Why do evolutionists act as if their theory is fact?(50.00%)
First, there are no "evolutionists" or "darwinists" any more than there are "gravitationists" or "relativityists". It's a scientific theory, not a belief.
Second, it's important to understand the difference between scientific fact and theory:
- Sci...
Is God Cruel?
flossheal: It's not what I believe (I'm an atheist) - I was simply taking the position that _if_ that's true (since it's what most Christians believe), then these are the logical conclusions.
I still believe that any god that can alleviate suffering...
Is God Cruel?
flossheal: No, it only works if the god you believe in is supposed to be both benevolent and omnipotent - which the god of the bible is. How is it not cruel to leave humans - many of them innocent - to suffer and die horribly when it could all be preve...
Is God Cruel?
flossheal: If god is omniscient, he must have known that AIDS (malaria, parasites, etc) would come about. If he's omnipotent, he must be capable of arranging the course of evolution so those things don't arise.
So it seems to me that God must either...
Is God Cruel?(0.00%)
amblessed: How does that actually answer the question?
Is God Cruel?
If you believe the creation story in the bible, yes, God created everything, including AIDS, malaria, and any number of even more horrible viruses, bacteria and parasites - specifically to cause suffering. Not very benevolent, huh?
Is there really such thing as ghosts
filletofspam: Yes, and hence you can use logic to apply to your theorems - but not to the world at large. You can't say "Godel showed all sufficiently capable systems of formal logic have unprovable truths, therefore the universe has unproveable truths...
Infinite possibility or finite possibility?
lilykatt: Zero is a number. It's part of the natural numbers, the rationals, etc.
You can't raise infinity to a power, because infinity is not a number - the comparison is meaningless.
Is there really such thing as ghosts
filletofspam: Your reference to godel is useless except in the allegorical sense (reality not being a mathematical system), but I take your meaning. I didn't say that they definitely couldn't exist, though - just that in the complete absense of any evi...
Is there really such thing as ghosts
No. If they existed, it would be possible to construct a test that reliably showed their existence. In the absense of any such test (and plenty of failed attempts), it's reasonable to suppose they don't exist - just as it's reasonable to suppose that f...
Massive black holes
Time only slows from the perspective of the object falling into the black hole. From an outside observer's perspective, the object falls into the black hole at the same speed you would expect for any other object.
Religion topics
I'll ask you back: Why should religious belief get special treatment? Most people have no trouble challenging peoples' beliefs and positions on practically any other topic. What makes religion different?
Have you ever seen a ghost?
I wasn't giving a "do I believe" answer - merely pointing out that just because I might have seen something that fits the (very vague and inclusive) descriptions people give of ghosts, how am I to know if it was 'actually' a ghost or not?
And I'm no...
Do you believe in horoscopes?
rnealw: If they were always wrong, that would mean they actually predict things.
Horoscopes are based on a discredited view of the solar system, and vague ideas about the movement of the planets somehow relating to our actions. As toadaly points out...
Have you ever seen a ghost?
How would I know what I saw was a ghost, and not, say, a hallucination? If you're seeing these sort of things regularly, I'd suggest going and getting a brainscan - untreated tumors can be deadly.
Eve and adam
lilbluemm: There's absolutely no mention of that in the bible. The first we hear about Cain's wife is Genesis 4:17:
"And Cain knew his wife; and she conceived, and bare Enoch: and he builded a city, and called the name of the city, after the name of h...
For the Catholics,
rnealw: Would you care to explain how the bible distinguishes between someone who dies with unforgiven sins and someone who commits suicide? It's my understanding that the latter is simply a special case of the former.
Human Evolution
"you also need to realize that aging EVOLUTION IS NOT FACT.
how can you ask where we came from without considering all possabilies?"
Read what I posted above earlier - "evolution as theory and fact". I'm not going to repeat myself here, since you c...
Whats up with god?
I can only conclude, then, that god is either limited - he _can't_ fix these things - or evil - he can fix them, but chooses to allow unimaginable suffering anyway. Curiously, he doesn't seem to exercise any powers of discrimination, either: True Belie...
Human Evolution
What have species got to do with anything? Species are a human convention, not something fundamentally biological. What exactly confines mutations to human-drawn boundaries?
For 5, I said "occupying the same niche". Bacteria don't hunt gazelles, and...
Whats up with god?
"If God were 'More Active' then Faith would be meaningless and no longer Free will."
This is one of the most common arguments religious people try and use for the mysterious absense of any evidence of god, and it's _total_nonsense_.
Why exactly w...
Chimps using spears!!! - evolution?
You don't "prove" evolution. Evolution, like any scientific theory, can be _disproven_, but not _proven_ (which implies no possibility of correction). You could claim that it provides evidence for evolution (which is sound), but I don't think you can s...
Are there any unforgiveable sins?
According to the bible, the only sin that is unforgiveable is blasphemy against the holy spirit.
P.S. I deny the holy spirit. http://www.blasphemychallenge.com/
For the Catholics,
rnealw: So why do you not generally conclude that anyone who died unexpectedly went to hell for whatever minor sin they might've had on their conscience, unforgiven, at the time?
Human Evolution
"Years of research in both theories" leads to you conclude that "there is only 6 palces in the world where that rocks layer like evolution says it would" and "carbon full life is 11400 years".
What I know of intelligent design is that it is not a sc...
Mormon FAQ's being answered
Right. So there's absolutely no evidence that these things ever existed, except for accounts made by a very small group of people who had a vested incentive to lie?
Human Evolution
blankman: If you'd read the article I linked you to, I'm sure you would have seen the distinction. Evolution _is_ a fact insofar as evolution is the gradual adaptation of organisms over time. We have repeatedly observed this, both in real-time (for exa...
Human Evolution
blankman: The scientific consensus is overwhelmingly in favour of evolution. Evolution is both a fact and a theory. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_as_theory_and_fact . The theory does not rest on a single fossil, or on "6 palces[sic] in the...
Mormon FAQ's being answered
Did anyone other than Joseph Smith ever see these "golden plates", or translate them? Are there records of the originals so we can verify their contents?
Infinite possibility or finite possibility?(100.00%)
A few points:
- You can 'calculate' zero. 2-2=0, for example. You can't divide two positive integers and get zero, though - perhaps that's what you're alluding to? Zero is an odd number, though. Check out http://scienceblogs.com/goodmath/2006/07/zero....
How do I tell my mom that I dont believe in god?(100.00%)
As others have suggested: Just tell her. If you feel it's necessary, go out of your way to assure her that you're still a "good person", that you simply don't believe there's a god. Explain as much as you feel comfortable with, while making it clear th...
Why is "god" so cruel?
Right. This god guy sure can hold a grudge, eh? 6000+ years, and he's still punishing us all for one measely petty theft!
Where does the universe stop?(100.00%)
Common misconception - the universe isn't a whole lot of stuff in an infinity of nothingness. The universe is the space itself and all the matter in it. Simply put, the universe doesn't end.
What this means is that at the big bang, the universe itse...
Human Evolution (50.00%)
Yes, as long as there are selection pressures - things that make one individual more likely to survive than another* - there will be evolution. The selection pressures we apply to ourselves in our societies are likely far more significant than natural ...
Holy water/normal water
Holy water is sold by charlatans, and is hence much more expensive.
But if you really want to spend the big bucks, you should get 'concentrated water': http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/29/AR2008062901872.html?hpid=sec-bus...
Who created God
"Great!... this admittance is what I have been after the entire go round. I am assuming you are classifying them under the term 'Nonsense' to we laypeople at least. By the by... I don't hold such a condescending view of people."
It's not a 'condesce...
Who created God
"When espoused by laypeople it is nonsense? This dismisses entire fields of critical thinking outside of scientific bounds. I am not willing to accept the position."
That's not what I said. What I said is that many scientific theories are sufficient...
What is my religion called?
gmltw: 'funadvice' is not a real person. Any questions by someone whose account has been deleted get renamed to 'funadvice'.
Who created God
miscegenymiser: There's a distinction between the scientific understanding of a theory and how laypeople understand it. For example, see the common misconceptions of theories like evolution ("humans evolved from apes"), and how poorly understood some ...
Who created God
miscegenymiser: I'd like to clarify a couple of things:
- Just because science doesn't have a theory on the origin of the universe that's widely accepted by the physics community at the moment doesn't mean it won't develop one.
- Just because it deve...
Is belief In Jesus necessary for Salvation ?
amblessed: So then, isn't the best path - the one way to guarantee salvation - to _not_ tell anyone about christianity? That way, nobody would be damned. In this view, missionaries damn far more people than they save!
Is belief In Jesus necessary for Salvation ?
Further, what about those that are over the "age of accountability" (whatever that is) but never hear about christianity? I'm specifically addressing gasmanobt3's claim that "every human being ever born afterwards would have the opportunity to accept ...
If we evolved from apes, why are there still apes?
I see two common fallacies being repeated over and over here.
The first is that "evolution is only a theory". There's a fundamental difference between the definition of "theory" in the context of science and the defintion of "theory" in lay-use. Evo...
Going to a school against your religion?(100.00%)
I would suggest giving it a try. See just how 'catholic' it is - many catholic schools are only religious in passing. The catholic church is surprisingly up to date when it comes to science, too. If you find that their religious affiliation is interfer...
Is belief In Jesus necessary for Salvation ?
gasmanobt3: Really? What about the hundreds of millions or billions of people who have lived and died after the death of Jesus, who, through accident of birth, never heard the "good news"? Are they all doomed to eternal damnation for the 'sin' of not b...
Who created God
miscegenymiser: I'm an atheist and a skeptic. I accept that we don't know how the universe came into existence, but think that it's extremely unlikely it was because of any sort of omnipotent being, because then you have to explain the origin of that b...
Who created God
cpstaicu: So in essence, you're saying that you've trained yourself not to ask awkward questions?
How can I make my mum happy apart from going to church?(100.00%)
What silverwings is proposing is basically to be close minded - don't admit the possibility that you could be wrong into your mind. This is exactly how religion propagates.
I'm sure I speak for a lot of atheists and agnostics when I say: Don't just ...
arachnid's Advice page 10
First, there are no "evolutionists" or "darwinists" any more than there are "gravitationists" or "relativityists". It's a scientific theory, not a belief. Second, it's important to understand the difference between scientific fact and theory: - Sci...
flossheal: It's not what I believe (I'm an atheist) - I was simply taking the position that _if_ that's true (since it's what most Christians believe), then these are the logical conclusions. I still believe that any god that can alleviate suffering...
flossheal: No, it only works if the god you believe in is supposed to be both benevolent and omnipotent - which the god of the bible is. How is it not cruel to leave humans - many of them innocent - to suffer and die horribly when it could all be preve...
flossheal: If god is omniscient, he must have known that AIDS (malaria, parasites, etc) would come about. If he's omnipotent, he must be capable of arranging the course of evolution so those things don't arise. So it seems to me that God must either...
amblessed: How does that actually answer the question?
If you believe the creation story in the bible, yes, God created everything, including AIDS, malaria, and any number of even more horrible viruses, bacteria and parasites - specifically to cause suffering. Not very benevolent, huh?
filletofspam: Yes, and hence you can use logic to apply to your theorems - but not to the world at large. You can't say "Godel showed all sufficiently capable systems of formal logic have unprovable truths, therefore the universe has unproveable truths...
lilykatt: Zero is a number. It's part of the natural numbers, the rationals, etc. You can't raise infinity to a power, because infinity is not a number - the comparison is meaningless.
filletofspam: Your reference to godel is useless except in the allegorical sense (reality not being a mathematical system), but I take your meaning. I didn't say that they definitely couldn't exist, though - just that in the complete absense of any evi...
No. If they existed, it would be possible to construct a test that reliably showed their existence. In the absense of any such test (and plenty of failed attempts), it's reasonable to suppose they don't exist - just as it's reasonable to suppose that f...
Time only slows from the perspective of the object falling into the black hole. From an outside observer's perspective, the object falls into the black hole at the same speed you would expect for any other object.
I'll ask you back: Why should religious belief get special treatment? Most people have no trouble challenging peoples' beliefs and positions on practically any other topic. What makes religion different?
I wasn't giving a "do I believe" answer - merely pointing out that just because I might have seen something that fits the (very vague and inclusive) descriptions people give of ghosts, how am I to know if it was 'actually' a ghost or not? And I'm no...
rnealw: If they were always wrong, that would mean they actually predict things. Horoscopes are based on a discredited view of the solar system, and vague ideas about the movement of the planets somehow relating to our actions. As toadaly points out...
How would I know what I saw was a ghost, and not, say, a hallucination? If you're seeing these sort of things regularly, I'd suggest going and getting a brainscan - untreated tumors can be deadly.
lilbluemm: There's absolutely no mention of that in the bible. The first we hear about Cain's wife is Genesis 4:17: "And Cain knew his wife; and she conceived, and bare Enoch: and he builded a city, and called the name of the city, after the name of h...
rnealw: Would you care to explain how the bible distinguishes between someone who dies with unforgiven sins and someone who commits suicide? It's my understanding that the latter is simply a special case of the former.
Guess I'm doomed, then. Oh well.
"you also need to realize that aging EVOLUTION IS NOT FACT. how can you ask where we came from without considering all possabilies?" Read what I posted above earlier - "evolution as theory and fact". I'm not going to repeat myself here, since you c...
I can only conclude, then, that god is either limited - he _can't_ fix these things - or evil - he can fix them, but chooses to allow unimaginable suffering anyway. Curiously, he doesn't seem to exercise any powers of discrimination, either: True Belie...
What have species got to do with anything? Species are a human convention, not something fundamentally biological. What exactly confines mutations to human-drawn boundaries? For 5, I said "occupying the same niche". Bacteria don't hunt gazelles, and...
"If God were 'More Active' then Faith would be meaningless and no longer Free will." This is one of the most common arguments religious people try and use for the mysterious absense of any evidence of god, and it's _total_nonsense_. Why exactly w...
You don't "prove" evolution. Evolution, like any scientific theory, can be _disproven_, but not _proven_ (which implies no possibility of correction). You could claim that it provides evidence for evolution (which is sound), but I don't think you can s...
According to the bible, the only sin that is unforgiveable is blasphemy against the holy spirit. P.S. I deny the holy spirit. http://www.blasphemychallenge.com/
rnealw: So why do you not generally conclude that anyone who died unexpectedly went to hell for whatever minor sin they might've had on their conscience, unforgiven, at the time?
"Years of research in both theories" leads to you conclude that "there is only 6 palces in the world where that rocks layer like evolution says it would" and "carbon full life is 11400 years". What I know of intelligent design is that it is not a sc...
Right. So there's absolutely no evidence that these things ever existed, except for accounts made by a very small group of people who had a vested incentive to lie?
blankman: If you'd read the article I linked you to, I'm sure you would have seen the distinction. Evolution _is_ a fact insofar as evolution is the gradual adaptation of organisms over time. We have repeatedly observed this, both in real-time (for exa...
blankman: The scientific consensus is overwhelmingly in favour of evolution. Evolution is both a fact and a theory. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_as_theory_and_fact . The theory does not rest on a single fossil, or on "6 palces[sic] in the...
Did anyone other than Joseph Smith ever see these "golden plates", or translate them? Are there records of the originals so we can verify their contents?
A few points: - You can 'calculate' zero. 2-2=0, for example. You can't divide two positive integers and get zero, though - perhaps that's what you're alluding to? Zero is an odd number, though. Check out http://scienceblogs.com/goodmath/2006/07/zero....
As others have suggested: Just tell her. If you feel it's necessary, go out of your way to assure her that you're still a "good person", that you simply don't believe there's a god. Explain as much as you feel comfortable with, while making it clear th...
Right. This god guy sure can hold a grudge, eh? 6000+ years, and he's still punishing us all for one measely petty theft!
Satan is what people blame when they don't want to admit their own failings.
Common misconception - the universe isn't a whole lot of stuff in an infinity of nothingness. The universe is the space itself and all the matter in it. Simply put, the universe doesn't end. What this means is that at the big bang, the universe itse...
Yes, as long as there are selection pressures - things that make one individual more likely to survive than another* - there will be evolution. The selection pressures we apply to ourselves in our societies are likely far more significant than natural ...
Holy water is sold by charlatans, and is hence much more expensive. But if you really want to spend the big bucks, you should get 'concentrated water': http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/29/AR2008062901872.html?hpid=sec-bus...
"Great!... this admittance is what I have been after the entire go round. I am assuming you are classifying them under the term 'Nonsense' to we laypeople at least. By the by... I don't hold such a condescending view of people." It's not a 'condesce...
"When espoused by laypeople it is nonsense? This dismisses entire fields of critical thinking outside of scientific bounds. I am not willing to accept the position." That's not what I said. What I said is that many scientific theories are sufficient...
gmltw: 'funadvice' is not a real person. Any questions by someone whose account has been deleted get renamed to 'funadvice'.
miscegenymiser: There's a distinction between the scientific understanding of a theory and how laypeople understand it. For example, see the common misconceptions of theories like evolution ("humans evolved from apes"), and how poorly understood some ...
miscegenymiser: I'd like to clarify a couple of things: - Just because science doesn't have a theory on the origin of the universe that's widely accepted by the physics community at the moment doesn't mean it won't develop one. - Just because it deve...
amblessed: So then, isn't the best path - the one way to guarantee salvation - to _not_ tell anyone about christianity? That way, nobody would be damned. In this view, missionaries damn far more people than they save!
Further, what about those that are over the "age of accountability" (whatever that is) but never hear about christianity? I'm specifically addressing gasmanobt3's claim that "every human being ever born afterwards would have the opportunity to accept ...
I see two common fallacies being repeated over and over here. The first is that "evolution is only a theory". There's a fundamental difference between the definition of "theory" in the context of science and the defintion of "theory" in lay-use. Evo...
I would suggest giving it a try. See just how 'catholic' it is - many catholic schools are only religious in passing. The catholic church is surprisingly up to date when it comes to science, too. If you find that their religious affiliation is interfer...
gasmanobt3: Really? What about the hundreds of millions or billions of people who have lived and died after the death of Jesus, who, through accident of birth, never heard the "good news"? Are they all doomed to eternal damnation for the 'sin' of not b...
miscegenymiser: I'm an atheist and a skeptic. I accept that we don't know how the universe came into existence, but think that it's extremely unlikely it was because of any sort of omnipotent being, because then you have to explain the origin of that b...
cpstaicu: So in essence, you're saying that you've trained yourself not to ask awkward questions?
What silverwings is proposing is basically to be close minded - don't admit the possibility that you could be wrong into your mind. This is exactly how religion propagates. I'm sure I speak for a lot of atheists and agnostics when I say: Don't just ...