Did humans evolve from ape or were adam and eve the first people?

were adam and eve the first people or did humans evolve from ape?

I believe there is a god .. im not so sure about jesus though .. and the whole Adam and Eve thing is kinda far fetched .. how can you possibly grow a human being from a rib stuck into the ground? .. its sounds kinda phony to me .. but if you look at the type of conditions that have to be set for life to take place on a planet .. there must be a god to make that happen .. Earth has to be just far enough away from the sun .. there has to be a Jupiter like planet to keep the big asteroids away . there also has to be a moon to control the tides and such .. you have to have all these things to have life.
Because God made these perfect conditions for us life sprouted and we evolved from single celled organisms and over millions of years we lost our gills .. sprouted legs and arms .. adapted to the changing world by walking up right .. even our finger and toe nails are proof that we evolved .. even if some scientists dont believe that we evolved from other creatures .. other scientists are continuly finding skulls and other bones of another connection between us and our ape like ancestors .. they are even looking at the possibility that some dinosaurs are the ancestors of birds! So Im not sure what everyone else thinks but I belive that we slowly adapted to the ever changing world .. not that we magically poofed out from no where and women were made from one of my ribs.

I think adam and eve were cavemen and all hairy.. well thats what I've always thought

According to the Bible (God's Word), Adam and Eve were the first created.

evolution is crap!! were there any creatures that resembled an ape and a human!! NO! it says in the bible that adam and eve were first created. and name 1 book that survived thousands of years like the bible did!! That was the work of God

Ok.

First of all Bible says it was Adam and Eve.

But Scientists/Evolutionists say that it was a tiny molecule from the wind, went into the water, thus animals, then walking animals, then apes..ect.

Now, I am Christian//Druidic.

I have read all the bible, but, any religious person should know that way back in the day there was a meeting held by the King Constantine. Now he got together many scholars, and they picked and choosed what would go into the bible and what would not.

Some of the bible over years, has changed, and you can talk to any Priest, Rev, ect. about this.
Sure 'God' made the Bible at first, but, other then that humans added it from what they saw and heard, and there are many variations of stories.

http://gbgm-umc.org/UMW/bible/cea.stm

I don't believe that every animal was put on this Earth by a higher power. So I do not believe in Adam and Eve

However, I do believe in evolution, whether human evolved from 'apes' I dunno.

It's something you have to decide for yourself, because right now mankind doesn't know the truth.

Most educated believers do accept evolution. Dualism is the view that there can be scientific truths and religious truths and that these truths do not have to agree because they answer different questions.

Of course the evidence for evolution in the fossil record is strong enough that anyone who doesn't accept evolution will not change their mind for any amount of evidence.

this topic is the most known topic that everyone loves to fight over.but to believe that we evolved from monkeys..thats part of..someone's theory I forgot who..but I believe what the bible says tho.I mean it makes sence and even scientist have said that we evolved from apes there have been some scientist who dont believe the bible and tested some of the 'facts' they read in the bible and were dumbfounded when they found out that the bible geography and things done there were actually real. so some scientist dont believe but most of them know not to judge the bible.
Adam and Eve were the first created. evolution was made by a guy who doesnt know what he is talking about

Human evolved from earlier beings. There is no such thing as a higher being who put everything here.

both. after two what ever sub humanis below us did it thhey gave birth to adem and eve. thet was the first humans and god came down and sead..etc

The Evolution vs. Creationism question cannot be answered. because no one *really* knows. SO the only answers you'll get a basically who's rooting on what side. One day we will know, but that will probably not be in any of our generations - if ever!

n one really knows.. but what I do know is..evolution is crap!!

I believe in evolution and I believe the bible. First of all I believe people evolved from ape but I also believe that Adam and Eve where the first true intelegant people and I feel they where the first people that were smart enough to astablish a writing system and write and keep track of there history. there had to have been more than just the two of them because if so we would all be cousins and people frown on that. .. If God is all so mighty and powerful them maby he created evolution and gave us the intelegance to see that there is evolution and warship him aswell.

lmao .. wow I just read what the guy above me wrote .. its kind of weird because as I read what he wrote I have a million things in my head that would answer what he just put down .. scientists 'guess' (its actually very complicated calculations that you cant understand) that it was really cold a million or so years ago and that there was a huge ice age .. the artic and antarctic are the reminents of this .. we have hills and other land formations becuase of the retreating glaciers .. now the Earth is coming out of this ice age and is constently warming .. we are just making it go faster by using our cars and polluting our Earth and keeping all of the Suns heat in .. and how is global warming a scam? how much are we paying for gas right now? its about $1.09 here in Canada .. now I know that this can also be blamed on the war but seriously .. you could bite the bullet now and pay the extra money and possibly have free gas that you can grow in your backyard .. or we can continue to heat the Earth until we have no glaciers there are major floods and no fresh water to drink .. I'll take choice A any day

Of course another angle is what if we are misunderstanding the whole Adam and Eve story today?

Adam is Hebrew for mankind, Eve is Hebrew for life.

Considering the names is it possible that the story is alegorical rather than a story about two people?

I don't understand your very first line with the question mark at the end of it

nvm

I think adam and eve were apes after all apes are the smartest animals in the animal kingdom. their perfectly designed to live in the jungle and wasnt that were adam and eve basically lived is in a jungle paridise as the apes spread out to differnt parts of the world they evolved to survive thats nature.I think people are scared to think that when god made adam and eve that they werent blonde blue eyed and fair skined put god doesn't make mistakes only people do

I agree with the whole ape into humans because, if birds with long beaks could have their off spring have curved beaks then an ape turning into human is possible, but I dont think that it was an ape maybe something similar that looks or maybe both humans and apes came from the same ancestor. The whole thing with the bible, even though it is the oldest book known who knows if god is only telling half the story. All everyone is hearing is from some old book.

well it was adam and eve. I believe that. elvelution never made sence to me I know that it will never be proven to eneyone because it never happened if you think about it, evelution couldn't have happened b/c when something explodes things go every where not seperate into group like the moon is made up of diffrent material then the earth that has been provent same for all the planets,and according to evelution the world is suppost to be getting better but things in reality become worse, things get out of order in the world even bodys after so long they just stop and come to a end..any more quetions about this or other biblical stuff you can mail me

Of course there was no Adam and Eve. I think I remember reading that the first human, or at least our ancestor, was a black lady in Africa. And no, she didn't descend from an ape. Probably both we and apes descended from something similar even further back. And we are talking about very long times here.

I am pretty hazy on the specifics but it is all there in the literature - just go and find it; you will be enthralled.

And there is no God - not even a dislexic Dog. Or if there is she isn't making a very good job of it.

If Adam and Eve were two people - who did their first child 'marry' and have children with?

There is no logical problem here. The first child would impregnate whichever of its parents were of the opposite gender. You and I know that this sort of behaviour probably leads to problems, but not logical ones. If Adam and Eve were godlike creatures al that would have happened was the line would have degenerated to the point where we appeared (a few million years ago). Possible but very very unlikely.

There is no God? What?!

No, there is no God. Primitive people believed in God because they wanted an explanation and their scientific ability was not very advanced. Later people believed because they were told to by crooks and charlatons who wanted power. Nowadays many people believe because they are too stupid or lazy to think for themselves.

There are intelligent people who believe in God, but their God is not the benevolent fellow with a white beard who watches over sparrows. She, He or It is merely the substance that fills in the gaps we still can't calculate. We might know what happened a nanosecond after the Big Bang, but with current techniques it is impossible to get back to the instant, and since that is a singularity, by definition we can't know what went on before. Hence, it is said, the necessity for God.

I am of course not happy with this. Look at an analogy. You start walking south; eventually you get to the South Pole - you can't go any further south, but that doesn't mean there is nothing beyond - there is plenty and it obeys all the usual rules. You just need something other than feet to experience it.

They should've gotten some of the 'Star Trek' writers to write the book of Genesis. It'd be more beliveable. Whenever I read Genesis, it reminds me of those TV commercials, where the kid explains how they get all that milk into Kraft Singles.

' the kid explains how they get all that milk into Kraft Singles'

This looks like something I'm going to have to look for, here in poor old deprived England

'Did humans evolve from ape or were Adam and Eve the first people?'

Neither. Modern humans are still apes. What we usually refer to as 'apes' are actually our cousins. And just like we did not evolve from our family cousins, so we did not evolve from the apes. All our cousins represent the biological state of evolution TODAY as descended from Common Ancestors. In the case of GORILLAS our lines separated 10 million years ago .. in the case of CHIMPS only 4 million years ago .. BTW the 'missing links', or close cousins Between us and the other apes, were offshoots destined to be lost in the sands of time to which they were not the FITTEST.
Adam and Eve will always *represent * the First People in the beautiful Bible narrative.

It's not so much a question of belief. There are some people even nowadays who
believe Earth to be flat, but you will rarely find them in industrialized societies.
Evolution is well-understood and a fact. Not all missing links were found, but given
the population densities of man-apes, you will never find all links beause there didn't
exists so many individuals.
I think it strange how many people are willing to believe in the Bible (an OLD book,
based on the knowledge of it's time) and not in the thinks science tells us.
Science is not religion, it just looks at the world and tries to classify.
If you ever used a genetic algorithm to solve complex mathematical problems, you
will NEVER EVER believe in creationism, because you see the blind clockmaker
at work, first-hand.
There is something called REALITY out there, unfortunately people depend on
opinions rather than facts. That's also the reason so many people read Horoscopes.

By the way, the term 'Theory' is used in science to classify thoughts about which
the scientific community is VERY sure, the only level even higher is 'Nature-law'.
In everyday language, 'Theory' is much weaker and people tend to think that
evolution is one of many ideas, while it's really the only thing which seems to work.

I don't just tell you to just believe in evolution. But if nobody better comes up, this is
by far the most likely explanation.

I like Mhung's answer except the last line. We and modern apes evolved from the same primate ancestor, and a lot of creationists don't seem to understand that when you have thousands of generations, the differences between one generation and the next are tiny, so nobody had a significantly more ape-like parents than anyone else.

What's beautiful about the Adam and Eve story? 'Don't seek knowledge!' 'You sought knowledge, you must be punished!' We became significantly different from the apes precisely by seeking knowledge. And the rest of the creation myth doesn't tally with the facts. There couldn't have been day and night before the sun, or flowering plants before there were insects to pollinate them.

Face it, the bible is a book of myths made up by middle eastern people who did the best with what they knew. There's nothing in it that someone couldn't have made up. The stories of prophesies fulfilled were made up after the prophesies - like drawing a bullseye around where the arrow lands. It's absurd to venerate the bible today.

No, humans did not evolve from apes, face it, they were created by god, not to be all religoes or anything. But there is a ton of proof, if you want I can name some, just pm me.

The trouble with 'God did it' as an explanation is not that it can't explain anything. The problem is that it can explain ABSOLUTELY anything, how the universe is, or any other way it might or might not have been. It has no predictive power.

Darwin knew nothing about DNA, but when they started to look into DNA, they could say 'Evolution predicts that ape DNA should be more like human DNA than buffalo DNA, but it should be more like buffalo DNA than horseradish DNA.' And that's exactly what they found, in spades. In fact they now use the DNA to work out how closely living things are related and how long ago they parted company - and it goes back MUCH more than 6000 years.

Collette0110 asked
'name 1 book that survived thousands of years like the bible did!!'

The Iliad
The Odessey
Oedipus Rex
Oedipus at Colonos
Antigone
The Flies
Lysistrata
The Bacchae ...

What about ny favourite, Aenead. Or Ars Amorata. Or Plato's Republic. Even Julius Caesar wrote about his wars, and we were made to translate them at school. There are hundreds. Catullus. Sappho. Suetonius. The more I think the more there are.

And dare I say they are pretty nearly all better written than the Bible (except possibly in parts). And don't forget, what we call the bible only dates from the reign of King James; yesterday in historical terms. Not so old then.

the bible nor science is 100% true... if it's true that we aren't suppose to have sex before marriage, and adam and eve were the first 2 people, who married them?? and who gave them their names? and if they do have names, why adam and eve? maybe their names back than were completely different from adam and eve.. after all, people do tend to make mistakes when translating history
but on the other hand. they MIGHT be the first 2 people on earth, but they didn't have to get married to have sex.
then again, maybe adam and eve were the first 2 people who EVOLVED from apes. lol
so maybe god created evolution (after all, every creation and doings are supposed to be god's) and from evolution adam and eve

but then again.. I MIGHT BE WRONG... because I'm not god nor religious nor pagan or anything. I'm just me... hahahahaha!!!

PS: by 'just me' I meant that I'm god's creation, whether I came from sand, from wind, water, fire, apes, etc.. I'm still god's creation...

'maybe adam and eve were the first 2 people who EVOLVED from apes.'

Gee, I wish evolution were better taught in school... (I wish it was taught at all...)

Evolution works on populations. It works very slowly - over many generations. There were large numbers of proto-apes. Somehow they divided into two populations - maybe they were travelling and disagreed about which way to go. Maybe a river rose, cutting one group off. They stayed separated for many generations. One group had to be clever to survive, the other didn't. The stupid ones in the first group didn't live long enough to have children, the clever ones did. Stupid or clever made less difference to the second group (maybe there was more food with less effort where they were). At the end of many many generations, the first group was markedly cleverer than the second group. At the end of many millennia, they were so different they couldn't breed together, even if they'd wanted to. There was no sharp dividing line and no first couple.

And you didn't come from sand or wind or water or fire.

God created Adam and Eve.

Going back to the original question, my answer:

Both!

It's not impossible. Humans evolved as God intended and the first two who were able to have a relationship with him (I.e were fully human) were the ones we know as Adam and Eve.

*** Collette0110 asked
'name 1 book that survived thousands of years like the bible did!!'

The Iliad
The Odessey
Oedipus Rex
Oedipus at Colonos
Antigone
The Flies
Lysistrata
The Bacchae ...

He's good. . . .
Ok name one that has been around over 1000 years that is amoung the top selling books of all times.

'Ok name one that has been around over 1000 years that is amoung the top selling books of all times.'

Oh, indisputably, the Qu'ran.

And probably the Analects of Confucius, the Bhagavad Gita, the Ramayana and the Tao Ti Ching.

You better check your book list.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_books
Wow the torah has been around for more than 3000 years and the Quran is in at 3rd.

You keep changing the rules.
'name 1 book that survived thousands of years like the bible did!!'
I named 8, and fleapit added at least 8 more.
'Ok name one that has been around over 1000 years that is amoung the top selling books of all times.'
I named one and probably four more.
'Wow the torah has been around for more than 3000 years and the Quran is in at 3rd.'
The Torah is probably only 2500 years old, and with about 13 million Jews worldwide who can read it, it can never make a top seller. 3rd is certainly 'among the top selling books of all times'. The thing about 'top selling books of all times' is that such a number is heavily dependent on printing and on capitalism. Look at some of the other best sellers - all the Harry Potters, well wowee! What does that say about the importance of the bible? Look, you want to tell us that your book is really, really special, well it isn't. It's great literature, and it's given many phrases and ideas to western world, but it's only one among many other 'inspired books' and many other great books, and many other best selling books. It also has some terrible messages, promoting genocide and intolerance and homophobia and racism and sexism and slavery and ...

Naaa . . . I'm not changing the rules. . . I'm just messing with ya.

What does that say about YOU?

It says he is at least reading this rubbish, as am I; and you too I expect.

Has anyone noticed that everyone who is on the Adam and Eve side of the discussion only say things like:

'No, humans did not evolve from apes, face it, they were created by god, not to be all religoes or anything. But there is a ton of proof, if you want I can name some, just pm me.'

and

'n one really knows.. but what I do know is..evolution is crap!!'

the evolution side has all sorts of evidence to back it up .. Adam and eve have one book that is just full of stories
If you want to make a good argument for Adam and Evethen dont write something like
'Ya well the bible said so!'

And can someone please explain to me why evolutiuon is not taught in our schools?

I have no Idea why it is not taught in canadian schools but it is in U,S. schools, they call it natural science.
I don't agree with this time frame and theory but here is Science saying we all have one common female ancester
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitochondrial_Eve
http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/alabaster/A703199
http://www.archaeology.org/9609/abstracts/dna.html
You could give me a library of books stating Man Evolved and I would still Believe God created man and I will go to my grave believing that.

They may teach natural science, but they don't teach evolution nearly well enough, otherwise we wouldn't have confused nonsense like this.

The word rnealw doesn't understand is 'common'. 'Common' in this context means 'Mitochondrial Eve' is the earliest human woman who is an ancestor of all of us on our mothers' mothers' mothers'...side. All of the many other women living at the time (140,000 years ago) were ancestors of only some of us or none of us or sometimes through the male side, and a woman who lived much earlier is the earliest ancestor of all of us regardless of parental gender. There were many other women living at the same time as her, too. (There is also a Y-chromosome 'Adam' but he wasn't Mitochondiral Eve's partner, in fact he lived at nothing like the same time as her.) This is all stated clearly in the third and fourth paragraph of your first Wikipedia reference (as of 9am 25/11/07, NZDT).

Basically it was a huge PR mistake of the geneticists to call this woman 'Eve'. They knew exactly what they meant, but far too many idiots have used to it try and back up Middle Eastern mythology.

rnealw's last line translated: 'My mind is made up, don't confuse me with the facts.' What galloway_15 said.

In order to teach Evolution which is a scientific theory. they must also teach other things also like Creationism which you consider a theory.
And since Evoution is properly called the theory of Evolution. . . . I'd like to know when Theory evolved to mean the same as Fact? I think your the one confused there.
Oh.
'There is no evidence in the fossil record of one kind of creature becoming another kind. No transitional links or intermediate forms between various kinds of creatures have ever been found.' For example, 'the evolutionist claims that it took perhaps fifty million years for a fish to evolve into an amphibian. But, again, there are no transitional forms. For example, not a single fossil with part fins...part feet has been found. And this is true between every major plant and animal kind.'

Evolutionists present much of their finds as if they were compelling and factual explanations to human evolution. In fact, they base their conclusions on mere speculation and often the flimsiest of `finds'. Many discoveries of supposed hominids consist of only a mouth fragment, a leg bone, a hip bone, or a knee joint. On this alone, they have considered it to be a hominid. They even name it, reconstruct what it looked like, and present it to the public as a fact. Some of these finds have turned out to be those of a pig, donkey, or the result of a hoax. One hoax consisted of someone placing a human skull with an ape's jaw. Evolutionist declared it to be a hominid for fifty years without having done an in depth study of it. Some finds consist of an assortment of fragments found miles apart and then placed together to look as though they came from the same individual. Sometimes rocks as simple as those found in any backyard are called tools of hominids and are pictured in books. Footprints that look identical to any person's today are sometimes declared in books and accepted as those of hominids. The brow ridge that supposedly marked the hominid appears only in one skull.

rnealw:
'In order to teach Evolution which is a scientific theory. they must also teach other things also like Creationism which you consider a theory.'
No I don't, nor does anyone else. A court of law has recently ruled Creationism is not science. It does not reach the status of a theory, it's just a speculation.

If there is a theory of Creationism, what is it? That is, HOW did the Creator create? The bible says 'God said 'Let there be.. and there was ...' but there's a yawning gap that 'and' (and 'omnipotent') fails to bridge. The bible is silent and so far as I know no creationist, sorry Scientific Creationist, sorry Intelligent Design theorist, has a clue - or has even given the matter a moment's thought.

'And since Evoution is properly called the theory of Evolution. . . . I'd like to know when Theory evolved to mean the same as Fact? I think your the one confused there.'
Evolution has a theory, which has evolved over 150 years. It is supported by a mass of evidence which is readily available. The basic truth of evolution is now so well supported by the evidence that it would be perverse to deny it. That is what we mean by 'fact'.

'There is no evidence in the fossil record of one kind of creature becoming another kind. No transitional links or intermediate forms between various kinds of creatures have ever been found.' For example, 'the evolutionist claims that it took perhaps fifty million years for a fish to evolve into an amphibian. But, again, there are no transitional forms. For example, not a single fossil with part fins...part feet has been found. And this is true between every major plant and animal kind.'

That is simply nonsense from beginning to end. It seems to have been written out of his head by some creationist (hence the use of the non-taxonomic term 'kind') Lungfish have flippers that they use to propel themselves across land, and they're living animals. The coelocanth has four rather leg-like fins.

Evolution does not stand or fall on the fossil record, but the fact is that the fossil record is growing every day, and old gaps are increasingly being filled in. Trouble is, whenever a transitional form is found exactly half way across a gap, the creationists say 'Look, now there are TWO gaps!' Fossilisation is actually quite rare, requiring specific circumstances to happen, and we're lucky to have any fossils at all.

Darwin was driven to formulate the theory of evolution by two big questions. Why are there so very many species - vastly more than necessary to make an earth in which humans can thrive? and Why is nature so cruel? His particular example was an insect that laid her eggs inside a caterpillar, and the young slowly eat the caterpillar from the inside, being careful not to kill her. His theory brilliantly answers both questions. Creationists have never begun to answer either. So far as I know, they haven't even tried.

rnealw:
'Evolutionists present much of their finds as if they were compelling and factual explanations to human evolution. In fact, they base their conclusions on mere speculation and often the flimsiest of `finds'. Many discoveries of supposed hominids consist of only a mouth fragment, a leg bone, a hip bone, or a knee joint. On this alone, they have considered it to be a hominid. They even name it, reconstruct what it looked like, and present it to the public as a fact. Some of these finds have turned out to be those of a pig, donkey, or the result of a hoax.'

This - which you seem to have lifted undigested from some creationist tract, is such a wild exaggeration that it deserves the name 'LIE'. ONE animal was falsely reconstructed from one bone in the nineteenth century, and was quickly withdrawn when other scientists pointed out its real origin.

'One hoax consisted of someone placing a human skull with an ape's jaw. Evolutionist declared it to be a hominid for fifty years without having done an in depth study of it.'

The Piltdown forgery is well known. It was always considered anomalous, many considered it a hoax until it was finally proved to be one, by methods that were not available when it was 'discovered'. All through that time, it was described as having an 'ape-like' jaw, contrary to the mainstream view of human skull evolution.

'Some finds consist of an assortment of fragments found miles apart and then placed together to look as though they came from the same individual. Sometimes rocks as simple as those found in any backyard are called tools of hominids and are pictured in books. Footprints that look identical to any person's today are sometimes declared in books and accepted as those of hominids.'

Sorry, too vague be able to rufute on sight.

' The brow ridge that supposedly marked the hominid appears only in one skull.'

This may have been true once, but it is certainly not true now.

The thing about these hoaxes and mistakes is that they come to light and are corrected. If evolution was a gigantic fraud, as you seem to believe, wouldn't we continue to insist that Piltdown was real, or at least be arguing about him? It was science, not religion, that exposed the Piltdown hoax.

Creationism has no such self-correcting facility. It has never made any discoveries. It has never proposed any mechanism more sophisticated than 'Goddidit'. It is a dead end, an alternative to science. That is why it must not be taught in science classes.

So if Evolution is a fact as you say, How come mankind has shown no signs of evolving in the last few thousand years of recorded history?
And what proof do I have that what you say is true and not just the belief of a couple of dozen people.

Thousands vs Hundred-thousands... there's a big difference...

Plus, there's less of a need to evolve in the past few millenia, humans have been developing better ways to survive.

'And what proof do I have that what you say is true'
Have a look at any real science journal, such as Nature or New Scientist. Go into any university library and look in the catalogue. The Internet can be useful if you look at the reliability of its sources. 'The Selfish Gene', 'The Blind Watchmaker' and 'Climbing Mount Improbable' by Richard Dawkins are excellent modern introductions.

' and not just the belief of a couple of dozen people.'
If it's numbers you want, the Creationists got going a petition of several hundred scientists supporting creationism. Real scientists responded with a petition of scientists supporting evolution - all called Steve. The Steve-o-meter registered 844 Steves as of November 16, 2007.

the only thing I've learned so far is that Evolution is a religion for Atheist

Then you haven't learnt anything.

1. Evolution is not a religion, because

1.1 a religion is a set of beliefs about the ultimate meaning and purpose of the Universe, usually (not always, as in Buddhism) involving the existence of a non-physical being or beings, and usually arrived at by inspiration/revelation, while
1.2 evolution is a scientific theory, derived (as they all are) from observation and discussion, susceptible to amendment by persuasion and reason

2. Plenty of theists believe in evolution.

But then, you seem determined not to learn anything. ('You could give me a library of books stating Man Evolved and I would still Believe God created man and I will go to my grave believing that.')

Until Darwin, Creationism was the best guess going as to how the diversity of life arose, and it was almost universally believed (though cracks were already starting to appear). Evolution made a designer unnecessary, but not impossible (nothing does that - the idea is too shifty, an omnipotent being can by definition do absolutely anything, including hide from any refutation - that's why it doesn't explain anything).

Hey we all worship something. . . . You seem to worship science and Evolution.
Hugh. . . . . That almost sounded Agnostic.

Not all of us worship anything. (It depends what you mean by 'worship'.) I have a strong regard - no more - for the truth. Anyway, suddenly worship is BAD? What side are you on? I don't think you know what agnostic means. (Actually, like atheism it has two meanings. Some agnostics say they don't know whether there are any god/dess/es or not, others say it is unknowable.) But the question is not what I believe, it's whether there are any god/dess/es or not. Thanks to Darwin, we are no longer compelled to believe there is/are because of the diversity of life.

Pilate said to him, 'What is truth?'

Truth seems to be what most people believe at a given time. Statistics and probability come into it; the larger the number involved the nearer we get to the truth. On balance (and with Occam) I would say that some version of evolution has it. Not Darwinism, unfortunately. But Darwin was bright enough to know there were gaps in his theory. Many of these have been filled in, but there is enough wobble left for everyone to have a jolly good argument, without bringing God in at all.

Whatever else truth is, it is not 'what most people believe at a given time'. That would mean that the earth was once flat, and that the sun once went around the earth, and that God once sent thunder and lightning on whim, but that about 1750 He stopped doing so and turned the job over to electrical charges in clouds. There is a real truth, even if you and I disagree about what it is, and even if every person on earth believes something else. So statistics and probability do not come into what truth is. The majority is probably right about most things, but we have no way of knowing when the majority - even a 100% majority - is 180° wrong.

By your own definition, fleapit, Darwinism is now true because a majority of scientists believe in it. For someone who knew nothing of genetics or DNA, Darwin got it amazingly right. There's still nothing the matter with natural selection acting on natural variation.

If everybody believes the earth is flat then no one will walk to the edge so the effect is exactly the same as if it were flat. If it waddles like a duck and quacks it probably is a duck. You seem to be implying that there is some kind of objective truth out there, that exists whether we know it or not. A bright and shiny (god-created) universe that just keeps on going and always has and always will. That seems a little unlikely but what has my sense of unease to do with reality? Whatever that is. In this system it doesn't matter if we don't open the box to see if Schrodinger's cat is alive or dead because we know that it will defnitely be in one state or the other even if there is no way of knowing which it is. (There is a 50 per cent probability that a particle will delay in the time-span so setting in motion a train of events that will end with the cat's death. Of course this means that there is a 50 per cent probability that it won't)

There are certain things that we can never know; but they exist anyway. That's it? In that case how do we know that's it? But then it doesn't matter if we know or not that that's it, because that's it whether we know it or not. Or is it?

If everybody believes the earth is flat then no one will walk to the edge so the effect is exactly the same as if it were flat. If it waddles like a duck and quacks it probably is a duck. You seem to be implying that there is some kind of objective truth out there, that exists whether we know it or not. A bright and shiny (god-created) universe that just keeps on going and always has and always will. That seems a little unlikely but what has my sense of unease to do with reality? Whatever that is. In this system it doesn't matter if we don't open the box to see if Schrodinger's cat is alive or dead because we know that it will defnitely be in one state or the other even if there is no way of knowing which it is. (There is a 50 per cent probability that a particle will delay in the time-span so setting in motion a train of events that will end with the cat's death. Of course this means that there is a 50 per cent probability that it won't)

There are certain things that we can never know; but they exist anyway. That's it? In that case how do we know that's it? But then it doesn't matter if we know or not that that's it, because that's it whether we know it or not. Or is it?

If everybody believes the earth is flat then no one will walk to the edge so the effect is exactly the same as if it were flat. If it waddles like a duck and quacks it probably is a duck. You seem to be implying that there is some kind of objective truth out there, that exists whether we know it or not. A bright and shiny (god-created) universe that just keeps on going and always has and always will. That seems a little unlikely but what has my sense of unease to do with reality? Whatever that is. In this system it doesn't matter if we don't open the box to see if Schrodinger's cat is alive or dead because we know that it will defnitely be in one state or the other even if there is no way of knowing which it is. (There is a 50 per cent probability that a particle will delay in the time-span so setting in motion a train of events that will end with the cat's death. Of course this means that there is a 50 per cent probability that it won't)

There are certain things that we can never know; but they exist anyway. That's it? In that case how do we know that's it? But then it doesn't matter if we know or not that that's it, because that's it whether we know it or not. Or is it?