|
Register | Sign In |
|
QuickSearch
EvC Forum active members: 65 (9164 total) |
| |
ChatGPT | |
Total: 916,914 Year: 4,171/9,624 Month: 1,042/974 Week: 1/368 Day: 1/11 Hour: 1/0 |
Thread ▼ Details |
|
Thread Info
|
|
|
Author | Topic: Take the Atheist Challenge!!! | |||||||||||||||||||||||
NosyNed Member Posts: 9004 From: Canada Joined: |
As I recall you were going to show us examples of dishonesty on the side of evolutionary biologists (perhaps geologists and physicists too). This thread seems to be stuck in listing literalists dishonesty (or off what I would like to define as the topics).
Examples of Dishonesty
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
NosyNed Member Posts: 9004 From: Canada Joined: |
That's because creationism AIN'T science. But it was held as the current consensus by most of those who were the practicing scietists of the day up to about oh, roughly 200 or 300 years ago. So in that sense it was the science of the time.
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
NosyNed Member Posts: 9004 From: Canada Joined: |
But if you are scientist, you must remain open to all possibilities.
Including the possibility that an individual is delusional which has been demonstarted to be true on some occasions. While it is desirable to remain open to possibilities it is cleary ridiculous to be open to all possibilities. It is too expensive in time and resource to go chasing after every cockamamie idea that is proposed. Each of us has to pick and choose as best we can. Science as a practive picks only those things which have some observableevidence to work with.
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
NosyNed Member Posts: 9004 From: Canada Joined: |
But if most of the scientists don't believe in God, then where is that going to lead us?
Surveys seem to show that about 40% of scientists are believers of one sort or another. While that's not a majority it seems to me to be a pretty good representation. I don't see that there's going to be a problem there. In any case, we were talking about evidence. If someone finds some evidence for God that can be examined the process will lead us there.
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
NosyNed Member Posts: 9004 From: Canada Joined: |
Ok then, I think you shouldn't use it as a reason not to find God. No one uses the ToE as a reason for not finding God. It would astonish me if someone claimed that. A majority of believers also understand and accept current biological science, physics and geology. There is no connection between believing in God and the sciences. However, if you're somone who says that if the earth isn't 6,000 years old then God doens't exist then you are the one making knowledge a reason for not finding God. Don't blame the scientists. The blame is on the shoulders of the creationists.
How are you guys quoting? I think I am doing it the hard way.
Go to the "UBB code is ON" link on the left of the edit screen to see all the things you can do. Also if you click the little blue raw text button at the bottom of a post you can see exactly how someone is doing something.
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
NosyNed Member Posts: 9004 From: Canada Joined: |
Lam, it's not so complicated. If there is a mitrochrondial Eve then all it means is that at different points in time the descendants of all the other women didn't have female offspring at some point.
It is very analogous to inheriting the father's name and changing the woman's last name on marraige. If a particular lineage has only daughter's at some point the name goes "extinct". If human populations have gone through a bottleneck it is rather easy for this to happen. I think (IIRC) that the bottleneck size is a few 10,000's of individuals. That is evidenced partially by our genetic similarities. The similarities do not say only 2 individuals though and not only 6,000 years ago. It is amusing that creationists want to latch onto selected scientific discoveries and try to warp them to fit the ideas they have but don't believe anything else that the scientists have to say.
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
NosyNed Member Posts: 9004 From: Canada Joined: |
The way I was raised makes it hard for me to see something as being fact, and unproven theory at the same time. It is contradictary to me. It is miss-leading to me. Let's try again then. It is a fact that things fall down if let go with no support. Right? So how does this happen? Newton explained it through the attraction that masses have. This is the "how" and is a theory of gravity. His theory gave equations for calculating how fast things would fall. Now we have what we might carelessly call "gravity" meaning two things. One is the fact that things fall and the other is a theory on how. It turns out that if you are very nit picky or dealing with some situations that Newton's theory was "wrong" (or not perfect or whatever word you want to use). Did things stop falling down? No! Now we have Einstein's theory of gravity. It predicts different results under some circumstances. The difference in predictions was used to see who was right. However, there is a good chance that Einstein's theory is also wrong. There are some problems to be sorted out. When they are we might have a third theory of gravity. How about a simpler analogy: Bob has arrived at your doorstep to visit. That is a fact. You don't see his car in the drive way but it could be up the street. The buses don't run very close. He could have hitched a ride. Bob is lazy. Bob doesn't like to spend money. If he doesn't tell you how he got there you might form your own "theory" (more like an hypothosis). He drove but parked up the street to avoid the mud near your house which would dirty his car. It is a fact that he got there, he was transported, and you have a theory of transportation. We use the word "evolution" to mean both the fact that evolution has happened and the Theory of Evolution (ToE). Sometimes it isn't clear when just the one word is used. And it is simply fact that it has happened. Once upon a time (it doesn't matter exactly the amount of time ago) there were no mammals, no birds, no reptiles. At a later time there were reptiles but no birds and mammals. Now they are all here. Either there were a whole bunch of individual creation weeks or the later life was born of the earlier. This is what scientists of a couple of hundred years ago went through. They were predominantly believers in the story in Genesis. When they found more and more evidence for the changes in life they had to keep adding more and more and more creation weeks until it began to get silly. But if not those creation weeks then how did the life change? That was the question that Darwin answered. Of course with what we've learned since the orginal "many weeks" theory would have to have 10,000 of creation weeks and would clearly be absurd as a theory. Also you are having trouble with the word "proven" (or "unproven"). In mathematics the word proof is used very carefully. It means absolutely and completely for sure true. The word proof is used somewhat similarly in science. Since we can't have mathematical proofs for anything we avoid the word proof. That doesn't mean that there is much doubt about some "unproven" theories. There is probably more doubt about general relavity (Einstein's theory of gravity) than there is about the ToE. A theory isn't proven it just gets to be more and more trusted. Some of our scientific theories are very trusted indeed. The ToE is one of them.
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
NosyNed Member Posts: 9004 From: Canada Joined: |
but many true Christians believe that they evolved. How can you explain that?
As I read the Pope's word on this they can easily believe that we evolved but that the spirit (soul) did not. That is what was "created". An interpretation of this is that there was that point in time when an early H. sapian was given a soul by God. Since there is an apparent sudden change in our ancestors when we started to make much more advanced tools, developed art and expanded throughout the world one could point to that as the time we received our souls. This was a few 10's of thousands of years ago.
|
|
|
Do Nothing Button
Copyright 2001-2023 by EvC Forum, All Rights Reserved
Version 4.2
Innovative software from Qwixotic © 2024