evolutionimpaired writes:
If they can do any of this, why is it only we stupid people that think some higher power could create something from nothing better than 2 colliding rocks?
It isn't the higher power I have a problem with. It is the lack of evidence for that higher power.
I've heard the "2 colliding rocks" argument before. Could you elaborate? It seems like someone is going around telling people that two rocks collided and created the universe. That isn't how it happened at all.
evolutionimpaired writes:
And if it makes it go down easier, evolutionists can believe that beings from a moon of Jupiter (which we don't need to know where they or Jupiter comes from) made everything because they are highly evolved,...but not gods.
evolutionimpaired
That doesn't seem intellectually satisfying to me. It takes faith, or at least quite a few assumptions, to make a claim like that without evidence. If there were evidence of the existence of these aliens, I would be very happy to acknowledge them. That isn't to say that I don't expect life to exist elsewhere in the universe. I doubt that Earth is the only planet out of trillions that has life, and I don't see any reason to believe that a planet has to have exactly the same qualities Earth does to produce life.
That said, I'm not going to change my beliefs to something ridiculous or vague just to satisfy people who refuse to think things through in a reasonable manner. I have attempted to come up with a mindset based on critical thought and a reasonable amount of evidence, and I'm not going to throw it all away just to satisfy creationists who ignore a tremendous amount of evidence just to rail against evolution and other phenomena.
I don't feel that science, or the belief in evolution, is a religion. Religions don't make testable claims and they aren't peer reviewed in a meaningful way. Anyone can come up with any interpretation of holy books they want to. Anyone can come up with their own religion - just look at L. Ron Hubbard. Science is different from religion in that it is a process by which we learn about phenomena in a controlled, testable, repeatable way, without making claims about things that are obviously untestable - like the idea that God created everything in such a way as to leave no evidence of his existence. If evidence is found that refutes some hypothesis or theory, then scientists modify their understanding of the world to fit the new evidence. Religions are not so fast to do the same. The quintessential example is the unwillingness of the Catholic Church to accept heliocentricity, the concept that the planets revolve around the sun. They didn't admit that they were wrong and absolve Galileo until 1992, centuries after his death.
evolutionimpaired writes:
Bridge: Evolution happens, but not by will, necessity, not even chance could make it happen, especially with the odds against having a planet that spins, weighs, keeps its distance from the sun, and has all the right gasses and minerals... every thing perfect.
How do you know that this is the only way things could have turned out? Earth isn't the only planet in our solar system that revolves in a roughly circular orbit. Everything else probably fell into the sun or came up with a stable, highly eccentric orbit. If we lived under different conditions, like on a planet with a methane atmosphere, we would think it quite fortuitous that our planet had so much methane. Life on Earth is adapted to live on Earth - not someplace else. There might be life out there that would be killed if exposed to our oxygen-rich atmosphere. Such creatures would think our planet very inhospitable to life.
evolutionimpaired writes:
BTW: God appeared to eyewitnesses and did miracles seen by multitudes, but since all the witnesses are dead, none of it is accepted for debate. Just because his presence can no longer be proven except through current miracles that are dismissed as crazy stories, does not prove he doesn't exist. Undiscovered species show up constantly and they existed even though no man seen them before. The falling tree doesn't make a sound, but it does make a vibration, even if noone is there.
My problem with the authors of the Bible isn't that they are dead. I'm not prejusticed against the testimony of dead people. Lots of people who are now dead made great contributions. My problem with accepting their stories as truth is that they form the only evidence for the events that they describe, and they were written decades after the events happened. There is plenty of evidence for the destruction of Pompeii to support the written records surrounding that event in history. I find the evidence for things like the miracles of Jesus Christ to be much more flaky. They got all sorts of things mixed up - Jesus' last words, and Judas' death, to name a few. This seems indicative to me of a story that the writer didn't remember very well, and it makes me wonder if he made it all up and then forced himself to believe it over many years, adding miracles as he went along to fulfill various prophecies.
There is no way to disprove the existence of God. There is also no way to disprove the existence of unicorns. All I want, if someone wants to convince me of the existence of God, is some evidence of his existence. I have seen unlikely things occur, but I've never seen one that can attributed only to supernatural forces. It seems to me much more reasonable to assume that the universe was created by a natural process, since pretty much everything else in the universe can be described by natural processes rather than supernatural forces. Of course, if you have other evidence, you are more than welcome to bring it up.
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