God vs. Science

Not exactly sure what you want to debate here, so I'll toss a few random thoughts out.If I were in any science class where the professor began with those questions, I'd walk out and demand my money back. I'm pretty sure that this tripe was written by someone whose misapprehensions about science would take a year to correct before they could even get started learning science. I would run, not walk, as fast as I could from any university where the science department saw fit to hire someone as a professor who could not give a better response than this.As a whole, I'd say that this email you received is probably quite comforting to those who are looking for some kind of trite but substanceless reassurance that faith can overcome science. Instead, if it proves anything, it proves that faith can overcome science only if science is reduced to the level of a village idiot.

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Those who would sacrifice an essential liberty for a temporary security will lose both, and deserve neither. -- Benjamin FranklinWe see monsters where science shows us windmills. -- Phat

I certainly wouldn't ever ask a student to take anything I said on faith, even assuming one were addle-pated enough to make such a speech. In addition to saying something along the lines of what Rahvin and Jaderis have already said in this thread, I'd suggest to the rest of the class (having already given up on the dolt who asked the question in the first place) that they decide whether to believe what I tell them in my lectures by learning more about the topic than I'm able to impart to them by talking to them a few minutes a day, then use the brains that I am quite sure that they have and make up their own minds.

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Those who would sacrifice an essential liberty for a temporary security will lose both, and deserve neither. -- Benjamin FranklinWe see monsters where science shows us windmills. -- Phat

Wow, that was fun! Let me try.Let's say that

My backyard = the entire universe

5 minutes (the amount of time I wasted trying to find a point in the post I'm responding to) = the age of the universe

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I've spent the age of the universe watching the entire universe and saw no sign of the presence of god. Therefore, not only is there no god, I've demonstrated that anyone who thinks there is even any evidence for the existence of god is demonstrably wrong.

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Those who would sacrifice an essential liberty for a temporary security will lose both, and deserve neither. -- Benjamin Franklin

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We see monsters where science shows us windmills. -- Phat

A much more interesting question to ask would be how many times do we have to tell a creo that speciation has been observed in a laboratory setting and in the natural world before the creo will stop spreading the falsehood that we've never seen a new species emerge?

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Those who would sacrifice an essential liberty for a temporary security will lose both, and deserve neither. -- Benjamin FranklinWe see monsters where science shows us windmills. -- Phat

Ah, the misconceptions abound! To tell you the truth, I'm not particularly worried about species going extinct. So maybe you should direct that question to someone who is worried about it. Whoa! Hold on there, buckaroo.I never said any species were better than others. Moreoever, I'm pretty sure very few scientists ever said it either. You seem to be confusing the idea of better adapted to survive with a value judgment. The two are not at all the same thing.Moreoever, your suggestion that we work on a "perfect" animal displays a tremendous ignorance about evolution. There is no "perfect" animal from an evolutionary perspective; there is only better adapted to the environment and less well-adapted. Not sure why you felt that needed clarification, but thanks anyway. Of course, your observation makes me ponder the following point:If humans are the divine creation of god in his image, why aren't they the perfect animal?

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Those who would sacrifice an essential liberty for a temporary security will lose both, and deserve neither. -- Benjamin FranklinWe see monsters where science shows us windmills. -- Phat

Thinking, hoping, praying, imagining, fantasizing, making up, guessing, assuming....Those are all wonderful words. However, in science, we look for evidence. Do you have any of that? Or is it all just a creo dream?

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Those who would sacrifice an essential liberty for a temporary security will lose both, and deserve neither. -- Benjamin FranklinWe see monsters where science shows us windmills. -- Phat