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Author Topic:   What I have noticed about these debates...
jcgirl92
Inactive Member


Message 1 of 238 (25019)
11-30-2002 7:43 AM


One thing that I have noticed about the whole debate over whether or not there is a God is that there are a lot of harsh Theists (one who believes in a god), and there are a lot of harsh Atheists! I see in all the arguing that goes back and forth a lot of the same stuff that you also see in Ireland between the Roman Catholics and the Protestants there and in Bosnia between the Serbs and the Croatians. My question in all of this is this - "Is the problem with having faith, or is the problem found in bigotry, misunderstanding, pride, and taking a different view to one's own as a personal offence to oneself?"
The argument that one group is less intellectual because one doesn't agree with the views that that group holds is very childish! Honestly, I have seen the Atheism/Theism debate and the Creation/Evolution debate turn into a debate not on the evidence for these ways of thinking but on a Atheists against Theists fight with one group putting down another group in some way just because they don't agree with the other's point of view. That is just going to cause the debate to go round and round and round and round etc ... That is not going to get anywhere!
The truth is that a lot of people in these debates are looking at things through their own "belief-structure glasses," and perish the thought of laying these "glasses" aside and looking at the question of "Does God exist?" without these glasses or with someone else's glasses! Could it be that one group is not less intellectual than another group for thinking the way that they do, but it is just that both groups have their own way of looking at life, themselves, other people, and the world around them based on what they have seen and experienced?
One thing that I have personally noticed about a lot of people who have left the Church or their faith in God is that there is a lot who have been hurt somehow. A lot of Atheists have been hurt, and that hurt hasn't been healed, but covered up by this fight that has been taken up to rid the world of this cruel hoax that there is a God.

Replies to this message:
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jcgirl92
Inactive Member


Message 4 of 238 (25108)
12-01-2002 12:41 AM
Reply to: Message 3 by nator
11-30-2002 11:28 AM


Hey there schrafinator!
Have you been to http://www.exchristian.net or places like that? Now that is full-on discussion, and hanging out in message forums like that is what I guess I am talking about! Quite honestly, I have sat back and watched this debate get quite heated!
By the way, is it that Christians are abusing science just because they believe that the world around us didn't come into being by accident? Or is it just that everyone in the world has the same evidence that we're looking at, but we are interpreting it differently based on the persuasion we take - and don't think that just because a scientist is of an evolutionistic persuasion that he is unbiased!
There have been many major and well-respected scientists who believed that the world was created by an intelligent being - it's not just something for those who are uneducated. Maybe you have talked to a lot of uneducated or uninformed Christians, but there are quite a lot of very intelligent, well-educated people out there who also believe that there is a God Who created the world - just as there are a lot of uneducated or uninformed non-Christians who believe in evolution! That doesn't mean that either belief is less intellectual than the other, it just means that there's one or two in every bunch!

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jcgirl92
Inactive Member


Message 15 of 238 (25176)
12-01-2002 8:31 PM
Reply to: Message 13 by gene90
12-01-2002 5:35 PM


"Plus, you should read the lists of "Creation Scientists" certain groups put out. They run heavy on engineers, social scientists, and even people such as plastic surgeons, but are weak in GEOLOGISTS."
My great-grandfather was a geologist and was a practicing Christian
- Sir Edmund Teale
Not hugely famous, but, just so that you know, there are also geologists out there who believe in the Bible!!!!

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Replies to this message:
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jcgirl92
Inactive Member


Message 16 of 238 (25180)
12-01-2002 9:09 PM
Reply to: Message 9 by nator
12-01-2002 10:02 AM


"quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
There have been many major and well-respected scientists who believed that the world was created by an intelligent being - it's not just something for those who are uneducated.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Really? Like who?
OTOH, so what if there were? Just because they believe something is supernaturally-caused doesn't mean that it was just because they say so. They have just as much evidence as my cat does that the world was created by an intelligent being."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Alrighty then!!! These guys were all either around during or after Darwin!!! Just a few...
Louis Agassiz - the father of glacial geology and a great paleontologist; 1807-1873
Gregory Mendel - the father of genetics; 1822-1884
Louis Pasteur - the father of bacteriology; 1822-1895
Lord Kelvin - established thermodynamics on a formal scientific basis; 1824-1907
Joseph Lister - founded antiseptic surgical methods; 1827-1912
Chandra Wickrasinge - British scientist who worked with Sir Fred Hoyle
Charles Townes - Nobel, physics; 1964
Arno Penzias - Nobel, physics; 1978
Candace Pert - the discoverer of the opiate receptor
Of course, Sir Issac Newton was around before Darwin, but this great scientist once said, "I must profess I know no sufficient natural cause of the earth diurnal motion. Where natural causes are at hand God uses them as instruments in His works, but I do not think them alone sufficient for His creation and therefore may be allowed to suppose that amongst other things God gave the earth its motion by such degrees and at such times as was most suitable to His creatures."

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Replies to this message:
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jcgirl92
Inactive Member


Message 17 of 238 (25183)
12-01-2002 9:37 PM
Reply to: Message 9 by nator
12-01-2002 10:02 AM


You said, "Now let me explain to you the fundamental difference between real science and Creation "science".
Real science always works from the evidence found and observed in nature, then formulates hypothese and theories in order to explain that evidence. If reliable new evidence comes to light, it may strengthen the existing theory, or it may contradict it, in which case the theory is modified or replaced. It is this tentativity, or falsifiability, of science, that makes it so dynamic and powerful. What we think is true about nature can change if the evidence is there."
*I want to ask are all Evolution-Scientists really as "scientific" as you think? How many times have we heard about a scientist who had doctored up stuff for the sake of the Theory of Evolution? Ernst Haekel is notorius! Someone wrote of him, "He became Darwin’s chief European apostle proclaiming the gospel of evolution with evangelistic fervor, not only to the university intelligentsia but to the common man by popular books and to the working classes by lectures in rented halls." Are all Evolution-scientists as unbiased as you would like to think...?
You also said, "Creation "science", by contrast, begins not with the evidence found in nature, but with a given interpretation of the Protestant Christian Bible. All of nature must be made to fit into this interpretation of this religious book, which is also held to be without error. So, there is nothing at all which can count against this Bible."
*Both Evolution-scientists and Creation-scientists have their theories with which they interpret the same evidence! You would have to agree that there are not too many scientists who do not have something by which they interpret the evidence they see.
You asked, "However, I am curious; what do you think of Theistic Evolution?"
*Well, I don't think of it at all actually! Don't want to!

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jcgirl92
Inactive Member


Message 18 of 238 (25185)
12-01-2002 9:39 PM
Reply to: Message 14 by Tranquility Base
12-01-2002 7:28 PM


Exactly right Tranquility Base!

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jcgirl92
Inactive Member


Message 19 of 238 (25186)
12-01-2002 9:48 PM
Reply to: Message 6 by zipzip
12-01-2002 5:55 AM


Quite right! Some jolly good points my friend!

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jcgirl92
Inactive Member


Message 21 of 238 (25191)
12-01-2002 9:59 PM
Reply to: Message 20 by doctrbill
12-01-2002 9:55 PM


"There are people in this forum who love both, Darwin and the Bible."
Jolly good - feel free to do that! I refer you to the first message that I wrote in this thread...
[This message has been edited by jcgirl92, 12-01-2002]

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jcgirl92
Inactive Member


Message 24 of 238 (25197)
12-01-2002 11:00 PM
Reply to: Message 22 by wj
12-01-2002 10:27 PM


Can do - and will do so! I'll be back!

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jcgirl92
Inactive Member


Message 183 of 238 (52261)
08-26-2003 4:23 AM
Reply to: Message 168 by crashfrog
08-25-2003 5:22 PM


"What they really don't like, and what the Constitution prohibits, is the suggestion that our government favors or otherwise puts special approval on any particular religious tradition. For instance, a public shrine, on government property, dedicated to a specific religion - like this Ten Commandments business. I mean, if you support the Ten Commandments shrine on the statehouse grounds, then I assume you won't mind if I enshrine the Koran right next to it?"
As I read this, I just thought I'd let you know a couple of things that you maybe didn't realise when you wrote this statement.
1. The law of the United States of America was (if you read a bit of history) founded on the principals found in the Ten Commandments.
2. Muslims who read the Koran (that you mentioned) also support the Ten Commandments as part of their religion.
Regards,
JCgirl

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jcgirl92
Inactive Member


Message 185 of 238 (52268)
08-26-2003 4:48 AM
Reply to: Message 182 by truthlover
08-25-2003 11:17 PM


Can I ask firstly, why is it that Evolutionists everywhere seem to be getting their knickers in a knot about this question of what is a definition of a "kind?" It seems to be a side issue that you're all getting off on. Very minor, but good for clouding the real issues!
You said in your post, "Maybe we could take up a collection and offer it around to the major organizations. Just think if they actually gave us a definition of kind to work with. If someone like Answers in Genesis would do it (or surely Kent Hovind would give it a shot if we could collect $1000 or so), then you scientist types would have an actual solid stance that creationists had taken that you could work with."
I don't know if this will really help you (by the way, not interested in any $$ at all - just curious about this whole controversy over "kinds"). This is something that I found included on the AIG website. It isn't originally from the scientists or writers from their organisation, but they have included it because it represents what they believe about it. It was by Andrew Kulikovsky.
"In addition, assuming that speciation has been an on-going occurrence since Creation, the eleven thousand vertebrate species in question would have most likely descended from a much smaller number of proto-species. Each would be the ancestors of animals in the group that taxonomists call a genus (or possibly the higher taxonomic order known as a family) and what the Genesis account calls a ‘kind’"
This is what the Genesis account calls a "kind."
Genesis 1:21
So God created the great creatures of the sea and every living and moving thing with which the water teems, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind.
Genesis 1:24
And God said, "Let the land produce living creatures according to their kinds: livestock, creatures that move along the ground, and wild animals, each according to its kind." And it was so.
Genesis 1:25
God made the wild animals according to their kinds, the livestock according to their kinds, and all the creatures that move along the ground according to their kinds.
The Heinemann dictionary says of the word, "kind."
"A class or category of similar or related things."
Again, I don't know if that will help you guys at all as it seems to be a major issue that Evolutionists seem to be having at the moment, but when Creationists talk of kinds they are referring to a class or genus of related animals. Just as Evolutionist can't be absolutely certain about things that happened thousands of years in the past (or whatever you want to believe about the age of the earth), Creationists can't be scientifically exact either about things that happened back then because we can't actually view the process of speciation happening! Both camps are in the same boat with regard to that!
Creationists and Evolutionists, however, differ on their view of speciation. For instance, Evolutionists, believe that humans evolved from the primate line, but Creationists believe that humans were made distinct from primates. To try and view a Creationist idea from an Evolutionist point of view, ie to say that humans and apes are in the same "kind" is only twisting the issue even further!

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Replies to this message:
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jcgirl92
Inactive Member


Message 190 of 238 (52277)
08-26-2003 5:30 AM
Reply to: Message 189 by mark24
08-26-2003 5:13 AM


Sorry Mark! I guess you didn't quite read the whole article that I posted. You obviously missed this quote...
"In addition, assuming that speciation has been an on-going occurrence since Creation, the eleven thousand vertebrate species in question would have most likely descended from a much smaller number of proto-species. Each would be the ancestors of animals in the group that taxonomists call a genus (or possibly the higher taxonomic order known as a family) and what the Genesis account calls a ‘kind’"
I was trying to take a few ideas and put them together to give an idea of what a "kind" is. I still don't see what the big issue is here!

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jcgirl92
Inactive Member


Message 224 of 238 (52919)
08-29-2003 9:17 PM
Reply to: Message 200 by nator
08-26-2003 12:35 PM


Responding to Schrafinator
"Opinion is not the main power of science. Logic, evidence, and repeatability is."
Repeatability is a power and asset of experimental science, but not necessarily of historical science where we try and examine the past.
As for logic and evidence - they are important in science, but can only go so far.
"Everybody knows fossils are fickle; bones will sing any song you want to hear." J. Shreeve
I would venture to say that life is only 10% what happens and 90% how it is interpreted!

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jcgirl92
Inactive Member


Message 225 of 238 (52925)
08-29-2003 9:40 PM
Reply to: Message 192 by Quetzal
08-26-2003 5:53 AM


Responding to Quetzal
Thanks for explaining what the problem seems to be with the whole "kind" issue.
Macroevolution is a gaining of information - correct? In other words, DNA information must be added to add on new characteristics that weren't there before - right?

This message is a reply to:
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