Evolution is simply more magnificent than your religion

Well, I consider it a remarkable occurance that a completely undirected process (undirected other than by blind, goal-less forces of nature) should conspire to produce something (a brain) that decides itself to be in a position to accurately determine that such a process is capable of producing something capable of concluding that such a process has produced something capable of deciding that such a process has produced something...There's something iffy about the 'product' pronouncing on the capability of the process which produced it as rendering it (the product) accurately and reliably capable of so pronouncing.Something decidedly iffy.- I think you're conflating things here. The alarms bells I referred to had to do with what should be going of in your head about your own position - not what should be going off in your head about mine. I agree that you shouldn't take anything I say with more than salt than suits your taste. And I don't mind if you don'tAs for me? I've all the evidence of God I need to convince me. I don't at all suppose that evidence available to you. And so, I don't expect you to be convinced by me. The only one capable of proving God exists to you would be, I think you'd agree, God himself.In these things he is nothing if not reasonable.Edited by iano, : No reason given.

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As mentioned, the point was that your being appalled can be considered to derive from a God-given conscience - in which case you'd be believing God on the matter about which you are appalled - if not believing IN God.

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Telling someone who does not believe in God that they are implicitly believing in God by having morals is just plain silly. You're just going to annoy them.I think it's very likely that morals originate with us, not with God. We ascribe morals to God that we ourselves see as ideal (or useful).Evidence :-- Different people have very different morals. Honour killings are acceptable in some cultures but not others. Sex with young teenage boys is acceptable in a few cultures. Slavery used to be acceptable in the West but is not now. Cannibalism, attitudes to violence, the moral status of women - etc etc. This shows for certain that morals are not entirely derived from God.- God's behaviour in the Old Testament is by modern standards sometimes deeply immoral. He condones rape. He kills his enemies. He punishes until the third or fourth generation. He is vilely cruel to lepers. He ordains capital punishment for relatively minor crimes or non-crimes. This set of morals does not drive our behaviour today - thank God. Irony intended.- Views of what God's morals are vary from person to person. Some evangelicals believe that non-believers are all condemned by God to eternal punishment - personally I find this to be one of God's most shocking examples of cruelty. Liberal Christians do not believe that God is like this. So even among those who believe in him, there is no consistency.- We know from research that when people change their own views of what is right and wrong based on exposure to different views or circumstances, then their belief in what God thinks is right and wrong changes accordingly to match their own views.- As many others have already posted, animals have morals in various degrees, and primates have something quite similar to our own morality. Unless you're prepared to concede that God has given animals a sense of morality too, then this is an argument against God- given morals for human beings.We are creating God in our own image and not vice versa.

Except that the so called subset you claim existed long before your God was invented.

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There is no better love between 2 people than mutual respect for each other WT Young, 2002Who gave anyone the authority to call me an authority on anything. WT Young, 1969Since Evolution is only ~90% correct it should be thrown out and replaced by Creation which has even a lower % of correctness. W T Young, 2008

I'm not in anyway saying they believe in God by believing God. I thought I was making it fairly clear that a person could believe God whilst clearly not believing in God. The two things (believe/believe in) are completely different things.But I'm sorry if I gave that impression.- This shows that what man finds good can conflict with what God finds good. That man calls it moral at one point, then changes his mind at another, is neither here nor there. What matters is what God calls it. And that we're measured against that standard.If God finds cannabilism immoral then men finding otherwise at some point or other merely means they are in conflict with God. Whatever they call their behaviour.- Where does God condone rape?What's wrong with God killing his enemies? Or anyone else for that matter?What's wrong with God punishing sinners at any time - whatever generation they happen to be?What do you mean by "vilely cruel to lepers"?What difference that God's actions measure as "excessive" according to your standard - it's not according to your standard he's measuring the crimes seriousness afterall.As to our "behaviour" today: after a century dominated by two world wars, topped off with a cold war which threatened the very existance of mankind + an endless series of less total wars (in which the depravity relented not). Add to that a world in which a billion or so live in the lap of relative luxury whilst millions upon millions live in squalour and starvation...Our behaviour indeed..- And some believers believe they'll have 70 odd virgins tend to their every desire if they fly a plane into a building. Since when did any number of forgeries (assuming for a momet they are) detract from the original?This isn't evidence for anything.- We know from the Bible that narrow is the way of salvation and few find it. We also know from the Bible that there will be many people who suppose themselves believers who aren't actually. It's not surprising therefore, that there are a lot of believers (in gods) who do as you say.It must be said too that a believer (as defined by God) isn't saved by his view on God's morality. So deviance there isn't all that relevant either.The best we can agree, I think, is that this "evidence" is actually observation that can be woven into your/my worldview.- Interesting. How do we conclude an animal has a sense of right and wrong (experienced in the way we experience a sense of right and wrong: guilt and shame/clear conscience etc). That God installs a controlling instinct in an animal is not the same thing as a knowledge of good and evil.- I'd agree with you that this occurs. Whether the god is religious in nature, or whether it's something else that attracts our worship/love/awe..life. Edited by iano, : No reason given.

Hi, Iano. Then, as long as we're quantifying everybody's wonder and comparing it to each others', let's also agree that the wonder involving my supposition (that God exists and can turn us into Gods so that we can do what He does) trumps the wonder involving your supposition (merely that God exists).To each his own wonder.----- And, therein lies the wonder...You have to admit, if it's true, it's pretty marvelous.Edited by Bluejay, : "post #46"

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-Bluejay (a.k.a. Mantis, Thylacosmilus)Darwin loves you.

That subset was installed in man at the point of his falling: a knowledge of good and evil (a.k.a. conscience). That's pretty far back..

We might have to move from trumping towards SNAP! My supposition see's God turning man into children of God (thus we become like order with God - albeit children of God). Our differences appear to centre on how God achieves this (by a mans work or by His grace - of which by grace is, by a long mile, more wonderful)I doubt that your God can turn man into supreme beings just like him? If so then I'll admit your supposition evokes more wonder (as in: how on earth can their be multiple supreme beings )- Unfortunately, this wonder kind of runs straight into a short circuit. The flash of light involved is wonderful - but short circuits also bring a horrible burning smell and lots of acrid smoke.Or at least they should. Edited by iano, : No reason given.Edited by iano, : No reason given.

Ooh ooh I wanna play.BOTH of your suppositions are less amazing than mine (that God is a magical goat who lives under my fingernail and farts candy corn).I win!

Hi, Nuggin. Honestly, that's not amazing: it's just stupid. But, at least you got the point.

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-Bluejay (a.k.a. Mantis, Thylacosmilus)Darwin loves you.

Not look good in front of his creation. To cause, as I said, wonder and humility to arise in his created beings. With a view to those things playing a part in God's mechanism of salvation w.r.t. mankind.I remember RobinRohan describing how it was that the sight of vast rolling seas caused an almost overwhelming ache of loneliness to arise in him (which is an applied version of the sense of the wonder & awe I'm referring to here). That ache - that dis-ease - fits snugly into an overall mechanism of (attempted) salvation which utilises pain in a specific fashion associated with pains general purpose, to whit: - informing us that something is wrong.Augustines had the same in mind when he said:

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You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.

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One task of creation, as I say, is to ensure that restlessness in us. RobinRohan, for one, felt it...

I in no way want to bismarch Robin's memory but I feel a 'vast sense of loneliness' when I look at very tall mountains. This is in no way an indication that there is anything more that the material.I live by the sea and am oft heard to say:"the sea's fucking big, hey?"Reality is so stupendous; no creator required.ABE: hope you and the wife had a good xmas and look forwards to a great new year!Edited by Larni, : Xmas greetings.

Hi Iano, ...and you think there's nothing "iffy" about entrenched religious beliefs based around a tome written by superstitious bronze-age people, with political agendas relevant to the period? Which have been transcribed through centuries, and different cultures and languages, each rendering their own political, cultural and demographic influences on the result? That you revere and do not question the resulting morass of inconsistencies and logic flaws, but at the same time decry the multi-disciplined process of science that uses only physically verifiable process to build on what has gone before.The world you live in is the result of the scientific method. From computers to medicine, from tunnels that connect continents to man planting his foot on the moon — it has all been achieved by mere man and his scientific method.There’s something very iffy about people who internalize their religious beliefs on the work of an old book and then use a proselytising voice on the rest of us.....Edited by Drosophilla, : typo

The trouble for your position is that it is a clearly partisan skewing of things - any number of threads could be opened to deal with these supposed inconsistancies and the trail would spiral away to infinity as it always does. The iffy-ness of my opponants position however, is pretty clear cut. That science has delivered him onto this dilemma horns isn't really the issue - indeed, I'm glad it has; it might cause him to stop and think about it for a while.Far be it for me to knock the pursuits of science. The world we live in is the result of mans manipulation of stuff which has nothing to do with man. That stuff is far more wonderful to behold than anything man has managed to do with it (I'm a mechanical engineer and can't avoid but seeing all the ugly inefficiency in so much of what we do)Not that I think man will be doing much with it for all that long more. At least not in anything like the guise of todays mankind. And that isn't the stuff's fault I might add.Not that I was attacking science by the way. I was pointing out the curious circularity of view that science seems to demand you arrive at: stardust concluding it's made of stardust is one thing. Supposing itself able to pronounce that conclusion reliable is quite anotherEdited by iano, : No reason given.Edited by iano, : No reason given.

Hi Iano But that is the essence of science! To constantly think and update theories based on evidence. Contrast this with religion which is inflexible, dictated to by a millennium-plus old tome without any ability to change or adapt. That has to be the epitome of restricted thought processing... To say that you are an engineer, it's quite eye-raising that you don't appear to understand the scientific method. Science, (unlike your religion) doesn't pretend it has all the answers. The scientific data set is based on a best fit model of the universe we inhabit based on EVIDENCE around us. Sure you can babble on all you like about this might be that, and this might be something else.....but science ONLY uses what can be observed and measured in the reality we see....in the light of anything better that is the only route anyone can logically take....otherwise ANYTHING might be possible and you could be the flying spaghetti monster for all I know.So, using observational data (the only sort we can meaningfully use), science makes predictions and theories are either rejected, subject to further scrutiny or tentatively accepted. Note the tentatively bit.....nothing is ever totally proven, only a best fit approach - with an acknowledgement that a given postulate is always up for modification or downright rejection if better data comes along....if you are an engineer you must know this!Contrast that with your 'book'. There is no room for manoeuvre. You blindly follow the book written by those Bronze-Age mystics all those years ago....you proclaim to know 'God's word' - again based on nothing but words written aeons ago. Some of your ilk scorn archaeologists because they 'read' data in skulls and other fossils....yet they stubbornly present their version of the past in those fixed words (fossils of social evolution?!) that aren't up for modifying or reassessment in any way......and you wonder why scientists shake their heads?For me there really is no contest - science is magnificent because of the long road it has come. People strived often in adversity (and thanks to religion - danger) to make this planet a better place. In ancient Greece and Rome there was science — mathematics, sewerage systems, spas, quality roads, philosophy and astronomy — to name a few pre-Christianity achievements. Fifteen hundred years later in sixteenth century England, people threw faeces out of their windows into open gutters, Black-Death and other diseases were rife, and in Europe people were persecuted in the Inquisitions — including many fledgling scientists. Who knows what great advances were lost during this ignorant time. I have to say Iano — there really is no contest for me! Edited by Drosophilla, : word deletion

You are trying to deceive me about what my own opinions are. This is not likely to be successful. I find your argument tenuous. If a dog-breeder believes that pit-bulls should be less aggressive, and successfully breeds them to be so, that does not mean that the dogs believe the dog-breeder. Which would make him completely unlike the being described in the Old Testament. If God existed, than I would think it benevolent to give me no more option of denying that than I have of denying that I have two legs. I should not find it a mark of benevolence in him to allow me to become confused about how many legs I have. Or not.I might as well argue that you "believe evolution". And yet you used the latter phrase. You wrote: "That said, unbelievers do believe in God all the time."Retreat from this position if you will, but don't deny that you expressed it.