Creationism vs. Evolution

[darksnowman]

Grunchie, yeah I know about that carbon caper. I'm just relaying you the info of how creation works.

 

(By the way twasnt a copy and paste, sorry for the confusion... but I've a wee booklet right here and I typed the whole couple of paragraphs just for you!)

[Jonwah]

You think dinosaurs might be mentioned in the bible, the fact that there were giganitc lizard monsters roaming around with man seems a pretty major omission to me. Maybe they were just so used to them they forgot to mention it. Of course the cynic might think that's because men at the time they were writing the bible didn't know about dinosaurs, which also explains the stuff about the sun going around the earth. Of course if God was dictating to them, he would have known that was incorrect from his lofty vantage point...

 

 

 

The bible tells you what you need to know. God saw no need to tell us specificly when the dinosaurs existed and then died out. There is breif mention of gigantic beasts and such however.

[BlueStar]

Scientists can estimate the age of the universe because they look at evidence first then come to a conclusion. You have the conclusion first (God created the world in seven days) and then start looking for the evidence. This is the fatal flaw of the dogmatic nature of organised religion, backwards methodology.

[darksnowman]

Haha Bluestar, I just googled they guy who's stuff I'm reading, Ken Ham... and it gave me answesingenesis.org! Nice spot! Maybe I'll unleash some copy and pasting upon you now, or atleast links to it to back up any of my wild and crazy creation ideas.

[BlueStar]

The bible tells you what you need to know. God saw no need to tell us specificly when the dinosaurs existed and then died out. There is breif mention of gigantic beasts and such however.

 

I sort of agree - The Bible can answer everything. Because you can interpret the bible to make it say exactly what you like - Hence the fractured nature of the Christian Church. And hence, for instance, some Christians claim that the idea the Bible says the earth is fixed in one place is a lie, while some say that's exactly what it says and the idea the earth moves around the Sun is a lie. People mould the bible around their views and beliefs to validate them not, as they would like to believe their views around the bible. Right from when you pick which of the many translations to read and accept, even if the Bible is the word of God, you are picking and choosing what to believe based on your own views.

 

By the way, bringing answeringgenisis.org to a creationsim debate is a bit like citing Fox News for facts about George Bush.

[Jonwah]

Interestingly, a big flaw with the evolutionary theory is it's backwards methodolgy and reverse engineering.

[darksnowman]

Magic, in the top ten bit on Answers in Genesis, dinosaurs is at number two. I clicked on it and lo and behold... what I have in physical old fashioned paper form right in front of me.

 

http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs/2.asp

 

Have a read if you have the time, we await your outraged cries of disbelief.

[Jonwah]

And what I was getting at was the fact that the bible isn't full of facts and statistics about when things died out and when certain breeds of dog were created. I'm not talking about interpritations etc, I was merely pointing out that the bible doesn't give us all the facts and all the small bits of information.

I wasn't talking about the interpretation of the bible in terms of lessons etc, that's a whooooole different debate.

[BlueStar]

Interestingly, a big flaw with the evolutionary theory is it's backwards methodolgy and reverse engineering.

 

Explain what you mean by "reverse engineering".

 

I'm not outraged by answeringgenesis anymore than I'm outraged by pages about the moonlanding being a hoax, the twin towers being brought down by missiles, David Icke's sites about how we're ruled by lizard men or Scientology sites about our intergalatic alien forefathers.

 

Considering all the minutiae that is mentioned in the bible, you're not surprised massive lizard monsters wandering around weren't mentioned? Could you convince a christian who believes dinosaurs didn't exist at all that they did? By trying to imagine what that would be like, can you kind of understand how I feel debating with creationists?

[darksnowman]

By the way, bringing answeringgenisis.org to a creationsim debate is a bit like citing Fox News for facts about George Bush.

 

 

Twoulda been funnier if you'd said it was like taking that post in the Wii Discussion from Matt Cassamassina as fact.

 

Anyhow, I apologise for having a source and having read anything apart from science. Ooh, I like Sci-fi so can we theorise about The Dark Tower being true?

[BlueStar]

Twoulda been funnier if you'd said it was like taking that post in the Wii Discussion from Matt Cassamassina as fact.

 

Anyhow, I apologise for having a source and having read anything apart from science. Ooh, I like Sci-fi so can we theorise about The Dark Tower being true?

 

Well entire religions have been made out of sci-fi novels and their followers will happily beat you over the head with facts and science to 'prove' their beliefs and challenge you to deny it.

 

Here's an interesting site

http://www.fixedearth.com/

 

Let's try and disprove what this guy thinks to him. Think it will work? If you can't, does that mean the sun rotates around the earth?

[Jonwah]

"can you kind of understand how I feel debating with creationists?"

 

Ha trust me it works both ways. It's like two brick walls talking to eachother.

[darksnowman]

Im not sure I've time to go through the multitude of links thats on that site, but tell me this, am I here trying to change what you believe? Hey if I could convert you or anyone it would be amazing, but this is an internet forum, not a meeting of us jovially around a table somewhere.

 

So seeing as I'm not going to change what you think is true, does that mean it is?

 

Right, here are a few of the 'facts': at the nexus of time and space, at the centre of everything stands a Tower, its the lynchpin for all worlds and universes. When we die, its merely a doorway to another world which could be completely different from this one, or extremely similar, with merely subtle differences. Maybe in one GB uses the Euro. If I was in here telling you that this was how everything is, would you believe me? Say I was convinced this was true, and just because I say its how everything goes down, does that automatically mean its true whether you like it or not?

 

[BlueStar]

My problem with sites like answeringgenesis is that in lieu of proof from their own side, they instead pick at things science admits it doesn't know with the flawed logic conclusion "See, science doesn't know everything! That means everything in the bible is true!"

 

If new scientific evidence comes to light about anything we have discussed I will change my views on it. Is there any evidence that could come to light that would change your belief in where we came from?

 

At the moment, evidence points to an earth billions of years old. Young earth theory is widely regarded as junk science and quackery, even by a large amount of Christians. If scientific consensus changes due to advances, I'm perfectly willing to change my views. When the evidence came to light that earth was billions of years old, you guys were not.

[darksnowman]

Funny you should say that, if there ever was any hard proof that came to light that creation as told in the Bible wasnt true then yeah, I'd have to rethink plenty wouldnt I? Or if anything for that matter was 100% disproved somehow. If for example alien life was discovered then Christianity would be in tatters, would it not?

 

Its interesting to imagine, but seeing as I'm a chap of faith, I just have to be strong in that. You know?

[BlueStar]

If for example alien life was discovered then Christianity would be in tatters, would it not?

 

I don't think so, previous scientific discoveries have been worked around by Christians successfully for centuaries, usually by flat out denial and then years later, acceptance with a claim that it doesn't discount their religion at all - Such as the church finally accepting that the earth moves around the sun, and the vatican finally accepting evolution (With Mr Pope even conceding that it's "more than just a theory." and after years of not mentioning it they are now at pains to say evolution can be true as well as god)

 

I'd like to point out, by the way, that I'm not an atheist. However I do think that people who believe that their faith, largely determined by an accident of birth, out of all the other faiths in the world, is inarguably the correct one are deluded, intensely arrogant or both - and that is my problem with organised religion. The guy who was mocking a tribe for worshiping a god-like American Gi while himself waiting for Skygod and his walking-on-water zombie son to levitate his followers up to heaven, for instance, really makes me laugh.

[darksnowman]

Yeah, people have funny ideas about what everythings all about dont they.

 

Sorry that I cant give you a quote of chapter and verse here, but I'm pretty confident the Bible says that life on earth is all there is. So something like that would be a cataclysmic discovery not just for science, but religion also.

 

Fair enough, if you say that the vatican has accepted evolution. But I'm not a Roman Catholic, and in fact, I dont really know many (... any... ) who believe in evolution anyway.

 

You're right that what people believe is determined by what sort of mindset they're brought up into. However, you can learn about anything (especially through the web) and so you can decide what you want to. Tailor made religions are plentiful, people just want to believe what seems to suit them and their lifestyle.

[BlueStar]

As far as I'm concerned, the only reason evolutionary theory gets such a hammering from people frantically trying to debunk and discredit it is because some people feel (wrongly in my opinion) that if it is accepted then it disproves the existence of a divine being. If the bible said things that people thought were at odds with atomic theory instead then there would be thousands of pages debunking that and everyone would quietly accept evolution as the probable cause of how we got to where we are today, just as people accept that things behave the way they do because they are probably made up of little things called atoms.

[Supergrunch]

As far as I'm concerned, the only reason evolutionary theory gets such a hammering from people frantically trying to debunk and discredit it is because some people feel (wrongly in my opinion) that if it is accepted then it disproves the existence of a divine being. If the bible said things that people thought were at odds with atomic theory instead then there would be thousands of pages debunking that and everyone would quietly accept evolution as the probable cause of how we got to where we are today, just as people accept that things behave the way they do because they are probably made up of little things called atoms.

Not just that, I think it's also partly that people seem to have a hard time comprehending it due to the vast amounts of time involved... a bit like the way people have a hard time comprehending a four dimensional cube. This is because humans haven't evolved (nyer ) to cope with these concepts.

 

But keep it up, you're talking a whole lot of sense.

[Zechs Merquise]

As far as I'm concerned, the only reason evolutionary theory gets such a hammering from people frantically trying to debunk and discredit it is because some people feel (wrongly in my opinion) that if it is accepted then it disproves the existence of a divine being. If the bible said things that people thought were at odds with atomic theory instead then there would be thousands of pages debunking that and everyone would quietly accept evolution as the probable cause of how we got to where we are today, just as people accept that things behave the way they do because they are probably made up of little things called atoms.

 

I agree, totally correct. Certain Christians hate evolution/dinosaurs/aliens etc as they think it debunks their own beliefs.

[DCK]

Christianity is one thing, nothing wrong with that, but if you are going to use it as an excuse to systematically defy facts, then that's dangerous.

 

You should realize what is a fact and what is not.

 

All this is proof of evolution. The theory of evolution is just a theory, but that only describes a model of why and how it occurs. The concept of evolution is proven by all the things you find in that link. Just as you believe the billion years old Earth, it's not a theory but a fact.

 

Creationists often say 'evolution just a theory'. It's not. Maybe Darwin was wrong, but that doesn't mean evolution is fake.

[Rick Dangerous]

Accepting something as 'fact' is dangerous to though because that stops the whole scientific process

[Kurtle Squad]

Scientists can estimate the age of the universe because they look at evidence first then come to a conclusion. You have the conclusion first (God created the world in seven days) and then start looking for the evidence. This is the fatal flaw of the dogmatic nature of organised religion, backwards methodology.

Exactly

 

I sort of agree - The Bible can answer everything. Because you can interpret the bible to make it say exactly what you like - Hence the fractured nature of the Christian Church. And hence, for instance, some Christians claim that the idea the Bible says the earth is fixed in one place is a lie, while some say that's exactly what it says and the idea the earth moves around the Sun is a lie. People mould the bible around their views and beliefs to validate them not, as they would like to believe their views around the bible. Right from when you pick which of the many translations to read and accept, even if the Bible is the word of God, you are picking and choosing what to believe based on your own views.

 

By the way, bringing answeringgenisis.org to a creationsim debate is a bit like citing Fox News for facts about George Bush.

Or an American news channel on Gulf War II

[BlueStar]

Or an American news channel on Gulf War II

 

Or Fox News on Barack Obama.

[DCK]

Accepting something as 'fact' is dangerous to though because that stops the whole scientific process

True. Thing is, evolution is not just one fact, it's a huge collection of small individual facts that add up together as evolution. Each of those individual facts can be checked, or you can research them yourself to be absolutely clear. You're right though, we have to be critical at all times.