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Exactly why I get frustrated
- Thread starter Chirios
- Start date
ImprobableJoe
New Member
It is the standard theist fallacy of "nothing is 100% knowable, therefore my stupid beliefs about talking snakes and magical sky daddies is just as reasonable as your conclusions based on mountains of independently verifiable evidence."
Frustrating, and more so because it is so common and predictable.
Frustrating, and more so because it is so common and predictable.
Is this person confirming he or she has no beliefs or that he or she is inconsistent?
Did he or she just equate atheism, a lack of a belief, to evolution, the most supported theory on a subject? Did he or she also imply that Christians or people of other faith can not believe in evolution?
This is just getting ridiculous: Lumping abiogenesis with evolution = Fail.
Yes. This is exactly how all current theories came to be; past theories were questions and replaced with better ones. Yahoo!
I didn't really understand this last part.
My Reply:
A higher authority? So anything done in the name of your religion is correct, even if it violates habeus corpus, human rights etc. because the book says so?
Okay, I really don't want to turn this into a debate about evolution, really, but there are so many things wrong with this statement.
1) In order for science to work there has to be a shadow of a doubt. This is why no explanation no matter how supported by the evidence, ever advances above theory .
2) Evolution is not now, nor has ever been an explanation of the origins of life. It is an explanation about the diversity of life, and encompasses the origins of humanity.
3) There are dozens of fossils, dozens of embryological experiments which show that our ancestors were once water-dwelling mammals similar in type to whales. Note, I am not saying that they were whales, just that they were mammals that lived in water.
4) People call evolution true because there is too much evidence for it not to be true. But you know what there is no evidence for? The Bible. The reason we consider things like religion to be faith is that there is not a single piece of evidence for religion, outside religion. Sure, we can accept that the prophets existed, whether they spoke to angels on the other hand is another matter.
This is what I don't understand. You are claiming that other people are blindly accepting things as absolute truth when by definition you are living a life based on something which has no evidence backing it up. During this "debate" I have seen people claim to know things about God which nobody knows, which nobody CAN know; because God by definition is UNKNOWABLE. The entire excercise of Christian apologetics is thus moot; it is without validity because the existance of God is not something that can be empirically verified, it is a pointless excercise of pointlessness which only serves to show that people nowadays have far too much time on their hands.
It is.
A higher authority? So anything done in the name of your religion is correct, even if it violates habeus corpus, human rights etc. because the book says so?
Okay, I really don't want to turn this into a debate about evolution, really, but there are so many things wrong with this statement.
1) In order for science to work there has to be a shadow of a doubt. This is why no explanation no matter how supported by the evidence, ever advances above theory .
2) Evolution is not now, nor has ever been an explanation of the origins of life. It is an explanation about the diversity of life, and encompasses the origins of humanity.
3) There are dozens of fossils, dozens of embryological experiments which show that our ancestors were once water-dwelling mammals similar in type to whales. Note, I am not saying that they were whales, just that they were mammals that lived in water.
4) People call evolution true because there is too much evidence for it not to be true. But you know what there is no evidence for? The Bible. The reason we consider things like religion to be faith is that there is not a single piece of evidence for religion, outside religion. Sure, we can accept that the prophets existed, whether they spoke to angels on the other hand is another matter.
This is what I don't understand. You are claiming that other people are blindly accepting things as absolute truth when by definition you are living a life based on something which has no evidence backing it up. During this "debate" I have seen people claim to know things about God which nobody knows, which nobody CAN know; because God by definition is UNKNOWABLE. The entire excercise of Christian apologetics is thus moot; it is without validity because the existance of God is not something that can be empirically verified, it is a pointless excercise of pointlessness which only serves to show that people nowadays have far too much time on their hands.
ImprobableJoe
New Member
If you could get them to understand that idea, the discussion would be over. The problem is that the entire point of apologetics is to build a giant wall between believers and the truth about their beliefs.Chirios said:
I believe in God (not the christian god but a god nonetheless) and I believe in natural selection, and the evolution within species (that is proven) but saying that all species originated from a single species I can not believe in at this time. It in essence is about as proven as God/s is/are. Now to say whether or not it is fact that has happened, I don't know. Same way as I don't know if God exists. There will always be that question in my heart (till I am proven otherwise) because I am human, and as a human I wonder.
Raistlin Majere
New Member
This is by far one of the most frustrating things for me.
Evolution does NOT mean abiogenesis >.<
Hopefully some people manage to figure this out in the near future before my head explodes from the idiocy.
And to figure9:
Macroevolution has something going for it that beliefs in gods do not. It's called evidence.
Raistlin Majere said:
That is my point. I totally believe in Macroevolution. Darwin completely proved that. But saying dogs came from bacteria over a course of thousands of years, I can't believe that. Same way I can understand people not believing in God. It can't be proven, I understand that. It's no big deal to me, my beliefs are mine, as likewise for you on that matter. But what I'm saying is that my belief is that a higher being created the planet and a bunch of species and just let it go to watch. And that the species we have today are variations of the original species that were created.
figure9 said:
Think of it not in, "Not proven," and, "Proven." Rather, try thinking as the most supported theory. When you do this, you do not exempt yourself from science; nothing is proven, there is always falsifiability. The atomic theory is the most supported, and thus currently true. Whatever the theory was before it - if there was one, I guess I do not know for sure - was the most widely accepted and supported theory until the current one bested it.
When you understand this concept, you can easily dismiss your claim that abiogenesis is as proven as a God is. Well, translating this: "Abiogenesis is as widely accepted and supported scientifically as the existence of a God." Wrong. Even if abiogenesis is really shaky, contains a lot of holes and does not provide much surety, it is more supported than a God. I am really not sure how much support abiogenesis has - if it is widely accepted or still debated; however, it is in no way accepted or supported just as much as a God.
figure9 said:
If you believe in macroevolution, then you should believe in 'bacteria to dogs.' Still, that is a gross oversimplification and seems to suggest a linear form of taxonomy. Evolution is a branching effect, not a bacteria reproduces into a multicellular organism that reproduces into something else and again and again and whoa, a dog! Evolution from bacteria all the way to current species has been confirmed scientifically; if you think they are wrong, prove it.
Ah, you guys are right. What I'm saying doesn't make sense at all. What I was saying was just fucking silly. My belief in a god has been going downhill for quite sometime. And why I ever believed in it I don't know. I hope you don't assume I was picking a religion fight or something, I'm not. Just been wandering among different theories. Trying to make sense of it all.
But thank you for not shooting me down for what I believe but reasoning with me. I appreciate that.
Of course, as the way I am, I flip flop from believing in God to not believing. But as time goes, I find myself believing in God less and less. But there are times where of course I just have to stop and wonder if there is a God. But I'm sure that is just human nature, also being that I was raised southern baptist, so I guess that has a lot to do with having a hard time with this. I don't really know.
But also, disregarding the evolution, is it hard to believe that a higher being tested over hundreds of years what worked and didn't work? I know that sounds ridiculous, but I think about that a lot too. Same way with the big bang, I believe in it, but scientists do not know what came before the big bang correct? So is it possible a god could have caused the big bang? Being that everything couldn't have came from nothing due to the law of conservation of mass right? And if energy is mass times the speed of light squared, then is it possible to say that the original mass to create the big bang was a god? And that it re-arranged and form new particles? And again, I know that probably sounds ridiculous, but it's just something I've always thought about. Of course saying that is just naming something God and saying that's why it happened. The only real difference is that you can either say the universe was of random or that it had a reason.
I did watch a few of them, mainly the ones regarding evolution. And as I think of it, I do remember dinosaur fossils being found with feathers in tact. So there you go, I am an idiot.GoodKat said:
But thank you for not shooting me down for what I believe but reasoning with me. I appreciate that.
Of course, as the way I am, I flip flop from believing in God to not believing. But as time goes, I find myself believing in God less and less. But there are times where of course I just have to stop and wonder if there is a God. But I'm sure that is just human nature, also being that I was raised southern baptist, so I guess that has a lot to do with having a hard time with this. I don't really know.
But also, disregarding the evolution, is it hard to believe that a higher being tested over hundreds of years what worked and didn't work? I know that sounds ridiculous, but I think about that a lot too. Same way with the big bang, I believe in it, but scientists do not know what came before the big bang correct? So is it possible a god could have caused the big bang? Being that everything couldn't have came from nothing due to the law of conservation of mass right? And if energy is mass times the speed of light squared, then is it possible to say that the original mass to create the big bang was a god? And that it re-arranged and form new particles? And again, I know that probably sounds ridiculous, but it's just something I've always thought about. Of course saying that is just naming something God and saying that's why it happened. The only real difference is that you can either say the universe was of random or that it had a reason.
EnDSchultz
New Member
Figure9, you remind me a LOT of how I was as recent as a year ago. Since then my understanding has expanded and I've contemplated deeply on the subject, and here's the conclusion I come to. You are right, it is 'possible' that a god or some intelligent entity outside our reality was the causation for our universe. There are literally an infinite number of possibilities for every single thing. It's possible none of you exist and the entire world around me is just an illusion. Hence we cannot prove anything with absolute certainty. However, we -can- determine what is most probable. I accept the possibility an intelligent entity was the causation for the universe, but I don't see it as very probable. Since then we have observed no evidence of it interacting with our universe, at least in any measurable way. So even -if- it exists, until we have evidence that it does, then for all practical purposes it may as well not exist and we can do nothing but speculate futilely about it.
One other thing, I'd like to point out a very key, if somewhat subtle, distinction: the difference between 'believing in' and 'accepting' something. You can accept the possibility of a god existing without believing in it. Believing in something implies you make a positive assertion about its existence or truth, and it sounds to me that right now you are on the fence and do not actually 'believe in' god. Right now it seems you're reaching a point where you realize God as he is traditionally known is a crock of shit, and therefore you dismiss the claims of religions which describe him. This is the tipping point in the idea of 'god'. When you no longer have the positive assertions about God provided by religions, you're basically left with nothing at all to work with and are free to speculate about the metaphysical to your heart's content. Indeed, it sounds like you've been doing quite a bit of speculation yourself.
But anyway, I ramble and I wasn't really taking this post in any particular direction to start with. Hopefully you'll at least have gained something from it.
One other thing, I'd like to point out a very key, if somewhat subtle, distinction: the difference between 'believing in' and 'accepting' something. You can accept the possibility of a god existing without believing in it. Believing in something implies you make a positive assertion about its existence or truth, and it sounds to me that right now you are on the fence and do not actually 'believe in' god. Right now it seems you're reaching a point where you realize God as he is traditionally known is a crock of shit, and therefore you dismiss the claims of religions which describe him. This is the tipping point in the idea of 'god'. When you no longer have the positive assertions about God provided by religions, you're basically left with nothing at all to work with and are free to speculate about the metaphysical to your heart's content. Indeed, it sounds like you've been doing quite a bit of speculation yourself.
But anyway, I ramble and I wasn't really taking this post in any particular direction to start with. Hopefully you'll at least have gained something from it.
Th1sWasATriumph
New Member
figure9 said:
Then you likely don't understand the processes by which life arose, or the truly vast timescale involved. Thousands of years? Try millions, or billions.
And you may believe that, but that's not in line with evidence. You'd have to prove your God, for a start. Go and research abiogenesis - a surprising number of people haven't whilst still professing to believe in evolution. Abio came first. We are just chemicals, and DNA is simply four organic compounds in varying patterns. All the chemicals required to make DNA were freely available in the primordial stage of the earth.
We didn't crawl from the ooze. Nothing did. Nothing so clear-cut happened. You still believe in the misrepresented science that creationists follow. The switch from self-replicating biological engines to simple single-celled "life" would have been incredibly fuzzy.
Man, we have the exact same background, raised southern baptist in SC, I feel your pain. You wouldn't happen to live in Florence would you?figure9 said:
I was rather reluctant to accept evolution and the big bang even after I quit believing in the Bible. I used to be a super-fundie, as brainwashed as they come, but my belief in a loving, personal God was crushed by reality when I finally realized how fucked up the world is. For a long time, I believed in an evil, sadistic God who had created us just to watch us suffer because that was my only explanation of the world as I saw it. But after a very intensive study of scientific theories and and some deep thought and honest reflection, I decided not to believe anything without objective evidence, and to rigorously apply logic to my beliefs and ideologies. Because of that, I simply cannot believe in God, or the supernatural for that matter.
Th1sWasATriumph
New Member
GoodKat said:
Reading what you said was a bit like watching a heroin addict throw away his needles. Salute.
figure9 said:
For me, and hopefully most other people, the whole concept of possibly being able to attribute anything to a God kind of discredits itself. Like EnDSchultz has said, you can try and put the label of God anywhere, but it is all just confirmation bias. Everywhere you look you can find some crazy coincidence and conclude it was possible a God did it. Well, after time, this turns out to contradict itself and really become meaningless. There is no point in trying to pin the God on the idea.
It is amazing to me when I try to think about how fascinating everything in my room, my building, the campus, the town, the planet and even the universe is. It awes with having developed over billions of years; on this planet rocks were all there were billions of years ago - and look now! Just reveling at the marvel of nature seems way more interesting than believing some really messed up character of a God did it in a week. So, really, I think the creationists claim of "Evilutionists" thinking the universe and Earth and life just happened is wrong; it is the other way around, and oh, how sad it is...
There is nothing Random about the formation of galaxies, nothing random about organic chemistry, there is nothing random about survivals selection of genes. (perhaps parts are based on some random factors, but do not themselves arise randomly)
Perhaps there was something random about the fundamental properties of the constants of particles and forces.
But perhaps not, just becuase we cannot currently fathom a universe creating mechanism does not mean we must propose magic as its source.
I think the more you know, the more objective you are forced to become.
I found books such as The First Three minutes by Stephen Wienburg to be helpful. We can certainly allow our imaginations to guide our research, I have great respect for Michio Kaku even though he really gets out there sometimes, but what is possible is not necessarily what is, that is what we must always realize. That is the purpose of science to sort through the possible and find and detail the actual.
Perhaps there was something random about the fundamental properties of the constants of particles and forces.
But perhaps not, just becuase we cannot currently fathom a universe creating mechanism does not mean we must propose magic as its source.
I think the more you know, the more objective you are forced to become.
I found books such as The First Three minutes by Stephen Wienburg to be helpful. We can certainly allow our imaginations to guide our research, I have great respect for Michio Kaku even though he really gets out there sometimes, but what is possible is not necessarily what is, that is what we must always realize. That is the purpose of science to sort through the possible and find and detail the actual.