All about Religion. (Rights, wrongs, Theocracy, etc.)

[lo_res_man]

A question: when you people speak of "theories", are you actually talking about theories, or are you really talking about hypotheses?

If you were talking to me, (it is hard to tell with just text) yes I guess your right it is a hypotheses. but is part of my THEORY of the universe "The Great SImulation"
not that I think our universe is anything like the matrix or anything, its just how I view the universe.

[The Inquisitive Stranger]

But hypotheses don't become theories until they have become confirmed by actual experiments...

[lo_res_man]

Then what is the "Theory" of evolution, at least when it was developed by Darwin developed it. Science deals with the present. One cannot prove evolution by experiment. it must then be an hypotheses all be it one that fits many holes while ( in my view) creating new ones. I guess that means my view is an hypotheses as well. thanks for correcting my syntax.

[big brother]

bb: No you're not, but thanks for assuming! I did philo 101 at business school! Plato: How to make an Ideal Sell!Ã,  Sartre: Hell is in Other Products! Camus: The Strange Cold Call!

Yes, these are very different from courses like:  Hume: Is There More to Life than Screwing Goats and Going to Gay Nightclubs? and Voltaire: Why Didn't Candide Settle For a Goat?

In most American Universities, each department teaches its own courses, so application between two subjects is usually the student's invention.

[The Inquisitive Stranger]

Then what is the "Theory" of evolution, at least when it was developed by Darwin developed it. Science deals with the present. One cannot prove evolution by experiment.

I didn't say that you could prove it; I said that you could confirm it. The theory of evolution is a theory because physical evidence has, to this date, not been proven to contradict it. (Of course, this doesn't necessarily mean that it never will be contradicted in the future...)

[Haddas]

Whoa! People still seriously believe in religion :o

I am shocked! I don't wish to offend... but seriously!

[lo_res_man]

I didn't say that you could prove it; I said that you could confirm it. The theory of evolution is a theory because physical evidence has, to this date, not been proven to contradict it. (Of course, this doesn't necessarily mean that it never will be contradicted in the future...)

Quite true but there is also evidence to contradict it.
"missing links" They are still missing. so we find a dinosaur with feathers, but that is but one example. the fossil record, by the laws of probability, should be more full of half-way one thing or the other then anything else. but is it? not even the scientists who are the biggest proponents of evolution will say that.

symbionts, I asked a scientist about this one, his answer sounds just like what they accuse intelligent design proponents "it just happened" and he was a biologist.

and how could life have come to be at all. the talk of lightning hitting slime in a big shallow sea. but when they "replicated" these conditions though yes they produced amino acids, they were of D chirality, the ones almost exclusively used in life have L chirality. As well the mild shocks the gave the chemical solution were nothing like an lighting bolt, which would have likely destroyed any amino acids it made L or D.

to quote some villain
"Your turn, Mr. Bond"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chirality_%28chemistry%29

[Becky]

"missing links" They are still missing.

We will never be able to uncover the complete fossil record, because the conditions that must be met to preserve animal remains do not exist everywhere, and will not preserve every single living being that has ever lived.  Just because it has not yet been found, does not mean that it didn't exist.

Also, "missing links" are always being found as gradually more of the fossil record is uncovered, see the Tiktaalik.

[lo_res_man]

True enough. but we should have found them long ago and much more of them. The probabilities are so huge as to be what a mathematician calls "statistically improbable" A comparable statistical event is giving 1,000,000 monkeys computers and as much memory as they want, and expecting one to type out a simple seven word sentence that makes sense. and life is a practically infinitely more complex piece of work.
And another thing I found out recently. Just because we find a walking fish doesn’t mean its a link. fish brains and all other vertebrates brains are formed completely differently. so how could fish have evolved into amphibians if there brains are so different.  now of course there limbs would change, but why the brains?

[Adamski]

There's a 1 in 14 million chance of winning the UK lottery jackpot - that's a pretty 'satistically improbable' number - yet someone manages to win it every week. Twice a week even! And somtimes more than one person! Holy shit!

The OMG STATISTICS SAY IT'S IMPOSSIBLE stance is not a good reason to dismiss evolution, and it's certainly not a 'trump card' argument against it at all.

Lets just continue down this line for a moment, here's something I found on a lottery site:

    Now, lottery odds can be pretty incomprehensible. How can we possibly have any "feeling" for the number 13,983,816? To help you with this, here's a little experiment you can try to "get a handle on" what a 1 in 13,983,816 chance really means.

       1. Get a piece of rope or string, that's 39 feet long.

       2. In a wide open area, arrange the rope or string in a circle, end to end, the best you can.

       3. Get a single grain of sand or dirt (use tweezers!) and place it anywhere you wish inside the circle.

       4. Get a second grain of sand. Close your eyes, and "disorient" yourself as to where the grain of sand is that you placed inside of the circle (have someone spin you around or something!).

       5. While you're inside the circle, drop the second grain of sand from 1 foot up.

       6. Your chances of hitting the first grain of sand with the second is roughly equal to the odds of "1 in 13,983,816."

       7. If the rope's length mentioned in #1 is a little unreasonable, for every foot above the circle that you drop the second grain of sand, you can reduce the length of the string by the same amount. For example, if you dropped the second grain of sand from a ladder 10 feet up, you'd need a length of string that is 10 times shorter than the one in #1, or a 39/10 = 3.85236 foot long piece of string.

Amazing isn't it? I've seen similar things but with 'AND THIS IS WHY LIFE COULD NOT HAVE POSSIBLY EVOLVED WITHOUT GOD DOING IT' conclusions at the end, and yet last month someone on my street won the UK lottery jackpot with odds of 1 in 14 million against them.

I think we can shut up about statistic improbabilities now.

[lo_res_man]

There's a 1 in 14 million chance of winning the UK lottery jackpot - that's a pretty 'satistically improbable' number - yet someone manages to win it every week. Twice a week even! And somtimes more than one person!

True, but with the lottery someone HAS to win. of all the people who by lottery tickets at least ONE has to win. BUT with life, no one HAS to win. life doesn’t have some great need to exist. and in evolution the numbers are MUCH, MUCH bigger the probabilities exceed 1 in more atoms in the known universe.
of course if the universe is truly infinite, this is bunk because life would have to be somewhere.. but then we run into Obler's  paradox. as well any answer still doesn’t answer were the universe came from or what it IS, infinite or not.

[Adamski]

True, but with the lottery someone HAS to win. of all the people who by lottery tickets at least ONE has to win.

What? No, nobody HAS to win the lottery, ever heard of a 'rollover'?

and in evolution the numbers are MUCH, MUCH bigger the probabilities exceed 1 in more atoms in the known universe.

Can I see some sources for this "more atoms in the known universe" probablility please? Sounds spurious to me.

[lo_res_man]

No I haven’t  :-[and your Probably right but isn't it more like ONE person buying a lottery ticket and hoping to win? then the numbers change and they try again. what are THOSE chances? because as time  ( an important factor) the conditions change constitutions of different chemicals change, some evaporate some may be destroyed and some other ones accumulate. Its like being the only one at the lottery. Of course I have other evidence, and maybe probability is not the best place to stand but as they say, "you spend your money, you take your chance"

[esper]

Oh. Crap. I've been gone a month and look what happens... I miss a religion topic. Shmoot. Well, I read everything, but since I haven't been in the convo, I guess my only reply can be to the original questions.

1.  Do the Christians (a majority) stand a chance of getting Bible-based legislation passed?

Yes. They have already, and continue to do so. Why do you think homosexual marriage is only legal in Tijuana?

2.  Do you believe that Bible-based legislation SHOULD be passed?

Only if it's mutually beneficial for every American.

3.  Do you feel that religion and politics intertwine naturally and that an American Theocracy in favor of the majority is inevitable?

No. A proper theocracy can never happen, because (sorry atheists) God isn't interested in govornment. Stupid-ass Christian sheep believe the verse that says "render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's" means we need to pay our taxes. If you'd actually spend time reading that whole section rather than believing what a human man has to tell you about it, you'd find Jesus says "Who's picture is on this coin?" And the response was "Caesar's." And so by syllogism the ultimate meaning was "Well, give it to him then. But don't give him what belongs to God." We need to pay taxes, because minted coins are minted for us to use by the govornment anyway, but Christians are commanded to keep themselves independently govorned. Ultimately, a theocracy as explained in the Bible is for God-believing individuals, and them alone. But no. Assmasters like Pat "I know you have cancer on your spleen" Roberson want to take over the govornment and "give it back to God," who never had it nor wanted it in the first place.

4.  If a Christian juggernaut formed and began moving towards a Theocracy, what would you do? (Either to help it or stop it.)

I, even though I profess belief in God, would burn down their buildings and slaughter their women and children until they cried like infants and gave up their ignorance.


Ragmaster, I just want to know... You say you came out of... what was it, Seventh Day Adventists? Do you still believe in God, or are you done with all that? Because, let me say this... I'm not one of those clowns that say you need to "Talk to Jesus..." I say this, though: Don't stop believing in God just because everyone who claims to be His People are morons. I once was a Catholic, getting ready to go into the priesthood. Then, I became a Baptist. Now, I'm a god. Don't forsake God just because nobody knows the truth about Him. I believe there would be less atheists in the world if there were less Christians, and there would probably be no atheists if there were no Christians. Okay, maybe a few. People don't understand one thing: religion is the study of what man has to say about God, but true Theology is the study of God, period. Here's an interesting verse for you:

"Knowing this first, that no Scripture is of any private interpretation."

Christians use this to say you shouldn't try to explain the Bible on your own, and should let your priest or pastor do it for you. If you look it up in the original language, it says this:

"Most importantly, these words shouldn't be expounded by any one man."

That's my two cents. Esper out.

[Nacho]

Whoa! People still seriously believe in religion :o

I am shocked! I don't wish to offend... but seriously!

Whoa! So, do you no believe in religion?  Don't you believe in the Cruzades? The Yihad by Saladhin? Don't you believe in the German civil war after Luther's theses? Don't you believe in the slaughtering of the Hugonotes in France? Don't you belive in Holocaust?

Maybe the problem is that your definition of religion is too short sighted. Religion is not just the (from my point of view) the unvelierable supernatural stuff that works as a source of it. Religion it's also the REAL effects that this FALSE facts produce. If I am asked: Do you think that crafts driven by alien intelligence have visited us? I will ask: Good lord, no! If I am asked if the UFO phenomenon exists, I will say: yes.

Sorry dude, but religion exists...

[Haddas]

Sure. I believe it EXISTS, but I have no belief in it, and i live a happier life because of it.

Don't you believe in the Cruzades? The Yihad by Saladhin? Don't you believe in the German civil war after Luther's theses? Don't you believe in the slaughtering of the Hugonotes in France? Don't you belive in Holocaust?

These were caused by or partially by religion, right?

I am done arguing about this subject. Can you people never come up with anything interesting to debate? Like if batman or spiderman would win in a fight?

[CaptainBinky]

I didn't say that you could prove it; I said that you could confirm it. The theory of evolution is a theory because physical evidence has, to this date, not been proven to contradict it. (Of course, this doesn't necessarily mean that it never will be contradicted in the future...)

It's not just a case of there being no evidence to contradict evolution, although I do agree with that statement. There are observations of evolution happening - there was a particular example involving snails, but I can't remember the details off-hand.

On the subject of the likelihood of life occurring, well given the infinitite timescale involved (I use infinite here in the context of "immeasurably large" rather than "un-ending" because I have no idea if time will ever "end") all things which can happen eventually will happen. Which makes life kind of inevitable. It's only because we are a result of countless improbable scenarios that we find it so unbelievable. It's only our paltry lifespan that makes winning the lottery so unlikely so you can't really compare the odds of that to the odds of life. One timescale is miniscule, the other is astronomical.

edit: About the snails... http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/1997/01.09/SnailsCaughtinA.html. Should have known this really - it's Stephen Jay Gould and I've got the blinking book! Doh!

[Raggit]

Ragmaster, I just want to know... You say you came out of... what was it, Seventh Day Adventists? Do you still believe in God, or are you done with all that? Because, let me say this... I'm not one of those clowns that say you need to "Talk to Jesus..." I say this, though: Don't stop believing in God just because everyone who claims to be His People are morons...

I've always given that consideration, but I've still found it hard to actually believe that God exists, as he is described in the Bible, because to me something just doesn't seem coherent there.
But I try to remain open to the ideas of something beyond ourselves, because there must be.

I'm far more open to the idea of worshipping God individually, excluded from church and religion.  I'm not terribly supportative of institutions that deal with something so personal, and make it something so sweeping, that everybody has to be stuffed into a cookie cutter.

I understand that not everybody who claims to be a Christian actually IS a Christian, and I don't consider one to be a representative of them all.Ã, 
And to those who've been following this who are Christians, I'm sorry if at any point it sounded like I was trying to put you all in one group.

[big brother]

That snail article is pretty interesting. It only really confirms natural genetic variations and selection. However, for it really to count as "proof" towards evolution, there would have to be some kind of cross-species transformation.

Evolution has always seemed inductive to me, personally. The theory itself has changed so many times (i.e. prominent scientists no longer believe in the spotted moths or the fetal stage transformations), I place it on the same shelf as other religions. I've encountered a lot of people that defend the theory with a similar dogmaticism to any televangelist. The main difference being they claim it's "scientific" (although the beginning of the universe isn't really observable or repeatable).

Ultimately, considering our short window of existance, reaching conclusions about million year old process requires some form of linear extrapolation.

[CaptainBinky]

That snail article is pretty interesting. It only really confirms natural genetic variations and selection. However, for it really to count as "proof" towards evolution, there would have to be some kind of cross-species transformation.

That would constitute stronger proof for sure. However,

"Scattered between them were thousands of highly variable shells spanning the full range of form from pure C. excelsior through intermediates of all degrees to C. rubicundum," Gould recalled. "It was difficult to escape the idea that the former had evolved into the later."

Plus, the concept of what a species is, and what it means is something that is open to quite a lot of debate. If you mean "species" in a biological sense, that what differentiates species is their inabilities to reproduce, then that would happen only in reproductive isolation. And isolation is not something that's going to happen overnight and therefore fairly difficult to ever study occurring. However, evolution doesn't have to just be about the formation of new species in that sense, and as such I think that the example of the snails is pretty good "proof". It certainly shows that the mechanism is there, and that what the theory explains can be seen occurring in nature.

I've encountered a lot of people that defend the theory with a similar dogmaticism to any televangelist. The main difference being they claim it's "scientific" (although the beginning of the universe isn't really observable or repeatable).

Hmmm... I agree that some people can get rather passionate in their defense of evolution. However, I'm not quite sure what the theory of evolution has to do with the beginning of the universe. It is possible to agree with evolution and still believe in a God as the creator of the Universe. To me, the reason I get uppity about the theory of evolution is because there is evidence to support it and therefore the quotes around the word scientific are redundant. Whereas with Creationism, there is no evidence, only conviction of belief.