Claims vs. Beliefs

[ElishaElijah]

[QUOTE

It is not a religion. And trying to lower science to the state of a religion is rather foolish since a religion is all that you have.

Why do you give science a bad reputation by falsely interpreting the evidence and making things up?

 

[Subduction Zone]

[QUOTE

Why do you give science a bad reputation by falsely interpreting the evidence and making things up?

Dude! That is you.

That is the neat thing about science. Others are constantly trying to show that you are wrong. If they cannot do that you know that you are very close to the right answer. Evolution has never been shown to be wrong, though creationism has been countless times.

 

[ElishaElijah]

Dude! That is you.

That is the neat thing about science. Others are constantly trying to show that you are wrong. If they cannot do that you know that you are very close to the right answer. Evolution has never been shown to be wrong, though creationism has been countless times.

Evolution is wrong, you start with what we have in the world today and work backwards with your tree of life to the root, much of the tree is unevidenced and hypothesis, admittedly may be false, subjective interpretation of the fossil record. When we get to the root, asked about where that came from (origin of life) you say, no we can’t talk about that it’s abiogenesis and different. So dishonest. Face it thats taken by faith and a religion.

 

[CG Didymus]

That reminds me of this,

Proverbs 1:1-33......."1_7 The proverbs of Solomon, son of David, king of Israel: To know wisdom and instruction, to understand words of insight, to receive instruction in wise dealing, in righteousness, justice, and equity; to give prudence to the simple, knowledge and discretion to the youth— Let the wise hear and increase in learning, and the one who understands obtain guidance, ...22“How long, O simple ones, will you love being simple?
How long will scoffers delight in their scoffing
and fools hate knowledge?....."

Bible Gateway passage: Proverbs 1 - English Standard Version

Regards Tony

So, tell me about this Solomon. Did he live an upright life and always follow God?

 

[Subduction Zone]

Evolution is wrong, you start with what we have in the world today and work backwards with your tree of life to the root, much of the tree is unevidenced and hypothesis, admittedly may be false, subjective interpretation of the fossil record. When we get to the root, asked about where that came from (origin of life) you say, no we can’t talk about that it’s abiogenesis and different. So dishonest. Face it thats taken by faith and a religion.

No, evolution has been endlessly confirmed and no one has found any evidence against it. We do not know what the whole tree is like but there is no need to do so. We can still understand how life came from a common ancestor.

I know, it scares the pants off of you.

 

[Sheldon]

it’s not a denigration of facts because there are fossils, they just don’t say what you are interpreting them to say.

I'm not interpreting them to say anything, this is just your latest straw man fallacy.

Really, you believe your cousin and ancestor was a tree? Or a slug?

He was not very energetic, but that's a stretch. I notice you failed to answer the question though, I shan't even feign surprise. Here it is again, I dare you to deny these facts:

You do know we share 50% of our DNA with trees, 70% with slugs, 44% with honey bees, and even 25% with daffodils.

Go for it! That does take a lot of faith, more than I have.

Faith in unevidenced magic seems to be all you have, but no, the facts that we share 50% of our DNA with trees, 70% with slugs, 44% with honey bees, and even 25% with daffodils, does not require any faith, and I myself do not base any beliefs on faith alone.

 

[Sheldon]

Evolution is wrong,

Not according to science, so I am inclined to believe in a global scientific consensus based over 162 years of global scientific scrutiny, over the demented ramblings of someone peddling superstition.

When we get to the root, asked about where that came from (origin of life) you say, no we can’t talk about that it’s abiogenesis and different. So dishonest.

Species evolution makes no claims about abiogenesis, but then neither does the theory of relativity or germ theory, or any other scientific theory, we note you only seem to have a problem with scientific facts when they contradict your superstitious beliefs.

Face it thats taken by faith and a religion.

Another spectacularly stupid claim, since those notions are firstly the very antithesis of empirical scientific methods, and secondly you value blind faith based adherence to unevidenced religion yourself, so the irony of you using it as a pejorative is not lost on others, even if it is on you.

 

[TransmutingSoul]

So, tell me about this Solomon. Did he live an upright life and always follow God?

I have no idea CG.

The words recorded are full of wisdom reflected in other religious scriptures, this being a great wisdom found in verse 7 "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge;......."

Regards Tony

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

For some reason the taxonomy of humans as part of the family of great apes, seems to annoy some theists quite a bit, who knows why. The histrionic on here by a few, when this fact is mentioned, is quite astonishing, though pretty amusing. Like theists who claim humans are not animals.

I think you understand. Christians and others teach that man is in a class by himself, like angels and the beasts. We are neither of those. Unlike the beasts, we are made in God's image. Unlike the beasts, we have a souls and an afterlife. Evolution strips the tree of life of that special status for man and makes him another beast that evolved from something nonhuman. "I ain't no monkey's uncle!"

Yet you couldn’t articulate what the Bible says on how a person is born again.

I'm sure he could, even if he didn't know, with a search of Google. He declined to do so for the same reason I often do. One has certain expectations of one interlocutor, and if they are not met, one loses interest in continuing. I'm often telling others at this juncture to think about what it is in it for the other person if you don't answer all of his non-rhetorical questions, and don't comment on arguments made in response to claims whether by saying you agree, or offering a rebuttal, which is a specific kind of denial, one which makes the comment rebutted incorrect if the counterargument is correct.

As an example of dissent that is not rebuttal, I just was told by a theist that a passage I cited from Numbers as evidence in contradiction of his claim that his Bible condone abortion was not about abortion, but instead, about God's judgment. Do you see why that is not a rebuttal and fails to address my comment, which was a rebuttal? The difference is that if I am right about what the Bible contains and what those words mean, then he is wrong, whereas even if he is correct (and he is; yes, this is about God's judgement - of which fetuses should be aborted), I can be as well.

Anyway, it's an acquired skill that requires a willingness and the ability to engage in dialectic as I just described it, and most people lack the ability to focus on an argument and give a complete answer to it, but some are so far from that that, such as those who won't acknowledge one's questions much less show the respect of trying to answer them, one is apt to do what I do and just stop cooperating. As I said, what's in for him if he doesn't? It's worth your while to think about such things. They're respectful and forward-going in a discussion, whereas the alternative is disrespectful and a discussion killer.

You might like to go back and find out what questions he is referring to that went unanswered and correct that. My guess is that you would like to do your part but aren't really sure what that is.

you know the main message of the Bible

I do, but I bet you'd disagree. It's submit or be punished. You might say that the central message is that we were born in sin and that by the grace of a loving God we are saved, but I see that man must submit to God's will (anything else is sin) or face perdition. Isn't that the discussion theists have with us when they tell us that on Judgment Day, we skeptics will have no excuses, because we were warned? What is the message there? You were warned, you disobeyed, and now you will be punished. THAT'S the central message of Christianity. One way remember? Just one way. But to be on that train, you need to comply with commandments.

What organism started everything, what is all life’s common ancestor? The next question is how impossible it would be to get from this organism to life as we have it today, this is what I see here. This would take great faith and wishful thinking.

We don't know the LUCA and likely never will. It was monocellular, marine, and likely an Archaean (a sort of primitive bacterium). But we don't expect to find fossils of it or any other permanent record, nor to recreate it in a lab and know that we have created LUCA, nor to have any means to decide if it was the LUCA or one of its ancestors

No faith is needed to say that there is strong evidence that genetic variants subjected to natural selection over geological time gave us the tree of life we see around us today and the extinct forms we find in the earth. That is extremely likely to be correct.

what is the point is the life that the Genesis story describes is all that can be confirmed by evolutionary theory.

Evolutionary theory like Big Bang cosmology contradicts Genesis. They can't both be right.

Notice how they mention origin of life (abiogenesis) and how even Evolution 101 uses this language yet you keep saying they aren’t related.

They can be considered separately, like all other types of evolution that came before (material and chemical) and since (psychological and cultural) biological evolution. One needn't have a complete theory of any of these to investigate any other. Abiogenesis (chemical evolution) preceded biological evolution, but divine creation works just as well.

This is subjective interpretation that isn’t proven, you can fill in the blank family tree. There is common design by the Creator.

So his comment is just unproven speculation, but your claim is not?

 

[Valjean]

If evolution happened slowly over time by natural selection this seems like an impossible task. Anyone should be able to see the problems with the hypothesis and theory that life developed over billions of years.

You mean that changes developed over billions of years?
Sorry, I must be dense. Please explain the problems with the ToE.

Let’s say for example the heart was developed first, or maybe the brain first that controls the heart, or was it blood that’s needed to keep them both healthy or was it the lungs first?

You really don't understand the theory you're so opinionated about, do you? Nor do you appear to grasp basic biology.
Nothing developed 'first'. Things developed and changed together. Where are you getting these bizarre ideas?

No, none of this could ever happen, no not ever, because in order for the human body to work and live everything needed to be formed at one time and this happened when God formed man and breathed life into him and he became a living being, that’s what I’m convinced of and sticking with it.

If you believe anyone claims the various organs and systems popped into existence fully formed, at various stages of human evolution, it's no wonder you're skeptical. It just didn't happen that way. I have no idea where you came up with this notion.

 

[Valjean]

Sounds like the only “magic” and sleight of hand is in the scientific community of the religion of evolution and abiogenesis as described or should I say shown by the missing evidence of the branches to the tree of life. Yes, by the way, the major organs of the body cannot function alone, this argues against evolution and isn’t a fallacy.

Magic is at the heart of creationists' claims. Magic poofing is the very essence of religious creationism.
Creationists describe effect without mechanism. That's magic.
Science rejects all that, and finds ordinary chemistry and physics can account for all the magic creationists claim.

If you have any evidence of this magic, please present it. I haven't seen any.
If you have any actual refutations of evolution, please present your evidence, I've seen none.

 

[Valjean]

A 747 is a great example of engineering, planning, precise machine work and intelligence. I’m glad you used this example because anyone can see the 747 came about by a designer with a plan not haphazard.
Another reality of life that mocks the theory of evolution and it’s hypothesis.

As far as I know, 747s don't reproduce with variation. I'll bet you don't understand the significance of this.

The evidence is right there in the picture and life we see right in front of you everyday.

OK, please explain it.

 

[Valjean]

And reminds me of this:
:
“The fool says in his heart, “There is no God.” They are corrupt, their deeds are vile; there is no one who does good. The Lord looks down from heaven on all mankind to see if there are any who understand, any who seek God. All have turned away, all have become corrupt; there is no one who does good, not even one. Do all these evildoers know nothing? They devour my people as though eating bread; they never call on the Lord.”
‭‭Psalms‬ ‭14:1-4‬ ‭NIV‬‬

But this is a silly quotation, isn't it?
Why do you post it? It clarifies nothing and is evidence of nothing.

 

[CG Didymus]

I have no idea CG.

The words recorded are full of wisdom reflected in other religious scriptures, this being a great wisdom found in verse 7 "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge;......."

Regards Tony

Well that's the thing. I know you mean well, but you're using the Bible when it says something you like, but when it talks about how Solomon had several wives and concubines and other excesses, those things are ignored. There isn't one set of Scriptures that can really be said to be dependable. Each religion trusts it's own and has reasons to doubt and question everybody else's or to go so far as to call it false.

 

[TransmutingSoul]

Well that's the thing. I know you mean well, but you're using the Bible when it says something you like, but when it talks about how Solomon had several wives and concubines and other excesses, those things are ignored.

Not ignored CG, just not explored at this time.

I personally do not have the time, or I am not inclined to explore too deeply the ancient scriptures. Life is for the Here and now.

Bahaullah has given us all we need for this age and If I want to know the Essence of all those ancient scriptures, Baha'u'llah gifted us with the Hidden Words.

The Hidden Words | Bahá’í Reference Library

"HE IS THE GLORY OF GLORIES

THIS is that which hath descended from the realm of glory, uttered by the tongue of power and might, and revealed unto the Prophets of old. We have taken the inner essence thereof and clothed it in the garment of brevity, as a token of grace unto the righteous, that they may stand faithful unto the Covenant of God, may fulfill in their lives His trust, and in the realm of spirit obtain the gem of divine virtue."

Regards Tony

 

[Aupmanyav]

Totally speculation with no evidence whatsoever. Isn't that what you all claim religion is? You have to take that bizarre theory on blind faith and it still doesn't explain why anything exists.

No. It is just a theory. Science is working on it. It may turn out to be correct or false. No different from the God theory, which too does not have any proof.

 

[samtonga43]

No. It is just a theory. Science is working on it. It may turn out to be correct or false. No different from the God theory, which too does not have any proof.

Hi Aupmanyav. Do you think it possible that there ever could be proof of 'the God theory'?

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

No. It is just a theory. Science is working on it. It may turn out to be correct or false. No different from the God theory, which too does not have any proof.

Science has no proof. That is logic and some forms of folk beliefs.

Learn to use the terms and learn to check your cultural words. Just as you require of someone using the word "God".

 

[Sheldon]

a great wisdom found in verse 7 "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge;......."

That's just a vapid platitude, using a circular reasoning fallacy, it explains nothing and simply assumes its core premise in it's argument.

 

[TransmutingSoul]

That's just a vapid platitude, using a circular reasoning fallacy, it explains nothing and simply assumes its core premise in it's argument.

Wack-a-do.

Regards Tony