Creationism Vs Evolution

ZOMG RANT ALERT

It sickens me how many people in this country don't believe in evolution.  I heard a statistic that it's around half, but I doubt it's that many.  Science is about rational thought and testable ideas and experiments.  Rejecting the scientific theory of the origin of the human race is like not believing in friction, saying something like that it's god's will that things don't move infinitley.  Even though most fundamental scientific principles are proved indirectly at first (like the spherical nature of the earth), when we are able to directly observe it, we are right because it has been tested indirectly so much.  Religious extremists dismiss evidence like fossils as "tricks by god to test our faith" or something like that.  I bet if someone took a born again christian or another religious extremist in a time machine back 65 million years ago, observed dinosaurs, and returned, they would still reject their direct observations as "hethanistic trickery" or something like that.  Courts have ruled in some places that scientific arguments in favor of creationism can be taught in public schools, what will they have to show?  This intelligent design theory they yammer about is nothing more than pseudoscience, and a lazy underestimation of the power and magnitude biodiversity, natural selection, and time can accomplish.

All rabbis know that Job is figurative, yet many christian denominations hold it to have actually happened. Ditto for Jonah and the whale.

Some figuratives stories in the Bible are not againt our faith. Bible writers did not know the modern science when they wrote the bible, it is no woder that they use figurative expressions. 

All right, according to the law of Conservation of Energy, and the Laws of Motion, stuff (ie energy, in any particular form, lets say its an amount of matter suitable for a Big Bang) will not move on its own. It will stay right where it is, no matter how much time you give it to move. It's gonna stay right where it is. Starting to move on its own would mean that a force was created from no where, ie energy was created, and you can't do that (apparently) according to that law of the conservation of national forests. I mean energy.

This can be extrapolated to incredibly complex things, such as the core of our particular planet. Sure, that giant ball of iron is spinning now, but its not very well understood why it started spinning in the first place, other than the theory of Random Chance Directed by Assumptions. (ie, the idea that an equation, with enough limiters removed, will produce infinite results, and in those results, you will find what we find today. See Evolutionary; Big Bang theory.)

Random chance, or the scenario where given infinite time, every possible possibility will happen, is not applicable. Because something has to be moving already, for other things to be moved, and that limit, in itself, automatically negates the Infinite Time Variable. For example, you have six rubber balls sitting in a box. You let it sit there, for an infinite amount of time, and surely, given enough time, the balls will have managed to bounce off eachother in every conceivable manner. Nope, wrong, unless you moved one of the balls to begin with, thus starting the chain reaction of bouncing, but that in turn will not last indefinitely, because there is not a perfect (100%) transfer of energy from your first initial movement, happening continuosly as each ball bounces. Lets say that we have to have a perfect transfer of energy, because we KNOW that if given infinite amount of time, the balls will hit eachother in every possibly manner. To have a perfect transfer of energy, you cannot have individual balls in a box. You will have an amount of energy, of some equivocable amount to the balls and box. Because that is the only way to have a force act upon something (in this case our blob of energy) and have it move forever, because there is nothing else to interact with it except itself.

So, in its simplest form, evolutionary theory vs creationist theory, is the statement "this amount of energy that is the universe has always been here, it never "started" per say, and it's in constant motion because it just is, ie, that is its state of existence (nothing is still/therefor everything is moving)" vs the statement "God made this ball of energy, lovingly regarded as the universe, and poked it, thus starting it moving."

psychologically, this is the idea there there is only what you sense vs the idea that there is more than what you can sense. Therefor, to prove one of these true (as both cannot be proved at the same time, from my understanding) it would make the other wrong. In simpler terms, the correct statement is saying Nothing = Nothing, and its adversary is stating Nothing = Something, a contradiction, and thus, not possible.

Thus, it is a conundrum of two unprovable theorems, according to practices of observable science. If we are to prove the first, then that means then that would mean that second would have to be false. But to prove the second would mean that we would be able to sense God, and God would no longer exist outside of our observable means, and that would prove the first true.

Therfor, to prove either one of them true, one must (and would) prove them both true. The solution is to Find God. God, in these terms, is simply defined as whatever started the motion in the universe in the firstplace. Of course, we could only find a part of him, because if we managed to sense all of God, then that would mean that he was totally within the universe already, and that would mean that the rubber ball moved on its own, ie, created its own movement! Oh no! So we would have to find traces first.

Wait, what about the fact that we exist? That would be a footprint in itself, because if we weren't started by an Outside Force, then we couldn't exist by current scientific law, unless it IS possible for something to move(start) itself. That would be the only other answer. But why would something start itself, why would nothing simply become something? I dunno! Because that would be creation as well. Weeeeeeee!

>>43 is wrong.
The latest scientifical approach to the "beginning of the universe" question, the infinite regress problem is breaking it down to an asymmetry within the singularity of energy from which all derived.

woah this thread got biggers

No, >>43 is plain retarded. Sorry to be blunt.

What does evolution have to do with creation? Nothing. What does energy have to do with evolution in this context? Nothing. What does adding support to the theory of evolution have to say about God? Nothing. What does the existence of God have to say about evolution? Nothing (unless He/She/It tells you so). Who says that God is an omnipotent, omniscient, unknowable, absolute personal entity? Just the Bible.

The whole argument is based on numerous false or unknown premises.

He's saying that the energy needed to create the Big Bang had to start from some "thing."  That thing can't be defined, but it is some form of energy enacted to create the Big Bang.  Otherwise, there would be just matter with no energy to push it outwards into the universe.  What this intitial energy is is unknown.  But if it were an intended, intentionally energy, it might be called "God" in some sense.  Assuming this intitial energy was sentient, it might have planned our universe forming and creating Earth for life to grow on.  But even so, it might not be an intelligent energy.  It might be a great cosmic burp that had no meaning or reason behind it, and we're only a speck of bacteria on the ends of this burp cloud.

>>47
Having everything come from "nothing" isn't mathematically plausable really.  There is a subset of the m theory which has to do with how everything suddenly exploded out of "nothing".  Anyway, the m theory (aka what the string theory has become) allows for the possibility of parallel universes.  Our universe, along with lots of other paralell universes, are like sheets on a clothesline flapping about our 11 dimensions, called membranes.  They say that the big bang was the result of two membranes crashed into each other at a certain point?  That is what they say happened with the big bang, and that's not the first time it's happened.  Proponents say that it has happened in the past, forever basically, and will continue happening infinitly.  Anyway, don't know much more than that since all I've heard about it is what I saw on nova and in discover magazine.  But what if that theory, which makes great mathematical sense, is true?  How would god play into all this if there never was a beginning and there never will be an end?

>>44
asymmetry within the singularity
lol

Nobody can say with absolute confidence whether God exists or doesn't exist. It's true to say that we shouldn't try to deny scientific facts, but have to accept them as they are. But even after accepting all the scientific fasts, we can still have faith. And I think that is a true faith.

>>49

hahah yea that guy is a retard

how can a SINGULARity be Asymmetrical..... ITS SINGULAR!
(symmetry requires more than 1 in the literary sense)

>>51

lol how can ANYTHING be derived from just a singularity? IT'S SINGULAR!

And YET the universe derived from a single singularity (common stance of science today). Thus the singularity had to be imperfect to a certain degree.

This isn't metaphysics where everything is geometrically and logically perfect, sonnyboy

>>51

yeah, let's just throw logic out the window

>>>(symmetry requires more than 1 in the literary sense)

note the sense of the word, it was a pun

>>43
SUMMARY: We can't explain it, so it must be God!

That's about the worst logical fallicy one can make.  Don't call it god, just say "I don't know."  That's honest.  That means you're making no claims of being right, are not being pompous enough to create an answer by defining something called "god," and -- most importantly -- show that you are willing to learn more about it in hopes of one day getting a real answer. 

I don't see what's wrong with "We can't explain it, so it must be God!"  It's not like things cease to be done by God just because we know HOW he does them.  It goes like this -
Slack-jawed Yokel: "I wonder where we came from?"
Nascar Fan: "God made us."
Other Guy: "We evolved from other species."
Nascar Fan: "OK, God made us evolve from other species."

You can't really argue against that.  However, there's also no reason at all to believe that other than being insane.

>>56

Sure you can argue against that.  What need is there for any diety?  There is nothing to suggest any intervention in the whole process.  It's making the claim more complex than necessary.  If that's how people want to reconsile their faith with undisputable scientific fact, that's fine.  I won't say god COULDN'T have used evolution to create man.  But as long as we're talking about method, inquiry, and logic, it's best to leave god out of it.

We don't know if god had anything to do with it.  We just don't know.  It's dishonest to make additional claims.  I may as well be saying space aliens did it.  What it really comes down to is that you're not saying anything at all.  "Why is the telephone ringing?  <i>God did it!</i>"  Sure, you can say that, and for all we know, it could be true.  But that's not an explination.  It doesn't say why something is one way and not another.  It doesn't lead to any new insight or knowledge.  Saying "god did it" only means you're stating an occurance.  It doesn't explain the how or why, so it's pretty much useless.  It's a worthless statement which just confuses the issue.

kusosure

>>57
"There is nothing to suggest any intervention in the whole process."  I mentioned this.

Yes, you can argue against it.  What I meant is that you can't make any definate arguments against an omnipotent god - the person can always weasel out of whatever you say.  This is part of the reason why it's a not scientific or logical belief - it's not falsifiable.

Yes.  Given the current state of Western theology, particularly all the Plato and Aristotle that Thomas Aquinas stole, filed the serial numbers off of, and gave to the Catholic Church, all claims about God are deliberately non-disprovable.

And Karl Popper put paid to that account a long time ago.  If a claim isn't disprovable, it isn't testable.  If it isn't testable, it tells us nothing.  Therefore such claims are semantically empty and have zero information content.  They're meaningless noise.

>>37

Do the Hebrews really need to know about some animal that has been dead for a long time, or would it be another thing they wouldn't understand.

The Problem with people bashing the Bible, and some people supporting it, is that they think the bible is an absolute record of everything that happened, it isn't. Just the stuff that would really matter, the chronicles of the Hebrews, what christians need to do (instead of trying to explain everything with science) and how it is going to go down in the end.

I don't think anybody bashes the bible for historical innacuracies.  It's a work of fiction, with some historical influences, but still just a literary work.  The problem with it is that fundamentalists try to use it for justifying their idiotic goals, but then weasl out every time they get shown how the bible doesn't apply or is inconsistient or incorrect.

>>62
Interesting that you call it a work of fiction (at least with the conviction that you seem to do so with) when Darwin references it as a historical account.

And, as we all know, Darwin was a paragon of omniscient intellectual perfection, incapable of error.

>>64
Considering how the biology comunity treats the theory of evolution as natural law, yes, we must assume that he was incapable of error

>>65
Are you that stupid?  Check this out, here's a theory by me:
THE EARTH EXISTS.

Now, if you agree that I'm right there, then everything else I say must obviously be 100% correct too, right?  You do realize that that is what are saying, don't you?  Just because someone says something one time that seems to be pretty accurate does NOT neccessarily mean that everything else they ever say must also be true.  Sorry to rock your world.

>>66
You've completely missed the point.

Meh.  Alan Schwarz said it best.  "Science and religion are orthogonal.  You can neither combine them nor use one to understand the other."

>>67
No, 65 is just confused.  Evolution isn't believe because it was made by Darwin, who's incapable of error.  It's believed because it fits the facts that have thus far been found.  I'm sure it's been changed a bit from what he proposed.

Either that, or 65 is REALLY confused, and doesn't know what "incapable" means.  Just because someone is capable of error does not mean that they will always err.  In fact, it's even possible for someone who is capable of error to never make any errors in their entire life.  65 just doesn't understand "thought".

I'm ot sure if this has been said yet in this long topic, but I didn't think the laws that govern our universe would apply to the Bang, because if there were no universe, there would be no laws saying an infinitelly dense singularity couldn't pop up in the middle of "nowhere" and expand exponentially until today.
But that's just my own idea. I've heard so many say, "You believe in science? Science says matter can't be made from nothing so you can't believe in the Big Bang."
So I thought, well, if there's no unvierse, then how can our current laws govern the creation of this?

"believe in" is improper to use in a scientific context.  I provisionally accept a certain hypothesis, a certain model, pending empirical disproof.  "belief" is irrelevant.

Question:
If Adam and Eve were the first two humans, how much incest has gone on since then?

>>71
Fucking a, man...  Fucking a.  This is what creationists don't understand - they think that scientists/reasonable people just accept evolution is true for no reason other then that they feel that it's true, not realizing there are lots of good reasons to believe it is, and none to believe it's not.  This is because it's how they decide on what to believe.  Sure, there are those who believe in evolution without understanding why they should do so - but even they believe in it because science provisionally accepts it, and they know that science doesn't just accept stuff randomly.

In conclusion:  no reason to accept creationism, many reasons not to; many reasons to accept evolution, no reason not to.

if god created us, THEN WHO the FUK created god?

its quite simple. therefore the world must of always existed and time is going in a circle over and over again and at the end of each circle world gets destroyed and recreated

also if god is so perfect and never makes mistakes then he wouldnt create humans.

so far we only destroyed gods planet which he tried so hard creating

People who believe in god are too lazy and stupid to figure out how the universe works, so they go and say some magical fairy man made it.

>>43 God doesn't exist

>>47 Did you see the Elegant Universe on NOVA? :D

>>62 Like Les Miserables (sorry only thing I can come up with)The bible is just so goddam old people lost sight of who wrote eventually turned it into religion. Then some nut comes along sees this book as a way to gain power and sways the public into believing blah blah blah blah Organized religion if in my opinion the worst thing humanity ever created. Why do I think this, cause they're trying to keep the rest of the world down and dragging our knuckles.

Sorry to interject here. HAY GUYS GUESS WHAT?! EVOLUTION IS A THEORY, SO IS GOD! WE CAN'T PROVE NOR DISPROVE EITHER ONE!
Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

64>> And you aren't?

Oh and 43>> what the hell are you doing browsing forums based on porn?

Also, maybe the universe used the collapsing energy from itself before in order to explode again?

And a final statement, god is a paradox in himself, If he's so powerful, is there a wall that he can build that he cannot jump?

>>76
You need to go find out what a theory is.  God is not a theory.  Evolution also can be disproven/proven.  Unless you're getting philosophical and trying to say that "nothing" can be proven/disproven.

>>76

The possibility that a theory of evolution can be disproved (because it makes testable claims) is what makes it a theory in the first place.

>>76
god may exist... in a higher dimension, say the 12th

at the very least a godly power exists with mastery of the structures postulated in the 12th dimension

god actually intervening in your daily life, or making cool places like hell and heaven for you to go to... is another question

superstring theory is the best lead we have so far
we'll get gods power one day... that sneaky bastard

the final problem is origin, who made all this shit?
no one has even attempted to theorize there, we are still guessing at the simple base mechanics of 4 dimensional physics


So will the final theory be in 10, 11 or 12 dimensions? According to Schwarz, the answer may be none of these. He feels that the true theory may not have a fixed dimensionality, and that 11 dimensions only emerge once we try to solve it. Townsend takes a similar view, saying, " The whole notion of dimensionality is an approximate one that only emerges in some semiclassical context."

So does this means that the end is in sight-that some day soon we will be able to work out the Standard Model from first principles? When I put this question to some leading physicists in this field they were still cautious. Townsend likened our present state of knowledge to the old quantum era of the Bohr atom, just before the full elucidation of quantum mechanics. "We have some fruitful pictures and some rules," he says. "But it's also clear that we don't have a complete theory."

Witten, too, believes we are on the right track. But he says we will need a few more "revolutions" like the present one to finally solve the theory. "I think there are still a couple more superstring revolutions in our future, at least," says Witten. "If we can manage one more superstring revolution a decade , I think that we will do all right." From Harvard, Vafa adds: "I hope this is the light at the end of the tunnel'. But who knows how long the tunnel is?"

>>79
About the existence of a God or supreme force... it's all about how romantic and symbolic you want to get.  I mean, one of the holy grails of science is a GUT (grand unified theory), right?  Unify Electroweak, Gravity, and the Strong forces into one force, right?  Just think about it... an all-present, ultimate power that controls and creates every aspect of the universe, including humans, and exists simultaneously in everything from ants to humans to white dwarves - sounds like "god" to me.  Some might say that god has a will, but really... you can say that gravity works its effects on you because it "wants" to if you believe that, and there's not way to counter you... lol.