Girl saying the tsunami in Japan is an answer to her prayers.

Why would anyone call it a god? Most definitions of a god require a sentient entity that comes close to one or more of the attributes of being omnipotent, omnipresent, or/and omniscient. Science fails on the first 3 of these criteria right off the bat for being an algorithm used by humans to obtain knowledge. As far as the last criteria is concerned, all knowing, I guess that if we had some tool which displayed properties in that it could predict anything and everything it might be regarded as god-like, but science is not regarded as being infallible in this aspect and the people most familiar with science are constantly looking into the places where scientific predictions deviate from observations in an attempt to correct these flaws.

Now, just as James T. Kirk might ask the profound philosophical question of, "why does God need a spaceship?" I ask the question, "if scientists believe science is god, why do they try to look for it's flaws and why do they keep correcting it when these are discovered?" This is a unique property that separates science from the faiths of the world since when is the last time that a theologian has actually made a contribution to his faith?

 

A scientist can contribute to science because it is a dynamic thing, it is in no way complete and polished off, and if someone makes a contribution to it then they are very welcome to do so. However, assuming by faith you mean religion, some religions would label any person attempting to look for flaws in it as a heretic, and so are no longer a part of the religion. This means for some religions someone believing in them have very little choice over whether they contribute or not to it.

As for more open religions, they are always open to opinion. Ask any Christian about their religious ideas and you will find that they do not all share the same ideas. The difference is that people would contribute for personal purposes, so any changes in ideas tend to only be for a the person who changed them, as not all changes will be universally accepted, unlike in science where a good, proven theory is accepted by most.

 

My mother brought me into the world too, and I can see her & prove she exists.

God.... well, the only evidence of his/her existence is a 2000 year old collection of self-contradictory fairy stories masked as moral guidance; there is no actual solid evidence or conclusive proof for the existence of a God or divine creator. Anyone who says there is, is merely clutching at coincidental & anecdotal straws; I can see the wind, if I use an electron microscope...

 

...

 

All quotes are converted into italics by default. Hence any emphasis made in italics kind of gets lost in the process. I'm sure that was not SuicideNeil's intention, just an unfortunate coincidence.

What did I say about the dangers of inferring intention behind complex behaviours again?

 

That's funny, because when I quoted you no conversation takes place, unless it only shows up after you've posted the quote? I have not noticed this before but will keep it in mind from now on, thanks.

Been working around the clock for three days now, going on the forth, and so it's safe to say I'm both tired and perhaps a bit grumpy.

 

You should smoke some more pot to unwind

 

The italic tags get quoted along with the text; hence it still gets italicised. It is just that all the text around it gets italicised as well by the quoting tags. Basically what you get is italicised text embedded in italicised text.

Yo, dawg, I heard you like italics... Etc.

 

I prefer Italicsception. Italicize deeper! (or would that be Italicize more slanty like!!)

 

I've been scrolling through a few pages awestruck by this phenomenon, Nexxo. It seems to be a frequent occurrence when one view quotes made. Even those I've previously made myself. How could this be.

What a strange experience, what else can you do other than to laugh at it really.

Oh well.

Edit: decided to remove the initial post. View it as damage control.


Coffee is not working, moving onto Red Bull.

 

@supermonkey, we seem to have a similar thought process. i was holding these two experiences and the resultant, opposed outlooks in mind at the same time as well.

i agree that for some people an intellectual understanding (scientific basis) of what has happened to them and why is not adequate for adjustment after a trauma. for some of these folks, religion and other faith-based approaches provide an "emotional" framework and support needed to adjust. and for some in that group, i think it can be helpful (as part of their long-term recovery). for others, it can easily become a crutch and hinder emotional maturity depending on the person and individual circumstances (and by contrast, of course, there are certainly atheists who are emotionally immature). one size does not fit all and neither is a panacea.

also, +rep @vipersgratitude and @kayinblack

 

Never said it did, my point is that all the matter and energy in the universe can't come from nowhere. It was a point in support of a creator of the universe. Creationism encompasses more than just the creation of humans, it is the entire creation of the universe and everything in it. I'm not even saying I don't agree with Big Bang. I don't even see any problem with the universe being billions of years old but I do believe that there was divine influence in the creation of universe and man.

String theory doesn't explain the origins of the universe either.. so what was the point of even bringing up a dying theory, was it just to attempt to make yourself seem smarter? Besides the "FFS" at the beginning of your post already gives insight to that aspect of you. Either way, I hardly consider string theory to be science at all since it can't be "...falsified by any conceivable experimental result."

We are still looking for good transitional fossils are we not? I mean if we can find 600 million year old fossils then we should have no problem finding transitional fossils right? To me this is evidence against evolution. I should mention that any evidence against evolution is seen as evidence for creation as a bunch of you have mentioned that creationism has no evidence.

If i was shown some conclusive evidence in support of evolution I'd be a supporter of it but as it is I've only seen some very inconclusive evidence with theories based on the presupposition that evolution is fact. Not exactly what I'd consider unbiased.

I've seen the experiment with the 12 nearly identical strands of E.Coli. where some strands have been reported to have mutated and one "evolved" the ability to grow in citrate. The experiment is pretty awesome and props to the team that does it, But this is nowhere near the macro evolution that we're looking for in support of evolution. So for me, this is an exciting experiment because maybe someday we'll see some crazy mutations that actually lead to a completely new organism, but only time will tell.

I do understand science and I do realize that people check and recheck experiments. There are scientists on both sides of the fence of evolution so please don't try and pass this off as some sort of misunderstanding on my part. There is a LOT of interpretation involved with scientific data and not everyone interprets things the same.

 

Apart from the fact that fossilisation is a rare process dependent on a number of exact conditions (so fossils are only a very rough, small sampling of am incredibly large variety of species), we have actually found transitional species, e.g. Archaeopteryx. Some are even still alive today, e.g. Coelacanth.

 

So you have a problem with all the matter and energy in the universe coming from nowhere (even though our current understanding of the origin of the universe is too small to make such a statement at this time) but have no problem with there being a supernatural creator who used his divine influence to create the universe and man? Out of curiousity where do you believe this creator came from?

While I don't disagree that String theory doesn't necessarily explain the origins of the universe I don't hold with your claim that it's not science. Yes it's very difficult to test by experimentation with our current level of technology but that doesn't mean that it couldn't be falsified by experimentation, if not now then in the future as our technology level rises. It can also be falsified by demonstrating that quantum mechanics is wrong.

As Nexxo has said, we have found transitional fossils even though fossilisation is a rare process. To be perfectly honest it's amazing that we've been able to find as many fossils as we have. Given the relative rarity of the conditions needed to create a fossil it would have been quite possible for tectonic activity to have destroyed an awful lot of the fossil record and we would have been none the wiser.

As for the claim that evidence against evolution is evidence for creation I'm not sure if you believe that to be true but it's nonsense. Just because something may be evidence against evolution doesn't mean that it's evidence for anything else. Not that missing fossils are evidence against evolution, at best it's a gap in the evidence but nothing more.

You not having seen it doesn't mean that there isn't conclusive evidence in support of evolution. The simple fact is that the theory of evolution is one of, if not the most, widely tested scientific theories ever. People have been trying to prove it wrong since it was first put forward and all that happens is we obtain more and more evidence in support of it. The evidence in support of evolution is conclusive; evolution is probably as close to a fact as any scientific theory could ever be said to be.

Evolution works over timescales which stretch into millions of years, if you're holding out for an experiment that shows something like further speciation of something like a contemporary mammalian species before you accept evolution then you're going to be waiting an awfully long time.

There aren't scientists on both sides of the fence of evolution, well not any that could be considered to be respectable anyway. Evolution is accepted pretty much unanimously by the scientific world. What is up for debate is certain aspects of how evolution operates but evolution as a whole is simply not debated anymore.

 

Any negative retaliation the girl in the op recieves, is no different to any one of the many wars held in the name of religion.

I think this thread has proved that the biggest trolls in history, are the authors of books such as the bible, but maybe I just can't comprehend the science and I'm low in faith

 

In no particular order:
Johannes Kepler, Robert Boyle, Isaac Newton, Carolus Linnaeus, Leonhard Euler, Michael Faraday, Charles Babbage, James Prescott Joule, Louis Pasteur, William Thomson (Lord Kelvin), James Clerk Maxwell, Werner von Braun, Alfred Russel Wallace (one of the co-creators of the original evolutionary theory), Arthur E. Wilder-Smith, Donald B. DeYoung, Robert V. Gentry, Gerald E. Aardsma, Gregor Mendel, Joseph Lister, James Irwin, Henry Morris, Raymond V. Damadian, and Richard Lumsden.

 

I don't know if she's an athiest or an agnostic, but she's definitely not a christian. I might have understood the crazies and her belief that she's a christian if she was a Westboro Baptist member (shudder) or KKK or something, but she admitted that she was trolling. To me this means that she's #1 not a christian and #2 might have had the intention of making all christians look like a**holes.

 

Wow, that's quite a range there but I fail to see what relevance most of them have to the issue of whether or not there's an ongoing debate about the validity of the theory of evolution. Very few of them are still alive and a good number of them died before Darwin proposed his theory of evolution or relatively shortly afterwards. I was never disputing that there hadn't been debates about evolution and whether Darwin's theory was correct so I'm not sure what you're trying to prove my giving a list of scientists who either died before the theory of evolution was proposed or within the sort of timescales after it's proposal that you would reasonably expect to still see reasoned debate.

Moving to the people you've mentioned who died after that point, usually in the latter half of the last century, while I can find mention of other scientific works that they engaged in there seems to be very little to demonstrate that their views on evolution were taken seriously by mainstream science. On the contrary it appears that the major sources of information about them are websites belonging to institutes with a clear agenda in promoting creationism, which have done nothing more than find scientists who have made achievements in other fields and share their views on evolution/creationism. I would be suprised if any mainstream scientist specialising in fields of study relating to evolution would consider the views of any of the fairly contemporary names you've mentioned to be worthy of any real merit in modern science (for the avoidance of doubt i'm only talking about their views on evolution/creationism).

Edit: Don't suppose you'd like to address any of the other points I'd raised in my previous response to your post?

 

Revised list of people who were alive during or after Darwin who studied biology and were also creationists: Gregor Mendel, Louis Pasteur, Alfred Russel Wallace, Arthur E. Wilder-Smith, Robert V. Gentry, Gerald E. Aardsma, Richard Lumsden.

Alfred Wallce published his theory on evolution through natural selection before Darwin did, his publication is what prompted Darwin to publish his own findings and conclusions.

I'm sorry if I see how this argument is relevant. These are some of the greatest scientists this world has known. Don't start saying that just because their specific studies weren't directly related means that their opinions aren't relevant. Alfred Wallace is in that mix, he's one of the founders of the evolutionary theory.. pretty relevant I'd say. Richard Lumsden (not the actor) started out as an athiest and eventually something sparked in him and he started thinking "this doesn't match what i know about biology" and did his own research on evolution. Arthur E. Wilder-Smith has a very similar story, though he became a Christian while he still believed much of evolutionary theory. He went on to earn a PhD in organic chemistry at Reading University, followed by another doctorate in biochemistry from the University of Geneva and one in biology and natural sciences from E.T.H. in Zurich. All the while he's doing his own scientific investigation and came to reject evolution and support creation.

A lot of scientists who have openly supported creationism have lost their jobs because of it. If you lose your position within a university or research facility in that fashion you've also lost the majority of your funding for research and a lot of your credibility. Heck, in some states in the U.S. it has become illegal to teach anything other than evolution (it's also taught as fact rather than theory). I myself was kicked out of a class for disagreeing with a teacher when he started talking about Lucy (a while after it had been proven fraudulent as well). That sent up big red flags for me.. why would a scientist be angry about the truth and/or if he knew it was a fraud, why was he teaching it? That's seriously a HUGE red flag to me.

Yes, most of the sites related to these people promote creationism. A lot of the more recent people in that list ended up joining the Creation Research Society. Whether you like it or not, creationism and religion go hand in hand. As much as you want to try and force creationists to leave religion out of it, it's just not going to happen. If you're allowed to bring your presuppositions to the table, then so am I.

 

Looking though the list of names I came up with these results.

Kepler: Astronomer, Died ~2 centuries before Darwin was born

Boyle: Physicist, Died ~2 centuries before Darwin was born

Newton: Physicist, Died nearly a century before the big D.

Linnaeus: Hey, a biologist, who died only a few decades before Darwin

Euler: Same story.

Faraday: Not a biologist and Darwin's work had been published within a year of him retiring.

Babbage: Same story as Faraday.

Joule: Again, another physicist who was retiring at the time of Darwin's work.

Kelvin: Ah, a man who actually spoke about Darwin's theory. Kelvin's argument revolved around there being an insufficient amount of time for evolution to occur, you see, he had calculated that the sun would cool off within a mater of 10 million years, thus the Earth must be less than this age and this is regarded as being an insufficient amount of time for evolution to have occurred. Fortunately, radiation had been discovered right at the end of his career. This solved the problem by postulating a new form of energy FAR more efficient than chemical reactions which permits stars like our sun to remain hot for billions of years.

Maxwell: Another physicist who was retiring at the time of Darwin's work.

von Braun: I don't know anything about his evolution views, not that it matters, he was a rocket scientist.

Wallace: This guy is an interesting character. He independently published work on evolution and then began work applying the concept of natural selection to other fields like economics and social issues. He then began fighting these applications that are usually refereed to as Social Darwinism which is used to describe events like the extermination of Native Americans by Europeans. This guy would be regarded as being a liberal even today.

Arthur E. Wilder-Smith: I've found very little information about this guy except that he was a chemist and one notable exception in that he believed that he discovered dinosaur and human footprints next to each other. Well, Meet the Flintstones, yaba daba doo!

Donald B. DeYoung: An astronomer wrote a book about 'creationist cosmology', this is not relating to evolution, not much else is known about him.

Robert V. Gentry: Former nuclear weapons researcher who is most famous for suing people when they don't hear him out.

Gerald E. Aardsma: No information found.

Gregor Mendel: He was a early geneticist who basically became obsessed about producing hybrids at the end of his life. His work was crucial evolutionary theory prior to the discovery of DNA as it provided the mechanism by which information was passed down generations.

Richard Lumsden: An actor



Looking at the list of names here. Most of the well respected scientists who have made significant contributions to science would fall under the category of 'the billion people who died before Darwin ever published his findings' and thus never ever heard the word Natural Selection. It's not exactly fair to classify these people in the same category as Creationists in the same way that we don't classify Newton as being a skeptic of Relativity.

Now, the most notable exception was Kelvin who had made speeches on the subject of Evolution and new discoveries in geography at the time that indicated that the structures are millions of years old and he is notable for calculating the approximate time that it would have taken a molten Earth to cool to the presently measured temperatures as well as the Sun assuming that it used the best fuel available at the time (coal). These arguments were compelling in that it served as a giant roadblock to many of the new up and coming theories in both geology and biology relating to the past but this problem was eventually resolved by the discovery of radiation, although, at the point that this radical idea had been discovered, Kelvin had more or less retired.