DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Everything Else... Question for the Religious....

to be fair, that's the point.

let's remember this is DT. non of us are scholars, and yes we have nothing better to do with our time than bicker back and forth.

I'm not calling you out specifically, but if Christians want to run our national platform off the word of God then evidence that God exists (Real evidence, not "It's a miracle" evidence) needs to be provided so they can actually argue the viewpoint of God.

I wouldn't look towards any academic discussion on this forum. It usually gets swept in the gutter as people know that they can just dismiss it with no counter evidence.

Al Gore is like any politician and good at stirring up fear to get what he wants. Michael Mann was cleared of fraud. The NOAA stuff you're talking is not real. It was fabricated so much even other climate change skeptics took Goddard to task for it. Claiming the 97% number is fraudulent only works if you change the question of consensus, which all the articles I found did.

I agree with you that this is the wrong thread to discuss AGW though. I suppose I'd lay my position best as I think the evidence backs AGW but I don't think Washington has a damn clue on dealing with it.

I agree with you.

That is a completely false statement. I can give an almost endless amount of examples where evolutionist try to give examples of life creating itself from from inorganic materials.

Berkley University on the Origin of Life

Where does life start?

Darwin's Take and modern thoughts on it.

It goes on and on...

Non-living materials combine with the help of energy and transform into the building blocks of life. Those blocks then magically start moving all on their own to combine with other blocks. The big problem with this theory to me is the part where this material magically animates itself beyond the chemical processes.

They can get the building blocks for life to form but they can NOT get them to animate themselves into any kind of action. That to me is a problem with the logic of pure evolution. To say everything came from nothing would be an argument that it should be happening all the time. There are ZERO instances of it EVER happening. To me that means you can't prove the theory of evolution because you can't prove life started that way. At least not yet.

Speak for yourself =) I think we have several scholars on this forum. I also discuss because I enjoy it not because I don't have anything better to do =)

I didn't mean any disrespect. I just don't understand the back and forth of "God is real"/"No, he isn't" over and over and over. I think at a certain point it's just antagonistic. And there's certainly a lot of more thoughtful debate here. I've liked a lot of what the poster gage has to say. But I'd say in my week here it's been 75% "Nuh uh"/"Uh huh" on threads pertaining to religion.

This conversation of ours has just gotten too long, so I am going to bring out a couple of comments and go from there.



If humans have a certain thing in common with another creature on this earth, it does not mean that we are that animal's long lost relative. We have eyes, and ears, a heart, lungs, a nose, a tongue, and many other physical traits in common with most animals. That does not prove that we are their long lost cousin. makes a lot of leaps where there just isn; consistent enough evidence to do so.

I am curious ..... just how many example of transition are there ..... where a becomes b, becomes c, becomes d, becomes e ..... that can be proven to be transitional and not concurrent with one another?

Carbon 14 only works back to a certain time frame, so testing bones older than that is not possible using this technique.

So, what is the most popular method of dating fossils? By geological level. And how do scientists prove the age of the geological age of the level?

By the fossils they find.

The geological levels are actually based on the idea that evolution is true. In other words, if a fossil is found at a certain level,then its level is presumed to be such and such an age. It is circular logic at its best.



Not really, a better question would be, if evolution is true, then why is cousin Bob still alive if he is not as fast, smart, agile, or capable as I am? Why hasn't he died off to allow for more worthy creatures to take his place? With the massive overcrowding here on earth, why aren't billions of "less capable" people dying off to make way for superior humans? Why isn't pressures in areas like the Middle East forcing an evolutionary change in response to that pressure? In fact, why aren't the strongest and smartest humans clearing out the less capable to make room for more worthy offspring? Why are there people who are less capable than those before who continue to exist? If natural selection is so overpowering, then why are such allowed to continue? In fact, as I have asked in the past, why do we have laws, and morals? In a natural selection/evolution world, the strong would overrun the weak, and the more capable would force out the less capable. There would be no consideration for such considerations. In fact, large civilizations would not be desirable. Why would they be" Attaining genetic superiority would be the only concern.

Morality, ethics, self-sacrifice,(and not just for one's children, but even for total strangers) and even love are total repudiations of natural selection. There is no room for any such things in a natural selections situation. What value to they add to passing on one's DNA and attaining superiority? Of course, the answer is "none". Why would a soldier ever sacrifice himself for his fellow soldier knowing that he could be ending his own genetic line, if the most important thing is passing on ones genetics to future generations, and to be the strongest, and best possible?



God created God. God, by His very nature, is without a creator. He is the creator. God is eternal, and exists outside of time and space. (and He created both, and is able to function inside of time and space, even though He is not subject to them) If there is no supreme being, then no matter what level of alien you go back to, you still have the problem of "how did they come into being?". I can answer that about God. God is.

My question with isotope decay dating methods is not concerning the decay rate. My question is in regards to determining the starting point. Theoretically couldn't any point along the projected curve be the starting point? I'm assuming that basically it goes at X point in time the object would have such and such percentage of isotope A and an inverse (more or less) percentage of isotope B. But, how do you know what the percentage was to begin with? Is the assumption that the object was all one isotope to begin?

As far as intense heat would be needed to accelerate the process, all the "bangs" I've been around have produced lots of heat. I'm assuming a Big Bang, consisting of all the matter in the universe, would have produced a basically unimaginable amount of heat. Do you not support the Big Bang theory (non TV-show variety)?

Sorry but the Earth is older than 6000 years old. We pretty much have written rcord older than 4000 BC. Sumerian is 3000 bs to 4000bc.

You also have new information coming out like:

The Dispilio Tablet

So if the writing is that old then surely the civilization that made it was much older for them to be around long enough to develope it.

Either way its not possible that the Earth is only 6,000 years old. Sorry.

Or there is a God, he loves you, but you wont accept his love.

I agree. Some of us believe, some don't, and even more are somewhere in the middle.
Is it as easy to believe that a supreme being created the muck that evolution used to create 8.7 million species, as it is to believe that inanimate rock "magically" became animated.

Both rely on something unknown, yet we argue about who's unknown is real.

There is also Gobekli Tepe which radiocarbon dating indicates many centuries of activity, with the earliest activity being dated to 10,000 BCE - Link 1 Link 2

Schmidt says the monuments could not have been built by ragged bands of hunter-gatherers. To carve, erect and bury rings of seven-ton stone pillars would have required hundreds of workers, all needing to be fed and housed. Hence the eventual emergence of settled communities in the area around 10,000 years ago. "This shows sociocultural changes come first, agriculture comes later," says Stanford University archaeologist Ian Hodder, who excavated Catalhoyuk, a prehistoric settlement 300 miles from Gobekli Tepe. "You can make a good case this area is the real origin of complex Neolithic societies."

What was so important to these early people that they gathered to build (and bury) the stone rings? The gulf that separates us from Gobekli Tepe's builders is almost unimaginable. Indeed, though I stood among the looming megaliths eager to take in their meaning, they didn't speak to me. They were utterly foreign, placed there by people who saw the world in a way I will never comprehend. There are no sources to explain what the symbols might mean. Schmidt agrees. "We're 6,000 years before the invention of writing here," he says.

"There's more time between Gobekli Tepe and the Sumerian clay tablets [etched in 3300 B.C.] than from Sumer to today," says Gary Rollefson, an archaeologist at Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington, who is familiar with Schmidt's work. "Trying to pick out symbolism from prehistoric context is an exercise in futility."

It doesn't matter what an evolutionist thinks life came from, it does not fall under the umbrella of evolution. Evolution is just genetic changes in life over subsequent generations. That's it. Life synthesizing spontaneously is abiogenesis, not evolution.

There are older civilizations that they have not found yet. I suspect if we are ever able to efficiently excavate underwater, we will find cities off the coastlines of the present world. We already know of many of them, but those cities are impossible to excavate with our technology.

Except the similarities continue as you go farther away from the branch of humanity. A chimp and human share 96% of their DNA sequence and we should be able to all agree that a chimp at least looks like a small hairy person to a degree

But as you go farther away, there are still similarities. Cats have 90% of their genetics in common with human. Chickens are 60%. And this continues, without exception, through every animal's DNA and genetic sequence we've observed. Could it be coincidence? It would be the biggest coincidence we've ever observed.



There are 40 transitional fossil species that I know of offhand. There are a few dozen more but I'm not as familiar with them. These transitions show invertebrates becoming vertebrate, fish becoming amphibious, reptiles becoming birds, reptiles becoming land mammals, and land mammals to whales.



As I said earlier, no, they determined the age of the earth by meteorite, not dinosaur bones.



Because evolution is local. Most species evolve when they are placed in a new environment and the new environment reacts harshly to them. The species population dwindles, so genetic makeup differences are amplified (due to smaller sample size) and voila.



I haven't heard of billions of people dying off or at risk due to overcrowding. Source?



I'm not gonna deal with a strawman. Society and Evolution aren't the same thing.



Strawman. Morals and Evolution aren't the same thing.



Because humans have empathy.



And your evidence? I can bring up innumerable mountains of evidence for why evolution is both an elegant and simple mechanism of creating complex life. The only evidence I can find of God is in a book the Romans influenced a few hundred years after Jesus lived.

I'm not gonna argue any of your concerns other than the heat death of the earth. The Earth was not created immediately after the big bang. The big bang is theorized to have occurred around 14 billion years ago, much older than the earth. And I know you may be concerned about the overall age of the universe, and that's OK! but regardless of it being 14 billion years, 7 billion years, or 3 billion years, the Earth was not created immediately after the big bang. If we're dealing in billions of years the heat rate isn't going to melt the earth. It's when we compress the age of the earth to 6000 years at the current decay rate that things get.... hot.

I don't think it does much good to decimate theological debate to "God is real/no he isn't", at least to me. I've been there. I've been a fundamentalist Christian. At the time no one would have been able to convince me that God wasn't real, that he didn't make us, or the sunflowers. It took me alot of soul searching and information de-programming to open myself up to what is out there and I'm glad for it.

At this time if you were to ask me point blank about God I'd say why while the evidence points to the contrary, I still have feelings for the God of Abraham. But I do not believe that the Bible tells his story properly. There are far too many contradictions that make the God of Abraham a malevolent God. And this even goes against God himself because to point at the Bible as having flaws puts the entire existence of God in question (to me at least). It's a conundrum

I know some might say "you won't change anyone's mind." But I changed mine. It took a long time but I did. I don't think we are so hard as to not reveal to ourselves what we believe to be true.

But where are the billions of years coming from? You're using circular reasoning which proves nothing. Why are you avoiding/changing the nature of my inquiries?

What does this tell us?

That DNA is important to life, and some of the basic structures are similar, or even the same. Look at animals and look at humans. We have eyes, ears, a mouth, teeth, a tongue, a heart, lungs ..... and so on. Of course we would have some DNA in common.

A wagon and a truck both share wheels, a steering mechanism, a body, and some degree of carrying capacity as common traits ..... essentially their DNA ..... but they are not the same thing. They have some similarities, they have traits that allow each to do the jobs they do, but they are not the same in so many more important ways than they are similar.

I can use eggs to make an omelet or a cake. Just because they have a common component does not make them the same.

DNA is fundamental to life, and all life shares certain traits, so it is not surprising that they share certain DNA chains. The differences are what are important, not the similarities.



I never said anything about the age of the earth. Maybe I misunderstood your comments, but I never said anything about the age of the earth itself. Fossils are generally dated by 2 methods ..... the geological level at which they are found, with older fossils assumed to be deeper, and newer fossils assumed to be higher. The other method, is carbon dating. However, when carbon dating (and other similar techniques) cannot provide an accurate date, fossils are placed as to where scientists think they should go. If they think there might be a pattern, then they make sure that pattern is what they show.

There are increasingly problems being found, and admitted, with carbon dating and other similar methods, some of which are written about here:.

The Dating Gap | The Institute for Creation Research
http://www.icr.org/article/dating-gap/



That still does not explain how a fish learns to walk out of the water, while at the same time also developing lungs, feet, skin, eyes that function in the air, a tongue, ears, hair, fur, a completely different respiratory system, a creature going from being cold blooded to being warm blooded, egg laying to live birth, and so on. That is an awful lot of physical factors to have change in a relatively short period of time, while also not changing so much that mating became impossible.



You haven't hear about concerns regarding man destroying the planet with his activities? Global warming, and so on? Far fewer people slows that process to a crawl. Natural resources are being depleted. There are continuing water shortages throughout the world. Fewer people extend the lives of natural resources. Overcrowding does not just mean not having enough space for people to move around comfortably.



No, in many ways they are mutually exclusive. If evolution and natural selection are the most important, driving force in our lives, ingrained within us at a genetic level, then how do we overcome this overpowering genetic drive in order to not only live together in peace, but to share, care for the weak and the poor, love one another, sacrifice for those we don't even know, and so on? What "evolutionary benefit" is there in such acts?



What benefit does empathy have in either evolution or natural selection? If anything, empathy would run counter to survival of the fittest, and the strongest genes surviving.



I am extremely curious as to what evidence you have for creating life. Life has to start somewhere. It either starts as a random process, (mathematically as impossible as anything could ever be) or there was a creator. If there was a creator, who lives in this universe, then who created the creator? Other than God, you run into the same problem, no matter what you propose as a creator, unless it is a being of some sort, who created from outside of this existence, then the creator has to have had a creator. Self creation in this existence is so mathematically impossible that we can say that it did not happen.

You speak of the elegance of DNA and the numerous systems of life ... plus, I would add, the beauty of the world ..... love .... friendship .... the way the world all fits together .... and so on all as evidence of God. You say that the Bible is somehow corrupted by the Romans, yet there are modern translations taken from manuscripts dating dating back to the 1st century AD. Rome certainly would not have wanted anything to do with those at that time. The NIV translation takes the oldest available transcripts, and uses a team of translators, fluent in the languages of the Bible, Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek. It was never written in Latin until Rome became the center of the Christian world, much, much later on. (in the 4th century AD) Paul's letters to the various churches were not created by the Roman Catholic Church. They were copied over to believers, and the originals were kept at these churches. Given that there are 24,000 or more early copies, or portions of books of the New Testament, there is little doubt as to the integrity of the books. The Bible and Its integrity are as established from a historical standpoint as anything from that era, and more than most. The Bible is actually extraordinarily established in its integrity. So, actually, is Jesus, given the writings of official Roman historians and others. Think about it ... Jerusalem was a PITA for Rome in a lot of ways. They crucified, by some estimates, 3000 people outside of Jerusalem. Only one is mentioned in official Roman histories. Historically speaking, the fact that Jesus lived, and the integrity of the Bible are both historical fact.

As far as God, that is something that each man must answer for himself. I don't know of any way to put God in a test tube. However, there really is no other answer that works except for God. You simply cannot get to life beginning except for a designer. If that designer is God, then man was a special creation, who God made in a very special manner, distinct from all the rest of creation, and who God actually breathed life into. To me, that is not only more likely than us somehow evolving from an nonliving puddle of goo ...... but it is far more beautiful as well.

Not trying to be smart ass or gotcha, but where did God come from. If God has been around for an infinite time then how did God come into being?

The age of the universe is incomprehensible. The age of Earth has been measured, but even that amount of time is incomprehensible.

I agree with the question, how can a fish learn to walk and develop lungs, but given that amount of time anything may be possible.

God is, by definition, eternal. The Bible says that He, essentially, created time, as well as all that exists in our universe. God is eternal, and that is a concept that truly is incomprehensible. Before time existed, God is. After time exists, God is. God has no beginning, and no end. To me, that is a far more believable explanation than that the universe popped into existence from nothing at the big bang, suddenly there was everything from nothing ....... and then the universe just fell into perfect balance ..... and life just happened out of nothing.

God is truly incomprehensible. We cannot truly understand His nature, as far as how He perceives the universe, and what it is like where He lives outside of this universe. He is outside of this universe, yet everywhere at every time within this universe. Omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipresence are concepts so far beyond out ability to truly understand that we will almost certainly never truly understand them in this state of being, if ever. I do not know for sure, but the Bible says that there will be a new Earth after judgement, so I would assume that we will have some sort of time as well ..... it just won't affect us in a negative manner.

So god was sitting in a big ole endless area of nothing before he decided to decorate his house?

that makes no sense.

To you it makes no sense.

The great thing about God is that he does not require you to believe in Him. He will never force you into accepting Him. he will honor whatever decision you make as far as if you want to spend eternity with Him in eternal joy, or whether you want to be cast out from His presence. It is entirely up to you.

someone mentioned this before.

thats fine if you believe it or not.

but when you start trying to make these beliefs of yours into law, thats where the problem starts. i don't believe in the bible, or any other religious texts, and seeing as this isn't a christian nation, i shouldn't have to be subjected to whatever morals or beliefs are in the bible.

if we lived in a christian country, then sure, i have no choice. but we don't.

I'm not meaning to avoid/change your inquiries. And you are right in that using arbitrary data is arbitrary, so lets use some of what we do know:

- radioactive decay produces tremendous amounts of heat
- if we aggregate this over the known age of the earth this is ok
- if we aggregate this heat over 48 hours (creation story) this is NOT ok

Even if we aggregate 500 million years into one year the earth would heat up to over 22,000 C. When compared to the suns temperature being a little under 6,000 C, that's alot of heat! Even if the Earth survived such an event, the crust of the earth would have been obliterated and we wouldn't have the type of geologic record we see today. These arguments were brought up by the Young-Earth Creation RATE team that claimed that the rate of isotope decay was accelerated during the year-long Flood of Noah and the first 48 hours of creation.

Does this mean that one team is right and another is wrong? Not necessarily. We are still learning all we can about the Earth when it was young as well as the universe. But if we are wrong about the earths age it would still be on the billions of years timescale, not less than 10,000.

Hardly. If one follows translations through history, there is very distinct evolutions that are the result of reigning powers and their attitudes. When it comes to the integrity of the text, there isn't any. It's always been fluid, from text, to interpretation to adherence.

Using man made constructions to help explain DNA can be constructive, but using it as an example to wash away similarities is not. And DNA is not the "only thing" life has in common on Earth. All known forms of live have genes as well with commonness between the species.

To use your example, a human and a plant look and act nothing alike, yet they both have DNA and genes. A plant has no lungs/mouth/nose/teeth/brain but has commonality with the most intelligent species on earth. And even at a higher level they share some commonalities. They both breathe, but differently. They both have a circulatory system, but differently. They both live and die, but differently. We have found no example of life on this earth that has so much different from something else that there is *nothing* similar between it and any other form of life.



Fossils are radiometric dated, not carbon dated.



This is an argument from incredulity. Mutations tend to add more components from simple systems than they remove, so evolution does account for complexity.



Overpopulation would have more to support evolutionary stasis than change because genetic mutations would "even out" due to all the potential mates in the system. Evolution is faster when a group is small because mutations can survive more readily from generation to generation.



Because humans have figured out that being social has advantages to evolutionary development. We aren't the only species to do this. Any social species has figured this out. Take schools of fish. They live in schools because when a predator comes along the majority can get away even if a few get eaten. Natural selection has more to do with species wanting to survive than the individual, because of that drive for survival and progeny.



If humans weren't social we'd have died off pretty early. We aren't particularly fast, we aren't particularly strong and we are pretty easy to damage/kill. Compared to something like a Bear we stand no chance by ourselves. Even compared to a Gazelle we'd have a hard time catching it with just one human. But a team of humans working together can take down anything as history has shown us. And again, other pack animals show this behavior too. By allowing ourselves to feel others pain, we can see why it would not be good to kill/murder fellow humans in the tribe.



Biochemistry is not probability so you cannot apply mathematical probability to it.




The reason I bring up the Romans is there is so much outstanding evidence today. You go to church on Sunday right? Romans. You celebrate Jesus' birthday on Dec 25th right? Romans. You believe in the Holy Trinity? Romans. When Jesus came before Pilate, what happened changes as the stories get newer and newer. In the oldest gospel (Mark) Jesus barely talks to him. In John, Pilate is shown to be believing that Jesus should be released yet it's those `evil Jews` that want him crucified. The book of John was written when Rome was gaining alot of influence over Christianity, so it was in their interest to whitewash it. Rome definitely wanted to control Christianity in the early days for political purposes. The reason for today's antisemitism can be traced back to John.

Jesus living is historical fact but the integrity of the Bible is not. Tens of thousands of manuscripts have been discovered and there are significant variations between them.

The bottom line for me is that I can't discredit the idea that a creator seeded the first life. We just simply DON'T KNOW. To claim that I know that life just generated by itself is ignorant. But because we simply don't know how life began, anything is possible. Whether it was an all powerful creator or circumstances on earth that did it. I know this plays at odds with some people because a natural development brings into concern a divine soul, but it is what it is. And even if we ask "who created the creator?" It may involve mechanisms we don't even know about. What if the creator is silicon based instead of carbon based? What if they use something more advanced than even DNA? What if they use something simpler? These are things we can't comprehend because they are outside of our realm of knowledge. But I believe that no matter how life began, that evolution drives us forward as living things.

Infinite implies he did not come into being.. he has always been. This is a concept that is extremely difficult for us to wrap our little brains around. Just like if you don't believe in God, you can go back to the Big Bang, where did that material come from? There is always the question on both sides, well where did that come from?

In the end, we are left with 2 possibilities, either something created from nothing... or something with no beginning... neither of which I think our minds can fully grasp.

Yet you have no problem making your beliefs into law, and forcing me into living in that kind of nation. Many on your side of the aisle have spoken of tolerance, yet you are only willing to see your way.

So much for tolerance.

A lot of the posters here have been having the same arguments on the same topics (political, ideological, theological, etc.) since the old board that was hosted on clevelandbrowns.com. You're not really going to get much more than that at this point.

i don't force you to tolerate any of my religious beliefs, as i'm not religious.

that's the thing. there's plenty of religious countries that will tolerate your way of life.

here's a cue from what a lot of republicans say: if you don't like it here, leave.


we can live together, but when you start forcing your way on me, i'm going to push back.

don't want me to push back? don't force it on me.

simple concept.

Is it a question of forcing their beliefs into law? Or is it a matter of allowing everyone to make a choice and equality for all? I believe separating religion from politics is simply giving the ability to all people to make their own choices since none of it has an impact on what religious people believe or how they live their life.

The NIV uses the very best available Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic texts. They don't use the King James version as a starting point ..... or Latin translations ..... but they go back as close as is possible to the original sources. There are numerous texts and manuscripts available to inspect and compare, and they are remarkably consistent.

This isn't a re-translation of the Bible found in a church, or a Bible found in Rome ... but rather a current translation of the best available, closest to the source possible materials.

What, exactly, are you being forced into that goes against your religious belief system?

Yet you have no problem forcing your beliefs on me.

You can't have it only your way. That's not the way the world works. We are not all going to agree on everything, all the time. We are going to have differences that need to be worked out, and sometimes we simply have to understand that we are absolutely not going to agree.

You said this:

we can live together, but when you start forcing your way on me, i'm going to push back.

don't want me to push back? don't force it on me.

simple concept.

Yet you have no problem with forcing your way on me. If you cannot see the inconsistency there, then I cannot explain it to you.

what am i forcing on you?

to leave me alone?

how is that "forcing"? you can say whatever you want. i can say whatever i want.

here's the difference, i'm not trying to make my beliefs into law. you are.

how do you not get that? I don't like two guys kissing. but you don't see me trying to make what they do illegal just because of my personal opinion.

i don't like religion, but you don't see me advocating to close church's down.

so please, enlighten me on how i'm trying to force anything on you.

Wow.

You really can't see, can you?

Oh well ... no sense going on about this with you.