Religion Debates and Discussions

answer my post above

 

So, coming from a currently none religious standpoint:

Oh boy am I going to enjoy this. Evolution is a scientific theory, and as such can never be fully proven, only disproven in it's current form or state. There is evidence to support the theory, but theories can never be proven. Science seeks to disprove the null than prove the hypothesis.

Says he's not accusing you of being brainwashed, then immediately states he thinks exactly that....

Nice flame, but completely subjective. You also can't disprove God's existence (nor for that matter prove God's existence either). The difference between believing in God or not is faith; faith that God exists without necessarily having the evidence to back it up. Many great scientific theories have been made by someone willing to test their beliefs. Gehenna can't comprehend that there is no God as much as you can't comprehend one could exist. You're coming from 2 opposite ends of the spectrum. Seems to me with those potentially insulting words your mind might be no more open in reality.

I personally don't like the idea of teaching religion from an early age because I like people to be able to make their own mind up. With that said, the very nature of some religions suggests that it is a good thing to start teaching kids to understand what they teach as soon as possible (to avoid Hell etc.). I do think however skewing the situation so that atheism is good and religion bad is silly. Someone might rightly say Religion can do a lot of good (such as instilling a good moral code) and so you could make the case religion is good. Atheism has also caused a great deal of evil (we could go more into that topic but some of it is fallacy). The opposite is also true for both, and so considering either option is good or bad seems inappropriate. I think it's personally better to show all of the options, and then let someone make their own mind up.

Several things about this:
- Not all christian parents teach their kids to be christian from a young age
- Not all christians go to church every week (some do, a lot don't)
- Not all christians were taught to be christian by their parents. They made their own decision
- Science and religion are not two mutually exclusive things
- Your circumstances might apply differently to different people with different values

Just because you came to the conclusion that Narnia, Harry Potter, the Greek myths and The bible were all fake, it doesn't mean that others didn't (and indeed a great many haven't). What's more is that not everyone takes the bible literally. The bible is sometimes taken literally (the fundamentalist approach) whilst others have taken a more liberal stance and use the stories in much the same way as Aesop's Fables - to teach a lesson

Well, there are certain explanations for this age problem. If God created everything intelligently there's nothing to stop that from going down to isotopes within rocks. I believe the Apocrypha also states fossils were placed on earth by the devil to deceive humanity, but don't quote me on that because I don't read the scriptures.

Just because they teach it in schools doesn't mean it's instantly right! They taught the earth was flat in school! (originally) The greek philosophers taught a great many students the theory of catastrophism, which has been subsequently disproven. Evolution is NOT a scientific fact (see above). I don't need to prove it wrong because it was never proven right, that's what science is about (and if you want to argue about that, this forms part of my degree). If you need evolution explaining to you, by all means PM me, I'll be happy to explain the concept. If you want to be even more specific, a lot of Darwin's original theory of evolution turned out to be wrong in specifics. The basic concept is there, but the specifics were out. At this point I could give thousands more examples of places where science could be wrong, because ultimately everything in science is only a theory waiting to be disproven. That doesn't make religion any better either, because there's evidence with one, and not with the other (that can't be explained away due to other potential factors)

See above for an explanation for this

I love how venomous you are towards religion. I'm not even on the side of religion and even I can agree your mind is too closed to the possibility that you might be wrong. At this point I'm not sure you're any better than a religious fundamentalist (and that's saying something).
See above for certain explanations for the whole dinosaur thing (although I do agree if dinosaurs did exist, we wouldn't have met them, that's my opinion). You have faith in people that could in fact serve their own interests. Scientists do it all the time. When they write books, they tend to only show the facts that suit their side of the debate. Academics are no better. Always take what they say with a pinch of salt, because there are always opposing views (and potential selfish motivation).
Oh, and it's benevolent, not malevolent.

You're stereotyping which instantly makes this largely invalid. You see yourself as the hero of the story, when in fact both are in a grey area. That's a narrow minded viewpoint. See above for the whole carbon dating thing.

No, they're not. Wanna know why? We've gone into space and we've seen the earth is in fact a sphere. We've zoomed in to the molecular level to see DNA. We know they exist. They have become scientific fact. We have NOT observed evolution as a full theory occurring in all species. We have seen it in some bacteria, but certainly not at the scale suggested by Darwin and since. That automatically classifies it as a theory, NOT a fact.

1 and 2 I've explained possible counters already. The third one, just because it "makes sense" doesn't mean it's true. Look up chaos theory and you'll understand why.

No, I would have never guessed. You hate them so much you've become blind to the opposing viewpoint.

Science and religion are not mutually exclusive, and I can go into examples as for why. They're not polar opposites, but not strong linked either. You can't explain all religion with science, and vice versa. You trying to explain religion on a scientific level is a waste of time. Unless you listen to and understand the opposing viewpoint, you'll always consider religion to be evil (as you seem to currently)

Tell me when you're ready to listen to the possibility that you may be wrong, and then people would hear you out more.

I'm not here to debate about the earth's shape. It's spherical, we've seen the thing from space. End of conversation.

Evolution isn't happening except in bacteria and virus'. We have similar DNA to other creatures because that's how God made us. Prove that wrong. The only way you're going to be able to is if you can visibly prove evolution has happened. Good luck finding a time machine to prove your point. Do I believe the evolutionary theory? Yes. Ultimately however IT IS A THEORY, NOT A FACT.

^Evolution in bacteria and virus'. There is DNA linking to suggest that evolution has occurred. Have we SEEN that evolution? Absolutely not. Is it logical to some? Yes, Logical to others? absolutely not. Not everyone agrees with you, you're just going to have to learn to accept that.

You have faith evolution is a fact, I don't see much of a difference.

 

I am so glad for this!

 

no point in debating, you're never going to come to an actual compromise. religion is way too controversial of a topic

 

Hence why it has its own thread.

 

You bring up a great point about how even the youngest of children naturally do wrong. Personally, In my life, I know little children who cannot even speak yet, let alone understand English, who run around the house and do bad things. They cannot possibly be hearing it somewhere because they are too young to understand English. The parents are not doing it, so where is he learning it from? It is in Human nature to sin and do wrong. Sin is inevitable and even the Bible teaches that. There are over 600 sins in the Bible, so i'm sure that you've done some of them before.

 

i believe the point he is making is that people are refusing to accept the most recent theories and instead choose to believe in a very, very outdated book that has unreliable information. religious people made conclusions before finding evidence, while science is based on finding evidence then generating conclusions.

also: referring to carbon dating, there is a lot of misinformation being spread by those who are religious in this thread, mainly thanks to the information that people are getting from the various creationist websites (stop using answers in genesis to "prove" your religion, its very biased and incomplete). carbon dating is only one method of determining the age of rocks, and can be only used when said rocks are 50-60k years old. there are, however, several other methods that are used to determine the age of much older rocks and the inaccuracies in said methods are eliminated by using various techniques (see: the accuracy section of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiometric_dating).

 

Did you know that Wikipedia is not considered to be a solid/reliable source of information? In fact, most schools/universities frown upon people using it to support data and facts (I have seen teachers deduct points off of papers because they, the student, used Wikipedia as a source). I suppose, therefore, that I question the data and info you give. While we are on the subject of being biased then I will point out that technically any website you will use that supports Radiometric Dating would be biassed in favor of Evolution. I am a little tired of debating so I am just going to toss that out there and spectate for now.

 

of course i know that, but it is also a huge database with MANY different users that quickly edit incorrect information with correct information on almost every single major topic. but whatever, i can understand your skepticism. here are several sources that back up my radiometric dating claims:

http://www.actionbioscience.org/evolution/benton.html
http://scienceline.ucsb.edu/getkey.php?key=2901
http://www.amendez.com/NAES/Noahs_Ark_Articles_files/NAS Radiometric Dating is it Reliable.pdf
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/09/100915171534.htm
https://ncse.com/library-resource/radiometric-dating-does-work
https://ncse.com/cej/3/2/answers-to-creationist-attacks-carbon-14-dating
https://www.nist.gov/news-events/news/2010/09/research-shows-radiometric-dating-still-reliable-again
http://www.askamathematician.com/20...-many-random-things-together-are-predictable/
http://www.asa3.org/ASA/resources/Wiens.html

all other sources i found discussing the topic of accuracy in radiometric dating that had something to do with "bible" or "genesis" or "creation" i ignored because of obvious reasons, but hopefully this list can help you rethink your views.

 

Thank you for the list of sites I will try to read through some of them tonight. However, you can claim that my sources were biased (I mean they were terrible sources XD), but I too can claim that the sites that you listed are biassed in favor of Evolution. Again, I am not against the idea of Evolution; just pointing that out.

 

@Proterozoic

I like you, you seem quite moderate.

However, I'd like to explain that while science does seek to disprove the hypothesis, once the hypothesis has had all others ruled out, it will be considered a scientific fact and probably true upto and until the point where it can be proven incorrect.

It's why the scientific term 'theory' isn't the same as the public term 'theory'.

The scientific term refers to a body of information built upon previous scientific *fact* that has the capability to explain the cause behind observations through rigorous experiment.

The public usage is synonymous with hypothesis: it's an idea.

Therefore, the 'theory' of gravity in the scientific sense is defining the group of scientifically proven facts that make up our knowledge of how gravity works.

And it works to such a perfect degree that the whole conversation we are having right now is being facilitated by the satellites in orbit above the earth, held in geosynchronous orbit by matching the speed of the earth's rotation with the speed of the satellite so it sits in the exact location above the earth constantly.

Science can prove things. Science can determine the definite facts of our world and can be harnessed to do incredible things only because we take as fact the principles that have been proven through an exceptionally rigorous process of determining what is true.

Just FYI. The theories of evolution, gravity, germ, etc. Have never been 'proved' per se, but the facts that make up the theories have proven to be so precise that they are considered to be truth.

 

they arent biased seeing as how they only seek to prove the question of "how old is the earth," not "is god real" or "is the bible correct"

 

Perhaps... However, on the topic of Wikipedia, you mentioned that incorrect information can be corrected, but that can also work vice versa. Especially since, as mentioned before, you would need to have a degree in some of this stuff to be able to accurately type out the equations.

 

You're misusing Bias. A Bias is a prejudice against an idea. Science has no prejudice against religion; it just disregards it entirely since it has never provided a scientific fact.

Religion has been co-opting scientific fact since the scientific method came to be.

If you want a bias against anything, here's Ken Ham (the owner of AIG) showing a bias.


We reject creationism because creationism rejects anything that might prove them wrong. THAT is bias.

Wikipedia is an amazing source for information as long as you check the sources cited in the article.

In general, Wikipedia has the benefit of having the best up-to-date information over a long period of time thanks to the collective sharing of information. However you're better to use it as a location to find sources, which can then be researched independently.

And, to go back to my above point; rejecting Wikipedia outright as a source of information is Bias.

I'm just enjoying the mental exercise.

 

Interesting point.

 

if we have cloned animals before, then what logically makes it any different than cloning a human besides more complex body systems?