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<p>Not quite. The question is one of perception. And there’s a difference between perception and assumption. </p>
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<p>Frankly, Applejack, I’m a bit disappointed. You can’t disprove Descartes’s argument, and that’s exactly the point.</p>
<p>No, you can’t disprove it. But it’s certainly not a definitive statement of fact that ends the discussion. Perhaps I overstated my position (extrapolating beyond the immediate context to my experience with philosophers in general).</p>
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<p>And frankly, I’m disappointed that people give credence to statements that aren’t testable. (see the previous pages where I think I differentiated pretty clearly between verifiable and non verifiable belief - and where someone then clarified what a hypothesis is )</p>
<p>“There are no left handed Irish people”
^ That’s a statement that can be tested, and will I believe be quicly proven false.
“There is a supernatural being that created all we can observe…'cept Him while we’re alive on this Earth”
^ That’s a statement I can’t test, because I’m not dead. And contrary to what Resident Evil would have me believe, the dead don’t do much.</p>
<p>As the saying goes, a theory that explains everything in fact explains nothing.</p>
<p>But isn’t the belief that all that exists can be explained by statements currently testable, regardless of its veracity, inherently untestable?</p>
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<p>That is true. All you can really conclude is how well your model fits your observations. That is why science can never exclude the possibility of any god. </p>
<p>However, it’s important to note that science only seeks to make explanations for NATURAL phenomena, things that are directly or indirectly testable. In this sense, science does not deny the existence of any god (inherently not testable), but can instead make them unnecessary. For instance, physics offers some rather elegant explanations on how electricity operates. One does not need God to explain the movement of electrons (though some might argue that they move simply because God or gods wills them to). </p>
<p>Whether or not you believe scientific theories accurately represent reality is a matter of faith. But this type of “faith” is very different from that involved in religion. Scientific theories are by definition provisional; you can’t prove with absolute certainty that an apple will fall towards the ground the next time you let go of it. But it would be foolish to expect the apple somehow to rise, considering the enormous body of evidence suggesting the contrary. If one suddenly observes something that contradicts a previously accepted theory, the theory is either modified to accommodate the new data, or is scrapped entirely. Science draws upon a large body of evidence, instead of requiring faith even in the face of contrary evidence. </p>
<p>(In case I offended anyone, I didn’t mean to. And I am not an atheist.)</p>
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<p>Grow a pair. </p>
<p>I don’t think you should go out of your way to insult religion, like pi$$ing on a Bible. But critical discussion of religion and its claims should always be acceptable.</p>
<p>Well…I knew this would be a long discussion on religion in general once I saw the title and the page count…I was right, lol.</p>
<p>Assumptions for believing in Evolution:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>The law that all things go from a state of organization to disorganization if left on their own was broken when “nothingness” exploded (Big Bang Theory) - forming perfectly aligned planets around a star.</p></li>
<li><p>Gases came together in a “soup” and used the power of lightning from constant storms to become amino acids…perfect building blocks to make life, which came together and formed a living organism…</p></li>
<li><p>This organism decided it wasn’t happy like that, and evolved repeatedly. At one point it kinda said “self replication is too hard…I think I’ll cut my neccesary sexual organs in half…give one to each new “sex” and in order to reproduce we have to get together!”</p></li>
<li><p>This organism and its offspring continued to grow and reproduce without ever being wiped out over a course of millions of years, finally forming everything from birds to monkeys.</p></li>
<li><p>The monkeys kept going, eventually becoming primative humans…to the more modern humans we have today.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>…if someone can honestly believe that without so much as questioning it, they are a bit odd, I don’t care if you’re Christian or not, the Theory of Evolution is hard to swallow.</p>
<p>Next: Why do Christians bother athiests so much? If you’re an athiest, and you strongly believe in your lack of belief (ha), then just go off an be athiest by yourself! Stop trying to convert everybody! Example: I’m vegetarian, and as such, I see my non-meat eating beliefs as superior to everyone else. Therefore, when someone eats meat, I think “what an idiot…” - I don’t try to convert them or tell them they are an idiot, or go into some philsophy of why they are wrong, I just realize (in my mind) that my vegetarianism makes me superior.</p>
<p>Lastly: In a Christian vs. Athiest debate, you have two ideas of what the afterlife will be like: Heaven vs. Nothingness. Now let’s assume one of them HAS to be right, and each one has an equal chance of being correct. That means there is a 50% chance for Heaven to exist, and a 50% chance for there to be only nothingness. Yes? Everyone can agree with that. No one can say it’s 100% sure either way without having died and come back to tell us. Let’s also assume that if Heaven does exist, Hell does too, and that not believing in God is a ticket to Hell. So what does this mean? Simple:</p>
<p>Christian:
50% chance of a happy eternal life - Happy afterlife
50% chance of nothing after death - Unhappy afterlife</p>
<p>Athiest:
50% chance of burning in Hell for all eternity - Unhappy afterlife
50% chance of nothing after death - Unahppy afterlife</p>
<p>Conclusions:
<p>You can read all the books on the evidence for evolution at your own leisure and judge the evidence for yourself. Not sure why you brought that unrelated topic into the discussion. This is a discussion on spirituality, not science.</p>
<p>As for your question of why Christians bother Atheists, perhaps it is because Christians force their views upon society in ways that no other group does, at least not in the western world.</p>
<p>You should also extend your perception beyond “religion X versus Atheists”. Spirituality is far more complex than the simple boxes you have constructed, and one can only assume that you seek to reduce the playing field down to a Christian-centric orientation where you are comfortable playing.</p>
<p>Your discussion of evolution is largely wrong.</p>
<p>Evolution is agreed upon by all of science, and all of scientists. And Evolution does not happen on a SINGLE BEING. Evolution is a statistical measure over a POPULATION of beings. Things evolve all around you. If all of the butterflies are either red or blue in the world, and a predator decides to eat all of the red ones, and only blue ones are left, THAT IS EVOLUTION. The population’s genetic distribution has shifted.</p>
<p>What Darwin proposed, and what is debated by science, is the method for which evolution occurred. Darwin proposed the Theory of Natural Selection (whereby offspring with traits that allow them to produce more offspring than others then propagate their traits in further generation). Darwin didn’t propose a Theory of Evolution. </p>
<p>Now to refute your “arguments” on a point by point basis:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>There is no “state of organization to disorganization.” You are probably trying to get at the Law of Entropy, which actually has to deal with degrees of freedom. You can have a lower entropic system that is actually MORE ordered than a higher entropic one. Also, thermodynamics states that spontaneous processes are governed by entropy as well as enthalpy, therefore if the change in enthalpy is favorable enough, it doesn’t matter whether the system is entropic.</p></li>
<li><p>Over the time span of billions of years, matter clustered together and aggregated to form solar systems that were largely made up of swirling balls of gas. This is not debated by scientists as well, this is very much agreed upon. Over the large time span, the high temperatures (from a bright new sun), and the energy in the form of storms over the boiling hot proto-earth, actually produced enough energy to break the Activation Energy barrier that caused the abundant elements on Earth to combine to form amine bonds with carbon. Once again, over a large time span, and over trillions of trillions of interactions between elements, a few interacted enough to form larger chains. Lather, rinse, repeat.</p></li>
<li><p>Once again, over the span of billions of years, the evolutionary switch from asexual reproduction to sexual reproduction is favorable. Sexual reproduction allows two separate organisms with different genetic materials (and possibly more favorable traits) to combine thereby increasing genetic diversity (and increasing the chance that one of them will survive).</p></li>
<li><p>This organism multiplied hundreds of trillions of times, and over the course of billions of years, a large many of its offspring died. Large populations and even species died out. What was left were those who were best suited to their climate at the time. When a few offspring develop some traits, and are separated from the rest of the population, guess what, if those traits dominate the offspring survive, and more traits aggregate in future generations, and guess what, given enough time you get two different species that have evolved in (possibly) different directions.</p></li>
<li><p>The monkeys kept doing what they were doing, nothing more. Just eating and reproducing. When a few monkeys found out they could use tools, they were better suited to their environment, and made more offspring. Given some time, this increase in brain activity combined with traits that gave them larger skulls and bigger brains caused the amount of intelligence in monkeys and later proto-humans to grow.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>Evolution is largely statistics. And statistics states that even highly improbable events will happen given enough trials.</p>
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<p>Well as is rather obvious, this “increase in brain activity” didn’t effect everyone.</p>
<p>^^
haha. </p>
<p>Zinngerrr…</p>
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<p>This argument implies that one should believe in God for fear of punishment. If you believe in God because you fear Him, is your faith really genuine? Should faith and morality be based on fear rather than a deep-rooted love for God? This “insurance policy” seems to me a poor reason to believe in God. One cannot simply “choose” to believe in God upon learning the consequences of disbelief; it takes a much greater motivation than fear. </p>
<p>Also, your understanding of the theory of evolution is almost as bad as your poorly thought out “reasons to believe in God.”</p>
<p>@soccerguy:</p>
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Well, you could also argue that an event like the big bang, where reference frames for physics are only just coming into existence might fall outside the laws of thermodynamics.
Also, there’s a lot of math that deals with the idea of synchrony (indicidentally, a lot done at Cornell) that suggests order/chaos can be stable equilibriums…untintuitive as that seems.</p>
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<p>A)[Miller?Urey</a> experiment - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miller-Urey_experiment]Miller?Urey”>Miller–Urey experiment - Wikipedia)
B) It’s actually thought that eukaryotes came about when some nuclear material (likely from a protovirus/bacterium) got into a prokaryotic cell. (which is literally not much more than amino acids and a cell wall…)</p>
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<p>So, the reason sexual reproduction is advantageous is because it allows for selective combination of alleles which code for traits…so…lady with nice hips and large boobs? Well, that’s sexually appealing to (most) male organisms, because she’s likely to be able to support children - which is whole point of reproduction.
In the same way that people along the equator didn’t say “I think I’ll have dark skin and hair”
If you’re a single cell’er…your ‘daughter’ cells are going to be EXACTLY the same…sans a mutation. Bad news if something comes along that’s good at killing you.</p>
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So, there are about 6 billion humans on the planet today. Try guessing how many OTHER mammals there are, let alone other animals…
Millions of years? try hundreds of millions of years. Y’know how you look different from your parents in just one generation of sexual reproduction? Imagine HUNDREDs of MILLIONs of years.</p>
<p>^ Number 5 is spot on in light of that…</p>
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And I suppose the Bible (which version? Which language? Which interpretation?) is a much more uniform set of logical assumptions that follow from massive amounts of evidence to give a theory which may be evaluated by more evidence and testing, right?</p>
<p>Also, thinking of God as a being is…contradictory at best…</p>
<p>Because it allows me, a mere mortal to say…</p>
<p>I AM NOT GOD
That might seem a little misplaced in its boldness, but; If I can say I am NOT God…god is NOT me (see where this is going?) then god is LIMITED. We understand differences by the limitations between two things. If God isn’t me - God is limited. A Car and a dog are the SAME in that they can both move - different in that a car doens’t have fur. It’s limited with respect to fur. If God isn’t one and the same as the universe, god is limited with respect to it! </p>
<p>That doesn’t really work well with the idea of God.</p>
<p>I’ve tried to stay away from all of the debating in this thread b/c internet fights can get ridiculous, but collegehopefull, your last argument doesn’t really make sense.
Say you were to create a painting of a beautiful flower (what the painting is doesn’t matter. it’s just 1 am so go with it 
Now obviously you are neither the paint nor the flower. You are not part of the painting. Does the fact that you are not one and the same with your painting mean that you are limited by it? Does you not being paint nor canvas take away from your ability to create or destroy a hundred paintings?
Maybe I’m misinterpreting your argument, but I don’t think God not being all = a limited god.</p>
<p>I think what he’s trying to say is that the arguement that God can do anything, be anywhere, etc, and the arguement that God is not mortal cannot exist at the same time.</p>
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<p>Of course it can exist. It’s called pantheism and many very smart scientists are of this religious persuasion.</p>
<p>Jesus was an alien who came back to see how the big terraforming experiment testing evolution on a world with a large moon was going.</p>
<p>Cayuga, I believe it can exist, I was explaining his arguement.</p>
<p>@circumlocution:</p>
<p>No, it means that with respect to a flower, the painting is limited. It doesn’t smell at all like the flower. It cannot evoke the same qualities as does the flower. With respect to the painting, I am the seperate creator of it, and so I am necessarily limited. People will admire the painting, not my fingers…
With respect to the flower, I’m even MORE limited.</p>
<p>As for creating and destroying - if God is to me as a father might be to a child, I’d have to say that:
<p>If God is seperate from something HE created, well, 1. God isn’t female, and is limited in that regard. 2. I have to ask, why does God have a gender? Does he have a body? Does he have sexual organs? What does He need those for? Is there a Mrs. God? 3.God is then limited with respect to whatever he created, because he isn’t it.</p>
<p>@ CayugaRed:</p>
<p>I am actually taking issue with theism in general. There cannot be a distinct being/beings that created all there is (either in physical form or otherwise), because naturally one would have to suppose, if they are seperate from creation; What created them?</p>
<p>If one were to say that Zeus and his fellows are gods, I would have to ask where Zeus was before he created all of this.
If one were to say that Ahura Maaza is the supreme being, I would have to ask where he was before he resided in the sky.
etc.</p>