Home » General Discussions » Heated Discussions and Debates » Darkknight's other thread: "does God exist?"
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| Re: Darkknight's other thread: "does God exist?" [message #362824 is a reply to message #362724] |
Fri, 12 December 2008 07:40   |
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| Darkknight wrote on Thu, 11 December 2008 19:03 |
Very well said... And I respect you for no name calling or flame bating as so many do when this subject comes up.
I read everything you said word for word and I understand your points clearly.
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That's odd, because pretty much everything I said in this post has already been said in the previous post in the other thread; the one where you made some incoherent bleating about me not answering the question.
| Darkknight wrote on Thu, 11 December 2008 19:03 |
Yes I have read the bible several times and still study it. I believe the bible is the word of God so whats in the bible is the truth to me. You see God no different then the tooth fairy so anything associated with God like the bible is just another story book. So i won't even use the bible as proof because it means nothing to you. Its just a book.
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The last two sentences are contradictory. It doesn't mean nothing to me. It means what it is; it's a book.
When you use a book as evidence you've got to ask certain questions. Who wrote it? When? Why? How did they know what to write? How much of it did they see for themselves, and is it possible they were mistaken? How much of it did they hear from other people, and if so how reliable were those people? When they wrote what they wrote, how much of it was literal reporting and how much was metaphor?
Finally, what were the odds that the writers - or the people the writers used as source - were crazy, or lying for some purpose, or honestly mistaken?
When a book about science is written, other scientists are always waiting to check its facts. If you can't answer these questions, it is a bit silly to claim the Bible is all true and inerrant. There is also the (not minor) point that the Bible contradicts itself again and again, starting right from Genesis. The New Testament is no better; the gospels manage to contradict each other about every single major event in Jesus' life; the birth, the genealogy of Jesus, the sermon on the mount, the treachery of Judas, Peter's denial, the crucifixion and even the resurrection.
| Darkknight wrote on Thu, 11 December 2008 19:03 |
It doesn't do any Christian any good to explain why they believe in God in a spiritual sense to someone who doesn't believe in a spiritual world. their just spinning their wheels and butting their heads up against a wall.
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You are not entirely wrong about this.
| Darkknight wrote on Thu, 11 December 2008 19:03 |
So I won't even try. Lets talk about the facts of evolution and what is known today.
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We already did; you tried to make some points about evolution in your previous post, and every single thing you said was wrong. Let's recap.
| Darkknight wrote on Mon, 08 December 2008 20:41 |
They have such a hard time believing in God but have absolutely no problem believing there was nothing then one day all the nothingness banged and everything accidently fell into perfect order, the fish jumped out of the sea, turned into monkeys and one day decided to stand up and talk, boom we have man. That they have no problem believing.
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Quite clearly you have not been properly taught evolution or the origin of life. I'll come back to that.
| Darkknight wrote on Mon, 08 December 2008 20:41 |
Science once believed the earth was flat until it was proven otherwise.
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Like I keep saying, the whole point about science is that it develops as we learn more. Religion doesn't. See my post earlier. When the Bible was written, we didn't know fuck all about the world. Now we know about the shape and composition of the planet, that it is still cooling with a molten core and fissures in its crust, and a turbulent weather system. These are completely valid explanations for hurricanes, earthquakes, volcanoes etc. We also know about bacteria, germs etc; which explains most diseases. When the Bible was written, we knew none of the above, so when the shit hits the fan and a city gets flattened, why not think it was the wrath of a celestial super-bully? Quite probably nobody could think of a better explanation.
Now, we can!
What's more (and very revealing) is the fact that religion has always stood in the way of scientific discovery, and still does. It makes me chuckle to hear religious people talk about how "LOL YOU USED TO THINK THE EARTH WAS FLAT". It took arduous scientific study from dedicated people to understand things about the world and universe we live in; the shape and nature of the world, what things are made of and how they work. There are countless examples of scientific discovery which were fanatically opposed by religion; Darwin, Newton, Galileo, Democritus, Einstein...
Yes, science used to think the earth was flat. If religion had its way, we probably still would.
| Darkknight wrote on Mon, 08 December 2008 20:41 |
Christians are being called nut jobs cause we believe in God, but those who don't seem to think its totally sane to believe the universe all happened from nothing that went bang and formed life in perfect order all by accident
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There are a few words here which prove beyond all doubt that you know absolutely nothing about the theory of evolution.
"in perfect order all by accident"
Firstly, "in perfect order". The origin of life was the most simple thing imaginable. It took MILLIONS OF YEARS for the first spark of life to appear. from there it took MILLIONS OF YEARS for it to develop and evolve into the most primitive example of life that still exists today, never mind the intelligent creatures we are now.
As for the original spark of life, it was (looking at it in isolation) an improbable event. One in a million, for all I care. Thankfully there are billions and billions and billions of planets in the universe, even assuming this universe is the only one (which is disputed). Looking at the numbers, it is not improbable at all that it would happen eventually. Over time (millions of years to work with, remember), nigh-impossible becomes improbable, improbable becomes feasible, feasible becomes likely, likely becomes nearly certain.
Secondly, "all by accident". WHAT THE FUCK? Do you know ANYTHING about evolution? Natural selection is the EXACT OPPOSITE of accident. It could not be further from an "accident" if it tried. The original spark of life was an accident, but an accident that was probably going to happen. Evolution is the exact opposite of an accident; it is the survival of successful creatures while less successful creatures die out, the genetic information of the successful creatures being passed on and developing over millenia.
Like I said, you have not been properly taught what evolution is, and it really does disappoint me that your educational system is obviously letting you down. Either that or your parents are brainwashing you.
Back to the present.
| Darkknight wrote on Thu, 11 December 2008 19:03 |
Theory Of Evolution:
Even before I became a Christian I questioned it. Later in life i got married and my ex-wife's father was a science teacher. By this time I was a Christian but his story i found interesting. After studying evolution he came to the conclusion their was no way all this just happened by accident.
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Once again, the choice of wording shows your COMPLETE ignorance of the subject. If he thinks this just happened by accident, he has not studied evolution. He does not know the most fundamental, crucial point about evolution. I've said it before, I'll say it again until it sinks in. IT IS NOT AN ACCIDENT, IT IS THE PRECISE OPPOSITE OF AN ACCIDENT.
| Darkknight wrote on Thu, 11 December 2008 19:03 |
One of the things he would tell me is that the eyeball does not evolve and that things that evolve decay and get worse not evolve into something better.
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This is just nonsense. Firstly the eye did evolve and is still evolving. I quote Michael Shermer:
Evolution also posits that modern organisms should show a variety of structures from simple to complex, reflecting an evolutionary history rather than an instantaneous creation. The human eye, for example, is the result of a long and complex pathway that goes back hundreds of millions of years. Initially a simple eyespot with a handful of light-sensitive cells that provided information to the organism about an important source of the light; it developed into a recessed eyespot, where a small surface indentation filled with light-sensitive cells provided additional data on the direction of light; then into a deep recession eyespot, where additional cells at greater depth provide more accurate information about the environment; then into a pinhole camera eye that is able to focus an image on the back of a deeply-recessed layer of light-sensitive cells; then into a pinhole lens eye that is able to focus the image; then into a complex eye found in such modern mammals as humans.
And all that took millions of years ^^. If you think he's making that up, all of the intermediate stages he mentioned have been observed in other animals. So yes, it did evolve from something very primitive, over millions of years, into something more advanced. Yet it is not perfect, and I'll give way to Shermer again:
The anatomy of the human eye, in fact, shows anything but "intelligence" in its design. It is built upside down and backwards, requiring photons of light to travel through the cornea, lens, aqueous fluid, blood vessels, ganglion cells, amacrine cells, horizontal cells, and bipolar cells before they reach the light-sensitive rods and cones that transduce the light signal into neural impulses - which are then sent to the visual cortex at the back of the brain for processing into meaningful patterns. For optimal vision, why would an intelligent designer have built an eye upside down and backwards?
To add my own question, why would he have given us the "blind spot"?
Anyway, moving on. I know less about the Big Bang theory than I do about evolution, but I'll give it a shot.
| Darkknight wrote on Thu, 11 December 2008 19:03 |
Ok that's nice but what happened to cause the bang. Now I know how could we possibly know what happened millions and millions of years ago right??? Like the big bang theory 
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Indeed, they are speculative. Nobody was around to see it and it's not exactly happening again of its own volition. That just leaves speculation. It's very tempting to compare that speculation to speculation about how much truth is in the Bible, but there's an absolutely crucial difference between the two. I've already articulated it. Let's recap.
| Darkknight wrote on Mon, 08 December 2008 20:41 |
Science once believed the earth was flat until it was proven otherwise.
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Like I keep saying, the whole point about science is that it develops as we learn more. Religion doesn't. See my post earlier. When the Bible was written, we didn't know fuck all about the word. Now we know about the shape and composition of the planet, that it is still cooling with a molten core and fissures in its crust, and a turbulent weather system. These are completely valid explanations for hurricanes, earthquakes, volcanoes etc. We also know about bacteria, germs etc; which explains most diseases. When the Bible was written, we knew none of the above, so when the shit hits the fan and a city gets flattened, why not think it was the wrath of a celestial super-bully? Quite probably nobody could think of a better explanation.
Now, we can!
What's more (and very revealing) is the fact that religion has always stood in the way of scientific discovery, and still does. It makes me chuckle to hear religious people talk about how "LOL YOU USED TO THINK THE EARTH WAS FLAT". It took arduous scientific study from dedicated people to understand things about the world and universe we live in; the shape and nature of the world, what things are made of and how they work. There are countless examples of scientific discovery which were fanatically opposed by religion; Darwin, Newton, Galileo, Democritus, Einstein...
Yes, science used to think the earth was flat. If religion had its way, we probably still would.
Back to the present.
| Darkknight wrote on Thu, 11 December 2008 19:03 |
It continues to say....
| Quote: |
Another misconception is that we tend to image the singularity as a little fireball appearing somewhere in space. According to the many experts however, space didn't exist prior to the Big Bang.
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So again we get this nothingness that just one day decided not to be nothing anymore and something happened out of nothing.
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Sorry, "according to the many experts"? Alarm bells are ringing for me.
Aside from anything else, there are various different theories on the "very beginning" - the Hartle-Hawking initial state, string landscape, brane inflation, string gas cosmology, and the ekpyrotic universe. Some of these are mutually compatible, others are not.
| Darkknight wrote on Thu, 11 December 2008 19:03 |
| Quote: |
So where and in what did the singularity appear if not in space? We don't know. We don't know where it came from, why it's here, or even where it is. All we really know is that we are inside of it and at one time it didn't exist and neither did we.
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Guess if i sit here long enough a 747 will appear out of the blue in my living room.
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I can't help but laugh at the 747 analogy. Creationists love to use it; they compare evolution to a 747 just appearing out of nowhere, by accident. There is not one single level on which the analogy actually works.
| Darkknight wrote on Thu, 11 December 2008 19:03 |
I have lots more to talk about when it comes to evolution besides the beginnings of life and very much look forward to a discussion on evolution because after all if evolution isn't really real then where did we all come from?
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This is the closest you've ever come to 'science'. Clearly there is an explanation. Evolution is one explanation. Creationism is another, a much more feeble one which does not even technically qualify as a theory. It is quite possible that neither are true and the true theory is something altogether different, but so far evolution is doing much, much, much better.
I'll just repeat some of my earlier statements. After all, look at this thread. The first time I said all the stuff in my first post, you completely disregarded it; the second time I said it, you said it was "very well said". So here goes.
| Quote: |
"All this" didn't come from nothing. See my post above. As for "evolution is just a theory"... uh, lol. Do you know what the word theory means? It doesn't look like it.
A theory is an evolved explanation to fit the known facts. It becomes a successful theory if it survives the introduction of previously unknown facts, and it becomes an accepted theory if it can make predictions about future events.
There is no insult in saying "evolution is only a theory". The word "only" does not belong in that sentence.
By the same definition, creationism isn't EVEN a theory. It fails at every required hurdle. It's a guess, nothing more; a guess made thousands of years ago who didn't know jack shit about the world we live in.
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| Quote: |
By the way, you have not answered Frontier Psychiatrist's question, which is absolutely valid. If God made everything, who made God? Who designed the designer?
If you say there must be a God because everything around us is so complex (such as we humans, for example) then surely something capable of designing something so complex must be at least as complex itself, probably a great deal more complex. This defeats your entire argument, because something as complex as God would in turn need to be designed, by something even more powerful. This leads us to an infinite regression. Evolution doesn't; it says that things as complex as we humans took millions and millions of years to develop, at a staggering cost (over 99% of all species that have ever existed on this planet are now extinct, and I'm not talking about deforestation or pollution here, I'm talking about unsuccessful creatures dying while successful creatures survive and develop)
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| Quote: |
Science is about looking at the world, trying to figure out how it works, and testing your ideas against the facts, and developing your ideas when they are not correct. Religion is more along the lines of "this book was written over a thousand years ago, we aren't sure who by, we aren't sure exactly when, we don't know how they knew what to write, we don't know whether they had an agenda which influenced their writing... therefore it's true"
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| Quote: |
Like I keep saying, the whole point about science is that it develops as we learn more. Religion doesn't. See my post earlier. When the Bible was written, we didn't know fuck all about the world. Now we know about the shape and composition of the planet, that it is still cooling with a molten core and fissures in its crust, and a turbulent weather system. These are completely valid explanations for hurricanes, earthquakes, volcanoes etc. We also know about bacteria, germs etc; which explains most diseases. When the Bible was written, we knew none of the above, so when the shit hits the fan and a city gets flattened, why not think it was the wrath of a celestial super-bully? Quite probably nobody could think of a better explanation.
Now, we can!
What's more (and very revealing) is the fact that religion has always stood in the way of scientific discovery, and still does. It makes me chuckle to hear religious people talk about how "LOL YOU USED TO THINK THE EARTH WAS FLAT". It took arduous scientific study from dedicated people to understand things about the world and universe we live in; the shape and nature of the world, what things are made of and how they work. There are countless examples of scientific discovery which were fanatically opposed by religion; Darwin, Newton, Galileo, Democritus, Einstein...
Yes, science used to think the earth was flat. If religion had its way, we probably still would.
|
| Quote: |
There are a few words here which prove beyond all doubt that you know absolutely nothing about the theory of evolution.
"in perfect order all by accident"
Firstly, "in perfect order". The origin of life was the most simple thing imaginable. It took MILLIONS OF YEARS for the first spark of life to appear. from there it took MILLIONS OF YEARS for it to develop and evolve into the most primitive example of life that still exists today, never mind the intelligent creatures we are now.
As for the original spark of life, it was (looking at it in isolation) an improbable event. One in a million, for all I care. Thankfully there are billions and billions and billions of planets in the universe, even assuming this universe is the only one (which is disputed). Looking at the numbers, it is not improbable at all that it would happen eventually. Over time (millions of years to work with, remember), nigh-impossible becomes improbable, improbable becomes feasible, feasible becomes likely, likely becomes nearly certain.
Secondly, "all by accident". WHAT THE FUCK? Do you know ANYTHING about evolution? Natural selection is the EXACT OPPOSITE of accident. It could not be further from an "accident" if it tried. The original spark of life was an accident, but an accident that was probably going to happen. Evolution is the exact opposite of an accident; it is the survival of successful creatures while less successful creatures die out, the genetic information of the successful creatures being passed on and developing over millenia.
Like I said, you have not been properly taught what evolution is, and it really does disappoint me that your educational system is obviously letting you down. Either that or your parents are brainwashing you.
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Darkknight's other thread: "does God exist?"
By: Spoony on Thu, 11 December 2008 07:42 |
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Re: Darkknight's other thread: "does God exist?"
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Re: Darkknight's other thread: "does God exist?"
By: Spoony on Thu, 11 December 2008 09:43 |
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Re: Darkknight's other thread: "does God exist?"
By: u6795 on Thu, 11 December 2008 12:46 |
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Re: Darkknight's other thread: "does God exist?"
By: Spoony on Thu, 11 December 2008 13:04 |
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Re: Darkknight's other thread: "does God exist?"
By: MGamer on Thu, 11 December 2008 15:29 |
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Re: Darkknight's other thread: "does God exist?"
By: Dover on Thu, 11 December 2008 14:53 |
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Re: Darkknight's other thread: "does God exist?"
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By: Dover on Thu, 11 December 2008 21:42 |
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Re: Darkknight's other thread: "does God exist?"
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Re: Darkknight's other thread: "does God exist?"
By: Spoony on Fri, 12 December 2008 07:40 |
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Re: Darkknight's other thread: "does God exist?"
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