blue edwards said:
this always perplexed me...that scientists know that matter is not created or destroyed yet, they deny a creator.
I'm not sure why this perplexes you ... if energy is not created, then there is no need for a creator. I've been doing a little reading of late on metaphysics and am beginning to postulate that there are planes/senses/dimensions that we cannot see, hear, or detect that may explain our existence and/or an afterlife. (I personally look forward to a life in 'hell' for I'll be able to chain-smoke with no repurcussions. haha!)
the bible gives answers for the origins of the universe and of life but a does not give details and it leaves a lot of questions unanswered. maybe God decided to create a world for his purposes and put in that world beings who were intelligent but, not smart enough to entirely figure him out. after all, if i were God and i created humans, i probably wouldn't make them as intelligent as i.
Technically, the bible only gives
theories to our origins. It certainly presents these theories as absolute truths, but there's nothing outside of the bible itself to prove them true.
What do you believe would be god's intent for us? And what about those things that have nothing whatsoever to do with us, like Venus or the Big Dipper? What is their purpose?
the evolutionist will always try and explain huge changes in species and between species by saying "over billions of years...". i don't by the arguement that a lot of time allows for the evolution from simple one celled organisms to the ordered, complex life we see in this world.
This quite baffles me, to be frank. Hominids (the earliest form of us) have been around for at least 2 million years (some speculate as high as 10 million.) We are expected to have begun walking upright about 1.5 million years ago and adjustment after adjustment had to be made to our bodies for this to work successfully (this is especially true for women and their reproductive organs.) We have actual hominid fossils which show that our pelvises were remarkably different than they are now. So you either have to believe these fossils come from a species now extinct, or that they are our ancestors (DNA - 99%+ in common - and carbon dating 'prove' they are our ancestors.) So if we can be convinced that we evolved from bent-over hairy beasts into svelte, graceful creatures, why is it such a stretch to believe that the evolution of life in the first place occured over hundreds of millions of years? That is a dramatically long time, and certainly more than enough to explain our own evolution.
if i have hundreds of little strips of red, white and blue paper and i take them up on top of my roof and release them into the air...what are the chances they will form an american flag on my front lawn? not too good. ok...lets give the experiment more time...now i will take my strips of paper up in an airplane. now i'm at say 10,000 feet and i drop them (giving the papers more time to come together in an ordered pattern)...now what are the chances it will form the flag on my lawn? the chances are even less because the papers will get more and more mixed up and probably won't even land on my lawn. if i take it up in the space shuttle (giving much much more time) the papers probably won't even land in the city i live in, let alone in an organized pattern. you see where this is going...random forces like wind, explosions, etc. do not result in oganized, complex things...rather, they produce unorganized, chaotic things.
Your argument is terribly flawed. In the first place, it's not as though there were thumbs and kneecaps and livers just floating around that somehow magically glued themselves into one being. Let me go back to the discussion about the dropping of the female reproductive system. When she was a tree-dweller, she would be completley bent over. When we first emerged from trees and wandered into fields, we began to stand upright (hypothesised as assisting our hunting skills.) It is then that our uterus and such moved from being at the front by our tummies and down into the pelvis. The pubic bone itself had to change dramatically, and did. We have the chronological fossils to prove this. Thus, female hominids went from childbearing on their knees (conception and delivery) to childbearing on our backs (ditto.) As a result of both our increased advantages in hunting and our change in childbearing posture, we increased our chances of overall survival. So, it's not like our pelvises were just created overnight and randomly ended up inside human bodies. These were developed very slowly over time and will continue to develop slowly over time.
(Here's another interesting example of species survival and genetics: American blacks are among the strongest in the world. They are undoubtedly the most muscular, much stockier than their average African counterpart. Diet alone cannot account for such a discrepancy given the short lifespan of the US itself. But slavery can. The strongest and fittest were not only selected by slave traders, but also were the ones to survive the long trek overseas and then survive hard physical labour. Consider, too, that the stronger ones were removed from the African gene pool. As a result the Afro-American gene pool consists of much stronger individuals. This is manipulated evolution, yes, but a solid example of survival of the fittest in easy to see terms.)
there is evidence for micro-evolution...the small changes within a species that we see over time. but there is no evidence for macro-evolution...changes between species. fish coming out of water and deciding to breathe air...growing legs, developing thumbs and then building cities, inventing airplanes and space shuttles.
Given the distance in time this will be harder to prove. These sorts of things would have to have occured hundreds of millions of years ago. Their fossils may well be far to deep into the earth's surface for us to find in our lifetimes. But science is an evolution, too, and I suspect one day will figure more of this out. Heck, it might even prove that god exists, yes?
if science disproves God then i will throw my bible in the trash and start living for the moment. i will also steal from as many people as i can and take advantage of every situation to enhance my situation because, life has no meaning and there are no consequences for my actions...assuming i can elude the police.
Science may end up
proving god. As for our social constructs .. this is also part of our survival as a species. Our purpose, in my view, is only to procreate, nothing more. What good does it do our species to live as though their are no long-term consequences. I'm an atheist but I'm not a criminal. And it's not simply out of fear of being caught, but mostly that I have been socialised. Our entire species has been socialised to respect order, precisely because it furthers our chances of survival.
well, if you were created by an all-powerful God who had a purpose for you and you ignored it, your bewilderment will be the least of your concerns. i'm not trying to be a jerk or something but think about it for a second...in this case wouldn't it matter much more what God thinks than what you think?
How do I know what god's purpose is supposed to be. Nobody dropped a letter in the mail for me. Perhaps my purpose is to argue politics and such with people and force them to confirm or reassess their beliefs. Perhaps my purpose is merely to help you reinforce your faith. Or, perhaps I have no purpose whatsoever except to have babies and keep them healthy. But if a god created me and gave me the ability to question, then she should not be surprised if I question her existence. In fact, she should expect it, maybe even welcome it. Lord knows I personally have more respect for people who question the basis of things they've been taught. Maybe your god is the same?
