link: Expelled Exposed!
And here is the link to the website,
link: Expelled Exposed!
Quote from website
Expelled Exposed, a detailed look at the Ben Stein movie Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed. We'll show you why this movie is not a documentary at all, but anti-science propaganda aimed at creating the appearance of controversy where there is none.
To learn why the claims made in Expelled are false, find out The Truth behind the Fiction. For information on the producers and their actions, go Behind the Scenes. To learn more about evolution and intelligent design, or to see what other people thought of Expelled, view our links to other online Resources. To correct Ben Stein yourself, and win fabulous prizes, Set Ben Straight.
164 comments:
You are so ridiculous. I mean, come on, stop making stuff up just because you cannot logically rebut Ben Stein’s great arguments. Here are some things that your video claimed:
“Ben Stein is not a rebel ... he is a fool”
First off, stop using fallacies to argue. Especially, the fallacy of ad hominem (attack on your opponent). This is one of the weakest fallacies, so don’t even try to use it because it doesn’t strengthen your argument; it weakens it.
“Ben Stein believes that evolution leads to Nazism.”
HE DID NOT SAY THIS AT ALL. He said that Hitler was like Darwin in that he believed in survival of the fittest. Hitler killed off all these innocent people just because they were deformed or did not help society in any way. Mr. Stein said that Hitler was like Darwin, not that evolution leads to Nazism. Stop making your own conclusions and listen to what is stated.
“The ‘mistreated’ people in this documentary are NOT victims of ID-discrimination. They are liars.”
Where in the world did you get this idea. Not only is this statement a fallacy (ad hominem again) but it is also false. They did not lie about these people. These scientists/teachers were discriminated against. Google these people’s names and you will find out that they were discriminated against. Do some simple research before accusing anyone.
“One thing you forgot about intelligent people is that they will research claims to make sure they are credible and true.”
I’m sorry, but you are not “intelligent” if you go on using the fallacy of ad hominem and keep on claiming false things about the scientists and teachers who were discriminated against. Stop trying to use pity and your egos to further your argument. That is so weak of you, and it proves the weakness of your arguments too.
“Every belief has discrimination.”
This is true, but Mr. Stein did not say otherwise. I have no idea where you got this point.
You give examples of people who are atheists and/or evolutionists who are victimized because of their views. I’m not saying that there are not people like this who are not victimized. What I am saying is that they are victimized for the right reasons; they are telling lies. And, how do we know that these people who you gave examples of were not expelled for other reasons, like you said the people in the documentary were.
“Vying for public support using sympathy tactics will not get an organization very far.”
This is a total lie. All the stories in the documentary were true and were not used for sympathetic effects; they were used for showing the truth in a world of lies.
Ahhh Lauren, I see that you are a 17 year old child.
Lauren, you need to actually watch and read what is in the video and the Expelled Exposed site before commenting. You need to set aside your pre-programmed beliefs and what you have been brainwashed with in your mythology temple.
ID is MYTHOLOGY. There is no proof, no evidence, no hard facts. Just feelings, beliefs, faith. Nothing scientific. You need to understand Evolution before you can condemn it. Evolution means change over time. Living things change over time. People change all the time. That is why there are so many races of people, so many species of animals. To think that a god just zapped all this into existence as is is RIDICULOUS. You are ridiculous for believing it...but you are still so very young and need to round out your education better so you can really understand science and the world you live in.
As for the people in the video. They cry persecution like all other evangelical fundamentalists when people won't accept their beliefs as fact...without evidence. That is RELIGION Lauren. Not science.
There is so far undisputed evidences for evolution. You need to finish your education before you go spouting off about things you have yet to learn. If you dare.
Evolution before you can condemn it.
And you need to actually provide which points of evolution you dispute, and explain why for each thing. As well as provide scientific evidence supporting your stance on ID. Where is your evidence, Lauren?
And one more thing, Lauren...I HOPE that this film is not being shown by brainwashing missionaries to third world countries overseas. That would be such a travesty...tragic to perpetuate ignorance to the less fortunate. It is a shame how you cannot just go to places and help without infecting everything with your mythological superstitious beliefs (and your version is just one of many of the millions of variety of the Christian mythology beliefs).
Alright, first I wanted to let you know that I did indeed watch your video, and that is why my first post contained quotes from the very video itself. And, I even looked up the website and looked through it. But, this still does not change my view. I still believe that you are being very ego-tistic by saying that aetheists are persecuted too.
Also, I need to know whether you actually watched the actual movie or you are just going by what some people on some website are telling you.
Another thing: evolutionists rely on belief too. I mean, how can you say how life began without having beliefs. No one now living was there when life began, so you have to believe what happened either from records or some other form of communication. How do you say life began? On the backs of crystals? No way. From aliens? Definitely no.
One other thing, before you go talking against me just because I am significantly younger than you, think about what I have to say. Just because I am seventeen doesn't mean that I don't have good ideas or good things to say. Some teenagers are much smarter than some fifty-year-olds today. That is why some students go to Harvard or Princeton. So, before you just brush me off because I am young, please seriously think about my comments. At least give me that honor.
Finally, isn't there enough proof around the natural world today of how life began. I mean, if you watched the movie, what did you think about the slot machine symbol. How can people and the world be so complex just by chance?
One more thing: you said in your profile that if you could live your life over again, you would be an astronomer, and you also said that you love to stargaze. Don't you ever wonder how the stars got there. Or why they ever got there. I would think that would challenge your beliefs because I have a very simple explanation to both those questions, and I'm not just spitting some "pre-programmed thought" out; I have actually thought about it and have grown to somewhat understand it. If you atheists would take the time to think about these things, you would have a totally different perspective on life and everything else.
Here is my evidence/proof: the world. Look around you - even look at the stars. Who (or in your case what) put them there. How did the stars or the sun or the trees first come to be? This can also be applied to people. How can such complex organisms come to be just by chance? You saw in the movie how impossible that is.
Another proof that we have is the Bible. I know that you guys say that it is just a piece of fictional junk, but that is not true. Have you ever at least tried to read it or have you been so influenced that you haven't even tried to rebute it yourself. I mean, everything that was promised (prophecied) in the Old Testament happened in the New Testament. That all doesn't just happen by chance.
Also, isn't the flood a great explanation and proof to how fossils were made. If almost every creature was killed, wouldn't they leave fossils. And if there was a flood, wouldn't the fossils be scattered everywhere (even covered by layers of land)? This all makes sense if you put it in this perspective.
Finally, I know you are an atheist and you don't believe in any kind of god, but how do you know what is right or wrong? How do you have any sort of morals? Why do we judge people for doing something considered "wrong" unless we have had a previous credible definition of right and wrong ----- the Ten Commandments, and yet you fight and fight to take prayer out of schools and to get the Ten Commandments out of buildings. What is your problem????? I just do not understand your reasoning.
Finally, isn't there enough proof around the natural world today of how life began. I mean, if you watched the movie, what did you think about the slot machine symbol. How can people and the world be so complex just by chance?
Lauren, if you know anything about science, proof is not based on assumptions. Just because you cannot explain how something came to be does not mean that goddidit. This is called God of the Gaps. You simply fill in unknown information with "god did it".
Yes, the world is complex and beautiful and what you want to do is simplify a complexity with a mythological and made-up juvenile explanation.
How do you say life began? On the backs of crystals? No way. From aliens? Definitely no.
Some people believe aliens are involved in our existence here on Earth. And their beliefs are as provable as your god beliefs are.
Another proof that we have is the Bible. I know that you guys say that it is just a piece of fictional junk, but that is not true.
I have heard this argument often in my 53 years on this planet. The Bible is indeed a piece of Literature. Not necessarily junk because it is quite creative and parts are very beautiful and poetic.
The fact is that the Bible is man made, written by human beings. It is full of contradiction and inconsistencies. All religions have a holy book written by human beings. Why do you believe yours to be true and all others false? We don't believe things simply because it is written in some book. Science is supported by evidence, verifiable and reproduceable results. Your god beliefs are based on faith, what you want to believe.
Ever wonder why there are so many versions of your Christian mythology? It is because human beings have made it up as they go along. You make it up according how you want it to be...and also based on what you were brainwashed with as you were growing up. If you put a bunch of Christians from all the 2500 Christian sects into an arena and said that you could not leave till you come to some agreement, then you would be there till you all are dead. And NO god is going to come down and clear things up. You will all kill each other first.
You come tell us how we should live and what to believe when you can't even come to some consensus on your own religion.
Time to grow up Lauren and give up the imaginary friend.
Also, isn't the flood a great explanation and proof to how fossils were made. If almost every creature was killed, wouldn't they leave fossils. And if there was a flood, wouldn't the fossils be scattered everywhere (even covered by layers of land)? This all makes sense if you put it in this perspective.
Lauren, The flood is a mythological story. There is no possible way a whole earth flood could have happened. There is no way one man and his family could have gathered up two of every living creature and fit them into an ark, provided food for them, cleaned up all the waste and dung from all the animals. The methane from the excrement would have been lethal from even the animals that could have fit on such an ark.
Then another question to think about. Why would a god flood the earth and kill all these people and keep a sinful Noah who got drunk and showed his naked self to his sons while in a drunken stupor? Why would a god who could have wiped everything out in a flash, and zapped them all back into existence again allow a sinful family to survive and go on and perpetuate sin? It absolutely makes ZERO sense because it is MYTHOLOGY. Lots of cultures have flood myths, based on natural events in their own little worlds. To these people who did not venture far away from their homelands, an area flood would seem like the whole earth flooded. Don't you get it? Most people who do not see reason, are just to brainwashed and afraid to even think about it.
So for your own sake, Lauren..USE YOUR OWN BRAIN.
How did the stars or the sun or the trees first come to be?
There are some astronomy links in my sidebars. I would suggest taking a course in Astronomy and you will be enlightened. If you aren't too afraid to learn something new. There are links to how stars are born...and die. Everything, animate or innanimate are composed of the same elements...and are carbon based...they same stuff stars are made of. Hence...we all come from stars...we evolved into being, Lauren.
I am glad you are asking these questions. Just because you don't know how something came to be, or have been told wrong information does not mean that a god and his magic wand poofed everything into existence. It is just that the human mind knows how things happen in our own world...things grow from a beginning and die in the end. How that all started is still being investigated, and it is not satisfactory to write it all off as Goddidit.
That is lame and ignorant.
Finally, I know you are an atheist and you don't believe in any kind of god, but how do you know what is right or wrong? How do you have any sort of morals?
Ahhh...this is the standard question that Christians always ask. Because you have been taught that you cannot have morals without god. That is just not true. We have morals which are taught to us from the culture and society in which we live. We treat others a certain way because that is how we want to be treated. We want to live in peace and get along for the good of the species.
Now, tell me if Christianity is so great for promoting morals, why are prisons full of mostly Christians?
Why do some Christians break laws and others do not? It is all upbringing. I do have a good sense of morals, much more than some of my "christian" neighbors.
I know right from wrong because of how my parents taught me. It's called Humanism, Lauren. Getting along with fellow human beings. I taught my kids to be good citizens and people. To be kind, loving...and help others, etc.
Just calling yourself a Christian does not automatically give one a sense of morals.
Back to your Bible. Have you ever read the book of Leviticus? DO you ever smart-mouth your parents? If so, according to your own "moral" book you should be stoned to death. Your Bible is one of the most immoral books ever put together by human beings.
If you atheists would take the time to think about these things, you would have a totally different perspective on life and everything else.
Oh...forgot to say I was a Christian for more than three decades. Taught Sunday school and the whole shebang. I began to realize little by little how negative religion is. How little that religious people think of this life and how much they hate this world in which we live. Just living life isn't enough for you, you have to have more...religion is selfish and gives you a sense of entitlement. And also, people follow religion because they fear death...and religion is a coping device.
You are still young, Lauren. If you stop and think about things, about what you believe, and really know your Bible...you might just toss it into the fire and free yourself.
If you stop deluding yourself, you might be able to think clearly and start seeking real answers instead of making up stuff to explain things you do not know or understand.
First start by taking a real Biology class and keep an open mind. Take an Astronomy course...and a few other science courses...secular, no mythology involved. You might still cling to your god beliefs, but you might be a little more reasonable about science and evolution. Everything evolves. Human beings are not the same as they were even a century ago. We are bigger, living longer.
Nothing stays the same Lauren, not even the stars in the cosmos.
Everything eventually dies. If there is an Intelligent Designer, he hasn't made one thing in the universe that lasts. Not one.
the Ten Commandments, and yet you fight and fight to take prayer out of schools and to get the Ten Commandments out of buildings. What is your problem????? I just do not understand your reasoning.
There is a lot you don't understand. This is a SECULAR nation. You have your churches, you have your freedom to worship anyway you want. But read the CONSTITUTION and you will see God is not mentioned at all...except for the Preamble...but not in the CONSTITUTION itself. This is a diverse nation where the rights of ALL people must be protected. That goes for Hindu, Buddhist,Atheist, Mormon, all people...even goofy Scientologists. You allow the Ten Commandments into a secular institution then Islam will want their Koran crap, Buddhists will want whatever they use, etc. There must remain a separation of church and state to protect your rights as much as ours.
I really think you need a more rounded education.
Lauren, I suggest you research chimps and especially bonobos, and then tell me how they seem to have morals and behave altruistic to each other within their tribe.
Do you think they read the bible when nobody is filming them?
Not much I can add here that has not already been raised except to say Lauren that the existence of the universe proves only one thing, that the universe exists.
Yes, I wonder how it all came about, but the existence of the universe does not imply that the universe has a purpose.
The idea behind the Bible is that human beings are central to god's plan. But that implies to me a very small universe, whereas as we know the universe is an immense place. Our planet is a rather small planet that orbits one of millions of stars in the Milky Way galaxy, which in itself is just one of millions of galaxies each filled with millions of stars and planets.
If the purpose of existence is merely for human beings to carry out god's plan, then what the heck is the rest of the universe for? Active volcanoes have been observed on Jupiter's moon Io. Wind storms can be observed on the surface of Mars. A lot of Christians, as well as people of other religions, like to blame storms, volcanic eruptions and other natural catastrophes as manifestations of the wrath of god. Well, then why the heck are their volcanic eruptions on Io? Is there a tribe of homosexuals living there that we don't know about?
And as for the Expelled film itself, doesn't it bother you in the slightest that PZ Myers was denied entry into the theater to see the film, when the people behind Expelled deceived him about the true purpose of the film when they interviewed him for it?
Ben Stein on Fox News was just asked if ID is a right-left thing. His response was it was "an atheist v non-believer thing."
There we have it from the horse's mouth -- ID is not objective, and is nothing more than a Trojan horse for creationism.
ID has no evidence supporting it, makes no predictions, offers no unifying principles, and suggests no experiments. In short, the ID movement is a bunch of angry zealots pissed off at modern science because it reflects poorly upon their sacred literature.
And in our Jon Stewart-like intellectual atmosphere where students are taught the adversary pose is the only thing that counts toward having a credible position, the worst kind of pseudo thrives. The only group of willfully ignorant citizens deserving of more contempt are the 911 conspiracy theorists.
Ahem, Ben Stein said it was "an atheist v believer thing." Obvious from the context, but my bad.
Hey everyone, I posted a response to Lauren over at her blog and she deleted me! I allowed her comments to stay even though she was insulting and not very friendly for a guest...not very "christian" is it? ;) (or maybe it is...since it's such typical behavior of most religious zealots)
Typical behavior in that when they don't have answers they just shut you up. Just like they shut out PZ Myers.
Can't defend their stance with evidence and credible sources, so just delete. How "intelligent" of them.
Hey everyone, I posted a response to Lauren over at her blog and she deleted me! I allowed her comments to stay even though she was insulting and not very friendly for a guest...not very "christian" is it?
Of course she was unfriendly. How can she not be? After all, we're EVIL!
"I posted a response to Lauren over at her blog and she deleted me!"
The reason I deleted your comment was because I did not think it was appropriate for the type of site I am trying to keep up, not because I don't have answers.
"she was insulting and not very friendly for a guest...not very "christian" is it?"
I was being really friendly; I was just asking some relevant questions. If you think asking questions is wrong then you should stop asking me questions.
"when they don't have answers they just shut you up."
I have the answers, you won't listen to them, though. You just shut me out and do not answer any of my questions that I pose (very unfriendly of you).
"Can't defend their stance with evidence and credible sources, so just delete."
I gave you credible evidence - the Bible, the world, etc. You just will not listen to the credible evidence because you have decided that you are right and everyone else is wrong.
I hope you are not this mean to everyone you talk to because you could turn a lot of people off with this kind of talk.
Lauren, asking you to provide evidence for your claims is not mean. God believers always start crying persecution when they get into a tight pinch. It's not being mean to ask you to back up what you say, and not just with your Mythology book. That proves nothing at all.
I gave you credible evidence - the Bible, the world, etc. You just will not listen to the credible evidence because you have decided that you are right and everyone else is wrong.
Lauren, that is the point here..you have provided no credible evidence for your claims. Your ancient mythology book, written thousands of years ago by ignorant humans proves absolutely nothing.
No evidence has been provided for the existence of a god. And even intelligent god believers understand you cannot provide any evidence. It's all a matter of what you choose to believe.
I hope you are not this mean to everyone you talk to because you could turn a lot of people off with this kind of talk.
Well, you are the one who came here and started ranting about how "ridiculous" I am...a stranger, coming into MY domain and spouting off with no evidence at all to back up your stance.
The reason I deleted your comment was because I did not think it was appropriate for the type of site I am trying to keep up, not because I don't have answers.
I was not trying to "keep it up"...I thought since you came here into my blog and started the "debate" that I was welcome to come over there and offer my viewpoints. I didn't realize you were afraid to hear differing viewpoints.
If you are going to go around commenting on other blogs, you better be ready for some rebuttal. Or else just stay safely in your little fun girly blog and keep having the same close-minded circle jerks with your like-minded Borg friends.
Oh, and one more thing, do not think that I am totally brushing off all your other comments, I am slowly going through them and commenting on them, but since you "claimed" so much stuff, it is taking me a little longer.
***And, by the way, Tommy. I did not say that atheists are evil. I just said that if they would think about what they actually claimed and actually believed, they might figure out that they have different views then they originally thought.
I am not afraid to hear differing viewpoints. This is why I am still commenting on your blog. If I was afraid, I would just ignore you and your blog forever. In fact, I find you and your blog and your fellow commentors very interesting. I also find what you have to say interesting. Even if I don't hold the same beliefs, I still think it is interesting.
Furthermore, you still have not provided me with credible evidence for evolution and all this other stuff you "claim" to be true.
Before you start ranting and raving on how Christians never give proof, why don't you yourself give proof. I am still waiting for a credible example of why you believe what you believe.
As I said before, I am working on a full rebuttal and it will be posted soon. You obviously have no patience since you keep on posting on my blog and yours about how I am ignoring what you say.
And, by the way, Tommy. I did not say that atheists are evil.
Welcome back Lauren! I guess my sense of humor was too subtle for you.
And you failed to address the points I raised above.
Lauren, if you expect me to allow you to run rampant and say whatever on my blog, why not allow me the same courtesy? I see instead of responding to my other comments, you simply deleted them again. That is not very "intelligent" and you are not very strong in your faith if you cannot stand up and discuss another viewpoint.
I hope you do keep coming back and maybe find the "light of reason" and give up the ancient mythology.
Oh, and one more thing, do not think that I am totally brushing off all your other comments, I am slowly going through them and commenting on them, but since you "claimed" so much stuff, it is taking me a little longer.
While you are going through other stuff, Lauren, why don't you show me proof for the existence of your god WITHOUT your dusty old mythology book that was written by ignorant humans thousands of years ago when they knew little about their own little world, much less the vastness of the cosmos.
And, by the way, Tommy. I did not say that atheists are evil. I just said that if they would think about what they actually claimed and actually believed, they might figure out that they have different views then they originally thought.
And Lauren, Tommy and I are ex-Christians and have done a lot of "thinking". We have been "thinking" and learning longer than you have been alive.
You just believe what you believe because like most of us, it is what you were TAUGHT to believe. If you would have been born in another part of the world, your beliefs would be totally different. If you had been born in ancient Greece or ancient Egypt, you would have been a follower of Zeus, or Ra...get it?
Religion is MYTHOLOGY.
You still did not answer my question - give me some proof of evolution. You keep on telling me to do things that you yourself cannot or will not do.
Furthermore, you still have not provided me with credible evidence for evolution and all this other stuff you "claim" to be true.
You are studying Biology in school, are you not? Do you go to a public school or a Christian school?
Before you start ranting and raving on how Christians never give proof, why don't you yourself give proof.
Again, you are the ones making the claim that a god exists. One cannot prove a negative. It's up to you. This is always an error Christians have in their understanding.
I am still waiting for a credible example of why you believe what you believe.
Because there is not one shred of evidence for the existence of a god, except what people believe and think in their own minds. 2,500 sects of Christianity, all believing different things...making it up according to your own interpretations, needs, and desires. I don't believe because it's as silly as believing in Santa Claus.
Humans help other humans. When you pray to a god, no help comes if another human does not come along or unless you help yourself. That is a fact.
As I said before, I am working on a full rebuttal and it will be posted soon. You obviously have no patience since you keep on posting on my blog and yours about how I am ignoring what you say.
I keep posting comments because you keep fucking deleting them. I would not even have bothered with your blog if you had not come here and posted. I do not make a habit of going to Christian blogs and ranting like you have done here.
You better be careful what you start if you can't deal with it.
You still did not answer my question - give me some proof of evolution. You keep on telling me to do things that you yourself cannot or will not do.
Are you really in high school? Get yourself a good Biology book. I also suggest looking in my sidebar for a link to TalkOrigins.com and they have the whole ID/Evolution debate on that site...Thousands of articles. You need to look and learn for yourself. I have three grown children who were quite intelligent and seekers of knowledge. Independent studiers.
This is something you cannot learn in one evening. It will take much reading...putting aside your useless Bible for awhile and open your mind. If anything, to at least learn about what you are disputing.
Most Christians do accept evolution as fact and have no problem reconciling evolution and religion.
Evolution just means change over time...we all change...everything changes and adapts to our environment.
The IDers do not understand evolution...they cannot make it fit into their fundamentalist beliefs. So, instead of re-evaluating their religion, they just reject evolution without really understanding what it is.
You believe in medicine. You go to the doctor, right? Well, many of the antibiotics are given to counter the bacteria in your body. However, the bacteria is now "mutating" and changing EVOLVING...and making the older antibiotics ineffective...new antibiotics must be constantly developed to kill new strains of bacteria...
this is just one example...or "proof" as you call it, of EVOLUTION.
If Noah's Flood created the Grand Canyon, then why is there a canyon on Mars that is larger than the Grand Canyon? Valles Marineris is 2,500 miles long and up to 4 miles deep, while the Grand Canyon is less than 500 miles long and 1 mile deep. Unless you are going to argue that there your god also wiped out a civilization of pagan Martian sodomites, your faced with the dilemma that if geologic phenomena appear on other planets that were caused by natural processes, then it stands to reason that geologic phenomena on the Earth were caused by natural processes as well.
Now, I have given you things to read, an example of evolution...
Now where is the evidence for the existence of your great sky boss? And don't use the book, or use pretty analogies like "Everything's so beautiful it HAS to be made by something", or "I don't know how it all came to be so goddidit"...
Those things will not fly on an atheist site. Especially an atheist and my atheist friends who are experienced in debating these things. ;)
If evolution were not true, then it would not make sense that there would be some mammals that live exclusively on land and some mammals that live exclusively in the water.
Oh, lauren, this is just too much.
What proof do you require? Will you listen at all?
How about the broken DNA strand in people as well as primates, where the mammal body won't process Vitamin C?
The chromosomal difference between man & primate? How it was predicted that 2 of them fused into others (by evolutionists, no less), & sure enough, there it was!
There's MOUNTAINS of forensic evidence. Which is why evolution is the accepted norm.
Insinuating that it's some vast conspiracy on the part of 'them thar evil mad scientists' is so much rubbish. It's...comic book rubbish.
You've been lied to. Your naivety has been exploited. You've essentially been intellectually violated.
You should be pissed.
I know I would be.
Here, do some reading:
http://rationalwiki.com/wiki/Expelled:Leader%27s_Guide
Or click here, if the link is too long.
Learn something, young lady.
Oh, and one more thing Lauren, I love you... in a platonic, human solidarity sort of way.
Tommy, you are so funny...think she will come back? Or are we too mean with all of our facts and reasoning...and questions? ;)
And don't bother commenting on Lauren's blog. If you don't happy, happy agree with her in her happy delusion land, she will just delete you.
Well, guess it was Lauren's beddy-bye time. I am giving up waiting on a response from her again tonight. Nite ya'll.
In my evolutionist biology book for my class this year, I have debunked everything that they have claimed to be true. I mean, come on,were is your evidence for spontaneous generation EVER occurring? What is the mechanism? Where are the "missing links?"? If you cannnot answer these simple questions then I will just stop this foolishness because you are not worth wasting my time on.
You also still need to give an example of ANY explosion or bomb (big bang) creating anything. I do not just believe things because someone tells me it's true. You have still not proven your point.
As to our evidence. The DNA itself, the complexity of the cell, the complexity of quantum physics. The fact that everything around us screams of design. If cells are so simple why does it take so much brain power and money to even begin to figure them out?
Finally, you said, "Well, guess it was Lauren's beddy-bye time. I am giving up waiting on a response from her again tonight." When you posted this, it was 1:30 in the morning at my home. This is so immature of you; I would think that in your 53 years on this earth, you would learn how to sensibly talk to a person.
One last thing, do you know the difference between macroevolution and microevolution? Even our evolutionist biology textbook stated this difference. You keep talking about change. I agree that the world changes but not on a large scale.
Microevolution: things adapt within their gene pool. Example= a St. Bernard and a beagle are all adaptations within the same gene pool that belongs to dogs. They look different because different genes have been selected from the "dog" gene pool. Yet they are all still dogs.
Macroevolution: the standard evolution people talk about that states that organisms and their genes mutate into entirely different creatures (Example=a fish become a monkey become a human). If Macro evolution were true then everything should be in a constant state of flux. We should not only have monkeys and humans, but every stage in between and beyond for every creature.
Can you even understand this??? If you can, than this is even more evidence for my view.
From Austin Cline:
Is There A Difference Between Microevolution & Macroevolution?
There is one particular aspect of evolution that needs to be given specific attention: the somewhat artificial distinction between what is called “microevolution” and “macroevolution”, two terms often used by creationists in their attempts to critique evolution and evolutionary theory.
Microevolution is used to refer to changes in the gene pool of a population over time which result in relatively small changes to the organisms in the population — changes which would not result in the newer organisms being considered as different species. Examples of such microevolutionary changes would include a change in a species’ coloring or size.
Macroevolution, in contrast, is used to refer to changes in organisms which are significant enough that, over time, the newer organisms would be considered an entirely new species. In other words, the new organisms would be unable to mate with their ancestors, assuming we were able to bring them together.
You can frequently hear creationists argue they accept microevolution but not macroevolution — one common way to put it is to say that dogs may change to become bigger or smaller, but they never become cats. Therefore, microevolution may occur within the dog species, but macroevolution never will.
There are a few problems with these terms, especially in the manner that creationists use them. The first is quite simply that when scientists do use the terms microevolution and macroevolution, they don’t use them in the same way as creationists. The terms were first used in 1927 by the Russian entomologist Iurii Filipchenko in his book on evolution Variabilität und Variation. However, they remain in relatively limited use today. You can find them in some texts, including biology texts, but in general most biologists simply don’t pay attention to them.
Why? Because for biologists, there is no relevant difference between microevolution and macroevolution. Both happen in the same way and for the same reasons, so there is no real reason to differentiate them. When biologists do use different terms, it is simply for descriptive reasons.
When creationists use the terms, however, it is for ontological reasons — this means that they are trying to describe two fundamentally different processes. The essence of what constitutes microevolution is, for creationists, different from the essence of what constitutes macroevolution. Creationists act as if there is some magic line between microevolution and macroevolution, but no such line exists as far as science is concerned. Macroevolution is merely the result of a lot of microevolution over a long period of time.
In other words, creationists are appropriating scientific terminology which has specific and limited meaning, but they are using it in a broader and incorrect manner. This is a serious but unsurprising error — creationists misuse scientific terminology on a regular basis.
A second problem with the creationist use of the terms microevolution and macroevolution is the fact that the definition of what constitutes a species is not consistently defined. This can complicate the boundaries which creationists claim exist between microevolution and macroevolution. After all, if one is going to claim that microevolution can never become macroevolution, it would be necessary to specify where the boundary is which supposedly cannot be crossed.
Conclusion:
Simply put, evolution is the result of changes in genetic code. The genes encode the basic characteristics a life form will have, and there is no known mechanism that would prevent small changes (microevolution) from ultimately resulting in macroevolution. While genes can vary significantly between different life forms, the basic mechanisms of operation and change in all genes are the same. If you find a creationist arguing that microevolution can occur but macroevolution cannot, simply ask them what biological or logical barriers prevent the former from becoming the latter — and listen to the silence.
OK Lauren, I will ask the question Mr Cline asks, "If microevolution can occur but macroevolution cannot, what biological or logical barriers prevent the former from becoming the latter?"
Now for missing links: (you are so programmed...amazing how creationists and fundies all provide the same exact argument with zero evidence to support their side of the existence of a supernatural creator)
Ok..Missing links
Evolution and the Missing Link: Why Is It Missing?
Again from Austin Cline
When we say "missing link," we invoke a metaphorical chain, a set of links that stretch far back in time. Each link represents a single species, a single variety of life. Because each link is connected to two other links, each is intimately connected to past and future forms. Break one link, and the pieces of the chain can be separated, and relationships lost. But find a lost link, and you can rebuild the chain, reconnect separated lengths. One potent reason for the attractiveness of this metaphor is that it allows for the drama of the quest, the search for that elusive missing link.
Charles Sullivan and Cameron Mcpherson Smith go on to explain in the May 2005 issue of Skeptical Inquirer that while the metaphor is seductive, it's mistaken:
But the metaphor is as misleading as it is attractive. The concept that each species is a link in a great chain of life forms was largely developed in the typological age of biology, when species “fixity” (the idea that species were unchanging) was the dominant paradigm. Both John Ray (1627-1705) and Carolus Linnaeus (1707-1797), the architects of biological classification (neither of whom believed in evolution), were concerned with describing the order of living species, an order they each believed was laid out by God (Ray suggested that the divinely specified function of biting insects was to plague the wicked).
But while the links of a chain are discrete, unchanging, and easily defined, groups of life forms are not. We generally define a species as some interbreeding group that cannot, or does not, productively breed with another group. But since species are not fixed (they change through time), it can be difficult to be sure where one species ends and another begins. For these reasons, many modern biologists prefer a continuum metaphor, in which shades of one life form grade into another. Life is not arranged as links, but as shades. The metaphorical chain is far less substantial than it sounds.
Thus the chain metaphor is wrong. It doesn’t accurately represent biology as we know it today, but as it was understood over four centuries ago. The myth persists because of convenience; it is easier to think of species as types, with discrete qualities, than as grades between one species and another. In school, we learn the specific characteristics of plants and animals; this alone is not a problem, except that we are not often exposed to the main ramification of evolution: that those characteristics will change through time.
So, our idea that there can even be such a thing as a “missing link” was created in an era of biological research which is long gone. It’s a concept which is no longer valid in our current understanding of the nature of life and evolution — but, as is so often the case with appealing concepts, it continues to live on, to structure people’s assumptions, and to influence how they think about evolution.
This is almost always an unfortunate situation, but it is especially unfortunate here because the concept of a “missing link” creates confusion and misunderstandings which creationists are able to exploit. Perhaps the creationists know that they misunderstanding things; more likely, though, is that their misunderstanding is completely accidental and, in fact, one of the reasons why they are creationists in the first place.
Life is more like a spectrum than a chain, but not a spectrum with discreet ends. It’s a spectrum in that there are gradual transitions from one species to another, all of whom are certainly linked together, but no discreet links in a chain which can be broken, repaired, or readily followed. The more people understand this sort of thing, the better equipped they will be to understand evolution as a whole — not to mention the entire field of biology itself.
And Lauren, keep in mind you can accept evolution like most people in the educated world and have your god beliefs at the same time. Like I said, most Christians accept evolution once they truly understand that it is gradual transitions over time, not a series of "links"
Think about this...when things die they decompose. That is why findings of dinosaur bones and remnants of other millions-of-year old species are found so seldom. Conditions must be right for the preservation of any biological organism. People who were buried in the ground even a couple hundred years ago without proper "containment like our present day sealed coffins" rot and disappear...return to dust, so to speak. So...transitional fossils are few and far between. And when they are found we learn more and more.
The difference between science and religion,Lauren, is that scientists are not afraid to find something that might change their thinking, and not afraid to re-analyze their data and to even say they are wrong when they are wrong. However, creationist fundies are afraid to question your beliefs, to question why you believe, question the lack of evidence.
Science is based on evidence.
Religion is based on faith without evidence.
You keep trying to use science to prove your god is real and fail miserably. Most Christians know better than to even try. They are two separate things...facts....and beliefs.
And Lauren, how about addressing Jason's point:
"ID has no evidence supporting it, makes no predictions, offers no unifying principles, and suggests no experiments."
Also pay attention to Tommy's...
"If evolution were not true, then it would not make sense that there would be some mammals that live exclusively on land and some mammals that live exclusively in the water."
And KA (who also supplied links)
"How about the broken DNA strand in people as well as primates, where the mammal body won't process Vitamin C?
The chromosomal difference between man & primate? How it was predicted that 2 of them fused into others (by evolutionists, no less), & sure enough, there it was!"
Yes, but you have to have faith to trust that the evidence is true. Science does include belief/faith.
Also, I do believe in evolution but not macroevolution. I am not disagreeing with the stament that things change over time. What I disagree with is how organisms change from one thing to something totally different.
"ID has no evidence supporting it, makes no predictions, offers no unifying principles, and suggests no experiments."
I gave you evidence but you choose to ignore it. You still have not given me evidence though. Stop telling me to do stuff you cannot do yourself.
Yes, but you have to have faith to trust that the evidence is true. Science does include belief/faith.
NO Lauren, we rely on FACTS, DATA, YEARS AND YEARS OF RESEARCH AND EVIDENCE.
You on the other hand simply rely on faith and have NOT provided any evidence and I seriously doubt you have read anything we have provided for you here. When I was teaching, students like you frustrated the crap out of me because you are obviously bright, just have a BRAINBLOCK.
I gave you evidence but you choose to ignore it. You still have not given me evidence though. Stop telling me to do stuff you cannot do yourself.
You gave us your bible...and your "belief"...that is all you have provided. There is no scientific evidence proving ID. All you do is try to debunk proven science but you provide no scientific evidence to support your claims. You are ignoring the science and evidence and too afraid to explore and think for yourself, and that is very sad in one so young with so much yet to learn.
Lauren, what are ID's scientific predictions, what are its unifying principles, and what experiments have been done to support your ID theory? WITHOUT THE MYTHOLOGY BOOK.
What I disagree with is how organisms change from one thing to something totally different.
Actually Lauren, things do not change to something "totally different". Please read the Austin Cline article I posted...and Talk Origins.com explains it all quite well. You can even join in a creationist/evolutionist discussion group there where people educated in the field can answer your questions more clearly.
Yes, but you have to have faith to trust that the evidence is true. Science does include belief/faith.
Uh, no you don't and no it doesn't.
I don't have faith that evolution is true, because it has no impact in how I live my life. I merely accept that the theory of evolution offers the best explanation based on the evidence that is available. If someone offers convincing evidence for an alternative explanation, I would be perfectly happy to accept it. And if such evidence were available, a lot of scientists eager to make their mark would bring it to public attention. But that is not what the ID movement does. In a nutshell, ID proponents claim that science has not provided explanations for everything, or in some cases, explanations that ID proponents are willing to accept, so therefore our universe could only have come about because it was created by an intelligent designer.
You on the other hand are the one who relies on faith, because you believe not only that this vast universe was created by an intelligent and powerful being, but that this being has a narcissistic need to be worshipped by human beings on one small planet among millions in a galaxy that itself is one among millions. You believe that our lives on this Earth are merely a test so that this creator can decide whether or not we suffer for an eternity in some afterlife based on whether or not we believed that this supreme being impregnated a virgin Jewish teenage girl in the Galilee some 2,000 years ago and that the superboy who issued from this union healed lepers, cast out demons and rose from the dead after being crucified. Now that requires A LOT OF FAITH to believe!
There is little here I could answer any better than others have. However, I will state this.
Lauren will not change, if some drunks and drug addicts had written The Origin of Species 2000 years ago and called themselves "prophets" she might believe in evolution instead of ID since that is what it takes for her to have proof of something.
Lauren you are young, I have been an atheist since before you were born. I became an atheist through religious education, the same as most atheists, so to say that atheists don't know the bible is almost always an unsubstantiated claim. Most atheists know the bible better than most christians who cherry pick the book. They take the things they like or want to agree with and disgard the rest. Are you wearing mixed fabrics? You should be killed. Ever talk back to your parents? Killed.
Using the bible as "evidence" is a cyclical argument. You have no proof where the bible came from, therefore you cannot use the bible as proof of anything.
The notion of science is to find answers to questions using logic, reason and evidence. If someone breaks into your house and kills your family would you prefer that someone investigate the scene, take fingerprints, look for DNA evidence and search for clues or would you prefer the cops come in, look around for a bit, say "well, since we don't know, then goddidit" and leave it at that?
Very good points, tommy and Poodles...
Here is a good quote by St Augustine concerning Bible literalists and using the bible as evidence for things scientific:
"For then, to defend their utterly foolish and obviously untrue statements, they will try to call upon Holy Scripture for proof and even recite from memory many passages which they think support their position, although "they understand neither what they say nor the things about which they make assertion."
Basically, he went on to say that Bible literalists make all Christians look embarrasingly foolish.
There is a mountain of evidence supporting macroevolution. For example, we observe sequences of development in fossil record.
Requests for a missing link in the fossil record are tantamount to stating that *any* evidence in the fossil record is not valid. For example, suppose I find fossils of various species of equines A, B, C, D, the order indicating a progressive development. Well, one can always request for more fossils. If I find two more, F and E, dated in sequence as A, F, B, C, E, D, well, we can then request the missing links between A and F, F and B, C and E. The procedure can be repeated ad infinitum. By asking for missing links, they feel they don't have to accept the links already discovered.
Creationists forget that in their own argument, we shouldn't see a progression in the fossil record at all. If God created everything as is, why make the world appear like organisms evolved? Perhaps it is a sinister plot by Satan to test our faith. This isn't science -- this is the rejection of science.
The old earth IDers are just as silly. The reject that natural selection explains the speciation we observe in the fossil record. They claim they aren't saying asserting a divine power made it happen, just "intelligence." (Is reality a cosmic Turing machine? Please. Their idea of intelligence is grossly undefined.) Some IDers like Demski will say that teleology is present in nature. If so, what are the teleological principles that explain macroevolution, and what future predictions can we deduce from them? Again, IDers have no principles -- they just don't like what biology implies for a literal interpretation of scripture.
Austin Cline is a fag btw.
Lauren, you are the product of child abuse. You can't help it now that you deny reality, because the environment your parents chose for you inundated you with lies.
Perhaps you are too far gone, maybe not.
There is not one piece of evidence that falsifies or even contradicts evolution theory.
I suggest you view Potholer54's videos on Youtube and try refuting them if you like. You might actually learn something though. Try to watch them with your brain and not your faith.
I'm sorry. I do not have the time to talk this all out with all you right now. I go to a very rigorous school that requires a thesis during the junior and senior years.
Right now, I am working on a twenty-page junior thesis (the senior one is twenty-five to thirty pages). Anyways, when I finish this thing in about a week, I will return and try, to the best of my ability, to have a sensible conversation with you all.
Thanks for spending this time thus far, and I will return as soon as possible. *Stardust, thank you for commenting on one of my other blog posts. Hopefully, you were not being sarcastic and you really meant it.
And, for your information, I am not dropping out because I don't want any questions. And, I'm not dropping out because I can't answer your questions. I just do not have the time right now. And, I'm not really dropping out. I'm just postponing my comments for about a week.
Yes, Lauren, I do hope you have a good time at your school ball.
I do hope you can find the time to read through all of the links we provided, and consider all comments posted by the educated people here and come back to discuss this with us again.
However, it is our experience that once the questions get too difficult, Christians usually bow-out of these discussions and never return. I hope that is not the case with you. I hope we have given you something to mull over and to inspire you to research more in-depth.
There is some pretty good stuff here.
There is some pretty good stuff here. First something on evolution, after that, God [shivers].
Several decades ago I learned that the common leopard frog of Florida could breed -viably- with the Ontario frog. Similarly, the James Bay frog could breed with the Ontario frog. But the James Bay frog could not breed with the Florida frog. All three were plainly the same species. I realized how beautifully they demonstrated the temporal gradations, but did so geographically!
This phenomenon is even more brilliantly demonstrated at this wiki on ring species. Some of the participants here may find it fascinating.
Knowing these things, I found the Austen Cline refutation of the "chain" notion really good. It shows how small but mistaken views can corrupt an entire understanding. A similar error is the idea of Evolution as a matter of the "survival of the fittest". This egregious notion ignores the fact that very "fit" animals regularly fail to reproduce. More proper, I think, is "survival of the best fitted". By which I mean "fitted" to the circumstance nature may provide. In a flood a singularly perfect male deer will drown, but fish have no problem. Even the most unfit fish are better fitted, for such an event, than the deer. Survival of the fittest is too simplistic, and implies a dog-eat-dog approach, which is not what Evolution is, at all.
The one thing I find missing from the discussion is a proper refutation of God and the Supernatural, in terms Lauren can grasp.
In brief:
1. First, Universe, means "one Everything". There can be nothing else, as Everything is, well, Everything. No multiple Universes, nothing 'outside' the Universe, because Everything IS everything. The implications for this viz. the Big Bang Theory is pretty significant.
2. Similarly, Nothing is Nothing, with no beginning and no end, and with Nothing, there is nothing that can be worked with. If, "In the Beginning" there was Nothing, then God did not exist in The Beginning either!
3. Let's grant that God did exist. How did He get there? God is eternal you say? Well, we have evidence that matter exists in the Universe, but only a lot of hokum exists for a God. Whatever the most fundamental particles, or puffs, of matter may be, they are the things that are eternal! Why brush the evidence before your face, with claims of something else?
4. Why make up something you cannot "know", as the religious claim, to explain the things you can know? If God is there, who made God? Of course, that question can be repeated for each new God that made God that made the God that any religionist chooses to settle upon: Utterly irrational.
5. So what is the beginning of the Universe? Why ask? Beginning presumes Time. But time is a measure of the motion of objects IN the Universe. A clock’s hands move in synchrony with the rotation of our Earth. Twenty-four hours is a single rotation. 365 ¼ of those is a year. If we were on a different planet we might break the day into different divisions. Time is not something apart from the physical motion of objects of the Universe. Our seconds, minutes… years, are just a function of the motion around us, which we use as a standard for out own motions, and lifespan. If you grasp that, you can then see that Time is IN the Universe, and not something by which the Universe itself can be measured. Setting a time to the Universe is as silly as asking where the Universe is. How can Everything There Is have a place? There is no other “place”.
6. All things Supernatural presume another place. It is an utter abuse of the idea of a Universe. Those who wish to redefine Universe to make room for God, simply shrink the meaning to exclude God. But, if he exists, then he is a part of the Universe. The same is true of Heaven and Hell. Aside from the mental failure involved in redefining Universe for the sake of a fantasy, observe that if God is a part of the Universe, then he is nothing more than an alien being. But if the foregoing made any sense to you, dear reader, they can only be figments, because they are presumed to be outside the Universe. Now, if God were in the Universe, and somehow has any power over us humans (including creating a Heaven and Hell), he is a freakin’ bastard to have done so! I relish the opportunity to face Him, and to tell him to bug off.
7. However, I have already demonstrated that such a God cannot make any sense at all. God is a figment of illiterate sheep herders and the like, starting with the Gods of rocks, storms, and other stuff, that primitive man could not explain. Some witch doctor type discovered he could manipulate his tribe by suggesting he had knowledge his tribe did not. Today’s prime witch doctor is the Pope, or Buddha, or Mohammed. Whatever they variant, each one is a crock!
I will take my own road thanks. This life is too precious, way to precious, to waste on such a fantasy. Choose reason. Use it to grasp reality and morality as is appropriate to a Man. Mankind is a brilliant achievement of the mechanism that produced Man. That same mechanism, working on non-living materials, began life on Earth. Evolution, by Natural Selection, worked to select chemicals and soapy bubbles in a fresh water ocean, that lasted longer than other chemicals and bubbles. Various combinations, over a billion years, resulted in some non-living precursor to bacteria. The chemicals included self-replicating molecules, it does not matter what kind (DNA or RNA) and, with self-replication began.
From there, it is a short step to life as we think of it.
Excellent comment, Richard. I wish you had been here in the middle of this debate. This is something that vagabond needs to read over at Lauren's blog, though he probably is so "into Jeebus" that he would not even try to read what you have written. Frustrating with these creationist people who willfully remain ignorant.
Thanks for that, Stardust. Fiery told me privately what was happening on your blog and I thought I would have a look. I ended up reading the whole darned thread... man it's a lot.
As a high school teacher (not now) I came to think of most of my students as intellectual road kill. Really sad; the graduate year were already primed to parrot University professors, while believing they had been taught to think for themselves, but they had no idea AT ALL as to what "think" meant. And, nor did their professors. I could write a book on it... but it has already been done.
Creationists are even worse, because they can only parrot the biblical crap. Poor Lauren is indeed the victim of intellectual child-abuse
Richard, on your profile, it says that your favorite movie is The Miracle Worker. I was just wondering how you can watch that movie and not see God's handiwork. I mean, it shines through that story so much.
Isn't it amazing how God gave Anne Sullivan the ability to help Helen Keller who was both blind and deaf. Without God's help, none of this would be possible.
No, I am not just reciting this; I truly believe this in my heart. You can believe whatever you want, but what I am saying is the truth. This is not just to you Richard but to Stardust and all the others out there who claim God does not exist. Just wait until He returns, and you will all realize how foolish you've been (you will remember this discussion and will wish you would have listened to those who tried to instruct you in the right way).
My goodness, Lauren, how could you betray Annie Sullivan so viciously. That wonderful woman struggled through a host of difficulties in an orphanage, with her sickly brother and terrible visual problems.
Yet, she thought and she learned. She mentored other children in the orphanage, and learned how to reach them. She saw how terrible their situation was, and showed them how to rise above it by thinking for themselves.
She read all sorts of books, in spite of her eyes, and she learned and thought and learned. She saw that a human without concepts (the ideas that words stand for) is no better than an animal.
When she met Helen Keller, she knew that the only way to bring sanity and reality to Helen's life was to appeal to the most important element for any human, that Helen could not train, —her mind.
Apparently you have seen The Miracle Worker, so you know how hard Annie Sullivan worked to enable Helen to grasp words. Though blind and deaf, the moment Helen grasped words was the moment her mind began to work in the manner it was meant to. It experienced the real world, interpreted sensory information from that world and identified the individual entities (which served as the units for each relevant concept) and labelled them with words.
From the moment she grasped "Wawa" as meaning that liquid molecular compound, Helen was able to expand her mind to grasping the Universe in which she lived.
All this was not God, in any way. It was ANNIE and HELEN. Annie provided the cues, but Helen began to grasp them, as surely as you grasped, one day, that 6*7=42. That is the human mind at work in a Universe made of consistent and natural laws and materials.
The Universe is a marvelous place, because it's laws are mechanically immutable. This aspect of the Universe is completely at odds with the Biblical view of the Universe, where its laws can be broken at the whim of some wizard in the ether.
Imagine if that wizard, one day, decided to move the color red from the longer wavelengths of the rainbow to the shorter. The rainbow colors are normally remembered by this acronym: "ROY G. BIV" where the long wavelengths are on the left, and the short, more energetic wavelengths are on the right. So, if one puts the Red color on the right, what happens?
Well, if this imaginary scenario is at all workable, you likely know that different compounds burn with different colors. For example, compounds with copper in them tend to burn, if enough heat is available, with a green color. It is rather cool looking.
Now burning wood produces red and yellow colors. Where does the colored light come from?
Physicists, quite a few years ago, realized that the wavelength energy of light released from burning materials was determined by the changes in electron orbitals as electrons shifted positions in the molecular structure of the products of the reaction, with the heated changes that occur in the presence of oxygen.
The color of light that is released is completely dependent on the positions of the electrons in the reaction.
Now let's have another look at the idea of moving red light of a rainbow towards the violet end of the rainbow, because God suddenly decided to. With such a change, the electrons of a chemical reaction would have to move differently to produce the red light, because the violet end of the spectrum is far more energetic. If combustion is to occur, then, it would take a lot more energy to make a fire burn or for a light bulb produce light. But it is more complicated than that.
Every molecule has electrons moving around the atoms that make up the molecule. Now the electrons would have to be in very different positions. This is because the positions of the electron orbitals are decided by *discrete* energy levels. "Discrete* means very specific and independent of one another... it is NOT a smooth continuum but a series of unique levels of energy. These discrete energy levels determine how each kind of atom can bond with the other atoms to make molecules. Mess up those orbitals, and all the molecules have to change too!
So, by God's magical decree, red becomes a near violet energy level of light. For that to work, the orbitals of electrons must also all change. But if you change the orbitals then bonding between atoms has to change, If the bonding changes for all atoms whose electron orbitals are capable of releasing red light on chemical changes, then the very chemicals will have to behave differently. Wood would have to be made of some other mix of molecules. Ink would also have to be made of different chemicals. But if wood is made of different chemicals, how is the tree going to produce them? Photosynthesis, which largely depends on red light (leaves reflect green light) will not be able to function, let alone provide the energy to make this strange new wood!
If you look at every chemical relationship between atoms, where red light is emitted in chemical reactions, you will see that every chemical must change, if God changes the energy of red light. That means that everything in the sun must change. It means that the light from each and every star must change. It means, ultimately, that everything in the universe must change.
But to what? All the biological chemistry that makes life possible depends on the electron orbitals of atoms and every chemical bond depends on the positions and energy of those orbitals. Suddenly, God changes ONE!!! The only thing that could occur is that every molecule in the Universe will have to suddenly have a different bonding relationship with every other molecule.
One little change in the natural laws, at the behest of your wizard in the heavens, and everything becomes so screwed up as to be fatal to the whole universe.
No being could live in a Universe where a god could suddenly make a bush burn without being consumed. In such a case, "burning" no longer means a change from reactants to products with the release of heat and light energy. It means, instead, "anything goes".
In a Universe where "anything goes" how could anyone establish Natural Laws to live by? Could we suddenly find ourselves swimming in lakes of olive oil, and olive trees producing fruit laden with engine oil? in such a Universe, how could there be any consistent way of living morally? Even if God existed, morality could switch from caring for your own children to well crafted recipes for barbecuing them... marinate well in peach juice and Javex bleach. Mmmmm.
The natural Universe is an integrated whole. Violate one law, through the magic of some god-thing, and the Universe must crack apart wiping out everything.
Yet religionists think that God alters things to influence our lives. God cannot do such a thing, because it alters everything. If that god could, then you could not count on anything! You could not count on your keyboard to put up the right letters, you could not count on the Internet to send things to the right places, you could not count on the light at your desk not to suddenly burn you to a crisp, you could not count on the words you write to mean what you first intended the very next time you looked at them.
Worse, you could not depend on your mind. In fact you could not depend on the nerve cells in your brain, because the chemical bonds that make them possible could alter at any second. You could not even depend on your own faith in God, because all of those things could waffle and change in an instant...because natural law is just a matter of some Being's whim.
Helen Keller may have been blind and deaf, but the rest of her functioned well, and she was able to learn the nature of her world through her other senses ("wawa", learned by touch). She went on to obtain a University degree by the time she was 22. It pains me to think that far less handicapped youths cannot manage to learn as well as could Helen. But learning requires honestly recognizing what is real, and rejecting what is not real. God is not real.
Just wait until He returns, and you will all realize how foolish you've been (you will remember this discussion and will wish you would have listened to those who tried to instruct you in the right way).
Lauren, amazing that you don't have time to answer the questions we asked you but you have time to go to Richard's blog and to try once again to tell us "what you believe in your heart" yet you do not answer the questions asked of you about creationism. So here they again...
"Just wait till zombie Jesus returns" is the programmed remark that all fundamentalist Christians make. Threats..."just wait till your father gets home" kind of threat. What kind of good god needs to forcibly be believed in with a threat of something bad happening to the person if you don't. Don't you see how ridiculous that is?
I was once a person who said this same thing you are saying "just wait!" because I was brainwashed to say so. But after reading the WHOLE BIBLE a couple of times through and studying it for years, and then studying world mythologies and customs, traditions, you will see where Christianity has adopted much from other mythologies and you will also see the many inconsistencies and contradictions in your own bible.
I see you still have not given a response about the evil book of Leviticus. About putting children to death for smart-mouthing your parents, death for adultery (which would mean half the Christian married population would be stoned to death). If you really open your mind and think, instead of having a Peter Pan type belief...then you would see how ridiculous and foolish your religion is.
And again...as for Creationism...I am still waiting for a Christian to answer the questions posed by Jason...
what are ID's scientific predictions, what are its unifying principles, and what experiments have been done to support your ID theory? WITHOUT THE MYTHOLOGY BOOK.
Quote by Helen Keller
"Sure, the world is full of trouble. But, as long as we have people undoing trouble, we have a pretty good world.'
People, Lauren...people undo trouble, not any god.
Just wait until He returns, and you will all realize how foolish you've been (you will remember this discussion and will wish you would have listened to those who tried to instruct you in the right way).
Ah, yes, the threat of hellfire. To paraphrase Samuel Johnson, it is the last refuge of religious scoundrels.
Lauren, abandon your religion and embrace secular humanism. Lose all that unnecessary baggage that comes with religion.
And Lauren, in reference to deaf and blind people like Helen Keller...what about the children of the world who are deaf and blind and no help comes for them? Only with the help of other human beings does any help come...therefore the quote I posted above by Helen Keller is very fitting for her story..."Sure, the world is full of trouble. But, as long as we have people undoing trouble, we have a pretty good world.'
Well thanks guys! I started reading and couldn't stop. It's good to see a good debate going on in the atheists blogs. :)
Open minds are the greatest.
Stardust :) wrote:
"then studying world mythologies and customs, traditions, you will see where Christianity has adopted much from other mythologies"
To shorten the exercise, dare to read The Source by Roland Michener, it traces the development of Middle Easter religions beginning with early man. It is an exciting read, because it is done with fictional characters struggling to live through all sorts of conflict and adventure.
It begins with the archaeological investigation of an ancient tell.
[Tell: an artificial mound consisting of the accumulated remains of one or more ancient settlements (often used in Egypt and the Middle East as part of a place name).]
I read the book in three days, unable to put it down, when I was sixteen.
After finishing it, I asked my mother, "All these different God's from all these different sources, what are you thinking of when you go to church with Dad?"
My father was a lay preacher in the Anglican church and I was an altar boy. She replied that she figured there might be a superior being, but whatever he, she or it was, church was her time to think about how she was going to lead her life. I was shocked, and complied with her wish (over the rest of my life --now 56) that I would not tell my father of her views.
Later, at 35, I realized her view was naive. Though she knows I am an atheist now, she is not ready to go "that far". She still accepts the (despicable) morality of religion: altruism, which demands self sacrifice to others.
It breaks my heart, the extent to which she bears pain caused by the senseless acts of others in our family. "Stoic" would best describe her day to day life, though she often, at 83, lies awake at night, often most of the night, suffering over the behavior of other members of her family. Ideas matter.
Lauren, ideas matter!
Ideas determine how you face the World, face the people around you and, above all, regard yourself. Get them wrong and happiness is fleeting & largely dependent on outside events. Correctly, ideas are your sense of being, and even in difficult times, they help you develop knowledge of your own value, apart from all that 'outside' stuff; ideas sustain you. With proper ideas, you will suffer none of that "God, why did you let this happen to me?" nonsense.
You will know that the real World has events you must wrestle with, and that you can survive, avoid, and cope through sensible consideration.
Note my use of "sensible". The essence of reason and science is the use of the only means we have for grasping the true nature of the Universe: our senses. Lauren, science is sensible (often by the extension of tools such as microscopes or carbon dating), but belief in God is completely insensible.
In fact religions insist that God is insensible, or unknowable. By that religious view, if God came to Earth, most seriously religious people would deny Him, because all of a sudden He had become knowable. He would have blasted to pieces the most essential element of religious belief: FAITH. In being sensible that 'God' would have violated the fundamental requirement of theism: blind faith. If God were sensible, then he could not be God!
The point is that, as long as God is (described by men as) a figment of human imagination, then he or it can be used by men to bind you to the arguments of other men: priests, bishops, popes etc. So long as you believe in God, those men are your true rulers. After all, is it not such men who tell you how you should believe, what you should believe, and above all, isn't it men who wrote the Bible, Quran and Torah?
Lauren, you were born and individual, do not die a copy of millions of faceless believers.
Richard, you said, "With proper ideas, you will suffer none of that "God, why did you let this happen to me?" nonsense."
I do not suffer this because I trust God in every circumstance. I do not need to wonder why something happens to me or anyone around me. Two examples: one, there was a family that went to my school. While their mother was out of the country, their father killed himself and his two daughters by carbon monoxide poisoning. I can see this situation and trust in God to take care of the mother as she travels back home and deals with the struggles of losing her whole family.
Two, when I was about seven years old, my grandmother had a heart attack and died. She and I were extremely close, and I loved her dearly. Now, when I think back about her, I do NOT think "oh, God, why would you do this." No, I think how amazing He is to let me live one more day, and I think to how she is enjoying her time with Him for eternity.
These two examples are to prove to you that Christians who are strong in their faith and actually are Christians (they don't just claim to be one) can trust in God through any circumstance.
Richard, you also said, "isn't it men who wrote the Bible, Quran and Torah?"
Well, you are correct in that men did write all these writings. But in the case of the Bible, the men were inspired by God. God told them what to write and they did. In the other cases, such as the Quran and Torah and so on, the men just made them up themselves and wrote them; they were not inspired as were the people who wrote the Bible.
Finally, Richard, you stated, "Lauren, you were born and individual, do not die a copy of millions of faceless believers."
I know I am an individual. That is why I have chosen to believe what I believe. I know I cannot change your beliefs, so don't try to change mine. You are probably as strong an atheist as I am strong a Christian. I also do not think I am a "faceless believer" because I actually want to go out and have conversations with those who do not hold to the same beliefs that I do. If I did not think in this way, I would not have started these comments on this blog in the first place.
"You are probably as strong an atheist as I am strong a Christian."
No, Lauren, there is no such equivalence, because in that statement you presume faith.
Faith is the turning of one's mind against the sensory evidence before them and its logical implications, so as to accept arbitrary assertions. It discards fact for emotional whim, gives precedence to the unreal over the real, and worships the primitive rather than the modern. It is a two thousand + year old weakness that betrays the most essential nature of being human: the human mind.
Even Thomas Aquinas realized that the human mind had some sort of purpose. Otherwise, he thought, why would God have created Man with a mind and free will?
A true believer in God, Thomas Aquinas grasped that the mind had a purpose, ~700 years ago. You, Lauren, have even chosen to abandon that basic level of understanding. You have ignored so many arguments, only responding to those where you can announce your blind faith.
The very brain that Aquinas grasped had some sort of purpose, you have utterly and deliberately shut down.
Men do not have such survival tools as the fangs and speed of carnivores, the camouflage abilities many insects or the wings of birds. He has only his mind. Imagine if a nestling bird, on seeing its flight feather emerging on its wings, rigorously plucked out each one, so as not to have to fly. What becomes of the wolf cub that gnashes its teeth away on rocks? Obviously, a self-imposed death! Where your tool of survival is your mind, and its faculty for thought, you have subverted it for the purpose of unthinking obedience to a non-entity other men have duped you into believing. It will not kill you, you may even survive quite well, but the ideal you commit your mind towards is not improving survival so much as returning to a Dark Age.
As for not changing one another's beliefs. Why did you bother coming here? Why comment? Were you not trying to tell others (Stardust) that her beliefs were wrong? Were you not, thereby, trying to get her to reconsider her beliefs? Look what you wrote:
"You are so ridiculous. I mean, come on, stop making stuff up just because you cannot logically rebut Ben Stein’s great arguments."
You started out, rudely, telling Stardust she was wrong and making stuff up!! Now you say you were not doing that! What hypocrisy. Even the Bible does not condone hypocrisy... so you are, fundamentally, a disgusting sinner, by your own beliefs.
Before reaching your second decade of the eight or nine available to you, you have already become brutally dishonest --the worst being that you have no idea if there is a God or not, but you blindly choose to insist on it, and have turned off your mind to genuine thought, reducing yourself to a dupe of witch doctors in archaic, long robes.
Your life on those terms, is that of a zombie (the walking dead), unable to grasp the more true nature of the Real world before them. Is it Natural or under Supernatural control? You choose not to understand direct your life according to the natural requirements of your body and mind, and instead move by the dictates of ... well you don't even know by what, except for the scribblings of frightened (by Reality) Jewish shepherds two thousand years ago... and you have no interest in finding out.
Lauren said:
"But in the case of the Bible, the men were inspired by God. God told them what to write and they did. In the other cases, such as the Quran and Torah and so on, the men just made them up themselves and wrote them; they were not inspired as were the people who wrote the Bible."
Prove this statement please.
Yes, that is a good point for Lauren to address, Poodles!
Lauren, you do realize that the Muslims believe their Qu'ran is the only inspired work of God (Allah).
To them, you are the infidel.
I do not suffer this because I trust God in every circumstance.
Lauren, do you go to a human doctor when you are sick? Do you take medicine? Why do you not trust your god to heal you? Why do you take medicine to get better instead of trusting god via your prayers? Christians usually cop out on this one and make up answers like "god gave us doctors". Why can't your god just heal you himself? All people who trust god to cure them of a serious illness DIE if they do not go to a human doctor for help. All people in dire circumstances die if no human help arrives. If you are isolated and in urgent need of help, no help comes except in the form of a human being.
No, I think how amazing He is to let me live one more day, and I think to how she is enjoying her time with Him for eternity.
My grandmother also died, when I was 16. We sat in vigil for her and prayed our hearts out. She was only 59. She was the sweetest person I have ever known. I cherish her memory.
Lauren, ever wonder how this god makes billions and billions of souls happy somewhere over the rainbow when he can't do it here on Earth? This "heaven" was created by humans to cope with the heartbreak of death. Some of us realize this and cherish the memory of our loved ones and remember the lives they have led, their goodness,the good times we had with them. And that is enough. I hope my children keep me in their memories when I am gone.
Why do you think it is amazing that this god allows you to live one more day? You are a slave to your own imagination, and that is really sad. Why do you think you would be allowed to live but my friend's baby be born without a brain? Why do you think a god picks certain people out of BILLIONS to be starving and eaten by vultures, killed by their parents, when he has the power to allow you to live a cushy life? You god believers make no sense. You think there is some great puppetmaster pulling the strings. Pulling Lauren's strings in her happy, happy life while ignoring the prayers of little "christian" children in third world countries who are starving to death. And no god will feed them. People feed them. Please think about all this. Lauren and you will see that you are truly programmed by your upbringing of one version of the thousands of versions of Christianity and god belief. Humans will look for any way to psychologically cope with things they have no control over. That is what religion is. That is what your fundamentalist parents and friends will not admit.
I know I cannot change your beliefs, so don't try to change mine.
And Lauren, you came here. None of us here first went to your site. You came here and left a message on an atheist site.
SO, I think you are questioning, and hopefully you will read all the newest comments after your latest comment, especially Richard's and please do what Poodles asks...
"But in the case of the Bible, the men were inspired by God. God told them what to write and they did. In the other cases, such as the Quran and Torah and so on, the men just made them up themselves and wrote them; they were not inspired as were the people who wrote the Bible."
Prove this statement please.
Star dust wrote:
"Why do you think a god picks certain people out of BILLIONS to be starving and eaten by vultures, killed by their parents, when he has the power to allow you to live a cushy life?"
And, why did he mainly reveal himself to roaming Jewish shepherds, in a few accounts in the Old Testament if mankind was "created" 6,000 years ago (by Creationist time-lines)?
Why should he then create a 'Son' as a whipping boy for human 'sins'?
Subsequently, why doid he only reveal himself as Mary or as some past 'saint' to oddly unimportant believers, in unbelievable situations? He could reveal himself to prominent non-believers, anywhere in the World.
Why, when Jesus walked the Earth 'teaching', why did he not teach Men about the wonderful things science now knows: about
* physics & chemistry — planetary motion, calculus, telephones, radio and TV communication, optical light transmission, organic chemicals used in food & medicine, inorganic chemicals used in material manufacturing
* engineering — from waterways, to combustion engines & aviation to nuclear energy to computers or
* health care — vaccination, pharmaceuticals, neurology, oncology, insulin, etc.
* agriculture — fertilizer, pesticides, harvesting machines, food distribution
...and so on?
All these amazing things were discovered by Man, while the most religion really says is to believe in and trust the imaginary puppetmaster in the heavens.
Yet believers "Thank God" and/or call it a "Miracle" when something good happens that is either lucky (the falling rock misses them) or is a direct result of human being(s). The child saved by incredible medical surgery invented by men, carried out by men, and refined by men... "Thank God", never mind that such a God made the world &/or the child so the child would need saving. The brilliant rescue of a family by firemen... "Oh, Thank God".
No! It was not God it was Men. You should thank Man!
All there is after you die is what was there for you before you were born: a blank. Don't waste your life on religious claptrap, learn better... there are lots of good resources because there are millions of us atheists.
According to the 2001 World Almanac, Atheists number:
* 121 million in Asia
* 56 million in the former USSR
* 23 million (3.5%) in Europe
* 2.7 million in Latin America
* 1.6 million (0.5%) in N. America
* 0.4 million in Oceania
* 0.4 million in Africa
These numbers are not very accurate because some atheists may call themselves Humanists or other kinds of belief systems that do not entail a God. Nonetheless, there are lots of us, all busy in our various ways, making the World a better place.
"If you are isolated and in urgent need of help, no help comes except in the form of a human being."
This is true, but God made the man who helps us able to help us. He developed our minds to be able to grasp all this information in our small minds and enabled many many men to become doctors, surgeons, etc.
"Why should he then create a 'Son' as a whipping boy for human 'sins'?"
Because Christ's life, death, and resurrection are the only things possible to save us. Without these things happening, there would be no hope for mankind. Imperfect people cannot save themselves; they need a Savior and that is Jesus.
"All these amazing things were discovered by Man, while the most religion really says is to believe in and trust the imaginary puppetmaster in the heavens."
As I said before, God made men able to comprehend these things. Without Him, no one would discover anything.
"No! It was not God it was Men. You should thank Man!"
Again, God has men become doctors, firefighters, and so on, so they can carry on their tasks of saving others. Without God, there would be no purpose for living or no chance of us surviving anything.
"All there is after you die is what was there for you before you were born: a blank."
Then, why doesn't everyone go around committing suicide. If there is nothing to look forward to after our deaths, then why don't we just stop prolonging our lives and face the "nothingness" you guys make up about when we die. How can you prove this? At least, Christians have a holy book which says what it will be like after death. Also, why did all the Christians go to their deaths with joy? Why did the men, women, and children joyfully get burned at the stakes or thrown to the lions. Why did they not recant their faith? Because they knew what was coming after death: an eternity of joy and happiness with Christ.
"Some atheists may call themselves Humanists or other kinds of belief systems that do not entail a God."
All atheists are humanists. A humanist is defined as "a believer in the principles of humanism" and humanism is defined as "a system of thought that centers on humans and their values, capacities, and worth." Do you not believe in humans and their values, capacities, and worth? In your last few posts, you have stated that "men should be thanked" and "men should be praised" and so on, so you are really all humanists. Humanism is also defined as a system that includes the following:
Rejection of accepting things by faith alone.
Naturalism (as opposed to supernaturalism).
Science, and the skepticism and rationalism that go along with it.
Utilitarianism (the idea of maximizing freedom and well being for all individuals).
Strong ethics without God.
Free inquiry-independent verification of the facts.
The Democratic Process
Tell me. You believe in all these things, right. If not, try to defend why not.
Finally, according to http://www.religioustolerance.org/worldrel.htm, Christians make up 32% of the world of religious adherents, while atheists make up about 2.5%. There are approximately 2,039 million Christians and only 150 million atheists. Another website, http://www.adherents.com/Religions_By_Adherents.html, states that Christians make up 33% (2.1 billion) and atheists make up 16% (1.1 billion). Still, a wide gap size-wise. So, when you contrast sizes, Christianity is definitely the largest. I hope you didn't think I would just see you stats and say "wow, there's a lot of atheists in the world" and not look up what it is compared to the amount of Christians. I am not dumb.
This is true, but God made the man who helps us able to help us. He developed our minds to be able to grasp all this information in our small minds and enabled many many men to become doctors, surgeons, etc.
But this is the standard answer given by Christians. Why would an all-powerful god need flawed humans who he cursed forever and had to created a son for himself to torture and kill for? Why doesn't he just cure things himself...better yet...why not just kill the diseases and flaws in the world before hand...and even better yet...why did he create these diseases in the first place? You will probably just make something up again. God believers are very inventive.
Because Christ's life, death, and resurrection are the only things possible to save us. Without these things happening, there would be no hope for mankind. Imperfect people cannot save themselves; they need a Savior and that is Jesus.
Again...why? Why create humans in a certain way and they have to go through a bizarre and gruesome ordeal to rid the world of what he created? Study ancient mythologies of other ancient cultures. Many of them had a similar type story of men/gods being killed and coming back to life.
Human beings sent to a place of eternal torment for merely exercising our "free will". That is absurd to think a kindly and gentle and giving person would go to the pits of hell for merely not believing in a god that place hide and seek games. Doesn't make sense at all. Doesn't make sense that a god who if he wanted every being to kiss his feet to create them with a choice to do otherwise, and then punish them for it. Makes no sense at all, Lauren.
There is no Hell. If you study the history of the hell concept, Hell was actually what the ancient people called the burning garbage dumps outside of Jerusalem. People turned Hell into a mythical place in order to scare people into believing in Christianity (and Islam also uses this oppression tool).
And you are right. People cannot save themselves from death. It happens sooner or later and we cannot do a damn thing about it except make up fantasies or whatever one needs to do to cope with the reality of that. I choose not to dwell on it as god botherers do. I choose to live now and not be walking around here focused on my death and finding ways to avoid it.
Again, God has men become doctors, firefighters, and so on, so they can carry on their tasks of saving others. Without God, there would be no purpose for living or no chance of us surviving anything.
And again, why would a god need little microscopic humans to take care of something he can just click his fingers and prevent? If you say he allows it, then your idea of god is a sadistic bastard of a god.
And have you read the front page of my blog? LIFE IS WITHOUT MEANING. We bring meaning to our lives. Some people who are believers are SLUGS. They sit and watch Jerry Springer all day, but many go out and do things to help, as you have done. Many atheists are slugs and do nothing all day. Many atheists do go out and do things to help others and to make their world a better place. It's all up to a person. Believer or non-believer because it is up to us to make our lives worth living. It is up to each individual how they are going to live.
And at the end, no...sorry but there is no chance of surviving this life. None of us do. But I am very glad to have had the chance to live at all. I don't need any more than that. To want more is rather selfish. Religion is selfish...self-centered. You are always concerned about the self. If you were not taught that there was something in it for you, some kind of reward for merely existing and saying some magic words, for just simply living your cushy life, then you would not be following this religion. I am sure of it.
Christians make up 32% of the world of religious adherents, while atheists make up about 2.5%. There are approximately 2,039 million Christians and only 150 million atheists.
If you are going by numbers Lauren, you should be a muslim...or maybe a Hindu. There are more people in the world who are other religions, no religions than there are Christians.
Hitler had millions following him. Does that make it right? Numbers do not justify truth. It just means there are a whole lot of delusional people. Most people who claim to be Christians do not take the bible literally (thank human intelligence). Most would not give up their life for their god beliefs. Just because a lot of people believe something doesn't necessarily mean it is true, or good. So many people believing so many gods, just means that there are a whole lot of humans who are afraid of things they cannot control. Religion provides the delusion that they do have some power and control when in reality they do not. We do what we can do, but if we can't, no god help comes.
And Lauren, since you seem to have a lot more time than you said you have(seeing that you have lots of time now for putting forth your programmed rhetoric that we have heard so many times before)...answer me this will you? (You keep ignoring it and ignoring it!)
what are ID's scientific predictions, what are its unifying principles, and what experiments have been done to support your ID theory? WITHOUT THE MYTHOLOGY BOOK.
and you didn't answer poodles request for proof on the little matter she brought up. Mind getting to that one, too?
At least, Christians have a holy book which says what it will be like after death. Also, why did all the Christians go to their deaths with joy?
I have a book about Peter Pan, and other fantasy books too. It's all made up by scared humans.
Have you ever seen Christians die? All Christians do not go to their death "with joy". I have seen Christians die...they were afraid Lauren. Like any other human. Then the family, do they rejoice? They mourn...they are not happy Lauren. They do not rejoice without the contradictory sobbing, need for valium to cope and years and year of mourning. There is no joy in death. Only of the memory the dead person leaves behind if they led a good life that touched others.
"If there is nothing to look forward to after our deaths, then why don't we just stop prolonging our lives and face the "nothingness" you guys make up about when we die.
Because, it is LIFE that matters, not death.
Answer some of our questions, Lauren. If you do not, or cannot, then you are a fraud and should stop commenting here (though that is Stardust's choice). There is no way for rational people to satisfy irrational people. Which one do wish to be, for the rest of your life before it blacks out and is done... with no Heaven, nothing?
Lauren, my beloved sister in humanity, writes, God has men become doctors, firefighters, and so on, so they can carry on their tasks of saving others. Without God, there would be no purpose for living or no chance of us surviving anything.
So, basically, what it sounds like you are saying is that we are all nothing but participants in some grand SIM City type program playing out roles that have already been pre-assigned for us.
Now to me that sounds like a pretty meaningless life!
The universe behaves as we should expect in the absence of a loving god watching over us and intervening in our affairs. Both the wicked and the good suffer from disease, starvation, war, oppression, natural disasters et cetera. Religion is simply a way that people try to impose some kind of order in a seemingly chaotic universe. They have a need to convince themselves that the madness is all part of some wonderful master plan that they cannot quite comprehend but assume must be for the best in the end.
Then, why doesn't everyone go around committing suicide.
Why should I want to commit suicide? There are things in this life that bring me happiness and joy and a sense of achievement. I recently completed a scuba diving course and got to experience what it is like to dive in the ocean and see marine life up close. Since I can reasonably expect to live another 40 to 50 years, there are so many things I can look forward to; places to visit, books to read, movies to see, seeing my children grow up and hopefully heed the lessons I have taught them.
Also, why did all the Christians go to their deaths with joy? Why did the men, women, and children joyfully get burned at the stakes or thrown to the lions. Why did they not recant their faith? Because they knew what was coming after death: an eternity of joy and happiness with Christ.
I would submit to you that the Heaven's Gate cultists who committed suicide because they thought their spirits would ascend to a space ship that was supposedly hidden within the tail of the Hale-Bopp Comet faced their death with a sense of joy. Even some Muslim suicide bombers probably experience a sense of euphoria before detonating their explosives.
Your mistake is equating belief in something with the reality of something. You can believe in your heart that you will go to heaven after you die and hang out with Jesus for the rest of eternity, but believing it will happen does not make it so.
It seems to me that it is religious belief that is anti-life. Why should a child willingly accept death rather than recant a religious belief and go on living? You mean to tell me that a being powerful and intelligent enough to create this immense universe would rather that an 8 year old girl die a brutal death instead of embracing the chance to live, to grow up, and raise children of her own? And you wonder why I don't kill myself?
Lauren, if evolution was proven to you (not that you would accept the proof because you obviously don't get what science is all about):
could you still be a Christian?
Lauren, dear child. You're using a very, very old argument known as the teleological argument.
Click here for a definition.
My favorite quote:
'There is no empirical (and therefore scientific) way to test for creation per se. To illustrate this, Robert Todd Carroll said "the universe would look the same to us whether it was designed or not." '
& while we're @ it, does your deity have a belly button?
Excellent comment from Tommy?
BEAJ, Evolution,in the sense of speciation has been demonstrated many times, mainly with fruit flies. However, one study used the Caribbean lizards called Anoles.
Two types, in particular, were involved. One was a tree climbing variety with long legs, and a greenish coloring that camouflaged them. The other occurred on relatively barren islands with only sparse vegetation. Both ate insects, but the island ones were the color of the rocks (camouflaging them from sea bird predators), with flattened bodies and short legs. Clearly their build enabled them to obtain insects from among the nooks and crannies of the rocks.
The researchers found a typical rocky island that had no anoles, and wondered what would happen if the populated it with the tree anole species. This, they did, and then recorded numbers and external features of the anoles each year. In only 12 years (effectively 12 generations) the tree anoles were clearly developing shorter legs, a flattened body and were colored more like their rocky habitat.
The anoles that were better able to hunt for insects and to hide among the rocks were more likely to survive to produce offspring than the ones who were less able. Over time small changes occurred and the animals that had them survived, until the anoles carrying genes for the best changes became the living population.
Notice that although the changes might have been small from one anole to another, and may have occurred by chance, it was not chance that produced the new anoles. It was the mechanism of Natural Selection that did that.
In the short time of the study the anoles' genetic code had changed considerably. For all visual purposes they were becoming a different species. This is precisely how the continuum of life branches into what we would call different species.
Going backwards in time, the tree of life goes down to a founding 'trunk' of the earlier bacteria. They too arose by the same mechanism, but the very first cell-like structures, we might not consider to be alive. However the chemicals they consisted of, with little doubt, basic naturally occurring molecules with a DNA~ or RNA~like structure. The oceans 3.5 billion years ago were freshwater! and loaded with other organic (carbon structured) molecules. The endless waves would naturally form great masses of foamy bubbles. The bubble structures that were more durable would last longer. The next big step would be for the RNA-like molecules to chemically produce a substance (a primitive protein perhaps) that strengthens the bubble walls, even better if the RNA is safe inside the bubble.
In this way the first steps toward a cell are underway, millions and millions of years, until a durable, replicable combination forms. The mechanism and the natural selection was always there, all it needed was materials and time.
For the anole researchers, the next thing they have to determine is how long it will take until the new anoles can no longer breed with the their tree climbing ancestral population. Then the new island population will meet that most standard (but often improper) definition of a new species. The will be unable to produce viable offspring with any other similar species.
From start to finish, God never did a thing.
[Sorry, I can't proof read this tonight, but hope any mistakes do not subvert what it says.]
"If evolution was proven to you (not that you would accept the proof because you obviously don't get what science is all about):
could you still be a Christian?"
That's the problem, evolution has NOT and CANNOT be proven. But, let's say evolution WAS proven to men, then, no, I could not be a true Christian. I have read and thought about your comments, and I have even read my evolutionist Biology book, but I still cannot find good arguments for evolution, so until these things are proven, I cannot choose otherwise.
And, what do you guys have to say about the moths that were glued to the trees to supposedly prove an evolutionists theory. See, this is just one example of many of how evolutionists lie to prove their points. I will not even consider another view until it is thoughtfully and logically presented.
"Does your deity have a belly button?"
I'm sorry but this doesn't even apply to our discussion. Why would it even matter whether He did or not. This is such a light way to describe such an awesome and amazing God. Please do not talk down to me like I am a dumb little kid, and definitely do not talk down to an ulmighty God who has the upmost power in the whole universe.
and definitely do not talk down to an ulmighty God who has the upmost power in the whole universe.
I'm sorry, but is that supposed to frighten me?
I have read and thought about your comments, and I have even read my evolutionist Biology book, but I still cannot find good arguments for evolution, so until these things are proven, I cannot choose otherwise.
To be quite honest, I personally don't care a whit whether or not you accept the theory of evolution. Just don't be bigoted against people who do not share your religious beliefs. Remember, human solidarity should trump religious identification.
So long sweet Lauren, it's really been nice chatting with you.
Lauren Shaw said Then, why doesn't everyone go around committing suicide. If there is nothing to look forward to after our deaths,
I know other people have answered this question. But the utter insanity (probably too strong a word and I'm in no way implying your insane) just kept on coming back to my mind while I was walking my dog looking for platypus. So now I'm going to put forth....
(cue twilight zone music)
"The lollypop zone *cough* argument"
Now imagine your in a world where for some reason or other each person is granted the special privilege of getting one lollypop in their lifetime on their 18th birthday. The lollypop can be the most delicious thing you have ever tasted. Fully of happiness, sadness, learning and every other nice and interesting thing. Now according to your argument you would just throw that lollypop in the ground and crush it underfoot. All because you wouldn't ever taste one again so sweet.
If you knew that this was the only one you were getting. And not just the appetizer for the big one (heaven). Wouldn't you savor the moment? Wouldn't you taste and explore every single nuance and enjoy the moment.
It doesn't make you want to commit suicide knowing you've only got one life. It makes it taste all the sweeter. Yes it would be nice to have a nice magical place to go to. Or to live longer and explore more of life. But saying so doesn't make it happen.
I'm sorry, but I really just can't understand your comment.
Lauren Shaw said At least, Christians have a holy book which says what it will be like after death
Actually the bible is contradictory on that subject in a number of places. And again just because it says so, ain't make it so. If there's some evidence that shows that there's this lovely place to go to after you die then please show me. I would truly love to see it. Until then, when I die. I'll just go back to non existing like I've done for the billions of years before my birth :)
but I still cannot find good arguments for evolution,
**************
It is called willful ignorance.
There isn't one piece of evidence that contradicts evolution. If evolution were false, there would be oodles of evidence contradicting it, just as there is oodles of evidence contradicting the idea that the sun revolves around the earth.
It is scientists who expose other scientists when they make faulty claims. That is how science works.
The few frauds that were made throughout history, were exposed by scientists, not creationists.
For Evolution 101, try this page Evolution Happens
More evolution in the news. Lizards near Croatia.
What do you mean by "proven", Lauren? Speciation by natural selection has been proven... and that IS evolution.
Much of what you need to know about the origin of life on Earth has been touched on in the comments above, or mentioned in your biology text, but you do not respond to that information.
Worse, whoever told you the moths were glued on the trees is the actual liar, but you choose to believe the lie to protect your blind faith.
So-called 'gaps' in the fossil record are understandable. However, the 'dots' of actual data are like the dots of a digital image: there are more than enough dots --in evolutionary history-- for the real picture to show perfectly clearly.
You are still young and there is a lot of very intelligent work in geology and biology that has been done, that you must yet learn from. A school textbook is only a brief summary of thousands upon thousands of definite facts (observable or repeatedly proven) that support Evolution.
Creationists never, ever, effectively read or study that greater body of material... they know they have something (their wishful hope for a Heaven) to lose.
Nature and the bible provide no evidence for God that others can observe or repeat.
Honesty is recognizing that the unreal IS unreal. When a thief starts to speak of the stolen goods as his own, he is being intellectually dishonest, because he actually knows that they belong to his victim. Nonetheless, he really really really wishes to believe he has some sort of right to the goods, and blanks out the knowledge that threatens his wish. He is refusing to recognize that his claim to the goods is *unreal*.
The same is true of believers. They (you) must blank out all sorts of evidence for whatever may contradict your wish, no matter how little evidence supports that which you wish for.
Savor the real lollipop, rather than discarding it, or half enjoying it, on the belief that a better one will appear when you are dead.
I have just learned that Ben Stein and the producers of Expelled lied in writing(!) to, and misled, the Evolutionary scientists that were interviewed.
There are direct excerpts here.
The material was put on the web by an agency where one of those scientists works.
The closing point is a good one:
"Of course, there are consequences for Expelled, as well: if these producers cannot be trusted to interview scientists honestly, can we trust them to present an honest documentary? A perusal of the content of the movie suggests such trust would be misplaced."
I have just learned that Ben Stein and the producers of Expelled lied in writing(!) to, and misled, the Evolutionary scientists that were interviewed.
Of course it is typical of many Christians to lie and they ALL lie to themselves about their god and afterlife fantasy. To believe something without evidence is absolutely mind boggling to me. And for people to claim to be morally superior because of their god instilled morality and LIE and mislead people.
and definitely do not talk down to an ulmighty God who has the upmost power in the whole universe.
Do not talk against Santa Claus who brings little children such happiness to believe in on Christmas morning!
Lauren...you have as much proof for the existence of your god as we do for the existence of Santa Claus, magic elves, pink unicorns and Flying Spaghetti Monsters.
Watch the video in one of my newest posts about the "Convert to all religions, Just in Case)"
I'm sorry but this doesn't even apply to our discussion. Why would it even matter whether He did or not. This is such a light way to describe such an awesome and amazing God. Please do not talk down to me like I am a dumb little kid, and definitely do not talk down to an ulmighty God who has the upmost power in the whole universe.
We cannot "talk down" to something that does not exist. I, and all atheists, do not have imaginary friends (unless they are in a mental ward somewhere or suffer from schizophrenia). You are a dumb little kid, Lauren if you will not even stop to consider what we are telling you. I was raised in a Christian home, I was taken to Sunday School for religious "programming", I was told God was going to get me if I didn't believe in him and going to hell if I did bad things. But finally, while going to school and taking courses to open my mind (at a SECULAR UNIVERSITY) like Astronomy, Biology (a real biology course, not an altered one like you are taking), Anthropology, Social Psychology, Abnormal Psychology, World Religions, World Mythologies, Bible as Literature in a Social Context(looking at the Bible from a secular viewpoint), and other classes that provided me with a well-rounded education. If we talk down to you Lauren, it is because we are older adults here, we have been there. Some of us have raised or are raising children.
Just concerned for you Lauren. IF you were such a believer and follower you would not own anything, you would not think that your god was a genie, you would want to walk the walk and not just talk the talk. You Christians just want to believe for the possible benefits for you. But you are not willing to give up everything and live like the man you say you follow. You make excuses for not being "true followers" while going on in the world just like we atheists. No god strikes you dead for it, no god strikes me dead for it. There is no imaginary "judgement day"...we must be judges of our own selves, and keep ourselves in check.
That's the problem, evolution has NOT and CANNOT be proven.
Lauren...it HAS HAS HAS HAS HAS been proven! Arrrrgggghhhh!! Have yo read anything at the TalkOrigins site that I told you I am linked to in my sidebar? Have you gone to any of the evolution sites in my sidebar? I bet not. You are far to "busy" keeping a closed mind.
But, let's say evolution WAS proven to men, then, no, I could not be a true Christian.
It HAS HAS HAS HAS HAS BEEN PROVEN!! And like I pointed out above...you AREN'T A TRUE CHRISTIAN anyway! You live like the atheists, play like atheists, play like any other believer..live life the way you want, you don't live like your Jesus at all. None of you do. You just want a genie in a bottle to rub and believe he gives you stuff you want.
I have read and thought about your comments, and I have even read my evolutionist Biology book,
You must be reading the wrong book. Most high school science books contain minimal information. Where did you get the evolution textbook? Your school? Hah!You must explore more in depth...You are only 17 and you are done exploring? Make a decision already? That is not very scientific. Scientists never give up. If new evidence comes along, theories are changed...altered. But not with religion! Nope...people cling to beliefs of an ignorant ancient people because they think they are going to get something for it.
but I still cannot find good arguments for evolution, so until these things are proven, I cannot choose otherwise.
You haven't looked Lauren. You are afraid to look. You are still quite young and can you say you have read everything? Have you read Darwin's works? Have you read any of these?
* Charles Darwin. (1859). The Origin of Species.
* Charles Darwin. (1871). The Descent of Man.
* Richard Dawkins. (1976). The Selfish Gene.
* Richard Dawkins. (1982). The Extended Phenotype.
* Richard Dawkins. (1986). The Blind Watchmaker.
* Richard Dawkins. (1995). River Out of Eden.
* Richard Dawkins. (1996). Climbing Mount Improbable.
* Richard Dawkins. (2004). The Ancestor's Tale.
* Daniel Dennett. (1995). Darwin's Dangerous Idea.
* Jared Diamond. (1992). The Third Chimpanzee: The Evolution and Future of the Human Animal.
* Brian and Deborah Charlesworth. (2003). Evolution: A Very Short Introduction. ISBN 0-192-80251-8
* Stephen Jay Gould. (1977). Ever Since Darwin.
* Stephen Jay Gould. (1989). Wonderful Life.
* Stephen Jay Gould. (1996). Full House.
Steve Jones. (1995). The Language of the Genes.
* Kenneth R. Miller. (2000). Finding Darwin's God.
Richard Lewontin, Steven Rose and Leon J. Kamin. (1984). Not in Our Genes.
* John Maynard Smith. (1958). The Theory of Evolution. ISBN 0-140-20433-4
o 3rd edition (July 30, 1993): ISBN 0-52-145128-0
* John Maynard Smith. (1972). On Evolution. ISBN 0-852-24223-9
* John Maynard Smith. (1978). The Evolution of Sex. ISBN 0-521-29302-2
* John Maynard Smith. (1982). Evolution and the Theory of Games.
* John Maynard Smith. (1989). Evolutionary Genetics. ISBN 0-198-50231-1
* John Maynard Smith and Eörs Szathmáry. (1997). The Major Transitions in Evolution.
* John Maynard Smith and Eörs Szathmáry. (1999). The Origins of Life: From the Birth of Life to the Origin of Language. ISBN 0-198-50493-4
* Matt Ridley. (1994). The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature. ISBN 0-140-24548-0
* Matt Ridley. (1997). The Origins of Virtue.
* Matt Ridley. (1999). Genome.
* Matt Ridley. (2003). Nature Via Nurture: Genes, Experience, and What Makes Us Human.
Carl Sagan. (1977). The Dragons of Eden.
Jonathan Weiner. (1994). The Beak of the Finch.
* Carl Zimmer. (2001). Evolution: The Triumph of an Idea. ISBN 0-060-19906-7
Those are just for starters, Lauren. Looks like you have a lot of reading and research to do before you can debate something just because you "dont believe" in it. Evolution isn't anything to be believed, it is to be UNDERSTOOD. You obviously don't understand it at all. Your school has done a piss poor job of teaching it because they want you to believe only one thing. In fantasies of sky bosses.
And, what do you guys have to say about the moths that were glued to the trees to supposedly prove an evolutionists theory.
Glued to trees? Who the hell told you that line of crapola? Ken Ham? This is a fundamentalist Christian LIE. You obviously are being fed a line of crap to keep you brainwashed. Sickening. The majority of Christians accept evolution because they are intelligent enough to understand how things change over time, the transitions that living things go through to adapt to their environment. It's not magic. Evolution takes millions of years. Unlike your magical god beliefs that you were zapped into existence. Makes no sense at all to think a big man in the sky points a magic wand and everything appears as is. Now that is utterly ridiculous.
I will not even consider another view until it is thoughtfully and logically presented.
You have to explore for yourself, Lauren. You are too old to be spoon fed, and you are still allowing yourself to be spoon fed like a little baby. You expect people to bring information to you, because that is how it always has been. I taught my kids to think for themselves, explore for themselves, find answers for themselves. You are ready to stop like a spoiled little brat "I am not going to do this till I hear a good argument"...but you have to READ THE ARGUMENT WE PRESENT if you want to know what we are saying. There is far, far too much information to present in a discussion thread. Read the books I suggest, and then THINK FOR YOURSELF FOR ONCE IN YOUR LIFE.
Lauren said "but I still cannot find good arguments for evolution"
beaj said "It is called willful ignorance."
Beaj summed it up perfectly...willful ignorance.
Our kids went to Lutheran grade school for a number of years, went to public school for a few years, and homeschooled for high school. (Actually we like to call it "independent studied". They went to public universities, and our daughter went to a private conservatory for her undergrad, and went to Yale for her Masters.
No matter what their education, the most important thing we taught them was to THINK FOR THEMSELVES. Ask questions. Lauren thinks she has all the answers at age 17 and that is pretty sad. Homeschool advocate John Holt says "We are learning all the time". And Lauren, even as older adults we understand we do not know everything, but we know how to research and look for information to help us formulate our decisions . . .some people even come up with new ideas that others have not thought of. If no one questioned, if no one did the research, then we would all be android zombies like people who only choose to "believe" one thing based on ancient information.
My husband went to a Lutheran grade school and a Catholic high school. He received an incredible science education at a CHRISTIAN school that was named after Gregor Johann Mendel (July 20, 1822[1] – January 6, 1884) who was an Augustinian priest and scientist, and is often called the father of genetics for his study of the inheritance of traits in pea plants. Mendel showed that the inheritance of traits follows particular laws, which were later named after him. The significance of Mendel's work was not recognized until the turn of the 20th century. Its rediscovery prompted the foundation of the discipline of genetics.
When you say you can't have your sky daddy beliefs and evolution, you are so very, very wrong as is proven by the many, many Christian scientists who do accept and understand evolution.
Like I said Lauren...explore for yourself, THINK for yourself. This reminds me of a religious teacher who taught my 8th grade science class at public school. She had praying hands all over the classroom (it was allowed then unfortunately)...BUT she also had THINK THINK THINK signs everywhere. You can pray till the cows come home, but nothing really happens till you think for yourself.
Lauren,
Why won't you answer any questions, including my own.
I give, Lauren is so blinded by religion she cannot see the real truth. It is sad for a young girl to be abused like that.
Not to mention, Lauren, that "READ" means to grasp the full meaning and content of words as they pertain to the real world. This means grasping abstract ideas... that is, ideas that are more removed from simple objects, but that are still based on the objects, actions, characteristics and relationships of the Universe.
For example a culture can be the lifestyle of many different people of many different races. Yet a great many people think that multiculturalism is something against racism. It is not. Its purpose is to encourage people to accept all the different lifestyles around the world as being of equal value. Yet that is plainly a dangerous and absurd thing to think. Western Culture is by far the superior culture, ever, when compared with others.
For example, one form of culture is the Indian castes system, at the bottom of which are the "untouchables". That bottom caste is condemned by their family heritage to lives of abject poverty because no one in the other castes will hire them. Recently a pregnant woman giving birth was not even admitted to hospital because she was an untouchable. The birthing did not go well, and both baby and mother, in agony, died.
Multiculturalism actually works against Western Culture, with the clearest example of that being the massive invasion of Muslims into France (and other parts of Europe) and successfully changing their laws away from Western values! It was easy for them, because the Europeans accept the faulty notions of multiculturalism, without having examined its full meaning.
Properly understanding abstract ideas is one of the great faculties of the human mind that must be ignored by the religious, and is too widely ignored by educators. I taught it to my students for some ten years, with consequence that trickled into other teachers' classrooms making it necessary for them to be much more careful about what they said (I learned of this from the school owner, who routinely sat in classes, and could see the changes.)
Lauren you must develop that ability, and, thus far have clearly not.
Concerning Mendel, Stardust overlooked a valuable point.
Darwin did not know of Mendel's genetics, and so he did not know just how the traits of living things were passed from generation to generation. Nonetheless, by observing the facts of Nature he was able to grasp that Evolution occurred. (And he too was raised a Christian.)
Mendelian genetics would have made Evolution all the more clear to him!
Lauren, I gave you some very powerful, factual arguments as to why the characteristics of the God you describe simply could not be. Yet, you have not asked a single question about them. Instead you have denied some points without explanation, and blindly repeated your beliefs. Are you that willfully dishonest, as BEAJ suggests.
Willful dishonesty deserves to be "talked down to".
Thanks Richard...good points about Mendel and Darwin.
Poodles, I know Lauren has not answered you, as she has not answered any of our questions here.
Including these...
what are ID's scientific predictions, what are its unifying principles, and what experiments have been done to support your ID theory? WITHOUT THE MYTHOLOGY BOOK.
In fact Lauren, you have a bunch of people here discussing ideas with you, thinking things through with you. It is rude to put up comments, and to not make a similar effort.
What kind of character are you? What kind of character do you really want to be? You are heading in quite a distasteful direction. I have known hundreds of people your age, many of whom were religious, who were a lot more thoughtful in how they communicated. Hopefully, and I think I can speak for others here too, you will make a better effort.
"I have just learned that Ben Stein and the producers of Expelled lied in writing(!) to, and misled, the Evolutionary scientists that were interviewed."
All right. I read through this whole article and it is bunk. The only way I will believe this is if you find a contract that they scientists being interviewed signed. Anyone could have just made that stuff up. Also, of course the scientists are going to say they did not agree to this because they looked stupid in the movie. If they want to uphold their position in society, then they think they must lie. It is common for people to do this.
And, in response to your question, "what are ID's scientific predictions, what are its unifying principles, and what experiments have been done to support your ID theory? WITHOUT THE MYTHOLOGY BOOK."
Alright, telling me to do so without the Bible is like telling you to prove one of your bunk theories without the world or without your brain.
Here is part of the reason why I believe there is an Intelligent Designer. First, did any of you actually watch the film (all the way through)? Okay, if so, do you remember the part where the camera went through a strand of DNA and through the body's genetic material and how it all fits together perfectly. Also, do you remember the slot machine example? Where the man had to get the same slot formation in 200 machines in a row. Even from these two examples, it can be seen that there is such a slim chance for this happening once; nonetheless, billions and billions of times. Also, the world is so complex. Think of how the air is so perfect. If just one part of it was off, we would not be able to live. This just happened by chance??? I don't think so.
And, in response to your question, "what are ID's scientific predictions, what are its unifying principles, and what experiments have been done to support your ID theory? WITHOUT THE MYTHOLOGY BOOK."
Alright, telling me to do so without the Bible is like telling you to prove one of your bunk theories without the world or without your brain.
The Bible does not provide scientific evidence.
for the zillionth time...
what are ID's scientific predictions, what are its unifying principles, and what experiments have been done to support your ID theory? WITHOUT THE MYTHOLOGY BOOK.
Your book is a religious text. Not a science book. It contains no scientific principles. Therefore cannot be counted as evidence.
If you are going to say that ID is scientific, then it should be held to the same proofs that any other scientific evidence is held to.
Now,,,answer the question...please.
the camera went through a strand of DNA and through the body's genetic material and how it all fits together perfectly. Also, do you remember the slot machine example? Where the man had to get the same slot formation in 200 machines in a row. Even from these two examples, it can be seen that there is such a slim chance for this happening once; nonetheless, billions and billions of times. Also, the world is so complex. Think of how the air is so perfect. If just one part of it was off, we would not be able to live. This just happened by chance??? I don't think so.
This is not scientific investigation and experimentation,documentation, verifying evidence, etc. You are just filling in the gaps with a god belief for things that seem "amazing" to you and instead of trying to investigate and understand the science like most normal science students, you simply go with "goddidit". You don't even have any evidence to dispute the things you are disputing. Cannot offer anything but pretty fantasy analogies.
Are you going to read even a few of the books on the list I suggested or just going to remain willfully ignorant?
And Lauren, the evolutionary scientists you are dismissing are far more credible than a washed up Hollywood second-rate actor who knows about as much as you do about evolutionary science. It only take common sense to understand that the movie is total bullshit and will be a total box office flop. It will only be a "hit" in fundie churches who wish to keep their fundie children from the outside world. I feel sorry for you.
Lauren,
You are racking up one heck of a lot of un-addressed questions.
First:
"If they want to uphold their position in society, then they think they must lie. It is common for people to do this."
So why does that apply to the scientists, but NOT to the Creationists? Note that I have explained the nature of dishonesty, and shown quite plainly that belief in God is inherently dishonest. Once one allows himself the luxury of dishonesty in one context, it is only a matter of time until one feels it is 'appropriate' to do so again. You are really accumulating quite a list of dishonest viewpoints now.
The article I linked you to, provided the actual text of what was written and sent to the scientists. The people (at NCSE), who have put that up, are very very reputable. This is from the About page on their website (bolding that follows is mine):
"NCSE is religiously neutral, though it cooperates nationally and locally with religious organizations, as well as scientific and educational organizations like the National Academy of Sciences, the National Association of Biology Teachers, and the National Science Teachers Association.
"The composition of our Board of Directors and official supporters reflects our scientific roots. Supporters include Bruce Alberts, President of the National Academy of Sciences; Donald Johanson, discoverer of the "Lucy" fossil; and evolutionary biologist Francisco Ayala. Paleontologist and writer Stephen Jay Gould was a long-time supporter and friend. Executive Director Eugenie C. Scott is a physical anthropologist who taught at the university level before becoming Director of NCSE in 1987."
The Academies and the individuals involved could not get where they are today through blunt dishonesty. The text you have poo-poohed as being a lie, is fully accurate.
That article is not bunk, Lauren, it just contains some things you do not want to believe.
richard, strange how Lauren would choose to believe that her god gave us doctors and firemen, but not scientists, isn't it? How she trusts science for medical treatment but not to tell her the truth about evolution and the way Mother Nature operates.
"the way Mother Nature operates."
Alright, then, who/what made "mother nature"? How did the world begin? Are you a "big bang" theorist or a backs of crystals theorist or even an alien one??? What do you believe? Just answer this one question: How did the world begin.
Alright, then, who/what made "mother nature"? How did the world begin? Are you a "big bang" theorist or a backs of crystals theorist or even an alien one??? What do you believe? Just answer this one question: How did the world begin.
Mother Nature is a figure of speech, Lauren. There are many theories about how the universe started. It is still be explored, investigated, evidence examined. I have many astronomy links in my sidebar. Seems you have a lot of reading to do, if you dare.
What is your answers Lauren? God did it? Easier not to have to investigate and use your brain, isn't it? Takes effort and time to dig for true answers. Easier to let your pastor tell you what to believe, and that everything appeared by magic. Ever heard of "god of the gaps"? It's what fundamentalist creationists use when they don't understand something or just to lazy to even try.
There is no simple answer as how the world began. But the Big Bang is a good theory. Read the Stephen Hawking site. It's quite excellent.
I am not going to make up answers for you Lauren. That is what fundies do.
The Big Bang is a cosmological model of the universe that has become well supported by several independent observations. After Edwin Hubble discovered that galactic distances were generally proportional to their redshifts in 1929, this observation was taken to indicate that the universe is expanding. If the universe is seen to be expanding today, then it must have been smaller, denser, and hotter in the past. This idea has been considered in detail all the way back to extreme densities and temperatures, and the resulting conclusions have been found to conform very closely to what is observed.
Can we observe your "creator" Lauren? You still keep ignoring my questions....
what are ID's scientific predictions, what are its unifying principles, and what experiments have been done to support your ID theory? WITHOUT THE MYTHOLOGY BOOK.
The reason you have no answers is because THERE AREN'T ANY ...nada, nothing to support your ID beliefs.
That's what they are...beliefs. Because in order for something to be considered a theory it must have scientific predictions, unifying principles, and experiments to support the theory. Therefore ID is simply a religious belief. That's all, and it has no place in the scientific realm.
Lauren, please have an open mind and spend a few days reading through these sites...
Evidence for the Big Bang
Arguments against Creationism
How do you post a link on this page?
Go to this link: www.preciousliljewel.blogspot.com, read the first post, and tell me what you think (even though I believe I know what you are going to say). Read it with an open mind, and then respond after reading the whole thing.
By the way, what is your occupation? I was just wondering since it seems like you have a lot of time on your hands to be posting at all hours of the day on this page.
By the way, what is your occupation? I was just wondering since it seems like you have a lot of time on your hands to be posting at all hours of the day on this page.
Lauren, why do you ask these questions instead of answering mine? How do you manage to have lots of time to come back and post here, write posts on your own blog, take college tours, when you don't have time to answer the questions posed to you here?
I am 53-years-old...and have worked my ass off my whole life as an insurance adjuster, graphic artist for a number of years, then went back to school to earn my Masters Degree, taught college English (Rhetoric, Writing and Literature) for awhile, did a stint as a substitute teacher. I was supervisor a couple years ago at a Printing and advertising firm. Am a freelance writer, and write fiction and non-fiction. Working on a novel. I work at home now that I have Lupus and Rheumatoid Arthritis and cannot work at a regular job anymore.
At the moment I also score academic achievement exams online for 6,7 and 8th grades and also score ACT and SAT essay exams online.
It takes but a moment to read and respond here. My email alerts me when I get a new comment.
As for the link...you aren't already going to link us to something before reading what we have given you to read? How can you even begin to rebut anything that you know little about? Whatever you link to, in our age and experience we have most likely already read. But to post a link in a comment see this page. How can I do more with links?
Lauren, about the link. It is yet another delusional fundamentalist viewpoint. Life isn't enough for you. You have to invent a god fantasy, and an afterlife fantasy because the awesomeness of this life isn't enough for you.
Many people can live fulfilling lives without deluding themselves. Lots of things have been found via science, Lauren. In ancient times all people except a few believed the world to be flat. That was eventually proven to be wrong thanks to some very brave explorers who went against the herd.
You want to believe that we are inherently bad, Lauren when I choose to believe that we are inherently good. Religion teaches you to focus on the bad instead of the good. Your link is to a site by another young brainwashed fundamentalist fool. Once again, science is NOT BELIEF. Science are proven facts, Lauren. Religious superstition is belief.
Do you know how many sects of Christianity there are Lauren? 2500. and then there are sub-branches of that, and it goes on and on. So many people with so many versions of Christianity. Ever wonder about that? Why your god wouldn't give you all the same message if this message was so "life and death"? It's because PEOPLE create these gods and belief systems, Lauren.
Your friend at My Life Simplified is just another sheeple of the flock of delusion.
You don't need religion to see that the world is a magnificent place, and the awesomeness of the cosmos.
Now, go make a reading list for yourself of the serious factual resources we have directed you to. Directing us to fluffy, little girl fantasy sites proves nothing of the existence of an invisible sky daddy.
If you look at my other blogs via my profile you will see all of my varied interests. I don't sleep much.
Well richard and all...we spend all this time providing information and links to evidence for Lauren to read and explore and what do we get instead of answers to our questions? Links to a little girl's site who is equally as brainwashed as Lauren. That really makes an intelligent rebuttal, doesn't it? (eye roll)
Alright, then, who/what made "mother nature"? How did the world begin? Are you a "big bang" theorist or a backs of crystals theorist or even an alien one??? What do you believe? Just answer this one question: How did the world begin.
Do you mean how did the planet Earth begin, or how did the universe begin? If you mean the latter, that is something that should eventually be possible to figure out.
Just because one cannot explain as of yet how the universe began does not mean that therefore some entity you call god created everything and then 2,000 years ago he impregnated a virgin Jewish teenager in the Galilee. That is quite a leap there Lauren.
As I wrote way up in this comment thread, we live on a planet that orbits one of billions of stars in a galaxy that numbers among tens of millions in the universe. It seems rather bizarre that any being intelligent and powerful enough to create all of that would have a narcissistic need to be worshipped and adored by us. It would be like you being angry upon finding out that you are not worshipped by an amoeba.
Lauren, this is for you.
Lauren, you wrote,
"Alright, telling me to do so without the Bible is like telling you to prove one of your bunk theories without the world or without your brain."
First, the fact is that the World is physically sensible, whereas the bible is a set of stories written by men and assuming the claims of those men. The Bible is not a source of sensory information about the World. It is a source of men's claims about the world. The difference is very very important.
Technically, this is a standard example of what is called a Circular Argument:
"How do you know that God is real?"
"God is real because the Bible says so."
"How do you know the Bible is right?"
"Because the Bible is inspired by God, and he would not lie."
I think you can see that the next question is the same as the first one. Nothing is explained.
There are many kinds of circular arguments on issues of much lesser importance that his one.
If you ask me how I know there is gravity, I can point you to the World, and we can both observe things falling, and even appreciate how things can glide on air etc.
All we need to do is use our independent senses, and we can see for ourselves that there is gravity. And we can agree. Neither of us needs to rely on anything else, least of all writing from 1800 yrs ago. Of course, the bible is just so many words, written by men (starting some 1800 yrs ago), who claim a connection to God. Neither they, nor you, can use senses to observe any truth in what they claim. It is all the more problematic, that their claims contradict any real experiences of any person.
Those writers and editors of the Bible were more ignorant about the World than the alchemists, of only 400 yrs ago, who sought to make gold from strange chemical mixes (not knowing that gold is a fundamental element of the Periodic Table).
Whereas the alchemists' ideas have faded into oblivion (except as history), biblical things have not, even though they are older and much less rational.
The World (Universe) is apparent to our senses, but the claims, by men, of the bible are NOT. The distinction is as great as the distinction between the fact that you are a woman and that, as a woman, you would not be able to understand matters that men can. You ARE able, but you have to actually do it!
Well, it has been fun developing the arguments, but Lauren is apparently, intellectually, dead meat.
The only thing that I can add, (or is it repeat?)-- and that serves as an answer to Stardust, is that the fundamental matter of the Universe is what truly is eternal. Even a Big Bang cannot escape that.
A Big Bang cannot create matter out of NOTHING, because nothing has NO things that can act.
My personal view is that black holes, which are now believed to disintegrate over time, disperse the enormous amounts of matter they once accumulated. In the process, they emit enormous amounts of matter and radiation.
I suspect that the radiation is the presumed background of the primordial Universe. This 'expansion' creates the data-based impression that the Universe is expanding. The general background radiation from black holes also creates the impression that the Universe dates back some 40 billion years. Yet it is inescapable that the Universe is Eternal! ...and godless.
It makes no sense to think that the matter of the Universe had a beginning, or has an end. The fundamental particles of matter, whatever they are, are eternal. They go through interactions that result in atoms and molecules etc.
Since the Universe is all there is, and since time is simply a measure of the motion of objects, the Universe is "outside of time". Sure the clock ticks off seconds, marking each day as a rotation of the Earth ...and, of course, each year is one orbit of the Earth around the Sun, but these things are *local* in the same sense that a gram is one milliliter of water, as a standard we choose to work with.
Just as it is outside of Time, the Universe has no Location. How could Everything-there-is be located? What could it be beside or near? It just IS.
It's fundamental particles just ARE, Big Bang or not.
The thing is that, on Earth, processes occurred that the mechanism of Natural Selection logically favored, and they led to what we call life.
Over billions of years, one branch of the tree of life produced the form of consciousness and volition that is uniquely human.
Unlike any other organism, we can examine our consciousness, we can think about why we are alive, and we can formulate our own way of dealing with this Universe. We can do it sensibly, or we can do it through mythical nonsense. The first is reasonable, the second is primitive and stupid.
We can deal with reality, or we can supplant that reality with Puppetmasters-in-the-Sky, in order to direct our lives according to reality, or according to fantasy, respectively.
Since there is no Puppetmaster, humanity has slowly and painfully grown out of the Dark Ages (where Lauren prefers to remain) and into a time when man can assert himself in Nature as he was meant --biologically speaking-- to do.
Man IS a superior consequence of Natural Selection, not because he is more powerful, but because his mind is something remarkably different from anything to previously occur on Earth. It is a mind that, over and above the simple neural network in his brain, is capable of free choice. It can observe itself, choose to act in concert with nature and the requirements of life. It is also able to create figments of its own design to live by, in contradiction to the Natural World. The amazing thing is that his mind is that sophisticated. The moral thing, in the sense of choosing what is right for human life, is that he (Lauren and other religionists) are also free to choose otherwise. The political system of The Founders, is the only one that frees the latter to make whatever foolish mistakes they wish, so long as they do not harm lives of the rest of us.
That said, given the history of Man, it is clear that his mind was meant to interpret the physical realities of the World and Universe as they are, without inventing extra-ordinary unnatural beings to rule him.
To the eternal Universe and the greatness of Man.
richard, that was quite an eloquent comment on the universe! Thanks so much you, and all my friends for all your time and efforts in trying to educate Lauren. I hope she got some "thinking seeds" planted in her brain. I am so glad that my kids all had the hunger for knowledge and the desire to explore and learn things for themselves.
Tommy, your link is a hoot! I love that movie!
A song for Lauren.
Evolution (Use Your Brain)
And another one...this one is amusing.
Evolution - Random Chance? Simple steps to complexity
Awesome YouTube clips Stardust.
And yes, the egg came before the chicken... by a long shot!!!
lOL LOL
Just for everyone's information...Can you believe that Lauren is still promoting everyone to go see the Ben Stein crap liar movie saying it is "amazing". With all the information and reading material and links we have provided for her, Lauren chooses to remain willfully ignorant. A zombie. Well...we tried.
I hate to see skin get so hopelessly wasted.
Well, at least the 'verification word' is "party"!!
What are the chances of that?? Thank God for small mercies. ;-)
I have now stopped commenting on your blog for a few days now, not only because I have better things to do but also because it is not worth my time and effort.
So, I would appreciate it if you would leave me be and stop commenting on my blog. I have been courteous enough to stop commenting on here, and I would like you to do the same.
Note: this is not because I don't want to have a civilized conversation or not because I don't have the answers. It IS because I don't have the time or energy right now to talk about this anymore. Thanks.
I have now stopped commenting on your blog for a few days now, not only because I have better things to do but also because it is not worth my time and effort.
Learning is not worth you time and effort? That is really, really sad Lauren that you don't have the desire for true knowledge for one so young.
So, I would appreciate it if you would leave me be and stop commenting on my blog.
Why, so your friends cannot know the truth? So they do not have other viewpoints given to them? That is pathetic.
I have been courteous enough to stop commenting on here, and I would like you to do the same.
This is total bullshit. You have commented here far more than I have at your blog. You are the one who came here first. You are the one who called me ridiculous with no basis, no answers, nothing at all except your young naiive snottiness.
Note: this is not because I don't want to have a civilized conversation or not because I don't have the answers. It IS because I don't have the time or energy right now to talk about this anymore. Thanks.
Meaning you are frustrated BECAUSE YOU DON'T HAVE THE ANSWERS, Lauren and choose to remain brainwashed. Unlike you, I am not afraid to have you comment here again and you are welcome to come back.. I hope you do, I hope you do read the things we pointed to.
Bruce, I deleted your comments and turned back on my setting to not allow trolls. I do not need to be "scolded" by you. Keep in mind, Brucie that LAUREN CAME HERE TO AN ATHEIST SITE with her snotty comments and wasn't so nice herself. You fundies get frustrated when you have no answers, no intelligent responses about your "Intelligent Design" that you want to claim as equal parallel to science. You do not have the evidence to justify that.
SO, when you don't have the answers you pull out the PERSECUTION card and cry "POOOOR MEE" and "don't pick on the poor child"...LAUREN IS 17 and looking at colleges for crying out loud. She is an adult. My kids were all great debaters, and not afraid to talk to adults, and were ready with supporting evidence when debating others at ages younger than Lauren. Lauren cannot even argue her points intelligently from a theological stance. Therefore she has no business running around commenting in blogland about things she cannot defend.
So...Bruce. If you are a fundie then think about the three questions Lauren refuses to answer.(Or cannot answer)
What are ID's scientific predictions?
What are its unifying principles?
What experiments have been done to support your ID theory? WITHOUT THE MYTHOLOGY BOOK.
And Bruce, you said Lauren tried to "sever ties". If you say that you haven't even read the comments here. Lauren came here. This is my "house". Count the times she commented here, and the times I went to her blog. I don't go to Christian blogs unless people come here and start crap with me. (Swearing came up in conversation, no one called her a derogatory name so don't make it seem like we are swearing at her personally...that is so dishonest of you.)
And Lauren needs to stop being babied. She is a young woman, she needs to grow up.
I was about to put this up Stardust, when you whipped in, yanked Bruce's stupid remarks and nailed him. Note that I make the same point regarding Lauren's age, and suspicion that he is religious :-)
Bruce, one does not always have to delve into the details of so great a folly as "Expelled" to recognize the folly. You might also have thought through the wealth of ideas and information here, and see that Lauren's mind was offered a great deal.
Lauren has clearly not heard "all the arguments" and clearly has no intention of processing them intellectually. So she invaded Stardust's space on false pretenses. You should be able to see all of that, Bruce. The only error here was in giving Lauren the benefit of the doubt. See Samnite Gladiator to observe how sensible and 18 year old can be! Stardust's alternative might have been to tell Lauren to "get lost" after her second comment.
Seventeen year olds, Bruce, are not six year olds. They are, or ought to be, able to think well enough to be ready for University, and be honest enough to actually engage with the content of a discussion. Her actions are by dishonest choice, not a result of childish innocence.
As for the notion that she might be right, it seems you must be some sort of theist fantasy, so you haven't given much thought to what is on this page, either.
Your comment to Stardust did not "seem" rude, it was rude and quite unforgivably so.
correction (disregarding other more obvious typos):
"must be in some sort of theist fantasy too"
Hi Richard. I HAD to pull Bruce's ignorant comment because it was simply an attack on me and questioning my honesty. If he had read my other blogs he would see that I am indeed a 53-year-old mother of three grown children who holds a Masters Degree, and I am one who values education tremendously, because education is the key to freedom and opportunity.
It's always the same thing with these fundies. They cannot answer the questions asked of them and they resort to "you're picking on me" and taking their blankie and bobbie and going home.
And as for trolls...that happens every time I take allow anonymous comments. It lets the stupid people in. I only put my settings to allow anonymous comments because I thought my friend karen was going to comment here. I think karen is going to have to get a blog to comment on Blogger blogs ;) because I really hate trolls.
Karen can get a blogger account under distinct pseudonym.
For the record:
I rather hate multiple captcha entries :(
I am a bit older than you and have an MSc in Wildlife Biology. After some 18 yrs working with government contracts I could no longer stand the minds and/or mindset of government people. I took a year off and signed up for a B.Ed. program. During that year I rediscovered Rand's Atlas Shrugged, reread it, and was amazed at how poorly I had understood it the first time. I went from agnostic to full blown atheist. I studied everything I could find about her ideas, and have met, or at least heard lectures by, many of those who studied under her. I've never looked back, but it is shocking how many dishonest or just plain stupid comments come out about her thinking.
The B.Ed program was a terrible experience, the professors and the other students (of all ages) were generally worse than the gov't people I had left! I got the degree and taught high school science, especially biology, at a private school for ten years.
Even in the private school, the curriculum and the approach did more to stifle kids' minds than it did to improve them. I never imagined how stagnant teachers' minds could actually be. I soon grew to be the staff 'exception', and had to deal with a lot of nonsense.
I am trying to set up a business in children's literature now. Children need to read more, and need to read better books if they are to enjoy reading. "Better" is a long discussion :-)! However, I have worked out a standard procedure for judging and identifying "better" that reduces the vagaries of individual opinions, such as is found among literary award judges or Amazon comments.
richard, thanks for sharing some of your personal information. I knew just from your writing that you are a highly educated and intelligent man. :)
I too became disillusioned with the education institutions. Our three kids did very well in their memorization and regurgitation in school, but became frustrated and bored there. If they got the right answers a different way they were marked wrong for it. But they know that often we can use different methods to come to the same conclusions.
So, even though they were involved in the school bands and orchestras, honors clubs, and other activities, we allowed them to make the choice to independent study for their high school years. They combined home study with classes at the community college and all three had their associates degrees at 17 and 18 years-old. They all did very well with their ACTs and went on to Universities, our daughter went to a top music conservatory, and then she went on to Yale for her masters in music. She is now on staff as a music professor at a university out east and is a member of a major symphony orchestra. Our oldest son has a degree in Physics, and is studying computer programming ON HIS OWN and plans to be certified in a year. Our middle son has a degree in Fine Arts but now is going back to University for his Accounting degree and plans to get his CPA. Like homeschool advocate John Holt said, "we are learning all the time."
I know what you mean about the education majors, and professors. Eeeghads! And people assume that just because someone is a teacher makes them some kind of expert. Too many of the education majors in my classes were airheads. Some of them couldn't articulate very well, had poor critical thinking skills, and yet as long as they memorized the answers, took those state tests and passed, jumped through the hoops they were made teachers! Our experience with teachers when our kids were in school, public and private, are mixed. Our kids had a handful of good teachers, and the rest were just there babysitting and collecting a paycheck. The good teachers never stay teaching long. They go off into the corporate realm when they become to disillusioned or weary of all the games.
The administrators are the worst to work with, though. They are usually ex-PE teachers who cannot teach anything else, and weren't very good PE teachers either, so they move them up to "management".
Anyway, I could write a book, and I am sure you could too, about our experiences with the educational systems! The most frustrating encounters are the fundies of all ages. Even now as I score academic achievement tests online, for the science questions many fundie kids give answers like "your science will not help you" and "evolution is not true" and "science is bad" in place of an answer...and they get a big fat ZERO...sadly.
I hope you keep commenting at my blog, your comments are quite interesting and informative. You should start a blog of your own and join Atheist Blogroll! It's growing by leaps and bounds.
Thank-you Stardust. Well done with your children, they sound great. Mine are girls of just 9 and 13. We were able to get them a Montessori education up to Gr 6. The eldest is now in a public school, and is having trouble with peers, etc. My ex-wife has the kids most of the time, so I cannot follow progress as well as I used to, dammit.
As for my own blog, that may come, but is mingled with the children's literature plan I have, and will be a while. (I've bookmarked your blog ;-)
Oh, BTW "publish this comment" doesn't work from the colored "Preview" box... it might be a page set up thing you need to alter in Blogger. So the captcha always has to be entered twice.
Darn captch... again!
richard, the peer thing in school is such a stupid distraction. Our kids were in classes at the community college with adults at age 14, and even tutored in English, Biology and Math while they were there.
Grade school and high school expectations for behavior are quite low. Kids are expected to bully, to be insecure, etc. etc. The social settings of grade school and high school is more like a prison environment and the principal is the "warden". Our kids were so much happier this way and thank us all the time for allowing them this academic freedom.
Sounds like your kids got a good start with the Montessori. Academically and socially that is a good thing. What we have found though, that when a kid is more mature intellectually and socially, the public school environment can be quite disturbing and emotionally painful. Getting hit in the head with a wad of potatoes at lunch, having people challenging you to fights, etc is not how the normal world operates so whenever people who are against homeschooling say "what about socialization" I always ask them if the elementary and high school institutional education is really a good representation of the real world where people live with others herded together in one age group, told what to think, how to do things, and where you have to watch your back all the time. It's more like Stateville prison than a school.
This is why so many young people go wild in college...they are suddenly FREE and go absolutely crazy with happiness.
Well I agree with everything in your post except the College kids going "wild with happiness" part.
After 12 or 13 years of "socialization" which includes repeated arguments
* that one cannot know the truth,
* that one should look out for others,
* that education is a system for the purpose of conforming you to what the educators think you should be,
* that humans live for a while, as chunks of pointless meat, & then die
* that humans are a tiny spot of nothing-important in a gigantic universe
* that a supreme Being ultimately decides Truth, and we cannot know it
* that the sun could go out tomorrow
* that by the sheer act of living you are ruining the planet
and on and on, they are not going wild with happiness so much as escape.
The foregoing pseudo-academic irrationalism produces extraordinary hedonism among college kids, if only in the short term, as some get what they can (in sex, drugs, partying etc). They think that way until they start to develop -a decade late- a sense of self and self respect. Except most never quite learn how to do that, and live in a kind of angst that brings on the dreaded mid-life crisis etc. Their morals are a confused shambles of conflicting principles and they make mistakes repeatedly that bring them great unhappiness, and hinder their careers.
TEFN
Richard, I should have clarified that by "wild with happiness" as a sarcasm. They drink, party and THINK they are happy...but then they eventually realize (often several years later) that they are not happy and should have studied more, partied less and got their lives on track.
It's temporary elation, the "escaped" feeling. Like someone just let out of prison.
Our kids, since they were allowed the freedom did get a little crazy at times, but for the most part liked to learn and liked accomplishing things, so we were lucky in that respect.
Capisco
Hey richard and all. I see at Lauren's blog that she went to see the dumbass movie AGAIN and the whole school went. Group intellectual abuse! She says she, her mom and a couple others actually CLAPPED at the end. After all we tried to get through to her, after 150 comments of information, links, etc. And we were pretty nice, considering her stubborness. At least if people have to have a sky daddy belief, have it be Catholic, Anglican, Presbyterian where people actually respect and understand real science.
sigh....
This topic just keeps on getting better and better. So many plot twists that it could be a blog of its own.
So since Richard and Stardust are describing their own children's educations and the merits of respective education systems I might tell a bit of my education in (pause for dramatic effect) "The catholic system"
Primary School(Elementary school, Years K-6): Just the usual worksheets, projects and other things. Nothing exceptional in my memory. Not even any science experiments (which may be understandable since there were only six people in the class). So I'll skip to the next part
High School (Years 7-Onwards): Another catholic school but it wasn't too bad now that I consider it. Science was science and religion was religion. And both were kept to their respective classrooms (except for the prayer at the start if the teacher opted for it)
In science class, evolution, big bang, sexual reproduction and all other things were taught. Most of my memories from it were non-science however. Including:
*Cooking a heart after a dissection class and mixing up some white (red?) wine sauce to go with it
*Using agar jelly for desert (fresh of course, and no spores)
*Cutting batteries open with a hacksaw and feeling the lead
*Putting way too much ammonium nitrate (yes, the type used in bombs) in water to get the temperature down to -4 C
Religion class was also not too bad. It was centered around catholicism but taught many other things as well. Including:
*A critical study of the bible, and the history of the early Christian religion.
*Study of other different religions and cults of the world.
One year our religion teacher was a Catholic/Buddhist(or similar) fuse and we spent a lot of time just meditating.
The school went to church every so often. But we also went to the pictures to see Harry Potter. So that sort of evens it out. :)
Then around year 10 I had some troubles with bullying and changed to this school
quote from their website
...is not a school where religious activities are offered as an addition to the regular curriculum. On the contrary, the school seeks to acknowledge Jesus Christ in every area of school life. Subjects are taught with a view to how God sees them, and how they fit within His plan for His creation.
Because the Bible is God's word, it forms the basis for thinking and understanding in every area of the curriculum. Because the Bible speaks about all of life, so does the school."
Even though I was a Christian (catholic) at the time the school (which was a different branch of Christianity) scared me. We used to joke at the catholic school about them putting Jesus into every subject, but I didn't actually think it was true. Needless to say I only lasted three weeks.
I could put more, but the post is long enough and I have things to do.
Thanks half rabbit for sharing that. It's interesting to know people's educational experiences and experiences with religion. You and my hubby could share stories about Catholic school! LOL! He has a ton of them. Many of the shenanigans that go on there are quite amusing.
The fundie schools are frightening. Do you mean you are stuck there now? If so, my condolences! I read your website, what is with the half rabbits and ostriches? That got my curiosity aroused.
Stardust. I have no idea why I chose the name half rabbit, half ostrich thing in a cage. I like myths, legends and hybrid creatures, so I assume I created the name late at night on a whim. Plus the mental imagery the word conjures up for me is interesting to say the least.
I might also be looking too much into the name with hindsight, but you could say the name describes how I feel at the moment. Make of that what you may. I'm not sure at the if I should post or email the details. (Catholic school was quite liberal but parents are not?)
No I'm not at fundie school any more. I only lasted three weeks before half breaking down.
Lauren said: At least, Christians have a holy book which says what it will be like after death. Also, why did all the Christians go to their deaths with joy? Why did the men, women, and children joyfully get burned at the stakes or thrown to the lions. Why did they not recant their faith? Because they knew what was coming after death: an eternity of joy and happiness with Christ.
Then why don't christians just commit suicide too? :)
tina, it's all about the delusion, isn't it? God believers are so wrapped up in fear of death that they obsess about their afterlife fantasies (which also vary from one Christian to the other, one god believer to the other...all different according to how they want to imagine the fantasy world to be, but all based on one ancient text written by ignorant humans nearly two thousand years ago.)
half rabbit, good thing you escaped after such a short time at a fundie school, and hopefully you didn't have too much trauma from it!
Thanks for explaining the half rabbit thing. :)
Snuck hastily onto my ex-wife's wireless network to say: my Internet is down for the next week! Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.
richard...good thing you let me know that or I would wonder where you went! I hate it when our internet goes down for a few hours (I work online, too, so that would really stink to be offline for a whole week!) Well...see you in a week then!
Lauren, in your very first comment here you made quite a point of complaining that "Stardust" employed Ad Hominem logical fallacies in his attack on Expelled. Since you're very concerned about logical fallacies weakening an argument, I'd just like to point out a few things that I noiced when reading this exhausting thread.
"Finally, according to http://www.religioustolerance.org/worldrel.htm, Christians make up 32% of the world of religious adherents ... when you contrast sizes, Christianity is definitely the largest."
This is the logical fallacy known as Argumentum Ad Populum., a.k.a. "Appeal to Common Practice."
"Here is my evidence/proof: the world. Look around you - even look at the stars. Who (or in your case what) put them there. How did the stars or the sun or the trees first come to be?"
This is the logical fallacy known as Argument From Ignorance.
"Another proof that we have is the Bible."
The Bible itself cannot be a proof for the veracity of the Bible. This is the logical fallacy known as Petitio Principii, a.k.a. "Begging The Question."
"I know you are an atheist and you don't believe in any kind of god, but how do you know what is right or wrong? How do you have any sort of morals?"
This is the logical fallacy known as "Appeal to Consequences."
"I am not just reciting this; I truly believe this in my heart. You can believe whatever you want, but what I am saying is the truth. "
Saying that what you believe is true because you believe it is true is the logical fallacy known as Bare Assertion.
"These two examples are to prove to you that Christians who are strong in their faith and actually are
Christians (they don't just claim to be one) can trust in God through any circumstance."
This is the logical fallacy known as "No True Scotsman."
"Also, why did all the Christians go to their deaths with joy? Why did the men, women, and children joyfully get burned at the stakes or thrown to the lions. Why did they not recant their faith? Because they knew what was coming after death: an eternity of joy and happiness with Christ."
If that is "proof" to you that your religion is true, then you have a serious dilemma.
Why did all the Muslims go to their deaths with joy? Why did the men, women, and children joyfully die for their beliefs? Why did they not recant their faith? Because they knew what was coming after death: an eternity of joy and happiness with Allah (and 72 virgins, apparently).
There is no religion on this planet that people have not given their lives for—Hinduism, Islam, Buddhism, Christianity, etc. There are also plenty of secular beliefs that people had gladly given their lives for. It is a complete fallacy to imply that simply dying for a cause or belief validates the cause or belief itself.
Guav, thank you for your comment and taking the time to address the logical fallacies in Lauren's argument here. That took some time and effort to look up and provide links for. You have made some excellent points, especially about how people of other religions are willing to die for their beliefs, also.
Sorry for the incorrect gender assumption over at the other blog :)
guav, no problem. Thanks for coming by.
I wonder if Lauren bothered to read all of the links you provided. I certainly hope so.
Excellent work Guav.
I wish standard education included an exhaustive Logical Fallacy requirement.
I taught High School Biology & Science classes (mentioned above), but for my last two years, one lunch period a week, I offered "Logic 4/20".
On those days I presented a Logical Fallacy in twenty minutes or less, with examples that I tried to make up myself. I then handed out a one page summary of what I presented.
On the first day I offered it, I had four kids. The next week I had six. The growth continued (approximately:) ->12 ->18 ->28+ two teachers -> standing crowd with students listening right out into the hallway (perhaps 50 students and the two teachers).
The administration paid no attention to the fact that the kids wanted to learn how to THINK!! Indoctrination by standard government curricula was all that really mattered to them.
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