Society Religious Discussion and Q&A Thread

[Roflkopt3r]

Evolution itself is not a theory but a fact. It's a fact that animals adapt, it's a fact that when a change is needed, a change happens. It's a fact that evolution basically is a mutation and 9/10 mutations are negative. Mutations are originally a random defect that happens when something goes wrong. If the mutation leads to a good thing, we call it evolution. For example; when an animal goes from X to Y - it mutates. We say that it evolves from X to Y.

Hihi it can be hard to stick to the correct phrasings when talking about evolution, isn't it?
(Just as a brief side note although I of course see what you actually mean )

I don't really see the advantage of your claim that "six days" could mean whatever time. The bible claims God to be allmighty and omniscient, so he could've just created everything in a single day, don't you think?
Also, when you assume the "scientific" timings for the creation of our planet and life, why should we need a God to explain it then? I don't see the need for thinking that in the beginning there is a complex beeing. Isn't that a much less likely explanation than everything happening just based on laws of physics? Why should something conscious and allmighty be at the start? I don't get it.

 

[kkck]

Hihi it can be hard to stick to the correct phrasings when talking about evolution, isn't it?
(Just as a brief side note although I of course see what you actually mean )

I don't really see the advantage of your claim that "six days" could mean whatever time. The bible claims God to be allmighty and omniscient, so he could've just created everything in a single day, don't you think?
Also, when you assume the "scientific" timings for the creation of our planet and life, why should we need a God to explain it then?

I don't personally think you actually "need" god to explain those things. What he does mean is that the bible does not mean to say the world was created literally in a week or less but rather a non literal approach should be taken. Ultimately what the genesis tells us is that god created the universe, basically that god is a starting point. I don't think that by unraveling the mysteries of how everything came to be you will reach a point where you can say "this is where god started everything".

 

[Akainu]

The interpretation of the bible - the old testamony that is - is a very interesting thing, since many of the stories could actually hint to historical happenings, i.e. something real, that got passed down as stories about the garden eden and how people were driven from there. There are naturally many other stories that somewhat would fit into that context that didn't make it into the bible, because it is a man made book, not one written by god himself or something.
Anyway, there are many of these things that serve as hints for historians about early history, so taking the bible literally isn't that bad of a thing - you just have to be aware that it ran through a process of many translations and some kind of chinese whispers and thus is enriched and/or decreased by many parts.
In that context it is quite interesting to compare the Gospels. They all tell the same story more or less, but they are written by diffrent authors years after things happend. You can however extract a more or less credible core of what happend (especially - again - with taking apocryphes into account <.<)

 

[DLord.Van.Buuren]

Evolution is 100% plausible to me and I don't see anything that would point towards high odds against Evolution - simply because I don't remember a single point against the theory which seemed plausible to me as all of them were logically invalidated.

Ok so lets say evolution is right and its now proven 100 percent fact, so what ? thats it, life stops ? the human mind is so desperate for new things, there will come a time when people get sick of having a useless life, they know they are gonna perish, so if somebody isn't lucky and has a terrible life, or poor he should just commit suicide. we'll become nothing more than animals, eat, drink, live and wait for your end.

In this life not everybody is lucky, and not everyone is rich, and religion is their only hope for a better life if they're not lucky in this one.

So tell me, are the ones who are rich, were by natural selection ?

Human feelings are too complicated to accept this kind of... well I can't say destiny.

I don't see a single hint why the creationism of the old testamony should be true.
Why do some people still believe in it these days? Because the bible says it. Great.

See now you dismissed every other possible religious explantions, and you based your resolve only what christianity said. so now you are actually still affected by christianity, whether its in a positive or a negative way.

I present facts from my side based on islam and its views of the universe and its creation. tell me rofl, do you know islam ? have you spared a minute to know what it is, I'm not asking you to convert or you know frocing it down your throat, I'm just saying you should do the same thing I do, I read
what people are saying against islam, I read what evolution has to say, I read what christianity is saying against islam, take these things and I see what Islam has to say about it, thats how I get to debate.

Now, I don't consider this a debate, but just hang out discussion about religion, if it was a debate, you'd be quoting the quran just like how I quote evolution, and I use its concepts against it.

Nevertheless I consider this discussion very informative.

@Blai, animals are just a fraction of a big picture here, we are trying to use logic to conclude how did the universe come to exist, since we aren't capable to expirement.

I just add one point, you guys think are heavily affected by the idea that if something was experimented on and it was right, then it should be generalized on all things, given its difrrences I mean what might apply to some species might not apply to others.

 

[Akainu]

I don't quite get your argument at the moment dark lord. As far as I know all three of the monotheistic "book" religions share the same story of creation almost unchanged (6 days for example) and even build upon each other way further up to a point the diffrent ways to pray seem a rather stupid thing to wage wars for instead of accepting the others, but that's for another discussion.

The other thing you bring up about people not always being happy has indeed not much to do with evolution - or let me put it like this - not solely with evolution. It is actually the secular/scientific society evolution is a part of, that could make people like you say only eat, sleep, work and whatnot.
This however is disregarding that even with the knowledge of doing something futile, people can pursuit happiness elsewhere. Some do so in reading, others in partying and others yet again in proliferating - maybe they don't know, maybe they try to forget, but it is like learning if you want to accept this comparision. The more you learn, the more you realize that you can't possibly learn/know everything there is to learn. Will you stop to learn then?
Also being rich has nothing to do with natural selection imo. children of a rich guy might just as well die or have genetic failures if they have children at all. It doesn't fit 100%, but the nobility in europe kinda overdid it at some point and through various incestous relationships produces some weirdos. Maybe the russian Zars can serve as example too. Had they not been killed in the revolution the male heir to the throne could have died easily of a genetic illness ending their line - all their wealth couldn't help them

 

[ashher]

Talking about believing in evolution sounds funny to me...no one talks about believing in relativity. I mean science is there so that you don't need to believe in anything. We don't believe that the earth goes round the sun,do we? Its proven. As far as i know, evolution is still a subject of research for the scientists. No theory(natural selection etc) so far can explain everything about this concept of evolution as far as i know.

 

[kkck]

Ok so lets say evolution is right and its now proven 100 percent fact, so what ? thats it, life stops ? the human mind is so desperate for new things, there will come a time when people get sick of having a useless life, they know they are gonna perish, so if somebody isn't lucky and has a terrible life, or poor he should just commit suicide. we'll become nothing more than animals, eat, drink, live and wait for your end.

In this life not everybody is lucky, and not everyone is rich, and religion is their only hope for a better life if they're not lucky in this one.

So tell me, are the ones who are rich, were by natural selection ?

Human feelings are too complicated to accept this kind of... well I can't say destiny.





See now you dismissed every other possible religious explantions, and you based your resolve only what christianity said. so now you are actually still affected by christianity, whether its in a positive or a negative way.

I present facts from my side based on islam and its views of the universe and its creation. tell me rofl, do you know islam ? have you spared a minute to know what it is, I'm not asking you to convert or you know frocing it down your throat, I'm just saying you should do the same thing I do, I read
what people are saying against islam, I read what evolution has to say, I read what christianity is saying against islam, take these things and I see what Islam has to say about it, thats how I get to debate.

Now, I don't consider this a debate, but just hang out discussion about religion, if it was a debate, you'd be quoting the quran just like how I quote evolution, and I use its concepts against it.

Nevertheless I consider this discussion very informative.

@Blai, animals are just a fraction of a big picture here, we are trying to use logic to conclude how did the universe come to exist, since we aren't capable to expirement.

I just add one point, you guys think are heavily affected by the idea that if something was experimented on and it was right, then it should be generalized on all things, given its difrrences I mean what might apply to some species might not apply to others.

I am confused, how exactly does proving evolution is real means everyone should take an extreme nihilistic approach to life? Why would evolution being something real mean life stops? You make it sound as if evolution if proof that god does not exist which is no less than absurd.

I am confused as to what you mean with your last point though.

 

[DLord.Van.Buuren]

You make it sound as if evolution if proof that god does not exist which is no less than absurd.

Well, most atheists are usually evolutionists, so you know.... Thats what I thought.

 

[kkck]

Talking about believing in evolution sounds funny to me...no one talks about believing in relativity. I mean science is there so that you don't need to believe in anything. We don't believe that the earth goes round the sun,do we? Its proven. As far as i know, evolution is still a subject of research for the scientists. No theory(natural selection etc) so far can explain everything about this concept of evolution as far as i know.

Evolution as of now can't explain everything but that is not by any means evidence against it nor to the absurdly overwhelming amounts of evidence which point towards it. Evolution could be proven wrong in a second, all in takes is a single testable prediction about it to be wrong for the model as a whole to be discarded (as is the same with every other scientific fact or theory). Still, in spite of all the discussion about it such a thing has not happened yet and more importantly the evidence for it keeps piling up...

I do think it is a grave misconception to think science can in some imaginable form disprove religion though (unless your scientific views are based on religion). Science and religion deal with inherently different things, neither should walk into the territory of the other. Science deals with facts and testable predictions, religion deals with spirituality and god(and by no mean uses testable predictions but rather revelation and faith)...

 

[DLord.Van.Buuren]

I don't quite get your argument at the moment dark lord. As far as I know all three of the monotheistic "book" religions share the same story of creation almost unchanged (6 days for example) and even build upon each other way further up to a point the diffrent ways to pray seem a rather stupid thing to wage wars for instead of accepting the others, but that's for another discussion.

The bible reached a point where it no longer made sense, and they still say its the word of god, I mean they got enough contradictions in "their"" bible, to be judging people based on it, so I say if you won't to actually compare evolution to religion, you should pick which religion is the closest to logic and doesn't internally contradict itself, and then compare it to evolution.

---

I am confused, how exactly does proving evolution is real means everyone should take an extreme nihilistic approach to life?

Well, if evolution is the way to go, then things are gonna change around here, I mean morals will mean nothing, and people will start doing whatever they want.

besides not everyone thinks the same way so, evolution will also have enemies, just like the people who said the earth was flat.

BTW I'm happy that we are sharing our thoughts here and trying to reach common ground so please don't hold back.

 

[kkck]

Well, most atheists are usually evolutionists, so you know.... Thats what I thought.

Well, I guess it depends. If your religious believes do get into the area (earth being 6000 years old for example) then I guess there would be conflict however that in itself would not prove god does not exist but rather that a particular religious view does not make sense.

Still, I have been a Christian(Catholic in particular) my entire life and I have never felt science in some way disproves or goes my religion.

 

[blai]

Well, if evolution is the way to go, then things are gonna change around here, I mean morals will mean nothing, and people will start doing whatever they want.

Just because people don't believe in anything divine doesn't make them do whatever they want. I think you've misunderstood the concept. Morals has it's roots before the big religions were born. Things as, you shall not kill, you shall not take what's not rightfully yours, etc, are followed by many atheists and evolutionists.

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@Blai, animals are just a fraction of a big picture here, we are trying to use logic to conclude how did the universe come to exist, since we aren't capable to expirement.

I only used animals as an example. What I meant was, that evolution happens for two reasons. One - because it's a necessity for the species survival. Two - luck.

The world we live in today has gone through billions of years of change, evolution, adaptation, mutation. Not only in living creatures, but also with material, bacteria, etc.

I don't really care whether it is a divine power or sheer luck that made us what we are. But I believe in science, and God. And I have no problem with that.

 

[kkck]

Well, if evolution is the way to go, then things are gonna change around here, I mean morals will mean nothing, and people will start doing whatever they want.

I get what you are saying but then again, evolution does not disprove god at least IMO.

On another note, I have read repeatedly what ways Secularism and atheist try to justify moral behavior however I have never been convinced (at least most of them don't actually reject morals). Even Nietzsche pointed out how life is inherently devoid of meaning and the only meaning it does have is what you give it (he never gave any form of justification for the last part though). How do we justify moral behavior without god? Moral implies that there are things which are objectively good or bad however how do we get that with life lacking transcendental elements? Lets take this rather nihilistic world view to the utmost extreme. How would I justify something like rape being morally reprehensible while helping others as something morally correct? The closest thing I have heard to a vaguely reasonable point is that we kinda instinctively know what is good and what is wrong (sounds kinda like natural law ironically) but in turn, wouldn't that mean that what objectively defines morals are mere instincts? And if that is the case, why should we consider these instincts to have any inherent value?

 

[DLord.Van.Buuren]

Just because people don't believe in anything divine doesn't make them do whatever they want. I think you've misunderstood the concept.

Ok; no problem, I agree that the laws would take care of the moral side.

Basically there is no diffrence between species except that humans were lucky and they got an intelligent mind, so we are basically like animals,
while we see that animals are governed by the law that the strong eats the weak.

So humans will start acting based on this law eventually, I mean laws are coming from religion in the first place, so if religion is wrong, then everything including its laws are wrong, so we have to come up with another law thats suits us, which is search for happiness since life is too short, and we'll start doing that even if it means killing for it, I mean c'mon life is too short.

Morals has it's roots before the big religions were born. Things as, you shall not kill, you shall not take what's not rightfully yours, etc, are followed by many atheists and evolutionists.

Humans evolved, so did their minds, which means at some point, our minds couldn't have been sophisticated enough to come up with laws, then humans adapted to the survival laws. which is survive eve it means kill.then they invented religion to restrict human actions and to guarantee that everyone is safe. but now since religion is false everything it brought from the start untill now is wrong, so why should we stick to it now ?

 

[Akainu]

I've just realised something weird: some time ago the argument was, that if there was no god, where did things come from? there can't be something made out of nothing!
Well, it took quite some time, but I remembered some arguments from school and frankly, if you accept gods existence, then you accept something made out of nothing - either the world by gods hand, or in case you agree there was an environment around god, god itself is made out of nothing - otherwise there's the question who or what created god, so this argument isn't really against evolution or anything and would make us spin in circles.

Budhism interestingly takes some "gods" and shows that they "just" don't know where they are coming from anymore which makes them sole beings, so maybe it's that search of our origin *gahcan'tthink*

 

[M3J]

Ok so lets say evolution is right and its now proven 100 percent fact, so what ? thats it, life stops ? the human mind is so desperate for new things, there will come a time when people get sick of having a useless life, they know they are gonna perish, so if somebody isn't lucky and has a terrible life, or poor he should just commit suicide. we'll become nothing more than animals, eat, drink, live and wait for your end.

Why would evolution being right make life stop? While the human mind may be desperate for new things, it's creative enough to make up new things. Even with religion, many people are sick of having useless life. Plus, it's their fault for being too stupid to realize that they can make something of their life.
Hasn't that happened already? In America during the Great Depression, so many people have committed suicide. Suicide still happens everywhere, whether there is religion or not there's no stopping it. Wouldn't religious people be considered worse as they'd go to great lengths against people with different beliefs?

We are animals. The difference is, we just have more intelligence and ability to adapt to anything. It's this intelligence that gave us more meaning in life, or rather helped us create meaning.

In this life not everybody is lucky, and not everyone is rich, and religion is their only hope for a better life if they're not lucky in this one.

So tell me, are the ones who are rich, were by natural selection ?

Human feelings are too complicated to accept this kind of... well I can't say destiny.

Religion isn't their only hope for better life as despite believing in a deity, it'll only make them feel better, not really improve their life. I also read about how god put his follower/s through trials to prove the said follower's faith in him... how does that make religious people's life better if they're played with to show how devoted they are to god? God was willing to kill his follower's family and torture him just for his ego.

The ones who are rich were probably rich because of luck or because of Social Darwinism (?). It's all about knowledge and timing, or having rich family.

Apparently not as human feelings are willing to accept only heaven and happiness as their end. It's pretty much a basic thing.

Well, most atheists are usually evolutionists, so you know.... Thats what I thought.

Actually, not all atheists believe in evolution, and not everyone that believes in evolution is atheist. Even religious people believe in evolution, though they mix in creationism with it as well. Science and religion can go hand in hand with each other, even if it's tumultuous. The problem here usually is that both sides tend to be close minded or stubborn.

Well, if evolution is the way to go, then things are gonna change around here, I mean morals will mean nothing, and people will start doing whatever they want.

besides not everyone thinks the same way so, evolution will also have enemies, just like the people who said the earth was flat.

Morals will mean something as we've been taught morals from birth, and it has been passed on. Plus, moral is just a word humans came up with; it's our intelligence and selfishness that make us worse than normal animals. Evolution also has to do with survival of the fittest, morals should have no play here as it can be a weakness.

 

[shaheer]

How old do you think earth is? Earth is 4.5 billion years old lol, more than enough time.

For an ape to become a man theoretically he must mutate only 1 % of DNA. At first you might not think this is very significant, remember the mutations have to be exactly the order of human person. It is estimated that for 1% difference only one million mutations are needed. How can one have a million mutations with each mutation in the direct order to make a human.

Example of only 5 mutations George Simpson , an evolutionist estimated to get five mutations in the exact order it would take 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 chances Simpson concludes,
".... unless there is an unknown factor tremendously increasing the chance of simultaneous mutations, such a process has played no part whatever in evolution."
and more over it estimated that to form life with 20 amino acids it would take 1 X 10 40,000 chances. Impossible to comprehend.
What chance did evolution have ?

And here is the catch evolution is considered as a continuous process. So why don't we have any transitional species (the popular ones like the intermediates between ape and man) in the society today?
As evolution is a continuous process, then the evolution from ape to man should continue and that mean every era these creatures should be present, rather we see well defined genomes present.
The theory of Evolution cant answer the claim of the existence of "self". What is self, it is not defined by our body or the chemicals, to answer this Richard Dawkins replied "We don't know it " in his God Delusion. Simple as that
And i did mention the odds to form a DNA the primordial era of the earth was brazen with excessive high temperatures that would not have facilitated life. Therefore the total 4.5 billion years want used for the development of the genomes.

Imagine you have a monkey in a room for twenty-four hours, typing a way on your laptop. In the morning you enter the room and you see, “O Romeo, O Romeo, where art thou O Romeo? Deny thy father and deny thy name…” The monkey has miraculously written out a Shakespearean sonnet!
now what are the logical explanations to it?
1) some one else did it
2) chance
I wouldn't magnify on some one else did it. I mean what s there to discuss. A guy/ gal came it and just did it.

Lets take the second option . A research was done to justify the claim and it was found that for a monkey to randomly type and produce:TO BE OR NOT TO BE; an independent pattern of English grammar and Shakespearean play it will take it 28 billion years. How old is this universe (forget earth) a bit more than 14 billion years.. Now to form DNA and RNA (some microbes depends on RNA rather than DNA , but they use Lygase and other enzymes but those are mumbo jumbos not needed here) which has an independent pattern of life and self replicating units and the intricate design how long do you think it will take?

This problem in the theory of evolution appertains many(many renowned scientists) to believe life was started by alien lifeforms. But that poses another question who created the aliens .
Now coming to Transitional species again
most of the Fossils shows stasis and sudden appearance rather than transition like

Chambered Nautilus "It remains essentially the same as its ancestors of 180 million years ago.... a living link with the past." National Geographic, January 1976

The praying mantis fossilized in amber is dated 40 million years.

The coelacanth was thought to become extinct 70 million years ago was found alive in the 1930's off the coast Madagascar.

Now another thing that i stated, why don't we have a 747 stranded when a tornado sweeps over a aircraft junk yard. why don't we have the Arabian and Sahara dessert covered with silicon diodes due to the lightnings and sandstorms . the chances for those are higher than the chances to form the 20 necessary amino acids and the DNA strand and RNA. The probability of assembling the genome is between 4-180 to 4-110,000 and 4-360 to 4-110,000.

And more over the Newly emerging picture of life from genetic studies do not fit with the traditional "tree of life". There are unexpected dissimilarities between very close groups. like the difference between rats and humans genome is very less rats/mice have around what 91 % similarities (i got the news i myself am surprised.i ll check it more) what similarities do we exhibit?
and there are further long discussions by Jonathen Wells(forgot the name of his books "my defense hey i am studying mech engineering not these)

 

[DLord.Van.Buuren]

And here is the catch evolution is considered as a continuous process. So why don't we have any transitional species (the popular ones like the intermediates between ape and man) in the society today?

True, thats the problem, I mean we still have apes, what happened to them, they don't evolve anymore?

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Morals will mean something as we've been taught morals from birth,

Just think for a minute, if religion is wrong, and morals came from religion then they are wrong as well, and thats not how the world should work anymore.

despite our intelligence, our look to each other will change, and you will longer look at your fellow human and his freedom as don't trespass, but rather just a mere animal with a brain.

BTW what do you guys have to say about the crusifixion of jesus, I mean we muslims believe he wasn't crusified and he was raised to heaven, and instead someone was crusified in his stead, which why christianity is wrong, because if jesus didn't die then all there will be no salvation.

 

[Roflkopt3r]

And here is the catch evolution is considered as a continuous process. So why don't we have any transitional species (the popular ones like the intermediates between ape and man) in the society today

Wow, are you serious? Sorry, but it seems you barely understood a bit of the evolution theory.

There not real "intermediate" states by definition. Every biological race is constantly changing on a slow rate, and by times the differences grow large enough that they can be considered different races at a certain point.

Just look at the races which human created by cultivating and breeding them - it's somewhat like an evolution in overdrive, because certain genetic information are combined specifically instead of just randomly and over a long time displacing other variations.
There have been many changes and new races in those races which were cultivated by men (probably especially crops, dogs, livestock). But how should you seperate between a race and an intermediate state? It's simply not possible.
In other words: Every race is in an intermediate state.
Also, to adress another common missconception: Men did not evolve from a kind of ape which lives today; We just shared an ancestor at some long gone point.

For an ape to become a man theoretically he must mutate only 1 % of DNA. At first you might not think this is very significant, remember the mutations have to be exactly the order of human person. It is estimated that for 1% difference only one million mutations are needed. How can one have a million mutations with each mutation in the direct order to make a human.

Another missconception.
1. Mankind did not evolve from apes; We just shared an ancestor. This means that ever since some million years ago, the DNA of human and apes are taking different directions.
We are way less related to any of the modern ape races than we were to that common ancestor. Actually the DNA of human and apes is quite different and many medical tests for example don't give any information about human anatomy when they're done on apes, simply because apes are so much different from us already.

2. Evolution doesn't happen in such a volatile way, but slowly and based on chances. The big main part of DNA changes which become "standard" for a race become so, because they are advantageous for procreation. If a carnivore for example has a mutation which improves the digestion (= gets more nutrition from the same food), it has an advantage for procreation because it will likely have more energy to spend on finding partners, sex and feeding children, and has better chances of surving to have more time to procreate.
This animal will have -statistically- more children than the others, these children of it again will statistically have more children than the others, and so on. And in the end, the mutation is widely spread amongst the race. It's a long and slow process for complex life forms - especially since mutations happen all the time, but only a very small percentage of them is useful.

This way, the seperation of one race into different ones take a long time, but the differences between the two branches will grow a lot by time. It's an easy explanation how our DNA can be so different from our closest living relative races.

 

[DLord.Van.Buuren]

ok, we share the same ancestor, but what is it ? our DNA is not similar to apes then that proves that we have nothing in common, thus we didn't share anything.

if you say the fossil record, the earth doesn't support this idea, because you can't find fossils.