Evolution & Atheism... Is it really more plausible?

[bjj hero]

Evolution is simply the best explaination we have of how we got here. It is crushingly simple. The fossil records support it.

There are gaps in this. The circumstances needed to make a fossil are quite specific, most bodies don't fossilise, so there will be gaps. Unfortunately if there is say a 10 million year gap and you find an example that splits it, the nay sayers will then say there is now an extra gap.

You can talk about probability but evolution is far more probable than an all powerful, all knowing fairy that invented life and can hear everyones prayers at once and create miracles. Who made him/her/it?

Unlike theism evolution is supported by evidence. the closest thing religion has to evidence is old books (that don't tend to be historically accurate) and "you can't yet answer it so it must have been god".


The origin of life is a different event that people have ideas about but don't know. It was a long time ago and evidence is hard to come by. Not knowing does not make the default answer god.

Think of all of the things through time we couldn't explain but now can. Rain, fire, movement of the sun, how different organs work, lightning, procreation. All at some point were put down to god as we didn't know how they worked. Now science can explain whats going on.

God is probably the least probable answer to how life started. Unless (and Im reaching here) god is some sort of scientist and we are in his "lab". At this point god isn't all powerful, isn't listening to your prayers and doesn't give a shit if you're good or have faith. He would be another organism that has evolved over millions of years. Just as Im sure at some point scientists will be able to make life in the lab in the future.

 

[Captain Blackout]

the "Atheists, It's time to turn the spotlight on you" topic has me ranting. Such quotes as:

xXGeckoXx: "I will raise the child as a scientist. I will not teach him that there is a god. If he tells me that he has heard of religions and wants to know what they are all about i will tell him but I will tell him why it is scientiffically7 implausible. then once he has been told he can choose."

MalthusX: "I will teach them how some people thought the world was made, but I will point out that evolution makes more sense."

Does it really make more sense? Can people really argue this logically for me? Yes, I realize you can't completely disprove or even offer significant evidence against the fuzzy, biased view of the earth's creation by a Christian, but try and offer some real evidence FOR evolution.

aruki: "A fair judge [God] wouldn't tarnish everyone from a family, street, town or country or race for the acts of two individuals from centuries ago. Assuming the bible to be correct that is."

Okay, I know this post wasn't typical post, normally people replied a bit more intelligently than that in the thread. But posts that showed little to no knowledge of the Christian side of the picture were fairly common.

Okay guys... post. Please do so in an intelligent manner (I reserve the right to make fun of every grammatical error found), and, if you directly mention elements of Christianity... make sure you have some idea what you are talking about.

PS: Don't hate me for making a religious thread.

I have been head-stomping all over anti-theists and getting my head stomped by them, and you go and do this!?! Do you have any clue how much harder you just made my job?!! Your lack of understanding is atrocious.

I have studied Christianity inside and out having been a member of the Catholic Church, Seventh Day Adventist, Church of Christ, Church of the Brethren, etc. I've had friends that ranged from hard-core fundamentalist, Mormon, and Taoist Christian. I'm Taoist Christian myself. I've also studied astrophysics, cosmology, evolution, medicine, biology, etc. etc. etc. Finally my hobby and true love is philosophy with backgrounds with both Eastern and Western.

You threaten to make fun of every grammatical error. Do I get to make fun of your complete lack of understanding of science? Do I get to make fun of your poorly thought out approach?

Look, atheism and theism aside the mountain of evidence for evolution is staggering. Do your homework, the information is out there. Every last Christian criticism against evolution I've ever heard is based on a poor understanding of the subject material or a complete refusal to look at hard evidence.

So again, thanks for sounding under-educated. You've just made my job exponentially harder. The next time I try and debate someone, your examples are going to come up and I'll spend even more time distancing myself from Christians who won't do their homework before spouting.

For example, I like to follow Taoist philosophy, but think their religion aspect(their gods) is totally stupid.

What gods? The Tao Te Jhing has one significant mention of gods, where Lao Tzu says the Tao is older than the gods (he's referring to the Chinese pantheon). Are you referring to mystical Taoism? If so, get away from it and stick to the Tao Te Jhing. If not, what the heck are you talking about? I'm Taoist and I don't know of any Taoist gods, with the possible exception of the Tao as an entity (although Lao Tzu would not agree with my view there, at least at first. He clearly did not see the Tao as a god in the traditional sense.)

 

[WayOutThere]

Don't hate me for making a religious thread.

I hate people who hate religous threads.

but try and offer some real evidence FOR evolution.

Why? That's been done so many times before. Its not even relevent topic of the thread, not really.

aruki: "A fair judge [God] wouldn't tarnish everyone from a family, street, town or country or race for the acts of two individuals from centuries ago. Assuming the bible to be correct that is."

As an atheist, let me say this is a typical, stupid, and annoying atheist argument. In Christianity, we are not being punished for Adam and Eves sin but because we are imperfect ourselves as a result of their actions.

xXGeckoXx: "I will raise the child as a scientist. I will not teach him that there is a god. If he tells me that he has heard of religions and wants to know what they are all about i will tell him but I will tell him why it is scientiffically7 implausible. then once he has been told he can choose."

I really, really hope you're problem with this quote is with the bad punctuation and not the content.

 

[Faux Fox Philodox]

PS: Don't hate me for making a religious thread.

The OP's of each hourly religion thread keep saying this at the end. If you know another religion thread is going to frustrate people further, don't make one. By making one, you are acknowledging that you care more about your silly rant being heard than anything else.

This should have been in the other thread as it deals with the exact topic of that thread.

 

[Gmano]

~4.6 billion years ago certain gases (all of which were present on earth) are struck by ultraviolet light (from the sun) they produce amino acids (the basis of things such as dna, rna, muscles etc). These formed the first "life". This early "life" was a simple collection of dna that absorbed the sunlight and the early gases and made energy. Eventually these formed the first cells and bacteria and began producing oxygen (16x more powerful than early H2S photosynthesis). With this abundance of life a new class emerged, this class was able to eat other life. We call these "sponges". These sponges evolved muscles and a nerve net becoming polyps and jellyfish. These evolved stomachs, hearts, lungs, legs, hands, feet, etc. and created the vast variety of life that populates this great planet of ours.

Alternativley: 6000 years ago a large, immortal deity created life in 7 days, buried all the dinosaur bones and layered out all the rocks so as to make the earth seem really old in order to "test our faith". eventually one of his angels got pissed off, became a snake and told adam and eve to eat an apple from a tree that the deity had placed there the deity got mad and kicked everybody out. Thus humanity came about.

I have layed out the most popular thoeries, the evolution one and the mainstream religions' (Judaism, Christianity and Islam) one. Pick for yourself.

 

[AhumbleKnight]

Religion and science will never coexist peacefully, because you have the two strongest fundamental aspects of human nature: faith, and truth. Do not flame me because I say truth, or I will force you to ride the triceratops with the fucking saddle. What I mean is, science gives answers and satisfies the human need for knowledge. We need to know WHY things are. Hence why Amelia Earhart is still studied even though all she was was some chick who crashed a plane. We don't know what happened, so we need to find out. Faith on the other hand gives a different sort of knowledge. Rather than breaking things down into their little bits, they look at a bigger picture that seems to explain things. Hence, faith. It's fire and water, the two cannot exist in the same place, which is why quite frankly we should stop bothering with this discussion.

Now watch as ten people quote lines from my post out of context and point out how I'm wrong.

Lolz. I don't take an issue with you saying truth. But if you say faith and truth are mutually exclusive factors, that pen that you're about to drop won't fall, because gravity takes faith. I think your definition of faith is messed up a bit here. Please say "religion" if you mean it (and Atheism, as it DOES require faith, is just as much of a religion as any theist religions are. Who are the gods? we are. What is morality? in the end, nothing. How did life begin? Atoms randomly appeared, (jump an eternity or two) atoms became able to bond (jump an eternity or two) See where I am going?). And yes, I love fulfilling people's prophecies.

@ICs2Xist
So far, all you have done is ridicule other peoples posts and call people 'noobs'. You have ignored every post that has either cited an example, as you requested, or put forward a logical argument.

OT: The argument against evolution seems to be constantly pointing out the holes and ignoring other scientific methods/theories. The fact that we can not explain everything with science does not mean that our explanations are instantly wrong, just incomplete. Given more data we will develop a better picture of how these things work. As we do so our understanding of how these things work will change and adapt based on quantifiable evidence, including evolution. Micro-evolution has been proven to work. It has been reproduced in a lab and observed in nature.

 

[Lisser]

The Christian (and all religions, actually) arguments are entirely based on ancient lore and faith. There is no scientific way to argue such beliefs except when they directly contradict what is observed. Much of the creation theories DO directly conflict with what is observed, so those theories are clearly false. However, this doesn't invalidate the religion in itself; religion is more of a philosophy, and it is only the stupid ones that take religious principles entirely literally. Religion is in a sense art; it is meant to be interpreted and spark thought. Too often though, it is used as a control system of the masses instead, which is a shame, frankly.

Amen

 

[Captain Blackout]

I'm referring to the worship of Chinese rulers.

Lao Tzu NEVER advocated the worship of Chinese rulers. Where did you get this from?

 

[grimsprice]

Look, atheism and theism aside the mountain of evidence for evolution is staggering. Do your homework, the information is out there. Every last Christian criticism against evolution I've ever heard is based on a poor understanding of the subject material or a complete refusal to look at hard evidence.

So again, thanks for sounding under-educated. You've just made my job exponentially harder. The next time I try and debate someone, your examples are going to come up and I'll spend even more time distancing myself from Christians who won't do their homework before spouting.

My religious friend, i am the purest form of atheist i can be, short of being anti-theist, and i pledge to stand beside you in the crusade(no pun intended) against ignorance and stupidity. You have my sympathy, and my respect. I know there are people out there like you, and finding them is a joy. I salute you.

 

[michael_ab]

think of this, creationism thinks that a word is made as a whole, the word is evolution, it has one meaning and one construction

evolution thinks a word is made from bits of other words

evol (evolve: to change progressivly, its opposite is regress: to change... um... backwards...)
+
tion (the act of)
=
evolution, the act of changing in a progressive manner

this i think is the quick and dirty way to explain how evolution works

 

[Notsomuch]

I've seen this enough to know that the OP has no interest in acknowledging Evolution or the facts surrounding it due to his own bias and ignorance. Obviously his standard for evidence extends way beyond the norm when it comes to the thing he is arguing against. For instance, I can present a human and chimpanzee skeleton as well as the early ancestor.

(side by side on top are Homo erectus on the right and homo sapien on the left. side by side on the bottom are chimpanzee on the left and australopithicus on the right.)

Australopithicus is believed to be the common ancestor between Chimpanzee, homo sapien and homo erectus and the similarities between all three are apparent. Of course, homo erectus is now extinct and the same with australopithicus. Yes, australopithicus is a transitional species as well, technically we all are.

Even the similarities between a very distant ancestor, a monkey, become glaring.

The actual evidence is there if you acknowledge it or not and it is abundant and unquestionable. We have seen evolution happen in real time, that is micro and macro evolution. We have invoked evolution through breeding of wild plants and animals. For instance, dogs and Banana's.

But of course the OP has made it clear that he will not acknowledge any evidence in favor of evolution due to his extremely high standards. Although he ironically lowers his standards to a point where he would acknowledge true what he himself described as unprovable and without any evidence. Stay classy mate!

 

[raxer92]

To tell you the truth,

1: I disapprove of the notion of god a.k.a. SANTA CLAUS, because over 20 people have been killed off in my family
2: I disapprove of the notion that a jewish zombie rules the land
3: People have used god to murder individuals, like that homosexual kid who died on a fence -_- in a university, I DEEPLY disapprove of these people.
4: I enjoy facts and provable facts rather than DOGMAS, which state that a jewish zombie rules over all of us.
5: It's been proven that, "when someone makes up their mind its nearly impossible to convince them otherwise"
6: Anyone who argues over something as ridiculous as this should do something better with their time.
7: No nothing is plausible to the eye of the beholder because as long as you have one set of ideals which you prefer more than the other than you'll truly never believe facts and science over your jewish zombie religion -_-

 

[The_Echo]

I'm deist, but I believe in the Christian God. Therefore, I don't believe the Bible is as accurate as it's claimed. I'm also into the Intelligent Design idea. So, yeah evolution is plausible, but it had to start somewhere.

 

[Captain Blackout]

Look, atheism and theism aside the mountain of evidence for evolution is staggering. Do your homework, the information is out there. Every last Christian criticism against evolution I've ever heard is based on a poor understanding of the subject material or a complete refusal to look at hard evidence.

So again, thanks for sounding under-educated. You've just made my job exponentially harder. The next time I try and debate someone, your examples are going to come up and I'll spend even more time distancing myself from Christians who won't do their homework before spouting.

My religious friend, i am the purest form of atheist i can be, short of being anti-theist, and i pledge to stand beside you in the crusade(no pun intended) against ignorance and stupidity. You have my sympathy, and my respect. I know there are people out there like you, and finding them is a joy. I salute you.

You just made my philosophical night. I've been all over these forums the last few days and it's been tiring. Thank you for that.

 

[headshotcatcher]

PS: Don't hate me for making a religious thread.

Fine, I'll hate you for knowingly starting a flame war. Honestly, if you cannot understand the basics of evoloution you are one of two things:
1. A moron
2. Too damned lazy to bother doing any basic research or readings on what it actually is (and then because you're trying to argue with it without any knowledge, a moron)

Neither have any place trying to contest it or imply it doesn't make sense. In the case of the second, here is a good place to start. You can read about some of the basic concepts without the "I'm not a monkey" bullshit most people would try and counter evolution theory with.

People have made Amino Acids appear from RANDOM CHANCE already, Amino Acids are the basics of life..

 

[grimsprice]

~4.6 billion years ago certain gases (all of which were present on earth) are struck by ultraviolet light (from the sun) they produce amino acids (the basis of things such as dna, rna, muscles etc). These formed the first "life". This early "life" was a simple collection of dna that absorbed the sunlight and the early gases and made energy. Eventually these formed the first cells and bacteria and began producing oxygen (16x more powerful than early H2S photosynthesis). With this abundance of life a new class emerged, this class was able to eat other life. We call these "sponges". These sponges evolved muscles and a nerve net becoming polyps and jellyfish. These evolved stomachs, hearts, lungs, legs, hands, feet, etc. and created the vast variety of life that populates this great planet of ours.

Alternativley: 6000 years ago a large, immortal deity created life in 7 days, buried all the dinosaur bones and layered out all the rocks so as to make the earth seem really old in order to "test our faith". eventually one of his angels got pissed off, became a snake and told adam and eve to eat an apple from a tree that the deity had placed there the deity got mad and kicked everybody out. Thus humanity came about.

I have layed out the most popular thoeries, the evolution one and the mainstream religions' (Judaism, Christianity and Islam) one. Pick for yourself.

You forgot one thing, it wasn't just a piece of fruit, is was fruit from the Tree of Knowledge.

 

[michael_ab]

wait wait lets make something clear, christianity is good, it teaches good values , through good stories.

is christiANS who fuck it up

 

[vampirekid.13]

the "Atheists, It's time to turn the spotlight on you" topic has me ranting. Such quotes as:

xXGeckoXx: "I will raise the child as a scientist. I will not teach him that there is a god. If he tells me that he has heard of religions and wants to know what they are all about i will tell him but I will tell him why it is scientiffically7 implausible. then once he has been told he can choose."

MalthusX: "I will teach them how some people thought the world was made, but I will point out that evolution makes more sense."

Does it really make more sense? Can people really argue this logically for me? Yes, I realize you can't completely disprove or even offer significant evidence against the fuzzy, biased view of the earth's creation by a Christian, but try and offer some real evidence FOR evolution.

aruki: "A fair judge [God] wouldn't tarnish everyone from a family, street, town or country or race for the acts of two individuals from centuries ago. Assuming the bible to be correct that is."

Okay, I know this post wasn't typical post, normally people replied a bit more intelligently than that in the thread. But posts that showed little to no knowledge of the Christian side of the picture were fairly common.

Okay guys... post. Please do so in an intelligent manner (I reserve the right to make fun of every grammatical error found), and, if you directly mention elements of Christianity... make sure you have some idea what you are talking about.

PS: Don't hate me for making a religious thread.

here, if you have a college level education you can visit whywontgodhealamputees.com and read through it for a very thorough explanation of everything regarding religion.

it makes more sense, because there is more evidence.

we see evidence of evolution. we see no evidence of an all powerful being.

also, assuming there is a god why is it that he wont stop wars, deaths, plagues etc.

if he can but wont he's malevolent, therefore not a god.
if he cant, he's not all powerful, therefore not a god.

...

 

[bjj hero]

Now watch as ten people quote lines from my post out of context and point out how I'm wrong.

While I do agree that science and faith do have different ways of looking at things, they can coexist. See Intelligent Design: the theory that evolution is so complicated that the only way it could be possible would be if it were directed by a higher power.

ID says there are things too complicated to have evolved so something (with a strong hint at god) had to have designed it. It directly clashes with evolutionary theory.

ID supporters find something they believe is irreducibly complex (meaning they cant see a function for anything smaller like half an eye) and say it could not have evolved.

No part of ID meshes with evolution or natural selection. It was designed as a way to get creationism taught in biology.