aww, now you had to go and get nasty, Roach...

Hey Steven, the Pope condemed Violent Video games the other day.

So I guess I'll see you in hell.

If there were a heaven and a hell, I'd hope that woman is rotting in the hottest place in hell.

Yes, I agree.

Sarn, then you might as well say that all evidence for evolution is "evidence" for creation. Anything that could be said to be evidence for evolution you can just turn around and say "God did it or created it to be like that". On one hand is a mechanistic explanation that doesn't require a leap of faith on the other is an explanation invoking the supernatural that only makes sense if you have those particular preconceived views of the world.
At some point you have to realise how silly it gets; as the situations used become more easily explained it sounds stupid to keep going "God did it". Eg. A rock falls off of a cliff because freeze-thaw shattering had slowly worked it loose until gravity overcame the rock's friction and pulled it over the edge. Or god actively hurled the rock over the edge, which, according to the basis of your argument, is a similarly valid explanation.

Exactly.

This situation can be explained by evolution in a way that requires less unknown entities than it being explained by creationism. You can always say that God set things in motion, but the point is that there are no valid arguments against evolution.

Every situation that someone tries to come up with to disprove evolution ends up strengthening it. But every reasonably solid scientific theory weakens the notion of a God because it provides yet another situation where God isn't needed.

That's the most absurd thing I have ever heard.

There is no valid argument for either side.

Both require an belief in something with no factual basis- God; matter that appears from nowhere; a supreme, benevolent being; an incredibly unlikely chain of events. Neither of them has any scientific merit, and any saying otherwise is nonsense.

Evolution has nothing to do with "matter that appears from nowhere." You're thinking of theories on the origin of the universe rather than the origin of life on Earth. These two are only related in that neither necessitates a god entity. Unlike with evolution, there are many competing legitimate scientific schools of thought on the beginning of the universe, mainly because the subject stretches our understanding of physics to the limit. On the other hand, the basics of natural selection and genetics are easily observable, which sounds like a factual basis to me.

Which is precisely why it's stupid to try and explain religion with science.

There's a fundamental difference in world view that will prevent evolutionists and creationists from ever seeing eye to eye. Perhaps you misread the intent of my post. I'm not arguing one point or the other, I'm arguing the futility of arguing one point or another. In essence, we're saying the same thing.

That's true perhaps, but that doesn't necessarily weaken the idea that there's a God. God could operate in such a way where he sets stuff in motion and then sits back to see what happens. Occaisionally he may directly effect events, but that doesn't mean he does it all the time. Imagine a boy with an ant farm. The boy sets the farm in motion by putting it together and adding the sand and whatnot, then he sits back to enjoy his creation. Now he can if needed take intervention, and if he does, it will amaze the ants, but he can just as easily watch and enjoy without intervening.

If you breed horses for a million years, would't you still end up with horses?

Maybe a short horse with long hair or a tall horse with short hair or something, but still... I have a very hard time beilieving it could ever become something non-horse.

[edit]
I'm haven't studied a lot on evolution, I'm just asking a question to learn, not... argue.

there is a difference between controlled breeding (such as with horses) and natural breeding... controlled breeding is far less likely to cause evolutionary changes but if you let horses run free and breed naturally in a million years yes you would still have a horse but there might be some noticable differences between the horses of this time and the horses a million years from now (maybe they will start walking upright and talking while digging up fossilized remains of humans)

Only in that there is no natural selection (unnatural selection?) It's still the same mechanism. If over millions of years, you selectively bred out the common traits of horses you would have a new species.

Controlled breeding is far more likely to cause changes if changes are desired. That's the whole point of controlled breeding. However, it's due to unnatural selection and the results almost always would be inferior to the natural ones out in the wilds (think of dogs and wolves, or wild cats and domesticated ones). Or wild bananas and the hyper disease sensitive ones we get from super markets. Most controlled breeding just produces things that are useful and usable in a controlled environment.

Natural selection doesn't need to change anything. Take some cave that has existed for a few million years isolated. The species might have adapted to it a million years ago perfectly, and would thereafter remain exactly the same. If you take wild horses to their best natural environment and the environment happens to stay the same (no sudden ice-ages), the horses are more likely to remain as they are than suddenly become something else, because there's no pressure to adapt (selection won't prefer changed attributes).

Genetics and natural selection are both valid, provable points. The self-adjustment of one's own physiology, on the other hand, even over thousands, millions of years, is not.

And, as I stated before, neither evolution nor creation have valid, provable arguments. Arguing either of them is a useless endeavor.

Who's trying to do that?:confused:

Also:

Haha, Wolfy is dumb.

A very, very large portion of the scientific community (let's say, oh, all of it) would disagree with you.

Your analogy is flawed. We're not talking about why things happened after the world came into being the way it is today. We're talking about why things are the way they are in the first place.

Like for instance God placed the moon into orbit at creation, or it was caught and pulled in by earth naturally.



They'd have just the opposite opinion 250 years ago. Would that mean they were right then? Science is useful, but no matter how advanced you think you are, some of what we think we know will eventually be considered ridicules. Reason and the senses are flawed tools and will never produce a perfectly reliable answer. Add bais, ego and other humans flaws to that and any sort of theory that is not directly observable should be given blind faith.

Er, that's exactly what he's talking about. It doesn't matter if it's at creation or after. One explanation is mechanistic, backed up by real evidence, the other is just a leap of faith.

Obi_Kwiet, it's neither.

It's generally accepted that an object the size of Mars hit a still molten Earth and launched a moon-sized amount of debris away, the moon then solidified in orbit around the Earth whilst the Earth solidified in Orbit around the Sun.

But the general point which is being made is that Evolution doesn't require any leaps of faith, creationism doesn't. The logical point-of-view should therefore be that we evolved because it requires no leaps of faith.

Heck, God could have created the whole universe from nothing 10 days ago and we could be none the wiser. I'd be just as justified believing this as any religious people are in believing their own creation stories. I'd also be a fool for believing this because there's nothing to suggest this.

Science is self-adjusting. Of course new facts are always coming in, and of course, 100 years from now, some of what we think may be considered false. That doesn't change the fact that evolution is a very, very, very plausible explanation for the origin of species.

Just because science can change does not mean it isn't reliable. Most theories that are now considered ridiculous never had a lot of evidence to begin with. But when everything you can find points to evolution being true, it's very hard to see it being false 100 years from now.

Like I said. It's simply an extremely plausible explanation. Are you to suggest that a leap of faith is better? "God did it." Is never and explanation. Ever.

Umm, the dude in the video.

Believing in science is also faith. Just because we have discovered 'laws' does not make them true. We have faith in the laws. But it is still faith. We have faith that they are true, but we can't know, because the only way to know they are true is for them to never be broken, and we shaint live to see if that never holds up. Like most things in life, even the most basic scientific principals can never be proven true. The only decisive proof is that which proves them false.

Science is based on experiments, observation, and experience. Period. Faith is blind. Quit trying to sugar-coat it.

There's a difference between witnessing and recording genetic mutations over time, and believing some scary space wizard made everything with a snap of his space wizard fingers.

How can we trust that the "decisive proof" actually proves them false? Sure, it may appear to us to prove them false, but it takes a leap of faith to believe that the conditions of falsehood we have set are accurate, or even that the observations actually meet said conditions. How are we to know if what we observe is true? Light strikes our eyes and is interpreted by smaller structures therein; our other senses rely on similar processes. These structures send signals up the nerves and into parts of our brain, which must communicate with each other and with the higher brain functions, which interpret and combine the signals they get in order to generate what we call observations. Think of all those layers of abstraction! If you ask me, it's rather shaky ground on which to base any claim of knowledge.

Why is my name attached to this picture every time it's posted now?

I like Wikipedia's definition of faith:
Science is based on logic, reason and empirical data.

What you're trying to do is create some sort of "reasonable faith." It's better, semantically, to say reasonable prediction of the future. My entire life I have witnessed what has happened when one drops a ball. It falls to the ground. If I hold a ball in the air in preparation to drop it, I can say with some damn good certainty that it'll fall to the ground. That is not faith. That is a reasonable assumption based off of my life experiences and hundreds of years of scientific data that has now become common knowledge.

Basically what you're saying is that it's no more unreasonable to believe in the supernatural than it is to "believe" in science.

You are right in that nothing inductive can truly be proven. Science is mostly inductive, except I suppose the parts based around mathematics, which is deductive and can be proven true. We can never be 100% sure that when gasoline in an engine is ignited it will cause the corresponding piston to move, eventually creating circular motion and moving the vehicle. Strangely, that doesn't stop mechanical engineers from designing engines, because their engineering has been "proven" beyond a reasonable doubt to be true.

You're twisting the small fraction of uncertainty found in science into enough doubt that it requires faith to "believe" in it. I'm pretty sure there's a logical fallacy for things like that, but the name escapes me.

Yeah, what he (^^^) said.

Oh, right. To be honest I just wanted an excuse to call you Sran_Cadpill. :saddowns:

Disagree or not, it remains true. Neither argument is concrete, and that is ultimately wht science comes down to. Nothing can be proven or repeated, and arguing for against either is useless.

[And everyone missed that awesome trick I pulled on Wolfy]

Ummm...no. We've documented adaptation. The difference between evolution and adaptation? Time span.

I don't know why you're arguing with me; I don't give two s***s.

I already have my own personal point of view, and barring any absolute, concrete, irreversable facts, nothing either side says can change it.

I'm a bit irritated with the fact, however, that neither side has a good argument, yet both insist on their view being absolutely correct.

Unless you're responding because of my initial remark about hell and Jim Morisson, but that was obviously sarcasm, as we all know he would say it was totally worth it.

No, the thing is, you're putting your fingers in your ears and screaming "I'm Steven, I'm awesome, and because I don't believe that people are smart enough to notice and record changes in biological systems around them, means that they don't happen!"

They're just observations; nothing can be claimed as absolute, and until they can be, I don't care.

Also, I am not going to read this thread anymore; just thought I would let you know.

That's true, Steven. Nothing can be claimed as absolute. The holocaust didn't happen, I can show you evidence, but I can't show you it actually happening, and besides, observations mean nothing.

There are a lot of people a lot smarter than us who have very good arguments for evolution. Just because you haven't read them doesn't mean they don't exist.

You mean kinda like how even though I've never seen God doesn't mean he doesn't exist?

Stupid statements like yours are exactly the kind of thing I am talking about.

The irony is incredible.

I knew I said I wasn't going to read it anymore, but my curiosity got the best of me, and I am glad it did, otherwise I would have missed that little gem.

Those people you were talking about must be a lot smarter than you.

[Now I'm done.]

No... not at all. I mean that you simply need to educate yourself and that's all there is to it.

[Edit, nevermind]