Remember when "atheist" had a negative connotation?

Jeff on a Starship wrote:

Fossils prove that God must have been a total noob at creating stuff for several billion years..

Why didn't he just get it right and have everything remain static?

What fun would that have been?

Jeff Wigand wrote:

thejeff wrote:

FWIW, I don't think Christianity and adaptation are mutually exclusive. Small sample size, I know :-)

Evolution, the way that some people try to use it, is no more provable than God is provable. Nothing about the theory of evolution comes close to explaining the addition of genetic material, how life came from non-life, or how complex organ systems came to be. That's just off the top of my head :-)

Hoping that something will happen or evening believing that something will happen or even having faith in a person is not that same as faith in a religious context.

I think you quoted the wrong post? :-)

Regardless, I think faith is faith. Scientists have faith that experimentation will one day explain the mysteries of the universe. Christians have faith that Jesus is their Lord and Savior. Illini have faith that the Cubs won't suck next year. All of those have varying levels of physical evidence to back them up :-)

From the Simpsons: "this sunrise was brought to you by God, the invisible giant you turn to when you're about to die"

In that case I will follow his example and believe in myself. At least in my case I will believe in something of which I have direct evidence.

thejeff wrote:

Snooze Alarm wrote:

If there is no higher power than God, than he himself is an atheist. I'll follow his example in this......

LOL, nice. I also like "can God create a rock so heavy that He cannot lift it?"

:-)

FWIW, I think it is ok for God to "believe in himself", which would keep him from being an atheist.

A day is the length of time a planetary body takes to make one rotation. One day on Venus takes about 5820 hours to complete, or about 243 days on Earth. The Earth formed over 4.5 billion years ago from a planetary nebula. The oldest undisputed fossils of living organisms on the Earth date back 3 billion years.

That sounds about right. Thanks!

(My point is, if there was no planetary body formed yet, then who is to say how long a "day" was? My guess is: billions of years...

thejeff wrote:

Jeff Wigand wrote:

A day is the length of time a planetary body takes to make one rotation. One day on Venus takes about 5820 hours to complete, or about 243 days on Earth. The Earth formed over 4.5 billion years ago from a planetary nebula. The oldest undisputed fossils of living organisms on the Earth date back 3 billion years.

That sounds about right. Thanks!

(My point is, if there was no planetary body formed yet, then who is to say how long a "day" was? My guess is: billions of years...

Thanks for taking the time to respond. I'm glad you have faith and it seems like an open mind. I'll continue searching for the truth (whatever that is) and who knows I may be born again one day.

Darwin talked about change in kind. However, there is no observable evidence of this. For example, finches beaks have changed but that's due to adaption and they are still finches and still the same species.

Darwinian evolution is not observable, scientists cannot come up with a change in kind or change in species. What we are left with is a belief.

Earth to Jeff wrote:

Darwinian evolution is not observable, scientists cannot come up with a change in kind or change in species. What we are left with is a belief.

Of course we have change in species. Horses and Zebras, Lions and Tigers, Humans and Neandertals.

Earth to Jeff wrote:

Darwin talked about change in kind. However, there is no observable evidence of this. For example, finches beaks have changed but that's due to adaption and they are still finches and still the same species.

Observable evidence

It is a shame that human society hasn't been around collecting data on the subject for hundreds of thousands of years to directly observe the collection of small changes over eons to amount to the complete change of the species of multicellular organisms. But since all the evidence points to that very conclusions, that's what we're left with.

Jeff on a Starship wrote:

Earth to Jeff wrote:

Darwinian evolution is not observable, scientists cannot come up with a change in kind or change in species. What we are left with is a belief.

Of course we have change in species. Horses and Zebras, Lions and Tigers, Humans and Neandertals.

If species is defined as "able to produce fertile offspring", then no, we have not observed Darwinian evolution. We have observed adaptation. We have not observed one species becoming another species.

thejeff wrote:

Jeff on a Starship wrote:

Of course we have change in species. Horses and Zebras, Lions and Tigers, Humans and Neandertals.

If species is defined as "able to produce fertile offspring", then no, we have not observed Darwinian evolution. We have observed adaptation. We have not observed one species becoming another species.

Those animals are different species with common ancestors. They adapted by becoming a different species.

Then we are in agreement, we have not observed Darwinian evolution.

Let's just call it evolution and say that we do have species arising from previous species..

grizzly bears and polar bears mate and produce viable offspring. Those are 2 different species.Part of the 'problem' is because some folks don't really understand how 'species' are defined.Evolution is not intended to outline how life started. You're misunderstanding evolution if you think it is.

This illustrates a complete misunderstanding of science AND faith.

Science illustrates repeatability. It's not based simply on "because xyz told me so"

This is is another part of the problem with this kind of discussion. The faithful just make sh** up to avoid reality. There is NOTHING in the text that supports your argument here. Nothing at all.

On the other hand, there is a rational argument to make that if days didn't exist, any sane author wouldn't use that metric in their story.

Which creation story?

And don't suggest 'the biblical one', because there are 2.

And there are literally hundreds of others.

God is no more provable than the Dreamtime of the Australian Aborigine. Or Santa Claus. But if you'd put the scientifically supportable theories of evolution alongside Santa, there's little point in a conversation at all.

This is completely unsupportable. Humans are no more born with a similar conscience than dogs or chickens are. Does that similarly point them to your god's character? This idea of universal right has been the source of endless, unfettered violence and destruction for centuries. And it hinges on the very point I'm making.

What exactly is this "god's image"? Whose god? your god? those become fighting words. Hell, they become fighting words when two people agree on the same god, never mind when they don't.

Humans are born with incredibly rich diversity. Do you suppose your god is gay?

I've never, ever heard any atheist make that claim. On the other hand, the faithful make that claim about their belief system routinely.

Well, that's an easy one .. what's this "soul" you speak about?

IMO, the discussion of a deity shouldn't simply revolve around creation. Hundreds, if not thousands, of deities have been believed in who had nothing to do with creation.

Reducing the discussion to simply 'your god' is to already tip the hat in your favor. It's like that Colbert show where he present the climate change discussion between 2 individuals ... as opposed to the reality of one person arguing against anthropogenic c/c and 99 arguing for it.

On what grounds do you deny the thousands of other gods that people have believed in, many for far longer than your jesus one.

Interesting thoughts :-)

Wow, there is a lot here, and I am not as good as you are at inserting quotes...but I will try to respond to your points.

1. I think you misunderstood my comment about faith and science. My point is that both sides have faith (one side has faith in a Savior, the other side has faith in the scientific method.) Both have faith that their choice will bring them the results they hope to find.

2. Making sh** up: I take issue with this. The Bible regularly teaches with parables and allegory. It also regularly teaches by presenting actual historical events. Figuring out which is intended in a given passage is not random guesswork; on the contrary, linguists have studied how the Hebrew and Greek was used and compared it to thousands of other manuscripts.

3. Creation Story: Yes, the Biblical one. To use your words, to say there are 2 creation stories "illustrates a complete misunderstanding" of Genesis. Genesis 2 goes into great detail about an even in Genesis 1. Yes, there are hundreds of others, but I will not speak for them.

4. Similar consciences: Humans, across the board, recognize that murder, rape, theft, lying, and more are "wrong", and that their inverses are "right". There are exceptions, certainly, that are due to indoctrination, mental illness, or even simple caving to temptation. But, there is certainly a universal "right" and "wrong".

5. Atheists claiming science already holds the answers. Chalk up my comment to a small sample size, then, on both our parts :-)

6. On what grounds do I deny thousands of other gods? For one, polytheism is logically unsupportable. You simply cannot have multiple omnipotent gods. That eliminates 99.999999% of the other gods out there. You are left with 3 monotheistic beliefs: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. I consider Christianity to be the fulfillment of the God that Judaism teaches, and Islam to be a perversion of that one God. There is plenty of support for this claim beyond "faith", though I consider "faith" to be a key component of my belief. For instance, you can look at the % chance that Jesus fulfilled OT prophecy, for instance. You can look at Mohammad's personal stake in swaying Meccans, his exposure to Roman Christianity, and his perversion of accepted Biblical teachings of the time.

I look forward to hearing back from you :-)

At least you realize that those three share the same imaginary God. So many think Allah is some other dude.

Its just a fact that mohammad tore the moon in half and rode on the back of a winged horse to heaven....

Whats so unusual about that?

Or Adam and Eve?

A woman made from the rib bone of a man?

6000 year old earth?

Sure, and we wonder why cultures live in squalor and massacre each other.