Evolution vs. Intelligent Design

So Atheism is a religion......Makes sense.

 

I did tell you what you could not believe IN THIS THREAD!!!
You subsequently have the right to believe it anyway!
I have no power of enforcement but all the right in the world to make an ass of myself and make demands.
A strawman adds layers that aren't originally there. I haven't done that. You have. The right of speech and the power to enforce are not related.
This all started with you asking what right someone had to tell you what to do. You didn't ask what right someone had to make you do it. Different question.
Should people at rallies with signs that say "You must repent!" be arrested!?

 

Hmmm. I heard that the surplus water from Noahs flood was taken by a wind to Neptune,
where it shines to this day as a warning beacon against incoming rogue angels*

Now, if Behe is out there too, what does it portend? What might happen?

*reference on request, i didnt make that up

 

And you can tell people the world is flat. They have a right to believe it is round. You do not have a right to tell them they cannot believe that. See the difference?

 

You are saying that you have a RIGHT to tell people what they can or cannot believe. You don't. I can tell you that you shouldn't be a bigot, but I don't have a RIGHT to tell you, you CANNOT to be a bigot. You have every right to be a bigot. Do you understand the English language and sentence structure?

 

What is my punishment for having violated this dictum you have invented?
Would I meet the people shouting "You must repent!" in my jail cell?
"...you CANNOT to be a bigot."
You sure you want to lecture me on the English language and sentence structure?
LOL!

 

I know what Genesis says, I'm asking you how it is logically possible for the Earth to be created as a "formless void". What does that mean? Void signifies nothingness. How can the Earth be created and be nothingness at the same time?

I don't know, but I also don't know why insects were brought up in the first place.

Sorry, I didn't see where you had said "most mammals". However, that doesn't line up with what the Bible says because Genesis declares that birds were created before ANY land animal, not before MOST land animals. And animals are not solely composed of mammals anyways. Dinosaurs were animals. They existed far before birds.

How does the snowball earth hypothesis relate at all to Genesis? It is only a hypothesis after all, and not at all proven. So, I don't know how it would help your case at all.

And how does there not being mountains when the Earth first formed have to do with Genesis?

Um, the Bible, Jews, Biblical scholars. The only people who have a problem with this are evangelical Christians.

"Can you, like him, spread out the skies, hard as a molten mirror?"

-Job 37:18

No, I don't believe in your apologetics, if that is what you're asking.

The point was that no scientist today believes that some unknown agent did something undefined. What about the Big Bang deals with unknown agents doing something undefined?

 

Science cannot explain what happened before the Big Bang. They say there was a singularity from which all time, space, matter and energy sprung forth creating the universe. (pretty much what the bible says) That there was a creation out of nothing, that it happened, and that you must believe it happened or you are a heretic.

Scientists do not know what space is.
Scientists do not know how time works.
Scientists do not know exactly what matter is.
Scientists do not know how gravity works.
Scientists do not fully understand why light is both a particle and a wave.
Scientists do not know what dark matter is.
Scientists do not know what dark energy is.
Scientists cannot explain why the universe is expanding.
According to scientists, the Universe expanded at an ever slowing rate. But now it is expanding at an increasing rate. They have no explanation for that.

There is no proof of God, and there is no proof of any of the above. Yet all of these things are taught in the schools. These are all theories. To believe in these theories you must have something called "faith".

 

Do you believe science and biblical Christianity dovetail well?
Do you believe the Big Bang just sort of describes Genesis?
So how did the earth come to be before any of the rest of the universe?

 

If lack of any religion is a religion, then it makes sense. As the old saying goes, atheism is a religion the same way that NOT collecting stamps is a hobby.

 

Maybe we didn't communicate. You can train a small child into a belief the world is flat, and at a certain age this becomes ineradicable. Through the rest of his life, that child will never accept a round world regardless of any and all evidence. Do you have the right to do that to your child?

 

I think you have a bit of a misunderstanding here. A theory is a proposed explanation for a set of related observations. You do not "believe in" a theory, you either accept that it's the "best fit" explanation, or you propose another explanation you think fits better. Hopefully, we understand that when we are young, scientific theories are presented baldly as "they way things are". As we grow more mature, we come to understand (sometimes!) that these theories rest on observations, and cannot be better than the observations they rest on. Eventually, we reach the point where we understand that not all observations are well explained. We can observe gravity and measure it with great precision, but precisely what causes it remains a mystery. We can construct equations describing mass and matter which are reliable over wide ranges of conditions, but there is always more to learn about the fine details. Always.

There is a tendency I've seen for some people to argue (indirectly, but still) that because science has not learned everything, therefore science has learned nothing. And that because all explanations are incomplete and tentative, therefore they are all fiction.

What is probably most worth looking at, is whether an idea can be tested. In science, tests can disprove wrong ideas, but they can never prove right ideas. They can only support ideas, pending the next test. But if an idea cannot be tested even in principle, then it's not a scientific idea. It's not necessarily wrong, of course, it's just not within the boundaries of science.

 

Perhaps you need not be so literal. It makes perfect sense to me. First there was nothing, then God said let there be light. Then he made the Sun. Then the Earth and Moon. And so on.

Omission of facts is not a denial of facts. I am still giving you a plausible explanation of what is meant in the bible. You can choose not to believe it.

And God said, "Let the waters under the sky be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear." And it was so.
[1:10] God called the dry land Earth, and the waters that were gathered together he called Seas. And God saw that it was good.

It was a reference to a plate tectonics that was mentioned I think.

I don't have a problem with it.

I'm not asking you to believe.

Yes, they do. It is called the Big Bang Theory. The singularity. Cosmological Inflation.

 

I understand perfectly.

So you don't believe in the God.
And you don't believe in the Big Bang either right? Because it is just a theory.
Some people theorize that God exists.
How are you going to test the Big Bang Theory?
Einstein did not believe in the Big Bang Theory.

 

Or a personal god. See my signature.

 

Are you not the one that has been arguing that Genesis literally lines up with our scientific facts? And that isn't what the Bible says. First the Earth was created as nothingness, somehow. Next light. Then the Sun and Moon.

I choose not to believe it because you haven't given me any reason to believe it. Sure, if we play fast and loos with the verses, we can make it appear to have a rough parallel to actual scientific fact.

And how does that parallel the scientific hypothesis of a Snowball Earth?

It was not mentioned until you brought it up.

You seemed to scoff when I said that is what firmament meant.

The Big Bang theory doesn't deal with what caused the singularity to expand.

 

You give no such indication yet.

There being no evidence of any gods, or any tests that can establish they exist or not, this is a matter of belief.

The "big bang" is actually a proposed explanation for a set of replicable observations. You don't "believe in" the big bang, at best you accept that this is a tentative "best-fit" explanation for what has been observed. Subject to change with the next observation, as always.

You are confusing the scientific meaning of "theory" (a comprehensive explanation for a broad set of observations, tests, supported hypotheses, successful predictions, and the like) with the vernacular meaning of "theory" (any old congenial hunch or guess). Scientifically, nobody can theorize about any gods because there is no set of replicable observations and no tests. And no successful predictions.

By understanding what we OUGHT to observe if the theory is correct, and then look to see if we DO observe it. Any prediction the theory makes that can be subjected to observation, properly represents the risk that the theory's predictions were wrong, so the theory must be wrong. And so the cosmic microwave background radiation was a clear, necessary prediction of the big bang theory (which at the time was a speculation). So OK, people went out and looked for this radiation, which the theory predicted in detail, from distribution to temperature to wavelengths. And BINGO, there it was EXACTLY as predicted. And it was that single prediction, more than anything else, that started cosmologists thinking maybe the theory had something going for it. A real test.

If so, it's because at the time it wasn't a theory yet, it was a proposal like the steady state. Today, I'm sure Einstein would accept this theory (you don't "believe in" a theory, that's for religion) because Einstein respected tests and evidence.

 

It doesn't say the Earth was created as nothingness. They are telling you a story. Try to follow along.


'In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, [1:2] the earth was a formless void"
This is the story of how God created the heavens and the earth...the earth did not exist at first, then God said, "Let there be light"
See? The bible has been translated into several different languages before it gets to you in English too.

The problem is that you expect a word for word accuracy of the bible for some ungodly reason. Why? What difference does it make? It is always subject to different interpretations depending on the reader.

How does it not? Now you are just being intransigent. I have related it both ways, whether you choose to "get it" or not.

And so what? Just saying Mountains and land masses were formed much impart due to plate tectonics. That is a scientific fact.

Do you have a point about the word firmament? I don't know exactly what you are getting at.

And that is the entire point now isn't it? You have to have FAITH to believe the theory beyond the singularity because there is no proof or scientific calculation that can explain it.

 

Sure I have.

The Universe is evidence that God exists.

Nobody has replicated the Big Bang.

There is no provable test that space exists, yet it is scientific dogma that space does in fact exist.

This is fantastic. God designed it that way.

We can hypothesize that he would accept Christ just as well.

 

Then I really have no idea what it means when Genesis says that the Earth was created as a void.

...Let there be light has nothing to do with the creation of the Earth.

Well, is it not a divinely inspired document? I am not expecting it to be accurate, you are arguing that it is literally accurate.

How does it not? Uh... well, that verse describes the creation of the Seas and says nothing about ice covering the Earth.

Right, but it isn't relevant at all.

I was simply pointing out that the Biblical "sky" is not what we know to be the sky today.

What do you mean "believe the theory beyond the singularity"? The Big Bang theory doesn't go "beyond" the singularity.

 

Really, how so?

That really doesn't address what he says and isn't particularly relevant.

Uh... there isn't evidence that space exists?

Nope, he completely rejected your religion as childish.

 

You just lack the ability to understand what the words mean.
It has to do with the creation of the Stars and the Sun and the galaxies.

Yes, divinely inspired. God didn't send us copies in triplicate from Heaven. I have not argued that it is literally accurate. Quite the opposite. I have said that it comports to what scientists believe today.

Ice is made out of water. Once the ice melted, the earth and mountains were exposed and the water gathered into the seas.

I thought is was.

Still not getting what you are talking about here.

Exactly. That would take a leap of faith. We can't tell you what happened before then, we just know that something happened. Believe us, God exists. No difference here.

 

I told you how it doesn't match. You think earth was the first thing made in the universe and science agrees?
Really?

 

"In the beginning there was nothing. And then God said, 'let there be light'! And there was still nothing, but you could see it a lot better."

Sorry, couldn't resist.

 

No, I don't think that the earth was the first thing made and I have said that several times. Reading comprehension on this site is terrible!