Evolution vs. Creation

[pophead]

so... how old is the earth then? is it 10-15 billion years old? or is it like 100 billion?
the person who wrote the article in talk-oragins I find is deseptive. I'll quote: that the odds against DNA assembling by chance are 10 40,000 to one (Hoyle, 1981). This is true, but highly misleading. (end quote)
so if it's true it's still true, even if DNA isn't randomly formed the chances are still slim. actually the chances are scientifically impossible.

 

[slipknottin]

I'll quote: that the odds against DNA assembling by chance are 10 40,000 to one (Hoyle, 1981). This is true, but highly misleading. (end quote)
so if it's true it's still true, even if DNA isn't randomly formed the chances are still slim. actually the chances are scientifically impossible.

May I ask you where you are getting your probabilities from? What is the probability of DNA forming if it isnt random?

And BTW- if them forming randomly is scientific possible, albeit unlikely, then why would they not form if it wasent random? The chance of it happening would be greatly increased, not decreased.

 

[pophead]

did you read the link you attached to your other post? if something is over 100000000000000000000(about 20 zeros, not sure exactly) to one it is scientifically impossible.

 

[slipknottin]

did you read the link you attached to your other post? if something is over 100000000000000000000(about 20 zeros, not sure exactly) to one it is scientifically impossible.

First off, If there is a chance of something happeneing, then its not impossible, regardless of how minute the chance is.

Second, if DNA is not formed randomly, then the chance of it forming is signficantly higher. Not impossible at all. Perhaps even likely depending on the actual probability data.

 

[Watcher74]

Well if we are going to keep posting about religions, I might as well post my own thoughts on the matter...

I don't have anything against God. Organized religion is another matter. Humans have constantly used their religious beliefs to look down on other people, kill other people, and suppress any ideas that are contrary to those religious beliefs.

I grew up attending a small Southern Baptist church. My mother still plays the piano there every Sunday. Growing up I believed wholeheartily in my religion and studied the Bible regularily.

As I got older I stopped attending church but still believed in it. Then I joined the Navy, got out of the Bible Belt, and visited places all over the world.

And things started to not make sense.

Now some protestant faiths are not very forgiving. If you are not Church of Christ, for example, you go to Hell. Catholics...same thing. Baptists are pretty lenient. If you believe about Jesus and all that, you go to Heaven.

Now all the Muslims believe just as strongly, if not much more so than the Christians. But even the leniency of my faith put them in Hell. Buddist? Sorry. Hindu...feel bad for you.

But don't most of them believe the same about us? And then I started asking people a simple question when I found out about their religion.

Do you believe in the faith you were born into?

99% of the time they have told me yes.

So, I am to believe, that I just happen to be so lucky as to be part of the minority that "lucked out" and happened to be raised in the "right" religion to get me to Heaven. Whew! That was lucky.

But don't all the others that don't agree with me, believe the same thing?

So I started to realize that a loving God would not do that. He would not make a creature that most often stuck with what he was raised to believe in, go to great trouble to ensure a belief system that would get them to paradise, and then allow a multitude of mutually exclusive religions to exist. Thereby ensuring that most of them went to eternal damnation.

It's a big crap shoot.

That's waaaaaay too sloppy and stupid for the God I was raised to believe in to do.

So I must be missing something...

Muslims, Buddists, Hindu, Christians, etc., must all have a way to get to Heaven. But how? By being a good person?

Well, my faith clearly stated that you do not get to Heaven through good works.

So I slowly turned Agnostic.

And then one man, already dead, made me finally come out and admit to myself that I truly did not believe in any god any more.

Carl Sagan.

Sagan had problems with how organized religion had suppressed scientific achievements, but not with religion itself. He often pleaded in his writings why religion so violently opposed the beneficial search for knowledge. Why the Church must react so woundedly when we state a simple fact such as: The Earth goes around the Sun.

He was a great man. A good man. A loving father and husband. He worried over mankind, and wrote books that brought out so much wonder in myself about life, and the universe, that I finally realized how much more amazing and exciting and likely it is that we are simply children of the universe.

Believe in what ever you want to believe in. But don't go throwing it around in people's faces. For no one ever wins those arguments.

But the only things you can prove are what we can put in our hands. And God will never be seen, even if He does exist.

But when I die, I now believe I will just be no more. And so far, with an estimated 13 billion humans that have ever existed. No one can prove that is not true.

All we can prove, is that as far as we can know, they are simply gone.

 

[MattyJFly]

From things as broad as the water cycle to the intricately balanced system of the food chain, to the geniously complicated inner workings of organisms (see http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=315976 ), there's just so much that works out perfectly in the favor of life. And indeed, if just one or two things were out of place, it'd all come crashing down. To me, conscious design's behind it all, and whenever I find myself doubting the existence of God, all I have to do is walk outside and take a look.

 

[Watcher74]

Of course, because we are alive to witness such things, a great multitude of factors had to have come out within a certain type of spectrum for life to even exist.

The vast majority of the universe is dead. Nothing alive at all.

And to think that the Earth was made for us because we have evolved to exist within the parameters of this planet is flawed thinking.

If we survive long enough we may come across another planet with life. Living in conditions, that to us, seems hellish.

But to them it is paradise.

Everything points to the reasoning that life took advantage of decent conditions for life on this rock, and evolved for billions of years to live comfortably on it. Not that the Earth was "designed" to support what the human body required for life.

 

[slipknottin]

From things as broad as the water cycle to the intricately balanced system of the food chain

Life makes life possible? Im not entirely sure I understand. Creatures have always evolved to capitalize on a niche. The water cycle (I presume your talking nitrogen cycle) and the food chain are symptoms of that, and show no real order other than that.

Im still wondering how you believe that a higher being planned all this perfectly, yet there are billions of organisms that have gone extinct. So part of intelligent design involves non-intelligent design?

 

[flyingfish]

I voted creation. I also believe in Microevolution, but not Macroevolution. In other words one species cannot evolve into another species, but can adapt/evolve within it's own species. So maybe I should have voted "both". And science isn't always based on what you can see. (quasars for instance, or wind, or gravity, or sound waves, the list goes on) Quite often science is based around factual effects of things unseen. I did not see my daughter break the toy, but she was the only one there and the toy is broken - she broke the toy.(a simple example) Prayer has been scientifically researched and the outcome is that prayer has a real affect on people to help heal. That doesn't mean everyone who gets prayed for heals, but it raises the odds. Even when the sick person didn't know they were being prayed for this applied. If we life evolved from ameobas then why are there still ameobas? :hang:

 

[slipknottin]

I voted creation. I also believe in Microevolution, but not Macroevolution. In other words one species cannot evolve into another species, but can adapt/evolve within it's own species.

Both macro and micro have been observed and are now documented fact.


How these processes function is what the theory of evolution attempts to explain. It does not attempt to prove that evolution exists, as that is fact.