Saying that faith hinders human advancement is silly, mainly because scientists that exist from all worldviews... are still scientists. Copernicus, Descartes, Newton, believed in God and Einstein was a firm non-atheist; Harvard, Yale, and other universities were established by Christians for the purpose of discovering the natural world; modern day Christian scientists still exist as well (the most notable that comes to mind is Francis Collins who headed the Human Genome project).
This video explains why faith hindered Newton and many other famous scientists:
Furthermore, while Einstein was not an atheist and considered himself an agnostic, he vehemently rejected the notion of a personal God and is quoted saying, "It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it."
Saying you are God, or that the Flying Spaghetti Monster is real and God, is not the same as a Christian professing belief in his/her God. It may be true that they may have come to their [initial] belief existentially, however the Bible isn't just a book. It has historical merits that put it beyond just say-so. If that were not true, I'm sure Christianity would have fallen a long time ago under all this antagonism. Faith is not blind, it is a trust based on reason. You can argue the merits of that reasoning, but this is how, even people today, use this word.
Your definition is not consistent with the widely held definition of faith. That is, faith is trust placed with complete disregard to proof or evidence. Faith, by definition, does not utilize rigorous logic and reasoning.
Furthermore, religion was not placed under extreme and frequent scrutiny until this past century or so. Simply renouncing religion, for a very long period of time in history, would have led to execution. For example, Copernicus and Galileo were met with extreme resistance and were condemned by the Church because of heliocentrism. Religion has been used by people for centuries to fill in the gaps for events or phenomena for which they didn't understand. It gives people a reason to be content with ignorance. As technology and science progressed, explanations for these phenomena were put forth and tested, which in turn developed into theories, which are completely devoid of any reference to the supernatural. So, the reason Christianity hadn't fallen a long time ago is because challenging it would have led to severe punishment, usually death, and there was a lag in science and technology in providing explanations for natural phenomena. If people two thousand years ago knew about the theories we have today, religion wouldn't exist.
On March 07 2011 07:25 sermokala wrote: Religion has given the very basis of ethics. It is a sad fact that there is no point to nor any benefit to "good" or "bad" scientifically. The Holocaust was an interpretation of evolution as a state policy.
1.) Einstein was a Deist, not an agnostic. Deist is defined as belief in the existence of a god on the evidence of reason and nature only, with rejection of supernatural revelation "My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble minds. That deeply emotional conviction of the presence of a superior reasoning power, which is revealed in the incomprehensible universe, forms my idea of God." The Quotable Einstein, Princeton University Press
"I'm not an atheist, and I don't think I can call myself a pantheist. We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangement of the books but doesn't know what it is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even the most intelligent human being toward God. We see the universe marvelously arranged and obeying certain laws but only dimly understand these laws. Our limited minds grasp the mysterious force that moves the constellations." Einstein and Religion by Max Jammer, Princeton University Press)
2.)As a naturalist, I don't think that you have any say on a definition of a term that nothing to do with your worldview. As someone with a naturalistic worldview, you believe in observational evidence, and nothing else (though many of the fallacies associated with your worldview require some sense of faith, in terms of the definition you provided)
If you see my earlier post, I present a different, more accurate definition in terms of "Faith" regarding Biblical Christianity. I would suggest you use that term when referring to Christianity.
3.)Also, as a naturalist, it is hypocritical to imply morality in anything, because morality is based on a transcendent being setting rules to live by, that are not necessarily enforced by the law of the land. You have no moral compass save your own personal, subjective one. There is no objective moral code as a naturalist, other than natural selection. And why would there be? There is nothing to be truly held accountable to except one's own well being.
The only way "morality" can exist on an objective basis is if there is a transcendent, higher power setting it. There is no transcendent higher power in a naturalist worldview, thus no need for morality to exist. When it does, it creates yet another Logical Fallacy in the framework of the naturalist's worldview.
4.) As for the Hitler notion, take a moment to consider the fact that anybody can say they are acting "in the name of God," but what you have to do is look at their actions and beliefs to truly understand their motivations. Most "crusades" in history, whether they be in the middle east, or a self-proclaimed crusade by Hitler to eradicate a race, are simply a push for power/resources/political gain while using a religious mask, if you will, to deny responsibility for atrocities committed. Hitler was not a christian of biblical Christianity, that much can be arrived at as the evidenced shown through his actions and his life.
His speeches and actions, however, do give credence to him being an atheist, however, if he was that, or something else, we will never know.
5.) Your statement regarding Christianity being eradicated if we had the current knowledge 2000 years ago is absolutely fallacious, as we simply have no way of knowing that. Not only this, but you operate under the assumption that Christian beliefs have not been affirmed by many recent scientific discoveries. Take for instance, the more we learn about the Universe, the more we realize there are precise conditions that must have been in place for it to exist in the state it is, that is, to be able to support life. In past decades, we have discovered that the Universe had a distinctive beginning (The Big Bang, as some call it) which brings the question, what caused the big bang? and what caused the particle expansion at its outset to be of the exact right mass and makeup of matter for the Universe to exist and be able to support life? As we learn more and more about Anatomy of the human body, we see extremely complex systems operating at precise efficiency as deep as protein syntheses, not to mention all the complex organs and organ systems. The eye itself gives credence to a designer.
Not only this, but Evolution makes many leaps not confirmed by observational evidence, rather such an unproven speculation, it could be said that some Evolutionists have a stronger faith (by the definition you insisted on giving earlier) than any Creationist ever did.
Saying that faith hinders human advancement is silly, mainly because scientists that exist from all worldviews... are still scientists. Copernicus, Descartes, Newton, believed in God and Einstein was a firm non-atheist; Harvard, Yale, and other universities were established by Christians for the purpose of discovering the natural world; modern day Christian scientists still exist as well (the most notable that comes to mind is Francis Collins who headed the Human Genome project).
I am not a fan of ID at all. I apologize that I can't spend too much time listening to this at the moment, but I listened to the portion on Newton. If he was indeed at his limit of knowledge, then his faith wasn't hindering him, it was his physical/mental ability. He could have said, 'I give up,' or, 'I'm too lazy,' and it would have come to the same conclusion. He could have stopped before attempting n-body problems and said 2-body problems were too difficult and it would have ended the same way. The point is he could have gone arbitrarily far in his research and his 'excuse' for stopping at that arbitrary point doesn't change where he stops.
Furthermore, while Einstein was not an atheist and considered himself an agnostic, he vehemently rejected the notion of a personal God and is quoted saying, "It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it."
I never argued or pushed this point, so I'll leave it.
Saying you are God, or that the Flying Spaghetti Monster is real and God, is not the same as a Christian professing belief in his/her God. It may be true that they may have come to their [initial] belief existentially, however the Bible isn't just a book. It has historical merits that put it beyond just say-so. If that were not true, I'm sure Christianity would have fallen a long time ago under all this antagonism. Faith is not blind, it is a trust based on reason. You can argue the merits of that reasoning, but this is how, even people today, use this word.
Your definition is not consistent with the widely held definition of faith. That is, faith is trust placed with complete disregard to proof or evidence. Faith, by definition, does not utilize rigorous logic and reasoning.
Maybe I didn't word my definition well. Faith is a trust with reason to trust. Of course there is no rigorous logic to remove all doubt. But there are reasons for you to do so, such as the historicity of the Bible and the biblical accounts. Again, the merits of this reasoning can be called into question, but faith is based on these reasons which are reasonable (if true).
Furthermore, religion was not placed under extreme and frequent scrutiny until this past century or so. Simply renouncing religion, for a very long period of time in history, would have led to execution. For example, Copernicus and Galileo were met with extreme resistance and were condemned by the Church because of heliocentrism. Religion has been used by people for centuries to fill in the gaps for events or phenomena for which they didn't understand. It gives people a reason to be content with ignorance. As technology and science progressed, explanations for these phenomena were put forth and tested, which in turn developed into theories, which are completely devoid of any reference to the supernatural. So, the reason Christianity hadn't fallen a long time ago is because challenging it would have led to severe punishment, usually death, and there was a lag in science and technology in providing explanations for natural phenomena. If people two thousand years ago knew about the theories we have today, religion wouldn't exist.
I would have to disagree, but then we're dealing with hypothetical situations which I don't like. I do agree that religious people need to stop pulling a 'God of the gaps', but mainly because it detracts from the main message of Christianity, which isn't about science at all, but about the deprived spiritual state of mankind and Jesus' solution to that state.
On March 07 2011 07:25 sermokala wrote: Religion has given the very basis of ethics. It is a sad fact that there is no point to nor any benefit to "good" or "bad" scientifically. The Holocaust was an interpretation of evolution as a state policy.
I agree that humanity does not need religion to uphold morality (this was already covered earlier in this thread).
However the link you cited is strange. Science is descriptive by nature and not prescriptive. Harris' claims morality from human well being, but this presupposes a prescription that human well-being ought to be important, and he doesn't give an explanation for that. Please know that, again, I have no problem with morality apart from God. This makes sense. I just don't like Harris' approach to explaining it.
On March 07 2011 09:27 whiteguycash wrote: 1.) Einstein was a Deist, not an agnostic. Deist is defined as belief in the existence of a god on the evidence of reason and nature only, with rejection of supernatural revelation
"My position concerning God is that of an agnostic. I am convinced that a vivid consciousness of the primary importance of moral principles for the betterment and ennoblement of life does not need the idea of a law-giver, especially a law-giver who works on the basis of reward and punishment." The Quotable Einstein, Princeton University Press
I do not know what his definition of agnostic is but I would agree that he sounds more like a deist.
2.)As a naturalist, I don't think that you have any say on a definition of a term that nothing to do with your worldview. As someone with a naturalistic worldview, you believe in observational evidence, and nothing else (though many of the fallacies associated with your worldview require some sense of faith, in terms of the definition you provided)
If you see my earlier post, I present a different, more accurate definition in terms of "Faith" regarding Biblical Christianity. I would suggest you use that term when referring to Christianity.
My "worldviews" do not require "some sense of faith." It's interesting that you say this and I would have to ask for you to give an example.
3.)Also, as a naturalist, it is hypocritical to imply morality in anything, because morality is based on a transcendent being setting rules to live by, that are not necessarily enforced by the law of the land. You have no moral compass save your own personal, subjective one. There is no objective moral code as a naturalist, other than natural selection. And why would there be? There is nothing to be truly held accountable to except one's own well being.
The only way "morality" can exist on an objective basis is if there is a transcendent, higher power setting it. There is no transcendent higher power in a naturalist worldview, thus no need for morality to exist. When it does, it creates yet another Logical Fallacy in the framework of the naturalist's worldview.
A transcendent being is not necessary to establish objective morality. In the video I linked, Sam Harris addresses this directly. Also, you contradicted yourself because in the first paragraph you say natural selection can be used as objective morality but then you say that only a transcendent being can establish objective morality.
How is it that your God can only establish morality? I do not need to reference scripture to say that raping and killing my neighbor is reprehensible and should not be done. Are these good moral guidelines:
"God deems it just to repay with affliction those who afflict you...when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with his mighty angels in flaming fire, inflicting vengeance upon those who do not know God and upon those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. They shall suffer the punishment of eternal destruction and exclusion from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might..." (2 Thessalonians 1:6-9)
"As for your male and female slaves whom you may have: you may buy male and female slaves from among the nations that are round about you. You may also buy from among the strangers who sojourn with you and their families that are with you, who have been born in your land; and they may be your property. You may bequeath them to your sons after you, to inherit as a possession forever; you may make slaves of them, but over your brethren the people of Israel you shall not rule, one over another, with harshness." (Leviticus 25:44-46)
"I also want women to dress modestly, with decency and propriety, not with braided hair or gold or pearls or expensive clothes, but with good deeds, appropriate for women who profess to worship God. A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent." (1 Timothy 2-14)
"Let all who are under the yoke of slavery regard their masters as worthy of all honor, so that the name of God and the teaching may not be defamed. Those who have believing masters must not be disrespectful on the ground that they are brethren; rather they must serve all the better since those who benefit by their service are believers an beloved. Teach and urge thee duties. If any one teaches otherwise and does not agree with the sound words of our Lord Jesus Christ and the teaching which accords with godliness, he is puffed up with conceit, he knows nothing; he has a morbid craving for controversy and for disputes about words, which produce envy, dissension, slander , base suspicions..." (1 Timothy 6:1-4)
Can you provide an example of morality that I, as a non-believer, would not be able to come up with without the word of a transcendent being?
4.) As for the Hitler notion, take a moment to consider the fact that anybody can say they are acting "in the name of God," but what you have to do is look at their actions and beliefs to truly understand their motivations. Most "crusades" in history, whether they be in the middle east, or a self-proclaimed crusade by Hitler to eradicate a race, are simply a push for power/resources/political gain while using a religious mask, if you will, to deny responsibility for atrocities committed. Hitler was not a christian of biblical Christianity, that much can be arrived at as the evidenced shown through his actions and his life.
His speeches and actions, however, do give credence to him being an atheist, however, if he was that, or something else, we will never know.
The reason I responded to that post is because I took issue with his statement that suggested evolution promotes social Darwinism and eugenics and that evolution was used to justify the Holocaust. Whether or not Hitler was an atheist or a Christian is something that is irrelevant and I don't care about.
Saying that faith hinders human advancement is silly, mainly because scientists that exist from all worldviews... are still scientists. Copernicus, Descartes, Newton, believed in God and Einstein was a firm non-atheist; Harvard, Yale, and other universities were established by Christians for the purpose of discovering the natural world; modern day Christian scientists still exist as well (the most notable that comes to mind is Francis Collins who headed the Human Genome project).
I am not a fan of ID at all. I apologize that I can't spend too much time listening to this at the moment, but I listened to the portion on Newton. If he was indeed at his limit of knowledge, then his faith wasn't hindering him, it was his physical/mental ability. He could have said, 'I give up,' or, 'I'm too lazy,' and it would have come to the same conclusion. He could have stopped before attempting n-body problems and said 2-body problems were too difficult and it would have ended the same way. The point is he could have gone arbitrarily far in his research and his 'excuse' for stopping at that arbitrary point doesn't change where he stops.
The point that I was trying to bring up is that when Newton reached the limits of the 2-body problem, rather than say he was incapable or that he needed to further refine his ideas, he invoked God and said that God was the one controlling and fine-tuning the mechanics of celestial motion. He was content with this explanation and left the problem rather than return to it. It wasn't that he was, perhaps, too lazy to solve the problem--he believed there was nothing else to solve because the answer is God, which he specifically says. It's good that someone disagreed with this and tried to provide a different answer.
On March 07 2011 07:25 sermokala wrote: Religion has given the very basis of ethics. It is a sad fact that there is no point to nor any benefit to "good" or "bad" scientifically. The Holocaust was an interpretation of evolution as a state policy.
I agree that humanity does not need religion to uphold morality (this was already covered earlier in this thread).
However the link you cited is strange. Science is descriptive by nature and not prescriptive. Harris' claims morality from human well being, but this presupposes a prescription that human well-being ought to be important, and he doesn't give an explanation for that. Please know that, again, I have no problem with morality apart from God. This makes sense. I just don't like Harris' approach to explaining it.
I'm not sure if my post was confusing or not but just to clarify: I responded to two different people using one post. I was responding to sermokala about morality.
5.) Your statement regarding Christianity being eradicated if we had the current knowledge 2000 years ago is absolutely fallacious, as we simply have no way of knowing that. Not only this, but you operate under the assumption that Christian beliefs have not been affirmed by many recent scientific discoveries. Take for instance, the more we learn about the Universe, the more we realize there are precise conditions that must have been in place for it to exist in the state it is, that is, to be able to support life. In past decades, we have discovered that the Universe had a distinctive beginning (The Big Bang, as some call it) which brings the question, what caused the big bang? and what caused the particle expansion at its outset to be of the exact right mass and makeup of matter for the Universe to exist and be able to support life? As we learn more and more about Anatomy of the human body, we see extremely complex systems operating at precise efficiency as deep as protein syntheses, not to mention all the complex organs and organ systems. The eye itself gives credence to a designer.
Not only this, but Evolution makes many leaps not confirmed by observational evidence, rather such an unproven speculation, it could be said that some Evolutionists have a stronger faith (by the definition you insisted on giving earlier) than any Creationist ever did.
Woops, you added this in an edit and I didn't see it until now. I should have been clearer and said that "I believe" that religion wouldn't exist--it's merely a hypothetical that we can never be sure of.
If by "precise conditions" you are referring to the cosmological constants and how because the values are so precise that this must support intelligent design (a.k.a. anthropic principle), then no, I argue this provides absolutely no evidence for God. To begin with, the notion of finely tuned parameters are debated among cosmologists but let's assume that each constant can only take on one specific value. If this is the case, then why is life so extremely rare? Why isn't the universe teeming with life?
You ask what caused the Big Bang and imply that it was God. This begs the question, then what created God? This leads to an infinite regression with absolutely no meaningful answer.
The human anatomy is actually very poorly engineering/designed, if it actually was. Take, for example, the Laryngeal Nerve (+ Show Spoiler +
). In the human female, the birth canal passes through the pelvis. The prenatal skull will deform to a surprising extent. However, if the baby’s head is significantly larger than the pelvic opening, the baby cannot be born naturally. Prior to the development of modern surgery (caesarean section), such a complication would lead to the death of the mother, the baby or both. Other birthing complications such as breech birth are worsened by this position of the birth canal. Almost all animals and plants synthesize their own vitamin C, but humans cannot because the gene for this enzyme is defective. What kind of designer thought it would be a good idea to make the pharynx something used for both ingestion AND respiration. How do you explain all of the useless, vestigial parts in the human body, like wisdom teeth? Lastly, I'm glad you brought up the eye because it is actually an example of very poor engineering. The nerves and blood vessels lie on the surface of the retina instead of behind it as is the case in many invertebrate species. This arrangement forces a number of complex adaptations and gives mammals a blind spot. Also, six muscles move the eye when three would suffice.
While there are many complex systems within the body, there are a plethora of examples of gross inefficiencies. For starters, look up DNA replication and the proteins used (specifically, DNA polymerase I, IV, and V). These are HIGHLY error prone polymerases which replicate the DNA using incorrect base pairs. They are also not very processive. Look up all the various repair mechanisms needed for DNA replication (e.g., mismatch repair, nucleotide excision repair, base excision repair, recombination, etc.). But these repair pathways aren't perfect either. If these mutations are not fixed, often times it will either be completely ignored (silent mutation) or it will lead to something like cancer. Also, look up non-homologous end joining, and how it is used as a last resort and leads to the loss of base pairs, and can lead to various syndromes like SCID.
Lastly, it seems you don't have a fully developed understanding of evolution. The amount of evidence that supports it is immeasurable and spans a period of over 100 years. Please give me an example of such "leaps" found in evolution and I'll try to explain why it is not a leap.
Saying that faith hinders human advancement is silly, mainly because scientists that exist from all worldviews... are still scientists. Copernicus, Descartes, Newton, believed in God and Einstein was a firm non-atheist; Harvard, Yale, and other universities were established by Christians for the purpose of discovering the natural world; modern day Christian scientists still exist as well (the most notable that comes to mind is Francis Collins who headed the Human Genome project).
I am not a fan of ID at all. I apologize that I can't spend too much time listening to this at the moment, but I listened to the portion on Newton. If he was indeed at his limit of knowledge, then his faith wasn't hindering him, it was his physical/mental ability. He could have said, 'I give up,' or, 'I'm too lazy,' and it would have come to the same conclusion. He could have stopped before attempting n-body problems and said 2-body problems were too difficult and it would have ended the same way. The point is he could have gone arbitrarily far in his research and his 'excuse' for stopping at that arbitrary point doesn't change where he stops.
The point that I was trying to bring up is that when Newton reached the limits of the 2-body problem, rather than say he was incapable or that he needed to further refine his ideas, he invoked God and said that God was the one controlling and fine-tuning the mechanics of celestial motion. He was content with this explanation and left the problem rather than return to it. It wasn't that he was, perhaps, too lazy to solve the problem--he believed there was nothing else to solve because the answer is God, which he specifically says. It's good that someone disagreed with this and tried to provide a different answer.
After re-viewing the video and doing a bit of research, I'll concede this point XD. However I would say that this is true only when you try to employ 'god of the gaps'. Newton could have still been religious, and not employ the 'god of the gaps' and continue working. Sadly that was not so.
5.) Your statement regarding Christianity being eradicated if we had the current knowledge 2000 years ago is absolutely fallacious, as we simply have no way of knowing that. Not only this, but you operate under the assumption that Christian beliefs have not been affirmed by many recent scientific discoveries. Take for instance, the more we learn about the Universe, the more we realize there are precise conditions that must have been in place for it to exist in the state it is, that is, to be able to support life. In past decades, we have discovered that the Universe had a distinctive beginning (The Big Bang, as some call it) which brings the question, what caused the big bang? and what caused the particle expansion at its outset to be of the exact right mass and makeup of matter for the Universe to exist and be able to support life? As we learn more and more about Anatomy of the human body, we see extremely complex systems operating at precise efficiency as deep as protein syntheses, not to mention all the complex organs and organ systems. The eye itself gives credence to a designer.
Not only this, but Evolution makes many leaps not confirmed by observational evidence, rather such an unproven speculation, it could be said that some Evolutionists have a stronger faith (by the definition you insisted on giving earlier) than any Creationist ever did.
Woops, you added this in an edit and I didn't see it until now. I should have been clearer and said that "I believe" that religion wouldn't exist--it's merely a hypothetical that we can never be sure of.
If by "precise conditions" you are referring to the cosmological constants and how because the values are so precise that this must support intelligent design (a.k.a. anthropic principle), then no, I argue this provides absolutely no evidence for God. To begin with, the notion of finely tuned parameters are debated among cosmologists but let's assume that each constant can only take on one specific value. If this is the case, then why is life so extremely rare? Why isn't the universe teeming with life?
You ask what caused the Big Bang and imply that it was God. This begs the question, then what created God? This leads to an infinite regression with absolutely no meaningful answer.
The human anatomy is actually very poorly engineering/designed, if it actually was. Take, for example, the Laryngeal Nerve (+ Show Spoiler +
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cO1a1Ek-HD0
). In the human female, the birth canal passes through the pelvis. The prenatal skull will deform to a surprising extent. However, if the baby’s head is significantly larger than the pelvic opening, the baby cannot be born naturally. Prior to the development of modern surgery (caesarean section), such a complication would lead to the death of the mother, the baby or both. Other birthing complications such as breech birth are worsened by this position of the birth canal. Almost all animals and plants synthesize their own vitamin C, but humans cannot because the gene for this enzyme is defective. What kind of designer thought it would be a good idea to make the pharynx something used for both ingestion AND respiration. How do you explain all of the useless, vestigial parts in the human body, like wisdom teeth? Lastly, I'm glad you brought up the eye because it is actually an example of very poor engineering. The nerves and blood vessels lie on the surface of the retina instead of behind it as is the case in many invertebrate species. This arrangement forces a number of complex adaptations and gives mammals a blind spot. Also, six muscles move the eye when three would suffice.
While there are many complex systems within the body, there are a plethora of examples of gross inefficiencies. For starters, look up DNA replication and the proteins used (specifically, DNA polymerase I, IV, and V). These are HIGHLY error prone polymerases which replicate the DNA using incorrect base pairs. They are also not very processive. Look up all the various repair mechanisms needed JUST for DNA replication (e.g., mismatch repair, nucleotide excision repair, base excision repair, recombination, etc.). But these repair pathways aren't perfect either. If these mutations are not fixed, often times it will either be completely ignored as it is silent or it will lead to something like cancer. Also, look up non-homologous end joining, and how it is used as a last resort and leads to the loss of base pairs, and can lead to various syndromes like SCID.
Lastly, it seems you don't have a fully developed understanding of evolution. The amount of evidence that supports it is immeasurable and spans a period of over 100 years. Please give me an example of such "leaps" found in evolution and I'll try to explain why it is not a leap.
Well, now that depends on what type of evolutionary concept you subscribe to.
There are two major models of evolution. They are:
* Gradualism - Changes in the morphology of species are the result of gradual changes in the genomes of species. The apparent lack of gradualism in the fossil record is due to an incompleteness of the fossil record. * Punctuated Equilibrium - Changes in morphology are due to species sorting following geographic isolation and major reductions in population numbers. The punctuated appearance of the fossil record is real.
Gradualism
The major problems with gradualism is that it is not reflected in the fossil record. By far, the fossil record is extremely discontinuous. There are a few examples of gradualism, but they are the exception. Even the most famous example of gradualism (the horse) suffers from a lack of intermediates for most species. Here is an admission by an evolutionist:
"Eldredge and Gould not only showed that paleontologists had been out-of-step with biologists for decades, but also that they had unconsciously trying to force the fossil record into the gradualistic mode. The few supposed examples of gradual evolution were featured in the journals and textbooks, but paleontologists had long been mum about their 'dirty little trade secret:' most species appear suddenly in the fossil record and show no appreciable change for millions of years until their extinction." -Dr. Donald Prothero (Prothero, D.R. 1992. Punctuated Equilibrium At Twenty: A Paleontological Perspective. Skeptic 1: 38-47.)
The evidence against gradualism is extensive, but not readily admitted to in the popular press or textbooks. Although the fossil record for a given location on land may be discontinuous, the fossil record for organisms deposited in the ocean or large bodies of water is continuous. Studies by Stanley (3), Cheetham (4) and Stanley and Yang (5) examined all the available lineages of their respective groups (bryozoans and bivalves) through long intervals of time, using multivariate analysis of multiple character states. Both concluded that most of their species were static through millions of years, followed by the sudden appearance of new species. Williamson (6) examined the fossil record of mollusks in Lake Turkana, Kenya, and showed that there were multiple examples of rapid speciation and prolonged stasis, but no gradualism. Barnosky (7) examined a large number of different lineages of mammals, from mammoths to shrews and rodents that lived during the last two million years of the Ice Ages and found a few examples of gradualism, but many more which showed stasis and punctuation. Prothero examined all the mammals with a reasonably complete record from the Eocene-Oligocene (about 30-35 million years ago) beds of the Big Badlands of South Dakota and related areas in Wyoming and Nebraska (8). This study not only sampled every available lineage without bias, but also had much better time control from magnetic stratigraphy and wider geographic coverage than previous studies. With only one exception all of the Badlands mammals were static through millions of years, or speciated abruptly (if they changed at all). Stasis and sudden appearance of new species is the norm rather than the exception, as evidenced by the fossil record.
Evolutionists have used the excuse that the fossil record is not complete enough to be an accurate representation of the history of life on the Earth. A recent book, The Adequacy of the Fossil Record (9), examined the fossil record in terms of its completeness, bias (over and under representation of certain species and groups of organisms), and stratigraphic range (its completeness for a species over the entire history of its existence). Their conclusions were that the fossil record is surprisingly complete, with about 10% of all species that have ever lived being represented. There are some biases and stratigraphic incompleteness in the fossil record, but these problems can be estimated mathematically from the available data. There are many examples of stratigraphic gaps in the fossil record, with these gaps being the rule rather than the exception. In the past, it has been assumed that the gaps represent incompleteness of the fossil record. The authors suggest the "heretical" view that stratigraphic data should be used to test the phylogenetic relationships between species rather than assume that the relationships exist and that the fossil record is incomplete.
The punctuated fossil record applies not only to individual species, but to entire periods of time, where entire communities of species remain unchanged for millions of years. These periods of "coordinated stasis" can be followed by periods when "upwards of 60% of species seem to be replaced over a period of a few hundred thousand years"(10). During the first 16 million years of the Tertiary period, 18 orders of mammals appeared. Many scientist had claimed that gaps in the fossil record could account for the apparent sudden appearance of mammals. However, Dr. David Archibald (San Diego State University), looked at the numbers of fossil site spanning the period of 5 million years before and after the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary. Dr. Archibald found that sampling was equal for periods before and after the boundary, although only 11 genera were found in the 5 million years before the beginning of the Tertiary compared to 139 genera in the 5 million years following (11). The idea that the lack of transitional forms is due to gaps in the fossil record is not reasonable given the tremendous number of fossils that have been discovered in recent studies. Therefore, the old "evolution of the gaps" theory is not supported by the extensive fossil record that now exists. Gradualism, although it seems a more logical mode of evolution, is not supported by the fossil record.
There are many who believe in the theory of evolution, who don't realize that you need to make a choice in what theory of evolution you are going to accept as being true. You can't believe in both gradualism and punctuated equilibrium simultaneously, since they are contradictory. Some of the "spokesmen" for evolution, such as Richard Dawkins, would like to redefine punctuated equilibrium into some sort of modified gradualism. However, the following statement is what Gould and Eldredge say about their theory:
""Punctuated equilibrium is a theory that attributes this pattern of spurt and stasis neither 1. to imperfections of the fossil record in a truly gradualistic world, nor 2. to such theories of occasional anagenetic rapidity as Simpson's important hypothesis of quantum evolution, but to speciation as a process of branching, characteristically occurring at geologically instantaneous rates - with trends then explained not as anagenetic accumulation, but as differential success by species sorting." -Drs. Gould and Eldredge (S.J. Gould and N. Eldredge. 1994. Nature 368:407.)
The punctuated reality of the fossil record is best exemplified by the "Cambrian explosion." Virtually every animal phyla (including chordates and many phyla now extinct) appeared during the short geological moment called the Cambrian explosion (13). This period of time is now known to have covered a period of time of less than 10 million years (14, 15). The diversity of life and the variety of body designs has led Stephen Jay Gould to make the following statement:
"We have reason to think that all major anatomical designs may have made their appearance at that time." -Dr. Stephen Jay Gould (Gould, S.J. 1995. Of it, not above it. Nature 377: 681-682.)
Many evolutionists are now admitting that the diversity of life appearing at the Cambrian explosion is beyond what one would expect from any naturalistic mechanism:
""Understanding both the onset and the termination of such bursts is a major challenge. Critical tests for the trigger or damper of the Cambrian explosion have been difficult." -David Jablonski (Jablonski, D. 1999. The Future of the Fossil Record. Science 284: 2114-2116.)
In a huge setback for evolutionists, scientists have discovered a true crustacean in early Cambrian strata from Shropshire, England. In a recent issue of Science, Drs. Siveter, Williams, and Waloszek. announced the discovery of a fossil phosphatocopid ostracod, which is preserved extraordinarily well, including all its delicate limbs cast in calcium phosphate, clearly allowing it to be classified as a crustacean. Dr. Richard Fortey, who believes that this discovery will foreshadow the discovery of pre-Cambrian ancestors of this crustacean, overturning the Cambrian explosion, has made this rather telling admission at the end of the article:
"Even if evidence for an earlier origin is discovered, it remains a challenge to explain why so many animals should have increased in size and acquired shells within so short a time at the base of the Cambrian. At the moment, there are almost as many explanations as there are animals caught in this belated "explosion." -Dr. Richard Fortey (Fortey, R. 2001. The Cambrian Explosion Exploded? Science 293: 438-439.)
Other recent studies contradict the major mechanism behind gradualism, since they "show how important large beneficial Permanent structural alterations in DNA, consisting of either substitutions, insertions or deletions of nucleotide bases.mutations are in the first stages of an adaptation," according to evolutionary biologist Doug Schemske of the University of Washington, Seattle (19). According to evolutionary theory, a new adaptation must be acquired fairly quickly, or else organisms will be poorly adapted to both the new and the old conditions and will not survive. Therefore, it seems logical that the first genetic changes must have large effects or else the changes will not be selected. However, the observation that large beneficial Permanent structural alterations in DNA, consisting of either substitutions, insertions or deletions of nucleotide bases.mutations seem to occur (of course de novo creation is eliminated as a possibility) poses a problem, since these Permanent structural alterations in DNA, consisting of either substitutions, insertions or deletions of nucleotide bases.mutationsare thought to be mostly rare and mostly disadvantageous when they do happen so "they contradict theory," according to Dr. H. Allen Orr, an evolutionary geneticist at University of Rochester in New York (19). "We're in a funny situation - we're about to have a wave of data crash down on us and no theory to hang it on." New models have been proposed to attempt to explain these data, although they are yet to be confirmed.
Punctuated Equilibrium
Punctuated equilibrium requires the occurrence of two unlikely events. First, a number of beneficial Permanent structural alterations in DNA, consisting of either substitutions, insertions or deletions of nucleotide bases.mutations must accumulate in a small number of individuals. Since the A permanent structural alteration in DNA, consisting of either a substitution, insertion or deletion of nucleotide bases.mutation rate is low, the species' population must be large in order to accumulate any beneficial Permanent structural alterations in DNA, consisting of either substitutions, insertions or deletions of nucleotide bases.mutations (most Permanent structural alterations in DNA, consisting of either substitutions, insertions or deletions of nucleotide bases.mutationsare neutral and the remainder are mostly detrimental). Next, these few individuals must become genetically isolated from the larger population (species sorting). Without genetic isolation (usually involving geographic isolation) the multiple Permanent structural alterations in DNA, consisting of either substitutions, insertions or deletions of nucleotide bases.mutations, needed to produce the punctuated appearance of a new species, would never get co-expressed. Therefore, punctuated equilibrium requires the unlikely events of multiple Permanent structural alterations in DNA, consisting of either substitutions, insertions or deletions of nucleotide bases.mutations in presence of a few individuals of large population, and the unlikely genetic isolation of these specific individuals from the vast majority of the main population. Although it is possible that such unlikely events could occur by chance occasionally, punctuated equilibrium requires that these unlikely events occur all the time, as revealed in the fossil record. Punctuated equilibrium truly is a faith in the miracles of chance.
A recent study destroys the idea of species sorting (20, 21). Instead of becoming a new species, populations that suffer drastic reductions in numbers are characterized by decreased genetic variability and an expression of detrimental genes. This happens because normally Possessing two different forms of a particular gene, one inherited from each parent.heterozygous (containing 2 different Variant forms of a gene at a particular locus, or location, on a chromosome.alleles of each gene) individuals become Possessing two identical forms of a particular gene, one inherited from each parent.homozygous, due to inbreeding. As a result, detrimental, non-expressed, A genetic disorder that appears only in patients who have received two copies of a mutant gene, one from each parent.recessive genes become Possessing two identical forms of a particular gene, one inherited from each parent.homozygous and, therefore, are expressed, resulting in a less fit population. The study examined the effect of a 35-year population decline of greater prairie chickens on their fitness and fertility. The results showed that population decline and isolation of the prairie chicken led to decreased genetic variability, reduced egg viability (from near 100% to less than 80%), and a decline of fertility rates (from 93% to 74%). Only after human intervention (which brought in genetically diverse individuals from other areas) did the population begin to recover. This study calls into serious question species sorting as the underlying mechanism of punctuated equilibrium. More recent studies have confirmed these results (22).
Another study showed that low relatedness (high genetic diversity) is favored in social insects (24). This low relatedness improves the fitness of the colony, but prevents the kind of species sorting expected in punctuated equilibrium.
Sources 3 Stanley, S.M. 1992. The empirical case for the punctuational model of evolution, in The Dynamics of Evolution. A. Somit and S.A. Peterson (ed.). Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press. pp. 85-102. 4 Cheetham, A.H. 1986. Tempo of evolution in a Neogene bryozoan: rates of morphologic change within and across species boundaries. Paleobiology, 12: 190-202. 5 Stanley, S.M. and X. Yang. 1987. Approximate evolutionary stasis for bivalve morphology over millions of years: a multivariate, multilineage study. Paleobiology, 13: 113-139. 6 Williamson, P.G. 1981. Paleontological documentation of speciation of Cenozoic mollusks from the Turkana Basin." Nature, 293: 437-443. Williamson, P.G. 1985. Punctuated equilibrium, morphological stasis, and the paleontological documentation of speciation. Biological Journal of the Linnean Society of London, 26: 307-324. 7 Barnosky, A.D. 1987. Punctuated equilibrium and phyletic gradualism, some facts from the Quaternary mammal record. Current Mammalogy, 1: 109-147. 8 Prothero, D.R. and N. Shubin. 1983. "Tempo and mode of speciation in Oligocene mammals." Geological Society of America, Abstracts with Programs, 16(6): 665. Prothero, D.R. 1992. "Evolutionary patterns at the terrestrial Eocene-Oligocene boundary in North America." Fifth North American Paleontological Convention, Abstracts and Programs, Paleontological Society Special Publication 6: 238. Prothero, D.R. and W.A. Berggren (eds.). 1992. Eocene-Oligocene Climactic and Biotic Evolution. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Prothero, D.R., T. Heaton, and S.M. Stanley. (In press). "Patterns of evolution in mammals at the Eocene-Oligocene climactic crisis." Paleobiology. 9 Donovan, S.K. and C.R.C. Paul, eds. 1998. The Adequacy of the Fossil Record. Wiley, Chichester, UK. 10 Richard A. Kerr. 1997. Does Evolutionary History Take Million-Year Breaks? Science 278: 576. 11 Dennis Normile. 1998. MAMMALIAN EVOLUTION MEETING: New views of the origins of mammals. Science 281: 775. 12 S.J. Gould and N. Eldredge. 1994. Nature 368:407. 13 Chen, J.Y., J. Dzik, G.D. Edgecombe, L. Ramskold, G.Q. Zhou. 1995. A possible early Cambrian chordate. Nature 377: 720-722. 14 Kerr, R.A. 1993. Evolution's big bang gets even more explosive. Science 261: 1274-1275. 15 Bowring, S.A., J.P. Grotzinger, C.E. Isachsen, A.H. Knoll, S.M. Pelechaty, and P. Kolosov. 1993. Calibrating rates of early Cambrian evolution. Science 261: 1293-1298. 16 Gould, S.J. 1995. Of it, not above it. Nature 377: 681-682. 17 Jablonski, D. 1999. The Future of the Fossil Record. Science 284: 2114-2116. 18 Fortey, R. 2001. The Cambrian Explosion Exploded? Science 293: 438-439. 19 Morell, V. 1999. Size Matters: The Genes Behind Adaptation. Science 284: 2106-2108. 20 SoulŽ, M.E. and L.S. Mills. 1998. No need to isolate genetics. Science 282: 1658. 21 Wetermeirer, R.L., J.D. Brawn, S.A. Simpson, T.L. Esker, R.W. Jansen, J.W. Walk, E.L. Kershner, J.L. Bouzat, and K.N. Paige. 1998. Tracking the long-term decline and recovery of an isolated population. Science 282: 1695. 22 Armbruster, P. and D.H. Reed. 2005. Inbreeding depression in benign and stressful environments. Heredity 95: 235–242. 24 Reed, D.H., A.C. Nicholas and G.E. Stratton. 2006. Inbreeding levels and prey abundance interact to determine fecundity in natural populations of two species of wolf spider. Conserv. Genet. doi:10.1007/s10592-006-9260-4.
Well, it seems that you went to http://www.godandscience.org/evolution/evolution.html and copy-pasted an essay, causing a lot of formatting errors, and did not respond to any of the rebuttals I made >_>. I don't have time to read all of this so I have to ask what, specifically, are you responding to and what questions about evolution do you have and want me to answer?
well it's basically religion vs. science, since science requires theories to be repeatably testable by physical experiments, but religion assumes a bunch of axioms for no apparent reason. so guess what makes the most sense out of those 2 things...
On March 07 2011 04:16 Chromyne wrote: As a Christian I believe in carbon dating, fossils and naturalistic evolution. Personally, I don't see any conflicts (go ahead, quote Genesis), but again, this isn't even a core issue [with Christianity] so if naturalistic evolution is true (which I believe is completely logical), Christianity isn't debunked. (I do understand that some or many do not believe in naturalistic evolution, and well... someone has to be wrong in the end!)
Saying that faith hinders human advancement is silly, mainly because scientists that exist from all worldviews... are still scientists. Copernicus, Descartes, Newton, believed in God and Einstein was a firm non-atheist; Harvard, Yale, and other universities were established by Christians for the purpose of discovering the natural world; modern day Christian scientists still exist as well (the most notable that comes to mind is Francis Collins who headed the Human Genome project).
Unlike in religion the scientific community does not work on things just because someone with a known name said something without any basis. All those people probably were religious, since back then people didn't know much and some people use the "god of the gaps" where you substitute god to everything you don't know. Is there any proof that religion helped them achieve their scientific success?
You do know that evolution conflicts with genesis? Hell, everything conflicts with genesis, you can't really say stuff like "Altogether, Methuselah lived a total of 969 years, and then he died." is taken out of context and it's actually a metaphor. Nothing has ever been created as in the biblical sense of stuff appearing out of nothing. If even the very first and basic book of the bible can not be taken seriously, how can you believe in what the rest of the book says? Especially when it's supposed to be the words of an omnipotent being.
Saying you are God, or that the Flying Spaghetti Monster is real and God, is not the same as a Christian professing belief in his/her God. It may be true that they may have come to their [initial] belief existentially, however the Bible isn't just a book. It has historical merits that put it beyond just say-so. If that were not true, I'm sure Christianity would have fallen a long time ago under all this antagonism. Faith is not blind, it is a trust based on reason. You can argue the merits of that reasoning, but this is how, even people today, use this word.
Stop the presses, humans believe ridiculous things for absolutely no reason. The Quran has historical merits, why are you not a muslim? Even then that reason is just bullshit, if one part of a book has the slightest amount of reality in it, it does not automatically make the rest of it 100% true. As for faith, the very definiton in this context means it's not based on evidence. You have no evidence, yet you believe in god. How can you not call that blind faith?
You're really good at finding verses, you don't like doing actual research, do you? There is this thing call context. They don't apply for very specific reasons: 1) they were for a specific group of people at a specific time (the Israelites), 2) it was to set the Israelites apart from everyone else (not really relevant to the laws you provided, however), and 3) it was to show the severity of sin with respect to a perfectly holy God.
Please do tell me, if you find it right that I go stone children to set myself apart from everyone else. The things god orders them to do in the bible can not be justified by saying that it's ok to brutally kill humans, just because it was a few thousand years ago. This sin stuff is some serious shit, please tell me how you decide which parts in the bible are literal and which ones are not.
You might not find that satisfying, and that's perfectly okay. But like some people don't like a speck of fecal matter in their chocolate cake, a perfectly holy God doesn't like unholiness.
His holiness does not like something so people should suffer. How can you call this character just is beyond me.
Matthew 10:33-37 is not about hating your family or killing them, it's about loving Jesus so much more relative to your family (who you already love, hopefully).
34“Do not think that I came to bring peace on the earth; I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. 35“For I came to SET A MAN AGAINST HIS FATHER, AND A DAUGHTER AGAINST HER MOTHER, AND A DAUGHTER-IN-LAW AGAINST HER MOTHER-IN-LAW; 36and A MAN’S ENEMIES WILL BE THE MEMBERS OF HIS HOUSEHOLD.
This literally says your family members will be your enemies, because they don't believe in christ.
Acts 3:23. I don't see how you came to that conclusion at all. I don't see any imperative to kill non-believers. It says that they will be cut off from God's people, the KJV even says they'll be destroyed, but that's not an imperative or license to kill them. It just says that non-believers will not be with God.
When someone says specific people will be destroyed from among the people, I'd interpret that as killing or at the very least something really unpleasant. Funny how an omnipotent being is so bad at communicating.
You should have Google'd slavery, then you might see that slavery in the Bible is completely different. Slavery was usually a financial issue, and not based on race. People would sell themselves as slaves if they were in debt to someone, or if they just wanted their physical/financial needs provided for by a master. The Bible openly condemns man-stealing and slave-trading, which I think you are associating with.
First of all, slavery does not mean whites using blacks as labor. A slave is a person who is forced to work and is treated as property. Even if people would sell themselves willingly they have to work as slaves for at least six years, and if they disobey any orders during that time, it's ok to beat them. Luke 12:47-48 The bible openly condemns trading humans? What? Please tell me what Leviticus 25:44-46 and Exodus 21:1-6 say. It also says how to treat slaves of different races.
Jesus is God, so yes he is immortal. However, he died as a human for other people's mistakes while being perfect himself, so yeah that kind of sucks.
Your illustration assumes that the person is innocent - meaning completely blameless and perfect - which they are not.
You are still saying it is ok for someone else to take a punishment instead of the real criminal. If a completely blameless and perfect being can take a whole races punishment, surely a less perfect being can take a few peoples punishment. Which still makes absolutely no sense, and this is one of the most important things in christianity.
God goes to hell for 2 days, because of his own rules and then goes to heaven and declares all sins are gone? God dying as a human does not matter, since he still is god and he does not truly die. People say religion offers answers, I think all it does is stop you from asking questions.
1) Creator of the universe (through 6 day creation or naturalistic evolution, doesn't really matter to me) and humanity to have fellowship with and bring glory to Himself. Perfectly holy and just. 2) I don't believe the claim, 'god exists' is falsifiable. So logically, you can't provide evidence for this (correct me if I'm wrong). I guess you could produce evidence that would reduce the probability of a god existing? But that seems sort of moot because reducing is not extinguishing. 3) What evidence do you require to convince you of the existence of the Christian God?
I require physical evidence of god. Simple as that. You said that you can not produce any evidence for god, which is true since there isn't any. If you cannot falsify the existance of god, you are taking his existance on faith and as I said earlier, it is not based on reason, since that would require evidence. I do not have to produce any evidence to reduce the probability of god existing, since the burden of proof is not on me. The default position is that nothing exists until proven otherwise, not god exists until disproven.
You've probably heard stuff like this before, but think of it this way; Do you believe Santa exists? No? Well you can't be completely sure, there just might be a dimensional being called Santa that actually manipulates parents to give presents to their kids during christmas. He also leaves absolutely no evidence to prove that he exists. Every arguement you use to try and prove the existance of god applies to every supernatural being. Just because something is written in a book does not mean it is true.
In the end the only thing a christian can fall back on is faith, which is rejecting reality just because you don't like it.
EDIT: fixed a few typos, there still might be more.
The Bible is like a guideline to being a better person and living a better life. And if we assume that a person is a rational human being they can fill in the blanks for themselves. In this regard religion remains and incredibly valuable tool for making people better.
I could go on and find you a lot more of these, but honestly try reading your bible and you'll be surprised.
What's that? These are from the old testament and therefore don't apply? I didn't know an omnipotent, infallible being made mistakes and suddenly changed his mind. Oh, and the 10 commandments are from the old testament.
Heres some new testament passages:
Matthew 5:27-32 (About divorce and adultery, you should also dismember and blind yourself, if you're having lustful thoughts) Matthew 10:33-10:37 (kill your family, because jesus is the lawd) Acts 3:23 (Kill non-believers)
There are also various passages that endorse slavery and how slaves should be treated. Google them, if you're too lazy to read a bible.
Then there's some really nice stuff like Luke 12:33, let me know when you've sold all your possessions so I can send you my paypal account info.
All christians believe in the "sacrifice" of Jesus (sacrifice is kinda funny when you're actually immortal). Do you really believe, that an innocent people can be killed to forgive the crimes of everyone? If so, you'd be okay, if we shot someone and let everyone out of prisons. They're forgiven after all.
Do you disagree with any of these? Congratulations, you now consider yourself more moral than god.
Try answering these questions: 1) How do you define god? 2) What kind of evidence do you require to show you that there is no god? 3) What can you show as evidence to prove the existance of the christian god?
In your quoting and explanation of scripture, your Hermeneutics is atrocious. I would suggest that YOU read the bible, and take some time to study the true context and meaning of scriptures you quoted before presenting such an obviously biased, and flat out wrong interpretation. It is tough to know where to begin to pick apart such a post when there are so many misrepresentations of christian theology and belief.
My main problem with religion is its conflicts with science. Faith in general annoys me and I find it to be one of the worst possible vice you could have. See, the difference between you and me is that if there was physical and irrefutable evidence that some god existed, I would have to believe it. I don't argue with reality, unlike you. There is absolutely nothing anyone can say to you to make you see that there is no god.
You disregard widely accepted and proven scientific facts, on the basis that it conflicts with your religious delusions. Sure at the moment it's stuff like carbon dating, fossils, evolution etc. It is highly possible that in the future new very important scientific discoveries will be made, if these would help mankind immensly, but conflict with your beliefs, you would do everything in your power to stop them. Religious thinking hinders mankind.
You can't make life altering decisions based on faith. Faith is rejecting all reason and accepting whatever someone says to you. If I told you I am god, why would you not believe me? If your answer is "because the bible said so and the bible says its true", I say that I'm speaking the truth, because I am god. If someone actually came to you and said that, you'd probably think they were being ridiculous, well to me religious people sound just like that. Are you starting to understand what I mean? There is absolutely no reason whatsoever to believe in god or any of the claims about god or jesus in the bible.
Many skeptics think that Christianity is for people who do not want to think. Christians are often characterized as people who believe whatever they are told by the church. Faith is thought of as something that one believes blindly - with no supporting evidence. However, this viewpoint does not represent biblical Christianity. In contrast, to what many skeptics believe, the Bible challenges its readers to test it and come to a reasonable conclusion. There are those Christians who believe blindly, and certain cults (such as Mormonism) teach that truth can be known through prayer. These ideas are heretical to biblical Christianity and often lead to deception, making such individuals susceptible to conversion by the cults.
-Test everything. Hold on to the good. (1 Thessalonians 5:21)
Contrary to what many non-believers think, the Bible does not teach blind faith. In fact, the Bible actually tells believers to test everything. No other "holy" book tells its readers to actually put what it says to the test. The Bible can make such a statement because it passes the tests of truthfulness that no other "holy" book can. God Himself in His revelation to Isaiah stated, "Come now, and let us reason together..." God, the Creator of humans and human reasoning ability wants us to use that ability to determine His plan of salvation. How do we determine if the Bible is true? We test it and see if it is reasonable. Psalm 19 tells us that the universe "declares the glory of God" and that this "voice goes out into all the earth." In fact, the Bible says that the evidence for God's design of the universe is so strong that people are "without excuse" in rejecting God and His plan of salvation.
Biblical faith is based upon knowledge and sound doctrine
God wants believers to be knowledgeable, especially regarding their faith. A lack of knowledge leads to apostasy and destruction, as God Himself said to Hosea, "My people are destroyed for a lack of knowledge." A zeal for God is not sufficient to please Him, since many Jews have this zeal, although it is misplaced since it is "not in accordance with knowledge." The Bible encourages believers to have a knowledge-based faith, built upon sound biblical doctrine. When Paul preached the gospel, he did it through reasoning from the scriptures and not an appeal to blind faith. Paul, in his letters told believers to do away with childish thinking and reasoning. Christians are advised to set an example for others in teaching by modeling "integrity, seriousness, and soundness of speech." The physician Luke, in his prologue to his gospel revealed that he determined the truth through careful investigation:
...it seemed fitting for me as well, having investigated everything carefully from the beginning, to write it out for you in consecutive order, most excellent Theophilus; so that you might know the exact truth about the things you have been taught. (Luke 1:3-4)
Jesus replied: "'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.'" (Matthew 22:37)
The Bible teaches a rational faith, based upon knowledge and refined through testing. Christians are encouraged to use their minds in all aspects of life, including our spiritual life - prayer and worship. God values truthfulness to a high degree and wants us to know the truth about his creation, the nature of His being and His scriptures. Ultimately, God wants all people to come to the knowledge of the truth of His salvation through Jesus Christ, so that they may spend eternity with Him in the new creation.
I'm going to make this short and not quote every single paragraph seperately.
Oh great master of hermeneutics, please give me a nugget of your infinite wisdom, and tell me how you decide which parts of the bible are metaphors. Could it be that the parts which make christianity look bad are only misunderstood and out of context?
You talk a lot about god and rationality, yet you do not offer a single reasonable arguement to the existance of god. The universe is not designed by everyone. It is a well known fact that everything has formed through natural means. You would know this, if you possessed any skeptical thinking. You say you want to think. I say you want to think of ways to justify your unjustifiable beliefs. If your position was truly divine and obvious, there would be a single legitimate arguement for it.
I am god. What you need proof? Look at anything, see the way it is. I made it that way, therefore I am god.
Your positon is based on faith, irrational faith, and nothing else. See my response to that other guy for more info. Go extract the truth from genesis and see how much truth your book actually holds. Remember a divine being does not talk bullshit.
God does not want everyone to have the knowledge of truth about him and salvation (whatever that is) because: a) he does not exist b) if he did, I'm sure an omnipotent being could communicate his thoughts better, you know with being omnipotent and all.
On March 06 2011 07:27 dudeman001 wrote: As for me, I'm Catholic and I love what religion has to give me. Do I believe in Hell? Actually no. We also forget that the Bible is man's interpretation of the word of God. Do I think anyone is inferior to anyone else based on what they believe in? Fuck no, and "we're all the children of God" is not a bullshit excuse. To God we are all equal, he loves us all unconditionally. How can I rationalize judging anyone as a mere human? It's God who judges us, for me to judge another is playing God. No, we're all brothers and sisters, and thanks to what God has taught me I can love anyone and everyone unconditionally.
God doesn't want us to be mindless slaves. In the eyes of a religious individual, he created us in this world with our own free will for a reason. A reason humans may never truly understand. But nonetheless he gave us the gift of reason so we can come to understand one another, so we can love one another.
On March 06 2011 05:41 Karliath wrote: I may not believe in Christianity, and I sure may be glad that people don't come to my door to preach to me, but I find that it is bad for Christians, if they really believe in their faith, not to preach.
What would you like religious people to do then? You both dislike how we try to spread our word, but dislike that when we don't. If someone is willing to accept the word of God, then they can be approached. If someone is shut off, then the more they're approached the more agitated they'll become. It's like telling a colorblind person that the sky is blue. If they're receptive, they may believe you and listen. If they're not, they'll just disregard what you say. There's nothing more you can do.
Thank you for your response.
Concerning the first paragraph I quoted, my point about inferiority has no basis if you don't believe in Hell. My point was that, if God judges that you can go to Heaven and I have to go to Hell, the inferiority is clear. If someone still wants to say that the soul in Heaven is equal to the one in Hell, then I have nothing to say to that person. BUT, since you don't believe in Hell, between you and me then, that argument can be disregarded.
You say that the Bible, which includes Hell, is only man's interpretation of the word of God. May I ask then, where you get your interpretation of the word of God - in other words, your belief system? Do you interpret the word of God yourself, or do you read the Bible, man's interpretation, and then go ahead and interpret it further?
Correct me if I'm wrong, but the Bible is the only "physical recording," if you will, of the word of God. Sure, it may be man's interpretation, but where else would you get the word of God?
Do you imagine (bad choice of words, I apologize) what a proper religion would be like, and then, from there, decide that these proper morals/beliefs/conducts are the word of God?
This again goes back to my point about how Christians today seem to "pick and choose" parts of the established branches that they like, in my eyes to conform with modern social and moral values. Now I'm not saying that you have to 100% agree with everything in the Bible, or everything in a particular branch to become Christian. My question is, where is that line? At what point does a person's beliefs stray too far from the Bible, or the word of God (if you can define/describe it), that he is no longer Christian?
Concerning your third paragraph, yes, I do believe Christians should preach. As I stated in my example, if I know a bomb is going to blow up under you, I don't care how much I 'agitate' you, I'm going to try to convince you to run (read: convert). But okay, perhaps that's just not the Christian way then. Maybe the attitude is, "There's a bomb under you. Now that I have given you a chance to save your life, it is up to you to decide whether you want to believe me." But then, we of course return to the point about how there are a whole ton of Christians who believe in a whole ton of things.
Deaths caused by Religion (specifically Christianity, not sure about others) is also another example I don't like. For sure, wars were fought in the name of religion, but not IN LINE with their religion. However the wars in the past under the guise of Christianity have been out of greed and selfishness of humanity.
However you could say that deaths caused by people like Hitler or Stalin, were completely IN LINE with Atheistic beliefs (regardless of whether they expressed them openly): that human life has no absolute intrinsic value, and that there are no moral absolutes to govern their actions as right or wrong.
Food for thought, feel free to disagree.
I agree with your point about religious wars. Especially in European history, many wars were waged in the name of religion, but were actually fought for political gain.
When you talk about deaths caused by Atheism though, it gets kind of awkward for me. What about all the technological, medical, environmental, etc advancements made by atheists, meant to protect and improve lives?
While atheists may not believe in moral absolutes, it doesn't mean that they don't believe that human life has no absolute intrinsic value, if you get what I mean. They don't need a God or a religion to tell them the value of human lives, they just accept it by themselves.
wait what? atheism = life has no intrinsic value? that's the most ridiculous assertion i've ever heard. atheism is a stance on the non-existence of deities, period. there are many arguments for the value of life and correct moral/ethical actions completely divorced from religion.
On March 07 2011 04:16 Chromyne wrote: As a Christian I believe in carbon dating, fossils and naturalistic evolution. Personally, I don't see any conflicts (go ahead, quote Genesis), but again, this isn't even a core issue [with Christianity] so if naturalistic evolution is true (which I believe is completely logical), Christianity isn't debunked. (I do understand that some or many do not believe in naturalistic evolution, and well... someone has to be wrong in the end!)
Saying that faith hinders human advancement is silly, mainly because scientists that exist from all worldviews... are still scientists. Copernicus, Descartes, Newton, believed in God and Einstein was a firm non-atheist; Harvard, Yale, and other universities were established by Christians for the purpose of discovering the natural world; modern day Christian scientists still exist as well (the most notable that comes to mind is Francis Collins who headed the Human Genome project).
Unlike in religion the scientific community does not work on things just because someone with a known name said something without any basis. All those people probably were religious, since back then people didn't know much and some people use the "god of the gaps" where you substitute god to everything you don't know. Is there any proof that religion helped them achieve their scientific success?
Strawman - that was never my argument. I'm saying that science doesn't stop religious people from doing science.
You do know that evolution conflicts with genesis? Hell, everything conflicts with genesis, you can't really say stuff like "Altogether, Methuselah lived a total of 969 years, and then he died." is taken out of context and it's actually a metaphor. Nothing has ever been created as in the biblical sense of stuff appearing out of nothing. If even the very first and basic book of the bible can not be taken seriously, how can you believe in what the rest of the book says? Especially when it's supposed to be the words of an omnipotent being.
Actually, no. You can't take everything you read literally - and no, this isn't a cop out - you need to take it as the original author intended it. You need context. Just like you can't read the gospels as modern biography but works of Hellenistic historiographies, you need to look at the original text to understand any true meaning. The Genesis account is surely an example of Hebrew poetry (evident through the use of parallelism and non-linearity). Now, this does not automatically make it metaphorical, but the fact that poetic devices are used, no clear definition of the length of a 'day', no use of the word 'create' (Hebrew word 'bara' meaning to 'fatten'), you can't flat out assume that it's literal.
Saying you are God, or that the Flying Spaghetti Monster is real and God, is not the same as a Christian professing belief in his/her God. It may be true that they may have come to their [initial] belief existentially, however the Bible isn't just a book. It has historical merits that put it beyond just say-so. If that were not true, I'm sure Christianity would have fallen a long time ago under all this antagonism. Faith is not blind, it is a trust based on reason. You can argue the merits of that reasoning, but this is how, even people today, use this word.
Stop the presses, humans believe ridiculous things for absolutely no reason. The Quran has historical merits, why are you not a muslim? Even then that reason is just bullshit, if one part of a book has the slightest amount of reality in it, it does not automatically make the rest of it 100% true. As for faith, the very definiton in this context means it's not based on evidence. You have no evidence, yet you believe in god. How can you not call that blind faith?
Yes, so you should definitely look into Islam. Do some research, because it's evident you've done little, if any. The faith isn't blind because there exists external reasons for this faith, I have already discussed this earlier in this thread. You're statement regarding the Quran shows that you're not even concerned with its validity, because you made a blanket statement without showing any knowledge about it.
You're really good at finding verses, you don't like doing actual research, do you? There is this thing call context. They don't apply for very specific reasons: 1) they were for a specific group of people at a specific time (the Israelites), 2) it was to set the Israelites apart from everyone else (not really relevant to the laws you provided, however), and 3) it was to show the severity of sin with respect to a perfectly holy God.
Please do tell me, if you find it right that I go stone children to set myself apart from everyone else. The things god orders them to do in the bible can not be justified by saying that it's ok to brutally kill humans, just because it was a few thousand years ago. This sin stuff is some serious shit, please tell me how you decide which parts in the bible are literal and which ones are not.
Sin definitely is extremely serious.
That's the problem. You don't decided which parts of the Bible to take literally, you look into the original text, figure out the context, and find the original intention of the author, whether it literal, figuratively, etc.
You might not find that satisfying, and that's perfectly okay. But like some people don't like a speck of fecal matter in their chocolate cake, a perfectly holy God doesn't like unholiness.
His holiness does not like something so people should suffer. How can you call this character just is beyond me.
If you do something wrong (steal, murder, etc.), you should get punished. That's justice. By the way, Jesus died on the cross to remove that punishment for those who would accept him.
Matthew 10:33-37 is not about hating your family or killing them, it's about loving Jesus so much more relative to your family (who you already love, hopefully).
34“Do not think that I came to bring peace on the earth; I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. 35“For I came to SET A MAN AGAINST HIS FATHER, AND A DAUGHTER AGAINST HER MOTHER, AND A DAUGHTER-IN-LAW AGAINST HER MOTHER-IN-LAW; 36and A MAN’S ENEMIES WILL BE THE MEMBERS OF HIS HOUSEHOLD.
This literally says your family members will be your enemies, because they don't believe in christ.
Your assessment is not reasonable or logical because you refuse to take into account or find the context of the verse in light of Jesus' message. It 'literally' doesn't make sense. John 13:34-35 clearly says we are to love one another. The verse you quoted says 'a sword' not 'the sword'. If you read the entire passage, you would see that this is not a physical sword or figurative war, but an active preaching of the Gospel. And a possible consequence of this is that your family will turn against you because of what you believe (a division by a sword).
Acts 3:23. I don't see how you came to that conclusion at all. I don't see any imperative to kill non-believers. It says that they will be cut off from God's people, the KJV even says they'll be destroyed, but that's not an imperative or license to kill them. It just says that non-believers will not be with God.
When someone says specific people will be destroyed from among the people, I'd interpret that as killing or at the very least something really unpleasant. Funny how an omnipotent being is so bad at communicating.
Actually, your confusion is the product of a specific methodology in translating the Greek into English.
You should have Google'd slavery, then you might see that slavery in the Bible is completely different. Slavery was usually a financial issue, and not based on race. People would sell themselves as slaves if they were in debt to someone, or if they just wanted their physical/financial needs provided for by a master. The Bible openly condemns man-stealing and slave-trading, which I think you are associating with.
First of all, slavery does not mean whites using blacks as labor. A slave is a person who is forced to work and is treated as property. Even if people would sell themselves willingly they have to work as slaves for at least six years, and if they disobey any orders during that time, it's ok to beat them. Luke 12:47-48 The bible openly condemns trading humans? What? Please tell me what Leviticus 25:44-46 and Exodus 21:1-6 say. It also says how to treat slaves of different races.
Your statements are contradictory, if they are willing, they are not forced. Your reference to Luke is also out of context. Jesus is using observed slavery as an illustration, and in no way approves the practice.
Your Leviticus reference is not condoning slavery. People described in the Bibles had multiple wives, or had divorces, but this did not mean that they were good practices. Your reference is merely an allowance because it persisted.
Jesus is God, so yes he is immortal. However, he died as a human for other people's mistakes while being perfect himself, so yeah that kind of sucks.
Your illustration assumes that the person is innocent - meaning completely blameless and perfect - which they are not.
You are still saying it is ok for someone else to take a punishment instead of the real criminal. If a completely blameless and perfect being can take a whole races punishment, surely a less perfect being can take a few peoples punishment. Which still makes absolutely no sense, and this is one of the most important things in christianity.
God goes to hell for 2 days, because of his own rules and then goes to heaven and declares all sins are gone? God dying as a human does not matter, since he still is god and he does not truly die. People say religion offers answers, I think all it does is stop you from asking questions.
Yes I am saying exactly that, under the conditions that the person taking the criminal's place is perfect. Surely a less perfect being cannot. But if a father dies so that his daughter won't because she did something wrong, that's sacrifice.
1) Creator of the universe (through 6 day creation or naturalistic evolution, doesn't really matter to me) and humanity to have fellowship with and bring glory to Himself. Perfectly holy and just. 2) I don't believe the claim, 'god exists' is falsifiable. So logically, you can't provide evidence for this (correct me if I'm wrong). I guess you could produce evidence that would reduce the probability of a god existing? But that seems sort of moot because reducing is not extinguishing. 3) What evidence do you require to convince you of the existence of the Christian God?
I require physical evidence of god. Simple as that. You said that you can not produce any evidence for god, which is true since there isn't any. If you cannot falsify the existance of god, you are taking his existance on faith and as I said earlier, it is not based on reason, since that would require evidence. I do not have to produce any evidence to reduce the probability of god existing, since the burden of proof is not on me. The default position is that nothing exists until proven otherwise, not god exists until disproven.
When did I say I couldn't produce any evidence for God? So you want physical evidence, like you want to see evidence of gravity by the observance of the graviton? If so, of course you [very likely] won't get it. Then I guess this discussion is over!
Atheism proclaims a belief that there is no god which also requires evidence (actually philosophically speaking, atheism is self-defeating), and can therefore not reasonably be the default position. A better default position would be agnosticism, claiming no knowledge.
You've probably heard stuff like this before, but think of it this way; Do you believe Santa exists? No? Well you can't be completely sure, there just might be a dimensional being called Santa that actually manipulates parents to give presents to their kids during christmas. He also leaves absolutely no evidence to prove that he exists. Every arguement you use to try and prove the existance of god applies to every supernatural being. Just because something is written in a book does not mean it is true.
Okay, so there is a possibility that Santa exists. Cool.
Your last statement rings true. But the Bible isn't just a book. It's a historical book that is historically and archeologically accurate, with a very high number of existing manuscripts to support it and a time-between original and first copy that bests the works of Homer. Don't try to oversimplify things.
1) Creator of the universe (through 6 day creation or naturalistic evolution, doesn't really matter to me) and humanity to have fellowship with and bring glory to Himself. Perfectly holy and just. 2) I don't believe the claim, 'god exists' is falsifiable. So logically, you can't provide evidence for this (correct me if I'm wrong). I guess you could produce evidence that would reduce the probability of a god existing? But that seems sort of moot because reducing is not extinguishing. 3) What evidence do you require to convince you of the existence of the Christian God?
I require physical evidence of god. Simple as that. You said that you can not produce any evidence for god, which is true since there isn't any. If you cannot falsify the existance of god, you are taking his existance on faith and as I said earlier, it is not based on reason, since that would require evidence. I do not have to produce any evidence to reduce the probability of god existing, since the burden of proof is not on me. The default position is that nothing exists until proven otherwise, not god exists until disproven.
When did I say I couldn't produce any evidence for God? So you want physical evidence, like you want to see evidence of gravity by the observance of the graviton? If so, of course you [very likely] won't get it. Then I guess this discussion is over!
Atheism proclaims a belief that there is no god which also requires evidence (actually philosophically speaking, atheism is self-defeating), and can therefore not reasonably be the default position. A better default position would be agnosticism, claiming no knowledge.
Actually, no. The most general definition for atheism is not an affirmative statement about there being no god but rather a simple lack of belief. I'm an atheist because I have a lack of belief. You can very well be an agnostic atheist because knowledge and belief are two separate issues. There are definitely atheists who have a "stronger" stance and will actively state there is no god.
Also, yes, gravitons at the moment are purely hypothetical. However, with gravity, you can observe the phenomenon and make pretty strong predictions about the behavior of gravity. Lastly, there are experiments that are being set up to detect gravitational waves, like the one at LIGO, which obviously won't detect individual gravitons but they can give us insight on graviton characteristics. The difference is that there's no experimental or theoretical evidence for the existence of a supernatural supreme being.
On March 06 2011 05:32 Nemesis wrote: Deaths caused by Religion (specifically Christianity, not sure about others) is also another example I don't like. For sure, wars were fought in the name of religion, but not IN LINE with their religion. However the wars in the past under the guise of Christianity have been out of greed and selfishness of humanity.
However you could say that deaths caused by people like Hitler or Stalin, were completely IN LINE with Atheistic beliefs (regardless of whether they expressed them openly): that human life has no absolute intrinsic value, and that there are no moral absolutes to govern their actions as right or wrong.
Food for thought, feel free to disagree.
i cut it down a bit, but this was interesting so i wikipedia'd it stalin was somewhat involved in prosectuting religion (and killing priests burning churches etc), and hitler was against the organisation of religion, though hitler talked about god and jesus occasionally so theres some christian thinking inside his mindset, hitler also didnt kill only jews in the holocaust, and never openly ordered it i like to think theres more to the other sides of the storys here too though, its one person taking the blame for an entire government in both cases at the very least, so many of the religious members of government could have easily taken part (assuming there were any) BUT, they did so in the belief that they would make their nations better, and through their actions raise the quality of life/education etc once these factions of people were removed from society i believe these incidents wouldnt have occurred if noone had been religious, but this leads itself into wouldnt have occured if everyone was christian/buddist/islamic etc too so its not a very convincing arguement
I think this is a very poignant comic. "Live and let live" is a great philosophy for your personal life but when someone's beliefs can effect you and society in very real ways you can't just sit idle.
5.) Your statement regarding Christianity being eradicated if we had the current knowledge 2000 years ago is absolutely fallacious, as we simply have no way of knowing that. Not only this, but you operate under the assumption that Christian beliefs have not been affirmed by many recent scientific discoveries. Take for instance, the more we learn about the Universe, the more we realize there are precise conditions that must have been in place for it to exist in the state it is, that is, to be able to support life. In past decades, we have discovered that the Universe had a distinctive beginning (The Big Bang, as some call it) which brings the question, what caused the big bang? and what caused the particle expansion at its outset to be of the exact right mass and makeup of matter for the Universe to exist and be able to support life? As we learn more and more about Anatomy of the human body, we see extremely complex systems operating at precise efficiency as deep as protein syntheses, not to mention all the complex organs and organ systems. The eye itself gives credence to a designer.
Not only this, but Evolution makes many leaps not confirmed by observational evidence, rather such an unproven speculation, it could be said that some Evolutionists have a stronger faith (by the definition you insisted on giving earlier) than any Creationist ever did.
Woops, you added this in an edit and I didn't see it until now. I should have been clearer and said that "I believe" that religion wouldn't exist--it's merely a hypothetical that we can never be sure of.
If by "precise conditions" you are referring to the cosmological constants and how because the values are so precise that this must support intelligent design (a.k.a. anthropic principle), then no, I argue this provides absolutely no evidence for God. To begin with, the notion of finely tuned parameters are debated among cosmologists but let's assume that each constant can only take on one specific value. If this is the case, then why is life so extremely rare? Why isn't the universe teeming with life?
You ask what caused the Big Bang and imply that it was God. This begs the question, then what created God? This leads to an infinite regression with absolutely no meaningful answer.
The human anatomy is actually very poorly engineering/designed, if it actually was. Take, for example, the Laryngeal Nerve (+ Show Spoiler +
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cO1a1Ek-HD0
). In the human female, the birth canal passes through the pelvis. The prenatal skull will deform to a surprising extent. However, if the baby’s head is significantly larger than the pelvic opening, the baby cannot be born naturally. Prior to the development of modern surgery (caesarean section), such a complication would lead to the death of the mother, the baby or both. Other birthing complications such as breech birth are worsened by this position of the birth canal. Almost all animals and plants synthesize their own vitamin C, but humans cannot because the gene for this enzyme is defective. What kind of designer thought it would be a good idea to make the pharynx something used for both ingestion AND respiration. How do you explain all of the useless, vestigial parts in the human body, like wisdom teeth? Lastly, I'm glad you brought up the eye because it is actually an example of very poor engineering. The nerves and blood vessels lie on the surface of the retina instead of behind it as is the case in many invertebrate species. This arrangement forces a number of complex adaptations and gives mammals a blind spot. Also, six muscles move the eye when three would suffice.
While there are many complex systems within the body, there are a plethora of examples of gross inefficiencies. For starters, look up DNA replication and the proteins used (specifically, DNA polymerase I, IV, and V). These are HIGHLY error prone polymerases which replicate the DNA using incorrect base pairs. They are also not very processive. Look up all the various repair mechanisms needed JUST for DNA replication (e.g., mismatch repair, nucleotide excision repair, base excision repair, recombination, etc.). But these repair pathways aren't perfect either. If these mutations are not fixed, often times it will either be completely ignored as it is silent or it will lead to something like cancer. Also, look up non-homologous end joining, and how it is used as a last resort and leads to the loss of base pairs, and can lead to various syndromes like SCID.
Lastly, it seems you don't have a fully developed understanding of evolution. The amount of evidence that supports it is immeasurable and spans a period of over 100 years. Please give me an example of such "leaps" found in evolution and I'll try to explain why it is not a leap.
Well, now that depends on what type of evolutionary concept you subscribe to.
There are two major models of evolution. They are:
* Gradualism - Changes in the morphology of species are the result of gradual changes in the genomes of species. The apparent lack of gradualism in the fossil record is due to an incompleteness of the fossil record. * Punctuated Equilibrium - Changes in morphology are due to species sorting following geographic isolation and major reductions in population numbers. The punctuated appearance of the fossil record is real.
Gradualism
The major problems with gradualism is that it is not reflected in the fossil record. By far, the fossil record is extremely discontinuous. There are a few examples of gradualism, but they are the exception. Even the most famous example of gradualism (the horse) suffers from a lack of intermediates for most species. Here is an admission by an evolutionist:
"Eldredge and Gould not only showed that paleontologists had been out-of-step with biologists for decades, but also that they had unconsciously trying to force the fossil record into the gradualistic mode. The few supposed examples of gradual evolution were featured in the journals and textbooks, but paleontologists had long been mum about their 'dirty little trade secret:' most species appear suddenly in the fossil record and show no appreciable change for millions of years until their extinction." -Dr. Donald Prothero (Prothero, D.R. 1992. Punctuated Equilibrium At Twenty: A Paleontological Perspective. Skeptic 1: 38-47.)
The evidence against gradualism is extensive, but not readily admitted to in the popular press or textbooks. Although the fossil record for a given location on land may be discontinuous, the fossil record for organisms deposited in the ocean or large bodies of water is continuous. Studies by Stanley (3), Cheetham (4) and Stanley and Yang (5) examined all the available lineages of their respective groups (bryozoans and bivalves) through long intervals of time, using multivariate analysis of multiple character states. Both concluded that most of their species were static through millions of years, followed by the sudden appearance of new species. Williamson (6) examined the fossil record of mollusks in Lake Turkana, Kenya, and showed that there were multiple examples of rapid speciation and prolonged stasis, but no gradualism. Barnosky (7) examined a large number of different lineages of mammals, from mammoths to shrews and rodents that lived during the last two million years of the Ice Ages and found a few examples of gradualism, but many more which showed stasis and punctuation. Prothero examined all the mammals with a reasonably complete record from the Eocene-Oligocene (about 30-35 million years ago) beds of the Big Badlands of South Dakota and related areas in Wyoming and Nebraska (8). This study not only sampled every available lineage without bias, but also had much better time control from magnetic stratigraphy and wider geographic coverage than previous studies. With only one exception all of the Badlands mammals were static through millions of years, or speciated abruptly (if they changed at all). Stasis and sudden appearance of new species is the norm rather than the exception, as evidenced by the fossil record.
Evolutionists have used the excuse that the fossil record is not complete enough to be an accurate representation of the history of life on the Earth. A recent book, The Adequacy of the Fossil Record (9), examined the fossil record in terms of its completeness, bias (over and under representation of certain species and groups of organisms), and stratigraphic range (its completeness for a species over the entire history of its existence). Their conclusions were that the fossil record is surprisingly complete, with about 10% of all species that have ever lived being represented. There are some biases and stratigraphic incompleteness in the fossil record, but these problems can be estimated mathematically from the available data. There are many examples of stratigraphic gaps in the fossil record, with these gaps being the rule rather than the exception. In the past, it has been assumed that the gaps represent incompleteness of the fossil record. The authors suggest the "heretical" view that stratigraphic data should be used to test the phylogenetic relationships between species rather than assume that the relationships exist and that the fossil record is incomplete.
The punctuated fossil record applies not only to individual species, but to entire periods of time, where entire communities of species remain unchanged for millions of years. These periods of "coordinated stasis" can be followed by periods when "upwards of 60% of species seem to be replaced over a period of a few hundred thousand years"(10). During the first 16 million years of the Tertiary period, 18 orders of mammals appeared. Many scientist had claimed that gaps in the fossil record could account for the apparent sudden appearance of mammals. However, Dr. David Archibald (San Diego State University), looked at the numbers of fossil site spanning the period of 5 million years before and after the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary. Dr. Archibald found that sampling was equal for periods before and after the boundary, although only 11 genera were found in the 5 million years before the beginning of the Tertiary compared to 139 genera in the 5 million years following (11). The idea that the lack of transitional forms is due to gaps in the fossil record is not reasonable given the tremendous number of fossils that have been discovered in recent studies. Therefore, the old "evolution of the gaps" theory is not supported by the extensive fossil record that now exists. Gradualism, although it seems a more logical mode of evolution, is not supported by the fossil record.
There are many who believe in the theory of evolution, who don't realize that you need to make a choice in what theory of evolution you are going to accept as being true. You can't believe in both gradualism and punctuated equilibrium simultaneously, since they are contradictory. Some of the "spokesmen" for evolution, such as Richard Dawkins, would like to redefine punctuated equilibrium into some sort of modified gradualism. However, the following statement is what Gould and Eldredge say about their theory:
""Punctuated equilibrium is a theory that attributes this pattern of spurt and stasis neither 1. to imperfections of the fossil record in a truly gradualistic world, nor 2. to such theories of occasional anagenetic rapidity as Simpson's important hypothesis of quantum evolution, but to speciation as a process of branching, characteristically occurring at geologically instantaneous rates - with trends then explained not as anagenetic accumulation, but as differential success by species sorting." -Drs. Gould and Eldredge (S.J. Gould and N. Eldredge. 1994. Nature 368:407.)
The punctuated reality of the fossil record is best exemplified by the "Cambrian explosion." Virtually every animal phyla (including chordates and many phyla now extinct) appeared during the short geological moment called the Cambrian explosion (13). This period of time is now known to have covered a period of time of less than 10 million years (14, 15). The diversity of life and the variety of body designs has led Stephen Jay Gould to make the following statement:
"We have reason to think that all major anatomical designs may have made their appearance at that time." -Dr. Stephen Jay Gould (Gould, S.J. 1995. Of it, not above it. Nature 377: 681-682.)
Many evolutionists are now admitting that the diversity of life appearing at the Cambrian explosion is beyond what one would expect from any naturalistic mechanism:
""Understanding both the onset and the termination of such bursts is a major challenge. Critical tests for the trigger or damper of the Cambrian explosion have been difficult." -David Jablonski (Jablonski, D. 1999. The Future of the Fossil Record. Science 284: 2114-2116.)
In a huge setback for evolutionists, scientists have discovered a true crustacean in early Cambrian strata from Shropshire, England. In a recent issue of Science, Drs. Siveter, Williams, and Waloszek. announced the discovery of a fossil phosphatocopid ostracod, which is preserved extraordinarily well, including all its delicate limbs cast in calcium phosphate, clearly allowing it to be classified as a crustacean. Dr. Richard Fortey, who believes that this discovery will foreshadow the discovery of pre-Cambrian ancestors of this crustacean, overturning the Cambrian explosion, has made this rather telling admission at the end of the article:
"Even if evidence for an earlier origin is discovered, it remains a challenge to explain why so many animals should have increased in size and acquired shells within so short a time at the base of the Cambrian. At the moment, there are almost as many explanations as there are animals caught in this belated "explosion." -Dr. Richard Fortey (Fortey, R. 2001. The Cambrian Explosion Exploded? Science 293: 438-439.)
Other recent studies contradict the major mechanism behind gradualism, since they "show how important large beneficial Permanent structural alterations in DNA, consisting of either substitutions, insertions or deletions of nucleotide bases.mutations are in the first stages of an adaptation," according to evolutionary biologist Doug Schemske of the University of Washington, Seattle (19). According to evolutionary theory, a new adaptation must be acquired fairly quickly, or else organisms will be poorly adapted to both the new and the old conditions and will not survive. Therefore, it seems logical that the first genetic changes must have large effects or else the changes will not be selected. However, the observation that large beneficial Permanent structural alterations in DNA, consisting of either substitutions, insertions or deletions of nucleotide bases.mutations seem to occur (of course de novo creation is eliminated as a possibility) poses a problem, since these Permanent structural alterations in DNA, consisting of either substitutions, insertions or deletions of nucleotide bases.mutationsare thought to be mostly rare and mostly disadvantageous when they do happen so "they contradict theory," according to Dr. H. Allen Orr, an evolutionary geneticist at University of Rochester in New York (19). "We're in a funny situation - we're about to have a wave of data crash down on us and no theory to hang it on." New models have been proposed to attempt to explain these data, although they are yet to be confirmed.
Punctuated Equilibrium
Punctuated equilibrium requires the occurrence of two unlikely events. First, a number of beneficial Permanent structural alterations in DNA, consisting of either substitutions, insertions or deletions of nucleotide bases.mutations must accumulate in a small number of individuals. Since the A permanent structural alteration in DNA, consisting of either a substitution, insertion or deletion of nucleotide bases.mutation rate is low, the species' population must be large in order to accumulate any beneficial Permanent structural alterations in DNA, consisting of either substitutions, insertions or deletions of nucleotide bases.mutations (most Permanent structural alterations in DNA, consisting of either substitutions, insertions or deletions of nucleotide bases.mutationsare neutral and the remainder are mostly detrimental). Next, these few individuals must become genetically isolated from the larger population (species sorting). Without genetic isolation (usually involving geographic isolation) the multiple Permanent structural alterations in DNA, consisting of either substitutions, insertions or deletions of nucleotide bases.mutations, needed to produce the punctuated appearance of a new species, would never get co-expressed. Therefore, punctuated equilibrium requires the unlikely events of multiple Permanent structural alterations in DNA, consisting of either substitutions, insertions or deletions of nucleotide bases.mutations in presence of a few individuals of large population, and the unlikely genetic isolation of these specific individuals from the vast majority of the main population. Although it is possible that such unlikely events could occur by chance occasionally, punctuated equilibrium requires that these unlikely events occur all the time, as revealed in the fossil record. Punctuated equilibrium truly is a faith in the miracles of chance.
A recent study destroys the idea of species sorting (20, 21). Instead of becoming a new species, populations that suffer drastic reductions in numbers are characterized by decreased genetic variability and an expression of detrimental genes. This happens because normally Possessing two different forms of a particular gene, one inherited from each parent.heterozygous (containing 2 different Variant forms of a gene at a particular locus, or location, on a chromosome.alleles of each gene) individuals become Possessing two identical forms of a particular gene, one inherited from each parent.homozygous, due to inbreeding. As a result, detrimental, non-expressed, A genetic disorder that appears only in patients who have received two copies of a mutant gene, one from each parent.recessive genes become Possessing two identical forms of a particular gene, one inherited from each parent.homozygous and, therefore, are expressed, resulting in a less fit population. The study examined the effect of a 35-year population decline of greater prairie chickens on their fitness and fertility. The results showed that population decline and isolation of the prairie chicken led to decreased genetic variability, reduced egg viability (from near 100% to less than 80%), and a decline of fertility rates (from 93% to 74%). Only after human intervention (which brought in genetically diverse individuals from other areas) did the population begin to recover. This study calls into serious question species sorting as the underlying mechanism of punctuated equilibrium. More recent studies have confirmed these results (22).
Another study showed that low relatedness (high genetic diversity) is favored in social insects (24). This low relatedness improves the fitness of the colony, but prevents the kind of species sorting expected in punctuated equilibrium.
Sources 3 Stanley, S.M. 1992. The empirical case for the punctuational model of evolution, in The Dynamics of Evolution. A. Somit and S.A. Peterson (ed.). Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press. pp. 85-102. 4 Cheetham, A.H. 1986. Tempo of evolution in a Neogene bryozoan: rates of morphologic change within and across species boundaries. Paleobiology, 12: 190-202. 5 Stanley, S.M. and X. Yang. 1987. Approximate evolutionary stasis for bivalve morphology over millions of years: a multivariate, multilineage study. Paleobiology, 13: 113-139. 6 Williamson, P.G. 1981. Paleontological documentation of speciation of Cenozoic mollusks from the Turkana Basin." Nature, 293: 437-443. Williamson, P.G. 1985. Punctuated equilibrium, morphological stasis, and the paleontological documentation of speciation. Biological Journal of the Linnean Society of London, 26: 307-324. 7 Barnosky, A.D. 1987. Punctuated equilibrium and phyletic gradualism, some facts from the Quaternary mammal record. Current Mammalogy, 1: 109-147. 8 Prothero, D.R. and N. Shubin. 1983. "Tempo and mode of speciation in Oligocene mammals." Geological Society of America, Abstracts with Programs, 16(6): 665. Prothero, D.R. 1992. "Evolutionary patterns at the terrestrial Eocene-Oligocene boundary in North America." Fifth North American Paleontological Convention, Abstracts and Programs, Paleontological Society Special Publication 6: 238. Prothero, D.R. and W.A. Berggren (eds.). 1992. Eocene-Oligocene Climactic and Biotic Evolution. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Prothero, D.R., T. Heaton, and S.M. Stanley. (In press). "Patterns of evolution in mammals at the Eocene-Oligocene climactic crisis." Paleobiology. 9 Donovan, S.K. and C.R.C. Paul, eds. 1998. The Adequacy of the Fossil Record. Wiley, Chichester, UK. 10 Richard A. Kerr. 1997. Does Evolutionary History Take Million-Year Breaks? Science 278: 576. 11 Dennis Normile. 1998. MAMMALIAN EVOLUTION MEETING: New views of the origins of mammals. Science 281: 775. 12 S.J. Gould and N. Eldredge. 1994. Nature 368:407. 13 Chen, J.Y., J. Dzik, G.D. Edgecombe, L. Ramskold, G.Q. Zhou. 1995. A possible early Cambrian chordate. Nature 377: 720-722. 14 Kerr, R.A. 1993. Evolution's big bang gets even more explosive. Science 261: 1274-1275. 15 Bowring, S.A., J.P. Grotzinger, C.E. Isachsen, A.H. Knoll, S.M. Pelechaty, and P. Kolosov. 1993. Calibrating rates of early Cambrian evolution. Science 261: 1293-1298. 16 Gould, S.J. 1995. Of it, not above it. Nature 377: 681-682. 17 Jablonski, D. 1999. The Future of the Fossil Record. Science 284: 2114-2116. 18 Fortey, R. 2001. The Cambrian Explosion Exploded? Science 293: 438-439. 19 Morell, V. 1999. Size Matters: The Genes Behind Adaptation. Science 284: 2106-2108. 20 SoulŽ, M.E. and L.S. Mills. 1998. No need to isolate genetics. Science 282: 1658. 21 Wetermeirer, R.L., J.D. Brawn, S.A. Simpson, T.L. Esker, R.W. Jansen, J.W. Walk, E.L. Kershner, J.L. Bouzat, and K.N. Paige. 1998. Tracking the long-term decline and recovery of an isolated population. Science 282: 1695. 22 Armbruster, P. and D.H. Reed. 2005. Inbreeding depression in benign and stressful environments. Heredity 95: 235–242. 24 Reed, D.H., A.C. Nicholas and G.E. Stratton. 2006. Inbreeding levels and prey abundance interact to determine fecundity in natural populations of two species of wolf spider. Conserv. Genet. doi:10.1007/s10592-006-9260-4.
Wow I really hate it when people use Gould to bash evolution. I keep a copy of the paper he and Eldredge published on my computer because the tendency for people to constantly use it out of context. Plus I'm getting my masters in biology so it makes me warm and fuzzy inside.
Your initial premise is totally wrong, you set up a false dichotomy. It's not a choice between "Gradualism evolution" OR "punctuated equilibrium evolution"; these aren't competing religions where one HAS to be completely right in order to be viable. Both are incorporated into evolutionary theory, it just depends on the type of speciation that is occurring. It actually answers the age-old criticism of evolution that its not true b/c of the fossil record holes. So, if anything, it makes the theory more robust.
Yes, originally scientists were approaching the fossil record through the lens of gradualism, but eventually punctuated equilibrium was added, which helped round out the theory. It actually goes to show how adaptable science is to new ideas, at least in the long run. If it's accurate, its eventually accepted.
Also, I decided to check up on some of those sources. Like one of the other posters said, it is clear this was copy pasted b/c the formatting errors make it a bit of a pain to read, but I read part of it anyway. To put it bluntly: whoever wrote this took at least one source that I checked up on completely out of context, which does not bode well for your argument as a whole. Source 21 was referring to a population of prairie chickens which was struggling due to drastic habitation drops due to humans. The population was never over 250 individuals, according to the paper. Now I don't know if you know anything about Minimum Viable Population, but it seems VERY unlikely that this type of animal would meet its MVP with only 250 birds. This does NOT prove allopatric speciation untrue. These birds had populations in the millions before humans had major settlements in the area, so you could still have allopatric speciation (theoretically, hard to do with birds), while still maintaining two populations of at least a million each.
It doesn't seem like you have a grasp on the topic at all, which is probably why you had to go elsewhere for ideas.
On March 10 2011 09:04 krndandaman wrote: On the internet, I practically gave up arguing for Christianity against atheists. It will pretty much go nowhere. Just ignore it.
I was converted to atheism via the internet. If you don't think that conversion via the internet in the other direction is possible, it seems to me that you must just lack confidence in your own justifications for your beliefs. Or you just don't realize that not everyone is as set in their beliefs as you are.
Also, @OP: Just because you don't do active harm with your beliefs doesn't make them any less irrational or groundless. And:
So just because I don't drink, do drugs, nor raise my hands in violence against any human being, doesn't mean that I am demanding the same of anyone.
I don't know why you suggest that these things are somehow equivalent to Christianity or exclusive to Christianity. Also, I do think that you should demand that other people don't beat other people up.
Long story short, OP seems to exemplify all of the typical liberal Christian dribble that involves a lot of words but not really saying anything of meaning. Harmless, but still senseless.
On March 07 2011 07:25 sermokala wrote: Religion has given the very basis of ethics.
I think that if you gave 5 minutes of honest thought to that, you would realize how wrong that statement is. On top of that, it is ridiculously offensive to not only atheists but to all people to say that they need a holy book to keep themselves from raping, killing, and stealing from each other.
EPT
-14) ![[image loading]](http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/beliefs.jpg)
