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god v aliens
do aliens exist, cause it occurred to me the other day that if they do then that totally rules out the theory of god because in the bible it says that there are no other planets in the universe or any other galaxy that have life on so if there is aliens then were all screwed cause theres no heaven either
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Nice try with the chimps, Clanad, but it's simply too far fetched. To say that 'eyes' are an example of convergent evolution is one thing (they are such a powerful adaptive feature that they came about in various species with no common inheritance of them). However to put the massive physiological and psychological overlap between humans and chimps down to convergent evolution requires such an overwhelming leap of faith as to be simply unacceptable. It is technically possible, in the wildest of worlds, that it could have happened this way. The chances of two distinct species, with no common ancestor, of having simply evolved such a massive common overlap even within the same niche are so extremely remote as to be impossible. The alternative explanation, that they came from a common ancestor, and became modified due to a combination of natural selection (different niches) and genetic mutation is SO much more feasible, and yet you reject it in favour of the overwhelmingly unlikely one, just so that you can hang on to a souped-up divinized notion of humanity?
Humans walk on two legs, chimps (normally) don't. Comparative evolutionary studies make a lot of fuss over this bipedalism, because it gives rise to many other differences. So take it, for example, that I assume for a minute that chimps and humans did have a common ancestor. I presume that the common ancestor would be quadripedal, and that there would be a gradual fossil line from this ancestor to modern humans shifting from quadripedal to bipedal, from small cranium to large cranium, from no tool use to advanced technology. Which perfectly supports my argument. It is staring me in the face.
Badams, your theories are excellent, and they make a lot of sense if one is to accept your faulty scientific assumptions. I think you have failed to grasp the actual mechanism of NON RANDOM natural selection acting in concert with RANDOM genetic mutation. You can go on forever trying to sell the notion of God as the explanation for complex animal life having come about from random genetic mutation. But it simply did not come about by this force alone: this is genetics 101.
Furthermore, evolutionists do not believe that DNA, protein, cells came about by chance. It is weird that they came about, but that does not mean that instead of trying to understand their arrival by rational enquiry we can abandon this in favour of the most outlandish suggestion of all: that some big guy in the sky, that no one has ever seen, did it all himself, and he explains it.
Let's face it: this debate doesn't centre around science it centres around philosophy of science and philosophy of mind. On the one hand, philosophically, I reject the notion of in any way assuming the existence of that which I am seeking to demonstrate (God). Yet you both enter the debate really with an underlying assumption that God exists and try (under the guise of 'rational enquiry') to squeeze and squash the science we do have to fit your goal! We are coming from completely different tangents. NOTHING I can say will ever change your conclusion, because you come to the debate with your mind made up. I am absolutely prepared to have my mind changed, to accept that another being had a hand in all this. But in fact, all that I see is science being misunderstood, warped, or twisted. The people I really worry for are those who read what you write and assume it has any basis in fact.
I detest religious fundamentalism.
Furthermore, evolutionists do not believe that DNA, protein, cells came about by chance. It is weird that they came about, but that does not mean that instead of trying to understand their arrival by rational enquiry we can abandon this in favour of the most outlandish suggestion of all: that some big guy in the sky, that no one has ever seen, did it all himself, and he explains it.
Let's face it: this debate doesn't centre around science it centres around philosophy of science and philosophy of mind. On the one hand, philosophically, I reject the notion of in any way assuming the existence of that which I am seeking to demonstrate (God). Yet you both enter the debate really with an underlying assumption that God exists and try (under the guise of 'rational enquiry') to squeeze and squash the science we do have to fit your goal! We are coming from completely different tangents. NOTHING I can say will ever change your conclusion, because you come to the debate with your mind made up. I am absolutely prepared to have my mind changed, to accept that another being had a hand in all this. But in fact, all that I see is science being misunderstood, warped, or twisted. The people I really worry for are those who read what you write and assume it has any basis in fact.
I detest religious fundamentalism.
MargeB:
The people I really worry for are those who read what you write and assume it has any basis in fact.
I detest religious fundamentalism.
This is why it is so important that people like us, whose beliefs you so vehemently detest, should continue to post the other side of the coin. Don't worry for other people, if they have been able to follow the intricacies of these arguments then they are well able enough to make up their own minds, and if just one person approaches the bible from a slightly new viewpoint (or even opens it!), then it will have been worthwhile. In the meantime these vigorous and absorbing debates will continue long long after we are gone - you to - where ? Us to - heaven ? Who knows :)
Me, to hell. A big fiery burning pit with the 'devil' and all the bad people. For ever and ever. God will put me there cos I refused to accept that he existed cos I just couldn't twist my mind through hoops to abandon reason for a collection of fairy tales and some random nutter among many who was supposed to have got hung from a tree cos he pi*sed off a bunch of Jews and cos I didn't believe the rantings of a bunch of weirdos who made up a story about him 'rising from the dead' and mysteriously zapping himself up through the clouds cos they couldn't admit that they'd put their money on the wrong horse.
In a word, MargeB, EVIDENCE. Where is it for your assumptions? The fossil record does not support your conclusions, the scientific investigation into DNA and other such hard evidence does not support it, historicity does not support it. You are certainly allowed all the assumptions you desire, but you finally arrive at the same flawed conclusion of other naturalists; any other explanation, especially one involving a Diety has no place in the discussion. I'm always prepared, but somehow taken aback, that it's not very long, in a discussion such as this, that your side becomes vehemently and sometimes abusively strident. I, nor anyone else on this thread has attacked your position, sadly the same isn't true for you. As I stated early on, we've been around this mulberry bush a few times, and it always winds up the same way, with you becoming angry others cannot agree with you.
Contd.
Contd.
Why do you describe my (and others) positions as being under the "guise of rational inquiry"? Thie presupposes that your position is... yet if you would honestly disclose, I'm sure you've never actually read Darwin (1st and 2nd editions), much less other scientific treatisies. I'm not the resident expert, but I have read and have the ability to understand... no.. comprehend the information presented. Example; my discussion of convergence is not my "nice try"... this is presented by the anthropologists and other scientific disciplines. This is not the conclusion of creationists, so you're argument is with yourself, so to speak, not me. You can kill the messenger, but that serves little, don't you think? You're obviously the one that is so devoted to a position that even evidence from your own "side" doesn't sway you. You're unacceptance or at least further sincere inquiry is astonishing.
Finally, evolutionists do believe that DNA, and all precursors to life, came about by chance. That is the fundamental factoid for their belief system. I'm not sure why you would make such a statement, unless it's to intentionally mislead.
Contd.
Conclusion:
However, as usual, I believe this discussion has now reached the end of it's usefulness with one last comment. You are free to make any choice you want... you can, after review of all the evidence, choose to say No! I will not believe! For, ultimately, it's a choice of will not, not cannot. The God of Scripture will honor that choice, because it is part of His unchanging nature (I believe). But, as with any choice, it has it's consequences. Right now, you do not understand that you are alienated, Scripture calls it at enmity with the Him. (Yes, I can almost hear the gnashing of your teeth in anger that anyone could believe what I'm stating, nevertheless...you were the one posing the questions that some of us have tried to answer) But He, because of the other singular characteristic of His nature; Love, has made a way for all of us to be friends (James 2:23) of His. He died to pay the price for our alienation from His perfect justness. I can only provide witness to what's happened in my life since I said Yes. Phillipians 4:6-7, says "Don't be anxious for anything... you will have a peace that passes all understanding" All I can say in closing is, Amen... and, my angry debater, I would certainly wish that for you... but that's all I can do... choice is yours... where's your evidence?
what a rant, lol.
There is plenty of evidence. Do you disagree that the fossil record exists? We have dozens of pieces.
I did not say that convergence is not true. Far from it. It's why so many wildly unrelated animals have eyes. But you have made the mistake of applying it where it is clearly inapplicable. You are saying that the enormous overlap between chimps and humans is due to convergence: it is not. They are clearly from the same ancestor, yet you refuse to accept this because, to take your words from a previous post 'it would mean embracing [what you perceive as] absurdity'.
I'm not angry in my words, but you do perceive them this way, since I think you hold on to your belief system very tightly and get angry when something threatens it. All I have done is point out that I think your starting point is wrong, and that you are trying to use science to support it.
So what do you make of all these fossilized remains that we have? That so clearly rule out 'a hand of God in history'.
Furthermore, the evolution of DNA, cells, and proteins, was itself as a result of natural selection, which is not random. Just because evolutionary theory is classically applied to beings which use DNA to code through propagation, it does not mean that events leading up to the existence of DNA, cells, and proteins were not themselves subject to the same evolutionary forces, such as random mutation and natural selection. And this natural selection is NOT chance event.
MargeB - Simple probability. If the probabilty of event A happening is A, and the probability of event B happening is B, the probability of both A and B happening is AxB. "Natural Selection" cannot occur with random mutation - if the mutation does not occur, there is nothing to select. Even if the probability of natural selection giving one variation complete domination over another is 1, the probability of that natural selection ever occuring is 1 x the probability of the mutation which allowed it. Therefore since we are agreed that mutation is random, it follows that the chances of natural selection bringing about positive changes are random too, since they are dependant on random events. Since natural selection is fully dependant on random events, it is quite valid to discuss it in terms of probability - something which seems to scare you, since you are not prepared to discuss how unlikely are the steps which evolution depends on. If you would examine the probabilities, you would not claim that genetic mutation as the reason for us being here is "more feasible" when in fact it is this absurd claim which is "overwhelmingly unlikely"!
CONTINUED
CONTINUATION
"evolutionists do not believe that DNA, protein, cells came about by chance" you say. What do they believe then? You claim that "events leading up to the existence of DNA, cells, and proteins were themselves subject to the same evolutionary forces, such as random mutation and natural selection". This shows an immense lack of understanding of the chemical makeup of these materials. Chemical compounds do not "mutate", nor are they subject to alteration by some mystical "evolutionary forces"!
"NOTHING I can say will ever change your conclusion, because you come to the debate with your mind made up" - well I guess that makes two of us then. In spite of all the evidence which discredits evolution as a credible explanation for our existence, you have amazing faith in a "science" which you hope will someday make remarkable discoveries to fill the gaps in our knowledge, and explain how events which are so improbable that they would normally be described as "impossible" could have taken place. Who knows - they might also be able to explain the natural phenomena known as Stonehenge!
Utter nonsense.
If two people get in a fight with a lion, and one of them is big and strong, and one of them is small and weak, who is more likely to beat the lion, and survive to have kids? The big and strong one. NOT one or the other equally. The big and strong one has a significant advantage. The NATURAL force (lion) SELECTS for the stronger one. It is very very simple. In very very plain english, this makes utter nonsense of your little probability theory.
DNA only survives if it can replicate. The ability of one strand to replicate more readily than another, or to survive in a certain natural environment, means that they will EVOLVE.
The fact that the events are improbable does not remove the fact that they have indeed taken place, I am just offering our best explanation so far as to why this has occurred. You, like most religious fundamentalists, are desperate, against all evidence, to try to claim a divine hand in it all.
There was no '1 second' before the big band, spacetime was created with the big bang. You can get something from nothing, this happens all the time. Even if you didn't, so what? Why should the big bang or whatever their was 'before it' (so to speak) submit in any way to analogy with anything we see in the universe around us? The only similarity would probably be some kind of quantum anomaly found in Black Holes, since these, like the universe at the Big Bang, contain singularities which do not resemble the 'regular' laws of physics at the macro level as witnessed around us.
MargeB - sorry, but it is you who is talking utter nonsense. For natural selection to occur, there has to be something to select. I fully understand, and have never anywhere infered that natural selection is a random process in itself. What made one lion fighter big and the other one small? That had to be mutation, and the mutation was random. So before the non-random selection by the lion, there had to be a completely random mutation. Therefore the probability that a mutation could occur and a superior lionfighter would survive while the weaker became extinct is completely controlled by a random event.
"The fact that the events are improbable does not remove the fact that they have indeed taken place." Ah - so Stonehenge did occur naturally!
"I am just offering our best explanation so far as to why this has occurred." - no - you're offering one explanation, and not a very scientific one either!
"You, like most religious fundamentalists, are desperate, against all evidence, to try to claim a divine hand in it all." On the contrary, I used to have serious doubts about the possibility of creation, and felt that the evidence was against it. That was until I started to study it, and discovered how weak the evidence was for evolution. The more I study it, and the more scientific discoveries are made, the further from "desperate" I get.
MargeB, you say "There was no '1 second' before the big bang, spacetime was created with the big bang." "Created"? I'm sure that was a slip of the tongue - sorry, keyboard :-). Anyhow, how do you know this? "Created" from what? Did matter and energy just appear out of nowhere?
"You can get something from nothing, this happens all the time." Okay, if it happens all the time, you'll have no problem giving a few examples!
"Even if you didn't, so what? Why should the big bang or whatever their was 'before it' (so to speak) submit in any way to analogy with anything we see in the universe around us?" Why surely you don't meant that there is an immeasurably large force beyond our comprehension, which works outside of all of the known laws of science, and could cause the universe to come into being? Hey - you could call it "God"! :-)
"The only similarity would probably be some kind of quantum anomaly found in Black Holes, since these, like the universe at the Big Bang, contain singularities which do not resemble the 'regular' laws of physics at the macro level as witnessed around us." How do you know that quantum anomalies and singularities are found in black holes - that's not very scientific, since we can neither observe, nor conduct experiments on black holes! (Anyhow, to have an anomaly, there has to be "something", whether it is matter or energy. You can't have an anomaly in "nothing").
"You can get something from nothing, this happens all the time." Okay, if it happens all the time, you'll have no problem giving a few examples!
"Even if you didn't, so what? Why should the big bang or whatever their was 'before it' (so to speak) submit in any way to analogy with anything we see in the universe around us?" Why surely you don't meant that there is an immeasurably large force beyond our comprehension, which works outside of all of the known laws of science, and could cause the universe to come into being? Hey - you could call it "God"! :-)
"The only similarity would probably be some kind of quantum anomaly found in Black Holes, since these, like the universe at the Big Bang, contain singularities which do not resemble the 'regular' laws of physics at the macro level as witnessed around us." How do you know that quantum anomalies and singularities are found in black holes - that's not very scientific, since we can neither observe, nor conduct experiments on black holes! (Anyhow, to have an anomaly, there has to be "something", whether it is matter or energy. You can't have an anomaly in "nothing").
calvesy - we're all so much more enlightened now thanks to your highly intellectual contribution.
It's a matter of perspective. From the creationists point of view, the more we study the theories of evolution, the more they look like "bull", (to use your terminology), concocted to meet the demands of a desperate scientific community who cannot contemplate the notion that our existence cannot be accounted for by science alone.
If the best you can do to defend your position is to make abusive remarks about those with a different opinion than yourself, all it does is to convince others that you are not in a position to offer a real defence of your views.
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