The biggest flaw in the arguments of those who oppose evolution as a concept is that they nearly always define the process of evolution as a purely random process.

Arguments that a bucket of watch (or other complex object) parts will not assemble a working watch (or whatever) no matter how long you have is symptomatic of mapping a non random process onto a random one.

Given that the ways that atoms and molecules interact (and given that such interaction is specifically defined by their characteristics) is, by definition, non random, and any sequence of events that contain even one non random characteristic becomes non random, even if *every* other influence is completely random.

For some other items:

The human brain is arguably the most complex structure *that we know of*. No argument on the wonder of the human brain

Regardless of the complexity and informational content of DNA, there is nothing in there, that in principle at least, cannot necessarily be duplicated by a sequence of mutation and environmentally directed fitness. We may not know, but that doesn't mean we *cannot* know.

Even given that, as complex and wondrous as life is, how much more wondrous and complex a design that, instead of creating life, etc. from whole cloth, creates a system that with no more than a body of physical laws and raw materials can, over time, produce our entire universe, and also give us the knowledge to begin to understand that system.

IMHO, such a creation is much more worthy of God than any simple self centered stories we're given in dogma.

928 by Citizen grayhaze - 11/2/2003 11:32:54 AM #925 by Mr ^^Arkantos^^ - 11/2/2003 10:03:59 AM IF EVLUATION IS FACT then why humen have same 2 hands, 2 foot, one head and 2 eyez.......y they have not "evolved" into something else with 2 heads or wings or something like thisEVALUATION.........has it finished........or??????Okay, I give in. Your mere existance conclusively disproves evolution.

SO IS IT FINISHED

Well, no, they're dead. They killed themselfs. One definition of the word 'cult' is
"A religion or religious sect generally considered to be extremist or false, with its followers often living in an unconventional manner under the guidance of an authoritarian, charismatic leader."
#936 by Citizen r3fr - 11/2/2003 10:43:30 PM

call it what "you" want, but remember as nutty as they seem "you & I" who have our own diff ideas of what/who God is, most likely makes us even seem to others like nuts... hehe
[Message Edited]

Joeys were, blah blah blah by the NAZI. Who wasn't, get a grip...

sheesh....

They have?

If thats a quote of me, sorry, I meant to say Scriptures. Though i'm not for sure that they've added books, because i've never looked. I've just seen the "trinity verse" (saying Father, Son, and holy spirit are the same).

I would have to look into JW before I say anything further. Only reason I said anything about mormons is because my wife was one and I was one too. Been there, done that. No misunderstandings...

Understood.

Regardless of the actual initial cause of life, matter was not left to itself. There was matter (atoms and molecules), energy (heat, radiation, light, etc.), motility (the atoms and molecules were in a substrate that allowed easy and substantial movement), and affinity (the tendency of atoms and molecules to combine only in certain combinations).

If there was nothing, how was there something?

call it what "you" want, but remember as nutty as they seem "you & I" who have our own diff ideas of what/who God is, most likely makes us even seem to others like nuts... hehe

I was stating the definition. Thats what it is, thats what they were, but yes, they might have thought other people were nuts.

Joeys were, blah blah blah by the NAZI. Who wasn't, get a grip... sheesh....

A lot of people weren't. Too many to count.

Hey I just came across this:

http://channels.netscape.com/ns/news/package.jsp?name=fte/originatelife/originatelife

And

http://channels.netscape.com/ns/news/package.jsp?name=fte/notbelieveingod/notbelieveingod


What does it all mean???

what they should have because others did?

get real...

and playing victim is old hat and an extream bore
[Message Edited]

I did the poll for if you think God created all of this and it leads by 3 percent against evoltion and God created.

For me it had to start somewhere


But I see evolution taking a role, a big one, after everything started.

I believe life came from:

God's creation 37%

Both evolution and God's creation 34%

Evolution: billions of years of random atomic collisions 22%

I have no idea! 7%

Total Votes: 2827

Unscientific poll of course

Here is a theory of mine:

Human beings much like other animal crave understanding what is around them to feel more assured about their safety.


It is my belief that human beings have not 'evolved' enough to see that we want somethings to be true or the Truth merely because of animalistic safety reasons.

In other words, if we know this is what it is, we feel safer going out of our house in the morning.

death insurance

Maybe this has been asked before, but who or what created God? To me that is an obvious question in this discussion.

BTW: I do not have a religion.

[Message Edited]

Who created God?


Why God of course.
One of those self creation techniques.
Its all clear to me now.

:CONFUSED:

MadIce,

That's pretty much the 64 million dollar question .

Human beings tend to anthropomorphise what they perceive and speculate about.

It is often difficult to imagine that something can exist without creation, because the only direct knowledge we have is of things that already exist or that we create. As a result, we think that what already exists was not only created, but was created by someone very much like us, only more powerful or knowledgable, because that is really the only context we have.

As we start to wonder where we came from, where the earth came from, where the universe came from, we're in the position of either believing that each was created, in one fashion or another, or that each always existed. Thing is, when we imagine a creator, we're still left with an origination problem. Either the creator was created (and so on, ad infinitum), or the creator always existed. If we then argue that the creator always existed, it is also logically consistent to argue that the universe (for example) always existed, in essence, substituting two complexities for one complexity (one case of eternal existence + creation or simply one case of eternal existence).

Some argue that if there was no creator, but that there was an origination point, then we become compelled to state that this origination sprang from nothing. But what is nothing? Some will say it is the absence of all things, which is intuitive, but possibly simplistic. But take the number zero, for example. For many, it represents an absence of something, i.e., it is a placeholder to represent no objects. But mathematically, zero is not necessarily empty. It can be expressed as the sum of two equal magnitudes of opposite direction (positive and negative numbers in the set of integers are one example of this).

On a physical level, what we generally consider as the quintessential representation of nothing is the vacuum of outer space. Thing is, a vacuum isn't empty (even if we're not counting any stray particles of matter that may exist). It literally seethes with energy, and this energy can be measured. At this point in our knowledge, the general framework does not include the existence of an area or time where literally *nothing* exists (or existed).

There's no way to even really begin to answer the question of created as opposed to simply instantiated. All the same arguments about which came first, which always existed (or not) and so on, apply pretty much equally to both points of view.

However, all of the above notwithstanding, my position is that the anthropomorphic God described in dogma was created by man. That does not argue that God does not exist, but that the God that really exists is as far beyond the dogmatic God as we as humans are beyond the simplest single celled forms of life.

Man created God.....a 'deity' is a manufactured concept generated from fear of the unknown and man's need to 'know it all'.

If you cannot understand something, make it up....

It would be more accurate and truthful to say that God created man, and then man returned the favor.