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Exactly, don't blindly believe your biology textbook and simply take evolution as a fact. There are many holes in that THEORY including all the missing fossil links between the species...they haven't been found after ~100 years of digging!
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| Originally posted by vinnie97 Exactly, don't blindly believe your biology textbook and simply take evolution as a fact. There are many holes in that THEORY including all the missing fossil links between the species...they haven't been found after ~100 years of digging! |
sorry, that last post was a bit harsh (i'm a bit buzzed after mother's day dinner with the family
)
vinnie, the last 18 or so pages reference the natural history of the planet from more multiple perspectives. if your looking for evidence of missing links, i suggest you read some of the sites referred previously. there's (to me) plenty to feed from there.
If you feel that because every transition between species is not fully accounted for in fossil evidence, you may want to view the issue with a fraction of the same faith in which causes you to believe the facts established are untrue
again, i'm sorry for the immature personnal attack that i've already posted.... I was just in shock that there is someone else out there with their head in a hole
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| Originally posted by vinnie97 Exactly, don't blindly believe your biology textbook and simply take evolution as a fact. There are many holes in that THEORY including all the missing fossil links between the species...they haven't been found after ~100 years of digging! |
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| Originally posted by MisterOpus1 This just might get interesting again........... |
.
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| Originally posted by occrider Not as interesting as the fundies fighting each other could have been . And it looks like this guy is a hit and run fundy ... c'mon, he didn't even bother reading the thread past the first couple of fundy posts to see that their arguments were subsequentely obliterated. |
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| Originally posted by MisterOpus1 Sshhh, you'll spoil the fun! C'mon Occ, I let people take your hooks every now and then, why's you gots to spoils it for me? |
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| Originally posted by occrider Hehe cmon, don't you want a REAL challenge ... I'm just trying to weed out all the filler for you. |
i wish i caught this at the beginning.. some intresting points made. as well the mockery of religion wasnt called for. Actually it was very immature.
Im not very relgious and i do believe in evolution. when one talks about micro evolution, macro evolution is just looking at the big picture. they are both the same thing essentially (im pretty sure mister opus mentioned this earlier in the thread)
Doing experiments in biology on bacterial cells cultured, then exposing them to antibiotics and them developing resistance, shows evolution in the workings. Those bacterial cells which have the specific DNA coding for proteins which will cause the antibiotics to be innafective will survive while the others dont. the surviving bacteria has made a "random" reproductive mutation (of course its not really random because chemical reactions have direction and opposite reactions, we just say random to show that some environmental factors are the cause). the resistant bacteria continues to thrive and reproduce into new colonies .
Essentially, this can be applied to all life. Genetic mutations are the basis of evolution. the mutations which cause the organism to be better suited for the environment will cause them to survive, and so forth. organisms are always chaning to adapt to the environment. Bacterial evolution is just a small scale example of evolution works throughout time in the big picture.
I know i havent posted any references but its just a quick summary of most points that have been pointed out in this thread.
It
just
won't
fucking
die.
For a good debate (actually, it's among the most famous ones ever held) on the existence of God I recommend:
http://www.youtube.com/view_play_li...5F2FF36C0ECC4A2
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| Originally posted by Alex For a good debate (actually, it's among the most famous ones ever held) on the existence of God I recommend: http://www.youtube.com/view_play_li...5F2FF36C0ECC4A2 |
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| Bahnsen: What is the basis for the Uniformity of Nature? Stein:The Uniformity of Nature comes from the fact that matter has certain properties which it regularly exhibits. It's a part of the nature of matter. Electrons, opposite things attract;[whereas] the same charged things repel. There are certain valences that fill up the shell of an atom, and that's as far as they can combine. Bahnsen: Have you tested all electrons? Stein: All the electrons that have been tested repel each other. I have not tested all of them. Bahnsen: Have you read all the tests on electrons? Stein: Me personally? Or can I go on the witness of experts? Bahnsen: Have you read all the witnesses about electrons? Stein: All it takes is one witness to say "no", and it will be on the front pages of every physics journal, and there are none. So I'd say, in effect, yes. Bahnsen: Well, physicists have their [own] presuppositions by which they exclude contrary evidence, too...In other words, you haven't experienced all the electrons, but you would generalize that all the electrons under certain conditions repel each other. Stein: Just statistically, on the basis of past observation. Bahnsen: But we don't know that it's going to be that way ten minutes after this debate then. |
You read a synopsis on Amazon, skipped the majority of the videos and commented on a transcript of the debate.
Well done.
Gordon Stein was the one who literally wrote the book on how to argue with a theist and win, yet he repeatedly loses ground throughout the debate and eventually offers some really poor closing arguments that make no sense.
Listen to the whole thing before you write it off as not worthy, your post is pure fingers in the ear screaming nananananana just because you were too lazy to listen to the whole thing. There are fantastic arguments offered by both sides and you'd know that if you really were open to an argument.
(Note, Stein's supporters also hail the debate as a victory for their side)
If you want to really read theologians/philosophers that have analyzed the evidence and 2 of which weren't even Christians their entire lives I suggest:
Augustine of Hippo
C.S. Lewis (Not really a theologian actually)
Thomas Aquinas (Specifically his Summa Theologica, but if you didn't have the attention span to listen to the entire debate I doubt you'll ever make it through even 3 questions of the library that is the Summa Theologica)
Also I suggest Peter Kreeft for his apologetics, some of his other stuff is a bit wack even for me.
My biggest suggestion would be Thomas Aquinas though, if you like to think and are open to argument as you claim you are, read the Summa, it's one hell of a piece of philosophy.
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| Originally posted by Renegade In other words, theist denies simple, demonstrable facts of nature in order to pretend that there is any rational basis for the quite specific theological beliefs he holds, i.e.: "Well the scientists don't know that the 175 billionth electron they test will have the same properties as the first 174,999,999,999 they tested, therefore Jesus rose from the dead". There are theologians out there that are worth listening to (the Bishop John Shelby Spong for one) and I am willing to accept that theology is capable of nuance and insight which might preclude it from the more generalised attacks of atheists, but come on: this is just embarrassing. The only sort of person who could accept the validity of this line of argumentation is one who has a vested emotional stake in it being true in the first place. |
Opus and Occrider basically cured me of all the creationism I was taught throughtout my christian indoctrination. Not saying there is not a Creator of our reality, because I actually do believe there is one. But how our reality was created...sure as hell ain't described by creationism. I rather believe creationism puts god in a box because it denies what nature tells us through science, that this reality evolved into the state with which we observe it today.
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| Originally posted by Krypton Opus and Occrider basically cured me of all the creationism I was taught throughtout my christian indoctrination. Not saying there is not a Creator of our reality, because I actually do believe there is one. But how our reality was created...sure as hell ain't described by creationism. I rather believe creationism puts god in a box because it denies what nature tells us through science, that this reality evolved into the state with which we observe it today. |
me is puritan
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| Originally posted by Alex You read a synopsis on Amazon, skipped the majority of the videos and commented on a transcript of the debate. Well done. |
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| Gordon Stein was the one who literally wrote the book on how to argue with a theist and win, yet he repeatedly loses ground throughout the debate and eventually offers some really poor closing arguments that make no sense. |
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| Listen to the whole thing before you write it off as not worthy, your post is pure fingers in the ear screaming nananananana just because you were too lazy to listen to the whole thing. There are fantastic arguments offered by both sides and you'd know that if you really were open to an argument. |
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| If you want to really read theologians/philosophers that have analyzed the evidence and 2 of which weren't even Christians their entire lives I suggest: Augustine of Hippo C.S. Lewis (Not really a theologian actually) Thomas Aquinas (Specifically his Summa Theologica, but if you didn't have the attention span to listen to the entire debate I doubt you'll ever make it through even 3 questions of the library that is the Summa Theologica) |
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| Also I suggest Peter Kreeft for his apologetics, some of his other stuff is a bit wack even for me. |
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| Argument from Design The argument starts with the major premise that where there is design, there must be a designer. The minor premise is the existence of design throughout the universe. The conclusion is that there must be a universal designer. |
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| Kreeft has been registered Republican for over thirty years. |
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| My biggest suggestion would be Thomas Aquinas though, if you like to think and are open to argument as you claim you are, read the Summa, it's one hell of a piece of philosophy. |
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| Originally posted by Alex Also: Bahnsen is a literalist, like most Evangelicals. That's why his base of support is saying that nonsense about the debate. That is also why he would even bother getting into the argument of electrons with an Atheist, it's simply because he literally believes God created the earth in 7 days, 24 hours to a day, 60 minutes to an hour, 60 seconds to a minute in our present measure of time. He also believes that Genesis is 100% true without the slightest chance of any deviation being acceptable. Therefore the argument you decided to use to defend your attacks on a debate you didn't listen to are irrelevant to the rest of the great points made in the debate. While it's too bad Bahnsen is a literalist, he is also a great mind regardless and makes some great great points. Stein makes some amazing points as well but as I said he get's caught in a few traps along the way and eventually loses ground. |
Ok.
First of all, none of the philosophers you mentioned are worth reading OVER Aquinas or Augustine. Modern theology hasn't hit some sort of wall just because it still promotes the readings of these two geniuses.
It's like saying mathematics has hit a wall because we still teach pythagoras or the multiplication tables. Essentials are essentials and I somehow doubt you've read much into either of those two men if you hold such a low opinion of their works.
And your Bahnsen arguments, really? Same as yours against Kreeft.
I'm beginning to think all you're capable of doing is the usual internet nonsense of looking on Wikipedia, seeing one thing you don't like and then lumping it all into one "this isn't worth anything" category simply because you were too ignorant to give it a shot in the first place.
He's a republican, big deal! If you think that is a reason to not listen to someone, I am sorry but I am answering an ignorant fool.
Also, I suspect you've taken Philosophy 101 at most if you are trying to claim that Thomas Aquinas' notions are "widely known" without actually offering a single one of them as evidence of this. You've heard the name, big deal, I've heard of lots of Philosophers whom I know absolutely nothing about.
The difference between you and I is I've kept an open mind and have explored deeply both the atheist points of view and those of theists. You claim you're after theist arguments, yet the ones I offer you (which have been used to pummel atheist mindsets into the ground time and time again, if you'd read Aquinas at all you'd realize this) and you come up with any excuse you can not to find them valid... BEFORE EVEN READING OR LISTENING TO THEM!!!
This is classic fingers in the ears screaming NANANANANANANA stuff, I'd be more than happy to debate these things with you if you do truly have an open mind, but I feel these posts will go back and forth to no where. An actual conversation is the only way to regulate these types of things.
PM me if you are interested. 
(PS I've read Descartes and Kant, obviously. Kant offers greater insights into theology than Aquinas, but Aquinas was both an excellent theologian and an even better philosopher, you can't forget that as there weren't many who could be both)
The only things I've read of Kierkegaard's are two discourses on why the idea of a state run secular church is bad. Yes, I must agree with that notion 
C.S. Lewis' Mere Christianity is a must read as it negates the atheist morality arguments almost in their entirety, and it's ironic given how a big portion of his life was spent being a staunch atheist.
Other names to consider are other early church fathers apart from Augustine like Basil the Great, Ambrose and Dionysius.
For more recent theology stuff Scott Hahn and Paul Tillich are both pretty good.
And by the way, the main reason I disagree with Bahnsen isn't something that's found in that debate. He is a baptist and I am a Roman Catholic, the differences aren't with how he argued in the debate but with what he believes in in accordance to his denomination.
I consider myself fairly centrist on most issues, Catholics are surprisingly centrist. I do not believe in creationism or in Sola Scriptura or any of those literalist ideas, that's why I've been able to take the approach I have.
Peter Kreeft may seem like a cookie cutter right winger to you, devoid of any wisdom whatsoever, but in recent years he has shifted from his fundamentalist views and has become a Roman Catholic. Obviously I disagree with many of his ideas, but others are extremely sound and he is very witty which adds some humor to the often too serious debate.
Stolen from Renegade, from Kreeft's website:
http://www.peterkreeft.com/topics/design.htm
Let's see if we can break this down a bit:
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| Argument from Design The argument starts with the major premise that where there is design, there must be a designer. |
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| The minor premise is the existence of design throughout the universe. |
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| The conclusion is that there must be a universal designer. Why must we believe the major premise, that all design implies a designer? Because everyone admits this principle in practice. For instance, suppose you came upon a deserted island and found "S.O.S." written in the sand on the beach. You would not think the wind or the waves had written it by mere chance but that someone had been there, someone intelligent enough to design and write the message. If you found a stone hut on the island with windows, doors, and a fireplace, you would not think a hurricane had piled up the stones that way by chance. You immediately infer a designer when you see design. |
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| When the first moon rocket took off from Cape Canaveral, two U.S. scientists stood watching it, side by side. One was a believer, the other an unbeliever. The believer said, "Isn't it wonderful that our rocket is going to hit the moon by chance?" The unbeliever objected, "What do you mean, chance? We put millions of manhours of design into that rocket." "Oh," said the believer, "you don't think chance is a good explanation for the rocket? Then why do you think it's a good explanation for the universe? There's much more design in a universe than in a rocket. We can design a rocket, but we couldn't design a whole universe. I wonder who can?" Later that day the two were strolling down a street and passed an antique store. The atheist admired a picture in the window and asked, "I wonder who painted that picture?" "No one," joked the believer; "it just happened by chance." |
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| Is it possible that design happens by chance without a designer? There is perhaps one chance in a trillion that "S.O.S." could be written in the sand by the wind. |
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| But who would use a one-in-a-trillion explanation? Someone once said that if you sat a million monkeys at a million typewriters for a million years, one of them would eventually type out all of Hamlet by chance. But when we find the text of Hamlet, we don't wonder whether it came from chance and monkeys. Why then does the atheist use that incredibly improbable explanation for the universe? |
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| There is one especially strong version of the argument from design that hits close to home because it's about the design of the very thing we use to think about design: our brains. The human brain is the most complex piece of design in the known universe. In many ways it is like a computer. Now just suppose there were a computer that was programmed only by chance. For instance, suppose you were in a plane and the public-address system announced that there was no pilot, but the plane was being flown by a computer that had been programmed by a random fall of hailstones on its keyboard or by a baseball player in spiked shoes dancing on computer cards. How much confidence would you have in that plane? But if our brain computer has no cosmic intelligence behind the heredity and environment that program it, why should we trust it when it tells us about anything, even about the brain? |
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| Another specially strong aspect of the design argument is the so-called anthropic principle, according to which the universe seems to have been specially designed from the beginning for human life to evolve. If the temperature of the primal fireball that resulted from the Big Bang some fifteen to twenty billion years ago, which was the beginning of our universe, had been a trillionth of a degree colder or hotter, the carbon molecule that is the foundation of all organic life could never have developed. The number of possible universes is trillions of trillions; only one of them could support human life: this one. Sounds suspiciously like a plot. If the cosmic rays had bombarded the primordial slime at a slightly different angle or time or intensity, the hemoglobin molecule, necessary for all warm-blooded animals, could never have evolved. The chance of this molecule's evolving is something like one in a trillion trillion. Add together each of the chances and you have something far more unbelievable than a million monkeys writing Hamlet. |
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| There are relatively few atheists among neurologists and brain surgeons and among astrophysicists, but many among psychologists, sociologists, and historians. The reason seems obvious: the first study divine design, the second study human undesign. |
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| But doesn't evolution explain everything without a divine Designer? Just the opposite; evolution is a beautiful example of design, a great clue to God. There is very good scientific evidence for the evolving, ordered appearance of species, from simple to complex. But there is no scientific proof of natural selection as the mechanism of evolution, |
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| Natural selection "explains" the emergence of higher forms without intelligent design by the survival-of-the-fittest principle. But this is sheer theory. There is no evidence that abstract, theoretical thinking or altruistic love make it easier for man to survive. How did they evolve then? |
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| Furthermore, could the design that obviously now exists in man and in the human brain come from something with less or no design? Such an explanation violates the principle of causality, which states that you can't get more in the effect than you had in the cause. If there is intelligence in the effect (man), there must be intelligence in the cause. But a universe ruled by blind chance has no intelligence. Therefore there must be a cause for human intelligence that transcends the universe: a mind behind the physical universe. |
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| (Most great scientists have believed in such a mind, by the way, even those who did not accept any revealed religion. |
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| How much does this argument prove? Not all that the Christian means by God, of course�no argument can do that. But it proves a pretty thick slice of God: some designing intelligence great enough to account for all the design in the universe and the human mind. If that's not God, what is it? Steven Spielberg? |
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| Originally posted by MisterOpus1 Out of curiousity, where is his support for such a claim? |
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| I want to put on the table, not why 85% of the members of the National Academy of Sciences reject God, I want to know why 15% of the National Academy don�t. |
Can people arguing in favor of Atheism only ever argue about evolution?
Do you realize that the vast majority of Christianity are not creationists?
And yes, I can support that claim.
Catholics do not believe in Creationism, or intelligent design, in fact most Catholics lean towards Evolution more and more these days, but that does not mean that something could not have put the pattern in motion in the first place.
Misteropus1 your arguments make so little sense and not only did you criticize Kreeft for not referencing some of his claims, you offered a bunch of statements that I'm sure are at the very least exaggerated and referenced absolutely nothing. So please 
And if you're still trying to apply the scientific method to figuring out if God exists, then I'm sorry, this will lead absolutely no where fast.
Even Mr. Atheist himself, Gordon Stein, agreed that you cannot apply the scientific method, or "tried and tested" methods to proving the existence of God. It is a question of something that is immaterial and there is obviously no way of testing such a thing with the scientific method. The question is of Philosophy more than it is Science, Atheists just can't seem to wrap their heads around that fact because they consider anything unproven by Science to simply be false or at the very least negotiable. Funny how things like Morality and the Laws of Nature (not natural science, but the laws of human nature) cannot be explained by Science yet are widely accepted regardless of this fact.
Also:
http://www.livescience.com/strangenews/050811_scientists_god.html
We can post statistics back and forth but neither of us will be able to prove that the vast majority of scientists do or do not believe in a god unless we were to conduct a fair and balanced study of this ourselves. So lets not even go there because that's one hell of a silly hole to fall into in this whole debate.
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| Originally posted by Alex Can people arguing in favor of Atheism only ever argue about evolution? |
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| Do you realize that the vast majority of Christianity are not creationists? And yes, I can support that claim. |
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| Catholics do not believe in Creationism, or intelligent design, in fact most Catholics lean towards Evolution more and more these days, but that does not mean that something could not have put the pattern in motion in the first place. |
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| Misteropus1 your arguments make so little sense and not only did you criticize Kreeft for not referencing some of his claims, you offered a bunch of statements that I'm sure are at the very least exaggerated and referenced absolutely nothing. So please |
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| And if you're still trying to apply the scientific method to figuring out if God exists, then I'm sorry, this will lead absolutely no where fast. |
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| Even Mr. Atheist himself, Gordon Stein, agreed that you cannot apply the scientific method, or "tried and tested" methods to proving the existence of God. It is a question of something that is immaterial and there is obviously no way of testing such a thing with the scientific method. |
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| The question is of Philosophy more than it is Science, |
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| Atheists just can't seem to wrap their heads around that fact because they consider anything unproven by Science to simply be false or at the very least negotiable. Funny how things like Morality and the Laws of Nature (not natural science, but the laws of human nature) cannot be explained by Science yet are widely accepted regardless of this fact. |
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| Also: http://www.livescience.com/strangen...ntists_god.html |
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| We can post statistics back and forth but neither of us will be able to prove that the vast majority of scientists do or do not believe in a god unless we were to conduct a fair and balanced study of this ourselves. So lets not even go there because that's one hell of a silly hole to fall into in this whole debate. |
Sorry Misteropus1 not all my comments were directed towards you, I should have been more specific. Some of my questions and statements were a "in general" sort of thing and weren't directed at you.
I'll have a look again at your post tomorrow as I have to go to bed sadly, doing stuff on Saturdays apart from sleeping sucks
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