What is Christianity's Weakest Link

spidergoat said:
Evolution is trial and error. The errors die to a greater degree. The successes go one to build on that success. This causes such wonderous structures as electric eels.
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SG, look at what you just wrote.

Get what right? How would evolution even know it got something right or wrong? This needed to be done millions of times. Then we will have to believe that there was desire to get things right but desire by whom? by what?
 
John99 said:
You are getting older, perhaps you should think about things.:)
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That's a mighty fine answer son!What does it mean ?

Look, you are attempting to take us down a blind alley. The sort of questions you ask about evolution have been dealt with ad nauseam. You should think about whether you are likely to come up with some insuperable objection that has eluded the anti-evolution brigade. I think it is unlikely, but if you disagree, go and read up on evolution and you will be able to answer your own questions
 
John99 said:
SG, look at what you just wrote.

Get what right? How would evolution even know it got something right or wrong? This needed to be done millions of times. Then we will have to believe that there was desire to get things right but desire by whom? by what?
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There are trillions of creatures being born every second. This happened every day for 3-4 billion years. Those that got it wrong died, or didn't reproduce as well. Those that got it right survived to make more of themselves. It's a passive, unplanned process. Eastern religions like Taoism are aware of the power of passivity. Their concepts aren't Gods, they don't make things, it's a passive quality inherent in matter/space. We aren't created, we grow.

You don't have to believe there is a desire to "get it right", there isn't any such thing. You are conditioned to think this way by the error that is the orthodox Christian (or Jewish) worldview.
 
There are trillions of creatures being born every second. This happened every day for 3-4 billion years. Those that got it wrong died, or didn't reproduce as well. Those that got it right survived to make more of themselves.
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So what? Of course you jumped from simple lifeforms to complex lifeforms because you dont want to talk about that. Everyone pretty much agrees with the statement you made above.

Here is where the disagreement comes in:
It's a passive, unplanned process.
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Ecosystems do not just develop on their own. If you want to believe that then you are entitled to your opinion.
 
In my view the weakest link in Christianity is the same for pretty much every religion - a direct linear relationship between the sophistication of human beings, and the amount of acts of direct divine intervention on earth.
Back in days of old, god would appear all the time to ignorant sheep herders in the desert, part seas for them, make ordinary humans impermeable to fire etc etc - these days the best we can get is a cinnamon roll shaped like the virgin mary or holy aubergines (sounds like something robin would say) - we need god less often to explain our lives, so we invent him less often - proof that god is a creation of man and not the other way around.

John99 said:
Ecosystems do not just develop on their own.
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suppose you explain how they do develop then please.
 
John99 said:
So what? Of course you jumped from simple lifeforms to complex lifeforms because you dont want to talk about that. Everyone pretty much agrees with the statement you made above.

Here is where the disagreement comes in:


Ecosystems do not just develop on their own. If you want to believe that then you are entitled to your opinion.
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Even the simple organisms are complex. We are just collections of them. It's a matter of degree. Ecosystems evolve too, the relationships between creatures are often mutually beneficial and self-regulating. If they weren't, they would soon stop working, which means the organisms die, which means only the working relationships are the ones that last. Evolution is really more amazing than most people want to think about.
 
There are many things about Christianity that have me baffled. One I don't quite get is why Christians do not call themselves Jews. Afterall, they have the pedigree and Messiah, so they must be more Jewish than anyone else on Earth.

This is where I get confused. For Jews who do not believe the Messiah has arrived, would they not still be Jewish if He/She/It suddenly showed up? Why don't the Christians call themselves Jews since the Messiah has already been here?
 
synthesizer-patel said:
suppose you explain how they do develop then please.
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That was a poor choice of words. Evolving from something new to being established and mature but for me the main thing is design. Thats what i see all around and i think it goes deeper than a belief system. Perhaps it is like being born with a preference or a predisposition.
 
John,

If you are talking about the definition of evolution then it is factual.
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No not really. I meant biological evolution is a fact. And by fact I mean confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to conclude anything else. Such evolution has occurred and is occurring. The subtleties of the how is where there is technical debate.

If I am in a room with a box in the corner and I leave and return and I find the box in another corner, I know the box has been moved but I do not know how. The fact the box has moved is the parallel with biological evolution. We can see from history that life has been changing over billions of years. This is fact (the box has been moved). The actual mechanisms of change is what constitutes evolutionary theories (how or what moved the box).

The first issue to resolve, for the sake of this thread, will be blood.
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An odd item to choose. In the context of this thread this is still a natural substance. Whether we do or do not understand an origin of such a substance doesn’t give any credence to proposing that a supernatural fantasy is a cause.

The second issue will be the transformation from simple lifeforms to complex. In actuality they are related but we can view them in an individual context.
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Can you demonstrate any instance where something complex does not arise from something simpler? You will fail. There is no arena where complexity does not arise from simpler components or simpler prior forms. We have no reason to conclude that complex life did not evolve as does everything else from simpler variations.

Can you show me the natural cause\precursor\reason for the creation of blood?
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Can you show any possibility that a supernatural fantasy could be a cause as an alternative? Again an alleged inability to show a natural cause does not give any credibility to a supernatural alternative.
 
John,

Evolving from something new to being established and mature but for me the main thing is design.
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The only example we have of anything capable of intelligent design is man's intelligence. Can you show any example of anything that man designed that was not the result of something simpler that he adapted? Again you will fail.

The very basis of your argument that life was designed is based on the only example of a capability to design, i.e. man, and he has never designed anything complex from scratch.

Everything evolves. And everything is a result of evolutionary processes. We know of no exception.
 
Cris said:
Can you show any possibility that a supernatural fantasy could be a cause as an alternative? Again an alleged inability to show a natural cause does not give any credibility to a supernatural alternative.
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Exactly. It's hilarious when creationists criticize science for not having a perfect, all-encompassing explanation for how something evolved, and then conclude that it must have been magical. As if that was a reasonable explanation.

It's just the same sad sort of thing that people have been doing for ages; attributing things that they can't completely explain to the supernatural.
 
John99 said:
That was a poor choice of words. Evolving from something new to being established and mature but for me the main thing is design. Thats what i see all around and i think it goes deeper than a belief system. Perhaps it is like being born with a preference or a predisposition.
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do you mean design as in design of individual structures in organisms or design as in the overal design of the ecosystem?

either way they are both delusions - if ecosystems are designed, why are they not designed like a ood engineer would design a similar complex system made of multiple interdpendent parts - i.e with built-in redundancy to prevent them from collapsing when man interfers with them - after all God knew what we would do with them and gave us express permission to do this.

Why are so many physiological processes and physical structures so badly designed - photosynthesis uses such a bizarre, long winded inefficient and illogical physiological pathway that whoever designed it was clearly retarded - same goes for the lunatic who thought up the design for the human eye - a layer of cells covering the light receptor cells? wtf is the point in that? and why on earth did god design freakin snails with better eyes than we have ?
 
Cris said:
John,

No not really. I meant biological evolution is a fact. And by fact I mean confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to conclude anything else. Such evolution has occurred and is occurring. The subtleties of the how is where there is technical debate.

If I am in a room with a box in the corner and I leave and return and I find the box in another corner, I know the box has been moved but I do not know how. The fact the box has moved is the parallel with biological evolution. We can see from history that life has been changing over billions of years. This is fact (the box has been moved). The actual mechanisms of change is what constitutes evolutionary theories (how or what moved the box).
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it's curious how you go from this



Can you show any possibility that a supernatural fantasy could be a cause as an alternative? Again an alleged inability to show a natural cause does not give any credibility to a supernatural alternative.
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to this

fair enough about the box, but what about blood?
I mean if you haven't actually observed the blood change, why are you offering anything less than a supernatural fantasy?
 
synthesizer-patel said:
do you mean design as in design of individual structures in organisms or design as in the overal design of the ecosystem?
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Probably overall. As in terra forming and seeding.

I think it has been done many times before with pretty much identical outcomes. It's probably been done on this planet more than once and definitely on other planet's. But the question is by whom, by what?

Who is flying around space doing this?
 
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LG,

fair enough about the box, but what about blood?
I mean if you haven't actually observed the blood change, why are you offering anything less than a supernatural fantasy?
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Why choose a fantasy as a preference over a simple don't know?
 
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