Thousands Touched by Laurie's Message on Life, Death and Heaven

humanape »

Mon Aug 18, 2008 12:11 am Agree: 2   Disagree: 5

"When you are a believer in Christ, you'll never die"

Wishful thinking: Interpreting matters as one would like them to be, as opposed to what they really are.

'A Knight of the Mind' - Dawkins, Darwin, and the Battle of Worldviews

humanape »

Fri Aug 01, 2008 3:28 am Agree: 0   Disagree: 0

"Faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence. Faith is belief in spite of, even perhaps because of, the lack of evidence."

-- Richard Dawkins

'A Knight of the Mind' - Dawkins, Darwin, and the Battle of Worldviews

humanape »

Fri Aug 01, 2008 3:20 am Agree: 0   Disagree: 0

I was just looking for my first comment on this thread, which I wrote on July 24th. I couldn't find my comment. I suppose some Christian didn't agree with it, so he or she vaporized it.

I was talking about the topic of this thread:

"For Dawkins, there is a tree of life; not the one featuring Adam and Eve, but the one tantalisingly sketched by Darwin with the two words "I think" written above, showing how different species branch slowly off from each other over millions of years, until fish are on one branch, and apes on
the opposite. If creationism falls, so, logically for Dawkins, does the rest of religion piled upon it."

Dawkins is correct about everything here. He's correct about evolution being a proven fact. He's correct to reject the idea there could be a theistic evolution. He's correct that Christianity depends on the magical creation belief. Throw out magical creation, and everything else that's been piled on top of magical creation looks as ridiculous as it really is.

Though many pro-science Christians will disagree, I think science is the greatest enemy of Christianity. With every new scientific discovery, Christianity becomes more and more irrelevant.

This is why Christians so fiercely attack science education. They know biological evolution is killing their religion, so they try to prevent public schools from teaching it, not caring that they are destroying the education of everyone else's children.

Fortunately, in the end, science always wins. Eventually creationists will be as rare as flat-earthers. And Christianity will be found only in museums. It may take many centuries, but eventually the number of people who believe in the Christian God will be equal to the number of people who believe in Zeus.

'A Knight of the Mind' - Dawkins, Darwin, and the Battle of Worldviews

humanape »

Fri Aug 01, 2008 2:57 am Agree: 0   Disagree: 0

"But I do know the doctors had no explanation for what happened."

There's a natural reason for everything. If the natural explanation is unknown, it's still a natural event. To assume it was God's magic requires a strong belief in woo-woo.

I thank goodness I live in a universe without magic. If some god could intervene at any moment, performing magic tricks for the fun of it, that would be scary. Fortunately it's impossible and fortunately the impossible never happens.

Ever hear this quote from Dawkins? I like this quote because it's a perfect description of reality. I'm a big fan of reality.

The total amount of suffering per year in the natural world is beyond all decent contemplation. During the minute that it takes me to compose this sentence, thousands of animals are being eaten alive, many others are running for their lives, whimpering with fear, others are slowly being devoured from within by rasping parasites, thousands of all kinds are dying of starvation, thirst, and disease. It must be so. If there ever is a time of plenty, this very fact will automatically lead to an increase in the population until the natural state of starvation and misery is restored.

In a universe of electrons and selfish genes, blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won't find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference.

'A Knight of the Mind' - Dawkins, Darwin, and the Battle of Worldviews

humanape »

Fri Aug 01, 2008 2:37 am Agree: 0   Disagree: 0

Blasphemy is a victimless crime.

'A Knight of the Mind' - Dawkins, Darwin, and the Battle of Worldviews

humanape »

Thu Jul 31, 2008 2:10 pm Agree: 0   Disagree: 0

The religious extremists, who spend their time reading the weird gibberish in the Bible instead of studying modern scientific discoveries, don't know what they're missing. The history of life as described by evolutionary biology is many thousands of times more interesting than magical creation.

Scientists have an interesting challenge. They want to explain everything without invoking childish magic. That's not easy to do. It takes a lot of hard work. Lots of thinking. Lots of testing of new ideas. Mistakes are made but every time an idea is proven wrong, that's progress. What scientists know today is amazing. What they will know several centuries from now will be way beyond amazing.

Meanwhile, the religious extremists contribute nothing to human progress. They prefer to be permanently stuck in the Dark Ages, invoking magic for everything. They never think, and they never solve any problems. They don't try to understand anything. They completely ignore and/or deny the progress of scientists.

'A Knight of the Mind' - Dawkins, Darwin, and the Battle of Worldviews

humanape »

Thu Jul 31, 2008 1:50 pm Agree: 0   Disagree: 0

Only 7% of the top scientists in the world (members of the National Academy of Sciences) believe in a personal god. The other 93% are atheists. I would bet the 7% who believe in a god think the Bible is a joke.

mathetes wrote "Miracles happen often, and the supernatural is around us all the time, like a dimension which overlays (or permeates) our own."

Translation: "MAGIC TRICKS happen often, and MAGIC is around us all the time, like a dimension which overlays (or permeates) our own."

I feel sorry for people who believe in magic. What a horrible waste of a life to believe in woo-woo.

Curt wrote "Suggesting that anyone that believes there is a God Who created this universe is considered foolish and stupid. But the truth is that there is a model for the Creation that clearly leaves evolutionary models badly in the dust. For a more intelligent discussion I suggest that you go to Reasons.org or read Hugh Ross' book: 'Creation as Science'."

Foolish and stupid? Let's just say hopelessly uneducated and not very interested in becoming educated.

There's a model for MAGIC that clearly leaves evolutionary models badly in the dust? That would be a big surprise to tens of thousands of biologists.

Reasons.org has intelligent discussions? Intelligent? You call believing in a 6,000 year old universe intelligent? I would call it an extreme mental illness. It's pure insanity.

Determining the age of the earth (about 4,500,000,000 years old) and the age of the universe (at least 14,000,000,000 years old) was one of the greatest accomplishments of the human race. The everything-is-magic creationists, if they had their way, would throw out all of science, all that hard work, so they could believe in their totally insane 6,000 year old universe. Their belief the earth is 6,000 years old is equivalent to believing the distance between the East coast and the West coast of America is 24 feet. Their belief the universe is 6,000 years old is equivalent to believing the distance between the East coast and the West coast of America is 8 feet. That's how insane their beliefs are.

'A Knight of the Mind' - Dawkins, Darwin, and the Battle of Worldviews

humanape »

Thu Jul 31, 2008 1:38 am Agree: 0   Disagree: 0

mathetes wrote: "I noticed that you comment on 'Eve' but ignore the other reasons for believing the Bible. Care to comment on them?"

I read your stuff about prophecies etc. The Bible was rewritten and translated how many times? Each time it was rewritten, modifications could have been made to make everything come out right. It's just like writing any other book of fiction.

The Bible is full of God stuff and miracles. I could never in a million years believe in anything supernatural. It's all woo-woo to me.

igh wrote "Evolution is the Anti-God religion"

Maybe igh was joking or maybe not.

Evolution is just science. Evolution is just an explanation of the history of life. It's not a religion and it doesn't make any claims for or against any gods.

However, long before Darwin's brilliant natural selection idea, religious people had their own explanation for the history of life. Their explanation required millions of miracles and a lot of god-did-it. The natural explanation for the history of life, evolution, conflicts with these religious ideas. But that doesn't make evolution a religion. Remember Zeus? Ancient people used to believe Zeus was responsible for thunder and lightning. That doesn't make the scientific explanation for thunder and lightning a religion.

I notice many religious people deny the proven-beyond-any-doubt facts of evolution. That's fine with me. I think the world would be many times better off without supernatural beliefs. I look forward to the extinction of all religions. Every time I see creationists complain about evolution I cheer them on, because I know their denial of modern science is the biggest threat to their religion. I know this because in the past, whenever there was a conflict between religion and science, science has always won.

'A Knight of the Mind' - Dawkins, Darwin, and the Battle of Worldviews

humanape »

Wed Jul 30, 2008 3:10 am Agree: 0   Disagree: 0

mathetes said "Has science confirmed parts of the Bible? Skeptics like to laugh at the opening chapters of Genesis, where it says we are all descended from one man and one woman. Then DNA evidence confirms that we are all descended from 'Mitochondrial Eve' as scientists call her. Other examples abound."

'Mitochondrial Eve' is one woman who is a common ancestor of all humans. However there were people living long before she was born. She was a descendant of other people. Most likely she lived at a time when the human race was an endangered species and there weren't too many people living at the time. Also, we are not all descendants of that woman's male friend. I suspect many guys had their way with her.

Agentorange, who seems to be very knowledgeable about lots of stuff, can provide more information or correct me if I'm wrong.

DNA evidence has also shown, beyond any doubt, people share an ancestor with chimps. You can't pick and choose DNA evidence you like. Just like the Bible, if you're going to accept some DNA evidence, you should accept all of it.

I think you missed an important point I was trying to make earlier. I will try to explain it again. A really good reason to throw out the Bible, in my opinion, is because God, if there is a God or Master of the Universe, would have no reason to pay any attention to our little solar system, which is one solar system of billions of solar systems in our galaxy, and our galaxy is one of billions of galaxies.

I don't think you and other Christians comprehend how vast the universe is. If you did comprehend it, you might laugh at the idea that a God of the universe would notice our planet, which is equivalent to one grain of sand of the Sahara Desert.

People like to think they're a big deal, but they're not. We are just one of millions of species, and our planet is just one of trillions of planets. The ancient people who invented God, and who invented the Bible stories about God paying attention to them, had no idea how unimaginably huge the universe is. They thought the earth was the center of a very small universe. The truth is the earth is almost nothing in massive universe.

In science old ideas are gladly thrown out when new evidence improves our knowledge. Meanwhile, religions remain forever stuck in the year they were invented. I suggest it's better for the human race to improve itself, instead of clinging to the ignorance of the ancient past.

'A Knight of the Mind' - Dawkins, Darwin, and the Battle of Worldviews

humanape »

Wed Jul 30, 2008 1:14 am Agree: 0   Disagree: 1

igh said "God made conditions on Earth, in the Solar system in relation to the Sun and moon and Planets, even Our Systems relation in its place to the Galaxy , and Universe is perfect for life here."

Actually, igh, God had nothing to do with it. There's 8 planets in our solar system. Life developed on one of them because one planet was the right distance from the sun. There's a darn good chance that there's life on millions of other planets in the vast universe, and God most certainly didn't have anything to do with it. There is no magic in the universe. We live in a universe of natural processes and only natural processes. If you deny these natural processes, you are saying your ignorance is equal to a scientist's knowledge, which of course is not true.

The less a person knows about science, the more likely he will invoke God. When you invoke God you make it obvious to everyone you need to learn some science.

Here's some information about the 13 part TV show on the History Channel called 'Evolve'. The first part was on 3 hours ago, Tuesday night. The next 12 parts of Evolve will be on the next 12 Tuesday nights. Creationists should see it. Creationists are called willfully ignorant for a good reason. They refuse to educate themselves. They could improve their reputation by watching the next 12 Evolve TV shows on the History channel the next 12 Tuesday nights.

http://tinyurl.com/6j3uzu

'A Knight of the Mind' - Dawkins, Darwin, and the Battle of Worldviews

humanape »

Tue Jul 29, 2008 9:42 am Agree: 0   Disagree: 0

mathetes asked some good questions: "And if you are going to start saying that parts of God's Word do not mean what they plainly say, where do you draw the line? What other parts of the Bible are not true? How would you know?"

If anything in the Bible is false, it's very reasonable to question everything in it. The Genesis story, no matter how you want to translate it, is obviously a made up story. Even somebody who knows virtually nothing about science, if he has any common sense at all, could figure out Genesis is pure fiction. The people who have a good understanding of science would have to call Genesis pure insanity.

So why trust the rest of the Bible? There's no reason to take any of it seriously. The book is so old, why bother with it at all? Is the human race going to move forward, or should we remain permanently stuck in the ancient world? I prefer to live in the 21st century. There's so much to learn about modern science, why waste a second of our limited time reading a book written by people who knew nothing about the natural world?

This 'God's Word' thing really bugs me. How can anyone be sure a book written that long ago, or any book ever written, is the word of God? It's just wild guessing and blind trust in religious brainwashing.

If only Christians and other religious people tried a concept called 'thinking'. They could think about how vast the universe is, and how insignificant our planet is. Then they might wonder why a God would select our tiny world in the middle of nowhere for special treatment. They might wonder if every religious belief ever invented is nothing more than wishful thinking. Wishing that a God would think the human race is important enough to notice them. Wishing that death is not final.

Reality is a wonderful thing. Accepting reality and only reality makes a person free. Theists should try to imagine what it's like to not be a slave of a supernatural creature nobody has ever seen. Especially since the existence of God has not one shred of real evidence.

'A Knight of the Mind' - Dawkins, Darwin, and the Battle of Worldviews

humanape »

Fri Jul 25, 2008 1:01 pm Agree: 0   Disagree: 0

"Once again Dr Mohler is trying to move the goalposts - ID and theistic evolution are not the same at all. ID is basically trying to prove the existance of God with nonsensical thories of irreducible complexity and the like (they claim higher power but we know its God) while those of us that believe in theistic evolution believe that evolution happened exactly the way scientists are finding it happened - just with the help of God's guiding hand. Ken Miller, one of the most outspoken critics of ID, believes in theistic evolution. Francis Collins does as well."

"Dawkins, believer and humanape are all have one thing in common: they are wrong about one thing - the facts of evolution do nothing to disprove God."

I agree. Evolution does not disprove God. Evolution, and other scientific facts, just make God unnecessary. If people want to believe in God, that's fine with me, but they should admit God never had anything to do with anything.

Your "the help of God's guiding hand" is terrible. Evolution is guided by natural selection. It never did and never will need a supernatural hand to guide it. Ken Miller, Francis Collins, and other religious biologists have NEVER invoked God for evolution. They call it a natural process. They don't stick God in there anywhere.

Nobody talks about theistic gravity. The worthless adjective 'theistic' should not be attached to any scientific fact, including evolution. God had nothing to do with natural processes. People should leave their God-of-the-gaps out of science. Science does not need supernatural magic tricks.

"I am a Christian, and I have no problem at all with the idea of evolution, at least at the micro level, adaptation within a species. I'm not at all convinced by the larger argument for macroevolution - one species becoming another - and I don't believe the fossil record really supports this. Either way, it doesn't matter much to me."

It should matter to you. I can't imagine anything more important and more interesting than where our species came from. You should be wondering why virtually every biologist in the world agrees all life is related, including our close relationship to the other ape species. You should see the video I recommended earlier. It talks about the fossils you pretend don't exist.

'A Knight of the Mind' - Dawkins, Darwin, and the Battle of Worldviews

humanape »

Fri Jul 25, 2008 12:13 am Agree: 2   Disagree: 1

"do you really think they check God at the door before they come in to do their research."

They don't stop believing in God when they work.

However, they leave their Bible bias or whatever other religious bias they have at the door.

If a scientist finds something that might lead to a cure for some disease, he is not likely to say "that can't be right, this evidence conflicts with the Bible."

The scientist's world is a natural world with natural processes only. There is no supernatural allowed in science. There are no exceptions. All religious scientists know this. If they have a problem with it, they are not likely to become scientists.

There are many very religious scientists and many of them have done important research. They succeeded partly because they left God out of it. They know they can't get away with "Here a miracle occurred."

Here's another interesting fact. The top scientists of the world belong to the National Academy of Sciences. These are the elite. The best of the best. In this group a poll was taken. The poll showed that only 7% of these top scientists believe in a personal god. I would bet most of those 7% are not very religious. The rest, 93% of the top scientists, are atheists.

What do these facts mean? I suggest that the more a person knows about science, the less likely he's going to believe in anything supernatural, including God.

'A Knight of the Mind' - Dawkins, Darwin, and the Battle of Worldviews

humanape »

Thu Jul 24, 2008 8:24 pm Agree: 0   Disagree: 0

"But once again there are many in the various fields of science who are very committed Christians who have no less desire to make important discoveries in their field than scientists who are not Christians."

I agree completely. My favorite biologist is a Catholic. But these religious scientists do not invoke God in the lab. They assume they work in a natural world of natural processes. They make this assumption because they are scientists, not preachers. They keep their religious ideas completely separate from their work as scientists. They have to do this because if they ever invoked God to explain anything, they wouldn't be doing science.

Anyone want to see a great video? A young woman named Louise Leakey, who is from a family famous for their discovery of human ancestors, gives an excellent speech about fossils, and other important things. She's a great public speaker. I highly recommend this 15 minute video.

Louise Leakey: Digging for humanity's origins

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/louise_leakey_digs_for_humanity_s_origins.html

'A Knight of the Mind' - Dawkins, Darwin, and the Battle of Worldviews

humanape »

Thu Jul 24, 2008 7:18 pm Agree: 0   Disagree: 0

"God and science can and do work very well together."

I think you missed the point I was trying to make. When scientists make predictions and then test those predictions, they are depending on the idea there's going to be no supernatural intervention to change the results. If they think God might perform a miracle that might change the result of testing, scientists might say to heck with it, and give up science. A world of natural processes, and only natural processes, is the only kind of world a scientist can ever hope to make any progress in.

Another point I would like to make is science would be polluted if God stuck His supernatural nose anywhere He wanted to. Other people could probably explain this better than me. My point is the beauty of understanding how the world works is destroyed when miracles sneak in there.

Let me try to put it another way. There is nothing more exciting for a scientist than to be the first to have an understanding of how some natural process works. Stick God in there, and the joy of discovery, and the beauty of it, disappears.

For example, when scientists first found powerful evidence for the idea that people and chimps share an ancestor when they compared the genome of these two species, that had to be exciting, beautiful, and very satisfying. If God had magically created these two species to be separate and unrelated to each other, biologists might as well quit their jobs. Where's the pleasure in trying to discover the reason for things, when it was all just magic?

'A Knight of the Mind' - Dawkins, Darwin, and the Battle of Worldviews

humanape »

Thu Jul 24, 2008 6:17 pm Agree: 0   Disagree: 1

"And anyways, if the biblical view of Creation is true how does that keep science from moving forward?"

If creation is true, then magic is possible.

If magic is possible, we might as well throw out all of science. How could scientists ever expect to accomplish anything if some supernatural being is constantly performing magic tricks?

The choice is supernatural magic or science. They both can't exist together. One or the other must be thrown out. My choice is science, also known as reality.

'A Knight of the Mind' - Dawkins, Darwin, and the Battle of Worldviews

humanape »

Thu Jul 24, 2008 2:59 pm Agree: 0   Disagree: 0

"Now let's get to work and solve the real problems that are negatively impacting mankind and our world."

Of course there are serious problems in the world, like pollution, threatened species, wars, poverty, disease, etc.

But what's wrong with scientific progress for its own sake? We didn't have to go to Mars, but we went there and the result is human knowledge has greatly increased. It's the same for the beginning of life problem. We don't have to solve this problem, but wouldn't it be nice to understand these things? Giving up (also known as invoking God) has never answered any question. Humans have a natural desire to know all they can, and thank goodness for that.

'A Knight of the Mind' - Dawkins, Darwin, and the Battle of Worldviews

humanape »

Thu Jul 24, 2008 2:17 pm Agree: 0   Disagree: 0

There's a scientific problem. How did the first living cells develop?

Christians: God did it! Problem solved.

Scientists: Here's a research opportunity. Let's get to work.

'A Knight of the Mind' - Dawkins, Darwin, and the Battle of Worldviews

humanape »

Thu Jul 24, 2008 2:11 pm Agree: 0   Disagree: 0

"too many unanswered questions"

So you invoke magic to answer those questions.

I'm not impressed.

Your religion is doomed. Scientific progress will continue forever, while the Bible will live forever in the Dark Ages.