[Points]

"water is nothing but two atoms of hydrogen + one oxygen.Give me that and I will make you water." So, where did the atoms come from? You know you can go back and forth, but one things is clear-you must have some kind of raw material and that is where science fails! Some scientists are afraid to tell the world that they are puzzled. surely however back you want to go (human life, earth existence, our galaxy, universe e.t.c) you will find that all explanations bears an event with something coming together but they fail to say from where or by whom. Why don't you just sit down and admit you don't know? I do science myself and I know that we don't know everything and say it as so. I think most scientist feel that they lose credibility or give in to religion if they admit they are bewildered. It is known FACT that any of the above (or after now)"evidence" about existence of life is PURE THEORY by some scientists (let me know if you thought it is fact). Do you know why those are all theories? I will not try to explain why it is still a theory and not a FACT but I fail to see why you are trying to defend someone's theory, whom themselves have failed to prove to the world that theirs is a LAW,or a FACT!
I am curious to know how you define Christianity or Religion in general. If you understand the definition, then you should know that we are exempt from the scrutiny that follows science. Religions are based on faith and not experiments. You may think someone who worships a tree is CRAZY, but he really doesn't need to prove to you that the tree is magical or powerful or hi/her God. If you understand the definition of RELIGION, you will see that fundamental philosophy is proving that religion to ONESSELF. Now, many religious groups try to convert others by telling their story and trying to PROVE to others, but still this doesn't change the definition of religion. You may argue with them all day why what they believe is right or wrong but trully as yourself again in the middle of the argument, "WHAT IS RELIGION?" Is there a dictionary around here so we can cut the chase?

[petermaumau]

Sometimes one wonders why try to talk to some of these stiffnecked folk, and I am sure they may wonder the same about me ..But ussually after a rather long spell someone may thank you that they finally accept christ so you keep on ,encouraged that at the very least, one person is not going to hell because I was used , or used myself to post...I must say that many of us do not look anything like the images we potray in Mashada yet we are comfortable discussing and sometimes defending some of our innermost beliefs

That aside, It takes more faith to believe that by chance we are here than to believe in God.. That Through a big bang that just somehow just happened we are here, and that some monkeys evolved, others did not..
Evolution is attractive in that it precludes a GOd who will judge us for our actions on earth.. So Le tme just define atheism as believing in looking for a reason why GOd does not exist,as much Evolution is welcoming...

[tertius]

I am registered here. At Mashada, I don't even know why.

But this post was on the front page when I checked where to register.

I have a few comments to make to people on either side.

1. THEORY

A scientific theory : A well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world; an organized system of accepted knowledge that applies in a variety of circumstances to explain a specific set of phenomena.

This is something that EVERYONE needs to get straight, not just the Christians. (Which I'm one of)

2. "I skipped the evolution course" , "People quote Darwin and other men".

If you are not scientifically inclined, then do not try to argue scientifically. You are basically saying that we can't take any past theories/proofs to defend what we know? That's like saying you should live in a void, no people, no earth, no ANYTHING, and try to defend why cheese is yellow when you haven't even seen cheese.

3. For those 'evolutionists' here. Please don't quote Darwin, most of his work is utter nonsense when trying to prove origins. And he brought nothing new to the table concerning evolution itself. If you read his book and believe that he just "proved" evolution, then you need to think more critically.

4. "If you believe in science,may the truth set you free."

I'm not one to judge, but please don't use language like that. If you are in fact a christian, then you believe that God created our world and that He created everything that exists around us, including all the physical and natural laws.

5. "if nothing of all these convinces u that God is love,"

After naming some things that you find cool, like babies crawling. This really has nothing to do with "love". And some of what you said actually goes against a God of love.

My God, is not just a God of love. The God of my bible hates sin etc.

You need to get your theology straight, I beg of you.

You are a fundamentalist without having an open mind and it seems that you are afraid of something that God himself made... "Science".

Please I beg of you, talk to someone that knows about creation and evolution. Creation can't be proved, neither can evolution, but where we're sitting now, without looking at God (which most people do), evolution has the most credibility. And you can't deny that.

You can't argue with an evolutionist and bring "faith" into the argument, that just doesn't make any sense. That destroys any credibility that you have. And a christian scientist can argue with credibility and logic even though you might not think so.

May the Lord bless you.

[m kenya]

If the semester ran out..you did something called a term-paper???

And in it i am sure you had a page for bibliographies, which are basically the works of other people....
so can u see the kettle calling the pot black?

[milanya]

Someone once said to me that believing in macroevolution is like believing random forces were applied to a scrapyard and then a rocket was produced as a result.


Life's not a garden so don't be a hoe

[safina]

@Milanya
I know the problem with you is understanding how something came out of 'nothing(what you cannot see)'.Let me see if I can get an example
Out of sun's light(what you can't physically feel)plants grow.You can imagine how big some of the plants grow.Without sunlight,they wouldn't be there.I hope in layman's english,you see how something can come out of nothing.

[ATLian]

Milanya,

why do you have such a hard time trying to understand how simple organisms like cells can come out of nothing - yet you have no issues believing that the most complex, powerful and amazing thing ever (god) came out of nothing?

[ATLian]

>That aside, It takes more faith to believe that by chance we
>are here than to believe in God..

PeterMauMau,

please explain what you mean by that statement coz I think that it's 100% Christian apologetic hogwash.

Simple basic logic dictates that WITHOUT any evidence, the more preposterous something sounds, the more faith you need to believe in it. Like I wrote above, god is the most amazing, most powerful, most complex and most-everything that has ever existed. Therefore it follows that you need the biggest amount of faith to believe in god. How then can you state that you need LESS faith to believe in the most amazing thing ever? That absolutely makes no sense at all.



>Evolution is attractive in that it precludes a GOd who will
>judge us for our actions on earth..

For an atheist, god doesn't factor in, so it's not about precluding god. You can replace god in your above statement with "mermaids" and it would mean the same to me. I can argue that for a believer, evolution is UNATTRACTIVE because it precludes god.



>So Le tme just define
>atheism as believing in looking for a reason why GOd does not
>exist,as much Evolution is welcoming...

No. Atheism is simply not believing in the existence of a supernatural being.

[milanya]

Because AT and Safina, if something is omnipotent, then what is beyond it? It is certainly not ruled by the confines of time. I certainly don't believe that plants are omnipotent or that sunlight is omnipotent.

Are you saying the sun or the plants came out of nothing Safina?



I watched a video about these guys who were investigating protein synthesis and DNa replication, and they admitted they didn't believe in intelligent design until they studied the process in detail.

You can say you don't want to believe in God because you have no empirical evidence and that's fine by my because that's where faith comes in, but if you are going to believe in non-empirical theories and call them science and try to convince me, I refuse!

[ATLian]

>You can say you don't want to believe in God because you have
>no empirical evidence and that's fine by my because that's
>where faith comes in, but if you are going to believe in
>non-empirical theories and call them science and try to
>convince me, I refuse!

Milanya,

empirical means "Relying on or derived from observation or experiment" or "Verifiable or provable by means of observation or experiment". Science means "any system of knowledge attained by empirical means". Therefore, by definition, it's impossible to have a scientific theory that is non-empirical. Or in other words, any theory that is non-empirical (like creation) is NOT scientific. I hope that makes sense.

That said, I'm not sure I understand what the non-empirical scientific theories you refer to above are, may be you can expound. Or if you can please give me what you think is a non-empirical scientific theory.



>I watched a video about these guys who were investigating
>protein synthesis and DNa replication, and they admitted they
>didn't believe in intelligent design until they studied the
>process in detail.

Well, that's an opinion they have. It's not a conclusion reached by any empirical means, therefore it is not a scientific theory. I guarantee you that if you showed a caveman a cell phone, he'd think that god exists because in his limited mind, he cannot understand how a mortal man can create such a complex machine. In the future we'll figure out a lot of these things we attribute to god and intelligent design, and we'll realize (like the caveman) that complex things can come about in other ways apart from the hand of god.



>Because AT and Safina, if something is omnipotent, then what
>is beyond it?

Again, god's omnipotence is a belief that has zero empirical evidence to back it up. Also assume that something can be omnipotent, what rules out the possibility of other omnipotent things existing out there? How can we claim that god is omnipotent and he's the only omnipotent being out there bila any evidence?