Religion should never be forced upon anyone. While it can be encouraged, forcing someone to do something just isn't right. I'm not saying parents making their kids go to church when they're young is bad, but forcing someone to do something once they're old enough to make their own decisions isn't right.
As for evolution vs. creation, I'll just point out that there are several states that do not include macroevolution questions on the state exams due to it not being proven. While "equal time" laws were shot down in the supreme court, some states are adopting the no time laws, which basically state that teaching macroevolution is optional and for the schools to decide.
i go to a catholic school where very october, we are forced to pray the rosary and everyday we are forced to pray more than 10 times. these 10 times are distributed in the day it makes life so boring because we keep on repeating prayers. and we sometimes have debates in class under this topic. i always go for mixed darwinian and biblical because i'm afraid they might decrease my Christian Living grade.what do you think?
Remember, though, you are at a private religiously oriented school; you are subjecting yourself to this treatment. If you disagree with the principles of their educational system, you are free to release yourself from it. They need no justification for any ridiculous teaching strategies if you are making yourself subject to them of your own free will.
That is why when we have to bend over and pray in chapel at school I sit bolt upright and text my friends. (-Ed)In fact, it seems a tad bit immature to rebel so ostentatiously as that if one is not in fact forced to accept that education.
oh, well, they have a very crazy way of grading us in Christian Living. they grade us on our "reflection"... a written output of your understanding on the bible reading. and the stupid nun grades the work for how beautifully it was decorated, not for the real content! once i tried doing a nice poem for my prayer on the reflection notebook and i didn't mind about coloring it. anyway, she marked it a B+ and gave those elaborately designed works with only very few words written A+!!!! hey that's really unfair!
well, i'd forever go for evolution... even if God DID created everything, i'm sure he didn't do it with magic!
It is impossible to comprehend something that isn't physical or that doesn't exist in our universe in any normal means.
I'll take biblical truth
Humans cannot observe this directly, of course, because it takes far longer than our civilization has been around; but the fossil record shows evidence of these changes.
There are many different theories of evolution, but I gather from reading that nowadays, most serious scientific debate is not about whether evolution occurred or not, but by what means life evolved.
I don't want to turn this into a lecture on evolution (not that I'm qualified to), but there are many books available that describe the process.
Wired-on what thread is your argument posted?
I go to a catholic school and we learn evoloution in science and creationism in religion classes... But creationism is treated more as an idea, no-one actually takes it literally.I have met about 1 or 2 people in my life who actually literally believe in creationism over evolution.
Most people in Australia think is is amazing that people in America actually want creationism taught in non-religious schools, seeing as there is no scientific evidence for it really...
Not that I'm judging other peoples beliefs or anything...
Can you share some evidence in support of creation? Remember, attacking evolution does not support one type of creationism over another, perhaps Zeus created the world if it didn't evolve.
Most people in Australia think is is amazing that people in America actually want creationism taught in non-religious schools, seeing as there is no scientific evidence for it really... Not that I'm judging other peoples beliefs or anything...
You believe in evolution? You're saying that given two theories that are unproven, you should teach only one and say that it's the way it happened?
I've always been taught evolution as being the most probable theory, but a theory nevertheless. I wasn't taught it was 100% true. Of course, I am convinced that evolution actually is true, but that is because I made up my own opinion (reading some books and considering religous people's arguments). Unfortunately your're not given that opportunity in religious schools.
I've always been taught evolution as being the most probable theory, but a theory nevertheless.
If there was no bible, would you believe in creation?
I will list here a couple contradictions, and I got these from a quick search of the internet.
Numbers 23:19 "God is not a man, that he should lie; neither the son of man, that he should repent."Exodus 32:14 "And the Lord repented of the evil which he thought to do unto his people."
II Kings 8:26 "Two and twenty years old was Ahaziah when he began to reign."II Chronicles 22:2 "Forty and two years old was Ahaziah when he began to reign."
Any search of the internet will yield hundreds such results, and I find it hard to believe that a flawless book would contain even apparent errors.
I am not trying to discourage anyone's faith, but I don't think such shaky evidence should be taught in classrooms as equal to a science that is founded on the real, physical evidence that I have yet to read of creationists providing.
Most probable? If that's the most probable theory, then we shouldn't exist. Odds are stacked up tremendously against us.
(reading some books and considering religous people's arguments).
Hence we have not found life on any other planet yet, Ed
you think we would if the other planets were a billion years old
The planets are over billion years old, just like Earth.
Wired's point of the odds being stacked up against us is a very valid one (although he said it sarcastically!).
It is for this reason that we haven't found life on the other planets yet,
How old do you think the universe is? Or rather, how old do you think that the oldest matter is?
Approximately 15 billion years
What good is it if the book is reliable only in a foreign language that most believers can't read?
I suppose that translation errors are an easy way to explain away problems.
If there is no evidence apart from the Bible, then why should creation be taught as science?
I would appreciate a specific examle against evolution.
Do you believe the flood is plausible? If so, I'm curious to here why you believe it is.
I've always wanted to know how the stars are going to fall from the sky as foretold in Revelation.
Also, I'm curious how, in the beginning, light was created before the sun and the "lesser light."
How exactly did the "firmament" divide the waters above and below in the beginning?
Where did all the waters of the flood come from and go to afterwards?
If when Noah was resting on Ararat, the birds found no place to rest at first and came back to the Ark, how was it that they had missed the Himalayas, the Andes, and fairly nearby Mount Elbrus in the Caucasus or Mount Damavand (sp.?) in Iran?
There seem to me many absurdities in the story.
So there was a definitive starting point? What was there before that? What caused everything to just appear?
This is a question that no-one can answer. However, the exact same problem exists in the creationist theory: on the lines of who created god in the first place, or did he just appear?
God is a supernatural being. Since He is supernatural, there are many things that we cannot explain or comprehend about Him. He lives in a different realm/dimension, not bound by the limitations of our universe. Because of this, we cannot grasp the full extent of this being.
How do we know what the Bible message is? If parts that don't affect the Bible message are distorted, how do we know there aren't problems with the actual message?
Can you please share with me, quickly one specific example of an "unrelated species"?
No evolution does not necessarily say we all arrived from the same species. Why couldn't there have been several species of original self replicating organic material that branched off?
Also, a definition of what makes a species unrelated might be nice.
So, the authors were trying to describe something in their own words, you say. How do we know that other parts of the Bible aren't described in their own words, and subject to dismissal whenever convenient to prove something else, such as a flood covering the whole world?
Those theories of water coming and going sound a little farfetched. Actually, extremely farfetched. They want me to believe that somehow deep in the crust were massive pockets of water that just sat in place under a much flatter world, not flowing anywhere.
Why would God put those there, anyway? Did he know he was later going to use them to wipe out the world? If you think about it, the fact that he repented at all the evil in the world, then decided it should all go would imply that he hadn't planned man to go so far astray, but deliberately had a giant flood prepared for them just in case. Also, when the ocean floor rose 6500 feet, where, might I ask? In the trenches, the plains, the mountains?
It seems like the authors of your sites seem to think there is a massive conspiracy afloat. All of the learned Geologists at parks around the world are deliberately hiding the truth of the geology from the people so they will never learn.
I will need more than a quick little internet website to erase the volumes of literature I have read packed with evidence supporting the old earth theory.
It has also occurred to me to question how mountains could build extremely quickly (1 year, the length of the flood) and then, for the rest of recorded history, change so little as to be barely noticeable.
Of course, all this is easy to explain by magical means, but I find that the accepted evolutionary and geological standards stay much more in line with observed reality nowadays.
There must be some problem with the foundations of the Bible, as I can think of many different sects that claim to have the only truth and are in fact doctrinally different. For example, the Baptists believe that their interpretation of scripture is correct, as do the Catholics. They both believe that the other is mistaken in their beliefs, and they both follow the Bible. That shows to me that there must be some underlying problem
perhaps of the type when Soddom and Gomorrah were destroyed by balls of sulfur burning up, where the Bible described it in one way. The writer of Revelation probably meant something quite different.
I find it interesting that in the article you quote about unrelated species, it mentions that the Eukaryotes have been around for about 2 billion years, which is a tad long for the creationist timetable. It must not throw too big of a "monkey wrench" into evolutionary theory.
No, evolution does not state that life arose from non-life. That is abiogenesis.
I see evidence of evolution all around me: dog breeds, for example. According to some theories, enough microevolution leads to what is called macroevolution. But really, they can be almost the same thing, with the prefix relating to the time scale, and not the actual mechanism of evolution.
Perhaps we are not meant to know everything, after all, if we did, we wouldn't need to debate anything, would we?
I don't pretend to know everything, but instead rely on scientists who research the types of thing we are discussing here, and who can hopefully interpret the evidence properly.
They won't stay scientists very long if they are always being demonstrated as skewing their results based on wishful thinking.
It is true that more than one person is claiming that their dates are skewed. But nearly every time, those making the claims have religious beliefs to defend. Thusly, I cannot trust them not to skew their facts in an effort to support their own beliefs.
Most sources that support creationist themes (and evolutionist ones, for that matter) online have little accountability for what they say. When its published in a book format, that's another matter. The creationist books I have read have usually badly maligned the facts.
Here is a link to one critique of one creationist book, and you will understand why I am often skeptical of creationist writings: https://skepticfiles.org/mcdowell/4_cretin.htm
Why doesn't the pressure at the bottom of the ocean now cause mountains to build down there at a rate to create a Mount Everest in a year? Water presses in a very even fashion, it doesn't put pressure on rocks in such a way as to form mountains. Why did the mountain building slow down so rapidly after the flood?
I suggest that this debate will continue going on and on with no real change in either of our views, as we both seem to be thoroughly convinced of the following:
No, it isn't a question no one can answer. I already wrote my proof up in the other forum, which everyone hasn't been able to say was incorrect
Are you talking about Martha Argerich ? Because it's Her, not Him.
Books are the past. Online is the future. Books take much more time to prepare, and have a shelf-life. Websites are ever-evolving works. I personally find the Internet much more knowledge-filled than books.
Topic: evolution vs. biblical theory 