Creationism - Lazy Man's science?

[shinbits]

That is quite a bit too simplistic, Shinbits. In primate societies, both the higher females and males get a say. A female of high position will not mate with a male of low position, that's not only the male's choice but also the choice of the female. Sex, together with other forms of powerplay, hold the balance in the group. For the same reason, a high placed male won't quickly mate with a low-placed female.

But wouldn't you agree that "high" and "low" positions are asigned simply by being bigger and stronger than another primate? If so, then this goes back to what I've said about a hierarchy being nothing more then the stronger beating out the weaker, then mating with whoever's willing.

I would really advice you to read up on this, because the idea you have on it is quite skewed. Read on some of of the research on baboons, for example. The intricacies of the hierarchical struggles are very interesting, and much more complicated then you want to make them out to be.

You've whet my appetite for this topic.

Nope.

Sexual promiscuity wasn't majorly frowned in the forties or fifties?

Wrong on both counts. If you look at the history of sexual relationships, you'll quickly notice that the only way in which current society differs, is the matter of openness about the above. It has always happened, it's not something purely of the last forty years or so. The church has tried to discourage it and place a taboo on it, sure. But even in highly christian societies, these things happened, with varying levels of openness about it. Ever heard of Casanova? I really would urge you to read up on this as well.

Hmm. Everything you've said is true. Good point.

You're on fire today.

 

[Tomk80]

But wouldn't you agree that "high" and "low" positions are asigned simply by being bigger and stronger than another primate? If so, then this goes back to what I've said about a hierarchy being nothing more then the stronger beating out the weaker, then mating with whoever's willing.

Not necessarily. Bigger and stronger males can loose if they do not take care of the relationships within the group. Bigger males can be overthrown by a number of smaller males or females banding together.

And is that so much different than human society? Research has shown that humans usually choose a partner that is in the same range of beauty as they are. And power and money play an immense role in getting a male or female you want. Go to a casino or art fair. Look at the young, pretty females of about my age that tag around with a guy around twice my age. And that guy sure ain't their daddy.

You've whet my appetite for this topic.

Sexual promiscuity wasn't majorly frowned in the forties or fifties?

Probably was, I didn't say it wasn't. But it happened nevertheless.

Hmm. Everything you've said is true. Good point.

You're on fire today.

 

[shinbits]

Not necessarily. Bigger and stronger males can loose if they do not take care of the relationships within the group. Bigger males can be overthrown by a number of smaller males or females banding together.

Hmm. Can you show that primates actually do band together in order to accomplish such a goal?

And let's say this did happen: who then would be the new reigning leader in this "hierarchy"? Wouldn't it be the biggest and strongest male in the bunch?

This would just go back to what I said before, that a "hierarchy" in terms of primates, is nothing more then the weak beating out the strong. If not, are you saying primates display loyalty to reigning primates in the same way humans show loyalty to a king?


But here's what I will do: this will be my last post for a while until I read what you've suggested. If you start a thread on this specific topic in future, I can give a better and more informed oppinion.

It's been fun.

 

[rmwilliamsll]

Not necessarily. Bigger and stronger males can loose if they do not take care of the relationships within the group. Bigger males can be overthrown by a number of smaller males or females banding together.

Hmm. Can you show that primates actually do band together in order to accomplish such a goal?


hmm, the kid's soccer league that meets in the park across the street?

 

[rmwilliamsll]

And is that so much different than human society? Research has shown that humans usually choose a partner that is in the same range of beauty as they are. And power and money play an immense role in getting a male or female you want. Go to a casino or art fair. Look at the young, pretty females of about my age that tag around with a guy around twice my age. And that guy sure ain't their daddy.


Kissinger put it bluntly.
power is the greatest aphrodisiac on earth.
it even made him attractive to young women.

 

[AV1611VET]

Not necessarily. Bigger and stronger males can loose if they do not take care of the relationships within the group. Bigger males can be overthrown by a number of smaller males or females banding together.

This is a perfect example of one my Four Axioms:

• Evolution violates God's principles of love and harmony.

Not to mention, it violates my first one, too.

 

[Edx]

This is a perfect example of one my Four Axioms:

• Evolution violates God's principles of love and harmony.

Really? Which KJV do you read?

 

[Kaonashi]

This is a perfect example of one my Four Axioms:

• Evolution violates God's principles of love and harmony.

Not to mention, it violates my first one, too.

Evolution and Natural Selection are not the same thing and you have yet to answer my question.
"Jesus didn't believe in using the King James Version only --- why should we?"

Evolution doesn't have to conform to any of your "axioms" to actually occur in a species.

 

[AV1611VET]

"Jesus didn't believe in using the King James Version only --- why should we?"

It didn't exist then.

 

[AV1611VET]

[/list]Really? Which KJV do you read?

The 1611 KJV --- there is no other.

 

[TheBear]

It will work if you find righteous men and women to pray. If you go to vegas and ask a bunch of sinners to pray you may not get very good results. If God answered their prayers they would all go home rich.

God does not honor the prayers of sinners, He honors the prayers of the righteous and those who live their life righteous before Him.

James 5:16 The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much.

The Bible makes it clear that God hears the effectual prayer of the righteous. The Bible is jam packed filled with promises. If you do your part, then you can be sure that God will do His part.

It is a shame that there are so many churches out there were people do not know how to get results. But I was blessed to be able to attend a church where we learned how to get good results when we pray. Also my wife was raised with people that taught her how to pray, so she knows how to get good results. She will be the first to tell you that if you do your part, God will do His part. But if you do not do what your suppose to be doing, then do not expect God to do His part.

"Results" = whatever you make of it - turning lemons into lemonade. For example - I'm sure your church group prays for the recovery of it's ailing members. On those occasions when the ailing member dies, that was God's will. And that becomes the new "result".

I felt horrible for the misguided family members of those coal miners who died. (What an emotional roller-coaster ride that must have been, and it ended up pretty bad. )

 

[steen]

But primates, which humans are said to be descended from, do have indiscrimanate sex.

Really? A dominant Gorilla lets other males mate with his harem without attacking them? You are making this stuff up, aren't you?

Or are you using nature as 'evidence" of what is normal, such as the lesbian sex among the Bonobos for bonding purposes?

So again, wouldn't marital institutions in a species which is supposed to have as an evolutionary heritage indiscriminate sex contradict this evolutionary history?

Well, you need to show that a Gorilla's harem isn't kind of an equivalent to marriage.

 

[steen]

This "hierarchy" is really just the bigger males beating out the weak ones, then proceeding to have sex with any willing female.

Ah, so you admit that the sex is NOT indiscriminate, then. Thanks for that admission.

The only reason that there is so much unrestricted sexual activity in humans within the past forty years or so, is because of the world-wide move toward secularism, which was prophesied in the Bible thousands of years ago.

Really? You of course have some evidence beyond postulation, right?

 

[shinbits]

.

 

[shinbits]

Ah, so you admit that the sex is NOT indiscriminate, then. Thanks for that admission.

*chews gum*

The stronger males have indiscriminate sex with whichever female's willing.

*sips ice tea*

Really? You of course have some evidence beyond postulation, right?

Have ever even heard of the forties?

 

[Beastt]

You have absolutely no evidence and no proof for that. How do you know what other men have or have not experanced?

I know what other men have claimed to experienced and I know that those who claim a belief in the Christian God have nothing more compelling than those believing in other gods. But in most cases, those believing in other gods don't believe in the Christian God and those who believe in the Christian God don't believe in other gods. This leaves only two reasonable conclusions. Either no gods exist or all gods exist. Since no one has ever presented a single lick of credible evidence for the existence of any god, the latter of the two choices seems the most likely.

The only thing you can know is that YOU have never KNOWN God. You not testify for others because you are not them, you are only yourself and you can only testify for yourself.

And you cannot testify for others either. Yet, by your very belief in Christianity, you imply that you can. Because the Christian God is supposed to be the "one true god", therefore elminating other gods such as Allah, who is also claimed as the "one true god". Certainly both of them can't be the "one true god", so by proclaiming that the Christian God exists, you're claiming to know that those who testify to experiences of Allah have not experienced what they claim. If you take a look in the mirror, John, you're doing exactly what you fault me for doing. The difference is that while I do this based on reason, applied to the evidence; you do this based upon blind assumption -- the assumption that your beliefs are correct and those beliefs contrary to your own are wrong.

Even if I had never known God, then how would you explain all of the miracles?

Until I'm presented with a credible miracle, there is nothing to explain.

How would you explain all the answers to prayer?

Those have been explained over and over through unbiased testing, John. There are no answers to prayer. There is what happens, what doesn't happen and the biases some apply to the events. When applied against the truth of numbers, it has been shown repeatedly that there is no difference between what happens when one prays and what happens when one does not pray. I posted information on the latest scientific research on this. Did you already forget that there was no discernable difference in patient outcome for those who received intercessory prayer and those who did not?

How do you explain that I get so much of what I want and ask for?

Confirmation bias. You've explained this to me yourself a number of times. You believe that you must pray in accordance with God's will. So when you don't get what you prayed for, you simply assume it wasn't God's will. When you do get what you pray for, you assume God arranged it for you. But there is another name for this type of "hit and miss" result. It's called, "chance", and it can be measured in studies by using control groups. This is what was done in the STEP study and the results correlated with chance. If prayer works, then it cannot logically offer results identical to chance. Yet study after study shows that this is exactly what happens. So I'm not the one who should be explaining this. It's up to you to explain how you can declare that prayer works when there is no significant statistical difference between situations where prayer is used and situations where it isn't.

How do you explain that my wife constantly has her prayers answered?

She holds the same or very similar beliefs as those you hold and applies the very same kind of confirmation bias in order to provide herself with a means of continuing her belief. This is very common among believers, John. The vast majority will claim that prayer provides them with their requests. But when an outside source compiles the numbers and compares them to a control situation without prayer, the numbers match up. Observing that, there simply isn't any way to make any kind of credible claim that prayer works. Have you ever prayed that God will keep you and your wife healthy?

In fact, how do you explain your testimony? Why do you feel your life is easier now that you do not seek after God anymore.

To the best of my recollection I never made such a statement. Feel free to correct me if I'm not remembering correctly but I believe I stated that the world makes more sense without a belief in God. By eliminating God and all of the proposed benevolence and "work of God", I'm no longer faced with a reality which doesn't correlate to the claims about God.

Does the Bible not say that the way to destruction is the easy way? But the way of God is difficult?

It really does't matter what the Bible says, John. The Bible could say the world is flat, sits stationary while the sun moves around it, that the moon, sun and stars are inside the Earth's atmosphere and that plants can grow in cryogenic temperatures. (Actually, it does say all of that.). But that doesn't make any of it true. This is why the Bible fails, John. You keep presenting text from the Bible because you look to the Bible as the measure of truth. But if you apply the true measure of truth to the Bible, (reality), we quickly find that the Bible fails to measure up.

You just got though saying it was difficult to be a Christian but now it is easy to be a atheist. Does that not verify that what the Bible is saying is true?

Can you please show me where I made any such statement?

The Bible is filled with truth.

Some things in the Bible are true, others are not true. If it were the word of God, should we expect to find blatant untruths in the Bible? Would it be expected that unless we changed what the Bible says, it would be a simple matter to demonstrate the blatant untruths in the Bible?

For hundreds of years men of science have been establishing scientific evidence that shows the Bible is true.

You're making a whole series of inaccurate claims here, John. Men of science have been able to establish that some of the information in the Bible correlates with the evidence. But they've also been able to show that a great deal of what the Bible claims is not only lacking in credibility, but simply and conclusively refuted by the Evidence. The Earth is billions of years old, John. The Earth is a sphere, not flat. The Earth revolves around the sun and not the other way around. Homo Sapien is a product of evolution, not instant creation. People of faith can't move mountains just by speaking the desire to do so. The Earth has never been flooded in water.

The Bible is more true, more accurate, more reliable and more dependable than any other book in existance today.

Which is, of course, very easy to say but impossible to support.

It is up to you if you want to be a christian or not. You have to calculate the cost and decide if it is worth it for you.

I've already done this, John. And I determined the cost of discarding reason and logic to be far too great to subscribe to ancient superstitions rather than the demonstrations of reality.

But to say it is not true only goes to show us that you do not know the truth.

The problem, John is that you continue to make such claims. But whenever it comes down to supporting claims, I can list numerous lines of evidence, all demonstrating my claims to be consistent with the evidence and the evidence to be provided by reality. You continually make claims, but always fail to offer support. You've done this so often that it seems to be expected of you. I draw your attention to your statement that the claim of biblical geocentrism is a position of "INFIDELS", and nothing but "urban myth". I presented you with the evidence of 16-centuries of such teaching by the church, based on scripture. I presented you with the death by fire suffered by Giordano Bruno, the persecution of Galileo and the beratement shown to, and the fear demonstrated by Copernicus. I offered you the Hebrew etchings. And what did you offer in return? You said we didn't have enough common ground upon which to proceed. I doubt I'm the only one here who interprets that as you knowing you don't have the necessary evidence to present any kind of credible refutation.

Christianity has a long history of wanting to have its fallability, and wanting to deny it too. When Christianity is wrong, you claim it's inconsistent with the Bible. The rest of the time you claim that Christianity is correct because the Bible is your standard of truth. Whenever you're shown to be wrong, you turn your back on the claims of your own belief system in order to salvage the Bible. But the crux of your belief systems is the Bible.

You and AV1611VET both demonstrated this by proclaiming that the interpretation of the Bible which held for 16-centuries, (until science proved it unquestioningly wrong), might have been incorrect but that the Bible itself remains unwaiveringly accurate. If this is the case, then apparently you and every other Christians are still misinterpreting a great number of the Bible's claims. Apparently, it doesn't claim the Earth was ever flooded. It doesn't claim that God created "kinds", but only a start, from which diverse forms of life evolved. Apparently, the Bible doesn't claim that prayer can provide any effect on outcomes. It mustn't say these things because these are the demonstrations of reality and reality doesn't change no matter what men from 2,000 years ago decided to write. So either you're misinterpreting a great deal of the Bible or the Bible is just as wrong about many things today as it was 450 years ago when it said that the Earth was stationary at the center of the universe.

Decide what you believe. Either the Bible is wrong or you're interpreting it incorrectly. Because there simply isn't any way that the Bible can be right and still not be in accordance with reality.

Jesus tells us that we can know the truth and it is the truth that sets people free.

The Bible claims that Jesus said this. Jesus didn't write the Bible, John. If you insist on defaulting to the belief that the Bible is infallible, then of course you'll never live in a world which makes sense. You'll continually find yourself denying that which is clearly demonstrable and you'll live in a fearful world where all of science is but one large conspiracy aimed directly at destroying your faith. If you would instead recognize the simple truth that reality itself is the supreme measure of truth, you'd begin to see that the Bible isn't what you hold it to be.

 

[BeamMeUpScotty]

I know what other men have claimed to experienced and I know that those who claim a belief in the Christian God have nothing more compelling than those believing in other gods. But in most cases, those believing in other gods don't believe in the Christian God and those who believe in the Christian God don't believe in other gods. This leaves only two reasonable conclusions. Either no gods exist or all gods exist. Since no one has ever presented a single lick of credible evidence for the existence of any god, the latter of the two choices seems the most likely.


And you cannot testify for others yet, by your very belief in Christianity, you imply that you can. Because the Christian God is supposed to be the "one true god", therefore elminating other gods such as Allah, who is also claimed as the "one true god". Certainly both of them can't be the "one true god", so by proclaiming that the Christian God exists, you're claiming to know that those who testify to experiences of Allah have not experienced what they claim. If you take a look in the mirror, John, you're doing exactly what you fault me for doing.


Until I'm presented with a credible miracle, there is nothing to explain.


Those have been explained over and over through unbiased testing, John. There are not answers to prayer. There is what happens and what doesn't happen. And when applied against the truth of numbers, it has been shown repeatedly that there is no difference between what happens when one prays and what happens when one does not pray. I posted information on the latest scientific research on this. Did you already forget that there was no discernable difference in patient outcome for those who received intercessory prayer and those who did not?


Confirmation bias. You've explained this to me yourself a number of times. You believe that you must pray in accordance with God's will. So when you don't get what you prayed for, you simply assume it wasn't God's will. When you do get what you pray for, you assume God arranged it for you. But there is another name for this type of "hit and miss" result. It's called, "chance", and it can be measured in studies by using control groups. This is what was done in the STEP study and the results correlated with chance. If prayer works, then it cannot logically offer results identical to chance yet study after study shows that this is exactly what happens. So I'm not the one who should be explaining this. It's up to you to explain how you can declare that prayer works when there is no significant statistical difference between situations where prayer is used and situations where it isn't.


She holds the same or very similar beliefs as those you hold and applies the very same kind of confirmation bias in order to provide herself with a means of continuing her belief. This is very common among believers, John. The vast majority will claim that prayer provides them with their requests. But when an outside sorce compiles the numbers and compares them to a control situation without prayer, the numbers match up. Observing that, there simply isn't any way to make any kind of credible claim that prayer works. Have you ever prayed that God will keep you and your wife healthy?


To the best if my recollection I never made such a statement. Feel free to correct me if I'm not remembering correctly but I believe I stated that the world makes more sense without a belief in God. By eliminating God and all of the proposed benevolence and "work of God", I'm no longer faced with a reality which doesn't correlate to the claims about God.


It really does't matter what the Bible says, John. The Bible could say the world is flat, sits stationary while the sun moves around it, that the moon, sun and stars are inside the Earth's atmosphere and that plants can grow in cryogenic temperatures. (Actually, it does say all of that.). But that doesn't make any of it true. This is why the Bible fails, John. You keep presenting text from the Bible because you look to the Bible as the measure of truth. But if you apply the true measure of truth to the Bible, (reality), we quickly find that the Bible fails to measure up.


Can you please show me where I made any such statement?


Some things in the Bible are true, others are not true. If it were the word of God, should we expect to find blatant untruths in the Bible? Would it be expected that unless we changed what the Bible says, it would be a simple matter to demonstrate the blatant untruths in the Bible?


You're making a whole series of inaccurate claims here, John. Men of science have been able to establish that some of the information in the Bible correlates with the evidence. But they've also been able to show that a great deal of what the Bible claims is not only lacking in credibility, but simply and conclusively refuted by the Evidence. The Earth is billions of years old, John. The Earth is a sphere, not flat. The Earth revolves around the sun and not the other way around. Homo Sapien is a product of evolution, not instant creation. People of faith can't move mountains just by speaking the desire to do so. The Earth has never been flooded in water.


Which is, of course, very easy to say but impossible to support.


I've already done this, John. And I determined the cost of discarding reason and logic to be far too great to subscribe to ancient superstitions rather than the demonstrations of reality.


The problem, John is that you continue to make such claims. But whenever it comes down to supporting claims, I can list numerous lines of evidence, all demonstrating my claims to be consistent with the evidence and the evidence to be provided by reality. You continually make claims, but always fail to offer support. You've done this so often that it seems to be expected of you. I draw your attention to your claim that the claim of biblical geocentrism being the claim of "INFIDELS", and nothing but "urban myth". I presented you with the evidence of 16-centuries of such teaching by the church, based on scripture. I presented you with the death by fire suffered by Giordano Bruno, the persecution of Galileo and the beratement shown to, and the fear demonstrated by Copernicus. I offered you the Hebrew etchings. And what did you offer in return? You said we didn't have enough common ground upon which to proceed. I doubt I'm the only one here who interprets that as you knowing you don't have the necessary evidence to present any kind of credible refutation.


The Bible claims that Jesus said this. Jesus didn't write the Bible, John. If you insist on defaulting to the belief that the Bible is infallible, then of course you'll never live in a world which makes sense. You'll continually find yourself denying that which is clearly demonstrable and you'll live in a fearful world where all of science is but one large conspiracy aimed directly at destroying your faith. If you would instead recognize the simple truth that reality itself is the supreme measure of reality, you'd begin to see that the Bible isn't what you hold it to be.

Reading this "debate" you're having with John I get the impression you're doing a great Sisyphus impersonation. But besides just rolling the rock up and down the hill you also have to carry a gallon of water in a seive balanced on your head. Good luck.

 

[AV1611VET]

If you insist on defaulting to the belief that the Bible is infallible, then of course you'll never live in a world which makes sense.

Just out of curiosity, how do you explain the absence of global peace in view of Evolution (or Natural Selection, or Survival of the Fittest, or Abiogenesis, or Spontaneous Creation, or alien frequencies) or whatever it's called today?

And how do you relate that to my Third Axiom (Evolution violates God's principles of love and harmony)?

 

[JohnR7]

Until I'm presented with a credible miracle, there is nothing to explain.

Miracles happen all of the time, very few people deny that. I worked as a carpenter long enough to know that something metaphysical is going on out there. New construction maybe different but when it comes to remodeling and renovation you had better be able to pull a miracles out of your hat every now and then. Because without it your not going to be able to finish the project.

So I repeat again, where is your evidence that the God of the Bible is not true. In what way can you falsify the Bible and show that it is not true.

Like I said before, I had a friend once that did not believe in miracles. He needed a miracle but he did not believe in them, so he died.

The bottom line is that people who belive in healing and miracles tend to live. People who do not believe tend to die. So we have a lot of people alive today who belive. Because their belief keeps them alive. Or at least someone that had faith to believe. In the Bible it could be a parent, or an enployer or a friend who did the praying and who had faith to believe.

There is nothing in all of science that has more proof than the effectiveness of a placebo. Every drug test they every run shows yet again that people get better when they take a placebo. Is that metaphysical? Is that mind over matter? Whatever it is, it works.

If you get results does it really matter why we get the results we get? Do we really have to be able to explain everything? What harm does it do if people were to believe that prayer is effective and it works as long as you pray for the right things and are not being greedy or in violation of a natural or moral law somewhere.

 

[JohnR7]

Just out of curiosity, how do you explain the absence of global peace in view of Evolution

Eccles. 9:11
I returned and saw under the sun that--
The race is not to the swift,
Nor the battle to the strong,
Nor bread to the wise,
Nor riches to men of understanding,
Nor favor to men of skill;
But time and chance happen to them all.

I wonder how evos explain that the swift do not always win the race and the strong do not always win the battle. How can they explain in sports that sometimes the underdog wins and defies all odds.

What looks good in theory does not always work in the real world. If you want a carpenter to build something, give him a working drawing, not a artistic painting. Evos try to pawn off to may works of art and not enough working drawings.