I have never believed that gods were anything other than characters in books.
You said "It has to do with the fact that there's no such thing as a perpetual motion machine" and now you show up with a truck full of them for sale?
I am not buying your perpetual motion machines.
Specifics, please. What is "more to life" for wolves?
You said, "if the only purpose of life is survival of the fittest, to procreate, then cannibalism should be perfectly acceptable." Substantiate it, or retract it. Use wolves as an example.
In my world, not believing in gods without some form of proof, is quite rational. And I can say that, and do say that, being not only a knower that God exists and is Real, but also a scientist of sorts. My latest work, which I wil not go into is inertial confinement fusion. Earlier I had fun with things like grain boundary diffusion.
Anyway, the point of Christians is at some point they experience the supernatural as I hope all academics call that experience. Instantly, I can think of all the objections to this, from a non Christian viewpoint. I can also come up with objections to this, but not from all Christians, only some of them
Now, it is pretty clear, that roughly 65,000,000 years ago, pretty much everythng on this whole planet something happened to. I wil state the references in two ways. One for Christians and one for scientific types.
Scientifically, that is according to all athe data, including KT boundaries, with Iridium concentrations which are only found in Asteroids, black glass droplets and so on and so forth, even carbon partilcles are found in that layer, supporting a total if not near total extincition of the dinosaurs. There is only one competing theory, but does it really make a difference for the evolution question? Evolution had to have taken place from virtually nothing, to all the animals on the earth right now, including your typist here and now.
To Christians, who know in the past that there have been interpretation errors even in 1616, for Galileo, and for scientific types like me, who actually know and use God from time to time in our work, and who cannot normally tell anyone that they are doing that, because that is the new heresy. God now is the new heresy in this world. To you Christians science is defined this way, by my breed. Science is finding out what God has done. Also it is demanded of God, in Genesis but that is off topic.
It seems to me, the major differences are, the scientific types who have major restrictions in accepting evern their own discoveries, that if they know God is real, or if they believe God is real, the latter being really as subset of the former, they are much to busy making a living to get into these discussions. I am retired.
Gosh, to the scientist type with no personal experiences with God, what is wrong with them thinking God is a product of mans imaginations to explain the unknown? What? Major Religious Theory certainly supports that idea. It has not proven it, but there is little that gives them any reason to suspect otherwise.
If Religionists, look at God from their point of view, how are they allowed to think differently. Even if they take a cursory look at cause and effect, shouldn't they expect ministers of Protestantism and leaders of The Catholic Church to be better morally and ethically then they are? Shouldn't they expect to find any difinitive statements, like evolution can not exist, and the earth cannot revolve around the sun, to be more accurate than what they find when they look? Wouln't you expect that, if you knew nothing?
Now, being in the middle of both groups of you now. First let me try and calm all you Christians down. I know God is Real. I don't have to believe in Him, because I actually know He is Real.
Secondly, I can not think of a single item for this discussion, that will help the scientific types, that seem to be here. I will say, that if this discussion took place at work, and it does from time to time, all anyone cares about is on piece of evidence. Whether or not, they can reproduce this, is not of primary importance to them. What is, is the results first, then the exact method used.
For you religious guys, it looks like evolution happened, but why cannot that be The Way God Did Things? Why like when I even looked into it the first time, does Adam have to be made in 5000 BC, when your book and mine is not written for Science, but for humans after they have an experience, before, duiring, after reading that book, and sometimes not till after they die.
...Katie.