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ORIGINAL: Kirata

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ORIGINAL: MrRodgers

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ORIGINAL: Kirata

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ORIGINAL: MrRodgers

What 'spiritual background and guidance' was given to man for the approx. 198,000 of those years before god (Abraham or Gabriel) stepped in and basically said, 'enough of this shit'...here's the gospel and to poor, desert dwelling illiterates no less.

Right, because everybody knows that religion didn't exist before then.

It doesn't matter what did or didn't because we are told....

Your notion that religion is constrained to what some people were "told" in the Middle East convinces me that I was too generous. Actually, a sack of hammers would have an advantage over you because it would be incapable of imagining that it knew what it was talking about.

K.

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ORIGINAL: Kirata

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ORIGINAL: MrRodgers

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ORIGINAL: UllrsIshtar

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ORIGINAL: DaddySatyr

Of course religious belief is a "leap of faith",

So is atheism.

There isn't enough evidence to make a scientific conclusion either way.
Both religion and atheism are unproven hypothesis.

Anybody who does anything beyond being agnostic is taking "a leap of faith".

The anti-theist need not and nobody can...prove a negative. The atheist and yes, ant-theist, has faith in reason and not credulity.

If you actually had any ability to reason you would realize that claiming nobody can prove a negative asserts a negative.

K.

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ORIGINAL: bounty44

just a quick note to both go off in a different direction, and to probably state something I suspect you and others will agree with.

yes I know there is a theistic view of evolution. to a very large extent, I find it unfortunate and view it mostly as an attempt to mollify the vehement evolutionary ranters both personally and sociologically. I know in terms of believers, this view is most common amongst catholics. its been heavily criticized by the more "pure" creationist side and I remember when I was reading about it all, siding with those criticisms.

as far as evolution goes, given how amazingly paltry the evidence is, to call it a "solid theory" is absurd. worse, to treat it as "fact" is academically criminal. belief in it requires more faith than does the belief we were created by god.

heres what I wrote last time it came up and it bears repeating:

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great---please start a thread on evolution that provides ALL the incontrovertible evidence of one species transitioning to another species. how many different species are there? evidence must be in abundance for each transition right?

and also while youre at it; just where are all those transitional creatures today?

as a sub component to this, im curious as to how mutations (presumably your argument for transitions), which are overwhelmingly harmful in the natural world, somehow in the case of evolution confer an advantage to the species such that, for instance, when this particular specimen mated with another specimen, that genetic mutation was inherited in the offspring, and then what---after millions of years an eye appears?

if those things are not forthcoming, then it seems to me the choice is between continuing to "believe" despite the lack of evidence or looking elsewhere for the explanations.

and jesus was a creationist.

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So, this bullshit that Christians don't accept the findings of science is ridiculous, but what can one expect when so much rhetoric that comes from the left is beyond ridiculous?

totally agree...

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One interesting feature shared by religion and science is that it is impossible for humans to practice either perfectly.

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ORIGINAL: Lucylastic

Religion is a substitute for a real understanding of the universe; it’s designed to console those who want a comforting supreme being, who will keep them alive after they die.

There are several "evolution in progress" examples but hey lets not spoil his ignorance

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One interesting feature shared by religion and science is that it is impossible for humans to practice either perfectly.

yep thats for sure....

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ORIGINAL: MrRodgers
Again, merely obtuse. Nobody is required to prove or can anybody prove...something doesn't exist and obviously, none of the above is...asserting a negative.

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ORIGINAL: heavyblinker

In case this isn't clear:

I don't think that anyone on this thread has a problem with Christians who accept or have contributed to real science, just the ones who feel the need to attack it because it threatens what they believe.

I know how anxious the RWNJs are to pretend that we're arguing about something else (as usual), but we're not.

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science has volumous leaps of faith that people believe in without a second thought, simply because its called science and proof is 'assumed'.

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ORIGINAL: Musicmystery

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science has volumous leaps of faith that people believe in without a second thought, simply because its called science and proof is 'assumed'.

Only by people who don't understand science.

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Unfortunately, there are many other misconceptions about science. One of the most common misconceptions concerns the so-called “scientific proofs.” Contrary to popular belief, there is no such thing as a scientific proof.

Proofs exist only in mathematics and logic, not in science. Mathematics and logic are both closed, self-contained systems of propositions, whereas science is empirical and deals with nature as it exists. The primary criterion and standard of evaluation of scientific theory is evidence, not proof. All else equal (such as internal logical consistency and parsimony), scientists prefer theories for which there is more and better evidence to theories for which there is less and worse evidence. Proofs are not the currency of science.

Proofs have two features that do not exist in science: They are final, and they are binary. Once a theorem is proven, it will forever be true and there will be nothing in the future that will threaten its status as a proven theorem (unless a flaw is discovered in the proof). Apart from a discovery of an error, a proven theorem will forever and always be a proven theorem.

In contrast, all scientific knowledge is tentative and provisional, and nothing is final. There is no such thing as final proven knowledge in science. The currently accepted theory of a phenomenon is simply the best explanation for it among all available alternatives. Its status as the accepted theory is contingent on what other theories are available and might suddenly change tomorrow if there appears a better theory or new evidence that might challenge the accepted theory. No knowledge or theory (which embodies scientific knowledge) is final. That, by the way, is why science is so much fun.

Further, proofs, like pregnancy, are binary; a mathematical proposition is either proven (in which case it becomes a theorem) or not (in which case it remains a conjecture until it is proven). There is nothing in between. A theorem cannot be kind of proven or almost proven. These are the same as unproven.

In contrast, there is no such binary evaluation of scientific theories. Scientific theories are neither absolutely false nor absolutely true. They are always somewhere in between.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-scientific-fundamentalist/200811/common-misconceptions-about-science-i-scientific-proof

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ORIGINAL: Musicmystery

No, you just went to your own straw man.

Science never "proves" anything. It does, however, create practical theories reliably used to make predictions based on tested hypotheses formed from observation.

You went off to masturbate to your own assumptions instead.

Ironically, not very scientific. But indeed predictable.

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ORIGINAL: tamaka

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ORIGINAL: Lucylastic

Religion is a substitute for a real understanding of the universe; it’s designed to console those who want a comforting supreme being, who will keep them alive after they die.

There are several "evolution in progress" examples but hey lets not spoil his ignorance

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One interesting feature shared by religion and science is that it is impossible for humans to practice either perfectly.

yep thats for sure....

Science and religion are both potential means to the same end, complicated means, but potential means nonetheless.