Early Man

[GScholz]

I prefer a different word to describe it: Indoctrination.

[guncrasher]

I prefer a different word to describe it: Indoctrination.

won't that apply to both intelligent design and evolution?


semp

[Tank-Ace]

 Funny how scientists ponder theories about a multiverse and string theory but never will consider a Being that exists on a different plane of existence from our "Physical world".
  So many wish to bury their thoughts on what they can see or touch. How does stress (mental) make some people exhibit (physical) damage to their bodies? Should not the Heart keep on pumping as a usual natural function? Why do Presidents turn gray after 4 years in office? Should not hair turn gray at an evolutionary pace? Medicine is finally realizing the relation to health with positive thinking.

  There are things beyond the Physical you need to take into account to get the whole picture of life.

   My Mom and I are close and we used to play a game where she would go into a room and concentrate on an object. Then she would leave the room and I would go in and tell her what she was focused on correctly. Not exactly a scientific experiment but interesting non the less. (and we could duplicate it though not every time)
   My wife visited her Mother in the hospital who was very sick and she left to go home. As she was halfway home and had "a funny feeling". She said we have to go back something has happened. Well her Mother had passed at the very time she had the "feeling".
   Coincidence of course you would say? Is psychic ability a natural process? Don't get me started on Ghost stories.      
  

Science has proven that theres more at work than we previously expected. IIRC, humans looking at random images will respond to images of pain and violence before the image is actually shown. When picking between two hidden images with one of them occasionally showing sex or acts relating to sex, we're 2% more likely to pick that image. Not huge, but still statistically significant.

[Motherland]

  Funny how scientists ponder theories about a multiverse and string theory but never will consider a Being that exists on a different plane of existence from our "Physical world".
  So many wish to bury their thoughts on what they can see or touch. How does stress (mental) make some people exhibit (physical) damage to their bodies? Should not the Heart keep on pumping as a usual natural function? Why do Presidents turn gray after 4 years in office? Should not hair turn gray at an evolutionary pace? Medicine is finally realizing the relation to health with positive thinking.

  There are things beyond the Physical you need to take into account to get the whole picture of life.

Why do you think any of this is in contradiction with science? There's literature and ongoing research about how psychological stress affects the human body. It's not like anyone pretends the brain isn't real or anything. Consolidating hard-biology and psychology through neuroscience is probably one of the more interesting and active frontiers of scientific research today in fact.
Why do you think scientists will 'never consider a Being that exists on a different plane of existence'?
No one is going to argue for it, because you can't, there's not a body of hard data, only inconsistencies in our current understanding of the universe at best, but that doesn't mean that no one believes in it.

No scientist will ever say 'oh God did it we can stop wondering about the universe now', if that's what you want, though.

[Brooke]

For a troll-thread this thread actually turned out pretty good! Wpeters must be the worst troll in the history of the internet!

I don't agree with his views on this topic, but I respect the way WPeters handles himself in discussions.  He doesn't get ruffled and angry and devolve into slinging a bunch of mean-spirited insults.  He discusses the topic in a polite way and enjoys the debate.   (So, yes, not a good troll.  )

[Brooke]

(Actually, I'd love to be a part of that beer meet-up.)

Arlo, you, too -- if ever you are in the Seattle area, send me a PM! 

[Bizman]

In our regional newspaper of today there was an article inspired by the upcoming flyby of the comet ISON. They stated that at least a great deal the Earth's water is of comet origin. A quick glimpse into Google gives opinions both pro and contra. Nevertheless the possibility of extraterrestial frozen water adds some twist into how life began on Earth. Now if the first reproductive life forms came inside an ice cube, where did they come from and how did they get there? I can't believe that single cell beings could harness a comet as their spaceship...

[gyrene81]

In our regional newspaper of today there was an article inspired by the upcoming flyby of the comet ISON. They stated that at least a great deal the Earth's water is of comet origin. A quick glimpse into Google gives opinions both pro and contra. Nevertheless the possibility of extraterrestial frozen water adds some twist into how life began on Earth. Now if the first reproductive life forms came inside an ice cube, where did they come from and how did they get there? I can't believe that single cell beings could harness a comet as their spaceship...

considering the makeup of a comet and that there may be solid cores in many of them...not hard to imagine some cosmic event hurling large frozen mud balls with single cell organisms trapped in a cryogenic state across the galaxy.

[wpeters]

funny thing about intelligent design is the basic foundation of it.  Eden you think by now we would have found it thru Google earth.

do I believe it yes,  that's why its called faith.


semp

Google earth may not be able to find it, but it has been found.

Where do you think all the oil comes from.        =   Middle east.

Why  =  Fossil Fuel=organic material=plant life.  By the amount that is there it is easly believed to be area with a tropical climate. =  Jungles

When God kicked out Adam and Eve out of the garden he set a angle to guard it.  I believe when the flood came in Noah's time God covered it with some of the most ugly landscape.  It was his way of burying the old world and starting with a clean slate

[wpeters]

I don't think that's really an important inconsistency. Genetic material changes from generation to generation and slowly drifts just due to imperfections/quirks in the mechanics of DNA and DNA replication, that's something inherent, observed and undeniable whether or not you choose to logically apply that observation to large scale changes over billions of years.
If God had created man in his image 6,000 years ago we are just as different from Adam and Eve as we are from the non-Christian version of humanity that existed 6,000 years ago. It's not possible that we are exactly the same, because if there was a moment of creation, that creation included the (certainly highly impressive, but none the less) fairly flawed methods of reproduction and replication that directly observable.
If you choose to believe that populations remain static over many generations then you have simply closed your eyes to the world.
I think it's always important to keep in mind that nothing gets 'better' in any objective way, just different, in ways that are generally more suited toward the environment. Of course science never considers anything better than anything else, just different, and that applies just as much to evolutionary biology as sociology or linguistics.

There are surely features of religions which make them incompatible with the scientific view of history, but I don't think that evolution is one of them (hopefully it's not because drifts in the genotypes of populations happen observably and that's just not disputable).
The problem with the Adam and Eve story of Genesis for example is not necessarily problematic from a standpoint of the mechanisms of evolution, but just from the standpoint that the Earth is far older than 6,000 years. If you suppose that Eden physically existed, but 4.5 billion years ago, we should really expect that modern humans are far different from Adam and Eve, but again I don't think that necessarily is contradictory with Christianity, just the image we were created in had to change along with the world in which we existed, as humans don't live in the heavens with God.
Humans were created in God's image but were not exact replicas of God. It follows that we're imperfect. If you want to suppose that humans were created perfectly then that's kind of silly as we, like other organisms, are pretty overcomplicated, Rube-Goldberg-like, inefficient machines.

I don't necessarily believe that there is no God but I certainly don't believe that humans and the universe were created 6,000 years ago. None the less, evolution and even abiogenesis isn't really incompatible with the idea of an original creator of the universe.

f


There is a extremely simple answer to your thought.

He created in his image, but also he gave us the freedom of will, to make are own choices. 

[gyrene81]

There is a extremely simple answer to your thought.

He created in his image, but also he gave us the freedom of will, to make are own choices. 

that didn't answer any part of what Motherland said... 

i really do not think you look anything like adam, or eve, or noah, or abraham, or moses...aside from having human features that is.

[GScholz]

... but also he gave us the freedom of will, to make are own choices. 

Or was that Satan whispering in Eve's ear?

[edog1977]

Where do you think all the oil comes from.        =   Middle east.

That's not true.

[Saxman]

Or was that Satan whispering in Eve's ear?

Also, if you assume an omniscient knows-all sees-all god, as is the main form present in Judaism, Christianity and Islam (excepting a handful of denominations/sects), that means God already knows what decisions you're going to make. So does that really make it free will?

[wpeters]

That's not true.

I stand corrected.. THe majority