I used to be a creationist. When I first heard of i I thought wow that's cool, and only hearing it by name thought that it was all about creation, art, procreation, all the cool forms of creation, etc and assumed it was related to sex drugs and rock and roll, various symbols of creativity. So I found a group of creationists and joined up. I was eager and came so prepared I even brought a decent stash of weed to boost my creativity which I'd smoked on the way. Due to turning up at these creationist gatherings completely stoned I never actually realised what it was actually about. I continued going to these gatherrings for years, made lots of friends and had some of the best times of my life.
Recently I forgot my stash, attended and was horrified to find that all my friends had been possessed and were completely different people. They did nothing but drink coffee and quote excerpts from a strange book. My best friend Jesus the hippy who was always sliding down this slide was no where to be found but someone had made a stain glass picture of him in the window. The ubermegatetraultrasuperhyper-musical-bong had turned into an organ. Worst of all, Marilyn, the girl I used to practice the procreation side of creationism with turned out to be a life sized statue of the vrgin Mary.
At first I thought that maybe this was some kind of out of ther box AND in the box act of creation. Once the shock faded and I had a little time to properly absorb my surroundings I realised that they had changed to the only bad kind of creation of all, lying. Only they weren't even creating the fiction. They were taking fiction from this book and claiming it to be fact! It turned out to be some kind of pacifist terrorist group who did not agree with some books shelf arrangement in the library. It was on the Fiction shelf but these people wanted it to be moved to the factual section along with the encyclopedias. So at first thought maybe they were right and asked what they thought should be facts. It turned out to all be fiction. In particular the belief that there's no evolution.
Recently I was eating some Jaffa cakes. Most of them were stupid and were so scared they didn't move as I took them out and pulverised them one by one. However, one was smarter and jumped out landing in a container on the floor of four day old brine I drained from a tin of sardines. After this there was chance of me eating it. So that Jaffa cake survives even now while it's siblings are being gradually liquidised and stripped of useful matter. Sadly that Jaffa cake will never pass on its trait due to not being able to reproduce. But if it could then it's children would be able to escape the likes of me to reproduce as well. Therefore where you get reproduction and danger you get evolution. Thus creationist don't believe in reproduction.
Proof of evolution.
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Proof of evolution.
Last edited by Orakio on 18 Sep 2006, 18:50, edited 2 times in total.
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Forboding Angel
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Guessmyname
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Okay... As a Moderate Creationist With Evolutionist Leanings... Who hangs out with people who are Buddists, Relativists, and other people who are generally open-minded... I at first thought this was funny... then it got kinda insane-rambly.
I'll just react by stating my beliefs.
First of all, if God created everything 10,000 years ago, there is an awful lot of "natural history" that has to be explained away... so I would make the time line a lot closer to that of the 100 million years or more.
Second of all, I take the bible as fact, except for the parts that are fiction... for example the book of Job doesn't have to be "True" be the inspired word of God, and Psalms and Proverbs are poetry... along with Eclesiates or whatever, that's just a long poetic essay.
Now the other side of things if God IS all powerful he could just about as easily manufactured the specific conditions for the big bang and earths formation and the evolution of life on the planet, in such a way as to have the animals show up on the planet in the order described in genesis, and later on for humans to show up... as to have done everything in literally seven days and made everything else just kinda work together.
Really, the only big thing that a Christian has against evolution is that it says man is no more then another animal evolved on earth. If you want me to say that I don't believe that animals (including man) don't change over time through the process of breeding and mutation (natural selection) I can't, but I do believe that humans were created as humans... even if it was just making something that looked a lot like a fish or a rat or a monkey with a big brain, but "God created man in his own image" is a "fact" of my belief system.
I'll just react by stating my beliefs.
First of all, if God created everything 10,000 years ago, there is an awful lot of "natural history" that has to be explained away... so I would make the time line a lot closer to that of the 100 million years or more.
Second of all, I take the bible as fact, except for the parts that are fiction... for example the book of Job doesn't have to be "True" be the inspired word of God, and Psalms and Proverbs are poetry... along with Eclesiates or whatever, that's just a long poetic essay.
Now the other side of things if God IS all powerful he could just about as easily manufactured the specific conditions for the big bang and earths formation and the evolution of life on the planet, in such a way as to have the animals show up on the planet in the order described in genesis, and later on for humans to show up... as to have done everything in literally seven days and made everything else just kinda work together.
Really, the only big thing that a Christian has against evolution is that it says man is no more then another animal evolved on earth. If you want me to say that I don't believe that animals (including man) don't change over time through the process of breeding and mutation (natural selection) I can't, but I do believe that humans were created as humans... even if it was just making something that looked a lot like a fish or a rat or a monkey with a big brain, but "God created man in his own image" is a "fact" of my belief system.
Last edited by SinbadEV on 18 Sep 2006, 18:22, edited 1 time in total.
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Guessmyname
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If God is all-powerful, why bother making it in seven days? Why not just click his fingers (or some equivalent action) and make it pop into existance in a microsecond?
Last edited by Guessmyname on 18 Sep 2006, 19:09, edited 1 time in total.
Meh, personally I take Genesis as fiction, the thought of some massive ass explosion creating the universe is to cool for me to pass up. The rest of it, I dont really care if its true or not. Its got good ideas (ie. dont kill people), just go with them. It doesnt have to be true to make it any more important.
I think as long as the Creationists biggest problem is that you are teaching them that they are no better then animals in school, and basically saying that the bible is wrong... it pisses us off... Intelligent Design acctually would practically allow for the Big Bang and pretty much everything else in science... all you need to do is spend 10 minutes in some class (to me preferably NOT science class) pointing out that some people feel that the fact that the universe works so well together despite the chaos inherant in everything is evidence of a devine intelligence guiding the course of the universe... this is why good "world religions" courses should be mandatory.
Well seriously, I have a few friends that are into theology in one form or another. The problem is most theologeans, even those that believe, take the bible less literally than common Christians do so. American creationists in particular tend to actually deviate from the core Christian understanding/interpretation, taking things more seriously, or believing archaic misconceptions and tradition which more uptodate and higher up the hierarchy christians in Europe has abandoned. Regardless there is ample proof that even a layman can comprehend to prove that the Earth has existed for billions of years. Evolution should be subconsciously understood in many species. Consider humans. You don't go and rape any woman that looks fertile, and the nearest one. We're selective. This kind of behavior emerges as a natural instinct to selectively breed your own species also known as sexual selection (as opposed to natural). We selectively bred dogs thousands of yeas ago proving we knew about evolution before the bible. Some might even propose that marrage was also a tool for selective breeding. If you consider that you could only have sex after marriage and preists would only permit certain couples. Religion as well, even Christianity has some origins in ancestor worship which is another kind of sexual selection, similar to the class systems. A class system works by saying X persons father was a farmer so X should be one too and intermarrying was restricted through classes. Ancestor worshiping tribes would remember ancestors, their names, and have long lists. If one person had an ancestor known for a specific skill then it might increase their status. It's possible that the Greek myths and norse began when populations got too large to remember all the complicated ancestor trees so instead they remembered just a few important ones which groups of people would be related to and become new tribes ie the tribe of person x so Hermes for example may have been a fast runner who was also the ancestor of a group of people. As the ancestors got more distant, populations intermixed, the stories would have changeed as they passed down from generation to generation. some could say that God, was really supposed to be the first cell, the ultimate common ancestor of which we are all in the same tribe. Some incentive to create even more excotic, wild and unreal story about ancestors, turning them into Gods like with the Greek's is that there would be competition amongst groups that would rate themselves on their ancestors "My dad can beat up your dad" sort of thing only more like great great etc something or rather.
Well, as they say, the lord works in mysteriouse ways right? Why flood the earth to kill all the humans, why confuse the languages of the babylonians instead of just womping them all, why require sacrifice for sin in the first place?Guessmyname wrote:If God is all-poweful, why bother making it in seven days? Why not just click his fingers (or some equivalent action) and make it pop into existance in a microsecond?
Basically, it's all a big puzzle, like we believe that God created "everything", but did he "create" evil, or even "define" evil, or is Good and Evil something that is universal, if it is universal, then we should have some way of knowing what right and wrong is built in, otherwise we can't be held accountable for our actions... and if he didn't define or create evil, then perhaps he didn't define or create other things... like the laws of thermal dynamics... and if you keep thinking that way you wonder what exactly He DID do. etc. ect.
Most forums consider talk about religious issues flamebaiting.
Proof of evolution? How would you do that? You CANNOT prove evolution because you CANNOT prove anything about the universe. With gravity we accept the theory that if we let go of a stone it falls to the ground. But what if that stone one day decides to fall upwards instead? That's the reason you can't prove anything about the universe because no amount of observation can tell you with 100% accuracy that everything will behave the same tomorrow.
But that aside, creationism is not a theory, it's a far-fetched hypothesis at best (due to a lack of supporting evidence) and possibly the most unnecessarily complex one available. Occam's razor mandates that if two theories can explain the same phenomena but one is more complex than the other the simpler theory is to be used until any evidence contradicting the theory is found. Then the theory is expanded or discarded. If evolution was disproven there would be a gigantic number of alternate theories with significantly less complexity than creationism.
"God made it" sounds simple from the human point of view since we can just define God as some omnipotent unknown we don't need to know more about but to science God is an incredibly complex construct. Where does it come from? How does it function? What are the rules governing its function? Why does it behave different from everything else we know of? Try describing God by combining attributes from things science is aware of and see the resulting complexity. You replace one question with hundreds of them. Science is about turning unknowns into knowns, not turning unknowns into even more unknowns.
Proof of evolution? How would you do that? You CANNOT prove evolution because you CANNOT prove anything about the universe. With gravity we accept the theory that if we let go of a stone it falls to the ground. But what if that stone one day decides to fall upwards instead? That's the reason you can't prove anything about the universe because no amount of observation can tell you with 100% accuracy that everything will behave the same tomorrow.
But that aside, creationism is not a theory, it's a far-fetched hypothesis at best (due to a lack of supporting evidence) and possibly the most unnecessarily complex one available. Occam's razor mandates that if two theories can explain the same phenomena but one is more complex than the other the simpler theory is to be used until any evidence contradicting the theory is found. Then the theory is expanded or discarded. If evolution was disproven there would be a gigantic number of alternate theories with significantly less complexity than creationism.
"God made it" sounds simple from the human point of view since we can just define God as some omnipotent unknown we don't need to know more about but to science God is an incredibly complex construct. Where does it come from? How does it function? What are the rules governing its function? Why does it behave different from everything else we know of? Try describing God by combining attributes from things science is aware of and see the resulting complexity. You replace one question with hundreds of them. Science is about turning unknowns into knowns, not turning unknowns into even more unknowns.
In basically every civilization ever in human culture there have been rituals, places of spiritual importance, god(s) and belief say afterlife or some other crap. I think its pretty obvious that its human nature to bind together and worship some sort of higher being(s) or place and have a certain way to do it (different every time).
Now you cant say for certain there is no god, but you've got to acknowledge the pattern that every culture has had a different god(s), a different way of worshipping them, a different place of worship, a different name/purpose for their god(s), a different image of their god(s), a different afterlife...etc
Now to say one religion or belief is the "true" religion/belief is a bit stupid, i mean how can you possibly justify there being one true way of life when 1000s of other religions and cults have said the exact same thing? When we do finally work out how the universe was formed, what will have god done exactly?
Now you cant say for certain there is no god, but you've got to acknowledge the pattern that every culture has had a different god(s), a different way of worshipping them, a different place of worship, a different name/purpose for their god(s), a different image of their god(s), a different afterlife...etc
Now to say one religion or belief is the "true" religion/belief is a bit stupid, i mean how can you possibly justify there being one true way of life when 1000s of other religions and cults have said the exact same thing? When we do finally work out how the universe was formed, what will have god done exactly?
Sure saying it is stupid, because your not going to believe it. I believe quite a few certain things about God, many of which invalidate pretty much all the other religions from my perspective... but it's not my place to judge beyond my own relationship with God so you'll have to forgive me for not argueing sometimes when I feel it will do no good.BoredJoe wrote:Now to say one religion or belief is the "true" religion/belief is a bit stupid,
Oh, and sorry to keeps posting in here... I think the point of his story was something to the effect of "My Snack Cake Got Away from me while I was stoned and started growing mold which proves it has evolved a life of it's own." ... and not acctually in invitation to discuss the evolution/creationist stuff.
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Acreo Aeneas
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unpossible
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