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RE: Evolution as evidence for atheism
August 26, 2010 at 3:47 pm
(August 26, 2010 at 10:52 am)DeistPaladin Wrote: As you've pointed out in another post, the differences are only ones of abstract philosophy. We agree that we live in a natural universe and nothing's coming out of the clouds to save us if we destroy our planet.
Sounds reasonable to me.
Best regards,
Leo van Miert
Horsepower is how hard you hit the wall --Torque is how far you take the wall with you
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RE: Evolution as evidence for atheism
August 26, 2010 at 3:51 pm
(August 22, 2010 at 9:25 am)BiblicalCreationist Wrote: Evolution is a basis for Atheism even though it does prove anything. GOD did not use evolution as this puts Death before man. "Billions of years" of death had to occur then Adam appeared and Eve made from Adam. Then all of a sudden everything is perfect for however many years. Then death resumes it toll as Adam falls. The Bible says that Death entered in the world by man (Physical). If there was death before man then the Bible is wrong for this is a contradiction violating the law of non-contradiction. If he made these earthly bodies in Billions of years through evolution why would He be able to give us our glorified bodies in a "Twinkling of an eye?" Since it took "billions of years" ro create the old earth - how long will he take to create the new earth? Billions of years? Just as Apostle Paul on Mars Hill debated a form of evolutionary theory in Acts 17.
On the Atheist Evolutionist part I want to ask them how knowledge is possible. Let's start with the beginning of the universe. In their worldview they believe that the universe Spontaneously started or the BB - Big Bang. Problems with the Big Bang:
1) Where are all the Population III stars?
2) Where is the anti-matter the universe needs to prove a Big Bang?
3) Who was their to witness the beginning happen and document down its existence happening?
-- They have to assume the BB happened without 100% knowing it ever happened since they were not there billions of years ago - nor can you test the past. They say they look at the present evidence and draw conclusions. But how do they not know that over that "billions of years" it has or has not changed in which determines truly what happened? They cannot prove it - since they do not know the past.
It could not happen spontaneously since Something cannot will itself into existence since it would have no nature. Without a nature it has no attributes, without attributes something cannot will itself into existence since it could not produce such actions. A stone knife could not become a knife unless someone acted upon the rock to make it that. A painting could not become a painting until the paper was acted upon by a painter. A building could not become a building until the materials to build a building were acted upon by an outside force to build a building. Just as the universe could not have been the universe until it was acted upon from an outside force to create the universe.
Everything in Atheism and Evolution (which they both go together) is based upon relativism. If we are subject unto no one but ourselves that means we can believe whatever we want and cannot condemn others for they believe according to our standards. To someone killing may be wrong since it is murder but to an evolutionist it might be considered right since he is just trying to survive (only the strong survive). How could one condemn someone else based upon their own moral standard if the other person has their moral standard also? How could we know what is right and wrong in this dog eat dog world? I am not saying Atheists cannot be moral because they can. Some may say that society's and government's make the moral standard for people. Well, just because the government has a standard for right and wrong does that make what is right - right and wrong - wrong? No. Just because they set what is right and wrong that is what they BELIEVE is right and wrong. So, how do we know what is right and wrong if there was no absolute basis for the cause of morality? It is universally accepted that killing is murder -- that is until you take GOD out of the subject but they will know what they have done if the committed murder even if their tradition says its alright. For something to be universally accept it has to be absolute (a standard non-changing).
If everything was relative and we did not need absolutes to determine truth then how do we know 2 + 2 = 4?
Is it only 4 because you believe it is 4? Is it because of where you live that makes it 4? Just because the majority of people believe it is 4 does it make it 4 ? No. Or is it a universal law that is accepted as fact that 2 + 2 = 4? This is an absolute - The Law of Mathematics. But Atheists do not need logical absolutes since we have no higher power to set those standards. No man can decide for what mankind is to believe since he is equal to all other human beings. I can type more, but I got church to attend. Be Blessed my Brethren.
Bro.Matthew
here we go again.
By the way Atheism is not a world view.
We just dont believe in god, (and why would we?)
Anyway, welcome to the forum.
You can fix ignorance, you can't fix stupid.
Tinkety Tonk and down with the Nazis.
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RE: Evolution as evidence for atheism
August 26, 2010 at 4:32 pm
(August 26, 2010 at 3:39 pm)EvidenceVsFaith Wrote: What I wonder is what your opinion is on the point that however fine-tuned and amazing the universe is, God would have to be even more fine-tuned if he created it without there being an explanation for him. He'd require an even bigger explanation.
What's your opinion on that?
When I heard Dawkins propose this argument, one question immediately popped in my head:
"What do you base that on?"
His assumption was that "Complexity of Designer > Complexity of Thing Designed" and this formula always holds. But is this true? Don't we design things bigger and more complex than us all the time? I suppose it depends on how you define "complexity".
Atheist Forums Hall of Shame:
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RE: Evolution as evidence for atheism
August 26, 2010 at 4:36 pm
This looks like something I'll be jumping into shortly, though I can't improve upon Adrian's last post concerning the Big Bang, so I'll wait like a cat about to pounce on his chew toy. 
If today you can take a thing like evolution and make it a crime to teach in the public schools, tomorrow you can make it a crime to teach it in the private schools and next year you can make it a crime to teach it to the hustings or in the church. At the next session you may ban books and the newspapers...
Ignorance and fanaticism are ever busy and need feeding. Always feeding and gloating for more. Today it is the public school teachers; tomorrow the private. The next day the preachers and the lecturers, the magazines, the books, the newspapers. After a while, Your Honor, it is the setting of man against man and creed against creed until with flying banners and beating drums we are marching backward to the glorious ages of the sixteenth centry when bigots lighted fagots to burn the men who dared to bring any intelligence and enlightenment and culture to the human mind. ~Clarence Darrow, at the Scopes Monkey Trial, 1925
Politics is supposed to be the second-oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first. ~Ronald Reagan
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RE: Evolution as evidence for atheism
August 26, 2010 at 4:41 pm
(August 26, 2010 at 4:32 pm)DeistPaladin Wrote: (August 26, 2010 at 3:39 pm)EvidenceVsFaith Wrote: What I wonder is what your opinion is on the point that however fine-tuned and amazing the universe is, God would have to be even more fine-tuned if he created it without there being an explanation for him. He'd require an even bigger explanation.
What's your opinion on that?
When I heard Dawkins propose this argument, one question immediately popped in my head:
"What do you base that on?"
His assumption was that "Complexity of Designer > Complexity of Thing Designed" and this formula always holds. But is this true? Don't we design things bigger and more complex than us all the time? I suppose it depends on how you define "complexity".
I agree up to the last point. I doubt anything human-made is more complex than a human. But that is not evidence that this rule is always true.
Best regards,
Leo van Miert
Horsepower is how hard you hit the wall --Torque is how far you take the wall with you
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RE: Evolution as evidence for atheism
August 26, 2010 at 4:47 pm
(August 17, 2010 at 3:44 pm)Captain Scarlet Wrote: Why would god select evolution as a means of creating new species and having them adapt over time. Evolution is a massively wasteful process creating many damaging mutations which leads to unecessary suffering in the lifeforms it works upon? Either evolution is false, which seems unlikely given all available evidence (here come the fundies!), or god is uncaring and wasteful of resource in a finite universe. Evolution is more likely on the basis that atheism is true.
I once heard the belief that 'god' was a scientist from another world. He was genetically creating creatures, then bringing them here, as if this were his secret test field. Maybe nuts, maybe not. I could believe that far more than the crazy theory about ribs. It even gives credence to the 'missing links'! I'm not saying it's my theory, because it's not. But it's an interesting one to throw around when this topic pops up.
"Why do they serve applesauce at church socials?" DocFNT
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RE: Evolution as evidence for atheism
August 26, 2010 at 4:53 pm
If we can create things that are more complex than ourselves, this is only possible because we actually have an explanation. If we were to come out of nothing without any explanation then that would be a lot more complex and improbable. But since we have an explanation for us (evolution) this sort of problem doesn't arise, however, God, lacking an explanation (at least as far as I'm aware), leaves the same question when addressed to him, unanswered.
It could be defined that when existence starts the universe starts. So for what reason would it itself need an explanation? How is God necessary? We on the other hand need an explanation because we aren't defined as the first thing that exists, and moreover, as you know, we obviously aren't the first thing that existed. We are necessary for the things we create as far as we know, because as far as we know (at least many of the things we create) they can't create themselves (at least yet). They are artificially created by us, unlike us, we evolved.
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RE: Evolution as evidence for atheism
August 26, 2010 at 5:26 pm
(August 26, 2010 at 10:52 am)DeistPaladin Wrote: (August 26, 2010 at 5:26 am)The Omnissiunt One Wrote: Just out of interest, why are you a deist? Are you convinced by the Cosmological/Teleological arguments? Finally, I would just say that I'm not an atheist because ...well, I'm just not. For whatever reason, delusion or my instincts are on to something, every fiber of my being is convinced that the universe isn't an accident and there's some kind of mind out there somewhere behind it all (at the same time, I've never felt God should be "feared" or demands worship). I even went through a phase for about two weeks where I wondered what was wrong with me, why I couldn't be a "normal atheist" like all of my friends and colleges in the freethought community. I've come to terms with it since. I have the heart of a believer and the mind of a skeptic. Deism is an accord between the two, allowing me a spirituality that's kept real and grounded in the natural universe. As you've pointed out in another post, the differences are only ones of abstract philosophy. We agree that we live in a natural universe and nothing's coming out of the clouds to save us if we destroy our planet. Hi DP. I would consider deism closer to atheism than theism. For me I don't accept that atheism lacks spirituality or that an atheist cannot experience the numinous. We look at the world or universe with awe and wonder, but do not ascribe its apparent design to supernaturalism either an intervening and supervsing one, or an initiator that came and went. All the evidence we both have and accept suggests that there is no mind, that apparent design is from mindless bottom up processes in the fascinating quantum world, and that the universe is set for a long slow death. It is both a hostile but fascinating place but a mind would not have initiated us from the unpredictable chaos of the quantum singularity and the principle of ignorance it entails. It is for this reason that for me Deism lacks force as an alternative to the obvious conclusion, that there is no god/s.
"I still say a church steeple with a lightning rod on top shows a lack of confidence"...Doug McLeod.
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RE: Evolution as evidence for atheism
August 31, 2010 at 4:39 pm
(This post was last modified: August 31, 2010 at 4:40 pm by The Omnissiunt One.)
(August 26, 2010 at 4:32 pm)DeistPaladin Wrote: When I heard Dawkins propose this argument, one question immediately popped in my head:
"What do you base that on?"
His assumption was that "Complexity of Designer > Complexity of Thing Designed" and this formula always holds. But is this true? Don't we design things bigger and more complex than us all the time? I suppose it depends on how you define "complexity".
That argument of Dawkins' is pretty rubbish, as it presupposes that God is material. Nevertheless, I hardly see how it helps to invoke something so far from our experience as to be inherently improbable: a timeless being who is a disembodied mind and yet somehow acts in the material universe. Besides, most design arguments are just arguments from incredulity. They are intuitively appealing, I'll admit, but not good evidence.
'We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart.' H.L. Mencken
'False religion' is the ultimate tautology.
'It is just like man's vanity and impertinence to call an animal dumb because it is dumb to his dull perceptions.' Mark Twain
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RE: Evolution as evidence for atheism
August 31, 2010 at 9:05 pm
(This post was last modified: August 31, 2010 at 9:10 pm by goalie.)
This is the most stupid thred I have seen and some are pretty dumb ones. Evolution is evidence because if we evolved then then there is no god. If we were magicly created then there is a god and considering that if you use gods name in vain god will punish you Dog=god haha im still living so there fore there is no god and we were not magicly created!
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