Disproving the Bible

[FatAndFaithless]

So Steve, at this point I have to ask: are you just looking for things that'll disprove evolution, or are you looking to study the facts irrespective of where they lead?

Because it certainly seems like you're just dashing for the former because it's what you already believe. It's getting embarrassing.

I have been told my whole life that evolution is not true and is filled with holes. I have read books that poke at these holes. I can find hundreds if not thousands of articles that poke at these holes. I read that scientist know there are holes and either ignore them because their belief is so strong that they figure we will eventually figure it out or they are not going to question the establishment because they will look bad at one end of the spectrum or even damage their careers on the other end. I hear that intelligent design is gaining momentum.

The bias of naturalism is a huge concern of mine. For example, no matter what science discovers, you will never ever believe in a theory that has God as part of the equation. They have no alternative than to believe in evolution. How many scientist would fit that description?

On the other side, you have thousands of Christian scientist (in every applicable field) that say evolution does not fit the facts.

So who am I to believe? Those that say that God had a hand in things or those who won't consider that option?

Alright, ignoring the fact that you still haven't responded to two of my earlier posts regarding two topics, your statements are still complete crap. The biggest problem is in your very first sentence, that you were 'raised to believe' that evolution is false. At least you stated that part clearly and honestly. It's no surprise you were furnished with books by your community that support your pre-drawn conclusion that evolution is false. And no, the intelligent design (read: Creationist) movement is not gaining momentum. The idiocy that is creationism is not only denied by any peer-reviewed and respected scientist, it's also not accepted by a huge portion of your fellow Christians, who do accept evolution. The God concept does not enter into any scientific theory because it's unproven, ill-defined, and uncessary.

And again, to respond to your last cheap point, "thousands" of "Christian Scientists" (which is a horse shit term, since scientific fact is independent of creed or faith or philosophy) is a laughably paltry number if it were a valid argument at all. Argumentum ad populum is a fallacy on its own, but argumentum ad populum with the 'populum' part being thousands of pseudoscientist a priori loons is even worse. Ever heard of "Project Steve"? It was a tongue-in-cheek initiative by the Center for Science Education in response to claims like yours that there are 'thousands of scientists' that don't accept evolution and that the creationist movement was gaining momentum. They accumulated more scientists that are just named Steve that support evolution than any group of creationists could gather in total.

Seriously man, get out of the a priori dogma box.

[SteveII]

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Are you fucking serious? This is a whole page of bullshit mischaracterizaion of evolution. Evolution is not a tree or a ladder or an ordered sequence with an end in mind. It's much more like a bush or a web, with huge imperfections, dead ends, extinctions, and useless junk vestigal DNA. Evolution is not linear, it's not goal-oriented, it's imperfect, inefficient at times, unpredictable, and it's not a damn tree.

Also, glad to see you stopped addressing my previous posts.

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Oh hey, I also did some research, and the same scientist (Doolitle) that your article uses to try and 'disprove' evolution, has his own article in Scientific American that asserts the same thing, that evolution is not a 'tree'....but guess what? He then provides a revised model that is much closer to a web or bush, and never once even suggests any weakness in evolution, just the old way of visualizing it.

Here's his suggested new model of bacterial DNA transfer and evolution from a single cell.


Again, it NEVER suggests any sort of weakness or falisty with regards to evolution, and the bullshit sensationalist language in the article you linked, if at all valid, is directed at the former metaphor we used to describe evolution (which was Darwin's idea, you would expect the science to change in its representation over more than a fucking century).

I'm getting tired of you linking shit and then crossing your arms and saying "Ha, disprove that!". It's not our job to deal with every lazy ill-researched claim you make. Do a little damn reading.

Read the caption: "links have been inserted randomly to symbolize the rampant lateral gene transfer...probably arose from a population of primitive cells that differ in their genes"! That does not sound like they have a handle on this. The diagram is describing what they are witnessing.

Later in the article, "Peterson and his team are now going back to mammalian genomes to investigate why DNA and microRNAs give such different evolutionary trajectories. 'What we know at this stage is that we do have a very serious incongruence,' says Davide Pisani, a phylogeneticist at the National University of Ireland in Maynooth". --Dolgin, Elie. 28 June 2012. Rewriting Evolution. Nature, Vol.486, pp.460-462."

I thought linear decent was a hallmark of the evolutionary process.

[Angrboda]

The bias of naturalism is a huge concern of mine. For example, no matter what science discovers, you will never ever believe in a theory that has God as part of the equation. They have no alternative than to believe in evolution. How many scientist would fit that description?

A theory with evidence for the existence of God, or just something that's "more plausible than not" in a philosophical doodle?

You're equivocating Steve. You're suggesting that scientists won't accept equally good evidence for God when what you have isn't even evidence.

Produce good evidence for God, science will listen. If you don't have evidence, don't pretend that the reason science doesn't listen is because of "bias".

[FatAndFaithless]

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Oh hey, I also did some research, and the same scientist (Doolitle) that your article uses to try and 'disprove' evolution, has his own article in Scientific American that asserts the same thing, that evolution is not a 'tree'....but guess what? He then provides a revised model that is much closer to a web or bush, and never once even suggests any weakness in evolution, just the old way of visualizing it.

Here's his suggested new model of bacterial DNA transfer and evolution from a single cell.


Again, it NEVER suggests any sort of weakness or falisty with regards to evolution, and the bullshit sensationalist language in the article you linked, if at all valid, is directed at the former metaphor we used to describe evolution (which was Darwin's idea, you would expect the science to change in its representation over more than a fucking century).

I'm getting tired of you linking shit and then crossing your arms and saying "Ha, disprove that!". It's not our job to deal with every lazy ill-researched claim you make. Do a little damn reading.

Read the caption: "links have been inserted randomly to symbolize the rampant lateral gene transfer...probably arose from a population of primitive cells that differ in their genes"! That does not sound like they have a handle on this. The diagram is describing what they are witnessing.

Later in the article, "Peterson and his team are now going back to mammalian genomes to investigate why DNA and microRNAs give such different evolutionary trajectories. 'What we know at this stage is that we do have a very serious incongruence,' says Davide Pisani, a phylogeneticist at the National University of Ireland in Maynooth". --Dolgin, Elie. 28 June 2012. Rewriting Evolution. Nature, Vol.486, pp.460-462."

I thought linear decent was a hallmark of the evolutionary process.

If you think that linear descent* is a hallmark of evolution, then you really have no idea what evolution is, and it's obvious you've been fed leis and mischaracterizations about it by your community.

No, evolution is not linear, as I stated in my previous posts. People who say that are either speaking in extreme general metaphor to get the basic idea across to children, or they are setting up a strawman to burn down and say "god is the right answer".

[SteveII]

The bias of naturalism is a huge concern of mine. For example, no matter what science discovers, you will never ever believe in a theory that has God as part of the equation. They have no alternative than to believe in evolution. How many scientist would fit that description?

A theory with evidence for the existence of God, or just something that's "more plausible than not" in a philosophical doodle?

You're equivocating Steve. You're suggesting that scientists won't accept equally good evidence for God when what you have isn't even evidence.

Produce good evidence for God, science will listen. If you don't have evidence, don't pretend that the reason science doesn't listen is because of "bias".

What would evidence of God look like to a scientist?

[Bibliofagus]

On the other side, you have thousands of Christian scientist (in every applicable field) that say evolution does not fit the facts.

So who am I to believe?

Maybe you could count the unbiased scientists as well and compare?

Or just count the medical breakthroughs 'god did it' brought us and compare that to the number evolution scores?

And - food for thought - lets say there is a god guiding evolution or something. Isn't it funny that mostly atheistic scientists are better at understanding 'Gods ways' than his priests are?

[Jenny A]

The Law (the first 5 books of the OT) and the Prophets (the second half of the OT) were stated to be inspired by writers in the NT.

You think the writers of the OT were inspired by the writers of the NT? Um? You think time travel was involved? Or have you just gotten your sentence so mangled up it doesn't mean what you meant it to?

NT books contain historical accounts (Gospels, Acts), theological letters (from Paul, Timothy, Peter John, etc.) and the eschatology book of Revelation at the end.

Not quite. The historicity of the Gospels and Acts is questionable. None of them were written by eye witnesses. Certainly the authors didn't expect them to be packaged as a unit.

Just a word to the wise Paul wrote Timothy I and II to Timothy . There is no author of the Epistles named Timothy. And while Paul probably wrote most of the ones attributed to Paul, we're much less certain who wrote the rest of them. They do contain theological material. But they were really letters and the authors did not necessarily expect them to become books.

The writers of the NT did not claim their writings were inspired. They were given their status by others based on author having seen the risen Christ, theologically consistency, etc.

None of the authors saw Christ risen. The gospels were written too late for that. And they don't claim to be eye witnesses either.

Most Christians believe that the various books of the Bible were inspired as well as inerrant in their original form.

Most evangelicals do. Some of you even think it's inerrant in it's present form. But evangelicals are not most Christians. Just the loudest Christians in the U.S. currently.

Christian does mean follower of Christ. Christ is pretty much the centerpiece of the Bible. It follows that Christians pretty much have to follow the Bible to claim the title.

Not necessarily. One could certainly attempt to follow Christ while finding most of the Bible to be wrong or untrustworthy. --- There were Christians before the Bible you know. Who do you think Paul was writing to? He calls them Christians.

You are right. The Bible does not give an opinion on many things. It is however useful for instruction in a number of areas including history, religious, ethics, nature of God, nature of man, plan of salvation, how should we live, and where we are going.

It's not very useful with regard to history because it's mostly myth. Kings and Chronicles are about as historical as it gets. It has some very strange ethics, much failed prophecy, and contradictory directions.

Before the very clever comments come flooding in, I would like to make an observation. For all the massive amount of time you people take to bash Christianity, most you know so little of what it actually means or teaches (there are probably some exceptions). Your concepts of Christianity do not come from its source (or even people that will explain it properly), but through anti-religious forums, books or articles. You accuse me of only looking at articles that have a Christian biased toward evolution. It seems most of you have done the same when it comes to Christianity.

You'd be surprised how many of us have very Christian backgrounds and have read the Bible extensively. What surprises me most often on this forum is how few Christians know what's in the Bible.

Have any of you actually read the New Testament? And if you did, did you read it with the filter of the vitriol and hate you put into your posts?

I've read the NT several times. Studied it in confirmation classes too.

Hate is not what I feel for the NT. But I don't think it's the word of god either.

[Jackalope]

You know, Steve - rather than plagiarizing an entire article, it's customary to provide excepts and a link, and attribute the source.

Plagiarism is a no-no around here.

It was a small part of a huge article. I have posted the link several times, but if you want to increase its search rankings, here it is again:

http://www.newgeology.us/presentation32.html

That's irrelevant. Read the rules. When you copy material, quote it, and clearly indicate where it came from.

It never ceases to amaze me when people argue back with the staff on issues like this.

[Minimalist]

Jesus told him it's okay.

Or maybe it was Rand Paul?

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/polit...m/3451991/

WASHINGTON — After facing accusations of plagiarism in speeches, an article and one of his books, Sen. Rand Paul said Tuesday through a spokesman that he made mistakes in crediting sources and has set up a new system for vetting his work.

It's so easy to mix those two up.

[Jenny A]

What would evidence of God look like to a scientist?

Be handy if he'd just introduce himself a couple times a year and put on a demonstration.

Seriously, I can think of a number of things that would be very suggestive of a god, but which haven't happened:

Suppose god revealed himself to everyone and we all got the same message as opposed to what happens now which is that god reveals himself to many (but not all) and they disagree violently over what he said and fight wars and burn people to death over the discrepancies in the messages.

Suppose god made clear concise unambiguous prophecies that happened every time just as prophesied.

Suppose miracles didn't go into decline with the rise of science.

Suppose god gave us accurate information about the world that we don't already know which we could confirm empirically.

What we have now is a god carefully defined to avoid science: if a prayer works, it's because god did it; if a prayer doesn't work it's because god didn't want to.