Human for helping others.

[Edwardo Piet]

Just thought I'd do my own (atheist) version of a post 'Mikethechristian' did.
Heres the original:

hello everyone who has either chosen to not believe in the bible or have had it forced upon them by their atheist parents, i would like to share my views and answer questions that some of you may be wanting answered as before i was converted i too was wanting answers and when i found them it started to make sense and i finally realised that it was all true.All in all i would like to give YOU the choice of either following god to eternal life in heaven or reject god and deal with the consequences yourselves.

Funnily enough my name's Mike too.
So as Miketheatheist I shall say:

"Hi everyone who has either chosen to believe in the bible or have had it forced upon them by their christian/jewish parents, I would like to share my views and attempt to answer questions that some of you may be wanting answered, as before I reached the age of reason I too was naturally wanting an explanation and when I eventually found what I think is the best possible one,- atleast for now - it started to make sense, and now that I've understood it - even if only in just a bit more detail - to be scientifically proven . All in all I would like you to understand that you have the option to understand what's scientifically proven, rather than to just believe in silly mythical stories that are over two thousand years old."

[Tiberius]

Awesome, let's hope some Christians ask some questions

[Ace Otana]

I've been waiting for the chance to do some debating. I'm going to store up some history infomation and such. I'm ready.

[Mikethechristian]

"Hi everyone who has either chosen to believe in the bible or have had it forced upon them by their christian/jewish parents, I would like to share my views and attempt to answer questions that some of you may be wanting answered, as before I reached the age of reason I too was naturally wanting an explanation and when I eventually found what I think is the best possible one,- atleast for now - it started to make sense, and now that I've understood it - even if only in just a bit more detail - to be scientifically proven . All in all I would like you to understand that you have the option to understand what's scientifically proven, rather than to just believe in silly mythical stories that are over two thousand years old."

I feel as if you have doubt in what you are saying.As a christian i do not have these doubts as i truly know that god is looking down upon all of his children from heaven.This thread seems very immature but seeing as through experience most atheists are immature and simply argueing just for the sake of it i am not surprised.
Here is a question for you how can you believe the following:
you were created from nothing,
you were naturally selected from monkeys yet there are still monkeys alive today so if they needed to evolve to survive how did the origenal monkeys not die out?same goes for whales and birds and every other animal. How did something crawl onto land and evolve into all these things through selection and changing enviroments.You truely believe that a fish can evolve into a whale and a bat and an elephant? If you answer this by saying the enviroment caused the ones with certain genes survived and thus passed them on to their offspring i laugh at you.How can a fish evolve into an elephant by passing on its genes the same way many other creatures supposedly have done and still exist in the same enviroment?

[Ace Otana]

"Hi everyone who has either chosen to believe in the bible or have had it forced upon them by their christian/jewish parents, I would like to share my views and attempt to answer questions that some of you may be wanting answered, as before I reached the age of reason I too was naturally wanting an explanation and when I eventually found what I think is the best possible one,- atleast for now - it started to make sense, and now that I've understood it - even if only in just a bit more detail - to be scientifically proven . All in all I would like you to understand that you have the option to understand what's scientifically proven, rather than to just believe in silly mythical stories that are over two thousand years old."

I feel as if you have doubt in what you are saying.As a christian i do not have these doubts as i truly know that god is looking down upon all of his children from heaven.This thread seems very immature but seeing as through experience most atheists are immature and simply argueing just for the sake of it i am not surprised.
Here is a question for you how can you believe the following:
you were created from nothing,
you were naturally selected from monkeys yet there are still monkeys alive today so if they needed to evolve to survive how did the origenal monkeys not die out?same goes for whales and birds and every other animal. How did something crawl onto land and evolve into all these things through selection and changing enviroments.You truely believe that a fish can evolve into a whale and a bat and an elephant? If you answer this by saying the enviroment caused the ones with certain genes survived and thus passed them on to their offspring i laugh at you.How can a fish evolve into an elephant by passing on its genes the same way many other creatures supposedly have done and still exist in the same enviroment?

You clearly know nothing of evolution. I'm laughing right now.

I strongly suggest you read the book "Origin of spieces" before we continue this debate.
Also atheists are mature it's just that many atheists tend to look and treat religion and theists as little kids.

If god created everything then were did god come from? The fact is, you do not know everything. It's arrogant to think you do.

I know I do not know everything, I openly admit that. It is very arrogant to assume you have all th answers, Especialy when you have no evidence to support our claims.

[Mikethechristian]

[quote='Mikethechristian' pid='2665' dateline='1225130261']

You clearly know nothing of evolution. I'm laughing right now.

I strongly suggest you read the book "Origin of spieces" before we continue this debate.
Also atheists are mature it's just that many atheists tend to look and treat religion and theists as little kids.

If god created everything then were did god come from? The fact is, you do not know everything. It's arrogant to think you do.

I know I do not know everything, I openly admit that. It is very arrogant to assume you have all th answers, Especialy when you have no evidence to support our claims.

Where in my post does it say that i have all the answers? I merely asked questions which was the main theme of the thread. Where did you learn that everything has to have a creator? God has been and will always be, have you not ever considered that humans do not have the capability to comprehend such a feat?

I will still need proof that "atheists are mature" because the person who created this thread is obviously immature by the way he writes this and saying they think religious people are "kids" is "arrogant".

I would like to know your theory of evolution or what you choose to believe is evolution so i can question it without making any assumptions.

[Ace Otana]

Below, I have assembled a series of references and abstracts that document striking evidence for the common ancestry of humans and the great apes independently of the usual paleontological, morphological, and molecular phylogenetic data that we usually see. I first became aware of this through some postings on the internet of Clark Dorman and Don Lindsay.

When one looks at the chromosomes of humans and the living great apes (orangutan, gorilla, and chimpanzee), it is immediately apparent that there is a great deal of similarity between the number and overall appearance of the chromosomes across the four different species. Yes, there are differences (and I will be addressing these), but the overall similarity is striking. The four species have a similar number of chromosomes, with the apes all having 24 pairs, and humans having 23 pairs. References 1 and 2 each contain high resolution photomicrographs and diagrams showing the similarity of the chromosomes between the four species (ref. 1 only covers humans and chimpanzees, ref. 2 covers all 4 species). Furthermore, these diagrams show the similarity of the chromosomes in that every one of 1,000 nonheterochromatic G-bands has been accounted for in the four species. That means that each non-heterochromatic band has been located in each species. (I hope to add a scan of the full sets of chromosomes for all four species in the very near future. In the meantime I'll have to make do with a couple of examples of the most rearranged chromosomes that Don Lindsay has posted.)

Creationists will be quick to point out that despite the similarities, there are differences in the chromosomal banding patterns and the number of chromosomes. Furthermore, they will claim that the similarities are due to a common designer rather than common ancestry. Let's address the differences first, and then we will see if we can tease apart the conflicting scenarios of common ancestry vs. a common designer.

The following observations can be made about similarities and differences among the four species. Except for differences in non genetic heterochromatin, chromosomes 6, 13, 19, 21, 22, and X have identical banding patterns in all four species. Chromosomes 3, 11, 14, 15, 18, 20, and Y look the same in three of the four species (those three being gorilla, chimps, and humans), and chromosomes 1, 2p, 2q, 5, 7 - 10, 12, and 16 are alike in two species. Chromosomes 4 and 17 are different among all 4 species.

Most of the chromosomal differences among the four species involve inversions - localities on the chromosome that have been inverted, or swapped end for end. This is a relatively common occurrence among many species, and has been documented in humans (Ref. 8 ). An inversion usually does not reduce fertility, as in the case I have referenced. Don Lindsay provides a diagram of the chromosome 5 inversion between chimpanzees and humans scanned from ref. 1. Note how all of the bands between the two chromosomes will line up perfectly if you flip the middle piece of either of the two chromosomes between the p14.I and q14.I marks. The similarity of the marks will include a match for position, number, and intensity (depth of staining). Similar rearrangements to this can explain all of the approximately 1000 non-heterochromatic bands observed among each of the four species for these three properties (band position, number, and intensity).

Other types of rearrangements include a few translocations (parts swapped among the chromosomes), and the presence or absence of nucleolar organizers. All of these differences are described in ref. 2 and can be observed to be occurring in modern populations.

The biggest single chromosomal rearrangement among the four species is the unique number of chromosomes (23 pairs) found in humans as opposed to the apes (24 pairs). Examining this difference will allow us to see some of the differences expected between common ancestry as opposed to a common designer and address the second creationist objection listed above.

There are two potential naturalistic explanations for the difference in chromosome numbers - either a fusion of two separate chromosomes occurred in the human line, or a fission of a chromosome occurred among the apes. The evidence favors a fusion event in the human line. One could imagine that the fusion is only an apparent artifact of the work of a designer or the work of nature (due to common ancestry). The common ancestry scenario presents two predictions. Since the chromosomes were apparently joined end to end, and the ends of chromosomes (called the telomere ) have a distinctive structure from the rest of the chromosome, there may be evidence of this structure in the middle of human chromosome 2 where the fusion apparently occurred. Also, since both of the chromosomes that hypothetically were fused had a centromere (the distinctive central part of the chromosome), we should see some evidence of two centromeres.

[Ace Otana]

Charles Darwin didn't invent the idea of evolution - that was around before he was born. He simply proposed a mechanism for evolution and provided evidence for evolution and the idea that many widely divergent organisms shared common ancestry. The mechanism Darwin proposed to explain evolution was natural selection. Here are a list of the conditions Darwin thought were required for evolution by natural selection:

1. All organisms produce far more offspring than can survive to adulthood and reproduce. This means that many of those offspring will die without reproduction.
2. Organisms vary in many ways, and much of that variation is heritable - that is, variations that exist in the parents are passed on to the offspring.
3. Some of those heritable, variable traits affect an organism's fitness - its ability to survive to reproductive maturity.
4.(This is the kicker.) Those traits that increase an organism's fitness will tend to be passed on to the organism's offspring and to subsequent generations.

What Darwin realized was that this tendency of organisms to increase in fitness by the increase of certain traits would lead to divergences in the characteristics of the offspring. Eventually, as some groups of offspring adapted to slightly different environments (than other groups), speciation would occur. Hence, The Origin of Species.

Of course, Darwin didn't know beans about genetics - he only recognized heritable variations - he didn't have any idea of what was behind the heredity. But now we know that heritable traits are ultimately controlled by genes. Which brings us back to our definition of evolution - any change in a population's allele frequencies over time.

Even if you reject evolution, do you see the logic of how populations will become different from each other over time if there is variability in fitness characteristics?

[Edwardo Piet]

I feel as if you have doubt in what you are saying.As a christian i do not have these doubts as i truly know that god is looking down upon all of his children from heaven.This thread seems very immature but seeing as through experience most atheists are immature and simply argueing just for the sake of it i am not surprised.

Well I understand that the original was more immature than my version. And that your response to my version was immature aswell. Oh and what reason do you have to be arguing if not just for the sake of it? I argue because I find the debates interesting (sometimes amusing) and much more importantly: I care about the truth.
It seems as though you care about the truth too, the problem is you think its a good thing to have no doubts. I mean that it in fact seems that you think that its a good thing to have ZERO doubts -which I don't believe you can really have, about anything. And its funny that you consider me to "have doubts" as if a significant part of me believes in God, because I thought I've made it clear that the doubts I have are the closest you can get to having no doubts without being dogmatic, taking the truth as gospel and thinking I KNOW the truth, and go on a parade preaching things to people. I don't force things upon you, I tell you I believe things because of evidence. And I believe God, could exist, but only like the Flying Spaghetti Monster could exist. In other words I believe the chance that God exists (or a God of any kind) is about 0.0.11111111111111111111111111111111111111% recurring to infinity...about that probably. I just understand that I believe this because of evidence, I'm not asuming things, the fact theres a possibility I'm wrong is because my atheism is based on evidence! It's scientific! So I'm not dogmatic, I'm not a fundamentalist and I don't preach crap to people.
I dunno maybe I didn't make myself clear, maybe you thought I was actually more of an agnostic than I am an Atheist. But actually well under 1% of me is agnostic as I have explained atleast in this post. WELL under, very close to zero indeed. In the subject of the supernatural of course, not everything.

[Tiberius]

I feel as if you have doubt in what you are saying.As a christian i do not have these doubts as i truly know that god is looking down upon all of his children from heaven.This thread seems very immature but seeing as through experience most atheists are immature and simply argueing just for the sake of it i am not surprised.
Here is a question for you how can you believe the following:
you were created from nothing,
you were naturally selected from monkeys yet there are still monkeys alive today so if they needed to evolve to survive how did the origenal monkeys not die out?same goes for whales and birds and every other animal. How did something crawl onto land and evolve into all these things through selection and changing enviroments.You truely believe that a fish can evolve into a whale and a bat and an elephant? If you answer this by saying the enviroment caused the ones with certain genes survived and thus passed them on to their offspring i laugh at you.How can a fish evolve into an elephant by passing on its genes the same way many other creatures supposedly have done and still exist in the same enviroment?

*bangs head on desk*

...and to think I actually thought we might be able to have a sensible conversation with you on this forum. Seriously dude, perhaps you should research what you want to talk about before you try. Most of us used to be Christians; we've done our research, so you do yours.