Posted on 07/30/2007 2:01:00 PM PDT by GodGunsGuts
Geologists have found the remains of a huge underground rainforest hidden in a coal mine in Illinois. The fossil forest, buried by an earthquake 300 million years ago, contains giant versions of several plant types alive today.
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Also surprising is the presence of remains from mangrove-like plants. "It was always assumed that mangrove plants had evolved fairly recently," says Falcon-Lang.
(Excerpt) Read more at bioedonline.org ...
You just don’t get it.
I can show you a $10 dollar stem-wind watch that keeps decent time and ask you how it evolved. Your response would be, “It didn’t evolve, someone made it.”
Yet, you look at a solar system that keeps perfect time, and is more finely balanced than watches costing tens of thousands of dollars. I ask you who made it and you respond, “Oh, no one made it, it evolved.”
Until you can see that basic truth, that our universe is a marvelous creation of unbelievable complexity, you and I have no common ground to discuss regarding this issue.
“Because evolution was brought about as a means to dispel creationism, not as true means of science”
Simply untrue. It was developed as a theory to explain the observed phenomena.
“Sure evolution happens, but the main idea that humans came from apes is just not true”
Humans did NOT come from apes; they evolved through an ape-like ancestor which is now extinct. Apes are our cousins, not direct ancestors. They are a separate evolutionary line from Homo sapiens. The fact that you did not know this belies your ignorance on the subject of evolutionary theory. Or was it a deliberate misrepresentation?
“The strict evolutionists you reference are athiests but just won’t admit it.”
I’m a “strict evolutionist”, as you call it, because all of the evidence supports that belief. I am not an atheist because there is no way to disprove God’s existence. I am a very skeptical agnostic. If God bothered to drop in on us on occasion, like a good parent, and did have a personal relationship with us, and acted like he cared instead of being a disinterested observer, I could easily change my mind. But he doesn’t. (I mean, assuming he’s there at all, which doesn’t appear to be very likely with the complete lack of evidence pointing to his existence.)
“The so called intellect is not just by chance or luck of the draw.”
Apparently, it is.
“All things given are God given.”
Apparently, they’re not. Your evidence, please?
The laws of physics, as we observe them, do indeed allow for the evolution of the Solar System, and all other astronomical phenomena, as well as earthly phenomena, without the need to call on guidance or intervention from some unknown (supernatural or otherwise) architect. Also, the Solar System does not keep perfect time. Orbital velocities of the planets are constantly changing due to many factors, varying gravitational influence from the Sun in their elliptical orbits, nutation which alters the rate of the precession of the equinoxes, etc. All obey well-defined physical laws which do not rely on supernatural means as an explanation. If you understood the Many Worlds interpretation of Quantum Mechanics, you would know why our existence is a statistical certainty out of an infinite number of universes which make up the multiverse.
So your contention is that man is not, in fact, a compilation of molecules?
300 million years my hairy(_|_)
They have a solution: Ignore them, and the MSM will go along as they always do for liberal causes.
“All obey well-defined physical laws “ ....
that evolved from total chaos and nothingness?
Words fail me.
“If you understood the Many Worlds interpretation of Quantum Mechanics, you would know why our existence is a statistical certainty out of an infinite number of universes which make up the multiverse.”
So, if it is statistically impossible, just keeping upping the numbers to infinite so that it becomes statistically possible?
So, if you took a clock apart, put all of the pieces in a box, then shook the box for ‘X’ number of years, at some point all of the pieces if the clock would assemble themselves into a running clock?
And you ridicule ME for relying of faith?
Precisely!
Me thinks fossils a much more compelling explanation of our existence than simple stories jotted down in some book.
“I’m a “strict evolutionist”, as you call it, because all of the evidence supports that belief. I am not an atheist because there is no way to disprove God’s existence. I am a very skeptical agnostic. If God bothered to drop in on us on occasion, like a good parent, and did have a personal relationship with us, and acted like he cared instead of being a disinterested observer, I could easily change my mind. But he doesn’t. (I mean, assuming he’s there at all, which doesn’t appear to be very likely with the complete lack of evidence pointing to his existence.”
So you take the easy way out. See posts stating the Darwinistic metallity. It has been stated by leading Darwinists that its main focus was an anti God, live how you choose with no ethical basis.
Its sad that you can’t find a means to communicate with God. Its spiritual, open your heart. That is how one gets to know God. Without opening your heart, he will not come in.
There is no response that one could make to this. You obviously have not had true exposure to the greatness of God.
“God has absolutely nothing to do with any of this.”
You are absolutely correct with this statement
Setting aside for the moment your "leading Darwinists" nonsense, who are you talking about?
In addition to explaining our existence, that book gives you a choice as to what is to become of your soul once your body goes the way of the fossils. Read it...as you say yourself, it’s quite simple.
“that evolved from total chaos and nothingness?”
Who says it was chaos and nothingness? The laws of physics are as they were since the Big Bang, and the matter/energy that comprised the Big Bang cooled into hydrogen and helium; gravity caused large clumps of matter to form stars, the conservation of angular momentum left spinning planets around the stars, heavier elements were formed in the cores of stars by thermonuclear fusion and distributed by supernova explosions. It’s all explainable by the laws of physics.
“So, if it is statistically impossible, just keeping upping the numbers to infinite so that it becomes statistically possible?”
No, the Many Worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics calls for an infinite number of parallel universes to exist; all are real, many having the same or nearly the same physical laws as ours, many being so different that they would be utterly unrecognizable to us. An infinite number of monkeys pounding on an infinite number of typewriters will eventually type out Shakespeare plays, right? Well, the infinite universes are the monkeys, and we are the Shakespeare that was typed out. Purely a matter of probability statistics, nothing more.
“And you ridicule ME for relying of faith?”
Who was ridiculing? Not me, I’m just pointing out a few facts, that’s all. I’m not relying on faith, but experimental evidence. The existence of these alternate universes has been proven by experiment; initially by the double slit experiment, the existence of the virtual particle sea, and more recently by quantum computers.
“This is a meaningless assertion, nowhere falsifiable or demonstrable because it is babble.”
A perfect description of Darwinism.
“So you take the easy way out. See posts stating the Darwinistic metallity. It has been stated by leading Darwinists that its main focus was an anti God, live how you choose with no ethical basis.”
No, I take the hard way out. I’d frankly love to believe in some ultimate form of justice and life after death. It’s just that there is no evidence whatsoever to support that contention. Please list the Darwinists that you contend are anti-God.
“Its sad that you can’t find a means to communicate with God. Its spiritual, open your heart. That is how one gets to know God. Without opening your heart, he will not come in.”
At a very low point in my life, I DID open my heart to God, at the recommendation of a Christian friend. I did so with all due humility and sincerity. Nothing happened. My life actually became much worse after I did this, for decades, not as a result of any improper actions on my part - all due to external forces to my life. I realize that this is anathema to what you believe, but it is true. I now expect for you to assume that I am horribly evil, and that is why I was not touched by “God’s grace”. It is not necessary, at least for me, to have to have rules laid out by someone else for me to obey in order to live an extremely moral and ethical life. If you did not know my skepticism and watched me in my day-to-day life, you would assume I was a devout Christian It is not I who did not try to communicate with God, it was He who did not communicate with me. Perhaps because he isn’t there?
==Bless you if you are a true believer but campaigning to convert people doesn’t work. Look at the millions of man hours spent discussing abortion on talk radio. I have never found anyone who’s mind was changed because somebody said it was one way or the other on talk radio.
It worked on me. And where do you think the pro-life movement came from? Do you think everyone woke up one day and decided they were pro-life?
I think no one is evil, save for the despots, and I doubt you are a despot. I too have had many struggles, and not seeing the work of God in each instance is difficult. However, I never gave up and continue to believe faith is what has kept me going. I don’t see Christ on walls, pieces of bread etc...... I am not a radical, I speak of my faith when when the conversation calls for it. I do not preach to people. Faith is personal, just as my relationship with God is personal.
This was posted by another member.
“Naturalistic evolution has clear consequences that Charles Darwin understood perfectly. 1) No gods worth having exist; 2) no life after death exists; 3) no ultimate foundation for ethics exists; 4) no ultimate meaning in life exists; and 5) human free will is nonexistent.”
Provine, William B. [Professor of Biological Sciences, Cornell University], “, “Evolution: Free will and punishment and meaning in life”, Abstract of Will Provine’s 1998 Darwin Day Keynote Address.
“It is no more heretical to say the Universe displays purpose, as Hoyle has done, than to say that it is pointless, as Steven Weinberg has done. Both statements are metaphysical and outside science. Yet it seems that scientists are permitted by their own colleagues to say metaphysical things about lack of purpose and not the reverse. This suggests to me that science, in allowing this metaphysical notion, sees itself as religion and presumably as an atheistic religion (if you can have such a thing).”
Shallis, Michael [Astrophysicist, Oxford University], “In the eye of a storm”, New Scientist, January 19, 1984, pp.42-43.
“I had motive for not wanting the world to have a meaning; consequently assumed that it had none, and was able without any difficulty to find satisfying reasons for this assumption. The philosopher who finds no meaning in the world is not concerned exclusively with a problem in pure metaphysics, he is also concerned to prove that there is no valid reason why he personally should not do as he wants to do, or why his friends should not seize political power and govern in the way that they find most advantageous to themselves. … For myself, the philosophy of meaninglessness was essentially an instrument of liberation, sexual and political.”
Aldous Huxley: Ends and Means, pp. 270 ff.
And let’s not forget Richard Dawkins, a scientists who speaks for millions of the Darwinist faithful:
“In 2005 online magazine ‘Edge The World Question Centre’ posed the following question to a number of scientific intellectuals: ‘What do you believe is true even though you cannot prove it?’ Dawkins revealingly answered: ‘I believe that all life, all intelligence, all creativity and all ‘design’ anywhere in the universe, is the direct or indirect product of Darwinian natural selection.’
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