Goodbye Jesus
Search the Community
Showing results for tags 'Creationism'.
Found 7 results
-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RCS21bI1arg&feature=c4-overview&list=UUUKpV1m_1VZc4JjbxhGwl0A Error - I forgot to add the narrative as I did with the previous one. Apologies. Anyway: Carrier, Richard (2011-02-28). Why I Am Not a Christian: Four Conclusive Reasons to Reject the Faith (pp. 67-68). Philosophy Press. Kindle Edition. When we look at how the universe is actually built, we do find that it appears perfectly designed after all—but not for producing life. Lee Smolin has argued from the available scientific facts that our universe is probably the most perfect universe that could ever be arranged for producing black holes. He also explains how all the elements that would be required to finely tune a perfect black-hole-maker also make chemical life like ours an extremely rare but inevitable byproduct of such a universe. This means that if the universe was designed, it was not designed to make and sustain us, but to make and sustain black holes, and therefore even if there is a God he cannot be the Christian God. Therefore, even on a successful fine-tuning argument C Smolin explains how a universe perfectly designed to produce black holes would look exactly like our universe. It would be extremely old, extremely large, and almost entirely comprised of radiation-filled vacuum, in which almost all the matter available would be devoted to producing black holes or providing the material that feeds them. We know there must be, in fact, billions more black holes than life-producing planets. If you found a pair of scissors and didn’t know what they were designed for, you could hypothesize they were designed as a screwdriver, because scissors can, after all, drive screws.(describe my own use of them) In fact, there is no way to design a pair of scissors that would prevent them being used as a screwdriver. But as soon as someone showed you that these scissors were far better designed to cut paper, and in fact are not the best design for driving screws, would you stubbornly hang on to your theory that they were designed to drive screws? No. You would realize it was obvious they were designed to cut paper, and their ability to drive screws is just an inevitable byproduct of their actual design. This is exactly what we are facing when we look at the universe: it is not very well designed for life, though life is an inevitable byproduct of what the universe was more obviously designed for: black holes. So if the universe was intelligently designed, it clearly was not designed for us. But that is not the only explanation. Now, Smolin’s theory has yet to be proven. It is at present just a hypothesis—but so is Christianity. Just like Christianity, there are elements to Smolin’s theory that are conjectural and not independently proven to exist. However, the most important element—the fact that unintelligent natural selection can produce incredibly precise fine tuning over time—has been proven, whereas any sort of divine activity has not. We have never observed a single proven case of a god causing anything, much less any fine-tuning of the properties of our universe. But we have found overwhelming evidence for a process that produces very amazing fine-tuning without any intelligence behind it, and that is evolution by natural selection. This is a known precedent—unlike bodiless minds or divine causation. And a theory based on known precedents is always less ad hoc than a theory based on completely novel and unobserved mechanisms. The universe exhibits no values in its own operation or design. It operates exactly the same for everyone, the good and bad alike. It rewards and craps on both with total disregard. It behaves just like a cold and indifferent machine, not the creation of a loving engineer. Christianity does not predict this. Atheism does. Christianity is therefore refuted.
-
It will NEVER end as long as there is ONE Christian left to regurgitate the often refuted arguments. http://youtu.be/5ENgUYOVM8M
- 4 replies
-
- 1
-
-
- Evolution
- Creationism
- (and 1 more)
-
For Entertainment Purposes Only: Kent Hovind's Doctoral Dissertation
Thought2Much posted a topic in Science vs. Religion
Since I couldn't find this linked anywhere else in the forums, I'm linking to it here. This is Kent Hovind's dissertation to receive his PhD, a degree that supposedly gives him the intellectual authority to convincingly debate the subjects of creationism and evolution. This is not only bad, it is hilariously bad, yet somehow this mental lightweight is still looked to as a powerful figure by creationists. It's 100 pages long, but let's just say that it's easy reading because Hovind uses very few big words. The introduction starts with the following sentences: That's about where the factual information ends. Enjoy! -
Why The Bible Claims Are Bs - Creation Vs. Evolution
LivingLife posted a topic in Pinned Science vs. Religion
I thought I would start a thread here to repeat my arguments with the YEC folk and bible literalists Most are Biblical literalists, though, so try to fit in science with the Bible. And this is where they shoot themselves in the foot. Surely one should realise, hey folk from all over the world believe evolution is factual and barring a few exceptions, it seems to only be Americans that holds to this so tightly. When we look at the evidence of the natural world exempt from evolution, we see a plethora of evidence for a very very old earth. That should be your first clue. The bible clearly has dates of creation and other stuff by the mere fact there a genealogies mentioned, you know the begats, add up the years etc and you get an approximate time this was supposed to happen. After all the traditional BC and AD dating ran for a long while before it changed to a religious neutral BCE and CE (before current era and current era) Now if the earth is older as various scientific proofs present, you must ask is there a global conspiracy or is this plausible. If you think all the scientists are in on some mass deception, ask yourself why would they need to lie? Just to disprove the bible? That is not what is driving science. Science is the tool whereby we seek real answers that the bible fails to mention and whatever the discipline is, the methods to arrive at conclusions are all pretty much the same, it must be falsifiable. That does not mean open to interpretation. If you can accept that there is no global conspiracy, then we must examine certain biblical claims like the flood. There are many proofs I have posted numerous times and no one yet has refuted it in any way other than a simple dismissal. A global food was impossible as none of the proofs bear witness to such an event. Bear in mind, according to scripture, this was only ~4500 years ago. What are these proofs? Antarctic Ice cores dating between 400k and 750k (no flood as there would only be 4500 years of data) Very old trees older than 4500 years (tree rings, one for each year) Even evergreens make one ring a year Lake Varves (sediment layers spanning thousands if not millions of years - no evidence of a flood. River deltas (None of these deltas would have formed to their current size in a mere 4500 years) The geology of these have no traces of any global flood Impact craters all over the world How would 5 different pieces of evidence be tampered with. The evidence is irrefutable. There are plenty more like canyons, cave formations and the like and ALL of these extend way past biblical time lines. So was the flood just local? The flood is the key issue and remember the lineage of Jesus traces all the way back to Adam (allegedly) Now look at the biological diversity in both the plant and animal kingdoms. For all this to have been replenished in 4500 years, we are talking evolution on a scale not even scientists claim. The scientific evidence just is not there. Now there has to be another answer. This is where evolution steps in. Not going to go there right now. What we find with sites like AiG and the creation institute, they introduce any evidence that may support a YEC world view. They feebly attempt to misguide people by actually misquoting and quote mining scientific journals as in reality; they have no evidence outside of blind belief in the bible. Before DNA was discovered, the key was a "missing link" or a transitional fossil as this palaeontology stuff was digging up and dating fossils that built on the Darwinian theory of evolution. Dinosaurs came back to skeletal life and yet these YEC folk suggest humans co-existed. All this stuff we have discovered in the last 150-200 years of enlightenment raises many questions the bible has absolutely no answer for. Now folk say we do not know what initiated all this but we have some pretty good ideas and none of them seem to need a Jewish god. We probably will never know but that is far more honest than assuming some god did it. The other areas of cosmology show us the cosmos is far older than 6000 years. We have dated rocks and found 4.5Bn years age for the earth and an estimate or 13.5Bn for the cosmos Now if this time frame is accepted as more plausible, you can get into the nitty gritties of evolution. Back to DNA. Wow was that a let down from the YEC folk. DNA/RNA mapping shows common ancestry for all living things but we do not have a complete assembled puzzle yet. We do know what we have and predict what we need to find and thus we keep adding pieces to this incomplete puzzle. What did the creationists do? They simply stated this DNA is too complex and this is an indicator of intelligent design and he was guiding evolution all along. Really there is no god particle in any of this and only folk who are floored by complexity want to assign god to the bits of the puzzle we do not yet know. That is about as far as my evolutionary knowledge goes, I am no expert but I do know a hell of a lot more than pseudo doctor Kent Hovind and the cronies that work for him. Is this enough reason to become agnostic? Probably not. Many have managed to accept what science is presenting and still maintain belief. If religion was not so dogmatic, it probably would have morphed into something more akin to science. Theistic evolution it is not; but it is at least a start. Now back to the bible. If the flood never happened, then Noah is likely a myth, and so too is Adam and Eve. We find that there are host of other creation myths that this A&E story was borrowed from. This comes from assimilation between different cultures when their stories were exchanged and merged. W/o Adam, the whole basis for redemption now is rendered moot. So did Jesus exist? Now you keep digging down the rabbit hole and eventually you discover that much of his legend is also made up and a conglomeration of earlier myths. He becomes just one more man made god. Make no mistake, the Roman Empire extended widely and the influence of the new state religion was simply worked politically with the Royalty of the day and as such this religion spread by decree of the king. Many religions were absorbed, festivals merged and you have what you have today Christianity, most of which follow Pauline doctrines rather than the Jesus stuff. I predict that in the next 100 years the Vatican will be simple a tourist attraction of a mind set passed just as we look at ancient monuments like Stonehenge. One need only look at how the church refused to accept the heliocentric solar model from Galileo and that only in 1992 did the church apologise. He was right. As time marches on, we just keep finding more and more leaving mankind to either accept this as more reliable than the bible or not. In this age of technology, you can no longer hide the truth from the next generation. Without non questioning people, the church knows it's days are numbered. Huzzah I say.- 50 replies
-
- 5
-
-
- Creationism
- YEC
- (and 4 more)
-
Did The Rejection Of A Literal Reading Of Genesis Help Lead To Your Deconversion?
Skepticktok posted a topic in Science vs. Religion
Hello everyone I'm Stephen. I'm curious growing up I was raised in a Pentecostal enviroment (Word of Faith/Assemblies of God) despite my interest in Paleontology I remember being taught to actively reject any notion of evolution, especially when it came to a link between apes and humans. Despite that I still found myself believing in an old universe. I had a weird hodgepodge of beliefs in regards to interpretations of Genesis 1-12. In High School I attended a Christian school with lots of books from Answers in Genesis, the ICR and others. Thy even had the magainze Creation Ex-Nihilo shipped to our library every month and I read it quite a bit. Despite the fact that I am now an atheist I became convinced of something during that time that I still believe. The discarding of a literal Genesis chapters 1-12 causes serious problems with Christian theology. I know there are alot of Christian groups acting as if the Bible and evolution can be reconciled (the Catholic church for example) but I don't buy it. If you say that humans are the result of millions of years of evolution and that the Garden of Eden story is simply an allegory or a myth...it fundamentally, and I believe fataly damages the doctrine of original sin. If human beings weren't literally infected with sin do to the actions of Adam and Eve why is there a need for Jesus to die on the cross for the salvation of humanity? How does Paul analogy of the first Adam and the last Adam make any sense? How does the geneology of Jesus make any sense if some of the people mentioned weren't real? And most relative to modern issues of gender how can one justify women submiting to men if 1st Timothy 2:11-17 are not based on actual events? Stepping outside of Genesis for a second, for Christian evolutionist at what point during the evolution of the homonid's does an immortal soul develop? Answers in Genesis and the others are right about one thing...it causes problems for Christianity when Genesis is not read literally. It was key step for me leaving Christianity. I'm just curious to see if this was true for many other ex-believers as well. -
The Creation Of The Universe: The Christian Argument About God's Existance
TheBluegrassSkeptic posted a topic in Science vs. Religion
Bear with me as I try to word this in a way that could surely be twisted by some and genuinely understood (possibly answered) by others. So, a little background first. I look at the debate over how a god supposedly created the Universe. My definition of god is a being/force unknown to us that INTELLIGENTLY influences/influenced our Universe. Period. Not listening to prayers. Not working miracles on a whim. With that said, I don't believe such a being exists or ever has. I truly believe that our Universe is a result of an UNINTELLIGENT event. Say, spontaneous energy. YES, I am aware of Plank's law. BUT, with that said, there are a lot of unknowns in that formula. We are relying on our own definitions of "nothing" to be accurate. I keep hearing the whole "something cannot come from nothing". I think ultimately, that is the limitation of the human mind - it is programmed to think of everything having a start and end and it cannot fathom something just being - BUT - low and behold they will believe in a being (god) to have those same characteristics..... If the Law of the Universe is that something cannot come from nothing, but it can only if it is borrowing that something and transforming it from what APPEARS to be nothing. I don't know if I worded that exactly right. The Big Bang idea is highly plausible on many levels because there are so many unknowns out there. For all we know, there was "borrowing of something" from what APPEARS to be nothing, but could very well have been actually SOMETHING that we thought was..well, NOTHING. For me, ultimately, I think the insistance of injecting the idea of God as the something in the nothing is a way to save ego. I think man has a hard time swallowing a rough pill filled with the reality that we are very much a by product that originated from an UNINTELLIGENT event/energy. It seems to be a mind blowing concept that something INTELLIGENT like ourselves could by a byproduct. Yeah, a pile of bacteria infested excrement. God = Hurt Ego in science. That's my thought. I want to expand on the whole energy side of things further, but I don't have the terminology or complete concept down yet, but I do know from the various quantum physics studies I've read that our being spontaneously created is very possible (meaning our universe, and we are product of said universe). -
http://www.thetruthproject.org My fundie sister told me they are looking at these "Truth Project" DVDs in youth group and are inviting non-christians as well, since it is supposed to be convincing. I could not find any complete lectures just some trailers and short videos. Have you heard about this? Are there any new creationist arguments in it? Do anyone have a link to the "science" part? I may want to debate these topics, and it is better to be prepared, because at first I can only go WTF when I hear such nonsense as the chicken egg/order argument here: http://www.thetruthproject.org/about/onlinetraining.aspx Lesson 7: Sociology: The Divine Imprint Clip: “Have You Talked to a Chicken Lately?” Interested in your experiences and opinion on this one... (first topic, so I hope it is in the right forum section)
