Idoubt

[sandiego4me]

I've never accepted what the church had to say at face value.  Always viewed myself as an outcast by the church.  Wanted to believe in God, but had many doubts  I wrote an ebook entitled iDoubt: When Faith Falters.  It's a no-holds, frank discussion of issues facing people who really wish they could believe in God. 

[TrueFreedom]

Rekindled your faith in fiction, did ya? I read the first few pages of your ebook. You should read up on Mother Teresa. She caused nothing but suffering, likely due to her sadistic beliefs about her sadistic God.

[sandiego4me]

My approach to writing this book was to come at it as a real person.  I certainly don't try to be religious.   I don't deride science, either.   I come it at from the angle that there is an uncomfortable reality for both sides.   Faith is hard - - no matter whether your faith is in God or in science.  My chapters should give you an idea of how this book is different:

 

Chapter 1        Paralyzed with Doubt
Chapter 2        It's Hard to Believe in Fairy Tales
Chapter 3        The Other God
Chapter 4.       What the Hell?
Chapter 5        God Can’t Exist: He’d Be Chairman of the Bored
Chapter 6        The Church Rapist
Chapter 7        Church: Who Needs It?
Chapter 8        If Einstein Couldn’t Figure It Out, How Will You?
Chapter 9        Psst . . . Has Anyone Seen God
Chapter 10       Lessons from Route 66
 
Chapter 11      Tiptoeing through the Tombstones
Chapter 12      Imperfect Scripture Bugging You?
Chapter 13      I’m Too Far Gone to be Used
Chapter 14      Does Death Make Sense?
Chapter 15      The End of Faith
Chapter 16      Fat Nuns and Priests
Chapter 17      God’s Strange Ways
Chapter 18      Guilty Pleasures Don’t Live Here
Chapter 19      On Your Mark, Get Set, Quit
Chapter 20      Jesus and High School
 
Chapter 21      The Rapture Bogeyman
Chapter 22      My Pastor Got Divorced
Chapter 23      Finding Faith in a Trouble World
>

[ExCBooster]

Okay, after using my mighty google-fu I read the actual blurb on the site. Here's the thing, sandiego4me, straight talk you probably won't come back here to read and you probably won't listen to even if you did:

 

Problem 1:

You probably wrote the book and posted the book title here out of a genuine desire to help people, from your point of view. (I'll be generous and give the benefit of the doubt.) It's on sale for $3.99. Noticing a mismatch here between claims of selflessness and profit to be had? Regardless of intentions, that's kind of crippling to your point.

Problem 2:

You and your audience are working from completely different sets of rules and premises for debate. And debate is what it is, if you're trying to convince people of anything, gently or not. This is embedded in the original post, as well: you seem to assume that people "want to believe in" a Christian God. This exact assumption is precisely why Christian arguments for their god and religion utterly utterly fail to impress me at all. No: I don't "want to believe in" anything. I want independent proof. There's a difference. I don't feel "abandoned by God", I don't think there is sufficient proof that God exists. Between my viewpoint and yours, we can't even agree on what it is we're discussing. Define God, exactly. Some all-powerful being? Why worship something just because it's stronger? Even if you could prove that there's something out there, you'd have to show that it's your God, as opposed to all others. Since I have never yet seen any proof that your holy book, that your God, that your opinion, is on any better ground than everyone else's deities and beliefs, it's a safe bet that Pascal's wager was dead wrong.

 

Edit: hey, you came back! (Maybe you're playing more honest than I thought after all.)

[sandiego4me]

If anybody wants to get a copy of the book and don't want to pay (I don't entirely blame you), let me know and I'll send you an electronic coupon that can help you get it either free or super cheap. 

 

I am not here to debate.  We both know that it's a waste when the sides debate.  I am an unusual Christian who doesn't like church, has many doubts, and wants to explore everything.   My ultimate conclusion came down to this:  either God (whatever his name may be) made everything or evolution did.  When I scrutinized evolution, I realized it was impossible.   By default, God is the only option.  There could be no third option.    That is the long and the short of it.  

[TrueFreedom]

You obviously haven't grasped evolution (nor do you seem to know the difference between evolution and abiogenesis).

[wanderinstar]

If anybody wants to get a copy of the book and don't want to pay (I don't entirely blame you), let me know and I'll send you an electronic coupon that can help you get it either free or super cheap. 

 

I am not here to debate.  We both know that it's a waste when the sides debate.  I am an unusual Christian who doesn't like church, has many doubts, and wants to explore everything.   My ultimate conclusion came down to this:  either God (whatever his name may be) made everything or evolution did.  When I scrutinized evolution, I realized it was impossible.   By default, God is the only option.  There could be no third option.    That is the long and the short of it.  

 

So I take it you're a biological scientist then? If not, how can you be so sure that your lay opinion is more correct than the 99% of Evolutionary Biologists working in their field of expertise and produce paper after paper demonstrating actual evidence for evolution? And even if evolution does turn out to be an incorrect, or more likely, incomplete scientific theory to explain the variety of life on earth, it in no way means any 'god' or 'gods' were involved. I did study Biological Science at University level prior to being christian, then I was a creationist while I was a christian (for 15 years) and I have to say that once I was free from religious brainwashing I was immediately astounded at the growing amount of evidence for evolution (extremely solid, testable evidence). Upon again reading the inner workings and demonstrations of the theory of evolution I was shocked that  could ever been so stupid to reject the science I had studied for unproven, untested, wild theories of religious people. 

 

May I suggest you 'scrutinize' the scientific theory of evolution again, perhaps using science texts, as it is certainly not impossible and more than that it is actually quite probable. Being so 'black and white' about it all like this,

 

' When I scrutinized evolution, I realized it was impossible.   By default, God is the only option.  There could be no third option.    That is the long and the short of it.'

 

...only demonstrates that you have not understood science at all.

[Gamecock1973]

I also doubted and wanted to believe in god.  As much as I desired for the christian god to be true, at a certain point I had to accept that what I WANTED and what is REAL are not always compatible.

 

   My ultimate conclusion came down to this:  either God (whatever his name may be) made everything or evolution did.  When I scrutinized evolution, I realized it was impossible.   By default, God is the only option.  There could be no third option.    That is the long and the short of it.  

 

There could be no third option?  Seems like a very limited scope for someone who wants to explore everything.  Even if this conclusion were true, there is NO (zero, zilch, nada) compelling evidence that the god of the bible created the world.  It is simply CULTURAL bias that keeps people coming back to the conclusion you have come to.  In essence, your table of contents seems to suggest:  we can't understand how science explains everything (even Einstein couldn't!) and we can't understand how god explains everything...therefore i will believe in god because i WANT to!  god is only the default because you placed him there before you started your search (subconsciously or otherwise).  Setting default parameters on what a conclusion can be is not honestly searching.

 

I haven't read your book, but as it APPEARS your reason for coming here is about as honest as your search for truth, as your book's conclusion is surely to convince doubters they should continue to believe in JESUS.  You don't want to debate...just trick people into reading your book so they be persuaded by your "frank discussions."  I have respect for straightforward Christians who are at least honest and genuine in their attempts to evangelize. 

[florduh]

Faith is hard - - no matter whether your faith is in God or in science.

 

There's the clue. Understanding and accepting provable scientific facts does not take faith. 

 

Sorry, you seem to have a classic misunderstanding of terms. This is typical of Christian apologists, whether they go to church or not.

[RipVanWinkle]

Why do you say that if evolution is impossible then god is the only option? That's a false premise. It violates a very basic rule of logic. You have no evidence at all that your premise is true. Even if it were true, if the only option were god, what god are you referring to? The Bible god? No way. The bible has been discredited by so many brilliant people, with such strong logic and evidence that, with informed and  reasonable people, there is no doubt that it is a very flawed book with a huge number of inconsistencies. It is certainly not inspired by a supernatural being.

 

Again, what on earth gave you the notion that god is the only option to evolution? 

 

Moreover, evolution can be demonstrated in a lab. But what part of evolution do you believe to be impossible and why?   bill

[JamesG]

Sure ill give it a shot send me a coupon so i can get it for free and ill write a review here

[sandiego4me]

Einstein's Theory of Relativity proved the the universe was not infinite.   Hubbell's discovery of an expanding universe showed that there was a starting point . The Anthropic Principle shows that the universe is calibrated to ridiculously precise levels, by which if variants had been slightly off, the entire universe would collapse.

 

Authentic evolutionists know this stuff isn’t true.  In a quote from the forward of the 100th anniversary edition of Darwin’s The Origin of Species, whose forward was written in 1959 by famous British evolutionary anthropologist, Sir Arthur Keith.  He admits: “Evolution is unproved and unprovable. We believe it only because the only alternative is special creation, and that is unthinkable.” 

 

George Wald, prominent evolutionist, Harvard University biochemist, and Nobel Laureate, wrote, "When it comes to the Origin of Life there are only two possibilities: creation or spontaneous generation.” (The Origin of Life," Scientific American, 191:48, May 1954.).

 

Wald, likewise, candidly admitted that his faith in evolution was a grope in the dark.  Wald said, “Spontaneous generation was disproved one hundred years ago, but that leads us to only one other conclusion, that of supernatural creation. We cannot accept that on philosophical grounds; therefore, we choose to believe the impossible: that life arose spontaneously by chance!" ( The Origin of Life," Scientific American, 191:48, May 1954).   

 

Fred Hoyle, British astrophysicist and avowed atheist, said, "A common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a super intellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as with chemistry and biology, and that there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature. The numbers one calculates from the facts seem to me so overwhelming as to put this conclusion almost beyond question."  Hoyle estimates the probability for chance, random arrangement of amino acids for all of life’s 2,000 enzymes is 10-40,000.  Mathematical zero is 10-50, and that any value smaller than the mathematical zero is relegated by mathematicians to the realm of “never happening.” (See Those Typing Monkeys Don’t Prove Evolution, by Laurence D Smart B.Sc.Agr., Dip.Ed., Grad.Dip.Ed;  www.unmaskingevolution.com).

 

If you believe in evolution, I’m curious to see what you perceive to be evidence.   Most people say “there are lots of scientific papers” or “floral and fauna prove it” or various other things.  These are just generic ways of saying you aren’t sure what you believe.   I want someone to honestly give me three known facts that prove evolution.  Please, don’t get angry and start cursing against God.  I just want to see if anybody has any proof? 

[sandiego4me]

To show what a great guy I am, I went to Smashwords.com and have changed it so that my book is free for the next 30 days.   Now, nobody can claim I'm out to make dough!  Seriously, read it and enjoy it.  At the very least, it's funny.  The title:  "iDoubt: When Faith Falters" by C.P. Fagan.  

[owen652]

Wow, not just surreptitiously evangelizing, but trying to make a buck out of it as well. Props for initiative I guess.

[Gamecock1973]

To show what a great guy I am, I went to Smashwords.com and have changed it so that my book is free for the next 30 days.   Now, nobody can claim I'm out to make dough!  Seriously, read it and enjoy it.  At the very least, it's funny.  The title:  "iDoubt: When Faith Falters" by C.P. Fagan.  

 

I went and skimmed through the first 100 pages or so.  A wannabe C.S. Lewis here using all sorts of fluff and illustrations from daily life to avoid the ACTUAL problems with god and scripture, and convince you that doubt is really an opportunity for faith, that lack of evidence of god shows that god is somehow more real than actual things that can been seen and verified, that black is white, etc. etc.  There is no reason given why Jesus is god rather than Allah, Zeus, Thor, and the bazillion other gods out there.  It is just evolution is stupid, you should believe in Jesus.  It is just a given that Jesus is the default truth.

 

Despite the title and his introduction of himself, there is very little doubt here at all.  The author's "doubt" is just a literary tool (i use literary in the loosest sense) to bring up strawmen against which he can argue why you should put your faith in Jesus.  Very weak apologetics, but creative in its tricky and dishonest attempts to get you to read!

 

Oh, and it's not funny.

 

But hey, sandiego4me, you magically "planted the seed" and I'm sure your efforts will reap you a harvest...muhahahhahahahahahhaha

[wanderinstar]

Thanks for your open mind sandiago

 

Here is an article that is best understood by reading it in its entirety. Yes,  am being a little lazy by not explaining it myself, but it really does lay out a good scientific foundation of the evidence found for evolution better than I could describe. This is just one of those many 'papers' people keep mentioning to you. There really has been a great deal of evidence found and when combined it paints a very clear picture of evolutionary mechanisms at work.

 

Moss, R. (1999). The molecular evidence for evolution. Journal of College Science Teaching, 29(2), 111-113+. 

 

Let me know if you cannot locate this paper as I got it through my university login so it may not be available online for free.

 

Here is a quote to give you an idea, '..when we compare genetic sequences of different organisms, yes their DNA is surprisingly similar...but it is the differences, the mutations shared by different species believed to be close on the evolutionary tree, but they are not by more distant ones, that are the most instructive. And we are not talking about just a few instances, but thousands that have been examined. The only reasonable way to interpret these differences is to assume that all the species examined came from one another, "copied" in series, in a definite order that we can now elucidate.' (Moss, 1999, italics his)

 

Let us know what you think. 

[TrueFreedom]

It's a quick read: http://faculty.virginia.edu/evolutionlabs/MossMolecularEvidenceEvolution.pdf

[TrueFreedom]

Many excellent videos explaining mountains of evidence for evolution on youtube:
Aaron Ra: http://tinyurl.com/op2dk9j
Potholer54debunks: http://tinyurl.com/njpux69

 

Lot's of information here: http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/
 

[HymenaeusAlexander]

Einstein's Theory of Relativity proved the the universe was not infinite.

This does not follow. As I understand it, since we can’t observe space beyond the limitations of electromagnetic radiation, whether or not the universe is finite or infinite remains uncertain.

 

The Anthropic Principle shows that the universe is calibrated to ridiculously precise levels, by which if variants had been slightly off, the entire universe would collapse.

The Anthropic Principle is question-begging.

 

“. . . imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, 'This is an interesting world I find myself in, an interesting hole I find myself in, fits me rather neatly, doesn't it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!' This is such a powerful idea that as the sun rises in the sky and the air heats up and as, gradually, the puddle gets smaller and smaller, it's still frantically hanging on to the notion that everything's going to be alright, because this world was meant to have him in it, was built to have him in it; so the moment he disappears catches him rather by surprise. I think this may be something we need to be on the watch out for.” – Douglas Adams

 

In a quote from the forward of the 100th anniversary edition of Darwin’s The Origin of Species, whose forward was written in 1959 by famous British evolutionary anthropologist, Sir Arthur Keith. He admits: “Evolution is unproved and unprovable. We believe it only because the only alternative is special creation, and that is unthinkable.”

 

George Wald, prominent evolutionist, Harvard University biochemist, and Nobel Laureate, wrote, "When it comes to the Origin of Life there are only two possibilities: creation or spontaneous generation.” (The Origin of Life," Scientific American, 191:48, May 1954.).

 

Wald, likewise, candidly admitted that his faith in evolution was a grope in the dark. Wald said, “Spontaneous generation was disproved one hundred years ago, but that leads us to only one other conclusion, that of supernatural creation. We cannot accept that on philosophical grounds; therefore, we choose to believe the impossible: that life arose spontaneously by chance!" ( The Origin of Life," Scientific American, 191:48, May 1954).

Your Keith and Wald quotes are dealt with here. Keith died in 1955 so obviously he didn't write anything in 1959 and the Wald quote is a very bad and completely out of context paraphrase. Let’s move on.

 

Fred Hoyle, British astrophysicist and avowed atheist, said, "A common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a super intellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as with chemistry and biology, and that there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature. The numbers one calculates from the facts seem to me so overwhelming as to put this conclusion almost beyond question." Hoyle estimates the probability for chance, random arrangement of amino acids for all of life’s 2,000 enzymes is 10-40,000. Mathematical zero is 10-50, and that any value smaller than the mathematical zero is relegated by mathematicians to the realm of “never happening.” (See Those Typing Monkeys Don’t Prove Evolution, by Laurence D Smart B.Sc.Agr., Dip.Ed., Grad.Dip.Ed; www.unmaskingevolution.com).

Hoyle was an astronomer, not a chemist and not a biologist. He was also a loon. An intelligent loon, but a loon nonetheless. He believed flu epidemics were caused by solar winds, viruses came to earth via comets, archaeopteryx was a fraud and aboigenic petroleum was a thing. He went to his death with a dogmatic rejection of Big Bang cosmology despite decades of breakthrough evidence supporting it.

 

For the reference to Borel’s Law (i.e. "Mathematical zero is 10-50") see here for a discussion of why it’s being misapplied in your citation above.

 

If you believe in evolution, I’m curious to see what you perceive to be evidence. Most people say “there are lots of scientific papers” or “floral and fauna prove it” or various other things. These are just generic ways of saying you aren’t sure what you believe. I want someone to honestly give me three known facts that prove evolution. Please, don’t get angry and start cursing against God. I just want to see if anybody has any proof?

 

Spend some time over at the talkorigins website. Get a copy of The Greatest Show on Earth or Why Evolution is True. Ask yourself why the creationist websites you cribbed those quotes from have to be so misleading and downright dishonest.

 

The fact that you’ve produced these quotes, committed the classic conflation of evolution with abiogenesis and apparently can’t see how “either God (whatever his name may be) made everything or evolution did” is a false dichotomy demonstrates that you’re not really up on your facts enough to be spouting off your opinion, much less asking us to read your book.

[florduh]

 I just want to see if anybody has any proof? 

 

Are you shitting me? You can't find the overwhelming evidence for evolution? You're not looking. I won't bother supplying an education in geology and biology because you would never accept the facts or the sources anyway; you've already rejected the obvious in favor or a religious belief.

[sandiego4me]

This is a really a cool forum.    I thought I'd get shouted down and made fun of (Just a little is okay).  You people are really pretty cool.  And thanks Gamecock1973 for reading the first 100 pages.    By the way, I attended the University of Nebraska. You kicked our butts two years ago in the bowl game.  Still hurts.

 

Back to evolution.  The Cambrian Explosion.    Pretty much killed evolution.   In the fossil record, the vast entirety of every living thing suddenly showed up all at once in the fossil record.  In other words, there was no progressive fossil evidence leading up to it.  Suddenly, everything in full living form was in the fossil record.  That runs completely counter to what evolution teaches, namely, that creatures changed over time long periods of time.  Rather, it fits hand-in-hand with the Genesis account of all things being created over a short period of time.   

 

Another strike against evolution:  If it takes billions of years for it to take place, then how did it recover after the dinosaur event when the entire earth was essentially wiped out?  If something so massive killed off the dinosaurs, then every thing else would have been killed too.   Evolution would have had to start over.  And wo would have told it to start over if it was doing this on its own?

[wanderinstar]

 

 

Back to evolution.  The Cambrian Explosion.    Pretty much killed evolution.   In the fossil record, the vast entirety of every living thing suddenly showed up all at once in the fossil record.  In other words, there was no progressive fossil evidence leading up to it.  Suddenly, everything in full living form was in the fossil record.  That runs completely counter to what evolution teaches, namely, that creatures changed over time long periods of time.  Rather, it fits hand-in-hand with the Genesis account of all things being created over a short period of time.   

 

Another strike against evolution:  If it takes billions of years for it to take place, then how did it recover after the dinosaur event when the entire earth was essentially wiped out?  If something so massive killed off the dinosaurs, then every thing else would have been killed too.   Evolution would have had to start over.  And wo would have told it to start over if it was doing this on its own?

 

Pretty much all that you wrote here is inaccurate to say the least. Please read the EVIDENCE for evolution that has already been provided for you on this thread, and if you are actually open to changing your mind based on logic and evidence then you will soon see how ridiculous what you have written really is. I used to believe a lot of what you are saying so I am not criticizing you, in case you read it that way. Once I looked into evolution with a mind open to change if the evidence supported it (but really expecting my 'evolution is a farce' stance to be vindicated) I soon realized just how wrong I had been rejecting the theory of evolution, and how biased I had been in my reading and accepting of information. Be honest with yourself; either look into evolution with an open mind or admit you would prefer to believe what you want to believe, not what is actually true.

[HymenaeusAlexander]

This is a really a cool forum.    I thought I'd get shouted down and made fun of (Just a little is okay).  You people are really pretty cool.  And thanks Gamecock1973 for reading the first 100 pages.    By the way, I attended the University of Nebraska. You kicked our butts two years ago in the bowl game.  Still hurts.

 

Back to evolution.  The Cambrian Explosion.    Pretty much killed evolution.   In the fossil record, the vast entirety of every living thing suddenly showed up all at once in the fossil record.  In other words, there was no progressive fossil evidence leading up to it.  Suddenly, everything in full living form was in the fossil record.  That runs completely counter to what evolution teaches, namely, that creatures changed over time long periods of time.  Rather, it fits hand-in-hand with the Genesis account of all things being created over a short period of time.   

 

Another strike against evolution:  If it takes billions of years for it to take place, then how did it recover after the dinosaur event when the entire earth was essentially wiped out?  If something so massive killed off the dinosaurs, then every thing else would have been killed too.   Evolution would have had to start over.  And wo would have told it to start over if it was doing this on its own?

 

If you’re going to continue to ignore things that have already been presented to you while adding ridiculous claims like  the Cambrian Explosion killed evolution and dinosaurs being wiped out is “another strike against evolution” you’re likely to see the coolness rapidly diminish and the ridicule begin to ramp up.

 

Please spend some time with the resources that have been offered to you in this thread until you reach the point where you can at least appear to have a working knowledge of the issues. Please take the time to address the salient points and rebuttals that others have presented before introducing more empty rhetoric. Otherwise we are liable to conclude that you have no interest in actually engaging in discussion and merely want to offer unsubstantiated claims while promoting your book.

[sdelsolray]

This one isn't worth the time.

[sandiego4me]

Wanderinstar, I was unable to locate Moss's article. When I Google it, I get other people who have quoted him, but I can't find his article.   Do you have a link to it? I'd appreciate it.