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Author Topic:   Evolution != Atheism (re: the Rejection of Theism in Evolution)
crashfrog
Member (Idle past 1497 days)
Posts: 19762
From: Silver Spring, MD
Joined: 03-20-2003


Message 80 of 178 (175021)
01-08-2005 11:09 AM
Reply to: Message 76 by Tal
01-08-2005 9:41 AM


No, (please no cemantics here) because it takes millions of years for things to evolve from one species to another.
No, it actually doesn't. We've observed hundreds of new species in the lab and in thw wild.
Under the right conditions you can actually get new species relatively quickly. Drastic morphological change in a long-lived organism (say, a vertebrate) does take a long time, but that's just a function of the time in between generations of the population.
We can't see evolution happening.
Yes, we can, literally. For instance:
Observed Instances of Speciation
I mean, you even mention a direct observation of microorganisms evolving into a different family, let alone a new species, in your item (6). But then in the very next sentence you deny that we've observed evolution. How does that make any sense to you?
Now, what if I said there is a mountain of evidence to support the idea of God?
Absolutely none of your evidence supports the idea of God. People recieve no answers to prayer that random chance can't explain. We figured out astronomy and how to protect against illness without God's help; why couldn't the Old Testament writers have done the same? And the Bible Codes have no legitimate mathematical basis. It turns out that you can find the exact same codes in any book - indeed, any string of random letters - of sufficient length. And no "supernatural" occurence has ever been substantiated in anything approaching controlled conditions.
I say God absolutely exists based on the mountain of evidence for Him, even though I haven't seen Him.
The problem is that "God" - specifically, "Christian God" - is not the simplest explanation for these things. The simplest explanation is still "people have a known psychological bias that leads them to misapprehend the significance of events, and from this they mistakenly believe that when lucky things happen to them, they're more than just fortunate; an actual God intervened on their behalf."

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crashfrog
Member (Idle past 1497 days)
Posts: 19762
From: Silver Spring, MD
Joined: 03-20-2003


Message 90 of 178 (175832)
01-11-2005 11:14 AM
Reply to: Message 89 by contracycle
01-11-2005 11:07 AM


Well, the question would be "what's their significance value"? I would guess it's pretty frickin' high, given that you can find almost any arrangement of letters at all in a book of sufficient length. In fact I dare say that the significance value, which they do not apparently share, is much, much higher than the odds of any string they present.

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 Message 89 by contracycle, posted 01-11-2005 11:07 AM contracycle has not replied

  
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