The Faith & Religion mega Thread

Originally Posted by mrmazda Evolution as taught in tax-supported public schools is, like religion, based on faith, little to none based on science.

It's certainly understandable you would think that since, as you have noted, you trust in Faith, not scientific evidence. Evolution is taught in tax supported public schools because ALL of the current scientific research consistently is explained by Evolution and not by any other method. It changes over time, is not perfectly identical to Darwin because Darwin did not have the technologies to gather more and deeper evidence, such as DNA. The fundamentals have not changed but details have been refined. Evolution has withstood intense scrutiny and attempts at falsification for nearly 200 years. This has not been any old 200 years but the most explosive advancement in technology in all of human history. The scientific theory of Evolution is most definitely not based on faith. If you think so you are either ill informed or lying.

Originally Posted by mrmazda That anything can be dated with the remotest accuracy much before people began recording their observations and began their scientific activities is fiction dressed up as fact, especially as the years digit count approaches 5. Various dating methods are based upon unprovable assumptions, and fall down dead before 6 digits, if not before 5. Dinosaurs lived with people. For some definition of proof, human's cave paintings, and soft tissue in dinosaur bones, prove it, but there's no significant statistical probability soft tissue comes from bones more than 9,999 years old. We can only speculate that there were such things as time or matter 10,000 years ago. We don't know (it cannot be stated as fact) miracles cannot happen. We don't know what we don't know. If we knew half what there was to know we still wouldn't know anything about the other half.

<SIGH> Again, you are either ill-informed or lying, mrmazda. For the time being I will exercise the benefit of the doubt view that you are simply uneducated in Science. I'll try to be brief. There are trees that sprouted just yesterday and others, like Great Basin Bristlecone Pine trees that are up to 5,071 years old. We can verify that age by tree rings. I assume you are aware of why rings form in cross sections of trees.

Radiometric dating depends on certain radioactive isotopes and their known FIXED RATE half life period and different isotopes have different half lives. For example Carbon 14 has a half life of 5730 years, Uranium 235 has a half life of 704 million years, Uranium 238 of 4.5 Billion years, and Rubidium 87 of 48.8 Billion years. In each case within extremely close tolerances these radioactive isotopes half life based radiometric dating agrees with tree rings and each other. This is just one method among many dozens that radiometric dating has been cross-checked and found accurate. It is repeatable, objective evidence, open to scrutiny... the definition of Science... most definitely NOT faith.

Your fundamentalist literal interpretation and insistence on the no fault, absolute perfection of YOUR view of scripture that denies that even absolute contradictions exist in that scripture despite the fact that Daniel alone is full of outright contradictions without even considering Genesis and Revelations, and so-called predictions that have been proven to not be "pre" at all but written AFTER the event, displays your prejudice and willingness to suspend critical thought. Scripture at best is metaphor and objectively is Myth. Scripture preceded Science and is based on superstition. That you assume that in any conflict between Science and Christian Scripture, scripture is the prima facie winner, is what disqualifies you from having anything meaningful to say about Science because you quite literally do not know what your are talking about.

Why would anybody seek your opinions on rocket science or brain surgery? (Just FTR I can speak intelligently and authoritatively on some aspects of rocket science but have no business in brain surgery) You ARE qualified... perhaps extremely qualified, to quote scripture and on the ultimate question of Creation you could be far more accurate than I, I bow to your expertise in that area, but in Science?, not only "No!" but "Hell no!".

@enorbet: As I have said before, I respectfully disagree that "evolution above the species level" is "science." (No matter how much "time" is injected.)

I believe that I see genetic mechanisms which serve to prevent the sort of genetic-material mixing – followed by successful production of both male and female examples accurately and without further mixing – which such a hypothesis would naturally require. Therefore, while I cannot offer any alternative explanation, I do not choose to accept that the present theory of "above-species evolution" is sustainable. I consider the present "theory" to be mere conjecture: it does not pass my "smoke test." There must be something else, that perhaps we have not discovered yet.

Also ... be nice. "Scripture" is what it is. You can make your case without dismantling or ridiculing someone else's . . .

So what is a species? We have two species of large gull in the UK: the herring gull and the lesser black-backed gull. The former has a light grey back and flesh-coloured legs, and the latter a dark grey back and yellow legs. They are not able to interbreed.

But if you follow the lesser black backed gull eastwards, its legs get more and more muddy in colour and its back gets lighter. By the time you get to the Behring Strait, it has become a herring gull. Herring gulls are found across the USA and we probably first got our British population from over there.

At every point along this ring, you get full interbreeding. But the two ends are separate species.

TLDR of course, and did not vote.
My date format is: YearMonthDayofmonth. Sometimes the last variable is missing. It can also be continued to include the hour, minutes and even seconds of the day (in 24 hour format). Like YearMonthDayofmonth:1234

I will start by something I wrote a few days ago, in my native language and the translation of course.
20220626
Δεν είμαι άπιστος. Απλά εσύ πιστεύεις σε κάτι που δεν υπάρχει
I am not unfaithful. You just believe in something that does not exist

And finally something like a statement I wrote in English many years ago.
201003
I am not a Christian Orthodox anymore. I do not believe in any religion. I know they have mastered the cross. I did not study any religions, except in junior school and some years in high school.
Religion, in my opinion, is to accept certain ideas that originated by someone or a group of people. And religions have fought for these ideas. This is a big reason why some religions have ceased to exist.
RELIGION. A man [human] made fact for the belief in one or many gods, based on the quest or questions he has about his origin and his surroundings, such as the nature, the Earth, the Moon and other planets, and the Sun and other stars.

Edit. I will drop another line from the past.
2002
"We always have unknown and consider it as a higher form of life"

Originally Posted by sundialsvcs @enorbet: As I have said before, I respectfully disagree that "evolution above the species level" is "science." (No matter how much "time" is injected.) I believe that I see genetic mechanisms which serve to prevent the sort of genetic-material mixing – followed by successful production of both male and female examples accurately and without further mixing – which such a hypothesis would naturally require. Therefore, while I cannot offer any alternative explanation, I do not choose to accept that the present theory of "above-species evolution" is sustainable. I consider the present "theory" to be mere conjecture: it does not pass my "smoke test." There must be something else, that perhaps we have not discovered yet.

I'll go a step further. It is very nearly certain "There must be something else, that perhaps we have not discovered yet.", BUT we know enough to know such refinements are not fundamental, that the basic fact of Evolution including speciation is rock solid, despite what you choose to believe or remain skeptical of.

Hazel is spot on with asking what "species" means since "species" is a construct useful for grouping characteristics, but only a useful abstract. Check this out

https://examples.yourdictionary.com/...peciation.html

Originally Posted by sundialsvcs Also ... be nice. "Scripture" is what it is. You can make your case without dismantling or ridiculing someone else's . . .

I think I am being nice. It is a disservice to a fellow human being to accede, in reality or for effect or just to be polite, to delusion or fantasy over reason. To quote Neil deGrasse Tyson, "The Universe is under no obligation to make sense to you" and Carl Sagan "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence".

It is not nice to allow a statement that there are no contradictions, no scientific evidence against, that which is printed in scripture to go unchallenged. I submit that in order for religion to continue to exist it is counter-productive to insist an unmoving, flat, young Earth is held up by pillars and the sky is firmament, that the Sun revolves around the Earth etc etc etc. is the state of reality.

Originally Posted by Phillip Dick Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away"

Again, your (or my) opinion of the distance from London to New York, or Earth to Moon is of zero consequence. It is not debatable. The answer depends totally on repeatable objective terms of measurement. Measuring The same starting and ending point, under the same conditions results a single answer. That answer may vary slightly as the Universe is nothing if not dynamic. For example we know the Moon "crawls" away from Earth at a rate of about 0.25 inches per year. That doesn't imply roughly 0.25 million miles is wrong. It is a meaningful and verifiable fact, only slightly refined with regards to motion and time.

@enorbet: I simply don't agree that "the basic fact of Evolution is rock solid."

Of course, it is "rock solid" at the species level since we can easily observe it happening. But it appears to be an adaptive process, naturally favoring certain slight(!) adaptations over others. But to then extend that reasoning to encompass "all the vast observed diversity of life" is a bridge I will not cross.

And, I do not have any other bridge to cross, instead. The answer to this "Big Kahuna Question™" is simply unknown to me. But it doesn't bother me to say, "I don't know." I'd much rather say that than pretend that I did.

If it's "rock solid" to you, then that's you but not me.

Well sundialsvcs ol' buddy, I'm, guessing you didn't check out those links above since speciation has been observed, documented and analyzed quite a few times actually in organisms as simple (but extremely fast gestation - thousands of geneartions) as virii, and as complex as dogs, birds and squirrels.

We simultaneously observe a level at which "evolutionary" (self-adaptive) changes do occur, and another vast level where such changes appear to be, somehow, prevented. If you add, say, "horse semen" to a "chicken egg," nothing happens. (Why not? It's DNA, isn't it?)

This is simply why I believe that "there must be a missing piece to this puzzle."

There must be something which bridges the gap between "faithfully reproducing after their own kind," for thousands of generations, and something which accounts for "the vast diversity which we see all around us ..." all of them now "faithfully reproducing."

On the one hand, "self-adaptive slight changes." On the other, a vast diversity of stable and successful life forms in a dizzying array, such that every time we poke around some forgotten corner of this globe we find yet another one, and are always surprised. (Even at the very bottom-most depths of the seas ... there is life(!) down there!) "Simple random chance" does not account for this, IMHO, no matter how many "billions of years" you toss into the pot.

Call it what, or Who, you want, there is something else(!) that we just don't know. Yet.

Originally Posted by sundialsvcs We simultaneously observe a level at which "evolutionary" (self-adaptive) changes do occur, and another vast level where such changes appear to be, somehow, prevented. If you add, say, "horse semen" to a "chicken egg," nothing happens. (Why not? It's DNA, isn't it?)

If we mix Hydrogen and Nitrogen why don't we get water? They're chemicals made of protons, neutrons and electrons aren't they? <sarc>

DNA functions as code. Just as one could write both Windows or Linux in C (or Assembly) that doesn't mean Windows can run, elf, aout, or any other Unix code and vice versa. It matters how it is written, yet bugs do occur and exploits are possible in any interactive, large blocks of code.

Originally Posted by sundialsvcs We simultaneously observe a level at which "evolutionary" (self-adaptive) changes do occur, and another vast level where such changes appear to be, somehow, prevented. If you add, say, "horse semen" to a "chicken egg," nothing happens. (Why not? It's DNA, isn't it?)

Wait, are you sure? Has anyone tried this? Maybe the only thing preventing the evolution of beautiful winged horses is that horses tend not to ejaculate on chicken eggs.

And if you put horse semen into a female donkey, you get a mule!

Originally Posted by hazel And if you put horse semen into a female donkey, you get a mule!

... which is sterile.

Originally Posted by ntubski Wait, are you sure? Has anyone tried this?

Lots of strange things have been tried. But, let's not go there, shall we?

Originally Posted by enorbet DNA functions as code. Just as one could write both Windows or Linux in C (or Assembly) that doesn't mean Windows can run, elf, aout, or any other Unix code and vice versa. It matters how it is written, yet bugs do occur and exploits are possible in any interactive, large blocks of code.

DNA may be the underlying code, but there is a great deal more to "reproductive biology," and there's a lot of things about it which we still don't understand. There are processes which enable the system to faithfully(!) reproduce millions of copies of "an organism" which always vary only slightly. If we attempt more radical combinations, they don't work. Therefore, something is preventing this.

If these self-control mechanisms didn't exist, entropy would take over and the whole system would break down. But, it never does. And we don't entirely know why [not].

Geez sundialsvcs, of course there is more to know about DNA, genetics and reproduction but that does NOT mean we know nothing. By a huge majority, and nearly ALL in appropriate fields of genetics, biology, etc scientists consider Evolution simple fact and backed by massive objective evidence. Anyone who denies that commonly either lacks training and knowledge of that evidence or has some belief agenda that eliminates even the possibility of any evidence mattering one iota.

So unless you wish to earn the label of agenda driven self-inflicted ignorance, you really need to look at serious evidence. I'm linking one but admittedly it is quite technical and you may find it daunting but I think you can use terminology to seek more layman oriented discussions.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7153321/

ahhh poo! here's one https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viral_evolution

Good read.