The Faith & Religion mega Thread

be aware that if you want to disprove the theory of evolution you will have to provide some better arguments than this one

Excuse me... the ape-centered evolution just appeared in the 19th century after Darwin, while all other records contrary to its postulated theory have spanned in thousands of years including the holy scriptures and qur-an. Wherefore, what gave you the right to shift the burden of proof to me? Evolution is nothing but theory. Theory is just a theory, no matter how you deeply profess it as a matter of belief.

Sorry. Malek, but you don't understand what a scientific theory is; you're confusing it with a hypothesis. A hypothesis is a "what-if" suggestion which, if true, would explain some otherwise puzzling facts. On the basis of this, predictions are made and experiments designed to test for the predicted results. If they are found, the hypothesis is confirmed. A hypothesis that is repeatedly confirmed by experiment becomes accepted as a fact.

A theory is an explanation of the facts, linking them together so that people can understand why things are as they are. Typically theories integrate different branches of science, showing that what looked before like isolated and unexplained facts make sense in the light of what is known in other branches of science. Modern evolutionary theory now integrates taxonomy, paleontology, genetics, embryology, and the basic atomic physics that gives us radiometric dating.

The genetic evidence is strongest of all. Take a particular gene and sequence it in a variety of living creatures. You can create a provisional family tree by assuming that it will be more similar in more closely related animals. That doesn't prove anything of course! But now take another gene and do the same thing. If there's no such thing as evolution, you should get a completely different tree. But you don't: you get the same one. Take a thousand genes and do the same for each and every one of them. You get a thousand copies of the same family tree!

So either evolution really happened, or some very spiteful and deceitful God has spent a great deal of energy forging evidence to make it look that way. But why would God do such a thing? And why would anyone want to worship a god who behaved like that? I, as a Christian, prefer to worship a God who tells the truth in His creation.

Einstein once said: "Raffiniert ist der Herr Gott; boeshaft ist Er nicht!" The Lord God is subtle but He is not malicious."

Isn't "theory" this: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/theory ?

IMHO it is anyway.

By extension, I could and would say the same about this entire thread, with all respect to members posting in this thread.

Originally Posted by jsbjsb001 Isn't "theory" this: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/theory ? IMHO it is anyway. By extension, I could and would say the same about this entire thread, with all respect to members posting in this thread.

That is the difference between what is vernacular for "theory" and "scientific theory" ( see ==>> -- What is Meant by Sigma 5 -- . In the case of The Theory of Evolution this is the scientific term NOT the vernacular. Similarly people often use the word "couple" to mean " a few...maybe a handful" when "couple" specifically means "two". It is the difference between cursory and exact. If you actually follow the above link you will see just how strict the term "scientific theory" really is. It may astound you and those here that toss "theory" around as if it was "anything pulled out of some nether orifice during a pipe dream".

You and anyone else are perfectly welcome to choose how you use the term but do realize that it says a great deal about one's commitment to due diligence in discovering fundamental truth. So the question to you is "Just how reliable do you wish to be and how much do you care whether people can count on your conclusions as real or fantasy?"

Originally Posted by malekmustaq Excuse me... the ape-centered evolution just appeared in the 19th century after Darwin, while all other records contrary to its postulated theory have spanned in thousands of years including the holy scriptures and qur-an. Wherefore, what gave you the right to shift the burden of proof to me? Evolution is nothing but theory. Theory is just a theory, no matter how you deeply profess it as a matter of belief.

In order to respond without being too technical (which you seem to prefer) I have to ask you to consider that the test for veracity does not depend at all on how long a belief has been held. In fact the nature of Discovery shows that the older a belief is, the more likely it is to be based on misunderstanding and/or superstition and some agenda other than defining actual truth.

One of the main strengths of Scientific Discovery is explainable in individual terms. Imagine you grew up medieval times when the scientific method had yet to be clearly defined and practised by great thinkers to create a reliable body of knowledge and you heard that if you sailed far enough you would "fall off the edge of the Earth". Now imagine that you were bold enough to sail a mile out to sea, then later, two miles, then four and so on. Along the way you would gain experience at sailing under a variety of conditions and your confidence would naturally grow accordingly along with that of any crew under you in your Captainship.

Then one day you hear about an idea that it may be possible to get to the Far East by traveling West. Absurd. right? But then you consider that when far out at sea and looking homeward to the mountains above your home shore, you can only see the very tops of the mountains and as you travel back home you can see further and further down the mountain until once again at home you see them whole as you normally did when homebound. This might make you consider what could cause such a phenomenon and speculate that the one idea that fit was that the Earth is round, not flat, and that East and West are relative terms on a sphere. Maybe you even heard tales that Vikings had traveled along the shoreline and discovered new land to the west, so perhaps it wasn't such a huge gamble to continue your exploration. So you provision your ship for many days at sea and gather those who trust you and head west.

How does this story end? Does it verify superstitious fear or does it confirm experience, observation and logic? Obviously we know the answer exactly because some men did exactly this and passed their experiences into the body of knowledge making it vastly easier and more rewarding to gather resources to go even further and add yet more to that body of knowledge.

Now consider that similar exploration and logging of data was going on in every area of human experience and at some point integrated together, filtering out the anecdotal and fanciful speculation leaving only hard fact. Can you imagine the weight of this preponderance of evidence compared to the mere passing of years with little or no exploration and no universal codec of sifting out the facts?

This is the difference between early Man's Search for The Truth and what became an exact Science.

I wrote a blog on this a few years ago.

Originally Posted by malekmustaq Excuse me... the ape-centered evolution just appeared in the 19th century after Darwin, while all other records contrary to its postulated theory have spanned in thousands of years including the holy scriptures and qur-an. Wherefore, what gave you the right to shift the burden of proof to me? Evolution is nothing but theory. Theory is just a theory, no matter how you deeply profess it as a matter of belief.

Hazel and Enorbet have replied very generously, and I believe they have already said all there is to say in response to your comment. I only have one thought to add on the side. Your ideas about the theory of evolution are very inaccurate at best, and it looks like they have been influenced by some highly unscientific and apologetic sources, something like the "Watchtower" for instance. Such publications pretend to be fighting against the theory of evolution (it is their goal) but they don't do any actual research work in order to try to back up their own statements with some shareable evidence. All they do is sling mud. Their contribution to knowledge: zero.

If your ideas about evolution weren't influenced by unreliable sources, then perhaps you wouldn't be talking about an alleged "ape-centered evolution", posting the 1 000 000 000 000 001th iteration of the «It's just a theory» routine, and claiming that a given belief must be necessarily true just because it has been around for thousends of years. That is, some of the weakest arguments against science and evolution ever. That's not necessarily your fault. However, I strongly suggest that if you want to know what you are talking about, then you focus your attention on more reliable sources, namely on publications that have as a goal the diffusion of a genuine and constructive scientific culture, not a gratuitous war against it.

Originally Posted by enorbet That is the difference between what is vernacular for "theory" and "scientific theory" ( see ==>> -- What is Meant by Sigma 5 -- . In the case of The Theory of Evolution this is the scientific term NOT the vernacular. Similarly people often use the word "couple" to mean " a few...maybe a handful" when "couple" specifically means "two". It is the difference between cursory and exact. If you actually follow the above link you will see just how strict the term "scientific theory" really is. It may astound you and those here that toss "theory" around as if it was "anything pulled out of some nether orifice during a pipe dream". You and anyone else are perfectly welcome to choose how you use the term but do realize that it says a great deal about one's commitment to due diligence in discovering fundamental truth. So the question to you is "Just how reliable do you wish to be and how much do you care whether people can count on your conclusions as real or fantasy?"

Well, I should say that (for the record), I voted "Agnostic" for the poll question for this thread. As, I firmly believe that (as the definition for "Agnostic" states) we as a human race, could not know about matters beyond this world/higher power(s) if you will.

As far as "scientific theory" is concerned, the only difference I can see between that and "theory" in general, is that one concerns things, that do not concern science and "scientific theory", is related to only scientific related matters.

In answer to your post, it does make a lot of sense and I think you are quite accurate in what your saying, and in general I would agree with it. I must and will confess, I'm not an expert on the "Theory of Evolution", therefore I can't really make a lot of comments about that subject.

My point being, that "in general" (scientific theory or other unrelated theory), is that, unless it can be proved beyond a doubt, it is just that at the end of the day, being 'a theory' (scientific or not).

I do believe that there would be 'something' above us (god/him/it/higher power/whatever else people want to call it/etc) as a human race, but I will be honest in saying I personally do not see the point in debating, what we have no hope of understanding. As in, for instance, 'what is god/higher power/almighty/etc'. It does not bother me if others would on the other hand like to debate it, as it can be interesting to read what others may think about the subject.

Originally Posted by malekmustaq Excuse me... the ape-centered evolution just appeared in the 19th century after Darwin, while all other records contrary to its postulated theory have spanned in thousands of years including the holy scriptures and quran.

St Augustine pointed out that a prophet's job is to tell people about religion, not to give lessons in science, geography, or history. When they speak about non-religious matters they are on their own. He concluded by saying that to deny known facts because some Biblical writer wrote before they were discovered was to make a fool of yourself and a mockery of religion. That is why the majority of Christians have no problem with the idea of evolution.

The obvious problem with rejecting evolution is explaining the lack of modern animals in the early fossil record, but there are many things that the theory of evolution explains that the general public are unaware of. For example, the larynx is controlled by the superior laryngeal nerve and the recurrent laryngeal nerves. The superior laryngeal and right recurrent laryngeal nerves go straight from the brain to the larynx. The left recurrent nerve, however, descends into the chest and does a U-turn. That mean that in a giraffe, the distance from the brain to the larynx is a matter of inches, while the nerve is twice the length of the giraffe's throat! That can be explained as an accident in the evolution of mammals from fish-like ancestors, but it's hard to explain as a design feature. There's a similar, though smaller, U-turn in the vas deferens.

If you have not actually read(!) Darwin's books, both On the Origin of Species and The Voyage of the Beagle, then I would heartily recommend both of them to you. Professor Darwin was an excellent and meticulous writer, and he had many scientific adventures!

I also say this because you really need to see for yourself(!) what he did – and did not – say. His hypotheses were carefully laid out, in the academic customs of his time, and today when I hear many people speak of him, I think to myself, "obviously, you have never actually read the book(s) ..."

Darwin clearly understood that he was speaking both about things which could be empirically studied in real time ... such as the observable mutations of insects ... and things that could not. He implicitly assumed that his learned readers understood the conventions of "scientific philosophy." But it is quite clear that many (mis-)interpreters of his writings do not.

- - -
(stepping away from this, now, to express my own thoughts ...)

Clearly, we now know that we share a great deal of genetic material with many other creatures, and when we examine the progress of human fetuses in utero we see very remarkable things – such as gills and a tail. But no human woman has ever given birth to an ape, nor vice-versa. (All species, however, do from time to time abort their pregnancies – "miscarriage.") We do not yet understand these things. But we very clearly are witnessing a complex and still largely-unknown process, navigating through a soup of potential chaos to unerringly produce a particular outcome.

But, within the scope of this process, we also readily observe a mechanism of species evolution: a process that produces variations, yet always viable ones. We still do not understand how this process works, nor how the genome allows for it.

I frankly think that it is "entirely too much of a stretch" to believe that this process is in fact accountable for the vast diversity of "kingdoms, phylums, classes, orders, families, genuses, and species" that we observe on our planet. In fact, I believe that the "error-preventing" behavior that we can readily observe in species evolution contra-indicates such a hypothesis ... with or without "billions and billions™ of years."

I continue to maintain that "there must be more." There must be some other process out there which we so-far have not observed ... or have not recognized. Nature is far from revealing all of her secrets to us "mere mortals."

Even if you choose to "summarily reject" the notion of "Deity," I think that the people who postulate their existence have, in any case, recognized that "the vast profusion of Life" is the product of some kind of exception. And, I think that they are correct in their assessment, whether or not you accept their conclusions. In my judgment, "this is not something that species evolution can explain." There is, very simply, "something going on here that we don't (yet ...!!) know."

I feel that, "even though I don't know what the answer is, I know what the answer isn't!"

By the way, it might be worth to observe how the expression "ape-centered evolution" has nothing to do with evolution itself, but only betrays its creationist and heavily anthropocentric origin. Take the old (W)MATCOTU [1] mentality and project it through a deforming lens to give a twisted, false and pejorative image of what evolution is. Evolution of course is not centered on any particular species.

[1] (White) Man At The Center Of The Universe

Originally Posted by DavidMcCann St Augustine pointed out that a prophet's job is to tell people about religion, not to give lessons in science, geography, or history. When they speak about non-religious matters they are on their own. He concluded by saying that to deny known facts because some Biblical writer wrote before they were discovered was to make a fool of yourself and a mockery of religion. That is why the majority of Christians have no problem with the idea of evolution.

Good point. Here's another quote from a man who was also a Christian, though not a particularly devout one:
"The Bible tells us how to go to heaven, not how the heavens go."
Galileo Galilei

Originally Posted by malekmustaq Excuse me... the ape-centered evolution just appeared in the 19th century after Darwin, while all other records contrary to its postulated theory have spanned in thousands of years including the holy scriptures and qur-an. Wherefore, what gave you the right to shift the burden of proof to me? Evolution is nothing but theory. Theory is just a theory, no matter how you deeply profess it as a matter of belief.

Computers don't exist because thie'r new so stop using them( did "we" get smarter or not )‽

Religion is a cult. Just like the law* and all opinions... make our higher power education! THAT is how you're alive today or try teaching y'our babies to only suck daddy’s nipple and see how long they live‽

Somethings we don't have to believe... seeds were not planted they fell, like solar systems. derr

Look-up,,, everyone in the room looked to see where Mork's mom was looking???