Religion

[Acriku]

I would think it is the opposite. Religion is the interior of the sphere, and the truth is outside the sphere. The more you believe in religion the more the sphere grows and the farther away the truth gets.

[ordos45]

Evolution is just a theory you all.  Tell me, have any of you tested evolution by the scientific method?  Oh wait you can't live a thousand years to prove it!  ::)

The Big Bang Theory corresponding with evolution.  Ok so the universe is created by an explosion of nothing.  (Wait isn't that a violation of science's basic laws?  Matter cannot be created or destroyed.)  Millions of years pass until our pathetic planet forms.  Around a few million to billion years later lightning strikes the ocean causing life.  (Hmm, could have sworn science also said that life could not be created by inatimate objects.)  

Now these single cell organisms evolve over millions and billions of years into higher life forms.  Eventually creating dinosaurs etc.  Then scientists can only speculate at what happened to the dinosaurs.  (My view is the biblical one.  Noah's flood.  Check out Glenn Rose, Texas.  Its streams have fossilized footprints of humans and dinosaurs side by side, same era!  ;))

So the dinos are wiped out by whatever.  Now little mammals begin to evolve.  They become Homo Sapiens and eventually Homo Sapiens Sapiens.  Who begint o wonder where they came from.

Eventually a man named Charles Darwin, a drunk on some ship thinks up a theory.  Poor Charles who took three years to realize he wasn't getting paid for his work on the ship...plus he had an affair with the Captain's wife.  

So you go to your family reunion and find out an ape is your parents' mother's cousin's brother.   ::)

Also, I could have sworn this is a strike against it all.  Have you ever seen a dog give birth to a cat, or a cat give birth to a human?  Its impossible.  It also means, you can't have evolution then.

[Acriku]

Ordos cmon, you are taking cheap shots now. Exaggerating to the point where it looks like nonsense. A dog wouldn't just give birth to a cat (although anything could happen ;)).  I think we all know the proposed timeline of evolution and adaptation in general. An organism develops a trait to adapt to it's surroundings, when the trait becomes so common among the organisms that must have that trait to survive it gradually becomes a trait in the genetic code, giving every organism of that species or selection of organisms within the species that trait when they are made. Theory yes, probable yes, law no.

[gryphon]

Ordos45, if you are under the impression that the post about Darwin's theory is a compleation to the other posts your wrong. The post on Darwin are ment as an answer to Acriku. The other parts to The Old Worm, and to others interested ofcourse ;).

They are non related.

"However, unlike the cave fish, we have the ability to imagine what is outside of our cave" and this is what I remain verry sceptical about. We might think we can emagine, but can we really ? In my opinion it is verry possible that we can't emagine things outside the abilety our body has given us to imagine. And so it's still limited.

But this is just as what Nema mentiond. We have to asume these things, alse you can even work with them.

And you are so right, it is more plausible that it is true at there, that we realy do see a "real" part of our univers. But "I can't help myself" thinking that the more plausible way is the right one without the possibbilety that it isn't. I see it as a justification of itself. And this doesn't mean it isn't true, but it make me verry sceptical in that way.

But this is my opinion, no, my idee or better my personal sceptical believe. And I really can't prove it or give any form of legitimate reason why it should be like that.

So it's not to debate over, just what I personally think.

[Caid Ivik]

If Darwin was totaly right, on Earth are thousands of intelligent kinds of creatures.

[The_old_worm]

Gryphon, I can't really argue with you, because in the end, you very well could be right. Imagination is limited, your right.  Can we actually imagine space-time?  We can feel the effects on it from gravity, but try to comprehend the actual folding of space.  Nor can we imagine infinity.  Technology does give us some opportunity to see things as we can't normally see them, expanding our perception, but I still think we are incapable of seeing everything.  And knowing the overall reality is probably beyond us just as colors and light are beyond that cave-fish.  I think it is healthy to be skeptical, to make sure we don't subscribe to any belief with Blind Faith.

Well, finally someone is ready to dive into evolution vs. creation.  I've been trying to bait someone into it for a while now, and no one has bitten.  I think though, that maybe this should be on another thread, so instead of replying here, I am going to start a new thread.

[Dezertfish]

Sorry it took me so long to reply, my internet has been causing me some trouble and I had an algebra test. I will try to answer each of you.

Acriku said "I'm sorry, but you can't sum up a religion in a few words. Any religion has different variants and different strings, so to sum it all up in a few words would be a lie."

Not really, you can sum up almost anything in a few words (Darwinistic Evolution-All creatures came from one creature which has been gradually changing and becoming more complex since then; Islam-Muhammad was a prophet from God and you should obey what he said and spread Islam; Nazism-The Germans are better than everyone else so we should conquer the world and eliminate anyone who gets in our way; Trade-you give something they want to them, they in turn give something you want to you) just to name a few, I am sure you can understand this concept.

Acriku said "You prove that one example doesn't work for the statement, then the part concerning that is wrong."

No, there are exceptions to almost everything. Are you saying that division is impossible because you cannot divide by zero? Or that lying is not bad because you might be trying to surprise somebody (for his or her own good)? or that brussel sprouts are not healthy if someone were to choke on one?

When I asked "Will Osama rise from the dead and appear to hundreds, and did he do miraculous wonders that defied the laws of science while he was still alive?"

I meant, did anyone predict he would come and do what he did before he was born, and has anyone heard of him doing anything miraculous?

Acriku said "What do you think this is, a competition?

In a way, yes. More so than you would like to admit and more serious than you believe at the moment.

Acriku said "The Bible didn't "know" these things that we have discovered or accumulated. Show me a verse that states how to treat viruses and diseases, how to make an airplane, how to utilize the energy from the sun, etc. There is a reason that the Bible contains things that were "back in the day" thinkings."

The Bible did predict many things before science discovered them. Examples? The order of Creation agrees with the order scientists believe the early earth developed; All those laws in Leviticus are methods of avoiding disease, poisoning, STDs, genetic disorders, plagues, and other things; the end of the world is described as having a fire that "destroys the very elements", this was impossible until modern atomic theory; the book of Job mentions ocean and atmospheric currents, years before they were discovered.

Acriku said "Here we go again blaming things we can't explain on Satan. Hey Satan is bad, so why can't we just say he made all bad things? And God is good, so he made all the good things? Do you realize how childish and primitive that thinking is? No offence or anything."

Sometimes the simplest answer is the correct one. And, correction, God made all things, including free will. Satan decides to try to take God's place, God says this is evil, so it is. Satan attempts to undermine God and God does not destroy him yet so that he can test humans through temptation.

The old worm said "Creationsist are the most dishonest group out there."

They are? Creationists have been saying the same thing for millenia. We do not have to lie, when the truth does not change ("I am the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow"). Naturalists have faked "the missing link" many times (Perking Man, Piltdown man, Java Man, etc.). The peppered moth illustration is also a fraud, (the moths do not even land on the tree bark). Lucy has been reclassified as an extinct ape.

If species gradually developed, how do you explain the Cambrian Explosion? How did the random amino acids that were formed overcome the obstacles of oxygen(If present it would corrode bonds, if not present no ozone layer would protect DNA/RNA from UV radiation.), tar (a major by product in all amino acid producing experiments), and chirality(right-handed/left-handedness)?

You call us dishonest? You asked me if I had a test to falsify evolution. Here are a few above. Here they are again. Oxygen, if there was any, it would have corroded the bonds between the amino acids. If there wasn't any, UV rays would have done the job instead. In the experiments that "proved that amino acids could have been formed in an early earth, tar was always a major by-product, needless to say, it wasn't very healthy for the first cell. All amino acids have Chirality, which is right or left handedness. In experiments that have "naturally" produced amino acids, they were produced in equal amounts. DNA and RNA chains require only one type bonded together in (relatively) long chains. Also, whenever amino acids bond, a molecule of water is produced. For a reaction to continue producing something already in abundance(such as if the first life was born in the sea), is not "natural".

[Dezertfish]

(my post was too losn for one post so I had to do three):D

You call me a liar? You say that you do not reject things based on anything but fact, and try to say you will listen to anybody; While you assume you know how I think ("And which system sounds good to you Dezerfish,(and we all know which sounds better to you),")and you assume that I am trying to discredit the big bang theory, (the_old_worm said "Yes, you can clobber the big bang theory all you want, but their is sufficient evidence to validate the theory.  No it is not proven, and certainly not fully understood, but at lease science is trying, instead of creationists who insist that their mythology has the answer.") it shows that you did not even read my post. No, this dishonest creationist has not edited it if that is what you think.(As a landsraad member, Acriku can probably verify that I did not hack in or anything ). I said "The big bang theory has only been proved in one respect, that there was a begginning(something people have known since pre-history), and that the galaxies are very probably moving outward(some dispute it)." I believe that GOD CREATED THE BIG BANG (all caps so people will notice it even if they skim). Got that? If you believe that the Big Bang ever happened, then you admit that there was a beginning. The laws of thermodynamics, the COBE project, and Einstein's formulas all point to this. If there was a beginning, then you admit that  something must be eternal, or that something not eternal emerged from nothing. A beginning also kills the odds of evolution because it means that it did not have infinite time. Old worm said "Which do you think has more likelyhood to be wrong about the final truth?" Likelihood? The chances of a single cell randomly evolving by chance have been calculated at about 1 in 10^40,000(in the entire universe). The odds of that cell evolving into anything intelligent before that cell's planet's sun burned out have been calculated at 1 in 10^1,000,000,000,000,000.

[Dezertfish]

I do not think you(old_worm) practice what you preach, old_worm said "Using evidence, observation and logic to support theories, accepting the fallability of human perception, or guessing about the answers and having Blind Faith in those answers, denying all other possibilities." Old_worm says "Science is neutal to God. If evidence arises that proves God's existance, or at the very least makes him likely, science will accept that, until another theory comes along to prove it wrong." And yet you ignore everybody who does not agree with yourself. Dishonest?

About macro/micro evolution. Micro evolution is minor changes within a species. This does well to explain how a bacterium becomes resistant to penicillin, or how bugs get resistant to bug spray. But how does a fish become a lizard or bird? In order to develop lungs, millions of favorable mutations would have had to occur at the same time in a sperm or an egg, that just happened to become fertilized. If a fish got lungs, it would also need feathers and hollow bones and many other favorable mutations ALL AT THE SAME TIME, other wise it would drown. Now who shows ignorance? The chances of your theory happening as you claim it did by chance, are unbelievably against you.  Vestigal organs? How can you prove that they are not used for any purpose? Aristotle thought that the brain was an organ that did no more than cool the blood. We still have not been able to make artificial intelligence, despite millions in research. Many mistakes have been made as well. Scientists have discovered that the "gills" they found in some mammal embryos are really the beginnings of a liver.  "Science" does not know everything and nowadays will not research anything that is not profitable.  What evidence from the morphological family tree you can post it, and I will read it.  Why would the order we find fossils be even able to go against accurate carbon fourteen dating? (we still have not perfected that method of dating).  What is so extraordinary about beneficial mutations, they do occasionally happen, and sometimes when they do, they get passed on to offspring.

If you wrote a story it would not be believable because you said it, If you and hundreds of other people all wrote stories that did not contradict each other, over thousands of years, then it has a much better chance of being true. Old_worm wrote "There is no evidence supporting any of it." Oh, is that so? Then how can you explain the historical facts? If Jesus was not who he said he was, he was both a liar and a fool(be cause he died for it), or insane. Does what he taught strike you as the teachings of a maniac? Peter denied ever knowing Jesus three times, then he was crucified upside-down for him. Not everyone believed at first (remember Thomas?, he ended up dying for Jesus too).

When the evidence is against you, what do you say?

Sorry this was so late, but it took me two afternoons to write it, because I verified all my scientific facts I used in writing it. I also had some tests to study for, plus I usually can only get online from school. All references to posts came from this thread, with or without the author's permission.

By the way Acriku, how do you do multiple quotes per post?

[nemafakei]

Ordos... What?!

First came organic molecules and proteins. Not hard to crate naturally. Then one came along that could replicate itself, and it did so... until it developed etc etc...

"Wait isn't that a violation of science's basic laws?  Matter cannot be created or destroyed"

Firstly, there was never nothing there was no time before the big bang. It's not that nothing existed before, it's that there was no before. If you want to go into the matter/antimatter physics discussion, IM me, otherwise, the idea is the amount of matter and antimatter were equal, but more antimatter was lost in the reaction. 99% of all mass was lost anyway.

Evolution happens to EVERYTHING. it's been tested in computer circuits, and other scientific models. Evolution is, to an extent, a manifestation of the 1st law of thermodynamics.

[Anathema]

@ Dezertfish

As for your point that it is to unlikely that an intelligent species evolves befor the planet perishes, imagine the following.

How come you exist? It is a mere coincidence that your genetic structure was formed the way it was. There is an (almost) infinate amount of possible outcomes if you go back to your grandfather of how you could have turnded out. But you did. You do not question how it is that it was YOU how came to existence instead of a totally different person in your place. Yet it was back then extremely unlikely that YOU would turn out the way you did. But you are here, and that is my point. We, mankind, are here, although millions of years ago it would have been unlikely that we would come to existance.

I hope I made my point clearly :).

[Edric O]

Earthnuker:

You said: "Mankind is at this time thriving, more  then ever. The most basic function of any form of life is to make sure its genes do not perish but live on. To make sure the species as a whole lives on."

I have to strongly disagree. That rule applies only to non-intelligent lifeforms. WE ARE HUMANS. WE ARE NOT LIVESTOCK. We must rid ourselves of animal instincts and animal behaviour. We are SUPERIOR lifeforms. We must develop our human side and dispose of our animal side. In order to do that, we must replace "survival of the fittest" with equality and we must find a HIGHER PURPOSE for our species, not just multiplying like rabbits.

The_old_worm:

Yes, my life has been made considerabely better by science and the neverending search for truth. MY life is better, but what about the 80% of the world's population who use up only 20% of its resources? While we enjoy our cars, TVs and Internet, billions live and die in a miserable state of poverty. So OVERALL, I think humanity is doing worse than before. People like you and me are the privileged, not the norm.

Freedom of choice is one of our privileges. The vast majority of humans don't have it.

"That's a pretty weak argument, let me help you out.  Perhaps the Kingdoms shown are only visions, not literally seen, but experienced through some kind of hypnotic trance. Now, there's a much better  argument for your side. This is theory is very possible, but given the knowledge of the time, it makes  more sense that they would believe that, on a high enough mountain, you could see everything."

You are right about the first part. My argument was similar... But as for seeing the whole world from a mountain, I doubt they believed that even back then. The Roman Empire was huge and anyone knew that you couldn't possibly see it all from even the highest mountain in Palestine.

"I recognize the dangers inherent in discovery, and the danger of  man's misuse of that knowledge.  We could very well destroy ourselves.  But stagnation leads to death.  It was our curious nature and will to survive that drove our ancestors out of Africa, and allowed the advancement of human society."

I do not dispute that. But my question is: After we've got this far, is further advancement really worth the risk? Notice that throughout history, technological advances have been followed by territorial expansion. But now there isn't anywhere left to expand to! I think we desperately need to colonize other planets in order to afford to continue advancing with minimal risk. Until then, science is getting more and more dangerous. Take biology for example. It's nice that we can find new cures for tough diseases, but as the world gets more and more unstable due to overcrowding, there's a high probability someone will use all that good research to create a killer bacteria.

Not to mention the increasing number of people using science as their religion...

The world is ready to blow anyway (look at the political situation, it's horrible - war in the Middle East, fascism apparently on the rise in France and Austria, a highly unstable former superpower, etc.). We don't need a new discovery adding more explosive power to the inevitable blast...

As for accepting God vs. accepting we are real... I don't see any evidence at all to support our existence. If reality is in fact an illusion, then all our observations are false, making any evidence invalid. You can't prove something exists or not without stepping out of it.... And we can't step out of our reality.

And regarding evolution vs. creation... I don't see sufficient evidence to point either way, so I remain neutral.

                     

[The_old_worm]

I really wanted to move this topic of evolution to another thread, because this thread should be religion.

[Gobalopper]

Get back on topic. :)

[The_old_worm]

Your concept of the Cambrian explosion also demonstrates your ignorance to the topic.  Again, why don't you read something other than your Creationist propoganda.  The Cambrian explosion in relation to evolutionary standards was a very short time, but the actual length of time was actually around 15 million years.  The Cambrian explosion refers to the explosion of fossils from shellfish in which fossils were left behind. Creatures existing before the Cambrian were invertebrate like Jellyfish, so no fossils would have been left.  Again, read up before you post.  This is the kind of dishonesty I am talking about.  Scientists admit when there is a fraud and when they make mistakes, Creationists bend the wording to make it sound better explosion must mean immediate right?  Get your facts straight!

As for Amino Acids and the left handed problem.  "One remarkable consequence of (the violation of mirror symmetry by the weak force) is the fact that energy levels of molecules and that of their mirror images are not exactly equal.  The effect is extremely small: the difference in energy levels between one particular amino acie and it's mirror image is roughly one part in 1x10 to the seventeenth(I can't do exponents on the computer).  This may seem very tiny, but...symmetry breaking requires only a very tiny disturbance. In general, lower energy forms of molecules should be favored in nature.  For this amino acid, it can be calculated that with 98% probability the lower enery form will become dominant within a period of about a hundred thousand years. And, indeed the version of this amino acid which is found in living organisms is the lower-energy one."(Ian Stewart 1995). Again, you've taken a fact of nature and twisted it to fit your ideas.

[The_old_worm]

Sorry, Gob, that's why I started the other thread. I'll post the rest of my response there.

[Edric O]

Nema:

"Without assuming reality is real, we can understand nothing."

Yes we can. We could direct our research into finding a way out of this illusion, or we could try to analyze the nature of it and make (mostly unfounded) theories on what IS real. Without assuming God is real, we leave many questions without any possible answer. Take the "big one" for example: WHY?

Why are we (humans) here?

Why does the Universe exist?

etc.

"I'm just taking shots at humanity, now."

Join the club. :)

"Seriously, our only purpose is to function."

No, that is an animal's purpose. I believe we are superior. I believe we have a much higher purpose. And if we don't, then we must find one!

Let me complete your list:

fossil to fission, fission to fusion, fusion to antimatter, antimatter to exotic matter, exotic matter to singularity, singularity to... space-time itself as a source of "energy", whatever that will mean at the time...

gryphon... still no comment to you, sorry :) But I think I covered everything in my comments to the other posters. If I missed anything, let me know.

[Acriku]

Not really, you can sum up almost anything in a few words

I highly doubt that Desert. For one, the things we can't explain cannot be put into a few words, so that's about 99% of anything. For the 1%, there is not a constant in one subject that describes the branches of that subject! If there is, then what are the branches for? The branches hold the core of the subject, but change the variables around the core. Thus making it non-explainable in a "few" words. Somethings sure they can be explained in a few words, but those are few.

No, there are exceptions to almost everything

Of course there are exceptions! But my point is, is that if you say the whole statement of one thing is true, but you find part of it is wrong, then the fact that it is true is false, and you would have to describe the whole thing false if you had to say what the whole thing was (true or false).

Acriku said "What do you think this is, a competition?

In a way, yes. More so than you would like to admit and more serious than you believe at the moment.

This is a discussion, with no end at hand. I was commenting on striving for the smallest of a victory in this discussion, and it doesn't need to be that way.

Sometimes the simplest answer is the correct one.

Yes, in some cases. But saying that whenever something bad happens it must be the bad demon in Hell that did it is pure ignorance. Remember in the more primitive times humans blamed everything that happened on the gods, this came from primitive thinking. So you think it isn't primitive to say that now?

The Bible did predict many things before science discovered them

Could you quote some verses for further discussion? I kind of do not have a Bible laying around.

And Edric, if people are saying our whole experience of existing is an illusion, or something of that matter, then I say this: why do we need a purpose? Why can't we just be here to live? To go about the circle of life and be pawns in the chess game of evolution and survival?

[Dezertfish]

I will try to reply on the new thread next time(Gob). I do not have much time right now so if I don't answer everybody who has addressed me until tommorrow or next week, do not think I am gone, or that I don't care. Because I do. Also, I am in high school and everything I use comes from other sources besides myself(including evolutionists, creationists, and cosmic ancestryionists among others), so if I am wrong on a specific point, and you can prove it, so be it. I would also like ot state that I learned most of this AFTER I had been taught evolution in 7th grade and AFTER learning what I now know, did I accept Jesus.

@ Dezertfish

As for your point that it is to unlikely that an intelligent species evolves befor the planet perishes, imagine the following.

How come you exist? It is a mere coincidence that your genetic structure was formed the way it was. There is an (almost) infinate amount of possible outcomes if you go back to your grandfather of how you could have turnded out. But you did. You do not question how it is that it was YOU how came to existence instead of a totally different person in your place. Yet it was back then extremely unlikely that YOU would turn out the way you did. But you are here, and that is my point. We, mankind, are here, although millions of years ago it would have been unlikely that we would come to existance.

I hope I made my point clearly :).

Acriku, I still have'nt figured out how you did all those quotes in your reply to my first post.

About the odds thing, this has been figured based on the minimum supposed number of bonds and amino acids surviving long enough to get through the tar, oxygen or UV, and other obstacles and be able to bond. This was figured by some biologist and I haven't  found much else on the topic of odds. My point was that this cell would have had to randomly overcome all these difficulties and chaos that its random environment had.

old_worm, how/why do you do that e^ thing

About Lucy, that came from

Henry M. Morris, and Gary E. Parker(in 1987), as well as Paul S. Taylor(in 1995).

if you have a source that proves what you said, I will look into it.

I did not hear evolutionists announce their frauds!(except for old_worm admitting some just now) I learned the truth about these hoaxes (from the people cited above) AFTER I was taught about them in school(with no mention to their falsehood). I can get discovery channel reports on any of these hoaxes, and they do not mention that they are hoaxes!

old_worm said "he Paluxy River Tracks, which you refer to, have been considered, even by serious creationists like Gish, to be a fraud. The decietful intentions are clear from the Creationists as, it conveniently happens, that the photographs originally taken were unclear, presumably to influence the viewers. Since then, several explainations can be given to them. The most likely that I've heard, is that they were tracks from a different form of dinosaur.

[Dezertfish]

old worm said "Your concept of the Cambrian explosion also demonstrates your ignorance to the topic.  Again, why don't you read something other than your Creationist propoganda.  The Cambrian explosion in relation to evolutionary standards was a very short time, but the actual length of time was actually around 15 million years.  The Cambrian explosion refers to the explosion of fossils from shellfish in which fossils were left behind.Creatures existing before the Cambrian were invertebrate like Jellyfish, so no fossils would have been left."

Ignorance? I read Evolutionist propaganda, Creationist Propoganda, and others. So what if there were only invertabrates before then, do you know how many favorable mutations must have occured all at once in order to form a single spine in a single animal, while not killing it, and while making it a favorable adaptation at the moment of that creature's lifetime.

old_worm said "explosion must mean immediate right?  Get your facts straight!" 15 million years is still a very short time in the history of our planet. The odds are still against evolution causing this variety of life all at once. It still suggests God creating many varieties of life in one age/epoch/day.

Dishonesty? If you do not bother to make your facts public, what good are they? And how can I be expected to know them. Your colleages coukld make them believable as well.

old worm said "This is the kind of dishonesty I am talking about.  Scientists admit when there is a fraud and when they make mistakes, Creationists bend the wording to make it sound better explosion must mean immediate right?" Like scientists don't bend the words? All the movies and everything I have ever seen on evolution has had pretty displays and convincing talk not mentioning any of its flaw, or that it had not been proven, or that the people making the video did not know everything about evolution and other theories.

Acriku, why do you care that I tried to summarize something, you do not have to agree with something, but tell me a better WHY?. Why does it not make sense to say that all christians believe in Jesus, or that all evolutionists belileve in life arising and evolving by chance? If you have ever written a one or two page book report on a novel, you have defied what you said.

about the proving things true or false, yes that works in completely logic(and/or/not/etc.) situations, but if the slightest bit of your counter-proof is wrong...

Acriku quoted me "What do you think this is, a competition? In a way, yes. More so than you would like to admit and more serious than you believe at the moment." then he said "This is a discussion, with no end at hand. I was commenting on striving for the smallest of a victory in this discussion, and it doesn't need to be that way." Huh? All i said was that scientists could not win and you took my wording to an extreme. I replied on what you had said. Now what? I see an eventual end and if you don't, I'm sorry.

Primitive does not mean wrong. A long time ago someone primitively (probably) said, "fire is hot and I can find a way to use it." Is this wrong now? I don't think that there are any 'bad demons in hell' going around and causing people to sin. We sin of our own free will, but satan(eager to undermine God's authority), will often encourage us to.

Some verses? Ask me to look up any one of these and quote it and I will, but I do not have much time right now so I will only put the references. The Hydrological cycle was described in Job36:27-28 and Ecclesiastes 1:7(before scientists could); Ocean currents were mentioned in Isaiah 43:16 as "pathways of the sea"(and in Psalm 8:8 as "paths in the sea"). This inspired Matthew Fontaine Maury to discover and map ocean currents for the rest of his life. In Ecclesiastes 1:6, Solomon mentions that that the wind travels in a repeating path(no he did not have a weather satelite to prove this). 2 Peter 3:10 mentions that the earth will end with a fire and a roar, and that the earth will be laid bare, and that even the elements will melt away. Keep in mind that this was written before 1945. In Isaiah 40:22, some scholars have decided that the hebrew word "khug", used to describe the earth, which means circle, more likely means sphere.

I gotta go, but if you want some more of these type of verses, or the actual quoted verses, I don't think Gob would mind if you posted questions on that topic on this thread. I will reply to everything else on old_worms thread.(if Gob does think this particular subject is off-topic, could Gob say so)

Until later...

[ordos45]

Your concept of the Cambrian explosion also demonstrates your ignorance to the topic.

[Acriku]

those headlines were in the sixties, seventies, eighties, nineties, and current decade.  I do not see any cure for cancer, do you?  

Not being found in those decades just goes to show we have yet to discover it. We can find it a minute from the time I am posting - who knows. And raising hopes isn't fraud when the outcome does not disappoint. Raising hopes to something that later proves to be disappointing (lowering the hopes) would be considered fraud then.

[gryphon]

No fun in debating with you Edric O ;D

And Gobalopper, I'm supprised, you really read all this ? :) I whould have given up hope a long time ago .. .

Just a small question this time. To Old Worm. And just an opinion question.

Ok, assuming religion tries to say it's right and it refuses to alter it's point. [ explained verry short ] Should this in any way effect the possible existence of "God" ? It can be just yor opinion, doesn't have to be scientifically explained and I'm not going to argue on it ;)

[The_old_worm]

Dezertfish wrote: "Oh, is that so? Then how can you explain the historical facts? If Jesus was not who he said he was, he was both a liar and a fool(be cause he died for it), or insane. Does what he taught strike you as the teachings of a maniac?"

quote]

No, I think Jesus was a good philosopher. I think he had some VERY good messages, and we should all listen and consider his message, especially in our morality. Maybe, as I think someone already said on this post, Jesus didn't mean that he was God embodied. Maybe he considered himself a son of God, as we all are children of God. Maybe, when Jesus spoke of his ressurection, he was speaking of his transition to heaven, not a literal rising from the grave, and his disciples created the ressurection story. Perhaps the mythology that surrounds him, is simply hero worship from his followers. People have certainly been known to exaggerate the truth before about people they look up to.

He died for his beliefs, is that so insane? People, now, are blowing themselves up for their beliefs, what's the difference. It's called martyrdom.

My point is, that perhaps Jesus was simply a preacher who was created into more than he actually was by his followers. Just a possibility.

[emprworm]

Belief in God is logical.

Here is an article I wrote 2 years ago regarding the philosophical idea that the universe does not need a cause and that such a view is more scientific than those who believe it does need a cause.