insane rambling thread

And now some choice quotes because I am bored.

They are morons who doesn't understand the difference between the everyday use of the word theory and the scientific use

Evolution is merely a theory. People believe in evolution as much as other people believe in creationism.

Moron doesn't understand that the chances of something happening are irrelevant after the fact

Well I certainly don't believe that life evolved out of a slimy pond. Mathematically, the odds of the simplest bacteria randomly forming by itself are so small as to being impossible. And then is has to survive and reproduce all on its own surround by various acids and compounds that will destroy it? Yeah, riiight.

Tries to downplay the evolution by grouping it into the same catagory as his retarded beliefs.

But at least have the balls to say that evolution is a belief system - because that's exactly what it is. If you can't see that it means you've simply been indoctrinated into thinking that it's possible for complex organisms and systems to evolve randomly.

There is heaps more retarded bulls*** that he spouts so we will just get to the good stuff. Read Rommels posts he owns him but eu4ia just pretty much ignores and repeats his bulls***.

Hey guys watch me make up more complete bulls*** to support my side of the argument!

I put forward this alternate explanation for the various levels of complexity in optical systems: When God created the world all creatures had perfect vision (as all of His creation was perfect). Over time as various animals migrated to specific environments their eye sight diminished over generations as perfect vision was no longer was necessary to their survival.

This is where the lols begin

My position is that the earth is 6000 years old. I think the geologic column is the result of fanciful imaginings.

He compares millions of years of layers appearing on the earth with putting dirt and water in a jar and shaking it up

If it takes a million years to form a new layer, why isn't the layer eroded by rain? Fill a jar with dirt and water and shake it. You'll get layers formed in seconds - it's called hydrologic sorting.

Hey guys listen to my wacky theories about Noahs Ark! They are all true!

The size of the ark is estimated to be about two thirds the size of the titanic. Noah was instructed to take two of each kind (not species) of air-breathing animal (not insects). And yes, dinosaurs were on the ark. They meet the criteria. But think about this, if you want to repopulate the earth, you'd want young animals that will live longer and produce more offspring. So why take a full grown elephant onboard when you can take two babies? Micro-evolution (or variations within a kind) is scientific fact. As an example, horses, donkeys, zebras are of one kind. If you can cross-breed them, they're of a kind. So the numbers involved are a lot less than most people think.

His thoughts on the bible

The Bible is the most accurate history book we have.

Probably one of the most retarded things I have ever read on the internet - his explanation of dinosaurs.

Well it's quite interesting that many cultures all over the world have stories and historical accounts of dragons. Yep, there you go trog... this thread has dragons! :) Big lizards. Don't laugh - we equate dragons to fantasy - but old stories couldn't have used the word dinosaur as it wasn't invented until the 1800s or so. There are numerous stories of "monsters" (Loch Ness monster, etc) and dragons from around the world. It's not impossible that these accounts are based on humans interacting with dinosaurs. There have been a number of examples where human presence has been found in the same rock strata as dinosaur fossils. Naturally, evolutionists aren't too keen for this to be widely noticed. Creationists say dinosaurs were with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.

When asked how Noah got the dinosaurs on the ark. They just came to him!

And who says Noah went out and got the animals? They came to him. Animals have an instinct for knowing when catastrophic events are about to occur.

Okay that's enough this post is way too long. Basically during the whole thread (and heaps others but as if I can be f***ed looking through them, just search for intelligent design vs. evolution threads) he was talking bulls***, and trying to back it up with information from horribly biased christian websites like answeringgenesis.org. Probably the most retarded and wrong someone has been on QGL since the 30 fps is all you need argument.

This sounds like serious internet business....



Other then that I rate this thread:


fail


That is all...

stepping up the hate campaign

perhaps we can save him if we all try hard enough!

in before the lock...

i rate this thread as awesome

it's great reading crazy people posts

I am ejoying the play

If this gets locked it further supports my idea of a classical style QGL forum. Why the f*** shouldn't we have threads dedicated to the ridicule of people like eu4ia? I mean, we have posts discussing tampons and cologne and s*** like that.

LOL
f***! Relgious people s*** me off. It's only a matter of time before we see extremist-atheists!

EDIT: I vote to keep the thread open

last edited by Fireblood at 17:19:59 28/Nov/08

Thread will no doubt be locked:

Abusive posts will not be tolerated. Be nice to your fellow Internet peeps.

I'm not really a fan of dedicated hate / ridicule topics.

dont get so worked up fpot, we all know religious people are f***ing retarded.

all we can do is hope they drown in their own fundie-froth.

If this gets locked it further supports my idea of a classical style QGL forum. Why the f*** shouldn't we have threads dedicated to the ridicule of people like eu4ia? I mean, we have posts discussing tampons and cologne and s*** like that.

couldn't you have called it "why I don't like creationism" or something instead of turning it into an abuse thread that I want to delete

The insane rambling thread is from 2005.. do you go back through old QGL threads looking for crap to repost?

Why dont you just wait for him after school and beat him up behind the toilets.

I'm not going to knock the belief of creationism but i'm not going to knock evolution either. One thing to say is that this earth most certainly is not 6000 years old.

this is bigoted imo

Okay I took the personal flavour out of it. Just so future people know though all posts quoted are from eu4ia.

The insane rambling thread is from 2005.. do you go back through old QGL threads looking for crap to repost?

I have a pretty good memory when it comes to certain things that I read. Ask StreX :P

i wonder if he believes in wizards. there is a pretty acurate history book written about Merlin.

edit: don't forget your modern history series: Harry Potter. His spells were way better than Jesus'

last edited by d0mino at 17:35:55 28/Nov/08

It's retard vs retard in a retarded boring discussion all the way to the bitter retarded conclusion.

haha

Come on. Dinosaurs on an ark? Dragons being mistaken for dinosaurs? Someone actually believing this? How can you not find that funny?

Just so future people know though all posts quoted are from eu4ia.

I hate future people, always complaining about how us present people ruined their environments.

Surely people who support ID are simply trolling.

eu4ia isn't trolling.

Were trolls on the ark?

UH oh it's flat earth society all over again.

I think Creationists come up with these crazy ideas because they are told the god is all powerful. Therefore he could have created the history of the planet before humans, instantly without it actually happening.

For us its not very logical - but for them its all they know so they will fight tooth and nail to defend it. Even if they do sound crazy.

Yeah I know I f***ed up pretty bad on that one but it has been confirmed that eu4ia is being serious.

still that flat earth society was funny to read with u on it fpot

fpot spends far too much time on the creationism vs evolution and other retarded debates

I don't actually think I have ever really debated about it. If you look through the thread I posted it is just pretty much one line responses calling him retarded.

http://img442.imageshack.us/img442/3676/cagepf7.jpg

I don't actually think I have ever really debated about it. If you look through the thread I posted it is just pretty much one line responses calling him retarded.

so you've evolved since then fpot?

Well it took 8 years, but finally a thread dedicated to me. Awesome. I'd like to thank my publicist, fpot, for recognising my ongoing contribution to the qgl community. All queries and requests for autographs can be forwarded through him as, clearly, he has taken everything I've ever posted to heart. He defends his position with an almost religious fervour that should be commended by all.

In closing, I'd just like to say here be dragons. You don't have to believe, but it's certainly an interesting possibility. Well, it is to me.

Carry on.

he continues to evolve. his evolution is powered by samboy chips. only taking them away can stop him.

Everything thing this poor chap is saying is absolutely true. Our saviour created this place and I really feel for the poor souls who have not been able to welcome him into their lives. I organise a community group that meets on the 2nd Wednesday evening of every month to discuss this scientific merits of creationist theory. If anybody would like to attend please email me on gods4ubrizzy@hotmail.com.

haha =]

Oh come on, you guys can't seriously believe we evolved from slime? That is the biggest load of horse s*** ever, anyone with half a brain knows how we really got here.

 ALIENS! 

panspermia amirite!?

hmf some of my comments in that old insane rambling thread are quite wrong. oh wells, ya live n learn.. evolve if you will.

You don't slowly evolve into a bird. When you add one of the parts required for flight, you are at risk of being eaten by predators before you evolve the rest of the requried parts to make your escape by air. Yes, I believe a bird did just pop into existence because there's no way it would've survived a slow evolution towards flight.

Bahahahaha

Science is the observation of events and the recreation of those events through experimentation. There was only one creation event and we weren't there to observe it. And as creation includes all matter, it's not something we can recreate in experiments

LHC anyone?

British anatomist Sir Richard Owen strongly opposed Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution. Owen introduced the word ‘dinosaur’ in 1841.

haha, and which of those two is actually remembered by the scientific community. or in fact anyone.

same thing happened to galaleo, except the church had a bit more power back then. pretty sure he died in prison.

Watch this series of videos called "Why do people laugh at creationists?". Very informative and funny. It's also stressful to see just how dumb people can be.

thats it hey. Why do opinions of dumbasses i never met stress me out.

I put forward this alternate explanation for the various levels of complexity in optical systems: When God created the world all creatures had perfect vision (as all of His creation was perfect). Over time as various animals migrated to specific environments their eye sight diminished over generations as perfect vision was no longer was necessary to their survival.

Ahh!

Also, G'day!

GAAAAAHAHAHA, oh yeah I remember this thread now. Such a riot. I shall keep reading.

there's still hope for your salvation yet demon

You don't slowly evolve into a bird. When you add one of the parts required for flight, you are at risk of being eaten by predators before you evolve the rest of the requried parts to make your escape by air. Yes, I believe a bird did just pop into existence because there's no way it would've survived a slow evolution towards flight.

Birds evolved from f***ing FLYING DINOSAURS they were towards the top of the food chain at the time.

last edited by thermite at 20:00:49 28/Nov/08

Why do opinions of dumbasses i never met stress me out.

I think what stresses me out is the fact that people this ignorant get the same rights to vote, be on a jury and have children to pass their idiocy on to. The thought of somebody who fails to grasp the basic concepts of evolution making decisions about the fate of a person or a country scares the crap out of me.

Crizane Tribal, could you please summarise your understanding of both evolution and creationism for me?

Oh wow another creationist thread.

I'd just like to say that while I respect people's rights to believe whatever they want, I still think they're all f***ing idiots.

Absolutely FraktuRe, it's best if the nutbags feel free to reveal themselves.

it's threads like these that make me wish Qgl still publicised the IP of every post...


let Gawd's will lead the way...

I really don't get how you guys can be so passionate about something you don't even understand! The lord works in mysterious ways I guess. By the way we also enjoy evolutionits coming along to our meetings even if they have not been touched by the grace of god. So please let me know if you would like to come down. We run an unbiased and impartial forum.

The lord works in mysterious ways

Every time I hear that I just hear Mysterious Girl by Peter Andre.

After 12 years of Catholic School I can confirm religion is retarded.

holy f*** between ross, faceman, smashcrab and eu4ia I think I'm just about ready to call Einstein normal.

they also sell amway at the meetings so grab yourself a bargain.

Haha wrong night silly billy! We have regular amyway seminar's but it was a little out of context here. Same email address if anyone is interested, I could always use more people in my downline!

ARGH SWEET JESUS f*** about sums it up correctly.

i dont' get why people bother to argue with religious creationists, most of them are evangelicals who put their beliefs above everything.

they don't represent even 1% of all christians, they are just once again the vocal minority.

but to them it's not a science it's not something thats "just there" like it is for 99% of people who believe in evolution (those who believe in evol but don't work in that field of research), it's their religious belief that they are actively involved in. to most of them unless you can disprove god, you can't disprove creationism.

don't get me wrong, i think creationism is just plain fairytale stuff, but i think the same of the bible.

I don't see the point in getting vocal about such things. My beliefs are my own and are probably different to every person in existence. We discuss the marvel of gods creations and warn people of the tools of the devil (women, drugs, computer games, the internet etc..). But we welcome all in our meetings and social functions because it would simply be no fun if everyone thought the same way!

creationists - why no-one should listen to them

Thankfully only other creationists listen to them but hopefully natural selection will sort them out

so women are evil now. where does it end?!

30 seconds into incredible vegetables video and i'm ready to punch whoever is manning (or womaning) that puppet.

rage.level.RISING.

I don't see the point in getting vocal about such things. My beliefs are my own and are probably different to every person in existence. We discuss the marvel of gods creations and warn people of the tools of the devil (women, drugs, computer games, the internet etc..). But we welcome all in our meetings and social functions because it would simply be no fun if everyone thought the same way!

Better start saying those hail Marys now Ross, you're using the internet and are going straight to hell.

No, this is where I am needed most. Just look around. There is so much confusion and dispair in all these members! Especially after I read about that poor sinful soul who took is own life on the internet!

If you quit your church I won't kill myself

These activities are not church related at all. I find that sceptics are less likely to attend if they are. My activites are frowned upon by many at the church. I am sort of a renagade! Just like in your computer games.

lol that is so terrible. enjoy yourself.

It is great fun thanks! Last month we all picked partners with different opinions and made diorama's of the other persons point of view. Then we analysed what each other had created for hidden meaning and our own subconcious opinions coming out!

It was a blast! Everyone thought so!

...

ross is aglow with holy spirit

Spoiler:
The Zebra did it

only if the holy spirit is your mums vaginal juices

ross you're going to hell for that

shut up c*********, if everyone went to hell who porked jims moms there would be no-one in heaven.

She is the missing link too! HAHAHAH

I think Ross is high on the holy spirit. And in this case the holy spirit is creamy thick and oozes from the tip of a man's penis.

(take your pick, go on, pls.)

don't be a hatah cos you got baited

I think you got gonorrhea you sick f***. Nothing oozes from my cock, its a f***ing fire hose

Ross that's not very Christian-like. I think you need a little more evangelical groupthink to get you back with the flock.

I love evolution it invented my genitals

Did it evolve your fatty manboobs too?

only the left one, the right is artificial.

I love evolution it invented my genitals

I think that was satan.

another wacky thread

Desperately clinging to his 'but it's only micro evolution' case'

What you've described is accepted by both sides. It is fact based on evidence around us. The contention is over the point of origins, not micro-evolution.

Hates homosexuals to appease his god. _That_ is bigotry infi

If two people of the same sex want to be recognised as a couple under secular law, go ahead. But don't call it marriage. The very definition of marriage comes from God. And He's quite clear on the subject of homosexuality - it's an abomination.

He likes all the retarded bits that is for sure

Christianity is a package deal. You can't choose bits you like and bits you don't like.

No but you are definitely incapable of understanding long periods of time it seems.

You personally believe that the "guesses" are right over the Word of God? We don't know how long 6 days are? Er, how about 6 days? If not, are you saying God with his infinite wisdom is incapable of explaining long amounts of time to us?

Why people who live on a remote desert island and never know about christianity have sinned

It is the responsibility of parents to teach their children about God. All of us are descended from the same bunch of people (Moses' family) and thus if a tribe on some remote island doesn't know about God, then at some point their parents sinned by not teaching their children.

Ironic statement of the year coming up. I love science, so I just made up some other stuff to make my crazy ideas work!

I was raised as a Christian but then thanks to my love of science I started to side with the idea of the days been ages long.

This is pretty lol. Basically he is saying evolution is what people with actual free will think but tries to twist it to make religion look good - he fails.

Evolutionary origin is a fairy tale dreamt up by people desperate to remove God from their lives so that they can live as they wish, answerable to no laws other than our own - which we can redefine when we please.

News flash -- he is just another kid who has been hooked onto religion by his parents. Imagine how f***ed up they are?

I'll be sure to pass on your compliments. But note that I haven't blindly accepted this faith. I stepped outside it for years and found the world and my life lacked true meaning. I am old enough that I've lived my own life and not of my parents and while their influence as a child started me on this path, I suspect I would've ended up here regardless.

He is just so fundamentally (no pun intended) wrong all the time.

My basic position remains: There is more evidence supporting intelligent design then there is supporting evolution.

For someone who loves science he doesn't even f***ing know what the word means.

Anyone with clear simple logic will agree – creationism and evolutionism (naturalism) are not science. Neither affects our technological progress

This is a retarded statement.

All those things I've listed earlier are merely the tip of the iceburg when it comes to massive holes in evolutionary theory. You don't want "it's too complex to just exist", well the evolutionary excuse it "just add time and anything is possible".

Is this guy 12 years old or something?

Think of a computer simulation where a programmer writes and defines all the dimensions, clockspeed, and laws of gravity, inertia, etc. Everything and every character created in the simulation can't possibly understand what's outside the program (unless the programmer included a few backdoors). In the same way we cannot comprehend what and where God truly is. He's kicking back in front of His pc, feet on desk, caffeine in hand. And at some point He'll decide to pull the plug to write version 2.0 and into it He'll import His favourite characters from version 1.1. I'm keen to see version 2.0. But then again, I always want to see the next upgrade. :)

Yes it does.

Just because a scientist has a religious viewpoint doesn't mean his science is flawed.

He doesn't understand the concept of natural selection. He sure does love science!

Incorrect. Natural Selection selects. It is quality control for a species, it is a limiting factor. The only way you could change a species through selection is if you take one slightly more advantaged specimen and then kill the rest. Otherwise that advantage will be diluted back into the population. How often will one advantaged specimen be the only survivor by natural means? Almost never. It's not survival of the fittest that occurs in nature, it's survival of the luckiest.

And again most of his posts contain a one sentence 'read this article' followed by a link from a website that is just obvious, OBVIOUS bulls***.

eu4ia, you are at the same time the worst and funniest poster on QGL. I have noticed you posting a lot lately and until you can prove that you are not mentally ill, can you please stop?

<-- Secretly enjoying this thread.

ummmm am i missing something... why the f*** did ross flip out. is someone taking the piss..?

Yes.

oh no not ross!

anyone but ross!

:(

ahhahahahaah that was magnificent ross

Ross' flipped out responses reminds me of when Ned Flanders lost it in one of the Simpson episodes.

Just stick to your guns.. or jebus rather, or whatever, leave the guns for me.

WHAT THE f***?! ^
That kinda made sense....but wouldn't convince any creationists!

I find the best way to deal with these people is just to ignore them, pay no attention to their beliefs. Your not harming them by not listening, and once you take away their audience, they have nothing left but their hatred.
Eventually their faults will be bred out of the community.
I call this process "evolution".

Not a bad vid typo, even though he did not take into account the lifespan of a clock, I guess it can be taken for granted that a fitter clock would live longer and produce more offspring. But I think that some of the first generation pendulums may have survived all the way up until the evolution of 1 handed clocks as they would have easily eliminated the weaker offspring.

Which unfortunately I think many people will find as a big enough flaw in his demonstration.

I think the point of the video is still valid though, as if he took into account a lifespan, I believe he would have ended up with a similar result, he just would have required more generations.

A cool video though, no doubt the devil's handwork ;)

last edited by predat0r at 01:23:48 01/Dec/08

Religious book (The Bible) is a work of fiction.

Fiction being.

fic⋅tion
   /ˈfɪkʃən/ Show Spelled Pronunciation [fik-shuhn] Show IPA Pronunciation
–noun
1. the class of literature comprising works of imaginative narration, esp. in prose form.

Now I aint no bible basher but it is most certainley not fiction. I seriously doubt you are going to find it in the fiction section anywhere. I would say its more like a lifetime movie 'Based on a true story' but embellished to hell so its not boring as hell.

so its not boring as hell

Christians around the world are banking on this being the case.

couldn't you have called it "why I don't like creationism" or something instead of turning it into an abuse thread that I want to delete

Oh come now trog, this is QGL. Some people just deserve to be abused.

Unfortunately in this case fpot is right. Religious believers are f***ing morons; those who enforce the religious beliefs on others are the lowest scum on earth.

The point of this thread isn't really about people pushing their religious beliefs on others. In all honesty, I don't think eu4ia is really too guilty of that. The real point of this thread was to laugh at the hilariously retarded comments eu4ia was making. They are really funny I reckon.

edit: I didn't see this.

Well it took 8 years, but finally a thread dedicated to me. Awesome. I'd like to thank my publicist, fpot, for recognising my ongoing contribution to the qgl community. All queries and requests for autographs can be forwarded through him as, clearly, he has taken everything I've ever posted to heart. He defends his position with an almost religious fervour that should be commended by all.

I haven't taken anything to heart. Don't you get it? I am laughing at you. Everyone is laughing at you.

I am also not defending any position. When someone says dragons are dinosaurs I am not really required to am I?



last edited by fpot at 10:10:17 01/Dec/08

The point of this thread isn't really about people pushing their religious beliefs on others

It's about you pushing your anti-religious beliefs on others right?

A little bit, but mainly eu4ia ridicule.

Well its more like "how the fk could you possibly believe that bulls***, eu4ia?" cause none of it makes sense. Most remotely intelligent people would not believe any of it on the pure principle that it just makes no f***ing sense, letalone whether its a decent theory or not.

The problem with arguing with someone that believes this stuff is that by design they won't listen to you and won't open up to the fact that maybe theyre completely wrong believing in these things against which masses of factual evidence laid out in front of them by thousands of scientists and studies over hundreds of years completely disprove their scientific beliefs.

You either believe it with eyes closed or laugh at the nonsense hysterically and wonder what could possibly be going on inside their heads.

The problem with arguing with someone that believes this stuff is that by design they won't listen to you and won't open up to the fact that maybe theyre completely wrong believing in these things against which masses of factual evidence laid out in front of them by thousands of scientists and studies over hundreds of years completely disprove their scientific beliefs.

I think you'll find the bible has all the fact that you will ever need.

I think it completely under-rates a God to think that It is incapable of designing an entire Universe that has the mechanical workings to build Life from a bunch of energies without any divine intervention.

It is insulting to think that It could only create Life by building from a spare parts bin as intelligent design would seemingly like to think.

I think it is incredible stupidity that people would ignore piles of evidence because they are following a bunch of words, literally, that have been translated several times, slightly altering the meaning each time. Not to mention the various editing that occures along the way. The Bible is missing several of the original books that a bunch of dudes thought were not nessesary because, you know, they know better then God or something...

No but guys, there are heaps of holes in evolutionary theory, just read this.

*posts links to dodgy websites to back up claims*

Science is treated like a religion these days, people will worship and swallow every word put in front of them. Why anybody feels the need to follow anyone or anything is beyond me.

word to that

word to that

props

word to that

Don't tell me you agree with me, I don't like it when people agree. Takes all the fun out of it.

Science is treated like a religion these days, people will worship and swallow every word put in front of them.

Science is actually one of the most moral, one of the most honest disciplines around — because science would completely collapse if it weren't for a scrupulous adherence to honesty in the reporting of evidence.
...
Science, then, is free of the main vice of religion, which is faith.

- Richard Dawkins

Religion = blind faith in a principle with no evidence of proof.

Science = optimistic faith in extensively tested, studied and proved theories or factual claims about the universe we live in, backed up by thousands of other scientists' approval of said evidence of proof.

last edited by 3dee at 15:17:23 01/Dec/08

Science is treated like a religion these days, people will worship and swallow every word put in front of them. Why anybody feels the need to follow anyone or anything is beyond me.

HELLS YEAH Science is just another article of faith. Science has plenty of "theories". Why? Because they cannot be conclusively proven. Seems like faith to me.

last edited by infi at 15:15:53 01/Dec/08

HELLS YEAH Science is just another article of faith. Science has plenty of "theories". Why? Because they cannot be conclusively proven. Seems like faith to me.

Uh, thats why scientists call them theories. If science can't prove a theory, it remains a theory and nothing more. Scientists don't try to claim a theory as fact until it is proven, the prime difference between science and religion.

Science is treated like a religion these days, people will worship and swallow every word put in front of them. Why anybody feels the need to follow anyone or anything is beyond me.

You don't follow science. That's the cool thing about it. It just is whether you believe it or not. And if you don't believe it, then you're free to go off and come up with your own theory and provide your own evidence.

HELLS YEAH Science is just another article of faith. Science has plenty of "theories". Why? Because they cannot be conclusively proven. Seems like faith to me.

I assume this is a joke so it doesn't really merit a response. But anyway, science isn't faith-based, its evidence based. But don't feel bad if you don't understand it, lots of people struggle with the difference.

+1.

The problem is that people think you have to believe or not, in science. Science as a definition is merely the backing of claims by real evidence, and if no evidence of proof can be supplied, the claim remains a theory. Science is saying that the sky is blue. Science is saying that the sun produces light. Science is saying that electrons attract protons. We know these things because the act of scientific study proved that this is what is happening.

Claiming the sky isn't blue on a normal day (blue by human definition, i.e. 400nm wavelength blue) is going against the definition of science.

3dee, my problem with that is who has the information and who controls it. Science has been shown to be anyones bitch who has enough money. It is a whore up for sale to highest bidder. Every week it seems there is an article proving something beyond doubt and then debunked the next. Religious types controlled the people years ago by fear and manipulation. What makes you think scientists would not do the same to you? Global warming is the new terrorism after all. What I am trying to say is if you put any faith into humans in anyway shape or form you may end up very disappointed.

Science = optimistic faith in extensively tested, studied and proved theories or factual claims about the universe we live in, backed up by thousands of other scientists' approval of said evidence of proof.

Ok so..

Uh, thats why scientists call them theories. If science can't prove a theory, it remains a theory and nothing more

I'm confused, so is a scientific theory proof or not because you don't seem to know either.

I don't quite go that far with it myself, I'm mainly talking about the way people just quote other people on the faith that it is actually true, without actually having done the work to prove it themselves. Basically what's happening here, is you're happy with the feeling that people around you and in whatever 'scientific community' you are exposed to all accept it as fact. This is a demonstration of faith to some extent.

Is it not true that evolutionists and creationists are all taught in the same schools / universities and have a similar working knowledge of their fields of science?

Why do they then come up with different observations?

What knowledge we have about the world we live in continues to grow on a daily basis. The whole world of science is continually changing and evolving with new discoveries. Old theories such as evolution and creation are continually being re-evaluated against new scientific discoveries, data and observations. New theories and explanations are continually being brought about because of those new discoveries.

Darwinism for example has so many unanswered questions at the core of its theory that science and scientists have to come up with alternative possibilities to bridge those gaps because the theory of evolution is so flawed.

Edit: The same line of thinking can be used with creation as well. It's all about the weight of evidence in the world around us.

Not to mention that evolution doesn't even account for or address the fact that humans are consciously aware of themselves as entities. E.g. we have feelings, we are able to cognitively reason, we think and process complex thoughts, we are aware of right and wrong, yada yada yada...the list is endless.

Where did that counsciousness come from?

The more people that believe in God, the better this planet would be...and we're not talking the fundamentalist freaks that you find in all religions. We're talking the normal people who are here trying to make the world a better place for others. Those types of people don't impose their beliefs on others. They know that its a waste of time trying to reason with people that don't want to listen.





last edited by wolfieee at 15:57:22 01/Dec/08

last edited by wolfieee at 15:59:46 01/Dec/08

I just don't know where to start, so instead I'm going to go back to work

start at the beginning

I'm not saying that believing in God is wrong and I'm not saying believing in theories that aren't 'scientific-community' theories is wrong. Its when people who believe in theories that are quite logically... dumb (like a Flat Earth with some magical Ice Wall with guards sitting on top of four elephants and a turtle, or a bird that had to evolve wings in 10 seconds to escape a lion running after it), try to impose their belief in these claims on people and claim, without ANY evidence to the fact, that they are 100% completely right and all other theories or facts that oppose said claims are completely false.

We're talking the normal people who are here trying to make the world a better place for others.

And why would you need to believe in God to do this? Are you saying we should do good out of the fear of being punished by an omnipresent entity? Or should we just do good because we choose to do without the fear of any consequences?

There are plenty of christian scientists who accept evolution and regard Genesis as complete hogwash, or at best, a really rough summary where a "day" really means billions of years.

Christians have discarded so much of the Old Testament already, I dont know why some are so attached to the rediculous Genesis story.

Tollazor: And why would you need to believe in God to do this? Are you saying we should do good out of the fear of being punished by an omnipresent entity? Or should we just do good because we choose to do without the fear of any consequences?

All I meant by what I said was that christians are more in tune with the plight of the people around them. They have more empathy for the people who are down trodden in society, who didn't get a fair go, who are battling their demons (drug addiction, depression, the homeless) and other such issues.

EDIT: People don't worship God because they are fearful of what he's going to do with them if they make a mistake. That line of thinking has nothing to do with what is actually written in the bible. They choose to do it out of love because they believe in God and what he stands for... They believe he put us here on the planet to help and to serve others.

Whether you choose to believe what's written in the bible is a totally seperate issue, but the values that your average christian holds true to and that are espoused in the bible would without a doubt make the world a better place. Compassion, honesty, respect, forgiveness, humility, kindness...



EDIT: So what i'm not saying is that christian people are better than you or me. They're the same they just hold different values which they get from the bible.



last edited by wolfieee at 16:35:55 01/Dec/08

last edited by wolfieee at 16:54:48 01/Dec/08

Why do they then come up with different observations?

So you're saying that when I got different answers on my maths tests they in fact shouldn't have failed me, but given me a HD, because my answers were also correct?

Also, you're a f***ing idiot if you think more people believing in god makes the world a better place. Hell, even if only based on morals, I'd rather trust a person who knows right from wrong without needing to be told or act based on consequence, rather than base their decisions on consequence (which is what most religious people do).

Also, you're ... never mind, I agree with Jim. I have work to do.

So you're saying that when I got different answers on my maths tests they in fact shouldn't have failed me, but given me a HD, because my answers were also correct?

What i'm saying is two people with reasoning skills can come up with two different answers. Science isn't mathematics. There aren't always rights or wrongs. The creation vs evolution debate is all about the amount of scientific evidence to support a theory.

Also, you're a f***ing idiot if you think more people believing in god makes the world a better place. Hell, even if only based on morals, I'd rather trust a person who knows right from wrong without needing to be told or act based on consequence, rather than base their decisions on consequence (which is what most religious people do).

You wouldn't even know what morals were unless someone told you and educated you about what was right or wrong in the first place. You think you grew up all on your own without any input from your parents, society, etc...

You're a product of your environment. You wouldn't know your ass from your face unless someone taught that knowledge to you. Same goes for morals.

Whether you choose to believe what's written in the bible is a totally seperate issue, but the values that your average christian holds true to and that are espoused in the bible would without a doubt make the world a better place.

As do the values written throughout ethical communities, the Book(s)? of Islam, Buddhist texts, Hinduism and so forth.

Good values are built from the ideas that benefit both society as a whole and the individual person. No book can claim to being the only way to do this.

Is it not true that evolutionists and creationists are all taught in the same schools / universities and have a similar working knowledge of their fields of science?

Why do they then come up with different observations?

Most people stick with what they know. It's the same reason most people end up part of the same religion as their parents.

Darwinism for example has so many unanswered questions at the core of its theory that science and scientists have to come up with alternative possibilities to bridge those gaps because the theory of evolution is so flawed.

It's true there are still disputes over things like group selection. Not exactly a huge gap. What flaws did you have in mind?

Edit: The same line of thinking can be used with creation as well. It's all about the weight of evidence in the world around us.

Not quite since there is a great deal of evidence that proves the literal creation story and ~6000 year old earth false. Radiometric dating (Uranium-Lead not Carbon-14... very important) putting the world at ~4.5billion years old is a good start. The wealth of evidence in the fossil record of transitional species (Therapsids, Synapsids, Archaeopterygiformes, Titaalik etc). Genomic evidence showing common descent. Why for instance does every metazoan going right back to the Porifera (sponges) use pretty much the same compliment (the extras that vertebrates have are duplicates) of Homeotic genes to determine body plan? It goes on like this. But the point is this can all fit into an evolutionary framework (not the radiometric dating obviously, that's just Geology and Physics... Beside the point really.)

It doesn't work with creation stories unless you use the old ad hoc explanation that God wanted it that way. It could be true that a supreme being who created the universe 6000 years ago made it appear as though it were 13.7 billion years old and the earth were 4.5billion years old. While he was at it he planted fake remains of creatures that never existed in ground and gave every living thing the false stamp of common ancestry in their genome.

Could be true. But what reason is there to believe it?

Not to mention that evolution doesn't even account for or address the fact that humans are consciously aware of themselves as entities. E.g. we have feelings, we are able to cognitively reason, we think and process complex thoughts, we are aware of right and wrong, yada yada yada...the list is endless.

Where did that counsciousness come from?

This is like criticizing a car for being incapable of sustained flight. Evolution is about species and how they change. This is very important because another frequent criticism is that it fails to account for the origin of life (abiogenesis). It may seem like a cop out, but it simply doesn't have to account for these issues because they are beyond the scope of the theory. There are other theories for this. It is however true that some of these theories will integrate evolution, but our weak grasp of consciousness is not a mark against evolutionary theory. It's just what remains to be discovered. Btw Science has a better grasp of the issues that you raised than you might think, try to avoid pop-science books though.

I don't quite go that far with it myself, I'm mainly talking about the way people just quote other people on the faith that it is actually true, without actually having done the work to prove it themselves. Basically what's happening here, is you're happy with the feeling that people around you and in whatever 'scientific community' you are exposed to all accept it as fact. This is a demonstration of faith to some extent.

I have complete and unswerving faith in this statement.

some reading for you wolfiee - note that the citations and your own research are far more important than the article itself, but it's a decent starting point:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altruism

should be a lot of good (and bad) reading here too:
http://www.google.com.au/search?hl=en&safe=off&q=where+do+morals+come+from&start=30&sa=N

Religion shouldn't ever be about versing science.

You can easily believe in a Religion and be an excellent scientist. Pfft, even some Highly regarded scientists would argue that Science without religion is lame.

For everybody suggesting that most people treat science as a form of faith:

Faith, in the religious definition, is a reliance in supernatural powers controlling stuff. It's not the definition of "We are acting in good faith that the thousands of experts in that section of science are not telling fibs or making s*** up".

The key difference between science and religion is that, although I have not personally done extensive research to prove evolution, I can go out and do my own research and if I discover a flaw in the current level of understanding, I can increase our body of knowledge. At the very least, I can read the millions of papers that document the course of how we build this level of knowledge.

So, while both parties are acting in faith that the people disseminating information are not telling bulls***, only one group of people actively put their information up for scrutiny, and change things as we improve our understanding and knowledge.

What actually infuriates me about religion, and specifically Catholicism is that it promotes ignorance about our universe. Why is the sky blue? Deus vult! Why shouldn't kill each other? Deus vult!

Why should we go to war? Deus vult!

last edited by typo at 18:17:21 01/Dec/08

Apathetic agnostic with ignostic tendencies.

Talk to my religious family members, along with some of their less accepting friends, as if I were Atheist.

Catholicism is that it promotes ignorance about our universe

Yet you are aparently ignorant of what that term means and what modern catholics are encouraged to believe. But typo being typo you won't be convinced that perhaps you don't have a clue.

But lets assume the roman catholic church, these days they are fine with science. So far as to label inteligent design as religion and not good science.

eg. the current pope

According to the widely accepted scientific account, the universe erupted 15 billion years ago in an explosion called the 'Big Bang' and has been expanding and cooling ever since. Later there gradually emerged the conditions necessary for the formation of atoms, still later the condensation of galaxies and stars, and about 10 billion years later the formation of planets. In our own solar system and on earth (formed about 4.5 billion years ago), the conditions have been favorable to the emergence of life. While there is little consensus among scientists about how the origin of this first microscopic life is to be explained, there is general agreement among them that the first organism dwelt on this planet about 3.5 - 4 billion years ago. Since it has been demonstrated that all living organisms on earth are genetically related, it is virtually certain that all living organisms have descended from this first organism. Converging evidence from many studies in the physical and biological sciences furnishes mounting support for some theory of evolution to account for the development and diversification of life on earth, while controversy continues over the pace and mechanisms of evolution.

source

I am at best a lapsed catholic and more aptly an agnostic.

I have trouble with the full atheist because they (nor any scientist) can not answer a simple and fundemental question to the atheistic belief, where did the stuff that went bang come from ?

So to me ... an atheist is as bad (or worse) then a fruit JW on a sunday mission.

ps. tollaz0r is right, any good religion should be happy for science to come along and challenge it. Because at their core they are both about who are we, how did wwe get here and where are we going ?

while I agree with most of your post typo, it makes it's point about what happens _after_ something is subjected to scrutiny. it doesn't really address what many, many people do every day prior to taking that step - and that is, act in faith a large percentage of the time - whether it be in their sources of information from a 'scientific' point of view, or a religious one


as we've both pointed out, it's how a belief stands up once scrutinised that's interesting, particularly when some beliefs forbid exposure to any alternate or conflicting points of view under the pretext that they are tools of satan. this was one of the big things that drove me away from the religion drummed into me growing up as a kid - I couldn't understand how, if it was so truthful and right, it couldn't stand up to criticism and come through shining. why did it have to be taken absolutely and without question?

I have trouble with the full atheist because they (nor any scientist) can not answer a simple and fundemental question to the atheistic belief, where did the stuff that went bang come from ?

Isn't this poor thinking? Religions, or religious views, don't do themselves any favours by saying, "we can't answer that question, therefore god", because, eventually, science probably will answer the question, and religions are left to look rather stupid.

As do the values written throughout ethical communities, the Book(s)? of Islam, Buddhist texts, Hinduism and so forth.

Good values are built from the ideas that benefit both society as a whole and the individual person. No book can claim to being the only way to do this.

That’s a good point.
No one book really does lay claim to all of that…but God does lay claim to creating everything in this world. That’s the choice people make when it comes to religion and their beliefs. They choose whether to believe in all of Christianity (insert any religion of choice here) or just take bits and pieces of Christianity (insert any religion of choice here) and make it their own.

Poor thinking ?

So you are fine to rule out any possibility of any higher power. That is what atheist means. Without knowing what was there pre big bang ? what caused the big bang ? that to me is poor scientific process. You are ruling out possibilities based on a personal belief.

Sorry but you can't scientifically say that a giant disc on the back of 4 elephants on top of a giant space turtle didn't explode ... you just can't (yet).

Apathetic agnosticism is the only answer that makes any sense (for me).

I'm an atheist (quite obviously) and don't believe in a 'God' so to speak and I have nothing against people who believe in God or anything like that. Personally, I don't feel the need to believe in a higher power as I am fine living life without believing in one. I'm not in need of some higher power to guide me and bow down to (in a blunt way of saying). If anyone tells me I need faith or to believe in God, they can GTFO. If anyone says people like me have no soul or are the work of the devil or some BS like that then they can GTFO to.

I have no problems with anyone else's beliefs until they try to push them on me and make me believe against what I already believe in (or accept as logically the right choice or plain fact - such as believing that we're made of atoms and the Earth is definitely round etc). I just don't need someone else to believe in to live my life the way I want to. I think thats what being an Atheist should mean.

Being an atheist does not mean we have no ideals or morals or beliefs, its just that we don't believe in some higher power that guides on our quest in life. We just have no need to believe in a 'faith' because we're doing just fine believing in ourselves instead.

last edited by 3dee at 18:53:08 01/Dec/08

JW at work got told by his "elder" (even tho JWs believe in equality of men and hence no priests/bishops etc ... but you can be an "elder" and obviously know more then a "normal" person) not to talk to me after I kept challenging his little quirtky beliefs.

Oh and one other point.

Religion is real even if the respective deities are mutually exclusive and hence atleast 1 (if not all) parties are wrong.

ps. genesis is the jewish creation story. ie. the Jewish rainbow serpent. Where we came from is a fundemental question. Nothing wrong with a good story as long as you get something useful out of it... like don't kill people

Apathetic agnosticism is the only answer that makes any sense (for me).

aw man i'm agreeing with obes =(

If anyone says people like me have no soul or are the work of the devil or some BS like that then they can GTFO to.

3dee, by definition of the fact that you are an atheist you do not believe in a soul. And as such should not be offended when people say you don't have one, if you do then I question your atheism.

ps. lawls at the post limiter must upset someone with my agnostic fence post sitting

logic and reason aren't enough; you also have to be a dick to everyone who doesn't think like you

start at the beginning

You mean 6000 years ago?

dreamtime bro

Obes, what I meant was, just because we don't know what was before big bang isn't a reason someone should necessarily think therefore that there must be a god. I'm not saying this was your reasoning specifically, but often religion will fill scientific gaps with god, only to look like fools when science eventually fills those gaps. Sorry for poor writing but editing on iPhone is painful!

Not quite since there is a great deal of evidence that proves the literal creation story and ~6000 year old earth false. Radiometric dating (Uranium-Lead not Carbon-14... very important) putting the world at ~4.5billion years old is a good start.

From what I've read, the whole idea behind radio radiometric dating is that you can measure the half life of a certain element within a fossil to determine its age and you do that by seeing how much of that element has decayed over time. Right?

That whole way of dating works very well in a closed system. That means nothing else got in or out of the item / substance you're trying to date.

Only problem is that that notion isn't realistic. No where in the entire world is their a single closed system that hasn't been pentrated by water or some kind of precipitation, or exposed to heat / cold and the elements of weathering. That means that accurately dating anything is not possible because you never know how much of a certain element has been moved in or out of the item you're trying to date...

And thats science for you...originally it was hailed by evolutionists as a cutting edge discovery and used to uphold their theory, but as science progressed it wasn't possible to factually claim the world is 4.5 billion years old or accurately date any item using those methods because you can't date anything accurately because it doesn't come from a closed system.

You can hypothesize how old the world is from a scientific point of view, but proving it factually with an air tight system of dating is another story.

The wealth of evidence in the fossil record of transitional species (Therapsids, Synapsids, Archaeopterygiformes, Titaalik etc). Genomic evidence showing common descent.

Transitional species? You're kidding right? There's no such evidence for a huge range of jumps to new species that darwin made in his theories and there still isn't. Darwin made those assumptions a long time ago hoping that in the future science would make those new discoveries and to date none of those jumps between species has been found, nor have their been fossils dug up to backup those claims.

But hey you've had plenty of scientists try to fake it and lots of assumptions being made about what a species could have looked like from a single piece of bone fragment that they found. Suddenly a single piece of bone fragment becomes the missing link between species until it too gets thrown out the window and science/evolutionists continues to move on and try and find that missing species...

Why for instance does every metazoan going right back to the Porifera (sponges) use pretty much the same compliment (the extras that vertebrates have are duplicates) of Homeotic genes to determine body plan?

I'm interested in some articles on the above. Have you got some links?

It doesn't work with creation stories unless you use the old ad hoc explanation that God wanted it that way. It could be true that a supreme being who created the universe 6000 years ago made it appear as though it were 13.7 billion years old and the earth were 4.5billion years old. While he was at it he planted fake remains of creatures that never existed in ground and gave every living thing the false stamp of common ancestry in their genome.
Could be true. But what reason is there to believe it?

I don't think God got it wrong, I think we interpret it wrong, or we make mistakes trying to prove a theory...we're continually learning new things about the world we live in and science is continually making new discoveries.

Published science journals for the win :)


last edited by wolfieee at 00:12:42 02/Dec/08

I assume this is a joke so it doesn't really merit a response. But anyway, science isn't faith-based, its evidence based. But don't feel bad if you don't understand it, lots of people struggle with the difference.

science is great and all but it is just another knowledge base. i don't really care what is right or wrong because there is no absolute.

the one thing science has going for it over religion is the search (and willingness) to be wrong. i remember from legal philosophy learning about evolutionary epistemology.

One of the hallmarks of evolutionary epistemology is the notion that empirical testing does not justify the truth of scientific theories, but rather that social and methodological processes select those theories with the closest "fit" to a given problem. The mere fact that a theory has survived the most rigorous empirical tests available does not, in the calculus of probability, predict its ability to survive future testing. Karl Popper used Newtonian physics as an example of a body of theories so thoroughly confirmed by testing as to be considered unassailable, but which were nevertheless overturned by Einstein's bold insights into the nature of space-time. For the evolutionary epistemologist, all theories are true only provisionally, regardless of the degree of empirical testing they have survived.

i like this approach because it is so unassuming. science is another way to grow the body of knowledge. it doesn't absolutely answer questions to our overall metaphysical purpose.

everything is just hunky dory until more information comes around the corner, but the gaps in the body of knowledge do require a certain element of faith due to the remaining unknown. there's no point in comparing religion to science because they are there for different purposes imo.

last edited by infi at 00:36:44 02/Dec/08

Without knowing what was there pre big bang?

There is no pre Big Bang. The whole point of Big Bang theory is that you have a spacetime singularity at one end. So the two-year-old style of questioning, "But what happened before that? Ok, but what happened before that?" doesn't really work any more. The concept of time, causality etc. breaks down and stops making sense once you cram the entire contents of the universe into a very small amount of space.

The only way thinking about "before the big bang" or "outside the universe" makes any sense is if you start considering other space/time dimensions, but then you're into the realm of ridiculous untestable theories that have no possible impact on our lives like invisible incorporeal dragons, God and String Theory.

there's no point in comparing religion to science because they are there for different purposes imo.

then why'd you say science and faith seem like the same thing?

the one thing science has going for it over religion is the search (and willingness) to be wrong.

right! also, the only good thing about a cold beer on a hot day is drinking it... aside from that its sort of lame. and aside from orgasms and procreation, sex is a bit of a waste of time.

ps. genesis is the jewish creation story. ie. the Jewish rainbow serpent. Where we came from is a fundemental question. Nothing wrong with a good story as long as you get something useful out of it... like don't kill people

See, here's where we differ. I'm the kind of person who believes that if you need something like a story or punishment to stop you doing things like that, you're not a very decent person to begin with. Nevermind that there's now something stopping you, the reasons for that are just wrong.

One of the hallmarks of evolutionary epistemology is the notion that empirical testing does not justify the truth of scientific theories, but rather that social and methodological processes select those theories with the closest "fit" to a given problem. The mere fact that a theory has survived the most rigorous empirical tests available does not, in the calculus of probability, predict its ability to survive future testing. Karl Popper used Newtonian physics as an example of a body of theories so thoroughly confirmed by testing as to be considered unassailable, but which were nevertheless overturned by Einstein's bold insights into the nature of space-time. For the evolutionary epistemologist, all theories are true only provisionally, regardless of the degree of empirical testing they have survived.


i like this approach because it is so unassuming. science is another way to grow the body of knowledge. it doesn't absolutely answer questions to our overall metaphysical purpose.

everything is just hunky dory until more information comes around the corner, but the gaps in the body of knowledge do require a certain element of faith due to the remaining unknown. there's no point in comparing religion to science because they are there for different purposes imo.

That's it, scientific knowledge is continually growing and until you can absolutely prove one theory one way or the other then they'll remain theories and scientific discoveries will continue to be applied to them and both sides will continue to uphold their theories with scientific evidence and continue to debunk and debate each other.

That's where everyone makes their decision, it was all random chance and there
is no ultimate purpose to life or you believe in a creator who tells you there is a purpose to life.

See, here's where we differ. I'm the kind of person who believes that if you need something like a story or punishment to stop you doing things like that, you're not a very decent person to begin with. Nevermind that there's now something stopping you, the reasons for that are just wrong.

Raven you reason like someone who hasn't thought about what was said.

In the conext of early society with oral traditions (ps. thats not a snowball or a feltch) a consistent story passed from extended family member to a group of children across multiple generations is important. ie. These weren't for the 60 year old they were for the 6 and 16 year old.

I took the super silly example that said people do kill other people on purpose and aren't a "bad" person eg. PNG tribal wars result in deaths and the people aren't "bad", soldiers are not "bad". But if you read these religious books (and if you are commenting in this thread you should have read atleast 2 of them or you are an uninformed troll) you should be able to identify that alot of the rules are common dog f***,imo alot of the "rules" are quite obviously not the word of any god, but of a governing body / person.

They are public health directives, social rules and labour laws.

Don't eat pig! ... good idea unless kept properly it carries alot of diseases we can pick up. And if that s*** is killing a bunch of people ban it.

You must pray 5 times day! oh and you have to wash your hands and feet before you pray! ... sounds like a public health directive.

a day off or sabbath or whatever. Sounds vaguely likely a precursor to the 5 day working week. Labour laws!

Don't steal, don't lie, don't sleep with ya mate's missus. All good advice yet s*** that people on this forum do all the time.

This has finally turned into an interesting discussion (rather than just a rehash of the old).

My position as a young-earth creationist pretty much comes down to this: I look at the data presented by various scientific studies and theories and test them against my bible-based worldview to see if my worldview is in error. So far nothing has contradicted it. Now I know many of you will laugh at that statement and will want to haul out various examples of where you think my worldview has been shot down in flames. Contrary to some statements in this thread, I'm not out to convert you or force my beliefs on you - heck, it wasn't me who dredged up quotes from a three year old thread out of the blue.

When evolutionary "proofs" are mentioned, for example: how various vertebrates' DNA have similarities pointing to a common ancestor, I break that statement down to fact and interpretation. The fact is many vertebrates have common DNA sequences. One interpretation of that fact is to infer a common ancestor. Based on my worldview, the fact points to a common designer. Which interpretation is correct? Well, that depends on one's worldview. I can appreciate why people will strongly disagree with me, but to simply assert (without proof) that my worldview's interpretation is invalid is to be close-minded. We can argue our interpretations, but don't try to present one side's interpretation as being the fact. Sometimes the differences between the two can be tricky to spot, but I'd encourage anyone who's interested in critical thinking to practice doing just that.

Now I know it's not single facts or interpretations that define the evolutionary worldview. It's far more complicated than that. It's a raft of theories, studies and research that have led to today's majority position. Many interpretations of fact are guided by previous interpretations of other studies and theories, and that's why these sort of discussions typically end up being way too long. The main point of contention is an unwavering defence of a worldview. fpot, that's why I jokingly said you defend your position (by attacking mine) with an almost religious fervour. It's because when you get right down to it, a worldview is the basis for who we see ourselves as being in this universe. It is a concept based on feelings and faith, and people tend to be emotional about such things. You may feel insulted and threatened that someone who functions in society can have such a totally opposing view of the world. But to then claim that, because my worldview doesn't agree with yours, all my opinions (on subjects not even closely related to this) are invalid is arrogant and downright unjust.

How is my worldview hurting anyone? It's not. I support scientific discovery, the quest to unlock the secrets of our world and universe. Do I believe science is evil and do I want to ignore new findings that appear to poke holes in what I believe? Not at all. I have learned many things about different subjects because of such questions. It's a motivator for me to continue learning - and that can only be a good thing.

I don't exclusively read creationist theories and articles. I read science articles and studies from many sources. I enjoy hearing of breakthroughs in technology and biology. New discoveries out in space are always exciting. Again, how am I a threat? How does my worldview impede scientific progress? Or am I merely a threat because if it turns out that my worldview is correct it means you've denied the very existence of your creator?

I believe in an all powerful God who, without lifting a finger, spoke the entire universe into existence. He is so massive compared to us and yet He takes a personal interest in our every day. Someone called that concept one of significant insignificance. A nice way to describe it, I think. My belief results in me being interested in science with the question of "how did God do that"? And the more I learn and the more we discover, the more in awe I am of Him. We truly are fearfully and wonderfully made. And He loves us.

There, I've worn my fingers down to bloody pulps typing this. I had said my piece on this three years ago and had no intention of mentioning it again. I'm done. Why would a born again Christian want to be a part of qgl? Well, despite that many of you are heathens, sinners, and on your way to a fiery eternity, you all provide many hours of great entertainment and are a realistic source of what's happening across a myriad of subjects. If it wasn't for qgl, I'd have to turn to news.com.au and that would be a great tragedy.

tl;dr:

God > *
interpretation ≠ fact
science = good
qgl > news.com.au
eu4ia = tired of talking about this

I didn't read any of that but how are those dinosaurs on noahs ark doing?

i dunno eu4ia... qgl is the sodom/gomorrah of the modern (or not so modern) world... if you look too much you may become a pillar of salt. ;D

yeah you don't need to read any of it fpot

dragons existed ok

I look at the data presented by various scientific studies and theories and test them against my bible-based worldview to see if my worldview is in error. So far nothing has contradicted it.

you're doing it wrong.

If it wasn't for qgl, I'd have to turn to news.com.au and that would be a great tragedy.

I think we can all agree with that!

How is my worldview hurting anyone? It's not. I support scientific discovery, the quest to unlock the secrets of our world and universe. Do I believe science is evil and do I want to ignore new findings that appear to poke holes in what I believe? Not at all. I have learned many things about different subjects because of such questions. It's a motivator for me to continue learning - and that can only be a good thing.

He has a point here. In the end, he's made his choice (and it seems like he's thought about it quite a bit). If I, or anyone think he's a nutjob for thinking those things, it's our point of view. If he was espousing that we murder everyone that was 5'6" whos name started with "X", then he'd be danger to society. If he thinks there may have been dinosaurs on the ark, he's not a danger to anything, except maybe his own social life ;)

Still, it's fun picking on someone when you're in the majority. :P

hah it still gets fpot wound up and that makes it all worth it.

Still, it's fun picking on someone when you're in the majority. :P

It wouldn't be qgl without that. :)

Well, despite that many of you are heathens, sinners, and on your way to a fiery eternity, you all provide many hours of great entertainment and are a realistic source of what's happening across a myriad of subjects.

I'm guessing the above was written with some tongue and cheek humour, but couldn't you utilise some other rhetoric other than you're going to burn in hell for all eternity because you're a sinner?

I find getting to know people works a bit better than bending them over and giving it to them hard and fast, no matter the truth.

burn this: ,,|.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

-- annoying fpot since 2005

LOL!

I didn't read any of that but how are those dinosaurs on noahs ark doing?

So someone takes the time to make a thoughtful response in a thread you created, then you make a childish remark like this. Dick.

I have a feeling fpot was waiting a long time to post that comment.

How is my worldview hurting anyone? It's not.

Your personal view may not "hurt" anyone, but the greater doctrine of organised religion most certainly does hurt people. Kills them in fact and has done for thousands of years.

I respect your right to choose to believe in whatever you like. And I understand that you might not agree with or be personally responsible for the damage or harm religion has caused. This harm does not make the belief bad in itself; the ideals of most religions are quite simple and morally just underpinnings. But surely you must have a bit of doubt when what you believe in, God's grand plan, has caused untold death and destruction across centuries.

If there was a God, why didn't they design a beautiful Utopia where beings could live in spiritual oneness with each other? Why all this? Say you are God right? I mean given that you are all knowing and benevolent and love all of your creation, and you had the power to bring into being a universe full of intricate organisms and complex interconnected life, where in the plan do you decide to go with the raping and the animal torture and the millions of dead babies?

And before you say "oh well you see God gave us free will and this is our sin or undoing or whatever", remember that God knows everything and is present in all things, and this is all part of the plan, so he or she would have known about the napalm and the thalidomide and the Holocaust and just ok'd all that s***. Is that what you're trying to tell us?

I just find the whole God argument and religion in general to be far too simplistic and naive an explanation for what we experience in this life. Don't get me wrong, I think there's far more than sterile scientific facts, but it's unlikely we, in this backwater galaxy out in the far reaches of space, will ever be able to figure it out.

We just don't have the tools to fathom the big picture and religion vs a piddling knowledge of the atomic structure of a hair on the ballsack of science is the best we can do right now. A nice idea, but it's not really working out too well is it?


last edited by IncrEdible_vEgetable at 20:22:48 02/Dec/08

last edited by IncrEdible_vEgetable at 20:23:56 02/Dec/08

Didn't you know?

God created the universe to make more God. Simple really.

I still don't understand, how people like eu4ia, take literal meaning from the Bible when it has been translated, edited and Books removed from it?

Perhaps a very small tid bit of information, a mere misunderstanding in the translation 1500 years ago, lost just a little bit of meaning that changes an entire paragraph.

Infact translation errors have been proven by biblical scholars.

Off the top of my head, one of the important ones is that in different hebrew bible stories God is referred to by a different name - specifically the names of pre-judaic semetic deities - so they just grabbed all the old pagan stories from different tribes (who had different gods) and lumped them all in to satisfy everyone. There were two main ones - one is the peace loving creator, the other is a furious war lord, and you can pick them very distinctly. At some point the jews decided that one of these words just meant 'God' and the other one was his name - in the translation the name is just given as 'the lord'.

Another one, kind of goes with that one, is that at some points God is referred to as a plural 'Gods' - the jews explain this away as a respect thing, but the plural is nowhere to be found in translations.

Also a big deal is the one where a King in the bible refers talks about the 'morning star' (?) never rising to the heavens - he is refering to the low orbit of venus - in the original text morning star is 'lucifer', which of course was left in the translation making a lot of people think it was talking about the devil or something. Well then some guy in America faked a religious text 'The Book of Mormon' that talked at length about lucifer further perpetuating this belief. Scholars proved that the Lucifer thing was wrong, it has been changed in the english bible, but people still believe in that mormon book :/

You can believe that the world is 6000 years old. You can believe that Noah got all of the animals onto the ark. You can even believe that we are all offspring of incestuous nudists who got tricked by a talking snake.

Hell, believe in whatever you want if it helps you sleep at night.

What gets me is people who get together with their funny little beliefs. And then they chant them over and over until they all believe that they have a right and a responsibility to tell everyone else what to believe. And then they make laws. And they kill people and take away their freedom if they don't believe the same things, even if the other people are no threat whatsoever.

As Bill Hicks once said (and I paraphrase): "Ideas are good. You can change an idea. But people kill for a belief."

So someone takes the time to make a thoughtful response in a thread you created, then you make a childish remark like this. Dick.

Well, actually, I did read it, and it was the same rambling white noise he has always posted.

It seriously amazes me how people can be so blind and... (searching for a more appropriate word really really hard. Oh wait, there is no other) f***ed up to believe this trollop.

I have quite a few religious friends, and they're cool, they've never tried to push their beliefs on me. But creationists that like to rant and rave and disprove & prove this and that ought to be culled.

Here's to fpot for sticking it to the faerie loving fags.

jesus had some pretty cool spells, he was probably one of the top wizards of all time. water -> wine. more like water -> win. way better than harry potters wingardium levioso.

and what about that guy who got stuck inside a whale? oh yeah, pinnochio. that was a great bit of history from the bible.

jesus had some pretty cool spells, he was probably one of the top wizards of all time. water -> wine. more like water -> win. way better than harry potters wingardium levioso.

Yeah, but being able to convert water to wine doesn't exactly give you the ability to solo Naxx.

Yeah, but being able to convert water to wine doesn't exactly give you the ability to solo Naxx.

Yeah but with an eendless supply of wine I bet he had no problem getting a raid going.

So someone takes the time to make a thoughtful response in a thread you created, then you make a childish remark like this. Dick

wait, are you suggesting we take time to make real conversation with someone that believes the world is 6000 years old and that dinosaurs were on noah's ark?

This thread is a classic, I've always loved the good creation/evolution debate. I used to work with a JW and we used to have the most interesting discussions, I am always fascinated by peoples blind faith (in whatever they believe), whether your information comes from a book of stories or questionable facts we as a race still seem to need to cling to something to explain it all.

As far as I'm concerned its completely possible that a "higher" power created it all, its also possible that we evolved from pond scum, but its also possible that we were bought here by aliens from another planet thousands of years ago. In the end no-one can disprove any of these claims, and really does it matter?

pretty sure it's been proven the earth is older than 6000 years though

In the end no-one can disprove any of these claims, and really does it matter?

Only when people die because of other peoples beliefs.

Yes, but does it matter? Do you really care if the earth is 6000 years old or 4.5billion? How does this affect the way you live your life? We would be better focusing on ensuring that the earth is here for another 6000 years, we seem to be managing to f*** it up in a much shorter space of time.

Whether you believe in "god" or not I think a simple philosophy of Do unto others....... is a great way to live your life (its almost like hedging your bets). Some of the most "godly" people I know have no belief in religion and yet would have a far greater sense of morals than some of the most devoted religious followers. Being a "good" person is far more important than going to church or worshiping. Any being that demands your worship probably doesn't deserve it.

181 posts later Mass wraps it up.

Nice work team.

Your personal view may not "hurt" anyone, but the greater doctrine of organised religion most certainly does hurt people. Kills them in fact and has done for thousands of years.

I respect your right to choose to believe in whatever you like. And I understand that you might not agree with or be personally responsible for the damage or harm religion has caused. This harm does not make the belief bad in itself; the ideals of most religions are quite simple and morally just underpinnings. But surely you must have a bit of doubt when what you believe in, God's grand plan, has caused untold death and destruction across centuries.

Your understanding of what God is all about is a little off. Firstly it's people who in the name of God have caused the death, destruction and huge human death toll in this world today. It's humans who have decided to use God as the reason for all their wars, crusades and treacherous behaviour.

No true God fearing (fearing = love in biblical terms) human would have done any of what you're talking about if they actually followed the values that are written in the Bible. The bible / God doesn't condone death and destruction. It's totally against it. Thou shalt not kill...does that ring a bell?

It's humans who chose to become brutal towards one another. If God decide to reach down and stop it then so be it, but that negates one huge factor about God and your life down here on earth. He gave you and everyone down here on the planet free choice...that means you have the power to choose right from wrong, or to murder in cold blood.

Why is it that it's so easy to blame someone else when all we need to do is look to ourselves and realise that we all individually have the power to choose and to change things around us...The more you blame the more you take away that power from yourself.

If there was a God, why didn't they design a beautiful Utopia where beings could live in spiritual oneness with each other? Why all this? Say you are God right? I mean given that you are all knowing and benevolent and love all of your creation, and you had the power to bring into being a universe full of intricate organisms and complex interconnected life, where in the plan do you decide to go with the raping and the animal torture and the millions of dead babies?

Depending on what you believe God says he did make this world perfect. Thats the whole story of Adam and Eve and the fall of the world through sin. Thats entirely what the bible story is about...

Again free choice and the state of the world. The bible story says that the devil is the one responsible for all those atrocities. It's just that we choose to blame God for it because we think he let it happen that way. According to the story it was Adam and Eve who chose that path for the world, they chose not to listen to God's advice and council.

And before you say "oh well you see God gave us free will and this is our sin or undoing or whatever", remember that God knows everything and is present in all things, and this is all part of the plan, so he or she would have known about the napalm and the thalidomide and the Holocaust and just ok'd all that s***. Is that what you're trying to tell us?

God represents the good in the world. The devil represents all that is evil in the world. In the grand scheme of things our little planet might be a spec of sand in an hourglass and in the overall scheme of things our plight in this world may be an example unto other worlds, who really other than God knows what is going on? The point is we as humans chose to play out this scenario on earth. It doesn't matter if you didn't want to be born into the world, the point is your here and now and that you can choose which path you take.

If God reached in a took away your free choice, then it totally negates the purpose of being a created being in the first place. Without free choice you'd be nothing more than a robot and how is that a happy existence for a rational, thinking and reasoning being?

I just find the whole God argument and religion in general to be far too simplistic and naive an explanation for what we experience in this life. Don't get me wrong, I think there's far more than sterile scientific facts, but it's unlikely we, in this backwater galaxy out in the far reaches of space, will ever be able to figure it out.

We just don't have the tools to fathom the big picture and religion vs a piddling knowledge of the atomic structure of a hair on the ballsack of science is the best we can do right now. A nice idea, but it's not really working out too well is it?

Totally agree, I can't even begin to fathom how big the grand scheme of everything is...but I know humans are capable of doing horrific things to one another. It's our choice...

I agree with mass.

No true God fearing (fearing = love in biblical terms)

So then why don't they say God Loving? I'm wouldn't be surprised if many Christians feared God (God fearing) because according to the Bible, he lays the smack down.

Also, as was written in the Bible, God smacks people dead. So why not just sort out the problem at the source and smack down the devil? After all, the story goes that he was created by God, thought he could do a better job and was cast down from Heaven. Seems pretty rude to kill a bunch of Humans but not a fallen Angel? Unless God is letting the fallen Angel exist to be a temptation, which again is pretty rude.


last edited by Tollaz0r! at 11:15:24 03/Dec/08

I still don't understand, how people like eu4ia, take literal meaning from the Bible when it has been translated, edited and Books removed from it?

Perhaps a very small tid bit of information, a mere misunderstanding in the translation 1500 years ago, lost just a little bit of meaning that changes an entire paragraph.

That's partially true depending on which version of the bible you have. Take for example the King James version of the bible. It's supposed to be the most precise copy of the bible we have in existence today because it came about from the translation of some 900 scrolls that were brought together from all over the world. Bible scholars weren't satisfied with what they had so they sought copies of the bible that existed in hundreds of different languages around the world and brought them all together and cross refrenced their translation (KJV) against all the other bible translations in the world to ensure that the bible version had remained intact for centuries.

I'm not saying that human error hasn't crept into some of the many 100+ versions of the bible that exist today, but all bible scholars agree that there are versions which are far more accurate than others.

There's a entire historical strand devoted to the study of this. I doubt I could hope to know it all in a lifetime.

But what I do know is that the bible is a very unique book in its continuity. It was written over a space of 1500 years by some 40 different writes, living in different places, on different continents, writing in different languages, working in different occupations, yet the overall theme that the bible presents is unified.

So if you begin to remove, alter and change the way it's written and set out you can totally destroy the message / story contained within its pages.

Anyway I don't know enough about that topic, i'm sure there is much more to it than some books were just removed or that some are missing.

So then why don't they say God Loving? I'm wouldn't be surprised if many Christians feared God (God fearing) because according to the Bible, he lays the smack down.

I believe it has something to do with the translation of the hebrew, aramaic and greek. I believe the word fear equates back to reverence / love for God.

I'm assuming thats why they keep updating the language and tranlations of the bible because our understand of the english language continues to grow and change as does our understanding of hebrew, greek and aramaic.

Exactly why people shouldn't follow the Bible word for word, ie world being created in 6 days.

It should be used more as a set of 'Guide Lines' :D

last edited by Tollaz0r! at 11:19:39 03/Dec/08

Ok you're sort of missing the point here though.

I agree that it is human beings who are the perpetrators of violence and atrocity. I'm not saying God is doing that.

What I am arguing is that in your view, God created everything including the devil, people's flaws, the possibility of evil etc. Therefore isn't God responsible for the outcome? If God had an opportunity to create the entire universe from scratch AND if God is all knowing all seeing and all loving, why create something that is essentially flawed? If God had a choice in the first place, why choose this?

Depending on what you believe God says he did make this world perfect. Thats the whole story of Adam and Eve and the fall of the world through sin. Thats entirely what the bible story is about...

But God created the sin. He put the apple there. Or at least allowed for the possibility of sin in human beings. So by definition creation is tainted. And I'm pretty sure that's God's responsibility. Here's an analogy. Assume you are a scientist who has biologically engineered a dog from scratch. If you make a dog who likes to eat your favourite pair of shoes, you can't blame the dog when you leave the shoes on the floor and he eats them. But if you could biologically engineer the perfect dog, one who had no interest in eating your shoes, wouldn't you just do that instead?

And ultimately your argument will end up being "well, only God knows the bigger plan" or "it's not for us to know or question God's motives" which is just another way of saying we don't know and we don't really have any understanding of anything.

If God reached in a took away your free choice, then it totally negates the purpose of being a created being in the first place. Without free choice you'd be nothing more than a robot and how is that a happy existence for a rational, thinking and reasoning being?

I don't think you are looking at the big picture. If God's choices are infinite and God has ultimate control over every aspect of creation (ie all powerful) couldn't there be other possibilities? Types of consciousness other than your rather limited dichotomy of free choice or robot? When you think about it free choice is kind of bulls*** anyway in Christian terms.

Christians say we have free choice, but if we believe in the Bible and religious teachings we are not really free to choose at all; we must adhere to a strict code of conduct. We are not free to be gay or to abort unwanted babies or ignore God or to do a number of things the Bible says are wrong. So where is this freedom?

Book of Enoch is an example of one of the removed books from the Bible.

Most churches regard it as non-canonical, tis a trippy read though.

Yeah Tollazor you should check out the Dead Sea Scrolls.

From Wikipedia:

According to The Oxford Companion to Archeology, "The biblical manuscripts from Qumran, which include at least fragments from every book of the Old Testament, except perhaps for the Book of Esther, provide a far older cross section of scriptural tradition than that available to scholars before. While some of the Qumran biblical manuscripts are nearly identical to the Masoretic, or traditional, Hebrew text of the Old Testament, some manuscripts of the books of Exodus and Samuel found in Cave Four exhibit dramatic differences in both language and content. In their astonishing range of textual variants, the Qumran biblical discoveries have prompted scholars to reconsider the once-accepted theories of the development of the modern biblical text from only three manuscript families: of the Masoretic text, of the Hebrew original of the Septuagint, and of the Samaritan Pentateuch. It is now becoming increasingly clear that the Old Testament scripture was extremely fluid until its canonization around A.D. 100."

Wiki article

On a side note, I certainly agree that the Bible is a valid text and contains material of considerable worth when looking at moral and ethical issues. I just don't think it is wise to read it word for word and use these parables and stories as the absolute truth about things in the physical world eg the Ark, the dinosaurs etc.

I'm pretty sure if dinosaurs had been around in Jesus' time, there would be some mention in the bible. You can hypothesise all you like about legends of dragons being evidence that dinosaurs existed the same time as humans but the Bible mentions quite a few creatures but no dinosaurs! I mean given that they were the largest animals that ever lived I would have thought they would have rated a paragraph at least.

As for God putting the bones there to "test our faith", wtf? Like our faith isn't tested on a daily basis. I think it's safe to say that I respect your beliefs and all, but dinosaurs and talking snakes? Surely you can see that it an allegory or parable to illustrate a point. Do you go to the movies and gasp as Superman appears to fly through the air too?

in addition to what incrediblevegetable said, what c*** of an all-powerful, omnipotent being would create other sentient beings and then have them endure what millions and millions of humans have endured down through the ages, all for the sake of being able to say 'I told you so' to one of his own creations gone wrong

there is absolutely no sense to the entire premise - this is because it isn't truth

Also, as was written in the Bible, God smacks people dead. So why not just sort out the problem at the source and smack down the devil? After all, the story goes that he was created by God, thought he could do a better job and was cast down from Heaven. Seems pretty rude to kill a bunch of Humans but not a fallen Angel? Unless God is letting the fallen Angel exist to be a temptation, which again is pretty rude.

As I understand the bible has numerous ways that it is written in and one of those ways in judgement language.

So yes, there are times where God does lay the smack down. No arguments there. My only But however is that whenever God lays down the smack he gives a huge amount of warning to the person / civilisation before he does so. He gives them ample amounts of time to change their ways for the better before he deals with the scenario. There's plenty of stories where civilisations are going off the rails, committing human sacrifices, committing beastiality, think of whatever evils you can come up with...God goes, sorry guys this just won't do and he doesn't let it perpetuate. But prior to that destruction he gives warning through prophets, through signs, through wonders, etc...before he brings judgement down on those people.

Thats the whole theme throughout the bible. That evil will not win in the end and that one day God will set things right for all to see.

last edited by wolfieee at 12:35:14 03/Dec/08

but you know what gen y is like, they want it all like yesterday.

Exactly why people shouldn't follow the Bible word for word, ie world being created in 6 days.

It should be used more as a set of 'Guide Lines' :D

There's a difference between expanding the meaning of a word vs a literal.

http://i37.tinypic.com/33jibdv.jpg

he gives warning through prophets, through signs, through wonders, etc

Wouldn't it just be easier to hire a sky writer?

Signs, wonders, prophets...leaves a little room for doubt. Maybe I interpreted the sign wrong? What does God want? I am so confused. I am a person living in 1200AD and let's face it, I haven't really got my head around the concept of personal hygiene let alone things like electricity and gravity.

What he really needed was a sign off sheet so that he could put his decree down in writing and have everyone sign off on it. That way there's no argument.

Ok you're sort of missing the point here though.

I agree that it is human beings who are the perpetrators of violence and atrocity. I'm not saying God is doing that.

What I am arguing is that in your view, God created everything including the devil, people's flaws, the possibility of evil etc. Therefore isn't God responsible for the outcome? If God had an opportunity to create the entire universe from scratch AND if God is all knowing all seeing and all loving, why create something that is essentially flawed? If God had a choice in the first place, why choose this?

If anyone ever meets God i'm pretty sure there will be a huge amount of time set aside for questions and answers.

Anyway the story goes that the devil (Lucifer) was the most powerful being in the entire universe next to God, he chose to buck against the system God had instituited because he wanted to be greater than God. Notice that he chose to buck against the system because he wanted to be greater than God...

I don't think I'm missing your point, I think that you may misunderstand mine. I can only work on the premise that if God created us and everything else, then he knows exactly what is best for us. Without free choice, we wouldn't be human, we wouldn't be able to experience what life is really all about...every aspect of what we know just wouldn't exist because you'd be forced into a life that you had no control over.

But God created the sin. He put the apple there. Or at least allowed for the possibility of sin in human beings. So by definition creation is tainted. And I'm pretty sure that's God's responsibility. Here's an analogy. Assume you are a scientist who has biologically engineered a dog from scratch. If you make a dog who likes to eat your favourite pair of shoes, you can't blame the dog when you leave the shoes on the floor and he eats them. But if you could biologically engineer the perfect dog, one who had no interest in eating your shoes, wouldn't you just do that instead?

If the apple wasn't there then how would choice have even existed? I'm sure God knew the consequences of either choice. But you wouldn't be a created being with capacity for life and love if you didn't have the option to choose. God told Adam and eve that "you will surely die" if they ate of the tree and all I have to do is look at the state of the world we live in today and I can see that, yep God was correct, everyone does eventually die at some point.

Maybe God was hoping that his created beings would make the right choice because they loved him, maybe he hoped that they would listen to his advice because he did know best...either way it doesn't take away from what happened in the story. Adam and eve chose their own path. They choose to believe the serpent (lucifer)and they chose their destiny.

God gave them the options, they're the ones that chose the path.

If you take away choice, you take away everything and I mean everything that is essentially Human.

And ultimately your argument will end up being "well, only God knows the bigger plan" or "it's not for us to know or question God's motives" which is just another way of saying we don't know and we don't really have any understanding of anything.

Well those are your options. You were either created and you have a purpose or you came about out of nothing and will return to nothing, or whatever version of the story you choose to follow.

I don't think you are looking at the big picture. If God's choices are infinite and God has ultimate control over every aspect of creation (ie all powerful) couldn't there be other possibilities? Types of consciousness other than your rather limited dichotomy of free choice or robot? When you think about it free choice is kind of bulls*** anyway in Christian terms.

Christians say we have free choice, but if we believe in the Bible and religious teachings we are not really free to choose at all; we must adhere to a strict code of conduct. We are not free to be gay or to abort unwanted babies or ignore God or to do a number of things the Bible says are wrong. So where is this freedom?

LoL...Limited dichotomy...Tell me what else there is? Educate me...What makes you human?

Again you're missing the picture...you're free to do what you want but what you do in this world comes with consequences. You live in a world where actions have consequences.

This world isn't perfect...anymore...thats how the story goes.

You say God institutes a strict code of conduct, but i fail to see where anyone of those commandments takes anything away from you? I say it creates liberty with them. For example, stealing...Wouldn't it be nice to live in a world where no one stole a thing and stuck to that code? I could leave the keys in my car knowing I could come back to my car and that the keys would still be in the ignition and that nothing had been taken from my car, because it was mine? Thats a perfect world everyone respecting other peoples property.

Don't murder? It'd be nice if we just all got along and didn't kill each other, how many of the wars and holocausts could have been avoided if we just adhered to something that simple?

Don't commit adultery? No boyfriends, girlfriends, husbands and wives cheating on each other and causing each other pain and hurt? I fail to see how that is a bad thing?

No proliferation of HIV and disease around the world that destroys countless innocent lives? Including the people who practice homosexuality.

You can think I have a closed minded view on things, but anything that minimises the suffering of humanity and helps bring people together across the divide i'm all for.

We don't live in a perfect world and we keep proving time and time again the we as humans are not capable of looking after our own destiny in a way that is fair and equitable to all humaity.

If you come up with any solutions, be sure to let the world know.





last edited by wolfieee at 13:27:27 03/Dec/08

Wouldn't it just be easier to hire a sky writer?

Signs, wonders, prophets...leaves a little room for doubt. Maybe I interpreted the sign wrong? What does God want? I am so confused. I am a person living in 1200AD and let's face it, I haven't really got my head around the concept of personal hygiene let alone things like electricity and gravity.

What he really needed was a sign off sheet so that he could put his decree down in writing and have everyone sign off on it. That way there's no argument.

I don't know...maybe it would have been better? I didn't live in that time, either way some of the stories in the bible are very prolific and the signs and wonders that were performed were pretty spectacular by anyones stretch of the imaginiation.

But then I wasn't there, so how would I know? I just read the story.

some of the stories pixar have made have been pretty prolific too, BUT THEY ARE JUST f***ING STORIES TO TEACH CHILDREN MORALS.

So then take them as stories...no need to get angry.

LoL...Limited dichotomy...Tell me what else there is? Educate me...What makes you human?

What I'm saying is why human at all? Why not a collective consciousness experiencing itself as a sentient being existing in a single dimension? Or as electrical pulses able to travel through the space time continuum while simultaneously displaying cognitive functions?

If God chose this flawed form of humans, why? Why cause us to suffer and kill and die? Doesn't seem very all powerful, benevolent or loving to me. Kinda reminds me of a kid with a magnifying glass and a bunch of ants.

What I'm arguing is that a "perfect Creator" has created an imperfect creation. Doesn't that make you feel a little bit short-changed?

Thanks God, you could have made us anything, anything at all. Picked "human". Hmmm. Ok, no that's ok. We get it. Nice one. No, no we still love you. The plagues? Nah don't worry about it. Water under the bridge. Hey it could've happened to anyone. Cancer? Well nobody's perfect are they. Oh, sorry, yes you are perfect. Well done. And when are you due back on Earth? Oh, ok well I'll leave my Sundays free for the rest of eternity then shall I? Top stuff.

I can't believe that in the 21st century that we are still even contemplating the merits of religions that have a strong human element to them. I'm not pretending to know the meaning of life, but I'm sure as hell confident that there isn't an all-supreme being up there aware of and caring about human matters. Though believing that makes many people feel special and better about themselves.

It's so mindbogglingly absurd that I'm not even sure why I even have to address this.

I'd be interested to know why God stopped laying down the smaq. Roman orgies, the stupidity in the middle east (in gods name of all things!), starving masses, George Dubya acting like a f***ing moron in His name to name just a few. However, a city behaves badly, and he f***s their s*** up and turns people into pillars of salt for looking. He causes plagues for the ancient Egyptians because they made slaves of "his" people.

What we are living in now far exceeds anything that has come before. We are destroying our home, raping, killing, having same sex relationships, letting people starve with much of this behaviour based in greed. We invent new and more terrible ways to kill our fellow man, and yet god looks on. I would suggest that times up. If we ever needed a second coming, or another flood, now would be it...

You keep saying that God is all-powerful. Then you say he gave us choice leaving the act of biting the apple up to us. However, if he was all knowing he knew which choice we were going to make, before we did.

If he didn't know what choice we would make, hence free will, then he isn't all powerful.

According to the Bible, God is all powerful and set us up to fail, knowing that yes, yes we would bite that apple.

In which case, it is kinda rude to punish someone for something that he knew we would do before we did it.


last edited by Tollaz0r! at 14:06:16 03/Dec/08

People need something to believe in because the thought of been here for no reason frightens them. I bring it down to a fear of death, if death was a religion I would probably worship that. Some people just don't agree with my opinion that life has no great meaning and people have no purpose apart from keeping a species going. Life is cheap and my personal opinion is you are deluding yourself if you think your life has any purpose. There is no meaning to life we are just here and that's about all. I could be wrong but the beauty of death and what it holds is you have to wait till you are dead and there aint no coming back to tell the story.

What I'm saying is why human at all? Why not a collective consciousness experiencing itself as a sentient being existing in a single dimension? Or as electrical pulses able to travel through the space time continuum while simultaneously displaying cognitive functions?

If God chose this flawed form of humans, why? Why cause us to suffer and kill and die? Doesn't seem very all powerful, benevolent or loving to me. Kinda reminds me of a kid with a magnifying glass and a bunch of ants.

I can't answer the why question you're asking and neither can you...you can only hypothesise and create theories about why we aren't a collective consciousness, or why we aren't electical impulses that travel through space and time...But what you can work with is what you already know about yourself here and now.

I can only recant what is being told in the story.

It says we were created perfect in every way and none of the bad things we see going on around us now ever existed until the fall of man. It was Adam and Eve who used their power of choice and chose to die. Thats how the story goes...If you can find a better accepted view of why we all die and why suffering keeps perpetuating itself on the planet and that gives you more answers then follow it!

What I'm arguing is that a "perfect Creator" has created an imperfect creation. Doesn't that make you feel a little bit short-changed?

I don't feel short changed. My only other option in life would be to not exist at all and that to me is far worse than the current option.

Thanks God, you could have made us anything, anything at all. Picked "human". Hmmm. Ok, no that's ok. We get it. Nice one. No, no we still love you. The plagues? Nah don't worry about it. Water under the bridge. Hey it could've happened to anyone. Cancer? Well nobody's perfect are they. Oh, sorry, yes you are perfect. Well done. And when are you due back on Earth? Oh, ok well I'll leave my Sundays free for the rest of eternity then shall I? Top stuff.

Thats the whole notion...The world would have been a perfect place had Adam and Eve made the right choice in the first place. There would have been no plagues, or cancer, or death...

When will humanity begin to learn from their mistakes instead of continually perpetuating them?

And what so bad about a taking a day of rest? The more holidays the better if you ask me...It all depends on how you look at it. If you look at the day of rest as a restriction then you miss the point, if you take another point of view and enjoy that you're taking a rest from the daily grind of life and look at it positively, how is it a bad thing? It's all a matter of viewpoint.

Thats the whole notion...The world would have been a perfect place had Adam and Eve made the right choice in the first place.

So everyone after Adam and Eve gets punished because of their mistake. Yer Nice.

your mother will always matter

What matters then?

If there is any womanz left to make love explosion inside of?

I can't believe that in the 21st century that we are still even contemplating the merits of religions that have a strong human element to them. I'm not pretending to know the meaning of life, but I'm sure as hell confident that there isn't an all-supreme being up there aware of and caring about human matters. Though believing that makes many people feel special and better about themselves.

It's so mindbogglingly absurd that I'm not even sure why I even have to address this.

But I thought humans are the only sentient species in the Universe and Earth is the centre of it and the Sun revolves around the Earth...

You could say God is a creation of human's ego :P (well not mine)

last edited by 3dee at 14:51:47 03/Dec/08

You keep saying that God is all-powerful. Then you say he gave us choice leaving the act of biting the apple up to us. However, if he was all knowing he knew which choice we were going to make, before we did.

If he didn't know what choice we would make, hence free will, then he isn't all powerful.

According to the Bible, God is all powerful and set us up to fail, knowing that yes, yes we would bite that apple.

In which case, it is kinda rude to punish someone for something that he knew we would do before we did it.

I grappled with the notion of free choice for a long time.

To me thats the point...if there is only one great and all knowing being. That to me means he created everything and everyone and all the options within the realm of creation. He created the capacity for good and he also created the capacity for evil. He created the whole world as we know it. Thats God's claim to fame...He claims he is the creator, he claims he knows best, he claims he knows which paths we should take for the benefit of our own good.

If he took away free choice and free will then we as created beings would not exist. What makes us unique is the power to choose. If God took away the capacity for evil then we wouldn't have the option of free choice. He gave us the power to choose one way or the other.

God gave you the realm within which to make your choices. He doesn't set you up for failure. You set yourself up for failure by the choices you make.

And thats my entire point. You take choice out the equation and we cease to be human. It negates being a created entity. It negates life itself.

So you can either accept that view or find another way to do it better...




last edited by wolfieee at 15:02:26 03/Dec/08

Maybe we're all just extras in God's own Truman Show!

So everyone after Adam and Eve gets punished because of their mistake. Yer Nice.

I think the idea is that we need to be given the chance to make the "right" choice. As Jim said though, for us to make the wrong choice so that God can say "told you so!", seems a bit pointless...

I was raised as a Mormon from around the age of 7 till when I was around 12-13 when I was brave enough to say "This is crazy!" and rebelled like a lunatic. In their point of view, we are here to be tested and judged. We are here to make the right choice, it's our reason for being. There are 3 levels of "heaven" and those of us that make a good go of being good people get to go to one of those. It's almost like they didn't like the idea of absolutes (such as in the catholic church), so they made up some things so you could be a little bit bad at times and still have a nice afterlife. Those people that are spectacularly good, get to become gods themselves, and create new worlds and people to test etc etc... So if you do everything we tell you, you will become all powerful!! How good is that?! I'm sure it appealed to downtrodden Americans at the time.

I'd like to clarify that I didn't just say "This is crazy!" at 12yo because I didn't like being picked on by my friends at school, or because I wasn't allowed to drink Coke, or watch TV on Sundays (when all the good movies were on), or fast on the first Sunday of every month. There were things that I took as "normal". It was all I could remember. When I was ordained as a "Deacon" (We got to hand out the sacrament) and then a "teacher" (we got to teach the little kids) I realised how ridiculous what I was telling little kids was. Particularly when they're asking you the hard questions, many of which have been in this thread.

I started to question things, and read lots on other religions and it seemed to me that all of them are only put there by "man" to make money. The catholic church is spectacularly wealthy! To be a Mormon, you gave 10% of your earnings to the church. I remember when I was a kid, my parents got behind on their payments and the bishop came around to work out a payment plan ffs. I actually gave 50c of my pocket money to "god", it made me feel grown up! I got to fill out a little form and put it in an envelope and put the envelope in a little slot and everyone told me what a good lad I was.

At that point, I thought "I don't need a religion to be a good person, I can just be a good person". I told this to the church elders and my parents and they went ballistic. They threatened, cajoled and even locked me in my room till I saw sense. It was at this point I thought "These aren't nice people, look what religion has done to them?" and completely went off the rails. I was so angry (and still am to a certain extent) that I had been lied to for most of my young life that I essentially decided all rules were wrong. I stopped going to school, stole, did drugs, had more premarital sex than was healthy at that age and generally disappeared off the face of the earth for 2 years till I got locked up for a bit.

When I got out, I got a job, settled down and started being a human being again. I still did stupid things, but I essentially chose to be a good person, and here I am 20 years later with a successful career, a wonderful wife and family and the respect of my kids and peers (well, apart from you clowns :P).

All without God.

There's nothing wrong with asking people to be good, but there's no reason to put an imaginary being and a bunch of bizarre rules around being good to make them that way.

[/rant]

this is elevated to epic thread wiki status.

i have always liked the Truman Show analogy myself as well.

So everyone after Adam and Eve gets punished because of their mistake. Yer Nice.

I have trouble with this idea as well.

Why should I go through this world paying for the stupid choice Adam and Eve made...

My only answer is that I could spend the rest of my life blaming someone else for my misfortunes and the state of the world or I could take control of my life and work with what I've got in the world at this point in time.

That's why a lot of postive people have such positive attitudes. They're not thinking about who they can blame for their misfortunes in life. They're looking at the bigger picture.

And according to the bigger picture as it is in the bible. The world as we know it will not last forever and if thats the case then I don't pay much attention to the choice Adam and Eve made. I can only work with what I've got to make the world around me a better place at this point in time that I'm living in...I can't change whats already been and gone.



last edited by wolfieee at 15:24:47 03/Dec/08

poor adam, he just wanted poon tang pie

poor adam, he just wanted poon tang pie

Exactly, and if he didn't we wouldn't be here (in theory), so onya Adam!! He probably didn't have to worry about foreplay, the g-spot or cuddles afterward... A real mans man!

damned cuddles afterward

i just want to sleep ffs

you wont get that problem with men

you are one brainwashed dude wolfiee. it's amazing that you can actually consider so many of your responses rational and logical, or even answers at all. many of them completely fail to answer the question posed, completely avoiding the actual subject entirely.

for example when someone poses a question which highlights the folly of a certain belief, your answering with "I don't know all the answers and neither do you - you can only theorise" isn't acceptable.

or attempting to shift the focus of a point from one thing to something unrelated, such as your response "My only answer is that I could spend the rest of my life blaming someone else for my misfortunes and the state of the world or I could take control of my life and work with what I've got in the world at this point in time." <-- that answer completely evaded responding to the point - it wasn't about blame, it was about the sheer ridiculousness of the pretext that "all the suffering humankind has endured is reasonable if it's purpose is to demonstrate that no matter how hard he tries, satan cannot steer all mankind away from god"

what a complete and utter joke.

even if by some sheer mind-numbingly impossible chance there is any shred of truth to that idiotic idea and there is a god who did this, what a complete and utter LOWLIFE c*** of an entity it must be. strike me the f*** down, a******

In an everyday sense, I don't even see science as a competitor to religion. I see religion as way for some, not all, people to help make they're lives better and have more purpose, among other things.

Whereas science, to me, pokes and prods at the inner-workings of the Universe so we may better understand it, utilise it (electricity anyone?) and improve our quality of life with it (i.e. medical science).

I choose to believe the findings of science without caution because I understand the point of science, which is to study and discover things about the world we live in, not to try and be the smarter of the two or to poke fun at religion. If a scientific theory turn out to be wrong or not entirely correct, science tries to form new theories explaining why said theory wasn't correct or tries to understand the outcome that happened that proved a theory wrong.

IOW, science says "electrons attract protons" or "gravity is a bi-product of mass" or "we theorise that whats causing all that extra gravity is some type of 'dark' matter" and anyone who wants to know about or utilise the findings of science can do so at their own accord.

I started to question things, and read lots on other religions and it seemed to me that all of them are only put there by "man" to make money.

That's kinda interesting because it made me realise that you don't have to be part of a religion (ie a common group of people) to be religious and to have faith.

There's too many 'religions' that have the same beliefs and faith which kinda sucks. On the census form they ask what religion you are, and they have things like Uniting, Baptist, etc. When really it should be asking what is your religious beliefs or faith .. then it would be Christian, Catholic, Hindu, etc.

Kinda sad that religion these days is perceived as the church group rather than the faith itself, because it does have many more negative things about it.

even if by some sheer mind-numbingly impossible chance there is any shred of truth to that idiotic idea and there is a god who did this, what a complete and utter LOWLIFE c*** of an entity it must be. strike me the f*** down, a******

I seem to remember arguing er... discussing this with you on QGLChat many moons ago, but you were taking the opposing view. Have you had an epiphany or something?

wow that bite was a long time coming

HAHA Jim

post of the year

even if by some sheer mind-numbingly impossible chance there is any shred of truth to that idiotic idea and there is a god who did this, what a complete and utter LOWLIFE c*** of an entity it must be. strike me the f*** down, a******

One guess where Jim is heading.

Clue: It's hot.

Kinda sad that religion these days is perceived as the church group rather than the faith itself, because it does have many more negative things about it.

More than sad imo, it's counter productive. Churches and religion have such a bad name now that people just avoid them out of principle.

There's a lot more GRRR in this thread aimed at religion more than a belief that some higher power created the world.

I actually believe that Jesus was real. I don't believe he was the son of God, but I reckon he was a smart marketing man and told people what they needed to hear to get his point across. And his point is well worth listening to, because in the end, being nice to one another is a good thing! He was human in everyway as well, in that he purported to be the son of god, and therefore was to be worshiped. That's some ego right there... :)

Jim, have you been let down by God? Tell me more about your feelings, preferably with swearing and cursing.

I seem to remember arguing er... discussing this with you on QGLChat many moons ago, but you were taking the opposing view. Have you had an epiphany or something?

Jim has been blinded by the dark lord and has many demons inside, perhaps joining Ross's group will help get him back on track.

One guess where Jim is heading.

Clue: It's hot.

cape york? AMIRITE?!@#

wow that bite was a long time coming

So either you're messing with people now, or you were messing with people then... I would think you were probably messing with people on QGLChat, cause there was no opposing view, and you thought you'd get a good ole argument going, cause after all, you're Jim :P

Jim has been blinded by the dark lord and has many demons inside, perhaps joining Ross's group will help get him back on track.

Homoerotic behavior is not a "way to see god", no matter what Ross tells me... And I've been walking funny for a week!

I actually believe that Jesus was real. I don't believe he was the son of God, but I reckon he was a smart marketing man and told people what they needed to hear to get his point across.

Must have been a car salesman in another life.

But on topic, yeah Jesus coulda been real. My beliefs tell me he couldn't be the son of any god (since I don't believe in the supernatural), but just like you said, he coulda been some super nice friendly all-round good guy son-of-a-bitch. The fact that the date I look at every day is relative to the day he died means he musta been a big shot when he died.

last edited by 3dee at 16:21:28 03/Dec/08

Well, think about successful leaders with lots of charisma. Jesus, Ceasar, Alexander, Gengis Khan, Hitler... They all had an agenda to grind, and a purpose. People love purpose and something to get fired up about.

If Jesus was alive today, he'd be Barack Obama :)

I wonder if he'd have done this pose if cameras existed back then.

http://stephenamurphy.files.wordpress.com/2008/01/buddy-jesus.jpg

Damn straight!! :)

Dogma is one of my favourite movies...

wolfiee is almost as retarded as eu4ia but he is a lot more boring.

I bet dice hates tits cos God told him too

http://homepage.powerup.com.au/~boldajis/images/muslimdrivers.jpg

oh yeah! that's a good 'un

mmmm, cape york
mantra: messing with people? arguing?

From what I've read, the whole idea behind radio radiometric dating is that you can measure the half life of a certain element within a fossil to determine its age and you do that by seeing how much of that element has decayed over time. Right?

That whole way of dating works very well in a closed system. That means nothing else got in or out of the item / substance you're trying to date.

Only problem is that that notion isn't realistic. No where in the entire world is their a single closed system that hasn't been pentrated by water or some kind of precipitation, or exposed to heat / cold and the elements of weathering. That means that accurately dating anything is not possible because you never know how much of a certain element has been moved in or out of the item you're trying to date...

And thats science for you...originally it was hailed by evolutionists as a cutting edge discovery and used to uphold their theory, but as science progressed it wasn't possible to factually claim the world is 4.5 billion years old or accurately date any item using those methods because you can't date anything accurately because it doesn't come from a closed system.

You can hypothesize how old the world is from a scientific point of view, but proving it factually with an air tight system of dating is another story.

It's true that they're not entirely closed systems, nothing can be. They're are close enough allowing for acceptable error (+/-1%). It's also why they use multiple samples and avoid weathered ones like the plague. With Isochron dating methods you don't even need to know the initial quantities, it's all about the ratios so you can detect any contamination and correct for it. With the Uranium-Lead method it's particularly easy because there are two uranium isotopes (238 and 235) decaying into two lead isotopes (207 and 206) so you can make a plot with both to cross check each other.

Transitional species? You're kidding right? There's no such evidence for a huge range of jumps to new species that darwin made in his theories and there still isn't. Darwin made those assumptions a long time ago hoping that in the future science would make those new discoveries and to date none of those jumps between species has been found, nor have their been fossils dug up to backup those claims.

But hey you've had plenty of scientists try to fake it and lots of assumptions being made about what a species could have looked like from a single piece of bone fragment that they found. Suddenly a single piece of bone fragment becomes the missing link between species until it too gets thrown out the window and science/evolutionists continues to move on and try and find that missing species...

Kidding? Certainly not. I can show you a fairly simple series involving the evolution of mammals and the continuum between reptilian and mammalian features in the jaw and the structure of the ear.

http://www.clan-lt.com/index.php?page=file&id=1347
Here you have skulls from a Synapsid (Pelycosaur) a Therapsid and an early mammal. The coloured segments show homologous structures that form the ear in these three animals and the black dots represent the jaw joint. You can see how they change in position and their relative function with regards to the jaw. In the Synapsid (the most reptilian) the ear bones (quadrate and angular) form the hinge of the jaw. In therapsids the still do this, but in a slightly different way, because they have two jaw joint one that is reptilian and one that is mammalian. In the mammalian skull you're left with one jaw joint with the ear bones separated from the joint.

http://www.clan-lt.com/index.php?page=file&id=1348

This series shows the essentially the same thing but sticks to the jaw and on the left you can see the groups these jaws come from and their place in the geological time scale.


Now a little closer to home.
http://www.clan-lt.com/index.php?page=file&id=1346

Can you tell me from this series of skulls which are human and which are not and why?

I'm interested in some articles on the above. Have you got some links?

I've got journal references

Curr Biol. 2007 Apr 17;17(8):706-10
Mol Biol Evol. 2008 May;25(5):980-96


It's a fairly new area of study so things may change pretty quickly. But as it stands it's just another line of evidence among many others pointing to common descent. Now you could say a common designer and that's fair enough. Except that it's a hypothesis that is untestable, unfalsifiable and therefore useless. You're free to believe it. Though I must put this question to you. If the lines of evidence that point to common descent imply a common designer to you, why are our genomes and the genomes of every creature riddled with mistakes? Inactivated genes, duplicated and divergent genes, chromosomes that have been pasted together, why? Why make it look as though the where a long term process with untold numbers of false starts and dead ends? Why does the pinnacle of creation in this mythology have a gene for synthesizing vitamin-C that is broken but dogs have a perfectly good version?

Unfortunately religion is one thing we haven't studied in psychology, but I'm guessing there are a billion studies out there examining religiosity correlates with everything. Maybe religion is adaptive? I know there are a lot of studies showing that if you feel like you have "control" over your life then you are generally happier than other people... so maybe a belief in a higher power who listens to you and will do things for you makes you feel like you have more...

Nope, just thought I'd run a quick search, here is one of the first abstracts I read:

Robbins and Francis (1996) note that the relationship between religiosity and happiness varies according to the precise measures used and the samples studied. To further explore the association between religiosity and happiness, 154 Northern Irish undergraduate students completed the Depression–Happiness Scale and a measure of frequency of Church attendance. No significant association was found between a greater frequency of Church attendance and happiness scores. As such, these findings compliment previous research using the Depression–Happiness Scale alongside an attitudinal measure of religion, and support the view that when happiness is operationalised in terms of the Depression–Happiness Scale there is no association with either attitudinal of behavioural measures of religiosity.

I was surprised about the apparent objectiveness of that study, so I read another abstract:

Since the Columbine horror in Colorado, the problem of violence in our society and its roots in human evolution have evoked deep soul-searching in sensitive people. We in the behavioral sciences and theology are asking what we can do to slow or stop the downward spiral of killing and brutality. How inevitable is it? What new factors impinge on this age-old problem of our species? What help is available from research in criminology, child-development, brain studies and modern psychiatry? There are scientifically established ways of reinforcing in the human subject the reality of empathic love which Chistianity has so long proclaimed to be God's answer to our human dilemma. This paper speaks to these issues.

What? Pretty typical of how religious people talk about science - they start with their answer, that god exists, present a problem and pretend they will talk about it rationally and objectively, and then answer with god and faith.

Both abstracts taken from Volume 50, Number 3 / January, 2002 "Pastoral Psychology".



last edited by BillyHardball at 19:04:26 03/Dec/08

Jim: Innocent questions?

But as it stands it's just another line of evidence among many others pointing to common descent. Now you could say a common designer and that's fair enough. Except that it's a hypothesis that is untestable, unfalsifiable and therefore useless. You're free to believe it.

Forgive me, but the same could be said for a hypothesis of common descent. It is also untestable, unfalsifiable and therefore useless. You're free to believe it.

We're back to fact versus interpretation.

Though I must put this question to you. If the lines of evidence that point to common descent imply a common designer to you, why are our genomes and the genomes of every creature riddled with mistakes? Inactivated genes, duplicated and divergent genes, chromosomes that have been pasted together, why?

From the creationist perspective, all DNA was created 100% perfect but errors have been occurring over generations. As for duplicated genes, such things could be built in for redundancy in some instances or are also simply an introduced error.

...on the left you can see the groups these jaws come from and their place in the geological time scale.

The geological time scale again is something of an interpretation, not a fact. Ages of fossils being dated by the strata they're found in, and the age of strata being dated by index fossils found in them. Other dating methods have determined wildly varying dates on tests carried out on the same fossil - not exactly reliable.

I almost didn't want to post this because I'm almost sure we've hashed this out three years ago. We couldn't agree then and I doubt either of us has changed since. :)

last edited by eu4ia at 21:19:21 03/Dec/08

Do you believe in television? Do you know how a television works? What about the Internet? Even time is an interpretation. How do you decide which science you believe vs which ones you pass off as mere "interpretations"?

Do you believe in television? Do you know how a television works? What about the Internet? Even time is an interpretation. How do you decide which science you believe vs which ones you pass off as mere "interpretations"?

Television exists today in this time frame. It is fact. Anything we can see, touch, examine is undeniable. Claims of how things have changed over time without anyone being present to observe them are not. They are educated guesses, based ultimately on interpretations of the data we do have. But the further removed from us in time the subject of discussion is, the more inaccurate our hypotheses are likely to be regarding that subject.

*edit: I've just realised I've been sucked back into this thread when I didn't want to be! Argh!

last edited by eu4ia at 21:43:11 03/Dec/08

Forgive me, but the same could be said for a hypothesis of common descent. It is also untestable, unfalsifiable and therefore useless. You're free to believe it.

We're back to fact versus interpretation.

I love it when they start to substitute and parrot. Anyway, the answer is no. Evolution makes testable predictions. It is most certainly falsifiable. I can tell you how. Find a modern animal (any one you like) preserved in one of the layers of the precambrian. If you can do it, the theory of evolution is wrong. The theory that replaces it is still going to have to explain everything we observed before that suggested common descent and those pesky little rabbits, dogs or whatever in the precambrian. It will be a tall order.

From the creationist perspective, all DNA was created 100% perfect but errors have been occurring over generations. As for duplicated genes, such things could be built in for redundancy in some instances or are also simply an introduced error.

I've heard of this perfect DNA before, but it makes no sense. What combination of adenine, thymine, guanine and cytosine would constitute a perfect gene?

The geological time scale again is something of an interpretation, not a fact. Ages of fossils being dated by the strata they're found in, and the age of strata being dated by index fossils found in them. Other dating methods have determined wildly varying dates on tests carried out on the same fossil - not exactly reliable.

The ages of the strata are dated radiometrically and relative to other known layers. There is a margin of error usually hovering around 1-2%, not much. Another one they like to trot out is accelerated or varying radioactive decay rates so that a young earth may appear old. But it's total nonsense. The decay rates are observably constant and can even be predicted through quantum mechanics. So to claim this is to claim that fundamental constants of the universe have been changing to make everything seem old.

it's hilarious, he askes for proof you give him proof and he just says 'oh thats bulls***, give me proof'

you f***in fruit loop

Forgive me, but the same could be said for a hypothesis of common descent. It is also untestable, unfalsifiable and therefore useless. You're free to believe it.

We're back to fact versus interpretation.

then dna is evidence of both if you want to be completely objective about it. but then you take something like alcohol dehydrogenase (an enzyme), which in humans has a whole bunch of copies in the dna (3 if i remember correctly?). each one is slightly modified to a particular purpose and different sites in the body.

what you can do is examine the code for each of them and compare to species which diverged from the common ancestors of humans. its like tracing back the history of religions by seeing when their teachings diverged if that makes more sense to you.

when you look at this kinda info it pretty much shoots down ID pretty hard. because two species that might diverge, then later converge due to enviromental changes don't have as similar DNA like they would in ID. it pretty much points to evolution as the only way that could come about.

take say a dolphin, the bone structure in the fins is essentially a misshapen copy of the human or land mammal style hands/paws or whatever. the hind limbs are just switched off. the code is still there, but it doesn't get turned on. you occasionally get mutants where they grow legs. same with humans sometimes growing tails.

thats showing for a start that mutations are random and also that its natural selection and its kin that are directing evolution. if it was intelligent design, mutant dolphins wouldn't grow legs. humans wouldn't grow tails. and in fact the code wouldn't be there for it to even happen.

also, the fact (and it is a fact) that there are dolphins with hind legs and humans with tails is evidence of evolution, even if its an evolutionary dead end. and you can see this directly. you don't need to interpret fossils planted by god. and if evolution is happening now, it was happening 30 minutes ago. and it was happening last week. and it was happening 3 billion years ago.

Also, uranium-lead dating of zircon crystals is pretty much flawless. Zircon is very chemically inert and resistant to weathering. Uranium is commonly found inside the crystal's structure. When the uranium decays to lead, the lead leaches out of the crystal causing fine cracks to form inside. No cracks on the outside shows the amount of lead inside a zircon crystal isn't due to external contamination. Hence we can safely say the Earth is at least 4.47 billion years old.

From the creationist perspective, all DNA was created 100% perfect but errors have been occurring over generations. As for duplicated genes, such things could be built in for redundancy in some instances or are also simply an introduced error.

if dna was perfect in the past you wouldn't have redundant dna. dolphins would have the code for legs because they would never have had it. humans would never have had the code for tails.

explain that with your bible, god boy.

The ages of the strata are dated radiometrically and relative to other known layers.

Okay, but how are the other layers "known"? The circular reasoning relied on is well known and even admitted by respected scientists:

"The rocks do date the fossils, but the fossils date the rocks more accurately. Stratigraphy cannot avoid this kind of reasoning . . because circularity is inherent in the derivation of time scales."—*J.E. O'Rourke, "Pragmatism vs. Materialism in Stratigraphy," American Journal of science, January 1976.

and

"The charge that the construction of the geologic scale involves circularity has a certain amount of validity."—*David M. Raup, "Geology and Creationism," Field Museum of Natural History Bulletin, March 1983, p. 21.

and

"It is a problem not easily solved by the classic methods of stratigraphical paleontology, as obviously we will land ourselves immediately in an impossible circular argument if we say, firstly that a particular lithology [theory of rock strata] is synchronous on the evidence of its fossils, and secondly that the fossils are synchronous on the evidence of the lithology."—*Derek V. Ager, The Nature of the Stratigraphic Record (1973), p. 62.

and finally (and perhaps more relevant)

"But the danger of circularity is still present. For most biologists, the strongest reason for accepting the evolutionary hypothesis is their acceptance of some theory that entails it. There is another difficulty. The temporal ordering of biological events beyond the local section may critically involve paleontological correlation, which necessarily presupposes the non-repeatability of organic events in geologic history. There are various justifications for this assumption but for almost all contemporary paleontologists it rests upon the acceptance of the evolutionary hypothesis."—*David G. Kitts, "Paleontology and Evolutionary Theory," in Evolution, September 1974, p. 466.

I'm not making this stuff up.

if dna was perfect in the past you wouldn't have redundant dna. dolphins would have the code for legs because they would never have had it. humans would never have had the code for tails.

explain that with your bible, god boy.

nF, that is an interesting point. I like it - something new for me to think about and go read up on.

i'm sure you will create something to counter it

oh i get it why they are called 'creationists'

you guys constantly create bulls***

Anything we can see, touch, examine is undeniable

can't say i've seen too many god's that i or anyone have seen, touched and examined...

but god is undeniable, right?

take say a dolphin, the bone structure in the fins is essentially a misshapen copy of the human or land mammal style hands/paws or whatever. the hind limbs are just switched off. the code is still there, but it doesn't get turned on. you occasionally get mutants where they grow legs. same with humans sometimes growing tails.

thats showing for a start that mutations are random and also that its natural selection and its kin that are directing evolution. if it was intelligent design, mutant dolphins wouldn't grow legs. humans wouldn't grow tails. and in fact the code wouldn't be there for it to even happen.

nF, can you cite some examples of redundant DNA for me to research? The dolphin "leg" thing has been discussed in creationist articles and doesn't really stand up to scrutiny. Here's one example of what I've found:

What Japanese fishermen actually found on October 28 was a five-year-old, nine-foot bottlenose dolphin with an extra set of fins, not a set of legs with hooves or even leg remnants. According to Katsuki Hayashi, director of the Taiji Whaling Museum, the dolphin has a well-developed set of symmetrical fins. It is premature to speculate beyond this.

After anatomical studies are done by qualified researchers, we should expect the results to be peer-reviewed. Only then can we determine in more detail the significance of this find. Researchers are now planning to do X-ray and DNA tests.

Possible sources of the hind fins include mutations, such as the Hox gene that produces flies with an extra set of wings or a child recently born with a third arm. Also, this dolphin could be a cross with, or somehow related to, dolphins that have two front and two rear non-dorsal fins. In support of this, some cetacean embryos do initiate hind-limb bud development which, in dolphins, degenerates during about the fifth week (see Thewissen et al., 2006).

In fact, today’s two-finned dolphins may have the genetic information for generating all four fins. All dolphins could have once had two rear fins, and lost the information. The fins are not used for propulsion but for steering, and for this reason, one pair may be adequate for survival.

Full article source: http://www.icr.org/article/3117/

but god is undeniable, right?

I've never said that. The belief in God is a matter of faith.

The dolphin "leg" thing has been discussed in creationist articles and doesn't really stand up to scrutiny

Haha, applying the term "scrutiny" when talking about discussions in "creationist articles". Give me a break. Creationists couldn't apply correct logical reasoning if their lives depended on it - hence all of their conclusions are inherently flawed and not even worth countering.

I still can't believe we are having a serious discussion about this.

nF, that is an interesting point. I like it - something new for me to think about and go read up on.

quick hint, you might want to try reading things written less than 35 years ago.

dna sequencing was pretty much impossible for complex organisms in the 70s. pcr wasn't invented till mid 80s by the coolest scientist ever. as i said genome studies shoot ID in a big way. evolution might be an interpretation of the evidence, but the evidence is stacked massively against ID. 60 years ago ID might have worked as a theory (for morons) but it can't today without deliberately ignoring evidence.

in fact half the species in australia are textbook examples of convergent evolution.

also, you're accusing science of circular logic? isn't that the very basis of creationism?

Ever heard of copy and paste? I'm sure it's possible God did the same thing that we do on a regular basis and just turn certain bits on and off and change a few bits here and there :p

nF, can you cite some examples of redundant DNA for me to research? The dolphin "leg" thing has been discussed in creationist articles and doesn't really stand up to scrutiny. Here's one example of what I've found:

uhh, your example is completely retarded.

i'll explain why.

look at dolphin and human embyros. the hind limbs are there in both. there's a tail in humans (and dolphins). theres your redundant dna. in humans the tail stops growing, in dolphins the legs stop growing. (except in mutants.)

the code is there, case closed. now see if you can find me a creationist whos going to deny the similarity of embryo development. more than likely they just ignore this.

you are one brainwashed dude wolfiee. it's amazing that you can actually consider so many of your responses rational and logical, or even answers at all. many of them completely fail to answer the question posed, completely avoiding the actual subject entirely.

for example when someone poses a question which highlights the folly of a certain belief, your answering with "I don't know all the answers and neither do you - you can only theorise" isn't acceptable.

or attempting to shift the focus of a point from one thing to something unrelated, such as your response "My only answer is that I could spend the rest of my life blaming someone else for my misfortunes and the state of the world or I could take control of my life and work with what I've got in the world at this point in time." <-- that answer completely evaded responding to the point - it wasn't about blame, it was about the sheer ridiculousness of the pretext that "all the suffering humankind has endured is reasonable if it's purpose is to demonstrate that no matter how hard he tries, satan cannot steer all mankind away from god"

So what’s a better answer Jim? What have you come up with?

I was re-iterating what was already written from a biblical standpoint. Your argument isn’t with me, but with God and the reasons he gives for the way things are…you either believe what he says or you don’t. It’s that simple.

My own personal opinion is that I don’t think it’s fair that humanity should suffer, but then I didn’t make the rules. I was born into the world the way it is which is why I wrote the answer the way I did. I don’t have exact answers as to why, nor do I know how to fix the state of the world or the suffering or to definitively explain away why it occurs on my own. That's why we come up with theories?

But more to the point, we’re all in the same boat. At some point everyone will have to endure suffering, pain and eventually death...so if you’re content with leaving those kinds of questions unanswered, then so be it.

Have you got a better reason for why it is all the way it just is?

what a complete and utter joke.

even if by some sheer mind-numbingly impossible chance there is any shred of truth to that idiotic idea and there is a god who did this, what a complete and utter LOWLIFE c*** of an entity it must be. strike me the f*** down, a******

At least you’re open to the mind-numbingly impossible chance…



last edited by wolfieee at 00:13:51 04/Dec/08

Ever heard of copy and paste? I'm sure it's possible God did the same thing that we do on a regular basis and just turn certain bits on and off and change a few bits here and there :p

thats where convergent evolution comes in. examples the dorsal fins on dolphins (and sharks, etc). legless lizards and snakes. the platypus bill and ducks, etc. echo location in animals (bats, dolphins, etc).

functionally they are quite similar, but genetically they aren't.

why else would a dolphin share so much more genetic information with a land mammal than it would with fish?

last edited by nF at 00:17:28 04/Dec/08

Quote mining isn't the greatest way to argue. I'll put aside the fact that you're getting your information from a creationist crackpot site and press on.

I went and read O'Rourke's paper. Aside from being a poorly written piece of crap, it's actually more about philosophy than anything else. He even gets into dialectical materialism, imagine that. The author is simply mistaken is any case.

Also your quote is slightly dishonest.
You posted this:

"The rocks do date the fossils, but the fossils date the rocks more accurately. Stratigraphy cannot avoid this kind of reasoning . . because circularity is inherent in the derivation of time scales."—*J.E. O'Rourke, "Pragmatism vs. Materialism in Stratigraphy," American Journal of science, January 1976.

Yet in the journal it appears as follows

The rocks do date the fossils, but the fossils date the rocks more accurately. Stratigraphy cannot avoid this kind of reasoning if it insists on using only temporal concepts, because circularity is inherent in the derivation of time scales.

(emphasis mine)

Anyway... next quote.

"The charge that the construction of the geologic scale involves circularity has a certain amount of validity."—*David M. Raup, "Geology and Creationism," Field Museum of Natural History Bulletin, March 1983, p. 21.

I won't post the everything that surrounds it. But anyone who is interested can find the text here, ctrl+f is your friend. He goes on to say

In spite of this problem, the system does work! The best evidence for this is that the mineral and petroleum industries around the world depend upon the use of fossils in dating. If an oil company learns that petroleum is found in buried reefs of Silurian age, for example, its geologists search for reefs of Silurian age else- where. It has been shown over and over again that by following this strategy, more petroleum will be found than if drilling is done on a random basis. 1 think it quite un-likely that the major mineral and petroleum companies of the world could be fooled.

And if you read a little before the quote you posted you'll see he's not talking about quite the same thing anyway.

The Ager quote is from a book so I don't have access to it right now.

"But the danger of circularity is still present. For most biologists, the strongest reason for accepting the evolutionary hypothesis is their acceptance of some theory that entails it. There is another difficulty. The temporal ordering of biological events beyond the local section may critically involve paleontological correlation, which necessarily presupposes the non-repeatability of organic events in geologic history. There are various justifications for this assumption but for almost all contemporary paleontologists it rests upon the acceptance of the evolutionary hypothesis."—*David G. Kitts, "Paleontology and Evolutionary Theory," in Evolution, September 1974, p. 466.

This one is by far the worst.

He goes on to say

Despite these pitfalls we can with reasonable care avoid the danger of presupposing what it is we want to ultimately to test and have at our disposal a distribution of organisms in space and time that we suppose to have been related to one another by descent. Something more is, however, needed. When paleontologists invoke paleontological evidence in support of evolutionary theories that evidence invariable includes assertions about the particular relationship of one fossil organism to another, which is to say, assertions about phylogeny. I have misgivings about the use of phylogenies as instruments of theoretical investigations but they do not stem from the fact that phylogeny construction obviously presupposes whatever theoretical principles they purport to test. They are grounded rather in the belief that, despite some valiant and interesting efforts, paleontological phylogeny construction has not been provided with a solid theoretical foundation (for a recent review of the problem of phylogeny construction see Ghiselin, 1972). Providing this foundation is, in my opinion, the most urgent task now facing theoretically disposed paleontologists.

He's not talking about fossils being used to date rocks, or vice versa. He's talking about what the distribution of fossils say about evolution. He says this right before the quote that you've mined (or copy pasted from a creationist site).

The temporal and spatial distribution is not entailed by any biological theory, but by the ordering principles of geology. Thus the paleontologist can provide knowledge that cannot be provided by biological principles alone. But he cannot provide us with evolution.

...

I'm not making this stuff up.

No but you are being extremely dishonest.


last edited by Rommel at 00:55:55 04/Dec/08

wolfiee - my argument isn't with any god at all, it's with the man-made notion that the bible is the conveyed words of a god and that instead of actually looking for answers, it's best to just have faith that the bible is the word of an omnipotent being and close your mind to anyone who says otherwise because they can only be a false prophet under the direction of an angel gone bad - to cling blindly and stubbornly to snippets of information that seem to support our desire that this actually is truth.

But more to the point, we’re all in the same boat. At some point everyone will have to endure suffering, pain and eventually death...so if you’re content with leaving those kinds of questions unanswered, then so be it.

Have you got a better reason for why it is all the way it just is?

Absolutely. It's because we are capable of choice.

It's really that simple.

What a suprise, the creationists found a couple of one liners written by scientists that on there own vaguely support them, so they take them out of context and present it as proof.

nf + rommel tag team

there's probably more money to be made from arguing the creationist's point of view than the darwinist's

i see it like this; which magazine would pay more for the following articles:
- an article published in a christian magazine that, although scientifically incorrect, constructs holes in darwinism and subsequently proves it 'wrong'
- an article published in a science magazine that categorically slams creationism

i wouldn't be suprised if half of the 'more vocal' creationists don't actually believe or care about the s*** they write

wolfiee - my argument isn't with any god at all, it's with the man-made notion that the bible is the conveyed words of a god and that instead of actually looking for answers, it's best to just have faith that the bible is the word of an omnipotent being and close your mind to anyone who says otherwise because they can only be a false prophet under the direction of an angel gone bad - to cling blindly and stubbornly to snippets of information that seem to support our desire that this actually is truth.

Jim: that argument might stick if we were all still living in the dark ages and if knowledge hadn't grown at the geometric rate that it has. You're acting like these people who have faith and hope that there is a God somehow lost their powers of reasoning and are just completely irrational beings because they believe in something more than the cycle of life as we know it currently.

Just because you have faith in an omnipotent being doesn't mean that you blindly follow, quite the contrary. Those people that follow are generally for the most part rational human beings who from their experiences throughout life have come to their conclusion. It's pretty clear that a lot of humanity doesn't just sit by and accept that the cycle of life and death as we know it is how it should be and its clear that those people also believe that there being has a spirtual aspect to them with a desire to seek out answers.

Whichever way you look at it Jim, science for the best part of the last 2000 years hasn't come up with anything concrete for the origins of life other than random chance.

I'd rather place my hope in the notion of a God rather than a bunch of science that equate to the random possibility of nothing coming from nothing, but what I'm really interested to see is if all of humanity can pluck itself up and out of the state of the current world and evolve enough to fix the problems we've caused in the space of a short 2000 years let alone the billions of years that we've apparently been evolving. I don't understand, shouldn't we be getting smarter and more highly evolved? Why then do we keep perputating our same mistakes?

At least we agree on one thing...choice :)


last edited by wolfieee at 09:35:41 04/Dec/08

It's true that they're not entirely closed systems, nothing can be. They're are close enough allowing for acceptable error (+/-1%). It's also why they use multiple samples and avoid weathered ones like the plague. With Isochron dating methods you don't even need to know the initial quantities, it's all about the ratios so you can detect any contamination and correct for it. With the Uranium-Lead method it's particularly easy because there are two uranium isotopes (238 and 235) decaying into two lead isotopes (207 and 206) so you can make a plot with both to cross check each other.

That’s not correct.

It is important to realize that the laboratories do not measure the ‘age’ of the rocks but the isotopes in them at the present time. Geologists calculate an ‘age’ using the measured amount of a ‘daughter’ isotope (e.g. argon) and its corresponding ‘parent’ isotope (e.g. potassium).
However, before this calculation can be made, it is necessary to assume how much of the ‘daughter’ and ‘parent’ were present when the rock formed. It is also necessary to assume that no isotopes were gained or lost over time and that the rate of radioactive decay has remained constant at the very slow rate measured today.
The problem is that we don’t know whether these assumptions are reasonable (because they are not provable), and it is especially awkward for metamorphic rocks. Geologists overcome this problem by ‘interpreting’ the result. For example, the calculated ‘age’ could be taken as the ‘date’ of metamorphism, or it could be the ‘age’ of the original volcanic (or sedimentary) rock, or something in between, or something else.

References
1. E.g. the Zoroaster Granite. Geological formations have names for ease of identification.
2. The Vishnu Schist and other rocks of the Granite Gorge Metamorphic Suite. See Karlstrom, K.E., Ilg, B.R., Williams, M.L., Hawkins, D.P., Bowring, S.A. and Seaman, S.J., Paleoproterozoic rocks of the Granite Gorges; in: Beus, S.S. and Morales, M. (Eds.), Grand Canyon Geology, 2nd edition, Oxford University Press, New York, pp. 9–38, 2003.
3. Belonging to a rock unit called the Brahma Schist.
4. 1741–1750 million years (Ma) based on U-Pb (uranium-lead) ‘dating’ of ‘original’ zircon grains in metamorphosed felsic (granitic) volcanic rock layers within the Brahma and Rama Schists. See Ilg, B.R., Karlstrom, K.E., Hawkins, D.P. and Williams, M.L., Tectonic evolution of Paleoproterozoic rocks of Grand Canyon: Insights into middle-crustal processes, Geological Society of America Bulletin 108:1149–1166, 1996, and Hawkins, D.P., Bowring, S.A., Ilg, B.R., Karlstrom, K.E. and Williams, M.L., U-Pb geochronologic constraints on the Paleoproterozoic crustal evolution of the Upper Granite Gorge, Grand Canyon, Arizona, Geological Society of America Bulletin 108:1167–1181, 1996.
5. 1690–1710 Ma based on U-Pb ‘dating’ of minerals (monazite, xenotime and titanite) that formed in the overlying Vishnu Schist and underlying Rama Schist during the metamorphism. See Hawkins et al., ref. 4, and Hawkins, D.P. and Bowring, S.A., U-Pb monazite, xenotime, and titanite geochronological constraints on the prograde to post-peak metamorphic thermal history of Paleoproterozoic migmatites from Grand Canyon, Arizona, Contributions to Mineralogy and Petrology 134:150–169, 1999.
6. These samples were collected with a Scientific Research and Collecting Permit issued by the Grand Canyon National Park, as part of the RATE (Radioisotopes and the Age of The Earth) project.
7. 50 m (160 ft) long and 2 m (7 ft) wide, outcropping just upstream from the mouth of Clear Creek at river mile 84 (measured from Lees Ferry).
8. ‘Whole rock’ samples were analyzed in all cases—K-Ar at Activation Laboratories, Ancaster, Ontario, Canada; Rb-Sr, Sm-Nd and Pb-Pb at the PRISE Laboratory, Research School of Earth Sciences, Australian National University, Canberra, Australia.
9. Austin, S.A. and Snelling, A.A., Discordant potassium-argon model and isochron ‘ages’ for Cardenas Basalt (Middle Proterozoic) and associated diabase of eastern Grand Canyon, Arizona; in: Walsh, R.E. (Ed.), Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on Creationism, Creation Science Fellowship, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, pp. 35–51, 1998.
10. Snelling, A.A., Austin, S.A. and Hoesch, W.A., Radioisotopes in the diabase sill (Upper Precambrian) at Bass Rapids, Grand Canyon, Arizona: An application and test of the isochron dating method; in: Ivey, R.L. Jr., (Ed.), Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Creationism, Creation Science Fellowship, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, pp. 269–284, 2003.
11. Musaka, S.B., Wilson, A.H. and Carlson, R.W., A multielement geochronologic study of the Great Dyke, Zimbabwe: Significance of the robust and reset ages, Earth and Planetary Science Letters 164:353–369, 1998.
12. Some might argue that these radio-dating methods still give ‘ages’ of many millions of years, as required by evolutionists. However, there is irrefutable evidence that the rates of radioactive decay of these ‘dating’ isotopes were grossly accelerated in the past, being up to millions of times faster than their currently measured rates (see box, ‘Accelerated radioactive decay in the past’, above).
13. Austin, S.A. (Ed.), Grand Canyon: Monument to Catastrophe, Institute for Creation Research, Santee, California, ch. 4, pp. 57–82, 1994.

Explain to me then why geologists can get such a huge variation in dates when they’re dating rock formations from the same geological place, using the same testing methods...

Wait I’ll do it for you!

Accelerated radioactive decay in the past
Research by the RATE project1 has uncovered much evidence that radioisotope decay rates were accelerated in a global catastrophic event in the recent past.2 This evidence includes the patterns of discordances between ‘dates’ from the different radioisotope systems.3–6
For example, if accelerated radioisotope decay occurred, then alpha-decaying radioisotopes would yield older isochron ‘ages’ than beta-decaying radioisotopes. This is exactly the pattern in the Brahma amphibolites in Grand Canyon.
Because the different radioisotope pairs are supposed to be dating the same geologic (rock formation) event, different ‘dates’ mean that the parent radioisotopes decayed at different rates over the same time period. In other words, the decay of the parent radioisotopes was accelerated by different amounts, the decay of those yielding older ‘ages’ (the alpha-decayers) having been accelerated more. This again matches theory.
Obviously, if radioisotope decay was accelerated, say during the Genesis Flood, then the radioisotope decay ‘clocks’ could never be relied upon when they ‘date’ rocks as millions and billions of years old. Indeed, there are several independent lines of irrefutable evidence7–9which indicate that the rates of decay of these long-age radioisotopes were grossly accelerated during some event in the past, up to millions of times faster than their currently measured rates. Thus, it is entirely plausible that the rocks are only a few thousand years old.
References
1. RATE is a cooperative research venture between leading creationist geologists and physicists of the Institute for Creation Research and the Creation Research Society of USA into Radioisotopes and the Age of The Earth.
2. Vardiman, L., Snelling, A.A. and Chaffin, E.F. (Eds.), Radioisotopes and the Age of the Earth: Results of a Young-Earth Creationist Research Initiative, Institute for Creation Research, Santee, California, and the Creation Research Society, St Joseph, Missouri, in preparation, 2005.
3. Austin, S.A. and Snelling, A.A., Discordant potassium-argon model and isochron ‘ages’ for Cardenas Basalt (Middle Proterozoic) and associated diabase of eastern Grand Canyon, Arizona; in: Walsh, R.E. (Ed.), Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on Creationism, Creation Science Fellowship, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, pp. 35–51, 1998.
4. Snelling, A.A., Austin, S.A. and Hoesch, W.A., Radioisotopes in the diabase sill (Upper Precambrian) at Bass Rapids, Grand Canyon, Arizona: An application and test of the isochron dating method; in: Ivey, R.L. Jr., (Ed.), Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Creationism, Creation Science Fellowship, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, pp. 269–284, 2003.
5. Austin, S.A., Testing the assumptions of radioisotope dating, using whole-rock and mineral isochron methods by K-Ar, Rb-Sr, Sm-Nd, and Pb-Pb radioisotope pairs; in: Vardiman et al., ref 2.
6. Snelling, A.A., Isochron discordance and the role of inheritance and mixing of radioisotopes in the mantle and crust; in: Vardiman et al., ref 2.
7. Humphreys, D.R., Young helium diffusion age of zircons supports accelerated nuclear decay; in: Vardiman et al., ref. 2.
8. Snelling, A.A., Radiohalos in granites: evidence for accelerated nuclear decay; in: Vardiman et al., ref. 2.
9. Baumgardner, J.R., 14C evidence for a recent global Flood and a young earth: in; Vardiman et al., ref. 2.