I wouldn't worry about any of this. After all. We're all going to die. And then we'll be judged, each and every religion is fairly clear on this. You die, you go to some sort of place and then *someone* decides if you've been good or bad and sends you to the appropriate place. All the religions I have any knowledge of say a similar thing.

So as I say, don't worry. You'll get there and god will do the deal and you'll be sorted for all eternity. If you've killed innocents, sounds like you're going down. If you've not shown compassion or forgiveness (and lets face it, religious people aren't reknowned for their forgiveness despite what their religion doctrines say), fireburning here you come. If you've thought bad things about people, or treated people badly because they don't believe as you do, hell cometh. It'll all sort itself out in the wash.

A few thoughts on various questions raised, encourged by a bit less aggression than usual!
You either believe the bible or you don't, if you do you can't pick and choose what is truth and what is imagery. If you believe the bible, then you believe God is who he says he is, and should have no problem believing that he could create the world etc in 6 days.
Tying this up with the theory of evolution is not easy, there is a lot of evidence to suggest how it all happened. There are also some big holes in the theory (why can we not simulate first life, left and right handed amino acids and equilibrium constants for reaction, no evidence of creatures actually changing species etc) and I find it easier to believe God made it than relying on it all happening by random chance.
And why should folks not say "God is bigger than us so we will never understand everything about him and 'his mysterious ways'". Is this not similar to saying "don't know exactly how old rock is but if we assume x has happened at x rate…."
On the American education thing, that was a group who introduced the concept called Intelligent Design to try to offer an alternative to evolution in schools – they certainly did not first introduce creationism!
God using evolution doesn't make a lot of sense to me – "survival of the fittest" is not very consistent with the picture God paint of himself (in the bible).
Then there is the whole basis of societies morals – if we believe we are just chance joining of carbon etc atoms then why should we not abort babies, assist grannie's suicide, kill those who don't believe what we do? If however we believe we are created we might have a bit more respect for each other.
Religion is fundamentally flawed cause man has too much control over it.

I personally struggle to believe that we are just here by accident,

Fortunately Evolution doesnt do "accident" so that covers that!

LD

You are absolutely wrong.

As is so often the case. The fact that Evolution does not explain every single step of the process of development does not mean that "God must have done it" whilst science will continue to provide evidence of evolution Faith will never provide any. It therefore becomes convenient to assume that "fairies" did it.

Its also convenient manipulation to say that if there can be doubt over the theory of evolution and there are doubts over Creationism then therefore must be an equal chance of each being right. The doubt leads to an equal probability.
This is clearly a flawed argument.

I personally struggle to believe that we are just here by accident,

Fortunately Evolution doesnt do "accident" so that covers that!

Fair point but I wasn't actually referring to evolution at that point.

Then there is the whole basis of societies morals – if we believe we are just chance joining of carbon etc atoms then why should we not abort babies, assist grannie's suicide, kill those who don't believe what we do? If however we believe we are created we might have a bit more respect for each other.

We "sorted" "chance" above.
With regard to morals why do Christians agree morally that it is acceptable to turn off life machines when somebody loses consciousness and are happy to "harvest" organs however the abortion of a blastocyst causes you incredible moral dilemmas. The loss of life is far greater in the former example than the latter. The argument about potential is also flawed. Each cell in the human body has the potential for life so the death of a adult with no brain stem activity should cause you greater concern than the small number of cells in a Blastocsyct (circa 250 compared with millions)
Fortunately for us our morals our not shaped by the book that advocated mass slaughter, infanticide, group rape etc.

Gets off soap-box… the thing that really troubles me about some of the recent STW posts are the comments that line up with Richard Dawkins' God Delusion. A lot of people seem to have simply swallowed all this without a critical look. Mr Dawkins philosophical arguments about religion seem to be seriously flawed in most areas and yet he has succeeded in convincing most people that his rationale is overwhelming and that nobody can challenge his views with any degree of intellectual rigour. NOT SO!!!

I would so love to see a serious god botherer sit down and do a televised debate with Dawkins. Having thoroughly read both sides of the equation, I'm off to the Building Society to get a mortgage, then off to Ladbrokes to put every penny of it down on Dawkins ripping Religion a new arsehole. IS SO !!!

…..Soz descended to the Religies level of debate for a moment 😉

the thing that really troubles me about some of the recent STW posts are the comments that line up with Richard Dawkins' God Delusion. A lot of people seem to have simply swallowed all this without a critical look.

The irony is comical. You really cound'nt make it up if you tried!

I'm staying out of this one, I get way too cross.

This whole Dawkins thing – seriously can people not understand that just because he's vaguely popular, it doesn't mean that everyone else who vaguely agrees with him (eg atheists and even agnostics in some aspects) takes him as their posterboy or even cares anything about him. Most people who might know the name and are atheist don't have a clue what he's actually said and don't really care.

That's the great thing about not being religious, you can make your own mind up and don't need a messiah to tell you what to think. 🙄

Personally, apart from the fact the guy is a focal point, I don't think he is important to the debate per se. Its just that he has written a very well argued book on the subject, and having read it I found it very hard to find any argument with his logic, or any of the science, or any of the philosophy, or any of the arguments presented. Whereas on the other hand I was questioning the other side really from the first time I can remember. All of the time that I was a choirboy. All the time I attended a Christian youth organisation. Right up to the time when I was villified for refusing to start my marriage with a lie by getting married in Church. Due to the fact that I had come to the conclusion, partly with the active agreement of the Vicar that it was a load of cobblers.

"God is bigger than us so we will never understand everything about him and 'his mysterious ways'". Is this not similar to saying "don't know exactly how old rock is but if we assume x has happened at x rate…."

I could hit you over the head repeatedly with the rock in an attempt to get you to accept it was real 😉
How exactly would you show me god as real?
Just because science has areas of limited understanding it does not add any extra credence to your fantastical unevidenced explanations of reality or creation.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

Thanks Mr Sagan, very succinct.

Something to think about…

Genetic code simply has to have an encoder. Everything we know about codes confirms this, and DNA is no different.

I love the idea that religion create morals. Kant would have something to say about that and how do non Christian societies create morals?

Many atheists have great moral character as well and religious people are not always very moral

As for the genetic code needing an encoder – why? The issue here is that the forces that shaped evolution act of timescales that are so long as to be very hard for the human mind to grasp hence the need that some feel to find a creator to explain what they find incomprehensible

The irony is comical. You really cound'nt make it up if you tried!

😆

Every code needs an encoder TJ 🙄

i don't understand how my radio works, clearly there must be a family of performing spirits inside…

Genetic code does have an encoder of sorts, it's the selective and refining force of evolution.

evolution is blind, and dumb, it has no plan, there is no forethought, no strategy.
Simply, what doesn't work is removed by death.

an intelligent encoder wouldn't leave whales with leg bones.

(vestigal leg bones are not enough of a hindrance for whales with them to die before mating, and so whales continue to have leg bones)

Every code needs an encoder TJ

So other than, "it must be fairies" do you have anything more enlightening to back up your assertion?
As Hitchins said, "what can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence"

Next

100.

surfer – for me the explaination is that there must be a Creator otherwise how could the code have been encoded in the first place – simple

for me the explaination is that there must be a Creator otherwise how could the code have been encoded in the first place – simple

However a question from me would be, who created the creator? It is logic that if something of sufficient complexity was required to create a complex thing (genetic code) then who created the initial creator?
Your logic is flawed. (sorry I was forgetting we are not dealing with logic are we)

surfer – as I mentioned earlier…

it's not an intellectual issue because it takes faith to believe in God not intelligence – by that I don't mean that all Christians have low intelligence, far from it, I just mean that you can't argue the point from an intellectual stand point.

Why we are is a more interesting question. 🙂

Simple?
No, just intellectually disappointing; trotting out a more up to date version of William Paleys Watchmaker is a poor attempt and suggests a pat answer from some how to argue against evolution web site.

Occams razor anyone?
To suggest that the 'simple' answer involves postulating a divine creator seems to me to be a less than simple approach.

I did ask how people manage to accomodate things that would appear to wobble their faith…it appears they are dealt with by pretending they don't really exist…

As for why; does there have to be a why?

It's a hangover from the Victorian age to assume that we are at the top of the evolutionary tree, that we above all other organisms are somehow special.

Bill Bryson suggests that we are living not in the Age of Man, but in the age of bacteria; now there's a organism that uses evolution. MRSA anyone? ESBLs anyone?

Tyger : Read Dawkins

Tyger if everything needs a creator who created your god?
Either god or life happened without anyone coding it…at least we are here. ANY question you have about how we got here can just be asked of your god….

Are you just arguing that god is the devine encoder/architect – bit short of a deity that and why does he allow the code to change…was it wrong to start with etc?
A very weak argument.

God might exist but there's no evidence that he has to. Some think they have a relationship with him which is proof to them that he does exist but is of little use to others.

Anyone can argue anything they like, doesn't get anyone anywhere where proof on either side is weak.

I'm an evangelical agnostic….

proof on either side is weak

they are asserting that something exists … the onus is on them to offer proof. You cannot prove a negative. Most people tend to belive in things they can prove/support though not things they cannot disprove as that would be an endless list including god, invisible spiderman, ectoplasm ,psychic powers etc

i am here because my parents had sex, and i found enough sustenance to survive until this point.

that process has been going on for quite a while now, with all of my ancestors managing to have sex at least once before being eaten.

it's an impressive heritage, humbling really when I stop to consider the timescales involved, and of course the sheer amount of sex my ancestors had.

It would be ungrateful of me to dismiss all that sex and death with a simple ‘god did it, about 6000 years ago – now go to church and say thankyou’

(maybe I’ve stumbled over something, we invented the ‘god did it and ran away’ stories because we find it so uncomfortable thinking about our grandparents having sex)

Now that would be funny.. imagine the whole God myth being created by a mother who was too embaressed to explain to little Johnny how his little sister got to be in mummys tummy!

Every code needs an encoder

Some reading:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spontaneous_order
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-organization

Would Einstein be a creationism, A year before his death Einstein wrote (extract from letter):

The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weakness, the Bible a collection of honorable, but still purely primitive, legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this.

He is also quoted of saying he does not believe in a personal god!

He is also quoted of saying he does not believe in a personal god!

The whole quoting what famous (intellectual) people have said is fraught with contradictions.
I had a debate with Rudeboy some time about Einstein. Fortunately I was able to prove that on balance he considered himself an Atheist, however he said some other things which could have been interpreted either way.
The fact that people we consider great leaders or great minds believe or don't believe in God is a bit of a Red herring in my opinion.

hotfly
the thing that really troubles me about some of the recent STW posts are the comments that line up with Richard Dawkins' God Delusion. A lot of people seem to have simply swallowed all this without a critical look. Mr Dawkins philosophical arguments about religion seem to be seriously flawed in most areas and yet he has succeeded in convincing most people that his rationale is overwhelming and that nobody can challenge his views with any degree of intellectual rigour. NOT SO!!!

Yet the bible is treated in exactly the way you describe Dawkins book is being treated by some on here!
Double hypocrisy with skimmed faith and head in sand sprinkles anyone?

Then there is the whole basis of societies morals – if we believe we are just chance joining of carbon etc atoms then why should we not abort babies, assist grannie's suicide, kill those who don't believe what we do? If however we believe we are created we might have a bit more respect for each other.

This does make me a bit cross..

I'm a moral being. I believe we should NOT kill those that don't believe as 'we' do. I have the utmost respect for others as far as they have the same respect for me. I believe in society and that everyone should contribute as in the end it is for the betterment of everyone, especially those worse off than myself.

I'm a complete and utter, uncompromising, total none believer in ANY form of religion. And yet I also understand that religion is often a very personal thing that means a great deal to a great many people and that's fine too.

So, what's wrong with me? It appears regardless of having no faith I'm not a murdering, selfish bastard!

I don't understand? Where do my morals come from?

I wasted years of my life involved in the christian 'faith'. I believe in nothing until it's happened.

Well actually there's an interesting point here – sort of. When is a human life special? At conception? At birth? Ever? If only at birth then abortion at any time is maybe fine – indeed maybe even to kill babies as they won't know what's happened? Dawkins says that he's not worried about dying as he won't be here to notice but just wants to die in a painless way – well that's fine but would he agree to being instantly teminated at some future random time whilst he's still enjoying life?

We protect human life as we empathise – often protect animal life too. There are those that will take it without caring and the rest of us can't understand that – we may think they're 'not human'.

When is a human life special?

This is a point I was making earlier regarding the religious obsession with the Blastocyct.

I'm with Mark – I'm a whole being, with morals and beliefs in respect and logic, I do not need religion to give me these.