[Closed] Creationism.............

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...."

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

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, [i]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.[/i]

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!!!

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.

What more worrying to me, is the assertion by religious types that the only thing preventing them going on a baby-killing rampage is their belief in their chosen [s]invisible superhero that lives in the sky[/s] deity.

Well I don't think that's entirely fair! I think it's more that they don't want to go on a baby killing rampage and think the reason they don't is because they no it's wrong and the reason they know it's wrong has something to do with God - if the only reason they don't kill babies is because they think God will be angry then that's a problem I'm sure!

What is more interesting is why we don't kill people if we think we might get away with it and there's a gain - empathy and guilt stop us; I could be rich if it wasn't for guilt! 😉

[i]What is more interesting is why we don't kill people if we think we might get away with it and there's a gain - empathy and guilt stop us[/i]

I'd imagine from an evolutionary point of view it still wouldn't be a successful survival stategy, as just as you might kill people if you could get away with it, others would do the same to you, so as a trait it doesn't seem very helpful if you're living in groups. Hence (with all the normal provisos) we don't do it.

I don't mind religious people being creationists.
I don't mind them using blind faith as a justification for their beliefs.
I don't even mind when they think their god has got a plan for them.
I don't really mind them using their ****y mixture of faith and logic as justification.

But it gets on my tits that they think they've got the monopoly on forgiveness.

I was in a shop in the USA last week - heard one shop assistant talking to her colleague about her husband 'currently studying creationism science'. How I wanted to go for a beer and a long chat with him.

I think persons religious beliefs say a great deal about them..... 😯

We (as a general rule) don't go around bumping each other off because it is unhelpful to the survival of the species.

Survival of self at the expense of the group is short-termism,
Survival of group at the expense of species is suicide.

Religion may codify morality, but religion is certainly not the sole arbiter of morality no matter what the religious types may say.

Your right to believe does not include the right to proselytise regardless of what commandments to the contrary your particular religion holds dear. Some religious people - certainly the 'Religious Right (wrong)' in the US - hold the the belief that Christianity is under a concerted attack because those same Christians feel they are being held back from expressing and propagating their faith.
Tough, you have the right to believe, you do not have the right to demand your faith be enshrined into law or to impose that belief on others.

I'd imagine from an evolutionary point of view it still wouldn't be a successful survival stategy...

Well indeed - seems it's hard to get away with; perhaps we mostly catch the bad people and kill them so as to remove them from the gene pool? There is a test to determine if someone is a psychopath; maybe we should pre-emptively strike and stop them reproducing?

maybe we should pre-emptively strike and stop them reproducing?

I feel a thread hijack coming......

Ok its here...who would you want stop from reproducing??

I'll start : Grotesquely Fat People..... Why?? Its an image I just don't want to have in my head....Fatties on the job.