I'm tired of all those people saying "I don't believe in evolution because [insert random creationist crap here]". (And creationism includes all that "Intelligent Design" stuff, hope it's obvious)
You can't say "I believe/don't believe in evolution", because, well, it's not a matter of belief.
People who reject evolution most often simply have no idea what it is about and that's rather sad.
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[link] - thanks, *SageGoat
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Comments are allowed again.
You can't say "I believe/don't believe in evolution", because, well, it's not a matter of belief.
People who reject evolution most often simply have no idea what it is about and that's rather sad.
_________
[link] - thanks, *SageGoat
_________
Comments are allowed again.
Evolution is not a philosphy. It's a biological process that can be observed directly. Saying it doesn't exist is like saying rain doesn't exist. The *theory* of evolution is the explanation to how this process works. And the theory is as 'proven' as a theory can be. Gravity is one thing, and the theory of gravity is another thing. One is the phenomenon we notice all of the time and the other is the explanation to it.
Accepting the theory supported by the most evidence is your safe bet, but if the current theory of evolution was proven wrong, the process of evolution itself would still exist, and would simply find a better theory to substitute the previous one.
You can't treat science and religion the same way. One looks for answers based on the available evidence, and the other claims to already have the answers, to be all-knowing and unquestionable, and ignores any evidence that contradicts its "answers". Any objective, rational, scientific study will come to conclusions contrary to religous literalism, and even the Catholic Church admits that most of the Bible should not be considered factual.
Creationists like you are simply refusing to understand evolution and other areas of science because it contradicts what you've been trained to believe in and still want to believe in for whatever psychological reason - but science is not based on beliefs, because they bring nothing but blindness to facts and distance from reality. Creationists are destroying Christianism by making it seem like something for ignorant people, even though the highest authority in the Church has already dismissed the validity of Creationism.
It's the farthest from science it can be.
For anyone who is actually, honestly interested in learning about evolution and how it works, I really do recommend the linked website because it does a good job at summing it all up.
They also have a page for common misconceptions, which is great.
There is no debate about evolution. Get that nonsense out of here.
You should stop writing long winded crap and don't try to argue about well established scientific theories with people that know more about science than you.
And no thank you, since I am well aware we only have this one life I will spend it trying to do what I enjoy without putting any rules by some hundred year old book on the limited time I have. When we're dead we all rot in the ground the same way, might as well enjoy the little time we have and try to be a nice person to everyone around you. That involves to stop spreading lies. The devil doesn't fucking exist.
We can cry and complain all we want, but if you choose evil over good, darkness over light, rebellion over humility, Satan over God, then you only have yourself to blame, and in Hell there are no more second chances (while this current life is filled with them, though none of them are guaranteed), but you will spend eternity the way you wanted by crying and rebelling against God as much as you can and constantly experience all the shame, regret, and pain without end and God will never ever again hear you, because your decision has been made. As C.S. Lewis once said; “There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, "Thy will be done," and those to whom God says, in the end, "Thy will be done." All that are in Hell, choose it. Without that self-choice there could be no Hell. No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it. Those who seek find. Those who knock it is opened.” I love you, as a fellow sibling in the world, and all I ask is for you to be wise in this. Again, this one life is a gift, so please don't waste it by rebelling against your Creator, who even died on a cross for your sake so that you could be free from the darkness.
If there were evidence to definitively support evolution then I would have remained an evolutionist. The world wide web is also a major reason why I ceased being an evolutionist after 20 years of passion, so that sort of cancels out that argument. But what you're doing right now is, rather than proposing an argument, you're telling me someone has a good argument even though you don't yourself, and describing the opponent's words in terms of "blah-blah-blah", which merely goes to show you don't really care whether it's true or not, but you just want an excuse to remove God from your life and falsely hoping that this excuse will somehow save you from Hell. Thus, you're being a hypocrite. Creationists knows (just like you and me) what the reality looks like, and they choose to submit to that reality.
Or as Romans 1:18-25 states; "The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse. For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles. Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator, who is forever praised. Amen."
We all naturally know that God is real, because He's written that knowledge within our very being and it is so clearly perceived when observing and experiencing our incredible existence in this world, and God's Word makes it clear that Satan is a real being seeking to deceive people at every turn and wage a pointless war against his Creator. God and Satan remains very real regardless if we choose to reject their very existence, and doing this only makes things so much worse for ourselves, and it's a symptom of Satan's deceit taking root in us, and the fruit that comes from it is far from sweet.
The reality remains this, you have broken God's laws and chosen to do what is evil and wicked over what is good and righteous, and thereby you deserve death and to spend eternity in Hell and there's nothing you could do to change it, and the same goes for all of us, but rather than letting us all enter into an eternity of suffering, God chose to pay the price in our place as a perfectly innocent human being, all because He loves you and doesn't want you to go to Hell. But if you now reject His gift of eternal life, you only have yourself to blame, and you'll experience the bitter fruits of that decision for all eternity.
None of what I've done here is forced, but all of it has been said in a voluntary spirit with brutal honesty, genuinly concerned about the soul of another fellow human being. As far as "being nice" goes (or perhaps you mean "being a good person and doing good deeds"), there's no justification for what is good or bad without God, but without God there is merely personal preference (i.e. anything goes and nothing is actually/objectively wrong nor right), and moral terms such as "good" or "bad" are rendered meaningless, since there would no longer be a Lawmaker to establish and uphold them. Furthermore, I don't need a book to tell me to be good either, after all God has written His Laws on our hearts through our conscience, though this type of "moral compass" has been corrupted since the Fall of Man in Eden and is thus no longer fully reliable, but we do need (especially in our currently fallen/sinful state) God to make clear to us what is right and what is good and it will be our responsibility to heed and fear His Word, or face the consequences of rebelling against Him and choosing evil, darkness, wickedness, and self-righteousness over God and what is righteous, good, just, and true. But it gets worse, because we are in a broken state and desiring to sin against God, we are far from good people, even if we occasionally commit to good deeds, we still have to answer to God for all our evil deeds and trespasses of His Law, and we would all be doomed if it weren't for Jesus Christ.
///I believe there is nothing after death and every living being faces the same fate of non-existance. No joy, no pain, no feelings, just what we were before birth. Non existant.///
Yet we all naturally know that there is an afterlife, and as the Bible states, God has written eternity on our hearts, and we will all face His judgment sooner or later. We will continue to exist for eternity in one of two places, either that will be in a state of eternal joy in the presence of God in Heaven, or in a state of eternal suffering in the absence of God in Hell. This remains true regardless what we think or feel about it. This type of mindset of yours is self-refuting and precisely what nullifies concepts such as truth and morality. It would ultimately mean that people can do whatever evil things they like and live their lives in any destructive ways they like and get away with all of it, and it means all our talk about things like "love" is an arational illusion.
///If you believe I will burn in hell for ever for simply not believing, fine whatever, let me barbeque my own legs with satan, it's none of your business anyway.///
Whatever you decide to do is of course your own decision and you're going to have to stand by that decision when faced with the consequences, and that's what concerns me as a Christian, I don't want a fellow human being to choose Hell over Heaven, it would be a most tragic end to your story, while you would've had a future had you only chosen to accept Christ's gift of everlasting life. Again, we only have this one life to decide our eternal destiny, so please don't take that lightly.
///Here's a taste of your own medicine, have fun with it.///
I fail to see what you're referring to, and you make it sound as though I intended to hurt you, which is far from what I've been trying to do. I'm merely attempting to reason with you, and help lead you closer towards salvation. But again, whatever you decide to do is ultimately on you, but I hope that you would be wiser than what you've already displayed of yourself. We all have an inescapable appointment with our Creator, whether we like it or not, and we better make sure we made the right call. God loves you enough to die for you, and I love you enough to reach out to you, regardless how it is perceived.
But they don't listen, they disregard evidence with bad excuses, or when they run out of arguments they just stop responding. All you do is make up excuses. All I hear is blah, blah, blah.
I don't believe in satan or god. I didn't ask jesus to die on the cross for me. I'm not the kind of person who needs others to die for me.
I don't need your forced fake love. I have friends for real love. They don't need any being in the sky to tell them to be nice or anything, they do it because they want to.
And not because a book tells them to. And that's the most honest kind of love to me. The only kind that matters, and the only kind I have for them.
I believe there is nothing after death and every living being faces the same fate of non-existance. No joy, no pain, no feelings, just what we were before birth. Non existant.
If you believe I will burn in hell for ever for simply not believing, fine whatever, let me barbeque my own legs with satan, it's none of your business anyway.
"Creationists knows (just like you and me) what the reality looks like"
Yeah because life evolving over millions of years makes less sense than man being made from dirt and women from his rib, as well as talking snakes and those damn evil fruits of knowledge. Let's ignore the fossil record, dna evidence, and anything else just so we can believe the shit a hundred year old rag written by random folks ages ago. Get a grip.
Yeah if you were smarter you'd be an evolutionary scientist, If I could fly I wouldn't drive with a car, ect.
"The reality remains this, you have broken God's laws"
which ones? Being rude to some random prick on the internet that pretend they know what evolution is?
"We all naturally know that God is real"
No. I don't. I naturally realised god is not real, I naturally realised satan is not real, and life is suddenly clear to me.
I don't need god to be a good person. I am kind because I enjoy being kind, and I do not need anyone to tell me to do it or else I'll burn in hell, or whatever other stupid threats. It's personal enjoyment, not a higher power commanding me or whatever.
If you like god so much maybe go take a look at /r/watchpeopledie and think about how an almighty being cant fix any of that.
I grew up believing in god but I lost that belief and I feel a lot better. I'm actually less paranoid and more content (when nobody is talking absolute horseshit in front of me, that is).
I do not need a mile long text that pretends to care about me by some random stranger that doesn't know when to shut the fuck up and stop shoving their religion into everyones damn face.
I'm actually doing a lot better life wise now than I did when I still believed in a god, and when I was agnostic. Now I'm pretty convinced there is none. None of those mythical beings exist. They're just fun to look at in fictional drawings and stories, but that's about it.
Not everyone needs religion. Some are better off without it.
Christianity can go fuck itself for all I care.
Not evolutionist (since there is no such thing) but among the scientific community.
"I was an Evolutionist for 20 years, and it took me several years to dare to come to terms with the reality of it being a dark, amoral, irrational, unscientific concept of a worldview."
Small problem there Pellchinn, a scientific theory that explains the diversity of life is not a worldview. Or are you suggesting that all scientific theories are worldviews also? How about gravity? Atom?
"I believe it's pretty generally understood that macroevolution (if it were ever real) should indeed be an accumulation of changes produced through means of speciation (natural selection or microevolution which, unlike macroevolution, can be tested, repeated and observed)"
Biology-wise, speciation (formation of a new specie) is considered "macroevolution".
"species are produced by means of the decrease of information in the genome"
Except when extra duplication of a gene occurs, which is quite frequent.
Perhaps you might desire to read about the subject? There is quite a lot of information online from educational and scientific sources. I suggest starting from the Berkeley university page on the subject.
If there supposedly "is no such thing as Evolutionist" then you might as well say there is no such thing as Creationist either. Both terms (which are evidently very real and frequently used) are used to denote individuals with a specific foundational philosophical framework for interpreting scientific data and understanding the world around them. However, don't confuse the concepts of Evolution and Creation with the individuals who adhere to belief in said concepts. The scientific community consists of both Evolutionists and Creationists, and what you are really referring to are nothing but Evolutionists. Even yet, I should urge you to proceed with caution in using any ad populum arguments.
///Small problem there Pellchinn, a scientific theory that explains the diversity of life is not a worldview. Or are you suggesting that all scientific theories are worldviews also? How about gravity? Atom?///
How would that be in any way "a small matter"? If you hold to an Evolutionary philosophy, you have no true foundation for morality other than personal interest and preference, and morality is the very building block of society, but you are then completely trapped in a world of neverending meaninglessness, darkness, suffering and amorality. It's one thing to deal with the concepts of Creation (essentially the idea that a personal agent and intelligence is behind life and the universe) and Evolution (essentially the idea that life and the universe somehow created and ordered itself, which is of course counterintuitive) as possible explanations of the origin of the universe as well as the origin and development of life (Cosmic, Stellar, Chemical, Organic, Social and Technological), but it's completely another when people start adhering to belief in the concept and attempting to indoctrinate others into sharing the same belief (especially by not being willing to let people choose a different belief). Evolution (in its general sense) is not even close to comparable to such things as gravity and atoms (which, unlike [macro]Evolution, can be continually and constantly experienced and observed), because it is merely the construct of your own mind (i.e. fantasy). Microevolution, however, is definitely comparable.
///Biology-wise, speciation (formation of a new specie) is considered "macroevolution".///
Macroevolution is generally and specifically defined as Evolution above the species or family classifications, or Evolution occurring on a large scale (as opposed to mere speciation). Trying to merge microevolution and macroevolution together doesn't solve anything, it doesn't address the issues, but that kind of reasoning is like referring actual teenagers to actual babies or adult dogs to small puppies. That is more an attempt at defending Evolution regardless of any methods or costs. Stating that "macroevolution is microevolution" means you're merely talking about nothing else but microevolution, but the term macroevolution exists to describe something much larger and more different from microevolution. If anything, the species (or family) level of classification is right below the ultimate limit for what could be considered macroevolution. But yet again, speciation (microevolution) is not the issue and never really were, but macroevolution is. You could learn further on this subject by visiting the very Berkeley Evolution Library you're evidently referring to below;
evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibr…
///Except when extra duplication of a gene occurs, which is quite frequent.///
This is indeed common in the degeneration of the organism, and the subsequent rise of a new species, but again, it's all working in a downward spiral where the organism will eventually go completely extinct. Gene duplication doesn't produce new functions or features, but (precisely) duplicate features (generally while losing another feature). Evolution on any large scale (eg. microbe to man across millions of years) cannot logically or reasonably occur.
///Perhaps you might desire to read about the subject? There is quite a lot of information online from educational and scientific sources. I suggest starting from the Berkeley university page on the subject.///
I've had a passionate interest in Evolution for more than 20 years. I never really stopped. I'd suggest you drop this arrogant attitude, lest any discussion will be at a complete standstill.
Technically there are since they have faith in their creation myth while scientific theories are not a matter of faith.
"what you are really referring to are nothing but Evolutionists."
No, I am merely talking about the scientific community. You can refer to the NCBI database to find hundreds of thousands of biology peer review papers, all supporting the scientific theory of evolution and not a single one pointing to a specific deity of creation myth.
"and Evolution (essentially the idea that life and the universe somehow created and ordered itself, which is of course counterintuitive) as possible explanations of the origin of the universe as well as the origin and development of life (Cosmic, Stellar, Chemical, Organic, Social and Technological)"
The scientific theory of evolution explains the diversity of life, nothing else. Please, do not invent "evolution" like Eric Hovind tried to do.
"Evolution (in its general sense) is not even close to comparable to such things as gravity and atoms (which, unlike [macro]Evolution, can be continually and constantly experienced and observed), because it is merely the construct of your own mind (i.e. fantasy). Microevolution, however, is definitely comparable."
The entire scientific community would disagree with your statement.
"Macroevolution is generally and specifically defined as Evolution above the species or family classifications, or Evolution occurring on a large scale (as opposed to mere speciation)"
You seem to really be confused about what speciation is (formation of a new specie) and "macroevolution". Again, I suggest you read about the subject. Cumulate the speciation events over a period of time and you'll get to what you define as "macroevolution" (which is both observed in the fossil record and supported by phylogenetic).
" it's all working in a downward spiral where the organism will eventually go completely extinct"
Yet another baseless claim. With the selective pressure in an ecosystem, it leads to better odds of surviving until reproduction (thus, not leading to extinction).
"Gene duplication doesn't produce new functions or features, but (precisely) duplicate features (generally while losing another feature)."
Quite the contrary. Considering that the Pax 2 and Pax 6 genes has a same origin which duplicated and leaded to those two, one which lead to the formation of the ears, one for the formation of the eyes.
" Evolution on any large scale (eg. microbe to man across millions of years) cannot logically or reasonably occur."
Genetic seems to prove you wrong.
" I'd suggest you drop this arrogant attitude, lest any discussion will be at a complete standstill."
I have no arrogant attitude, merely one of discouragement when one who claim to have had an interest in the subject shows quite a lot of ignorance in her claims.
And empty words? So the Pax-2 and PAx-6 genes being a duplicate but leading to the formation of two different organs are empty words?
Well....so many people disregarding scientific evidence, not really a place I want to be.
Voltaire.
I went to the Natural History museum and was embarrassed by my mother loudly proclaiming just this upon reaching the ancient ape and human bones. She stalked away refusing to even look at them. I had to give her a calm down lecture that it is fact there are very old skeletons that are similar to both human and ape and because this is science, theories are postulated based on what we are strictly observing. That there is no reason to be defensive and no one was going to chain her down and make her believe in ape-men lol. Sorry, my mum and I dont get on well...
"Fuck Christians,their beliefs are bullshit".
This shows your desire to attack anybody who disagreed with you...in the past.
I'm laughing so hard.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psycholo…
you seem you can't get over the fact that I have changed throughout time
i can't stop laughing for the fuck's sake
what's changed? my beliefs.
shouldn't you at least be...happy about it?
shouldn't you just leave me alone as i'm not a christian anymore?
if you still want to discriminate on christians-which is by itself a bad thing-go away from people who are not christians anymore.
it shows you're a person without a soul,who just wants to tell all religious people they are ignorant-which is,indeed,a generalization-and even keeps harassing people who have drastically changed their beliefs as i did.
now leave me the fuck alone,dude.
and keep burning your crosses,i don't care anymore.
Nope.
"if you still want to discriminate on christians-which is by itself a bad thing-go away from people who are not christians anymore."
Not what I want.
"it shows you're a person without a soul,who just wants to tell all religious people they are ignorant-which is,indeed,a generalization-and even keeps harassing people who have drastically changed their beliefs as i did."
Nope. If you can't tell the difference between hate and calling out bullshit then stay off the internet.
You're so butthurt.
But "love thy neighbor",so I'm not gonna shame on you or block you.
Evolution itself also doesn't mean you cant hold a religious belief. (see "Theistic Evolution")
And "DieHard300"s point stands. Do you think demonstrable amounts of scientific evidence is less important than your religious belief? Have you analyzed the evidence yourself?
Demonstrable evidence doesn't care about an individuals or groups belief to the contrary.