Do You Believe In God?

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Do You Believe In God?

  • Yes

    Votes: 159 32.8%
  • No

    Votes: 267 55.1%
  • Unsure/ Used To

    Votes: 59 12.2%

  • Total voters
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For anyone who wants to argue about the big bang. There will never be any completely definite proof for or against it, unless someone invents a time machine.

EDIT: You may be able to get close to definite though.
 
Last edited by Hiccup,
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I read more than you thought I do. But you cannot prove that evolution from species to another species has happened anytime in history. And I dare you or anyone else to prove that. You will only keep talking about billions of years ago or eons to come. But your idea is just speculation.
My two examples are fine by themselves unless someone is an evolution fanatic. Notice that I am not an old fashioned creationist.

I was not throwing accusations of creationism, or worse, at that point, still not now for that matter. That said I hold your examples are very poor ones and there are a variety of better ones out there to look at, not sure how I can justify that beyond the dismissing of them I already did though. I guess I could have gone further on the organs thing and general animal reproduction and how mostly it stays the same but occasionally other things pop out, or indeed fail to copy and the resulting creating might not live long enough to breed or breed well (or it might and then we have classical evolution).

Evolution from one species to another then. This one gets to be fun and a massive length of time is a far more useful concept but I will give it a go.

I have three approaches I would take for this one, assuming the retrovirus thing* from earlier does not fly for you, there may well be more (I am not much of a biologist)
1) General incompatibility within a genetic species -- a female chihuahua and a male great dane (both unarguably dogs) can not produce offspring, let alone the viable ones, and dogs are a relatively recent species/offshoot (40000 years at the high end by most estimates). Now this is not chromosomal variation (not an infallible means of defining species but a very good one) as much as a physics/biological supply issue and so does not count by some of the quite useful definitions out there.
2) In plants at least the blending of species (allopolyploidy, a subset of the general concept of polyploidy). When learning about this sort of thing people often wonder why plants sometimes have more chromosomes and genetic mass than other life forms. Blending plant and animal biology like this is not a great move but not an entirely invalid one either and there are . Grasses are a particularly good area of study here http://www.plantphysiol.org/content/125/3/1198.full as they do it a lot and as we eat them they are pretty well studied.
The aneuploidy version is probably the more dominant method in animals, and possibly some microorganisms though by different means there, and is the one that takes the time.
3) General chromosomal variation, the aneuploidy thing mentioned above. Chromosomes are a pretty good means of species delineation, the classic example from biology textbooks being the horse, donkey and mule example.

*there has been more than one retrovirus throughout history, however various species have got them after another might have branched off which was otherwise untroubled and thus they provide nice things to compare.

So yeah you will probably not have a nice piece of footage (or multiple pieces showing the pattern) from someone with a time machine, a camera and a DNA swab but the mechanisms are very demonstrable.
 
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The other thing is souls. To have a soul seems very odd. If we are souls only using our bodies as vessels, then why does something like brain damage affect us? Technically we are our brain, which really dissuades me from thinking we have souls. People tell stories about ghosts. Ghosts would be evidence of a soul-like state, but are any of those stories true? I've never seen a ghost personally, so I'm inclined to say no unless I actually see one first-hand. Then the whole concept of death comes in. You can't imagine nothing. And if there's no afterlife, nothing is exactly what we get. It feels odd that life would just come to a sudden halt. Something's there, now there's nothing.

This was pretty much all of the things I thought of, when I did think about this stuff. Thinking about it would give me a headache and make me anxious from being unable to answer any these questions; so I chose to stop thinking about it and move on. If there's an afterlife, I'll worry about it when I'm dead. Until then, I'm going to enjoy my life as a human. :P

I tend to think of the difference between a brain and a soul as the difference between a computer and the software running on it. Damage the hardware, you might make the program harder to access correctly or corrupt it, but the program isn't really physical, it exists as information and the brain both feeds it info about the physical world by our senses (input) then reads the output (thoughts).
 
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I believe in a god and am a mainline Protestant Christian. I'm quite interested in my own faith tradition and seek to become a pastor in the Alliance of Baptists (we are quite liberal in our outlook and are nothing like the southern Baptists morons). Like wise I'm quite liberal and support equality of lbgt persons in religious institutions, I believe in evolution, and I do not believe Jesus is the only way to heaven. Likewise I guess despite this I can say worship (or don't worship) whatever the hell you want just do not use it as an excuse to be a dick towards others. Basically I'm like John Spong.
 
Last edited by RevPokemon,
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I do not believe there is a single god or multiple gods.
I do not believe in the supernatural, which includes things like psychics, miracles, or fate.
I do not believe in an afterlife.

"That which can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence" - Christopher Hitchens

Basically, I have to have a solid reason to believe in something. I'm always open to being wrong, am willing to change my mind should better logic and evidence present itself. All the evidence and logic that I have come across points to verifying that my current beliefs are most align with how reality works.

"For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring." - Carl Sagan
 
So this is still evolution of the same species. lol
My example are fine and you cannot refute that. They were not even meant to discuss Darwin. I sticked to the OP question about faith in the existence of a God.
Here is something that can entertain you a bit :)

 
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So this is still evolution of the same species. lol
My example are fine and you cannot refute that. They were not even meant to discuss Darwin. I sticked to the OP question about faith in the existence of a God.
Here is something that can entertain you a bit :)


Look up "ring species".
 
I am talking about change of kind. I didn't talk about birds evolving to birds with different peaks ... etc.
....change of kind is not a biological notion, it is a creationist notion. It was intentionally created by the religious to try give Noah's flood a scientific spin, as the Jewish/christian bible can be translated to categorizing the animals as "kinds". Which is a category of convenience, not a scientific term. It has no actual scientific merit, as it's an arbitrary categorization. This is easily illustrated by how easy it is to change the definition of what counts as a distinct "kind".

Ring species are direct evidence of the separation of one species into two species (more or less). There's also a lovely example of lizards out west, though I forget their names.
 
Last edited by osaka35,
Thanks for the article on space-time! It's a really interesting concept; time and space being a single entity. It almost uses time as a distance more than what it's usually conceptualized as, which would help explain some of the inconsistencies of time being its own entity.

I tend to think of the difference between a brain and a soul as the difference between a computer and the software running on it. Damage the hardware, you might make the program harder to access correctly or corrupt it, but the program isn't really physical, it exists as information and the brain both feeds it info about the physical world by our senses (input) then reads the output (thoughts).
That's an interesting way to look at it. Humans as a sort of bio-machine.
 
....change of kind is not a biological notion, it is a creationist notion. It was intentionally created by the religious to try give Noah's flood a scientific spin, as the Jewish/christian bible call the animals "kinds". Which is a category of convenience, not a scientific term. It has no actual scientific merit, as it's an arbitrary categorization. This is easily illustrated by how easy it is to change the definition of what counts as a distinct "kind".

Ring species are direct evidence of the separation of one species into two species (more or less). There's also a lovely example of a lizard out west, though I forget it's name.

Sorry but I am talking about something purely scientific here. You didn't care about reading what I wrote or watching the video. Your answer is totally unrelated.
 
I got you there.
I also believe in Lucifer, he is very real, he just beat my ass hard on Devil Survivor.

XD , Devil Survivor made me hang in , i have the retail copy of it, it was one of the very first games i bought.

it is insanely difficult unless you grind i guess..

and as for the post,

i do believe in GOD and love and peace.

i wish peace for everyone, the current world is rotting ( Which is very sad ) it is all human failure,

the politician (them big guys) are the real evil of this world.

hopefully someday soon there will be a very peaceful era?!

and well nowadays sometimes i wish i lived somewhere, where there are no humans ?! Maybe with Aliens?!

or Elves !? X"D okay thats about it.
 
Sorry but I am talking about something purely scientific here. You didn't care about reading what I wrote or watching the video. Your answer is totally unrelated.

I'm sorry, I thought you were posting the video because you thought it had merit. I didn't know you meant it to be made fun of. My bad.
 
My mind tells me I want to believe. My heart says I am not meant to :(
Is it a burning desire to believe? :P
Anyway, as adults we are all free to believe what we want and we take full responsibility of our choices and beliefs. No one can impose on you what to believe in :)

--------------------- MERGED ---------------------------

I'm sorry, I thought you were posting the video because you thought it had merit. I didn't know you meant it to be made fun of. My bad.

Yeah. It seems that you did actually watch it. lol
Stop trolling and answer like a man instead of making fun of something that obliterates your thought ;)
 
Is it a burning desire to believe? :P
Anyway, as adults we are all free to believe what we want and we take full responsibility of our choices and beliefs. No one can impose on you what to believe in :)
The problem is a few dicks however do try to impose their beliefs on others.
 
Is it a burning desire to believe? :P
Anyway, as adults we are all free to believe what we want and we take full responsibility of our choices and beliefs. No one can impose on you what to believe in :)
I wouldn't say a burning desire. I believe in what I see. If you believe in someone who created the universe that's great (my parents do not know I am a atheist yet) but science is the true god. I want to believe because my biggest fear is death. Knowing that if you believe in god you can go somewhere after you die is comforting. That's why I want to believe but cant.
 
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Yeah. It seems that you did actually watch it. lol
Stop trolling and answer like a man instead of making fun of something that obliterates your thought ;)
I tried :P then you avoided. If you don't want to actually have a conversation and just want to be heard, then I'll leave you alone. But if you do want to talk, let's move this to private chat so not as to junk up this nice thread =]
 
Last edited by osaka35,
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