Creation or evolution. Mutually exclusive?

Vazagi · Post by **Vazagi** » Sat Mar 23, 2002 3:42 pm

Rant alert, continuing beyond this point may compromise your sanity!

A lot of people seems to think that (the theory of) evolution is proof that god doesn't exist, and on the other hand many religious persons seems to think that evolution is blasphemy, to mention the two extremes. Both fail to see that even if evolution is the truth (which i personally believe, but of course we do not know the entire truth) it doesn't mean that there can be no god in the equation.

To give some examples, what if god created this planet as an experiment and that humans is just the current stage of development, with god working mainly behind the scenes? What if god planned to end with humans from the beginning, but (for some reason) saw the need to go through the entire process of evolution. Hell, how am we supposed to understand the motives and goals of a deity that may or may not exists, but who certainly isn't human. We can't prove/disapprove the existence of god with our current understanding of the universe, so how can you use a simple thing like evolution (which only covers the change in species as they adapt) as an argument for it's existence?

Some people have used the term 'Intelligent Design' when arguing against evolution. Basically it means that a thing like the eye of a butterfly is simply to complex to have evolved trough natural processes, and MUST have been designed by some intelligence (namely their god, correct me if I'm wrong).

There is many examples of species that have adapted to manmade changes, and many where they have adapted to changes that weren't manmade, however I'm not sure wherever these should be labeled adaptation or evolution. However you could argue that evolution is just another for of adaptation...

Please share your thoughts on this (and sorry for the length).

Arcaton · Post by **Arcaton** » Sat Mar 23, 2002 3:52 pm

I've always thought the biggie with Creationists is that God created Man in His own image; therefore man looks like God and always has done. Presumably this doesn't mean that man has a navel (which he needs) because God has one he doesn't need........
I personally see nothing wrong in assuming God created man and then let him evolve to see what improvements needed to be made to the basic (intentionally imperfect) design. Occasionally (as with the Flood) dramatic action was taken to remove imperfect specimens from stock but by and large I expect the Book of Reckoning to have a column marked "Build Standard" as well as one labelled "Pass/Fail". I just hope there isn't an entry "FUBAR - scrap" against my name........

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Arcaton on 2002-03-23 15:54 ]</font>

Mikaiten · Post by **Mikaiten** » Sat Mar 23, 2002 4:02 pm

Maybe God (whom I personally don't believe in) used the evolutionary process to end up with the best of everything. Survival of the fittest. As a being who doesn't exist on this plane of existance he wouldn't know what would be the best way to create humans and animals so that they would survive on this planet. It would give us the chance to grow up and slowly weed out all the unnecessary traits.

If there is a God he probably just gave us the big hunk of rock we live on, a one celled organism and let it go from there. We may not even be the end... maybe we're only half way along the evolutionary process.

Michael Ezaiany · Post by **Michael Ezaiany** » Sat Mar 23, 2002 4:10 pm

God couldn't create us the way we're now. Everything's evolving. Nothing looks the same after a long period of time. Maybe God is changing us constantly and those scientists just call it evolution. Maybe there's no God and we're changing by ourselves. Maybe we're not even here and all this is just a dream. Maybe WE are the Gods who have created this world and WE are the ones who are changing it. Humans use very small fraction (was it 10%?) of their brain? What about the rest? Telekinesis, pyrokinesis, telepathy, levitation, shapeshifting - all these and many more are possible. We only need to discover a way to use our brain at 100% efficiency.

Mikaiten · Post by **Mikaiten** » Sat Mar 23, 2002 4:13 pm

Oh... on a semi-related note. If the whole Adam and Eve story were true we would be horribly inbred. I figured it out once and have discovered there would have to be 2 couples at least. One of these days I have to redo the chart I made up and post it online. It was amusing to say the least.

Kelgo Road · Post by **Kelgo Road** » Sat Mar 23, 2002 6:03 pm

But single celled organizims can self reproduce. I could be all life came from one simple cell.

On the note of God, if god really does exsist and is a "God" then would the rules that we see as true even hold an effect on it? Sorry for the it term but God doesn't (most likely) have a sex.

Also from the inbread thing, well keep in mind that we all come from ONE point and the stories of the bible have been translated uncounted times, so true writtings and meanings of it are lost to time.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Kelgo Road on 2002-03-23 18:05 ]</font>

DarkBlood_Warwing · Post by **DarkBlood_Warwing** » Sat Mar 23, 2002 7:07 pm

oh no, but of course the bible SEZ how everything came to be, like kangaroos and polar bears.....

god is lazy, it's like those "grow your own cystals", that toy where you grow 'cystals' if you want to mosh both together......but i smell like smoke and am very tired to rant and preach biblical tripe....it dosen't care anymore....thus, god is a victem of sloth....
make sumtin, leave it be and watch what happens. think of as playing a simulation game on autoplay. I did that in sim life and my T-rex evolved into 50 differnt species...yeah, think of God as playing sim life.

Ordinary Guy · Post by **Ordinary Guy** » Sat Mar 23, 2002 9:27 pm

*DELURKS*

The creationist viewpoint is so incredibly deluded its amazing.

I mean their entire arguement against such heaps of scientific evidence against them is "You can't prove it". Suggesting such ridiculous things like the speed of light is different now from what it was in the past, or the same for half-life decay. Suggesting that God is purposely deceiving us, suggesting that their God is a liar and thus evil, but thats another story entirely.

The whole reason this creationism thing started, and only flourished in the US, was because fundamentalist christians saw evolution as the "root" of all present day things they don't like, such as acceptance of homosexuality, abortion, etc.

Note however that I think the Theistic Evolution viewpoint has a lot of merit, and that evolution and the existence of God are certainly not contradictory as fundamentalists would have you believe.

Less than 1% of scientists throughout the world think Creationism is even a plausible idea. So, whos more likely to be right; some religious nut, or a scientist? (source = http://www.religioustolerance.org

Some sites you should visit:
http://www.talkorigins.org/
http://www.religioustolerance.org/evolutio.htm

*RELURKS*

Merlark · Post by **Merlark** » Sat Mar 23, 2002 10:12 pm

From the moment eve bit into that first apple, the human race began to evolve. we find bones of prehestoric man burried deep into the earth and frozen glacois...

The bible, as i see it...is nothing more than a childs english paper blown out of preportion with everyones favorite story thrown in to make it even more grand because there was not TV back then.

we all know for a fact, the bible was hand written by priests in europe. we know for a fact very few people could read, we also know that priests had absolute power. in turn we know that a great many became corrupt, the holy book has gone through the hands of man so much...both good and evil that it is more filled with words of man himself than of god.

Evolution, is not just the point of a physical adaptation to an envormental change. its a concept of growth, how can you begin to discuss wether or not god put us here or we evolved from microbes to what we are today.

our vision of god, is that of an immortal being...i ask you, why must a being, who is immortal, reproduce? why create something from nothingness if you are ever lasting...the beginning and the end? he couldn't be, anything we consider life lives...reproduces and then dies, leaving the cycle to continue on.

i'm not a church fairing man but i don't belive god ever told adam...why? why exist, why earth, why him? hehe...for the very simple matter that darkness can not exist without the concept of light. the same goes for light. the universe is a gaint paradox, like any peradox it will never make sence, intill we change the rules.

Its a good rant, i can't really i disbelive in god. for i want there to be a god, i desire his love and understanding. most people desire this, to be loved and understood. I'm not sure if i created god so i may live, or god created us so he can live...

I just know that i am here, that i evolve and i change. out of all the life on this planet, human is the only sentiance...out of all the people in the world, i am the only one to have my specific self...which is, good for the rest of the planet or you would all be my clones slaves...

Katassah · Post by **Katassah** » Sat Mar 23, 2002 11:35 pm

Bah..
I've got an incredibly religious friend. She really believes that god made everything perfect. That he was inable to make anything with flaws, or mistakes or what have you..

mostly I just smile and nod and let her rant and try to convert me... and then I stumbled on a little jem:

http://snaildust.xidus.net/archives/arc ... y=03182002

Panda poop. It just says it all

Michael Ezaiany · Post by **Michael Ezaiany** » Sun Mar 24, 2002 1:51 am

Sorry for the it term but God doesn't (most likely) have a sex.

Maybe he has, with a Goddes

Il-Mari · Post by **Il-Mari** » Sun Mar 24, 2002 2:00 am

Humans use very small fraction (was it 10%?) of their brain? What about the rest? Telekinesis, pyrokinesis, telepathy, levitation, shapeshifting - all these and many more are possible. We only need to discover a way to use our brain at 100% efficiency.

Of course, if you were to use your brain for a small amount of time, you'd realize that this is an old urban legend propagated by various "psychics" and various New Age wackos. I refer you to the Urban Legends Reference Pages,

http://www.snopes.com/science/stats/10percnt.htm

Quote from the above, "Have you ever heard a doctor say, '. . . But luckily when that bullet entered his skull, it only damaged the 90 percent of his brain he didn't use'? Of course not."

- Il-Mari

Michael Ezaiany · Post by **Michael Ezaiany** » Sun Mar 24, 2002 2:03 am

Welcome to the forum, Il-Mari!

Okay, I'm the stupid one. Feel free to stone me!

Vazagi · Post by **Vazagi** » Sun Mar 24, 2002 3:17 am

Yay, stoning!

<A HREF="http://www.stone-dead.asn.au/movies/lif ... .jpg"><IMG SRC="http://www.stone-dead.asn.au/movies/lif ... d.jpg"></A>

Thanks for the many insightful posts. This forum continues to amaze me with its lack of flamers and trolls

As to why god created the world, i think that is an easy one to answer. It must get boring fairly quickly when you are the only being in existence

Kendrakirai · Post by **Kendrakirai** » Sun Mar 24, 2002 3:33 am

As was noted in the book Good Omens, perhaps the world was just CREATED old. Created billions of years old, so BOTH creation AND evolution are true.

Personally, I don't know what to believe with regaerds to creation versus evolution....I believe we evolved, but I know that the odds of a cosmic FLUKE happening and complex organic molecules like amino acids just forming out of semi-random chemical processes are literally astronomical.

I'm a skeptic, sure...but only because I'm cynical. I'm also somewhat realistic. The odds of life appearing as it appears to have done are *incredibly* bad. The planet has to be at just the right distance from the sun, just the right age, have just the right prevalent elements, just the right amount of sun, be in just the right position that a cataclysmic colission with another body in space doesn't occur for a long enough time for life to evolve...

At least for life as we know it. It's possible that there are silicon based lifeforms living on planets of extremes such as the surface of Venus (Which has a corrosive, poisonous aptmosphere, with a surface pressure that would crush a one foot by one foot by one foot cube of solid iron into something the size of a sugar cube, and a surface temperature of around six thousand degrees)...or even on pluto, the coldest place in the solar system. Or even other carbon-based lifeforms in our own planetary system.

The odds of life existing...right now that is...elsewhere in our solar system is very low....but given the near infinite space of the universe, with it's trillions of planets...the odds of ONLY us existing in this universe are equally astronomical. Life MUST exist elsewhere in this universe, somewhere...but the question is, what exactly caused that life to exist in the first place? THAT is the part that we do not yet know, and perhaps never WILL know...or even CAN never know.

If there is a God, and we are all there is, then all I can say is He/she/it is one unimaginitive bastard. Probably a bureaucrat.

Wouldn't that be a kick in the pants? God is a middle manager.

At least he wouldn't be in marketing.

Q99 · Post by **Q99** » Sun Mar 24, 2002 3:37 am

On 2002-03-24 03:17, Vazagi wrote:

As to why god created the world, i think that is an easy one to answer. It must get boring fairly quickly when you are the only being in existence

So , basically , existance is the Cosmic equivelent of making a pyramid of soda cans when you don't have anything better to do?

Michael Ezaiany · Post by **Michael Ezaiany** » Sun Mar 24, 2002 3:59 am

Welcome to the forum, Q99!

Striker · Post by **Striker** » Sun Mar 24, 2002 5:22 am

My personal belief is that somebody set the rules and started the whole thing.

El SillY · Post by **El SillY** » Sun Mar 24, 2002 6:49 am

On 2002-03-24 03:33, kendrakirai wrote:
I believe we evolved, but I know that the odds of a cosmic FLUKE happening and complex organic molecules like amino acids just forming out of semi-random chemical processes are literally astronomical.

Scientist find more and more planets like our own (well, more suns than planets but still), so I don't think life is rare at all. Even Europa (one of Jupiters moons) has (under the very thick ice) some possibility of life (high volcanic activity). Also scientists are finding more and more natural phenomenon that forms DNA building blocks.

-El SillY, Spoons are the answer.

Kendrakirai · Post by **Kendrakirai** » Sun Mar 24, 2002 8:03 am

Of course. Read the rest of what I wrote

Yes, it's a thing we're finding more of...but remember that all of the planets we've found so far have been saturn-sized or larger. Gas giants. Not exactly the perfect place for life as we know it.

The whole point of it is tho...We don't know where life FIRST originated, or whether or not life on earth was seeded from another source, or how life was first created....we'll probably never know. If we learn where life in this universe truely originated, I think that at that point we would ourselves be considered 'gods'.