Which prompts me to point out that E. E. Cummings himself never spelled his own name in all lowercase.
OK, what do you want? Personally, I refuse to believe in a god so small and fragile he could be damaged by people choosing evolution or creationism. I also believe that to ignore the evidence which I assume He placed on this earth in favor of the brief statement “God did it!” while failing to explore the ways in which God might have done it is to directly disobey what Christ calls the “first and greatest Commandment . . . Thou shalt love the Lord, thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul and with all thy mind.”
As for evidence of evolution and/or natural selection, have you heard of thepeppered moths in Manchester? This is one case of evolution and natural selection occuring within the past 200 years. You might also want to consider the Scottish fold cat as an example of a spontaneous mutation which, through selective breeding done by man, is becoming more and more common, although I can’t see Scottish folds being bred into a seperate species. Devout Christian that I am, I like to think of God having a hand in the point where speciation occurs.
JustWrightin, you’ve told me and others here our evidence is insufficient. If you’re truly interested in debate rather than dogma, I encourage you to tell us why it’s insufficient and give us some idea of what would be sufficient. I’ve got a pretty good idea of what I believe and why. Tell me why you believe differently.
CJ
To cite the peppered moth as evidence for evolution by natural selection is not without problem.
Similarly, criticizing the use of the peppered moth example also has its problems. Though I’ve got to say it’s such an overused example and there’s many more interesting ones–the bacteria that developed the ability to digest nylon are pretty cool.
Link us man, for the love of God! Or evolution. Or whatever floats your boat.
What I’ve never been able to understand is that all these creationists think that the world MUST have been created by God, because how else could it have gotten here, but if that’s true, then how did GOD get created?
The idea that some God has existed forever seems much more ridiculous than evolution ever could…
And if he has lived forever, then why did he wait so long to create the earth? Or did he just spontaneously generate just in time to create the earth?
:dubious:
Again, universe creation is not the same as evolution.
But you have a point, Survivor, that both believers and non believers, when looking at creation, have to rationalize that something sprang from nothing, be it the universe or God Himself.
The faithful say that God has always been, and decided to create this place. The non-belivers simply say that time didn’t exist before the bang. Either way, pre-universe (and pre-time) periods are the same, whether God was there tinkering with ideas or not. The “what took Him so long” question is meaningless, for it doesn’t really matter and there was no time in which to gauge the relativity of “so long.”
Unless there was never nothing, of course.
JustWrightin wrote:
“I really rather not be called a close relative of an ape.”
Lord Ashtar replied:
“I’m not sure who originally said this quote, but I first heard it here in Great Debates. If anyone can give me this quote’s origin, I’d be most appreciative.”
Well apparently we share about 98-99% of genes in common with chimps, and if evolution is true that means that we’re close relatives. (If creation is true then it just means that we had a similar blueprint or something)
SentientMeat:
“Unless there was never nothing, of course.”
I didn’t read all of that thread you linked to, but Platonia is a kind of a universe with no beginning. It’s basically a static entity. It is also compatible with Deutsche/Feynmann/Hawking/etc’s multiple worlds or multiple histories interpretation of quantum mechanics where there are a large number of parallel/alternate universes…
Lord Ashtar:
Sorry I missed the last bit of your post…
“It’s just as honorable to be a modified monkey as it is to be modified dirt.”
Well I did an advanced search for modified AND monkey AND dirt and I see that Triskadecamus has this in his signature:
“It is as respectable to be modified monkey as modified dirt.” ~ Thomas H. Huxley ~
I did a search on google and found the full letter it came from:
http://aleph0.clarku.edu/huxley/letters/59.html
Heh heh - I own that book (picked it up in Oxfam for £1). Julian makes some iteresting observations on the Wheeler DeWitt equations, but we should note that he sits rather outside the mainstream (he has no professional tenure, which he would argue is an advantage in some ways) and so his interpretation should be taken with a pinch of salt.