What I find humorous is the evolutionists arguing the timeline in the Bible as absolute fact, yet, dismiss the gaps in the evolutionary record.

As far as I know, the chapters in the Bible, no matter which version, is incomplete. We only see what someone wanted us to see in those books.

Just like history in the school systems. It's a political compromise.

Ancient aliens ... Yeah, I watch that show and what I find humorous there is the absolute disbelief of the actors, concerning man's capacity to accomplish things.

Like the old Chinese proverb, the faintest ink is brighter than the sharpest mind. With no record, the light of the truth will not shine.

We could throw aliens into the mix, but that would be another hypothesis to test with a sketchy record ... Like the evolutionary hypothesis.

One could say that sailors will be sailors ... Even those that sailed the cosmos.

 

I can also make the claim that 7 + 7 = 16 with an equal amount of veracity.

I think there is a wrong note in that tune. Why then you and so many seasoned contributors with firm beliefs about proved truths of you profession, do even bother replying to posts where the OP or anyone after him claim an outstanding nonsense? Equal amount of veracity? Cannot see how.

 

I got a kick out of the Bollywood movie about a guy in India that had his Dhaba (cafe) flooded in a rain storm and tried to claim insurance coverage, the agent told him it 'Was an act of God' so he was not covered, so he took God to court.
Quite funny.
Max.

 

For me as a Evolutionist, I find most people I speak to on the subject still have an open mind, science itself generally operates on the premise of a theory put forward and then every effort is made to disprove it, if the result is that the premise appears as fact, then that will stand until someone come up with a better one.
As opposed to religious dogma that proclaim's it to be absolute undisputed truth. Period!
Max.

 

OK, here's the world according to Number Twelve: The vastness of the universe and the structure of the human body are enough to make a person believe there must be a God. (My two favorite entertainments right now are Star Trek and Gray's Anatomy (the Book), and both of them are mind bogglers.) This place and these creatures couldn't possibly have fallen together by accident.

Beeep! Wrong answer.

I believe that if there is a God, that being manifests as Nature, and if there is no God, then Life, the Universe, and Everything is still explained by Nature. It is the nature of rocks and dust and gas to accumulate rotational velocity and coalesce into larger chunks. It is the nature of atoms and molecules to interact in a liquid. Give either of them 5 or 10 billion years, and s**t happens...amazing s**t! Full blown, There Must Be a God kind of s**t. IIRC wayneh already pointed out that the difference between Galileo and us looks like God stuff. Little by little, and sometimes in leaps and bounds, the mysteries of how stuff developed is being discovered. I don't think we'll ever get to, "Let there be Light" or, "Here's how to start with CHON and make a human." but controlled nuclear power is a reality and space travel is on the drawing board.

Wandering off to the side, I was about 8 years old when my sister dragged me into Sunday School where I learned that I was so bad that I was already condemned to Eternity in Hell unless I attended religiously and brought money and declared my everlasting allegiance to JC. Yeah...right...I didn't believe them. At 8 years old I could punch holes in what I call The Christian Myth. The all mighty, omnipotent, omnipresent made a bet with Satan and the stakes were our, "everlasting souls". There is no reason an omnipotent would deign to make a wager. God has nothing to gain. There's nothing to win. It's a fun concept and I like the TV show called Lucifer, but I ain't buying it as Fact. In the long run, I studied several religions, thinking I might aspire to one, but I discovered which one I naturally am. Guess what? I'm a Taoist by my nature. I don't have to bring money or pledge fealty to anything except trying to be in harmony with the Nature of things. The nature of things is called, "reality". Some people call it Physics or Chemistry. I'm using a larger concept. I sum this up in one of my Life Rules: "The primary cause of emotional distress is the difference between beliefs and reality." If your emotions are in turmoil, it's time to check your beliefs.

What about the End Game? Guess what. I've been dead, or as close as you can get and recover. There was no tunnel of light or choirs of angels. It was just the absence of anything. If there is such a thing as ghosts or wandering spirits, we should be up to our necks in The Spirit World. All the dead souls of all the humans who have died, laid side by side, would cover the planet, six feet deep. The best definition of a Soul came to me from a Christian concept: A living soul exists. There is no such thing as a dead soul. I don't go to funerals because I experience horror when I see what used to be a living soul and the glaring absence of it crushes something inside me. (I guess I need to adjust my beliefs.) The last thing I told my nephew is: On a personal level, the only thing death means is that you become unaware and you never find out anything's wrong. I won't feel the horror of my own death. I will simply not know about it.

In between, "I arrived" and, "I'm dead", the best I can do is try to live in harmony with reality. If I'm wrong, I will arrive in the next place, naked and ignorant, and I will do the best I can using what I have to work with, just as I did here. All in all, my beliefs don't matter. Nature will take its course and I might be lucky enough to be a spectator.

ps, my personal beliefs are not open for negotiation.

claim an outstanding nonsense? Equal amount of veracity? Cannot see how.

That 1+1=3 nonsense is merely creating logical fallacies by subtly violating the rules of mathematics, and I consider it to be trolling in this Thread. It is completely Off Topic and should die a horrible death.

 

What about the End Game? Guess what. I've been dead, or as close as you can get and recover. There was no tunnel of light or choirs of angels. It was just the absence of anything. .

This is one aspect that bothers me that many with religious bent claim they are going on to better things after this life.
Very selfish attitude AFA I am concerned.
If you try and figure out the odd's of you or me ever being born at all it must be mind boggling, so saying there must be better things in store is like someone winning the $500m lottery and saying, 'Is this all there is'
Max.

 

What I find humorous is the evolutionists arguing the timeline in the Bible as absolute fact, yet, dismiss the gaps in the evolutionary record.

That's because the Bible's purpose was never intended to explain science.

 

...But he loves you!

Max.

 

...But he loves you!

An oldie, but a goodie!
Still gets a grin.

 

I have watched the Ancient Aliens show, and just like religion, just like mainstream scientific theories, there were some things that made sense and a lot of things that didn't. Enough things sounded like hogwash that I stopped watching. But the stone structures on mountains are definitely an intriguing unanswered question in my book. I don't rule out the possibility of extraterrestrial intervention; actually it's the theory that seems most likely in my book.

I have often pondered what extraterrestrials would look like if we met them. I wouldn't be surprised if they were human.

Another thing that drew my interest to that show was one of the Voyager space crafts include written greetings from Earth, in many languages. One of those was Sumerian Cuneiform. What does that have to do with anything? It is the earliest know form of writing, and the Sumerians had a long history of believing people that came from space helped and taught them. If somewhere in the hidden part of knowledge in the NASA there are things they know and don't publicly talk about there is some truth to those 'myths', that is the only reason that I can see they included a language that has been dead since the second century AD. To cover their a$$ just in case.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuneiform_script

 

For me as a Evolutionist, I find most people I speak to on the subject still have an open mind, science itself generally operates on the premise of a theory put forward and then every effort is made to disprove it, if the result is that the premise appears as fact, then that will stand until someone come up with a better one.

I'm an evolutionist too, so we're on the same page...

As opposed to religious dogma that proclaim's it to be absolute undisputed truth. Period!

Dogma exists no only in religion, but in philosophy and science as well... except that in the latter it's called axioms... "I think, therefore I exist", or in mathematical axioms, for instance.

For the religiously inclined (like me), the most fundamental axiom is "there is a God" ... but unfortunately such a statement is attacked as "dogma" by those who are rabidly non-believers ... seems a little unfair, to say the least.

 

Another thing that drew my interest to that show was one of the Voyager space crafts include written greetings from Earth, in many languages. One of those was Sumerian Cuneiform. What does that have to do with anything? It is the earliest know form of writing, and the Sumerians had a long history of believing people that came from space helped and taught them. If somewhere in the hidden part of knowledge in the NASA there are things they know and don't publicly talk about there is some truth to those 'myths', that is the only reason that I can see they included a language that has been dead since the second century AD. To cover their a$$ just in case.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuneiform_script

Whats interesting to me on Ancient Aliens show, is the dude with the hair say's "Anunnaki literally means, those to whom from the heavens came" quoting Zecharia Sitchin. His literal interpretation is called into question when they discover an alphabet and begin the process of linguistically putting it to use, their is an online dictionary for " Anunnaki " which actually means the sons of God. The Sumerians pantheon is believed to be Angles, which gave rise to other deities such as Greek and Viking etc. are all not of this earth demigods.

And there is the Kings list https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sumerian_King_List where I added up the years together not only did I find the first King ending his reign 33k long but after or on about 10,000 b.c. things change and they went from a 33k progressively to 1,000 years down to 120 max. Suggesting around 250k b.c. or so beginning and ending approximately 1730 b.c. I can't reconcile it so easily but, can see an entanglement of beliefs by Ancient people. Sumerians apparently say they were created by them but the book of Enoch also say's the sons of God found the women of men beautiful and created an abomination.

Neanderthals appear in or about that same timeline 160k ago and then suddenly Homo sapiens appear just before the end of the last ice age.

kv

 

Why would you insist that 2 + 2 = 7 is incorrect? What fundamental laws do you have to back your argument?

I can also make the claim that 7 + 7 = 16 with an equal amount of veracity.

I would not but there are many who follow their religions or general belief systems that way with total blind devotion to whatever it said and taught to them even when whatever it is can easily be shown to be wrong.

The law of basic rational sense is what I have to back it up!

 

I don't disagree with you at all, but you are debating a mod about a rule that the mod made in an effort to guide the thread in a direction that wouldn't get it shut down.

But I am not debating you. I was making a point that just because someone believes something does not in fact make it right, true or worthy of respect. Wrong is wrong no matter what color or texture or value they try and paint it to justify believing and following it.

Just because someone believes something is true or means or implies something that it does not does not mean I have to respect them or their beliefs. When someone is wrong they are wrong, it's that simple in my mind.

They have every right to explain and defined themselves in order to justify their views but ultimately if they cannot do that in any rational credible way they are in fact ultimately wrong in what they believe and why.

 

I don't disagree with you at all, but you are debating a mod about a rule that the mod made in an effort to guide the thread in a direction that wouldn't get it shut down.
I would prefer to keep the thread open, and make no mistake, I see this thread as an instance of "giving just enough rope to hang oneself."

But I am not debating anyone and I mean no disrespect to you or this thread in any way..

I don't see how this got interpreted as such other than more is being read into what I have posted that was put there and I don't take blame of fault for others reading abilities or lack thereof.

A comment was made saying,

The problem is there is no religious, political, economic, etc. viewpoint that can be universally acceptable, so what's the point of arguing, or discussing rationally.

to which the reality is all of those topics very much have rational reasonable provable fact based aspect to and of themselves that are definable in rational logical universal terms just as I pointed out with a simple math example. Some things are in fact universally definable regardless of their primary associative topic they fit under but not everyone knows what they are which makes discussing them worthy if for no other reason than their educational sake.

I don't know what other come to forums like the for but for me I come here to learn about things I presently do not have knowledge of and as such find no topic I can learn from to be off limits.

In a way that is my religion The raw unscreened unfiltered truth behind reality. The religion of learning everything I can about anything I can regardless of what the source or the sources apparent bias is towards the topic.

 

I am not debating you. I was making a point

STFU. This Thread is not about right or wrong or what you declare is right or wrong or how religious nuts present themselves.
We all know how religious nuts present themselves, and they sound like YOU demanding to have their say, all the time, regardless of how far Off Topic it is.
It's not about debating you or suffering your withering gaze upon most cherished beliefs.
Share your beliefs on the Topic or shove off.

 

STFU.

WHOAH! that's a verbal Judy Chop.

I appreciate your defense of the thread but please let's keep it civil.

 

I'm an evolutionist too, so we're on the same page...

For the religiously inclined (like me), the most fundamental axiom is "there is a God" ... but unfortunately such a statement is attacked as "dogma" by those who are rabidly non-believers ... seems a little unfair, to say the least.

I would not necessarily describe myself as rabid, even the likes of Dawkings or the late C. Hitchens said they are open to opposing views, but all they require is some proof, just because someone says it is true, does not make it so.'
S0 far what I have read of their published works, presents me with their personal views. Whether I chose to agree is my choice.
All I can say from my point of view is when I first read a 'The God Delusion' by Richard Dawkins, it was like feelings I had suppressed talking about for a long time myself, now all of a sudden someone else not only thought the same way, but put it all in print.
Max.
The God Delusion.
The Selfish Gene
The Blind Watchmaker
The Greatest Show on Earth.
et,al.

 

But I am not debating you.

You were debating Mr chips about not quoting the Bible IIRC

 

I appreciate your defense of the thread but please let's keep it civil.

Sorry. I must be having a bad day. Too tired and sore.
This morning a guy told me that he was very careful not to ring my phone when I might be asleep.
"And do you know why you have to be so careful?
Because you're too f*n stupid to realize that I have told you a dozen times across 30 years that I CAN'T HEAR THE PHONE WHEN I'M ASLEEP!!!"

When I can't handle, "stupid" or pedantic nit picking, I'm having a bad day.
Time to sign off until I get a better attitude.