If the tornado was really big and lasted a billion years...

John Smith wrote:
David:

You have two choices, either a creator made us, or we came from a mud puddle. There are problems with both of these:

Why only two choices? Most real-world problems have more than two
choices. Shouldn't ever stop thinking at two. This is a thinking
disorder that most of humanity has had, to stop with dualism when there
are almost always more options.

Maybe a Creator made us from a mud puddle from evolution (just to offer
a third alternative), or maybe a Creator made evolution (the laws of
the universe and conditions necessary for life itself) and sat back and
watched the rules He/She/It/They put into place create us while sipping
a nice cianti.


1) If we are the product of a creator, we would be expecting angles.

If we are the product of a Creator, then we may or may not be provided
with proof. That would depend a lot on what the Creator wanted us to
know, how much evidence we've observed, and how smart we are.

The scientific method, while not the only possible way to discover
truth, is stunningly successful at self-correcting its own errors and
approaching truth. The proof it, it works. No amount of philosophy or
prayer or faith will get you to the moon and back or compute a trillion
floating point math operations per second. Science does. It works, and
finds its own mistakes over time.

Every scientific-method claim must, *by definition*, be DISPROVABLE by
experiment. If you can formulate a hypothesis and an experiment and the
hypothesis makes a wrong prediction, you can toss it out. If it
withstands a lot of attacks of this sort, it gradually goes from a
hypothesis to a theory. (A theory is basically established fact
until something upsets it. In scientific terms, something doesn't get
to be called a "theory" until it is very comprehensively in accordance
with observed facts.)

The relevance here is, you cannot possibly prove or disprove the
existance of angels in a hard-science way. Unless you can give me a
reason to believe that angels necessarily prove the existence of God or
the lack of angels prove the non-existance of God, or for that matter
proving that angels exist, is all completely outside the realm of
science.

That said, evolution is the only (and nearly universally-accepted)
explanation for life on earth, which is backed by many different
independent observations from different fields of science. Not just
archeology, but geology, astronomy, cosmology, chemistry, nuclear
science, even radio (cosmic background radiation). They all point to a
universe about 11 +/- 0.2 billion years old which had to be
uninhabitable for an awfully long time after the initial moment of
creation. Not 7 days. And species clearly sprang into being at many
different times throughout geologic history, not all at once over 7
days.

Does this disprove the existence of God? Not at all. It does disprove
creationist arguments, comprehensively. If life was created by
intention, it was done gradually over millions of our years. Angels or
no.




2) If we are the product of a mud puddle, we are waiting for an alien. As obviously, there are millions, perhaps billions of planets out there with mud puddles on them, and some were probably able to crawl out of those mud puddles before we got our start here.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy has the perfect counter-argument
to this.

The Universe:
Area - Infinite
Infinite : Bigger than the biggest thing ever and then some. Much
bigger than that in fact, really amazingly immense, a totally stunning
size, real "wow, that's big," time. Infinity is just so big that by
comparison, bigness itself looks really titchy. Gigantic multiplied by
staggeringly huge is the sort of concept we're trying to get across
here.

Add to that, the Universe is staggeringly old.

Even if the Universe is teeming with life (and I believe it is for
several reasons), the chances that the nearest life is close enough to
detect us, let alone visit us, is probably miniscule. See also: Drake
equation.

I tend to believe there is intention of sorts behind the Universe. But
I'm not going to be stupid and deny what's been proven, which is life
has been on this Earth for eons and many species alive today weren't
alive until comparatively recently.

It's clear the fault isn't with God, but with our tiny-minded ways of
conceiving of God. Dogma is the enemy of truth.

-- Ross



John

"David" wrote in message ...
On 26 Jul 2005 10:03:55 -0700, "John S." wrote:



wrote:
www.worldnetdaily.com Some muslim TERRORIST are "upset" because
Michael Graham,radio talk show host at WMAL - AM's late morning call in
program repeatedly described Islam on the air a Terrorist organization
that is at War with America.Three Cheers for Michael Graham.Hip Hip
Hooray! Hip Hip Hooray! Hip Hip Hooray! Hang in there,Michael Graham,you
pegged them exactly right.
cuhulin

One could make an equally illogical connection between the Catholic
Church and the IRA.

All religions suck big donkey dicks. Worst thing to ever happen to
mankind was God.

I was over at my webtv female webtv address (Hey,if Johnny Cash can have
a name like Sue,I can have me a name like Alice,now shut up and get over
it!) and looking at some girls private pics and camcorder videos.Woof,I
have to take me a break for a while.
cuhulin

David wrote:

Lets make the water turn black


....but shouldn't Zappa get a bit of credit for this?



mike

"David" wrote in message
news
If the tornado was really big and lasted a billion years...

You'd still have nothing but a big mess on your hands.

"-=jd=-" wrote in message
. 20...


But to say that an amoeba becomes a fish; becomes a lizard; becomes a
hominid... The fossil record will only take you so far, after which, you
have to "use your imagination" to make a leap in the direction your
current
belief(s) want you to go. Where are the transitional forms? Until they are
produced, then evolution (to me, anyway) is just as faith-based as
creation.

Then there is another point of view, that being that creationists and
evolutionists are both right. In a grossly over-simplified "nut-shell"
description: someone set up all the dominoes in a certain design and then
tipped over the first one (Big-Bang) to start the whole process...


I tend to fall into the category that subscribes to this latter point of
view, but even that requires faith, as does most anything in life.

As for the fossil record, there may not be sufficient "transitional forms"
to prove one way or the other. Since evolution is a process of mutation,
it's likely that only successful mutations survived long enough to leave a
sufficient record. Other mutations may not have been viable and therefore
left no record. This argument leans toward the egg side of the chicken/egg
argument because whence the chicken came may not have been a chicken in this
case.

But I ramble. Nice to see an intelligent argument for a change.

On 30 Jul 2005 11:43:35 GMT, "-=jd=-"
wrote:



Then there is another point of view, that being that creationists and
evolutionists are both right. In a grossly over-simplified "nut-shell"
description: someone set up all the dominoes in a certain design and then
tipped over the first one (Big-Bang) to start the whole process...

-=jd=-
God is a mollusk.

On 29 Jul 2005 19:43:52 -0700, wrote:

Nothing is infinite.

On 30 Jul 2005 14:27:25 GMT, "-=jd=-"
wrote:


On Sat 30 Jul 2005 09:22:57a, David wrote in message
:

On 30 Jul 2005 11:43:35 GMT, "-=jd=-"
wrote:



Then there is another point of view, that being that creationists and
evolutionists are both right. In a grossly over-simplified "nut-shell"
description: someone set up all the dominoes in a certain design and then
tipped over the first one (Big-Bang) to start the whole process...

-=jd=-

God is a mollusk.


That speaks volumes about you.


-=jd=-
The fact that primitive man had to characterize ''God'' as humanoid
speaks volumes about you.

On 30 Jul 2005 14:26:50 GMT, "-=jd=-"
wrote:


On Sat 30 Jul 2005 09:23:40a, David wrote in message
:

On 29 Jul 2005 19:43:52 -0700, wrote:

Nothing is infinite.



Prove it.

-=jd=-
Nobody knows everything.