Evolution

[Yautja]

Wasn't really responding to your post, just my thoughts after reading it (and spoons lifting one)
I problably got the wrong end of the stick though - ive never studied philosophy/logic

People have problems with the universe coming from nothing or the question why it exists - which i reckon there is no reason or we will never be able to answer it (you can die trying if you want though), so it cannot be considered knowledge - so theres no point trying to understand it.

Just as much substance in it as the case for god i must admit - but i don't like the thought the universe has reason/order (the oppisite reason people believe in god ), it kinda makes life pointless - would farm cattle see any reason to live if it knew the reasons they existed, to be killed & breed others for human food.

Each person controls their own destiny, not the other way around

Infinity's a bitch when you're trying to prove anything because it cannot be measured (its alright in theorys though), we can never know if stuff has existed forever or goes on for infinity unless we can prove its finite.

Never had philosophy explained to me, is it just to do with things that can't be proven ???

[Boofhead]

Necro:
Why is satan such a major part of the last 2000 years, but now he's pushed down on the priority list of things to bitch about, and yet society is most definatly becoming evil as you would define it.

I'm not quite sure what you mean by this... if you care to explain it further maybe I can help.

Why cant people like pk actually be nice?
I don't know... why can't *everybody* Just Be Nice? Perhaps you could blame it on 'human nature' or 'sinful nature' or something... (sinful nature means that humans will naturally be inclined towards doing stuff that is wrong in God's sight - ie stealing, lying, adultery, etc - I think this is quite evident in today's society)

also, why do you have to follow the exact worship of the almighty, and not some other religion to save your soul from the fires of hell? Some wank could go out doing henious acts and then repent his sins before death to get into heaven, yet some native of indonesia who is kind to his fellow man and beleives that good character is the most important thing in life, yet will suffer eternal pain for not devoting his life to the big boss.

One of the ten commandments is: Thou shalt worship no other Gods but me. That I think is quite self-explanatory, another verse that I can't remember of the top of my head explains that God is a jealous God (the human concept of jealousy being the best word in the circumstance). I believe if you have made some bad mistakes in your life for which you are truly sorry and willing to turn your life around, then why should you be excluded from Heaven? It's not like there is a checklist of criteria you need to fulfill, and once you've done so you're a shoo-in.
(These are trite replies, aren't they )

Yautja:
the church used to be the law , but killing was only a last resort. First they would try to discredit their work using reasoning/logic/even making up lies, if that didn't work they'd try and discredit the person and then their family by making up rumors.

The key words are "the church" - a human institution, run by people as fallible as you and I. This does not, however, excuse their behaviour. But when confronted with information that conflicts with what they believe, some people will go to any lengths to convince themselves and others that it cannot be true - these are probably the events history has recorded (I'm not a big history buff), whereas the people who sat quietly, strong in their beliefs would be ignored.

Its already adapted that fact that the earth is not flat , not the center of the solar system/universe , stopped burning people on stakes, and its just starting to accept evolution,equal rights for females\gays,the universe is finite and had a beguining.

I'm sure the Bible says the earth is a sphere suspended in space... I'll have to look that one up. What I feel has happened is once again the result of human assumptions and fallibility - religious leaders heard a theory they thought sounded good and accepted it as the truth. I don't know about 'Christianity' accepting evolution; to me the two are mutually exclusive.

Where did you hear that you can do anything in heaven? I'd imagine it'd be quite difficult to kill someone, for instance. I think once you enter heaven, you become perfect... and so you'd never want to do anything that goes against the Bible/Christianity.

I think I wrote a lot without actually saying very much :/

[This message has been edited by Boofhead (edited 13 August 2000).]

[Whiplash]

So as soon as you enter heaven you lose all free will?

Sounds kinda sucky to me...

[chiQ]

Not if they make you play with goats up there Whippy...

Were all going to die someday

So, I suggest you make an effort, to belive in what the bible says, or at least take some advice from it.

You and I might wish we had paid a little more attention to it.

[chiQ]

Nah. I'm more likely to go to Valhalla than heaven. I have more faith in nordic religion than judeo-christian....not that that's much, but personally I don't believe in your religion PK, so there's no way I'm going to try to. I'm a good person. I treat people well, and I personlly want no part of a God who will ignore that if someone lacks faith. I mean, what kind of omnipotent creature will damn someone to hell despite being a good person because they don't subscribe to an organised system of rules enforced by mere men? He'd have to be a bit of a bastard.

Yer, well I am not one to tell who is and is not going to hell or heaven. For all I know, I could be biffed somewhere to burn.

But just because you dont belive in it, does not mean it will not happen.

[Spoon1]

Just because you believe in it doesn't mean it's going to happen.

[Yautja]

Your replies were alright boof, sounds like you know your stuff.
So i take it you believe in repentance/forgiveness and you get into heaven by being a 'pure spirit' or something like that. Its not a matter of god forgiving you(hes always forgiving is he not?) but a matter of you being able to forgive yourself ? - that sounds sensible.

Just don't like the thought of heaven because if it is all sunshine, lollipops and rainbows all the time - it sounds like eternal boredom ,unless you get reborn after a while.

Also that theres too many religious afterlifes so they can't all be right, and i reckon the safest bet when you don't know the odds is none at all.

Was the church intended as <U>only</U> a place of worship, and not a money making/law enforcing/destructive thing it turned into (thats the biggest problem i have with christianity, creationism is a distant second, and no problem with the concept of god)?

Now for science, been thinking some more and come to the conclusion we can never evolve to godlyness in this universe. To have all knowledge is impossible, there are non-terminating constants that can never be know (because they have infinite decimal places) like PI.
You can get around this by making things like PI the fundamental unit of measure(radians), you could then calculate things like grand unified theory to perfection.

The problem then becomes with the dimensions, there may be a fundamental measure for distance (the smallest sub atomic particle, smallest wavelenght of light-which is problably impossible to measure because it would be infinitely small and infinitly energectic - what the universe came from) but you could never know how their actual size is because you can't measure them to make them a unit of measure (just like you can use infinity in theorys but cannnot be measured).
We havn't been able to detect that time is anything but continuous(can be divided infinitly small) so calculating a precise point in time like the big bang is impossible without infinite decimal places.

Calculating the chaos theory of our universe is also impossible while inside of it, you would need an computer bigger(more matter/energy) than the universe itself and then the speed of light wont allow you calculate in realtime. Plus you would get the infinite regression because the computer will have to account for itself in calculation and fill the universe to infinity.

So - the universe exists because of randomness, why this randomness exists we'll will never know while we're still in it, life exists to create order from this randomness, science may come up with theorys of everything that fit all observations - but we will never have absolute proof of them (we can be 99.99999999....% sure though), we can never reach godlyness or prove it does/dosn't exist as long as we are still part of this universe.

Problably a load of BS though, been thinking about logic too. Using logic is how they accertained the earth was flat/center of the universe and other ideas. Science later proved these were wrong with proof - so whats the chance in another 2000 years our current ideas about the universe will be thought just as ridiculous as a flat earth.

The theory of a curved universe, no matter how far or what direction you travel, you'll always end up at the same place you started from - just like if you travel in any direction on the face of the earth. So in essence making it infinite in a finite space.

(on a strange side note i listened to downward spiral today(its been a few months), and i was kinda 'enlightened' - could understand everything in it, after a month of thinking about all this stuff that the cd is about. Just felt weird hearing and understanding something i had never heard was there before)

Sorry for rambling on again, but i can't get these damn thoughts out of my head

[This message has been edited by Yautja (edited 13 August 2000).]

[CavalerA]

I believe I can fly.........

[MadMax]

Has anyone seen/read/heard anything about Galapagos Island?

If not, then I suggest some of you go get your facts straight before spluting anything out.

Evolution: The development of features on a creature so that it can adjust itself according to its habitat.

Humans used to be short - now they are tall(er): PROOF OF EVOLUTION.

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³²¹MANY things are preserved in alcohol, DIGNITY is not one of them!

[FB]

Yautja: "We havn't been able to detect that time is anything but continuous"

We will never be able to, because if time applies to every single particle in this universe, if time changes "flow", everything will be effected.. and the only way humans know how to measure is in potential Difference, or relativity.. so there is no way we would be able to proove this theory unless we have some "higher" vantage point outside our universe

Also.. You based your last post on the fact that infinity can never be calculated.

I have one answer to that "Math is flawed".
Do you really think that the human race is so enlightened it can invent a language to describe life? I dont think so.

Hrmm.. these posts remind me alot of the Orz, an alien race in a game called Star-Control 2 - they were from an alternate dimention to us, and during conversations, the computers translator (their "speech" has to be translated) the computer would often place words like *higher*, *beside* etc in sentances because there is no way for the computer to describe what the alien race is talking about, other than making a loose correlation.

I.e some people may say that there are many dimensions *beside* our own, but in actual fact, they are not beside it at all, because beside is a word which describes our constrictive universe..

FB



[This message has been edited by FB (edited 14 August 2000).]

[Whiplash]

MadMax: Ajax already pointed out the height thing - its due to diet, not evolution.

[Fenchurch]

The variety in our height has almost nothing to do with evolution, and almost everything to do with nutrition.

I'll say this only once: agriculture was a bloody stupid idea. Sure, you can fit more people in per area, but the nutrition...putting it mildly, it sucks. So our height plummeted, along with life expectancy. These days, we're getting up there again to the maximum possible as defined by our genes, but it's taken about 7 thousand years or so to recover from goddamn agriculture. Which was a very silly idea. Or did I already say that?

Look at the case of the Japanese after WWII, for instance. Their average height has been rocketing in the last 50 years. They'd twigged milk/calcium were very good ideas. I think the curve is flattening off now. The changes are due to nutrition, not evolution.

[NT_VlaD]

Jesus Fucken Christ PK ..
Fuck what absolute mindless BullFuckenShit
Good Grief ..
I just cant believe the shit which exits your gobhole ffs .......
Ahh thats better ....
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Calm calm ...
OK just ask yourself this please , would this single minded one eyed person wearing blinders still have the same opinion of GOD
(spelt backwards is DOG , thanks to John Lydon for pointing that out)if you were living on the other side of the world ??
Ie: say ... India Or China , the ONLY reason you even know about this god you are wrongly obsessed with is because of geographical placement OK !!!!
Pull you head in and accept the fact that there is the other half of the worlds population which has no idea who you are refering to or care , because they are equally one eyed about there gods being THE god OK >>
This GOD IS REAL because I know he is , Im affraid is complete ASS OK ..
Real BOCS believe that you need to spend your entire life living the exact right way in order to get into heaven and if you dont then YOU GO TO HELL ??
Quite strange really where do all the people go who believe in god but are not bocs ??
They go to hell .... O I C ..! ??
There are so many contradictions to this stupid christian religion that it makes a complete ass of itself .
My opinion of you PK has gone from complete fucken idiot to Err the next level down , whatever that is ..
Just another blind religious nut case

[pinky]

what was it called when (before the lutheran reforms stuff) catholic priest were selling "tickets" to heaven.......like for so much $$ you got a signed paper from a priest saying "XX can go to heaven now"

was it called an "indulgence" ??

[ReBEL DeM0n]

After taking a few days to read most of the topic (haven't finished yet, got 3 pages to go), I believe in evolution, but still, something must've started off the process (put the first 'whatever' here).

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irc.rebel.net.nz:6667

[Fred]

Pinky: Yes, it was indulgences. A booming trade that grew out of the holy relic business when a Pope needed money and decided to rationalise things a bit more.

Spoon: Your argument about god being able to break all the rules is simply the same as the 'rock to heavy to lift' argument and can be broken thus :-

God is omnipotent.
Because it is omnipotent then God can break all the rules.
Therefore God can break the rule that it can break all the rules.
Therefore God can create a rule that God can not break.

This is why the next step in theological thinking was to proscribe God with limited omnipotence. Namely that God can do anything it is logically possible to do. This avoids the paradoxes of above but does curtail God to behaving in a logical fashion.

|THAT|-fred
'fred is not dead, fred is resurrected!'

[Yautja]

FB: My points exactly
We'll never know if time is continuous because we can keep dividing it for infinity, and can never prove that is continuous.

Things like infinity and continuity are easily calculated in maths, but they can never be measured. So science can explain everything with formula's but we can never be certain of it(only 99.9999999999999......% sure, one could assume something was god if it was that close to proving omnipotence, just like we assume infinity - something to think about ).

Hence i said while we're inside of this universe, once we leave the only thing you'll need to know is exactly how much energy the big bang had, and you could calculate everything from that , assuming you can measure it and randomness dosn't exist as you say. If that fails, create you're own with an amount of energy you know (assuming energy isn't continuous either, but science cannot currently predict anything at the big bang anyway or knows what caused it).

Yeap damn stupid Orz, only useful things you got from them was their crappy ships(good for credits though ) and the location of the arelioo(sp). Stupid *happy campers*, say the wrong thing and the hate you for the rest of the game .

Yeah dimensions, like you said before if something is thruout our universe theres no way we can detect that thing directly, only the changes it has in our physical world (thats what Grand Unified Theory is all about - trying to combine all dimensions(forces - gravity, electric and magnectic) that have effects on the physical ones we can percieve(space/time)).

Human brains work on changes in our perception(measuring eqipment also), we become used to a smell and don't notice it anymore , used to sounds and block them out , white light is the combination of all the spectra and yet we see it as clear instead of black. changes in taste and touch. Theres really something like 13 human senses that medical science reconises (esp isn't one of them yet, but i reckon it exists, but not in the thought reading way - like when you know someone is watching you but can't see/hear them - might just be those pheromones again, but then they would have to be upwind of you :/) - others are sense of balance and sense of acceration (both closely related, dunno the rest)

How can such a being be expected to know something if it can't be detected/measured, it may as well assume it dosn't exist - if it has no perceivable effects. If you think something is there but can't sense it - its either dosn't exist, or you need your vision checked.

Had another thought - if you religious people just accept whatever you learnt without question - how does that make you any different from monkey teaching its young to gather termites on a stick, open a banana etc. Thinking about stuff is what supposedly makes us better than animals, if you don't question what you learnt, you're no different from them.

NT_Vlad: two words for PK - Religious Zealot - sums up you're post (im problably a scientific zealot though )
(changed you=>PK - stupid words never say what you want them to )

[This message has been edited by Yautja (edited 14 August 2000).]

[NT_VlaD]

Zealot .. No not at all ??

[Yautja]

PK = Zealot i ment

[Spoon1]

Fred: My point exactly.

Spoon1 said: "If you define God as omnipotent then you cannot define that being by logic."

So long as people realise that they're not arguing for or against an omnipotent god with logic, then fine.

[FB]

It may very well have logic, but it wouldnt be the logic that we know, as our logic is derived from the world around us.

hrmm.. anyone remember those doco's - "The world around us"
FB

[Vandal]

http://www.winternet.com/~mikelr/flame63.html

hmmm?

[Fred]

FB: Ummm not really. Certainly we have derived our ideas of logic from observing the world but formal logic is akin to mathematics and abstract enough to be independant of reality. Technically formal logic is a branch of mathematics.

Spoon: I agree with you that God is not a logical entity. But not that this means that logic can not be used on it. It, for me anyways, acts as a persausive argument that our concept of God is at best horribly flawed.

|THAT|-fred
'fred is not dead, fred is resurrected!'

[FB]

Fred: "Ummm not really. Certainly we have derived our ideas of logic from observing the world but formal logic is akin to mathematics and abstract enough to be independant of reality. Technically formal logic is a branch of mathematics."

How can you say that when you have absolutely NO idea of what could possibl y exist outside our reality.
Nothing is abstract enough to think outside the square we live in, because we literally have no basis to form any abstract ideas of an outside reality.

FB

[OdditY]

And Jesus said unto them, "And whom do you say that I am?"

They replied, "You are the eschatological manifestation of the ground of ouy being, the ontological foundation of the context of our very selfhood revealed."

And Jesus replied, "What?"

[Endymion]

The second coming of Christ is going to be quite an interesting event.

[Fred]

FB: You really haven't played with some of the more hairy forms of mathematics have you?

Mind you neither have I really. But mathematcs, and by extension formal logic, is a system of thinking that is not particularly tied to reality. There are reasons why maths is called a universal language and I'd suggest you have a look.

Finally it is worth considering that even if I agree with your assertion that we can only consider things which we have experience with in reality then you defeat yourself because God, if it interferes with or created reality, is then a part of that body of experience. And consequently by your own assertion we can speak about it because it doesn't exist outside our reality.

|THAT|-fred
'fred is not dead, fred is resurrected!'

[Uncle Gus]

Jesus!! This thread is still going? Let it die, people....

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That's all I have to say about that.

Uncle Gus

[Mr Toots]

I havent read through the whole topic yet (only the first 3-4 pages) so I'm sorry if I'm repeating anything anyones said already. I'll also try to make this intelligent and well thought out, so only reply to this if you have something to say in a constructive manner. If you want to flame, I guess you can do that too, but thats up to you

On evolution vs creationism: I myself don't think either views discredit each other. I havent studied either in any great depth, but in my limited understanding they dont seem to clash (remember that someof the bible is written in a funny way, ie 7 days to create the earth as we know it probably doesnt mean 7 x 24 hours) .

On God: I guess it seems from what Ive read here that a fair few of the people who are talking about god dont actually know him or have ever known him. There is a rather large difference between knowing 'about' god and knowing god. I guess an analogy one could use is acid, the drug. Having never tried acid I could never explain what its like to someone. Even if I had tried it, explaining it to someone wouldnt really tell them much that they could understand anyway. The only way to know would be to actually try acid yourself. This is how I see the God topic

Another thing, Some people seem to be talking about Christiany and Christians being the same thing. One thing I want to point out is that Christians stuff up just like everyone else. Take the crusades for example (not that I've really studied this either ). I'm sure that God would not have wanted this to happen, but some crazed fundamentalists obviously thought that it should, and so in God's name they launched a holy crusade upon the Muslim nations (thats correct isnt it??) which lead to a lot of evil acts by so called godly men.

I myself can only say that I've known God in the last 3 months. I dont really want to get into my life story and I'm sure no one wants to hear it anyway, but lets just say that I've changed more (for the better) than I had in the 5 years previous to that (in fact no matter how much I tried to the contrary it got steadily worse) when I had known 'about' God.

Anyways, the deal is this, everyone will live their lives how they want to, whether they choose to follow God or not. If I'm wrong about the Christian thing, then I guess I'll have lived a 'goodish' life and then I'll die and shrivel up and that will be that. If I'm right however, and I do get into heaven, then it will all have been worth it. I dunno what you guys will be doing

If any of you care or are interested there is a rather good book by C.S.Lewis that some of you may care to read called 'Mere Christianity'. I guess it is biased towards the Christian faith, but then every book ever written is biased in way way or another.

Well I'll sign off now ('phew - at last' everyones thinking ). Hopefully people wont class this as mindless dribblings, cause I am in no way mindless in anything I do

[Mr Toots]

Oh, and about breasts, dems the shiznit

[FB]

Fred: " ... with in reality then you defeat yourself because God, if it interferes with or created reality, is then a part of that body of experience. And consequently by your own assertion we can speak about it because it doesn't exist outside our reality."

Im not a god pusher BTW. Im not trying to prove its existance with my posts. hehe im not even christian.

But you see, MATHS, is based in this universe, how do you know that in another universe, 1 + 1 doesnt = 4?, Of course it seems out of the question and illogical to you, but in an enterly different reality with different laws of exitence, anything is possible.

Maths can only go so far.

FB

[Yautja]

Our entire understanding of this universe is based on maths.
Measurement of the dimensions, counting/measuring of matter and energy - numbers - numbers - numbers.
1 + 1 will always be 2 because we define what 1 and 2 are. 1 particle + 1 particle = 2. 1 person + 1 person =2. 1 galaxy + 1 galaxy = 2 . 1 uinverse + 1 universe = 2.

Just like any language words can mean anything you want, in maths numbers can be anything you want - except there is no room for interpretation(and whatever you think of can be expressed perfectly in maths, seeming you're not limited by only about 30,000 words - you've got infinite words), 1 is always 1 and 2 is always 2. Its the perfect language.

Anything that isn't based on numbers wouldn't be our definition of our universe now would it . We can't imagine anything without numbers because thats all we know.

For anyone who thinks im crazy answer this question, if everyone else thought the same apart from you, who'd be crazy then.

[#Cookie]

This has to be the longest post ever... I just wanted to say that sothat I get to be on it....

Boobies are all good in my eyes... except when girls like to point out that they are for lactating... the word lactating is a turn off....

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#c

[smudge]

Sorry to resurrect the thread that won't die, but I've just come across this great page which describes the steps between simple chemicals and bacteria.... which is a big hole in my knowledge...

<A href=http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/abioprob.html>Talk Origins Archive : Abiogenesis Calculations</A>


[This message has been edited by smudge (edited 18 August 2000).]

[necom]

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[This message has been edited by necom (edited 24 October 2000).]

[necom]

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[This message has been edited by necom (edited 24 October 2000).]

Bah, no need to debate! You will all die one day, when so, you ask god how it all happened.

Then you will see that evolutuion is wrong, and god exists, as well as Jesus, and all that is said in the bible.

Wanna argue? Save it for when you have passed away.

[smudge]

Problem is PK, you're sure that will happen while most of us are sure it won't.

Evolution doesn't have to mean God doesn't exist, if he's omnipotent could have just as easily created a universe where it occurs.