the point is that judas's followers would have written everything down sooner like all the other gospels if it wasn't a bunch of people that decided to make some stuff up and say judas wrote it.

the moth thing was natural selection not the evolutionary process on a grand scale. i still will not accept that men and monkeys had a common ancestor and that everything's common ancestor is unicellular prokaryotic slime. i see that people and monkeys have a somewhat similar bone structure but fail to see how men evolved a will and are immensely smarter than monkeys if we all had the same common ancestor (planet of the apes lol)

no-lol

if you cannot see the comparison i just drew then you're a fool, couldnt even think of a forum name

peace kid, good luck to you

actually blind, we share over 99% with gorillas and around 65% with sea urchins, see if he can explain that

first of all sea urchins are not mammals so they are nothing like us and almost all DNA of animals is similar to eachother because all animals do most of the same body processes

For the record, chimps grieve and can learn sign language.

I'd say they're pretty intelligent.

We should be getting those people hooked on cigarettes to study the effects rather than the chimps.

AMIRITE?!

> icantthinkofanythingelse0 wrote:

> peppered moths

i am ok with evolution/natural selection where one color of a moth is more prominent in a certain place but that still does not explain that men were monkeys once.

It empirically proves that evolution and natural selection are demonstrations of how the world works.  It shows that, when two species compete for a similar place in a biome, the species with the traits preferred for that environment would thrive.

The peppered moths demonstrate a very simple mutation over a short period of time.  Evolution is a series of small mutations over a longer period of time.  What explanation can you give for why a microcosm example such as this can't be extrapolated to be empirical evidence for a macro-level event?

Remember, evolution takes a LONG time.  It's not like a monkey just gave birth to a human suddenly.  It took place over tens of millions of years.

Let's take a couple examples of "human" characteristics that define the modern homo sapien.  Each of these traits, when slowly developed, would give humans a competitive advantage over the monkey, which would allow humans to develop:

Walking upright: Would have given a great advantage to creatures that could do it: they could travel longer distances, and could see longer distances than their predecessors.
Brain size, use of tools: Obvious benefit.
Reduced fur: Remember, humans first came out of Africa.  Extremely hot climate.  Hair is hot!  Reduced hair would allow humans to conserve body heat better, reducing the need for food and water.  Monkeys survived because they limited themselves to jungle environments.  Humans (or, at least, animals with this trait) could go further out.

Also add that walking upright saves about 85% of energy compared to using all fours.

I think it was 85%...or something close to that.

http://graphjam.com/2008/06/16/song-chart-memes-god-vs-satan/

just saw this and thought it was cool...

Probability is extremely important when considering your "sun will not rise tomorrow" question. It's not an original question, it's the atypical example given in the classroom, but it's sufficient nonetheless at conveying its point. We can't know with absolute certainty, but we can know within a given probability the likelihood of specific events. It's not perfect, I will admit there is an undeveloped core, but it seems to best fit our experiences thus far. Avoiding arguments of induction and so fourth, our amount of success is obvious from what we've accomplished and what we are on our way to accomplishing now.

Most of my adult life has been centered around pressurized tubes of air travelling over 500mph through the lower atmosphere to destinations hundreds, sometimes thousands of miles apart. To achieve such feats requires knowledge of aeronautics, meterology, standardized procedures, and a wealth of technical information concerning flight and flight operations. We've been doing it for hundreds of years, and have nearly perfected it. We eventually landed a man on the Moon. To argue such accomplishments as trivial is to seriously underestimate the sacrifices made by the men who made the journeys and pioneered the discoveries necessary for us to arrive at our current level of understanding. You can argue our understanding is unsubstantiated, but you can not contend its usefulness in understanding the world around us.

"Note: ^Vampan, you make a lot of errors in your post that have to do with a confusion about metaphysics. You are begging questions in a way that makes them illogical given a specific metaphysical framework, like say 'god'. Asking 'who created god' is an illogical proposition that would beg an illogical answer because you are confusing two levels of metaphysics and epistemology. A Human being can beg such a question, granted, because causality and origin are frameworks of human cognition. Experience, then, must be structured in such a way. 'God' however, is a proposition that is beyond the bounds of human experience, and thus beyond the bounds of the 'logical' and perceptional rules given by human cognitive structures. But affirming its negation, i.e. NO God, is affirming the same type of metaphysics as the former. In this way, atheists are doing the same thing as deists or theologians - however atheists tend to confuse their metaphysics and, thus, believe their proposition 'no god' or the negation of god is logically sound or a proposition consequence to inductive logic and empirical phenomena (induction from observation is an impossibility by the way).

Do not think your are above theologians, nor think that your simply comments are enough to prove some sort of 'infinite regression' making the proposition of God's existence false. You've done no such thing, all you've done is confused your metaphysics and, thus, begged the affirmation of propositions that are beyond the bounds of logic structures."

@Comintern

Asking who created God may be illogical but the idea of God is itself illogical.  I am merely postulating a viewpoint using the points of Intelligent Design against itself.  While it is true that 'God' is beyond the bounds of human experience in the sense that we have not experienced any first-hand interaction with such a being, does that mean we cannot argue or debate over his existance?  Should we therefore just blindly accept God's existance as proselyted by theologians?

On your point over "my" metaphysics, I am not taking a philosophical approach to the debate over God's existance, as you correctly observed, my standpoint is one of logic so metaphysics in this particular instance is irrelevant.

You also accuse me of arrogance in that I think I am above theologians.  You are mistaken, I do not think I am "above" theologians in any sense, your statement smacks of the arrogance you accuse me of in that you claim to understand my mindset.

My "simply comments" are not designed to prove anything, I was merely stating my own opinion and an example of how the Intelligent Design idea can be turned against itself.

I am not arguing an "infinite regress".  I merely look at the theory which states the Earth is 4-5 billion years old, look at the accompanying evidence (carbon dating and rock samples) and I look at the Bible which states the Earth is around 6000 or so years old.  I discard the Bible because there is more than a single book's-worth of evidence against it, eg. the fossils taken from rock said to be millions of years old.  My "regress" is not
"infinite", it's just longer than the one theologians use which is "God is eternal, God created everything".

The essence of the argument is that God has existed for eternity and he created the universe, which indicates that the universe itself is not eternal in terms of the amount of time it has existed.  Therefore, why should God have existed eternally?  And what did he exist in if there was no universe?

My point is, the universe could naturally have come in to being on it's own.  I believe the main theory behind this possibility (though I confess I have only scratched the surface) is called Chaos Theory, the most basic idea of which (in layman's terms) is the ability of particles to appear and disappear at random.