Does this sum up where we are in our yahoo answers conversation about God?

Question

God
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Bible or Qu'ran
philosophical arguement that a tornado can't go through a junkyard and build an airplane, and so by looking at a tree we must infer that the tree had a creator . . God

Evolution
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DNA comparrissons with other living animals, such as the fact that we share 98% of our DNA with the chimpanzee,

Fossil record showing differences over time

Counter to these

Counter to God: Bible written by man, Qu'ran written by man, the thing with the plane is like a 3 year old riddle it requires no counter it is SOTTISH

Counter to evolution: We share a percentage of our DNA with a pig, does that mean we evolved from a pig?
Counter to this counter: Will we probably do have a common ancestor with a pig 80 million years ago, so yes thats LOGICAL.

Counter to the fossil: It's fake, see dr dino
Counter to the counter: CARBON DATING ANALYSIS reveals forgeries.


Does this sum up where we are in our yahoo answers conversation about God?

Answer 1

sums it up perfectly. people are going to believe what they choose to believe and no amount of arguing is going to change their minds, and this applies to both sides of the argument.

Answer 2

you forgot a counter to evolution being that there is no clear fossil record of transitional creatures.

this sums up the where we came from argument.

then there's the jesus argument, the my life is better with god and atheists is empty and vice versa argument, the my religion is the only way argument, and a few others i can't think of at the moment.

googlywotsit - i have, well, pictures in books, i haven't seen the real thing. we only have a few (relatively few) skulls that appear to be primate due to forehead and jaw structure, but that have a much larger skull and hips made for an upright stance, indicating to some that these may have been early humans. while the conclusion is logical, that this is the intermediate between a human and a primate, other conclusions can be drawn. we know that neanderthals were a different species that we did not evolve from that died off eventually, could it not be concluded that these animals met the same fate? that they didn't really evolve? evolution appears to occur in giant leaps, and we don't know why yet. scientists think that its because of these giant leaps that we have so little fossil record of all the little differences that must have taken place for evolution to occur. these differences would have been minute, and we could lay out the bones side by side and have seen a wonderful progression. we only have big differences that can be interpreted either way, and point, we think, to macro-evolution.
my point is, the evidence is there, its all in how you interpret it.

btw, i believe that evolution occurs. i just believe in the scientific method and challenging theory a lot more.

Answer 3

I just have to laugh at byefareed's link.
First, the picture is the cat's eye nebula. It's not even the Rosette nebula, which would be more appropriate, since the site is talking about a rose.
Second of all, the site says galaxies explode. The cat's eye and all other nebulae are of stars exploding not whole galaxies exploding.
Third, I may not be able to see agalaxyexploding with a regular telescope? I have a regular telescope and can and have seen many galaxies. What makes you think one of these galaxies will not explode at some point? For all we know, it could've already happened.


But yes Jim, you make a correct assessment of where this argument is today. About the carbon dating though, I would argue that the atmosphere has changed over all these years and that would offset accuracy of carbon dating. But yea you are right.

Answer 4

I'd say that's a pretty fair summation of it all.
Jolly good summary I must say.

Just missed out one final counter to evolution:

Even if you say evolution took place, then it follows a plan. And if such is it's structure, then who wrote the plan it must follow?


EDIT: I don't normally do this but this moment simply begs for it:

Magic Keys you are right. That earlier recommended site is so full of hyperbole and is wrong on so many levels that I won't even begin to touch that.

So I must turn my attention to TheHZA. Girl you sound like you are trying to think and reason out, so I urge you to do so, rather than attempt a leftist Science-is-god fanatic argument that you are ill suited to.

Too many corrections need to be made to your statement. i'll touch on the more important ones.

Creationists: They believe that God gave us reason so that we might use it.

I don't know where you got your other stuff from... but please don't try to demonize. It only lessens the impact of your argument and makes you look silly.

Creationists just don't discount faith either. So it is possible to walk both lines. Why? Simple, if your faith is borne out in reason then why would you discount it? You must realize that you have been subject to faith your entire life. Everything the teachers done told you as a child growing up you accepted on faith. Heck I bet you could tell me the speed of light, but I also doubly bet that you've never actually tried to calculate it yourself. Or the Distance between us and the sun etc.

Is my point coming across to you? And BTW, many of the worlds most brilliant scientific minds that invented and discovered the rules and laws of science we apply today were creationist minds as well. So I think that kinda negates your "creationists are illogical buffoons" assertion doesn't it?

No bogey-man facile arguments please. Not if you hope to be taken seriously.

Answer 5

me being new i am not sure - but here is what i think:

i would never liken the creation of this world to a "tornado in a junk yard" and say that "proves a God." because the tornado is not intelllegent and could not "design" - and i do not think God creates junk :)

i think the debate between science and religion is a silly one - scripture shares a narrative of creation - a story of creation - why must it it seen as being 100% fact as it is written? it says, God created the world, and i am cool with that. i never strive to get into the debate.

but here is something to think about - if we were all created from the earth [the story says "dirt" or "mud"] when would we all not have a common dna? which brings me to a point where i must respect the planet, the animals, the plants and all that is on it - because we share the same dna as everything on this place we call earth.

Answer 6

Well, I've only seen bits and pieces of this argument. Wow, what a way to ride the merry-go-round.

And to those who use the argument "my life is better with Jesus and an atheists life is empty" *Sigh* That is so silly. THat would be like me saying "my life is peaceful because I have the Goddess, but those Christians lives are full of chaos."

Answer 7

Hmmm...you forgot to mention that the people that ask the questions usually only read answers that agree. But that seems to be the general arguments for both sides on evolution. I like to think of it like this:
Evolutionists:I think reason is more important than anything and I value it in decision making above all else.
Creationists:I believe that community ties and trusting my elders is more important than anything and I value it in decision making above all else.
Both:You have no respect and you make no sense.
Me:true- how 'bout that.
But because the basis for making the decisions is completely different, there's no way for either to persuade the other. You would have to make creationists reject community-without using reason, and evolutionists reject reason-without using faith based appeals. Neither of those is possible. I wouldn't even know how to argue something without using reason. Proof I'm not a creationist.
The frustrating part of the debate comes in when creationists pretend they are using logic. They want to have it both ways, basing decisions on faith and reason, but it's not possible. You can only use one tool at a time. And they always pick faith. I wish they would just accept that they don't value reason as much. Instead they use psuedo science to try and argue on "our grounds". I wish they could just be proud of themselves for who they are.

Edit:
Cain, I did not, and will not say that logic is better at making decisions than faith. I have, apparently, more respect than you do for it. I would also like to ask WHY you think that faith is born out of reason. I have found no basis for that. I have honestly looked, too. I'm not trying to be condescending. I'm trying to be reasonable. And what I'm saying is that people can talk until they're blue in the face, and if it was somehow possible to get difinitve proof that creationists are wrong, they still wouldn't believe it. Because you aren't using proof to base beliefs off of, you're using your faith. Which -good for you. Maybe you should embrace that.
And since there is no way to prove god, because believing in god requires faith, creationists can argue all day, and they're not going to convince people. Because science isn't convinced by faith and religion isn't convinced by reason.
And I know what god is, I'm not an atheist at all, I firmly believe in god. But I know I can't make any logical arguments to support my belief. I believe because I do. It's something precious to just me. Logic and reason play no part in that. And if someone came up with some proof there was no god, I would not believe them. It's just that I haven't found anything in god that can be applied to science. There's no overlap. Two completely different fields. I'm alright with that though.
And finally, the ability to reason and think critically is immensely different from knowledge. I'm not even interested in knowledge. I'm interested in reason. And, no, my teachers growing up didn't teach me that. That came from carefully reading arguments on both sides of many many kinds of debates and then observing what is a good and bad argument.
What you have done is make many assumptions about me to totally discount a basic point I made. That is a bad argument. Try and focus on the issue. If there is a conflict which one do you think would win, reason or faith? Can you honestly say reason? If not, would you consider reason based appeals logical appeals to make to those such as you?
I'm not sure this is a forum for "debate" so I'll leave it at that. I'm just telling you the conclusions I've come to based on my observations.

Answer 8

If that is a measure of a god building life, what happens when we start to build life in our image. Not only can we build a plane from a junk yard but we can take thing from nature and build what ever we want. Life will be next, oh yes it will.

Answer 9

No! If the scientists cannot agree on this hypothesis, how would a simple posting group be able to get through all the diverse opinion?

Answer 10

No, because the devil made you write those things and come to the conclusions you have....obviously....(cough..)

:D

Aleks-you obviously haven't seen the' transitional' effect in 'human' skulls found-oldest being incredibly similar to primates, newest being closer to modern man, then?

Answer 11

No it doesn't sum it up. You have taken the extreme ends of the conversation and are trying to make it the entire conversation.