Homestar Runner Wiki Forum

While a consensus is a great thing, it's important to remember what Michael Crichton said, "There is no such thing as consensus science. If it's consensus, it isn't science. If it's science, it isn't consensus. Period."

I usually bring that up in "global warming" debates. It works here, equally well.

I didn't use the word consensus, I used the word majority. I am also not refering to a majority of the sort which exists for global warming, which has the support of only 52% of climatologists according to a 2003 poll. For evolution were talking over 90%, and the fact that a theory has survived with no substantial challenges for 100 years says something.

Seriously, though, you get props for saying "supported by..." instead of "proven by...". The most important thing to remember in ANY scientific debate is something said to me by my advisor/boss's PhD advisor, "Science doesn't seek to prove anything. Science only seeks to disprove the incorrect."

Evolution has been proven, in so far as anything on this Earth can be proven, in that it has literally been witnessed in real time by scientests in labrotories, that DNA duplication is not perfect, and sometimes creates errors that can beneficial.

Tell me where your refutation is derived from. Like the Catholic ministery in the time of Gallileo, do you believe that lenses lie to us?

There's nothing to say that a creator, God, in my case, didn't create everything by letting it evolve from some initial state.

Disproof and lack of proof are for all means and purposes the same thing. There is only a difference of one in infinity in probability between them.

I'll repeat, seperate the assertion that god exists, from the one that an invisible rabbit is hopping around somewhere in your room as we speak.

Abscence of evidence is not evidence of abscence. Sorry.


God exists.
I never said an invisible rabbit is hopping around anywhere, but I said God exists.

That seperates the two.

Still, there is NOTHING about evolution that says God couldn't have created some initial state and hit the "evolve button".

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If you can't fix it with a hammer, you have an electrical problem.

Abscence of evidence is not evidence of abscence. Sorry.

As I said, there is only a one in infinity difference between them in probability of being true.

God exists.
I never said an invisible rabbit is hopping around anywhere, but I said God exists.

That seperates the two.

I meant seperate via proof.

I should think the existence of the Bible and various historical texts would make one more likely than the other. Not to mention logical inferences.

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You're a moron if you think I'm not.

I think we've been straying pretty far off-topic. The existence of God would be necessary for creationism, but evolution doesn't care about whether or not God exists. For the purposes of argument, we could just assume (for convenience) that he does exist and then decide if this God decided to go with the Genesis creation story or if he decided to go with evolution.

(Sure, if you disprove the existence of God, then you defeat Creationism, but you're not going to pull that off, so there's no use trying.)

- Kef

basically the only problem with christians beleiving in evolution ( from the bible's point of view ) is that the narrative starts in the garden of eden, and hasn't ended yet. if the narrative doesn't start in eden ( like Jesus himself believed, mind you ) then there was no original sin, and no need for a ransom sacrifice, ie Jesus.

if that doesnt make sense, ask yourself why Jesus died. If you cant figure it out read some Romans. like 5 Romans.

edit:
also, the bible doesnt support many creationist beliefs. its that thing with the two accounts of creation many [s]evilutionist[/s] scientists talk about. the first one says 6 days, the second one says, in the day of his creating them, etc, etc. so the 'days' of the first one obviously arent 24 hour days.

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hallo da' peeps!

Welcome to the forums. It's perfectly fine for you to have a religious opinion here, but please try not to be inflammatory by using such terms as "evilutionist."

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The meaning of life is 'bucket.'

FOR PONY!!!

ok, um, i was just playing off the first post there. before it got changed. i kinda forgot you cant hear sarcasm as i type.

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hallo da' peeps!

Ah, my apologies, then. Just as a friendly suggestion, though, if you're trying to convey sarcasm and you're not sure how clear it will come across as true sarcasm, you could do something like putting a or even smilie at the end of the statement, or you could make a mock use of BB Code brackets and surround the statement with [sarcasm][/sarcasm]. No hard feelings, though.

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The meaning of life is 'bucket.'

FOR PONY!!!

actually this post was only funny as i typed it.... so now it's gone.

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hallo da' peeps!

Um... I'm not gonna even try to read this whole thread to see if what I'm about to say has already been said. Hope you can forgive me!

This is one of those debates that, in my opinion, is way overblown. It starts getting into all these minutia of doctrine and logical this ways and that ways convolutions.. and for what? No one was there. All we have is science, which we can see has undergone immense re-evaluations of what it considers true in the past (can that be trustworthy?) and the bible, which is constant but is "just" a story. It just asks "believe me" without any proof. Frankly, here we are right now, and that's a lot more important. Getting emotional about this topic is kinda stupid, IMO.

So now I'll contradict myself by saying what I think. I think it's interesting that no less an early Christian than St. Augustine, while probably believing the story to be literal, allowed that it's possible that it didn't happen exactly that way and that it may be an allegory and that wouldn't really change anything about faith. We're so caught up in our physical surroundings, even people of faith, that we don't notice how complex and totally different the inner world is. Even if the creation story doesn't match up with what happened in the physical world, it still perfectly describes something that happens in all of our spiritual worlds, which is why Jesus' death was still necessary for all of us. And that's what's really important.

Another thing is the unpredictability of the smallest bits of energy. While when everything's added up, things can be predictable, I like the thought that this could be the way God has been guiding the direction of the universe without us being able to "prove" him. So instead of God setting up a universe and letting it go to evolve on its own, God set up a universe and has been individually planning and choosing each of the tiniest elementary particle interactions so that over billions of years everything would set itself up exactly how it is now. Instead of God being a clockmaker, he's so involved it's crazy. And science and faith don't have to contradict.

I read some Dalai Lama stuff for an Eastern philosophy class. He said he highly doubts it would be possible, but if science does prove reincarnation wrong tomorrow, Buddhists should stop believing in reincarnation. That was the most amazing thing I'd heard of.

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ATTN: LOWER BOARD USERS HAVE MOVED TO ANOTHER FORUM. COME JOIN THE FUN!

If science were able to prove creationism wrong, I'd totally stop believing in creation. However, to prove something means that you have to unequivocally show every step and prove that there was complete randomness and no outside interaction.
Is that asking a bit much? Yes, it is. Then again, the anti-creationists are asking the same thing of creationists.

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If you can't fix it with a hammer, you have an electrical problem.

when you say creationism what do you mean?

because many people associate that word with fundamentalist beliefs, including the fact that the world was created 6000 yrs ago, in 6 literal 24 hour days. and science proves that way wrong. i mean, scientists can see starts more than 6000 light years away.

it is important to read what the bible means and not try to hang too much meaning on each individual word. that is where supposed contradictions come in. just keep in mind that it wasnt originally written in english, or whatever language you use, and that it was translated, so if something doesnt make sense you need to look at the context and see if one of the contradictory passages was allegory, prophecy, illustration, etc.

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hallo da' peeps!

By creationism, I mean that God created the universe and everything in it in 6 days and rested on the seventh day.
Whether those are 24 hour days (with 24 hours being the same amount of time as we would know it today) or some other thing (a day for an infinite being such as God could be a few hundred thousand to a million or so years), is unimportant to me.

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If you can't fix it with a hammer, you have an electrical problem.

See, that's why you got "Best Debater". You're reasonable, and you can see both sides of the situation. Why, one could even say you're the "master" of said activity. But that's just too tongue-in-cheek.

Anyways, as I've said before, I don't really care about the origin of life, though I have my own beliefs on it.

It's possible that life didn't evolve from scratch on Earth, however, whatever its origin, I firmly believe in evolution by natural selection. It's based upon principles which have been more or less proven. Yes, maybe natural selection hasn't been "proven", but it's just common sense that if you have two organisms, and one is more fit than the other, that the more fit organism is more likely to survive and have offspring. I don't see how anyone could dispute that. Then, there's heredity, which, again, I don't think there's any valid argument against.

On a more depressing note, according to a recent survey, the United States is second to last on poll of countries that accept evolution. We beat Turkey.

don't feel bad. maybe terrorism against the US will thin out the numbers a little so you can climb higher.

What does terrorism have to do with evolution?

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Natural selection

Being killed by a terrorist is not natural selection. Not by any stretch of the imagination. It doesn't even work as a joke, if that's what you were trying to do.

Exactly. Geting a disease and dying from that would be natural, but driving your car off a cliff, while it might earn you a Darwin Award, is not natural. Terrorism is possibly the farthest thing from natural selection.

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I maintain that when you kill a large group of people, the majority of them are going to be stupid, unless it's a Mensa convention.

bless.

When they attacked the World Trade Center, do you think more dumb people died than smart people? I doubt it.

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Do I think more dumb than smart people died?

yes.

How exactly can you prove that? Because they died, they must be dumb? No offense, but your statement of more dumb people died is completely ridiculous.

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I think the fact that he is using thw WTC attacks as the basis of a Evolutionary argument is cold-hearted and wrong.

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I think what he means is that, on average, there are more dumb people than smart people, so when you get a large group of people together, a higher percentage of them will fall in the dumb category.

I tend to agree.

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beep beep I'm a Jeep

But killing a random group of people won't do anything for the percentage.

PS, how can there be more dumb people than smart people? What do you compare them to... other people... then they'd be equal amounts...

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No it isn't.



not making sense there

Are you kidding? That's about the most cold hearted thing I've ever seen posted.

How are smart people dying as the result of some terrorist jerkwad "proof" of evolution?

The Darwin Awards are an example of evolution. Terrorist attacks most certainly are not.

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If you can't fix it with a hammer, you have an electrical problem.

God Only, I want to give all of us a great reason, with proof, why you don't think what you said isn't cold hearted. Also, we want proof on your statement that more dumb people died on 9/11 than smart people. I don't want to hear and crap like "Well, there a lot more dumb people than smart people, that's why."

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