Homestar Runner Wiki Forum

So essentially, you are annoyed that religion does not play by your rules. In fact, does not feel at all obligated to play by your rules. Religion in general acknowledges an authority higher than that of limited human observation. And let's face it, most of what we call science is just that: observation and reflection. And, as Heisenberg has taught us, observation can be (and often is) inaccurate.

It seems to me that it's a problem of differing a priori assumptions. Creationism works fine within a system which assumes the existence of a Creator, but not so well in a system in which human reason is considered the highest authority. I assume the existence of a Creator, and yet you expect me to start by accepting that your limited human intellect is greater than my God. My question to you, then, is, exactly why should I?

Also, if you do get so frustrated trying to convince religious people of your views, then you might want to question whether the effort is worth your time and energy. I will also add that you are not likely to gain much success if you start out by trying to offend them.

And if you truly think the good I do is irrelevant, I challenge you to come down here to LSS and work a few shifts. (In other words, I'm not going to let you get away with abstractifying good and evil the way you did in that one post. When you can address concrete, day-to-day life, then we can talk).

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But that 'higher power' is abstract. It's imaginary. Those who acknowledge is do so 'just because'. Go ahead and call human understanding primitive, that our science has only come so far, but to say that just because scientific theory has change over the centuries, doing so to improve it's self, makes it's meaningless is just ridiculous.

Let me ask you, do you still belive in Santa Clause? The Easter Bunny? The tooth fairy, the boogie man, or any other childhood aperations? I see believing in the existence of deities to be no different than those. Granted the applications are much more complex, but they're still the same. They are all fictional creations of the developing mind, manifested to bring understanding to things that they cannot understand. Gods are what adults use to try to put reason on what they cannot understand. Instead of accepting that there are things that we cannot explain yet, they slap together some crazy belief that an all knowing entity magically does everything.

Yes, I'm abrasive. I'm like that because I'm a bitter person who has little patience. I can't stand the idea that people can possibly belive in such things, and I'm disgusted by what it's done to the world. When I think how human development could have became hadn't religion, Christianity especially, taken over as the number one concern for everyone, I yearn for it. But then, I realize that it's just a dream, one that may never come true. History shows that religious dogma surpressed scientific theory. Galileo and Socrates, great thinkers eons ahead of their time, were severely punished for going against the gods. Then there was kind whats-his-name, who ordered the destruction of the dead sea scrolls, which contained knowledge that would have jump started progress a thousand years early. And then there was the dark ages. A whole milena where absolutely NO progress was made. And not surprisingly, the power of the church was never stronger. So you can see why I'm so hostile...

And I never said the work you did was irrelevant, I said that goodness in the name of religion is what's irrelevant. You don't need to care for your fellow man because Jesus said so. And you don't need to do it because it will get you into heaven (or avoiding going to hell). You do it because it's right, you do it for the benefit of mankind.

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I did not use that word. You did.


Conceded. But I never made that claim, only that human knowledge, by its very nature, can never be absolute. You are familiar with Heisenberg, aren't you?


Do you even know what you're talking about here? The Dead Sea scrolls are a collection of ancient documents with just about anything, from sacred texts to business receipts, preserved in clay jars all around the Dead Sea region, and they were only discovered about 60 years ago. If you knew anything at all about them, you wouldn't be making such an outrageous claim as this one. Before you make references like this again, at least try to know what you're talking about.


I will concede this point. But only because I have a much better understanding of divine grace than you do. Christians do not claim that "good deeds" earn them a place in heaven. This is ignorance on your part. But here I have to ask the question: if we human beings are merely evolving animals, then where is there any notion of inherent goodness? Why should I consider other people anything more than animals? It is my theology that tells me that other people are valuable; without it, why should I care?


And, if you knew anything at all about history, you'd remember that this was because the barbarians sacked Rome, effectively destroying Western civilization. Remember? Vandals, Huns, Visigoths? Do any of these names ring a bell? In fact, had it not been for monasteries, there would have been no preservation of historical documents at all. Just think: you owe the very fact that you've heard of Socrates to some monk in the middle ages.


What about Rene DesCartes, Blaise Pascal, Isaac Newton, Albertus Magus? In case you did not know, these men were Christians who contributed greatly to science.

As for Galileo, he was persecuted because he made ad hominem attacks against the pope in one of his books. It is true that his theories were not popular, but he was relatively tolerated until he insulted the pope. That's what got him into trouble, and any Galileo scholar would tell you the same thing.

As for Socrates, he lived about 400 years before there ever was a Christian church. And if you've ever read his Apology, you'd know it wasn't on account of religion that he was persecuted, but because a certain playwright had accused him of deceiving the public and corrupting the youth. History, history, history.

(Incidentally, that playwright only used Socrates' name because he was popular at the time. He later regretted that it led to Socrates' death.)


Okay, that's fine for your personal opinion, but you have a long way to go in presenting an actual logical case for this assertion. We know that Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy aren't real because they're games that parents play with their children (and deep down I think most children know that they are just games, anyway). But no one that I know of ever played that way about God. Therefore, lumping God into the same category as Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy does not do justice to the seriousness of the trust that people place in their God. It's like trying to put Aristotle on the same shelf with Dr. Seuss.

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The dead sea scrolls were more than that, they have been said to contain a great deal of scientific knowledge that took over a thousand years to relearn.

My reference to Socrates was my badmouthing ALL religion, not just Christianity...

As for your 'divine grace' comment, you can take that crap and shove it. Divine grace is just a self-delusional title that you people use to make yourselves seem morally superior to others.

The fall of Rome may have had a drastic effect on western civilization right after it happened, but there is no way it would have taken as long as it did to rebuild hadn't the church ruled over the land with an iron fist. Yes, they kept records, but that doesn't mean squat. The church still looked at science as sacrilege...

Sorry for the complete randomness of my rely, I'm tired...

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But you claimed that someone tried to destroy them. Who? When? Your claim is unfounded and false. I'd also love for you to expound on all this "scientific knowledge" that you claim the Dead Sea Scrolls contain. My suspicion is that you don't have a reliable source for this claim either.


Have you even read the Apology? In case you did not know, it is a record of Socrates' trial.

Just so you know, Socrates was not a scientist, but a philosopher. In fact, I'd be willing to bet that if you were to engage him in a conversation about scientific progress, he'd probably question the crap out of you about why you think it's so important.

Socrates was a great man, very intelligent and wise, and very courageous. I have an immense respect for him. The medieval Church had an immense respect for him as well. And if you think otherwise, then you are not well versed in medieval literature. Sure, there was the occasional fundamentalist who discouraged the reading of pagan literature, but they weren't very popular. Whereas men like Aquinas, Bonaventura, Abelard, Anselm, and Dante would prefer that Christians read as much pagan literature as they can, and to learn everything they can from them.


Do you even know what the word grace means? From this statement, I gather not. Well, in that case, let me explain. "Grace" means that you get something you don't deserve. For example, if you came home from school and found a present waiting on your doorstep for no apparent reason (and no, it's not a bomb).

Now, you had attacked the notion that doing good deeds earns you the right to go to heaven. You assumed that that was what I believed. I was replying that your assumption was incorrect. The belief you were attacking was not mine, nor do Christians believe that.


It was the Church that inspired people to rebuild civilization. It was the Church that brought about the rebirth of art, literature, mathematics, and architecture, all of which are the building blocks of modern science. Are you not aware of the medieval university system and the Seven Liberal Arts (aka the Trivium and Quadrivium)? You have a fellow named Charlemagne to thank for that, by the way. You accuse the Church of trying to stifle civilization and culture, when it is actually the Church who produced these things at a time when everyone else was too busy.

Incidentally, I would also add the contributions that Muslims made to the liberal arts. They had a pretty high civilization during the medieval period as well. In fact, they were fairly advanced in the medical sciences for their time. Muslim scholars also developed algebra and chemistry, both very important in the advancement of science.

You claim that religion stifled the advancement of science? I reply that, at least according to history, science would not have existed without the groundwork laid by religion.

(Incidentally, my undergrad was in the Humanities, so I know a little bit about history and culture).

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Both of you stop it this instant. Take it to PM or another thread.

Yeah yeah I know this thread is old, but I just HAD to respond since I'm such an obnoxious Bible believing Christian. First off, had it ever occured to any of you evolutionists out there that a method of, may I say, creation such as a big bang or whatever you guys believe in, unsupervised, unchecked, simply out there has a million to one chance of creating such a detailed and beautiful world as we live in? Let me go on a rabbit trail, there was a team of scientists a while ago who tried to create a self contained environment called "biosphere 2" I will quote my biology book "they spent 7 years and 200million dollars.....biosphere 2 could not support life for even two years...In the end, biosphere 2 was a failure." Now I'm not just gonna use this quote for my argument, but isn't it interesting that the human brain, one of the most intricate and complicated things, fully exercised by a team of "top scientists" cannot create anything CLOSE to the world we live in. Now let's compare these 2 things,
1:Big spontaneous bang (or whatever) makes this INCREDIBLY detailed universe.
2:A team of VERY smart scientests creates a very small self-contained environment sucsessfully.
Well lets see, #2 (an EXTREMELY small achievement compared to #1) was a big flop. So how can anyone in their right mind, and with plain and simple logic say that #1 happened? Please answer, and try to make it good

Well, try thinking of this: In the infinite vastness of the universe, the laws of probability have to fall into place sometimes. Yes, it's a one in a billion chance for a planet to form supporting life... but when you take into consideration just how many stars are in our galaxy alone, those odds don't seem so impossible...

Human comprehension is ever evolving. Every generation unlocks more mysteries of existence. But there is much more we need to discover. We may not have all the answers, we may never have all of them, but at least we acknowledge that, and don't rely on some fairy tale to give us some false sense of security...

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Sorry but that argument sucked and didn't really bring any counterattacks for mine. It's hard to believe people can be so stupid as to believe in evolution since it requires way way more "faith" then the christian view does.

Listen doody, calling people stupid just because you don't agree with them is just plain, well, stupid. I think that it was "God" that created the Big Bang, and he let all that happened happen. How else would you explain the obvious traits we share with monkeys? There have been multiple findings that show a link between us and monkeys that suggest evolution did in fact happen.

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doodyman, if "that argument sucked" is all you have to say, then please refrain from posting in this forum.

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Hehe, I think I might have made that dude cry. Or at least he's about to, seeing as he ran away the way he did

I'm pretty sure I gave more than enough counter arguments to his claims. And how does evolution require more faith than creationism? Unlike creationism, there is actually evidence to support it! Creationism is just "God made everything! Case closed!", while evolution is "well, looking at fossil evidence, tracing DNA similarities between certain species of animals, and just making simple observations between us and the great apes, concludes that this is the most logical explanation"

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Your argument hardly addressed evolution at all. It addressed the Big Bang theory, but let me tell you this: The Theory of Evolution does not care one way or the other about the origin of the universe. It does not care one way or the other about where the first bacterium came from. Most evolutionists do believe in the big bang and that this all happened by chance, but that's not part of evolution theory itself.

Yet I already know your counter to this: you'll say that no matter how the Earth was formed, there's no way a bacterium could eventually evolve into a human by chance alone. That, too, is not necessarily addressed by evolution; evolution might be guided by God for all we know. But it does say that it did happen.

As to your argument that evolution requires more faith, I already explained in GREAT detail why I feel this is not the case, which you ENTIRELY IGNORED. Please pay attention to the previous discussion.

- Kef

Actually, you may want to review the passage that talks about "wise as serpents and gentle as doves." I don't think "obnoxious" is what Christ had in mind for us.

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Another article.

15 Answers to Creationist Nonsense.

The usual disclaimers apply.

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IJ - good link. Their arguments made sense. And I agree with them.

I will have to say though, that I still use number 7 (Evolution cannot explain how life first appeared on Earth) as my argument for Creationism. I actually do believe in Evolution...with Intelligent Guidance, so to speak. I think Christians are silly to completely ignore the evidence scientists have. It was Aristotle, I think, who coined the phrase "first mover, unmoved". Now, even if this is not what he meant, it serves as a way for me to philisophically explain my reasoning behind Creationism and Evolution going hand in hand. I think I said in other posts that this can still go with the Bible - our concept of time is not the same as God's. Millions of years to us could be, well, seven days to God.

Oh - I was rereading the first page of this topic, and I don't think anyone commented on the post Coach Mindwarp made about there being 2 creation stories in the Bible. My learning told me that basically, the first was kind of a summary of creation and the second was the more in depth version. And while I have an ex who COMPLETELY disagrees with me - I don't even want to THINK about the religious "debates" (ahem, IJ ) that we used to have - I think that human error and our faulty translations may have lead to some discrepancies over details...but I still think the main ideas are in tact.

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I do not believe that there is faulty translation involved, but maybe faulty interpretation by those who do not understand the proper relationship between the two accounts. The first describes the creation in general, whereas the second focuses on humanity and humanity's role in the created order (occasionally referring back to the first account).

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This thread isn't too old to dredge up, is it?

I just wanted to share a fun article from NYT called Unintelligent Design.

The usual disclaimer applies.

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That is one good article. "Intelligent Design..." What crap. That's just another way of saying creationism, but with a pretend scientific flare! The ideas of creationism in my opinion were never intended to be literal. God didn't really do any of this in terms of days. It's all a metaphor for the specific laid out time period God took. And as long as you don't believe that Genesis is 100% accurate, you can take into consideration how much evolution can be translated into a strikingly similar theory to creationism. Evolution is just like creationism except each "day" is millions of years and evolution explains the transition.

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You can't believe that God created the world and used evolution to do it!
God cancels out Evolution and Evolution cancels out God. That said, I believe in 6 *24* hour days for Creation and that the Genesis is 100% truth.
It seems to many Christians are trying to appease the masses by believing in the Lie of Evolution and mixing it into their Christian belief. It just doesn't work!

Well that's just your point of view. I'll explain it a little bit more in depth here, just incase. Now, in the Jewish faith (which is based on the old testament, which you apparently consider 100% truth) on the seventh day of the week (which Jews consider Saturday aka the Shabbat) no one may do any work because we must rest like God did on the seventh day. Jewish farmers, however, must let their soil rest on the seventh year. The earth is far bigger than people so the earth's "days" are much longer than human days. Now because God is far bigger than the earth, his "days" would arguably be much longer than human days. The PEOPLE who wrote the Bible, said that it took God seven DAYS to create the world. They didn't say that people took seven days to create the world, so one can argue that 7 of God's days is a lot longer than 7 human days. In my opinion, it's just naive to completely ignore the truths of evolutionism, and I also believe that evolutionism and creationism CAN be intertwined for sort of a happy little medium, okay?

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You're joking, right?



On what grounds?



Why?



You can't just come in here spouting your point of view giving nothing to back it up. That's because I can't give a point of view with nothing behind it any respect. So, you must show me what makes this point of view so good. What's behind it?

I thought about this a bit. What the heck is a "day", anyway? You can't have a day without a point of reference. So if we were to be superliteral, it would have been impossible for Earth to have been created within a day, because without Earth, there were no days.

And what if the Earth rotated really slowly after it was created? Six days until the creation of Adam and Eve could be four billion years for all you know. (Science says that Earth is slowing down bit by bit, suggesting it previously spun quickly, so I wouldn't buy this explanation myself, but that's not the point.)

- Kef

Your logic is flawed. Even I, a bible burning Atheist, am willing to contemplate the possibility that god simply created the big bang (or the birth of god was the big bang it's self) and simply let everything fall together as they will. Or, that god is simply an observer, and has no power over anything. Simply put, all evolution states is how life became what it is today, not how life first started. So all that creationist garbage can still find a way in there, due to the fact that science simply hasn't found all the answers yet...



"Appease the masses?" I thought Christians were the majority, in America at least. Why would they need to appease the masses if they ARE the masses? You ever stop to think that maybe, just maybe, there is room for enlightment in religious dogma? The world is not what it was 2000 years ago, we live in a world a scientific breakthroughs, which have become hum-drum to us, that would seem to be the incoherent rantings (or downright heresay) of a madman back in bible times. What rules out the possibility that the religious aren't making a compromise to scientific reason?

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Replace "God" in Tintin's statement with "my God" (as opposed to any heathen's god) and it doesn't become so illogical.

You burn the bible! You're an atheist!!1! What!! ! Blasphemy!!11! ! DROWN THE HEATHEN!!!!111!!!!


You've accidentally described your own logic. Good for you.

My point is that God doesn't cancel out evolution and evolution doesn't cancel out God. If you look at it from a theological point of view, God could have created life by means of evolution, right? Evolution doesn't automatically imply "THERE'S NO GOD!" but it does give way more answers than Creation.

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I dabble in both theories.

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How about some Pan-Asian cuisine?

Evolution. There's more evidence that points to evolution than creationism.

Two TOTPs in two days! How 'bout that! Cue the eekdancers:

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"They've taken Mr Rimmer! Sir, they've taken Mr Rimmer!"
"Quick, let's get outta here before they bring him back!"

Now what?
There's more evidence that a bacteria could turn into a human over the course of 500 billion trillion years, than that that there could be a tiny chance of a spiritual being creating it?

There was this show on somewhere on TBN about this person who really helped use scientific facts to help prove the creation theory. (with I highly believe, by the way)

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