Political Discussion - "on-topic & unmoderated"Rated PG13, unmoderated but threads must stay on topic - that means you can flame each other all you want as long as it's legal
The All Purpose SCIENTIFIC Debate Thread (Former Evo Thread)
I don't know why I didn't post about this earlier since it happened like a month ago, but some Czech tourists tried stealing pieces of the Burgess Shale and attempted to flee by jumping into the Kicking Horse River.
The Burgess Shale is of course full of the devil's work, since we all know it's impossible for soft parts of fossils to exist and for fossils to be 505 million years old to begin with. If anything the Shale proves Noah's flood since swimming animals can't be on mountains.
Is this a joke(you really can't tell in this thread) or do you need to have plate tectonics explained to you?
1,000 posts have flown by (1,100 technically) and you still do not believe in God?
It's not quantity, it's quality, and so far the quality has been severely lacking.
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Originally Posted by Big Phil
My honest opinion, this is who you are and it is up to you what you believe in.
I have no argument with this because, well, face it, this is you playing the role of captain obvious.
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Originally Posted by Big Phil
Would 10,000 posts even change your mind?
It would only take one. I, having taken the role of captain obvious from you, haven't seen it yet.
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Originally Posted by Big Phil
I am going to guess no and I don't think another 1,000 posts on this thread will change that.
You guess wrong. Once again, it's not quantity, it's quality. You have yet to post any comment that I haven't been able to logically refute. If you want me to accept something that I can't logically quantify, then yes, you're right that another 1 000 posts of that sort will not convince me. If, however, you are somehow able to logically show me something that most everyone who believes it admits must be taken on faith (the opposite of logical reasoning), I will accept that as truth. If you can do that, as always, there'll be a panel of people in Sweden looking to hand you a special "Prize" afterwards.
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Originally Posted by Big Phil
I hardly doubt you will find either one of a) atheists who became Christians or b) Christians who became atheists because of reading this thread and the last one. At least you won't find ones that openly profess that either way.
Perhaps not (though I'd argue that even one is enough for me), but that's not the point of the discussion. The thread was first and foremost for you to attempt to prove a theory with over 150 years of data, hundreds of scientific disciplines behind it and a nearly perfect acceptance rate within the elite scientific community wrong. So far, you've failed to do that, and the whole question of Christianity being true or false is irrelevant to that discussion.
In that case, I would at least hope that a number of people who were on the fence about evolution (ie: "I don't know enough about it to say it's true or false" or "A lot of the stuff I hear sounds wrong") would have either learned enough in this thread to at least come to a basic understanding of evolution enough to be able to say it's at least reasonable to them, or even better, for them to have seen that things they heard about it that made them think it's wrong, like the piles upon piles of false ideas you've been spewing, are actually nothing but made up lies about what the theory is and says.
I am, personally, very disappointed that, despite very clear, simple and blunt explanations about how your particular understandings and descriptions of evolution are not even somewhat close to what it actually says (ie: "it's just a theory", "it's constantly changing, therefore probably wrong", "it says it happens by random chance", "it doesn't explain complexity", "I see design" and so on), you still hold onto such misconceptions like a security blanket.
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Originally Posted by Big Phil
You are missing out on one thing. There isn't a person in the world (including me) that can convince you of a God.
The question you have to ask yourself is, could that be because there isn't a good reason to say that there is a God? I've yet to hear one, and unlike what you seem to be trying to convince yourself of, I am completely willing and able to accept it if evidence does appear that does show a God exists.
That said, in literal terms, yes, there is not a person in the world that could convince me of a God. At the same time, there isn't a person in the world that can convince me of anything. I am convinced by cold, hard facts, logical reasoning and repeatable observations, not by what people tell me.
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Originally Posted by Big Phil
There is a limit, the rest is what you take from it, there is nothing anyone else can do to convince you, it is impossible and borders on threatening your free will.
This sounds like surrender. And "borders on threatening your free will"? That's a bold assumption that you can't even begin to make before showing anything else you are trying to prove is true. In other words, I interpret this as nothing short of sour grapes and a poor attempt at camouflaging an insult. In short, I think this comment is extremely offensive, and you should be utterly ashamed of yourself.
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Originally Posted by Big Phil
Good luck in the thread though. You know my opinions by now, nothing to hide here. I believe in God and believe he created the universe. I've stated why countless times and feel that as much as science does for us that there is a limit to what it can tell us.
You have stated why you believe in God countless times (with constant unanswered rebuttals, I might add), but you haven't explained at all as to why you think science has a limit to what it can tell us beyond the idea that "why" questions must be answered, another assumption you cannot even begin to substantiate.
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Originally Posted by Big Phil
The rest is what we do with the circumstantial evidence that smacks us in our face.
Circumstantial evidence is meaningless to anyone with a reasonable mind. Hell, even in law, where winning is more important than the truth, circumstantial evidence is viewed as being unreliable and meaningless. We can consider what it might mean, but there is, nor will there ever be, any level of reasonable certainty gained from circumstantial evidence.
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Originally Posted by Big Phil
I can join this thread if you want, but do you really want 1,000 more posts of the same? I don't, life is too short for me, its summer and I do a lot of nice things with my family. I'm not sure there is anything you or I can or need to say anymore about this issue.
Once again, fair enough, but I do feel this is much more giving up than being repetitive, since the only one in this thread being repetitive is you. If you feel like debating is a waste of time, however, there's nothing I can say to you that'll change your mind, but I wonder why you did waste your time with this thread already if you don't have any interest in debating in the first place.
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Originally Posted by Joey Hoser
Is this a joke(you really can't tell in this thread) or do you need to have plate tectonics explained to you?
I understand Poe's Law, but I'm quite sure the whole thing is sarcastic.
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Originally Posted by PubOFH
Why is there something rather than nothing?
We don't know. Doesn't mean you can put God into it. "I don't know" is the intellectually honest answer when you don't know.
Last edited by Leafsdude7: 08-29-2011 at 11:12 AM.
You know, he gets a lot of heat around here, but I kind of like Big Phil. Seems like a good guy at heart and if he lived next door to you, you probably wouldn't spend the summer fighting off his crabgrass overflow. (unlike the liberal minded lesbian couple I've got...)
He needs a good Archie Bunker avatar, though!
Definitely unconfirmed, but still way more reasonable and defensible than "because a God put it here".
Well you've written a book again in the last post. There were some very good quality arguments for a God back there but you either open your eyes to them or you don't, again, I can't make you do that. Can it be as simple as something like how we interpret things? I see the mountains and ocean and sunset and the human body fitting to a tee between a woman and a man and see God and find it impossible to not see that. You are skeptical and seem to have little faith and never seem to actually think beyond just seeing cold hard facts. To me Mount Everest is a cold hard fact. To you it isn't. Don't know about you, but I don't lose sleep over it, maybe you do, but I don't because you are free to decide for yourself.
And surrendering? Honestly, there can be a lot of good threads on here from time to time, isn't 1,000 posts kind of a sign telling us that the thread has run its course? You know in your heart of hearts the last thing I have done is surrender. If I did, I'd have mailed it in at, oh I don't know, post #25.
Lastly, I will leave you with this. God doesn't need to show himself at all. He already does in my opinion. There is circumstantial evidence that SHOULD hit you like a glove in the face and like I said if you look at something as simple as the tide or the Grand Canyon how in the world can you not see God in that? The rest is up to you my friend.
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Originally Posted by JF Omalycat
You know, he gets a lot of heat around here, but I kind of like Big Phil. Seems like a good guy at heart and if he lived next door to you, you probably wouldn't spend the summer fighting off his crabgrass overflow. (unlike the liberal minded lesbian couple I've got...)
He needs a good Archie Bunker avatar, though!
Well you couldn't go wrong with the best show of all-time (maybe after Seinfeld). But since this is a hockey site Bobby Orr is second to very few.
Do you have fossil records of all the transitions from species A to species now?
I take it this is the next stupid question. That isn't the way it works, but that has been explained ad nauseum and you just choose to ignore the explanation.
This doesn't happen in the natural world because intelligent design doesn't happen in the natural world.
Well you've written a book again in the last post.
Indeed. I like responding to posts with thorough, thoughtful replies without leaving out any part of what I'm replying to, unless it's an extremely repetitive post. Take that comment as you will.
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Originally Posted by Big Phil
There were some very good quality arguments for a God back there
Point them out to me again, then. Perhaps I missed them, somehow. More likely, though, as I said earlier, I was probably able to show how they were not reasonable arguments.
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Originally Posted by Big Phil
but you either open your eyes to them or you don't, again, I can't make you do that.
Pretty much how I see it is you can't make a fool out of me. I have a brain, I use it to think, and I use what has proven in history to be the most successful way to think. I don't think I need to explain that.
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Originally Posted by Big Phil
Can it be as simple as something like how we interpret things? I see the mountains and ocean and sunset and the human body fitting to a tee between a woman and a man and see God and find it impossible to not see that.
Explain why you see God in that, outside of "it just looks like God, man!". Cause that's not a reasonable argument. It's an emotional argument, based on subjective experience and opinion, not based on anything that one can accept with a rational, sound mind.
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Originally Posted by Big Phil
You are skeptical and seem to have little faith and never seem to actually think beyond just seeing cold hard facts.
You make it sound like such a bad thing. Skepticism is what has gotten the human race to where it is now versus where it was 500 years ago. Like a favourite person of mine loves to say, Faith is gullibility, and gullibility is not a virtue. It makes you victims and causes the good to do bad things. What better reason is there to do something wrong that because your favourite supreme being says you should? (Note that, when I say this, I am not referring to anyone specifically, but just a generalized point.)
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Originally Posted by Big Phil
To me Mount Everest is a cold hard fact. To you it isn't.
What makes you think to me it isn't?
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Originally Posted by Big Phil
Don't know about you, but I don't lose sleep over it, maybe you do, but I don't because you are free to decide for yourself.
Lose sleep over what, exactly?
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Originally Posted by Big Phil
And surrendering? Honestly, there can be a lot of good threads on here from time to time, isn't 1,000 posts kind of a sign telling us that the thread has run its course?
Why is it to you that somehow 1 000 posts seems to be a special number in a thread? Why must one fully accept or reject an argument after 1 000 posts, and why does a thread have to end after 1 000 posts? Couldn't the topic just be that complex to not be able to reach an end within that time, and could it possible be that, over 1 000 posts, the real answer to the question just hasn't shown up yet, but it still might?
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Originally Posted by Big Phil
You know in your heart of hearts the last thing I have done is surrender. If I did, I'd have mailed it in at, oh I don't know, post #25.
I am getting somewhat sick of this "I know you better than you do, so I know that you know in your heart of hearts blah blah blah" stuff. Can you for a moment just step back and accept that what I'm saying is what I'm saying without telling me what I really think?
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Originally Posted by Big Phil
Lastly, I will leave you with this. God doesn't need to show himself at all.
Yes, he does, in order for me to believe in him. I don't believe in things without reason, because I know my beliefs factor into my actions, and in order for me to make the best decisions on how to act, my beliefs have to be as close to true as possible.
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Originally Posted by Big Phil
He already does in my opinion.
You have yet to show that claim in any legitimate way.
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Originally Posted by Big Phil
There is circumstantial evidence that SHOULD hit you like a glove in the face
Once again, circumstantial evidence is the worst form of evidence one can get (aside from an out-and-out lie, which is not mutually exclusive, mind you), so to put your trust in it is to not be concerned about truth.
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Originally Posted by Big Phil
and like I said if you look at something as simple as the tide or the Grand Canyon how in the world can you not see God in that? The rest is up to you my friend.
I cannot see God in the tides or the Grand Canyon because there is a reasonable, rational explanation for how those occur naturally that can be objectively proven with models and experiments, most of which for both are done by 6th graders. If you're going to try and put God into something, I'd at least expect it to be something truly complex...
Last edited by Leafsdude7: 08-29-2011 at 11:39 PM.
Well, no, we don't. We also don't have a full observation of Pluto's orbit, or a fossil record of Adam and Eve or Noah's Arc (cue hilarious links and claims of "but we have" on the latter), so how do we know those are true?
Well, no, we don't. We also don't have a full observation of Pluto's orbit, or a fossil record of Adam and Eve or Noah's Arc (cue hilarious links and claims of "but we have" on the latter), so how do we know those are true?
DNA sequencing, real-time observation, mathematical systems, selective breeding, vestigial structures, physiological anatomy, retroviruses, proteins, biogeography, and more, still support evolution by natural selection as first described by Darwin and since expanded on by generations of scientists with much more advanced materials and expanded knowledge and evidence base.
How's that for proof of evolution?
ETA: Also, just to **** with him, you don't have the fossilized remains of Adam and Eve or any other biblical figures, or the Arc, therefore there is no evidence for the bible.
Last edited by Leafsdude7: 08-29-2011 at 11:29 PM.
DNA sequencing, real-time observation, mathematical systems, selective breeding, vestigial structures, physiological anatomy, retroviruses, proteins, biogeography, and more, still support evolution by natural selection as first described by Darwin and since expanded on by generations of scientists with much more advanced materials and expanded knowledge and evidence base.
How's that for proof of evolution?
ETA: Also, just to **** with him, you don't have the fossilized remains of Adam and Eve or any other biblical figures, or the Arc, therefore there is no evidence for the bible.
Well I'd rather believe one chapter of the bible over all that so called "evidence"
If there's one thing I've learned, it's that neither Pub, JXC, nor Dr. Fire would know what science was even if a bunson burner scorched their *****. It'd be funny if they didn't ultimately represent a sizeable portion of the voting population.
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