ActRaiserTheReturned said
Chinese history cannot be damning towards the Creation hypothesis. The Chinese don't exactly like to share their mythology/religions and the entirety of their culture with the rest of the world.
They may not like sharing their religion or culture, but we're talking about their recorded history here and the fact of the matter is that it has been shared nonetheless. Just because they are reticent about sharing it does not make it invalid. The point being made is that Chinese history is continuous and pretty reliable (it has been verified and corroborated by records from other nearby people for many events, unlike the Bible which contradicts recorded history many times), and it makes zero mention of a worldwide flood (which as I understand it is supposed to have happened within the last 4700 years, and that's about how far back the Chinese calendar goes, just for an idea of how long they've been recording stuff) that wiped out their civilization. Similarly, as Brovo said, there are plenty of other written and oral history records that go back quite a way and have no mention of a worldwide flood.
Chinese history doesn't contradict the creation idea, so you're right about that, but nobody ever made that claim before you tried to refute it out of nowhere. Brovo said it contradicts the idea of the worldwide flood and thus Noah's Ark, then went on to say this is just one example of creationism's failings. In that respect, if it's creationism that includes a literal interpretation of the Bible, he's right about that. For the general concept of there being a creator entity, nope, Chinese history can't touch that.
Yog Sothoth said
interesting post, but it won't matter, atheism will be gone in about fifty years when the populations shift and Africa and the middle east become the dominant powers.
Er, even if your prediction about Africa and the Middle East becoming dominant world powers in the next fifty years turned out to be true, that would in no way mean the eradication of atheism. First of all, there are atheists in those regions of the world. Second, even if they do become dominant, that doesn't mean all people in the current dominant regions of the world (or the rest of the world for that matter) will suddenly be eradicated, so atheists outside of Africa and the Middle East would still likely exist. Third, atheism is on the rise around the world, so I'm confused as to why you think it will be gone in the next fifty years. These two ideas lack any coherent connection so far as I can see.
religion has seen worse than most people can imagine and it's still here, so regardless of how much atheists insult or argue, faith and belief come naturally to us, it has been proven.
Yeah, religion is resilient, what of it? Nobody has said religion is dying or anything, they've simply disagreed with the concept of creationism (which is the idea that a supreme being created humans and other animals as they are now; creation in some other way is still entirely possible even if you acknowledge evolution as a fact of life). Religion can exist without creationism, so even if creationism were somehow to die out as an idea there would still be religion. I don't think anyone here is foolish enough to think otherwise.
also since when does something always have to be fact to be the right course of action?
When the choice is between facts and fiction, then the fact-based course is usually the right one. When there are no facts to be had, well, then if there's a right course of action to be taken then it obviously doesn't have to be a fact. I'm not sure what you're even getting at here. Are you responding to something in specific in the thread? This doesn't seem connected to anything you've said before in this post.
no one can make an absolute prediction, also science is mostly guess work and not always correct.
Some predictions can be made with absolute certainty though. If you are standing outside on Earth and you drop an apple, it will fall to the ground. That is an absolute prediction that has been found true again and again and again and it will remain true unless something changes the conditions present on Earth, such as a sudden change in how gravity works.
Science is not guess work, it is the attempt to understand the universe by trying to figure out how it works. Predictability is actually a core factor of something being considered legitimate and accepted science: you have to be able to make a prediction of how something will work (such as "if you drop an apple, it will fall to the ground"), then demonstrate that your prediction was correct (such as by dropping a thousand apples in control conditions in the lab and then going out and dropping thousands of apples in various locations around the world to get the same result), and then put your data out there for others to test and verify before your information is actually considered true by the scientific community. If someone were to say that dropping an apple would make it turn into an orange, that would be guess work and not any sort of scientific fact... unless they demonstrated it and the results held up under peer review. Part of the scientific process is rigorous testing to make sure it's not just baseless guesses, because guesses do not help us understand how things work.
You're right that science is not always correct, but the cool thing about it is that it's self-correcting. If some new evidence is gathered that contradicts an existing theory, it is either updated to account for the new information or a new theory is created to explain things in light of the new information. The theory of gravity is not just guess work, it is a set of explanations about how one of the core forces of the universe works. Newton's original version of this theory turned out to be incorrect when it came to very small or very massive objects, so the new evidence came along and Einstein looked at it and whipped up his theory of relativity to explain why things worked differently depending on the mass of the objects being observed. That was rigorously peer reviewed and found to be accurate by many different people, thus the scientific community accepted this new information and there was much rejoicing for they had gained a better understanding of the universe. This is how science works, not by making guesses and calling it good.
religion is asking for people to trust in it and have belief in it. we as a species put faith in each other to do the right thing and are never always sure what the outcome of a decision is.
Okay? Religion is based on faith, people put some level of faith in others in their regular life. These are two facts that I think we can all agree on. Why are you relating them to one another? I don't understand what point you're trying to make here.
my opinion, evolution is still believed because it has yet to be disproved, but for all we know it could be disproved in the next ten years.
Well yeah, we still believe in gravity because it also has yet to be disproved, what of it? This isn't just your opinion, it's a fact that the reason why people say evolution is true is because it hasn't been disproved (and also because of the mountains of evidence for it). Once more, I fail to understand what your point is. Are you trying to say that you think evolution is false and that it will be proven so eventually? Are you saying we shouldn't view evolution as true because there's a chance it could be disproved? Is there some other option I'm missing here?
before you guys jump on me and call me a religious moron like many atheist jerks do, I'm not religious, I'm a philosopher and i laugh at how hypocritical atheists are nowadays by calling people stupid and retarded. it proves how hateful human beings who don't truly understand knowledge are and just use it to feel superior.
You seem to be hyper focused on having some kind of atheism versus religion debate. This thread wasn't really about that, but okay, whatever floats your boat. I haven't seen any mud slinging in this thread until you just now implied that all atheists are hypocritical for supposedly insulting the intelligence of religious people (which implies that atheists are stupid, otherwise it would not by hypocrisy), so I guess you're just making a generalization based on seeing the awful minority that does that; I say minority because from what I've experienced of both atheists and religious people, most of them don't even get into these kinds of discussions in the first place, much less sling insults and such. I do have to say that I find it somewhat strange that you're not religious, as you seem very biased toward religion and against atheism, but I suppose you being some kind of agnostic or being an irreligious believer in some kind of higher power could make sense too.
Anyway, on to your next post that I wanted to respond to.
I'm calling bullshit on you saying I'm terrible at articulating myself. the Africa and Middle East theory could happen, you never know. once again I don't share your opinion and you insult me for it. hypocrite much?
Well, to be less hyperbolic about it than Kadaeux, your initial post didn't seem to have much of a cohesive thread running through it, it just had the general theme of you disliking atheism that seemed to be the link between each idea. You jumped from one idea to another without going into detail on any of them, which made for a kind of jarring read. Notice how I broke your post up into different sections to respond to each of them? That's because each one seemed to be a separate idea that merited a response. Notice how many points I responded to by saying I wasn't sure what you were trying to say with it? Those are all things that could have done with some more detail to explain your views rather than jumping immediately to the next idea.
You've clearly got ideas you wish to convey to others, but your way of communicating them isn't very efficient. I know Kadaeux brings up your way of typing, but that doesn't have much of an effect on the communication of your ideas. It's just that lack of clarification and moving from one thing to another quickly that causes issues, which is rather easily fixed.
a good amount of science has to do with educated guesswork and trying to prove it to be fact. look at paleontology, that is mostly guesswork and is never truly proven to be fact, and that is a form of science. are you suggesting that science is always fact and never involves any sort of guesswork? my whole point is that at the end of the day both religious and non-religious people have tendencies to be assholes to one another, and claim to want the right to an opinion but insult others who don't share their opinion.
It's not even a "good amount" of science that starts from an educated guess and then seeks to prove it, it's all of science that does that, though your phrasing makes it seem shady. How it works is someone observes something that is not currently understood or explain by science, then they seek to explain it by drawing on current scientific knowledge as needed and then positing what they think the reason is for whatever they observe being the way that it is. This basic explanation, which is essentially an educated guess, is called a hypothesis. This isn't "guess work" as you characterized science in a previous post (which makes it sound like it's based on nothing but guesses with no proof), it's a rough draft that is based on research and observation. The thing to keep in mind is that hypotheses are -not- what make up scientific facts, they are the first step toward trying to explain something that is not currently understood. Something is not considered a scientific fact until it has been further researched with experiments done and peer review conducted to see if others get the same findings; if someone cannot support their hypothesis via experimentation and further observation, or it gets destroyed by peer review, the idea is either tossed to the scrap heap or sent back to the drawing board. The guesses don't get accepted into the body of scientific fact until they've been heavily supported to the point that they're no longer just guesses, which is why people who are familiar with the processes of science will get up in arms about you calling it "guess work" and similar things.
Alex said
if we evolved from monkeys then why are there still monkeys?
checkmate athiests
oh u
xAsunaWolfx said
This question has me curious. Any evolutionist want to take that one? it was rather...overlooked, or it was server lag.
Kestrel already covered this rather concisely. To expand on that a bit, because I'm awful at brevity and I like sharing scientific knowledge with people, it's similar to how domesticated dogs started off with a few breeds but now there are tons;
here is an image showing a limited selection of dog breeds and where they came from. Humans did not actually evolve directly from monkeys, we had a common ancestor. Take a look at the far right of that dog chart, where the Tibetan Mastiff is, then go find the Doberman Pinscher and the Labrador Retriever breeds down near the bottom of the chart on that same side. The question "if humans evolved from monkeys, why are there still monkeys?" is like asking "if Labrador Retrievers evolved from Doberman Pinschers, why are there still Doberman Pinschers?" The short answer is that they did not. In reality those two dog breeds share a common ancestor in the Tibetan Mastiff, and similarly humans and various monkeys and apes share common ancestors, not a direct link.
First (though not at the same time, I'm simplifying here) there was a split between different types of primates due to differing environments and mutations, specifically into three groups called apes (the one humans are part of), old world monkeys, and new world monkeys; right there you have a split, where the types of creatures known as monkeys are no longer part of the group humans are in, and there are more steps to come before you get to humans, so the premise of the question is already debunked via technicality. To continue on anyway, the apes then split into those known as lesser apes and great apes (humans are in this one). Then the great apes split off into different environments and divided into more subgroups, including chimps, gorillas, orangutans, and humans. It did not go immediately from a great ape ancestor to homo sapiens (which is the taxonomic name for our species of modern day humans) though: there were many intermediary steps in which species of the genus homo lived and bred until significant changes occurred to the point that modern day taxonomists and such decided they were different species from what came before, so on and so forth for many thousands of years with tons of generations and species passed through until you get to homo sapiens. We've got a lot of species of differentiation between ourselves and chimpanzees, who are our closest relative species, and they're far closer to us than monkeys. Oh, also, fun fact: you know that second part of the question that asks why monkeys are still around which implies that there shouldn't be any of an ancestor species left around? Yeah, the common ancestor we shared with monkeys isn't around anymore, some of the groups thrived and evolved and the rest eventually died.
Look at or think back to that dog evolution chart. See how goofy it'd be to say Labrador Retrievers evolved from Doberman Pinschers? There are way more steps between modern humans (and the genus homo altogether) and monkeys than there are between those two dog breeds. Hell, there are also more steps between us and chimpanzees than between those two dog breeds, and chimpanzees another type of great ape and our closest genetic relative species, so the whole humans and monkeys thing is just silly. The reason why most people ignore or laugh off the monkey question is because it displays a lack of knowledge about how evolution works and instantly conveys the fact that the person asking the question actually has no idea what evolution says about the origin of humans. It's something that a person who did not understand evolution thought up and figured was a solid attack on the theory, and for some reason people keep bringing the question up as if it's still a legitimate question despite it being knocked down time and time again.
By the way, if my explanation wasn't clear enough feel free to ask about any of it and I'll do what I can to explain it better or link you to somewhere that does a better job of it than I can.
