LuklaAdvocate wrote:

Except the context of those verses had nothing to do with timeless wisdom.

A reader can often interpret a verse a certain way, but like any book, he can only interpret within context.

ªbominable' wrote:

No, its like saying that nothing had enough time to evolve into man as we know it. It just doesn't make sense.

jibjib106 wrote:

Hmm, maybe I should check that, I remember seeing a program in which the four different types of parallel universe were explained, the first being the one I just mentioned, I think the others were that our universe itself can be divided into separate universes, and that there are many universe 'bubbles' which are contained within a much larger space. The fourth I can't remembernir understand enough to explain. Are you thinking perhaps of string theory in which there are theorised to be 11 dimensions occupying the same space?

LuklaAdvocate wrote:

The Bible differentiates between God and the universe when it comes to time and existence.

The world and second coming have nothing to do with it. When I'm talking about eternal existence, I'm referring to God, not the earth or the universe.

"In the beginning" relates to the beginning of earth, not the beginning of God.Nothing will sound logical when it's caricatured to that degree.

plax77 wrote:

And you're saying a magic man that lives in the sky and controls the fate of every human being that has ever been born does?


.

ªbominable' wrote:

You obviously do not know what Christianity is, do you?

In the case of Orthodox Christianity, in its simplest manifestation, you can BASICALLY insert the word "love" anywhere you see the word "God".

What this means is that God (love) is all around us (which would make sense because the Bible says that God is all around us, and think about it- isn't love all around us too?), not "A magic man in the sky".

I can make evolution sound pretty stupid too- but I choose not too, because I am trying to believe that everyone here is mature enough to have a realistic discussion.

That kind of exaggeration gets us nowhere.

ªbominable' wrote:

They made a SYNTHETIC cell- you know, like the nylon shirts most people wear. Otherwise, not a CARBON BASED ORGANIC cell, like the ones we are made out of- so it is still BS- its just a tiny t-shirt is all, not an actual ORGANIC Carbon Based living organism!!!

Yes, it is carbon based. Or have you found a way to create base pairs without carbon? So yes, it is a carbon-based, living organism. FUN FACT: Nylon is also carbon-based.

AND-

"The achievement caps 15 years of work by a large team of researchers, led by Craig Venter of Human Genome Project fame, who engineered a chromosome and inserted it into a bacterium to create a new living entity."

Only an idiot would fail to see the lack of creation in the above sentence.

They used a computer to create a DNA sequence. They then created the chromosomes based on the computer program. They then inserted the genetic information into a bacterium that didn't have and DNA in it. Sure, you could argue that they didn't create life because they used an already existing cell wall... But then again, a cell wall is just proteins, and we CAN create those, so they just skipped an obviously doable step. Then again, maybe there are other reasons for it, I'm not a scientist and I won't claim to understang everything they publish.

AND-

"Scientists became very optimistic that the questions about the origin of life would be solved within a few decades. This has not been the case, however. Instead, the investigation into life's origins seems only to have just begun.

There has been a recent wave of skepticism concerning Miller's experiment because it is now believed that the early earth's atmosphere did not contain predominantly reductant molecules. Another objection is that this experiment required a tremendous amount of energy. While it is believed lightning storms were extremely common on the primitive Earth, they were not continuous as the Miller/Urey experiment portrayed. Thus it has been argued that while amino acids and other organic compounds may have been formed, they would not have been formed in the amounts which this experiment produced."

This is from the same link that you posted saying that they did infact make life-
all they made where amino acids and adenine- this is NOT creating life!, read what you posted yourself before using it to try to refute other more informed peoples' statements.

Wrongo, that's from the link stating that they replicated possible origin-of-life conditions. Please make sure you understand what you're reading before attempting to post long quotations without paraphrasing and trying to sound smart.

So, like Einstein himself, I believe there is a God.

WARNING: Tl;Dr coming up!

"I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, whose purposes are modeled after our own -- a God, in short, who is but a reflection of human frailty. Neither can I believe that the individual survives the death of his body, although feeble souls harbor such thoughts through fear or ridiculous egotism." [Einstein]


"Faith means not wanting to know what is true." [Nietzsche]


"I cannot believe in the immortality of the soul.... No, all this talk of an existence for us, as individuals, beyond the grave is wrong. It is born of our tenacity of life – our desire to go on living … our dread of coming to an end." [Edison]


"The Bible is not my book nor Christianity my profession. I could never give assent to the long, complicated statements of Christian dogma." [Lincoln]


"Religion is a byproduct of fear. For much of human history, it may have been a necessary evil, but why was it more evil than necessary? Isn't killing people in the name of God a pretty good definition of insanity?" [Arthur C. Clarke]


"Religions are all alike – founded upon fables and mythologies." [Thomas Jefferson]


"Say what you will about the sweet miracle of unquestioning faith, I consider a capacity for it terrifying and absolutely vile." [Kurt Vonnegut]


"Religion is based . . . mainly on fear . . . fear of the mysterious, fear of defeat, fear of death. Fear is the parent of cruelty, and therefore it is no wonder if cruelty and religion have gone hand in hand. . . . My own view on religion is that of Lucretius. I regard it as a disease born of fear and as a source of untold misery to the human race." [Bertrand Russell]

So with all due respect, stop fucking saying that you're Einstein's fucking lover and stick to real arguments.

LuklaAdvocate wrote:

Out of curiosity, why on earth would you go to BYU if you're an atheist? Or were you Mormon at the time? I can't see a non-religious person having much fun at a university such as Brigham Young.

Batgirl wrote:

As to what is all around us.
Death, distruction and hate is also around us. Just sayin'.

Matt9148 wrote:

They made a SYNTHETIC cell- you know, like the nylon shirts most people wear. Otherwise, not a CARBON BASED ORGANIC cell, like the ones we are made out of- so it is still BS- its just a tiny t-shirt is all, not an actual ORGANIC Carbon Based living organism!!!

Yes, it is carbon based. Or have you found a way to create base pairs without carbon? So yes, it is a carbon-based, living organism. FUN FACT: Nylon is also carbon-based.

But where they (the scientists) around when the Earth was started? That still doesn't answer the question of how we got here

AND-

"The achievement caps 15 years of work by a large team of researchers, led by Craig Venter of Human Genome Project fame, who engineered a chromosome and inserted it into a bacterium to create a new living entity."

Only an idiot would fail to see the lack of creation in the above sentence.

They used a computer to create a DNA sequence. They then created the chromosomes based on the computer program. They then inserted the genetic information into a bacterium that didn't have and DNA in it. Sure, you could argue that they didn't create life because they used an already existing cell wall... But then again, a cell wall is just proteins, and we CAN create those, so they just skipped an obviously doable step. Then again, maybe there are other reasons for it, I'm not a scientist and I won't claim to understang everything they publish.

AND-

"Scientists became very optimistic that the questions about the origin of life would be solved within a few decades. This has not been the case, however. Instead, the investigation into life's origins seems only to have just begun.

There has been a recent wave of skepticism concerning Miller's experiment because it is now believed that the early earth's atmosphere did not contain predominantly reductant molecules. Another objection is that this experiment required a tremendous amount of energy. While it is believed lightning storms were extremely common on the primitive Earth, they were not continuous as the Miller/Urey experiment portrayed. Thus it has been argued that while amino acids and other organic compounds may have been formed, they would not have been formed in the amounts which this experiment produced."

This is from the same link that you posted saying that they did infact make life-
all they made where amino acids and adenine- this is NOT creating life!, read what you posted yourself before using it to try to refute other more informed peoples' statements.

Wrongo, that's from the link stating that they replicated possible origin-of-life conditions. Please make sure you understand what you're reading before attempting to post long quotations without paraphrasing and trying to sound smart.

"all they made where amino acids and adenine" Isn't this from here:

chem.duke.edu/~jds/cruise_chem/Exobiology/miller.html

???



So, like Einstein himself, I believe there is a God.

WARNING: Tl;Dr coming up!

"I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, whose purposes are modeled after our own -- a God, in short, who is but a reflection of human frailty. Neither can I believe that the individual survives the death of his body, although feeble souls harbor such thoughts through fear or ridiculous egotism." [Einstein]

^ Uh so? He also said he believes in God, just not a PERSONAL God :

"Einstein's "superior reasoning power," however, was not the God of the Bible. Though he confessed to the rabbis and priests who came to congratulate him on his discovery of God that he was convinced God brought the universe into existence and was intelligent and creative, he denied that God was personal."

and

" Nevertheless, and to his credit, Einstein held unswervingly, against enormous peer pressure, to a belief in a Creator. "

^ I think thats pretty clear.



"Faith means not wanting to know what is true." [Nietzsche]

^Absolutely not. This is what faith means:
The apostle Paul wrote: “Faith is the assured expectation of things hoped for, the evident demonstration of realities though not beheld.”



"I cannot believe in the immortality of the soul.... No, all this talk of an existence for us, as individuals, beyond the grave is wrong. It is born of our tenacity of life – our desire to go on living … our dread of coming to an end." [Edison]

^Actually, most of the time I wish I was dead. My faith is the only thing that keeps me in this miserable anus of a world. So that quote is BS, because I am sure there are a lot of people in this world who feel like me too.

"Our dread of coming to an end" my ass.

"The Bible is not my book nor Christianity my profession. I could never give assent to the long, complicated statements of Christian dogma." [Lincoln]

Christian Dogma?

"Dogma is the unshaken belief that something is true, regardless of proof"

The Bible does, in fact, have proof- but that just brings us back to about 2 or 3 pages ago, its a catch 22- .

" In the book of Ezekiel, it says that King Zedekiah would not see Babylon, but he would die there. When Jerusalem was taken, his eyes were removed by the Babylonians, and he was taken along to Babylon. He did not see Babylon!
[I](Ref. Ezekiel 12:13, 2 Kings 25:7, Jeremiah 52:11, Jeremiah 39:7)"
[/I]

Besides- Even though it is not the case, we could (as a species) use some constucting dogma every now and then- either way, the Christianity that I am speaking about is Orthodox Christianity (meaning we follow the Bible, nothing else). It is when Catholics and other denominations pop up that "dogma" comes into place.



"Religion is a byproduct of fear. For much of human history, it may have been a necessary evil, but why was it more evil than necessary? Isn't killing people in the name of God a pretty good definition of insanity?" [Arthur C. Clarke]

The people who killed others in the name where in fact NOT Christians, even though they profess to be such:

1John 4:1 Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God: because many false prophets are gone out into the world.

Where does the Bible preach that you should kill people in the name of God? It teaches the exact opposite! It teaches peace, not war! People have done some stupid things, and claimed they were CHristian deeds. They lied.
[B][/B]
"Religions are all alike – founded upon fables and mythologies." [Thomas Jefferson]

Actually, the Bible was NOT founded on either of the above.

biblebasis.org/index.html#articles/trust_bible.html


"Say what you will about the sweet miracle of unquestioning faith, I consider a capacity for it terrifying and absolutely vile." [Kurt Vonnegut]

^That is just an opinion, no more important than yours.


"Religion is based . . . mainly on fear . . . fear of the mysterious, fear of defeat, fear of death. Fear is the parent of cruelty, and therefore it is no wonder if cruelty and religion have gone hand in hand. . . . My own view on religion is that of Lucretius. I regard it as a disease born of fear and as a source of untold misery to the human race." [Bertrand Russell]

^Again, "religion" could mean anything, including Muslims, I am talking about th Christian God. And as far as cruelty that people have done because of a CHristian God- that is a lie in and of itself, since the Christian Bible does not preach that and in fact goes against it, even giving a warning:

"He who lives by the sword shall die by the sword"

So with all due respect, stop fucking saying that you're Einstein's fucking lover and stick to real arguments.

^^^If I, by quoting Eintstein, am his lover, then you just had a gigantic gay orgy with the following:

[Lincoln]
[Arthur C. Clarke]
[Thomas Jefferson]
[Kurt Vonnegut]
[Bertrand Russell]

and, last but not least,

[Einstein]

:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D

You are right, this IS getting fun

ªbominable' wrote:

But where they (the scientists) around when the Earth was started? That still doesn't answer the question of how we got here

The whole point of the Miller-Urey experiment was to see if the idea that a "primordial soup" with a bunch of chemicals in it could spontaneously generate the amino acids necessary for a living organism to eventually develop. There is no possible way to completely answer that question of where we come from, we can all agree on that, but the point is that people say it's impossible for the basic molecules of life to spontaneously come together... But now we know it might not be that farfetched.

"all they made where amino acids and adenine" Isn't this from here:

chem.duke.edu/~jds/cruise_chem/Exobiology/miller.html

???

Yes it is, but I never claimed that the Miller-Urey experiment was an attempt to create life. The other link I posted is the recent experiment where scientists have created a living organism from a computer program. Miller-Urey isn't creating life, it's trying to prove one of the theories of its origin. The other link is the actual creation of life.The whole point of my long list of quotations from famous philosophers and such was to point out the fallacy in your tendency to fall back on an appeal to authority by always saying something like "
So, like Einstein himself, I believe there is a God." He was a public figure. Obviously we'll never know what he really believed because he said two conflicting things. But in the end, what anyone believes doesn't change the fact that a God does or doesn't exist. So as I said, let's avoid the useless "I'm with this smart guy's side" shit and stick to our arguments.

You are right, this IS getting fun :D

Glad you're enjoying it, you're actually the first believer I've talked to that's never tried to change the subject to irrelevant points instead of arguing with me so +10 points for you :rofl: (Yes... that's why the Jehova's don't come by my house anymore :P)