Religion vs. Science

[The ClayTaurus]

How can you expect people to respect your religious values if you don't respect the religious values of others?
Clay Taurus makes some good points. Which reaffirm my opinion that religion is primarily faith based.

Could you explain how my points reaffirm your opinion?

[avatar4321]

Could you explain how my points reaffirm your opinion?

I'm not sure she knows..

[Powerman]

Guess you think I'm stupid, then. Everything in that video made sense to me.

Stupid? Who knows

Ignorant of science? Definitely

No one with a good grasp of physical sciences or logic for that matter watches those videos and comes away agreeing with anything they said.

[Powerman]

If evolution were indeed true, then I have to ask, why are there no differences between the remains of ancient Egyptian mummies (some of which are over 3,000 years old) and those of modern humans?

If I were to accept Darwin's theory of natural selection, then I would expect to see a difference, albeit a slight one.

Again, modern humans arose 50,000 years ago in the plains of Africa, why are we still the same as those humans? The only differences seem to be in race, which is an adaptation to the sun, not necessarily evolution.

Furthermore, I would expect that humans should be very different from one continent to another and perhaps have become separate species by now. After all, the environment of the Sahara is very different than that of the tropical jungle. Why for instance haven't Eskimos become furry to adapt to the cold?

I think you answered your own question without realizing it. If modern humans arose 50K years ago then why would you expect people 3k years ago to be significantly different when they weren't significantly different 3K years ago? Maybe the lesson here is that it takes a very long time for changes to be made.

[Powerman]

Why must it always be religion vs. science, as if those two are mutually exclusive. Most Western science was largely driven by a desire to understand God, and the Atheistic view that the two cannot intermingle has actually stifled science in some places.

Um...probably because religious people come out of left field and claim scientific theories to be bogus

Of course they only investigate the ones that seem to raise questions about their beliefs. Funny how you never see Christians lining up to question the merits of the uncertainty principle.

[Pale Rider]

What about differences in immune systems from one region to another?

Mutations.

[Missileman]

Mutations.

Okay, and?

[Hobbit]

Um...probably because religious people come out of left field and claim scientific theories to be bogus

Of course they only investigate the ones that seem to raise questions about their beliefs. Funny how you never see Christians lining up to question the merits of the uncertainty principle.

Ok, then I'm guessing you're forgetting how many scientific advancements were made in pursuit of God? Newton's laws, for example.

I also think you're forgetting that it's the nature of scientific theories to constantly be challenged. If we hadn't challenged the theory that it was the nature of things to move in arcs, ballistics would still be disfunctional and the space program would never have left the ground. If you can't stand to see theories challenged, you must not have much faith in the theories.

[eighballsidepocket]

Things like the Mexicans can drink the water, but it makes tourists ill, or Amazon natives being wiped out by the flu virus because they had no immunity to it. Eskimos have developed the ability to digest blubber, etc.

I'm perfectly serious, so please don't turn this into some joke now, but I remember the first time I ate a tinnee weenie piece of a fresh Jalopeno pepper as a kid, and thought my mouth was being stung by a hundred bees.

My family didn't make fresh Jalopenos a daily part of our staple diet. Now with that, I've grown up around Mexican American kids and have many adult Mexican American friends, and they can eat Jalepeno's like I eat raisins, without even breaking into a sweat. They can even eat hotter types of peppers than those and not even blink an eye. They relish the flavor and enjoy those little hot buggers with their meals.

With that said, did they evolve separately from us Norte Americanos and now have some genes that allow them to tolerate hot peppers and us Anglo's can't? Hardly.

If I were to have those little hot buggers from the time I was put on solid food from being weaned of mother's milk and grew up on them, I'd develop the ability to stand the pain, and probably my metabolism and taste buds would somehow adapt. Living proof is my Dad, who comes from about as Northern European stock as you can have. My father's parents were both from central Sweden.

I remember seeing my dad eat those hot Mexican peppers as a kid. He wasn't supposed to be pre-disposed to handle those buggers as he's from a culture and human subspecies of Northern European humans that lived on very bland diets of fish and grains, with a few berries thrown in. My dad said the first peppers were tough as a kid, but he gradually in some mysterious bodily way, got used to the "sting" and began to enjoy the peppers not as a challenge to his manhood, but as tasty, wholesome food.

Us humans do have certain micro-evolutionary qualities, but not to the extent to become other than humans.

As Marx mentioned, you have the lighter skinned Homo Sapiens in the Northern climbs, who need that sun light to penetrate the epidermis to produce sufficient Vitamin D, yet in the equatorial regions we have most dark skinned races or Homo Sapiens that have more than enough sunlight for Vitamin D production, and need the extra Melanin to protect them from over exposure and skin damage.

Us upper lattitude humans want to mimic the skin tones of the equatorials, and end up with leathery skinned bodies, and lots of skin cancer as a reward for our vanity.

I see the skin color distribution as very much a micro evolutionary work within God's creation of the human species, but don't expect the human species to develop into a computer nerd, woose, type of species just because we have culturally changed our means of survival. I doubt that we will develop extra digits to enhance our keyboard abilities over the 10 digit species of Homo Sapien.

Naked we were born, naked we leave the earth.

We are one of the very few species that can't survive on our own after birth without a long duration of nurturing by our parents. In many ways this goes "flap" in the face of hard core evolutionists. You'd think by now that we as a human species would have babies popping out of the womb and walking and talking within days or hours of their birth, as we see with myriads of animal species. Antelope babies must get up, run, and stay with the herd or they are food for predators. Why do we continue to maturate so slowly. Why do we have to rely for so long on parental wisdom and instruction as compared to the myriads of species? Why haven't we evolved as the others?

Low and behold, we still take 9-12+ months to take that first bipedal step, we still take that same amount of time to say Ma ma or Da Da. We still become breedable creatures until a pre-set time on each one of our biological clocks, that really hasn't changed over thousands of years.

Sure some cattle steroids may have skewed some of our clocks and cause our females and males to prematurely grow into puberty type ways earlier than the norm, but the gene clock hasn't changed.

Never the less the micro evolutionary work still is present within the species, as in others. There are color variations, and bodily shape variations, of every species.....Just look at cats and dogs.........Every size/shape and color of the rainbow exists, but the cat family is the cat family and the dog family is the dog family. Dogs can't breed with cats and vice versa.

Yes, we live longer, but that's a "no brainer" as we have developed medications, safer foods, safer living environments, and less strenuous work on our bodily frames through the thousands of years.

Man, thousands of years ago, had a nice big brain, but his learning/knowledge was exponentially growing as he gradually conquered his environments, obstacles and dangers to his benefit his well -being.

Ever wonder why computer science only a few years ago is now obsolete? Not evolution, but exponential compounding of knowledge and learning continuing at an ever accellerating pace. It's not unlike the first litter of rabbits. You start out with a small group of 6 bunnies, and then three of the six have 6 more offspring. Now you have 18 bunnies and 9 have 6 more offspring and there's 54 bunnies.......and on and on and on....

Man started with fire making, man compounded his knowledge upon that to forging or foundrying metals from the earth, then compounds upon that knowledge to design weapons or tools to further his convenience or alleviate hardship of survival. By the time we were to Roman times, man had Siege engines, cross bows, aquaducts, sewer systems, and even had learned how to make concrete. We had a copper age, then a bronze age, then an Iron age, and then an Aluminum/steel/titanium age, and now we live in the Carbon Fibre/Kevlar age. Man's knowledge is exponentially growing because he's sourcing an incredibly growing back log of previously learned knowledge.

The first guy that had to bust a piece of rock to make it sharp edged to use as a knife to skin a carcass or make an arrow head, didn't have a big old back log of previously learned knowledge to build upon, but every strike of the rock, every little happen stance discovery within his environment added another growing point in knowledge to build upon.

A brain with the capacity was provided.

If you could take a baby from 10,000 years ago and put him/her in a 21 century family, he/she would have the same capacity to learn and be up to speed with the modern times as ourselves.
*****
Just picture what you would do, "modern man" if you were dropped into an environment 10,000 years ago. Would you be able to find or create your 21 century life, and it's leisure type tools and refinements? With your backlog of history and possible scientific understanding of the environment, you could accellerate your fellow ancient man's life, and knowledge. Never the less, you would have to start with the same raw materials and the absence of an electrical grid, or cultural substructure built upon those thousands of years of gained knowledge to start or get anywhere.

Even the bible says in the last days that knowledge will go, "exponential". Funny how so many overlook that statement, as it's happening now and we know it full well.

Also the seeking of knowledge, aside from seeing it's source from a divine Creator is also predicted in scripture.

Intellect and knowledge is man's credo, and religion. To be smart is to be advanced, to be vernacularly blessed is to be venerated. Man desires all the "kudos", as he has already "written off" the existence of a devine Creator or source for all that exists, both materially and immaterially. Magazines with titles such as: Self, People, etc.. are just the evidences of man's love fest with him/herself.

Man is where he is because he built upon previous knowledge. Not because he has evolved into a better species. In fact, if evolution is indeed working within our species, we'd have the absence of war and be living in utopian societys by now. Instead we daily and yearly affirm the biblical scriptures that we are a most spiritually shipwrecked species that was once created to reflect God's image and nature, but have sorely lost that in our quest to be our own little gods.

[Lightning Waltz]

Ok, then I'm guessing you're forgetting how many scientific advancements were made in pursuit of God? Newton's laws, for example.

I also think you're forgetting that it's the nature of scientific theories to constantly be challenged. If we hadn't challenged the theory that it was the nature of things to move in arcs, ballistics would still be disfunctional and the space program would never have left the ground. If you can't stand to see theories challenged, you must not have much faith in the theories.

To have faith in theories would be unscientific...

There is such a disconnect going on here, it's hard to reply.

That scientific theories change is a GOOD thing. It shows that as people gain more knowledge about the world, we aren't dogmatic and believe what was held before dispite the evidence, but change the theory to match what we now know of the world...which only make sense.

But, as Oscar Wilde once said, "Truth, in matters of religion, is simply the opinion that has survived."

[Missileman]

Us humans do have certain micro-evolutionary qualities, but not to the extent to become other than humans.

Who said anything about a new human species?

[Hobbit]

To have faith in theories would be unscientific...

There is such a disconnect going on here, it's hard to reply.

That scientific theories change is a GOOD thing. It shows that as people gain more knowledge about the world, we aren't dogmatic and believe what was held before dispite the evidence, but change the theory to match what we now know of the world...which only make sense.

But, as Oscar Wilde once said, "Truth, in matters of religion, is simply the opinion that has survived."

Oscar Wilde also said that patriotism is a virtue of the vicious. I think he needs to just stick to plays.

If questioning and changing theories is good, then how come everyone brings up irreducable complexity or the Cambrian explosion, we have accusations of 'religious zealot' thrown everywhere. Same thing goes for the medieval warming period and 'industrialist parrot.'

[Hagbard Celine]

Oscar Wilde also said that patriotism is a virtue of the vicious. I think he needs to just stick to plays.

If questioning and changing theories is good, then how come everyone brings up irreducable complexity or the Cambrian explosion, we have accusations of 'religious zealot' thrown everywhere. Same thing goes for the medieval warming period and 'industrialist parrot.'

Because irreduceable complexity is flawed and the Cambrian explosion has been explained--even if it hadn't been it still wouldn't jive with Genesis. *shrug*

[Lightning Waltz]

If questioning and changing theories is good, then how come everyone brings up irreducable complexity or the Cambrian explosion, we have accusations of 'religious zealot' thrown everywhere. Same thing goes for the medieval warming period and 'industrialist parrot.'

Questioning theories is a good thing (as long as you are willing to listen to the answer)
Questioning theories and having evidence to back up your disputes with a theory, an even better thing.
Disputing a theory without evidence just because it doesn't agree with what you want to believe is true, is a bad thing.

[Lightning Waltz]

Oscar Wilde also said that patriotism is a virtue of the vicious. I think he needs to just stick to plays.

BTW, weren't you the one that got upset when you created a thread and people questioned the source?