Nighthawk, a quick aside: Dickens was a very popular British author. You're thinking of Charles Darwin, which is an understandable mixup considering the similarity of their names...

Anyways, to review: The theory of evolution holds that as an environment changes, the lifeforms that live within that environment adapt to the new environment through natural selection. Life is always in flux, recombining and mutating. Most of the new results are not well-adapted to their environment and will not prosper, but occasionally a mutation will by rare (but over a long period of time inevitable) chance be actually better suited to the new environment. The outcome is that the new better suited lifeform increases in population and begins to outcompete the lifeforms that previously thrived there, so the population of the former (and the chance for their newly adapted genome to be passed down to descendants) increases, while the population of the former decreases, possibly all the way down to extinction as has happened to the vast majority of lifeforms that we find in the fossil record. There have also been some mass die-offs as a result of extremely precipitous changes in environment, such as what happened at the end of the Permian epoch when almost all land-based life died, and much of what was in the ocean as well.

Now, can you say that intelligence is not a survival trait? The same mechanism of natural selection that could cause an Ur-armadillo to grow armored plates could cause an Ur-human to become more intelligent through successive generations, as the more intelligent primates use their burgeoning intellect to outcompete those less intelligent. That is why the idea that there MUST be a god for intelligence to exist does not seem to be true in light of the mountain of evidence for the theory of evolotion that we see in the fossil records, in human and mitochondrial DNA, in computer models, and in lab experiments on organisms that have very short lifespans and thus can literally evolve right before our wondering eyes.

None of this disproves the concept of intelligent design, it just goes to show that ID isn't the ONLY way to describe how the world we see today came to pass.

devilnis do you know Charles Darwin was Christian

The problem with with invoking an omnipotent creator to explain the complexity of biological life is that it doesn't at all explain how complexity arises.

In other words, the argument is supposed to be something like: We see that all complex things are created by something more complicated. Thus, life was created by something more complex: God. It is highly unlikely that the extraordinary complexity of life would arise by mere natural processes.

The problem with this is that an omnipotent God is necessarily more complex than the life it created. So you don't "solve" the problem of figuring out how the complexity of life can exists, you just replace it by the bigger problem of how the greater complexity of God can arise to create life in the first place. If it is unlikely than something as complex as life would "just be", then the existence of a more complicated deity is way more unlikely.

On the other hand, evolution does provide an answer to how complexity can arise from simpler structures/beings.

The more general problem to a divine alternative to evolution is that it is not falsifiable: Any observable empirical fact would be compatible with creationism/ID.
A "theory" that can explain any conceivable observation has no explanatory power at all (i.e.: The point of an explanation it to know what things could happen and which ones couldn't).

@Nighthawk: Reference to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, an awesome book.

Yes, Ironheart, I did know that. Like Darwin, I don't believe that the theory of evolution is at odds with the possibility of the existance of God, I just believe that it is a more likely explanation for what we see than the creationism story of the bible, for instance.

There are computer programmers now that work in evolutionary systems, neural networks and the like, basically attempting to model life to achieve outcomes that are difficult to explicitly code. Look up fuzzy logic, for example - well-trained neural networks have the capability to make decisions that are intuitive instead of deductive, like an educated guess. It's a fascinating subject in part because it plays out very much like intelligent design, with the programmers playing the part of "God" - They start it out with predefined rules (akin to the laws of nature such as conservation of momentum and the like,) and they may tweak the rules or the state of the universe they have created from time to time, but mostly what happens is millions of uncontrolled, unguided interactions between different "neurons" in the network that actually lead to very interesting results that the programmer could never have predicted in the first place. Couldn't God have done much the same, starting the game in motion and then sitting back and merely tweaking it here and there and being amazed by the results? I don't believe it, really, but it's very interesting to consider :)

Lol, I always get the names mixed up. Thanks for the clarification, Ill try to remember that from now on

To review your argument, I dont dispute the theory of evolution to a point. Darwin was right in his experiments, animals will change to suit their environment. Darwin's experiments showed that as winter came, the shells around the nuts (the primary source of food) got harder, some of the birds grew tougher, thicker beaks, allowing them to crack the nuts, and get that food. As summer came around, the nuts shells got thinner, so the larger beaks were basically useless, and the birds beaks got smaller. Where I disagree with evolution is the mutation part. Darwin said, based on only the birds beaks changing, that is was possible for animals to change there entire characteristics, and evolve into a different form. Like you said, it is a rare chance, and would take a very long time to even happen. The species would most likely die off before that mutation would happen.

To the second point, your right, Intelligence is a survival trait. I was more thinking along the lines that, when the scientific explanation is that the The Big Bang happened(which I do believe happened, just in my own interpretation, There was nothing, then God created everything, so the Big Bang did happen, it just wasnt the Big Bang :) ). It seems highly unlikely that the Universe could manifest, and contain and control itself, without any guiding by a Intelligent Creator, a.k.a, God.

Also, in response to the lab experiments on organisms, I havent heard about the results of experiments, so if you could expand a little on that part, I would appreciate it. But my point about it is, from what I would expect the experiment to start out, the Scientists would have created the organism, which would have no direction by itself, would have to be guided by the Scientists, who themselves (to the organism) gods, having created the organism, and are guiding it to a specific point in its lifespan.

@FD, I have never gotten a chance to read that book, Ill keep an eye out for it.

And as for God just being there, and where he would come from, shockingly an episode of Family Guy (if it was at all accurate) would explain it. A Causality loop is a loop where you are destined to do something, and are unable to change it(which after researching, am still not sure if its a real thing), which, in the episode of Family Guy, Brian and Stewie get knocked out of the space-time continuum, overload the reactor in Stewie's time machine. After getting back in the present, stewie finds out that he created the Big Bang. The Universe created Stewie, who in turn created the Universe, which created him again, and so on and so on. When you think about it, there appears to be no start point, because if there was, then one of the two required actions would not happen. Time would have to be infinite, with no start point, otherwise the Universe would cease to exist. How this wraps around to God existing is that He has always been, and always will be. He is outside time, He created Time, and if He was never there, Time would not have been created. Its hard to wrap your mind around, I still have trouble with it sometimes.

It's not a real thing.

Shockingly, Family Guy is not a reliable source.

Just a note, it's not correct to simply say that atheism is "another form of religion masquerading as critical thought." (Sorry for bringing this up again but I don't think it was addressed fully).

The argument can be made that atheism is not an assertion in its own right. Therefore there is no knowledge that atheists claim to have. There is simply the absence of belief like that of a newborn baby or someone completely .

Not that this is my personal position but I feel it should be acknowledged. Oh Dev you troublemaker :P

Muahahahah IT HAS BEGUNNNZ!

Atheism is the devil . .. and fuzzball that's the devil too . . .

i AM NOT A troll and I dint troll other people but it seems funny but I dont -_-

I believe God made evolution. The whole Adam and Eve thing just doesnt work for me. After all it was man who wrote the Bible. Some people see evolution and immediatley think you dont believe in God but is it that farfetched to think God started evolution?

No MilitaryManiac, it's not that far-fetched. Most Christians in Europe believe that God created evolution. It's 35-40% of Americans that still think the world was created as it is ~6,000 years ago. It's a disheartening thought to say the least.

Nighthawk30 wrote:
|> @RvW, to your first comment, what makes me sure is the lack of evidence whatsoever that there ever was any links. There is no fossils that show a (to continue on my example from earlier) lizard turning into a bird. Evolutions claim that there are links, which they say would take millions of years to go from one species to another, then why are there no fossils?

Currently, there are countless billions of organisms on this planet (even if we disregard tiny stuff such as everything from viruses and bacteria up to insects), each with a lifespan of at most century or so. The fossil record goes back hundreds of millions of years. That means there've been countless billions times a million generations which equals a crapload of "individuals".
The chance any one animal will become a fossil (and will be recovered by humans) is *incredibly* small. Maybe the "links" from one species to another are relatively short-lived and all we're finding is species which remained relatively unchanged over an extended portion of time?
This is not my area of expertise, so this is just a suggestion, not fact!

|> Doesnt intelligent design imply that there is a Creator or God behind the intelligent design? Its hard for something, say a book, to be complex and intelligent, without a God designing it.

The idea of intelligent design is that it allows religious people to pretend to be scientists and (oh, how ironic) gain credibility that way. To the best of my knowledge, just about every ID-proponent uses the theory to sneak in a (tacit) "oh and by the way, that designer must obviously be God" at the end of their argument.
I'd strongly prefer if they'd just "admit" they're religious and are trying to proof existence of God, instead of beating around the bush. So in theory, no, ID does not imply there's a God, but on the other hand, yes, in practice it does.

Also, the argument is not necessarily valid. For instance, the (human) eye is an incredibly complex piece machinery which every engineer would be incredibly proud of, had he/she designed it. However, that's its current form. It is very important to remember that evolution does **NOT** say "there once was a blind ape, then all of a sudden an eye evolved and from then on all apes have eyes". Quite the opposite in fact, evolution says an organism might evolve a cell which is sensitive to light (in the very first "version" this would be very limited, maybe just enough to know whether it is day or night, we're nowhere near an actual "eye" yet!). If having such a cell proofs to be advantageous, an ever increasing portion of its offspring will also have such a cell.
Once a genome "knows" how to create a light-sensitive cell, a mutation could happen where an individual has a few of those cells, enabling it to be slightly more aware of its surroundings. Next maybe those cells could get more sensitive to particular wavelengths (and, combining a few different types, would allow vision in colour). Then those important yet fragile cells might be protected by a translucent layer to protect them. If all individuals within a species have such a protective layer, the ones where it is slightly thicker in the middle (and acted a bit like a lens) would be at an advantage, since it'd allow them to observe the world around them much more accurately. Given another million years, a muscle might evolve which gets ever more proficient at flexing that lens into shape, tuning its refraction index and letting an organism see sharp pictures at various distances, at will.

|> 'That also means that when people (ab)use science to (attempt to) show there definitely is no God, I feel compelled to object.' I was intrigued by this statement. Its rare to hear someone say something like this, when they dont believe that there is a God (or in your case, believe that there is probably not a God).

While not perfectly accurate (I do not disapprove), I'd still like to bring up this famous quote: "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." (often attributed to Voltaire, but if we can believe Wikipedia it was actually written by Evelyn Beatrice Hall).
On a side note, I do hope the "to the death" part is intended as "until I just so happen to die of unrelated causes"; becoming a martyr for a case you don't believe in seems a little over the top...

|> What the hell is the Babel fish?

While I really enjoyed The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, I do think I should warn you; its author, Douglas Adams, was not exactly a religious person and some of his writing (including some parts of The Guide) could be construed as being disrespectful of religion / religious people. You'll see what I mean on the very first page.

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MilitaryManiact27 wrote:
|> I believe God made evolution. The whole Adam and Eve thing just doesnt work for me. After all it was man who wrote the Bible. Some people see evolution and immediatley think you dont believe in God but is it that farfetched to think God started evolution?

My main problem with Adam and Eve is, where did the third generation come from? There's a bunch of people on Earth, all one family: Adam, Eve and their children. So ehm, then what...?

military maniac charles darwin who was a christian believed God created evolution so the man who thought up the theory agrees with you and doesn't too far fetched

its funny how this things goes over the internet.
to be a free mason (which i am not) the first "rule" is to accept a higher power in any form you understand, the point is that is the only way people can advance in approaching a great number of subjects and knowledge. Stubborn self-mind people will always look for words or ideas to justify what they want, and what is that close for unrevealing any truth?
Is there laws in the universe? Of course they are, gravity is one of them, you jump, you fall, you die if it is high enough. But to understand gravity one person had to walk a path to unreveal reality, and bring humanity closer to understanding what's happening.
And we did it in every possible field. Science is awesome.
But there is a lot of other intelligent people that believe intuition and other forms of understanding are as valid as any rational scientific method. And they also are approaching numerous forms of perceiving reality and they know how things work for a fact.
They predict and they are precise, they are right. All difference lies in how you perceive matter, and what rules you agree to accept as measurament.
You already believe in two things that are not matter: they are emotions and thoughts, whatever they are, it ain't matter. And there is a lot of other things going on that are not matter.
Not long ago acupuncture was not an accpeted idea by the ocidental mind, but his efficiency talked for itself, and just now proven for us, because for the chinese it was a fact for a very long time.
So, my true goal is to not bother to anything that I want to believe just to make sense to me. I want if possible unreveal the rules as they actually are, know the variables that really interfere with all humam events, and universe itself.

When people open themselfs to find reality they often start to go into a very common path, and thats is understandable to a great number of people. That path leads to what we call a spiritual path of understanding. But its not spiritual, is just acceptance of a multidimensional world, where many other things interfere with reality.

Because people know that human stubborness is not ready for reality itself, groups like free masons, the Jewish or even the Vatican people have to hide most of their knowledge from the free public.
They prefer to sell you movies, music, media and everything else, hiding their understanding in their work, or either manipulating you to believe in what they know its not true.

I say to you i dont believe i have either one single belief that is in fact truth, but i know i am searching a lot and i have proof in my own life of real amazing things.

And thats my way of expressing my point of view, sorry by that

if god exist, why world war two happend? why holocaust happend, why death black happend, why not all good people will become immortal and all bad people will die, shortly: why the world isen't a utopia?
if all those things are a 'test of faith' then god is sadistic.
besides, in all the universe there millions of other planets with intelligent life forms* why god will only worry about 0.00000000000000001% of the intelligent life forms in the universe not to talk about the non-intelligent life forms, in that case it's 0.0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001% and that is only on earth
despite this, i'm agnostican, as god can only be proved to exist(which yet happend) snf not to not exist.







*human intelligent, not cat intelligent.

choombi why did you write it that way annoying.
Also your answers to your questions is in the bible.
For example why isn't the world a utopia that is because adam and eve were given a choice and they failed.
God isn't sadistic he just isn't like humans,dosen't think or act like humans,if God was like humans instead we probally all be dead so God isn't sadistic he just isn't human.
Other life forms what evidence suggest there are other life forms and even if they were i don't know ( enough about this subject or evidence.God will care for them all.
In other words do your research it is like me saying american football and baseball is rubbish when i don't know anything about the rules or about the sport make an impression,So do your research the answers are in the bible are do your research.

@Choombi:
Utopia is what Heaven is for; as far as I understand the Bible, being a decent person in this world (and dealing with all its crap) is the way to proof "worthy" of your entry ticket into utopia.

With no proof whatsoever for either the existence of alien life or the existence of God, it seems your conclusion that God doesn't care about alien life is rather premature...

According to WolframAlpha there's an estimated [1 * 10^80 atoms in the universe](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=particles+in+universe). Your impressively long string of zeros works out to 1 * 10^-253. Apart from breaking page layout and being hard to grasp (both of which would be perfectly solved by using scientific notation), it also demonstrates an impressive lack of credibility; if you had any idea what you're talking about, you'd use a real argument instead of something which looks impressive but is meaningless.

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@IronHeart:
|> For example why isn't the world a utopia that is because adam and eve were given a choice and they failed.

So God is still punishing us (the entire human population) for a "crime" which none of us would've had the vaguest possibility of preventing, because it happened thousands of years before our births (not to mention not having committed it ourselves)...?

On the one hand the idea is to go to Church every Sunday, confess your sins, say a few prayers in penance and receive absolution, yet on the other hand, we're still paying for Eve's indiscretion...? That seems to be a contradiction if you ask me.

Besides, didn't Jezus die for our sins? With Eve's "Original Sin" necessarily having taken place before Jezus' sacrifice, why is it not forgiven...?

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|> it is like me saying american football (..) is rubbish

Well duh, it is. Once upon a time there was rugby, now *that's* a real sport. But no, in order to play american football, all players put on approximately the same amount of protective gear as a hockey goalkeeper (either field hockey or ice hockey), yet there is no ball or puck which is anywhere near dangerous enough to warrant such measures...

*(Hmm, I feel like I just built a piece of Ikea furniture; my post is looking good, but I have a couple of flamebait-tags leftover... Meh, they probably aren't important. ;) )*