Why MT doesn't believe in this.

[Yanoda]

Some food for thought.
Say the creation story is true, that God made Adam and Eve.
Say that the flood story is true, that Noah and his family were the only surviving humans.
Say that it is true that all the +7 Billion humans descended from Noah.
Say that it is true that Evolution doesn't exist or any part of it.

One question comes up:
Why do humans look so different?
We have Africans, Asians, Caucasians etc. none of the people look the same.
So if Evolution doesn't exist and all humans descended from Noah's family, then why don't we look the same?

So...
If Evolution is false:
- Either the Flood Story is bogus and several humans were already created, who also survived the Flood.
- Or the Bible was inaccurate about the Global Flood Story.

If Evolution is true:
- The rise of different ethnic backgrounds is explained if the Flood did occur and Noah (and his family) were the only survivors.

What's this!?
To accept the Flood Story and Creation Story, one needs to accept Evolution to explain the different ethnic backgrounds we have today?
To deny Evolution (Evolution being false and non-occurring) would mean the Flood Story couldn't have happened since humans have different backgrounds?


Cheers

Yanoda

[Mandalore]

Valhalla awaits me when I die. Have you accepted Odin into your heart yet?

[Darth Crater]

Yeah, I can't even bother to formulate responses anymore. Homestar seems to not be reading my posts, just picking out scattered words and constructing incoherent and irrelevant arguments based on those. Panama, though - you haven't contributed much so far, but I'll give you a chance.

"God can do anything" is an unsupported and extraordinary claim, and I don't see any extraordinary evidence from you. As far as I know there's no evidence of God being detected doing anything. What is your source for this claim? The Bible has already been established as circular. That's not even the main problem, though. By saying "God can do anything", you're saying "the laws of physics are false", "history is false", and "anything could happen at any time". Basically, you give up all ability to understand or predict the universe. With a scientific and logical mindset, on the other hand, you can understand and predict things. You can then use these things to build the world we have today.

However - suppose a God did in fact magically create and then remove water. That still leaves the countless other things that would appear as a result of the flood, which we've listed. None of those have appeared. Could an omnipotent being have undone them? Sure. The problem is that those things we don't have evidence for include "civilizations being flooded" and "animal/plant/marine life dying off." If you undo these things such that we could not detect them today, you undo the stated purpose and effects of the flood. If the flood wiped out most of the animals and people ~5000 years ago, the world could not look like it does today. (By the way - The Grand Canyon's depth is not a result of volume of water. It's a result of time.)

You are attempting to "rationalize" (I really hate that word; there's nothing "rational" about the process) the lack of evidence for a God by saying "If he existed, this is why there'd be no evidence". The problem is this: I'm sure that if you got direct evidence for a God, you'd believe it was more likely he existed and less likely he did not. Thus, not seeing evidence should cause you to believe it's less likely a God exists and more likely he does not. I'm not sure how well I explained this, so if you feel up to more technical language, you can check out this article: Absence of Evidence Is Evidence of Absence.

Finally, Panama - you seem to believe we have souls. Could I get your input on them? Specifically, what exactly you think one is, and what it does? Do you have any response to my post at the start of page 85, or is there anything that seems flawed there?

Then he/she/it shouldn't have allowed us to develop past the dark ages.

I agree with you, but you're missing an important point. I can and have demonstrated that beliefs based on evidence are more useful and helpful. If your God wants you to ignore evidence and trust blindly, your God does not want what is best for you.

I was taught that there's only one God, and I don't have subjective proof that there isn't so I'm inclined to believe that.

I see a contradiction here. Previously, you said that you think humanity is not alone, and that you believe life is abundant in the universe. Why do you think this would not hold true at the scale of deific beings?

Not really. It's hard to find flaws in atheistic logic since it relies on facts alone.

So, you agree with what I've stated there? Given that, I don't think you ever answered these two questions:
-What do you think the soul actually does? In other words, how do you define "soul"?
-Given that definition, what causes you to think that we have souls? How do you think we can detect them or their influence?

I've been doing most of the asking so far. Is there anything you want to know from me? Any topics you want to talk about? (This applies to Narg, or any other readers, too! Also willing to talk about things via PM if you don't want to wade through this thread constantly.)

EDIT: something else I want to say. It was prompted by Shalandai's post in the thread on the Colorado shooting, but it doesn't feel respectful to say it there. The killer had a degree in neuroscience, but even so, he couldn't tell that he was mentally ill. It's difficult to find any problems with yourself from the inside. Many of my beliefs are probably false, and I've probably seen some evidence contradicting some of them but not processed it. The problem is, whatever the statistics say, I don't know which. Please, point out anything I do or say that you think is wrong. I can only re-evaluate a belief if I get new evidence or if I know it's a problem.

[THEWULFMAN]

Nice post Yanoda. :)

If your God wants you to ignore evidence and trust blindly, your God does not want what is best for you.

Right. Which is why I believe he/she/it wants us to question everything. Because otherwise he/she/it is a prick and I'm not going to worship him/her/it.

I see a contradiction here. Previously, you said that you think humanity is not alone, and that you believe life is abundant in the universe. Why do you think this would not hold true at the scale of deific beings?

Honestly I have no idea(something I think more people need to admit rather than come up with crap reasons and excuses). There's no way to prove anything one way or another so I'm willing to agree with what I was taught. And actually, I've had the idea that my God is actually the same God(s) other religions worship, they just interpret him/her/it differently and worship him/her/it differently. I'm entirely confident God could have gone to other "alien" cultures as well, and he/she/it could be worshiped by dozens of sentient species for all we know right now.

Also, I don't know if you saw, but I have the idea in the back of my head that God is a collective consciousness, thus not being a single entity but several as one. Which would explain that away nicely. But again it's just a theory.

So, you agree with what I've stated there? Given that, I don't think you ever answered these two questions:
-What do you think the soul actually does? In other words, how do you define "soul"?
-Given that definition, what causes you to think that we have souls? How do you think we can detect them or their influence?

I pretty much agree with you yes. Our main difference is one of us is an atheist and one isn't. We share most of the same "beliefs" (if you can call looking at reality a "belief") since we draw most of our conclusions from facts.

What does a soul do, what is it, why do I think we have them, and how can we detect them? All good questions. I don't know. I can only speculate generally. Unless I have subjective evidence. I'm actually surprised you've been so lenient about my subjective evidence, usually people get all over your grill and call bull. Perhaps you're more reasonable than I thought and/or you're just being non-confrontational.

• What is it:
  Perhaps it is the essence of the electrical and chemical reactions in our brain, and it is simply a metaphor. Perhaps souls are energy, made up of known and/or unknown particles. I'm confident science will prove their existence someday.
  
• What is its purpose:
  I don't think souls and our personality are mutually exclusive. I don't think we get our personality from our soul, I think moreover a soul is "simply" a "recording" device for who we are. Our personality if formed from genetics and our surrounding, not our soul.
  
• What does it do:
  I don't think the soul "does" much other than exist within us and continues to exist after we die. I don't know if it has a purpose in life, I just believe it has one after death.
  
• How do we detect them:
  How we detect a soul is even harder to try and answer because we don't know what it is exactly. Lol, it's like catch 22. We can't detect it until we know what it is, but we won't know what it is until we detect it. Perhaps it's a spiritual thing and we can personally feel them through enlightenment. I believe "enlightenment" is the understanding of yourself/your soul completely and thoroughly.
  
• Why do I believe in them:
  I believe they exist because I believe in an afterlife, and more importantly because I've had personal experiences with what you'd crudely call "spirits." Souls are the only explanation for the spirits I've interacted with (if you can call it that. It's been pretty one sided). I've actually recorded a couple EVPs before, although I don't know if I can find any of the audio bites. I still have one on my cell phone but I don't have any way of transferring that to my computer sadly. Oh and as a note, I think most EVPs are crap. It has to be very clear and understandable for me to not claim it's crap. I'm a skeptic at heart.

There's so much we don't understand that I'm keeping an open mind on this one. Like I've said, I'm confident science will prove it someday.

Even though the bible says otherwise(like I give a damn at this point), I'm open to the idea that animals have souls as well.


Maybe souls don't actually exist at all and we were told that to make sense of things we couldn't understand at the time(we don't understand the brain fully now). I believe Jesus rose from the dead, after being so for 3 days. At that point he should have been unable to bring back to life. Of course, Commander Shepard was brought back to life after suffocating to death, freezing, burning up on reentry, and then impacting ice and rock at 240 KPH. :P But she's mothermkaying Commander Shepard.

In all seriousness though, I don't have all the answers. I wish I did, and I have plenty of things to ask god when I get the time. One thing I won't ask him that he/she/it probably gets a lot is "Why don't you use your superpowers to save the world from its problems?"

I know the answer to that, and I don't want God helping us(and he/she/it doesn't). Whether we were created by him/her/it or not, we'll survive or die because we as a species did so. If an asteroid comes to destroy the world, I don't want him to put his hand in front of Terra so save it. It's our world, we need to protect it ourselves. If he/she/it did save us, I'd feel like we don't deserve to survive because we didn't do it ourselves.

Here's a general statement of a sentiment my good friend Marth and I share. The purpose of religion is to be happy, and love others. Religion brings people happiness and peace, this is partially why I believe in God. Oh, and if you're not happy and you're filled with hate, you're doing it wrong. I'm looking at you Westboro Baptist Church.

[Col. Hstar]

Some food for thought.
Say the creation story is true, that God made Adam and Eve.
Say that the flood story is true, that Noah and his family were the only surviving humans.
Say that it is true that all the +7 Billion humans descended from Noah.
Say that it is true that Evolution doesn't exist or any part of it.

One question comes up:
Why do humans look so different?
We have Africans, Asians, Caucasians etc. none of the people look the same.
So if Evolution doesn't exist and all humans descended from Noah's family, then why don't we look the same?

So you're saying children are exact replica's of their parents? Different characteristics doesn't imply evolution. Evolution claims that one species can mutate to another. Last I checked Africans, Asians, or Caucasians, are all still human. We all have two hands, two arms. two legs, two feet, two eyes, two ears, one nose, one mouth etc.. In the unfortunate case that someone is born with a deformity, evolution would suggest that this deformity should be passed on, yet it's not.

Then he/she/it shouldn't have allowed us to develop past the dark ages.

Your implying that humans today have become smarter then God. Faith is developed not only on intelligence and knowledge, but on personal experience, humility in accepting God's role in human affairs, and a personal relationship with him. Is loyalty and faith more desirable from a robot or a free thinking individual?

There is nothing wrong with questioning everything around you. But you seem to think that everyone should come to the same conclusion as you have. This is not and never will be the case. If it angers you so much to hear my beliefs I'm sorry, that's unfortunate and disappointing.

As it is, this thread I think has gone away from any type of debate I've ever seen. in debate two sides present their arguments and counter arguments and that's it. No one is forced to accept the other persons argument or told that they are utterly stupid for believing what they believe. Wulf even you once promoted doing just that, which was what I did. Now you've taken a complete 180 because you didn't like what I had to say. Again unfortunate.

[[m'kay]]

Then he/she/it shouldn't have allowed us to develop past the dark ages.

Your implying that humans today have become smarter then God.

You know, having more fiber in your diet might help make the diarrhea spewing out of your mouth have a bit more substance. For [m'kay]'s sake Homestar, that's not what he's saying at all - he's saying that the dark ages were the period of time in which faith was foremost on everyone's mind. Scientific advances started superceding the policy of "belief at any cost", which is what Wulf is talking about. Jesus goddamn christ read what people are saying instead of just saying random [poo].

And what the [m'kay] are you even saying in regards to evolution? That one parent being born with a physical deformity means all their children will have that deformity? I don't suppose you've actually, you know, taken any middle school biology? I mean jesus christ i'm trying not to get mad here but everything you've been posting lately has been so full of concentrated stupid that I don't even know what to do with you anymore. I had a much higher opinion of you before reading this topic, but now i'm at the point where I can't do anything but shake my head and laugh. Stop, Homestar. Jesus [m'kay] christ.

As for the soul debate, I think i'm gonna bow out of this one. My beliefs aren't really set in stone enough to stand up against scrutiny. I still believe in it, but really debating it is just going to end up with me going "lol doesn't make sense? dont care haha", so it's not quite worth it. Not mad about it at all, just being realistic about my debating skills.

[THEWULFMAN]

Narg pretty efficiently nailed it on the head. You have no idea how human biology works.

As it is, this thread I think has gone away from any type of debate I've ever seen. in debate two sides present their arguments and counter arguments and that's it. No one is forced to accept the other persons argument or told that they are utterly stupid for believing what they believe. Wulf even you once promoted doing just that, which was what I did. Now you've taken a complete 180 because you didn't like what I had to say. Again unfortunate.

I made the 180 when I realized I was dealing with a creationist like MT is. I didn't realize you were one. When I realized I knew I could no longer defend your beliefs like I had been trying to. I don't defend creationism or Scientology or any other bullcrap nonsensical religion.

And we're still debating. Just because we don't like your flawed point of view doesn't mean we're no longer debating.

[Yanoda]

Some food for thought.
Say the creation story is true, that God made Adam and Eve.
Say that the flood story is true, that Noah and his family were the only surviving humans.
Say that it is true that all the +7 Billion humans descended from Noah.
Say that it is true that Evolution doesn't exist or any part of it.

One question comes up:
Why do humans look so different?
We have Africans, Asians, Caucasians etc. none of the people look the same.
So if Evolution doesn't exist and all humans descended from Noah's family, then why don't we look the same?

So you're saying children are exact replica's of their parents? Different characteristics doesn't imply evolution. Evolution claims that one species can mutate to another. Last I checked Africans, Asians, or Caucasians, are all still human. We all have two hands, two arms. two legs, two feet, two eyes, two ears, one nose, one mouth etc.. In the unfortunate case that someone is born with a deformity, evolution would suggest that this deformity should be passed on, yet it's not.

Ah but you misunderstand.
If we all originated from Noah and his family, without evolution or its sub-processes, we would all have the same characteristics. Evolution doesn't only imply Speciation. It also implies why we have different skin color or facial characteristics.
Without Evolution, we would have to all look quite similar (skin color, facial build etc.) if we all came from one family (Noah).

Cheers

Yanoda

[Col. Hstar]

I had a much higher opinion of you before reading this topic, but now i'm at the point where I can't do anything but shake my head and laugh.

Don't expect me to lose any sleep this

For [m'kay]'s sake Homestar, that's not what he's saying at all - he's saying that the dark ages were the period of time in which faith was foremost on everyone's mind. Scientific advances started superceding the policy of "belief at any cost", which is what Wulf is talking about.

Thank-you for clearing it, that does sound more reasonable then what I initially thought he meant. My point still stands though that God doesn't want blind faith or else he would have just created robots. What kind of relationship is more desirable, a friend who is close to you because of the power and influence you wield and what you can do for him? Or a friend who is close to you because they like you for who you are. They have the same moral standards as you and respect your ideas?

And what the [m'kay] are you even saying in regards to evolution? That one parent being born with a physical deformity means all their children will have that deformity? I don't suppose you've actually, you know, taken any middle school biology?

It's my fault for not making it clear what I was meaning by saying that. It's not that the child won't have the deformity, there are chances they won't and chances they will of course, but that does not make a new species. Yanoda wants to say that every single difference between children and parents is part of the evolutionary process, I say that's wrong. When a Brown eyed parent has a blue child, and that blue eyed child grows up and has a brown eyed child how is this evolution. Evolving goes forward devolving goes backwards.
So now hopefully I've cleared that up and you can untwist your panties

And we're still debating. Just because we don't like your flawed point of view doesn't mean we're no longer debating.

A debate about God should include ALL points of view not just those your comfortable with.

I think I am done with this topic. Intolerance in any form is disgusting. I never felt the need to exclude someone for what they believed (Atheism, Theistic Evolution, Reincarnation) despite how far out I thought they were. I never resorted to calling anyone an [derriere orifice] or jackass like Wulf was called by Ariel, I never told anyone they were an idiot because they believed a certain way. I just discussed the topics using my beliefs.
Everyone can start to cheer and celebrate

[haasd0gg]

This just in: Friedrich Nietszche has run through town naked proclaiming god is dead.
Guess all these arguments are null