Is Christianity nonsense?

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so a witness is not allowed to believe that YHVH used evolution to do this?

The theory of theistic evolution on an ancient earth is accepted by pretty much any christian today as well as any muslim in a western country, I don't see why Jehova's witnesses should not accept it. (I mean no disrespect.)

Nor do I.

btw Kurgan, your use of the word "accepted" here instead of "believed" is a good choice of words. It bothers me when people ask if I "believe" in evolution. No, I accept it as a fact of nature just as I accept gravity, and for the same reason: OVERWHELMING EVIDENCE THAT THIS IS SO! DUH!

Why would God plant all this evidence that it happened if it didn't? Why would God say one thing in all the evidence of the physical world that seems to contradict what the Bible says? Either the Bible is wrong OR maybe Genesis is not meant to be read literally.

Most of those who argue against the fact of evolution do so from ignorance because of lies they have been told. The amount of misinformation on this subject is mind-blowing. How can so many people be so misinformed about a subject where ALL the scientific evidence supports one side and NO evidence supports the other? IF there were any scientific evidence that falsified evolution or that supported a literal reading of Genesis, don't you think that evidence would have been presented in at least one of the dozen major court cases of the past forty years where well-meaning but misinformed people tried to legislate reality to be something different than it really is?

As you point out Kurgan, MOST Christians worldwide belong to denominations that either accept evolution or say it doesn't matter one way or the other. I understand the theological reasoning of those who insist on a literal reading of Genesis. If there was no literal Adam, then they say it means there was no Fall and no need for Salvation. The whole Gospel story falls apart according to this interpretation if evolution is true. BUT, since all the evidence of the natural world that we can observe and measure suggests evolution IS true, then I have a problem.

IF the Bible IS true too, then why would God try to trick us by planting so much evidence that evolution happens if it isn't true? And if churches like Jehovah's Witnesses or other denominations that claim to spread "truth" deny the fact of evolution, why do they do that? I would respect such denominations more if they didn't spread so many lies that can easily be shown to be lies. So many falsehoods in the name of truth! I'm not talking theology here, nothing spiritual about whether or not Jesus is God or whether or not there is a Hell. The bottom line is that there IS evidence for evolution but some churches ignore most of the evidence and deny or distort what they do not ignore. It makes all Christians look stupid.

I believe that all religion is false. I do believe that people should choose whether or not to join. That is why I am against certain governments that knowingly oppress others based on faith

Those people who think that their God created species directly or indirectly by some kind of guided evolution ought to be wondering why the whole of life is in a continual and deadly arms-race. Only blind, thoughtless natural selection can be excused for developing sharper teeth to overcome thicker hides over and over again. If people understand God to be the perpetuator of such carnage they surely ought to wonder where the love is.

Also, the Son of God story makes no sense given that Jesus is supposed to have been sacrificed so those who beleive in the story can be saved. Of all the sons ever to be lost to a parent, this one is supposed to belong to a being so powerful as to be able to raise his son from the dead! How mere mortals would like to be able to pull off a trick like that! Really, none of it makes sense unless Jesus was 100% human (no super-powers of his own so we know he really did suffer) and that his loss was genuine as only a mortals loss to mortal parents can be - but that's not the plot at all. (Regretably we have had countless genuine sacrifices throughout recorded history, but none are at the root of such a large belief system)

A lame attempt to paper over these cracks in the bible appears to have God turn Jesus into some kind of mutant lamb after being beamed up to heaven. Its like a hastily written ending to a pulp scifi novel which you aren't supposed to dwell upon too much. Few details are given but I suspect the author(s) created something hideous to the imagination precisely to stop people thinking about it too much. I welcome any comments from anyone who has thought about these things and have managed to rationalize them - this stuff has been bugging me for years.

Some people will tell you that the violence in nature is all due to Original Sin, that death did not exist before Adam ate that forbidden fruit. They even claim that before The Fall dinosaurs like T-rex were vegetarians. Now I see that still as violence against plants, but these people make a distinction that plants were put here as food and are not "alive" the way animals are.

It seems to me that nature is not necessarily as tooth and claw as some other people think it is. There is a lot of cooperation in nature, not just competition. Even when it is tooth and claw, it might be mutually beneficial to the prey species as well as the predators. I am reminded of something Alan Watts once said. In our bloodstream there is constant warfare at the cellular level, but the violence at that level is necessary for the harmonious functioning of the body at a higher level.

If one has a mental image of nature as bloody, then of course that is how one will interpret what one sees. I'm not saying it's all lovey dovey, just that there might be more to it. A lot has to do with preconceived notions. A hunter will think of a rabbit in different terms than someone who keeps a loving bunny as a pet. Both are right even if their opinions conflict. It's all a matter of context.

This does NOT mean though that the same evidence scientists say supports evolution can somehow be used to support a young earth creationist viewpoint. I've heard that a lot in this forum and elsewhere, that it's all how you look at it. No, it isn't. The problem is that most of those who argue against evolution are badly misinformed about what evidence exists and also do not understand how science works. For the most part they argue against a straw man caricature of evolution.

Rather than say all religions are false, I am more inclined to say most if not all religions tend to have a core message that, when read symbolically, is the same message expressed different ways by and for different cultures. My opinion on that subject is only an opinion. I could quote and interpret and argue all day with people back and forth about that and get nowhere. On the subject of evolution though, where there is hard physical evidence of so many different types that all point to the same reality, I am on more solid ground.

Not withstanding human subjectivity in notions such as "violence" I point more to the evident rounds of measure and countermeasure that can be seen in any natural habitat, in any era. It would be simply preposterous to suggest that animals all got along fine with each other and ate vegetables while divided into two clear groups: predator and prey, as easily identified by their differing physiology. Anyway, the sort of mind I am interested in probing is not one that imagines the Earth might be only 6000 years old but the sort that understands the actual magnitude of the timescales involved in the colonization of this planet by life. There are plenty of well-educated people around who must hold the notion of a loving God in mind along with the terrors of his supposed creation.

Indeed. I can understand it if people who live in very repressed countries, where they're being told that this is western lack of moral, but not in a country where we have access to science. Evolution is a flawless algorithm; it's consistent with all the modern religions.

Evolution = mutations, failed species, extinction, natural selection. These processes are not compatible with the intelligent designers offered to us by the religions out there. A world that has around 2,000,000 living species, and 40,000,000 species are already extinct doesn't seem compatible with the idea that an engineer engineered it all. Such percentage of failures wouldn't be appropriate for any engineer.

Anyhow, this topic asks if Christianity is nonsense and I've often asked why it would be sensible to look upon the sacrifice of the Son of God with normal human values. I dimly recall being impressed with the story as presented to my tender young mind at Sunday School - after all, the human instinct is to map human values and feelings onto the lives of those portrayed in biblical accounts. Countless human lives have been given in service of saving others but we can understand the costs. No sensible accounting is possible when we are supposed to be dealing with Gods and immortals.

Every time I hear that "Jesus died for our sins" my mind just boggles at the ability of people to trot out such such stuff without considering how this could possibly be.

I understand the scientific method fine. What you do not understand is that scientists are humans, not androids. A particular scientist is not guaranteed to follow the scientific method any more than a particular priest is guaranteed to be celibate. Scientists have emotions and all the weaknesses that accompany them, including confirmation bias - what they were taught is what they expect to be true, and they interpret what they see accordingly.



Thankyou for proving my point. According to the Tiktaalik webpage, "the fossil search was based on two independent theories about the past — first, that the fossil record tells a reliable history of the development of life on earth, so the scientists knew when to search; and second, that geologists have developed reliable methods for determining the age of various rock strata, so the scientists knew where to search. The fossil hunt was a test of both theories."
Which is nice, but notice how none of those theories are dependent on evolution. If things are created, they'll still leave fossils behind, and it will have no effect at all on the rocks. And since the theories here are equally valid under creationism, how does the find prove evolution? The answer is - it doesn't. And yet it is presented as if it does. Why? Because the writer assumed evolution, so everything that is merely consistent with evolution- even though it's equally consistent with creation - is taken as proving evolution and only evolution, and therefore falsifying creation.
Take note of the deception there - evidence consistent with creation is presented to seem as if it were falsifying it!

Imagine you were an alien looking at the fossil record of computers on our planet (that have somehow fossilised with great accuracy as to date of production and detail of working). You'd discovered a modern day computer, and a Sinclair ZX81. Now, regardless of whether you believed in the creation or evolution of computers, do you think you could make fairly good estimates about:
A: what kind of transitional forms might exist
B: when in the fossil record they might be found
Do you see how these predictions can be made regardless of what you believe? So verifying these predictions doesn't do anything to verify whichever belief you had when you made them!
(Of course, the advantage in such a situation of believing in creation, even if many of its predictions were the same as those of evolution, would be that it frequently gave a better explanation of things than any good step-by-step explanation - like the CD-ROM drive that appears very suddenly in the computers' fossil record. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2011/03/a_ ... 45311.html )

Likewise, what about chromosome 2? Have you never seen a device made of two devices put together? When you see combined shampoo+conditioner, do you think it must have come about by some accidental change? Sure, it's possible - the two might have mixed by accident, and somebody might have selected to keep it. In that way, it might have formed by chance mutation and artificial selection. (Not natural selection in this case, but still a similar process.) BUT!! ! On the other hand, it might have been a deliberate act. Somebody might have deliberately put the two together thinking in some circumstances it would give greater efficiency. Unless you were there when it happened or can ask someone who was, you have no idea which theory is true - both theories are consistent with the evidence. And to say that just seeing the two mixed together - as you see with chromosome 2 - proves one or the other just shows circular reasoning; you're assuming that one is true to begin with, rejecting any other possible explanation, never questioning it (as invisiblesilent claims that all scientists constantly do), and therefore your theory is the only possible explanation which proves your theory is true (and this line of reasoning works just as well whichever theory you initially assume to be true) - completely circular reasoning.



Most Christians also pray to other people besides God (including statues in their church as forbidden by the 2nd commandment and again in the new testament), many will spread AIDS in Africa because they're not willing to use contraception (which the Bible makes no comment on) but are willing to commit fornication (which the Bible forbids), etc. etc. What kind of authority are 'most christians' on Christianity?

That aside, the basic claim Genesis 1 makes is that God made everything. (Given that the six days of chapter 1 are called one day in chapter 2 and the seventh day is implied by Paul to still be in progress now, there's little else we can discern.) If somebody's making things, then artificial selection is a theoretically possible mechanism, but not natural selection - natural selection by definition means no intervention. That's why it's called natural selection. So the Bible does pretty much rule that out. And its claim that God made everything certainly isn't falsified by assuming that it's false.
http://wol.jw.org/en/wol/d/r1/lp-e/1102010234

Far from being falsifed in fact, claims that Genesis makes, such as there being a beginning when the 'heavens' themselves were made, have been verified relatively recently in scientific history.
"In the 1920s and 1930s almost every major cosmologist preferred an eternal steady state Universe, and several complained that the beginning of time implied by the Big Bang imported religious concepts into physics"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_ ... ang_theory


Yes there is - and it is well recognised that the evidence for our theories of gravity can be questioned, and they are questioned. Alternative theories of gravity, like string theory and loop quantum gravity, are proposed and considered, without anybody crying that their "arguments show incredible ignorance of the amount of evidence that exists" for general relativity (our current preferred explanation of gravity).
Do you see? Despite all the observations that fit the predictions of general relativity, good scientists recognise that it might be wrong, and probably is. They recognise that another theory will probably be able to explain all the same observations, while simultaneously explaining the things that the current theory fails to explain.
Good scientists recognise the same about evolution as they do about our theories of gravity. In this you are correct.
Of course, they can theorise without much opposition about gravity - because then they aren't challenging the personal and emotional beliefs of atheists. ID-proponents aren't so lucky.

this post does nothing to disprove that you do not understand evoplution or the evidence presented, in fact it only serves to strengthen the arugment.

To pave the road for more advanced species, some have to be wiped out. The vast majority of car plattforms (Audi B1—B7, Porsche 911—997 and so on), CPUs (Intell 80386, Motorolla 68000 etc.), the external combustion engine, the AM radio, the CRT screen and the dial-up modem have all been outphased. Hence, nobody has designed them.

All of the above are man made artifacts, not products of nature.

ruveyn

But all of these things you describe are non-living things invented by humans. When it comes to living organisms, you would think that a perfect, infinite, all-powerful, and all-knowing being could design things a little better than humans, right? If species have to be wiped out to "pave the road for more advanced species" then if there was an intelligent designer behind all of existence, then either this intelligent designer made tons of mistakes and had to aid the evolutionary process to fix the problems in the species that had to die out, or the intelligent designer just doesn't care at all about its creations and just watches and observes to see what happens. In either case, this would mean that "God" is no better than designing things than humans. Maybe "God" is even worse at designing things than humans.

Last edited by Alfonso12345 on 19 Sep 2012, 12:25 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Don't be so patronising. Also, way to totally mis-represent my position (pretty much the standard trick of theists who attempt to disprove science). I even addressed "rogue" scientists in an earlier post. Of course scientists are humans and humans are prone to error and bias. I didn't say they weren't; I said that's not what science is about. I'm not attempting to set scientists up as some paragons of human virtue which is why I pre-empted this exact argument you are making with my statement about rogue scientists. My central point remains: the scientific method works. Are you going to argue against that?

I might address the rest of your contentions when I am less busy again later. Suffice to say it wont be difficult.