For Creationists

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If I give you the proof of a mathematical theorem, does that deny your free will with regard to whether the theorem is true or not? If you say yes, that would mean you can only freely decide whether to believe something if you are ignorant. Knowledge would be incompatible with free will in deciding what to believe.

What is your position on whether knowledge interferes with your free will when it comes to decide what to do?

Your position seems to be that God carefully hides all evidence of his existence so he does not interfere with humans' free will, but he is happy to punish those who fail to believe in the absence of evidence. Worse, he punishes those who, in the absence of evidence, believe in the existence of the divine but whose beliefs don't quite fit what he intends. In the absence of relevant information, the choice what to believe is a gamble. Your theology seems to say that God forces everyone to gamble, then punishes unlucky gamblers. It seems to me that the god you believe in is a malicious god, and you can't trust anything he says.


This looks like another variant of the argument that order can come only from the action of an intelligent agent. The whole point of evolutionary theory is to provide a third alternative to the possibilities of pure chance and the action of an intelligent agent. If you choose to to believe that the latter two are the only possibilities, then your choice between the two is made in a state of profound ignorance. Of course, if you really think that only ignorance guarantees a free choice, you may be happy with that.

^ Simplified, but mostly valid.

Evolution does not address the origin of life. If you want to see theories about how life started, look up abiogenesis. It is not correct to say that the evolution lacks in evidence. As some have pointed out in other threads, the evidence for evolution is overwhelming.



Whatever gave you that idea? Multiple mutations occur in the genes of any organism. That's the only part that could be considered random. By natural selection, the organisms with mutations that are detrimental to reproductive success die off, the ones that are beneficial lead to a higher reproduction rate and hence those genes will be spread faster, the ones that are neither beneficial nor detrimental have no effect. It's that simple. Sounds pretty logical to me.



Again, you are ignoring the fact that evolution doesn't happen by chance. It is driven by natural selection. By the way your logic is flawed. If I took a pack of cards and shuffled them. Now lay them out, one by one, you'll notice that there'll be a 1 in 52! (52 factorial) chance that they will come out in any specific order. But what you need to look at is the process in which it got there. Pick the first card, there'll only be a 1 in 52 chance any specific card will be chosen. Pick the second card, it there'll now be a 1 in 51 chance etc. You only get the 1 in 52! overall ( 52! = 52*51*...*1). Given a small number of mutations at any particular time, theres a chance that one of those mutations might be beneficial. It's only when you look at the evolution of a particular species over millions of years that the probability might seem astronomical, and any species did not have to end up in any particular way.



Say again? How does Newton's Third Law of Motion apply to the origin of life? Once again evolution does not address the origin of life because that is not what it's about. Here's a link to the Wikipedia article on abiogenesis which is about the origin of life:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenesis



The above paragraph is completely nonsensical. If you are saying that regular patterns in nature imply that it was designed you would be incorrect. There are plenty of things in nature that have regular patterns, such as a crystals, which have perfectly reasonable natural explanations. I don't think you would find a paper lying around on another planet discussing McDonald's cheeseburgers. But then again, there's already a McDonald's in every corner of the globe. Maybe McDonald's has spread their business further than what I'd previously thought .



I think you misunderstand what information is. Information exists inherently in nature. For instance information can specify the state of a physical system. And no, there is no need for a conscious mind to process the information in DNA.



Once again, it didn't arise from disorder and chance. It arose from the process of natural selection. By the way, not everyone who believes in evolution is an atheist. The Catholic Church has accepted evolution.

How can you possibly believe this. For pities sake there is no definitive proof of the existence of the man called Jesus as told in the gospels, the only evidence is that of subjective hearsay. Is that an example of attacking too small a part of the bible?


What major parts of the bible have independent (whatever that means) corroboration




So instead of searching for the truth lets just blame god? How lazy and vulgar is that approach!! !



Oh please do elaborate



So in your thoughts the scientific method is flawed because it allows for its theories to be challenged and proven false, whereas religion is good because it sets down its presumptions i.e. 'god did it' and allows no one to challenge the voracity of its statements ?????? and you claim to be rational !



Never was a truer word said about why people still believe in creation.




Have you actually looked at the stats? Have you actually thought about just how many billions, possibly trillions of galaxies there are and then looked at how many billions of stars are in these galaxies and then considered how many planets orbit these stars? The odds of life evolving may be infinitesimally small but then the numbers involved are gargantuan



Ahh the faithful strawman of the religionists comes wobbling to the rescue