Disciple

This is my explanation for why I simply cannot believe in the complete theory of evolution. Dont get me wrong here, I agree that Evolution is taking place, its just that I believe a divine creator started it all off.

Over the weekend, myself and my lady went to our local park with a group of close friends. We all sat round, chatted and the guys played some football. We then went back to my house, we prepared some food, ate outdoors and generally had a good time with good company.

As I sat there and listened to the conversations, I got to wondering...

There we were, a group of twenty or thirty something's sat round on a hot summers day. We have feelings, dreams, love, pain, suffering and many other emotions. We can see the beauty and the horror of our world, we can smell it, touch it, taste it and listen to it and each other. Other people have achieved great works of art, made the most beautifully sublime music, visited almost everywhere on the globe, scaled Everest, touched down on the moon, performed great sporting achievements and shown boundless enthusiasm for their lives and their world. There is fantastic literature available on every conceivable subject, the internet is a source of limitless learning, mankind is pushing the outer limits of exploration into science and medicine.

People are out there making love and war. Politics are being argued and discussed. Philosophy is being created and debated all over our planet....and on this forum. Wars are being raged in different countries and in our own hearts. Families are made and are broken....lies told, love expressed, hearts broken....

Now tell me....

Is all of this the result of some single celled organisms evolving? Is all of this simply a fluke of science and evolution? Do people really believe that their ancestors were simply protein chains in a prehistoric swamp? Is the heart no more than a muscle?

C'mon guys and gals...evolution simply does not cut it as the explanation for our existence....at least not to me any way...

Aquila ka Hecate

This is a lovely example of Argumentuum ad I don't understand it

Or something.

Disciple, just because it seems incredible to you doesn't necessarily mean it's not true.

There are more things in heaven and earth etcetera...

Anyway, I find it unlikely to the point of derision that an omnipotent being magicked it all into being.

But that's just my personal opinion of course, and consistant with a non-supernatural worldview.

The_Unknown_Banana

Yeah, Evolution might not be totally correct, but it has a lot more evidence than a God, in my opinion. I think the thing that most theists forget (or ignore), is that it didn't just start like that. Evolution has been going on for BILLIONS(?) of years!! A very long time anyway. Surely, in such a lot of time, and with such an unimaginably huge universe, it is actually LIKELY that evolution would produce such results somewhere along the line?

Just a thought.

The_Unknown_Banana

Actually, on a further note: How does something like God come into being? If the complexity of us mere humans is enough to make you conclude that God exists, then how do you explain the complexity of God, a being that can create the universe? Surely, using your logic, you would have to conclude that God in fact had a creator himself?

Joe Meert

JM: Argumentum ad personal incredulity. "I can't believe it or figure it out, therefore it is false". Interesting angle, but difficult to debate.

Cheers

Joe Meert

Oolon Colluphid

Believe away, old chap. But would you find it rude if I asked you for evidence to support your contention?
Yup. And one of our most fundamental bits of understanding about living things is that they’re all related. Perhaps you could try reading some of this literature?
Don’t know what you mean. Is what ‘merely’ a result of evolution? Bach and Hendrix, Shakespeare and Stephen King, Einstein and Eisenstein? Nope, that’s culture. Which is underpinned by, but not dependent on, our biological nature, a nature that comes from being a bipedal primate with an overblown, evolved brain.
Aha. “Fluke.” Nope. There’s rather little that’s fluke-y about evolution. Go dip into that vast literature. For now, I’ll simply point out that evolution is not a theory of chance.
Nope. They don’t believe it, those who have looked into the matter -- unlike yourself, sadly -- simply accept it as being the best explanation there is, based on all the vast literature. That is, based on all the evidence.

And the ancestors in question were something like 3,500,000,000 -- it could easily be 10,000,000,000 -- generations ago.

Oh, and no swamp. No plants at the time, you see.
Well, it’s a special kind of muscle. It is not, however, the seat of the soul. There. Now you know, and I can therefore say, welcome to the nineteenth century.

Perhaps you’d like to ask yourself why, if hearts are more than muscles, they are the same ‘design’ in all mammals, whether whale, bat or human. Why does a hedgehog have a liver, two kidneys, two lungs, a spleen, limbs formed of a single bone with two bones at the further end, eyes with a retina that has the light cells facing away from the light, an ear with little bones in it that start off, in the embryo, as part of the jaw... and so on and on and on... just as in you yourself.
This is the old Argument from Personal Incredulity. It is a fallacy because one’s own lack of knowledge or acceptance has no bearing on the reality of the situation. If I do not believe that the earth is a ball -- even though it being so is, in many ways, counterintuitive -- this does not mean that it is actually flat.

Well, you can believe what you like. Hope you like your flat earth.

TTFN, Oolon

pz

Of course not. It also contains significant amounts of connective tissue, a small amount of nervous tissue, and multiple instances of epithelia.

Theophage

Actually, argument from personal incredulity, which boils down to "I don't believe it's true, therefore it isn't true." Of course I suppose it could also be considered argument from ignorance which is simply, "I don't know how it could have happened, therefore it didn't."

I can understand the original poster's skepticism at what amounts to them as a rather extraordinary claim. It is certainly true that extraordinary claims do require extraordinary evidence. But what I would suggest the original do (if they really are interested in the subject) is dive into the huge amount of extraordinary evidence we have for evolution. Run to the local library and grab anything by Gould or Dawkins and you will be well served.

Oh by the way, yes, the heart is a mere muscle (well, muscular pump). Let's not get the biological heart confused with the metaphorical "heart", okay?

Oolon Colluphid

That deserves a

and a
:notworthy .

And as it's you, a too!

Oolon

Non-praying Mantis

Evolution? Of course!






















...and don't call me Shirley

NPM