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When atheists go too far
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1. Evolution is a fact. How so?
2. The essence of the BBT is that everything did, indeed, come from nothing.
From NASA:
"The Big Bang Model is a broadly accepted theory for the origin and evolution of our universe. It postulates that 12 to 14 billion years ago, the portion of the universe we can see today was only a few millimeters across".
Eh, a few millimetres is certainly not nothing. Every few millimetres of your skin is crawling with billiosn of bateria and other organisms. Every thousandth of a millimetre of space is jammed full of atoms, themselvs containing protons and netrons. I've nothing against religion, or religious people, but I do have something against people speaking authoritatively on subjects about which they clearly have little understanding.That is, without doubt, a most ludicrous assumption which at best appears to be tenuous, and at worst, impossible to prove.
The vast majority of physicists subscribe to the notion of the Big Bang Theory, or a derivative. They spend years researching and publushing, and exposing their work and arguments to peer review and critique, yet you dismiss it all simply because you can't get your head around it?There are two sides, both claiming to be experts. Which is right?
Eh no. We have one side, who are experts- scientists, physicists etc- and another side who aren't- religious fundamentalists, people generally ignorant of the concepts.Not always. Global 'warming'?
Global warming has been refuted?
Seriously, stop and think. Someone is trying to convince you that something less than an inch across formed the Universe. Without any binding, logical, proof.
I'm no expert. I studied science in school, and I have layman's interest in the subject, but I'm far from a physicist. However, when I look at the theories for the formation of the universe, they have an eloquent and elegant cohesion to them, that renders them entirely plausible to anyone who has even a basic understanding of science. The BBT may or may not explain the origins of the universe, but there is no denying it's logic.The stories the likes of Dawkins peddle don't take into account the scale of improbability his theory has. For man to have evolved in this universe a whole load of events would have to occur. We're talking near ∞ to 1 in terms of odds.
For me, as opposed to some other sperm to be typing this, a whole load of events would have had to occur. We're talking near...
The odds on something happening isn't sufficent to dismiss it.How many big monkeys do you know that can appreciate beauty, art or have an interest in logic, science, ethics? Where did our morality come from? Might all be good fun reading books from this snake oil salesman but ultimately he's deriding you. If someone telling you you're just a big monkey it's because they're trying to make a monkey out of you.
You might have a point if there was just one "snake oil salesman", but there are millions, and billions of rational people who read their workd, and make their minds up on the inherent logic, and in what they can see around them every day. Human morality has long been explained as an evolutionary process, but the fact that you ask the question doesn;t surprise me- you aren't interested in finding out the truth, or asking questions, but rather in safeguarding your own, unthinking version of the truth.
This is what bothers people about religion. It's not that people believe in this and that; it's that some people use that faith to deny rationality, and attack logic.And more probable. Lookat mathematicians are only starting to get to grips with multiple universes, scientists have spent decades underground investigating dark matter and still have turned up with zilch. What you're asking people to do is to take a leap of faith. To place the absolute value of their lives on a fairly shonkey premise. As I said earlier, I'm cool with sceptics and credible arguments but what we have here are Darwinian fanboys. There's simply more required to prove Dawkins right.
There's nothing left to prove that Darwin is right. The evidence is all around us. You're just not interested in seeing it.
When Darwin first posited his theories, he acknowledged a major gap- a mechanism that would allow random mutations to move inter-generationally. The fact that nothing could explain this was a major flaw in his theories, and something that your Victorian equivalents took great delight in pointing out. Darwin wasn't to know that an obscure Austrian monk by the name of Gregor Mendel was, contemporaneously, experimenting on his pea plants, and discovering the role of genetics in inter-generational gene transfer. Thus, not only was the roblem solved, but Darwin anticipated the discovery of genetics by several years. This in itself leads credence to his propositions in OTOOTS.
Contrary to popular fundamentalist belief, Darwin's work was based primarily on practical experimentation, rather than on theory. He studied evolution in action. He bred pigeons amongst other things in Down House, and kept meticulous records of his findings, as well as his correspondence with fellow breeders all over the world. All pointed to the one self-evident conclusion, something that man has long known to be true- that evolution is a fact, and a easily verifiable phenomonen.
One of things that distinguishes a scientific theory from a Sherlock Holme's type of theory, is the ability to predict certain future outcomes from the premise of the theory. Thus, not only should a theory provide a convincing answer for a current problem, but it should also predict future outcomes. Something like this happened re Darwin's anticipation of Mendel's discoveries. In the time since Darwin's death, more and more propositions, based on his work, have been brought to light as empirical facts. In terms of humanoid development, every passing decade sees a million year leap backwards through our evolutionary ancestry. When Lucy was found in 1974, she was the oldest human ancestor yet found, at 3.2 million years. By 1994, she had been eclipsed by Ardi, a 4.4 million year old ardipithicus skeleton. The fact thet people are searching for such fossils stems from the fact that Darwin, and evolutionary biologists since, have been arguing that they should be found. Darwin's work anticipated their discovery, even though the man himself could have had no inkling of their age, or their evolutionary character. In other words, Darwin's theory anticipates discoveries and results and outcomes that the man himself could not have even imagined.
Since Darwin published OTOOTS, the theory of evolution has always lagged some time behind the discovery of supporting evidence. This itself is proof of the veracity of his proposals- the evidence is constantly being dug up. When i was younger, people scoffed at the idea that birds have evolved from dinosaurs. They couldn;t get their heads around the notion. People like Freddie mocked evolutionists for the very notion, and used it as a stick to beat the entire field. Yet a few years back, a small dinosaur was found in China with the unmistakeable fossilised evidence of feathers, and others have been found since. Once more, a theory based on nothing but Darwin's work was proved correct and valid by discoveries in the field.
That's not even to go (too deeply) into the evidence for evolution that surrounds us every day, and which one would have to be seriously delusional to miss, or refuse to acknowledge. Just this week, there was reports that the e coli out break on the continent has been caused by a new strain. I suppose God just created it in a spare moment, and popped it on some German bean sprouts? Over the past decade, there have been threats from several other mutated forms of common viruses, swine flue to name just one. A few weeks ago, the Queen visited the Irish National Stud, an institution that could not exist were it not for evolution. Barack Obama chose his dog Bo because it had been specially bred to be hypoallegenic. One can be pretty sure that there was no such thing as fluffy, hypoallegnic Portugese Water Dogs roaming the primordial forests of ancient Europe!
So, the evidence for evolution, and for the evolution of man are many and varied, and not disputed by serious scientists. Instead what we have are "experts" on youtube who basing their denunciation of the fact on the Bible, and the fact that a banana fits so well in a human hand (). Even the RCC believes in evolution, and imams have recently launched a petition of support for Darwin's work. And yet we have people who still refuse to accept it.
What really bugs me though, is that evolution and the Big Bang Theory and a universe designed by God aren't mutually exclusive. Couldn't they both be tools of a higher deity? Indeed, considering religious people claim that the mind of God is unknowable, it's really the height of arrogance to suggest that evolution and the like flies in His face.
That's what leads me to believe that opposition to evolution in particular, is not based so much on religious scruples, but on base human narcissism. People place humanity, and by extension themselves, on an exalted platform, as being more divine than animal, and the idea that we are not shocks them. It's interesting to note that most of the pictorial (and much of the general) opposition to Darwin, and evolution, from the Scope's trial to the present day, is preoccupied with the notion of man being more than a lowly monkey. There is precious little sense that it goes against religious precepts or respect due to God, and much that it goes against man's vanity, and opinion of himself.0 -
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8I8mWG6HlmU![[Deleted User]](/applications/dashboard/design/images/defaulticon.png)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ZuowNcuGsc
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