Evolution: Science or Philosophy

[~hellish one~]

lord, you guys are exhausting...~laughs~ my take on it all?

ID is crap. it is NOT science.

Evolution/Natural Selection is NOT crap and is science.

i believe in the latter of the two. why? because i am the kind of person that needs to see proof of something before i can believe it. and ID does not provide that proof. one of you made a very smart comment in one of these posts...one that i agree with 100%! i think it was TOS..lemme see if i can find it...

here we go

But now we're talking about faith. I think it's an intriguing idea, but I'm not going to bank on it being true.

i couldn't agree more. i'm not here to criticize anyone's faith. if you want to believe in something...in god...and have faith in that, then more power to you. if it makes you happy and fulfills your life then i am happy for you. but i am not a faith based person. i need that physical proof before i believe something to be true. i can't spend my entire life worshipping a god just because he MIGHT have created us. imagine how much it would suck to die and be like...oh fuck...where's heaven? lol i'm not singling out Christianity here either. i'm talking about all faith-based religions.

so yeah basically until god comes to me and says "yo dumbass..." sorry...me believing in ID just isn't gonna happen.

[Rhabbi]

i need that physical proof before i believe something to be true. i can't spend my entire life worshipping a god just because he MIGHT have created us. imagine how much it would suck to die and be like...oh fuck...where's heaven? lol i'm not singling out Christianity here either. i'm talking about all faith-based religions.

so yeah basically until god comes to me and says "yo dumbass..." sorry...me believing in ID just isn't gonna happen.

I am not going to ask you to believe in ID, or even God, but let me make a quick point.

If I dedicate my life to God, which I am doing, and I die and find oput I am wrong, what have I lost? My life of somewhere around 100 years, if I am lucky.

If you dedicate your life to yourself and die and find out there is a God, what have you lost? Eternity. Just something to think about.

[fantassy]

If I dedicate my life to God, which I am doing, and I die and find oput I am wrong, what have I lost? My life of somewhere around 100 years, if I am lucky.

But if this 100 years is all you get, you have lost everything.

fantassy

[fantassy]

If you dedicate your life to yourself and die and find out there is a God, what have you lost? Eternity.

A God worth spending eternity with would look more at the quality of life I've lived. What use did I make of the time I had - did I help my fellow creatures, etc., rather than merely judging me on lack of religious belief. So I will have lost nothing.

If God merely judges a person on their religious belief and not their good deeds, I've saved myself from spending eternity with a vain unworthy God.

fantassy

[Rhabbi]

A God worth spending eternity with would look more at the quality of life I've lived. What use did I make of the time I had - did I help my fellow creatures, etc., rather than merely judging me on lack of religious belief. So I will have lost nothing.

If God merely judges a person on their religious belief and not their good deeds, I've saved myself from spending eternity with a vain unworthy God.

I could not agree with you more, but you have to remember that that quaility of life would still be defined by Him. I do not believe that God judges people solely on their religious beliefs, but on their life and what they do with it. This is actually told to me in the Bible, so I have confidence in it.

That said, I wonder if you are living a qualioty life, or one that serves only yourself. I am not asking you this so that I will know, but so that you will think.

But if this 100 years is all you get, you have lost everything.

fantassy

I am going to answer both of these in one post because they kind of belong together.

That is my choice, and as long as I live life fully while serving God, I will have no complaints. I am happy with my life and who I am.

[TomOfSweden]

That is my choice, and as long as I live life fully while serving God, I will have no complaints. I am happy with my life and who I am.

It is actually possible that I am totally wrong about the way to serve God, whiloe being right about there being a God.

So how do you reconcile these two statements?

Here's a Roman quote that I think is very apt:
"If one does not know to which port one is sailing, no wind is favourable."
- Seneca

[Rhabbi]

I do not have to, the simple things is that i can admit that I could be wrong, something that you seem unable to see in yourself.

[gloombunny]

I am not going to ask you to believe in ID, or even God, but let me make a quick point.

If I dedicate my life to God, which I am doing, and I die and find oput I am wrong, what have I lost? My life of somewhere around 100 years, if I am lucky.

If you dedicate your life to yourself and die and find out there is a God, what have you lost? Eternity. Just something to think about.

Hey, it's Pascal's Wager.

It's been thoroughly discredited by many people more eloquent than me, but I can at least try to sum things up a bit by pointing out that it only "works" because you've carefully framed it as a consideration between two arbitrary possibilities that are in fact no more likely than any others. (Hint: "no gods or afterlife at all" and "my specific version of Christianity" are not the only two ways the universe could conceivably work.)

[~hellish one~]

Hey, it's Pascal's Wager.

It's been thoroughly discredited by many people more eloquent than me, but I can at least try to sum things up a bit by pointing out that it only "works" because you've carefully framed it as a consideration between two arbitrary possibilities that are in fact no more likely than any others. (Hint: "no gods or afterlife at all" and "my specific version of Christianity" are not the only two ways the universe could conceivably work.)

agreed. and i agree with fantassy as well. very wise words hun.

there are a million different possibilities. nothing after death, heaven, reincarnation...all of which are just as plausible as the other.

but there is no way i could pretend to worship a god for my entire lifetime just because there is the possibility that i might go to hell if i don't. there is also the possibility that i might be reincarnated. ~shrugs~ like i said...i need that proof. i doubt i will ever get it. but i'm not belittling your choice to believe in what you do, Rhabbi. there are so many different faiths around the world, it just blows my mind that any one could think they are the one true religion....ya know?

[Rhabbi]

agreed. and i agree with fantassy as well. very wise words hun.

there are a million different possibilities. nothing after death, heaven, reincarnation...all of which are just as plausible as the other.

but there is no way i could pretend to worship a god for my entire lifetime just because there is the possibility that i might go to hell if i don't. there is also the possibility that i might be reincarnated. ~shrugs~ like i said...i need that proof. i doubt i will ever get it. but i'm not belittling your choice to believe in what you do, Rhabbi. there are so many different faiths around the world, it just blows my mind that any one could think they are the one true religion....ya know?

I agree with that sentiment, it does blow my mind as well. The most surprising thing in my life was the day I came to believe in God. If you are curious about the way this feels, there is actually a book that describes it better than I could, because if I tried to I would end up using his ideas and descriptions. If you do not mind reading a book that is about religion and one man's journey from atheism to belief I recommend "Surprised by Joy" by C. S. Lewis.

[Rhabbi]

Hey, it's Pascal's Wager.

It's been thoroughly discredited by many people more eloquent than me, but I can at least try to sum things up a bit by pointing out that it only "works" because you've carefully framed it as a consideration between two arbitrary possibilities that are in fact no more likely than any others. (Hint: "no gods or afterlife at all" and "my specific version of Christianity" are not the only two ways the universe could conceivably work.)

I have actually seen this response before, which is why I did not try to push my version of Christianity. But I should have added a third choice, as a subset to the first, to deal with this answer. It is actually possible that I am totally wrong about the way to serve God, whiloe being right about there being a God.

[TomOfSweden]

I am not going to ask you to believe in ID, or even God, but let me make a quick point.

If I dedicate my life to God, which I am doing, and I die and find oput I am wrong, what have I lost? My life of somewhere around 100 years, if I am lucky.

If you dedicate your life to yourself and die and find out there is a God, what have you lost? Eternity. Just something to think about.

Why not do the maths instead. We know we have this life. This is all we know. We don't know if we have an afterlife. If we assume there may be, we have the problem of working out what this afterlife entails and how we can make it better. We have no clues. The existance of an afterlife is pure assumption. The existance of god is pure assumption. The belief in that there exists a god that has an intelligence and that god cares about earth and humans is equally assumption. If we sit down and make a compilation over the possible varieties of heaven our human brains can conjour up, (all on equal merit to the Bibles version) we will find that the result is one chance in an infinity.

So the scenario you presented is skewed. It's not a choice between two equal possibilities. They're not even almost equal. One is pure guesswork and the other is fact.

edit: Ninjad. NatalieD beat me to it. I bow to your great wisdom.