The Bible

I really want to believe in God. I really do. I personaly think that those that sincerly do are impressive.

When you meet them, the sincere ones, you can tell. Very similar disposition as budhist monks or other devoted people to peace.

However America has stained the pure Ideaology of the beauty of the Christian faith...and the secular world hates it.

I couln'd walk the real walk that that book calls for....it's difficult at best.


Personally the idea of an advanced species or race that , created....designed and implemented a giant human ant farm on this planet makes just about as much sense to me.

Oh well....I guess we all get to find out soon enough...right?

Probably my first ever post here..........sorry bout that - it was prompted by a post in the lounge....
anyways, i believe that if you read the Bible or any ancient religious material come to that, with an open mind and with a modern interpretation, then it could hold a lot of answers to many peoples questions. After all, The Bible, which this thread is all about, does give a lot of clues as to what is gonna happen in the (then) future. Whether or not you believe it is up to you, but with an open mind it makes very interesting reading.

UKMan

@ Thorin

It is absolutely impossible genetically for anyone to have genes for the whole human race (read up on some genetics) in each of their cells and survive and reproduce, and I know of no other way for the variation in humanity to have come about except through natural selection as part of evolution. I can only begin to imagine the mess that having all of those genes would make of any cell containing them. If you say that he would give different genetics to each of their gametes (sex cells) for different races it would be possible genetically, but the gametes would quickly be eradicated by the bodies immune system. Saying god managed to suppress the immune system and put different genetics in each gamete simply begs the question of how he did that. Whereas I realise that one of the ideas about god is that he is said to be capable of doing things that are effectively impossible (performing miracles), things which are impossible are just that: impossible.

@kragon doom

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I really want to believe in God. I really do. I personaly think that those that sincerly do are impressive.

When you meet them, the sincere ones, you can tell. Very similar disposition as budhist monks or other devoted people to peace.

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If like me you do not believe in god, you can see (and I'm not saying you can't) that the devotion to peace they have achieved is therefore not due to a god. It is therefore possible for someone to achieve this without reliance on a religion, however impressive it might seem. You can be devoted to peace and other views without religion, just as you can learn morals without religion. This leads me to the conclusion that I really can't see why you'd want to believe in a god for this reason.

@maynoth

I've got to agree that its a little suprising and disappointing that we haven't had more Christians (and other religious people) defending their beliefs. Its a little hard to have an interesting intellectual debate (which some of this thread has been) without someone arguing from a different point of view. Oh well, with any luck someone will arrive shortly. B)

“A race is simply one of the partially isolated gene pools into which the human species came to be divided during and following its early geographical spread. Roughly one race has developed on each of the five major continental areas of the earth. ... Man did indeed diverge genetically during this phase of history and we can measure and study the results of this divergence in what remains today of the old geographical races. As we would expect, divergence appears to be correlated with the degree of isolation. ... When race formation took place on the continents, with the bottlenecking of thousands of populations in isolated gene pools all over the world, the gene-frequency differences we now see were established. ... The paradox which faces us is that each group of humans appears to be externally different yet underneath these differences there is fundamental similarity.” (Heredity and Human Life, New York, 1963, H. L. Carson, pp. 151, 154, 162, 163) (Thus, early in human history, when a group of people were isolated from others and married within the group, certain distinctive combinations of genetic traits were emphasized in their offspring, including skin colour)

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It is therefore possible for someone to achieve this without reliance on a religion, however impressive it might seem.

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So after all these thousands of years have we not had a single occurance of world peace?
As the bible said at the start of these thousands of years, men can not rule the world all by himself, as wars etc will happen
but as Gods right to rule the earth was questioned, he is allowing man to see if he really can cope all by himself.

look out of the window and ull find he can not!

@ dale

I agree completely with what you have said in regards in regards to races and gene pools, and if it was intended to argue against my point or to correct me I still do not think that it conflicts with what I have said (unless my wording misled some from what I was meaning, in which case I apologise). I was merely arguing the impossibility of having all of the different variations on human genes that cause the phenotypes we would regard as racial features in a single cell, as well as in gametes. I was saying this as another poster had suggested Adam and Eve had been given the genes for the whole human race.

Your other comments however i feel that I could disagree with...

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It is therefore possible for someone to achieve this without reliance on a religion, however impressive it might seem.

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So after all these thousands of years have we not had a single occurance of world peace?
As the bible said at the start of these thousands of years, men can not rule the world all by himself, as wars etc will happen
but as Gods right to rule the earth was questioned, he is allowing man to see if he really can cope all by himself.

look out of the window and ull find he can not!

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I think that we have had occurances of peace throughout this time, and in fact that occurances of peace have become more common if anything. I am afraid that my poor knowledge of the bible will make it harder for me to argue my point in this answer, as I do not know entirely which bits of what you said were stated in the bible and to which parts of human history they were relevant.

If you are saying that a time occured before conventional human history (ie. before the known beginnings of civilisation with races such as the Sumerians) in which there was peace under the rule of god (which was then questioned before the beginning of conventional human history), I know of no such evidence of a time like this existing. There is however strong evidence of violence throughout the history of life on earth.

If you are saying that 'gods right to rule the world' has been questioned recently (perhaps by things such as science) then I would point out that the present is more peaceful than pratically any time in known history and that it is becoming continually more peaceful (currently at least), just as I believe the grip of religion on the world is weakening currently (particularly in Britain, where I live) and the grip of Science is growing. These modern trends would tend to act against what you have said in regards to peace and the rule of god.

The fact remains however that there has been war and violence throughout human history (and beyond that if you consider other species). This may therefore present evidence for the point you have made, however this could have just as easily have come about by coincidence and far from conclusively proves this. I personally think that there has been violence throughout all of history, whether human or not, and that this is simply another method favoured by natural selection for the survival and reproduction of genes.

One of the main problems that I have with the accuracy of the bible in portraying historical events and the truth in general, as well as the existence of god is that absolutely no evidence that I have seen can actually prove these things or even strongly support them. There are merely some small amounts of 'evidence' which do not necessarily lead to a conclusion that supports the bible or existence of god at all, and which can be explained by current scientific theory supported by empirical evidence. Therefore instead of religion being able to prove god exists, others are faced with the notoriously difficult situation of trying to prove a negative.

You say that man cannot cope by himself...I say that man will have to, because there's no-one else to help us. :)

God an jesus and all that shit isnt real so the bible is irrelevant

Uhhh, seems like "Case Closed" here now.

[)arkredemption has said it all :)

Could'nt agree with you more.

Wow!, 7 pages. Are you guys kidding me?!

I'll come clean here, i started this topic as a joke/bet with Neo714, to see how many responses i'll get, and what they'd be. I didn't think you guys would take this seriously. Well, now you have, it's not a bad thing.

Ok, about this gene thing, my opinion is DNA, RNA, and Protein didn't just come about by chance, the possibility of a strand of protein long enough to support life to be produced by chance is something like 10^-23; and the chance of DNA or RNA being created with protein (which are complicated enoough to support life) in the same place is so minute, it's practically 0. Even if you take into accout, the known universe is about what? 14 billion light years? and there are God knows how many stars and planets; the chance of life happening from non-life on any one of them is still almost 0.

So, do you still not believe in God?

And about the peace thing, it's true you know, in God knows how many years of human civilization, there isn't an era of world peace, ever. E.G. the 20th and 21st century:
1900 -- 1914 colonian wars;
1914 -- 1918 WWI;
1918 -- 1939 Civil war in China, Spain;
1939 -- 1945 WWII;
1945 -- 1949 China civil war continued, War in Vietnam (French vs Vietnam people's army);
1950 -- 1953 Korean war;
1954 -- 1966 Cuba "liberated", war in Middle-east, U2 incident, cuba missile crisis;
1961 -- 1974 Vietnam war (USA vs Vietnam communist), China - Indian war;
1974 -- 1989 Falkland isles, Vietnam war (vietnam vs Combodia; then Vietnam vs China), war in Afganistan (vs USSR);
1990 -- present Congo civil war, Ruwanda conflict, 1st gulf war, 2nd Gulf war, war in Afganistan (vs USA), Mecedonia, Yogoslavia, "war of terror";

Possible future conflicts:
Middle east (Isreal's already at war);
2nd Korean war (there's 1million troops on the border);
Iran (part of "war of terror");
Taiwan;
Africa (sorry i can't spell the names of the countries).

And these are just wars i can name, and know about; not to mention the constant tension in Isreal.

How can you still tell me the world is becoming a more peaceful place? Are you George W Bush?

So, we can't really rule ourselves, can we? We jsut wanna kill each other. I mean, look at the Holocaust, Stalin's gulags, purges, Mao's cultural revolution, Milosevich's genocide, Suddam's rule of terror, Bush's "war of terror"... (the list is endless)

End of the day, we need God.

Theres a widely held evolutionary theory that there was a simpler, but less effective precursor to DNA and RNA, but obviously when RNA and later DNA evolved from it the precursor couldn't compete and is now long gone.
This greatly shortens the odds on creating life, and there are a number of other factors which also help, but i can't remember them.

Btw is the 1 in 10^23 value u quoted, the probability of the molecules ordering in the correct way in order to produce a useful protein? Because if thats the case then that value is in no way the probability of life occurring. Theres a rebuttal of creationists calculations of probabilities of life, here, although what he's written is afaik scientifically accurate I should warn you that the writer seems a wee bit pissed at creationists.

The short list of why creationists quoting probabilities often get it wrong is:

1) They calculate the probability of the formation of a "modern" protein, or even a complete bacterium with all "modern" proteins, by random events. This is not the abiogenesis theory at all.

2) They assume that there is a fixed number of proteins, with fixed sequences for each protein, that are required for life.

3) They calculate the probability of sequential trials, rather than simultaneous trials.

4) They misunderstand what is meant by a probability calculation.

5) They seriously underestimate the number of functional enzymes/ribozymes present in a group of random sequences.



Looking at the inverse, if you accept that life could happen by sheer chance, what are the odds that no life was created anywhere in the universe? if you accept some of the less basic evolutionary theory (if you accept the basics why not the advanced stuff) that probability is likely orders of magnitude smaller than the 1 in 10^23 you quoted.

@**GASHA**

Thankyou

@Will_518

Firstly, I'm quite happy to say that I'm not Bush :D

Anyway...

You are quite correct that there are still world conflicts, and that there have been many in recent history. I still think that currently there is less war than there has been at many other times, but accept that this is only taking into account the very recent past and this very moment of the present and that I can hardly predict whether this will be true in the future (it is quite possible that there will be much war within the next century associated with dwindling resources for a start).

What I view as the most important part of the argument I was making still stands strong however. The fact that there has been war throughout human history far from proves that what is written in the bible is correct, and the violent aspect that does exist in human nature and the way in which this could come about by evolution (once again, I'd advise reading Richard Dawkins books on evolutionary psychology...Perhaps The Selfish Gene would be a good place to start) can quite easily explain why humans fight wars. We may 'just wanna kill each other', but there is no god to come and pervent us from doing so. I view this as a very negative outlook an human nature however. We all have redeeming qualities and what might be regarded as 'good' qualities go along with the 'bad' qualities. Opinions on what fits into each category are purely subjective however...There is no Black & White (only a sort of shade of grey). With any luck however we can set aside differences long enough to at least ensure the survival of the human race.

This also still leaves another key point I made in my last post.

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One of the main problems that I have with the accuracy of the bible in portraying historical events and the truth in general, as well as the existence of god is that absolutely no evidence that I have seen can actually prove these things or even strongly support them. There are merely some small amounts of 'evidence' which do not necessarily lead to a conclusion that supports the bible or existence of god at all, and which can be explained by current scientific theory supported by empirical evidence. Therefore instead of religion being able to prove god exists, others are faced with the notoriously difficult situation of trying to prove a negative.

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If you can suggest some evidence that I believe this does not apply to, I would be delighted to hear it.

@ilw

Beautifully put. I don't think I could have said it better myself. There is however a little something I believe that I could add.

It is believed by many that a compound such as RNA may have been the first form of 'life'. RNA is capable of both storing information in a similar way to DNA, as well as playing an part in metabolism, as proteins do. Once an RNA molecule was formed that was capable of self-replication (something not so unlikely as you might think if you consider the vast timescales and amounts of matter in which this could happen), but that made slight errors in doing so, life on earth could develop as natural selection (and therefore evolution) could act upon that molecule. Natural selection would favour molecules that would have a good copying fidelity, durability and fast speed of replication. Development of this molecule, and the phenotypes that it would eventually bring about, could quite easily lead to what we would regard as life.

It is of course quite possible, as ilw suggested, that another molecule could precede RNA, and in fact that any molecule capable of self-replication (but that made slight mistakes in the process) could become increasingly complex and lead to what could be regarded as life.

Its great to see that a joke/bet has turned into a great thread, with all kinds of smaller scientific and religious issues being debated. BTW Will_518, if this was a bet...Did you win?? :D