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Not necessarily. I'm not saying I believe it, but if evolution were somehow proven untrue, what would be your next best guess?

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I think that situation's one of "let's cross that bridge when/if we get there".

But what if we never?

I believe very strongly that Evolution and Creationism can never be proven by human means. For Evolution to be treated as a science, you must show me an organism evolve into a different one. According to scientists though, it take a few billion years for an organism to change. So I don't think we'll see it in our lifetime.

And the same goes for Creationism. No matter what religion you believe in, you have to accept the idea of a higher diety. However, I nor anyone else, can show you him/her/it.

Neither can be fully proven, and untill then, are only faiths.

The same would go for anything else. If Issac Newton stated his theroy of gravitiy without any substansial evidence (a planet without gravity) then his theroy would still be so. It could be considered, but untill fully proven in some way it could only be treated as a Hypothesis.

I really don't like these sorts of arguments. Because no matter what, this is how it is untill further notice. Be it billions of years or tomorrow.

But there is evidence of evolution, in the form of fossils. For example, scientists recently found a fossil of a creature that has both characteristics of lobe-finned fishes and those found in all four-legged animals (see Wikipedia article, SciAm article). This supports the notion that four-legged animals evolved from fishes, as it shows traits of both (and it probably wouldn't make sense that it was just a coincidence) While one could argue that evolution is "just" a "theory", it does have a certain basis in fact. In fact, all scientific theories work that way - they cannot be proven as patently true or false, they can only be judged relative to the evidence at hand.

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I brought this up earlier, and it's worth bringing up again, just as food for thought. There's nothing, as best as I can tell (unless you believe the literal 6 days creation, with 6 days being 144 present-day, human hours) that says evolution and creationism are mutually exclusive. Who's to say that God didn't create the universe, using evolution as His tool?

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If you can't fix it with a hammer, you have an electrical problem.

Heh, how would we even know how long a day was before the earth was created?

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That's a very good point. Since a second is defined as the time it takes light to travel 3e8 meters, and a day is 60*60*24 times that, we don't really need the earth. Of course, we didn't always define a day that way. It used to be the time between local noon and the next local noon, then... you know what? You just made my head A'SPLODE. Thanks jerkie!

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If you can't fix it with a hammer, you have an electrical problem.

Ah, but there's so much more to science than what can be observed empirically with the naked eye. I think you're confusing proof with science, which as we have gone over again and again, are two entirely different things and, in fact, science typically shuns the notion of "proof".

BTW, StrongRad, I know it's been said a zillion times that creationism and evolution aren't mutually exclusive, but as I keep saying myself, I'm not particularly interested in that argument because, well, I don't find it interesting. I have no quarrel with that point of view (and a lot of scientists don't, either, but with the caution that such a belief is not scientific -- it just doesn't contradict science either).

- Kef

Well, let's say that God created the world, but used evolution. Then the bible, your main source of information on creationism, is false.

Evolution is not jsut a faith. There is no evidence pointing towards crreationism. There is some pointing towards evlution. That's why I don't believe in creation. I just don't see how you can rely on something with no evidence (The bible isn't evidence, it could just be another piece of literature for all we know). As I've said before, I'm sticking with what's logical, or at least what seems to be logical at the time.

How so? Evolution might have been left out of the bible; one of those things that isn't all that important. It's unimportant because, with or without it, the point would be the same: God Created the living things.
Of course, this probably sounds like complete hooey to those who aren't members of an "Abraham" religion (Judaism, Christianity, Islam), and I'll admit, if I weren't a believer, it would probably sound like that to me, too.

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If you can't fix it with a hammer, you have an electrical problem.

Well, I admit I don't know much about the bible. We studied Genisis 1-3 and 6-9 in literature class earlier in the year, but that's all I know about the bible (Apart from the few true parts I'd heard from The Simpsons) but if I rememebr correctly, God created man in his image. Firstly, it would take billions of years for man to evolve, and the only man in the creation story is Adam. Secondly, if God created man in his own image, and God does look like man, then evolution would've been taken out of the process. Unless God is affected by evolution, in which case he, when first creating man, would be/look like an undeveloped, single cell organism. Evolution just doesn't fit with this creation story.

Evolutution. There is littel proof that religious therorys could very well be incorrect. Along time ago, very few people were religious. Until
some farmer pulled a scam called "The Great Chicken of the appocolipse"
He Wrote "Crist it coming" on the eggs of a chicken and claimed that whoever gets an egg that has paper in it the sais J.C. would go to heaven. And lots of people became religious. But the scam was proven
to be be a scam by scientists who examined the chicken as it laid eggs.

Thus, giving little proof that religious theroys could be incorrect.

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Alright! You win, The Noid! No more memes.

God created man in his image, not necessarily his physical image. I don't belive God looks like a human. (You're probably thinking of the way 'image' is used on computers - a picture.)
Also, if you remember from Genisis 1, man was created after everything else, so that would fit in with other animals evolving before man.

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That's a great chicken story there, Strongfan. It is also completely irrelevant to the current conversation.

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I've never heard of that story in my life. Besides, "A long time ago, very few people were religious"? I'd like to raise a red flag with that one. I thought back then they were more religious.

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From my little knowledge about how the universe came about, science can't explain it. Science's theory about the universe happening is a bit to coincidential to believe. Everything just happened to line up perfectly for us to be living here. There had to be some help from God.

We won't truely know the answer until we die. Then, when we meet our creator, we will know. If we don't, then science wins.

Yeah, the probability of life evolving on this planet the way it did may seem small, but considering how vast space is and how many planets are out there, rotating around suns, it stands to reason that some of these planets would have the means to support life, and for life to evolve. Just because odds aren't in the favor of something happening doesn't make it a physical impossibility. Improbable is not the same thing as impossible.

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The meaning of life is 'bucket.'

FOR PONY!!!

No one said it was impossible, but it is improbable. Why believe in something so unlikely?

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Why do people play the lotto? It's unlikely that they'll win, yet they do it anyway. Furthermore, why believe in religion? That seems even MORE unlikely than what science can show us. As I said before, the Bible is not a scientific textbook, and "6 days" doesn't have to mean "6 EARTH days."

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The meaning of life is 'bucket.'

FOR PONY!!!

Well, according to odds, there should be more than 30 billion planets with life on them (If I rememebr correctly) It may've been 30 million or possibly a number without a 3. It was a long time ago that I calculated it, but still, it's a big number.

May I ask where you got that number, Ju Ju?

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Good qustion, Johnny!

Er, anwyays, my dad was reading an article, I believe it was on the NASA site. He was telling me a few things, one of them was the minimum number of planets that are thought to be in the universe, and another was the chance of being able to have and sustain life on those planets. The other important one was the chance of actually havign life on the planets that can have life. So, I did the calculations (A few times, to make sure) and the number came out to be surprisingly large (And this was calculating with the numbers that were thought as the minimums, worst case scenario). Like I said, I don't rememebr the numbers, and I can't find the article that had these numbers (Mainly because I never actually saw the article, my dad just told me what it said)

Sorry I can't be of more help. If I find a better answer, I'll mention it.

Because if they do win, they actually get something. If someone ends up 'right' about atheism... you... uh... nothing happens. I don't play lotto, though, so I can't explain to you why people do.How is it MORE unlikely? What is it about religion that makes it hard to believe in?

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Uhhh... so you're saying some people are Christian "just in case"? I wouldn't really call that being a Christian.

How did God come into existence?

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No, I'm not saying that. (Some might, sort of like Pascal.) I believe it as fact. But why would I believe something so improbable as fact? Like, I believe the sky to be blue, even though there's a one-in-a-googol chance that it's really white and people have been shining blue lights at it all my life to trick me.
EDIT: grrr... simulpost...
God is an infinite being, but the universe is not. That's why God can always exist, but not the universe (since he created science, logic, and existence). I don't have time to explain it all now but that's the really short version

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And how is it anymore probable that some being came from nowhere and was able to create everything?

God did not 'come into being'. Since he has infinite power, he is able to always exist without being created. The universe, on the other hand, is not.

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Then where did this power come from, when does always beginm?

The problem is, we will never get anywhere with this. When we answer where something came from, then we must know where the other came from. That's why this topic is so frustrating (By topic I don't mean thread )

If we had no evidence pointing to anything, anything could be possible. But, since there is some evidence pointing towards evolution, and pretty much none pointing towards creationism, I'm sticking with evolution.

I believe if it's possible for God to just happen to exist, and to always have existed, and to just happen to have all these incredible powers, it's also just as possible for the universe to just happen to exist, and to always have existed, and to just happen to have all these things "line up perfectly". I like the second possibility because it's simpler: instead of requiring God and a universe, not to mention God's motivations for creating a universe, etc., we just have a universe.

It also helps to take into account the size of the universe. The number of planets there are is orders of magnitude beyond the comprehension of any human mind. Statistics says, then, that things that are even hugely, vastly, mind-bogglingly unlikely are still likely to happen on at least one of them. So, even if it's most extremely improbable that life could have existed on this planet, it may well be likely enough that it could exist on a planet.

- Kef