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August 27th, 2012
11:31 AM ET
Bill Nye slams creationismBy Eric Marrapodi, CNN Belief Blog Co-Editor (CNN)–Famed TV scientist Bill Nye is slamming creationism in a new online video for Big Think titled "Creationism Is Not Appropriate For Children." "Denial of evolution is unique to the United States," Nye begins in a YouTube video posted on Thursday. The video quickly picked up steam over the weekend and as of Monday morning had been viewed more than 1,100,000 times. Nye - a mechanical engineer and television personality best known for his program, "Bill Nye the Science Guy" - said the United States has great capital in scientific knowledge and "when you have a portion of the population that doesn't believe in it, it holds everyone back." "Your world becomes fantastically complicated if you don't believe in evolution," Nye said in the Web video. Creationists are a vast and varied group in the United States. Most creationists believe in the account of the origins of the world as told in the Book of Genesis, the first book of the Bible. CNN’s Belief Blog: The faith angles behind the biggest stories In the creation account, God creates Adam and Eve, the world, and everything in it in six days. For Christians who read the Genesis account literally, or authoritatively as they would say, the six days in the account are literal 24-hour periods and leave no room for evolution. Young Earth creationists use this construct and biblical genealogies to determine the age of the Earth, and typically come up with 6,000 to 10,000 years. Your Take: 5 reactions to Bill Nye's creationism critique The Gallup Poll has been tracking Americans' views on creation and evolution for the past 30 years. In June it released its latest findings, which showed 46% of Americans believed in creationism, 32% believed in evolution guided by God, and 15% believed in atheistic evolution. During the 30 years Gallup has conducted the survey, creationism has remained far and away the most popular answer, with 40% to 47% of Americans surveyed saying they believed that God created humans in their present form at one point within the past 10,000 years. Survey: Nearly half of Americans subscribe to creationist view of human origins "The idea of deep time of billions of years explains so much of the world around us. If you try to ignore that, your worldview becomes crazy, untenable, itself inconsistent," Nye said in the video. "I say to the grownups, if you want to deny evolution and live in your world, that's completely inconsistent with the world we observe, that's fine. But don't make your kids do it. Because we need them. We need scientifically literate voters and taxpayers for the future. We need engineers that can build stuff and solve problems," he said. Creationists' beliefs about the origins of the Earth are often a narrow focus, based in large part on religious beliefs, and while they reject evolution as "just one theory," they often embrace other fields of science and technology. Follow the CNN Belief Blog on Twitter In "The Genesis Flood," the 1961 book that in many ways help launch the Young Earth creationism movement in the United States, the authors write: “Our conclusions must unavoidably be colored by our Biblical presuppositions, and this we plainly acknowledge." Their goal for the book was to harmonize the scientific evidence with the accounts in Genesis of creation and the flood. The idea of creationism has been scorned by the mainstream scientific community since shortly after Darwin introduced "The Origin of Species" in 1859. By 1880, The American Naturalists, a science journal, reported nearly every major university in America was teaching evolution. "In another couple centuries I'm sure that worldview won't even exist. There's no evidence for it. So..." Nye ends his video. soundoff (14,640 Responses)« Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 Next » |
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The CNN Belief Blog covers the faith angles of the day's biggest stories, from breaking news to politics to entertainment, fostering a global conversation about the role of religion and belief in readers' lives. It's edited by CNN's Daniel Burke with contributions from Eric Marrapodi and CNN's worldwide news gathering team.  |
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My problem with republicans is they don't ask any questions, it's all about faith for republicans. Trust my God, religion, and Political Party. Don't ask questions just believe what your told. Faith is man made. Faith is a locked door that republicans are told to never open or they will be sent to H311. So fear gets in the way of republicans seeking the truth. Fear is man's down fall and the rest of us have to pay the price for their fear.
This is scary, majority in most powerfuly country (for few more years) is idiot.
When this country embraces logic and science Republicans will lose power for good.
I have a good friend who works for Exxon-Mobile. He is a geologist engaged in searching for oil and other fossil fuels in Africa. They know where to look for oil based on the ages of the rocks and their location during the Carboniferous Period, which is when the vast mats of plankton and other small sea creatures were laid down, that gradually turned to oil over the tens of millions of years.
Fortunately, I have a creationist friend, who has told me that fossil fuels are not made of fossils at all, as the world is only six thousand years old and started with the Garden of Eden and a magic talking snake! So, I will write to my friend and tell him to stop looking where they usually find oil, as that has just been a lucky coincidence. God must have buried some there to fool them.
What a playful, loving god we have, and aren’t creationists smart!
ouch, your friend should probably notify exxon so they can stop wasting their time and money digging for oil and paying geologists. boy they are going to have egg on their faces!
I wonder when Bill will start discussing the creation of the universe, and the origin of the first life form on earth..
as well, I wonder when he will start talking about the implausibility of punctuated equilibrium being reconciled with a purely random genetic mutation/natural selection mechanism.
no doubt bill is just days away from announcing theistic evolution as the only viable explanation!!
The theory most scientists currently favor for the origins of life is called “abiogenesis,” the gradual emergence of life on Earth from non-living matter. To understand why it is thought that life arose on Earth from non-living matter, one has to understand some basic biochemistry. This is where you “talking snake crowd” have such a problem. You have to actually understand some very basic science, you can’t just rely on what you were taught at Sunday school as an eight year-old.
All life is comprised of complex arrangements of proteins, fats and carbohydrates, all orchestrated by DNA and/or RNA. DNA/RNA and proteins are by far the most important components of a living organism, carrying out virtually every function in a cell. Fats and carbohydrates are generally simpler molecules and play critical, but subordinate roles in cells.
DNA and RNA are made of five nucleotides – adenine, thymine, cytosine, guanine and uracil. They act as the cell’s “mission control,” orchestrating the cell’s activities. Proteins are made of 20 amino acids. They are the workhorse of the cell – the nails, wood, steel beams and machinery that make the cell run. It is the order of amino acids in a protein that determine its shape and, therefore what it does. This order and shape of proteins is itself dictated by the DNA through RNA.
So, in short, life is made up of complex arrangements of:
The five nucleotides – adenine, thymine, cytosine, guanine and uracil – arranged into DNA and/or RNA
The twenty amino acids – that form all proteins, including enzymes and the other 100,000 or so proteins in a complex organism’s body.
Carbohydrates – literally “water-carbon,” which include sugars and starches. These are much simpler elements than proteins or DNA/RNA and act as an energy source.
Fats – also called lipids, these are important in constructing cell membranes.
The simplest cells are prokaryotic cells. They exist today principally as bacteria. Stromatolites and other fossils from all over the planet suggest that, for the first billion years of life on earth, all life was simple, prokaryotic life. These cells consisted of a fatty cell membrane, like a balloon skin, with DNA/RNA, proteins, fats and carbohydrates on the inside. They had no nucleus. Cells with nuclei, called eukaryotic cells (which make up virtually all multi-cellular organisms) are much larger and more complex that prokaryotic cells and likely resulted from the early combining of prokaryotic cells.
So, can a simple prokaryotic cell come into existence without the intervention of God, Allah, Shiva, Vishnu, Yahweh or any other divine/magic being?
Beginning in the 1950s, scientists started trying to mimic the conditions on the early Earth to see whether some kind of “life-fairy” was necessary to get things started. In the most famous experiment of this era, the Miller-Urey experiment of 1952, Stanley Miller demonstrated that heating and running an electric spark through an atmosphere of water vapor, ammonia, methane and hydrogen for a few weeks resulted in these very simple molecules self-assembling into all 20 of the amino acids upon which life on Earth is based. This is a startling result. All 20 building blocks of proteins, which comprise over 99% of the cell’s functional structures, self-assembling without a magic wand from God, Shiva, Vishnu, Allah etc!
The experiment was groundbreaking because it suggested that, under the perfectly natural conditions of early Earth, the building blocks of life can and will self-assemble. Indeed, it now seems that major volcanic eruptions 4 billion years ago would have created an even more diverse atmosphere than Miller used, including carbon dioxide (CO2), nitrogen (N2), hydrogen sulfide (H2S), and sulfur dioxide (SO2). When these were added to the mix in subsequent experiments, they have resulted in the creation of all 5 nucleotides, all 20 amino acids and basic fatty membranes and various carbohydrates. That is to say, with no magic/divine intervention, all life’s building blocks WILL self-assemble.
But nails, wood, wiring and bricks a house do not make. Even the simplest life requires these building blocks to be arranged in very, very complex ways. In various experiments with various conditions, scientists have been able to create a wide range of cell-like structures of increasing complexity on the road toward a simple self-replicating organism. These creations are called protobionts or coacervates and if you “you tube” or google these terms, you will see many examples.
This is still a far cry from a cell, but the important thing is that the experiments uniformly demonstrate that organic molecules have a natural tendency to clump together in increasingly complex ways under early Earth-like conditions. They are not being pushed into doing something “against their will”.
Where it gets really suggestive is that scientists have been able to isolate what they believe to be some of the most primitive genes of Earth, by comparing the DNA of two organisms whose last common ancestor lived soon after the formation of the Earth. For such genes to be common to both such organisms, they must be very, very old. When these ancient genes produce amino acids, they are rich in the amino acids most common in the Miller-Urey and similar experiments! This suggests that these experiments do indeed reflect early Earth conditions and that life itself did arise under such conditions.
The other important factor is that these impressive results have been achieved in laboratories over small periods of time. Imagine the whole Earth as the “Petri dish” and hundreds of millions of years as the timescale. Simple life gradually emerging from such a “soup” does not seem at all incredible, certainly not incredible enough that we in the USA have to give up and call the remaining gap in knowledge “God,” while our Indian colleagues do the same and attribute it all to the Lord Shiva.
Scientist are also approaching it from the other side too, gradually stripping away at prokaryotic cells to see how stripped down they have to become for life to “stop,” while others continue to build up from coacervates and protobionts. The gap is narrowing as our knowledge continues its inexorable march.
Oh will you please just shut the f*uck-up?
@Chad the disingenuous,
Chad, you know full well the target of this discussion is the 46% who believe that the earth is less than 10,000 years old, and not the 32% (like yourself) who harmoniously synthesize a belief in God with the scientific estimates that the earth is 4.5B years old.
That was for Chad not Colin.
Chad,
Please tell us about unicorns and talking animals to prove your point.
You are using words to impress that mean nothing. You cant have "randomness" and "natural selection" in the same sentence. They are totally different and even a cursory reading of evolutionary theory would tell you that.
@Colin ""The theory most scientists currently favor for the origins of life is called “abiogenesis"
Hi Colin, happy to refute your same nonsense for the umpteenth time.. thanks!
Criticism of Abiogenesis and Panspermia
While the experiments carried out by Stanley Miller and others who have built upon his work show that life may have arisen from a primordial soup, that possibility remains theoretical. There is no evidence for pre-cellular life on Earth; what's more, critics of the RNA world hypothesis point out that the experiments that support the concepts were conducted with biologically created RNA. RNA can act as both a template for self-replication and an enzyme for carrying out that process, but these findings have been carried out in controlled laboratory experiments. This doesn't necessarily prove such delicate actions could happen in the seas of the ancient Earth.
For reasons like these, the RNA world hypothesis has been largely abandoned by proponents of abiogenesis in favor of other hypotheses, like the simultaneous development of both proteins and genetic templates or the development of life around undersea vents similar to those currently inhabited by today's extremophiles. But there is one criticism that any abiogenesis hypothesis has difficulty overcoming: time. DNA-based life is thought to have developed on Earth beginning around 3.8 billion years ago, giving pre-cellular life forms about 1 billion years to carry out random processes of encoding useful proteins and assembling them into the precursors of cellular life [source 1="Discovery" 2="News" language=":"][/source]. Critics of abiogenesis say that simply isn't enough time for inorganic matter to become the theorized precellular life. One estimate suggests it would take 10^450 (10 to the 450th power) years for one useful protein to be randomly created [source 1="Klyce" language=":"][/source].
@SCOTO "You are using words to impress that mean nothing. You cant have "randomness" and "natural selection" in the same sentence. They are totally different and even a cursory reading of evolutionary theory would tell you that."
=>random refers to genetic mutation, the "grist for the mill of natural selection" essentiall.
natural selection determines which random genetic mutations survive in the gene pool..
No Chad, you don't refute them. You selectively copy/past creationist dogma.
@Colin "No Chad, you don't refute them. You selectively copy/past creationist dogma."
=>????
if you look up those sources, you'll see they are NOT "creationist" in any way shape or form.
RNA world is debunked, as you've been shown dozens of time. denying reality makes your stance look extremely irrational....
Chad- "the RNA world hypothesis has been largely abandoned by proponents of abiogenesis in favor of other hypotheses"
For a review, have a look at
Abiotic Self-Replication.
Meyer AJ, Ellefson JW, Ellington AD.
Acc Chem Res. 2012 Aug 15. [Epub ahead of print]
An RNA world may have prevailed for a time, preceded by a world of less complex replicators evolving over time to include more complex information encoded in RNA with the help of ribozymes. It's an idea that is current.
"Molecular biologist's dream" is a phrase coined by Gerald (Jerry) Joyce and Leslie Orgel to refer to the problem of emergence of self-replicating RNA molecules as any movement towards an RNA world on a properly modeled early Earth would have been continuously suppressed by destructive reactions.[41] It was noted that many of the steps needed for the nucleotides formation do not proceed efficiently in prebiotic conditions.[42] Joyce and Orgel specifically referred the molecular biologist's dream to "a magic catalyst" that could "convert the activated nucleotides to a random ensemble of polynucleotide sequences, a subset of which had the ability to replicate".[41]
Joyce and Orgel further argued that nucleotides cannot link unless there is some activation of the phosphate group, whereas the only effective activating groups for this are "totally implausible in any prebiotic scenario", particularly adenosine triphosphate.[41] According to Joyce and Orgel, in case of the phosphate group activation, the basic polymer product would have 5',5'-pyrophosphate linkages, while the 3',5'-phosphodiester linkages, which are present in all known RNA, would be much less abundant.[41] The associated molecules would have been also prone to addition of incorrect nucleotides or to reactions with numerous other substances likely to have been present.[41] The RNA molecules would have been also continuously degraded by such destructive process as spontaneous hydrolysis, present on the early Earth.[41] Joyce and Orgel proposed to reject "the myth of a self-replicating RNA molecule that arose de novo from a soup of random polynucleotides"[41] and hypothesised about a scenario where the prebiotic processes furnish pools of enantiopure beta-D-ribonucleosides.[43]
Im not sure Ive seen so many ignorant people all gathered at once in my life. Seriously? BIble thumpers, keep your myths to yourselves or try to evolve! My god! Denial makes you look foolish.
PRAY TO YOUR GOD FOR WISDOM NOW!!!!!!!!!
And creationist should stop taking antibiotics – another man-made-evolutionary trick. Just pray to god to cure the bacteria he created for people.
Evolution or creationism aside. I find it hard to belive that the Earth and all the life it has, is a result of some random cosmic accident that formed the perfect environment to start life that evolved to what we know today. The universe started from somewhere........... by something and it was not a coincidental event.
In countless experiments with Fruit Flies (chosen because of their short life which allows study of generations in a short time) Scientists under controlled laboratory conditions have not been able to genetically mutate them into a different species. Sure they can make their wings longer or shorter, there eyes different colors, etc...but never a mutation into a new speicies. Evolution seems to think this is possible in an uncontrolled environment? How? if you can't even mutate a fuit fly into a house fly? I don't have enough faith to believe in evolution! Thanks!
@b0b64 –
Sorry, but your assertion that specification has not been observed is incorrect. Please read the following from the peer-reviewed journal "Genetics" (March 1, 2003).
http://www.genetics.org/content/163/3/939.long
"your assertion that specification has not been observed" should, of course, read, "your assertion that speciation has not been observed". Damned spell checkers!
This board is showing exactly how absurd religion is. Thank you, CNN. You've finally helped society improve.
He should slam whoever botoxed him.
Creationists...look to your leaders. Even Pope John Paul II believed in evolution. Get your head out of the sand!
Head in the sand? How about these guys they were creationists. Were they slouches?
Kepler - Laws of planetary motion.
Francis Bacon - contributed to formalization of scientific method
Linnaeus - classification
John Ray - Founder of biological science
Robert Boyle - Founder of modern chemistry
Sir Isaac Newton - gravity, optics, calculus
Blaise Pascal - mathematics, calculating machine, air pressure
Charles Babbage - invented "difference engine," designed computer
Gregor Mendel - first studies of heredity
James Joule - physics, inc. beginning of thermodynamics
William Thomson, Lord Kelvin - Physics
Michael Faraday - Physics
John Dalton - chemistry
Louis Pasteur - immunization, disproof of spontaneous generation
Sir John Herschel - mathematician and astronomer, called the theory "the
law of higgledy-pigglety"
James Clerk Maxwell - physicist, developed theory of electromagnetism
Adam Sedgwick - geologist
Andrew Murray - entomologist
Richard Owen - coined the term "dinosaur"
Louis Agassiz, founder of modern glacial geology
Werner von Braun - Leader of early US space program (Creation 16(2))
James Irwin - astronaut, walked on the moon
A.E. Wilder-Smith (deceased)- 3 earned doctorates, master of seven
languages, UN advisor
the pope is not my leader - you and bill nye the science guy need to get both your heads out of you collective -
OH and by the by little John Paul was wrong.
They didn't want to get persecuted like Galileo! Or tortured like so many others.
But the thing is... it isn't the Catholics (The people who would of followed PJ2 or Benedict) it's the hard line right protestant religions who are the ones that believe in Full on creationism.
Better to pretend to believe or not admit you don't than to lose funding.
Whoever would have thought that the group responsible for the inquisition and the crussades would be viewed as progressive...America is a scary place.
pEvanB, they were "creationists" because they never became aware of evolution.
BTW, Newton was anti-trinitarian, hardly a belief system you would support.
Every being evolutionizes except the Christians. Poor things
you sir will find out about your poorness when you meet JESUS - and you will meet HIM one day
Evolves......
/sigh
EVERY being evolutionizes?!? You're kidding me, right? Let's see one now, right now. Someday, very soon, EVERY knee shall bow to Jesus. Yeah, you too.
You sure do seem terrified of your "all-loving" and "all-forgiving" invisible friend. Maybe it's a deep-seated insecurity that perhaps you've chosen the wrong one? What if you die and find out that you have to "kneel before" Odin or Zeus or Vishnu or Ra as opposed to Jesus?
The threats about what your invisible friend is going to do to anyone who doesn't believe in him with you speak volumes about the perverted sense of morality religion tends to inspire. Enjoy your baseless fear.
If Evolution is a theory because there is no proof then God is also a theory. You religulous folks can't have your cake and eat it too.
As a Christian with a science degree I have no problem with your assessment. Just as some people put their faith in the theory of Evolution, I put my faith in the theory of God.
@michael,
so, with your science degree, do you believe that the earth is less than 10,000 years old?
Religion is NOT a theory .. a theory has reason to think it's likely correct ... religion is better described as folklore or mythology. Don't ever give religion the credibility of theory!
i wondered why you think the way you do - your most recent monkey ancestor has popped out - but that's ok - mabe the next generation of yours will resemble a jack****
You're confusing a hypothesis with a Scientific Theory. In science, a theory is "a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world, based on a body of facts that have been repeatedly confirmed through observation and experiment."
Without that repeatedly confirmed observation and experiment, you have a hypothesis.
You can believe in a creator (just not the xchan version) and be a lunatic.
Lol, there is loads of evidence to support evolution. "Theory" refers to questions as to how evolution works, not IF it occurs. Pick up a book, you might just learn something. Heck, just be lazy and do a search on the net. http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/evolution-fact.html
It's been a long proven fact that species evolve within their species; one species does not evolve into another completely separate and distinct species. Other scientists laugh at Bill Nye. He's a television personality that conducts rudimentary children's experiments for entertainment. He is not a scientist. He has an engineering background not a science background.
He should go quietly back into his hole and not speak on subjects that he has no qualifications to be speaking on. His biggest mistake is to portray personal belief as fact; no real "scientist" would ever do this.
Perhaps in a micro scale. Over millions of years creatures do evolve. Please explain dinosaurs, Neanderthals, and the many different rsces of humans. If Adam, Noah, and the others represent the complete history of humans wihtin the past 10k years, where did all of these very differnt people (who by the way have become optimized for their habitat) come from?
Wrong on all counts.
True. There's plenty of evidence that evolution occurs within a species (microevolution), but no conclusive proof that one species can evolve into another (macroevolution). Most evolutionary biologists claim they're both one and the same when in fact they're not. That would be like an attorney arguing that killing in self-defense is the same as first-degree murder. Are they both killing? Yes, but do they both qualify as murder? No.
I think his main point is- People should stop brainwashing their kids-give them the freedom to form their own world view as they grow up.
That is simply untrue. Scientists absolutely believe that both microevolution and macroevolution exist.
Macroevolution is no different from microevolution. Macroevolution is simply a buildup of microevolution, that occurs over millions of years.
Eventually, after a certain amount of mutations, speciation (creation of a new species) occurs. When 2 individuals that belong to these 2 different populations mate but cannot successfully reproduce, that means there has been speciation.
Macroevolution is universally accepted by scientists, and it's sad that you're so misinformed that you believe otherwise.
What if "creation" WAS the Big Bang and evolution the natural outgrowth of the event? Anything that could go about the process of creating an entire universe ought to make one hell of a ruckus, and what happened afterward then flipped the evolutionary switch to 'on' and a few million years later, bingo-bango-bongo, here we are. I think science should tread lightly on their treatment of the creationists, although they may have opinions that run counter to fact, telling someone they're stupid is no way to win an argument. Of course, the young-earth creationists are still batcrap crazy.
I agree
Yet most Christians think the world is a few thousand years old.
I deny the existence of "Creationists". My faith says that it is not possible for a human being to possess a brain and still be that ignorant. "Creationists" do not exist. I don't care how much many "polls" and "facts" are presented supporting their existence. My faith says this is not possible. How hard is that to understand?
.... then your faith is idiotic because its foundation is Denial.
God created it. Fact.
Lots of evidence. Open your eyes, Nye. CNN, please interview the scientists on both sides of this issue for further journalistic endeavors here. Thanks,
No evidence to support your imaginary friend creating anything.
There are no legitimate scientists that don't except evolution.
What are the facts?
Fact: There is ZERO evidence to prove Creationism. NONE. See how that works?
All I know is this; I have a biology degree and have studied for a master's degree in zoology and am still not convinced that everything can be explained by evolution. Why? Because during my studies I've seen numerous facts and scientific laws that seem to contradict evolution, and when I ask my professors about it they either can't explain it or use some sort of circular reasoning to try to explain it. Unlike most of my professors and classmates I didn't take it all on blind faith. Most scientists are quick to question everything that has to do with God or religion, so what's wrong with applying the same analytical thinking to science?
'Because during my studies I've seen numerous facts and scientific laws that seem to contradict evolution'
such as?
Harry potter destroyed voldemort because it says so in the book. It happened. No proof of it but you cant disprove it. Im right you're wrong. blah blah blah blah i cant hear you
What amazes me is the United States is no different then the Muslim countries fighting over who's God is greater.
Every culture has a creation story, Adam, Eve, and the fruit of the forbidden tree happens to be the one that stuck in the Christain faith, lifted whole from the more ancient Jewish faith. Interesting to note that the only reason childbirth is so painful is because she did not take directions very well.
@Fladabosco – You need to read a bible. 1st Commandment – You shall not have no other gods before me. 2nd Commanment – (This is where you are wrong) – You shall not make for yourself any idol (to worship) in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them or worship them. You can have faith and believe in the Big Bang (Dirt Ball in the Sky) even though some of the science doesn't add up (where did the dirt ball come from and how did it get so big without exploding much sooner – Our math doesn't support that). We haven't even figured out why the Universe is still expanding faster instead of slowing like math says it should.
Or you can choose to believe in the Man in the Sky which at least tells us to treat each other nicely the way we would want to be treated. What ever way you choose it is still a leap of faith. If you believe in Evolution then it is chaos and still every man for himself and get as much loot as you can before you die just like much of the Middle East.
Well of course it is survival of the fittest. Look at the 1% crowd.
Actually math IS the very reason we know the universe is expanding. Scientists have open minds and that's the way it was figured out. They THOUGHT it should NOT be expanding faster, but the math and common sense from observation proved that it is.
Silly Christians.
Although there is a lot of overlap, "Christian" does not equal "creationist".
I'd rather be a silly Christian and believe in God and die only to find out He doesn't exist, than to be a smart athiest who denies and offends God and die only to find out He's real...
Michael: "I'd rather be a silly Christian and believe in God and die only to find out He doesn't exist, than to be a smart athiest who denies and offends God and die only to find out He's real."
This is another tired repeti.tion of Pascal's Wager - thoroughly refuted since the 17th century.
- What if the real "God" is Allah, or Vishnu, or Zeus, or Quetzalcoatl, or any of the other of thousands which have been dreamed up over the centuries? Some of them are very jealous and vengeful and will relegate you to nasty places for not worshiping them. You'd better cover your butt by believing in ALL of them and fulfill their wishes and demands.
- What if the real "God" prefers those who use logic and reason and punishes you as a silly sycophant?
- What if the real "God" detests those who believe something just to cover their butts in eternity?