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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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I wish that humankind could throw off the shackels of religion once and for all. so that we may continue to evolve.
Anyone who truly still believes in that BULL. shows their lack of an evolved intellect.
Evolution is a theory. Science changes from generation to generation. Today's scientific fact is tomorrows error. Theory is not fact. Belief is not a fact. The only fact that anyone can know for sure is the "I Exist" everything else is either a delusion or pure conjecture. People of science who "Know" what others should know are fools of the moment because as soon as science is sure of their fact the facts change. On the other hand people of religion who are "Sure" that their belief is the only one are just as wrong. If you are a scientist there are still too many questions unanswered to affirm that any fact is eternal. and if you are a person of faith it is for God to make the final decision on who is right and who is wrong so just believe and be content. To me science is the way god allows us to understand a portion of what he does until he is ready for us to get the whole picture. If you people that expound the THEORY of evolution know for sure there is no god then you need say nothing. Yours is not to condemn but to explain and if people don't like your explanation that is their right. Please respect that as you wish your beliefs to be respected.
It is 'shackle' not shackel. or did you mean 'shekel' as in $$?
I LOVE YOU, BILL !!!!!!
The reason creationism isn't good for children is because it's centered on one big silly concept. That if they somehow prove evolution is false, then it makes their claims of God more likely.
News flash. It doesn't.
Ideas and concepts are proven on their own accord, not by destroying alternative viewpoints.
Children need to understand that ideas need evidence to be accepted, not simply the last remaining idea.
So, to the creationists out there I have a challenge...
"Ok, let's say for the sake of argument that evolution is 100% wrong. Now go and prove creationism."
Agreed and whenever you ask a believer to provide evidence of their theory, they can't so they just turn around and point out flaws (real or imagined) in yours.
Please provided me with your proof that we all evolved from nothing. I notice that all of you brave atheists in your comments are only attacking Christians, why don't you also attack Muslems after all they believe in God? I do not have enough faith to be an atheist. It is by faith that I believe in God just like it is by faith that you believe in evolution.
Nope. I'm pretty confident that 'faith' is not a function of empirical science. I'm equally confident that evolution has sufficient supporting factual data, that I can 'believe' it to be true, and be on solid intellectual ground.
I'm just surprised that some cultist hasn't introduced The Book of Dinosaur into the mass delusion.
CRay: CNN has published several stories regarding athiests attacking Islam, and Judaism. Did you skip over those, or do you just like to feel persecuted?
Mr Nye - The article says that you're in the minority for believing in evolution. MAYBE IT'S BECAUSE YOU'RE WRONG! I don't have enough faith to believe in evolution–it's always sounded like a ridiculous theory. I'll just stick with common sense and believe God created it all.
You think you need faith to believe in evolution but yet you don't feel the same about your imaginary friend god. Faith is belief without evidence, there is evidence for evolution, there is no evidence for your imaginary friend!
Or, put another way, "science is to hard for me, so I'll continue to believe in my sky-fairy".
Ok, what created God? why is the uneven suffering?
You mean common nonsense- THAT'S Creationism.
Tom again proves that religion is a crutch for the weak minded.
Truth isn't decided upon by a democratic vote.
This is what is scary about the world today. People are too lazy to find out the truth. They settle for what is easy, and take the easy way out. This doesn't just pertain to whether you believe in evolution or creationism.
Once something gets hard, people give up!
So, modern medicine is to complicated to grasp, so you will settle for faith healing, huh.
Only in the US (and Turkey and few other countries) are those that accept evolution in the minority. World wide evolution is overwhelmingly accepted. See the graphic here.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/bigphotos/21329204.html
That's what makes it so disturbing: the citizens of a country that put a man on the moon, invented the IC, etc, etc, can be so backward.
"Tom: "God created it" is the common sense argument?
Saying science is a more experienced answer than God < Chicken Sandwiches against Gay marriage. I love the USA!!!
I am sick of people saying that religious people are stupid.
One of the most creative and intelligent minds of the 19th century was Fyodor Dostoevsky. He was big on religion and immortality. In fact half of you idiot atheist on this blog don't have the mental capacity to read a dostoevsky novel. Whom educated people worldwide consider the greatest novelist of all time.
"Dostoevsky gave me more than any scientist has ever given me" – Albert Einstein
"Dostoevsky has taught me more than any psychologist has" – Frederick Nietzche"
But religious people ARE, by and large, stupid.
I love how people fail to comprehend what would have happened if people like that had of admitted to disbelief back then...nothing quite like signing your own death warrant!
stupid, no. delusional, yes.
religious people are some of the smartest people in the world but they still believe in a magical sky fairy and in the wors of a bronze age story book written by goat herders with no concept of science. Delusional.
so just because a person is atheist...that makes him automatically intelligent. LOL come on now. The only true way of measuring intelligence is through literature. Dostoevsky is one of the best. He is very religious. Tolstoy is one of the best. He is insanely religious.
@swordfish
Sorry, but multiple studies have found that, for the most part, non-religious people are more intelligent than religious people. Why do you think the most religious and poor states do so bad academically? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religiosity_and_intelligence
Believing in a system that was created by stone age men sitting around a fire telling fairy tales to scare kids and keep people in line, that was propagated by men who learned to write, and that was based on making a class of "preists" and holy men that could get money for doing nothing and that could dictate how olthers should live and molest boys and girls is stupid. There is no other word for it. Taliban, Tea Party, Evanagelical or Sharia, its about money, power and haves and have nots. Dont kid yourselves.
Science has done absolutely nothing for society. It has prevented diseases yes...but you can also says science has helped invent and spread disease from person to person. Technology does not make people more smart. Instead it makes people more lazy. That's why i refer to Dostoevsky and Tolstoy. because 150 years later their books are still insanely relevant to our everyday life. So life does not change as much as you atheist and scientist tend to preach. Your everyday life problems are the same today as they were 150 years ago. This BS about the generation gap and how people today are so much more smart than people from 150 years ago is dumb. In fact my honest opinion people today are more uneducated and more uninformed than ever.
its funny how people bring up money when it comes to religion. I wonder how much money Bill Nye made LOL
So how about all the brilliant atheist authors, like Anton Chekhov, Ibsen, W. Somerset Maugham and Albert Camus (and countless others)? Your argument is ridiculous.
my argument is that people should not dismiss a person's intelligence just because he/she is religious. And not a single person will tell you Chekhov is a better novelist than Dostoevsky or Tolstoy. Don't get me wrong he was good but a fly compared to what Dostoevsky did for the world of literature.
swordfish: Studies are indisputable...it is a proven fact that believers tend to be less intelligent than non-believers.
"In 2008, intelligence researcher Helmuth Nyborg examined whether IQ relates to denomination and income, using representative data from the National Longitudinal Study of Youth, which includes intelligence tests on a representative selection of white American youth, where they have also replied to questions about religious belief. His results, published in the scientific journal Intelligence, demonstrated that Atheists scored an average of 1.95 IQ points higher than Agnostics, 3.82 points higher than Liberal persuasions, and 5.89 IQ points higher than Dogmatic persuasions."
every society, country, nation, and community in the world has its share of educated and uneducated people. Religion has very little to do with how smart a person is or how smart a person can be. bringing up some study you found on the internet does not automatically dismiss the intelligence of religious person. You tend to speak for all atheist as if all atheist are scientists, engineers or rich and/or have stress free lives.
and just because a poor person resorts to religion does not make religion the reason he is poor. nor does it make the reason a region on this planet is poor.
Swordfish, please get off of your computer, turn off your lights, and leave your home. Don't take the car, stay off the concrete, do not use your debit/checking card or even cash, take off your clothes, do not eat any foods that have been processed or packaged, or anything from a grocery store.
All brought to you by SCIENCE!
"The only true way of measuring intelligence is through literature."
Says who?
"Science has done absolutely nothing for society"
Wow. What an incredibly dumb statement.
Disagree. I teach both science and religion(Catholicism in my case) to my kids.
I also introduce other religions to them.
However I teach them to think and feel for themselves.
I told them I'm not sure if God really exist.
I alwaystell hetm that don't just blindly take what school teachers, Sunday school teachers, or I say before think for yourself.
My kids got almost 100% on Sceinece SOL test this year.
Dear evolutionist or atheist, if you are so smart and educated, please explain the origin of life.
BTW, please don't use Richard Dawkins answer by saying that an alien from another galaxy must have brought life to earth. Unless you really believe everything Dr. Dawkins says.
Origin of life on Earth? Brought from outerspace is one possible explanation.
I don't believe everything Dawkins says. My religion is Catholic.
Agree, as long as you don't use Genesis as your source....Lets start....
Dawkins mentioned panspermia as a plausible explanation, that's all. Ironically, the only books I am aware of that makes ridiculous assertions about the origin of life popping into existence are the Torah and it’s derivatives, the Bible and Qu’ran.
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.
The Christian sky-fairy is being pinched out! There’s not a lot of room left for him now. The pincers of science are closing in from both sides, squeezing out the phantom of religion and ignorance. Soon, the two sides of the pincer will meet and this unnecessary holdover will have to flutter off and find another dark corner to settle in, where the penetrating light of science and knowledge has not yet shone. Fortunately, the weak, forgiving mind of the believer will always be there for him, acting as an eternal refuge from enlightenment and advancement.
Dear Ken, please explain the origin of god. Thanks.
You've already removed one possibility just like you remove all other religions but yours. You don't deserve an explanation because you have tunnel vision. And if by chance someone were go give an accurate explanation, you would dismiss it because you already have a preconceived notion of how life started.
Creationists disbelieve Science............that alone tells you everything you need to know about them.
I wish I could like posts.
That statement is a huge generalization, and huge generalizations is what causes these conflicts in the first place...
Bill Nye is not good for kids, if he's telling parents that they shouldn't explain something to their kids that they know to be true. Nope – Bill Nye is not good for kids at all.
How do parents KNOW that creationism is true?
The Bible?
On the same amount of evidence, i could teach my kids that you can walk through brick walls at London train station and head to a magical school.
So, let children believe in the stork instead of natural childbirth. But, that's OK, it's the belief of their parents.
For years Einstein thought that the universe was the same size. It took someone else to show him that he was wrong...He even accounted for a constant-sized universe in his theory of relativity...
No offense but using the Bible as evidence that something is true is the equivalent of using something you saw in a Harry Potter movie as scientific proof that something is possible. Just because it is written in the Bible is not sufficient evidence. You need actual evidence to prove something – like you know how fossils prove that dinosaurs existed. That's how science and evidence works.
Or, if you're at the end of your grant, and you say, need money to keep eating...you make up new claims and "assertions" to make sure you get another grant, so you can keep eating. This is called the business of science people. The same people who shoot down religious based knowledge are the same people who lap up everything the scientific community spews out; you’re just as bad and stop trying to convince yourself otherwise.
True, if it were just one book, one writing, but whne yo have over 25,000 writings outside of the Bible backing up the Bible then it tends to lend credibility. where as Socrates only had about 7 writings outside of his works, and yet many people tend to belive him without question. Evolution is called a theory for a reason, its just that.
25,000 writings that back up the Bible?
I call shenanigans
Well I'm sure the various monks and theologians of the Catholic Church have managed to write 25K 'writings' that reference their god and/or the bible in the last 2000 years or so. Don't really see how the number of writings is relevant when they all have the exact same source evidence: the Bible/Jesus teaches...
You guys keep using the word "theory".
I do not think you know what it means.
The definition of FAITH is the lack of critical thinking.
Religion is just like a PENIS, please don't whip it out in public. and please refrain from shoving it down my child's throat.
Only a qu eer would make a statement like that. Qu eers the people that gave AIDS to the world.
LOL
I love your response!! And I totally agree with you! And for the record, I don't think you are qu er, but I don't care if you are. An intelligent mind is an intellignet mind. Too bad Bill Nye doesn't have one.
pervert alert,
Heteros are spreading it. They have a LONG list of diseases that they spread.
The difference between you and me is that you think calling someone gay is insulting to them.
Pervert Alert,
No, monkeys were what gave AIDS to the world.
Why can't the scientists think about it this way.
Did God say in Genesis that a DAY was 24 hours? No. I think that God did create the earth but the DAYS were a bit longer than we think of now.
Scientists, Athiests, Leftists – just because conservatives are conservative does not mean that you need to change us. Leave us alone.
fine, but lets keep this straight.
when more and more evidence amounts to support the non-existence of God, you can't switch sides.
Deal?
It is the conservatives and evangelicals who need to take your advice. Please stop trying to codify your religious beliefs through civil legislation.
Think of the biblical "days" as eras or ages.Makes a little more sense than a simple 24 hour day.
Because it's stupid. Either the Bible is true or not. This is just an example of trying to fit a fairy tale to the data. You can't without turning somersaults.
I disagree. The hebrew term for a literal 24 hour period is "yom". That's what God inspired Moses to write in the book of Genesis. Scientists like to marvel at themselves and their "wisdom." Anyone who disagrees with their superior minds are gullible and uneducated. They in essence, have replaced God and think of themselves as god...
@correctly.
so please answer me with yes or no:
do you doubt science?
I believe that many say it is 24 hours based on the words used in the earliest manuscripts. However, the earliest manuscripts are STILL translations that had gone through perhaps hundreds of transcribings and translations, and people – even to this day – have the tendency to replace words that they don't think make sense with words that they feel are more logical (see: so many bible translations that have different meanings)
Example: The story of a camel through the eye of a needle. The suggestion is that the Greek word kamilos “camel” should really be kamêlos, meaning ‘cable, rope’, as some late New Testament manuscripts have. But even then this doesn’t solve the issue at all. I suppose a rope is smaller than a camel, but you’re still not going to get a rope through the eye of a needle.
Now, if you were a transcriber and were reading this, and the original text that you are transcribing said "kamilos", but you suspected that it meant "kamêlos" because it made more sense, and you thought that someone else had made a mistake in the past, you would be tempted to "correct" the error. It's possible that someone in the past said "well, a day is 24 hours, so let's just use that word for it" and generations of people got confused...
It does not matter how long a day is. It took a longer "day" to create earth than the rest of the universe. That makes no sense at all. You can't wiggle out of that.
To "CorrectlyCenter: I disagree. The hebrew term for a literal 24 hour period is "yom".
Actually, we don't have the words that Moses wrote. We have transcribed copies that went through many, and perhaps many uninspired, hands on the way down the line. One could have easily thought that "yom" made more sense and "fixed" whatever the original was, thinking that they were making a proper adjustment.
So some people write a story in a book long ago which gets morphed, twisted, and rewritten over the ages to what it is today and you just take it at face value believing everything you read as 100% fact because it's written on those pages?
Sorry Sparkdad, but that is NOT what is implied in the bible at all. I talked with a friend mine, who was an orthodox Jew, and has the Talmud in the original Hebrew. The first days of the bible are defined as that "the sun set and the sun rose and it was a new day". One rotation of the Earth, not millennia of time passed.
Science is able to record that the Earth's rotations are slowing down, NOT speeding up, due to tidal interactions with the Moon. Projecting back in time, means that the when the Moon formed from the collision of Theia with the Earth, a day was only 18 hours long, if that.
we will gladly leave you alone, but please, do the same for us. stay out of the school books, stay out of our government, remember separation of church and state. pay your taxes if you are going to involve yourself in governmental affairs. you as a single person as long as you pay your dues(taxes) have every right to vote or complain, whatever. but as a religion, you have no place telling your stories and having your people vote for whom you want to forward your agenda. not everyone thinks the same about if there is a god or if your way is the right way. remember that jesus, the jew in your books, was a liberal and i think you would be throwing stones at him if he were to come back today. your christians sure don't practice what you preach.
To EricNoot:
14 ¶And God said, Let there be alights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for bsigns, and for cseasons, and for days, and years:
15 And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so.
16 And God made two great lights; the agreater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the bstars also.
17 And God set them in the afirmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth,
18 And to rule over the aday and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good.
19 And the evening and the morning were the fourth day.
Um...how could the sun have set and then risen in the first days if the day/night cycle wasn't created until the fourth day?
Again...he may have the "original" language, but:
The oldest surviving Hebrew Bible manuscripts date to about the 2nd century BCE (fragmentary), the oldest record of the complete text survives in a Greek translation called the Septuagint, dating to the 4th century CE (Codex Sinaiticus) and the oldest extant manuscripts of the vocalized Masoretic text upon which modern editions are based date to the 9th century CE.
In other words, if Moses lived about 1300 BC, then the text had been handed down for over a thousand years. In other words, it would be comparable of having a history text now, and taking it literally, that was written in about 900 AD...and we've all seen the "literal" maps and literature from those dates, that were created by actual eyewitnesses and cartographers.
Not disputing existence or methods, just saying we should keep an open mind about where and when these things came from.
The problem is many Christians take 1 day to equate 24 hours as we know them. In Islam this is acknowledged not to be the case so 6 days means 6 time periods not actual days.
I have one simple question, assuming we evolved from one-cell organisms, where did they come from?
from the possible 'big bang' spreading components of life across the entire universe. ours, of which, we were created happened to end up on this mass of materials that rotates around a light/heat source just far enough away to support life.
its all luck.
That's a great question! It's called "abiogenesis," and it's an extremely fascinating field with a number of really smart scientists looking for possible answers. I suggest you read up on it!
We are working on it through scientific exam, not “Simon says”
Life as WE know of it anyway. Who knows, there might be other life forms out there on planets with differnt types of suns, other types of atmosphere, maybe even based on something other than carbon... Religion can't answer those questions, but science, ever so slowly, is plugging away at the answers.
it's been found that the components for life exist on many asteroids just floating through space. no, not single celled organisms, I'm talking about the stuff you need to bring those kind of things to be. Earth is just one planet hit by these types of rocks. and, as has already been said, other components come from material that make up stars and such. stars explode and cast out material. we all have material/atoms in us that came from stars. it's scientifically sound.
The organic soup, Joe. Molecular biologists have already figured out how to assemble, piece by piece, a life form from scratch. If mere humans can figure it out, there's no magic in it.
Joe,
Proteins and amino acids from organic material combined in the warm oxygen rich sludge a few billions of years ago. Eventually, Ribonucleic Acids formed from these protein-amino acid sludges. Over millions of years, the Ribonucleic acids developed in dioxi-ribonucleic acids while other proteins and amino acids integrated with these genetic codes to form sub-cellular mechanisms, such as ribosomes and mitochondria. Eventually, after millions upon millions of years, these sub-cellular structures consolidated under one set of genetic material and began to multiply as one unit... hence the first single celled organisms.
Nobody in the scientific community would attempt to prove that the hand of God is not a part of this process. One could easily argue that God is in all of the laws of physics and nature that we are still discovering to this day. The argument science is making is that the concept that "poof!" we're all here! is just absurd.
Personal feeling is that God created life, but he also uses the materials at hand. Someone said that "we" are experimenting with creating life from sludge...I like to keep my mind open as to HOW he did it, because I'd rather not wind up in front of him one day with a false, pre-conceived notion of how he did it to the point where I look at him and say "no you didn't! You did it this other way!!!"
Some christians believe they never evolved, I'd have to agree. Wish they would though and join civilized man.
@truth...
nope
So nothing suddenly became something and that turned into a monkey that turned into a person. Very scientific, Bill.
@devara: READ
A
SCIENCE
BOOK.
Your ignorance on the theory of the big bang and evolution is astounding
sorry you were mistreated as a child.
holy crap. this is alarming.
You forget the span of time it took me to make this happen – 4.5 billion yrs, ever thought of that figure. Your stupid Creation god thinks he did this in 6 days!!! He was sleeping while I toiled hard for billions of years.
And no my son, I didnot evolve monkeys into humans. I love monkeys more than Iove you, so I gave them better lives. You followers of Anti-Evolution are just thankless beings. I evolved ur brains and wired them so that u would kill each other and perish, see natural selection is my weapon!!!
@Devara, Exactly!!!! LOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
No, obviously an invisible man in the sky magically created the entire universe 6000 years ago, in a series of contradicting events, as laid out in a bronze age collection of spoken-word stories. Yeah, that sounds far more reasonable...
@WASP, read a science book? what for, for more of the same stupidity.
I know right. How dumb are these fools. Everyone knows god made us from dirt and ribs. Sheeesh
Evolution you moron. Do you even know what that word means? You are nothing but a sheep who's told what to believe. You drank the Koolaid = very sad and unoriginal. How many virgins you getting when you die??? Idiot
@Evolution God, sorry time span theory doesn't work either. Utterly ridiculous!!!!!
Didn't he get busted for making meth in airstream trailer in 2010? Just checking. I agree with him about the sciece and all, but what kind of moral authorities does CNN try to push on us? A former meth maker telling us what is good for our kids? Durrr ok..
You need to learn the difference between spoof new sites and reality.
The Holy Bible says that God has put the knowledge of his existence in every living human being. So the atheists just "choose" to reject him, angrily demanding physical proof. But your anger actually testifies to the fact that you know that he exists. And you do everything in your power to resist him.
LT,
No one is born religious.
One of the biggest sources for the creation of atheists is actually reading the Bible.
your god plays hide and seek. Odd that he only made himself known to primitive man. After all, if he were perfect, he would have made himself known across the decades of man. Not to forget the bible, the book they claimed was inspired by a god who missed perfect by light years. Such a perfect book that it requires man to interpret and translate. Then again, the bible is no different than those as Rush Lim... All fabrication of silliness.
If I believed what the bible said about that, you wouldn't have to convince me.
God isn't real. When you die, you're gone for good, not at an eternal theme park with god running the merry-go-round and grandma on the rollercoaster.
Get over it.
Your just wrong LT Im sorry but you are. Look deep down in your heart past your fears and allow common sense to rule out what you where raised in merely based on chance. If you born in the middle east you may be a sikh or a muslim a little further east a buddhist. Im sorry if no one allowed you the opportunity to understand the basic principles of evolution and science. This stuff is provable it makes sense, these books which have been retranslated and used for several different purposes since there original form are an allegory a fable. This allegory stood in the place of what we could not explain. .As time has moved us off the plains and out of caves we too have learned more than just how to cloth and feed ourselves. We have learned how to travel to other worlds. We have learned their have been countless species before man walked the earth. I understand your fears, Where are we going? What does it all mean? answer: we don't know yet and we may never know.
Here what our Forfather thought about religion (repost):
I came across a recent article of quotes from the founding fathers of the USA...this is a reasonably long read but it goes to prove that the USA is not a christian nation.
1. "Christianity is the most per.verted system that ever shone on man"- Thomas Jefferson
2. "The hocus-pocus phantasm of a God like another Cerberus, with one body and three heads, had its birth and growth in the blood of thousands and thousands of martyrs." -Thomas Jefferson
3. "It is too late in the day for men of sincerity to pretend they believe in the Platonic mysticisms that three are one, and one is three; and yet the one is not three, and the three are not one- Thomas Jefferson
4. "And the day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin will be cla.ssed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter. But we may hope that the dawn of reason and freedom of thought in these United States will do away with all this artificial scaffolding, and restore to us the primitive and genuine doctrines of this the most venerated reformer of human errors."- Thomas Jefferson
5. "There is not one redeeming feature in our superst.ition of Christianity. It has made one half the world fools, and the other half hypocrites."- Thomas Jefferson
6. "Lighthouses are more useful than churches."- Ben Franklin .
7. "The way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reason."- Ben Franklin
8. "I looked around for God's judgments, but saw no signs of them."- Ben Franklin
9. "In the affairs of the world, men are saved not by faith, but by the lack of it."- Ben Franklin
10. "This would be the best of all possible worlds if there were no religion in it"- John Adams
11. "The New Testament, they tell us, is founded upon the prophecies of the Old; if so, it must follow the fate of its foundation.'- Thomas Paine
12. "Of all the tyrannies that affect mankind, tyranny in religion is the worst."- Thomas Paine
13. "I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish Church, by the Roman Church, by the Greek Church, by the Turkish Church, by the Protestant Church, nor by any Church that I know of. My own mind is my own Church. Each of those churches accuse the other of unbelief; and for my own part, I disbelieve them all."- Thomas Paine
14. "Take away from Genesis the belief that Moses was the author, on which only the strange belief that it is the word of God has stood, and there remains nothing of Genesis but an anonymous book of stories, fables, and traditionary or invented absurdities, or of downright lies."- Thomas Paine
15. "All national inst.itutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit."- Thomas Paine
16. "It is the fable of Jesus Christ, as told in the New Testament, and the wild and visionary doctrine raised thereon, against which I contend. The story, taking it as it is told, is blasphemously obscene.”- Thomas Paine
17. "Religious controversies are always productive of more acrimony and irreconcilable hatreds than those which spring from any other cause. Of all the animosities which have existed among mankind, those which are caused by the difference of sentiments in religion appear to be the most inveterate and distressing, and ought most to be depreciated. I was in hopes that the enlightened and liberal policy, which has marked the present age, would at least have reconciled Christians of every denomination so far that we should never again see the religious disputes carried to such a pitch as to endanger the peace of society."- George Washington
18. "The Bible is not my book, nor Christianity my profession."- Abraham Lincoln
19. "It may not be easy, in every possible case, to trace the line of separation between the rights of religion and the Civil authority with such distinctness as to avoid collisions and doubts on unessential points. The tendency to unsurpastion on one side or the other, or to a corrupting coalition or alliance between them, will be best guarded agst. by an entire abstinence of the Gov't from interfence in any way whatsoever, beyond the necessity of preserving public order, and protecting each sect agst. Trespa.sses on its legal rights by others."- James Madison
20. "Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise."- James Madison
But you conveniently left out the most important quote of all of our historical texts, The Declaration of Independence were the Founding Fathers declared God to be the CREATOR OF ALL MEN.
LT,
The Declaration of Independence NEVER USES the words "God, Jesus, Christ, Christianity, or Bible".
You need to get an education. It's the same for our Consti-tution.
Wow...8,000-plus responses. A very popular subject with the Belief Blogs unbelievers.
One question...has science ever really created anything? Seems most of the scientific discoveries and theories revolve around mirroring what already happens in nature. Electricity wasn't "discovered" by anyone, it was simply proven to be harnessable for human use. Same with thermonuclear energy. Vaccines are developed to mirror the human bodies reaction to viruses by boosting the autoimmune response to an invading disease. Humans still cannot fly on their own power, but have amassed the knowledge necessary to do so with the aid of aircraft, parachutes,paragliders,etc.
Scientific discovery will never include the ability to create true organic life. That in itself is the difference in science and God.
lol.
You are on the Internet communicating with theoretically millions of people around the world.
Get SERIOUS.
You have not seen God create anything neither. Matter of fact, i'm willing to be you've never seen anything created.
Science is a technique that we use to learn about the world around us. Its purpose is not to create, but to help us understand. And it does that magnificently, more successfully than any other method yet devised.
All of the advances that you sight are a direct result of scientific inquiry, none were made by referencing a book written by bronze age middle eastern shepards
@observer......the internet is simply a result of the first "discovery" of electricity. As I said all science simply mirrors natural phenomenon.
CD, Observer is making light of the fact you are slamming science, while using science to get make your point. It's called reading comprehension.
LOL.
Get serious. Next thing you'll pretend is that lightning created the Internet.
LOL – The difference is God is pretend and all the things you mentioned are real things we've discovered we can actually use. Some of those discoveries have enabled you to log on to the internet and share your make believe world with the real world.
Actually, a scientist by the name of Craig Venter did that. He made life from scratch by assembling molecules.
Really.... really. After this guy I am getting scared. We have to do something with these schools.
This is because Science is the study of Gods Creation. I believe Science is a great tool and an important subject to be taught. but not intended to try to disprove something that Mere Human Men cannot rap there Minds around . Creation Versus Accidents. even an accident would had to have been set in motion by something created !! even the " single cell Organism " that we supposedly came from, is a form of Life, that had to come into existence at some time .
Steve I'll make it simple. If a tree falls in the woods and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound? Answer YES. no one has to be present to observe life what kind micro logic is that? There isn't some galactic overlord running the show people. Angels do not exist. Your granny doesn't look out for you from beyond the grave. There is just the here and now and thats enough for anyone.
i have witnessed creation. it is called birth. i have delivered three children into this world. it was done in my body with the sperm of my husband. does that make me god??