Is there such a thing as a Christian?

Exactly.
Heeh2 is arguing not in support of evolution, but in opposition to the Christian idea of a creator and creationism. He is just looking to evolutionary theory as another weapon in the arsenal to combat the ideas he doesn't agree with.
When his premise is grounded in an effort to disprove creationism, then the whole concept of abiogenesis is at the very core of the debate. A fact that seems to allude heeh2.

 

Faith is trust or confidence in things that we believe are true more like promises(at least that is what the) (bible says )

 

Actually, I've learned alot of what I know from reading my responses and reflecting on them with regards to how they relate to me before I post them. It used to be often I would have to reform my arguments to avoid hypocrisy and as a result, I don't get emotional over facts. The idea that the universe 'cares' whether the reality inside of your head matches the one on the outside of it is unfounded. My emotion is invested in understanding, not being right or wrong.

Like the rest of your posts, this one is baseless and mostly ad hominem. You seek to enlighten me by calling me ignorant and that isn't something someone can really reflect on.

Thats exactly what i'm not saying though. That would be ridiculous for anyone to say, considering how we are here talking about this. I've explained that I think its possible life on earth was created from inanimate matter, by inanimate matter which is what the "Primordial soup" posits.

Intelligent design would only MOVE the questions about what created life on our planet to what created the life that created the life on our planet and doesn't answer anything.

The word for thinking this way is "redundant".

While i'm not saying that it didn't happen, the proposition is redundant and assuming it did happen or even proposing it is superfluous.

 

I understand your last statement.

As Steven Hawking put it, "Science can not prove god doesn't exist, but it makes God unnecessary"

 

How are my posts ad hominum attacks?
I am just responding to what you post and you do contradict yourself.

You are approaching it from the vantage point of disproving the concept of a creator, specifically Christian concept, and not from the vantage point of presenting evolutionary theory as a viable scientific hypothesis.
Those are two very different arguments.
I honestly don't understand how you cannot see that.
You have not provided any substantial evidences of a common ancestor to all life which is another basic tenent of evolution in regards to its opposition to creationism.

What I have seen is you attack Christian/Biblical ideas of creation with evolution. Then when I or others point out certain aspects that are germain to the argument in the arena which YOU have placed it in, you backpedal and try to change the tactic you use.

 

heeh2-

yes, it really does break down to a question of original origin, and there is nothing pointing in any direction as to where that answer lies.

for this reason, to me, the existence of something beyond what we can understand, that intentionally created what we experience as the universe and life around us, is just as likely as its non-existence.

this mystery is at the core of everything that is, and it serves as a bright, flashing, neon arrow, pointing directly at the weakness of the logic we humans hold so dear.

some would say to just leave it alone, but how can i?

with nothing factual or logical to go by in regards to the question of origin, does it not make sense to seek something outside of my own limited mind?

to me, this is what spirituality and religion attempt to do. i would always recommend spirituality and philosophy over religion, however, as religion is basically an elaborate method of ignoring the mystery. perhaps, in some ways, so is science-until/unless it can answer this question, of course.

 

How and why would I attempt to disprove something that has no supporting evidence?

How would the lack of proof in a common ancestor disprove all of the predictions evolution has successfully made? You are again talking about the history of evolution and not the event of it.

I really feel like ive adequately answered all of your questions, despite your greatest attempts at explaining to me how I am handling your arguments rather than what is wrong with what I explain.

The existence of an intelligent designer is equal to a total of one possibility. Consider what else is possible. Then Consider how many of those possibilities don't include an intelligent designer, which is all but one of them.

Quantum mechanics does just that. It is a question of whether our calculations are wrong, or if our minds just cannot comprehend the fabric of reality. Possibly both.

Well to me, religious people are like scientists who don't use evidence or logic at all, but hang on to theories because they were created by a certain person. And Since science is concerned with the objective universe, simply not requiring evidence is by far the worse way to gain knowledge.

All scientists revere Aristotle, Socretes, and Einstein but they don't believe the theories because of who they were. Meanwhile, if Jesus or god said we should jump off a bridge, there would be groves on theologists scrambling to interpreter the statement differently, rather than call them baseless and dumb.

"No, no, I didn't mean 'cat' when i said 'cat', i meant dog". I wonder how much of the bible god would revise if he did exist.

How will we ever know how to live with one another if we cant even accept that we all live in the same universe?

 

there are an infinite number of possibilities that could include an intelligent designer, but i do get your point.

my point is that not you, nor anyone else, can name one logical alternative. the only thing that really fits, without a creator, in a way that is even close to logical, is that everything has always been. but how?

and why/how is there consciousness?

anyways, i think we have yet again found a decent middle ground.

 

Edit:

Technically, the idea that the universe has always been is just a simpler version of "god has always been here"

It is fundamentally the same thing without god, provided its not said that the earth is 5,000 years old.

The problem (if you want to call it a problem) with logic is that it needs to be applied to what we understand.

It is in and of itself that we are reality and cannot understand it objectively because we can not separate we from we.

We are the universe thinking about itself.

There is nothing logical about the fact that we exist in the first place. We just have to accept that like gravity and electromagnetism and temperature, life (and consciousness) just exists.

We are like flowers following the sun.

 

one logical alternative to a creator as an ultimate origin.

some people can't just accept that.

like i said, we are at a point in this conversation that i don't really know how to debate.

 

I edited my post

 

You decide whether anything has to be completely evident for it to be accepted into your mind, either as conclusive objective reality or even as a question of. It's clear where you have chosen to view life from. I respect that, and it is a decently grounded position. Although I do think it is more grounded to accept that we can not know all that is going on, even on, and mostly off of our earth whatever dimensions exist. I do think it is a silly idea to take completely and literally at face value the idea of intelligent design as it seems to be presented as one large moment that created everything as it is, including human species, and all the assumptions that go along with a "God" of that type. Those assumptions casually leading into patterns such as ignorance, bigotry, misunderstanding. In relation to the main point of this thread, that could not entirely deny the positive influence religion has in people's lives.

Also in supporting the validity behind some religious teaching, hypocrisy is not a weakness but a strength. It is a weakness at the level of understanding found in many diehard christians, which is why I view Christianity as still a beneficial religion but the biggest failure in the religious attempt to place a symbol for the story of man, just because they wanted such a simple template. However look at Zen buddhism, which is atheist in the correct sense of the term, that the subject of observation is not of our origin, but the nature of the human mind, hypocrisy is a fundamental aspect of our psyche.

 

I suggest that by experiencing the psychological effects of external nature, and the depth of our mind, and with what states of mind we can be in, that we can definitely have something more than just the individual experience of consciousness in pure subjectivity. I think we are, at the core of consciousness, one with our actual origin in everything, separation doesn't exist from our subjective experience and thinking, but that is a separation, or splitting of our experience.

Meditate, eat some shrooms, drop acid, get lost in the woods. Do anything that removes all that is superfluous to direct experience.

 

Plenty of religious teachings can be backed up by science, but that isn't what atheists are mad about. Personally, I dislike the fact that people believe in the teachings because of authority rather than objectivity.

The Buddhists i have met have been more skeptical about things than a lot of self proclaimed naturalists i know. The most common error i find in these two groups though, is the faith in uncertainty. The idea that certainty isn't possible.

I can be certain that I am not certain.

"We are the universe thinking about itself" is not a subjective statement.

My point is that if we were all rocks, rather than human beings, nothing changes because consciousness is just as physical as trees are, its just chemistry.

I think psychedelic drugs are very useful in experiencing what the human condition isnt. A chance to step outside of millions of years of circumstance temporarily and really know what it is to be human afterwards.

 

i am very thankful for this site.

if i had met you in person, and we had attempted to have some of the conversations we've had on here, it wouldn't have lasted long enough for me to understand your perspective.

your idea of the nature of the universe is very close to some of the ideas i have pondered in regards to the nature of god.

one of my favorites is that the universe is currently in the process of creating this lifeform; that we are the cells forming what will eventually be a universal consciousness, or singularity. of course, this perspective only creates more questions. still, fun to ponder it.

 

Completely isn't? A lot of people, including myself, would disagree with you about that. Although it seems obvious we aren't ourselves while in psychedelic altered states, and you know your self in a different way afterward, there is a lot of experiences to support psychedelics lead you into a mostly un-experienced but still natural part of the psyche or consciousness. I have discovered as others have, and as Zen suggests in experiencing the ground of being, the ability to make useful the experience as it would relate to life. These are things discussed in great detail and without myth on the Psychedelic boards.

And I don't think I meant We are the Universe Thinking about itself as being a subjective statement, but rather that thinking in say the sense we are here now, is subjective. When we are thinking, in the sense I think you mean and even the way we do, we are making our own inferences on the philosophical answers. Aka Opinions. Which I am saying is all opposed to the experience I speak of.

And I think consciousness is phenomenon of brain chemistry, but I don't see how that refutes there being a deeply seeded core of consciousness.

edited. And regarding your dislike of that aspect of the monks. It doesn't sound like they are uncertain about things such as science, but if they chose to be uncertain it is due to their devotion to being undisturbed by any certainty, in the uncertainty of the human experience. Far different from being devoted to different and opposed certainty (theistic belief). But it seems the uncertainty I read of in Zen is mostly as uncertainty of explaining everything. After all there is suffering in uncertainty after certainty, and what is Buddhism but a guidance of thinking to understand suffering.

 

heeh2-
any thoughts on what the observer is?

 

And condition I have learned from myself is a matter of choice, or whatever chain of results occurred from your choices, perpetuating the direction to the extent of your acknowledgment.

 

Uh, the Observer sounds like a newspaper....

What is THEE observer?

 

in regards to the mind, with all of its physical chemical interactions, that which observes, or experiences, the interpreted input received by the body, and perhaps, that which makes decisions.