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Comment count is 18
oogaBooga - 2008-06-29

My pea sized brain is very pleased by all the big words.


kelpfoot - 2008-06-29

Five stars for nearly TalkOrigins.org-quality material on YouTube.

(Needs moar citations.)


theSnake - 2008-06-29

Even if you got a creationist to sit through this and understand it, they would claim it happened because God's invisible hand stroked all those lipids and polymers into the right formations to start life.


Crucifried - 2008-06-29

Why is that so bad? If you accept all of the knowledge of science, why is believing in a supernatural power that works with those scientific theories wrong?


Mr.Graves - 2008-06-29

Because then you open the door to acceptance of all unproveables. The amount of people who follow one unproveable or another doesn't make the unproveable any more or less true. Whether 1 million people believe unproveable A or 1 person believes unproveable B, they are both equal theories that have no relation to the scientific method by the very defintion of their existence.


rustedmutt - 2008-06-29

Not to mention... who created the creator, Biblemunch?


drcrypt - 2008-06-29

I'm very much against the teaching of intelligent design in schools. I'm also an atheist. That said...

If you pull back for the macro view, neither origin answer is particularly satisfying: follow everything far back enough and you either have an invisible old man who lives on a cloud who created the universe (where'd he come from?), or the universe just sprang into existence of its own volition (where'd it come from?). The distinction is whether the origin of the universe is sentient or non-sentient. I don't find either answer any more intrinsically plausible or ridiculous.

Why I reject a sentient origin to the universe is simply because I don't -feel- that it's true, which is surely why every atheist rejects it... but I don't think it's inherently foolish to think that reality ultimately has a life or intelligence of its own that we are too small to comprehend. Ultimately, no matter how you believe the universe came to be, you are taking a leap of faith into the unknowable and unprovable, something that defies all human experience: that something can come out of nothing.

I have no problem with Christians, as long as they make the distinction that science and faith are two very different things... and only one should be taught. God may have well put everything in motion, but that doesn't change a single thing in science. God has nothing to do with science: faith is the realm of philosophy, and attempts to help us understand problems that are unprovable by science. In truth, this is the way a significant chunk of religious people feel... a chunk that is constantly drowned out by the idiots and loud-mouths.

So Mr. Graves says that we can't accept a supernatural being because it opens the door to blanket acceptance of all unproveables. I don't find that a satisfying response. "Why are we here?" is a very real problem of the human condition that science can't answer, except to describe the mechanism with great precision. Perhaps it will be able to answer that question someday. Perhaps there's no answer. But it's not reasonable to say that until science can tackle the question, we shouldn't bother thinking about it or trying to come up with answers of our own. You're basically saying: "Stop thinking about philosophy." Really, what you should be saying is "Stop thinking about philosophy as science..." which, I'm afraid to say, is something atheists are just as guilty of as Christians.


UnderANeonHalo - 2008-06-29

This was going to get 4 starred due to me having to mute that deaf bastards shitty piece but drcrypts comment alone is worth 5 stars. Well thought out and very well presented.


indierockbird - 2008-06-29

these stars are all yours, drcrpyt.


j lzrd / swift idiot - 2008-06-29

Stop getting wasted, and stop being an apologist for the Faithful, crypt, and for the love of humanity, stop doing what the I.D. people are trying to build into the collective consciousness: that we should compare the idea that GOD™ sneezed out the Universe, as opposed to the well-documented, more-than-highly-probable theory that the Universe began with a fucking explosion. WHY it began with an explosion around FIFTEEN BILLION OR SO GODDAMN YEARS AGO (to put it in terms a human mind can barely grasp by the fingernails) is a question which very smart and educated and well-paid people (Thank The Lord Humanity, Amen) are trying to answer.

YOU, are comparing current computer models of how the universe began, when the Grand Unified Force divided into its current four constituent parts, and various other brilliant modern day miracles that would make Isaac Newton and Galileo and even Einstein cry tears of joy, to... fuck it, I'm not going to get Bible History on your ass this time.



THAT IS WHAT THEY WANT, WHAT YOU DID THERE!! That is exactly what the I.D. people want; for us to think that just because busy guys in white labcoats with the FERMI-lab in France haven't calculated the home address of GOD™ yet, then WELL!! THE BIBLE® (TRADEMARK OF GOD™ & CO, LTD.) MUST BE JUST AS VALID.

NO!! STOP THAT!




I ain't callin' you out on this or anything, you're well spoken. Even after reading that TL;DR spiel, the first micro-¶ you wrote should suffice.

There is an Empty Throne, a throne we built when we were very young animals. Now, we're using science to bootstrap our species into Princedom. We should not tolerate anything that gets in the way of a rational, sensible, objective but pragmatic, and above all beneficent mindset in the way we deal with the universe around us.

And eventually, we're all going to be angels. Why not stop arguing, start acting, stop shouting and start whispering, and get our damned acts together for the sake of the oncoming and ongoing future and history? Shit. The Show Must Go On.


StanleyPain - 2008-06-29

I don't think that's what he's saying at all. He's saying there is a clear division between religion and science and neither one needs to necessarily intrude on the other. You can believe that a God set the universe in motion and still believe in science. If you think God made the universe, then God made the physics and laws of that universe. Science is an exploration of what God created. Intelligent Design is all about using religion to explain science, which is totally different. ID is all about "well, if you can't come up with a plausable explanation CONSIDER THAT GOD DID IT END OF STORY STOP BOTHERING TO USE SCIENCE HERE". And THAT'S what ID is. ID is a clever ruse to slowly insert creationism into schools and is very different from someone saying "I believe in God and I believe God has a design for the universe, but I also think science is the tool to understanding his creation."


Crucifried - 2008-06-29

I forgot to five star this the first time around, so I'm doing it now.

drcrypt and StanleyPain are both saying what I was getting at in my original comment. Science and Religion/Spirituality are not mutually exclusive, but they can't be used to explain each other. However, saying "I believe god created the universe" is not the same thing as saying "I believe god created the universe as it is right now, and nothing science has to say will change that belief." Spirituality is an attempt to answer unanswerable questions of "Why". They are a personal belief of the meaning and workings of the world. Science is an attempt to answer rationally explained and answered questions of "How". Intelligent Design is the mixing of the two, saying that something that we have proven time and again is false because of a personal belief.

I believe in a supernatural power. I believe it shapes and forms the universe for purposes I can never comprehend. Luckily I can comprehend how the world it created works, and to deny that Evolution or Big Bang or any other thing doesn't exist is to deny the wonderful complexity of the supernatural essence of the universe, if one believes in a supernatural essence.

There is a very real danger in lumping people who thing like I do, wether atheist, agnostic or spiritual, in with ID people. You do a disservice to the cause of forwarding rational, scientific thought when you act like anyone not completely against religion is going to make Jesus the next Secretary of Education. Instead of attacking a small, ignorant few, you are attacking a large, sometimes very intelligent many, and bringing the fight to a boil.


Mr.Graves - 2008-06-29

Crypt, to start, I'm not an athiest, although I'm not sure you were referencing me at the end of your statement.

Secondly, your assessment isn't exactly accurate. I said nothing about the question. The question being 'why are we here?' or some such. The unproveable is the answer. Like Abiogenesis and evolution, to say the answer isn't a satisfying question, it's not logical.

Further, unproveables remain unproveable, so technological advances have no effect on them. If something eventually becomes proveable or not, then it never was an unproveable, it was simply out of our range of knowledge at the time.

Finally, unproveables have no relation to science because the entire basis of the scientific method is accurate reproduction of the methodology of proof, which would make an unproveable concept solely the realm of faith and belief.

To recap: Asking the big questions about why are we here and such is perfectly fine, in fact one of our greatest drives.

Leaving the answers to faith and belief, is little more than nice words for collective insanity. Religious faith has all of the qualities of a diagnosis of schizophrenia.


Vicious - 2011-01-07

Existence is like a chain of dominoes. God is the guy who knocks the first domino over.


JackDenials - 2008-06-29

To quote Sick-boy: "Beautifully fokin illustrated!".


Mr.Graves - 2008-06-29

I follow the Black Smokers (Ocean floor volcanic) theory of the origin of life, it works perfectly with this explanation as well.


Shion - 2008-06-29

That was pretty damn interesting. It makes sense to me, although I'd need to follow up with the current papers in the field, which I'm sure are well above my head (which is I think why creationists tend to revert back to the "mud puddle" argument, thinking is HARD).

Also, DrCrypt's comment.


kingofthenothing - 2009-01-15

Who needs school when there's YouTube? I feel like "Oh! I get it!" now.


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