@Silverwings

Catch ya later🙂

@Silverwings Goodnight!🌻🤗 God bless you!

@TheOrionbeltseeker

Well DNA shows us that modern birds still possess the dormant genes of their saurian ancestors. Jack Horner has been doing experiments where he's managed to produce a chicken embryo with a reptilian snout and teeth.

[quote]The dinosaurs became extinct because they had large body to feed. The birds had small body so they survived.[/quote]


This is true and not true.
There were of course large dinosaurs which are the ones that most capture our imaginations and which are most readily preserved in fossils.
But there were also many smaller dinosaurs and some of these are the ancestors of modern birds.

@ArishMell You can try as much as you will to minimalize Christianity, but you cant do anything to minimalize the number of adherants there are to the teachings of that one solitary figure, nor the fact that the Bible is still the #1 selling book of all time, and true science will never disprove the truth of the bible.

@Silverwings

[quote]and true science will never disprove the truth of the bible.[quote][/quote][/quote]

I don't think anyone is trying to minimalize the number of people who believe in a religion or that the bible done made good sales.
But this statement is the one i;m really going to challenge you on.

This is a faith claim. It is not upheld by evidence but is in fact held [i][b]in spite of[/b][/i] evidence.

Do you have a logical, rational way to defend this position or are you happy to admit that it is just am unsupported declaration of faith?

@Silverwings Sorry, but you misunderstand me.

I know I won't convert anyone determined to regard his or her own faith as absolute irrespective of identity, theology, logic or even other sects let alone different religions. However, I am interested to know [i]why [/i]they are so determined. (Saying "Because it's in the Bible/ Q'ran/ Talmud/... and that's the word of God" is not the answer, merely repeated affirmation of belief.)


I do NOT "minimalise" ANY religion - including Christianity. However, any religion and sect is "true" ONLY to its own followers - something a lot of the more hard-line believers consistently miss or deny.

I do NOT "minimalise" ANY religion's genuine followers, but by genuine I mean including having the humility and ability to accept they cannot monopolise their own scriptures or sectarian litany as sole "truth".

If such monopoly were demonstrably possible all the many different faiths and sects invented over human history around the world ought by now have coalesced into one, uniform system, and not necessarily based on the Mosaic faith; but I do appreciate virtually all known religions have shared a few simple, basic threads.



I accept the Best Seller appellation of the Bible - it's the handbook for the world's most widespread religion. (Though Islam, which shares Christianity's and Judaism's Hebrew roots, seems to be catching up.)


I accept many Christians do cling to thinking the Bible literally true from beginning to end - some so desperately that they despise science without spotting the irony of doing so over the WWW!

I do not accept the drive by organised groups to ban teaching any science that in their [i]personal[/i] view, conflicts with their [i]own[/i] version of their [i]own[/i] religion: such groups are not theologists but amateur fascists.

I am though, interested to know the real motives of such groups, who have incidentally tried to muscle in the British education system that rightly, carefully separates theology and personal religious belief, from science.

Equally there are very many Christians, including senior clergy and other professional theologians, who do NOT take books like Genesis literally. They take them as allegory and statements of Hebrew belief, within a book whose central message is NOT to hate learning about Nature, but to accept that behind everything in Nature is an omnipotent, creative and loving God. I include three of my friends among those theologians: two vicars and a deacon - they ought to know!


And I repeat, your assertion that science cannot prove the Bible misses the point that science does not seek to attempt any such thing - but does admit the Bible cannot be proven objectively anyway! Science is not worried if some deity god made everything happen, just how it happened. It has to rise above petty sectarian squabbles, not just for academic freedom but also for collaboration between many different people of many different faiths and none.

If you are religious fine: God created everything but science then tries to understand and teach us as far as it can, HOW and WHEN.

What science shows to the open-mindedly religious is that whoever or whatever that God is, He/ She/ It is not the mere celestial conjuror wanted by Creationists, but an entity that created and continues to create, something far, far greater and more beautiful than the Genesis author [i]genuinely[/i] could have imagined.

Creationism selectively denies that full majesty and beauty we are still discovering, so its poor old God finds Himself being unthinkingly demeaned by the very people who imagine they are defending Him against those seeking to [i]understand and appreciate[/i] His Works!

So...

If God is not the hirsute naturist giant in that dotty old painting, measuring the Earth with dividers - wrong tool but pictured suspiciously resembling the Freemason's badge - is not the Creationists' magician, and takes not a literal week but so far has been calculated to have taken:

- nearly 1.5 X 10^10 years to make and run the Universe, then
- nearly 5 X 10^9 years ditto for our Solar System; then
- perhaps 4-5 X 10^8 years ditto for Life on Earth;
but then (His one mistake?)
- <<1 X 10^6 years to evolve a petulant little hominid mammal that gives itself a species name meaning "Wise" but argues bitterly about whose deity and litany are the only "true" ones, and makes a right mess of its home planet...

... well, I could almost return to my fairly loose Anglican roots and start going to Church.

Amen!

@Pikachu No I would get sick because I only sleep when I have to. I would stay up 30 hrs and sleep 5 and that would be too exhausting!

@Pikachu
I am writing a book. Are you going for a PHD? You would make a good teacher?

@Carazaa

[quote]No I would get sick because I only sleep when I have to. I would stay up 30 hrs and sleep 5 and that would be too exhausting![/quote]

lol that makes no sense.
You could just as well say that with our current system you'd stay up for 20 hours and sleep for 4. Besides, our natural sleep cycle is not actually sleeping for many hours at once. It's a sleep, wake up, sleep, wake up cycle within the 24 hour period.
Sleep schedule is what you decide. I recently went from working early morning to evening to working evening to early morning. And tomorrow i've got to switch back! lol
Sorry, this just doesn't seem to be an argument for god's design to me.

[quote]I am writing a book. Are you going for a PHD? You would make a good teacher?
[/quote]

Wicked! If you finish let me know so i can read it!

I'm deffs not going for a PHD but i would make a good teacher. I'm good at teaching at least in an unofficial capacity.

@REMsleep

If you don't mind my asking, what's your science degree in?

Do you believe that evolution has not happened at all?
If not, what limitations would you place on it?

@Pikachu I am a Clinical Lab Scientist. I was also originally trying for other programs so I also took a bunch of upper level science not related to that degree.
I believe that adaptation has happened, mutations of course happen
There are gaps in the theory/facts known and generally we tend to make leaps to close those gaps.

@REMsleep

In your opinion, what is the worst gap in the theory of evolution?

@Dragonfly

Thanks for saying that because that's really my purpose here and i catch a lot more shit for it than i'd like lol

@Pikachu When you start preaching reason and logic, you will catch all the shit. 😄

@Dragonfly

lol it would seem

@Montanaman

[quote] Man's grasp of explanation. God's word to help him understand things beyond his.comprehension.[/quote]

I partially agree with that.
I do think that it's an attempt to explain that for which man had no explanation. I don't know that it's a god trying to explain it simplistically for us.

@Montanaman I call that fiction, even if a beautiful piece of fiction to help people understand, something.

@Montanaman It would seem ideal for the harmony to exist, but I often wonder if that, too, would lead to more problems. If the two coexist, would either be what they are today?

@DeWayfarer

Although luckily they are the powerless minority this time round.
Well, largely powerless anyway.

@Pikachu I disagree even there. This not just Christianity this time. It's Islam as well.

@DeWayfarer

Good point. I guess i should rephrase that to recognize that in western countries the church no longer holds the power it did in Galileo's time.

@Pikachu Well that ideas absurd because the devil I thought can't create anything, only God can. Though he can corrupt it I suppose.

@Lhayezee

I'm not actually super clear on what the devil is meant to be able to do on earth. My impression is that there is little biblical support that he can do anything besides tempt people.

@hunkalove LOL!

Of course you can believe God created fossils - as the traces of the mortal remains of the animals he'd created millions of years ago - but religion asks Why and By Whom, whilst Science asks How and When.

@Carazaa Science does not pretend to know all the answers, but you can't distrust or dismiss the entire field for it not yet knowing all there is to know about one topic.

If your were that sceptical about science generally you would not be here using the Internet for a start!

@ArishMell thank you for telling me, I had no idea!

@Carazaa

[quote] Here is an example of that behavior[/quote]

But did you notice the way i phrased it? "In my experience it appears..."
Not "This is the reason even if you tell me otherwise".

lol but that IS your own stated reason for rejecting evolution!

[quote]Well now I'm going to find some info on birds to try to prove some of the evolutionists wrong.[/quote]

Good luck😉

@Carazaa

[quote] it wasn't a dinosaur at all probably, but a bird![/quote]

I think this would be a hard point to communicate to you without some level of expertise in morphology and taxonomy.

To put it simply: In this fossil and others there are a number of features which do not exist in modern birds but which are characteristic of dinosaurs: A toothy skull with a reptilian snout, a long bony tail and strong claws on the forearms to name a few obvious ones.

There is no argument among paleontologists about where this animal is nested in the phylogeny. But just to assure you that this is not just a blind closing of ranks, there are indeed debates about where other animals fall (eg> archaeopteryx). So when i tell you that this microraptor is indeed a dinosaur, unless you're a paleontologist you should probably just take their word for it.

@Pikachu Oh is that what I should be doing?

@Carazaa

Well i mean not if you want to devote a great deal of time to really gaining an expertise in the field.

That's certainly the most skeptically responsible thing you could do!
But if you're like me then you mostly rely on the expertise of experts for matters with which you lack training.

All i was trying to do was to communicate that the dinosaurhood of this animal is not in question by those people whose life's work it is to determine such things. You're certainly welcome to do your own study on the matter🙂.

@Lhayezee

lol well certainly there are many unreasonable reasons to deny evolution.