I just would like to say something about what the bible says.

The bible never estimates. People estimate what the bible might have been saying. The bible says nothing about evolution. Usually when a book of such importance like the bible comes along and I read it. I understand it does not give all the answers. My theory's on what the bible might mean could be wrong. I take it like this though. If the bible does not clearly state it then maybe it doesn't matter. Just a thought. Take it or leave it.

Love you all my collegenet cohorts.

Science is definitely onto something, but I think that although there are scientific theories and findings, people should not take that as the absolute theory.

In many ways, science actually complements Christian teachings. Just because our DNA is nearly identical to a monkey's doesn't necessarily mean we evolved from them. Think about it. Intelligent design. We could've easily all been created similarly from one design that just worked. Who said we had to evolve? Just like everything is made from the same elements and compounds, we could be made from the same things but still be separate entities in our own right.

Abiogenesis is something one has to be familiar with when studying biology and evolution. It is a chemical theory as to how living things came from inanimate matter. Basically it says that the spontaneous generation of life simply occurred from a series of coincidences over a long period of time. This along with many theories really have no more truth to it than what the Bible and other religions teach.

I think that before we even address this question however, we should lay down our criticisms of any organization be it scientists, researchers, or religious organizations and just focus on findings. It is easy to find faults in any group of individuals by nitpicking controversies and mistakes that they have made over time. Let's focus on the actual arguments rather than what mistakes the Catholic church or whatever other organization has made over time.

In response to yeager_meister90's last post, I honestly didn't think we were getting carried away with this debate, and I also didn't think my original post was insulting. It certainly wasn't intended to be. I was voicing my opinion on the issue and giving evidence to back it up. If he doesn't agree that my evidence is relevant, that's fine. He should counter it. That's how debates work. I agree with him that eyeswideshut should not have said what he said, however. It was rude and out of line.

yeager_meister90's last statement said he didn't agree that human evolved from whatever they evolved from "and that's the end of it". Well if he finds it insulting to even hear the other point of view, then why did he start this forum topic? Did he think everyone would agree with him? Kind of immature if you ask me.

1st of all backstroke... yeager is a lady... 2nd of all I've now decided to continue this debate. I am not insulted to hear anyone's point of view. That's why I asked the question. I know I said everyone but that was because I was addressing a few people who felt like I think they're going to hell or I was rude or that I thought I was so righteous yada yada, I didn't think it got out of control but some people felt like I was rude to them I guess. If you didn't tell me the earth's been around for billions of years or tell me what evolution was, like everyone who's gone to elementary school already knows, or call me a religous hag, which I'm not even really, I was not telling you that I also felt insulted. Automatically it semmed that everyone felt like I was stupid and had the brain of a 7 year old because I didn't agree with humans coming from whatever species they came from.
Backstroke you had a very intelligent argument. Your comment was appreciated.

Claire* you rock girl! and I just got to say that I love you all too!

So i am to understand that you are not going to link a website with pictures of the ark?

Thats a shame. Kinda selfish if you ask me. I mean, someone found the ark, which would prove that at least one of the stories in the old testament is true, and by association affirm the rest of the stories, and you are going to keep it to yourself? Pity.

Either your selfish, or there really is no ark. One of the two.

Eyes:
I can't believe you've never seen a picture of the excavated ark. Geez dude, have you been living under a rock? Here's your picture. You can thank me later...

Noah's Ark

Y-M:
I was responding mainly to the tone of your post. Consider comments like:


"the theory that I evolved from a monkey is pretty rediculous to me."

"I actually don't try to make up theorys like all these highly respected and intelligent scientists do"

"Just because the catholic church and I'm sure tons of other religions were proven wrong by science doesn't really mean anything to me because how often do they open their bible and study it? "

"if you can make up a theory about those things I'd love to hear it."


These sorts of comments have a implicit dismissive tone. You imply that the Bible is right, science is wrong, and that no other points of view have any virtue, and that we're all just 'inventing ideas' to satisfy our predjudices. That's called narrow minded thinking, at least in my book.

Consider how strongly you hold your beliefs about God, creation, the Bible, and so on, and consider that nearly everybody holds their beliefs just as dearly.

As such, dismissing their beliefs as fairy tales creates pretty much the same poor reaction in their mind as my ark joke. (Which I'll be the first to admit, is in pretty poor taste, but I'm sure EWS got a chuckle out of it.)

To carry that thought a bit further, I would question wether it's even productive to argue about these things in a personal manner. If you adopt a more humble tone, the discussion will surely be more productive for all involved.

That's the point I was driving at. Not that you're wrong. Not that you're silly for believing as you do. Only that any discussion of religious beliefs requires, at a minimum, a certain willingness to hear what everyone is trying to say.

Oh, and that the evolution debate is a really tired subject here. But, argue on, good people of CollegeNet, by all means...

Skater dude you are real funny with that picture...
Eyeswideshut here are a couple links for you...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Y5ORpMTebI&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgQHQ992Wnw&feature=related
www.arkdiscovery.com

yeager_meister90,

hahaha sorry for calling you a he.

You were certainly right in getting angry at those people who insulted you, and I'm sorry for bringing up the whole "the Earth has been around for millions of years" thing. I didn't mean to insult your intelligence.

Thanks for clearing up your post. Unlike eyeswideshut, you've impressed me as a respectable person, even if I don't agree with you on this issue.

Good luck in college this coming year.

backstroke48

Ok, i checked all three links, and saw little more than a shady looking hill. I'm sorry, but i dont believe that this dirt mound is the ark. Were it actually the ark, do you think it would be left as a dirt hill, or actually excavated and preserved?

No offense, but those images convince me of the finding of the ark about as much as the fuzzy images of bigfoot convince me of its existence.

And backstroke: It's rather adorable to see you continually voice your dislike for me. It reminds me of the children who told on me for being mean to them in high school. It takes me back to those days when people actually cared if you didnt like them. Thanks for the trip down memory lane, but i'm going to go back to the real world where whining about someone being mean makes no difference now.

God is the creator of everything and period. No science, neither science will ever prove where we came from.

Thankyou backstroke and goodluck to you too...

These type of threads always baffle me. Yeager - you're obviously not open to any thought aside from "GOD MADE US ALL, BIBLE IS 100% ACCURATE". No theory could change your mind otherwise. My guess is that you either made this thread to change us non believers minds or you hope that spewing your ideas in a very poor debate form will make us all run to the polls to vote for you. You get extremely upset when someone presents an idea contrary to your own. Do not assume it is an insult to your intelligence if they bring up something that you may already understand. There are a lot of people who simply were not taught things in school (I'll admit, I'm one of those people - I went to a very poor public school system and thus did not get nearly as good of an education as I wanted). Here's a tip: people have different opinions, respect them and have a spirited debate. One that springs to mind is the thread posted a few weeks ago that did go down talk about evolution, the Bible, and all that jazz. I thought that thread was a fine example of people who disagree yet debated well (it did seem to get slightly heated, but that can happen).

If what you originally stated about evolution is what you learned in school, your teachers should be fired or sent to a class to teach them about fundamentals of evolution. Saying that we came from monkeys shows that you were improperly taught the theory of evolution. While it is incredibly hard to judge tone in written debates, it seems that you have a general disregard for anything in science and again, your teachers must not have taught you what scientific theories actually are.

I was a Classical Studies major in college (classical as in ancient history - Romans, Greeks Egyptians, Minoans, Myceneans, etc) and kind of understand what it takes to have something "proven" in archaeology. The "facts" presented by that site are extremely vague and some of the metals that they have found manufactured are impossible to have made at that time (unless you're going to counter that argument with "GOD GAVE IT TO THEM"). If the Ark was actually found, it would be headlined all over the place (think of how much press those water stains that look like Mary or Jesus get, something like the Ark would be an insane discovery).

CONT
When presenting evidence, it is a good idea to supply something more than youtube videos and one website that is so biased and does not provide actual evidence. The archaeological community would go insane if a discovery from the bible was made, Dead Sea Scrolls were a huge discovery.
Personally, I believe in evolution. I was born & raised Catholic and my parents let me make up my own mind on things like this. I can't say that I really remember being taught much about evolution in school (briefly mentioned in biology). A lot of my CCD (Sunday school, but on Wednesdays) teachers (and priests) brought up that the theories of Evolution and Creationism do not have to exclude each other. If you've studied anything about the ancient languages, you know that words can have multiple definitions, different definitions, and can be incorrectly translated (or translated in certain ways to skew it more towards someone's interpretation). Don't believe me? Go look at the multiple different interpretations/translations of various Greek, Latin, Hebrew documents out there. There are by far and large certain translators that are head over heels better than others. Have you actually taken classes in Aramaic & Hebrew, Ancient Greek or Latin (not Medieval Latin) to understand the Bible in the original languages it was written in or translated into? I have taken Ancient Greek & Latin and we have several classes devoted Bible study. From the little translation that I've done, it is easy to see how much interpretative room there is. While a lot of the message is the same, the details are different.

Another lesson that was brought up by CCD: the ancients would have had no understanding of how science worked enough to understand evolution. They believed various theories about the body, continents, outer space, etc that have all been invalidated. I'm not saying that I agree or disagree with the teachings, I think they were interesting ways to handle the conflict within people when trying to reconcile the idea of evolution and what the Bible says. Catholics in general, or at least it seems to me, have a much less strict interpretation of the Bible than a lot of other forms of Christianity.

And really, I think we can come up with some more creative forums than rehashing the same debates. Abortion, Creationism vs Evolution, etc have been debated to death in the few months that I've been here....these subjects will probably be debated heatedly until the end of time.

Those videos are older than my grandma, and there's like 3 differant places they referance as being a place where the ark could be. Not a single person said "we found it" and the narrating lady sounded like the intro to one of those fanatic sites. And holy crap the comments under it are freakin awful. I thought this was a spoof video honestly.

I guess it's gonna be the thing where we all believe what we're gonna believe, since we're so dead set and faith is something that's very hard to change, and the real issue now should just be learning to respect other people for whatever they're going for. You'll never win a convert by calling them wrong, stupid, or whatever else, treating them like crap, and you'll never change a believer that way either. If you want to make a differance, just love everybody, live your life, and set an example with it. If you adore religion, live your life by it, and never try to convert anyone, even subtley, you'll win more than you could any other way.

People should want to listen to you for the benefits and good things they perceive in your life, not because you lecture at them from the pulpit of theism or atheism.

I can`t say that I believe that we were once monkeys but I do believe that we have evolved from primitive beginnings.

I`m just unclear as to what those beginnings were.

As far as I know, my ancestors were humans, either less, just as intelligent, or more intelligent than me.

But I would like to believe that we as a human race are continuously progressing towards something or someone morally and intellectually superior.

Dear, yeager_meister90
I'm going to agree you with buddy. You shouldn't believe that you share a common ancestor with monkey's because-and I mean this in the most respectful way- your idiocracy is beyond that of which I thought was capable for a human being and you probably haven't fully evolved or came from somewhere else entirely. That was too harsch and I'm sorry, but I agree with many of the previous comments. It seems to me that you really will not listen to reason. You do not have to compromise you beliefs and I don't think anyone wants you to, but you cannot talk about Religion and science in the same paragraph without having an open mind and it seems to me that you do not. It is cool that you are defending yourself and I say don't give up, but make sure you have as many facts as you can. You told Slugs to go do some research and I think that is an excellent idea for you too. The more research you do the less likely it is that people will insult you so much or maybe you'll find you are right IDK, but keep an open mind when you do it.
Jonathan David Girard

Hey, yeager meister.

Go check out my forum on "Civilized vs. Savage" if you already haven`t done so because it`s a very interesting follow-up to this forum.

And don`t forget to give me your opinion on the video.