Creationism/Evolution Debate

[Phlegyas]

Here is a place where you can post your own philosophies and comment about others. Feel free to debate, but absolutely no flaming directed at another person.

Let's get things rolling by talking about Creationism.

I believe that the ways the Universe was created that is conveyed through religion is completely false. Especially the Bible where God made the Earth in 6 days. He supposedly made Adam and Eve then. They were already human, but this is not possible because humans evolved over long periods of time into what we now know as the human race.

[Some say, Sun Ce!]

Talking about creationism is interesting. It can be about creation, or the lack of it. It is my view that there was no creation, or beginning of time as we know it, because time is infinite in both directions. I believe that the Universe has been around for an infinite amount of time, only in different stages, with "big bangs" and "big crunches" marking the beginning and end to each stage. This does stretch somewhat into physics, but some good books to read to learn more is Stephen Hawkings, "a brief history of time" and "the universe in a nutshell"

I do think that Religion as a creating factor is somewhat bogus.....

[DianWei]

i think creationism holds more, because the idea that people have evolved completely from a series of random mistakes repeated over and over is ludicrous. A species is defined, according to what i remember from biology, an animal that can only breed within its own kind to produce fertile offspring. How probable is it that a man and women would evolve exactly simulataneously so that they would be able to breed? i know its a slow process and such, but why would these missing links go missing? Why hasnt the same "mistakes" been repeated enough for intelligent primates to evolve again?

[Lu Xun]

Creationism is quite off-the-wall in my opinion, but for many people it is easier and simple for them to believe that some being just made everything. Creationism proposes the least questions and people feel safe and comfortable with it.

I think Darwinism is just about dead on about evolution, but I'm not quite sure on "the big bang". It is the best theory I've seen on the matter, but something doesn't seem right about it.

[Phlegyas]

Yeah because what caused the big bang?

The thing that pisses me off about evolution is how it is still not taught everywhere. In the south, someplaces don't allow it. That is ridiculous in my opinion.

Note to the posters in this thread, I will change the subject of discussion after awhile when a topic has been discussed thoroughly.

[Ju Bei]

People fear and ridicule what they dont understand, so they act as f nothing exists or its "evil". We are all but dust in the wind, and thats how it will always be, time goes by people live and die, that will neer change, how things were started, nobody knows, wild guesses are put out, but, its hard to tell when something started if it existed for and infinites amount of years. I belived we evolved, but form what exactly? monkeys is what most people think. But who knows, maybe we were created by another species as perhaps a test to see if humans are fit to live and communicate with...and i do disbelieve of any one being creating the earth and its inhabitants, besides if it were true then adam and eve would have had kids then they would have had kids, and so forth and we would all be inbred, and thats not somethin id like to know if it were true...lol

[Iznoach, Legendary Dragon]

Wow, such an interesting topic. I think that both sides of this are entirely possible, and it seems that their is evidence to back up both arguments.

First, "darwinism", or "evolutionism". This is the one I tend to agree with more, because of things such as the incomplete fossil record, and lower life forms that share many traits with humans. The living evidence of the primate family and specifically chimpanzees is right on. Also, I've read several articles over the years showing how minor mutations in the genes of animals brought about by such things as environment, weather, other species (predators, plantlife) could explain the evolution of humans. Such as, over millions of years, as humans evolved bigger brains, we developed societies to protect the human young. The young infants had to be born really early in the developmental process to allow them to be born before the head was too big, so they hadn't developed survival instincts and therefore must be protected. That's why other animals can walk after a few minutes of being born, and humans generally take almost a year before they truly become bipeds. (I think I read it in "Jurassic Park" or "The Lost World", but I'm not sure). For me, simply too much evidence to ignore, and that's why I believe in Darwinism.

Next, "Creationism". I'd like to say that I believe in a higher power, but it really relies a little too much on "faith" for me. I'm one of those people who need to see something to believe in it, and Darwinism provides way too much evidence for me to believe that God just created two perfectly evolved humans and placed them in Baghdad a few thousand years ago...it just doesn't hold water for me. That's all I'm saying on the subject of creationism, because I don't wish to offend anyone.

[Phlegyas]

If you have already talked about creationism, here is another topic:

I read the most interesting article a little while back.

It was about a man named Stephen Wolfram. He began to explore a type of computer program called a cellular automaton in the early 1980's. It typically consists of a row of black and white pixels on a computer screen-the "cells"-and a simple rule for transforming that row into a new one. A rule might go like this: If a pixel in a given position is flanked by pixels of its opposite color, reverse its color when drawing the corresponding pixel in the next row; if not, keep it the same. By automatically applying the rule on each row as it moves down the screen, the computer builds up a pattern of remarkable complexity. Some of the automaton looked like some things in nature. "Could it be that natural systems work in a similar way?"

He began to explore hundred of different automatons and was astonished because the patterns resembled all sorts of scientific phenomena-the subatimic trails emerging from a particle accelerator, the diagrams of curved space-time that arise from Einstein's equations, the spread of evolutionary changes in organisms through time, the graphic equivalent to different kinds of mathematical logic. Wolfram said that science had been heading in the wrong direction for 300 years and should not be trying to write complicated equations, but rather very simple ones.

Question is: Do cellular automata merely resemble rather than describe the world?

I thought this was really cool. What if nature was made in this method. What are your thoughts?

[Guest]

If nature was made in that method, then who or what would be running the cellular automaton............... god?u

[Phlegyas]

No one needs to run them. It is sort of that infinity in both directions idea. The rules for the automata are part of the existing.