One can't prove that God but science makes God unnecessary

sinweiy

4 Feb 13, 15:22

Originally posted by BroInChrist:

Which is precisely my point, that inconsistent and even self-refuting statements are being made, and then excused or rationalised away as "conventional truths".

to get out of samsara, the "realm" of attachment, dualism and wandering thoughts, we need to learn to let go, detach. the dharma itself also cannot attached. we said in an analogy, when one reached the other shore, u get off the boat. the other shore represent Nirvana, the boat represent the dharma. when u cling to the boat, then u cannot achieve the other shore, Nirvana.

or Dharma can be like medicine to cure ur illness. when u are cured, u discard the medicine.

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An Eternal Now

4 Feb 13, 15:38

Originally posted by BroInChrist:

That's the problem with evolution. The evidence is so scanty that evolutionists are desperate to make a big issue out of a few pieces of bones. It makes for a great story with lots of money in it. It will usually last for a while so that they can milk it for a while. And then when it is finally revealed as just an ape, they call it still a relative of humans and look for the next thing to hype on.

So if Buddha never teach reincarnation, yet you claimed that he never rejected reincarnation, then wouldn't your belief in reincarnation be a belief resting on silence?

LOL, that was hilarious.

http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2006/04/18/kirk-cameron-in-the-evolution/ - nuff said.

Holy cow, someone posted a link to this video in a comment and you just have to see it. It’s Kirk Cameron and Ray Comfort “debunking” evolution in the most hilariously ridiculous thing you may have ever seen. Funniest of all is that they start it out by saying that they’re going to be interviewing people about evolution and you’re supposed to notice how they use words like “possibly” and “we think” and then finally “I’m not an expert”. Why is that funny? Because the people they’re interviewing aren’t experts, they’re just random people they found somewhere, most of whom are as ignorant of evolution as the hosts. But apparently it’s suspicious that random people who know nothing about evolution don’t speak with the certainty of experts or claim to be experts. Well that proves it, I’m convinced. This is a bit like going to an art school and asking them how the internal combustion engine works, edit it down to all the responses where people say things about it based on ignorance, and then saying, “See, it should be obvious that the internal combustion engine is impossible.” 100% pure idiocy.

There are lots of outright lies in the video as well. For instance, they say of Lucy that “nearly all experts agree that Lucy was just the skeleton of a 3 foot tall chimpanzee.” Really? I’d love for them to find just one expert – by which I mean an actual paleo-anthropologist – who claims that Lucy was just a 3 foot tall chimpanzee. They say Neanderthal man was a creature “whose famous skeleton found in France over 50 years ago was that of an old man who suffered from arthritis.” Yes, these people are in fact clueless enough to believe that there is only one fossil of Homo neanderthalensis; in fact, there are dozens of them. I’ll give this video 850 milli-Hovinds on the creationist stupidity scale.

An Eternal Now

4 Feb 13, 15:39

Trying to outreason science with fabrication is stupidity.

BroInChrist

4 Feb 13, 16:14

Originally posted by An Eternal Now:

LOL, that was hilarious.

http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2006/04/18/kirk-cameron-in-the-evolution/ - nuff said.

Kirk Cameron in the “Evolution Zone”

Posted by Ed Brayton on April 18, 2006

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Holy cow, someone posted a link to this video in a comment and you just have to see it. It’s Kirk Cameron and Ray Comfort “debunking” evolution in the most hilariously ridiculous thing you may have ever seen. Funniest of all is that they start it out by saying that they’re going to be interviewing people about evolution and you’re supposed to notice how they use words like “possibly” and “we think” and then finally “I’m not an expert”. Why is that funny? Because the people they’re interviewing aren’t experts, they’re just random people they found somewhere, most of whom are as ignorant of evolution as the hosts. But apparently it’s suspicious that random people who know nothing about evolution don’t speak with the certainty of experts or claim to be experts. Well that proves it, I’m convinced. This is a bit like going to an art school and asking them how the internal combustion engine works, edit it down to all the responses where people say things about it based on ignorance, and then saying, “See, it should be obvious that the internal combustion engine is impossible.” 100% pure idiocy.

There are lots of outright lies in the video as well. For instance, they say of Lucy that “nearly all experts agree that Lucy was just the skeleton of a 3 foot tall chimpanzee.” Really? I’d love for them to find just one expert – by which I mean an actual paleo-anthropologist – who claims that Lucy was just a 3 foot tall chimpanzee. They say Neanderthal man was a creature “whose famous skeleton found in France over 50 years ago was that of an old man who suffered from arthritis.” Yes, these people are in fact clueless enough to believe that there is only one fossil of Homo neanderthalensis; in fact, there are dozens of them. I’ll give this video 850 milli-Hovinds on the creationist stupidity scale.

What Ed Brayton did was simply an entire ad hominem article. BTW, I wonder how would you or folks here fare if you were the ones interviewed by Kirk or Ray?

Anyway, Ed Brayton got it wrong. Lucy is an ape and the Neanderthal man is a man. They are not our human ancestors. http://creation.com/are-there-apemen-in-your-ancestry

BroInChrist

4 Feb 13, 16:15

Originally posted by An Eternal Now:

Trying to outreason science with fabrication is stupidity.

Indeed, I fully agree!

The Piltdown Man was an evolutionist's fabrication. http://creation.com/the-piltdown-man-fraud

So was archaeoraptor. http://creation.com/archaeoraptor-hoax-updatenational-geographic-recants

An Eternal Now

4 Feb 13, 16:35

You prefer to quote fabrications rather than science.

You are still unable to " find just one expert – by which I mean an actual paleo-anthropologist – who claims that Lucy was just a 3 foot tall chimpanzee"

and

You still ignorantly think that "there is only one fossil of Homo neanderthalensis;" and ignore the fact that "in fact, there are dozens of them."

Gosh, you really think there are no such thing as neaderthalensis?

An Eternal Now

4 Feb 13, 16:37

Kirk and Ray definitely can't stand up to the scrutiny of real scientists.

I'm not a scientist and I am simply not interested in debating stuff like these with creationist. It gets boring after a while.

sinweiy

4 Feb 13, 17:21

i think he is saying Homo erectus onward including Neanderthal is man-like in the link, except for Homo habilis and Lucy. http://creation.com/are-there-apemen-in-your-ancestry

actually, i also query Evolutionism in the sense, if man evolve from ape, then how come there are still apes around?

Jui

4 Feb 13, 20:34

Actually the correct way to say it is that man evolved from a common ancestor to the apes. We just branched off into a separate species at a certain point in time. So asking why there are still apes around if we evolved "from them" is actually a wrong question.

An Eternal Now

4 Feb 13, 23:59

Originally posted by sinweiy:

i think he is saying Homo erectus onward including Neanderthal is man-like in the link, except for Homo habilis and Lucy. http://creation.com/are-there-apemen-in-your-ancestry

actually, i also query Evolutionism in the sense, if man evolve from ape, then how come there are still apes around?

I see. Neanderthal is man-like but they are not human, there are clearly distinguishing features between human (as in homo sapiens) and the neanderthals. Neanderthals share a common ancestry with the homo sapiens, but the neanderthals died out later. Either way, Neanderthals have never been considered 'human ancestors'... they are a different evolutionary branch from the Homo Erectus. Neanderthals are however considered to be as or in fact slightly more intelligent than the homo sapiens (they have slightly larger brains than us).

I read one article some time ago, here's something about why they disappeared from the face of Earth, part of their decline is because "the base of the Neanderthal tongue was positioned higher in the throat, crowding the mouth somewhat. As a result, Neanderthal speech would most likely have been slow-paced and nasalized. "... ..."although Neanderthals did have the ability to speak, they were capable of articulating only a smaller number of phonemes. Jared Diamond described this limitation using the following example: imagine how many words you could say if the only sounds you were able to make were a, u, c, p. Imagine trying to say "Trinity College is a fine place to work." All you could say were something like "Capupa Cappap up a cap capupap." (also see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o589CAu73UM)

And also there is a curious fact that some European and Asian races (not all) have a few percentage (1 to 4) of Neaderthal DNA in them due to cross-mixing tens of thousands of years ago. Chinese is included in those races so I'm probably a bit neanderthal and mostly homo sapien myself.

See http://news.softpedia.com/news/Neanderthals-were-too-smart-to-survive-15264.shtml

An Eternal Now

5 Feb 13, 00:00

Originally posted by Jui:

Actually the correct way to say it is that man evolved from a common ancestor to the apes. We just branched off into a separate species at a certain point in time. So asking why there are still apes around if we evolved "from them" is actually a wrong question.

Yeah precisely.

An Eternal Now

5 Feb 13, 00:36

By the way you can also say Neanderthals are human, as they are, by definition... but they are still different species.

Both Homo Sapien and Homo Neanderthal are humans. Human = Homo = A genus made up of species.

Some modern day surviving Sapiens have some Neanderthal admixture. Sapiens and Neanderthals were closely enough related species of human to produce fertile offpsring.

Neanderthals lived in Europe & Southwestern Asia. Their DNA would be found worldwide just very low if not rare rate in Sub Saharan Africa due to continual contacts and trades such as Arab & Atlantic slave trades. And not all of non Africans have Neanderthal DNA either.

Then there are many other human species that once lived which possibly mixed with our ancestors Neanderthals are just one of them.

sinweiy

5 Feb 13, 09:00

Originally posted by Jui:

Actually the correct way to say it is that man evolved from a common ancestor to the apes. We just branched off into a separate species at a certain point in time. So asking why there are still apes around if we evolved "from them" is actually a wrong question.

i don't get it. man evolved to the apes?

Jui

5 Feb 13, 10:05

Let's say there's this species of animal we call "A" that lived 10 million years ago. Over the years this species slowly changed and 5 million years ago groups of them eventually differ from each other enough that you can no longer call them species A any more, and thus we have species b and c and maybe even d.

We can't say that b evolved from c and then ask how come there's still c around because they're totally seperate species, but we can say that they share a common ancestor named "a".

sinweiy

5 Feb 13, 10:41

Originally posted by Jui:

quite in the middle of farfetched, i mean how come species b stopped evolving while species a continue to evolve. then more dinosaurs species should be around. and another problem i consider quite strange is we should be seeing many or some of the middle species(missing linkS) still around instead of such a big gap between species. like species A and B should have a smoother transition of species still around, not only man but animal too.

what i know from a documentry is that the time when Lucy first appeared and the time apes first appeared is too close apart for it to evolve. say u need at least x million of years to evolve for A to B, but the time is less than x.

/\

Uraniumfish

5 Feb 13, 10:46

Hawking is a physicist, he thinks of the universe in models. Our understanding of the universe is already limited by our senses. For example, light can be described by drawing a wave (to show frequency and stuff), a particle (basics in quantum physics), or even a straight line (to explain law of reflection). So which one of this is it? The truth is, a photon is what it is.

We see it as light because that is how sight works in animals, all other ways of thinking about it are models.

He thinks of God (the creator) as a model as well. A model that tries to explain how the universe is formed. The laws of gravity allow spontaneous creation, therefore Hawking thinks that God is an unnecessary model to explain this phenomenon.

Jui

5 Feb 13, 11:05

Originally posted by sinweiy:

quite in the middle of farfetched, i mean how come species b stopped evolving while species a continue to evolve. then more dinosaurs species should be around. and another problem i consider quite strange is we should be seeing many or some of the middle species(missing linkS) still around instead of such a big gap between species. like species A and B should have a smoother transition of species still around, not only man but animal too.

what i know from a documentry is that the time when Lucy first appeared and the time apes first appeared is too close apart for it to evolve. say u need at least x million of years to evolve for A to B, but the time is less than x.

/\

I actually took out a few sentences in my original reply because going into species Z4 is very tiring to read, so yes species b will split off into species b1, b2 and e-what-have-you. Is the original b still around? Well most species do change over time, but those we find to not have changed much we name these creatures "living fossils". Also, evolution is constant so yes it is a smooth transition. We simply point out a few because their differences are significant enough that we have to draw a line and give them a new classification as a separate species rather than call them "species a version 20382"

Dinosaurs are around btw. We just call them birds now.

sinweiy

5 Feb 13, 11:48

Originally posted by Jui:

Dinosaurs are around btw. We just call them birds now.

as in the bigger ones not around anymore. Dinosaurs to birds, dinosaurs totally mutated. ape to man, ape still around.

Jui

5 Feb 13, 12:06

Climate changes, competitors for food, changes in food source pretty much did the biggest ones in. Tons of apes went extinct too, and of course, animals are going extinct as we speak . All the animals we see now are those that have adapted to those changes.

sinweiy

5 Feb 13, 14:19

hmm, i prefer Buddha's saying, the one that said devas from Light heaven slowly turning to man. and that animal and human realm still have their differences of morality. morality is a quality that came from devas than animal.

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BroInChrist

5 Feb 13, 17:30

Originally posted by sinweiy:

to get out of samsara, the "realm" of attachment, dualism and wandering thoughts, we need to learn to let go, detach. the dharma itself also cannot attached. we said in an analogy, when one reached the other shore, u get off the boat. the other shore represent Nirvana, the boat represent the dharma. when u cling to the boat, then u cannot achieve the other shore, Nirvana.

or Dharma can be like medicine to cure ur illness. when u are cured, u discard the medicine.

/\

Yet to speak of attachment and ignorance and attaining knowledge and detachment while negating the notion of Self, is precisely what I find to be most incoherent and inconsistent. See how you cannot avoid talking about "we", "you" or "I" i.e. self. Calling it conventional truths is mere language tools is IMO not a good excuse at all.

BroInChrist

5 Feb 13, 17:34

Originally posted by Jui:

Actually the correct way to say it is that man evolved from a common ancestor to the apes. We just branched off into a separate species at a certain point in time. So asking why there are still apes around if we evolved "from them" is actually a wrong question.

Of course this begs the question. It should be broken into

1. Did man evolve from some apelike creatures?

2. If yes, what's the evidence?

I submit to you that the evidence does not speak for itself. Finding a tooth or a jawbone or some bits and pieces of bone, is not enough to establish the "fact" that man evolved from some apelike creature. The evidence has to be interpreted. And what beliefs you bring to the evidence determines the conclusions you draw or infer from the evidence.

sinweiy

5 Feb 13, 18:00

Originally posted by BroInChrist:

Yet to speak of attachment and ignorance and attaining knowledge and detachment while negating the notion of Self, is precisely what I find to be most incoherent and inconsistent. See how you cannot avoid talking about "we", "you" or "I" i.e. self. Calling it conventional truths is mere language tools is IMO not a good excuse at all.

erm still seem like u have not understood not-self...self is on changing, hence we negate a fixed self. to us, we are just emotions coming together. anger is just anger. happy is just happy. etc. other than the changing emotions, there's nothing else per se. also most considering rebirth, at one life u can be this and on the next that, changing and changing, in different location, act and time, etc. if u are an actor, is the role you are acting the real you, every time u change a new role? no. the "you" u are thinking now is not the real you. when u truely understood non-self/emptiness, then u can talk about "you". so don't be so attached. but u reject rebirth, so no use explaining...

/\

Jui

5 Feb 13, 20:27

BroInChrist: 1. Yes, although if you want to go even further you can say man evolved from fish-like creatures. Or heck, microbial lifeforms. 2. You already know of them and decided they're not enough for you. I doubt I can convince you otherwise. I do agree with your last statement though.

sinweiy: Since it's mindstreams that move from one living being to another anyway, I don't think this is a problem. The capacity to reason and develop morality is surely limited to the kind of thinking capacity a living being posesses, so I'm sure it's possible to fall again and again down the realms of rebirth.

sinweiy

5 Feb 13, 21:35

Originally posted by Jui:

sinweiy: Since it's mindstreams that move from one living being to another anyway, I don't think this is a problem. The capacity to reason and develop morality is surely limited to the kind of thinking capacity a living being posesses, so I'm sure it's possible to fall again and again down the realms of rebirth.

? u mean i think that human can't reborn into lower realm? or higher realms cannot reborn into lower realms? i am fine if the transition is rebirth, but by mean of mutation, like an animal 'giving birth' to a human, i am far-fetched. as there are causes of rebirth in the different realms in the suttas.

The Thirty-one Planes of Existence

http://www.accesstoinsight.org/ptf/dhamma/sagga/loka.html

for animal realms:

· Ten unwholesome actions (MN 41)

· Lack of virtue, holding to wrong views. If one is generous to monks and nuns, however, one may be reborn as an "ornamented" animal (i.e., a bird with bright plumage; a horse with attractive markings, etc.; AN 10.177).

· Behaving like an animal (MN 57)

for human realms:

· The development of virtue and wisdom (AN 10.177)

· The attainment of stream-entry (sotapatti) guarantees that all future rebirths will be in the human or higher realms.

(there's links to the sutta, Buddha expounded.)

i know some realms can also inter cross, like animal quality can be found within all other realms. asura quality in all realms except the hell realm. etc

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