You sacrifice for me, I sustain you. I sacrifice for you, you sustain me.
I believe this because nature is hungry, but expected to sustain life.
Because I’ve personally met Jesus Christ. He’s a 10,000 year old former cave man.
What a movie!
Starring both the Candyman and The Greatest American Hero!
They don’t make films like they used to!
Oh, hey, I’ve seen this one.
I don’t
I believe in intelligent design because the theory of evolution boils down to: if you left your room messy for 1 billion years, when you came back it would be the Taj Mahal.
The real fundamental root cause of my belief in God comes from personal experiences.
What? So first of, it really doesn’t. You don’t understand evolution if you think that’s what it is, but that’s beside the point.
You believe that a supernatural sky being made a mud man and a rib woman, who were tricked by a talking snake into eating magic no no fruit. Then 4 thousand years later, a zombie came and made everyone drink it’s blood and eat it’s body in order to get into the good magic sky place.
It’s real easy to dumb down peoples beliefs and make them sound stupid, especially if you misrepresent them.
The question was why do you believe in YOUR beliefs. It was not an invitation to be a superior asshole.
As I said, personal experience. I’m not sure how I was insulting anyone else’s beliefs. That’s literally why I believe in intelligent design: I believe that evolution is mathematically impossible.
You are correct and don’t deserve the down votes.
It is insulting because it downplays the theory to the point of “to believe this would be absurd and stupid” which obviously has implications for its believers.
Imagine an atheist stated: “I am an atheist because intelligent design boils down to: if you leave your room empty for 6000 years, a magic fairy will appear and create the Taj Mahal”. Can you see how this is not only just an outright false statement, but also making a mockery of those who believe?
Not really. I don’t find that statement insulting at all. That is what Creationism boils down to.
If you think that the theory of evolution puts forth the any argument like Taj Mahal coming from a messy room, then you don’t understand the theory of evolution.
Evolution does not “boil down” to that.
Except the room is entire Earth, it’s filled to the brim with most elements of the Periodic table, and constantly receives hundreds of terawatts of energy. Oh, and it actually took several billion years, not one, to come from this to Taj Mahal.
Modern science has shown ways in which many of the organic molecules could be spontaneously formed out of basic elements under conditions observable on early Earth. We’re also about to bridge synthesis of organic molecules and synthetic biology.
Intelligent design, on its end, gets stuck with several big questions, like the fact our design is actually very bad, just workable, and the fact we share not only visual properties, but most of our DNA with other animals - particularly other primates.
Not here to alter your beliefs - you do you - but setting the record straight.
So the record is, we’ve never been able to achieve synthetic biology under the most ideal laboratory circumstances?
What do you mean by bad design?
Just because we share DNA with other animals doesn’t mean it wasn’t by design.
Conditions of early Earth are often complicated to recreate, and it takes a lot of simultaneous reactions going just right to make it work - but Earth had billions of years, and we don’t have such a luxury. Still, we are very close, and we already created a lot of biomolecules out of basic blocks like water, carbon dioxide, and ammonia.
Humans have plenty of faults in their design - why do we have reproductive organs, which need to be kept clean, right next or combined with exhaust (urethra/rectum)? Why do we have two legs and vertical organization of the body that adds huge gravitational stress? Why do we have pelvis shaped in a way that makes birthing more painful and complicated? Why people with uterus have bloody and painful periods? Why do we have so many vulnerable spots on the body where they should clearly be reinforced? etc. etc.
We also have plenty of rudimentary organs we don’t need anymore, that are either just sitting there for no intelligent reason at all, or are actively causing trouble for us (like appendix or wisdom teeth).
This all doesn’t fall into the line of intelligent design, unless divine creatures just enjoy crafting us at random and see how we survive anyway.
Sure, they could still do that, they may engineer us in a very odd and imperfect way, they could make our DNA similar to other animals to make us guess if we actually descent from them instead, etc. But this involves so much jumping through the hoops we may as well cut it off with Occam’s razor. Evolutionary theory offers clear sequence of how we got where we are, it shows clear relation of all living organisms and the ways they develop into what we know today. So, it wins.
The analogy to a messy room fails. I recommend you read this (and the rest of the archive, it’s great stuff):
https://talkorigins.org/indexcc/CF/CF001.html
Of note is “The Earth is not a closed system”
Realizing that the root cause is just because you want it to be true is fine, commendable even. Just don’t try to justify it post hoc with sciency-sounding arguments.
I understand that the sun gives low entropy energy to earth, and pockets of entropy can decrease as long as the whole system increases. However, my room exists on earth, so I still think it is an adequate analogy.
More seriously, I would like to see a mathematical treatment of the probability of biologically detrimental mutations vs. beneficial or neutral mutations.
That treatment has been done. From the same page:
https://talkorigins.org/indexcc/CB/CB101.html
Most mutations are neutral. Nachman and Crowell estimate around 3 deleterious mutations out of 175 per generation in humans (2000). Of those that have significant effect, most are harmful, but the fraction which are beneficial is higher than usually though. An experiment with E. coli found that about 1 in 150 newly arising mutations and 1 in 10 functional mutations are beneficial (Perfeito et al. 2007).
The harmful mutations do not survive long, and the beneficial mutations survive much longer, so when you consider only surviving mutations, most are beneficial.
First, I want to thank you for having this discussion with me. I’ve been wanting to discuss these ideas with someone for some time.
As to the referenced article, a couple of points stand out to me:
- The first paper cited by Nachman and Crowell compares pseudogenes between humans and chimpanzees assuming that one evolved from the other over a known period of time. Rejecting the assumption that humans did not evolve from chimps would render this sort of evaluation inaccurate.
- The last sentence of the first point, that harmful mutations do not survive long, is not supported by any literature on the page, and I believe it to be wishful thinking. There are many examples of human genetic diseases that do not decrease the reproductive capacity of those carrying them, which to me would imply, again without literature support, that those mutations would accumulate over time in a population.
- I would also disagree with the 5th point, where any beneficial mutation disproves young earth creationism. Young earth creationists must believe in a much higher rate of so-called micro evolution, since all the variation we see on earth must have taken place in the last 6 thousand years or less.
- It’s a common misunderstanding, but humans and chimps didn’t evolve from each other. We each evolved from a common ancestor. Regardless, it seems like you wouldn’t accept anything other than something from the now, so here’s a study that agrees with the general mutation rate done by comparing parents and children in Iceland: Parental influence on human germline de novo mutations in 1,548 trios from Iceland Here’s also a paper on calculating the distribution of those mutations across deleterious/neutral/beneficial: Assessing the Evolutionary Impact of Amino Acid Mutations in the Human Genome
- If a mutation doesn’t decrease the reproductive capacity of the carrier, then it’s not harmful. If it’s harmful, then it will affect the reproductive capacity. That’s just how it’s defined in this context.
- I think it’s slightly sloppily phrased, but is a counter to a specific claim found in this book: https://www.amazon.com/Scientific-Creationism-Henry-M-Morris/dp/1982697091. I don’t have a copy so can’t comment further.
Sorry, it took me a little while to go through the Boyko paper. It’s super statistics heavy. What I’m reading from there is that 27.3–29.0% of mutations are neutral, 30-42% are moderately deleterious, all the rest are highly deleterious or lethal. The statistics indicate that 10-20% of mutations have been fixed by positive selection (again assuming a common ancestor with chimpanzees). Deleterious, as you mentioned, specifically means harmful to reproduction. So in this context, diseases like Huntinginton’s, hemophilia, familial ALS, sickle cell, Lynch syndrome would be considered “neutral”. These statistics are mostly derived from Americans of African decent, as the clustered rate of mutation in Americans of European decent was too high to model well.
The Jonsson paper had a similar average rate of mutation of order 10^-8 per base pair as the other paper we looked at, which translates to about 3 per generation.
So what I don’t understand, and maybe you can help me, is that in the extreme case of 20% of mutations being avoided by positive selection, there’s still 7% of mutations with potentially horrific consequences. This is already excluding the over 70% of mutations that decrease reproductive fitness. What evolutionary pressure is there to keep “neutral” genetic diseases from accumulating in a population over time? How can “beneficial” mutations outweigh this burden? Mathematically, it seems to me that macro evolution is impossible. Am I missing something?
No worries, I can also be slow to respond. There’s a few things at play here:
-
Neutral mutations can become beneficial later on. It’s not just about the genes, it’s also about the environment. Even deleterious mutations can become beneficial, like sickle cell disease likely being selected for due to its protection against malaria.
-
Following from that, deleterious/neutral/beneficial are pretty loose categories, and it’s not even really correct to think of them as categories. It’s more about how beneficial it is. Sickle cell disease is bad, but better than dying of malaria.
-
Beneficial mutations can be really beneficial. Once somebody has them, they can spread like wildfire through the population. One example is the ability to digest lactose as an adult. It’s “worth” lots of “failures” to get that mutation (using those terms loosely and without value judgement). An analogy might help here, think about it kind of like this slime mold searching for food. The tips have a lot of churn and waste, but the food it finds is worth doing all that work. You can think of the beneficial mutations as the branches that are kept.
(Note that evolution isn’t directed by “something”, even as simple as a slime mold, it’s a description of a physical process, like gravity, so the analogy is loose)
-
We’ve seen beneficial mutations happen in person, and shows another example of how useful beneficial mutations can be: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._coli_long-term_evolution_experiment. The E. coli evolved the ability to digest a new substance they couldn’t before. The experiment also touches on neutral mutations sticking around.
-
The distinction you’re drawing between micro evolution and macro evolution relies on an assumption that either there are different kinds that are inherently distinct, or some sort of “system” that prevents micro evolution from progressing into macro evolution. For the prior, I’ve never seen a defense of that that doesn’t rely on the supernatural, and for the latter, what happens when the system itself changes due to evolution?
-
In my personal experience, the strongest argument against any radical move away from the current general scientific worldview consensus is that everything generally fits together. Sure, the estimated age of the universe might be adjusted slightly from 13.7B to 13.8B years, or the Jurassic might actually be estimated slightly wrong. But across all evidence we have, the current scientific understanding across a diverse range of disciplines is approximately correct. Nobody is counting tree rings and saying “Wait a minute, these show the Earth is 6,000 years old!”. Nobody is dating rocks and saying “Hold on, this dates as twice as old as the universe!”. Note that you’ll find claims of things like fossilized tracks of humans walking next to dinosaurs, but those don’t pan out
-
Also, The God Delusion.
I used to, because my parents did and I went to church and all that.
But then I started to actually think about it.
Now I don’t believe in anything supernatural.
There are parts of nature we don’t understand (yet) but I don’t think there’s any ‘higher power’ that created the universe, and especially not earth or humankind specifically.I spiritually disbelieve in everyone’s religion
What’s the term for not knowing for sure if there’s a god or not and not giving a fuck about it either way?
Apatheism
Agnostic
I have personally experienced librarians and they have helped me when in need.
I believe in the Goddess of Luck because, hopefully not sounding too cocky, she’s been kind to me. I’ve told people about her before and they think I’m slightly insane, but then as they hang out with me they start to thank her on thier own luck because they see how she speaks in crazy ways.
All you have to do is thank her when luck is on your side and you’ll see the difference.
beautiful
I do not really know. I was not raised in a practicing family, and my country is very secular.
Philosophically, I’m agnostic. I’m not convinced either by arguments for or against the existence of God. I think a being which could exist outside time and space is not approachable by our reason.
But I can’t stay neutral, the question is too important. And I feel the presence of God in my life. This feeling came first, and when I tried to understand it, I went to the culturally nearest place of worship, and it was Protestantism, and I felt at home. I read the Bible, not as a theology manual, but as the story of people who try to understand the presence of God; sometimes they’re right, sometimes they’re wrong, but their quest is mine, and theirs inspires mine.
I feel the same way reading the Bible. Even as early as Genesis I was like damn Abraham I already don’t understand why you tried to pimp out your sister-wife ONCE so why did you KEEP DOING IT? Somebody recently commented that they find the Bible boring and I was like you need to find a modern translation because if you can even vaguely understand what’s actually going on that shit is WILD. Turns out humans have always been crazy AF and personally I actually find that kinda comforting. Makes a lot of modern shit seem less unmanageable. Another great example is the whole Onan thing. It’s wild that somebody decided to make it about masturbation when if you really get down to it it’s a story about a dude who thinks he’s being slick by obeying the letter of the current law to (literally) screw his widowed sister in law out of her rightful property and THAT story is TIMELESS.
Yeah sorry, there’s nothing.
But we should behave towards each other as we’d like to be treated. Otherwise it doesn’t work.
Now, there’s this unsolved issue of people harming all of us…
I believe there is lots of important knowledge about morality etc. embedded inside religious books. This is why is is worth reading those. Also there is lots of shitty and immoral stuff i try to ignore. Why would I try to implement those.
The other important stuff is active community. A single person can only do so much good. But if you are doing good as a whole local community you can do project far bigger than you could pull off yourself.
So it was easy to decide to keep the religion I was raised in. This is the biggest religion with biggest community.
This is about my religious framework and why I have it. However I distinct between my religion and my personal believes. Personally I am ignostic (with I), so I think we almost never use the same definitions for God, Being, to believe, to exist,… I even hold an opinion, by what most atheists define what God is, most grown up Christians are atheists. And the other way around. I think we hold pretty similar believes but we use different meaning for same words.
I want to have an afterlife. I study science, and sometimes I feel like there are things humans won’t get in my lifetime. So I like to think that I can continue on learning even after I die.
I’m an atheist due Roman Catholic grade school. The teachings about religion were crazy.
I also went to Roman Catholic high school and college but religion was very miner. College required four religion type courses but including courses such as ethics and logic.
I’m an atheist bcs I don’t have a wild imagination.
I’ve read through the Bible cover to cover three times. Amplified, NIV, and New King James with a copy of Strongs.
I’m an atheist now.
What made you an atheist?
The Bible is pretty fallible when looking at it objectively IMO. But the nail in the coffin was contrasting what the Bible asks of us vs what Christianity does. The tyrannical cheeto is as close to the antichrist as we’ve seen and they’re all gaga for him as an example. But I’ve been disillusioned since Obama’s first election. The terrible and false things “the church” and soon to be former church friends said about him was next level bullshit. Yet when I highlighted that the Bible clearly says the worst relationship we have with man is our relationship with Christ landed in def ears.
“The impenitent sometimes excuse themselves by saying of professed Christians, “I am as good as they are. They are no more self-denying, sober, or circumspect and their conduct then I am. They love pleasure and self-indulgence as well as I do.” Thus they make the faults of others an excuse for their own neglect of duty. But the sins and defects of others do not excuse anyone; for the Lord has not given us an erring human pattern. The spotless Son of God has been given as our example, and those who complain of the wrong course of professed Christians are the ones who should show better lives and nobler examples. If they have so high a conception of what a Christian should be, is not their own sin so much the greater? They know what is right, and yet refuse to do it.”
- Steps to Christ p. 32
Translation: Judge not shall you be judged
it’s better to say things in 6 words instead of 100+ (I didn’t count)
Just saying
And I disagree with that argument. It’s like saying a critique can’t be a critique unless he or she can do better, which is bullshit. And the premise that being disillusioned with a group means I must think higher of myself is a step too far.
No, it’s saying that our example is Christ Himself, not hypocritical human beings.
… Reading comprehension is hard…
Thank you!
And that I agree with.
I think they are saying reading those books are the reason.
Any part in particular?
Any parts really. Biblical god was a monster, absolute piece of shit character. Then Jesus came and said he’s going to follow his dad’s orders with a sword. Jesus is just as bad, there is no old/vs new testament trash, all hateful.
3 of the 10 commandments were selfish, and there was room in the rules to put don’t eat shelfish or wear mixed fabrics, but no mention of don’t own fucking people.
Dying for us is shit behavior?
Lmao. If you honestly believe that, I’ve got a bridge to sell you. Santa has a timeshare nearby.
The Bible literally gives instructions on how to own slaves. And how to beat your women. And how to marry off your raped daughters to the rapist.
Just the idea of it is enough
Not op, but for me it was the fact that the supposedly ineffable word of God turned out to be pretty effible
It wasn’t the first step towards losing faith, or even the last, but it was pretty troubling to a young me
It bothered you that a document written over thousands of years by dozens of authors didn’t agree in every imaginable way?
I was taught and fully believed that it was the literal and inerrant word of God, guided by his hand and infallible… so yes, finding errors in it was a disturbing. The authors or it’s age shouldn’t matter if they’re being guided by an all knowing and all powerful being. It wasn’t until much later that I found out how much of it is suspected forgery. Probably could have saved a couple years of agony there
Most denominations don’t believe that it was written directly by God, but by inspired authors.
Not the one I was brought up in, and “most” is a stretch. I will grant you “some” but the majority believe it is the literal word of God
The bible reads like any other religious text. It is impossible for all religions to be true, but it is possible for them all to be false. With no strong evidence proving the bible to be true, there is no reason to accept it over any other religion.
I understand the reaction. The Bible is sold by a lot of churches as “the word of God”, and if it’s the case, God is a lying asshole. But nowhere in the Bible it is written that the Bible is the word of God; according to the Bible the word of God is Jesus-Christ so… it may not be the right approach according to the Bible itself.
I love the Bible, I read it (almost) every day, I use it as a guide in my material and spiritual lives, I studied the story of its interpretation in the university, I even thought about making that my speciality. Yet I don’t understand how someone could believe in biblical inerrancy. It’s very clearly a human work, written by error-prone normal humans. I believe that God spoke to its redactors, but it’s still a human work. And ours is (according to me) to listen to the voice of God through the human form; and that’s why we have the Church, as it’s not something one can do alone.
I like your view.
Though I don’t do church anymore, either they worship the current incarnation of the antichrist or they’re lead by weak leaders who aren’t willing or capable to do what it takes to be a great leader in my experience.
We tried a few liberal / LGBTQ lead churches and I just couldn’t continue to participate. My wife kept going longer than I did but she hasn’t gone in a few years.
