Childofgod

Thakyou JoshJaffe for your help. I am going to make myself sound like an idiot now, because my fundamental beliefs have changed so easily. Here goes: I have completely changed my mind on everything I have posted here. I dont believe in God any more. I just can't stand my Christian friends any more. They talk such utter BS constantly. My Christian girlfriend whom I met at the start of this term, is going back to America (I'm in the UK). Next term, Christianity will be completely out of my life. My personality is no where near that of a Rearden or a Galt type personality. I am too lazy. I have definite plans to make a lot of money, which I am carrying out and am certain that I will be well off in 10 years time, but after that I plan to live a life of leisure. I also think that you can't change your fundamental philosophy. I think that a person is a product of their experiences and to go against them will make them unhappy. For example, if you are raised to be a rational person then you can't change that. Luckily, I was raised to be rational, but I have always gotten by in my acedemic life with as little work as possible. This is my personality and my efforts to work hard all the time just make me unhappy and stressed. I think I also have a gullible personailty. My views change all the time. I should also tell you people that I have posted on this board over the last year under a few different names. I have been banned from the board as well because sometimes I enjoy annoying people on purpose. This is all part of my personality though. What do you guys think? I know I sound like an idiot, but you gotta believe me, I believe in capitalism (even if my view temporarily changes to socialism or anarchism or anything else it always comes back to capitalism), reason, individualism, etc. Its just that part ofmy personality seems to change and flick all over the place. Anyway, gotta go. I cant seem to get an hour to myself these days...

Hello again people. Sorry for my absence - its not because I was scared off, but that I have just started university and life is pretty much sceduled away between lectures and socialising. I believe in Jesus as the Christ not through a blind leap of faith but through faith that is reasoned and considered: For many historical books we only have about 10 copies of them which were made about 1000 years after they were written. We have no orginals. Caeser's Gallic War is one example. Another example is this Roman historian's book (the name of which I can't recall), upon which we gain a lot of knowledge about Roman history. No one doubts that these books are 95% identical to the original copies (all copies have errors in them) - we can be sure that what we read is how it was first written. Now for the New Testament we have over 20,000 copies written only 300 years after the events they describe. We also have a fragment (of John's Gospel I think)written only 60 years after the original. In the same way we can be sure that what was written has not been changed since the time the original was made and our earliest copy. So you either believe that the New Testement was all made up or that it all actually happened. Can you really believe that the apostles made the whole thing up? (By the way this is not my entire argument as I have ran out of time. I will hopefully be back in the next week. I am looking forward to your responses.)

From what you have posted, here is the situation as I see it: Creation of Universe Either something was created out of nothing (the explanation being that God created it), or think that the universe has always been here for an infinite amount of time. Abiogenesis Either God created life, or large amounts of time and chance sparked the first life form. Evolution Things evolve by mutation and natural selection weeding out the bad mutations. So in large amounts of time, helpful mutations will have by chance occured, and will propagate. In each case we are talking about the same thing. Created things (either the universe, the first life form, or a helpful mutation) are either caused by large amounts of time and chance or by God. You say that causality means that things do not happen by chance. If I roll a dice and it is a six, then this was caused by laws of physics and is a result of cause and effect, yet the event of a six being rolled was still a one in six chance. You say that the chance of any two molecules forming into life is very very small but given enough time it will happen. You seem to be saying that given enough time anything and everything will happen. Even an event with the lowest probability of happening will happen eventually given enough time. So is this a clear representation of what you and I believe? PS Please be patient if I have completely misunderstood what you have been saying. PPS I think I may have been using the word random in previous posts when I should have used the word chance. (Hopefully that will help in understanding what I have been saying.)

Why would I be banned for posting that website? It is not as though I have offended anyone! I'm only trying to understand why you believe what you do. I think (like the article) that you believe evolution because it allows you to avoid a creator concept. I also understand that scientific theories are not the basis of objectivism. The reason I posted here instead of a science board is as follows: I can accept a socialist espousing a theory that reduces life to random chance, but I cannot understand how a group of people who love life can believe in evolution. What specifically do you disagree with in the article that I posted?

I have just found a website that describes what evolutionists believe in. How can you believe in this? http://www.creationdesign.org/If%20you%20b...evolution.html#

You speak of reality as though it had a brain. Surely "reality dictating" is a completely arbitrary process and is in fact just random chance? However, lets change the topic slightly from evolution to what was the first ever life form. I assume that non-Christian/religious scientists have an explanation along the lines of particles combining together under immense heat etc etc, forming the first gene, or something like that. So how can you argue that this process happened not by random chance or by a creator?

I am glad that you replied because I am actually after a proper discussion. Sorry if I sounded too agressive. Can you explain what you meant by "causality"?

Evolution is ridiculous. If it is true then you are admitting that your entire life is a result of random chance. As objectivists how can you handle this? How can you think that your wonderful life is a result of chance? You degrade it and make it something common and crude. In my opinion the reason you do this is to avoid the concept of a creator. Evolution gives an explanation for creation that doesn't involve a creator - how ridiculous.