<< Man, how much evidence do you need before you believe something?
I sure would like you on the jury if I was facing a serious charge >>
That's right. I wouldn't convict you unless I was sure you did it. We'd have a lot more executions if we were as willing to go off scanty evidence in murder trials as we are with evolutionary "evidence."
<< It just seems odd that you do not beleive any scientific evidence with theories, formulas, and alot of research to back it up...but you do beleive in a story about a supreme being that created everything and rules the world without any proof of his existence other than "cause the bible says so". >>
These scientific "evidences" and "theories, formulas, and a lot of research" don't coincide, and I'm finding more and more the failings of evolutionary research. I would love to believe evolution if I were convinced it were true. I'd rather there not be a God. That way I wouldn't have to worry about all these things I feel guilty about. I could just dismiss guilt as a biological means of prohibiting my ability to have fun. Of course, all my "fun" would be pointless anyway, but who cares?
I see evidence of very complex biological systems in nature. I'd be a fool to look at the intricacies of even a cell and say, "that must have happened by a completely random stroke of luck one day." That's like taking a helicopter up to 20,000 feet and dropping a stack of notecards, hoping they'll land in ordered fashion, spelling "Anandtech" on the ground below.
It's true. I do believe in God, but it's based on a little more than "cause the bible says so." Why do people insist on telling me what I believe and what evidence I have for believing it? Furthermore, why do you care? If there is no God, nothing really matters. This life is all there is, and we're all going to die some day. Every emotion you experience has no greater significance than the fact that chemicals are mushing about in your brain. Furthermore, you can't justify anything on moral grounds. If there is indeed no metanarrative, then we have no system of morality. You wouldn't be able to say that it was evil for the perpetrators of the September 11th tragedy to do what they did. Why not? Because they followed Darwin's line of thinking. Survival of the fittest. Adapt or die. You're either a one or a zero. On or off. You live for awhile, as a passing moment, and then, like the passing moment, you pass on. The fact that I recognize evil in the world proves to me that there is some standard whereby we recognize things like "evil," "wrong," "justice," etc., that I can't explain in purely naturalistic terms. Human intuition cries out with evidence for God. Do you really think you evolved from a single-celled organism over the last 4 billion years? Do you really believe that an ape, given sufficient time and the right conditions to genetically mutate, will become fully human with the ability to express rational thought? When I was in grade school, we used to call the idea of a frog turning into a prince a fairy tale. Then came high school and college, where I learned it was science. Please. Think with your brain -- that's why God gave it to ya.
There's just as much proof that God created the universe as there is that it exploded from nothingness. I call both ideas wild and out of the ordinary. After all, we don't observe universes creating themselves all the time, so it's got to be a very rare thing. The problem is that our scientific "theories" and "laws" and "evidences" are based on the norms... not these "wild" occurrences. So you want to have a scientific discussion? Have a scientific discussion about true science -- that which we can observe. Physics... chemistry... biology -- what have you. Things that I can perform tests on. Things for which there exists a test that will prove the theory wrong. Evolution has no such test. It has adapted and changed -- yes, the theory of evolution has evolved with time to suit the minds of those who would like to explain the world in purely naturalistic terms. But it doesn't explain purpose. It doesn't explain "why." And it can't say that "there is no why," because such a statement is ridiculously outside the realm of science.
As far as your evidence is concerned...
If I took you to a junkyard and you saw a bunch of scrap metal, and then I took you inside and you saw pieces and parts of computers lying around, and then I took you to the office and you saw a computer... does that really prove that the scrap pieces of metal evolved into greater and greater degrees of sophistication as time passed to create the end product of a computer by random chance, or is that merely one interpretation based on the data at hand? Note, pretend that everyone you talk to claims that this is the exact process by which computers are made, and nobody knows anybody who designs computers. A few people have the wild notion that the thing was designed by somebody who knew what he was doing, but most people brushed them off because they read it in this book and didn't really have any evidence that such a designer existed. What are you going to believe? The people with the book or the people with the evidence?
And I'm not saying that the Creation side is without evidence. I'm just saying that "evidence" for things like this situation are like statistice -- they're used and abused.
Kind of like I'm about to be.
Let the flaming begin.