Where does my belief fit in

[jagec]

Originally posted by: Throckmorton
A couple years ago I would have accepted your viewpoint as a valid personal compromise between fact and belief, but not anymore. The "guided evolution" idea has been coopted by religious fundamentalists and politicians.

Guilt by Association. I'm disappointed in you...didn't you ever take a class in critical thinking? An idea doesn't become invalid because it is endorsed by people you don't like.

They try to teach it in schools and try to pass it off as fact. We have to take a hardline stance against nonscience like this, otherwise with the help of the media elevating it to the level of real science, it's going to end up being taught to our kids in 10 years.

Where does your belief fit in? Untruth

You correctly label it as non-science, but then you claim to have access to some sort of secret knowledge that tells you that it is, in fact, untrue as well. Really? Where's your data? Got any error bars on that? Were you using a calibrated truth-o-meter?

 

[HannibalX]

I live in a big city with a lot of traffic. Why haven't I evolved into a creature that can fly? I spend hours a day stuck in traffic, and it's slowly killing me. I want to fly damnit!

 

[ZzZGuy]

Nothing good EVER comes of a religious debate on the internet.

The only time you will get a discussion without a flame war is if everyone talking part is of a very similar opinion, which only serves to reinforce their current beliefs rather then to validate them through reasoning.

Religion requires faith and nothing more.
Science requires facts and nothing less.

It's like oil and water. In this threads case, with a match thrown in for good measure.

-edit-
@ OP
Not that i agree with the op's belief, but his purpose for making this thread was NOT to debate if his views are right or wrong, but as to what label applies to him.
-edit-

 

[BirdDad]

I came to this conclusion myself without religious people pushing it on me.I came to this after a zoology class.
And when one of those mutations occur do you notice that the other animals stay away from it?If it has something different about it they might accept it into the pack or herd but they sure as hell wont allow it to mate.

 

[meltdown75]

start up your own religion. you can call it STFUism and just tell everyone to STFU. when you get a sizeable cult formed, tell the hot chicks that join that they must post NSFW pics of themselves on ATOT to please the gods.

 

[polarmystery]

google "agnostic"

that I think sums up your original post.

 

[Atomic Playboy]

Originally posted by: BirdDad
I do believe in a God who guides or causes changes in animals for specific purposes which sometimes makes several mutations to occur.
I do not believe in creationism

You believe that God wasn't responsible for the creation of life, but then saw that maybe it wasn't so bad and decided to get involved with every evolutionary branch afterwards? I'm not one to shit on anyone's religion, but come on man, that's a damn lie. Maybe you don't believe the Biblical version of creationism, Adam and Eve, Noah's Ark, etc., but I'm willing to bet all the apricots in Patterson you believe in some form of creationism (God having a hand in the first creation of life).

As others have said, your belief coincides strongly with intelligent design, a nonscientific belief structure that is being offered as an alternative to the scientific theory of evolution. It's fine that you feel this way, but if you ever join the nutjobs that propose this be taught in secular schools alongside actual science, you will join the list of people that must be hurled into the sun so that humanity can survive. Nothing personal.

 

[nakedfrog]

So you believe in evolution as the how and a deity as the why?

 

[Jeff7]

Originally posted by: jagec

Originally posted by: Jeff7

Originally posted by: jagec
As I scientist I can assert that a *lot* of stuff isn't science. If you were to build a universe using nothing but science, both present and future laws, discoveries, and models, you would find a lot of gaps. Some things are simply impossible to test scientifically.

At least, right now they are impossible.
There was a time when it was "impossible" for things heavier than air to fly.

Huh? That's completely different. Besides, that sentence is untrue: birds have been around for ages. Technology was limited, but science knew that it was theoretically possible.

Science relies on reproducibility, and measurement. If you can't bring something into the lab or design an instrument to measure it from afar, you can't do science. Speculative theories can be made which are later proven when technology advances, but no instrument can reveal the answer to basic philosophical questions such as "Why are we here? Is there a purpose, or is it just chance? What is right and wrong? Is there absolute truth, or is everything relative to ones' observations and experiences?"

Another thing is the study history, which, while there are certainly many tantalizing bits of hard evidence strewn around, will always be speculative. We can never write a second-by-second account of Julius Caesar's life...that information is lost forever to science. You can certainly conjecture some basic ideas about what sort of person he was, what things he was likely to be doing at any given day, and with whom he might have been speaking, but none of this is science: it isn't reproducible, it isn't observable, and it isn't provable. You can only disprove the occasional tidbit that actually does show up in some sort of printed record (He couldn't have been taking a bath, because senatorial records show that he gave a speech. But that isn't yet "proof", given that records can be falsified.)

I wasn't even thinking about purpose and that sort of stuff. That clearly falls into the realm of philosophy, not hard science, and as such I didn't factor it into my thinking or my statement. I was thinking right away about things like experimenting on the subatomic scale, getting a very high-res look at extra-solar planets, or superluminal travel speeds. Things like purpose, at least as far as I'm concerned, come from us. Nature simply exists. If you want purpose in your life, you're the one who has to create it. If God or some other external force has a purpose or a plan, then there's nothing you can do to "change" it, because anything you do is already part of that perfect plan. Thus, you still wind up creating your own purpose in life, which just happens to fit in with the divine plan already in existence. Or something like that.
And how's this for clarification: For a time, it was impossible for humans to achieve any sort of flight. How's that?

But I do get what you're saying. Some information is lost to us, buried in time, which we cannot retrieve, unless some clever person in the future devises a means to either travel through time, or else simply peer backwards through time.

Originally posted by: DangerAardvark
Why does it have to go straight from "science can't explain it" to "oh well, God did it"? That's quite a leap there.

Indeed. There is too often no middle ground of simply, "I don't know right now." Science couldn't explain illnesses long ago, and it was attributed to evil spirits of some sort. Now we know that sickness can be caused by bacteria, viruses, environmental toxins, or genetic anomalies - not demonic possession. Or the wind - it's not a deity blowing air from his magical lungs, it's little more than turbulent fluid flow, caused by dissimilar temperatures within that fluid.

Originally posted by: skace
What is the term for when a god mutates animals on the fly?

"Messing with your mind."

Originally posted by: BirdDad
I came to this conclusion myself without religious people pushing it on me.I came to this after a zoology class.
And when one of those mutations occur do you notice that the other animals stay away from it?If it has something different about it they might accept it into the pack or herd but they sure as hell wont allow it to mate.

The rate of this could occur at such a gradual rate that such an avoidance instinct wouldn't kick in. Certain traits could even be seen as desirable by potential mates. For example, arger antlers on a male could increase his attractiveness to potential mates, as well as survival chances.

 

[torpid]

Originally posted by: nakedfrog
So you believe in evolution as the how and a deity as the why?

Wouldn't it be more accurate to say that he believes God is doing a sort of selective breeding? Not choosing which animals or people mate, but enacting mutations and particular gamete success?

 

[thecoolnessrune]

Without reading what everyone else has written (I'm in no mood to watch the useless banter), what I always understood as the term for your belief was "theistic evolution."

 

[mh47g]

Both suggest a god, therefore I honestly can say neither.

 

[nakedfrog]

Originally posted by: torpid

Originally posted by: nakedfrog
So you believe in evolution as the how and a deity as the why?

Wouldn't it be more accurate to say that he believes God is doing a sort of selective breeding? Not choosing which animals or people mate, but enacting mutations and particular gamete success?

I said what I meant and I meant what I said

 

[meltdown75]

oh yeah, and your God sounds a lot like a scientist

lololololololol

 

[Kadarin]

Given that your belief is equally based on nothing as are most religions, I place it in the same category: Wishful thinking.

 

[SirStev0]

I'm making my own religion for this... updates coming soon... please send check to...

 

[BirdDad]

I do believe that there was a creation just not that mytholgical crap the religious are pushing,I don't think anything had any sort of random chance.

 

[zerocool1]

I believe in the FSM, in all His Noodley Glory