monkfish
what are birds? we just don't know.
no problem same hereMonkfish- Sweet, I was just beating you to the punch incase you were some bible crazed godhound. I didn't mean for it to sound as bad as it came out, I hope I didn't piss you off too badly. I suspected you to be smarter than that, but I like to undercut people (especially religious folk) before their arguement even gets off the ground because they are so frustrating to me on the internet sometimes.
agree. perhaps "scientifically simple" would be a more appropriate qualifier to the razor.Faith is something that people are hardwired for, that's an easy explaination right there. We are biologically hardwired to find explainations for things, even when the explaination is beyond us. So, how do you explain things like the sun when you haven't got a telescope? How do you explain death when it scares the shit out of you? Easy, you make a god.
with regards to nature i think sir david attenborough has it bang on: "as far as I'm concerned, if there is a supreme being then he chose organic evolution as a way of bringing into existence the natural world.";I would argue that the middleman would be the same, but then I am asserting that if there is a god he would have made the galaxy, set the rules in motion and left it to its own devices, what with the whole freewill thing and all. Ergo, you have life starting the same, moving along by the same rules and ending the same way. Evolution, cellular respiration and all that jazz is what I was thinking would be the method here. Perhaps I'm so far from believing in any kind of god that it makes it a bit difficult for me to see your point of view.
"My view is: I don't know one way or the other but I don't think that evolution is against a belief in God."
perhaps i misinterpreted what you mean by the "method", but there is one sticking point that always gets me:
"...set the rules in motion and left it to its own devices, what with the whole freewill thing and all. Ergo, you have life starting the same..."
to me, the simple explanation for the existence of life is that life has always existed. i also believe in the big bang theory so much as the history of the universe is concerned. i believe that we evolved from single-cellular organisms. but i do not rule out the possibility that such organisms were created by a conscience of some sort - so i suppose my definition of a god is (tongue-in-cheek) the "possible creator of life on earth".
so back round to the original point: i don't see any way in which we can quantify the probabilities of this happening. it is simply beyond the capability of the current state of our minds and our technology to discern such a thing.
lol no they didn't. nobody marched into Big Chief Athiest's office and slapped down a legal notice requiring this advertisement to be placed. they could have worded it "there may be no god" and that would have been perfectly legal.Um. To everyone who's bitched about the 'probably no God' thing - they had to phrase it like that, it was a legal requirement.
son of disaster:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_Law