God created evolution and all else that is - and He created it such that nothing about it has a beginning or end. Part of His creation was our own Big Bang - from which our "known" Universe, our galaxy, our solar system, our planet, our nature and our evolved species - from which our minds, growth of thinking, which led to ever-greater inventiveness ...and our ability to examine and understand our nature, the nature of life on our planet, the beginning of our planet, our solar system, our galaxy, and our universe - even the fact that we (universally) are not alone.

Just as there is no limit in time or space or spirit to God, there likewise is no limit in those realms to His creation. For He did create us in His own image, infinate. To see that we are finite is to limit perspective to a finite aspect of a limitlessness. It's like saying since a rain drop will evaporate, our oceans are doomed to a similar fate.

Perhaps they are. Perhaps our entire planet is finite...does that mean that the same is true of all planets everywhere? Does human mortality point to an end to all? Or is it more likely that from the Big Bang came an expanding cycle that will contract again and implode into another ex-plosion, expansion, retraction, etc.? Or maybe the expansion of our Big Bang will just infinately expand. But just as it is scientifically unlikely that ours is the only universe or we the only intelligence, it is unlikely that ours is was or ever will be the only Big Bang.

God's limitless by it's nature created further limitlessness, from which our existance was born. Science is the further discovery of His creation and hence His nature, hence Him...or Her...or the mighty IT or ID or whatever...GOD...GargantuanOmnipitantDivinity.

Humboldtdave, Maybe there is a god....and maybe there isn't. But one thing is for sure, God dod not create the world/universe/mankind, etc in 6 days. That, like the Bible. is total bullshit. You say god created us in his image? You should say "thier" image, since in the text it is "our image". Maybe there's more than one god, maybe there is a shit-load? Maybe there is even a commettee of gods and goddesses? But one thing is without doubt, the God of the bible did NOT create the universe or mankind.

Humbugdave,
Who created God?
...and why?
Does he have a greater purpose, or worth, than us?

Anyway, here's another recent missing link discovery:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/frontpage/story/0%2C%2C1748005%2C00.html

It's a newly discovered animal between land animals and fish.

Sounds like Humboltdave gets his information out of a book, written by simpletons that lived 2000 years ago. According to HD, God created the whole Universe and then needed someone to worship him and to tell him how wonderful he was for creating us and he created us to praise him, but then, he regretted making a man and a woman, so he killed the first generation, but he had all those Angels to worship him in Heaven, but that didn't work out either. The God in a book does not sound like he is very smart! He put a rainbow in the clouds, to remind him not to flood the Earth again, and it only shows up when the Sun is shinning and raining, depending on the angle and location that it is being viewed.

Scientist's do not search in a book to look for evidence of a god, nor do they take someones word that say that they have been inspired by a god, so it must be true.

Scientist's look outside of books to look for evidence of how we got here and how it was created.

The earth and human beings are more than 6000 plus years old which the supposed bible reveals for those who want to spend time doing some homework on the issue. This supposed book of a supposed God's word tell us how old Adam was when Seth was born. The calculation from Adam's age, then until now is a little over 6000 year.

The big problem is the word "God". For some that means allah, jesus, whatever..
I am bordering athiest and some kind of higher power, that doesn't make me a religious fanatic, but gives me the room to have something that I can call my own. Evolution and science may be a the way "It" does things.

Let's get this discussion back to the subject of the article. It didn't say anything about whether or not God exists.

I predict that anti-evolutionists won't see the 4.2 million-year-old pre-human fossil as filling a gap. They will see it as creating two new ones.

People who know nothing about science will continue to react against evolution in public ways. Ignorance of what evolution is/isn't will persist in the United States, and that doesn't bode well for school-age children and the future of science in our country.

Attacks against God in discussion of evolution don't help either. Those who care about science should understand that it's a mistake to attack religion and the existence of God every time new proof of evolution surfaces. A recent Harris poll determined that the vast majority of people still believe in God. I don't recall the percentage and won't BS you.

Let's confront religion on ethical grounds instead. The churches are essentially fascist organizations run by greedy power mongers. We see signs of this in the other posts about preachers abusing power and violating kids.

Considering whether or not
God exists is a personal matter that doesn't have to be affected by what science teaches us or what preachers do wrong.

Personally, I don't see evidence of God's involvement in daily events. Saying God changes outcomes one way or another invariably leads to absurdity. Lots of people see only randomness, and it doesn't stop them from believing in God. Our founding fathers were mostly deists who belived God created the world, then left it alone.

I think a big misconception about the problem of God vs. science that I hope I can clarify for many of the readers here is that science cannot disprove or prove the existence of God/Gods; due to the fact that you can never do a test for something that you never can have evidence in reality for, i.e. God, goblins, unicorns, the grim reaper. But science can disprove of the religions created by the human race, by means of historical facts, contradictions in religious texts, scientific discovers such as evolution, physics discoveries and so on. I myself am an Atheist and even if a god did exist it would make absolutely no affect on my life and I will still live and die just like everyone else if I believe in one or not.

Ironic that fundies do not post on articles like this isn't it?

Does anyone else find the above article to be/seem a bit questionable?

I don't know... For some reason, it sounds like somebody is blowing smoke here. It sort of has that too-good-to-be-true feel to it.

And six million years of evolutionary progress all within a "days walk" of one another?

I just hope it isn't one of OUR guys lying to further their cause. After all, it has happened before, it just doesn't happen as often as it does on the OTHER side.

Interesting how many readers seemed to think that what I wrote in any way reflected what the Bible says.

Oh, there was that bit about God creating us in His own image, I'll concede, but in my use of it (not the Bible's) it was simply meant to mean that from what is came what is.

If you paint a picture you had an idea of what that picture would be before you painted it and did your best to duplicate your idea - the outcome being something along the lines of your idea, interlayed with your humanness (i.e., you+brush+paint+canvas don't =photograph). Even if you have no idea what might end up on the canvas, for instance random paint splattering, something of who you are ends up on the canvas...whether it's from your particular angles of brush movements, how close you choose to stand to the canvas, with what force you splatter, etc.

So if we do exist (and I can't seem to Grok that we don't), we must have come from something. Our planet originated from something. Our galaxy, our universe. And what we are made of (atoms, energy, maybe even spirituality of some sort...ya know, maybe we're not just energetic movements of atoms) is a reflection of what we came from.

Some science examines our matter, some our behavior, some our thoughts, our feelings...some our fellow species in life on Earth. Some our Earth itself or other celestial things. Why look at all? Why would we want to know anything that we can find through scientific method?

Because we care. We want to know who we are, what we are, what we are a part of, what the rest of that "of" is, where it all came from, where it'll take us in the future, how we can better ourselves along the way and experience more aliveness, joy, love, and peace.

I agree that most of what is published in the myriad of versions of Bibles is fiction. You won't find the Truth, the Whole Truth, and Nothing But The Truth in the Tao Te Ching. Here's a few other religions that won't give you the end-all:

Ásatrú
Ayyavazhi
Bahá'í Faith
Buddhism
Christianity
Confucianism
Discordianism
Etruscan religion
Falun Gong
Hinduism
Islam
Jainism
Judaism
Mandaeanism
Manichaeism
Mohism
New Age religions
Rastafari movement
Samaritanism
Satanism
Sikhism
SubGenius
Swedenborgianism
Taoism
Thelema
Unification Church
Zoroastrianism

...and in alphabetical order no less! ...okay, I cheated with Wikipedia.com

...but each has some reality in what they teach, as they were created by real people who were given a real environment of time and space within which to create them.

And why did they create them? Can any of you say without a shred of doubt that every school of belief's end goal is subjugation and control by division and destraction? Is that what Budha meant when he said what he said to those he said it?

Let's get down to the nitty gritty - y'all have some hang-ups about Christianity in particular. But I wonder if you feel so strongly about Christianity or more just the Bible and church? All the destructive things people do in our world and pin it to their interpretations of dogma and how influential it should be.

It pisses me off too. It's like if my sister told me she loved me dearly and a passer-by heard her say she wanted to shove me - then told a stranger my sister thought she was above me - so they started telling everyone that women are conceited and for the wrongs to be made right men should overpower women in all things - and a movement is begun, passions arise - as the stranger gets more and more to listen to him he feels stronger and stronger - and he gets a God complex - you see where I'm going with this?

I don't like perversions of morality either...but I believe in right and wrong. I believe it is wrong to steal, cheat, lie, kill, and degrades our ability to respect when we can't get past selfishness or lust and see the real beauty beneath the surface. Or if there be ugliness beneath the surface we should confront it and expose it and use example to bring about healthier change.

Use our minds to better understand and teach. Use our hearts to hate less and care more. It's that part of our nature that I believe best represents the "image" of God. If there was a man named Jesus of Nazareth, the descriptions of how he lived his life lead me to understand that he understood that kind of goodness too. If he never really existed, someone or some ones were able to express it pretty well through the telling of at least THAT part of the Bible.

When I see a "Who Would Jesus Bomb?" bumpersticker I am reminded that kindness is possible and more powerful than attack or counter-attack.

Benevolence is the very fabric of our universe - I would call that "in His image" - and I say His to mean God's - and I say God for lack of a better term that you will understand what I mean...I'm sorry you have such tainted attachments to the term.

Peace be with you all.

humboldtdave wrote:
"Benevolence is the very fabric of our universe - I would call that "in His image" - and I say His to mean God's - and I say God for lack of a better term that you will understand what I mean...I'm sorry you have such tainted attachments to the term"

If I understand the meaning of Benevolence to be:

Benevolence (Be*nev"o*lence) (?), n.
[OF. benevolence, L. benevolentia. See Benevolent.]
1. The disposition to do good; good will; charitableness; love of mankind, accompanied with a desire to promote their happiness. "The wakeful benevolence of the gospel." Chalmers.
2. An act of kindness; good done; charity given.

I SAY,
then I would suggest that you are wrong. It seems to me that "chaos" is the very fabric of our universe and if you look at our history as we evolved, we arrived here on top of the food chain by surviving every imaginable natural calamity, and by killing and eating everything that got in our way, because that is the way "God" made us.

Now we humans do love each other for a variety of reasons, but our benevolent creator, (Whatever it is), has shown little benevolence for any particular species, whenever a stronger smarter species showed up.

WE are doomed, or at least our descendants are doomed by the very natural chaotic nature of how "IT" created the universe. It was nothing to God when millions of humans died from plague or violence, and as we reproduce at an exponential rate, with a finite potential for this planet to support and survive the pollution we are creating, we will disappear with a whimper, with no evidence of a benevolent creator to intervene.

I suggest that CHAOS is the very fabric of our universe, and learning to deal with it, understand it, and make the best of it, is our job, our reason for being here, our purpose.
Dan (Agnosticrationalisthumanist)






chaos
1 obsolete : CHASM, ABYSS
2 a often capitalized : a state of things in which chance is supreme; especially : the confused unorganized state of primordial matter before the creation of distinct forms -- compare COSMOS b : the inherent unpredictability in the behavior of a natural system (as the atmosphere, boiling water, or the beating heart)

The Church of the Subgenius is an actual religion? I thought it was a band.

Fwee..

"Does anyone else find the above article to be/seem a bit questionable?

I don't know... For some reason, it sounds like somebody is blowing smoke here. It sort of has that too-good-to-be-true feel to it.

And six million years of evolutionary progress all within a "days walk" of one another?

I just hope it isn't one of OUR guys lying to further their cause. After all, it has happened before, it just doesn't happen as often as it does on the OTHER side."

Judge for yourself. See the following article:

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v440/n7086/pdf/nature04629.pdf

It's a bit long on scientific terminology, but worth the read.

Sorry about that. The link appears to have cut off. Someone want to tell me what tags to use to abbreviate a link?

If you put the following together into one string, you'll have the whole thing.

http://www.nature.com/

nature/journal/v440/n7086/

pdf/nature04629.pdf

I've learned alot just from this string of posts. Thank you all - mucho food for thought, yum!

So evolution has been scientifically proven, it is in the nature of nature to evolve from something to something. Intellect is part of nature as well - that is, cognizance, reason, learning. Could our own intelligence have come from a lack of intelligence?

humboldtdave wrote:
"I've learned a lot just from this string of posts. Thank you all - mucho food for thought, yum!

So evolution has been scientifically proven, it is in the nature of nature to evolve from something to something. Intellect is part of nature as well - that is, cognizance, reason, learning. Could our own intelligence have come from a lack of intelligence?"

Dan replies,
Our intelligence came from ancestors who were mutants and slightly more intelligent than their peers, and therefore solved problems better than their peers, and therefore lived better and longer than their peers and therefore reproduced longer, and more often than their peers.

Wallah! A more intelligent species. "Natural selection" IT is still going on today!
Dan (Darwinist, agnostic)

"Our intelligence came from ancestors who were mutants ..."

Okay, but from what/where/when did the mutation process come? Are you just talking about life on Earth? Was there not a time before Earth was?

humboldtdave wrote:
"Our intelligence came from ancestors who were mutants ..."

"Okay, but from what/where/when did the mutation process come? Are you just talking about life on Earth? Was there not a time before Earth was?"

Dan replies,
The mutation process came from "IT," the cause of everything. You may call "IT" God, or you may it the force, or you may call it the prime mover, or you may call it anything you want, as men have done ever since they evolved enough intelligence to wonder about what caused their natural world.

But you can't call God a supreme being that created us in his image, and the world in 6 days, and all the other stupid shit in the Bible, without veering off into make believe.

The laws of probability says that there may be intelligent life on any number of similar planets to ours, and most probably beings so superior in intelligence than us, that they might not know how to communicate with us, just as we can't talk to an ant.

Of course there was a time before "Earth was." It was the time when all of the matter that makes up this planet was coalescing into a sphere, and all the time that preceded that.

Dan (Who has an inalienable right to trust in "IT", and is in awe of "IT")

humboldtdave ,
I just reread your post at the top of this thread and realized you and others, said approximately everything I have said in my ensuing posts. We just talk differently!
Dan(Agnosticrationalisthumanist)

I agree with Jim Lee,...It 's very clear that evolution is true.We
just don't know all the details yet.Good to see something new on the subject!!

Humboldtdave said:

I suggest that CHAOS is the very fabric of our universe, and learning to deal with it, understand it, and make the best of it, is our job, our reason for being here, our purpose.
Dan (Agnosticrationalisthumanist)

I think Chaos may have been the beginning (the unstable singularity and the ensuing Big Bang caused by the instability of the singularity), but from it relative order was born as a result of the physical evolution of the force called gravity.

I really appreciate the article you wrote. I have a natural history timeline at www.triassiclegacy.org and it's WAY behind in updates because of several other problems with the Website I’ve been unable to cure, e.g., Verizon blocking email from the site.. You've spurred me on to set a time for an update of the timeline, probably Sunday.

Thanks

Also, anyone who might have suggestions for further updates of my timeline at www.triassiclegacy.org, let me know.

I do worry that most all recent archeological discoveries seem to end in the claim that the 'missing link' has been found. I believe someone is interpreting the data found. Anthropologists and especially scientists should not have an agenda of such. As much as I want there to be proof that the Bible is erroneoous - it has already been proven by every unanswered prayer by faithful people. The believers will believe because they want to. Just as people created Gods in the first place - because it answers what they do not understand and it satisfies their fear of death. Everyone fears death at sometime in their life - no one wants death to be final, nor soon. It is why the bible used longevity as a carrot for believers in Genesis. That book was written so far after the fact that no one could prove or disprove the 900 year lives of people. Now that it can be disproved - even 2,000 years ago - longevity was no longer a reward for believers - they had to come up with something new - better. Thus Heaven was created.

No matter what we find here to disprove the ridiculous theories of the Bible - Believers will choose to believe because they think it makes them a better person. It takes real confidenc, maturity and intelligence to live a real life - accepting death as inevitable and mostly random. We all want control - but death does not afford us this. It makes people uncomfortable.

Cholebear:

The article didn't say "the" missing link was discovered, but that a previously discovered link was newly found in an important place, along with 6 million years worth of other pre-human ancestors. This helps corroborate a chain of events that was previously hypothesized.

Exactly Dan! From IT came IT. We are merely part of IT. IT is Universal and we will never fully understand all of IT any more than an ant will fully comprehend the world it lives on or the measure of it's signifigance (which, incidentally MIGHT be a whole lot more than any human would ever give it...except for maybe a budhist).

Still, that won't stop us from trying to better understand it, especially in what ways might further bennefit our own existances...as well as our fascinations.