General Chat

Kay - we are mutations, in the general sense of the word. We mutated from things that crawled out of the soup billions of years ago.

Joy, there are several theories on how life first originated in the pimeval soup, mostly involving the creation of simple through to complex amino acids, which morpehed over millions of years into more complex life forms and the process of natural selection has taken us to where we are today. You have to remember that conditions on earth were totally different to those now. Experiments have been able to replicate the formation of these basic building blocks of life.

It's quite hard going but look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenesis which gives a sort of synopsis of the various theories.

Of course, Darwin is the definitive read on the subject. Or the bible, whichever you think is more believable :-)

Whos to say we as humans are not a *mutation* of something else?

ahhhhhhhhh yes but.........how did it have babies .where was the cockrel eh.lol.
and how did the chicken get there in the first place .:)

who put it there.[wanders off to get pringles and a cuppa]

Joy they think they have the answer to the chicken and egg thing anyway! I read it the other day..

"British scientists claim to have finally come up with the definitive answer: The chicken.

The scientific and philosophical mystery was purportedly unraveled by researchers at Sheffield and Warwick universities, according to the Daily Mail newspaper.

The scientists found that a protein found only in a chicken's ovaries is necessary for the formation of the egg, according to the paper Wednesday. The egg can therefore only exist if it has been created inside a chicken.

The protein speeds up the development of the hard shell, which is essential in protecting the delicate yolk and fluids while the chick grows inside the egg, the report said.

"It had long been suspected that the egg came first but now we have the scientific proof that shows that in fact the chicken came first," said Dr. Colin Freeman, from Sheffield University's Department of Engineering Materials, according to the Mail.

"The protein had been identified before and it was linked to egg formation, but by examining it closely we have been able to see how it controls the process," he said. "

yep ya got me there eldrick.
and your right religion causes loads of problems .
but my question is this....
if i look out my window now,i can see bees /trees/flowers etc.all living things which all work by amazing stuff.a hell of alot of thought went into that.
how?
the big bang....like it just happened...i want to know about how.........how did it come together .whose idea was it to give me a heart that pumps blood through it...[my hubby disputs i have a heart but thats a whole new story]
whose idea was it for me to have bones and flesh.im not disputing science at all ,quite the opposite.i want to know.
same as the chicken and the egg thing.
[grabs cushion.....well........lol]

So I’m lead to believe it’s just a simple equation that allows all no matter where or what they are doing, they all see an event the same.

Oh,you didnt have an athiest for a dad Eldo,,,,,,,who told them good and right he didnt want my head filled with nonsense about people walking on water or parting the waves}}}}

he had good doorstep arguments that produced no defence.}}

I've tried all ways to get my head round relativity and extra dimensions, but it's hard going. Makes sense when you read up on it, but it's a place reserved for greater brain power than I posess.

Kay - I loved RE. Even then I used to ask loads of questions and get the teacher stone mad when he couldn't answer them. It was fun :-)

Just think where we would be now if not for the scientist & physicist, we would not have the 4th dimension of “timespace”, this will no doubt change our world and the way we see things

Oh I'm glad I was was excluded from any RE lessons, I would hate to have belived in things that wasnt proved to be true or happened.,,,,:}}}}}

I think science goes a lot further than that, Joy. Compare what we have now to say 20 years ago. Medical advances, technology, especially in computing, physics, that sort of thing. The advances are coming thick and fast at the cutting edge of science and the more that is discovered, the more sense that can be made of the world and indeed the universe.

We know pretty much what happened to start the universe and how the earth, stars etc were formed and it has nothing to do with a man with a big white beard. We know how evolution works and understand the process of natural selection. We know about DNA and genetics and how all of these things have a relevance to the future of the human race and it's wellbeing - or destruction. Yes, science occasionally gets it wrong, but not as often as the leaders of the organised religion groups, or the psychics or the esp proponents, etc. And when it gets something wrong, it admits it and moves on.

And we know that atheists and skeptics dont start wars or fly planes into tall buildings because voices in their head told them it was a jolly good idea.

my view on scientists as i see it is they look to find.sometimes they get it wrong so they look for more proof.to me they are finders.thats there job.
they find an alternative way of understanding stuff.
which im all for.
i was never forced to go to church,i was allowed to go to sunday school .at school we had RE.so i suppose religion was taught to me at an early age.as was science.
religion was more interesting to me because of the storys in the bible .not making crystals grow in a test tube.
so thats maybe why i still lean to the religious side.
its a hope that the scientists cant give me .but on both sides i still would like that proof.maybe they will find it.im happy to wait.

lol Beverley. I have no idea what your beliefs are nor do I care. I certainly don't want evidence of YOUR beliefs, because I know in advance you couldn't provide any, the same as any other believer in woo. I only know that you believe in homeopathy, a culture which transcends ridiculous and enters into the arena of the truly ludicrous. But again, neither you nor anyone else can explain how homeopathy works, other than it being a placebo. Which is fine, but why not just call it what it is? Why dress it up into something it isn't? So apart from that, believe away and dont think I am trying to convince you or anyone else of anything. I just like pointing out the flaws in the argument for belief in things that don't exist apart from in someones mind.

I never said scientists were gods, because there are no such thing as gods. It's a contradiction in terms. But scientists show us how things work and why they work, thereby dispensing with the need for gods. For some of us, anyway :-)

I agree, peoples beliefs are formed in childhood. Now if children weren't indoctrinated in their early years, they would maintain the default position, which is a non belief in gods, ghosts, esp and other fanciful notions. But that's not going to happen anytime soon. The best we can hope for is education and an encouragement to think critically and to question, which I think is happening and it's only a good thing.

A telling comment that you make is the one about your beliefs staying with you until you die. That's fine, but it's a bit scary. I'm quite prepared to believe in anything if it can be shown to me. I'm willing to change my views - indeed I WANT to believe in lots of things. But to put my hands over my ears and say 'La la la la la la' is not part of my repertoire :-)

Yes Mick

I'm pleased to say I was taught the world is good and people are good but bad things happen during the course of their lives. If that is brainwashing, then so be it - I've been brainwashed.

Ahh yes Beverley! How does the old Jesuit maxim go -
"Give me a child for for his first seven years and I'll give you the man"

It sounds as if you were well brainwashed in early childhood.


xxxx mick

Running Bear:

"so no matter what you believe in today you can bet the future will prove you wrong. "

I actually don't expect that anything in the future will disprove my belief that the earth revolves around the sun, or that the earth is spheroid and not flat.

And since nothing in all this time has even begun to prove that anything supernatural actually exists, I'm fairly confident that nothing is going to.

Science does advance our *knowledge*, and thus the foundation on which beliefs are formed.

The shape of the earth, or the operation of the solar system, isn't actually a matter of belief, is the thing. It's a matter of fact. The question is whether we *know* the facts, not whether we believe X or Y about them.

That's really just very different from the question of the existence of the supernatural.

But that said, I'm an agnostic atheist.

Agnostic refers to *not knowing*. None of us knows, when it comes to the existence of the supernatural. We are all agnostics, even those who claim to have knowledge, since they plainly don't.

Atheist refers to *not believing*. No basis for any belief, and so no belief.

Different matters. ;)

Bev, it must be very heart warming think like that, but I cannot, I like to think I can and do change my way of thinking, as we more forward with new evidence, the way I see things changes, so what I believe today will not be the same as tomorrow.

Beverley:

"Evidence can be (and is) falsified. Ask any lawyer, sales person or parent telling a child about Father Christmas. "

I'm feeling Eldrick's pain.

Did you actually read what I said, or did you just think you'd splash something around the thread that had nothing to do with it?

What *I said* was:

"It is evidence if it *can* be reproduced. If someone credible does the experiment, and someone else credible replicates it, and no one credible tries and fails to replicate it, we got us some evidence."

How does your statement about falsified evidence, let alone Santa Claus, respond to that? ???

Scientific *evidence* is not a tale told in a court or on the doorstep, or to a child on Christmas Eve. Really.

I'd have to see Eldrick's words. I wouldn't necessarily say, myself, that someone's beliefs are ridiculous *because* there is no scientific evidence to back them up. I might say they are ridiculous *and* there is no scientific evidence to back them up. If someone asked, or voluntarily stated them in public.

As I have been trying to say - it doesn't matter who is right or who is wrong. What I believe is right for ME. If I lived to be 10,000 years old (oh, please no) I would still have those basic faiths. Many are formed in early childhood. As years go by and I read and think more and speak to others, I have and will amend various aspects of that belief but the basics of my beliefs will stay with me until I die.