did darwin kill god?

[Corbs1234]

In my opinion, science is now explaining what religion used to.
A good example of this is in Africa, Libya i believe where an exposed coal line generates methane gas which seeps through holes in the ground. Some time in the past these methane seams have caught fire, and the local people believe this to be a sign of the gods, and hence consider the region sacred.
That explanation was all well and good a few thousand years ago but now we know better...
As for evolution, its just adaption over time.

[Stressball]

i believe Aussie comedian Tim Minchin explains it best in his stand up / songs

Spot on, he's a funny bastard, but very insightful as well. Smart guy.

As has been stated a few times, Darwin didn't kill God. Knowledge didn't kill God. Nothing ever will kill God. Why? Because people like to feel special. People like to think that they are not an insignificant bit of carbon in the grand scheme of things. I don't know why; if you accept that there is no magical fairytale man up in the sky, you are no longer bound by words written thousands of years ago. You can make decisions of your own, live your life how you want it to be. To Philthy, the people who shuck religion in order to act how they want, would never have followed a religion to begin with if acting out was their desire.

People have both a great boon and a great weakness in possessing faith. It blinds them to rational thinking, and it blinds them to proficient use of logic. This is not limited to religion, it applies to many aspects of life. Take those who believe in Scientology (It's not a religion, it's a cult ) or homeopathy, or acupuncture, or naturopathy, or any number of natural 'alternative medicines' etc etc. These people use things like confirmation-bias, selection-bias, Ad Hoc Hypotheses, optional starting and stopping, arguments to ignorance and self-deception to justify their beliefs, all the while ignoring the mounting piles of evidence disproving what they believe. This is all particularly true for those who believe in the paranormal, and 'psi' claims ie. psychics.

For those not familiar with the terms, a site called The Skeptic's Dictionary covers all of them, with references:

Confirmation bias - confirmation bias - The Skeptic's Dictionary - Skepdic.com
Selection bias - selection bias - The Skeptic's Dictionary - Skepdic.com
Optional starting and stopping - optional starting / optional stopping - The Skeptic's Dictionary - Skepdic.com
Ad Hoc Hypotheses - ad hoc hypothesis - The Skeptic's Dictionary - Skepdic.com
Argument to ignorance - argument to ignorance (argumentum ad ignorantiam) - The Skeptic's Dictionary - Skepdic.com
Self-deception - self-deception - The Skeptic's Dictionary - Skepdic.com

Put simply, people will convince themselves of something untrue, and vehemently deny any challenges to their belief, regardless of their foundations. Religion is the absolute pinnacle of this; how can you disprove there is a God? You can't. But you can, using scientific evidence, prove that writings such as the bible can not have happened as they were written. The responses from deluded people are generally either A) Science is wrong because God said so, or B) Well in that case the writings are only metaphorical/not literal/distorted with time and translation and meant something else. This is one of the cases of denying mounting evidence contrary to their beliefs.

God will never die. The concept of one great deity will never fall completely. You can convince some of the people most of the time, or most of the people some of the time, but you can never convince all of the people, all of the time.

[jakbob]

Don't you think we have more important things unexplained than something simple like evolution , There's some seriously large holes in the theories of ..... everything that need fixing before we claim to know anything at all about anything. I think there more doubt about what is life now than there ever has been before.

P.S Darwin never proved anything about God or how life and the universe started, he just described how evolution works

Evolution itself has some pretty big holes itself. I can't for the life of me see why a bunch of molecules would suddenly decide to come together and form a single celled organism in the first place. And as far as I'm concerned life on earth is just far too complex to have happened by accident.
But I'm no God fearing bible basher either. The bible might be based loosely on true events, but its that old and been translated and #%$@ed with so many times that you have to take what it says with a grain of salt. Or probably a kilo of salt.
But I think in this day and age religion is a good thing, it makes a lot of people happy and provides some good principles by which to live. Most mainstream religion these days is more about living a wholesome life and generally being good, rather than burning witches and other such extremes. Its just those fanatics you've got to watch out for.
I think science and religion can still exist together. Whether god is real or not.

[Philthy]

Evolution itself has some pretty big holes itself. I can't for the life of me see why a bunch of molecules would suddenly decide to come together and form a single celled organism in the first place. And as far as I'm concerned life on earth is just far too complex to have happened by accident.
But I'm no God fearing bible basher either. The bible might be based loosely on true events, but its that old and been translated and #%$@ed with so many times that you have to take what it says with a grain of salt. Or probably a kilo of salt.
But I think in this day and age religion is a good thing, it makes a lot of people happy and provides some good principles by which to live. Most mainstream religion these days is more about living a wholesome life and generally being good, rather than burning witches and other such extremes. Its just those fanatics you've got to watch out for.
I think science and religion can still exist together. Whether god is real or not.

I agree. You would think that after 3 years of studying science and chemical engineering, I would have a good idea of how nature works on an atomic scale, but it seems like no matter how many doctors or professors I talk to, if you just keep asking "why" enough times like a child, in deeper than "well the electrons do this because of that", it gets to the level where they all just say "it just does".
But has everything been designed so that it comes together to form everything we see around us? Seems like the most logical explaination to me. Its an aweful lot of coincidences to have happened by chance

[greenfoam]

I don't count that as evolution, that's where you start getting into the God domain . Evolution as in changing from one species to another over many generations from a worm to a fish to a rabbit to a human, that I can do. But as for it actually starting from elements and bam you have life that I'm afraid just can't happen. You don't make dna from nothing. Lifeforms are made from elements but theres a very big difference . The only way I can see it is if life is it's own thing that has allways exsisted. The deeper you dig that hole the more likely you'll end up in Church that's why I thought this threads first post had no point

Evolution itself has some pretty big holes itself. I can't for the life of me see why a bunch of molecules would suddenly decide to come together and form a single celled organism in the first place. And as far as I'm concerned life on earth is just far too complex to have happened by accident.
But I'm no God fearing bible basher either. The bible might be based loosely on true events, but its that old and been translated and #%$@ed with so many times that you have to take what it says with a grain of salt. Or probably a kilo of salt.
But I think in this day and age religion is a good thing, it makes a lot of people happy and provides some good principles by which to live. Most mainstream religion these days is more about living a wholesome life and generally being good, rather than burning witches and other such extremes. Its just those fanatics you've got to watch out for.
I think science and religion can still exist together. Whether god is real or not.

[minux]

But as for it actually starting from elements and bam you have life that I'm afraid just can't happen. You don't make dna from nothing. Lifeforms are made from elements but theres a very big difference . T

So release your findings to the community, you will be hailed a hero amongst leading scholars.

[greenfoam]

I don't have any findings and neither does anyone else and I doubt anyone ever will. So it's all a bit pointless.

I believe 100% that Earth was seeded with life from elsewhere at the same stage it was getting bombed with water from comets, but that's about as usefull as knowing about evolution

[danja]

They are getting there. If the boffins don't suck themselves in a black hole of their own making first, they'll find the answers.

String theory and quantum computing are fascinating fields to read about, the possibilities are way more mind boggling than anything the church can throw at you.

[greenfoam]

LHC has been up and running for a week now and they haven't killed us yet:P. But I don't think they have it fully ramped up

[danja]

Doesn't bother me much, putting the science aside (which apparently says the chances are pretty much nil), if they do suck our solar system into oblivion, I'm probably not going to care much (being compressed to the size of a pinhead along with the rest of the planet and all), and if they don't, well, business as usual!

[STEALTHY™]

I have proof Jebus doesn't exist. I threw out an offer to have a beer with him at the pub (my shout) and he hasn't taken me up on it. Its proof, because no-one passes up a free beer.

[danja]

I have proof Jebus doesn't exist. I threw out an offer to have a beer with him at the pub (my shout) and he hasn't taken me up on it. Its proof, because no-one passes up a free beer.

Maybe Jebus is also a tee-totaler?

[Sphinx]

oohh... heavy stuff.

It's true, Darwin didn't kill God. It was the second gunman on the grassy knoll

[Vee-ard]

...or homeopathy, or acupuncture, or naturopathy, or any number of natural 'alternative medicines' etc etc. These people use things like confirmation-bias, selection-bias, Ad Hoc Hypotheses, optional starting and stopping, arguments to ignorance and self-deception to justify their beliefs, all the while ignoring the mounting piles of evidence disproving what they believe. This is all particularly true for those who believe in the paranormal, and 'psi' claims ie. psychics.

You have no idea what naturopathy is mate, do you? You're just picking the top three most well known alternative medicines and slamming them because you dont like alternative medicines as a whole.

While I think homeopathy ("like" treating "like") is a whole lot of crap (realistically, you cant treat alcoholism with alcohol) I think naturopathy has a whole lot going for it, after all arent scientists just now realising that certain rainforest plants can completely destroy some cancers with no side effects?

[burnz]

You have no idea what naturopathy is mate, do you? You're just picking the top three most well known alternative medicines and slamming them because you dont like alternative medicines as a whole.

While I think homeopathy ("like" treating "like") is a whole lot of crap (realistically, you cant treat alcoholism with alcohol) I think naturopathy has a whole lot going for it, after all arent scientists just now realising that certain rainforest plants can completely destroy some cancers with no side effects?

well isnt fungus/mould called penicillin?

[HamaTime™]

I don't think it was Darwin's theory that has caused the decline in church numbers. I find it funny to think that even after Darwin proclaimed on his deathbed that Evolution was just a theory and could never happen, the whole planet took it on board as truth and have spent billions and billions and billions of dollars trying to discover/prove the evolutionary theory. Fair enough some parts of it are plausible, but there are many many holes in the theory that even the worlds top scientists can't explain, like the evolution of the eye for instance. There have been many cases of evolutionary scientists renouncing their belief in the evolutionary theory as the origins of the world, and have converted to believing in God. A good example is some physicist from Switzerland (can't remember his name).

On the topic of Christianity, I will surprise you all by saying that there are very few 'pure' forms of Christianity left. Most of the worlds churches, being Catholic, Methodist, Protestant, Anglican etc etc are perverted in some way shape or form. For example the Catholic church. It is the richest and largest organisation on the planet, and it has been responsible for many atrocities in the past 2000 years. All the way back to Roman catholicism and the Roman Christianity around 100AD. It is not Christianity or holds its beliefs in anyway shape or form, it became a scapegoat or a justification for the lives people wanted to live. I.e. making people be your slaves 'because God says that your my slaves'.
Catholicism is not Christianity either. Catholicism is a religion and is based on false ideas. (I.e. they worship Mary as the saviour because she gave birth as a virgin to Jesus) the whole structure of Catholicism is based upon rules and control. The fundamental will of the Catholic church throughout history and most likely still today is to control people, to be a second government and to rule its sheep.
Christianity in it's pure and unhumanised form is not a religion, it is not a set of rules, it is not a controlling organisation. It is a way of life, a relationship with God through Jesus (who died to save our sins on the cross, bridging the gap of sin that previously seperated man and God, enabling us to have a relationship with him).

In my opinion, it is not knowledge or Darwin's theory that have pushed us apart from God, but our own human nature. Our rebelliousness, our want to have control (why? because essentially none of us like the idea of someone or something being better or above us).

[JBDrifter]

Difference is we aren't going to be strung up and or burned for renouncing our faith in the Church (Government)...atleast not in this country.

Fear is a powerful motivator. Take the creation of Satan for example. Satan is the Churchs best ally, their greatest creation. No one figure has got them more followers. Centuries past people feared that people who followed Satan would take unbaptized Children and sacrifice them. The church incites fear...and offers the solution.

I'm a Christian, not here to argue about religion or whatever... I'm not that type. Just want to make a correction... or maybe just clear something (at least for what I believe in anyway, as a Baptist).
I think it is a great misconception that all Christian's are weak, driven into their faith by the fear of going to hell when they die. Well, that's not the case... at least not for me and all other Christians I know. I would bet my life that if you asked any Christian this question, "why are you a Christian?", that their answer would not be "because I'm afraid of Satan/Hell". Their answer is much more likely to be, "because I love God".
You see, our faith is based on love, not fear. Why would I, or any Christian, be afraid of Satan/Hell if we believe (know) we are going to Heaven?

Now please... I don't want to start a religious debate here. That's not my intention whatsoever... so please no criticising comments about my choice of faith please.

[minux]

Catholicism is not Christianity either. Catholicism is a religion and is based on false ideas. (I.e. they worship Mary as the saviour because she gave birth as a virgin to Jesus) the whole structure of Catholicism is based upon rules and control. The fundamental will of the Catholic church throughout history and most likely still today is to control people, to be a second government and to rule its sheep.
Christianity in it's pure and unhumanised form is not a religion, it is not a set of rules, it is not a controlling organisation. It is a way of life, a relationship with God through Jesus (who died to save our sins on the cross, bridging the gap of sin that previously seperated man and God, enabling us to have a relationship with him).

I was unaware Catholics worshiped Mary as a Savior? They worship jesus as a savior and Mary as his mother...

re·li·gion (r-ljn)n.1. a. Belief in and reverence for a supernatural power or powers regarded as creator and governor of the universe.
b. A personal or institutionalized system grounded in such belief and worship.

2. The life or condition of a person in a religious order.
3. A set of beliefs, values, and practices based on the teachings of a spiritual leader.
4. A cause, principle, or activity pursued with zeal or conscientious devotion.



To say being Christian is not a religion, well its just silly, Christianity is a set of rules defining the way of life. Ways of life contain rules, these rules were put down by your so called god.
To say Jesus died for ones sins is just more story telling, Romans used to punish people by hanging them on a cross. He was killed obviously for no other reason than for breaking obvious laws of the time. Hey though, may as well keep a good fairy tale going through the times

As for Darwinism killing god, well no, as people have become more open to thoughts many have realised how much a fable these stories are and as such have stopped donating to such a dodgy cause.

The only thing you should believe in is yourself, once you can do this, anything is possible.
That said, I will not hold anything against those who like to believe in fairy tales, when they try to tell me something, I will just revoke all credibility.

[russy13]

Evolution itself has some pretty big holes itself. I can't for the life of me see why a bunch of molecules would suddenly decide to come together and form a single celled organism in the first place. And as far as I'm concerned life on earth is just far too complex to have happened by accident.

I think you're rather confused. Aside from using evolution as the first word, nothing you say after that has anything to do with evolution. You're actually talking about abiogenesis.
Sure, the exact definitive event isn't known 100%, given that it happened billions of years in the past, and without a time machine to go back and view it ourselves we may in fact never precisely know exactly what happened. But that doesn't mean we simply throw our hands up and say 'I don't know, it must be magic.' Nor does it mean we don't have any evidence for the processes involved either.

Evolution is simply the change in allele frequencies over time. It says nothing about how life itself began, and nor does it claim to.