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KoltirasRip — EvolutionChart
Published: 2012-06-25 00:36:32 +0000 UTC; Views: 5345; Favourites: 138; Downloads: 49
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EDIT: Apparently hyenas aren't dogs. This blows my mind *laughs* Anywho, the point was that mutts would look like them in the sense that a common dog resembles all of its peers, like wolves, African Wild Dogs and Dingos do, if left to their own devices...so since Hyenas are morphologically similar to canines, the point is still valid.OKAY...COMMENTS CLOSED NOW. It's been an hour since I made my last reply to the last comment sent to me, and I haven't gotten another response...so I'm gonna go ahead and close this thing. Please be aware that there are only like...3 people total that ended up getting banned because of their arguments, and it was certainly not because of their beliefs. It was their manner. I've said it before and I'll say it again...believe whatever you want, but don't shove your faith down someone else's throat like it's fact. Faith and fact are not the same, and no matter how hard you think something is true, believing it won't make it so. Until you can find proof for your claims, they are little more than empty, soulless promises. So I close by saying "I respect the believer, but not the beliefs, and I can't, so long as a large chunk of those beliefs brainwash people into hating, discriminating, and devaluing other people who never once had the choice of being born into your favored place in existence."
UPDATE: Just a fair warning...I'm gonna close comments on this thing pretty soon cuz I'm spending far too much time reading and responding, and I'm not getting any work done. It's been awesome talking with some of you guys (frustrating as shit with others of you,) but I gotta finish my costume for Otakon XD
At the risk of pissing off a lot of people, I'm gonna post this. Normally I keep my views about this to myself but there's been a lot of Creationist stuff going around lately and my forehead is raw from the face-palming and head-desking I've been doing.
If you believe in God, that's cool, I'm not trying to tell you not to. However, your religious leaders are going out of their way to impose upon ALL PEOPLE their twisted views of how the universe came into being, and the morality rules of some Bronze Age goat-herders who believed lightning was God's wrath, and children could be sold into slavery. It is both detrimental and absurd.
So...yeah. Don't hate. Educate. Learn. Never take ONE source as the truth. There's a reason your school teachers and college professors REQUIRE you to cite several credible sources when you do research assignments. If you only use one source, and that source ends up being wrong or an outright lie, you can get yourself into a lot of trouble.
And no, the Bible doesn't count as multiple sources because it was written by multiple people. It has been heavily altered, mistranslated, changed, mistranslated again, applied falsely, and most of it, even before then, was heavily self-contradictory... The Sunni and Shia Muslims are killing each other because of a difference in translation of the Koran. The entire Protestant Bible is a heavily edited version of the Old Testament because King Henry VIII wanted a divorce that the Pope wouldn't give him. The Old Testament itself is a fucked up amalgamation of DOZENS of religions and pagan beliefs that predated it.
After all, if Emperor Nero had chosen Mithra-ism as the State Religion, everyone in America would believe in Mithra. I would still be an Atheist. The very reason you find all other religions on earth to be false is exactly why I know Christianity is. It's all a lie, perpetuated by superstition and the inferiority-complex of long-dead men who wanted to control even more inferior men (and women.) Sorry.
I'm hoping any comments added to this are civil. I feel, however, that many people will see this as an attack on their faith. To me, it's no different than telling a child that Santa Claus isn't real. The only difference is that God is the Santa Claus of adults and it's frightening that many are trying to dictate how others live their lives because of their 'faith.' Faith is not a virtue. It's a cancer.
EDIT: Really quick...if I don't respond to you, there's probably 2 reasons. 1, You're agreeing with me, or 2, I think you're too stupid to breathe. If I don't reply to your nonsense, it's not because I think you're right...it's because you can't be reasoned with and I'm not going to try.
YET ANOTHER EDIT: [link] Here's a link to an article that describes how scientists created biological entities in the lab. They weren't insects and you could hardly call if 'living, breathing, motivated life' but RNA is an ancestor to DNA, and we all know what comes after that.
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Comments: 200
I firmly believe in both God and evolution (and I think I'm not the only one) and I just can't stand it when Creationists say these stupid things -.-.
I mean, "But my granny wasn't a chimp D:!"
Oh, and OCEAN+TIGER= TIGER SHARK is probably the most awesome thing in the world XD.
Sorry for my bad English, I'm Italian.
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Thank you! This is really an amazing job, wish more people could read it!! I have always felt really proud of the way my parents left me on my own on the whole religious fiction, because it helped me realise they are all lies made to control and scare the poor and uneducated peasants. I remember that when I was little a lot of my friends believed in God and I started to believe too (of course, the TV also helped brainwashing me) so I was always asking my parents thing about Christianity and why they weren't married and why I didn't go anywhere to learn about the Bible lol They were really patient, never telling me their own opinions on the matter or trying to talk me out of becoming a nun 
I understand the use it had centuries ago, where you could get your people to behave under the threat of hell, but nowadays it's hard to believe so many people decide not to open their eyes
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True story! My upbringing and childhood were quite similar.
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I think it's pretty direct, easy to read and none offensive. Good Job. They should have this hanging in schools for when evolution comes up.
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Lol, I have one word for this. GENIUS!
And after reading all the comments so far, I do have to wonder how many people didn't take biology.
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I haven't read any of this or anything, but I've just wondered if you've ever read the book "Darwins Black Box" or "I Don't Have Enough Faith To be an Athiest"?
Oh also, you should probably check out "The Evidence That Demands a Verdict" and/or "The Case for Christ". There's also this one debate but I can't remember what it was...
There are so many more, but I think you should at least just check them out before you make any conclusion. If you read those, there's a super overwhelming amount of evidence that proves both God's existence and Jesus' legitimacy. Ex nihilo nihilo fit-
Another added note is that The Bible is actually extremely accurate. "Over 20,000 known manuscripts document the New Testament text. This makes the New Testament the most reliable document of antiquity (a document written before the printing press). These manuscripts vary in size from a part of a page to an entire Bible (Old and New Testaments). The earliest New Testament manuscripts date from the second century (100-199) AD These manuscript copies were written in different languages by people of different nationalities, cultures, and backgrounds. In spite of all those differences between them, the New Testament texts all agree. (That is, those differences that we do observe between these hand written documents are occasional changes in the spelling of names or isolated cases of missing or changed words. Still, since we have so many copies, it is obvious to anyone but the hardened skeptic can that they all represent the same text.)" [link]
There is so much more evidence that Christianity is true, but I'm super tired and don't feel like typing anymore. (+glass cut on my pinky 
And please don't kill me, I really mean the best! and long message is long. :I
-erisabesu
I don't know if I should even post this let alone discuss due to fear of being trolled... + my natural fear of offending people....
*clicks add comment button* Peaceful deviantart experience... most likley forever ruined.
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There is absolutely no evidence that proves the validity or truth of Christianity anymore than there is proof that Mohammad rode a flying horse across Arabia and into Heaven. Jesus Christ was not an actual dude; his story is based on numerous other religious figures that predated him. Christianity bastardized several pagan celebrations (Winter Solstice -> Christmas, Fertility Festival -> Easter, etc,) while somehow finding it meaningful to slaughter (in droves, and in horrible ways) anyone who dared think differently. There are several notable historians that actually and truly did live during the supposed age of Christ and not a single one of them ever mentioned his name. You'd think if a guy did the things Christ claimed to do, one of them would have eventually heard about it and investigated, or at least joted a note about it. But no...Jesus Christ the dude isn't mentioned until some 40 or 50 years after he supposedly died. Given the living conditions of the day, 40-50 years was basically a whole lifetime, and anyone old enough to write about Christ (had he actually existed) would have been too young, or not even born, to know anything about him.
Anytime I have ever heard supposed evidence about Jesus Christ actually having lived, that anything God supposedly did ever actually happened, it's twisted up by the biased, wishful thinking of believers who can't see the forest for the trees. I'm really into mythology and theology as a hobby, I've heard all the stories and all the evidence. The more I learn, the more firmly I know Christianity (and all other religions that predated and postdated it) are lies used by leaders to control the uneducated masses.
In the last 10 years, since the advent of the internet, religion has become a more recessive part of most peoples' lives because they are able to access more information than every before. They don't get their education through the mouthpieces of the Church. They can read everything on their own, first-hand. Atheism has skyrocketted to a whopping 12% of the American population, and 'nonaffiliated' has risen to more than 20%. We don't need fairy tales anymore. We know why the tide goes in and out, why lightning happens, what caused the Bubonic Plague and that stepping on cracks won't break your mother's back.
There will always be people who think (for example,) as a matter of fact, that the banana was designed by God to be help by man's hand because the ridges so perfectly fit into the creases in our skin...but those people don't know that their example of a banana is a hybrid created by humans from 3+ different varieties that grows faster and tastes sweeter. But honestly, to me, all religion sounds nucking futs, just like Scientology does to most sane people, or Mormonism, or any other religion that anyone can cast off as being absurd. I just take it one religion further.
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I don't even know where to start. But if you would just even listen to my side, it would make my world. Will you?
If you don't want me to give it, I won't. But what I say might be really surprise you and be different from the normal stuff other people have told you.
I is be awaiting your reply.
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The sad and constant thing about religion is that every time I read about or listen to someone talk about their "evidence," it's generally built and falsehoods, bias, indoctrination and the age old "I believe it and you can't prove I'm wrong" argument.
Religion is a hobby of mine. I like learning about them, so it's not like I've taken my position from the angry atheists who dig up dirt and twist it into something it wasn't. I try to find a happy medium where I look into evidence presented and described by both sides...but when it comes down to it, the side that generally wins is the one with actual evidence. That actual evidence points to Christianity (and all other JudeoChristian religions) as being based largely on previous faiths and customs, while offering little original material of their own besides character names.
I quoted to someone else earlier, "Religion is regarded by the people as true, the wise as false, and the rulers as useful." No greater truth about religion could be stated, and I am sorry, but the evidence proves religion is a lie created by superstitious people 2 or more thousand years ago, and the more we learn about the world, the farther "God" is reduced to being a "god of the gaps." You can't honestly believe every word to be true, just and good...and I you only take small parts literally, what good is the whole thing? Religion gets more and more watered down with every successive generation.
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Well, You'd be surprised at the evidence out there. And it's not just evidence that I'm accumulating because it will prove my case; I don't really need to go looking for it because there's so much of it. I have a whole shelf full of books and discs about Christian apologetics, and most of them were actually written by former atheists. (actually... I think about 90% of them were... :i) There's just so much evidence that I'd place my bet with Christianity being the one and only truth. (+ my one personal little experience, but that doesn't really matter... because it only helps me be sure, not others 
LOL I keep saying how much evidence there is but I'm not giving examples. >> I still haven't received an answer about whether you want to hear about it or not D: If yes, then I will proceed to list evidence for Christianity and disprove other points that would invalidate my case... if not though, that's totally fine.
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I'd rather not. Not because I'm 'scared of the truth' but because, as I said before, most of it is biased, false, misinterpreted, or like this one supposed 'prominent atheist that converted to Roman Catholicism and accepts Jesus as her Lord and Savior'...it turns out to be done just for show, by people who were never actually atheists, but rather very subdued Christians who became born-again and went nucking futs just for attention.
Evidence I hear, that religious folk take absolutely seriously, is mostly ridiculous nonsense like saying the banana was made just for mankind to hold, or that the horse was created just for mankind to ride, or dogs created specifically for mankind to befriend. Bananas (as they hold in example) are a hybrid WE sloched together...horses were picked by man because it served as a better mount than a mountain goat or white-tailed deer or cougar, and dogs were picked because they're a reasonable size, social, and easily trained.
The very term "Christian Apologetic" is ridiculous in itself. It's essentially a person that commits his or her time to making up excuses for why things are the way they are when they aren't explained (well enough, properly or AT ALL) in the Bible. A God that needs its dimwitted minions to make excuses for him/her isn't a God worth worshipping anyway. I had someone earlier actually making shit up like "Well, Adam and Eve had better, purer genetics than we do so OBVIOUSLY their inbred babies wouldn't be freaks of nature!" to which I just roll my eyes and think "The people who wrote the Bible didn't know shit from fuck about genetics...and that's not even taking into consideration the fact that a 600 year old man, his wife and one or two of his kids had to repopulate the whole world again themselves after the flood. But wait, I bet his genetics are perfect, too?" And speaking of Noah...Christian Apologists actually try to use the fact that there's fossils at the top of mountains as proof that the world flooded. Pity they seem to forget the fact that the fossils are millions of years old, and those very mountain ranges were once beaches, but got shot into the air (over millions more years) when the continents collided.
You're more than welcome to attempt posting your supposed evidence anyway if you're so confident about it, but be warned, chances are I'll be able to give you a natural explanation for each and every one of them, or prove them to be absolutely false in the first place (kind of like the Loch Ness Monster.)
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80% of Christians don't know why they believe what they believe, that's why we sound so sortof stupid all the time.
Anyways though, that's totally fine. I'm not going to shove anything down your throat if you don't want to hear it. If you ever do want to know/or ask questions about it, or, idk, maybe even chat not even about religion and have some otaku talks...(? I really don't know 
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"Shun the nonbeliever!"
"Shuuunnnnn...!"
"Shuuunnnnnnnnnaaaaaaaaa...."
~Pink and blue unicorns to Charlie the Unicorn
XD Shunning can be funny in certain situations though lol
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HAHAHA YES <3 Charlie the Unicorn for the win! XD haha... good times. good times.
"grab onto our tongues Charlieeee~~" XD
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Damn, if you had shown this to my old high school teacher who happened to be an uber liberal, he'd probably applauded for this post you made! You really made a very valid point, because I believe in evolution despite of me being a christian, mainly because it makes sense based on genes! Our genetic make ups make us of what we are depending on out environment and diet, etc. For example, native people who live in the mountains in S. America actually have bigger lungs to take in any available oxygen in the altitudes. Anyway, this is a good insight to look at.
I once asked my aunt if she believes in evolution, and she said that she wasn't sure because she never seen it happening in her own eyes. "That's because it'll take hundreds or even thousands of years to happen," I told her, but then again where she's from as well as the generation gap, she doesn't really have much faith in advanced science....
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While I have slight problems with the chart of wolves to dogs, I have to agree. I always have agreed with evolution, but this just further supports it. I may have faith in God, but facts that we have discovered should overcome thoughts and ideas based on something that hasn't and most likely never will be proven.
Really, I don't think God created or did anything on this planet, I more think he deals with souls once they die, and maybe set up everything before us, like even before the big bang, but hey, even typing that up I sound insane
And all in all, I feel like I have to believe in him, if he is real, or else I'll be punished... Religion scares me a lot...But then, if he isn't real, I would of been living my life waiting for something that would never happen...
It sounds crazy that there was one man who created everything, I mean, did he create himself or something? Jeez, I'm actually starting to lose faith just by writing this comment...
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I fail to see what your problem is with the chart on wolves to dogs. It's accurate, even if it's only a sample of the enormous spectrum of existing modern breeds. Could you elaborate?
The rest of your comment was kinda funny XD Not sure what to say about it.
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Eh, its just so simple, like wolf to modern dogs, it could just be a bit more elaborate, because like just not one wolf species made all the dogs, there's just so many wolves, and combination were left out, but I'm being just too picky here XD
Plus, not only wolves were used, other canines and the result of previous breedings were used too. There's nothing wrong with it, I just like stuff with details :3
I sound like such a dunce don't I
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Well, there's the different breeds of wolves that came from different parts of the world. The image referenced the fact by mentioning Asiatic breeds. However, at the bottom of it all, wolves in general are the most basic form of canine that we know and most modern dog breeds can be sourced from them. I won't give the entire family free of every breed cuz that's tedious and would serve no real purpose (I mean, if you want that kind of detail I'm sure you can find it on your own) but it would be unfair to dismiss the whole thing cuz you think it isn't detailed enough in its presentation.
I feel bad for folks like you though, on your other points. It's like parents aren't giving their kids the chance to figure things out on their own. My mom did...I gave religion a chance, had a lot of religious friends, went to church functions...got really creeped out by how brainwashed everyone seemed, became most agnostic, and eventually became totally atheist. I don't feel the slightest bit of threat that I might go to Hell for not believing in God because I genuinely don't think Hell exists, considering the very source for the inception of Hell is a book that described it (first) as a place of darkness to hold Lucifer and other fallen angels, not as a place that Lucifer controls and punishes bad people in a lake of fire. Just the fact that Christianity itself has changed so drastically over the generations lends to the incredibility of it. In science, when it changes, it's advanced, made more perfect, more accurate...it's not like, one day we think Creationism and the next we think Evolution. No one thinks Evolution until there's evidence for it. Science goes through so much scrutiny and criticism...if the Bible got picked apart by the clergy like the propositions of science do, you'd be down to "don't fuck with each other because it's a dick thing to do" and no one would need to bring up a deity in the first place. But even the 10 Commandments were just rephrased spells from the Egyptian Book of the Dead, or common sense put into spooky terminology to make people think it was somehow unknowable without the Bible.
I can assure you, atheists are well aware that killing people is wrong, and we don't need the Bible for that. It's common sense...decency...not killing each other is helpful and beneficial and promotes the survival of communities. We are social creatures and we don't act violently towards those we care about. It's just...natural. To us, the notion that people can't be good without God is terrifying. It's like "Wow, you really needed someone to tell you that killing was bad? Did the Bible instruct you on how to breathe, too? Or how to pee?" Some things are just innate. Calling it Divine Law or some hogwash just makes it complicated.
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:3 I never dismissed it, it was still a good chart, I just couldn't help it
Frankly, if I had never been told that religious stories were meant to make you believe and such, I would of mistaken them for horror stories, meant to incite fear, and well, I still feel like they do. I've been to a church multiple times, with friends and such, and I really hated it. I even wanted to leave before the man was done preaching, but they made me stay to listen, and it really did feel like brainwashing to me... They even asked who in the crowd believed in God, and the ones who raised their hands got to leave, the ones that didn't had to stay for more of the guys preaching.
After reading the rest of your reply, I don't want to assume anything, but I would take it that you don't support the death penalty? This is just a question that I've heard multiple times, and it came across my mind during this conversation.
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The death penalty is a hard one. I'm not malicious by nature, so I wouldn't think killing someone over theft would be worthwhile. But at the same time, I don't think rapists or child molesters deserve the air they breathe. I feel like castrating them, but then I think about how that wouldn't solve the problem anyway, since that would just mean they'd have no semen to leave behind as evidence next time...so then I think about cutting off the entire penis, but then I start to think that's just cruel, even if what they did to the kid is crueler still. For certain degrees of malicious crime, such as those examples, murder, just generally vicious and harmful things...I wouldn't contest the judgement of death, so long as executing the judgement didn't cost more time and effort than leaving him/her alive would. I don't like lethal injection, as studies show it's cruel and painful. I'd settle for a single bullet in the back of the head.
But, even then...I dunno...it depends on the motive for the crime. A 19 year old guy could be convicted as a child rapist because his consenting girlfriend is 17. I wouldn't want harm upon him. That's not fair. My own parents are 6 years apart but the only thing that makes them different is that they're both over 18 NOW. Crimes of passion are also hard to figure out, as probably everyone alive, over the age of 12, has probably felt the urge at some point or another to just punch someone right in the teeth for something. It's not something 99% of folks would think about in advance. You'd have to be really twisted, like Ted Bundy or Charles Manson, to get a death penalty from me...someone truly irredeemable that's gonna be a threat for as long as they live. The rest I'd put to work XD;; None of this "23 hours a day you're in a cell and the other 1 you get to lift weights on the yard" crap like prisons of today. If they wanna eat, they farm it. Then we just have them produce excess for the rest of the population. I like those dog rehabilitation programs some prisons have. Those are awesome.
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Huh, I like your look on that topic, I used to live by "an eye for an eye", but then, I kinda saw how that really served no point...
"The rest I'd put to work XD;; None of this "23 hours a day you're in a cell and the other 1 you get to lift weights on the yard" crap like prisons of today. If they wanna eat, they farm it."
That's a mighty fine idea there, I wonder if it could ever happen...
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You should do one of these exploring the purpose of life. People like to over complicate things to the point where the question is obscured in morality and applied intelligence.
The question itself is not at all hard to answer from an uninhibited objective standpoint. I'm curious as to you're thoughts.
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I don't really think there is a "purpose" in life, no specific "reason" for why we are here. It's become especially obvious since I started working at an OBGYN. People come in, 1/4 have a miscarriage before the 12th week, half are 'accident' babies and the other half are planned pregnancies. I myself was conceived in the back seat of a pickup truck. I'm almost 30 years old and I haven't found any sort of calling. I just do what entertains me, what makes me feel good about myself and what makes me happy with regards to others. I'm no genius, I'm not half as talented as some folks I watch on DA, but I know there's 400+ people on FaceBook that watch my page because they're interested in what I do. I make no claims about being web-famous because I'm not, even if some of the people who talk to me seem to think they're talking to a celebrity for some reason. When I die, I expect that'll be the end of it all. I won't be aware that I'm done or that I ever existed. The only thing I fear about death is the manner in which I go. After that, dead's dead.
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"no specific 'reason'"
The question is as easily answered as it is unanswerable lol. From a completely objective standpoint, we exist to die. In life is death, and in death is life. Without the death of life life cannot go on existing.
From a more indirect metaphorical standpoint, the question about meaning can be interpreted as to why we are capable of thought and emotions, when no other living thing can. Not even scientists can answer this question of /why/ we were able to invent knowledge to the best of my knowledge. Religion is a simple way of answering it, and that is why people are so prone to conforming with it.
Knowledge, religion, morals, ideals, feelings, establishment, and structure all work together to create a purpose within an otherwise purposeless existence. We are afraid of the idea of nothingness; that every achievement, every consequence, every death, every birth is without reason or purpose. We fabricate the concept of absolute, infallible fact and reasons to hide from the bitter reality of purposelessness.
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"...as to why we are capable of thought and emotions, when no other living thing can..."
You mean to tell me that you can't hear a cat purr and not think it's happy? Or a dog jump up and down, wagging its tail and panting, and not be excited? A bear rear up to defend its cubs and not feel threatened and panicked? A raven figure out how to grab a worm out of a glass bottle with a metal wire? Or a dolphin to rape a member of its pod and not feel malicious? It is absolutely absurd that humans are the only ones capable of thought or emotion.
Suggesting that God or religion is the only answer to "why are we aware" is simply turning it into a "God of the gaps." I'm not so scared of the unknown that I can't be okay with saying "we don't know, but we're working on it, and we probably will find out if given enough time."
And by "we" you must assume only "self" because I am not afraid of nothingness. I embrace and accept it, though don't seek it, cuz living is fun.
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No it isn't lol. You're putting too much value on the existence of a man made concept.
Here, I'll give you a little personal story which explains what I mean easier. I feed feral cats that roam around the neighborhood as vagrants. A few years back a mother cat had given birth to a small litter of two kittens, one boy and one girl. I cared for these animals daily, feeding them and giving them fresh water and made sure that if it stormed that my shed was open for them to use as shelter. One day I wake up from a night's worth of rest and look outside my front window to see a dead animal laying beside the road. The street is a very busy one, and I had concerns that it was one of the three cats I've been feeding. Running to the edge of the street, I had my worst fears confirmed when I realized that the dead animal was the young sister cat.
I waited outside for the day on my back porch with food and water. I was worried about the brother cat, who I did not see until late in the afternoon. When the brother cat appeared, all he could do was meow and meow and meow. I was disheartened at the sight of him meowing, as it would almost appear as if he was mourning the loss of a beloved relative. However, in reality, the cat was meowing for his sister because his instincts tell him that the cat that is usually with him is absent. He was not sad, as he cannot feel sadness. He was not confused, as he cannot feel confusion. He was simply calling for her to appear, unable to register the concept of death in it's mind.
Animals do not think, therefore they cannot feel. Intelligence and emotion was created by us, what we cannot answer is how or why. If you truly understood the extent of which nothingness ruled our existence, the idea of them being incapable of emotion just falls into place lol.
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You're assuming you understand how that kitten was feeling because he has no humanoid facial expression to accompany the chirping, such as crying or other sorts of wailing. Elephants are known to mourn their dead, for YEARS at a time. Lions have been known to foster orphaned prey, and take long days to accept it when the orphan dies from lack of nutrition that its mother provided. At best, the kitten probably couldn't comprehend death as an adult would, just like children can't. But to say it was emotionally vacant to the absence is both arrogant and conceited, and established just how inhumanely sociopathic and apathetic you are to the emotions of those around you. I'm hardly a bleeding heart, but when I see a dog lying down before the casket of a Marine that was once its person, and refusing to leave, I know that something is there. If the dog truly gave no fucks, it wouldn't stay.
If you want to say something non-human has no emotion, at least stick with insects or something. You're absolutely daft if you think mammals, especially the higher forms of it, are pathologically inept.
Good day.
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Science enthusiast and future science major here, I really can't thank you enough. I can't help but laugh and scoff at those who think science has a bias. Science is observing the natural world and figuring out the truth, it cannot hold a bias. People hold bias.
Anyhow this was very informative, thank you for taking the time to do this. I just feel bad you're dealing with so much ignorance.
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I'd facepalm too if I met a Christian who didn't believe Evolution existed at all. We've already seen some dog breeds change and evolve before our eyes, among other animals!
The way I see it, before creating man, God created a variety of animals, but the animals weren't as nearly as wide in variety as they are today. He created the basic animals that branched off into different breeds and such as time passed.
The reason for the similar DNA is pretty easy to explain. It's the same reason an artist might have a variety of characters that are all drawn in the same style. It just works for them! Making a different complex build for every single organism sounds pretty unnecessary.
As atheists find it hard to believe that a higher being has created us all and placed us all on earth to learn faith and feel the thorns on the roses of existence, I find it pretty hard to believe that a giant pile of dirt became something ALIVE just because enough time passed for some code to be made. (How does the saying go? Don't throw a bunch of airplane parts in a junkyard and expect it to become an airplane?) If you take time to just stare at all of the flowers, trees, and even the build of wildlife, it's impressive to see how many intricate details are on it. Every color and curve on a flower just appeared? Didn't someone with a sense of beauty make it? It's mind boggling really. c:
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Sorry to rain to your parade, but scientists have (very recently, like 2011) managed to artificially replicate the conditions of early earth and successfully caused organic material (basic RNA) to develop. It may not have had insects crawling out, but like 75% of the time it took for megafauna to come into being took place while life was barely worth calling yeast. The particles of living things can manifest on their own. The rest is just time. God is not necessary for life to exist.
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It's fine, my parade can party in the rain. =u=
I am interested in learning more about this 2011 experiment though. Do you have the article? I think I might have found it, but I'm not sure if it is the right one.
Particles that are the building blocks of life, in my opinion, might be ALIVE but not LIVING, if that makes any sense. Just think of it as an organic robot. It has no thoughts or feelings, it just functions. If they formed something with thoughts, feelings, a personality, that is what I would consider life. Something with an actual soul inside of it. The little organic particles have a God given function, but not spirit. At least, the way I see it. I'm sorry if I worded this oddly.
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I linked it to the Artist's Comments on the deviation itself.
Anywho though, life with a consciousness and thoughts can't and doesn't just happen. There has to be something simpler from which it comes, similar to how every human starts as a thoughtless blob of cells called a zygote. The first heartbeat heard isn't even an actual blood pumping heart, it's just cardiac cells doing what cardiac cells do best. Basic yeast, bacteria, and other forms of extremely primitive life existed long before anything developed that even needed to mate in order to reproduce. That sort of thing took billions of years to happen. You can't discount how important the synthesis of organic material in a lab is just because it's so primitive. We don't have the lifespans to wait for it to change. That's why we have the fossil record. If a+b=c, and we have proven a (basic RNA) and c (complex life) then b can be inferred because of cause and effect laws, at least until we can figure out how to make things evolve at high speed.
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Oh, neat. Thanks.
And speaking of your artist comment, I'm flattered that you've responded to me this far, even though that will likely stop soon =u=; I know this isn't going to take us anywhere, but I do enjoy mature discussions about this stuff. Anyways!
The thing that never made sense to me is how all of those basic functioning cells came together to form a living thing. Of course it would take numerous years, but life can only be so complex on its own. How did organisms evolve into two difference sexes and it was suddenly determined that they needed to bread to create more of them? The article itself said that they technically haven't created life, but the basic build that may or may not have been what became life itself. Theists and Atheists alike have holes in each of their theories. It basically just depends on which we decide sounds more...accurate?
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And you believe "God did it be because of reasons" right? That's a cop out.
Scientists are studying what happened, and aren't going to say one way or another until they know. Life is pretty good at adapting to things around it. The bigger things got, the less easy it was for them to simply split in half to make more of themselves. It just goes from there.
Using the God excuse is just intellectually dishonest and curtails people from being curious and finding out. I mean, if people always let "God did it" answer every question, we'd still think illness was a curse or punishment and we wouldn't have modern medicine. You wouldn't believe the shit the Church gave to the guy who disproved Spontaneous Generation. It basically ended the notion that God created anything at all, cuz the belief was, for example, maggots just appeared in rotten meat. No one even understood that they were fly larvae until a guy basically asked wtf and experimented with meat and cheesecloth.
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Oh boy do I disagree.
Firstly, of course God had reasons for creating the Earth and the life on it. How is that a cop out? If our purpose on Earth is to learn and grow and exercise freedom to choose whether we will make good choices or not, making His presence on Earth obvious would make it too easy to know which are the right choices to make, but He DOES make himself known to those who meet him halfway.
God wants us to ask questions. Any Christian shooting down theories without even looking at them is a flawed person, like every person on Earth. Don't blame the entire faith for something some mislead Christians do. That's like me saying all Atheists are bitter, close-minded people. It's not true, but I could definitely draw that conclusion from some.
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So God has the power to create the entire universe in just a couple days...then all the animals, and a couple people...then he hates it all, floods the fuck out of it...plagues...walking on water...resurrection...now he appears on toast? Saying "God did it" is a cop-out because the more you look at everything else, the less likely it seems that life is any more special than plate tectonics, stars that are thousands of times bigger than our planet, black holes that can slow down time and suck in light, or even the formation of crystals. Life is an inevitable outcome, given the right conditions, especially since life as we know it is made of the most common elements in the universe. Considering too the fact that there are trillions of places in the universe that could harbor life, the only thing stopping us from finding it is time and technology. We've found dozens of planets that meet the criteria for life on them, as we know it to exist on this earth. The problem with proving there's anything alive on them is that we've only found them because of light-wobble, where the planet passing in front of its star makes the light wiggle a little bit. We can tell the chemicals on those planets by the light spectrum refracting through it. The odds that life ISN'T on one of those planets is staggering. Yet, conveniently, any time science proves one more thing about the Bible as being false, the religion simply modifies its position on everything and says that it was taken out of context to begin with, or that God meant for us to figure it all out.
Or maybe the Bible was written by a bunch of bronze age goat-herders that didn't know anything about the universe, and like every single other religion, faith or shamanistic culture that predated it and that's come since, a supernatural force was created, named and given HUMAN-like characteristics, just to make sense of it all.
If folks still want to be spiritual, that's all cool and fine, and I have no problem with it. I have a problem with organized religion making books and trying to tell everyone exactly how it all works when none of them know a damn thing and can't ACTUALLY prove any of its positions. Every one of them claims to be the 'truth,' 'the light,' 'the way,' 'the one path,' and yet I'm pretty sure we know the world doesn't rest on the back of a giant turtle, that it isn't flat, and that it surely isn't at the center of the universe. I have a problem with different parts of the world having an indigenous religion that encourages them to kill or convert any other kinds of people they may find. After all, every baby on this planet is born an atheist. It's just so convenient that most grow up to be the same religion as their parents, cuz they don't know any different.
Atheists aren't bitter or cold-minded. Most of us are frustrated. We see hope in reason and facts, yet we are surrounded by people who, on a daily basis, argue the facts of reality with their nonsense. You wouldn't say Spiderman exists because he's in a comic book, right? You wouldn't want to be put in prison or executed for a crime no one could prove you committed, right? Well you can't say God exists because he's in the Bible either. Circumstantial evidence isn't good enough in a court, and it's not good enough in life either. I just find it endlessly enraging that religious people are so quick to accept their faith without question, yet require unrealistic mountains of evidence when any one thing about their religion is challenged. Why not approach the faith with the same scrutiny to begin with? Jesus was crucified and rose from the dead 3 days later? Great, give me documents about it from the Romans who lived at the time, not from a collection of self-contradicting stories written some 40+ years after the events took place.
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I'm assuming you don't look into religious stories and accounts very deeply at all. =_=
Of course you're not going to see any evidence of God if you don't keep an eye open. A good religion doesn't teach you to kill. It teaches you to put others before yourself. Babies are born with their memories wiped. They believe whatever they choose to believe when they grow up. If they grow up the same religion as their parents, they must have seen some truth in what they were taught. If they seek out another belief system, they must be noticing the flaws. Don't underestimate the capability of people being able to think for themselves.
And I'll repeat, I've said some atheists are quite bitter. Call it "frustrated", which you're starting to sound yourself. You guys aren't the only ones who get frustrated. When you just KNOW something and this congregation of people on the other side of the theology-fence call theists names and constantly treat every believer like a shallow idiot who can't think for themselves. I am frustrated with the condescending attitude, truly.
I think I'm done with this. It's starting to sound more like one-upmanship than a discussion /:
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Why look into them deeply? They suggest ridiculous things like a guy living inside a fish-whale for 3 days. They say a 600 year old man repopulated the entire planet and made a boat with specific dimensions that carried 2 of every living thing, even the stuff no one knew existed yet. They say a deity sent 42 bears to maul children to death because they made fun of a guy for being bald. They say a deity made everything in the world, hated it enough to flood it once, plague it once, impregnate himself into a young woman and then have himself horribly tortured and killed so he could forgive us for stuff he knew we would do in the first place.
You're making up facts about life that you can't possibly know anything about. Babies are born with their memories wiped? Fucking what? Proof. That's all I ask. You can't prove it, you can't claim it as true, and you're crazy for believing it even if it's a spiffy idea. Kids also believe anything their parents tell them. They're impressionable that way; it's a survival mechanism that adults take advantage of even if they don't realize it. Once a kid has been told something...even something as benign as there being a toothfairy or Santa...when they grow up and realize those stories weren't true, most kids are hurt. I can't tell you how many times I've seen kids cry when they realize these things. I myself once got a verbal beating from my stepmother because I refused to write a "Dear Santa" letter, so her own biological kids wouldn't suspect anything, since they were younger than me and still believed.
But whatever, you can believe what you want, and I've said that a few times now. However, I'm only recommending you don't throw your faith around like fact. Believing something hard enough doesn't make it true.
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Do you have a link to that research, or could you tell me where/how to find it? I'm trying to look it up and not finding much.
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[link]
It's not the exact one I saw...I actually got to see video of the big sphere with the brown goo growing in it. But this article is pretty good all the same.
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A few weeks ago in my Biology class, we were discussing Evolution VS Creationism. Our teacher, a creationist himself, encouraged the whole class to step back and away from our personal views and look at it as a neutral party, to consider all of the facts. When all was said and done, most of us went back to being creationists. It is a Christian school, after all. Anyways, I don't know about the rest of the class, but I personally found gaps in both sides. So, while I do respect your opinion and beliefs, I can't say that you're right. However, I can't say that you're wrong, either. The same goes for myself. Nobody can know for sure based on facts alone.
Also, I do have to point out that while some Christians do go out of their way to try and force others to believe in God, not all of them do. I don't, and if I sound like I am, I truly am sorry, since that is NOT my intention.
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People really have to stop mistaking "belief" for "accepted facts as tested by documentation, scrutinizing peer review and experimentation."
I do not "believe in" evolution. I do not "believe in" Darwinism or any of that. Science is not a faith system, a text book is not my gospel, and I don't cannibalize a make-believe martyr or drink anyone's blood. I don't worship Dark Matter and I don't pray to Black Holes.
Please stop using religious terms on fact. The "Theory" of Evolution is not the same as "the coolest idea we have about" evolution. In science, a theory is essentially a law. If you don't understand it then I challenge you to jump off a mountain and test the Theory of Gravity, rub your hands together to test the Theory of Friction and Thermodynamics.
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Sorry, but that sentence is so epic I need it for my signature
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I'm sorry for offending you. I've never heard of that being a religious term, even when I wasn't Christian.
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Sooo Hyenas aren't dogs but they are in the canine family? o.O
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Apparently they aren't even canines. I had no idea. It's hard to pin down what they are when they look like a dog but seemingly are closer related to cats.
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