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Do You Believe in Creationism?

Do You Belive In Creationsm?

  • Yes I do - The Biblical version

    Votes: 2 3.7%

  • Yes I do - "Intelligent Design" - God created everything

    Votes: 8 14.8%

  • No - I believe in the Theory of Evolution (Darwinism)

    Votes: 35 64.8%

  • None of the above - please explain

    Votes: 9 16.7%
  • Total voters
    54
Cardinal said:
I don't know of any evidence myself to support that claim, and I've even found several particularly unambiguous quotes* that points to him being an atheist. The ironic thing, however, is that I've also found another quote** of his that suggests he might distance himself from me at the appearance of trying to prop him up as a mascot for an atheist movement. The dude just didn't like the idea of being a member of any ideology.

*
- Albert Einstein, letter to an atheist (1954), quoted in Albert Einstein: The Human Side, edited by Helen Dukas & Banesh Hoffman

**

- Albert Einstein to Guy H. Raner Jr., Sept. 28, 1949, quoted by Michael R. Gilmore in Skeptic magazine, Vol. 5, No. 2
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He once wrote:
The religious inclination lies in the dim consciousness that dwells in humans that all nature, including the humans in it, is in no way an accidental game, but a work of lawfulness that there is a fundamental cause of all existence

In a 1930 essay entitled "What I Believe," Einstein wrote:
To sense that behind anything that can be experienced there is something that our minds cannot grasp, whose beauty and sublimity reaches us only indirectly: this is religiousness. In this sense, and in this sense only, I am a devoutly religious man.

He also made the following statement in an essay entitled "The Religiousness of Science," which appeared in a collection of his essays published in English under the title "The World As I See It":

"The scientist is possessed by the sense of universal causation....His religious feeling takes the form of a rapturous amazement at the harmony of natural law, which reveals an INTELLIGENCE of such superiority that, compared with it, all the systematic thinking and acting of human beings is an utterly insignificant reflection. This feeling is the guiding principle of his life and work, in so far as he succeeds in keeping himself from the shackles of selfish desire."
 
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walleye said:
I read the post. Am I supposed to believe this is the final word? That's funny. Science has not come to the final word on anything. To think so would be very foolish.

Einstein was probably the greatest mind we have ever known and he believed in intelligent design.
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Einstein "believed" in a pantheistic sort of god, not a personal one.
 
I'm not sure that's true. Einstein didn't believe in personal gods, when he spoke of gods he was speaking in a pantheistic sense. That is, ascribing attributes of nature to gods. God doesn't play dice, this is a quote from him when presented with quantum mechanics (Einstein didn't believe quantum mechanics was right, we know better now). But that wasn't a personal god, that was nature. Nature doesn't play dice. In fact, your first quote of Einstein is exactly this point. He doesn't believe in the Christian sort of god, not a personal deity, something that started everything and guided it. But rather that things flowed from nature, and nature was a type of god itself.

All of this is a null point anyway, it doesn't matter what Einstein thought was right or not. Ideas and hypothesis are tested, results are noted, knowledge is gained, and mankind moves on. We know how old the earth is, we know approximately the age of the universe; there's all sorts of things we can measure.
 
RightinNYC said:
You're conflating a whole bunch of things together here.

There's the belief that the earth was created by god in its current form, fossils and all, 6000 years ago.....
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I had to smile at that one -- the notion that God created the earth and then just chucked in the fossils, the "remains" of creatures which presumably never existed...? Was he trying to mess with our heads? Why didn't he toss in some corpses of aliens, just to completely freak us out? And maybe bury fake corpses of Jimmy Hoffa in five different places?

Maybe he does have that kind of sense of humor. I mean, look at the platypus....Not the work of a serious artist here.
 
walleye said:
That's fine. He believed in an intelligent creator.
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Einstein clarified his religious views in a letter he wrote in response to those who claimed that he worshipped a Judeo-Christian god: "It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal god and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it."

Albert Einstein - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 
I probably float between Right's 2nd and 3rd definition, more the third.

BmanMcfly said:
the pyramids themselves are enough to write many books about
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Or really, really, really long threads with lots of pictures.
 
walleye said:
I read the post. Am I supposed to believe this is the final word? That's funny. Science has not come to the final word on anything. To think so would be very foolish.
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No, it really has. 4.55 billion years plus or minus 1%. If new evidence comes forward it will be evaluated. But for now, that is how old the Earth most likely is.

Einstein was probably the greatest mind we have ever known and he believed in intelligent design.
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"It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly."--Albert Einstein.

Pretty sure you're full of ****.
 
walleye said:
He once wrote:
The religious inclination lies in the dim consciousness that dwells in humans that all nature, including the humans in it, is in no way an accidental game, but a work of lawfulness that there is a fundamental cause of all existence

In a 1930 essay entitled "What I Believe," Einstein wrote:
To sense that behind anything that can be experienced there is something that our minds cannot grasp, whose beauty and sublimity reaches us only indirectly: this is religiousness. In this sense, and in this sense only, I am a devoutly religious man.

He also made the following statement in an essay entitled "The Religiousness of Science," which appeared in a collection of his essays published in English under the title "The World As I See It":

"The scientist is possessed by the sense of universal causation....His religious feeling takes the form of a rapturous amazement at the harmony of natural law, which reveals an INTELLIGENCE of such superiority that, compared with it, all the systematic thinking and acting of human beings is an utterly insignificant reflection. This feeling is the guiding principle of his life and work, in so far as he succeeds in keeping himself from the shackles of selfish desire."
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Given that he's clearly stated he's an atheist, can you see how the above quotes could be taken as metaphore?
 
walleye said:
I dont' think the bible says the earth is 9000 years old. It's obviously millions of years old, perhaps billions. No one knows for sure.
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Of course we know for sure. The Earth is 4.5 billion years old.
 
Cephus said:
Of course we know for sure. The Earth is 4.5 billion years old.
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This is true and the universe is believed to be 8 to 12 billion years old

Equate in the fact that life on earth had to start over at least 3 times because of large meteor impacts we should have been much farther in evolution

Because of the probability of some planets with life out there that did not have a catastrophic event and start over, there are likely beings out there at least two billion years ahead of us in evolution and technology
 
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creativedreams said:
This is true and the universe is believed to be 8 to 12 billion years old

Equate in the fact that life on earth had to start over at least 3 times because of large meteor impacts we should have been much farther in evolution

Because of the probability of some planets with life out there that did not have a catastrophic event and start over, there are likely beings out there at least two billion years ahead of us in evolution and technology
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Or not. Evolution happens because of "unfavorable" conditions. Mosquitoes and sharks have been the same for millions and millions of years because their environments have been just okey dokey for them. No need for survival of the fittest to be called into play, whereas conditions for the ancestors of homo sapiens have always been just crappy enough to warrant the strongest, most intelligent and most aggressive to come out ahead. And if it hadn't been for the last meteor (the one that killed the dinosaurs), we wouldn't be having this discussion.
 
Cardinal said:
Or not. Evolution happens because of "unfavorable" conditions. Mosquitoes and sharks have been the same for millions and millions of years because their environments have been just okey dokey for them. No need for survival of the fittest to be called into play, whereas conditions for the ancestors of homo sapiens have always been just crappy enough to warrant the strongest, most intelligent and most aggressive to come out ahead. And if it hadn't been for the last meteor (the one that killed the dinosaurs), we wouldn't be having this discussion.
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Yes this may be a valid point for some of the planets out there, but because of the numbers of planets with the possibility of life likely in the billions and the possibility of intelligent life likely in the millions...many too would have evolved...some less as fast as earth and some much faster...the scenarios are almost infinite
 
creativedreams said:
Yes this may be a valid point for some of the planets out there, but because of the numbers of planets with the possibility of life likely in the billions and the possibility of intelligent life likely in the millions...many too would have evolved...some less as fast as earth and some much faster...the scenarios are almost infinite
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Well, let's take an idyllic world, one with no adversity. No significantly smarter or stronger species would evolve...ever...just like the shark and the mosquito haven't seen fit to evolve for over a hundred million years. Just as necessity is the mother of invention, adversity is the mother of evolution. All life on earth is what it is because reality bites, and if that wasn't the case we'd all still be single cell organisms.
 
How could anyone be really certain about evolution without understanding intelligent design? ID doesn't necessarily think the world isn't 5 billion years old or that it was created by the God of the bible.

ID states that many forms of life could not have evolved and appear to have been created by plan. It doesn't say by who or what.

So how do you account for this if you don't know the theory? Why would scientists find explanations for this stuff if nobody pointed out these problems with the evolution theory?

Keeping ID out of school just reminds me of the Church putting Galileo in prison or something. It only helps scientists and students understand evolution better.
 
sazerac said:
How could anyone be really certain about evolution without understanding intelligent design? ID doesn't necessarily think the world isn't 5 billion years old or that it was created by the God of the bible.

ID states that many forms of life could not have evolved and appear to have been created by plan. It doesn't say by who or what.

So how do you account for this if you don't know the theory? Why would scientists find explanations for this stuff if nobody pointed out these problems with the evolution theory?

Keeping ID out of school just reminds me of the Church putting Galileo in prison or something. It only helps scientists and students understand evolution better.
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ID is a hypothesis that requires evidence of the existence of such a "planner." Without evidence of this planner, the scientific method can't calculate it into the origin of existence or evolution. You can't figure "x" into a mathematical equation if there is no logical reason to suspect that "x" exists. Sure, you can say, "but if x exists, then..." but that would be more philosophy than science.
 
Cardinal said:
Well, let's take an idyllic world, one with no adversity. No significantly smarter or stronger species would evolve...ever...just like the shark and the mosquito haven't seen fit to evolve for over a hundred million years. Just as necessity is the mother of invention, adversity is the mother of evolution. All life on earth is what it is because reality bites, and if that wasn't the case we'd all still be single cell organisms.
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Just because sharks haven't evolved doesn't mean they don't have a direct effect on how other species of fish evolved. Some species of fish start reproducing in larger quantities to make up for the consumption of them by sharks so they can keep proliferating their species and help fight extinction.

There are current studies that back this in how some species have evolved in ways with increasing the number of offsping they have to compensate for the increasing number lost.

Mosquitos directly force the evolution of blood immune systems to recognize and battle different blood viruses that evolve and mutate.
 
Cardinal said:
Well, let's take an idyllic world, one with no adversity. No significantly smarter or stronger species would evolve...ever...just like the shark and the mosquito haven't seen fit to evolve for over a hundred million years. Just as necessity is the mother of invention, adversity is the mother of evolution. All life on earth is what it is because reality bites, and if that wasn't the case we'd all still be single cell organisms.
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Did you notice that even species of plants have evolved somehow in many ways?
 
creativedreams said:
Just because sharks haven't evolved doesn't mean they don't have a direct effect on how other species of fish evolved. Some species of fish start reproducing in larger quantities to make up for the consumption of them by sharks so they can keep proliferating their species and help fight extinction.

There are current studies that back this in how some species have evolved in ways with increasing the number of offsping they have to compensate for the increasing number lost.

Mosquitos directly force the evolution of blood immune systems to recognize and battle different blood viruses that evolve and mutate.
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Then it seems as though we agree that adversity, wherever it's coming from, is the necessary setting for evolution.
 
Cardinal said:
Then it seems as though we agree that adversity, wherever it's coming from, is the necessary setting for evolution.
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Just the fact that any planets lifeform requires an ecosystem of consumption and survival is actually quite disturbing.

Here on earth virtually every species of life attacks and kills other species of life because it has to to survive. Based on this I believe that chances are that if we meet other lifeforms from other planets they wont be friendly.

I personally believe that evolution may eventually do away with emotions because all we need are logical decision making to proliferate as a species and emotions will only hinder this.

This is why I believe that if life out there finds us it will almost certainly only look at us and earth as a resource for their proliferation and have no emotion as to where we fit in.
 
Ikari said:
I'm not sure that's true. Einstein didn't believe in personal gods, when he spoke of gods he was speaking in a pantheistic sense. That is, ascribing attributes of nature to gods. God doesn't play dice, this is a quote from him when presented with quantum mechanics (Einstein didn't believe quantum mechanics was right, we know better now). But that wasn't a personal god, that was nature. Nature doesn't play dice. In fact, your first quote of Einstein is exactly this point. He doesn't believe in the Christian sort of god, not a personal deity, something that started everything and guided it. But rather that things flowed from nature, and nature was a type of god itself.

All of this is a null point anyway, it doesn't matter what Einstein thought was right or not. Ideas and hypothesis are tested, results are noted, knowledge is gained, and mankind moves on. We know how old the earth is, we know approximately the age of the universe; there's all sorts of things we can measure.
Click to expand...

My point was I said Einstein believed in intelligent design and he did.
 
creativedreams said:
Just the fact that any planets lifeform requires an ecosystem of consumption and survival is actually quite disturbing.

Here on earth virtually every species of life attacks and kills other species of life because it has to to survive. Based on this I believe that chances are that if we meet other lifeforms from other planets they wont be friendly.

I personally believe that evolution may eventually do away with emotions because all we need are logical decision making to proliferate as a species and emotions will only hinder this.

This is why I believe that if life out there finds us it will almost certainly only look at us and earth as a resource for their proliferation and have no emotion as to where we fit in.
Click to expand...

As earth is currently our only precedent for how evolution happens, I agree that E.T. ain't gonna be the first one we meet out there.
 
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