If that is so, what with humans being the ultimate lifeform and whatnot, it’s a pretty weak arguement. I’d like to see the human eye out-perform an eagle’s, human limbs outperform an insect’s, and as for the brain.. perhaps there’s an arguement there, but just because animals can’t talk doesn’t mean they aren’t as smart. Hell most would outperform humans on Eggheads, power of human speech or not.

And it’s hardly like we “crawled out of the slime” overnight, it happened over billions of years (which is quite a hard number to quanitify – look how far the Earth has come in just the last 100), not the 200 or so years as an alarming number of people think.

Really? I believe we should respect each other but not each other’s views.

Why should we? Should I respect Scientology or any other wacky belief based on zero evidence?

Absolutely not.

This idea that the big bang and evolution are somehow inextricably linked is baffling to me, why do people persist in assuming that one theory depends upon the other?
Evolution as a theory is proven, the jury is still out on the big bang.

ID needs to develop a scientific foundation built on a base of evidence before it can expect to be treated on a level par with evolution. Currently it has none and it’s supporters seem to spend most of their time trying to poke holes in evolutionary theory rather than creating an evidence base for their own viewpoint.

My faith on the concept of IT gets strengthened when I see the complexity of the human eye, the reasoning power of the human brain or the sheer dexterity that a hand can produce and wonder – surely we did not come from creatures that simply crawled out of the slime?

Not sure what Nelson would like to see in the Museum; i guess though that it should represent both history, science and faith if they important to the people living in the country.

I also believe that we should respect each others views on the subject and haven’t really seen that from many [non-creationists] commentaries here except yours.

However I suspect what Mr McCausland actually wants is for the museum to present creationism in a context of equivalency with evolutionary theory. It’s a tried and tested technique of the Intelligent Design proponents. “Teach the controversy”, as though ID is backed with as compelling a body of evidence as evloution when the truth is that there is precisely zero scientific evidence backing up crewationism and all that places like the Discovery Institute do is try and poke holes in evolution, seemingly oblivious to the fact that even if they were to bring down evolutionary theory, it would do nothing to make the case for their own beliefs any stronger.

We probably could debate whether or not some of the views on this thread expressed by atheists are fundamentalist or not – if you read through them you might conclude they are fairly unwavering:)

Your last comment seems somewhat of an admission – you don’t know where life started [brave of you to say - that was not scarcasm] but I have a faith in where I believe it started. I don’t believe that the ‘I don’t know answer’ from an Atheist
should be any more or less respected than the ‘God created it’ from a Christian.

To widen it out slightly and return to NMc comments regarding Creationism. I would imagine that there would be a significant number of people in Northern Ireland from both sides of the community who would side with some type of Christian theory regarding Creation. To this regard I feel that Museums should reflect the views and beliefs of all – that includes Christians.

I appreciate you taking the time to reply and not patronise me – even if we don’t agree. VH

If someone provides me with reasonable evidence for a young earth (which is the theory McCausland puts forth) then I’ll accept that their theory is worthy of investigation. Reasonable evidence does not include adding up the ages of people in a book that also carries no weight as evidence.

I don’t put my non-faith in abiogenesis. If anyone asks me how life started I’ll tell them I don’t know. But I am glad that brainier people than me are looking for the answer rather than taking “Dunno. God did it.” as an acceptable answer.

Hardly a like for like replacement

Whilst I don’t expect you to agree I believe that God demonstrated the greatest love by sending his son to die to save a fallen mankind. However this is not a thread on Christianity but rather creationism….

——-’Sounds like the kind of thing that might be spouted by someone who believes that atheism is as much a religion as any of the faith systems.’——–

Nope I don’t believe Atheism is a religion – I was simply making the point that some atheists are ‘fundamentalists’ – which is often who they choose to critically comment on because of their faith system.

When Francis Crick [who co-discovered DNA] calculated the possibility of a simple protein sequence of 200 amino acids (much simpler than a DNA molecule) originating spontaneously, his figure was 10 with 260 zeroes after it.

It is scientifically reasonable to assume that a chance of one out of 1,000,000,000,000,000 is considered a virtual impossibility. Personally I prefer ‘as a rational person’ the chance of God existing than the atheistic long shot of Crick.

I don’t have to prove gap creationism to you or prove that their is a God, that I accept is a matter of faith. I would be interested in you explaining away the SCIENCE of Abiogenesis and why you are willing to put your non-faith in it.

With respect, that idea is held strongly by many but i think it is part of a belief system that is not supported by evidence and that belief misleads a lot of people to view religion and the religious incorrectly.

For example, the field of earthquakes/seismology that you cite was actually called “The Jesuit Science”

http://www.companysj.com/v264/SU09.Jesuit.Science.pdf
http://www.faculty.fairfield.edu/jmac/sj/geophysics.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alessandro_Serpieri
http://books.nap.edu/html/biomems/jmacelwane.pdf
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0006ANHOA/ref=nosim/catholiceduca-20
http://sp.lyellcollection.org/cgi/content/abstract/310/1/135

If you trace science back far enough you will find the pioneers were religious and they succeeded for the very reason that they were not (and are not) intellectually lazy or close-minded.

We continue to search for how the universe works. We don’t see God as being between the gaps who is slowly being fazed out, but on the other side of the gap. And we have tried for centuries to close that gap. I view western science as the great success story of Christianity not as something alien or foreign or in conflict with Christianity.

OK got to go.

Sounds like the kind of thing that might be spouted by someone who believes that atheism is as much a religion as any of the faith systems.

My faith is simple leaving aside the personal aspect of it – I prefer to believe that there is a God who made the universe in stages of over millions of years [days in Genesis] than the odds of Abiogenesis.

The other interesting note in this thread so far is that whilst NMc is being berated because of his ‘fundamentalist’ beliefs there are so many ‘fundamentalist’ atheists here proporting THEY ARE CORRECT!!! Spot the irony?

“… religious belief is very real to many people, but one exists because of reason and evidence, the other despite them.” – could you explain BM?

They’re out there and they’re well-known. They’re just not well-respected.