Prove that God exists

[Final-Fan]

Runa216 said:

padib said:

My intent is not and never will be to be counter-productive. I am a curious person by nature, and am very personally interested in the topic. So boo to that.

Second, your not reading my post is a bad sign. Bad for me because it makes me feel like I'm wasting my time, bad for you because it shows your lack of involvement in your own thread.

Thirdly, my mention of Evolution not being fact was not to derail the topic, thanks for misunderstanding. My purpose was to construct the argument that a young theory under serious challenge should not be shoved in peoples throats, especially when alternate, legitimate explanations exist.

The fact that a genetic evolution has never been witnessed or barely that should be a huge RED flag in terms of teaching it to kids. What about devolution?

They're teaching natural selection to people as if it was evolution. Keep the topics separate. Creationists also believe that Natural Selection is fact, but they see devolution as the explanation for speciation and the many varieties of animals we see, and the various mutations we witness. Mutation is a law, evolution is a theory, devolution is an alternate theory. Why is it being overlooked?!

oh, I read the whole post, I even read a decent amount of the link you provided (not buying a book, so I didn't look at that link), the thing is...I'm sorry dude, but most of your points and opinions are pretty strongly off the mark.  You keep bringing up evolution, and I'm still insisting you keep it in the appropriate threads.  you're turning this into a war of "Religion vs science", and this should certainly NOT turn into that. yes this thread is about evidence and such, but that doesn't mean it's a launchpad for "oh, let's talk about how bullshit science is!" which is what you're doing.  

Again, I believe jesus was real, I DO think there's plenty of evidence to suggest he was a real people, but a lot of the stories were logically exagerrated.  and just because the bible does have some things in it that match up with what history books say, that doesn't mean God is real. That's (ironically) a pretty massive leap of faith.  That's like saying that because the Animorphs books took place in the real world and mentioned many real events and people, that there's really an alien invasion that's being thwarted by teens who can turn into bugs and shit.  LEap of faith, not evidence. 

Well, to be honest, I think he's making a point that, while horribly wrong, deserves to be addressed. 

I believe what he's trying to say is that religion has no less evidence supporting it than evolution.  This is almost mind-bogglingly counterfactual, of course.  But, continuing on from that, it follows that just as you don't want religious doctrine being pushed into our educational or legal systems, creationists don't appreciate having "EVILUTION" taught to their kids as fact. 

PADIB: 
You are completely, utterly wrong if you think that the science of evolution has no more supporting evidence than Christian doctrine.  The Bible is basically all the evidence you have.  Historians and archaeologists have been able to put together some sketchy support of SOME of the stuff in the Bible, but obviously nothing like Jesus walking on water etc.  We don't have a diary of a guy who watched him being crucified and saw him die and be buried and camped out at the grave and saw the stone crack or fall away from the hole or however the story goes.  There is only a lot of hearsay, usually decades later, about people talking about OTHER people talking about "that guy who they say rose from the dead". 

Scientists get "supporting evidence" for a theory whenever they do an experiment.  For instance, they might figure that if a particular theory is true, something will happen, and if it's not true, something else will happen.  Then they do the experiment and find out what happens.  By confirming and contradicting and refining theories all the time, science has an extremely good idea of how the world works, including how species change over time.  And "evolve" into noticeably different beings than their ancestors were many many years ago. 

What do you mean, padib, when you say that "genetic evolution" has never been observed?  Did you know they watched bacteria that are famous for not eating citrate turn into bacteria that  love to eat it? 

As for "devolution", since you didn't explain it here, I might be wrong, but I think I know what you're referring to.  It is not taught because it is bullshit.  More precisely, it has not stood up to tests the way other science has that is taught to society's children, particularly evolution.  I do not even know if it is even capable of being so tested, or if it's total crap (from the perspective of scientific illumination of nature's workings) like intelligent design.