Also, do you get on a roller coaster because it's awesome when you get off of it? Or do you spend the whole ride thinking about how much it's going to suck when it stops? No way. Enjoy the ride while you can.

"Man, this whole ride is pointless, I'm gonna screw myself out of half of it." *pulls a gun and kills himself 5 seconds before the cool part starts* 

Nah, cause i'm going to remember the rollercoaster ride and how much fun it is afterwords. The memory of the enjoyment is the true reward.

Also, i don't see anything that says people who believe in god can't search for the truth, believe in science or be scientists themselves.

Nothing in science contradicts religion, so their is no reason that someone has to believe in one or the other. There is nothing in science that even suggests that their isn't a god, so I don't see your point. I myself am actually very interested in finding out the truths of science and the like and if there was some expierement that could actually prove or disprove god i'd totally do it.

However their are dimensions of the universe we can't even perceive (probably anyway) so there will never be such a test, and we'll likely never know EVERYTHING about the universe.

It's still fun to try, no matter your religion.

Either way, according to both Pascal and Richard Carrier i'm covered either way.

Too bad neither of them know what god's like.

You're all wrong.

The world is ovoidal.

 I agree to a point. A constant search would almost mean never maturing. Like a guy who wants to build the perfect house, so he spends his entire life searching for the best blueprints and materials, and never actually building the home. For myself, I found what I whole heartedly believe, and I've spent my life yes confirming those beliefs but also building on them. It has allowed me to build a very rewarding perspective on life.

His entire point is that a religious person believes he already knows the truth, because the truth is in the bible, which is the word of god and thus not subject to question. Therefore he does not have to search. A man who really wanted to know the truth would want to know if the bible was really written by god. If it was, that's what you study for truth. But the bible was written by early christians about 1700 years ago. Except for the old testament, which is about 2500 to 3000 years old. And it does not jive with things we can already prove as truth.

@Kas If you did everything right, you won't need to remember anything, because from what I hear, heaven is nicer than earth. And lasts forever. Don't think I don't regret that it isn't real...I'd like it to be real, but it isn't...or, more accurately, even if it did exist, since nobody ever came back to tell anyone else about it, I doubt it is anything like what the bible says. Considering most cultures don't really have a heaven...or a hell, for that matter. Most of the time it's just kind of another life for your soul, not really reward or punishment. 

Not as many coincedences as you think. First take a look up in the night sky and see how many stars are up there that are visible to use and than multiply those numbers by several trillions to end up with only a small fraction of the number of available stars. Many of those stars have planets and theory is starting to show that planets formation may be intergral to star formation which would mean most of the stars in the night sky probably have planets. Secondly many any stars will be in galatic locations similiar to ours in their respective galaxies or not even in a galaxy at all. So the odds of a planet being in a sitation where it can sustain life at all is very high the odds of an individual planet being able to support life itself is very low but the only way anyone would know that is if they lived on a planet that could support os it isn't coincidence but happenstance that life exists on a planet that is prime to support it and there are probably trillions of planets that do support life.

Full blown vision did not just pop over night there are many species of animals with impaired vision that is supplemental to other senses. Yes a Whale and doliphin are mammals and yes they reverted back to sea creatures yet they are not the same as fish. They still have lungs and they still have a skeletal structure that is similiar to mammals and it took a long time. You will have to site the 100,000 times of evolutionary change to me never heard it before and it sounds like an embellishment for arguments things change and the changes with regards to the enviroment can be good or bad.

Your argument is one of intelligent design. Personally I find intelligent design to be a deeply flawed philosophy. For starters your radio example is an oversimplification. Life has been around for more than a billion years and the parts for things never just show up bam like you say.  You say you read a lot on evolution but I seriously doubt you read it with an open mind or that you read it beyond a 7th grade biology textbook or maybe a freshman year biology text book. You may want to consider a class in Microbiology or maybe Mycology to get a more modern grasp on evolution as it effects these fields of biology more than other.

BTW evolution DOES not prohibit a religous belief of anything evoltion mixed with geologic history and timelines may through an askew to literal  readings of the pentauch particualrily genesis but it is not out right procluded anyone whose faith is threatened by evolution or plate tectonics or astronomy really doesn't have much faith at all. You do not have to accept or believe science either(in fact despite the egos of people who strive to be the top science does actually encourage questioning and does not take the stance of being absolutely right but the closest approximation of what is explainable based on what we now today). Maybe the concept of Abiogenesis is threatening but even that is likely only a few years away(we are getting close to creating fully mainmade life forms from non living matter).

Fooflexible let me ask you your thoughts on Noah? Do you beleive the whole earth was flooded? I am not sure you are religous but the only people I know who even consider ID tend to be christians(I am a christian so I do not mean that as a blanket statement). ID itself has no proof neither does creationist theory but evolution does and it has a ton more and as far as I have seen nothing has disproved evolution yet.

Back on topic since this not about evolution. Even Stephen Hawkins says the world is flat but of course he is referring to the surface that is wrapped around a sphere. Also the Catholic Church did teach that world was flat during the Dark Age and it was the common belief at the time. However the greeks and the egyptions before them and even Europeans before them Knew the world was round and during the dark ages this knowledge hung around through groups of people. However the comon sense view would be the world was flat unless you were a mariner or had a good teacher or was just really smart

Actually the only thing evolution requires is that what ever creature it is a portion of the offspring is able to grow old enough and manage to reproduce once reproduction occurs the creature coudl die and it no longer matters. Some creatures leave thousands of eggs and only a fraction of those hatch and than only a fraction of those survive to reproduce and than only a fraction of those go on much longer.

How many creatures can share a niche?

The bible wasn't really written 1700 years ago so much as compiled 1700 years ago.  I don't really use the bible though.  It might be the word of god, might be the part of the relgious writings that were kept because they fit the roman empires views best.  Who knows since the rest of the scripts were destroyed.  Also, it's not like christianity is the only religion.  As for it's accuracy, you'd be surprised, every few months they uncover stuff that surprisngly is only mentioned in the bible or that show the bible is more accurate then was once thought.  As far as the biblical countires that arn't supposed to exist and such.  I'm fairly sure most christians veiw most of it as just a metaphor in most places anyway however with the things mentioned as examples.

As for Heaven.  Well that's another part of the "weird" for me as my ideal world doesn't equal the common conception of heaven.  Most people see it like a Star Trek Holodek or something, given the option I'd perfer to live on earth until humans died out then live in a place where nothing but good things happen to me.  In a world like that my memories of bad times would actually be more valuable to me.  Pretty much a life where even perminant diseases only lasted a lifetime and everything pretty much worked as it does now would suit me best.  Well minus rape and murder.   It'd be a lot harder to ethnically cleanse someone if you had to look at them the next day.  Hah like that episode of Southpark where Sadam Hussein is in hell and they kill him only to have him come back and say something like "Where did you expect me to go?  Detroit?"

Personally i can't see heaven as a place like that anyway.  I mean could i be happy if my Grandma wasn't in heaven?  Why no i don't think i could be happy knowing my grandma is either non existant or being tortured for eternity.  Of course my Grandma is a nice old lady so i'm fine.  But what about Hitlers Grandmother?  She might of been a perfectly nice lady, who couldn't enjoy heaven if her son was tortured for all eternity.  Nor likely could a jewish person who was killed in the holocaust be happy if Hitler was in heaven after what he went though... unless he was a really big person anway.  So there's gotta be some dissatisfaction somewhere.

I mean everything being good and happening good cheapens everything.  I mean i feel sorry for the person who the worst thing that's happened to them is that they lost a game of Halo or something.

What I generally believe is that their is a god, i'd say the christian/jewish/muslim god based on personal expierences when i was younger.  If that fails, hey he's got the numbers on his side, I mean Buhda pretty much said to not treat him as a god, so Buddhisms out, and Hinduism pretty accepts all gods anway.

So i'll believe in him, thank him for creation and live my life staying true to myself as I imagine that is the best gift i can give him back.  After all if he wanted me to be someone else i'd of been created someone else.  If I end up being wrong and it's a different god, or i'm wrong and he's got a problem with how i live my life, i'll apologize accept whatever punishment is handed down and go my own way, assuming i'm not smote or something.  I imagine it will involve a lot of being upset though as upsetting your creator would well... suck.

While if i'm wrong, eh I'll never know anyway.

I was contemplating all night whether I should get involved in this topic or not; but I feel like there is a small amount of misunderstanding of what the current Evolutionary theory states (contrary to popular belief the theory has changed a great deal since Darwin first proposed the theory), and so I thought I'd chime in. I apologize in advance for the length, but there are a few things I'd like to explain thoroughly. If you're serious about this debate, I hope you'll take the time to read some of my comment here. Thanks in advance for your attention.

As a Bioinformaticist, my main background is in genetics and molecular Biology. And so, for that reason, I see a lot of evidence supporting evolution every day, whether it be in comparative genetics (essentially using computer programs to compare genomes that are now sequenced to one another), or the study of microbial strains of bacteria.

One only needs to watch the development of a strain of bacteria when under selective pressures (that is, put in an environment that allows for the selection of some characteristic which is beneficial to survival in that environment) to see the underlying mechanism of evolution at play and see how the strain's characteristics will change very quickly. Because Bacteria reproduce at a very fast rate, it is much easier to follow these changes. A good example of this can be seen when a strain of bacteria that is not resistant to an antibiotic can over time develop a resistance. This will only occur when this strain is put under selective pressure (that is, put in an environment where this antibiotic is present). Over time, any bacterium that have acquired the gene for resistance (either through conjugation (sharing genetic material), or genetic mutation) will be selected for, and these will be the individual organisms that propagate and divide. Therefore, over many generations, this strain will go from a non-resistant strain to a resistant strain. This will occur very rapidly (that is, in our sense of rapid), and as a result is a serious problem in Hospitals due to the heavy over-prescribing of antibiotics. If you want to learn further about this, type in MRSA (Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus) into a search engine, and you'll get plenty of results back talking about this topic.

Although this example I described occurs in bacteria, the underlying mechanism is exactly the same for every single living organism on Earth. Everything that is alive has some form genetic molecule that stores the information for life (DNA for most all organisms, RNA for viruses (although they aren't technically considered alive, they do propagate and share many similar characteristics with living organisms)). When placed in situations that favor certain features that an organism, or group of organisms, possess, these organisms will survive to reproduce.

Underneath all of this, however, is the actual mechanism: the mutation of the genetic code (in single-celled organisms, it's the mutation of the chromosome(s), and in multi-celled organisms that reproduce sexually, it's in the mutation of the germ cells (that is to say, if you get cancer in the liver due to a mutation in that cell causing for uncontrolled division, you won't actually pass on this mutation to your offspring; but if you get a mutation in your sperm or egg cells, this mutation will be passed on to the next generation). Sometimes these mutations are deadly, while other times these mutations may be beneficial and may code for some new protein that may have some effect on survival (often times, when people think of mutation, it has a bad connotation associated with it, but in evolution, "good" mutations are the driving force). Given enough time, these mutations accumulate, and when these mutations code for new phenotypes that are beneficial to survival, these organisms are more likely to survive to reproduce and propagate their genes. When you realize that the Earth is over 4 billion years old, and life itself is over a billion years old, one can see that given this amount of time, life can evolve to pretty much any form.

However, it should be noted that not every organism evolves at the same rate. This rate at which evolution occurs depends on a great deal of factors. I'll cover two factors briefly:

1) There are distinct differences between the way DNA is replicated in prokaryotes (bacteria) and eukaryotes (basically everything else alive), and this has a distinct effect on the rate of mutation. Because Bacteria are not as good at checking for mistakes in their genetic code as Eukaryotes (that is, us, humans), bacteria replication is more likely to produce mistakes (mutations). For this reason, there will be more mutations over time in bacteria, and they will undergo evolution at a faster rate (rate being over each generation, not literal time as bacteria reproduce very fast).

2) Evolution occurs at different rates for each species depending on the environment. Using the strain of bacteria that was not resistant to a certain antibiotic above again as an example, when this strain is placed in an environment where no selective pressures exist (that is, there is no antibiotics present), then there will be nothing that causes bacteria with resistant genes to reproduce more than the bacteria that do not contain the resistant genes. In other words, both types of bacteria, resistant and non-resistant will survive and reproduce at the same rate. And as a result, the overall percieved rate of evolution will not be as fast as the situation where a selective force exists. However, when this strain of bacteria is placed in an environment where there is an antibiotic, the bacteria that have the gene for resistance will survive and reproduce. Therefore, the rate of evolution will be higher here. This helps explain why certain organisms exist over millions of years with little changes (sharks, or alligators for example), while other organisms undergo evolution at a much faster rate (differences in the shape of the tortoise, or the shape of the beak of finches on the Galapagos Islands for example). The organism that have little evolution over time have little evolution because there is little in the way of selective forces being applied. On the other hand, the organisms that evolve at a faster rate into new species do so because of changes in the environment that select for more beneficial genes.

I'm using the idea of evolution of bacteria here because it illustrates the mechanisms of Evolution very well and in a time frame where humanity can witness the changes (after all, these changes take thousands of generations often...and thousands of human (or any animal) generations is a very long time). I'm sure some people will dismiss this evidence because it's happening in bacteria; but they're ignoring the fact that evolution occurs by the same exact mechanism in humans as it does in any other organism on this planet. Therefore this "micro-evolution" (as people sometimes refer to it) is occurring by the same mechanism that humans evolved.

Even so, this is just one small example of Evolution in action. There are literally mountains of evidence supporting Evolution out there, and I suggest people who discount the theory for whatever reasons look into recent research that is being done (be recent, I mean in the last 10 years for comparative genomics for example). The theory has evolved quite a bit since Darwin proposed it (by the way, if anyone has any interest in going to the Galapagos Islands, I highly recommend it; it's a truly amazing experience), and in many ways he wasn't completely right (for instance, the underlying mechanism alluded him his entire life...if only he had met a man named Mendell). We now know this mechanism to be the crossing over and mutation of our DNA in our germ cells.

Also, almost every week, a new organism's complete genome is sequenced and cataloged in a gigantic database (well, it's probably many databases, although I'm not sure). Using this information, it's now very easy (thanks to brilliant programmers) compare similarities of genomic data, and create trees showing how closely related species, or groups of species, are to one another. When these trees are created, it's very remarkable that these trees align very closely with the phylogenetic trees that were already in place previous to genomic data being known. This is just one small field of biology that is helping to further prove the theory. There are many other fields, that I'm not an expert in, such as comparative biology (comparing the features of organisms to one another (whale to other mammals, for example)) or the effects geographical isolation (when organisms that are the same species are split by some barrier, such as a new sea, become different species over time due to their new environments) that further help provide evidence for the theory.

Yes it's a theory; but if you're not intelligent enough to know what the word "theory" means in scientific terms (after all, I'm sure you'd be surprised to know that Gravity, the orbit of our planet around the Sun, and Electricity are all "merely theories"), then you have no right taking place in this argument. The theory is constantly evolving changing with each new discovery. However, that is not to say that the theory is not accepted, and it certainly is not grounds to prove that it shouldn't be taught.

Having said all of that, I'm not in any position to say whether there is a God or not, although there is nothing in science that contradicts the existence of God. I personally believe in God, but I also agree with evolution and its underlying mechanisms, and I agree with the scientific theories of the beginning of our known universe (often called the Big Bang theory). The Earth is billions of years old, and even though this an amount of time that is almost impossible for my little mind to comprehend, I do see that given that much time life could go from a pool of amino acids, nucleic acids surrounded by micelles to all the organisms that exist on our beautiful planet.

And so, at least to me, this in no way contradicts an existence of God. In my mind, there is nothing to say that he didn't set forth the Big Bang and create the universe, which eventually led to the creation of our solar system and eventually to us humans. I believe that the Universe is so large and complex that we know very little about anything; but I do feel what we know about evolution is true and supported by sound Science; and none of that sound Science contradicts the existence of God (Darwin even himself never stated in his works whether evolution meant there was a God or not).

I do not agree with Intelligent Design, for I feel it's merely creationism in disguise. If you want to believe in it, than more power to you. To be honest, I don't really care what you believe because it's a "free country" and you can believe what ever you want to believe. However, don't plan on it ever being taken too seriously in the field of Biology. Maybe if some sound proof supported by sound science that shows that Intelligent Design is true comes out, it might start getting taken more seriously, but until then I don't consider it any form of science.

I suppose a major issue I have with the theory is that for whatever reason when this topic comes up, the integrity of science always comes into question. People say "oh there's no evidenc for Evolution" or "it's just a theory" or "we haven't found the missing link, therefore it's not true" (this shows a somewhat misunderstanding of the theory because evolution is a gradual process and our point of view now is only a snapshot of the evolutionary journey...there aren't distinct jumps from species A to species B...it's gradual, and so finding the "missing link" is not really realistic). But, like I said, I don't have a problem with people believing what they want to believe, but when the overall integrity of science is put into question, I have serious qualms. I have the same issue with the Global Warming skeptics (do people really believe that scientists aren't pretty much unified in the idea that the Earth is indeed warming?) who claim that science is faulty; and if everything seems ok today, then of course everything is ok. Believe what you want, just don't question the validity of science. After all, without, we wouldn't have all these wonderful gadgets; and we certainly wouldn't be able to drive to work every day.

With that off my chest, back to what I was saying: In my opinion, the underlying mechanism behind evolution is based on random mutations (see bacteria evolving due to random mutations over time due to the presence of an antibiotic), but that doesn't mean there is no God. In fact, evolution doesn't set out to prove or disprove God...it really has nothing to do with God, and makes no mention of whether a higher power exists or doesn't exist...I think people misunderstand this often, and this leads to trouble...like I was saying before, there seems to be a lot of misinformation just in general. And I saw some here, so I chose to comment on it.

But, in the end after years spent of my own life learning about the complexities of life and evolution, I still believe in God (after all, as was quoted above, odds are you're better off believing in God, haha); and most importantly, I feel that Science and Religion can co-exist without contradiction. I hope people welcome my point of view and, I hope this comment has helped some people better understand the current theory of evolution. Thanks for reading.