atheists

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danschance

Guest
Darwin himself actually discusses the evolution of eyes; if you're interested you should consider reading it. Eyes are a very, very important part of the history of animal life on this planet.

Here's a very brief summary. Certain creatures can gain a benefit by having light-sensitive cells on the surface of their bodies. If those cells are collected in one spot, they can gain an additional benefit. If those cells have a ridge around them, they gain additional benefit. If that ridge is more pronounced, so is the benefit. If that ridge almost covered the recessed eyespot, there is additional benefit. If that eyespot is covered by transparent cells, further benefit. If the eyespot is filled with transparent fluid, further benefit. If muscles under the eye can cause it to move relative to the body, further benefit.

We have examples, both living today and fossils, of animals at EACH of these stages of the development of the eye - and there's a clear pathway to get from each stage to the next.


In lighted environments, creatures that see survive better than creatures that don't. That, combined with a viable mechanism for sight to develop in some creatures, is enough for evolution to cause sight to dominate most of the multicellular animal world.

The reverse is also true - in dark environment, eyes don't do much. Hence we find cave lizards who have what were clearly at one point millions of years ago functional eyes, but are now completely overgrown by opaque skin because the eyes are vestigial. I don't see any purpose at all for God to design the lizards that way, but from an evolutionary perspective it makes sense - the lizards are descended from sighted ancestors.



Many mammals developed exterior testes because the ideal temperature for sperm to develop is lower than the animals' body temperature. And actually, your argument is more true in reverse - if you were designing a human from scratch you would never put the testicles there, but as an adaptation of reproductive systems over millions of years it's perfectly reasonable than they'd end up there. Evolution doesn't necessarily end up with perfect designs, just configurations that survive to reproduce.
Darwin had no clue about DNA. DNA is very complex and couldn't form on it's own by random chance and accident.
 
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Darwin had no clue about DNA.
DNA wasn't the topic of discussion. The questions were about the evolution of eyes and testicles; Darwin spoke about eyes specifically and evolution of testicles is similarly well-known.

DNA is very complex and couldn't form on it's own by random chance and accident.
There are several mechanisms by which a cell with DNA could develop from non-living matter simply by the rules of physics and chemistry. The dominant hypothesis now is that RNA formed first and was eventually supplemented by DNA in more advanced creatures. There is certainly nothing preventing this from happening; the Miller-Urey experiment and its successors show the mechanism quite clearly.

Please watch this and indicate your objections, if any:

3 - The Origin of Life Made Easy - YouTube
 
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Personally, I can't say I had a lot of nice experience with atheists - a former friend of mine laughed at me while I was praying, asking me if I was talking to my "imaginairy friend" again. Another time back in high school some random person (also an atheist) spat at me because I was a christian. Extremely disrespectful behaviour.
Not saying all atheists are that way, but some of them are giving me a hard time respecting their choice of living life without God.
The disrespect goes both ways, because neither atheism nor theism forces a person to be respectful. And it's easy to find examples of disrespect, especially in the form of insults and name-calling, on both Christian and atheist forums, from both Christian and Atheist sources. While such cruelty seems like it ought not to come from Christians (because they claim to honor a holy book that commands them to love their enemies), becoming a Christian doesn't prevent a person from sinning.

Some atheists embrace moral systems such as ethics or humanism. I myself find that the golden rule is very easy to follow and typically leads to a morality that most people (including Christians) embrace. But atheism isn't a religious system -- there are no universal practices. While the consequences of having a bad reputation keep most people in line publicly, there is nothing keeping some atheists (and yes, even some Christians) from immoral behavior that they feel they can "get away with".
 
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Personally, I can't say I had a lot of nice experience with atheists - a former friend of mine laughed at me while I was praying, asking me if I was talking to my "imaginairy friend" again. Another time back in high school some random person (also an atheist) spat at me because I was a christian. Extremely disrespectful behaviour.
Not saying all atheists are that way, but some of them are giving me a hard time respecting their choice of living life without God.
I observed a debate on here recently and a Christian openly stated they would kill a child if god asked him too.

And you get hung up on someone saying your talking to an imaginary friend or you were spat at?
 
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Danschance said:
It is not logical to say there is no God. To be able to say that factually, one would have to search the entire universe....
Dan, let’s have a look at what you’ve accomplished. You had meant to make a splash in presenting a logical argument that would force the atheist to sit up and take notice. ‘If he has not searched the entire physical universe for God, then how can the atheist be certain the deity does not exist?’ But, as I point out, if you are going to rely on this “reasoning to confirm the possible existence of God then you must also apply the same logic to every other god or spirit that mankind has ever thought existed. You cannot reasonably deny any of them; not if you are going to remain true to this same logic.” If you deny the possible existence of other gods or spirits then essentially you have emasculated the argument and made it worthless. It either applies to all gods or to none, otherwise everyone is free to exclude from its net those things that they do not believe in; and the atheist is equally free to deny the existence of God. So, deny the possible existence of other gods in the parts of the physical universe you have not examined and the atheist is free to think you don’t take your own argument very seriously.


Danschance said:
Other Gods do not exist. I say that in faith, not fact.
Either the argument you presented carries weight or it does not. It must include all gods as possibly existing, even for yourself, or it becomes a meaningless argument. If you retreat into faith and deny that other gods and spirits might exist then you deny the logic of your own reasoning. Perhaps it’s time to put this argument to bed.
 
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I observed a debate on here recently and a Christian openly stated they would kill a child if god asked him too.

And you get hung up on someone saying your talking to an imaginary friend or you were spat at?
It's not really a fair comparison. Just because someone says that they would kill for God doesn't prove they'd actually do it, and certainly no one gets hurt from the assertion alone. Plus, I think this commits the fallacy of relative privation to assume that her problems are unimportant simply because bigger problems exist.
 
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Darwin had no clue about DNA.
Very true. Neither Darwin, nor any of his contemporaries knew anything about DNA.

danschance said:
DNA is very complex and couldn't form on it's own by random chance and accident.
Easy to say Dan, not so easy to prove. The assertion you are making of course is that God originated DNA. If he exists then perhaps he did as you claim, but how do you prove it?
 
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There are several mechanisms by which a cell with DNA could develop from non-living matter simply by the rules of physics and chemistry.
While I believe it is true that life arose naturally on Earth and was not derived from 'special creation', I don't think there are as yet any solid ideas about how this happened.

AvalonXQ said:
The dominant hypothesis now is that RNA formed first and was eventually supplemented by DNA in more advanced creatures. There is certainly nothing preventing this from happening...
While researchers seem agreed that DNA arose from RNA, I don't think the mechanism that produced the first RNA is yet understood.

AvalonXQ said:
... the Miller-Urey experiment and its successors show the mechanism quite clearly.
I don't think this is true. This experiment shows that the building blocks of life can likely form naturally, but it doesn't provide the mechanism behind the origin of self-replicating organisms.
 
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CoooCaw

Guest
While I believe it is true that life arose naturally on Earth and was not derived from 'special creation', I don't think there are as yet any solid ideas about how this happened.


While researchers seem agreed that DNA arose from RNA, I don't think the mechanism that produced the first RNA is yet understood.


I don't think this is true. This experiment shows that the building blocks of life can likely form naturally, but it doesn't provide the mechanism behind the origin of self-replicating organisms.

such blind faith; amazing!!!!!!!!!!!
 
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Atheism isn't based on a holy book; Christianity is.

In case I wasn't clear, what I was saying is that many Christians misunderstand faith as it is presented in the Bible. I myself am a Bible-believing Christian, and also a strong evidential - and the Bible supports this position by presenting, not men and women blindly believing something for no good reason, but men and women trusting YHWH because of what they had seen and experienced of Him.
Avlon, I jumped to the wrong conclusion in thinking you were an atheist. Sorry about that. :)

It must look as though I have been disagreeing with everything you have written. I just want to take a moment to say that appearances can be deceiving. I actually agree with much you've said; I just haven't been terribly vocal about. Oh, I looked up Evidentialism in Wikipedia. :) I have a better understanding now of where your coming from.
 
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such blind faith; amazing!!!!!!!!!!!
Not really CoooCaw. Though there are no solid hypotheses on the origin of the first life forms, that I know of, evolution itself is well established by a plethora of evidence. Don't confuse the origin of life with evolution. Evolution explains the abundance of different life forms on Earth and their rise from other organisms, but it says nothing about how life first originated. That is not what evolution claims to do.

I am telling you that I don't know how life originated and you are calling that blind faith? Blind faith is believing that you know how life originated in the absence of any physical evidence to support your claim. When you assert that God created life, that is not evidence. When you quote scripture to show God created life you are only quoting an author making a faith claim. You have to distinguish between a faith claim and actual evidence. Biblical scripture makes faith claims. It presents no actual physical evidence about the origin of life. In fact if we examine the Genesis account I can show you that the creation story is not what you think it is.
 
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While researchers seem agreed that DNA arose from RNA, I don't think the mechanism that produced the first RNA is yet understood.
I guess it depends on what you mean by 'understood'. One of the earliest steps in life would be a "self-replicating polymer", and we have strong evidence that they existed because they never went away -- the entire ocean is teeming with them. We can't be certain that life developed from them... the small odds of forming life mean that we could watch a gallon of oceanwater filled with these polymers for centuries and it's unlikely we'd ever see life start. This is the main problem of ever knowing for certain how life began, because if it arises naturally we'd never see it and if we tried to force it somehow then we'd be called out for making it happen in faked conditions.

However, it's still possible to observe it happening, however unlikely or improbable. Creationism, on the other hand, will never be observed.
 
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such blind faith; amazing!!!!!!!!!!!
He wasn't displaying "blind faith"... he was displaying skepticism. Did you even notice that he made no positive assertions, but rather argued for doubt?
 
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Kerry

Guest
Atheist are atheist because they want to be atheist and ignore the many proofs of the word of God. You might as well cut down a tree and carve it then worship it. that is what the atheist did in bible times. So they could feel good about doing their own thing and not be held accountable for their actions or so they thought.
 
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It's not really a fair comparison. Just because someone says that they would kill for God doesn't prove they'd actually do it, and certainly no one gets hurt from the assertion alone. Plus, I think this commits the fallacy of relative privation to assume that her problems are unimportant simply because bigger problems exist.
It's not about comparison. If she wants to blanket all atheists based on the actions of two people then why can't anyone else do the same?
 
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danschance

Guest
It's not about comparison. If she wants to blanket all atheists based on the actions of two people then why can't anyone else do the same?
That is like saying: "If Joe can rob a bank then I should be able to rob a bank to, to make things fair."
 
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CodyJ

Guest
It's not about comparison. If she wants to blanket all atheists based on the actions of two people then why can't anyone else do the same?


That right there was dumb.


This right here
That is like saying: "If Joe can rob a bank then I should be able to rob a bank to, to make things fair."


made me ROFL so true!!
 
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saydee

Guest
It's not about comparison. If she wants to blanket all atheists based on the actions of two people then why can't anyone else do the same?
I never said "All atheist are going straight to hell whereas christians surely end up in heaven" or anything - I just shared two events in my life where I felt treated very disrespectfully by them. Apparently you missed the last part of my former post, which clearly states I do not believe that all of them are this stereotypical atheists that hate on christians.
For your information: my own brother is an atheist. And guess what? We get along just fine and I enjoy our discussions on our different perspectves of life. I have many friends from who have different believes and I am absolutely fine with that - as long as we all treat each other with respect.
 
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It's not about comparison. If she wants to blanket all atheists based on the actions of two people then why can't anyone else do the same?
Because two wrongs don't make a right.