Quote:
Originally Posted by RazielRedel
I understand what you mean by the God of the Gaps but the thing is that I've never prescribed to the "Oh, I don't understand that. God must have done it." type of religion. Frankly that sort of reasoning should never have existed in the first place. Yes we are making massive leaps in bound in understanding the natural world around us, but that does not prove in any way that it isn't God that's behind it. It just lets us understand how those various natural processes work.
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No, but attributing the big "why" to God is no different than attributing the big "why" to the Flying Spaghetti Monster... I'm curious: are you equally certain that he is behind this? Why not?
Quote:
Originally Posted by RazielRedel
I don't quite understand what you mean by macro evolution not occurring naturally. And to be perfectly honest, I am in fairly over my head in this area. That being said, from what I understand about carbon dating (I'm assuming you mean carbon-14) it's only real effective range is between 500 and 25000 years. That being said, I agree that yours is a perfectly acceptable theory for why there are so many missing links.
I'm not particularly sure what the second part has to do with what I said. Are you saying that the accumulation of useless features just happened to occur in such a way that they became useful?
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In regards to macro-evolution not occurring naturally, I was speaking as a prelude to how macro-evolution is nothing more than micro-evolution seen over a long period of time with lots of missing links in the fossil record (see my explanation on why this is not at all unexpected considering how old some of the fossils are). Macro-evolution is a myth, it occurs when we draw a direct line between two different fossils and disregard the possibility of there being something in between.
In regards to the second part of my post, I was referring to why you see things that have evolved with no practical function. People say that if evolution is all about better fit to the environment and you have useless pieces evolving in, that it would logically disprove evolution. As I said, this is a hasty conclusion because many traits that are very VERY useful can also have useless traits coded along with them. Due to this, when a very useful trait gets expressed, the other trait (which is impractical, but does not off-set the increased fit the creature has) would also be expressed.
Furthermore, in regards to the Carbon-14 dating "problem" you brought up. I have explained this many times in many places in the forums, but I'll explain it, again, for you right now. There is a technique called "spiking". This involves adding more carbon to the sample, and then removing it from the results. This effectively increases the age of the oldest you can measure an indefinite amount (from 5,730 years), though it has a larger margin of error the more you "spike" it past the 40,000 year mark.
For samples that are too old for the Carbon-14 dating, there are a number of other absolute dating methods. My favourite one to bring up for rocks is the Potassium-Argon test. It accurately measures samples older than 100,000 years, and can be extended with minimal margin of error up to over 1 billion years. The only thing with K-AR dating is that it can't be used on organic substances, only geological (rocks).
The one that is used to measure some of the oldest samples is the Uranium-Lead dating method. This method has its best results within the 1 million to 4.5 billion year old sample range.
I'd also like to make mention that dating methods are always double (sometimes triple) checked using more than one dating method. So long as there is either exponential decay or half-life, it can be measured for absolute dating purposes.
Quote:
Originally Posted by RazielRedel
No, that's not what I meant. I can see where you would get that though. I wasn't terribly clear. I meant that within all other religions that I've encountered the idea that comes that you have to do all the work yourself. I'm not saying that others on the same path won't be supportive or even helpful, but it's still you that has to achieve whatever end the religion is trying to bring you to. It would be both ridiculous and stupid to assume that other's wouldn't be willing or able to help you further along.
I apologize for any lack of clarity on my part.
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I'd have to agree with that assertion. Christianity is the only "free-ride" religion. All you have to do is believe in Jesus... and not commit the unforgivable sin (see below).
The Unforgivable Sin:
"Therefore I tell you, every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven men, but the blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven. And whoever says a word against the Son of man will be forgiven; but whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come. Matthew 12:30-32"
Link.