h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Some of the scientist believed that the human footprints were a hoax. But some scientist tested the footprints by cutting them in half and looking for signs of carving or of compression in the rock. If the footprints were carved then the rock would not show any signs of compression. The geologists that performed the test confirmed that there were compression signs in the rock around the human footprint. This indicates that the footprint was pressed into the mud/rock. The geologists made no commit on if it was a human foot or when it was made. It could have been an unknown animal or it could have been human.

There are new theroies that evolution is not a smooth linier progress but somtimes chaotic with radical changes over just a couple of generations. New species within a single generation, hopefully the new species will be smarter.

Mostly

Mostly

I am a Creationist. I look around at how orderly things are. Even in chaos, there is a calm and unerring order. There is an eye to the hurricane.

Ask yourself how things came to be. Is a baby an accident? If so, why does this accident happen 350,000 times a day? Why can humans feel emotions and think complex thoughts?
There are some Creationists who completely blast evolution. I am not one of these. Science is science. I don't really care how God created Life, the Universe, and Everything. What matters to me is the knowledge, not just a misplaced belief, that He did. If He used the Big Bang, then good for Him. The point is, it all had to start somewhere, and that is where God comes into the picture.

I think you'll find that a baby is all part of a rather complex chemical reaction, a bit like eating food then a few hours later having to go to the loo. Just takes about 9 months longer.
I'm glad to see that you believe in evolution and the big bang and although I'm an athiest I have to concede that it is a possibility that a diety of some sort could have started off the big bang because there is no way to prove or disprove this and in the end it is (at the moment) a matter of speculation.

It has to start somewhere? Why? And what makes God the natural starting point? Where did the Mother of God go?

All I am saying that it would take a person of extreme arrogence to say whether there is defintely is or isn't a God.
Each side has to agree that it is not a matter of fact but a matter of belief. I for example believe that there is no God, I may be right maybe wrong, the same goes for the religious who to their credit on the most part say I believe rather than there is.

Of course. Openmindedness is a must.

I SAY NO TO OPAN MINDEDNESS!
That sounds really bad but
what I mean is yes every
one should approach every
new truth hypothesis with a
view that it may be write or
wrong and not be overly
preconceived, once one has
examined a hypothesis one has to
disided weather to except it
or not.
I agree that it is not possible
to establish any thing as 100%
true (except possible that there
are thoughts) it is possible
to disprove hypothesis from the
fact that they lead to contradiction
Creationism is not a coherent
argument. Contradictions
arise with in its theory and
there are contradictions between
the world as it is (or I surpose as
I experience it) and creation science.
Faith in nonsense is a failure not
a virtue have faith I right and u
are wrong.
Jk the unwise.

opan-->open

I think I wrote an entry which sorts this one out: http://www.h2g2.com/A469019

How old is planet earth?

I have been told, that if you count the ages in the Bible (That's Holy Book II: The Forgiving, an intriguing second insertion to the trilogy) you'll see for a fact that the Earth is about 70,000 years old.

Other people claim a couple of billion years old, but who lives that long, right?

all right, my turn...
let me start by saying im not completely athiest but mostly so, i believe that this god person is a figure of our imaginations, people have always needed something else to believe in when something happens thats bad ar that they didnt want to happen. religion is nothing more than a crutch, something to help us in our time of need, like i said i dont believe in god but have still found myself saying "oh god please dont let that be anyone i know," when passing a bad car accident...well back to the point of the conversation...

the argument most creationists use is that there are too many coincidences for our little planet to be by chance, the problem is they dont take into account infinity. and since everything has a probability no matter how minute ther still is a chance it could happen. there is a chance a monkey will walk into the room next to you, unplug your computer, and hold a conversation with you about the ethics of cloning. sure this has a .0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001 to 99999999999999999999999999999999999999 of happening but in this would come up if it were tried infinity times. there are more planets in our universe than just ours, it may not be infinatly large, but it has been proven to be growing and thus indicating it may have came into with the big bang or whatever but seeing as how something has always been( try to comprehend nothingness its really hard) time has always been and in an infinite amount of time all these probabilities could happen. it just took one little bacteria or single celled organism and it all evolved into something bigger.

also look at the evolution in just humans, all the different people of the world look different they have adapted to their environments and so has their skin color and physical attributes.

jingle bells

BLuE

There is a theory that God its self is actually a product of our evolution.

In the ape world a group is lead by one dominant male whose rule is very much a dictatorship and is ruled by fear more than anything. What Male 1 says goes so to speak.
When we evolved into a hunter gatherer ape the dictator was now a hindrence as with group hunting it is vital that you get the trust of the whole group. So the leader of the group became less of a dictator and more of the type of leader we see today.
That left a gap of having an that dominating force that keeps the group under control and this is where the God figure comes in.

Hmm, I´ll look into the thing about scientists having reseached the prints and found out they seemed genuine. There is no copyright on the term scientists, so even guys like that reverend who claimed to be an archeologist can be labelled as a scientist. Adn even if we did find out they were real, we would need a bit more evidence to show humans lived along with dinosaurs. And even if that happened it doesn´t prove any Adam & Eve. Only that we have to rethink our theories.

I personally like the argument that it is a scientific law that if something has happened there must have been something to make it happen. If you route all that back you get the Big Bang. And there must have been something to start the Big Bang, therefore God exists. And when we reach that point there is suddenly no need for anything to have caused God´s existence. Then that scientific fact is just forgotten. Shows how Christians only use science when it suits their purpose.

About the origin of life, don´t forget the Goldielocks factor.

And wether evolution is smooth or sudden is an old discussion I think. It is not a new idea that Evolution happens in jumps.

For those of you who are interested in the TRUTH, I've started putting some of it here. After all, I AM an authority on the subject ;-) http://www.h2g2.com/F52180?thread=73379

Xanatic wrote a while ago: "About science first saying it is so and so, untill proven wrong, this _is_ the basic of the scientific method."

No, that is the basis of scientific theory, not the scientific method. A theory is just one part, albeit the desired end of, the scientific method. To say differently is to not follow the scientific method. This really is very simple - I remember this from my elementary school days (not sure what the non-USA equivalent of that is, but I was about 10 when I remember first learning the scientific method). It hasn't changed in the 20 years since then.

While my going on and on about this may seem unnecessary, I feel it is the heart of a common mis-understanding of what science really is. As someone pointed out in this thread already, there is (lamentably) no copyright or license on the term "scientist." This implies that science has no strict foundation. I think it a tragedy of common reason to think of science as such. I also think it a tragedy of common wisdon to dismiss out of hand all religions for the same reasons. That is, since there is no real copyright or license on the term "priest" (or any of the myriad variations on that term), anyone can be a priest of some kind. Does that mean that all religions have no strict foundation? One only has to spend a few hours studying the history of any of Judaism, the Lutheran faith, Roman Catholic, Church of England, Mormon, etc. to know that religions have strict foundations. Obviously, that's usually the first step in forming a religion.

What I'm trying to point out is that science and religion are not really opposing view points so much as they are complementary ones. The concept that science and religion have split The Truth (whatever that is) in half, or have interpreted it in different ways is, IMHO, quite closed-minded and ignorant. I think of Life-the-Universe-and-Everything, or The Truth if you like, as being more like a coin - you have to see both sides in order to fully appreciate it. Of course, that still ignores the edge, or whatever the metaphysical equivalent of my spur-of-the-moment metaphor would be. In any case, trying to use one method to "prove" the other method is wrong is like trying to describe the tails side of a coin when all you've ever seen is the heads side.

Metaphors aside, I really wish people would learn what really is the scientific method, and actually practice it - scientists included. I'm not a priest, but perhaps if I were, I'd be also wishing people would learn what really is belief and religious method, and practice that. Heigh ho, I've said too much again.

I´d still say scientific method. Anyways, the problem with religion is that science looks at different theories. If they are deemed worthless then they ignore them untill new evidence in favour of them come up. That´s why science doesn´t really have anything to do with religion. It isn´t worth looking into, as with astrology and a lot of the other new-age stuff.

One or two points:

The Earth is reckoned by Scientists to be 4.5 billion years old.

The Universe is something between 10 and 20 billion years old, depending on which theory is popular today.

Time has not always been. Time started the same day as space, the day of the beginning of the universe. You can't talk about before that, because there was no "before".