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Klaus said:
melon: even supporters of "creation" are sure that there is evolution, the question is: can evolution create something out of nothing?
actually some still dispute evolution, if by "evolution" you mean "macroevolution". and some other types.
 
Angela Harlem said:
And nbcrusader, perhaps it needs to be asked why that is the case. Sometimes we all need to stop and ask ourselves if perhaps our views are just simply offensive. I'd hope there is nothing to read between the lines with your comment.

No hidden messages. Abortion tends to be the most devisive topic generally. IMO, this topic tends to be here.
 
Sorry to everyone for the direction this thread has taken, although in my defense the discussion was already veering in that direction before I got here.
Angela Harlem said:
If we do choose, I remind you that you are obligated on this forum to do so without insulting anyone. No one here can force people to be open minded, or even to be just a little polite.
I can in all honesty say to you that I have not said anything with the intention of being hostile, insulting, or even mildly impolite. If my attempt to express my opinions in a very sterile, impassionate way in general keeping with the tone of this thread have given the impression that I am cold-hearted on this issue, it was not my intention.

I will freely acknowledge that I am a christian, and to the best of my understanding of what the bible says, I believe that God tells us that homosexuality is a sin, and as all sin I believe it is something which is harmful not only to those who are engaged in it but to everyone in their lives and their community as well.

The somewhat shocking theory, I suppose, that I am trying to put forward here is that it is actually possible to oppose homosexuality (and anything else that you believe is harmful/sinful behavior) without actually hating, being prejudiced towards, or even mildly disliking anyone. As a matter of fact, it is quite possible to stand up against what you believe to be wrong, not for the sake of being hateful or brow-beating people or pretending to be morally superior, but out of love.

Let me put it this way: If I saw someone standing in the bottom floor of a house who was unaware that the second floor was on fire, and I really cared about that person, I would do my best to warn them and try to convince them to that they are in danger and need to get out.
If they told me, "I don't believe you, I'm not in danger, leave me alone," and if I really cared about that person, then would I say, "Okay, fine, I will respect your decision to stay there," or would I say, "I'm sorry, but I can't hold my tongue because we're talking about life and death here." Living a life unknowingly entrenched in any sin is truly a life and death matter. I could give you several very clear quotes from the Bible which condemn homosexuality, but I'm guessing that the response of some would be that I was either misinterpreting them, taking them out of context, or that the Bible itself is not a genuine authority.

Now if what you're saying to me is that my view (which I firmly believe to be biblical to the best of my understanding) is not welcome to be expressed in this forum in any way, shape, or form, if that my spiritual views are in and of themselves unwelcome to be discussed, then I'll leave and not come back, assuming that it is the consensus desire of the people who make these decisions.

But I'll ask you first to at least give me some kind of basic hearing to determine whether I have in fact made any of these statements out of rudeness, insults, or hostility, or is it simply the expression of my opinion itself which is causing the problem?

While I can't speak for everyone, for many who oppose homosexuality, it is often a matter of believing that God exists, that there is such a thing as absolute truth, that God has given us this truth in the form of a book called the bible, and that the bible condemns homosexuality.

Hypothetically, just for the sake of discussion, what if it was actually true that:
1) God directly inspired the writers of the bible and therefore wrote it, and
2) the bible condemns homosexuality because it is a matter of using sex in a manner other than what God created it for.

Under this hypothetical scenario, we would have two choices:
1) We could choose to say, "While I don't see anything wrong with homosexuality, in the end I'm going to cede final authority to God and accept what he has to say about it," or
2) We could choose to say, "I'm going to value my own logic, feelings, and judgement on this issue over God's."

Under this scenario, would we be willing to let go of things that we really wanted if God insists that they're wrong, or would we choose to keep those things if we could find a rationale that satisfies our comparatively limited human understanding of them?

The bottom line, I guess, is that I can't in good conscience remain silent on these issues when I believe that people are doing grave harm to themselves and putting their eternal destiny in jeopardy without realizing it. (see postscript below)
 
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P.S. --
But I promise that per your wishes I won't discuss it any further in this thread, and I will do my best to adhere to the wishes of the forum moderators whenever they step in (as you have done in this instance) and say "Let's end the direction that this discussion is going."
 
(Hey Melon, can u shoot me an email??? It's not about this topic but I can't figure out how else to get in touch with you :reject:

thanksss! :wave: Carrie)
 
TheFirstBigW said:
Sorry to everyone for the direction this thread has taken, although in my defense the discussion was already veering in that direction before I got here.

I have nothing left to say, except that slavery, misogyny, and anti-Semitism have all been classic hot-button issues that have abused the Bible to support these prejudices. In fact, if I take the book of Joshua, I can also justify genocide under certain circumstances.

And I've argued until I've been blue in the face that homosexuality, a 19th century concept, is not even mentioned in the Bible. No, rather it is a mistranslation of pagan sexual practices, so long extinct that there are no modern words to describe them, but they were, in essence, idolatrous temple orgies. It was the idolatry that offended them, and the bisexual practices that went along with them is what they were describing; but it is still centered solely on an opposition to idolatry. What I should do is take random passages in the Bible that condemn heterosexual practices and use it as a blanket condemnation of heterosexuality. How would one like that? Because loving same-sex relationships aren't even in the Bible, unless you want to take David and Jonathan in 1-2 Samuel and go places with it, in the same manner that modern audiences have gone places with obscure, poorly translated supposedly anti-gay passages.

But whatever. Believe what you want; just don't expect me to roll over and let you spout hatred and try and justify it.

Melon
 
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oliveu2cm said:
(Hey Melon, can u shoot me an email??? It's not about this topic but I can't figure out how else to get in touch with you :reject:

thanksss! :wave: Carrie)

What's your e-mail address? I don't have it.

Melon
 
melon said:
Believe what you want; just don't expect me to roll over and let you spout hatred and try and justify it.
Per my promise to Angela Harlem, I am not going to address the current subject of controversy any more in this thread.

It accomplishes nothing to automatically assume the absolute worst about my heart and my motives.

God tells us to love all people, and love sometimes means that you have to tell them the truth even if it hurts, and I promise to do my best to keep an open mind in discussing all of these issues while at the same time being faithful to stand up for what I believe to be the truth.
 
TheFirstBigW said:
God tells us to love all people, and love sometimes means that you have to tell them the truth even if it hurts, and I promise to do my best to keep an open mind in discussing all of these issues while at the same time being faithful to stand up for what I believe to be the truth.

And expect me to be faithful to stand up for what I believe to be the truth as well. Even if it hurts.

Melon
 
Thank you for your replies, TheFirstBigW. I dont think this thread is anywhere near as bad as some have been on this topic, but what we take offence to is highly subjective. I dont like closing threads unless people are being outright arses and I dont really like people to stop giving their opinion when this is precisely what this forum is for. We will never all agree on any given issue, so we need to all be very careful how with how what we say can be taken by others. I hope we dont need to say anymore on this now as the subject of evolution is interesting and I hope we can continue with that alone now.
 
Angela Harlem:
Thanks.
I was a little concerned that you were mad at me or that I had overstepped a boundary without realizing it.
I appreciate the fact that we can discuss such issues without becoming enemies as a result.

Melon:
I appreciate your sentiment and I expect and hope for nothing less. Passionate debaters have the ability to sharpen one another like steel and hopefully come closer to both the truth and understanding one another in the process.
 
After reading all of this I've come to one conclusion no matter what, people are going to use or abuse any medium they can to express their point. Science, religion, it doesn't matter anymore someone's going to twist it to match their personal beliefs.

What it comes down to is there are no absolutes in either.

Not one of you have given any proof either way, so until you have 100% proof, why not just love your fellow human being, because that...at least you know is true.
 
TheFirstBigW said:
I believe that God tells us that homosexuality is a sin, and as all sin I believe it is something which is harmful not only to those who are engaged in it but to everyone in their lives and their community as well.

You know what other group of people are harmful to everyone in their lives and community? Bigots -- like you.

Comparing the "harm" that two gay people do by falling in love with the harm that homophobes do when they wage another of their filthy campaigns against gay people, there's absolutely no comparison.

I believe that people are doing grave harm to themselves and putting their eternal destiny in jeopardy without realizing it.

You don't know what you're talking about. What actually causes "grave harm" to gay people is having to hear yet another ignorant bigot whining about how gay people are "disgusting" and "destroying the morals of society," or having to hide their sexuality for fear of the consequences.
 
Fizz, let's not throw words like "bigots" around so carelessly. Whether you agree with TFBW or not, I believe he or she has stated his or her opinion as circumspectly and respectfully as possible.
 
Originally posted by paxetaurora
Fizz, let's not throw words like "bigots" around so carelessly. Whether you agree with TFBW or not, I believe he or she has stated his or her opinion as circumspectly and respectfully as possible.

So it's okay for TFBW to say gay people are "harmful...to everyone in their lives and community" but it's not okay for me to say he's a bigot? With all due respect, I think you should consider how offensive those comments are to gay people. In any case, I don't see how making bigoted comments in a polite manner makes them any less bigoted.
 
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I DO NOT agree with TFBW in that point (as you can read in my previous statement about sexual orientations) but i think it would have bin wiser to ask her first in which manner she thinks it's harmful.
She said "like all sins" but from my point of view there is a huge range of how harmful something is. It's a difference between killing or raping or not keeping the sabath for example.
Anyway, i'm not going in more details because i think this subject is discussed much to emotinal here and because of that rational discussion isn't feasible anymore
 
I promised I wouldn't discuss homosexuality in this thread anymore, and I'm sad to see that it's still taking over this thread when it should have been returned back to the original topic.

As for the more general question of how sin itself can be harmful to not only the person involved in it but also those in their lives and the community, I meant in the way that we are all in one respect interconnected and part of one another as God's family, and when one member of the family suffers or engages in self-harmful behavior, the family as a whole suffers to a certain extent as well.

In other words, I guess I'm talking about that old cliche "no man is an island."
 
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FizzingWhizzbees:
When you placed my phrase "grave harm" in quotes, you then followed it with two other phrases in quotes: "disgusting" and "destroying the morals of society".
I'm sure you probably didn't do it on purpose, but it kind of makes it look like you're attributing those last two quotes to me as well, so I'd just like to go on the record as saying that I've never used either of those phrases.
 
There is no devolution, evolution does not have a direction

/This is one of those jokes where I would say it in a totally serious manner.
 
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A_Wanderer:
I allways thought evolution had a direction:
"Survival of the fittest" not "Survival of the best" ;)
So people who live in a dictature and just do what they should do have higher chances to survive and prosper compared to people who try to make a revolution ;)
 
FizzingWhizzbees said:


So it's okay for TFBW to say gay people are "harmful...to everyone in their lives and community" but it's not okay for me to say he's a bigot? With all due respect, I think you should consider how offensive those comments are to gay people. In any case, I don't see how making bigoted comments in a polite manner makes them any less bigoted.

Fizz I'm not addressing you with my response here but yours I am quoting has prompted it.

I honestly don't believe the subject of homosexuality can be discussed on this forum, and I say this with no assigningng blame or pointing fingers. Any level of being opposed to it for whatever reason is going to be offensive to some. It's just the way it is. And surely that is to be expected because sometimes we are saying that a natural part of someone is wrong, it is a sin, it is morally reprehensable etc. Who wouldn't be offended by that? I would. That's for sure.
So what about the issue of right to free speech? Here begins the thorny part and one which causes the problems. As Fizz says in not so many words, even carefully wording something and making all good intentions to be polite, can still offend.
So what do we do? It isn't even about moderating this forum really. I dont like to see it become a situation where an opinion isn't welcome. That then becomes something I dont think any of us really hope to see, but can we continue it at the cost of some being offended? That bothers me more. We see this in a few topics around here, religion being another, and when it is impossible for even the majority of this board to agree on one given thing, I think even if only a few are so deeply offended, then we have a problem and need to do what this forum wasn't intended to do, and that is silence a topic.

I dont even want to close this thread, but I am going to because it isn't constructively growing in any real direction.
 
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