Atheists

[Aura]

I believe in evolution. I don't mean any offense, but I just can't imagine someone creating something out of nothing. Also, I support evolution because it is more comprehensible for me. I'm the 'prove it' sort of person.

[Fiery Gatoh]

Thinking about the beginning of the universe is okay for me. What I hate thinking about is the END of the universe. Do any of you believe it will end in 2012? Why or why not?

I don't think so. I mean, people thought it would end in 2000, right? And some people thought it would end in, what, 2004? That never happened.
And that calender, the Mayan Calender, it has to end SOMEWHERE! It can't go on forever. It doesn't necessarily mean that the world's going to ends.

I personally think that they just run out of room and so finished there.
I doubt they ever thought that humans would live this long.

[Aura]

Thinking about the beginning of the universe is okay for me. What I hate thinking about is the END of the universe. Do any of you believe it will end in 2012? Why or why not?

I don't think so. I mean, people thought it would end in 2000, right? And some people thought it would end in, what, 2004? That never happened.
And that calender, the Mayan Calender, it has to end SOMEWHERE! It can't go on forever. It doesn't necessarily mean that the world's going to ends.

I personally think that they just run out of room and so finished there.
I doubt they ever thought that humans would live this long.

I mean, think about it. Humans are physically not the strongest animals. We have soft flesh, no hard shells or stings, we aren't the fastest runners and we aren't the strongest. But we do have more brains than, let's say, ants. So, we had to invent stuff to stay alive, I suppose. *off topic, kinda*

[Toastberg]

Mm, even though I haven't had any part in this thread I'm just going to randomly show up and point out that God making the world in a week and the big bang theory may well both have happened. (I'm Christian btw)
So, everyone knows the Bible says the world was made in a week, but all the fossil stuff says the world has been here thousands of years, and scientists reckon there was a lot more before those fossils. Well, so do I. A lot longer than 7 days. But I think it's probably symbolic, like most of the things in Revelations. One "day" was probably actually a few million years, and so there may well have geen a gigantic bang which God had intended to happen. That is the main reason most of my friends don't beleive in the Bible or God, so I just thought I'd point it out here, too.

*random*

That's what my dad said, and he's catholic and beleives all tat stuff.
The way he explained it one day was the big bang. The next could be the dinosaurs or something. And days meant eras, not 24 hour periods.
It still doesn't sound right to me. Doesn't leave a lot of room for evolution or whatever. There's more to support that theory than the 7 days thing.

There's a lot more support for the big bang theory because scientists are supposed to be smart an get things right. Personally, I think it may well have happened, but that doesn't kick God out of the story. And honestly, it doesn't even bother me all that much about how the world came about. It's here, I'm on it, who cares about how it got here.

I don't think so. I mean, people thought it would end in 2000, right? And some people thought it would end in, what, 2004? That never happened.
And that calender, the Mayan Calender, it has to end SOMEWHERE! It can't go on forever. It doesn't necessarily mean that the world's going to ends.

I personally think that they just run out of room and so finished there.
I doubt they ever thought that humans would live this long.

I mean, think about it. Humans are physically not the strongest animals. We have soft flesh, no hard shells or stings, we aren't the fastest runners and we aren't the strongest. But we do have more brains than, let's say, ants. So, we had to invent stuff to stay alive, I suppose. *off topic, kinda*

Yeah, the world has been supposed to be ended heaps of times... like in 2003 or something when I was in year 2 the earth was supposed to bump into another planet and blow up... then just last year it was supposed to get sucked into a black hole starting in France or something, now when 2012 comes people'll say it's going to end in 2020 or something. I just sort of got the vague idea that it's going to end when people screw it up too much, like if someone starts a nuclear war or something... idk.

[~EverOutOfTouch~]

Mm, even though I haven't had any part in this thread I'm just going to randomly show up and point out that God making the world in a week and the big bang theory may well both have happened. (I'm Christian btw)
So, everyone knows the Bible says the world was made in a week, but all the fossil stuff says the world has been here thousands of years, and scientists reckon there was a lot more before those fossils. Well, so do I. A lot longer than 7 days. But I think it's probably symbolic, like most of the things in Revelations. One "day" was probably actually a few million years, and so there may well have geen a gigantic bang which God had intended to happen. That is the main reason most of my friends don't beleive in the Bible or God, so I just thought I'd point it out here, too.

*random*

That's what my dad said, and he's catholic and beleives all tat stuff.
The way he explained it one day was the big bang. The next could be the dinosaurs or something. And days meant eras, not 24 hour periods.
It still doesn't sound right to me. Doesn't leave a lot of room for evolution or whatever. There's more to support that theory than the 7 days thing.

There's a lot more support for the big bang theory because scientists are supposed to be smart an get things right. Personally, I think it may well have happened, but that doesn't kick God out of the story. And honestly, it doesn't even bother me all that much about how the world came about. It's here, I'm on it, who cares about how it got here.

Scientists are only people. How do we know they're right all the time? We just trust that they are. Anyways, there's no way to go back in time and see how the world was created, people just make up what could have happened when we've never witnessed it again or anything like it. For example, on the theory of evolution, have any of you witnessed evolution happen?

[~Kaleidoscope~]

Scientists are only people. How do we know they're right all the time? We just trust that they are. Anyways, there's no way to go back in time and see how the world was created, people just make up what could have happened when we've never witnessed it again or anything like it. For example, on the theory of evolution, have any of you witnessed evolution happen?

True. I personally believe in evolution, because it makes tons more sense then any other explanation. And we should never agree with scientists all the time. I mean, some say that animals have no feelings, and I totally don't believe that. And some have really crazy theories that everyone thinks are wrong, but then somehow they get proved right. Nobody really KNOWS anything about fifty million years before humans, and that's a fact.

[Atwood]

(A lot of writing because this is kind of my main field)

Apparently the discounted theories of a researcher from the early 1900s are being reviewed again, since scientists have realized that the guy might have actually stumbled across epigenetics (genes modifying to fit the environment) about sixty years ahead of everyone else. Unfortunately, he was a Lamarck supporter, so his discoveries were dismissed as fabrications to support his theory until the past couple of decades when epigenetics became known. Scientists can be wrong, but the great thing is that we can change and adapt our ideas as new data comes in.

For those who are interested in the process scientists must go through to be considered right (or more correctly, not wrong): All legitimate scientific research that gets published goes through a lengthy peer-review session in which several experts do all they can to rip the argument to shreds, discredit every single word the scientist says in it and show the scientist to be totally incompetent. If the research can successfully withstand these efforts, then it can get published so even more scientists can try to tear it apart and prove that it's wrong. No one in science actually believes that other scientists are right, or even remotely competent, until they have actually proven it through the strength of their work (and that only holds for the individual bit of research - the whole process starts over with their next project). If a researcher is even once proven wrong through incompetence or (worse) fabrication, their entire body of work is dismissed and must be replicated by someone else to re-prove it all, regardless of how rock-solid it seemed initially. Scientists constantly have to deal with the burden of proof, and every hypothesis must be supported by the data, which must have been obtained in such a way that the only explanation for the observed effect is that the hypothesis is not wrong, and which the hypothesis predicted accurately before the research was done.

Unless one of us is secretly a few million years old, none of us has witnessed the process of large-scale natural evolution. We can see it in the small scale though - bacteria in particular are great for that, though other short-generation animals can show it as well. Over the course of just a few days, you can watch bacteria develop new traits and gain new resistances depending on what conditions they're being grown in, which is why people shouldn't use antibiotics unless they really need to. MRSA and VRE (varieties of antibiotic-resistant bacteria) are two well-known examples of evolution that frequently show up outside of the lab, much to the hospitals' despair.

[Moonflight]

Thinking about the beginning of the universe is okay for me. What I hate thinking about is the END of the universe. Do any of you believe it will end in 2012? Why or why not?

I don't think so. I mean, people thought it would end in 2000, right? And some people thought it would end in, what, 2004? That never happened.
And that calender, the Mayan Calender, it has to end SOMEWHERE! It can't go on forever. It doesn't necessarily mean that the world's going to ends.

I personally think that they just run out of room and so finished there.
I doubt they ever thought that humans would live this long.

I agree. Or it's just when it completes a cycle and starts over.

People are silly with their conspiracies C:

[~Kaleidoscope~]

I agree. Or it's just when it completes a cycle and starts over.

People are silly with their conspiracies C:

Very true.
I think they do it for a little more excitement in this world. My mom's friend told me about when she was sleeping over at her friend's house, on New Year's Eve in 2000. They were all scared, half-jokingly, because everyone was saying how the world was going to end at midnight, at precisely the new year.
Well, the friend's brother pulled a prank on them, and turned off all the power at midnight. xD So they all thought the world had ended, because it was pitch-dark and they couldn't hear anything, not even the refrigerator.
*cough* But let's get back on topic...

[Araviir]

ya I think they thought 15000 years into the future was far enough XD