As far as the earth is concerned, all the big bang theory tells us is that the earth is less than 15 billion years old. Evolution has nothing to do with any of this.

Baby dinosaurs.

That is all.

I already explained why I see no point to further discussion on this topic. And others have pointed out the flaws with your claim. You linked a statement that the universe has been around for billions of years to "Darwinistic evolutionary theory" and claimed that such beliefs made his Darwinistic worldview apparent. The only link between the age of the universe and evolution is that an age less than 4.5 billion years would imply that at least one of the age of the Earth and the age of the universe must be wrong, and if it were proven to be much less, then evolutionary theory would be wrong.

In other words, the age of the universe is one of a multitude of pieces of evidence that could have been found to be inconsistent with evolutionary theory, but wasn't. But it doesn't prove evolution, nor does its belief imply a belief in evolution. There are enough posters here to prove that. And before you claim that it was the combination of points that led you to the conclusion - evolution does not imply disbelief in an afterlife, and the age of the Earth and the timing of human emergence does not imply belief in evolution.

/hijack

I just want to add in that I agree. I do believe that the universe is billions of years old and that the data stands on it's own to show this. I believe that well before I accepted any of evolution.

I do also accept evolution and common decent. I do not however believe that random mutation and natural selection can account for all (or a majority) of biodiversity. So I do not believe that it is the "driving force".

The problem seems to be that too many things are being lumped into one. The age of the universe is different from whether or not evolution happens which is different from the theory of common decent which is different from the mechanisms of evolution. Now there are obviously some connections, but each of these can stand on their own.

On evolution, I don't think any atheist on this forum is particularly wedded to natural selection as the only mechanism. We are only partial to that so long as the scientific consensus says that its the leading contender. As Razzspazz has been kindly updating us in that other thread, there seem to be other things going on as well. Most atheists here are content to let the scientists figure it out.

What we tend not to believe, is that a god has anything to do with evolution.

I thought it has already been proven that there was no worldwide flood a few thousand years ago... Eventually, someone is going to claim to have found the fossils of the talking snake in the bible. Plus 2 of every animal, that would mean that the boat would have to be hundreds of yards long and many storys high. That would be much more of a feat then the Egyptians building of the Great Pyramid. Was there even large ships 5000 years ago? The America's were yet to be discovered by Europeans/Asian's when the bible were written so they wouldn't have known of all of the species that live just in North/South America. There is no way, frogs from the Amazon Rain Forest could cross the Atlantic Ocean, or do Christian's believe that God gave them all planks of wood to float across the ocean on?

The Bible/Koran have so many flaws. I don't see how anyone can actually take these books seriously. I believe it is possible that there is some sort of God, but more in the deistic sense. It bugs me that theists see us as ranking way above the billions of species to ever exist on this planet, and no telling how many species of animals exist out on other planets.

[X] The bible is flawed
[ ] Noah put two of every animal in the world into an arc and sailed away

Well Thank Flying Spaghetti Monster that YOU were not a key component of our ancestors' survival.

Nice name by the way. Enjoy the perma ban.

As I'm finding out in that other thread, I think there may be some definitional issues in the way. There are a large number of extremely complex mechanisms at work in evolution on earth, I just happen to think they are all subsets of mutation and natural selection. However, a grad student in the field disagrees, so I don't think I'm going to insist on that view any longer.

Do you believe that the driving forces are natural?

My point though, is if the dust clears and the grad student along with the rest of the scientific community says: well, we no longer think the mechanism is natural selection, its all these other things: you wouldn't just hang onto Darwin would you? You would say that the balance of evidence seems to favour these other things.

Out of all the religious artifacts you could try to base a hoax around, isn't Noah's Ark the very worst?! Unless we assume Noah had futuristic in vitro fertilization/gestation technology (and hence only needed DNA samples of each species), the faux Ark needs to be impossibly big.

So no way you could keep construction of the hoax a secret; or recover construction costs even if you did.

I can't help but wonder - in this particular (or any) hoax...

Are the guys thinking "this is going to be great - everyone will believe this - we'll never be found out - millions more people will begin believing in the bible - we'll be famous - we'll be rich - etc - etc"????

Currently, yes. I have no reason to believe otherwise. With the exception of certain attributes like our level of intelligence and our ability to reason.

Do you believe that the driving forces of evolution are natural for all life on earth except for humans? If so, is it possible that you believe this just because you happen to be a human?

I didn't say "except humans", only that certain attributes I do not believe could arise by purely naturalistic mechanisms, like rationality.

In other words, I do not believe that an unguided purposeless (ie non-rational) process can create rationality.

I'm that way about swimming. I have no reason not to believe other swimmers arrived that way, but the best swimmer, Phelps, must have another explanation.
hmmm...I'm starting to think that way about flying to. Robins I accept, but come on, the Peregrine Falcon reaches horizontal 55 mph and 270 mph in a dive.
When you get to the top level, we need a supernatural nudge.
If humans die off, the supernatural will be needed to explain apes, elephants and crows.

Let's ignore the second part.

What makes you think you have anywhere near the knowledge or expertise to go against the scientific consensus on this? Your statement above leads me to believe you're not religiously motivated on this subject, so what gives?

There are times you've mentioned stuff like how you think evo-devo might replace mutation and natural selection as the driving force of evolution. But biologists who specialize in evo-devo think that's nonsense! For instance PZ Meyers (whom I'm sure you hate, but nevertheless specializes in evo-devo), says:

"evo-devo is a refinement of certain aspects of biology that has, we think, significant implications for evolution, especially of multicellular organisms. It is not a new engine. People who claim it is understand neither development nor evolution." (Emphasis mine)

I even understand religiously motivated evolution nonsense. I at least see the motivation behind it. I just really don't understand your position, not even a little bit.

Wait a second, I'm confused. You asked,

I answered,

then you said,

Are you claiming that the current scientific consensus is that the driving force of evolution is supernatural? Where did I go wrong?

Nope. My mistake sorry. I was going off your new answer but referring to this statement by you:

Well, according to our new friend Razz, I am not that far off of the scientific consensus. But aside from that, I just don't find it convincing and find the explanations to be nothing more than "just so" stories.

Do you feel the same way about quantum mechanics? The stuff they tell me about that seems orders of magnitude less convincing (and sometimes downright contradictory).

i have not done much studying at all on this subject, I have no real opinion.

Thread cliff notes:

Some Christians claim they found Noah's Ark and other Christians say "I told you so."

Still to come: Muslims discover Mohammad's "blankey" and say "No, I told YOU so!"