Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire So, which of the 6 theories of Evolution do you unbelievers believe in?

Chuck,

Let me help you out a bit and see if I can help you understand a different perspective.

One of the things you asked for if "proof". Generally, in these discussion I see someone asking for "proof" as a red herring. If you haven't followed many of these discussion, you may not have noticed that I never ask for "proof". I will ask for evidence, or good evidence, or sufficient evidence. Often times we don't have "proof", but claims supported with insufficient evidence, or evidence that something is "likely" or "probably" etc. Besides, since there's no real way to get around the problem of hard solipsism (you are just a brain in a vat, and all your experiences occur only within you brain) it can be argued that there is never really "proof" for anything, so it's best we talk in term of evidence that we can evaluate.

As for the existence of life beyond our planet, I consider it likely. We know it happened at least once, it's able to adapt to a surprising range of environments, and, excluding helium which is inert, we are made up of the most common elements in the universe one for one, in order of abundance.

Considering there's around 200 billion starts in the Milky way, and 200 galaxies just in the visible universe, and some number of planets and moons around each of those stars, that's a lot of dice to roll continuously over the billions of years since what we call the Big Bang (which was neither big, nor a bang). So do I think life outside our solar system is likely, yes. But do I know, no, I don't, and I'm ok with that. If there is life outside our solar system, we can build models of what, under certain circumstances, it might be likely to be like, but again, that's not the same thing as knowing.

Could there be life outside the solar system that's at the level of moss or bacteria. Yep, sure could be, or it could be highly advanced, living on the surface of a Dysan Sphere, or the moss could be the Dysan sphere, and more then we could possibly imagine in between these possibilities. I don't know. We don't know, and considering what we currently understand regarding the universal limit of causality, we may never know.

There's much we don't know, and I'm ok with accepting there are limits to our current knowledge. IME that's a common thematic difference between non-believers, and the hard core fundamentalist. Many fundamentalist have such a need to know they would rather blindly accept a fairly tale them accept the level of uncertainly and now knowing that comes with living in a world with scientific discovery.

You ask about what people should be "allowed to believe". It's a common trick for believer to ask as if engaging in an intellectual debate is "not allowing them to have their beliefs". I hope you would agree, that's absurd. Nobody's forced to join this forum, or clink on this thread. Everyone participating in this debate is doing so of their own free will (to the extent that freewill actually does or does not exist). The only force I've ever used to change someone's beliefs is the force of my reason. If your beliefs cannot withstand scrutiny, perhaps you should change them, but they should be changed because they fail to meet their burden of proof, not at the point of a gun. Of course there are exceptions to that. If you faith calls for child sacrifice, everyone drinking grape Kool Aid, or Sarin gas on the subways, then yes, your ideas need to be changed or eliminated with the proper application of firepower.