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I'm sorry, but I can't believe that a being as complex as the human could have come by accident out of a little germ billions of years ago.
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Very good. But evolution doesn't say anything about human beings coming by accident out of a little germ billions of years ago. I suggest you learn about evolution. You will find that it is not what you think it is. For example, it has nothing to do with "accident" (i.e. chance).
OTOH Creationism does claim that something as complex as the human came about very suddenly. There is even a more complex entity, G-d, that apparently came by accident without having any ancestors. If you don't like stories of things coming about by accident, you should reject Creationism and embrace evolution.
I am religious. I go the shul every week, I studied Hebrew, I live somewhat kosher (in Israel I am kosher, except in the Arab parts), I read the Bible (Luther translation, King James translation) and the Qur'an (English translation/interpretation). I believe in G-d.
But there is a limit to what I believe. If something contradicts what I see, I don't believe it. I am religious, but I am not a gullible fool. My religion tells me not to be gullible and, instead, to employ reason. The great Moroccon rabbi Mainonides said, in the 12th century, that man should believe only what can be supported either by rational proof, by the evidence of the senses, or by trustworthy authority.
There is no rational proof for something as weird and random as Creation of species out of nothing. My senses confirm evolution because I can see it happening in labs and I can see it having happened by comparing fossils. And a looney interpretation of the Bible is NOT a trustworthy authority. Some parts of the Bible were never supposed to be taken literally. If the Bible, even if written by G-d Himself, contradicts what we see in the world, also created by G-d, who are we to trust G-d's writing (which for all we know could have been tampered with easily) over G-d's creation (the world, which is less easily tempered with). To trust the source that could have been tempered with over the source that could not is to regard man's authority as higher than G-d's. And that is not allowed, not in my religion; I am surprised it is in others.
I don't really care what you believe, but I do insist that you not force children to study it alongside science if you cannot find evidence for it outside one interpretation of a translation of a 2500-year old book.
As for "intelligent design", looking at the human body, perhaps a more appropriate term would be unintelligent design:
"The vertebrate retina is a terrible design. The optic nerve comes into the eyeball at a certain point, and the nerve fibers spread out across the surface of the retina. Each individual nerve fiber reaches its assigned point, burrows down into the retina through several layers of epithelial cells, and ends with the light receptor itself pointing away from the lens of the eye, which is the direction from which the light must come. As a result, incoming light strikes the surface of the retina and must penetrate through multiple layers of inactive cells and then through the body of the nerve itself before it reaches the active point where it might be detected. This both diffuses and attenuates the light, decreasing the efficiency of the retina in accomplishing its function."
http://denbeste.nu/essays/humaneye.shtml
If we were indeed created or designed by someone, that someone must have been a really bad designer indeed. Since G-d is perfect, it cannot have been Him. Maybe it was a tribe of particularly stupid space aliens?
JoeUser Forums
Heh, heh.
