After stepping away for a while, I wanted to rejoin this group to ask questions and hopefully learn from the discussion that may follow.

1.) By discounting the creationist theory of intelligent design, do you instead choose to believe that man, creatures, and plants evolved over time to meet their individual needs? If not, what do you believe instead?
2.) Where do you suspect the beginning organisms came from? What do you think was the initial spark that first created life? (Side point to consider... creationists can say chicken in the old chicken/egg debate... what would you say?)
3.) What do you see when you take time to examine the food chain? Have you stopped to consider the intricate relationship between all things and how they are all interdependent upon one another?

Personally, when I stop to look at nature; I see the fingerprints of God on everything and am genuinely amazed by those that claim to not see the same thing. I'm not trolling. I'm just hoping to gain a better understand of your point of view. Let’s all try and be respectful to one another so Lowe doesn’t have to edit our posts. Thanks for your time.

I'm sorry Lowe. I appear to have killed the activity in your group?!?

Maybe it's just not ready for resurrection yet ...

I will make one comment though ...

To me it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to talk about "believing in" a Creator. Either the evidence is there and accepted or it's not. Either way - "belief" implying faith without empirical evidence - you have your QED.

So what evidence is there that a man loves his wife... his child...his dog? Because he feeds them, cleans them? None of these proves that he loves them, yet he does. Not everything in this world is physical in nature or has physical evidence to support it. This isn't a debate. You will not win 10 points for Gryffindor by making me look foolish. I am seeking genuine conversation about things that neither you nor I completely understand. Some things in the world we live in are emotional or spiritual in nature and there isn't always going to be physical evidence for these things...

Sorry, I wasn't trying to make anybody look anything - just stating my viewpoint.

In what I said, the crucial word is "accepted". Acceptance is subjective, just as love is, just as belief is. Applying this to the original question, if I accept the evidence that I see as being valid evidence for the existence of God, then as far as I'm concerned, God exists. It's not a matter of belief, it's a matter of acceptance of what I see.

Again, no insult or slight intended, no points for Gryffindor. Personally, I absolutely believe (or accept) that there are lots of spiritual matters that "hard science" cannot address because "hard science" only deals with the material universe. Matters of the spirit, by definition, extend beyond the bounds of the physical and apply in the realm of the metaphysical, where "science" is totally irrelevant.

1.) While I don't completely discount "intelligent design", I think accepting that as the answer to how I (in the metaphorical sense) got here doesn't answer the question. It can neither be proven nor disproven that the world didn't start 5 minutes ago, complete with memories, surroundings, fossil records, religions, histories, etc., so why bother even thinking about it? I don't know where it all came from, so I want to find out, to examine it, to think about it in a way that can be scrutinized.

continued...

2.) To my best understanding of logic, if there was a "big bang" that started it all, there has to be a what or who or Who to put the stuff there to go bang. The next question would be "What or who or Who put the first what or who or Who there?" This is something science doesn't address. I think scientific thought could address it, but it is a bit of a paradox, in that you keep asking the same question over and over to infinity. Science deals more with the here and now, and questions that can be answered. In short, there is no answer to the chicken or the egg question.

3.) As for this question, everything is in some way interconnected. The food chain is not that different from the economy in this way. For that matter, they're practically the same thing.

That is interesting jack. I imagine that the same "no way" feeling I get trying to imagine that everything just kind of worked out through evolution is the same way that some other people feel about their being a god that created everything out of nothing in just 6 days.

Thanks for posting your thoughts guys.

I'm gonna just jump in on the Chicken and Egg question from my standpoint (noncreationist?). I believe the Egg came first. I believe in evolution, and so I believe some other animal eventually evolved into the Chicken, which had to happen at some specific stage. Evolution is gradual, but at some point we stop calling the animal by its previous name and decide it has evolved into a Chicken, that first Chicken's mother (still the previous species) laid the egg that hatched the "first" Chicken. Egg -> Chicken