ok so i know im coming into this a but late and the quote im about to use is a few months old but as i was going through the thread i just couldn't resist this post.
faazshift wrote:...
Even if religion was false, it helps people to better themselves. It brings a lot of peace and order to the world that would otherwise be chaos, wars, etc.
i love that last bit. the bit about religion not starting or causing any wars. it apparently also repels chaos,i wish someone would have explained that to the guys trying to blow me up in Iraq. and yes i know they are not catholic, so lets look at this.
how many wars have been started because of religion? how many people have died due to religious beliefs?
would you like me to start chronologically or alphabetically?
how about one event that caused not only chaos but a religious feud that continues today???
anyone here ever hear of the crusades? possibly one of the bloodiest wars ever fought, its hard to get accurate numbers on how many died because of it, but whole towns and cities were wiped out by the crusaders. they damn near committed genocide.
in your precious bible in the gospels it talks about one of the most disturbing mass murders known to man. king Herod in his attempt to snuff Jesus killed every baby he and his soldiers could find. yeah that's real peaceful.
so when you said religion has brought peace and order to the world i had to laugh at your ignorance. religion has caused more wars than any other cause. period.
that being said to clear up the evolution problem, we did evolve from "the ancestors of monkeys" they have a name but i doubt anyone is interested in the scientific name. the point is evolution can take multiple routes. for example in Darwin's studies he found many different types of swallows ones with long, short, stubby, curved, etc. beaks different length wings, and on and on. that doesn't mean they didn't evolve from the same place, it just means they evolved differently from a similar place. it also means that the place they evolved from was stable enough that they didn't branch out to become a new species. this is the same with humans. we and apes (there are like 50 different species of "apes" fyi) evolved from a similar place both our genes were favorable thus we both survived and continued reproducing. and since humans didn't prey on apes exclusively they had a pretty good chance of survival.
it seems you think somewhere along the following. -ants need longer necks to eat (for whatever reason its an example go with it.) so one day the queen gives birth to a whole bunch of eggs that hatch and have ants with longer necks, then magically all the ants without longer necks die and the ones with long necks are all that's left.-
as you can see that makes little to no sense at all. the ones with shorter necks might continue surviving by moving to a place where having shorter necks is favorable, leaving the long necked ants to survive where they left them. when thinking about evolution you have to take everything into account, location, food, weather, water, predators, etc. everything matters.
hopefully that helps you understand a little.