Moontanman

How does religious faith have any basis? What is it's basis other than faith? I would say there is zero empirical evidence for god... There is personal experience of alien abductions, literally millions of them, does that make aliens abductions credible? Obviously you don't know many Pagans... There are still people who worship Thor, believe in faeries, elves, the green man, Adrianna...

So this plan includes things like disease, abuse, disasters, crashes, injury, death, if these are part of the plan then i think I can do without being watched over by this planner...

I'm not sure how this supports your position... ?

Have you forgotten about seasons? Even at the edge of the ice sheets the summer woke up the landscape of the "frozen" tundra just like it does now and taiga forests rolled across the landscape just like it does today but just further south. These animals were capable of migrating vast distances from summer to winter feeding grounds just like caribou, musk oxen, bison, bears and other large fauna do today. Large animals like elephants migrate huge distances even to day to follow the growing season why couldn't the mega fauna have done that as well?

Why does there need to be a higher being, why couldn't the origin of the universe be as naturalistic as the formation of the solar system?

I do agree with you, unicorn was probably a mythological rendition of a rhino, but "Auroch" was not an African cow with horns that looked fused together. Aurochs were the ancestors of modern cattle but the original beast was much larger and more powerful than domestic cattle and lived manly in Europe, Asia, and India with a smaller range in North Africa. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aurochs They were large dangerous beasts.

I am not sure what you are asserting here, why would mega fauna have any problem finding food during the ice ages?

Unity+, are we using individual religions to debate this idea of theistic scientists or not? I am well aware of how people compartmentalize their beliefs away from reality and a superfluous understanding of a religion allows this compartmentalized belief. My voyage away from religion resulted from a critical investigation of what religion, specifically what I needed to believe to be true vs reality, reality won... I don't see how anyone, much less a scientist, can ignore the disconnect between reality and religion. Compartmentalization might allow a person to believe in rainbows as supernatural effects that have only occurred since Noah's flood as a sign of a promise by god to never murder every one on the earth again but the reality of rainbows calls into question the rationality of the guy who believes this if he knows the true reality of rainbows but prefers to believe goddidit...

And this Jesus character is relevant to theistic scientists in what way?

That picture is not the picture of any arthropod, larvae or adult...

well then we are back to how can a person study the natural world and still believe in something that flies in the face of that natural world...?

I'd like to read a few of those, I am very familiar with the Bible, I know of no accurate description of reality in the bible that were not self evident of the time it was written. In fact it is dead wrong about many things it asserts about reality... Getting a few things right is reasonable, coincidences do happen but the major things it's wrong about are huge... And yet you keep defending your version of reality not some generic version...

It's obviously not meant as an accurate representation of reality either...

Pot... meet Kettle... Didn't you open the door on that one by asserting your god as The God? Again meaningless in this context.

And the idea of god is supported by what? I would suggest the magnitude of the work around's required for god is far bigger than the work around's involved with string theory. Historically accurate is meaningless in this context, other religious texts are historically accurate to the same degree as the bible... Hindu for instance or Sikh...

Ok what makes your religion any more valid than the Hindu religion? Math makes string theory look valid but the idea of god has no math to back it up.

Science cannot prove or disprove many things, does that make them equally valid?

So we are talking about giant beetles that fly at hundreds if not thousands of miles an hour and glow in the dark? This is not even close enough to being right to be wrong. How or why would a giant insect be able to make a right angle turn any better than a human pilot in a jet? Cube square law... just saying... Where do they breed, where are the giant insect larvae?

Are you suggesting that UFOs are giant glowing insects?

Unity+ asserted he thought all points of view were worth respecting, I asked him if all religious world views were equal in his eyes... The unicorn idea is not the original question he asked about, I went back and read the posts again. I think it was the genocide and keeping female children for their own pleasure he was questioning as demands of god. http://www.evilbible.com/Rape.htm

OK, I know this is anecdotal and you're not going to be able confirm it but here it is. A guy known to me, who was a aggressive atheist most if not all of his life, went fundamentalist Christian a couple years ago. He went from asserting religion was total bollocks to creationist practically over night. It was very difficult to visit him, his "need" to convert everyone he came in contact with was quite a bit more than annoying. A few weeks ago he was diagnosed with a fatal inoperable brain tumor. The doctors said the tumor was in a part of his brain that controlled his cognitive and or reasoning abilities, I haven't seen him in a long while but it seems he had finally driven all his friends away due to his proselytizing but now the docs say his trip from reason to delusion was almost certainly fired by his brain tumor. Just saying...

There is a technical term for SHC, it's on the tip of my tongue... Murder! yes that's it... http://www.csicop.org/sb/show/a_fiery_death_murder_or_spontaneous_combustion/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spontaneous_human_combustion The case you cite with the baby is not as well supported as you insinuate... http://science.howstuffworks.com/science-vs-myth/unexplained-phenomena/shc.htm

Well since chimps have indeed been seen in the wild doing those things I'd get a tarp before i sat in front of that fan...