[quote=MACS]Lets not get twisted, home skillet... If you don't believe, that's your prerogative and I ain't going to try to convince you.
HOWEVER, God made man... man made organized religion as a means to control other men (and women), I imagine with good intentions at first. What men do in the name of organized religion is not what most religions preach.
I am a Christian. I struggle with my faith, as all men do, but I believe Jesus made the church obsolete. God, by sending Jesus here to be crucified, took away the need for a 'church' and put that church in our hearts. I believe this because it is what I was taught growing up, and because I believe something as intricate as life here on Earth could not just have happened spontaneously. The trees using sun and carbon dioxide (which we expel) to create oxygen (which we breathe) only for us to expel it so the trees can use it to create more oxygen? The cycle of water from vapor to rain to ocean to vapor to rain... to nourish said plants and animals? The Earth... and the moon... in perfect concert around the sun? With all the stars and all the planets in our galaxy... this is the only one with life.
Sorry. I don't believe it's all a coincidence.[/quote]
Sorry MACS, I gotta call bs on this. People like to call out the way our systems in the planet work together as some sort of evidence of a divine. But it simply isn't. You look at it from the top down, and see it as something that is working in a system. That's simply not how it developed. You have to imagine how it came to be, how it developed, and how each organism developed a niche in the system. Those organisms that couldn't develop a niche, well, we don't see them any longer do we. I think the most profound depiction of this is in prehistoric organisms, I personally think this is fascinating. Our first organisms didn't consume O2. They had anaerobic metabolisms, and oxygen is a waste product for them... I believe the first atmosphere was methane, and that was probably a main component of their metabolism. But as the oxygen levels increase (incidentally, waste from their metabolism), they become less suited for the environment. Oxygen utilizing (aerobic) organisms become more popular. Now we only see anaerobic bacteria in isolated locations, they were pushed out as the environment changed. It WASN'T in perfect balance for their existence.
I know I'm not going to convince you to drop your religion or anything like that over the internet. I just want people to stop using that silly argument. Life exists on this planet BECAUSE it is in the right place to support life. If it weren't, life wouldn't have developed. If the moon weren't there to influence the tides, the life that developed wouldn't have any dependence on tidal motion. Don't make the mistake of looking at it as if the environment is fit to support us. We (and every other organism here) simply developed to fit the environment...
