We're always being told we should respect other people's beliefs, but....

[Hakluyt]

.....what exactly does "respect" mean in this context? I am an atheist, and I am always happy to be challenged on my lack of belief, and am frequently told that I must have no moral compass and that I have to put up and shut up when Christianity imposes itself on me. I have also been told that I must have no sense of wonder- and, on on particularly memorable occasion, that I couldn't possibly have any charitable impulses!

But if I say anything even remotely "challenging" about faith or people of faith,bi am accused of disrespect. So, what exactly does respecting other people's beliefs mean?

Why can't God have just moved them in the blink of an eye?

It seems a lot of denial is going on for little effect. In their place, I would have said continents moved faster in the beginning and they have slowed down (they still move - fact) once they have reached the places that God wants them to be.

Same with evolution. I would have said that God directed the evolution of species, to end up with mankind as we are now, in His image.

THis brand of christianity takes it as quite an insult to suggest that homo sapien evolved from less developed species.

Well, life is going to be hard for them then, isn't it?

It's easy for the ones that choose to stay within the church/school environment. Hard for those that want to leave.

I know many many creationists and have NEVER ever heard anyone say that fossils were planted.My dad believes in a 'Creationist' and has a t-rex footprint fossil in his patio which he is very proud of. He would say that extreme geological events can affect dating considerably,rather like this headline from earlier this year...

Living on the edge: Homes perilously close to tumbling into sea after Sussex coast is battered by seven years' worth of erosion in just three months

and he would believe that events such as 'the great flood' are evidenced in fossil records where large amounts of preserved fossils all killed in a simultaneous catastrophe of which massive flooding might be high on the cause list. He would probably also accept that the Earth itself existed before life on earth,seeing as the first verse in Genesis says'In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth ,now the earth was formless and empty...' He would probably also accept that the days of creation could have been periods of time, not days. Genesis describes the land mass breaking up into sea and land and also describes creation as being fish,birds and then mammals.Quite clever for a document thought to be written several hundred years BC. So yes,some,in fact many Christians accept evolutionary theory, some accept adaption only(not really contraversial in any way) Some think the Genesis days were large periods of time and some believe a 6 day creation,which lets face it,if you believe in a supreme being who is omnipresent,omnipowerful and omni everything else,it is hardly beyond him!!

So...one of my problems with evolution is that they will find bone fragments of something and then design it into the link they have been looking for.I searched for images of Ambulocetans(missing link between land mammal and whale) and all these lovely photos appear.When you search for the fossils actually found there were not many and the one segmant of tail bone was found 5m from the rest of the fossil but they wanted it to have a tail as it was to become a whale,so guess what,it had a tail. Also,I thought evolution generally involved things crawling out of the sea and becoming mammals so why is this advanced mammal then crawling back into the sea.
All I am saying is that rather than constantly trying to twist things into your theory,why cannot anyone take a fresh look at stuff with no preconceived ideas?
I look at pictures of skull fragments and sometimes complete skulls that apparantly prove I came from a monkey and I think a) what if it is a monkey skull(some have proved to be so)
b) if we scalped the entire population of the world currently are are skulls all going to be the same?And I think the monkey theory has also changed a few times in recent years! And yet massive amounts of theory are built on either 1 skull or sometimes a small fragment. Seems crazy to me but I am happy to keep searching,just not happy to accept changing theories.

Nobody has ever said you came from a monkey.

"I know many many creationists and have NEVER ever heard anyone say that fossils were planted."

I read that article in "Creation" magazine that has a readership of 300,000.

So I assume there must be some other creationists that believe that too.

It is not difficult to see evolution before our eyes. Bacteria do it very quickly - we can easily see the evidence.

Sorry...'an ape-like' ancester

I have no difficulty in understanding adaption,mutation,natural selection etc but one species becoming another I struggle more with. Surely bacteria are still bacteria at the end of their change?

Just googled that thing about dinosaur bones being planted by the devil.Never heard that...will enjoy telling my dad about that later!

vdb - Have you ever been to an anthropology museum? I think it would help you visualise the evolution of species if you actually saw how different those skulls are from each other, for example.

Nobody says human beings came from monkeys.

And it is not just about skulls and fossils anymore. Genome science has made it possible for scientists to compare DNAs. There is overwhelming evidence that today's birds have evolved from avian dinosaurs.

This is not about scientists finding a little bone and trying to make it fit into their worldview.

But different species exist within bacterial populations too.
Speciation is fairly well understood, and no great mystery. Animal husbandry have created new species, the modern domestic sheep is now a different species to the one it was derived from. Species can be produced in the laboratory too.

www.astrobio.net/interview/bacteria-dont-have-species/

Not always as straight forward as people claim!

Not straightforard, but that article is a little sensationalist. Different species of bacteria do exist although it is true these organisms have some interesting features.
One of the interesting transformative processes of bacteria- ie the ability to absorb extracellular DNA, and actually supports the science of evolution- and the creation of life from nitrogen rich puddles without the need for some guy behind the curtain.

You can't deny that there are different types of bacteria, just like there are different types of viruses. Don't call them 'species' if you don't want to, but they look different under the microscope, they behave differently, they respond to different antibiotics, and they cause different diseases.

not happy to accept changing theories

But what choice do we have if we are to be honest with ourselves? So you're alternative is to believe something you have no evidence for instead of finding out and redefining as you go along? You make the theories sound washy washy but they have to be testable and repeatable before it is accepted as a theory. It's not just some wild off hand guess work. I'm much happier to think 'this is the best educated explanation we can make at this current time, yes there are gaps, but for now it's the the most honest and factual way of understanding the universe'. What I now find unsatisfying is to think something with no reason to it.

Is the definition of a succinct specie that it can't breed with another specie?

I had the weirdest conversation with my 8 year old who wanted to know what you'd get if you mated a horse with a seahorse. 'A horseseahorse? Except you can't' I said, because they are different species. He seemed disappointed.

Science is all about changing theories, adapting, challenging, refining.. That is how science advances. If we do otherwise then it wouldn't be science.
We would be stuck in the same rigid dogma.
Like christians.

Whether different species of bacteria do exist or not, they are still bacteria. That is not evolution.

Evolution is not science because science is observable and testable.

Scientists who study evolution do so from their world view starting point.

If a scientists believes in God they approach it from the angle of changes with decay over the years that we use to measure something we can't observe or test because we weren't there (radiocarbon dating for example).

But if a scientist doesn't believe in God they approach it from the angle of there being no changes with decay rates, and this gives a much older reading.

Whichever world-view you begin with gives entirely different readings at the end result. Since no one was there the prove whether decay rates were constant or not then it boils down to what you decide to believe in.

Oh dear Headinhands, is that really the best you can come up with? You offered a link for other religions having fulfilled prophesies, but have you really read them? There are one or two vague guesses with each religion but there are hundreds of accurate prophesies within the bible and not one single one that was wrong.

We can all make vague guesses, people are down at the bookies doing that as we speak all over the country. Some get it right and guess what, some get it wrong. Pot luck. Only, even down at the bookie eventually a winner will become a loser. It's not possible to make predictions like that 100% accurate.

And the psychic link you gave says within a few paragraphs that they had wrongly predicted Nick Clegg would resign.... I asked for the SAME as the bible, not inferior mistakes.

I hate doing wall of print cut and pastes, but it's sometimes necessary- as here. Some unfulfilled Bible prophesies here