The origin of life on planet Earth

Wow.

Why do you have "cloud" in quotes? Does it not mean, cloud like in the normal sense?

Everybody knows that God made the earth and everything on it about 6000 years ago...geeze.

Maybe god just made that gelatinous mass of cloud.

Or maybe Ridley Scott's "engineers"

Quite glib and as far as fundamentalist nonsense goes, perhaps deserved, but dismissing God as the creator of all things is a leap of faith.

It was a joke.

But, since I'm here, I'm one of those religious whack jobs that believes in God AND evolution (dun, dun, dunnnn).

Me too.

Stick around, you'll see where I'm coming from.

Sarcasm is hard on the internet!

It needs a special font

It's interesting being a conservative in this forum. You won't get any credit for you moderate opinions the second you advance a hard conservative one.

There isn't as much intellectual give and take here as there should be. It's more a battle of two tribes on either side of the river hurling insults, feces and the occasional spear.

This could cause you to leave, or change or try to maintain a "rational middle of the road" position. We've all faced it. It will be interesting to see how you proceed.

Thus far I've simply "stepped out" of two threads. Once it devolves into a pissing match I try to take the high road. I enjoy the back and forth and the varying opinions on things. I don't mind having my own views challenged, but there is a hard line between challenging with the intention​ of understanding and challenging just to be a douche.

At any rate, A2K seems like a decent enough place, I'll stick around for now!

Oh, woe is me, woe is me . . . it's so hared being a noble conservative in this wasteland of librul savages . . . whaaaaa . . . whaaaa . . .

Somebody call the Whaaaaambulance.

For someone that's not added anything positive to a conversation in some time, it's good to see that you continue to do so.

How very nasty of you. In fact, despite Finny's efforts to turn the latest Mars thread into a bitch fight about capitalism, we've been having an interesting conversation over there. Your snotty condescension is noted, though.

Oh, woe is me, woe is me . . . it's so hared being the great Setanta in this wasteland of right-wing savages . . . whaaaaa . . . whaaaa . . .

They always get so nasty and snotty!

Somebody call the Whaaaaambulance.

Everybody gets so butt hurt around here! It's the internet, don't take it all so personal or serious!

Ah grasshopper...

I'm guessing that the "God" you speak of doesn't look like the elderly Leonardo DaVinci? I think that the dismissal of "God the creator" has more to do with the simplistic way the story is told, by people full of conviction using a narrative source which is at least a few millennia old. If someone wants to speculate about the origin of life on earth or the creation of the universe and uses the term "God", well sure — he can fine tune his definition by taking cosmological science into his account and use the g-word to cover both mystery and agency. But all too often we see true believers simply taking the Genesis story (or any other creation myth) literally and employing it as a cudgel against doubt, curiosity, and empirical evidence. I have little interest in discussing the topic with such people.