4thought.tv

How can a scientist be so mis-guided?

Just because science can't give a definite answer for the origin of life, doesn't mean that you can just jump on the religious bandwagon because it offers a reason (one on very little evidence). Maybe sit it out and wait for a different reason to come along, rather than accepting current religious assumptions.

This makes me feel dissapointed.

He doesn't understand evolution. Of course it's possible to believe in creationism and darwinsm, but it's not logically consistent. Like most religious beliefs.

I was really pleased to see someone allowed to share their spiritual beliefs on TV. It's refreshing when currently there is so much pressure not to say something that someone else might not agree with. I'm open minded on the evolution versus creation theories, I think it's very small minded of humans to think that they can explain everything through science, when you think how small we are compared to the vastness of the universe.

This makes me feel angry. I don't understand the speaker's point of view at all.

If he was a doctor of science why is he one no longer? I put it to you that he didn't understand science! He stated that scientists do not know why life was created, which is a total distortion of the current understanding. He said that the world before man was perfect and without death... huh?? Death is a part of life and it has to occur for everything to work in the world. Mr Lloyd is just another religious idealist without an understanding of the meaning of life, the universe and everything!

Sad, Why do religionists always deny that their god could have created evolution as his mechanism for creation and they are always certain that they know what, when and how their god acheived it all.

Absolutely. Once a Muslim friend of mine told me that it is a precondition to Islamic belief that whenever sience negates a story in the Quaran then sience should prevail.
Hi My Name is Nadia Nashi, I work as a technical consultant in BT. I am qualified in two dicplines software engineering and architectural design. I grew up in Baghdad, for the last twenty years I have lived in England. I am a Christian. I think that the Bible or the Quran or any other religoiuse book should not be taken litrally. The values and stories that are presented are good and give humans hope in a better world. They must be seen after all as works of litrature set in a specific culutral context at a specific point in time in human hsitory. I am a beileiver in a superiour God. God is part of the subcontoiunce of all humanity. God is within every one of us. Darwin got it right there is no conflict or cross over in my view. We simply need to rise above the literal and transend to the abstract. Beieveing in god dose not mean believing litrally in every bibilcal story. Does the big bang not represent the begining of the universe? does this not give credibility to the concept of creation? There is still so much more that sience cannot explain. 90% of universe is not accounted for.This will be the gift of future generations to ours.

It was amazing to hear a doctorate in science come out with such unfounded beliefs. To him there was no deah before humans and only then because Adam and Eve went scrumping. He based this on a silly and misguided interpretation of Genesis cahpter 3.
Can anyone explain to me how someone so educated can have such daft beliefs?
I had expected him to say something like this but he shows why creationists should be regarded as having worthless beleifs and that creationism must be kept out of schools.
I ought to add that I used to be an exploration geologist in Africa and am now a minister of a church

Simple logic tells one that there is some kind of intelligent creative force at work in the universe. Unfortunately it is beyond the capacity of our finite minds to ever know what it is. To us, the whole of creation is an illogicality - something coming out of nothing! But it seems fair to say that life is an evolving creation. Frankly, it doesn't matter what is taught in faith schools in this respect: people will believe what they want to believe...and all one can SAY of God is not true (to define God is to deny God). We should stop trying to work it all out, just trust, and have love and gratitude in our hearts for all that the Creator has given us.

This makes me feel sad.

Another educated person who hasn't understood (maybe hasn't tried to) the theory of evolution by natural selection. Darwin's theory doesn't say how life began, only how it constantly evolves.
I hope he is better suited to the duties of a pastor than he has demonstrated as someone who claims to be able to undertake scientific research.
If you are going to critique a theory, specifically. It is customary to check that the bit you are going to say you don't like about it is actually in it.

This makes me feel angry. I don't understand the speaker's point of view at all.

I've just checked Genesis. Light was created and then separated in to "day" and "night" on the first day. Strange as he didn't create the sun and moon until day four! But what puzzles me most is who was this revelation given to? When was it written down and what provenance do we have for this account? As a scientist Dr Lloyd will realize these details are important. Can he also tell us if there any peer reviews?

This makes me feel dissapointed. It reinforced what I already believed.

Schopenhauer said that religious teachings will always lead to a partial paralysis of the brain. Here is an example of it happening. Dr Lloyd ignores the Bible and ignores evolution. He sticks with what he has been told. Very sad.

This makes me feel encouraged.

Steve Lloyd has provided the answer to all those who accuse the Creator of using suffering, pain and death to achieve a "very good" creation. The same answer is relevant to some of the arguments for "bad design" (the rest of the arguments are flawed). The "problem of pain" is the reason why many say that "if there is a God, I don't want to worship him", but Steve has shown us that the Bible is not calling us to worship a God like that. The present is not the key to the past - the evolutionary account of history (which has an undiminished version of the "problem of pain" - but completely impersonal and amoral) is one that may be compatible with some belief systems, but not with the Creator God as revealed in the Bible.

Steve is absolutely right and puts his finger on the main theological reason I cannot accept evolution. The creation/evolution debate is about far more than the literary genre of Genesis chapter one or how we understand the days of creation. Of central importance is the link between sin and death " and what that means for our understanding of Christ's own death and resurrection. Physical death is regarded throughout the Bible as the punishment for sin. Jesus Christ had to physically suffer and die to pay the penalty for human sin and defeat death which is described as an "enemy" (1 Cor. 15:26). But if a Christian accepts evolution as the "creative process used by God, they are forced to accept suffering and death as perfectly natural " simply part of the "package deal of biological life. Death cannot be regarded as something that originated with human sin because it was around for hundreds of millions of years before man evolved. This view of physical death renders Christ's sufferings for sin utterly inexplicable. We end up having to argue that Christ on the cross was defeating an enemy that he originally created and called "very good (Genesis 1:31)!

It seems that neither David nor Paul want anyone to respond to them! However to answer them and Steve Lloyd's assertion that death even for animals came into the world as a punishment for Adam and Eves's sin. This creates a major problem as it makes God out to be unreasonable and vindictive and , to put it flippantly, God made all things suffer because adam and Eve went scrumping. It must be put like that to get the full force of the Creationist argument as it makes God out to be an ogre.
For the vast majority of Christians going back 2000 years who do not consider this to be the case and that animal suffering is written into creation, there is still the problem of theodicy or why God allows suffering. Ultimately it is a question which is unanswerable and we end up like Job in the Old Testament just trusting in God.
However the corollary of David, Paul and Steve's position is that the earth cannot be billions of years old as no animal could die before adam ate the forbidden fruit. Hence they have no option to believe in Young Earth Creationism.
To hold to Young Earth Creationism you must show all geology is wrong and that scientifio arguments for an ancient earth are WRONG. They have not succeedded and every one of creationist arguments has been shown to be utterly false.

So that trio give all here a choice, either believe their fables of a Young Earth and an ogre for God and make a mockery of science ,or accept geological time and wonder why God allowed suffering to be written in to all creation. That latter baffles me but I find some sense as I consider Jesus' death on the cross

I apologise in advance for the length of this post; but please, do read on. Well what have I learnt from this last broadcast but more importantly from the responses to that and to the comments posted to the previous transmissions on this subject? Refreshingly there appear to be people who have been open minded enough to accept the provable tenants of evolution whether they continue to have a religious faith or not. Religious faith is a personal matter and as far as I am concerned you can believe in anything you like but keep it to yourself and DON'T try to ram it down other people's throats. And don't teach bad science based on your religious views. However if you seek to proselytise and hold your religion up in public and try to support it's doctrines with non-scientific drivel then you have laid yourself open to ridicule. To say You KNOW because something was written down on velum several thousand years ago; well, you might just as well believe in fire breathing dragons (and some do!). To pick and choose which bits of the account in this bronze age text you wish to believe and which bits to cast aside is even more contemptible. To spout this primitive account as fact, and proof, of how the world was created is just lamentable. To suggest that these myth stories of creation were endorsed by a holy man, because it says so in further texts (written, as most bible scholars agree, about 30 years after his death), and which are full of inconsistencies and contradictions, is just incomprehensible. Nowhere in these four gospels (probably not written by any of the disciples, I might add (as they were probably illiterate fishermen ) is Jesus reported to actually claim he was either God or the Son of God; in fact there are several mentions of only the 'the son of man'. Jesus was probably a nicer, more humble person than some I have come across on these pages that claim to follow his teachings. Of course Jesus was a Jew and would, as such, have followed many teachings in the Old Testament. He is supposed to have attend a Passover celebration shortly before his death. Strange that modern day Christians don't follow this example today but at the same time believe in the Genesis myth and the story of Noah and the flood! But perhaps this isn't so surprising as Jesus never founded a church, he just wanted to show by example. The Christian church was founded by Paul and should, more correctly, be called the Paulian Church. As for Jesus actually being God, he didn't claim that and is supposed to have said "My father" as he was on the cross. The bible itself was a cobbled together from lots of ancient texts long after the death of Jesus. The non-canonical gospels were thrown out at the first editings and the trinity was decided by committee much later at the Council of Nicaea in 325 AD. To dismiss all the scientific evidence for evolution based on a belief in a mythical bronze age story, backed up by other mythical accounts ... the Garden of Eden and the Flood is just stupidity in the extreme. The conjecture of Original Sin (something never mentioned in the accounts of what Jesus was supposed to have said) was probably fabricated by Paul and has been argued about much later by committees of Bishops. Other religious believers do seem more tolerant and amenable to the proven theory of evolution. I am please to see that some more enlightened Christians are prepared to embrace it. As for the believers in Intelligent Design they are just as blind and closed minded as the creationists. I have discovered that creationists come in several brands. The Young Earth believers are no doubt the most fundamental and should be banned from teaching in schools if they believe in such rubbish. They are the ones that add up the genealogies stated in the bible to calculate the age of the earth. If that wasn't non-scientific and stupid enough they appear to be spending their lives, literally in some cases, scouring the earth for 'scientific' geological proof to back up these beliefs! To suggest, against all the scientific evidence to the contrary, that the earth is less than 10,000 years old is ludicrous. To propose that man was created, in the form he is today, just 6,000 years ago is laughable. This comedy is further enhanced by a literal belief in Noah having to populate the world with different races of mankind and disparate animal kinds, presumably as the waters receded. This must have been quite a voyage but, I read, he had extra meat as he took on board seven pairs of 'clean' animals (so presumably he could eat quite a few) and although we are told there were several decks he must have had quite a job storing all the seeds to replant the world. It is strange that a new age creationist can't explain why, if there hasn't been any evolution, how if we bring certain types of plants back to the Holy Land from the 'four corners' of the earth, after only a few thousand years they won't grow in that climate! If the story of Noah's Ark is true then there must have been strange climactic conditions in the Holy Land prior to the flood. So, as a thought experiment, let's imagine there was; poor old Noah 600 years old and just a few family helpers to do all the collecting of animals and seeds. Dear reader please don't accuse me of being cynical, these are the 'facts' that New Earth Creationists believe ..... and SOME (with science degrees!) are teaching YOUR children science! I wait in interest to see the peer reviewed papers that prove the White Cliffs of Dover to have been laid down in a period of 10,000. As for those of you who still don't believe in evolution there are loads of scientific papers out there. Almost all incomprehensible to me but all peer reviewed.

This makes me feel angry and angry. I don't understand the speaker's point of view at all.

Why Steve is no longer a research scientist is obvious. First of all, the Theory of Evolution does not even pretend to explain how life began. It describes how life evolves. How it began is called the Theory of Abiogenises. It's not nearly as complete as the theory of evolution is, but we are making more and more progress every year. Look at the research done by Jack Szostak, or the Miller and Urey experiment (which has been improved on)

But just because we don't know everything about how life started yet, doesn't mean that you have to jump to the conclusion that some divine being designed it all. Not when there is no evidence to support it. Just some dusty scribblings written thousands of years ago by people who had nothing like modern science to help them understand the world. By the way... I would suggest doing some research on who wrote the bible. It's very enlightening. The bible talks about flooding a world with rain and keeping 2 of every kind of animal in an boat alive and well, then keeping them alive and well when the waters receded and all vegetation is dead and gone.

Please people... start thinking critically and start asking questions. We have lost over a thousand years of scientific advancement because of religion. It must stop. Just because we don't know how something happened yet, it doesn't mean god dunnit. And just because someone tells you something is true, doesn't mean it is. We don't apply this kind of thinking to our every day life. Why should religion be so different?

P.S. I noticed that all the apologists and theists have the need to apply titles such as Dr. And PHD's to try and make themselves sound more credible, even when in it's in a completely irrelevant field, while the actual practicing scientists do not feel the need to do so. Just an observation. I can always tell what the speaker's standpoint is before they utter a word.

There is a very clear trend on almost all posts on all videos here: once supporters correct the "flaws" in evolution suggested by theists, using facts, and confront the assertions of theists with facts, links, references etc., the debate soon dies away. Most final responses on comments here end with a supporter of evolution, after dismissing arguments with facts, asking for proof. It is clear that, once the erroneous assertions muted by theists are dealt with, they have little more to back up their argument rather than blind faith, and these requests for evidence, proof and facts are left unanswered. This is sad, as i'm sure there are plenty of clever minds lost to religious dogma, in the mire of a world where such words as "evidence", "proof", "data", and "fact" are despised and largely ignored. Oh, and before you start, the use of the bible as evidence in the 21st century provides a weaker argument than the use of "the origin..." in a debate regarding the neo-darwinian synthesis. Up-to-date evidence, contemporary studies, debunking this synthesis would be much appreciated.

God "The Creator" was invented when there was only the Earth, Sun, Moon and pinpricks in the sky. Think!

Consider water born Cholera. Vibrio cholerae which is normally a harmless bacteria. If it is invaded by a particular type of virus called a phage it will be transformed into a more dangerous form, the one which causes the disease referred to as Cholera. This occurs because the virus has mixed it's genetic material with that of the bacteria to give it different properties. Two different 'kinds' (in biblical terms) mixing their genetic material. Only one of the two types of phage mix their DNA with that of the host (by a process called Lysogenesis) but the Temperate Phage, do. The changes in function of an invaded bacteria could be beneficial, or not, but if you understand the evolutionary process, it's easy to see that only beneficial changes to the bacteria will be successful otherwise the phage would loose it's host phylotype. Research here in the west is far behind that in the other countries, particularly those of the former Soviet Union. Research is on going to discover phages capable of invading MRSA and other 'super-bug' bacteria as this will give a more effective control than our present day antibiotics, like penicillin etc., derived from a fungus. In this process the phage would be killing its host; if you like using an evolutionary 'dead-end' for medical benefit. The fact that very basic organisms, viruses, can 'create' new variants of bacteria by modifying genetic coding is very interesting, don't you think? Given that the number of DNA base pairs in 'primitive' organisms is much larger than that in man (Something that creationists like to use against evolutionists) then the 'pool' of genetic material available for the evolution of new organisms by processes such as lysogenesis is vast. Isn't the evolving world interesting?!

This is a reply to the many people on these posts, who like to mock people for their beliefs and then use those beliefs to convince themselves that God cannot exist. I agree with you that some of their beliefs are not reasonable in the light of Science. But the truth is not any one book, or any one religion, there have been many inspired prophets over the centuries, but their revelations always end up being corrupted by people who would use these teachings to give themselves power over others, Christianity was more of a way of life, before Constantine. There has always been a more mystical Christian tradition, outside of the mainstream, (often having to hide if they didn't want to go the way of the Cathars) they believe in a more personal relationship with God an inner Knowing or Gnosis, as Carl Jung once said "I don't believe in God, I know". Not all revelation is ancient, there have been many modern prophets and revelations in recent centurys, Swedenborg, Allen Kardec, ,The Christian Spiritualist Zodiac messages and The Urantia Book are just a few, all free online, so if you want to argue against God intelligently you had better start reading.

who would like to talk about facts.
Although not stricly relevant to Darwinism (neo or otherwise) the facts of chemistry show that life cannot arise spontaneaously (even allowing billions of years) from chemical reactions. And yes I have read something on all the current origin of life theories, they all show the impossibility of life evolving without the intervention of an intelligent agent.
How about some biological facts.
The transition from fish to amphibian is disproven by the current published evidence. See: G Niedźwiedzki et al. (2010) Tetrapod trackways from the early Middle Devonian period of Poland. Nature 463, 43-48 (2010).

Also birds existed before the supposed ancestors see: Application of neoichnological studies to behavioural and taphonomic interpretation of fossil bird-like tracks from lacustrine settings: The Late Triassic-Early Jurassic Santo Domingo Formation, Argentina Genise et al, Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology, Volume 272, 2009, Pages 143-161 These facts (and many others) are inconsistent with current evolutionary theory.

This makes me feel happy and happy.

Is it possible to believe in God and Darwin? YES, as long as one asesses the scientific parameters of Darwin's actual work, which showed clearly and repeatedly the clear limits to change/breeding [as In Genesis 1], and rejects his unscientific theorising that some, unknown, 'simple' common ancestor could possibly, by the still unknown millions of 'smoothly graded transitional forms', change into everything else [That's why one of the latest taxonomic paradigms, 'Transformed Cladistics' is transformed away from evolutionary succession, into a realisation of a 'nested hierarchy', precisely because there are virtually none of the many required 'transitionals'!] Had Darwin stopped at his sole revelation, linking the oft observed, built-in variety in 'Genus/Family' with the borrowed idea of 'Natural Selection', which can only conserve it within predetermined bounds, he would have made a commendable contribution to real, testable science. Alas, he went way beyond the evidence, and thereby contributed to the degeneratibe effect 'evolutionism' usually has on science ['vest. organs', 'Junk DNA', Cross-Kingdom cloning, mass murder of the 'unfit'/ unborn etc] - and certainly, Christianity, already wallowing in unBiblical ideas through rejection of the scriptures.

Science can be reinforced with every new discovery and can be rewritten with every new discovery...in some ways it's only as good as its last discovery. I have a theory on how God and Darwin can both exist. When Adam and Eve were evicted from Eden, this suggests they were evicted into an already existing realm which had life, animals and nature in general - maybe this was the realm of evolution? In biblical terms, these were the times where 'man' lived for several hundred years so a few generations could literally equate to thousands of years which would better map into the evolutionary scale. This realm would also explain how the offspring of Adam and Eve met their future spouses. If Darwin and God are one and the same then there is another question to ponder, if God created man in his own image, then which image along the road of evolution was that, prehistoric mankind as we know it today...which going by the history of evolution there's nothing to say mankind has stopped evolving.

In the light of the discussion of my piece maybe Channel 4 should have issued a warning before the broadcast: "some viewers might find the following program distressing. I find it intriguing that in some posts there is a strong sense of anger about what I said. Such a response is irrational for an atheist. If atheism is true then all I am is a highly organised chemical machine, a product of a whole series of processes since the Big Bang. The words I utter are no more significant than the rustling of leaves in a tree. So what is there to be angry about?

In fact rational thought itself must be something of an illusion if our thoughts are understood only in terms of chemical processes in the brain. The processes occurring in our brains, reflected in the content of our posts, are as much a product of all that has happened since the Big Bang as the body with which we are typing them.

I was heartened over the agreement that the origin of life is indeed an unsolved problem. But I was intrigued at the way several comments insisted that the origin of life is to be distinguished from ˜evolution'. If you want to define ˜evolution' in such a way I have no objection. But adopting particular definitions does not solve the mystery of life's origin. If you are an atheist (a belief), logically you have to say that life, in all its diversity and complexity, made itself. There is no one around who could make life. Hence to have a credible explanation of the origin of life is crucial to the credibility of your beliefs " if not evidence is clearly not that important in substantiating your beliefs. Evidence is important to me. That is why I find atheism a poor belief system " there is very little evidence for it.

I cannot watch people sit and tell me they believe a story book over science - Religious people can never seem to accept fault in their nonsense.

It helped me understand the speaker's point of view.

While Darwin and belief in God may seem to be opposites, I have colleagues who believe in both.

In fact, I think we all have contradictory views and beliefs in our heads, where something tips the balance into keeping - rather than rejecting - a notion. Logic is one thing, but people aren't always like that.

Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it,
Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations,
Do not believe in anything because it is spoken and rumoured by many,
Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written down in books,
Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders,
BUT after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is condusive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it. ~LORD BUDDHA~

Life cannot make itself? How does he explain how people mate and have kids?

And no Evolution doesn't explain the origins of Life "Doctor" - it explains its diversity. And if Genesis is historical can you explain how birds came about before terrestrial animals?

Its possible to believe that the gradual refinement of evoloution was steered by god, but unnessesary.Any other attempt to explain the origins of spieces falls woefully short.

Lloydy you legend, I think you're the father of a pupil at my school.
I love your ideas, I share the same beliefs, I respect you for speaking your thoughts and keep up the good work. Furqaan.

The theory of evolution does not say that life made itself.

This just makes me lose all faith in humanity how someone can say the theory of evolution is wrong because it's incomplete because we can't go back that far yet but then believes that what is essentially a fairytale is correct, that a man above us created all and it was good until we ruined it. If he is a 'scientist' as he says he is where is his evidence of this 'perfect world' or creation of the Earth 6,000 years ago.