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The Eye: Evolution versus Creationism
Sox2 writes "SciScoop is running a story about researchers in Germany who claim to have solved the "mystery" surrounding the evolution of the mamalian eye. The work, published in Science, goes some way to answering the issues raised in the "intelligent design" debate that has become the mainstay of creationist thinking."
Scientist Kristin Tessmar-Raible provided the crucial evidence to support Arendt's hypothesis. With the help of EMBL researcher Heidi Snyman, she determined the molecular fingerprint of the cells in the worm's brain. She found an opsin, a light-sensitive molecule, in the worm that strikingly resembled the opsin in the vertebrate rods and cones. "When I saw this vertebrate-type molecule active in the cells of the Playtnereis brain - it was clear that these cells and the vertebrate rods and cones shared a molecular fingerprint. This was concrete evidence of common evolutionary origin. We had finally solved one of the big mysteries in human eye evolution."
Well, I understand that for this article they probably spoke in very simplistic terms but the phrase "strikingly resembled" doesn't exactly equate to "concrete evidence". This certainly won't quell the arguments from the creationists either as there just isn't enough evidence to prove that the "supreme being" didn't plan this all along...
"When I saw this vertebrate-type molecule active in the cells of the Playtnereis brain - it was clear that these cells and the vertebrate rods and cones shared a molecular fingerprint. This was concrete evidence of common evolutionary origin. We had finally solved one of the big mysteries in human eye evolution."
Can someone explain how this information is conclusive?
Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose.
This doesnt matter.
Have you ever tried to have a reasoned debate with a creationist? It doesnt work. Their entire belief structure is based on rhetoric, falsehoods, and a book written two thousand years ago, that has gone through several revisions by whoever was in power at the time.
Then these people pick and choose which parts to believe in based on how it fits their situation.
IE, god created the world, but that whole thing about stoning disobedient children we can ignore.
WTF?
I have, honestly, tried to have an intellectual debate with a creationist. It was an exersize in futility.
These are completly unreasonable people, and trying to make an argument with reason will be lost on them, no matter how much scientific backing it has.
This willful ignorance is destroying america.
Im bitter, can you tell?
It's that creationism arguments will evolve as well
When I see the term "intelligent design", I'm reminded of:
Religious fanatics are so unimaginative. There's no rational explanation for their beliefs, so they're free to speak without benefit of logic,
untroubled by petty concerns such as truth or
even plausability.
- _Belgarath_the_Sorcerer_ (David Eddings, Jr)
As for the inevitable flame-war that seems to be already brewing here:
90% percent of Americans don't care what you do; 10% are fanatics. They think you're going to hell, and they want you to go to hell. All right?
Ignore them... I mean, people who think you are going to hell and are going to quote from Revelation that you're going there. I think that's a little ridiculous, don't you?
- FOX News' Bill O'Reilly, on
religious right "fanatics"
_The_Advocate_, September 2002
While the evolution of the eye has never been that much of a theoretical puzzle--there have been lots of plausible theories--this discovery moves us a little away from the realm of theory and into the realm of historical detail.
What effect will it have on the creation/evolution debate? The same effect that all the other mounds of evidence in favor of evolution have so far had on the debate.
Maybe evolution is the "intelligent design." I just have a hard time believing that evolution gave us, the human race, our start. I think we were created and evolution was allowed to take its course so we can adapt to our environment. Assuming we were created maybe god knew we were going to fuck up our planet and we needed a mechanism to survive those changes.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Except evolutionists have some basis in reality. Also, they do not rule out that the process of evolution is as some deity intended. They are just describing a mechanism, not a supreme plan.
Why couldn't God have created Evolution? This is the most plausible solution. The two ideas are not diametrically opposed.
Religion and science don't mix very well in my opinion. Beneath the typical flaming contests there lies a fundamental difference. I kind of look at it as the "outside-in" thinkers vs the "inside-out" thinkers. Religion is based on the Fact that God exists and that he/she is behind the way things happen. Non-religious thinkers (or those religious who keep religion out of their science) start with a meta science philosophy and build up their scientific knowledge based on observation, deduction and extrapolation. The meta science typically tells them not to predict things that can't be proven. The two philosophies are incompatible at the meta level. No matter how loud you scream, we will not settle the argument at the discussion level.
DISCLAIMER: this is just my $0.02
Just food for thought. I know this may cause a big flame war, because I do believe that God created it all (and it doesn't hurt the world one bit if God did created it all), but answer this question?
Why if you purport enough time, can you make anything sound plausible? Remember, Evolution (as well as Creation) are both Theories (the Theory of Evolution). To downplay someone because they don't believe (not the word believe) the same as use is just as willfully ignorant as you would call them.
I personally believe there is a God that created it all (to much in experience and life that I've seen to contradict this), but I'm not going to argue it with someone that doesn't hold the same belief as I do. It's not because I'm ignorant, but why "Cast your pearls before swine!" (I know that an evolutionist will say the same thing). So keep the creation/evolution of the world in your own belief, firm up what you do believe, and get on with the things that matter (Like what Linux distro should I use next).
That is all.
Nobody has a problem with intelligent design as a philosophy or religion.
The problem is that's it's faith, i.e. you just believe it with no basis in provable (or testable) fact. It's the same as believing the Bible, just a little more rational because there's nothing that proves it's not true.
The problem is when people try to masquerade it as science. "I don't understand how this can happen, ergo 'God' did it." is not science, it's faith.
BTW, I am not sure that evolution is incompatible with the idea of "intelligent design" as long as one is careful about defining intelligent design....
I agree. Most molecular biologists who are in the intelligent design camp are not against "micro-evolution", but are instead against "macro-evolution" -- primodial soup-type theories of genesis of life.
I think that unless you're a strict, seven day creationist, you at least have to have an open mind about evolution. And if you're still against micro-evolution, you're just a Luddite.
Whereof we cannot speak, thereof we must be silent. --Ludwig Wittgenstein
I graduated from a Catholic High School a few year back and one of the Priests said it best,
'Who are we to say how God created or didn't create the World. God could've could've chosen to create the creatures in 7 days or God could've chosen to create the creatures in the world with evolution'
I really don't see the big fuss, whether God created the world one way or another, it doesn't affect the core basis of my beliefs. This has little to do with morality and my day to day life.
It does turn out to be a lively debate that can go on for hours between two opinionated people. And my guess is that those two people usually care more about looking smarter than the other, than they care about their beliefs and Morality.
Brandon Petersen
Get Firefox!
The article is an interesting report about a new biological discovery which provides evidence of the evolution of the eye. However, creationism is not mentioned at all; looks to me as if the submitter is trying to start an argument for no reason.
-Stephen
Creationists often point to the human eye as something so perfect that only a divine being could have planned it. However, the human eye is far from perfect. The detached retina model is a serious flaw which can oftentimes lead to total vision loss. Other animals, such as squid, have a significantly more advanced model completely impervious to these problems.
If the human eye is evidence of creationism then it can only be evidence of a flawed creator.
This is the typical 'reasoning' that creationists use to justify their attacks on evolution. The problems comes in places like Delaware, where people actually believe this line of reasoning. It comes from a terrible lack of real science education in this country. You don't see this sort of nonsense in Europe or the more develped countries in Asia, where they have better education systems.
'Loose' is when your pants are three sizes too big. 'Lose' is when you misuse 'loose'.
Displayed by both sides. Science is the quest to determine how our Universe operates. But if a God/Creator exists, and is all powerful, then our Universe could have been - actually, must have been - "intelligently designed". If science is currently discovering that evolution is the mechanism by which this occurs, discovering that mankind was created by putting a rock in play about a sun with just the right mixture of gasses and stability in it and letting the laws of Physics do their work, then so be it. Evolution is hardly a refutation of religion, and "Creationism" is the pathetic blithering of men who have read their Bible incorrectly.
Einstein rejected more than one theory on the premise that no God would have designed the proposed system - and he was right more often than not. Religion and science are hardly incompatible, except to those of rigid thinking.
If guns kill people, then CmdrTaco's keyboard misspells words.
The evidence for evolution is overwhelming. This doesn't mean you need to become an athiest, though -- although I am one, I don't see the difficulty in conceiving evolution as merely a tool of your creator. If (a) god(s) wanted to create a planet with life on it, why couldn't they work through natural processes that they themselves set in motion? How does that challenge anyone's faith?
But there are those who insist that the Earth was created "with age" 6000 years ago, and that fossils, etc, are a diversionary trap for the unfaithful. The same arguments can be made about this work, or anything done with molecular fingerprinting. (or any other technique, for that matter.)
Wearing the right blinders, it will be obvious that your road is the only correct one, and that all else is distractions. There are those who will make the same assertion against scientists, claiming that there are "science blinders" that restrict their vision. While I won't disagree that there are scientists who wear blinders, I would argue that the basic premise of science is to remove the blinders. The facts will guide you, and a scientist is always supposed to be ready to modify or discard a theory if disproven by facts.
I spent a little time with google and "neocon" (and a few other terms, some independent of "neocon") this weekend, and came to an interesting conclusion: Neocon philosophy is *never* wrong. Any mistakes happen because the philosophy was not put into practice vigorously enough. In other words, they compromised too much, and if they'd been sufficiently uncompromising they would have succeeded. Rather a disturbing world view, IMHO. Of course, this is the result of an hour or so on the Web, and my view can be modified by facts.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
It's what made me go from agnostic to atheist. We just use the concept of God whenever we reach personal limits. Time and time again we use God to explain things and we're proven wrong. Me becoming an atheist came after seeing one too many arguments in favor of the God is a coping mecanism rather than truth.
By which you mean they feel quite affronted that religious dogma masquerading as bad science should be taught alongside a scientific fact. Is it any wonder?
nooooo . . . evolutionists attempt to construct an explanation for existing evidence. This is very different from taking thousands-of-years-old mythology literally.
But they're mollusks, which means they branched off at something like a clam.
So, it's interesting wonder how they wound up with eyes too.
Here's what I do: Bitty Browser & Andromeda
Belief in creationism is not part of being a "neocon."
remember, no matter where you go, there you are
faith: Belief that does not rest on logical proof or material evidence.
unreasonable: Not governed by reason.
Oddly, they don't show up as synonyms of each other. Why is that?
Definitions shamelessly cut-n-paste from dictionary.com
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong ... but I learnt somewhere that not only are octopus eyes as complex as human eyes they are actually better "designed" since they do not have blind spots. I've always thought that was as compelling argument as any against creationism. God may think you're the bees knees, but he gave the good eyes to the celaphopods...
the layman's guide to computer science
When I read the story, I didn't even think about the religious aspect. I'm a devout Christian and evolution is just another one of God's miracles to me. I don't see why Creationism and Evolution are not compatible. After all, God did create Adam from the Earth. God is the master of code-reuse! :-) We can physically be made of the same stuff as all of the other creatures and still be spiritually distinct.
But this isn't the point of the story, really; we've already seen evidence of links between our bodies and behaviors to other creatures. This story just shows that the rods and cones in our eyes developed from certain types of brain cells. It isn't a religious discussion.
For example, as a fun trick he might instantly create the world with trillions of fossils and fill outer space with countless photons all hinting that the universe is old and higher life evolved from lower life, then reserve the actual truth to a 20th-generation copy of one particular enigmatic book out of a selection of dozens of similar but false enigmatic books. If that's the case, then reality is so bizarre that there's no use arguing; clearly the world would be a minefield of false evidence and logical traps.
Personally, I love reading articles like this, but I always have the depressing thought that *nothing* researchers can do will change creationist thinking.
If someone were to create a time machine or "past viewer" so we could watch the entire history of the planet at any accelerated rate we wanted and trace the evolution of all life, it might change the mind of 10% of the True Believers. The rest would consider it to be a deceiving tool of Satan.
-- stream of did I lock the front door consciousness
OK, I know I will get bashed for this but it still wasn't proven
They showed that through modern methods they believe this is what happened. A hypothesis. They have not seen it actually occur or any stages of it occuring. It is one thing to put a hypothesis together but another to see it in action.
I would be interested to see if there are different stages of this hypothesis occuring anywhere.
Evolution or ID?
Speaking as a lifelong Christian, I'd have to say things like this are fantastic. Why? Well, there's two kinds of things in the bible, things that are meant to be taken literally (plainly stated commands which are repeated as themes) and things which are to be taken figuratively (stories which contain valuable lessons for us). I think there is this false thinking in the church that evolution somehow destroys the "need" for God to exist, or changes the fact that humans are special and unique.
Honestly, the mechanics of the system are unimporant to religion - if God created the universe to be one where we'd develop, that's equivilent to creating us directly. It's kinda like creating a pile of logs and then lighting them on fire is basically equivilient to creating a pile of logs which are on fire. There's still things in this universe which are arbitrary and important for life (6 fundamental constants) which, unless we have some way of exploring outside of this universe, are likely going to always be a mystery. Maybe it was an accident (but that's require an infinite number of universes, which is hardly a simple answer) or maybe it was on purpose (which requires an infinite being of some sort outside our universe, also not simple).
I used to be a creationist, until I studied biology, evolution, and cosmology in detail. Then I realized that the arguments that had swayed me as a kid really didn't logically add up. I think that Creationism is dangerous in the sense that it widens the gap between Christianity and science/mainstream culture. This is bad because Christianity is about spreading a message of Love and Hope, and when scientists who spend their entire lives devoted to figuring out the secrets of life are alienated and ridiculed, it's hard for Christians to come off as anything but narrowminded fools. I know a lot of fundamentalist Christians (and in some ways I am fundamentalist, with a lower case f) and it's not narrowmindedness, it's the fact that science, especially evolution, has become so abstract, and so based on mathematical concepts you need a degree or two to understand, that the scientists might as well be saying random mumbo jumbo to these people. These people have no reason to trust the scientists (especially when these same scientists ridicule their faith, as many Humanists tend to do, especially on places such as slashdot) because they cannot understand them. And honestly, I'm just as wary of those who, for no particular reason, just seem to believe that Science will solve everything, and is the end all and be all of truth, as I am of those who have little faith in it. Science is just empiricism. It's a collection of ideas that happen to work, at least as far as we can test.
I for one like to think we're here for a reason. And I think that God gave us this universe full of beauty to explore and gave us the ability to try and understand it. And shouldn't we use that?
Cheers,
Justin
But there are those who insist that the Earth was created "with age" 6000 years ago, and that fossils, etc, are a diversionary trap for the unfaithful.
Of course, this could be true. It could also be true that the universe was created last Thursday and that all appearances of age, including fossils memories, are simply manufactured. The problem with this view (Omphalism) is that it's unfalsifiable. There is no observable consequence to distinguish a universe that's actually old from one that simply has the appearance of age or even from a universe even older than our estimates that's been altered to look young for that matter. And even if we could somehow be sure that the universe was created with the appearance of age, then it simply doesn't tell us anything new. The supposition doesn't help us explain or predict any new observations.It would seem to be a bit presumptuous to tell someone else that they don't understand their religion. Their religion is just that: their religion. They do not misunderstand it: they define it.
Additionally, there is a reason to show that creationists are wrong: they are wrong. Personally, I don't feel comfortable in allowing national policy to be set by those who feel that nature exists solely for the exploitation of humans and should be used up before the imminent second coming.
There is much pleasure to be gained in useless knowledge.
bzzt.
ID is a codeword for creationism. It claims there are aspects of biology which cannot be explained through evolution, thus requiring... "intelligent design"
This is different from theological schools that integrate god and evolution, of which you are presumably a proponent (as are most sane theologies).
Most arguments in ID nowdays center around the concept of "irreducibly complex" biological components.
Some examples.
The blood clotting cascade.
The human eye.
DNA replication.
Most of the time they argue this while blithely ignoring a myriad of simpler intermediate processes in nature (Darwin himself pointed out that if you look at snails alone you can see almost every form of eye from primitive light sensing cells up to a complex focusing lens like our own) as well as the fact that components that are mutually dependant now may have evolved so without having been so in the past (the blood clotting cascade in humans versus lobsters for example, evidence that simpler clotting mechanisms were refined, and the components becoming inextricably linked - like hummingbird beaks and deep-throated flowers).
In short, it is their usual lack of imagination combined with a poorly concealed agenda of creationism.
One amusing thing is how they try to explain these "irreducibly complex" mechanisms in a biological framework.
A primitive cell created by some being that had all these mechanisms they clcaim required design. The cell had templates for blood clotting, eyes...
This massive cell then, presumably, differentiated into the current lifeforms who lost all this extra information.
-- perl -e'print pack"H*","6e656d6f406d38792e6f7267"'
If Jesus himself came back with Stephen J. Gould and told them all that they're idiots and evolution is the best theory, they wouldn't believe it.
You have two hands and one brain, so always code twice as much as you think!
1) ``How did things get to be this way?'' and
2) ``Why are things this way?'', or ``Who made it so?''.
Evolution is a very plausible answer to the first question. Creationism is a very plausible answer to the second. Since there isn't any great overlap between the two questions, there isn't any strong reason to think that the two answers are mutually exculsive.
Science is concerned with the first question, because that is the question which can be given an objective answer from verifiable facts. The scientific method just doesn't lend itself to the second question.
The sooner the religious nutcases on the science side quit picking on creationism, and the sooner the religous nutcases on the religious side quit picking on evolution, the better off we'll all be. Unfortunately, since there's a lot of religious nutcases on both sides of the issue, that probably won't happen.
1) It all happened by an infinite number of rolls of the dice.
2) God loaded the dice.
There you have one Christian fundamentalist's opinion.
See what I've been reading.
If you mean they hold to it doggedly and often take the words of books and authority instead of working it out for themselves, I'd say you're right. A lot of people take a lot of science on faith. However, they don't have to. If they disagree with anything scientific they hear or read, they can go and test it themselves until they're satisfied one way or the other. They don't even need expensive equipment for a lot of the work.
With evolution, it's not always easy to go out and dig up some bones, but anyone who's curious enough can learn about genetics and heredity, and test the principles of biology and zoology on which evolution rests.
Creationists and other people of faith have no choice but to take the word of some book or some person (who's taking someone else's word) that the tenents of a particulat faith are true. If they disagree with something, they have no recourse except to go to (or start) another religion or to give up religion altogehter.
Don't blame me, I voted for Durga.
now there's a contradiction in terms. Faith hinges on what can't be proven, so creationists will never be swayed by factual evidence.
"God for you is where you sweep away all the mysteries of the world, all the challenges to our intelligence. You simply turn your mind off and say God did it."
- Carl Sagan (1934-1996), Contact
The root problem here is that the two camps are separated by a fundimental, unbridgable divide:
- For a Scientist, Truth is discovered/uncovered by a rigourous process of interacting with the world. Theories are postulated, they are tested with experimentation, and the Big Picture slowly resolves itself.
- For a Diest, Truth was dictated to humanity by some sort of Supreme Being, where it is recorded in some sort of Holy Work. That work contains the literal Word of God, which is de facto Truth. Anything that gainsays this Word is by definition, Untruth, and the gainsayers themselves are Diabolically motivated and must be opposed.
So with one camp, we have a tradition of skepticism, of viewing the picture of Truth as incomplete, and requiring rigourous human effort to complete the bigger picture.
With the other, there is a tradition of "faith" (a nicer way of saying "believe what we tell you or face the consequences"), of viewing the Picture of Truth as complete and well-defined, and requiring Humanity to fall in line and stop believing the Lies of the Devil.
There is absolutely no intellectual common ground here. This goes beyond just simple human stubborness (an attribute common to both the Scientist and the Deist). A Scientist, used to having to "prove" his position (a core feature of the scientific method) cannot "prove" anything to someone who refutes the use of logic in discovering truth in the first place!
The bottom line here is that Scientists cannot convert Deists via force of argument - you might as well argue with a plant.
DG
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
It's all OK until:
- Someone else's religious beliefs get in the way of teaching my kids proper science.
- Someone else's beliefs mean my taxes are spent on quack treatments such as homeopathy and therapeutic touch instead of stuff that actually works.
- Someone else's beliefs prevent me from conceiving a child, or choosing not to conceive a child.
- Someone else's beliefs are used to determine funding for the scientific and medical research that may one day save my life.
- Someone else's beliefs are prominent in the election of the leader of the world's most powerful economic and military force.
At this point, someone else's beliefs very concretely become my concern, and I reserve my right to disagree with them and oppose them if necessary.
Sean Ellis
Follow OfQuack's antics on Twitter.
Except often ideas are evolved, too. For example, Einstein's Relativity built upon the work of Lorentz, Poincaire, and a host of others. He took concepts that were already half-way developed and made the mental leap that made them coherent.
the intelligent design camp are not against "micro-evolution", but are instead against "macro-evolution"
In other words, they aren't against the parts that have been conclusively proven in repeated experiements, but are remarkably obtuse about allowing that what happens in small ways quickly can also happen in large ways slowly.
You can't take the sky from me...
Actually, you've hit on one of the biggest problems in getting people to accept evolutionary biology. The "ick" factor.
I've only ever discussed the matter with one creationist (I'm Canadian; we don't have as many as the 'States). As far as I can tell, the major resistance to evolution among much of the public is that it's humiliating to think that we have such humble, slimy origins. If it were just a matter of scripture, then why does the big bang theory, which blatanty contradicts their bible, not get nearly as much opposition? Blind faith is only half the problem.
The other half of the problem is that we keep getting knocked away from the center of the universe. Earth was the center of the solar system before Galileo, we were created in the image of god before Darwin. People (especially religious fundamentalists) are prideful creatures, and the thought that we are not special is humbling. Evolution not only demonstrates this fact, it drives it home by showing the mechanism behind our existance to be grossly humiliating. Primordial goop? Ick! Natural selection amounts to a genetic lottery that favours the opportunists and kills off the rest. And don't even get them started on apes and pre-human hominids.
I remember asking the creationist in question why god would equip humans with an appendix, tailbone and wisdom teeth. The fact of the matter is that we are only greasy organic meatbag humans, intelligent animals, and that's a hard pill to swallow for many people.
Erotic is when you use a feather. Exotic is when you use the whole chicken.
Darwin said no such thing. Darwin's theory only dictates that the fittest will survive. Organisms are in competition on numerous levels. There is no reason to believe that such an intermediate creature would not be superior in some important ways to its competitors.
-----
Sorry, I'm only a 1336 h4x0r.
At the very least, a person who believes in Evolution, or a person who argues for Evolution.
However creationists seem to believe that there is this huge group of Evolutionists -- like it is some organized camp with some sort of agenda. The fact of the matter is that there isn't anything like it. Evolution gets validated through studies done in different biological fields. There is no concerted effort, just validation. I frequently hear the argument "You evolutionists are zealots! You are out to undermine faith!" or something stupid of that nature. There is no evolutionist camp.
Another thing to remember is that creationists only attack evolution and never come up with an alternative explanation other than "God did it". They frequently like to attack scientific studies and claim that there is a bias against them and that they are never taken seriously. Has any creationist every put out a scientific paper?
Vivin Suresh Paliath
http://vivin.net
I like
See? You answered your own question. Creationism got dragged into it because the scientists went looking for proof of what they wanted to believe, that creationists are wrong.
Wrong. At least assuming you mean scientists and other intelligent individuals. The reasons that the average person believes what they believe are not relevant to this discussion.
As for scientists, their view on evolution is usually founded in the scientific method and falsifiability.
I don't think any scientist will tell you that the theory of evolution is complete or proven in every aspect - as with most facets of biology, it's complex, and the data we have is essentially a partial, but extensive, set of samples. The problem with Creationists is that they fail to separate articles of faith ('God is the ultimate creator of the world' - a statement that is not incompatible with falsifiable observations) and science ('the world is 5000 years old' - there is no evidence to support this and many other such claims).
Obviously, it's a complicated fray, and some of the Intelligent Design people make less outlandish claims, and instead try to attack the theory of evolution by finding exceptions or outliers. Unfortunately, they often selectively ignore important research and evidence, and have mostly been debunked (yes, I've read some of this stuff by these people out of curiousity to see how they presented their arguments, and I wasn't very impressed).
Most of the arguments, at a basic level, are elucidated quite well on the talk.origins FAQ. Strangely, the site doesn't read like religious mantra to me.
> Everyone alive today is descended from one person who lived about 3500 years ago, probably in Asia, a study has found.
> This article supports what the Bible says about all humans descending from Noah in Asia (i.e. Noah's ark settled in Armenia after a global flood about 4200 years ago.)
4200 - 3500 = ?
Didn't you notice that your own account allows the MRCA to be more recent than the origin of the species?
BTW, if you're ever in a bookstore you should thumb through a historical atlas and see what kind of cool stuff was happening on our planet 4200 years ago.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
---
"I did nothing. I did absolutely nothing and it was everything that I thought it could be."
It seems like an aweful lot of people on here have a really low view of creationists. Many people are assuming that all Christian creationists believe that God created the world in 7 days, 10000 years ago. That's just as ignorant and uninformed as saying that all geeks are fat or all black Americans eat fried chicken. Almost all mainsteam Christian groups believe that the whole "7 days" thing is a metaphor. Only a small percentage of people take it to be literal.
Now, hold on a minute. The poster should not have gotten modded flamebait for this. Religious ideas of creation are myths, but people get so touchy about it because it their myth. What about the myth of earlier cultures who believed that a god created a giant turtle and that the world is riding on the back of it? Perfectly valid as long as you're going to ignore scientific reasoning and evidence.
There's nothing wrong with myths, by the way. They just have no place in the rational part of our world.
http://www.rootstrikers.org/
A completely irrefutable argument, but one that completely fails as a hypothesis in the scientific sense, because it is irrefutable: it could apply equally to every possible instant from now backwards... Oh, and it also requires that you beleive in a God who has perpetrated the biggest lie ever! I prefer to think that any possible deity would look favourably on me using the best mental tools I've got to form the most consistent picture from the information I'm given...
Ha, HA!
"Good eyes"???
Functionally, your eyes are good as they have to be to fulfill your role in the vast scheme of things. The lowly cephalopod is just hoping you watch where you walk or what ocean you test your nuclear weapons in, or where you spill your oil slick.
The human brain is the real force behind the human visual capacity. Further the 'pod' does not have our spectral range in his visual context.
Yes, of course you think he has better vision,....but would you want to be one once you SAW one?!
That is all we have know to appreciate who we are on this big bluse marble!
a/It isn't a religious discussion/It shouldn't be a religious discussion/g
Although I'm not religious myself, I agree that there doesn't seem to be any inherent conflict between creationism and evolution. Neither disallows the other. The only difference is that one requires facts and one requires faith.
The problem, of course, is that this is in a perfect world, where even discussions of faith are based in logic at some level. And that's not where much of the world is right now. Fundamentalism is a way of looking at religion which sees science as a threat. There are other ways to look at religion, but this view currently holds sway in the US and elsewhere. The few, silent, rational Christians such as yourself are likely to end up burnt at the stake with us atheists.
First of all, they tracked the possible movement and breeding of people for the past 20,000 years. How did they do that if man only goes back 6,400 years?
Secondly, it was an average date that went back to 1415BC. What do they mean by average? Well, the example they give is that Tasmianians were isolated from the Australian coast for the past 12,000 years (so there's yet another example of a group that goes back further than 6,400 years) but today there are no remaining Tasmaninians without some European or mainland Australian ancestry. The 12,000 years gets averaged out by the relationship with Europeans/Australians.
This is one of the reasons why creationism is a flawed belief, you can't just go ignoring facts and believe that all you need is a small subset to prove your point.
If you want to enlighten yourself, go read a Richard Dawkings book (I recomment Climbing Mount Improbable although others would point to the Blind Watchmaker) and maybe you'll have a better understanding of how weak an argument creationism really is.
I'm a writer, a poet, a genius, I know it. I don't buy software, I grow it.
This nuance is very important.
Evolution* isn't trying anything. It simply happens.
End of message.
[*] Evolution is a prevalent, beneficial mutation. Specifically, a mutation simply happens.
Marxist evolution is just N generations away!
...your current president believes in all this religious stuff!
Lets hope he isnt the current president for much longer.
Mind you, our prime minister seems to dabble in it as well.
Bah, all these cultists running major governments, no wonder theres so many wars.
If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done?
Maybe the "intellegent design" was the balance of matter to make an atom work, and now he sits back to see what happens. Why would God waste his time with all that detail work on DNA and eyeballs?
I have a hard time believing any person can even imagine what God is trying to do, and an even harder time thinking that man could be his crowning acheivement.
In some ways, "creationists" are trying to hijack the "intellegent design" theories as a back door to getting creationism taught in schools (since their God could be one of the possible designers). But, strictly speaking, intellegent design theory is the exploration of those evolutionary black boxes regardless of who put us here.
And, we all know we got here due to meddling by Q anyway.
Sleep is for the Weak
Actually, the paper says that their mathematical model suggest that everyone alive today SHARES A SINGLE ANCESTOR who lived about 3500 years ago. Not that he's our only ancestor from that time.
Object Oriented Programming or Spaghetti Code
The debate of Evolution vs ID(Intelligent Design or Influence) is really one of programming philosophy.
Please read the following quote:
"She found an opsin, a light-sensitive molecule, in the worm that strikingly resembled the opsin in the vertebrate rods and cones....This was concrete evidence of common evolutionary origin."
The following statement claims that said discovery is de-facto proof of evolutionary origin. But in truth, it is not. It could be applied as evidence for support. But as there are other simple explanations it cannot be used as proof.
To me, evolution is "spaghetti" code. Is the world written sloppily or is there a framework? are there functions?
One could look at the above example in the quote and assume that it is proof that said molecular arrangement originated in worm and was carried thru to vertebrates as they evolved and got more complex.
However, there is a simple explanation, code re-use. In an Object Oriented model of programming one writes functions that perform a particular task. One later writes functions that call other functions/routines to accomplish a large task.
So the thought of ID, explains the above discoveries equally well. Both the worm and the vertebrates include some of the same function libraries. So such a development philosophy easily offers another rational for the observed phenomen. Thus I do not see this as some 'concrete evidence'.
In fact, code-reusage and modular development also explains the instances where scientists state that there is code in the DNA for primitive functions we do not use.
Might I ask how many programmers use a "library". I know in my first C++ class we had to import a library for which to utilize certain functions. Furthermore, I know that I did NOT use all those functions. So how can we look at such code and claim those as arguments for random development and than go to our bosses and expect a paycheck for our labor?
Just some food for thought
- The Saj
Personally, I do not think it is just a few silent christians. I think that it is the majority of America. I see that the fundamentalists are more akin to the 1980's moral majority, 1990's Al Qaeda, the 1930's German nazi party, or the 1900's USSR communist party. That is, just a small group with a very vocal opinion carry a message of their own choosing. The vast majority of people really just want to live and enjoy life. They are not concerned with changing it. These aforementioned groups are all small, but ....
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
The scriptures are ambigious in many areas. It is not the place of a man to fill in the details with opinion. Did Judas hang himself, or did he jump over a cliff? Depends on which Gospel you consult. Did Christ point to the crowds or the Scribes in his famous "you brood of vipers" line? Depends on which Gospel you consult. What were Christ's last words? Considering that none of the Apostles were there, whatever is recorded in the Gospel is a secondhand telling. And even there, it depends on which Gospel you consult.
Ambiguity is just something you have to get used to folks. Fundimentalism, or even a strict interpretation of the scripture, isn't even supported by scripture.
"All scripture (is) given by inspiration of God, and (is) profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness." 2 Timothy, 3:16
You can't quote a single passage of the Bible, without considering what other passages might have to say.
Nowhere in the Bible does it state that the Universe started on any particular day. Nor does it state how man was created, save that God formed us from Dust. Exactly what is meant by that? Was it literally from dirt molecules? Or figuratively, say from a more lowely form of life? Are we reading what the ancient Hebrews understood, or merely the best translation into the written word that their language allowed.
I'm ranting, but I definetly agree with you on all points.
--Sean
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
Non-creationists rarely take the trouble to understand creationism any more than they think they need for a superficial debunking and therefore do the whole world a dis-server.
Many christians also fail to study their own sources.
6 thousand years is supposed to be the approximate time since Adam and Eve were expelled from the garden of eden and made mortal.
There is NOTHING in the bible to indicate
1) how long they were in the garden of eden as immortals before this point
[hence 6k is rubbish]
2) nothing PLAIN about how long each of the six creative periods ("days") were or even if they were the same length of time as eachother.
All I've done here is show that the parents posts debunking is groundless.
Creationists don't all believe the same things, and that grouping them together and debunking some combined creationist idea may not be equivalent to debunking any particular creationist idea at all.
For instance I believe in God and the creation account as given in Genesis - buts a pretty brief account, heh? Not rich on the details. I also believe God is a perfect glorified man with a physical body. But then again many humanists hope that man will one day be perfect and immortal, and have the power to create worlds. Whats wrong with saying it has already happened?
Sam
blog.sam.liddicott.com
Intelligent design implies a designer.
If the evidence for the existence of this designer consists only of circumstantial evidence such as the "brilliance" or "elegance" of a biological mechanism (for example), then the existence of the designer has not been conclusively proven. Direct physical evidence is required.
History indicates that religions survive and gain popularity if they can stand up to extreme scrutiny. Religions that cannot stand up to scrutiny die out. This results in the common "God works in mysterious ways" explanation being used as an all-purpose response to the questioning of skeptics. (Unfortunately for the religious proponents, using 'God' in that explanation represents an unproven assumption -- the existence of a god.)
Because modern religions must be able to explain their way out of any absurd scenario, god has, by definition, become undetectable by any scientific means. (If god were detectable, the necessary experiment would be conducted, and god would be found to not exist. This is not acceptable for the religions that require a supreme being.)
A completely undetectable supreme being is exactly equivalent to no supreme being at all.
Suck on that.
--Colin
Neocon philosophy is *never* wrong. Any mistakes happen because the philosophy was not put into practice vigorously enough.
While I don't disagree with your conclusion, I've made the very same observation about "new liberalism", socialism and even Communism: Socialised medicine's failings are blamed on private clinics, inequalities in the workplace are still a problem because affirmative action is not adequately enforced in education and industry, the Soviet Union collapsed because of corrupt officials who did not follow the ideals of Communism and acted in their own interests before the state's, etc.
I suggest you further "modify your view" and google for more "facts" using terms related to liberalism and socialism. You'll find that philospohies that deviate from the "common sense middle" you are simply looking at two sides of the very same coin.
Incidentially, one of the most "neo-conservative" people I knew was an honours student in physics and a rather "devout" athiest. I also find that apart from some of the more evangelical churchgoers that devout Christians tend to be more liberal in a lot of ways (advocating more socialised medicine, subsidised housing, international aid, etc.) so I think the issue of evolution vs. creationism cannot be classified simply as a conservative vs. liberal issue.
> is assumes that everything that's important is observable.
Yes [and no]. If you assume there are hidden agents that affect everything that happens, you can't do any science at all. (Or religion either; see further below.)
But the issue isn't whether science can aspire to omniscience, but rather which is the better guide to reality: what we see, or what our ancestors told us.
[The "and no" is because we don't actually assume that everything important is observable, e.g. the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle and all the immense challenges for science that follow from it. But I bracket this because I don't think it's what you meant.]
> Kind of a faith in itself (to see is to believe).
Certainly there's a philosophical problem with it, but we rely on it just to make it through the day. How do you know you're taking your morning leak in the john instead of wetting the bed? How do you know you're eating breakfast instead of jumping off a cliff?
Also, such an appeal to nihilism is pretty useless as a support for keeping creationism in the ring. How do you know the bible really exists, or if it does, how do you know it says what the letters on the page look like they say?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
God is generally portrayed as a "coping mechanism" by atheists, within my personal experience (others may differ). Putting aside religious people trying to sell something, most of the rest of us deal with the reality that Life with God is more complex and often more difficult than Life without God. There is no "coping" for me.
"Man has always been his own most vexing problem." --Reinhold Niebuhr, "The Nature and Destiny of Man"
I respect your view point on creationism vs evolution. I'm happily on the Darwin side myself. I'm also happy to hear about creation theories that don't boil down to 'because that's the way it is'. I find it fascinating that science is proving that parts of the biblical texts actually did occur; or at least likely occured similarly to what's been passed down over the ages.
May I suggest you think about why the ID folk only want *their* Intelligent Designs taught in schools? I think we really should be teaching Native American Indian creation theories as well, perhaps the Aborginal (sp?) from Austraila as well if they're really interested in true teaching of non-Darwin based reasons as to 'why we're here'. And if you really want to see the sparks fly, suggest the teachings of the Koran (and I have no idea what these are or if they are diff from Christian type concepts...but my guess is the 'supporters' of ID would have a huge problem with this just on concept)
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
Most christians don't have a problem. However, the number of fundamentalists is growing in the USA, and they are a problem. They prey on people who can't deal with the real world, have never learned any critcal thinking skills or developed any form of skepticism. These are people who claim to be persecuted in the USA, they are victims, and their religious groups give them a sense of community. They are members of a cult, and one that is rapidly growing with people who can't deal with modern society. In return, the leaders of this cult make millions of dollars and get tremendous political power.
This leads to another problem, non-christians think that the fundies represent all christians, that all christians are fascist-like who would murder anyone who disagrees with them. Of course, that affects all religions -- a segment will always use it to prey on the weak minded.
The fucking sorry state of America is such that religious morons think that they can invade every aspect of society with "religion", including scientific thinking.
It is such a fucking sorry state that one must argue evolution *all over again*, because morons refuse hard evidence. We are back in the middle ages, when someone takes the Bible literally.
What a drawback. Would this be the beginning of the end for the great U.S., a nation that thrived on independent thinking and scientific investigations brought on by the great influx of immigrant brains post WW-II? I guess so...
What developed the West, what set it apart from the rest, was *science*, not religion.
In that respect, religious rednecks are very much like the fundamentalist muslims they fear and loathe so much.
You seem to have a misperception of scientists' motives. If there was concrete evidence of God creating the universe, that evidence would be used by scientists to better understand reality. You're confusing science with atheism. BTW, scientists have a tendency toward agnosticism, not atheism.
I find it frustrating that religious people (which by your post I suppose you are one, that or badly misinformed about science) think that because they base their worldview on faith, that everyone else does as well. Some of us are perfectly happy admitting that there are things which we do not yet know, and striving to find out in due time.
Your statement is also ironic, seeing that science is constantly challenged/attacked by the religious, who refuse to accept things because they are worried about implications for their beliefs.
To really consider the relation between the science and religion, there's some homework to do. Philosophically speaking, God can not be proved nor disproved. David Hume showed that all proofs of God beg the question of God's existence. That means they're circular proofs; they prove nothing. Similarly, when you're discussing a being/force which can by definition "do anything", it's child's play to refute any assertion based on faith; if someone says that God doesn't exist because of observation X, the retort is that God wants it that way, and is hiding.
If religious people want 100% of the population to believe in God, I have two suggestions: 1) Stop trying to assert that science is untrue on the basis of your personal beliefs. 2) Stop using your social identity as an excuse to do things which are clearly prohibited in your own code of conduct.
This still leaves the religious more "wiggle room" than I would like; but I think we can agree that we'd all get along better if we are considerate of each other's beliefs. And frankly, I have as much right to believe that physical reality has no cause but itself as others do to believe that physical reality must have a cause other than itself because nothing causes itself, therefore it's cause must be God, which has no cause because God has no cause but itself.
When Galileo concluded that the earth must go around the sun, it wasn't because he wanted to disprove God or destroy religion; it was because he observed reality. Galileo didn't attack the church; the church attacked Galileo. When Darwin published the Origin of the species, it wasn't his way of casting doubt on God or religion; it was his theory as to why animals are the way they are. Again, Darwin didn't attack the church, the church attacked Darwin.
What bothers me more than anything is that people who use faith to explain everything seem to have the least understanding of the nature of the spirit and the debate which they wish to participate in. Religion's value is in its charge to its followers to do the RIGHT thing. To help the weak and poor. To repay a wrong with a right. To love and forgive instead of hating and avenging. Religion also has speculative answers to questions which once were considered unanswerable. Now that some of those answers are proving to be *ahem* inexact, *certain* people are very upset. Instead of keeping their cool, they attack the messenger, and everyone who doesn't agree with them. The US is very backward, philosophically, in many places, and this is perpetuated by conservatives for political reasons. Liberals don't want to take your religion away people... we just want the same freedom you take for granted; to believe as we will and live as we choose. Evangelists have missed something here; that their right to swing their fist stops at my nose. You don't want schools teaching that God doesn't exist.. well guess what, they don't address that issue at all. We don't want *you* forcing us to live your lifestyle. You think you're "saving" people. But if atheists were to go around "saving" people from
"A witty saying proves nothing." ~Voltaire
"d'Oh!" ~Homer
Luke 6:27 - 6:29
Haven't seen too much of the spirit of charity on display in the latest election, have we?
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
I agree that stating that God couldn't is utterly stupid, however the question is on whether evolution occured or not. That question is definitely within the domain of science and not religion.
These discussions reach absurd proportions, someone finds that the cells in a living fossil are very similar to those in a part of the human eye and suddenly it is possible to somehow evolve a complete human eye, lenses and all, just like that.
Yes, this is a valuable contribution, but claiming it shows how human vision evolved is about as absurd as claiming that tea cups show how beer containers evolved because they are similar in some ways.
It could also be pointed out that most parts of the really interesting parts of human vision aren't in the eyes themselves but in the brain.
Very true... Which religion is more beneficial to the progress of our species, and further, our planet? That's the question, I think, that should guide us to our chosen dogma. Dogma seems unavoidable. It seems we would benefit from a wide adoption of a dogma that might, eventually, eradicate itself. Science is linked too strongly to commercialism. Creationism and other extreme ideologies seem ludditish... I tend to think that it lies somewhere in between Buddhism and Science. Taoism is probably the closest approximation that has been explored fully. Vedanta is great, but the mystical aspects can be hard to swallow for many.
Marxist true believers to this day say that the Soviets failed because they didn't implement 'true' communism, ditto for their former satellites. China is a complete perversion of the Marxist ethic.
If the right person or people came along, with the right level of moral conviction, the system would work. At least its champions say so.
It's human nature to believe such things.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
I'm amazed at the backlash that ideas like 'intelligent design' get from people at slashdot. While I assume that it is because ID becomes associated with religion, it seems to me to be somewhat of a relevant idea. Has anyone ever looked at the ID books and ideas?
I began as a creationist because of my religion. I have since abandoned creationism for several reasons. What I haven't let go is ID. If it is one thing that history proves it is that the best scientific theories often fall. Flat World, Sun Goes around Earth, and those physics guys are constantly going over their theories.
Why is it such a bad thing to question Evolution?
I don't understand; if all this is random chance - humanity, the study of science, life; why is it so important to these people? If they truly believe they are right then why does proving they are right matter to them? Further more, if they are right, then nothing matters at all. There is nothing greater and there is absolutely no valid reason to pursue understanding any of it because it doesn't actually mean anything. If they truly believe what they believe is correct, then all their efforts are actually a big waste of time. Their actions and passion seem to be a contradiction to their convictions.
Is evolution really a fact?
Yes.
Has it been observed in the amazing way that evolutionists describe it to have happened?
Yes. Speciation has been observed, in the lab and in the wild.
Why should they feel affronted, regardless of whether Creationists are right or wrong?
For the same reason a geography teacher is affronted when parents come in demanding they teach that the earth is flat. The same reason that Jews don't really like people who claim the Holocaust never happened. The same reason psychics never win the lottery, or at least with no more regularity than the rest of us. These people are simply wrong (and demonstrably so), and they use the most asinine arguments to support their ridiculously stupid stances.
If Creationists are just a bunch of blind religious zealots, why not ignore them?
Because they won't ignore the rest of us and leave their foolishness at home. Because they go to school boards, they go to governors, they go to Congress demanding in no uncertain terms that their favorite brand of nonsense be taught as fact to everyone else's children. Because students that _are_ taught ID are in for a rude awakening if and when they go to college where there's none of this "Aww, evolution is _just_ a theory" foolishness.
Dyolf Knip
It is like America is entering a new dark age.
How can America be competetive in Biological sciences (any science) if these groups succeed in destroying even Scientific Method in America.
ID == Creationism. This is backdooring religion into the Curriculum.
This is the divisive issue in America today. It is religious society vs secular society. It seems that Secular society is on the wane and religious is on the rise. Somewhere Osama is smiling because this is certainly the outcome he wants for the world.
I think the reason why fundamentalism continues to enjoy strong support is that acknowledging flaws in your scriptures of choice is a slippery slope. If there are a few passages that are just plain wrong then the validity of the entire work is challenged.
One might argue that the spirit of work is the important part. In that case it would be prudent to distill the various scriptures into a pamphlet with the essentials; a higher power, Golden Rule, etc. This would enjoy much broader support. But I guess a lot of people enjoy taking a stand on stuff like a 6000 year old Earth, homophobia, contraception, submissive women, and other obsolete mores of ages past.
Some of the posts on this thread disturb me. They imply that people aren't taking intelligent design (ID) seriously enough as a threat to science. The posts say that maybe ID is compatible with science after all: maybe it only applies to speciation; or maybe a god started things off at a certain point, and evolution took over from there; or if you interpret "day" to be some indeterminate length of time, maybe you can make the bible's creation story match facts (hint: you can't -- the creation story has plants appearing before the sun, for example).
The point is not whether it's possible to somehow reconcile ID with fact if you try hard enough. The point is that ID is being presented as a science, when it is clearly nothing of the sort. Are there unanswered questions in evolution? Of course. But saying "god did it" answers a small mystery with an enormous, or even completely unknowable one (god). It explains nothing, and encourages intellectual laziness. If we accepted "science" like this, we'd all still think thunder was the sound the gods make when they're angry.
I don't care if people choose to believe in god or ID based on faith; that's their right. What terrifies me is when it is presented as science -- especially in our schools. There is absolutely no doubt about it: if it weren't for the fact that ID puts a pseudo-scientific face on a certain demonstrably false and contradictory "holy" book, and the fact that proponents of that book fund ID well, it would have long since been thrown out as crackpot nonsense. Instead, it is being accepted by some school districts as science. Teaching ID as science undermines our entire theory of knowledge.
So discoveries like this possible explanation for the eye are important! They can potentially narrow the gaps in our scientific knowledge, which is the only attack against "god of the gaps" arguments like ID (the fact that ID is almost impossible to completely falsify is another big "tell" that it is not scientific).
p.s. [political rant]
Defending science is especially important with Bush in the white house. This is a man who says the "jury is still out" on evolution. This is an administration that approves a National Park Service booklet saying that the Grand Canyon was caused by Noah's flood. This is an administration with the worst environmental and scientific record in recent memory.
[/political rant]
I often like to point out that even with my eyelids closed (which I think most people would grant is an imperfect eye) I can still determine if it's night or day and figure out roughly where in the sky the sun is. With that information I could not only decide the best time to sleep/wake, but over time determine my lattitude or the coming of the change of seasons. Not to mention flinching if something big jumps right in front of me.
Imperfect eyes would still be very useful.
Pat
> The fuss is that some people read "God's book" with a literal eye. The bigger fuss is that the strongest nation on earth is now led by one of those people.
Indeed, that is the problem with the debate. First off, there IS difference between Creationist and Christian. Secondly, there is a big difference between the 'literal type', hardcore, Christian types and the rest of us. Many hardcore Christians and Creationists see the bible as 100% PURE UNCHANGEABLE FACT, and nothing will -ever- change their idea of that. (I've had this debate a few times.) Some still believe the world is flat, I hear. Something about a mountain one can climb and see everything. Seek out the article 'Things Creationists Hate' online.
These Creationists can not comprehend or won't even attempt to comprehend that one's faith, one's idea of faith, can evolve and change over time -just like science does-, and not be some kind of infidel heathen. Yes folks, it's possible to not believe every word of the Bible, but merely take it as a well meaning guide, and still have true faith! It's not all or nothing, Creationist or Atheist.
I believe strongly in science, but I also have strong faith. To me, the bible is simply man's understanding of faith and religion a few thousand years ago. It is a wonderful tool, but believing it word per word as infailable law is every bit as far off in my opinion just as if a scientist were insisting that the scientific theory of two thousand years ago is still 100% accurate today. There is absolutely no reason why a logical person's understanding of their faith can't grow with their understanding of the world.
Needless to say, this too is unacceptable by the 100% crowd. I'm considered some kind of fake Christian by closed minded friends, just because my views are willing to grow and change. I'd rather not have my views limited to the understanding, politics, and stories printed in a series of books ages ago, or told to me by a church. Faith sure seems rather weak to me if you need a book or a church to tell you it's true in order to believe in it.
But folks, the alternative to Creationist thinking is -not- only atheism. I see too many friends put off by the narrow mindedness of religion and giving up on it. One can be both religious, and open minded. They are not mutually exclusive in any way, no matter how many people decide that they are.
First, let me state that I believe in evolution, both macro and micro-evolution. However, I do not believe in Darwinism or Creationism. Second, let me state that I believe in the Big Bang. I also believe that God created the universe. I find no contradiction between any of these beliefs, nor do I find any contradiction between my life as a scientist (B.S. Chemistry, B.S. Physics, pursuing PhD), and my life as a Christian (Roman Catholic).
The key to being able to reconcile all these viewpoints is that as a Roman Catholic, I believe in the Bible as an inspired work, but read it in context. The Bible was not written as a scientific textbook, nor as a book on geography, but as a guidebook for faith and morality. Using it as a scientific textbook is about at rational as using a freshman biology book as a latin grammar book. Certainly, there will be some latin in the biology book, and you might be able to figure out a few of the rules of latin, but how much? There may also be some mistakes in the latin, especially in interfacing latin words into english sentences. Does this mean that it is a bad biology textbook? No! It means that for some reason (perhaps the high cost of textbooks), you're trying to avoid getting yourself a proper latin textbook. The book of Tobit provides a good example of where the Bible clearly is not written as a geography textbook. Throughout the book the distance between two points that were several weeks walk apart in real life was referred to and treated as a couple days journey. That does not bother me in the least, because the Book of Tobit was not written to teach me about geography, but about God. If you wish to tell me that the book of Genesis is a good proof that the Bible is not an accurate physics or biology textbook, I'd be the first to agree. Where I draw the line, though, is when people try to claim that the Bible is a bad physics or biology textbook, since it is not a physics or biology textbook.
I believe in the inerrancy of the Bible... in teaching about God, about morality, etc, but would never use it as a physics textbook. I accept the teachings of Genesis, that God created man in his image... I have no problem with people who believe in evolution, micro or macro, as I do too. I do, however, have a problem with those who then attempt to use evolution as a proof against the existence of God. Why does evolution disprove the existence of God? I can accept that science can disprove strict creationism (world 6000 years old), but how does it disprove the existence of God? How does evolution disprove that God created man in his likeness? There remain plenty of ways to do this. First, even a few non-random changes of an apparently random event could alter the evolutionary path tremendously. Second, God created the universe, and the laws of the universe. Why not create evolution in such a way that it would head in the direction He intended? Finally, what does it mean to be in the image of God? If evolution results in humans gaining a set of wings, I wouldn't be forced to say that we are no longer in God's image. (I'd probably be to busy doing aerial acrobatics to be discussing it, but that's beside the point.) To be made in the image of God has to deal more with the fact that we are not creatures purely of the flesh, but also of the spirit... that we have an immortal soul, and make choices. Here, science actually supports the existence of something it cannot explain. Science, by definition, requires that given the same set of inputs you receive a given output (or probability distribution if you've learned quantum). There is no such thing as a choice, or free will. Yet, even without knowing you, I would be willing to bet that you believe that you make choices every day, in fact our whole society is based on the belief that people's actions are their own choices. While I do not know your moral code, I know you must have one. Yet, if our every action were predetermined based on internal chemistry, all actions must be morally neutral, there can be no right or wrong. So, since you
As far as I can tell, the major resistance to evolution among much of the public is that it's humiliating to think that we have such humble, slimy origins.
And that just slays me. I watched the PBS special on Evolution and found it absolutely fascinating, even though I'd already known most of the stuff presented. To me, the process of evolution is a marvelous process, combining the grace of life in nature with the savagery of survival and competition in a harsh universe, all written on a tapestry 3 billion years long, just aching to be read. On a long enough time scale, morphology flows like water. It is a process that is beautiful beyond compare.
To say that humble origins detract from the end result is ludicrous. A painting is nothing but a canvas, paint, and the proverbial blood, sweat & tears, but it is no less a work of art for it.
Dyolf Knip
The core of science cannot refer or rely upon a God figure who magically imposes his will upon the universe.
Learn what "hypocrisy" means. Again, the core of science cannot refer or rely upon magic.
By definition, if it is an "omnipotent God", then nothing is "impossible".
Yet it is also 100% useless to refer or rely upon that in science. Science depends upon reproducible events. Miracles are not reproducible. Act of God are not reproducible.
http://xroads.virginia.edu/~u
Some did have religious links, but others seem to have been toys for children. Archaeologists have been digging up toys for years.
Your details are correct.
If there was no literal first man and woman, then there was no talking snake to tempt them into eating an apple. If that didn't happen, there was no literal fall (the fall had to be by CHOICE, protestants don't accept that God just made humans imperfect from the start). If there was no literal fall, then mankind is not in need of redemption. If there is no need for redemption, there is no need for Christ. This would basically invalidate protestant Christianity.
You've left out one important point: your #2 argument hinges on this paragraph, but this paragraph depends necessarily on #1 (the Word of God in the Bible is inerrant and literal). It's not actually a stronger argument, because it depends on the first, weaker one.
Here's the problem. Fundamentalist Christianity rejects the idea of continuing revelation from God through any single source. Prophets - as they were understood in the Bible - don't come around anymore, as a matter of doctrine. The only thing left they have to base their faith in is the Bible. It's their only witness of Christ. If parts of it can be allegorical, Christ himself doesn't really have to have existed, and there goes the religion.
So #1 actually exists out of necessity. That's where the circular arguments come from ("the Bible is literally true because the Bible says so [in our interpretation]", etc., etc.) - it's because they haven't actually got anything better.
I'm LDS, and I go to BYU. In this school - which is run basically by my church - we actually don't have a problem with evolution at all. We even (gasp) teach it. Why? We believe that God still speaks through a single source, and we have more than one witness of Christ. The idea that parts of the Bible might be allegorical or severely watered-down for the people of the time doesn't bother us at all.
I got my Linux laptop at System76.
Could be that our eye's evolution was halted by our acquiring intelligence - remove evolutionary preasure and features stagnate. IIRC, the skunk has really bad eyesight - since everything leaves it alone and it only eats plants it had no reason to evolve better eyesight.
If we ever do get into genetic manipulation, I hope that is one area given serious work. We depend much more on our eyes than ever before (though not for survival per se) in our society. I for one would love to see in seven channels of vision - and have eyes that can repair their own damage.
The eye seems perfect, but it is not. Mamalian eyes have arteries/veins that lie between the photoreceptor cells and the source of light. This means that some incoming light is scattered or absorbed by the veins.
However , squids have the photoreceptor cells on top of the supporting circulatory system, so no light is blocked from the cells. So really the squid eye is more perfect than human eye. Why would God make our eyes defective while making squid eyes more perfect?
I was listening to NPR this morning and they were doing a spot on the Constitution candidate running for president. His speech to a 12th grade school class was borderline embarrassing. He was pushing for evolution to be banned from schools and said, "These people want you to believe that your great grand-daddy was a small drop of goop, your grand daddy was a fish and your daddy was a chimp."
Creationism is simple thinking for complex problems. A lot of people are frightened by the idea that some things can't be explained. In ancient Rome they blamed floods and earthquakes on Poseidon. Science later told us that these are explainable natural events, not the work of Gods. Science has given us answers to many of the questions about our world that used to be associated to gods. There are a few really tough questions left that scientists are making some headway on like, "What are we made of?" Which is being understood through particle physics and quantum theory. "Why are we here?" That's a tough and fundamentally esoteric question that I don't think anyone could agree on... and here is where religion comes in. I don't have a problem with religion itself, but I'm uneasy with it because it breeds fundamentalism, hatred and mistrust. A great number of our wars in history have been about, "My god is better than your god." Again, a product of simple thinking. The funniest part is that at the most basic level all religions agree on the same things, love, trust and harmony between man. Often these values are upheld, but more and more people are straying from the basic ideas of what religion was indeed to teach us.
WURD!!
I'm a Christian, to some extent. Depends on who you ask, I suppose. I decided a long time ago I was through with my fellow Christians, and I'd try to get back to the lofty ideals and morality that the religion is supposed to be about. Everybody else is becomming very hung up on miniscule historical trivia and particulars of a book that's lost so many of those particulars through poor translation and intentional modification by kings and popes seeking to use it to their advantage.
The problem with biblical literalism is that they gleefully abandon, ignore, or even deny the existence of most of the bible in their quest to support one or two lines. Who cares that sodomy meant what we now call beastiality until only a few centuries ago, let's go out and burn down gay people's houses. Forget the tax collector who prayed quietly in his home and recieved his blessings, let's be like the pharisee who tore his shirt in public and cried out to God and country in thanks that we aren't as bad as everybody else.
One of the key things that gets harped on is Noah's flood. Three divergent bloodlines are mentioned before the flood (if I had my bible, or even one of my books my Rev. Polkinghorne, I could look them up and tell you), and their currently (currently as in when the old testament was assembled) living descendents are related (one was the ancestor of "all such who live in tents and keep herds" (probably the Arab and south Asian nomadic peoples), and two others. Noah was from one of these three bloodlines, and all three clearly survived the flood. Also, Goliath's bloodline is mentioned both before and after the flood (both by name and as "such people as have great stature"), so that makes three definite and one probable bloodline (and by their descriptions, indeed entire civilizations) that survived through the flood. Combine this with the use of "everything under heaven," (Which is used to describe cities that cover all things under heaven, and armies which span all lands under heaven. Obviously, earth has never had a global megalopolis, but its very easy to imagine a city or army spanning horizon to horizon), Noah's flood doesn't even sound global by the litteral wording.
Worse again, the parts they cling to are the parts that are not eye witness. They are humans interpreting divine revalation. "His thoughts are above your thoughs". Imagine the difficulty an ant would have making sense of what a human is telling it to describe a city. Not having seen a city, and having minimal understanding of our speech (pretend its one of those semi-intelligent super ants that eat dogs in movies or something), it would produce an image of a city that, although it would bear certain correlation with a real city, could not be taken for a literal description of one.
The test of how much they understand is if they deny the city exists when they see it and it doesn't look like what they imagined from the description.
A century ago, it was refusal to reconcile Christian beliefs with mainstream science, and things held together fairly well. If I lived then, I doubt I would have bought into evolution either. But now, especially with people like Henry Morris, it's gone beyond that: Changing Christian belief to preclude any and all mainstream science. It was unfortunate when one creationist published a book for preists saying that "It's better to lie to the people than to risk them seeking the facts for themselves. There is no sin in lying for God, and no sin in believing a lie." I see far too much of it now, wich churches outright lying about science, politics, medicine, business, current events, and religion (both their own and others) to manipulate congregations.
And as long as I've lost the point, a quote: "Oh, no, religions never kill people. Religions have lofty ideals and pure morality. Religious followers, on the other hand, are closed minded, hateful, spiteful people who will kill one another for no useful cause."
Scientists should not be spending their time attempting to discredit creationists. Any attempt to answer creationists on their own ground merely adds credence to their beliefs.
Science is not a belief. Science follows the scientific method. Accepted principles in science can be independently verified by testing and re-testing hypotheses using the scientific method.
Science is also not static, and it does not offer any guarantee that today's conclusions will match tomorrow's conclusions. While creationists attempt to cite this uncertainty as a weakness, it is one of science's greatest strengths. There is no place for dogma in science. Whereas, religion (and creationism as a sub-part of religion) is rife with dogma and the need to suppress intellectual curiousity.
Creationists deliberately misconstrue statements by various scientists and scientific conclusions in order to paint those statement and conclusions as "beliefs" rather than the results of the scientific method. Except creationists are not true scientists, because they come to the table with a hypothesis, the truth of which they are highly invested in proving. That is not the scientific method, because they do not approach their hypothesis with neutrality. Therefore, they find exactly the answers they seek. That is not science.
about those that will think "that's the way it panned out because thats how God meant for it to pan out", irrespective of what happened.
:)
:)
There isn't a required scientific discrepancy between modern science and biblical christianity. (It's up to christians to resolve such questions as 'were those 7 24 hr days or 7 god days that it took to make stuff?')
You'll find very few fundamentalist christians get upset about discussions of subatomic particles because discoveries in subatomic theory are never used by anti-christians as the foundation for a "see, you stupid christians were wrong!" argument. Macro-evolution and even micro-evolution are unfortuneately often used exactly for this purpose.
The notion that earth based life forms are related and seem to have differentiated themselves from others in discoverable, explainable ways seems reasonable to me. I mean, if i were a deity and wanted to "make world", i'd use lots of shared libraries
"the scientists" are at least as guilty as the hardcore creationists in the antagonism that has lead to the cultural divide in america. "science", where it appears to contradict traditional christian thinking, is the new religion for a sub-society that hates traditional religious thought.
Strictly speaking, science has never been "right" about anything - the scientific process merely produces output ("knowledge") that asymptotically approaches "truth" as our observational techniques become more advanced.
I mean, consider that newton thought his laws of motion adequately described mechanics. This theory broke down in some scenarios, requiring the relativistic theories accounting for time/mass/distance expansion/contraction. Special relativity wasn't sufficient to explain photolovaics and that problem led to the thinking of quantum mechanics.
I sincerely hope that after 3 groundbraking world-view changes on just the basic rules governing how things _move_, in _only_ 400 years, nobody thinkgs that we are now at the end-destination of scientific thought, and that we completely understand mechanics, and there will be no more refinements to our understanding of mechanics.
I thought so.
It is perfectly acceptable to me to accept scientific progress as learning about the incredible universe that was engineered for us by God, the "designer" if you will
Infact, it used to be the case that the worlds best scientific minds were strong thelogians as well, and studied under the context of discerning how God's universe operated.
You should be suspicious of scientific "progress" that is touted as being contradictory to Christianity.
Let the Christians figure out how to reconcile what is observed in nature and what they think their biblical understanding is.
Let the scientists concentrate on making the best possible observations and the best possible theories to explain them.
That will leave just the pundits - the real people causing the rift between science and religion.
My opinions are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.
That "all fall short of the glory of God" refers not to some stain handed down by Adam and Eve, but rather to our own mistakes and shortcomings, as is evident by looking at the correct quote in the Bible:
Exactly how one overcomes past mistakes and corruption (sin) to justify oneself to God is hotly debated among Christian sects, but all do believe that a belief in Christ and an appeal to Him is required. Christian thought requires a literal belief in the divinity of Jesus, and in his death and resurrection, not necessarily in a literal creation story.For my part, it makes no sense to try and drum up a controversy between evolution and creation. Evolution deals with how creation was accomplished, something not well documented in scripture, and creation deals with who did the creating, something not addressed by evolution theory. Whether God waved a magic wand or just set up the laws and circumstances that would lead to human existence makes no difference to me as a Christian. The important thing for me to know is that God did it, that he has a plan, and that I am a part of that plan.
Yep. And that is your bias. Because having a single link supports your bias, you don't see anything wrong with it.
Whereas I look at the information and ask why they are linked.
Incorrect. Unless there are other people to breed with there, they should have the same DNA as the original tribe.
That was their whole point about using "mitochondrial DNA" for the female tracking.
From the article: "unchanged". Then.
So why is are there so few changes and those changes only happen when migrating to a new geographic region (aside from the afore mentioned 3-become-1)?
In other words, 2 of Eve's 3 original lines have been 100% resistant to change over all the years. While 1 of the 3 has undergone change after change after change after change, but only when moving to new locations.
Rather, it appears that they are charting sections of the DNA code, and placing an arbitrary limit on what constitutes a "new" "line" and tracing back these "lines" to support their bias.
Yet it then goes to branch 3 times. To me, that indicates at least 3 individuals, not the one. Unless they can dig up the original and the 3 daughters.
I find it interesting that they seem to indicate that the original 1,000 women would have 1,000 different sets of mitochondrial DNA.
Which gets back to bias. If you take the religious point of view, then believing in 1 Eve is easy.
If you take the evolutionary bias, then believing that those 1,000 women could all have the same mitochondrial DNA is easy. They are all descended from the same stock and there was inter-breeding.
Which would also support my belief that they aren't talking exact matches but are imposing an arbitrary limit on what constitutes a "line".
Faith and science are not necessarily opposed to each other, though a lot of atheists would like to think they are.
The problem I see is that atheists attempt to pervert science into "proving" that there is no God, as if the techniques of science are somehow suited to grappling with the metaphysical.
The other problem I see is that fundamentalist Christians are denying their faith in God. God - not science - is supposed to be the truth, but if your arguments for faith rest on scientific proofs, then you've supplanted God with Science as the ultimate arbiter of truth. Which is just self-defeating. If God is truth, and He said He created the world in seven days, then He did. End of story. Chasing after "scientific" proofs of Biblical stories only shows one's faith to rest not in God, but in science.
And then comes science. In the discovery of the marvels of our universe, we come to realize that it is ordered - the hallmark of a creative genius. No, it doesn't prove God exists - if it did, science (or logic), rather than God, would be the ultimate truth. It isn't. Not to say science doesn't serve a useful purpose - it does; but rather that it is a tentative explanation of nature. From a logical standpoint, science doesn't prove anything, but rather explains it.
And those who try to base their religion on science only show themselves to be foolish - whether they are the atheists using evolution to bolster their naturalist beliefs, or fundamentals using flawed reasoning to bolster their creastionist ones. In fact, I'd say that both camps have done more damage to the reputation of science than all of the scientific scandals in history (cold fusion, California's fictitious elements, etc...)
Faith is something that one discovers apart from science. And we all look like fools when we attempt to use the scientific method to "prove" what we suspect to be true about God. No amount of scientific proof will ever bring an atheist to salvation, nor will it convince a true believer that God doesn't exist.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
I'm an atheist, and I don't think they are compatible. The main problem with the compatibilist attitude is this: evolution is a blind, mechanical process. There's no need for an agent like a god to do anything; evolution just happens on its own! It doesn't need a god to mutate genes, or put pressure on prey to see their predators better, or urge the lions to catch the slow gazelles, etc. Saying "god did it that way", is to arbitrarily stick a god in the background, where he somehow "endorses" the process of evolution..but there's nothing to do there (besides give believers their security, presumably). In just the same way, you don't need to postulate a shoelace gnome who keeps everybody's shoelaces tied (but uses the mechanism of friction to do it).
You have to look at the motivation of people like the pope when they say these things. They're smart enough to realize that evolution is an incontrovertible fact, but they don't want to give up their religion. So what else are they going to say?
The thing in the box has no place in the language-game at all; not even as a something; for the box might even be empty.
There's two options you left out, and I'm sure there are plenty more. Try thinking a bit more laterally and less literally.
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"I did nothing. I did absolutely nothing and it was everything that I thought it could be."
It is hiliarious to hear their explaination of Christ's first miracle (turning water into wine), and the beverage that is part of the rite of communion (wine). They claim that in the ancient tongue that "Wine" meant a strong grape beverage. Never mind that no such word exists, nor that the effects of said beverages are also described quite accurately in the scriptures.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
This statement shows a fundamental misunderstanding of the term "evolution". In the biological sense, evolution is a process, not an event. One debates whether a process occurs and whether an event occurred.
I can and do study (and thereby demonstrate the existence of) evolution every day in my research. These days, evolutionary scientists seek to understand and characterize the properties and mathematics of the process of evolution. We observe and characterize it, day in and day out.
The phrase "...whether or not evolution occurred..." is not even lexically coherent. It's equivalent to "whether or not oxidation occurred" or "whether or not gravitation occurred". If someone wants to debate the existence of the process, feel free. But creationists gave up that lane of attack decades ago in the face of overwhelming scientific evidence. They pretend that the difference is now a debate between "microevolution" and "macroevolution" - a distiction which does not exist and cannot be defined.
If instead you want to debate whether the dual processes of evolution and speciation have led, over the course of several billion years, to the particular phylogeny biological species which currently inhabit the Earth, feel free. At that point, we're out of the realm of strict science (meaning the scientific method) and into the realm of observation, speculation, and logical argument because we can't, of course, conduct a controlled experiment.
But for goodness' sake, at least please take the time to understand the terms about which you're debating.
I stole this sig from someone cleverer than me.
Science is merely an epistomology based on rationalism. It is by far the most successful epistomogy in widespread use today.
The flaw in science is not the scientific method. Rather, science is flawed in spite of the scientific method. Science if flawed the same way every human endeavor is flawed: it's run by humans.
It's difficult to topple an existing scientific belief, but it happens. The same way quantum physics displaced the prevalent Newtonian physics, evidence for something other than evolution would receive widespread critisism, but as a new generation of scientists replace the old guard, the new evidence (and the accompanying hypothesis) would become accepted as canon.
This study is all cool and everything. But modern science has made up it's mind, so don't fool yourself into thinking you'll hear all sides of evolution/darwinism from religion or science.
Modern science hasn't made up its mind; modern scientists have made up their mind. Incorrect theories will topple as evidence mounts against them. Within science, dogma grows old and dies. New theories replace old all the time. Sometimes it just seems to take a long time-- often, a professional lifetime.
So far, there isn't even a logical hypothesis to compete against evolution via natural selection, so there's very little "mind" to make up. Until there is a logical, scientifically-verifiable counter hypothesis, there's very little room for debate.
Now, within the framework of evolution via natural selection, there's a lot of room for debate.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
Of course evolution can be guided, as can be seen with reference to domesticated dogs, for example.
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"I did nothing. I did absolutely nothing and it was everything that I thought it could be."
Haven't seen too much of the spirit of charity on display in the latest election, have we?
When you choose not to do something--act spitefully--how do you put it on display?
If you see five people speaking angrily, there may be a thousand restraining themselves.
I dont think the argument historically is about Creationism vs Evolution. It is more about the implications of all the theories that go along with Evolution and how they differ from the Biblical view.
ie;
- Old earth view -> Some Christians believe this
- Natural Selection -> Pretty much accepted by anyone who has an education, Christian or Atheist or other.
The place where the two crowds split is with respect to what is "created". A lot of evolutionists believe in the "Big Bang Theory". The bible says that God created the heavens and the earth as well as man and woman from him. This would contradict the idea that God would create gases that might later evolve into living creatures. If God did not create us directly, I think the Bible would say so. Some Deists might see the garden of eden as symbolism and see the possibility of the Big Bang Theory coexisting with creation, but that would just be a faith-based opinion just like any other religious belief.
So to sum it up for me:
- I am a Christian
- I believe in natural selection/altruism as a built-in mechanism for purifying and strengthening the gene pool
- I believe in a short-aged earth, but if proof were found that the earth were millions of years old, it would not invalidate my faith, it would simply be a different scientific viewpoint of how the earth progressed after eden.
- I believe God made the earth and humans based on scientific laws and those laws allow us to exercise free will. (ie: those trapped in a world they dont understand and attribute everything to "magic" is not free will. By giving us science and natural laws, we can better understand his creation and his design.)
I respect you if you do not believe in a god or have a different religion. I lose repect when people say religion is incompatible with science.
Thanks,
David
Exactly.
Rule one: get a good commentary. Preferably access to a few of them.
Rule two: get some good translations.
As much as evolutionists bitch about creationists taking them out of context, that's nothing when compared with the possibilities of mis-quoting and mis-interpreting the Bible.
catch (HumourFailureException e) { e.user.send("You, sir, are a humourless idiot."); }
I'd like to make a point that's slightly related to this topic.
First let me say that I don't preclude the possibility of macro evolution. It certainly could've happened and would not be incompatible with the Torah. It seems that Kool-Aid Evolution Scientists have gotten themselves into a logical pickle with the Big Bang. Precluding God precludes Big Bang because if there is a singular event to start the universe, there must've been a cause. The logical trail always ends up with an uncaused cause, an uncreated creator, etc.
What I'm frustrated about, is that modern scientists (most of them, not all), rule out religion at the outset. Don't even give it the slightest possibility. They then next move on to other things. This seems silly. Granted, scientists are frustrated by things they can't explain, or that aren't adequately defined/explained, so I can understand their natural tendency away from religion, but to absolutely rule it out is folly. It's akin to those scientists around the time of Newton who simply ruled out his theories because... well... no one knows why, because that's just what they've always thought.
As a scientific theory, Evolution is pretty poor. It inadequately defines the problem and presents no real solution. There is no evidence yet to suggest macro evolution actually occurs.
There seems to be a core of anti-religion scientists who accept Evolution as The One True Answer despite tons of evidence to the contrary. In fact, the blind acceptance of Evolution is a religion in and of itself. It takes far more faith to believe in Evolution then in Judaism or Christianity. Seriously! There's a lot more physical, scientific, logical, and forensic evidence to support that Jesus rose from the dead then there is to support that macro evolution has occured even once.
Certainly there must be other explanations (even non-religious ones) that scientists can explore. It seems they are so committed now to evolution, that they will not abandon it no matter how bad it becomes.
This is sad because science cannot progress under these thick-headed circumstances. Trying to prove another group wrong is a bad way to conduct scientific research. There should be a focus and goal on persuing the Truth, whereever it may be found. I think that some scientists are unwilling to consider the possibility that there is a God and he did create the universe.
Skepticism is one thing, and it's very healthy and productive, but outright sticking your head in the sand accomplishes nothing for anyone.
If you're a scientist or academic researcher, I implore you, please look honestly and objectively at the junk science that so far surrounds Evolution and try to come up with another theory that is more plausible and is verifiable with evidence and research. You may actually find out Evolution is the right answer, or you may not. Just please stop blindly accepting Evolution simply because you don't want to give some type of sophmoric victory to the Jews/Christians.
Just like ancient maps with "Here be dragons" scrawled across unknown areas, those with religious beliefs apply their belief to everything that is unknown.
That's why some people mockingly call Him "the God of the gaps." What a lot of people who fight so hard to bring religion to non-religious regions of life don't seem to realise is that they are taking a huge gamble. The one guarantee you have to be free to hold the religion of your choice is that society doesn't consider you a treath, and so has no reason to be offended by your religion. As soon as you start to behave in a way that most people consider harmful (like insisting in teaching religious dogma in public schools), your religious freedom becomes heavily undermined.
Ofcourse, I've heard it argued that the religious people who do this have such weak religions that they require the religious persecution and the fight to hold on to their faith despite all their doubts and trials.
As such, I look around at a universe which not only contains no evidence of God, but also appears more and more to be entirely explicable absent God. The further we push the bounds of human thought, the clearer it becomes that God need not exist for the universe to make sense.
Anyone who argues with that statement is demonstrably wrong.
And yet, despite that, I still believe in God. Yes, it's possible that I'm an unwilling victim of indoctrination, and cannot help but think this way. I wouldn't know.
On the other hand, it's also possible that I simply believe that there is a purpose in the incredible beauty and wonder that the universe reveals to us with every discovery. I can marvel at the incredible - almost literally - elegance of a system wherein a very few fundamental particles introduced in sufficient quantity, along with (I believe) a few simple rules (which we have yet to tease out of the universe's structure, but I which I believe exist) have necessarily formed the universe as we perceive it. Not because someone tinkered to make it work, but because the very nature of the system demanded it.
To me, the universe is awe-inspring. As a programmer, I know the difficulties in setting up a complex system such that it does anything interesting whatsoever. The fact that the universe not only exists as it does, but that it has to, and that it all sprang from such a comparatively simple set of basic "settings," as it were, is humbling in the extreme. Even more impressive, to me, is that the system is complex enough to give rise to a subset of the system capable of analyzing the system itself.
And that is God. I don't appeal to God because I don't know what happened to start the universe. I appeal to God because the universe is beautiful, and it wouldn't have to be. Have you read Just Six Numbers, by any chance? If you haven't, I recommend it, it's an excellent book. Even if not, I assume you're familiar with the idea that there are a few fundamental numbers that "just are," and because of those numbers, the universe as it is exists. The fact that those numbers are what they are is equally likely to be sheer happy chance as it is to be divine intervention, as far as we are able to determine.
Personally, I prefer to thank God that the universe is than to thank an odds-against roll of the dice. But it's those sorts of things that are God - not the unknown, but the unknowable. God is the one who set the initial conditions, knowing what would result. God is the one who knows the position and vector of every particle in the universe.
God is not, in my view, and explanation for anything. He can't be. We are expected to explain the universe on our own, it's why we're reasoning creatures.
I'm rambling and disjoint, and I apologize. I'm trying to explain the ineffable...and I'm at work.
What it comes down to is that I have ultimate faith in science to explain the how of anything, given enough time. I have no faith in science to provide a why for anything, regardless of time. Science provides ever-more-accurate representations of what is. Religion, however, attempts to provide a reason for what is.
Of course, it's easy to believe that there is no reason, that it's all pure chance. But that's the point - that is a belief, and is unrelated to science. To me, the belief that creation has no reason is no m
Reality has a conservative bias: it conserves mass, energy, momentum...
Evolution, on the other hand, is a belief that information (that's what DNA is - information) has the ability to become both more complex, and more orderly over a period of time.
So, natural selection can be proven. Evolution can not. We can prove that genetic mutations occur, but we cant prove that those mutations result in the combination of increased order and complexity over time.
You said...
"That is why we still have vestigal organs like the appendix and tonsils. There are other mammals that still use those organs, but humans don't."
I'm just wondering: what are these other animals using them for? And how can you be so sure that we humans don't use them? My understanding was that the tonsils function as a part of the immune system, constantly sampling new pathogens in order to generate an immune response.
"Yes, we can still smell the pherimone, but that smell doesn't trigger that part of the brain anymore."
How can you be so sure about this? Did you know that women that live together in close quarters for long periods of time eventually share the same menstrual cycle? How do you explain that?
Biology is a real science. I can say, I have a theory, I think that cameleons skin adapt to the colour of their surroundings. I can then prove that this is true by taking 100 chameleons and observing that their skin changes color.
I can then say, their skin changes because the chemicals in their skin react to UV rays in sun (or something like that..) I can prove that by observing that the skin won't change in the absence of UV light and I can find out which chemicals are in chameleons' skin, and try an experiment to see if I can make color change on my own.
But, science stops when I say, ok, now I believe that chameleons evolved to have this ability to change color because I can not set up an experiment to prove it. I cannot observe the changes and I cannot repeat the changes. Therefore, it is not true science.
Of course, the ability to prove something is not absolutely related to its repeatability. Historical study is a prime example of that. I can't "scientifically" prove that Julius Caesar even existed. But, I can use the evidence of literature, archaeology and the like to be pretty certain about it.
So, in the case of the eye, the scientists have proven that we have certain materials in the brain that are light sensitive and that these kind of materials could have possibly, over millions of year developed into eyes. This creates a certain degree of possibility that it could have happened, but, it in no way scientifically proves that it did.
Evolution leads to local maximas, not global maximas. That's why there so many different kinds of animal. If an eye develops that works, even if in a backward way, it will tend to stay that way if there's a hard evolutionary "ditch" to get over in flipping it around (i.e. there is a global maximum nearby, but the curve goes through a dip before it gets there, so locally evolution favors not going in that direction.)
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
In other words, the Y-Chromosome ancestor was:
You are overstating the importance of the Y-chromosome "Adam" (and the mitochondrial "Eve"). Yes, our Y-chromosomes all come from one man and all our mitochondrial DNA comes from one woman... but so what? Indications are that these two people were separated by vast spans of time, and anyway: what about the rest of the genome?
Also, just because all our Y-chromosomes come from one man does NOT mean that was the only man around at the time. It just means that his lineage is the only one that survived until the present. Read this.
This happens far too often, for both religion and science. I suspect that the grandparent post was right. A lot of them would not believe, even if god came and told them so. Remember, god did that once. And his people for the most part still don't believe 2000 years later.
Laws are horrible moral guides, moral guides make even worse laws.
There is evidence of (forerunners of) Chinese civilisation leading back to about 5,000BC. There are paintings from Aboriginal Australians from between before 5000BC. Of course there is a degree of uncertainty in working at such a distance.
But let's remember, the 6000-year number was originally calculated by making correlations and educated guesses between events in the bible. The "facts" on which the calculations were based include figures living for hundreds of years, etc, etc, which no serious non-Creationist historian could suggest with a straight face. Even before modern scientific discoveries about the age of the earth the 6000-year figure was considered by theologians to be very suspect.
Creationism is very much comparable to looking for invisible pink unicorns. (Intelligent design is to pretend that we're looking for invisible equines of unspecified color, nudge nudge wink wink.) The method:
1. Assume unicorns exist. (cf, assume the world was created in 7 days from water 6000 years ago.)
2. Develop a theory, however contrived, convoluted and implausible, to reconcile existence of IPUs with one scientific fact. You can safely ignore any other facts people might raise, including volcanos, glaciers, prehistoric human remains, etc etc.
3. Profit?!?!?
Given the possibilities of either the universe being billions of years old, or some special magic time-accelerating force-field, Occam's razor slashes away the second.
If you're talking about direct radiometric dating, run the samples through an AMS and try again.
I must have left my AMS at the office, so tell me: what is that supposed to prove? Radiometric dating is a well-established technique, has a good theoretical basis, and produces results consistent with other measures.
not a dumb bunny
Not dumb, exactly; more like deluded.
There is no shortage of intelligent and well-educated cranks. I used to find this sad and confusing, but now I realize that when you consider the many thousands of PhDs in the world there are bound to be some kooks.
Newton and Tesla, amongst others, were pretty much crackpots, but they produced a few gems. Fortunately science has in the long term good mechanisms to filter the wheat from the chaff. Religion, generally relying on arguments from authority, doesn't have this mechanism.
Show me ten genuinely results developed from creationism and then I'll believe it's science. By "genuinely useful", I mean giving a credible explanation of something that could not be explained before, and that has been independently verified and accepted by mainstream science. Hey, show me one creationist paper in Nature and I'll be impressed.
If you want to go back to believing in late mediaeval superstitions, why rest at 6000 years? Why not believe that heaven is a few miles about the earth and the sun orbits suspended in a crystal sphere. At the time, some people thought these facts were clearly proved by the bible. I suppose you could make an equally contrived case that the moon landings were a materialist hoax.
No, science is not religion. But naturalism - the philosophy that states that everything can be explained in terms of the natural univers - is a psuedo-religion of sorts, and it finds particularly strong support among atheists and scientists. So you will often find proponents of naturalism using science to bolster their religious convictions, which often has the effect of blurring the distinction between science and religion.
The other is based on total ignorance and acceptance of something without questioning any of it.
As trollish as this might sound, I see this line of reasoning often repeated, so I think I should respond to it. Religion, especially Christianity, is based on both man's experiences and divine revelation. It is not merely the unquestioned acceptance of some nice fantasies. Divine revelation is truthful by definition (if it's not true, it didn't come from the one who is the truth). Contrast this with science in which axioms initially thought true can prove false with greater observation and understanding. One can never know with any degree of acceptable certainty if a scientific theory is true; one can know the observations, but continued observation could disprove earlier theories.
Now this is all fine and good when it comes to material things. Generally speaking, science provides a safe way to bet. But when it comes to things such as eternal destiny, the uncertainty of the scientific method is far from reassuring. Yes, I can trust a physicist to predict the Moon's orbit, but no, I wouldn't trust the same physicist with my eternal destiny.
Now as for man's experiences. Christianity arose from the largest body of scientific data ever assembled - namely, the Bible and the Magisterium of the Catholic Church. This body of data far exceeds that of any other discipline - God has been the subject of more study than any other subject throughout history. Nor is reason contrary to faith - in fact, it is the light of reason which causes us to believe. Anyone who disagrees would do well to read Descarte, who found a reason to believe in God without ever mentioning a Bible verse.
We do not accept Christianity without question. Every mature Christian that I've known has, at some point, questioned their belief. And we always come back to the same place - that God does exist. To think otherwise would require simply ignoring some profound evidence:
Granted, you might not be convinced of God's existence from what I've just written, but at least you should gather that religion, and Christianity in particular, is not opposed to reason. Rather, it is our faith and our reason working together which lead us to believe in God.
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