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Did Humans Evolve? No, Say Americans
Stern Thinker writes "In a 2005 poll covering 33 countries, Americans are the least likely (except for Turkish respondents) to assert that 'humans developed ... from earlier species of animals.' Iceland, meanwhile, has an 85% acceptance rating for evolution." The blurb on the site for Science magazine is less circumspect about the findings: "The acceptance of evolution is lower in the United States than in Japan or Europe, largely because of widespread fundamentalism and the politicization of science in the United States."
The current administration has been quite effective in keeping this issue in the public eye and billing it less as an issue of science and more of a threat to society. The issue has taken on the sentiment that if the concept of evolution becomes widely accepted then faith is voided and we enter moral decay (which is obviously wrong, thanks Bush). But it's definitely how a majority of Americans feel. Science threatens their faith.
Jim
http://www.runfatboy.net/ -- Exercise for the rest of us.
...the idea among Americans that humans didn't "evolve" from earlier forms of animals isn't new, and definitely hasn't changed markedly since 2000.
I'd hope that would be obvious to most people. The figures are mostly unchanged for decades, so the assertion that this is because of "widespread fundamentalism" and the "politicization of science" seems to be somewhat of a politically motivated assertion in itself.
Note that about one third of Americans reject the concept of evolution. It's unfortunate that even if people do want to have a religious or spiritual belief, they can't reconcile it with fairly firmly established scientific truth.
Further note that "fundamentalist religions", as the study refers to them as, are also not new in the United States. A lot of people would like to think that these people have sprouted up from nowhere in the last 6 years, but that's simply not the case.
...Americans reported least evolved humans on planet.
Funny how that worked.
I can't believe I'm trying to defend America's honor by pointing out that we may still be better than Burma or Pakistan. :(
there is no need to sign your posts. this isn't usenet. your username is right there above your post. stop it.
in this day and age, we're still experiencing the same thing Copernicus faced 500 years ago. Will we EVER learn a thing?
evolution is as much fact as the earth revolving around the sun. it doesn't take a genius to understand that--some basic damn education in school would help!!!
[/outrage]
Zed's dead baby. Zed's dead.
Some claim politization. I say Americans are simply observant. Take a look around in America lately, would you believe evolution?
I, for one, consider George W evidence that we some of us have evolved very little from monkeys.
What if I do the same thing, and I do get different results?
Yea yea, we suck. Who were the last people to accept Coninental Drift? Americans. We don't believe in global warming, we don't believe in evolution, but 50% still believe we found WMDs in Iraq. If we couldn't brain drain scientists from other countries, we'd probably still be living in caves.
I just don't get it. What is the deal with people never changing their minds, or letting in new information? Most people aren't stupid...I'm sure the average person in Iceland isn't any smarter than the average american (Kansas excluded). It could just be the religious thing; a lot of european social democracies are much less religious than we are. I mean, I understand we're not a pro-intellectual country, but there is a huge difference between not rhapsodising about your elite scientific tradition, and being completely averse to new knowledge.
You can't even blame it on modern schools...We have a tradition of this type of mental blindness going back more than a century.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
But, who knows...I guess I often think of something I heard someone say: "If humans evolved from apes...why are there still apes?"
Simply because evolution doesn't work that way. Just because a mutation occurs and creates a branch in the evolutionary tree, doesn't necessarily mean that the ancestor must die. A balance can be achieved among the mutated branch and the original species.
Zed's dead baby. Zed's dead.
"I guess I often think of something I heard someone say: "If humans evolved from apes...why are there still apes?"
Maybe you should think a little more.
there is no need to sign your posts. this isn't usenet. your username is right there above your post. stop it.
That's pretty shocking. That 15% of any country would not believe in evolution I mean.
because you don't know the very first thing about evolution.
humans did not evolve from apes. humans and apes evolved from a common ancestor.
apes are just as evolved as humans. evolution does not have a goal. apes are not trying to become human. everyone is just trying to survive in their environment as best as they can.
Ahh, but humans didn't evolve from apes; they shared a common ancestor (who no longer exists). Nowhere in evolution does it state we descended directly from apes, current day or otherwise.
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
I've just read Chomsky's 'Imperial Ambitions', by the way, does it show? :)
"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." -- Goethe
It's called a fork in development. Consider OpenBSD and FreeBSD.
However, apes are less mobile and are therefore do poorly on savannahs - where humans first appeared. They can't swim, so are less able to spread than the more versatile beings who split from them.
Tortoises exist because fish are really poor at climbing around on land. There are flowering trees because there are plenty of wooded areas where fires are improbable to non-existant.
Evolution is not a replacement scheme, it is a code fork where the fork is optimal for different conditions.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
The article is about the US, Japan and a whole swack of European countries (presuming that I can include Turkey as European). Okay, but what about the rest of the world?
Where is the "OK, this is lame" selection?
.. paranoid crackpot leftover from the days of Amiga.
And according to this study 64% of respondents believed that aliens have contacted humans.
Many, many people all of the world do not 'get' science. It has nothing to do with religion. This happens all over the world.
Based on upvotes, Ageism is the only "-ism" Slashdotters care about and think isn't SJW
The roughly third percent of the US population who do not believe in the evolution of humans cited themselves as proof...
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
Because apes are pretty good at being apes.
A "daughter species" doesn't necessarily kick the parent species out of its niche. That's common when the environment changes but doesn't eliminate the old environment, or when the old environment splits into to different parts. Humans evolved from tree-dwelling apes who ventured out into the encroaching grassland. That selected for apes which walked on their hind legs at the expense of prehensile feet, but the trees were still there and apes live in them to this day.
Go into an ape's niche and you'll find yourself massively out-competed. You'd make a lousy chimpanzee.
Sometimes a daughter species does compete with, and outcompete, the parent species, and drives it into extinction. We appear to be working on that pretty vigorously. In a century or so the answer to the question "Why are there still apes?" may be "There aren't." But it doesn't really change the answer: new species come all the time without destroying the old ones.
Remember that from the evolutionary point of view, humans aren't "better" than apes, any more than apes are "better" than fish or fish are "better" than amoebas. Each one fits into a niche without driving out the older species. It's only our bias that puts us on the top of an evolutionary ladder.
It's not really survival of the fittest. In fact, that which survives, survives. And when the environment changes, it stops surviving.
For the record, I'm conservative, I voted Republican in 2000 and 2004. Yes, it's all my fault, let's move on.
I'm against the idea of abortion but think it should be legal. I don't like flag burning, but I think an amendment against it is a silly idea. I don't care about gay marraige, it shouldn't be banned, but before we allow it, we need to take a careful look at all the societal and economic consequences.
All that said, I am also decidedly NON religious and think that Creationism and Intelligent Design are fairy tales for children. PLEASE do not color me and all the other conservative red stater's in with the religious right. They're not connecting with reality, and I feel bad for those people who continue to blindly follow the paths of organized religion (which has done OH SOOOO much good for the world over the last several years). <sp<sp>We don't ALL live in Je$u$land (perhaps geographically, but not mentally), and some of us choose to follow science, watch the Discovery Channel instead of Pat Robert$on, and sleep in on $unday morning rather than gathering to worship at the altar of Chri$t.
Thus endeth my rant. Thanks for listening. Go Darwin.
No, it wasn't. It was the evidence.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
Sadly some people like the taste of various primates. So far the advocates of the theories of Tastiness haven't made many inroads when it comes to having their views incorporated into general evolution however.
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
You know those jocks that beat up nerds in highschool for being "too smart"? Those jocks are running America. And you are still the nerds.
--
make install -not war
"It hasn't actually been proven, so it's not entirely ...."
All the evidence supports it, and none contradicts it: it's a very strong explanatory framework. It's been pretty much proven. It is disingenous to use shades of the definition of "theory" to get around that evolution in the common meaning is fact. And yes, those who refuse to "abandon ideas" that have long since been proven false do not deserve any sort of respect for doing this. It is not very justifiable.
Where were you when the voynix came?
You might want to provide a real link to back up that assertion. Degrading mustard gas shells from the Iran-Iraq war in the 80's do not constitute WMD, no matter how much you silly conservatives try to say differently.
Hans Blix said they didn't have them. Scott Ried said they didn't have them. And except for a long forgotten stock pile of shells, they have never been found. No nukes, no mobile weapons labs, no sarin gas missle. Nothing.
Never by hatred has hatred been appeased, only by kindness - the Buddha
I have a hard time thinking humans came from apes.
Humans did not "come from" apes. Humans are apes.
We only came from apes in the same sense that German Shepards came from dogs, something I'll hazard you don't even question.
KFG
I know it's going totally off topic, but come now. Do you have to recite that to yourself each night, to make sure you keep believing it?
So, all along in the run up to the war, you thought we'd find 500 discarded (in quantities of one or two) pre-first-Gulf-War weapons that couldn't have been fired even if someone wanted to? You were really hoping that we could launch a war resulting in the deaths of more than 2500 Americans and tens of thousands of Iraqis, in order to find what our own defense officials say no longer qualified as weapons of mass destruction? That's really what you were expecting? Man, I wish someone had clued me in...
I would refer you to Stephen Gould's article Evolution as Fact and Theory.
- and-theory.html
http://www.stephenjaygould.org/library/gould_fact
"Technology.....the knack of so arranging the world that we don't have to experience it." Max Firsch
Yeah, yeah, evolution is only a theory. So is gravity. From wikipedia:
In scientific usage, a theory does not mean an unsubstantiated guess or hunch, as it often does in other contexts. A theory is a logically self-consistent model or framework for describing the behavior of a related set of natural or social phenomena. It originates from and/or is supported by experimental evidence (see scientific method). In this sense, a theory is a systematic and formalized expression of all previous observations that is predictive, logical and testable.
If fate makes you a motorcycle, you become a motorcycle.
Each of which pre-dated the First Gulf War, and had not been maintained, making them useless for the function for which they were originally intended, the function that had us so scared that we invaded the country. They are not "partially diminished", they are "functionaly disabled non-weapons".
The claim was that Saddam had continued his WMD programs after the first war and had continued to build and maintain an arsenal. Everyone knows he had one before the first war, and that he did a bad job of accounting for them, and nobody says or said this wasn't so.
It is that claim which has been proven false, and the discovery of only old, unmaintaned, useless weapons actually reinforces the fact that the original claim was a lie.
Saddam had no working chemical weapons when we invaded, that major motivation for the war was a sham and lie, and since you actually have the facts in front of you but choose to misinterpret them this shows that of the 50% who believe it to be true you are part of the sad subset who wants to believe that it is true.
The enemies of Democracy are
It's the same magic that allows one half of a family to move to America, and the other half to stay in Europe!
See, it's not all or nothing. Evolution happens to populations. When one population becomes isolated from another population, they will evolve differently given enough time.
Probably means you've misunderstood the theory. Oh, and overlooked the amphibians, too.
Suppose there's a world in which there are fish in the sea but no vertebrates on land (the insects got there millions of years earlier, though). A fish moving towards the amphibian lifestyle has competition in the sea, but no competition on land and if it plays its cards right it can flourish. In time some of its descendants might come to live entirely on land.
Fast forward half a billion years. Now land and sea are both well stocked with life adapted to all available niches. What role now for a fish trying to make a living on the shore? Not much. Seagull bait. Between the well-adapted fishes still in the sea and the well-adapted animals on land, the intermediate has no niche.
Intermediate forms, in general, are dead. This is why so many people are out in the world digging for fossils. You wouldn't expect to see a half-fish-half-mammal in the world today, but somewhere in the past you might hope to dig up a fossil of one of the earliest vertebrates to settle on land.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
in evolution because I personally evolved from a lower life form--I used to be a Republican.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
Have you considered that perhaps it's not so much as a mental illness, but perhaps we're seeing an evolutionary split between homo sapiens that do have brains powerful enough to understand basic scientific principles, and cause/effect relationships, and homo sapiens that can't think any further than primitive "gods"? Sure, religions can certainly be defined by mental illness (talking to non-existent people/"gods"/saints/whatever, having firm beliefs in completely illogical and bizarre things, etc.).
There are evolutionary theories regarding brain capacity in primates, so is it really that far fetched to think that we have old humans, and new, more intelligent humans at this point? Sure, we won't see any specization for thousands of years, if ever, but I can definitely see where this is one trait that can and will be emphasized through breeding (I would never consider marrying and breeding a religious person, for example.)
mind people rejecting evolution.
as long as they're consistent.
In the event of a bird flu outbreak in humans, they should not ever take a vaccine or medicine for it.
There win-win.
Timang tinggi tinggi
parang sudah asah
alang alang mandi
biar sampai basah
Clearly it does. Some moron modded him informative. =P
This is the actual report saying no WMDs were found in Iraq.
Damn liberal CIA. Always twisting the truth. Gotta listen to Fox News, because, you know, they're Fair and Balanced.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
To the Methodist Church... the Scientific Methodist Church.
Eloi are stupid, throw morlocks at them!
A fine anti-Bush troll/joke, but a few facts are in order....
WASHINGTON - All year, the government has promised stepped-up testing to see if bird flu wings its way to the United States. On Monday, the Bush administration announced those tests got a hit -- but the suspect isn't the much-feared Asian strain of the virus.
In almost the same breath, Agriculture Department officials announced that routine testing had turned up the possibility of the H5N1 virus in the two swans on the shore of Michigan's Lake Erie -- but that genetic testing has ruled out the so-called highly pathogenic version that has ravaged poultry and killed at least 138 people elsewhere in the world.
"We do not believe this virus represents a risk to human health," declared Ron DeHaven, administrator of USDA's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service. "This is not the highly pathogenic avian influenza virus that has spread through much of other parts of the world."
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
Only if the environment stays the same. Ice ages come and go, and mammoths evolve and then die out. Continents drift, and what was once a unified population of species A diverges on separate landmasses into species B and C. Deserts become forests, forests become plains. Sea levels drop and suddenly life on the mainland has to compete with the dangerous killer species that used to be trapped on the island. Species have to keep adapting to the changing environment.
If the environment stays the same for a long time, though, then a species can go unchanged for millions of years. If what it has works well, why change? Some creatures - like crocodiles and sharks - are pretty much the same today as they were when they used to compete with dinosaurs. Their lifestyles haven't changed much, so on the whole they've just varied in size.
As I understand it (IANABiologist) what really gives new ideas their chance is a mass extinction. The extinction of the dinosaurs (probably a result of a bloody great meteor) gave mammals their chance to fill the vacant niches. Similar wipeouts during the time of the dinosaurs wiped out the likes of Allosaurus and Stegosaurus and left room for T. Rex and Triceratops. Suddenly the competition is dead, and there's a new opportunity for life to exploit.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
Yes, they found some old stuff, but it had decayed to the point of being usless of a weapon. It's not a weapon of mass destruction if it can't cause mass destruction.
To my mind, they're as much idolaters as any Bronze Age primitive bowing before a golden statue. Their idol isn't a graven image in stone or metal, but in paper and ink, and no less false for it. They worship the Bible, not God.
Ah, here it is: Biblical Literalism Is Idolatry.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
It's sad that this got voted "Insightful" on Slashdot... Please read the Wikipedia article on evolution and the talk.origins FAQ, they will answer your questions.
Maybe because the Science article requires a paid subscription or a one-time fee of $10.00 just to read it?
Your average non-scientist citizen is not likely to go and check all the sources to verify that, yes indeed, evolution is the most likely explanation for the diversity of species. So, to demand that this average citizen believe in evolution is to demand the same leap of faith as for that citizen to believe in creation
It seems to me the most appropriate solution to this problem is adequate science education in the public schools.
Why don't these polls include an "I don't know, I don't have time to check the facts, and it really doesn't matter in my everyday life" option? I think that would be the best response for a thinking non-scientist.
Did you read the article? These polls did include an 'I don't know' option.
I'm not religeous, at all, so perhaps I just don't get it. Why can't evolution be the process in which whatever diety you believe in produced us? For that matter, why couldn't the big bang be It's process?
Do you really think the "six days" were actually six twenty four hour periods? Couldn't it be six days as measured in some other way? Days on other planets are not 24 hours, so why would a day in Heaven (or wherever) be 24 hours? Couldn't six days actually be several billion years? Perhaps it was meant to be six awake-rest cycles but was interpreted wrong by the people who transcribed the different books of the bible.
Another point to look at is are we pets or an experiment? When you set up a cage for a pet you put everything together and you keep it that way, you keep feeding it, and you keep the cage clean. In an experiment you set the initial state and then, for the most part, you leave it to whatever it'll do. To me, the latter seems to be the case...
I'd bet that the majority of people in the US believe in what they do because of ignorance and fear or changing. I am referring to creationists and evolutionists.
Many who believe in creation do so not because they see the logic in attributing the order in nature to a designer (just as we would in any other circumstance) but because it's what their parents|churche$ taught them.
Many people who accept evolution do so not because they see evidence thereof, but rather because it is taught as the "scientific" truth. This in spite of the very good points you make, of course.
I will stick my Karma out there and agree with you. I'd add to your list a third point: the fact that nature's laws that scientists spend lifetimes unraveling show tremendous order. This implies a designer. It's not that things are too complex to understand therefore they must be miraculous. It's that in any other context when you see order and structure you credit that to a designer. Trouble is that so many in the scientific community have a religious (yes, I said it) objection to the notion of a creator. Yet, neither evolution nor creation is testable, so in that respect both are a matter of faith.
Of course, it is with good reason that many people reject the position of the churches. They persecuted Galilleo for being right but against their obviously wrong scriptural interpretations. Belief in a creator (or the genesis account, for that matter, if correctly read) does not fly in the face of scientific fact. It only flies in the face of conclusions drawn by those in the scientific community who prefer the philosophical implications of a purely naturalistic origin of life rather than accept belief in a creator.
--
WAIT! Are you modding me down simply because you disagree with me?
blah blah blah
We had a gentleman come to my university for a guest lecture about his life synthesis research...basically, he'd created from scratch a working "organism" complete with DNA and everything...Only truoble of course being, his cell was instructed just to replicate one protein over and over, and eventually it burst because he hadn't quite figured out how to make it get rid of said proteins.
Still, he'd created a working cell with DNA and protein synthesis from scratch, and he'd hand-coded it, to do what he wanted.
It's only a few (very difficult and expensive) steps from there to crafting customized fully-functional organisms that can, say, reproduce.
(yeah, I know this response is flamebait. I don't care. It needs saying.)
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
Despite how it sounds, I don't mean it racist. First of all, we didn't evolve from monkeys, apes, baboons, or anything along those lines...we evolved from a species SIMILAR to them. Which is also similar to us. So people need to stop saying that. Now that that's out of the way, I have never met a Creation-believing Christian I haven't been able to "flip" on evolution using the following logic, in a very calm manner. It works especially well if the other party is pregnant or the spouse of a pregnant woman. 0) You cannot attack the Christian's beliefs. Doing so just makes them not believe anything you say as they enter Zealot, and possibly Martyr-mode. 1) Determine the subject's race. If you want, just ask them. 2) Ask them the races of their birth parents. If they are mix-race, chances are if the first answer was "Irish-German" you'll get a response similar to "My mom is Irish, my dad is German" 3) If expecting a child, ask what race(s) their child will be. They'll probably look at you funny because you should know the answer. 4) Ask if they resemble anyone in their families, if they get any traits from another member of the family, what diseases run in the family, etc. When they answer, tell them "congratulations, you now understand the basic of genetics." This is quite possibly the toughest part of the flip, because it's not evolution that gives the Christian (well the one willing to think) reason to pause, but genetics. That genes are passed down from generation to generation, and that over time these genes mutate (which is why you asked about diseases). Simply passing your genes on is evolution on the most miniscule of scales. 5) If they're anemic, or know someone who is, this is great! Inform them of the malaryia-ridden areas of the world, and how those living in those areas evolved anemia to survive. Make sure they know that they didn't decide "crap we better become anemic or we'll all die!" but that only those in the area who weren't affected by malaryia survived, and the majority of those people were anemic, hence its existence today. That that is evolution on a tiny tiny tiny scale, but a little bit larger than simply passing your genes. Here is where we see "survival of the fittest." Make sure they know that "fittest" means "most fit to survive in the area at the time" and not "strongest"- because in this case, the inhabitants of the area got weaker to become more fit for survival. 6) Usually at this point they will realize that they agreed with evolution all along, but their church prevented them from admitting it. The thought that "God didn't make us the way we are now" is probably the largest hurdle for them to jump, but once they can see the cracks that we really aren't the same as we were when the bible was written, the fissures begin to grow. Usually they come to understand. It doesn't hurt to tell them that proof of evolution is not disproof of God. You can also inform them that nowhere in the bible does it say man and woman would always remain the same as when God made Adam and Eve. If that were the case, how come we all look so VASTLY different? Evolution shouldn't shatter their faith. I think, when properly educated on the matter while receptive to the idea, it can strengthen their faith. The real problem isn't the faith, it's the church's enforcement of it. The church, like any other institution, seeks power. And the more that is unknown, the more power they have. Faith isn't the enemy of science, but the Catholic church is damn close.
Way to go, stereotyping a nation to look stupid. I think the title could've been less offensive if, perhaps, it said, "America kills Jesus!" Of course, that doesn't have much to do with the article, but you get my drift.
--Edward Dassmesser
I call shenanigans on the Times, Science, and the pandering academics who performed this study. The graph (actual numbers have been conveniently withheld) clearly shows that an absolute majority of Americans do believe in evolution. Worse, the "best case", Iceland, has only an 85% uptake rate--it'd be one thing if it was 99% there, but a difference of less than 35% hardly strikes me as a crisis, at least not in the sense the Times clearly thinks it is. If it shows anything, it shows that people everywhere are still bound to irrational, primitive ideas. As long as even the uber-modern Scandanavians have 10% of their populations believeing in pre-rational nonsense, stop picking on America.
Media that can be recorded and distributed can be recorded and distributed.
-kfg
Many people of science have a hard time understanding why people of faith can't accept cold facts, and many people of faith aren't able to explain it. When it comes right down to it you have look at the very nature of religion to understand why there's a conflict.
Religion is a competition of story telling. Almost everything in religion is a story that someone came up to explain poorly understood phenomena. They fill in the unknown parts with a good story, and the person with the best/most interesting/most appealing story becomes the shaman, and wins the right to tell people how to live their lives. Those who are adherents to the most popular story teller get similar rights via delegation and proximity, so they have good reason to provide their story with support.
For those who are adherents to a popular story teller, science is nothing besides a competing story teller, no different than any other religion. Accepting and spreading the word of that other story teller is no better than the blasphemous suggestion that other religions have their good points, too. This results in the idea that one must dispute science as a matter of doctrine, otherwise your storyteller might lose popularity, and through that lose influence.
Kinda like what's going on now.
Wake up - the future is arriving faster than you think.
... the greater acceptance of scientific explanations of human origins among Icelanders than among Americans does not seem to hamper their simultaneous belief in the supernatural.
According to reports here, here and here, the Icelanders may just be experienced at distinguishing elves from trolls.
--- Attorneys Assisting Citizen-Soldiers & Families -
Of course *they* didn't evolved, they elected George W. Bush as President! :P
Where is that? Even here in the "godless" Silicon Valley, there are plenty of literal creationists.
Everyone is entitled to his own opinions, but not his own facts.
There's a widespread misunderstanding of evolution, mostly on the part of creationists, but even some of those who believe in evolution make this mistake.
Understand this: evolution is not a linear process from "less-evolved" to "more-evolved."
That is, just because one species evolves from another, that does not mean the new species is in some absolute sense "better." What it means is that the new species is better suited to its current environment.
If a giant asteroid hit the earth tomorrow, or some massive radition burst hit the earth, it is possible that all human and mammalian life would be wiped out, and the earth left with little more than cockroaches and bacteria.
In that scenario, humanity would be a branch that died out because it could not evolve fast enough for its changed environment. Mass extinctions have happened a number of times before in the history of the earth, with a large percentage of species being wiped out. The trilobite has no known living descendants, for example.
Cockroaches would then evolve to be better suited to this new hellish world, though I doubt you would consider them more evolved. Their evolution would be dramatically different from how they would evolve without this cataclysmic event. In the eyes of evolution, neither evolutionary pattern is better in a general sense; each one was simply better suited for the environment in which it existed.
So as for your question about humans and apes; if the apes were better suited for a particular environment, but not for others, they might split into two groups, one in the old evolutionary niche, and the other in a different environment which triggered changes in that group that led to the evolution of humanity.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
It's about time we all evolved.
It's about time we drop religion. It's obsolete. It's a remnant from another time when man looked up at the sky and didn't see planets, stars, water vaper, and atmospheric events, but instead the "hammer of Thor" or "Ra", or the "firmament of heaven."
Religion has value in society, but should be as far away from science as possible. Belief in supernatural is the quickest way to neuter the progress of mankind, and history has demonstrated this over and over, and over, and over and over.
Print this and share it among your friends (also pdf version). Stick this on your car. Let's encourage others to evolve beyond the dark ages of cowering under the rock at the angry gods that are now called "weather."
"Insightful", indeed. There's very little insight to be had in your post, I'm afraid. Be careful focusing on six words and making a generalization. To ancient folks, and to some degree modern ones, which god you identify with determines which set of rules you follow.
In many cases, "religious law" seems to have been "engineered" in a way. In other words, the reason for the law was not really religious in nature, it was pragmatic.
Examples in health:
Don't eat food XYZ. Why? Because God said so. In reality, they likely noticed that people who ate XYZ wound up getting sick or dieing of food poisoning more often. In reality, it was probably due to bacteria proliferating in certain types of food more than others. For them, it was wrath of their god. The result? Dietary laws.
Circumcision has long been protested as "pointless mutilation", which it may well be. However, there's strong evidence that circumcision may save your life if you have sex with an HIV-positive person. I think the figure I heard was that you'd have 60% better chances if circumcised, due to a lower white blood cell count at the tip of your penis (white blood cells which are directly infected by HIV). Someone will correct me, I'm sure. Did ancient people have *anecdotal* evidence that suggested circumcision would prevent certain diseases? I don't know, but for such a large percentage, it seems plausible. They didn't have microscopes, but they weren't blind or stupid. They were simply misidentifying the causes of some very real observations.
Apart from health, sociology was a big target (in fact, the stated target) of religious law. How do people treat each other? What rules define the interactions of people in a society? How do we attempt to avoid a "welfare class", "bankruptcy", a certain few owning most of the property, etc? (For just one example, think "Year of Jubilee" and imagine its economic impact).
All I'm saying is that many of the religious laws were anything but. They were laws that were a response to issues of the day. Just like today, there were lots of pointless and stupid ones -- some probably downright harmful. How do you get people to obey the laws? Threaten death, jail, etc? Sure, and they did. What's a more pleasant way to do it? Tell them their god said so. That way you don't look like the bad guy for creating rules, and, what's more, people don't think they can get away with unseen crime when an omniscient god is the judge, jury, and executioner.
So this is where people argue that "that was then, and this is now". Wrong. Human nature doesn't really change much over time. People are still basically greedy, hateful, lustful, kind, loving, and generous. They always have been, and always will be. The essence of religious law is the most time-tested way of dealing with the way we've been since we've been human. Do situations change? Would Moses have envisioned the internet and motor vehicles? No, of couse not. But he would have known what people would act like on the internet, and how they would drive. See? The *things* don't change the *people*. They just change the *object* of the desire, or the *cause* of the murdurous rage.
Insisting on monotheism was, in a way, insisting that people follow a uniform code of conduct. They didn't want their carefully constructed legal system to be polluted by outside influences, which would generally prove destructive to Jewish society.
On a more theological note, you quote the "you shall have no other gods". The actual passage is "I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; you shall have no other gods before me." (Ten Commandments)
Jewish tradition never said that there were no other "godlike" entities in the spiritual world. They just said that you shouldn't worship them in a higher precedence than the I AM. In fact, the Bible is chock full of stories about angels, demons, spirits, and precognition,
Lets say God exists.
Lets say God creates a program, in other words, our universe.
Lets say that the program has rules which handle changes in the fundimental makeup of organisms.
Lets say these changes, spread amongst a population, is what we like to call an evolution of the population, otherwise, its a mutation. (please correct me if i'm wrong)
What I'm trying to understand is why its so hard to grasp that maybe God ran the program and let it go! Sure He may be working hard to 'roll the dice', but the fact is that everything is ruled by the laws of physics which was ALSO created by God, and interestingly enough, represented by equations. God created everything, right? We created 'science' in an attempt to explain everything. I think its safe to conclude that science describes the program, which God created separate from Himself. The Bible describes God. I also think its possible to admit that one can have faith in the existance of God and also know why things happen.
Why Do You Believe in God?
Have you ever asked yourself
I mean seriously asked yourself?
Pierre Charron once noted that we are baptised or circumcised a Christian or a Jew, long before we are even aware we are a human.
Is it any wonder then that, through early indoctrination while the critical mind is still developing, we almost without exception go on to inherit the precise religion of our parents or surrounding culture?
No, of course not - its only natural. But that doesnt say much for the actual truth of that particular religion, does it?
Don't be afraid to question:
The Truth is never embarrassed by honest enquiry
150 years ago: the abolition of slavery
100 years ago: the emancipation of women
50 years ago: inter-racial marriage
Today: same-sex relationships
Why is it that the church always has to be dragged kicking and screaming (by secular outrage) towards the tolerance and compassion that, ironically, it claims to hold a monopoly on?
Morality
Contrary to what your church may have told you, atheists do not automatically turn to hedonism and anarchy. In fact, those who suggest that a man must be ethically restrained by a religion reveal, quite frankly, just how deep-seated their own morals are.
It is an easy target for the church to blame society's ills on man's inevitable shelving of the god myth. But the fact remains that there is a fraction of the immorality now than there was when the church had complete, unchallenged influence over every aspect of society.
This was a time of Crusades, Inquisitions, and witch- and heretic burnings.
It was a period known as the Dark Ages, and that they truly were both morally and intellectually.
The Ten Commandments are woefully inadequate as a moral guide:
The first four are blatant religious propaganda - basically a plug for the Hebrew God.
The remaining six are dangerously held up as exhaustive and inspired by those who apparently haven't read them. For example, one wonders how 'lying' and 'envy' make the big list of don'ts, but not rape, torture, child abuse, racism, slavery. And surely nobody still seriously believes that black and white moral guidelines are of much use in a greyscale world. &Thou shalt not kill& - but what about in genuine self-defense? &Thou shalt not bear false witness & - but what about lying to the Nazi officer who asks if you are hiding Jews? True morality requires judging each case on its own merits, not just overlaying the same clumsy morality stencil on everything.
Prayer
To the critical mind, it seems that the proportion of prayers that are specifically answered do not deviate too far from what the simple law of averages would suggest.
Having never prayed in my life, I can certainly attest to having a better than fair share of good fortune.
Regardless, what never fails to surprise me is the egotism and arrogance of the Christian who, by praying for divine favour or intervention, actually calls doubt on the very wisdom of their god!
Who told you that you were a sinner?
Your church? But wait, don't fret! There's a magic cure, and your church just happens to have it! (Of course some might suggest that your church has merely cut you in order to sell you a band-aid.....)
Did Adam and Eve sin?
They disobeyed God by eating from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil (Right and Wrong). So, yes..... Right?
Just one problem. How could Adam and Eve have been expected to comprehend the implications of their actions if, prior to their indiscretion, they had no concept of wrong, evil, punishment, suffering, pain, and death?
Even if God had been successful in adequately explaining all of these concepts and the distinction between right and wrong to them beforehand, this means that he would have had to have given them knowledge of good and evil anyway, which turns this entire story into one big ridiculous farce.
Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able?
Then he is not
your faith is weak if it cannot take on evolution without crumbling.
Maybe people should become deists if they want to believe in a god without having obvious conflicts with science. Or just live with the (very few) conflicts (by ignoring them)
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
It's understandable why many Americans don't believe in evolution -- It's because evolution only happens outside of the US.
With 1,000+ comments already down, I doubt anyone will see this. However, I have an on-topic anecdote I think is worth sharing.
The gf and I were walking on the beach yesterday when we came across a crab. We both noticed that it looked and moved like a spider, and so, wondered aloud if they (crabs and spiders) are related.
They are.
Then we sat on the beach and watched the sky turn pink as the sun set. Somewhere in the sky I saw the face of God. Of course, it wasn't a literal face, but rather, some sort of symbology that was picked up and processed somewhere in my primordial brain.
I felt loved.
I accept that God is my creator, and I accept that [S]He might have used a methodology such as evolution to create me. If God is "intelligent", it might be argued that mine is an "intelligent design"- but that is an issue for Philosophy class, not Biology class; I know of no way to objectively test this hypothesis.
But Godless science? What unmitigated nonsense! Einstein was godless? Newton was godless? It hurts my soul to see a force as powerful as God being whored to win elections. If Jesus does exist, and if he keeps a watchful eye on us (as his fanatics declare), I have to assume he is very disappointed in us right now.
barack to the future?
Yes, I am sure that stat is right. But there is one fundamental difference here: The alien believers of the world aren't passing laws equating their alien-beliefs with non-believers.
/. so much, and rightly so.
The same can not be said for evolution. Just look at what Kansas did. That's why it's on
What I don't get about all the Intelligent Design crap is that they say that there is evidence of a designer, but they only believe in the one god. The universe is so vast and complex that surely it would take at least a dozen or so REALLY brainy god-dudes to come up with all this stuff. So why aren't the god-squadders advocating a belief system based on lots of gods, all with their specific departments? They argue that there is evidence for an intelligent designer, but I've yet to see anyone put forward a case that there weren't a load of em. In fact at the moment they probably outsourced some of the work to 'gods of other religions' which leaves a lot of em unemployed, and pretty much explains why the weather's getting worse - damned out-of-work ID types too much time to play with their tornado and earthquake powers. At least Ganesh is able to scratch his own arse while he juggles - handy having all those arms, you never get bored.
Watch my YouTube atheist video blog (user NickGisburne2000) for arguments against religion
This Wikipedia page has links to dozens of specimens of various stages of human evolution. Some even with pictures! I know, I know, you might actually learn something that contradicts your small-mindedness, but it might be worth it.
This page on the Smithsonian Museum's website (I know, I know, it's a 'devil's facility', but bear with me) also has a lot of stuff on evolution, including specimens. But, again, you might actually learn something, and then your straw man would fall apart.
Follow these links with caution, Christian warrior!
It discusses such things as:
According to a leaked memo from the HR department, during his annual evaluation God was found to be a huge control freak, who doesn't work well in teams, doesn't always communicate clearly, can be a bit too harsh when meting out punishment, and perhaps worst of all, has a serious God complex. They had to let him go.
Interesting that equate "belief in creationism" to "belief in God". It's really only in America that Biblical literalism is so strong. Thus the survey results. Most other rational, but religious, people can see that much of the Bible is allegorical. One thing that the DaVinci Code, silly as it is mostly, got right is that the "scriptures" we have today are a result of centuries of selection and interpretation; not typed verbatim by God into His stone laptop.
> I've always wondered how they could have evolved from something like the sabre toothed cat.
Actually, it is the other way around. Large, saber-tooth cats evolved separately several times throughout history from different base feline stocks. The domestic house cat likely derives from similar sized wild cats: http://ds.dial.pipex.com/agarman/blackfoo.htm/
If i'm not mistaken (no sources, but I do recall reading as such a few years ago), science refuted that theory many many years before it was generally accepted to be false, but was censored by the religious powers of the day.
Ah... here's a source: http://www.imahero.com/herohistory/galileo_herohis tory.htm
And another: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo#Church_contro versy
Don't accuse science of being wrong, but then turn a blind eye to the fact that religion has actively tried to suppress scientific knowledge (based on evidence determined via scientific method), simply because it does not agree with their stories.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
Bush has evolved from apes???? WTF?
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
They're COPIES. So I'd hope they do. So what? How many of the authors witnessed anything?
That doesn't even factor in all the eye witnesses and outside (non-christian, non-jewish) historocity that validates the claims in the new testament.
Bollocks. There isn't a single contemporary document mentioning Jesus. Including the gospels, which were written at least a century after. That's irrelevant though, we were discussing Genesis. Whether Jesus existed, whether he was divine, is a whole other debate and again you try to make them the same. They're not. I can believe in Jesus' teaching (which I do) without believing in Adam and Eve.
Ahh, and where are all of the transitional forms that have lived and died over the last 30 million years?
What's a "transitional form"? Except a buzzword used by creationists who think it's a zinger. How about you explain Homo erectus, Pithecanthropus, etc.
"In fact, it is precisely because of these problems that more and more modern evolutionists are adopting a new theory known as Punctuated Equilibrium....
Who are you quoting here? Someone who creates straw men, who puts words in the mouths of evolutionists and knocks them down. If you want to debate with evolutionists, quote a real one. Better yet, actually read, say, Richard Dawkins (or for that matter, Charles Darwin; he's quite readable).
Make no mistake; America has a state sponsored religion that is indoctrinated in public schools...
Bollocks again. TFA says the US has almost the highest proportion of creationists in the whole world. You're winning. Yet you still claim persecution. If it goes on, in a century the US will be a third-world theocracy.