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Debate Over Evolution Will Soon Be History, Says Leakey
Hugh Pickens writes "According to noted paleoanthropologist Richard Leakey, sometime in the next 15 to 30 years scientific discoveries about evolution will have accelerated to the point that 'even the skeptics can accept it.' 'If you don't like the word evolution, I don't care what you call it, but life has changed. You can lay out all the fossils that have been collected and establish lineages that even a fool could work up. So the question is why, how does this happen? It's not covered by Genesis. There's no explanation for this change going back 500 million years in any book I've read from the lips of any God.' Leakey began his work searching for fossils in the mid-1960s and his team unearthed a nearly complete 1.6-million-year-old skeleton in 1984 that became known as 'Turkana Boy,' the first known early human with long legs, short arms and a tall stature. At 67, Leakey conducts research with his wife, Meave, and daughter, Louise, and the family claims to have unearthed 'much of the existing fossil evidence for human evolution.' Leakey, an atheist, insists he has no animosity toward religion."
Never underestimate the stubbornness of sheer ignorance.
+1 IDisagreeSoHeMustBeATrollOrAnAstroturferOrAShill
His fatal mistake is to assume that creationists care about evidence.
Gamertag: WyleType
The debate on evolution is evolving. *snickers*
Mr. America walk on by your schools that do not teach Mr. America walk on by the minds that won't be reached
There is a group of people who do not care about the evidence - the Bible says so, so there it is. That's not going to change just because you amass more evidence.
On the other hand, there are a group of people who believe in God who also believe evolution was the method God used to create all of the different kinds of life we see. That is not something you can prove or disprove, therefore it's not in the realm of science. In other words, you want people to keep their religions hands off science, great. Keep your scientific hands off God. They don't have to be mortal enemies.
For linux tips: http://www.linuxtipsblog.com
Meh, God just plaed all that there to test our faith... The denial will continue.
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Where some people still believe in the literal truth of Genesis
The debate over evolution should've been history a century ago.
When a segment of the population refuses to accept scientific evidence, how is more of such evidence going to convince them?
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. --Will
Let's be honest here. Even if we got our hands on Rick Berman's time machine and collected video evidence of every stage of human evolution from single-celled sludge to the "Alien Nation Reject" John Crichton, you'd STILL have the noisy nutcases "debating" it, because some 400-year-old book says it was a magic man in the sky.
If the massive load of evidence collected since Darwin wasn't enough (with ERVs being the clincher, see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TUxLR9hdorI), it will never be enough because people just shut it out.
Religion is there because it makes you feel good (if you have the ability to fall for it). However baseless, that is a tremendously powerful force in a shitty world. So, as long as people don't want to have their illusion challenged, they'll oppose it with all the denial they can muster.
Bert
As some guy said once: You can have your own opinion, but you can't have your own facts
I am not a religious person nor an evolution denier. I agree evolution happens and causes species to change over time. However, it cannot be the whole picture. The basic tenet behind evolution is that a mutation helps an organism survive better and thus is kept. How does this explain the reproductive system? Without pretty much every part of the male and female anatomy working perfectly, none of it would help an organism survive, and in fact some argument can be made that requiring a baby to be carried around and live birth to happen hurts survivability. The argument always goes along the lines of "well you're talking billions of years". So what, the length of time doesn't change the problem. Likewise I've heard descriptions of how eyes formed from light sensitive cells. If those light sensitive cells were not hooked to anything that caused the organism to survive better why would they be selected for?
Darwin was brilliant, evolution happens, but it is FAR from the whole picture.
There is a group of people who do not care about the evidence - the Bible says so, so there it is.
But what the Bible teaches is not at all inconsistent with a multibillion-year-old universe. God created the universe in six ages, figuratively called "days" in Genesis 1. Notice that nowhere does the story of creation in Genesis mention an "evening and morning" for the seventh "day", which makes the 24-hour interpretation less likely. This and other mentions of God's rest (e.g. in Hebrews) indicate that the seventh age is ongoing.
... "I hope you're right. I really do." But we know how that worked out.
Leakey is being wildly optimistic. The evidence for evolution is already overwhelming (and no, "intelligent design" is not required.) There is a large and noisy group of people who have made it very plain that they will not accept this evidence. It's an ideological issue for them, not a scientific one. And they will continue to maintain this position in the face of any new evidence that is presented to them. There's no way to win them over with appeals to logic. The only solution, AFAICT, is to continue to shower them with the mockery they so richly deserve, and hope that they're driven back to the lunatic fringe where they belong.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
I am a Christian. However, the overwhelming evidence is that the Earth is 4.6 Billion years old, life on Earth is Billions of years old and yes, my great^50000 grandfather was an ape. Yet, not matter what the evidence, there is a contigent who will ignore it. It is human nature to look at facts through the lens you wish to view it. One intelligent person I was disucssing fusion with denies that fusion was the power of the stars, saying instead that it is gravity that produces the energy of the Sun. I was dumbfounded. Even after asking why we see millions of stars with different colors and asked him how his model accounted for this, he could not answer. After asking why the Sun isn't shrinking rapidly as the equations would indicate they would have to to produce the amount of energy output of the Sun, he couldn't answer. Did his opinion change? Nope. Facts don't often change opinions.
So, no, new evidence won't change anything. From my perspective, the debate was over about 150 years ago. Now we just have yelling.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
Most "religious scientists" that I've heard about believe that either 1) God set it in motion and then let it go or 2) God set it in motion and then subtly influenced everything thereafter. Very few of them take the Bible at its most literal - God created everything 6 thousand years ago, etc.
The debate about evolution was history a century ago. I'm sure you've heard of the Scopes trial, but the public opinion shifted away from creationism towards science, and went even further with the national focus on and trust in science after Sputnik.
We've regressed. That's all there is to it.
I have developed a truly marvelous proof of this comment, which this signature is too narrow to contain.
Once there is a remotely plausible naturalistic Origin of Life scenario that actually has details and lots of steps that can be shown to be true, then the tide would turn.
If you are a naturalist, I wouldn't hold my breath waiting.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
Logic and faith don't really co-mingle well.
Well that's logical, so I can't believe it.
Some people still believe that humans rode dinosaurs to work. No amount of fossil evidence can change that kind of stupid.
Ah but those people are not politically relevant or culturally influential, other than being laughed at.
Perhaps that's the angle he's aiming at, rather than christian creationism being "owned" as a core of one political party, it'll just be an ignorant fringe belief, much like flat-earth, hollow-earth, alien-visitation, humans-and-dinosaurs living together, etc.
There will always be stupid beliefs, but this individual dumb belief might be sun setting.
Personally I think they're will be a brief burst of non-christian creationism before it sunsets in general, especially after its no longer politically relevant, but that's just a guess.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Creationists are old hands at doing all of the above but the technique is common to denialists of all shades - moon hoaxers, 9/11 truthers, anti-vaxxers, global warming deniers. The same tactics every time.
Growing up very religious in a small town, I really thought that I knew what evolution was, and why it was wrong. It seemed so silly to me that 'scientists' could believe in this conjecture,er 'theory' full of 'missing links'. Clearly it was a conspiracy by godless atheists (where I now seem to comfortably fit in) to drown out the 'Truth'.
Then at age 18 I got the internet and began to discover that I never, in fact, had ever been taught what Evolution really was. I had been taught a fantasy, an imaginary concoction that nobody actually believed in. As we all have seen, Creationists create a straw man simplification of evolutionary theory and then attack the straw man, rather than attacking the real thing.
So I set out with my newly acquired knowledge. Surely, I though, now that I know that we've only been taught a mistaken notion of what evolutionary theory is, I can convince some people. Boy oh boy was I ever wrong. The first responses I got was, quite literally, "how dare you accuse our religion of LYING to us. They wouldn't lie to us". And so forth. I learned a lot about logical fallacies. The straw man. The fallacious appeal to false authority (look, this 'scientist' says evolution is fake, therefore it is). The argument from ridicule ("Man was made from monkeys, what kind of nitwit believes that"). It was a fascinating and revealing time in my life, and the clear intellectual dishonesty I saw compelled me to change my life. Within a couple years I went from being a homophobic creationist to going out to queer parties, not because I was gay, but because I discovered many of my friends were queer, and hadn't told me for obvious reasons.
I am reminded of this Salon article talking about how social conservatives basically assign a lot of emotion and identity to their belief. They think it is rude if others challenge their beliefs, yet they desire to push their beliefs on everyone else. http://www.salon.com/2012/02/24/the_ugly_delusions_of_the_educated_conservative/
In the end, you cannot convince people who do not want to challenge their presuppositions and assertions. What will happen in the future, is that we will continue to move on and embrace exciting new advances, technologies, medicines that stem from biology, while those who do not understand it will simply be left behind.
"The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place." George Bernard Shaw
Why does this happen? We will never know. Science cannot answer that question. Science can answer how it happens and what happens, but as for why, other than the mechanism involved, which is really the how, that answer is outside the realm of science and is left to philosophers and theologians. That it happens is a given. How it happens will be come more and more clear as time goes on. Why it happens. Nobody knows and it is unprovable regardless of one's position.
Interesting article I read on that this morning (written by a climate denialist, but on the topic of a legitimate study):
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/05/29/science_and_maths_knowledge_makes_you_sceptical/
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
This universe is God's experiment in free will. Some people will show that they give a smurf about overcoming temptation to break from God's purpose. Those who do will be rewarded when the earth is rebuilt; those who do not will be destroyed.
Everyone knows the so-called "Fossils" are actually fakes put in by the creator(s) of Earth when the planet was made.
The debate of evolutionism vs. creationism will probably never end due, in a large part, to the human adversity to change. Humans have a tendency to hold on to what is familiar or what they think they can grasp and understand. Humans are a bit change adverse. The very religious and the fundamentalists will never disavow the bible, torah, koran, etc. As others have noted, new evidence will change nothing. In the end, those that produce the new evidence will be lambasted by the creationists. This is an argument that will probably never disappear, as much as we wish it would.
FTFY. No need to thank me.
HAND.
The problem is that "evolution" isn't one clearly defined topic but a bunch of closely related ones. There will be unanswered questions no matter how much we uncover and there will be (and should be) skeptics asking what those missing bits mean.
I agree 100%. The thing is the skeptics should understand that they have to provide falsifiable hypothesises, and that their model should explain the known evidence at least as well as the current theories. Personally I think that the theory of evolution by natural selection will be augmented rather than replaced. It is quite valid to ask why (for example) evolution seems to go fast at some times and then be followed by periods of stability, rather than at a steady state. To just say "it must be wrong cos the bible says so" is not a valid criticism tough.
I have all the evidence you need: just check with me later. Like next month, or the month after...
This must have been written by someone who is surrounded by like minded people and out of touch with Joe Sixpack. People watch ghost hunting shows thinking that finally this one will have some solid evidence. Gamblers laugh in the face of math and talk about patterns with zero statistical backing (I usually win on rainy days).
We have spent a long time evolving into superstitious creatures so anyone who genuinely believes in evolution should understand that unless, in the next 15 to 30 years, there is massive selective pressure against superstitious people that we will be lucky to be much more than a step or two forward. Maybe education might evolve into something better but keep in mind it is the same dolts shaping education that watch the ghost shows.
The bible was written by the men with a (limited) understanding of the known science 2000 years ago. If someone saw dinosaur bones it was a demon, and demon's are from Hell, and the bible describes demons from hell for bones of creatures not understood to have come from a lineage of millions of years of evolution that eventually became a mouse, deer or rabbit.
I think the biggest arrogance of men is in assuming they are worthy and clairvoyant enough that they could fully interpret and understand the voice of God to accurately describe it in written word. I believe that if God could actually talk to a person then I would imagine the event to be so incredibly awesome and overwhelming that our feeble brains could only absorb and understand a small fraction of his/her/it's words. The sooner people accept that the bible could never be a direct, accurate and literal transcription of God's word, and is only some feeble account of some schmuck's encounter with some heavenly force, then we could end these "debates". The bible is a moral compass, at best, and should not be interpreted as a scientific account of the history of mankind.
I like to think God made us in a way we could discover, rationalize and understand the natural world instead of holding a book in front of our faces and regurgitating verbatim the scientific ignorance from 2000 years ago.
Dismissing science and only accepting the "Written Word" as truth is an insult to the idea that God gave us a brain and didn't just make us a race of mindless zombies.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
Or, Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman were right, and it's just a sign that God has a sense of humor:
The whole first chapter* of Good Omens is on the Harper Collins website: http://www.harpercollins.com/features/pratchettBooks/excerpt.aspx?isbn=9780060853969
* I *think* that it's the intro + first chapter, as I believe the first chapter started 'It wasn't a dark and stormy night.'
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
It is flawed to believe that MORE evidence will bring about change in a group that is ignoring evidence.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
I always thought it was funny that creationists think their god created static creatures in some kind of I Dream of Jeannie special effect. Seems to imply that their deity isn't too creative or intelligent.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
There's already enough evidence that earth is >6,000 years and yet some people don't believe it. There's also enough evidence for evolution today, so I doubt the situation will change in 30 years. Perhaps things will change when we're able to create life from scratch (go Venter!) or simulate consciousness in a computer.
FIRST?
Having started involvement with FIRST over a decade ago, I would like to thank you for the OT advertising.
Most "religious scientists" that I've heard about
Most religious scientists I actually know are social members. Church is a social club, a family and group tradition. You say you believe because saying you do is a ritual, not a "real belief". Most church attending people I know are like this, not just scientists.
As long as you don't let it influence your life too much, its a fairly harmless hobby or daydream or whatever. Much like DnD or twilight books or WoW or star trek or star wars or whatever. Which is why churches stereotypically hate those things.
Its very much like the tradition of watching TV or the new tradition of "everything on facebook". Why? Well thats just what "we" do. Why don't you?
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Some people still believe that humans rode dinosaurs to work. No amount of fossil evidence can change that kind of stupid.
Captcha: detest
Nobody believes that. They believe that people *used* dinosaurs at work.
It's well known that ancient people actually rode to work in foot-powered log cars mounted on stone rollers.
...and proving there's no need to do so, most people get busy on the proof." - John Kenneth Galbraith
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
Very few (and let's face it, wacky) sects out there actually refuse to accept Darwin's theories of evolution these days, so I'm not really seeing the story here.
Let me make that clearer still: Most Christian sects have no problems with Darwin or evolution, and the largest/original sect has never formally condemned it, even back when it was new and untested. That link also is an example of it being embraced by Christianity.
Certainly, again, there are nuts who take the Bible waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too literally. But really... how many of them actually read Slashdot again? I mean, it's cool that Leakey is thinking that things will be easier to understand for the kids and all, but it's not like there's nothing really new you will ever dig up in the lineage of Homo Sapiens Sapiens that going to convince anyone not otherwise convinced by now.
So, err, what was the point of this again? Outside of allowing posters to post various bigotries in a socially acceptable manner, I'm not seeing why the story should be given anything more than just a 'oh, okay - cool.' attitude. Mod me down all you like, because I know it'll come, but seriously - Evolution is a non-issue these days.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
The Bible (the Hebrew version) basically says that the Tree was the Tree of Knowledge: all knowledge other than basic gardening was a falling away from perfection. It's part of a quite general myth that everything was better in the past when things were simpler. But if the people who pursue knowledge are damned, God has a very funny way of showing it. To the pursuers of knowledge (S)he gives long life, worldly goods, a pleasant environment and an interesting existence. To the ones who claim to be obedient to her purpose she gives funny robes and membership in the Hassidic Jewish movement, the Jehovah's Witnesses or the Taliban. The day to day evidence is that Blake was right, and the God they claim to be obeying is actually Satan.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
There was this angel who was following this man named Ben Franklin. After a long time Ben Franklin went out with a Kite and discovered Electricity. The angel was so astonished he went to God and said "God, See this man Ben Franklin Discovered Electricity" and God said "Its about time".
The Bible never preaches blind devotion, in fact if you find the greatest of those in the bible were also the most learned. Moses (court learning), Jesus (was in the temple lecturing the teachers at 12), and many others, Paul, Matthew, etc. God wants you to worship him with your mind, not just your heart and body. Those that INSIST on blind devotion are the same people that are told "Hey, I will take your money and give it to someone else and its good for you" and they believe it.
Remember: Bible is Why, Science is How.
I can program myself out of a Hello World Contest!!
I never heard anyone in my country dismiss evolution against anything else. Where I live (3rd world country, predominantly roman catholic apostolic population), everyone accepts evolution as any other thing. I cannot understand why you have such a struggle with something so obvious.
I am a devout agnostic ;)
I suspect that if there was indeed a God that spoke to men in biblical days, man's primitive culture and language would over simplify the statements. Purhaps the universe up to the point of the bible was created in 6 units of time measurement that were beyond the scope of man at that time. A perfect example that is testable today is '40 days and 40 nights'. We know that this was a common statement in biblical times to say 'a long time'. You may or may not believe the literal 40 days and 40 nights, but there is good supporting, believable evidence that the language frequently used idioms to describe time.
Very sophisticated thoughts can be described in English that simply cannot be described in Piraha for instance (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirah%C3%A3_language). Purhaps the language spoken by 'God' or 'gods' or whatever is beyond our ancestors language skills, and possibly beyond our language skills.
I do tend to be on the athiest side because I haven't seen evidence of 'God' etc etc, though I don't crusade that there can't be a God.
Which missing parts?
I love it when people handwave about "doubts" and "missing evidence", and then can't name any.
It's not covered by Genesis. There's no explanation for this change going back 500 million years in any book I've read from the lips of any God.
[6.6] Do they not consider how many a generation We have destroyed before them, whom We had established in the earth as We have not established you, and We sent the clouds pouring rain on them in abundance, and We made the rivers to flow beneath them, then We destroyed them on account of their faults and raised up after them another generation.
Guess he was reading the wrong books. And BTW God doesn't have lips, He is the Creator of lips.
The further collecting of evidence will only solidify evolution in those with open minds, not those who BELIEVE evolution is trickery, which craft or a test by their god. Remember when God had to blind Abraham, just to stop one of His vain, egotistical tests that nearly lead to the death of an innocent person? Even God couldn't reason with a scared, intellectually primitive follower; too bad so many remain and propagate their ignorance.
For the record, nowhere does the bible (yes, I've read it) implicitly deny the idea of evolution, God simply doesn't bother to explain the laws of nature (to include math) to a bunch of sheep herders; like make sure your pork is cooked well done to kill the harmful stuff. If you can't accept evolution, then tell me how rain is made using only the word of God to refute science.
They really really really don't like being directly contradicted.
I know a lot of people are contemptuous of religions or the concept of religion. They think the right idea is to spurn these people and just force them to accept the facts or be ostracized. Unfortunately that isn't possible and that isn't a very wise solution. Religions are powerful, common throughout the world, and very capable of controlling human belief. Going into direct conflict with them isn't in our interest since it mostly wastes time and doesn't accomplish much.
Bare with me here. An alternate solution would be offering the religions a loophole. Some ideological wiggle room that lets them keep beliefs they'd literally die to protect and allow them hold scientifically accurate positions.
What the quote said about "if you don't want to call it evolution"... that is actually a very important concession. It sounds stupid that a name would matter, but to the religions it matters a lot.
Consider the difference between a civil union and a marriage. They're literally the same thing in almost every respect but the religions organizations have a special problem with homosexual marriage. Why is that?
The word marriage means something to the religions organizations that it does not mean to other people. In some senses we're not speaking the same language.
In most cases, we could probably compromise by giving everyone a comparable third option that uses a different term.
For example, call evolution something else but have it represent all the same scientific concepts. And this time be very careful about massaging the religious groups into seeing that it isn't a threat to their world view. It's not that hard. They don't want to fight. They just don't want to give ground. Tell them how they can hold their positions without conflicting with science and they'll accept it.
That goes for all the other stuff as well. The religious groups in general don't have a problem with people getting civil unions. So what if everyone got civil unions and we left "marriage" up to private organizations to handle. Marriage would then have no legal meaning where as the civil union would stand in for all the same legal institutions. The religious groups could decide who they think is married or not and none of that would matter to the law.
We either try to find compromises or we're just going to keep peeing into each other's drinking water.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
I don't think there are many supporters of punctuated equilibrium left any more. Your point is probably 15 years out of date. In particular, claims about the Cambrian "explosion" have been steadily chipped at for over half a century, and the notion of that the pre-Cambrian was full of dull, static species has been debunked.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
I think we can safely say that a probability so low that it's below one divided by the sum over the quantum descriptions of all the particles in the Universe is indistinguishable from zero. And that anybody who predicated their beliefs and behaviour on the idea that that probability should be taken into account in determining anything useful - is indeed a crackpot.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Actually, it was my understanding that the Hebrew word that is translated into English as "day" in Genesis 1 is
...the word yôm (Strong's H3117).
the same word that is used to refer to the period of time from sunset until the following sunset.
Among other meanings. It can also refer to an indefinite period, much as English day can. Compare English "one of these days", "back in the day", etc. It has similar metaphorical meaning in Hebrew, and what is described as happening on some creative "days" cannot happen in 24 hours. See also Genesis 2:4, where Moses refers to the six creative "days" as one "day", and 2 Peter 3:8, where Peter compares God's concept of a "day" to a millennium to indicate that God operates on a different timescale from humans.
is a top-ranking Christian university which promotes a correct scientific understanding of evolution. They recently opened an Evolution Education Research Center in conjunction with Harvard and McGill.
Pepperdine University and Wheaton College are two other prominent Christian colleges which teach evolution.
Sites such as http://truecreation.info/ http://theistic-evolution.org/ and http://biologos.org/ illustrate that there are Christians out there who have reconciled faith and science.
Sounds good, right?
That said, I still believe that the problem won't go away any time soon. Why? Power and money. The organizations behind the modern-day creationism movement (Institute for Creation Research, Answers in Genesis, Creation Science Evangelism, and The Discovery Institute) are multimillion-dollar Christian textbook publishing houses -- or they supply the "science" for other homeschool textbook publishing houses.
Even when it lands them in jail for tax evasion, they have a cult-like following:
http://freehovind.com/
As much as it seems like they're a united front, they love to criticize and sue each other:
http://www.icr.org/article/intelligent-design-or-scientific-creationism/
Legal controversy between AiG and CMI
It's not about the individual believer anymore. It's not about worldviews. It's not even about the churches! It's about the money-driven organizations that are feeding them. They've sucked people in using slick propaganda, books and Web sites, and encourage people to not just teach this stuff, but to teach other people to teach this stuff.
In short, it's not any different from any modern political movement.
https://xkcd.com/258/
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
This isn't just a Christian-head-in-the-sand issue. There are an embarrassing number of people who share my faith that think that the Sun revolves around the Earth just because Maimonides said something to that effect over 800 years ago. On top of that, you have: Birther, Bigfoot, ghosts, the Loc Ness monster, the connection between autism and vaccination. The list goes on and on. Faith is a powerful thing.
This has been debated for over one hundred years. No amount of discoveries will resolve it because evidence is sort of tangential to the argument anyway. It's a bit like the joke that 2012 will be the year of the Linux desktop. Will 2030 be the year of Evolution?
It's actually pretty inconvenient for observant Jews living in Northern Europe or Canada because the sun sets so early in winter.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Most "religious scientists" that I've heard about believe that either 1) God set it in motion and then let it go or 2) God set it in motion and then subtly influenced everything thereafter. Very few of them take the Bible at its most literal - God created everything 6 thousand years ago, etc.
No scientist, religious or otherwise takes the bible literally. You have to remember that even that Catholic Church (Latin and Eastern), the Orthodox Church and the Anglican Communion all except evolution. It is only a small minority group of "Christians" who take the story of creation literally instead of how it was meant to be: As an explanation to a primitive people on how they go there. Not as a scientific discourse.
As I mentioned in another post, the Bible also talks about the four corners of the world, but fundamentalist Christians who believe the world is only 6,000 years old, accept that it is round instead of square. So, if one part can be an allegory, why can't another?
And then the Christians burned all the pagans and scientists.
Incidentally the Wikipedia article amused me. While superficially even handed it contains this line:
The problem, of course, only exists in the minds of people who want it to be God-inspired. To anybody else there is no problem: there isn't one.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Not everybody calling himself a Christian is actually following Christ. (Matthew 7:21) Jesus never told anybody to spread the message of the Kingdom of God by the sword, to my knowledge. The first-century church didn't use force either.
The people who interpret the books literally and ignore reason, they look at the world as simply about being a good believer. They're extreme and can be usually ignored. They're also who people tend to think of when they think of "creationists". Let me ignore them here for now, as I don't live in USA so don't have them making laws and stuff. Sorry USA, that's your problem, sorta like Iran.
Then there's the people who within reason, wonder, gee, the universe is "creating" all this new stuff, how does that work?
And here you have two sorts of "answers".
First there's the idea that pure randomness combined with having to survive in the environment, has generated life.
Then there's the idea that, um, no, pure randomness alone is not enough, even with natural selection weeding out the failures. Within reason, some people wonder that, somehow, there's additional physical mechanisms going on that we haven't detected, which are somehow generating better solutions.
Both sides would agree that evolution has happened. But whether randomness+selection is enough all on its own to account for all the life that's appeared, is a question, and it is here that it becomes more controversial, because many maintain that randomness+selection is enough, even though they can't actually prove that by running a universe forward on this principle. It sorta just becomes an opinion that's strongly held.
Part of the reason that it becomes such a strong opinion is that many reasonably feel that if you let in the idea that randomness+selection on its own isn't enough, then you open the door to the fundamentalist extremist irrational people who simply believe books literally. Well that is a problem. But so is figuring out how life works. And if there are additional mechanisms going on –– mutations are not random -- and after all, a ball doesn't bounce randomly, it obeys physical laws -- maybe there are laws governing what's created that somehow make it already predisposed to be adapted to the environment. Whatever. IANAB but as I say, who can prove it has to be random?
Any evidence that there is a "why"?
Bert
Why would a "God" need to perform an experiment, when He already knows the outcome?
For the same reason a freshman chemistry lab instructor does. God knows that Satan is wrong, but Satan is being given a chance to have it his way so that people can ultimately realize just how wrong Satan is.
"There's no explanation for this change going back 500 million years in any book I've read from the lips of any God."
Jesus said, "When you see your likeness, you are pleased. But when you see your images which came into being before you, and which neither die not become manifest, how much you will have to bear!"
Jesus said, "Blessed is the lion which becomes man when consumed by man; and cursed is the man whom the lion consumes, and the lion becomes man."
--Gospel of Thomas
There you go.
The metaphor-challenged may not "see it", and if not, that's how it should be, and Darwin will take care of you just fine.
Once again, though, the majority of theistic stances have no problem with "evolution occurs", and this False Dichotomy is getting old.
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
We should all take a look at how estimates of the earth's age http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_the_Earth and go from there. Notice how scientists started with estimates of up to 100's of millions of years without a shred of evidence? They were based on "models" and current estimates are also based on assumptions and models. They are based on meteorite samples which were being bombarded with a lot more cosmic radiation than what we would see on earth which would throw off any estimates based on radioactive decay significantly. There is also the concern about how most models assume that the moon and earth formed around the same time and yet the moon appears to be much younger than previously thought.
Most people don't have a problem with classical science and the scientific method but they do have a problem with the apparent "moving of goal posts" that seems to be happening with regularity in modern science.
There is nothing wrong with adjusting your view point but fudging the numbers by adding new variables such as "dark matter" and "dark energy" should not be allowed. You should be forced to create a new model if they existing one does not work. In any other field, you are forced to go back to the drawing board. A lot of people see "dark matter" and "dark energy" as nothing more than a more scientific for names for invisible pink unicorns and fairy dust.
Why do people on the internet believe scientist without question? They are human beings first and scientists second which means that they can lie and cheat like anyone else. They are not beyond reproach.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
God wants all people to come to him, but he also knows that some people will choose Satan no matter what. God is fair to all, even to Satan. Converting people by force wouldn't give Satan a fair chance to have things his way. God is also fair to humans caught in the crossfire, which is why he sent his perfect son to be executed as a payment for our resurrection.
the "debate" has been over for at least 70 years. The US is really a crass outlier and only comparable to Islamic or strongly underdeveloped Christian countries in that regard.
Sometimes people cannot accept we don't live in a world of their design
And other people choose to accept the world that is fed to them by the mainstream media, the government, and popular opinion. It requires no effort, and does not upset their existence. Otherwise, of course, there'd be a responsibility to do something about it.
Whether they overcome the temptations of not is entirely dependent on the circumstances of the person's life, which is all planned by God.
God doesn't cause the evil even if he allows Satan to cause the evil. See the book of Job.
Evolution does not explain how life came into being.
Actually it might if you take into account the fact that all living things are simply a collection of chemicals. Living things are chemical reactions so it stands to reason that non-living things might evolve into living things. It's just chemistry. The distinction between living and non-living is a rather arbitrary one. Living things can become non-living. No reason to assume it can't work the other direction as well.
Ah but those people are not politically relevant or culturally influential, other than being laughed at.
The 40% of the population of the USA who believe in literal creationism are not politically relevant?
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
Why does this happen? We will never know.
Incorrect - evolution (or adaptation, as it is also commonly referred as) occurs because of changes in the biome in which an organism lives. As the number one goal of all life is to continue living (procreation being a close #2), it is not an unreasonable proposition that the genetics of living things are programmed to allow for changes and 'upgrades' to the design of said living things to account for alterations in biome conditions.
Put quite simply, the "why" of evolution is that living change to survive changes in the world around us. That by no means proves or disproves the existence of a higher power, but rather is a statement of fact.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Lets see if you can reply without bias, or better, just stop and think.
I'm not going to go on a pro-Religion campaign, since frankly I'm not fond of many Religions. With that said, Science can not answer the base question, and neither side can prove it. So you have speculation verses speculation. Atheists, just like named Religions, refuse to look any further than their own arguments which do nothing to answer the fundamental question.
Evolution does not disprove an intelligent design, and the big bang does not disprove a creator. What I think those arguments do is show that many Religions have some things incorrect. But the base argument of a creator can not be disproved, and logic always takes you to a creator.
Before you go there, remember that a multi-verse or parallel universes just confuse the base question. They don't answer it at all.
We look at how everything works in the Universe and we see that everything relates to cause and effect. Then when you say "What caused it all to start moving" the Atheists go in to a rage. At least the Religions just point to a book and say "that" instead of the Atheist's reaction of "it doesn't matter" or "la la la I'm not listening to you".
I'm not asking you to change your opinion, but rather pay attention to the bias. We live in a society brainwashed not to think about the question, and hate people that do think about it. That should frighten you!
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
If you want to understand the mindset of people who don't understand evolution, look no further than the anti global warming crowd, which makes up a surprisingly large subset of the Slashdot community.
You might even be one of them.
It's exactly the same kind of mentality. People really don't want to believe in global warming, because they know full well that if it's true, then they are a) fucked, and if they are American, then b) it's probably mostly their fault. It's so much easier to just latch onto some soundbite from a shill on TV paid by an energy company than to... urgh... study the science. It's a choice between an unpleasant effort to find out something negative about themselves, versus zero effort to stay blissfully ignorant. You can tell that some less-bright people actually love it. They can smugly throw memorized quotes at their better educated peers like "It's just a sun cycle, didn't you know!". For once in their lives, they feel superior, like they know something those geeky eggheads don't. It's a good feeling, and the man in the expensive suit on TV agrees!
Religion and evolution is the same type of thinking. They don't want to know anything about evolution, because it directly discredits their holy book, starting with page one of chapter one! This is a book that gives them the same comfortable feeling of smug superiority over those "blasphemers" that unfortunately can no longer be stoned to death legally. Theists believe that they're the chosen people: the blessed ones that will get to go to heaven. Why on earth would they ever go out of their way and learn something about the science of evolution, when the only two possible results of that are that: a) they were right all along and now they've just wasted a bunch of their time learning about this filthy secular science stuff they hated so much when they were in school, or b) they were wrong all along and their entire life was based on a bunch of bullshit, and hence they aren't the special chosen people, and won't get to go to heaven.
This isn't a question of fossils, or DNA, or charts of CO2 absorption spectra. The same people will believe scientific evidence on other topics just fine. The problem is that to trying to convince these people of global warming or evolution is also in effect an attempt to convince them that they're bad people. This is an entirely different ball game, and is essentially insurmountable until their belief in the scientific truth will no longer have this effect on their self-perception.
Global warming will be popularly accepted after fossils fuels run out -- nobody will have a vested interest either way at that point, and the evidence will be lapping at their ankles. I suspect that even if several American cities are reclaimed by the rising waters, that still won't be enough to convince some people if fossil fuels are available and cheap at the time.
Evolution will be accepted after Abrahamic religions die out, or adapt and change to the point of unrecognizability -- we've had overwhelming evidence for evolution for what, 150 years? Has that been enough? Not even close. We've had germ theory for less than that, and everybody believes it. The atomic theory of matter is even more recent, but good luck finding an educated disbeliever. No, you'll find that evolution is special, because it contradicts the Torah, the Bible, and the Qur'an. It won't be commonly believed until the common people no longer have faith in something that contradicts it.
You know, I've heard that argument before. The premise being that god placed all this evidence here to test our faith. And you know what? It's a load of crap.
I agree with you. I agree with you that a loving God would not plant a false fossil record to test us. In fact, the fossil record is entirely consistent with a day-age interpretation of Genesis 1. I was referring to temptation in the sense of the opportunity to choose to sin, that is, to choose to be inconsiderate to each other.
Why would he build this entire universe just for us when we probably have no hope of ever reaching even the nearest star? It makes no sense!
Yeah, it would be an awful waste of space, like in the film Contact. I haven't seen anything in the Bible that rules out God creating man on multiple class M planets but spacing them far enough apart that they couldn't reach another civilization's space. I wrote more about that hypothesis here.
Why would he need to constantly test our faith?
Why would automated test suites need to constantly test code that we know works?
You can also say "back in my father's day, things were so and so". Day indicates a period of 24 hours (modern), or from sunset to the next sunset, or whatever other 24 hr mark you choose. But it can also be used to signify an era.
The parent poster is correct, "day" as used in Genesis signifies a period of time, but not a specific period of time (such as 24 hours, or 1000 years) - it could be any length of time.
There is already so much evidence that the people who don't accept evolution should not be called skeptics. They are deniers.
The fossil record can't show a smooth transition because not everything fossilizes and very small fossils like mice etc. are very hard to find/identify, which is why the hunt continues. It's not convenient by any means.
Extinction events, by their nature, can wipe out even the most fit species, leaving a distinctly new evolutionary path for PREVIOUSLY less fit organisms on a global scale.
One of the marvels of science is the ability to fix mistakes and move on, instead of never eating bacon.
To see evolution in action read this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pepper_moth#Evolution/
Any other "creative" ideas you'd like to vomit my way?
what a great load of bollocks from a troll
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
While some believe the good book is 100% accurate and contains no flaws from copying, translating and retelling the stories for countless years and generations, I believe that some error is in there.
If you simply move the creation of birds to after calling for the animals to land, you've pretty much got the evolutionary chain:
1. Sealife
2. Makes its way to land
3. Takes flight
4. Mankind appears
So we mess up the order and all of a sudden fundies can't accept evolution. Right that wrong and it's really not that hard to imagine that evolution is a divine and guided process. Of course, it's not that hard to imagine it isn't :)
"I'm not against faith" - why not? its complete crap.
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
You are so right...
I rather believe in God: he loves me soooo much. But if i sidestep only a little, there's hell to pay. Forgiving is not his best vice. Neither is his sense of humor.
Evolution is a topic of interest mainly to people who would like to promote bigotry against religious people. How often does it get brought up in any other context?
Religious folks rarely (if ever) bring it up. There are widely varying opinions on the topic among religious folks, but few consider it imminently important to their day to day lives.
I generally tow the Slashdot line, but this is one of the topics where I definitely disagree with the Slashdot norm. Since those siding with Leakey are well represented, I thought I would provide some perspective from the other side: those who believe in a literal seven day creation account. I'll also preface this by saying that I do not, of course, speak for anyone but myself.
I agree that there is mounting evidence in favor of evolution. And I know faith is not popular around here, but I maintain a faith that there is an alternative explanation for why this evidence seems to be pointing towards evolution (I won't bore you with repeating ideas you've surely heard before). I strongly believe that science can account for everything natural in the world, but I also believe that any attempts to explain things in a manner contrary to the Bible will eventually be demonstrated to be incorrect. In the case of evolution, I believe that science itself will eventually provide an alternative explanation. It's a simple faith in that idea, nothing more, nothing less.
To draw a quick comparison, I find this topic rather similar to when historians doubted the existence or scale of the Hittites. While frequently mentioned in the Old Testament, no archaeological evidence for their allegedly vast empire seemed to exist. It wasn't until the late 19th century that a series of discoveries eventually demonstrated that their empire did in fact cover most of Asia Minor at one time. While evolution is the prevailing belief today, I have faith that it will be disproved in time, just as the skeptical historians were disproved.
I also agree with those of you saying that the evidence will do little to convince people such as myself. There will certainly be many who are persuaded. As you may have seen in some of the comments here, there are a growing number of people who believe that the Genesis account of creation can be reconciled with evolution (typically this involves accepting that each of the seven "days" actually meant something longer than a 24 hour day). I cordially disagree with them, but I cannot deny that the idea is gaining traction in many circles. For those such as myself, while I rely on science regularly and enjoy it immensely, there are certain areas where I simply take it on faith that the current prevailing ideas incorrect. There aren't many of those areas, but evolution as the origin of life is one of them.
Anyway, all I sought to do here was represent the other side so you could see how someone who likes to think of themselves as rational can possibly disagree. I'm not interested in getting drawn into a debate or lengthy discussion, and I fully anticipate either being downmodded as a troll or else swamped with more comments in disagreement with me than I can manage. That said, I will take the time to read through any responses, whether critical or not.
Natural Selection is a mechanism that results in Evolution. Though they are related, the debate over Evolution is very different from the debate over Natural Selection in a religion vs. science context. I think that both sides tend to forget this in their enthusiasm.
www.DIYTVAntennas.com
Too bad 90% of the criticism expressed here in these comments are all fluff and biased anger. When you say evolution is already proven please give a reference to such evidence. I'm ready and willing to listen. If you don't have undeniable scientific proof of evolution then stop putting down those who scientifically doubt your claims. I don't believe what I believe because I refuse to see any evidence. I believe what I do about evolution because I see EVIDENCE that no evolution-supporting fossil record exists.
Ironically, Occam's Razor is basically rejected by today's "bible-believing" Christians (this is ironic because the man after whom Occam's Razor is named was a bible believer himself). They will jump through as many hoops as necessary to justify their belief. A typical example is the approach to the issue of why the bible describes a circular object that is 30 units around and 10 units across; all sorts of convoluted answers are given, ranging from "well the 10 units were for the inside, and the 30 units were for the outside" to claims that by analyzing the letters in the original Hebrew passage, you can find hundreds of digits of Pi. At no point are they willing to accept the simplest answer: the authors of that passage were not mathematicians.
Palm trees and 8
Is a time machine. If people could go back and look at the past (and not just the distant past, but anytime between 20 minutes ago to millions of years ago), then disbelieving in evolution would be as silly as believing that the earth is flat (and too a lesser extent the moon landing) today. You have to see it too believe it, and it has to
That being said, I still know people who think that sperm come from the back side between the hip and the ribs (as is written in the Koran).
You can lead a horse to water but you can't make him think.
Your naive trust in the power of the human mind to overcome ignorance with nothing but evidence is rather cute.
Wrong. But cute.
The evidence of history does not support your conclusion.
At no point are they willing to accept the simplest answer: the authors of that passage were not mathematicians.
That's because they know full well that if they ever hint that the Bible (and other religious texts) are not the "literal word of God" but were in fact written by an assortment of priests and clerics of varying knowledge and ability, some almost certainly with self-serving agendas to boot ... then the whole house of cards collapses around them.
Don't you wish you hadn't wasted 3 seconds of your life reading this sig?
Actually, the agreement between our current scientific understanding of evolution of life and the Book of Genesis is pretty good considering that Genesis was written 4,000 years ago by several uneducated authors who had likely never traveled more than a few miles from their home village and were relying on even earlier oral traditions. The creation sequence described in Genesis is 1) light, 2) Earth's rotation to provide day and night, 3) dry land on the Earth, 4) plants and vegetation, 5) moon and sun to mark night and day, 6) fishes and birds, 7) mammals and all kinds of terrestial creatures, 8) Man. Our current scientific understanding of the evolution of life is 1) big bang to create all space, time, and mass, 2) stars form, 3) pre-earth forms, 4) moon forms from impact of planet with pre-earth, 5) oceans condense, 6) early life, both photosynthetic and non-photosynthetic, arrives in ocean and on whatever 'land' exists in warm earth with no polar ice, 7) life evolves in oceans to more complex multi-cellular forms, invertebrates, and then vertebrates (fishes), 8) More dry land forms and life forms colonize it, 9) mammals, 10) man. The key thing is that both creation accounts rely on a sequence of events arising from creation out of nothing at all which is counter-intuitive to our imagination working alone. If you put most of us down in a little village 4,000 years ago and asked us to describe creation, we would likely either say 'it's always been this way,' or 'the gods formed everything from the raw materials at hand.'
What's so bad about describing an object as roughly 10 units across and 30 units around? It certainly isn't exact but it's not too bad if you're just approximating for story telling purposes.
There's already overwhelming scientific evidence for evolution. The people who don't believe in evolution will not believe in evolution no matter what evidence you show them. They're either idiots, religious fundamentalists or those who stand to gain by deceiving the latter two groups. Move along.
You can take any "why" answer and use it as a "how" answer. If you're going to do that to science then you have to do it with everything and there is no why.
Why is there something rather than nothing?
Because there was a quantum fluctuation of the right size that kicked off the big bang, etc.
Because God wished there to be something and created the world.
But those are just the how! WHY was there a quantum fluctuation? WHY did God wish there to be something?
Did you never play the why game to irritate your parents?
In case you're too busy reading your bible I've mostly re-posted this just for you.
The fossil record can't show a smooth transition because not everything fossilizes (MOST don't) and very small fossils like mice etc. are very hard to find/identify, which is why the hunt continues. Do you really expect man to excavate the whole of earth and find most fossils?
Extinction events, by their nature, can wipe out even the most fit species, leaving a distinctly new evolutionary path for PREVIOUSLY less fit organisms on a global scale.
One of the marvels of science is the ability to fix mistakes and move on, instead of never eating bacon.
To see evolution in action read this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pepper_moth#Evolution/ [wikipedia.org]
Any other "creative" ideas you'd like to vomit my way?
What is this business of "despising" Creationists regarding their delight about the absence of transitional intermediates? If one is pursuing a scientific course, who cares what everyone ranging from Fundamentalist Christians to the Hare Krishnas believe or say on the subject? And yes, the Hare Krishna movement has its own religiously inspired spin on Evolution -- I came across a book once that had some kind of desire to prove the modern human race (not just earlier Homo and Australopithicans) to go back millions of years to fit in with Hindu scriptures regarding recurrent cycles.
Purely from a scientific standpoint, the Cambrian explosion, abiogenesis, even the transition from Procaryote to Eucaryote forms still require a lot of 'splainin, and there is probably more to the Cambrian explosion than some mystery process of why fossils don't last longer than 600 million years, and there are intriguing interpretation of the Edicaran fossils has being primitive forms or a dead end where things started from fresh in the Cambrian. These are all legitimate and open questions, and if some people are going "See, see you Evolutionists are all wrong!", I mean, like who cares?
I hope Frank T. Lofaro Sr. is ashamed of you
Would you like a slice of toast?
To give credit so some of the religious, it is hard to take off the training wheels when science cannot prove there is a reason not to harm others in society without getting caught. A huge portion of society believes that, atheist and worshippers alike, that the key is not what you do but not getting caught. Evolution at this point seems to back them up, and that is why a lot of people are not willing to let go of a few thousand years of morality based on faith. Calling them stupid when we don't have a moral system capable of replacing it, or calling ourselves "more intelligent" than the avowed believers, or even more intelligent than the hypocrites, lacks any prima facia proof. I know plenty of smart religious people.
Gently reply
Who is God's most valuable employee?
Satan.
Obviously still in the old man's employ, otherwise he would have setup a paradise to reward those who turned against the Big Beard, not inflict endless agony on (only!) those who didn't tow the party line.
There is plenty of silliness in the Abrahamic religions (just like all the rest), but this flaw shows up before you can even utter 'In the beginning...'
Scientific response to a single failure: Well, that theory is now known and proven wrong and should be trashed and try a new theory
Religious response to a single failure: Well, our domain merely shrinks to "everything other than this single failure" we're still correct!
Find one verified and provable example where, perhaps, general relativity doesn't "work" and its "wrong" and try another approach. Therefore find one example where a religion doesn't work that means its "wrong" and try something else.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Well, as anti-democratic as it sounds to express a heresy like this, "no".
If 90% of the population doesn't want another war, or a bank bailout, its gonna happen anyway if the campaign donors and political hacks want it, as recently proven. A mere 40% of the population has no control over the nation or our politics or our culture.
The people who are politically relevant and culturally influential are the guys donating millions to election campaigns, the party hacks who organize campaigns and advertising and conventions, network news directors, etc...
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
science doesn't deal in Truth, and its viewpoints and theories change with time.
Wrong. Science deals with levels of truth, approaching towards a slightly truer truth as time passes.
Somebody much more eloquent than myself already explained this in The Relativity of Wrong, by Isaac Asimov.
Many people who are hard-line creationists (or generally anything hard-line-faith) use their influence for more than just religion. By preaching "faith without question" people can identify those that are easily manipulated and abuse them for whatever alternative motives they want and justify it with mystery.
Most of the suicide pacts, cults, terrorist groups, and dictators operate on the same premise: Blind faith, fear, and promises of a better life (in this life or the next).
Some elected officials on both sides of the issues try to use the same tactics and thankfully it doesnt always work.
Especially when it comes to the wilfully foolish, which you have to be in order to be a fundamentalist of any stripe. If a person had made the decision to lie to themselves to be more comfortable, there's really not much you can do.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
The reason the Cambrian stands out is that it's the first period that saw widespread hard body parts that actually had a decent chance of fossilizing. And we even have some good reasons for the morphological variation seen.
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
"You can lay out all the fossils that have been collected and establish lineages that even a fool could work up."
What an unfortunately ironic choice of words, as I do believe Mr. Leakey has already worked up the lineage.
It is unfortunate that people use hostile labeling for creationists since it makes it harder for everyone to think clearly. I grew up believing as you. But the evidence for an old earth and evolution of species became so clear that I abandoned Young Earth Creationism. The evidence is really not circular. For the full story about how radiometric dating works, check out the essays linked at : http://www.indiana.edu/~ensiweb/evid.anc.earth.pdf For a more complete account of why many Christians find the evidence for evolution compelling see: http://biologos.org/ And let's be clear that this is not about the origin of the universe. Or even the origin of life. The point that is overwhelmingly obvious from the data is that life has become more complex on earth over the last few billion years.
Newtonian physics was unshakable until Einstein disproved it.
Evolutionists should be deemed anti-creationists (aka anti-religion) and ignore evidence disproving evolution as they claim religious persons ignore supporting evidence. But the hypocrisy is all one-sided. Evolutionists claim there is "all this proof" in support of their case when actually the opposite is ocurring. Take for example (credit attributed below):
1. Sudden emergence of new species out of nowhere, fully complete with all their characteristics and not changing over time. "...the infinitude of connecting links has still not been discovered and the fossil record is about as discontinuous as it was when Darwin was writing the Origin." - Michael Denton, "Evolution: A Theory in Crisis"
2. Computers have shown that the neat evolutionary trees that get drawn up are in fact based on imaginary relations of similarity and difference that owe more to the human mind's tendency to perceive patterns than to the raw biological data.
3. Many putative The order of nucleotides in a DNA or RNA molecule, or the order of amino acids in a protein molecule.sequences which look logical based on the progression of one set of anatomical characteristics suddenly look illogical when attention is switched to another set. For example, the lungfish superficially seems to make a good intermediate between fish and amphibian, until one examines the rest of its internal organs, which are not intermediate in character, nor are the ways in which its eggs develop.
4. ...the evolution of present-day organisms from their supposed ancestors are in fact highly conjectural if not downright false. ... And even the emergence of one species from another has never been directly observed by science.
5. ...(Evolution) remains incapable of explaining how anything could evolve that doesn't make biological sense when incomplete. The wings of birds are the classic example: what good is half of one?
6. It was hoped that a thorough cross-species comparison of these (organic compounds) would reveal the kinds of relationships of graded similarity that evolution implies. But it hasn't. Instead, it has given the same picture of distinct species that examination of gross anatomy does.
7. The data used to support evolution are neither experiments nor repeatable, nor can they be, since the origin of species on earth was a unique event.
Robert Locke
"The Scientific Case Against Evolution"
http://www.godandscience.org/evolution/locke.html
We don't know scientifically what caused the universe to come into being. Evolution says nothing at all about that subject. You would be well served to look at the evidence rather than claiming that a very difficult question about philosophy of beginnings must be answered first. We don't even know how the first living things came into being. But we know with great precision that there has been a sequence of increasingly complex organisms living on earth over the past few billion years. There is really no serious debate about that. Biological evolution is an highly successful explanation that unites many pieces of our observations about the history of life on earth and about the genomes of living creatures.
Most Christians I know don't accept a 6000 year old Earth.
Long Day Theory.
When you're looking at a point where science and Christianity disagree, most likely it is bad theology on the part of the Christian. God loves you. Jesus is LORD. I know.
God spoke to me
Are you trying to argue for dualism, or for the utility of the Big Lie (ie. it may be false, but it makes me feel okay).
And if you think me claiming "Ten thousand invisible faeries command your mind" is the equivalent of "Your mind is made up of the electrochemical interactions of your neurons", then man, you've got some intellectual issues.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Young-universe theories in a nutshell:
"The laws of physics changed several thousand years ago, perhaps by divine (i.e. outside of the laws of physics) intervention, and since we don't know what the laws were or even how to estimate what the laws were, we can't (yet) extrapolate backwards more than a few thousand years using only science."
Or, to put it a bit more "scientifically":
"Old-universe theorists assume that the laws of the universe have not changed since the very first small fraction of time, if then. This theory is no more scientifically testable than our theory, which is that the laws of physics did change sometime in the 5-10,000 year ago time-frame. Our theory also states that we do not yet know or have the means to find what those laws are or how the laws of physics changed. We admit an unscientific assumption that a divine being is responsible for these changes. We challenge old-Universe theorists to scientifically prove that the laws of the universe have not changed beyond the very first moments of the Universe's history."
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
What's so bad about describing an object as roughly 10 units across and 30 units around?
Nothing. Its just scientific types who want to argue about God and will ignore their own mathematical priniciple of "significant digits" in their haste who complain.
"10" is one significant digit. "30" is one significant digit. "30/10 = 3" is not only correct for infinite precision based on individual "units" (like "dollar bills" or "golf balls"), but for the number of significant digits in the problem when talking about real physical measurements. And pi just happens to equal 3 TO ONE SIGNIFICANT DIGIT. "3.1415..." rounds down.
How many scientists pull a copy of Hansel and Gretel off the shelf when they want to calculate the BTU output of a gas stove? "Well, we have this well documented story where an oven raised the temperature of an X pound boy Y degrees, and we know the approximate heat capacity of the human body is Z, so that means ..."
Can we please move on to something more significant to argue about as the proof for no God?
And leave the theology to the theologians?
The notion of Young Earth Creationism wasn't popular in the early church, and in fact the Six Ages of the World theory is just another wacky idea from the supreme Wackadoodle of Western Christianity, Augustine. In contrast, listen to what Origen (3rd century) said:
I'm minded of a legendary, possibly apocryphal quote from Karl Barth (pronounced "bart") when he was confronted by a woman who couldn't believe in a talking snake in Genesis 3. "It is not so very important whether the snake spoke. It is much more important what the snake said." Most serious theologians think that the purpose of Genesis 1-11 was not to give literal history, but to setup the basic propositions that:
You don't have to agree with this; but I wish that those opposed to Christianity (neo-atheists, gay rights activists, and the like) would stop telling the church that we are not permitted to interpret our own sacred texts in ways that we have used for thousands of years.
(Note: I have a Ph.D. in "Judaism and Christianity in Antiquity: Textual and Historical Studies" from the University of Virginia -- basically, New Testament as I focused it -- so feel qualified to speak with some authority on this subject.)
"He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere. " -- John Calvin, commenting on Genesis 1
Highly recommend you take a gander at "Surprised by Hope" by N.T. Wright. Your notion of the doctrines of the afterlife is ... ahem ... not exactly Biblical. Not that there aren't a lot of people who believe this in the church, but, in a word, they're wrong.
"He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere. " -- John Calvin, commenting on Genesis 1
People not interested in facts aren't persuaded by them.
#6495ED - cornflower blue
Neil deGrasse Tyson sums up the debate nicely. He points out how with all the life and beauty of the world it seems magical, but when you step back a bit, you can see how completely fucked up the design really is. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oEl9kVl6KPc
Most scientists experience first hand that science was built by all the previous scientists and that their purpose in life, as a scientist, is to continue building the culture of humanity.
All scientific papers acknowledge some of the previous papers upon wich they build.
Humanity's culture has given you so much, why not give something back ? And you may even live long enough to see what you gave being improved by others, which is one of the greatest satisfaction.
You can get much more than what you give. This is like a relationship with someone who has a very big potential, namely humanity.
Well, I know for a fact that it can't be talking about a literal day, because that requires a sun, and the sun wasn't created until the fourth "day" even according to the story.
As I understand it, the sun was created early on, but it was not resolvable until the fourth creative day because the atmosphere had been diffusing the light. Hence the difference between "let there be light" (1:3) and "let there be sources of light in the expanse of the heavens" (1:14).
A good chunk of the Old Testament was written by people who thought the world was flat
I beg to differ. The author of Job knew that the earth is suspended in space (Job 26:7) and that the day-night boundary is a circle (Job 26:10). The prophet Isaiah also spoke of a round earth (Isaiah 40:21-22), as did Solomon (Proverbs 8:27).
If he'd have caught this front page article he'd have saved himself some future embarrassment.
So you're saying he's resting right now?
At least that's how several Christian denominations interpret Hebrews 4.
I assume if there are no false fossils then the universe is billions of years old.
Of course it is. Genesis 1 days are figurative, as we've been discussing over here.
Evil exists because of free will and God would rather have free will and evil than remove free will.
Evil will be removed once it has had its turn on the throne after which it will be destroyed in a lake of fire.
If so I can get all of that but the one thing I still don't get is why would God's intervention in the world reduce in proportion to the availability of reliable evidence?
It's a punctuated equilibrium. Notice how the miracles have been spaced out throughout the roughly six millennia after the creation of man.
I have a number of religious friends who in all other things I respect their logic and reason fully, but I dare not ask them these questions at dinner parties for fear of annoying them
If they are as Christian as they claim they are, they'd be happy to reason with you from the Scriptures.
What's so bad about describing an object as roughly 10 units across and 30 units around?
The fact that you are giving both the circumference and the diameter of a circle; only one is necessary, and it is impossible to accurately give both. I am not blaming the authors of the bible for giving such a description, though, since I doubt they were familiar with geometry or anything beyond the most rudimentary math.
It certainly isn't exact but it's not too bad if you're just approximating for story telling purposes.
My point is that there are plenty of people who say that the bible is not just "for story telling purposes" and that it is the "perfect word of God." When you stop using the bible as a way to illustrate moral precepts and start trying to say that scientific results must be false if they do not agree with what the bible says, then giving a rough and mathematically unsound measurement of an object is most certainly problematic. Again, the people who say that the theory of evolution is the work of Satan do not respond to objects about the measurements given in Kings and Chronicles by saying that it is OK for a story to give such measurements; they respond with convoluted explanations that attempt to justify the measurements as given.
Palm trees and 8
How many scientists pull a copy of Hansel and Gretel off the shelf when they want to calculate the BTU output of a gas stove?
The same number that pull a copy of the bible off the shelf when they want to know the age of the Earth. That is exactly my point: there is nothing wrong with the bible as an ancient Jewish storybook, but it is absurd to point to the bible whenever someone talks about the Earth being billions of years old. People who give complicated explanations about why the biblical measurements of round objects are acceptable do so because they are absolutely unwilling to admit that the bible is just a storybook and not an accurate description of the physical world.
Palm trees and 8
The only way to win the evolution debate game is not to play.
Ah but those people are not politically relevant or culturally influential, other than being laughed at.
The 40% of the population of the USA who believe in literal creationism are not politically relevant?
I was pretty sure that 40% was a bit high so I started poking around for numbers. According to Wikipedia (original source here), Evangelicals only make up around 26% of the population. This is the only large group I was aware of that would adhere to literal creationism as a rule, though they do not hold the belief universally. From my understanding a small percentage of Catholics adhere to literal creationsim also.
I then checked out the Gallup Poll that states the 40% number. I found this difficult to believe, but the wording of the question may influence the answer. I think that perhaps many Americans across all religions (including those who vaguely 'believe in god') don't really understand the difference between 10,000 years and 10,000,000 years. Maybe a lot of (even reasonably intelligent) people just don't care that much, and file it all away as "stuff that happened a long time ago".
and condemning anyone who dare believe what they see
People can believe what they see and still believe that what they see has a loving creator. "The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands." (Psalm 19:1) God's "invisible qualities are clearly seen from the world’s creation onward, because they are perceived by the things made, even his eternal power and Godship." (Romans 1:20)
to an eternity of torture
The Bible teaches that "the wages sin pays is death" (Romans 6:23), not eternal conscious torment. It teaches an everlasting judgment of destruction for people who continue to act like jerks toward God and toward their fellow man, but it's just that: destruction. Jesus likened the second death to the town dump where garbage was destroyed through burning.
It's perfectly reasonably to beat someone repeatedly, then expect them to love you for it.
"One who loves his children is careful to discipline them." --Proverbs 13:24.
Before you is the collected works of science over the last 400 years. We have shown the body of the heavens is predictable
Yes, creation is a marvelous machine set into motion by its builders, Jehovah God and his son Jesus.
"This man is the devil and the world is 6,000 years old and you're going to Hell unless you believe me!" says the preacher.
Then the preacher is misled. The Bible doesn't teach a literal 144-hour creation, as we've been discussing over here.
Not all interpretations of Matthew 10:34 hold that Jesus endorsed conversion through violence.
So if you think it's ok to eat bacon? You are not following Jesus
That's the Judaizer fallacy. The first hint that one need not follow Jewish dietary laws to do God's will was given in Peter's vision in Acts 10. Later, it was determined at the Council of Jerusalem that even though many early Christians were recruited from Judaism, one need not become Jewish to become a Christian.
Lol... thanks for that.
Ive been reading /. for a couple of years and doctors(excluding the Phd variant) seem to be a seriously under represented group.
Admittedly Slashdot is a community catering towards other professions(as evidenced by a lack of choice when it came to selecting my profession as i made this id)
I think it actually requires more faith to believe that evolution is capable of the immense complexity that is the human body.
Also as a poster pointed above, evolution doesn't deal with the origin of life as many of the comments seem to imply.
Must be new here.
There is no amount of evidence that could convince these people, because their minds don't operate like that. A scientist observes and builds a model of reality to explain observations. The creationist doesn't need to observe, because he already has a perfect model of reality. Any observations that contradict it are to be ignored, lied about, or dismissed. When a creationist claims to ask for evidence, his intention is not to learn, because he already has perfect knowledge. His intention is to ensnare the audience in a web of lies. This is a discipline called apologetics, in which the only objective of a debate is to score points by hook or by crook. Feeding evidence to them is to feed an endless abyss that spits all of your information back at you, distorted, that listens only to find ambiguities or gaps in your knowledge, to fill them with religion. Give them better evidence, and they will not thank you - they will be angry at you, because you're making them work harder to twist and refute you. Annoy them enough, and they will attack your character personally and professionally.
Once Mr. Leakey realizes this, he will no longer lack animosity toward religion.
Clarification for anyone who may be interested ... ...
In Hindu scripture the supreme god is an embodiment of energy; not a human.
Very interestingly, Vishnu (the preserver of the universe) is supposed to take different forms or Avatars to help keep the universe running (and that's the origin of the term Avatar). The first form was a fish, the second a turtle, the third a lion (more specifically half line / half man). Amazing how that parallels evolution
The rest were humans, but with increasingly subtle differentiations of what is right and what is wrong. Krishna (the Krishna in Hare Krishna) is the 7th or 8th avatar based on who is counting, and is a God for our times if you will.
Just like nearly every other religion, hinduism has "populist" stuff, which the more politically minded (who get to run temples and run their own sects or cults) use to control the population. Thats how most folks in India see the Hare Krishna movement. In India, as education has spread, the hold of these folks has got weaker, and you can see that in the changing norms and standards in India. 10 years ago you could be spat on for wearing a bikini. Today Bollywood heroines can't make it big without at least one swim suite scene in their movies.
Hinduism is about 5,000 to 7,000 years old depending on whose reckoning you follow. If you want to see the future of Christianity and Islam, and to understand how the Church and State use religion to control folks - go study Indian history. You will see parallels everywhere. Institutionalized ignorance to control the populace. The aggregation of wealth into the hands of the a few claiming to control the gates to the Gods and heaven. Extreme factions united by a single extreme belief pushing their agenda over that of the majority. The use of religious fanatism to win wars.
Been there; done that.
They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.
But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another's throats.
Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don't have any kids yourself.
People who give complicated explanations about why the biblical measurements of round objects are acceptable do so because they are absolutely unwilling to admit that the bible is just a storybook and not an accurate description of the physical world.
I'm sorry that you find the concept of "significant digits" to be complicated. It is quite accurate, within the number of significant digits used, to talk about a round object that is 30 units in circumference and 10 units in diameter. Your inability to suss out what one digit of significance means doesn't make the description any less accurate. It probably wasn't intended to be more accurate than 1 sig. digit, and so the fact that it isn't means nothing.
That's of course no problem assuming that you are not using planar, but spherical geometry. On spheres, the quotient of circumference and diameter is always smaller than pi. As an extreme case, if the circle is the equator, then the circumference is just twice the diameter.
Of course if you use that assumption to calculate the size of that sphere, you'll find a sphere circumference of exactly 60 units. I somehow doubt they used such a large unit that the circumference of the earth has only 60 of them.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
It is a more complicated explanation than, "The people who wrote that passage did not know about Pi or that the ratio of the circumference to the diameter of a circle is constant and that therefore only one measurement is needed." Nowhere does the bible talk about significant digits; nor does the bible take the time to explain how the measurements were taken, which would go a long way toward justifying such large margins of error.
Palm trees and 8
God created (or as some would say organized the existing materials) this earth and placed man on it. So that's what happened but does it explain in detail how that happened? Not to my understanding it doesn't, nor does it explain everything ever but is more along the lines of spiritually oriented. The point being is it impossible for both to be true, to some extent at the very least.
/flamebaitfornotagreeingwiththestatusquo
IS based on EVERYTHING changing on earth. One of the most important core tenets of the text is that God is the only thing which is unchanging in this universe.
Creationism is about acknowledging the existence of design in all things (molecular, atomic, sub-atomic), and believing it to have been purposed, instead of having come to be by pure chance. That's the bottom line.
God of the Gaps. Creationism came about as a negative answer to the evolution of species. In modern times, anybody who isn't willfully ignorant can see the evolution of species in the fossil record, and so now they retreat into areas like fine tuning of physical constants.
> there is nothing wrong with the bible as an ancient Jewish storybook
Don't forget the splitters...
Also FatPhil on SoylentNews, id 863
2. Computers have shown that the neat evolutionary trees that get drawn up are in fact based on imaginary relations of similarity and difference that owe more to the human mind's tendency to perceive patterns than to the raw biological data.
...and physics is the study of frictionless elephants whose mass can be ignored. Are those "neat evolutionary trees" trees actually used by biologists or are they simplifed examples given in popular accounts?
4. ...the evolution of present-day organisms from their supposed ancestors are in fact highly conjectural if not downright false. ... And even the emergence of one species from another has never been directly observed by science.
Not so.
5. ...(Evolution) remains incapable of explaining how anything could evolve that doesn't make biological sense when incomplete. The wings of birds are the classic example: what good is half of one?
Well, at least you didn't dredge up the eye here.... Presumably you don't mean "half of one", you mean "something halfway towards one", well, then....
7. The data used to support evolution are neither experiments nor repeatable, nor can they be, since the origin of species on earth was a unique event.
"The origin of species on earth" is a process, not an event. Yes, evolutionary biology, like geology, is a "historical" science, so it makes "retrodictions", but....
Does this debate exist anywhere outside the US and maybe some south-american countries? -- I have never seen a trace of it in Europe, (where I live).
Yes, it does. I suspect Jewish creationism is enough of a minority view that the debate isn't huge in Israel, but I might be mistaken there. I don't know how significant Hindu creationism is.
Yet another article that seems to imply you can't believe in evolution and be a Christian. This is not the case and Biologos is one such institution setup by Christian biologists that has a wealth of information to support the case for Christians accepting evolution and genesis. One of those involved was previously head of the human genome project. The book "the language of science and faith" which I have just finished reading provides additional insights.
The dead are already sleeping on a backup disk. After the dust settles from Armageddon, the dead will be restored from backup over a thousand years so that people can clean up Earth under Jesus M. Christ's guidance. As I understand it, the rate of this resurrection will be carefully controlled to match the increase in Earth's carrying capacity due to cleanup efforts. This "great fsck" will make Earth like new, and once it resembles Earth at the end of the sixth creative age, Christ will hand it back to the Father.
if Jesus died for your sins, including original sin, then before Jesus there was no way to be absolved of original sin
True. The blood of animals sacrificed under Jewish law just covered up sin; it didn't wash it away. But it was a symbol of the provision that Jehovah was going to make in the blood of his son Jesus, which would absolve Jehovah's loyal followers whether they died before or after Jesus.
HORRIBLY TORTURED FOR ETERNITY
What the hell are you talking about? The Bible teaches that "the wages sin pays is death" (Romans 6:23), not eternal conscious torment. Death/Sheol/Hades is not torment; it is an unconscious state (Eccl. 9:5). Gehenna is not eternal conscious torment either; it is destruction in the lake of fire, a second death from which there is no resurrection.
It was a poor choice of words on my part, since I was not intending to refer to abiogenesis. See my last paragraph of this post.
Preemptively attacking people who say you're wrong doesn't make you less wrong. It just makes it obvious that you already know you're wrong.
Nowhere does the bible talk about significant digits;
"The Bible is not an ancient mathematics textbook, therefore it is inaccurate and unbelievable." Somehow it seems a bit arrogant to assume that a concept that most (but apparently not all) scientists are familiar with would be a complete mystery to an omniscient being. "Hey, God, your Bible doesn't mention protons and electrons and man knows all about them, so man is clearly smarter than You are!"
nor does the bible take the time to explain how the measurements were taken,
"The Bible does not report every detail of daily life as experienced by the people of the time, therefore it is inaccurate and unbelievable."
which would go a long way toward justifying such large margins of error.
The "large margins of error" you proclaim happen to be within the margin of error for the reported measurements, according to current scientific processes and thought. I think the problem lies not in the Bible but in your understanding of the purpose and context thereof, and modern scientific concepts regarding math. Please go look up "significant figures" and don't use the "images" section of Google to do it.
In this sense some countries like Norway are living in the future ...
http://www.alternet.org/story/154252/the_republican_brain:_why_even_educated_conservatives_deny_science_--_and_reality/
Just want to point out that the theory of evolution is constantly evolving itself, or should be: Scientists Late to Recognize Human and Giant Mammal Coexistence
"The Bible is not an ancient mathematics textbook, therefore it is inaccurate and unbelievable." Somehow it seems a bit arrogant to assume that a concept that most (but apparently not all) scientists are familiar with would be a complete mystery to an omniscient being.
The concept is, however, a mystery to a large number (and I would go as far as to conjecture a majority) of the people who read the bible and who rely on it as a source of knowledge. One would think that an omniscient being could have taken the time to clarify a simple detail like significant figures, or to explain why it is necessary or sensible to report both the radius and the circumference of a circle.
"The Bible does not report every detail of daily life as experienced by the people of the time, therefore it is inaccurate and unbelievable."
You are the one who tried to bring scientific reporting techniques into this conversation, not me. When scientists report a measurement, they are expected to report how that measurement was taken so that other people can assess their technique and possibly duplicate their results. With this passage in the bible, we are left guessing about how the measurement was taken -- was it based on the dimensions of someone's arm? Was it based on a standardized rod? A ruler? Some other apparatus?
The "large margins of error" you proclaim happen to be within the margin of error for the reported measurements
Those margins of error are enormous by any reasonable standard, and any scientific paper would need to explain why they are so big. If taking the measurements was particularly difficult with ancient technology, then they are acceptable measurements since nobody would expect anything better -- but as noted above, we have no idea how those measurements were taken.
You keep harping on about significant figures, but you miss a more general point: the bible was not written by some omniscient being, it was written by people thousands of years ago. Those people were not mathematicians or scientists, and the is no reason to expect that what they wrote should be remotely accurate. Take the bible for what it is: an ancient book of stories, poems, and edited copies of government records. It is absurd to use the bible as a record of anything scientific -- not merely because of a passage about a round object, but because of the sheer weight of scientific evidence against biblical assertions.
Palm trees and 8
Perhaps "moot" as in "moot point" is in the sense of an issue that is only debatable academically because it is otherwise irrelevant under the facts. Or perhaps it derives from "moot court", an exercise in which law students practice a fake appellate case in front of law professors.
What complicates any discussion of hell is that there are two distinct states called "hell" in English translations of the Bible. One is Sheol or Hades, the place where the dead sleep unconsciously: "the dead are conscious of nothing" (Eccl. 9:5). The other is Gehenna, where the unrepentant are permanently destroyed in the second death. Which hell are you talking about?
The God of the Old Testament and the God of the New Testament are very different, somewhat conflicting personalities.
As a study of the past, material science can only investigate 'what appears to have been, based on current evidence', and not 'what actually was' in the very possible case that these two notions: 'what appears to have been', and 'what was', do not converge. It is not sensible for one conducting a scientific investigation into 'what was' based on current evidence to assume otherwise, for then they have no foundations. But just because this is a necessary assumption for the investigating scientists neither makes it true, nor implies that others should take on this assumption. The alternative is that the past cannot be deduced logically from available evidence, and then one must look to other sources of inspiration. Scientists do not do this, but many religious believers do. Thus we find that the two camps may be standing on different, incompatible, foundations, both of which can make sense depending on your standpoint. Total victory on the part of the evolution brigade is as absurd as an 'it's all in Gen 1' approach, being possible only with the kind of conquest over peoples thinking and beliefs that the Christians and Muslims have tried in the past. (Guess what: other belief systems survived, and a new one is now in the ascendency, but needs to learn from past attempts at conquest of belief and realise that there are better ways forward.) On both sides, though more on the fundamentalist religious side, people need to be encouraged, gently, to open their minds to other possibilities besides the ones they take on faith. And this taking things on blind faith is, so far as I'm concerned, philosophically unavoidable. Anyone whether of a holy book or a science book, who believes otherwise is deluded.
John_Chalisque
To apply logic, you either end up with P implies Q statements that say nothing concrete, or else you take certain hypothetical assumptions as true as an article of faith. Everybody does the latter all the time, but tend to be unaware that they are doing this. Furthermore, what hypotheses people take on faith in their daily life vary, and there is no True foundation that one can show to be the case. Even scientists must have faith that the universe behaves in a reasonable enough way that what they are doing produces sensible results (and at present it appears this way, though one cannot answer questions as to the past and future on such matters given only available evidence -- circularities abound when you try.)
John_Chalisque
One of my points is that Fundamentalists are not the only game in town with respect to religion and the Evolution Controversy. As to attributing this book to the Hare Krishna movement, the forward to this book had Something-Something-Center for Krishna Consciousness. I took this organization to be speaking for whom we in the West call "the Hare Krishna's" rather than Hinduism in general.
I have the impression that the Hare Krishna movement does not speak for all Hindus and may even, in India, be regarded as something as an heretical sect. On the other hand, I kind of have the impression that Hinduism isn't as "uptight" about perceived heresy and deviationism as the three major Abrahamic Western religions. Correct me if I am wrong, but an observant Hindu would not be going around saying "Don't pay heed to those Hare Krishna people" but would not necessarily be endorsing everything they say. I also have the impression that the Hare Krishna movement comes out of the cultural context of Hinduism -- at least they base parts of their religion on Hindu scripture and religious culture?
Modern science isn't that conceptually different to most religions (talking organised religions here). Its followers believe in empirical evidence (evidence collated by our senses alone). Most religions share this belief, but add further avenues of perception on top. More importantly, almost every religion (amongst other things): 1. Believes it deprecates all previous religions.
There are scientists who believe that science deprecates all previous religions. I have not seen any indication that all scientists do (there are, for example, scientists who identify themselves as Christian or Muslim, so...).
2. Insists it is incompatible with other religions (despite evidence to the contrary).
See my reply to point 1.
3. Claims to answer all the questions you have (and if not now it will in the future).
There are scientists who think science either can or will answer all those questions. There are also scientists who think "why does the universe exist?" are out of scope.
4. Hates being compared on the same platform as other religions.
Yes, I suspect most scientists would reject the notion that science is a religion. One out of four isn't good enough, though.
You should probably read the Bible before you go paraphrasing it. http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis%2022:1-15&version=NKJV
There wasn't a shred of inconsistency in that story.
No, just God changing his mind:
[Abraham prepares to sacrifice Isaac, and bullshits him with "trust me, we'll find a lamb to sacrifice somewhere around here"...]
So, yeah, only the first 3 parts of El Fantasmo's paraphrase actually apply here:
Who cares? It's all just a simulation anyway!
That said there are plenty of fundamental crazies out there, particularly in the US it seems (when did that happen anyway)... I once heard of a "professional" geologist, who was also a creationist. I am not sure how someone would be able to segregate their belief that the world was created 5,000 years ago while at the same time have formal training in things like geologic time spans etc...
Please don't use the No True Scotsman fallacy.
Is it in God's interests to just sit and wait until [Armageddon]?
The Bible portrays Jehovah God as infinitely just and patient. The Adversary has been exploiting these qualities to make God give him a fair chance to run the world under his leadership. God already knows that Satan's system will fail; he just needs to show everyone else. Yes, it'll fail within a spirit creature's lifespan, which is far longer than a human's, especially post flood. This means humans will be collateral damage in this conflict, but God recognizes this and has provided for a resurrection through his son Jesus M. Christ.
scientists are not trying to deceive everyone (well, most of them)
Yes, some scientists are examining this world in good faith to learn the underlying rules governing its operation, but others are just seeking moar grant money by breaking things up into LPUs.
This assumes that "why" is a valid question in the first place, and you're already begging the question of whether or not there is an entity to ascribe some kind of purpose to. Even if this question is outside the realm of science, that doesn't mean that philosophers or theologians have anything at all to contribute to this discussion that's based in reality.
kurzweil_freak
5th Kyu Genbukan Ninpo/KJJR student
Be the darkness that allows the light to shine.
Wow, sure is atheist in here...... I openly encourage you to disprove creationism then. I'll STILL be waiting in 50 years for someone to be able to do it. Before you ask, No I'm not a young earth creationist, I AM however a believer in intelligent design, the universe is far to ordered in its chaos to be a product of "Just the right amount of X and Y at the exact point in time" Random chance? Really? HAH
I'm sorry. First you have to provide evidence for dualism before you can make further claims about it.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
While the evolutionists are trying to use scientific research to figure out what it is that they believe in, the creationists will be expanding their ideas through rampant fornication. Lets face it, dear Darwin tells us that the organism which reproduces will exist, not the one that does the research. :)
US First?
Wasn't that the name of Charles Lindbergh's gay little Nazi club or something?
When Argumentum ad Hominem falls short, try Argumentum ad Matrem
The dinosaurs are always found in sedimentary rock proving they drowned in a flood. To claim the fossils formed over millions of years is beyond stupid , they would have rotted and been bestroyed by scavengers and insects. We find them often in ripped apart in huge piles along with marine , aquatic {fresh water) , terrestrial and avion life which tells us they died elsewhere and were transported there by water. We have very reliable histories of them existing in the last few hundred years. Some small to medium lizards and several flying reptiles. The Bibles tells of people training them to pull carts and the Chinese who use the same word for dragon and dinosaur have histories of emperors who used them to pupp carts. Alexander the Great dealt with some worshipped as gods in India. Fossils evidence does not speak and the historical evidence that man existed with dinosaurs is vast. Most dinosaurs were rather small, the size of a sheep is average. The giants like T-Rex we know little about, we have only found a few of them so how many existed is anyone's guess. The stupid argument "No man has seen a living dinosaur" is mindless, how could you know? We have many accounts where men said they did and in some cases the they knew details such as skin color we just recently found out, how did they know? Easy, they saw them! The depiction of a Stegasauras on a 1500 year old temple in Thailand is exact as are ones from Meso-America. The American Indians depiction of giant saurapods and duckbills are proof enough for anyone with an open mind they saw these creatures. We find unfossilized dinosaur bones all the time , some with red blood cells , soft and stretchy flesh that stinks of death. We have found thousands of creatures from fish to insects to trees that supposedly died off more than 65 million years ago alive and well . It is you who refuses to accept the evidence . When you feel evidence from the past supports your religious beliefs you claim it as absolute fact and that anyone who disagres is stupid. When it tends to disagree such as finding human bones in the same rock as dinosaurs you make up stories such as it must have been a reburiaal even though you have nothing but your religious beliefs to supprt the idea. Evolution is the never ending story, every generation has to get a whole new set of "facts" because the previous "facts " are now extinct. And to top it off you are so ignorant of science you cannot tell me the most basic rules such as what the assumptions required to estimate the age of a rock are or even how many are required , yet you think that your ignorance is superior intellrct? Get a grip!
As neither I am always amused at how dedicated atheists show just as much naivette as their dedicated theist counterparts.
...." - Yeah... That's the primary theme in all religion. It really is that simple. </sarcasm> Come on, stick to talking about fossils. It's what you know.
First... What evendence is going to change the minds of the majority of young-earth creationists? Ha! You think you can ever dig up enough fossils? Tell me another one!
"There's no explanation for this change going back 500 million years in any book I've read from the lips of any God." - Actually, there are plenty of old-earth creationists who believe that God did it but science describes how. Yes, the Judeo-Christian-Islamic texts say it happened in 7 days but there is plenty of reason for a believer to believe those days were figurative. Is this just a watering down to cling to an old belief even in the face of contrary evidence? Maybe. But there are the Psalms that say a day to God is like 1000 years and 1000 years is like a day. That makes no sense as a unit conversion formula as it goes both ways but plenty of sense if you just take it to mean that units of time are meaningless to him. That also makes sense if you believe as science tells us that time itself is a part of the universe. Wouldn't that mean that a God who created the universe and therefore must be not a part of it is also outside of time or at least in some other timeline? I'm not arguing that this is or is not the truth. My point is that even with insurmountable evidence for evolution this is about as far as an atheist can hope to get in convincing people.
"I see no reason why you shouldn't go through your life thinking if you're a good citizen, you'll get a better future in the afterlife
""If we're spreading out across the world from centers like Europe and America that evolution is nonsense and science is nonsense, how do you combat new pathogens..." - I would imagine that a creationist doctor would combat new pathogens the same way as any other. With drugs. I don't even hear the Pat Robertson types saying all Science is nonsense. Is it really necessary to understand the origin of something to kill it? Even if it is necessary to explain the origin of new pathogens a creationist can (and does) just invoke the term "microevolution". You've got to admit, even as a full believer in evolution as the origin of all species, a few mutations to cause some RELATIVELy simple bug to change shape and link up with this protein as opposed to that is a much easier thing to comprehend and accept than the huge number required to make me and you from even homo erectus let alone from early archea. I feel pretty safe that even if the whole world becomes young-earthers tomorrow disease research will continue and we will not simply return to the conditions that brought on the black plague. At least not for that reason.