Doubting Didymus

I don't think kevbo meant to imply that you shouldn't be here, its just that he, and I, and I'm sure many others too all thought that you were posting here as a flat out evolution denyer and strict biblical literalist. This challenge is aimed specifically at them, demonstrating very clearly that common ancestry is a fact.

I for one, am extremely glad that you showed up here. You have been the catalyst for some really great discussions, as well as inspiring me to read and search in areas I had not previously explored. The fact that you are a rational person with your wits about you meant that your acceptance of factual evidence was a matter of time, and I am very glad indeed to see you adopting the highly respectable intellectual perspective of theistic evolutionism.

"A religion old or new, that stressed the magnificence of the universe as revealed by modern science, might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by the conventional faiths.
Sooner or later, such a religion will emerge."
-Carl Sagan.

I'm sure that there are still great debates to be had here. Theistic evolutionists really make those of us without god work hard for our bread.

DrLao

Where's Magus?

Albert Cipriani

Dear Doubting,
Thanks for the clarification. I admit to being a bit brittle in these parts. Jobar keeps reminding me. It’s like I’m the only domesticated dog running with a wolf pack (prior to the hint of any altruistic allele being expressed!). So I tend to be testy, suspecting the worst. See what a lousy Christian I make?!

Hopefully, it’s not unleavened bread, that is, what I dish out has some levity to it and none of us get too down in the mouth or grim over our irreconcilable differences.

“Theistic Evolutionism.” I hate the term.

A couple years ago I had a drag out knock down over that term on a Catholic message board, insisting that the phrase is an oxymoron, that it’s the equivalent of an oil-water cocktail. I’m still not reconciled to the term. I feel as if even tho I’ve arrived in your country (known as Godless Evolution), I’m still in Customs, with a lot of theological baggage that needs to be gone through and sorted out. – Cheers, Albert the Traditional Catholic

Oolon Colluphid

Albert, I can honestly say that you are the most admirable Christian I’ve ever encountered! You keep making me want to hug you!

As to “theistic evolution”, well yes, I suppose it is an oxymoron. But one so useful to describe the position so many take that I guess we have to live with it. It is oxymoronic, as you doubtless are aware, because evolution does not require any gods interfering in it to explain what we see, yet a god is dragged in anyway. Perhaps simply ‘theist and evolutionist’ is better (since it’s apparently possible to be both at once, and the two need not be more than tangentially connected)?

What it amounts to is, God is not required for evolution. But this doesn’t preclude the possibility that he was involved anyway, guiding stuff, but doing so in that ever-so-subtle way of his, so that, as a creationist correspondent of mine put it, we cannot see the join.

(Quite how one knows there’s anything being joined is a bit tricky to answer, if the join’s invisible... and quite what his guidance amounted to is rather moot, given at least six mass extinctions and a host of smaller extinction events. But then, this god moves in mysterious ways, as they say!)

Personally, if I wanted a god at all, I’d have one that had had nothing to do with evolution. A god that allowed evolution -- predicated as it is on waste, suffering and death on such a vast scale, resulting in so much more suffering (parasites and predators are just doing what they do so survive, yet their toll on life is immense) -- is not one I’d want within many millions of light years of me!

A god that uses evolution is a god that is happy to allow the disembowelling of the zebra, the lifecycle of parasitic wasps, the haemorrhaging of Ebola, the hydrophobic insanity and certain death of Lyssavirus (rabies), and the shitting-yourself-to-death of millions from Vibrio cholerae, to name but some miniscule percentage. Such is not a loving god. In short, it is not the Christian god, at least, not the one advertised.

But it’s up to you.

Erm, have a nice day!

Cheers, Oolon

gcameron

God spends most of his time shifting alleles around, and occasionally he drops a comet on us.

This is why he is inconsistent in answering prayer: he's very busy. You have to ring a few times to get through.

Albert Cipriani

Dear Oolon,
Thanks for the virtual hug. It puts you at the head of the wolf pack. Now I don’t have to watch my back for fear of you nipping me; but on the other paw, I have to watch my step lest I step in one of the turds you drop. Like what you said about any god responsible for evolution not being the God advertised.

Given what we know, who could disagree with your sentiments? But therein lies the rub, what we know, it’s so lacking. At least belief in the Catholic God offers us a postmortem hope in the re d teeth of this world being explained away. Without my God, Evolution is it. You’re stuck with it as your what-you-see-is-what-you-get god.

A somewhat facetious but kind of accurate way to define god is to do it as the pagans did, whatever is in control of us is god. So there’s a god of forests, lightening, and the winter, as we couldn’t control any of these things.

But with the advent of chainsaws, lightening rods, and central heating, those gods left. In fact, they started to get dethroned when we figured out that they were all subservient to the sun god Ra, as ultimately all thing, and certainly all life as we knew it, came from the sun.

Today, that same pagan mentality has taken paganism to a whole new level with evolution. Even our sun has evolved: it’s a third generation sun. The one subsuming force in control of all is evolution. Ergo, evolutionists worship it through research as the druids worshiped the sun through Stonehenge.

Problem is, as you admit, you don’t like your god. The means whereby this all-controlling force controls all is so despicable that we don’t even personalize it with the name of god, tho that is precisely what it is. Evolution fulfills the role that all the pagans gods did before it. It is an attempt to explain all.

So who of us is in the more enviable position? You, who don’t believe in my God who might have a loving explanation for this dog-eat-dog world but do believe in the god that wrought this dog-eat-dog world. Or I, who believe in a God Whom I believe holds a loving explanation for this dog-eat-world? – Cheers, Albert the Traditional Catholic

Wounded King

There are no sides, we're all in this together!

WinAce

Magus or any other creationists wanna take a stab at this?

I guess not.

Demigawd

How is believing in a god who supposedly states "I didn't screw up; you did!" better than realizing that celestial objects are not sentient?

WinAce

As much as I'd love to believe those children dying of leukemia are actually unfeeling robotic drones sent on mysterious missions of good, cold, hard reality beckons. Same with the dog-eat-dog real world vs. magical heavenly candyland.