my dog earl

Before "The Flood" we were vegetarians as were all the carnivores.

atheist_in_foxhole

I believe the fundies claim that we (and the other creatures) were all friendly vegetarians before the "Fall." The alleged "Flood" came much later when God threw a fit and decided to drown everybody.

seebs

Yes, but some have claimed that the vegetarian to other-food shift happened at the flood. Go figure.

my dog earl

Where did these people get these ideas from? Where did it say that all creatures ate vegetation before the flood and the carnivores switched to meat afterwords? Thats a big assumption.

seebs

Heroic, if not to say hilariously stupid, attempts to reconcile the flood with a very naive understanding of science.

Heathen Dawn

The main difficulty that biological evolution puts in front of the theistic religions is its refutation of anthropocentrism: in other words, we humans are nothing special. All theistic religions are predicated upon the idea that human beings are something special in the universe, the centre of interest in the universe, the purpose of creation. Evolution smashes that smug conceit to pieces.

seebs

No, it doesn't. It doesn't even seem particularly relevant.

If you show me a cat which can debate epistemology, I'll grant that other creatures are similar to us metaphysically as well as biologically, but for now, there is a useful line to be drawn between Us and Them. Furthermore, the religion doesn't actually depend on humanity being the only "people" in the universe - only on all "people" being special to God, each as an individual.

It doesn't matter what groups are involved, or how many groups.

Heathen Dawn

OK, that’s our specialty: well-developed brains. Dogs have their own specialty: a well-developed sense of smell, of which we haven’t an inkling. Every animal is special in some trait. But they’re all animals, all governed by the same natural laws, and all headed for the same end. Humans are treated by natural disasters the same way beetles are. The flood or earthquake doesn’t look and say, “oh, it’s a human, I’ll stop here”. And if floods and earthquakes aren’t acts of God according to theistic religion, then I don’t know what is.

seebs

You miss the point; in theistic religions, the specialty of humanity isn't "brain", it's "soul". Which, since it's not a claim about the natural world, science doesn't address.

Heathen Dawn

It may not be a claim about the natural world, but it is a claim about reality. Science can’t disprove the soul, but mapping the personality to areas of the brain makes the soul hypothesis improbable. Also, the first reason why the soul was theorised to exist at all was anthropocentrism, the belief that mankind is something special. Now that we know—by evolution—that mankind is just another animal, it is not much of a stretch to say mankind like all animals has no soul. Or, conversely, that all other animals have souls too. But the position that only mankind, and no other animal, has a soul, is now untenable.