foursquareman

All those posts are great! Thanks heaps for your acceptance. I understand evolution is not some propaganda. It does not prove there is no God.

But hopefully you did not misunderstand me. I am here to gain knowledge, but I most probably won't change my stance on YEC/evolution. I'm here to find out what I believe. If I can make things work. Ultimately, I will give up all this knowledge for God (not give it away, but not be focused on it). I hope you all understand, my focus isn't on finding knowledge, but finding God.

Thanks heaps to everyone!

bluefugue

San Diego Atheist,

That was hilarious! Thanks.

Oolon Colluphid

But

Erm, could you clarify please? It sounds like you’ll only accept evidence that fits with what you want to believe. What do you do with the evidence that doesn’t fit?

Also, why do you think God and knowledge are mutually exclusive options? I thought we’d made it clear that science isn’t anti-god, it merely shows that Genesis 1, [i]literally interpreted[I], is not true. If you care about truth, then science is a good way of getting at it, because it is constantly tested against reality. Why must Genesis be literally true? Are Jesus’s parables true stories about real people? Would the ancient Hebrews have understood the real facts? So why might not God’s words to them be allegorical -- that he created, but not literally how?

And why is this creation story to be regarded as true, and all the other ones of all other cultures false? How can we tell? By reference to the world outside the stories...?

Why might God not have used evolution as his mechanism of ‘creation’?

Did you look at those skulls? Any thoughts / questions?

Sorry, rather a lot of questions there!

Cheers, Oolon

The Other Michael

Hi foursquareman,

I guess I didn't make my post clear enough.

I wasn't claiming that there were religions that accepted evolution as not being a violation of dogma.

I was trying to point out that people of many differing beliefs, many of which hold very different statements of dogma to be true (and which are often contradictory with the other religions) manage to accept evolution.

Since that may still be garbled (I've been going cold-turkey on coffee this week and I'm pretty tired right now)let me put it this way:

Jews, Muslims, Christians, Hindus, atheists, etc etc will by and large agree that the sun appears to rise in the east, and that this is a verifiable fact due to the Earth's rotation around the sun in a heliocentric solar system. This leads me to think that this is probably then an acceptance of the actual facts, rather than a statement of dogma.

If a significant number of the "adherents" to all these different beliefs/non-beliefs largely agree on the factual basis of evolution, in spite of all their different creation myths, then there may well be a reasonable conclusion that there is some factual basis to evolution that can be investigated and validated by a reasonable person.

But YEC is strictly (AFAIK) a Christian concept, and one that is claimed to be true due to a specific religious dogma that is not even accepted by many Christians.

This should, I think, give you cause to wonder about why it is that so many people with such widely varying religious/non-religious backgrounds can agree on evolution, yet only that small portion of Christians disagree and insist that their particular religious writings actually have scientific validity.

But the people who posted after my original post have probably cleared that up for you already.

cheers,
Michael

Jack the Bodiless

YEC's have many misconceptions about evolution, but a large part of their problem is that they tend to label as "evolutionist" things that have nothing to do with evolution at all.

For instance: the Genesis creation account and the Noachian Flood account are false. But this is not "evolutionism". Even someone who rejects evolution would come to the conclusion that Genesis is false from studying the geological evidence. Evolution did not replace Genesis: it filled a vacuum.

Similarly, belief in an ancient Earth is not "evolutionism": it is merely what the evidence indicates, and is entirely independent of evolution. Evolution requires millions of years to produce the diversity of life on Earth, but those millions of years happened anyhow.

Common misconceptions about evolution itself include "you have to be an atheist to accept evolution" (you don't), "you can't be a Christian and accept evolution" (most Christians do), "evolution contradicts the Second Law of Thermodynamics" (it does not), "mutations cannot increase information" (they can and do), "macroevolution has never been observed" (macroevolution is just a lot of microevolution: all other creationist definitions of macroevolution have been observed), "evolution is faith-based" (it is evidence-based), "some scientific evidence contradicts evolution" (none is known).

Creationist misconceptions about creationism include "the evidence can be interpreted to support it" (much evidence is utterly incompatible), "some scientists have become creationists" (no scientist has become a creationist from studying the evidence: some have bogus "creation science" qualifications and some religious fundamentalists have science degrees), "creationists are good Christians" (many creationists are professional con-artists).

Oolon Colluphid

Nice post Jack. You missed out, however:[*]There are no transitional fossils. [*]The theory of evolution says that life originated, and evolution proceeds, by random chance. [*]Evolution is only a theory; it hasn't been proved.

From TalkOrigins’s <a href="http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-misconceptions.html" target="_blank">Five Major Misconceptions about Evolution</a>, of course.

Oolon

bluefugue

We tend to say all Catholics accept evolution because the Pope does. But if you polled all Catholics individually, what would their opinions be? I guess they are supposed to defer to papal decrees on such matters, but I imagine some of them would hold private opinions regardless.

PopeInTheWoods

I don't "practice evolution" around here, that would be rude. My wife and I usually practice it in our bedroom.

Mageth

Randman:

Evolution, as posited here basically has a major flaw. Even if evolutionists could prove evolution can happen on a macro-level (not proven yet), and appeared to happen in some, many, or most instances, that misses the real crux of the matter for the kind of atheist evolution found here. That type of evolution basically posits a theory that because of these things,God could not have intervened, and moreover, refuses to even acknowledge it is valid to consider whether God was involved.

Wrong. Evolutionary theory describes a mechanism in which it is not necessary for god to intervene. It doesn't rule out the possibility of divine intervention.

And I know nothing of a "kind of atheist evolution." Evolution is, as has been pointed out, independent of atheism.

What's confusing you, perhaps, is that atheists lack a god belief. Therefore, they, through their atheism (not through evolutionary theory), rule out godly intervention in evolution, as well as godly intervention in cosmology, abiogenisis, astrophysics, physics in general, chemistry, politics, football, etc.

As such, the "open mind" approach does not exist here. What many here want is for you to close your mind to the reality of the spiritual world, accept arbitrary rules that essentially state considering the spiritual is off-limits to the discussion. Once this is done, of course, it is easy to beleive just about anything. Truth has been removed.

Wrong again. It's the religious and other credulous groups that make it easy to "believe just about anything." As an atheist, skeptic, and naturalist, I require at least some credible evidence to generate a degree of confidence in the possibility or probability of something. And I have seen none to lend support to the "reality of the spiritual world." And considering the spiritual is not off limits. I've considered it, am still considering it, and am still finding it highly improbable.

What is interesting is that the atheist approach makes right and wrong mere human creations that evolved, but that basically don't exist independently of people's will.

True.

There is no truth of right and wrong,but mere custom, but not many evolutionistsare willing to live that out.

Are you saying that not many evolutionists live a moral life? Ridiculous.

They may bash a religious person for their "superstitious beliefs" but they themselves harbor beliefs about right and wrong which are no less arbitrary and superstitious and even more so actually by their own standards. That doesn't matter though. Logic has left the room.

When you entered it...

The truth is that there is no evidence that disproves God.

And there's no evidence that proves god, either. You're stating a truism; I'm assuming most if not all here accept that god cannot be disproved.

All of the evidence is thus compatible and consistent with theistic models, and that is a plain fact.

I notice that you used the plural models. And you're right; all evidence is consistent (or the models can be adapted to make the evidence consistent) with theistic models; pretty much any theistic model. Hindu, Moslem, Christian, etc. models can all be used to explain anything. When you introduce magick, anything's possible. And something that can be used to explain anything and everything ("goddidit") is not much use as an explanation.

Note that all evidence is consistent with the IPU model; all evidence is consistent with the "Popeye created the universe and formed the animals from spinach" model; all evidence is consistent with the "everything's a figment of my imagination, and I'm just a brain in a jar on some mad scientist's shelf" model; etc.

It is also true that evolutionist models despite their howls to the contrary depend on the idea that common descent arose from a common source, which sprang to life all on its own from non-living matter.

Wrong again. You're talking about abiogenisis here (matter to life), not evolution. Evolution does not depend on a particular genesis scenario.

The fact this is wholly illogical and unscientific does not stop the athiest evolutionist from believing it for if he ever accepted even the smallest admission of God, it would open the door to the reality of the spiritual world and forever shatter his paradigm which he has based his life upon.

I based the first 45 years of my life on the god paradigm. What a waste. I finally shut the door to the "reality" of the spiritual world after, for all my searching, I found the actual evidence (rather than the emotional appeal) to be totally lacking.

The Bible states that God causes it to happen. This is where careful analysis is necessary to find when from the creationist perspective, "God did it" is appropiate and when it is not. Obviously, God is intervening here in a personal way, and therefore you can't rule out, if you are considering the story on its face value, that He also used His power to keep the animals alive and happy and peaceful, and the story implies as much.
God Himself, or perhaps via an angel, closes the door to the Ark.

Exactly right. Once you accept magick, absolutely anything and everything can be attributed to that magick. Every criticism of the Flood and other biblical myths can be, and most have been, swept under the rug with the universal "goddidit" broom. Fortunately, at least some of us now know better - the universe is a wonderful, exciting place on its own, is understandable using science and reason, and doesn't require magick for any explanation.

So go on believing what you want to believe. You're right; it can be used to explain everything. But don't forget, so can any of thousands of other magickal paradigms. And it's impossible to determine the truthfulness of any of them. As such, not one of them is actually a good explanation.

I'll stick with science, reason, and skepticism and leave the magick to those too lazy, too indoctrinated or too afraid of the dark to actually take the steps and do the work necessary to appreciate life, the universe and everything for the wonders they really are, without requiring gods, magick or Popeye and his spinach.

[ June 07, 2002: Message edited by: Mageth ]

[ June 07, 2002: Message edited by: Mageth ]</p>

jordan_tar

It's really not intended to answer such questions - other scientific issues like the Big Bang and abiogenesis are more in that area.