SanDiegoAtheist

The majority of Christian denominations (my guess would be about 3/4ths) do NOT have a problem with evolution, they simply posit that God guided the process, influencing when and where mutations cropped up, that sort of thing. This is the official stance of the Catholic Church, the United Methodists, Episcopals, Lutherans, and Presbyterians among major denominations. While I don't have the exact statistics, you can find the size of these denominations on numerous webpages - I just didn't feel like doing the math, but since these are the majority of the largest Christian denominations (Catholicism alone accounts for half the world's Christians), it's certainly a large majority.

Islam and Hindu both have 'fundamentalist' sects, similar to Christianity, which are "Creationist" - although according to their own holy books - however, again, the majority of sects do not have a problem with evolution.

Buddhism, Confucianism, and Taoism, to my knowledge, do not have a "Creation" movement at all.

Yes, this is true. Evolution is a very large problem for inerrantists - which is why most denominations do NOT believe in the absolute inerrency of the Bible. The rationale behind this is that those who were 'divinely inspired' to write the Bible were given inspiration for a REASON - that being the spiritual salvation of mankind.

As a liberal Christian friend of mine puts it - "The Bible is a handbook for the soul, not a handbook for science".

Think about it this way...if God WERE to reveal something to a person from 2 or 3 thousand years ago, someone completely ignorant of science, how could He possibly discuss advanced concepts of science? First of all, it would've been a bit long - most evolution textbooks are as long as the Bible by themselves. Secondly, the person would have not had any CONTEXT to put it in.

Imagine the conversation...

GOD: Well Moses, first of all, I created a small protobiont, which multiplied throughout the oceans gathering all the amino acids which were generated by interactions of heat and lightning upon...

Moses: Hold on God...what's a protobiont?

GOD: Ummmmm, it's a really teeny tiny thing, sort of alive, and sort of not. Very small.

Moses: Ummm, how can something be sort of alive, and sort of not?

GOD: Well, there's really not as much difference between alive and not...but we'll skip that part for right now.

GOD: Then, I caused mutations to occur, which allowed the original protobiont to become slightly different, and...

Moses: Ummmm, you're losing me God.

GOD: OK, how about this, let's start with the origin of the universe.

Moses: OK, maybe that will make more sense

GOD: Well, in the Beginning, I caused a quantum fluctuation in the vacuum, which allowed for matter and energy to change state into the matter and energy we have today.

Moses: Ummm, what's a quantum fluctuation?

GOD: Oh hang it all - here, write this down...in a few thousand years your descendents will be able to figure out the rest on their own... In the Beginning, the world was without form and void.....

and so on...

Cheers,

The San Diego Atheist

lpetrich

Where, O Randman?

And I note that there is absolutely zero physical evidence for Noah's Flood. All the evidence claimed for it can readily be explained by much more plausible hypotheses.

And how were all these animals cared for on the Ark? How were they fed? Lots of carnivores prefer their meals very, very fresh. As in alive. How were all the disease organisms brought over? Like the rabies virus, the smallpox virus, the syphilis bacterium, ...

And how did they get dispersed to the "proper" places after the Flood? Why did all the rattlesnakes slither off to North America, leaving none behind? How did the sloths get to South America, when they could have stayed in some trees near Mt. Ararat? Why did all the rabbits hop to North America and Eurasia and not to Australia, while the kangaroos hopped to Australia and not anywhere else in the world? Why did all the marsupial moles burrow to Australia and none of the placental moles?

scigirl

San Diego Atheist,

Love the dialogue! Too funny.

Moses asks, "Um, God, what's de-oxy-ribo-nucleic acid?"

God says, "Sheesh, Ok I made you from clay. Never mind!"

scigirl

foursquareman

Hey SanDiego

Thanks for the heads up those denominations. I'll check them up when I get a chance.

To answer Michaels question, yeas I believe YEC is driven by religion, while scientist constantly advance their studies in evolution.

Faith in an unseen being is the one of the main things holding me to YEC. It may sound close minded, and maybe it is.

scigirl

Well do you accept scientific descriptions of the weather? Or of gravity?

Why should biology be any different? Clearly, the natural world follows natural laws, right?

You don't have to give up your belief in a higher deity to accept evolution. I work with plenty of Christians - lutherans, mormons, pentecostals, catholics - who have no problems accepting evolution as a good explanation for how life diversified.

But I guess it would be unnerving to challenge any system of belief. So. . . good luck in your quest, and don't be afraid to ask questions!

scigirl

KeithHarwood

He might be right. There is a theory floating around that the prebiotic substrate was clay. Last I heard the odds on the theory were pretty long, but it's still in the race.

lpetrich

However, the Bible could have contained warnings that it had an extremely simplified account. And it could have avoided numerous blunders, like:

The Sun being significantly younger than the Earth.

Fruit trees appearing before Sun or sea life.

Birds appearing before land animals.

In fairness, Genesis 1 does get humanity's geologically-late appearance correct.

Genesis 2 pictures the creation of first man, then the creation of the animals, then the creation of the first woman. Which is totally absurd -- how was Adam supposed to reproduce? He ought to have been a parthenogenetic woman.

However, Genesis 1 pictures both sexes being created at the same time, which is more reasonable.

Here's a more reasonable account in prescientific terms, I think.

Once upon a time, there was a truly gigantic explosion, which produced a truly gigantic fireball, which produced a truly gigantic and very thin cloud which broke up into smaller and smaller and smaller clouds, but still very big clouds by everyday standards.

One of these clouds began to do when many others have done. It collapsed under its own weight, and as it did so, it began to spin.

The center of that cloud became the Sun, with that collapsing igniting a superhot fire in its center, and the leftover material becoming the Earth, the Moon, and the planets.

The stars are Sunlike objects, but far away, which is why they look so dim. And they had formed the way the Sun had formed, from giant clouds.

The Earth also a hot interior, from a weak version of the fire in the Sun's center, and that makes the land move around on it, causing earthquakes and pushing up mountains and melting the rock to flow out as volcanoes.

The early Earth was a barren, rocky wilderness, but eventually, some pond scum and seaweed grew from it. And eventually, some tiny worms grew from the scum and the weed, liking to eat it, and from them came shellfish and fish, which have lived in the sea ever since. Some sea animals like to build heavy armor for themselves, their shells, while some like to be on the move.

Some of them decided to move onto the land, making land plants and land animals. Fish crawling out became salamanders, turning their fins into legs, then lizards, laying their eggs on the land. Some salamanders liked to jump, and they got big hind legs, making them frogs. Some lizards lost their legs and became snakes. Some took to walking on two legs, growing feathers, jumping, and flying, thus becoming birds. Some started growing hair instead of scales and ears sticking out of their heads, and started shrinking their tails. And started keeping their eggs inside of them, nourishing their babies from inside.

Some of them liked to live in trees like squirrels; they got big and learned how to grab tree branches and became monkeys and apes, and some of these came out of the trees, started to walk on two legs and lose their body hair and grow big heads and learn to talk, becoming humanity.

I say "some", because there were always some others who preferred their original lifestyles or different lifestyles; the Earth is a big place and there are many ways to live on it.

I had to butcher a lot of modern science here; nuclear reactions are not chemical combustion, and evolution almost certainly does not proceed in the vitalistic way that I've pictured it here. I've also oversimplified some parts of evolution, and I've also scrimped on describing all the branches that do not lead to our species, which is nearly all of them.

[ June 06, 2002: Message edited by: lpetrich ]</p>

Typhon

foursquareman,

Let me say, I appreciate both your candor and calmness on this manner. There are a few more things I'd like to state:

Is Evolution the Enemy of Faith?

Evolution is not aimed at destroying faith.

An important mistake that many religious people who misunderstand evolution make, is to assume that evolution is an attack on faith and religion. It is not.

Evolution did not set out to disprove god, or even creation. It merely set out to discover how and where the diversity of life arose, and why we see such variation in form, behavior, and function in many related, but separated species. It wasn't even the findings of evolution and Darwin's theories, that caused problems. It was the ramifications of these theories that upset things for people when they took the process, and applied its findings to such previously sacrosanct lifeforms, as humans.

Evolution is no more about or concerned with religion than is chemistry. It only cares about how to factually and best explain the mechanics and process of life. That its findings proved to be in contradiction with a literal interpretation of Genesis, is not its fault or its aim.

It is akin to saying that chemistry was seeking to undermine the Bible because it discovered that the atmosphere contains 21% oxygen by volume, and approximately 78% nitrogen, and that oxygen can only carry eight electrons and more typically only holds six, while if in Genesis, it was written thus:

51:1 And of the air that exists, over the earth and the waters of the deep, shall one half portion by measure1 be an element that is without hue, without scent, and taste neither sweet nor sour nor bitter upon the lips of man, and that the other measure be but void, empty of all things, nameless, and without either shape or substance, as it was created in the beginning and ever shall be maintained by the Word of God.

51:2 Of this half portion of all the gases that man doth drink in with his fetid breath, shall be called Oxigyne2, and it shall burn hot as pitch and maketh the fool drunk in his laughter.

51:3 So shall the element of the air be crowned at all times by nine holy electrums3 and come it shall, falling like snow, from the stars at night, invisible to all save the Lord and his Cherubim.

1. by volume
2. Oxus or aer in the Greek
3. Electrons

Chemistry may not be the best example, but try to imagine if there is something that we know very well today, that happens to disagree with a literal translation of the Bible. Another example is that the earth is very, very much older than 6,000 or even 10,000 years, yet, that is not what geology set out to prove, it is just what it came up with, and in this case, what appears to be true. We don't blame mathematicians that 2+2 = 4.

Another example would be discovering that a passage in the Bible stated that the organ in man from which the ability to think arose, was the spleen. It would be rather odd to accuse a poor neurologist for showing that the brain actually appears to be the organ both thoughts and consciousness.

This is a bit what has happened to evolution. BECAUSE it appears to contradict a strict, literal interpretation of the events in Genesis, some folks feel that they have to refute it, or face the fact that Genesis is wrong. Poor evolution can't help it, it is just a body of facts and findings, which make the best sense based on the studies of the natural world that we have undertaken. It is not, an attempt by any means, to discredit either religion or the Bible.

That is why I recommend you learn evolution if you care to, as just another field of study, like chemistry, or metallurgy, or history, or even math. It is just a body of knowledge, no more, no less. Why some fundamentalists approach it like it was the devil himself, I don't truly understand.

I think personally, that they are frightened. Fear often breeds anger. Anger hardens the heart. A hardened heart turns away an open mind. A closed mind, lets in neither knowledge nor light.

Is Evolution Right?

We really don't know. We certainly think so, as much as we think that chemistry, and physics, and astronomy are right. They are not complete, they do not answer all our questions, we haven't even come close to discovering all the answers about everything that is debated in these fields. But we think that what we do know, is pretty close to the way the universe works. It is based on observation, experimentation, facts, and a lot of hard work and study.

When ideas prove to be false (and all ideas in these fields are generally rigorously tested as much as humanly possible), they are discarded or amended to make way for the best current ones we have. Core facts don't change that much though, and while some of the individual processes involved in evolution are still being sought after and/or challenged, evolution itself, is an accepted cornerstone of all biology.

Real scientists don't dispute evolution as either a fact or a science, merely they have differing opinions about specific mechanisms or processes by which evolution acts. In this, evolution is no different from any other field of science. Right or wrong on the particulars, evolutionary theories all agree that evolution, not a static creation, is the truth we have found in the biological world.

Those who believe in god, must then choose how to interpret this, but it is foolish IMO, to think that evolution is just a "theory" and not supported by the evidence, when it clearly and demonstratively is so. It smacks disturbingly of dishonesty that so many people try to claim that its findings are untrue, BECAUSE, they disagree with scripture.

Some people will try to say that they don't believe in evolution, because the facts don't support it. But you will never find someone who no scriptural belief saying so. It is because, and only because, some of the findings of evolution disagree with a literal reading of the scriptures that they are not as excepted as chemistry or any other science.

Indeed, those with no faith-based reason that is in conflict with evolution, do not dispute it as fact or valid theory. If it was truly flawed, you'd see scientists who were not creationists or other religious fundamentalists attacking it. Scientists don't care whether evolution supports or detracts from anyone's religion. They only care if it is true or not.

.T.

[ June 06, 2002: Message edited by: Typhon ]</p>

Oolon Colluphid

Hi foursquareman! I too admire your honesty, you are very welcome here. Ask away!

Why?

Minor changes are all that evolution requires. They are what it works with. The point is that they accumulate over time. String togethger enough minor changes, and you can end up with pretty radical change.

Compare these two dog skulls:

Bull terrier



Bulldog



We know for sure that these are both the result of cumulative selection from an ancestral wolf-type skull. Here is what selection has done to the bull terrier in just fifty years:

1930



1950



1980



Now, with this cumulative selection of slight changes in mind, take a look at these:



They are in chronological order, except the first, which is modern (not an ancestral species, just there for comparison). Could you tell us why this is not the minor changes you admit, just more of them stacked together? Which ones are ape, and which are human?

Long before such fossils were found, it was proposed on anatomical grounds that the African apes are our closest relatives. The fossils simply confirm this. Evolution predicted the existence of such creatures: if evolution were wrong, these things should not exist. But here they are, and there’s many more.

And fossils are only one line of evidence.

Now, since you say you’re a YEC... if you honestly think that the earth is only 6,000 years old... clearly there has not been enough time for evolution on a grand scale. So before we go any further with biology, perhaps the geologists among us could give a round-up of why the earth is in fact a bit older than 6,000 years.

Sorry, can’t do. Because absolutely everything in the YEC position is not true and/or ignorant. There is no credible evidence at all for YECism. So the easiest thing is to take that as read .

Cheers, Oolon

RufusAtticus

You probably are a YEC not because you are Christian but because you are a certain kind of Christian. Evolution is not incompatable with Christian doctrine.

<a href="http://iidb.org/ubb/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic&f=58&t=000557&p=7" target="_blank">This</a> has some comments by us and Christians about Christians who accept evolution.

This is my favorite post in the thread:
~~RvFvS~~