Explanations can be made to sound good. So good that people can believe them.
I’m asking for evidence of that explanation, so that I can accept it as a fact.
Otherwise it’s just a case of belief.
Which you’re obviously entitled to.
Absolutely Nothing: Atheists on What They Know About What They Pretend to Discuss
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I’m asking for evidence of that explanation, so that I can accept it as a fact.
Otherwise it’s just a case of belief.
Which you’re obviously entitled to.
But, you agree white people are inferior.
Why would I?
Why don’t you say what you want to say?
Seems I’m going to have to call you “trickster” as well.
You're a racist.
Why am I?
You're still confused about the terminology. The explanation is not the fact. And nobody cares whether you accept it or not.
If you have a better explanation, feel free to present it. There may be a Nobel Prize in it for you.
I was hoping you could explain.
Why do you think I agree with you?
In other words, you can't explain the difference. Just say so. Playing word games is for children and we are adults here.
Never said it was.
Neither is what is being explained, unless you can show it to be.
just as well bcuz I don’t care whether anybody accepts it or not.
Evolution is a THE explanation. No need for the atheist version.
Still wrong. The theory is the explanation.
The only theory of evolution is atheistic - i.e. it takes no gods into account at all. There can not be a theistic theory of anything because gods are usually considered to be unexplainable.
More correctly, the concepts and ideas of supernatural, and/or paranormal myths, are unscientific concepts, at worst, and the proposal of any mythical deity is at best superfluous.
To doubt Darwinian evolution, aka the theory of evolution in this day and age is inane and stupid.
The only “theory” is the “theory of evolution”.
It’s an explanation, which could be, and seems to be anything.
Evolution actually occurs, so we can get an explanation of evolution, from evolution.
Not necessarily.
The Dogon tribe in West Africa claimed gods told them about star systems, hundreds of years before modern science discovered them.
How do you explain that?
I thought I’d throw you another bone as you were hopelessly tied up in our current discussion.
Spoken like a true fundie!
Xelasnave.1947
Valued Senior Member
That hell had freezed over.
To read about in depth is perhaps where you could start but if you wish to think about it leave evolution off the table and explain to us.. simply so you can read how you attempted to explain things...the alternative you propose...I guess the thing that stands out with a creation explanation, in my view, is how we have evidence for many species that are now extinct. It would seem a creation approach requires all life to be created in those first six days...The simple question could be did humans and dinasaurs exist together. It seems that some theist s reject evolution as they see it's story as making a mockery of creation, however rejecting evolution does nothing to establish God exists...
Can you explain the origin of species?
Alex
Religious types don't propose ideas; they mainly just tear down other people's ideas. They feel their religion requires it.
Xelasnave.1947
Valued Senior Member
Like any other claim I would like to review the evidence in support.
It is pretty clear theists make many incredible claims but all have in common the inability to come up with the goods, by way of evidence in support.
Did the gods tell them where the Sun went at night? Did these gods tell them about germs?
Did these gods explain the origin of species?
Alex
First of all, it wasn't hundreds of years before modern science discovered the binary star of Sirius, it was found out from 1931 to 1956 by Griaule who studied the Dogon in field missions. It is thought this information was imparted to the Dogon tribe during a five-week expedition, led by Henri-Alexandre Deslandres, to study the solar eclipse of 16 April 1893.
A brief google search produces the statistic that 97% of all scientists accept evolution to be the best explanation of biological diversity. That's not working biologists, mind you, just scientists in general.
Probably you can find a few people with qualifications of some kind in biology who don't accept evolution, if you look hard enough. I'll wager that if you find some they are very likely to turn out to be people who have strong religious views, like you. If that is the case, it seems likely to me that something about their religion is stopping them from accepting the science.
What you are trying to do with that line of argument is ludicrous, and I think that you're fully aware of that.
There's an immense professional literature (not to mention the popular literature) that documents scientific investigations into all manner of things that depend on or are the direct result of evolution.
You might manage to convince some uneducated hicks that no such thing exists. You might, if you're willing to lie to yourself and close your eyes to the obvious, even convince yourself. But to come to a science forum and try to run that line is just silly. All that does is to destroy your own credibility. People lose respect for you.
One of the great strengths of the theory is that it just fits. It took insight to come up with the idea in the first place, but that work has been done. These days, all we have to do is explain the theory adequately. It doesn't take great knowledge to just see that it has to be true.
If you're in an environment where you're being taught that the theory is evil and ungodly, and that you can't be a real [insert religious designation here] if you accept it, then probably you'll be willing to go out of your way to avoid learning about it, like you have. In that case, you replace objective intuition with religiously indoctrinated beliefs.
Congratulations. You just decided that reading, writing and arithmetic are not real knowledge.
I suppose you'll be telling us that numbers don't mean anything next. You're already saying the world is flat. You don't have far to go to get to the bottom of your self-made abyss.
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Okay.
It's possible, but my own suspicion is that Jan is or was probably a member of some fringe religion such as the Hare Krishnas.
Here's an imaginary tale that I shall title "The life of Jan".
Jan grew up with religious parents, but was never really satisfied with his parents' religion. It is possible that the family had problems, but not necessarily the case. Jan was a bright boy who gained a decent education. But he was always searching for spiritual fulfilment. Then, one day as he was walking into the train station, Jan met a group of Hare Krishas. Jan's own background up to that point was primarily Christian, but he had developed an interest in "Eastern" religious beliefs, possibly as a result of travel or possibly because he was on a spiritual quest. So, Jan collected the literature and chatted with the Hare Krishnas. He was invited to come to a gathering or service or temple (or whatever they have). Jan was intrigued to find out more, so he read up and talked to his new friends. At some point, Jan decided to join the faith himself.
As a new convert, Jan was eager to pass out the literature of the faith and to try to convert others. Jan became a True Believer. The problem was, certain aspects of the lifestyle didn't sit right with Jan. Also, he kept reading and, as he did so, he began to question whether the Krishnas really had all the answers. It seemed to Jan that some elements of his old Christianity (including things from the bible) fit Jan's worldview better than some of the official positions of his new faith. Besides, life started getting in the way, and Jan didn't really want to dedicate his entire life to spreading one religion. Especially after the internet became a thing, Jan gradually found that it was just as satisfying for him to preach his own version of the faith online, and it was also far less time consuming than regularly attending gatherings of the faithful.
Things went on for a number of years while Jan remained in touch with his religious community. But he found that parts of his original faith no longer satisfied him. His own views seemed to be better supported by a variety of the "scriptures" he spent long nights pouring through. So, Jan gradually drifted away from official activity within the faith, although never feeling like he needed to entirely make a clean break with his old comrades. After all, there was still much in the Krishna faith that Jan admired and agreed with, and there was no need to alienate those people who had helped to change his inner religious life for the better.
On the internet, Jan discovered people who were willing to engage with Jan's own ideas. In Jan's view, a lot of those people just had no idea about what belief in God should really mean. He found that, due to his background, he could speak with an assumed authority born of experience. He could preach the word. He could unify all the faiths and show the people all gods are One. He could be the prophet of the God he had constructed for himself.
One day, Jan discovered a forum called sciforums. To his surprise, some prominent voices there were openly asserting that religion is nonsense and there isn't even a God! Jan's mission suddenly hit him. He would show these godless heathens what a real Man of Religion looks like. He would put the atheists in their place by telling them that they know nothing of God. He would explain how there are no real atheists, only deniers of the One God, Jan's God. But he wouldn't get bogged down in matters of fact or evidence. He would ignore those. He would be the Wall that will not budge. His faith would not waver, no matter what the atheists said. He would certainly not lower himself to learning about mere human science, as if that matters.
And yet, as the years went by, Jan's faith did waver, in spite of himself. Some nights, Jan lay in his bed thinking over conversations that he had had on sciforums. A niggling voice in his head would say things like "The atheists have a point here" and "That thing about the need for objective evidence - it almost sounds sensible." But then, the angel on Jan's other shoulder would tell him not to concern himself with these mere trifles. The voice in his head would say "Jan, my child, I am your God. I am YOUR God. Nothing else really matters." And for a while, Jan could forget.
Then, one day, something just clicked in Jan's head. He didn't know why. Maybe it was those niggling conversations that he was unable to forget, no matter how hard he wanted to. Maybe he'd found out too much about science, accidentally. Maybe he had just allowed himself to think too much, rather than just submitting to his God, which had always worked to quell his doubts before. Whatever the reason, something worried him: what if I've been wrong all this time?
From that day on, there was no turning back for Jan. Probably the scientists and the atheists were wrong, but if they were wrong then it should be possible to prove them wrong on their own ground. Jan decided to learn some science. He started by reading some introductory material on evolution. Looking at it with new eyes, Jan found that rather than it being dogmatic, it actually made logical sense. But where did that leave God? What if human beings really did have ape-like ancestors? Where would that leave God and his Special Creation?
The more Jan read the scientific and atheist literature, hoping to find errors of fact, the more he found himself thinking in an unfamiliar way. Then one day another revelation hit Jan: what if I don't know what I've assumed I've known all these years? It was unsettling: the idea that his own religious faith might not be objective knowledge. Jan wondered if he should check that beliefs he had held unquestioningly from his Hari Krishna days were actually evidence based.
Time went on and Jan found himself becoming honest, really for the first time, with himself about what he really knew and what he could not show. To cut a long story short, over the next year Jan de-converted. He even apologised to some of his former opponents on the internet for what he now recognised as his own prior deliberate dishonesty. With some regret, looking back, he realised that if he had only been honest with himself back then, he could have been living a reality-based existence long ago.
Jan became a happier man than he had ever been before. He lost a lot of the anger that went with the need to defend his own personal religion, and he made lots of new friends. Occasionally he struggled with guilty feelings about the religion he had lost, but he recognised that these were only partly his own fault and over time they diminished. Jan died a happy atheist, comfortable with his place in the real world.
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