There is some good stuff above Wegs, stuff that challenges both of us, for we are alike in this world, scientific but also believers. We struggle to marry the two together but I want to take up the mission to find out how that can be done. Two work better together than one.
Denial of Evolution VI.
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wegs
Christianity and creationism are not the same thing. Most Christians see the first chapters of Genesis as allegory or metaphor. If you want to say that god said "Let there be light!" and the Big Bang occurred, I would have no means nor any reason to try to convince you differently, we just don't know what caused the Big Bang(but we do know it happened and when).
Evolution, on the other hand, we do have copious evidence of, we KNOW that life is older than 3.5 billion years on Earth(not 6000 years as per creationists), we KNOW that nothing more sophisticated than a single cell existed before about 600 million years ago(as opposed to top down creation, we KNOW that every human currently on Earth descended from a single female who lived about 200,000 years ago(that "Eve" actually did exist), we KNOW that the human race got "smarter" suddenly about 15-20 thousand years ago, possibly from a single set of mutations or possibly due to the invention of writing, civilization and cultivation. In short, we KNOW that almost every claim made by creationists is wrong and that the goal of creationism is not a search for truth but a protection of ignorance and superstitious non-sense by those who cannot face reality. The Catholic Church has no beef with what scientists have found to be true(that has not always been so, but after so many loses they realized there is no winning with the facts on the other side)and nutjob fundies are a mystery to most of the world(and a bane on civilized, free societies wherever they do exist, here or abroad). Fundamentalism and creationism go hand in hand and they are both insults to the intelligence of mankind.
I was raised Christian, my morals are still based largely on the philosophy of Jesus(basically responsible Socialism)even as I realize he was just a man, not the deity the people of the organized cult following his death created out of whole cloth. The Old Testament was written thousands of years before Jesus, the New Testament has no content from less than 50 years after his death. It is largely fiction in both cases, it has nothing to contribute to any scientific investigation and cannot be considered history(legend and fable yes, accurate history, no). It was written within a misogynist, scientifically ignorant age and it shows. Many of the things the Old Testament tells you to do would get you arrested(if not executed)today, we don't sell our daughters or own our wives and if we kill everyone not of our temple who visits it, we deserve to be killed ourselves as we see this Biblical admonition as the barbarism it actually is. But the only one of these admonitions(kill your rebellious children, no bacon, no mixed fabrics, being crippled in the temple, divorce, etc.)is still supported, the one about homosexuality, go figure.
Grumpy
At the risk of sounding redundant, you and billvon have really helped me in a succinct way. Respectfully, I might add.
I can't thank you enough for taking the time to do this. You didn't have to, so I appreciate it.
How you explain this is just based on facts. And ones I agree with. Lol I have often thought the same things but yet there is this "nagging belief" in a Creator. Whoever He may be. Whatever He may be. Where does this come from?
I will write more later on this. You are a kind man. (with the wrong username) lol
Thank u again.
Oh hey
Yes, me too. I'm excited in a weird way. Lol
I can't give up my faith...but I will look for a way to reconcile what I feel (faith) and what I know (science)
Good morning from NZ.Oh hey
Yes, me too. I'm excited in a weird way. Lol
I can't give up my faith...but I will look for a way to reconcile what I feel (faith) and what I know (science)
Rooster crowing in the background confirms the morning. A new day to "solve Genesis".
You seem to have misread the post - the parents being discussed are not beating their children, or treating them badly in such coercive and onerous ways.billvon said:
But taking the bait, and considering only the physically or emotionally abusive, the atheist ones might be strawmen, but the theistic ones quite definitely exist as a major and significant fraction of theistic parents. Almost any school classroom in the US holds several of their children, and they are politically as well as socially influential.
Wegs et al are misreading the arguments, reacting to their own misreadings as if they were the opinions of other posters. and instructing other posters on aspects of theistic people (they are often kind, good people, non abusive, not fundies, etc) long familiar and well understood by the people they purport to instruct - an odd approach for those insistent on other people crediting their point of view (walking in their shoes, say), but unfortunately also familiar and even characteristic of the solidly theistic on this forum.
Especially characteristic, we note, in threads on evolutionary theory, in which willfully ignorant and abusively rhetorical theists commonly put quite a bit of bandwidth into instructing others on the nature and implications of an evolutionary theory they do not understand.
Now we all appreciate this basic approach being presented politely and civilly and without the underlying hostility too prevalent among the touchy uneducated. We're grateful. But however presented, the pattern is a revealing one. And among its revelations is an apparent mental state rather closely resembling that type labeled "brainwashed", an appearance which is only reinforced by attribution to one's parents, upbringing, childhood faith, etc.
I spent my early years in a very religious household and spent four years in a Catholic high school, taking the requisite hour of Scripture a day and going to school masses on all the holy days. We got a quite a bit of programming.
And not once - not from any of the priests, not from any of the brothers or nuns - did I hear any variation on the theme "believe this or you are going to Hell." I didn't hear other kids worried about this. The handful of non-Christians in the school (necessary for that oh so important state funding) didn't get told that.
Now, I am sure that there are examples of parents saying just that - just as I am sure that atheist parents have threatened/belittled/abused their children who espouse religious beliefs. In my experience both are very much the exception, not the rule.
Agreed. And as you mention such positions are, in general, based on ignorance rather than a fear of Hell.
If we're going to compare annecdotal evidence, I have had the opposite experience.
I too grew up in a religious houshold and attended a catholic school. I've attended Catholic churches, Presbyterian churches, baptist churches, churches bordering on evangelical with the whole singing and dancing and laying on of hands schtick, I was baptised as an adult by a baptist church, I've also attended mormon churches and the salvation army church, and at every single one of them it was reinforced the consequences of non-belief and disobedience were eternal damnation.
It is prolific enough that I know some very good people whos overwhelming generosity helped me through one of the hardest patches of my life (facing the possibility of loosing my wife and/or unborn son through complications in pregnancy) who refer to it as "The hellfire and damnation" or "Doom and Gloom" sermon style. They, incidentally, find it every bit as objectional as I do.
And if your wondering, no, I am not currently religious. I walked away from the church and my faith and embraced atheism for reasons which I don't feel like discussing.
don't confuse "belief in a creator" with "belief that humanity is more that what nature can explain".
it's my guess that very few believe in a creator but a great many believe humanity is more than what nature can explain.
Catholic church isn't that bad. They teach redemption through the self as opposed to the church itself for those who strive for something deeper than what society believes. Sure they give shallow reason for "sheeple" but for those with something to hide its more understanding than a Mormon (lol) and less shallow than the rest when you really set out to find the right people. Unitarian teaches all religions like Sikhism, but what is important about any church is that they specialize in keeping up with the times as well as realizing what is truly timeless.
Me? I got confirmed and never looked back. I consider faith something you live with no matter what. It is a feeling not a thought so there is no need to denounce it unless you denounce a part of yourself. (=
Me? I got confirmed and never looked back. I consider faith something you live with no matter what. It is a feeling not a thought so there is no need to denounce it unless you denounce a part of yourself. (=
What alternative is there other than a supernatural creator of mankind to a natural model of the origin of humanity?
Is that "very few" in relation to the population of a particular city, country or the whole Earth? What research did you do before forming such a guess?
Consciousness? Something quite lacking in these days.
To which the response, in the context of this thread, is: so?billvon said:
That has, literally, nothing to do with the arguments here.
Look, I don't happen to agree that the kind of influence on children being discussed is a form of abuse. Personally, I find all childraising a process of inculcating what might as well be called delusions here, a series of them, often overt - the famous Santa Claus illustrates, but it gets far more serious (I recall having an Australian aboriginal one described, with the young man at puberty introduced to the bullroarer he had been brought to believe was a monster's voice, and taught to swing it himself as a newly grown man), and the whole good and necessary and profoundly educational and in all ways worthy of respectful praise (if part of one's own childhood, deep affection).
But the argument that the God Of Abraham is a special case and especially problematic, an especially crippling category of this, is there to be made. One can't just dismiss it, especially with the numerous examples at hand right here. Someone encountering Darwinian theory should not be burdened with such serious and apparently unnecessary extra mental obstacles from their childhood as we see, over and over, on this forum and in similar venues. The intrinsic difficulty of the theory is obstacle enough, surely? So to have that argument dismissed in the manner seen here is worth highlighting.
Well, you can be sure of the one because you can, and have, met numerous examples. We all have. They are not exceptions to an overwhelmingly dominant rule, they are very common in ordinary US life. Your certainty of the other is not supported like that. There you have a hard time finding even one or two examples, and those would be drawn from the wide world and not dozens of your classmates from childhood.billvon said:
To repeat - threats of Hell are not the whole, or even the most important part, of the problem under discussion here. That is not what we are talking about in this matter. The nature of the ignorance involved, the difficulties and blind spots and odd inabilities to reason or recognize reason or even read plain English prose with comprehension we see among the theistic here, is far more importantbillvon said:
leopold
This is known as argument from incredulity, you don't have any idea of what deep time is, your life experience encompasses only around 100 years at most and you only have evidence of the thoughts of earlier humans for 10 thousand or so, so you don't see how any number of very small changes can lead to drastically different life forms, because it can't in any time frame you can grok based solely on your experiences. But those who study evolution have a better understanding of deep time(as do geologists, astronomers and cosmologists). Ten thousand years(the longest time period man has personal experience of today)is like the second of deep time, it is nearly the minimum time one can expect geological, biological and astronomical changes to be significant, absent catastrophic events. 400-500 million years is a lot of significant changes, it led all the way from trilobites to man(and every other creature on Earth). But it took from 3.5 billion years ago to 400-500 million years ago to go from the first lifeforms to bacteria, time enough for millions and millions of significant changes(actually many billions, one celled life evolves much more quickly than multicellular forms with many generations a year instead of many years per generation).
Grumpy
This is known as argument from incredulity, you don't have any idea of what deep time is, your life experience encompasses only around 100 years at most and you only have evidence of the thoughts of earlier humans for 10 thousand or so, so you don't see how any number of very small changes can lead to drastically different life forms, because it can't in any time frame you can grok based solely on your experiences. But those who study evolution have a better understanding of deep time(as do geologists, astronomers and cosmologists). Ten thousand years(the longest time period man has personal experience of today)is like the second of deep time, it is nearly the minimum time one can expect geological, biological and astronomical changes to be significant, absent catastrophic events. 400-500 million years is a lot of significant changes, it led all the way from trilobites to man(and every other creature on Earth). But it took from 3.5 billion years ago to 400-500 million years ago to go from the first lifeforms to bacteria, time enough for millions and millions of significant changes(actually many billions, one celled life evolves much more quickly than multicellular forms with many generations a year instead of many years per generation).
Grumpy
leopold;
I'm not confused; I believe in a Creator.
But for some, your presumption could be correct.
i'm incredulous alright.
asking me to believe things become alive is like asking me to believe in god as creator.
you can't be serious.
really?
god creates humanity, and for what?
remember he's all knowing and all powerful and loves humanity (he gave his only son for us remember?)
think about this wegs.
ANY explanation will be a contradiction of some or all of the above "god qualities"
but yet there's that nagging feeling "that we are more than nature can explain".
if you can relax some or all of the definitions of the "god qualities" above then you MIGHT be able to make a god concept fly.
but i doubt it.
let's take the one on the right, PE.Let's go to the pic Lewin placed in his article to illustrate the question that was in play. Can you restate what you said above in a way that is consistent with the illustration?
in my opinion all of the humps are separate species.
the functional disparity would be at the "junction" of the 2 tines and to a lesser extent between all species graphed.
macroevolution would be the species at the bottom turning into either of the 2 tine tips.
it doesn't show a gradual accumulation of changes and is apparently pronounced at the "split" between tines.
the junction is probably what gould was talking about when he mentioned functional disparity.
i don't know, the universe is a very big place and i fail to believe our natural laws will hold true everywhere in it.
the only thing i keep coming back to is life is infinite and/or it employs an interdimensional effect.
like einstein said:
not only is the universe stranger than we imagine, it's stranger than we CAN imagine.
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