Is it possible to believe in God, and be a darwinist at the same time?

[Jan Ardena]

There I fixed it for you, you had the punctuation wrong.

I didn't say that.
Can you take it down please?
Thanks.

jan.

 

[Aqueous Id]

So the claim that whales evolved from these other animals is not believed at all,

It's a fact, not a claim. Unlike belief, this is knowledge. That is, there are facts and evidence which require it.

meaning the evidence doesn't only show similarity of structure, it actually shows that they DID evolve from these other creatures?

That's correct.

Can you explain how they know that they DID actually evolve?

By being informed by their knowledge of the actual facts and evidence taken from the study of fossils. In other words, any other conclusion is false because it collides with nature.

It is absurd to say dogs turn into whales. It is true that dogs don't turn into whales. But it is anti-science to claim that whales did not evolve from primitive ungulates*.

In the same way that it was anti-science to say flies didn't spontaneosly generate from rotting meat back in the day?

In that era the tables were turned. The churches claimed ownership of the explanation for all origins and retaliated against questions of this kind. In any case, no, the example you've chosen is not comparable to the science that classifies fossils and builds the phylogenetic trees from which we know that whales evolved from ungulates.

I find your charge it is anti-science to claim that whales did not evolve from primitive ungulates disturbing, not to mention oppressive.

Knowledge disturbs false beliefs. Education oppresses the perpetuation of ignorance and myth. But that should only please you. You'd have to say why it doesn't.

There are scientists who do not agree with this, and it wouldn't surprise me that some who do agree with it, do so out of fear of losing money, career, credibility, and so on, especially with that kind of hovering ultimatum.

Project Steve puts that in perspective.

Because one doesn't agree with the idea of whale evolution does not mean one ''repudiates'' science, it doesn't necessarily follow.

It's a repudiation of science when the decision rests on belief that contradicts knowledge.

I can't accept the explanation of whale evolution because I just don't see it.

You don't see how one species can branch from another, and how, by tracing these branches, you see an ungulate evolve into a whale?

Would you be satisfied if I said ''I don't see how this could be, but I will accept it anyway because the mainstream scientists say it is so''?

Once you've decided that there is a division between a mainstream and a dissenting side, you've already stepped away from the evidence. Remember, it's not scientists who are saying what is so, it's the fossils themselves. If you trace the branches from ungulates to whales, you're back on track.

I've told you already, it just doesn't make sense to me. It doesn't matter what arguments I use, the point is that it has to make sense to me, otherwise I cannot accept it.

Maybe the key is to find out how scientists have come to understand the issue, and to walk through the same information they used.

And right now the ID movement is showing some serious flaws in the evolutionists ideas.

Here you are saying that you can see a fact of science when told through the lens of religion, but that you can't see the fact when given as raw data.

If there is more information that is able to counter the ID claims, then it should on the net.

I have never seen an ID claim that is not easily defeated by the raw data which is readily available online.

As it stands if you google ''whale evolution'' you get the same thing telling you that it happened, showing you how it happened by way of cartoons, all with minimum information.

I just Googled, and the first sites I got were PBS, Berkeley, and Wikipedia, National Geographic, Smithsonian, a couple of learning sites, and the American Museum of Natural History. The PBS site introduces you to Phil Gingerich, who discovered the critter you were calling a dog. It goes from there to give you the names of the intermediate fossils with embedded links for more info etc. All of these are great resources. If that doesn't get you where you want to go you might want to search for some specific detail. Of course you need to avoid the Creationist sites. They have gotten pretty sneaky about modeling their sites after real science sites, so the casual reader has to have their baloney detector turned on to realize what mess they've just stepped into.

However, Gingerich is a very good place to start. If I search for "whale evolution gingerich" I get this page which is a great place to start:

Research on the Origin and Early Evolution of Whales (Cetacea)

It's as if it is a forgone conclusion,

Check that last link and tell me what part is foregone.

as if there is no absurdity in the pictures and videos.

Here is the first video I pulled up. What is absurd about it?

It is the emporers new clothes.

It's chock full of science. It's just the beginning. Wait til you get to the details. That's where you want to go, if you're looking for more specific facts. That will inevitably lead you to the journals, which is what you may ultimately be looking for.

 

[Jan Ardena]

iceaura,

No one believes that dogs turn into whales.

Dogs turning into whales is no more absurd than pakicetus turning into whales.

There are no people who understand Darwinian Evolution who don't accept it as a solid, well-supported theory capable of explaining the origin of the species, and the basic theory of Biological Science.

So if you don't accept darwinian evolution (pakicetus turning into whales), you don't understand evolution?
So one has to accept it to understand it?

Why do you assume that they diverged?
Why couldn't they just be similar?

You could, but that would mean assuming they don't make sense - that the resemblances are random and arbitrary and without explanation through reason.

At least you wouldn't have to make up absurd stories. Pakicetus lived at a certain time, and became extinct. That is the actual truth of the matter.

I've told you already, it just doesn't make sense to me. It doesn't matter what arguments I use, the point is that it has to make sense to me, otherwise I cannot accept it. And right now the ID movement is showing some serious flaws in the evolutionists ideas.

No, it isn't. It's selling a lot of books and raking in the speaking fees by gulling the rubes, another chapter in the long and almost honorable Christian tradition of separating the credulous from their money.

I'm not interested in the religious aspect of this quote, but otherwise, good, they're forcing people to think about the net they are currently being swept up in, opening up some room for contemplation. The evolutionary ideas have to constantly come with ideas and explanations to keep them on their toes, and it's only a matter of time before something has to give.

And as you repeatedly reveal (once again claiming somebody thinks dogs turn into whales, or the genetic variety of domestic animal breeds was generated by intelligence somehow rather than random mutation, and so forth, months and years after being corrected in these simple matters) your inability to make sense of this stuff is based in a willful, purposefully maintained ignorance.

It doesn't matter whether it's dogs, cats, or pakiceti, the whole idea is absurd. It's almost as if you can't see it.

Like Sergeant Schultz on the old TV show "Hogan's Heroes", you contrive to see nothing by shutting your eyes and turning your back and cultivating amnesia. And like the good Sergeant in that respect (although without the joviality and intrinsic honesty of that man) you are forced into that position by your choice of ethical and political faction - you're on the side of the bad guys, and that allegiance is crippling your reason and observation.

My eyes and ears are fully open. If you like I can link you some movies of how this whale evolution occurred, and they are ridiculous.

jan.

 

[jayleew]

How does any of this rhetoric matter? We all believe what we believe. I'd like to think most of us are listening and reevaluating their beliefs, but how can we call any belief ridiculous that we cannot prove is not? We are here discussing the reason and philosophy of what we all believe, but how can we ever reject any belief when we ourselves probably believe something that someone else would say is equally ridiculous?

To answer the OP, some people believe that Evolution was God's tool to create man. So, since there are people who believe that, then the answer is "yes."

 

[Rav]

To answer the OP, some people believe that Evolution was God's tool to create man. So, since there are people who believe that, then the answer is "yes."

You've missed what's really going on here though. What the OP is arguing is that anyone who says they accept the fact of evolution, and believe in God, doesn't really believe in God at all. The justification for this is that a person who really believes in God necessarily sees the process of evolution as being incompatible with that belief.

So, if God merely created a universe in which intelligent life would evolve as an inevitable consequence of the physical parameters He put in place, He's not really God at all, and therefore believing in Him constitutes believing in nothing more than an idea concocted by man. If fact even if God directly authoured abiogenesis, and perhaps even actively guided the resulting processes at a few critical points here and there, He's still not really God at all, and therefore believing in Him still constitutes believing in nothing more than an idea concocted by man.

(the manner in which I elected to phrase the paragraph above was decidedly premeditated)

 

[Rav]

Also of particular relevance is the Catholic doctrine of "special creation" where, in the context of theistic evolution, evolving hominids were eventually endowed with souls by God at which point they became properly human.

But alas, no matter how devout a catholic may be, they are not true theists either.

 

[Rav]

Hmmm. The Pope? Not a true theist!

 

[Aqueous Id]

How does any of this rhetoric matter?

We are pitting the rhetoric of the Creation Myth against the rhetoric of all of science. That matters to anyone who cares about truth.

We all believe what we believe.

And we know what we know. Now we need only put what we believe to the test of what we know in order to discover if the belief is true or not.

I'd like to think most of us are listening and reevaluating their beliefs, but how can we call any belief ridiculous that we cannot prove is not?

By winnowing the deceptions out of our beliefs. By learning.

We are here discussing the reason and philosophy of what we all believe,

And know.

but how can we ever reject any belief when we ourselves probably believe something that someone else would say is equally ridiculous?

How? By applying what we learned in geometry (the systematic application of logic).

To answer the OP, some people believe that Evolution was God's tool to create man.

Alas, that's one sad way folks handle the truth.

So, since there are people who believe that, then the answer is "yes."

Only as belief. But never as truth.

 

[Aqueous Id]

Hmmm. The Pope? Not a true theist!

One of the silliest faces of fundamentalism is its disdain of Catholicism and the Pope. Beside the fact their entire belief system was created by the ancient Catholics, their own "pope" was Henry VIII (in that he took ownership of the Church of England) - the perfect Machievellian and emblem of the corruption they attribute to the papacy. Of course I'm excluding all of European Protestantism from the ones I'm calling "fundies" but in fact this movement - the one that is so zealous about denying science - is evidently entirely rooted in the groups that descended from the original English Anabaptists.

Just a little bit of trivia. But it does speak to the duplicity of fundamentalism. I mean, if they really wanted to make a clean break they should have disavowed any document the Catholics ever had in their possession, on grounds that it had to be contaminated. And to think the Popes (esp Damasus I who sent Jerome off to create the modern Bible) controlled what went into the Bible . . . Blasphemy !! And how did the English Protestants react? By removing the Apocrypha, the Jewish texts! It's all ridiculous. Worst of all they have no sense of their history, of all the fallacies they built their rejection of the other fallacies on.

 

[wegs]

So, the question for me is ...why is it incompatible to believe in God and evolution from the POV of the OP?

Just when u think you know what's going on in a thread...

Jan, I sensed you don't believe in evolution but didn't think you feel that to believe in it, means one shouldn't claim to be a theist?

 

[Jan Ardena]

So, the question for me is ...why is it incompatible to believe in God and evolution from the POV of the OP?

Just when u think you know what's going on in a thread...

Jan, I sensed you don't believe in evolution but didn't think you feel that to believe in it, means one shouldn't claim to be a theist?

I already asked you the questions that matter. Who and what is God? But you declined to answer.

You're right, I don't believe IN evolution, and what's more I shouldn't have to believe in it anymore than I have to believe IN any natural phenomena. If I am left
having to believe in something, then it is something that falls outside of mine or anyones sensual perception and/or outside of nature, but that thing has to make sense, and necessarily follow on from something that I do know or can percieve in some way.

jan.

 

[Rav]

Didn't really get a straight answer there did you wegs? Here, from page 1:

Once the theist accepts the darwinian theory of evolution, he/she accepts the idea that God's sovereignty can be diminished. This means there is no belief in God, but an idea of God that fits with their worldview. That position is not a theist one.

So I don't think it is possible to believe both points of view as a simultaneos reality.

 

[Aqueous Id]

Dogs turning into whales is no more absurd than pakicetus turning into whales.

That's incorrect. Animals don't turn into anything. They descend from one another. Descendency is genetic. Over generations genes drift and mutate, introducing gradual changes to the individuals who carry them. The word is evolve. Animals don't evolve into other animals. They simply evolve. There is no endpoint or destination, just whatever works for the survival of that population in that particular set of circumstances. Further, they evolve as populations. Any new genetic traits have to be so successful that they take root in the entire population.

Pakicetus did not "evolve into" a whale. The evidence and current science on this places Pakicetus in common ancestry with modern whales. The fact of having "cetus" in its name tells you it's a primitive whale. One with legs.

So if you don't accept darwinian evolution (pakicetus turning into whales), you don't understand evolution?

If you say "animal X turns into animal Y" you likely don't understand evolution. If you can't pass a college entrance exam covering the subject of evolution, then same thing. I think there are some objective ways to measure that.

So one has to accept it to understand it?

What we mean is, denial of evolution is hard evidence that the person does not understand it.

Pakicetus lived at a certain time, and became extinct. That is the actual truth of the matter.

That's only a minimum of the truth. You need to say when it lived, and how it originated. Then you're getting closer to the truth.

It doesn't matter whether it's dogs, cats, or pakiceti, the whole idea is absurd. It's almost as if you can't see it.

Quite the reverse, jan.

My eyes and ears are fully open. If you like I can link you some movies of how this whale evolution occurred, and they are ridiculous.

The truth is stranger than fiction. But not absurd.

 

[Yazata]

How does any of this rhetoric matter?

Not really. Just about everyone posts here for fun, and arguing can be entertaining. So the arguments can go on and on endlessly, aimlessly and often in circles.

To answer the OP, some people believe that Evolution was God's tool to create man. So, since there are people who believe that, then the answer is "yes."

Of course. I agree with Jayleew. Countless millions of theists believe in biological evolution, so obviously it's possible.

The only way that an incompatibility would seem to arise would be if the theist believed not only in the existence of a 'God' (however that word is defined), but also in a second special-creationist premise that has this God creating all the various 'kinds' of life initially at creation, with the 'kinds' continuing on essentially unchanged ever since.

That suggests that it isn't really theism itself that's incompatible with "Darwinism", but rather the second creationist premise.

 

[Rav]

Not really. Just about everyone posts here for fun, and arguing can be entertaining. So the arguments can go on and on endlessly, aimlessly and often in circles.

You make me laugh sometimes. And I mean actually laugh. In this case it's the nature of the subject matter itself that is inherently funny of course, but you have a knack for succinctly conveying the essence of it.

In fact I'd say you have a knack for succinctly conveying the essence of many things.

 

[wegs]

I already asked you the questions that matter. Who and what is God? But you declined to answer.

You're right, I don't believe IN evolution, and what's more I shouldn't have to believe in it anymore than I have to believe IN any natural phenomena. If I am left
having to believe in something, then it is something that falls outside of mine or anyones sensual perception and/or outside of nature, but that thing has to make sense, and necessarily follow on from something that I do know or can percieve in some way.

jan.

Jan, I do remember you asking and I had no definitive answer then and don't now. I don't know "what" God is or isn't...but I have a faith, a belief, that we have a Creator. To guess that God would somehow be less omniscient simply because he may have chosen evolution as the catalyst for everything to exist, makes us create a god that fits into our way of thinking. I don't know what I don't know.

Having said that... I ask questions here not to change minds or to spar, even. I honestly want to understand the views being presented. I do think it's fundamentally wrong however, to say that a theist can't "have it both ways."

See, to me...I'm not having it both ways. I believe evolution stemmed from a Creator. Not, two separate thoughts and I'm trying to connect the spiritual dots to science. Hope that better clarifies my point. And thx for yours...

Didn't really get a straight answer there did you wegs? Here, from page 1:

Grazie!

 

[Jan Ardena]

Also of particular relevance is the Catholic doctrine of "special creation" where, in the context of theistic evolution, evolving hominids were eventually endowed with souls by God at which point they became properly human.

But alas, no matter how devout a catholic may be, they are not true theists either.

I'm not interested in religious affiliation as being a member of any organisation does nothing to show if you believe in God or not.

jan.

 

[Aqueous Id]

. . .but also in a second special-creationist premise that has this God creating all the various 'kinds' of life initially at creation, with the 'kinds' continuing on essentially unchanged ever since.

That suggests that it isn't really theism itself that's incompatible with "Darwinism", but rather the second creationist premise.

Also I'm wondering if jan has God creating Pakicetus 50 MYA out of thin air. Added up to include all speciation events ever, it's pretty frenetic version of special creation.

 

[Rav]

One of the silliest faces of fundamentalism is its disdain of Catholicism and the Pope. Beside the fact their entire belief system was created by the ancient Catholics, their own "pope" was Henry VIII (in that he took ownership of the Church of England) - the perfect Machievellian and emblem of the corruption they attribute to the papacy. Of course I'm excluding all of European Protestantism from the ones I'm calling "fundies" but in fact this movement - the one that is so zealous about denying science - is evidently entirely rooted in the groups that descended from the original English Anabaptists.

Just a little bit of trivia. But it does speak to the duplicity of fundamentalism. I mean, if they really wanted to make a clean break they should have disavowed any document the Catholics ever had in their possession, on grounds that it had to be contaminated. And to think the Popes (esp Damasus I who sent Jerome off to create the modern Bible) controlled what went into the Bible . . . Blasphemy !! And how did the English Protestants react? By removing the Apocrypha, the Jewish texts! It's all ridiculous. Worst of all they have no sense of their history, of all the fallacies they built their rejection of the other fallacies on.

For a lot of religious people it doesn't really matter. Historical considerations, and even theological ones beyond their own brand of faith, or sometimes even any considerations at all, are secondary to the reality of their own convictions. Hence, fideism. Most theists (although perhaps not all, depending on exactly how you want to define the word) engage in this to varying degrees.

Although to be fair the same sort of behaviour can certainly manifest outside of the context of theism as well.

 

[Jan Ardena]

wegs,

To guess that God would somehow be less omniscient simply because he may have chosen evolution as the catalyst for everything to exist, makes us create a god that fits into our way of thinking. I don't know what I don't know.

If you're prepared to accept that God could choose the darwinian evolutionary process to kick start existence, why can't you accept that He created in the way it says in scriptures?

Having said that... I ask questions here not to change minds or to spar, even. I honestly want to understand the views being presented. I do think it's fundamentally wrong however, to say that a theist can't "have it both ways."

I didn't say it was wrong, I said I don't it is possible to accept both realities.

See, to me...I'm not having it both ways. I believe evolution stemmed from a Creator. Not, two separate thoughts and I'm trying to connect the spiritual dots to science. Hope that better clarifies my point. And thx for yours...

Like Yazata said, just have fun with this, try not to take it seriously, and if you can add anything to your outlook it is a bonus.

jan.