the slow death of religion
- Thread starter youngbiologist
- Start date
biblthmp,
This link shows a set of 31 studies carried out between the 1920s and the 1960s that consistently shows that the more intelligent and educated tend to be the less religious.
http://www20.brinkster.com/atheology/the_effect_of_intelligence_on_religious_faith.htm
There is an inverse statistical correlation between religious beliefs and education and intelligence.
This link shows a set of 31 studies carried out between the 1920s and the 1960s that consistently shows that the more intelligent and educated tend to be the less religious.
http://www20.brinkster.com/atheology/the_effect_of_intelligence_on_religious_faith.htm
biblethmp,
All moral standards must be relative to the needs of humans. Rational morality is easily determined when viewing human needs.
A rational morality, in essence, is a code of values required by man for his survival, well-being and happiness. The term "rational" is used because such a code must be based on the facts of human value, and only reason can determine what is and is not of value to man. A rational meta-ethics, therefore, is based on man's need for objective values, his need to determine those goals that are conducive to his well-being. To take a simple illustration, food is of value to man, it is instrumental in maintaining his life; poison is not. If man is to survive, he must value food and disvalue poison. Man's evaluations must be based on, and agree with, those things that are actually of value to him.
Nonsense. Evil has clear connotations outside of religion.
All moral standards must be relative to the needs of humans. Rational morality is easily determined when viewing human needs.
A rational morality, in essence, is a code of values required by man for his survival, well-being and happiness. The term "rational" is used because such a code must be based on the facts of human value, and only reason can determine what is and is not of value to man. A rational meta-ethics, therefore, is based on man's need for objective values, his need to determine those goals that are conducive to his well-being. To take a simple illustration, food is of value to man, it is instrumental in maintaining his life; poison is not. If man is to survive, he must value food and disvalue poison. Man's evaluations must be based on, and agree with, those things that are actually of value to him.
youngbiologist
Registered Senior Member
Re: questions religion raise that aren't raised outside religion?
Okay blith, I'm gonna keep this REAL simple. So those prairy dogs, the ones that work together building networks, sharing food, warning each other of predators...They all do that cause they worship a god? I didn't know groundhogs had their own god.
Guess what, alot of the ideas in the bible are good ideas for society. These ideas also exist in the animal world anyway, the bible just has some of them written down. Tribes of chimps exist, work together, share childrearing, etc becaus they are good for society. Whats good for the individual is usually good for the society(tribe, colony, etc), as such animals have evolved to have certain rules. Sure theres still death and violence, but we still have the same thing in our own societies cause deep down we too are animals. Gophers aint' got no god, and they have morals. Hence, morality does not require religion. Back several thousand years having morality writen in books was probably a good idea, still is. Thats why we have the law.
Okay blith, I'm gonna keep this REAL simple. So those prairy dogs, the ones that work together building networks, sharing food, warning each other of predators...They all do that cause they worship a god? I didn't know groundhogs had their own god.
Guess what, alot of the ideas in the bible are good ideas for society. These ideas also exist in the animal world anyway, the bible just has some of them written down. Tribes of chimps exist, work together, share childrearing, etc becaus they are good for society. Whats good for the individual is usually good for the society(tribe, colony, etc), as such animals have evolved to have certain rules. Sure theres still death and violence, but we still have the same thing in our own societies cause deep down we too are animals. Gophers aint' got no god, and they have morals. Hence, morality does not require religion. Back several thousand years having morality writen in books was probably a good idea, still is. Thats why we have the law.
agreed and let us not use the term survival of the fittest anymore if you actually do not understand what it means.
Throughout history god has been used to explain the unexplained. If people don't know how something came about, god did it, simple. Thats how god was thought up in the first place. People didn't know why there was a day and night so god must have made these phenomena.
People have figured out why such things happen now.
Now that evolution is pretty much a fact(creationists are simply too ignorant and moronic to take into account) the latest religious craze is to say "well sure everything has evolved but god made the universe in the first place" and this is just another case of(the word)"god" being used to explain the unexplained. We don't know how the universe was made so I guess god made it. I lost a tennis ball recently, I have no idea where it could have gone off to. By a religious person's reasoning, god has stollen my tennis ball! what other possible reason could it vanish like that?
You might say there is no solid proof of this and that but there is no proof whatsoever of a god, not even reasonable indications.
Lets say I'm wrong. Lets say god created everything. Lets say god made it so the world revolves around pain. Lets say god designed the concept of a carnivore, a creature that needs to kill another creature and cause it pain to survive, lets say god created creatures that paralyze other animals and lay their eggs in said animal only to have their babies hatch and eat paralyzed animal alive, lets say god created us.
Well if a god created all these things he must one sick, twisted, sadistic bastard(creative ... but messed up) and frankly I don't WANT to meet him.
At the end of the day the ways of this planet are coldly logical and if there's something we don't understand then there is something we don't understand period... that shouldn't be so hard to understand.
People have figured out why such things happen now.
Now that evolution is pretty much a fact(creationists are simply too ignorant and moronic to take into account) the latest religious craze is to say "well sure everything has evolved but god made the universe in the first place" and this is just another case of(the word)"god" being used to explain the unexplained. We don't know how the universe was made so I guess god made it. I lost a tennis ball recently, I have no idea where it could have gone off to. By a religious person's reasoning, god has stollen my tennis ball! what other possible reason could it vanish like that?
You might say there is no solid proof of this and that but there is no proof whatsoever of a god, not even reasonable indications.
Lets say I'm wrong. Lets say god created everything. Lets say god made it so the world revolves around pain. Lets say god designed the concept of a carnivore, a creature that needs to kill another creature and cause it pain to survive, lets say god created creatures that paralyze other animals and lay their eggs in said animal only to have their babies hatch and eat paralyzed animal alive, lets say god created us.
Well if a god created all these things he must one sick, twisted, sadistic bastard(creative ... but messed up) and frankly I don't WANT to meet him.
At the end of the day the ways of this planet are coldly logical and if there's something we don't understand then there is something we don't understand period... that shouldn't be so hard to understand.
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I have a question for the God killers
Just for the sake of arguement, say I didn't believe in evolution at all and you could categorize me as a freaking creationist who basically has his head up his @ss.
Here's my question. Evolution basically posits that all animal life descended from some common critter that itself descended from the pond which was the product of random chemical evolution...now I don't want to go backwards to abiogenesis because you guys will get all pissed off and yell and scream about how that isn't evolution, so I won't go there.
Lets go the other way. -------------->
We have an animal. It evolved. ------------------>
Now it's going to evolve some more until it becomes a totally new animal.....eventually. Right? -------------------->
Ok.
Macro-evolution involves trying to become some totally new animal with new organs, a new basic plan for existence, and new requirements for integration between both old and new organs.
Take a bird for example. So you're a lizard but you need to become a bird to survive but you don't even know it. Nature is working out the details.....evolve.....evolve...evolve....--------->
Problem.
Vast majority of fossils should show intermediate stages. They don't. Solution: ?
Suppose you still aren't one yet but you're getting there. You still need to evolve many specialized body parts, including wings, flight feathers, a specialized light bone structure, specialized flow-through design heart and lungs, specialized tail, specialized general balance parameters etc.
Ok. No problem.
So the neo-Darwinian crowd (Gould and Eldredge, et al), lacking the necessary fossils to convince everyone, says this stuff happened and it happened really fast and in spurts .....this has become known as punctuated equilibrium or punk-eek.
Here's my point to this rant or rather my question. Does the lack of intermediate fossils bother any of you? I know you'll immdeiately refer to me to a host websites like talkorigins....been there, done that, they still don't have the hard evidence, much of it is speculative in nature and the fossils they do have, the majority are based on 10% actual bones and another 90% of the artist's conception of what the animal should like.
Does anyone wonder why, if punk-eek is true, none of the experiments on fruitflies has produced anything but another fruitfly? Shouldn't so factual a theory as evolution have some concrete evidence that big changes can happen billions of time to millions of animals in short bursts of time and at least leave a few hundred thousand examples in the fossil record? Does this not concern anyone?
As Ted Holden says, the conflict isn't between evolution and religion. It's between evolution and mathematics. Probability and statistics are not voodoo.
That should stir up the hornet's nest
Just for the sake of arguement, say I didn't believe in evolution at all and you could categorize me as a freaking creationist who basically has his head up his @ss.
Here's my question. Evolution basically posits that all animal life descended from some common critter that itself descended from the pond which was the product of random chemical evolution...now I don't want to go backwards to abiogenesis because you guys will get all pissed off and yell and scream about how that isn't evolution, so I won't go there.
Lets go the other way. -------------->
We have an animal. It evolved. ------------------>
Now it's going to evolve some more until it becomes a totally new animal.....eventually. Right? -------------------->
Ok.
Macro-evolution involves trying to become some totally new animal with new organs, a new basic plan for existence, and new requirements for integration between both old and new organs.
Take a bird for example. So you're a lizard but you need to become a bird to survive but you don't even know it. Nature is working out the details.....evolve.....evolve...evolve....--------->
Problem.
Vast majority of fossils should show intermediate stages. They don't. Solution: ?
Suppose you still aren't one yet but you're getting there. You still need to evolve many specialized body parts, including wings, flight feathers, a specialized light bone structure, specialized flow-through design heart and lungs, specialized tail, specialized general balance parameters etc.
Ok. No problem.
So the neo-Darwinian crowd (Gould and Eldredge, et al), lacking the necessary fossils to convince everyone, says this stuff happened and it happened really fast and in spurts .....this has become known as punctuated equilibrium or punk-eek.
Here's my point to this rant or rather my question. Does the lack of intermediate fossils bother any of you? I know you'll immdeiately refer to me to a host websites like talkorigins....been there, done that, they still don't have the hard evidence, much of it is speculative in nature and the fossils they do have, the majority are based on 10% actual bones and another 90% of the artist's conception of what the animal should like.
Does anyone wonder why, if punk-eek is true, none of the experiments on fruitflies has produced anything but another fruitfly? Shouldn't so factual a theory as evolution have some concrete evidence that big changes can happen billions of time to millions of animals in short bursts of time and at least leave a few hundred thousand examples in the fossil record? Does this not concern anyone?
As Ted Holden says, the conflict isn't between evolution and religion. It's between evolution and mathematics. Probability and statistics are not voodoo.
That should stir up the hornet's nest
Yes evolution is a miracle, thats why it is so rare in the universe, there is a great equation out there that concludes that out of all the billions of stars in the universe the amount of planets out there with any thing close to intelligent life on them is probably around 50 000. Thats relatively nothing. Of course I won't try and pass that number off as fact, that would be like signing my own suicide note here, but its an interesting equation none the less.
I'm not sure if lizards evolved into birds or anything like that but I think its clear that anything with 2 eyes and four limbs did at one stage come from the same life form. I don't know how to explain it exactly but you can almost see it with your own eyes. Different members of one creature would have went their separate ways and adapted over time to their environment. To understand this you need to get a grip on what sort of time we are talking here.
Hundreds of billions of years is a REALLY long time..... seriously.
I don't see why anyone would be against evolution, its so weird and spun out that I have to admire the concept.
Anyway I don't have a problem with someone who has a reasonable argument against evolution(if there is one) its just I don't see why the word god should be used .... ever. Maybe there is no such thing as evolution but that doesn't automatically mean some dude with a big head and long beard made everything. It just makes no logical sense whatsoever to come to that conclusion. You might as well say a cow did a crap and it turned into a universe, its just as plausible.
I'm not sure if lizards evolved into birds or anything like that but I think its clear that anything with 2 eyes and four limbs did at one stage come from the same life form. I don't know how to explain it exactly but you can almost see it with your own eyes. Different members of one creature would have went their separate ways and adapted over time to their environment. To understand this you need to get a grip on what sort of time we are talking here.
Hundreds of billions of years is a REALLY long time..... seriously.
I don't see why anyone would be against evolution, its so weird and spun out that I have to admire the concept.
Anyway I don't have a problem with someone who has a reasonable argument against evolution(if there is one) its just I don't see why the word god should be used .... ever. Maybe there is no such thing as evolution but that doesn't automatically mean some dude with a big head and long beard made everything. It just makes no logical sense whatsoever to come to that conclusion. You might as well say a cow did a crap and it turned into a universe, its just as plausible.
actually some tribe in africa believes the world was created by giant termites crapping out the world.
Bridge
Some interesting points. Perhaps you could argue that all fossils are potentially intermediate. Assuming, of course, that Evolution is a linear process... But what would I know?
Dawinism may not be the final theory but it seems to explain a large number of things, so I guess it's the theory of choice.
If you can produce another theory that works as well please expound, just don't mention God. (or little green men).
TaTa
DeeCee
Some interesting points. Perhaps you could argue that all fossils are potentially intermediate. Assuming, of course, that Evolution is a linear process... But what would I know?
Dawinism may not be the final theory but it seems to explain a large number of things, so I guess it's the theory of choice.
If you can produce another theory that works as well please expound, just don't mention God. (or little green men).
TaTa
DeeCee
Dr. Looney Tunes
Yes, I suppose you have a point there.
Especially given the fact that the latest scientific studies of the afterglow of the original Big Bang peg the age of the universe at around 13.5 billion years.
http://www.ems.psu.edu/info/explore/AgeUniver.html
Yes, I suppose you have a point there.
Especially given the fact that the latest scientific studies of the afterglow of the original Big Bang peg the age of the universe at around 13.5 billion years.
http://www.ems.psu.edu/info/explore/AgeUniver.html
Re: I have a question for the God killers
Semi random to be fair...not all chemicals will bond with all chemicals. Chemistry does have its set of rules.
abiogenesis is a type of evolution, but really its own separate theory. It's kind of like Newton having to explain why gravity works to get his equations accepted...it's not a necessary step. Whether life arose from a miracle of god or a gathering of physics and chemistry, it happened, and evolution takes it from there.
Stop right there...micro-evolution is very small changes that happen within small periods of time, right? Stuff that doesn't change a creature enough to call it a new species. But enough small changes over a long period of time between two isolated groups will create a species rift, and an occasional fossil of this process will create a transitional fossil for us to connect the two. We're talking long times, different environmental pressures, and the dilemma of fossils not being all that common. Every creature that dies does not fossilize; few do. So we have to go by what records we find, and scientifically connect the dots. If we find that our guess is screwed up by a new fossile, we erase that line, and figure in the new data.
But new creatures don't get popped out of old creatures. Even punctuation equilibrium doesn't predict dinosaurs birthing birds....that's a creationism spin or misunderstanding of the theory, take your pick.
We've just found another unique fossile, more of a reptile, but with feathered legs, like a flying squirrel almost. We'll find more...why is what we have found not convincing enough that something is going on over time?
They are a good source, but not the only one. And yes, we don't usually find complete fossils, so we have to guess on what the complete picture is. But that's not done haphazardly. In fact, such guesses are many times incorrect, so we have to go back when new data is found and redo the guess. So what, that's how science works. We certainly can't make it all up and have it 100%...what do creationists want, a perfect prophecy record for paleontology? That's not science....
I don't know what experiments have been done with short lifetime creatures to try and simulate isolation and species splitting. And I don't think punct equi is that quick, or the best solution. Current evolution theory is a mix of the different ideas, to try and match the various explanations with what we see in the record, the current world, and lab. And as for fossils, I covered that above...fossilization requires special conditions to occur, so the chances of finding every last change down to micro-evolution changes for past creatures is unlikely.
Every example I've seen of applying math to discredit evolution is used incorrectly (usually it's against abiogenesis, but anyway, still incorrectly applied). Numbers are pulled out of thin air, when in fact there are limited ways that chemistry can combine elements, there's the countering big numbers in the equations of time and area affected, and we have found evidence in the lab and space of organics somehow appearing non-biological. It's a matter of piecing it together at this point.
If you do the math using what we know of the time span, the area that was used in early earth, the chemical compounds available, how those compounds would react with each other if exposed, and the probability is calculated...it's very likely that life would have arose.
But evolution itself, after this point of life creation, is a fact...no alternate theories of why we find what we find in the fossil layers is credible, not because it comes from creationists, but because it doesn't hold up when tested scientifically. The more data is found, the harder it is to take a creationist's argument seriously.
Semi random to be fair...not all chemicals will bond with all chemicals. Chemistry does have its set of rules.
abiogenesis is a type of evolution, but really its own separate theory. It's kind of like Newton having to explain why gravity works to get his equations accepted...it's not a necessary step. Whether life arose from a miracle of god or a gathering of physics and chemistry, it happened, and evolution takes it from there.
Stop right there...micro-evolution is very small changes that happen within small periods of time, right? Stuff that doesn't change a creature enough to call it a new species. But enough small changes over a long period of time between two isolated groups will create a species rift, and an occasional fossil of this process will create a transitional fossil for us to connect the two. We're talking long times, different environmental pressures, and the dilemma of fossils not being all that common. Every creature that dies does not fossilize; few do. So we have to go by what records we find, and scientifically connect the dots. If we find that our guess is screwed up by a new fossile, we erase that line, and figure in the new data.
But new creatures don't get popped out of old creatures. Even punctuation equilibrium doesn't predict dinosaurs birthing birds....that's a creationism spin or misunderstanding of the theory, take your pick.
We've just found another unique fossile, more of a reptile, but with feathered legs, like a flying squirrel almost. We'll find more...why is what we have found not convincing enough that something is going on over time?
They are a good source, but not the only one. And yes, we don't usually find complete fossils, so we have to guess on what the complete picture is. But that's not done haphazardly. In fact, such guesses are many times incorrect, so we have to go back when new data is found and redo the guess. So what, that's how science works. We certainly can't make it all up and have it 100%...what do creationists want, a perfect prophecy record for paleontology? That's not science....
I don't know what experiments have been done with short lifetime creatures to try and simulate isolation and species splitting. And I don't think punct equi is that quick, or the best solution. Current evolution theory is a mix of the different ideas, to try and match the various explanations with what we see in the record, the current world, and lab. And as for fossils, I covered that above...fossilization requires special conditions to occur, so the chances of finding every last change down to micro-evolution changes for past creatures is unlikely.
Every example I've seen of applying math to discredit evolution is used incorrectly (usually it's against abiogenesis, but anyway, still incorrectly applied). Numbers are pulled out of thin air, when in fact there are limited ways that chemistry can combine elements, there's the countering big numbers in the equations of time and area affected, and we have found evidence in the lab and space of organics somehow appearing non-biological. It's a matter of piecing it together at this point.
If you do the math using what we know of the time span, the area that was used in early earth, the chemical compounds available, how those compounds would react with each other if exposed, and the probability is calculated...it's very likely that life would have arose.
But evolution itself, after this point of life creation, is a fact...no alternate theories of why we find what we find in the fossil layers is credible, not because it comes from creationists, but because it doesn't hold up when tested scientifically. The more data is found, the harder it is to take a creationist's argument seriously.
Just to add into the abiogenesis argument...I know you said you've read talkorigins stuff. Maybe you missed this, that nails the argument down.
http://talkorigins.org/faqs/abioprob/abioprob.html
Keywords...assume, misunderstand, underestimate.
http://talkorigins.org/faqs/abioprob/abioprob.html
Keywords...assume, misunderstand, underestimate.
Just a bump...wanted to make sure that biblthmp got a chance to answer my two questions on morality and god, and on what details he experienced with his observed miracles.
1) Would you answer these two with the same things?
Because there is a god, it is not okay to __________.
If there was no god, it would be okay to __________.
2) On the miracles you've seen:
What did you eyewitness?
How did you determine it was a miracle?
Did you at any time question the validity of the event?
1) Would you answer these two with the same things?
Because there is a god, it is not okay to __________.
If there was no god, it would be okay to __________.
2) On the miracles you've seen:
What did you eyewitness?
How did you determine it was a miracle?
Did you at any time question the validity of the event?