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Given that someone is hellbent on being a Christian fundamentalist, the most rational and intellectually honest thing they can do is simply accept that the scientific evidence for evolution is really good, but then say "I believe the Bible anyway." For some reason God created the world to look really old and evolved, and that's all there is to it. A Christian doesn't really need to challenge science on religious grounds - just assume God has some good reason for doing whatever God did. May God put life through an accelerated evolution-like process - maybe He "stopped the clock" on whatever day it was He created life, let it evolve "off the clock" so to speak, then re-started time when it reached whatever point He wanted. Endless speculative possibilities, but none of it really matters. What science uncovers is interesting insights into God's methods, but whatever science finds, the Bible is still true. Period. God doesn't even need to "guide" macroevolution because He set it up as a self-sustaining system. God's a really smart cookie; He can do that sorta thing.
I like that Creationists dig for any and every possible flaw in science - we need people to do that - but I hate that they feel compelled to tout the "science is wrong" or "science is a conspiracy" meme when they obviously don't really understand the science all that well in the first place.
Yes. Questioning is fine, but trying to debunk it by using false information just wastes everyone's time.
Somer kind of evolutionary process is just too supported by the evidence. Postulate a god behind it - nobody can disprove the, but that it never happened requires ignoring and fiddling the evidence.
I am actually learning about the psychology behind climate science denial and I think most of it applies to evolution science denial as well.
Atheism really did make a great difference to my life. Learning religious apologetics made me realize that the arguments used by UFO enthusiasts and Atlantis -believers were very much the same: carping at the science that wouldn't take their claims seriously while longing to get the same sort of credibility that science has earned.
I debated some apologist here about the Piri Reis map, and showing that it could be explained in terms of the medieval portolan and that the 'Antarctica' it was supposed to show didn't fit with Antarctia as it is, but a distorted S America cape was met with the same denial and ignoring of points as the religious use in arguing for the Bible - whether genesis or the gospels.
Thus I realized that religious apologetics and "cult -think' were the same thing. And we get the same thing in arguing for any Belief, racial, gender or political.
Rational 'science-method' thought doesn't work like that. It is based on getting at the truth, not propping up a belief - but the theist -apologists of course assume that's what we are doing.
We are not in fact arguing for an 'atheist -faith' but for a 'science -based' worldview and educational curriculum. When I study history, I'm not looking for confirmation of a view that Britain was always right, justified and better than anyone else. I'm looking for what happened, when we got beat (1), acted badly or when we did ok. I do the same with the religion debate.
(1) history buffs on 'the patriot' is worth watching, it doesn't try to pretend we treated the US fairly, or that really we didn't get beat fair and square, but it pans it for the lies and bias.
In fact I'll post it, because it's worth a watch anyway.
Atheism really did make a great difference to my life. Learning religious apologetics made me realize that the arguments used by UFO enthusiasts and Atlantis -believers were very much the same: carping at the science that wouldn't take their claims seriously while longing to get the same sort of credibility that science has earned.
I debated some apologist here about the Piri Reis map, and showing that it could be explained in terms of the medieval portolan and that the 'Antarctica' it was supposed to show didn't fit with Antarctia as it is, but a distorted S America cape was met with the same denial and ignoring of points as the religious use in arguing for the Bible - whether genesis or the gospels.
Thus I realized that religious apologetics and "cult -think' were the same thing. And we get the same thing in arguing for any Belief, racial, gender or political.
Rational 'science-method' thought doesn't work like that. It is based on getting at the truth, not propping up a belief - but the theist -apologists of course assume that's what we are doing.
We are not in fact arguing for an 'atheist -faith' but for a 'science -based' worldview and educational curriculum. When I study history, I'm not looking for confirmation of a view that Britain was always right, justified and better than anyone else. I'm looking for what happened, when we got beat (1), acted badly or when we did ok. I do the same with the religion debate.
(1) history buffs on 'the patriot' is worth watching, it doesn't try to pretend we treated the US fairly, or that really we didn't get beat fair and square, but it pans it for the lies and bias.
In fact I'll post it, because it's worth a watch anyway.
No, Transponder, Great Britain got beat because the U.S. knew when to pick a revolution--when your opponent is roughly 4000 miles away by sailing ship and he's involved in a war with a great European power! Spread them thin, and then introduce them to "guerilla warfare!"
I'm huge fan of Sharpe and I just finished the first two of James Mace's books on the Zulu war.
And even in Mace's book on the Defense at Rorke's Drift, I learned that I had been wrong in my ideas about Henry Hook, portrayed in the 1966 (?) movie Zulu. The movie portrayed him as under arrest and indicated he was a drunkard. Not so, Mace gave historical accounts of all the VC winners and Hook was really a religious guy. He indicated that either Hook's daughters (or granddaughters?) went to an early release of ZULU and walked out when they saw how it was portraying him.
The point is there really is no such thing as absolute "factual" history. Everyone who is a "historian" writes with a certain historiographical bias. In the Zulu war alone there is reason to blame Lt. Col. Dunford or Lord Chelmsford, GOC. And there are all sorts of opinions out there all based on "history."
Just as I see a certain bias in biblical writing, it's also possible to note it in "straight history" books. The events may be the same but the spin is an attempt to sway.
The Bible is the same way, attempts to tell events, like the resurrection story. The overall event may not be in contention for everyone, even if the details most certainly are.
With regard to macroevolution the "evidence" points toward it even if some of the science guys themselves differ about it. I think it is illogical to think one can accept microevolution without accepting that at some point there was a "macroevolution" from one kind of animal or fish into a closely related relative---such as men and chimps.
It also fascinates me that most fundamentalists will not question a commercial company telling them that 10% of their DNA is from Scotland or Germany, but when one points out that we share an extraordinary amount of DNA with chimpanzees, they go "ape," so to speak!
Quote:
If human and chimp DNA is 98.8 percent the same, why are we so different? Numbers tell part of the story. Each human cell contains roughly three billion base pairs, or bits of information. Just 1.2 percent of that equals about 35 million differences. Some of these have a big impact, others don't. And even two identical stretches of DNA can work differently--they can be "turned on" in different amounts, in different places or at different times.
I am actually learning about the psychology behind climate science denial and I think most of it applies to evolution science denial as well.
It's scary the number of people who actually deny climate change. Normal people - not just science denialists! I suppose they fit into the conspiracy theorist camp or something.
Christians never change their mind. Thousands of times every day we observe "after their kind." We stick with God did it.
never?
Quote:
To think a small dog-like land animal became a big whale is not only laughable, it is completerly unscientific.
Is this how you think evolution works? One animal just goes full Pikachu into Raichu? Of course that is ridiculous. We aren't talking about butterflies being a different species from caterpillars here.
Christians never change their mind. Thousands of times every day we observe "after their kind." We stick with God did it.
Hahaha, and you actually think "never changing your mind" is a GOOD thing.
ROFL!
Sure, you go right ahead and stick with "God did it" and display your ignorance of science for all to see.
Just like all of those people who stuck with "the earth is the center of the universe" because they couldn't let go of whatever nonsense the Church had taught them.
Now, even fundamentalists accept that the earth revolves around the sun. Just like always, science eventually wins these battles. Science has won every single time.
So, if you really enjoy being on the wrong side of science and history -- as religion always is -- hey, be my guest.
It's just too bad that Christians like yourself who believe taking the Bible literally is necessary to get into Heaven won't stop spreading lies, disinformation, and poison about evolution.
What kind of lies, disinformation, and poison am I talking about? Well the quote just below the sentence you are now reading is a perfect example:
Quote:
Originally Posted by omega2xx
To think a small dog-like land animal became a big whale is not only laughable, it is completerly unscientific.
That. That is one of the most ridiculous arguments Christian apologists use -- and no doubt you probably grabbed that example from some junk science religious website or some pamphlet your church handed out.
What it DOES show is that you have NO idea how evolution actually works -- and you don't care to know.
Instead, you'll keep posting that kind of nonsense because you seem to think it's some kind of "Gotchya!" argument that disproves evolution straight away -- that 95% of the world's relevant scientists are wrong and some fantastical Bronze Age creation myth (for which there is NO evidence) is the Truth.
It just goes to show everyone what I've been saying all along about how fundamentalist religion rots the brain, makes it impossible for a person to be at all objective in their thinking. People are perfectly rational in every other aspect of their lives, but when it comes to religion, they're willing to turn their brains off and accept without question whatever their religion feeds them.
It would be as if you, Omega, visited every single doctor on the planet and 95% of them tell you that you have cancer. What would you do in that situation?
Well, a rational person would say, "Damn, I better start cancer treatment right away before it's too late!"
An irrational person would say, "Bah! I don't have cancer. I don't care what all of those doctors say. There are still SOME doctors who say I don't have it. And, by george, I don't WANT to have cancer, so I'm going to simply deny that I have it. In fact, I'm going to start quoting from that website that says cancer doesn't even exist, that cancer is just a big mind control conspiracy to keep hospital profits up. Yeah! And the guy who wrote the website, HE is a scientist, he has a Ph.D. in ... ah ... 11th Century Viking Poetry ..."
Guess which one applies to fundamentalists who deny evolution?
Yes. Questioning is fine, but trying to debunk it by using false information just wastes everyone's time.
Somer kind of evolutionary process is just too supported by the evidence. Postulate a god behind it - nobody can disprove the, but that it never happened requires ignoring and fiddling the evidence.
It is not science is wrong, it is evolution is not science.
Why do you always bring religion into this discussion? The subject is science, not religion.
Why don't you start by providing the scientific evidence for "natural selection."
We know. It's called a closed mind. Reject the science that says different, go with what you want to see. There are no particular kinds (yes the word id valid _ of animals ans see that as proof of how it always was. Except that Creationism accept 'Baramins' (I keep calling them barymnas, for some reason ) as a 'common ancestor' of all present species - except that they super- evolved over a thousand years. years. How? Why? Becasue that's what the belief needs now they casn't fit all the animals on the Ark, especially now the prehistoric ones have to be on the Ark, too.
Scientific is what it is. Why do you think Ken put Pakicetus on his Ark? To be the origin of whales. Do any Creationists deny that the dog - like Eohippus became the horse? Then why deny Pakicetus to what? Because it is becoming a different critter. Evidence is rejected not because it is laughable, much less unscientific, but because it does not fit in with the current Creationist dogma that "Macro" evolution does not happen.
I don't think I posted this before, but it is a nice example of the Gish gallop, loading one dodgy claim after another ("I could fit all the transitional fossils into my Prius!" - a bit better than say there are none at all) until the bel goes and the "atheist professor' gets no chance to respond. But the responses are made as we go.
If science is what it is, post the scientific process that causes a leg to become a fin and a nose to become a blowhole. Genetics will not allow that to happen.
Omega, please don't presume to speak for all Christians. You do realize don't you that many Christians accept macro evolution (change above the species level), as well as an old earth, and as long as I'm at it, the so called 'big bang' origin of our Universe?
Even Darwin, though not a theist, but a deist, and later an agnostic stated that there was no conflict between being a theist and an evolutionist. In reply to Church of England priest John Fordyce, Darwin wrote the following letter.
To John Fordyce 7 May 1879
Down Beckenham | Kent
May 7th 1879
Private
Dear Sir
It seems to me absurd to doubt that a man may be an ardent Theist & an evolutionist.— You are right about Kingsley. Asa Gray, the eminent botanist, is another case in point— What my own views may be is a question of no consequence to any one except myself.— But as you ask, I may state that my judgment often fluctuates. Moreover whether a man deserves to be called a theist depends on the definition of the term: which is much too large a subject for a note. In my most extreme fluctuations I have never been an atheist in the sense of denying the existence of a God.— I think that generally (& more and more so as I grow older) but not always, that an agnostic would be the most correct description of my state of mind.
Dear Sir | Yours faithfully | Ch. Darwin [Bolding mine]
Many of Darwin's Christian contemporaries accepted evolution.
''Given that Darwin’s Christian contemporaries largely embraced evolution, how is it that today, 150 years later, many American Christians reject his theory? First it should be noted that evolution is still widely accepted by the Christian community in Europe. Second, it is an unfortunate fact that evolution since Darwin has become infested with different ideological agendas that have nothing to do with the biological theory itself. For example, some have sought to invest evolution with an atheistic agenda, so Christians who naturally reject atheism are in danger of throwing out the baby with the bath water.''
Why don't you start by providing the scientific evidence for "natural selection."
Good grief. So we are to offer a class on organic evolution in this thread? I would suggest an alternative: Google "evidence for evolution" and read or watch the evidence as presented by actual evolutionists. This is important: For the sake of this exercise, do not rely on what anti-evolutionists present as the "evidence for evolution" but rather, take a close look at what actual evolutionists - preferably actual scientists - present as evidence for evolution.
I have not seen the entire video, but it makes an important point in the very beginning: Notice that there are multiple interlocking pieces of evidence to be presented. Once you demonstrate that you understand these lines of evidence, then perhaps we can have a fruitful discussion of the evidence. (BTW: What I mean by "demonstrate that you understand" is this: Present what you think are some of the BEST lines of evidence FOR evolution, then attack this evidence.)
Last edited by Gaylenwoof; 10-02-2017 at 07:44 AM..
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Atheism really did make a great difference to my life. Learning religious apologetics made me realize that the arguments used by UFO enthusiasts and Atlantis -believers were very much the same: carping at the science that wouldn't take their claims seriously while longing to get the same sort of credibility that science has earned. 
That is one of the most ridiculous arguments Christian apologists use -- and no doubt you probably grabbed that example from some junk science religious website or some pamphlet your church handed out.
_ of animals ans see that as proof of how it always was. Except that Creationism accept 'Baramins' (I keep calling them barymnas, for some reason 
) as a 'common ancestor' of all present species - except that they super- evolved over a thousand years. years. How? Why? Becasue that's what the belief needs now they casn't fit all the animals on the Ark, especially now the prehistoric ones have to be on the Ark, too.
