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Where does everyone stand in regards to...

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  • #21
im glad this topic didnt go off the handle like the last one.

I am a evolutionist but really im thinking of avoiding further conflicts (elsewhere) by just staying out out of the discussion because "No one cares what you think" is coming up far too frequently in them.
 
  • #22
This is something I feel very strongly about, because I see these issues of interpretation at the heart of many conflicts today.
I don't think that believing in the Bible or the various theories of evolution is impossible. But, a hard-driving, literalist view of either makes the other exceedingly difficult to accept. I'm not even Christian, but I find most of the Bible to which I've been exposed to be quite believable, if occasionally inconsistent. I've rarely seen glaring condradictions between them except when consulting people who are particularly ignorant of one topic or the other. Sometimes, it seems to me that the only reason people refute one or the other is because they feel like Creationism threatens the existance of evolution or that evolution threatens the truth of Creationism (or, somehow, the existance of God.)
On one hand, evolution, although presented in schools as the end-all and be-all of biological whys and hows, has a very shaky foundation in observed science. Darwin's theories on evolution describe the process as continuous. However, the fossil record and observed phenomenon show 'real-world' evolution to be something happening in fits and starts, punctuated by long periods of stablity, which calls the mechanics of evolution - as described by Darwin - into question. As we know it, evolution is a fairly sturdy theory of how things change and differentiate in estabilished systems of biology, but it becomes weaker and weaker as we approach the question, "what is the origin of life on Earth?" At this time, that question is one for organic chemists and statisticians, not evolutionary biologists. Most importantly, while most professionals in the field agree evolution is possible, few are so bold and certain as to assert that evolution is the only way things could have begun.
On the other hand, the Bible has been translated, edited, cut and amended by people for several thousand years (not sure how old the Old Testament is, but I'm under the impression that most scholars accept it to be at leask 2500.) It's full of symbolism and metaphor, plus lots of sketchy fantastic details that may or may not have happened (issues of faith, particularly.) Without even speaking to how people are interpreting the Bible's account of creation, we should call the Bible into question because throughout history the Bible and Judeo-Christian religions in general have been manipulated for the benefit of individuals many times (such as whoever declared Christmas to coincide with the popular folk holiday of Saturnalia, I think it was Nero maybe, while the birth of Christ can be more accurately be placed around September with a careful examination of the Bible.) Just like any other system of living parts, religions have evolved to attract subscribers and survive (see Hobbes' Leviathan if you're down with Middle English) and I don't see much compelling evidence to believe the Bibles of today - and even more, their interpretations - reflect the knowledge and sentiments of the Bibles of yesterday. I think ZAK's link makes a good treatment of the many seemingly harmless, mostly unintentional changes that have made today's Bible look quite unlike the original Hebrew editions. More than anything, I find it very hard to believe that God would leave a bunch of clues to be discovered (fossil evidence,) allow us to create all these useful sciences for figuring things out and making stuff happen (geology, biology, genetics, chemistry, physics,) and then top it all off by leading us to a useful conclusion (we can derive applied sciences from evolutionary theory) that's utterly incorrect. To me, it's more believable to think that there were a few typos in the several thousand years of reprinting that the Bible has undergone (especially those early, handwritten years.) After all, to err is human - isn't there something like that in the Bible?
Besides, who's to say that God's method of creation wasn't evolution - gradual change over time? Everything else in creation changes gradually with time - would God bother to do the stuff in Genesis by hand if he (or she) could just set up some grand domino-effect process to do it automatically? (If you think so, I think you're not giving God enough credit.) Only the slightest shred of imagination is required to make the story of Genesis a story of the Big Bang and evolution with God pushing the buttons. Even if one party is right and the other dead wrong, isn't it better to accept both ideas until we know for sure? I've never had any trouble keeping both possibilities in mind, personally. This might be uncomfortable for someone who's a very devout Christian, but I doubt it would cause a breakdown in logic so severe that the person in question could not go on.
Despite this, I take comfort in the idea that something had to have dreamt up all this scientific causality that we see today. There are some pragmatists that say that the universe 'doesn't need God' to be created, but I think that whatever lead up to that creation must have been something like a god.
On a more opinionative note, I've always thought it was a real shame that hard-line creationists couldn't incorporate the observed phenomenon of evolution into what they feel to be true, as it seems to me that evolution is the most elegant and sublime hand of God. If there's anything in the world to tell us that God exists, it's the beauty of living things and the fantastic processes that maintain them.
~Joe
 
  • #23
[b said:
Quote[/b] ]they feel like Creationism threatens the existance of evolution
umm... it does. both creationism and evolution cannot be true.
[b said:
Quote[/b] ]Darwin's theories on evolution describe the process as continuous. However, the fossil record and observed phenomenon show 'real-world' evolution to be something happening in fits and starts, punctuated by long periods of stablity, which calls the mechanics of evolution - as described by Darwin -
I don't know exactly how darwin put it... but it doesn't really matter. If you think about it, if there are more oportunities (ie... when plants first began growing on land... and when animals first began living on land too...) evolution will occur faster because any given mutation has a greater chance of being good.
[b said:
Quote[/b] ]As we know it, evolution is a fairly sturdy theory of how things change and differentiate in estabilished systems of biology, but it becomes weaker and weaker as we approach the question, "what is the origin of life on Earth?" At this time, that question is one for organic chemists and statisticians, not evolutionary biologists.
yes, because evolution is not concerned with the beginnings of life. It's concerned about how life became what it is today.
 
  • #24
Evolution is a fact. Since its a fact, and it and creationism cannot exist together, then "creationism" gets ruled out. It's a very simple concept to grasp. But because "creationism" requires "faith" that an actual "god" "created" everything... then evolution gets questioned. I don't question it. I don't see a god anywhere. But what i do see is that every human being undergoes about 100-200 genetic mutations per lifetime. And it makes sense that if one of those mutations was to our benefit, would stay in the gene pool, and maybe the "older" generation phenotype die out. In laymans terms - theres proof for evolution, unlike creationism.
 
  • #25
Comment:someday pretty soon (ok, not really, but lots of people wish it was)next to the Smithsonian Museum of natural history there will be a bigger building titled Creationist Fact Center
 
  • #26
[b said:
Quote[/b] ]but really im thinking of avoiding further conflicts (elsewhere) by just staying out out of the discussion because "No one cares what you think" is coming up far too frequently in them.
Hop in finch, waters fine
[b said:
Quote[/b] ]Comment:someday pretty soon (ok, not really, but lots of people wish it was)next to the Smithsonian Museum of natural history there will be a bigger building titled Creationist Fact Center
lol
 
  • #27
[b said:
Quote[/b] (TheAlphaWolf @ Dec. 27 2004,6:32)]
[b said:
Quote[/b] ]they feel like Creationism threatens the existance of evolution
umm... it does. both creationism and evolution cannot be true.
Why? If God is as omnipotent as the Bible would have us believe, why couldn't the story of Genesis happened and then God turns things over to good-old evolution?
Before you can make evolution and creationism mutually exclusive, you have to add extra details to one or the other. I really don't see any way that you could dress evolution up as the refutation of creationism, because most interpretations of creationism don't have any verifiable axioms; creationism happened because God said so, not because of any testable phenomenon. Likewise, creationism is a description of what happened in the past, what created the first life forms, and it says nothing about what happened after Genesis. Things could have kept evolving - after all, we have no evidence to assure us that fossils are the remains of living things and not just geological oddities. So, who's to say that God didn't plop down every species that was around at 3000 B.C. and they've spent a little time changing since then? After all, as you agree, evolution describes the changes that different classes of living things undergo, and not their origin.
[b said:
Quote[/b] ]
[b said:
Quote[/b] ]Darwin's theories on evolution describe the process as continuous. However, the fossil record and observed phenomenon show 'real-world' evolution to be something happening in fits and starts, punctuated by long periods of stablity, which calls the mechanics of evolution - as described by Darwin -
I don't know exactly how darwin put it... but it doesn't really matter. If you think about it, if there are more oportunities (ie... when plants first began growing on land... and when animals first began living on land too...) evolution will occur faster because any given mutation has a greater chance of being good.
No, not quite - when there's a longer period of time in which mutation can occur, there are more opportunities for beneficial change, but this does not effect the probability of a beneficial change. It doesn't matter how many times you flip a coin; you've always got the same chances (unless you change the coin.) Nor will things occur faster, because giving more opportunity means giving more time. The only bearing that time could have on beneficial mutations would be if the earliest mutations made future beneficial mutations more likely. In such a case, it would be those catalyzing mutations - and not the elapsed time - which led to a higher ratio of beneficial mutation.
Anyways, that's not what I was really getting at... my point is that evolution, as we know it, is not a very useful tool for making decisions about history and what did or didn't happen, because we don't even understand it well enough to know why it happens when it happens in real-life situations (actually, the important question is why it isn't always happening.) We're getting ahead of ourselves to believe that the fossil record is explained by our present understanding of evolution. We know there is such a thing as evolution, but our theories on it are neither sound for nor covering our observations of it.
~Joe
 
  • #28
[b said:
Quote[/b] (Amateur_Expert @ Dec. 27 2004,6:53)]In laymans terms - theres proof for evolution, unlike creationism.
To this I would say, "Proof is required for evolution, and not for creationism." An important detail to appreciate is that the only proof we could ask of Creationism is here; the planet Earth exists. There's no reset button that we can press, wait ten seconds, and then say, "Hey, there's God arranging flowers in Eden," or, "Hey, it's just a bunch of plasma and undifferentiated particles." Take a look at Hume's Enquiry Regarding Human Understanding for a good treatment of this. Evolution requires conventional causality (being able to rely on past experience to predict the future) which has been known to be illusory at best for the past 300 years. I'm a scientist at heart and I'd love to have some proof to sweep religion out of the mix, but the fact is that religion is outside science. There's nothing in the definition of religion or faith which neccessitates truth or proof or anything of the sort. To believe in science, one must have faith in consistency, and to believe in religion, one must have faith in God or higher powers or whatever it is that particular religion entails. But still, no one seems to be able to explain to me why they're mutually exclusive.
~Joe
 
  • #29
[b said:
Quote[/b] (seedjar @ Dec. 27 2004,10:15)]Why? If God is as omnipotent as the Bible would have us believe, why couldn't the story of Genesis happened and then God turns things over to good-old evolution?
you're making me go dig up my bible...

Genesis 1:24-25 says exactly:
"-24- and god went on to say "let the earth put forth living souls according to their kinds, domestic animal and moving animal and wild beast of the eart accoring to its kind. and it came to be so -25- and god proceeded to make the wild beast of the earth accoring to its kind and the domestic animal according to ts kinda and EVERY moving animal of the ground according to its kind."

Now.. every is a VERY strong word here. Every would mean.. well.. every animal would of been created by god, which totally contradicts evolution. In saying every animal was "created" is severing all the ties between animals evolution has defined.
 
  • #30
That doesn't contradict evolution in the least. Evolution says nothing about what created the first living things. So, instead of the typical scientific view of assuming some cell-like thing was the first thing to live and evolve, why can't we start with the animals that God created? To make an allegory, say I'm carving a sculpture with a chisel. It would be fair enough to say that when I'm done, I created the sculpture, yes? But wouldn't it also be fair to say that I chiseled that sculpture? If these things are acceptable, then couldn't we say that God created each animal and beast, and that God evolved each animal and beast? After all, literal interpretations of the Bible put forth that God wills everything. The problem you describe is related to your interpretation of the word create, and not anything put forth by the theories of Creationism or evolution. Tell me about the part after that passage that says, "and the animals that God made never changed or looked different and never, ever will (because there is no such thing as evolution.)"
~Joe
 
  • #31
[b said:
Quote[/b] ]Why? If God is as omnipotent as the Bible would have us believe, why couldn't the story of Genesis happened and then God turns things over to good-old evolution?
no because (the branch we're talking about... we're not talking about the big bang or anything... we're talking about the branch concerning evolution) creationism says all species were created as they are now. Evolution says other species became these species. Both cannot be true.
[b said:
Quote[/b] ]after all, we have no evidence to assure us that fossils are the remains of living things and not just geological oddities
well... since there's no natural way we know of that could have produced fossils. We don't see any evidence of anything besides organisms that could have made anything like fossils.... and what a coincidence they have the same bones as present organisms, (tibia, radius, skulls, teeth -which are not bones-, carpals, metacarpals, etc) and look ridiculously alike to organisms.
[b said:
Quote[/b] ]No, not quite - when there's a longer period of time in which mutation can occur, there are more opportunities for beneficial change, but this does not effect the probability of a beneficial change. It doesn't matter how many times you flip a coin; you've always got the same chances (unless you change the coin.)
I wasn't talking about giving them more time. I was talking about giving them more habitats to which they can adapt to. Mutations occur. It depends on the environment if they're good mutations or bad mutations. Let's say you're the first animal to live on land. If you have a mutation that makes you slower but allows you to eat a certain plant it's going to be very good because nothing is going to eat you and yet you have a whole other food source and no competition for it. If you WEREN'T the very first animal on land and you had that mutation, since you were slower you would get eaten, AND you would still have competition from the other animals that were already eating that food source...
so if you have more opportunities, you evolve faster. (so there is a reason why sometimes things evolve faster than other times)
I'm I clear now?
"actually, the important question is why it isn't always happening.) " It's always happening... though sometimes it's just very slow.
[b said:
Quote[/b] ]We're getting ahead of ourselves to believe that the fossil record is explained by our present understanding of evolution.
as for that... it is the fossil record that supports evolution... not evolution explaining the fossil record.
 
  • #32
[b said:
Quote[/b] (seedjar @ Dec. 27 2004,10:24)]I'm a scientist at heart and I'd love to have some proof to sweep religion out of the mix, but the fact is that religion is outside science.
Exactly, which is why both definitions cannot be accepted

[b said:
Quote[/b] ]There's nothing in the definition of religion or faith which neccessitates truth or proof or anything of the sort.
So i'm just going to "belive" something... with no proof? If that was a valid way of thinking, we'd all be dead by now.

[b said:
Quote[/b] ]To believe in science, one must have faith in consistency, and to believe in religion, one must have faith in God or higher powers or whatever it is that particular religion entails.
You don't have to have "faith" in consistency. Actually you don't have to have "faith" in anything. Science isn't about faith (thats a new one..) it's about proof - evidence, logical, factual evidence. "consistency" isn't random.
 
  • #33
[b said:
Quote[/b] ]the only proof we could ask of Creationism is here; the planet Earth exists. There's no reset button that we can press, wait ten seconds, and then say, "Hey, there's God arranging flowers in Eden," or, "Hey, it's just a bunch of plasma and undifferentiated particles."
we're talking about the branch of creationism involving evoluton. You're talking about the beginning of the solaar system which has nothing to do with evolution. Even if we WERE talking about that, there's more proof that the solar system was formed by nebulae because we can actually see nebulae in space and we can see different steps on how stars form (we can't see planets because by the time planets form the star is already too bright for our instruments to see the planets)
 
  • #34
[b said:
Quote[/b] (Amateur_Expert @ Dec. 27 2004,7:35)]
[b said:
Quote[/b] (seedjar @ Dec. 27 2004,10:24)]I'm a scientist at heart and I'd love to have some proof to sweep religion out of the mix, but the fact is that religion is outside science.
Exactly, which is why both definitions cannot be accepted

[b said:
Quote[/b] ]There's nothing in the definition of religion or faith which neccessitates truth or proof or anything of the sort.
So i'm just going to "belive" something... with no proof? If that was a valid way of thinking, we'd all be dead by now.

[b said:
Quote[/b] ]To believe in science, one must have faith in consistency, and to believe in religion, one must have faith in God or higher powers or whatever it is that particular religion entails.
You don't have to have "faith" in consistency. Actually you don't have to have "faith" in anything. Science isn't about faith (thats a new one..) it's about proof - evidence, logical, factual evidence. "consistency" isn't random.
Please, read some philosophy. I don't want to explain why causality is not to be trusted, because the Greeks and Kant and Hume and Descartes and a whole lot of other dead guys have done it already. The only thing that leads us to believe that causality is consistent is that it's been consistent before, and thus it's a totally circular argument. There's no proof that what we observe really happens, and thusly there's no solid proof of anything, because it all depends on our observations being correct (which, by the Heisenberg principle, never are, even if they are close sometimes.) Anything that you might call proof can be called into question by asking for proof of it's accuracy. If you intend to prove that gravity exists by showing that masses attract one another, then you must go on to prove that your test actually happened. To prove the test happened, you would probably want an eyewitness account of it happening. You would then need proof of that account. The proofs go on ad nauseum, and there is no end to them.
~Joe

PS - Please, there's gotta be a philosophy major around here to back me up. I want to eat dinner!
 
  • #35
[b said:
Quote[/b] ]let the earth put forth living souls according their kinds, domestic animal and moving animal and wild beast of the eart accoring to its kind.
That's saying that domestic animals and others were put here already as domestic animals (etc).
completely ignoring the fact that bacteria/protists are not animals and are not even mentioned in the bible,(since you could say that people back then didn't know about them... -aldough god should have-) everything evolved from bacteria-like organisms that would not be considered animals... let alone domestic animals. If you make a sculpture of a cow and then something else makes it a fish, you don't say you made a fish.
 
  • #36
seedjar is correct in saying that there's no proof that what we observe really happens, and thusly there's no solid proof of anything.
{now i have to dig out my mythology book with the section on philosophy}

...
 
  • #37
Evolution is a theory, not a fact. Why things are like they are---who knows?? All we really have is a lot of people putting forth ideas, trying to call them fact, and it is all supposition. I don't know, you don't know, but it is interesting to punt around the field a few times. Otherwise, I have plants to love, and lots to learn about what I am doing now.
 
  • #38
[b said:
Quote[/b] ]thusly there's no solid proof of anything.
ok?.... I really don't know what to say about that... Then should we just give up and do nothing? the fact that there's no solid proof of anything isn't relevant when debating about evolution/creationism because ... well... how can it be?
You can't prove you're not just a dream... or that you're a brain in a jar being fed stimuli.
You take what you have (proof) and you base your beliefs on it. With the proof we have, evolution happens and creationism has no scientific proof.
 
  • #39
[b said:
Quote[/b] (TheAlphaWolf @ Dec. 27 2004,7:49)]If you make a sculpture of a cow and then something else makes it a fish, you don't say you made a fish.
I definitely agree, but the thing about the way that God is supposed to work is that God is responsible for everything, so if evolution exists and God exists, it's not like God passing the torch off to Darwin - God is still doing the evolution, making things happen. As for God making everything as it is today; certainly this "today" we speak of is the "today" of the Bible's original author. So if the animals (lets be flexible and assume that the passages about plants and animals were including protists and other life-forms that people didn't know about back then) were created by God then, by whatever means, that would satisfy the basic requirements for Creationism. Evolution could still happen - after all, at the time of the writing, when somebody said that God created things as they are "today," things were evolving, changing, etc., or at least that's our best bet. That's evolution, right there next door to Creationism. This is all why I prefaced my initial comment with the qualifier that a literal, overzealous interpretation of either school of thought makes the other difficult to accept.
~Joe

PS - As for the thing about Earth being evidence for Creationism, what I'm trying to get at is that Creationism just says that things were put here as they are - by virtue of its structure alone, Creationism is correct, because it doesn't ask that anything be different from what it already was. Of course, if you take it to mean that nothing ever changes, you run into problems. If nothing ever changed, as Creationism might say, then things wouldn't die, or get old, or perform any other life processes. But I think that the authors of the Bible accepted those kinds of changes, and I think that they would also accept the life process of evolution.
 
  • #40
you wanna know somthing funny..the bible does not mention dinosaurs, so religious people say they are tricks of the devil and they never exsisted...

just my 2 cents...
 
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