From The Big Questions:
One of the blowhards from Answers in Genesis brays,
There isn’t evidence [for evolution]…. Some people put their spin on it based on their presuppositions. Now clearly I’m a biased person because I start by believing in the Bible…. What’s interesting is that there are other people who start with a different set of presuppositions and they interpret the evidence accordingly.
What’s hilarious is he equating starting with the Bible and following wherever the evidence leads. But at least he admits he starts with the premises that (1) God exists, (2) that this God is the Christian God, (3) that this God wrote a book, and (4) that book is the Protestant Bible as we have it today.
Nothing big there — just everyday presuppositions that we all have. Completely rational starting points of a scientific worldview. Ugh.
I thought Peter Atkins makes a great point that if evolution is true and God exists, he chose a “particularly nasty” way of going about creating the world.
Anyway, this is a video where some of it makes you crazy from the stupid, and encouraged that smart people (like Peter Atkins) actually take the time to show how misguided these folks really are. Unfortunately, they rarely listen.
(via)
Yes, the stupid, it buurrrrnnns!
I don’t understand how anyone could say there is no evidence for evolution. Even if you rejected the final conclusion that scientists make from that evidence, to outright deny the existence of that evidence just makes you look a buffoon.
But the comments on the link suggesting that if Genesis is allegorical that would destroy all of Christianity – I don’t follow that logic either. Adam and Eve could be an allegorical story speaking to the fallen nature of the world. This would perhaps make the penal substitution theory of atonement invalid but not the concept of atonement in general.
It bothers me when people who say that they are evolutionists continue to believe that evolution is progressing towards a perfect being.
Evolution has no goals. Evolution has directed progress. Evolution does not select. Natural Selection, one of the mechanisms of evolution, is what pushes forward change.
We see so many examples of how species evolve towards things that don’t seem to help that species beyond increasing their overall fitness. A great example is sexual selection, which has given peacocks giant feathers for no other reason than to attract a mate. Does this sound like progress towards the perfect being?
I wish I could just throw the Descent of Man at the Archbishop of Cantebury for believing that man is the ultimate being.
I would be fine with these presuppositionalists if they would just stop there (well, I’d laugh at them for being silly, but no more than that). However, most of them (like AiG) then proceed to blather at length about evidence, hoping that the suckers won’t notice that the presupp position, if taken seriously, says that evidence is irrelevant — you should just believe whatever the hell you want.
And that makes them liars.
Hah! They wanted me to appear on this broadcast, but I declined.
Robert
Adam and Eve were monkeys in the jungle of Eden? I had no idea. Now it all makes sense. The Tree of Life must have been a banana tree.
If a Christian believes in evolution, why can’t they evolve beyond a book written by primitive men? The word of god shouldn’t take so much effort to rationalize with current evidence from science and technology.
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They’re STILL running the “Were you there” line?????? Wow! I remember hearing this when I was ten and thinking, well, we [I was a creationist back then] weren’t there, either!
Which Bible are they talking about when asking the questions of contradictions? Is it the Real literal Bible or the “whatever the famous Bible thumpers (made up) reinterpreted because that damn book contradicted every known natural law” version?
on the topic of evolution (of which i’ll admit i’m very ignorant, to many things to look at to little time) i have a question that you fine folks here seam like you could answer.
It seams to me that humans have evolved farther? faster? than other creatures on the earth. is that true? can certain species evolve faster? why?
the reason i wonder is that i we may be able to teach a money sign language lets say. but looking at our society and all its complexities (computers, sky scrapers, the car, etc) and comparing that to an creature that can use a tool to make a nest. we just seam to have evolved so much further. that could be my lack of understanding but i’d love to know.
*note* this is not a bridge to some christian argument i’m just genuinely interested.
Biblical Christianity which states that God created all life is indeed not compatable with the Theory of Evolution. They are at opposite ends of the spectrum. There are people on the Christian end who, in an effort to compromise, try to match them up but the bottom line is this; According to the Bible, God didn’t make prototypes. He created everything exactly as He wanted it and declared His creation very good.
I know from reading your responses to other statements that you will immediately fire off a list of ‘horrors’ that are in this world and I agree that there are many horrors. I live in Arizona, a real nasty place. Ants bite, killer bee swarms reek havoc, the plants have acid in them…and its real hot here.
But just because there are things in th is world that you don’t like or agree with really have nothing to do with the matter. The real issue is that there are two competing world-views. You’ world-view starts with the presupposition that there is no God, that all life just happened and that everything we see and know is just the result of a cosmc accident.
The Christian approaches this from the presuppostion that all life was created by God. You see the evidence as being in and so do we. But only one of us can be right. I think this is key.
When Christians say “Yeah, ok, give me one piece of evidence for evolution,” and we can’t immediately provide one, it’s not because there isn’t any. If someone approached you and said “Give me one piece of evidence that we landed on the moon,” you would be taken aback by how wrong they already were.
There’s mountains of mutually supporting evidence for the moon landing and evolution, but just because we can’t furnish god-heads with an adequate summary of modern biological discoveries at the drop of a hat, doesn’t mean we have to abandon the theory and revert to bronze age superstition.
Evolution is like calculus, in that, we have reached a point where it just works. We know that the integral of sinx dx is -cosx + C, even if not everybody doing calculus remembers the proofs. Nobody would listen to some jackass who said “calculus is false until you can give me all the proofs for integration and derivation.”
Or NONE of us/you could be right.
At least science is always seeking new information, and revising “beliefs” based upon the new information.
(If science ran like xianity, we’d be teaching flat-earth and phlogiston theory.)
Repeat after me: “I don’t know. I don’t have all the facts.”
GO ahead! Try it!
I actually have more respect for those people that believe in literal creationism rather than a blend of the two. Trying to cram evolution into the bible is just absurd.
Elliot, what do you see in the observable world that leads you to the conclusion that there is no God? What is this lack of evidence? You have demonstrated great intelligence in your calculus example. Not everyone can do calculus. But the ability to explain how you arrive at your solution is incredibly valuable; especially when you are trying to get your point across…teach others so that they can grow in their understanding!
There must be evidence to prove that Christianity is merely superstition and that evolution is the way to go. Teach me and I will listen to what you have to say.
claidheamhmor: I will tell you the truth. I don’t have all the facts…and neither do you! Who could be so foolish as to actually stand up and say, “I know everything there is to know…therefore I am right and you are wrong.” What we have to do is examine all the evidence that we have, honestly, truthfullly. We must take the time to really dig deep.
There has been a lot of nonsense spewed forth in the name of Christianity which has led to some really stupid conclusions. I am very willing to admit this. I have done some of the spewing myself. But I am also willing to really look at all the evidence and after taking the time to study eveything, come to an honest conclusion rather than say; “your stupid because your not a Christian.”
>But the comments on the link suggesting that if Genesis is allegorical that would destroy all of Christianity – I don’t follow that logic either.<
Obviously some Christians are able to believe some of the Bible is allegory, while believing some of it should be taken literally. They can do so because humans have the ability to simultaneously hold contradictory views.
Logically, if there were no Eve and Adam, there would be no fall, and thus no need for a Jesus Christ to redeem a sin that never occurred. And if we take the story of the fall as allegory, then following the logic, there is no reason to think the story about Jesus Christ is anything other than allegory, too.
Giving up belief in Adam and Eve and/or believing in evolution means starting down a slippery slope leading to apostasy. Giving up on Adam and Eve is akin to child admitting that the toys under the Christmas tree came from China, and not from the handiwork Santa’s elves at the North Pole.
That’s the beginning of the end of belief for a child. But it’s not like that for some adults, who will cling to their beliefs even in the face of evidence that proves otherwise. Adults will either claim all that’s necessary for belief is faith (“Adam and Eve were real people”) or claim some of the Bible is allegorical.
To do otherwise, to admit that humans just live and die in an often brutish, nasty world, is not acceptable. For them, it’s Santa’s elves, not Chinese factory workers, no matter what’s written on the box in that hold’s the toy. And it’s Adam and Eve, no matter what the evidence is for the evolution of species.
>There must be evidence to prove that Christianity is merely superstition and that evolution is the way to go.<
It’s up to the person making an assumption – “Jesus Christ is Lord” – to prove it. The extraordinary claims Christians make are just that – extraordinary, and so require extraordinary proof.
If one makes a claim that holding a hand over a flame will cause it to burn, there won’t be much argument. If someone claims holding a hand over a flame will result in no burn, some proof to be believed would be required.
Did zombies walk the streets of Jerusalem? Did humans live for hundreds of years? Were all species of animals created at one time, and were they all placed aboard the Ark?
Was there such a person as Jesus, let alone a divine Jesus? Did Jesus turn water into wine, did he put demons into the bodies of pigs? Would his closest followers, who saw him make so many miracles, doubt his divinity after he was crucified?
Those are all extraordinary claims. We know that today there are no demons, much less demons that can inhabit the bodies of pigs. There are no zombies. An ark of the description given in the Bible couldn’t hold – without magical intervention – all the species of animals found in this world. People can’t live much past 100. Jesus has not yet, as promised, put in a return appearance.
It’s possible to believe something extraordinary on faith alone – but it doesn’t make what we believe on faith true.
So the idea that evidence must disprove Christianity is at odds from the way that we build up rational belief, belief based on evidence and not on faith.
Evidence from a variety of sources leads me to believe the sun will on my part of the world tomorrow. No evidence leads me to believe in a god, but plenty of evidence shows Christianity is merely superstition.
I do think some forms of Christianity are compatible with an acceptance of evolution. It requires accepting the Bible as something other than historical truth. It is the work of humans. Sometimes deeply religious people who provide valuable understanding toward our relationship with God, but still fallible people. It has been written, edited, preserved, and interpreted by humans. Why would we expect perfection?
Instead, we should listen to the testimony of the world around us. It is the direct work of God, and its evidence takes primacy over any work of humanity. If the evidence points to a 13 billion year old universe, we should accept that.
To address a couple points raised above, if evolution means death, and God created the process of evolution, there are two possible conclusions: Either God is evil, or death is not evil. I accept the second conclusion. There have been billions of years of death and suffering. Sometimes death and suffering are necessary for beauty. If God had created a world without death, He would have created a stagnant world. Personally, I would rather have a world with death, change, and beauty than a fixed and stagnant world.
Dave: If Adam and Eve are only allegorical representations of Humanity’s inherently flawed nature, Jesus can still have a literal purpose. Even if our sin didn’t originate with a literal Adam and Eve, it’s hard to deny we’re all screwed up in some way or another. Jesus gave a message that we can change that through a willingness to follow his teachings. It doesn’t matter why we’re screwed up in the first place, just that he offers a way to become less so.
The story of Jesus could still be completely allegorical, but an allegorical Adam and Eve doesn’t necessitate an allegorical Jesus.
@Philip
“so if i’m understanding correctly the reason we have evolved intellectually to the place we have (one of the most advanced) is so that we can better survive where we are?”
No one knows for sure why homo sapien went the evolutionary route it did. Intelligence is only one of many possible survival adaptations. By many measuring sticks, it’s not even the best one. We’re delicate, we have a very long pre-adult period where we are basically helpless, and we reproduce (relatively) slowly and have quite large energy requirements (eating constantly to keep that big brain running). Compare that to cockroaches who reproduce in the thousands, are incredibly durable, and have very low energy requirements.
Yes, we invented TVs and space heaters and guns and all the goodies that make us capable of living almost anywhere and dominating our environment. So we got lucky and our particular adaptation panned out. But there have been lots and lots of unique adaptations that didn’t, and those species are long gone. Being gigantic was a pretty good survival strategy right up until the time when it wasn’t, and everything big died out, while the tiny shrew-like things inherited the earth. Being smart tool users could very well be a great adaptation right up until it isn’t, and the insects take over. Who knows?
See, evolution is descriptive, not prescriptive. We can look backward and see the evolutionary paths things have taken, and make educated guesses about why. But there is (so far) no way to look forward and see what the best path is for the future. Evolution has no plan.
“my last question. is there any reason why we are so far (if i am accruate in saying this) advanced in intellect compared to everything else? like lots of animals have gotten bigger, stronger, whatever, why have no other animals gotten smarter like we have?”
We are not the only species to use intelligence, or communication, or even tool use as our survival strategy. What you’re asking is “why are we smarter and more tool usery?” But that’s a largely meaningless question. It’s akin to blue whales wondering why they’re the only species that uses being big to survive. They aren’t, they just happen to be the biggest.
As has been pointed out in other posts, being the most of one particular thing is not a sign of being special. Lots of species are the most of something. There is a snake that has the most lethal poison. An insect that is most radiation resistant. A whale that is the biggest. A cat that is the fastest.
Intelligence only seems special to us because we happen to have it and value it. But it is not the only survival mechanism, and arguably not the best one. Remember, evolution only works with animals that survive long enough to reproduce and pass their genetic material on to the next generation. That’s it. Mold is really really good at that. Being smart wouldn’t help mold at all.
I didn’t have time to read all the comments so I’m adding my 2 cents and I apologize up front if this has already been said. When I was a Christian I had no problem with the concept of evolution. I still believed God created everything, HOW he went about it was entirely up to him.
When I make a cake I don’t twinkle my nose and *boom* there’s a cake. No, start with flour and suger and eggs, etc, etc. And heck, somebody had to make the flour and raise the chickens, etc, etc.
I believed that the men who wrote the bible when they did had no concept of cellular science and all that it entails so they merely said “God created the earth and…..” No details on HOW.
So, why all these Christians are up in arms over evolution just blows my mind. I don’t get it at all. WHY is that a threat to their faith? The bible is not a science texbook.
>But I would also hold out the Ransom Theory or Christus Victus Theory of atonement as possible models of a literal Jesus that could work with an allegorical fall.<
Such theories exist and function well as ideas in the human mind. However, they – and numerous other similar theories – pre-suppose the existence of Christ outside of the human mind.
It’s as foolish as estimating the number of angels that can dance on the head of a pin, because there are no angels.
Andrew C wrote:
> Even if our sin didn’t originate with a literal Adam and Eve, it’s hard to deny we’re all screwed up in some way or another.If Adam and Eve are only allegorical representations of Humanity’s inherently flawed nature, Jesus can still have a literal purpose.The story of Jesus could still be completely allegorical, but an allegorical Adam and Eve doesn’t necessitate an allegorical Jesus.<
No, a Jesus who believed in Adam and Eve, divine or not, could have existed. However, there’s no proof that a Jesus, divine or not, did exist, and plenty of reasons to think he didn’t exist.
Evolution? Yes, plenty of evidence.
Evidence of the resurrection of Jesus, of his walking on water, of letting someone blind since birth see? Contemporaneous accounts? Zero evidence.
Yet you start, Andrew, with an assumption that Jesus was a real, and divine individual. You are trapped inside your own faith, stuck inside a loop of absurd ideas.
“it’s hard to deny we’re all screwed up in some way or another.”
I also dislike this assertion. It is a foundation of Christian theology that humans are ‘imperfect’. Imperfect to them has a very specific meaning.
But since we are not defining what ‘perfect’ is, then ‘imperfect’ is a meaningless term for this discussion. What, exactly, would a perfect human be?
But the ‘imperfect’ claim is made by Christians as a foundation for the argument that we need to be ‘saved’ by something.
Of course Evolution can be backed up with the Bible. Have you forgotten that there are thousands of Christian denominations out there which all claim their bizarre beliefs are backed up by the Holy Book?
The Josh McDowell’s of the world can twist the Bible to fit any belief. The book in so vague, contradictory, and diverse, that if you weave the Bible verses correctly, you can come up with all kinds of theories, including evolution.
“What’s hilarious is he equating starting with the Bible and following wherever the evidence leads. But at least he admits he starts with the premises that (1) God exists, (2) that this God is the Christian God, (3) that this God wrote a book, and (4) that book is the Protestant Bible as we have it today.”
These are exactly the same things Kemp believes. I wonder if that’s him in the video.
[Are] Evolution and the Bible (2 subjects=plural verb) Compatible.
You could change it to
Is the Bible Compatible with Evolution. (1 subject=singular verb)
C’mon now. What happened to well-educated?
Grammar Nazism is the first resort of the scoundrel.
Andrew wrote: > it’s hard to deny we’re all screwed up in some way or another.The story of Jesus could still be completely allegorical, but an allegorical Adam and Eve doesn’t necessitate an allegorical Jesus.<
That’s true – an allegorical Adam and Eve doesn’t necessitate an allegorical Jesus. On the other hand, it does nothing to validate a real Jesus, either and if anything, helps negate the belief, on faith alone, of a real Jesus.
bush
Elliot;
Thank you for your in-depth answer concerning what you believe and why. You see, this is something valuable. Real, actual dialog concerning what we believe and why. And I didn’t take it that you were rubbing your intellect in my face. You were giving me an illustration to emphasize your point. On the contrary, I found it fascinating.
The scientific observation of life is an absolutely stunning endeavor. There are so many creatures, from the microscopic to the Blue Whale and to observe them iin action is amazing.
As you have been very honest and clear concerning what you believe let me do the same. I do believe that God created all life as we see and know it now. I believe that He didn’t create prototypes but did the job right the first time. So when I view all of the multifaceted details of just human life for instance, things like the eye and the hand and the circulatory system and the immune system, these things cause me, as a believer in a Creator God, to marvel at the incredible mind that produced such complexity.
Does that make me sit back and say; “Oh well, God created it and thats enough for me.” If everyone did this there would be no discoveries at all. We’d all just sit down and do nothing. Rather, how many have benefited from the hours and hours of research from the brilliant minds of Michael Farraday and Sir Isaac Newton, both Christians. Their Christianity didn’t cause them to ‘check their brains at the door’ but instead fueled their study of the intricacies of nature, yes to glorify God but also to benefit mankind by their findings.
Let me be brutally honest about Christianity and the ‘pious platitudes of placid piles of pathetic pewsters who do nothing but offer nonsense rather than delving into the facts. This has done no one a service but rather has served to paint us as ‘yokels’ who are too stupid to use their brains. You didn’t say this, I did! You didn’t even suggest it. It is the stated truth and you all have seen and heard and been the recipients of these platitudes which mean nothing.
I personally apologize for the nonsense you have had to endure at the hands of Christians and those who merely go by the name. Now as you have been honest with me concerning your understanding of the origin of life, I am going to post an article in the “Topical” section of my blogsite and it will bear the title, “A Christian understanding of the Origin of Life.” I hope you will check it out and please, I would love to hear your critique concerning what I have to say. It will be in depth and comprehensive. I intend to present evidence for the Being of God, the Person of Christ and the creation of the world. I promise not to use coke cans or banana peels.
Mike
Didn’t the bible quoting gentleman as much as admit he was rationalizing from a preconcieved point of view? I think religious people often assume the scientific community makes the same kind of rationalizations they do. As far as evidence for evolution goes…….where is the evidence for creation? Do these people think they win by default if they can just discredit Darwin? It never seems to occure to them that they have to prove what they’re saying too, and simply attacking Darwin doesn’t do that. For the biblical account of creation to be correct, a whole lot more than Darwin has to be wrong. Pretty much everything we know about astrophysics, chemistry, biology, and geology have to be wrong as well. Einstein has to be wrong.
Patrick Simon;
You are indeed right. Both sides must lay out a comprehensive statement as to what they believe and why. It cannot be left up to just one side to justify themselves. Attacking others leads to nothing but more attacks. While there are those Christian people (possibly so called) who debunk science with a wave of a hand and a snort, this accomplishes nothing. We Christians might as well say, “We’re right and you’re wrong…nana nana nanaaa!
And what does this do? Does this solve anything. Not at all. A lot of creepiness has been done in the name of religion and in the name of science. Why? Is science incompatable with Christianity. There have been many Christians who are also scientists who have done much good for the world. I hope you will look for my article stated in the comment above yours and I look forward to your comments as to what I have to say.
Mike
One of my favorite science blogs has a great post on the topic of extraordinary claims and evidence.
http://planetologist.net/2009/02/24/experimental-theology/
It’s long, but Dr. Haas has a great way of articulating things that I’ve thought, but have never successfully put into words.
It’s worth a read.
“Creationists/fundamentalists say ‘Here’s what we believe, what evidence can we find to support it?’
Scientists say ‘Here’s the evidence, what conclusions can we draw from it?’”
Bull! Both say “Here’s what we believe, what evidence can we find to support it?” Just look at the moronic theory that the first cell evolved on the back of a crystal “because crystals have very random formation.” Wow. Them scientists sure is objective ain’tn’t they? Fact is, there is no real evidence for creationism nor evolution. They are both equally unbelievable. And both the notion of a God having always existed and of matter having always existed are equally illogical. Logically, nothing should exist, period, and yet it clearly does. Why? Its impossible to explain, because it isn’t logical. How can anything or anyone have always existed? Its a paradox that can’t be explained.
maricon wrote:
“And both the notion of a God having always existed and of matter having always existed are equally illogical.”
There is no dogmatic scientific claim that matter has always existed. In fact, science does not claim matter has always existed.
You are perhaps confused by atheists who are fond of pointing out that it makes at least as much sense to suggest that the universe has always existed as it does to claim than an omnipotent god created the universe. Or perhaps you’re trying to confuse the issue.
The bible and evolution are NOT compatible. It’s quite simple. Evolution is *REAL*. The bible is *PRETEND*. That’s like asking me if evolution is compatible with Beowulf of Midsummer Night’s Dream. It’s all PRETEND!
I find evolution to be totally compatible with Lord of the Rings.
@LRA, “Scientists readily admit to throwing out bad science/old theories. That is what makes science so powerful.”
I must be really powerful too then, cuz that’s what I do.
“There are MOUNTAINS of evidence for evolution!”
Nope. There are lots of supposed transitional forms. But what is interpreted as a transitional form could just as well be said to merely be an extinct form. In other words (let me throw out a theory like scientists readily admit they do) imagine a god of some sort, not the Christian god, in fact not even a god just a mind, creating every form that can be found in the fossil record all at once. Ok, so everything exists all at once, then dies out over time. The fish with half-legs then is not a transitional form between a fish with no legs and a salamander. Instead, its just a lame animal that didn’t make it very far past the prototype. It is just as reasonable to believe that as evolution.
Then there’s the fact that we live in a computer based society. Computers make us smarter, right? Well, turn your computer on and lets see if any programs evolve by themselves. Hmmmmmmm…..I left my computer on a kagillion hours and no programs evolved. Now, write a program that evolves other programs and watch them evolve. Look at ‘em go. In other words, computers prove that evolution can’t be undirected. Except we still have the pesky problem of how anything ever broke the existence barrier to begin with. Computers shouldn’t even exist at all, because nothing should (not even a god).
@Keviefriend
“Evolution is *REAL*. The bible is *PRETEND*.”
Why can’t they both be pretend? Does the notion that a random and undirected process created all that you see really make any more sense than an all-powerful God having always existed and being perfect and all that? No. And who says you’re even real. You could just be the dream that some other dream that someone else who doesn’t really exist is having.
@Dave “There is no dogmatic scientific claim that matter has always existed. In fact, science does not claim matter has always existed.”
So what, then, it didn’t exist one moment then just popped into existence the next? That is just as logical as it having always existed actually.
“You are perhaps confused by atheists who are fond of pointing out that it makes at least as much sense to suggest that the universe has always existed as it does to claim than an omnipotent god created the universe.”
Every guess about the ultimate beginning makes an equal amount of nonsense. It is not logical for existence to exist.
Typo: Should be “Evolution has no directed progress”.
“Creation took eight days”
Scarred into his own skin with a shard of fingernail, by man kept as a fish-like pet in RObert Heinlein’s “Goldfish Bowl”
And yet, the overall trend since the first self-replicating molecule does look rather like an exponential increase in complexity, intelligence, and now self awareness.
Sexual selection doesn’t do much for the species going through the process, but it does allow for faster evolution of species’ plural, allowing seed to fall further from the tree. It widens variation of the forms taken by prey animals, putting selection pressure on predators to be more curious and abstract in their perceptions.
This might not be *directed*, but there does at least seem to be an attractor in play.
Evolution destroys Pauline theology as Paul builds his theory on a literal first and second Adam. This alone would scare the claudistics out of biblical literalists.
Cello
I don’t see why you get confused by theists rejecting the evidence that is in front of them. I remember one of the local theists on this blog in reply to a previous post basically say outright that if there is a contradiction between reality and the bible than the obvious conclusion is that reality is wrong. Compare to that ignoring the evidence is practically normal.
“Progress” is a very arbitrary word in this context.
Anyway, what we have achieved in the last 10.000 years or so are due primariliy to our intellectual rather than genetic progress. So genetically speaking, our rate of progress is unremarkable, but intellectually we are unique. Our intellect has given us a steady (maybe even exponential) state of progress.
Well, we tend to judge thing by that which we ourselves value. We like to think we are the pinnacle of evolution because we have the ability to create and use tools, create abstract structures, and contemplate our own belly-buttons.
But that is only one measure out of many, and while our tool-using and intellectual capacities have contributed greatly to our overall fitness, we are outpaced by many other creatures in other categories, and also outpaced generally in the category of survivability by a few.
There is no objective metric to use that measures whether being able to run 60mph (like some cats can), or live thousands of years (like some bacteria can) is more or less “advanced” than being able to use integrals and derivatives. The problem is that, like Alex Breiding pointed out above, while we love to attach particular value to things, the natural process of evolution is essentially directionless. And we naturally value what we ourselves excel at.
In the sense that humanity is a relatively “new” species, relative to many existing species, and we have been relatively successful at establishing our survivability in various ecosystems on the planet, one might get a rough idea that humans are “more evolved”, but when it comes down to it we are just one fairly successful species amongst many, in many ways inferior to our competition.
What Elemenope said.
But I would like to expand on the bit about being inferior to our competition. To an octopus, we look ‘under-evolved’ because we can’t fit our heads through a bottle to get a clam.
Dogs can smell hundreds of thousands of times greater than we can. Birds can fly.
There is no ‘end goal’ to evolution. There’s a limitless number different niches into which an organism can evolve, and we just happen to occupy one of them. It happens to be a very large niche, but not as large as the cockroach.
It’s not true that we have evolved faster. Yes, some creatures can evolve faster than others, because they reproduce more rapidly. Bacteria are the prime example–you can work through a few million generations of E.Coli in a few years, which is why it’s so popular for studying evolution.
It took over 4 million years for our brain to evolve from “probably not-too-intelligent hominid” to “smartest creature ever to walk the earth.” It just seems that there’s a certain threshold in the evolution of intelligence that has allowed us to develop (key word) language and technology at an astonishing rate, and we hit this point somewhere in the last 30,000 years.
Should’ve been “rate of progress”, sorry.
You’re wrong, wrong, wrong. Our worldview starts with the idea that we should examine the world around us, and draw conclusions from what we see. We don’t see god, so we conclude there is none.
At an atheist’s core, we have no attitude towards god at all. But his existence is not born out by the evidence, so we reject him.
You on the other hand, begin with an assumption that has no basis whatsoever in the observable world, and you make it your highest imperative to believe it no matter what anyone tells you.
Science is NOT a worldview. It is a process. It makes NO attempt to derive metaphysical facts (as philosophy and religion do).
This is why christians continue to fight a losing battle. They don’t understand what science ACTUALLY is.
I mentioned this a bit in my comment below. No where in the bible does it state HOW god created everything nor how long it took. (I’m sorry, but the DAY analogy in there is just a metaphor.) Do you actually think a god SPOKE to a handful of people and said, “Look, I’m God. I need you to write this down. I made the earth and the sky and the light and the dark and that took me two days.” etc, etc, etc?
I have no idea if there is a god, gods, or none, but even if there is, who are WE to refute the evidence in front of us and make up some other story about how we all got here? We have brains (whether god-given or evolved, you decide) and they should be used for the purpose they serve.
Aw, it would have been fun!
Notice they don’t apply that principle to whether Jesus was born of a virgin and rose from the dead. “Uh, no, were weren’t there, but there are excellent sources… er, um, a hundred years after by non-eyewitnesses.”
I have more respect for the folks who have an open-mind to the evidence. I’d rather they re-interpret their holy book than ignore science.
i thought that evolution was suppose to make the species better, stronger, able to survive better? yes no?
Admit it, though:
Phlogiston is a really cool word. Like aether. And quintessence.
Science ruined a lot of really cool words by demonstrating the incorrectness of the concepts behind them.
Better able to survive, yes, but that can mean all sorts of different things, and it doesn’t tend to mean “stronger”, “faster” or “fitter”.
Crocodiles, sharks, turtles, dragonflies, and E. coli bacteria are all excellent at surviving within their niches, and have not needed to make any significant changes to their way of living for hundreds of millions of years. Does this make them “more evolved” than humans?
Nope, there’s no rule in evolution that says an organism can’t be extremely wasteful, fragile, weak or whatever, as long as it’s able to fit some environmental niche where the competition is comparatively weak.
Also, being strong, fast, etc, always comes at a price (higher energy consumption, more fragile bones, etc). In some cases the cost is simply too large compared to the benefits.
You’re unfairly attributing fitness to the traits you mention, but, really, the only measure of success in evolution is how well-suited an organism is to its environment. And being small and weak is often what serves that purpose best.
TOE says that given pressure from the environment and from fellow members of its species, a species will in general evolve over time so that it is better suited to survive in its preferred environment.
Bacteria are doing a great job staying ahead of our antibiotics.
We never heard of some viruses several decades ago.
To me though it just seems silly. You have to really twist the text to make evolution fit. Its as if they know in the back of their mind the book is a falsehood, but they’re too timid to discard the entire thing due to a number of possible repercussions.
Do you like “subluxation”? I discovered the other week that it has a legitimate usage in medicine (more or less: joints partially dislocated or misaligned); it’s not just chiropractic BS.
I call bullshit on that. Voice, you’ve not once in all the time that you’ve posted here shown that you’re willing to consider anything other than your god-addled ramblings. You claim to want proof that “Christianity” is wrong and that the earth wasn’t created in six days? Look at the fossil record and carbon dating and the frakkin’ geological record. (You’ll probably come back with some nonsense about the earth not being literally created in six days–if you say that, then that’s totally wrong, because the Hebrew for day indicates a 24-hour period)
Let me first correct you. I am not arguing that Christianity is wrong, although I do think that it is ‘wrong’ in lots of ways, I am arguing that creationism is wrong.
There does not need to be evidence to prove creationism wrong, because creationism is not a default state. There needs to be evidence to prove anything right, be it Christianity, or evolution.
What makes me choose evolution, is that it’s beautifully parsimonious, and makes provable claims about the world we see.
Such as: Animals that evolved from a parent animal will share parts of that animal’s biology.
All mammals came from a group of mammal like creatures that had hair and produced milk, so we share that in common.
We have opposable thumbs like our ape relatives. We have spinal columns like all other chordates.
Evolution makes predictions about what we see. Lots of mammals have muscles to turn their ears 360 degrees. We would expect humans to have them, even though they would be vestigial, and withered. Sure enough, we do. They are near functionless, but they allow you to wiggle your ears.
The mechanism that gives us goose bumps is similar to what you see happening to dogs and cats when their hair stands on end. Somewhere in our past, there was an animal who benefitted from tiny muscles at the base of their hairs to make them stand on end. When the animal was frightened, it could puff up to look larger. When it was cold, it fluffed up to get warm. The descendant animals don’t use this as much today, but it still exists, even when the animal has no hair, like humans.
You see how interesting it is? This is the power of the theory. It’s being tested and retested all the time, and it’s always the right answer.
Creationism on the other hand, is a conversation ender. It doesn’t make predictions about the world, it just says “god did it.” It’s useless. I repeat it is useless as a theory, because it predicts nothing. Whenever something new is discovered, like “oh wow, we have tiny muscles in our foot that look like they could be used to turn our big toe inward like a thumb,” creationism says “too bad, so sad. That means nothing, it has no relevance. God did it.”
And please don’t come back with “god works in mysterious ways” or “he put it there to test us,” or whatever. I just gave you a reason for what I believe and that is far more than creationists can do. Their reason for believing is that they do not want to own up to the fact that their belief structure is totally bunk.
Regarding the calculus, I have forgotten most of it. The example was not meant to rub it in your face that I know more than you, it was to show that there are matters of science that we trust to others more qualified than ourselves, and we don’t trouble them asking them to justify their knowledge all the time.
Voice-
Here is a great place to start:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/
If you balk at the idea of learning from a website, then I suggest you go to a university bookstore and buy a college level bio book. It will have a chapter on evolution in it.
If you really want to challenge yourself, buy a book on evo-devo or genetics.
All the proof you require is fully available.
Again, from the Voice:
That is what science does.
(Root word for science is “scientia”, knowing. To know you have to – here it is again:
All science does, even if not literally digging in the ground; archeologists do so literally.
It’s what Science DOES.
DUH!
re: subluxation
That’s a good one!
By a great many evolutionary measuring sticks, cockroaches are the best adapted species on earth.
And crocodiles have existed in pretty much exactly the same form since the dinosaur age. That would tend to indicate a very robust survival rate.
Humans are, frankly, a flash in the pan compared to a great many other species. If we’re still here in a hundred million years or so, then the crocodiles might be impressed.
Yep. I was convinced by evolution and became an atheist AFTER spending three decades as a Christian.
There was no ‘presupposition’ there. That’s an idiotic argument the theists like to run out when they want to claim their worldview is just as reasonable as the scientific one.
“The evidence can be interpreted either way, it only depends on where you start!”
Uh, wrong.
Logically, if there were no Eve and Adam, there would be no fall, and thus no need for a Jesus Christ to redeem a sin that never occurred. And if we take the story of the fall as allegory, then following the logic, there is no reason to think the story about Jesus Christ is anything other than allegory, too.
I don’t disagree with this and would say that religion as complete allegory is workable IMO.
But I would also hold out the Ransom Theory or Christus Victus Theory of atonement as possible models of a literal Jesus that could work with an allegorical fall.
The traditional model of Christianity asserts that the only way that we can get to God is through Jesus (penal substitution). But the Christus Victus model asserts that God used Jesus’ sacrifice as a way to get to us (reversing the direction of traditional atonement). To borrow a phrase from John C. (I know, I know) Jesus is the method God uses to wake us up. As a way to reunite man with God.
first thanks to everyone for indulging my ignorance. i’m trying to learn so thank you very much.
so if i’m understanding correctly the reason we have evolved intellectually to the place we have (one of the most advanced) is so that we can better survive where we are?
my last question. is there any reason why we are so far (if i am accruate in saying this) advanced in intellect compared to everything else? like lots of animals have gotten bigger, stronger, whatever, why have no other animals gotten smarter like we have?
As for the smarter thing, I read once that it is with fire and the cooking of meat. Something changed in the proteins that allowed us to digest it in a way that allowed our brains to grow and function better.
I have no idea if it is accurate, as that is the only time I have heard that idea, but it is a start anyways.
Oops, yes, thank you.
That’s called peer reviewing people – the wonderful thing about science.
thank you
“So, why all these Christians are up in arms over evolution just blows my mind. I don’t get it at all. WHY is that a threat to their faith? The bible is not a science texbook.”
Well, I know that for a lot of them (including myself back in the day) they feel that god is getting ‘squeezed out’. God used to be the explanation for everything, now he gets some vague ‘first cause’ props and that’s about it.
They want a return to the time when the bible was the inerrant word of Truth, and so god was the end-all be-all explanation for the universe.
It is, in my opinion, a rejection of a world that has gotten too complex; a pining for ‘simpler’ times.
They are afraid of the implications evolution carries. God is invoked to explain where we come from, and their faith says explicitly that he created us. If there is sufficient probability that we arose on our own, or that there is no grand “direction” of the universe, then the explanatory value of their faith is negated. If we are not meant to “rule” over the animals, and are in reality just a peculiar hairless ape (Ty lays this out beautifully one post above), then their god’s ‘purpose’ for us is challenged.
It’s also a control thing. There is a huge vested interest in keeping people from learning about, or believing in, evolution.
I mean, look around at the fights in courts, classrooms, universities, online, the above video conference………. It’s BIG.
As far from believe-and-let-believe as possible.
You don’t fight something unless you consider it a threat. Small effort for a small threat, huge fight for a huge threat. It is threatening SOMETHING. Something they WANT – BADLY.
Not really. I went from conservative to liberal to non Christian, then an atheist. When I was liberal, I believed that evolution vs. literal creation didn’t matter because the creation story in Genesis was the only passage in the entire book of Gen that was written in a poetic style in the original Hebrew. That allowed a lot of room for the possibility that it was never meant to be taken literally.
Welcome.
Any book that can be used to justify the beliefs of the Mormons, Catholics, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Moonies, and Koreshites can be made to justify anything.
So you are saying we should kill crocs? ;)
Oh, sure, put them under a bunch of survival pressure that forces them to evolve a bunch of anti-human adaptations.
That seems smart.
Next thing you know we have crocs with bullet proof scales and spine mounted anti-aircraft cannons.
Mr. Kidder breeding his neoterics in Theodore Sturgeon’s “Microcosmic God”.
It seems to be a day reminiscent of science fiction stories.
Its not really a big deal at all, but I personally, just can’t classify Genesis 1-2 as poetry.
Your point? Other than to be a grammar fascist?
Sorry for making a grammatical mistake in your eyes. I hope you’ll find the ability to forgive me this horrible sin.
Jinx! Buy me a Pepsi!
Genesis 6:3
“Then the LORD said “My spirit will not put up with humans for such a long time, for they are only mortal flesh. In the future, their normal lifespan will be no more than 120 years.”
So, God did get around to changing how long folks were living.
Though, that just means that God was flat out WRONG, as can be seen in the case of Jeanne Louise Calment.
http://www.wowzone.com/calment.htm
Infallible my ass.
Someone upthread mentioned not being able to point to evidence easily wrt evolution but I think we can.
Talk Origins has this:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/
Retroviral DNA is strong evidence of the chimpanzee / human split.
http://www.gnxp.com/blog/2008/02/retroviruses-evolution.php
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/11/071114121359.htm
The point is, what do those scientific discoveries lead you to believe? You can’t tell me that the fact we share the goosebumps response with haired animals can be taken in isolation. It *means* something that we have it in common with them.
Evolution captures the generalization that animals with common ancestry share common traits. Creationism does not. There would be no reason to distribute common traits among similar looking animals if you were creating life from scratch. You may protest that there is no reason that we know of why god would to do it. But that would be admitting your theory doesn’t explain something mine does.
I mean, this evidence is everywhere. Like other mammals, whales have hip bones. In whales, they are tiny, but they are still recognizeable as hip bones. If you were creating a whale from scratch, you wouldn’t include hip bones, would you? If you know about cetacean biology, you could argue that they are used as an anchor for reproductive organs, so they aren’t functionless, but it still doesn’t explain why they look like hips, and not something else.
Snakes have vestigial leg hooks. They have a function during breeding, but they look to trained biologists like modified legs.
I could go on and on with evidence for evolutionary processes. It’s all around. The fact that animals all breathe oxygen, our knees bend forward like other apes, even though upright walking would be easier with ones that bent backward. And so on, and so forth.
Evolution is a theory, because it makes testable predictions about the way the world is. In fact, it happens to be a good one, because it predicts a lot of stuff that happens to be true.
Creationism is not a theory, because it makes no testable predictions.
Mightn’t I like orichalcum, folderol, rotgut, drivel, Cuchullainn and Bradburyesque (a description of my own)?
@ claidheamhmor
I used “Tolkienesque” in a Philosophy of Religion paper once. Got a raised eyebrow.
“You are indeed right. Both sides must lay out a comprehensive statement as to what they believe and why. It cannot be left up to just one side to justify themselves.”
The naturalist worldview does exactly this. It’s called science.
What you keep missing is that the existence of god/gods is an extraordinary claim. It is never up to the skeptic to prove why an extraordinary claim is false. It is always up to the person making the claim to prove it is true. That’s the fundamental fact you are missing.
You claim god is real. We, as skeptics of that claim, are under no onus to prove you wrong. You are de facto wrong until you can provide evidence that you are right.
You seem to be looking for some atheist manifesto that lays out all the reasons not to believe, and there are a few out there. Richard Dawkins and others have written them. But that doesn’t mean we OWE you one. The skeptical position owes no explanation other than, “You are not providing evidence for your claim.”
And that’s it.
I do not necessarily agree with this view, but I am glad that you are willing to accept evolution if the evidence is conclusive.
“Sometimes death and suffering are necessary for beauty.”
Nicely said, and very humanist, too.
Creationists/fundamentalists say “Here’s what we believe, what evidence can we find to support it?”
Scientists say “Here’s the evidence, what conclusions can we draw from it?”
I think the fundamentalists fear more than anything else a literal interpretation of the Bible and creation story because it is often the beginning of disbelief for many ex-Christians/atheists.
This idea came from Dan Baker, but it does fit my life as well. Start with a pyramid. The pyramid has a descending order of beliefs. For example, at the top is belief in an all powerful god. Below that is the divinity of Jesus, the resurrection, the Trinity, atonement by the blood of Jesus, the belief in salvation in faith alone, etc.
At the bottom of the pyramid is maybe belief that Baptism is required to enter heaven. Or that Christians can’t work on Sundays. Most Christians don’t believe these are necessary tenants of faith, so go ahead a cross them off your list. As you go up the pyramid, you have various denominational beliefs. Some restrict pastors to being only male, or example.
As you get up the pyramid, you come to issues like belief in a literal creation story. “Well, if the creation story isn’t literal, that’s okay. It was parable, just like Adam & Eve and Cain & Able were parables. The truth is in the message of a parables.” Scratch another level off the pyramid.
“Most of the old testament was written by a primitive people trying to understand god, so I’m not going to take everything literally. Noah was a parable. Moses was a parable. This doesn’t conflict with the belief that god loves us and has a plan for us.” Scratch another level off the pyramid.
As Christians become less literal in their interpretation of the Bible, the fundamentalists have lost control over them. They no longer have the ability to steer Christians in one direction or the other on their political agenda. No longer does it work to cherry pick one or two verses and telling Christians they must interpret this verses literally.
Eventually, as the pyramid gets smaller, you cross off things like Jesus being the only path to heaven, and eventually you doubt the need for Jesus at all. Like Thomas Jefferson and many other deists, your faith is in the overall message of Jesus, but you don’t take literally the stories of miracles or even the resurrection.
At this point you see many other stories of morality through out the world that are as good or better than the Bible. You see that morality is found outside the church, and that good people do good, evil people to evil, but that it takes religion for good people to do evil. There’s only one block left atop the pyramid now – scratch it off.
I really liked your post, but this part:
“You see that morality is found outside the church, and that good people do good, evil people to evil, but that it takes religion for good people to do evil.”
irked me a bit. In my experience, good people do evil all the time, and it is usually worst when they wholeheartedly believe they are doing something good. Religion is but one avenue of well-meaning evil; it’s an unfair burden to place all (or even most) of the blame for this phenomena there.
Sounds like that one was directed at a comment I made about academia versus the Bible. I wasn’t denying “reality;” I was denying humans’ ability to interpret history perfectly. We constantly make so many assumptions!
Look at geology, we assume that layers of strata equals a set amount of time, right? Nobody pays too much attention to natural disasters that can lay down “millions of years” of sediment in a short time span (ex. Mt St. Helens dropped 400 feet of distinctly layered strata in just days; other volcanoes have formed entire islands in mere months)
I agree that it’s ridiculous that even the most hard core of Creationists like myself could deny all evolution, though. What kind of God would leave organisms without any way to adapt to change? But I think we all need to admit that we humans get it wrong sometimes…a lot of times…should I be unfair and bring up the Piltdown Man? It took 40 years for anyone to figure that one out! And good land of the living, we have extant evidence (living individuals, alive and still walking!) that proves a genetic mutation can cause bipedalism in the modern Pan genus!
Anyway, in response to your last line, I don’t ignore evidence. I do the same thing any evolutionist does: I see evidence and see if it fits with my own theory. If I ever come across something that tells me beyond that it was impossible for God to have created the Earth, I will be the first to drop it.
(By the way, I do need to apologize to all you. You all tend to get my feisty side way more than you deserve because this is my only steam outlet. I get frustrated with the distinct possibility of losing my assistantship if any of my profs found out what I really believe. I don’t teach Creation in my labs, and I do whatever research I’m told to do without a hint of disagreeing with the status quo. But freedom of worldview doesn’t actually exist in my world, and the anonymity of this space lets me vent. Who knows, in the end I may be wrong about my beliefs. Whatever, that’s my loss. But as long as I don’t teach it to my students in a classroom, can’t I just be wrong in my own head and not have to worry about losing my income? It’s like being under a state religion!)
Actually, to be more correct, I should say that science makes no attempt to derive metaphysical truths (not metaphysical facts– truths are philosophical, facts are scientific)…
Sorry to say, but Marcion, you are incorrect.
Scientists readily admit to throwing out bad science/old theories. That is what makes science so powerful.
There are MOUNTAINS of evidence for evolution! This website has been posted a couple of times already, but do have a look at it!
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/
The history of science concerning evolution shows that scientists did not start from this premise, but that it developed over time, and after much evidence, it was given the status of theory (meaning that there is much evidence for it, not “it’s just a theory”) as evidence for it came to light.
Some of the most powerful support for evolution comes from modern genetics. I would encourage you to read that section of the above website… it is awesome.
You’re being dishonest, marcion. You present a specific hypothesis as if it were accepted by the scientific consensus, when in fact it isn’t. And from this, you conclude by analogy that the theory of evolution must be just a hypothesis as well.
There’s a big difference between someone putting forth a hypothesis (which is a suggestion, and usually a subjective one) and a theory (which is a widely accepted and experimentally verified model).
What you’re presenting is a straw man. You’re either being willingly deceitful, or you simply can’t tell the difference.
It’s worth pointing out that 1) there’s some evidence that clay catalysis could work; and 2) its strongest proponents admit that it has some serious flaws that need to be dealt with. See Wikipedia for a brief description.
And feel free to look at the rest of that page, and see what other ideas scientists are throwing around, too. The truth of the matter is that we don’t know what biochemical pathway was used by the first replicators.
Fantasic post James, you’ve got it dead on. The Jefferson Bible is perhaps the book that non-literalists should be waving at us….
CONTROL!
Control is the issue.
It’s all about control, man!
Try on the lens of control, look at Christian practices, and check out how you understand them.
Or if you’re more the “feeling” type, feel that desire for control of others on a large scale (institutions, countries), and feel the motives for Christian actions.
1) No, no-one claims that there’s a direct relationship between “thickness of sediment” and “time taken to deposit”. Some deposits are laid down very quickly, others every, very slowly. We have many different methods of dating rocks, but judging it from the thickness of a layer is not one of them.
2) Mt. St. Helens laid down 400 feet of loosely agglomerated ash and tuff. That is not the same as 400 feet of sediment that has been compressed down to become limestone.
3) Igneous lava flows and sedimentation are very different things, and any geologist who knows anything can tell them apart very easily.
And we all know that there can never be any such evidence. An omnipotent God could have constructed the universe in any way imaginable, and there’s no conceivable evidence that can possibly prove that he didn’t choose to do it in that way. The concept of divine creation is compatible with any potential evidence.
On the other hand, there is much potential evidence that would prove that the theory of evolution is not responsible for the distribution of life we see today: If an animal was found that had all the diagnostic features of mammals, but was genetically more similar to birds, for example. Or if a group of creatures that seem to be related to the rest of the tree of life was found to use a genetic code that wasn’t based on DNA. Or if the nested hierarchies found by comparing anatomical data differed from those found by comparing proteomic data, and those found by comparing genetic data.
Evolution predicts that we will never see any of these things. Creationism makes no such predictions, so there is no way that any evidence can be used to disprove creationism.
It’s true, “freedom of worldview” is not a popular concept in the sciences; people who believe that diseases are caused by demonic possession find it very hard to get a job as a doctor, for example. You can’t really be a physicist if you think that Newtonian mechanics is the be-all and end-all of gravity. And it is possible that you could be fired for not understanding the subject you’ve been hired to teach.
But having said that, there really is no such thing as unassailable dogma in the sciences. As a teaching assistant, you may not be in the best place to do this, but if you find some decent evidence that evolution is not a true description of the world, then you will not only keep your job, but win a Nobel prize to boot. The greatest goal of any scientist is to prove that the greybeards who went before him were wrong. Yes, it’s a lot harder than complaining about how unfair it is that your sacred cow should be held to the same standards of evidence as everyone else’s, but do the work and you’ll be richly rewarded for it.
I find evolution (social) to be totally compatible with the Lord of the Flies.
;)
Instead of ‘religion’ there, I’d generally substitute ‘unquestioned moral authority’.
In my experience, religion and patriotism are the two most common sources of unquestioned moral authority in the modern world.
(My inner anarchist, for a moment…)
I would replace “unquestioned moral authority” with, simply, “authority”.
It goes back to the rhetorical triad. Logos, that’s an easy one. Argument is fought and won on the battlefield of reason. We can even formalize it, with syllogisms and symbols, apply equations, recognize fallacies.
Pathos is trickier, and yet there is still a sense of argument; we may not know how to formalize emotions and passions, but we do hold them as common experiences, and as such they can be appealed to in order to support or detract a given proposition. We can know that, for us at least, something is right or wrong because we feel it to be so.
But ethos? The problem with appeals from authority is that by their very nature they are transcendent from argument. They really only allow two options in response: Yes or no.
And in my experience, humans are really, really, really, incredibly, indescribably bad at saying “no”.
A whole host of mischief follows from that simple fact.
Forgive me for sounding snooty as I don’t mean it this way at all. It is reasonable on my end to assume that we must both be able to give an answer for the reason why we believe what we believe. Now you have done so. You have stated your position very clearly. So has Elliot, Mr. Florien and others on this site. And you have given me information that I cannot get anywhere else. For this I truly thank you.
I have had an unexpected increase in workload at the office this week and therefore I ask you to indulge me just a little further concerning my promised article. It will be done next week rather than by Friday. As stated earlier, I am dealing with intellectuals and would rather not present a hurried article to you.
Thanks again.
Mike vftw
And yet, the fact that it is impossible for any human to be truly educated on every possible topic, at some point accepting the existence of authorities on those subjects is the only reasonable way to form a society.
I can do some research for myself on smoking and lung cancer, but unless I want to put in the time to get an M.D and Phd like the researchers who work in the field, I will at best have only incomplete and possibly dangerously incomplete information. In that case, I don’t mind accepting their statements that smoking may be dangerous to my health. But if they were to take the position smoking is immoral, I would question that, and we could begin a discussion about whether or not second hand smoke is damaging to others, and whether or not a person has a moral responsibility to keep healthy and not be a burden on society. We could begin a dialog.
But many sources of moral authority do not engage in dialog of any kind. It is an appeal to authority with no real substance. It is authority for authority’s sake.
“Being gay is evil.”
“Why?”
“Our book says so.”
“Why should we take your book’s word for it?”
“Heretic, die!”
@Ty
And yet, the fact that it is impossible for any human to be truly educated on every possible topic, at some point accepting the existence of authorities on those subjects is the only reasonable way to form a society. [etc...]
I don’t disagree on any particular point.
It is said by some that Goethe was the last true Renaissance Man; he was the last person who has lived who has had a functional mastery of every area of human knowledge available when he was alive. After him, human knowledge expanded (at a close to exponential rate, qualitatively and quantitatively) such that it is never again possible for a human (unaltered; who knows what we’ll be able to do with the human mind in the future) to know enough to not have to depend upon outside human authority.
It is interesting to think about, how different a world where it was possible to know everything knowable (i.e. anything that humans at that moment could reasonably claim authority to expound) would be, how the nature of authority and social structure would be different. We’re stuck through the looking glass thinking about it from a world where human knowledge is fragmented without any hope of union within one subjective viewpoint.
Certainly our goals in life, and our conceptions of what a life worth pursuing would be have changed profoundly because of this shift. It also calls into question many Enlightenment ideals which our society still (at least nominally) are based upon; the value of a liberal education, the utility of democracy, and so forth.
There are lots of supposed transitional forms. But what is interpreted as a transitional form could just as well be said to merely be an extinct form.
It is possible.
In other words (let me throw out a theory like scientists readily admit they do) imagine a god of some sort…
So far you’ve managed to create a hypothesis that is untestable, so, no, nothing like what scientists do
…not the Christian god, in fact not even a god just a mind…
A volition that creates everything? Dude, that’s a God.
…creating every form that can be found in the fossil record all at once.
We would find a very different pattern in the fossil record if this were the case than what we actually find.
Ok, so everything exists all at once, then dies out over time. The fish with half-legs then is not a transitional form between a fish with no legs and a salamander. Instead, its just a lame animal that didn’t make it very far past the prototype. It is just as reasonable to believe that as evolution.
Beyond the fact that your hypothesis is un-falsifiable, and thus unscientific, it is also not *parsimonious*, in that it introduces ad hoc helper hypotheses that are unnecessary to explain the given evidence. Ockham’s Razor, and all that.
So, no, it is not *as* reasonable to believe your hypothesis as it is to believe Evolution is a sufficient explanatory framework.
—————-
Then there’s the fact that we live in a computer based society.
Uh-huh. In the same way that we live in a corn-based society, or a car-based society, or an oil based society, I suppose, yeah.
Computers make us smarter, right?
I beg to differ.
Well, turn your computer on and lets see if any programs evolve by themselves.
Well, shockingly, a discrete state machine with no stochastic input will never exhibit a behavior that it was not designed to exhibit. The fumble here is that computers are a piss-poor metaphor for the iterations of the biological-information process. For one, you are confusing a null start state for a random start state. Life is theorized to have evolved in random input conditions, not empty input conditions. For another, computers exhibit signal fail-safing, whereas lifeforms are rather poorer at preserving the fidelity of DNA perfectly to the next generation, thus introducing genetic drift.
Hmmmmmmm…..I left my computer on a kagillion hours and no programs evolved. Now, write a program that evolves other programs and watch them evolve. Look at ‘em go. In other words, computers prove that evolution can’t be undirected.
Uh, no. Our experience with a certain type of computer tends to demonstrate that programs for that certain type of machine don’t spontaneously evolve. However, computers have been a helpful tool in investigating zero-player game mechanics (like Conway’s Game and Von Neumann’s Game) which pretty definitively show that syntactic order spontaneously evolves from steady state systems with random initial input after an arbitrarily large number of iterations.
Except we still have the pesky problem of how anything ever broke the existence barrier to begin with. Computers shouldn’t even exist at all, because nothing should (not even a god).
Now that is an actually interesting question, though not a scientific one. Welcome to metaphysics.
Marcion-
I really appreciate you sharing your religious views with me earlier, but I must disagree with you on your scientific views. You have opinions, not facts…
You said: “There are lots of supposed transitional forms”
Yes there are… but you clearly have not looked at the research, or the genetics, or the comparative embryology, or the microevolution, or etc…
I left you a website too look at (talk origins)… Did you?
You talk like a believer and not like a scientist. I am a scientist, so I suggest that you educate yourself if you want to disagree with me. Use facts to do so and not opinions, lest you look ignorant.
“I must be really powerful too then, cuz that’s what I do.”
No, because you do so with no good reason. Scientists have evidence.
There’s a reason why we no longer have a geocentric view of the solar system… it’s because evidence for a heliocentric view became impossible to ignore. Same thing for creation versus evolution. Creation is the geocentricity of science, old, outdated, and flat out wrong.
“Well, turn your computer on and lets see if any programs evolve by themselves.”
Besides being a really poor analogy is it also incorrect — genetic algorithms all ready do evolve.
This does not explain the evidence anywhere near as well as evolution. Take, for example, those fossils that look like whales with legs. We have a lot of these, now. The ones that are in the deepest rocks and radiodate to the oldest time, have larger legs, nostrils at the front of their face, and typically mammalian ears, among other features. As we move up the strata, to fossils that have undergone less radioactive decay, we see the legs get gradually smaller, the nostrils slowly move to the top of the head, and the ears develop into the distinctive cetacean ear.
The obvious implication is that these represent a change over time. Your theory is presumably that these animals all lived at the same, but for some unspecified reason, they didn’t start dying until it was their “turn”, and the apparent pattern of development is simply a cosmic coincidence? And that this coincidence was repeated for ever lineage where we have a good fossil record (horses, elephants, humans, crocodiles, dinosaurs, ants…)
Quite apart from the anatomical data from fossils, we also have a lot of evidence from genetic and proteomic data; for example, chimps and humans have specific sequences of junk DNA that look exactly like they were inserted by viruses. Gorillas have a subset of these sequences, and other apes have a subset of that subset. If all these species evolved from a common ancestor, we can use this pattern to work out when different groups split off from our lineage. And this tree (Humans most closely related to chimps, then to gorillas, then to other apes) matches the fossil data, and also the overall similarity in genes and proteins.
On the other hand, if all these creatures were created de novo at the same time, there is no reason for these patterns to exist, is there? And certainly no reason for the trees assembled from different lines of evidence to match up so neatly.
Curse Spock for making people think they know what “logical” means. “Something exists” does not involve an argument, so you’re right; it’s not logical. “I can see something, therefore something exists” has a premise and a conclusion that follows validly from it. Therefore, it is logical.
What you mean is that it doesn’t make sense. And I’ll accept the point, but the entire last century of physics has been an exercise in proving that the universe doesn’t make sense. As you move faster, you weigh more. A photon can be in two places at once. Particles can just spontaneously pop into existence with no precursors. Time is just distance rotated through 90 degrees. Electricity and gravity used to be the same thing. None of this makes sense. Why should the origin of the universe be any different.
Marcion, you also said:
“Instead, its just a lame animal that didn’t make it very far past the prototype”
No, that is incorrect. Carbon (and other methods) of dating allows us to have evidence of a geological/ biological history that is seen in the historical evidence as well as what happens in speciation today.
Please, I ask that you read the whole of the scientific literature before you criticize. Otherwise you are a clanging gong.
Actually he covered that with “…Now, write a program that evolves other programs and watch them evolve. Look at ‘em go….”
In other words, his hypothesis is that an intentional creator is necessary to start the evolutionary process.
Which is much like saying that that an intentional creator is required for birds to fly as humans have made air planes. It really doesn’t sound like a more convincing argument than you hair is wet therefore you must must have had a shower. A causes B does not mean that B is caused by A. The point is that he/she has started with god exists and then moved from there. It’s not a particularly interesting way of thinking.
I agree. It lacks parsimony and elegance to insert something (technically, many things) that is unnecessary and not indicated by the evidence.
And he affirms the consequent a helluva lot, as you point out.
None of this makes sense.
I would say none of it makes intuitive sense. The theories that describe those phenomenon may violate our natural predispositions of how the world ought to work, but they are internally consistent, parsimonious (well, except for string theory), and agree with observable data.
Origin of the universe is different in that it is a metaphysical rather than a physical question.
Right. As I posted it, I realised I should have qualified it with something like “None of this makes sense to someone who’s not spent years studying it“. Obviously it makes sense to people who are way smarted than me.
The point is that “That makes no sense to a layman like me!” isn’t really a valid criticism of a theory in modern physics.
Hey Voice!
Scroll up for more replies! To you.
It’s OUR turn to give voice, and YOUR turn to be EARS for an overdue change!
And, it seems to me, that in an effort to know the facts, quoting – and misquoting! – a thousands-years-old, unproven, multi-authored, subjective, sometimes self-contradicting old book is a completely inadequate way to, and utterly fails to:
(here it is again)
I’m not a physicist so I am only going on what I hear but this is a question that is being addressed in science. Quantum Flux is one such hypothesis. There are physicists that claim as established fact that certain quantum particles appear out of literally nothing.
The point is that “That makes no sense to a layman like me!” isn’t really a valid criticism of a theory in modern physics.
Yet is one of the main planks of argument for ID/Creationism. I would really like to see even a single argument that wasn’t based on ‘I don’t understand so goddidit’, ‘You can’t explain every single detail of evolution so goddidit’, ‘Darwin lead to Hitler so it must but wrong which means goddidit’, ‘Evolution is just a worldview’
YES! Someone else who sees it too!!! Control is the issue and purpose of organized religions. Sigh. I love this blog.