Evolution vs Creationism, Why are we having this silly debat

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Feel free to pray for me, no harm could be done.

And just to satisfy both my own curiosity and you, I shall recite the lords prayer (the only prayer you are supposed to actually say according to the bible) before I go to bed tonight.

Excuse me, but it is everyone's business what creationists are trying to do. If a school isn't supposed to be funding a religion, then we shouldn't be putting favoritism for a certain deity or it's religious teachings into science. I'll follow one poster's advice and attempt to clarify the things I don't like about it.

1: "I don't mean 'intelligent designer'. I mean 'intelligent text and proof'. Uhh? Uhh? Can you put it into your science class now?" NO!
2: "See this little flower? How can you lie and say it was planted and cultivated 900 years ago, when the great ancient scroll said it was 700 years ago specifically? Oh you brainless haters, and evil people against the Goddess. I pity your stupidity."
3: "I believe in a Goddess! The Goddess is the truth. I believe in the values of my people, but the truth needs to be taught no matter what!"
4: "See this little flower? How could you possibly think the Goddess didn't create it? Don't you see the similarities to that plastic flower I've pinned to my chest? Both are made by a maker, and blah blah blah..."
5: "I bet you think we came out of dirt instead of the Goddess's vineyard. You don't really think a flower grows it's petals underground now? FYI, carrots grow underground, and they aren't flowers. Just telling you that, because you obviously don't grasp the Goddess's world around you, Einstein! " This is an old style, but they keep using the tactic!
6: "It's a great day and a great feeling to be opening this museum. This will prove to everyone that the Goddess and her vinyard are absolutely real. I took the actual proof and put it here. Not that rubbish, anti-scriptural, big fat pile of fakery they keep giving the public.”

Last edited by LiendaBalla on 21 Jan 2012, 12:47 am, edited 4 times in total.

Then why is creationism in a form familiar to evangelical Christians or Wahabists believed by almost no one who is not of an Abrahamic Religion, in places such as Southern India or China?

blessed is the invisible pink mane of the goddess, whose hooves danced the flowers of the world into being.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Of90cKxSeuw[/youtube]


[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0vKGn9GH-Ww[/youtube]


...


[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXRjmyJFzrU[/youtube]

its funny that you'd start a silly debate about why we are having a silly debate for both evolution and creationism are means of explaining why we have this silly debate.

It is a good question though. Consider that one side has literally tons of evidence from observations of every branch of science that all point to the same reality, and the other has NO scientific evidence supporting it. Consider that the first side has not yet been falsified, and that the amount of evidence of so many different types is so overwhelmingly obvious that it is extremely unlikely it ever will be falsified by anything new found, and the other side has been falsified (no scientific evidence of a global flood for example, yet there is evidence of different types of the sort that would be found if such a flood did NOT occur).

Even if we did find a fossil rabbit in the PreCambrian (a famous example of the type of evidence that would falsify what we currently think we know about evolution), there is so much evidence that clearly shows different species have common ancestry that such a discovery would most likely not falsify evolution completely. Instead, we would have to modify the theory to account for such evidence. Obviously though, if enough evidence were to be found that clearly shows evolution is false, then science would discard evolution. That is the way science works. When scientists are shown they are wrong, they change their minds. When creationists are shown they are wrong, they go "La La La I can't hear you, GodDidit" and pressure school boards to teach religious beliefs in science classrooms when such beliefs are clearly NOT scientific (since they are NOT supported by any scientific evidence and are falsified by some).

It is my opinion that most people, if they were truly aware of how MUCH evidence there is for evolution, would concede that it is as obviously a fact evolution happens as it is a fact that gravity happens. It's just the way the universe works. Most people who argue against the FACT of evolution do so because they have been LIED to about what it is, how much evidence there is for it, and how it works.

Half is probably incorrect, unless your claim is based upon a statistic. The reason is that a lot of people believe religion is just a matter of faith, not a matter of the evidence they have seen. Also, most of the population is casually religious, not deeply so, but evidence for God suggests people go into the latter category.


The "Wisdom of the Bible" is a massive case of confirmation bias. The reason I say that is because the Bible is clearly a text full of problematic issues, that anybody will have massive problems trying to resolve. So, for instance, in Christianity, we have a problem with the fall. The fall has two humans as the parents of the species(which disagrees with biology), it blames human moral failing and a number of human problems upon the consumption of an apple(which doesn't really make much ethical sense, and also has problems with biology as well because most of these failings would have evolved), and it creates a theological problem that God has so much difficulty resolving that we have the Christ's atoning death(and most theories of that atoning death don't make sense, at all). Additionally, we have the flood, which still has issues(a world-wide flood disagrees with geology even though this is the natural reading, the internal evidence of the text suggests that redaction occurred with two different stories which is why there are two different sets of numbers 2 and 7 animals, additionally near genocide doesn't make much moral sense, especially since alternatives are definitely possible). And the list goes on and on. I mean, if we want to talk about "Wisdom of the Bible" tell me about a text like Deuteronomy 28:15-68. I mean, I know that there is a weak "theologically correct answer" but if you go through the text passage by passage, it's mentally disturbing, not a matter of edifying wisdom.


Your numbers are off, and it depends a LOT on other evidences. You have to realize that there are other problems:
1) Other religions. Christianity disagrees with other religions, but all religions have spiritual experiences. The problem ends up being that we either have to say that one is correct, that they all secretly agree, or that none are correct, and the last response really seems the best.
2) Internal coherence of doctrine. Despite 2000 years of effort, Christianity still doesn't appear very coherent, whether it is atonement theory, the workings of the trinity, God and the problem of evil, and so on and so forth.
3) Other signs of divine truth. Christianity proclaims that believers are blessed by the holy spirit and transformed by God towards his moral ends. The issue is that we don't have evidence strongly suggesting this claim. I mean, instead we have clergy scandals with pedophilia, we have a variety of Christian sub-groups that don't display themselves as intellectually honest, and so on and so forth. I mean, even Christian source recognize that statistically Christians are not significantly better than the rest of the population, even at maintaining their own theological morals.

You're using a conceptual model that isn't necessarily true. So, while I agree it is the starting point in that Occam's razor holds and we don't posit additional entities without evidence, it is reasonable to claim that something can be shown not to exist. So, as long as we have a model of God, we can make a prediction based upon that, and show it doesn't hold. So, the problem of evil, takes a model of God, and tries to show that God doesn't exist.

Please read my earlier comments on Adam. The Bible does not explicitly state that Adam and Eve were the first people. (BTW I believe that "an apple" was first mentioned in Milton's "Paradise Lost" . It is certainly not Biblical) Even then, so called evidence of multiple ancestors is simply evidence consistent with a particular model of biology. We do not know if that model is valid for this purpose.
Bertrand Russell used predictions based on a specific model of God to supposedly disprove God's existence. (see Why I am Not a Christian) He won his Nobel prize for that, but this only shows that Nobel prize committees were political even fifty years ago. Russell's argument, in essence, analyzes what Russell believes God should do and when he finds that it is not done, Russell asserts that there is no God. Russell's model puts himself above God. I believe that is the only way one can make this type of argument. Otherwise, that there is no God is as genuine of a null hypothesis as one can create. (Do you believe that null hypotheses exist?)
That leaves the existence of God as an empirical matter. I believe that the evidence is only shown to (or at least acknowledged by) some people. I do not see how it is relevent whether the portion shown (or acknowledging) that evidence is 50% or some other portion.

Last edited by ProfessorP on 22 Jan 2012, 11:11 pm, edited 1 time in total.

You are telling this person to bang his head against a stone wall. That is not nice.

Just because you delude yourself does not mean that he has to.

ruveyn

[quote="Awesomelyglorious1) ..............Other religions. Christianity disagrees with other religions, but all religions have spiritual experiences. The problem ends up being that we either have to say that one is correct, that they all secretly agree, or that none are correct, and the last response really seems the best.
2) Internal coherence of doctrine. Despite 2000 years of effort, Christianity still doesn't appear very coherent, whether it is atonement theory, the workings of the trinity, God and the problem of evil, and so on and so forth.
3) Other signs of divine truth. Christianity proclaims that believers are blessed by the holy spirit and transformed by God towards his moral ends. The issue is that we don't have evidence strongly suggesting this claim. I mean, instead we have clergy scandals with pedophilia, we have a variety of Christian sub-groups that don't display themselves as intellectually honest, and so on and so forth. I mean, even Christian source recognize that statistically Christians are not significantly better than the rest of the population, even at maintaining their own theological morals.[/quote]
1. Not all religions have spiritual experiences. My reading of the subject indicates that the only major religions in which they are common are Christianity and Islam.
2. I find the entire Bible internally coherent. I disagree with other Christians on many issues, but I do not think that makes Christianity incoherent. People think differently and God speaks to them in different ways. As I stated earlier in this blog, I believe that our job as Christians is not to correct other people but to be humble and to love them. (With that in mind I hope that you will accept my responses to you as part of a mutual attempt to discover the truth.)
3. Virtually all Christians fail in some ways to do what God wants. We are in a process of improvement. I believe, however, that the world is a much better place because of Christianity. Its effect on improving human behavior far surpasses pagan religions or human organizations.
While I am not a Roman Catholic, the fact that people cite the pedophilia by Roman Catholic priests so frequently already says something about the positive contribution of Christianity. Rates of pedophilia among Catholic priests are about .3% (.003) That is no higher than the rates among other professions where men have authority of children (such as pediatricians). To an unbeliever, that should be surprising since (unlike pediatricians) priests are a self-selected group which abstains from marriage. Somehow, the fact that the rate of pedophilia is about as high among priests as in other professions is news. The newsworthiness of this is an indication that people have higher expectations for Christians than for the general population and that those higher expectations are met elsewhere.

But Biblical theology does give Adam the headship of mankind, and does relate the existence of sin in the world to descent from Adam.

It wouldn't matter where "apple" came from. I use it because it flows when I am writing something, not because I am intellectually committed to it. I know scripture doesn't say apple, but my fingers apparently don't unless I monitor them closely.

"So called evidence"? The matter is that we have three methods that all agree on similar conclusions. http://biologos.org/blog/does-genetics- ... mal-couple In this, our major theory is just extrapolation from known details. That's acceptable in most circumstances. Please note: Biologos isn't "WehateChristianity.com", it's a Christian source urging Christians to accept modern biological knowledge.


Bertrand Russell's argument is mostly that arguments for God fail, and that God's actions in scripture are not moral. God not being moral is a significant issue, which either must undercut Russell's knowledge of morality, or undercut God. Either one works.

Also, he won his Nobel Prize "in recognition of his varied and significant writings in which he champions humanitarian ideals and freedom of thought.". Note: It doesn't say "for writing anti-Christian writings" and Russell was one of the most influential people of the 20th century. He is one of the major shapers of the analytical school of philosophy, which has dominated the English world.


No, Russell's model does nothing of the sort. He doesn't even use one of that nature. Russell argues that various arguments FOR God fail. Then, he argues that our moral knowledge contradicts the existence of God. That's not bizarre, if one holds that God is a being with moral knowledge. Even further, the simple issue is that in evaluating claims, you really do have models. I mean, the "entire mystery" notion of God, makes no predictions, which means it is not something we could ever decide in favor of. How do you know that something is an act of God, or what kind of God that is, if God is so fundamentally unknowable? How do you know God isn't just a transcendental liar, if he is so far beyond your conceptions?

A null hypothesis can exist if this is a situation involving the relationship between two variables, where null is no relationship. This doesn't exactly work for that kind of statistical model though, as how do you fit a normal curve to this situation??? It's at best a conceptual metaphor.


It's entirely relevant when determining whether this group hasn't just lost their freaking minds.

John Nash had his own revelations, and his were driven by schizophrenia. If something is common, it's harder to label insanity, but the community of one that experiences God has probably lost their mind, and one of the ways to help with that, is NOT to buy into their delusion.

Last edited by Awesomelyglorious on 23 Jan 2012, 12:39 am, edited 1 time in total.

No, they all basically do. Most of them have mysticism related to them as well, and mysticism is an effort to be in touch with the divine without the mediation of a text. Frankly, you must not have read the Bhaga-vad Gita too closely, as it is all about transcendental experiences, and was an old favorite of the transcendentalists. I mean, Mormons have their own notion of the burning of their bosom affirming their faith, even though their faith is clearly a corruption of Christian doctrine. I am not joking, most religions have associated miraculous events with them. Even corruptions of religions have miraculous events, such as with the miracles attributed to relics(which are likely all just fakes).


That's great that you feel that way, but it's pretty problematic. Once again, look towards something like atonement theory. If you accept the mainstream theory in the West, you have tons of intellectual hurdles involving how it corrupts justice, how its handling of sin is bizarre, and how it basically limits what God can do so ridiculously strongly and in many senses artificially.


Except for the fact that statistically those within churches are not better to any significant degree than those outside of them. I mean, if you want I can start pull stats from "UnChristian" a Christian book writing relying on research done by the Barna Group. Even further, the fact that politically motivated efforts to suppress scientific knowledge on behalf of Christian organizations have occurred is hard, if not impossible, to deny. The fact that people, like Bertrand Russell who you mention earlier, have been discriminated against because of their religious views is also impossible to deny.


ProfessorP, that's a huge stretch in terms of analysis.

First off, the church is simply hypocritical, it's just that most people are members in some form or fashion, so they overlook the hypocrisy or are themselves engaged in it. Never heard of churches being moralizing or being gossip hubs. This can be shown with a number of statistics, including statistics involving the attitudes people have towards the church.

Secondly, having the same statistics despite being a group of moral pledges is not an accomplishment. I mean, pediatricians are not supposed to be motivated by the morality of their cause, they're just doctors. Priests, however, are supposed to have this "improvement by the holy spirit" acting on them for a period of decades. Now think about that really quick, if they are being divinely improved, how should we expect their behavior to be so poor on this matter.

Thirdly, not all people are equally trained to see the failings of the church. So, when churches promote intelligent design, all of the biologists know that these churches are full of crap, but the average person doesn't know the dishonesty of the position. So, despite this being a failing in terms of intellectual honesty, most people really just don't know this, and are instead lulled by the rhetoric of free speech.

awesomelyglorius wrote "Also, he won his Nobel Prize "in recognition of his varied and significant writings in which he champions humanitarian ideals and freedom of thought.". Note: It doesn't say "for writing anti-Christian writings" and Russell was one of the most influential people of the 20th century. He is one of the major shapers of the analytical school of philosophy, which has dominated the English world. "
You are correct on the stated reason for Russell's Nobel Prize. While I believe that I was deluded by the publisher of my own copy of "Why I am Not a Christian", I take fully responsibility for the error. I am sorry and plan to be more careful with facts in the future.
I continue to disagree with the validity of your arguments. While he, of course, does not state this, Russell's argument does imply that he is better than God. Russell states what he believes an omnipotent god should do and then, when he does not see it, he says that this is evidence that there is no god. This does not allow that God understands creation and morality better than Russell. It is only an invalidation of a specific sort of god which Russell creates and which, by implication, is morally and intellectually no better than Russell.
I remain of the belief that the statement "God does not exist" is a genuine null hypothesis. This does not involve statistics or Occam's Razor.
I plan to reply to your other arguments later. I wanted to address this first, however, since my apology is part of it. I may (much later) apologize on my portrayal of facts on whether or not major religions other than Islam and Christianity frequently involve spiritual experiences. My last serious discussion of these issues was more than 15 years ago, so it will take a while for me to review sources of factual information.

If we look only at the two alternatives of Christianity and atheism, then my advice to Abacus has no risk to him. If there is no god, then we are just pieces of matter that happened to have formed into particular patterns. There is no purpose to it. There cannot be. There is no purpose to Abacus' life nor to the life of anyone else. There is no good or bad, and nothing can be better or worse. It would not matter if Abacus spent years banging his head against a wall.
Alternatively, if the Christian view is correct, then Abacus has everything to gain by finding God. It is Pascal's wager. I made the wager and found it to be a good bet.
With respect to my possibly being deluded, I will describe a few of the miracles I have witnessed in a later post.