Do You Believe In Evolution?

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Ambivalence
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07 Jun 2010, 5:40 am

DaWalker wrote:

The 24 hour "Day" was not invented until much later on.

The Earth's rotation has been gradually slowing since it was formed. An earlier "day" would be shorter, not longer.

Quote:

A Day is a reference to a period of time, said period could easily be construed to satisfy science and the bible at around 1.5 million years.

There is no way to reconcile the "days of creation" precise (or imprecise, for anyone who isn't fluent in ancient Hebrew :wink:

) script in Genesis with observed evidence. They can roughly be made to fit if you ignore the specifics of "what was created when", but you'd need much longer time periods, like 750 million years for six equal days (or more, if your zero point is "the universe being created" instead of "earth being created") which means that regardless of precise lengths at least one day has to be either 750 million years long or even longer.

Divine creation is not fundamentally incompatible with science (though it is not and perhaps cannot be supported by science, it is potentially true), but the Genesis creation myth is, even if read as heavily metaphorical. As you'd expect, really, from a book written as a tool of control by the theocrats of a tribe of uneducated people long before the idea of "rational enquiry into the universe" had arrived. It'd be unfair to expect them to be able to come up with a fabrication that would stand the test of time against better minds and methods than their own. :roll:

Though it's kinda funny, 'cause if they'd just limited themselves to "God created the universe for verily He doth rock, dealst thou with it" they'd be unprovable, but inassailable. As soon as they start giving specifics for things they are ignorant of, as all detailed creation myths have to do, they open themselves to inevitable disproof by reality.

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07 Jun 2010, 5:45 am

ColdBlooded wrote:

psychointegrator wrote:

ColdBlooded wrote:

Okay. So, someone at work today said that he didn't believe in evolution because he's a christian, so we ended up kind of getting into a debate about it. He was being completely illogical, and even used the old "if we came from monkeys then why are there still monkeys?" argument(which shows a complete lack of understanding in how evolution works in the first place). No offense to anyone who disbelieves in evolution, but most of the arguments i've heard against it make no sense at all and i can't really understand how someone can not believe that we came from other animals. So, i was just wondering how many people here believe and don't believe in it. I don't necessarily want to start an argument or convince anyone here of anything, i just want to know where other people here stand on the issue.

Hey there ColdBlooded.

What do you mean by believe? The theory and fact of evolution doesn't need belief and shouldn't be treated like a religion. Do you understand the difference between belief and accepting evolution?

I agree that it is a fact, however there are apparently people who don't "believe in" things that i see as facts. I don't mean anything religious by the word "believe."

Ah, it's as I thought and this is a fairly common issue that comes up. This is not an attempt to be pedant, instead being directed towards illustrating what beliefs are and are not and a few other bits and pieces.

At this time I will simply quote from others who have remarked on the two points I wish to address.

The first...

Quote:

Religions focus on belief, disbelief, and faith. The benefits of religion and spiritual paths only accrue to those who have a solid foundation of faith in their path. All religions admonish their followers to be firm in their faith, or face negative consequences (ranging from the neutral to the very negative). Some religions assert that reliance on reason is not a substitute for faith. In other words, belief and faith are what matter, not evidence and reason.

Science, on the other hand, focuses on reason, observation, evidence, and revision. Science gives us tools with which we can predict how the world around us functions, and test those predictions in a disciplined manner, which leads to more and more knowledge about how things work. Belief and disbelief simply don't enter the picture. The universe doesn't function differently depending on whether or not a person believes or doesn't believe something.

Snagged from: http://pmo.vox.com/library/post/do-you- ... ution.html
Danke senor pierre

The second is a very short passage snip providing an example...

Quote:

Let's say that I believe that God exists, and some impertinent person
asks me why. This question invites—indeed, demands—an
answer of the form "I believe that God exists because..." I cannot say,
however, "I believe that God exists because it is prudent to do so" (as
Pascal would have us do). Of course, I can say this, but I cannot mean
by the word "believe" what I mean when I say things like "I believe
that water is really two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen because
two centuries of physical experiments attest to this" or "I believe
there is an oak in my yard because I can see it." Nor can I say things
like "I believe in God because it makes me feel good." The fact that
I would feel good if there were a God does not give me the slightest
reason to believe that one exists. This is easily seen when we swap
the existence of God for some other consoling proposition. Let's say
that I want to believe that there is a diamond buried somewhere in
my yard that is the size of a refrigerator. It is true that it would feel
uncommonly good to believe this. But do I have any reason to
believe that there is actually a diamond in my yard that is thousands
of times larger than any yet discovered? No. Here we can see why
Pascal's wager, Kierkegaard's leap of faith, and other epistemological
ponzi schemes won't do. To believe that God exists is to believe that
I stand in some relation to his existence such that his existence is
itself the reason for my belief. There must be some causal connection,
or an appearance thereof, between the fact in question and my
acceptance of it. In this way, we can see that religious beliefs, to be
beliefs about the way the world is, must be as evidentiary in spirit as
any other.

Chapter 2 The Nature of Belief in The End of Faith by Sam Harris is the specific section I recommend reading

BTW -
"but most of the arguments i've heard against it make no sense at all and i can't really understand how someone can not believe that we came from other animals."

I understand how they refuse to accept the theory of evolution. If I get the energy to explain it in a way that will hold comprehension for a person like you, one who at least isn't suffering enough delusional thinking to deny what is a fact. I had to analyze so many debates, arguments and interactions between faithheads and atheists (damn atheists can be just as inane as believers as I am sure you know) to finally find the pattern and solve the puzzle, I'll link you or babble in here again.

Just to add that I was in the exact same situation that it sounds like you are in, where you literally can not understand how they can believe the tripe they do.

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07 Jun 2010, 6:21 am

I think of myself as a Christian, but facts are facts - evolution happened, is happening, and will happen. My religious beliefs are in no way threatened by Darwin.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

Zonder
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07 Jun 2010, 6:35 am

John_Browning wrote:

What happened in the paleolithic era and the eras before mankind does not define one's faith in God. In fact I even attend a church that is an offshoot of the Baptists (and I even teach sunday school), and the first sunday of this year the pastor invited his wife, who was the science major, to teach on literal 6-day creation and she was very critical of any secular or hybrid theories. I would love to publicly debate her someday, and I would love to teach the sunday school kids how beautifully God orchestrated the big bang, but it would cause lots division in the church without teaching them anything about being forgiven and finding God's plan for their lives so I just drop the issue except in private.

"A faith that requires you to close your mind in order to believe is not much of a faith at all."

It is so sad that you have to hide your beliefs in order to be a member in good standing in your church. I was raised in a similar environment, but realized when I was fairly young, that all of the energy focused on fundamental Christians constructing their logical arguments for a "young earth" were just as misguided as continuing to believe that the earth is flat or the center of the universe. The position grows increasingly indefensible that the Genesis creation story is a literal story, and not a spiritual metaphor.

If you want to know how misguided a church can be concerning scientific discoveries and theory, you only need to read a bit about Galileo. Fortunately the creationists don't have the power to place you under house arrest for your views. But you could still be de facto excommunicated if you let them slip out.

Wikipedia wrote:

Galileo's championing of Copernicanism was controversial within his lifetime, when a large majority of philosophers and astronomers still subscribed (at least outwardly) to the geocentric view that the Earth is at the centre of the universe. After 1610, when he began publicly supporting the heliocentric view, which placed the Sun at the centre of the universe, he met with bitter opposition from some philosophers and clerics, and two of the latter eventually denounced him to the Roman Inquisition early in 1615. In February 1616, although he had been cleared of any offence, the Catholic Church nevertheless condemned heliocentrism as "false and contrary to Scripture", and Galileo was warned to abandon his support for it—which he promised to do. When he later defended his views in his most famous work, Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, published in 1632, he was tried by the Inquisition, found "vehemently suspect of heresy," forced to recant, and spent the rest of his life under house arrest.

Moog
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07 Jun 2010, 6:49 am

Sometimes.

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Brainfre3ze_93
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07 Jun 2010, 8:44 am

I'm a Christian and agree with facts that can be proven, however with evolution I'm more willing to agree with mircoevolution rather than marcoevloution. On occasions I've heard people argue use that man could not be from monkeys, or that the Earth is only 6000 years old.
Which I thought was absurd, since we can carbon-date rocks and minerals from the Earth to show it's closer to 4.5 billion years old. I even heard that a person dosen't believe The Bing Bang happened simply because it confuses the person, but I didn't say anything to this person because I didn't want to get into an arguement.

Zara
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07 Jun 2010, 9:13 am

I tend to believe in evolution. I understand it and it makes sense to me. It's the most acceptable explanation for current life.

Religion is not science guys. :roll: Trying to making scientific sense of things in the bible is as futile as deriving philosophical meaning from a washing machine. Waste of brain power.

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Brainfre3ze_93
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07 Jun 2010, 9:38 am

@Zara:
I was not implying that religion is a science, because it's impractical to make sense of things from the Bible. Alot of it tends to be confusing, and hard to explain. I'm merely saying that I'm a Christian.

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07 Jun 2010, 10:06 am

Brainfre3ze_93 wrote:

My comment wasn't really directed at you.

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07 Jun 2010, 11:29 am

I voted "don't believe for religious reasons", but it's really religious and logical reasons.

DaWalker wrote:

The 24 hour "Day" was not invented until much later on. A Day is a reference to a period of time, said period could easily be construed to satisfy science and the bible at around 1.5 million years. Furthermore, nowhere does it say all days are equal. IOW, it was/is an evolving process.

In the original Hebrew, the word "day" used in Genesis is the same used for a 24h period of time elsewhere.

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Skyjester
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07 Jun 2010, 12:14 pm

Okay, here's the thing, the length of a day changes over time. It is a different length today than it was 6000 years ago which is different than it was 4 billion years ago. Before about 500 BC or so, the day was simply measured as 1 complete night/day cycle. Since for a variety of reasons we all know, such as the tilt of the planet and the moon, the length of a night/day cycle changes.

Now back to the issue of evolution.

The number one argument that Christians use to claim that evolution is false is that there is no proof. This is completely invalid as there is proof for evolution. Medical scientists have watched as an antibiotic destroys a bacterial culture. When a few bacteria survives, reproduces and then is no longer destroyed by the same antibiotic. They have just witnessed the mechanism of change in biological organisms known as evolution. Now someone earlier made the case for a macro vs. micro difference. The thing is, evolution works at the micro scale and it the constant change that aggregates until it gives the appearance of a macro change. An example, ever hear of a cat that has 6 toes? This isn't a macro change, it is a series of micro changes that occur due to genetic drift. Genetic drift is just the fancy name for what happens when biological organisms change. It is also called evolution.

So, how can there be no proof, when there is proof? Or has god suddenly changed his mind about creation and has decided to enact changes while we watch?

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you_are_what_you_is
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07 Jun 2010, 12:19 pm

Anybody who doesn't believe in evolution is living in a fantasy world. It doesn't make sense to deny it. Evolution is a fact. The modern evolutionary synthesis is the best theory we have for explaining this fact, and I can understand somebody denying that - although often such denials come from ignorant religious nuts - but to deny evolution in general is simply delusional.

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07 Jun 2010, 12:25 pm

Zonder wrote:

If you want to know how misguided a church can be concerning scientific discoveries and theory, you only need to read a bit about Galileo. Fortunately the creationists don't have the power to place you under house arrest for your views. But you could still be de facto excommunicated if you let them slip out.

Wikipedia wrote:

The Church wasn't entirely misguided in that instance. Note that the 'large majority of philosophers and astronomers still subscribed (at least outwardly) to the geocentric view'. We cannot blame religious institutions for simply siding with mainstream science. The Church certainly shouldn't have sought to punish him for his views - but to be fair, that was something that happened often at the time.

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07 Jun 2010, 12:51 pm

CockneyRebel wrote:

I don't, because of religious reasons.

Ditto

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07 Jun 2010, 2:29 pm

ColdBlooded wrote:

i can't really understand how someone can not believe that we came from other animals.

Really...
Can't you see that humans are unique from animals? I don't even need to go into the details do I? But don't get me wrong here, I respect your views.

I voted for "no, for other reasons" because my views are influenced by my faith but I didn't blinded decline evolution simply "because the Bible says so." I have read about both sides of the arguments and have come to the conclusion of not believing in it.

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07 Jun 2010, 3:01 pm

I believe in evolution. I don't think it's contrary to religion, because God could have caused evolution to happen, He just didn't necessarily explain it all to us. Maybe He wanted us to find it out on our own, or maybe He wasn't bothered one way or the other if we knew how it worked. We don't know everything that God knows, that is why He is called a higher power.

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