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Evolution.....pfft
PiRaTe!!!
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
I know there is already an atheism vs religion thread and probably dozens of other religion debate threads but I thought I would create a separate thread to discuss the ever fun debate of Evolution vs Creationism, more specifically though that crazy wacky creation museum down in Kentucky.
I stumbled across this blog post of a tour of the new creation museum:
http://crazytalk.typepad.com/bluegrassroots/2007/06/fun_at_the_crea.html
This article along with the guided picture tour of the new multi-million dollar creation museum just has me speechless. I just don't understand how some people can ignore scientific facts and believe that this is how our world was created. This is not a museum it's a religious Disney Land nothing more.
Thoughts?
I stumbled across this blog post of a tour of the new creation museum:
http://crazytalk.typepad.com/bluegrassroots/2007/06/fun_at_the_crea.html
This article along with the guided picture tour of the new multi-million dollar creation museum just has me speechless. I just don't understand how some people can ignore scientific facts and believe that this is how our world was created. This is not a museum it's a religious Disney Land nothing more.
Thoughts?
PiRaTe!!! on
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And I shall contribute this by Carl Sagan:
Warframe: TheBaconDwarf
See, I've always just basked in the wonder, rather than -suspecting- it.
Nature is insanely complex. But -all- of it is complex. So the complexity of evolution doesn't even phase me.
The museum says that dinosaurs and men once co-existed, less than 6,000 years ago.
Complexity is just a measure of how difficult it is for me to understand something. Why should something that is more a measure of my intelligence than a statement on the object I'm examining be taken as proof of the existence of God?
I'm having difficulty grasping this, so God must exist.
For me it's the opposite way: the more I learn about the way nature works, from the microscopic level to macro scale, the more I'm assured that there was no guiding hand. Yeah, mutations are random, but not all of them persist throughout the ages. Only the ones that make sense, i.e. the ones that increase the survival and reproduction chances of the organism are passed on. From that perspective, even the smallest details of living organisms can easily be explained.
Carl Sagan is right; people feel the need to attribute this complexity, among many others, to a supernatural power because they are afraid of the unknown.
I think maybe I can't really grasp the amount of time its taken us to reach where we are. Maybe.
not a day goes by that i do not wish this to be true
Pretty rough to have a serious discussion on this topic without bringing up atheism and religion as a whole.
What the debate often comes down to, when science is so often ignored, is that you have people who want to shape the world in different ways. Those in favor of evolution and the scientific method want a word of critical thinking, science, and truth. But on the other side we find people who believe they have the truth, and thus, the world should be shaped based upon faith and a relationship with God. It is these people that find a world without creationism to be undesirable and threatening to an entire way of life. Much in the same way I find a world without a strong foundation in science threatening!
Such is why bringing up the overwhelming consensus of the scientific community on evolution is fruitless. It's not about the facts, it's about fostering a particular lifestyle. The scientific method doesn't fit into said religious lifestyle, and consequently, is resisted.
Warframe: TheBaconDwarf
No, not maybe. That's exactly it. You're not to blame, though. Billions of years is difficult to wrap one's mind around.
Do remember that biogenesis and evolution are two different topics. Unfortunately, those two are often confused by those who have less knowledge of biology, etc. which pollutes the discourse further.
Given the massive amount of time that life was restricted to single celled or a few celled organisms it's not surprising that a lot of developments could have taken place to flesh out the basics. The law of very large numbers states that with a large enough sample that it will be likely that some otherwise very unlikely events will occur. If you roll the dice for a billion years strange things are almost bound to happen.
for those who haven't, he starts off by poiniting out that some molocules are attracted to water on one side and repelled on the other, this leads to them coming together to form a bubble shape, the first cell membrane.
He also gives a good commentary on the time spans involved in even the simplest evolutionary change.
I approve your link 100%.
90% because it's a great video to watch and quite relevant to this discussion.
10% because it lead me to this Family Guy clip on Carl Sagan's Cosmos for Rednecks. So good.
Warframe: TheBaconDwarf
Aaah, I never get tired of hearing that one.
They aren't technically incompatible - it's just incredibly difficult to formulate a sensible motivation for doing so.
Not that it isn't a good thing to know, but its not going to convince someone of an uncreated universe. There's too many points in the story of what is where its easy to insert a creative force, and the further back you go the easier it is to get away with. That's why the YECs are a joke and can be effectively debunked using science alone, but other forms of creationism that only suppose a creative force, say, at abiogenesis, or at the big bang, can't be - we don't know enough about those points to contest the argument on scientific grounds alone.
The question then is who created the creator and who created that creator and so on. It becomes an infinite series of creators.
Well if you don't know then who does? Hmm?
Indeed. But that's not what I was talking about...
I dunno, I can't really think of any other way for a creator who refuses to prove his own existence to create life that can change and adapt to things dynamically. Suppose for the sake of argument that there is a creator. If he didn't allow for evolution, then if it ever got to the point where man had to change or die out, then he'd be forced to either let us die out or reveal his existence. Evolution would allow him to sidestep that scenario. You could also argue that he, being the creator and all, would never let it come to that point, but that doesn't work if you believe that he gave us free will. Giving us free will gives us the power to fuck up the world to the point that we'd need evolution to survive. It also gives us the power to wipe ourselves out, but that's just life
I'm just frustrated with people (mainly on the religious side) who insist that the notion of a god and the notion of evolution are incompatible. I've never heard a sensible argument for why. In fact, I've never actually spoken to a religious person face-to-face who claims that evolution and god are incompatible, but if you look anywhere on the internet or in just about any religious book or at these intelligent design lawmaker bozos, you see it.
t agoaj: I think we've already established that this isn't going to be a lol-religion thread. Keep the facetiousness in the chat thread, thanks.
Well, yeah, I'm not really interested in proving or disproving a deity, "prime mover" or otherwise. If someone wants to profess that god created the laws and set the first events in motion that led to the formation of life that's fine by me, the first fall in the most elegant and complex chain of dominoes ever conceived, so long as they don't then turn around and claim that that same all knowing and far seeing diety then found it necassary to prod and tinker with his project to ensure the current outcome.
Honestly, if there were a truly omnipotent and omiscient being for whom the passage of a billion years is not even a tick of the clock, he could have casually flicked one atom in just the right manner to ensure that billions and billions of years later all of the universe, cows, humans, flying squirrels, cheeze whiz, would come about exactly as was his intention. Without all the constant mucking about his more voiciferous devotees ascribe to him.
I like to think that this supposition will be proven true when we do it.
I happen to be good friends with various religious types, but a "museum" that disregards stone-cold fact is just indefensible. There's a difference between offering a faith's viewpoint and contradicting blatant truths about the Earth and its lifeforms.
Frankly I'm disappointed in them. I'd have thought they'd have tried to interpret existing information in a way that leaves the door open for God, not casting caution (and fact) to the winds and resorting to making shit up.
People who try to reconcile reality with their faith are generally not the ones who make religious museums. They are too busy being relatively normal.
The Bible's not supposed to be the word of God in the same way that, say, the Koran is. Makes the literalist position even more ridiculous.
It's turtles all the way down.
By wisdom the LORD laid the earth's foundations,
by understanding he set the heavens in place;
by his knowledge the deeps were divided,
and the clouds let drop the dew.
Proverbs 3: 19-20
I agree with your whole rationale but God would have to 'much about' a bit if he were looking for relationship with his creation and not be a mere observer.
If people really want evidence of evolution within our lifetime, just look at the waves of bacterium and viruses that have continuously beaten back new drugs/treatments. A series of random genetic mutations that allow for the survival of the species (or a transformation into a new species). Seems about the definition of natural selection => evolution to me.
Yes, but it does not follow from that that he needed to tweak the internal plumbing of a cow or step in at the last minute to ensure we got thumbs and an appendix. Or is God not fully able to interact with his creation unless he intentionally left in a few bugs that woud need working out later? (I would have to assume the bugs were intentional as he is a perfect being after all)
"Having a relationship" only requires some communication. A burning bush here, an angelic revalation there, maybe a few golden plates tucked away somwheres safe. That he made all of creation need not be disputed, only the method by which he accomplished it. He talks to Moses, sends his son on down, etc. none of that requires that God needs to stick to the play-doh method of creation (lump-a clay here, lump-a clay there, bada bing!)
edit: and so help me, nothing personal, but if people start posting bible verses as part of the discussion I'm gonna start adding the choice stupid bits from exodus and leviticus before every post I make.