U.S. Lags World in Grasp of Genetics and Acceptance of Evolution

@ehBeth,

I believe that we are hard wired for myth and "gods". As soon as we could get organized in cave and water side dwellings, we created effigies and began burying dead with trinkets and red and white dirt rubbed on the corpses. Animism seems to be the first real religious practice and followed closely by anthropomorphic creatures. It wasnt a real long time before we gave up transcenendent gods who were more often rather capricious and often evilly motivated, to a more imminent set of gods who ,while still capricious, began making behavioral "deals" with humans.

Gradueally this became institutionalized and developed game rules and a series of literatures.

Studies have suggested that animals are hard wired to morality. NO gods required, just add bananas

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@farmerman,

I'm not educated in the earliest religion(s) of other cultures but those "religious practices" you write about above are rather well documented by primary sources since the early bronze age. The Germanic tribes' religion wasn't only polytheistic with some dozens of Gods, but had ghosts (humans and animals), "godly" sources, rivers ...

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@rosborne979,

I'm good with magical things.

Believing in things that explain the world at a time humans didn't know much yet, that makes sense.

Once the world/universe begins to be explainable, it's hard to justify the belief in magical things. We don't need the magic crutches as much.

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@ehBeth,

Good observation. The advance in our knowledge of the universe has been phenomenal during the past 100 years, but more recently as we are able to explore the universe with more science and technology.

NASA has plans to send man to Mars by 2030.

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@parados,

Quote:

Leadfoot Quote:
"No, I'm saying that there is a single cause behind all things in the category of 'God'."

Which tends to be the exact same cause behind the belief in all mythical creatures.

That doesn't even deserve the effort to reply but I'll humor you.

Not that there are actually people who 'believe' in unicorns but if there were, you are saying that these people believe in unicorns for the same reason that people believe in God. So if you have the same reason as ros gave, that means they fear eternal punishment from unicorns if they don't believe.

You and ros are losing all credibility on this discussion.

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@InfraBlue,

Quote:

Leadfoot wrote:
That's because there is a reason for that susceptibility to belief in God.

What's the reason for that susceptibility to belief in God?

Many, but the main ones would be that he created us with that tendency. And it is not just that the bible says so but it is only logical that he would create us with the same nature as his own. Since he is 'here', it only makes sense that we would sense or resonate with that presence.

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@Leadfoot,

Are you familiar with the evolution of homo sapiens?
http://humanorigins.si.edu/education/introduction-human-evolution

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@cicerone imposter,

Also, DNA proof.
http://biologos.org/common-questions/human-origins/what-scientific-evidence-do-we-have-about-the-first-humans

1 Reply

@cicerone imposter,

From your link:

Quote:

An examination of the genetic evidence that God designed humans by means of common descent.

You don't really read the stuff you link to do ya...

1 Reply

@Leadfoot,

This is the article I posted:

Quote:

Tags: Genetics, Common Ancestry
In the last couple of decades, our understanding of genetics has grown dramatically, providing overwhelming evidence that humans share common ancestors with all life on earth. Here are some of the main types of genetic evidence for common ancestry.

1. Genetic Diversity. Human children inherit 3 billion base pairs of DNA from each parent, but they are not an exact duplicate. The rate of change has been measured precisely to an average of 70 bases (out of our 6 billion total) per generation. So as we go back on the family tree, there are more and more genetic differences between us and our ancestors. For example, there would be about 140 differences between your DNA and that of your four grandparents, and 210 differences between you and your eight great-grandparents, and so on. That enables us to make a prediction from the amount of genetic diversity between two species about the time since their common ancestor population lived. Using non-genetic evidence, the common ancestor between humans and chimpanzees was estimated to have lived about 6 million years ago. The calculation from genetic differences gives a figure remarkably close to the estimated value.

2. Genetic “scars”. Just as scars stay on our bodies as reminders of past events, the DNA code contains “scars” and these are passed on from generation to generation. DNA scars result from the deletion or insertion of a block of bases (not just single base changes as in the previous section). Because we have a lot of these (hundreds of thousands) and they can be precisely located, they serve as a historical record of species. If we have the same scar as chimpanzees and orangutans, then the deletion or insertion must have occurred before these species diverged into separate populations. If we and chimpanzees have a certain scar but orangutans do not, we can conclude the deletion or insertion must have occurred after the common ancestor of chimps and humans separated from our common ancestor with orangutans. In this way we can create a detailed family tree of common ancestors.

3. Genetic synonyms. In a certain context, the words “round” and “circular” mean the same thing to an English speaker—they are synonyms. So too, there are “synonyms” in the genetic code—different sequences of DNA bases that mean the same thing to cells (that is, they cause the production of the same proteins). Mutations in the genetic code are often harmful, resulting in an organism not being able to successfully reproduce. But if the mutation results in a “synonym”, the organism would function the same and continue passing on its genes. Because of this we would expect the synonymous changes to be passed on much more effectively than non-synonymous changes. That is exactly what we find among the DNA of humans and chimpanzees: there are many more synonymous differences between the two species than non-synonymous ones. This is exactly what we would expect if the two species had a common ancestor, and so it provides further evidence that humans and chimpanzees were created through common descent from a single ancestral species.

The more research that is done on DNA, the more evidence we find that all life is related.

- See more at: http://biologos.org/common-questions/human-origins/what-scientific-evidence-do-we-have-about-the-first-humans#sthash.yW91YSIi.dpuf

I don't see the word "god" on this blog.

1 Reply

@Leadfoot,

You said there is a single cause for belief in God. When you come up with it and tell us, I will show that it is the same reason for believing in unicorns.

Note - Your cause must be able to be applied to every person that has ever believed in God in order for your original statement to be true.

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@parados,

Since you are too lazy to read the answer I already gave a few posts ago I can no longer take your posts seriously.

Sorry.

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@cicerone imposter,

CI, I don't need a lecture on genetics. The thing I quoted was on the same page as that blog. And if you knew anything about the website you linked to, you would know that their whole reason for being is to support the idea that God created man by means of evolutionaly common descent as evidenced in the genetic record.

1 Reply

@Leadfoot,

Your comprehension skills are non-existent.

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@Leadfoot,

Leadfoot wrote:

Quote:
Leadfoot wrote:
That's because there is a reason for that susceptibility to belief in God.

What's the reason for that susceptibility to belief in God?

Many, but the main ones would be that he created us with that tendency. And it is not just that the bible says so but it is only logical that he would create us with the same nature as his own. Since he is 'here', it only makes sense that we would sense or resonate with that presence.

You're basing your reason on the assumption that God exists rendering your reason circular, i.e. susceptibility to belief in God is because God exists, God exists because there is a susceptibility to belief in God.

It's also an assumption that God would create us with the same nature as his own. That you believe that it only makes sense that we would sense or resonate with that presence is also an assumption because many people do not sense or resonate with that presence.

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@InfraBlue,

I was just answer'n your question dude. Make of it what you will.

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@farmerman,

Interesting, that you see Animism as the focal point for the beginning of an assumed afterlife. My Latin is forever rusty but serviceable enough to translate 'anima' for animism which Milton later translated to 'soul' or mind and spirit.
Perhaps you can agree that the earliest known burial of Homo at Qafzen Jebel roughly 190,000 years ago could just as easily be a case in which the burial was for personal safety as early Homo had learned that decomposing humans attracted predators and scavengers? As far as 'trinkets' as you so describe there is no way of really proving that this was done deliberately.

Any talk of religion in the worlds history often get to the point of absurdity as how in the world could have the Brits has gotten so far removed from reality that they burned people to death in public as so the population would not stray from the company policy.

It often, for myself anyway, leads me back to Cheech and Chong's hippy who proclaimed that : "Before I was all messed up on drugs-then I found the Lord-now I am all messed up on the Lord"

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U.S. Lags World in Grasp of Genetics and Acceptance of Evolution

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