Is Evolution a Dangerous Idea? If so, why?

@rosborne979,

Not that anyone else here gives a **** but altering someone's post and reposting as a quote from them is as close to a capital offence as it gets in the cyber world.

The only thing a person has on-line is their identity and reputation. An attempt to undermine that in any way is offensive if you have any principles.

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That's a pretty high horse there . . . you use a step ladder to get in the saddle?

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@Leadfoot,

I rarely agree with your opinions, Leadfoot, but you make a very valid point in your last post.

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@Setanta,

Quote:

That's a pretty high horse there . .

I guess it would be, for you...

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@cicerone imposter,

Thanks CI, we do not agree often, but I never thought you were anything but true to your principles.

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@Leadfoot,

Leadfoot wrote:

Not that anyone else here gives a **** but altering someone's post and reposting as a quote from them is as close to a capital offence as it gets in the cyber world.

The only thing a person has on-line is their identity and reputation. An attempt to undermine that in any way is offensive if you have any principles.

I would agree with you if I had tried to hide the change, but since I did exactly the opposite, prefaced the quote with a contention and capitalized the change to draw attention to it, both making a joke and getting a good point across at the same time, I would have to disagree with your assertion.

I'm just guessing, but it seems like maybe you didn't read the whole post, or the true meaning should have been clear to you.

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@Leadfoot,

Yeah, you're right about that. It has never been a penchant of mine to ride a moral stalking horse, as though I were morally superior to those around me. I leave that kind of hypocrisy to the religionists.

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@rosborne979,

We disagree. If you put it in a quote box, it better be legit in my book.

And it was a lame joke.

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@Leadfoot,

Leadfoot wrote:

We disagree. If you put it in a quote box, it better be legit in my book.

And it was a lame joke.

We disagree a lot. But I still like you... mostly.

The joke was fine. I think you just have a lame sense of humor.

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@rosborne979,

I like your style, mostly.

Pesky random thought.
Doesn’t it seem weird that a field of science and its implications can stir up so much thought and angst? And be considered Dangerous no less.

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@Leadfoot,

Leadfoot wrote:

Doesn’t it seem weird that a field of science and its implications can stir up so much thought and angst? And be considered Dangerous no less.

It doesn't surprise me at all. Biological evolution demonstrates that the fundamentalist view of God is not necessary in the history of biology on this planet. And a lot of people don't like that. They even go so far as to declare it a "dangerous idea", when the only danger it poses is to the fundamentalist's view of reality itself.

Are you really surprised that people with religious views which conflict with the knowledge of evolution react this way?

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@rosborne979,

Rosborne is right. The concept of evolution freed the mind from its slavery to the church, for a supernatural was no longer necessary to explain the phenomena of life on Earth.

The old pre-renaissance Credo was: knowledge comes from belief. That meant that if you wanted to understand anything you would study it in the Bible. With the overthrowing of the Muslim city-state of Cordova by the Christians, the whole gamut of ancient Greek knowledge became available to the Christian world, for the Muslims had preserved that knowledge in books. European scholars flocked to Cordoba to study that Greek knowledge and it took about three hundred years for the emergence of the Renaissance, but then the Credo reversed. It now became: belief comes from knowledge.

Wanting to use the Bible as a basic authority on all knowledge including the science of evolution is like turning the clock back time 600 years to pre-Renaissance times.

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@rosborne979,

Quote:

Are you really surprised that people with religious views which conflict with the knowledge of evolution react this way?

Not really surprised but I think it’s strange/weird that people with an atheist POV don’t think it’s strange that so many people would be this questioning about a 'settled science' without any evidence other than a religious text that doesn’t directly contradict evolution anyway.

Ive heard it argued that evolution is responsible for theistic beliefs too, but come on, at some point common sense has to tell you that’s rediculous. I could make at least equally convincing arguments that evolution (not to mention science) should have annihilated any beliefs in God.

Quote:

Biological evolution demonstrates that the fundamentalist view of God is not necessary in the history of biology on this planet. And a lot of people don't like that. They even go so far as to declare it a "dangerous idea", when the only danger it poses is to the fundamentalist's view of reality itself.

I don’t have much use for the fundamentalists, but have you considered that the inverse of your statement is also true? If evidence is presented that unguided biological evolution is not adequate to explain life as we see it, it is also not surprising that those who believe that evolution explains everything would be very reluctant (and sometimes emotional) to give up the view of reality they’ve become comfortable with.

Some are even afraid that children will be exposed to 'dangerous ideas' about 'design' in school, etc. They say that children must be “inoculated” against the idea of design in the universe while they are young and 'vulnerable'. (What irony!)

There are physicists today that resist the Big Bang theory for that reason. One of them said that explicitly. It was 'too close to the Genesis story', or words to that effect.

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@Leadfoot,

Leadfoot wrote:

I don’t have much use for the fundamentalists, but have you considered that the inverse of your statement is also true? If evidence is presented that unguided biological evolution is not adequate to explain life as we see it, it is also not surprising that those who believe that evolution explains everything would be very reluctant (and sometimes emotional) to give up the view of reality they’ve become comfortable with.

Actually it would be very surprising to me if any sizable portion were to cling to evolution in the face of incontrovertible evidence against it. Evolution is not a belief system, it's an understanding of a process derived from scientific methodologies.

So the answer to your question is no, I don't think the inverse to my statement would also be true. I think this is a very specific phenomena where belief is challenged with evidence, and I think "believers" have this problem, whereas "understanders" don't.

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@Helloandgoodbye,

You mean 15000 BC?

The real question is why the arctic was immune i.e. why the region involved took the form of a band across the North temporate zone.

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@coluber2001,

Quote:

The concept of evolution freed the mind from its slavery to the church, ...

for some, and not all. People of religion now claim that evolution was all part of intelligent design. The problem with that claim is that there are just too many errors and contradictions in the bible about many things concerning this planet. Their attempts to rationalize ID to evolution is simply impossible. In the first place, planet earth is not 7,000 years old as claimed in the bible. Anything beyond that claim becomes moot.

Any god who claims one people (Jews) as his is a bigoted claim. If god is a bigot, who would want to associate with him? We have enough problems with inequality in this world. Any one group claiming to be superior to others is based on ignorance.

Evolution is not a dangerous idea. It's a factual idea based on evidence.

cvescience.com/474-controversy-evolution-works.html

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@cicerone imposter,

Could not edit previous post. Here's the correct link on evolution.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_as_fact_and_theory

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@cicerone imposter,

That entiire wiki was made almost incoherent and vague. You hould have posted the Steven Gould original version (1981). Below is the ooriginal (waay more entertaining and easily understood without sounding too preachy)
EVOLUTION AS A FACT AND A THEORY.

He originally did this for Discover Magazine and then it was updated in "Hen's Teeth and a Horses Toes"

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@farmerman,

Thank you, farmerman.

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@cicerone imposter,

when he wrote only to entertain, he was very instructive. When h wrote to be instructive, he was almost NEVER, entertaining.
Gould, now that hes dead, I can say, taught an applied paleo course at Hahvad geared for practicing earth scientists. I took his course one year and he was so full of hisself that he had to assign his Discover articles so he wasnt accused of being a total asshole whose baseball references nd artistic nd music parallels were often totally out of the base-lines of good analogy.

Even the greats can be douche bags.

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Is Evolution a Dangerous Idea? If so, why?

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