Is the theory of evolution correct?

I have to challenge you and Set from time to time.
Now don't take this wrong . . . .
I respect your comments and value your input.

'Course, I'm pretty dent proof from all of your impacts.

Next, they will put up border checkpoints.

Lemme know when you start

I said I value your input. I didn't say I accept it.

As soon as anyone starts, Farmer and the other chickenshit, Setanta run to their little hidey hoes.

I always thought they duked it out pretty well. It's just that they can't abide any adjustment to their mind set. The possibility that there may be a God to whom they have obligation is too much to consider.

JTT says:


You clearly haven't read many threads they've been involved in, if you think that.

neologist says:


Not true. It's been considered repeatedly. No one has yet to offer any convincing evidence it's so. Certainly there's no evolutionary evidence a god is necessary to the process.

That would be reason enough

? Damn, I tried posting this and it wouldn't let me, said it was too short with just the one question mark. So,

what do you think you were saying, neologist?

Wack the space bar a few times. Spaces are characters, and they don't indent.

I answered your post with "That would be reason enough". I was focusing on the idea that evolutionary theory dismisses the role of God. Reason enough (for some) to cling to it.

Well, there's your problem right there. Just as soon as you provide evidence that your god exists, we'll all be on a level playing field where we can have a reasonable exchange of ideas.

Even if, for sake of discussion, one were to stipulate your god, why could not your god have begun a process which lead to the rise of life and its subsequent diversification through the agency of natural selection? This is, i believe, the position of supporters of the concept of theistic evolution.

I think you're just holding out for a special creation because you think we, as humans, are just too damned wonderful to have "happened by accident."

if it can be evidenced then it can be considered , thats all.
neo "holds out" a possibility and wants everyone else to do so. If he were to look at "naturalism" ,he would see that in our earths history, theres really no evidence for "And then a miracle happens".

Were one to consider a god in the loop, many chunks of evidence wouldnt be available based on dogged research and late nights in the field and lab. Besides , it would be dismissive of what science is focused on.
Imagine if everyone involved in ewvolutionary reearch was committed to some Fundamentralist relligion, ID say that NOTHING important would get done. Nobody'd want to volunteer to dig for Tiktaliik for 3 years in ELsmere Island , foregoing vacations at the beach while you freeze your ass off in latitude 79 in mid SUmmer.
All your lab directors would be saying
"well we alredyknew that the good Lord was there directing that certain fish would change into amphibians<Cmon, get with the program".

We dont "cling to it" Method naturalism underpins it. How many great Creationists are out there doing anything in genetics geology or evo/devo? The only guy I knew was Fairbanks and he switched over to Methodological naturalism cause he saw that a religious foundation in evolutionary science is actually silly . You can certainly quip about it in a chat room but Ill say that itd be hard really buckling down in research with Genesis by your side.

It's interesting that you mention this because I think it pointedly demonstrates the difference between "religion" and "fundamentalism".

Many scientists (and people in general) who are religious don't think of their religion as a tool for measuring the physical world, they see it as a purely spiritual endeavor full of allegories instead of literal interpretations.

Fundamentalism on the other hand is a very anti-academic path which justifies intellectual blindness with Faith and replaces thought with obedience.

The religious, like Ken Miller, have a god at their side as a transcendental being , whereas the Steve Austen's have their entire professional careers built on a core of Genesis. Consequently, anything that Austen presents must first be analyzed and (usually) dismissed because its just flat bullshit.

There are two good points there. There are many religious people who accept that a theory of evolution explains the diversity of life on this planet, and don't cling to the notion of special creations. Their view is that their god created the cosmos, and the natural laws which govern it, and that therefore evolution was inevitable. After all, if your god is omnipotent and omniscient, why would he need to tinker with his creation down the road?



This is a very pernicious attitude which has been with the world for literally centuries. In John Bunyan's book The Pilgrim's Progress the subtitle is:

From This World to That Which is to Come;

Delivered under the Similitude of a Dream

He then quotes Hosea Chapter 12, verse 10:

I have also spoken by the prophets, and I have multiplied visions, and used similitudes, by the ministry of the prophets.

Bunyan felt the need to justify having written the book. The first section is "The Author's Apology for his Book." It is a painfully bad poem. He wants to assure the reader that it is acceptable for a devoutly religious person to read. The next to last stanza of his poem reads:

This book is writ in such a dialect
As may the minds of listless men affect:
It seems a novelty, and yet contains
Nothing but sound and honest gospel strains.

Anything which a devout believer would read must be justified on religious grounds, and anything a devout believer would write must have the same justification. For so many of the fundamentalists, the only thing one should ever read is the bible, or hortatory based on sound theology.

I once worked with a rather attractive and well-educated woman who had been "born again." One day when i showed up in the office i had a bag of books which i had purchased shortly before at a used book store near the university. She immediately launched into this diatribe about books being vanities, and stated that all one need to read was the word of god, or the words of righteous men. So i started pulling gooks out of the bag. I had Bede's The Ecclesiastical History of the English People, two biographies of Charlemagne in one volume, the first by Einhard, who had been raised at Charlemagne's court at Aachen, and was a "clerk," i.e. a cleric; and the second written about a century later by a German monk called Nottker the Stammerer. Einhard's work is fairly reliable and the only contemporary life we have of Charlemagne. Nottker's panegyric is full of flying bishops and the king abasing himself to those worthies. I also pulled out Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress and its sequel, now almost always included as Part Two, the pilgrimage of the wife of the central character. (I suspect some kid had had a course at the university which obliged him to read books of that sort, and he had sold them off as soon as he no longer needed them.) There were a few other titles which i don't now recall.

Her response was to dismiss Bede and the Charlemagne biographies because they had been written by "Catholics" (even though there were no Protestants when those books were written, and would not be for 700 years to come). After all, Catholics are not Christians, as everyone knows. She said the Bunyan might be acceptable, but she'd have to ask her minister. I pointed out that i didn't need her approval or that of her favorite bible thumper to read anything. What was truly appalling, though, is that this was a university-educated woman. She had truly drunk the koolaid.

Reading, learning, liberal education are all anathema to the religious fanatic.

Agreed. All of which serves as a constant reminder that the emotional component of thought underlies the bulk of human behavior.

Read you in the Pet Peeves of English thread and in some of your "history lessons" and it's clear that you here again parade your hypocrisy, Set.