Evolution or Creation

big easter bunny in the sky? if thats not bashing i dont know what is... but then again who knows what you were thinking

I do . . . i was thinking of how sick i get of people attempting to foist their superstitions off onto others as reasonable. I don't care that someone wishes to believe such tripe--i do care that any of them make an attempt to suggest that there is a reasonable basis therefore, and the attempt to argue it by analogy is ludicrous--the more so when the analogy fails.

As for "easter bunny in the sky," that's rather mild--but then, i've mellowed with age.

so how would you feel if someone said you werent colored blind... just because they couldnt see what you see? is that not the same thing? i believe in God cus i see the workings of His hand and yet you dont so you dont believe....

I wouldn't care in the least, as it would have no effect on my life. I do care about the religious claptrap with which the human race is saddled, because it causes, continuously, untolled misery and a good deal of death.

Well Seed, you're probably right, I see gnats and republicans and immediately realize that there must be a god, the world couldn't get this folked up by itself.

eh i guess thats life... freewill is a hell of a thing

Hell is a hell of a thing. Freewill is pretending it all has meaning.

so life has no meaning?

I think the idea is that the reasoning believers typically use to support their belief, in those very rare cases when they dare to lay it out explicitly, is highly flawed, just in terms of rules of valid inference. Take your above statement for example. You claim to have seen things that are evidence for the existence of a God, yet, since you do not give examples, whatever reasoning you are doing is not subject to scrutiny. I suspect that if you could ever be persuaded to lay your alleged proof out explicitly, it would be neither proof nor even strong evidence. Typically when people make such claims, they are inferring the existence of God from phenomena which easily admit much more mundane explanations.

Also note that "experience" is more subjective then real, physical evidence (ie, red being a particular wavelength of light). When using the scientific method and testing experiments and observing, there's no room for subjective things. Testing must be done objectively--it doesn't matter what you thought you saw (ie, perspective, experience), it doesn't matter what you think or what you believe, if what you see physically conflicts with what you think, what you observed holds true--not what you previously thought. That's why experiments must be tested over, and over, and over again.

Hi Kelly,



I'm sorry, but this is incorrect.

The Theory of Evolution by means of natural selection did not come about as an attempt to explain fossils. Fossils were simply an additional piece of evidence which corroborated the elements of the theory.

Fossils are only a tiny tiny fraction of the evidence which match the predictions of the theory. Evidence from a vast array of sciences all support the same model, and all corroborate each other. Cosmology shows atomic evolution and timespans which match. Stellar and planetary evolution also match along with evidence in craters and moons. Geology shows strata and weathering which match timeframes. Plate tectonics match. Fossils reside within the strata such that biology matches geology. Genetic mechanism are implied by the theory, and are demonstrated and proven. Evidence for relation by common descent has been provided by paleontology, comparative anatomy, biogeography, embryology, biochemistry, molecular genetics, and other biological disciplines. And the list goes on and on, without a single scientific discipline in conflict with the basic mechanisms of the theory.



Incorrect.

Evolution is not only a rock solid theory which has yet to be in conflict with any bit of evidence ever found, but it has made many predictions, passed many tests and been demonstrated in real time (through the evolution of retroviruses and bacteria), and is being used in medical sciences to understand the disease process.



Correct. And yet, in a world full of skeptical scientists all eager to win a nobel prize for knocking evolution off its perch, not a single conflicting piece of corroborated evidence has been found.

The problem with the view of evolution which you have presented here is that it completely neglects the comprehensiveness of the theory. You have presented a view in which pieces of evidence are scattered about and disconnected, but this is not the case at all.

If you cut a tree down and see the growth rings, do you say to yourself, "God put those growth rings there to make it appear that the tree grew, when I know it was created?", or do you say to yourself, "the tree grew, and the rings prove it". The various evidences for evolution are like growth rings, they fit the picture of an evolved world. They are not disjointed pieces of a jigsaw puzzle which don't fit. And everywhere we look, and at every level, we see the signs of growth, not spontaneous creation.

Now, if you told me that some form of "God" put everything in motion, and allowed it to evolve, then that's fine. Science has nothing to say about that. But if you say that this Universe didn't evolve, then you are simply denying the elephant in the living room.

Good post Ros

You have more patience than I have in dealing with these delusional creationists.

Yes, exactly, and therein lies the problem. Joseph Campbell had a solution. It was to study the myths of other cultures and religions. That way one can see the truth underlying the myths and religious metaphors without becoming defensive. It's an easy jump from there to see the commonality of the myths of differing religions including our own. The myths of different religions must be all describing the same thing, because they're all describing the human condition. Myths describe beautifully and poetially the problem that consciousness brings and how to deal with this fact of consciousness.

Back 10,000 years ago we all lived in relatively small groups and could afford our own tribal religions; now we can't. It's all one world, folks. If we're going to survive with our natural world intact, we've got to get beyond tribalism.

News Flash: I just took another biology lecture and misconceptions of evolution were discussed: Evolution and Creationism are NOT comparable. This is because evolution does not explain the origins of life--evolution only explains the history of life, and how organisms developed and changed over long periods assuming they came from protists. Whether or not life came from protists is not part of evolution, it is a different theory. Creationism, however, does try to explain the origin of life, but it does not say if organisms developed. The bible does not explain the development of organisms or if new species were created...Well, not that I know of.

Yawnnnnnnnnnnnn.

Rosborne,

You and I do not disagree. I only looked at things near the beginning. I thought my post was long enough as it was. Gregor Mendel, a priest in the Roman Catholic Church in the 1700s published some of the first works that fit the pattern in his investigation of peas.

Lucifer,

If you will find some Biblical literalists, start at the Baptist Student Union as a highly probable source. Those folks will be happy to show you in Genisis where God created the animals, birds, plants, etc. The literalists will be happy to explain to you that all the species were created by God and placed on the planet. Thus explaining where they came from.

All,

I still don't find any conflict between Creationism and Evolution as long as one accepts that the Bible is metaphor and alegory. Allow the first six days in the Bible to be an unspecified large amount of time and things work smoothly together. If you are a literalist, then please explain to my small brain where all the fossils came from. I'll let the crop and animal husbandry experts explain about developing hybrids and long term breeding to develop specific varieties of corn, dogs, horses, and tomatoes. I just want to know how all the fossils got here if creation only took 144 hours 6,000 years ago.

Kelly

Could you please some info about that priest's works?

I only know about the famous Gregor (origianally: Johann) Mendel, born July 22, 1822, died Jan. 6, 1884.
He was an Austrian botanist and plant experimenter, the first to lay the mathematical foundation of the science of genetics, in what came to be called Mendelism.

Mendel's bio:

http://www.accessexcellence.org/RC/AB/BC/Gregor_Mendel.html

He's fairly well read by Church historians.

But you see, that's where creationism conflicts. It says god created the birds and other animals, but in the "beginning" (which is millions of years ago) there were no birds or plants, according to evolution. Just bacteria and protists. If someone did write the bible, then they would not be able to see the bacteria and protists, and would not write about them.

As a side note, since I've been hearing that god is everywhere and created us all (and since we really don't know what god looks like), has anyone ever considered that "god" might be a bacteria? Bacteria are everywhere, even though we can't see them unaided, and we were, in a sense, created from some little protist a long time ago.

Sorry if I'm offending anyone, it's all in good humor.

His experiment - on the Mendel museum website