Contradictions in the Bible...

Ive never read anything by Charlie Bradlaugh on evolution , have you?

He actually believes you were insulting homeless people.

Darwin refused to testify at Bradlaugh's trial but he was eventually acquitted anyway.

No. Why do you ask?

Pardon me, but when I link websites, I put links in the post to the supporting evidence. It is bad form not to do so.



You are correct; it is not I who have proven you wrong, but science itself.



That's fine with me; Intelligent Design is not a theory and never will be one, until you can come up with some sort of testable hypothesis. Therefore from a scientific point of view, your idea is infinitely inferior to others which can be tested.



You seriously believe that God magically snapped his fingers, and 'poof,' brand new species just appeared from nowhere, to populate the planet, at certain times which just happen to mimic what an evolutionary chain would look like?

This is an unsupportable and highly ridiculous belief. In order for it to have any credence whatsoever, you would need to be able to show evidence of species coming into existence for which we had no possible precursor in the fossil record. I have seen no evidence of this at all.



I am not trying to imply that you don't believe in god, or that you shouldn't. You have the perfect right to believe in whatever you like. However, you shouldn't pretend that anything based on those beliefs is applicable in the scientific realm whatsoever. This is the essential problem with ID, and it stems from an old religious discussion:

- Evolution of species implies a method of formation of mankind which was not dependent on God.
- This scares religious leaders, who see science undermining their worldview and thus their authority, so they react quite negatively against it. The idea that not all things flow from God's grace is perilous to their method of control. This is hardly new, ask Galileo how that worked out for him.
- So the religious leaders attack the idea, denounce those who support it, threaten damnation for those who believe in it - and are eventually proven wrong as the science turns out to be confirmable in a wide variety of different tests and observations.
- Therefore, the modern religious leaders have chosen a new tack: to try and pretend that their myths are equal to science in some way. To discount and demean the idea of science itself. To try and preserve their method of control by forcing schools to teach their myths alongside actual science, when it is nothing of the sort.

I took religious study classes as part of my philosophy minor in college, 4 of them, and these issues came up over and over. Evolution is taught as a fact, b/c there are thousands of different experiments and natural observations which confirm the theory and practically none which even seriously challenge it, let alone disprove it. We have as much data telling us that evolution is real as we do telling us that many of the other things we take for granted in life are real. There's no reason not to educate children according to scientific principles.

If the religious leaders hadn't been such scared pussies a while back, this whole thing could have been avoided by a simple admission on the part of said leaders that evolution is the method by which God works. The only people challenged by this idea are those who are completely unable to understand the allegorical nature of ancient texts, and insist on idiotic 'literal word of god' stuff. It's high time that the modern religious communities got with the program and started accepting and using science instead of seeing it as an enemy.

Cycloptichorn

As Mr McEnroe used to say--"You're not serious man!!"



What's a "minor". I've read stuff from "majors" and that was bad enough. I didn't know there are lower grades that majors.

"No reason not to educate children according to scientific principles",

Sheesh. Don't offer me 10 dollars a reason.

I agree with you on this

In what specific ways should religious communities (an absurd generalisation) start (an absurd generalisation) accepting and using ( absurd generalisations) science that they are not already?

One supposes that what is meant is that the Christians should concede the liberal case and adopt its agendas regarding birth control, abortion, divorce and homesexuality none of which are mentioned in Darwin.

No chance. PC language of that nature can be seen coming from miles off. It is nothing but the expression of platitudes having no meaning outside of the expression.

This is what I agree with .......

The rest of what you refer to are separate and individual from this in that they are based on individual decisions.

Well--that's a baseline political position. That individual will outranks collective traditional wisdom. It's not my position.

Normally incest is a bad thing. The two girls in question at the time were concerned that the human race might go extinct.

I've been in that position. In fact, I'm guilty of using that argument. It's worked pretty well so far, thanks.

Chorn

I agree and said the same on the Bible vs Science thread

http://able2know.org/topic/75520-68#post-3634826

Set corrected me. It was a Belgian priest

So then you actually deny the tenets of Intelligent Design?

It gets more complicated than that, farmerman. You might say that it is a bit of ID along with evolution. Sounds crazy, perhaps, and I can't exactly explain my rationale. I don't think that it is impossible that evolution moved on from what God created.

The real problem is how it was created....not how it changed after creation.

Darwin had that problem. It's a bit like the bimbo who knew that the train had come into the station but not the process which got it there.

.
If that is your belief Im glad it supplies you comfort. SCience , of course, doesnt just rest at the base of a comforting tale. It needs more of a forensic trail to follow. SO far, no evidence of a superior being has been detected. (Im pretty close to the literature and I cant recall any pubs about a creators tracks).

In fact, based upon the evidence we do have, a creator , if he even existed,would have had to be either a complete neophyte at creation , or else a sly trickster who , like the pronouncements of AVicenna, was invested in a theory called "Vis Plastica" or , simply, hes a guy that likes to leave phony evidence around that shows that the path of life was not preordained but was more like a cosmic dice game (pardon to Dr Einstein's supposed utterance [and Im not sure it was ever true]) .

My only concern is why then, if your religious colleagues are so confident in their beliefs, why do they not search for evidence that helps their story? They are only trying to enter a school science curriculum armed only with a syllabus thats mostly based upon "once upon a time there was this creator", or" The world is so complicated that it must have been created by an intelligent being".
That last one I find particularly disturbing because it proves that the hyper Fundamentalists dont ever read or pretend to understand what science really does know in 2009. They are still dabbling in the science and sorcery of the Middle Ages. SCientists, and especially science teachers (public schools and college) are overwhelmingly trying to keep the religious point of views out of the science classrooms because the religious POVs do not have any underpinning in evidence, calculations, or any objective proofs at all, yet here they are, attempting to stick their noses under the tent and gain some kind of dogmatic beachhead in the classrooms. We have enough problems with the "dumbing down" of our school curricula, so much so that the SATs have been downgraded TWICE since the 1970's.

Im fine with your beliefs since they obviously work for you. However, unless you have some evidence that what you say is actually observable, then you dont yet have the beginnings of a theory. As such, your beliefs should stay in your faith based discussion groups, not a high school biology class.

The conclusion there is based upon which science is to enter the high school biology class. And effemm decides that based on his hang ups.

It allows him to have it both ways you see. Science and respectability conjoined in a few easy phrases. A wimpy cop out.

With that braindead view, you could actually be a successful candidate for the Governor of Lousiana. THeir residency requirement allows all kinds of whackos.

I prefer the peaceful life effemm.

I should imagine that being Govenor of Louisiana to be akin to a bed of red hot nails with a current running through them.

What about you? You could get your banal, sterile, deterministic materialism taught in all the schools down there.

I don't want to change anything in Louisiana. You do.

Spendiouse.... Without the science in the beginning of mankind's thinking, then the use of the scientific theory in that thinking --- you would still be running around naked with your cudgel, beating to death those who dared to question your myths--- just like you do now