Creation and Evolution

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Although I am not always as mindful of this as I should be, it is essential for us to show some consideration for one another's sensibilities if we are going to have a productive discussion. Such discussion is important because it allows us to further our understanding for one another, and this understanding ultimately serves to build friendship and trust.

A theory isn't something that is ideally expected to be considered "truth" in the sense that you refer to. A theory is literally a speculative truth in which it is acknowledged that this truth is founded upon data that may be subject to change or reassessment.

This is what I was getting at. Christian beliefs are based upon faith, and it is ridiculous to compare them with scientific theory or to consider the two within the same realm of thought.

The burden of proof is upon anyone who makes a statement which is to be regarded as being supported by proof. Religious beliefs are naturally deemed unproven and unprovable. Unless the Christian avers that these beliefs are supported by evidence and reasoning, it is illogical to expect the Christian to be charged with describing such support.

No. Evolutionary theory is merely the only theory of our origins that is supported by data and sound reasoning. Therefore, it is the theory that is taught in public schools.

No. Science is merely based upon data and sound reasoning. Christianity is, according to its own adherents, not. If the empirical sciences are going to be taught in the classroom, this is how it must be.

Agreed. I take offense to them as well.

When I say that I find something offensive, it is intended as a statement of fact about my feelings, which you should really consider being more considerate of. When you take offensive language toward my liberal values, I am subject to react defensively. This is not useful for productive discussion.

I've found the opposite to be true, actually. Although conservatives give the most lip service to morality, I've rarely met one who lives up to the talk.

I have done no such thing. In fact, I have hardly even touched this topic. Elemental has done a fine job of dismembering you, though.

I wouldn't know how to play "word games," sir.

I find it more effective to work with people on an individual basis to help them embetter themselves. For you, giving is a chore pursued on occassion. For a liberal, it is part of a lifestyle. Besides, charity and handouts are not known for being particularly effective. In fact, a Catholic friend of mine who used to spend a lot of his time doing charity work complained at length to me about how futile it turned out to be. Ironically, this is his basis for objecting to welfare.

No. It was not. You did bother to type a response to it, so your statement negates itself.

Oh, and the Catholic Church has formally accepted the teaching of evolution--it seemed worth mentioning. Also, the theory of theistic evolution further undermines the humanist conspiracy theory. Despite attempts to paint this as an either / or debate, a great many people with religious faith are able to reconcile it with evolution.

I accept evolution 1 and evolution 2 as well. That makes me an evolutionist. However, I don't accept evolution 4, 5 or 6. Those are religious beliefs of secular Humanism. That's what I have been arguing against all this time. If you want to debate someone who is vested in creationism being true, you will need to find a Jew who wants to play.

For years we have been opressed by the religious and murdered for our beliefs rise up my secular brethern and defeat them. Take ignorance down, and use the golden rule in our favour. We will treat them as we were treated. Seriously, we have won. After years of struggle and unjust repression we have taken over the mind of the people. Religion is on its way out.

I dont mean to offend people, but I am telling it as it is. A repressed group rising up and defeated their opressers.

"Those are religious beliefs of secular Humanism." That's a contradiction in terms.

I see you're still refusing to address any of the counter-arguments I've made concerning your last three points (and one more time, not all scientists are humanists, or even most). Your arguments have no substance, and you try to claim that they're exempt even for the need for substance. You can only repeat "Humanist conspiracy!" like a mantra, and keep on bringing up talking points like "radiocarbon dating is circular" while refusing to even examine evidence to the contrary of your points.

Though you've shown yourself to be disinterested in debating over preaching, I at least hope this thread has been helpful for any third parties, in providing accurate information about evolution, and showing the flaws in your points. The ironic thing is that your conspiracy theories about the media-controlling Nazi-Marxist Humanists have already made you look more foolish than anybody else could ever manage.

That's not really helpful. Why do religion and rationality need to be in conflict at all? There are just as many atrocities and injustices with secular roots as religious ones, so to claim one worldview as better seems a bit naive.

Yup. Greed, power, nationalism, racism, utopian ideology...even if the people who actually commit atrocities on such a basis have religious beliefs, I have never heard of a religion of any significance that was based upon any of these things. Historically, religious fanaticism has been a relatively rare, if scandalous, basis for wrongdoing. The Assyrians may be an exception, but those guys were evil to the core.

Last edited by Griff on 16 Apr 2007, 7:51 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Well...good for you?

No. You don't even have them right as far as I can tell. I would appreciate if you would actually address my own position on this subject.

You don't argue against a position. You argue for one. If you have legitimate concerns about the logical consistency of evolutionary theory, argue for this position, and do it well. Don't just beat a straw man. I don't find it particularly impressive.

If you will look up "Torcaso vs. Watkins", you will see where the United States Supreme Court made a determination that secular Humanism is a religion and used that as the basis for a decision. This determination has not been contradicted since.
I didn't say they were. The Humanists have been successful in getting this foundation of their faith accepted by a large part of society, even if the majority of the people don't make the final jump to Humanism. A lot of them just get to nihilism and stop.

I have shown myself highly interested in debating the Humanist speculations they call evolution. The fact that I have disappointed you in not being interested in debating creationism is just a cross you will have to bear.

As for Fascism and Communism being basically the same thing, take a look at Jerry Pournelle's Political Axes" at: http://www.baen.com/chapters/axes.htm He makes a good point. The Libertarian party made up a quiz based upon this idea: http://www.theadvocates.org/quiz.html

Take a look at "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" by William Shirer to see how cozy Hitler and Stalin were. Hitler taught Stalin concentration camp technology among other things. Stalin was caught totally by surprise by Hitler's attack on the Soviet Union even though he was warned by the west (p.724). He thought they were friends. He had forgotten to ask a very important question, "Do you consider Slavs to be an inferior race?"

As for media control, the Humanists learned well from Joseph Goebbels, the propaganda minister for the Third Reich. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Big_Lie The latest example of it is "Global Warming." Unfortunately, we see George Bush caught up in using these same tactics for propping up the economy. Another reason I believe he is merely pro-Christian for political support.

I your case ignorance is an excuse. Your Humanist teachers left out inconvenient facts so your decisions would be spun in their direction. I had the same programming decades ago.

If you will look up "Torcaso vs. Watkins", you will see where the United States Supreme Court made a determination that secular Humanism is a religion and used that as the basis for a decision. This determination has not been contradicted since.[/quote]I'm not a humanist, though. I'm just a happy, little liberal. Like humanism, it's really more of an ideology, but it can arguably pass as an analog of religion.

You haven't shown much interest in discussing our own views on the subject, though.

What's disappointing is that you're spouting conspiracy theories and straw man arguments instead of actually making positive discussion.

Some fair points, but you appear to have trouble distinguishing between compatibility and relevance. To say science and religion are incompatible is to state that one can not consistently and validly hold both to be true (this could be said of a literal reading of Genesis 1 and Darwinian evolution, but again that would be a confusion of categories). You seem, at least in part of your response to say rather that they are asking different questions, dealing with different fields of knowledge (NB no statement here on your personal beliefs as to ignorance or knowledge, ie the truth value of respective systems for the time being) or some such distinction, meaning that they belong in different universes of discourse and can say nothing meaningful to each other (or rather humans using arguments from the two spheres cannot coherently debate anything). These are quite different statements, both worth debating.

Of course not all scientists are humanists; if it comes to that, humanism does not always refer to an atheist philosophy. Ever heard of Desiderius Erasmus? Humanism appears to refer to a philosophy, albeit one within there is room for considerable diversity; science to the application of a method for seeking truth about a wide range of areas of knowledge, involving testing hypotheses by the use of experiments to accumulate evidence, that may falsify, validate or modify the original hypothesis. A hard and fast distinction between philosophy from the Greek "love of wisdom" and science, derived from a Latin word denoting knowledge, is admittedly a modernist dichotomy, but you are right to point out this flaw in my fellow Christian Tim's reasoning. My own definitions here are of course flawed; I have really only described the scientific method.

To return to the earlier point, your analogy about unrelated propositions about colour and diagonal lines appears to indicate a claim of religion and science dealing with different objects of human inquiry and thought, not an inadmissability of an individual credibly believing in the truth of both. This may be what you meant by incompatibility.

My apologies if this post is longwinded, abstract, and contributes little useful to this debate.

What specifically does Tim mean by saying that Carbon 14 dating (given the limited time frame of that method, I am not sure how helpful it would be as an argument for or against evolution; other isotopes would surely be more relevant to such long periods of time as the history of evolution requires) is the result of circular reasoning?

This is ridiculous.

So if it's a religion, then it's not "secular" which is by definition seperate from organised religion. Choose your conspiracy theory and stick with it.



Your stance is becoming increasingly clear, and it's rooted in pure paranoia. You have lumped everything you find unpleasant under the category of "Humanism", including Nazism, Stalinism, and Nihilism and imagined a massive conspiracy.

Why has nobody heard of this conspiracy? Because the Humanists control the media. Why do people disagree with you? Because the Humanists have brainwashed them. You know what? I'm going to ask you to do one extremely simple thing. Prove it beyond reasonable doubt. Produce rigorous evidence for this titanic Humanist conspiracy and it's agenda to promote evolution. Prove you didn't just pull it out of your rear end.

If the conspiracy has the amazing power you claim, then it should be easy. I'm sure you will understand why your say-so won't be good enough for people on a message board who don't know you.



I was educated in Catholic schools up till the age of 19, so you are objectively wrong. Unless the Catholic Church just got lumped into your conspiracy. Which frankly, wouldn't surprise me at this point.

Although the quote is another example of your paranoia--after all, it presumes nobody would disagree with you if they knew the truth.

Last edited by Elemental on 17 Apr 2007, 9:16 am, edited 1 time in total.

Yes, that is what I'm trying to say. I think people can hold both attitudes, but not both about the same thing. For me, it's a definitional thing. Faith is not the same as science, because if something I had faith in were to be proved, it would become science. If something that seemed scientific to the best of current understanding were to be completely debunked by new evidence (such as life on Mars, for example), continuing to believe in it would be faith.



I agree completely, and I already cited Gregor Mendel. A lot of scientific theories have started out as leaps of faith ("What if we used this hypothesis? There's no evidence for it, but I think if we looked in the right places, we'd find some.") before becoming science. Equally, religion has inspired a lot of scientific progress ("God has laid out a wondrous universe for us, we must try and understand it, so we can look after it and use his gifts better.").

TimT seems to be using humanism as a term for "everything I don't like", a useless and inaccurate definition.



Yes, it is. I've explained my reason for this, above. I certainly don't mean to dismiss either.



Don't worry, I won't bite your head off. And it's good to be able to talk sensibly about this topic with someone who reads and thinks about what I write.



It's the argument that "The fossils date the rock, and the rock dates the fossils."--in other words, the supposed view that rock is old because it has fossils in it, and fossils are old because they're in old rock. Also, radiographic data can be unreliable past a certain threshold of age. The conclusion is that scientists are seeing what they want to see.

First, this supposition ignores the existance of other dating methods that confirm the radiocarbon data. I've linked to this rebuttal of the other point a few times in this thread, but once more won't hurt.

How so?

Sorry. I just don't understand why I keep pursuing these discussions. They never really get anywhere. It gets lame.