Question About Evolution

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I never said that ALL Christians are members of the Happy Jesus Fan Club. Many of them just attend the meetings.

Agreed. They should either accept both the New AND the Old Testaments as valid and truthful in their entirety, or they should give up and admit that they're just "cherry-picking" their moral doctrine to suit their personal ethics.

That's very interesting about atavisms. I'd like to see what would happen if enough of these traits were reactivated. Perhaps you could get a separate species that can interbreed with itself but not the animal it was "de-evolved" from. I really want to find some concrete examples to give to young earth creationists. I feel that, on my end of things, I have to exhaust more brain power and energy to prove my point. They just say God did it all.

I shall embrace my tortoise brother, and shout: "Tetrapod Power!"

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

I think if there is a metaphysical force at play, not necessarily a God, it probably has something to do with the interaction of trans-temporal information (wave-particle duality, geometrical patterns, harmony vs. disharmony, etc) and consciousness. I don't really see this distinction between nature and spirit as necessary. In fact I think its a false duality that arose during the era of neo-platonic thinking toward the end of the Roman Empire.

Some of my favorite examples of evidence for evolution are Tiktaalik, Australopithecus afarensis, human chromosome 2. and the nested hierarchies found in many different types of genetic data that all produce the same tree of life as is found in the fossil record.

I can see a way for creationists to say "God did it" without denying observable reality. Maybe their God IS the one who created us, but all the evidence of His creation clearly shows the earth is billions of years old and humans share common ancestry with other living things.

If those who deny evolution say they do so solely or mainly because of their faith, regardless of the evidence of the physical world, that is one thing. When they try to tell me though that there is just as much evidence supporting their opinion, or that it is all in how one interprets the evidence, I know better. I call BS.

What irks me are how most creationists are incredibly ignorant about how much evidence there is, and the sources they rely upon for information (Creationist web sites and such) ignore most of the evidence and deny or distort what they do not ignore. Creationist web sites and books are also notorious for "quote mining" where they blatantly misquote people out of context to make it look like their words mean the opposite of the intended meaning in context, and so on.

I love truth and hate lies so this practice of the creationists just pisses me off. Of course it could be they are just too stupid to know what they are doing, but how could they be that stupid, really? It makes me wonder also if perhaps they are insane? or evil? I don't agree with Dawkins' militant atheism but he nailed it when he said that


Oh and that isn't a put down by the way. Most of those who argue against evolution do so because they have been misinformed. Ignorance is no crime and is nothing to be ashamed of. It can be easily fixed. Insanity, stupidity, or wickedness though might be more complicated problems to solve.

Last edited by TheBicyclingGuitarist on 02 Nov 2012, 6:11 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Yah, I think that just passing them off as stupid and not seriously entertaining their world view in any meaningful way is no different from what they do. All they do in church is talk about how stupid evolutionists are and explain the theory in a half assed way. All this behavior is is mental masturbation, and its likely to keep people in the dark ages. If you show a basic amount of respect to someone, and if you have a good ideas and information, they're likely to listen.

I do like the article on the apple maggot from Australia. They're referred to as races, but the fact they've developed different breeding cycles leads me to believe they are two distinct species. I wonder if the hawthorn and apple races can still interbreed offspring through artificial insemination though. Its a shame we've only known about evolution by natural selection for less than 200 years. Too bad we haven't been aware of it since the dark ages. I guess they wouldn't have been so dark if they did know about it if you get my drift.

Superiority is relative to the environment, and geology changes over time. While it was superior to be a gigantic, lumbering T-Rex 70 million years ago, it wasn't an advantage after that huge asteroid struck and clouded over the atmosphere with debris that made it very difficult for their large lungs to fill with enough oxygen to survive. The tiny nocturnal shrews that were formerly the prey of the big T-Rex's now were in the superior position because they didn't need as much air, food, and sunlight as their former predators.

Well, from what I understand, Jesus Christ wasn't even a traditionalist or literalist. He constantly spoke in metaphor and parable, so I even doubt that he even meant he was the Son of God in a direct or exclusive way. There's a lot within Christianity that bares less resemblance to Orthodox Judaism and more to Jewish Middle Platonic thought, like that of Philo, fringe groups like the Escenes and Qabbalistic conceptualizations. I don't see Christianity so much as exclusively Jewish, as I see it as a fusion between Jewish and Hellenistic philosophy. If they want to get to the fundamentals of Christianity, they shouldn't be literalistic as the Pharisees were, but rather search for the core message behind the mythology, or the spirit of the Law as Jesus called it. After all, he's the guy who stopped a bunch of people from stoning a chick for adultery when a literalistic interpretation of the Law gave them the full right to do so.

Yes well i can attest to those dwindling number having grown up methodist. That these mainstream strains of Christianity has been allowed to evolve independently without being challenged has lead to many of their cruel positions, especially the "God has a hand in everything we do, and would never allow something to take your life, therefore the evil you see in your life is not evil, it is a challenge for you to overcome" is pretty amazing. Their position on rape to their position on the ethical non-believer going to hell because they do not know or accept christ makes God out to be a total immoral tyrant of an A$$hole, which is fine if God truly is one, but I don't think the text suggests that at all.

I blame Christianity entirely for the grave it has dug for itself, but I don't wish that things have to be this way.

I didn't say evolution had anything to do with those things. I'm saying that:

1.) evolution, as understood by a large body of evolutionists, had a material natural beginning.
2.) Nothing supernatural was involved.
3.) Force, time, thermodynamics, and the quantum vacuum are examples of what I am speaking of... they are not matter, and therefore do not exist in nature beyond describing a mode that matter is in.

I don't know how to simplify it further.

The torah allows for slavery because it is universal which makes it very difficult to ban outright. But it saddled the slave owner with so many conditions that they had to meet in order to own a slave that slavery died out as an institution in ancient israel, while it continued to thrive all around it in the ancient world up through today. It said that if a slave ran away, you could not return it to its slave master. This was included in exodus for slaves from foreign lands as well. If you had two pillows, you had to give the slave one. If you have one pillow, you had to give them that only one.

Any jew who bought a slave ends up buying himself a master is a famous line in Jewish life. We killed slavery because of the conditions we put upon it, and even though there are those who followed text and still owned or supported the slave trade, movements to abolish the system came from readers who were inspired by the text and its message of freedom. Please pick a specific line from the first five books of moses and we'll explore it together further.

Your list:

No. You're still getting hung up on that. Evolution does not in any way touch upon those subjects. Science in general, however does. Someone who believes in evolution believing in those things is entirely irrelevant to evolution itself. I don't know how to explain this any more clearly. You are no longer talking about evolution. Life beginning through entirely natural means is not in any way related to evolution. Period. I don't know why you keep talking about it, it does not matter in any way.


On the torah:

So... how does this matter? At all? {i]Especially[/i] given how we all know people hardly obey such religious laws when it's not convenient for them?

I was showing a contrast of what is and isn't matter and what is in the confines of naturalism to better illustrate my point. It does matter as it clearly outlines what does and does not exist, according to naturalism and "matter is all there is." If that is so, then the soup of chemicals that existed long ago, that was somehow brought to life by a lightning flash that somehow managed to arrange chains of RNA into some cell like structure. It was all natural, no unexplainable non-material force, no super natural, no God.

On the torah: because if you didn't follow the principle of the torah, at the time the republic was being set up, you were stoned. To own a slave publicly that had already run away is a public revolution, and in setting up the first ethical monotheistic society, you would be stoned. And the slavery mentioned in the torah is indentured servitude, wherein I owe you my services and time for some wrong I committed against you. Again, please cite a specific case within the torah so I can better comment on it.

Okay, first off, I just have to comment on the sheer hilarity of the bolded line. An ethical republic doesn't stone people. Go ahead, just try and argue that killing someone in such a painful manner can be the right thing to do. Just try.

Secondly, did you not read the link I posted? There are the rules governing slavery that you seem to believe come from from god (being part of the torah). I see absolutely nothing there that makes it difficult to own slaves (even permanently. Perjury is an effective tool there). Common practice or no, you're talking about your so called Divine Guidance telling you that it is perfectly okay to own another human being and beat them to within an inch of their life.

Thirdly, you are still not talking about evolution. You are talking about the concept of abiogenisis. I've told you that already. It has nothing to do with evolution. Naturalism has nothing to do with evolution. Please at least make sure your arguments are relevant man. What you're talking about is not in any way connected to evolution, nor has it ever been. What is your point here? You're just kind of spouting off nonsense and expecting me to draw connections that simply aren't there.

I'm not a Christian and don't believe in God or anything religion says. Thanks for the straw men. I'm an atheist, and you're still an idiot who parrots other peoples ideas.