Sciences vs. Religion

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Originally Posted by Hwo Thumb

Why is it that every time the subject of creationism vs evolution rears its head, I always want to beat myself to death out of embarrassment for sharing a planet with creationists? As a friend of mine once quite eloquently put the matter, "I believe in God. I don't understand God. I don't believe in evolution, I understand evolution. Belief implies that there's something to be contested."

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The creationism vs evolution debate is a smokescreen, a major part of the science vs religion smokescreen, which was primarily set up by atheists beginning in the 19th century. The real debate is between atheists and theists.

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Originally Posted by Hwo Thumb

Why is it that Darwinists can come to the fight armed to the teeth with statistics, fossil records, hard, observable science, and a mountain of evidence, and all creationists bring is a fundamentalist view of an ancient book, and yet we still somehow think there's even a fight to be had?

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The problem is that neo-Darwinists, those who believe that genes through random mutations slowly and unconsciously drive evolutionary change, do not have the fossil record on their side. If you get a chance, read the introductory chapters of Niels Eldredge's Reinventing Darwin and consider how the sedimentation layers in which fossils occur with long periods of equilibrium punctuated by brief periods of change could have happened under neo-Darwinism.

From what I can see from Foster's work with E. coli, they do not even have evidence about how mutations actually occur on their side.

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Originally Posted by Hwo Thumb

Why is it that I'm told by my fellow Christians that I'm a ****ty person for believing in evolution, but if I tell them that they're stupid for not believing in evolution, I'm being uncivilized?

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You are probably arguing about two different things. You just need to clarify better what each of your positions are.

It is easy to believe in evolution and the best evidence for it is that we can see common features between different species. Neo-Darwinism, on the other hand, wants to claim there is no consciousness in the process, not even on the part of the species themselves, not even on the part of the individual members of the species. It is all in the genes and is based on random changes.

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Originally Posted by Hwo Thumb

Why is it that it's perfectly okay for creationists to blatantly ignore proof of evolution, (Lenski experiment, bacterial resistance to antibiotics, genetic tests, etc.) and still insist that creationism is a viable method for conducting scientific inquiry? (When your science relies on ignoring the facts, it's not science, it's faith)

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As I see it, it is neo-Darwinism that is ignoring the facts. The fossil evidence showing punctuated equilibrium falsifies the slow, random mutation theory underlying neo-Darwinism. The hypermutation in the Foster studies falsifies the slow, random mutation theory as well.

mal4mac, I'm so encouraged by your astronomer's validation of Psarris' video "Our Created Solar System" without him even realizing he did it!! Think about it. The video is 1 1/2 hours long and jam packed with information supporting our Created Solar System and What Astronomers are Not Telling Us, and the only gripe your astronomer can come up with is…drumroll…SEMANTICS?#!? over one word, "evolution" that Psarris uses to describe naturalistic astronomy. That's like analyzing great works of Literature via spelling *chuckle*. If you watch the magnitude of Psarris' video the compare it to your astronomer's criticism it's clear Plait can't deny any of the the scientific findings Psarris presented supporting creation. Here's what Psarris has to say about your astronomer's accusations: http://kgov.com/spike-psarris-and-phil-plait

Actually, while the video outlines flaws in various theories put forward by scientists to explain certain aspects of the solar system, it offers no direct or objective information supporting a Created Solar System. The subtitle of the video, “What You Aren’t Being Told about Astronomy,” is misleading. The opening credits themselves note that most of the “photographs, animations, and other graphics… come from NASA (the National Aeronautics and Space Administration), JPL (Jet Propulsion Laboratory), and/or the USGS (U.S. Geological Survey).” No one is trying to keep the flaws in scientific theories secret as the subtitle suggests; all the information about flaws in the scientific theories is put out openly by scientists themselves.

That is what scientists do – they put forward a theory (a better word is hypothesis) for explaining natural phenomena, test the hypothesis using observations and experiments, gather evidence, and attempt to objectively analyze the evidence from their observations and experiments. Then they evaluate the hypothesis - accept it, reject it, or attempt to modify it based on their analyses. Scientists accept the fact that they do not have satisfactory explanations for every natural phenomenon. Scientific research is the ongoing process of testing, observing, collecting data, analyzing and evaluating evidence, and revising hypotheses as knowledge and understanding of the subject matter increases.

As the narrator in the video points out (from information freely available), despite advances in astronomy, there are many phenomena in the solar system that scientists do not fully understand. The narrator then leaps to the conclusion that because there are gaps in our knowledge about these phenomena, then we must acknowledge that the universe was created by God in six days approximately six thousand years ago, according to a literal interpretation of the Bible. He presents absolutely no direct or objective evidence to support this conclusion; he simply asserts that the Biblical narrative must be true because a number of scientific theories are imperfect.

If someone wishes to believe in Creationism, I try to respect that (although I cannot agree). But I have a problem with people who try to prove their beliefs are “correct” or “superior” to mine. The video in question is purposely misleading and draws unfounded conclusions.

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Originally Posted by 108 fountains

If someone wishes to believe in Creationism, I try to respect that (although I cannot agree). But I have a problem with people who try to prove their beliefs are “correct” or “superior” to mine. The video in question is purposely misleading and draws unfounded conclusions.

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I disagree with the "purposely misleading" part of your conclusion. I thought Psarris was trying to present his case as well as he could. There is nothing wrong with that. He presented his evidence and drew his conclusions.

By the way, I thought some of the evidence he presented was interesting, in particular, the evidence about geomagnetism. I was expecting Plait to address the evidence when I saw mal4mac's link. But it doesn't matter. I will have to look into geomagnetism further on my own.

Although I agree with you about creationism, I deliberately try not to have any "problem" with people who disagree with me. I want them to try to prove their beliefs. What they usually do in the process is help me clarify my own positions. Some of them, like Plait, also offer amusement. My point: Neither Psarris nor Plait are problems. They are opportunities.

As a side note, I think Melanie is right in claiming that Plait witlessly validated Psarris' evidence by not addressing it and wasting time with the "evolution" non-issue.

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Originally Posted by Melanie

mal4mac... The video is 1 1/2 hours long and jam packed with information supporting our Created Solar System and What Astronomers are Not Telling Us, and the only gripe your astronomer can come up with is…drumroll…SEMANTICS?#!? over one word, "evolution" that Psarris uses to describe naturalistic astronomy.

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If the guy who designed the X ray machine mistakes kidneys for tonsils, do you think I'm going to listen to him rattle on for two hours about parts of the human body? (Why am I listening to him anyway? Shouldn't I be listening to an anatomy professor?)

Psarris makes a mistake I wouldn't have made as a 12 year old - when I first got interested in Darwinian evolution and Stellar evolution. Psarris' mistake is just *so* dumb, that I'm out the door even before entering the room.

YesNo,

Thanks for your comments. I appreciate you reigning me in because I truly wish to be respectful of others’ belief systems. I generally just stick to the forums on literature, but this thread and others like it drew my attention recently.

I did not intend to say that the entire video was purposely misleading, only the parts, as noted in the subtitle “What You Aren’t Being Told about Astronomy,” where it insinuates that there is some kind of conspiracy among scientists to withhold information on the inconsistencies between observed data and scientific theories. There is no such conspiracy, and to insinuate otherwise is misleading.

I also don’t have a problem with people trying to prove their beliefs, but I do have a problem with people who assert their beliefs are morally superior to mine or that their point of view is the only correct point of view. Even attempting to explain one’s own point of view will be offensive to some who have deeply held beliefs inconsistent with that point of view – that’s one reason why I generally shy away from threads like this one; I’m not going to convince anyone that their beliefs are wrong, and I feel morally disinclined to do so anyway.

I’ve seen some of your comments in this thread and in some of the similar threads, and I really applaud your open-mindedness, your genuineness, and your search for truth. In many ways, your comments remind me of my own thinking about 40 years ago. Despite my Catholic upbringing, I had given up belief in angels and devils, a Creator God, and all the other ideas that accompany a literal interpretation of the Bible at about the same time as I stopped believing in Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy. In college, I started reading about Buddhism and was particularly attracted to the ideas found in Zen Buddhism.

I spent more than half of the next 35 years living and working in countries where Buddhism was the predominant religion. During that time, I gradually lost my enthusiasm for Buddhism for several reasons – the popular practice of Buddhism in the countries where I lived included veneration of gods and goddesses and ritual practices that I considered to be based on myth and superstition similar to other religions; I found that in some places, most notably in Sri Lanka, Buddhist practitioners were as close-minded and intolerant of other religions as other religions themselves (although I think that the intolerance I saw there was more of an ethnic than a religious issue); and most importantly, I found that I disagreed with the Buddhist notion that life is illusory and defined by suffering.

For a long time, I was able to find comfort in ideas that might best be described as equivalent to Brahmanism as described in the Upanishads – and similar, I think, to the concept you describe in some of your comments about a kind of spiritual consciousness that pervades the universe. But in recent years, I am coming more and more to the conclusion that this life, the here and now, is all there is, and I am becoming more and more comfortable with the notion that this life is wondrous and beautiful as it is, without the embellishments of myth and superstition.

The universe is filled with amazing things – some of them are described in Melanie’s video. Others, such as the nature of time, space, gravity, and energy and their relations to each other with respect to quantum mechanics and relativity theory, we are just beginning to learn about. Still others, like the love between two people, our dreams and our longings, our music and our literature, our cognitive abilities to question, to reason, and to learn and our quest to understand, and our desire to seek ultimate truth and meaning – all of these, I believe, are wondrous, beautiful aspects of life, and they are all here right now before our very eyes; we do not need to look any further beyond ourselves and the material universe to find them or to explain them.

Now that I’ve stated my beliefs, I’m sure I have offended some people. I apologize for that, but I feel I have as much right to share my beliefs as others.

I am mulling the idea of making one more post to this thread in response to the latest link that Melanie posted. I went through it last night, clicking on the various other links and articles it led to. What I found struck me as disturbing and even frightening, but I will leave that for another post – or maybe best not to comment on it at all.

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Originally Posted by 108 fountains

... our music and our literature, our cognitive abilities to question, to reason, and to learn and our quest to understand, and our desire to seek ultimate truth and meaning – all of these, I believe, are wondrous, beautiful aspects of life.

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Partly I agree with you, but life can also be a pain, and the quest to understand a depressing, angst ridden journey. I actually now think our desire to seek ultimate truth and meaning isn't useful. These days I'm not seeking ultimate meaning, just looking for the next good read. Maybe it will be wondrous and beautiful, and even surprise me in being so (like Hemingway's "For Whom the Bell Tolls", for me, today.)

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Originally Posted by mal4mac

Partly I agree with you, but life can also be a pain, and the quest to understand a depressing, angst ridden journey. I actually now think our desire to seek ultimate truth and meaning isn't useful. These days I'm not seeking ultimate meaning, just looking for the next good read. Maybe it will be wondrous and beautiful, and even surprise me in being so (like Hemingway's "For Whom the Bell Tolls", for me, today.)

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read The Elegant Universe by Brian Greene or The Long Way by Bernard Moitessier.

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Originally Posted by YesNo

As a side note, I think Melanie is right in claiming that Plait witlessly validated Psarris' evidence by not addressing it and wasting time with the "evolution" non-issue.

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I have to agree that Plait's hammering on the use of the word "evolution" rather than presenting scientific evidence vs. Psarris' creation evidence didn't make him look good, and the sniggering, condescending hipster tone of his writing made him look even worse. What's the difference between a strident, holier-than-thou Christian and a smug, deeper-thinker-than-thou atheist? I wouldn't want either of them at my party.

If you can slog through Plait's "review" to the end, he does finally make an actual point about the content of the video: that it's basically "God of the gaps" stuff, pointing out things we don't understand and conveniently omitting the word "yet."

The crux of the distinction between the two camps is that the scientists start with questions and seeks the answers, while creationists start with their answer and look for questions that they can point at that answer (while never questioning the answer itself).

I clicked on this link that Melanie provided to support “the scientific findings Psarris presented supporting creation.” http://kgov.com/spike-psarris-and-phil-plait
What I found was all sorts of articles citing natural phenomena or experimental observations that scientists have found surprising and/or difficult to explain and then asserting that these discoveries are somehow evidence supporting creationism and the literal interpretation of the Bible.

I agree that it is important to be aware of and to explore discrepancies and flaws in scientific theories and hypotheses – scientists do that all the time so that they can modify of replace the theory or hypothesis to better fit the observed evidence. That is a process called learning.

It’s fine, in my opinion, to replace the scientific hypothesis with a new hypothesis based on Biblical creationism, but then (again, in my opinion) the new Biblical creationist hypothesis should be subject to the same kind of scrutiny as the scientific hypothesis – i.e., it should be supported by observable evidence.

The author of one of the articles in Melanie’s link references NASA scientists who have discovered evidence that Mars may at one time have been subjected to great flooding that was “possibly global in extent.” The article then goes on to state, “And the same scientists mock anyone who offers evidence that the Earth (which is more than two-thirds covered in ocean water that averages a depth of 2.5 miles) could ever have been flooded.”

Okay, so let’s put forward the hypothesis that the entire Earth was underwater during the great Biblical flood….

The hypothesis leads to many questions, such as the following, that should be responded to with observable evidence:

- Is there any evidence to answer the question of how Noah collected kangaroos, wombats, and koala bears from Australia, panda bears from China, tigers, water buffalo, pangolins, lemurs, and Asian elephants from India and Southeast Asia, snow leopards and yaks from the Himalayas, sun bears, gibbons, civets, porcupines, and monitor lizards from Southeast Asia, polar bears, caribou, reindeer, walruses, and the various species of seals and penguins from arctic regions, orangutans from the Indonesian islands, kinkajous, vampire bats, chinchillas, marmosets, tamarins, sloths, anteaters, jaguars, alpacas, llamas from South America, gorillas, chimpanzees, baboons, lions, giraffes, zebras, hyenas, cheetahs, gazelles, springboks, impalas, bongos, African elephants, meerkats, aardvarks, and wildebeasts from Africa. There are five species rhinoceros – is there any evidence to explain how Noah was able to collect all five species from Africa, India, and Southeast Asia?

- For that matter, is there any evidence that he would have known about the existence of these animals?

- For that matter, is there any evidence that he was aware of the existence of the Western Hemisphere, of Australia, of the Indonesian islands, or the Arctic regions?

- Is there any evidence that he traveled to these places or had the capability of traveling to these places to collect these animals? According to the Bible, God gave Noah a seven-day notice before the flood – is there any evidence to suggest that Noah, assisted by his wife and three sons and their wives could have travelled and collected all these animals in seven days.

- Is there any evidence to answer the question of how these eight people kept the animals caged and fed, not only for the 40 days that it rained, but for the additional 150 days they spent on the ark, according to the Bible, until the waters receded? (Actually, the Bible is a little confusing about the period of time they spent on the ark – it mentions that Noah waited another 40 days before he sent out a raven and then a dove and then another 7 days before the dove came back with an olive branch, but I’ll go with the 190 days as the minimum.)

- Is there any evidence that Noah was aware of the dietary needs of animals not endemic to the Middle East (for example, did he know that koala bears eat mainly eucalyptus leaves or that pandas eat bamboo almost exclusively or that he would need about four tons of bamboo for two pandas to survive 190 days?)

- Two gorillas would require about three tons vegetation to survive 190 days. Four elephants (2 African elephants and two Asian elephants) would eat approximately 140 tons of vegetation over a 190 day period. Is there any evidence that Noah was capable of stockpiling 140 tons of vegetation just for the elephants? What about adding on the amount of food necessary for the gorillas and all the other herbivores?

- Lions eat approximately 500 pounds of meat per month, and tigers eat approximately 200 pounds of meat per month. Is there any evidence that Noah was able to provide the two tons of meat that two tigers and two lions would need to survive for 190 days? What about meat for all the other carnivores?

- Is there any evidence to answer the question of how Noah, his wife, his three sons and their wives were able to take all the pairs of animals he had collected back to their endemic regions after the flood?

- Many (most?) creationists also believe that man coexisted with dinosaurs. One Brachiosauras weighed between 35 and 90 tons and ate several hundred pounds of vegetation per day. One Tyrannosauraus weighed from 5 to 7 tons, and ate… I was unable to find an estimate for how much meat T. Rex ate, but it was likely a substantial amount. Likewise, it seems unnecessary to mention all the other species of dinosaurs.

- Another Biblical fact to consider: God actually commanded Noah to take one pair of every unclean animal and seven pairs of every clean animal. This would have increased the number of animals on the ark significantly (although I don’t know if polar bears, gorillas, or dinosaurs were considered clean or unclean.)


- Some creationists hypothesize that Noah did not need to bring all these animals on board the ark because they “evolved” and dispersed across the globe later. The creationist websites I visited give dates of between 2200 and 2500 BC for the date of the Great Flood. Is there any evidence anywhere that all these species evolved and dispersed over a period of just a few thousand years? (Frankly, I find the reliance on rapid evolution after the flood to be a disingenuous argument, given that creationists dismiss the idea that evolution of all species could have occurred over a time period of billions of years.)

- Similarly, according to the Bible, after the flood, the three sons of Noah and their wives and their descendants populated the Earth. Is there any evidence to suggest how these six humans and their descendants managed to form all the various ethno-linguistic groupings on Earth in just a couple thousand years?

Science does not hold all the answers (yet), but in my opinion, neither does the Bible. I have no problem with creationists believing whatever it is they want to believe, but when they begin attacking scientific theories and hypotheses using scientific evidence and observations, then they should be prepared for reciprocal scrutiny from scientists.

Just one more thing… The National Zoo in Washington, DC, currently holds about 1800 animals from about 300 species. The Zoo has more than 450 full-time staff, including keepers, curators and scientists. There were eight people in the ark, including a 600-year-old man, to take care of the animals there. Something to think about.

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Originally Posted by 108 fountains

Just one more thing… The National Zoo in Washington, DC, currently holds about 1800 animals from about 300 species. The Zoo has more than 450 full-time staff, including keepers, curators and scientists. There were eight people in the ark, including a 600-year-old man, to take care of the animals there. Something to think about.

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There's no need to think about it. Aside from the most fervent Fundamentalists, no one over the age of eight really takes the Noah's Ark story literally. Figuratively, maybe.

And by the bye, I don't get the question "Do you believe in evolution?" as if evolution were an "ism" or some kind of religion. It is my understanding that evolution is an arrangement of facts presented as possible evidence for the rise of various biologic species on earth. The system is so inherently consistent that it is convincing, but one is free to accept evolution as truth or not. It is not something to "believe" in. And I still can't see how evolution is necessarily the antithesis of religion.
They're apples and oranges. (Or jellyfish and lemurs.)

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Originally Posted by mal4mac

Maybe it will be wondrous and beautiful, and even surprise me in being so (like Hemingway's "For Whom the Bell Tolls", for me, today.)

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I'm so glad you are enjoying it. I think it's far better than A Farewell to Arms or The Sun Also Rises but like A Moveable Feast doesn't get it's just due of praise.

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Originally Posted by AuntShecky

It is my understanding that evolution is an arrangement of facts presented as possible evidence for the rise of various biologic species on earth. The system is so inherently consistent that it is convincing, but one is free to accept evolution as truth or not.

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Evolution is a fact. You are free to accept the fact that the earth moves round the sun or not. But you would look rather silly if you didn't accept it. If you completely trust astronomers when they tell you the earth moves round the sun, why wouldn't you completely trust biologists when they tell you evolution happened? One isn't "free to accept evolution as truth or not" unless you deny science itself, and throw doubt on every other scientific fact, like an extreme flat earther.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...lligent_design

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Originally Posted by mal4mac

Evolution is a fact. You are free to accept the fact that the earth moves round the sun or not. But you would look rather silly if you didn't accept it. If you completely trust astronomers when they tell you the earth moves round the sun, why wouldn't you completely trust biologists when they tell you evolution happened? One isn't "free to accept evolution as truth or not" unless you deny science itself, and throw doubt on every other scientific fact, like an extreme flat earther.

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What is up for questioning, however, is neo-Darwinism as Thomas Nagel puts it, or ultra-Darwinism, as Niles Eldredge calls it, or more generally naturalism as Alvin Plantinga refers to it.

Neo-Darwinism is the view that random mutations in a selfish gene are all that drives evolution. It is a form of materialistic reductionism. What that does is moves the subject of evolution from the species further past the individual in the species where Darwin placed it to the gene inside a cell. It also doesn't fit the fossil record which is best mapped in terms of species.

The problem with atheism and science is that atheists think science is on their side and that it is opposed to religion like they are. It isn't.

This delusion gives some atheists a belief that they can pontificate to others on what science is all about. This is a form of proselytizing. That is why questioning scientific presentations is important and why I like to hear people with alternate metaphysics provide their interpretations.