gattaca writes "A small Texas museum that teaches creationism is counting on the auction of a prehistoric mastodon skull to stave off extinction. The founder and curator of the Mt. Blanco Fossil Museum, which rejects evolution and claims that man and dinosaurs coexisted, said it will close unless the Volkswagen-sized skull finds a generous bidder. 'If it sells, well, then we can come another day,' Joe Taylor said. 'This is very important to our continuing.'" Meanwhile, the much larger Creation Museum in Kentucky that we discussed and toured when it opened last year seems to be thriving.
I used to work for a well known company in London and met a colleague visiting from Moscow. He stanuchly believes that God created everything and that evolution probably can't be relied upon. Being a colleague I couldn't really push him too far on the point for fear of HR reprisals...
Nope, this is just here in the US. Actually, I have problems even explaining what Creationism is to most of my European friends. In the end they sort of figure it out ("Oh, it's like that hollow earth stuff").
The church in many European countries is busy trying to show that if the Bible is read like it is supposed to (i.e. not taken literally) it really does correspond with the scientific findings. 7 days for god is obviously some billion years for man they tell you and they take it from there, showing how through metaphors the scientific facts known to us were hidden in the text.
While there's a kernel of fundamentalism in the UK, I'm afraid this particularly virulent, anti-science, Know-Nothingist, inerrantist version of Christianity is an American invention.
You do understand that it was Europe that dumped this religion on us?
No, they didn't. The modern, and very flawed, Evangelical movement was kicked into high gear by some power-hungry madmen by the names of Dwight L. Moody and Cyrus Ingerson Scofield. Moody had a big effect on the British and Irish, actually, promoting their crazed movement there, too.
* I'm a Protestant-leaning Christian, but definitely not of the Evangelical nature. Sadly, most of my friends and family are still under the sway of the madness called the modern Evangelical movement. I also have a soon-to-be-published book (electronic as well) that I'd love to share with slashdot readers who are interested in why it is time for Christianity to take a new direction.
The English deported their religious fanatics to America and deported their criminals to Australia. Personally, I think America got the short end of the stick on that one. The Australians can party like a Kennedy.
Creationism is not anti-evolution. All followers of Christianity believe that God created man. Where that differs is in whether or not he literally made Adam from mud 6000 years ago or whether he made a big bang 15 billion years ago and then guided our evolutionary development from there.
One view supports evolution. The other does not. However both are Creationist views.
Anyone who believes that a first-century illiterate Jewish peasant from backwater Galilee is the "son" of an omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent divine being can believe anything
Actually, there's no first-person accounts of Jesus actually having existed at all. So the whole thing is really not worth discussing, since the guy was probably a literary invention.
. In fact, I'm sure there are a lot of people who are much more intelligent than you are, who much more thoroughly understand evolutionary theory than you do, and who are much more generally enlightened and educated than you, but who still hold religious views which might properly be called "creationist" views.
Fortunately, no.
There are many intelligent, smart, wise people who believe in God. Thing is, for them faith always gives up to reason, never in opposite direction. You believe in things you don't know, you aren't certain. If science explains something, you adapt your faith to accept the fact, you don't deny it to keep that part of faith running.
You may believe that the first string of DNA that created the first living cell was created by an intelligent being. Thing is there's a lot of ways to mix bases of DNA code, just like slamming on the keyboard randomly, but getting a working self-replicating program by slamming on the keyboard randomly, well, that's a lot of slamming and what is more likely, that it happened randomly, or that it was created? We can't estimate the chance of random creation of such a string within several orders of magnitude, so it leaves room for faith: it might have been created this way. If you look at the amazing properties of electromagnetic waves, how simple rules create such amazing results, you think 'How could such rules come to be? Why is electromagnetism the way it is, so possiblity-rich and yet so simple in its essence?' and you think it would take quite a wise mind to invent such a thing... if it could be invented. Again, room for faith, never certainty, but elements of unknown.
But if you hear bones of dinosaurs were dug into the ground some 4000 years ago to confuse us, sorry. No matter how much you believe in God, with a bit of criticism, you say "bullshit".
Two states where I'm pretty sure you could find arguments against evolution just by looking at the local populace. I guess if they don't believe in evolution they don't feel the need to do so themselves.
I'm a Christian of the preterist nature. I believe in evolutionary forces as part of God's creation. I don't believe in a 6000-year old Earth (neither do most Jews who hold the Old Testament in a different way than many Christians do). I also think the debate of evolution versus creationism is really repugnant and a waste of time when there are so many other things we can be spending our time on (we meaning "us Christians.")
I can't even begin to count the billions of hours wasted by Christians in living life in ways completely counter to what our God teaches us. Look at the battle over the 10 Commandments, laws of the Israelites' God that have been countermanded by Christ's teaching to a much more simpler set of rules (completely love God first, completely love others second). And yet, when we dig deeper into the "Why" of modern Christian thought, we come up against the same problem that I see in those who are pro-government: we need "leaders" and we need "rules" and we need "penalties" to keep us in line.
What has happened to the powerful individual in today's society? Evolution versus creationism is a debate that strikes at the heart of my question: why is it that we need "teacher-leaders" to stick to a specific standard, rather than what the individual kid in a unique place in their specific city/society needs to be taught? I can't even understand why science is taught to ALL children, along with higher level maths, when the kids today can barely count, let alone read or speak properly. I had a 20-something in my town use a calculator at a checkout line 2 weeks ago when I gave her $21.01 for a $6.06 charge. Unbelievable.
Creationism and evolution are both articles of faith, and really have no purpose for MOST students. Then again, I truly believe that even High School is worthless for 70% of society considering what it is churning out.
Creationism and evolution are both articles of faith
You start off sounding like a very reasonable person, and then end with that.
You have faith in something you cannot prove. Like the existence of a god.
There is tons of evidence for evolution and none against it so no "faith" is required. Or is gravity an article of faith too, because you never know, one day something might fall upwards?!
You are merely trying to conveniently gloss over the fact that for the biologist, all views are open for debate and can be overturned at any time. All it takes is for a "better idea" to come along.
You are attempting to conflate "faith" with "trust".
Faith is based on wishful thinking where as trust is based on experience.
Clinging to your religious view in the face of the current scientific consensus is the perfect example of this distinction.
Creationism simply isn't that "better idea". Infact, it is what Evolution REPLACED when it originally came along as the "better idea". It's history.
It belongs alongside the idea that you grow mice by combining scraps of clothing and grains of wheat.
Evolution is not an article of faith. It's a matter of fact, something you can walk around and see in organisms that change quickly (bacteria, insects).
To start with: I'm not a Christian, but I find some theological topics like this interesting.
To me, it would make sense to say that the fall is as literal as Adam. The fall comes hand in hand with free will; if free will appeared as a gradual process through evolution, then so too was the fall a gradual process.
This makes sense from other perspectives as well -- we treat young children as innocent, even if their actions by an informed party would be wrong. As they grow older, they become more responsible for their actions, and so (if you're the type who believes in "sin") more capable of sin. It's not an instant process; we'll be more lenient with a 10-year-old than a 20-year-old, but we still expect them to understand right and wrong for the most part. If you're willing to take other parts of the Bible as metaphorical, I see no contradiction in taking the fall and original sin and the Eden story as allegorical for slow processes that came with the evolution of free will.
Though not the GP, I'm a Christian who believes in evolution myself, I'll try to tackle this if you don't object. Please excuse the brevity of the summary below; there is so much left out, I fear I've made it sound rather less structured and nuanced than it really is.
The way I look at it, the "fall" was not a one-time event that blighted the rest of us. It was, and is, and will continue to be, an over-and-over event that blights each of us individually. "Adam" is not an historical figure, but an allegorical one, a representative of our human nature.
We are human, and fallible. Not one of us makes it through life (or probably even through the day) without making some serious error of judgment that wounds another person, whether deliberately or thoughtlessly. Those errors are the things we need to atone for: our deliberately hurtful deeds, our thoughtlessness. No one is immune from this; it is a necessary consequence of our free will.
And in most cases, I think we cannot really make up for the wrong we have done. The errors create wounds that are beyond our power to heal. Yet in a just universe, evil requires an expiation.
As I see it, Christ's death provided that expiation. The salvation of Jesus is offered freely, as a pure gift -- nothing expected of us in return, except to say, "I accept." Without that acceptance, the expiation for the evil I have done then falls on myself.
(DISCLAIMER: Please understand, it's not my intent to proselytize or start a debate. I only expressed my view because the parent asked for an answer. I'm not saying that this is THE answer. I'm saying that this is AN answer, and one that I can live with. If your life, logic, and understanding have led you to a different conclusion about the world -- a different relationship with God, a different God or set of Gods, or no God at all -- and so long as you are harming no others, I won't presume to say that your view should be the same as mine. Go in peace.)
...either smite them with bankruptcy or send a saviour to the auction, their accountant has been weighing their sins and thinks a press release might help./ducks
The KY Creation museum isn't too far away from here and everyone that I've talk to that has gone or wanted to go hasn't done so out of religious belief but out of morbid curiosity or think it's funny. Their success is the same as that of the bearded lady, or so it seems to me. Once people get over the initial shock and humor it'll fade into obscurity.
The funny part about the original CNN article I read on this said that Heritage Auction Galleries estimated the age of the thing to be at around 40,000 years old. At least the musuem guy is letting smarter people sell the thing.
It's about 35 miles from me on the road to Lubbock. He has some really nice fossils, but his interpretation is just plain weird. He built a huge human leg bone to show people what the "giants" would have looked like. The problem is he didn't take into account the strength of the bone and simply scaled it up to giant size. The local schools take classes on field trips to see the museum, I need to ask the high school kid that works for me what they are told when they visit. Knowing the teachers around here they teach this stuff in their class, it's shame really.
Y'know, it occurs to me that anti-evolutionists don't just have a problem with evolution, but also geology, cosmology, carbon dating, physics. Any I missed?
Y'know, it occurs to me that anti-evolutionists don't just have a problem with evolution, but also geology, cosmology, carbon dating, physics. Any I missed?
Y'know, it occurs to me that anti-evolutionists don't just have a problem with evolution, but also geology, cosmology, carbon dating, physics. Any I missed?
Sexuality. Other religions.
And don't forget world 36 on Super Mario Brothers. That one can be pretty tricky if you don't know what to expect.
Y'know, it occurs to me that anti-evolutionists don't just have a problem with evolution, but also geology, cosmology, carbon dating, physics. Any I missed?
Actually, interesting that you bring up gravity. Last time I checked, we *still* have no clue what the heck gravity is. How it acts at such great distances and such. We can describe it mathematically (G m1 m2 / d^2), but we don't really know the reason for it. Why is it that this works? How can it act apparently instantly across great distances that even photons can't reach as quickly?
Perhaps your smart-ass answer isn't far off - it's God's will. Whatever it is, we do not thoroughly understand it. All we can do is take advantage of it (through mathematics).
As a Christian, I have toi say that the parent comment is the best modded comment I've seen today. Science and religion ask completely different questions. Science asks "how", religion asks "why".For the religious to try to undermine a useful scientific theory with an untestable "theory" like "creationism" is to show an appalling lack of faith in the God they claim to worship.
My take on it? Creationism per se is bunk, and evolution is the best theory I've seen to explein how God went about growing this wonderous universe.
Yes, I know it's heresy to admit being a Christian [kuro5hin.org] at slashdot, where athiesm is the site relgion and its proponents will stone with mod points anyone who dares believe that God exists, so mod me down. Arguing the existance of God with an athiest is like arguing the existance of red with a blind man.
You're an athiest because God wants you to be an athiest. "All we are is dust in the wind" - Kansas.
Theistic evolution is a good middle ground way of looking at things, but in believing it, you have to interpret the bible non-literally. That doesn't work for fundamentalists.
athiesm is the site relgion
Atheism is not a religion, it's just the lack of belief in deities. It is the default position. There is no doctrine, ritual, or morality associated with a lack of belief.
You're an athiest because God wants you to be an athiest.
I'll accept that if Christians stop telling me I'm going to hell for, apparently, being what god wants me to be.
Yes, I know it's heresy to admit being a Christian [kuro5hin.org] at slashdot, where athiesm is the site relgion and its proponents will stone with mod points anyone who dares believe that God exists, so mod me down. Arguing the existance of God with an athiest is like arguing the existance of red with a blind man.
Nah. There appear to be plenty of pro-Christian moderators at Slashdot, given the amount of modding that took place the other day in a thread where a Slashdot "editor" commented heavily and all his posts were typically modded 3 or higher and as "Interesting" or "Insightful". Given the sheer amount of backslash against threads where evolution and other topics that contradict typically non-Christian dogma, I would say the Christian crowd is well represented.
I would also suggest that the argument analogy you presented is inaccurate and misleading, as most analogies often are. Such topics cannot be summed up or dumbed down in such simplistic manners. Case in point, the popular "let me explain this as a car" analogy given so often on Slashdot. Your analogy presents a pre-determined supposition that God does indeed exist, which is the point of the argument in the first place, yes?
You're an athiest because God wants you to be an athiest. "All we are is dust in the wind" - Kansas.
I'm not sure what to make of this. Are you implying that atheism is a state at which humans arrive at, being theistic at first? I would propose that humans come out of the womb atheistic and them develop theism at a later date. This can probably be proven by the fact that there are plenty of religions out there that do not advocate "God" in a Christian fashion, or are monotheistic, or something completely different. Unless you're one of the "all paths lead to God" people, of course...
Theories can be tested to be proven or disproven using scientific methods. Creationism cannot. What scientific research would you propose to test the "theory" of creationism? Evolution can be studied by examining DNA progression, fossil records, etc.
Actually, I think a better argument is the predictiveness argument: Science is about learning to understand and predict the world around us, so we can make it better. (Of course 'better' has a host of different meanings, but regardless of which we choose, we need to be able to understand and predict, so we can choose the results of our actions.)
Evolution makes predictions that are accurate enough to be useful, regardless of whether is it aboslutely true or not. (For the record: It's as true as anything we've ever come up with.)
Creationism makes no predictions. In fact, it prevents them: Why did this happen? God did it. Will it happen again? If God wants it to. Will it stop? If God gets bored. Can we influence it? If God decides to be influenced, yes. In the end, 'God' is unknowable and unexplainable, so by saying God did it we have stopped all thought, inquiry, or prediction on the topic.
Which is probably why it is attractive to some people: They don't want to think.
by Anonymous Coward
on Friday January 18 2008, @12:00PM (#22095340)
I have a question that has always troubled me regarding evolution vs. intelligent design. Is there any meaningful way, or even a need, to differentiate "created" things from "naturally occurring" things? Homo Sapiens may have "evolved" over millions of years, but there are objects on this earth (now even "living" objects) which are 100% the "creation" of us as a species, which would be very difficult to explain from an evolutionary standpoint.
At some point, we may become so advanced, technologically, that there is nothing curently living which is beyond our ability to recreate in a laboratory setting. How would one determine what occurs naturally and what was created? There will be lots of legal issues related to "accident of nature" or "industrial accident" related to when created things go bad, and how to prove they were created versus just having occurred by themselves.
To some extent, this is us "playing God" with nature. Somewhere down the road, a wholly "created" being will gain consciousness, evolve some (if left alone long enough), then wonder where he came from. Then they will have the same argument we are having now.
I'm no fan of ID as having "scientific" merit. But it does have philosophical merit. And some of the thought experiments make my head hurt.
(Posting Anon, because I don't like to discuss my personal politics or religion in public.)
I'm not sure what you mean by "DNA progression" but DNA itself makes for an excellent - practically ironclad - argument for common descent.
Books used to be copied by scribes, and (despite a lot of care) sometimes typos would be introduced. Later scribes, making copies of copies, would introduce other typos. It's possible to look at the existing copies and put them into a 'family tree'. "These copies have this typo, but not that one; this other group has yet another typo, though three of them have a newer typo as well, not seen elsewhere..." This is not controversial at all when dealing with books, including the Bible.
Now, this process of copy-with-modification naturally produces 'family trees', nested groups. When we look at life, we find such nested groups. No lizards with fur or nipples, no mammals with feathers, etc. Living things (at least, multicellular ones[1]) fit into a grouped hierarchy. This has been solidly recognized for over a thousand years, and systematized for centuries. It was one of the clues that led Darwin to propose evolution.
Now, more than a century later, we find another tree, one Darwin never suspected - that of DNA. This really is a "text" being copied with rare typos. And, as expected, it also forms a family tree, a nested hierarchy. And, with very very few surprises, it's the same tree that was derived from looking at physical traits.
It didn't have to be that way. Even very critical genes for life - like that of cytochrome C - have a few neutral variations, minor mutations that don't affect its function. But we find a tree of mutations that fits evolution precisely, instead of some other tree. Wheat engineered to use the mouse form of cytochrome C grows just fine. (Imagine if a tree derived from bookbinding technology - "this guy used this kind of glue, but this other bookbinder used a different glue..." - conflicted with a tree that was derived from typos in the text of the books. We'd know at least one tree and maybe both were wrong.)
The details of these trees are very specific and very, very numerous. There are billions of quadrillions of possible trees... and yet the two that we see (DNA and morphology) happen to very precisely match. This is either a staggering coincidence, or a Creator deliberately arranged it in a misleading manner, or... common ancestry is actually true.
[1] Single-celled organisms are much more 'promiscuous' in their reproduction and spread genes willy-nilly without respect for straightforward inheritance. With single-celled creatures, it looks more like a 'web' of life than a 'tree'. But even if the 'tree' of life has tangled roots, it's still very definitely a tree when it comes to multicellular life.
Hate to be the one to break it to y'all, but evolution is pretty much just a theory too. Theory as in, not fact.
"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means." - Inigo Montoya
From the BioTech Life Science Dictionary: theory definition:"In science, an explanation for some phenomenon which is based on observation, experimentation, and reasoning. In popular use, a theory is often assumed to imply mere speculation, but in science, something is not called a theory until it has been confirmed over the course of many independent experiments."
What makes it better than proposing Creationism?
Evolution is supported by repeatable, publicly observable experimentation. Creationism is not
Evolution is supported by massive amounts of publicly observable evidence. Creationism is not.
Evolution is falsifiable. Creationism is not.
Evolution makes testable predictions. Creationism does not.
Think about it.
I strongly urge you to begin doing so, rather than following the lead of charlatans.
Bronze age fairy tales vs a mountain of verifiable facts that also are the basic foundation of genetic research.
What possible prediction can anyone make from Creationism?
Evolution predicts that since all living things on the planet share DNA, then medical research using animals should produce useful medical procedures for humans.
There are three meanings of theory, and people frequently misunderstand them.
(Theory defitition 1): "supposition" or "hunch". This is the use in the sentence "If my theory is correct, then..." This is the meaning that creationists usually think they are arguing against. But in science, it is never correct to use theory in this sense, though even scientists speaking casually often use it like that. The correct word for this in science is "hypothesis". It is certainly not the correct definition for the phrase "the theory of evolution".
(Theory definition 2): "a description of a process that explains observed facts". These vary in their degree of supportability, and sometimes, multiple warring theories are supported to different degrees by existing experiment. For example, there are at the moment multiple theories about what process gives matter mass. Examples: The theory that matter is atomic, i.e. not continuously divisible. The theory that natural selection coupled with variation leads to evolution. The theory that particles have mass because of their interaction with the Higgs field.
(Theory definition 3): "a body of knowledge and understanding that supports much other past and future work"; it describes an entire framework of internally consistent principles, understanding and data. Meanings used in this sense:
* Atomic theory (the understanding of the structure of the atom and it's constituent particles and interactions that underlies all of nuclear science and chemistry)
* Evolutionary theory (the understanding of how organisms and species give rise to one another, and the genetic mechanisms thereof that underlies all of biology)
It's instructive to note that evolutionary theory and atomic theory are approximately equivalent in terms of evidentiary support and use in their fields. Both arose as type-2 definitions around the same time (mid 19th-century), supplanting prior theories (matter is continuous, God created all organisms at one time and they have been unchanged since then). Both have since then become into type 3 theories that completely underly the relevant fields (chemistry, biology).
Religious fundamentalists don't understand the difference between these definitions, and they think evolution is a "type 1" theory, more properly called a hypothesis. It is not. Evolution is the entire framework of over a century of biological research. Attempting to understand research in biology while rejection evolution is like attempting to understand chemistry while rejecting the atom. Or attempting to understand higher math while rejecting arithmetic. It's flat-out ludicrous.
(This is a repost of my statement from the last time we had this debate. [slashdot.org] I will keep reposting it, hoping to educate a few people eventually.)
I think the point is that he's supposed to talk up his love for everybody, but in secret only loves the ones that suck up to him. That's why animals have such a rough go of it, they aren't smart enough to brown nose the one way that really counts.
Well, at least their prospects for selling it look rosy. I'm sure a member of the large "creationist fossil hunters with lots of money to burn" community will come to bail them out.
Indeed. If you ever have the perverse pleasure of debating with a creationist, the first thing you need to discover is what it is exactly that he/she understands by the term "evolution". If you're scientifically literate at all, I can guarantee you that 99% of the time you'll be amazed and discouraged by what you're dealing with. These are people who are not necessarily stupid, but rather something worse than that: willfully and intransigently ignorant. It can be like arguing with a toddler.
Typically, they think that "evolution" means that a monkey got pregnant one day and out popped a human baby. They think that a theory in science (as in "just a theory") is an idle speculation that just shot out of some scientist's ass and beat out competing theories in a popularity contest. Their faith requires them to believe without question what they are taught by their parents and religious authorities, and so the notions of reason and sceptical inquiry carry zero weight with them.
There's a multitude of them, they're refractory to reason, and they vote. They are also easily manipulated by unscrupulous politicians who don't give squat about their beliefs but are willing to pander to them to enhance their own power.
This circus is going to go on for a long, long time.
Creationism in Europe? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Creationism in Europe? (Score:5, Informative)
The church in many European countries is busy trying to show that if the Bible is read like it is supposed to (i.e. not taken literally) it really does correspond with the scientific findings. 7 days for god is obviously some billion years for man they tell you and they take it from there, showing how through metaphors the scientific facts known to us were hidden in the text.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Creationism in Europe? (Score:5, Informative)
No, they didn't. The modern, and very flawed, Evangelical movement was kicked into high gear by some power-hungry madmen by the names of Dwight L. Moody and Cyrus Ingerson Scofield. Moody had a big effect on the British and Irish, actually, promoting their crazed movement there, too.
* I'm a Protestant-leaning Christian, but definitely not of the Evangelical nature. Sadly, most of my friends and family are still under the sway of the madness called the modern Evangelical movement. I also have a soon-to-be-published book (electronic as well) that I'd love to share with slashdot readers who are interested in why it is time for Christianity to take a new direction.
Parent
Re:Creationism in Europe? (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Re:Creationism in Europe? (Score:4, Interesting)
One view supports evolution. The other does not. However both are Creationist views.
Parent
Re:Creationism in Europe? (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Creationism in Europe? (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Creationism in Europe? (Score:5, Informative)
Pope Benedict believes in evolution [dailymail.co.uk].
Parent
Re:Insecure much? (Score:4, Insightful)
Fortunately, no.
There are many intelligent, smart, wise people who believe in God. Thing is, for them faith always gives up to reason, never in opposite direction. You believe in things you don't know, you aren't certain. If science explains something, you adapt your faith to accept the fact, you don't deny it to keep that part of faith running.
You may believe that the first string of DNA that created the first living cell was created by an intelligent being. Thing is there's a lot of ways to mix bases of DNA code, just like slamming on the keyboard randomly, but getting a working self-replicating program by slamming on the keyboard randomly, well, that's a lot of slamming and what is more likely, that it happened randomly, or that it was created? We can't estimate the chance of random creation of such a string within several orders of magnitude, so it leaves room for faith: it might have been created this way. If you look at the amazing properties of electromagnetic waves, how simple rules create such amazing results, you think 'How could such rules come to be? Why is electromagnetism the way it is, so possiblity-rich and yet so simple in its essence?' and you think it would take quite a wise mind to invent such a thing... if it could be invented. Again, room for faith, never certainty, but elements of unknown.
But if you hear bones of dinosaurs were dug into the ground some 4000 years ago to confuse us, sorry. No matter how much you believe in God, with a bit of criticism, you say "bullshit".
Parent
Re:Creationism in Europe? (Score:4, Funny)
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Quick.... (Score:5, Funny)
Texas and Kentucky... (Score:4, Funny)
The Market Speaks! (Score:3, Insightful)
I can't even begin to count the billions of hours wasted by Christians in living life in ways completely counter to what our God teaches us. Look at the battle over the 10 Commandments, laws of the Israelites' God that have been countermanded by Christ's teaching to a much more simpler set of rules (completely love God first, completely love others second). And yet, when we dig deeper into the "Why" of modern Christian thought, we come up against the same problem that I see in those who are pro-government: we need "leaders" and we need "rules" and we need "penalties" to keep us in line.
What has happened to the powerful individual in today's society? Evolution versus creationism is a debate that strikes at the heart of my question: why is it that we need "teacher-leaders" to stick to a specific standard, rather than what the individual kid in a unique place in their specific city/society needs to be taught? I can't even understand why science is taught to ALL children, along with higher level maths, when the kids today can barely count, let alone read or speak properly. I had a 20-something in my town use a calculator at a checkout line 2 weeks ago when I gave her $21.01 for a $6.06 charge. Unbelievable.
Creationism and evolution are both articles of faith, and really have no purpose for MOST students. Then again, I truly believe that even High School is worthless for 70% of society considering what it is churning out.
Re:The Market Speaks! (Score:5, Insightful)
You start off sounding like a very reasonable person, and then end with that.
You have faith in something you cannot prove. Like the existence of a god.
There is tons of evidence for evolution and none against it so no "faith" is required. Or is gravity an article of faith too, because you never know, one day something might fall upwards?!
Parent
Re:The Market Speaks! (Score:5, Insightful)
the biologist, all views are open for debate and can be overturned
at any time. All it takes is for a "better idea" to come along.
You are attempting to conflate "faith" with "trust".
Faith is based on wishful thinking where as trust is based on experience.
Clinging to your religious view in the face of the current scientific
consensus is the perfect example of this distinction.
Creationism simply isn't that "better idea". Infact, it is what Evolution
REPLACED when it originally came along as the "better idea". It's history.
It belongs alongside the idea that you grow mice by combining scraps of
clothing and grains of wheat.
Parent
Re:The Market Speaks! (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:The Market Speaks! (Score:4, Insightful)
To start with: I'm not a Christian, but I find some theological topics like this interesting.
To me, it would make sense to say that the fall is as literal as Adam. The fall comes hand in hand with free will; if free will appeared as a gradual process through evolution, then so too was the fall a gradual process.
This makes sense from other perspectives as well -- we treat young children as innocent, even if their actions by an informed party would be wrong. As they grow older, they become more responsible for their actions, and so (if you're the type who believes in "sin") more capable of sin. It's not an instant process; we'll be more lenient with a 10-year-old than a 20-year-old, but we still expect them to understand right and wrong for the most part. If you're willing to take other parts of the Bible as metaphorical, I see no contradiction in taking the fall and original sin and the Eden story as allegorical for slow processes that came with the evolution of free will.
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Re:The Market Speaks! (Score:4, Interesting)
The way I look at it, the "fall" was not a one-time event that blighted the rest of us. It was, and is, and will continue to be, an over-and-over event that blights each of us individually. "Adam" is not an historical figure, but an allegorical one, a representative of our human nature.
We are human, and fallible. Not one of us makes it through life (or probably even through the day) without making some serious error of judgment that wounds another person, whether deliberately or thoughtlessly. Those errors are the things we need to atone for: our deliberately hurtful deeds, our thoughtlessness. No one is immune from this; it is a necessary consequence of our free will.
And in most cases, I think we cannot really make up for the wrong we have done. The errors create wounds that are beyond our power to heal. Yet in a just universe, evil requires an expiation.
As I see it, Christ's death provided that expiation. The salvation of Jesus is offered freely, as a pure gift -- nothing expected of us in return, except to say, "I accept." Without that acceptance, the expiation for the evil I have done then falls on myself.
(DISCLAIMER: Please understand, it's not my intent to proselytize or start a debate. I only expressed my view because the parent asked for an answer. I'm not saying that this is THE answer. I'm saying that this is AN answer, and one that I can live with. If your life, logic, and understanding have led you to a different conclusion about the world -- a different relationship with God, a different God or set of Gods, or no God at all -- and so long as you are harming no others, I won't presume to say that your view should be the same as mine. Go in peace.)
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God will... (Score:3, Funny)
The KY Creation museum (Score:4, Interesting)
Teh funnay (Score:5, Funny)
Obviously a fake. (Score:5, Funny)
I've been to it. (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Evolution is a theory too (Score:5, Informative)
Some resemblence to the facts we can find in nature.
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Re:Evolution is a theory too (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Evolution is a theory too (Score:5, Insightful)
Sexuality. Other religions.
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Re:Evolution is a theory too (Score:5, Funny)
And don't forget world 36 on Super Mario Brothers. That one can be pretty tricky if you don't know what to expect.
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Re:Evolution is a theory too (Score:4, Insightful)
Logic?
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Re:Evolution is a theory too (Score:4, Funny)
English
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Re:Evolution is a theory too (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually, interesting that you bring up gravity. Last time I checked, we *still* have no clue what the heck gravity is. How it acts at such great distances and such. We can describe it mathematically (G m1 m2 / d^2), but we don't really know the reason for it. Why is it that this works? How can it act apparently instantly across great distances that even photons can't reach as quickly?
Perhaps your smart-ass answer isn't far off - it's God's will. Whatever it is, we do not thoroughly understand it. All we can do is take advantage of it (through mathematics).
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Re:Evolution is a theory too (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Evolution is a theory too (Score:4, Insightful)
My take on it? Creationism per se is bunk, and evolution is the best theory I've seen to explein how God went about growing this wonderous universe.
Yes, I know it's heresy to admit being a Christian [kuro5hin.org] at slashdot, where athiesm is the site relgion and its proponents will stone with mod points anyone who dares believe that God exists, so mod me down. Arguing the existance of God with an athiest is like arguing the existance of red with a blind man.
You're an athiest because God wants you to be an athiest. "All we are is dust in the wind" - Kansas.
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Re:Evolution is a theory too (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Evolution is a theory too (Score:5, Insightful)
I would also suggest that the argument analogy you presented is inaccurate and misleading, as most analogies often are. Such topics cannot be summed up or dumbed down in such simplistic manners. Case in point, the popular "let me explain this as a car" analogy given so often on Slashdot. Your analogy presents a pre-determined supposition that God does indeed exist, which is the point of the argument in the first place, yes?
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Re:Evolution is a theory too (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Evolution is a theory too (Score:5, Insightful)
Evolution makes predictions that are accurate enough to be useful, regardless of whether is it aboslutely true or not. (For the record: It's as true as anything we've ever come up with.)
Creationism makes no predictions. In fact, it prevents them: Why did this happen? God did it. Will it happen again? If God wants it to. Will it stop? If God gets bored. Can we influence it? If God decides to be influenced, yes. In the end, 'God' is unknowable and unexplainable, so by saying God did it we have stopped all thought, inquiry, or prediction on the topic.
Which is probably why it is attractive to some people: They don't want to think.
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Re:Evolution is a theory too (Score:5, Interesting)
At some point, we may become so advanced, technologically, that there is nothing curently living which is beyond our ability to recreate in a laboratory setting. How would one determine what occurs naturally and what was created? There will be lots of legal issues related to "accident of nature" or "industrial accident" related to when created things go bad, and how to prove they were created versus just having occurred by themselves.
To some extent, this is us "playing God" with nature. Somewhere down the road, a wholly "created" being will gain consciousness, evolve some (if left alone long enough), then wonder where he came from. Then they will have the same argument we are having now.
I'm no fan of ID as having "scientific" merit. But it does have philosophical merit. And some of the thought experiments make my head hurt.
(Posting Anon, because I don't like to discuss my personal politics or religion in public.)
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Re:Evolution is a theory too (Score:5, Informative)
Books used to be copied by scribes, and (despite a lot of care) sometimes typos would be introduced. Later scribes, making copies of copies, would introduce other typos. It's possible to look at the existing copies and put them into a 'family tree'. "These copies have this typo, but not that one; this other group has yet another typo, though three of them have a newer typo as well, not seen elsewhere..." This is not controversial at all when dealing with books, including the Bible.
Now, this process of copy-with-modification naturally produces 'family trees', nested groups. When we look at life, we find such nested groups. No lizards with fur or nipples, no mammals with feathers, etc. Living things (at least, multicellular ones[1]) fit into a grouped hierarchy. This has been solidly recognized for over a thousand years, and systematized for centuries. It was one of the clues that led Darwin to propose evolution.
Now, more than a century later, we find another tree, one Darwin never suspected - that of DNA. This really is a "text" being copied with rare typos. And, as expected, it also forms a family tree, a nested hierarchy. And, with very very few surprises, it's the same tree that was derived from looking at physical traits.
It didn't have to be that way. Even very critical genes for life - like that of cytochrome C - have a few neutral variations, minor mutations that don't affect its function. But we find a tree of mutations that fits evolution precisely, instead of some other tree. Wheat engineered to use the mouse form of cytochrome C grows just fine. (Imagine if a tree derived from bookbinding technology - "this guy used this kind of glue, but this other bookbinder used a different glue..." - conflicted with a tree that was derived from typos in the text of the books. We'd know at least one tree and maybe both were wrong.)
The details of these trees are very specific and very, very numerous. There are billions of quadrillions of possible trees... and yet the two that we see (DNA and morphology) happen to very precisely match. This is either a staggering coincidence, or a Creator deliberately arranged it in a misleading manner, or... common ancestry is actually true.
[1] Single-celled organisms are much more 'promiscuous' in their reproduction and spread genes willy-nilly without respect for straightforward inheritance. With single-celled creatures, it looks more like a 'web' of life than a 'tree'. But even if the 'tree' of life has tangled roots, it's still very definitely a tree when it comes to multicellular life.
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Re:Evolution is a theory too (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:Evolution is a theory too (Score:5, Informative)
From the BioTech Life Science Dictionary: theory definition:"In science, an explanation for some phenomenon which is based on observation, experimentation, and reasoning. In popular use, a theory is often assumed to imply mere speculation, but in science, something is not called a theory until it has been confirmed over the course of many independent experiments."
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Re:Evolution is a theory too (Score:5, Insightful)
What possible prediction can anyone make from Creationism?
Evolution predicts that since all living things on the planet share DNA, then medical research using animals should produce useful medical procedures for humans.
When you cut someone open, it's not full of clay.
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Creationists don't understand the word Theory (Score:5, Informative)
(Theory defitition 1): "supposition" or "hunch". This is the use in the sentence "If my theory is correct, then
(Theory definition 2): "a description of a process that explains observed facts". These vary in their degree of supportability, and sometimes, multiple warring theories are supported to different degrees by existing experiment. For example, there are at the moment multiple theories about what process gives matter mass. Examples: The theory that matter is atomic, i.e. not continuously divisible. The theory that natural selection coupled with variation leads to evolution. The theory that particles have mass because of their interaction with the Higgs field.
(Theory definition 3): "a body of knowledge and understanding that supports much other past and future work"; it describes an entire framework of internally consistent principles, understanding and data. Meanings used in this sense:
* Atomic theory (the understanding of the structure of the atom and it's constituent particles and interactions that underlies all of nuclear science and chemistry)
* Evolutionary theory (the understanding of how organisms and species give rise to one another, and the genetic mechanisms thereof that underlies all of biology)
It's instructive to note that evolutionary theory and atomic theory are approximately equivalent in terms of evidentiary support and use in their fields. Both arose as type-2 definitions around the same time (mid 19th-century), supplanting prior theories (matter is continuous, God created all organisms at one time and they have been unchanged since then). Both have since then become into type 3 theories that completely underly the relevant fields (chemistry, biology).
Religious fundamentalists don't understand the difference between these definitions, and they think evolution is a "type 1" theory, more properly called a hypothesis. It is not. Evolution is the entire framework of over a century of biological research. Attempting to understand research in biology while rejection evolution is like attempting to understand chemistry while rejecting the atom. Or attempting to understand higher math while rejecting arithmetic. It's flat-out ludicrous.
(This is a repost of my statement from the last time we had this debate. [slashdot.org] I will keep reposting it, hoping to educate a few people eventually.)
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Re: (Score:3)
Re:Evolution is a theory too (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:Difficult Decision (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:wha? (Score:5, Funny)
'If it sells, well, then we can come another day,' Come again?
I think that means his wife is cutting him off until he gets that damned thing out of the house.
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Re:wha? (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:Definitional clarity, please (Score:5, Insightful)
Typically, they think that "evolution" means that a monkey got pregnant one day and out popped a human baby. They think that a theory in science (as in "just a theory") is an idle speculation that just shot out of some scientist's ass and beat out competing theories in a popularity contest. Their faith requires them to believe without question what they are taught by their parents and religious authorities, and so the notions of reason and sceptical inquiry carry zero weight with them.
There's a multitude of them, they're refractory to reason, and they vote. They are also easily manipulated by unscrupulous politicians who don't give squat about their beliefs but are willing to pander to them to enhance their own power.
This circus is going to go on for a long, long time.
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