Calia has an interesting way of twisting things around. After studying the Bible for several decades, I’ve come to the opposite conclusion: religions are the societal programming. Why did Yahweh spend so much time meddling in the affairs of two little kingdoms on the East coast of the Mediterranean? Read the Ten Commandments or the book of Leviticus, especially chapters 11-15 regarding laws differentiating between the clean and the unclean, for a direct look at the actual code of the societal “programming.” Note that this has been replaced, at least partially, with secular laws. Large clusters of humans seem incapabable of surviving without societal programming, religious or not.

I also reject the notion that people prior to Darwin somehow saw things in a truer form than we do now. If they did, then its a shame that we’re still not burning witches in Salem. If witches back then were “brashly evident,” then by Calia’s logic, witches exist.

Concerning the quotes by famous people, only one contains a testable argument. Newton’s objection is easily dispensed with by countering with the Anthropic Principle.

Calia is right in saying that there is no proof for evolution. Nothing whatsoever can be proven, only disproven. As such, there will never be any proof that God exists. But there is certainly plenty of evidence in favor of evolution; many creationists have given up arguing that currently existing species can’t evolve, only that evolution can’t create species ex nihilo in the first place. Evolution doesn’t always result “in improvement and advancement.” This statement reveals that Calia doesn’t know enough about evolution to argue for or against it.

It has been a while since I seriously studied Evolution, but the last time I looked in to the theory, I found it seriously laking in the areas of the origin of life. This to me is different then the origin of species. Its one thing to say man evolved from ape or birds evolved from dinosaurs. Quite another to say life came from non-life. I am not a proponent of creationism, but I can understand why so many people still reject evolution as showing there is no need for God. For me, it would take just as much faith to believe in the orgin of life theory espoused by evolution, as it would to believe in creation.

Also, to compare evolution to relativity or atomic theory doesn’t work for me. Usually if something can be shown using math, I am much more willing to accept that theory as the best truth we can know now. No body of evidence presented by evolution has so persuaded me.

Your point that evolution and religion are both matters of faith is to some extent understandle and true.

Not wanting to start a detailed thread, it seems to me that the way people look at it is that: evolution does’nt really explain stuff, so God must have made it.

And in a sense evolution does’nt prove anything. As you mention, biologists are’nt going to be able to provide a verifiable proof for evolution. And lots of things are unexplained. My question then is – what is the need to ‘pass the buck’ to something equally vague (existance of God) rather than accept that we don’t know and hopefully we will learn more in the future.

It seems to me that this approach remains true to the spirit of scientific enquiry. Accept what we dont know but work towards finding answers. Not passing the buck.

It seems to happen quite often these days that spokesmen for one or another of society’s interests will claim to hold the exclusive keys to the “Truth”. Having defined this “Truth”, the authors then expound upon the way things ought to be.

The groups of thought that can be called “Science” and “Religion” are undoubtedly the two largest belief systems in the world competing to define “Truth”. As the largest, they are usually considered to the exclusion of all others.

In the end, what both try to do is categorize the things we see, hear, think and do to explain the world around us. They are tools. Both are very effective in their specific arenas of expertise, with Science dominating the questions of ‘how’, and Religion holding the upper hand in that of ‘why’.

Tools are extremely useful, as anyone who has tried to fix anything will probably know. What they don’t do is give us any *universally* special insight into the nature of what it is we are working with.

That last sentence will probably raise a lot of objections, but it’s important to understand that having intimate knowledge (whether Religious or Scientific) of a thing doesn’t make it any more or less of what it is. Just because I know a tree is a multicellular, autotrophic organism, or that only God could make it, or that it’s a “Weeping Willow”, doesn’t mean I have any exclusive “Truth” about the tree. Someone could just as easily come along and declare it “beautiful” or “what’s been clogging the #$%! sewer main”.

All of these are labels, and many can be applied at the same time, but they are all tools that categorize the thing for whatever purpose we have of addressing the object. The tree is not merely a composite of all of the things that we can make to describe it, as its existence does not depend upon us making labels for it.

In the end, I would agree with Calia’s conclusions. Go out and experience the universe in its breathtaking complexity and its tear-jerking simplicity. Experience it, if you can, not just as a Scientist, or an Artist, or a Methodist, but as free from any labels and preconceived notions as you can possibly be. Only in the absence of what we think we already know can we see what we didn’t allow ourselves to before.

to provoke further inquiry and study. We often ask “was < place your favorite physical scientist here >  wrong?” in order to start an investigation into some prediction or other of their theory. Specifically, we look to find the exception that disproves the rule, leading us to a better knowledge of the domain.

For example, we’ve recently measured the predicted frame-dragging by the Earth. Quite the story there, certainly.

I am often amazed at the willingness of scientists who otherwise accept the approach that new data should cause a re-evaluation of the theory to ignore the basic tenets of science when discussing evolution.

Signs of human activity, and even anatomically modern humans are often uncovered among evidence that clearly and unambiguously places them hundreds of millions of years in the past.

“Hogwash” you say? “Impossible”? Please don’t take my word for it. I certainly would not.

However, I can recommend a good starting point. The book “Forbidden Archeology” does an excellent job of cataloging these sorts of artifacts.

Yes. Many of the artifacts are simply eye-witness accounts, some of them are hand-draw representations, others are photographic. But then again, I’ve never had the pleasure of meeting Homo-Neanderthalis in person.

(Notwithstanding, there is an excellent statue of a homonid that is clearly “neanderthal-cradling-a-child” in the Sechelt Tribe Musuem in Sechelt, British Columbia. Called “Sechelt man” locally, it is dated at 2000(!) years old. Yet the body shape and features are obviously neanderthal.)

Was Messr. Darwin wrong? We may never find out unless and until we are willing to first accept that disturbing and significant exceptions to the theory are frequently un-Earthed and second, are willing to apply the highest of scientific ethics and inquiry to the investigation of those artifacts. Only through our willingness to follow the data will we ever truly vindicate, or abandon if that is the case, the still immature and relatively unchallenged theory of evolution.

Good points, every last one of them.  

The Evolutionists that I happen to know personally, seem to think that evolution ought to be a closed question.  And that is why it is good to keep it open in spite of what people tend to say.  

In the end, legit. critical thinking only works well if one is equally skeptical of his own motivations and conclusions as he is of others who do not agree with him.

cal

“I also reject the notion that people prior to Darwin somehow saw things in a truer form than we do now. If they did, then its a shame that we’re still not burning witches in Salem. If witches back then were “brashly evident,” then by Calia’s logic, witches exist.”

Darwin said in the “Descent of Man” something to the effect that women had “lesser powers of intellect and imagination than men” etc. This demonstrates that not every faulty pattern of thinking should be directly attributed to current adherents of the similar philosophies.  

Or should they?

We, as a civilization, are far more distracted with multitudes of things that demand our attention than people from 100- 300 years ago were.   How do you know that you see things more objectively than persons from ages ago?  I.e., what do you have to compare it to?    

Hard to believe the number is that high and that constant. As a child, I marveled how the different religious people I met were hypocrits, did not understand “basic” science as they maintained their beliefs (eg–sentient life is almost “unavoidable” given the right mix of inert material available===organic soup, methane, electricity===its been demonstrated in the lab===get with it!!!), how each group maintained they were right and everyone else was wrong, that knowing other groups felt the same way but with a different God gave them no second thoughts, and how 95% of people had the same religion as their parents (ie purely a sociological phenomenon!).

A bit older now, these first insights haven’t changed at all—still valid. Now a few layers. A month ago I read a saying that paraphrased was that I came to be an atheist by using the same procedure you used to reject all the Gods but yours, and then I added one more. Funny and Deep! Just last week I read a web article from a “Darwinian” Belief ideology that made sense. Children that do what they are told to do have a greater chance of survival than children who don’t. The sociological phenomenon with more of a scientific basis.

Most people that object to one aspect or another of a “scientific” position because “it doesn’t make sense” don’t apply the same rigorous analysis to their own religious position. In fact though, religious positions don’t “explain” anything. Religions address morality and the afterlife–nothing “real.” If you want to know how to build a tower, study scientifically because what works has been discovered by trial and error. Think prayer works? Go pray. When it does work, believe it anyway. That’s religion–doing what our parents told us.

Finally, I asked my christian (ex) girlfriend what you called a person who would reject “God” even if he did exist–ie–just because he exists, made the universe, and made me, and gave me my free will, my free will says “everybody” can just leave me alone. I don’t need any stinking badges.

Oh—her answer was “damned.” I thought that was pretty funny. bobbo.

One typo—its when prayer does NOT work.

One transition—life from inert materials has been demonstrated in the lab. “Logically” thinking life will flow eventually given enough time–although there is little proof of this yet.

One addendum–a thought experiment. Imagine a universe without God. How is it different than what you see today?

And I thought Einstein was clever with discovering relativity from thought experiments and not hard data.  Your last two sentences are brilliant and my new creed.

Cal?

“Looking in every direction, we humans beheld not only fantastic complexity, diversity and order, but also the supreme intelligence behind creation, as brashly evident as the noonday sun.”

Consider an ordinary snail shell. From experience (noting that snail shells stop growing once the snail inside is gone), one could objectively conclude that lowly snails grow snail shells. But to then also conclude that snails and snail shells were “designed” by some all-knowing, all-powerful being a long time ago is a subjective conclusion. The only way it could become objective is if God flashed before your eyes and demonstrated by creating a snail from god-spittle and a pile of sand.

It’s easy to forget that Darwin was still Christian. His attitude towards women was informed by the societal norms of his time, which in turn were heavily influenced by religion. Consider Leviticus 12:1-5, which says that a women giving birth to a daughter is unclean twice as long as when giving birth to a son. Belieiving that women are inferior because a bunch of ancient priests said so is subjective: concluding that they are not inferior because well-designed i.q. tests show little difference is objective.

I developed my thought experiment after reading several different comments all to the effect that “if God exists—you sure can’t tell” and that got me thinking along those lines. Of course, it is more of an argument than a proof, and no thought experiment is a proof of any kind.

I think the experiment is still prone to original bias. Adopting the bias of monotheism, I guess I could argue that if there was no God in the Universe then there would be no human desire to live a righteous life–ie, society would devolve into self possessed people not caring about their fellow man and virtue? I don’t think that’s true–but we are dealing with people who don’t admit the truth (evolution) of what is observable around them. 44 % !!!!!!! Thanks for your comment. Good website. bobbo.

Societal norms are no indictor of truth or the validity of Christianity.    And the odds that a guy who is a convinced Christian would work simultaneously to deconstruct its fundamental tenets is pretty poor, don’t you think?  However, if you are convinced that Darwin was a Christian, it is only reasonable to attribute both the good effects alongside the ones you might wish to blame it for.  

I also suspect that there is a deeper meaning to being “unclean”, if we’re willing to look further, so I’ll shall try to find out what it is by the time I get back from Texas a week or more from now.
Consider the following excerpt from link above:

“The seeds of change were actually sown in the 15th and 16th century by a few courageous reformers who dared to resist the corrupt religious establishment of their times. Willing to face persecution and death, men like Jan Hus (Bohemia – burned on the stake in 1415), John Calvin (Geneva – 1564), John Knox (Scotland – 1572) and John Foxe (England – 1587) chose to follow their conscience and teach the life-changing truths that would — by the 17th century — transform northern Europe.

Martin Luther led the way. As a Catholic priest, he had access to the Scriptures, and his Bible-based conscience could no longer tolerate the twisted doctrines of self-serving bishops nor their cruel exploitation of the poor. He knew that souls were saved by faith in Jesus Christ, not through forced “indulgences” and submission to oppressive human edicts. His rational challenge to the papacy (in 1518) birthed the Reformation and became a beacon of hope to those who longed to know the truth and live in freedom.

The surrounding culture didn’t change overnight. The first sprouts from the seeds of the Reformation were still too few to accomplish a change in public consciousness. Many of the early Protestant churches were too closely tied to established traditions and state alliances to freely demonstrate the Christian life. They needed time to study God’s Word, clarify the doctrines and define the unfamiliar terms. And their followers had to learn a lifestyle of faith that would resist and endure what the Encyclopedia Britannica called “savage persecution” involving the torture and death of “thousands of humble victims.”[4]

Their courage and commitment bore fruit. Persecution has always built faith rather than failure in God’s flock. As Tertullian said back in the 1st century AD, “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church.”

Ruled by the Spanish King Phillip II, whose deadly campaigns aimed to crush every rebel against his religious empire, Dutch believers faced the brunt of these deadly assaults. But in 1609 the Dutch Republic won independence from Spain. “Protestantism was now firmly established in the northern provinces,”[4] and throughout most of northern Europe.

By God’s grace, people in northern Europe were suddenly free to print and read the Bible, live by faith and follow their conscience. A century later, the evangelistic zeal that spread God’s truth and love throughout Europe began to cross seas and continents to reach the earth’s most distant lands and oppressed people.

In the wake of this mission movement which grew quickly in the 19th century, nations were transformed. You might argue that financial exploiters and many colonial leaders served human greed and ambition. That’s true. But faithful Christian missionaries did the opposite. They gave all they had — comforts, security, health… in order to share God’s love. Facing all kinds of dangers, they built hospitals, schools and churches in distant lands. And as they spread God’s truths, moral standards and respect for human life, the world changed. The global slave trade ended,[5] human violence ebbed, kindness and civility grew and travelers no longer feared for their lives.  

Christianity had taught men to protect, not abuse, women. So in 1912, when the passengers of the sinking Titanic climbed into a limited number of lifeboats, “women and children came

first.” You may recall more recent ship and ferry accidents in which men trampled the women in their path in order to save their own lives. But when the Titanic hit the iceberg, most of the men demonstrated self-sacrificing kindness and old-fashioned chivalry:

    “Lifeboats were quickly made ready and women and children were ordered to get into them first. There were 12 honeymooning couples on board the ship. Though all of the brides were saved, only one of the grooms survived.” “While ‘Unsinkable’ Titanic Sank, John Harper Preached”

Today, we still reap the benefits of a violent world pacified by the spread Christianity. But we also see a reversal of that tide that first flooded Europe with truth. Many powerful leaders — religious as well as political — are determined to snuff out the light of God’s Word. And the new global education and human resource development systems are designed to  replace the personal freedom we have in Christ with a collective society based on religious pluralism and global idealism. Aware of the rising wave of violence in schools and communities, they ban the only viable solution. [See Psalm 127:1 and Isaiah 30:15]  

Sure

I need to run out the door and down the road in a few, so this is about all I could get to.  Read it carefully tho.  

Thanks a bunch for re-posting the matrix stuff.  Have a nice week, Ricky.  :)

Good comments and solid reflections throughout this post. Too many threads to respond to “all” of them, but a few caught my attention:

1. In fact, we live in an existential universe—one that only has the meaning that we (thinking creatures) give it. All the leap frogging straw man general conclusions that we look at the world with wonder, or with a matrix of scientific chance calculations are only examples of noncognizant projection. The universe “is” and we observe it including our own observations.

2. Ricky on his original post and several others emphasize that “the theory” has substantial proof. How much proof does one need to establish a theory as a fact? Whatever that level is, The Theory of Evolution has reached the level of established fact. I backtrack and add that the theory that life evolved from inert material and continues to evolve today is proven. Whether or not this is “exclusively” done by genetic mutations and the selection of better adapted genes over lesser adapted genes and whatever other filigrees (ie punctuatied verses gradualism and other ornaments) one wants to decorate the theory with are only refinements to the basic FACT of evolution. Once you start to reject Evolution, you start unravelling the entire field of science/knowledge/progress. Its simple—without evolution then there has always been life on earth. That means earth is not the product of the heavier elements born from supernova atleast two times repeated? This would negate the observed expansion of the universe, the big bang and so forth. The “truth” of the universe is woven into a single fabric that encompasses each thread. (((Now I would like to know how “science” estimates the big bang started from a clump of matter the size of <<you fill it in>>.))

3. Anyone who disagrees with the above is really joining the flat earth society. You know, the earth is not flat but it is also not round. It is in fact oval in shape. A quibble you correctly say. So are all the distractions and opposing “facts” regarding the conclusion unavoidable today that evolution is a fact.

4. Am I being close minded? Yes I am. I “believe” the world is round because the evidence has accumulated, it is consistent with all the other accumulated accepted evidence, and I can’t even imagine a different much less better explanation.

I was prompted to add the above after reading the following—one more quibble defeated.

http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99996607Fish fossil

18:00 03 November 04

Land vertebrates can breathe through their noses thanks to an anatomical rearrangement of fish-style nostrils. That same rearrangement may explain why cleft lips and cleft palates are common birth defects in humans.

The nasal passages of land vertebrates differ dramatically from their fish ancestors. In fishes, the nose is independent of the mouth and throat. Water enters the nasal sac through one pair of nostrils and exits through a second pair.

By contrast, land vertebrates – technically known as tetrapods, because of their four limbs – have nasal passages that open to the outside world through a pair of external nostrils, and to the throat through a pair of internal nostrils or choanae.

Many biologists suspect the choanae evolved from one pair of fish nostrils that migrated over millions of years to a new position inside the throat. To do that, however, the nostrils would have had to cross through the line of teeth at some point, a move that sceptics regarded as unlikely.

Their doubts should vanish, thanks to a careful reconstruction of several fossilised skulls of the most primitive known ancestor of tetrapods, a fish known as Kenichthys campbelli, from Yunnan, China. In Kenichthys, the second pair of nostrils opens neither externally nor internally, but directly into a gap in the row of teeth (Nature, vol 432, p 94).

It’s as if we were to have a nostril located on the upper jaw margin between the canine and the adjacent incisor,” says Per Ahlberg of Uppsala University in Sweden, who did the study with Min Zhu of the Chinese Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP) in Beijing.

In short, Kenichthys is a perfect intermediate, says John Maisey, a vertebrate palaeontologist at the American Museum of Natural History in New York.

Developing human embryos have a gap in the same place in the upper jaw, which later fuses. If it fails to fuse, the result is a cleft palate or cleft lip. Most likely, then, these birth defects arise from the same developmental process that gave us the ability to breathe through our noses, says Ahlberg.

Bob Holmes

“Today, we still reap the benefits of a violent world pacified by the spread Christianity.” Hmmmm…. What country started World Wars I and II? Germany, a Christian country, the birthplace of your vaunted Martin Luther. Which country bears the distinction of being the only one to have ever used atomic bombs on civilian populations?

And despite having read the entire piece, I see no evidence that Christianity was responsible for lifting the place of women. For one thing, why did it take two millenia to occur?

“Aware of the rising wave of violence in schools and communities… ” You’re very wrong here. There was a precipitous drop in crime rates in the 90’s. Now that Bush is president, they’re going back up, but they’re still relatively low (was Clinton more Christian than Bush?). Your belief is clouding your common sense.

Anyway, I haven’t seen anything objective you’ve written yet. Keep trying.

… especially of his own conclusions

barakn:

I’d be glad to give you info on what it means (in the typological sense) to be “unclean”, but I have concerns that you might not understand this well enough to apply the information in the manner that it was intended.(even Solomon did not understand it)  So we could get back to addressing Darwin’s missteps, unless of course you’re brave enough to look sincerely at the deeper and more difficult issues.

ANSWERING OBJECTIONS TO CREATION SCIENCE

EVIDENCE FOR CREATION?  

TELEOLOGICAL ARGUMENT

IS FAITH REASONABLE?  

THEISTIC EVOLUTION AND THE GOSPEL

ARE CHRISTIANS JUDGMENTAL AND UNLOVING?

Here are a eight links to some pretty dramatic stuff and links to their associated home pages where you can find out more…

Whale Evolution/Cetacean Evolution (Atavistic Hind Limbs on Modern Whales)

http://edwardtbabinski.us/whales/

from

Edward T Babinski

http://edwardtbabinski.us/

Smooth Change in the Fossil Record

http://www.don-lindsay-archive.org/creation/fossil_series.html

from

Don Lindsay Archive

http://www.don-lindsay-archive.org/

Transitional Fossil Species

http://www.origins.tv/darwin/transitionals.htm

from

Darwinians and Evolution

http://www.origins.tv/darwin/indexpage.htm

Observed Instances of Speciation

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-speciation.html

from

The Talk.Origins Archive

http://www.talkorigins.org/

Some More Observed Speciation Events

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/speciation.html

(Homepage given above)

Ring Species: Unusual Demonstrations of Speciation

http://www.actionbioscience.org/evolution/irwin.html

from

Action Bioscience.Org

http://www.actionbioscience.org/

The Evolution Evidence Page (homepage for website)

http://www.gate.net/~rwms/EvoEvidence.html

The Fossil Record: Evolution or “Scientific Creation”

http://www.gcssepm.org/special/cuffey_05.htm

from

GCSSEPM Special Interests

http://www.gcssepm.org/special/

Today, anyone with a connection to the internet who knows how to use Google can find plenty of evidence for macroevolution without much work.

A bit of advice: you are going to find polite people who are curious about whether there is any evidence for macroevolution, or for the evolution of so-called irreducibly complex features of life, etc.. Such people should be taken at face value — they are hoping that someone in a forum knows a little more than they do about a given topic and will have the information readily available.

As for people who argue that there is no evidence for one or another aspect of evolutionary theory, the most polite interpretation, particularly in the age of the internet — is that they simply haven’t looked. In either case, it is a good idea to have a collection of links to post — readily available — which includes a variety of websites. For macroevolution, you might want to start with the list I gave above, order and add to it as you see fit, and remove links when you find better ones.

Then when either kind of post appears, you are ready to provide some pretty impressive information. Oftentimes, when responding to some Young Earth Creationist, Old Earth Creationist, or advocate of one or another form of Intelligent Design Theory, writers will only have the time or space to cover the broad principles, if that. They won’t have the time or space to provide a good number of examples of the evidence. But if you have some links handy, you can quickly remedy that.

Incidentally, by all means, not all evolutionists are atheists. A good number are religious, but they do not permit their religious views to interfere with the quest for empirical knowledge. Here is one good example:

“Science and Religion” interview with Kenneth R. Miller

http://www.actionbioscience.org/evolution/miller.html

“It has been a while since I seriously studied Evolution, but the last time I looked in to the theory, I found it seriously laking in the areas of the origin of life”

If you had ever seriously studied evolution – or even read a basic definition – you would know it has nothing to do with the origin of life. Physicists don’t argue about the forces of gravity by talking about its origin.

Yes, evolution doesn’t talk about origins of life, it talks about origins of species…it could encompass origins if we started to get insights into how molecules first organised and replicated, however…