Christian Churches Celebrate Darwin's Birthday 1225
kthejoker writes "Today is the 197th anniversary of the great biologist Charles Darwin's birth. In response, some 450 Christian churches are celebrating Darwin's birth, saying, 'Darwin`s theory of biological evolution is compatible with faith and that Christians have no need to choose between religion and science.' There's also an interesting perspective on Darwinism and Christianity in the San Jose Mercury News."
Reminds me of The Naked Gun... (Score:3, Funny)
Blind Faith standing over Skepticism and to save face as the outline of the body of Truth lies floating in the Bay the reponse can only be...
Doonesbury? (Score:5, Funny)
Doc: Well, I'm afraid you have tuberculosis. I need to know, are you a creationist?
Patient: What does that have to do with anything?
D: Well, I could give you the drugs that would cure Tuberculosis as it was discovered in 1937, or the modern drugs that treat the disease as it has evolved into today.
P: What's so great about the modern drugs?
D: They're intelligently designed...
Re:Doonesbury? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Doonesbury? (Score:5, Funny)
1st frame: A guy is giving a presentation to the reader, with a slide projector screen behind him. He says: "God created Man in His image."
2nd frame: shows the picture of a caveman
3rd frame: Guy says "then man evolved. As for God, we don't know."
I liked it a lot
Problems for theistic evolutionists... (Score:5, Interesting)
Christian theistic evolutionists have got some very hairy questions to answer....
http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v18/i3/q
http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs2004/0112reje
http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v17/i4/t
http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v20/i1/t
Better questions for biblical literalists... (Score:5, Interesting)
If you say something to yourself similar to, "Obviously that part was allegory," then you have no leg to stand on. Either every single thing in it is literal (and the earth has four corners) or everything must be interpreted. Once everything must be interpreted, you cannot claim any sort of non-relativism.
Now, ask yourself these questions: Which bible do you read, and why? Do you think the Romans (who cannonized the Bible with their selected bishops in 313) were answering the call of God or politics? Why do you go to church on Sunday instead of the Sabbath, or Saturday? Why do most of the Christian holidays coincide exactly with pagan holidays that are centuries older?
If you're a Trinitarian, are non-trinitarians going to hell? What if you aren't baptised? Why do you think there are so many sects of Christianity if the bible is so crystal clear?
Holy fuck! Call in the Mythbusters! (Score:5, Funny)
Those sound like the kinds of questions that Adam and Jamie, the Mythbusters, need to be called in to answer!
Re:Holy fuck! Call in the Mythbusters! (Score:3, Funny)
A: What is a Holy fuck?
Alex Trebek appreciates that I put it in the form of a question.
Re:Better questions for biblical literalists... (Score:4, Insightful)
That's ridiculous! The Bible comes from a large number authors all who were in different time periods and different cultural contexts. And often we don't have the full context available to us.
For instance the story of Jonah is believed by biblical scholors to be a story that was told as an allegory. One of the reasons is because there's no other evidence that such a man even existed. The creation story is similar, there were no witnesses to the event, a primative culture with no modern scientific background drew upon existing stories to create their own. Notice that the creation stories of several civilizations at the time are very similar.
The Bible is first and foremost a guide on how to have a relationship with God and those parts are pretty clear IMHO. That's where the absolutes lie.
Which bible do you read, and why?
Any Bible that was translated from the original Greek and Hebrew which, believe it or not (for the "the Bible's been redone dozens of times!" camp) is most translations.
Do you think the Romans (who cannonized the Bible with their selected bishops in 313) were answering the call of God or politics?
I'm sure it was probably both.
Why do you go to church on Sunday instead of the Sabbath, or Saturday? Why do most of the Christian holidays coincide exactly with pagan holidays that are centuries older?
Same answer for both, they were Pagan traditions originally and used by the Catholic church. I've never really understood why in this day and time it even matters.
If you're a Trinitarian, are non-trinitarians going to hell? What if you aren't baptised?
Well I've read the Bible several times and I've never seen where it says non-trinitarians or people who aren't baptised are going to hell.
Why do you think there are so many sects of Christianity if the bible is so crystal clear?
I think there are lots of reasons, the rebellion against corruption, the twisting of scripture to gain power, just the ability to nit-pick. Ultimately religions are made up of people and people are far from perfect.
Re:Better questions for biblical literalists... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Better questions for biblical literalists... (Score:4, Interesting)
What better way to convert people than offer them alternative holidays so that instead of studying both the pagan version and the Christian version, they have to either merge them or choose one over the other? This page [about.com] offers some details. Be careful of criticizing something that you haven't researched (I found the site I just linked to by clicking on the first link of Google results with criteria "pagan christian holiday").
Have you ever heard of the literary device hyperbole? In any given literary work, not every word is to be taken "literally"; one must understand the word in context. Moreover, when reading interpreted works like the Bible, one must understand not only textual context, but cultural context. You make things out to be a lot simpler than they are, which leads me to believe that you're acting like stereotypical Creationists in spewing out the same thing over and over again.
I'm not even sure what you mean by relativism; I would call it the search for truth and claim that absolute truth exists (you cannot deny that absolute truth exists for everyone, only that it does not exist for you given your worldview). If you speak of "what's true for me isn't necessarily true for you," then great, are you going to violate the law set down by your country because it isn't true for you? I would try questioning more important things, like whether Christ died or just swooned; here is where you get into theologically imporant material. However, do your homework before you start making ignorant comments about it.
Knowing vs. believing (Score:4, Insightful)
One could always believe that evolution is just a tool in God's hands. That way it's possible to believe in intelligent design without denying facts, that Earth is older than a few thousands years, etc.
Religion is about believing, science is about knowing. They are not mutually exclusive.
Re:Knowing vs. believing (Score:3, Informative)
1) If God knows all causality, then he could have brought about everything into being originally AND have it, from science's view BE random and undetermined. The two are not mutally exclusive when God is the best pool player of all time, setting up the most elaborate shot of all time.
2) God could act via influencing things in ways that, due to quantum
"I'm not really good at this game..." (Score:4, Insightful)
God as a conman. Good one.
Re:Knowing vs. believing (Score:4, Interesting)
Unfortuantely, this idea of a "hidden determinism" is simply logically impossible, given what we currently know about quantum mechanics. Hidden variables simply don't work. And if you believe God can do the logically impossible, then there's really no reason to debate further, since you can literally believe anything.
But for those who believe that God, if he exists, must be constrained by logic, then hidden variable determinism is simply not possible.
2) God could act via influencing things in ways that, due to quantum outcomes, would indeed be like magic to us, and undetectable or testable (hence we can still believe in a God that does miracles)
Again, see above, but I suppose if one believes God's own actions are not deterministic, then he could influence everything via QM. But it's unclear how God could actually achieve any particular outcome; ultimately he'd be violating statistical properties that could be measured with enough sensitivity. But if we're talking about very small changes over eons, then it might be impossible to distinguish a God-influenced universe from simply a "luckier" one. See the Anthropic Principle for more thoughts along these lines. :)
3) Evolution itself has plenty of room for a valid new theology based on the idea that God would WANT life to be free of God's direct design. This is known as "liberation theology" and though many Catholics disdain it, it's perfectly plausible.
Actually, I don't think you meant "liberation" or "libertarian" theology, but simply so-called "liberal" theology, which is more of a fuzzy notion about God and theology where every viewpoint is potentially valid and all persons must engage in their own spiritual journey to find truths they and their community find seem to work for them within the context in which they live. In some ways, it's Protestantism to the extreme, although the irony is that modern Christian fundamentalism has Protestant roots, where the authority of the majority simply substitutes for that of the Pope when interpreting scripture. But I digress...
To get back to the notion that God has a teleological purpose in mind for man, well, I'm sure you know that's well-explored territory in postmodern Christianity (a form of liberal theology itself). But I feel it necessary to point out the conflict between God's omnipotence, Free Will, and the Existance of Evil. Unless one believes in the Actual Choice conception of Free Will (which seems unpalatable, if not illogical), then one of the above three has to give, and we know it's not Evil. And given that Free Will is an essential element to Liberal theology, it would seem that God's omnipotence, even within the logical realm, must be discarded, and in that case one has to question just to what extent God can influence the universe teleologically.
In retrospect, I got way more out of the Philosophy of Religion classes in college than I did from Calculus...
Bruce
Re:Knowing vs. believing (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Religion is also about knowing (Score:3, Insightful)
But these are feelings. "Feeling" that you are in love is automatically true, becaues feeling is just an expression of an experience. But "feeling" that a truth claim is accurate is not the same thing as it being true.
Totally wrong (Score:3, Informative)
Christian (and Islamic and Judaeic) dogma inevitably and logically results in fundamentalism and rejection of all secular (ie, rational) thought and belief. To think otherwise is to ignore the very scripture one claims to believe in.
(Long Now [longnow.org] has a great talk given by Harris available for free download in Ogg Vorbis or MP3)
Re:Totally wrong (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't need you, or Sam Harris, or my pastor, or the Pope to approve of my relationship with God. Thanks for asking, though.
Re:Totally wrong (Score:5, Interesting)
How funny, the papal Encyclica "Fides et Ratio" says otherwise.
I think your friend Harris is misunderstanding at least one point of christianity.
Re:Totally wrong (Score:4, Informative)
His argument, specifically, pretends that fundamentalist-literalist theology is the sum of all religion. In fact it's not, it's a minority.
The interesting thing is, there are two groups that like to pretend that this fundamentalist-literalist theology is the only form of valid religion - the fundamentalists themselves, for obvious reasons, and the doctrinaire atheists - because that form of religion is so very easy to criticise. It's utter nonsense, and can be quickly and conclusively shown to be utter nonsense to anyone not already commited to it. But it's far from the only form of religion.
It's perfectly possible for non-literalists to have faith in G_d without that contradicting scientific knowledge of evolution in any way.
Re:Totally wrong (Score:3, Insightful)
'Bout Time... (Score:4, Interesting)
After all, a true person of faith would encourage science because it will only prove what he/she already believes to be true, right?
Re:'Bout Time... (Score:3, Insightful)
G-d being outside time and Space , beyond the universe so to speak , is unknowable.
So you separate Science which is of the knowable , with that which is wholly unknowable . The minute you try to mix the two you just get into a lot of problems that really need not be there.
Some things about Darwin (Score:5, Insightful)
The guy was:
1) A careful and thoughtful scientist who spent countless hours studying tihngs most people would find incrediby boring. Darwin spent EIGHT YEARS studying BARNACLES.
2) Fairly shy.
3) A Christian for most of his life, and only an agnostic in later life (which had more to do historically with death in the family than with evolution, just ike Lincoln's rediscovering of Christianity)
The guy is/was NOT:
1) a guy who's ideas are a dogma. What Darwin thought is historically important in the development of evolution, but has no bearing on what and where that theory will lead.
2) 100% right about a LOT of things. He not only got the patterns of heredity completely wrong (he thought it was analog: by trait blending, when it was really digital), but was embarassingly forced to admit it when people with better arguments pointed out that blending was in contradiction with the evidence.
3) Someone that thought fossils had proved his case. To Darwin, fossils showed mainly the fact that past life was very different from present life: hence that most of species that existed in the past no longer existed in his day. This was one of the chief inspirations for his idea. The current creationist obsession with fossils overlooks the fact that Darwin put forward his theory, and was considered to be correct, long before we had anything like the fantastically rich fossil record of today. Darwin predicted that future fossils would all confirm his theory, but he NEVER expected that we'd find anywhere as many as we have, or that an entirely unimaginable field (genetics) would someday come to exist and provide an indepedent second check on the fossil record, allowing us to figure out actual lineages.
Darwin also didn't propose that the origins of life were part of evolution. The most he ever said on the subject was that maybe life had started in some warm little pool somewhere... in a private letter. He didn't publish this idea as scientific work.
There are so many misconceptions about the man that this otherwise fairly reserved guy is just buried under layers of legend. He was neither an exceptional genius and phropet, nor was he arrogant, careless about jumping to conclusions, or an atheist. He was a bright, studious man who worked hard, amassed tons of evidence, and hit upon a stunningly innovative realization about how evolution could have occured (one which was as much due to the new discoveries in geology and biology of his time as to his own thinking: as is obvious from the fact that no one in the history of earth had thought of it before... and then suddenly two guys did indepedently around the same time). He's worth remembering and learning about, not worshiping or demonizing.
Canonize Charles Darwin (Score:3, Interesting)
As a christian... (Score:4, Insightful)
It is a choice regardless of what the Churches say (Score:5, Insightful)
I beg to differ. The premise of religion is to accept that certain things are mysterious and cannot be investigated, or that certain things are true whether there is evidence for them or not.
The premise of science is that everything should be investigated, and that things are accepted as generally true only after evidence emerges for them, and that new evidence can change our perceptions of what is true.
Re:It is a choice regardless of what the Churches (Score:4, Insightful)
1. Science can only be reasonably applied the things that can be observed.
2. Science can only be meaningfully applied to things that can be measured and repeated.
3. Science can only be absolutely applied to things that can be understood by humans.
To presume that all knowledge and all truth must necessarily be confined by the above set of restrictions is ludicrous. And, of course, completely unprovable. If you honestly believe that science and humanity are capable of understanding and knowing everything, then you have trapped yourself by faith in science. That is, welcome to your pseudoreligion.
Ultimately, science is all about answers. Religion is all about questions.
Re:It is a choice regardless of what the Churches (Score:4, Interesting)
And therefore, we have the science called Theology [wikipedia.org], whose subject of study is God.
Re:It is a choice regardless of what the Churches (Score:3, Informative)
Finally, some sense! (Score:5, Interesting)
It's nice to see people giving the issue some thought and prving that we're not all religious crackpots. I certainly don't believe the Bible to be 100% literal in its explanation of things to us. While my faith tells me that my God is a powerful force, I'm pretty sure that using the notion of 7 days of creation was a mechanism to get the idea across to people of that time. Do you really think people thousands of years ago would be able to grasp the notion of evolution? The book of Genesis would certainly be a few chapters longer...
The important point here though is that evolution is not creation. Both can co-exist quite happily.
Evolution vs. Christianity (Score:3, Insightful)
Since then, people have come to say that evolution has "killed" God, or "disproved" Christianity. These comments fail to understand exactly why science tends not to like religion. One of the basic tenets of science is that for something to be scientific, it has to be falsifiable. Because religion's basic premise is the existence of an omnipotent force not governed by physical laws, it is by definition unfalsifiable. That does not mean it is scientifically false, or scientifically true, it means that science cannot be applied to religion. Religion cannot be scientifically proven or disproven. Every objection a scientist raises to religion could be countered by "But God could temporarily suspend that natural law, and act in violation of it".
Creationism is logical, in that it is internally consistent. If you accept the basic premise of a divine being, then it follows on logically that that being could then create life. Evolution was radical, not because it contradicted this, but because it created a logical alternative that did not involve God. It's not a replacement for creationism, it's a scientific explanation, much as creationism is a religious explanation.
Saying that, the very notion of evolution changes over time. Darwin originally didn't comment on abiogensis - his theory was about environmental conditions causing changes in organisms in such a way that diversity was created. His theory took as a premise the existance of life before the evolutionary process begins.
Even now, there are various components to evolution that some people believe and some don't. Some believe in the "punctuated equilibrium" model. Some don't. Some believe in "macro" evolution, some don't. Some believe in abiogenesis. Some don't. Some theists argue for "directed" evolution. Some argue that animal diversity evolved from a few common ancestors, as per Darwin, but that man was created directly by God, outside of evolutionary forces.
Saying "I believe in evolution" is almost as meaningless these days as saying "I believe in Christianity". There are so many different theories, sub-theories, movements, interpretations and denominations that just saying "evolution" doesn't actually describe much.
This is Idolatry (Score:4, Informative)
I would also like to remind the people who wrote my Biology textbook, a Miller and Levine of Prentice Hall, that their treatment of Darwin and evolution is rather idolotrous. Details of earlier theories (inheritance of learned traits, geological theories that led to "Earth is billions of years old" in the first place, Darwin's actual evidence) are left out, and the authors practically declare Undying Love for Charles Darwin. Declaring Undying Love for anything is unscientific.
This has been a public service announcement because idolizing people causes problems, such as reading the National Enquirer, stupidity and electing the stupid "National Enquirer" readers you idolize to high political office.
Another three things to read/view (Score:5, Informative)
How design supporters insult God's intelligence [smh.com.au]
and the following documentary about some priests who are also hard core scientists:
Galileo's Sons [bullfrogfilms.com]
A few days ago the Pope came out and reinforced the Catholic Church's view that Science and religion are compatible. [msn.com] In other words even the Pope thinks evolution is valid. Here is the original speech in Italian. [vatican.va]
All in all the proponents of intelligent design are looking more and more like the snake oil salesmen they are.
Science and Religion: Nonoverlapping Magisteria (Score:3, Insightful)
It's very clear that when religion goes head to head with science, religion loses - because science is defined by what works . NOMA articulates the boundaries that intelligent, thoughtful people can use, between the realms where science is valid and where religion is valid.
Re:And in other news... (Score:5, Funny)
Of course he's "comparable" to Hitler: It is possible to compare Bush to Hitler: Bush is immensely less charismatic, competent or intelligent than Hitler.
Brought to you by the British campaign to eliminate idiotic American misuse of the word "comparable".
Re:And in other news... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:And in other news... (Score:5, Funny)
Because his sig says, and I quote, "I drive an SUV -- and I'm actually pretty proud of the fact."
Re:And in other news... (Score:5, Informative)
Dictionary.com's definitions [reference.com]
Note the second definition:
To examine in order to note the similarities or differences of.
Note the usage notes, which state that the preposition "to" is generally indicates that compare is being used to highlight differences between the two (or more) things, while "with" is usually used to indicate similar traits. Note that the origional post stated:
How about the idiots who, for example, think Bush is comparable to Hitler?
Also, recall that a rather famous playwright and poet once asked,
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Clearly, the intent is to compare a human being with a temporal event, things that don't share precisely similar traits.
Re:And in other news... (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, Gandhi is comparable to Hitler. I'd say he compares rather favourably, of course, but comparable, still.
Re:And in other news... (Score:5, Insightful)
You speak of discussing events one did not witness. Just like that man and his children may not have witnessed macroevolution, I take it you did not witness World War II. While I was young at the time, I did. I remember leaving London during the Blitz. It is hypocritical and ignorant for you to suggest that those who experienced it firsthand are incorrect when they correctly point out history repeating itself.
Re:And in other news... (Score:5, Insightful)
2. Normal Iraqi people are not members of Al Qaeda. But they are the people being detained.
3. The idea of a "war" against such an amorphous and vague group is ridiculous. They should be targets of law enforcement. War is about nation-states and armies fighting one another. "War on Terror" is a misnomer.
4. If we are at war with Al Qaeda, then why doesn't the US treat them by Geneva conventions, and other standards for treating POWs? But the administration has denied that they are prisoners of war - they are "enemy combatants" - therefore, there must be no war, if they are not POWs.
Re:And in other news... (Score:5, Informative)
What evidence do you have of their presence in Iraq?
They hide among the population which is turning against them. Ordinary people are turning them in.
So, why are ordinary Iraqis being imprisoned and tortured, even if they have nothing to do with Al Qaeda or terrorism? If we are at war with Al Qaeda, saying that we should imprison Iraqis (without rights or trial) is like saying that the French should be imprisoned in WWII, because we were at war with the Nazis.
War on Terror is shorthand, not misnomer.
We also have a War on Drugs. Does that mean that drug users should be denied constitutional or international law rights? If it counts as war, why aren't they treated as POWs?
In order to qualify for the protections of a Prisoner of War under the Geneva Conventions you must meet certain standards. Al Qaeda and company violate the standards and therefore don't qualify for the protections and priviledges.
Please explain this. If they are not enemies in a war, then they are civilians, and deserve civilian protections. If they are enemies in a war, then they should be treated as POWs. There is no third category recognized under US or international law.
War on Al Qaeda is about the same as war on pirates in centuries past, or various guerilla groups. Nothing silly about it at all.
Well, under US law and international law, pirates, guerillas, and war criminals are granted criminal trials if captured.
Faulty logic, and quite silly.
Why is it silly?
Might I suggest that you actually read the Geneva Conventions?
Yes, I have. Might I suggest you actually explain what you mean? Where is it in the Geneva convention that allows anyone to be treated the way the US is treating prisoners? You don't actually present a logical argument. You just say "this is silly" and don't explain why.
Aside from the Geneva conventions, what about the conventions against torture? What about George Bush saying "The US does not torture"?
Re:And in other news... (Score:3, Insightful)
All I see in those links are allegations by the new Iraqi army, or the US administration. Neither of these are trustworthy sources. Anyone can claim they are Al Qaeda. Doesn't make it so.
By whom? I don't think the US is doing this. There was the rogue bunch of soldiers at Abu Gharaib, but most of them are already in jail for their crimes
Actually all the evidence points to this not bei
Re:And in other news... (Score:5, Informative)
That would only prove you even more wrong. Geneva says that signatories should follow the rules, even if the enemy isn't. In fact, it's Article I, "The High Contracting Parties undertake to respect and to ensure respect for the present Convention in all circumstances." Emph. mine.
And Article II: "Although one of the Powers in conflict may not be a party to the present Convention, the Powers who are parties thereto shall remain bound by it in their mutual relations."
And let's look at Article V: "Should any doubt arise as to whether persons, having committed a belligerent act and having fallen into the hands of the enemy, belong to any of the categories enumerated in Article 4 [POWs], such persons shall enjoy the protection of the present Convention until such time as their status has been determined by a competent tribunal."
While you can use slippery lawyer talk to try and get al qaeda members out of the POW definitions in Article 4, it simply isn't a logical argument, and it is completely bereft of any moral standing. You want so badly for this to be a "WAR", but then you want to throw away the protections that we've agreed to for the treatment of prisoners of war, because.. oh.. uh.. they're not prisoners.. or something.
Re:And in other news... (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually, yes. We schould teach our children to doubt and question absolutely everything. To me, the need for a continuous search for answers is one of the greatest attributes a person can have.
Re:And in other news... (Score:5, Insightful)
I think such absolute skepticism is impossible to maintain in the face of how much there is in the world to understand. Very few people are in any position to vouch for the authenticity of much of the scientific experimentation that goes on. Another great attribute of humanity is the ability to pool a mass of knowledge much greater than any one individual could possibly hope to grasp on their own.
Re:And in other news... (Score:3, Insightful)
I agree with you for the most part, except for the abslute skepticism. I don't take anything as fact. I jus
Re:And in other news... (Score:5, Insightful)
The general principle should be not "to doubt and question everything", but to be willing to doubt and question anything.
It is simply silly to actually doubt and question everything. It would be a huge and pointless mental burden.
But the willingness to question anything seems to me to be an essential attribute of a civilized, rational person. I know damned well I don't have all the answers, but it seems to me insane to suggest that there are some questions that ought not to be asked.
The opposite of this view is religion. All religions place some questions beyond the pale. Christians are not allowed to question the divinity of Jesus. Jews are not allowed to question their special relationship with God. Muslims are not allowed to question the unity of God. None of them are allowed to question the existence of God in the form of any serious doubt.
This kind of willful epistemological blindness will always be opposed to science, which holds that we should be willing to ask any meaningful question.
Re:And in other news... (Score:4, Interesting)
This attitude is a religion in itself - and your generalizations are basically based on observations of religion based purely on the media or by listening to others like yourself. Instead of going to the real sources, you're using the very tools that religious fanatics blame for being the downfall of our society. Ironic.
Many, MANY forms of christianity encourage the questioning of the divinity of Jesus - the hope is obviously that you'll ultimately agree, but many believe you don't have true faith unless you can truly question it, and still believe. I won't even get into Judaism of Islam.
What I find the most disappointing about this whole debate is the rash generalizations people use to describe the "other side" - like saying "Christians are against evolution" and so forth.
It's like saying that all geeks are hackers, or that all hackers are criminals, or even that all geeks prefer C++. None of these statements are valid. And it is not because there is some small exception to some general rule. I'm guessing that most programmers do not in fact prefer C++ and instead have a great variation in language preference.
Re:And in other news... (Score:4, Informative)
Fascinating--you apparently know all about me, my religious upbringing, my studies in ancient Christianity and the history of the English church, and my broad reading in non-Christian religions. This is a fine example of religious thinking: when faced with something that challenged an article of your faith, you made something up that protected your faith.
I grant you that many minor Christian sects have at one time or the other questioned the divinity of Christ. The Gnostics were at it pretty much from the off. But no major Christian denomination would even consider recognizing such sects as Christian until the latter half of the twentieth century, and the Christian denominations to which the majority of Christians have been subject since the Middle Ages have spent far more time killing people for questioning Christ's divinity than encouraging them.
You need to look at Christianity beyond what a few atypical modern sects believe. I've known UU's who call themselves "Christians", but that does not make them so. Based on my deep and extensive knowledge of Christianity across the last two thousand years and across the world today, including many years of personal experience as a Christian I am comfortable standing by my assessment of Christ's divinity as central to Christianity's mythos (in saying "divinity" I intend to be agnostic regarding person/body distinctions.) If you take away the divinity of Christ you are left with just another Jewish preacher, a footnote to history whose sacrifice on the cross was simply an unfortunate turn of political events, no different from any other Jewish prophet who came to a bad end at the hands of secular or religious authority.
You and people like you may want to call yourself Christians, but I am willing to bet you are in fact Christian-inspired humanists, and that you do not believe anything that the majority of Christian thinkers or followers at any time in the past two thousand years would recognize as being doctrinally close to the teachings of Jesus or the Pauline church. You cannot simply believe whatever you damn well please and claim on that basis that you are a Christian. The Nicen Creed, the 39 Articles, something has to be held in common between Christians, or the word means nothing.
Finally, if being willing to question everything is in your view a religion, then what in your view is not a religion? Or by "religion" do you simply mean "any set of foundational beliefs whatsoever, however tentative, however open to revision, however empirical"? If so, then I can only say,
"that word you keep using, I do not think it means what you think it means." It is certainly nothing like what most people mean by it, as most people have no difficulty at all distinguishing religious beliefs from empirical, scientific, or humanist ones.
Re:And in other news... (Score:3, Insightful)
Why?
You go on to talk about pooling knowedge, but skepticism doesn't prevent me from learning or sharing ideas.
I think it's a much better viewpoint to consider nothing sacred. Maybe Newton was right, maybe he wasn't. Einstein, learned Newtons ideas, but he maintained his own skepticism about them.
Believing in anything 100% is a bad idea. It means no matter the evidence to the c
Re:And in other news... (Score:4, Insightful)
You hear something from a friend, but you're skeptical, so you go look it up. You find ten other people that agree with what your friend said, but you're skeptical of them. Where does it end?
When people say absolute skepticism is impossible to maintain, they're not lying; it is impossible. Eventually you have to give in to trust.
Re:And in other news... (Score:5, Insightful)
Agreed — the thing is, though, that arguing against science with religion doesn't work on a rational level. Religion is a belief, the questions that can be asked of it are distinct to those of science — this debate gets messy because people are pitting two disparate systems against one another. Science does not aim to disprove religion, so arguing against religion with science doesn't work (except with extremely anal literal interpretations, where the parts that are decided are fairly mundane). Religion does not aim to prove itself, being based on faith, so arguing against science with it leads to problems from their contrasting bases.
Re:And in other news... (Score:3, Insightful)
Prove all things and hold fast to that which is true.
1 Thessalonians 5:21
That is the foundation of both science and any religion worth believing in. Any world view that shackles God from revealing more information about who we are and where we came from is incapable of surviving in our modern world and will attract only the most zealous and irrational elements until it sputters out. Religion has been forced to reinvent itself to cope with the knowledge that science brings. If a reli
and... *GULP* (Score:4, Insightful)
The logical outcome of his argument doesn't matter though. This stuff works on children only because children haven't been taught critical thinking; they've been taught to listen to authority. (Then it continues to work because adults haven't been taught critical thinking either.) And that's exactly what this guy wants. The specific argument doesn't matter. The only thing that matters is that someone in a position of authority said it, and the people who believe it don't have the tools to defend themselves from authoritative statements.
Re:And in other news... (Score:5, Funny)
I believe that Bush is comparable to Hitler, evolution is still an iffy theory (though creationism is ludicrous), the world isn't flat and that you are, quite clearly, an idiot.
How's that for bizarre?
Re:And in other news... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:And in other news... (Score:5, Insightful)
Where did you get your info about recycling paper? A quick google turned up this:
though of course I'm not an expert - your claim about recycled paper just sounds like one of those myths going around that have no basis in fact. References?
Re:And in other news... (Score:3, Insightful)
When was it decided that it's just too offensive to compare any contemporary politician to Hitler? It's considered a below-the-belt insult.
This just floors me. You'd think we'd want to compare everyone to Hitler all the time. We can't afford to have that happen again.
We're determined to learn nothing, it seems.
Re:standing up against the fundies.. (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm not religious, and I find, on the whole, that fundamentalists hijacking a religion can be a good thing in the long run. Probably nothing else could turn as many people away from the whole idea of religion so much as a generation of frothing-at-the-mouth zealots fighting each other and anyone disagreeing with their inflexible, warped view of the world.
Re:standing up against the fundies.. (Score:3, Funny)
Agreed, and well put. In the same way, people will be put off Islam by the fundamentalists burning embassies because someone dared mock their religion.
Re:standing up against the fundies.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Meanwhile... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Meanwhile... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Meanwhile... (Score:3, Interesting)
Ermmm..last few decades would be more of an argument. If you go back centuries, we get nice things like the Opium wars ("Christian" powers forcing the Chinese to open their markets to a dangerous drug), the Amritsar Massac
Re:Darwinsim = Science? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Darwinsim = Science? (Score:3, Interesting)
I used to think natural selection was a sufficient explanation for life. What cured me was I worked fulltime for two years using genetic algorithms to solve a hard problem [i
Re:Darwinsim = Science? (Score:3, Insightful)
"genetic" (Score:4, Informative)
There are countless factors in reality that are all interrelated and reflecting on each other's properties. Your simplistic computer simulation exists in an artificial abstract environment with rules that are infintesimally incomplete if not outright incorrect.
So I would point out you shouldn't put much faith in those numbers to correlate with meat space evolution. Real evolution probably does not even behave exactly like your simulated evolution.
Re:Darwinsim = Science? (Score:5, Insightful)
but.. think in terms of the creation of a creature as much more "fit" [from evolutionary perspsective] as a human to an ape.
I think the real question is "more 'fit' for what?", and until we have some semblance of an answer to that I think your concerns are awfully speculative. We really have no idea of what pressures or constraints led to humans developing. In contrast your example of and F16 from a Sopwith Camel there are some very well defined implicit constraints and specifications as to purpose and what constitutes "fitness" in this case. What led to humans may have been some fairly loose and easily satsified constraints with some of the particulars that we take for "fitness" simply being aberrations where the process spun on in an unconstrained direction.
Could evolutionary algorithms solve the Sopwith Camel to F16 problem in the required time? Maybe not. Evolution/Life doesn't always manage to solve the problems with which it is presented, particularly when the constraints are excessive. History is littered with examples of evolution failing to develop a satisfactory solution in time: it's called extinction. So even if humans are a remarkable solution to an incredibly difficult problem it may well be that we are just one of those few cases where an answer did turn up in the requisite time out of millions more cases where it didn't.
Jedidiah.
Re:Darwinsim = Science? (Score:3, Insightful)
There are what, ~25,000 genes in the Human genome, made up of about 3 billion base pairs(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_genome [wikipedia.org]).
I'm no expert on genetic algorithms, but I am willing to guess that you weren't working with anywhere near 25,000 variables per individual or that you did silly things like generate non working solutions(radical mutations) and the like. Did your system includ
Re:Darwinsim = Science? (Score:3, Insightful)
Your analogy of sopwith camel to F16 is more like the evolution of an anphibian to a human -- many structures are completely revised and the overall complexity is much larger, though some
Ape to human? NO! (Score:3, Insightful)
"Apes evolved into modern humans"
No, humans and the rest of the Homininae subfamily share a common ancestor. We didn't evolve from modern apes anymore than we evolved from a sitka spruce. Take a look at the Wikipedia article on apes [wikipedia.org] for more information. Frankly, I find it hard to believe that a person who does not seem to understand this basic fact has expertise in the area of evolutionary theory.
Please don't take this as a personal attack; misunderstanding of the concept of common ancestors is just a pe
Re:Darwinsim = Science? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Darwinsim = Science? (Score:3, Insightful)
I hear that these days, engineers assume that gravity exists when they design bridges without even testing it for themselves. It's shocking, especially when you consider that lives are at stake, yet they still allow their biases to color their work.
You assume wrongly, then. (Score:4, Interesting)
This is the difference between engineers and scientists. If an engineer screws up, people die (and often on the spot). You can go out and knock on most of the stuff an engineer does. Engineers believe in working with error bars and well-defined uncertainties. Scientists often have no such assurance, and surprisingly few scientific disciplines treat uncertainties as rigorously as engineers routinely do.
The canonical scientific reaction to uncertainty is either rejection of the whole concept ("burn the heretics!"), or to ride roughshod over the uncertainty because certain key items look to be in about the right places ("only an heretic would question that!", in this case evolution). Neither approach is particularly rational.
The creation scientists might well be totally wrong (although it's likely that even if the majority of their ideas are wrong, a few will be pure gold), but so far they have typically been more rational in their approach than elephant-hurlers like the parent poster.
Re:You assume wrongly, then. (Score:3, Insightful)
2) You really aught to provide some evidence of mainstream scientific researchers doing their work with the attitudes you describe, or your post can be safely discarded.
3) Creationists more rational than the parent poster? arguable but irrelevant. More rational than actual scientists? Not even close. It's easy to be sk
Re:You assume wrongly, then. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Darwinsim = Science? (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, of course in principle it doesn't automatically mean that.
However, evolution is one of the most well-established theories that science has to offer. It is supported by evidence extremely well and is validated by hundreds of new observations every day. And if you publicly come out against it and in favor of some alternative theory for which the only evidence is a religious text, chances are pretty damn good that you are incapable of holding a logical thought in your head to begin with.
Now maybe that's an unfair assessment to make about you, but to make a more accurate one requires too much time and energy to expend on every evolution-basher out there. Life is too short, and there are too many of them (especially in the United States of America) to interview every single one as to his feelings about science in general. And it's a simple fact that people who publicly oppose evolution tend to be quite vocal in not only bashing scientists as a group, but bashing science in general as an inferior source of knowledge as compared to religion- an apples to oranges comparison if there ever was one.
If I were some omniscient being with all the time and resources in the world to examine the innermost thoughts of every creationist and intelligent designer, perhaps I'd be able to develop a more accurate opinion. As a human being with limited years on this earth, please forgive me if I take a short cut and make what is a pretty accurate generalization to save time. If you are against Darwin, you are probably against science. You may think you're pro-science, but usually what that means is that you're pro-technology and view your toys as validation of the superiority of your culture and by extension the correctness of its religious views. Individuals opposed to Darwinism on the merits of the theory itself (and who may offer alternative theories equally unpalatable from religious viewpoints) are actually quite rare.
Re:Darwinsim = Science? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Darwinsim = Science? (Score:5, Insightful)
Name some. Before you post, please check talk.origins and the NCSE website to see debunkings of your claims; I can almost guarantee that any of the observations you're thinking of do not contradict evolution in the slightest, and have already been explained in short, simple sentences and words of few syllables so that even creationists can understand them.
There are also many established scientists who don't support it too.
No, there aren't. There are very, very few, and almost none of them are biologists. And their arguments are the same easily debunked nonsense, repeated over and over in increasingly obfuscatory language; they haven't brought anything new to the table in decades.
The theory of evolution is an attempt to find an absolute in a relativistic universe, it doesn't exist. It is based off age-old beliefs in simple cause and effect, and projecting those flawed beliefs over the span of millions of years. The universe does not operate this way. With our modern knowledge of relativism and quantum mechanics, evolution should be debunked.
Congratulations, you've managed to combine two of the most common types pseudo-scientific quackery (creationism and profound misinterpretation of quantum physics) into a single post! I suggest you stick to fare like "What the Bleep Do We Know?" -- it should be more at your level.
Re:Darwinsim = Science? (Score:4, Informative)
This is absolutely correct. Evolution is a theory of speciation (the emergence of species from other species), not of origins.
Theories of Abiogenesis (life emerging from non-life) I've heard are within a decade or two of being experimentally tested. I'm a physicist by training and don't know the details, but from what I've read in popular science magazines, biologists are optimistic.
Theories of abiogenesis (Score:3, Informative)
There is plenty of stuff on the web, but to get you started, here are some things to get you thinking about how abiogenesis may have occurred, or at least suggest the workings of some steps along the way.
1) In 1953, Stanley Miller, working under Harold Urey, showed [duke.edu] that amino acids are able to form spontaneously in the conditions which may have existed in earth's primordial atmosphere. In three months, his experiment produced at least 7 amino acids, which included 3 of the 20 found in modern (and probably
:Darwinsim = Science! (Score:5, Informative)
You seem to confuse testability with repeatability. Testability here is the ability for observation to support or refute a theory, not the ability to reproduce experiments in a laboratory. That is to say, a proper scientific hypothesis must be answerable to the facts. Repeatability is not, however, a requirement of all the sciences.
By your argument, astronomy and the rest of biology are not science either. And yet patently they are.
Darwin did not therorize about the origins of life, only the origin of species. The origins of life is not normally considered part of evolutionary theory.
Regarding the other two examples, evolutionly theory does not claim to be able to explain how every evolutionary occurence throughout time took place in minute detail. You state that it is nonscientific because we have an incomplete understanding of what happened two billion years ago? Ridiculous.
Re:Darwinsim = Science? (Score:5, Insightful)
And thus far no such system has been observed. All theories are potentially falsifiable -- an explanation that has no falsification criteria is not scientific. Evolution stands strong for many reasons, including the total failure of any potential falsifying observations to come about despite ample opportunity.
Re:Darwinsim = Science? (Score:3, Insightful)
What bases? Evolution covers a specific phenomenon in biology. Scientific theories are like that -- they keep their scope limited to a set of events. Abiogenesis is not a part of evolution because how the first life came to exist has no bearing on the evolution of that life after it exists.
and if this was not a forum where religion was essentially banned from discussion, I would use it to fill in the missing gaps.
The lack of explanation for
Re:Darwinsim = Science? (Score:3, Interesting)
That depends. What are the holes?
Re:I couldn't disagree more. (Score:3, Informative)
Those christians (and radical muslims etc) will be in their own dark age. The rest of us will do alright.
Re:I couldn't disagree more. (Score:4, Insightful)
Unless they manage to take the rest of us out with them in their infighting.
Re:I couldn't disagree more. (Score:3, Insightful)
Truth is, even with the Bible we can't say how old the universe is. Sure, we know it was created in 6 days, and we know there have been approximately 3600 years (Jewish calendar) plus another 2000 (Gregorian calendar) si
Re:Sigh (Score:4, Funny)
Then it is news for nerds.
Re:Christianity and Microsoft? - Embrace and Exten (Score:5, Insightful)
1. It has a kernel (belief in Jesus and God) and you can put different forms on top of that (barring a few that go against the license), leading to different branches and forks.
2. Most of its followers are friendly, though there are a few loud zealots who give the rest a bad name.
3. It sprouted from an older, less "open", religion, many of the followers of which are still around today.
Re:Christianity and Microsoft? - Embrace and Exten (Score:5, Funny)
So when will it be ready for the desktop?
Re:WTF? (Score:5, Funny)
I think you misspelled "abused".
Re:WTF? (Score:5, Informative)
If you want to read Darwin's ideas about Human Evolution then you should read "The Descent of Man" where he demonstrates that sexual selectiona nd the competition that entials are sufficient to account for Human diversity as observed 2 centuries ago.
I have to stress that at no pont in Darwin's writings did he address the question of the Origin of Life. 1. Everywhere in nature, the double helix DNA works the same way. To mate, animals must have the same number of 'rungs'. But man has 46, and ape has 48; humans have #2 & #3 bonded together. Nowhere else in nature are rungs "bonded" like this. We're just not the same, but we appear similar, visually.
No, there is no such requirement in order to mate. There are any number of websites that demonstrate mating between different species. To mate and have functional and fertile progeny, that's another thing however. I'd like to point out that as you said, Humans have 2 chromosomes from apes bonded together, which is simply a transcription modification.... I assume that God can allow the telomeres to unfold differently if He wishes?
And regarding your points about ID, well, in the opinion of myself, and many of the memebrs of our Church, ID is one of the greatest threats to Christianity in many many years. ID requires that God be an imperfect being, that creation be imperfect and that he makes mistakes. My God does not make mistakes, therefore ID did not happen.
Finally I'd like to refer you to St Augustine, who made the point that when experience and scripture seem to be in conflict, it's always that we have mis-interpreted scripture.
Re:WTF? (Score:3, Interesting)
I'd like to see a reference for this assertion, if you don't mind.
goes to the larger issue - how we debate in the US (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, at a certain point you have to start addressing the problem. I think we're at that point.
Well put.
The notion that you can just ignore these nutjobs can lead to even bigger problems down the road. It is when average, everyday people fail allow spurious debates to take hold that the majority becomes hostage to a dimwitted but aggressive minority. Hostility to intellectualism has been with America since its founding, but when it becomes so pervasive that the nonsensical hurling of insults becomes a substitute for debate, the reasonable majority loses its ability to influence politics. I think we've already entered a very dangerous era, where style (angry rhetoric, appeals to symbology, character assassination) has far outstripped substance in the arena of public debate.
When is the last time you saw two people on television actually debate an idea for a full 40 minutes? I'm talking about locking intellectual horns and attempting to prove the merits of an idea to an audience through skillfully argued logic. No dodging the question, no shoehorning a question into a pre-generated answer. I think such debates are non-existent now because we have allowed them to become extinct. We allow the issues to be turned into lowest common denominator mudwrestling that shows how little we respect ourselves as citizens. We have not demanded a better process, one that pushes better ideas to the fore. So we wind up with a process that is driven by one liners and photos of politicians going duck hunting.
Re:Happy Birthday Darwin... (Score:4, Funny)