View Poll Results: What's your view of the Origin of Life, the Universe, and Everything?

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  • Y.E.C, Intelligent Design or other (post specifics)

    4 11.43%
  • Natural Origin and Evolution

    27 77.14%
  • Something else? (post specifics)

    4 11.43%
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Thread: Evolution vs Y.E.C

  1. #21

    Default Re: Evolution vs Y.E.C

    The idea that the first actor of the universe is a fully formed intelligent being which is beyond the rules and explanations of that universe is an enormous assertion.
    On its most basic level, intelligent design is merely the assumption that reason sits behind the form of the universe: that reason begets reason. I don't see that this assertion is any more enormous than the assertion that there is no reason behind the form of the universe.

    It's the difference between asserting bacteria caused the milk to sour and magic caused the milk to sour.
    I disagree. The existence of bacteria has been proven scientifically. We're discussing philosophical/theological questions which for the most part are contingent upon logical deductions and speculation.

    Inherently appealing to a force which is exterior of existence and the rules of that existence to explain existence requires an enormous leap of faith.
    Any theory which attempts to explain existence requires a leap of faith. There is no scientific evidence to support or oppose any theory. The Christian perspective is not that God exists outside of existence. Anything which exists must be within existence. The claim is that God exists both in our world and in a realm beyond time and the physical universe - a claim which would at least be compatible with the general scientific view that the physical universe did indeed have a beginning.

    As Paleo was talking about such a proposition would be inexplicable through any observation. We could literally scour the entire universe and understand all knowledge within it and still not come to any sort of way of proving or disproving that assertion.
    If the universe was akin to a closed system, you could scour it entirely and still be no closer to explaining the reason for its existence. Being unable to provide a scientific explanation doesn't mean that no explanation exists. Though ultimately you're correct: no matter what you observed you would never be able to disprove God. That said, people don't believe in God simply because His existence cannot be disproven.

    It's a non-explanation in which we presuppose the divine in place of any such explanation. Now if you're wondering about the possibility of a life designing earth? Yeah could easily happen. What if this universe is a pocket universe designed in some interdimensional school project? Also possible. However both of these explanations fall significantly sort of God and do not contain the rather silly assumptions that typically follow it.
    They fall short of the theist view. They don't necessarily fall short of the deist view of intelligent design. If it were provable that our universe was a designed "pocket universe" we'd still be no closer to knowing what the ultimate cause of the universe was (assuming that there is one). You'd just have another link in the chain of events leading to the present - albeit one which demonstrated a a measure of coherence to the universe's form.



  2. #22

    Default Re: Evolution vs Y.E.C

    Quote Originally Posted by Elfdude View Post
    Fair enough, not everyone is vested in coherence. What is problematic is when your decision making processes appeal to the divine righteousness of creation as you relativistically interpret it from your bible. I.E. Abortion, Homosexuality, Gender-nonconformity, Racism, Xenophobia, Slavery so on and so forth. To say none of these concepts and the theological interpretations of them do not revolve around creationism would be ridiculous.
    No... Since I don't read the Bible like an atheist, it's fairly easy for me to coherently read mythology as mythology, morality as morality, allegory as allegory, poetry as poetry, and so forth. I think I'll take the word of the church fathers and most mainstream Christian churches, including Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy, and much of Protestantism, over that of some random guy online.



    [T]he Teaching Authority of the Church does not forbid that, in conformity with the present state of human sciences and sacred theology, research and discussions, on the part of men experienced in both fields, take place with regard to the doctrine of evolution, in as far as it inquires into the origin of the human body as coming from pre-existent and living matter — for the Catholic faith obliges us to hold that souls are immediately created by God. However, this must be done in such a way that the reasons for both opinions, that is, those favorable and those unfavorable to evolution, be weighed and judged with the necessary seriousness, moderation and measure, and provided that all are prepared to submit to the judgment of the Church. -Humani Generis 36.

    Humani Generis addresses two issues in this section. First, there can never be evolution of the soul because it is created with God as its first cause. Since the soul is immaterial it cannot evolve as things in the material universe evolve. This means the faculties of the soul—intellect and will—do not evolve as the body evolves. The Church has a clear obligation to clarify this position for the Mystical Body and the world.

    Second, the Church wants to make it clear that no one is required to submit to evolutionary theory and that open and reasoned dialogue should take place between persons on this topic. Each member within the Church is permitted to agree or disagree with various aspects of evolutionary theory, but the Church also dismisses outright, an overly literal interpretation of Genesis as a book of science.
    So if evolution turned out to be true, it would be compatible with Christianity, but we still can and must criticize it and its shortcomings, same as we would any other scientific theory, rather than unreasonably put it above criticism.
    Last edited by Prodromos; August 09, 2018 at 04:09 AM.
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  3. #23
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    Default Re: Evolution vs Y.E.C

    Imagine you do not have any religion and you're somewhat familiar with the context modern science provides in terms of our place in the universe. Suppose you were looking for a 'meaning' of it all. Would it be good enough for any candidate religion to merely be 'not incompatible'? I'm in that position and I think that's a horridly weak case, to be honest. All I see is ideas committed to paper that show no real indication of transcending contemporary thinking being passed down as 'divine revelation' from one generations of people to the next. And I am to take that seriously because, with some effort, its contents can be shown to be not incompatible with what we've learned since?
    Last edited by Muizer; August 09, 2018 at 04:26 AM.
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  4. #24

    Default Re: Evolution vs Y.E.C

    Quote Originally Posted by Muizer View Post
    Imagine you do not have any religion and you're somewhat familiar with the context modern science provides in terms of our place in the universe. Suppose you were looking for a 'meaning' of it all. Would it be good enough for any candidate philosophy to merely be 'not incompatible'?
    What do you mean? Good enough for what? Could you rephrase the question?
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    Default Re: Evolution vs Y.E.C

    I'll try. Do you think a non believer will be impressed by "the Bible is not necessarily incompatible with science" as an argument for it being divinely inspired?
    "Lay these words to heart, Lucilius, that you may scorn the pleasure which comes from the applause of the majority. Many men praise you; but have you any reason for being pleased with yourself, if you are a person whom the many can understand?" - Lucius Annaeus Seneca -

  6. #26

    Default Re: Evolution vs Y.E.C

    Quote Originally Posted by Muizer View Post
    I'll try. Do you think a non believer will be impressed by "the Bible is not necessarily incompatible with science" as an argument for it being divinely inspired?
    People don't use that argument to prove that the Bible is divinely inspired: they use it to show that scripture and science aren't competing entities.



  7. #27
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    Default Re: Evolution vs Y.E.C

    Quote Originally Posted by ep1c_fail View Post
    People don't use that argument to prove that the Bible is divinely inspired: they use it to show that scripture and science aren't competing entities.
    An elaborate way of saying "no".
    "Lay these words to heart, Lucilius, that you may scorn the pleasure which comes from the applause of the majority. Many men praise you; but have you any reason for being pleased with yourself, if you are a person whom the many can understand?" - Lucius Annaeus Seneca -

  8. #28

    Default Re: Evolution vs Y.E.C

    Quote Originally Posted by Muizer View Post
    An elaborate way of saying "no".
    Correct. The elaboration, however, wasn't arbitrary. It was designed to challenge the nature of the question.



  9. #29

    Default Re: Evolution vs Y.E.C

    Quote Originally Posted by Muizer View Post
    I'll try. Do you think a non believer will be impressed by "the Bible is not necessarily incompatible with science" as an argument for it being divinely inspired?
    That seems like a pretty poor way of convincing people of the Bible's being divinely inspired. I have never heard anyone making this argument, personally.
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  10. #30
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    Default Re: Evolution vs Y.E.C

    Quote Originally Posted by Dr. Legend View Post
    @Elfdude

    Thank you for demonstrating my point about the ideological nature of evolution. The slightest hint of skepticism brings fanatic believers out of the woodwork, mocking anyone who doesn't believe as they do, no matter how well-intentioned the skepticism was (I've noticed this on other websites too). Does that sound like a normal scientific theory to you? Have you seen anyone behave like this when someone doubts the theory of relativity, for example?

    It must be because, like I said:



    Most people I've noticed don't believe or disbelieve in evolution for the sake of knowledge, but only for what it entails regarding their political or other beliefs. Why would I "pick a side" in a pointless debate that is irrelevant to my life? Seems like a waste of time for me. I have enough favorite sports teams as it is.
    Could you elaborate on that? How does evolution link to political or "other" beliefs? As a scientist I find evolution (in its current, refined state, nota bene, not necessarily the original assertions by Darwin) to be the best tested explanation we have for the development (not the origin!) of life (the latter is a different story). As a Catholic I am happy that the Holy Church recognises these scientific findings to not be in conflict with our faith, but even if it didn't I could not scientifically renounce the theory of evolution in favour of my faith - I'd have to live with the cognitive dissonance.

    Quote Originally Posted by Muizer View Post
    Well people will go to great lengths not to fall foul of the community they live in and not to have to acknowledge having lived a lie. And, to be fair, there's really no good alternative. While metaphorical or other non-literal interpretation of Genesis might remove scripture's outright contradiction with science, it also removes the context within which humankind has a central place in God's universe. Accepting the scientific account means all of a sudden humankind is relegated to an infinitesmal speck of space-time.
    Not necessarily, for while scientifically we have to assume the universe to contain no "special points", i.e. it being more or less homogeneous and isotropic on the large scale, we can still religiously assume that the entire universe exists to serve this one planet in this one solar system in this one branch of this one galaxy. Given that the "existence" of the rest of the universe is philosophically only relevant to us with regards to us observing it this view is not that far from the current state of epistemology (although the roles are somewhat inverted: religiously the universe created to enable our existence, epistemologically our existence enabling the philosophical notion of the existence of the rest of the universe.)

    Quote Originally Posted by Muizer View Post
    I'll try. Do you think a non believer will be impressed by "the Bible is not necessarily incompatible with science" as an argument for it being divinely inspired?
    As epic_fail already hinted at, you're missing the point here a bit. What you mention is just a necessary condition to accept Christianity without cognitive dissonance. The sufficient conditions are far more complex and far more subjective. Cf. Himster's mention of Kierkegaard for that.
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    Default Re: Evolution vs Y.E.C

    Quote Originally Posted by Dr. Legend View Post
    That seems like a pretty poor way of convincing people of the Bible's being divinely inspired. I have never heard anyone making this argument, personally.
    Well correct me if I am wrong, but in discussions like these, the argument quite often is "Science cannot compell me to abandon my faith". The reason I posed the question as I did is to demonstrate what remains of that argument when you take pre-existing faith out of the equation. And I agree with you it stops making any kind of sense.

    And yet, how come in discussions like these, so many religious minded people still seem bent on questioning science where it's at odds with scripture or its (past) interpretation? Why the obsession, specifically, with the theory of evolution, which gets questioned way more than seems reasonable by people who have no professional background or interest? If science and religion concern different spheres, then there should be no vested interests. Why does every 1 in 2 science questions on Quora be about whether or not Evolution theory is proper science, or how it can be disproven?

    If science is the rising sea level and dry land the domain of religion, what you're doing is is pointing at mount Everest and saying "well, the water will never get that high,so we can always go there, but for now we'll continue to camp on the coastline and pretend the water isn't rising".
    Last edited by Muizer; August 09, 2018 at 10:01 AM.
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  12. #32
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    Default Re: Evolution vs Y.E.C

    Quote Originally Posted by paleologos View Post

    I need you to explain to me/inform me how it would be possible to carry out a heredity experiment at an evolutionary scale.
    Or else, what exactly to do you mean by "experiment" in the context of the quoted line?


    An experiment is a test run upon data using a hypothesis and null hypothesis, if the hypothesis is correct the data will conform to it, if the hypothesis is incorrect, the data will conform to the null hypothesis.

    For example, you may want to understand the genetic drift associated with a particular invasive species, using the principles underpinned by evolution it's possible to trace the origins of that particular invasive species through mass sampling of the population. Of course the sample is a convenience sample but all samples inevitably are. You could look at the evolutionary principles which underpin heredity in breeding, everything from dogs, to rodents to bird to mice. It's rather difficult to perform on long lived species given such an experiment would have to be continued for dozens or hundreds of years but domestication studies abound on evolutionary response to artificial selection.

    The earliest experimental evidence that evolution worked was an experiment by Dallinger in the late 1800's he gradually increased the temperature of a culture from 15 C to 70 C. Doing it slowly enough the organisms were able to adapt over progressive generations and were fundamentally different from the ones he began with, notably, they could no longer grow at the original temperature and the original lineage he had showed distress at 23 C.

    You have similar experiments constantly within medicine with development of antibiotic resistance. Bacteria, Prokaryotes/Eukaryotic single cellular organisms evolve rapidly and show ample experimental data. The whole variety which exists within beers and wines.

    You can look at experiment on aphids, fruit flies, mosquitos, lab mice, gnats, sticklebacks etc etc. Kinsey began his career showing that a short lived gnat speciated so quickly that gnats of the seemingly same lineage could no longer reproduce with each other less than a few miles apart and showed it took them hundreds of generations to move that far confirming evolution again.

    Domestication experiments on animals from foxes, to elephants, to birds. There's ample closed environmental systems (closed from the scale of the organisms studied) which also provide ample opportunities to see much larger scale experiments which couldn't be run in a lab. Numerous islands and species introductions within human history have resulted in speciation events.

    Of course the whole study of DNA and what it does also is described by evolution. There's many examples of purely genetic manipulations which conform exactly to what the theory of evolution describes.

    Quote Originally Posted by paleologos View Post
    The reason the falsifiability of evolutionary theory is contested is that it is not obvious how it can reproduce data of the kind that led to it's rise.
    Input?


    Depends on what you call data. The common source of this argument is the assertion that for evolution to be falsified we'd need to have a similar planet to earth without life or at least a plurality of it. While this would certainly falsify or at least raise many questions about evolution it is not the only way to do so.

    Quote Originally Posted by paleologos View Post
    How would you go about to produce at will data that would confirm or falsify the Theory of Evolution?


    See above. Data which would falsify the Theory of Evolution would arise through the normal experimental processes except rather than conforming with the theory of evolution, it wouldn't.

    Quote Originally Posted by paleologos View Post
    I am asking for a description of a falsifiability test for the Theory of Evolution: what would the experimental process look like?
    I mean, I described several (twice now).

  13. #33

    Default Re: Evolution vs Y.E.C

    @Muizer

    I think my response to Iskar might clarify this. As a politicized theory, evolution has been used by its adherents as a weapon against religious people or morality, it's only natural that they are pushing back against it regardless of whether evolution is true. But most mainstream Christian authorities don't really get worked up over it, it's a laity thing, mostly.

    Quote Originally Posted by Iskar View Post
    Could you elaborate on that? How does evolution link to political or "other" beliefs?
    In most cases it's not even proper evolution that they're appealing to, but a distorted, even silly version of it. The prime suspects are probably hedonists who believe evolution somehow justifies or normalizes their immorality, usually relying on wild speculation and absurd post-hoc reasoning; I'd list some examples but it might be too vulgar for this forum. Another example, a lot of irreligious people think evolution is some sort of smoking gun that disproves religion, like our friend Elfdude. It's by no means just a normal scientific theory to them. They are heavily invested in it as the backbone of their political or religious ideologies.

    Evolution may or may not be true, but I think its loudest adherents definitely need a better marketing strategy. I'm pretty unlikely to believe a theory whose main supporting argument is usually, "Ha ha you're not smart enough to believe in it, huh? Leave your stupid religion first, then you'll be able to believe in evolution." This tactic might work on impressionable teens and young adults, who are so afraid of being thought of as stupid that they unquestioningly accept evolution, despite having no real understanding of what the evidence for or against it is, but certainly not on me. I'm likely not much more knowledgeable in that regard, but I'm strong and confident enough to maintain my agnosticism (not trying to brag). I'm a big fan of "prehistory" myself, but since I'm not really knowledgeable on how to verify the veracity of these claims, I generally take most things we think we know about anything that happened before, say, ~3000 BC, with a grain of salt. Seems like a pretty reasonable position to me.
    Last edited by Prodromos; August 09, 2018 at 11:36 AM.
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  14. #34
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    Default Re: Evolution vs Y.E.C

    Quote Originally Posted by Dr. Legend View Post
    @Muizer

    I think my response to Iskar might clarify this. As a politicized theory, evolution has been used by its adherents as a weapon against religious people or morality, it's only natural that they are pushing back against it regardless of whether evolution is true. But most mainstream Christian authorities don't really get worked up over it, it's a laity thing, mostly.



    In most cases it's not even proper evolution that they're appealing to, but a distorted, even silly version of it. The prime suspects are probably hedonists who believe evolution somehow justifies or normalizes their immorality, usually relying on wild speculation and absurd post-hoc reasoning; I'd list some examples but it might be too vulgar for this forum. Another example, a lot of irreligious people think evolution is some sort of smoking gun that disproves religion, like our friend Elfdude. It's by no means just a normal scientific theory to them. They are heavily invested in it as the backbone of their political or religious ideologies.

    Evolution may or may not be true, but I think its loudest adherents definitely need a better marketing strategy. I'm pretty unlikely to believe a theory whose main supporting argument is usually, "Ha ha you're not smart enough to believe in it, huh? Leave your stupid religion first, then you'll be able to believe in evolution." This tactic might work on impressionable teens and young adults, who are so afraid of being thought of as stupid that they unquestioningly accept evolution, despite having no real understanding of what the evidence for or against it is, but certainly not on me. I'm likely not much more knowledgeable in that regard, but I'm strong and confident enough to maintain my agnosticism (not trying to brag). I'm a big fan of "prehistory" myself, but since I'm not really knowledgeable on how to verify the veracity of these claims, I generally take most things we think we know about anything that happened before, say, ~3000 BC, with a grain of salt. Seems like a pretty reasonable position to me.
    You're trying to discredit evolution by an attack on some of its proponents (which may even be strawmen for the sake of debate). A large number of tests and findings have been presented in this very thread that show evolution to be a proper, falsifiable and well tested theory amongst our portfolio of scientific knowledge. Just because some people try to (mis)use it to attack religion(s) that does not mean one should doubt the theory itself.

    As for your last assertion that it would be reasonable to doubt scientific results the method of which one does not understand: Do you mistrust your smartphone's GPS navigation just because you're not sufficiently educated in General Relativity? Do you refuse treatment at hospitals because you don't exactly understand the biochemical workings of the medicine? Do you abstain from using induction stoves just because electrodynamics is beyond your grasp? If the answer to just one of these is No, then you have no reason either to take prehistory cum grano salis.
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    Default Re: Evolution vs Y.E.C

    Dr Legend, I'm afraid you're absolutely right there are some militant atheists who wield scientific theory as some weapon to defeat religion. But it's only going to work against those who make themselves vulnerable to such attacks by not separating the spheres of science and religion. People who, for instance, would insist that creationism be taught in schools as a viable alternative to the theories of astronomy, geology and biology (including evolution).
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    Default Re: Evolution vs Y.E.C

    Quote Originally Posted by Elfdude View Post
    An experiment is a test run upon data using a hypothesis and null hypothesis, if the hypothesis is correct the data will conform to it, if the hypothesis is incorrect, the data will conform to the null hypothesis.
    Not quite the way I was educated about it:
    The only hypothesis that matters in research methods is the null hypothesis.
    The null hypothesis is always a negative statement that declares there should be no correlation between two groups of data.
    For example, if you are testing an antibiotic, the null hypothesis would be that there will be no correlation between the addition of the drug to a culture and what will happen to the culture.
    If the null hypothesis is confirmed then the inefficacy of the drug vis-à-vis the particular strain in the culture is proven.
    If, on the other hand, the null hypothesis is not confirmed, the researchers would have to declare that they "fail to accept" it, which wouldn't necessarily establish the efficacy of the drug.
    Or -at least- that's how I remember it.
    Input by several people trained in research methods seems to be required here.


    Quote Originally Posted by Elfdude View Post
    For example, you may want to understand the genetic drift associated with a particular invasive species, using the principles underpinned by evolution it's possible to trace the origins of that particular invasive species through mass sampling of the population. Of course the sample is a convenience sample but all samples inevitably are. You could look at the evolutionary principles which underpin heredity in breeding, everything from dogs, to rodents to bird to mice. It's rather difficult to perform on long lived species given such an experiment would have to be continued for dozens or hundreds of years but domestication studies abound on evolutionary response to artificial selection.

    The earliest experimental evidence that evolution worked was an experiment by Dallinger in the late 1800's he gradually increased the temperature of a culture from 15 C to 70 C. Doing it slowly enough the organisms were able to adapt over progressive generations and were fundamentally different from the ones he began with, notably, they could no longer grow at the original temperature and the original lineage he had showed distress at 23 C.

    You have similar experiments constantly within medicine with development of antibiotic resistance. Bacteria, Prokaryotes/Eukaryotic single cellular organisms evolve rapidly and show ample experimental data. The whole variety which exists within beers and wines.

    You can look at experiment on aphids, fruit flies, mosquitos, lab mice, gnats, sticklebacks etc etc. Kinsey began his career showing that a short lived gnat speciated so quickly that gnats of the seemingly same lineage could no longer reproduce with each other less than a few miles apart and showed it took them hundreds of generations to move that far confirming evolution again.

    Domestication experiments on animals from foxes, to elephants, to birds. There's ample closed environmental systems (closed from the scale of the organisms studied) which also provide ample opportunities to see much larger scale experiments which couldn't be run in a lab. Numerous islands and species introductions within human history have resulted in speciation events.

    Of course the whole study of DNA and what it does also is described by evolution. There's many examples of purely genetic manipulations which conform exactly to what the theory of evolution describes.
    I see no reason to dispute any of this.
    I still don't see in it an example of an experiment in which if the null hypothesis is rejected to a statistically significant degree (meaning a multitude of execution instances), the theory of evolution would be falsified conclusively and I can't think of one myself.

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    Default Re: Evolution vs Y.E.C

    I think what your struggling with here is that you're taking "The theory of evolution is correct." as a monolithic null hypothesis, which is just as sensible as having "General Relativity is correct." as a null hypothesis - i.e. not at all, really. Each of these "theories" is by now an umbrella term for various single branches, assertions and subtheories that can be succinctly tested and possibly falsified by appropriate experiments/observations. If you will any falsification of a subthesis is a proper falsification of your null hypothesis in that the entire theory is no longer tenable as a whole, but requires correction.

    (In comparison: We have definitely falsified parts of Newton's classical mechanics by deviation of light, perihel progression of mercury, self-interference, etc., and as such you could consider the entire theory falsified and replaced by Relativity and Quantum Mechanics respectively, but of course it is still valid with restrictions to certain parameters and still very useful in its applications to large length/low energy scales. In the same vein we are constantly falsifying parts of the theory of evolution and refining them to better represent our observations. As such, what you call the theory of evolution is a dynamic bundle of theses and assertions just like quantum mechanics, genetics, relativity, etc.)
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    Default Re: Evolution vs Y.E.C

    Quote Originally Posted by Muizer View Post
    Dr Legend, I'm afraid you're absolutely right there are some militant atheists who wield scientific theory as some weapon to defeat religion. But it's only going to work against those who make themselves vulnerable to such attacks by not separating the spheres of science and religion. People who, for instance, would insist that creationism be taught in schools as a viable alternative to the theories of astronomy, geology and biology (including evolution).
    Well I wouldn't put it that way, but yes, many militant atheists adhere to scientism, which is ironically very unscientific, and give science a bad name. Religious people sometimes fall for it and reflexively attack science in general, believing that science is an enemy of religion, when really religion is the foundation on which science stands.

    Quote Originally Posted by Iskar View Post
    You're trying to discredit evolution by an attack on some of its proponents (which may even be strawmen for the sake of debate). A large number of tests and findings have been presented in this very thread that show evolution to be a proper, falsifiable and well tested theory amongst our portfolio of scientific knowledge. Just because some people try to (mis)use it to attack religion(s) that does not mean one should doubt the theory itself.
    You must have misread me, then. The behavior of evolutionists is pretty irrelevant as to the validity of evolution. I think purely naturalistic evolution, as a theory for the origin of life and humanity, strains rationality, but I don't really have an opinion on "God-guided" evolution, which most Christian authorities say is generally compatible with Christianity. The evidence for evolution requires some other supporting evidence, however, and that evidence requires supporting evidence as well, and so on, and I'm not interested in researching it all the way, so I'd prefer to withhold judgement instead of holding an opinion from a position of ignorance. Likewise I have no opinion on the theories of gravity or relativity either. This seems perfectly reasonable to me.

    As for your last assertion that it would be reasonable to doubt scientific results the method of which one does not understand: Do you mistrust your smartphone's GPS navigation just because you're not sufficiently educated in General Relativity? Do you refuse treatment at hospitals because you don't exactly understand the biochemical workings of the medicine? Do you abstain from using induction stoves just because electrodynamics is beyond your grasp? If the answer to just one of these is No, then you have no reason either to take prehistory cum grano salis.
    I think these are poor analogies. No one denies biological diversity, as far as I'm aware, I just don't really have a firm opinion on the theories which seek to explain it, e.g., evolution, creationism, aliens. In much the same way I can, for example, play a game without having an opinion on which programming language was used to create it. It'd be unreasonable to have a firm opinion on something I'm not knowledgeable about, especially since whether evolution is true or not doesn't help me in my other interests, e.g., my personal life, political ideology, religion. I'd rather focus on the future and recent written history over what happened 200,000 years ago.

    Demanding everyone to either believe or disbelieve in evolution strikes me as a religious inquisition, and I never see this quasi-religious fervor when other scientific theories are involved, it's just evolution/creationism and global warming, because these have been politicized. Many people have strong opinions about them and consider you an "other" if you disagree, even if you don't care about the topic and prefer to maintain skepticism toward all sides. I rarely see this type of behavior from evolutionary theists, like that guy in the above YouTube video, it seems to be an irreligious thing. (This paragraph is about other evolutionists, not you BTW)
    Last edited by Prodromos; August 09, 2018 at 03:11 PM.
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  19. #39

    Default Re: Evolution vs Y.E.C

    Since at the very least ~200 A.D. that apple and snake were interpreted to be symbolic by Christians as seen on written records.

    Intelligent design stands undefeated

    Isn't the snake part of the symbolism of modern medicine and pharmacy too?
    It will be seen that, as used, the word ‘Fascism’ is almost entirely meaningless. In conversation, of course, it is used even more wildly than in print. I have heard it applied to farmers, shopkeepers, Social Credit, corporal punishment, fox-hunting, bull-fighting, the 1922 Committee, the 1941 Committee, Kipling, Gandhi, Chiang Kai-Shek, homosexuality, Priestley's broadcasts, Youth Hostels, astrology, women, dogs and I do not know what else.

    -George Orwell

  20. #40

    Default Re: Evolution vs Y.E.C

    Quote Originally Posted by fkizz View Post
    Since at the very least ~200 A.D. that apple and snake were interpreted to be symbolic by Christians as seen on written records.

    Intelligent design stands undefeated

    Isn't the snake part of the symbolism of modern medicine and pharmacy too?
    ID is not a falsifiable proposition, however it is inferior to evolutionary theory as it doesn't produce useful implications. Understanding of evolution as natural process, however, already led to its successful application, which is impossible for ID.

    While not falsifiable, an argument can be made against ID by pointing out various mishaps and vestiges that happened over the course of evolution. Several mass extinction events are either suspected or proven to be caused by evolution of organisms causing ecosystem collapse, and there are plenty of vestiges found around human body, for example the unfortunate crossing between breathing and diestive tracts...

    Caduceus and Rod of Asclepios are symbols linked with medicine longer than Christianity exists, as they are associated with Greek polytheistic gods related to health and medicine.

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