POLL: The God and/or Evolution Poll!!!

A few words about contradictions:

Contradiction is when a claim contains parts that are mutually exclusive on a dead-serious and ice cold logical basis:

0 != 1

And that's it.

That you can't understand how A gets along with B, still doesn't mean there's a contradiction there.

But please go on, folks.

 

Well, Evolution explains it all too clearly in my opinion. Creation as it is promoted by the Bible or other relg. texts surely doesnt.
However, there is a nagging doubt in the back of my mind who/what started it. And why.
These thoughts make my head spin.

Perhaps there is a guiding, propelling force behind it all, but I dont buy the 6-days-plus-the-7th-for-resting story... and that our world is only a few thousand years old. No offense intended!

 

Hermit explained this pretty well, but I'd like to add a few things. First of all, it is incorrect to say that whatever exists now is "the best". For starters, evolution doesn't create something that is best, it creates somethign that works. By works I mean succeeds in the environment at that time. If you look at the environment as the rules life plays by, the reason that evolution occurs is that the rules are always changing. Furthermore, just because something went extinct doesn't mean in couldn't survive today, or that things today are obviously better than things past.

How about a few examples here. Could dinosaurs live on the earth today, given it's current environment? Probably. At least in the more tropical areas. The problem was that they went extinct because the environment changed globally during the Cretaceous extinction that made it impossible for them to survive.

Similarly, if humans lived around the time of the Permian extinction, we probably wouldn't be here today either, even though we could obviously survive the current conditions.

And that's why evolution doesn't go for the best solution. If it did, then logically dinosaurs should have re-evolved in tropical areas. Evolution is random, fueled by genetic mutations. Most of the time the mutation is bad an creates an unfit organism. But when you don't strive for something perfect, only something acceptable, it is completely reasonable to expect that once a species goes extinct its chance of re-emergence are negligible. Evolution doesn't have a goal or purpose is the bottom line here.

 

Why do people say "parable" instead of "fiction"?

Religion and one's notion of God may not be mutually exclusive, but one seldom has anything to do with the other and the existance of the former in no way proves the existence of the later.
In the great unlikliness there is such an entity as God or cosmic intelligence or whatever name you apply, its seems evident to me that this entity is entirely oblivious to mankind. To suggest otherwise is almost the pinnacle of vanity.

Just goes to show you what a wonderful thing is the mind of man, able to conceive of the incomprehensible.

This is what is known as myth. Very apt description.


As for me:

Seek where you will, but you will find the answers to your questions and the solutions to your problems within yourself or you will find them not.

If it makes one feel better about the unfairness of mortality to espouse the existance of an entity greater than oneself who bestows immortality after one's life is ended, then jolly good; but burden me not with the inspid justifications presented in self delusion.

 

@Tal- glad you came around! and I'll be much more careful in writing my next AoDA poll (tentatively titled "When did you stop stealing from your grandmother?")

Actually, the question of whether something is "true" or not isn't that straightforward. In science, whether something meets the criteria of "true" or not tends to depend on the theoretical framework one uses; one of the jobs a theory does is to set forth the criteria for "truth." For logical positivists, for example, truth by definition can only happen within a theoretical framework; events can happen outside that framework, to be sure, but they are meaningless without a theory to make sense of them. For Karl Popper, there's an inherent self-reinforcing bias to looking for "truth," so that it is better science to instead proceed through deductive falsification. How one moves from one theoretical framework to another becomes an interesting problem, which Thomas Kuhn famously dealt with with the notion of the paradigm shift...

 

Just to add to what BTA said...yes, a parable is a teaching tool to illustrates morals and values, but it is also a kind of "secret code". Most of Jesus' parables dealt with farming (sowing, reaping, pruning, etc.), as a result, they were understood by the simple people...the farmers and workers, because they could relate to the illustration given. The wealthy and religious did not. As a result, most of Christ's followers were "simple" people, the salt of the Earth.

Unfortunately, his Apostles had a particularly hard time with his "farm" parables...because they were mostly fishermen!

My, we have a lot of cranky atheists on these boards of late...it's almost as if you felt your position was being threatened.

Oh, also a parable is a recognized literary form by critics and publishers.

[edit] would someone please remind Bion to post in English?

 

Gott in Himmel! Der Hacken Slash hat damit gerechnet, dass ich die ganze Zeit nicht auf English geschrieben habe! Affentittengeil, Alter!

come now Hacken Slash, you never even owned up to the "salvation by grace" issue in the "God - Man or Woman?" thread. i kinda think i had you there... even got to pull out some Dante (tho that's not english either, right?)

 

I had not originally intended to return to this thread. I may have mentioned this before: I hate arguments. I no longer have the patience for them, especially arguments regarding religion, and consider them a complete waste of time. Yet, I tend to get easily sucked into them. I have finally decided to come back, not to continue the argument, but because I think I need to ammend some of the things I said in my earlier post.

After having made my post, overhwelmed by the feeling of frustration I often get from things like these, I wrote an e-mail to the editor of Positive Atheism magazine, Mr. Cliff Walker, and mentioned some of Grey Magistrate´s arguments against evolution in my letter.

It turns out I was wrong: evolution apparently *does* have something to do with human morality. Mr. Walker was kind enough to send me a copy of an article entitled "Of Altruism Heroism and Evolution´s Gifts", by Natalie Angier. I do not feel at liberty to reproduce the article in its entirety, but I do believe I may make some quotes:

"There´s a general trend in evolutionary biology toward recognizing that often the best way to compete is to cooperate", said Dr. Barbara Smuts, a professor of anthropology at the University of Michigan, who has published papers on the evolution of altruism."

"Most biologists concur that the human capacity for language and memory allows altruistic behavior"

"The question of altruism was at least partly solved when British evolutionary theorist William Hamilton formulated the idea of inclusive fitness: the notion that individuals can enhance their reproductive success not merely by having young of their own, but by caring for their genetic relatives as well"

"Yet, as biologists are learning, there is more to cooperation and generosity than an investment in one´s own nepotistic patch of DNA. Lately, they have accrued evidence that something like group selection encourages the evolution of traits beneficial to a group, even when members of the group are not related".

"These models showed that under a wide range of simulated environmental conditions you could get selection for prudent, cooperative behavior (...) if you happened by chance to get good guys together, they remained together because they created a mutually beneficial environment"

So it appears that evolution does have something to do with the development of human morality. I stand corrected.

More on the subject may be found on Michael Shermer´s work, specifically his book "Why People Cheat,Gossip, Share, Care, and Follow the Golden Rule.", which was also recommended to me by Mr. Walker.

Those interested in learning more may want to visit Mr. Walker site, positiveatheism.org; or Mr. Shermer´s site, skeptic.com. I hope this is not viewed as spamming, as that is not my intention.

On the subject of supposed evidence of intelligent design, Mr. Walker directed me to Dr. Victor Stenger´s book "Has Science Found God?". More information on it may be found here: http://www.colorado.edu/philosophy/vstenger/god.html
along with excerpts from the book. More to the point, the chapter "Absence of Evidence", which is reproduced in its entirety.

It is not my intention to spam the forum, and neither is it to get into any arguments with anybody, or try to convince anybody of anything. I am merely posting these links for the benefit of whomever may be interested in the subject, so that they may read about it and make up their own minds.

 

You have good taste. Cliff(of Positive atheism) is one of the sharpest minds on the net. Read the PA letters section sometime! It almost makes you feel BAD for the theists!

Stenger is great too! I have some articles and things he wrote around here on teh subject. Very good stuff.

 

@Bion

I must have missed your last post to me in the man or woman thread...wasn't trying to dodge anything. I'll go back and read it and reply either here or there, whichever seems more active at the time.

Proceed with caution...whipping out your "Dante" is a crime in 48 States.

You know, when I said to speak in English, it was actually a backhanded compliment. You don't need to cuss me out in Watusi.

[edit] should I claim that you are dodging me in the "Surgical Castration" thread?

[ April 23, 2004, 08:59: Message edited by: Hacken Slash ]

 

Excellent post, Hermit. There are plenty of ways to explain the evolution of morality, such as mutualism, reciprocal altruism, and kin selection (and a few others). That was just one of the many perplexing oversights in Gray's post. It's as if he is talking about evolutionary theory and animal behavior without even understanding the most basic tenets and ideas dealing with the subjects.

Here is perhaps the most bizarre paragraph:

Ok, we already have problems with the first sentence. Strong? Weak? No. The terms you are searching for are "fit" and "unfit." Organisms that are better adapted to their environment leave more offspring, on average, than their conspecifics. Therefore, they send more of their alleles into the next generation, thereby generating evolution which is defined as a change in allele frequencies over time.

We measure "survivability" (of conglomerates of genes, not species) as a function of fitness (reproductive success). Just because viruses have reproductive capacities beyond other organisms (let's just assume viruses are organisms) doesn't mean anything. Can a virus exploit every ecological niche available? No. The great diversity of life is a result of the exploitation of a great diversity of ecological niches. That is (usually) how new species diverge from common ancestors: one fragment of a population is exposed to a new environment.

The emergence of complexity in organisms is a *passive* trend in macroevolution and the relevance of complexity on fitness completely depends on the ecological situation and phylogenetic history of the organism. In fact, many organisms have *simplified* over evolutionary time because it was advantageous for exploiting a niche (this is commonly seen in organisms who become parasites, where complexitity is pointless and unnecessary, or even a hinderance).

DNA does not code for the perfect organism. Just as an engineer does not create a machine that can microwave, do the dishes, create music, tell time, send men to the moon, run PET scans, dispense toliet paper, and serve every other conceivable function, DNA won't and can't create an organism outcompete all others in every ecological niche. (BTW, you seem to view evolution at "the species level", this is a common mistake. You should try to view evolution taking place *within* a species with conspecifics competing with each other in order to maximize their reproductive success). Because of the nature of evolution and DNA there are both *proximate* and *phylogenetic* constraints on every living organism.

By Jove, you almost explained it to yourself! That's why strength is such a terrible term. Fitness, my man. As situations change, the fitness effects produced by various alleles change in value. As wolves were brought into domestication, alleles coding for "cuteness" were favored by breeders, thereby increasing the fitness of "cuter" wolves. It's analogous to a adaptive radiation (which I talked about above) where when exposed to a new environment, allele frequencies will change across generations to best exploit that environment.

No! As the environment changes, so do the demands on the organism. Just because there is no constant unchanging gauge of fitness, does NOT mean that evolution loses its explanatory power.

Proximate constraints of DNA. Architects and engineers can spend eons designing new forms of airplanes, but there will come a point where can't make a faster plane. The proximate constraints of physics won't allow them to make the plane go any faster no matter what.

And lets be very clear, who is to say that life is short and fragile? That's your opinion. I find life to be incredibly robust. Millions of years of evolutionary arms races have allowed our bodies to compete with disease and injury.

 

im a former christian (no religion now) the reason i no longer beleive is that if greek mythology and all these other religions are wrong why does that make 1 right

 

@Bion

I was wrong.

I've gone back and re-read your posts that dealt with basic Christian Theology, and I can find no major areas to dispute what you have said.

I only read your post in a very perfuntory way the first time through, and responded to what I thought you had said. The debate was raging fast and furious, and I failed to really read what you were saying.

As for my standing as being competent in my understanding of Christian Theology as it pertains to Grace, evil, sin and the fallen state of man...I've written extensively on those topics in other threads in the past (the "How could a loving God and evil co-exist" thread comes to mind).

No point in doing it all again just to prove to you that I have an understanding of my faith...look them up if you care to.

I apologize for responding to you based on what I thought you had said, rather than carefully reading the post.

I don't particularly care for the works of Kierkegaard and Bonhoeffer, and St. Augustine is far more enlightened after his conversion. Try Sts. Aquinas, Theresa of Avilla, de Monforte or Therese of Lisieux.

@All members and admins

I would have normally responded to Bion via a pm, but since I spoke against him in a public way, I felt it appropriate to say I was wrong in a public way.

 

I am a creationist that studied Evolution.

Someone earlier mentioned 'Peppered Moth' as a 'tranisitionary example.' Before I can agree we have to 'agree' on what a 'transitionary example actually is.

In Evolution there is 'Micro-evolution' and 'Macro-evolution.' Creationists will agree that Microevolution exists. Subtle changes can occur over time among a species.

What Creationists disagree with is that they do not believe Macroevolution exists.

Macroevolution are changes that occur that produce a new species. A species splits into 2 species or what have you.

Species is simply defined by whether or not 2 groups are 'capable' not merely 'willing' to breed with eachother. A poodle may not be willing to breed with a Greyhound, but they are capable of it.

BACK TO: Pepppered Moth:

Black Moth, White Moth, Peppered Moth? Macro-Evolution? Nope!

http://www.utm.edu/~rirwin/moth.htm

From my link above you can see that the new groups of insects are capable of breeding and therefore no new species is created.

Someone once said that DOGS are becoming less likely to breed with eachother as cross breeding continues. That doesn't matter. It is about whether or not they are 'capable' of breeding, not merely willing. As of TODAY, all dogs belong to the same species. As of TODAY, no new species of Fruit Flys has been bred.

Creationists do have a Scientific Theory which is the Hydroplate Theory. That the Earth suffered a great flood many years ago. This was taken out of the Bible's Great Flood with Noah. To date: No one has found Noah's Ark on Mt. Ararat but there are still several people conducting expeditions. Only time will tell on that issue.

 

http://talkorigins.org/indexcc/list.html


scroll down to CB600 for refutations of the specific peppered moth claims of creationists.


Also from Talkorgins:

So much for that.


Now, i fully anticipate the "You just posted info from another site instead of posting your own argument(i.e. the same damned info in my own clumsy words)" bit. let me remind you: If you can refute the INFORMATION please do so. if you CANNOT then spare me the excuses for why you cannot. I do not have time right now to write a book containing information presented elsewhere.

 

I would love to refute all that as 'Microevolution' and not 'Macroevolution' simply by showing that they breed or that the person was absolutely mistaken about the parent producing the child.

But that would take an awful lot of time that I do not have given the sheer volume of mis-guided examples.

 

@Hacken Slash- thanks for the gracious reply, no harm done of course!

 

In my point of view, God created a world and imprinted evolution in the minds of all living things. I took the first answer but my sentiments are between the first 2 answers. I can't possibly explain it all, and certainly not in English, but hell, you know what I mean. Mankind created a god image, but this is solely for determining scientifically unexplainable things. Not for explaining evolution.

It doesn't matter what I think. Just live and be done with it.

And btw that was not naive by any means.