Any conservatives want to defend Palin on these quotes?

[The Cleveland Steamer]

Elsewhere in this volume, she talks about creationism, saying she “didn’t believe in the theory that human beings — thinking, loving beings — originated from fish that sprouted legs and crawled out of the sea” or from “monkeys who eventually swung down from the trees.” In everything that happens to her, from meeting Todd to her selection by Mr. McCain for the Republican ticket, she sees the hand of God: “My life is in His hands. I encourage readers to do what I did many years ago, invite Him in to take over.”

Wow. What an idiot.

Can anyone defend this crap?

[statsman1982]

I'm not a conservative, but I can see many of them saying, "What's the problem here." I grew up, and currently live, in a very conservative part of Texas (just let THAT sink in ) and many of the people here advocate, with the straightest of faces, that it is best if one lets God take over every part of their lives. It's an attitude that lets them justify dismissing science and logic on the grounds that "Man's wisdom is God's folly." In other words, even though an idea makes sense scientifically and/or logically, what God says (or better, what some people think he says in "the" Bible") always wins out.

And even on matters that the Bible doesn't speak about, such as evolution, some staunch conservatives will have a vague sense that attributing the origin of homo sapiens to anything but two people in a magical garden is blasphemy. Sad but true.

This is not to say that being a conservative is tantamount to being a religious nut (there are several conservatives on this board that I wager don't believe this stuff). But there is a large amount of overlap in the Venn diagram between the religious and the politically conservative.

[Argent Towers]

It's easy to forget sometimes that Christianity - real, believing Christianity - has 2,000 years behind it. 2,000 long years, century after century after century of people believing - really, truly believing - in God. Conquering nations, constructing cities, building cathedrals, creating art, sculpture, music, all in the name of God. I'll never understand peoples' indignant surprise that there are "still" people out there that literally believe in their religion's scriptures. This board is not a representative sample of America or the world.

[Der Trihs]

Originally Posted by Argent Towers

It's easy to forget sometimes that Christianity - real, believing Christianity - has 2,000 years behind it. 2,000 long years, century after century after century of people believing - really, truly believing - in God. Conquering nations, constructing cities, building cathedrals, creating art, sculpture, music, all in the name of God. I'll never understand peoples' indignant surprise that there are "still" people out there that literally believe in their religion's scriptures. This board is not a representative sample of America or the world.

So? Most of those people's ancestors believed in all sorts of other nonsense as well; from magic to fairies. Somehow they seem to have managed to shed those particular bits of superstition. They still believe in Christianity because they are willful fools, not because they lack the capability to enlighten themselves; otherwise they still would believe in fairies and all the rest.

[tomndebb]

Originally Posted by The Cleveland Steamer

Wow. What an idiot.

Can anyone defend this crap?

I'm going to let this simmer in Great Debates for a while in the hope that an actual discussioin breaks out, but with a well so thoroughly poisoned by the OP, itself, I suspect that I will be sending this to the BBQ Pit fairly soon.

If you would like to engage in a serious discussion, let me know, I will close this and let you open a new thread with a modicum of civilty.

[ /Modding ]

[Argent Towers]

Originally Posted by Der Trihs

So? Most of those people's ancestors believed in all sorts of other nonsense as well; from magic to fairies.

Which just proves my point. Religion is so universal that it's been with mankind practically as long as mankind itself has been around. Breaking out of this conditioning is the exception and not the rule.

[Revenant Threshold]

Originally Posted by Argent Towers

Which just proves my point. Religion is so universal that it's been with mankind practically as long as mankind itself has been around. Breaking out of this conditioning is the exception and not the rule.

But surely the considerable majority of Christians, as with the population in general, believes in evolution in the U.S.? So far as creationism is "conditioned", at least in this example, surely it's continuing to believe that is the exception?

[Revtim]

Originally Posted by Revenant Threshold

But surely the considerable majority of Christians, as with the population in general, believes in evolution in the U.S.? So far as creationism is "conditioned", at least in this example, surely it's continuing to believe that is the exception?

Nope
http://www.gallup.com/poll/114544/da...evolution.aspx

On Darwin’s Birthday, Only 4 in 10 Believe in Evolution

[Revenant Threshold]

I don't think i've ever been unhappier to have been proved wrong.

[Der Trihs]

Originally Posted by Argent Towers

Which just proves my point. Religion is so universal that it's been with mankind practically as long as mankind itself has been around.

So has belief in magic, yet that is no longer the norm. Of course, unlike religion we don't feel it necessary to bend over backward pretending that belief in magic should be treated as reasonable.

[GIGObuster]

Originally Posted by Argent Towers

It's easy to forget sometimes that Christianity - real, believing Christianity - has 2,000 years behind it. 2,000 long years, century after century after century of people believing - really, truly believing - in God. Conquering nations, constructing cities, building cathedrals, creating art, sculpture, music, all in the name of God. I'll never understand peoples' indignant surprise that there are "still" people out there that literally believe in their religion's scriptures. This board is not a representative sample of America or the world.

Neither was the kind of Christianity nor the type of creationism put forward by Palin.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/max-bl..._b_128805.html

The Witch Hunter Anoints Sarah Palin

Pentecostals are not a very good representative sample in America.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religio..._United_States

http://www.livescience.com/culture/0...eationist.html

An article in the Anchorage Daily News dating back to when Palin was running for governor of that state (hmm, a mere two years ago, talk about experience and being fit to be commander in chief), reports her response to a question during a debate about teaching creationism. Here is the full quote:

"Teach both. You know, don't be afraid of information. Healthy debate is so important and it's so valuable in our schools. I am a proponent of teaching both. And you know, I say this too as the daughter of a science teacher. Growing up with being so privileged and blessed to be given a lot of information on, on both sides of the subject -- creationism and evolution. It's been a healthy foundation for me. But don't be afraid of information and let kids debate both sides."

Now this is disingenuous at best. Education is not about having "kids debate both sides," since most kids would probably conclude that the earth is flat and at the center of the universe (after all, the sensorial evidence is overwhelming in favor of the flat-earth, Ptolemaic system). Education is, at its core, about two things: a) We want our students to have access to the best of what humanity has produced, be that in science, philosophy, literature, economics or what have you. b) We want to provide students with the necessary tools to engage in critical thinking and serious analysis of whatever claim comes under their scrutiny.

According to criterion (a), "teaching both" isn't going to cut it, because creationism is simply not even in the ballpark of the best ideas ever produced by humanity. On the contrary, it is superstitious nonsense that harks back to an earlier era of ignorance about how the world works.

And it is important to point out that creationists are divided, and they are even less capable of being a representative sample of America:
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/m...g=content;col1

"I'm a creationist," the teacher needs to ask, "What kind?"

[El_Kabong]

Elsewhere in this volume, she talks about creationism, saying she “didn’t believe in the theory that human beings — thinking, loving beings — originated from fish that sprouted legs and crawled out of the sea” or from “monkeys who eventually swung down from the trees.”

Well, I wouldn't believe such a ridiculous theory either, if there were such a thing.

[GIGObuster]

Originally Posted by Revtim

Nope
http://www.gallup.com/poll/114544/da...evolution.aspx

Not quite, the second group was the "36% that don't have an opinion either way"

Only 25% were willing to say that they did not believe in evolution.

Bad, but not as terrible, it is clear to me that most Americans would still have serious doubts on putting creationism into the school science curriculum.

[Argent Towers]

Originally Posted by Der Trihs

So has belief in magic, yet that is no longer the norm. Of course, unlike religion we don't feel it necessary to bend over backward pretending that belief in magic should be treated as reasonable.

You're distinguishing between magic and religion as if they are different things. They aren't. What we now call mainstream religion is really just an extension of the magic people believed in before there were mainstream religions.

[Starving Artist]

Originally Posted by El_Kabong

Well, I wouldn't believe such a ridiculous theory either, if there were such a thing.

I think most Christians probably don't really believe in the Adam & Eve version of creation. Where the rub is, I believe, is that in speaking of evolution the prevalent idea is that evolutionists are saying that some living cell somehow got sparked in some random way and that all life as we now know it grew and evolved from that, and IMO that's as unlikely and hard to believe as is any religious belief.

Why, for example, didn't that randomly created cell just die, like one would expect. And if it didn't die, how did it replicate? And if it did replicate, why was it necessary to devolop even more sophisticated ways of replication? And if it could already get around and eat and reproduce, why did it need to develop eyes (and how could something as complex and multi-facted as a visual system develop on it's own just because it would be handy)? And how and why develop teeth and an extemely complex digestive tract if the organism was already eating and sustaining itself? Etc., etc., etc.

Human and animal life and everything about it is extremely complex and it's hard for most people to grasp how any of it could have "just happened," which is what I think most people believe evolutionists are saying.

(And then there's the possiblilty that evolution was just God's way of creating and growing life in the first place. So even if a person comes to find legitimacy in the idea of evolution itself, it doesn't necessarily disprove to them the existence of God.)

[Wesley Clark]

Only 6-12% of scientists identify with the GOP. No idea why.

http://people-press.org/report/?pageid=1549

Most scientists identify as Democrats (55%), while 32% identify as independents and just 6% say they are Republicans. When the leanings of independents are considered, fully 81% identify as Democrats or lean to the Democratic Party, compared with 12% who either identify as Republicans or lean toward the GOP. Among the public, there are far fewer self-described Democrats (35%) and far more Republicans (23%). Overall, 52% of the public identifies as Democratic or leans Democratic, while 35% identifies as Republican or leans Republican.

[Revenant Threshold]

Originally Posted by Starving Artist

Why, for example, didn't that randomly created cell just die, like one would expect.

How do you know it didn't? If one randomly created cell is possible, more than one randomly created cell is also possible - perhaps there were many millions, many billions, many vast-number of cells that died. A billion-to-one chance isn't so unlikely if you have a billion chances and only need one to work. As for the rest of it, pretty much the short answer is "natural selection", I would guess.

(Not sure if this is actually your argument or you phrasing the arguments of others, but you did say the subject was in general hard for you to believe).

[Polycarp]

Originally Posted by Argent Towers

It's easy to forget sometimes that Christianity - real, believing Christianity - has 2,000 years behind it. 2,000 long years, century after century after century of people believing - really, truly believing - in God. Conquering nations, constructing cities, building cathedrals, creating art, sculpture, music, all in the name of God. I'll never understand peoples' indignant surprise that there are "still" people out there that literally believe in their religion's scriptures. This board is not a representative sample of America or the world.

But not only id iy ytur yhsy Christianity != Fundamentalism ,but Christianity has NEVER equaled fundamentalism. The earliest Christian commentaries on Genesis give it a non-literalist, symbolic reading.

[Polycarp]

Originally Posted by Der Trihs

So? Most of those people's ancestors believed in all sorts of other nonsense as well; from magic to fairies. Somehow they seem to have managed to shed those particular bits of superstition. They still believe in Christianity because they are willful fools, not because they lack the capability to enlighten themselves; otherwise they still would believe in fairies and all the rest.

Do you still believe in phlogiston and Piltdown Man? Or do you have critical faculties enabling you to distinguish between good and bad science? If the latter, why do you assume all religionists are bereft of them?

[Starving Artist]

Originally Posted by Revenant Threshold

How do you know it didn't? If one randomly created cell is possible, more than one randomly created cell is also possible - perhaps there were many millions, many billions, many vast-number of cells that died. A billion-to-one chance isn't so unlikely if you have a billion chances and only need one to work. As for the rest of it, pretty much the short answer is "natural selection", I would guess.

Yes, but remember, that highly unlikely event is only the beginning. How does the cell survive? How does it reproduce? And if it is surviving and reproducing, how is it managing to develop the highly complex electrical and chemical and organic systems that have developed in its wake when there is no apparent need for them in the first place? I don't think these questions can be answered merely by laying them at the feet of natual selection.

Originally Posted by Revenant Threshold

(Not sure if this is actually your argument or you phrasing the arguments of others, but you did say the subject was in general hard for you to believe).

Pretty much 50/50.

But I will say I find it very hard to believe that organisms could develop teeth and eyes and split into opposite sexes, both of which are necessary for reproduction (and why would this be necessary if the organism was already reproducing...and how could the transition be made without the organism dying in the process even if the need to make such a transition should suddenly spring forth in the first place?

[cerberus]

There is a well known distinction between and among fiscal conservatives, small/limited government conservatives, social conservatives and the theocratic types.

[GIGObuster]

Originally Posted by Starving Artist

I think most Christians probably don't really believe in the Adam & Eve version of creation. Where the rub is, I believe, is that in speaking of evolution the prevalent idea is that evolutionists are saying that some living cell somehow got sparked in some random way and that all life as we now know it grew and evolved from that, and IMO that's as unlikely and hard to believe as is any religious belief.

Evolution researchers do not deal with the origins of life. (Evolutionist is a word that implies a dogma and creationists prefer to apply it to the scientists, unfortunately for the creationists there are also theist evolutionists)

http://www.scientificblogging.com/ge...s_vs_evolution

The influence is one-way, and this is the opposite of the way anti-evolutionists perceive it. They argue that if we do not know how life started, then evolution is false. In actuality, knowing how life started has nothing to do with studying how life has evolved since the first complex cells appeared. However, understanding how complex cellular life evolves probably tells us something about how life arose because the same processes are relevant whenever there are variable replicating entities.

In my opinion, it remains a valid and useful argument to point out that uncertainty regarding the origin of life is irrelevant to the factual standing of evolution over the past 3.8 billion years.

http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CB/CB090.html

1. The theory of evolution applies as long as life exists. How that life came to exist is not relevant to evolution. Claiming that evolution does not apply without a theory of abiogenesis makes as much sense as saying that umbrellas do not work without a theory of meteorology.

2. Abiogenesis is a fact. Regardless of how you imagine it happened (note that creation is a theory of abiogenesis), it is a fact that there once was no life on earth and that now there is. Thus, even if evolution needs abiogenesis, it has it.

[Revenant Threshold]

Originally Posted by Starving Artist

Yes, but remember, that highly unlikely event is only the beginning. How does the cell survive? How does it reproduce? And if it is surviving and reproducing, how is it managing to develop the highly complex electrical and chemical and organic systems that have developed in its wake when there is no apparent need for them in the first place? I don't think these questions can be answered merely by laying them at the feet of natual selection.

Why not? Natural selection is about context. It's the same overall ideas that more recently (relatively speaking) we see the differences between various species of cat. The "need" is provided by environment and competition; it's not a matter of whether it can survive, whether it can reproduce, but whether there are better variants of it, or better completely different things, that are better at it that mean there's less food or room to survive and reproduce. It doesn't matter if it can do a thing; what matters is if it does it better or worse compared to the competition.

That there are highly complex systems is because once they were just complex, and before that they were simple, and before that they were rudimentary. And that changed because the changes granted a benefit to the creatures that had them, in the context of competition and environment.

But I will say I find it very hard to believe that organisms could develop teeth and eyes and split into opposite sexes, both of which are necessary for reproduction (and why would this be necessary if the organism was already reproducing...and how could the transition be made without the organism dying in the process even if the need to make such a transition should suddenly spring forth in the first place?

Well, here's the point at which I say i'm not a biologist and so won't be able to give you detailed explanations of how those specific mechanisms evolved.

That said, I would like to ask a question of you; why do you select those particular points as your examples of hard-to-believe things? Are there things you think are comparitively easy to swallow?

[Starving Artist]

Originally Posted by GIGObuster

Evolution researchers do not deal with the origins of life.

I know. This is what I'm trying to say is the main problem with most of the people who are scornful of evolution: they do mistakenly think it deals with the origins of life. (And IMO this is largely because so many evolutionists are scornful and dismissive of people who believe in God. And if God didn't create life, what other explanation can there be but that it erupted and develped all on its own?)

[Diogenes the Cynic]

Originally Posted by Starving Artist

I think most Christians probably don't really believe in the Adam & Eve version of creation. Where the rub is, I believe, is that in speaking of evolution the prevalent idea is that evolutionists are saying that some living cell somehow got sparked in some random way and that all life as we now know it grew and evolved from that, and IMO that's as unlikely and hard to believe as is any religious belief.

There is no such idea in evolutionary biology. For one thing, evolution has nothing to do with the origin of life. It only describes what happened after life got started. For another thing, there is no notion or hypothesis in any part of biology that a cell just "sparked" into existence. The development of cells was a long, layered process with several intermediate steps, not just a single step or a single cell.

[GIGObuster]

Originally Posted by Starving Artist

I know. This is what I'm trying to say is the main problem with most of the people who are scornful of evolution: they do mistakenly think it deals with the origins of life. (And IMO this is largely because so many evolutionists are scornful and dismissive of people who believe in God. And if God didn't create life, what other explanation can there be but that it erupted and develped all on its own?)

On again, you are ignoring that there are theistic evolutionists.

But the main point remains that we have a peculiar kind of creationists that pretend that there is an ongoing controversy in science and that therefore we should "teach the controversy".

Creationists are lying here. You bet that creationists deserve more than scorn when they try to take their church dogmas into the classrooms.

[Starving Artist]

Originally Posted by Revenant Threshold

That said, I would like to ask a question of you; why do you select those particular points as your examples of hard-to-believe things? Are there things you think are comparitively easy to swallow?

No, there are a great many other things I could have listed also. Those just came most readily to mind as being things whose complexity and function everyone is familiar with and whose development seems not only highly unlikely but unnecesary in terms of having sprung up on their own, and mostly as a matter of convenience. Take eyes for example: how on earth would eyeballs and flexible lenses and muscles to move them and retinas to be focused on and optic nerves leading to the brain all develop out of nowhere just because it would be handy for an organism to see what was going on? I would think the organism would either die out or continue to get along as it always had long before anything as complex and seemingly intelligently designed as eyesight ever came into being.

[Czarcasm]

Originally Posted by Starving Artist

I know. This is what I'm trying to say is the main problem with most of the people who are scornful of evolution: they do mistakenly think it deals with the origins of life. (And IMO this is largely because so many evolutionists are scornful and dismissive of people who believe in God. And if God didn't create life, what other explanation can there be but that it erupted and developed all on its own?)

Why do you persist in using the obviously derogatory term "evolutionists"? There are the vast majority of scientists that recognize the reality of evolution, and the few that refuse to accept that evidence.
Do you label people that accept the Theory of Relativity "relativists", or call those who accept that 2=2+4 "mathists"?

[Starving Artist]

Originally Posted by GIGObuster

On again, you are ignoring that there are theistic evolutionists.

No, I'm saying that theistic evolutionists are virtually invisible to the public eye and most people aren't aware of them.

About the only things one hears from evolutionists on the public stage are about how valid evolution is and how stupid people who believe in God are, so it appears to most God-believers that evolutionists are saying that there is no God and evolution proves it.

[Czarcasm]

Originally Posted by Starving Artist

Take eyes for example: how on earth would eyeballs and flexible lenses and muscles to move them and retinas to be focused on and optic nerves leading to the brain all develop out of nowhere just because it would be handy for an organism to see what was going on? I would think the organism would either die out or continue to get along as it always had long before anything as complex and seemingly intelligently designed as eyesight ever came into being.

Am I mistaken or has this particular example been discussed(and explained thoroughly) a few times before on this board?

[Czarcasm]

Originally Posted by Starving Artist

No, I'm saying that theistic evolutionists are virtually invisible to the public eye and most people aren't aware of them.

About the only things one hears from evolutionists on the public stage are about how valid evolution is and how stupid people who believe in God are, so it appears to most God-believers that evolutionists are saying that there is no God and evolution proves it.

Could you perhaps provide a few cites from prominent scientists who said things like this in a public forum?

[Starving Artist]

Originally Posted by Czarcasm

Why do you persist in using the obviously derogatory term "evolutionists"? There are the vast majority of scientists that recognize the reality of evolution, and the few that refuse to accept that evidence.
Do you label people that accept the Theory of Relativity "relativists", or call those who accept that 2=2+4 "mathists"?

No degrogatory meaning is intended. I believe in evolution myself, up to a point. What would you call them?

(And yes, I would call people who accept the Theory of Relativity "Relativists," just like I call believers in Objectivism "Objectivists," thus I don't see where your ire is coming from.)

[Starving Artist]

Originally Posted by Czarcasm

Could you perhaps provide a few cites from prominent scientists who said things like this in a public forum?

If you can show where I ever said anything about scientists making such pronouncements, I would be happy to.

[Revenant Threshold]

Originally Posted by Starving Artist

No, there are a great many other things I could have listed also. Those just came most readily to mind as being things whose complexity and function everyone is familiar with and whose development seems not only highly unlikely but unnecesary in terms of having sprung up on their own, and mostly as a matter of convenience. Take eyes for example: how on earth would eyeballs and flexible lenses and muscles to move them and retinas to be focused on and optic nerves leading to the brain all develop out of nowhere just because it would be handy for an organism to see what was going on? I would think the organism would either die out or continue to get along as it always had long before anything as complex and seemingly intelligently designed as eyesight ever came into being.

Interestingly enough, the evolution of eyesight is one of the specific cases I was taught in high school level biology. I think the problem with your question is that those things didn't just pop up out of nowhere - they built upon less impressive, less efficient versions of what they were. So you don't have blind fish, blind fish, fish with complex, interdependent working eyes. You get a blind fish, and then maybe a fish with a slightly light sensitive spot, and then a fish with a yet more sensitive one, and so on and so forth. There are, literally, billions upon billions of years, billions upon billions of generations, for all this to add up in.

As for dying out - the very point of natural selection is that those traits which helped are the ones that survived. If that incredibly rudimentary light-sensitive spot on precursor fish helped it to survive in some way, then those with them are going to survive more, and survive longer, than the ones that don't. You talk about convenience as if it's trivial, but of course it matters. If there's a shop selling a product you regularly buy 10 miles away, and then another shop with that same item opens up just 2 miles away, all things being equal, you're going to go to the more convenient location to get your product. The nearby shop will survive better than the far shop, because it has properties which make it more convenient, more able to survive in the context of you as a shopper and the competition.

[Starving Artist]

Originally Posted by Czarcasm

Am I mistaken or has this particular example been discussed(and explained thoroughly) a few times before on this board?

What bee has gotten under your bonnet? Do you expect that I'm aware of and fully versed in every thread that has appeared on this message board?

I'm trying to explain why people such as Palin and other believers in God appear to believe that way rather than in evolution to explain life on this planet.

You, however, seem to be wanting to fight some battle I'm not even vaguely aware of, so I'd appreciate it if you'd at least let me know what your problem is.

[GIGObuster]

Originally Posted by Starving Artist

No, there are a great many other things I could have listed also. Those just came most readily to mind as being things whose complexity and function everyone is familiar with and whose development seems not only highly unlikely but unnecesary in terms of having sprung up on their own, and mostly as a matter of convenience. Take eyes for example: how on earth would eyeballs and flexible lenses and muscles to move them and retinas to be focused on and optic nerves leading to the brain all develop out of nowhere just because it would be handy for an organism to see what was going on? I would think the organism would either die out or continue to get along as it always had long before anything as complex and seemingly intelligently designed as eyesight ever came into being.

No, even having a simple detector of light and darkness is an advantage over critters that do not have even a simple photoreceptor:

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2...ent_divers.php

Vision evolved in the pre-Cambrian, and we have all inherited the same basic machinery — since then, we've mainly been elaborating, refining, and randomly varying the structures that add functionality to the eye.

Now there's a new and wonderfully comprehensive review of the evolution of eyes in one specific lineage, the vertebrates. The message is that, once again, all the heavy lifting, the evolution of a muscled eyeball with a lens and retinal circuitry, was accomplished early, between 550 and 500 million years ago. Most of what biology has been doing since is tweaking — significant tweaking, I'm sure, but the differences between a lamprey eye and our eyes are in the details, not the overall structure.

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2...brate_eyes.php

From those early pre-Cambrian days on, there have been two (well, three, but let's not get into that right now) basic kinds of photoreceptor: ciliary and rhabdomeric. The differences between the two are in cellular organization—rhabdomeric receptors have an apical elaboration of the cell membrane, while ciliary receptors modify a protrusion called the cilium to do the same thing—and in the cellular pathway they use to trigger changes in current flow across the membrane. Different lineages have appropriated these two kinds of photoreceptors in different ways. We vertebrates use ciliary photoreceptors in the image-forming part of our eyes; we have rhabdomeric receptors, too, but they're used in a more general way to sense light and dark, and play a role in circadian rhythms. Most invertebrates instead use rhabdomeric receptors for vision — the eye of the octopus, for instance, which superficially resembles ours, contains rhabdomeric photoreceptors instead of the ciliary rods and cones of our eyes. These ciliary receptors are found in all chordates, even in cephalochordates which lack true eyes, but do have simple light sensors.

[Czarcasm]

Originally Posted by Starving Artist

If you can show where I ever said anything about scientists making such pronouncements, I would be happy to.

So when you referred to "evolutionists on the public stage", you were talking about...?

[Czarcasm]

Originally Posted by Starving Artist

What bee has gotten under your bonnet? Do you expect that I'm aware of and fully versed in every thread that has appeared on this message board?

I'm trying to explain why people such as Palin and other believers in God appear to believe that way rather than in evolution to explain life on this planet.

You, however, seem to be wanting to fight some battle I'm not even vaguely aware of, so I'd appreciate it if you'd at least let me know what your problem is.

Actually, all I was doing was asking if anyone could direct me to previous threads discussing your example, because I was pretty sure it had been covered before and it would suit us better than rehashing arguments that had already been made.

[GIGObuster]

Originally Posted by Starving Artist

No, I'm saying that theistic evolutionists are virtually invisible to the public eye and most people aren't aware of them.

As a lapsed Catholic (and as a part of one of the biggest Christian denominations in the USA) I can tell you that most are aware of them.

Originally Posted by Starving Artist

About the only things one hears from evolutionists on the public stage are about how valid evolution is and how stupid people who believe in God are, so it appears to most God-believers that evolutionists are saying that there is no God and evolution proves it.

No, only a sub set of creationists are stupid. (The ones that want to put creationism in schools) That subset (like Palin) does want to convince all Americans that what the smack-downs that they deservedly get on school and on the courts applies to all people of faith. Those creationists are also lying.

[ambushed]

Originally Posted by Argent Towers

It's easy to forget sometimes that Christianity - real, believing Christianity - has 2,000 years behind it. 2,000 long years, century after century after century of people believing - really, truly believing - in God. Conquering nations, constructing cities, building cathedrals, creating art, sculpture, music, all in the name of God. I'll never understand peoples' indignant surprise that there are "still" people out there that literally believe in their religion's scriptures. This board is not a representative sample of America or the world.

A mere two thousand years is very nearly trivial compared to human history's longest-running, most popular religion / belief "system", but unfortunately it doesn't have a very good name. Pascal Boyer referred to it as "witchcraft" in his engrossing (if unduly repetitive) book Religion Explained, but at least here in the Western world that term is too strongly associated with old hags and broomsticks and the like to be properly understood by the general public. It is composed of a vast grab bag of beliefs centered on an imagined sense of hidden, mystical agency behind events, arising from the subjects / objects -- physical or otherwise -- around us which are thought to be imbued with the "breath" of powerful forces. A central tenet is that these hidden forces can be subtly manipulated by those possessing the relevant gnosis, many of whom are believed to be transcendent or can only be described using vastly different ontologies than our own, the effects of which are variously revealed in "luck", in the "evil eye", in our ancestors' will or respect, in specially designated animals, in the "Word of God", in "fate", in "horoscopes", in "psychic powers", in "prophecy", in "church", in "alien abductions", etc., etc.

You Christians (along with many others) have artificially added a great deal of subtle intellectual heft to the same root concept and refer to it in English as spirit.

This "religion" is at least as old as Homo sapiens, and remains the dominant belief system in the world even today throughout the world. Consider the enormous current popularity in the West of vampires, zombies, the paranormal, ghosts, Mayan death calendars, etc. Consider such popular books as "The Celestine Prophecy", "The Holy Bible", "The Secret", and "The Qur'an". All just different representations of the belief in spiritus.

Applying what we have learned from that background to Sarah Palin's and so many others' belief that their lives can be, or are being, "guided" by "the spirit of God", we can observe that what began as animism is still the preeminent foundation of that worldview. Humanity has layered astonishingly complex, subtle, and often extremely beautiful intellectual edifices on top of animism, but ultimately, animism it plainly remains.

And the extreme danger of secular power in the hands of people with that worldview telling us that their lives have been "taken over" and are now "in God's hands" is that their decision-making has thus become virtually unquestionable! Just as George W. Bush took us into an utterly unjust war in Iraq because he was certain that God had told him to do so (God was wrong about WMDs, too, apparently), if listening to secular advice and following secular laws and heeding the secular democratic will conflicts with "God's will", guess who gets the short end of the straw and suffers "God's wrath"?

[Sophistry and Illusion]

Originally Posted by Starving Artist

Take eyes for example: how on earth would eyeballs and flexible lenses and muscles to move them and retinas to be focused on and optic nerves leading to the brain all develop out of nowhere just because it would be handy for an organism to see what was going on? I would think the organism would either die out or continue to get along as it always had long before anything as complex and seemingly intelligently designed as eyesight ever came into being.

Go pick up a copy of Dawkins' Climbing Mount Improbable; he devotes an entire chapter to the evolution of the eye, and how each step confers an evolutionary advantage, and how the eye could evolve in relatively few generations. IIRC, he writes that the eye has in fact evolved independently between 40 and 60 times; it's not really that unusual.

To borrow a line from (I think) Diogenes, the argument from personal incredulity is not that compelling. The evidence shows that these things evolved, and often evolved multiple times.

[Starving Artist]

Originally Posted by Revenant Threshold

and then maybe a fish with a slightly light sensitive spot...

This is the crux of what I mean. How did this "light sensitive spot" appear in the first place? And why did it progress rather than die out? And how did it (or any other part of the body) happen to develop muscles and tendons to operate it. And how did clear lenses develop with corresponding retinas to focus on?

It's easy to say they just started small and grew but there's a great deal more than that at play, and to say they just started small for some reason and grew into what they are now is just as hard for me to believe as it is for some to understand how a person can believe it God. To me there are just as many things about that kind of belief that depend upon faith as anything a believer in God comes to employ.

Now, having said that I'm going to bow out of here. I merely wanted to offer a likely explanation as to why so many Christians put a greater belief in God than they do in evolution. It was not and is not my intention to argue the finer points on their behalf.

[Starving Artist]

Originally Posted by Sophistry and Illusion

Go pick up a copy of Dawkins' Climbing Mount Improbable; he devotes an entire chapter to the evolution of the eye, and how each step confers an evolutionary advantage, and how the eye could evolve in relatively few generations. IIRC, he writes that the eye has in fact evolved independently between 40 and 60 times; it's not really that unusual.

Thanks. I'll check it out. But as I just said above, I didn't come into this thread to argue that point of view, but just to explain why so many people are dubious as to the role of evolution in creating life as we know it now.

I've heard it said many times, and once even in this thread, that evolution is adaptive, not creative. You appear to be arguing otherwise. Clearly eyesight, teeth, liver function, etc., have all come into being where they did not exist before (i.e., they've been "created"), so surely it's possible to see where people might be confused about this issue.

And again, it isn't my purpose to argue either their POV or my own, but just to say that this is how many people out there think when it comes to the subject of evolution.

[DanBlather]

Originally Posted by Starving Artist

No, there are a great many other things I could have listed also. Those just came most readily to mind as being things whose complexity and function everyone is familiar with and whose development seems not only highly unlikely but unnecesary in terms of having sprung up on their own, and mostly as a matter of convenience. Take eyes for example: how on earth would eyeballs and flexible lenses and muscles to move them and retinas to be focused on and optic nerves leading to the brain all develop out of nowhere just because it would be handy for an organism to see what was going on? I would think the organism would either die out or continue to get along as it always had long before anything as complex and seemingly intelligently designed as eyesight ever came into being.

It seems like you are being willfully ignorant. There are dozens of good, accessible books that describe how. The Panda's Thumb and The Blind Watchmaker are two.

On the other hand, the idea that God made man out of mud and woman out of a rib and that a talking snake got them kicked out of paradise so now we all are born with a burden of sin that can only be shed by worshiping a man born to a virgin who was sent to earth by his father so that he could die a horrible death is very easy to believe.

[Sam Stone]

Why should her personal beliefs matter? I'm an Atheist, so if ask me, Barack Obama's head is filled with all sorts of bizzaro claptrap about supernatural beings being sent to earth by greater supernatural beings, for the purpose of absolving our sins through some strange mechanism involving said supernatural being becoming a human for a while and then allowing other humans to crucify him. And if we just 'believe' in this supernatural being and accept him as our savior, we'll all go to some mystical place after we die where all will be sunny and happy.

Does it make him a worse president for believing that? If not, why should Palin's personal religious beliefs be held against her?

[Der Trihs]

Originally Posted by Polycarp

Do you still believe in phlogiston and Piltdown Man? Or do you have critical faculties enabling you to distinguish between good and bad science? If the latter, why do you assume all religionists are bereft of them?

Because they are still religious. There IS no "good religion"; no such thing as religion that is any more plausible than "phlogiston and Piltdown Man". In fact, those were rather more plausible than most or all religions. Religion is ALL baseless garbage, at best. Anyone who looks at it seriously with their "critical faculties" is going to discard religion.

[Starving Artist]

I believe I said that I don't think most Christians really believe the Adam & Eve version of creation, so why are you getting on my case about the ones who do?

Why can't a person say that Group A believes a certain way around here without immediately being cast in the role of having to defend what Group A believes?

I'm not sure what to believe myself, and so far as I know my beliefs with regard to God and creation are quite a bit different than those of many on either side.

So cut me some slack, mmkay?

[elucidator]

Originally Posted by Starving Artist

This is the crux of what I mean. How did this "light sensitive spot" appear in the first place?...

Be harder to find a cell that wasn't "light sensitive" than to find one that was. Just about all the plankton, the algae, for instance. Single cells, some of them, and the whole living creature is a "light sensitive" cell.

[GIGObuster]

Originally Posted by Starving Artist

This is the crux of what I mean. How did this "light sensitive spot" appear in the first place? And why did it progress rather than die out?

Heat also applies to spots like that, and many critters that not reacted to the change of light or infrared signals were easy prey. So less they were less able to reproduce.

Originally Posted by Starving Artist

And how did it (or any other part of the body) happen to develop muscles and tendons to operate it. And how did clear lenses develop with corresponding retinas to focus on?

Lots of information here:

http://www.springerlink.com/content/m3k441k67q3n/

Originally Posted by Starving Artist

It's easy to say they just started small and grew but there's a great deal more than that at play, and to say they just started small for some reason and grew into what they are now is just as hard for me to believe as it is for some to understand how a person can believe it God. To me there are just as many things about that kind of belief that depend upon faith as anything a believer in God comes to employ.

Now, having said that I'm going to bow out of here. I merely wanted to offer a likely explanation as to why so many Christians put a greater belief in God than they do in evolution. It was not and is not my intention to argue the finer points on their behalf.

You are not even accurate on the "many" Christians bit. Catholics accept evolution and so do many protestants. Religion can lead to doubt the evolutionary evidence, but it is clear that not all scientists are atheists, most scientists that are Christians clearly have no problems accepting evolution.

http://www.livescience.com/culture/0...evolution.html

[Diogenes the Cynic]

Originally Posted by Starving Artist

This is the crux of what I mean. How did this "light sensitive spot" appear in the first place?

Random mutation. They happen all the time.

And why did it progress rather than die out?

Because it conferred a marginal advantage.

And how did it (or any other part of the body) happen to develop muscles and tendons to operate it. And how did clear lenses develop with corresponding retinas to focus on?

Slowly and steadily. A step at a time. One thing you shou;d be aware of is that these steps are not just hypothetical. Every stage can be found in present, living species. This is really not a mystery. The information is easily available to you.

It's easy to say they just started small and grew

It's also easy to prove.

but there's a great deal more than that at play

Like what? Cite?

and to say they just started small for some reason and grew into what they are now is just as hard for me to believe as it is for some to understand how a person can believe it God.

Yes, this is called the argument from personal incredulity. If I can't understand it, it must be magic. The comp[arison to God belief is inapt, by the way. We can prove the evolution of the eyeball. It's discovered information, not just a wild hypothesis.

To me there are just as many things about that kind of belief that depend upon faith as anything a believer in God comes to employ.

No "faith" is involved. We're telling you what is known for a fact, not what is merely "believed."