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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 also easy to prove.
Like what? Cite?
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.
No “faith” is involved. We’re telling you what is known for a fact, not what is merely “believed.”
The first two groups tend to be separate from the second two. The social conservatives tend to be married to the religious ones (figuratively.) The people who believe in small government, fiscal conservatism, etc with no religious dimension are so turned off by the religious connotations of the far right wing that they are falling in with the libertarians. There is definitely a huge rift in “conservative” thinking today, although it’s still in its infancy and the libertarian movement is sort of a youthful adolescence of this ideology which, I think, over time will become more solidified.
Before anyone even thinks of putting me in one camp or the other, let me say for the record that the only form of government I really support is a dictatorship with me as the dictator. Everything else, to me, is weakdick, as Keshner would say.
First, Obama opposes same-sex marriage. This is at least one area where his religion has influenced his political opinions for the worse.
Second, I see this belief as a symptom of a bigger problem: a willingness to place wishful thinking before logic and evidence. You can only reliably come to good decisions by using good information, and sabotaging your thought process with self-delusion hurts that. Believing in God doesn’t make Obama think the Federal Assault Weapons Ban was a good idea, but they have a common cause.
No slack from me. Anyone who isn’t “sure what to believe” with regard to evolution is choosing to be ignorant of one of the most important and interesting ideas that man has come up with. If you just say that God set up the initial rules of physics and let things roll, that’s one thing. But to think there is some uncertainty that eyes could develop from undirected evolution is just ridiculous. Are you “unsure” that the earth is round, orbits the sun, and is orbited by the moon?
People like Palin decry evolution because it is associated with the idea that there are objective facts that can be discovered through science. They are used to just making shit up and having there pals nod in agreement. They “just know” that crime is getting worse, that America has the best healthcare system in the world, that religious people lead more virtuous lives, that abstinence only sex education reduces pregnancy, and that taxes and regulation are bad for the economy.
They don’t want to examine those assertions to see which are true and which aren’t, because if just one brick is taken out they feel that there entire life will come unraveled and crash back to earth.
Because, and it is clear that you ignored this in past discussions, Palin still wants the schools to teach the controversy.
It has to be clarified: No, Palin is not in favor of teaching Creationism, but what was ignored is that the “teach the controversy” is the default position of creationists nowadays as the courts already decided against just teaching creationism. However, there is no controversy in the science community, so in the end she is just lying. In a message board that fights against ignorance, defending that kind of industrial strength ignorance is beyond the [del]Palin[/del] pale.
There’s also a difference between unfalsifiable religious beliefs, and beliefs that show abject ignorance of demonstrable fact. Being religious isn’t a problem, but being stupid is a big problem.
How many evolve lenses and muscles and transparent lenses and optic nerves, all in the right place and acting in the right way to feed the brain and guide our actions?
Seriously though, what is the position of evolutionist theory? Did some cell just miraculously spring to life from out of nowhere and everything else followed in its wake, or does evolution not take a position on the creation of life?
It’s hard to contend with both positions simultaneously.
And what is the position of evolutionists on the existence of God? As I believe I saw it said around here once: “In the beginning, God created evolution.”
What about that? And how do you, as an atheist, prove to a theistic evolutionist that he is wrong? You don’t have any more evidence that God didn’t create that first spark of adaptable, evolutionarily-capable life than he does that God did. So it’s pretty much a wash anyway.
I didn’t say I wasn’t sure what to believe with regard to evolution. In the first place, you yourself just called it an “idea.” So what is it, a factual explanation of events or an idea? If it’s only an idea, one can hardly be blamed for being skeptical of it.
And secondly, I didn’t say I wasn’t sure what to believe with regard to evolution. I specifically said I found it valid “up to a point.” What I’m not sure about is the nature of God and what role God may or may not have played in creating this phenomenon we know as life.
There’s also the matter of keeping the religion(stupid or not) separate from the policy stuff - there’s something to be said for fiscal conservatism linked to the avoidance of religiously driven social mandates.
It’s already been explained to you that evolution is not concerned with the origin of life. Evolution only explains what happened after life got started.
Having said that, I will tell you once again that there is no scientific belief that a cell “sprung to life.” There were a whole bunch of steps before that.
There isn’t one. Evolutionary theory does not address the existence of God whatsoever.
We don’t. It’s not something that can be disproven.
Classic God of the Gaps. Yes, it’s true that no one can prove God didn’t do it. We also can’t prove elves didn’t do it, and the evidence is just as strong for elves as it is for God.
