Well, of course, that is true. I do not believe in evolution, althouigh I certainly do not believe in the Creationist stories.
On the other hand, I accept the scientific evidence for evolution, so that it is no longer a matter of belief.
Yeah, you are going to regret it. I don’t really know how this world began, or how we humans began. I dismiss the Bible creation as mythology. I dismiss the science explanation as not logical to assume life started by random, then became ordered out of nowhere at some time undetermined. Or the universe created by a big bang randomly then became ordered out of nowhere at some time undetermined. That all the fossil remains use to described the accent of man will fit into the back of a pickup truck.
I just need more, I need personal experience, I want to see it happen.
Now here is the regret part. I am a spiritual person in contact with the spiritual dimension of life. I am told by the spiritual world that we created this earth and universe, then came to live on it for a physical experience, it was supposed to be fun, but we forgot who we were, got lost in the intensity, and well, one thing led to another.
Have fun with that.
Yes, we are alike then, I have experienced the spiritual dimension of myself. Many times and in many ways so I no longer believe in God and spirit. I know they exist. But I still don’t believe in the Biblical creation and I have never seen any scientific evidence for evolution, theories, guesses, opinions, but no real evidence.
To quote one of your favorite claims: then you have never looked with an open mind (as observed in your clear misunderstanding in your prior post of what science has actually proposed in regards to the origins of the universe or life).
Oh I’m not saying it is strictly an American thing. As noted before Turkey has a higher percentage of doubters.
What I was toying with was the idea that there might be a component to culture that makes one harder to convince.
If a person believes, by culture, that they are as an individual very important and significant would they perhaps have an easier time rejecting any ideas which would make them a just a small part of a giant whole. I mean once you realize the Earth is Billions of years old and the Universe much older, your 70 odd years of life are really nothing.
Do you think that American culture breeds this type of religiosity and the current backlash against Evolution?
It would be interesting to study what traits are shared in the people who believe in Biblical Literalism.
I hear from some of the vocal ones they believe in a one on one relationship with God. Not being much of a church goer I’d be interested to know if that sentiment shared by most Christians (Not just Fundimentalists) or even Other religions? On top of that is that view unique amongst any one group or shared in many cultures?
It’s very hard for me to comprehend that people could take creationism seriously. We’ve all seen what religious fundamentalism has brought us lately. Neither the Christian or the Muslim variety have anything worthwhile to offer.
I am up on science pretty good. The last I heard was pre-biotic synthesis was the main theory. I do realize that Methanosarcina acetivorans have been considered as a driving first step, as well as other things found in the ocean. But they are all theories, suppositions, and such. The big question remains did random action cause life or was life ordered by some greater knowledge. That question has not been answered yet. So, I go back to my original statement: I don’t know how life started.
Yes, and it is hard for me to comprehend that people take evolution so seriously. I think it is mainly what we are taught to take seriously. But some of us break-away from our indoctrinations and learn to think on our own. Now Christian and Muslim religions do have a lot worthwhile teachings, but it is too bad you can only see the negative part of it. This world is not black and white, good and evil, no it is not. When people become more knowledgable about what this world is all about it will be much easier to live here.
I think it is fair to say that no one who understands these issues claims that they know how life started. But you’re aware that this doesn’t have anything to do with evolution, right? Whether the first self-reproducing molecules emerged naturally, were seeded by aliens or from space, or came from God, the development and evolution of life after that is exactly the same.
Care to say why you don’t accept evolution as opposed to spontaneous abiolgenesis?
Yeah, all that horrible evidence they showed us, how dare they. Linking finds to other branches of science, finding new missing link fossils all the time, demonstrating evolutional development on existing species, what kind of gullibile fools do they think we are? :rolleyes:
Comparing evolution religious indoctrination is laughable.
The irony hurts.
No they are not the same. Everything that happens has a reason. There is no such thing as spontaneous anything. Just because the reason is not clear or apparent doesn’t mean it’s not there. What you describe spontaneous to mean is things just happen for no reason, now should you be correct, then the happening is random, has to be random. Events that happen for no reason are random events. So this brings us back to square one. Did life start randomly or by knowledge and intelligence.
Science distorts logic to suit its own purposes.
I have a bandaid if that would help any.
Was that supposed to be a comeback?
Lekatt, your answer to the question on the beginning of life, as Dawkins puts it, is no answer at all, but rather a restatement of the problem.
The emergence of life from non-living components appears to be incredibly improbable. A satisfactory answer must RESOLVE this problem. Science gives us the Athropic Principle as our current best answer (the details will, hopefully, be worked out as science advances), you, instead, only compound the problem by insisting that the answer to the improbability of life, is an EVEN MORE IMPROBABLE creator.
Well, yes . . . because it’s a religious culture. If you’re born into America today, you’re born into a culture with a lot of competing and proseletyzing fundamentalist denominations, for the historic reasons I mentioned.
I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the only surveyed country with more creationists, Turkey, is also a very religious country.
American “exceptionalism” exists, but it’s a different phenomenon with (I believe) different antecedents, and I don’t believe it drives creationism. I believe religion alone is enough for that.
I think you’ve missed Kinthalis’ point. The reason behind the beginning of life is completely irrelevant to evolution. The only thing that matters is what happens to life once it arises. All evolution really is, is creatures 1) with differences, 2) that can be passed on to offspring, 3) that furthermore make them better/worse able to pass on those traits, 4) in an environment with limited resources that weeds out the weaker organisms.
So, do you accept evolution, or don’t you?
What do you mean by everything happening having a reason? Is there a reason a 7 came up when I just threw two dice? Is there a reason the Tongan royalty was killed by some stupid girl racing on a freeway? In the macroworld, you might say everything has a cause, but that’s different from everything having a reason.
Does your requirement of a reason mean that the result is predictable? Looking backwards, we can see how things evolved, but we can’t predict what will evolve, and if we ran things over again we might come up with a different result. And if someone caused humans to be the result of evolution, who was it?
We don’t even know that yet. We may not until we have some other examples. Given a reasonable set of organic molecules, enough time, and some energy, a self-replicating molecule might come into being with near certainty. After that, it might be just a matter of time.
I don’t know, what do you think it was? You are right.
No, I didn’t suggest that at all. Just pointing out the two choices, random or order. If you have a third let me know.