# Cultural grievance is not a governing agenda! **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [March 5, 2021, 6:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cultural-grievance-is-not-a-governing-agenda/937288 "2021-03-05T18:34:50Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 9
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2021, 4:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cultural-grievance-is-not-a-governing-agenda/937288/161 "2021-04-10T16:36:10Z")
What would you call the belief that God had a hand in evolution? And if you are going to contradict me, shouldn’t you at least offer a reason? Or are you just trying to be offensive? ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2021, 4:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cultural-grievance-is-not-a-governing-agenda/937288/162 "2021-04-10T16:51:29Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > According to [Gallup](https://news.gallup.com/poll/108226/republicans-democrats-differ-creationism.aspx), as of 2008 My, my. 200_ **8** _, you say? My, my. > [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > Large majorities of both parties believe that God either created man outright or influenced the evolution of man. Sorry, where did anyone say the sides are the political parties? ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2021, 4:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cultural-grievance-is-not-a-governing-agenda/937288/163 "2021-04-10T16:54:57Z")
The “god-guided evolution” I recall from my Episcopal school education was the best science about evolution from the time, plus some gobbledygook that God oversaw it all. Intelligent Design, on the other hand, rejects evolution, and insists that there is evidence that God created all life, and life did not significantly evolve (and most especially, humans did not evolve from other life forms). ---
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2021, 5:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cultural-grievance-is-not-a-governing-agenda/937288/164 "2021-04-10T17:04:08Z")
Eh, plenty of Dems I know conform to Sam’s findings. It’s a big tent, after all. The difference being, of course, that Christian Dems did not reject science or their concern for their fellow man, as did their Republican counterparts, nor do they have to stand before Jesus and explain why they voted to continue cruel, malignant policies which had already killed a quarter-million fellow citizens and impoverished the country, pouring our wealth into the hands of the moneychangers, knowing the continuation of conservative governance could result in a million additional deaths and further impoverishment at the hands of those Jesus himself said are not worthy of being in either in the Temple or in heaven. But, yeah, to Sam’s point, I _will_ concede the conservative Evangelicals, every last one of their condemned souls. ETA: In case y’all wondered where _I_ stood on this issue. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2021, 5:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cultural-grievance-is-not-a-governing-agenda/937288/165 "2021-04-10T17:10:19Z")
[“God-guided” or “theistic” evolution](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theistic_evolution#:~:text=Theistic%20evolution%2C%20theistic%20evolutionism%2C%20evolutionary,scientific%20understanding%20about%20biological%20evolution.) does not purport to be a scientific theory. It accepts the conventional explanation for the existence of complex life on Earth, it just assumes that God was responsible for that process existing. [“Intelligent Design”](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligent_design) is a pseudo scientific explanation that is at odds with, and intended as a replacement for, the consensus understanding of how evolution works. It assumes, among other things, that large evolutionary changes are not a result of descent-with-modification, but are the result of God directly intervening and altering animals into new forms. ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2021, 7:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cultural-grievance-is-not-a-governing-agenda/937288/166 "2021-04-10T19:52:17Z")
Exactly. “Theistic” evolution isn’t really incompatible with either science or religion, in that it lets the stuff that can be explained by science be explained by science. Things evolve the way they did because of evolutionary pressures and the mechanisms that science can explain. God comes into the picture in a larger sense of having set the process up and presumably having nudged things here and there to achieve the ends He wanted (assuming there were desired ends in the first place). Intelligent design is just a smokescreen for the rejection of evolution, and basically is the anti-evolutionists way of trying to reconcile the idea that the Earth is billions of years old and that we have proof in the geological record of all sorts of animals that came and went, and more importantly, that we can point to exactly when (in geological time terms) modern day animals came into being. Creationism doesn’t hold up with that sort of evidence, so they went looking for an explanation that retains the active role of God in the shaping of the natural world and of humanity, but that is also mostly compatible with the idea of extinctions and geological time. It’s the active role of God that they’re trying to hold on to, as evolution essentially implies an unguided process, and furthermore implies that humans aren’t necessarily special. So they have to gin up a scheme whereby humans are special again, because God made us this way, and we didn’t come from apes, etc… Which if you ask me is selling God short. I mean lots of other natural world processes happen in a self organizing way according to natural laws that govern them- the weather, geological processes, planetary orbits, etc… why would evolution of living things be any different? It makes more sense to me that God would set the world up to run itself and then if he’s angling for a specific result w.r.t. mankind, then tweak the existing processes here and there in a basically imperceptible way to achieve those goals. That’s what a smart deity would do, rather than helicopter-God everything all the time. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2021, 8:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cultural-grievance-is-not-a-governing-agenda/937288/167 "2021-04-10T20:10:55Z")
The original concept of intelligent design was to find some structures that couldn’t evolve, but which had to be designed by God. All examples have been debunked of course. Behe accepts evolution. The current concept of intelligent design is creationism scratched out and intelligent design written in its place in a futile attempt to prove that it is not religious and so can be taught in schools. ---
**Author:** ![crowmanyclouds](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crowmanyclouds/32/19884_2.png) [@crowmanyclouds](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/crowmanyclouds)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2021, 8:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cultural-grievance-is-not-a-governing-agenda/937288/168 "2021-04-10T20:21:28Z")
Literally scratched out, “_cdesign proponentsists_.” > **[Of Pandas and People | Pandas and "cdesign proponentsists"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Of_Pandas_and_People#Pandas_and_%22cdesign_proponentsists%22)** > > The Louisiana "Balanced Treatment Act" case – Edwards v. Aguillard – was decided by the Supreme Court in 1987. The court determined that teaching creationism in public schools violated the Establishment Clause of the United States constitution, but that alternative scientific theories could be taught. While the decision ruled out any return to teaching traditional Young Earth creationism in science classes, it did offer an opening for those willing to recast creationist doctrine in the language o... ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2021, 1:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cultural-grievance-is-not-a-governing-agenda/937288/169 "2021-04-11T01:03:10Z")
You can believe in God and evolution, if you accept that God had no hand in it. The minute you buy into ‘God directed evolution’, you are basically talking about intelligent design without the specific arguments. It’s a cop-out. Intelligent design people simply look for the evidence for God-directed evolution while the other God-directed evolution people just accept that He did it. Neither believe that evolution is a natural process, and instead believe that it must be the hand of God at work. I’m not sure which is better - accepting the supernatural without evidence, or attempting to find evidence for the supernatural within science… In any event, plenty of people on both sides of the aisle are religious and believe that the hand of God directs things like evolution. Intelligent Design is just an explicit version of that. I do think it’s worse for science, because it confuses people about science and what it is, but for the individual believe there is very little difference. ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2021, 1:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cultural-grievance-is-not-a-governing-agenda/937288/170 "2021-04-11T01:25:24Z")
This is just nonsense assertion. Plenty of people accept the science of evolution but believe that God set it all in motion, whether by designing the rules of the universe that made it inevitable (and playing no other role) or by making infinitesimal tweaks here and there. That’s entirely different than Intelligent Design, which wholly rejects the science of evolution. There’s a massive difference between accepting and rejecting that scientific evidence. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Strangelove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr.strangelove/32/6613_2.png) [@Dr.Strangelove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Strangelove)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2021, 1:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cultural-grievance-is-not-a-governing-agenda/937288/171 "2021-04-11T01:47:38Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > The minute you buy into ‘God directed evolution’, you are basically talking about intelligent design without the specific arguments. “Intelligent Design” isn’t just a normal English term that you can use in a non-idiomatic sense. It was invented by Creationists to refer to Creationism with different words (see _Of Pandas and People_, above) to get around the law. There is zero difference between ID and (Evangelical Christian) Creationism. “God-directed evolution” isn’t such a loaded term. Use it however you like, just don’t pretend it’s a synonym for ID. ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2021, 7:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cultural-grievance-is-not-a-governing-agenda/937288/172 "2021-04-11T07:08:47Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > You can believe in God and evolution, if you accept that God had no hand in it. Which is essentially the same as saying you can’t believe in God and evolution at the same time. > [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > The minute you buy into ‘God directed evolution’, you are basically talking about intelligent design without the specific arguments. It’s a cop-out. Intelligent design people simply look for the evidence for God-directed evolution while the other God-directed evolution people just accept that He did it. Well, no. Not even remotely. The problem with Intelligent Design is that it requires the person who believes in it to ignore evidence that contradicts their dogma. If you remove the “specific arguments” from Intelligent Design that are disproven by evidence, what’s left is entirely unobjectionable. “God-guided evolution” doesn’t require its adherent to ignore facts, and doesn’t purport to make testable predictions about the world. If you’ve got some beef with the fact that a lot of people out there believe in God, well… you do you, I guess. But the complaint you were responding to wasn’t, “There are theists,” the complaint was, “Some people ignore science when it disagrees with their theology.” Your attempt to conflate the two doesn’t actually serve as a rebuttal to the original complaint. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2021, 3:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cultural-grievance-is-not-a-governing-agenda/937288/173 "2021-04-11T15:08:04Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > According to [Gallup](https://news.gallup.com/poll/108226/republicans-democrats-differ-creationism.aspx), as of 2008 38% of Democrats believe in creationism, and another 39% believe in God-guided evolution, which I guess would be intelligent design. Only 17% of Democrats say God had no part in the evolution of man. > > Republixans score higher in creationism, lower in ‘God guided’ evolution, and lower in ‘God had no part’. Note that Sam cites actual numbers for the Democratic responses and then slips into qualitative “higher” and “lower” designations for the Republicans, which obscures the massive difference between Republicans and Democrats in anti-evolutionist belief. Those comparable 2008 numbers for the Republicans are 60% creationism, 32% “God-guided evolution”, and only 4% “godless evolution”. Interestingly, a later Pew survey found that [Republicans in 2014 were less likely to accept the existence of evolution than in 2009](https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/01/03/republican-views-on-evolution-tracking-how-its-changed/). So yeah, back to the original dispute over which party “gets” biology, it is clear that anti-science opinions on biology are far more prevalent among Republicans than Democrats. (And the Republicans’ score only gets worse when you factor in their ill-informed transphobic claims that over-simplistic binary models of sex and gender are “biological fact”.) ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2021, 9:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cultural-grievance-is-not-a-governing-agenda/937288/174 "2021-04-11T21:38:42Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > You can believe in God and evolution, if you accept that God had no hand in it. The minute you buy into ‘God directed evolution’, you are basically talking about intelligent design without the specific arguments. Not quite. The reason for “theistic evolution” (which doesn’t have the loaded phraseology of intelligent design) is that the Bible said that God created man in his own image, which requires that evolution be directed so that things that look like us pop out of it. Since this can be done invisibly by God, it is not falsifiable. Behe tried to find proof of it, but that would seem to be implying that God couldn’t direct evolution to create us without “a miracle here” someplace in the process. Theistic evolutionists could study evolution just like secular ones. Now, God creating man in his own physical image harks back to the old concept of God being just a really powerful person and not a God without form which was in some of my prayer books. And Occam’s Razor says that if theistic evolution is identical to secular evolution there is no reason to include a god at all. But you can believe God had a hand in evolution while not going directly against science. ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2021, 3:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cultural-grievance-is-not-a-governing-agenda/937288/175 "2021-04-12T15:22:20Z")
My scripture is pretty rusty, but is there any actual evidence that the idea that God made man in His image, literally means physically? I mean, you could argue that “in his image” means sentient/sapient more than anything else, as I don’t recall the Judaeo-Christian God having a physical presence like that. So with that in mind, the actual physical body might have just been how things evolved- if God’s omniscient and omnipotent, he could have set it in motion and known that _some_ kind of creature in his image (in the sapient/sentient sense) would evolve eventually, without any intervention to make the apes evolve into Man. I mean, he’s playing the ultimate long game here- if it wasn’t the velociraptors in the Cretaceous, it would have been the apes, and if not us, maybe the dolphins in another few million years. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2021, 5:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cultural-grievance-is-not-a-governing-agenda/937288/176 "2021-04-12T17:39:54Z")
I think I am being misunderstood. I agree that intelligent design is unique in that it tries to use the trappings of science to prove the unscientific. I even said it is worse because it damages science. But in terms of personal belief in woo, there’s little difference between intelligent design and ‘theistic evolution’. Both deny that evolution is a natural process, and believe that ultimately mankind exists not through natural processes, but by the hand of God. ---
**Author:** ![Airbeck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/airbeck/32/6574_2.png) [@Airbeck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Airbeck)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2021, 5:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cultural-grievance-is-not-a-governing-agenda/937288/177 "2021-04-12T17:46:58Z")
I don’t think that’s right. God could have set the natural processes in motion, or created the conditions that led to the natural process proceeding. ---
**Author:** ![QuickSilver](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quicksilver/32/7832_2.png) [@QuickSilver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/QuickSilver)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2021, 5:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cultural-grievance-is-not-a-governing-agenda/937288/178 "2021-04-12T17:48:51Z")
He also could have done a much better job of it. I’ve never created a universe from nothing myself, but it seems to me that he half-assed it. ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2021, 5:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cultural-grievance-is-not-a-governing-agenda/937288/179 "2021-04-12T17:54:19Z")
Many folks don’t distinguish between “natural process” and “process in nature that is guided/prepared by God”. And science doesn’t say anything about God. I’m an atheist, but there is nothing counter to scientific evidence, or the Theory of Evolution, in the following belief: “Through subtle, invisible, and undetectable means, God guided or set into motion the evolution of life on Earth, including human life”. Intelligent Design is totally different, and rejects this evidence. There really is a huge difference. The guys that want to fill science textbooks with bullshit really are much, much worse than the guys who don’t. ---
**Author:** ![Akaj](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/akaj/32/145_2.png) [@Akaj](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Akaj)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2021, 6:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cultural-grievance-is-not-a-governing-agenda/937288/180 "2021-04-12T18:07:50Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > But in terms of personal belief in woo, there’s little difference between intelligent design and ‘theistic evolution’. Both deny that evolution is a natural process, and believe that ultimately mankind exists not through natural processes, but by the hand of God. The difference is in attribution. Many of the religious people I know “see” God in the dazzling diversity of life – not really as “God did this” or “God made this happen,” but more as “all this wonder isn’t just evidence of God, but actually _is_ God.” [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cultural-grievance-is-not-a-governing-agenda/937288.md?page=8) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cultural-grievance-is-not-a-governing-agenda/937288.md?page=10)