How can anyone possibly not believe in evolution.....

Evolution is a lie. Another way to attempt to strip God of His glory.

I saw a creationist make the claim that the Grand Canyon was evidence of creation, because you need water to carve that out. Not a trickle. Not a stream. But a Great Flood. I almost choked on my drink.

Because it doesn’t require belief in the first place. It’s not a religion or, in the parlance of our times, a belief system.
As to why people don’t think it’s real? I’d say it’s some combination of ignorance and stupidity.

Yuh-huh. Then your god should’ve prevented us from being able to put 2 and 2 together, or else should’ve constructed the world in a nonsensical fashion that we can’t comprehend. (You’re well-acquainted with nonsense, right, johnny miles?)

Here’s a possible argument. The evidence for evolution comes right from the rocks. A believer should believe that god created these rocks, or caused them to be created. The “evidence” against evolution comes from the Bible, written by man. (Even if inspired). A god believer who denies evolution is basically believing the words of man over the direct writing of God in the rocks.

Maybe we could bring back the Inquisition to deal with them :slight_smile:

This is just silly. For those of us who believe in God and yet do not turn off our brains when we get up in the morning, recognizing the wonder of all the intricate processes that underlie the fact of evolutionary development are much more glorious than having everything appear through divine fiat (or even Porsche).

The comment about it being “a way” to “strip God of his glory” also indicates that you are historically ignorant of the fact that the earliest explorations of the concept of evolution were undertaken by devout Christians. And, while Darwin, an atheist, came across the best explanation for the process, his work was made intelligible and given a sound foundation among scientists by two other Christians, Mendel and Dobzhansky. So, basically, the notion that evolution is an atheist plot is actually a Creationist lie.

Care to give some evidence?

And I agree with Scylla on the topic of cows vs. steers and etc.

“Lies! It’s all evil lies! Don’t listen!” is an easy way to refute an idea without the suffering the discomfort of doing any actual thinking.

What harm is there in someone not believing in evolution? Its not sacred, its just a theory, so denying it is some sort of not blasphemy.

I believe in evolution because of the evidence behind it and until someone can disprove that evidence I will continue. Science has to be rational, if someone attacks evolution listen to their arguments and look at their evidence. If they have no evidence and their arguments are the usual creationist rubish just ignore them. You can’t change someones belief by attacking it with your own. If they are going to accept the theory of evolution as the most likely explanation they should do so by the weight of evidence, not being pressured by others who believe in it.

Re-read your Gospels, johnny miles. Christ commanded us to love Him with all our minds and for me to accept what you say as opposed to what I have learned through all these years is to turn off my mind and thus defy Christ. Maybe you’re comfortable with that, but I’m not.

Lobelia Overhill, as a rather ordinary-looking person, I’m not sure that “best-looking” has anything to do with fittest. My whole family tends to be rather ordinary looking, but we also tend to run above average in intelligence and robustness. We may come in last place at a beauty contest, but chances are we can out-think you and, if that doesn’t work, we can out-stubborn you.

Also, what constitutes “fit” varies over time. I’ve read that the same gene which causes sickle-cell anemia if a person has 2 copies of it increases resistance to malaria if a person has 1 copy of it. That’s why the gene that causes it got passed along – people do die of malaria before they get old enough to have children; I don’t think they do of sickle-cell anemia. (Anyone got a liferaft or a link for me now?)

As I understand things, small edges grow into big edges, which, in time, lead to speciation. A chihuahua and a great dane are still dogs, could theoretically interbreed (although the logistics aren’t pretty), and are quite definitely dogs! (Don’t believe me? Ask a chihuahua!) I think without human interference, however, they could easily wind up seperate species, although that may be me trying to get chihuahua’s disclassified as dogs so I’m not tempted to keep typing their name. :wink:

I also sometimes find myself wondering how limited a God who would only use the “Poof! It’s there!” method of creating must be, compared to One who would give us the marvelous and absorbing puzzle that is evolution. I take pleasure in seeing a knitted sweater grow under my hands and my direction; surely God must have taken pleasure in seeing species evolve, grow, and change under His hands. No disrespect is intended.

CJ

I believe that the heart of the matter is that many creationist goups are pushing to have their material taught in science classes at school, simply ignoring them isn’t enough in this case.

I totally agree Mangetout.

Besides, if anything; shouldn’t evolution be further down on the list on things that Creationists (YEC’s mainly) have a problem with.

The list, in my mind goes as follows:

A round earth
Inbreeding leading to birth defects
6-legged insects
The earth going around the sun
The age of the earth
Older civilizations
Plants needing the sun to survive

and so on.

I would think evolution would be down toward the bottom of the list, but I’ve never heard any serious arguments from Creationists to get the number of insect’s legs tossed out of science books.

Hypocrits…
:smiley:

I think all the people who believe in evolution should just kick back there heels and wait as i’m sure it will do a better job of getting rid of the ignorance surrounding this topic. Just wait for the headline in the papers: Creationists nearly Extinct due to Evolution, 100 acres of Alabama Set Aside as Wildlife Reserve.

If the problem is education in schools perhaps children should be taught about the philosophy of the scientific method and rational scepticism. That way when presented the arguments they will have some protection from indoctrination, inside and outside of school. That said, I don’t think schools should waste time teaching creationism, since it directly contradicts much of biology, physics and chemistry that is also being taught. Then again we don’t have much of a problem with creationists in the UK :).

  1. Meatros, where did you get that list? Some of it sounds exagerated.

  2. Anybody who doesn’t know that cow != bull is in for a big surprise at milking time.

  3. TomnDeb, Mendel and Dobzhansky were not Christians, at least by the definition used by many Fundamentalist Christians. Fr. Mendel was Catholic (check you Jack Chick–the Pope is the Whore of Babylon) and Dobzhansky was Russian Orthodox and hung out with de Chardin, a known Jesuit!

  4. Siege and TomnDeb, indeed the universe we know is far more glorious than that of a person who knows nothing about science. He has no idea of the glory and magnificence it presents!

I’m perfectly prepared to acknowledge that it’s more accurate to refer to bulls as unaltered male bovine cattlebeasts, cows as female, steers as castrated males, and so forth. I have no doubt that everyone in the dairy industry does it that way.

But the context of this discussion was species: sheep producing sheep, pigs producing pigs, and so forth. I wouldn’t take the time to point out that we need a boar and a sow to produce anything in the porcine world; using “pigs” is not inaccurate and is of sufficient precision for this discussion.

Similarly, cows produce other cows. The statement is not inaccurate – although it could be MORE precise – and was sufficient for this level of discussion.

I’m not wrong, although I could have been more right than I was.

  • Rick

Anyone have an ethymological dictionnary at hand?

I’m wondering where the word bull comes from, as in dutch a ‘stier’ is a fully functional male cow. An ‘os’ or ox is a castrated ‘stier’

Johnny miles, I can’t help but notice that you’ve had more than one thread in which to prove this point. I even started one specifically for people like yourself.

And yet, all we get is assertions without proof.

And do you know why? Because your religion is a lie founded on lies.

If you want to prove that evolution is a lie, start with retrogenes. If you can’t handle a basic fact of the “evolutionists’” science, then you have zero right to go spouting assertions that evolution is a lie.

I made it up, and I was exaggerating a wee-bit. :wink:

Granted the list is contradicted by ‘biblical’ fact…If you want to be a literalist.

yeah…heres a little more in depth about cicadas…

The cicada, most often incorrectly called the locust, have plagues that occur in any given area 13 (or 17) years apart. The larva remain underground for 13 or 17 years and emerge at the end of the 13 or 17 years an adult and live for about 2 weeks. The varieties are known as 13-year cicadas and 17-year cicadas. It turns out that there is not just one 13-year cicada species and one 17-year species, rather there are three species, and each one has both 17 and 13-year variety or race. There are no species that come every 12, 14, 15 or 16 years. The proposed reason: 13 and 17 are prime numbers. A prime number cannot be exactly divisible by any number. The idea is that a race of animals that regularly erupts in plagues gains the benefit of alternately swamping and starving its ememies, predators or parasites. And if these plagues are carefully timed to occur a prime number of years apart, it makes it much more difficult for the enemies to synchronize their own life cycles. If the cicadas errupted every 14 years, for instance, they could be exploited by a parasite species with a 7-year cycle. 13 and 17 must be pretty special numbers because three different cicada species have independently converged upon them.

hahaha…that was one of the funiest lines I have seen in a while!
and to reiterate what everyone else said…Evolution is not something to believe or disbelieve. What you can do with Evolution tho is question, reason, deduce, and revise, and formulate your own ideas if you want. But to simply say “it is false” is absurd and shortsighted. And btw, I am a Catholic and have no problems resolving my faith with observable science.