It is not necessary to reject a Creator in order to accept evolution

Great Debates
1

For the record: I do not believe in a Creator. I never have, I never will, barring a personal introduction backed up with some pretty spectacular Creator-level proofs.

I’m watching a Dawkins series “The Genius of Charles Darwin”, and I’m getting very frustrated with Dawkins’ insistence on treating evolution as proof that there is no Creator. That is what makes it so difficult to penetrate the creationists, and it’s not necessary.

The Catholic Church recognizes the truth of evolution and the age of the earth, and it hasn’t meant the abandonment of their faith: they simply believe that God created via evolution. Seems to me you will make greater progress in getting people as a whole to accept science if you stop using science as proof that there is no God and work on persuading people that science shows us how things work without comment on the possibility that it was all set in motion by some greater power. Leave that out of it, or allow that perhaps a creator created what science is showing us…no skin off science’s nose and if it helps break down the stupid fighting over it, why not?

2

Evolution, both in science curricula and in popular literature/Internet sites is commonly presented for what it is, without invocation of a deity or denial of same. The vast majority of scientists, religious or otherwise educate on this subject in an evidence-based fashion.

I don’t know what Dawkins is supposedly saying in the example you’re citing, but if the existence of a small minority of presentations by avowed atheists is enough to get the devout to reject evolution, then I suggest the problem is with them (I don’t see atheists rejecting evolution because some major religions are OK with it).

3

This seems highly unlikely from all the Dawkins material that I’ve seen/read. He usually says that evolution shows that a creator is not necessary, which is a whole different thing altogether. His normal storyboard is that all the scientists or scientifically inclined people that came before Darwin had no better explanation than religion for why life existed the way it did. Darwin gave the world that explanation, and that was his genius. If he says anywhere that evolution is proof there is no creator, I’d appreciate a link.

4

I do think there’s a problem with a Creator who treats humans as privileged with souls that separate them from the animal kingdom–evolution really undermines that position.

Evolution and natural selection are compatible with, say, Deism, but that’s not really relevant to the primary debate, i.e. Darwin vs. Christianity.

5

I don’t know where it is written, I’m just seeing it on video.

6

Yeah, it doesn’t sound like what I’ve heard in the past from Dawkins.

7

You’re right that it’s not necessary to reject a Creator in order to accept evolution. It’s also not necessary to reject Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny or the Tooth Fairy in order to accept evolution. Our understanding of evolution is based on the facts of reality and our rational interpretation of them. Why cloud the issue with things that have no basis in reality whatsoever . . . just to appease people’s irrationality?

8

Why can’t that just end at “God created.” And everything else that happened afterward is a byproduct, including us..

9

Because we kinda like to figure out how the universe works rather than just beg the rain gods to spare our harvest. You know all that great stuff that makes your life awesome, like this internet thing and all of the cheap food and clothing and cool gadgets and all that stuff that makes your life good? That came from the people who weren’t satisfied to not figure out how things actually work.

As for god and evolution. Sure, you can think both happened, and lots of people do. It’s a less ridiculous position than thinking evolution didn’t happen, because at least you’re accepting reality and not thinking god planted the dinosaur bones 6000 years ago to fuck with us.

But it’s also sort of useless. It adds no explanatory power, it’s just like saying “ok, so evolution happened, but god did it!” “Ok, so the universe is huge and expanding, but god did it!”, etc. Basically, just stating what actually exists, and then saying “god did it!” adds nothing to the explanation. God isn’t necesary to the explanation, nor does his presence actually help explain anything. What’s the point?

The reason idiots really want to deny reality though, is this: the entire point of inventing gods is to explain things you don’t understand with an idea that gives you a sense of control. Back when we didn’t understand how the solar system work, or how weather worked, we had the sun god that pushed the sun across the sky, and the rain gods who would reward or punish us with good weather for our crops.

As we learned more and more about how things actually worked, those explanations for god became unnecesary. We no longer need sun gods or harvest gods, because we figured out how those actually work. Well - it used to be that we couldn’t explain the biodiversity of life and how we got here, so we used god to fill in that gap. He gave us all the animals, custom designed just for our world, and he created us, super special humans, in his image.

That’s part of the issue actually - it was easy enough for people to give up the idea of a sun god or weather gods or gods of the sea because we don’t have that much invested in it. But the idea that humans are super special, unique from anything else in the universe, custom-designed by god, is a big ego booster. To think that we’re just a rather remarkable result of random processes, same as anything else, is a big hit to our ego. It’s a lot harder to give up the idea that you’re the most special thing in the universe than to give up sun gods and sea gods and harvest gods.

Evolution removes the need for god in the explanation about life just in the way that our understanding of the solar system removed the need for the sun god. Sure, you could still say “ok, so the sun is at the center of the solar system and we revolve around it… because that’s how the sun god wanted it!” but at that point, what role does the sun god serve in your explanation? Why is he necesary?

Similarly, once we figured out evolution, what use is the modern monotheistic god in explaining that? Saying “evolution happened exactly as it appears, and would be logical to happen, but… god did it!” is equivelantly useless to saying the sun god wanted the sun to be at the center of our solar system all along. It lacks explanatory power and is unnecesary, it’s just special pleading to maintain the beliefs you find most comfortable.

10

This is a huge problem. Religion and science are different types of truth. Using one to attack the other is a misuse of it. I believe in a Creator, but the revelation in the Bible is about the Creator, not creation. He knew we could eventually figure out what we need to about how the world works.

11

As in, one (science, naturally) is the kind of truth that is actually true; and one is the kind of “truth” that the people asserting it demand be treated as truth. What Robert A. Heinlein called Pravda, after the Communist newspaper; official truth.

And note that it is flatly impossible for most religious claims to actually be true since they contradict each other. Religious people of course either outright ignore that problem or assume that it’s their particular religion that will turn out to be true and all the religions that contradict their own are false; it would be rather funny if the One True Religion was verified to be the religion practiced by some obscure primitive tribe somewhere instead of one of the big religions. Christianity? Islam? Buddhism? Nope, Al-Hagrash the Three Headed Lizard God is the One True God!

12

Since Dawkins inspired this discussion, I think it’s relevant to note that he explicitly rejects the NOMA (non-overlapping magisteria) view of the relationship between science and religion.

I personally think mythology contains “truths” in a psychological or metaphorical sense but not a literal sense, unlike science. So I feel that NOMA equivocates on the definition of “truth”.

13

He does a pretty damned good job of making it sounds like evolution disproves God. He doesn’t quite get around to sayin it that way, but goes on and on in “The God Delusion” about how evolution is a “consciousness-raiser” that leads one to reaize there is no God, even using Douglas Adams as an example.

Sawkins may be a hell of an ethicist and biologist but he’s really not a sensational writer, and it’s hard to grasp where he’s going sometimes; the chapter entitled “Why There Is Almost CErtainly No God” does not really clearly defend the title thesis except to go on and on about… evolution. In fact that’s more or less the summary of the entire book:

  1. There’s no God. Religion sucks.
  2. Evolution is the shiznit.

It’s hard for me (an atheist, I might add) tocome away from the book with any coherent idea of what Dawkins is saying OTHER than “Evolution trumps God.” If he’s saying anything else of note he’s not saying it well.

14

You are completely and utterly wrong. I saw this thread, and have just completed watching the 3 part series in its entirety, and Dawkins never once claims this. He doesn’t even come close to saying it.

FYI, the series is available in its entirety in YouTube. You can all judge for yourselves.

15

Evidently we disagree.

16

I wouldn’t say “we disagree” as if we have two different opinions on something.
I would say you are factually wrong about what Dawkins says. It is not a matter of opinion.

The closest he comes to what you say is that evolution destroys the Biblical creation story, which I don’t think can be argued if you accept evolution as fact. But nowhere does he come close to saying that evolution is proof that there is no Creator.

I challenge you to go find it. We can all listen to whatever you want to specify, episode and time-wise, on the YouTube videos.

17

It only “destroys” the Biblical creation stories if one follows the 19th Century American idea that the bible must be literally true, even in its contradictions.

Since most Christians up until John Darby–and the majority since John Darby who live outside the U.S.–could recognize that the two separate Creation stories contradicted each other and represented a moral or spiritual belief, not a physical one, they never really had a problem with Darwin’s theory.

At least as long ago as Augustine of Hippo, Christians explicitly noted that the two Creation stories were not retellings of factual events. I suspect that Judaism has the same sort of tradition, although I am not sufficiently familiar with the Talmud to cite those discussions.

18

Hawkins is a fine example of the intellectual dishonesty of misusing science to disprove religion.

19

How so? And do you mean Dawkins or Hawking?

20

It’s not misusing science. It just offends religious people because science always wins when the believers are foolish enough to make a claim that can actually be tested. Religious beliefs being pretty much universally wrong can only survive by avoiding such tests.