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

Great Debates
21

It’s everywhere. He can’t seem to find a way to talk about evolution without referencing religion, God, biblical creation, etc. Completely unnecessarily. Right at the opening he talks about people’s belief that God created everything and how Darwin’s theory proved that wasn’t true: evolution did. Not necessary.
“Evolution is the explanation for our existence.”

The only thing that has to be directly refuted by evolution is the idea that everything was created at once, in its finished form, in a week or a few thousand years. But that’s not what he confines himself to. He talks about people “Clinging to the old ideas that God created our world and every living thing in it.” A Catholic will tell you that God did: *via Evolution over a huge span of time. *

“Darwin showed us that the world is beautiful and inspiring without a god”

Can’t get much plainer than that.

Part three is all about how evolution makes God a lie, starting with Dawkins’ personal conversion to atheism as a direct consequence of recognizing the legitimacy of evolution.

“Darwin grasped that the religious story of creation ran against the evidence of the natural world. With evolution, God just wasn’t part of the picture.” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cARUZyBJtdY 3:45
Throughout the series he repeatedly treats the fact of evolution as refuting the existence of God. It doesn’t, and he doesn’t have to talk about it as though it does. If he wants to get people to accept evolution, he should back off treating it as the refutation of god, and confine him to the fact that evolution refutes the story of creation in the bible or any other story of creation that asserts that creation happened quickly and completely, vs. over time via evolution.

Finally, any question that he’s setitng out to say that evolution refutes the possibility of God he argues with the representative of the Church of England, (and he sets up a conflict that I think is bogus on its face, but that’s a separate issue from the fact that he feels the need to go after it in the first place).

Starts around 29:00, and if his goal was not to sell the idea that evolution refutes the existence of God there would be no point in doing that. He talks about Christians tying themselves in knots to try and have it both ways…and so what if they do? If they accept what science teaches and layers God on top of it, SO WHAT?

But thats the OP itself, this is my reply to your assertion that he doesn’t do what he plainly does…

22

Having said all that, watching the creationists stick their fingers in their ears is depressing…

23

None of the quotes you cite come even close to what you said in the OP, that evolution proves there is no Creator. As I said earlier, he does say that evolution does negate some specific Creation myths, which it does.

The idea that a Creator is “not in the picture” means that a Creator is not a necessary element as an explanation of the creation or development of life on Earth.

??? This says he doesn’t believe in a God. Again, it doesn’t AT ALL constitute a claim that evolution proves there is no Creator.

Either find a cite which supports what you claimed, or take a remedial reading course.

24

I was actually rather disappointed by the science teachers who didn’t want to challenge the factually incorrect religious beliefs of their students. When the guy said “We believe in evolution because we’re scientists… but we present this, and we let them decide whether to accept it.” And his response was something like, “No no no. You believe in it because of the evidence for it, and the lack of evidence for any other explanation.” It’s like he was asking them why don’t they challenge the kids like they would if the kids insisted that 2 plus 2 equals 5. And they just kind of looked at him blankly.

25

Does our knowledge of the solar system rule out the existance of a sun god? Well, not in the strictest technical sense. Maybe the Earth revolving around the Sun and rotating is how the sun god wanted it. But it removes the need for the sun god as part of the explanation of how the sun works. Similarly, evolution explains life without needing god as part of the explanation.

Now you can essentially say “ok, everything that exists exists, but… god did it! And in a way so subtle it looks identical to natural phoenomina” - but it’s meaningless. What does god add to the explanation there? It has no explanatory power.

At that point you’re saying “Ok, I accept that the earth revolves around the sun… but god did it!” “I accept evolution… but god did it!”. Useless. I suspect that’s more in line with what he’s trying to say.

26

Back atcha. Address the end of my post, AND…what I said about Dawkins in the OP is this:

Which he does. Throughout, from every angle, and I’ve offered some examples.

27

Saying that it is not necessary for something to exist is not the same as saying that it does not exist.

28

And what he also questioned, unnecessarily, was the teachers’ reluctance to directly attack the religious beliefs of their students. Again, outside of believing in specific creation stories that are incompatible with the reality of evolution across vast time periods, the teachers are right: it is NOT their place to question the religious beliefs of the children and Dawkins’ is wrong to insist that they should.

The conversation can be had without dragging everything about religious belief into the equation and treating the issues as A vs. B, which is absolutely what Dawkins seeks to do. Watch Part 3 starting at 29:00, as I pointed out before. Dawkins is on a mission to sell the idea that evolution makes belief in God impossible. He’s obviously welcome to promote whatever he likes, but he’s undermining the possibility of bringing religious believers on board by insisting on making it God v. Evolution. It’s the Biblical Story of Creation as Literal Truth vs. Evolution. Different things, and he’d make better progress if he treated it that way.

29

Watch the whole thing. Parsing sentences doesn’t mean anything. His point of view is crystal clear and expressed a multitude of ways: because evolution is true, God must not be.

30

I don’t agree with your assessment at all, and I doubt most believers would either.

If there is an almighty Creator with a plan, whether he/she/it created the laws of the universe that we understand through science or whether he/she/it waved a magic wand and Poof! Everything just exists makes no difference if what you care about and cling to is the idea that there IS IN FACT a creator with a plan who cares about what he/she/it created and has a plan for each of us here and in an afterlife. Which is why it would be great for scientists like Dawkins to let go of worrying about whether people believe in God or not and focus on getting them to at least believe that the world works the way we know it works and just stop arguing about the God aspect altogther - that’s my point: by making the existence or truth of God an issue, you lose the believers completely and they reject science itself. The insistence on making God an issue slows any progress towards ending the argument about biblical creation vs. evolution.

If the believers want to say/think/believe “Evolution explains the diversity of life on earth but God invented evolution” what the hell difference does it make so long as they stop fighting against the idea of evolution?

31

No, God isn’t true and evolution neatly fills the creation aspect left by said god’s nonexistence.

32

:rolleyes: Dawkins and people like him are a reaction to the believers refusing to accept science. Your “suck up to the believers” tactic was tried for over a century and failed miserably.

33

Your point escapes me in the context.

Who tried which tactic to accomplish what and failed how? Are you asserting that for a century scientists and teachers talked about evolution without ever suggesting that life evolving = no god?

34

Well, I think you’re wrong, and I’m not concerned with the ability of believers to interpret logical arguments.

Dawkins is actually fairly careful in his use of logic. Which is why he says “there is almost certainly no god” rather than “there is no god” for example.

God exists for the explanatory power he provides. We invent him to fill the gaps in our knowledge that we’er uncomfortable with. One of those gaps was previously the explanation for the history and biodiversity of life. Attaching god to that one is a pretty core part of the understanding of any religion. Evolution demonstrates a natural explanation for the entirety of it without any need for god as part of the explanation. And for that matter without any room for god. The best you can do is to say “sure, every piece of logic and evidence points to the fact that everything we’ve ever seen is explained by naturalistic causes, but… god did it, in an infinitely subtle way that we could never observe, and in a way that’s not actually needed”

You use his quote “Darwin showed us that the world is beautiful and inspiring without a god” as evidence that he’s saying god doesn’t exist. But that isn’t purely logically true. He’s just saying we have a natural explanation for life that requires no god.

But, go ahead and keep disagreeing with me. I don’t really care. You have a tendency to just plainly contradict the obvious and not budge.

Eh, I agree that it’s probably better that they stop pushing a plainly counterfactual agenda - but as to why further discourage their belief. God is an unnecesary part of the explanation for life. You’re essentially just saying “ok, evolution happened, but god did it!” even though the end result is exactly identical to “ok, evolution happened, god wasn’t involved”. It becomes a pointless tack-on. An extraneous bit of unnecesary argument. At best, it’s meaningless.

Which means that whatever conclusions they draw from god’s (admittedly unnecesary and useless) purpose in all of this is likely to be unrelated to anything grounded in reality. If god is essentially meaningless filler in this equation, whatever meaning they derive from his supposed presence is going to be flawed and incorrect.

It’s as if we decided to insert light fairies into our explanation about how light bulbs work. We could say “we have a complete understanding of light bulbs, the electrons move back and forth and heat the filament, which creates light” and they stepped in and said “yeah, all that might be true, but… fairies do it!”.. Well, ok, how do we disprove that? We just say that fairies are unnecesary to explain our understanding of how light bulbs work. Whatever conclusions you draw from it “fairies make our light bulbs work, so maybe we should listen to what I think the fairies want to do about our plumbing!” are going to be baseless.

35

Only if you are attached to the idea of God purely as a means of explaining the “how”. Most of the people I’ve known in my life who believed in God found God to be a far more important and critical part of answering the question that science does not even try to answer, (no doubt because the very nature of the question implies conscious creation) and that is “why?”

Not even close…kinda the reverse, actually. For those who believe in God, it is God that gives life meaning by providing the answer to why life exists. The answer to how life became so diverse isn’t very meaningful at all in most people’s real lives, certainly not in the lives of those who hold strong beliefs about a creator and the purpose of life.

And I think some ideas are geting mixed together here: evolution explains the diversity of life, it doesn’t explain the existence of life to begin with. Evolution via natural selection was not the cause of the chemical reaction that turned non-life into life.

36

A central tenet of most religions is that humans are different. Elevated from animals. Special. Custom-made by god.

So the idea that there is a naturalistic explanation for the existance of humans that’s the result of random biological processes really does take away from religion. Now you can say “humans evolved in a way entirely consistent with a natural process that doesn’t require god at all, and adding god to the equation doesn’t actually add anything meaningful, but… god did it”, but what are you adding to the explanation at that point? What explanatory power does god serve here? As much as the light bulb fairies.

37

But God doesn’t answer “Why?”; supposing a Creator only pushes the question back a step.

38

Scientists and unbelievers in general tried staying quiet or pretending that “God did it”/“God exists” are ideas that deserve to be taken seriously. The result has been a nation more religiously fanatic and less well scientifically educated.

Teachers did their best to avoid mention of evolution at all, and still do. And scientists either remained silent or bent over backwards to pretend that “God did it” was an idea that actually deserved to be taken seriously. The only thing “new” about “new atheism” is that a few prominent people have refused to stay silent, or to lie in favor of religion.

39

I agree. I read Dawkin’s The Greatest Show on Earth and he goes into how frustrating it is for him and other biologist to constantly have to defend the most basic biological principles at every turn. Paraphrasing Dawkins, it would be like a history professor having to defend the very idea that Rome existed before moving on to the meat of his discussion about Caesar.

40

If someone believes that God is responsible for evolution, then they also believe that evolution is not random at all, it’s controlled and shaped and nudged by God.

Of course it does for those who believe. Ask any deeply religious person why God created human beings and I’m sure they will readily provide an answer for you, the answer that gives them comfort, and I can assure you that 99 out of 100 times they will tell you without hesitation that they are more comforted by the fact that God has a plan for the life he created than the idea that God created life, period.

It is belief in God’s Plan that is the greatest source of comfort for the majority of religious people, even when they don’t have any idea of exactly what that plan is. The fear that underlies much religious belief is the fear of randomness itself. The fear that there is no plan. they just want to know there is one, kinda the way we all want know that the pilot of the airplane we’re in has an actual flight plan and isn’t just randomly cruising around. The same way we want to know that parents, teachers, governments, employers, leaders of all kinds have some kind of plan - we don’t need to know what the plan is, we just need to have the security of knowing that someone is in control, is overseeing things, is making sure that shit doesn’t just randomly occur. God is just the ultimate version of that same thing.