I don’t know about personal attacks, but perhaps wrenchead took offense at Lib’s post above saying “Wrenchead? Is that anything like Justhink?” I don’t have any idea what Lib meant by that, except perhaps to comment on wrench-head spelling his name as wrenchead like just-think spelled his name as justhink (omitting that double letter in the middle). However, given the fate of justhink perhaps wrenchead felt that Lib was somehow referring to the quality of his posts or something.
(note… no offense is intended by the shortening of Libertarian to “Lib” nor do I intend to imply that Lib was actually trying to be disparaging toward wrenchead.)
I echo that welcome, Wrenchead, and would be pleased to discuss with another Christian why I believe as I do (which includes that God worked through evolutionary processes).
Irritation with folks who consider themselves “creationist Christians” whose sole purpose is to pop in here, post a link to a website that supports their POV, and leave, may account for the less-than-enthusiastic welcome you got – people presuming you to be the latest one of those, perhaps as an uncalled-for jumping to a conclusion. It’s called “Great Debates” in this forum because that’s what it’s supposed to be – state your POV and defend it with evidence that holds up under scrutiny. If you’re willing to argue for your views on those terms, do feel welcome to join in. People who can argue intelligently for the anti-evolutionary point of view are in short supply here; your contribution will be more than welcome.
I, for one, would be wary of any site which urges one to think for oneself - by only questioning the scientific data. If one truly wishes to evaluate the arguments impartially, one must likewise be prepared to question Biblical orthodoxy. Yet I doubt you’ll find many pro-creationist websites (or books) which would urge one to do so.
Sorry for the misunderstanding. Evidently i misunderstood the intent of some of the previous posts. I’m all for intelligent debate and hope to enjoy many more with this group.
If you ever come back, wrenchead, I would like to echo what Poly said and reiterate that good, smart anti-evolutionist viewpoints are in short supply here, and they really are welcome. No one has a problem with an opposing view here. We are here in Great debates because we like to debate. A worthy opponent is a valued commodity.
I think you will also find that your Christianity per se, will always be respected. We stand and fall on the strengths of our posts, here. We like intelligence. We have several theistic evolutionists on the SDMB, including Polycarp, Libertarian and tomndebb, all Christians who also happen to be three of the most respected posters on these boards.
Now please, put down that chip and let’s start all over again.
Let me ask you this, what is your very best evidence against the veracity of evolutionary theory?
I think the difference between the links is obvious, but I suppose it might not be.
Let me put it to you this way, not all links are created equally. Some Creationists twist science, truth, and logic and write up websites that contain sever misinterpretations about evolution (as well as other subjects).
From your site:
First: There are plenty of transitional fossils.
Second: Fossils are not the only evidence.
Third: “Darwinism” is an ad-hom attack aimed at discrediting evolution and to equate it with some sort of fanatical “belief” (IMO).
Fourth: Evolution, such as all other science, is checked, rechecked and checked again-that’s how science works. It’s obsurd to think that it would be different (IMO).
“Fantastic”? Why? Every society of which I am aware had myth and legend that was flatly contradictory in many elements. Are you proposing that everyone in the ancient world was so credulous that they simply accepted every story as a recitation of (contradictory) facts and never challenged those contradictions? Given a choice of believing that people accepted Story as a way to give meaning to experience, regardless of its correspondence to a journalistic narrative, or believing that rational thought was some late development in human history, I would label the latter far more “fantastic” than the former. And given the choice of believing that Jewish, and, later, Christian, Scripture was written in some way wholly unlike all the other mythic literature that humanity has produced, (despite the very clear parallels among all such literature), or believing that all societies create their myths in similar human ways, I am going to choose the latter–and I am going to want to see evidence that demonstrates such development was unique.
As to the claim that my position is “blatantly” opposed to Jewish tradition, I will note that Philo argued that we could not truly understand Scripture if we accepted it at face value, even arguing that duplicates, extraneous-appearing words, and passages that portrayed God in a bad light should be ignored when studying Scripture so as not to miss the actual meaning. Maimonides put forth in Guide for the Perplexed. Part I. Chapter XXXIII,
So the plain speach of the Torah is only to “lead” those without understanding to greater knowledge? This is an indication that the Scriptures are literally true as written?
It is true that Rashi, in the late eleventh century, argued against passages in the Midrash that seemed to go against the “plain meaning” of the text, but his very argument indicates that the Midrash had gotten to a point of using the text as a springboard for interpretation rather than a close following of the words. (And, while Rashi argued against torturing the text, the passages of his that I have read do not make a serious effort to reconcile apparent contradictions, appearing, to me, to simply treat each selection or passage as an independent statement and allowing the contradictions to stand, basically unremarked. Indeed, it was a student of Rashi who began to propose the idea that the parallel stories found throughout the Torah had been written separately, then joined together in a single narrative.)
First: There are plenty of transitional fossils.
Second: Fossils are not the only evidence.
Third: “Darwinism” is an ad-hom attack aimed at discrediting evolution and to equate it with some sort of fanatical “belief” (IMO).
Fourth: Evolution, such as all other science, is checked, rechecked and checked again-that’s how science works. It’s obsurd to think that it would be different (IMO).
In my opinion, what this article and others like it are saying is that modern science uses the evidence they find to prove a predetermined end. That is to say that they already believe in evolution so they interpret the findings in light of their predetermined conclusion. Biblical creation is based on the word of the Creator for those who believe in him and therefore does not only depend on conclusive evidence (although, as seen in this forum, we can debate for eons that it does, lol).
No, what this article and others are saying is that there is NO evidence. That ‘scientists’ are fabricating evidence because they are clutching at straws.
Statements like that should set off some alarmbells in your head.
Modern science relies on the scientific method. Establish a hypothesis, try to prove it, discard what doesn’t work, then refine the hypothesis.
Other scientistists test the validity of the claim a scientist puts forward. If their is bias, or the claim doesn’t fit the evidence, the the claim is discarded.
Biblica
You have demonstrated why it’s not scientific. What you have stated is philosophy/religion, not science. The creationism you espouse is not falsifiable, therefore it can not be scientific.
Philosophy/religion should not compete with science. You can’t measure creationism (a religion/philosophy) against evolution (science).
So for arguments sake, if the claim does not fit the hypothesis of say “evolution” but rather “creation” it is discarded because it doesn’t fit the supported system. This was my point to begin with.
You do have a point, Wrenchead – since intervention by non-natural forces is beyond the pale of what is considered appropriate study, the assumption that God jumped in and created something ex nihilo is rejected out of hand.
But the evidence for evolution lies in the amazing mass of fossil material which seems to clearly suggest that various critters lived at a given point in time and were replaced by various other critters differing a tad from them, and so on for millions of years, combined with observational evidence that suggests that the same processes are continuing today.
If my theory suggests that kangaroos were introduced to Australia by the aborigines from somewhere else, I’d better be able to show that prior to the supposed date of introduction there were no kangaroos in Australia, that they did indeed occur prior to that date somewhere else, and that the aborigines were likely to have been at that somewhere else shortly before they entered Australia. If any one of those elements is lacking, my theory falls.
If God created all creatures in a given time frame, without the possibility of significant change, then there ought not to be any creatures prior to that time, there ought to be continuing evidence of those creatures from the time of his creation to the present with no change or only minor variation in them, and there should be absolutely no transitional forms in which a creature with aspects of two or more “kinds” as defined by the Hebrew vocabulary is evidenced. Those elements do not obtain.
For God to have created, purposively, though the techniques of natural selection and mutation, with his infinite and manifold Will carried out through those processes, is not contrary to either Scripture (read not with an eye to literalism but with a sense of the point the writer is trying to hammer home) or the evidence of the natural world. I therefore believe that this is what He did.
But that is not what would happen. No hypothesis is rejected because it has a philosophical tag on it, it is rejected because the facts that it seeks to interpret either do not bear that interpretation or the interpretation is not consistent with surrounding interpretations.
For example, Michael Behe’s claim if irreducible complexity was probably met with a lot of head-shaking when he published it. (Behe actually follows the general norms of neo-Darwinian Evolutionary thought, he simply thinks that at specific points, there must have been “inteeligent” intervention and he came up with an event that he belived demonstrated that intelligent design.)
However, his work was not dismissed as “Creationist.” It was not ignored by the biological community. Instead, other scientists went out and examined his work, examined the data he had (and the data that he had not produced) and demonstrated that his conclusion was, at best, premature. If there are examples of irreducible complexity in nature, his examples did not meet the definition. So we are left with the evidence supporting random mutation and selective speciation (i.e., Natural Selection), not irreducible complexity (i.e., Intellient Design or Creationism).
The evidence must support the hypothesis, regardless which philosophical system one supports.
OK, so we are clear, then, that your assertion was not based on your knowledge of historical facts establishing this, but on your speculation that this is likely the case. Big difference of course, particularly as I disagree with your rationale, for reasons noted in my previous posts.
I believe you are misinterpreting the words of Maimonedes. He appears to be referring to the anthropomorphic aspects of the Bible (or other references to the aspects of God), and arguing that the reason for these depictions is the inability of common people to comprehend God on a deeper philosophical level. (If you dispute this, I’ll go look it up).
If you are saying that the “hand of God” does not refer to a physical hand, I’m with you. Nobody says otherwise, AFAIK. This is not the same thing as saying that the historical facts presented in the Bible were not meant to be taken as factual.
I am not familiar with Philo. But the statements that you put forth from him do not appear to support your claim that he did not take the Bible literally. Sounds like all he said was that you could misinterpret the Bible if you did not properly understand it. I’d be curious to see his actual statements. In any event, I would not consider Philo to be representative of traditional Judaism.
Of interesting historical note: in the early 14th century, the Jewish communities of Spain and Southern France (Provence) were roiled by a controversy over the study of philosophy. And one of the charges against the philosophers was that they has interpreted certain passages in the Torah as being non-literal (e.g. that Abraham & Sarah represented matter and form). The philosophers themselves vehemently denied that they had or would ever say such things (they said what was meant was that in addition to the literal meaning there were also metaphorical). Neither side accepted that one could interpret historical facts in the Bible as being non-literal.
Another misunderstanding. Rashi did not “argue against” any passages in the Midrash. Rashi felt that in addition to the interpretations to be found in Midrashim, which were allusions of the Bible, there was also the need to interpret the plain meaning as well. But he consistently makes clear that he is not coming to disagree with anything in the Midrash - only to point out the plain meaning. (He usually introduces such commentary by saying “The Torah can be interpreted in 70 ways. The Midrash should expound, but I am coming to explain the plain meaning”). This has no connection to anything being discussed here.
Sure, just as your perspective is shaped by your assumption that people have believed multiple contradictory expressions of history as unquestioningly, literally true for some reason. (Well, my speculation and the various anthropological, literary, and scriptural college courses that all pointed to the same thing, the texts of which I have a hard time retrieving from my mom’s attic 30 years later from 250 miles away.
Do you have any actual support that people did generally believe the contradictions were all true in a newspaper-reporting fashion?
Well when you originally made the statement, it seemed as though you were asserting a fact in support of your position, as opposed to a product of your position, as it turned out to be.
Well I’ve seen quite a lot of traditional Jewish literature dealing with the Bible, from the Talmud and Midrashim on down, and it is beyond obvious that the accounts were treated as factual. I don’t know about Christian sources, though.
Your link does not quite say what you said - there might be a difference between “the idea that the parallel stories found throughout the Torah had been written separately, then joined together in a single narrative” and “he assumed duplicate accounts in the Pentateuch”. Frankly I’m unsure what the latter might mean. But I’ll take a look at his commentary to Genesis and see if he said anything that would suggest a non-literal interpretation. Meanwhile I am extremely skeptical.
Facts in support of my position were laid out with a citation to the Encyclopædia Britannica, earlier, and arbitrarily dismissed by you claiming that we were not discussing what we are, in fact, discussing. We disagree on the basic approaches to this issue, and I do not see us getting any closer.
