I will not defend those three segments in history, because they were wrong, but I will not buy into the notion that Christianity is solely known for killing. Christianity didn’t kill anyone, because religion doesn’t kill people…people do.
People kill people, regardless of reason…religion is just one reason to kill out of many reasons used throughout the ages.
Other reasons? Color of skin. The number of deer on a mountain to hunt for food. Slavery. To bolster one’s tribal population. Beliefs. Building and mining resources. Superstitions. A well with drinkable water. A great farming place to grow crops. Even the distance and angle of eyes of a population. Color of a flag/shield/bandana. Religion (or lack of) is just one of MANY reasons why opponents are killed.
No one said only religion kills, or that all killing is done for the purposes of religion. However there is plenty of killing done directly because of religion (and my ancestors suffered a lot of it.) Removing religion would not stop war, but it would have stopped lots of bloodshed. And remember, it is easier to kill the heathen when you know god is on your side.
Speciation has been observed both in nature and in the lab. And, while nothing in science is provable, evolution makes testable predictions about what we can expect to find in the fossil record. The testable predictions have repeatedly been verified when new fossils were found. One dinosaur, mammoth or person buried amongst the trilobites would cast grave doubts on evolution as we now know it.
Similarly, cosmology made predictions about the cosmic background radiation expected from the Big Bang. When it was found, this was strong support for it. Saying that if you cannot repeat something in the lab makes something not science shows that you don’t quite understand what science is.
That DNA clearly shows common descent is another prediction of evolution that has come true. If the Bible were nearly as accurate, Jesus would have come and gone already.
In the 20’s, and beyond, science books stopped discussing evolution to the extend they did in the very early 20th century, even in states where evolution was legal. (The Scopes decision was overturned on a technicality, and never made it to the Supreme Court.) Things were better in the science boom that came as a result of Sputnik, but now are worse. (Though pretty good in California.) The “correction” to Jeb’s statement is almost as disturbing as the original statement. He clearly thinks that evolution is peripheral, rather than central, to biology. Teaching biology without evolution is like teaching geometry without bothering to teach the Pythagorean theorem.
And, while there are certainly people who believe in evolution, no learned person should just believe. They should be convinced and accept evolution from the overwhelming evidence for it. No belief is necessary.
And BTW ** 2, lonesome polecat, care to retract, or give a cite for, the statement that people here believe in Darwin and Mendel as holy writ? Anyone reading the Origin knows he got how traits are passed to descendants totally wrong - all the more spectacular that he got it right in general. No one starts a field and gets it totally right the first time (with the possible exception of Claude Shannon and information theory) - that is not how science works and no good scientist would ever claim anything is not subject to revision.
responding to the last sentence first…I dont even know how to answer that. its not a question that makes anysense. if you read and believe the bible then that is something you have learned through your senses…
and my point wasnt to toss out the bible, just the literal 6000 year old earth created in 6 days nonsense that the extremeists go for.
Ohhhhhh, yeahhhhh…I did see God waving the Stars and Stripes (with the Rush is Right poster in the background) last night in my dreams, when he told me to take down those nasty heathens! :rolleyes:
And yes, I have seen OPs here on the board that blamed religion/God for all of the suffering/wars…and I do recall that there was bloodshed when the attempt to remove religion happened last century in a certain country by a certain group of non-religious people.
This thread has gotten way off track. In regards to answering the OP, I wish to echo the sentiement behind Knorf’s post.
Tom Cruise’s laywers would like a word with you.
You don’t happen to live in Kansas, do you? Let’s make a deal: you don’t have to have your children indoctrinated with all that evolution nonsense and you can be shielded from biotechnology advances, whether they be medicinal or industrial.
BTW, every time a baby is born or a salmon spawns evolution just happened. Look ma, I can change my alleles with no hands!
OK, that was bad.
Turning to the predictable course of this thread, I’ll just have to say I’m astonished at all the interesting logic black holes around here. It doesn’t matter if Christianity has directly resulted in the death of a billion people and blew up the moon since it doesn’t directly relate to the supposed truth of Jesus being the son of god, born from a sinless virgin blah blah blah, ya get it?
As far as secularism, I’ve found this to be an almost endless source of laughter whenever the religious right brings this up. OK, secularism – embodying a great maturation in Western civilization history – is out. What’s the alternative? A theocracy? I guess that’s a nice gig if you’re a card carrying member…not so much otherwise. I also remember something about Christians oppressing other Christians somewhere along the line of human history. It may have involved cookies.
Or something.
We do, huh? Well, perhaps an educated, logical person would eventually go into that sort of serious introspection. Most people I know don’t get beyond your first sentence. Then again, I seem to be surrounded by the stereotypical red stater, so maybe it’s just me. If you’ll allow me to generalize out to the sphere of people I know: most don’t think about other religions. If you get into a frank conversation they may say that the Jews are a nice but confused people. If you push further under ideal circumstances (usually with alcohol) you can get them to say that the Jews are probably going to hell. As for the Muslims, well…that wouldn’t be appropriate for this forum.
Everyone else is just a pagan, don’tcha know? They worshipped sky gods and stuff!
In terms of what it has to say about the mechanism that drives change within a species, it can absolutely be tossed out without a second thought.
In Genesis, the story is told of how Jacob makes a deal with his father-in-law, Laban, as to how to split a goat herd. Laban agrees to take all the black or white goats at the end of a specified period, while Jacob agrees to take all the speckled goats.
At the end of the period, the speckled goats vastly outnumber the black and white goats, and Jacob makes a killing off the deal.
Genetics explains such a phenomenon by a single allele, where, say, SS codes for a black goat, ss for a white goat, and Ss for a speckled goat. Normal genetic probability takes care of the rest.
The Bible claims it turned out that way because Jacob placed speckled sticks in front of the goats, so they had more speckled offspring.
I await your conclusive proof that the Bible was right and genetics, which is a foundation of our understanding of the workings of evolution, is wrong.
“Less than half of Americans believe in evolution” does NOT= “most Americans deny evolution”. You likely have a good number of “undecided” and “I don’t know”. Then there’s the exact way the question was worded. If you asked me “Do you accept Darwins Theory of Evolution as fact?”- I’d have to say NO, as Darwins Theory has been modified and his original Theory is no longer 100% accepted- it’s still mostly right, but Darwin hadn’t thought of Punctuated Equilibrium, which refines the original Theory. And of course, some of the evolutionary jumps appear so unlikely that believing in a “guiding hand” for Evolution isn’t crazy.
The Christians I know all more or less believe in Evolution, but with “the guiding hand”. I don’t know anyone who beleives in a Fundamentalist view of Creation.
However- Evolution is a Fact, not a theory. It has been observed. Exactly how that Evolution happens- “gradual modification”, “punk eek”, some highly modified form of Lamarkism, the “guiding hand”- or even all of the above- that’s where the “theory” part comes in.
Sounds to me like he’s saying ID need not be part of the curriculum.
At any rate, getting back to the OP, I would suspect (and I’m only hypothesizing here) that the main difficulty many people have with evolution concerns humans. If you left humans out of the equation, evolution probably wouldn’t be so controversial, although there would still be plenty of YECs who don’t like the idea of speciation at any level. Of course, very few Americans have actually though the whole thing through, as most of us here on this board have.
I agree that evolution, as taught in most schools, is only covered in a cursory manner-- just one small topic in Biology class (usually 9th grade). And, yes, the polling questions usually make it out to be an either/or proposition (or it’s perceived that way by the respondents) – do you believe in evolution or do you believe in God. It would be helpful to see a well constructed poll that made it clear that belief in God did not conflict with an acceptance of evolution. Still, there is a considerable difference in result when Americans vs Europeans are polled, IIRC.
[Qupte]I agree that evolution, as taught in most schools, is only covered in a cursory manner
[/Quote]
And I, in turn, agree with that statement. It seems to me that many if not most people who insist God must have created humans, or set life in motion to begin with, have only the most vague and superficial understanding of evolutionary theory, and of the vast time frames available for evolutionary processes to occur. Not a lot of time is spent in schools on these subjects, especially compared to the vast amount of indoctrination found elsewhere in society concerning the Christian view of the creation of life. This does not mean they these concepts are flawed, however, simply that they are more complicated things to grasp than many people care to bother with.
It would be interesting to see what a cross section of clergymen would say wrt to accepting evolution. Your average layman who does not “believe” in evolution is most likely working from a flawed understanding of science and religion. I suspect that a higher percentage of clergymen accept evolution than do laypeople. If we look at Catholics alone, they represent about 25% of the US population and there is no religious reason for Catholics to have a problem with evolution. And yet, surely they are some of the people responding to these polls by saying they don’t accept evolution-- in fact, some of them are probably my relatives!
To me, the beauty of evolutionary theory is the simplicity of its mechanisms. It seems to me that there is plenty of ignorance to go around. The creationists may lack an understanding of what it means to fester for a billion years, but the evolutionists lack an understanding of what it means for God to create. Perhaps natural selection was His mechanism of choice. For my own part, what I don’t understand is this: why are religionists using religion to examine a material universe; why are scientists using science to examine God; and why, for Pete’s sake, do they feel the need to line up in opposition to one another? It’s like an electrician and a plumber arguing, with the electrician concerned about the toilet and the plumber concerned about the wiring.
That’s the contradiction that I mentioned. Science and religion can conflict only when a contradiction is introduced. It is hard to conceive a more stark dichotomy than the natural and the supernatural.
Where do you see scientists trying to use science to examine God?
As for religionists using religion to examine the material universe, well, shall we just chalk that up to ignorance? Besides, unless you’re a research biologist, evolution has no impact on your daily life, and there are no consequences to not having an understanding of it.
Perhaps indeed, but simply stating “God put natural selection in motion” as an axiom doesn’t provide much in the way of useful, practical information. Also, natural selection does not in fact, require a God to put it in motion.
I’d be very surprised if many scientists would say they are attempting to use science to examine God. Creationists, on the other hand, routinely demand that an untestable hypothesis based solely on folklore be given equal weight with an enormous amount of experimental data showing that if not wholly wrong, the creation myth is at least irrelevant. Therein lies the conflict.
Carl Sagan made a more than passing effort to “examine” the need for gods and Richard Dawkins has gone much further in trying to actually debunk gods.
Now, these were two individual science popularizers operating in the realm of popular philosophy, and I do not know of any scientists acting in their capacity as scientists who are attempting to “examine God,” but they certainly lent the appearance, to people uneducated in science, that some scientists were attacking God. (And their very popularity allowed them to be held up by some religionists as examples of science attacking God, even though actual science is doing no such thing.)
tom: Can you give more detail about what Dawkins has done? I’m pretty familiar with his work, and I know he’s no friend of religion, but has he actually tried to dubunk God or was he simply debunking certain claims about God and His interaction wtih the physical world? When religion people make claims tying the supernatural to the natural, then I think it IS appropriate for scientists to weigh in on that.
