Many times of read the line that evolution and God need not be mutually exclusive. The thing is in most occasions that the author is not thinking about just any god. There thinking speciafically about the Jewish God.
Sure there’s no way scientifically to disprove any piece of fictional infomation with 100% surety but we can use common sense and logic to deduce an answer for ourselves.
So while evolution doesnt disprove ‘God’ we can use our common sense to say, there may be a God but sure as a bear fertilisers the woods Christians/Jews/Muslims didnt know him/her from a bar of soap.
Whys that? Because there faith includes teachings that evolution proves to be a pile of baloney and if there wrong about that how can you trust any part of there myths?
Only through self delusion thats how. How often do you need be lied to to finally realise your dealing with a lie?
Hence the empathasis on attacking evolution and stating the whole “that parts not meant to be taken literally” drivel. (so who decides which part of the tale is fact and which is fiction when no part has supporting evidence?)
I think spritualists just can no longer deny the writing on the wall. So to reconcile their beliefs still being worthwhile they must rationalize a way for evolution to fit into their dogma.
The insistance that scripture is to be interpreted literally, rather than as a medium for often estoric spiritual teachings, is a relatively new phenomena. Indeed, Jesus himself was found of parables, stories that didn’t necessarily reflect events that actually happen, but were still true, in that they conveyed a moral lesson.
Creationism was embraced not merely because it was in the bible, but because it was the most reasonable argument availiable for the origin of species, before Darwin and his contemporaries came along. The lesson of Genesis is not that God created man on the sixth day, but that man is God’s ultimate and most special “creation”. He has a plan for us, and has had one since the species first appeared,
Spiritualists are a far different group than religionists. Spiritualists usually don’t get into the debate because they are busy learning more about the God they know exists and don’t have the time.
As a general statement, this is nonsense. There are a few smaller (if loud) groups among Christians and Jews and a somewhat larger number of Muslims who would claim that “their teachings” deny evolution, but the majority of people recognize that a Creation Myth has no conflict with science as it addresses a different point than science addresses. (Augustine of Hippo pointed out a similar perspective in the fourth century, so it is hardly some new rationalization that was developed to counteract evolutionary theory.) Even the Catholic Church’s acceptance of the science of evolutionary theory dates to the late 19th century, within 50 years of Darwin’s first published works on the subject, although many people lacking historical awareness have confused John Paul II’s recent re-affiration of that long-held point with some “new” declaration.
So while it is quite possible (if one so chooses) to attack specific beliefs held by particular religious people, the broad brush condemnation that occurs in the OP is factually in error when one surveys the totality of the three great related monotheistic religions.
Since God is, as defined, 100% safe from sceptical inquiry should He choose to remain so, the irony is there’s essentially no debate unless a religionist is overly literalist.
However, I think there is still a bone of serious contention around the notion that evolutionary theory, as it stands, requires no “exterior” agent. IOW, while God cannot be falsified, He’s irrelevant, except in arguments about abiogenesis, which lie at the very fringe of Evolution’s applicability. Some folks have no problem with this. Maybe He just appears to be irrelevant to creatures as limited as ourselves. Maybe he just wound up the clock and set it running. Maybe he intervenes only occasionally, in a manner thus far unrecognized by scientific inquiry.
The debate is essentially pointless unless one cares deeply about God, as it will never be resolved. Those who are wedded to the idea of their God are not bothered by the mysteries. Those who are not have no need of them. The edifice of evolutionary theory is utterly unaffected either way.
Surely it’s quite easy to meld theism and evolution? You simply say that the deity or deities set the initial conditions such that everything that has happenned would happen. The universe obeys certain laws, so who or what set those laws?
Quite a few people with religious beliefs hold them not initially because of ‘teachings’, but because they have experienced some profound episode of spiritual insight, or something similar. Yes, it’s completely subjective, unfalsifiable and worthless as science; to third parties it might appear to be delusion or mental illness (and arguably, maybe it is), however, to the person experiencing it, it’s utterly compelling and comprises sufficient personal grounds for them to hold their position of faith. I don’t really see anything unreasonable about that, so long as it nobody gets hurt.
“Quite a few” maybe, but not most. Most are born and initiated into the dogma as once most were born and initiated into the earth being flat.
But people get hurt when their heads are sawed off or they can’t be married because they are of the same gender.
The reasonable thing for this world is that superstition goes away and we begin respecting each other as precious, valuable human beings whose existence in the universe is finite.
The dogma is “man made” so to speak. It is stupid rules and misrepresentations put forth by stupid people who want to control.
Respecting human beings is the “truth” of most religions, once you strip away all the dogmatic bullshit.
But, given a choice between respect and dogma, people keep choosing the dogma.
Well, I’m not sure if I believe in god, let alone the judeo-christian god, myself. But I look at it this way.
Suppose that god was real, that he orchestrated everything from the big bang up to the evolution of ‘homo sapiens sapiens.’ And he reveals himself to a few primitive tribespeople living in the middle east area (through some form of connection that science as yet would not have words for) and talks to them.
“Hey Jahweh,” Abraham (to pick a patriarch pretty much at random) says. “How did all of this stuff begin, then?”
Would God tell him about galaxies flying apart and iron-rich nebula matter coalescing and natural selection working among the smallest multi-cellular organisms?? People of that time would just be literally incapable of comprehending any such thing.
So yes, maybe God would tell a bit of a metaphorical story, to explain what it thought of as the important points in terms that his audience could understand. And humans being humans, maybe they got it mixed up with some stories that they had invented themselves.
Perhaps you’re right - I’m not particularly interested in throwing around statistics; I’m merely wanting to address the OP’s assertion that religious faith is only ever unreasonable and worthless.
Yes, which was exactly why I was careful to say that it isn’t a problem when nobody gets hurt.
Respecting others are precious valuable human beings and wanting to strip them of what you perceive to be their worthless superstitions… hmmm… run that one by me again?
Quote:
The reasonable thing for this world is that superstition goes away and we begin respecting each other as precious, valuable human beings whose existence in the universe is finite.
Mangetout
Wouldn’t forcibly strip anyone of their superstitions. I would just hope they would eventually fade away, as I have faith in natural processes and not in magic.
Once you start analysing religion with logic, you realise why fundamentalists insist on everything being a matter of faith.
If God has difficulty explaining himself, is he really omnipotent?
Why does God command Abraham to sacrifice his son, and only send an angel just before the knife went in? What lesson was that teaching?