142: In His Name We Pray, Ramen

[oneplus999]

If you'd like evidence, look at the rise in various childhood conditions, such as ADHD (which I know, like anybody else, isn't always true for every kid that claims it), autism (also linkable to flu vaccines containing minute amounts of mercury thought to be in-potent till recently), bipolar disorder, etc. etc. think about it and our life spans, the only reason they are increasing in comparison to the past few centuries is better living conditions.

Increasing occurrence or increasing ability to diagnose? Considering the drastically decreased child mortality rate, you really can't claim that genetic disorders didn't exist in the past, we are just better at helping people live with the problems. Considering that there is no data presented in ancient documents on the rate of various genetic diseases, on what are you basing the claim that there is now more?

As for "no meat eaten before the fall of man," don't take what you see on The Daily Show to stand for all creationists either

I haven't watched the Daily Show in a while, but I'll assume someone said this there, as well? Regardless, you missed the point of my comment, which was that a 10,000 year old Earth is just as ridiculous and unfounded as a 6,000 year old earth which is just as unfounded as a velociraptor eating plants.

There have been tales of dragons as far back as we have stories to recall from.

And once again you have countless dragon myths to compare to countless species of dinosaur and you actually take a few common attributes as evidence that dragons are based on dinosars? PLEASE take a statistics class or a social psychology class before you hurt yourself.

 

[rougeknife]

This thread should have been locked from the start. No good shall come of discussing religion on a forum. Besides, the enlightened understand that the ducks are truly our immortal saviours. :roll:

Good article. If you can?t laugh at your beliefs, you shouldn?t reproduce.

 

[oneplus999]

intelligent design movement came out of the Discovery Institute, an organization run by old-school creationists.

Also, there is the possibility that fellows at the Discovery Institute figured out they were on the losing side of the argument and adapted their hypothesis. You know, like scientists are supposed to do? Not saying that they are practicing good science, but they are sure doing a better job than Ken Ham.

Yes, but they update their theories to be as close to creationism as possible without breaking the first amendment, as opposed to updating a theory to be in line with conflicting observations

It is possible to be Christian and simultaneously agree with Evolution. There is no monolithic Christian entity (unless you are Catholic j/k) so the possibility for conspiracy here is small. I would hope that a question of origins would not make or break a person's faith

I've always thought the same thing. I still considered myself a xtian long after learning about evolution because it never occurred to me that the two were incompatible. It really wasn't until I took social psychology and learned about how easily our brains are fooled into false pattern recognition and following the crowd mentality that I realized religions are made up.

 

[trlkly]

Most biblical interpreters no longer see Job (or Isaiah)'s animals as dinosaurs. The writers of the King James version often substituted animals from other mythologies into the Bible when they were unsure of what animal the writers were referring to, and the results of that practice continue to this day.

I personally am a fundamentalist Christian, and I don't really like the idea that we all believe the same thing. I've personally decided that Creationist/Evolution debate detracts from the core message of Jesus's teachings. Obviously, the actual Origin of Species is important to scientists studying that sort of thing, but, to the everyman, it doesn't really matter much. It's similar to Einstein's work. Many people I've talked to about it can't understand that time isn't absolute. Do I press the issue? No. Let them believe what they want to believe.

Of course, certain parts of (most versions of) Christianity don't afford you the luxury of letting people remain in the dark. Fortunately, origin beliefs aren't one of them. Just say God was ultimately responsible, and leave it at that.

(My belief? Uh, Evolution theory is incomplete, particularly in the area of Ambiogenesis. Still, most of it is as right as we can get with our limited information. I just find it ridiculous to allow violations of Cell Theory in order to create life, but have only the flimsiest explanations on why it's allowed.)

 

[Keljeck]

????

I made no claims either way, I was just pointing out that a few lines in a book written few thousand years ago in fact does not contain an eye-witness account of a dinosaur. There are two creationist explanations of fossils that I am familiar with:

1. Fossils are god's way of testing you, there were no dinosaurs.

2. There were dinosaurs before the flood, and the flood wiped them all out, and caused rapid fossilization... somehow.

Unfortunately the book of Job takes place AFTER the flood, so unless he fit that creature's ancestors on the boat, it's not a dinosaur.

And my argument was that creationists read ancient accounts of flying lizards and think that they are somehow historical. I'm not trying to defend them, I'm trying to correct the argument against them. It doesn't help to create a strawman when the real thing will do.

There are two arguments, but the argument that God may have created the world last tuesday isn't accepted by the higher ups. It's mostly a thing mothers tell their children. Most creationists argue that the dinosaurs died out after the flood as a result of a climate shift. But they managed to live on for awhile, sometimes they get desperate and try to argue they still exist today in far jungles.

Yes, but they update their theories to be as close to creationism as possible without breaking the first amendment, as opposed to updating a theory to be in line with conflicting observations

They're trying to change the language to be more inclusive. Not necessarily to infiltrate our schools and teach scientific heresy.

It really wasn't until I took social psychology and learned about how easily our brains are fooled into false pattern recognition and following the crowd mentality that I realized religions are made up.

Heh. Actually, our brains are hardwired into religious thought. I've seen a couple articles on it, very interesting. I'd like to look into some naturalistic evolutionary explanations for this. I believe Richard Dawkins considers it an accident of evolution that never quite went away. Personally, I'm a Christian.

The writers of the King James version often substituted animals from other mythologies into the Bible when they were unsure of what animal the writers were referring to...

Most humorous example being the translation of Ox into "unicorn."

 

[oneplus999]

I've personally decided that Creationist/Evolution debate detracts from the core message of Jesus's teachings.

I agree, but for a creationist, the fall of man is the cause for everyone to be sinful, necessitating Jesus to die for those sins. Here's a the problem for xtians who accept evolution: at what point did pre-man with a continuously evolving brain get a "soul"? Assuming that animals don't have souls and humans do, at what point in this evolution did god decide these human children have souls and moral decisions to make, but their parents are soulless animals? This MUST have happened unless you want to say that all animals in our evolutionary history, including bacteria, have souls and go to heaven.

Obviously, the actual Origin of Species is important to scientists studying that sort of thing, but, to the everyman, it doesn't really matter much. It's similar to Einstein's work. Many people I've talked to about it can't understand that time isn't absolute. Do I press the issue? No. Let them believe what they want to believe.

Right, let them believe it, but it becomes a problem when they try to force that belief into a secular school system, as FSM was protesting.

(My belief? Uh, Evolution theory is incomplete, particularly in the area of Ambiogenesis.

Evolution is NOT a theory that presents an answer to the origin of life, there are many theories that attempt to answer this, and they fall under the separate field of abiogenesis. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenesis
The inherent problem is that evolution continues to occur to this day and is easily observable in the fossil record while abiogenesis can't be witnessed so easily, so we may never know for sure how it first happened.

Still, most of it is as right as we can get with our limited information. I just find it ridiculous to allow violations of Cell Theory in order to create life, but have only the flimsiest explanations on why it's allowed.)

Because before there were cells, the world had a completely different set of environmental conditions to take into account. Obviously the first cell couldn't come from a previous cell, but this isnt violating cell theory, its just an obvious exception. Enter abiogenesis theories.

 

[oneplus999]

Yes, but they update their theories to be as close to creationism as possible without breaking the first amendment, as opposed to updating a theory to be in line with conflicting observations

They're trying to change the language to be more inclusive. Not necessarily to infiltrate our schools and teach scientific heresy.

Sorry, but that's EXACTLY what they did. The courts rejected teaching of creationism in schools because it was a violation of the separation of church and state. They replaced god with "an outside force" and tried to get it in again. Read up on the history of "Of Pandas and People" before you speak so kindly of their intentions.

It really wasn't until I took social psychology and learned about how easily our brains are fooled into false pattern recognition and following the crowd mentality that I realized religions are made up.

Heh. Actually, our brains are hardwired into religious thought. I've seen a couple articles on it, very interesting. I'd like to look into some naturalistic evolutionary explanations for this. I believe Richard Dawkins considers it an accident of evolution that never quite went away. Personally, I'm a Christian.

Right, it is an accidental byproduct of advantageous behavior. First, it is good to follow what your parents teach you. Since parents have better judgement than children, children who blindly follow what their parents say would be more likely to survive than ones that decide to see if lions and tigers and bears are really as bad as they say. This, coupled with memory heuristics that make "facts" in our brains hard to change has the byproduct of propagating religion.

 

[Arbre]

Ah, I see people are having fun with creatonism truths.

It's easy to regail Religion as such. It's easy to mock dogma and fable and the blind, obedient, stupid sheep who think God is a wise Bearded Father in the sky or a Flying Spigetti Monster or anything so rediculous.

"There are two kinds of faith: stupid and smart. Where the atheists fall apart is when nobody bothers to explain the difference to them, and I speak as one of them; overcoming the stupid kind of faith inevitably leads to a denigration of the smart kind, because they both look the same from the outside," said Jacob, and he put it incredibly well.

There's the Stupid Faith that values obedience and submission and order above curiosity and observation, the kind that demands you not eat certain foods or mix with certain people or take your children to the doctor. The kind that will have you charging full speed ahead to some promised Paradise like a rat in a maze, the kind that will crush all opposition because it is Wrong, that would destroy the dangerous Questioners for asking why, why are these Truths you've given me so shallow that they don't explain what I can deduce with my own senses? That's the kind of faith that leads to Hate and War.

Then there's the Smart Faith. The kind that brings people together, provides the Hope that will keep you going when everything is lost. The kind that brings Strength out of nowhere, because it's bigger then what you can see, simply by it's nature it exists against and above all reason and words and intellect that could be leveled against it.

That's the kind of faith that we smart-ass Atheists can't really make fun of. The kind that gives strength out of nowhere.

You call is smart because, ultimately, it's believing in a concept which is deemed perfect by nature, and superior and above everything else and infinite +1 blah blah?

The real smart thing to do is this:

Rest assured that you don't know, and may never know.

That's just about it. Paradoxally, uncertainty is the one unique truth.
Everyone will, one day or another, return to the unknown. The fears of death, loss, pain, loneliness, are nothing measured against the fear of the unknown.

This is where all those myths begin. Amon-Ra, God, Allah, Xenu, Buddha, etc. same bunch of made up guys.
It's most exciting to imagine what sort of predigested food for the lazy brains people of the future will believe in, say in 4,000 thousand years from now.

Besides, there's this best seller also full of stupid faith, pseudo intellectual one liners and hearsay imbued in ancient writing which sounds cool and class, espcially when pronounced in latin, and can be traced back to tablets which contain the most idiotic and fascist rules to be followed by man.
Like when life isn't already hard... just add a good load of absurdism to it, just to be sure.
10-14-15 commandments, old, new, you name it. Actually, the old one was even better in some ways.

Robert A. Heinlein
"The most ridiculous concept ever perpetrated by Homo Sapiens is that the Lord God of Creation, Shaper and Ruler of the Universes, wants the saccharine adoration of his creations, that he can be persuaded by their prayers, and becomes petulant if he does not receive this flattery. Yet this ridiculous notion, without one real shred of evidence to bolster it, has gone on to found one of the oldest, largest and least productive industries in history."

Napoleon Bonaparte
"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."

Ramen.

 

[Keljeck]

Here's a the problem for xtians who accept evolution: at what point did pre-man with a continuously evolving brain get a "soul"?

And that's where the Creationists get hung up, that and the Bible teaching that before the Fall there was no death. I would say first of all, that the soul is granted when we have sentience. Second of all, since I brought up the death issue, I would say the death should be understood as a spiritual death, not necessarily a physical death. If evolution is to be taken at its current word, that means the creation myth is a true myth, in that it teaches us a much deeper story than at its literal face.

Right, let them believe it, but it becomes a problem when they try to force that belief into a secular school system, as FSM was protesting.

And the Creationists were protesting the secular school system forcing their belief on their children.

Sorry, but that's EXACTLY what they did. The courts rejected teaching of creationism in schools because it was a violation of the separation of church and state. They replaced god with "an outside force" and tried to get it in again. Read up on the history of "Of Pandas and People" before you speak so kindly of their intentions.

What they were trying to do is redress the essentials of creationism into something more easily digestible by the public at large. I suppose the difference is that I am sympathetic to their views. That's why before I said that the debate is useless and if the evolution model works in science then that is that. If parents don't want their children to learn evolution it isn't going to kill their children. It only effects them if they are trying to get into biology, at which point they would obviously have to either be reeducated, find another profession, or somehow by some miracle convince people of their views.

Right, it is an accidental byproduct of advantageous behavior. First, it is good to follow what your parents teach you. Since parents have better judgement than children, children who blindly follow what their parents say would be more likely to survive than ones that decide to see if lions and tigers and bears are really as bad as they say. This, coupled with memory heuristics that make "facts" in our brains hard to change has the byproduct of propagating religion.

I don't buy that explanation. The portion of the brain in question is the temporal lobe, when stimulated it can give people spiritual feelings, like they are not alone. It's not a matter of conditioning, a part of the brain has the effect of spirituality. This can't be explained by children following their parents or memory heuristics. All that it explains is the form in which we conceive of the divine.

 

[Geoffrey42]

Keljeck:
1. Be careful bandying about with the term "sentience". Not everyone agrees on what it means, and depending on the interpretation, you're giving most mammals a soul. I don't believe that's what you're trying to do, so you might want to be more specific.
2. If by the "secular school system forcing their belief on their children" you mean, promoting a rational approach to science, then yes, they were forcing their beliefs. Personally, I interpret "secular" not as the bogey-man its often used as (a nice term for "atheist", non?) but as it's intended: separate from religion. Public school, being paid for and run by the government (at least in the US), is inherently a secular organization. They do their best to leave religion, and "beliefs" out of it. That's the whole point. It is not the school's place to teach theism or atheism, or even fence-sitting. They're not teaching religious belief. They're teaching science. (Key takeaway: "secular" does not mean "anti-religion". It means "not religious". Big difference.)
3. I cannot help but see ID as an attempt to inject religion into a secular curriculum, by taking religious belief and supporting it with pseudo-science. Can you prove, or disprove, the existence of an "external force"? If it is not a testable hypothesis, then it has no place in the classroom.
4. I think you and oneplus999 are talking about two slightly different things when dealing with the mental roots of religious behavior. oneplus999 just seems to be talking about why people seem so beholden to believe what their parents told them. You're referring more to the spiritual centers of the brain. Separate issues. Evolutionarily (this is being anally extracted, like the rest of this conversation), I'd guess it might be feasible for such a part of the brain to be advantageous, if it promoted the community. Decreased selfishness, increased sense of community with others, increased tribal cohesiveness and subsequently durability in times of stress. Plus, whoever met an atheist that wasn't angry or depressed about it (maybe not all the time, but come on, its not all sunshine and rainbows)? It's sad being a greater-purposeless random conjoining of atoms, which had as much chance of existing as not existing in this particular space-time dimension.

 

[Nerdfury]

Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able?
Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing?
Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing?
Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing?
Then why call him God?

-- Epicurus.

 

[DreamerM]

Ah, I see people are having fun with creatonism truths.

I am leaving that whole side of the debtate alone. All I'm going to say is that old standby: if we ever could prove concretely that God existed, then He no longer would. So those people who think they need to "prove" a Divine creation account of the world are missing the whole point of religion.

You call is smart because, ultimately, it's believing in a concept which is deemed perfect by nature, and superior and above everything else and infinite +1 blah blah?

Yes, I am calling it superior, because sometimes you need something to be.

The real smart thing to do is this:

Rest assured that you don't know, and may never know.

We don't have to know, because Hope, that abstract force that will keep us reaching for the Better against all reason, is kind of the whole point.

And Hope is what's going to save your ass from Despair.

 

[trlkly]

You really want to have this debate with me? I guess I must assume the answer is yes, as you obviously wouldn't be assuming I wouldn't answer (and thus you would seem to have beaten me) since I stated that I don't like to talk about this sort of thing. So I'll go over to the Dark Side, just for you.

I've personally decided that Creationist/Evolution debate detracts from the core message of Jesus's teachings.

I agree, but for a creationist, the fall of man is the cause for everyone to be sinful, necessitating Jesus to die for those sins. Here's a the problem for xtians who accept evolution: at what point did pre-man with a continuously evolving brain get a "soul"? Assuming that animals don't have souls and humans do, at what point in this evolution did god decide these human children have souls and moral decisions to make, but their parents are soulless animals? This MUST have happened unless you want to say that all animals in our evolutionary history, including bacteria, have souls and go to heaven.

Humans began to have "souls" the second they did something God told them not to do. The only command we have recorded for other lifeforms is "Be fruitful and multiply." As long as they do that, they survive. They stop? They die. We had an extra commandment. We violated it. We now have a soul. Why were we given an extra commandment? I guess because we got smart enough to actually understand it. Or God created us from scratch. It doesn't really matter. We are the ones who broke the world that God created, and we have to fix it.

Of course, I don't have to point out that Jesus didn't actually teach about the Fall of Man, do I? Because that would be a nitpick. Speaking of which...

(My belief? Uh, Evolution theory is incomplete, particularly in the area of Abiogenesis.

Evolution is NOT a theory that presents an answer to the origin of life, there are many theories that attempt to answer this, and they fall under the separate field of abiogenesis. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenesis
The inherent problem is that evolution continues to occur to this day and is easily observable in the fossil record while abiogenesis can't be witnessed so easily, so we may never know for sure how it first happened.

Okay, so that's just being nitpicky. I spell the word wrong and you think I don't know what it means? The problem is, no matter Wikipedia says, the various abiogenesis theories are often lumped up in the bigger version of the Theory of Evolution. If not, how could a creation vs. evolution debate even exist? Since creation is an abiogenesis theory (if you'll allow me the liberty of calling something that isn't quite scientific a theory), it would be like comparing apples and oranges.

Obviously, the actual Origin of Species is important to scientists studying that sort of thing, but, to the everyman, it doesn't really matter much. It's similar to Einstein's work. Many people I've talked to about it can't understand that time isn't absolute. Do I press the issue? No. Let them believe what they want to believe.

Right, let them believe it, but it becomes a problem when they try to force that belief into a secular school system, as FSM was protesting.

I agree. That was kinda my point. Neither side should care enough to try and get the other side to change its opinion. Also, I wasn't really addressing FSM here, but the various posters that came later. I guess I didn't make either one of those points clear. Sorry!

Still, most of it is as right as we can get with our limited information. I just find it ridiculous to allow violations of Cell Theory in order to create life, but have only the flimsiest explanations on why it's allowed.)

Because before there were cells, the world had a completely different set of environmental conditions to take into account. Obviously the first cell couldn't come from a previous cell, but this isnt violating cell theory, its just an obvious exception. Enter abiogenesis theories.

That's the flimsy excuse that I'm talking about. None of the various abiogenesis theories have proof (sorry, I mean compelling evidence) that their required environmental conditions (particularly the lack of oxygen in the atmosphere) ever existed, as oxidation occurs even in the lowest layers of sedimentary rock. I just think it's silly to assume that Cell Theory has an exception without that evidence. But you're right. It may be lost to us forever. Kinda makes it unfalsifiable, doesn't it?

[hr]

I'm hoping that scientists are really are really trying to separate the theories of abiogenesis and evolution in the public mind. As it stands now, almost every book I've ever read about evolution assumes abiogenesis as its starting point. A lot of these are textbooks, so I guess I'm agreeing with FSM on that point. We need more accurate science books. Or maybe we should get rid of the book format all together, and actually teach the kids real science. We've got the resources.

 

[YOli-4]

OMG!
Why on earth do we need such a dabate in here?

Gamers hate to be mocked and blamed as potential "amok-running-killer-freaks" for no reason or just because they know what a FPS game is.
We all get pissed if gamers are described as "Counterstrike-Only-Playing time-ticking bombs" or "sleepers" by people who obviously have no clue what they are talking about.

Why do we have the need now to mock others?
Why blame Crationism or "intelligent design"?

Especially when its obvious that this article was written without doing any good research on what "intelligent design" and that stuff is about.

Well no, I am not going to defend Creationism and that stuff for there are so many hypotheses (not theories!) that are just bullshit (sorry) - but to tell one thing:
from the scientific view the evolution hypothesis (not theory!) has no proof.
Huh? Yupp, got it right. There is none!

Millions have tried to find proof/evidence for the evolution - but all failed ...

If you think you can give evidence - just tell me I would get a billionaire immediately because there are lots of companies that will award you if you have any evidence.

And to end this: NO! Saying that something written in a "science" book is proof enough for the evolution is totally crap! Remember the bible itself is written in bookform and has been called a truthful book centuries before "science" was born.
[so all that changed was the definition of science but the TRUTH is still out there ]

 

[Geoffrey42]

Well no, I am not going to defend Creationism and that stuff for there are so many hypotheses (not theories!) that are just bullshit (sorry) - but to tell one thing:
from the scientific view the evolution hypothesis (not theory!) has no proof.
Huh? Yupp, got it right. There is none!

There is very little "proof" of anything in the universe. For example, "prove" that yesterday happened, and that we all didn't spring into existence, fully formed and ready to go, memories in place, 5 minutes ago? Mostly, science just goes on what has more supporting evidence. As the answer to the question: "How did we become what we are today?", Evolution has more evidence which supports it than Intelligent Design does. For example, the fossil record fits both the evolutionary model, and the ID model. But, evolution and geology generally explain the fossil record, while ID requires a 3rd-party, unseen force to make its claim. Scientists take issue with the completely unverifiable nature of ID. They are not anti-religion (in fact, scientists can still be theists, and sometimes are.)

@trlkly: I'd rather not allow you the liberty of calling it a theory, because the muddling of the meaning of that word is part of what contributed to this mess in the first place. ID is conjecture, evolution is theory (afaik). Also, I don't think he was nitpicking about your spelling of abiogenesis. He was just pointing out that abiogenesis and evolution are two separate (though potentially complementary) things. Your original statement had implied that they were two parts of a whole.

 

[UsefulPlayer 1]

lol good article, too bad peopple are humans

 

[oneplus999]

Here's a the problem for xtians who accept evolution: at what point did pre-man with a continuously evolving brain get a "soul"?

I would say first of all, that the soul is granted when we have sentience.

Ok, I tried to word it as clearly as possible: our brains gradually grew to what we have today. If a Christian accepts evolution, and that animals don't have souls while humans do, there must therefore be a cut-off in our ancestors, despite the fact that between generations there would only be a marginal difference in intelligence. So there really is no point at which we gain sentience.

Right, let them believe it, but it becomes a problem when they try to force that belief into a secular school system, as FSM was protesting.

And the Creationists were protesting the secular school system forcing their belief on their children.

Already addressed by someone else: science is not equivalent to belief. Religious beliefs are based on faith, while science is based on evidence. If you want to say evidence isn't a good basis for knowledge, you aren't capable of crossing the street safely.

Sorry, but that's EXACTLY what they did. The courts rejected teaching of creationism in schools because it was a violation of the separation of church and state. They replaced god with "an outside force" and tried to get it in again. Read up on the history of "Of Pandas and People" before you speak so kindly of their intentions.

What they were trying to do is redress the essentials of creationism into something more easily digestible by the public at large. I suppose the difference is that I am sympathetic to their views. That's why before I said that the debate is useless and if the evolution model works in science then that is that. If parents don't want their children to learn evolution it isn't going to kill their children. It only effects them if they are trying to get into biology, at which point they would obviously have to either be reeducated, find another profession, or somehow by some miracle convince people of their views.

Evolution is the basis for modern biology. Without evolution, anything more than a superficial understanding of biology isn't possible. Even my 9th grade bio class talk about evolution. Even if you think it's not important, it opens the door for denying other subjects. I don't want my child learning multiplication, the alphabet, etc. Where do you draw the line?

Right, it is an accidental byproduct of advantageous behavior. First, it is good to follow what your parents teach you. Since parents have better judgement than children, children who blindly follow what their parents say would be more likely to survive than ones that decide to see if lions and tigers and bears are really as bad as they say. This, coupled with memory heuristics that make "facts" in our brains hard to change has the byproduct of propagating religion.

I don't buy that explanation. The portion of the brain in question is the temporal lobe, when stimulated it can give people spiritual feelings, like they are not alone. It's not a matter of conditioning, a part of the brain has the effect of spirituality. This can't be explained by children following their parents or memory heuristics. All that it explains is the form in which we conceive of the divine.

Yeah, I don't think this is something we are actually debating about. I have heard of both features of the brain and I don't have any reason to believe they are mutually exclusive hypotheses. Both may be true.

 

[oneplus999]

You really want to have this debate with me? I guess I must assume the answer is yes, as you obviously wouldn't be assuming I wouldn't answer (and thus you would seem to have beaten me)

That's not how internet debates work, since no one really convinces anyone, no one wins
I just do it to familiarize myself with arguments used by the other side for future reference and on the off chance I actually learn something. Mostly it's just a medium in which to flesh out my own ideas and apply ideas I've learned from others.

I've personally decided that Creationist/Evolution debate detracts from the core message of Jesus's teachings.

I agree, but for a creationist, the fall of man is the cause for everyone to be sinful, necessitating Jesus to die for those sins. Here's a the problem for xtians who accept evolution: at what point did pre-man with a continuously evolving brain get a "soul"? Assuming that animals don't have souls and humans do, at what point in this evolution did god decide these human children have souls and moral decisions to make, but their parents are soulless animals? This MUST have happened unless you want to say that all animals in our evolutionary history, including bacteria, have souls and go to heaven.

Humans began to have "souls" the second they did something God told them not to do. The only command we have recorded for other lifeforms is "Be fruitful and multiply." As long as they do that, they survive. They stop? They die. We had an extra commandment. We violated it. We now have a soul. Why were we given an extra commandment? I guess because we got smart enough to actually understand it. Or God created us from scratch. It doesn't really matter. We are the ones who broke the world that God created, and we have to fix it.

Of course, I don't have to point out that Jesus didn't actually teach about the Fall of Man, do I? Because that would be a nitpick. Speaking of which...

I don't know if Jesus didn't point it out as the reason for his death, but that's certainly the reason I'm familiar with.

So then there was a family of humans or pre-human ancestors who got god's "word" and suddenly had souls and knew what they needed to do to go to heaven? Did this happen for all such creatures in existence at the time, or only for a few? Were some going to heaven while their second cousins weren't? The difference between them and their dead grandparents, who obviously didn't have a soul, is so slight, why not just let their grandparents in (and then by recursion their grandparents?)

(My belief? Uh, Evolution theory is incomplete, particularly in the area of Abiogenesis.

Evolution is NOT a theory that presents an answer to the origin of life, there are many theories that attempt to answer this, and they fall under the separate field of abiogenesis. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenesis
The inherent problem is that evolution continues to occur to this day and is easily observable in the fossil record while abiogenesis can't be witnessed so easily, so we may never know for sure how it first happened.

Okay, so that's just being nitpicky. I spell the word wrong and you think I don't know what it means? The problem is, no matter Wikipedia says, the various abiogenesis theories are often lumped up in the bigger version of the Theory of Evolution. If not, how could a creation vs. evolution debate even exist? Since creation is an abiogenesis theory (if you'll allow me the liberty of calling something that isn't quite scientific a theory), it would be like comparing apples and oranges.

You're right, but that's what IDers and creationists do. They point to the lack of knowledge about the origin of life as the reason to need alternatives to the perfectly sound theory of evolution. Doesn't make sense does it?

Still, most of it is as right as we can get with our limited information. I just find it ridiculous to allow violations of Cell Theory in order to create life, but have only the flimsiest explanations on why it's allowed.)

Because before there were cells, the world had a completely different set of environmental conditions to take into account. Obviously the first cell couldn't come from a previous cell, but this isnt violating cell theory, its just an obvious exception. Enter abiogenesis theories.

That's the flimsy excuse that I'm talking about. None of the various abiogenesis theories have proof (sorry, I mean compelling evidence) that their required environmental conditions (particularly the lack of oxygen in the atmosphere) ever existed, as oxidation occurs even in the lowest layers of sedimentary rock. I just think it's silly to assume that Cell Theory has an exception without that evidence. But you're right. It may be lost to us forever. Kinda makes it unfalsifiable, doesn't it?

????

"We don't know" is not an unfalsifiable theory. It's a statement of fact. Are you saying that the fact that abiogenesis happened at all is unfalsifiable? Only in so much as every single explained event in the known universe has a natural explanation, and therefore rejecting the idea that abiogenesis has a natural explanation is just a case of poor pattern recognition. Allow me to elaborate:

A long time ago:
We don't know why it rains.
God must do it!
We figured out how it rains, I guess God didn't do it.

Later:
We don't know why the sun rises.
God must do it!
We figured out how the sun rises, I guess it's not God there either!

More recently:
We don't know why people get sick.
The devil must do it!
We figured out how people get sick, I guess it's not the devil!

Now:
We don't know how life began.
God did it!

See any patterns? Just because we don't know something is obviously not a good reason to ascribe that action to God. Instead, it's clearly safer to just assume that it, too has a natural explanation, as does every explained event in the universe.

[hr]

As it stands now, almost every book I've ever read about evolution assumes abiogenesis as its starting point.

Yes, because evolution only concerns how life changes, not how it began. I don't see what the problem is here.

 

[Wolf Protagonist]

Great article Mr. Pitts!
As for the value of debating Science VS Intelligent Design/Creationism on the comment section of a website, I believe this issue is much bigger and much more complex than can be summed up in a few sentences.

For those interested in educating themselves in this topic I would suggest a few of good podcasts that I listen to regularly.
Darwin or Design http://darwinordesign.com/
The Way of Reason http://infidelguy.libsyn.com/
Evolution 101 http://www.drzach.net/podcast.htm (Sadly, there are no new shows, but you can still download all of the episodes!)

Also for general Science based thought,
The Skeptics Guide to the Universe http://www.theskepticsguide.org/
Point of Inquiry http://www.pointofinquiry.org/
Skepticality http://www.skepticality.com/index.php
Truth Driven Thinking http://www.truthdriventhinking.com/
This Week In Science http://www.twis.org/
Skeptoid http://skeptoid.com/
The PopSci Podcast http://www.popsci.com/podcast (Popular Science)
Physics 10 Descriptive Introduction to Physics http://webcast.berkeley.edu/course_details.php?seriesid=1906978397 and finally,
NPR: Science Friday Podcast http://www.sciencefriday.com/

 

[CanadianWolverine]

IMHO, Religion sucks and this article sucks - not because it calls a religion on its myths but because it can't even separate wildly differing views and over simplifies ... because its funny to the writer. [sarcasm] Oh, does science have differing views? Who cares! Lets all toss them all in together and say all scientists are right, all of the time! [end sarcasm] Sad really.