If You Don't Believe in Evolution, Why?

sneakypenguin

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Snack Cake said:
Cakes said:
sneakypenguin said:
I personally think my faith(christianity) and science intersect pretty well
Agreed. Why there is a conflict is beyond me.
I presume that you don't see a conflict because you are able to take the factual claims in the Bible as largely metaphorical / not literal. I can understand a blanket policy that allows for science and religion to be separate spheres. But this gets back to my original question. Why do many religious people accept some science that contradicts their religion, but not other parts? For example, there are few (I suspect) American Christians who reject germ theory in favor of belief in demonic possession, but there are many who reject evolution in favor of creation.
Actually I would be one to take the Bible literally. Usually the people who actually follow a belief, will take whatever is said in their respective scriptures. It's just most people only passively follow something or its more of a social/support thing.
 

Dragon_of_red

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Cakes said:
dragon_of_red said:
Now i dont really belive in the Evolution theory, or the the other creation/how we were made theories, and mainly Evolution is attacked because it pretty much destroys whatever faith/ideas the religioous communities have. If Evolution is ever 100% solved, then it would be a giant blow to the religions of the world. It wouldnt disprove God, but would make it highley unlikley.
See, that's where you're wrong. Evolution doesn't destroy any religious beliefs at all. Plenty of religious people agree that evolution just gets into the specifics of how *insert deity here* made this mess work. Evolution already is pretty much "100% solved", as you put it, and it doesn't disprove God in the slightest. It makes absolutely no comment on the existence or lack thereof of any sort of Deity.
Well, i cant talk for any other religions other than my own, Christian by the way... may be able to do the Jewish one since its kind of the same story. If Evolution is right, it pretty much makes the Genesis and Garden Of Eden story, make no sense what so ever and pretty much ruins the core beliefs of 2 religions. Doesnt disprove him, just makes your God look like a little wuss who cant do as much and heaven will be a bust.
 

Snack Cake

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Cakes said:
Deshara said:
Yes, and some people are willing to talk about it. Shutting out any request to talk about it by automatically claiming that nobody can be civil while doing so is only helping to alienate two already self-seperating demographics.
Sorry, but it's true. These topics, while pretty interesting, just never seem to fly here. It'd be nice if it could, but I only see this ending in a horrific blood-bath. If it doesn't I owe you a Coke.
I'm not especially attached to this account, so if it ends badly, I'll just watch my ZP without logging in, and live out my life in exile. That really isn't my intention though.
 

sheic99

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dragon_of_red said:
Well, beacuse we have faith my son, faith.

You need it, faith and hope are the only things making us seperate from the bad guys.

Now i dont really belive in the Evolution theory, or the the other creation/how we were made theories, and mainly Evolution is attacked because it pretty much destroys whatever faith/ideas the religioous communities have. If Evolution is ever 100% solved, then it would be a giant blow to the religions of the world. It wouldnt disprove God, but would make it highley unlikley.

Alos, this could turn bad.
Why would it be a huge blow to the religious communities. The origin of species has never stated that God or any other deity is false/ true. In fact, Pope Pius XII stated that while he doesn't view evolution as being correct, it does not conflict with religious views. In case you're not catholic, made that statement in 1950.

And to look at the second comment you made, that is just stupid. Why would a Taliban soldier have less faith than a US Soldier? Why does an atheist have less faith than a creationist? The truth is, they don't.
 

Syndef

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I've spoken with some people like this. From what I can understand, most of them are just abhorred by the fact that man and hominids are related.
 

Kollega

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I dunno,really. The Universe in it's entirety may well have been created by some kind of deity - we don't know what was there before the Big Bang,do we? Evolution is probably a natural process,but the existence of the Universe itself may not be accidential.

Most religious people probably dislike the concept because it's a blow to their fundamental beliefs. Even if the Universe was in fact kick-started by someone abstract,certain people will still insist that anything and everything is hand-sculpted by their God.
 

Dragon_of_red

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sheic99 said:
Why would it be a huge blow to the religious communities. The origin of species has never stated that God or any other deity is false/ true. In fact, Pope Pius XII stated that while he doesn't view evolution as being correct, it does not conflict with religious views. In case you're not catholic, made that statement in 1950.

And to look at the second comment you made, that is just stupid. Why would a Taliban soldier have less faith than a US Soldier? Why does an atheist have less faith than a creationist? The truth is, they don't.
Well, read my post above this somewhere and i answer your first thing.

And the Faith thing was a joke, get it, a joke, calm down.
 

Snotnarok

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sneakypenguin said:
I personally think my faith(christianity) and science intersect pretty well, but arguing that here is like trying to argue with a twilight fan girl that edward is creepy. So why bother eh.
You mean trying to argue with a Twilight fan.
 

Gillespie

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What interesting is that I don't think the theory of evolution would bother any fundamental Christian groups NEARLY as much if the whole "humans and apes shared a common ancestor" issue was never raised. I think THAT'S their main cause for upset over anything else.

But that's just my humble view, all. I really couldn't say what the real root of it is: Christianity is a worldview, like all religions and cultural philosophies, but science is science.
 

Serge A. Storms

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I like how everyone's falling over each other declaring that this is going to be a flame war in 0.0000001 seconds, and the vast majority of the actual discussion on evolution v. religion so far has been between Atheists that are commenting because they saw "believe" and "evolution" in the thread title, and Christians that want people to know that science doesn't have any conflict at all with Christianity.
 

sheic99

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Cakes said:
sheic99 said:
Why does an atheist have less faith than a creationist? The truth is, they don't.
I'm sorry, what?
It takes the same amount of faith to believe there is or isn't a god.

dragon_of_red said:
Well, i cant talk for any other religions other than my own, Christian by the way... may be able to do the Jewish one since its kind of the same story. If Evolution is right, it pretty much makes the Genesis and Garden Of Eden story, make no sense what so ever and pretty much ruins the core beliefs of 2 religions. Doesnt disprove him, just makes your God look like a little wuss who cant do as much and heaven will be a bust.
I assume you mean this post.

Or Genesis is the most that man could understand at the time when said deity revealed the story of life unto them. If God is as powerful as the bible states, then there is an innate possibility that the human consciousness cannot fully grasp the entirety of his powers. Continuing along this line of thinking, the six days of creation that is described in the bible, may have been six days for the supreme being, but for mortal like it could have been 6 million years. As such, evolution can be seen as an attempt to view the process of creation of life on Earth.
 

PhiMed

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(I'm not making an argument against evolution. I happen to view it as fact)

I think there are three reasons for this phenomenon.

First, the method at which it was arrived is not, strictly speaking, the scientific method. In the scientific method, an hypothesis is formulated, then a test of that hypothesis is constructed to observe the variable in question, data is collected, and it is proven or disproven.
Evolutionary biology works in the opposite direction. In evolutionary biology, data is collected and compiled, and an hypothesis is formulated afterwards. If subsequent data disprove this explanation, the explanation is revised, but there's no way to devise a controlled test, because you can't hold any of the environmental variables constant. For this reason, evolutionary biology would probably better be described as a "logic system" than a "science". This doesn't mean it's not true. It just means it isn't truly scientific. The same could be said for certain aspects of astrophysics, but enough is actually scientific that we can forgive them that.

Second, while several examples of microevolution have been found, virtually no examples of macroevolution have been observed in human history. Granted, we haven't been observing for very long, but that's not really an excuse. Here's why: We believe humans evolved from lower primates over the course of a period of time on the order of millions of years. There are bacteria with a generational time that is about 1/350400 of ours. After being aware of these bacteria for several decades, shouldn't we have seen an evolutionary innovation at least as significant as the primate/human transition by now?

Third, and this is the least-reasonable reason, but probably the most important one in terms of creating evolution deniers. The most publicly prominent evolutionary biologists in the world are militant atheist dickholes. I don't know of a single scientific discovery Richard Dawkins has made, but I know of a ton of books he's written about what a bunch of silly bitches the faithful are. If he's a dedicated scientist, why does he expend so much energy on philosophy?
People are spiteful, and the best way to get them to refuse to listen to what you have to say is to spit in their face. No other scientific discipline feels the need to go on the attack this way. I think it's because every other science is a little more comfortable with their status as a "science" rather than a "logic system", or should I say a "belief system".
 

Cakes

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sheic99 said:
Cakes said:
sheic99 said:
Why does an atheist have less faith than a creationist? The truth is, they don't.
I'm sorry, what?
It takes the same amount of faith to believe there is or isn't a god.
For some bizarre reason, you used "Atheist" and "Creationist" as your two examples. A more appropriate one would have been atheist and theist, since that seems to be the comparison you're trying to make. It still makes no sense though. Only a strong atheists would say "I believe there is no God".
 

Thaius

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sneakypenguin said:
I personally think my faith(christianity) and science intersect pretty well, but arguing that here is like trying to argue with a twilight fan girl that edward is creepy. So why bother eh.
Perfect analogy, my friend.