Terminate421 said:
the same could be said by evolution through natural selection. This is not to say that I do not find natural selection nonexistent.
If you believe in objective reality then the case for macro and micro evolution under the natural selection doctrine is exactly as proven as the theory of gravity. Google examples of speciation or check out its wikipage. If you assert that it's not true, then you are calling billions of people, including the entire population of industrial era London, liars.
The funny thing of course being that the current theory of gravity has holes in it when we move out into space and bring other phenomena like dark matter into the mix, whereas evolution is thus far flawless and more likely to remain true than the theory of gravity.
Terminate421 said:
I do not however believe we came from monkeys.
No one in the history of ever has said that we came from monkeys. If you think anyone has said that, then you have been talking to people who have no fucking clue about evolution or evolutionary theory. 0% of professors who believe in evolution think we came from monkeys, Richard Dawkins does not believe that, Darwin did not believe that, Erasmus did not believe that.
So lets do some simple bio and taxonomy.
1)Monkeys are not apes. No we evolved from monkeys, they don't even say we evolved from apes. They say we are from the same family as apes. Cercopithecidae is the family for most species of monkeys, of which Humans are not a member.
2)Humans are in the ape family. More specifically the great apes. More specifically and scientifically known as Hominidae(seen here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hominidae) of which Humans, Orangutans, Chimpanzees, Bonobos, and Gorillas are all members.
3)While we are also somewhat related to monkeys(as we are also related somewhat to cockroaches) what people assert(when you either mishear them as saying we are related to monkeys or hear perfectly well people who have no understanding or training in biology say it) is that we are cousins of the Great Apes, and most closely the Chimpanzees. And you would be no closer to being correct in saying that we evolved from Apes than you would be in saying that everyone's parents are their 2nd cousins thrice removed. You and your cousin had the same Great-great-great-great-grandparent, your cousin is not your father. Just like a long long long time ago two species split and one of them became Humans and the others became Chimpanzees. Chimps didn't just stop evolving and suddenly we budded off of them. We both evolved away from a common ancestor, just like your 2nd cousin thrice removed is probably way different than you.
Terminate421 said:
And befor you bring up "oh religion has caused problems too!"
No it hasn't. Douchebags are douchebags no matter what colors they fly. Hitler said he was Christian, Stalin said he was atheist, Mao said he was atheist, Mehmed the fifth(Armenian Genocide) was a Muslim, the inquisition was run under Catholics. Pol pot didn't need to be an atheist to butcher tens of thousands of people any more than the Mongolians needed their religion to stack 90,000 decapitated heads in front of Delhi.
People often use religion to justify their behavior, but a justification isn't a root cause. Here's an example. The Sultanate of Rum and the Ottoman Empire both were expansionist Empires, the latter of which went so far as to advance into the Balkans and up to the point where it threatened Austria, Italy, Germany. It likely would have beaten them as well had the crusades not occurred. And if it had beaten them, France, England and Spain would have been next and they all knew this. So they united together to stop the Ottomans. But the average age of death for the non-nobility that made up the bulk of armies in the middle age was somewhere between 25-35. So how do you convince, say an English peasant, that he has to go and fight people in some place that's going to take him half a year to get to. Hes going to have to fight there for 4 at least, and then he can go home. Do you tell him it's because the nobility don't want to be deposed and that your King is afraid if the Austrian King is deposed that he will be next? That because of that some peasant has to give over a fourth of his time in life to save some king, all the while abandoning his entire family who he will likely never see again?
Hell no, you tell them that God wants them to do it, and that if they follow you there, they will be rewarded in heaven. The crusades weren't caused by religion. Religion was the excuse, they were caused by politics and economics.