Tao_Equus said:
There is very good evidence to support the evolutionary history of man. Unfortunately the lie-mongers in the 'creationist' camp use a strategy of of half truths, out of context interpretations and laughably bad science to convince those too lazy to look for themselves.
i think this is a serious and important point - although i believe that G!D Created the universe, i also believe that my religion cannot require me to be intellectually dishonest, so therefore it is incumbent upon me to find a way to make this stuff work. fortunately, evolution does not present Torah with a problem when both evolution and Torah are properly understood.
But this is precisely why I am a proponent of evolutionary theory, despite its incompleteness, and abhor the creationist fraudsters. Abhor is a strong word and I do not choose it lightly. My problem with the big shouters amongst creationists is that I do not believe for one moment that they believe what they are saying. They are very deliberately and purposefully trying to deceive people, invariably so they profit personally from it. I believe they should be tried in court as fraudsters and not be allowed to hide behind religious freedom. And they should certainly be banned from teaching kids that creationism is science.
certainly teaching something that is not science in science class is reprehensible and a waste of education. however, although evolutionary theory in the right hands does a lot to explain how religion itself evolves (see the work of daniel dennett) it does run up time and time again against problems for which empirical investigation is inadequate and only a properly trained philosopher can weigh the evidence. certainly the a priori assumption that all religion is deluded, irrational nonsense can be demonstrated to be false by an examination of the various disciplines of cultural anthropology - but it does *not* therefore follow that *no* form of religion is deluded, irrational nonsense. the question must then become: what constitutes "deluded, irrational nonsense" and does your belief system fit the bill. then one must allow human free-will, rationality and, yes, love and judgement to make the decision.
The dominant and most important class of life on our planet is bacteria, not us.
i don't think it's as cut and dried as that if we are able to operate on a level where we can control or otherwise stimulate or repress particular bacteria, but i do take your point. however, necessity and importance are not the same thing. water is a necessity but it does not necessarily follow that water is important until it becomes scarce. moral importance is an entirely different philosophical question.
I cannot comprehend science ever having all the answers, there are simply too many questions for that to be possible, but at least it approaches these questions with a desire to find out the working truth and to prove it to be testable and repeatable and open to peer review. We cannot do more than that.
religious interpretation, at least in my tradition, functions exactly the same way; it is founded on a desire to know the intention of G!D as an ideal theoretical and practical construction which is tested through interpretation of texts; these interpretations are also repeatable and by definition peer-reviewed, which is why jews spend so much of their time arguing.
path_of_one said:
I also think evolution should be taught in a way that is less threatening to people's beliefs, in part because people only are open to learning when they feel safe and not defensive.
precisely, this is why dawkins is his own worst enemy. by his hysterical insistence that evolution "proves" that there is no G!D, he immediately gets people's backs up whilst at the same time picking on the *weakest* part of evolutionary theory, that which relies upon disproving something which is by definition not observable.
Tao_Equus said:
Evolution theory is not a vague possibility but as much a certainty as the sun will rise again tomorrow.
and the idea that people will keep believing in something greater than themselves which is not in an observable scientific domain is a similar certainty. the thing to understand is that the two are not in conflict.
One of my biggest issues with religions is that they are allowed to peddle what they know to be fiction or speculation as though it were truth.
firstly, you assume that "they know" it to be "fiction" or "speculation" and that is a pretty damn big assumption to make. second, you assume that you have the only criterion for assessing whether something is "true" or not. it does you a disservice and will not help you (or me) one iota in fighting against shoddy thinking and poor theology.
juantoo3 said:
Science and religion are *not* an either / or proposition...unless you make it one. In so doing, you limit yourself within the frame of the side you choose.
precisely. of course, dawkins abhors this particular point of view. he considers this "absorbing" evolution, which he doesn't think religion should be able to do. but it's astonishing the insights that he gets to; the other night, when i was watching the last of his programmes about darwinism, his final point was about how we were related to absolutely every other living thing and i thought, my G!D, how beautiful a way to prove that All Is One; we are all part of one system, i share 99% of my DNA with a chimp and 90% of my DNA with a banana, shouldn't that make me feel a sense of kinship with all life? how is that *not* a religious insight on some level?
Tao_Equus said:
Change. No two things that we have been able to observe in this universe are identical. Look closely enough and even the most apparently similar things have differences. So much so that it is virtually a law of nature. But there are patterns. And these patterns are repeatedly, if imperfectly, reproduced according to the available constituents.
at some level, in other words, something "changed". the most significant of these changes was the point at which free will itself evolved and humanity became a distinct species, severing its ability to interbreed with other species (mentioned in midrashim on genesis, incidentally) and forcing its expulsion from the edenic state.
If you were to deliberately deform a child's limb then the child would be removed from you and you would be prosecuted. But religions get away with deforming children's minds with whatever sputum they wish to spit with impunity because they have to be respected because they declare religious freedom. Its a travesty on the human rights of these children.
so you believe that the human rights of children entitle you to take my children away? way to go, genius, you've just lost all your support.
You cannot study the unobservable, it is speculation, philosophy...just ideas with no more credibility than the next persons.
has anyone ever seen a number, tao? what do mathematicians do if not construct ideal domains and then observe the real world and how we might apply those concepts within that real world? my religion is nothing if not similar.
The Bible and Koran are both full of violent and pornographic imagery we would not accept from any other source.
excuse *me*, but where is this "pornographic imagery" in the bible?
It quickly became apparent that Mr and Mrs Average American Christian had virtually no understanding of evolution theory and that their creationist dogma was built upon the indignation they felt at being associated with 'lowly animals'.
it is very sad. i know dawkins is fond of referring to us as "the fifth ape". i would not be sorry to be known as "the choosing ape". choice is at the heart of what it means to be human, as the garden of eden story shows.
juantoo3 said:
Aside, the tragedy of eugenic thinking (which stems *directly* from Darwinian evolution) was the second world war and the *assumption* of a "master" race superior to others...which led to the assumption that other "inferior" races could then be dealt with as sub-human.
yes, but juan, you can't use that as a reason to dismiss darwinian evolution, any more than you can use nazism as a reason to dismiss nietszche or wagner, any more than you can use mengele as a reason to dismiss medicine. one of the biggest things in evolution is about learning new skills and acquiring new capabilities - like not making damfool mistakes like thinking that eugenics was a good idea.
Dogbrain said:
Before evolution caught the public imagination, God was invoked to justify racist policies. Scripture after Scripture was quoted by the slavers of the US southern states to rationalize their practices of chattel slavery.
(hi dogbrain, haven't met you before, but i understand you're a mate of dauer's from another board, welcome) indeed - but their understanding of the Text involved was completely and utterly inadequate and flawed, which reveals to us that actually it was really about post-hoc rationalisation of something they just "felt" to be "right". they were wrong and those of us who know the Text better than they should say so, just as those of us who detest the idea that eugenics is somehow scientific should object.
you won't find me calling anyone a monkeyfecker, either. obviously we are aware that just because one *can*, does not mean that one *should*. perhaps we should point this out to all those welsh blokes chasing sheep up mountains. i don't think juan and you really need to be knocking spots off each other just yet!
Quahom1 said:
It seems to me, that "random chance" would result in more wrong results than right..
it does, Q - but the point is that there are so many iterations that the chance of one working is near-certain. most mutations have no effect, as i understand it (which isn't very far) but the sheer scale of change, though wasteful as only mother nature can be, makes it reliable as a constant.
path_of_one said:
As a person who believes in God along with agreeing with evolution, I am at a loss to understand why this is difficult for others. And no, I don't think God is driving the process in the sense of picking this or advancing that. I just think God is inherent in the process- that the change itself is a force of creativity, which is God. Unity, and the reconciliation of competition and suffering in the benefit of continuity of life, and the "Something Bigger" that is God... it's all right there rolled into evolution for me. So the contention is, on a personal level, a mystery to me.
gosh, path, this is a delightful summary. i don't even think there's any more to say on this for me!
b'shalom
bananabrain
You guys gotta keep me around for that reason alone... 
