[Dolorous Menhir]

If I had a gif of someone shaking their head in a sad & resigned way, I would put it here.

[Darkwatch]

DM, by your mere presence any time in any thread, that is what we picture.

[Terez]

Matt Cartmill said:

As an adolescent I aspired to lasting fame, I craved factual certainty, and I thirsted for a meaningful vision of human life - so I became a scientist. This is like becoming an archbishop so you can meet girls.

Just ran across this one and thought it was appropriate.

[Morgoth]

So basically Gem's position is that no matter the proof/observations/examples brought forth she will not ever accept the theory of evolution. The reason for this is that she's got an open mind?

[MTS]

Morgoth, on 29 January 2010 - 11:03 AM, said:

So basically Gem's position is that no matter the proof/observations/examples brought forth she will not ever accept the theory of evolution. The reason for this is that she's got an open mind?

Oh no! PARADOX!

[Gem Windcaster]

Morgoth, on 29 January 2010 - 11:03 AM, said:

So basically Gem's position is that no matter the proof/observations/examples brought forth she will not ever accept the theory of evolution. The reason for this is that she's got an open mind?

That's one way to look at it, I suppose, but it's not what I meant. Also, dude, you could talk to me directly, you know, and not refer to me in 3rd person. It's weird.

[cerveza_fiesta]

Quote

beliefs are personal, scientific theories are public standards.

Maybe its been said before (88 pages is a lot to read...but I did the last 10 or so)

beliefs [which I take to mean religious beliefs] and scientific theories are both beliefs. Dunno what this "public standards" thing is you're talking about...

I'll try to separate my thoughts for clarity
====================================
Belief in a scientific theory is typically based on measurable evidence, and the evidence gives a reason to believe in it. If A can be measurably equated to B, then A equals B. It's a reasonable assumption. It's proven wrong when somebody goes and finds that C influences A's equality with B. So then the theory is modified to A equals B except when C. We can still reasonably believe in the theory that A equals B, you just have to watch out for the C's.

Religious belief is not based on measurable evidence in a strict sense. We don't have a gauge-o-meter that tells us when god is speaking/influencing/whatever...it's a feeling. To a person a person who relies on gauge-o-meter as the only reliable source of evidence, the whole idea of a God seems like complete baloney because they assign zero importance to emotion-based evidence. People with religious belief place weight on that feeling and take it into consideration when debating the existence/nonexistence of god, or creation/evolution, etc...

Religious belief and Scientific belief are the same thing, and are both based on reasonable assumptions. The key (I think) is how weight is assigned to the evidence for the belief. If you have every reason to believe your evidence is sound, then it is reasonable to assume your conclusion is sound as well.

======================================
On the Creation/Evolution debate,
============================
The purely scientific mind places all the weight on measurable evidence like fossil records, evolutionary experiments with fruit flies, observation of speciation, measurable DNA evidence for closeness of species, and all that good stuff. To that person, spontaneous creation is absurd in the extreme

The purely religious mind may place weight on measurable evidence, but places much much more on the teachings of their religion, which in this case (I assume) state that God created the earth and everything on it. To that person, the only reasonable explanation is the creation one beacuse evolution theory and all its evidence is given less weight in the conclusion than the religious teaching.

============================
The thing I have a problem with:
=============================
I don't understand for the life of me why there is a conflict on this creation vs. evolution issue. Above, I described kind of a black and white contrast between two ways of thinking. Like if the pope and Dawkins were to debate the issue.

The majority of people are a grey shade between those two extremes. I find it most reasonable to place weight on BOTH scientific and (for lack of a better term) emotional evidence. Evolution doesn't have to be a denial of religion, it can be incorporated into your belief system as easily as anything else. If god created the earth and everything on it, why can't He have established a system for it to carry forward without direct interference. If he created the earth and the heavens He must have realized how the climate of a planet can change and that he should build in some mechanism for adaptation.

Science only proves the existence of an adaptation mechanism (evolution) and the fact that it progresses (and has progressed) over long periods of time to keep life going in spite of changing environments. Science does not and probably never will prove WHY it is set up that way or WHO/WHAT gave the initial spark to get it all going. As far as I'm concerned, it could be god as easily as random chance.

I'm not a particularly religious person so I lean toward random chance (just to make my official opinion known).

Belief in evolution doesn't preclude belief in creation.





Edited cause I missed a word up there someplace

This post has been edited by cerveza_fiesta: 09 March 2010 - 03:39 PM

[Morgoth]

this thread makes me want to cry every time I look into it. I should know better by now.

[Darkwatch]

Indeed you should.

[Cause]

cerveza_fiesta, this is true 'Belief in evolution doesn't preclude belief in creation'.

Everything else you wrote is absurd.

[cerveza_fiesta]

@cause

what's wrong about it specifically?

That's just how I interpret it. Probably expressed myself poorly, but please critique it.

Is it the idea that we place different levels of importance on different kinds of evidence?

Or the idea that some rational being could have acted at all to set the whole process in motion?

Just wondering, cause "absurd" is kind of a vague term.

[Illuyankas]

For me, it's this line:

Quote

Religious belief and Scientific belief are the same thing, and are both based on reasonable assumptions.

I can no longer summon the energy to give yet another summary of why this is incorrect to add to the dozens already posted in this thread, albeit at a different person.

[cerveza_fiesta]

Illuyankas, on 09 March 2010 - 06:59 PM, said:

For me, it's this line:

Quote

Religious belief and Scientific belief are the same thing, and are both based on reasonable assumptions.

I can no longer summon the energy to give yet another summary of why this is incorrect to add to the dozens already posted in this thread, albeit at a different person.

Yeah, I know, I've been following this thread here and there over the months (years?)

And definitely not trolling. I've been on here long enough you know I don't do that.

Dunno why I bothered posting really...since its a rehash. Just was bored this morning and trying to put something I've thought about in words for, really, the first time without bashing one point of view or the other...and simultaneously trying to sympathise a bit with Gem's stance.

but regarding the above, what's wrong with the statement. The "reasonable" part? Isn't the jugement of reasonableness (which I'm using synonymously with "validity") a subjective thing? Or is reasonableness of evidence in your view a cut-and-dry thing?

Fuck it. Forget about it anyways.

[Terez]

Veritas est perfidus. It's the new hip logical fallacy.

[Kurt Montandon]

My contribution:


There is a wealth of physical evidence for evolution.

There is absolutely no physical evidence for Intelligent Design, or even Creationism.


There, it's as simple as that. You can either accept reality on its own terms,
or you can hide behind the 3,000 year-old combined mythologies and superstitions
of a pack of goat-herding savages who wiped their asses with their hand.

[cerveza_fiesta]

cerveza_fiesta, on 09 March 2010 - 07:25 PM, said:

Fuck it. Forget about it anyways.

I meant that sincerely. My apologies to those that contributed. After getting slammed I read farther back and in more detail. You guys pretty much covered everything I would have said or offered to the discussion eons ago.

S'what I get for contributing far too late in the discussion to be of any use whatsoever.

I retract all the above posts and good on ye all for an interesting read

*shamefully retreats to the inn*

[Cold Iron]

The reason evolution is not compatible with creation and the reason Gem refuses to accept the evidence (not her "open mind") is that instead of embracing Darwin's work and claiming he was divinely inspired, the major churches were silent at the time of the publication of The Origin of Species. This allowed any pundit with an agenda to fart rubbish for a hundred years and we're still living with the controversy. A smart pope would canonise him.

Also cf, I actually like your term "emotional evidence" despite of - or perhaps because of - it's apparent contradiction. We actually do make our minds up based on emotions, or gut-feeling if you will. The difference between two people who disagree on an issue such as this is their education and learned method for assigning meaning. One person might get a good feeling about a conclusion that is well supported by empirical evidence, another might get a good feeling about a conclusion that is well supported by their sense of purpose or righteousness. The first assigns more meaning to their ability to quantify reality, the second to qualify reality. To the first something is real if they can measure it's physical attributes, to the second it is real if they can judge it's moral standing. The only time there's a problem is when these two people want to argue. Rightness depends on how you judge what is right, so these people will never agree.

[anakronisM]

Evolution might not be compatible with certain sorts of fundamental views of the bible and young earth creationism. But on other views that are more coherent with the theory of evolution there's no problem. I find the whole debate between creation and evolution irrelevant when the creation side is misrepresented by more fundamental views and interpretations of the bible. This is totally dependent on how you define how creation came about. Which is defined by interpretation of the bible.

I can't say my Christian beliefs in a creator are threatened by evolution. Maybe evolution was the way to go.

[Cold Iron]

You have a point, anakronism, and this is my major problem with Dawkins too - why begrudge people their god of the gaps? There are some places you just can't take science. It's a stretch even saying the big bang happened, the question of what was before it is not even syntactically correct, it's like asking what is below the centre of the earth or what's beyond space or what happens to you after death. There are plenty of valid and good reasons for believing in a higher authority. The belief that this entity created us is a simple way of establishing it's authority, why not let people believe it? His claim that there is no evidence for this symbolic concept, this emotional construct, is hardly revolutionary. How could there be? Clearly this does not matter to the majority of believers, though, and it is certainly no reason to ridicule them.

If you have found no impetus to believe in god then don't. But you clearly don't understand the reasoning of those who do, and thus have no grounding upon which to base an attack. Ask yourself first why they believe, and when you've found an answer that isn't based on your initial assumptions then reevaluate your grounds for attack. You may find you no longer see the point of attacking them at all.

[Use Of Weapons]

I think it's pretty clear that Dawkins believes religious belief to be dangerous, and that is why he attacks it. It's not because of how they got there, but because of the effect they have once they have got there. He attacks actions as well as beliefs, and, as actions are the clearest demonstration of a belief system's integrity, he is at least being consistent. The argument then becomes, is the balance of moral action of any religious system in the black or the red? Dennett, according to _Breaking The Spell_, would seem to support Dawkins in saying the major Abrahamic religions are significantly in the red on that count.