<p>Check that out. You see how one has to logically think in order to believe in christianity. </p>
<p>I suggest all of you who spout off about the bible not being true, or nothing disproving it to take a intro to geology lecture or physical/historical geology lab course. Your eyes will be opened to a thing we like to call “REALITY”.</p>
<p>By taking classes in the subject matter you will see real, yeah, remember that word “REAL” data. I think ya’ll have been missing that one for quite some time. You will see pictures, events, learn how fossils are placed. How certain animals are only found in geographic locations, how continental drift plays its part. Such things as fossils matching on off the coast of south America and Africa. There are millions of details, millions of discoveries. The succession of the Hawaiian Islands, how you can travel along the coast and see how the lava plume has created other islands in the past, and how they have eroded. You will see things like seismic imaging, how we can actually see where the pacific plate that is billions of years old has traveled to the outside edge of the upper mantle. You will see the oceanic crust grave yard that lies beneath the continental US. All sorts of fascinating and thrilling things that a closed minded person is never exposed to. Explore the different classes wherever you attend school, experience the different environments. Science makes the world all the more beautiful and logical. If you do research or just spend time talking to your bio, Geo, and other professor’s on the subject, you will clearly see how it all adds up. We aren’t trying to lead people astray, Oh god forbid, we are only presenting the truth as we see it. Facts, real things, not the inner workings of your imagination.</p>
<p>Well, I think the problemi is the origin of their disbelief -they believe EVERY WORD of the Bible -a book which has been translated numerous times and was only written down several hundred years after the events. I am a Catholic and belief the fundamentals (the main ideas) of the Bible -I do not, however, belief dinosaurs were here 4000 years ago or that Jonah was really swallowed by a big fish</p>
<p>The reason, I think, that evolution is so widely contested is because of two things. </p>
<ol>
<li><p>It is called the theory of evolution. When people think of a theory, they think of the social definition. They think, “oh, I have a theory as to who will win the Super Bowl.” This is NOT the scientific definition of a theory. In science, a theory is a hypothesis that has never been disproved even though a large body of research has been conducted AND that has a massive body of evidence to support it. Many scientific theories remain theories forever. The term theory carries a lot of baggage. People say “oh, evolution is just a theory” because they do not know the true definition of the theory. For example, the cell theory is almost exclusively accepted by people. People see and know about cells. We use our knowledge of cells for many medicinal purposes. But the cell theory is exactly that - a theory. Science is weary of naming anything the “truth” (unlike religious institutions) because humans are ultimately fallible. There are actually comparatively few scientific laws - gravity, for example, is a law.</p></li>
<li><p>The term “evolution” is actually something of a misnomer. When people think of evolution, many of them think of the wrong idea. At about the same time that Darwin was developing his (now slightly faulty) ideas, there was a man named Lamarck. Lamarck proposed that evolution occurs when one individual slowly gains traits. That is, one individual actually changes throughout the course of his or her life. Think of the way that Pokemon evolve. That’s the hypothesis that Lamarck proposed and unfortunately, it’s the one that many people think of when they hear the term evolution. This is how some people counteract evolution by trying to ask “why are there still monkeys, then? why didn’t they all evolve?”. The hypothesis that Darwin proposed is natural selection. Natural selection may not agree with one’s beliefs, but it is logical - species that are able to adopt to an environment live whereas species that are not able to adopt to an environment die off. For example, the people of Africa are darker in skin color than Europeans. This is because the skin of Africans produces more melanin. But why? Africa is generally hot and sunny. A very pale person would essentially burn to death in the “African sun”. Thus, that person and his or her traits would die off. No or few other very pale people would be born because that trait does not allow them to survive and, therefore, reproduce and pass on his or her traits. (This example could be flipped - that is, that a person with black skin was born and that he or she was more well suited to the African sun and thus lived to spread his or her genetically beneficial trait - depending on the patterns of migration of humans and where humans did, in fact, originate).</p></li>
</ol>
<p>Anyways, what this whole post is saying is this: I don’t mind people who oppose evolution because of religious reasons. I’m okay with that (until it becomes a matter of education and our schools). But I DO very much mind people who oppose evolution because of ignorance.</p>
<p>Prune, your faith is strongest, not threatened because a word or two or hundreds or thousands in the Bible might be not exactly as God meant. What weak faith the fundamentalists have, shattered if they admit that one of the English words was wrongly translated.</p>
<p>I was particularly glad that (vossron?) mentioned this:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Humans are incredibly finite. Therefore, humans believe there is a beginning and an end to everything. This is not necessarily the case. You ask, “how did matter get here?” I say, “why did it have to GET here?”. Vossron had it right to say that to ask “how did matter get here?” is to ask “how did God get here?”. Because humans are so finite, there is a need to say that something had to come from something else (the proverbial "which came first: the chicken or the egg?). It is necessary, however, to extend beyond the human scope. For example, I would say that for many humans, it is impossible to believe that space is literally infinity. Space probably doesn’t just “stop” somewhere. It is incredibly difficult for me to even fathom how massive (infinite!) space really is. Why? Well, it’s a concept well beyond human scope, because humans are limited to earth and the surrounding planets, as well as the solar system and just beyond (at least for the foreseeable future). Therefore, it is difficult to understand infinity. It can be done, but it is a difficult to grasp. The same thing goes for matter. How did matter get here? It didn’t have to get here; it has always been here. That’s my claim. However, since “origin science” is not an actual science, it will have to remain my claim. Religion was created because humans could not explain certain phenomena (if you don’t want to believe that this is why Christianity was created, you must at least understand that this is how Greek mythology was created). As society has developed, humans have been able to use reason and scientific methods to explore what was previously unknown. Consider how revolutionary the germ theory (please note - the germ theory is a THEORY, meaning that is a scientifically accepted hypothesis with a wealth of information, research, and evidence backing the claim) was!</p>
<p>While I actually agree with what Vossron said, “just a theory” is an iffy statement. Here are some theories that no one is debating or calling “just a theory”:</p>
<p>–The Cell Theory
–The Germ Theory
–The Atomic Theory
–The Gene Theory</p>
<p>Also, do you realize that five hundred years ago the heliocentric theory (the idea that the sun is the center of the solar system and that the earth actual revolves around the sun, not vice versa) was widely contested by the religious? And how many hypotheses and even theories that were scientifically based were actually toppled? I don’t know what the theory of natural selection will be doing in 500 years, but if it is toppled, it will be toppled because of science, not religion (unless God speaks to the world, which hasn’t happen in at least the 6,000 years that YECs believe in, so I’m not betting on it).</p>
<p>It always astonishes me when I come across polls that say “66% of Americans believe man was created in his present from 10,000 years ago”. I just wonder who these people are. Ive never come across someone with those open beliefs. Ive never really been bothered by evolution or seen the problem. I remember being a young boy having my mom read me bible stories about Adam & Eve and Noah, and also buying me dinosaur books that said they died off 65 million years ago. And when I first heard of evolution in elementary school the first thing that came to my mind was how it made perfect sense. All the while believing in God.</p>
<p>Here are some good books (among many) that deal with evolution and christianity (theism in general):</p>
<p>The Language of God by Francis Collins (former director of the National Human Genome Research Institute)</p>
<p>Finding Darwin’s God by Kenneth Miller (well known for participating in evolution-creationist debates. And in my opinion does a great job on dismantling the argument of antievolutionist, and I imagine he does so inhis last book which is appropriatley title Only A Theory)</p>
<p>For a perspective on evolution from a theologians view point I recommend anything by John Haught and Keith Ward.</p>
<p>Ive also just begun reading Perspectives on an Evolving Creation edited by Keith Miller, and every review Ive read so far of the book have said it is among the best for this subject.</p>
<p>if you live in the 21st century and have an elementary biological education and don’t accept that organisms arrived at their present forms via evolutionary processes then you should probably just toss out college altogether and reconcile yourself to a life of boorish idiocy</p>
<p>I think it’s blasphemous to elevate the writers and translators of those old documents (that were assembled by committees to become the bible) to infallible god-like status.</p>
<p>The thing is a milli is that I dont think your average high school biology class does a good enough job in explaining evolution. My high school teacher never really talked about evolution, and where Im from evolution is not that big of a deal. Heck even my biology class in college barely talked about the actual concept, only briefly mentioning it when talking covering zoology. I wont recieve an actual class on evolution until next spring, and thats only because Im a bio major. So it doesnt surprise me that people question the theory of evolution, what bothers me is that people think it is somehow an enemy of God and religion, and continue to view a couple chapters in Genesis as the literal truth, despite the evidence for evolution, 4.5 billion year old panet, and the big bang theory (one would think they would at least embrace this one enthusiatically)</p>
<p>Obviously, this is a matter of opinion. The more religious among us (from a religion that supports this belief) will support creationism, while the more scientifically inclined will chose evolution. Many strong evangelists from each camp will blatantly ignore any evidence proving or disproving the opposing theory, while there will be still others who are more open-minded. And then there’s evolutionary creationism - why not have the best of both worlds?! :)</p>
<p>Yes, it’s opinion, but you either accept and believe science or you don’t. You can’t say “I believe in science except where it contradicts my religion.” Well, okay, you can say it, but it means you reject science and the scientific method.</p>
<p>Creationism might be a religious theory, but it’s not a scientific theory. There is no evidence supporting creationism, at least no scientific evidence. Scientists are open minded about scientific evidence, but words in a book are only that.</p>
<p>If you can consider evolution to be god’s mechanism of creation, then we seem to meet in the middle. In that case, science is just trying to figure out how god did it. The folks that wrote the old bible books did their best, but they weren’t gods, so they didn’t get it right.</p>
<p>It is not the “evidence”, but the interpretation of the evidence. Mt. St. Helens proved a lot can happen in a matter of a few hours that geologists formerlly thought took millions of years. Also, it is hard to explain a petrified tree that is vertically preserved through “millions of years” of rock layers.</p>
<p>
it is as much a “theory” or “religeon” as evolution. What you can say about one, you can also say about the other.</p>
<p>
Actually evolutionists are quote closed minded about anything that draws doubt to evolution.</p>
<p>I believe in evolution over religion, mainly due to the fact that there are so many different religions. How can we know if one religion is right or wrong? We can’t. So therefore people go into wars just to prove that what they believe is the truth. Same thing goes with this argument. Evolution also has proof compared to the many other religions. The Bible has been translated numerous times. Something similar to this is you sending a message to a friend individually until you get to person x. There are 15 people in between you and person x. Chances are the message will not be exactly the same as it started when it reaches person x. Also the Bible mentioned that God made the Earth and Adam within a week. The oldest human fossil is 195,000 years old. How is that dating techniques have found that the Earth is 1.8+ billion years old when the oldest human fossil is 195,000 years old when Adam was born less than a week apart at most from the Earth. That leaves more than 1.5 billion years unexplained.</p>
<p>Please see my other posts for a thorough definition of a scientific theory. Germs are a scientific theory, for example. Creationism can be an idea, but it cannot be a scientific theory because it doesn’t fit the definition.</p>
Studying germs is not the same as studying the theory of origins. You can’t prove, observe, test origin theories. Thus, they are all religions (beliefs). You can conjecture, but that is not the same as prove/observe/test. </p>
<p>
Even the initial conditions for the formation of amino acids is not conducive to the formation of life. You can get the amino acids, but they don’t survive long enough to form proteins. You can get the proteins from amino acids, but those are not the same conditions that are conducive to the formation of amino acids. Also, how do you get all the one handed amino acids when random chance would have them forming both ways. Lots of problems with postulating how even the building blocks began.</p>
<p>Carbon dating only works back 40,000 years or so (no carbon left to date). Farther back then that, and dating techniques are recursive. Mt. St. Helens laid down millions of years of deposits in a matter of days. For a rock layer to be dated to 1 million years ago, it uses “reference” fossils or other markers from rock layers dated to that age. So how were those rock layers dated? Eventually you end up with some type of recursive reference, or because someone said it was 1 million years old.</p>
<p>The “evidence” is not in dispute. A fossil is a fossil. A rock layer is a rock layer. The question is how you interpret the evidence. Even folded rock layers are better explained by catastrophic events (upheaval while rock layers were still solidifying, rather than some subsequent event millions of years later that would tend to cause fractures, not folding). The mere existence of fossils is best explained by some type of catastrophic event that buried all the plants and animals so they could fossilize. The existence of so many fossils in one layer (or set of layers) indicates some type of event that made it conducive to form fossils world wide.</p>