<p>I think there are more students than you know that believe in micro but not macro evolution, or at least that don’t fully buy into “Darwinian” evolution.</p>
<p>Some resources worth checking out if you’re interested in the “other side”:</p>
<p>Michael Behe’s <em>Darwin’s Black Box…</em></p>
<p>Stephen Meyer’s <em>Darwin’s Doubt: The Explosive Origin of Animal Life and the Case for Intelligent Design</em></p>
<p>Stephen Meyer’s <em>Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design</em></p>
<p>John Ashton’s <em>In Six Days: Why 50 Scientists Choose to Believe in Evolution</em></p>
<p>The DVD “Expelled”</p>
<p>Deborah Haarsma’s <em>Origins: A Reformed Look at Creation, Design and Evolution</em></p>
<p>Former atheist Antony Flew’s <em>There is a God: How the World’s Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind</em></p>
<p>Guillermo Gonzalez’s <em>The Privileged Planet: How Our Place in the Cosmos is Designed for Discovery</em></p>
<p>Stand To Reason’s Greg Koukl and others from Stand to Reason (a Christian apologetics website) have some worthwhile articles discussing evolution.</p>
<p>I am only interested in science. All of these present arguments based on religion. There is no scientific debate going on. </p>
<p>Your first example, Michael Behe, is one of the architects of Intelligent Design. He openly admits that his views stem from his religious beliefs (Christian). If you read his testimony in Kitzmiller vs. Dover his incompetence is clear. He claims that ID is science, then he says that by his definition astrology is science too. </p>
<p>Your list is making my point for me that there are no scientists arguing against evolution that do not have a religious conflict. None. There is no debate about this in science. Not accepting evolution is a purely religious denial exercise. The objective scientists have moved on long ago.</p>
<p>This is not the case. Microevolution is about variation on smaller scales (often shorter time periods), and macroevolution is the compounded effect. They are not fundamentally different processes.</p>
<p>As a scientist, I’ll be happy to revisit evolution. I’d do the same with gravity. These are simply our best models for now, after all, and it’s possible someone has legitimate proof that disputes our current models. </p>
<p>This doesn’t change the fact that, in my experience, “my religion tells me so” is the only counter I’ve stumbled across - and it’s not adequate.</p>
<p>I would argue that for you, science is your religion. Would you agree? And you feel that you’re objective, is that correct? No subjectivity at all? You don’t come into the argument with any particular worldview or grid from which you view the world?</p>
<p>And actually, though Greg Koukl is a Christian, he makes his argument against evolution on a non-religious basis.</p>
<p>Also, I’m curious what you think about scientists such as Copernicus, Sir Francis Bacon, Kepler, Descarte, Newton, Pascal, Newton, and Faraday, just to name a few, who believed in God? (To be fair, I don’t know each of their positions on macro-evolution)</p>
<p>I also feel the majority of scientists don’t feel there’s a reason you can’t be religious while partaking in scientific beliefs. Religion is typically about faith and believing things for which there is no possible proof. Science is a way of looking at our physical world and trying to understand it to the best of our current ability. The two have completely different goals.</p>
<p>No. For me, science is the opposite of religion. Religion views faith as a good thing, and asks you to suspend disbelief and critical thinking skills. Science demands evidence, reason, and critical thinking skills. From a scientific perspective, if it does not happen in nature, it is not real. I am actually very open-minded and willing to believe anything, if there is enough evidence. That is what scientists do. In contrast, some religions teach people to cling to falsehoods no matter what the evidence is, they say you should ignore the evidence, suspend disbelief and “have faith.”</p>
<p>I agree with Piper that science and religion don’t have to be in conflict. As long as religion is Supernatural, there is no conflict. Science is only interested in nature. However, once it begins making decrees about the natural world, there is the potential for conflict.</p>
<p>"Another anomaly, to me anyway, is that in the same survey, 40% of respondents indicated a belief in God. I wonder if some survey takers might have been having a little fun with this. "</p>
<p>If you survey all those with PH.D. degrees in STEM, you may find a even higher percentage indicated a belief in God. My church has about 80% holding a Ph.D. degree or are Ph.D. candidates and all of us converted after having a deeper look into evolution.</p>
<p>There is an Evolutionary Tree of Life site by a research group of an university that I followed for more than 20 years. There are not enough evidences to say that human came from evolution. (They should re-build the tree using DNA. It could turn out differently in sequences.)</p>
<p>Observational evolutions did occur in the labs but it can’t explain how human came about. There are too many gaps in evolutionary tree of life. </p>
<p>And if you look carefully into this following link, they claimed a common ancestor but the cousin species are ALL UNKNOWN.
[url=<a href=“http://tolweb.org/Eutheria/15997]Eutheria[/url”>Eutheria]Eutheria[/url</a>] </p>
<p>Science gives a curious mind a way to explore, but try not to dismiss other’s findings.</p>
<p>In fact, the most famous scientists like Isaac Newton, Pascal, … are believers of an intelligent designer. Newton wrote more religious papers than scientific papers.</p>
<p>I have no intention of talking about religion. But no scientist should be arrogant to claim there is certainly no creator of the universe.</p>
<p>Of course not. I will also not arrogantly claim that invisible pink unicorns are not surrounding me and directing my life. I have no certainty about invisible pink unicorns, who am I to say that I am 100% sure they do not exist?</p>
<p>But I don’t think it’s particularly likely, and I’m not going to be concerned with it until I start seeing reason to. Same with Yahweh, leprechauns, or Zeus.</p>
<p>I don’t see where common sense comes into play here. I could just as easily create any baseless assumption, call it common sense, and then quote Voltaire. </p>
<p>A great video from The Sagan Series (watch the entire thing, but here’s one video to get you interested) on religion and the role of faith in scientific pursuits (this series of videos reinforced me and changed me in ways I can not describe - I’d say it’s totally worth your 30 minutes too).</p>
<p>Quote, “You don’t come into the argument with any particular worldview or grid from which you view the world?”</p>
<p>Reply:
Everyone comes from a particular view to some extent. I was raised as an evangelical Christian. I went to a Christian college and took bible classes, in addition to regular classes. Overtime I took more science classes, and started with the belief that when there was a conflict, the answer was simple, science was wrong. I was happy to read the evidence with an open mind because I knew the bible was right and they were wrong. I spent a significant amount of time learning about evolution and eventually realized that as the evidence piled up, there were only two possibilities. Either evolution happened, or God created the earth to appear exactly as if evolution happened, just to mess with scientists. Everyone that I know that has actually educated themselves on the issue, has come to the same conclusion. No one without a religious conflict has argued against evolution for a long time. And the opposition’s argument has no substantial scientific evidence.</p>
<p>Quote: “He makes his argument on a non-religious basis.”</p>
<p>Reply: Apologists have made many arguments. However, the evidence simply does not support their claims. If those arguments do not lead to verifiable claims and predictions about the natural world, they are not science. In contrast, evolution leads to all kinds of predictions that do occur. Your Inner Fish by Dr. Neil Shubin at U of Chicago is an excellent example of this, and is an easy and interesting read.</p>
<p>Quote “Also, I’m curious what you think about scientists such as Copernicus, Sir Francis Bacon, Kepler, Descarte, Newton, Pascal, Newton, and Faraday, just to name a few, who believed in God?”</p>
<p>Reply:
This string is not about God’s existence at all. It is about evolution by natural selection. For many people, there is no conflict between the two. Science is about the natural, and religion is about the supernatural.</p>
<p>“I will also not arrogantly claim that invisible pink unicorns are not surrounding me and directing my life. I have no certainty about invisible pink unicorns, who am I to say that I am 100% sure they do not exist?”</p>
<p>Good for you. LOL. You can’t anyways.</p>
<p>Good to see that there is no one challenge the fact that the Evolutionary Tree of Life is lacking of evidences to conclude that human and monkey has a common ancestor. I am totally evidence-driven so if anyone wants to challenge this, please provide hard evidences.</p>
<p>As a scientist, I agree that there is no conflict between science and religion. However, some scientists claimed too much and tried to use science to dismiss religion or to imply that people of faith are stupid – that is what I am against, and those are the arrogant scientists I referred to. Claims without evidences are dangerous.</p>
<p>And sorry, despite that Sagan is a great contributor in some areas, he WAS still exploring. He crossed his field to claim things he did’t know. When this was stated: “We long to be here for a purpose even though despite much deception none is evident.” Sagan is clearly stepped outside of his areas into religion which he has no grasp of - Bible’s fulfilled prophecies are more than evident…Well, I don’t think this thread is for religious discussion, so I would just stop here on this. </p>
<p>Much2learn, it is good to challenge what was taught. But remember not to go from one teaching into another teaching just because it is different - ALWAYS ask for evidences.</p>
<p>Most religions I’ve heard of and reasons people have for following them are pretty silly to me.</p>
<p>I’m still eyerolling over this idea that there’s no conflict between science and religion. It depends on which religion we’re talking about here - and if you think none conflict, you haven’t gotten out enough.</p>
<p>I stand by “there’s no conflict between science and religion”, as long as it is true science.</p>
<p>Science, in many cases confirmed descriptions in the Bible.
Example:
Job 26:7 He (God did other thing) …, and hangeth the earth upon nothing.
Job 26:7 He (God did other thing) … and suspended the earth on empty space. </p>
<p>This was written 3,600 years ago when no one had the knowledge or view of the earth from space like we do now. Science confirmed it.</p>
<p>You can roll your eyes. I had mine on the solid ground. Well, no more talk on religion on this thread from me.</p>
<p>These organisms share a recent common ancestor, which is easy to see if you compare their genomes to each other, either at the whole-genome level or at the level of single genes.</p>
<p>Like Much2learn, I too was raised in a fundamentalist Christian household, and I actually read Behe’s first book when it was released. After reading all the books on both sides that were available to me at my local public library, I came to the conclusion that evolution by natural selection was the best model available to explain the biological data, and everything that I have learned in the past decade as a scientist-in-training has supported that conclusion.</p>
<p>Another way to think about so-called “micro” and “macro” evolution is to think about language evolution.</p>
<p>Like genomes, languages evolve, and human languages are thought to originate from a single common ancestor language which diversified into several ancient language groups. On a day-to-day scale, languages don’t seem to change that much, although we are aware that new words and grammatical constructs are created, old ones are lost, and there’s cribbing from and donating to other languages. This is the micro-evolution of language.</p>
<p>Over larger timescales, this “micro” linguistic evolution becomes “macro”, as entirely new languages evolve that are not mutually intelligible with their ancestors. The linguistic evolution denialist might think he has a snappy argument when he asks when, exactly, people stopped speaking Latin and started speaking Old French, but of course this has happened over historical time, and we know that it did, in fact, happen. </p>
<p>And like evolutionary biologists, linguists can trace the passage of words and grammar through time and through descendant languages to try to reconstruct the ancestral language, even if it is no longer spoken anywhere in the world.</p>
<p>Yes, there are comparisons of “rhesus” “mouse” “dog” genome sequencing, but no comparison for the mostly asked Primate species. You linked the individual genomes for Human, Gorilla, Chimpanzee, and Rhesus macaque. There is no sequencing comparison for these primates. Dare to ask why?</p>
<p>The linguistic evolution analogy also raised another all time high question – although the non-material evidences may be all lost (languages) over time; why is the evolution physical evidences, fossils, so lacking for any Primate common ancestors? If they evolved over time, with so many transitional species and so long a period of time there should be at least fossils of some species exist. </p>
<p>Point me to genome sequencing comparison on Primates, please.</p>
<p>Findmoreinfo, if your understanding of religion is that it’s only based on a single sacred text, your understanding is undeveloped. Any decent comparative religion class should correct this.</p>