Evolutionism

To briefly interject on the "evolution is a fact"argument occurring, I think you're all agreeing but getting hung up on an irrelevant semantic...

Let me remind you that "fact" is merely the patterns observed thus far....

As they are good patterns, and seem to be solid... So did a bunch of other patterns and observations, till we learned better...

So, before anyone gets all uppity, remember that please....

We are at but a moment in time...

I don't have an issue with evolution at all, but I did find the following conversation between Richard Dawkins and Ben Stein to be interesting and thought provoking:

Ah, yes, Ben Stein emphasizing on points Professor Dawkins didn't make.. Its a famous scene and a prime example of badly attempted dishonesty in creationist journalism.. But I won't go down that rabbit hole yet unless it gets caught up.

Brenna: No, two theories are not necessarily mutually exclusive. However one of the two opposing ideas in this case is not a theory while the other one is. And also, if you were an engineer and designed your machines the way they are 'designed' in nature, depending on the type of machine, you would earlier or later definately be fired. The 'designs' we find in nature for the most part are bad, incomplete or unnecessary and I can provide prominent examples, if needed. Long story short, the world looks exactly as we would expect it to be without divine intervention in its creation but nothing like it should look like if any intelligent, let alone benevolent being, was in charge of any bit of it. If a god is responsible, it is either being dumber than a fish or more cruel than anything that would remotely deserve worship. In either case it makes an enormous effort, as Dawkins quoted, to make sure we have no indication of its existence.

Rickie: Let's assume it is correct and we have no indication for a god nor against a god. Is it not the same with Santa Clause? If we cannot tell, disbelief is the only reasonable position to take until such time that more evidence comes in. In a court room, the accusation would be existence (or intervention or whatever that follows), and if we have not enough to tell either way, while we cannot assert the accused is innocent, we must not rule him guilty for the time being. But of course the existence of an intervening or smart god is a scientific claim that can easily be and has easily been falsified.

Lila: I would disagree that the spirit of Christianity doesn't necessitate creationism. Sure, there are people calling themselves Christians and accepting evolution and viewing Genesis as the book of fairy tales that it is, but without the story of Adam and Eve and their sin, let alone the horrific constantly broken commandments that follow it throughout the pentateuch, salvation through the Messiah becomes unnecessary. Without both a few old testament stories and the life, death and resurrection story of Jesus of Nazareth being literally true, the entire Christian doctrine collapses. So while you can maintain an occasional good teaching or two (and none of the good ones are original nor exclusive to Christianity), if you want to keep believing or following any core doctrinal aspect of the Christian faith, you must reject evidence and reason against at least a few rather important and equally falsified parts of the Bible and insist they are literally true.

Jestor: That's right, we haven't observed it all yet. Facts usually grow in number, they don't die per se. What ever other facts we may find in the future, the observation of evolution that we keep making every day will always remain an observation, always remain a fact. We may find new facts and have to refine our scientific models of reality, but we will never find a piece of (this) reality that would tell us we never found any of the pieces we have today.

There are billions of suns and multi billions of planets. Keeping that in perspective, who are we to cling to our beliefs to the exclusions and intolerance of others. I/ we may be wrong. There is a good chance I/we are wrong.

Discussion stimulates the mind and thoughts, that's good, just be flexble with your conclusions and others.

Peace

Gisteron,

I agree with you in general and find the idea of externalizing responsibility morally troubling, however, as you mention, ostensibly the basics of christianity are the teachings of jesus whom in message is comparable to Buddha and other such figures. When I said "in the spirit" of, this is what I was referring to.

As far as the people espousing the "we just don't know and we're probably wrong"...
There are a few things to consider here: 1. Evolutionary theory can predict outcomes. That is to say, given a set of variables, evolution can reliably predict the way an organism will evolve. Theistic creationism has no such consistency. 2. Evolution matches with what we observe. Creationism adapts what we observe to a preconceived belief and when taken with literal interpretations of the bible contradicts what we observe. 3. Evolution has a specific set of criteria which could prove it wrong. Creationism in general, theistic or deistic, has no such criteria, its advocates have a constantly moving goal post preventing it from ever being disproved.

We are not wrong about evolution. We have direct observation of it both in the fossil record and in the small scale with bacterium and other small organisms. Could we learn more about it, about mechanisms in evolution we weren't aware of? Sure, but then the predictive models would likely be less accurate than they are. Could we be wrong on parthenogenesis? Certainly, but, again, there is a specific set of criteria under which it could be falsified. From a rational world view, any time you find yourself holding a belief that cannot be disproven without divine intervention, its time to reassess your logic from the ground up.

That's not the only instance in where Dawkins has said similar things, Gisteron. So no, Stein wasn't "emphasizing on points Professor Dawkins didn't make". He did make them (unless my eyes and ears have deceived me), has made them, and continues to do so. Though, I must be clear, I am not a creationist, so I am not trying to advocate that particular world view.

Admittedly, however, it is something that creationists latch on to and blow out of all proportion. I simply posted it up in order to show that there are issues within the theory of evolution, areas that need more research and explaining. It's not as straightforward/black and white as many people would like to think it is.

One of my relatives is also an evolutionary biologist (and humanist) and has been kind enough to spend many hours explaining the ins and outs of evolution to me. Evolution is a fact, but there are major issues within it also.

I made references to Jesus' teachings (as portrayed in the New Testament) before illustrating how it doesn't take big of a search to find enormous gaps and faults with them and while in comparison I know little of the teachings of Buddha, a good portion of the few I know are rather objectionable and if the rest is anything like Jesus', it is a safe bet to say one ought not take them too seriously. Jesus, in the Bible, gives explicitly awful advice and suggests disturbingly questionable behavioral patterns even in the few passages quoted to be among the greatest speaches anyone ever gave and the occasional good thing the Bible reports him to have said is usually found all around the globe centuries if not milennia before any trace of the New Testament documents came about. The only reason to follow the conveyed teachings of Jesus of Nazareth rely exclusively and entirely on the presumption of his relation to the divine and is only understandable under the coersion through threats of hell fire. The entire "Only through me" thing couldn't be possible without the notion of sinful human nature and that in turn would have no grounds without the original sin in the Garden of Eden.
So, in essence, while one may claim Christianity without creationism all day long, intellectual honesty and logical consistency isn't granted separating the two.

Rickie, to not know everything doesn't mean to not know anything. So while there are gaps in our knowledge and areas where we have to admit there is a lot we haven't discovered yet, there are still a few things we know for a fact are incorrect and a notion of genesis ex nihilo is one of them. A global flood is another.
Yes, at the end of the day what we say may not be entirely accurate, but as Lila said already, it is still pretty accurately and reliably predicting testable results. Creationism doesn't. In fact, every single prediction that could possibly come about has probably already been falsified and every piece of evidence they provide is either outdated negative presented as up to date and serious, an absurd or falsified interpretation that they claim speaks to their cause while it does for the other, or an outright fabrication and at least someone behind the scenes always knows she is lying. It would take one bunny rabbit fossil bone from the Cretacious and it would make them rich and famous, but they don't even bother digging because on every site they have they disclaim in advance that they will disregard all evidence contrary to their fairy tale of choice.
Excuse me, I won't take the accusation of close-mindedness. If I am to be tolerant of creationism, I might as well be tolerant of the Demonic Posession Theory of Desease as "another good theory" while I'm at it.

Actually, Sheuthem, yes, he was. They cut out pieces of that interview to emphasize that Dawkins would rather accept aliens than their imaginary friend while sweeping under the rug that he was pushed to suggest any remote possibility of Design and you can tell they have made cuts every time Dawkins gives an answer that seems to have nothing to do with the preceding question (like when for some reason Dawkins suddenly jumped to the origins of life after a preceding back and forth on the origins of the universe)... And of course Dawkins himself testified to the dishonesty of that editing in a public appearance not much later (google for "On the Art of Quote Mining"). This interview was before it started already intended to ridicule Dawkins rather than portray him. The movie is called "Expelled", by the way. And as for Dawkins admitting to major gaps in the Theory of Evolution, you'd have to bring up some quotations for that, for whenever I saw him touch upon that he quite explicitly expressed that by today there is no margin for reasonable doubt. At best what he said is that he couldn't definately disprove any deities.

Gisteron wrote: I made references to Jesus' teachings (as portrayed in the New Testament) before illustrating how it doesn't take big of a search to find enormous gaps and faults with them and while in comparison I know little of the teachings of Buddha, a good portion of the few I know are rather objectionable and if the rest is anything like Jesus', it is a safe bet to say one ought not take them too seriously. Jesus, in the Bible, gives explicitly awful advice and suggests disturbingly questionable behavioral patterns even in the few passages quoted to be among the greatest speaches anyone ever gave and the occasional good thing the Bible reports him to have said is usually found all around the globe centuries if not milennia before any trace of the New Testament documents came about. The only reason to follow the conveyed teachings of Jesus of Nazareth rely exclusively and entirely on the presumption of his relation to the divine and is only understandable under the coersion through threats of hell fire. The entire "Only through me" thing couldn't be possible without the notion of sinful human nature and that in turn would have no grounds without the original sin in the Garden of Eden.
So, in essence, while one may claim Christianity without creationism all day long, intellectual honesty and logical consistency isn't granted separating the two.

There are thousands of Christ conscious individuals who don't believe Christ was Jesus' last name, who believe that Christ consciouness is like the Force, present long before Jesus or the Budha ever lived. It is "through this consciousness" they believe that Jesus, Budha and many others were referring to as a means to rise out of dualistic thinking to purer awareness. Some call it the Tao to enter Qi.. . The same thousands don't believe in the model of hellfire or left out of heaven. Many of these individuals have joined creationism and evolutionism in their mind and are done with valuing one versus the other. A synthesis. They are at peace. They have compromised nothing.


In this thread, a few Jedi have made a reference to "spirit of" versus letter of the law. I am appreciative to those offerings which take thought beyond the arguments of this conceptual box VERSUS that conceptual box. I know, I know, . evoultion isn't a concept voices cry out. Okay, physically not, no problem, here. . . .

In their own right and light, ethical teachings have a value, no matter who speaks them. The fascinating thing about ethcis . . . once many religions are studied . . common threads appear. I have found one reason that many do not undertake the journey of comparative analysis is fear. Not just in one form, but in many forms.

TotJO doctrine doesn't support contempt prior to investigation, neither do scientists.

No Jedi has to live in fear of societal indoctrination. Here here is one example of how thesis,antithesis, synthesis works for me.

thesis: someone says you have to go through a guy to get to heaven
antithesis: doesn't feel right to me, doesnt make sense

open mind
study
be quiet listen

synethesis: via my desire to overcome, by studying and by internal integration, the words don't bother me anymore.

The specifics matter not for this post. . . mostly i care to share that I had the same issues and how I got beyond them.

The massive wisdom sees everything in one. The lessor wisdom breaks things down into numerous parts

Zhuangzi