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[deepbrown]

No, my morality does not come from the bible. what DOES come from the bible, are a bunch of stories, that are quite uplifting, and give me an insight into what a wonder it all is, We're alive. thats pretty fucking impressive. why not write a story about it, something, something for our kids to enjoy. lets call it the bible.

also, i dont pick and choose my morals from the bible, i pick and chose them as i see fit. It just so happens, that the majority of them in the bible are correct. And really i think this is on a whole other level to the level of religious devotion in Australia, it's quite astounding.

really now its 3:20 and i'm even more delusional.. but if your point was do i get my sense of morals only from the bible? no.

do i beleive anything in the bible? no.

the bible was written before scientific fact (well a whole lot of it) came to use.

The Aboriginals of Australia tell of stories such as the magpie being black and white because he was caught in a bush fire.

What gives the Christian story more fact over theirs? do you have me pictures of said jesus playing cricket on the shores of Jerusalem?

also nothing personnel on you anyway, I've had a shit day at home with many an argument and I'm really just using the internet to vent! no assholery intended!

Then you are not a Christian. You are a spiritualist.

 

[deepbrown]

What the heck are you talking about? You know nothing about Christianity if you think morals are picked and chosen from the Bible. Christianity is based on the teachings of Christ (you should be able to tell that by looking at the name of the religion).

You and everyone else in this thread who feels they need to attack Christianity speak a lot bull. You all have a lack of understanding that is equal to those who try to attack evolution. Those that try to defend it are just as bad. Anyone who says that there are no scientists that understand and disagree with evolution is a liar.



All of you sound like fools.

Uh no. Find me a Christian who believes in ALL of the teachings in the bible. You don't get your morality from the bible, let alone the New Testement. It's a very simple argument, and a very famous philosophical argument at that. You have a moral compass BEFORE you encounter the bible.

And noone is "ATTACKING" Christianity. Why is it when people place religion against sound reasoning, it's called attacking? But when philosophers and scientists disagree and provide counterexamples to their theories, it's called logical debate?

 

[deepbrown]

And none of those things had anything to do with Dawkins attitude which was the only thing I had ever brought up.

The other example of you putting words into my mouth in that thread was when you flatly stated I thought you were an asshole. You were and are straight up wrong on that one.

The title of the PM was "Response to an old post that I don't want to bump" which is perfectly valid GAF Etiquette and I have had quite a few very good discussions with Gaffers I've PMed and IMed. Guess I was wrong to expect the same from you.

Further you asked for examples of condescension?



Edit:
Lovely, so the OP was accurate. I'll repeat what I said in the last thread. Carl Sagan was a far more effective communicator in his approach then the Dawkins manner. The OP article is further proof of this.

WHen we're talking about the Dawkins manner...we're not talking about The God Delusion are we? Because the way it's written is just like any philosophical/scientific paper, with strong debate and reasoning.

 

[onipex]

Christianity:

"The belief that a cosmic Jewish Zombie who was his own father can make you live forever if you symbolically eat his flesh and telepathically tell him you accept him as your master, so he can remove an evil force from your soul that is present in humanity because a rib-woman was convinced by a talking snake to eat from a magical tree..."

Science

“ Some random cosmic bang created the universe. A bunch of galaxies some how formed and solar systems some how randomly formed in them. One small planet randomly came to be. Life some how randomly happened. Conditions just happened to be able to support life and have it grow. Life almost gets wiped out (didn’t this happen more than once?) on the random small planet with the random life. Life some how bounced back and over time evolved into what we see today.”

 

[Mash]

This whole debate is so fucking boring because, in my own experience - and I'm willing to bet a lot of other people's - the people who object to evolution don't even understand it. They don't want to understand it and approach the ideas prejudiced and hard-nosed. I do not think evolution negates a God; I think it negates a clay worker conception of God where he moulded the world just so. If someone wants to add on some supernatural icing to a natural theory then fine but do it in your home and not in school. You don't fuck around with education.

Intelligent design is challenged by evolution, for the most part, but have you ever heard of or considered the concept of a "clockmaker" god? If God is omniscient and omnipresent and all-powerful, wouldn't it stand to reason that he could spark the beginnings of evolution and realize how it would all turn out in the end; just like a clockmaker works on individual gears one at a time with the concept of a system of gears and cogs forming a whole clock in the end in his mind? Is that really harder to believe than all of the scientific evidence in the world?

You could believe that, yes, it seems very superfluous though. You don't need to invoke God here, instead of a theory that asks you to posit the existence of some blob of organic matter that developed the ability to self-replicate, you're instead asking someone to entertain a theory where, on top of this blob of organic matter, you have to posit the existence of a being infinitely complex, powerful and omniscient. Ockham's razor has been dulled over the past 100 years but it still holds force when it counts. And, if God was aware of how it would all pan out, why would he then punish his creations for going through the motions he set in gear? So, yes, it really is harder to believe.

You're perfectly entitled to believe what you want but when it comes to scientific education the facts matter, and so does parsimony. (I'm agnostic for what it's worth)

Science

“ Some random cosmic bang created the universe. A bunch of galaxies some how formed and solar systems some how randomly formed in them. One small planet randomly came to be. Life some how randomly happened. Conditions just happened to be able to support life and have it grow. Life almost gets wiped out (didn’t this happen more than once?) on the random small planet with the random life. Life some how bounced back and over time evolved into what we see today.”

See my first paragraph. For every time you put "randomly" or "somehow" there's a theory backed by facts you simply don't want to know about.

 

[mernst23]

I personally was raised Catholic, and it makes complete sense to me why Christians are so anti-evolution. The truth is evolution disproves the notion that the Bible was written out of divine intervention and is 100% correct. However as a realist and now agnostic, I acknowledge a higher power exists and believe god is the answer to the question of why, but evolution is the answer to how. In this day and age, it's hard to believe anyone can still take the bible as being 100% correct and hiding behind the indestructible argument barrier of "faith."

 

[kame-sennin]

I know it's way late, but am I the only one who imagined the Bryce kid from the story as Steve Holt?

 

[Atrus]

So... score one for education? In Florida to boot! Now hopefully an Obama administration can try to bring the education system in the other backward regions up to speed.

 

[tak]

evolutionists?

I seriously cannot stand reading this crap. Science is not a religion!

 

[Fusebox]

Intelligent design is challenged by evolution, for the most part, but have you ever heard of or considered the concept of a "clockmaker" god? If God is omniscient and omnipresent and all-powerful, wouldn't it stand to reason that he could spark the beginnings of evolution and realize how it would all turn out in the end; just like a clockmaker works on individual gears one at a time with the concept of a system of gears and cogs forming a whole clock in the end in his mind? Is that really harder to believe than all of the scientific evidence in the world?

Any argument that requires a prime mover regresses and fails when asked to explain the origins of the prime mover. If your clockmaker God is so well designed he can design a self-sustaining universe, whoever designed him must be of a near infinitely better design etc...

 

[deepbrown]

Science

“ Some random cosmic bang created the universe. A bunch of galaxies some how formed and solar systems some how randomly formed in them. One small planet randomly came to be. Life some how randomly happened. Conditions just happened to be able to support life and have it grow. Life almost gets wiped out (didn’t this happen more than once?) on the random small planet with the random life. Life some how bounced back and over time evolved into what we see today.”

None of it is random. It's random to you, because you don't understand it. The whole point of Science is to explain things, not to say they are "random occurences." And is everything that isn't started by an intelligent being random? Is a leaf falling off a tree random? Or is that there was a gust of wind, or the connection between the leaf and tree had sufficiently hardened?

We can all use "random" to make something sound absurd: Randomly an intelligent being that is randomly not made of matter, came into being, and randomly decided to make the universe... etc.

Any argument that requires a prime mover regresses and fails when asked to explain the origins of the prime mover. If your clockmaker God is so well designed he can design a self-sustaining universe, whoever designed him must be of a near infinitely better design etc...

Inifinate turtles (or was it tortoises?)

 

[deepbrown]

I personally was raised Catholic, and it makes complete sense to me why Christians are so anti-evolution. The truth is evolution disproves the notion that the Bible was written out of divine intervention and is 100% correct. However as a realist and now agnostic, I acknowledge a higher power exists and believe god is the answer to the question of why, but evolution is the answer to how. In this day and age, it's hard to believe anyone can still take the bible as being 100% correct and hiding behind the indestructible argument barrier of "faith."

If you think a higher power exists, you are not agnostic.

 

[spielcaster]

Just like atheists don't want Christians to push their beliefs on others, they should follow the same example and stop trying to push their atheist beliefs onto Christians.

Live and let live.

Ummmm... evolution isn't an "atheist belief"

You don't have to be an atheist to "believe" in evolution, nor is it based on faith.

 

[tak]

Science

“ Some random cosmic bang created the universe. A bunch of galaxies some how formed and solar systems some how randomly formed in them. One small planet randomly came to be. Life some how randomly happened. Conditions just happened to be able to support life and have it grow. Life almost gets wiped out (didn’t this happen more than once?) on the random small planet with the random life. Life some how bounced back and over time evolved into what we see today.”

I always see extremely religious people point to this as some kind of proof of the illogical nature of science and proof that science doesn't have all the answer. The problem is that scientists know they don't have all the answers; scientists are in the process of trying to find out all the answer they are capable of finding out, that is what science is. The things scientist do know are based on things that can be proven. It is true that sometimes the facts they have proven sound strange to us, but that does not make the facts untrue.

Science is not a religion. It is not something you need faith to believe in. It is something that is full of facts that you can prove. Sometimes those facts are strange and unbelievable, but that doesn't make them untrue.

EDIT: I just want to add, I'm not trying to argue that Christianity is wrong and there is no god, but I am trying to argue that you shouldn't put science on the same level as a religion. It is not a religion.

 

[Bowflex]

Last time I checked science was not an issue of belief.

Look at his username.

Smart people are very good at defending ignorant ideas they were taught at impressionable times.

 

[mernst23]

If you think a higher power exists, you are not agnostic.

Sorry, "Agnostic Theist." Semantics, yeesh.

 

[deepbrown]

Sorry, "Agnostic Theist." Semantics, yeesh.

I'm sorry. How about a spiritualist?

 

[Ranger X]

That was a very interesting read. I like that Campbell guy it seems.
This makes me think i wish school would focus on psychology/history and philosophy WAYYYYYYYYYYYYY earlier and ALOT more than it does right now. This would spare so many problems.

 

[Formless]

Methodology and science lend themselves to evolution. Gah, rational thinking is just nonexistent with so many people.

 

[Eteric Rice]

I really don't see why people are so threatened by evolution. It doesn't even say that God doesn't exist, just that life forms change over time.

Why can't God create things through evolution? I mean, he seemingly does mericles without us seeing him come down and manually cause them. And these mericles supposedly happen because things happen at the right place and time. Why can't it be the same with evolution?

I'm not religious, I'm just saying.

 

[Punchy]

I worded it wrong, but I actually support evolution and don't believe in a creator. I was trying to make the point to the religious folk that their beliefs don't have to compete with evolution - that they could accept the idea of a clockmaker god, or something more along those lines, rather than refute evidence with "nuh uh, we were made 6,000 years ago".

 

[Gaborn]

Science

“ Some random cosmic bang created the universe. A bunch of galaxies some how formed and solar systems some how randomly formed in them. One small planet randomly came to be. Life some how randomly happened. Conditions just happened to be able to support life and have it grow. Life almost gets wiped out (didn’t this happen more than once?) on the random small planet with the random life. Life some how bounced back and over time evolved into what we see today.”

So you reject abiogenesis, too bad you haven't commented on evolution there at all.

 

[Lesath]

I really don't see why people are so threatened by evolution. It doesn't even say that God doesn't exist, just that life forms change over time.

Why can't God create things through evolution? I mean, he seemingly does mericles without us seeing him come down and manually cause them. And these mericles supposedly happen because things happen at the right place and time. Why can't it be the same with evolution?

I'm not religious, I'm just saying.

The Bible is the word of God, and evolution (meaning abiogenesis) contradicts what God said. The other parts of the Old Testament are okay to not interpret literally when they are morally reprehensible, but Genesis is not.

 

[Fusebox]

How about the creator God as a result of zillions of years of evolution in a distant galaxy?

It's actually more probable than *POOF* Tada! Here I am! And noooow, *ZING* Here you are too!

 

[milanbaros]

For the people feeling despair trying to explain evolution to others, just relax, you are right, it has actually been proven you are correct countless times, the future will only ever show you to be more correct, in 10,000 years you will still be correct and will be forever.

Is that not enough for you?

You aren't wrong in any way by allowing ignorant people to belief something else. They are wrong and in future years will be looked upon in the same way as the greeks and romans with their zeus and jupiter.

Just let it be.

When is being proven right not enough?

 

[StormyTheRabbit]

Just like atheists don't want Christians to push their beliefs on others, they should follow the same example and stop trying to push their atheist beliefs onto Christians.

Live and let live.

Honestly, that has nothing to do with this at all. You need to stop "pushing" that idea into everything thread that mentions faith as I've seen you do it a lot.

I'm an atheist and, even though I find it to be idiotic to teach something related to faith in an educational environment, I feel that if one end of the spectrum is taught, the other should be at least discussed as well. Whether or not the person chooses to believe in it is one thing, but as the professor smartly put, they should at least understand it.

 

[Druz]

that is awesome. I have never seen that before. :O

edit: just read the wikipedia entry about it. It seems that the film makers made a lot of false assumptions.

sorry I have to quote and remind you that you said it FURTHER PROVES GODS AWESOME EXISTENCE. I cringed at your post before I left for work, now I'm back and I still hate you.

 

[cashman]

evolutionists?

I seriously cannot stand reading this crap. Science is not a religion!

I saw one guy use Darwinists

 

[Solaros]

Evolution and Religion do not have to be mutually exclusive. A lot of religious people accept evolution. The only leap required for a religious person to accept evolution is that the earliest stories of the beginning of mankind and the world are parables and moral lessons, and not historical accounts.

Intelligent design is challenged by evolution, for the most part, but have you ever heard of or considered the concept of a "clockmaker" god? If God is omniscient and omnipresent and all-powerful, wouldn't it stand to reason that he could spark the beginnings of evolution and realize how it would all turn out in the end; just like a clockmaker works on individual gears one at a time with the concept of a system of gears and cogs forming a whole clock in the end in his mind? Is that really harder to believe than all of the scientific evidence in the world?

With that logic, who sparked the sparker?

 

[jett]

I always ask this, but how come this assbackwards "creationism" bullshit only exists in the states? I went to a goddamn catholic school and never once did I encounter this garbage.

 

[KHarvey16]

I always ask this, but how come this assbackwards "creationism" bullshit only exists in the states?

Oh it doesn't. It gets more attention here, but it's everywhere.

 

[Solaros]

I worded it wrong, but I actually support evolution and don't believe in a creator. I was trying to make the point to the religious folk that their beliefs don't have to compete with evolution - that they could accept the idea of a clockmaker god, or something more along those lines, rather than refute evidence with "nuh uh, we were made 6,000 years ago".

Your line of reasoning digresses to the irrational requirements relegated by religion, so I guess that is fine.

Also, as said before a couple of times by Gaborn, among others, this thread isn't even about that. It is about teaching. It is not about the argument between creationism and abiogenesis, it is not about the validity of evolution, and it is not about young earth creationists rationlizing out their already faulty viewpoints. It is about teaching.

 

[DevelopmentArrested]

lol religion lol

 

[Druz]

Oh it doesn't. It gets more attention here, but it's everywhere.

its everywhere but not as wisdspread as in america.

 

[Y2Kev]

I always ask this, but how come this assbackwards "creationism" bullshit only exists in the states? I went to a goddamn catholic school and never once did I encounter this garbage.

I went to a Catholic high school and my Bio I teacher was a hardcore evolutionary biology guy and my AP Bio teacher was the same way. I don't know where these people come from but they aren't in Catholic schools in New Jersey.

I almost feel like this is a problem plaguing people lacking the ability to think rationally or use the scientific method, not a problem for religious people.

 

[White Man]

I always ask this, but how come this assbackwards "creationism" bullshit only exists in the states? I went to a goddamn catholic school and never once did I encounter this garbage.

Catholics have no qualms with evolution.

 

[Fusebox]

Probably because the Holy Trinity is such an out-there concept they wouldn't dare take shots at others beliefs.

 

[Dolphin]

I went to a Catholic high school and my Bio I teacher was a hardcore evolutionary biology guy and my AP Bio teacher was the same way. I don't know where these people come from but they aren't in Catholic schools in New Jersey.

I almost feel like this is a problem plaguing people lacking the ability to think rationally or use the scientific method, not a problem for religious people.

It's predominantly southern fundamentalist Christians. Catholics acknowledge that evolution is a strong theory.

 

[KTallguy]

I always ask this, but how come this assbackwards "creationism" bullshit only exists in the states? I went to a goddamn catholic school and never once did I encounter this garbage.

Ditto. I believe in God and was brought up on Christian morals (but never baptized).
Went to Catholic school 6 years, studied the Bible.
My science teacher was an Benedictine monk who taught us evolution and science, an incredibly intelligent, warm man.

I don't get this "Science doesn't count anymore" bullshit. Science isn't a belief system.

 

[Haunted]

I almost feel like this is a problem plaguing people lacking the ability to think rationally or use the scientific method, not a problem for religious people.

There seems to be a significant overlap. Not every religious person believes in creationism, but every creationist is a religious person. Or something.

Reading such an article about the sorry state of education in one of the richest and technologically advanced countries in the world feels so fucking weird and strange to me. It's like some sort of time-warp/throwback to 200 years ago, with the need to explain the most basic principles of our world to the ignorant masses.

"What? You mean to say that the earth isn't flat?"


It feels so fucking weird. :lol

 

[KTallguy]

I'm reading that article and WTFing at every other sentence.

The discovery that a copy of "Evolution Exposed," published by the creationist organization Answers in Genesis, was circulating among the class did not raise his flagging spirits. The book lists each reference to evolution in the biology textbook Campbell uses and offers an explanation for why it is wrong.

Where the textbook states, for example, that "Homo sapiens appeared in Africa 200,000 years ago based on fossil and DNA evidence," "Exposed" counters that "The fossil evidence of hominids (alleged human ancestors) is extremely limited." A pastor at a local church, Campbell learned, had given a copy of "Exposed" to every graduating senior the previous year.

My god, what has this country become?

And I think the bible has a lot of excellent stuff in it too! Why does it have to be all or nothing with these people??

 

[Shouta]

Well met. Thanks everyone. Still, I'm not entirely convinced. So, under this theory, our ancestors reached a pivotal moment in history. Either Humans descended from Monkeys, or Monkeys and Humans descended from an even older species. Regardless, we know that our side of the family experienced a crisis. Depending on whether or not Monkeys evolved themselves from the same ancestor, another potential crisis could have been thrown into the mix. Yet, there must have been an exodus of some sort, not referring to the biblical exodus. How else could one familiar remain unaffected by the other branch's dilemma? More so, has there even been a moment in history where man was apart from forestation. Therefore, how could we have evolved when apes have lived beside us for centuries. On top of that, if both Man and Monkey had a common ancestor, what drastic sort of conditions prevented Man from maintaining similar construction?

As I recall, our ancestors began living in environments that are far less dense with threes and more along the lines of a savanna where as primates have been living in their current conditions for ages. The change in living environment means old methods, tricks, and adaptations wouldn't work if they wanted to survive. So bits and pieces of changes that allowed our ancestors to survive in their new environments started to accumulate over generations and eventually lead to a full change into the creatures we are today.

As someone put it earlier, evolution occurs when pressure is applied to the population. This sometimes comes in the form of environmental factors that threaten the survival a particular species (there are probably a huge number of factors but environment is the easiest for examples). The ones born with odd features that end up allowing them to survive better than pass it on to the next generation and eventually changing the species.

For example, take insects that use a tongue to drink nectar. They usually eat from flowers with a short distance to the nectar. However, you separate a group of them into two and give one group the normal flowers they feed on and the other group flowers that require slightly longer tongues to drink or a different shape that requires a different method to access it. Over time, a bug in the second group may have an abnormality or something that allows them to get food better than the others. That bug then passes its genes on better and starts the ball rolling but would take a long time for a species with a longer tongue in every member of the population to show up or something like that.

That's basically it. I know someone will correct me on it but oh well, I have time before class so I thought I'd respond.

 

[M3wThr33]

I always ask this, but how come this assbackwards "creationism" bullshit only exists in the states? I went to a goddamn catholic school and never once did I encounter this garbage.

I went to an Episcopal school and it never came up. My science classes were good, if not better than public schools.

I believe that you need to be educated about something before you disagree with it, rather than being fed propaganda from those who fear it.

 

[Ela Hadrun]

Catholic teaching doesn't discount science anymore because they actually learned their lesson on that one. Nearly all of their positions are backed up theologically rather than "scientifically" these days.

There are millions of Christians who believe in evolution. It's not against the Bible to believe that the Creation stories (there are two, btw) are there to teach BY PARABLE.

BECAUSE GUESS WHO TEACHES BY PARABLE.

 

[spielcaster]

Again that's why you go to a non-denominational Church that teaches the Bible.

Did you even read the posts in this thread that explain that Christians do not follow Leviticus due to the New Testament and Christ's New Convenant?

So exactly how do you evaluate the "truths" in the bible when there are openly contradictory lineages and histories even in your precious New Testament?

And on basis of supporting scientific argument, what parts do you think SCIENCTIFICALLY SUPPORTED enough to be taught in a science classroom?

Additionally, surely if you follow literal interpretation of the bible - New Testament particularly, you should be of the Eastern Orthodox faith, as it probably has the most direct link to the people who wrote the new testament, and follows the tennets of that 'group' most directly... in which case it's not up to YOU to interpret the bible.

 

[ElectricBlue187]

The first time I read this I wanted to have the authority to make sure Bryce Haas never ever graduates from any High School on Earth.

 

[hteng]

Can't these people be more open minded? can't they accept both?

 

[Seth C]

I'm not picking on Christianity - I'm picking on religion - but if you like to think that Christianity has some kind of moral high ground over every other religion, then so be it. For what reason would that be? What makes your old book anymore "true" than the other older book?

Well modern Christains like to pick and choose what they want to believe from the Bible, failing to see that doing so is incompatible with being Christain - since they then say that their morality comes from the bible, yet they still pick and choose their morals. Ie. Find a Christain who thinks women should be stoned to death for committing adultery, but men should only have a formal warning. None, but they're happy to say that Homosexuals are "sinners".

Christianity is the pick and choose religion.

Yeah, okay then.

Oh, and I don't care if you are attacking Christianity, religion, or anything else. I'm simply saying that if you want to do so, and you'd like people to think you have a point of some kind, you need to approach the topic in a manner that suggests you have a clue about it. Your example was horribly flawed (arguing a Christian is required to follow Levitical law).

 

[MorisUkunRasik]

Science should be taught in science class.



/thread

 

[Y2Kev]

Catholic teaching doesn't discount science anymore because they actually learned their lesson on that one. Nearly all of their positions are backed up theologically rather than "scientifically" these days.

There are millions of Christians who believe in evolution. It's not against the Bible to believe that the Creation stories (there are two, btw) are there to teach BY PARABLE.

BECAUSE GUESS WHO TEACHES BY PARABLE.

ooh ooh ooh it's JESUS

I think the Catholic Church's official position on Genesis 1-4 or so is that it's actually even a combination of myth and legend. The Church has been really quite "progressive" when it comes to this sort of thing-- but I guess the Galileo egg-on-face can lead to that.