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Do you believe in evolution?
brokeplex:
--- Quote from: delalluvia on April 28, 2008, 09:01:44 pm ---I'm sorry Broke but the majority of the scientific community and the courts have reviewed ID materials and arguments and they've all concluded that it's just rehashed Creationism. The ID people have introduced nothing new and nothing that can be considered a science. ID proponents are trying to force academia to accept ID as a science since that will give credibility to their position not because they have a credible position in the first place.
--- End quote ---
oh, by the way, Happy Floralia!
what courts? how could this possibly be a legal issue? what we are talking about is just an academic debate and the attempts to "legally" silence it by peer pressure within academia. I don't think that anyone has seriously charged the academic left with criminal behavior, and that is not seriously mentioned in the Stein's film, at least that I saw. ???
serious crayons:
I not only believe in physical evolution, I believe in evolutionary psychology, a far more controversial theory.
Also, it seems quite possible to me to believe in both evolution and God. I'm agnostic, but if there is a "God," what's to keep him/her from coming up with the idea for evolution and then getting it rolling? The system is complex and unpredictable and amazing enough to match all the other stuff God created. If in fact s/he did.
I know this is going to sound horribly offensive, and I wish there was some way to soften it, but what's with the propensity of people to "dumb down" their concepts of God's work? I mean, creationism just seems way too simple and obvious. Just like the concepts of heaven and hell seem too simple and too obvious. If you look around at all the other things that a God, if there is one, would have been responsible for devising -- galaxies, light, our brains, an ant -- everything is exponentially more complex than creationism, heaven, hell, etc. I guess I'd just give God more credit than that.
Note: I'm not directing this last line of inquiry to any specific poster here, and I hope no one has been overly offended.
Mikaela:
Since religion by and large thrives on keeping people as much as possible in ignorance and on providing them with simple, clear-cut solutions to life's and death's complex, unresolved (and therefore frightening) questions, in exchange for not being inquisitive, following their leaders unquestioningly and never challenging the "truth" as written and preached - of course it has to, as you say, "dumb down" natural science and everything amazingly complex and dauntingly challenging in the world and the universe. That's the whole point of religion. The comfort of simple certainties, rituals and superstition in the face of the (yet) unknown, (yet) incomprehensible events and the petrifying seeming randomness of life and death.
Just my opinion, of course.
delalluvia:
--- Quote from: broketrash on April 29, 2008, 12:22:29 pm ---oh, by the way, Happy Floralia!
--- End quote ---
Thanks, It's one of my favorite holidays! ;D
--- Quote ---what courts? how could this possibly be a legal issue? what we are talking about is just an academic debate and the attempts to "legally" silence it by peer pressure within academia. I don't think that anyone has seriously charged the academic left with criminal behavior, and that is not seriously mentioned in the Stein's film, at least that I saw. ???
--- End quote ---
ID has gone before the courts in some areas - I quoted a bit in one of my last posts - because ID proponents are trying to force it into schools, misrepresenting what ID actually is, which is illegal. I'm sure Stein & company wouldn't mention the court cases, because ID keeps losing.
"In December 2005, federal Judge John E. Jones III ruled that ID must meet the same fate that creationism met in 1987 when the Supreme Court ruled religious doctrines can't be promoted in secular institutions under the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. Judge Jones wrote in his decision regarding a policy of the Dover, Pennsylvania, school district that added ID to the school's biology program
Read more on Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitzmiller_v._Dover_Area_School_District
delalluvia:
--- Quote from: Mikaela on April 29, 2008, 07:01:49 pm ---Since religion by and large thrives on keeping people as much as possible in ignorance and on providing them with simple, clear-cut solutions to life's and death's complex, unresolved (and therefore frightening) questions, in exchange for not being inquisitive, following their leaders unquestioningly and never challenging the "truth" as written and preached - of course it has to, as you say, "dumb down" natural science and everything amazingly complex and dauntingly challenging in the world and the universe. That's the whole point of religion. The comfort of simple certainties, rituals and superstition in the face of the (yet) unknown, (yet) incomprehensible events and the petrifying seeming randomness of life and death.
Just my opinion, of course.
--- End quote ---
Well said.
I tried to find Carl Sagan's quote, but I couldn't so I'll just put his meaning as best I can. He was continually surprised that religious people didn't take in the awe-inspiring discoveries of science and exclaim how BIG their god was - much bigger than they'd thought - and embrace the idea. Instead he found that people felt threatened and wanted to keep their god small and so would say "No no no, it's not that way at all", in the face of facts.
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