that's really news to me. maybe you should try it sometime. you might like it. first hit is free
ok my first question is which definition of materialism?
The theory or attitude that physical well-being and worldly possessions constitute the greatest good and highest value in life.
haha so not. or at least not for me.
A great or excessive regard for worldly concerns
if you mean by that my concern for human rights, well then guilty as charged and proudly. but then jesus was all about human rights too. maybe jesus believed in evolution. wouldn't that be funny.
The theory that physical matter is the only reality and that everything, including thought, feeling, mind, and will, can be explained in terms of matter and physical phenomena.
this is the most likely. while i am quite convinced that the brain and its chemical processes are quite sastisfactory for managing all our functions, i see this as no problem. so you can't figure out how it works therefore there must be some magical soul that makes us special that we actually use to think. that's crap. why can't god be a powerful enough god to create a brain that runs on chemistry that makes all out thoughts and feelings a reality?
The philosophical doctrine that every state of affairs, including every human event, act, and decision is the inevitable consequence of antecedent states of affairs.
ever hear of 'god's will'? sounds a little like determinism to me. as a presbyterian i believe in christian predestination. this is deterministic. so. what i'm struggling with now is whether to continue to believe in determinism as a christian or to believe in something more like 'free will' as something other than a christian. imagine that. i think that in order to be a christian you have to be a determinist.
Disbelief in or denial of the existence of God or gods.
i will always believe in a god of some sort, i think. but my god who is smart and powerful is smart and powerful enough to design a system that works on its own and doesn't lie to us. i'm so sick of people saying that the rocks and the bones lie or that they aren't what they seem to be. or that god made them day before yesterday to look old. if that is the case then god made them to lie. this makes god a liar. why is your god a liar?
An extreme form of skepticism that denies all existence.
-or-
A doctrine holding that all values are baseless and that nothing can be known or communicated.
if i were a nihilist, why would i be on this board? why would i be pursuing a degree with the intention of being a professor to mold young minds? if nothing can be communicated then i have no hope of working to save humanity from itself. if that is the case, then i have no purpose in living. but i have nothing but hope.
The view that the world consists of or is explicable as two fundamental entities, such as mind and matter.
well. if evolution is a goal-less cycle then any kind of goal-bearing anything opperates outside of it. i guess that means that evolution is inherently dualistic. and any scientist will tell you that evolution is not driven, but rather just kind of happens. it doesn't kill off things on purpose to make way for new things.
evolution is nothing more than the witnessed pattern of the passing of genes from a parent to a child and so forth and how that affects their longevity and genetic success. if a child is given a gene for a defective heart, it will die and not pass that on. now. no parent pokes around in their genes trying to give the child a defective heart. neither does evolution. it is not guided nor is it really purposeful. it is not an entity or anything more than a name for a pattern. a pattern of what lives and what is genetically successful. it is not a deterministic heavy hand that squashes what it doesn't like. it is not an it. evolution is not a god.
do you think maybe it's possible that proponents of evolution are less prone to -isms?