The Religious Nature of Evolution, or Lack Thereof

Says you, but once again, the data shows that it's Christians that commit crimes and atheists who, largely, don't. Not so surprisingly, that's true of all scientific knowledge. Yeah, the alternative to sense.

If you'd read my posts on the subject, you'd know that I was talking about how atheists are underrepresnted in prisons.The obvious conclusion is that atheists, in general, commit less crimes than other people. They have more successful marriages, too, based on the rate of divorce by religious affiliation. Hrm, what do you suppose the most significant difference between those two situations is? The individual beliefs of the participants, or the fact that the crucaders had swords and Stalin had access to machine guns? True Scotsman Fallacy. If you're just going to define "Christian" as "one who doesn't commit crimes", then obviously, the only people you're going to recognize as Christian are those who haven't committed any crimes.Me, when someone expresses a religious identification, I take them at face value. To do otherwise is to commit a fallacy of equiviocation. Anyone can define words, I guess. You're telling me that the thousands of Christians in prison really aren't, despite their honest and impassioned insistence that they are?I don't know any other way of determining what religion people belong to than to ask them. Maybe you have a better way? Mental telepathy or something? But if you're just going to sit there and commit the True Scotsman Fallacy, don't waste our time, you know?This message has been edited by crashfrog, 06-07-2004 01:24 AM

Who defines those expectations, though? You?The Bible? Which Bible? Which passages? They don't quite all agree, you know.There's a bazillion ways to be Christian, and I know this because there's a bazillion different types of Christian. You may claim that they're not "true Christians", but the funny thing is, they make the exact same claim about you.Why should I believe them over you? How can you expect me to believe that you of all people are a Christian?

Ah, right. Here we go again - DarkStar is the authority, of course, on who is and is not a Christian. He feels that he can, like Carnac the Magnificent, look into the hearts of men and ascertain their exact religous affiliation, regardless of the subject's stated religious preference.

You meant that you don't have any idea about what you're talking about, most of the time?Why would I have any difficulty accepting that?

Hrm, it's a fairly well-known fact about the fossil record that shows little but what you would refer to as macroevolutionary change; that the fossil record is a record mostly of large-scale change and not small-scale species change is what led Gould et al. to develop the hypothesis of Punctuated Equilibrium.In other words, the fossil record consists largely of transitional forms between higher taxa and not so much between species. You seem a little confused, so I'll explain: shared ancestry isn't an assumption, it's a conclusion. We'd hand creation scientists the Nobel Prize if they could prove their theories. It's not their conclusions we villify; it's their methodology: "we know the conclusion, now, what facts can we find to fit it?"

How do you figure? Those "opposing views" hardly debunk anything by their mere existence, as you seem to suggest, and certainly those views have made no scientific traction whatsoever on their own merits.There are a considerable number of transitional fossils. You can read about many of them here: Transitional Vertebrate Fossils FAQHere's a page detailing the evidence for what you refer to as "macroevolution". It's difficult to imagine "observing" a process that is the result of a sum of small evolutionary changes over time. At each step, of course, the hardened anti-evolutionist could simply dismiss each step as "microevolution". You can lead a horse to water, but apparently, you can't make him add things up. 29+ Evidences for Macroevolution: The Scientific Case for Common DescentCan I presume your opinion is suitably altered, now?

So, you believe then that the results of paternity tests in humans are also always erroneous conclusions?