Evolution != Atheism (re: the Rejection of Theism in Evolution)

Jazzns writes:

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Atheist = One who believe there is no god.

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OK, I'm going to be picky.An atheist is not one who believes there is no god. Instead, an atheist is one who has no belief in god. Belief in non-existence is not the same as non-existence of belief. Atheists do not go around contemplating the non-existence of god just as you do not go around contemplating the non-existence of invisible pink unicorns. It never enters your head unless somebody else makes you think about it.

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I would prefer not to get bogged down on the "is atheism a religion" path because I am beginning to think that you can flounder around with evidence that pretty much anything is a religion.

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I know, but that is an important point. If you water down the word "religion" so much that anything is a religion, then you rob the word of any usefulness. Atheism stands apart from religion in that it has no tenets, no doctrine, no commandments, no pronouncements. It is defined by absence, not presence.And, in the end, that is part of the problem. Theists want atheists to be just like them. They want to be able to say, "But you're in just as precarious a position as I am," and therefore declare that their opinions about science are just as valid as anybody else's...as if atheism has something to say about science. Not only have they conflated science and atheism, they have decided that the two are direct influences on each other as if an atheist can't have any mystical opinions.Science doesn't declare there is no god. Instead, science is interested in things that happen on their own. Just as science tries to determine what happens when god isn't directly intervening, it also tries to determine what happens when you aren't directly intervening. But surely you exist. Unless one is going to say that god deliberately, consciously, and purposefully directs every single action of everything in the universe, then we must let science investigate those things that happen despite god, not because of god.And in the end, the fundamental problem is that these theists have a preconceived notion about how god did it. Rather than looking to god's creation to read the signs of god's handiwork, they have read a book and decided that it must be so. Anything that contradicts the book must be an affront against god.As if god were a book. It would seem they don't worship god so much as the idol of a book.

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Rrhain
WWJD? JWRTFM!

Jazzns responds to me:

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Fair enough to be picky. From dictionary.com:

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Um, dictionaries are descriptive, not proscriptive.By this logic, the theory of evolution would be an "educated guess" simply because the dictionary defines "theory" as an educated guess. But, we know that when scientists talk about theories, they mean something much more intense: An analysis of a set of facts in order to explain them.There is what the theists think "atheist" means and then there are what the atheists, themselves think. Since there are more theists than atheists, I am not surprised that the theistic definition of atheist shows up in the dictionary.But shouldn't we defer to what the atheists think atheism is?

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Lets go with this as a working definition?

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No, let's not. That's the entire point: It's wrong. Atheists, by and large, are not people who have an active belief in the non-existence of god. Instead, they have no belief in the existence of god. That's the entire point behind atheism: To be without. If you have belief, then you're defeating the point.

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In the minds of the people we are talking about it might be better to use atheist rather than other words we could choose to mean "not believing what they believe".

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Who cares what theists think atheism is? They can't possibly understand what it's like. How do you explain color to a blind man? Even though they experience the exact same lack of belief regarding a thousand other things (Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy, Zeus, the Invisible Pink Unicorn, etc.), they cannot conceive of anybody who doesn't have belief when it comes to god.Why do they get to be the arbiters of what atheism is? Shouldn't atheists be the final say? If they say they don't have belief, who are we to argue?

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I know, but that is an important point. If you water down the word "religion" so much that anything is a religion, then you rob the word of any usefulness. Atheism stands apart from religion in that it has no tenets, no doctrine, no commandments, no pronouncements. It is defined by absence, not presence.

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Right. That is exactly what I don't want to do.

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So by the same token, you cannot water down atheism so that it is useless. If you define atheism as "anything that isn't quite like the particular brand of theism we're looking at," then it doesn't really mean anything.

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I really just want to know why acceptance of evolution automatically denies ownership of other beliefs, namely Christianity, in the eyes of most Biblical Creationists.

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The short answer, given my experience, is that evolution, since it is a science, does not invoke god. Since one of the tenets of Christianity is that god is always present in everything, they cannot accept the idea that something as important as the diversification of life, especially humans, might have taken place without god personally, deliberately, and consciously controlling every aspect of it.They don't quite have this problem when it comes to other scientific fields like physics or chemistry because they aren't personal. The don't see the personal connection to god in dropping a plate because, well, a plate's an inanimate object. But start hinting that they came about because of mere biology and not because god kissed them lovingly before their creation and they go nuts because they have such an intense obsession regarding god.

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Rrhain
WWJD? JWRTFM!

PurpleYouko writes:

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If God created us then we didn't evolve and vice versa. How can it be any other way?

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God can't create life that evolves?Evolution does not concern itself with the origin of life just as chemistry does not concern itself with the origin of atoms. Instead, evolution concerns itself with how life behaves given that life exists just as chemistry concerns itself with how atoms behave given that atoms exist.The origin of life is a very important question, but you won't find the answer to it in evolution.

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Rrhain
WWJD? JWRTFM!

PurpleYouko responds to me:

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God can't create life that evolves?

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Sure he could, if he existed. That was one of my options, remember?

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I didn't see you mention that at all in your post. Instead, you made it seem perfectly clear that you were saying that evolution and god are incompatible. Did you or did you not say: So it would seem to me that no, you didn't include it as an option. So if you agree that god can create life that evolves, one has to wonder how you come to the conclusion that "evolutionist = Atheist."You may have your other reasons for rejecting the existence of god, but it isn't because of evolution.

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The version I am most familiar with is the literal Genesis where God made everything exactly as it is today.

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But surely that isn't the most common vision. Heck, the official position of the Catholic church is that evolution is the only valid scientific theory we have concerning the diversification of life on this planet. The idea that god and evolution are incompatible doesn't withstand scrutiny. Plenty of people agree with both. Just because one believes in god does not mean he believes in a literal interpretation of Genesis.

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Rrhain
WWJD? JWRTFM!

LinearAq writes:

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If evolution is true then death was here before the original sin.

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From a theoretical point of view, this isn't true. You do not need death in order to have populations evolve. You simply need to have enough resources for them to live. While death of populations has a huge effect upon evolutionary processes (it opens up niches to exploitation by surrounding species, spurring the creation of new species to take advantage of the peculiarities of the new niche), it is not required.Now, I will handily agree that from a practical standpoint, there is no way that life could have evolved for billions of years on this planet without death.But then again, death was in the garden before Adam sinned. It had to be. How else did Adam and Eve eat? Plants are alive, too. Pull a carrot out of the ground and eat it and you kill it. And unless they are saying that carnivorous plants like the Venus Flytrap or the Pitcher Plant or the Sundew only came about after the fall, then even animals were dying before the fall.

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Rrhain
WWJD? JWRTFM!

PurpleYouko responds to me:

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Any way I look at it, If TOE is true then God isn't, at least in any way recognisable from Christian, Islam or any other monotheistic religion that I am familiar with.

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Then how do the Catholics manage to do it?The official position of the Catholic church is that evolution is the only valid scientific theory we have to explain the diversification of life upon this planet.Are you saying the Pope is an atheist? That the Pope isn't Christian?

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I cannot see any way to be Christian and to simultaineously accept the TOE unless you radically redefine God!

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Do not confuse your inability to do something with a universal. It may simply be you aren't clever enough to figure out how. If someone tells you he is Christian and also agrees with evolution, why can't you simply accept it?

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Rrhain
WWJD? JWRTFM!

Arachnophilia responds to me:

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catholic christian.

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i've actually heard people use this argument before, and before the acceptance of evolution too. personally, i think it's pretty funny.

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I know. Pretty sad. The single largest group of Christians making up more than half of all Christians aren't really Christians.No wonder the "real" Christians are so worried about Islam...there are more of them.

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Rrhain
WWJD? JWRTFM!

PurpleYouko responds to me:

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And I see the usual response coming through here. Personal insults! Maybe I'm not clever enough? That doesn't even dignify a response.

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Personal? I say that to everyone. It's hardly personal. That's one of the first things everybody needs to learn: Nobody knows everything. Everybody is dumb at something. It's what helps us keep our humility: There is always something you and I are not clever enough to figure out.

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Face it, the only argument for the existance of God is that all this stuff must have been created.

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Says who? You? Who made you the expert on god?

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Then how do the Catholics manage to do it

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By pretty much making stuff up as they go along and not encouraging any form of free thought is my experience of it.

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Catholics "made up" evolutionary theory as they went along?

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The official position of the Catholic church is that evolution is the only valid scientific theory we have to explain the diversification of life upon this planet.

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And how long did it take them to come to that realization after spending such a long time condemning TOE as anti-Christian propeganda or some such crap?

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Do you know?It was before Vatican II, after all. It's not like their 400-year-too-late apology to Galileo by JPII. The Catholic church has learned very hard the lesson of not trying to declare scientific evidence false.

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Rrhain
WWJD? JWRTFM!

PurpleYouko responds to me:

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Catholics "made up" evolutionary theory as they went along?

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FYI "Stuff" does not equal evolutionary theory.

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But that's what the Catholic church advocates. Therefore, we're back to the original question: If it is impossible to believe in god and advocate evolutionary theory, how do the Catholics manage to do it?

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Do you know?

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No not really.

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Then why were you so quick to imply otherwise about the state of the Catholic church? If you don't know, that's fine. But why pick on somebody you don't know?

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Some priests are still doing it right now

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And Behe, a published biochemist, claims that ID is a viable "theory." The fact that there are fools does not mean that everybody is a fool.

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IMO 'clever' refers to inteligence and not knowledge.

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But it's both. Some subjects will always be difficult to understand for any given person. We won't know what they are until we try. Our brains just don't work that way. The problem is assuming that "intelligence" is this all-encompassing thing that is universal and applicable to every single scenario. It isn't. Practice will make you better, but thinking is a learned skill and familiar methods of thinking will always be stronger than unfamiliar methods and some methods will always be difficult.F'rinstance, I've been playing the clarinet since I was about 10. Years of reading only treble clef, of picking out a single note in a chord should they have written all the clarinet parts into a single staff, etc., etc. have had their effect upon how my brain works.Reading piano music is hard. My brain just doesn't work that way. I understand the concept but years and years of reading clarinet music has trained my brain to think in certain ways. It's hard enough to see the whole chord on a single staff...to try and read two staves at once (and with one in counterpoint to the other!) is just beyond me. I could probably learn, but it'd pretty much take starting over from scratch.And I'll never be as good as those who can play pretty much any instrument out there. They have a skill that I have never acquired.

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Rrhain
WWJD? JWRTFM!

PurpleYouko responds to me:

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Ok then name one that stands up to scientific scrutinization. Any science. Not just TOE.

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Excuse me? I'm not the one making the claim. That's you. Burden of proof is always on the one making the claim.Where was it decided that god created everything? Why can't god have found the universe?

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Rrhain
WWJD? JWRTFM!

And then there's the Ancient Greek way of looking at things, Quetzal, which is anthropomorphization of existence. The earth wasn't "created." It came into being not by god but as god. Chaos did not "create" Eros and Nyx and Gaia but rather they emerged as those things personified. The existence of things like the air and the stars and the sun and the moon aren't things that were "created" but born. It's a very different way of looking at things.

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Rrhain
WWJD? JWRTFM!

PurpleYouko responds to me:

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Official policy doesn't necessarily reflect the beleifs of the masses.

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Irrelevant. The existence of those who don't does not nullify the existence of those who do.Are you seriously claiming the Pope is an atheist?And if you can't handle the idea of the leaders of the religion believing in god as well as advocating evolution, let's take someone further down the line. Ken Miller. He's a cell biologist and a Catholic. He doesn't seem to have a problem with the two.

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Rrhain
WWJD? JWRTFM!

PurpleYouko responds to me:

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Excuse me? I'm not the one making the claim. That's you. Burden of proof is always on the one making the claim.

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My only claim here was that the only argument for the existence of God at all was that everythinh must have been created.

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And it is now your responsibility to justify that claim. Since when was it agreed that such was the case? Who said god had to create the universe? Why can't god have found the universe? Why can't god be the universe?

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There are NO logical and scientifically backed arguements for the existence of God.

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But then again, there aren't any for the nonexistence of god, either. God has this amazing tendency to defy concrete definition and proof requires solid definitions that can be manipulated. God tends to refuse to put himself inside the little box to be poked and prodded.In other words, god is outside the purview of the instruments you are trying to use.

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I still contend that if a person professes to study science (TOE or otherwise) then they need to have an enquiring mind set that accepts empirical evidence above all else.

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True...with regard to science. Science is not capable of telling us everything, though. Science can tell you quite a lot about an acoustical wave: Its amplitude, frequency, strength, how far it will travel in various media, etc.What it cannot do is tell you if it is music.

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The absence of evidence on a subject leaves little or no room for 'faith' that it actually exists

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Incorrect. This is only true when we have a good, solid definition of what it is we are using science to examine and only if science is a good tool to use for said examination. Not everything falls into such a category.

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There is simply no logical reason to beleive.

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But what logical reason is there not to believe? It has to go both ways. That's the maddening thing behind the Continuum Hypothesis. Godel was able to show that if you assumed it was true, you didn't reach a contradiction, but that isn't good enough to say it actually is true. Cohen later came along and showed that if you assumed it wasn't true, you also didn't reach a contradiction. Thus, we have no logical reason to think it's true...and no logical reason to think it's false.Not having a good reason for something doesn't mean the something doesn't exist. It simply means you don't have a good reason.

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Rrhain
WWJD? JWRTFM!

Tal writes:

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Now, can we observe evolution taking place right now?

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Yes. Here's an experiment you can do in the privacy of your own bio lab. It isn't very expensive and doesn't require very many materials.Take a single E. coli bacterium of K-type. This means the bacterium is susceptible to T4 phage. Let this bacterium reproduce until it forms a lawn. Then, infect the lawn with T4 phage.What do we expect to happen? That's right, plaques should start to form and, eventually, the entire lawn will die. After all, every single bacterium in the lawn is descended from a single ancestor, so if the ancestor is susceptible, then all the offspring should be susceptible, too.But what we actually see is that some colonies of bacteria in the lawn are not affected by the phage.How can this be? Again, the entire lawn is descended from a single ancestor. They should all behave identically. If one is susceptible, then they're all susceptible. If one is immune, then they're all immune. This can't be an example of "adaptation" because if one could do it, they all could do it.But since there is a discrepancy, we are left with only one conclusion: The bacteria evolved. There must be a genetic difference between the bacteria that are surviving and those that died.Indeed, we call the new bacteria K-4 because they are immune to T4 phage.But we're not done. Take a single K-4 bacterium and repeat the process: Let it reproduce to form a lawn and then infect the lawn with T4 phage.What do we expect to happen? That's right: Absolutely nothing. All of the bacteria are descended from a single ancestor that is immune to T4 phage. Therefore, they all should survive and we shouldn't see any plaques form.But we do. Plaques do, indeed start to form. How can this be? Again, all the bacteria in the lawn are descended from a single ancestor that was immune to T4 phage, so they should all behave identically. If one is immune, then all are immune. There must be something else going on.Something evolved, but the question is what. What evolved? Could it be the bacteria experiencing a reversion mutation back to K-type? No, that can't be it. Suppose any given bacteria did revert back to wild. It is surrounded by K-4 type who are immune to T4 phage. As soon as the lawn is infected, those few bacteria will die and immediately be replaced by the offspring of the immune K-4 bacteria. We would never see any plaques forming because the immune bacteria keep filling in any holes that appear.So if it isn't the bacteria that evolved, it must be the phage. And, indeed, we call the new phage T4h as it has evolved a new host specificity.There is a similar experiment where you take bacteria that have had their lactose operons removed and they evolve to be able to digest lactose again.You might want to look up the information regarding the development of bacteria capable of digesting nylon oligimers. It's the result of a single frame-shift mutation.This is evolution. And please don't be disingenuous and claim that it's still a bacterium. Of course it's a bacterium. Evolution doesn't go from bacterium to ostrich in one step. If you could show that happening, you would completely overthrow our understanding of how life diversified and would probably win a Nobel Prize and could write your own ticket for the rest of your life. I am simply pointing out the proof of concept: Life changes from generation to generation.If 1 + 1 = 2, why can't 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 = 10? We've seen speciation happen both in the lab and in the wild, but those experiments require more equipment and are much more sophisticated.

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because it takes millions of years for things to evolve from one species to another.

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No, it doesn't:Observed Instances of Speciation
Some More Observed Speciation Events

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Now, what if I said there is a mountain of evidence to support the idea of God?

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1. Personal accounts of specifically answered prayer.

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Anecdotal, unverifiable, unreproducible.Therefore, not evidence.

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2. Divine protection in combat against all odds.

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Anecdotal, unverifiable, unreproducible.Therefore, not evidence.

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3. Accurate "prophecies" (Isreal becoming a nation again) that number in the hundreds.

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Overwhelmed by the failed prophecies that number in the thousands. The biggest one being that the world was supposed to end over 2000 years ago (Book of Daniel) and again nearly 2000 years ago (Gospels).Thus, this renders all other "prophecies" that supposedly came true (like Israel becoming a nation again) null and void.That is, if I tell you that you're going to win the lottery and that the world is going to end before the end of the year and then the world doesn't end and you win the lottery next year, then I do not have a fulfilled prophecy regarding you winning the lottery. My claim that the world was going to end puts a timeline on your lottery winning. It would need to happen by the end of the year because the world was going to end and there would be no next year.The failure of the world to end means your winning of the lottery means nothing.Therefore, we wind up with absolutely no prophecies ever being fulfilled.Then again, the prophecies that are usually touted as having been fulfilled, when examined, turn out to be so nebulous and vague that they cannot be reasonably declared to be prophecies and in a huge number of instances, actually turn out to be unfulfilled.Therefore, no evidence.

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4. Supernatural events that have happened to me and others (astral projection anyone?)

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Anecdotal, unverifiable, unreproducible.Therefore, not evidence.

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5. Bible Codes (subject to debate, but it does perk the interest)

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Disproven. Every single large text contains this as a mathematical artifact. Assassinations Foretold in Moby DickAnd, as it turns out, Drosnin had to doctor his own methodology in order to get as many "hits" as he claimed, including editing the scripture he was using.Not evidence.

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6. Old Testament laws that deal with bacteria.

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Source, please? Do not confuse sanitary precautions with understanding of the cause of disease.

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7. Old Testament accounts of accurate astronomy (Pleadies/Orion).

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Irrelevant. You can see the Pleiades with the naked eye. They are often called the "Littlest Dipper" because you can easily make out six of the seven major stars. The Greeks even had a myth as to why the seventh was so much dimmer. Do you seriously think they did that out of divine revelation? Or is it simply because all you need to do is go outside and look up?Orion is a constellation.There is no actual astronomical material in the Bible regarding these other than the claim that the Pleiades is a star cluster and Orion is a constellation.Therefore, not evidence.Hmmm...seems you haven't actually come up with any evidence at all. Just a lot of anecdotes and even claims that don't claim what you claim they claim.

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We weren't there when God created everything.

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No, but the universe was. We can therefore look at the universe and see what it has to say about the subject. We won't get the absolute, complete picture down to the last atom, but it's amazing what you can find out simply by examining the leftovers.

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Are those prophecies really that accuarate, or a load of crap?

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Yes. It's because they aren't prophecies and they aren't accurate.

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Does the fossil record really show the evolution over time from, or is that just how they fell into place during the flood?

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Simple experiment to prove that the fossils could not be the result of a flood:Buy a box of cereal. Open up the box and pull the bag out but don't open up the bag.What do you see?All the big pieces are at the top and all the little pieces and dust are at the bottom. Do you think it's because the manufacturer deliberately did it that way? Of course not. The package settled on its way to the store and this is out everything sorted itself out. The largest pieces are at the top because, being large, they pack together tightly and have very little room to move. The smaller pieces, being able to fit between the gaps left by the bigger pieces, fall due to the force of gravity to a lower state. And the dust, being able to fit through anything, falls down to the lowest state.How to test? Turn the bag upside down, put it back in the box carefully, and gently shake the box to agitate. After a few minutes, pull the bag back out of the box and notice that, once again, all the big pieces are on top and all of the little pieces and dust are on the bottom.Therefore, we see that when things are left to sort themselves on their own, they sort themselves by size: Biggest ones on top, tiniest ones on the bottom.If the fossil record were the result of a flood, then we should expect to see one of two possible outcomes: A complete jumble of fossils with absolutely no sorting or a sorting by size with the biggest organisms on top and the smallest on the bottom.Instead, we don't see either pattern. Instead, we see completely accurate layers of a single type of organism. These layers end up being accurate world wide. We never see this organism appear in a layer below that organism. It's always the other way around...even though if they were "hydrodynamically sorted," they should appear the other way around given the way physics works as we just showed.Therefore, using nothing more than a cereal box, we have proven that the fossil record cannot be a result of a global flood.

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And we poke holes in each others evidences.

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Incorrect. Instead, you show you don't understand what evidence is.

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Rrhain
WWJD? JWRTFM!

PurpleYouko responds to me:

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Who said God had to create the universe?

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DUH! Creationists!

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All of them? Every last one of them? Just because you aren't clever enough to figure out how to have a god that didn't create the universe doesn't mean everybody else suffers from the same problem.

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If God found the universe then this discussion is pretty much moot since the whole point is to rationalize a beleif in both creation (ie. God) and evolution.

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Incorrect. The whole point is to rationalize a belief in god and evolution.Thus, my original question: Since when was god required to have created life and/or the universe?

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A kind of universal consciousness that developed as the Universe formed?

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That's one way, but not the only way.

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However I seriously doubt that Creationists would accept that it is.

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Why are you focusing on creationists? We're talking about theists. When was it agreed that god had to have created the universe?And who said that the creator of life had to be the same one as the creator of the universe? The Ancient Greeks certainly didn't believe that.

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In a hypothetical situation where a child is brought up to analyze everything (s)he sees, hears, smells and draw logical scientific conclusions about it without ever hearing of religion then it is highly unlikely that that child is ever going to spontaineously start to beleive in something that has no reason to exist, just for the heck of it.

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But that's precisely what children do. It's called "magical thinking" and it is a well-recognized stage that children go through. Where do you think imaginary friends come from? Surely parents didn't teach their children such. It is simply what children do.

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You don't need a reason not to beleive but you do need one to beleive as it is an afirmative action.

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Incorrect. You don't need a reason not to have a belief. Absence of belief is different from belief in absence.

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Rrhain
WWJD? JWRTFM!