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

Because that is what this thread is supposed to be about. Check this exert from the OP. The discussion does not include any form of God that isn't Creationist and possibly (but not necessarily) Christian. I am just trying to stick to the thread subject matter as any other visualization of God is off topic. Maybe this is why we have been disagreeing over this all along. No that isn't the point. The point is to rationalize a beleif in a "Christian" "Creationist" style Creator and evolution. Because that is what we are supposed to be talking about here. It is completely irrelevent that Zeus and Odin may still be squabbling over who gets to be head god. They ain't "the Creator" in the Christain sense. All you have done is paraphrased what I wrote in the first place. I said "not beleive", you said "not have a beleif". They are exactly the same thing! Not beleiving certainly isn't beleiving in absence!The way I see it, you weigh up the evidence for both sides and see where you come out. The Christian, Creationist God is either Guilty of creating life, the universe and everything or he isn't. There is no grey area here. No room for finding the universe or coming from outside of it or any number of other god ideas.Either he created it all or the whole myth is false and he doesn't exist.PY

Hi Jazzn's I admit that I have been hitting the subject from a biblical creationist point of view. I had to start somewhere and this is the position that I am most familiar with after being brought up as a Jehovah's witness for the first 15 years of my life.
I always thought of the bible (OT and NT) as being indivisable. If you freely admit that bits of it aren't correct then how can you tell which bits are? Is it just a matter of picking and choosing whit bits you like and which bits you don't?. Who makes that call? Each person themselves or some higher religious leader?
It was this kind of inconsistency and lack of any kind of unified position that first made me doubt the entire bible in the first place. That and the fact that I could never get any real answers no matter how many people I asked.I will try to put some thought into problems from an NT based point of view and see what I come up with.PY

There you go again. The topic of this thread is "Christian" and or "Creationist" images of God and their consistency or inconsistency with the TOE. There is absolutely NO reason to extend the interpretation of God to anything beyond that yet you stubbornly keep trying to pull it in that direction.
Too right, I am ignoring a whole catagory of (totally off topic) gods which don't countermand my argument in the slightest because my argument isn't aimed at them. Total crap! I never claimed anything whatsoever about these non-Christian Gods. Maybe your reality is somewhat different than mine. Perhaps in yours I actually did say something like that but it sure as hell wasn't on this thread. OK then. Now we are back on topic.
let's take a look at this statement
"The Catholic church does it"
Does it? Are you so sure? Are you saying that the present Pope IS the Catholic church? Because I will show you that a good sized chunk of the Catholic Church does no such thing.
check this intersesting little site out. It contains just about every evolution/geology/palaentology bashing argument that I have ever seen. Where did I find it? Here!. A site more commonly known as "Learning The Faith! Catholic High School Theology online"
Please excuse that this is very close to breaking the "bare links" rule but there is way to much stuff there to even paraphrase it.Or how about this nonsensical doubletalk that I found on a Catholic web site where people write in with questions for the priest?

quote:

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"Dear father,
I have read articles about evolution and how the Catholic Church regards it as a scientific theory and not a philosophy. How would our belief of the human soul fit in with evolution? Since when did we have a soul?
Thank you,
Rafael"

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"Dear Rafael, Yes, the Catholic Church regards the various theories concerning evolution as theories, since they have not been porved."
"You ask, Since when did we have a soul? Human beings had a soul since the first human being was created by God."
"But a human being, that is, one with a human body and a human soul, cannot possibly evolve from an animal"

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This is apparently the "official" Catholic position on evolution as I understand it. The Church policy is to "allow" ordinary Catholic people to make up their own minds provided that they remember the following."While the Church permits belief in either special creation or developmental creation on certain questions, it in no circumstances permits belief in atheistic evolution." Pope Pius V 1950Later (1996) Pope JohnPaul II anounces to the world that Darwin was right.But there are still limitations on this. Catholics cannot beleive that "the soul" evolved from an "animal soul" (whatever that might be) they define evolution in two separate camps. Theistic evolution and Atheistic (materialistic) evolution. The former is OK but the latter isn't. Catholic encyclopedia. Still claims that the soul was created by God and put into man at some point.It is certainly not a whole hearted acceptance of TOE, just their own version of it.
You even make this point yourself and that is fine as long as you accept that this is "theistic evolution" with limitations and not the full blown deal.Here is another Catholic website.? Obviously these Catholics don't see eye to eye with the Pope.

quote:

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"Evolution undermines the Catholic doctrine of original sin which the church knows can't be tampered with without undermining the purpose of Christ's death on the cross."

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Anyway, that settles the question of "The Catholic Church" as an entity. They don't agree with the Pope at all times. One man does not a religion make! At least you are correct here. It seems to me that creation can mean pretty much anything at all as long as there are little wiggles holes for the supposed "soul" to escape through. Have you ever heard of boolean logic? "NOT believe" is inherantly defined as the complete absense of "believe".The programming code...IF NOT beleive = TRUE THEN
perform some action
ENDIFproves that, assuming that "believe" has been defined as a boolean variable.
Therefore I was completely correct to say that "not believe" does not imply any kind of belief at all, let alone a belief in the absence of something. That is just word twisting and is totally inaccurate and ilogical to boot. Maybe some branches of Christianity don't believe that, however Christian Creationists do and that was the exact definition used in my previous reply. Why don't you try actually reading my answers before making out-of-context replies to them. Completely irrelevent for the reason noted above. "or" doesn't come into it when referring to absolute creationism. No there isn't! In the context of my position (and this thread), there is no room for a Non-Christian or Non Creationist God. There can be a Christian God who didn't create everything (but this is still a somewhat limited field) OR there can be a Creationist God who DID create everything but need not necessarily be Christian. Any other type, kind or variation of God belongs on a different thread.
Why can't you seem to grasp that fact?I am arguing from a very specific viewpoint which I am trying to keep precisely to the original topic proposed in the OP. Because that is the entire point of this discussion. If you want to discuss a God who just happened to come across a nicely furnished universe without an apparent owner then please feel free to start another thread on that subject. But stop trying to drag this one off in pointless directions. But I used to be one though. Have you stopped to consider why I'm not any more? My ability to see clearly enough to analyze the situation and ask pertinent questions, to which the best answer I ever received was "You shouldn't ask those things! God doesn't want us to ask them! We aren't meant to know!", are the exact reason why I'm not one now.If the answers weren't there then I was looking in the wrong place!PY

And again I say YES IT IS!Here is the most relevent section of the OP which says so. This is the question I have been responding to. Anything outside of this context would be irrelevent. Excuse me! Where the heck did I say that Catholics aren't Christians? What I actually said was that not ALL Catholics believe in evolution, no matter what the Pope tells them to do. I believe (oops better not use that word or you will try to twist that too ) that i gave you plenty of references to back up this claim. What exactly does this disprove? There is a guy called John Paul who happens to be the Pope. So what? Only within reasonable bounds. And even then the masses of people who make up the Catholics of the world don't necessarily give more than lip service to those rules and dictates. The average Joe on the street is free to make up his own mind what to believe or not and if he thinks that Evolution is bogus then he will keep right on thinking that Evolution is bogus no matter what the Pope says. He can't force people to beleive stuff if they don't want to. Does that make them bad Catholics? or maybe not Catholics at all? Who cares? The point is that the Pope doesn't control what people think even if he would like to.
I gave you plenty of evidence that some supposedly mainstream Catholics still refute the TOE. I got plenty more if you want them. I only used a small fraction of all the websites that I found in less than 30 minutes of googling.
If you want to tell me that anyone who doesn't think and feel exactly what the Pope tells them to, is not a Catholic then that is fine. It only helps to strengthen my point and to weaken your statement that the world's largest group of Christians believe in TOE.There is just no way that you can say that Catholics, as a body, accept TOE when a whole lot including certain Catholic high schools, clearly don't. Yes I agree with you here. The TOE doesn't deal with souls or the origins of life in any way and since modern day Catholicism officially denies that Genesis is factual and literal then they don't even have a place in my argument at all.
I have only ever argued that biblical creationism is incompatable with TOE. If they chose to disbeleive parts of their own Holy book then that is their business. I am not interested in the middle ground at the moment. You are the one who keeps trying to pull it in that direction. I am only trying to defend a narrow position here. If you get me to admit that you are right in that a "middle ground" can exist then it will not be a victory to you since I have never denied it in the first place. What is the point of trying to drag me in that direction all the time? Why not address the points that I have actually tried to make?I don't deny that some of the points you make about Christian evolutionists in the vane of the Catholic "official" stance are irrefutable evidence that some people do beleive in both sides. That just isn't the point I have been getting at.I have learned a whole lot more about Catholics from this discussion and I still get the impression that the official line is not that Darwin was right (in fact they specifically refute "Darwinism") but that anyone who wants to, is free to believe the TOE (but not Darwin).
So basically there is no "official" beleif. Just a relaxed definition of what you can beleive. I can't believe (Oh no! There is that word again) we are still quibbling over gramatical phrases.The way I see it, "Not believe" does not in any way imply any kind of belief. That is the crux of the issue. In fact it does the exact opposite by specifically denying the existence of belief.
How can saying "I do not believe in anything" equate to "I believe in nothing". Even though gramatically, the second statement could be somewhat ambiguous, the first cannot.I can't comment on the Spanish as I have never studied it and can't speak a word of it.PY