Could evolution actually be a spiritual Issue?

Please see Message 2 for the focal question of this topic. It seems quite possible that this thread's originator is actually just plugging his own website and won't be sticking around for any dialogue. --AdminHello everyone.I would like to say hello as I am a new member here.There is a flaw of logic that is really hard to get around when it comes to believing in evolution. When it comes to our world, or to the universe, whether you believe in the Big Bang theory, a theory that things just always existed, or any other theory that excludes creation, you have to be able to reason that there is a design without a designer and a plan without a planner. I can understand that it could be hard for some to fathom the idea of a God that always was; however, when you consider it, it is even harder to fathom the idea that this God who always was, never was. Am I making any sense? Seriously, it's no different to believe that a piece of art, like a painting, had no artist, or a convenient bridge over a river had no builder. I know I sound like a very simple person, but a complex world existing without a Creator is too simple of an answer.Is it not true, if one was to be honest with self, that trying to reason with evolution is really a person's awkward way of trying to understand how a God could allow so much evil in the world. Please don't get me wrong. I'm not arrogantly telling people why they reason as they do, as only the an individual has the right to do this. I'm just sincerely asking a question. Is it possible that a person who tries to prove evolution is actually struggling with spiritual issues?Either way, there is an old newspaper article "Evolution vs Creation" that can be found in this website that is interesting. Welcome to LarryJones.ca - Larry Jones It should be challenging to the evolutionist believer. It's just a site of articles that might be of interest for the Christian and the Non Christian.ATruthSeekerEdited by Admin, : Add note at top.

I'm going to promote this and ask people to focus on this question that appeared in your post:

---

--	Percy
	EvC Forum Director

Thread moved here from the Proposed New Topics forum.

It's possible, I would doubt that it is likely in the vast majority of cases though. I don't believe that everyone who works in a field of research contributing to evolutionary biology is struggling with spiritual issues in an effort to deny the existence of god.TTFN,WKP.S. at the risk of the wrath of Admin I have to say that any site which states as Welcome to LarryJones.ca - Larry Jones does that ... ... will have no credibility whatsoever to anyone who has the faintest familiarity with evolutionary theory. Shouldn't a christian ministry (as this site seems to be, albeit a one man one) try not to lie so much? Or is it just that they are stupid?

In a sense, this is obviously the case; anyone who is still trying to convince people of the reality of evolution is clearly struggling with spiritual issues. It's just that those issues are the ones held by creationists, who insist upon explaining every phenomenon by reference to the "spiritual".The implication in the OP though, that anyone striving to promote evolution is actually undergoing some inner struggle with the spiritual realm that they secretly know to be true, seems rather arrogant. It presupposes that anyone who is not a practising Christian is somehow in denial of reality, clearly not the case if atheists like myself are correct.Evolution is not merely a way of rationalising away the god of the Old Testament. For (I suspect) the majority of scientists the ToE has no spiritual implications at all, it is simply one of the main tools of modern biology.Evolution and the religious/spiritual are only in conflict if one insists upon a literal interpretation of Genesis and a few other Bible passages. Otherwise, neither really touches upon the other.As for Larry Jones' website, in my view it contains the usual mixture of misinformation and emotional blackmail that is common to such creationist sites.

---

Mutate and Survive

I doubt it. Maybe in some cases, but it's hard to see how a struggle with spiritual issues would manifest itself in "proving evolution."Certainly, I think that the majority of scientists who study the evidence in biology and geology accept evolution because it is the most reasonable inference based on the data; now the minority who don't accept evolution may do so because of "spiritual issues."Most non-scientists, I suspect, accept evolution for the same reason most of us accept most of the information of which we don't have direct experience: we trust that the majority of scientists who do study the evidence and data are competent and honest enough to trust, and that the procedures that detect mistakes and dishonesty work for the most part.

---

There is a tragic flaw in our precious Constitution, and I don't know what can be done to fix it. This is it: Only nut cases want to be president. -- Kurt Vonnegut

I think that the people who are struggling with spirtual issues are the ones who are trying to disprove evolution.Evolution obviously happened, even an open minded toddler can see that.The only poeple who have a problem with evolution are the ones who think it will disrupt their woldview, or their belief in God or the Bible. Its these people who have "spiritual issues", not the ones who accept the obvious, the ones who try to "prove" evolution.

This seems to be the common theme of many religions, though. In my Mormon church services practically every week, I get to hear members of my church testify about their friends in other churches who want so desperately to find the truth, but have been "lead away" by cunning ministers or by Satan himself to believe in other (false) religions. Mormonism is the only true church for us: and all other religions are flawed or false, and full of people who are "lost spiritually."Of course, none of us actually takes the time to notice that the Baptists and Presbyterians are saying the same things about us: from their standpoint, we're the ones who are "lost spiritually." And, Islam feels that all of us are lost. So, only in assuming the truthfulness your own belief system can you actually state that another belief system or viewpoint is wrong, or "lost spiritually." This is a prime example (from the OP) of interpreting the world in terms of one's own viewpoint. Only from the viewpoint of someone who believes in the reality of one's religion, could this line possibly make sense. It is tautological: assumes itself to prove itself. Any such apologetic arguments for Christianity (and, I assume, for other religions, though I'm not familiar with non-Christian apologetics) are completely tautological.The underlining assumption of the OP is the old "evolution is just another form of religion" argument, wherein science is nothing but the expression of the belief system of a group of people. Assuming this idea to be true (even though it's not), there might be a case for ATruthSeeker's argument, but then, the implication would be that all religions are simply the expressions of people who feel "lost spiritually."Unless, of course, there is a single "true" religion, in which case everybody but the sincere practitioners of that religion are automatically "lost spiritually." This means that any random person in the world is automatically seen as "spiritually lost" by a majority of everybody else.

I'm going to ask the same question that Kepler asked centuries ago about the church's resistence to the heliocentric model. Isn't it possible that God designed the universe in such a way that would allow his children, mainly us, to be able to seek out the answers on our own using what he equipped us with, mainly our curiosity and intelligence?Part of being curious and intelligent is to be able to question the existence, or inexistence, of design (aka God). That said, perhaps one day we will get to a point where we can clearly see God's design in nature, but for now I haven't seen anything that would need an Almighty behind it. This, of course, doesn't affect my beliefs at all.The other question that comes to my mind is if you truly believe in God why do you need to bend and warp the evidence in nature to support your belief?

It is not a claim of evolutionary theory that there is a plan, so no-one is reasoning that there is a plan without a planner. No. Paintings and bridges do not reproduce with random variations, and are not subject to natural selection, in case you'd never noticed. That is a massive difference. You said it, not me. You seem to have no problem with the idea of complexity existing without a creator....unless your creator is non-complex, of course. No. If one was to be honest with oneself, one would base one's views of the universe on the available evidence. I'd wait for evidence of this thing called God before I considered its relationship with evil. The reason that I think the theory of evolution is a strong theory is because of the evidence for it. You describe that evidence as flimsy on your website, and that's a symptom of either being dishonest with yourself, or of ignorance. If you'd typed "disprove" instead of "prove" in that sentence, you might have made the only good point in your post.If humans have non-material souls, I don't think anyone would argue that they are the product of mutation and natural selection. If having descended from other animals worries you, think of evolution as being about your body, not the soul that you presumably believe in.Evolutionary theory isn't incompatible with certain forms of theism. It only clashes with creation mythologies that describe fictional universes (and there are many of these from many cultures), because science provides evidence based descriptions of the real universe, whether that reality was created by a God or not.

The problem I think is intermingling what is science and what is religion, and this tends to be strictly a "creationists" view point. Many people who follow the science of evolution, as many have said here, do not have a conflict simply because (my opinion) there is no need to co mingle or intertwine what is science, and what is religion.

Personally, my involvement in "creation/evolution" has been, ever since 1981, a reaction against the crass and gross dishonesty of that monumental fraud, "creation science". It's not that I'm trying to "prove evolution", but rather I've been trying to get creationists to be honest and truthful, something that I had always been taught was an inherent part of Christianity, but which creationists hate with a burning passion.Indeed, I joined this very forum wanting to pursue the question of how "true Christians" could justify "lying for the Lord" and why they express such hatred for and opposition to actually seeking the truth.This is also expressed by Troy Britain, whom I met both on-line on CompuServe and a couple times in person; from his bio at No webpage found at provided URL: http://home.att.net/~troybritain/articles/troy.htm:

quote:

---

... one day (cir. 1989) I was chatting with a new guy and somehow the subject of evolution came up.
As it turned out the "new guy" was a Christian fundamentalist and young earth creationist. Beliefs that my fairly liberal Christian upbringing hadn't exposed me to. He said things that flew in the face of everything I'd ever heard or read before. He was so certain and brought up so many things that I began to wonder if there might be something to what he was saying. I started to become concerned about how the scientists could be as messed up as he was saying they were. So I started looking into it, wondering if maybe there might be something to all this "creationism" stuff.

​

I looked into it all right! I started looking at creationist literature (as I recall Darwin's Enigma (1988) by the late Luther Sunderland was the first creationist book I ever owned, it was given to me by a pastor), and I also started looking the writings of scientists and at their responses to the claims of creationists. And the more I looked into it, the more pissed off I got. Claim after claim made by the creationists turned out to be distortions, half-truths and down right fabrications. Sometime this seemed to be due to innocent ignorance of how science works or of the facts. However, more often it seemed to be willful ignorance and occasionally even to be deliberate distortions of the truth.

​

I was incensed. I had been misled and people who espoused a devotion to "Truth" misled me. And there were people who were supposed to be of God. And not only had they mislead me, but they were continuing to mislead others.

​

From then on I was hooked on the subject. I became determined not to let the misinformed and/or dishonest claims of creationists to go unanswered. I began reading scientific literature voraciously. I became a regular at the public library, looking for everything I could on the subject of evolution and creationism.

---

I have reposted my own essay, "Why I Oppose Creation Science", at No webpage found at provided URL: http://members.aol.com/dwise1/cre_ev/warum.html.You call yourself "ATruthSeeker". Are you really? You express difficulty understanding how the world could have developed into what see through natural processes. At the same time, "creation science" and its multitude of followers have created outright lies which it continues to spread virtually unabated and unrepentently. There could be some room for discussing your difficulties, but the facts of creationist lies and deception are unquestionable.If you truly are a seeker of truth, then what say you about:
1. The role of truthfulness and honesty in Christianity?
2. The responsibilities of a Christian when he discovers that his fellow Christians are practicing lies and deception and the prescribed Christian response thereto?

---

{When you search for God, y}ou can't go to the people who believe already. They've made up their minds and want to convince you of their own personal heresy.
("The Jehovah Contract", AKA "Der Jehova-Vertrag", by Viktor Koman, 1984)Humans wrote the Bible; God wrote the world.
(from filk song "Word of God" by Dr. Catherine Faber, No webpage found at provided URL: http://www.echoschildren.org/CDlyrics/WORDGOD.HTML)Of course, if Dr. Mortimer's surmise should be correct and we are dealing with forces outside the ordinary laws of Nature, there is an end of our investigation. But we are bound to exhaust all other hypotheses before falling back upon this one.
(Sherlock Holmes in The Hound of the Baskervilles)Gentry's case depends upon his halos remaining a mystery. Once a naturalistic explanation is discovered, his claim of a supernatural origin is washed up. So he will not give aid or support to suggestions that might resolve the mystery. Science works toward an increase in knowledge; creationism depends upon a lack of it. Science promotes the open-ended search; creationism supports giving up and looking no further. It is clear which method Gentry advocates.
("Gentry's Tiny Mystery -- Unsupported by Geology" by J. Richard Wakefield, Creation/Evolution Issue XXII, Winter 1987-1988, pp 31-32)

The Wise One writes

quote:

---

Indeed, I joined this very forum wanting to pursue the question of how "true Christians" could justify "lying for the Lord" and why they express such hatred for and opposition to actually seeking the truth.

---

Having been raised in a religious setting all my life, I have thought about this a lot, especially after I started college and really started getting exposed to more secular ideas than ever before. Here is an explanation that I have been able to come up with in regard to creationist dishonesty.Religion, specifically Christianity, generally teaches that only religious dogmas are truths. This implies that everything else is not truth and therefore malleable in regard to its "truth value". My following statement might offend some people, so be warned. I think that to many religious people bending a fact or evidence is not dishonesty because that fact or evidence is not part of their religious dogma and therefore, to them at least, do not have to be portrayed accurately.For secularists, this is particularly hard to understand. At this point, you want to ask how is this not dishonesty? It is not dishonesty, as far as the religious is concerned, because what is being discussed is not part of the religious dogma and therefore isn't truth. And if it is not truth, it must therefore be ok to be bent and warped.I think this is the number one reason why the evolution side and creation side have such a hard time communicating with each other.ABEI just remembered another reason why many religious people think it is ok to bend and warp facts. When I was little, I used to ask a lot of questions. My parents of course didn't know the answers to all of them. Sometimes they made up an answer just to get me to stop asking. I wouldn't call this intentional dishonesty on their part. However, this does reveal a very important aspect of the religious mindset. Facts are not truths and therefore don't have to be portrayed accurately right down to the detail.Edited by teen4christ, : No reason given.Edited by teen4christ, : No reason given.

FYI (because I've made the same mistake), his first initial is D. and his last name is Wise, the number 1 was added to make it an email address.The guy is David Wise, which you can find out from his link, and he's a respectable intellegent person (just sayin').

Regardless, I've read enough of his posts to realize that even if that's what he intended he deserved it