Is Evolution a Radical Idea?

I guess your use of the term evolutionism, (I hadn't realized that you had coined it), is confusing things.If evolutionism is just evolution by natural selection then I have no problem, but if you see evolutionism as providing a "first cause" the I do have a problem.

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Everybody is entitled to my opinion.

Where did that first cell come from? Where did anything come from? What is the first cause?Lotsa room for God.Edited by GDR, : No reason given.

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Everybody is entitled to my opinion.

Even if your characterisation is correct (and I don't think that it is - I would say that all the cosmologies currently proposed by scientists are compatible with evolutionism) that doesn't establish that theism is better.

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The reason that there is something rather than nothing can be one of two things. Either the Atheistic approach which uses random chance as an explanation or Theism using an external designer(s) as an explanation

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Well you're definitely wrong about the "atheistic approach", but your "theistic approach" is still worse. Your "external designer" is still "something" and thus you haven't actually offered an explanation. Of course you could extend your approach and assert that the best explanation for the "external designer"" was yet another "external designer" - and by your criteria you actually should. Any proposed designer would have to be more exquisitely ordered than our universe.So you don't offer an answer, and if you were you ought to be proposing an infinite regress of "external designers". So I have to say that on this basis theism is even less rational than the strawman you try to contrast it with.

There was no first cause. The universe appeared without a cause.

That's an interesting comparison, but evolutionism is not about survival of the fittest, only about gradual change. And of course it has nothing to do with human culture.

Pretty much everything that I read about space and time is that they are inextricably linked. Time is just another part of what there is. The question then of what came before an intelligent designer is meaningless because there is no before.I still maintain that gives a more rational explanation for why anything exists than anything else, but that's just my opinion and obviously not yours.

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Everybody is entitled to my opinion.

Doesn't that mean then that it came about by random chance?

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So did "social Darwinism."

That's an interesting comparison, but evolutionism is not about survival of the fittest, only about gradual change. And of course it has nothing to do with human culture.

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No, "evolutionism" is a "creation science" strawman. What it's about is deceiving the creationists' audience into believing that the scientific idea of evolution is not scientific, but religious. I've seen creationists do that repeatedly ever since my first encounter with "creation science" circa 1980 and I'm sure that they had been doing it for at least another decade before (the creation of "creation science" having occurred shortly after Epperson vs Arkansas, 1968, even though the anti-evolution movement goes back to around WWI). Which means that, no, you did not coin the term.As I had said, "And both cases [, both "social Darwinism" and "evolutionism", ] are misapplications of the scientific ideas that they were purportedly based on." "Social Darwinism" was a bastardization of the scientific ideas of Darwinism for the industrialists to justify their actions. "Evolutionism" is a gross caricature of evolution, but instead of actually being based on evolution, it is based instead on a morass of misconceptions about evolution with a huge dollop of "God of the Gaps" thrown into the pot, thus painting "evolutionism" as an attempt to disprove the existence of God.Now you have taken "evolutionism" as your own and are apparently trying to use it for the same purpose that creationists claim that it is being used, to disprove God. Science cannot do that. Philosophy can disprove God logically, but only if it can get you to accept the right premises. But all that could do would be to show that such proof that God doesn't exist is valid. A valid proof can only be known to be true if the premises from which it proceeds are true. Sorry, but the premise, that natural processes being involved in proximate origins (eg, origin of man, origin of life on earth, origin of our solar system) or even in near-ultimate origins (eg, the Big Bang) disproves God, is simply not true. That premise comes from "God of the Gaps" reasoning.Now, if you want to use your "evolutionism" to prove that Christian theology is false, then relax, you don't need to. We already know that it is ... or at least that it is not completely correct. Theologies are man-made and are fallible human attempts to describe in excruciating detail things about the supernatural, things which no human could possibly know. And even if such things ever did become fully known to a human, that information could not get transmitted uncorrupted over milennia and through countless translations (each of which is an exercise in fallible human interpretation -- ich wei ja wovon ich schreibe) and through the long chain of teachers teaching their misunderstanding to students who misunderstanding their teachers. You don't have to prove what we already know.

I didn't ask what came "before" your "designer". Any more than you asked what came "before" our universe - and by your own reasoning there is no "before" that either. So if that is relevant - and you don't offer any reason to think it is - it applies equally to our universe.And you still fail to understand that you are not answering the question. Your designer is "something". So you can't answer the question without saying why your designer exists - and without proposing another unexplained something.You really need to understand that what you have isn't rationality - it's rationalisations. And not very good ones at that. You're just looking for excuses to say you're right without really thinking about it. Which is why you miss all the obvious problems in what you're saying - because you aren't being rational.

Yes, there are some Christians who believe in evolution or can't decide, but it is also true that evolution has claimed many casualties among Christians, at least to the extent of causing them to compromise their trust in the Bible -- which is no small thing. There may be some, or many, who have avoided this, as you have, but the fact is that it has wreaked quite a bit of damage among believers -- and I do mean believers, true believers. It has also caused many to lose their faith altogether, and I guess we could argue at some length about whether they had true faith or not to begin with, but I think some may yet come back to the fold.I think it's just plain obvious that the ToE is false from a number of angles, which I've tried to argue, and I think it's important to continue to try to refine the arguments because of the damage this false worldview has done to the people of God. But I understand that not everybody is going to be attracted to this pursuit.Robin's arguments usually strike me as remarkably perceptive. He understands that evolution and true Christianity are logically incompatible, and he's right. He understands the implications of the Fall versus the world defined by evolution, nature red in tooth and claw and all that. What's even more remarkable to my mind is how hard it is for others to get what he's saying.I don't know if anyone will ever be saved through creationist arguments, but I do know that the ToE is a serious work of the Adversary against God and the effort seems well worth it to me.2Cr 10:4-5 (For the weapons of our warfare [are] not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God...Speaking of noncarnal methods, I've started praying for the collapse of this stronghold. Prayer is worth a million arguments.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

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Seeing hows its all going to be junked in the end renders a prime interest in that somewhat silly (from my perspective).

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By that logic, we shouldn't ever bother trying to cure disease since people are just going to die eventually anyway.I often think that some Christians focus so much upon the next life they gamble on having that they completely squander the one they know for sure they are living right now.

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Much more fun to find out the workings of something that goes on forever. The workings of the gospel and that which it talks of in the future is rivetting stuff to investigate in comparison

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Meh.Philosophies and old myths are not that interesting to me.

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I have no problem with evolution. It is when people go beyond evolution and use random chance as a first cause. That is not scientific.

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You are both right and wrong here.If you are calling Abiogenesis "using random chance as a first cause of life", then you are right to say that it isn't evolution and wrong to say that it isn't scientific.

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That evolutionism explains reality so well that it is devastating to religion.

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It's not devastating to Buddhism.

This is a valid observation. To what do you attribute the "loss of faith" you note?

has mostly to do with all the science that is done in its name. Real science is done despite the faulty assumptions it rests on. Also, proving the theory false is very hard since it rests on so much elaborate interwoven speculative scaffolding by now with so much embedded scientific data it appears to be inextricable (though much of it really fits creationism better). In the early days the ToE would have seemed a lot more reasonable than some of the ideas about the flood they had then, which were pretty nutty, and that no doubt attracted many.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.