How Do Scientists Believe in God and Evolution?

Hello, Wumpini. John 1:3 states:

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All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.

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"Him", of course, referring to God.So, there isn't a literal biblical case for the deception-of-Satan argument for physical evidence. Any appeal to the Bible as literally true must either concede that Satan created nothing or that there are parts of the Bible that are not covered by the "literal truth" insurance.So, we have established that either God created everything, or the Bible's truth is not universal. Our next action is to examine the evidence (which we assume to have been created by God), and determine what it is saying. The ID and creationist movements are very adamant that they can find evidence against evolution in the natural world, but people who know how to work with such data have overwhelmingly decided against them, making their case very fragile, at best.We must then conclude that either God created the earth in the manner that the evidence suggests, or that the evidence (which was created by God) does not match the history of the earth (which was also created by God). If you (generic "you") can believe in a God of contradictions, or in a God who would deliberately mislead us, this poses no problem for you.I personally don't favor this interpretation. And, frankly, if the real God actually "planted" the evidence to purposely lead us to a wrong conclusion, I do not believe such a God is worth worshiping anyway, regardless of the power that He, She or It has over me. Unless, of course, He did it so we would have a theory on which to unite and build our scientific theories and increase in intellectual capacity (which would be very hard to prove, and would still rather hurt my feelings).So, to me, the options are to believe in evolution, or to believe in a deceitful God.Edited by Bluejay, : No reason given.

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Darwin loves you.

He can do it even better if you don't have any evidence at all, which is what all religions have. So, you're saying that the evidence actually supports the Flood and Creationism and other literal-Bible concepts, and that we are just not able to see it because Satan is leading us astray?Prove it.And, simultaneously prove that you're not the one being led to the wrong conclusion by the antithesis of some other religion's God.By bringing in the possibility of supernatural distortions, you've effectively rendered all points of view equally evidenceless: you cannot prove that any evidence of any sort in support of any concept could ever have any sort of meaning at all, because it could have been influenced by an evil spirit. Even "evidence" for a Flood or God! The Mount of Olives could crack in half tomorrow, and you still couldn't definitively say that the Bible was right, because it might have been us misinterpreting the evidence. At best, this puts the literal-Bible position on equal grounds with non-biblical positions. But, even then, I have just as much likelihood of being right as you do.So, I'll stick with the concept that makes more sense, rather than the one that requires Satan to be actively ****ing with scientists' minds in order to even be on equal grounds with the one that makes sense.

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Darwin loves you.

What faith? I already explained to you that we're only reporting and concluding what the math is directly saying. We don't understand it at all because it's so flippin' different from everything that we thought we knew before we started actually trying to figure it out. It's hard work: we've only a couple hundred years of real, formalized science on a global scale to figure all of this out (less than that for evolution). First, the majority of the people on the planet do not hold the same "theory" as you: as many have repeated many times on this website, there are literally hundreds of creation myths, all of which are significantly different from one another. No matter what you believe, the majority of the people in the world disagree with you.Second, this is called "argument from incredulity": one's personal inability or unwillingness to understand or believe something does not make it false. I can't really understand anything about physics or advanced mathematics, but that doesn't mean it's all "suspect," "controversial" or "untrustworthy." I don't know how the Irish elk ever held its head up with a rack of antlers twelve feet across, but that doesn't mean it constantly tipped over on its face.Third, what theory are you talking about? All you have is "God did it," without any explanation at all as to how. You can't put this up as an explanation of how the universe was created, nor can you compare it to other theories that try to explain how the universe was "created," because you simply do not have an explanation beyond the agent that caused it all. I will not say that textbook writers didn't have the attitude you think they had: you may very well be right. But bad attitudes do not make people wrong. If you're basing your opinions on people's attitudes, your opinions are automatically unreliable, invalid, insignificant, and not worth discussing with anybody else. Bad attitudes are everywhere, and are actively promoting every opinion that has ever been had on this planet.I have had very bad experiences with Christians of all flavors telling me I'm going to Hell (with a capital "H") because I believe in the Book of Mormon. I have had Christians of all flavors spit at and mock all of my most cherished beliefs and tell me that I am an ignorant fool who has been led astray by false prophets and by the arm of Satan himself, and that my come-uppance is at the door already. Most of them do this without even knowing what my beliefs are in the first place. They automatically assume that they have all the answers about the proper way to get into Heaven, and every attempt I make to explain my own views is cut off with but laughter and rolling eyes and--I'm not kidding or exaggerating--fingers in ears while humming the "Hallelujah Chorus" or "Amazing Grace."Does this make Protestantism wrong? Once again, your personal disbelief doesn't mean a damn thing.And, just because we don't know what something is, doesn't mean we don't know how to detect it or what sorts of symptoms go along with it. Consider the weather: a few thousand years ago, nobody knew what clouds were, but they did know that clouds usually brought rain. According to your incredulity, they couldn't possibly know that rain was coming, because they didn't know what clouds were. Do you really believe this?

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Darwin loves you.

Hi, Wumpini: sorry I took so long to respond. I've been at a conference for the North American Benthological Society, and haven't really had the time or the energy to get to the computer since that started. I can agree with this statement: there are many people who want us to stop believing in God. However, do you believe that evolution is just a manifestation of this "someone's" desire to hurt peoples' faith in God? More specifically, do you believe that evolution is the work of Satan? Or that it is a conspiracy against Christianity? First, and I'm repeating myself a bit here: it's not a theory if you don't have a mechanism attached. If you say "God spat out the oceans" is your theory, I would accept that as a testable alternative to evolution. If you were to say "God took some dirt and molded it into the shape of a man," I would accept this as a testable alternative to evolution. If you were to say "Bees spontaneously spring from the rotting pancreas of red kangaroos," I would consider this an testable alternative to evolution.But, when all you have to say is who was involved in the process, and nothing about the process itself, YOU DON'T GET TO CALL IT A THEORY!!!! No matter how much you believe in it.Second, lots of people believe something very similar to what you believe. They believe in something that you would likely associate with what you call "God," and they believe in some sort of magical process that resulted in the appearance of animals, plants and human beings. And, they believe in something that you would likely associate with what you call a "soul." This does not make them all conflatable into a single "theory." They would likely disagree with you (maybe even call you a heathen or something) if you tried to share with them your opinion about "God's" nature. I have heard numerous definitions of the word "faith" on this website, and there isn't a topic here that pisses me off more than this.So, for you, "faith" simply refers to "belief?" Got it. In the Book of Mormon, there's a story about a man who had the greatest faith ever, and he was given the privilege of seeing God, at which point he is explicitly stated as no longer having faith, because his faith was replaced by knowledge. So, my opinion as to the meaning of faith is clearly not equivalent to yours.I was always raised believing that faith is "belief without evidence," just as all the atheists and evolutionists on this forum define it. And science simply does not "believe" anything without evidence. Anything that a particular scientist believes without evidence is no more than a personal belief. I hold out in my hope that someday, somebody will find evidence of God, or of the historical accuracy of the Book of Mormon, etc., but, until there is evidence for it, it's just a personal belief, and I will not incorporate it into my scientific studies.Until you can actually show that science is built upon the beliefs of individual scientists, and not entirely on evidence, there is absolutely no reason to bring up anybody's faith in anything in relation to science. Fair enough. I don't suppose everybody needs to know anything in particular. But, if someone doesn't need to know something, they also don't need to comment on it, either. Let biologists study biology, and everybody who doesn't understand should just shut up and read until they do understand. One time, my little brother decided that he was going to wear his tennis shoes to church. My mother worked on him for a long time, telling him that he had to wear his Sunday shoes to church. Eventually, after arguing, he looked up at her and said, "Mom, if you keep telling me not to do something, it just makes me want to do it more."I'm not saying you're like my little brother, but I am saying that there could be a lot of reasons for what you have ascribed to your faith and to the Hand of God. First, the topic of this thread is not the origin of the universe, so I don't have to tie my remarks back in to that.Second, I said, "Your personal disbelief doesn't mean a damn thing" in response to your saying "I don't believe it." Read here for a review of the context. Belief/disbelief don't mean anything when you're trying to find truth: only supporting evidence means anything.Third, tell me exactly what it is that I have put my faith in. If you mean I have put my faith in the ToE, I have already addressed this. I do not intend to answer those questions. This is because I don't know what God did or didn't do, nor do I base my faith in Him on what He did or didn't do. I believe He is real, and that He did something, but I will not risk attaching my faith to something that may later be proven false. So, whatever science can explain, ascertain or prove with sufficient empirical evidence, I will accept as likely true, and I will remain silent on all other questions.

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Darwin loves you.

Alternatively, it is an attempt by scientists to explain how the creative processes of God manifest in the physical world. Any religious person in the world can add
“and God did it” to the end of any of scientific theory, explanation, data or conclusion, and I wouldn’t complain.Perhaps I should have answered your questions like this:

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I believe in the Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection, as proposed by Charles Darwin in 1859 and as supported and refined by the Mendelian Genetics, Modern Evolutionary Synthesis, etc., and believe that this theory is sufficient to explain the diversity of life on Earth today. And I believe that God did it.

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This is problematic, because God is most definitely not the mechanism; He is the agent. Your theory is akin to “the mechanic fixed my car,” where my theory is akin to “the mechanic fixed my car by twisting a wrench and pouring fluids in.” Your theory only says what the sum total result of the mechanic’s work was, whereas my theory sorts into what the mechanic actually did. Under this logic, my theory includes everything that your theory includes, except mine also incorporates more information. First, they aren’t my attempts to do anything. But, they are models that potentially explain how God did what He did, and they could be tested. The results of these tests would produce information and knowledge, which I could then apply to my attempts to understand other aspects of nature.Second, the Bible states very clearly that I am made in the image of God. That means I am like Him. If I am like Him, He is also like me, so I see no problem with anthropomorphizing on this issue. Anthropomorphizing does, however, produce problems in other parts of my understanding of God. And with this, I disagree. I believe in a God of order. Fair enough. But, you have to remain consistent in your usage. You don’t get to take the theory of evolution, and your theory of Creation, and say they are equal and equivalent entities just because we’re not on a science thread. There is a difference between them, and just because we’re not exposed to the rigormarole of science doesn’t mean you can flip back and forth.This also goes for the word “faith.” In your last post, you flipped back and forth between different definitions of “faith” so that you could answer everything I had to say with “there is still an element of ”faith’.” That is extremely unfair to me, and makes it impossible for me to argue anything. Either stick to one definition of “faith,” or use qualifying words or make up terms to distinguish between the different types of faith, because you know damn well I’m not referring to all of the possible meanings of “faith” when I say “I don’t have faith in God So now, it appears that there are multiple meanings of the word “magic” as well. What is the difference between what God does and what a sorceror does, other than that one is used for “good” and the other is used for “evil?” I understand “magic” to mean “something that people can’t comprehend and science can’t explain.” If you object to my use of this terminology, show me why it’s erroneous. Because everybody on the ToE side agrees on the mechanism: natural selection. Your mechanism, you have said, is God. Yet, God is the part that people on your side can’t agree on: some think it’s one God, some think it’s many, some think it’s a disembodied power, etc.And, even if you agreed on the nature of God, there is still no consensus on the mechanism of His creation: did He point His finger and zap the dust with lightning so that it formed into the shapes of humans, trilobites and chitons? Or did He mix it in a Cosmic petri dish and manipulate the molecules using teenty-tiny forceps? Or do the words that emit from His mouth interact with things at a molecular level and cause cells to form? These are mechanisms. And on these, nobody in the Creationist camp agrees. Therefore, many theories. And I am also correct that scientists’ beliefs without evidence are not part of science. I can’t top Straggler. See here. Basically, he says “great claims require great evidence.” If you have something on which everything in the world hinges, you’d better be prepared to do more than just tell somebody you felt something. You’d better apply the most exacting standards possible, and you’d better get the best, most objective evidence possible. Until you do, you’re better off not committing to anything specific (as bluegenes said very well here.)---In summation of all this, it does often nag at me that I almost always side with atheists and anti-Christians in debates at EvC, even though I am a legitimate believer in God and Jesus. I try to always side with good arguments, but have been caught many times making bad ones. But, I have noticed that the pro-God arguments are usually very weak, and I cannot, in good conscience, defend a weak argument, even if it supports something that I want to be true. Take the recent gay marriage thread, for instance, in which I made it clear that I don’t like gay marriage, but I can’t argue against it because the arguments are weak. It hurts to do that, but the fact that I can do it makes me feel strong and secure in my ability to come to the truth, and in my ability to be fair and open with people. I feel that I am gaining the ability, partly through this forum, to discern truth and error, and that this will make me a better judge and person in this world and the next.I believe God wants me to study and learn on my own, and to test the data for myself, rather than just conclude that a certain vague feeling one day is proof of something grand and indescribable. I will always side with the people who are willing to subject their own arguments and standpoints to the same critical standards to which they subject others’ viewpoints, because those are people who are able to see when they have made mistakes, and are able to apply their knowledge evenly across every field of study and work. And, in my experience, those people are more commonly atheists than Christians.Edited by Adminnemooseus, : Change 2nd link from containing "m=145#151" to "m=151#151". The "m=" number gets you to the page containing that message number. Different members have different numbers of messages per page in their profile setup. IF the specific message is on that page, the "#" number will jump to to that message. If the specific message is not on that page, you just get the top of the page. For most reliable results the "m=" and "#" numbers should be the same - That of the specifec message being referred to.

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Darwin loves you.

Hi, Wumpini. Of course not. But consider this: perhaps what you are calling “God” (or at least “the power of God”) is the same as what they are calling “the laws of physics.” They are trying to understand how “the laws of physics”/”the power of God” works. [qs=Wumpini]Unfortunately, if you are referring to the God of the Bible, then you are contradicting Jesus Christ who claimed to be God. Jesus is stated to be the Creator of all things (John 1:3). And, Jesus quotes Genesis and says that God, in the beginning made them male and female (Matt 19:9). If you believe that God used the “Theory of Evolution” as proposed by science, then you are saying that God started with a one cell something in the beginning.[qs] This assumes that “the beginning” could only be the beginning of reality, when it could just as easily refer to the beginning of the Christian religion, or the beginning of humans, for that matter. Biblical literalism doesn’t require you to take the most extreme interpretation every time. With this statement, you’ve assumed that “creation” has to refer to an instantaneous “big poof” event, and cannot refer to a gradual, long-term process such as presented by evolution. I see nothing in the genesis account that definitively rules out the possibility that evolution was the mechanism of Creation. Also, I am not married to semantics, especially not the semantics of the Bible: some people are not gifted in choosing words, and some of these people were called by God to be prophets. I would say the mechanism is the supernatural power that the mechanic used. I would not say it was the mechanic. What you seem to believe is that “God” is synonymous with “the power that God has.” He cannot be both the agent and the mechanism: He can’t grab Himself out of His toolbox and use Himself to loosen a bolt. Neither did the mechanic in your example grab himself out of his toolbox and use himself to fix his car. The “mechanism” (or “power” or “tool,” whatever) is different from the entity wielding it.So, you can say the mechanism is a supernatural, unexplanable “power,” but this is different from saying that the mechanism is the person who wields this “power.” The mechanism of creation is the “power” that God wields, and I believe that “power” to be natural selection (in the case of life being “created” from pre-existing forms of life).Also note here that a God who can spontaneously---without any tool or mechanism but His own will---cause things to happen, is not a God of order, but a God of chaos. I do not believe that God can just act in any way He wishes. Consider this: is God good? Does He have to be good? Does He have the power to do evil? If He can switch to evil for no reason, He could just as easily have lied about the whole Bible, and you can’t really be certain it’s true. If He cannot switch to evil, He is governed or restricted by something. This would mean that there are rules that even He has to follow, which makes His power conditional. If His power is conditional, than it is being governed by something other than Him. Thus, a God of order is not the mechanism for His own work. It’s really quite simple: if I’m using a word in a certain context or with a certain definition, your rebuttal must address the definition I’m using. Otherwise, the rebuttal is invalid, because it doesn’t even address what I actually said, it only addresses a point of semantic confusion that isn’t really relevant to the argument anyway.I can address this with the word “faith” in your last couple of messages to me on this thread: In the above quote, you have said “faith is belief” without any equivocation. I don’t really understand what this quote means. Are you saying that it is possible for faith to exist without evidence? Or are you saying that faith is rational? (I also have a problem with your usage of the word “evidence” here, but let’s not get into that). With this statement, you are equating faith with uncertainty. You are also agreeing that knowledge and faith are mutually exclusive. Yet, your definition of faith (i.e. “belief”) would not require knowledge and faith to be mutually exclusive. Either you believe faith is just belief, or you believe that faith and knowledge are mutually exclusive: you can’t have it both ways. Perhaps you just overlooked this semantic error, or maybe you’re deliberately trying to confuse me. But I think it’s more likely that you really do see faith as “belief without evidence,” but you’re attacking that definition because it sounds derogatory. Yet, all the definitions you provided for the word “magic” basically said “a supernatural power,” and none of them said anything that could not be applied to the power of God. You’re right: it could be. It could also be a lot of other things. I used to be on Zoloft for bipolar disorder and social anxieties, so I think it’s a little inappropriate to suggest that what I feel comes from God: I have felt a lot of rather disturbing things. So, which do you think is the safer assumption:(1) my feelings come from God and should be listened to and acted on
(2) my feelings are due to a psychological dysfunction, and should not be trusted without external, corroborative evidence?Further, how can you be sure that your feelings are any more reliable than mine? That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you, and you’ve been largely rejecting it. There is a lot to be learned from the natural world, and what it is trying to teach us in relation to life is evolution. Whether or not God was involved, science will never know, because the natural world is unable to tell us that. Just a thought exercise here: if I (or anyone) thought science had all the answers, why would I (or anyone) still be doing it? Wrong. Science can only say, “outside of what we can see, hear, smell, touch and taste there is nothing that we can comment on.” Get that through your head: science doesn’t say that what it can’t test doesn’t exist, it only says that what it can’t test it can’t test, and it can’t incorporate what it can’t test in its tests of things that it can test. Let me put a scenario in front of you. Let’s say you have a son, and this son goes to a Christian school, where his teacher teaches him that birds build their nests in trees so that their young can be closer to God at the time of their birth, and that this is good evidence that God is real---after all, why would the birds want to be closer to something that isn’t real? Let’s say this little teaching causes your son to believe in Jesus, where he did not believe before. What would you do?a.) Let him think whatever he wanted to, as long as it helped his faith in God.
b.) Explain to him that this is not evidence of God, and try to show him better evidence.If you chose (a), and he were later to find out that ducks, chickens, quails and ostriches lay their eggs on the ground, what would you then do? Would you side with him and defend his silly notion that birds’ choice of nesting sites is related to their desire to be near God? Or, would you say, “that really was a stupid argument from the beginning”?Basically, with the EvC debate, I regularly face this very question: is it more important to preserve people’s faith, or to tell them the truth? Every creationist I have ever met or conversed with on this site has provided nothing more than PRATTs as “evidence” for creationism, cannot answer the arguments brought against creationism with anything more than “you can’t prove it’s not true,” or “it seems hard to believe,” and generally doesn’t even understand what the theory they’re disagreeing with says in the first place. Do you expect me to support arguments like that, just because it helps people’s faith? If so, I sincerely believe that you are the one who should be on pills, and not me.

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Darwin loves you.

Hi, Wumpini. Allright, well there’s a conflict then: Matthew 19:4 said man and woman were created in the beginning, when Genesis said they weren’t made until six days after the beginning. This leads me to believe that either “the beginning” in Matthew refers to the beginning of the human species or of human civilization, etc., but probably to a different beginning than the one mentioned in Genesis. Or, alternatively, you could give up a bunch of semantics that don’t matter, and you don’t lose anything that does matter. But, that’s all you’ve been arguing for all along: that God said it, and, “Poof!” there it was.You find it hard to understand how I can believe in God and in evolution, and keep saying that the mechanism that brought us into life was supernatural. Supernatural origins = unexplanable-by-science origins = magical origins = “Big Poof.” What about them? I met people in Taiwan who claim to have their genealogies back to a thousand years before Adam, and they have it all recorded on little wooden plaques that they stack in their family shrines. You can only twist the results of a scientific experiment so much and then you have to give up something that you used to think mattered. I disagree. Where does the Bible say this? Because spontaneity is, by definition, not orderly. Essentially, if He can do whatever He likes, despite the laws of nature, and on a simple whim, with nobody or nothing to restrict what He does but His own will and power, He is not orderly. This is the very definition of chaos. What? You just said “God does not lie”: how is this not a rule? If God is the only thing restricting Himself, is there something that forces Him to restrict Himself, or is He just doing it by choice? If He’s doing it by choice, He also has the choice to do things differently. If He’s not doing it by choice, it is being enforced on Him, whether by some outside entity or by the office that He fills, it doesn’t matter. But, the point is, if there are no checks and balances except Himself, He is chaotic. But, you should. If your only source for confirmation of your feelings is your feelings, you are also chaotic and unreliable. You cannot make pull yourself up by your own shoelaces. No. But I'm sure the materialistic explanation is closer to the truth than the "Big Poof" explanation. In fact, I'm sure the materialistic explanation is the best one that humans have ever come up with (Straggler's "God-hypothesis" included) and I will support it, work on it myself, and improve upon it until I die, and then, in the next life (I hope there is a next life), God (I hope there is one of these, too) can fill in the gaps that will inevitably remain.

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Darwin loves you.

No, I actually can’t. I see creation week spanning about 14 billion years since the Big Bang until at least the evolution of Homo sapiens within the last 1 million years. There’s a big difference between “the beginning” and “the beginning of man.” It has always been my contention that God has never done anything that cannot, in principle, be explained by science. I’m a Mormon: I’ve done my own share of work on my own family lines. A whole lot of it is fabricated. Do you believe that the ancient Hebrews were immune to this, that they somehow never made mistakes in passing their family records down by word of mouth for thousands of years, or that they were all so perfectly honest and humble that they never said “my great-great-great grandfather was Barak’s younger brother?” I see no reason to believe that. Why should I agree with you when you won’t show me where the Bible says God is His own power? First, I rely upon materialistic explanations for the physical phenomena of this life: this does not mean I apply materialism to “spiritual” things.Second, because God is deliberately withholding materialistic evidence of Himself and of “spiritual” things from me, I cannot ascertain whether these things are, in principle, explanable by materialistic means. However, I believe that they can be, in principle.

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Darwin loves you.