Question for those who are of religious faith....

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Short version: http://www.csicop.org/sb/show/emperorrsquos_new_designer_clothes/
Long version: http://www.talkreason.org/articles/eandsdembski.pdf

Examples? Just google "intron" for an extremely small (relatively speaking) subset. The main specific that jumps to mind immediately is human hemoglobin- again, Google is your friend.


What Gromit said. In ultra-condensed form: the Earth is not a closed system.


"Chemical evolution" is an ambiguous and inaccurate term- let's use the clearer "abiogenesis." This is a separate study from evolution. Evolution makes no attempt at explaining the origin of life. That is an important thing to remember.

The argument from statistics is bunk. It's based on sloppy assumptions, and even if the numbers they came up with were correct, it would do nothing to disprove abiogenesis.


The point of bringing up the quote is that YECs are being exceedingly narrow-minded when they try to take any time period in the Bible completely literally.

It may help to read through the topic before posting. Present-day evolution of microbes is well-documented.


That's not faith, it's philosophy.

For an understanding of the exact changes that a mutation can make at the protein level, click here.

I was wondering about one thing regarding Evolution and Christians who believe in evolution, there is an observation I have, and, well, as I don't have much knowledge about biology and the process of evolution as well as the theology of it, I was wondering about one thing, and probably that could be a Creationist argument to support their views theologically at least rather than scientific on why Evolution can't be true for them, and one example of this would be Carnivore Hunting, surviving and death, isn't that part of the process of evolution? if that is so, would God made animals hunt other animals for food, to survive and eventually death wether there was an original sin or not, and was there an original sin in the first place?

From a Creationist point of view, deseases, death, carnivore hunting take place because of the original sin, without it, such things wouldn't exist according to it, the issue is that those aspects are part of the process of evolution, I gather, and that seems to somehow post a problem with the idea of a paradise, unless theistic evolution rejects that idea, and that is the question, how theistic evolution see this issue?

I believe that could be another reason for Creationists to reject Evolution, becuase it seems to post the problem with the idea of a Paradise without death and suffering.

@GB: There are theological issues that you can claim evolution creates. However, they do not seem (to me at least) any more severe than those that arise from our modern understanding of the layout of the galaxy (Earth revolving around the Sun, which itself is not the center of the galaxy, much less the universe).

well, the thing is, how theistic evolution addresses those issues or wether those issues don't apply because they could believe they don't exist, I mean, I could guess that some may argue that death was part of everything and reject the idea of the nonexistence of death before sin, but I'm not sure of that and probably there might be other explanations to it.

Having being raised under the literal interpretation of creation is an indicative of my lack of knowledge to another Christian perspective which has no conflict with Evolution, I just have a general vague idea of theistic evolution, and I wonder about the issue I presented, if it has been a problem or not and what is the explanation given, theologically not scientifically.


well, the issue here is not much about our modern scientific comprehension of the universe, but rather, theological issues of Evolution regarding death and suffering.

I think the normal resolution is just to reject literal readings of Genesis, and not only in the first chapter. Death can be taken to mean spiritual death, ie one could believe that humans (or our ancestors) lived in accordance with God's will but our growing intelligence and increasingly complex social structures led us to defy God (Tower of Babyl, anyone?) in a symbolic sense, rather than literally getting kicked out of a Middle Eastern garden for eating the wrong kind of plant.


There are also theological issues that arise from non-geocentric astronomy in regards to Man's central place in the universe, and the question of what God is doing with the rest of the cosmos. It raises the question "Why would God care about this pale blue dot?" It seems so small and insignificant. Actually, in many ways I think these questions are a bigger problem than evolution ever has been.

I think that cuts both ways. Many carnivores can't live on a vegetarian diet. Neither their teeth nor their digestive systems are made for it. The problem is worse if you think of obligate parasites, whether macroscopic like tape worms or microscopic. Those would have had to be remodeled after the fall so much that even a creationist would be hard pressed to claim they are still the same kind. That means there would have had to be a second creation. Is that mentioned in the Bible? Does the Bible say all life was created in the first six days? Then you could not have obligate parasites being created as part of the fall. If those parasites existed in paradise, then there must have been diseases.

What is the YEC position on the existence of immune systems? Did God create them before they were needed, in preparation for the fall? Were they created after the fall? Did they evolve? If they evolved, would that mean anything that came into existence as a consequence of the fall is not irreducibly complex?

You see herein lies the problem. As I have stated many times before, if the majority of religionists had your attitude I would happily live my life side by side with religion and let it be. However your constant claims that most christians think in a similar way to yourself is not borne out by general observation (subjective I know). From what I observe I believe that a great many christians do in fact believe the 'true word' of the bible, and by bringing their beliefs into the political and ethical arenas create a bloody mess for all of us to try and wade through.

Availability heuristic. The "Religious Right" believes insane things and so they stand out more. Plus, they're a lot more vocal. At my church, the attitude is "Hey, the two of us disagree on some theological matter. That's interesting, tell me more about how you view this." Among fundies, theological disagreements turn into shouting matches, jihads, and excommunication of the "heretics." Obviously, the latter display attracts more attention and so seems more common than it is.

Also, at least in the US, the "religious Right" is a well-organized political force that forms a very powerful voting bloc. There is no such organized political grouping for moderate or progressive Christians that says anything like "Jesus wants you to vote for universal healthcare." Because of this, the right-wing Christians have a disproportionate impact on politics, with an accompanying increase in pandering to them by politicians, further putting that demographic in a limelight its size doesn't merit.

Even if I accept for the sake of argument that your heuristic availability explanation is correct, the practical outcome is the same. A bunch of wilfully obtuse people are forcing governments to make decisions based upon their ignorant beliefs. If the effect that these ignorant people had was inconsequential that would just be annoying, instead these people force life altering effects on others by refusing to let them get on with their lives without the influence of god.

Keep your ignorant religious beliefs to yourselves, if you dont want an abortion dont have one, if you have homosexual tendencies and chose not to fulfil them fine, if you become paraplegic, or have organ failure refuse stem cell therapy. I could go on but i think you get my drift, believe what you want but let the rest of us who do not believe in a supernatural being work out our morals and ethics with quality scientific debate and reasoning devoid of supernatural input

Until this happens I will fight back against such ignorant, abusive and controlling people.

If you are a creationist who claims no desire to influence the lives of others, well I call you a liar, just the mere mention of creation puts you into that camp. You deny science and and perpetuate this garbage which causes so much suffering

Whoa, whoa, whoa! Are you absolutely certain of that? Any evidence to present?

In my own experience, that is absolute rubbish.

If I didn't have the context of your previous post I would think you are drawing a Bush-style line in the sand "you are either with us or against us". If the defining criterion for your line is religious beliefs that are by default ignorant, even Orwell will be hard pressed to join you. Or do you intentionally take Dawkins' approach? He believes even politically moderate religious believers are the cultural enemy, because he thinks they give legitimacy to the extremists.


If you believed that great apes should be considered persons, as some reasonable people do, would you be content with just not eating apes, not paying for medical research involving apes, and not actively contributing to the destruction of their habitats? Or would you feel they should be protected against bush meat hunters, research you wouldn't do with humans, and habitat destruction?

For someone who thinks abortion is murder, there is a moral duty to prevent murder (making the reasonable assumption that this person's moral code prohibits murder).


It is not clear to me who you mean by "you" in this case. It looks like you mean Orwell, but that is so clearly wrong that you probably mean a generic "you". Which one is correct?


I submit two cases.

Would you accept the campaign by creationists to get themselves elected to school boards to get creationism taught in science classes? Where education is provided through government services, I think this creationist campaign fits DentArthurDent's description.

Then there was George W. Bush cutting off US contributions to all NGOs that included abortion in their family planning services. I read just two days ago that less contraception increases the number of abortions, so if Bush's decision reduced the services offered by those NGOs he probably increased abortions. Cutting off the money was a concession to his religious base.

I don't know whether you would count those two examples as cases of 'forcing'. Would you count them as cases of decisions made based on ignorant beliefs? In the second case the ignorant belief would be that Bush's decision would reduce the number of abortions. I have never heard of the religious right ever asking what policies would really reduce abortions. They campaign against several policies that probably would have the effect they claim to want. I conclude that they are willfully ignorant, and want decisions to be made based on their willfully ignorant beliefs. The same goes for "creation science" in its several incarnations.

1. wilfully obtuse ok be even more ignorant and just have it at obtuse, at least I was giving creationists the benefit of the doubt and suggesting that they might actually realise that what they believe is garbage but are too afraid of their imaginary ruler to admit it to themselves.

2. Forcing governments - is forcing too strong, maybe. Certainly they exert far greater influence than the numbers should allow. examples - the removal of federal funds for embryonic stem cell research, the removal of funds for ngos who supported abortion, the decision to only allow faith based charities access to social welfare funds (last time i checked this no non christian group had been awarded any funds), the massive pressure these people exert to prevent gay marriage or civil unions, the only reason that creation is not taught in most US states is because people have taken school boards to court and won, without this court intervention evolution would be banned in many school jurisdictions, same goes for abortion it is not by government choice that this is legal in the US it is because non fundies have fought damned hard to prevent this inalienable right being removed via the courts.

3. Ignorant beliefs- I think I have summed this up in number one. To use the stories from a writers speculating on how the earth was formed several thousand years ago as a basis for refuting proven scientific knowledge is ignorant in the extreme

The people I am refering to in the above quote are the fools who refuse to change their beliefs in the face of overwhelming evidence. Orwell and the rest that have similar views do not fall into this category. People who believe in the Cosmological argument whilst I do not agree with them at least are not flying wilfully in the face of proven science



I would have thought that was blindingly obvious read the sentence again. Of course I don't mean Orwell

It was the context of a reply to Orwell that misled me. I am glad to be wrong. Thanks.