Why Evolution and Christianity are Fundamentally Irreconcilable

[9-10ths_Penguin]

He explicitly says in the above that the Genesis account is history in the sense of salvation history (i.e. using metaphorical language) but not history in the sense of Herodotus or the Roman historians like Suetonius.

A “description of the origin of the human race” sure sounds to me like a description of factual history (or at least what the author takes to be factual history). There’s nothing in the text that supports your assumption that a “salvation history” can’t also serve some other purpose.

 

[shunyadragon]

The bible teaches inherited sin, and it's a core principle of Christianity that every human born is condemned, and thus needs a savior.

Unfortunate ball and chain belief based on ancient mythology.

 

[Vouthon]

A “description of the origin of the human race” sure sounds to me like a description of factual history (or at least what the author takes to be factual history). There’s nothing in the text that supports your assumption that a “salvation history” can’t also serve some other purpose.

Did the Babylonian Enuma Elish concern itself with the origins of the human race? Most certainly. Was it an attempt at history akin to the Greek Herodotus' chronicle of the Persians Wars? No, because it was the fruit of a rich, symbolic worldview grounded in religious lore and the received wisdom of the ancients.

I don't know what kind of historiography you are familiar with or enjoy reading but I highly doubt that if it was intended to be a factual account that it would consist of "metaphorical language adapted to the mentality of a people but little cultured [to] state the principal truths which are fundamental for our salvation".

I can really say nothing more if you wish to labour the point, given that I simply disagree with you.

 

[Audie]

What 401k?

Ah, ya poor sweet darlin', you forgot to put away acorns for winter.

 

[Audie]

Unfortunate ball and chain belief based on ancient mythology.

Frightfully aggressive and uncompromizin' of ya.

 

[Subduction Zone]

Ah, ya poor sweet darlin', you forgot to put away acorns for winter.

You missed it. We are now in @dfnj 's world of Last Thursdayism. I assume that you thought that you deposited your money before last Thursday.

 

[Audie]

You missed it. We are now in @dfnj 's world of Last Thursdayism. I assume that you thought that you deposited your money before last Thursday.

Oh yah, missing my own joke. Good grief.

 

[shunyadragon]

Frightfully aggressive and uncompromizin' of ya.

I am the dark side of Irish when it comes to this, and do not mince words.

 

[Audie]

I am the dark side of Irish when it comes to this, and do not mince words.

Irish..prolly part Neander.

Go forth, and mince ye opponents,
not words.

 

[Subduction Zone]

You basically wrote if you consider creationism a theory you are not intelligent, because lack of understanding of something is generally associated with lack of intelligence, not lack of knowledge. It is interpreted differently from
"no intelligent person, WHO IS WELL INFORMED WHAT A THEORY IS, ..."

You seem to hold the view that the implications of words depend wholly on intend, not on how people perceive one's words. Then when interpreted negatively, you see that as a personal attack to which you react by taking on the role of the insulted. Hmmm. That actually is like their thinking.

In my experience even the people out to deceive and feeling pleasure in that are still trapped in their own lies. You can not take that path and not lower you consciousness. But then you are talking about 1-2% psychopaths. Once you start attacking widely held religious views you actually provide them with a cover to create conflict from.

A compromise is not necessarily finding a common view. A compromise can also be to let the matter rest, or accept differences of views. Let's agree to disagree. If fundamentalist persist on pushing their views, one can ridicule them in a good humored manner (not in a sarcastic manner). The Bible does not say for nothing that there is one thing the Holly Spirit does not forgive, and that is being ridiculed. Because believers love to be attacked, insulted, chastised. That only fulfills the prophecies of the Bible. To feel victim, makes them feel worthy servants of their God. It gives them a challenge ("We shall overcome"). That is why they actually seek being ridiculed and attacked. They invite people to do that by attacking them first. They want to be hated. They love that. No one is a sadist without being a masochist.

Good humored fun makes them powerless. Read the Bible, it is totally humorless. It is a book that prepares people for conflict. It makes them experts in conflict. It is very easy to win the debate on reason and lose the popular vote. To win the popular vote one should not be seen as aggressor. No matter how much one is provoked, one then loses because they play a home game for their people. They may not be scientists but they can sell second hand cars without brakes better than anyone else. They know how to play peoples emotions. The Bible uses emotional arguments, not reason. It is created by tradesmen. Tradesmen know what arguments convince.

Just a question I am interested in. Do you think the confrontational attitude of the left actually helped achieving a more reasonable thinking, or sped up acceptance of more reasonable scientific views? Do you think American politics is improving as a result. Or do the left volunteer to play the role of the enemy of God, the enemy fundamentalists so bitterly seek and need?

Let me try to help here. I didn't read your entire post, it was too long. She did not say that anyone that thought creationism was a theory was not intelligent.

She said that anyone that understood the concept of a theory, and in context it was rather obvious that she meant a scientific theory, and thought creationism was a theory could not be very intelligent.

You may have taken offense because you incorrectly thought that you knew what a theory is. I am betting that you don't. A scientific theory is an explanation for a rather broad range of phenomena that is well supported by scientific evidence and has been repeatedly tested and confirmed.

Since creation "scientists" tend to be a rather cowardly, not to mention incompetent and . . ., lot they will not put their concepts into a testable form. Therefore their ideas by definition have no evidence for them and are not even scientific hypotheses. Creationism is not a theory, at best it is a self contradictory ad hoc explanation.

There are many intelligent people that do not know what a theory is. You appear to be one of them.

 

[shunyadragon]

Irish..prolly part Neander.

Go forth, and mince ye opponents,
not words.

Yep! DNA part Neanderthal!

 

[lewisnotmiller]

wow at 5 my father was teaching me genetic traits l, and in fact origi ally Darwin based his entire theory of natural selection On dog breeding. We have been Involved in genetic manipulation for 10,000 years. How the heck do you think corn arose magic? We intuitively knew that traits could be selected and cross bred none of this is remotely new.

Phhht....
1) Those same farmers, who created more modern, edible corn strains, were Creationist of various religious backgrounds (I would suggest mostly polytheists). They didn't associate cross-pollination of plants with the evolution of species from common ancestry.

2) Even if they did, what of it? Evolution is a scientific theory, not a narrative. That remains true even if scientific method was not discovered at the time people used trial and error to discover and use knowledge.

 

[lewisnotmiller]

stick figures I will make it easy. Since really this is a quasi discussion about consciousness. It see
Well all of us create narrative. The only real facts I know are nature is

True facts are rarer than most believe, I would agree, but that doesn't make everything else 'narrative'.

And this has nothing to do with 'consciousness'.

 

[lewisnotmiller]

Just a question I am interested in. Do you think the confrontational attitude of the left actually helped achieving a more reasonable thinking, or sped up acceptance of more reasonable scientific views? Do you think American politics is improving as a result. Or do the left volunteer to play the role of the enemy of God, the enemy fundamentalists so bitterly seek and need?

I'll skip the rest of the post, but I've found myself thinking about this also.
For me, the context was a little different, and was more around the impact of anti-theism, and more specifically some 'atheist' subcultures, like New Atheism, and also more organised or coherent atheist groups, like the American Atheists.

It's an ongoing process for me (considering this) so I won't pretend I have any answers. But I do think that (for various reasons) the encouragement of resistance is not limited to the right wing responding to the left. It appears more universal.

Indeed, Trump's campaign messaging was heavily reactionary, as was the formation of the Tea Party, but there are mass appeal based left wing movements as well.

So whatever the reason for this, I get the impression that reactionary political movement, and partisan beliefs is more pronounced now across many dichotomous relationships. I think we see things increasingly as a choice between 2 extremes, and too commonly lack nuance. I think, further, that our ability to reduce complex issues to soundbytes we can easily consume, and our choice in content being more tightly reflective of our pre-existing beliefs is a fundamental consideration in all this.

At a personal level, I try to read multiple sources on issues, and try to include slightly left/right views (I'm not terribly interested in unnuanced jingoism, although it depends on the issue).

Anyway...my thoughts on your question, for what it's worth.

 

[exchemist]

So you don't take the bible literally then. Fair enough. Maybe it's just because of the evangelical circles that I was exposed to as a kid, but to me, a Christian is someone who believes the bible is the inerrant word of God.

Yes, that sounds likely.

In fact the major denominations of at least Western Christianity in Europe have never stressed biblical "inerrancy" and most certainly have never taken 100% of it literally. For instance the Wiki article on inerrancy has this to say:


"Inerrancy has been much more of an issue in American evangelicalism than in British evangelicalism.[7]According to Stephen R. Holmes, it "plays almost no role in British evangelical life".[8]"

However in fact, as I have had occasion to point out several times elsewhere on this forum, even back in 200AD the early Christians did not read the bible literally! Origen himself saw Genesis as an allegorical myth, to be read in the same spirit as Homer. This is how the Jews of that time read it too.

Biblical literalism is largely a c.19th invention, heavily promoted in the US by Seventh Day Adventists and similar sects. It's an idea that is extraordinarily difficult to make work even within scripture itself, due to the inconsistencies, let alone in the wider contexts of literature, history and - latterly - science.

 

[david-david]

If Evolution is true, then a new Evolution occurred after every extincted epoch.

 

[Cassandra]

I'll skip the rest of the post, but I've found myself thinking about this also.
For me, the context was a little different, and was more around the impact of anti-theism, and more specifically some 'atheist' subcultures, like New Atheism, and also more organised or coherent atheist groups, like the American Atheists.

It's an ongoing process for me (considering this) so I won't pretend I have any answers. But I do think that (for various reasons) the encouragement of resistance is not limited to the right wing responding to the left. It appears more universal.

Indeed, Trump's campaign messaging was heavily reactionary, as was the formation of the Tea Party, but there are mass appeal based left wing movements as well.

So whatever the reason for this, I get the impression that reactionary political movement, and partisan beliefs is more pronounced now across many dichotomous relationships. I think we see things increasingly as a choice between 2 extremes, and too commonly lack nuance. I think, further, that our ability to reduce complex issues to soundbytes we can easily consume, and our choice in content being more tightly reflective of our pre-existing beliefs is a fundamental consideration in all this.

At a personal level, I try to read multiple sources on issues, and try to include slightly left/right views (I'm not terribly interested in unnuanced jingoism, although it depends on the issue).

Anyway...my thoughts on your question, for what it's worth.

One gets the impression of a party playing football against a party playing tennis. If you understand fundamentalist religion as I do, it is very much based on "us against the rest". "Jews against all non-Jews", "believers against all non-believers". These people are survivalists waiting for the day of reckoning. Every generation they predict the end of the world. That is why they seek war as a fulfillment of prophecies. And constant conflict serves another purpose. In war time the ranks are closed, and internal opposition can be silenced. There is less room for internal divide.

In my country we have the same bible belt, but there is no public discussion. Every time fundamentalists bring their ideas, people start laughing, and they quickly retreat. They actually shun debate these days. Their thinking is contained within their circles. Laws are made they do not like, but no one is bringing the war home to them.

One can win every debate, and still lose the war. The Greek philosophers won the debate and lost the war, their ideas were suppressed for a thousand of years. One of the reasons was that they undermined their own religion. if one indiscriminately attacks religion both the moderate and the fundamentalist, the fundamentalist, no longer moderated, grow in power. Look at American politics, the power of fundamentalist has been growing consistently. American people increasingly seek emotional in stead of factual truth. Moderates allowed this to become a war without realizing that in war time reason and moderation are the first casualties.

 

[ecco]

I am worried about what that will do to my 401k.

Everything in your 401K was put there LastThursday.

 

[ecco]

Once you start attacking widely held religious views you actually provide them with a cover to create conflict from.
...
Or do the left volunteer to play the role of the enemy of God, the enemy fundamentalists so bitterly seek and need?

Actually, the Religious Right creates false dichotomies in order to stir the pot. For example, there are many in the Religious Right who will insist Real Christians do not, should not believe in evolution.

In truth, many Christians do believe in evolution, a point often made by moderate Christians and atheists alike.

 

[ecco]

There are many intelligent people that do not know what a theory is. You appear to be one of them.

A person, intelligent or not, may be ignorant of what a scientific theory is. Perhaps, regarding things scientific, they are just uneducated.

However, many people would be just as upset being labelled ignorant as they would be being labelled uneducated or unintelligent.

That being said, most people who still insist that "ToE is only a theory", are neither unintelligent, uneducated nor ignorant. Therefore, there must be another option. Perhaps, they are just liars defending the faith.