Re: Any comments? (Evolution - was Answers to Pete)

If there's one thing that might make me believe in evolution, it's this thread... :)

Holly wrote:
I'm glad y'all are alright - Gallatin was hit very badly but my cousin
is ok. They just built a historic farm and were trying to turn it into
a b&b. It's a beautiful place and I have a lot of friends in the
Nashville area so I've been busy calling everybody.

Was it spared?

I think we could agree on a lot of things, except here are my final
thoughts (as authentic as Jerry Springer's)

"Take care of yourself - and each other"

(don't ask me how I know that...)

- I don't have a problem with religious perspectives being taught in
school for what they are. Beliefs, not theories. It is a common
misunderstanding of what a theory actually is. To be a theory there
does have to be significant evidence based upon a consensus of
scientific study and testing. While it isn't necessarily indisputable
in all ways that doesn't mean it isn't fact. Think about the Law of
Gravity. That is a Theory.

No, it's a "Law" - which makes it not a theory anymore. :) Gravity can be proved and demonstrated. Without exception, every piece of "proof" I've seen for evolution (as a theory of how we got here, not just observed "natural selection", which is somewhat believable) has been debunked. It's called the "theory" of evolution because it cannot be proved. I would say that it would never be called the "law" of evolution, but I wouldn't put it past some of these textbook writers to try to slip that in at some point in the not-too-distant future.

If you see the bible as literal truth then I can understand why it
could be mistaken for a theory. But I interpret the Bible by trying to
see what meaning I can get, and how we can apply it to today. How can
all of it be actual fact when it has been transcribed over centuries by
a million different scribes and churches and edited for content.
Didn't they just find the book of Judas was valid and should have been
included so everyone's idea of Judas might have been misinterpreted for
centuries?

Ah - for those of you who thought that my "it's not complete, so how can we believe it" logic was a figment of my imagination - read what she said again.

If this "book of Judas" contradicts *anything* in the current Bible, it should be ignored (as far as elevating it to Scripture). Maybe interesting reading, but altering religion based on it is a bad idea.

From what I have seen in East Tennessee, there are some pretty scary
misinterpretations that have no place in public education or anywhere
else. When the Tsunami hit Sri Lanka, and Southeast Asia, I actually
heard people say to me ( at work even - these people are supposed to be
educated!) that it was God's will because God punished the
nonbelievers. Not to mention an inaccurate understanding of geography
or the fact that there are large Catholic populations in the South
Pacific, it was offensive and ignorant to actually say that kind of
crap in public. I also heard that kind of drivel about Hurricane
Katrina being the will of God, showing absolute intolerance hatefulness
and homophobia, which I find ironic because the part of downtown New
Orleans that wasn't totally destroyed was the hedonistic French
Quarter. Poisonous ideas like that show me that religion can be a
vehicle for intolerance which allows people to do evil things to each
other.

I agree that viewpoints like that are extreme ones. Again, the same as they guy yelling on the corner - how do they know? Leave the condemning up to God, I say.

And if you present one religious belief system, you gotta present them
all.

Creation isn't exclusive to any one religious order - many recognize it as the (rightful) beginning of our universe. You're not promoting "a" religion by present a (previously unopposed, but now opposing) viewpoint.

Nobody has time for that, unless maybe there was a comparative
religion class and as an elective class I think that would be ok. And
if they want to say a prayer at a football game, that's ok - it's
voluntary and you aren't forced or expected to participate. But it
should not be required in any way, there are people who want the
freedom not to believe in religion or keep their views private. It's
about respecting everyone, not just the majority.

No, anymore it's about *us* respecting *them*. I would absolutely *love* hearing a public figure stand up and say something like...

"Look, if you don't like prayer, you don't have to bow your head, and you don't have to pray in your heart - you can sit and do a crossword puzzle for all we care. But we are *going* to have this prayer - the majority of people want it, it's traditional, and we're not going to change our way of doing business because *you* are offended. There are lots of things that *you* do that offend *us*, but we don't demand that you cease them; rather, we're told we have to be tolerant of it. Well, what's good for the goose is good for the gander - so tolerate *us* for a change.

This country is free - but, if you're offended by the principles with which we operate, or our pledge, or our motto, our outgoing immigration is even more lax than our incoming. If you're offended by the pledge, then turn in all your money too. Surely "In God We Trust" is just as offensive as "Under God"! If you can stomach it when you buy your groceries, then you can stomach us and our traditions."

I'd vote for that guy or girl in a heartbeat.... I'm sick and tired of "tolerating" with no "tolerance" in return.

I am curious to see why you don't think evolution is a science.
Couldn't it be compatible with religion? I don't see the conflict?
Why couldn't God have created the universe to evolve and change the way
Evolutionary theory is trying to determine?

He could have - I'd imagine that He would have told us that though. Like I said, I'm not opposed to the "natural selection" part - there are certainly areas of biology where this applies. But expanded all the way out to suggest we started as "goo", then just "happened" to be on this planet that just "happens" to have an atmosphere conducive to life, where we just "happened" to evolve into all different species of bird, animal, insect, and human - and that the complexity of our DNA, which scientists today are *still* working to figure out, just "happens" to work in the precise and orderly way that it does - all this just flies in the face of the quite scientific theory of entropy. Things go from order to disorder, not the other way around.

I can't believe that more people believe all that than believe "oh, a deity must've made it". :)

Theory has a number of distinct meanings in different fields of
knowledge, depending on the context and their methodologies. In common
usage, people use the word "theory" to signify "conjecture",
"speculation", or "opinion." In this sense, "theories" are opposed to
"facts" - parts of the world, or claims about the world, that are
real or true regardless of what people think.

In science, a theory is a logical (thus often mathematical) model of
the world (or some portion of it) which predictions either have been
tested through numerous experiments, or were verified through empirical
observation. In other words, for scientists "theory" and "fact" do not
stand in opposition, but rather support each other, are logically
consistent with each other - for example, it is a fact that apple
dropped on earth has been observed to fall towards the center of the
planet, and the theory which explains why apple behaves so is the
current theory of gravitation.

I agree that observation can support theories. What I don't agree with is expanding those observations to areas to which they were never intended to explain. And, no one has ever observed evolution - that's the kicker. By it's definition, it's impossible to observe - and people say the *Bible* is hard to believe? I'd much rather believe holy men and scribes over the years that the writings of one man...

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"Who is more irrational? A man who believes in a God he doesn't see, or a man who's offended by a God he doesn't believe in?" - Brad Stine
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