Amongst some in religious communities there is a pride in ignorance. Â Atheists are frowned upon for being “intellectuals” and out of touch with the normal, working class people. Â This pride in ignorance is not the cultivated ignorance that we see as a result of organised religion, but rather a misplaced sense of conflict and segregation.
One can see evidence of this behaviour in polls which question the respondents position on topics such as evolution. Â For example, a recent Pew Research Poll found that 97% of scientists (unspecified disciplines) agree that Humans “Evolved over time” whilst only 61% of the public share this view.
This, I find astonishing.
To put this into context, can you imagine someone, upon being told by their doctor that they have diabetes, respond by disagreeing and instead choosing to believe that it’s actually just athlete’s foot? Â It wouldn’t happen.
This alarms me because evolution is fact. Â Not only does evolutionary theory match the fossil record at every turn, but we can recreate evolution in labs. Â We have genetics to back up our understanding. Â Yet this mountain of irrefutable evidence is not enough for some. Â Why? Â And just what will it take to change these people’s minds?
So how do we stem this tide of ignorance? Â The simple answer is education, but unfortunately systemic failures within the education system to push objective facts, and ingrained fear of the truth from community leaders make this difficult. Â Teachers can teach evolution in schools, only for fearful, misinformed, ignorant parents to turn their students against them.
Another possible option is to simply make the alternative viewpoint unacceptable. Â Again, we’re dealing with facts, so in the same way espousing flat earth theories is not acceptable, so should be denying evolution. Â And let’s be clear, this isn’t curtailing free speech, people can say whatever they want, but proliferating misinformation should be seen as a socially unacceptable activity. Â This may be even more effective than education. Â Those who reject evolution do so because their religions have offered an alternative. There’s no evidence for any of these alternatives, but they are supported by religious communities. Â Followers of religions often call themselves “sheep” (The Lord is my Shepherd etc.), and it’s very apt. They follow the consensus in their community, and don’t think for themselves. Â Let’s face it, anyone who chooses to believe a two thousand year old book which has very little basis in reality over centuries of scientific progress, with accompanying evidence, is not being particularly thoughtful. Â Therefore, making it socially unacceptable within and around their social groups may have a big impact.
I expect that part of the problem is political correctness. There is a tendency to avoid “upsetting” religious people by openly dismissing their beliefs.
For example if someone openly and energetically professed their belief that there were fairies living in their garden who looked over them and were responsible for all the actions of humans, they would be mocked at least, maybe even forced to receive psychiatric counselling.
So why to we pussyfoot around people who openly and energetically promote the mythology of 2000 year old goat herders over the accumulated knowledge that humans have managed to develop (despite the best efforts of the church).
Moreover why do we tolerate the pseudo intellectual nonsense like “intelligent design” which is based at its very core on flawed logic. (If you can’t explain in infinite detail how something works then that automatically validates my mythological answer).
It is time to set aside political correctness and tell it to religious people straight.
You are fools. And just discussing this nonsense with you is an insult to my intelligence, and should also be to yours.
Re the doctor metaphor… whether you get treated for diabetes or atheletes foot has a direct and extreme effect on your day to day life.
In contrast: a pollster calls on your phone, and asks if you believe human beings evolved over time. There’s nothing riding on how you answer. In dealing with the vast majority of ordinary daily-life situations, whether or not you believe in evolution is entirely irrelevent.
For society to function well and advance, we need a certain number of people who are well-educated, who specialize in rational analysis. But it’s clear that many people can live fully functional lives without being so rational.
Over time, the over-all level of rational understanding will rise in the world… but there will always be a great spectrum of rationality within the population. There’s not necessarily a great problem with that.
If people simply accept — for whatever reason — that they should strive for kindness, for not harming anyone who isn’t bothering them… that’s the biggest step towards a harmonious world. I think it has far far greater effect than the percentage of people who understand evolution or other such issues.
Stuart
http://stuart-randomthoughts.blogspot.com/
“Atheists are frowned upon for being “intellectuals†and out of touch with the normal, working class people.” Perhaps by some secluded sects, but not by thinking Christians.
This time, however, I have a question. By evolution do you mean variations within species (say different strains of dog) or do you mean the emergence of one species from another totally different one. The first is obvious, the second merely quite likely. So far as I know it has not been proved yet, though. Please correct me if I am wrong.
Thus, if “humans evolved over time” means that humans are different now (because of their environment and habits etc…) than humans were a thousand years ago, that’s pretty obvious. If it means that humans evolved from a monkey, that is something rather harder to show, even if the (let’s face it, rather sparce) evidence seems to point that way. Let’s not confuse theory from proven fact.
Evolution is not necessarily an anti-Christian theory, (Yes, theory, not fact as claimed by the article). Indeed, the Vatican is hosting a summit on the Origin of Species. see the link if you don’t believe me. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article3993823.ece No one can say evolution is an indisputable fact with no alterations or revisions, that’s the same as the fundamentalists claiming the bible is absolute fact. People need to be open to other views points, they should not be called “unacceptable.” That is a violation of the human right of free thought. if people wish to not believe in evolution, they have that right as if they wish to believe it. I find this post to be bigoted, rude to religion, and totalitarian in nature.
Darwinian Evolution is not “fact” and there is no evidence for it whatsoever and it is not observed to occur either.
Every time I read: “Atheists are frowned upon for being “intellectuals†…” I wince. I wish atheists were a bit more intellectual. The New Atheists seem to think that the argument is simply over science versus faith, and have no understanding (or interest it seems) in the academic and philosophical history that preceeds them, which is far superior.
If only we had real intellectuals like Sartre, Camus and Nietzsche again! At least they understood what was at stake culturally and metaphysically in a world without God.
I also object to the statement on the grounds that some of the most intelligent people in history have been strongly religious. It does not do justice to thinkers as varied as Plato, Augustine, Aquinas, Descartes, Copernicus, Galileo (despite any injustice done to him personally by the Church he never lost his faith in God) Kepler, Steno (bishop and founder of the subject of geology), Newman, and on the list goes….. None of these people “frowned” on atheists for being intellectual, but embraced the challenge of sharing ideas with those few that were!
Gospeltoday states evolution is not a fact. Sorry buddy, its time to join the rest of civilization in the 21st century. Evolution is a fact with tens of thousands of pieces of proof and data. Its time for America to grow up.
DJ please read properly that Darwinian Evolution is not “fact†and there is no evidence for it whatsoever and it is not observed to occur either. For example, birds did not come from dinosaurs. All things stay within their own kind. Birds have always been birds, dogs have always been dogs, cats have always been cats, etc.
Above all, mankind has always been mankind.
Darwinian Evolution is a farce for people who do not think for themselves.
Thank you GospelToday for very effectively demonstrating the sort of ignorance society needs to overcome in order to progress. What I can’t quite decide on, at the moment, is your reason for dismissing evolution. is it because you lack the mental capacity to understand it? Are you just ignorant? Or are you just a bad person? What other reason would you have for lying?
Nevertheless, let’s look at your claim, for example, “cats have always been cats” and that all things stay within their own “kind”. I don’t know what you consider to be a “kind”. Is it synonymous with a species, a genus, a family, an order, or a class?
Cats, for example (assuming you mean the commonly domesticate cat), is of the species Catus). They are of the genus Felis, which includes Jungle Cats. Felis belongs to the family Felidae, which includes Lions, Tigers, Jaguars etc.
So which “kind” have they always belonged to? Just to highlight the level of your ignorance, I’ll point out that if you look at all species under the family Felidae, including Tigers, Lions, Domestic Cats etc they have a common ancestor that existed around 10 million years ago.
Since you are highly confident that there is no empirical data which supports evolution, please post the data that you have examined.
The Atheist
Wow, I’m all for clearing up ignorance such as what I’ve seen on this blog and others like it. The first thing that needs to be addressed is “what is a kind?†Often, people are confused into thinking that a “species†is a “kind.†But this isn’t necessarily so. A species is a man-made term used in the modern classification system.
A plain reading of “kind” in the Bible infers that plants and animals were created to reproduce within the boundaries of their kind. Evidence to support this concept is clearly seen (or rather not seen) in our world today, as there are no reports of dats (dog + cat) or hows (horse + cow)! So, a good rule of thumb is that if two things can breed together, then they are of the same created kind. It is a bit more complicated than this, but for the time being, this is a quick measure of a “kind.â€
As an example, dogs can easily breed with one another, whether wolves, dingoes, coyotes, or domestic dogs. When dogs breed together, you get dogs; so there is a dog kind. It works the same with chickens. There are several breeds of chickens, but chickens breed with each other and you still get chickens. So, there is a chicken kind. The same works with cats as there are a number of breeds of cats, but when you breed cats with each other you still get cats. So, there is a cat kind. The concept is fairly easy to understand if one can think for one’s self.
But in today’s culture, where Darwinian evolution and millions of years are taught as fact with no evidence to support it, many have been led to believe that animals and plants (that are classed as a specific “speciesâ€) have been like this for tens of thousands of years and perhaps millions of years. So, when they see things like lions or zebras, they think they have been like this for an extremely long time.
From a biblical perspective, though, land animals like wolves, zebras, sheep, lions, cats, and so on have at least two ancestors that lived on Noah’s Ark, only about 4,300 years ago. These animals have undergone many changes since that time. But dogs are still part of the dog kind, cats are still part of the cat kind, and so on. God placed variety within the original kinds, and other variation has occurred since the Fall due to genetic alterations.
If two animals can produce a hybrid, then they are considered to be of the same kind. However, the inability to produce offspring does not necessarily rule out that the animals are of the same kind, since this may be the result of mutations (since the Fall). Zonkeys (from a male zebra bred with a female donkey), zorses (male zebra and female horse), and hebras (male horse and female zebra) are all examples of hybrid animals. Hybrid animals are the result of the mating of two animals of the same “kind.â€
The fact that different species of cats can interbreed is strong evidence that they belong to the same family, that is, the same biblical kind. Even before the liger (lion father and tiger mother) found its way to the spotlight in popular culture, animal keepers crossed species of cats to create tigons (tiger father and lion mother), leopons (lion and leopard parents, famous in Japan), and pumards (puma father and leopard mother); the bobcat-lynx hybrid is well known in the exotic pet market. Even domestic cats have been bred with wild cat species to create new breeds, such as the Bengal and the Savannah.
So, other than your incorrect assumption of age of their first creation, cats have always been cats as you pointed out:
CLASS: Mammalia (mammal)
ORDER: Carnivora (meat-eating)
FAMILY: Felidae (cat kind)
Good to see that you agree that cats have always been cats from their first creation. There is hope for you to learn the truth.
To help clear up ignorance about dating methods, I suggest starting with this article to understand the presuppositions used in dating things which were not observed: Dating Rocks is a Farce – http://findingtruthtoday.typepad.com/finding-truth-today/2009/10/dating-rocks-is-farce.html
GospelToday, I’d just like to address a couple of points.
I’m astounded that you actually believe in the flood. You talk about evolution being taught as fact, and then claim there’s no evidence for it, but you seem to accept an event as fact for which not only is there no evidence, but there’s incontrovertible evidence to the contrary.
As for your neither here nor there definition of a biblical kind, which may or may not be defined in the same way as a species (i.e. can breed to produce fertile offspring) depending on whether it fits your case or not, I really don’t know where to go from there. At no point did I say that “cats have always been cats”, in fact, I thought I was pretty clear that cats shared a common ancestor around 10 million years ago. This common ancestor would not resemble a common cat found today, but rather existed as a point from which a fork took place. An animal that shared certain attributes with modern day cats, but certainly wasn’t one.
The article you linked to is one of the biggest piles of drivel I’ve read in a long time. Even a modicum of research renders the entire thing farcical. And that’s something that continually amazes me about creationists. You’re willing to believe such fantastical, implausible, scientifically discredited stories such as great floods, and an earth that’s only 8,000 years old and the rate of decay of rocks magically changing over time but you won’t believe that a book, written two thousand or so years ago could possibly be wrong. Do you not see the flaw there? To end, I’d invite you to watch this video series, Why Do People Laugh at Creationists? many of the “Theories” you’ve suggested are roundly debunked, and It’d serve no one for me to simply repeat the well established facts over and over again.
Atheist,
I agree with most of what you say. You may be surprised that the father of geology was a Catholic Bishop! His biography is enlightening in coming to understand how faith and science are not in opposition: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolas_Steno
As I understand it, there are still 3 basic problem areas with evolutionary theory:
1) the origin of life itself (life from non-life). I accept that there are many theories about this around, but that there is, as yet, no scientific consensus let alone proof.
2) The problem of “kinds” (sorry I don’t know the technical word). In particular, how an animal with X chromosomes could evolve into something with a different number. This is a chance to educate me: is it true that this would have to be a sudden increment? If so, how does this square with a gradual mutation type theory. [Incidentally the father of genetics is also a Catholic priest, Gregor Mendel: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregor_Mendel ]
3) The specific problem of human intelligence. There is a lack of continuity here with the capacity of self-reflection which allows a “gap” for free will between instinct and its expression. (eg we don’t just eat when hungry or even in a genetically-determined way, but can decide to go on a hunger strike, or spend the whole day preparing a meal etc, can use knives and forks to make it easier for us etc……)
In other words, there is still plenty of work for scientists to do before evolution is established definitively. I think we all accept natural variation… even @GospelToday. I am genuinely interested in your thoughts.
Hi Jonathan. First I wanted to apologise for your comment taking so long to appear on the site. As it contained a number of links it was accidentally flagged as being spam and I’ve only just noticed it. Unfortunately, as this site is somewhat pristine it gets bombarded with thousands of spam comments every day, and occasionally the software flags a false positive, which was the case here.
On to your questions…
1) The origin of life is still somewhat mysterious, but as I’ve covered on this blog previously, some noteworthy work at Manchester University has shown that conditions during the so called primordial soup were conducive to the formation of RNA, the precursor to DNA. There are still some gaps in our knowledge in this area (rather large gaps, truth be told), but it’s something that’s being actively worked upon and progress is being made.
2) I’m sure a geneticist or biologist could give you a better answer in this one, but as I understand it, changes to the number of chromosomes fall under the standard mutation banner. As for the rate of these changes, I have to throw my hands up and admit I don’t know.
What we do know is that differing in the number of chromosomes from your parents can be severely debilitating, but not necessarily so. We also know that the human chromosome 2 can be traced back to the merging of two ape-like chromosomes which are still present, and separate, in apes.
We know that an organism with x number of chromosomes is not necessarily precluded from breeding with an organism with Y number of chromosomes (look at Down’s Syndrome sufferers for example, who can have children with non-sufferers or the way horses with differing numbers of chromosomes are inter-bred). What’s most important is whether the genetic information can be passed on, rather than the number of chromosomes per se.
I’m sure that if I did a bit of research I could find a more satisfactory answer to your question, but unfortunately I’m short on time at the moment. In my mind, there’s nothing that jives with my understanding of evolution when it’s looked at from the chromosome point of view.
3) As I’m sure you’re aware, we share many personality traits with the great apes that tend to be fairly unique in the animal kingdom, although clearly we are further developed. Again, I’m no expert in the field (far from it in fact), but as I’ve had it described to me, there are numerous theories, most concern the evolution of human intelligence to allow us to care for our particularly helpless young (relative to most young animals). I’ve also heard of theories concerning our ability to operate within large and complex social groups.
It stands to reason that organisms that are self-aware and in control of their instincts are better suited for large social groups. That seems like a positive mutation that would be beneficial when looked at from a natural selection point of view. Especially given that the environment in which pre-humans were living during the time this development was believed to be happening was constantly changing, exposing them to new threats.
I hope that goes some way to explain my view on those points. As I said, I’m no expert although I do take an interest in these areas. I’m more than happy to admit where there’s a gap in my knowledge but I always strive to improve. It’s very comforting knowing that there are scientists out there who are also striving to improve their understanding of the world and sharing the results with the rest of us.
A good rule of thumb is that if two things can breed together, then they are of the same created kind.
CLASS: Mammalia (mammal)
ORDER: Carnivora (meat-eating)
FAMILY: Felidae (cat kind)
What part of “cat kind” do you not understand? Did you not read the later part of my last reply? Children understand it.
Cats have always been and will always be cats from the cat kind. One can observe different species within a group or kind (usually at the family level of classification)�but that has nothing to do with changing one kind into a different kind, which is ultimately what Darwinian evolution is all about.
Textbooks present evolution in two different ways�small, observable changes (natural selection, speciation, adaptation) and large, unobservable changes (molecules-to-man evolution). They show evidence for the former and then conclude that this proves that the latter took place as well.
As our understanding of genetics has improved, it has become increasingly clear that mutations + time + chance do not equal evolution. All observed mutations demonstrate a loss of genetic information from the genetic code, or they are neutral. Evolution claims that the process has no direction or goal. If you look at the complexity of the �first� organism, it must be accepted that a massive amount of information has been produced to explain the variety of life we see today. Mutations cannot generate new genetic information; so they cannot be used to explain how evolution has proceeded from a cell with less information than is present in modern cells.
“For I am well aware that scarcely a single point is discussed in this volume on which facts cannot be adduced, often apparently leading to conclusions directly opposite to those at which I have arrived. A fair result can be obtained only by fully stating and balancing the facts and arguments on both sides of each question.” Charles Darwin, “Origin of Species”
I’m amazed that so many people have not used their minds to realize that there is proof of Noah’s Flood but in reality there is so much sludge people have to sort through to get to the truth it makes it difficult for those who do not use their minds to figure it out. Too many people just go with the flow and do not use their God given mind to think for themselves.
This is what really hurts your worldview of Darwinian Evolution and millions of years. Noah�s Flood would produce exactly the kind of complex geological record we see today worldwide: thousands of feet of sediments clearly deposited by water and later hardened into rock and containing billions of fossils. If the year-long Flood is responsible for most of the rock layers and fossils, then those rocks and fossils cannot represent the history of the earth over millions of years, as evolutionists claim. Without your millions of years, that gives more reason for God to really exist and you don’t like that do you?
The idea of millions of years did not come from the scientific facts. It was developed by deistic and atheistic geologists in the late 18th and early 19th century. These men used anti-biblical philosophical and religious assumptions to interpret the geological observations in a way that plainly contradicted the biblical account of creation, the Flood and the age of the earth. Most church leaders and scholars quickly compromised using the gap theory, day-age view, local flood view, etc. to try to fit �deep time� into the Bible. But they did not understand the geological arguments nor did they defend their views by careful Bible study. The �deep time� idea flows out of naturalistic assumptions, not scientific observations.
Radiometric dating methods do not prove millions of years. Radiometric dating was not developed until the early 20th century, by which time much of the whole world had already accepted the millions of years assumption. For many years creation scientists have cited many examples in the published scientific literature of these dating methods clearly giving erroneous dates (e.g., a date of millions of years for lava flows that occurred in the past few hundred years or even decades). In recent years creationists in the �RATE project� have done experimental, theoretical and field research to uncover more such evidence (e.g., diamonds and coal, which the evolutionists say are millions of years old, were dated by carbon-14 to be only thousands of years old) and to show that decay rates were orders of magnitude faster in the past, which shrinks the millions of years dates to thousands of years, confirming the Bible.
I just want to address a few of the issues you’ve raised in your post. Fortunately, I’ve been reading about this very subject recently, so I’m fairly well versed in it.
That’s just a lie. Scientists struggled for many years, centuries in fact, trying to establish the age of the earth (and subsequently the age of the universe). Before radiometric dating many theories were posited, all of which had flaws. Carbon dating, for example, was only accurate to a point (~20 million years) and was found to be altered by external forces. A particular problem with carbon dating was the contamination of samples with particles from other substances. As the sample became older, the greater the impact of these contaminations, making it particularly unreliable hen looking at older samples. You’ll also find that Willard Libby’s decay constant of Carbon-14 was off by about 3%, hence almost all dates derived from carbon dating are off by at least 3% (the constant was on the low side, so add 3% to any figures, but they’re so inaccurate it’s not even worthwhile). This, as you may or may not be aware, means that because of the decay rate of carbon-14 a single contaminate particle can throw the estimate off by 50% when looking at the oldest samples.
Radiometric dating, on the other hand, is as reliable as clockwork. In fact, the most accurate clocks in the world (known as atomic clocks) use the same technique as radiometric dating. Arthur Holmes, the spiritual father of radio metric dating as we understand it (although you could say the same of Ernest Rutherford) was a geologist and, as far as I can tell, had no religious affiliations. In fact, he ran a curio shop at one point.
The great thing about radiometric dating is it’s reliability. As Thunderf00t put it in one of his “Why do people laugh at creationists?” videos that I linked you to, if you can find a way to change the decay rate of rocks there are thousands of nuclear physicists who would like to have a word with you. You’ll be a millionaire overnight. The error rate of uranium-led radiometric dating is less than 2 million years in 2.5 billion years.
It’s also worth pointing out that there was a significant amount of resistance in the scientific community to the age of the earth as determined by radiometric dating. One of the problems is that it put the earth as being far older than originally thought. In fact, the figures were saying that the earth was significantly older than the universe. of course, the age of the universe has since been recalculated. You’re right that they didn’t understand the geological facts, in fact there was some debate as to where all the “old” rocks had gone (a man called Clair Patterson was the first to attempt to date the earth using radiometric dating, and he had problems finding old rocks). Now we know that “old” rocks are subsumed by plate movements and drifts.
You’re absolutely right! At the time, the most popular estimates for the age of the earth based on numerous techniques (e.g. carbon dating, thermoluminescence, electron spin resonance) was somewhere between 20 and 200 million years. Radiometric absolutely did not prove the millions of years theory, but rather the billions of years. This new, infallible, technique meant the world had to change its accepted figures.
I’d whole heartedly recommend looking into how scientists get the figures the get for the age of the earth, it’s truly fascinating and sits rather uncomfortably between physics and geology.
Dating Rocks is a Farce http://findingtruthtoday.typepad.com/finding-truth-today/2009/10/dating-rocks-is-farce.html
I read some were that scientist think that Noah’s flood good have been round the time that the Mediterranean flood its the timing of the flood they cant decide.
The Black Sea flood does not match Noah’s Flood as recorded in the Bible. In spite of this, the secular scientists are keen to link this with Noah’s Flood.
Even though the Black Sea flood was not a global flood, but just a local flooding of a small area around the Black Sea, they are quite happy to say the Black Sea flood was Noah’s Flood. They say that the Bible got it wrong. Not so. They are the ones who got it wrong. They have dismissed the evidence for the real, global, Flood of Noah, and wrongly linked a local flood that occurred many hundreds of years afterwards.
There was a worldwide Flood (Noah’s Flood) because the Bible describes it, and does so in considerable detail. And we find evidence around us that fits with what the Bible says.
For example, all over the world, even on the highest mountains we find the remains of dead creatures that have been buried in mud and sand laid down by huge watery catastrophe. These fossils are of marine and terrestrial animals and are buried everywhere. We also find lots of vegetation that has been buried by the Flood, and this has turned to coal and oil and we use it for fuel.
Beyond Doubt – Christianity is True – Atheism is False http://bit.ly/5vtvvF
Thank you for your comment atheist only believe scientific evidence so they most except the evidence as proof.I am playing there game by there rules unless they change the rules.