Are You Religious?

[PB_guy]

Sorry to burst your bubble, but the theory of evolution has not added a single important piece of scientific information yet.

If you think it has, then fine, but in 30 years of research in forestry and fisheries, I never ran across a single example.

ian

[geodave]

It's not my bubble your bursting. I don't really care if evolution is true or not. As long as we all agree it's a theory and not a fact (which is what Carl Sagan called it.) I think it's reasonable that species can become new species through random changes over long periods of time. I have a lot harder time explaining humans this way.

My favorite theory (which is also just a theory) is that our evolution was "enhanced" or "interfered with" by some other intelligence. But it's just as likely that we were created exactly as we are from scratch. The important thing is, none of these theories impacts my belief system. It just isn't that important to me.

If you insist that the world was created LITERALLY as in Genesis, I have a little more trouble believing that (I'm skeptical), but it's POSSIBLE.

[PB_guy]

What you want to believe is up to you. With a science background, I like to separate theory from facts. A lot of what we presume to be facts are only the currently prevailing theory. I like to research my material with a skeptical bent, knowing that God will always get it right, because that is His nature.

Ian

[geodave]

INDEED.

My beliefs about God are pretty set, and my ability to separate things like evolution from them makes it unnecessary to worry about how one affects the other.

[James]

Evolution is both a fact and a theory. It is a fact in stating what happens; it is a theory in stating why it happens. A more detailed explanation here: click. While we're at it, on the same site is an amazing page about the evidence for evolution: click. (warning: absolutely mammoth document...but then again, that's the point ). There's also a ton of other interesting information on that site unrelated to evolution (such as the age of the Earth).

@Dave: "Just as likely" implies that we can assign probabilities to those events, which we can't.

[Click to Show Content]

I haven't had a decent debate about this kind of stuff in a long time...sleeping giant awaking in T-10, 9...

[geodave]

Ah, well, I guess I could have worded that differently. Since we don't KNOW what actually happened, all possibilities are available. But probably not equally likely.

If you start this I may not be the best one to take the bait, since I don't believe strongly in any viewpoint. (Although young earth is pretty hard for me to swallow.)

[ManipulatorGeneral]

I was actually about to weigh in myself, and even though I know very little about evolutionary science, to take a slightly different approach, but James' input was useful in pointing me in another direction. I'm not likely to contribute much to this phase of the discussion, but nevertheless, I have found this thread thoroughly productive, and I always wondered how a religious thread would proceed amongst the CC community. This is the sort of thread which demonstrates why I vastly prefer "discussion between people who disagree" over debate.

[James]

This is the sort of thread which demonstrates why I vastly prefer "discussion between people who disagree" over debate.

True. When I used "debate" in my spoiler, I meant it more as an unleashing of effort, resources, time, etc. to the discussion rather than a heated rage-inducing nuclear explosion type thread. I think how that type of discussion was unwanted was talked about in another thread.

[BitBuster]

...debates are also too regulated, imo. Discussions are free to adapt to the backgrounds and temperaments of those who care to participate, making for a more organic and interesting dialogue.

Re: evolution, I confess that I sometimes fall into the "How does an eye evolve?" camp. I also confess that science is not my bag, and that I am in no position to evaluate any theory in any regard. While I recognize that it is an important issue (whether it's "true" or "false"), it's also something that doesn't really directly affect my life. Global warming, on the other hand...that'll affect my life if half the eastern seaboard is underwater in twenty years.

[tensorpudding]

I think people that deny evolution usually accept the validity of genetics, given how important and useful it is to modern science. They also accept the validity of the notion that traits are heritable, and that over time traits that give improved fitness become dominant due to natural selection, and possibly even that mutations can create entirely new phenotype, and that separated populations will diverge genetically due to genetic drift.

What they deny is the "long-term" effect that these things have, that over a large enough timespan, these changes can cause new species to form, and that the billions of years that life has been known to exist on Earth is a long enough time for the complexity of modern lifeforms and their equally complex interrelationships to have formed from very simplistic organisms, themselves formed from a stew of chemicals in the ancient oceans. Why they express disbelief of this when they accept so much else of modern science, despite the fact that evolution is a central tenet of biology underpinning so much of what we know, seems to me to come from a tendency to see humanity as singled out, and apart from the rest of life on Earth. This hubris is at least partly due to religion, and can be seen as part of a general mistrust of science which has been shown to have grown significantly over the last 30 years amongst conservatives, particularly the religious.

The worst effect that this could have with regards to evolution is that fewer people get involved in biology and the state of science suffers in the countries where these beliefs are common, whereas with climate change it could prevent concerted global action before the point that we can no longer prevent the worst disaster of the coming decades from happening. This point will probably occur before the effects of climate change are no longer able to be ignored.