Creation & EvolutionForum for the discussion of this important topic. This forum is open to non-believers. There is a Christians-only forum in the Christians-only section too.
3: Most atheists at this forum claim that there is no conflict between evolution and religion, because evolution is no reason not to believe in god. However, whenever the actual existence or non-existence of a god is discussed with any of these posters, the same people claim that since the theories of evolution and abiogenesis can explain life’s origin and development without involving a god, god becomes an unnecessary entity that is ruled out by Occam’s Razor. Richard Dawkins has explained this in the greatest detail—for a person who calls themselves a scientist to believe in god is similar to a “scientist” believing in homeopathy: you cannot trust someone to be capable of performing science in an unbiased manner when they simultaneously believe something so completely unsupported. The same people who claim this should not also be trying to win support for evolution with the argument that it does not conflict with religion.
I do have a problem with theistic evolution, but maybe it's because I don't understand it.
Therefore I would find it a good learning experience if someone would pick holes in the following few lines - hopefully I won't build up a straw man of my own.
Theistic evolution implies that life started (by the hand of god presumably) and evolved into what we observed today, and this process was set up and guided by said deity.
In my opinion, this brings up several major problems.
Firstly, evolution by natural selection does not include a supernatural hand, it relies on chance mutation to generate variety and selection pressure to weed out unfavourable traits.
Secondly, implying a supernatural involvement would reduce the improbability involved and mean that the timescales involved are outrageous. Compare this 'guiding hand' to artificial selection and see how much man had accumplished in just a few thousand years of guiding crops, fruits, and dogs.
Thirdly, if evolution (and presumably human evolution more so) has been guided, why are there so many genetic illnesses in the world today - not to mention diseases? Bad design of humans can also appear as a stumbling block to this way of thinking.
Lastly, to paraphrase Christopher Hitchens, why did god wait at least a hundred thouand years before revealing his plan to a few desert nomads in the middle of nowhere?
So surely, especially looking at the last point, a deistic viewpoint is more likely if theistic evolution is correct (if that makes sense) as the typical monotheistic god becomes unworkable given these constraints.
To conclude, Darwin's theory does not include a deity of any kind as science does not comment on the supernatural. But to extrapolate from Darwin's work, if supernatural influences are not required to explain speciation, are they required at all?
__________________ "We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further." - Professor Richard Dawkins.
"It ain't the parts of the Bible that I can't understand that bother me, it is the parts that I do understand." - Mark Twain
"The inspiration of the bible depends on the ignorance of the person who reads it." - Robert G. Ingersoll
You mentioned earlier that no one is giving detailed responses to creationist claims. Are there any specific claims you want us to focus on? Perhaps you could summarize the creationist claim here and we could give a one post refutation with references to the scientific evidence.
There’s a reason I haven’t been replying to anyone other than Nitron here, which is because (as said in post #51) I was basically giving up on trying to improve this situation. I’ve tried to change it several times before, and sometimes I could cause it to get better for a few weeks, but then it would go back to the same way it was previously.
I’ll also point out something else I said earlier in this thread:
When a creationist posts a thread, I often have to look several pages into it before I can find a reply that contains more than just mockery.
Most of the time, an informative reply to a creationist claim does end up happening eventually. The biggest problem is that if this reply is on page three or four of a creationist thread, chances are that its poster it will have already abandoned the thread after seeing that the first two pages contained nothing but taunts. With this in mind, I don’t think compiling unanswered creationist claims in a separate thread would be especially helpful.
I’m going to keep lurking here, and if the problems I’ve described can improve permanently, I’ll start participating in the actual debates again. Wiccan_Child’s Evolutionary PRATTs thread looks promising, but it’s too soon to tell whether the benefit of this thread will last longer than the amount of time the thread remains active.
__________________
To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 10 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
There’s a reason I haven’t been replying to anyone other than Nitron here
Let me guess...you don't understand the concept of a debate forum?
Seriously, dying characters on day time soap operas have lingered for less time than you. Please, please please stop telling us why you want to go away, and just do it! How many pages of Good bye Aggie do you think we need?
__________________ I hear stories from the chamber / How Christ was born into a manger
And like some ragged stranger / Died upon the cross
And might I say it seems so fitting in its way
He was a carpenter by trade / Or at least that's what I'm told
--Mercy Seat, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds
Let me guess...you don't understand the concept of a debate forum?
Seriously, dying characters on day time soap operas have lingered for less time than you. Please, please please stop telling us why you want to go away, and just do it! How many pages of Good bye Aggie do you think we need?
If you look at what USincognito has been doing—not just in this thread, mind you, but in the entire forum ever since he “left” it himself—it’s the same. He no longer gets involved in any debates, to the point of deliberately avoiding those of them in which he would normally get involved, but he doesn’t withhold his commentary on the state of this forum when it comes up. Now that I’m in the same situation myself, I don’t think there’s any other way of dealing with this that makes sense. We don’t think the debates themselves are worth our time, but when someone else is doing or saying something to try and improve what’s caused us to make this decision, it’s still worth encouraging.
All things considered, your post is a perfect example of what causes people like us to do this. It selectively quotes the first half of my sentence, while attaching your own conclusion to it that contradicts the rest of the sentence, and discourages any of the other members from doing anything differently in the way that could improve this problem. The more we see people like you replying in a manner that serves no purpose other than worsening the environment here, the more you ensure that we won’t want to take your side in any debates against creationists, but will continue replying to posts like yours out of frustration.
__________________
To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 10 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
And you think you're serving a purpose other than worsening the environment here?
Yes.
At least five other people have already left this forum for the same reasons I’ve brought up, and they also happened to be five of the most intelligent, informative people whom I’ve seen post here. Since they left relatively quietly in comparison to me, nobody ever made much of an effort to change the problems that got them to stop posting. In my case, even though I no longer feel like the debates here are worthwhile, I feel like it’s at least worth putting forth the effort to make sure people like Blayz understand the effect they’re having on this forum.
__________________
To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 10 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
At least five other people have already left this forum for the same reasons I’ve brought up, and they also happened to be five of the most intelligent, informative people whom I’ve seen post here. Since they left relatively quietly in comparison to me, nobody ever made much of an effort to change the problems that got them to stop posting. In my case, even though I no longer feel like the debates here are worthwhile, I feel like it’s at least worth putting forth the effort to make sure people like Blayz understand the effect they’re having on this forum.
You mean "people like Blayz understand the effect I think they're having on this forum". In any case, it's pretty certain that you've made your point. In what way does your extremely drawn-out goodbye help?
Aggie, you have to understand, some people just arn't polite . And if you point it out, don't be surprised when they tell you to GTFO.
All I see with this thread is furthering the mentality of "Oh, he hurt my feelings so he's obviously wrong!"
If you see someone make a fallacious pro-evolution argument, point it out to them. If they have any sense ( they may not), then they'll stop using it. And people will be people, politeness is all style and no substance.
Anyways, if you think you'll have better luck convincing creationists by invading the TE forum, go for it. If you stay here, you'll have to argue alongside those atheists who, rightly or wrongly, regard religion as the enemy; and you may not agree, but you'll have to respect that opinion also--or disrespect it, just deal with it.
Let me guess...you don't understand the concept of a debate forum?
Seriously, dying characters on day time soap operas have lingered for less time than you. Please, please please stop telling us why you want to go away, and just do it! How many pages of Good bye Aggie do you think we need?
Philosophical problem: how to exiting a discussion forum while still getting the last word in?
You mean "people like Blayz understand the effect I think they're having on this forum". In any case, it's pretty certain that you've made your point. In what way does your extremely drawn-out goodbye help?
Did you actually read my post? A few pages earlier in this thread, two of the people who have contributed most to this forum over the past four years have said that this problem was affecting them in the same way. I suppose the most accurate way of putting this is that I want people like him and you to understand the effect that I, USincognito, OnceDecieved, and everyone else who’s mentioned this elsewhere think that you’re having on this forum.
If you actually think it’s just me who has this opinion, this is another good example of why I think it’s worth sticking around as much as it’s necessary to show this.
Originally Posted by Nathan45
All I see with this thread is furthering the mentality of "Oh, he hurt my feelings so he's obviously wrong!"
If you see someone make a fallacious pro-evolution argument, point it out to them. If they have any sense ( they may not), then they'll stop using it. And people will be people, politeness is all style and no substance.
If you’ve read my OP in its entirety, I think you’ll know that this problem involves more than just rudeness. The rudeness comes at the expense of the logical quality of the arguments being used, so the way it appears to creationists here is that the people here aren’t able to support evolution without relying on these sorts of fallacies. RichardT has already told me he feels this way.
Blayz was a good example of this in one of the threads I linked to in my OP. I pointed out a false claim that I’ve often seen supporters of evolution using at this forum—that evolution has never been used in support of racism—and I explained how it actually has been, even though the people who do this usually don’t understand the theory properly and are drawing unwarranted conclusions from it. Blayz replied by selectively quoting my OP and claiming that I had no evidence to support the idea that evolution had been used for this, even though I had described the evidence for it in the post he was quoting. This is fairly typical of the response I get when pointing these things out, even if Blayz is a little worse than usual.
Originally Posted by Nathan45
Philosophical problem: how to exiting a discussion forum while still getting the last word in?
I’ve pretty much decided, as long as it remains an open question here whether or not this problem actually exists, I’m going to continue participating in the discussions about that specific topic. It’s clear from the other people who have already left because of this problem that mentioning it once and then disappearing never changes anything, so before I leave entirely I’d like to see whether the most I’m able to do about this can make any difference.
__________________
To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 10 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
. And if you point it out, don't be surprised when they tell you to GTFO.
Linear Mode
