How to choose between creation and evolution.

[OldWiseGuy]

Religion charges the individual with moral responsibilities that go far beyond the ordinary.

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

Meaning I should accept the mercenary-missionary ridicule?

God says of His missionaries ...

Hebrews 11:38a ( Of whom the world was not worthy: )

And to equate them with mercenaries is a cheap shot that will backfire and create a mental block.

No, it was just light humour - puns. You post enough nonsense to recognise that.

 

[SelfSim]

No, I wasn't religious at all unless you mean 'had a foggy notion that God probably existed'
But call it whatever you like. I wasn't a Christian which is the same end result whichever way you cut it.

One doesn't have to believe in the existence of God to be religious .. but one does have to conclude existence by way of beliefs, rather than by the way of science, to be exercising a religion.

 

[SelfSim]

I think it depends on which denomination of Christianity a person is evangelized by. If it's a conservative Evangelical Protestant sect then one will probably become a creationist.

I find this insight/observation of yours quite disturbing (yet quite possibly true).
Evangelism imposed on children, can be likened to intense pressure imposed on the human mind during a very sensitive stage of mental development.
As a parent, the notion that all children are born with 'original sin' is also one of the most potentially psychologically destructive notions I can imagine.
I think conservatism of any kind, tends to oppose the objective exploration of one's own (human) mind(?)
PS: I'm not sure about all that though(?)

 

[AV1611VET]

As a parent, the notion that all children are born with 'original sin' is also one of the most potentially psychologically destructive notions I can imagine.

Instead we're animals doing what animals do?

That might explain on paper why Klebold & Harris went feral, but the Bible has a better explanation.

 

[Speedwell]

Instead we're animals doing what animals do?

We are animals, but we have capabilities which the other animals do not. Do you ever actually read that story, or do you just use it, like you use the Gospels, merely as a source of anti-evolutionary proof texts?

 

[coffee4u]

I think it depends on which denomination of Christianity a person is evangelized by. If it's a conservative Evangelical Protestant sect then one will probably become a creationist.

I was not evangelized by one particular group. A few people planted seeds but what converted me was scripture itself.
Hebrews 4:12
For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.
I am a creationist because this is what scripture teaches and I believe God over men any day.

 

[coffee4u]

We are animals, but we have capabilities which the other animals do not. Do you ever actually read that story, or do you just use it, like you use the Gospels, merely as a source of anti-evolutionary proof texts?

No, we are not animals, we were made separately from them and given both a spirit and soul. We were made in the image of God.

Animals are one kind of flesh and we are another.
1 Corinthians 15:39
Not all flesh is the same: People have one kind of flesh, animals have another, birds another and fish another.
You can go with man's classifications but I will go with God's.

 

[AV1611VET]

We are animals, but we have capabilities which the other animals do not.

And vice versa, so what's the point?

 

[AV1611VET]

No, we are not animals, we were made separately from them and given both a spirit and soul. We were made in the image of God.

Shhhhh! You're giving deep dark secrets away!

 

[Speedwell]

No, we are not animals, we were made separately from them and given both a spirit and soul. We were made in the image of God.

Animals are one kind of flesh and we are another.
1 Corinthians 15:39
Not all flesh is the same: People have one kind of flesh, animals have another, birds another and fish another.
You can go with man's classifications but I will go with God's.

That's fine, but from the scientific standpoint (including medical science) the distinction is not useful so it is not made. As a practical proposition we are very similar to animals even if we were created separately by miraculous means.

 

[AV1611VET]

As a practical proposition we are very similar to animals even if we were created separately by miraculous means.

How similar?

 

[Speedwell]

How similar?

Physiologically? All but identical.

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

Instead we're animals doing what animals do?

That might explain on paper why Klebold & Harris went feral, but the Bible has a better explanation.

Typically, the more we know about the causal origins of such behaviours, the better we understand how they arise and how they may be avoided in future. OTOH trite scriptural 'explanations' give no such opportunity.

 

[AV1611VET]

Typically, the more we know about the causal origins of such behaviours, the better we understand how they arise and how they may be avoided in future. OTOH trite scriptural 'explanations' give no such opportunity.

"Causal origins"? We're animals, aren't we?

You've never heard of animals fighting each other? eating their young? having adulterous relationships?

Isn't that natural among animals? why should we try to avoid them?

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

We're animals, aren't we?

Indeed we are. We're mammals, primates, hominid apes.

You've never heard of animals fighting each other? eating their young? having adulterous relationships?

Isn't that natural among animals? why should we try to avoid them?

Animals vary in their behaviours; we have a superior capability for learning from experience, individually and culturally, and for planning changes to our environment and behaviour to achieve long-term goals.

In practice, history shows that our unconscious (animalistic?) drives and motivations often undermine or overwhelm our high-level plans (which are themselves subject to their influence). Our animal origins are all too apparent.

 

[AV1611VET]

Animals vary in their behaviours; we have a superior capability for learning from experience, individually and culturally, and for planning changes to our environment and behaviour to achieve long-term goals.

But you're going against nature, are you not?

 

[Speedwell]

But you're going against nature, are you not?

Of course. But as the noted theologian Rose Sayer once said, "Human nature, Mr. Allnut, is what we were put in this world to rise above."

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

But you're going against nature, are you not?

I don't really see it in those terms. It's all natural, but some of it is more sophisticated, works at a higher level of abstraction or emergence.

There are a number of animals that have social rules and hierarchies of various complexity and sophistication, have degrees of cultural transmission, have varying capacities for planning, and so-on. We have these capabilities at a much higher level, but we're at one end of an evolutionary continuum of them. It's hard to see where to draw a line between what might be considered 'natural' and what might not; especially when, as I said, our unconscious drives and predispositions play such a large role in our behaviour.

It's another example of our (understandable) need to divide up a world of continua into distinct categories; unfortunately, it tends to lead to crude stereotypes that are taken to represent the world.

 

[AV1611VET]

Of course. But as the noted theologian Rose Sayer once said, "Human nature, Mr. Allnut, is what we were put in this world to rise above."

It's interesting that, when we claim we're human, academia reminds us we're animals.

But then when we act like animals, academia calls us humans.