Is evolution atheistic?

[npetreley]

Interesting reading. I particularly enjoyed this...

This intellectual and spiritual fraud can be better exposed by challenging them to show ONE evolutionary journal where God plays a role in evolution. If there is at least one currently-accepted version of evolution which is compatible with the existence of God, then it should easily be possible to locate some mention of a God-directed evolutionary theory (in a biology text or a biology journal). Needless to say, there is none. This clearly shows that those who insist on a Creator God and organic evolution happily coexisting are simply rhetorically papering over the irreconcilable conflict between the two.

Indeed, "theistic evolution" is simply a semantic invention, and no such thing as "theistic evolution" exists ANYWHERE in the biological sciences. It is merely a nominal religious belief tacked on to an atheistic evolutionary system. (To elaborate and illustrate this fact, see my Fable about the Horse and Tractor: http://www.rae.org/jwindex.html; along with some of my other anti-evolutionary articles there, all courtesy of Doug Sharp).

http://www.rae.org/firing.html

 

[npetreley]

By the way, this article addresses most of the (IMO) evolutionist blather that gets posted here.

 

[LiveFreeOrDie]

Wow. I guess then by this logic that chemistry, physics, geology, grammar, algebra, and calculus are atheistic too.

After all, I've never seen ONE journal article for any of the above where God plays a role.

 

[Morat]

  I'll show you one. As soon as you show me a chemistry, physics, geology, thermodynamics or botany journal that mentions God. Or a text on software engineering. Or a Linux reference manual.

   I'm not surprised you enjoyed it, Nick. You seem to find the stupidest reasoning appealing for some reason.

 

 

[secularfuture]

"Is evolution atheistic?"

NO!

Evolution, by definiton, only talks about how life has changed over time. It doesn't talk about where "everything" came from.

 

[blader]

It ain't atheistic. It's just scientific.

 

[ocean]

No it's not atheistic.

 

[Corey]

Originally posted by npetreley
Interesting reading. I particularly enjoyed this...

Please give a reference to any article published in the mainstream scientific literature that comes to the conclusion, "Thus God does not exist," based on the theory of evolution.

In other words, put up or shut up.

 

[Nathan Poe]

Originally posted by npetreley
By the way, this article addresses most of the (IMO) evolutionist blather that gets posted here.

*RANT MODE ON*

I suppose to a chimpanzee, the works of Shakespeare would be considered "blather."

*RANT MODE OFF*

Ok, now that I got that out of my system...

Let me explain this very clearly. EVOLUTION IS NOT, BY DEFINITION, ATHEISTIC. It makes no claims whatsoever against the existence of God. Evolution does not claim there is no God. Unlike Creationism, evolution can happen regardless of whether God exists or not.

Creationism, on the other hand, hangs solely upon principles which cannot, nor ever can, be proven scientifically. But they insist on calling it "science" anyway.

EVOLUTION DOES NOT SAY: "God doesn't exist."

EVOLUTION DOES SAY: "The variety of life on Earth could've gotten this way by itself, without help from God."

It is an interesting article, though. I scanned over it briefly and found it to be quite amusing in it's willful ignorance. The whole site is good for a study/laugh. They researched their facts carefully; they knew exactly which ones to ignore.

 

[npetreley]

Originally posted by secularfuture
Evolution, by definiton, only talks about how life has changed over time.

From the same article:

2. THE EVOLUTIONISTS' SLICK GAME OF DEFINITIONS:

As usual, the evolutionists tried to define evolution as "change through time". That way, the viewing public would be led to believe that anyone who does not believe in evolution must believe in a perfectly static earth. This evolutionary chicanery also facilitates this common non-sequitur: If you agree that any change occurs in living systems, or in populations of living systems, then you must also admit that molecules-to-man evolution takes place. After all, they are merely different degrees of the same process--or so the evolutionists would have us believe.

...

5. NO FINAL CAUSES--REALLY?

Evolutionists are very disengenuous when they say that "science does not deal with final causes". Evolutionary theory certainly does--if not by statement then certainly by implication. And it most certainly is not limited to the late Carl Sagan and his transparently atheistic assertion about the physical cosmos "being all there is and all that ever will be." Since evolutionary theory is built entirely without God, and God has absolutely no place in ANY step of the evolutionary process (including the very origins of life), it is obvious that evolutionary theory IS making a tacit statement about final causes--and an atheistic one at that.

 

[ocean]

It's obvious that this article is very biased.

 

[LiveFreeOrDie]

2. THE EVOLUTIONISTS' SLICK GAME OF DEFINITIONS:

As usual, the evolutionists tried to define evolution as "change through time". That way, the viewing public would be led to believe that anyone who does not believe in evolution must believe in a perfectly static earth. This evolutionary chicanery also facilitates this common non-sequitur: If you agree that any change occurs in living systems, or in populations of living systems, then you must also admit that molecules-to-man evolution takes place. After all, they are merely different degrees of the same process--or so the evolutionists would have us believe.

Where's the alleged chicanery? Is the chosen definition somehow inaccurate? It ain't the evolutionists' fault that the fact of evolution is bleedingly obvious to anyone willing to look at the evidence objectively.

5. NO FINAL CAUSES--REALLY?

Evolutionists are very disengenuous when they say that "science does not deal with final causes". Evolutionary theory certainly does--if not by statement then certainly by implication. And it most certainly is not limited to the late Carl Sagan and his transparently atheistic assertion about the physical cosmos "being all there is and all that ever will be." Since evolutionary theory is built entirely without God, and God has absolutely no place in ANY step of the evolutionary process (including the very origins of life), it is obvious that evolutionary theory IS making a tacit statement about final causes--and an atheistic one at that.

Evolution relies on random mutations to produce variation. Is science so complete that we fully explain the final causes of each random change?

Then there's natural selection. Some organisms live to reproduce and others die. Often the difference between one and the other is luck.

In both cases, there is plenty of room for God's invisible hand to tip the balance one direction or the other.

 

[Morat]

  Notice: Nick has retreated from his initial question, "Is evolution atheistic", and has now frantically changed the subject away from the initial 'proof' that you never see God in evolutionary papers, towards an extrapolation of evolutionary theory.

  So Nick's goalposts have now been moved to "Can evolution be used to support atheism"?

  And, by the way, "change in allele frequencies over time" is a slightly better phrasing of it.

 

[Humanista]

This reminds me of a post by someone on another message board who announced that anything that didn't reference God specifically was atheistic, because atheism literally means "without God". Examples of atheistic things including going to the bathroom, or school kids at recess--he believed every possible thing had to be either about God or atheistic.

By this thinking, the following things are atheistic:

Your shoes
Learning to type
Cooking
The first stanza of The Star Spangled Banner
Math
Music theory

 

[Nathan Poe]

Originally posted by npetreley
From the same article:

"2. THE EVOLUTIONISTS' SLICK GAME OF DEFINITIONS:

As usual, the evolutionists tried to define evolution as "change through time". That way, the viewing public would be led to believe that anyone who does not believe in evolution must believe in a perfectly static earth. This evolutionary chicanery also facilitates this common non-sequitur: If you agree that any change occurs in living systems, or in populations of living systems, then you must also admit that molecules-to-man evolution takes place. After all, they are merely different degrees of the same process--or so the evolutionists would have us believe.

Classic Strawman tactic. They can't refute the real definition of evolution, so they make one up and argue against their own invention.  The "molecules-to-man" part is an especially blantant oversimplification, but a common one.

 

[Chris H]

Originally posted by blader
It ain't atheistic. It's just scientific.

Exactly.

Nick, you've been shown a ton of evidence here and also when you posted on the SecWeb. I'd be really interested in your actual thoughts on this evidence.

Chris

 

[chickenman]

well done npeterly, perhaps your most ridiculous post

going by their criteria physics is atheistic npeterly, do you advocate removing it from schools?

I don't know of a single physics text book that mentions god