Is evolution necessary?

[Late_Cretaceous]

Kookabura, being a creationist should not affect your ability to get a job anywhere. I am sure that in AUstralia, as here in Canada, it is illegal for a prospective employer to ask about your religious beliefs in a job interview (it is also illegal to deny employment to someone due to thier religious beleifs).

 

[Chris H]

I should have made myself more clear. I don't think it would eep her from getting a job. I think that a strict belief in a young earth viewpoint would keep her from accepting the findings of science.

Sorry about any confusion.

Chris

 

[Chris H]

Originally posted by fragmentsofdreams
I remember the difficulty my high school biology teacher had in phrasing the answer to a question that concerned evolution. She wanted to present the current scientific consensus but feared having to later deal with infuriated parents mad about her teaching evolution.

This is sad. Even if I were still a young earth creationist, I would want my children exposed to evolution so they knew what it was.

Chris

 

[MSBS]

Actually, I think it more likely that study of biology would lead her to modifiy her views (assuming she is a YEC) to that of at least OEC or theistic evolution. All of the biologists I know that are christians are either in one of those camps, or feel that christianity and evolution are not contradictory.

 

[Chris H]

I myself would be in that camp. Old earth creationism and thiestic evolution are much closer than most people think.

My wife is an Old earth Creationist and I have for the most part no problem with that viewpoint.

And let me make myself perfectly clear. I do NOT want Kookabura or anyone else to give up their faith because of evolution. Just the opposite. It's far better that she start thinking about this now as opposed to four years from now when she goes to a secular four year university and gets hit in the face with Evolutionary ideas.

Also, I think that Rufus Atticus, who posts in this forum is married to a Christian. Wildernesse is a poster on both this board and another board that I post on with Rufus. Rufus also has an advisor at the University of Georgia who studies genetics from an evolutionary point of view who is a devout Christian.

The Bear has also impressed me with his faith and some of the things that he has written. I'm not sure he believes fully in Evolution, but he seems to fully accept science and fully accept Christ as his personal Lord and Savior.

In Christ

Christopher

 

[RufusAtticus]

Chris,

My advisor is Christian, but I don't know enough about that part of her life to say whether she is "devout" or not. We do have a prof in our department who studies hybridization and speciation and is a conservative and devout Christian. (He once jokingly refered to himself as "right of Attila the Hun.") Yet this man has no problem with evolutionary theory and in fact taught the "macro" part of my undergraduate evolution course.

 

[Chris H]

Exactly my point. I thin that it is silly that so many Christians are afraid of evolution.

Seems to me the Bible said something about perfect love casting out all fear.

Chris

 

[Christian Soldier]

"Kookaburra: Do you go to the doctor? Ever been given antiobiotics? Vaccinations? Ever taken any drug that was tested on animals?

Evolution is a vital part of any doctor's visit, because human biology is explained in light of evolution.

If you don't want science taught in schools, feel free to remove your children from class. The rest of us will happily enjoy the smaller class sizes are our children learn science. And go on to make the biological breakthroughs (using evolution) that your children will enjoy."

----------------------------------------------

Yet another of Morat's standard, virtually fact-free posts.

Actually, the scientist who is considered the "father" of vaccinations is none other than Louis Pasteur---a staunch critic of evolution, Darwin, and the bogus hypothesis of spontaneous generation/abiogenesis.

Most of the founders of modern science were Christians.

 

[ocean]

Originally posted by Christian Soldier

Most of the founders of modern science were Christians.

That doesn't mean that they were Creationists.

 

[Lacmeh]

Christian soldier, it is one thing to discover, that there are such things as bacteria and that heat kills them (well atl east their living form).
It is quite another thing to prove, that a certain chemical compund is actually efficient against a certain illness and it works better than an already approved medication or has less harmful effects on humans.

Nowadays, without evolution you wouldn´t even have working antibiotika.

 

[Christian Soldier]

"That doesn't mean that they were Creationists."

They most certainly were.

 

[Christian Soldier]

"Christian soldier, it is one thing to discover, that there are such things as bacteria and that heat kills them (well atl east their living form).
It is quite another thing to prove, that a certain chemical compund is actually efficient against a certain illness and it works better than an already approved medication or has less harmful effects on humans.

Nowadays, without evolution you wouldn´t even have working antibiotika."

Everything you mentioned can be ascertained without any belief in molecules-to-man evolution or common ancestry. Your post is irrelevant.

 

[MSBS]

What does a researchers religous beliefs have to do with anything? A scientist could believe in fairies, but so long as his data is clean and his experiments replicable it doesn't matter-- his work will be peer reviewed and his theories examined by other scientists. End of story.

As for Pastuer, what does it matter about what he thought about Darwin? Einstein didn't like quantum mechanics, but that didn't effect the theory in any way. Many geologists didn't like plate tectonics....guess what? It didn't matter. Most new theories are not accepted by contemporary scientists in that field, mostly because all of the implications take a while to be worked out and older theories have yet to be entirely falsified. But a person's likes or dislikes really do not matter when it comes to the strength or weaknesses in a particular theory, what matters is what the data shows.

 

[Lacmeh]

Christian soldier, I suppose ignorance is bliss.
You might want to enlighten the FDA, that the basis al preclinical research and studies are pure bull[wash my mouth][wash my mouth][wash my mouth][wash my mouth], since the principles, that they are based upon are not true.
You also might want to have a serious talk with various bacteria to please stop gene transfer and mutations so that they don´t get immune to antibiotika, so that evolutional principles no longer apply to them.
You can then scold various plants to stop transferring their genes between different species, too, since this further proves a point of evolution.

 

[Morat]

 MSBS: I'm not sure that being a Creationist will stop him from being a biolgoist. Snelling does it in geology.

  Of course, he does it by being somewhat schizo. All his geological work is done by "pretending he believed in that old earth nonsense" and working the problems that way.

   All his Creationist work is done in creationist journals. I find it very interesting that YEC geologists are  forced to "pretend" to accept the prevailing geological model, if he wants to work for oil companies and mining concerns. Glenn Morton, I believe, dropped his YEC views because he realized that YEC geology wouldn't find oil, but regular 4.5 billion year old earth geology could.

  

 

[MSBS]

Morat,
Actually that was my point in an earlier post. My recomendation was to get an advanced degree doing research in areas that didn't conflict with her creationist ideas, and then once she had a nice solid CV (or maybe tenure ) she could research what she wanted.

Interesting about Glenn Morton, I kind of suspect that a similar thing would happen to anyone doing actual research in biology (well in molecular biology anyways, who knows what the field biologists would come up with)