The "unified" theory of evolution

[Warden_of_the_Storm]

Actually I would.

Colour me doubtful, but I'll give it a shot.

The scientists, members of the Italian National Commission for the Forecast and Prevention of Major Risks, messed up because it is literally 100% impossible to predict when an earthquake will occur and how severe it will be. They literally had no way of knowing the the earthquake that occurred in 2009 would be as strong as it would be. Hence why their charges were manslaughter. They had no intention of misleading anyone with their findings, even though they were wrong. They made a mistake unwillingly.

Hovind knew what he was doing when he withheld paying taxes and continuously refused to pay his taxes, and in doing so even broke away from scripture of "Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's". The man was earning millions of dollars and he refused to pay any taxes on it, which was a total of $3.3 million. Hovind had no intention of paying those taxes, he refused to admit that he was wrong and he made that mistake willingly.

So it all boils down to intent, and how willingly they had committed to their mistakes.

Do you now understand why I said it's a case of apples and oranges?

 

[AV1611VET]

Do you now understand why I said it's a case of apples and oranges?

Yes, and I don't agree.

First of all, the comrades in L'Aquila, if they were as ignorant as you say, shouldn't have advised anyone that it was safe to go back home.

Second of all, Mr Hovind, at least in his mind, thought he had worked out a way of avoiding to pay taxes. Thus -- again, in his mind -- he wasn't wrong.

 

[Warden_of_the_Storm]

Yes, and I don't agree.

First of all, the comrades in L'Aquila, if they were as ignorant as you say, shouldn't have advised anyone that it was safe to go back home.

Second of all, Mr Hovind, at least in his mind, thought he had worked out a way of avoiding to pay taxes. Thus -- again, in his mind -- he wasn't wrong.

But they were both wrong though.

 

[Hans Blaster]

Oh, ok. It's too bad that the theory of evolution is seen as the 'crux' of the modern day apostasy. I know that it can be an issue for some people (such as it was for Rhett McLaughlin of the "Rhett and Link" show), but for the most part, I don't see how evolution and deep time should be a deal breaker for biblical belief and thus a locus of evangelical sparring with atheists.

Rigidity is a major factor. If a doctrine is rigid about evolution being false, learning that it isn't can break a religious faith. The same with biblical literalism, or anything that treats a doctrine or church as the only true way.

 

[2PhiloVoid]

Rigidity is a major factor. If a doctrine is rigid about evolution being false, learning that it isn't can break a religious faith. The same with biblical literalism, or anything that treats a doctrine or church as the only true way.

Agreed.

 

[AV1611VET]

Agreed.

Rigidity can be tough.

It can lead to two years of house arrest (Galileo); or it can lead to days of significant ridicule (Frances Kelsey).

 

[BCP1928]

Agreed.

I have also noticed that creationists lean toward Dispensationlism and don't like to let go of that timeline, but in general the major objection to it from Evangelical theogians has been over the evolution of man. For instance, the Butler Act only prohibited teaching the evolution of man, not evolution generally. At the trial, the prosecuting councel, William Jennings Bryan, declared that he didn't know how old the Earth was, and didn't really care. YECism was all but moribund until the 1960s when The Genesis Flood came out

 

[2PhiloVoid]

Rigidity can be tough.

It can lead to two years of house arrest (Galileo); or it can lead to days of significant ridicule (Frances Kelsey).

Rigidity is a hermeneutical choice, really. And even just existentially speaking, I tend to decline from equating it as a synonym for commitment to truth.

 

[AV1611VET]

Rigidity is a hermeneutical choice, really. And even just existentially speaking, I tend to decline from equating it as a synonym for commitment to truth.

Do you agree that a person can be sincere, but sincerely wrong?

 

[NxNW]

I believe that atheists have a God-concept that they are rejecting, which leads them to reject the existence of God entirely. One cannot reject what one does not have.

You've got the definition completely wrong. Atheists do not reject God, we simply lack a belief in God(s).

If one does not reject the existence of God, they are an agnostic, not an atheist.

A moderator might want to have a better understanding of the term.

 

[NxNW]

Or directly from the soil:

Genesis 2:7 KJV
7 And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.

From dust we came and to dust we return.

We all come from stardust, created in a Supernova.

 

[2PhiloVoid]

Do you agree that a person can be sincere, but sincerely wrong?

Sure. That's why I like to cite Romans 10:2 as an example of that sort of thing.

 

[AV1611VET]

We all come from stardust, created in a Supernova.

Au contraire:

 

[linux.poet]

I have no idea what this was about, but apparently I had to define atheist for you.

This topic is about whether human beings are apes or not. I gave a large amount of scientific studies to back up my points that humans are different from other apes, which has been ignored by some.

A previous post that was made stated "I also don't have a concept of god, like many fellow apes.", which apparently was trying to make the following logical argument:

Premise 1: Chimpanzees do not have a concept of God. Chimpanzees are apes.
Premise 2: I do not have a concept of God.
Conclusion: I am an ape.

I attacked premise 2, because I believe it's incorrect, and so that led us to discussing whether you have a concept of God and what atheism is.

However, on the face of it, the argument is absurd even if I don't attack premise 2.

Premise 1: Chimpanzees do not have a concept of God. Chimpanzees are apes.
Premise 2: I do have a concept of God.
Conclusion: I am not an ape.

So this argument basically does nothing, because all it does is say that all people who do not have a concept of God are apes and all people who do have a concept of God are not apes. Belief in Christianity is all it takes to be elevated back to being human and made in the image of God and not longer being equated to an animal.

They certainly don't and I do disregard their messengers.

Never been affected by one.

Everyone who has to work for a living or who has given birth has been affected by God.

Cursed is the ground because of you;
With hard labor you shall eat from it
All the days of your life.
18 Both thorns and thistles it shall grow for you;
Yet you shall eat the plants of the field;
19 By the sweat of your face
You shall eat bread,
Until you return to the ground,
Because from it you were taken;
For you are dust,
And to dust you shall return.”

Somehow I think it is unlikely that a human being can go through life without having encountered hard labor, work, or weeds. Genesis 3:17-19 describes how reality works on this planet. Every time you see a weed, that is God affecting you. Every time you go to work, that's God. Everyone is affected by His displeasure at our sin and the adversity that creation throws at us.

If evolution were true, the creation would be disordered, chaotic, and it would obey our will entirely. I could wish for a box of Cheerios to show up on my doorstep tomorrow and there would be a 50/50 chance that it would actually show up, spontaneously and out of the blue. That's not how the universe works. It's not governed by random chaos, it's ordered by natural laws.

These natural laws dictate that, if I wish to obtain Cheerios, I have to do some kind of labor in exchange for money, which I have to take to a store. And Cheerios don't arrive on the store shelves spontaneously either - they have to be made from grown plants and chemicals and machines, all of which took a massive amount of human expertise, toil, hard labor in fields and factories. Fortunately, this cost is distributed across a vast number of people who want Cheerios, so I have my fellow Cheerios customers to thank for the fact that I can buy this product, and all of their labor across multiple different industries, for the fact that I can sit in my kitchen and eat Cheerios.

Therefore, Genesis 3:17-19 explains reality better than evolution does. Chaos runs downhill to benefit the greatest intelligence to take advantage of it. If evolution were true, one of us would be God. But the creation does not subject itself to our will, which indicates that we are struggling against a greater intelligence than our own that is displeased with our actions.

Rest assured, if I were in charge of the universe, hard work and weeds would be among the first things to be abolished. I most certainly am not responsible for them, and neither is any other human.

What definition? You gave three.

“gods may exist, but they don’t affect me, so I’m good”

Strobel's analysis of evolutionary biology is about as balanced as a ladder with a leg missing and reads about as true as a Roman coin marked 'VII BC'.

I was 12 when I read Strobel, and I already stated that my research sources may not have been the best. I think I can give some grace to my CPTSD-affected 12-year-old self for not being the best apologetics researcher to walk the earth. Likewise, Strobel is a journalist, not a scientist, and he was biased, perhaps ever-so-slightly, by his wife's conversion to Christianity. He wanted to resolve his painful personal crisis, and that biased his research.

Point is that I don't casually believe things without researching them, which I was accused of. In response to that accusation, I provided my sources for my information and gave my information about how I came to faith in Christ.

I should point out that the quickest and easiest solution for my own painful personal crisis would have been atheism at multiple points later on, probably drugs and lying, cheating, and stealing. That would not have been the best solution over the long term, but it certainly would have helped. I chose to work hard for the best solution, and in doing so, suffered more than I would have otherwise. My intuition tells me that I made all the right choices and that those choices will pay off in the next decade, but what do I know? Point is that atheism and Christianity both offered solutions, and I chose my solution.

You've got the definition completely wrong. Atheists do not reject God, we simply lack a belief in God(s).

And not having a belief in God is rejecting God and what He says, because He claims to be the authority over mankind. When you say "God doesn't exist", you are rejecting God's authority over your life. Multiple passages of Scripture indicate God's authority over mankind, most notably the famous Decalogue aka the 10 commandments. Jesus claims authority over heaven and earth. Disregarding authority has negative consequences.

It has been my understanding that most atheists who flip from Christianity to atheism do so because the Christian communities they were living in disapproved of their actions (whether truly sinful or not, some Christian communities can flip out over things that don't matter) and they wanted to continue those actions. The root of atheism is a disregard for the authority of the Christian community and God Himself and wanting to continue in sin in complete disregard for God's authority.

That's not how everyone ends up in atheism, however. Some people were raised in it and blindly believed what their parents told them, like many other beliefs. Other people had no clue what to believe, and they researched the science and other data, and found that atheism had a greater emotional appeal (they liked it better) because the sin nature of mankind likes atheism better. Human default mode is break the rules and go for the druggie sex parties and laugh at authority.

A moderator might want to have a better understanding of the term.

A moderator might want people to do what they say. If a moderator says "do not post this in this thread" in their mod role, they might want people to do just that, or face negative consequences.

If a person believes that forum moderators don't exist, they will not obey the website TOS or heed any actions that the moderators take against them or follow their instructions. This person rejects said forum moderator. The mod in question probably will not take it personally, but it's still a rejection of them as a person because that person is a forum moderator. Clearly said moderator believes forum moderation has some value, otherwise they wouldn't be doing it.

Likewise, the Bible and the 10 commandments are this universe's Terms of Service. If you reject God's Terms of Service for His creation, eventually the vast numbers of rule violations will get you banned to the outer darkness where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. You also reject His authority, which means that you reject Him because He gave you the rules. Therefore, failing to believe in God is rejecting His authority, and rejecting His authority is rejecting Him.



Okay, I think most people believe that forum moderators exist. If not, when they get banned, they would benefit from changing their beliefs. But getting banned, if you're guilty, means that you lose access to the services of that forum, which might be useful. Likewise, if we as humans loose permanent access to the resources of our environment, it doesn't look good for us. Weeks without food, days without water, minutes without oxygen, we are dead! Getting banned from God's creation isn't an option we can just entertain casually. Our survival literally depends on the creation God made.

(And yes, that's not what was meant here, but I couldn't resist. I think it meant "You should understand our definition in order to mod the forum better", in which case thanks, but I couldn't resist borrowing this comment to turn it into an analogy to make my own point. I'm a terrible person sometimes.)

We all come from stardust, created in a Supernova.

We got some rock star creationism on the house here.

 

[Bradskii]

This topic is about whether human beings are apes or not. I gave a large amount of scientific studies to back up my points that humans are different from other apes...

Showing that there are differences doesn't address the fact that both are apes. It's no good pointing out that a goldfish and a shark are different if the point being made is that they are both fish.

A previous post that was made stated "I also don't have a concept of god, like many fellow apes.", which apparently was trying to make the following logical argument:

Premise 1: Chimpanzees do not have a concept of God. Chimpanzees are apes.
Premise 2: I do not have a concept of God.
Conclusion: I am an ape.

That argument is as logically sound as this one:

Premise 1: Sardines do not have a concept of God. Sardines are fish.
Premise 2: I do not have a concept of God.
Conclusion: I am a sardine.

In other words, it's completely illogical. Nobody has made such a nonsensical argument.

 

[linux.poet]

Now, I must nit-pick your choice of the word concede. I made no concession that humans were stewards of life. That implies a reluctance to agree that this stewardship is a "fact". Indeed to the extent that I consider anything a given, then this is one that I insist upon.

My apologies for this. If it is any comfort, I agree with this, and would like to go to a future where we take better care of our world instead of exploiting it.

If I understand your point correctly the uncertainties I see are removed for you through faith. I acknowledge the power of faith, I just don't accept its value. (Correct me if I misrepresented your position.)

I don't think so. I believe, based on Scripture and all the scientific evidence available to me, that human beings are not apes and that they are distinct from apes. Human beings are made in the image of God, created by God, and are not animals. We are responsible for being stewards of the creation and taking care of the animals, but we are not animals.

I don't accept anything as true. I merely accept some things as being more likely than others and act, pragmatically, on that basis. Scientific evidence, or rational argument are the two most common ways by which I would arrive at such acceptance.

What do you do when the statistical probability of something being true reaches 100%? I don't think that a human being (or frankly, almost any animal) can operate without beliefs. That is because human beings (and other animals) take action based on inputs from their environment.

Putting it on a probabilistic spectrum aka "more likely than others" doesn't change this fact. Let's take a simple chair. Every time I sit down in my chair, I believe that my chair will support my weight and I will not fall to the floor. This belief can be verified by the scientific method: experimentally, I have sat down in this chair hundreds of times and I expect this chair to behave as a support for my weight because it has done so hundreds of times. If I were feeling more feisty, I could examine the materials of my chair, calculate a weight rating for those materials, and conclude based on all of that data that all of my chairs in my house will hold my weight if I sit on them. I could examine different structures and calculate the relative strength of each one scientifically, and conclude the chair with the highest probability of holding my weight.

It also doesn't matter whether I use the word "belief" or acceptance. I can accept "chairs that are intact and structurally sound hold my weight" as a part of my reality, or whether I believe "this chair is structurally sound and will hold my weight" - the result is the same: I sit in the chair. Having no beliefs (or "acceptances" that are basically beliefs) leads to immobile insanity because nobody has time to really question the scientifically proven structural stability of chairs.

Before I move on from this, I should point out that, inductively, if I see a plastic chair that has a hole in the seat and what looks like a badly damaged chair leg, and someone tells me to go sit there, I'm going to examine the leg that looks like it won't support me. I will test "this chair will support me" as a hypothesis because clearly the other person thinks the chair is safe to sit in. If the examination reveals that the chair leg is broken and the chair will not support me, my acceptance or belief in "this chair will support me" will drop below my threshold into "unbelief" or "not acceptance" and I will not sit in the chair. There is a certain level of belief or acceptance that is required for me to sit on the chair, and a certain level of doubt or unbelief that will prevent me from sitting on said chair.

Chemically, actions are emotions in the body. Information --> beliefs --> emotions --> actions. A certain amount of information has to be given to a human or other animal to decide what to believe and at what strength, which builds up enough brain chemicals to order actions in the brains of organisms.

I rather think it is the reverse: emotions can lead to beliefs. That can be dangerous.

What can happen is that beliefs and emotions can turn into a feedback loop. That's because emotions also affect how we perceive reality

Belief --> emotion (usually a negative one) --> perception (distorted) --> information --> belief --> emotion, and so on. I already cited at least one study above that states that fear and anxiety can inhabit information processing. It's also well known that anger can do the same thing - both of those emotions trigger the amygdala which inhabits activity in the prefrontal cortex, where our thoughts and logical thinking are located.

In adolescence, most humans face the challenge of "pulling" emotionally held beliefs out and subjecting them to our prefrontal cortex and to our own reason. That's because the prefrontal cortex is the last part of the brain to develop in humans. Some humans never got around to doing that process and get locked in the death spiral I just described above, with disastrous results.

Stopping the cycle involves a stop - withdraw - pause - evaluate process, where I stop, withdraw from the intense emotional situation and "put it on hold", pause to get the intense emotional chemicals out of my body, and then evaluate the situation using my reason instead of my body's flood of chemicals, then decide on a course of action and then act, with Information being the first part of the chain.

The success of chimpanzees with sign languages have almost certainly been overrated. On the other hand it is only within the last year or so that we have managed to understand how complex chimpanzee communication actually is. (With the usual caveat of "I'd like to see further researchers produce similar results, depsite a critical attitude to the original research before accepting it as the best explanation . . . .")
You see, from my perspective, you are judging these fellow creatures by human standards. By human standards, no other creature can hold a candle to us. However, I find myself insufficiently species-centric to assume human standards are the right ones.

Thanks for actually responding to the scientific part of my post. I look forward to updating my knowledge of chimpanzee research with better information.

There are two problems I see with this approach. The first is that it may not really be possible for humans to meet the standards of other species. It's too open-ended - which species is the standard? Do we even know what success looks like for a crow or a salmon? Do dolphins hold professional success seminars? Do other species even have standards? It seems that each species is unique with their own purpose, and we would be better off trying to fulfill our own while letting them fulfill theirs.

And technically, Christianity isn't about human standards, it's about God's standards.

 

[linux.poet]

Secondly, no-one believes in atheism.

Spoken like a true atheist.

Atheism is a belief, which is based in the unprocessed emotions of the sin nature of mankind in the believer of atheism, and the sin nature is the human default. The objective of atheism is to disregard the authority of God in hopes of becoming God and controlling everything, including the known universe.

Evolution, by contrast, is a scientific theory based on reason and analysis, made by a Christian to describe the reproductive behavior of finches. It was co-opted by secularists operating under Jean Jacques Rousseau's philosophy of mankind being basically good, as opposed to basically sinful. Evolution's explanation of origins is strikingly similar to Rousseau's Discourses, even though Rousseau predates Darwin by about 30 years. Rousseau died in 1778 and Darwin was born in 1809. This means that Rousseau's philosophy was already circulating around Europe and was firmly in the hold of intellectual circles by the time Darwin was writing the Origin of Species.

Science was originally a Catholic-developed institution in Western Europe, and most prominent scientists in the early years of science were Christians. Therefore, science and Christianity are compatible ideas, since having a better understanding of God's creation is for God's glory and honor. Scientific advancements have extended human life and given people a longer time to accept the Gospel and consider the claims of Christ, not to mention furthering missions efforts around the world.

Therefore, once one subjects their sinful emotions to God's commands, this subjects the entire human system to reason and it starts clearing the painful lies and intense controlling emotions out of one's head. That's what happened when Science was first developed. The Holy Spirit was working on brains in Western Europe for thousands of years, undoing centuries of insane human beliefs until we were able to start mastering God's creation again and figuring out details of it we previously had no access to.

That argument is as logically sound as this one:

Premise 1: Sardines do not have a concept of God. Sardines are fish.
Premise 2: I do not have a concept of God.
Conclusion: I am a sardine.

In other words, it's completely illogical. Nobody has made such a nonsensical argument.

I think this post was meant seriously, but it made me laugh IRL so hard that tears ran down my face. The problem is, I agree with you that the argument is completely illogical, but other posts in the topic claim kinship with fish too, so this absurd syllogism actually does carry some weight here. Thanks for helping me out.

 

[BCP1928]

Spoken like a true atheist.

Atheism is a belief, which is based in the unprocessed emotions of the sin nature of mankind in the believer of atheism, and the sin nature is the human default. The objective of atheism is to disregard the authority of God in hopes of becoming God and controlling everything, including the known universe.

Evolution, by contrast, is a scientific theory based on reason and analysis, made by a Christian to describe the reproductive behavior of finches. It was co-opted by secularists operating under Jean Jacques Rousseau's philosophy of mankind being basically good, as opposed to basically sinful. Evolution's explanation of origins is strikingly similar to Rousseau's Discourses, even though Rousseau predates Darwin by about 30 years. Rousseau died in 1778 and Darwin was born in 1809. This means that Rousseau's philosophy was already circulating around Europe and was firmly in the hold of intellectual circles by the time Darwin was writing the Origin of Species.

Science was originally a Catholic-developed institution in Western Europe, and most prominent scientists in the early years of science were Christians. Therefore, science and Christianity are compatible ideas, since having a better understanding of God's creation is for God's glory and honor. Scientific advancements have extended human life and given people a longer time to accept the Gospel and consider the claims of Christ, not to mention furthering missions efforts around the world.

Therefore, once one subjects their sinful emotions to God's commands, this subjects the entire human system to reason and it starts clearing the painful lies and intense controlling emotions out of one's head. That's what happened when Science was first developed. The Holy Spirit was working on brains in Western Europe for thousands of years, undoing centuries of insane human beliefs until we were able to start mastering God's creation again and figuring out details of it we previously had no access to.


I think this post was meant seriously, but it made me laugh IRL so hard that tears ran down my face. The problem is, I agree with you that the argument is completely illogical, but other posts in the topic claim kinship with fish too, so this absurd syllogism actually does carry some weight here. Thanks for helping me out.

They don't claim kinship with fish based on that ridiculous logic, that's on you. But throughout your posts I get the sense that for you the theory of evolution somehow denies or excludes the existence of a creator God. That is a blatant falsehood, so it's not a useful idea to put much work into an argument based on it.

 

[BCP1928]

If evolution were true, the creation would be disordered, chaotic, and it would obey our will entirely.

That's so wrong it's just silly. No logic behind that one at all. I get the "disordered and chaotic" part. Many creationists are under that delusion, but why would creation obey man's will entirely?

 

[AV1611VET]

They don't claim kinship with fish based on that ridiculous logic, that's on you. But throughout your posts I get the sense that for you the theory of evolution somehow denies or excludes the existence of a creator God. That is a blatant falsehood, so it's not a useful idea to put much work into an argument based on it.

The theory of evolution is not going to be a viable defense at the Great White Throne Judgement.

It may have had an impact at the Scopes Monkey Trial, but it won't work in God's court.