[_ Old Earth _] The disconnect between morality, religions, and evolution.

[Gabe]

I did not mean to imply that you are actually morally vacuous, I was only using it as a rhetorical device to illustrate my point that we can objectively quantify "good" and "bad." I didn't intend to degrade the discourse and actually felt that the inevitable hostilities aside, this debate was informative and entertaining. We can draw it to a close if you wish - I much prefer discussing these topics with someone as level headed as yourself to people who consistently ignore others' points and disregard all context. Cheers, sir.

Thanks, I too found it to be enjoyable and am glad we can end this on good terms.

 

[BobRyan]

But since I know you want me to voice my outrage at their opinions, I'll give my thoughts: the whole debate to me is an odd one, and I obviously disagree with the conclusions of both. On one hand, I see a group unwilling to accept that their beliefs do not sync at all with the realities of the natural world. On the other I see a group that is able to accept the facts of the natural world and still insist that their book is reliable, instead of taking their understandings of reality to what I see as the natural conclusion - that their book is invalid.

1. Has anyone ever given any reason to suppose that the 5 books of Moses "preach Darwinism"?
2. Has anyone ever provided evidence to you that the Bible is a "darwinist document" or that Darwin was wrong to reject the Bible once he fully realized the extent of his Darwinism?

Do you ever imagine Darwinists would state THEIR BELIEFS in this fashion?

IV –
Ex 20
8 ""Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.
9 "" Six days you shall labor and do all your work,
10 but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the LORD your God; in it you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daughter, your male or your female servant or your cattle or your sojourner who stays with you.
11 "" For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day; therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.

That is an example of Moses' legal code -- commandment number 4 summarizing the creation event.

3. Does it appear to be difficult to read?
4. Does it appear to proclaim the Darwinist idea of origin of all species of life on earth? i.e HOW we got to this point of this level of diverse life forms?
5. Was Dawkins wrong in his statements about "Christians that proclaim Darwinism" being logically self-conflicted?

PBS – Dawkins Segment
http://www.pbs.org/faithandreason/trans ... frame.html


Bob

 

[Snidey]

Are you seriously trying to engage me, an atheist, in a debate of theistic evolution vs. creationism? Wow.

 

[BobRyan]

Are you seriously trying to engage me, an atheist, in a debate of theistic evolution vs. creationism? Wow.

No - I am asking you to simply state the obvious when it comes to the example and your fellow Atheist Richard Dawkins' conclusions about the fact that Christians who try to "have it both ways" being engaged in a logically conflicted task.

I am also asking why it is that when this gets pointed out to them -- even arguing in favor of Dawkins' argument above -- our atheist darwinists are so slow to speak up.

Essentially I don't find atheism or the agnostics to have a very good argument in general and I certainly find lots of holes in what atheist dawinist Colin Patterson calls "stories easy enough to make up". The ONE area I thought atheists and agnostics COULD contribute to -- was simply stating the obvious -- just as Dawkins did in that PBS interview, just as Darwin did in his later years and just as Provine did in the Movie Expelled.

Bob

 

[Snidey]

Speak up on what? I don't believe in the Bible being inerrant, so why do I need to square it with my scientific understanding of the world? I've made my opinions on this clear enough.

 

[BobRyan]

Speak up on what? I don't believe in the Bible being inerrant,

Obviously -- but that is not the question

so why do I need to square it with my scientific understanding of the world? .

You don't need to square it with anything -- all you have to do is comment on what Darwin, Dawkins and Provine did -- admit that "these two are not the same thing" in fact they are opposed to each other.

As can be seen clearly in that simple example I just gave - The bible is not proclaiming Darwinism nor even a compatible version of it.

Bob

 

[Snidey]

I do believe that a literal translation of the Bible is obviously not compatible with modern scientific understanding.

But what you're asking would be better addressed by someone who knows more about scripture than I do. If, for example, there is a great reason to not take Genesis literally, I don't know about it because that is a field I have very little interest in.

 

[BobRyan]

1. We are not talking about Genesis -- we are talking about Exodus and written "law".
2. The question is about the text itself not being "The way to express darwinism".


If as a Darwinist your answer is "yes we often refer to darinism in just those terms -- that is the way to symbolically or literally describe darwinism" then fine - say it.

If as Dawkins states the wording we see in the Bible and as Darwin stated about the Bible -- is NOTHING like Darwinism and is in fact opposed to it -- you could admit that obvious point as well.

Getting darwinists to admit to "the obvious" is like pulling teeth on these boards. Good thing we have Dawkins, Darwin and Provine ...

Bob

 

[Snidey]

1. But you're talking about Exodus as it relates to Genesis, right?

I do not believe in the Bible's stranglehold on truth.
I believe evolution occurs.

So what are you confused about here? I've already said that a literal translation of the Bible very much disagrees with my scientific views. The amount of finagling one would have to do to get the Bible to agree with me scientifically and ethically would be tantamount to rewriting a massive, massive portion of it.

 

[Gabe]

Bob, Snidey has already stated that he is an Atheist, he does not believe in God, he does not understand how a Christian can believe in both the Bible & evolution, if you want a more in-depth answer you should ask someone who has studied the Bible in more detail. What more do you want from him?

 

[BobRyan]

Darwin, Dawkins and Dr Provien are all avowed atheists (and in Darwinis case someone who admits his disbelief in Christianity was finally and at last COMPLETE due to the clear and glaring gap between what the bible actually says and what Darwinism teaches).

This is a question to an atheist about statements made BY atheist Darwinists - as they all claimed to see the SAME GAP between the Bible and Darwinism.

It hardly pays to go to a Christian and ask them if these Atheist Darwinists have the accurate view of "atheis darwinism" and it's gap from something like -- the Bible.

Bob

 

[BobRyan]

1. But you're talking about Exodus as it relates to Genesis, right?

that would be a very bold step -- I have tried to keep it simple. Just exodus 20:8-11 Just 5 short sentences... no rocket science here.

In this case the simple text -- 5 sentences and the gap that Darwkins, Darwin, Provine and Huxley all said they SAW between athiest Darwinism

I do not believe in the Bible's stranglehold on truth.

Obviously. I am not asking you if you think the Bible is true.

I am asking if you "see the gap" between what we SEE those 5 verses saying and what Darwinism teaches -- the SAME gap that Darwin, Dawkins, Provine and Huxley all admit to "existing"?

I've already said that a literal translation of the Bible very much disagrees with my scientific views. The amount of finagling one would have to do to get the Bible to agree with me scientifically and ethically would be tantamount to rewriting a massive, massive portion of it.

NOW we are getting some place. This is exactly where Dawkins and Provine were going. They admit that it is not a case of taking enough drugs to imagine Ex 20:8-11 to "be darwinism" rather it is a clear statement that the two statements on Origin (Darwin vs something like Ex 20L8-11) are in fact NOT in agreement and no amount of drug induced text-wrenching is going to fix it.

To put it in the venacular.

Bob

 

[BobRyan]

More "help" for those whose "disbelief in Christianity is COMPLETE" from one who agrees with them -- Darwin

Darwin


But I had gradually come by this time, i.e. 1836 to 1839, to see that the Old Testament was no more to be trusted than the sacred books of the Hindus….

By further reflecting… that the more we know of the fixed laws of nature the more incredible do miracle become, - that the men of the time were ignorant and credulous to a degree almost incomprehensible to us,- that the Gospels cannot be proved to have been written simultaneously with the events,- that they differ in many important details…

I gradually came to disbelieve in Christianity as a divine revelation…. But I was very unwilling to give up my belief; I feel sure of this, for I can well remember often and often inventing day-dreams of old letters between distinguished Romans… which confirmed in the most striking manner all that was written in the Gospels. But I found it more and more difficult, with free scope given to my imagination, to invent evidence which would suffice to convince me. Thus disbelief crept over me at a very slow rate but was at last complete. The rate was so slow that I felt no distress, and have never doubted even for a single second that my conclusion was correct.

Darwin (1887) III p. 308 [Barlow (1958)].[/i]

[/quote]

To his credit we must agree with Darwin that there is no peyote-esk "thought experiment" that is going to come up with "Moses preaching Darwinism but in an odd kinda way".

A perfect example of that is the "creation memorial" statement in the legal code of the "Ten Commandments "

IV –
Ex 20
8 ""Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.
9 "" Six days you shall labor and do all your work,
10 but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the LORD your God; in it you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daughter, your male or your female servant or your cattle or your sojourner who stays with you.
11 "" For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day; therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.

Bob

 

[BobRyan]

What more do you want from him?

Good question -- what I wanted "more" was that once we can get a clear statement that Darwin and Dawkins are right (from the atheist Darwinist POV) then when we find someone trying to marry the bible to Darwinism AS IF they are both saying the samething or at least similar and kinda compatible things -- we are "imagining" an atheist Bible where in fact none-exists and atheists (former Christians) like Darwin, Dawkins and Provine are correct in recognizing the gap.

On that point the YEC group and the Atheists agree. Dawkins points it out -- you would think that one or two other atheists would be brave enough to admit it as well.

Bob

 

[Snidey]

But I DID "admit" it, so why do you keep asking? I believe the Bible and modern science are basically incompatible and have said as much several times.

 

[BobRyan]

Great.

We have people on this board who argue that the Bible is compatible with evolutionism in places like this.

IV –
Ex 20
8 ""Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.
9 "" Six days you shall labor and do all your work,
10 but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the LORD your God; in it you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daughter, your male or your female servant or your cattle or your sojourner who stays with you.
11 "" For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day; therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.

At which point I usually argue that this text is nothing like Darwinism and should not be falsely represented AS IF this is teaching Darwinism. It is no more Darwinism than Dawkins' "flying spaghetti monsters".

PBS – Dawkins Segment
http://www.pbs.org/faithandreason/trans ... frame.html
Salient Points

QUESTION: If you could wave a magic wand and have the world be the way you think it should be, what would you see as being the proper relationship between science and religion today?

MR. DAWKINS: If I am asked is there a role for religion, would I just like to wave a magic wand and wipe it out? It's not quite so straightforward as that…
At the present we think DNA really is a double helix. If ever that's found to be false we throw it out of the window and we start again, and we don't try to rediscover some inner symbolic meaning, which is exactly what they're trying to do with things like the Book of Genesis. They have thrown it out as historical fact, which is what it always was thought to be, and which many of its authors presumably intended it to be -- and they have now replaced it with a symbolic meaning: the true meaning of the Book of Genesis is this that or the other. You know the kind of thing I'm talking about. I think that it is a waste of time. I think it's nonsense.

I find it odd that the Atheists and Agnostics who supposedly agree with Dawkins on this point -- never add their vote when the subject comes up.

Bob

 

[Snidey]

That's because the subject, as I said, requires a decent amount of scriptural knowledge. I've read the Bible, but I am unfamiliar with much of the scholarly work that has been done in interpreting it in a modern context.

 

[Rick W]

Bob,
I believe Snidey is being as honest as he can and I find I respect him for it.
Can we move on to other matters concerning this topic please?

To all,
I need no help or comment concerning my request but thanks anyway. :wink:

 

[Jayls5]

[quote="Gabriel Ali":5a040]
p-s- before you start claiming that people who believe in God are delutional or backwards, there was a survey carried out amongst scientists a hundred years or so ago (I forget the exact details but it shouldnt be too difficult to find out) and that same survey was carried out again a few years ago. the question asked was something like 'Do you believe in God?' about 48% of scientists said yes and the figure was almost unchanged in the second survey (much to Richard Dawkins frustration)

God bless

I hope you realize that "believing in God" is a vague term that can apply to pantheists and deists. Einstein "believed in God" yet was used disingenuously by the religious crowd to support religion. Frustrated, he wrote, "It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it." Some people just can't grasp the fact that God is a term used by scientists to describe a general structure of order in the universe we try to find out about.

That may well be the case, BUT NOT IN THIS INSTANCE, the actual question asked was '' Do you believe in a God who actively communicates with humankind and to whom one may pray in expectation of receiving an answer.''

These scientists clearly do believe in a God and not simply a general structure of order in the universe we try to find out about.


Below is an article from The New York Times:

Scientists have been accused of playing God when they clone sheep, and of naysaying God when they insist that evolution be taught in school, but as a new study indicates, many scientists believe in God by the most mainstream, uppercase definition of the concept.

Repeating verbatim a famous survey first conducted in 1916, Edward J. Larson of the University of Georgia has found that the depth of religious faith among scientists has not budged regardless of whatever scientific and technical advances this century has wrought.

Then as now, about 40 percent of the responding biologists, physicists and mathematicians said they believed in a God who, by the survey's strict definition, actively communicates with humankind and to whom one may pray ''in expectation of receiving an answer.'' Roughly 15 percent in both surveys claimed to be agnostic or to have ''no definite belief'' regarding the question, while about 42 percent in 1916 and about 45 percent today said they did not believe in a God as specified in the questionnaire, although whether they believed in some other definition of a deity or an almighty being was not addressed.

The figure of unqualified believers is considerably lower than that usually cited for Americans as a whole. Gallup polls, for example, have found that about 93 percent of people surveyed profess a belief in God. But those familiar with the survey said that, given the questionnaire's exceedingly restrictive definition of God -- narrower than the standard Gallup question -- and given scientists' training to say exactly what they mean and nothing more, the 40 percent figure in fact is impressively high.

More revealing than the figures themselves, experts said, are their stability. The fact that scientists' private beliefs remained unchanged across almost a century defined by change suggests that orthodox religion is no more disappearing among those considered the intellectual elite than it is among the public at large. The results also indicate that, while science and religion often are depicted as irreconcilable antagonists, each a claimant to the throne of truth, many scientists see no contradiction between a quest to understand the laws of nature, and a belief in a higher deity.

The results of Dr. Larson's survey, which he conducted with a religion writer, Larry Witham of Burtonsville, Md., are to appear today in the journal Nature.

Dr. Larson did not try to determine whether the scientists he polled were Christian, Jewish, Muslim or any other creed, whether they went to religious services or otherwise attended to the rituals of a particular faith. He merely wanted to see what had happened in the 80-plus years since the renowned psychologist James Leuba asked 1,000 randomly selected scientists if they believed in God.

Mr. Leuba, a devout atheist, had predicted that a disbelief in God would grow as education spread, and Dr. Larson decided to use the psychologist's exact methods to see if the prediction held.

He polled the same number of researchers as had Mr. Leuba and used the same source for picking his subjects -- the directory ''American Men and Women of Science,'' a compendium of researchers successful enough to win awards and be cited regularly in the scientific literature. He followed Mr. Leuba's survey format to the letter, with the same introduction and the same questions written in the same stilted language, even enclosing the same type of return envelope. More than 600 of about 1,000 scientists answered the questionnaire, similar to Mr. Leuba's response rate.

In addition to the question about a belief in an accessible God, the survey asked whether the respondents believed in personal immortality, and if not, whether they would desire immortality anyway. Here there were some changes in the responses. In Mr. Leuba's survey, 50 percent of the scientists said they believed in personal immortality, a puzzling and inconsistent figure given the more modest 40 percent belief in God. Moreover, many doubters confessed to a strong desire for immortality. Dr. Larson found that his two statistics, a belief in God and in life everlasting matched; and that those who didn't believe in personal immortality had little wish for it. ''I see this as a healthy trend,'' he said. ''People have become more consistent, confident and comfortable with their world views.''[/quote:5a040]

Ahh I finally caught this response just now. I'm glad someone finally wanted to be somewhat scientific about a study like this.

I wish they repeated the original experiment and went on to specify exactly what type of God each scientist believed though.

 

[Gabe]

Hi Jayls5, do you mean what religion they believe in?