You have talked about evolution by natural selection and intelligent design. Let us not forget that there is a third elephant in the room. It is known as theistic evolution or evolutionary creationism. Wikipedia has an article on it here. Also, I have a link to the Wikipedia article about Francis Collins, the former leader of the Human Genome Project, who believes in God-guided evolution and says that intelligent design is pure hogwash.
Crazy, God was a child.
I know I loved playing with my dinosaur toys when I was a kid.
Lucky God.
mattemuse has detailed and explained that better than you already, two or three posts ago.
Believe it or not, I had no idea it was a formal “theory” until I saw Bob’s post.
From his own link: “Theistic evolution is not a theory in the scientific sense”
Hence the quotation marks around “theory”
Which is why I normally don’t get involved in these discussions. Cuz no matter how I offer up my opinion, someone always insists that the next step from me saying “wait! that doesn’t make sense and I am not buying it” is that I gave up looking at any scientific discoveries from then on and quickly signed up for the God theory.
I would hope you are not saying that I was trying to impose my theory on you. I also hope you dont think that with me being a Christian I automatically assume all evolution is garbage. Actually quite the contrary… I…
You know what… Nevermind. Continue your discussion. I am already sorry I tried to offer up a light comment.
Well, the problem with the remark you added, Catz, is the fact that you set such stringent conditions for the scientific method to meet so that as soon as you found the slightest hole in the method you could feel vindicated in believing the religious side of the debate, the irony being, that there isn’t a shred of evidence to support that side.
This tends to go beyond notice among folks though.
That is not at all what I was saying. Please don’t use statements I haven’t made as an excuse to sidestep what could be an interesting discussion.
By “impose their religious doctrine on scientific theory” I mean that creationists insist that for science to be valid, it must comply with their theology. On the other hand, many atheists/agnostics insist that religions must comply with science for them to be valid.
In my opinion, both sides are in error. I’m trying to say that religion and science are apples and oranges, and trying to put them on equal footing (creationism as an “alternative” to evolutionary theory, or evolution disproving the existence of a god) doesn’t make any sense.
You all know I have to speak on this one…
Firstly, I couldn’t have said it better myself. I really appreciate your opinion Matt.
Too many times, we Christians are all lumped into the same group with others that use Christianity as a militant identity rather than one of peace. The Bible is full of allegory, parables, lessons, and guidelines. By insisting that God literally created the earth and every single species thousands of years ago is absurd. Though God said it was created in six days, we have no idea what six days mean to an entity such as God. Is it possible that a day for God might be a million years? Is that possible?
Science is the foundation of how we understand creation. God gave us reasoning for a reason. Evolution is a theory and theories can only be proven false and never true. Scientists are always checking and rechecking their theories and are always questioning their claims. On the other hand, most of the religious claim that their principles are irrefutably true and there is no question that they are right. Period.
True. There are zealots on both sides, but as I tried to explain, we should not lump people into these extreme groups. I find that religion and science go together like hops, water, grains, and malt. There millions of arguments to support the theory of evolution, but a theory is open to scrutiny. There is one huge argument to support the existence of God in a scientific sense. Where did it all come from? Religion, as always should be put up to the same level of scrutiny. Faith isn’t supposed to be scientific because faith is personal. With that said, why so many Christians are threatened by the theory of evolution is beyond me.
Unfortunately there is a rather large community of Christians that take the words of the Bible completely literally, metaphor and allegory unfortunately eludes them, most importantly of all, it also eludes them that after all is said and done, the Bible was written by several different generations of men, and was not, as they seem to think written by God’s very hand (I seriously doubt anyone would be crazy enough to piss God off enough to change the words to fit their circumstance as the Vatican has been wont to do).
I wouldn’t say that supports the existence of god(s). Since we know absolutely zilch about why the big bang occurred, any theory is technically just a viable, meaning that the fact we know nothing makes any theory completely unsupported.
^
Soup speaks truth. In no way shape or form does a philosophical question constitute “supporting evidence” in the scientific sense.
I’m waiting for that little christian kid (I can’t remember his forum name) to join in and tell us we’re all going to hell.
coldroll? That’s mean 
As for the topic, I read about it on the newspaper yesterday, and I thought it was pretty interesting, but what stuck with me was that, a few hours later, I saw an old preaching lady burning the same newspaper I had because it was “blaspheme”. People are so weird sometimes…
Scientifically speaking, the normal universe runs in linear time. So it is provided that a infinite being (regardless if you call it “God” or “E.T.” or “Lemmy Kilmeister”) had to be responsible for the beginnings of all we know today.
Whether you call it philosophy, logic, or science, it makes perfect sense.
Only if you take the classical school of physics into account. There are now however many advanced schools of physics that have made that interpretation of the question almost obsolete.
So it becomes a matter of what we’re aware of vs. what we’re not aware of. Should the unknown variable always = God. If so, had humanity always taken that stance where would we be today?
And I’ll go with Lemmy Kilmeister… Hawkwind era preferably.
Don’t blame them for being religious, when I saw Einsteins equations about relativity and the space-time dimensions explained in math or Hawkings work on black holes and singularities I thought my head exploded.
:meh:
Science deals exclusively with the explanation of observable phenomena. We can only observe phenomena in “linear time” therefore, that is how science deals with them. There is as far as I know, no basis in scientific theory for claiming that “the universe runs in linear time” in the broad, existential sense which you are using. In fact I believe the broadly accepted theory of “spacetime” directly contradicts this claim.
Like I said earlier: square peg, round hole.
Fair enough. I clearly have little mastery over physics concepts. I suppose you and I can agree that one day humanity will find the answers. I am open to the possibility that I am wrong, I have to be since I am a citizen of the natural world.
My point is, religion is compatible with the theories of science and they shouldn’t be in conflict. Faith should not be threatened by science either.
Does that make sense?