User talk:Clayc3466/Archive 1

Your comments on Talk:Evolution

The issues you bring up have been discussed at length many times during the development of this article. The talk page begins with a convenient listing of discussion archives categorized by subject; you will probably be interested in the category A large number of scientists, and a lot of scientific evidence, oppose evolution, and particularly the previous thread No overwhelming consensus, where many of the matters you bring up have already been discussed, and the problems with your approach pointed out. To avoid repetition, you would want to be familiar with those arguments before getting involved in further extended discussion. Opabinia regalis 17:37, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Typical creationist behavior

You exhibit typical creationist tactics: raise issues, and then refuse to address any points raised by the other side. And then cry about how unfair it all is. If 99% of all biologists have no problem with evolution, is that not assuming that evolution is the dominant explanation? 99.9%? 99.99% ? How overwhelming does the majority have to be ?--Filll 21:53, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Question of Evolution article neutrality

This thread has been moved from Talk:Evolution for further discussion, so that it does not get in the way of new discussions on improving the article contents. -Silence 20:37, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Part 1

I am not interested in starting yet another string of debates on the validity of evolutionary science. I am simply questioning the neutrality of some of the langauge in the article. For example, the line in the into "With its enormous explanatory and predictive power, this theory has become the central organizing principle of modern biology, providing a unifying explanation for the diversity of life on Earth" could go without the adjective "enormous". The word "unifying" is certainly a reach since the public is far from unified on the subject. Some will claim, as they already have, that this is not a biased article because reasoned, criticially thinking people hold true to the fact of evolution. But the very fact that there is such a large and heated controversy on the matter is proof enough that there are more sides to the argument than the point of view expressed in the article. Many reasonable, educated and wise people question the validity of evolution. Again, I am not suggesting in this peice that evolution is false and should be stated as so. I only contend that in recognition of the widespread and legitimate counter-argument many people hold on the subject, the article needs some cleaning up to reflect a more neutral point of view. Clayc3466 23:39, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

I believe enormous is accurate. After all, as the title of the famous book says, "nothing in biology makes sense without evolution". What the public thinks is basically irrelevant. This is about science, not what joe six pack or some other uneducated dufus without any teeth thinks, or the claims of some preacher screaming and ranting and raving and having a tantrum, rolling on the floor speaking in tongues. This sort of "objection" is frankly, irrelevant to the science of evolution. There are literally dozens of articles here on Wikipedia exploring the fantasies of such cretins. You are invited to consult those. For example, go to creationism and its links to start. And look at Support for evolution to see who believes evolution and who does not.--Filll 23:44, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Filll, please refrain from making such negative gross generalizations. Doing so is both incivil and contributes nothing to the discussion here. -- Merope 02:08, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Merope I apologize. However, in partial explanation, I did not characterize anyone on Wikipedia in this way, or make any personal slurs against anyone by name. I have not identified anyone. I will try not to repeat this, but as said below, it gets very tedious to encounter editor after editor who repeats the same argument over and over and over, apparently without reading any of the copious warnings above.--Filll 05:56, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Merope I know you're an administrator who has taken an interest in these wars, probably as a result of a fairly negative and angry editor from one of the related articles. Not to be argumentative, but do you know how frustrating these discussions are? Clayc comes in here, possibly without reading the vast dialogue that has occurred over the past months and years, and begins a somewhat inflammatory conversation. The general crankiness of some of the editors in these articles may deserve a slap here and there, but it's tiresome to have to address these conversations every few days! Orangemarlin 05:38, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

I don't see anything inflammatory about Clayc's comment. It may be misinformed, but it's not aggressive, antagonistic, insulting, or even argumentative; it's quite civil. Filll's comment is a bit over-the-top in its stereotyping, but at least it isn't attacking anyone specific, so I don't think it's anywhere near the more hostile comments we've seen in these discussions either (on both sides). Clayc probably did notice the warnings above, hence his hesitance to comment, but felt the need to make serious, constructive, and specific comments about the article, which I don't think were in and of themselves unreasonable—in most contexts, phrasings like "enormously" would be hyperbolic and POVed, and Clayc simply misunderstood the meaning of "unifying" here. As is often the case, this is largely the result of misunderstanding.

If you're feeling tired, worn out, or cranky from having to deal with the same points again and again, then don't respond to them; there are plenty of ways to contribute to Wikipedia, and even to Wikipedia's evolution articles, without dealing with such comments at all, so it's only your own fault if you don't give yourself enough breaks to avoid becoming "burnt out". There will always be new people who are simply uninformed in various issues that have been gone over again and again, in every part of Wikipedia—because there will always be brand-new users here, or users from different parts of the site. It is thus simply unfeasible to expect any issue to be resolved forever; the best we can hope is to turn an exhausting torrent into a mildly irritating trickle, which seems to have essentially been done here. -Silence 06:25, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

I actually don't respond to trolls or creationists any more, because it is a waste of time. I let several others beat up these misinformed (or inflammatory) comments from people who don't spend time reading the rules or archives. But I don't think that someone beating up on Filll is fair. Orangemarlin 06:40, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

And I don't think that Merope was intending to "beat on" Filll. She was just giving some helpful advice ("don't make negative gross generalizations; it's not helpful or nice"). No one in this conversation needs to be punished; let's move on to more productive matters. -Silence 07:26, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

I certainly wasn't trying to beat up on anyone. I understand that these discussions are both redundant and frustrating, which is one reason why I try to avoid them. ;) I understand that Filll wasn't picking on anyone in particular, but I think it's best if people refrain from such characterizations as it 1) isn't terribly helpful to discourse and 2) may inflame the current discussion. Perhaps future comments like this can be replied to by simply asking the editor to read the relevant archives? It might help keep the frustration levels low. -- Merope 08:16, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Merope, if I can put in my 2c, I have long admired the tireless, patient efforts Filll has made to try to understand people who were quite belligerent to any view other than their own. If the people Filll refers to actually followed advice they were given to read archives or guidelines, we wouldn't have seen any evidence of his frustration. Even so, I appreciate your peacekeeping efforts.Trishm 10:11, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

More to the point, the enormous explanatory and predictive power is in terms of biology: the vast majority of those with expertise in the field fully agree with the principle of evolution and the modern synthesis: a tiny minority of dissenters include such theologically inclined folk as Behe who accepts and agrees with evolution in general, while claiming a few unexplained gaps for his god to fit into. There is undoubtedly a vigourous theological debate about whether to interpret god's word in the light of god's works, but that's beyond the topic of this article. .. dave souza, talk 00:07, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Clayc3466, welcome to Wikipedia. I am glad you are not looking for a long debate. The article reflects the science, science is neutral, therefore the article is neutral. --Michael Johnson 00:36, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

• Clayc, I understand your concerns, and in most cases "enormous" would be hyperbole in such uses. However, in this case the scientific community is unanimous: evolution indeed has "enormous explanatory and predictive power". Unless references can be provided which show that the evolutionary biologists disagree over whether evolution has enormous explanatory and predictive power, WP:NPOV doesn't apply, because there's such overwhelming agreement. However, I'm willing to discuss possible alternatives to "enormous", if you think we could word the sentence in a way that would convey the same information without giving the impression of being hyperbolic. On the other hand, your other point is simply incorrect; evolution is unifying. Your mistake is that "unifying" here doesn't refer to people, but to facts. Saying that evolution is "unifying" in that context doesn't imply that no one disagrees with the modern evolutionary synthesis, but rather that evolution unifies every aspect of life into a single "umbrella" explanation. It's kind of like the theory of everything for biology; it makes the otherwise-arbitrary facts of life coherent and cohesive, by explaining them all in one fell swoop. Another way this has been worded is the common statement that "evolution is the cornerstone of modern biology". Whether you agree or disagree with evolutionary theory, that is simply undeniable.
• By the way, I will concede that counter-arguments against evolution are widespread, but what is your basis for saying that they are "legitimate"? No such objection has ever been published in any peer-reviewed scientific journal or paper; none is accepted as having any merit by any expert in the field; and none, at least on a cursory analysis, seems to have any basis in fact or logic. So what do you mean by "legitimate"? Is there a specific counterargument you have in mind? -Silence 01:16, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Per Silence, you may have good intentions Clay, but your statements give a wildly inaccurate impression of the reality in this situation. Within the relevant scientific community, there is virtually no one that can claim legitimacy by taking an anti-evolutionary stance. As has been explained before, sociological and theological incentives are not enough to seriously threaten the nomological validity of evolution and evolutionary theory.UberCryxic 03:16, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Yes, enormous could be removed provided it was replaced by immense, huge, gigantic, colossal, mammoth, tremendous, stupendous, gargantuan or vast. (Yes, I sucked a Thesaurus.) And unifying is quite appropriate Clayc. Candy 06:30, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

It is clear to me that the only way that I would be able to convince the editors to make any changes to the article would be to provide credible sources that have serious issues and doubts in regard to the merits of evolution. Unfortunately, I fear that I could list a parade of such folks only to have them immediately dismissed out of hand. My experience is that too many supporters of evolution engage in falty logic. They reject any source or data that does not agree with their presumptions and then claim that all the data agrees with and supports their conclusion. It would be the same as believing that only red M&Ms are real M&Ms, opening a bag and throwing out all the other colors (becuase they are fake) and pouring what's left (the reds) into a bowl. When someone then comes along and says, "You know there are blue and green M&Ms too", the person looks in the bowl and says, "No there are not. I challenge you to find a blue or green M&M in my bowl."

But just in case one or two folks out there are willing to see that there are credible sources who have issues with evolution. Please allow me to provide a couple of examples:

“The extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persists as the trade secret of paleontology. …yet to preserve our favored account of evolution by natural selection we view our data as so bad that we never see the very process we profess to study.” Stephen Jay Gould (professor of Geology and Paleontology, Harvard University), ‘Evolution’s erratic Pace’. Natural History, vol. LXXXVI(5), May 1977, p.14.

"Question is: Can you tell me anything you know about evolution, any one thing, any one thing that is true? I tried that question on the geology staff at the Field Museum of Natural History and the only answer I got was silence. I tried it on the members of the Evolutionary Morphology Seminar in the University of Chicago, a very prestigious body of evolutionists, and all I got there was silence for a long time and eventually one person said, 'I do know one thing - it ought not to be taught in high school.'" -Dr. Colin Patterson (Senior Paleontologist, British Museum of Natural History, leading cladistic taxonomist), Keynote address at the American Museum of Natural History, New York City, November 5, 1981.

"For example, no scientist could logically dispute the proposition that man, without having been involved in any act of divine creation, evolved from some ape-like creature in a very short space of time - speaking in geological terms - without leaving any fossil traces of the steps of the transformation. As I have already implied, students of fossil primates have not been distinguished for caution when working within the logical constraints of their subject. The record is so astonishing that it is legitimate to ask whether much science is yet to be found in this field at all." -Lord Solly Zuckerman, M.D., D.Sc., Beyond the Ivory Tower (New York: Taplinger, 1970), p. 64.

"Evolutionism is a fairy tale for grown-ups. This theory has helped nothing in the progress of science. It is useless." -Professor Louis Bounoure, past president of the Biological Society of Strassbourg, Director of the Strassbourg Zoological Museum, Director of Research at the French National Center of Scientific Research. (Quoted in The Advocate, March 8, 1984.)

"Nine-tenths of the talk of evolutionists is sheer nonsense, not founded on observation and wholly unsupported by facts. This museum is full of proofs of the utter falsity of their views. In all this great museum, there is not a particle of evidence of the transmutation of species." -Dr. Etheridge, senior paleontologist of the British Museum of Natural History, cited in Dr. Scott Huse, The Collapse of Evolution.

These examples are only a sampling of sources who have problems with evolution. So again I contend that the scientific community is not unified on evolution as some argue it is. Yes, currently the majority of those in the field probably do agree with the tenents of evolution. But it is a falicy to say that all "relevant scientists" completely agree that evolution as presented today is completely true, proven and factual.

Finally, a quick comment on the point someone made that "science is neutral". The evidence may be neutral but it is interpreted by men and women who by their very nature each carry his or her own unique bias. They pass their observations through their various lenses of presumptions and experiences before drawing a conclusion. That is why two people can see the same evidence and come up with two very different conclusion.

I really don't see the difficulty in changing some of the text of the article to reflect the fact that there are (even if a small minority) of scientists who struggle with evolution or have serious doubts to its validity. In my view, this more accurately shows the reality of the situaiton. Clayc3466 13:56, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

As I said before, there are many many articles which explore the issues you want to bring up. Start with Creationism and look at the links. You will see. There are many more articles that deal with the subjects you want to expound on than articles on evolution, actually. This article is about the science, not other things. And you might look up quote mining while you are at it.--Filll 14:01, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you are trying to say here. The issue that I am bringing up is regarding the neutrality of this article in that it leads the reader to conclude that all scientists agree that evolution is a fact and that there are no dissenting opinions -- meaning those scientists who still see large holes and problems in the theory. This has nothing to do with creationism. Clayc3466 15:24, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

It doesn't matter the opinions of various scientist on evolution-that is POV. The article is on evolution which is neutral per subject. I agree with the statement "enormous explanatory and predictive" however that is only to a degree. Creating models and evidence that supports the models doesn't reflect on the significance of the models. Darwin's finches (and Darwin's mocking birds) have been studies for years-genomic analysis indicates evolution occurs (changes in BMP,etc.), natural selection occurs, character displacement occurs, and yet the conclusion of a thirty year study was evolution was unpredictable. The evolution of certain forms of antibiotic resistance is constrained in Darwinian terms to a few mutations, however now the significance of HGT (gene flow)jumping that hurdle is realized. Evolution is a fact the theory keeps getting a tune-up to increase the explanatory and predictive power. GetAgrippa 14:34, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

I'm confused. My assesment all along has been that the article cannot be neutral if it states or otherwise infers that all credible scientists believe that evolution is a indisputable fact when in fact there are credible dissidents in the scientific community. I was challenged to produce such sources so I gave a small sample. Now I'm told that those sources are irellevent. If, by the statement of GetAgrippa, opinions and POV of scientists doesn't matter then the article should contain no references to the scientific community's support or even unsupport on the subject. Continuing to say that all scientists support and believe that evolution is a fact is nothing short of a lie and therefore harms the credibility of Wikipedia. Clayc3466 15:24, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

You misunderstand. My point is that their opinions is POV, however peer reviewed published ideas is another matter. Gould saying he believes in evolution is POV, but his peer-reviewed publications is a valid resource. ClayC does bring up a valid point that it doesn't matter what the majority of scientist believe. For years Stanley Prusiner was treated like a nutcase and the majority of the scientific community did not believe in prions (some still don't believe in significance) so saying the majority believe maybe true but inconsequential to be fair. The merits of the extensive literature supporting evolution is overwhelming and quickly squashes any contenders. ClayC is quote mining and taking comments out of context. I doubt a group of evolutionary biologist would sit quiet at his question: Can you tell me anything you know about evolution, any one thing, any one thing that is true? That is so incredibly naive and absurd!!GetAgrippa 17:05, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

You are not understanding the WP:NPOV policy. And you are ignoring the link to quote mining that I gave you; do you really believe those quotes you cut and pasted from a creationist website mean anything?. And there material in this article of the type you refer to at Evolution#Misunderstandings. Did you not read the article? And did you not read the article at Support for evolution ? Over 99.9% of biologists have no problem at all with evolution. So what do you want us to do? Turn EVERY article on Wikipedia into some religious tract, including the scientific ones? After all, you already have:

• Creation (theology), Origin belief, Creation within belief systems, creationism, Modern geocentrism, Theistic evolution, Progressive creationism, Old Earth creationism, Gap Creationism, Day-Age Creationism, Young Earth creationism, creation science, intelligent design, Neo-creationism, Pre-Adamite, Creation-evolution controversy, Articles related to the creation-evolution controversy, Creation and evolution in public education, History of creationism, A Scientific Dissent from Darwinism, Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy, List of Young Earth Creationists, Creation Ministries International, Answers in Genesis, Answers in Creation, Creation Science Evangelism, Institute for Creation Research, Creation Research Society, American Scientific Affiliation, Fundamentalist Christianity, Christian right, Evangelicalism, Conservative Christianity, Access Research Network, Leadership University (web portal), Campus Crusade for Christ, Creation Science Association, All About God Ministries, Intelligent design, Intelligent design (disambiguation), Santorum Amendment, Teach the Controversy, Critical Analysis of Evolution, Irreducible complexity, Specified complexity, Fine-tuned universe, Intelligent designer, Intelligent design movement, Theistic realism, Intelligent design in politics, Wedge strategy, Critical Analysis of Evolution, Michael Polanyi Center, Intelligent Design (book), Access Research Network, Discovery Institute, Quality Science Education for All, Center for Science and Culture, International Society for Complexity, Information and Design, Biologic Institute, Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture, Foundation for Thought and Ethics, Truth in Science, Omphalos (book), Creationist cosmologies, Creation according to Genesis, Adam and Eve, Biblical inerrancy, Biblical infallibility, Biblical literalism, Biblical inspiration, Creationist cosmologies, Flood geology, Creation biology, Baraminology, Science and the Bible, Kashut - Reasons for the Biblical dietary laws, Biblical archaeology, Fine-tuned universe, Rare Earth hypothesis, c-decay, Omphalos (theology), Cosmological argument, Dispensationalism, Created kind, Baraminology, Variable speed of light, Starlight problem, Mediocrity principle, Anthropic principle, Cosmic pluralism, Denying Evolution: Creationism, Scientism, and the Nature of Science, Horizon problem

And a whole bunch more articles as well. So are you not being a bit greedy to demand that even the science articles have a huge amount of religious material in them?--Filll 15:42, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

• "They reject any source or data that does not agree with their presumptions and then claim that all the data agrees with and supports their conclusion." - You could make the same claim about people who disagree with Flat Earthers. The question is: are the evolutionists/round earthers rejecting the sources that disagree solely because they disagree, or because they lack any scientific evidence or support? Provide any peer-reviewed scientific paper that disputes evolution, and you'll have your answer: we're perfectly open to alternative views, but Evolution, being a scientific article, can only accept alternative scientific views, which means views that meet the scientific method and have demonstrated scientific support.
• Clayc, you should be warned that you are engaging in the process of quote mining, an intellectually dishonest and wasteful attempt to drown out rational discussion with out-of-context, misleading quotations from people who don't actually think what you want believe they do. See The Quote Mine Project for more information. Such quotations are useless here, as they not only deceive about what the people in question actually believed in the vast majority of cases, but they also are not peer-reviewed or scientific; you might as well quote George W. Bush to rebut evolution, as it's equally irrelevant. Evolution is not based on appeals to authority, but on evidence; therefore if you wish to argue against evolution, you must provide evidence against evolution and submit it to a scientific publication. Attacking or distorting the statements of scientific authorities has no relevance whatsoever to evolution, because unlike religion, science doesn't ultimately depend on any authority for its veracity. Here's are some examples of the deceits involved in the typical creationist quote-mining you're engaging in (though I suspect you are probably engaging in them unknowingly, as you are simply parroting the lies and distortions of others):
• "“The extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persists as the trade secret of paleontology. …yet to preserve our favored account of evolution by natural selection we view our data as so bad that we never see the very process we profess to study.” Stephen Jay Gould (professor of Geology and Paleontology, Harvard University), ‘Evolution’s erratic Pace’. Natural History, vol. LXXXVI(5), May 1977, p.14." - That is an out-of-context quote that doesn't mean what you think it does. See Quote #3.2. Gould was not disputing the occurrence or theory of evolution; rather, he was disputing strict gradualism, and arguing for punctuated equilibrium. Indeed, his arguments, and the evidence he was able to back them up with, have caused dramatic changes in the field of evolutionary biology, and punctuated equilibrium is now widely accepted; this shows how open-minded scientists are (at least in the long run; there will always be individual scientists who act like jerks) to new ideas. The only major requirement, from a scientific perspective, is that those ideas have evidence behind them. Gould's claims did, and so have become largely accepted; creationists' claims did not, and so have not become accepted.
• ""Question is: Can you tell me anything you know about evolution, any one thing, any one thing that is true? I tried that question on the geology staff at the Field Museum of Natural History and the only answer I got was silence. I tried it on the members of the Evolutionary Morphology Seminar in the University of Chicago, a very prestigious body of evolutionists, and all I got there was silence for a long time and eventually one person said, 'I do know one thing - it ought not to be taught in high school.'" -Dr. Colin Patterson" - This is a second out-of-context misquote, albeit a less egregious one. See Patterson Misquoted, which includes a quotation from Patterson noting that a creationist coverly tape-recorded a lecture of his and took an out-of-context, misleading snippet from it which did not fairly represent Patterson's actual views. Patterson was criticizing what he saw as a parcity of evidence to justify certain relationships in systematics; he was not criticizing evolutionary theory itself, or arguing that it in any way lacks evidence. At most, he was encouraging caution and skepticism in interpreting the fossil record for the purposes of classification.
• ""Nine-tenths of the talk of evolutionists is sheer nonsense, not founded on observation and wholly unsupported by facts. This museum is full of proofs of the utter falsity of their views. In all this great museum, there is not a particle of evidence of the transmutation of species." -Dr. Etheridge, senior paleontologist of the British Museum of Natural History, cited in Dr. Scott Huse, The Collapse of Evolution." - "Dr. Etheridge" is neither a doctor, nor a senior paleontologist, nor a contemporary figure, nor any sort of famous, relevant, or significant figure in any way in the research of evolution or the history of any field of science; you might as well pick a man off the street and quote him disputing evolution. Etheridge was actually an obscure 19th-century museum assistant who never had any relevance to any aspect of science and probably didn't know the first thing about evolution.
• "The evidence may be neutral but it is interpreted by men and women who by their very nature each carry his or her own unique bias." - Correct. That's why we have peer-reviewed studies, and demand that scientific evidence be able to be reviewed, and experiments repeated, by a wide variety of specialists or experts in the field. These exacting demands in science are the only thing that make it remotely reliable; because creationists fail to meet even the most basic standards of science here, and have produced no evidence whatsoever in their support, it would be a violation of Wikipedia's WP:NPOV and WP:NOR policies to interject creationist claims into Evolution, or any other scientific article.
• Unfortunately, Clayc, you seem to have been misled by common creationist arguments and tactics. Although I recognize and appreciate how strong your personal faith and religious convictions are, it is important to realize that they are not scientific, and do not amount to a scientific controversy. Hard as it may be for you to believe, there is, in fact, dramatically less controversy over evolution in the field of biology than there is over gravity in the field of physics. The reason creationists have to resort to misleading quote-mining is because there simply aren't any actual scientific publications disputing evolution, and there aren't any actual experts in the field who dispute the occurrence of evolution. There is no Evil Atheist Conspiracy going on behind the scenes here; scientists aren't ignoring evidence, they're ignoring empty claims that lack evidence, like "evolution lacks any transitional fossils" (Tiktaalik, Archaeopteryx, Ambulocetus, etc....).
• Rather than trying to promote your religious beliefs here, I recommend pausing, rethinking your options, and trying to learn about what biology actually says on the matter. You may find that your views are actually not as irreconcilable with evolution as you've been led to believe; or you may find some genuine problems with evolution, giving you actual material to object to rather than insubstantial out-of-context quotations. Either way, it will be more fruitful for you than continuing to try to convince us that there is a scientific controversy that doesn't actually exist, and which you apparently have no actual evidence for. -Silence 16:37, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

So much for not wanting to start a debate. Leading with quote mining Gould from 1977 about the various modes of evolution, and then claiming that you've provided citations from "credible dissidents" that dispute evolution. Are you saying that Gould disputes evolution? JPotter 17:19, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Part 2

Yesterday I brought a comment to the table that simpy states that the evolution article in Wikipedia is not neutral in some of its wording. The major issue being that the article infers that all scientists believe that evolution is fact. I have read many examples of biologists, paleontologists, geologists and other scientists who have their doubts to the validity of the theory. My suggestion is that for the article to preserve neutrality, it should state that not all scientists are convinced or at least say that "most" scientists agree, etc. etc. Since then I've been peppered with circular reasoning and ad hominem arguments that avoid the issue. Some people have even accused me of forcing my religious beliefs into the subject when I not once mentioned my religious beliefs. I did not advocate creationism, ID or any other alternative to evolution. That is not my purpose here. The argument that keeps coming back to me is that everybody who matters -- the "revelant scientific community" -- believes in evolution so there is no scientific debate. Only relgious and social debate. Since there is no scientific debate, the argument goes, there are no sides to be taken and therefore no bias to avoid. This just doesn't make sense. Of course there is no debate when the only scientists you allow in the debate room are the ones that agree with your presumption that evolution is fact and supported by all scientists. Maybe you can personally reject a source that does not agree with your POV but you can't ignore opposition when the goal is to preserve neutrality. If there are two (or more) sides to an argument, positioning the article to favor only one side is bias. I sense that I will get nowhere when it comes to atually making any changes in the language of the article, but I have made my objections to the neutrality known. Clayc3466 18:59, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

It probably would have been wiser to simply add this comment to the end of the neutrality conversation rather than delete everyone else's comments and replace them with a new one. Chickenflicker---♣ 19:03, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Chickenflicker (which is very cool screen name), you're probably correct but the string was getting too long and convoluted. I simply grew tired of the thing. So I guess since I started the conversation I took some editorial perogrative and deleted the whole thing. Clayc3466 19:08, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

• ClayC. You presented 0 examples of peer-reviewed scientific papers disputing evolution. You provided 0 examples of experts in the field of biology who dispute evolution, or who assert that it is false. You provided 0 examples of people saying that the process of evolution is not a fact. You provided 0 examples of academic secondary sources confirming that evolution is at all controversial or disputed among scientists in the field. All you did was make empty assertions and quote-mine cherry-picked out-of-context quotations from people like Stephen Jay Gould who have been some of the strongest proponents of modern evolutionary theory. Whether you're right or wrong, you've clearly made an extraordinarily weak case for your point, so you can hardly blame us or accuse us of bias for not conceding that evolution is scientifically disputed when there's no evidence that this is so.

I believe that Stephen Jay Gould was a huge advocate for evolution. My point in including him was that he at the very least realized that there are problems with the theory that must be addressed. I used him to show the others in the discussion that the book on evolution isn't closed. The article infers that it is. Clayc3466 22:04, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Gould's problem wasn't with evolutionary theory overall, it was with phyletic gradualism. If your purpose here is only to point out the phyletic gradualism controversy, then you should be advocating to have views on that added to phyletic gradualism, not to evolution. No scientist in the world claims that the theory of evolution—or any other scientific fact or theory—is infallible or perfect. However, imperfection is not in itself a "problem", because it's unavoidable; that's why science is constantly revising and improving upon its theories, as new evidence arises. But we cannot assume that a problem exists when there is no evidence for one; if we did that, we'd reject every aspect of everything in science, not just the parts that contradict the evidence. So, to discern whether a scientific claim has merit, the evidence in favor of that claim must be evaluated; and this is why creationist claims have no scientific relevance. They have no scientific evidence. They make no testable predictions, explain nothing, are not falsifiable, and are derived from religious scripture, rather than from observation and experimentation. Religious movements like creationism have no more relevance to evolution than religious movements like the Flat Earth Society have to Earth. -Silence 00:10, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

• Nowhere in evolution does it claim that 100% of all scientists in all fields accept evolutionary theory; this is clearly untrue, for the same reason that 100% of all scientists in all fields probably don't accept that the Big Bang occurred, or even that the Earth isn't flat. There will always be some people who disagree with even the most obvious, uncontroversial statement; what WP:NPOV demands is that we not give minority views undue weight by treating the unsubstantiated personal views of less than 1% of biologists as if it were a scientific dispute, much less a significant enough one to merit mentioning in the lead section. Unless you can provide evidence that there is a scientific dispute, simply asserting it and accusing us of bias for not believing you on faith is pretty unconvincing. -Silence 20:37, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Part 3

Silence, where did you come up with "less than 1% of biologists"? Not that I think its going to help, I'll provide some sources of those scientists who have opposition to evolution.

Agard, E. Theo Allan, James Anderson, Kevin Armstrong, Harold Arndt, Alexander Austin, Steven Barnes, Thomas Batten, Don Baumgardner, John Bergman, Jerry Boudreaux, Edward Byl, John Catchpoole, David Chadwick, Arthur Chaffin, Eugene Chittick, Donald Cimbala, John Clausen, Ben Cole, Sid Cook, Melvin Cumming, Ken Cuozzo, Jack Darrall, Nancy Dewitt, David DeYoung, Donald Downes, Geoff Eckel, Robert Faulkner, Danny Ford, Dwain Frair, Wayne Gentry, Robert Giem, Paul Gillen, Alan Gish, Duane Gitt, Werner Gower, D.B. Grebe, John Grocott, Stephen Harrub, Brad Hawke, George Hollowell, Kelly Holroyd, Edmond Hosken, Bob Howe, George Humphreys, D. Russell Javor, George Jones, Arthur Kaufmann, David Kennedy, Elaine Klotz, John Koop, C. Everett Korochkin, Leonid Kramer, John Lammerts, Walter Lester, Lane Livingston, David Lopez, Raul Marcus, John Marsh, Frank Mastropaolo, Joseph McCombs, Charles McIntosh, Andrew McMullen, Tom Meyer, Angela Meyer, John Mitchell, Colin Morris, Henry Morris, John Mumma, Stanley Parker, Gary Peet, J. H. John Rankin, John Rosevear, David Roth, Ariel Rusch, Wilbert Sarfati, Jonathan Snelling, Andrew Standish, Timothy Taylor, Stephen Thaxton, Charles Thompson, Bert Thomson, Ker Vardiman, Larry Veith, Walter Walter, Jeremy Wanser, Keith Whitcomb, John White, A.J.(Monty) Wilder-Smith, Arthur Ernest Wile, Jay Williams, Emmett Wise, Kurt Wolfrom, Glen Zuill, Henry

This is a partial list of scientists who hold doctorates that do not believe in evolution. You can see the complete list at http://www.christiananswers.net/creation/people/home.html. Now before you accuse me of throwing religion in here, know that the source may be a Christian web site but the point that these scientists and more do not believe in evolution is the issue. Perhaps a change to the introductory paragraphs aren't the answer. Perhaps someone should just add a "criticisms" section to the article. That would go a long way to showing that there are many -- although a minority -- that do not believe in the theory of evolution. Clayc3466 22:04, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Clayc, that's not a list of evolutionary biologists who dispute evolution, nor of ones who dispute it for scientific (as opposed to religious) reasons; according to the website you provided, it's a list of "Creationists holding DOCTORATES IN SCIENCE". Are you arguing that was should mention that a number of scientists dissent from evolution in the lead section of Evolution because creationists aren't banned from getting doctorates? That's rather silly indeed.

Creationism is a personal religious belief; it has nothing to do with science. There is no scientific evidence for creationism, and no aspect of creationism has never been supported or verified in any paper submitted to a peer-reviewed scientific paper. The problem here isn't that you're trying to dispute evolution by linking to a Christian website (after all, Christians can do science too); rather, it's that you're trying to dispute evolution by citing people who hold a certain religious belief. Creationism has no more relevance to the field of biology than Mormonism or Hinduism or Trinitarianism does. It is scientifically (and biologically) unremarkable that some people reject scientific facts for religious reasons, and creationism is a religious movement, based on the Book of Genesis in the Bible, not on scientific observations. If you think that the Book of Genesis (or any religious movement based on it) is science, you gravely misunderstand the meaning of "science".

Also, that's an amazingly short list, considering how many millions of people there are with doctorates.. And how many people on that list are actually biologists?

Also, a "criticisms" section is a bad idea, though a related article is currently under construction: Objections to evolution. When it's finished, it should satisfy your desire that this encyclopedic topic be covered. It's not a scientific topic, however, but a social and historical one, so it will have little mention in the top-level article, Evolution. -Silence 23:54, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Silence. You're boxing me in unfairly. You ask me to provide scientists who do not believe in evolution but then tell me that scientists that don't belive in evolution aren't valid. You point that I only produced a short list isn't responsible either. I stated that I was only giving a sampling from one source. Furthermoere there is a huge misunderstanding that evolution is only about science while creation is only about religion. Creation Scientists have done years of research to support their claims that the scientific evidence supports the Genesis account of creation.

At the same time, evolution by its nature dismisses the supernatural and God therefore having a religious bent of its own. Evolutionists observe the data they can see today and make educated guesses on what happened in the past. It takes a lot more faith in mind to believe that what we observe today literally came from nothing than to believe that it was created by a god. Clayc3466 03:07, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

I can give you hundreds and hundreds of "scientists" who support creationism and/or dispute evolution. However, they are a teeny tiny fraction of the scientists out there. This is particularly true in fields where people are trained in evolution and use it in their work.--Filll 22:47, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Also, in response to the "1% of biologists" claim, here y'go:

Of the scientists and engineers in the United States, only about 5% are creationists, according to a 1991 Gallup poll.[1][2] However, this number includes those working in fields not related to life origins (such as computer scientists, mechanical engineers, etc.). Taking into account only those working in the relevant fields of earth and life sciences, there are about 480,000 scientists, but only about 700 believe in "creation-science" or consider it a valid theory.[3] This means that less than 0.15 percent of relevant scientists believe in creationism. And that is just in the United States, which has more creationists than any other industrialized country. In other countries, the number of relevant scientists who accept creationism drops to less than one tenth of 1 percent.[4][5][6][7]

-Silence 00:10, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

Not that biologists are the only experts in the field but even 700 of 480,000 shows that there is opposition. I'm glad to see that there will be an "Objections to Evolution" page. If done well and fairly, it should appease me and help make the overall article more neutral.

Finally, Silence, let me say that I hope that I have not offended you in any way or appeared to have made any personal attacks. I can appreciate your willingness to support your position. Too many people just take the position of "whatever". Thanks for the discussion. My guess is that you are an editor for the evolution article? Are you a scientist yourself? Clayc3466 03:07, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

We can't take a US-centric view of evolution becasue of the serious inbalance in that country. Look at the French evolution wikipedia site. One example of discussion about creationism (well religion actually) or the German site where there is none. It's only in the skewed minds of US citizens that there is any opposition to evolution. Even there it's so meaninglessly small to be ignorable as trivia. It's not wikipedia's job to point out that opposition to evolution comes with a gross blanket of ignorance about science. Candy 08:18, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

Candy, I don't think its all that responsible to dismiss the research and studies of educated men and women and call them ignorant and meaningless. You may not agree with their findings but that doesn't mean they're not credible scientists with years of experience and wisdom in their particular feilds of study. Clayc3466 16:26, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

When the people in question either have no background whatsoever in biology, or constitute less than 0.1% of the biologists, they are fairly called a fringe group. We do not dismiss them. We address their concerns and activities in other articles on Wikipedia. However, in an article about the science, they do not merit more than a paragraph or two, which is what they currently have. And that is far more than they deserve, frankly.--Filll 17:58, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

For example, it is possible that 0.1% of all seismologists believe that earthquakes are caused by aliens from outerspace. Should all the books and articles on earthquakes include a large section discussing this extraterrestrial theory for the cause of earthquakes?--Filll 18:00, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

Fill, I do not expect an article on evolution to give equal time to an alternate theory. That's why there is an article on creation. If there is a paragraph or two that does address the concerns of those who's research does not support evolution, then great. I missed those paragraphs if they're there. The section on "social and religiious controversies" isn't a great place for it (if that's what you're referring to). The sentence "creationists argue against evolution on the basis that it contradicts their theistic origin beliefs" doesn't tell the complete picture. Creationists argue against evolution based on both their religious convinctions and their observations of the evidence -- just as evolutionists come to thier conclusions based on their philosphical convictions and their intereptations of the evidence. Both groups are in effect doing the same thing. Again, I don't advocate the evolution article to support creationism. I only think it should do a better job of admitting that their are major problems with the evolutionary theory. Isn't that what evolutionists are doing everyday - trying to resolve the questions that still exist? I encourage you to read one or two of the books I noted above. Clayc3466 19:40, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

Part 4

Here are some examples of books that make a scientific case against evolution.

Darwin’s Black Box The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution Dr. Michael J. Behe

Evolution: A Theory in Crisis Dr. Michael Denton (note that Dr. Denton is not a creationist and does support it in his book)

Scientific Creationism, Dr. Henry M. Morris

Clayc3466 21:38, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Actually 3 of the 4 the books you mentioned attack evolution from a religious perspective:

• Beginning: Compelling Evidence for Creation and the Flood (7th Edition) by Dr. Walt Brown- well known strident creationist

• Darwin’s Black Box The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution Dr. Michael J. Behe-well known fundamentalist Catholic whose work is widely discredited by his colleagues and has never been published in a scientific venue, and has also been disproved over and over and over

• Evolution: A Theory in Crisis Dr. Michael Denton (note that Dr. Denton is not a creationist and does support it in his book). Here is a book review:

From Library Journal Denton pursues his avowed purpose, to critique the Darwinian model of evolution, in a manner alternately fascinating and tiresome. He details legitimate questions, some as old as Darwin's theory, some as new as molecular biology, but he also distorts or misrepresents other "problems." For example, he falls into the classic typological trap: organisms with the same name are all the same. He has Euparkeria as the closest possible ancestor of Archaeopteryx, thus displaying either ignorance or disregard for discoveries over the past two decades. He misunderstands or willfully misrepresents the nature of a cladogram as opposed to a phylogeny. Much of the book reads like creationist prattle, but there are also some interesting points. For informed readers. Walter P. Coombs, Jr., Biology Dept., Western New England Coll., Springfield, Mass.

By the sounds of that it does not sound too promising. Also Denton has asked to be removed from the Discovery Institute's website and does not want to be associated with them.

• Scientific Creationism, Dr. Henry M. Morris- an infamous radical creationist

There eventually will be a section on scientific controversies in the evolution article, however it is not yet written. These are real controversies, not this sort of crazed nonsense by people that know very little or whose work has been discredited, but by serious people trying to improve the theory. Unfortunately for the purposes of creationists, this will be technical and not useful for their purposes of "proving" genesis or some other such nonsense.--Filll 20:31, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

It is quite clear to me that such fringe elements are damaging to Christianity and are driving more people away than they are attracting. It is an embarassment.--Filll 20:33, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

Fill -- You and I could spend the next month each citing sources that support our views with the purpose of discrediting the other guy's. I'm encouraged to see that a "scientific controversies" section will be added to the article. But again I caution anyone who derides someone as ignorant beacuse their intereptation of the evidence differs from their own. I don't know what line of work you are in, but my guess is that guys like Behe and Morris have far more scientific knowledge than you and I together. Yes, they are creationist. Of course they are. They don't believe in evolution because in their estimation, evolution is false. So they believe in an alternative. But that doesn't automatically discount them from having an informed opinion on the facts. I began this whole thing because it appeared to me that the article was not addressing the fact that there are still major gaps to be explained in evolution -- not to promote creation per se. If that is taking place, then great. I have no beef. But I am a little miffed that too many evolution supports paint creation scientists out to be ignorant, backward, religious kooks. I don't agree with what evolution scientists are saying in most cases -- but I still respect them. I don't make them out to be wackos. There are just people with differing opinions (even within the evolution community) on how this whole complicated thing of origin works. None of us were there, so we're left making guesses, doing research, filtering what we find through our own philisophical inclinations and coming up with conclusions. Evolutionists don't have it all figured out -- yet no one in their camp seems willing to admit that. Clayc3466 21:12, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

Actually in science I have way more credentials than Morris for sure. And probably more than Behe, who is a minor faculty member at a minor school. And who has been marginalized for his views, and is lucky to even be employed, frankly. Let me try to make some things clear:

Again, I qualified my statement by saying that I don't know you and what you do for a living. For all I know, you're the ghost of Carl Sagan. Clayc3466 15:52, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

• The version of evolution that exists now is radically different from that of Darwin. It has had things added to it. It has had things taken away. It has been modified repeatedly. Why? because this is what we do in science. Our explanation has to change to fit the new facts. This happens in ALL scientific theories. Always has. Always will.

I agree. That is part of the issue I had with the evolution article. It seemed to infer that the book on evolution is all but closed. Clayc3466 15:52, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

• Evolution will not stay the same in the future. As we learn more, it will change to accommodate the data.

Yes it will. But what will happen if technology brings new data that begins to challange major elements of evolution? What if the data indicates the earth is much younger than believed now? Clayc3466 15:52, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

• Evolution will not include the supernatural in the future.

I do not expect it to. Those who believe in evoloution do not believe in the supernatural. Clayc3466 15:52, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

• Science will not include the supernatural in the future (unless something like World War III happens in science with 99.9% of present scientists being fired or executed).

By definition science is objective. If the data cannot reasonably lead to the conclusion of natural process being responsible for a particular event, then one is at open to consider the supernatural as the cause. Clayc3466 15:52, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

• There are no "major gaps". This is nonsense, and just propaganda from the religious fringe groups

Evolution still has at least one big hurdle to get over: The Cause of all this. Where did matter come from? How did something come from nothing? What triggered the formation of the universe? Clayc3466 15:52, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

• The vast majority of Christians and Christian groups do not subscribe to this crazy fantasy world of biblical literalism.

You'd have to cite many, credible sources for me to believe this statement. The opposite is true. Yes, many are confused when it comes to reconciling what they read in the Bible with what they were taught in school when it comes to origins. But most Christians believe that the Bible is the inerrant Word of God. Clayc3466 15:52, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

• After evolution changes to fit the new data, it will still be evolution. The choice is not between creationism and evolution, but between evolution¹ and evolution².

This is sadly true because too many evolutions are working off the premise that there is no God; so therefore means for supernatural intervention and creation. Clayc3466 15:52, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

• Just because a theory changes, does not mean it is all nonsense and we have to decide that the Tooth Fairy is real.

If there were enough overwhelming evidence, the theory could be shown to be wrong. You'd think the Tooth Fairy is real if she showed up and yanked a tooth out of your head. Clayc3466 15:52, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

• It does not matter how many people believe in the Tooth Fairy. We have no evidence for the Tooth Fairy.

I don't think anyone over the age of 10 believes in the Tooth Fairy, so equating her with Chrisitanity is misleading. Clayc3466 15:52, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

• I call them religious kooks because they believe the same things religious kooks believe. If it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck...--Filll 21:43, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

I'm dissapointed that you would call so many millions of people kooks. You're not a kook to believe in God, his son Jesus Christ and the Bible. Clayc3466 15:52, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Another great quote I saw: Creationism is not really a matter of pitting science against creationism. It is more the age old matter of one version of Christianity attacking another version of Christianity. One sect against another. As old as the hills. It is just disguised so these characters can spread their venom and hatred. And frankly, creationists are anti-religious and religious bigots and zealots for attacking those of other religious faiths (and I am NOT talking about atheism here). It makes me sick.--Filll 21:47, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

Fill, now you're losing credibility in my mind because you've resorted to ad hominem attacks on Christianity. Here is the truth on the this whole debate. Everyone has the same evidence to observe, test, etc. The difference is that Evolutionists come into the game with the working premise that there is no God so everything was and is done by natural processes alone. The seek to make the evidence support their presumptions. Creationists beleive that there is a God and he did and does act supernaturally in this world (He acts naturally too since he created nature). Creationists seek to have the evidence support their presumptions. But both parties must admit that none of us were there 10,000 or 4.5 billion years ago. All of this took place before our time. So we go on faith that what we believe to be true actually was true. We have some evidence that supports our unique perspectives but not all of it. The part that we can't know. We just have to take on faith. You're faith rests in science and the nature. You believe that evolution took (and takes) place based on what you've read or experimented on yourself. In your mind, it is so because you believe it to be so. I, on the other hand, put my faith in God and in his Word, the Bible. I cannot prove it, but I believe it. And since I believe it to be, I cannot believe something that contridicts it (just as you cannot believe something that contradicts your belief system). That doesn't make me a kook, nor does it make you a kook. We're just two people with different views on this subject. Clayc3466 15:52, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Some comments:

• You are free to believe whatever you like. You are NOT FREE to impose those beliefs on others.
• I am not "attacking Christianity". I might be dismissive of some fringe sects and cults that want to claim the word "Christianity" for themselves and deny the name to other groups they disagree with. However, they are free to believe what they want, as long as they do not impose it on others. I am quite uncomfortable with the proselytizing that many sects feel they have to do.
• Science does not include the supernatural, including God, in its definition of science. To do otherwise is destructive to science. It is like having physics homework to do, and knowing the answer in the back of the book. You can get the first 3 steps, but just cannot figure out the next 17 steps to reach the answer. So you declare that you got the answer by magic, and then expect to get a full grade from the teacher, just as your neighbor who actually had to figure it out and did all 20 steps. This does not mean that magic or the supernatural does not exist, just that it is not part of science
• Most christians do not reject science and evolution. This is just an extreme fringe group here in the US. About 90% of Christians in the US belong to denominations that have no problem with evolution. And the US is the most extreme case in Christianity by far, although Turkey also is another prominent Muslim example.
• God endowed us with the gift of reason. To reject reason and rationality is to spit in God's face, and to proclaim biblical literalism and biblical inerrancy is basically bibliolatry. The behavior of these fundamentalist groups is close to the same sort of sin that the Pharisees committed for which Jesus and others condemned them.--Filll 16:11, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

I found this debate through betacommand's talk page... not going to get involved but FYI "About 90% of Christians in the US belong to denominations that have no problem with evolution" is wildly inaccurate. I'd say more accurately that most people who identify as Christians don't actually practice the religion, and therefore might have differing views on origins. But the religion itself clearly supports creationism (the idea of creationism comes from christianity). There are groups that hold that God initiated evolution, but these beliefs aren't mainstream and within christian circles the literal interpretation of creation is by far more accepted. --froth^T 19:20, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Responses: Concerning science and reason, religion and faith

This is a response to some of Clayc's last archived comments.

"It seemed to infer that the book on evolution is all but closed." - You seem to be misusing the word "infer"; I believe you mean to say "imply". If not, then what is the article "inferring" this from? And if so, then where does the article imply that "the book on evolution" is any more (or less) closed than the "book" on any other topic in science?

"Yes it will. But what will happen if technology brings new data that begins to challange major elements of evolution? What if the data indicates the earth is much younger than believed now?" - Then the theory will change to accomodate the data. But the likelihood of future data ever indicating that the Earth is much younger than believed now is about the same as the likelihood that we will someday learn that the Earth doesn't really revolve around the Sun. It's pretty darned unlikely, so much so that speculating about it is profoundly futile. Anything's possible, but when there's no reason whatsoever to favor a certain possibility, fixating on it serves no purpose except to try to rhetorically exaggerate its significance. In reality, it is much more likely that the Earth will turn out to be a lot older in the future, than that it will turn out to be a lot younger. In fact, it's probably thousands of times more likely for the Earth to turn out to be 4 billion years older than we think it is, than it is for the Earth to turn out to be 4 billion years younger than we think it is (i.e., less than a billion years old). (Of course, both possibilities are infinitessimally small, but it is interesting to compare them anyway; learning that the Earth is a lot older would require that most of our current data be incorrect, whereas learning that the Earth is a lot younger would require that all of our current data be incorrect, in numerous fields of science.)

"Those who believe in evoloution do not believe in the supernatural." - Incorrect. Most people who believe in evolution also believe in the supernatural, because most believers in evolution are religious people. Evolution itself is naturalistic, because all scientific explanations are; believing in evolution no more precludes believing in the supernatural than believing in gravity does. Just because evolution and gravity don't appeal to the supernatural doesn't mean that they preclude the supernatural.

"By definition science is objective." - False. Science is not objective. It is intersubjective. No human institution can be truly objective; at best, it can aspire to a degree of quasi-objectivity through intersubjective verification (i.e., multiple different subjective agents double-checking each other's work to counteract any one person's biases).

"If the data cannot reasonably lead to the conclusion of natural process being responsible for a particular event, then one is at open to consider the supernatural as the cause." - Fortunately, the data can, and does, reasonably lead to the conclusion of natural processes being responsible for the particular events of evolution—and, indeed, for all known events. No confirmed event has ever been proven to be fundamentally inexplicable; and even if any had, no supernatural entity has ever helped explain anything (because inevitably the supernatural entities themselves are vague and undefined, making them useless as explanations).

"Evolution still has at least one big hurdle to get over: The Cause of all this." - False. Evolution has nothing to do with "the Cause of all this". To demand that evolution explain the orignis of life (i.e., abiogenesis) is as absurd as demanding that gravity explain the origins of the universe (i.e., the Big Bang). If you are going one step further and demanding that evolution, a topic in biology, go so far as to explain the creation of the universe, a topic in astrophysics, cosmology, etc. then you are simply speaking patent nonsense. What's next, do you want the theory of general relativity to explain cellular respiration?

"Where did matter come from? How did something come from nothing?" - These are unanswered questions in physics. They have nothing to do with biology. You are committing the non sequitur fallacy (and probably the equivocation fallacy as well). Disputing evolution on the grounds that physicists don't know everything is like disputing quantum theory on the grounds that botanists don't know everything. Moreover, these are unanswered questions in theology as well. There is no explanation for where the universe came from, because no real mechanism has ever been proposed by theists to explain how God created the universe; God himself has never been adequately explained (or even defined!) by theists; and no explanation has ever been provided for how, if the universe needs an external creator (God) to exist, God could exist without its own external creator? Theology simply leads to an infinite regress, and a nonexplanation; it essentially does nothing more than rephrase our ignorance in dogmatic, religious terminology, by changing the question from an ongoing, active, and productive debate in physics into a stagnant, arbitrary dead-end in theology. If you genuinely want to learn about various ways the universe could have come into being, you should start by taking some introductory courses in quantum physics, as this is one of the most important fields for understanding things like "how could something come from nothing?", and for understanding the basic forces that were at work in an early universe. On the other hand, if all you want is for scientists to throw up their hands in defeat because they don't know everything, and concede that the religious were right (even though while science knows some things, religion seems to know nothing), then you're out of luck. Science seeks real, substantial answers to problems and puzzles, not metaphysical word-games like the cosmological argument.

"You'd have to cite many, credible sources for me to believe this statement. The opposite is true." - You are entirely mistaken. Even in the United States, the stronghold of Biblical literalism, only about a third of the populace supports a literal interpretation of the Bible; about a half regard the Bible as "divinely inspired but not always to be taken literally". Biblical literalism is enormously less popular than "looser" interpretations of the Bible throughout the world. (Probably in part because a literal interpretation of the Bible is logically impossible, as the Bible contradicts itself on a number of counts if not taken figuratively or loosely.)

"But most Christians believe that the Bible is the inerrant Word of God." - Inerrancy has nothing to do with Biblical literalism. In fact, it is unintelligible to believe in an inerrant and literal Bible, because such a Bible is both internally and externally contradictory. The only intelligible options are either that the Bible is erroneous and literal, that it is erroneous and figurative, or, the view of most Christians, that it is inerrant and figurative. Your conflation of Biblical literalism (an extremely controversial and contested minority view in Christianity, much like Fundamentalism) with Biblical inerrancy (the standard, universally-accepted position of Christians) demonstrates an amazing lack of understanding of the very position you are trying to argue for. This, combined with your apparent lack of understanding of evolution and its scientific consensus, is crippling in a discussion which seeks to compare these two positions.

"This is sadly true because too many evolutions are working off the premise that there is no God;" - False. "There is no God" is no more a premise in evolution than it is a premise in gravity. Gravity does not appeal to God, because to do so has no explanatory value; for the same reason, evolution does not appeal to God because there's no point. It doesn't explain any phenomena; it has no predictive or testable consequences; it cannot, in itself, give us any real information. Science is too practical to appeal to God just to make Christians feel good. It demands evidence. What you are really describing is not a "premise", but a methodological commitment to not ignoring the observable world in favor of a completely hypothetical transcendent and supernatural one; this is methodological naturalism, and everyone in the world, even the most religious of people, relies on it for 99% of their lives, in order to deal with all sorts of issues in the empirical world. The only potential value of religious speculation is its emotional appeal; religion has never demonstrated any explanatory value. Exorcists and shamans have a much worse track record than doctors and surgeons.

"If there were enough overwhelming evidence, the theory could be shown to be wrong." - Correct. If there were.

"You'd think the Tooth Fairy is real if she showed up and yanked a tooth out of your head." - Absolutely so. As soon as we observe a reproducible phenomenon that cannot be better explained without God or the Tooth Fairy than with God or the Tooth Fairy, we will be justified in believing in God or the Tooth Fairy. Until then, such belief is rationally and empirically baseless.

"I don't think anyone over the age of 10 believes in the Tooth Fairy, so equating her with Chrisitanity is misleading." - Where did Filll equate Christianity with the Tooth Fairy? Filll compared Christianity to the Tooth Fairy; he was making an analogy, not an equation. To make an analogy, you need merely show that two things have a certain thing in common, despite being unlike in other ways. Arguing that Christianity and the Tooth Fairy are not alike in every way is inane, as it misunderstands the very meaning of an analogy, which is meant to compare two unlike things based on a similarity they have, not to compare two like or identical things. For example, if I compared a pen to a pencil on the grounds that they were both writing utensils, and you objected to my analogy (claiming that it is "misleading") on the grounds that pens don't use lead, you'd most likely be misunderstanding how analogies work. In the same way, you are misunderstanding how analogies work here, by lodging an irrelevant objection to something Filll wasn't discussing. Filll was discussing the lack of evidence for the Tooth Fairy, comparing it to the lack of evidence for Christianity's claims; nowhere did Filll make any arguments based on what groups of individuals tend to believe one claim or the other.

"You're not a kook to believe in God, his son Jesus Christ and the Bible." - Do you consider Scientologists kooks? Christianity is no less kooky than any other religion or cult.

"Fill, now you're losing credibility in my mind because you've resorted to ad hominem attacks on Christianity." - And you're losing credibility for not realizing that it's impossible to make an ad hominem against a belief system or religious institution. Ad hominem means "against the person"; is Christianity a person now? Moreover, ironically enough, it's an ad hominem to attack someone's credibility rather than simply responding to something they said; you and I, not Filll, are making ad hominems, when we say things like "you're losing credibility for X" in an attempt to rebut "X". :)

"The difference is that Evolutionists come into the game with the working premise that there is no God" - Incorrect. Scientists come into the game without the assumption that there is or isn't a God. Creationists come into the game with the assumption that there is a God. Scientists (at least in their scientific, rather than personal, lives) will conclude that there is a God if, and only if, the evidence demonstrates that there is a God. Creationists, in contrast, will believe in God no matter what the evidence indicates, because their presupposition requires it. Methodological naturalism does not necessarily preclude or assume God, and is therefore the most open-minded and reasonable stance, and the stance of science; in contrast, creationism assumes God regardless of the evidence, and is therefore a much more unreasonable and closed-minded stance, as it cannot change its views on God based on what the evidence indicates. It simply believes based on faith; and since faith can support false beliefs just as easily as true ones, there is no reliable basis for this assumption that God exists. Scientists keep their options open; creationists come into the game with their minds already closed to the vast majority of possible scenarios, because they reject out-of-hand any scenarios which do not include God.

"But both parties must admit that none of us were there 10,000 or 4.5 billion years ago." - Like pretty much all of the rest of your claims so far, this is a common creationist argument, and an exceedingly poor one. The fact that we "weren't there" doesn't mean that we can't know plenty of things about what happened "there". Events in the past have consequences on the present; it is perfectly reasonable to infer certain things about what happened in the past based on the present. To abandon such inferences altogether undermines Christianity just as much as science, since it means that we can't even infer anything about what happened 10 seconds ago, much less yesterday! Science is simply more consistent and rational in its approach to evidence for past events, relying directly on physical and material evidence rather than solely on the claims of a man-made book. People lie, and are mistaken; geological strata do not, and are not.

"So we go on faith that what we believe to be true actually was true." - Incorrect. We go on evidence, if we have a scientific rather than religious mindset when dealing with such things. Evidence can tell us just as much about the past as it can about the present. Inferring past phenomena from present evidence is no more or less reliable than inferring present or future phenomena from present evidence. They may not be certain, but they're as close to it as we can ever come. The religious have no reliable evidence to support their claims, so they are hte ones who are required to rely on "faith" to believe in their claims; scientists do not require any more faith to believe things about the past than you requie to believe in things that happened 10 minutes ago. After all, neither belief can be certain; you simply assume that the evidence is reliable until given any reason to doubt or reinterpret such evidence. This commonsensical approach is the heart and soul of scientific and empirical research.

"The part that we can't know. We just have to take on faith. " - Incorrect. There is another option: rather than taking on faith those things which you don't know to any reliable degree, why not simply withhold belief until more evidence arises? That seems more sensible and open-minded than leaping to arbitrary conclusions before the evidence has been gathered and evaluated sufficiently.

"And since I believe it to be, I cannot believe something that contridicts it (just as you cannot believe something that contradicts your belief system)." - Evolution does not directly contradict the Bible. Believing that the Earth isn't flat, on the other hand, does. Yet you don't believe in evolution, and do believe that the Earth is not flat—correct? This shows that your claim is baseless and intellectually dishonest. You don't believe in those things because hte Bible tells you "evolution is false"; you believe in them because creationists (no doubt including many people in your personal life who you deeply respect, particularly people who influenced your ideas in your formative years) told you so, and provided arguments that convined you that it was so. Unfortunately, you lacked the faculties at the time to realize that their arguments were vacuous, their evidence spurious, their claims ultimately baseless; and now you have become so personally invested in those arguments that you are largely unwilling to reconsider them, even though you have a much better capacity to do so now. This is the creationist tragedy; creationists are not mad, nor foolish, nor "bad people" in any way. They are, quite simply, indoctrinated into a specific thought paradigm: dogmatic faith, in lieu of reason. Many of the most devout Christians in the world—the Pope included—do not believe that the Bible contradicts evolution. The reason you do is because of the views you were raised to believe, not because of any overwhelmingly compelling evidence in the Bible. I am not saying that your views are wrong, or that their views aren't; there is indeed a case to be made for the Bible, as its authoris originally intended, contradicting evolution. But the evidence clearly shows that there is no correlation betweeou how faithful of a Christian one is, and how much one believes in evolution; it is not a matter of Christians who care about what the Bible says vs. ones who don't, but rather a matter of Christians raised to accept a specific Creationistic, anti-evolutionary interpretation of the Bible vs. ones who weren't raised to accept such an interpretation. -Silence 06:36, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Which is, as I said before, an argument that this controversy exists not between Christianity and evolution, or between Christianity and atheism, but beween one Christian view and another Christian view. This story of Christian sects arguing with each other over world views and interpretations of the bible are as old as the hills. Christians have killed each other over them. Evolution has as much to do with atheism, or with religion, as plumbing does. Plumbing excludes God (at least our modern view of sanitation does anyway). Is it possible for a plumber to belong to your Church and your faith? Because in the past, plagues and sicknesses caused by bad sanitation were chalked up to punishments from God, not bad sanitation. So would you rather get rid of your toilet, throw your human waste in the street, and just pray to God instead to protect you from dysentry and other unpleasantries because that is the more "Christian" thing to do? That is what was done in the past. Then we took God out of plumbing. And now we have a system that works and keeps us healthy. Was that unChristian? Are we all atheists because we use toilets? Is it an affront to God to use a toilet?

"But both parties must admit that none of us were there 10,000 or 4.5 billion years ago."

"So we go on faith that what we believe to be true actually was true." So are you in favor of letting the vast majority of criminals out of jail? Letting the people on death row go free? Doing away with most trials? Letting convicted murderers and rapists out on the street? That is the logical conclusion of following your line of reasoning. You know we convict criminals based on evidence. It is rare that the convicted commits his crime in front of the judge and jury so they can witness it for themselves. Our legal system relies on things like DNA evidence, and fingerprints, and video recordings, and confessions, and testimony of various witnesses, and various physical evidence, and so on. Usually the judge and the jury were not there when the crimes occurred. So you are arguing for basically letting most convicted criminals go free. And not only are you arguing for that, but you are demanding that others accept your logic. All the rest of society, even if they think it is a bit strange.--Filll 12:38, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

More precise

All me to make my statement more precise:

Molleen Matsumura of the National Center for Science Education found, "of Americans in the twelve largest Christian denominations, 89.6% belong to churches that support evolution education." These churches include the United Methodist Church, National Baptist Convention USA, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, Presbyterian Church (USA), National Baptist Convention of America, African Methodist Episcopal Church, the Roman Catholic Church, the Episcopal Church, and others.--Filll 19:32, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Fill, this is a skewed survey as these particular denominations tend to more liberal in their views and doctrine. You maintain that God gave you reason. Well, if only 10% of Christians have issue with evolution, then why is there such a big national debate on the subject? God's creation of the universe is a fundamental element of Christianity. Wait -- you said that God gave you reason [from an earlier discussion]. But according to your beliefs, God didn't create or give anything. Reason is the result of billions of years of natural processes. You further confuse me because you seem on one hand to believe in God but rejct the supernatural with the other. You can't have both. Clayc3466 21:34, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

You have to read more carefully, say at Levels of support for evolution. Just because their churches follow one path does not mean the membership agrees. And just because they say they believe in creationism, does not mean that they all believe it firmly. I never said that God didnt create or give anything. I am more in the camp that most Christians are; theistic evolution. Which is pure poison to creationists, but so be it. I do not think the supernatural belongs in science. That is my position. I didnt say it didnt exist. --Filll 22:33, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

I don't get it. I makes zero sense to say that you believe in theistic evolution and you don't think the supernatural belongs in science. Here is the definition of theistic evolution from Wikipedia:

Theistic evolutionists may believe either 1) that evolution (namely macroevolution) is a viable biological mechanism but was guided by God for the determination of species, or 2) that it is not viable and each genetic alteration leading to a new species required God's intervention.

I would disagree with that. If God exists, he set up the system to operate. He does not tinker. My vision of God is far grander than that.--Filll 03:32, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

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In short, both subviews require the intervention of God (supernatural) in the natural process. God is the Cause or catalyst for natural process. Let's assume that God did act in this manner. A ton of questions must follow.

1. God's purpose for causing the universe (creation/evolution) was to have a relationship with man. Why take billions of years to do this?

Ours is not to know. Why should we expect to know ?--Filll 03:32, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

How do you know that God's purpose in creating the universe is to have a relationship with man? What evidence is there that this is true? Why would God want or need to have a relationship with anyone other than Himself, if God was already perfect and complete before Creation? But even if you just take it as an article of faith that God's purpose was to have a relationship with man, evolutionary theism is no less incoherent than creationism on that account, since it makes no more sense to suppose that God waited thousands of years than to suppose that he waited billions of years; neither span of time could have been necessary for an omnipotent being, so both are equally inexplicable. Any attempt to answer "Why would God wait thousands of years for X?" will also necessarily answer "Why would God wait billions of years for X?" just as well, if not much better. However, if you really want to know the answer: there is no apparent reason for God to take billions of years to do anything. And there is just as little apparent reason for God to take thousands of years to do anything. Therefore there is no rational basis for supposing that God created the universe for such a purpose; you need to either take it on faith (and thus not think about it), or think about it and be an agnostic at best. -Silence 04:49, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

I will also point out, that as far as we can tell:

• the Big Bang created time and space and most of what we view around us is really much more complicated than we think it is; nondeterministic, spontaneous creation and destruction of matter in a vaccum, quantum teleportation, Schodinger's cat really is alive and dead at the same time, matter is not matter but waves, we live in a tiny part of a 10+ dimensional universe, black holes create tears in the fabric of the universe, antigravity exists, time is not what we think it is, etc. etc. So if God exists, and if what is written in the "book of nature" is a message from God, God's handiwork is like a communication, a record of creation, THEN our puny limited vision of God and how he works and what he intends are basically worthless. And the creationist vision of God is so limited by comparison as to be laughable; it is basically imagining God in man's image, with all man's failings. To take the gifts that God has given us, and then turn our back on them and act like ignorant jerks, is basically to spit in God's face. He gave us brains. He gave us information. And some ignorant preacher screaming and speaking in tongues is who we are going to believe and follow? Give me a break. That is blasphemy. It is obscene. It is an insult to God.--Filll 05:04, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

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2. If God did act through evolution, why give us a different account in the Bible?

I was always taught that the bible is poetry, allegory. An ancient tribe coming to grips with nature in Genesis.--Filll 03:32, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

What makes you think that God wrote the Bible? Many theistic evolutionists don't believe in the Bible—you falsely assume that everyone who believes in deity-guided evolution must be a Christian. But even if we are only talking about creationists who take the Bible to be the word of God, your argument is a weak objection, because the Bible doesn't say that evolution is false anywhere in the text; it says that God "brought forth" various species, but nothing in the text specifically necessitates that the specific mechanism for bringing those species forth not be evolutionary. If you object to theistic evolution on nothing more than the grounds that the Bible doesn't explicitly state that evolution occurred, or on the grounds that a simple literalistic view of the Bible seems to contradict evolution, then on the same grounds you will need to ask why God would state or imply in the Bible that the Earth is flat, when it is not. (Though, of course, some fundamentalist Christians claim that the earth is flat, for the same reason that some claim that evolution is false—and with much more Biblical evidence on their side, remarkably.)

See Isaiah 40:22, "It is he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth.. Clayc3466 15:03, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

All this does is demonstrate more of the many hundreds of thousands of contradictions in the bible. These are well known and have been for centuries.--Filll 16:08, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for proving my point. As I said, Flat Earthers believe, based on the Bible, that the Earth is a flat, circular disc. Nothing in the Bible contradicts this, and much supports it, so, because of their Biblical literalism, they are forced to take on an absurd position. The only people who don't accept a Flat Earth are non-literalists, and generally ones who are compromising their faith in the Bible with the obvious evidence in the world around them, because they realize how silly they'll look if they claim that the Earth is flat.

The problem with creationists is that since there are so many of them, they can much more effectively form an insular bubble than Flat Earthers and validate each other's ideas while hiding from the outside world. They don't see that their ideas are just as silly as the Flat Earthers', because evolution is a much more complex topic than the shape of the Earth. So as a result, ignorance and pride lets creationism flourish. -Silence 16:23, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

So, to answer your question directly: there is no apparent reason for God to not simply explicitly state in the Bible that evolution occurred; but then again, the Hebrew Bible is presumably meant to be a moral guide and a cultural history of the Jews, not a scientific textbook. That still doesn't excuse its gross inaccuracies if it's divinely-inspired, of course; the only two sensible ways to resolve the conflict between the Bible and all the extra-Biblical evidence is either to say that God is a liar or a fool, that the Bible was inspired by God in a very limited manner, that the Bible was intended as metaphor and allegory (as Filll suggested above), or, most sensibly of all, that the Bible is not divinely inspired at all (there is no apparent reason for a God to need to communicate his message through books, anyway; he could communicate directly with people's minds if he wanted). All of these interpretations except the last have significant problems, though there's no need to go into them in detail here. -Silence 04:49, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

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3. Death and decay did not enter the world until after the fall of man. So how can their be billions of years of death and extinction as proposed through evolution before the arrival of man?

Not really part of my religious upbringing. Sorry.--Filll 03:32, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Again, not all theistic evolutionsts are Christian, so many of them don't believe in the Fall. And, for that matter, many progressive Christians don't believe in the Fall either. And the vast majority of Christians who do believe in the Fall, also believe that the universe is billions of years old. But, to answer your question: there can't be. And this is a problem for Young Earth creationists most of all, because it makes no sense that all the evidence indicates that there are billions of years of death and destruction in the past, if God supposedly created man (and the world) only a few thousand years ago. Of course, that's only one of countless problems for the creationists... It's not a problem for most people (i.e., people who don't believe that the Fall ever literally occurred), but it's a problem for all creationists and a number of Christian supporters of evolution. -Silence 04:49, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

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4. The Bible ascribes God as the Creator in multiple places. Not just in Genesis. (Matt 19:4-5; Exodus 20:11; Mark 13:9; Romans 1:25; Colossians 1:16)

So?--Filll 03:32, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

So? -Silence 04:49, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

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5. The Bible teaches that the first man's fall into sin was the direct cause of sin in the world (Romans 5:12). Dismissing the fall of Adam undermines the biblical bases for Christ's redemption.

So some say. Not me. Not in my religious upbringing. Sorry.--Filll 03:32, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Acknowledging the fall of Adam undermines the Biblical bases for Christ's redemption even more, because there is no apparent reason for a good God to condone inherited Sin. In fact, the idea of inherited sin (i.e., blaming the children for the sins of the father, Adam) directly contradicts the ideas that God is good, that he is wise, and that he has any respect for free will, effectively refuting the three in one. This thoroughly undermines any basis God has for demanding that we seek salvation through Christ, as, if anything, God is the one who must atone for his own sin (of punishing children for their ancestor's sins); humans have done nothing to God, and indeed it is impossible to harm a perfect being, unless he wishes to be harmed. The idea of seeking redemption through the son of God because of Original Sin is incoherent, immoral, and absurd regardless of your theology; it is like demanding (with threats of Hell) that your grandchild go through an elaborate ritual to atone for a trivial and innocent error on the part of the child's father. If what the advocates of Original Sin have to say about God is true, then God does not deserve worship—rahter, God deserves to be put on trial for child abuse! Fortunately, I do not believe that what they have to say is true, so I am potentially free to rationally and ethically believe in the goodness of God if I wish. -Silence 04:49, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

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Theistic evolution is an interesting belief because in its attempt to marry evolution and creation, it in the end refutes both. Clayc3466 02:58, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

So some say. Not me. Not in my religious upbringing. Sorry. And I am joined in this by the Catholic Church and 90% of the 12 largest churches in the US and various Orthodox Churches.--Filll 03:32, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Clayc, how does theistic evolution refute evolution or creationism? -Silence 04:49, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Silence, I appreciate your additional comments that you added after this section, but we're past that part of the discussion. I can see that there has been a bit of a misunderstanding in communication. You have been focusing on the biology aspect of evolution while I've been working on the concept of the total deal: the evolution of the universe. I'm facinated now with my discussion with you guys(?) on theology. BTW -- I don't how to archive if you don't mind telling me how its done.Clayc3466 14:48, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

This is another common creationist confusion. Typically creationists will lump all kinds of disparate fields together in a confused mess, demonstrating tremendous misunderstanding of science. Biological evolution has nothing to do with stellar evolution (except very indirectly) or cosmology etc. But creationists seem to love to make such a huge mess.--Filll 16:17, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

There is no reason why we cannot engage in both parts of the discussion simultaneously, as this is the Internet and it is easy to alternate between the two. Many of my responses were highly important, relevant, and enlightening responses to certain common misunderstandings, so I at the very least recommend that you read them. You gave no opportunity to respond to those comments earlier, since you deleted that section of the discussion almost immediately after writing them. You should refrain from deleting discussions in the future; it is preferable to just make new sections so the discussions don't get too crowded, and then to archive several discussions at once when the page as a whole gets too large. Otherwise you are like to confuse and annoy people with your constant deletions. Archiving is extraordinarily easy; just copy-paste the text you want to remove from this page onto an Arcive page. See Wikipedia:How to archive a talk page for more information.

Also, the reason we are focusing on the biology aspect is because you only posted to the biology page on evolution: you asked or a change to Evolution alone. Also, the creation-evolution controversy only applies to biological evolution, though it is true that many Young Earth creationists dispute most of the fields of physics, geology, etc. as well. Speaking of "Evolution of hte universe" is too vague, as there are countless different processes involved therein, and those different processes are not considered by scientists to be part of a single, overarching "universal evolution" model. That's why none of them rely on explanations for how the Big Bang came to be in order to be valid; all they rely on is their evidence. They don't need to answer every possible question; our knowledge is limited, and, unlike the religious, scientifically-minded people don't speculate wildly about what they don't know and then assume they got it right based on faith. -Silence 16:23, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Responses: Concerning science and reason, religion and faith

This is a response to some of Clayc's last archived comments.

"It seemed to infer that the book on evolution is all but closed." - You seem to be misusing the word "infer"; I believe you mean to say "imply". If not, then what is the article "inferring" this from? And if so, then where does the article imply that "the book on evolution" is any more (or less) closed than the "book" on any other topic in science?

"Yes it will. But what will happen if technology brings new data that begins to challange major elements of evolution? What if the data indicates the earth is much younger than believed now?" - Then the theory will change to accomodate the data. But the likelihood of future data ever indicating that the Earth is much younger than believed now is about the same as the likelihood that we will someday learn that the Earth doesn't really revolve around the Sun. It's pretty darned unlikely, so much so that speculating about it is profoundly futile. Anything's possible, but when there's no reason whatsoever to favor a certain possibility, fixating on it serves no purpose except to try to rhetorically exaggerate its significance. In reality, it is much more likely that the Earth will turn out to be a lot older in the future, than that it will turn out to be a lot younger. In fact, it's probably thousands of times more likely for the Earth to turn out to be 4 billion years older than we think it is, than it is for the Earth to turn out to be 4 billion years younger than we think it is (i.e., less than a billion years old). (Of course, both possibilities are infinitessimally small, but it is interesting to compare them anyway; learning that the Earth is a lot older would require that most of our current data be incorrect, whereas learning that the Earth is a lot younger would require that all of our current data be incorrect, in numerous fields of science.)

"Those who believe in evoloution do not believe in the supernatural." - Incorrect. Most people who believe in evolution also believe in the supernatural, because most believers in evolution are religious people. Evolution itself is naturalistic, because all scientific explanations are; believing in evolution no more precludes believing in the supernatural than believing in gravity does. Just because evolution and gravity don't appeal to the supernatural doesn't mean that they preclude the supernatural.

"By definition science is objective." - False. Science is not objective. It is intersubjective. No human institution can be truly objective; at best, it can aspire to a degree of quasi-objectivity through intersubjective verification (i.e., multiple different subjective agents double-checking each other's work to counteract any one person's biases).

"If the data cannot reasonably lead to the conclusion of natural process being responsible for a particular event, then one is at open to consider the supernatural as the cause." - Fortunately, the data can, and does, reasonably lead to the conclusion of natural processes being responsible for the particular events of evolution—and, indeed, for all known events. No confirmed event has ever been proven to be fundamentally inexplicable; and even if any had, no supernatural entity has ever helped explain anything (because inevitably the supernatural entities themselves are vague and undefined, making them useless as explanations).

"Evolution still has at least one big hurdle to get over: The Cause of all this." - False. Evolution has nothing to do with "the Cause of all this". To demand that evolution explain the orignis of life (i.e., abiogenesis) is as absurd as demanding that gravity explain the origins of the universe (i.e., the Big Bang). If you are going one step further and demanding that evolution, a topic in biology, go so far as to explain the creation of the universe, a topic in astrophysics, cosmology, etc. then you are simply speaking patent nonsense. What's next, do you want the theory of general relativity to explain cellular respiration?

"Where did matter come from? How did something come from nothing?" - These are unanswered questions in physics. They have nothing to do with biology. You are committing the non sequitur fallacy (and probably the equivocation fallacy as well). Disputing evolution on the grounds that physicists don't know everything is like disputing quantum theory on the grounds that botanists don't know everything. Moreover, these are unanswered questions in theology as well. There is no explanation for where the universe came from, because no real mechanism has ever been proposed by theists to explain how God created the universe; God himself has never been adequately explained (or even defined!) by theists; and no explanation has ever been provided for how, if the universe needs an external creator (God) to exist, God could exist without its own external creator? Theology simply leads to an infinite regress, and a nonexplanation; it essentially does nothing more than rephrase our ignorance in dogmatic, religious terminology, by changing the question from an ongoing, active, and productive debate in physics into a stagnant, arbitrary dead-end in theology. If you genuinely want to learn about various ways the universe could have come into being, you should start by taking some introductory courses in quantum physics, as this is one of the most important fields for understanding things like "how could something come from nothing?", and for understanding the basic forces that were at work in an early universe. On the other hand, if all you want is for scientists to throw up their hands in defeat because they don't know everything, and concede that the religious were right (even though while science knows some things, religion seems to know nothing), then you're out of luck. Science seeks real, substantial answers to problems and puzzles, not metaphysical word-games like the cosmological argument.

"You'd have to cite many, credible sources for me to believe this statement. The opposite is true." - You are entirely mistaken. Even in the United States, the stronghold of Biblical literalism, only about a third of the populace supports a literal interpretation of the Bible; about a half regard the Bible as "divinely inspired but not always to be taken literally". Biblical literalism is enormously less popular than "looser" interpretations of the Bible throughout the world. (Probably in part because a literal interpretation of the Bible is logically impossible, as the Bible contradicts itself on a number of counts if not taken figuratively or loosely.)

"But most Christians believe that the Bible is the inerrant Word of God." - Inerrancy has nothing to do with Biblical literalism. In fact, it is unintelligible to believe in an inerrant and literal Bible, because such a Bible is both internally and externally contradictory. The only intelligible options are either that the Bible is erroneous and literal, that it is erroneous and figurative, or, the view of most Christians, that it is inerrant and figurative. Your conflation of Biblical literalism (an extremely controversial and contested minority view in Christianity, much like Fundamentalism) with Biblical inerrancy (the standard, universally-accepted position of Christians) demonstrates an amazing lack of understanding of the very position you are trying to argue for. This, combined with your apparent lack of understanding of evolution and its scientific consensus, is crippling in a discussion which seeks to compare these two positions.

"This is sadly true because too many evolutions are working off the premise that there is no God;" - False. "There is no God" is no more a premise in evolution than it is a premise in gravity. Gravity does not appeal to God, because to do so has no explanatory value; for the same reason, evolution does not appeal to God because there's no point. It doesn't explain any phenomena; it has no predictive or testable consequences; it cannot, in itself, give us any real information. Science is too practical to appeal to God just to make Christians feel good. It demands evidence. What you are really describing is not a "premise", but a methodological commitment to not ignoring the observable world in favor of a completely hypothetical transcendent and supernatural one; this is methodological naturalism, and everyone in the world, even the most religious of people, relies on it for 99% of their lives, in order to deal with all sorts of issues in the empirical world. The only potential value of religious speculation is its emotional appeal; religion has never demonstrated any explanatory value. Exorcists and shamans have a much worse track record than doctors and surgeons.

"If there were enough overwhelming evidence, the theory could be shown to be wrong." - Correct. If there were.

"You'd think the Tooth Fairy is real if she showed up and yanked a tooth out of your head." - Absolutely so. As soon as we observe a reproducible phenomenon that cannot be better explained without God or the Tooth Fairy than with God or the Tooth Fairy, we will be justified in believing in God or the Tooth Fairy. Until then, such belief is rationally and empirically baseless.

"I don't think anyone over the age of 10 believes in the Tooth Fairy, so equating her with Chrisitanity is misleading." - Where did Filll equate Christianity with the Tooth Fairy? Filll compared Christianity to the Tooth Fairy; he was making an analogy, not an equation. To make an analogy, you need merely show that two things have a certain thing in common, despite being unlike in other ways. Arguing that Christianity and the Tooth Fairy are not alike in every way is inane, as it misunderstands the very meaning of an analogy, which is meant to compare two unlike things based on a similarity they have, not to compare two like or identical things. For example, if I compared a pen to a pencil on the grounds that they were both writing utensils, and you objected to my analogy (claiming that it is "misleading") on the grounds that pens don't use lead, you'd most likely be misunderstanding how analogies work. In the same way, you are misunderstanding how analogies work here, by lodging an irrelevant objection to something Filll wasn't discussing. Filll was discussing the lack of evidence for the Tooth Fairy, comparing it to the lack of evidence for Christianity's claims; nowhere did Filll make any arguments based on what groups of individuals tend to believe one claim or the other.

"You're not a kook to believe in God, his son Jesus Christ and the Bible." - Do you consider Scientologists kooks? Christianity is no less kooky than any other religion or cult.

"Fill, now you're losing credibility in my mind because you've resorted to ad hominem attacks on Christianity." - And you're losing credibility for not realizing that it's impossible to make an ad hominem against a belief system or religious institution. Ad hominem means "against the person"; is Christianity a person now? Moreover, ironically enough, it's an ad hominem to attack someone's credibility rather than simply responding to something they said; you and I, not Filll, are making ad hominems, when we say things like "you're losing credibility for X" in an attempt to rebut "X". :)

"The difference is that Evolutionists come into the game with the working premise that there is no God" - Incorrect. Scientists come into the game without the assumption that there is or isn't a God. Creationists come into the game with the assumption that there is a God. Scientists (at least in their scientific, rather than personal, lives) will conclude that there is a God if, and only if, the evidence demonstrates that there is a God. Creationists, in contrast, will believe in God no matter what the evidence indicates, because their presupposition requires it. Methodological naturalism does not necessarily preclude or assume God, and is therefore the most open-minded and reasonable stance, and the stance of science; in contrast, creationism assumes God regardless of the evidence, and is therefore a much more unreasonable and closed-minded stance, as it cannot change its views on God based on what the evidence indicates. It simply believes based on faith; and since faith can support false beliefs just as easily as true ones, there is no reliable basis for this assumption that God exists. Scientists keep their options open; creationists come into the game with their minds already closed to the vast majority of possible scenarios, because they reject out-of-hand any scenarios which do not include God.

"But both parties must admit that none of us were there 10,000 or 4.5 billion years ago." - Like pretty much all of the rest of your claims so far, this is a common creationist argument, and an exceedingly poor one. The fact that we "weren't there" doesn't mean that we can't know plenty of things about what happened "there". Events in the past have consequences on the present; it is perfectly reasonable to infer certain things about what happened in the past based on the present. To abandon such inferences altogether undermines Christianity just as much as science, since it means that we can't even infer anything about what happened 10 seconds ago, much less yesterday! Science is simply more consistent and rational in its approach to evidence for past events, relying directly on physical and material evidence rather than solely on the claims of a man-made book. People lie, and are mistaken; geological strata do not, and are not.

"So we go on faith that what we believe to be true actually was true." - Incorrect. We go on evidence, if we have a scientific rather than religious mindset when dealing with such things. Evidence can tell us just as much about the past as it can about the present. Inferring past phenomena from present evidence is no more or less reliable than inferring present or future phenomena from present evidence. They may not be certain, but they're as close to it as we can ever come. The religious have no reliable evidence to support their claims, so they are hte ones who are required to rely on "faith" to believe in their claims; scientists do not require any more faith to believe things about the past than you requie to believe in things that happened 10 minutes ago. After all, neither belief can be certain; you simply assume that the evidence is reliable until given any reason to doubt or reinterpret such evidence. This commonsensical approach is the heart and soul of scientific and empirical research.

"The part that we can't know. We just have to take on faith. " - Incorrect. There is another option: rather than taking on faith those things which you don't know to any reliable degree, why not simply withhold belief until more evidence arises? That seems more sensible and open-minded than leaping to arbitrary conclusions before the evidence has been gathered and evaluated sufficiently.

"And since I believe it to be, I cannot believe something that contridicts it (just as you cannot believe something that contradicts your belief system)." - Evolution does not directly contradict the Bible. Believing that the Earth isn't flat, on the other hand, does. Yet you don't believe in evolution, and do believe that the Earth is not flat—correct? This shows that your claim is baseless and intellectually dishonest. You don't believe in those things because hte Bible tells you "evolution is false"; you believe in them because creationists (no doubt including many people in your personal life who you deeply respect, particularly people who influenced your ideas in your formative years) told you so, and provided arguments that convined you that it was so. Unfortunately, you lacked the faculties at the time to realize that their arguments were vacuous, their evidence spurious, their claims ultimately baseless; and now you have become so personally invested in those arguments that you are largely unwilling to reconsider them, even though you have a much better capacity to do so now. This is the creationist tragedy; creationists are not mad, nor foolish, nor "bad people" in any way. They are, quite simply, indoctrinated into a specific thought paradigm: dogmatic faith, in lieu of reason. Many of the most devout Christians in the world—the Pope included—do not believe that the Bible contradicts evolution. The reason you do is because of the views you were raised to believe, not because of any overwhelmingly compelling evidence in the Bible. I am not saying that your views are wrong, or that their views aren't; there is indeed a case to be made for the Bible, as its authoris originally intended, contradicting evolution. But the evidence clearly shows that there is no correlation betweeou how faithful of a Christian one is, and how much one believes in evolution; it is not a matter of Christians who care about what the Bible says vs. ones who don't, but rather a matter of Christians raised to accept a specific Creationistic, anti-evolutionary interpretation of the Bible vs. ones who weren't raised to accept such an interpretation. -Silence 06:36, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Which is, as I said before, an argument that this controversy exists not between Christianity and evolution, or between Christianity and atheism, but beween one Christian view and another Christian view. This story of Christian sects arguing with each other over world views and interpretations of the bible are as old as the hills. Christians have killed each other over them. Evolution has as much to do with atheism, or with religion, as plumbing does. Plumbing excludes God (at least our modern view of sanitation does anyway). Is it possible for a plumber to belong to your Church and your faith? Because in the past, plagues and sicknesses caused by bad sanitation were chalked up to punishments from God, not bad sanitation. So would you rather get rid of your toilet, throw your human waste in the street, and just pray to God instead to protect you from dysentry and other unpleasantries because that is the more "Christian" thing to do? That is what was done in the past. Then we took God out of plumbing. And now we have a system that works and keeps us healthy. Was that unChristian? Are we all atheists because we use toilets? Is it an affront to God to use a toilet?

"But both parties must admit that none of us were there 10,000 or 4.5 billion years ago."

"So we go on faith that what we believe to be true actually was true." So are you in favor of letting the vast majority of criminals out of jail? Letting the people on death row go free? Doing away with most trials? Letting convicted murderers and rapists out on the street? That is the logical conclusion of following your line of reasoning. You know we convict criminals based on evidence. It is rare that the convicted commits his crime in front of the judge and jury so they can witness it for themselves. Our legal system relies on things like DNA evidence, and fingerprints, and video recordings, and confessions, and testimony of various witnesses, and various physical evidence, and so on. Usually the judge and the jury were not there when the crimes occurred. So you are arguing for basically letting most convicted criminals go free. And not only are you arguing for that, but you are demanding that others accept your logic. All the rest of society, even if they think it is a bit strange.--Filll 12:38, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Theology

Fill -- After our exchange last night, I'm just a little curious about your religious upbringing and your theological views. Please don't take offense. That's not my intent. I'm just trying to get my head wrapped around it.

1. How do you view the relationship between God and man?

2. In your POV, is there a rift between God and people that must somehow be reconciled? Do people have to atone for the bad things they do in some manner?

3. If there is such a rift, then what is the mechanism for repairing it?

4. What happens to people after they die?

Clayc3466 14:48, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

1. God, if he existed, created the universe and its rules. Something like what Maimonides believed. Or Newton. Or Einstein. Or the Pope John Paul II. Or Pope Pius XII. --Filll 16:08, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

2. I do not believe in an afterlife with a hell. Sorry. There can be hell in this life however. And rift? For eating the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil? No I do not subscribe to that. Sorry.--Filll 16:08, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

3. Well I do not believe there is a rift, but I think there are some valuable ethical and behavioral precepts in the bible. For example:

• Do not behave like a Pharisee (and to me, the fundamentalists are the closest thing we have)
• Do unto others as you would have them do unto you (present in many religions)
• Do not hide your talents under a bush (the sort of Galilean reasoning: I cannot believe God gave us reason and did not want us to use it...)

You might not like this, but there are over 30,000 Christian sects/denominations/variations. And none of them like what the others believe. So what. Tell me something new.--Filll 16:08, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

4. I have no proof, and neither does anyone else, but I would like to believe that consciousness does not evaporate. I do not know, but I choose to believe there is something more. You were brought up in a different tradition, I am sure. Well, the whole world was not brought up in your tradition and does not believe the same things. Live and let live I say. More blood has been shed over these stupid differences than anything. And they are just that; stupid differences.--Filll 16:08, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

For my part, my answers are: 1. God probably doesn't exist. I'm open to the possibility that God might exist, and will change my mind if someone gives me sufficient evidence to justify belief in God, but until then it's such a slim possibility that it would be foolish of me to jump to the conclusion that he does. So, the relationship between God and man is, man made up God. God is our imaginary friend. Like imaginary friends, he gives us comfort; but also like imaginary friends, he can also lead us to stray from reality and common sense if we put too much faith in him and disregard our senses.

2. People do not need to "atone", by and large; they need to change their ways and become productive members of society. The purpose of justice is not to punish, but to prevent further evils and, ideally, to rehabilitate. Punishment doesn't benefit anyone; preventing evils does, and rehabilitation does. Atonement is only valuable when it serves the latter two ends. Even if God exists, humans do not have a "debt" of sin to God. Evil doesn't work that way.

4. After people die, they are dead. The evidence indicates that their bodily functions end. Their brains cease functioning, and thus their minds (including their consciousnesses) end. They gradually decompose and decay until they are no longer recognizable. There is no known way to reverse brain death, so there is no known way to restore a person's mind once it is gone. Speculation about an afterlife is a common cultural myth (and a pleasant fantasy indeed), but has no evidential basis. -Silence 16:23, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

In addition I think that humans and human brains are wired for religious belief. Instead of God creating man in his image, creationists make God in their image; a tinkerer, with human frailties. It is the height of folly and conceit, arrogance, vanity and pride (one of the seven deadly sins, after all). In fact, if I was a preacher, I would preach that those who act like creationists are committing a multitude of sins, such as:

• pride (creating God in Man's image)
• hiding their talents (denying rationality)
• acting like Pharisees (bibliolatry etc)
• going against the Golden Rule (aggressive proselytizing and harassment, cursing others for not believing the same, etc).--Filll 16:34, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Further discussion

Guys. I don't know where you live or what you do. I don't know anything about your lives other than the fact that you're both passionate on the subject of evolution. So I won't presume to know what your world looks like and I honestly don't demean or look down on you for having the beliefs and convictions that you do. I've heard a lot over the last day on what you believe theologically. Let me share my perspective.

God is perfect. He is just. He is love. And he is the creator of all things. He made man in his image and gave man a purpose which is to reflect the perfect glory of God. He gave us the choice -- the free will -- to love him or reject him. Unfortunately, we chose the latter. Every one of us. Everyday people do things that are against the character of God. We don't come close to reflecting his image. We've screwed up big time. The only thing we could do to correct the situation is to be perfct -- and we all know that no one is perfect. But in his love, God chose to come to the earth in the form of Jesus Christ who suffered and died to pay the price that justice demands. He rose again and lives, not in flesh but in spirit, today. Through his act, all men, anyone who wants can be clean before God with no judgment against them. We still screw up, but believing in Christ and what he did for us covers those screw ups. Because of that we considered God's children. A part of his family, and he has prepared a place in eternity for us to live with him forever.

Some may see that as a fairy tale, but I don't base those beliefs on a gut feeling or something I learned in school. It's not a preacher that I rest my faith on. It's not consensus. It's the Bible. I can't explain to you the relationship I have with God really beyond that. He gives me hope. He gives me direction. I am far from perfect, and I know I don't have all the answers. But with every fiber within me I know its real.

In what do you rest your faith? What is the foundation of your beliefs and values? Silence, you said that you're not sure if there is a God. If there isn't, then why are we here? What is our purpose? What is your purpose in life? In what should we place our values, our morals, our laws? Where is the basis for the "golden rule"? Why should we value life and liberty if we'll all just here by chance with no real purpose only to die and become food for the worms someday? Why do men have that yearning inside to fulfill a purpose, to leave a legacy? Why do men long for religion - for a relationship with something greater than us -- if it weren't planted in us by God?

Let me encourage you to pick up a book by Lee Strobel called "The Case for Christ." You can find it on Amazon. Strobel was a jounralist for the Chicago Sun Times who set out to prove that Christianity is false -- a joke, a fairy tale. Read his arguments. If you don't agree with thm, throw the book away. Use those scientific minds of yours. Check out the evidence and see where it leads. Clayc3466 19:39, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

I have no problem with you believing that. Some of it I even accept; not because I have any proof or evidence for it, but because it gives me comfort. In other words, it is faith. However, God also endowed us with reason. And we can choose to use it, or not, to read God's handiwork expressed in the book of nature. To "know God's thoughts" as some scientists say (although that is overreaching quite a bit, considering how little we really understand). And there is plenty of evidence for "values" etc being programmed into people. Some of the most moral and ethical societies have much less pervasive religious beliefs. I would say that about 99.9% of the strident fundamentalists and biblical literalists that I see are the exact antithesis of Christianity. It is more of an excuse to hate those that are different. It is NOT what Jesus would do. And whether Jesus was divine or not, he taught that message. However, we have plenty of "Christians" who do not seem to get it. I guess it just feels too good to hate. It is like a drug.--Filll 21:35, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Fill, you are correct that there are far too many Christians that have missed the boat. I know some of them. I'm not sure what you're considering a "fundamentalist" and "biblical literalist", but I do know this. I know thousands of evangelical Christians who are real people and not the TV preacher throwing his Bible at the crowd. Again, I encourage you to grab the Strobel book and give me your thoughts.

I have talked to plenty of fundamentalists and biblical literalits. I know what they say. I hear it over and over; God made the world look old to test our faith, or Satan is tempting us by making the world look old, or whatever. That is fine if you want to believe that. However, do not assume you have the right (or duty) to shove it on everyone else, when you are about 50% of the 10% of the US which is evangelical, and the US is less than 5% of the world population. By my calculations, that puts biblical literalists way below the 1% level of world population. They are in the noise, as we say. --Filll 22:32, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

I just followed the Wik link to the biblcial literalist article. I'd say that's not what evangelicals (or creationists) are. There is plenty of allegory and poety in the Bible. Jesus used parables to make a point. I am -- what most evangelical Christians are -- someone who believes in biblical inerrancy. The Bible is divinely written through the words and pens of his people. It is without flaw. There are definitely some things that are difficult to understand and plenty of good people have taken opposite sides on some of these issues. I don't believe Genesis to be an allegory, nor the gospels. These books are narrative unlike say Isaiah that is a prophetical book and uses a ton of metaphor and allegory. But I'm not going to lie. Most Christians struggle with reconciling what they read in Genesis with what they are taught in school about science. As I see it, a choice has to be made. Some folks say the science can't be wrong or incomplete so the problem lies with our understanding of Genesis. I -- and many others -- believe first in Genesis and contend that there is more still to know about the scientific componant. I guess I'm willing to bet on a perfect God rather than imperfect men.Clayc3466 21:58, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

As I say, there are plenty of varieties of biblical literalists and fundamentalists. I do not mind if they want to believe it, I just object to their aggressively pressing everyone else with such nonsense. It violates separation of Church and State. It violates Freedom of Religion. It goes against the very tenets that the US was founded on. You can deny all the errors and problems and different versions and translation problems and contradictions in the bible if you like. Just do not expect everyone else to buy it, because most do not. And it is an affront to God who gave you brains to insist otherwise. It is blasphemy, frankly. It is idolatry. This is why there are more than 30,000 sects of Christianity. Because they do not agree with each other. I say that is fine, but LIVE AND LET LIVE. You can worship a head of cabbage for all I care, but do NOT expect to force everyone else to worship a rotting vegetable, or there will be trouble. And you are quite wrong. "Most Christians" have no problem with theistic evolution and reconciling the two, unless you want to use the standard fundamentalist rant that claims

• Catholics are not Christians
• Orthodox are not Christians
• Presbyterians are not Christians
• Methodist are not Christians
• Episcopalians are not Christians

etc. So that is an absolutely incorrect statement. I would also rather bet on a perfect God, rather than the mistaken-ridden bible, or the dufus who claims to speak for God from the pulpit. God sends you his message in nature. If you want to spit in God's faith, be my guest. I choose not to. I will read his message directly, no men involved, thank you very much.--Filll 22:32, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

What I hear from biblical literalists and fundamentalists (although not all are the same of course):

• Gays are bad; lets kill them now. No trial. Bloodier the better. They are an offense to god
• Blacks are disgusting and cursed by God. Who the heck came up with this equality business anyway?
• Muslims should be killed on sight. Lets have ourselves a huge holy war. Yipeee!
• Catholics are atheists/satan worshippers/idolators/evil/nonChristian etc
• I want the world to end as soon as possible so I can go to heaven. Wheee!
• I hope we launch nukes and destroy the earth so Jesus will come back. Of course I am sure *I* will be one of those saved to live in paradise because Pastor Bob told me, before the police took him away for smoking crack cocaine and having sex with male prostitutes. But he is forgiven because he is a righteous holy man, instead of those filthy Jews !
• Jews are jesus killers and we hate them
• Lets pollute as much as possible and use up our resources as fast as possible. Burn all our oil, cut down all the forests, pave all the land, take all the fish out of the ocean, pour toxic waste everywhere. After all, it will just force Jesus to come back
• Liberals are evil and I hate them all
• God loves to hate and punish. God is NOT about love. God loves to hate. If you believe otherwise, you are weak and evil and damned and will go to Hell. Yippeee! Wow I am such a good Christian!!
• All abortion doctors should be killed and their clinics bombed. I would be doing Gods work.
• I do not see why we need trials for suspected criminals. Lets save money and have the police kill them. A bullet is much cheaper than a trial. After all, the police never make a mistake. It is all lies told by those evil politicians and lawyers.
• The bible tells me to hate blacks/Jews/Catholics/gays/women/muslims/liberals/etc. And I believe it because it is in the bible. And if you disagree with me, I hate you because I am personally speaking for God. So F-off. I am such a great Christians. Wheee!

And so on and so forth. So you see why I take what I hear out of fundamentalists and biblical literalists with a grain of salt. I am exaggerating some of these points a bit, but they are all pretty close to things I have heard out of assorted "Christians" who believe in biblical literalism and fundamentalism. Not my vision of Christianity, frankly. But you are welcome to it. Just do not shove it on others.--Filll 22:43, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Response

"I don't know anything about your lives other than the fact that you're both passionate on the subject of evolution." - Actually, I'm not remotely passionate on the subject of evolution. I'm perhaps strongly interested in evolution, but mainly because I'm interested in philosophy of science, and because evolution is such an important topic in biology (and thus important to understanding who we are); it's not a special topic of note to me, it just ends up getting discussed a lot because misconceptions about it are so in the forefront in modern society.

"Unfortunately, we chose the latter. Every one of us." - False. None of us were alive when Adam chose the latter; if one does not exist, one cannot make a choice. We are not responsible for the errors of Adam.

"It's not a preacher that I rest my faith on. It's not consensus. It's the Bible." - The Bible is a man-made text of any other. Believing in the Bible is no better than believing in a a preacher, or in your parents, or in your community consensus. Every indirect source of information is potentially fallible and misleading. Books can hold fairy tales just as easily as truths; they can (and in many cases do) even hold mixtures of both.

"I am far from perfect, and I know I don't have all the answers. But with every fiber within me I know its real." - Sadly, strength of conviction does not have anything to do with the truth of what you believe. Many people who have been absolutely certain, sure in every fiber of their being, that a certain thing is true, have turned out to be wrong. You correctly note that you are not perfect; and as an imperfect being, you should be open to contrary views on any subject, in case your imperfect faculties have led you astray on some subject or other. Furthermore, as an imperfect being, you should realize that your intuitions and feelings and convictions are less reliable than information you gather from the world around you; people are wrong much more often when they trust their impulses than when they trust their sensory perceptions. Experience tells us that how passionately we believe something does not make it any more or less likely to be true; how central and core we feel a belief is to our very being does not influence the veracity or reliability of that belief. Humility and self-awareness thus demand that our beliefs be provisional as much as is possible, and that we always keep an open mind to new evidence.

"In what do you rest your faith? What is the foundation of your beliefs and values?" - The foundation of my beliefs and values is my love and affection for my fellow man. I base all of my ethics on the principle that it is good to help other humans. I do not require the approval or command of an external entity, such as a God, in order to have empathy for others; I have it regardless of what any authority, real or imagined, commands.

"Silence, you said that you're not sure if there is a God. If there isn't, then why are we here?" - I would turn your question around: if God exists, then why is God here? If you believe that we must have been created by God in order to have a purpose, then you must believe that God himself is purposeless, arbitrary, meaningless, because no one created God. If, on the other hand, you believe that God can give himself purpose and meaning, simply by being, then you have your answer: we give ourselves a reason to exist. We are not cogs in some cosmic plan; we are just people. There is no ultimate, objective value or meaning to our existences; rather, we give ourselves value and meaning. The purpose of life is not anything other than life; the beauty and wonder of the world is not just a means to some inexplicable, enigmatic end. Rather, it is an end in itself: the purpose of life is to live. If you can't handle the idea of living without some authority to reassure you that you are part of some vague cosmic machine, then you simply need to grow out of that sort of authoritarian mindset. Children are the ones who need authorities to tell them what to do; as mature beings, we should be willing to face the harsh reality without creating a cosmic parental figure to watch over us and give us instructions. We can, and do, live, laugh, and love without one. Why squander your love on a being that may or may not exist, when there are so many unloved people in the world today who so clearly need it? At the very least, be sure to spread the love around to encompass both God and other people; I have no respect for those who give preferential treatment to an imagined God over other human beings in need.

"Why should we value life and liberty if we'll all just here by chance with no real purpose only to die and become food for the worms someday?" - We should value life and liberty because it makes more people happy to do so. The fact that our lives are ultimately meaningless does not give us a reason to throw them away; the fact that they are not precious to someone other than humans, some magical hypothetical extra-human intelligence, does not mean that life is any less precious to us.

"Why do men have that yearning inside to fulfill a purpose, to leave a legacy?" - Because having a sense of purpose makes us more likely to survive, and thus was naturally selected for. But there is no reason to assume that that purpose is a cosmic, supernatural one; it can even more easily simply be a purpose for ourselves, our loved ones, and the world at large.

"Why do men long for religion - for a relationship with something greater than us -- if it weren't planted in us by God?" - Because our society has long taught us to have an authoritarian mindset, in which we must appeal to some authority—be it a priest, a king, or a deity—in order to have good and meaningful lives. Modern society is slowly replacing that no-longer-useful societal model with a humanistic model that values all men as equal, that does not create a hierarchy where those at the top are immune to ethics and doing the right thing, where morality is a one-way street and we must all work to benefit those greater than us. The new model treats ethics not as a way of serving and pleasing our superiors (be they kings or gods), but rather as a way of helping each other out. As a result of this new model, traditional religions are changing in dramatic ways to try and accomodate the new way of thinking, and religiosity is becoming less and less common, and less and less zealous, in many parts of the world. Religion has its origins in basic human society and psychology; to appeal to the supernatural to explain it is an absurd and profoundly unwarranted violation of Occam's Razor.

"Let me encourage you to pick up a book by Lee Strobel called "The Case for Christ." You can find it on Amazon." - Isn't it a little unfair of you to ask us to read an entire book just to get at whatever evidence you think supports your views? If all you want is to show us evidence, rather than show us the book's rhetoric, you should be able to easily tell us what evidence there is that the Bible is the inerrant word of God. I've debated with many people before who've appealed to that book, and I haven't found many of their arguments to be compelling. If you give more specific examples of why we should accept such an extraordinary claim, you'd look more like a scientist and less like a religious apologist.[8]

"Strobel was a jounralist for the Chicago Sun Times who set out to prove that Christianity is false -- a joke, a fairy tale." - That's incorrect. Strobel's motivation for writing the book was to convince people to become Christians; he had that goal in mind before he even started writing it, because he had converted to Christianity beforehand. His device of pretending to be an atheist or skeptic at certain parts of the book is an after-the-fact attempt to simulate how his conversion was, some unspecified time before writing the book.

"Some folks say the science can't be wrong or incomplete so the problem lies with our understanding of Genesis." - No one I've ever met in my life has said that. Science can always be wrong, and it's clearly incomplete. The question is not "could science be wrong?", but rather "is science likely to be wrong?"; the question is not "is science incomplete?", but "is science complete enough to give us reliable explanations of the evidence?". You are constructing a straw man when you claim that people who accept science over Genesis believe that science is infallible; they need not believe that, they need only recognize that modern science, with its improved methodologies and vastly greater body of evidence, is more likely to be true than a 3,000-year-old cultural myth.

"I guess I'm willing to bet on a perfect God rather than imperfect men." - False dilemma! You're betting on imperfect men either way. The bet is not between man and God, it's between man and man, where one man claims to have scientific evidence, and the other man claims to have a magic book. The first man can show you the evidence to support his hypotheses. The second man asks you to take it on faith that this book is magical, and was written or inspired by an absolutely perfect being who would never lie and knows everything. Regardless of whether you're a scientist or a creationist, you are relying on human beings, not gods, and trusting their veracity on certain points. The only real difference is that scientists can give you direct, observable evidence to support their claims; the religious demand an extraordinary amount of faith, because they can't give you any direct evidence of God. A scientist in a laboratory can let you look into a microscope and see bacteria evolving over multiple generations; a theologian or preacher in a church cannot call God down from the heavens.

Because of their impotence in actually demonstrating that their claims are true, creationists become incredibly defensive of the beliefs they were raised in, and try to claim that scientists just rely on "faith" too; but if they do, scientists rely on infinitely less faith than creationists, as all they trust is the veracity of their observations (which no evidence has ever contradicted), whereas creationists must trust the veracity of hundreds of people who, if at any point they had lied, fabricated, or simply been mistaken, would cause the Bible to be grossly inaccurate and unreliable. Creationists, in other words, have unrealistic, impractical, and unnecessary faith, based in personal conviction rather than in evidence or logic. The debate is not between man-made science and God-made religion; it's between man-made science and man-made religion that claims to be from God. If science claimed to be from God, it would be no more reliable than it is now; for the same reason, the mere fact that religion claims to be divinely-inspired, in no way implies that this is true. In fact, in many ways it implies the opposite, since there is no reason for God to have to rely on religious books or churches to convey his word, when he could just as easily give direct, immediate, and complete knowledge of his Word to everyone in the world at once. Any institution that claims to have the Word of God is thus extremely suspect. -Silence 23:01, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

• "Some folks say the science can't be wrong or incomplete so the problem lies with our understanding of Genesis." People who say that do not know what science is. If you want truth or proof, do not look to science. Look to logic or mathematics. Science by definition is incomplete. All it does it produce a parsimonious model for predicting measurements and observations. Period. It is because it actually works that gets biblical literalists upset. Well, sorry. Just do not attack it because of the perceived inadequacies of creationist beliefs.--Filll 03:08, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

Tower of babel

Why not campaign against linguistics? And the teaching of many aspects of linguistics in colleges and high schools? Grammar? Etymologies? A lot of information taught and studied in linguistics disagrees with the biblical account, after all.--Filll 03:15, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

It is hypocritcal to be offended by evolution and not to be offended by the field of Historical linguistics.--Filll 03:19, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

The End

Fill and Silence

After a week of this conversation, I think its time for it to come to an end. I no longer see the need to respond to such wild, unsubstantiated accusations that have been thrown out on the last couple of posts. You are both sadly misinformed on who evangelical Christians are and what we believe When I try to explain it or direct you to a source such as Strobel, you reject it without consideration (Strobel, by the way, did set out to disprove Christianity. He wrote "Case for Christ" only after he found the opposite to be true and became a Christian himself). I'm just not interested in being called a gay-hater or black-hater or irrational kook when none of those things are true. Yes, examples of that exist out there but to cast such a wide net over all evangelicals is irresponsible and offensive. Clayc3466 20:28, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

I apologize. As I tried to point out repeatedly, there are many many different types of belief in religion and in Christianity in particular. Even many evangelical Christians, fundamentalists, biblical literalists and biblical inerrancy advocates disagree with each other (this is nothing new; similar disagreements have gone on for centuries). They all try to tell me how everyone agrees with THEM, or most people do, and those who dont are evil etc. I do not know if you personally subscribe to ANY views that any of the others do, or to what extent you agree with anyone else's views. However, reprehensible examples exist. In fact, many of them probably would scream at you and tell you that YOU are cursed and damned for your beliefs and walk around proud as punch about how smart and Godly and righteous they are. Full of hatred for you and disdain like only a fundamentalist seems to be able to muster (in my experience). And having had assorted creationists/fundamentalists/evangelicals who have screamed in my face, cursing me, and cursing about how awful and satanic I am since I do not believe the same things they do, and how no one is allowed to disagree with them since they personally speak for God, I have been burned a few times. My yellow caution flag is out, because of my previous bad experiences. All thanks to wonderful Godly "Christians" (although I might have a tendency to call them Christianists in analogy with Islamists, because they are not Christians to me). So...I have been innoculated. I am glad I had a serious religious background and upbringing that lets me look askance at such nonsense and hatreds that jerks like that try to peddle. However, I am unapologetic of my efforts to defend science from the forces of ignorance, from wherever they come. And no matter how well-meaning the people who push these views are.--Filll 21:05, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

I didn't call you any of those things. And I don't think that Filll meant to call you any of those things either; he was explaining to you his past experience with creationists, in order to help you understand where he's coming from. This gave you an opportunity to dispel many of the misconceptions about creationists he may have developed from past experiences; clearly Filll wasn't outright accusing you of anything, merely listing his biases for the sake of honesty. I think he went a little overboard too with some of the characterizations, but others were quite accurate; regardless, I don't see how any of your comments apply to me. I did not reject the "Case for Christ" out-of-hand, but rather asked you to cite specific evidence from that book which supported your case, since we have been considerate enough to do the same for you (even though we could just as easily have given you a huge list of books to read rather than taking the time to explain their counter-arguments and evidence). -Silence 00:02, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

I will again apologize for being over enthusiastic. I want to make perfectly clear I do not believe those things are true of you. However, in my partial defense, one of the most common lines of argument made by creationists/biblical literalists/fundamentalists etc is that their viewpoints on all issues are the only valid viewpoints, and everyone who is a real Christian or a nonatheist or reasonable or sane etc agrees with them and their interpretations and viewpoints. And these same attitudes make things very difficult when I am discussing science with them.--Filll 00:06, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

There are a bunch of mean Christians out there. Fill, I sorry that has been your experience. Those folks infuriate me. I guess I just want to encourage you guys to not apply those types of experiences too generally. My experience is that most evangelical Christians are not like that. And the crowd you seem to have run across does not accurately speak the gospel of Jesus Christ according the Bible. Sort of like how the jihadist terrorists give an unfair bad name to Islam. Silence, I don't want you to think I'm ignoring your comments. I've come to the point that I believe that you and I just aren't going to come into any agreement on the subject other than the fact that we are coming from two completely different sides. You're entitled to your opinion as I am mine. Beyond that, I'm just not sure what more there is to say. I guess if you have a specific question that you'd really like an anser to, write it out and I'll do my best. Clayc3466 01:13, 20 January 2007 (UTC)