Welcome shortart,

i think there is a need to separate the debates about the origins of life and the universe from a debate about how life reached its current state of complexity.  There would be nothing inconsistent, for example, about believing that life was created by an omniscient diety and then evolved into what we see around us today.  People who believe in special creation tend to disbelieve in unguided evolution, but that is because they also believe other things (that God made man in his own image, etc), not because the two ideas are logically incompatible.

Unfortunately, we are hampered in our efforts to get at the truth by our tendency to seek evidence which confirms things that we already believe.  As you say, once you knew the basic premise of Hawkins' book, you became automatically less likely to read it.  This confirmation bias - which we all have - makes objectively evaluating the evidence in a debate like this quite difficult to do.  i would say that your conclusion that evolution is "not good science" is probably influenced by this sort of thing, but then that could just be my confirmation bias talking! 

i agree that evolution and creationism are incompatible ways of explaining the diversity of life.  The middle-ground (theistically-guided evolution) satisfies almost no one, and rightly so, since it invokes unnecessary entities.  As for where our component molecules came from, i think that is a little beyond the scope of evolutionary theory.  You'd have to ask a physicist.

As someone who doesn't believe in God, and who thinks that evolution is the best explanation for how we got here, i would agree that the passion surrounding this issue is ideologically based.  However, the conclusion that special creation is unacceptable to most people seems to miss the fact that the majority of people throughout the course of history have believed (as far as we can tell) that the world was created by some sort of God(s).  It is only in the last hundred years or so that alternative theories have gained any serious currency.  To me, that would suggest that non-religious explanations for life, the universe and everything have proliferated along with our dramatically expanding sciences, providing naturalistic explanations for things to which we previously only had religious explanations for.  You will notice that this is a one-way process.  There is no question to which we used to have a naturalistic answer that has now been superceded by a superior religious explanation.  This gradual erosion of religious certainty may or may not continue, of course, and there have certainly been efforts to fight back against it, partially successful in the US.*  But it is significant that the way that these counter-attacks occur is not with the discovery and propagation of new knowledge, but with a return to the fundamentalism of a previous era.

Science advances humanity.  Religion (when taken literally) holds us back.  _{Hopefully this is controversial enough to pull a few more people into the discussion!}

Cheers,
Dan

* - for example, nearly half the US population apparently believes that the Earth is less than 10,000 years old.  Most people would agree that the only compelling reasons for such a belief are religious ones, and certainly it would be difficult for any openly non-religious person to be elected to high office in the US.  In the UK, by contrast, the leaders of two of our three main political parties have both publically stated that they do not believe in God.  We are clearly separated by more than just the Atlantic!

Shortart (unless there's anything else you'd prefer to be called?),

A little controversy is fun sometimes, so long as no one takes it too seriously.  As you say, it would be naive of anyone to come here expecting to make converts to their particular belief system by sheer force of argument, but testing the strength of one's own arguments and locking horns with people from an alien culture (well, pretty much) is good for the soul.  Not that i believe in souls.   

i do agree with you that "it's either this or that" - unless there's another option which we haven't thought of yet - and i don't expect there to be any widespread consensus on the matter in my lifetime.  After all, there are still people around arguing (with apparent sincerity of belief) that the Earth is the centre of the universe and also flat.  At least, i can't find any obvious signs that these two links are parodies (although they are both hilarious):

Geocentrism.com
The Flat Earth Society

(i especially love "Argument 3" on the Flat Earth Society website - "The impossibility of holding unsecured objects in place on a curved surface")

I'm a layman who learned the scientific method in high school, so I expect a "flame" or two.

i'm also a layman when it comes to evolutionary theory, although i had to educate myself in a hurry around five years ago when SntJohnny and i had our major battles on the subject.

To emphasize - Let's use imagination as well as logic in taking each of the following statements personally, determined to live true to our findings:
I am a product of evolution
I am here because I was created to be here

Very well.  As exhibit A for the prosecution (or is it the defence?) i enter the human appendix, the only obvious purpose of which seems to be to provide a steady income for the surgical profession.

(I hope you don't expect me to apologize for religion.. oh! Wait! Is that called "apologetic"? I'm not sure. Maybe I will...)

No more than i would expect to have to apologise for the Boston Massacre (although, seriously - "massacre"?  Five deaths is more like a bad plowing accident).  i wasn't there, anymore than you were present during the Spanish Inquisition.  i doubt that you would have sanctioned such behaviour had you been there, so you have nothing to apologise for.  Biblical literalism does have some potentially unpleasant implications however, which i may bring up at a later stage, if only to see how you personally rationalise them.

Later,
Dan

Chris,

i appreciate the candor of your personal disclosure, and don't worry about violating discussion board protocol.  It's pretty intuitive, and the server wont allow you to use any profanity (to my very occasional annoyance).  i'm sure you wouldn't anyway.

My background (since you shared) is a Philosophy BA - after an extremely liberal Christian upbringing - and then straight into a diploma in nursing because i had no idea what i wanted to do with my life (except to not work behind a desk) and at the time in Britain that training was subsidised.  After finishing my philosophy degree i felt a strong urge to maintain my debating skills, which led me to internet discussion forums, on one of which i met SntJohnny - the overlord of this domain!  Since qualifying as a nurse (eight years ago now) i've been working in Emergency Departments in and around London, as well as some time spent overseas.  i can't really blame the philosophy degree for my deconversion, i think i gradually lost whatever faith i ever had during my teens and it was doing philosophy that helped me realise that.  i remember, at the age of around five, being very angry with Jesus because he seemed to be all anyone talked about at the church we started going to, and i felt that he was taking over God's territory somehow.

My reading these days is a mixture of religion, politics and philosophy.  i am very interested in millenialism and fundamentalism in all religions, but also biblical scholarship, racism, feminism, sexuality, globalisation, morality and medicine.  i am always in need of more bookshelf space.  i try not to limit my reading to authors who i agree with, in fact i have recently finished Anthony Flew's post-conversion-back-to-christianity book "There is a God".

Anyway, thanks for sharing your sources.  i haven't seen Expelled, but i know the AIG website fairly well.  It interests me how religion and politics tend to come as a package deal in some parts of the world.  How many Young Earth Creationists also believe in the idea of universal healthcare*, for example, even though the Bible (as i recall) makes no mention of it?  Quite a few of the reported sayings of Jesus might even seem to favour it.  AIG has an anti-abortion anti-homosexuality slant, which is understandable given its strong Biblical influences.  If you are in the mood for some mind-numbing tedium you can check out my debate on homosexuality with End Bringer, to get an idea of my standpoint on that last issue.

I would not believe in a benevolent creator, though I briefly toyed with the idea that there might be a sadistic one!

   i think that's quite reasonable.  i must admit, if i became convinced tomorrow that there was a god, i would not automatically assume that he, she or it was benevolent.  Malevolent would seem equally likely to me (natural disasters and reality TV as evidence in favour of that idea).

Where does the understanding "I am a product of evolution" take you? Does the way you live reflect this belief? I'm not talking of your public position as an atheist, even though that is certainly one element of your life. Do concepts of justice and morality have any place in your world view, for example?

Definitely.  This comes up in my ongoing debate with EB as well.  Basically i believe that morality is the art of balancing human, and to some degree animal, wellbeing and suffering.  It may sound like an unnecessarily clinical way of putting it, but i can't think of a better one.  Religion, often trumpeted as the last bastion of morality, in my view at best gives people bad reasons to do good things, and at worst makes them feel righteous about doing some truly terrible things.  For example, if someone helps a stranger because they think that this is what God wants of us, then that is ok, but as a rationale for behaviour it is pretty flexible.  Someone could equally argue the merits of killing a stranger on the same basis (with some Old Testament justification), so i am suspicious of these kinds of religious motives for good deeds, even if they do make the world a better place to live.  You would have a very hard time justifying the murder of a stranger on the grounds that it would increase the net amount of happiness and wellbeing in the world, so i consider that a superior motivation for moral action.

Essentially, morality in my eyes reduces to the pleasures and pains of beings able to experience them.  The more suffering a creature is capable of, the better i think we ought to treat it.  i consider apes to be worthy of many human rights, and i would care more about the torture of a cow (for example) than i would about the torture of a fly, because i think there is a relationship between biological/neurological complexity and the ability to experience pleasures and pains.  Notice that i (and science) could be wrong about this, but that there are objective facts to be known on the subject, indicating to me that facts and values may not be as unrelated as many people think.

EB has suggested that there are contradictions in my notion of morality, such as vaccination shots painfully accomplishing a good outcome, but taking the longer view we see that the balance of wellbeing is likely to be improved by most vaccinations, outweighing (to my mind) the soon-forgotten pain of the needle.

Is that a clear explanation?

Also.  Why "shortart"?

Dan

* - editted to add, i realise in retrospect that this is vaguely phrased.  i am saying that most YECs are also conservative on social issues not specifically touched on in the Bible, and rhetorically wondering why this is.  That's all.

Chris,

I understand I have (by default) become a member of a new group, YEC.

Well, i didn't mean to pigeon-hole you, if that's not an accurate label.  You mentioned in your first post that you believed that Genesis is "sublime writing intended to convey truth".  Now i suppose that it would be quite possible to believe both those premises and still consider the Christian Creation account to be factually incorrect, but i understood you to mean that you also think that it does convey truth.  i have difficulty assessing the sublimeness of the writing in Genesis since my Hebrew is a bit rusty, and i am unsure whether the writer(s) intended to convey truth or to tell a story with many utilitarian messages (from their point of view).  Aaaaaaaanyway...

You are correct in concluding that the Bible is my source for my moral stance in applicable issues, anyhow.

i would question that.  When you read the Golden Rule, for example, how do you assess it (as i assume you do) as being a great piece of moral wisdom?  Logically it must be using some non-biblical ethical intuition, otherwise you would have no grounds to morally judge any act or precept in either the old or new testaments.  Likewise when you read something morally abhorent in the Bible (the example i have been using with EB is the Deuteronomy instruction to stone a woman to death if she is found not to have been a virgin on her wedding night) you likewise must take the decision to reject that as being any kind of guide for 21st Century life on grounds other than the fact that it appears in the Bible.  If the source of your morality was the Bible, not only would you accept all of these things as automatically prescriptive, but you would have no way not to do so - their moral excellence would be defined by their inclusion.  Hopefully we can both agree that stoning non-virgin brides is a bad thing to do, and if we can then it demonstrates that the Bible is not the only source of your morality.

Wouldn't you put your own well-being ahead of any other? If not, could you explain a little more?

When rationally assessing the value of individual lives, i would put myself on a level with any other sentient human being.  i use the term "sentient" as a qualifier here, because since my primary concern is wellbeing and suffering, i think there are some sorts of lives which are by definition less worth living - if i had to make a "balloon debate" kind of decision between a person in a Persistent Vegetative State and another person who is not in one (or even, actually, an ape), i would come down in favour of the non-PVS balloon-occupant.  Why?  Because their capacity for happiness and suffering, now and in the future, is going to be far greater.  This is not the same as advocating killing all disabled people (before End Bringer charges in here with guns blazing).

Now, to the extent that i am selfish, of course i quite often put my own needs above other peoples needs, and i assume that they are doing the same thing with their needs.  There is nothing wrong with that, so long as we recognise the moments where our mild increase in wellbeing actively impacts on someone else's wellbeing.

Humans, we will assume, are the highest (known) form of life.

"Highest" is a vague word.  Most capable - on average - of conscious thought, i would agree, and since that has implications for psycholgical wellbeing and suffering that makes it sensible to prioritise human needs over those of most animals.

In the paradigm of evolution, survival of the fittest is consistent with Muggeride's statement and is also a bleak prognosis for those who choose to be "nice". The problem for the evolutionist, I would think, is the whole concept of depravity; it might possibly be a meaningless one.

Where we come from does not necessarily determine how we should proceed.  Just as accepting the theory of gravity does not necessitate that i model my moral behaviour on it (ethically prioritising larger people, perhaps, because of their superior mass and gravitational pull), accepting the theory of evolution as the best explanation for where we come from doesn't mean that i commit myself to a life of selfishly advancing my genes.  If our evolutionary history had been different then we might well be unable to have this discussion, and our ethical intuitions are largely (in my view) a result of our communality as a species.  Solitary animals would need very little in the way of hardwired moral coding.

i don't know whether "depravity" is a meaningless concept, but it would seem to be a highly subjective one.  From my point of view, however, there are clear standards of good and bad behaviour with extremes, of which we can both think of historical examples, which either dramatically increased or dramatically decreased the overall wellbeing of sentient beings.

I have a tendency towards arrogance

Not obvious thus far.  Maybe i have been desensitised to arrogance by conversations with some other people here, but i am certainly not recognising it in you.

Cheers,
Dan

Chris,

Amen to the power of words.  As to your doubts about retaining the ability to find the right ones, i think that is an illusion created by the speed with which the difficulties we have always had in translating mental states into verbal utterances disappear from our memories.  That is my hope anyway.  Certainly i have much the same problem and i am thirty years younger than you, so either it's a universal thing or i am suffering with some sort of early-onset dementia.  Fingers crossed.

i am not sure precisely how to comment on your provisional summary of my position.  i agree that it is key to our moral interactions that we recognise the same desires, needs and goals in others as we experience in ourselves.  Those who are apparently unable to do so - babies and psychopaths (off the top of my head, there may be other examples) - lead lives of logically-coherent selfishness.  The extent to which we fully endow other humans with the same rights that we desire for ourselves is the extent to which we overcome that selfishness.  Racism, sexism and any number of other "isms" are based on a failure to appreciate that certain groups of people have exactly the same capacity for wellbeing and suffering as we and those more culturally similar to ourselves do.  Taken to extremes this can lead to a denial of certain groups' right to continue to exist if it in any way impinges on the majority's needs and desires.  Examples from history are rife.

i also agree that humans often express their personal preferences as moral absolutes, something which religious texts (often consisting of the personal preferences of long-dead writers now considered to be immune from rational criticism) make all too easy.  i will do my best to respect your decision to avoid taking this debate into the realm of politics, but it may not be that easy.  Politics is, after all (as someone whose name escapes me said), the shadow cast on society by religion.  We'll see how we do.

i just watched Jon Stewart's Rally to Restore Sanity online (being a fan of the Daily Show), and one of the things that he said struck me as being especially controversial in America.  "We are living in hard times, we are not living in End Times".  This in a country where something like 50% of the population think there's a good chance that Jesus will return and kick off Armageddon sometime in the next 50 years.  While i consider most peoples reasons for believing that the end is at hand to be unthinkingly narcissistic (i am part of the culmination of history!), and not directly influenced by scripture, there is no doubt that when read literally scripture has dangerous real world implications.  And people believe it to be sacred for no better reason than that it was considered sacred yesterday.

Is the Bible really the most perfect book in existence?  Is there no way to improve upon it?  i think we both know the answer to that question.  i could improve the Bible in a couple of minutes by taking a pair of scissors to Leviticus, Deuteronomy, Exodus and half a dozen other Old Testament books.  Either one of us could improve the Ten Commandments - the only things that God apparently felt it necessary to write himself.  "No graven images" is number two?!  Can't we think of anything more important than that to go into the the top ten list of moral imperatives to transmit to mankind?  Don't beat your wife or children?  Don't wage war on the basis of religious differences?  Don't mix whites and colours?  Seriously.

Lastly, a question.  If you had been born in another time and place, where another religion was dominant, and you had been raised in that religion rather than in Christianity, do you believe that you would today be a Christian, or a committed member of religion X (whatever it may be)?  Maps of the world broken down by religion would seem to suggest that religion is largely contingent on upbringing, not on the validity of the truth claims made by individual religions.  As someone who espouses the truth of Christianity, does this kind of subjectivity bother you?  There is, after all, no such thing as Indian Physics or Argentinian Mathematics, because those are objective domains of knowledge.  My suggestion is, of course, that religion isn't one.

Cheers,
Dan

Hello, End Bringer,
I'm thankful you've come on. After I write this, I will post what I've prepared for Dan - when you read that, you may have more to say.
For myself, I am inclined to "duck out" of the science discussion. This is not to say I would not consider posting under some other topic, but the issue has clearly moved away from science and on to faith.
I will keep checking in as time permits. Perhaps this forum will come back to life by drawing more participants.
Chris

Hello, End Bringer,
I'm thankful you've come on. After I write this, I will post what I've prepared for Dan - when you read that, you may have more to say.
For myself, I am inclined to "duck out" of the science discussion. This is not to say I would not consider posting under some other topic, but the issue has clearly moved away from science and on to faith.
I will keep checking in as time permits. Perhaps this forum will come back to life by drawing more participants.
Chris

Well welcome anyway. But I must advise to exercise patience with DB. He often has widely incorrect notions on what the Bible says or is even about, as well as contradicting principles of belief.

Danny,
I will not venture to try and explain the lapse in posting due to personal matters, but willingly admit I have been pondering the most helpful way to answer your questions. Because of your background in philosophy, you will likely be able to find circular reasoning in what follows. Even so, my intention is to answer honestly.

There is no possible evidence that I do not exist. Since I have the need to try to answer "how and why" I exist, the root of the question (for me) becomes "Is there a God?". Attempts to disprove God's existence, in my understanding, have been as nebulous as the attempts to prove such. This is why the theory of evolution has such high profile - it is a supposedly scientific way to say, at a minimum, God is unnecessary. It does not suit me to give credence to the theory of evolution, roundly denouncing it as a contrived effort of fallen humanity. Obviously, I do not consider my position an irrational "leap of faith", though the skeptics sometimes marvel at my assurance. My faith does not contradict true science, even if it transcends the observable (or "measurable") universe.
For others, meaning for life takes other shades, not dependent on any supreme being. Much evidence from this paradigm can make for interesting discussion, but generally leaves me "cold" - disinterested. You could certainly argue that I am choosing to avoid hard questions, possibly fearful of losing my faith. I don't think so, but let me know if you think your mind is a reliable witness on such matters. Doesn't it sometimes seem that what yesterday appeared unjust, today is acceptable, and tomorrow may be praiseworthy? 

As to cultural conditioning, you correctly assume I could just as well be a Muslim, for example, or an animist, had I been raised in a different culture. But I wasn't, and I'm not. The question, I believe, has to do with the exclusivity of Christian creed. I remain unapologetic for holding to this faith, even while I wonder about how God will work justice for those who believe differently. You must know, however, that neither good intentions nor good works will reconcile fallen humanity to the Almighty God. There is one way, and (I repeat) it is inscrutable. Accept the fact that you are a sinner; Believe that the Christ (Jesus of Nazareth) makes atonement; Confess that this Jesus is your Saviour, and died for you personally; Determine to live by that confession.
I end this way, starkly contrasting our differences with what may be an irritatingly familiar "ABCD" formula. I do intend the contrast, but I would prefer not to irritate. My guess is that if a Christian tells you your eternal destiny, it is with the assumption that you have heard and understood the Gospel. Only you know the choices you are making. Enough said?

Finally, I do not simply "hope" that evolution theory is patently false; AIG is one of many resources that expose the errors. I'm sorry that you do not seem to grasp the fact that some scientists take the unpopular stance of refuting these errors by presenting the truth.
Sincerely,
Chris