gbear Posted March 6, 2003 Author Share Posted March 6, 2003 That's why I posted the poll. I couldn't believe so few people believe in evolution. Atleast the polls on this board are closer to what I would expect, though the creationism number is still high. Of course, as the NyTimes article pointed out, the belief in Evolution is high primarily among educated people in the NE. It's less prevalent elsewhere. So mabe the high numbers are the result of it being on a Redskin message board. Still, it does make me understand how my friend's point of the percentage of people believing the sun rotates around the earth could be possible. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steve Y Posted March 6, 2003 Share Posted March 6, 2003 Alright here's my deal with Evolution. I can dig the whole we came from monkeys thing. I atleast get the scale of how life progresses. But somewhere along the lines life had to be created from something. The first cell that was alive, it didn't just magically start living. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gbear Posted March 6, 2003 Author Share Posted March 6, 2003 I'm with you Steve Y. That's the whole unmoved mover arguement. I've never heard a good arguement for evolution that would rule out God starting everything. It's not like Evolution and God are two ideas that are mutually exclusive. However, pure Creationist believe God created man in our pressent form in God's image. What's more, there is a rough date from the Bible. That's the part with which I have trouble. However, it seems much of the US does not. In some ways, I find the disagreement very instructive in looking at how strongly people hold to their beliefs. You'll see it in arguements on this board all the time. If less than a third of the population in the US believes all of the evidence for evolution, how can we wonder at how other countries can deny all evidence of Iraq having WMD. How long did it take for the world to believe the world was round not flat? How many people believe the hallocaust never happened? How can people in other parts of the world still honestly believe Israel was behind 9-11? The truth seems to be we believe it because we believe it, evidence be damned. Interestingly enough, I wonder how many of us would qualify for having a psycotic break? After all, isn't the definition of that a complete or partial withdrawl from reality? What are the odds that our world views all have partial breaks from reality in one aspect or another? Now the hard part for me is to try and keep an open mind to new ideas even when it violates some of my basic assumptions about the way things are. Afterall, maybe some of my ideas are just rejecting evidence. I'm not quite arrogant enough to believe all of my beliefs are the ones taking evidence into account:cool: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Golgo-13 Posted March 6, 2003 Share Posted March 6, 2003 Originally posted by gbear That's why I posted the poll. I couldn't believe so few people believe in evolution. Atleast the polls on this board are closer to what I would expect, though the creationism number is still high. Of course, as the NyTimes article pointed out, the belief in Evolution is high primarily among educated people in the NE. It's less prevalent elsewhere. So mabe the high numbers are the result of it being on a Redskin message board. Still, it does make me understand how my friend's point of the percentage of people believing the sun rotates around the earth could be possible. I have to say that this was quite possible the most condecending post I have ever read. But hey, it certainly does make u SOUND like a stuffy NE intellectual. Sheesh.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Golgo-13 Posted March 6, 2003 Share Posted March 6, 2003 One more thing....why the h@ll are poeple so afraid to teach BOTH theories in the classroom??? God forbid we actually teach people both sides of the issue and let them decide for themselves. I mean, that's what we have @sshole NE intellectuals for, right? To make our decisions for us. :gus: :gus: :doh: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gbear Posted March 6, 2003 Author Share Posted March 6, 2003 I'm sorry. I didn't mean for it to come across that way. As I said, I came from a class room where ONLY CREATIONISM was taught. I think that was pretty wrong. I'm willing to admit I could certainly be wrong on whether evolutionism is fake and Creationism is right. It just seems that denying the Earth and even human life has been around for more than 10,000 years is a bit like denying any other scientificly factual statement. It's like saying God can be the perfect liar by adjusting all detail so that reality only appears this way. My point in the post, I guess, was poorly stated. I meant that it's possible that many of the assumptions we all make on a daily basis are not based on fact and what's more I may still believe them after the facts have been presented to me. That was as far as I meant to take it. I'm sorry if you took it as more than that. As a side note, the article only mentioned the ghigher number of people believing in Evolution among the NE educated group. It's not just an intellectual elite thing. There's educated people outside fo the NE. The funny thing is your chiding me for the same thing the article did, for being out of touch. Fair enough. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Golgo-13 Posted March 6, 2003 Share Posted March 6, 2003 Originally posted by gbear I'm sorry. I didn't mean for it to come across that way. As I said, I came from a class room where ONLY CREATIONISM was taught. I think that was pretty wrong. I'm willing to admit I could certainly be wrong on whether evolutionism is fake and Creationism is right. It just seems that denying the Earth and even human life has been around for more than 10,000 years is a bit like denying any other scientificly factual statement. It's like saying God can be the perfect liar by adjusting all detail so that reality only appears this way. My point in the post, I guess, was poorly stated. I meant that it's possible that many of the assumptions we all make on a daily basis are not based on fact and what's more I may still believe them after the facts have been presented to me. That was as far as I meant to take it. I'm sorry if you took it as more than that. That's cool. Understood. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Awgustlab Posted March 6, 2003 Share Posted March 6, 2003 Evolutionism, definitely. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
@DCGoldPants Posted March 6, 2003 Share Posted March 6, 2003 I had an English class in college where in one book the author was talking about Evolution. The older woman in the class said "Why is this in the book? Everybody knows that its a lie and the Earth is only (I'm guessing she said somewhere in between 3 and 7 thousand) years old." *Honestly, I don't remember how old she said. Then I said. "What about the Dino's? She said. "They all drown in the flood from Noah's Ark." and I said "What about the underwater Dino's?" she got mad at me and told me I had no faith. I don't look at it like that though. You have to believe that there is something out there so complex that none of us really will even begin to understand it.........ever. That's my idea of God I suppose. If that created Time and Space, and in turn created the stars, planets, life on Earth and that evolved into us. Then I don't know which one I'll side with. If I had a gun to my head, I'd say Evolution. People Evolve. We get bigger, stronger, immune to certain things, more receptive to others. When the U.S. was only a few Colonies.....after about 50-100 years here, the people who were born and raised were healthier and taller than your average European person. This was because people here weren't so packed together, living in nastier conditions and drinking nastier water. Is that evolution or just being more healthy? When two healthy people get together and have bigger kids...is that evolution? Now I am confusing myself. Ok, I'm making no sense. I'll go with Evolution because it leaves open more of a door that somewhere down the road there was a creation. The other way around sounds too snotty and ignorant. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tex Posted March 6, 2003 Share Posted March 6, 2003 Originally posted by Steve Y Alright here's my deal with Evolution. I can dig the whole we came from monkeys thing. I atleast get the scale of how life progresses. But somewhere along the lines life had to be created from something. The first cell that was alive, it didn't just magically start living. Have heard that same argument with a slightly different spin. It's call the uncaused first cause. Causation Of Existence This Way deals with the issue of existence. Aquinas concluded that common sense observation tells us that no object creates itself. In other words, some previous object had to create it. Aquinas believed that ultimately there must have been an UNCAUSED FIRST CAUSE (GOD) who began the chain of existence for all things. Follow the agrument this way: 1) There exists things that are caused (created) by other things. 2) Nothing can be the cause of itself (nothing can create itself.) 3) There can not be an endless string of objects causing other objects to exist. 4) Therefore, there must be an uncaused first cause called God. --St. Thomas Aquinas (1224-1274) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheKurp Posted March 7, 2003 Share Posted March 7, 2003 Frankly speaking, it doesn't make a damn bit of difference what anyone believes. So why must one be expected to believe one way or the other? The only thing that seems to come from taking a stand one way or the other is an argument. An argument that does nothing but produce carbon dioxide because when all is said and done, one side cannot prove the other wrong. I could care less, although at one time I felt compelled to choose Evolution over Creationism. For the record, I spent my youth in Catholic school. Then I spent some of my college years in a Jesuit Catholic school, a Baptist school, and a Methodist school. When someone finds indisputable evidence to support one theory over the other, then I'll start caring. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tex Posted March 7, 2003 Share Posted March 7, 2003 The painful act of liberation from the fetters of religious indoctrination received in youth is a life changing experience and can ultimately result in an attitude of indifference. I prefer an attitude of humility corresponding to the weakness of our intellectual understanding of nature and of our being. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Glenn X Posted March 7, 2003 Share Posted March 7, 2003 Assuming this question hasn't already been asked (and if it has and I missed it in this thread, my apologies), going on the belief articulated here by several posters that some force or agent must serve as an initial creator of any new organism, if a so-called God created us, then who (or what) created God? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mardi gras skin Posted March 8, 2003 Share Posted March 8, 2003 i'm stuck in the middle with code and brave... I'm a minister and in a sense I'm stuck in the middle too. I agree with the Biblical account of creation, but I disagree with the interpretation of that creation process. For instance, the Hebrew word translated "day" is used elsewhere in the Old Testament to express varying segments of time. When the sun and earth weren't even around for part of of the process, why would we think 24 hours here? I think that the Bible leaves "how" pretty much alone. "He spoke and it was" is ambiguous. But who spoke is address over thousands of years and with great clarity. btw. I couldn't vote on the poll. My pov wasn't an option. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NavyDave Posted March 8, 2003 Share Posted March 8, 2003 Creationismm Answer the GoD Father and God Mother. In Evolution some fish crawled out of the sea grew legs, shed its scales grew hair developed a fondness for banannas the eons later had a portfolio and and addiction to capo latte? My problewm with the evolution with man is if we evolved from apes why are they still apes and why arent the ones still here evolving? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NavyDave Posted March 8, 2003 Share Posted March 8, 2003 How about the theory of man evolving into a sea creature? Man turns into a spineless, cowering being that can burrow its head in the sand has an aversion to water but fondness of snails. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
panel Posted August 24, 2004 Share Posted August 24, 2004 Evolution isn't a theory, it is common sense. Evolution isn't some sort of magic, it is just the dieing off of the unprepared for life. When people have kids that are crazy, and do things like car surf or bing drink, they get themselves killed, leaving them no chance to have kids of their own, meaning that faulty geam has been eliminated from the gene pool, and thus progress. And in the anamial kingdom, instead of dieing from being stupid, they die from not being fast enough to catch food, leaving only the faster ones to survive (tigers), or not having a neck long enough to reach the edaible leaves in the high trees above (garaffs). But no one who beleives in evolution can say religion is a bunch of crap, becuase if it was, and put you at a disadvantage, all the religousness who have died out, instead, every human culture has religion that seems to help the society out. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
panel Posted August 24, 2004 Share Posted August 24, 2004 Originally posted by NavyDave Creationismm Answer the GoD Father and God Mother. In Evolution some fish crawled out of the sea grew legs, shed its scales grew hair developed a fondness for banannas the eons later had a portfolio and and addiction to capo latte? My problewm with the evolution with man is if we evolved from apes why are they still apes and why arent the ones still here evolving? Men ARE apes, and besides, to be successful under evolution, you don't need to be the "superior" creature, to be successful, all you have to do is have kids, and insure that they will have kids. There is no reason for the other families of apes to disappear, they have found their own way to continue to live At some point there was a cross point, where a shared ancestor found different ways to adapt to a changing environment. The group that became chimpanzees found it could hide from predator by hanging out in trees, and use its, shade to cool, use it's braches to rest, and use it's fruit to eat. The other group headed toward the water, where they found that they could hide from predators by jumping in the water, uses it to cool down, and use it for some of their food. And when they need to mate or get some different food, they head to the land. When in water the buoyancy of the water helped support the weight of these apes so they only need to use their hind legs to walk across, (even today when apes need to cross water they use only their hind legs like us) they slowly built up strength in their legs to that style of movement, walking, which freed our hands up. But going back and forth like this lead to some problems that evolution banged out, like being hairy all over meant that it trapped water to their body even when they left the water leaving them to freeze with hyperemia, and all the hair slowed them down when they were in the water. So the apes with the best chance of survival were less hairy. Another problem was droning, so the humans with the best chance of surviving were fatter, because it is more buoyant. Look at us, we are the only apes to be born with fat, the only other Mammals that are also like that are Hippos, seals, dolphins, and other creatures that spend lots of time in the water, those creatures also have less hair than other mammals, like us, and the hair we do have, flows in the direction of water if we where swimming, while every other ape's hair flows in the direction of air. Our great minds are a product of being able to explore and make adaptations with our hands, and then the individuals with the best chance of survival are the ones with the best innovations, so we get smarter and smarter. Every summer humans flock to beaches to enjoy themselves, you don't see dear, cats, or nearly any other creatures do this, and we daily groom ourselves by jumping in a tub of water, while most other animals hate to touch water, even to bath, they only like to drink it. We are apes and we are evolving, evolution doesn't happen fast, it may take a few generations to wipe out certain negative gene aspects, and by that time the world maybe different and require new skills. One thing that I am sure of is evolution; it would make no sense to me if it didn't exist. If it doesn't exist, than explain what happens when a dumb guys dies because of his stupidity, and a smart guys thrives because of his brain, the smart guy has more kids, and the dumb one has none, humanity as a whole just got smarter, and the process repeats for the next generation. If that isn't evolution, what is it? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NY_Skinsfan Posted August 24, 2004 Share Posted August 24, 2004 I am not sure of anything right now....I grew up Protestant, my stepfather being a minister. I was force fed religion. For a while now I have been reading a series of books called the Earth Chronicles, by Zecharia Sitchin. His focus is that we were created from another civilization that visited Earth hundreds of thousands of years ago. I am not saying I have turned into a believer but the evidence that this man has suggested (there is not proof that his evidence is fact) is quite intriguing. His first book in the series is called, The 12th Planet. Now, don't everyone start jumping all over me...I am not some crazed lunatic who's going to catch a ride on a comet...I just want to see things from another perspective. I would suggest this book to anyone who is open to the idea...the more I have read the more it has made me think. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hitman56 Posted August 24, 2004 Share Posted August 24, 2004 Here's what I don't get. If you believe in creationism and the Garden of Eden story... ok Adam and Eve had 2 sons: Cain and Abel. One of them killed the other. That leaves Eve as the only woman on earth to procreate with her son? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MrWill Posted August 24, 2004 Share Posted August 24, 2004 Yikes.....28%?!? This country is in trouble. It is about time we made post-secondary education free in this country. It is sad that the 72% reqire no evidence for their beliefs. They just blindly cling to the words from a book that was force fed to them at an early age. Living inside a mind like that has to be like being in prison. BTW, this is why organized religion can weaken a population. Spirituality, in general, can really be stunted by everyone resting on their laurels and believing the exact same story, without looking for the answer themselves. If you are in this category, I pity you. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jpillian Posted August 24, 2004 Share Posted August 24, 2004 Okay, no time for the argument -- gotta get to work. Will try to post tonight. I'm definitely a Creationist; which does NOT preclude Evolution. But let's just remember for a second that all historical science is purely THEORY. There is no such thing as historical empirical evidence. If you can't actually observe the phenomenon, or reproduce the phenomenon -- it's always going to remain a theory. I'll leave that until this evening BTW -- I think a truly amazing thing is the way the google ads at the bottom of the forum are now creation/evolution ads. HOW DO THEY DO THAT?!!? :laugh: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Om Posted August 24, 2004 Share Posted August 24, 2004 Has anyone defined "evolution" for pursposes of this discussion yet? As distinguishied from, say, natural selection? For that matter, have we defined "creationism" yet? I trust we've simply acepted as the default setting that we're talking about the Christian model here, and not, say, Inuit or Mongol or Ancient Egyptian or Cherokee or Druid or Islam or Aztec or Yanomamo or Dinka or ... ? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SkinsNut73 Posted August 24, 2004 Share Posted August 24, 2004 Originally posted by Hitman56 Here's what I don't get. If you believe in creationism and the Garden of Eden story... ok Adam and Eve had 2 sons: Cain and Abel. One of them killed the other. That leaves Eve as the only woman on earth to procreate with her son? Adam and Eve continue to have children. Perhaps Cain sleeps with his sister, not him mom, and bears more children? This could be considered okay IN THAT TIME because the Law (10 Commandments along with some 600+ other laws in the Old Testament) has not been given yet. They lived under a different dispensation. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
docdru Posted August 24, 2004 Share Posted August 24, 2004 Originally posted by SkinsNut73 Adam and Eve continue to have children. Perhaps Cain sleeps with his sister, not him mom, and bears more children? This could be considered okay IN THAT TIME because the Law (10 Commandments along with some 600+ other laws in the Old Testament) has not been given yet. They lived under a different dispensation. Either way, if you believe in that hoopla, we're all inbreds. Seriously though, creationism? Wow, I think I'm dumber for having clicked on this link. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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