Posted on 09/16/2009 3:29:20 AM PDT by Ethan Clive Osgoode
Steve: You're doing really interesting work. You've decoupled sort of, "Is evolution true?", you know, "What are problems with evolution?", from people's interpretations of whether or not they accept evolution. Regardless of evolution itself, we're just talking about the psychological profiles of how you come to either accept or not accept evolution. Some of that work is yours and some of it you're very well familiar with from other people; so let's talk about some of the basics and some of the surprises about the people who accept and don't accept evolution and their reasons for it.
Lombrozo: Sure. So I think one of the most surprising findings has to do with the relationship between understanding the basics of evolutionary theory and accepting it as our best account of the origins of human life. So most people, I think, [or] in particular scientists, tend to think that if people reject evolution and in particular evolution by natural selection, it's because they don't understand it very well; they don't really understand what the theory is telling us. But in fact, if you look at the data from psychology and education, what you find is either no correlation between accepting evolution and understanding it or very, very small correlation between those two factors, and I think that's surprising to a lot of people and in particular to educators and scientists.
Steve: Yeah, it was surprising to me when your data were presented. So what [does] that mean for, you know, education in the country? What should people be thinking about if they have a desire to have evolutionary theory be more accepted by more people?
(Excerpt) Read more at scientificamerican.com ...
Sounds about as probable as talking birds.
Besides, it wasn’t a snake yet, it was a serpent.
Otherwise, the curse of making it crawl on its belly would have been redundant.
” To believe in evolution is similar to believing watch parts can be placed inside a box, shaken and out comes a completed watch.
Just common sense tells us “Intelligent Design” (i.e. God as THE creator) is responsible.”
Then who created god?....
What doesn’t work for me is that the complexity of DNA or the ‘perfect balance’ of the universe must have been created because of their complexity and balance, yet the far more complex and perfect God has no creator..... Either perfection and complexity requires a creator or it doesn’t.
Well stated,...amazingly ignorant how the same adversarial arguments and methods are used in different contexts,...first with Eve, then with modern man.
Common question with huge implications. If you're genuinely interested in the answer, read on. I don't deal with "snipers" though.
God is the unique, eternal uncaused cause. He has to be uncaused, because it can't logically flow that He would have a cause (or creator). And He has to be unique, because if He were multiple, logic would dictate that some other entity created the multiples.
To reject God is to accept the sheer impossibility of the watch parts analogy.
In addition, the fact Christ's shroud has NEVER been replicated speaks volumes. How does someone who rejects God explain Christ's shroud?
I hope someday you accept God in your heart.......
“A who is more reasonable than any other option.”
What may appear to be more reasonable to you does not in itself constitute proof (like you said, there isn’t any proof). Having said that, I completely respect your choice of which question to ask, and which answer you choose to put your faith in.
Obviously evolution occurs, and has been documented.
Similarly, there are things about which we will never have answers, and that is where faith comes in, whether you are talking about scientific theory or religious beliefs.
Why people become hateful and judgmental over things that cannot be proven I will never understand. Heck, most wars have been fought, and millions of people killed, simply because one group didn't share the same beliefs with another, and neither could be proven.
Why does it have to be either or? Why can't it be both?
I think humans are arrogant if they think they will ever be able to specifically prove the who, what, when, where and why of this planet, or of humans. This is where faith comes in, and it is where human beings are consistently divided.
There are things regarding spirituality than in this life I may never know. And I am fine with that, because I have my own beliefs. Can I prove them? No. But it doesn't mean I disregard what others believe.
In my view, there are two groups of people; good, and bad. Other than that, people can believe whatever they want to believe.
God is an entity, not a thing, like the material universe. Beyond that, you could keep going on forever about who created the one who created, ad nauseum. Since we are bound by time and space, it is beyond our comprehension that nobody needed to create God.
Whatever was the highest order of creative entities is the one that we would call God, the first mover. If something created God, He wouldn't be God, he'd just be a created being.
What doesn’t work for me is that the complexity of DNA or the ‘perfect balance’ of the universe must have been created because of their complexity and balance, yet the far more complex and perfect God has no creator..... Either perfection and complexity requires a creator or it doesn’t.
What doesn't work either is rejecting creation because of a lack of explanation of where God came from, but accepting that the universe created itself, with no explanation of where it came from.
“Then who created god?....
Common question with huge implications. If you’re genuinely interested in the answer, read on. I don’t deal with “snipers” though.
God is the unique, eternal uncaused cause. He has to be uncaused, because it can’t logically flow that He would have a cause (or creator). And He has to be unique, because if He were multiple, logic would dictate that some other entity created the multiples.”
“God always was and always will be.
To reject God is to accept the sheer impossibility of the watch parts analogy.
In addition, the fact Christ’s shroud has NEVER been replicated speaks volumes. How does someone who rejects God explain Christ’s shroud?
I hope someday you accept God in your heart.......”
MrB, please be assured that I have no time for infantile “sniper” games, doubly so for such an important issue as this one.
As an engineer and scientist I have grappled with these questions for quite some time. I was brought up in a loving household surrounded by family of strong faith, yet I find myself somewhere between agnostic and atheist.
I just find it very difficult to accept anything on the basis of faith alone. Thanks for your replies, and please don’t take offense, I’m certainly not challenging the validity of your faith.
One main area of conflict is the interpretation of the fossil record.
Even amongst creationists, including groups like AiG, there is recognition of variation within species and natural selection. The belief is that God created kinds of animals with enough variation in the DNA to produce what is labeled as species today.
It’s that variation that is misinterpreted as macro-evolution, or speciation.
The fossil record does not disprove that concept.
Is it probable that birds talk?
“The motivation for looking at Alzheimer's disease patients was that they have some of the characteristics of healthy adults, they have undergone normal cognitive development, they have undergone normal science education, and so on. On the other hand, because of their memory impairments, they may not be able to access the kinds of rich caus[al] beliefs that most adults consult when evaluating explanations. In that sense, they might be somewhat like the preschoolers who haven't yet acquired certain kinds of scientific beliefs. So looking at the Alzheimer's patients allows us to see whether or not you see that population falling back on this kind of preference for purposive explanations in the absence of the kinds of alternatives that most healthy adults have available, like the idea that rain results from water condensing in clouds. In fact, what you find is that if you do a task like the one I described with preschool children with the Alzheimer's disease patient’s—so [if you] ask them, “Why is there rain? Is there rain because water condenses in clouds or is there rain so that plants and animals can grow?”—they will also prefer the teleological option much more often either than healthy young adults or their age matched controlled participants who are the same age as the Alzheimer's patients but don't show signs of Alzheimer's.”
Doctors test for Alzheimer's disease by asking questions that require varying levels of reasoning and memory.
Now here the statement is being made that offering a teleological explanation may indicate incipient disease unless one is a child because healthy adults of the same age tend to not offer such teleological explanations.
A point well made in the interview is that when people are asked about belief in evolution the questioner has to be careful about defining the terms of the question.
“Lombrozo: Different questionnaires will find different numbers; you do typically find that if you give people that option you get what looks like a larger numbers of people accepting evolution. What gets a little bit tricky is that when you ask people whether or not they accept a position like theistic evolution, you don't quite know what it is that they are endorsing if they say they accept evolution. So you might have people who end up falling into that bucket who think that plants and animals evolved but that humans were created in their present world, for example. Another fairly common view is someone who will accept microevolution—the idea that a given species can change slightly over time—but not macroevolution, the idea that you might get one species from a different species. So you really have to be careful about what it is you are asking people to accept and making sure they understand what it is you're asking them to accept in order to even make assessments of what kinds of views people have.”
Left out is that evolution has been defined so broadly that almost anything can be cited as an example of its occurrence from such superficial traits as color of an animals coat to whether or not animals will mate.
I'll have to come back later to this.
Everything we know about randomness shows clearly that it does not lead to increased order. Intelligence begets systems, randomness does not.
A refreshingly open viewpoint.
I don’t suppose that you ever heard of parrots?
http://www.birdsupplies.com/talking-parrots-s/68.htm?gclid=CLnH9Yeu9pwCFdND5godchE_ag
Bird Speech Training Supplies
When we know the cause of ordered systems, we know that there is intelligence behind it.
For ordered systems where we don't know the cause, the best we can say is that we don't know the cause.
There is a lot of thinking that indicates that if we don't know the cause, it's presumed that there is none, or at least no intelligent cause. But that is merely an assumption and should never be stated as a fact.
So basically, precedent indicates that ordered systems for where someone might say that they don't know the cause, the logical assumption came be made that it is intelligent, as opposed to having none.
Presuming no intelligent cause for an ordered system takes faith as there is no precedent for it.
“When you believe in things that you don’t understand
“Then you suffer...
“Superstition ain’t the way!”
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