In my experience and from what I see from interviews and stories online is this.
Science, including evolution , only leads to atheism when the person was brought up under a toxic form of Christianity ( YEC / OEC / ID ) and their leaders try to lie to them and deceive them into believing they can either choose God ( and by God they just mean their own interpretation of the Bible ) or they can choose science. So they go with what they know to be factual, science. It’s those forms of Christianity that forces someone into thinking their choice is their leaders interpretation or scientific facts.
But if these Christians facing this conflict can be shown that there is far better and healthier interpretations to the scriptures that leaves the door open for accepting science. They realize the eh can accept reality and not come across as uneducated and still approach theology through the works of scholarship and science by doctors.
The good news and thanks to God is that those outdate bad approaches to biblical hermeneutics resulting in bad theology is dying off. With each generation less and less kids are being deceived by pseudoscience and the mishandling of the word of god.
I understand the need for science to be “materialistic”, but unfortunately the scientific claim that the history of life on earth can be attributed to a known and understood biological process sends the message to many people that belief in a Creator God is an irrelevant, outdated superstition.
I’m open to the notion that non-human life “evolved” in some mysterious, miraculous manner over perhaps billions of years, but I don’t think science has any chance of explaining how it happened. ToE strikes me as a very simplistic and unconvincing nineteenth-century idea.
So in that sense I’m with Paul-Pierre Grasse, the late French zoologist, who had no faith in Darwinism as an explanation for the fossil record.
I mean one key way we can see the theory of evolution as being true is to look at the fossil record which consists of superimposed geological layers with species community that showcases evolving basal forms through divergent traits.
It’s like how we know humans are mammals. In the same way we know humans and chimps are mammals is the same way we know we are also primates and tetrapods. Not only does our morphology clue us in to this but so does the genetic data. By morphology I don’t just mean outward appearance but internal anatomy too.
It’s why we also know domesticated house cats are cats just like lions and they are more closely related than cats are to wolves. It all goes together pretty well.
Just so you know, many here do not attack intelligent design, but just The Discovery Institute and (capital letter institutionalized) Intelligent Design, due to their deceptive tactics and antagonistic attitudes. Even the name of their publication “Evolution News” is an exercise in deception.
Biological evolution explains the pattern (to the extent that there is such a pattern) – it doesn’t describe it. What exactly do you find lacking in the explanations that evolution provides? To be concrete, here’s a series of evolutionary transitions from one of the punctuated equilibria papers. What is the ID explanation for these observations?
What is the ID explanation for the appearance of novel organs and body plans? Note that ‘they were intelligently designed’ isn’t an explanation, since the same could be said about absolutely any state of affairs. Why don’t pick some particular novel feature, describe it in context and lay out the proposed explanations from evolution and ID? Then at least we’d know what you were arguing.
The world’s biologists (believing or not) disagree with you.
Now that is an accurate statement – and an excellent summary of why ID is so useless as science.
I’ve been studying and applying evolutionary biology for decades, and in that time I have never once encountered a scientist who was using it for that motive. Where do you get these ideas? How many biologists have you actually talked to?
Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
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And why it is so useless at promoting faith in the Creator for anyone who separates church and state. Faith that declares objective, disinterested truth to be a lie is no such thing. It’s the opposite. Which isn’t doubt. Which is perichoretically intrinsic to faith. In fact it is intellectually honest and competent scientists of faith who might be able to promote faith accordingly.
Has been somewhat over-hyped by many of the parties involved in promoting or decrying evolution (for a while). What people who work on the relevant strata would say is that “Most modern phyla, plus a few extinct ones, that 1: have any chance to fossilize (eliminates a few) and 2: are reasonably recognizable as fossils (eliminates about 5), appear somewhere between 700 and 500 MYA.” and “There seems to be a significant adaptive radiation in response to the novel ecological niches of burrowing and macrocarnivory appearing at about the same time.”
Everyone involved with stating when groups first appeared needs to keep in mind just how many major groups of animals basically look the same, and thus are very hard to detect, unless they are preserved in some of the more spectacular Lagerstaetten.
That’s not too surprising since many people are telling their fellow Christians that if evolution is true then the Bible is false. When faced with the mountains of evidence for evolution, what are they to do?
The name is a little quirky, but no big deal … the site is mostly about critiquing ToE, after all.
Maybe they should have called it Evolution Bad News.
Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
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“salutations”
What about it?
Can you provide a disinterested critique of the poor description by biological
(sic) evolution? By biological (sic) evolutionists themselves of course? Or - better yet - a disinterested philosopher? Even even betterer a disinterested informetrician?
They didn’t lose faith because of evolution but because of religious communities trying their best to convince them against science. They thought that’s what religion is, a way to manipulate people to abandon logic and follow some guys that profit from this.
Science doesn’t send this message itself. It’s up to us how we will interpret things science observes, that’s why there are christians who believe in evolution, they simply interpreted science differently than creationists.
Perhaps you could explain the positioning of the fossil record within the superimposed geological layers? What determines where the species ended up being fossilized at? It can’t be size because we find small and large animals throughout all the layers. It can’t be mass because we find heavy and light animals throughout the layers.
Perhaps you can also explain are humans also mammals? If we are mammals what makes us mammals? If not what makes us not mammals? Are dogs and bears also mammals?
Are humans primates?
Are domesticated cats and lions more closely related than domesticated cats are to foxes? How do you know? Is it because they have similar appearances? If so then what about dolphins and whales?
It is quite telling that the Discovery Institute and its website are not about producing positive evidence for intelligent design. They seem to base their approach on a Designer of the Gaps argument.
The clip on youtube advertising a “Big Conversation” this summer was interesting. I particularly liked where Ian McGilchrist who says, “The argument is not between atheists and believers, it is between the atheists and the fundamentalists on one side and rational people on the other who mostly say they don’t know.” (note below) For me, I am reminded of the pact of non-aggression between Hitler and Stalin which shows how those superficially opposed can often have more common in their efforts to promote conflict and opposition than they would like you to believe. Both the creationists and atheists like to demand that you choose between science and religion – one seeking to replace science with pseudoscientific rhetoric and the other seeking to cast religion into the role of primitive science.
But the reality is religion and science are not on the same playing field. Science seeks to understand the universe for which objective observation is most suitable, and the other seeks to help with the living of our lives which requires subjective participation. Trying to force everything into one or other is certainly myopic if not downright insane.
Note: I would modify the “who say they don’t know” to “who say there is no objective evidence either way.” There are plenty of people who have made their own choices with regards to belief in the things of religion, but who acknowledge that this is a matter of personal choice according to personal experiences and there is no evidence objective by scientific standards to prove things either way.
I’m not a spokesman for ID. And I don’t deny that there’s evidence for “evolution” … but I don’t offer explanations for the fossil record and the appearance of novel organs and body plans. I accept them inexplicable, divine mysteries.
I don’t consider ID to be science - rather, ID uses science to argue for the existence of God.
The theory of evolution sends the message to many (not all) people that a Creator God is unnecessary, irrelevant and superfluous. Many scientists no doubt believe (and sometimes publicly preach) this message:
“Let me summarize my views on what modern evolutionary biology tells us loud and clear — and these are basically Darwin’s views. There are no gods, no purposes, and no goal-directed forces of any kind. There is no life after death. When I die, I am absolutely certain that I am going to be dead. That’s the end of me. There is no ultimate foundation for ethics, no ultimate meaning in life, and no free will for humans, either.”
“Evolution is the greatest engine of atheism ever invented.”
William B. Provine, former Charles A. Alexander Professor of Biological Sciences at Cornell University
“Although atheism might have been logically tenable before Darwin, Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist.”
Richard Dawkins
