What is your opinion on evolution?

[nygreenguy]

Im curious as to what everyones specific beliefs/opinions are on this topic. However, a belief w/o justification is useless, so please throw your $.02 in!


I know this has been discussed ad nauseam here, but Im now and wanna get a better feel of CURRENT feelings, not old ones!

[byofrcs]

I think there's enough evidence of biologically compatible compounds occurring beyond Earth to suggest that they could combine naturally to produce life. I don't think it's a strong case yet, but it's more of a case than anything else I've heard. I think we know that the early Earth saw a great number of extreme conditions, many of which we cannot fully understand enough to replicate in a lab. The variations of temperature, atmospheric and terrestrial chemical makeup, plus electrical, solar energy input make for some extraordinary situations that could lead to any number of strange developments. In my mind, it's enough for me to accept abiogenesis as the source of life on Earth. I don't go beating that drum, but if pressed, that's what I'd admit to.

Evolution, however, I do not doubt in the least.

Even should abiogenesis never be proven I don't think I could accept any of the religious stories. It may be a similar story, but the extra consequences that come with religion are something I think are truly fictitious. It's religion I have the most trouble with, more than the idea of a creator.

Also the idea that polarised starlight potentially explains the homochirality on Earth, would support panspermia, albeit at an amino acid level rather than the more bizarre ideas of the likes of Scientology.

As Douglas Adams said, "Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the *chemist/drugstore etc etc*, but that's just peanuts to space. "

[QED]

I often think it would be more productive if people would realise that the arguments are really all about selection. Who or what is selecting the myriad patterns of atoms that constitute the universe?

I've heard terms like pan-selectionist used in contempt of such a view, yet it remains an obvious fact to me that "abiogenesis" and "natural selection" are ultimately just two forms of selection process out of may. There are indeed a vast number of known selection effects which will always generate the impression of "a higher agency at work" in someone, yet (when talking about selection effects) we know that this is a purely psychological issue.

When we can understand and model a given selection process we can deem it to be natural. When we can't, we can call it "supernatural selection" if we like, but we haven't understood it -- and some day, some Darwin may come along and explain it to us.

[cnorman18]

I believe in God and I chose option 1.

As I have said elsewhere, to Jews, the phrase "Religion vs. Science" is a non sequitur. Jews, as a rule, revere learning in ALL academic fields as a sacred activity, and the disproportionate involvement of Jews in the sciences in particular has been noted for centuries. There simply is no conflict between science and religion for Jews.

To paraphrase something said by my own rabbi (also quoted in my signature), "If you see something in the Torah that you KNOW is contrary to reason or morality, either you do not understand the Torah properly, or the Torah is wrong."

Note that the third alternative--overruling reason or morality in favor of religious dogma--is not available.

Speaking for myself, I understood that the opening chapters of Genesis were not intended to be read as a treatise on biology, geology or astrophysics when I was both a Christian and a child. The fact that some adults apparently do just that remains a puzzle to me.

[Beastt]

Evolution is a theory. We should leave it at that.

Evolution is a theory. So is gravity, relativity, thermodynamics, aerodynamics, uncertainty and at least half of the concepts your computer operates on. You have to remember that theories is what science produces and what it utilizes as foot-holds for the next level of discoveries. That's the way science works. "Theory" is the pinnacle of scientific credibility. It doesn't just mean "an idea" as in the more common usage. It means an idea which has been tested, challenged, attacked, meticulously scrutinized and has emerged from all of the testing fully supported by all of the known pertinent evidence.

And while you might think that sounds a bit less definite than some will proclaim, it still works far better than any other means of discovery ever developed my man and does so my orders of magnitude. The vast majority of the principles in your television, air conditioner, computer and automobile operate on theories.

But just as gravity has been observed in operation, so has evolution. If you want to compare the two, gravity is the one with the must unknowns. Evolution is far ahead of gravity when it comes to evidence. And every scientific discovery is miles ahead of religion. Religion has never offered discovery. It offers only claims and when the claims are proved wrong, it's up to the theists to distort the original claims to say other than what they actually say in a feeble attempt to proclaim them to still be accurate.

[Thought Criminal]

Abiogenesis and natural selection explain the diversity of life on the planet.

Is the closest to what I believe. However, I do not believe that abiogenesis did much for diversity of life. From what we can tell, this process does not generate much variety.
Natural abiogenesis explains the introduction of life on Earth and natural selection and a few other factors such as sexual selection, explains the diversity.

Polls are tough! I didnt want to exclude the origins of life in this discussion, so I worded them the best I saw fit!

The way I read it, it didn't suggest that abiogenesis is responsible for the diversity, just the fact that there is life at all. Natural selection provides the diversity and adaptations.

TC

[Thought Criminal]

I believe in God and I chose option 1.

As I have said elsewhere, to Jews, the phrase "Religion vs. Science" is a non sequitur. Jews, as a rule, revere learning in ALL academic fields as a sacred activity, and the disproportionate involvement of Jews in the sciences in particular has been noted for centuries. There simply is no conflict between science and religion for Jews.

To paraphrase something said by my own rabbi (also quoted in my signature), "If you see something in the Torah that you KNOW is contrary to reason or morality, either you do not understand the Torah properly, or the Torah is wrong."

Note that the third alternative--overruling reason or morality in favor of religious dogma--is not available.

Speaking for myself, I understood that the opening chapters of Genesis were not intended to be read as a treatise on biology, geology or astrophysics when I was both a Christian and a child. The fact that some adults apparently do just that remains a puzzle to me.

Allow me to point out that what you say is true of liberal Judaism but not true at all for Orthodox, and only somewhat true of Conservative. I've talked to people who attended Orthodox schools and were taught that macroevolution is a lie.

TC

[Lionspoint]

Along with most everyone else I selected # 1. Evolution is essentially done as far as any need for more evidence, although we should never stop searching for it. If anyone in an industrialized nation in the year 2008 does not think evolution is a fact then they have woefully tried to not learn about it.

Abiogenesis is pretty much the opposite. I'm not even sure if it is a theory yet but I am sure it's going to be a while before we collect enough evidence to fully understand this. But it's a whole lot better than god did it. Anything is better than that idea. In fact, I'd have selected Scooby Doo did it before god did it. I have seen Scooby Doo, after all.

And I so want to hear more about this:

Matter, in fact, only became locked in density in 11,457 BC. If you have questions, tell me.

I have questions and I am telling you. Not sure what this means, but how did you come up with the exact year for this event? That is awesome!

[C-Nub]

Part of me really thinks that this is something we should no longer be debating, and that part gets louder when I see people claim things about the density of matter being 'locked' less than twelve thousand years ago, and the Earth being created in six days.

I'm all about option one, but to be honest, I think panspermia is a better explanation for the 'origin' of life (on earth, anyways) than abiogenesis, I think it's important for Christians to understand that 'evolution' is not a theory as to the origin of life, not at all, but rather the diversity and variety of it.

But by constantly debating this, by willingly entering into this argument over and over and over again, we are acknowledging (falsely) that it is acceptable or credible at this time to doubt evolutionary processes and time scales. By responding to theist claims and views on the subject that differ from established scientific fact, we lend unnecessary validity to ideas that should best be left unrecognized due entirely to their obvious and overt ridicuousness.

To those who would argue against evolution, I suggest to you that you are way too ill-informed to enter into a conversation on the subject. The evidence for evolution, as well as the corresponding evidence in geology, astronomy, chemestry and the all-father of sciences, physics is at this point beyond conclusive. While there are many here who appear willing to repeatedly point out the massive flaws in your point of view, the non-science of your position, I myself have come to feel that you should be more or less handled like children who believe in Santa Claus; it is an understanding that requires a level of intellectual maturity that only time and experience can provide, and all we can do is wait and hope that you take the time to examine the facts that have presented over and over (and over and over and over and over and over and over) again to you in regards to this and accept that your position is indefensibly ignorant.

I realize that I've put that rather harshly, and I want to make clear that I am talking about a very specific area, and am not calling people who buy into young-earth style religious nonsense to be stupid in general, merely as it relates to the entire history of the earth.

Lastly, on the subject of 'matter density' being somehow dynamic prior to 11,000 plus years ago, no. A very resolute 'no' in fact. Computer models have shown, using super-processors and progreams written by people way, way, way smarter than we are, that if you tinker with something like the density of matter, even by a very small fraction, you alter the nature of gravity, and with gravity set to a different value than it is now, galaxies and more importantly stars are unable to form. Stars are billions of years old, not 11,000, and this we know because of the measured speed of light and our ability to red shift it to determine distance.

Red shifting, for the unaware, is the distortion caused in light by the expansion of the universal 'fabric' through which light travels. The further the light goes, the greater the expansion of the universe that has occured over the length of its journey, and the more it is shifted towards the red end of the visible spectrum. (Incredibly distant objects, like the earliest stars, are so far shifted that the light is turned into microwaves). Objects that are moving towards us have the light compressed towadrs the blue end of the spectrum.

By measuring this shift, we can, thanks to detailed measurements of light at known distances between points on earth (and the earth and the moon) measure very accurately the distance between us and stars, many of which are hundreds, thousands, and in the case of galaxies, millions of light years away. Since the speed of light is constant, those galaxies had to be there millions of years ago. If those galaxies formed millions of years ago, then the density of the matter out of which they formed had to be constant in order for that to occure.

I apologize to the creator of this thread for the bit of a tangent, but that sort of claim has to be dealt with pretty quickly and definitively, otherwise we run the risk of having to hear it again, which I really think could kill brain cells.

[byofrcs]

Part of me really thinks that this is something we should no longer be debating, and that part gets louder when I see people claim things about the density of matter being 'locked' less than twelve thousand years ago, and the Earth being created in six days.

I'm all about option one, but to be honest, I think panspermia is a better explanation for the 'origin' of life (on earth, anyways) than abiogenesis, I think it's important for Christians to understand that 'evolution' is not a theory as to the origin of life, not at all, but rather the diversity and variety of it.
.......

People are born every day and some are fools. Thus religion has a ready supply of "fresh meat".

Panspermia is still abiogenesis at the level of life from non-life.

[Play_Dough]

Im curious as to what everyones specific beliefs/opinions are on this topic. However, a belief w/o justification is useless, so please throw your $.02 in!


I know this has been discussed ad nauseam here, but Im now and wanna get a better feel of CURRENT feelings, not old ones!

Creationism and evolution can work 'hand-in-hand'.
Surely if 'God' exists then that 'God' (by definition?) can 'evolve' his/her/its 'creations'(?).

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