Grumpy wrote:hannahjoy wrote:The question is not "Is it impossible for God to use evolution?" but "Did God use evolution?"
Since the scientists have clearly shown(to those who look at the evidence) that evolution has occured throughout the history of life on Earth, then if God is responsible for creating that life he DID use evolution. That is just a fact.
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I do not say that God had to use evolution, I just say that we know that evolution occured. The question then becomes was God responsible or not. I leave the answering of that question to you(and religion). Science has no answer, nor any way of answering that question.
I think that I will agree with Grumpy, Hannahjoy. There is just far too much evidence for evolution to conclude that it didn't happen. So, we're stuck with the following question:
What is God's role in the evolution that we know has occurred?
It seems that different denominations answer this question differently. Most accept evolution and the facts upon which it is based--and adjust their spiritual understanding accordingly. A few choose a rigid interpretation of the bible (or other holy book) that is incompatible with evolution and its supporting facts--and deny the facts, rather than re-examine their interpretations. It is these few that insist that religion and evolution cannot coexist, despite significant evidence to the contrary.
The difference is not evolution or the facts. The difference is the interpretation of extremely complex and often cryptic texts. It
seems as if the simpler the interpretation, the less likely the acceptance of science.
Rob wrote:Is it true or not true, McCullock, that it is good to murder one's neighbor because they are different, for example a different color, or religion, or hold different beliefs? For example, the fascist Nazi regime during the holocaust and the genocide against the Jews?
How do you determine the truth of this question? Do you think science can answer these forms of moral questions?
We might also ask whether it is good to murder Iraqis in the desire to overthrow their ruler, or whether it is good to murder Iraqis because they try to work with the occupation in restoring the country. The US did one, the insurgency (or freedom fighters, depending on your viewpoint) are doing the other.
I
think you may be looking for (or asking about) a yes/no, black-
vs-white answer, with no shades of gray. Obviously, the Nazis
did think it was good, and they used both science and religion to sway the populace into going along with it. Similarly, Europeans of 400-500 years ago created "reasons" that it was "good" to slaughter the "heathens" of the Americas, and to force them to accept Christianity. Now, many of us recognize that both of these atrocities were exactly that--atrocities. Yet, there remain holocaust-deniers and white-supremacists who persist in the belief that what was done then was good, and should be continued.
We can "assign blame" all we like, but I think it's better to understand
why people seem to be able to come up with ideas like these that seem so awful. What you'll find in religious texts is that "others" look different because they were "punished" for some transgression, or that we must protect our homeland from intruders, or that we must spread the faith even unto those who don't want it. It's easy to assign blame to Religion--but that's not fair. Instead, it is necessary to look at our own evolutionary history and figure out
why we have this built-in instinct to think that "others" are wrong, and "we" are right.
I refer to it as the "berry patch scenario." We've got two tribes living on opposite sides of a valley. There's one berry patch in the middle--but it doesn't have enough berries to support both tribes through the winter. One tribe has the built-in instinct to share--but if they shared, both tribes would starve. The other tribe has the instinct to fight the "others" because they're different. So, they fight. The "sharers" are killed, and the "fighters" survive the winter.
Whose genes did we inherit? Not those of the dead guys.
There are lots and lots of behaviors that are strongly influenced by genetics. One of those seems to be to feel strong bonding with your own group, and to mistrust other groups. Indeed, many tribes' names for themselves translate into English as "The People." Apparently, the others aren't really people.
Uhhh...how do you tell who is part of your group, and who is "other"? Well, there's hairstyle, face paint, body piercing, tattooing, and now that we have modern technology, hats, gang "colors," your country's flag, your political candidate's color (red or blue in the US,) your religion's color (orange or green in Ireland). There's also skin color. Skin color's an easy one, because it's so easy to see. It turns out to be irrelevant except in terms of how far your ancestors lived from the equator, but then, wearing your favorite team's logo on your shirt or hat is pretty much irrelevant, too--but can lead to pretty nasty fights.
I think that if you look around, you'll find that most of these atrocities we get so worked up about are based on this one basic instinct of staying with your own group, and considering other groups to be hostile. They can be whole countries going on a rampage (Hitler's Nazis), or just one guy (what's-his-name from the World Church of the Creator who went on a multi-state shooting spree, and killed a Korean student at Indiana University "because he wasn't white").
Now back to the thread: religions are groups of people. They tend to have fairly homogeneous views, or they break off into new denominations. Different denominations often dislike each other passionately--witness those who refer to themselves as "True Christians," and refer to the other denominations as "Pretenders." There's no real truth to any of the "lines drawn in the sand," but there's one heck of a lot of evolutionary history that makes us
feel as if there is.
I suspect that a lot of the controversy of religion vs science (evolution primarily, but also geology, astronomy, and chemistry) comes from the fact that most people make a lot of decisions based on emotional analysis of information (the gut-level feeling), whereas science tries (not always successfully) to work exclusively at the level of unemotional analysis of facts. Someone who infers meaning from conversations on the basis of body language and tone of voice will completely misunderstand a scientist who has no clue that such things even exist--and
vice versa. (I've seen it happen.) For a conversation on this issue to work, we've got to be on the same wavelength, and we're usually not.
