Get Ready For New Requirements In Faith

[AZMike]

No, evolution is a change in allele frequencies over time.  It doesn't refer to religions at all (or "truth", for that matter).

 

No, but certainly some have argued that natural selection not only eliminates the need for religion, but can be applied to a wide range of issues which Darwin would probably have scoffed at.  

 

From the traditional Catholic viewpoint (which, with the Orthodox, comprises about 2/3 of all the Christians in the world, so it's not an outlier position), natural selection is one of the many natural processes by the natural world is shaped, just as volcanism, tectonic plate dynamics, atomic degradation, and so forth are. In Genesis, God is referred to as both the maker and shaper of creation, and the Hebrew word for "shaped" is used in connection with much of the creation narrative. It seems likely, and has traditionally been taught, that these natural processes were set in motion by God. God intervenes and decisively "creates" at key moments in history - with the creation of the universe, with the creation of life, and with the creation of the human soul - all moments when God is said to have "breathed" these things into existence ("pneuma," the breath, is also associated with the spirit or soul in ancient philosophy.)  All three events are ones for which we don't have good explanations, if we solely use the lens of science.

 

Since early in Church history, natural selection has been offered as an explanation for how species change and how the number of species have increased over creation, as St. Augustine proposed. He also wrote that the account of creation in Genesis is true, and also metaphorical or lyrical in its descriptions, probably took much longer than the days described literally in Genesis (The Hebrew word used, YOM or "day" can also mean an era) and that if the facts as revealed by our senses (i.e., empirically, through our sciences) conflicts with the Biblical account, then we are probably wrong in our scriptural interpretation. Biblical literalism, as applied to the Old Testament, is a fairly recent theological belief that arose largely during the Reformation.

 

That being said, the state of scientific understanding of exactly how natural selection has worked over time is kind of chaotic at this point - the timeline on the rate of change in the genome is still quite controversial, and may throw off some of our estimates on the dates of events way, way off:

 

In the past six years, more-direct measurements using ‘next-generation’ DNA sequencing have come up with quite different estimates. A number of studies have compared entire genomes of parents and their children — and calculated a mutation rate that consistently comes to about half that of the last-common-ancestor method.

 

A slower molecular clock worked well to harmonize genetic and archaeological estimates for dates of key events in human evolution, such as migrations out of Africa and around the rest of the world¹. But calculations using the slow clock gave nonsensical results when extended further back in time — positing, for example, that the most recent common ancestor of apes and monkeys could have encountered dinosaurs. Reluctant to abandon the older numbers completely, many researchers have started hedging their bets in papers, presenting multiple dates for evolutionary events depending on whether mutation is assumed to be fast, slow or somewhere in between.

 

Last year, population geneticist David Reich of Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts, and his colleagues compared the genome of a 45,000-year-old human from Siberia with genomes of modern humans and came up with the lower mutation rate². Yet just before the Leipzig meeting, which Reich co-organized with Kay Prüfer of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, his team published a preprint article³ that calculated an intermediate mutation rate by looking at differences between paired stretches of chromosomes in modern individuals (which, like two separate individuals’ DNA, must ultimately trace back to a common ancestor). Reich is at a loss to explain the discrepancy. “The fact that the clock is so uncertain is very problematic for us,†he says. “It means that the dates we get out of genetics are really quite embarrassingly bad and uncertain.†(http://www.nature.com/news/dna-mutation-clock-proves-tough-to-set-1.17079)

 

Whether evolution is a smooth and relatively continuous event (phyletic gradualism) or comparatively rare and rapid period of branching speciation (the punctuated equilibria theory of Stephen Jay Gould and Niles Eldridge) is up for grabs in evolutionary biology, and the latter theory would be supported by the genomic change problems. As I believe in directed evolution (as a majority of the American population does, per Gallup), neither is really a problem for me.

Edited April 26, 2015 by AZMike

[packsaddle]

Man has not proven that humans came from a frog, dog or even a monkey. Just because man can simulate it in ideal lab conditions doesn't mean otherwise.

 

Barry

Well I don't know of any biologist who has made such a claim in the first place. Moreover, I don't know of any such lab simulations of it, either. I HAVE seen some entertaining fantasies like those in the movies though. 

Edited April 26, 2015 by packsaddle

[Stosh]

That's incorrect. Many people believe evolution is fully compatible with religion. See for example, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theistic_evolution

 

Of course, evolution is also compatible with atheism, agnosticism, beliefs in higher powers without a religion, etc.

 

Sorry, but Wikipedia is not the source of all truth in this world.  People can put whatever junk they want on that site and call it the truth.  

 

So, I'm, incorrect because "many people believe evolution is compatible with religion" as documented by Wikipedia, makes it acceptable?  Does one really believe a statement like that can be taken as fact?

 

Sorry, but one has to come up with a more convincing point than that to convince me because there are "many people who believe man has never walked on the moon", too.  It was all staged.  

 

I will concede that there are a lot of people who believe man has walked on the surface of the moon even though I have only been told so and watched what I considered unaltered video of the event.  It doesn't mean I'm right though.

 

Sorry, I'm just not going to buy into evolution or evolution as somehow torqued into being compatible with a religion of some sort.  I am one of the many who for 2,000 years believe that Socrates and his anti-religious disciples just haven't come up with a convincing argument against religion, which the vast majority of people actually do believe in.  It always reminds me of the idea that if everyone in the world is crazy and you're the only sane one, you might want to rethink your premise.

[moosetracker]

Stosh - What about AZMikes comment?

 

From the traditional Catholic viewpoint (which, with the Orthodox, comprises about 2/3 of all the Christians in the world, so it's not an outlier position), natural selection is one of the many natural processes by the natural world is shaped, just as volcanism, tectonic plate dynamics, atomic degradation, and so forth are. In Genesis, God is referred to as both the maker and shaper of creation, and the Hebrew word for "shaped" is used in connection with much of the creation narrative.

 

 

I know the liberal protestant churches I grew up in were just fine with blending science and religion together also.

 

 

Also since most of the united states but a few red states have accepted teaching evolution in their science courses, that to me says the majority of people in this country are fine with accepting this science..

 

For me religion is pure faith.. Evolution has thousands of fossils that show changes over time, it offers me more then faith.. If my religion wanted me to have pure faith in it, while part of it's belief system was to tell me evolution was a myth because to believe in evolution discounted religious faith, rather then finding a way to blend evolution with faith, well...  my religion would have basically told that my religious belief was something I could no longer have any faith in.

[AZMike]

A slower molecular clock worked well to harmonize genetic and archaeological estimates for dates of key events in human evolution, such as migrations out of Africa and around the rest of the world¹. But calculations using the slow clock gave nonsensical results when extended further back in time — positing, for example, that the most recent common ancestor of apes and monkeys could have encountered dinosaurs. Reluctant to abandon the older numbers completely, many researchers have started hedging their bets in papers, presenting multiple dates for evolutionary events depending on whether mutation is assumed to be fast, slow or somewhere in between.

 

Gives one hope for Alley Oop, doesn't it?

 

[JoeBob]

Pardon me for responding to the original topic:

 

A few recent Eagle candidates have pushed their reverence to NO GOD as satisfying their 'Duty to God' requirement.

 

Including a faith element in SMCs is logical push-back.  No longer will barrister boys be able to say "You never told me I had to believe in Gawd!"

 

Seems straight forward to me.

[AZMike]

Pardon me for responding to the original topic:

 

A few recent Eagle candidates have pushed their reverence to NO GOD as satisfying their 'Duty to God' requirement.

 

Say what now? That makes no sense whatsoever.

[NJCubScouter]

Pardon me for responding to the original topic:

 

A few recent Eagle candidates have pushed their reverence to NO GOD as satisfying their 'Duty to God' requirement.

I am not aware that any Eagle candidate has done that. What is your source for that statement?

[AZMike]

Sorry, but Wikipedia is not the source of all truth in this world.  People can put whatever junk they want on that site and call it the truth.  

 

So, I'm, incorrect because "many people believe evolution is compatible with religion" as documented by Wikipedia, makes it acceptable?  Does one really believe a statement like that can be taken as fact?

 

Sorry, but one has to come up with a more convincing point than that to convince me because there are "many people who believe man has never walked on the moon", too.  It was all staged.  

 

I will concede that there are a lot of people who believe man has walked on the surface of the moon even though I have only been told so and watched what I considered unaltered video of the event.  It doesn't mean I'm right though.

 

Sorry, I'm just not going to buy into evolution or evolution as somehow torqued into being compatible with a religion of some sort.  I am one of the many who for 2,000 years believe that Socrates and his anti-religious disciples just haven't come up with a convincing argument against religion, which the vast majority of people actually do believe in.  It always reminds me of the idea that if everyone in the world is crazy and you're the only sane one, you might want to rethink your premise.

 

I'd agree with you about the lack of a good argument against religion (by which I'm guessing you mean a belief in God, and the duty to worship Him). I should also add that the trad Catholic viewpoint holds that while evolution can be accepted as a finding of science by the faithful (heck, we owe the science of genetics to a priest, after all), it is not acceptable to believe that the human soul evolved and was not a creation of God, or that there was not an event where the first man and the first woman were imbued with a unique human soul. When that occurred, or what form of human that was or what they looked like, can be interesting to debate but has no real impact on our morality or our salvation. 

 

Catholic doctrine does not require a belief or disbelief in evolution, of course. One is welcome to believe in a literal reading of Genesis, and if the account of Adam and Eve were literally true, it would also have no effect one way or another on my salvation.

[moosetracker]

I should also add that the trad Catholic viewpoint holds that while evolution can be accepted as a finding of science by the faithful (heck, we owe the science of genetics to a priest, after all), it is not acceptable to believe that the human soul evolved and was not a creation of God, or that there was not an event where the first man and the first woman were imbued with a unique human soul. When that occurred, or what form of human that was or what they looked like, can be interesting to debate but has no real impact on our morality or our salvation. 

 

Catholic doctrine does not require a belief or disbelief in evolution, of course. One is welcome to believe in a literal reading of Genesis, and if the account of Adam and Eve were literally true, it would also have no effect one way or another on my salvation.

 

Pretty much same with what my church taught.. After all evolution is not in the bible, so you did not need to believe in evolution to be in-sync with the religion.. It was simply they did not draw a line in the sand and say either you believe in the bible, or you believe in evolution but you can not believe in both.. They found a way to reconcile why evolution did not discount the bible.  Since I have never met anyone but Stosh who can't accept evolution except to read about the a State or two that refuse to have it in their science books, from my point of view I would say most people who were religious found peace with the ability to blend.. But, as I have always stated, I live in the east.. NY, IL, MA & NH, never a red state.. So I have never lived in the bible belt.. Perhaps there you have a lot of people how are not able to blend and must deny science in order to keep their religious faith.. So where we live could definitely color our perspectives.

[packsaddle]

Moosetracker, I do live in that belt and there are many legislators who regularly try to change the science standards (only for biology) to require faith-based ideas to be taught alongside science. Thus far they have failed, largely due to the monumental embarrassment they suffered in the Dover, Pa decision. I once attended one of the legislative meetings in which one of these individuals asked, "What IS science anyway?" and another noted that as far as he was concerned the Bible was all the textbook anyone needed. This was a committee specifically chosen to provide oversight over the quality of educational standards for the state. 

Not a single other committee member could answer the first question for the guy. There was, in attendance, at least 12 professional scientists. We were not allowed to speak.

Welcome to the South.

[AZMike]

Moosetracker, I do live in that belt and there are many legislators who regularly try to change the science standards (only for biology) to require faith-based ideas to be taught alongside science. Thus far they have failed, largely due to the monumental embarrassment they suffered in the Dover, Pa decision. I once attended one of the legislative meetings in which one of these individuals asked, "What IS science anyway?" and another noted that as far as he was concerned the Bible was all the textbook anyone needed. This was a committee specifically chosen to provide oversight over the quality of educational standards for the state. 

Not a single other committee member could answer the first question for the guy. There was, in attendance, at least 12 professional scientists. We were not allowed to speak.

Welcome to the South.

 

Daaaaaang.

 

I have to admit, though - I find it peculiar that so many people want to make belief or disbelief in evolution a litmus test for scientific literacy. 

 

Why?

 

A man can believe that Eve was literally formed from Adam's rib and that the serpent convinced her, etc.... And what difference would it make to me? 

 

There are any number of other non-scientific, or anti-scientific shibboleths that are held by many quite respected people (*cough*RobertKennedyJr*cough*) that are held up as examples or admired, and those non-scientific beliefs can have a far bigger impact on my life, health, and safety than a belief or disbelief in some form of evolution. Some of those are even taught in our school systems.

 

Anti-Vaxxers....a belief held by both those of the left and right, although in West L.A., Santa Monica, Marin County, and Beverly Hills, it is largely those of the politically "progressive" upper class. You can probably thank them for the kids who contracted measles at Disneyland. ("“We’ve seen just a skyrocketing autism rate. Some people are suspicious that it’s connected to the vaccines. This person included. The science right now is inconclusive, but we have to research it.†- Barack Obama, 2008, long past the point when he should have known better.) Under Obama's watch, the FDA ordered a change from multi-dose to single-dose influenza vaccines because they contained less thimerosal -- the preservative that anti-vaccine activists wrongly believed causes autism. According to Scott Gottlieb, a former deputy commissioner in the FDA, this last minute switch was partially to blame for the vaccine shortages which occurred later that year.

 

Anti-Frackers, although fracking can safely remove us from dependence on middle eastern oil.

 

Anti-nuclear power plant people, although they can save thousands of black lung cases.

 

Anti-genetically modified crops people, although they could save millions of lives in the third world - despite what supposed "Science Guy" Bill Nye has claimed (although he has said he has change his mind, after being berated by real scientists...)

 

All the believers in homeopathy, acupuncture, chiropractic, naturopathic medicine, crystal healing, aura alignment, and other forms of hokum healing. While it's true that one won't find many creationism museums in the Bay Area, you can sure find a lot of such quack health parlors. And while an American may have the right to drink some some rotting fungus that looks like something you scraped off the bottom of your shoe if he wants to, under Obamacare, you and I as taxpayers have to pay for it, at least in states that recognize such jiggery-pokery - thank you, Senator Tom Harkin, Democrat, Iowa, and President Barack Obama.

 

While every Republican political candidate has gotten the question "Do you believe in evolution?" I would like to hear Hillary and whatever other Democrats who decide to run be asked if they believe that funding those kind of frauds is effective. Given that the science was settled for years before Roe v. Wade that human life begins at conception (as every obstetrics and gynecology textbook stated), I would have like to hear Obama pressed on when he believes life begins, instead of allowing him to duck out of it with a grin and a "that's above my paygrade" joke. Heck, I'd like to hear them be asked if they agree withe the ridiculous nutritional advice that Obama donor Gwyneth Paltrow puts out, or if they agree that genetically modified foods must have a special label?

 

Any of those issues has greater real-world consequences than a belief in evolution. So, why do you all think it is treated with such greater importance than it deserves? 

Edited April 27, 2015 by AZMike

[packsaddle]

Dobzhansky answered your question best.

By the way, life 'began' billions of years ago. It has continued and still continues to this time. Our gametes are very much alive and human.

[moosetracker]

Thanks for the info Packsaddle, I knew someone passed that (thought it was a state, not a district), I didn't realize that it was later overturned as unconstitutional.. Every now & then I hear of someone thinking about it, but was not sure if it passed or not..

 

Since AZMike's comment would shift this from a religious thread to a political thread, I will pass on commenting.. Electing a new president is less then 2 years away and I am sure as we get closer to that we will have plenty of threads that are more political in nature.

 

Evolution just got discussed within the realm of this thread because of Stosh's view on religion vs science.. So it is not the ONLY litmus test, but it is a valid topic for this particular thread..

Edited April 27, 2015 by moosetracker

[Stosh]

If science can be taught without creationism theory, why can't it also be taught without evolution theory.  It was done so for billions of years before Darwn.