Dear David,

Sorry about the reply and thanks for your comment in regards to my logic and arguments, that’s quite a compliment coming from someone like yourself.

I don’t believe OUG could ever be enlightened, and if Dan could somehow be enlightened, I think it’s unlikely that it would ever be me - or any one person for that matter - who did the enlightening.

I look back to my creationist days and the debates I used to have with those who understood evolution, and what sticks out to me the most now, looking back on all those discussions I had, is the fact that I can remember every argument I made against evolution, but I can’t remember many of the responses I got. Not many at all. Obviously I heard my opponents but never listened. I think there’s something in that.

So why do I continue?

Because others - who may be sitting on the fence - could one day read these pages, and so I feel an almost uncontrollable urge to correct Dan so that the corrections and truth to what he says are at least on the record.

As I said in the post that Dan quote mined me on: “...it would be a real tragedy if someone were to read Dan’s posts and think he actually had a point.”

Although I should have added the word “mistakenly”.

Too be honest though, I’m not sure that I should continue. One can only repeat the same rebuttals over-and-over before one starts to become concerned about the point Mark Twain made in regards to arguing with fools.

So what enlightened me?

I’ve never been able to answer that one as well as I’d like to - not even for my own sake. I covered it a little at http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=3564#85116.

A very small realisation snowballed and the more I realised I was wrong, the more I started caring about being right and having as many true beliefs as possible, while eliminating as many of the false ones as I could.

Continued...

...Continued

My new-found respect for the truth and awareness of its importance in our beliefs (since our beliefs effect the decisions we make) is why I eventually abandoned religion altogether - not just my young Earth creationist beliefs.

Was I lucky, or was it inevitability going to happen as I matured? Does maturity along with the absence of Temporal Lobe Epilepsy or something similar or something not yet discovered explain it?

I’d really like to fully understand it all myself but try as I might, that may never happen.

George,

<<Never mind that some anti-Christians want to pass [Constantine’s Christendom] as just an unnecessary aberration also something that lasted over a millennium.>>

What’s important to remember is the fact that there is nothing the West has acquired or achieved through Christianity that it couldn’t have acquired or achieved via secular means. To omit this point is to give undue credit to Christianity that it simply didn’t earn - especially when it is secularism that has helped drag Christianity kicking and screaming out of the Dark Ages and into modernity.

Considering there appears to be a continuously shifting (an improving) moral zeitgeist that started moving since before Christianity was even thought of, I think - regardless of our inability to test the “ifs” of history - we can safely say that any role played by Christianity in the progress of the Western world was simply and accident of history.

Dan,

David was absolutely correct when he said: “In taking a bunch of old fables as truth [creationists] are engaging in a similar process.”

Speaking of the, “You just don’t understand” argument I mentioned weeks ago...

<<...judging by what [AJ] has said. I don’t think he really understands the creationist argument or line of thinking.>>

I think I have quite adequately proven a good understanding of creationist arguments; more than yourself, ironically.

David,
Someone once said that whoever sets the definitions controls the argument. So I would think that you would expect me to react to you calling Genesis a bunch of old fables. I don’t know if I was aiming at tit-for-tat or a tête-à-tête, but I was attempting to mirror your comment, showing how well evolution passes as a sophisticated fairy tale for modern man. Some kind of creation myth is quite necessary for personal wellbeing. It’s something like an Amex card. You won’t get far without one.

Rusty,
What are Wieland's qualifications in paleontology or geology? At a guess, I would say that they’re at least the equal of yours. His book, Stones and Bones, was not attempting the depth of a doctoral thesis. It is a quick overview showing how some of the most common lines of evidence make eminently more sense when viewed in a Biblical framework. If you’re looking for depth in analysis you would find it elsewhere in a different book or journal.

But you raise an important point. Different aspects of evolution gather over several and varied disciplines, such as biology, paleontology, geology, etc. So finding the expert on them all is tough. From memory, Darwin’s ideas were much influenced by long age Lyellian geology, yet he was trained in theology. In reality, evolutionary history is like an all pervading ideology that can be incorporated into any domain.

I try not to go too far out of my depth when discussing the issues, but we’re all laymen when we move outside of our field. I see you have experience in your field of genetics. What do you know about dice rolls? I’ve studied some pure and applied mathematics, so when you talk about probabilities and dice rolls, I start to feel like I’m more on home turf. Wasn’t Carl Sagan known as an astronomer and astrophysicist? Yet he discusses genetics at length in his book. Perhaps he was an expert here, as well as in several others fields. I don’t know. He was quite a guy!

Atheists often insist of theists, for something like proof of God or the spiritual realm, that a radical claim requires radical proof. Similarly the onus is on you to DEMONSTRATE to the sceptical how bacteria can turn into a bacteriologist via mutation and natural selection. Up until now the almost Gnostic claims of mysterious superior knowledge (or the faith that it has probably been sorted out and established in someone else’s domain) are not cutting it.

Dear Oliver,
You asked me what I believe about evolution and science.

As I’ve said earlier, word definitions change within different contexts. Science could mean something very general like ‘knowledge’, or more specifically focus on what can be obtained by your understanding of the scientific method. Evolution can generally mean ‘change’ or something specific like neo-Darwinism. It’s good to define terms or otherwise risk talking past one another on something in which we’re really in agreement.

I have a lot of problems with the commonly accepted theory of Neo-Darwinism, that being the common descent of all life on earth from a single ancestor via undirected mutation and natural selection. I do not think this is well substantiated by science. Which part of this specifically do you think has been well substantiated?

That view relies on naturalistic thinking. Alternatively, in a world created by an intelligent spirit, we may expect that Spirit to have communicated some description of his creative endeavour. As a Biblical creationist, this is as I believe, in line with empirical data:

‘God created all kinds of living things with the genetic capacity for variation by the rearranging of the genetic information, the genes, through the reproductive process. However, the variation is basically limited to that available in the created genes, with the addition of some extra variation due to non-lethal mutations in the original genes. The extra variations in humans caused by genetic mutations probably include such visible things as freckly skin, blue eyes, blond hair, inability to roll the tongue, lack of ear lobes, and male pattern baldness.
Things reproduce according to their kind, as Genesis says (1:11,12,21,24,25). They always have and they always will—while ever this world exists.

‘Dr George Gabor Miklos summed it up nicely when he said: “We can go on examining natural variation at all levels … as well as hypothesising about speciation events in bed bugs, bears and brachiopods until the planet reaches oblivion, but we still only end up with bed bugs, brachiopods and bears. None of these body plans will transform into rotifers, roundworms or rhynchocoels.”

Dear Oliver,
You ask what I think of Christians who accept evolution.

I’ve met many good Christians who hold to many different views of Genesis and origins.

I believe the Biblical creationist view is the one best doing justice to the scientific evidence and in making for sound theology.

I’m sad that so many genuine Christians want to accept Darwinian evolution. I don’t think that, such as it is, an inherently materialistic philosophy, fits well into a Christian view. Darwin’s natural selection had no need for God. I think it is inconsistent for the Christian to say that God chose a method of creation in which he didn’t create.

I could go into more detail about the discussion I’ve had with Christians about this if you like, but I’m probably beginning to ramble as it is. Yet for the theologically inclined, I like to raise this verse from Paul’s letter to the Corinthians. Does Paul believe these people to be real people?

“Just as death came into the world through a man, now the resurrection from the dead has begun through another man. Just as everyone dies because we all belong to Adam, everyone who belongs to Christ will be given new life.”