So, Dan, you accept the literal truth of the Bible, at least some of the time, and are willing to accept exegesis of texts such as the three chapters of the book of Jonah.

Chapter 2 of Jonah is hard for me to accept as factual history. I assume you do not believe that Jonah was literally swallowed by a fish, then vomited up on dry land three days and three nights later.

The difficulty for me, in accepting both exegesis and literal truth, depending on which is best, is that the exegesis depends on fallible scholars for its authority.

So depending on them for authoritative statements about evolution becomes a matter of accepting their word rather than depending on the consilience of inductions, mentioned by the author of the article that got this discussion going.

This body of coherent evidence has been extensively developed by scientific research and experimentation over the past 150 years.

In the past 30 years or so, the tree of life has been drawn using a research tool known as cladistics. Google "tree of life" and cladistics, using Google Images, an you will find a wealth of diagrams showing how we are all related, from goo through zoo to primates such as ourselves and the other great apes.

I would rather be part of an evolving, ongoing creation than an isolated species, with no kinship to the rest of the organic world. I prefer a family history going back more than 2 billion years, rather than a history that some dead preacher, from the 17th century, says began about 4000 years ago.

Don't get me wrong. I believe humans are unique, in positive ways. We are capable of sympathy, empathy, self-consciousness, novel and complex speech and tool-making, and are aware of our life and our mortality.

As for the definitions, I added them so as to make clear the difference between creation science, where the word science is used in the general sense, and experimental science, where the words imply the outcomes of activities carefully crafted to produce repeatable outcomes which address particular questions.

And what difference does it make how I spell it? Smile.

Just joking Dan, and I with-draw the clam. I do believe that god is in the mind and that's fine, i believe in things as well, and for some strange reason, I look up to the sky and talk to my self! and I have know idea why i do it.
I guess in all humans, we just needed a buddy to talk to.

Cause when you talk to your self, who are you talking to?

Lets just call it god or jesus and leave things just the way they were intened to.

EVO

Experimental evolution is a pressing policy issue.

Dan, instead of denying evolution, you and your fellows of similar faith need to be looking at how evolutionary science and technology is surging ahead, like the tide before King Canute.

I have included a link to an experiment that is similar in principle to one I did with fruit flies, at university, in introductory genetics, back in 1969: subject an organism to selective pressure over several generations, and note the change in gene frequency and/or phenotype (appearance or other observable trait) over the generations.

In this case, the organism is a virus, the trait is infectivity and the implications are for production-scale culturing of human disease virus. The article is from the latest issue of the Proceedings of the National Acadamy of Science, a US periodical that publishes world-class experimental results.


http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2009/02/20/0813365106.abstract?etoc

Excoffona, K. et al (2009) Directed evolution of adeno-associated virus to an infectious respiratory virus

[conclusion]
"In summary, we speculate that ... viruses can evolve under artificial selective pressure to be significantly more infectious. This finding has strong relevance for the engineering of novel virus-based gene therapeutics.
[and]
This general approach thus enables the development of "designer" gene delivery vectors under clinically desirable selective pressures ...[that] ... will continue to yield exciting new candidates for human gene therapy."

Dan, I assume you belong to a particular sect. What is the position of your church on genetic engineering of viral, bacterial and higher organisms? In this case, the implications of a potential to develop highly infectious and fatal germ warfare agents ought to be taken into consideration.

"As they say, evolution is a bit like Marxism, the more you know about it, the less likely you are to believe it."

How much do we know about creationism Dan?

We know it was unwitnessed, described by a man living thousands of years ago, passed from generation to generation, eventually written down and subequently included in what came to be the bible.

What else?

George,

When you said

" I like the definition where evolutionism is an ideology masquerading as pseudo-religion based on the scientific theory of evolution. Symmetrically I would call creationism an ideology masquerading as pseudo-science based on belief in an “intelligent designer”, whatever that means. So one can accept evolution without accepting evolutionism, and e.g. the Christian model of Divinity without accepting creationism: the two acceptances are compatible. In this sense creationists are “evolution-deniers”.

The pseudo religious evolutionism that you are referring to is the 19th century movement that thought everything incl organisms, society, culture etc were constantly improving themselves through evolution.

Very few people who believe that man evolved fall into that category, rather they understand it to be a natural phenomenon.

Similarily I believe that gravity draws matter together, but I would hesitate to call gravitationalism a pseudo religion.

Dan,

I would compare religion to Marxism. The more you know, the less likely you are to believe it.

Creationist slogan - Ignorance is bliss.

Dear Michael,

No, this forum is not a place formal debate but in regards to settling the debate, that was done long ago. In fact it has already been done here because the facts support the “Pro-evolution” side of the argument. Nature and scientific reasoning are the adjudicators.

Your claim that home schooling by fundamentalists is done to teach both sides goes against my observations and is a flawed argument. Why would a parent go to all the effort of home schooling their child to teach creationism when they could send them to a school and still do that at home?

Aside from that, creationists know very little about evolution (as both yourself and runner have shown in this thread) and what little they do know, are misconceptions. They would hardly be ideal teachers of evolution.

Another point: Teaching evolution only is not telling a child what to think. But teaching creationism (an unfounded belief) alongside evolution is misleading a child and causing unnecessary confusion.

Dear George,

I’ve already mentioned some coercion methods used such as home schooling and having children repeat nonsense statements out loud. Yes, I know the method of repeating something our loud is done for standard academic education but it’s not done at schools in an attempt to prevent children from accepting facts.

(Cont’d)