Evolution Primer #7: Why Is Evolution Controversial Anyway?

Consider different points of view, as scientists, religious leaders, and college students share their opinions about evolution, science, and religious faith.

Category:

Howto & Style

Tags:

• Evolution
• Religion
• Fundamentalist
• Denial

[coleneil1]

"I don't look for, you know, DNA mutations and you know stuff like that, thats just, you can't expect that..."

You can't expect the infalable word of god to mention DNA? WTF is this not an omniscient god we are talking about? Is she fuc*ing stupid?! Your damn right I expect god to know about and talk about DNA, atoms, evolution, and the right shape of the Earth! he better know sh*t god should know!!!! Stop making excuses for god he made the s*it right? he should be able to talk about it!!!

[Promatheos]

Why doesn't it seem to strike Christians that every time there is a scientific discovery, it's religion that has to give ground in the reconciliation? The religious doctrine must change to survive. Science just is what it is. Is it really that difficult to see which is the weaker world view?

[ruffgreens]

Why would we check our evidence requiring brain at the church door? Look, if the creation story is metaphorical, then vicarious redemption through faith is metaphorical. Ergo heaven, hell and the biblical god are all metaphorical. Just because people can create a dichotomy in their mind and exercise specious reasoning so they don't have to unravel the bullshit their parents taught them at an age when they also believed in santa does not make evolution and RELIGION compatable.

[GoblinXXX]

@PatchesRips At the risk of being pedantic-- "Evolution" is not the theory.  The mechanism of NATURAL SELECTION is the theory that explains the observable fact of evolution. (There's obviously a lot more to it than that, now, but that was how Darwin put it.) I know you know this, but the common phrasing bugs me, almost as much as hearing people call Leonardo "DaVinci", like that was his last name and not where he was from.

[puncheex]

@Hrimpurstala: OK. I agree.

[Hrimpurstala]

@puncheex

Well, I suppose, what I meant to say was: The dispute is between different religious interpretations of what questions science should be allowed to research and whether some 'results' must be motivated by evil temptations or false branches of the faith.

So, basically - we are saying something very similar.

[puncheex]

@Hrimpurstala: Beg to differ. The main conflict is between a naturalistic view of the world, and a religious-centered view. Science is certainly not thought to be another sect of christianity.  Some branches have a more tolerant view of science than others do, indeed can even find ways to make then coexist, but conservatives, locked into a literal interpretation of a book that was never thought to be literal by anyone until the 17th century, see science at the chief cause of harm in our world.

[PatchesRips]

@xKRUSHx10 "Evolution isn't a theory"

It is, in fact. A scientific theory is a formal explanation for a set of related empirical observations. It can be tested and falsified. So far, evolution has survived falsification.

"Some people believe that man evolved from apes"

We still ARE apes. "Ape" is the colloquial term for "hominid"; hominids are a biologically-related group including orangutans, chimps, bonobos, gorillas, and humans. Chimps are more closely related to humans than to gorillas.

[PatchesRips]

@puncheex (cont'd) It's true though they did not want common people interpreting scripture or mistranslating it for fear of heresy, apostasy, and potential schism... all of which, essentially, occurred (at least from the Catholic point of view) once people like Wycliffe and Luther began translating the Bible into various languages, where shades of meaning in one language were either lost, or drawn out of nothing, in another. At least the Vulgate was a single standard all had in common.

[PatchesRips]

@puncheex "The Bible was not definitively ordered until an RC council in the 14th century."

Long before the 14th century. The Western biblical canon was formalized in 393 CE at the Synod of Hippo Regius.

[PatchesRips]

@nintendude695 "day could also mean era."

It could also mean "day" -- which is what it MEANS when we use the word. We have a word for "era"... it's "era". There's also month, year, decade, century, millennium, eon... If you take the view of Humpty Dumpty in Alice in Wonderland and decide words means whatever you want them to, what's the point of having a language with agreed meanings at all? In other words, if this god spent billions of YEARS instead of six DAYS making things, why not say so?