My thoughts on the Creation v Evolution debate

[Andara Bledin]

Well, to begin with, Original Sin was because of Adam, not Eve. Considering that in the 2nd century women had no power, and thus, no control, so the sin was his, not hers. Regardless, it doesn't make anything any muddier than before.

As regards what God did and did not create, technically He crated everything, good and bad alike. Sin is a byproduct of free will. Without free will, there would be no sin. Without sin, free will would be meaningless. The whole point is to strive to be better than mere requirement or base desire would dictate.

This comment caught my attention in particular:

why would god require a blood sacrifice of a human to remove sin when humans are not the cause of sin?

This is akin to saying that a person who locked a door and trapped people inside a burning building is not to blame because they weren't responsible for the fire itself.

As I mentioned above, sin is merely a byproduct of free will. Because free will is nothing without the option for those who have it to choose the option to do things that are proscribed. What should and should not qualify as sin is a hotly debated topic, but on a personal level, if you know what you're doing will cause someone harm and is not for a greater good, then it's a pretty safe bet you're sinning in some manner.

[siead_lietrathua]

Well, to begin with, Original Sin was because of Adam, not Eve.

no. just, no. i have never seen that ever shown in any theology of christianity. where the hell did you get that from?
eve broke covenant with god by eating of the apple. adam did as well, but his sin was secondary. even when they talk about adam's fall, it's noted that eve caused it.
seriously. my partner facepalmed so hard from that it scared the cats.

As regards what God did and did not create, technically He crated everything, good and bad alike. Sin is a byproduct of free will.

ergo, god created sin intentionally as a byproduct of free will. he didn't have to. he chose to. therefore he created the thing that he would then punish us for and we had no choice in the matter because we never chose to have free will.

This is akin to saying that a person who locked a door and trapped people inside a burning building is not to blame because they weren't responsible for the fire itself.

um. no. that analogy is not at all similar to what i was saying. to make it a correct analogy: "why would god place humans in a building, set it on fire, then insist him setting it on fire was the fault of the people inside. then demand that in order for people to leave the locked building, they have to kill the firefighter."

As I mentioned above, sin is merely a byproduct of free will.

you need more than assertions that it is true, especially if other denominations of your own theology would disagree. you need to prove it. just as you would still need to prove the existance of sin AT ALL still before even getting to the point of whether it's caused by free will. (if we even HAVE free will)
to me, this "byproduct of free will" sounds like nothing more than a scapegoat. even if BAD THINGS are a byproduct of free will, they do not have to carry the weight of being a SIN that requires INFINITE punishment. that is unjust, by any rational mind.

and to add to the question pile: Why then would god create free will if he knew it would lead to sin that would cause him to have to punish us?

i also note you skipped all the ones on where and when sin and souls kick in along the phylogenetic chain. "when does free will apply" can also be added to that stack of questions.

[Gravekeeper]

however, when debating about a topic that is essentially Theology Vs Science Theory, things need to be defined. otherwise the debate is pointless from the get-go.

But there's no debate.

I thought we were all pretty clearly in the "Wow these guys are idiots" side and the op clearly laid out his concerns we're not in the context of God. That's kinda why I'm at a loss over what you're on about. No one took the position you're so adamantly arguing against. You just sort of flew into the thread swinging. >.>

the reason this buts heads so badly with christian theology is not because it breaks genesis. it's because the lack of an adam and eve, the lack of a "fall", eliminates the concept of original sin. without the idea that all of us are born in sin, and require this specific messiah to be saved from that sin, christianity loses alot of it's power. it's hard to scare people with inborn sin when they can show that the story is false.

But again, you are insisting on a literal and global interpretation. The concept of original sin was a doctrine that was developed over time ( and indeed had both supporters and detractors ) and much later than Genesis. It's also primarily a feature of Catholicism. Which is the one you seem to be upset with as that is the Church(tm) that is central to the whole fear and power thing over the middle ages.

Well, one of the main concepts of Christianity as I understand it is that Christ sacrificed himself for the sins of all humans, and that started with the original sin in the garden of Eden. Get rid of the creation and Adam and Eve, and the foundations there start to look a bit dubious. Depends what you take from it, I guess.

Well, to be pedantic, the foundations of Christianity are the oral teachings of Jesus. All of this other crap came later and all of it went through bitter discussion, strife, etc and was mostly swiped from the Jews. The view that Christianity is this sort of universal whole is flawed. Its the result of hundreds of years of philosophy, debates, bickering, politics and assholery much like anything else about human society.

Near any universal tenant of Christianity you can name likely has a denomination that disagrees with it to be honest and that's before you even get into what the Jews or the Muslims think. I mean, in the Muslim version God forgave Adam and Eve. So there was no original sin or downfall of man or anything.

Fun fact: While Original Sin is a specifically Christian belief, it isn't universal to all branches of Christianity.

It actually isn't, its a fairly common theme. But yes, it is not universal to all branches of Christianity which is kind of the problem with this whole weird discussion. -.-

Funny thing about Christians in general. They disagree with each other a whole lot, often more than they disagree with other religions. Seems to be more vehement against other faiths, but I suspect if Christianity was the dominant religion in the world the churches would start to fight each other.

Well, that's people for you. Christians have been disagreeing with each other from the moment Jesus opened his mouth. Everything we have now as the common tenants of Christianity is basically just what won from a historical perspective.

Also, they already fight each other and have been fighting each other for a long time. There are entire branches of early Christianity that were quite literally slaughtered to a man for disagreeing with other groups.

That's people for you. -.-

that doesn't solve anything though, it just drums up even MORE questions. with original sin, sin entered the world because of eve. clean-cut answer. but if there was no eve or eden, if they are seen as non-literal figures, it adds questions like:

You're demanding a clear cut answer to philosophical questions of a religion that was based on teaching moral values through analogies and metaphors. Do you see the problem? >.>

no. just, no. i have never seen that ever shown in any theology of christianity. where the hell did you get that from?
eve broke covenant with god by eating of the apple. adam did as well, but his sin was secondary. even when they talk about adam's fall, it's noted that eve caused it.
seriously. my partner facepalmed so hard from that it scared the cats.

.....uh. I think you need to go back and read up on this theology you are so adamant about before you embarrass yourself.

Original sin was Adam's. As Andara pointed out when the doctrine of original sin was developing women had no power to speak of. The basis of original sin is the concept of the generation sin of the father passing to his children. Because of it Adam could not pass on his holiness/grace/whatever to his children. Thus the human race is born with mortality and the capacity for ignorance, suffering and sin yet retains free will. But no longer has the ability to achieve eternal life without God's grace.

Its the very doctrine of the Catholic church that original Sin was Adam's. Yes, Eve gets blamed for it and both have sin for it, but the original Sin is Adam's. Adam is standing right there the entire time with the serpent.

So saying you've never heard this in any Christian theology when its the doctrine of the largest denomination of Christianity on the planet? Yeah. >.>

[siead_lietrathua]

GK, you say i came out swinging.. i did. i admit it. but the op said, in their own first post,

In conclusion, I have more points of debate, but I think I went on for long enough.

i answered the questions the OP put up for debate. all their questions, including the radiocarbon dating, bones, and ETC. everyone else fixated on my first point about theology. so, naturally, i continued along that thread addressing their points. if people has simply said "no, we're talking about creation in general, not abrahamic creation", it could have stopped there.

you yourself said you wouldn't touch the op's god with a ten foot pole. i just decided that i would put up a boundry on their god instead! since they invoked jesus, adam and eve, it's a safe assumption it was the abrahamic god, and i went from there. i put up a barrier that if we were invoking the abrahamic god, then we should not give it traits that are not part of it's theology. and people flipped shit.

now, if you're going to say we shouldn't debate theology when talking about creation, then define a god to be debated against instead. and make the definition something concrete so the goalposts can't be shifted around when one side or the other is losing.


as to the fall: the catholic catechicm (sp) talks about man, as in the race of man, adam and eve as one entity, in the section about the fall. AFTER the fall, it follows the line of adam's sin. not surprising because, he was the one with the penis. however, in the bible itself eve both sinned first, and was punished first. eve still CAUSED the fall. eve CAUSED original sin. without her, there would have been no sin on adam, no apples get ate. why is that a hard point for people to agree with me on?

aside from that bag of worms, if you're going to say i cannot ask for rational answers from theology, even on it's fundamental basics like Sin, then it's freakin pointless to even have a conversation.
i should be able to ask "where in the phylogenetic record does the soul begin?" and be met with an answer beyond "you can't ask that!". hell even a "only god knows" is a better answer than being told not to question.
if theology is unwilling to go up against perfectly rational questions then it needs to stay away from science.

[Gravekeeper]

GK, you say i came out swinging.. i did. i admit it. but the op said, in their own first post

Yes, but that was in reference to the scientific. Which we discussed. There really wasn't any need to go swinging the other way when the op made that separation themselves. There was nothing to argue against.

as to the fall: the catholic catechicm (sp) talks about man, as in the race of man, adam and eve as one entity, in the section about the fall. AFTER the fall, it follows the line of adam's sin. not surprising because, he was the one with the penis. however, in the bible itself eve both sinned first, and was punished first. eve still CAUSED the fall. eve CAUSED original sin. without her, there would have been no sin on adam, no apples get ate. why is that a hard point for people to agree with me on?

Because you repeatedly invoke theology without seeming to have a full grasp of the theology in question. In Christian theology the concept and doctrine of Original Sin is Adam's Sin. End of line. You can blame Eve for it all you want but the theology of Original Sin is that it is Adam's sin. Assigning blame or responsibility from a literary perspective doesn't change the theology and since it is the theology you keep referring to, well, sorry but you are incorrect here.

Andara specifically referred to Original Sin. Original Sin is theologically Adam's. So acting like she just said the stupidest thing in the world was not only incorrect but also rather poor of you. She even explained to you exactly why it was considered Adam's sin.

aside from that bag of worms, if you're going to say i cannot ask for rational answers from theology, even on it's fundamental basics like Sin, then it's freakin pointless to even have a conversation.

You're free to ask, but it is indeed pointless because no one was having that conversation in this thread. You started this conversation on your own. That's my problem here.

[siead_lietrathua]

You're free to ask, but it is indeed pointless because no one was having that conversation in this thread. You started this conversation on your own. That's my problem here.

putting up the barrier that if we are talking about yahweh, then we can't change yahweh into a non-yahweh god is all i did in the beginning. it denigrated from there when people said that christianity disagreed with me. i tried to put up a reasonable boundary, and it went downhill.
i'm not saying i'm faultless in it. but AGAIN if creation VS evolution is on the table, the type of creation needs to be defined so the goalposts cannot be shifted. to eliminate god-of-the-gaps invoking. is that unreasonable? really?

but, at this point, i'm just irritated with this. so, i shall make like bad drapery and flounce. lol.

[Gravekeeper]

But...no one was talking about....nrrr. >.>

[Nyoibo]

I'm honestly getting a bit lost here as to what you're arguing. >.>

To repeat myself, why are you insisting Christianity adhere to Genesis when not many do and I would venture to say most understand that Genesis is merely a creation myth. One, that from an academic theological perspective, is compiled from various different sources and influences, incorrectly translated, contradictory to other parts of the Bible and was decided on by a committee. I'd say the average Christian is smart enough to realize they're just reading a book penned and compiled by human hands that is thousands of years out of date.

You are essentially insisting all Christians be fundamentalists.

And that's ignoring the fact that Genesis is merely the Christian creation myth that made it to print.

Because if peoples faith is so intrinsically based on a holy book you don't treat it as a damned pick 'n' mix on what is to be believed and what is a fable/ cautionary tale, myth you either treat the entire text as truth or as an analogy.

[Kheldarson]

Because if peoples faith is so intrinsically based on a holy book you don't treat it as a damned pick 'n' mix on what is to be believed and what is a fable/ cautionary tale, myth you either treat the entire text as truth or as an analogy.

Except different parts were written at different times and to different purposes. And by different authors even. So how do you sit and interpret them all under the same light?

[HYHYBT]

Except different parts were written at different times and to different purposes. And by different authors even. So how do you sit and interpret them all under the same light?

Because that's the kind that's easiest to make look stupid.

[BlaqueKatt]

On a more humorous side note, I saw an Atheist scholar blast an Internet commented for posting that the compiled writings of Josephus were not real because "carbon dating said so". The scholar blasted the commenter because we do not have any original copies to test (almost 2000 years ago, was when Josephus wrote). Most paper does not survive a few hundred years (then only under the most Ideal of conditions).

no that's *not* why it's considered a forgery, the first person to mention the specific passage(and josephus was widely quoted by early church leaders, funny how none of them knew about that passage *until* mr. forgerman got his hands on it) was someone who was known for inserting "supporting evidence"(that he made up of whole cloth) to further the chuch, he was quoted as saying "it's acceptable to lie if it furthers the church".

almost all scholars that don't have a personal religious agenda accept that the insertion is a forgery, and have since the early 1800s.

lengthy explanation here

excerpts from the authority on Josephus' life and writings

[Seshat]

I only read the first page of this, but Gilhelmi, I would like to point out a few things.

Firstly: you sometimes seem to think that just because a single person (or a single team) who claims to be 'scientific' or 'atheist' makes a claim or assertion that turns out to be false, that discredits the whole argument.
This may or may not be what you mean, but it's how you're sometimes coming across. If it's not what you mean, please find a new way to phrase things.

An example of the phrasing that leads me to believe this, taken from the first post in the thread:

On a more humorous side note, I saw an Atheist scholar blast an Internet commented for posting that the compiled writings of Josephus were not real because "carbon dating said so". The scholar blasted the commenter because we do not have any original copies to test (almost 2000 years ago, was when Josephus wrote). Most paper does not survive a few hundred years (then only under the most Ideal of conditions). Declaration of Independence is almost gone too, is that going to be a myth of history? (remember an Atheist said that)

I don't care if 'an Atheist' said that. I don't care even if Stephen Hawking said it. Look further down this post, I explain the philosophy of science in a bit.
'Appeal to authority' is a fallacy, in scientific theory and scientific philosophy. We work by trying to prove each other wrong. And even if we can't prove someone wrong, that means only that their theory is tentatively 'true' until we get better testing methods.

... I'll hold on this until I get to that part of this post.

I believe my God can do anything, I mean anything. I do not care if he used evolution over billions of years, or took 6 earth days.

Okay. Here's my take on creation vs evolution: I don't know.
I totally freaked my father out on this, actually!

I have no data, and can never have any data, to determine whether or not God exists.
I have no data, and can never have any data, to determine whether or not the Universe, Time, myself, my perceptions, were created by God a microsecond ago; including all my memories and all our supposed study and research. For all I know, it all was.
Or maybe it all started a gazillion gazillion years ago with a puff of 'existence' or something we can never understand.
Or maybe the Big Bang hypothesis is correct.
Or maybe the hypothesis about continuously expanding then collapsing universes is correct.
Maybe we're all chance. Maybe we're created.
Maybe we were created by God getting better as he went along. (My personal, humourous take on evolution.)

I have no data to determine it. I can never have any data to determine it.

All I can do is use my perceptions, and the communicated perceptions of others, and the tools we develop to attempt to expand our ability to perceive; and from the perceptions attempt to derive guesses, educated informed guesses, about what MIGHT be true.
(Tools such as radio telescopes, Hubble, and other cosmological tools; tools such as carbon dating and dendrochronology and ice core and rock core dating and other earth-temporal tools; tools such as pollen studies and layer studies and other history-of-ecology tools....)

Also, who else looks at these bones? I really want to know the methodology for ....

I cut here, because I can easily answer that for ANY part of science.
If you really want to know the methodology for anything scientific, wander into your local university library or large public library, and ask the librarian to show you how to access the first-year texts on the topic. Then sit down and read them. Those will give you the background necessary to understand the second-year texts, then the third-year, then the honours level, Masters level and finally Doctorate level methodology for whatever field you're interested in.

I propose that you begin with the philosophy of science, which I'm about to attempt (HA!) to explain in a matter of a few paragraphs.... and trust me, I WILL fail. It's far, far too complex to explain in a few paragraphs. However, I once again refer you to any university library, or to any philosophy of science free course provided by any reputable university. I'm sure there are such free courses online; though I'm afraid right now I have no interest in looking them up.


Deep Breath.
Exhale.
Okay. Scientific Method and the Philosophy of Science, in a few paragraphs. Oh. My. God.

Science is about attempting to approximate fact. Not truth - truth is a harder concept to reach. Just fact. Just things we mortal humans can perceive. We leave Truth for theologians and Angels - should Angels exist. We can't perceive them in a replicable way, so we scientists have a temporary hold on researching Angels.

Humans who are interested in fact (not truth) have worked for centuries, and possibly millenia, to develop a method of researching fact that gets around human failings.
One of the most persnickety of human failings is our desire to prove ourselves right. We want to twist the facts to fit the theory, not change the theory to fit the facts. So we have invented something called 'peer review', and a rule about replicable experiments. I'm about to explain those in a paragraph or two.

The method which we've found works best (so far). (We want a better one.)

* Someone observes something. Things fall, but some seem to fall more slowly than others.
* This person records their observation, or maybe just mentions it to a scientist. The scientist goes 'huh?'
(Most really interesting scientific breakthroughs start with 'huh?' or 'that's odd', not with 'eureka'.)
* The scientist develops a hypothesis. This means 'a really rough guess', basically.
All hypotheses must be disprovable. A provable hypothesis teaches us nothing new: it's useless to say 'some apples are red'. We already know that. If you were to say 'all apples are red', we can go looking for non-red apples and learn something new.
* So our scientist develops a hypothesis that how fast things fall depends on their weight. (Shh, I know I mean 'mass', but I don't want to explain 'mass' vs 'weight' to our non-scientists, I'm busy.)
He can disprove this by standing at the top of a tall tower and dropping two things at the exact same time, trying things of equal weight, and things of different weights, with a fellow observer or two at the bottom of the tower, timing the landings.
* He performs the experiment. He records exactly what he did; including things like how high the tower was, what he dropped, what the observers at the bottom of the tower noticed, and so on. Everything - and I mean e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g - he can think of. This permits other scientists to repeat the exact same experiment.
(Side note: one early radio experiment proved non-replicable because the scientist forgot to mention the size and shape of the room, and what the walls were made of.)
All experimenters must do this, this permits other scientists do repeat the experiment. Replicable experiments are a must; even if sometimes repeating the experiment is almost impossible. (Some are hideously expensive, for example.)
* If the experiment disproves his hypothesis, he changes the hypothesis and tries again. He may, if he desires, publish it so that other scientists can try to resolve his 'huh?' question - why do things seem to fall at different speeds?
Maybe someone else can come up with a different hypothesis that he hasn't thought of, and her experiments may fail to disprove her hypothesis. At least he'll have prevented her from going down his blind alley.
* If the experiment doesn't disprove his hypothesis, he publishes it for peer review. If it passes peer review, it becomes a theory.
* His peers study his experiment, and one thinks maybe it's not weight, but air resistence. He tries dropping two pieces of paper of equal weight, one crumpled into a ball (low air resistence), the other flat (high air resistence). He disproves the original hypothesis, and fails to disprove the air resistence hypothesis.
* The air resistence peer publishes his experiment, and noone - yet - comes up with a disproof. The air resistence hypothesis becomes a theory, and the weight hypothesis doesn't (because it was disproven).


* Until someone disproves the air resistence hypothesis, we consider it tentatively true. It's a theory - an approximation of fact. It's the closest we have come so far, but eh, we might be wrong.


In fields where experiments are easy and cheap, we're pretty sure of our theories. We even call some of them 'laws' - eg the 'laws of physics'.
In fields where experiments can have hideous consequences, we're less sure. Psychology comes immediately to mind, as does a lot of medicine.
In fields where experiments are difficult-to-impossible, we're very uncertain. Cosmology and quantum physics are among those. But tools like the Large Hadron Collider and the Hubble Telescope give us more observations to work with.


Anyone who claims to be a scientist, but does not work with the technique of "observation->hypothesis->replicable experiment->offered for peer review->if noone disproves it, hypothesis becomes theory" is not a scientist by my understanding of the term.
With an exception. In some cases, replicable experiments are either impossible or unethical. Much of anthropology, for example, CANNOT work with replicable experiments, only observation. Scientists in those fields are in the so-called 'soft sciences', and come as close as they can to the method described above.

Anther side note, many scientist in the early 20th century were skeptical of the "Big Bang Theory". Many leading researchers, such as the eminent Cambridge astronomer Arthur Eddington, were also suspicious of the Big Bang idea, because it suggested a mystical moment of creation (source).

The term for you to research is 'paradigm shift'. It's been adopted - incorrectly - as a business/management term, but its proper use (or at least original use) was in the philosophy of science. You're looking for Thomas Kuhn, and 'The structure of scientific revolutions'.

A paradigm shift occurs when the majority of scientists in a given field come to realise that the old way of looking at their field had a serious/major error, and there's a new, more accurate way.

Examples of paradigm shifts:
(Note: I might have missed some medical paradigms. If so, please just mentally insert them in the appropriate gaps.)

In medicine, there was the 'four humours' theory of sickness. All sickness was caused by an excess or lack of one of the four humours, black bile, yellow bile, blood or phlegm. If you had an excess of blood, for instance, they would draw it from you either by cutting you or using leeches.
Paradigm shift:
The 'miasmic' theory of sickness. Sickness was caused by bad air, or 'miasma'. This was the period when they'd send someone with tuberculosis (for instance) to the country to get some 'healthy air'.
Paradigm shift:
Pasteur and Lister (and others) proposed the 'germ theory' of sickness - and now we know that many illnesses are caused by bacteria or virii or fungi.
NOT a paradigm shift:
.... but we have also figured out that while many illnesses are caused by them, we also have illnesses caused by anatomical or physiological problems, such as diabetes which is an illness (partly) of problems in the pancreas.
But this expands on, doesn't overturn, germ theory. So it's not a paradigm shift.

One day we might discover that germ theory is completely wrong. If so - good! It'll make medicine even more effective!


In other words, being wrong and being proved wrong is part of science.

Paradigm shifts are often resisted, partly because people hate to be proved wrong. There can also be other, equally human reasons.

I have a book somewhere in the house (please don't ask me to go find it and find the relevent passage, I have no idea where it is right now) which is about obstetrics during the paradigm shift to germ theory. It contains some diary excerpts from an obstetrician who eventually supported germ theory.
At first, he resisted germ theory. Who was this 'Dr Lister' to tell him he was killing his patients just by not washing his hands between patients? He's been doing medicine his whole life, this Lister is just some young upstart.
Then he decided it was a simple enough thing to do, and besides, just in case Lister was right, well, he'd been the doctor to bring some of his patients into the world. If just washing his hands had even a small chance to prevent an ugly death ...
... and he saw the number of patients dying of infected vaginas and uterii drop significantly.
And then he grieved for all the women he'd personally killed with his own ignorance. And it was very, very hard for him to accept it and admit it to himself. Especially the ones who'd died between when he first read an article about handwashing and when he started doing it; those were the hardest for him to accept.

Once he'd tried the experiment (washing his hands between patients) and saw the results, he became a fierce advocate of handwashing; whether or not this newfangled 'germ theory' was true, handwashing was saving lives.
See, he didn't know, or care, about the paradigm - only the result. Handwashing saved lives, so he promoted handwashing. It was only after microscopes were available to the ordinary doctor (priced low enough) that people like our diarist actually started to believe germ theory; because only then could they SEE them.



A paradigm shift can take centuries to truly take hold; but being proven wrong is good in science. Because it takes us closer to figuring out what's right.

And I think that that fact is the hardest one for many creationists to understand.

[s_stabeler]

also, note that just because a theory is wrong, doesn't mean that everything based on such a theory is also wrong actual observations are still correct. For example, even if FTL travel was proved possible tomorrow, it wouldn't affect (for example) lasers.

[BlaqueKatt]

one of my friends wrote this, it breaks down things and uses analogies that are easy to grasp.

Evolution is an unpleasant fact

What makes evolution a fact is not the evidence, or standing up to a battery of scientists trying to disprove it, or its predictive power, or its application. Evolution is a fact because it performs seamlessly in all four categories. Multiple lines of evidence, predictive power, application, and testing independently converge to the same conclusion; common ancestry is a fact.

[Seshat]

A good philosophy of science course or text will cover the four categories in the quote BlaqueKatt included in her post.

The info in my post was a tiny, tiny, tiny subset of the philosophy and hows and whys of science. There are some very readable, even fun, firstyear-level texts on the philosophy of science available: I encourage anyone who's interested in finding out more about it to ask any librarian at a big public library or university library for a suggestion.

I'll see if my firstyear text on the philosophy of science is still in print; but it was more than 20 years ago, so probably not. (Does Amazon search...)
No, it doesn't seem to be.

I did, however, find the Kuhn Structure of Scientific Revolutions book in a 50th anniversary edition.