Age of the Earth and Evolution

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EndTimes said:
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Freddy:
So if someone rejects Darwinism and God, how on earth would they think we got where we are?
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You’re suggesting that they have only therefore Darwinism to choose?
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Excuse me. We seem to have slipped from denying evolution to denying Darwinism. They are not the same. Let’s get back to your original statement: ‘There are Atheists who reject evolution…’

Let me know who they are and tell me what you know they believe.
 
Evolutionary processes are described in a manner that is not reliant on God. (All scientific theories are such).

But in accepting that a scientific theory well describes the behaviour of the physical world, there is no requirement to hold that God is irrelevant. An in so far as evolution is concerned, I see no need to draw from the theory any conclusions eliminating God as the source of creation, notwithstanding that the theory does not incorporate God.
 
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jan10000 said:
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Freddy:
From today on another thread:

(Please Note: This uploaded content is no longer available.)Relativism and skepticism are logical suicide
God,didn’t need to use evolution, he can make anything pop into existence.Example: the wine from water , and loaves and fish.
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How is saying God is all-powerful imply God doesn’t exist?
If I said, God doesn’t need rain to make plants grow, he could just make them grow, does that mean God doesn’t exists because it rains? Do we need the term “theistic rain”?
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Techno thinks that evolution isn’t required. God does it all directly. For him, holding to evolution is a denial of God. Many good Catholics have tried pointing out that this is fallacious thinking and that although evolution appears to be entirely random (it isn’t) God is either controlling its progress or has set the physical world up in such a way as to ensure its outcomes.

Hence theistic evolution. As opposed to Godless evolution.

Techno and his buddies are decreasing in number but there are still quite a lot of them about unfortunately, especially in the US of A.
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EndTimes said:
Darwin’s (not a believer) presentation of LIFE as emerging in a random materialist-only manner which required no God - is embraced by call it militant atheism…
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Darwin said very little about the origin of life, Abiogenesis. Work on that topic started later.
That said… There are Atheists who reject evolution…
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There certainly were, see Lysenkoism. I am not sure that there are many Lysenkoists left. There may be a few Lamarckians around, but there is no specific connection between Lamarckism and atheism, as there was with Lysenkoism.
 
sealabeag said:
For those Catholics who believe in evolution as laid out by Darwin and others […] how is this a logical position to take as a Catholic, considering if it were the case, that it would […] contradict the Biblical account of a world created perfect by God and into which death only entered after Adam and Eve’s sin?
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I hope the OP will forgive my omitting so much of his post, but I think the essence is here. I am one of those Catholics. The Catholic Church has over many years grown to accept the current scientific paradigm for the origins of the universe, the solar system and life, and evolution as proper explanation for its development. For even longer it has rejected a literal interpretation of Genesis, and other books of the bible, including the idea that ‘death only entered the world after Adam and Eve’s sin’. Contradicting such a literal interpretation is therefore not a Catholic illogicality. It would be illogical for Catholics who believe that God is the prime mover of all things to claim that the processes of astronomical and biological science occur without God’s effect, but that’s a far cry from accepting the biblical account as written.
 
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jan10000 said:
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Freddy:
although evolution appears to be entirely random (it isn’t) God is either controlling its progress or has set the physical world up in such a way as to ensure its outcomes.
Hence theistic evolution. As opposed to Godless evolution.
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The point I am making is such qualifiers are meaningless.
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Pretty much so, yes. But the term has evolved (no pun intended) because of the intransigence of those who deny that evolution even occurs. There are three players in the game:

Evolution deniers: They either don’t understand the process (they’re ignorant of the science itself) or they do but deny it anyway, claiming it’s all Intelligent Design (they are biblical fundamentalists). And guess who the Intelligent Designer is! God has made all creatures great and small and there may be minor changes within a species but no speciation.

Atheists: They believe that life as it is now is the result of the evolutionary process. They don’t believe in God so they don’t believe that there is any supernatural aspect to the process at all. It is a blind and unguided process (but one which does not exclude the possibility of God).

Christians: They also believe that life as it is now is the result of the evolutionary process. But they believe that God is either controlling it at each stage or has set up the initial conditions knowing what the result would be. Us.

Now our chums the evolution deniers claim that accepting evolution is denying God. As I said, it isn’t. But whenever this is pointed out, even by an atheist such as myself, they stick their fingers in their ears and go lah, lah, lah until the discussion moves on. They believe that evolution is just a ruse to get people away from God.

Our Christians also find themselves trying to explain to the deniers that evolution doesn’t exclude God. And must actually include Him. ‘But no’, cry the deniers. ‘You are just like Freddy, believing in this blind process which by its very description must deny God!’

And their response is 'No. The evolution we accept includes God. We see His hand in the process, guiding it so that after billions of years of evolution it results in us! So what we believe in is…I dunno…I guess we can call it ‘theistic evolution’.

When atheists wants to name the process they always use the term ‘evolution’. As do Christans when talking to other Christians or to atheists. But when Christians talk to deniers, they sometimes roll their eyes, do the air quote thing with their fingers and use the term ‘theistic evolution’.
 
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jan10000 said:
The problem with “theistic evolution” is that you haven’t defined it.
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It may not be possible to do so. It may be the case that the course of evolution accords with the divine will but in practice is entirely indistinguishable from a process akin to that described by Darwin, viz: random mutations and natural selection.
 
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jan10000 said:
Please show me one. I agree there are people that say Genesis is wrong because of evolution, and perhaps many more Catholic teachings (like Original Sin, for example) but not theism itself.
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Richard Dawkins pretty much makes this claim.

www.ted.com

Militant atheism

Richard Dawkins urges all atheists to openly state their position -- and to fight the incursion of the church into politics and science. A fiery, funny, powerful talk.
www.ted.com www.ted.com
 
Fundamentalist Christians with anti-ecclesial views of science give militant atheists their purpose in life.
Think about that.
 
goout said:
Fundamentalist Christians with anti-ecclesial views of science give militant atheists their purpose in life.
Think about
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Naw… Militant Atheists have always militarily Railed against God. .

Such as the AntiChristian Bolsheviks…// Marxists.
 
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