Book: The Hoax Called Evolution

[mathematician]

They’re not always, the two could be thought of as synonyms after all. Generally speaking though, faith is an absolute confidence.

There is no such thing as absolute confidence. (Well I suppose my confidence that the sun is going to rise tomorrow is close to absolute.)

 

[StAnastasia]

Many theists are in fact agnostic. Agnosticism deals with knowledge, theism and atheism deal with belief, or in the case of atheism lack of belief. So i am sorry to tell you, you are way off the mark when you claim an atheist cannot be an agnostic.

You don’t understand what “agnostic” means. Neither theists nor atheists are agnostic about the matter of God’s existence, although they may be agnostic about other tings, like whether miracles happen.

 

[StAnastasia]

They’re not always, the two could be thought of as synonyms after all. Generally speaking though, faith is an absolute confidence.

I don’t read faith as being “absolute confidence,” so much as I read it as placing one’s trust in someone. When I place my trust in God I don’t have absolute confidence; otherwise it wouldn’t be faith.

 

[StAnastasia]

It is very, very important to people if the Church says something for or against evolution. Why? Because it affects what they perceive as “the balance of power.” There’s over a billion Catholics out there. A big voting block. If they start believing their Pope when he says evolution cannot be proven then, to them, that’s a bad thing. Then they ramp up the propaganda: Theocracy! The Church is antiquated, out of touch, etc.

What the pope has to say about evolution is irrelevant from a scientific point of view. Of course, as a Catholic I hope the pope shares my view on the importance of articulating theology in a way intelligible to the twenty-first century.

 

[rossum]

Trivial? Can you explain the following statement which I see on a fairly regular basis here: Evolution is a fact.

Evolution is both a fact and a theory:* Evolution-as-fact: the genomes of interbreeding populations change over time.

• Evolution-as-theory: the change is due to random mutation, natural selection, genetic drift, founder effect, sexual selection, etc.

A corollary of evolution-as-theory is common descent.

Evolution-as-fact is what we observe. Evolution-as-theory is our best explanation for what we observe. The explanation may change as we discover more facts.

Another example:* Gravity-as-fact: things fall down.

• Gravity-as-theory: things fall because mass causes a curvature in nearby space-time.

The fact stays the same, while the theory is provisional and may change. Gravity-as-fact remained unchanged when gravity-as-theory changed from Newton to Einstein.

It is indeed trivial to say that evolution-as-theory is not proven; the Pope was correctly advised on this.

rossum