One-third of Americans reject evolution, poll shows

[Farsight001]

Evolution fails not only b/c cross-species evolution is completely unsupported by fossil evidence, but moreover b/c it posits that organisms would have emerged spontaneously, with or without a Creator designing them. This is patent nonsense.
I suggest that every skeptic of ID read recent articles on creationsafaris.com to understand the impossiblity of life arising without God. Students deserve to understand the reasoning of people who believe in ID. REAL scientists are unafraid of a competitive joust of ideas. Rob

Cross species evolution is EXTREMELY supported by fossil evidence. Several links have been provided in this very thread that illustrate this fact.

 

[Farsight001]

Yup. UCMJ.

So every soldier stationed here in America is a failure as a soldier for not being on the front line against Al Qaeda, even though their orders have them here doing paperwork?

 

[Farsight001]

I point out evolution is being used to tell us what we are.
It cannot, it does not explain the soul.
It is your own words that indicate the theory being used to explain what we are…

It explains what we are BIOLOGICALLY, as is its purpose, and it does not fail in this.

 

[Judas_Thaddeus]

That interpretation is just a little over the top to anything I wrote.

Maybe, but just maybe.

It is just common knowledge. Donch;a you google?
usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/12/03/21733705-us-teens-lag-in-global-education-rankings-as-asian-countries-rise-to-the-top?lite

huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/25/oecd-education-report_n_3496875.html

That’s interesting and all, but I failed to find anything there about how
lack of Catholic education is at fault. I understand that I didn’t ask for
that alongside. Anyway, there’s also talk on Economy, does that not
play any part in the education system. I think it does.

I have high school education, along with a degree in social sciences, and a technical certificate in the field I am currently employed in.
I am not sure how that is relevant though.
It is kinda flamey though.

One’s educational background may call to question whether
said person has any place to criticize the education system.

 

[Farsight001]

Sorry Judas, but more Christians have lost their faith thanks to the idea that God can be excluded from origins theory. Ask any evolutionist in a classroom if life could have arisen and evolved WITHOUT God, and the reply will be either maybe or yes. You are kidding yourself if you believe otherwise. ID is fully supported by probability theory and logic.

They probably answer that way because either, A) a great many of them are atheists and they are expressing personal opinion, or B) they’re in a public school and aren’t allowed to say otherwise by law. Neither reason for that reply is the fault of evolution.

I’m sorry, but anyone who tells you that they know how muscles, bones and tendons could have evolved separate from each other, when all three must exist simultaneously fror any of them to be functional, (not to mention all the other systems running through them), is blowing smoke.

Maybe you should actually read on of the many books on the subject instead of just blindly accusing people of blowing smoke.

Students should be encouraged to fairly contemplate both sides, and decide.

Sounds good to me. Fairly contemplate both sides. So tell them the truth about both sides, then? Ok. Tell the kids evolution has been proven true time and time again, and that ID is patently false and unscientific. This is telling them the truth. Then let them decide for themselves.

 

[Farsight001]

No, Christians drop the faith in relation to evolution when they are
incapable of rationalizing the allegorical language of the Bible and
the physical evidence seen. Also Christians will be ostracized by
Creationists, if they believe in Evolution, driving them also to drop-
ping the faith. The thing is that you WANT evolution to deny God,
which is another factor leading Christians to drop the faith.
It is the fault of the rather recent Creationist Movement.
Glorious Irony, yes?

Have you seen the Wedge Document, Judas? Its a short text authored by some popular creationists where they actually admit to and set out a plan to drive a “wedge” between belief in God and evolution - to suggest that it is impossible to accept both - believing that people will of course choose God and reject evolution as a result. (though it backfired on them, and the opposite is occurring. Who’d have thunk - dishonest tactics backfire?)

 

[Farsight001]

Don’t let some random poster on CAF teach you evolution. What qualifications do you have? Why should we listen to you? Are you an expert?

Clearly I am more of an expert than any of you here, if you guys can’t even get 101 level terminology right. My knowledge of the subject is mostly average - I’m a geologist, which actually does dive pretty deep into evolution, though not as much as an actual evolutionary biologist. Still, as the saying goes, in the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.

Thank you for proving my statement correct. You have a very presumptuous and prideful attitude.

Its not presumption. It’s deductive reasoning and basic logic. A person who is educated in a subject is going to tend towards using proper terminology. A person who does not use proper terminology and even more doesn’t recognize it when they see it obviously isn’t. There’s nothing presumptuous about that. You just don’t like the fact that we can see straight through you, so you’re acting indignant and slinging accusations, unwilling to admit it.

 

[Monkey1976]

Do you believe this is being explained to students in public schools?

As public schools are prohibited from teaching theology, it is not. The study of the soul and God’s role as creator are the domain of theology. Does that mean we should cease teaching biology in school, simply because it doesn’t perform a task outside its capabilities?

Would you throw out a hacksaw because it can’t make a good club sandwich?

That this theory only describes our biology, but we are really much more?

Of course we’re much more! As I explained in the examples that you saw fit to remove, biology is just one facet of our “self”, just as our chemical make-up and physical parameters are. When you get a physical and a doctor says that you’re so-many-meters tall, do you berate them for failing to fully describe you as a complete child of God, body and soul? Is your drivers license an attempt to make you question your faith because it lists several physical parameters, but ignores that you have a soul? All that those of us who accept the science - including ven. Pius XII - are saying is that evolution is a reasonable explanation for our biology as homo sapiens. It says nothing about the soul because that is something outside the purview of biology and anthropology. Is my bathroom scale an instrument of Satan because it doesn’t tell me I have a soul?

I’m still waiting for an answer to the question I asked in my first post: Is God a trickster?

 

[Judas_Thaddeus]

Have you seen the Wedge Document, Judas? Its a short text authored by some popular creationists where they actually admit to and set out a plan to drive a “wedge” between belief in God and evolution - to suggest that it is impossible to accept both - believing that people will of course choose God and reject evolution as a result. (though it backfired on them, and the opposite is occurring. Who’d have thunk - dishonest tactics backfire?)

I have not seen the Wedge Document. I’ll have to look at it sometime.
Very Interesting . . .

 

[Peter_Plato]

Have you seen the Wedge Document, Judas? Its a short text authored by some popular creationists where they actually admit to and set out a plan to drive a “wedge” between belief in God and evolution - to suggest that it is impossible to accept both - believing that people will of course choose God and reject evolution as a result. (though it backfired on them, and the opposite is occurring. Who’d have thunk - dishonest tactics backfire?)

Ad hominem

Stephen Meyer lays out a compelling case in Signature in the Cell and Darwin’s Doubt. It is not an effective rebuttal of his arguments to bring up the Wedge document.

Why not try actually addressing what Meyer has to say instead of casting aspersions?

Meyer held his own on the Unbelievable? radio show debating evolutionary biologist Charles Marshall. (Available here)

Have a listen to what Meyer actually says instead of judging by some past incident that has nothing to do with the case for ID itself, if honesty is truly what you seek.

He has done numerous talk shows and his newest book Darwin’s Doubt is a best seller.

This talk is a fair presentation of his case.

youtu.be/x-E8COy3nRg

 

[Judas_Thaddeus]

Ad hominem

What ad hominem?
Farsight001 talked about the Wedge, described it, talked about the point of it, what it was
meant to do, and suggested that the complete opposite happened. No Attack of Persons
here, but it’s not like Creationists know what Logical Fallacies are (THAT was an ad hom-
inem).

 

[Darryl1958]

Maybe, but just maybe.

That’s interesting and all, but I failed to find anything there about how
lack of Catholic education is at fault. I understand that I didn’t ask for
that alongside. Anyway, there’s also talk on Economy, does that not
play any part in the education system. I think it does.

The links that I gave showed how America spends the most for mediocre results.
What more needs to be said about the economy.

One’s educational background may call to question whether
said person has any place to criticize the education system.

Yes, that is what I am all about, changing that educational background through vouchers to something more of the parents choosing.

Maybe, you missed that part.

 

[Judas_Thaddeus]

Yes, that is what I am all about, changing that educational background through vouchers to something more of the parents choosing.

Why should only parents choose specifically?

 

[Tenofovir]

just a few years ago, it was half, so this is good. Even though the article tries to make it seem like there are more and more of them, there are actually less and less. One third is still too high, of course, (for the most part) but I’ll take the improvement.

Evolution is entirely irrelevant to everything unless one’s an evolutionary biologist, psychologist, etc.

I’m just not sure how having an understanding of evolution, which itself is lacking in experts as evidenced by disagreements between Wilson and Dawkins, makes people better in some way or another. Does it make them better physicists? Does it make them better biologists? Does it make them better street sweepers? I’d like to know how, because I simply don’t see it this way.

Say you have a microbiologist studying antibiotic resistance in successive generations of E coli. How is evolution relevant to her work? She cultures her bugs in different media, exposes them to different concentrations of antibiotics, isolates and sequences their DNA and polypeptide structures, she compares them to other strains, etc. Most of this is proximate research. Talk of evolution is then often superfluous and only an after thought.

Certainly talk of evolution is also laden with unnecessary philosophical/metaphysical import too, and that’s certainly should be separated from any scientific understanding of evolutionary changes over time.

Often I think people will use evolution to run down traditional morality and natural law. Except this OUGHT/IS game is a sham because they then postulate their own morality instead, which also faces the IS/OUGHT problem which is insurmountable in secular ethics.

 

[Gricken]

This thread has devolved into a few people with actual knowledge of evolution trying to explain what it is while creationist sit there making narrow minded, broad stroked, straw man arguments, then pat themselves on the back for “proving” how stupid evolution is.

I’m seeing little and less reason to even stay here.

 

[Peter_Plato]

What ad hominem?
Farsight001 talked about the Wedge, described it, talked about the point of it, what it was
meant to do, and suggested that the complete opposite happened. No Attack of Persons
here, but it’s not like Creationists know what Logical Fallacies are (THAT was an ad hom-
inem).

His ad hominem was implicit. He avoided making a case against “creationism” by attacking creationists as dishonest. Yet, even his “proof” of dishonesty by appealing to a single document fails to show dishonesty. If the motives of one group of “creationists” were freely admitted, how were they being dishonest? And how does it serve as an argument that ID is the same as creationism? Or that ID is false?

I would assume farsight001 also believes the universe was “created,” does the Wedge make his claim that God created the universe false because he is a “Creationist?”

Argumentum ad hominem – the evasion of the actual topic by directing the attack at your opponent.

Actually, your example isn’t an ad hominem, it is simply a hasty generalization about “creationists” claiming that as a group they don’t know what logical fallacies are.

Hasty generalization (fallacy of insufficient statistics, fallacy of insufficient sample, fallacy of the lonely fact, leaping to a conclusion, hasty induction, secundum quid, converse accident) – basing a broad conclusion on a small sample.

Definitions from Wikipedia.

 

[lightbeamrider]

Originally Posted by Judas Thaddeus View Post
If I don’t fight in the war against Al Qaeda, do I fail as a soldier?
Yup.
Quote:
Under what premise?
UCMJ.

So every soldier stationed here in America is a failure as a soldier for not being on the front line against Al Qaeda, even though their orders have them here doing paperwork?

Judas initial question presupposes he is a soldier in a wartime situation who refuses to fight is the way i initially took it. I can see now it can be interpreted differently to mean he is a soldier who is a rear echelon paper pusher. Under that scenario he does not fail as a soldier.

 

[ringil]

I wonder how many people interested in the Faith come to CAF, read this thread and get the mistaken impression that many Catholics don’t acknowledge Evolution.

Well, I can say as a life-long Catholic that every Catholic I have asked acknowledges the reality of Evolution.

 

[estesbob]

I wonder how many people interested in the Faith come to CAF, read this thread and get the mistaken impression that many Catholics don’t acknowledge Evolution.

Well, I can say as a life-long Catholic that every Catholic I have asked acknowledges the reality of Evolution.

Catholics are free to think anything they want about evolution.It not a theological question.We concentrate on the"who" not the"how"

 

[ringil]

Catholics are free to think anything they want about evolution.It not a theological question.We concentrate on the"who" not the"how"

You are correct. However, I have found, and always loved about the Church, that we tend to embrace science, however. The Church has a long history of this.

In addition, I have noticed that the majority of Catholics- including the vast majority of priest and Bishops- the educated- accept Evolution.