Creation vs. Evolution

[Kim]

I'd like to hear examples of laws that are being passed that violate the traditions of "most major religions."

Well I don't want to drag this too political and therefore against the TOS but I do think that some of the things that have recently happened in the 'terrorism', 'anti-terrorism' stuff certainly violate most religions. On the other hand torture certainly has it's place in the Bible (as done to Jesus) so maybe I'm wrong. As Andy pointed out though...it's hard to support any kind of God that consciously allows this kind of crap....

 

[Hank49]

Chimps are supremely adapted to their environment which is being rapidly detroyed by a plague that has taken over the world.

We're not happy with letting a natural course (natural selection?) regulate human populations.

R

.

In a way we are letting a natural course run. Man is dominant right now and no different in that way than other predatory species. If you hunt (i used to) you'll notice rise and falls in populations of deer, rabbit, quail on a regular basis. Years of high quail populations will be followed by years of high fox populations and vice versa. (This is a pretty simple example as other factors such as severe winters come into the equation also but you get my point).
Your statement almost sounds like man is now capable if "playing God" and controlling our environment. We are learning a lot about it but it's still not within our control.
I also don't think other animals are any more "smart" than us in that they don't corrupt the environment. They just haven't learned how to yet. Ever see what a monkey does when let loose in a house, or a papaya field? Or what rats do when they get into an feed storage area? Total destruction and waste. Animals have no more morals then we do and dont' have any more environmental sense.

 

[lamont]

Show me evidence of animal self awareness. If all traits are a product of some evolutionary process, why among all animal species have humans developed the ability to use higher reason?

language is neccessary for higher reasoning. the ability to string words together and create arbitrary constructs and communicate them. all other animals which communicate do so via a limited symbol set and cannot construct sentences.

consciousness and an experience of "I"-ness does not produce the ability to use higher reasoning. neither does simple self-awareness (i'd speculate that there's a correlation between animals that we consider to be 'curious' and self-awareness, but i don't see how simple self-awareness necessarily gives rise to higher reasoning).

 

[lamont]

The issue goes beyond creationisnm vs. evolution. The other day I caught part of an interview on the radio...I only caught part so I didn't catch who it was being interviewed...but he presented some interesting ideas. He proposed that secularism in itself had become a "world view". Rather than being a bias-fee view he was of the opinion that it constitutes a view that has it's own unique bias. I never thought of it quit that way but I tend to agree. I'm all for the basic idea of the seperation of church/religion and state but secularism has just about become a religion of sorts. I don't believe that to limit all political debate/consideration to purely secular arguemnents is accomplishing the intended goal of the seperation of state and religion. On the contrary, it appears to be a rather solid alliance between the state and one specific world view. A world view, that probably isn't even close to being representative of the majority.

Interesting how the pendulum swings the other way. In the 60s and 70s it was the largely anti-christian left wing that was the moral relaitivists. Now it appears that the christian right has picked it up because it suits their purpose in trying to undermine science and secularism.

Also in general American isn't so much secularist as it is pluralist. The secularist world view is in the minority. The problem comes that if you want to pick an official religion, you're going to get a lot of opposition from a whole buch of non-secularists who disagree with you on your choice.

 

[wreckchick]

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1541283-1,00.html

Go ahead and read it... I'll wait.

R

 

[ClevelandDiver]

No, not at all. I can't send anyone to Hell. Ones actions or lack of determines the outcome. God judges by his standards not ours.

Read my quote again "In a nutshell, you told all non-christians they are going to hell, but didn't threaten them?"

Reading your earlier quote it states something to the effect that one can only get to heaven through Jesus. If a good person does not accept Jesus, they are unable to get into heaven.

You say you are not threatening with fire and brimstone, but implied damnation for anyone who does not accept Jesus (i.e. non-Christians) is one heck of a veiled threat in my book.

To recap, you are saying if my actions do not follow your beliefs, I am damned. You say God judges by his standards, not ours, yet somehow you claim to know his standards.

If that is true, my summary of your message must also be true. Non-Christians (i.e. those who have not accepted Jesus as their saviour) can not get into heaven. The leap from not getting into heaven to be damned to hell might be a stretch (there still is a purgatory, right?), but you are effectively saying "My way (a.k.a. the way of Jesus) is the only way to salvation".

Conversely if my summary of your beliefs is inaccurate than non-Christians can get into heaven within your belief system.

So which is it?

 

[wreckchick]

Higher reasoning goes back to the big brain thing. Our frontal lobe is HUGE compared to every other species out there. We have more computing power and obviously that's an advantage.

As far as language is concerned, other apes have the capability of using language as we know it. They cannot use a verbal language because of physiology. Chimps, bonobos, gorillas and orangs have all proven that they can understand and use language and do simple math.

I think it was one of the chimps that had a child and taught the child to sign like she'd been taught. I know that groups of chimps that have been taught sign language will use it to communicate when no humans are present.

Coco the gorilla named a kitten she was given. The kitten's name was All-Ball, what that means I have no idea but the fact that she came up with it on her own says something, again, not sure exactly what.

Part of the reason we have discounted the ability of other animals mental abilities has to do with their ability to communicate with us what they know. We can come up with the symbolic language for them to use and they take readily to it.

R

 

[MikeFerrara]

Wow folks one at a time. LOL

Andy, in regards to your last post, I don't think I offered proof of anything. I did suggest that there is some evidence that can be looked at though.

ok now this one.

i must agree. one of Christianity's teachings is that just because you are saved (one of the chosen) that doesn't mean you aren't going to suffer

quite an inevitable teaching, since that's what happens every day all around us

if Christianity were to teach otherwise, it wouldn't last a decade

what gets me is that you have an all-Powerful God who could in one instant cease all the suffering and hunger in the world. i mean, he is all-powerful, and yet he decides, every single second of every single hour of every single day, of every single week of every single month of every single year of every single decade of every single century for the past 6,000 years not to do it.

since he is all powerful he certainly can (or he wouldn't be all powerful), which means

he doesn't want to do it

wow... and this God wants me to worship him?

I sure couldn't say with certainty exactly what's on Gods mind beyond what we have in the Bible. Just applying logic though, I would agree with you that it seems He doesn't want to end hunger in the world. If I had to guess, I would say that he would like to see us do that. Now that's just a guess but so much of the Bible has to do with how we are to treat the poor. Do we really not have enough wealth and food or are some of us just hording it? Do we sell food to the poor at no profit? Do we lend money to the poor at no interest? Do we set aside a portion of our harvest for the poor to have at no cost? We have homeless people in the streets of the wealthiest country on the face of the planet sleeping up against buildings with untold thousands of square feet of space that's empty for most or all of the day. What's the average sized home in the average middle class neighborhood in this country and how much of that housing space is taken up for anything other than to store a bunch of useless junk? We should blame God for this? How much of the suffering from disease in this world is due simply to a lack of medical care and medicine? Well not a lack of it. It just costs to much and only the wealthy can have it. We blame God for this?

 

[bwerb]

All-Ball was named because the kitten had no tail...it was "all ball".

(Where this trivia in my head comes from is beyond me...)

 

[lamont]

Chimps, bonobos, gorillas and orangs have all proven that they can understand and use language and do simple math.

I thought that chimps and such could string symbols together to produce meta-symbols but still had a very finitely bounded symbolic communication which I would not consider to be language in the same sense that humans have language...