Creation vs. Evolution

[mislav]

I disagree. I have not been able to find a theory explaining how dead stuff came to life with any amout of substantiation behind it.

Well, you must have missed my post on page 118 of this thread then:

Science must destroy religion... I'll try to do my part:

An international team of molecular biologists has explained the mechanism which allows cells of Deinococcus radiodurans bacteria to resurrect from the state of cellular clinical death. Half of the eight team members are scientists from Croatia: dr. Zahradka, dr. Petranovic and dr. Slade, including their team leader - dr. Miroslav Radman, researcher at french Paris-Descartes university.

Discovered only 50 years ago, Deinococcus radiodurans bacteria has adapted to living in extreme conditions. It can survive in the desert sands or on the stones under bright sunlight. No other organism can live in such an environment due to extreme dehydration and heavy exposure to UV rays. This bacteria can endure the effects of radiation 5000 times larger than what's lethal to human.

Through this research, dr. Radman and colleagues have explained the molecular mechanism of cellular self-repair which allows Deinococcus radiodurans bacteria to "survive death". Extreme radiation and dehydration tear up the DNA of any cell to pieces, which means death to most cells. Yet, through evolutio,n the Deinococcus radiodurans bacteria has developed the ability to patch up its entire torn DNA in a correct order which has so far been a scientific mystery.

The work of dr. Radman and his team on this subject has been going on for a several years and it will be published on October 5th in a science magazine Nature.

link to the original story: Rudjer Boskovic Institute, Zagreb (Yes, it's in Croatian, I had to translate this story myself. )

So, the science is able to explain how something dead can come to life!

Plus the update - link to the published article in Nature magazine.

 

[H2Andy]

Why, how and for what reason did the predilection to religiosity arise in humankind and why does it continue to persists and even thrive?

In other words... what survival/procreating advantage did/does believing bestow?

you are looking at advanced cultures which have religion and extrapolating backwards to assume that all human cultures have always had religion

if you look at the remaining hunter gatherers on Earth (on the Amazon, New Guinea, parts of Central Asia), you will see that they do not have religion in the sense you use that word.

they have a relationship with the natural world that involves the supernatural.

why?

it's a way of explaining the unknown. why does stuff happen? because there are beings we can't see that make it happen. you can explain seasons this way, fire, lightning, migration routes, illness, etc.

in fact, this "proto-religion" is just another technology that the human race has developed, in this case a technology for understanding the unkonwn, just like the wheel, writing, agriculture, etc.

all of those technologies (including religion) were invented independently of one another at quite a few places on Earth, and it shows that faced with similar problems, humans will tend to find similar answers.

then, religion evolved, as all cultural constructions do, and, as Soggy said, it became a tool of control and power projections by the elite, a useful propaganda to keep the masses under control.

which one sounds better?

1. I am the King because I say so; or

2. I am the King because God says so.


1. I say you don't kill one another; or

2. God says you don't kill one another.



if you think of religion as a product (or a "commodity") and you want to know why people continue to consume that product, just ask yourself why you believe in God.

it probably makes you feel like your life has purpose, that you have a higher calling, that it's all worthwhile, and in the end, all will make sense, that you're not alone in the world, that the Maker of the Universe has a special relationship with you and thus you are worth something... etc. etc..

it's a powerful product. it fulfills a powerful psychological need to "be special and be good and feel i am living a righteous life."

in that respect, it can give people a powerful drive to do good and can lead to happy, fulfilled lives (or, its more negative aspects can creep up, but let's put that aside for now)

sort of like diving

 

[redacted]

Science comes in real handy but it doesn't seem to be doing a very complete job of explaining the origin of the universe or of life.

I understand some of your questions, but I guess I'm just not as conserned with the answers as you are. But, unlike you, I really don't find the supernatural being explanation any more consistent or satisfying.

 

[Thalassamania]

I disagree. I have not been able to find a theory explaining how dead stuff came to life with any amout of substantiation behind it. There are, of course, saeveral theories but it all seems pretty open ended. Theory concerning the evolution of that life that they can't explain the begining of has more holes than filled spaces.

Various people have answered my questions or comments with explanations of what they think the holes mean but no one has filled the holes.

Thal did a great job of explaining why it doesn't bother him that there may be problems with using DNA to measure time but he didn't offer a solution to those problems. Lomont did a great job of explaining why he/they consider the big bang theory valid even though so much of the energy and matter that the universe must contain is missing but he didn't explain where or what it is.

Science comes in real handy but it doesn't seem to be doing a very complete job of explaining the origin of the universe or of life.

We’re engaged in discussing a bunch of different issues here that are not particularly relevant to each other. From whence life sprung and the process of evolution are not the same discussions. The process of evolution is irrefutable. The origin of life is still open to much conjecture. While I seriously doubt that the final answer to the question of origin of life will have anything more to do with supernatural forces than world-wide animal diversity has to do with fables such as Noah and the Ark. Similarly the origin of the universe in the time-before-time and space-before-space (that stuff really boggles my mind) is still open to conjecture, but if past advances in cosmology (Copernicus, Galileo, Einstein, etc.) hold true to form, then supernatural forces will be found to have had nothing to do with that process either. But not knowing what happened during time-before-time and space-before-space, does not mean that we don’t have a really good idea of what happened after, and even some insights into what may have come before. Same for the origin of life.

 

[Uncle Pug]

I don't yet see an answer to my question but perhaps my use of the word *religiousity* caused the confusion.

I'm not asking about the evolution of religion or an ordered belief system.

I'm asking specifically about what seems to be a built in predilection to spirituality. It appears in the most primitive of peoples as well as the most educated and *advanced*.

Now to restate my question... from an evolutionary point of view... what evolutionary pressure caused this spirituality to emerge, develop and become so powerful in the individual? What advantage did it provide the individual that caused it to be selected by nature?

Again, my question has nothing to do with religion or the religious beliefs themselves but rather the evolution of believing.

 

[Hank49]

Perhaps learning and realizing that we all die, (do other animals know this? I don't know) the fear of death, and or to deal with the pain of losing loved ones. Those, or some of those, that didn't, died of dispair or wreckless craziness?

 

[MikeFerrara]

Evolution is not concerned with the beginning of life. It's not part of the theory. It's a completely separate area of study.

It may be a seperate area of study but without life there clearly can't be evolution. As I understand the theory somehow we got a single celled (or less) critter (or a small group of them) and everything evolved from that. Seperate field of study or not I see it as central to the issue and the theory has to hold true for the first life as well as the last.

 

[adurso]

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Why, how and for what reason did the predilection to religiosity arise in humankind and why does it continue to persists and even thrive?

In other words... what survival/procreating advantage did/does believing bestow?

What we recognize as religion arose as an attempt to explain that which was not understood. Early forms of organized religion have gods in charge of all natural events; fertility gods, thunder gods, sun gods and so forth and so on. The gods are generally organized into families/tribes, and their actions mimic those of the societies from whence the pantheon springs, just on a larger scale. As society evolves, so too does the belief system. The Greeks and Romans had many gods, the Norse and Native Americans as well. The Vedic systems still hold many gods for many things. The one god concept is that of a patriarch who oversees an extended family. Society dictates the religious belief, or perhaps vice versa....Andy addresses the survival advantage succinctly

 

[H2Andy]

I'm asking specifically about what seems to be a built in predilection to spirituality. It appears in the most primitive of peoples as well as the most educated and *advanced*.

that is only part of the issue, which i tried to address in its totality, but let me repeat the relevant part again:

people have a psychological need to know they are special, loved, worthwhile, and that they are doing "good"

spirituality is one (of many) manifestations of the human attempts to satisfy their psychological needs.

as i said, when faced with similar problems all over the world, people have come up with similar solutions.

spirituality is one solution to fulfill our psychological need to "have meaning" in the world and our lives.

again, ask yourself why you believe in God, and you will see why "spirituality" is such a powerful commodity.

 

[MikeFerrara]

Well, you must have missed my post on page 118 of this thread then:

Plus the update - link to the published article in Nature magazine.

I think, here we have a creature that can go dormant (for lack of a better term) and come out of it. It was alive, went dormant (call it dead if you want) and comes back. Take a hand full of mud or water or ooz or whatever it was and explain how to make one of those critters out of it and I will be impressed.