For your benefit, Medievalists study Medieval history like Astronomers study the universe. You make a big deal out of getting your facts straight, so please do.

Yes, you can make anything into an axiomatic belief, but the only reason for doing so is if your framework allows for the generation of interesting results. It seems to me that your axiom that God is somehow distantly involved in physics doesn’t fall into this class. It’s a completely unnecessary axiom which is clearly not needed to do science.

As a secularist, I think you’re bang on! It’s great that you appreciate that our personal opinions shouldn’t be taught in schools unless we have strong evidence to back them up.

As an atheist and as a skeptic, I have to wonder why you would believe that God has helped evolution along since there’s no evidence to support your beliefs. It doesn’t make any sense to me.

Yeah, I know everyone involved, anti-evolution or not, is a human being. I’m also aware of the religions involved. It doesn’t make it any less frustrating.

From my point of view (as a relatively moderate Christian who believes that science should be accepted because it can teach us things rather than fought against lest it threaten our favorite beliefs), it’s a mistake to make it an either/or proposition (either genes did what they would do naturally or Goddidit, but not both). Such a view of God’s involvement in the Universe limits Him, and makes Him more limited all the time as we learn more.

To put it another way: with mathematical models like VSOP89, I can predict where the planets will be five years hence with decent accuracy. When they show up there, does that mean that I think God had nothing to do with it? Of course not.

If you’re going to believe that God is involved in the universe, it seems to me that you have to (1) accept it as axiomatic and (2) admit perpetual ignorance as to the exact mechanism He uses. Using God’s involvement in the universe as a means to explain what you don’t yet understand is cheating — kind of like getting the exam answers ahead of time without bothering to understand the material that would have been useful for you to learn (and finding out later that the answer sheet you stole was for a different exam entirely).

Romans 1:20 tells us that there are attributes of God visible in creation. If you honestly believe that’s true, it would behoove you to try to study the universe the way it really is, not the way you wish it were. We must try to find out who God is based on the information we can gather and understand, and worship God as He is as much as we can. Worshipping a God of your own invented and preferred characteristics in spite of what He has tried to clearly communicate about Himself is idolatry.

And this is exactly why I don’t agree with teaching ID of creationism in science classrooms, and why I don’t debate people on God’s existence of try to coerce people into believing my religion. What I do attempt to do in these discussions on the board is to stand up and ask that people keep in mind that there are some of us Christians who feel that we should lead by example and bring Christ into people’s lives through our love for humanity – that not all of us are trying to ram our beliefs down everyone’s throat.

It would actually make more sense to say that Satan is responsible for the decimal expansion of Pi:

“A curiosity relating pi to the beast number 666 involves adding the first three sextads of pi. First, note that

141592 + 653589 + 793238 = 1588419.

Now, skip ahead 15 decimal places and note that the sum is repeated as

3.141592 653589 793238 [15 digits] 88419 7169399375″

!nataS teews ym ot s’ereH

They do, you just can’t hear them over the creationist’s shouting. (And you probably didn’t realise they were Christians anyway)

Just to clarify even further, there are two types of Creationists, YEC’s (Young Earth) and OEC’s (Old Earth). Both are generally anti-scientific who have a problem mainly with evolution. Christians who accept science are generally referred to as normal people. Who are also Christian.

Yay Texas! Still a bit iffy in Florida though…

The abstract process of evolution is a mathematical property of replicating systems. It has a Platonic existence like PI or a dodecahedron or complex numbers. All of these things didn’t need to be invented- they’re already ‘out there’ in ‘mathematical space’.

If life exists elsewhere in the universe, we can be reasonably sure that it too must have arisen through an incremental evolutionary process acting on a different biological substrate.

Evolution is what ‘naturally’ happens whenever replicating objects compete for resources. In fact, it can’t not happen in such circumstances.

There’s as much need to invoke a God to ‘invent’ evolution as there is to use Him to explain the decimal expansion of PI being equal to 3.1419265…

—————————————–
Of course, I don’t need to disprove your idea that God kick-started evolution. The onus is on you, as the one making the claim, to come up with the evidence. It’s easy to claim that God did ‘this’ or ‘that’, but unless you have any evidence, there’s no reason why anyone who doesn’t share your ‘faith’ should believe your views.

More accurately, it’s a biblically-related timeline, as the Hebrew bible doesn’t specifically give an age for the Earth. The YEC view of biblical verse is a relatively new, purposeful re-interpretation. It’s quite extra-biblical, as usual.
Google:
George McCready Price
Henry Morris
————
“Did you see a post on My Yahoo stating that Moses was high on
a hallucingen(sic)? ”
Funny. Though, just a relative to suggest the FSM was/is, since there’s a presumption that Moses actaully existed in the first place.

That was a close call.

You have no idea how much of a relief this is to us rationalists in the Lone Star State (what few of us there are =P).

But we aren’t out of the woods yet.

The development of intelligent human life on earth turns out to be highly contingent on the asteroid that finished off the dinosaurs. Had the collision been a little larger, all life might have been wiped out and we wouldn’t be here. On the other hand, if the collision been a little smaller, the smaller dinosaurs, like the troodons might have survived and we wouldn’t be here. Thus, a theist might legitimately propose that maybe god arranged the asteroid collision in such a way that all the dinosaurs were eliminated but that the little furry mammals were able to survive (the parameters of the collision are rather narrow). This seems like a more likely scenario then god causing genes to mutate.

I’m not sure how I skipped over your comment.

Awesome link.

And thus we get into a problem that I have with polls. Someone should define `helped things along’. To some people, that would mean that God had a direct hand in pushing evolution through its various stages. To others, they would say that it means that God created the mechanisms need for evolution to work and to guide it path, but then stepped back and left his creation work when he finished (I really feel that I haven’t explained that very well. It’s much clearer in my head). In either event, both would probably answer yes to that, even though the two have different ideas behind the precept. For one, God only needed to get things started, creating a “seed” if you will, while for the other, God had to help the process along. Of course, for some people, one idea is just as oddball as the other.

Believing that God ‘helped things along’ is absolutely incompatible with evolutionary theory in the same way that believing leprechauns determine the outcome of a small fraction of nuclear decay events is incompatible with quantum theory.

It’s saying in effect that evolution as a process isn’t strong enough by itself to account for life, and humans in particular.

I don’t accept the view that natural processes can only account for 97% of the world, and the remaining 3% comes from God. Of course, it’s better than the creationist view, but it would be even better if you eliminated that last 3%.

Of course, I can’t prove that God didn’t shuffle a few genes along the way, but the onus is on the person making the claims. Also, it’s only by *assuming* that the bits we don’t understand have underlying naturalistic explanations (until proven otherwise) that we can make any headway in science.

IIRC, California and Texas are both relatively close in terms of textbook market share. The Committee for Skeptical Inquiry website may have more on this. I know they have a CreationWatch/IDWatch section of their site.

I just wanted to second, third, etc., what Black Cat and lot of others have said. If religion is a major grounding force in your life, as a non-believer I will gladly defend your right to worship. Unfortunately, the squeakiest (and in the case of the IDers/creationists, most dogmatic) wheel seems to get the proverbial grease, where grease equals press coverage.

My frustration is that if there is this giant majority of Christians/people of faith/whatever that do accept science, WHY DON’T THEY SPEAK UP? Why continue to let these zealots run rampant?

I realize this is easier said than done, but in many ways we are at a crossroads of sorts. I honestly feel there is a real danger of this country sliding backwards scientifically and economically if people, believers or not, can’t or won’t stand up to these kind of fundamentalists.

Okay, who’s got the soapbox next?

Matt

That was kind of my thinking. For those of us not in TX, our best defense is to (1) show support for those backing science agendas in TX and (2) ensure that our states don’t adopt textbooks that would be altered if Texas did lose reality.

I’ll personally do my best here in GA, but, as I think I’ve mentioned before, I’m planning on homeschooling my kid. So even if I did get a hold of a pro-”Teach-the-Controversy” textbook, it would be supplemented by my copy of Demon Hunted World and Why People Believe Weird Things (and yes, you hear me right several messages ago when I said I was Christian).

On a related note, she would also be taught for her own copy of Bad Astronomy that I had the BA sign back at Dragon Con in ’06. How many 20-month-olds can say that. well, she can’t technically say it either, but you get my point.

What they all say is true. This is one small victory in a nationwide struggle. The creationists haven’t gone away. They’re well funded and rely on our ignorance and apathy to sneak these nuts onto the school boards.

The above bloggers do us all a service by keeping their extra smart readership aware of the issues, thus nullifying one major component of the creationist’s arsenal.

Actually, the largest group of people in that survey are the ones believing humankind evolved from “lower” life-forms over millions of years, and that proves Darwin’s theory of evolution do attract a bit more people than a strict biblical interpretation. Yeah, I know that Gallup poll divided these people between those we think God played a role or not into that long evolution, but from my perspective, this is irrelevant.

Believing that somehow, some entity or force called God helped that evolution process along so that intelligent beings finally appeared is not incompatible with Darwin’s theory. Darwin’s theory is mute on that point anyway. Darwin and science in general made obvious that the Bible timeline for human existence of just a couple of thousands years is blatantly wrong, since there is solid evidence that millions of years were involved, but science just doesn’t know whether God did influence or guide this process or not. Science has no conclusive evidence God exists, but it has no conclusive evidence it does not exist either. In fact, when you look at the incredible combination of factors and conditions that needed to happen to produce the beings we are, from a basic unicellular organism to a full-fledged thinking human being able to reflect on the Universe and its destiny, you kind of wonder was really all that just a freak accident that happened at random…or was there something that helped along the way ?

So my point is that I would not put in the same bag the people who do adhere to Darwin’s evolution theory (even if some think God was still involved in the process of evolution) with those who are strict Creationists who believe in stuff that definitely flies in the face of rock-solid scientific evidence.

C’mon now. The most annoying accent was displayed in Ken Burns’ film “The War”. That lady from Mobile, Alabama had the worst accent I’ve heard in my life. Nobody from Texas has an accent that bad.

IT WAS HAHD TO FINDA MINT JULIP DURIN THE WAH

WE JUST NEVUH KNEW WHEN ONE OF AH BOZE WAS GONNA BE KILLT IN THE WAH

My mom (before she retired) designed modules for communication satellites, and taught me to play blackjack and count cards when I was 12. She also thinks organized religion is a cancer upon this Earth. The copy of “God Is Not Great” by Chris Hitchens that I read was borrowed from her.

Sorry, I just like to show off about my mom.

Matthew: ’m what you might call a Christian (though I prefer the term “follower of Jesus,”

Better follow fast. Jesus done got him a raptor.

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/files/2007/jesus_dinosaur.jpg

Seriously, I would *totally* join a sect of Christianitydom that had stuff like that in their version of the Bible.