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In the US: Is the debate on evolution between scientists and the religious?

Is the debate on evolution between scientists and the religious?

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Aunt Spiker said:
So - you guys believe that all scientists aren't possible Christians or believers in Creationism? You just don't see creationsim *as* a theory - when that's all it is.

The definition of Theory:



And I'm not going to debate this further - I don't believe in creationism so I'm not going to defend and support something that I, myself, find to be hogwash.

Some scientists are Christian and many believe in Creationism :shrug: Other than saying "there's a conflict and this is one of them" there's really nothing more for me to point out.
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1 is a scientific theory. 6/7 are creationism. they are not the same.
 
Jerry said:
That it is, but repeatedly trying to sway someone's opinion with evidence when their opinion is not based on evidence is the very definition of insanity.
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The problem is that their opinion isn't based on evidence.

Jerry said:
It seems to work. If one accepts that God exists, then based on that accepts God's authority, then based on that follows His rules even when one disagree with them, then if the premises are valid one should see benefits greater than chance.
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Can you see how the rules working (most of the time as long as you ignore some of them) don't show that God exists.

Jerry said:
One day I decided to accept those premises, and I experienced a great improvement since that very day.
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Just because some premise is beneficial doesn't make it true.

Jerry said:
How my faith in God has improved my life speaks louder to me than any counter evidence random nameless posters could link in an online debate forum. To sway someone from their faith you would have to get personal and real with them on a one on one basis and demonstrate in real life how your way of seeing things is better.
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I need to be convinced rationally, it seems you never were.

Jerry said:
Additionally, where scientific theories are to be published for criticism, religion itself is not to be debated. Where the details experiments are supposed to be published, prayer is strictly private.
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Because you say so. Do you care whether what you believe is true? Religion should be debated to the same extent as any other opinion. More so even, because it affects the lives of the believer and others around them profoundly just like politics does.

Jerry said:
Science and religion are like oil and water, so it's loonacey to try to counter one with the other.
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They are different ways of reasoning (or not in the case of religion). That doesn't make someone automatically wrong when they use one to counter a statement from the other.

Jerry said:
Yup, and most of the time that reason is because a person was socialized to follow that line of tradition. Learned behavior is a powerful force.
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Could you have had the same kind of improvement in your life that you had when you became a Christian if you became a Buddhist?
 
Jerry said:
Pro-lifers care about what is actually true.
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OK?

Jerry said:
I align more with pro-choice in my style of thought, in that whether or not something is 'true' does not depend on its internal constitution, but rather on the way it functions, or the role it plays, in the system of which it is a part.
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When I say something is true I mean that it is an actually existent phenomenon.

Jerry said:
In that way can I fight for the right to life while carrying the will and ability to end a life.
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You mean that life is something that should generally be preserved, but there are circumstances that make it necessary to end it?

Jerry said:
In this way can I sympathize with a mother who is indeed carrying a unborn "person", yet justify it's death in the event of rape or incest.
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How is killing a fetus and killing an infant different such that rape or incest justifies killing one but not he other?

Jerry said:
In this way can I endorse same sex marriage when it is about the children first, even though it's not a biologically congruent union.
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I believe marriage should be about people's love for each other.

Jerry said:
In this way can I oppose same sex marriage when it it's about validating a sexual identity even after it's established as a right.
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You still need a reason to oppose it.

Jerry said:
Natural science focuses on what the actual thing is. I personally couldn't care less. I'm looking for what works.

Even if God is fake, my faith in Him works better then no faith at all in my life.
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This is sad.
 
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Jumping in late and I haven't read the thread because I had missed it until now, but to answer the question about the debate on evolution, I don't see it as a debate between scientists and the religious.

I think that the majority of the debates on evolution occur between non-scientists who believe in evolution and non-scientists who do not believe in it.

But there are other debates about the specifics of evolution that exist between scientists as well. I don't believe those debates are about whether or not it is real, but instead they are about the details of the theory. For the most part, with relatively rare exceptions, these debates are not creation vs. Evolution or intelligent design vs. evolution.
 
Anarcho-fascist said:
The problem is that their opinion isn't based on evidence.
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Experience is just as valid. The disconect is that experience is highly subjective.

Anarcho-fascist said:
Can you see how the rules working (most of the time as long as you ignore some of them) don't show that God exists.
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I don't really have a problem with that. I'm fully aware that religion evolves with time, and I'm open to evolving with it.

Anarcho-fascist said:
Just because some premise is beneficial doesn't make it true.
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Mhmm, I know. The assumption of God is a premise, not an established conclusion. I'm open to something more beneficial. I find motivation and guidance in the idea of God, so until I have something more motivational and/or gives more guidance, that's what I'm going with.

Anarcho-fascist said:
I need to be convinced rationally, it seems you never were.
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Everyone needs to be convinced rational. The very process of convincing is to provide or establish a rational. My experiences are highly subjective to me, so I wouldn't expect them to convince anyone of anything.

Anarcho-fascist said:
Because you say so.
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Because the rules I subscribe to say so. I didn't write scripture. My family name didn't even exist.

Anarcho-fascist said:
Do you care whether what you believe is true?
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I care if my beliefs work. No, I'm not particularly concerned with whether or not they are objectively, actually real. That doesn't matter. If faith in the Flying Spaghetti Monster makes you a better person, so be it. Whether or not his noodliness is actually real doesn't matter. Behavior is what matters, not the thought process which leads to that behavior, because it's your behavior which affects others, not a mere thought in your head.

Anarcho-fascist said:
Could you have had the same kind of improvement in your life that you had when you became a Christian if you became a Buddhist?
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Absolutely. In fact, back in middle school just before I converted from Wicca to Christianity, I was giving a serious look at Buddhism. Here's a sexy stud posing with a copy of The Essence of Happiness, by his holiness the Dali Lama:

jerry-albums-jerry-s-junk-picture67113815-getattachment-aspx.jpg
 
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Jerry said:
Every healthy human has a philosophical outlook just as they have a language. Like language, philosophies have different aesthetics, but are all used for the same things.
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Belief in something is the emotional element in behavior conditioning, and is further reinforced when a situation you're in forces you to defend it, action and reaction, not philosophy or other disciplines.

ricksfolly
 
scourge99 said:
Most theologians don't care to consistently make claims based on evidence and other verifiable sources. Its a hodgepodge of evidence, philosophy, speculation, and fervent belief.
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I don't think it's hodgepodge. The philosophic fathers of the church (Aquinas, Augustine, et al) were very good at forming a closed loop around "The Good". Religious philosophy is based on an internal consistency, albeit a consistency that does not necessitate an anchor in reality.

The religious would disagree. They develop complex explanations based on unverifiable claims and assertions (speculation). For example, lets say you are debating a pixy-believer. They might assert that gravitation exists, causes objects to fall at 9.8m/s/s, etc... and we would all agree. But they would also claim that its caused by undetectable pixies holding everything down. Such a claim is unfalsifiable and thus useless because there are a limitless number of unfalsifiable claims that can be made.
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That's where the world of pure rationalism comes in. Empiricism and rationalism can't argue on the same ground, because one distrusts the senses and puts his/her faith in "pure logic", while the other lives by his/her senses and distrusts ungrounded logic.

Many religious think that presenting unfalsifiable claims is a sign of the strength of their argument when it is actually a telltale sign of weakness. This is why you often hear the statement "you can't prove god doesn't exist". Rather, the religious should be saying "this is why you should believe god exists" and pointing us to objective reason and evidence why. For example, who finds this argument valid "you can;t prove pixies don't exist".
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Different philosophical starting points. Rationalists start with what they don't know ("God", perfection, "The Good") and work their way in. Empiricists begin with what they DO know, and work their way out.

And then there are the fideists. Those who think that "faith" in their beliefs is justification. But that is a whole other can of worms. Great thinkers from long ago (both religious and non) have destroyed the basis for fideism. Suffice it to say, fideists claims have indistinguishable truth value from ANY other faith-based claim.
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I don't know anything about that stuff. I do know, though, that as the definition of truth is largely varied and/or subjective along a broad range of philosophic schools, there's no shortage to claims of truth. Heck, the claims to the existence of "truth" is in itself up for debate.

To sum it all up: The difference between science and religion is that science finds answers and religion asserts them.

Well there are lots of things that aren't (directly) based on grounded fact. Like which flavor of ice cream you prefer or the meaning you find in particular books.


The religious would retort by saying they have no intention of being "scientific". That religion and science are two separate issues. The religious would be correct. Their beliefs are not scientific, but they
1) fail to support their position with something else that would justify their claims.
or
2) fail to acknowledge the limitations of philosophy and speculation.
This is where they fail.


Rationalism and the way we think stems from our interaction and experience with the physical world. But the religious cannot support their extraordinary claims by the physical world alone. To bypass this seemingly insurmountable problem, the religious often speculate about alternate realities or "true reality" (E.G., heaven, hell, timeless gods, souls, spirits, demons, transubstantiation, resurrection, etc). They build fantastical castles in the clouds and expect you to ignore the absence of testable, observable support.
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...and the second half of this where I mostly agree. There's an internal consistency with the religious thinkers based on beginning their quest with the unknown and working their way out. They create this alternate reality for themselves, and it's perfect to them because it's consistent and simple. Certainly something as messy and complicated as the real world can't be Godly, can it?
 
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Aunt Spiker said:
Science isn't always provable - some of it remains theory forever. Or for an extremely long time. Creation is just one example. Other theories that they battle about are seen between sociology and psychology - nurture vs nature - and so forth.
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A theory is not a theory until it has been proven. The standard for a scientific theory is much higher than the standard of proof of guilt in court. A scientific theory is not "just a theory", meaning someone's unsupported guess.

So, yes, science can be proven beyond a reasonable doubt, and then some.
 
Dittohead not! said:
A theory is not a theory until it has been proven. The standard for a scientific theory is much higher than the standard of proof of guilt in court. A scientific theory is not "just a theory", meaning someone's unsupported guess.

So, yes, science can be proven beyond a reasonable doubt, and then some.
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Well, actually, a scientific theory is something that has significant evidence and has yet to be disproved in an experimental lab setting. For it to be a law, it has to be mathematical.
 
Tucker Case said:
I think that the majority of the debates on evolution occur between non-scientists who believe in evolution and non-scientists who do not believe in it.
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Scientists believe visual effect with no clear vision of cause. Non-scientists believe visual effect is caused by a miracle.

ricksfolly
 
Dittohead not! said:
So, yes, science can be proven beyond a reasonable doubt, and then some.
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Effects, yes, but causes can never be fully examined or explained because much of it is not accessible, impossible to observe, only detected with with modern technology, which never can take the place of actual observance.

ricksfolly
 
ricksfolly said:
Effects, yes, but causes can never be fully examined or explained because much of it is not accessible, impossible to observe, only detected with with modern technology, which never can take the place of actual observance.

ricksfolly
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Wtf is "actual observance"? Is that a fancy way of saying that things are only believable if you see them with your eyes?

Your faculties are more prone to error than you give them credit for. Instead of relying on personal experience, we should rely on a convergence of both personal experience, hard data, and the experiences of others. To rely too heavily on any one is folly.
 
scourge99 said:
Wtf is "actual observance"? Is that a fancy way of saying that things are only believable if you see them with your eyes?

Your faculties are more prone to error than you give them credit for. Instead of relying on personal experience, we should rely on a convergence of both personal experience, hard data, and the experiences of others. To rely too heavily on any one is folly.
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If you were blind, couldn't hear and feel, none of the things you wrote would matter.

ricksfolly
 
What is a scientific theory?

Theory: A theory is what one or more hypotheses become once they have been verified and accepted to be true. A theory is an explanation of a set of related observations or events based upon proven hypotheses and verified multiple times by detached groups of researchers. Unfortunately, even some scientists often use the term "theory" in a more colloquial sense, when they really mean to say "hypothesis." That makes its true meaning in science even more confusing to the general public.

In general, both a scientific theory and a scientific law are accepted to be true by the scientific community as a whole. Both are used to make predictions of events. Both are used to advance technology.
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Diseases are caused by microbes, not by evil spirits. That's a scientific theory.
Life on Earth has evolved from earlier life forms. That's another.

A scientific theory has been proven. It is accepted as fact. Evolution is a fact. Malaria is caused by a microbe that is spread by mosquitoes, and not by "bad air", as its name implies. That, too, is a fact. Colds are caused by viruses, and not by cold weather. Yet another fact.
 
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Dittohead not! said:
Colds are caused by viruses, and not by cold weather. Yet another fact.
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You know I wish more people realized that.

It's because your house/car/office is closed up to stay warm that germs have the opportunity to infect you. Cold weather itself, if anything, would reduce infection as it slows the reproduction of germs.
 
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Your faculties are more prone to error than you give them credit for. Instead of relying on personal experience, we should rely on a convergence of personal experience, hard data, and the experiences of others. To rely too heavily on any one is (rick's)folly.
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ricksfolly said:
If you were blind, couldn't hear and feel, none of the things you wrote would matter.
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Ignorance of a truth does not make that truth any less true. It just makes one ignorant.

There is an objective reality despite our subjective experiences of it. We don't all live in our own pocket universes.
 
Dittohead not! said:
What is a scientific theory?



Diseases are caused by microbes, not by evil spirits. That's a scientific theory.
Life on Earth has evolved from earlier life forms. That's another.

A scientific theory has been proven. It is accepted as fact. Evolution is a fact. Malaria is caused by a microbe that is spread by mosquitoes, and not by "bad air", as its name implies. That, too, is a fact. Colds are caused by viruses, and not by cold weather. Yet another fact.
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It as accepted as fact, but, yet again, you cannot "prove" a scientific theory.
Let's take gravity. Every time we observe its effect, it is the same. But, it could be different tomorrow and thus throw the whole thing off scale.
Scientific theories are based off of empirical evidence, something we can test for. Until it is disproved, it stands. However, we cannot prove that it will hold for all cases.

I agree with you almost completely, but just this one point isn't true.
 
Jerry said:
You know I wish more people realized that.

It's because your house/car/office is closed up to stay warm that germs have the opportunity to infect you. Cold weather itself, if anything, would reduce infection as it slows the reproduction of germs.
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Yes, and yet the legend persists that colds are caused by cold. Maybe it's because of the name.
 
iamitter said:
It as accepted as fact, but, yet again, you cannot "prove" a scientific theory.
Let's take gravity. Every time we observe its effect, it is the same. But, it could be different tomorrow and thus throw the whole thing off scale.
Scientific theories are based off of empirical evidence, something we can test for. Until it is disproved, it stands. However, we cannot prove that it will hold for all cases.
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Nothing in reality can be "proven" as you define it. What you are defining is not "proof" but "absolute certainty".

Absolute certainty is belief beyond any possible doubt (not just reasonable doubt, as in criminal trials in the U.S.). The only propositions that someone could be absolutely certain about are those proven within a rigorous logical system — and even those would typically have to be conditional statements, since they would necessarily rest on unproven assumptions (axioms or postulates), which one may not be absolutely certain of.



Lacking absolute certainty does not inhibit one from making consistently good decisions.
 
scourge99 said:
Nothing in reality can be "proven" as you define it. What you are defining is not "proof" but "absolute certainty".

Absolute certainty is belief beyond any possible doubt (not just reasonable doubt, as in criminal trials in the U.S.). The only propositions that someone could be absolutely certain about are those proven within a rigorous logical system — and even those would typically have to be conditional statements, since they would necessarily rest on unproven assumptions (axioms or postulates), which one may not be absolutely certain of.



Lacking absolute certainty does not inhibit one from making consistently good decisions.
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Well, of course not. Mathematical proofs are as close to absolute certainty as we get. For example, the mathematical representation of gravity is "proven" more than the actual thing we call gravity. We have yet to see a graviton or know what causes it - there's actually quite a bit we don't know about it.
Scientific theories are quite clear. They are about as close to fact as can possibly be shown by science. However, the fact that they are falsifiable is one of their greatest assets, not a detraction.
 
Anarcho-fascist said:
If thats the case then I'm done.
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Yeah, it's kind of sad to deal with people who aren't at all concerned whether what they allow into their heads is real. Fantasy is all that matters, so long as it gives them an emotional ego stroking.
 
Anarcho-fascist said:
If thats the case then I'm done.
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Well, that's the case. I view the world from a fundamentally Functionalist perspective.

At the very least, you're a good man for not trying to beat a dead horse.
 
Cephus said:
Yeah, it's kind of sad to deal with people who aren't at all concerned whether what they allow into their heads is real. Fantasy is all that matters, so long as it gives them an emotional ego stroking.
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images
 
Cephus said:
Yeah, it's kind of sad to deal with people who aren't at all concerned whether what they allow into their heads is real. Fantasy is all that matters, so long as it gives them an emotional ego stroking.
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This, I think, is a stark difference between theists and non-theists. Not all, obviously, but some. Most agnostic types based their belief on what they observe. Wherever the facts lead, they will go. It has nothing to do with what they prefer the truth to be, only with what it is. If there was strong evidence of god, they would pack the churches. But there isn't, so they don't. I could never argue with someone who actually had a rational basis for their outlook, no matter what it was.

Well... I could argue, but it would be a real debate.
 
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