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U.S. churches to discuss evolution vs creation

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“Still, many Americans believe that God created man. A 2006 survey by the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion and Public Life found 63% of Americans believed humans and other animals have either always existed in their present form or have evolved over time under the guidance of a supreme being.”

There really isn’t all that much difference between the backward Islamic faith & the backward Christian faith. Both inane primitive superstitions that so many still cling to like lost children rather than think for themselves. This is the 21st century & yet so many have still to grow up & live like adult human beings without the need of the religious crutch. 63% in modern America, that I find incredibly depressing. Darwin may have got a great many things wrong, in the detail, but if nothing else he showed religion up for what it is. Nonsense.

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I think they should adopt the Simpson's judge's ruling in an early episode - Religion must stay at all times at least 100 feet away from science.

Everyone is wrong anyway. I know for a fact that the great Panda in the sky created everything with his magical ladel and holy saucepan. Someday, everyone will know I am right....

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I can not believe that people still believe in creation.

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I like Lois Farakhan's view of creation.

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It’s a touchy topic in a country as religious as the United States.

Um...half of British don't believe in evolution either. More than a quarter of Ozzies believe in the Bibilical account of creation; more than half don't believe in evolution or are unsure about it.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2009/feb/01/evolution-darwin-survey-creationism

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in a country as religious as the United States" I really don't know of any sane person who believes any of this in the US. I'd like to have some stats.

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Now I have a good reason to visit Kentucky. It want to see the Creation Museum where there are people shown to be living alongside dinosaurs. I might suggest some additions. Like Noah trying to get a Tyrannosaurus Rex on board the Arc. Or how about Jesus ascending to heaven on a Pterodactyl?

Welcome to the 21st century and the intellectually backward the United States.

Hey, evolution is real. Darwin was right, as was Sportin' Life in "Porgy and Bess" who said, "It ain't necessarily so, what they say in the Bible, it ain't necessarily so."

Creationists are a lot like Holocaust deniers. They trump up a lot of fake objections and psuedo-science to try to discredit evolution; and they have big bucks supporting them. All of this contributes to a general ignorance and ultimately intellectual oppression.

Until you have been in the United States for a spell you just cannot know just how suffocating religion is there. It is a quasi-theocracy, with the Treasury Department being the supreme determiner that God exists and that the nation has implicit trust in him or her. In the US you can be anything except an atheist if you want to be President.

The trouble with science is that it has been too kind to religion. It ought to be obvious that the sky God is only a projection of one of our bodily functions: the ability to turn our imaginative thoughts into actual production. But you cannot delve too deeply into the psychology of belief without getting into trouble.

Anyway, I like the idea about the Great Panda being the supreme creator.

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Faith and Reason go hand in hand: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_and_the_Roman_Catholic_Church. The question is how can reason come from that that has no reason. How did beauty evolve? Joy? Freedom? Will? Something more than matter around. Yes, I am an American Catholic.

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Well, I'm thinking this is a pump up to something bigger. I can so many people on the left who would believe this to be crazy, and I do too, but yet will support teaching of Islamic culture in US schools and any backlash against it is considered bigoted but its ok to call these creationist all sorts of names...

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“I’m presenting the idea that science or evolution is compatible with faith,” he said.

Re-inventing the wheel. Our American Founding Fathers could have told you that way back in the late 1700s.

Thinking science and religion are mutually exclusive is the work of a not so clever mind.

Evolution tells you the method by which living creatures came to be as they are. If you want to believe an invisble hand implemented those methods, go right ahead. Science never so much as even boths to address the question of the invisible hand, and any scientist who makes claims about it is not very scientific.

But if you believe the Bible is a literal handbook that explains how living creatures came to be as they are, then you are a complete idiot. If it were that simple, we would be making new life in this fashion by now. We aren't. God is so far beyond us, he is not going to waste his time explaining such things in detail. Its like a little kid taking his mother's explanation of storks bring babies literally. Or stories of Santa Claus.

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Anyone in America is free to believe anything they wish. The tension revolves around the role creationism should play in public life. Should it be taught in public schools, for example, which are funded by the taxpayer and include the offspring of atheists?

In the UC admissions process we rejected a strong student who had been church-schooled because his science curriculum did not meet the California state-mandated biology requirement. It was a creationist alternative. I felt sorry for him but hold his parents accountable for depriving him of the opportunity to study at one of our research university campuses. If you make an exception for him, then it opens the door to lobbying by others. Where does it end?

Evolution exemplifies scientific inquiry. Nothing is ever proven true, it's held to be true until disproven. This is an important distinction to appreciate and a standard which creationism cannot meet since it must be accepted on faith.

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How did beauty evolve?

Evolutionary biologists would tell you beauty was traditionally associated with those physical attributes best suited to survival.

My Mom used to tell me when she was growing up, the chubby child was considered healthier than a skinny one. Why? Well, if you got sick, it was better to have some meat on your bones.

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If this becomes a trend will some of the liberals here consider their conspiracy theories a little more as well?

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Evolutionary biologists would tell you beauty was traditionally associated with those physical attributes best suited to survival.

I am sure an alien would swear we are ugly as sin, and probably so would a human who grew up with aliens. Beauty is almost completely subjective.

I would say that a perception of what is good for survival probably actually contributed more to our appearance than what is actually good for survival. Your example of skinny and chubby kids is a case in point. Such views can get one adopted over the other more often, and over eons, just about all kids would be one or the other.

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Your example of skinny and chubby kids is a case in point.

I'm not sure being chubby would have helped you stave off polio, but before the vaccine was invented that was a virus to be feared, for certain.

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this tread proves that religion should not be taught in schools. If you want to learn about god or Adam and Eve, you can go to church/mosque/synagogue as much as you like. but, you better keep it away from me.

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Beauty is almost completely subjective.

Not really. Once survival could be taken for granted, beauty came to reflect socio-economic status. In most of the world, lighter skin is considered more beautiful. It meant you didn't have to toil under the hot sun in the fields where the darker people were found.

Moderator: Back on topic please.

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"this tread proves that religion should not be taught in schools."

Private religious schools generally produce better educated pupils, which is undoubtedly why so many "liberals" oppose people (other people , that is) having the choice of sending their kids to such schools, at least in the US. Obama is a great example - his kids get to go to private schools but I suspect that if he had his Gramscian way any city other than DC would be bound to uniformly public, i.e. government, schooling.

I think religious folks' case against evolution is often deliberately misrepresented, at least in the popular media. There are a lot of cynical people out there who want to believe that if someone is not in 100 percent agreement with "Darwinism" then they believe Sunday school biology.

But I suspect a lot of the so-called opposition is to the social and political consequences that religious people imagine Darwinism has wrought.

It's a fascinating subject. Seems to me that, at least in political discussions that touch on evolution, the Left wants the public to accept Darwin and evolution - for the plant and animal kingdom - and they want the authority and finality they imagine science confers, but in some respects, when turning to human evolution, they are as uncomfortable and irrational as many on the religious right.

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Private religious schools generally produce better educated pupils, which is undoubtedly why so many "liberals" oppose people (other people , that is) having the choice of sending their kids to such schools

I went to a private religious school, and I think I got a darn good education. The good thing about a good education is that it trains you to think - and to see though the fallacies of the religion story. Now if they could raise the level of all public schools to that of the good private schools (I'm not saying that all private schools are 'good') I might be in favour of public schooling for everyone. In the meantime, I'll settle for policies such as direct grants that allow bright kids from poor backgrounds to attend private schools at state expense.

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This won't please the flat-earthers.

Can't have debate about the storybook, what?

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Opposition to the political ramifications of Darwin, to abuse of his theories, is warranted. His "missing link" theory was immediately picked up by cartoonists of his day, with some of the leading papers carrying cartoons that portrayed the Irish and the Chinese as less evolutionarily "developed" than the Birtish, who were looting these countries and in China's case literally destroying their civilization.

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My boy, your position of constant snivelling about Britain's colonial past is prety funny where I'm sitting, what with what's goin' on in the world and all.

What has more credibility....

Science?

Or a strorybook written by men and constantly edited by man to suit his agenda over other men?

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Opposition to the political ramifications of Darwin, to abuse of his theories, is warranted. His "missing link" theory was immediately picked up by cartoonists of his day

No surprise to us at all, Wuzza, that you take the cartoonists' version as being an acceptable and valid criticism of Darwin.

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this tread proves that religion should not be taught in schools.

I have no problem with studying about religion in schools. What I have a problem with is coercion to believe it. So long as that is not present, fine.

And especially important, I think, is to teach how evolution theory does not conflict with religion. Just because they all gloss over creation does not mean there cannot be more to it and we can't determine what it is. We have made many discoveries about the world that religion did not teach us. I have no idea why this one has to be such a sticking point.

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Very good likeitis. It is what it is likeitis.

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liketits: No surprise to us at all, Wuzza, that you take the cartoonists' version as being an acceptable and valid criticism of Darwin.

I can't help those of you who can not read and infer.

Flame away. Hit that straw man quota of yours.

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I can't help those of you who can not read and infer.

Odd comment, since that is precisely what I did. If you don't think the cartoonists have a valid point, then why did you bring it up? I think they extremely unfair and presumptious to say the least, and I would not mention them except to say, and say clearly, how stupid and presumptuous people can be about this evolution idea.

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I'm from Kentucky. There are a lot of bumpkins there. There are some bright individuals. Good people, but a lot are backwood. They believe the word. < :-)

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I think that those children that attend private religious schools do get a better education & as Cleo said, they do learn to think things through for themselves. But then they have to, to get passed the religious nonsense that is being taught, If they can survive that they must be bright.

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I think that those children that attend private religious schools do get a better education and as Cleo said, they do learn to think things through for themselves. But then they have to, to get passed the religious nonsense that is being taught, If they can survive that they must be bright.

I attended a Quaker school for 13 years where I had mostly Jewish classmates. That's probably not what people here, certainly not those bashing liberals, are thinking of when they refer to "religious schools" but it certainly qualifies as such despite the fact the curriculum was not bible-based. I can still remember dissecting animals in biology (something from which I learned a lot).

While the education was first-rate, it was also provided by people who had conviction in their beliefs which was very inspiring and produced a lot of "life-long learners."

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Several Abrahimic Religious leaders 'assume' that evolution is in conflict with creationism. It frightens them about the unknown; which is human. They have an unquestionable need to believe that what they know is the final word of God; a different point of view is anathema to them. The non-Abrahimic faith followers need not gloat; a new idea is usually an abomination to someone or the other including some of them. Whether you are a believer in a God, or several or no God, you would still find a new idea bring insecurity, like some one has pulled the rug from under you and you are out of your comfort zone.

We need to give God a lot more credit than we have given him (her or it) now. Let's give him the benefit of doubt that his word (or wisdom) perhaps includes evolution and every one of us needs to push the refresh button of our thinking, and find meaning in it. Religion is about what we believe.

http://www.foundationforpluralism.com/Articles/Evolutionary-Creation.asp

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I was quoted in the article above, here is the full text http://www.foundationforpluralism.com/Articles/Evolutionary-Creation.asp

Mike Ghouse www.Foundationforpluralism.com www.WorldMuslimCongress.com

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So you want it both ways, MikeGhouse?

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Interesting breakdown of support for evolution broken down by religious affiliation.

http://pewresearch.org/assets/publications/1105-1.png

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