Creation vs. Evolution

[shoredivr]

Back when I used to teach research skills, I told students I did not want them choosing research project topics that were hot button issues like abortion or evolution beause of the inevitable emotional issues that would arise. One of my brightest students talked to me about this, and he insisted he wanted to write about evolution. I finally consented.

The first checkpoint in the research process was the working bibliography. Students had to submit the list of resources they had collected as the first step in their project. When I saw his, I told him it was not acceptable because 100% of his sources were from religious sources. I said that proper research is objective and unbiased, and he had to be sure to include information from scientific sources. If 100% of his sources were from the scientific community, I would have told him he needed to balance that as well. He agreed.

After working on the project for about a week, he asked if he could meet with me privately after school. When we met, he just stared a while, looking as if he were about to cry. Finally he said, "Why did they lie?" His voice was trembling.

I asked him to explain.

He then told me that when he had read the scientific sources, he saw that everything he had been told about evolution in his religious sources was untrue. Evolution did not mean what they said it meant. The processes were different from what he was told they were. The evidence was different from what he was told it was. Why, he asked, would people with religious convictions misrepresent the facts of evolution so blatantly? Why did they lie? The realization that the religious leaders he had always trusted had distorted the truth was shocking to him.

I told him that as a teacher I was in no position to talk about this. I suggested that he talk to his clergy about it.

We also decided that he would be better off with a different research topic.

If, like my former student, you learned everything you know about evolution from a religious tract or two, perhaps you, too, should consider learning about it with an objective point of view rather than looking to fight everything you hear. The hardest thing to do in research is set your prejudices aside and look at evidence objectively. When you fail to do that, you cannot help but overlook key points that contradict your preset point of view, misinterpet what you do see, and overstate the importance of little issues in your favor.

If there was a thank you button I'd push it.

 

[ce4jesus]

On the historicity of Christ the single account, which most scholars agree was Josephus, references him. Josephus has proven to an incredible resource to archeologists in the area with 100 percent of his landmark references being vetted as true. Likewise, Josephus only mentions John the Baptist once yet John was significant enough to have been identified as the leader of a revolt. You might as well question the existence of the church itself as there are very few references, if any at all, in the secular writings of the time.

 

[ce4jesus]

Quote:
Originally Posted by ce4jesus
I did all that by disagreeing with you? All the poster was asking for is civility and respect..not agreement with what he believes. I think you've confused the two.

There you go again, thinking ... it's your attempts at that process mixing with your belief system that most of us have trouble with.

Yes thinking outside the box is definitely a gift.

 

[deco_martini]

After working on the project for about a week, he asked if he could meet with me privately after school. When we met, he just stared a while, looking as if he were about to cry. Finally he said, "Why did they lie?" His voice was trembling.

I asked him to explain.

He then told me that when he had read the scientific sources, he saw that everything he had been told about evolution in his religious sources was untrue. Evolution did not mean what they said it meant. The processes were different from what he was told they were. The evidence was different from what he was told it was. Why, he asked, would people with religious convictions misrepresent the facts of evolution so blatantly? Why did they lie? The realization that the religious leaders he had always trusted had distorted the truth was shocking to him.

I had a similar "come to Jesus" moment. I was working in the internet sector early in the days of the web boom. A search engine called google came along. Google found talk origins for me one day when I was trying to argue from a creationist viewpoint about the fact there there weren't transitional fossils and especially that missing link.

And there I was, staring at the pictures of skulls aligned by their dated age showing a pretty smooth progression without any mythical missing link.

Asking a fundamentalist pastor about creationism, in retrospect is poor choice. Most fundamentalist pastors (if they are indeed educated beyond a high school level) have diplomas from colleges labeled "diploma mills". They don't have the faintest understanding of archaeology, ancient history, genetics, biology, chemistry, or anthropology (or even the Bible as I later found from my own studies).

I don't think they lie as much as they are simply ignorant (I say that not as an insult but in the pure definition of the term which means un-knowing). Personally, many of them seem to have attitudes that are anti-knowledge. They reap the benefits of knowledge when their children get vaccinated or they peddle their wares on the internet, but in the pulpit they will warn about the evils of all the wicked knowledge on the internet and weird secular humanist conspiracy theories.

 

[adurso]

Quote:


Would you have preferred the term "believers", followers of Christ or members of The Way? In hindsight, we know them as Christians.

The term would be "Jews". Ceteris paribus the historical Jesus was Jewish. His followers were Jews. After his death there was a split between two camps, one camp went about proselytizing the new faith, the other stayed closer to its Jewish origins. The Romans wiped out the stay at homes circa 45 CE, the proselytizing band led by Saul of Tarsus were the only group left in the Jesus movement. This group became the first Catholics. Saul, who became Paul said something to the effect that he would make of this all things for all people, this is the origin of the name "Catholic", it means universal.Paul's group aggressively sought converts, incorporating ideas from the old religions into the new in order to make the religion more palatable.

This is what creates the problems between people of faith and academics; using the language without accuracy.

If someone of religious bent cannot express themselves accurately within the confines of their faith their observations relating to scientific endeavor becomes suspect.

 

[shoredivr]

Er, once again:

ce4jesus.....

For goodness' sake, please learn how to quote correctly, otherwise one just skips over your posts as they're too hard to follow.

Here's how you do it. Press the quote button below the post you're wanting to quote. You'll get the quote (eg "text text text") surrounded by coding information: square bracket, quote, equal sign, person's name, post number on one side, square brackets, and square brackets, forward slash, quote, square brackets.

It looks like this without the spaces.

[ QUOTE=ce4jesus;3666995 ] text text text [ /QUOTE ]



Don't cut out the code information if you want to make the quotes appear in a blue box with the name of the person quoted like this:

text text text

If you don't include the name of the person quoted inside the blue box, it just becomes a giant run-on sentence that's too confusing to follow. But, as you prefer.

 

[adurso]

On the historicity of Christ the single account, which most scholars agree was Josephus, references him. Josephus has proven to an incredible resource to archeologists in the area with 100 percent of his landmark references being vetted as true. Likewise, Josephus only mentions John the Baptist once yet John was significant enough to have been identified as the leader of a revolt. You might as well question the existence of the church itself as there are very few references, if any at all, in the secular writings of the time.

This has been debunked many times, several times within this thread. The church was not mentioned in the writings of the time as it was not important enough in an age of multiple religions all vying for the top slot amongst the populace.

 

[shoredivr]

The term would be "Jews". Ceteris paribus the historical Jesus was Jewish. His followers were Jews. [....]

Saul, who became Paul said something to the effect that he would make of this all things for all people, this is the origin of the name "Catholic", it means universal. Paul's group aggressively sought converts, incorporating ideas from the old religions into the new in order to make the religion more palatable.

This is what creates the problems between people of faith and academics; using the language without accuracy.

If someone of religious bent cannot express themselves accurately within the confines of their faith their observations relating to scientific endeavor becomes suspect.

Bravo.

 

[Thalassamania]

On the historicity of Christ the single account, which most scholars agree was Josephus, references him. Josephus has proven to an incredible resource to archeologists in the area with 100 percent of his landmark references being vetted as true.

Equally true would be the fictional works of any half-way decent historical novelist. 100% of the landmark references in say, Flashman or Sharpe's Rifles are accurate, and 100% of the events are accurate and all the references to people (save the few fictional characters in the novels) are accurate, but I'd be hard pressed to confuse it with history (did Richard Sharpe really save Nosey? Did he kill the Tippou? Did he "frag" the Prince of Orange at Waterloo? Was Flashman's flatulence the real cause of the Charge of the Light Brigade?).

Likewise, Josephus only mentions John the Baptist once yet John was significant enough to have been identified as the leader of a revolt. You might as well question the existence of the church itself as there are very few references, if any at all, in the secular writings of the time.

That's not in agreement with the rules of the game. The rules state (for the umpteenth time) that you need two (2, 10 in binary) CONTEMPORANEOUS crossreferences to document the existance of an historical figure. With respect to Christ, there are zero (0, 00). Joespheus was still in diapers when Jesus (allegedly) met his fate.

As I have stated before, there are more (and clearer) mentions, and a better case to me made for Herakles as a historical figure than there is for Christ. As I posted ages ago:

... There are many stories, myths and beliefs of a Jesus, but if you want the facts of history, you cannot put together an account without even one (not to mention the required two) reliable eyewitness accounts.

Maybe there was an historical Jesus. Maybe loosely modeled on someone whose actual history got lost, but that’s just speculation. But, as good (or better) a case can be made for the historical existence of Herakles as for Jesus. Just as for the Herakles myth there’s an abundance data that supports the mythical evolution of Jesus’ story. Almost every detail in the gospel stories occurs in earlier pagan and/or Hebrew stories. But, there’s no evidence to demonstrate historicality of a Jesus "the Christ," just evidence that some people believed in him.

If you accept hearsay and take believers’ accounts as historical evidence, then shouldn’t you be consistent and extend your credulity to other mythos? How about Herakles? His story parallels Jesus’ so well that denying Herakles a position as a historical fact belies and contradicts the methodology used to establish Jesus.

The Herakles myth resembles Jesus’. Both were human from the union of a god and a chaste mortal. Herakles was on earth as a mortal helping people and performing miracles. When Herakles died, he rose to Mt. Olympus and became a god. Sound familiar? Herakles was the most popular hero in Ancient Greece and Rome. They believed that he actually lived, told stories about him, worshiped him, and dedicated temples to him.

The data on Herakles is like that on Jesus. There are well know authorities like Hesiod and Plato who write of him. And there are stories of Homer. Aesop refers to him, even quotes him. Joesphus, in fact, mentions Herakles more times than Jesus (in the same book)! Tacitus also mentions Christ and Herakles many times in his Annals.

But (and here’s the rub) we have no artifacts, writings or eyewitnesses concerning Herakles (or for that matter, Jesus). All information about both of them comes from stories, beliefs, and hearsay. Should we then believe in a historical Herakles? Why not? Just because his is the son of the wrong god? Of course we shouldn’t and the same must apply to Jesus if we are to have any consistency.

You may doubt that a “historical” Jesus could grow from myth because you’ve not thought about it. There is plenty of precedence for this. We can all think of examples of myth taken from history (Troy, George Washington and the cherry tree, or the silver dollar toss) but what about “history” arising out of myth? Trust me, there are clear and obvious examples: the Greek mythologies where Greek and Roman writers including Diodorus, Cicero, Livy, etc., assumed that there must have existed a historical root for figures such as Herakles, Theseus, Odysseus, Minos, Dionysus, Daedalus and Icarus, as well as places such as Atlantis. These writers put their mythological heroes and places into an invented historical time line. Herodotus, even studied the myths and determined when Herakles lived.

Today belief in urban legends, turn pure fiction (or hoaxes) into history as does propaganda spread by politicians (also fiction) and believed by their supports (am I stretching the TSO as this stage to mention WMDs, al Qaeda and Iraq in a strictly historical and academic sense?).

You (like I) probably think that Herakles and other Greek gods are just myth because you do not believe in the Greek and Roman stories. When a civilization dies, so does its gods. Christianity and its church authorities still wield influence on governments, institutions, colleges, etc. and without an “historical” Jesus, Christianity dies. So they try and defend the “historical” Jesus, at all cost, even when faced with the most unreliable of sources.

A lot of folks want to believe in something and at this time, for many, its Jesus. Belief alone can create intellectual bleed through into secular thought, even down to the most used swears and oaths. Christian authorities advance the view of an “historical” Jesus over and over so that, just through being so oft repeated (remember how well the repeated big lie worked for Hitler and Stalin) it finds a comfy couch in the public consciousness. But it just ain’t so. When one makes an historical claim, the assertion should depend solely on the evidence and not require belief, since beliefs can live comfortably without any evidence what-so-ever.

Is it any wonder that that people strongly resent your inability or unwillingness to read the thread and deal with what is already there. You seem to have two rhetorical approaches, declaring by personal fiat that it isn't so, or just ignoring the facts in front of everyone and traipsing right on as though nothing had ever been said. Is it any wonder that people (including me) have referred to you the way in which we have?

 

[Sordello]

What is that? :cwmddd:

Is that the sound of a Missourian.