Isn't this cute?

I could turn your answers round and make them the answers to the question, 'Why were most people in Europe and North America Christians until the middle of the 20th century?'

Wildswanderer said:

The explanation was just given. It's what they are taught in college, so they incorporate whatever evidence they find into that worldview. And of those who do question it, how many have the courage to come out and stand against the tide? If they do they are ostracized and possibly lose their job.
But there are those who have spoken out.

Click to expand...

Wildswanderer said:

Most people are rather easy to manipulate when they're young, and once they have an opinion, most people aren't happy with those who think differently than they do. So, I'm not seeing a contradiction.

Click to expand...

Do you think that those are the true answers to my question?

Wildswanderer said:

I didn't say they know it's false. Obviously they have already had thier indoctrination. However there's also people in those fields who are skeptical about Darwinism.

Click to expand...

They would know its false if the evidence shows it to be so. They have direct access to that evidence and can present it to the scientific community.

Instead, what happens is that those who doubt evolution are those that never do real research themselves and have a religious doctrine to uphold.

Wildswanderer said:

Sad how easily people are indoctrinated.

Click to expand...

And how the purveyors of the indoctrination get tax breaks for promoting their falsehoods.

I mean the houses of religion, by the way.

Wildswanderer said:

Lol, okay however you want to spin it!
Most people are rather easy to manipulate when they're young, and once they have an opinion, most people aren't happy with those who think differently than they do. So, I'm not seeing a contradiction.

Click to expand...

And how young are the children when they get indoctrinated into a religion?

MonkeyFire said:

If you can be a monkey, maybe some of us came from angels. Idk

Click to expand...

Wouldn't a monkey fire come from monkeys almost by definition?

Jose Fly said:

So tell me.....why do you think the world's life scientists have all generally agreed for more than a century that evolution occurs and all life on earth shares a common ancestry (humans and other primates included)?

Click to expand...

And a lot of these scientists are or were Christians, so they presumably think or thought that there is no conflict between Christianity and evolution.

I'm still wondering how @Wildswanderer knows so much about what's been going on in upper level biology, genetics, and evolutionary biology classes across the world for over 100 years, even though he's never been in one.

Jose Fly said:

I'm still wondering how @Wildswanderer knows so much about what's been going on in upper level biology, genetics, and evolutionary biology classes across the world for over 100 years, even though he's never been in one.

Click to expand...

Creationist websites?

Polymath257 said:

Creationist websites?

Click to expand...

That'd be my guess.

Polymath257 said:

And why is it possible to argue that? BECAUSE ITS TRANSITIONAL.

Transitional organisms don't fit into nice categories. So there tend to be arguments about how they should be classified.

It was never thought to simply be a chimp. It *is* an ape. And it is an ancestor of humans.

Click to expand...

You are missing the point. Small changes in apes or humans don't equal one transitioning into another. BTW, if we are apes, we really suck at doing all the things apes do. Why didn't we transition into being even better at swinging through trees and being stronger and throwing poop farther instead of getting weaker and less acrobatic and poorer at poop throwing?

Polymath257 said:

Nope. Science didn't really start until about 1600AD and the discovery that that the Earth is not the center was one of the first discoveries.

Click to expand...

Hogwash. Science didn't start in 1600 AD. I don't know if it's just that we are so arrogant or if we think we evolved suddenly at the so called scientific revolution but the ancients knew far more than most people think.

Polymath257 said:

They would know its false if the evidence shows it to be so. They have direct access to that evidence and can present it to the scientific community.

Instead, what happens is that those who doubt evolution are those that never do real research themselves and have a religious doctrine to uphold.

Click to expand...

In your fantasy world.

Polymath257 said:

And how young are the children

Click to expand...

As soon as they enter public schools in some cases.

Wildswanderer said:

You are missing the point. Small changes in apes or humans don't equal one transitioning into another. BTW, if we are apes, we really suck at doing all the things apes do. Why didn't we transition into being even better at swinging through trees and being stronger and throwing poop farther instead of getting weaker and less acrobatic and poorer at poop throwing?

Click to expand...

Small changes adding up over many generations *do* add up to a transition.

We didn't specialize to swinging from trees because we went into the savanna, where there weren't as many trees. Instead, we started scavaging and hunting upright (to see over the grass).

Again, the environment determines what adaptations survive.

Wildswanderer said:

Hogwash. Science didn't start in 1600 AD. I don't know if it's just that we are so arrogant or if we think we evolved suddenly at the so called scientific revolution but the ancients knew far more than most people think.

Click to expand...

They had a lot of technological understanding, especially those in the trades. But the trades were seen as unworthy and those doing philosophy denigrated the use of observation in place of just thinking about things. That prevented the development of science as opposed to free form theorizing. Testing ideas by observation is the key to science.

So, yes, there were a couple of people doing science prior to 1600AD (Al Haytham was one of the few), but not many. The idea that you need to *test* your ideas by continual observation didn't get started until very late. And that is the difference between science and other areas of study. Even astronomy, which was the most scientific subject for thousands of years, didn't really get past the concept of 'keeping the illusion' until Galileo.

Science didn't really get started until about 1600AD because prior to that the idea of testing theories by actual observations was disrespected. That is one of the reasons Aristotelian physics lasted as long as it did.

I might suggest you learn a bit more about the history of science and technology. Christianity, in particular, was initially incredibly destructive of what the ancient Greeks had discovered. Only after about 1000AD, when writings were re-introduced from Arabic lands, did a proto-scientific philosophy begin to get started, and even then, the idea of testing by observation wasn't acknowledged to be important.

Wildswanderer said:

As soon as they enter public schools in some cases.

Click to expand...

Children typically are sent to church before going to secular schools. So the indoctrination into a religion begins far earlier than the education obtained in schools.

And we should be teaching the children the results of the best science available. And that most certainly is NOT creationism. The evidence shows the Earth is billions of years old, not just 10,000. The evidence shows that species change over time. And the evidence shows the universe is far, far larger than what anyone guessed before a century ago or so.

To deny that is simply holding onto religious indoctrination in spite of the evidence showing it to be wrong in almost every detail.

Polymath257 said:

Children typically are sent to church before going to secular schools. So the indoctrination into a religion begins far earlier than the education obtained in schools.

And we should be teaching the children the results of the best science available. And that most certainly is NOT creationism. The evidence shows the Earth is billions of years old, not just 10,000. The evidence shows that species change over time. And the evidence shows the universe is far, far larger than what anyone guessed before a century ago or so.

To deny that is simply holding onto religious indoctrination in spite of the evidence showing it to be wrong in almost every detail.

Click to expand...

Of course it's so much more important to understand how DNA works than to understand that you have an eternal soul. Because everyone on their death bed says: " Golly, I sure wish I would have studied my science books harder."
Science doesn't answer the most important questions at all.

Polymath257 said:

We didn't specialize to swinging from trees because we went into the savanna, where there weren't as many trees. Instead, we started scavaging and hunting upright (to see over the grass).

Click to expand...

Well, gee, then all of us who later lived in the woods should have transitioned back into tree swingers.

Wildswanderer said:

Of course it's so much more important to understand how DNA works than to understand that you have an eternal soul. Because everyone on their death bed says: " Golly, I sure wish I would have studied my science books harder."
Science doesn't answer the most important questions at all.

Click to expand...

As far as I can see, religion only answers them by making things up. it supplies no reason at all to think it has the *correct* answers. For example, there is no evidence of a 'soul' at all, let alone an eternal one.

And, if religion actually had some truth, different religions would get almost the same answers to these 'important questions'. In reality, they vary so much *because* the answers are made up with no evidence to support them.

Any question religion actually answers (like how best to live one's life) can be answered *better* by other means. Making up myths to boost the egos of believers isn't the way to knowledge.

Indoctrinating children to believe those myths is child abuse.

Wildswanderer said:

Well, gee, then all of us who later lived in the woods should have transitioned back into tree swingers.

Click to expand...

That isn't how it works. Once the specialization has been made, it isn't easy to reverse it. And, given that people moved back into the woods only recently (last few thousand years), there hasn't been time, nor the selection pressure to go that way.

Polymath257 said:

As far as I can see, religion only answers them by making things up. it supplies no reason at all to think it has the *correct* answers. For example, there is no evidence of a 'soul' at all, let alone an eternal one.

Click to expand...

Other than the personal testimonies and experiences of billions of people. The circumstantial evidence is far beyond the circumstantial evidence for a godless universe. People who have seen the soul leave someone or experienced other spiritual visions, ect, can certainly be dismissed if you have an agenda that causes you not to want to accept them, but I find the overwhelming number of these experiences to be impossible to dismiss by your hand waving.

Polymath257 said:

That isn't how it works. Once the specialization has been made, it isn't easy to reverse it. And, given that people moved back into the woods only recently (last few thousand years), there hasn't been time, nor the selection pressure to go that way.

Click to expand...

Do you ever hear how silly that sounds?
People have lived in every kind of environment on earth and no one has formed gills by living near the water and diving a lot, or wings if needed to fly to a water source or even a tail for a third hand, which I think would come in very handy at times. This is how silly evolution theory is. If it really worked, we would have literal X-Men running around by now.