Why does evolution vs creation matter to you?

[A Vestigial Mote]

Come off it! Most religion makes no such claims, nor does it impede knowledge-seeking activities of humanity. It's true that fundies may try, from time to time, but most religion is not fundie.

Wasn't even talking about claims made. Wasn't. If you're talking about the idea I posed that religious people think they "know" certain things are true or correct without having done any reality-based investigation to correlate their beliefs to said reality... a great many of them do think this. They do think they know. I am not sure how there is any denying this. I have never met a single religious person who didn't believe that they knew something special about some aspect of the universe that simply IS NOT apparent nor correlated with reality. Whether that's simply that God exists, or that given enough time, concentration and "enlightenment" a person can levitate, or that there is some "spiritual dimension" that can be accessed via prayer or whispers in the dark, or that there are spirits that dwell and move among us here on Earth, etc. Never met a single one who didn't hold to some idea like this and would swear it was true. Not one.

And you're absolutely correct (thank the gods!), the efforts of the religious to cast aside all knowledge that didn't jive with their beliefs have been mostly put down or ignored, and they can't infiltrate everyone's lives to make sure they aren't investigating things that will turn their beliefs on their heads. But seriously - there are so many examples, even contemporarily, of people trying to thwart the progression of human knowledge. Just look at what happened to the Middle East when Islam took greater hold - used to be a great bastion of knowledge and learning - and then the leaders of the Islamic traditions waged war on that. Consider all the hubbub surrounding evolution being taught in schools - a battle still being waged today. I've heard enough first-hand accounts, testimonies and anecdotal evidence to believe that some Jehovah's Witnesses actively discourage their kids from attending institutes of higher learning. The Catholic church has many multiple times decided it was against particular avenues of thought or teaching methods (see sex ed. and contraceptives, or HIV in Africa and their "advice" on contraceptives) and made wide-sweeping decrees about what everyone in their "flock" should be doing. I've even heard that the number of people who believe in a flat Earth is ON THE RISE. Don't tell me that it just "can't happen" that religion gets it's hooks into the teaching and learning of a populace... because it has happened. And as far as I have seen there will continue to be people who will try and make it happen.

So no thanks. I won't "come off it."

 

[Quintessence]

Come off it! Most religion makes no such claims, nor does it impede knowledge-seeking activities of humanity. It's true that fundies may try, from time to time, but most religion is not fundie.

Nah, it's easier to just ignore that the pursuit of science is a fundamentally religious impetus. Nope, scientists totally didn't start studying God's creation as an expression of religious devotion. And I totally didn't pursue a science career because science is literally the study of my gods either. Religion totally doesn't change over time and have tens of thousands of different traditions because of knowledge-seeking, critical thinking, and philosophy within religious traditions. Nope. Didn't happen. It's all lies. All religion is rigid, dogmatic fundamentalism. True facts!

 

[exchemist]

Wasn't even talking about claims made. Wasn't. If you're talking about the idea I posed that religious people think they "know" certain things are true or correct without having done any reality-based investigation to correlate their beliefs to said reality... a great many of them do think this. They do think they know. I am not sure how there is any denying this. I have never met a single religious person who didn't believe that they knew something special about some aspect of the universe that simply IS NOT apparent nor correlated with reality. Whether that's simply that God exists, or that given enough time, concentration and "enlightenment" a person can levitate, or that there is some "spiritual dimension" that can be accessed via prayer or whispers in the dark, or that there are spirits that dwell and move among us here on Earth, etc. Never met a single one who didn't hold to some idea like this and would swear it was true. Not one.

And you're absolutely correct (thank the gods!), the efforts of the religious to cast aside all knowledge that didn't jive with their beliefs have been mostly put down or ignored, and they can't infiltrate everyone's lives to make sure they aren't investigating things that will turn their beliefs on their heads. But seriously - there are so many examples, even contemporarily, of people trying to thwart the progression of human knowledge. Just look at what happened to the Middle East when Islam took greater hold - used to be a great bastion of knowledge and learning - and then the leaders of the Islamic traditions waged war on that. Consider all the hubbub surrounding evolution being taught in schools - a battle still being waged today. I've heard enough first-hand accounts, testimonies and anecdotal evidence to believe that some Jehovah's Witnesses actively discourage their kids from attending institutes of higher learning. The Catholic church has many multiple times decided it was against particular avenues of thought or teaching methods (see sex ed. and contraceptives, or HIV in Africa and their "advice" on contraceptives) and made wide-sweeping decrees about what everyone in their "flock" should be doing. I've even heard that the number of people who believe in a flat Earth is ON THE RISE. Don't tell me that it just "can't happen" that religion gets it's hooks into the teaching and learning of a populace... because it has happened. And as far as I have seen there will continue to be people who will try and make it happen.

So no thanks. I won't "come off it."

But look, the things religious people may claim to "know" are nothing to do with the forms of knowledge sought by other branches of human enquiry. So there is practically no overlap, unless you are thinking of the fundies who are completely atypical. So how is it possible for religion to hold back these forms of enquiry? It can't and it doesn't.

What you say about the Middle East is untrue by the way. It became a great bastion of knowledge under the muslim caliphs of Baghdad. What has changed is not the spread of islam but the spread of fundamentalist islam.

Similarly in the USA the problem has never been Christianity but the rise to prominence of fundamentalists.

I think you may be shooting at the wrong target. The question we should be asking, surely, is why fundamentalist strains of religion are spreading, as it is they that do the damage.

 

[A Vestigial Mote]

I think you may be shooting at the wrong target. The question we should be asking, surely, is why fundamentalist strains of religion are spreading, as it is they that do the damage.

And the answer I feel fits the evidence best is that religious forms of thought are continually taught to the incoming generations, and there will always be people who want to "be right" at all costs - always people who take it too far. We - our cultures - foster these ways of thinking and tell everyone they can "be right" if they just believe hard enough. That's the basic message of pushing this type of thought without adherence to evidence and readily apparent comport with reality.

Ask yourself this - what happens when someone takes the learning within the subject of mathematics "too far?" They produce results, that's what. Similarly with a thousand other disciplines of knowledge within which ACTUAL RESULTS are the product of continued pushing. This is not what happens within religion. Within the religious realm of thought you can only suppose that you have "made progress" by pointing at amorphous "spiritual", communal, or possibly psychological "advancements." And even then, are they really advancements, or just more lateral moves to "something else?" Religions don't take too kindly to offers to expand/change/amend core doctrine. If you have new ideas you are left with one option - go off and start your own "religion" - a thing that has happened THOUSANDS of times. And you want to point to a discipline with that much unwarranted diversity as what? Useful? Only to those who enjoy the false sense of "being right," "being eternal," or "being important to the universe."

 

[exchemist]

And the answer I feel fits the evidence best is that religious forms of thought are continually taught to the incoming generations, and there will always be people who want to "be right" at all costs - always people who take it too far. We - our cultures - foster these ways of thinking and tell everyone they can "be right" if they just believe hard enough. That's the basic message of pushing this type of thought without adherence to evidence and readily apparent comport with reality.

Ask yourself this - what happens when someone takes the learning within the subject of mathematics "too far?" They produce results, that's what. Similarly with a thousand other disciplines of knowledge within which ACTUAL RESULTS are the product of continued pushing. This is not what happens within religion. Within the religious realm of thought you can only suppose that you have "made progress" by pointing at amorphous "spiritual", communal, or possibly psychological "advancements." And even then, are they really advancements, or just more lateral moves to "something else?" Religions don't take too kindly to offers to expand/change/amend core doctrine. If you have new ideas you are left with one option - go off and start your own "religion" - a thing that has happened THOUSANDS of times. And you want to point to a discipline with that much unwarranted diversity as what? Useful? Only to those who enjoy the false sense of "being right," "being eternal," or "being important to the universe."

I am really not sure what all this is about. Leaving aside the second issue introduced, of whether or not religion is "useful", your original assertion seemed to be that religion ipso facto impedes human advancement, in some way. That is what I take issue with.

Religion has, over the centuries been the main repository of learning in Western civilisation, between the fall of the Roman Empire and the Enlightenment - and even after. William of Ockham was a monk. So was Roger Bacon. Copernicus was a priest (and commended by the pope for his work on heliocentrism). Newton studied for the priesthood. The universities of Paris, Oxford and Cambridge were monastic in foundation. Islam under the Abbasid Caliphate was the sponsor and protector of a great deal of advance in learning in the Mediterranean and Near East.

 

[Polymath257]

I am really not sure what all this is about. Leaving aside the second issue introduced, of whether or not religion is "useful", your original assertion seemed to be that religion ipso facto impedes human advancement, in some way. That is what I take issue with.

Religion has, over the centuries been the main repository of learning in Western civilisation, between the fall of the Roman Empire and the Enlightenment - and even after. William of Ockham was a monk. So was Roger Bacon. Copernicus was a priest (and commended by the pope for his work on heliocentrism). Newton studied for the priesthood. The universities of Paris, Oxford and Cambridge were monastic in foundation. Islam under the Abbasid Caliphate was the sponsor and protector of a great deal of advance in learning in the Mediterranean and Near East.

I also think it is easy to ignore how important ideas as 'the universe is rational and can be understood by humans' were, originally, religious ideas based on the idea of a rational deity. Much of the advances in math and natural philosophy during the middle ages were done under religious auspices.

And we tend to forget just how intellectually turbulent the 12-14th centuries really were. Such ideas as 'vacuum', 'inertia', 'natural law', and many questions about motion attempting to deal with contradictions in Aristotle were addressed and different solutions investigated.

On the other hand, the same time also saw the proclamations dictating that certain 'solutions' could not be reached. For example, they required the rejection of Aristotle's view that the world was infinitely old. So there was a sort of fundamentalist backlash even during the intellectual ferment. Fortunately, some just ignored the proclamations. Others technically went along (making good arguments for a position, then stating it can't be true as a matter of faith).

And, I do think it is true that every religion, by the very nature of being untestable, will inevitably have those that *insist* that theirs is the only way and everything *must* explicitly agree with them. And yes, that pretty much inevitably leads to divisions arising and either suppression or bifurcation.

TLDR: it's complicated

 

[exchemist]

I also think it is easy to ignore how important ideas as 'the universe is rational and can be understood by humans' were, originally, religious ideas based on the idea of a rational deity. Much of the advances in math and natural philosophy during the middle ages were done under religious auspices.

And we tend to forget just how intellectually turbulent the 12-14th centuries really were. Such ideas as 'vacuum', 'inertia', 'natural law', and many questions about motion attempting to deal with contradictions in Aristotle were addressed and different solutions investigated.

On the other hand, the same time also saw the proclamations dictating that certain 'solutions' could not be reached. For example, they required the rejection of Aristotle's view that the world was infinitely old. So there was a sort of fundamentalist backlash even during the intellectual ferment. Fortunately, some just ignored the proclamations. Others technically went along (making good arguments for a position, then stating it can't be true as a matter of faith).

And, I do think it is true that every religion, by the very nature of being untestable, will inevitably have those that *insist* that theirs is the only way and everything *must* explicitly agree with them. And yes, that pretty much inevitably leads to divisions arising and either suppression or bifurcation.

TLDR: it's complicated

Yes, "it's complicated" would be my verdict as well.

Some might argue that if religion had not existed, then learning would have been sponsored by some secular institution (royal courts?) and "progress" (in the Whig view of history ) would have been faster that way. But we can never know. The fact is that rival ideas did contend, vigorously, among the religious scholars and were not systematically suppressed in the style of a modern totalitarian state, though certainly it was a risky business if they blundered politically and got on the wrong side of some powerful prelate. That was the way of the world in those days: it was what happened to courtiers and noblemen who got on the wrong side of the monarch, too.

 

[tas8831]

Maybe because I was indoctrinated to believe in Evolution almost as a religion

I'll take 'Things that never happened for 1000...

....having had Biology teachers who would giggle at Adam and Eve...

Well, it is a funny notion, the whole thing about man being made from dust.. being shown all of the animals from which to choose 'an helpmeet', then, Jehovah the Omniscient realizing that Adam wanted 'an helpmeet' that looked like him, took a piece of him and made Eve (yet apparently was able to make female wombats and such on a whim - from dust, I suppose); threatening them not to eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge \of good and evil - wanting to keep His slaves ignorant of such things, I suppose - and that this single breeding pair is responsible for populating the entire earth. Well, except for the people from which wives were obtained (which could be their sisters?)...

I giggle just thinking about it being taken seriously by adults.

 

[A Vestigial Mote]

I am really not sure what all this is about. Leaving aside the second issue introduced, of whether or not religion is "useful", your original assertion seemed to be that religion ipso facto impedes human advancement, in some way. That is what I take issue with.

Religion has, over the centuries been the main repository of learning in Western civilisation, between the fall of the Roman Empire and the Enlightenment - and even after. William of Ockham was a monk. So was Roger Bacon. Copernicus was a priest (and commended by the pope for his work on heliocentrism). Newton studied for the priesthood. The universities of Paris, Oxford and Cambridge were monastic in foundation. Islam under the Abbasid Caliphate was the sponsor and protector of a great deal of advance in learning in the Mediterranean and Near East.

But it wasn't because of their religious background that they sought that learning. That, I feel, is the mistake you are making here. It may not have impeded them, specifically, no, but that is hardly reason to dismiss any of the times the religious have attempted such impedance.

 

[exchemist]

I'll take 'Things that never happened for 1000...

Well, it is a funny notion, the whole thing about man being made from dust.. being shown all of the animals from which to choose 'an helpmeet', then, Jehovah the Omniscient realizing that Adam wanted 'an helpmeet' that looked like him, took a piece of him and made Eve (yet apparently was able to make female wombats and such on a whim - from dust, I suppose); threatening them not to eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge \of good and evil - wanting to keep His slaves ignorant of such things, I suppose - and that this single breeding pair is responsible for populating the entire earth. Well, except for the people from which wives were obtained (which could be their sisters?)...

I giggle just thinking about it being taken seriously by adults.

Indeed, which is one reason why most Christians and Jews take it as an allegory - and have done for centuries.

 

[Polymath257]

But it wasn't because of their religious background that they sought that learning. That, I feel, is the mistake you are making here. It may not have impeded them, specifically, no, but that is hardly reason to dismiss any of the times the religious have attempted such impedance.

Once again, it is far from clear that it *wasn't* partly the religious background that motivated them. Remember that many were monks or priests. Often they specifically stated their investigation was to more fully learn the 'mind of God' by looking at 'His creation'. They were also often motivated by a impulse to square the recently retrieved 'Greek learning' with their Christian belief system.

And, no, we should NOT dismiss the many times religious motivations have hindered the development of science. And it isn't just the fundamentalists that did this. Much of the investigation of anatomy was initially seen as immoral and sacrilegious. And various proclamations have frequently condemned certain 'solutions' or viewpoints (although it was not always the case that the Church overall agreed with the condemnations).

It is way too easy to adopt the Voltairian view that science and religion have always been at odds. And while they have been at many times, it is far from being a universal.

What *is* the case is that the *methods* of science and of religion are often opposed. Taking any statements on faith make it difficult to criticize and thoroughly investigate those ideas. If the statements are about something within the purview of scientific investigation, this can and does often impede science. But, still, the *religious* view that the universe was made by a rational creator and given 'rational natural laws' and thereby could be understood by the human mind was a *huge* advance during the middle ages. The specific rejection of this in, for example, Islamic 'theology' is one of the many reasons for the decline of science in the Islamic world.

 

[exchemist]

But it wasn't because of their religious background that they sought that learning. That, I feel, is the mistake you are making here. It may not have impeded them, specifically, no, but that is hardly reason to dismiss any of the times the religious have attempted such impedance.

Their motivation is - once again - not relevant to my point (though in fact a great number were motivated by seeing what they took to be the glory of God in creation). And of course there were occasions on which advances in learning were temporarily derailed by religious interference. But what were these instances and how serious were they? The Galileo affair looks like one, but for balance one needs to remember it was Copernicus, a canon of the church, who developed the heliocentric system which was commended by the pope. Galileo's error seems to have been political. And in fact the Galileo affair did not seriously hinder the adoption of the Copernican system.
Some of the new, more literalist, Protestants had a go at trashing Copernicus's reputation, but that didn't seem to hold back the ideas either.

 

[Polymath257]

Some of the new, more literalist, Protestants had a go at trashing Copernicus's reputation, but that didn't seem to hold back the ideas either.

And, in fact, the rise of the scientific method was, perhaps, more dramatic in the Protestant areas (which were often more fanatical) than in the Catholic areas. Again, the history is complicated and very far from being a simple science vs. religion story.

 

[A Vestigial Mote]

What *is* the case is that the *methods* of science and of religion are often opposed.

And this is where the issue I am trying to get at lies. There are very few disciplines, philosophies, teachings or arenas of learning within which there is potential for the practitioners to actively discourage or oppose the findings of other fields of study. That religion is one of the very few of these that exist I believe says something.

 

[exchemist]

Once again, it is far from clear that it *wasn't* partly the religious background that motivated them. Remember that many were monks or priests. Often they specifically stated their investigation was to more fully learn the 'mind of God' by looking at 'His creation'. They were also often motivated by a impulse to square the recently retrieved 'Greek learning' with their Christian belief system.

And, no, we should NOT dismiss the many times religious motivations have hindered the development of science. And it isn't just the fundamentalists that did this. Much of the investigation of anatomy was initially seen as immoral and sacrilegious. And various proclamations have frequently condemned certain 'solutions' or viewpoints (although it was not always the case that the Church overall agreed with the condemnations).

It is way too easy to adopt the Voltairian view that science and religion have always been at odds. And while they have been at many times, it is far from being a universal.

What *is* the case is that the *methods* of science and of religion are often opposed. Taking any statements on faith make it difficult to criticize and thoroughly investigate those ideas. If the statements are about something within the purview of scientific investigation, this can and does often impede science. But, still, the *religious* view that the universe was made by a rational creator and given 'rational natural laws' and thereby could be understood by the human mind was a *huge* advance during the middle ages. The specific rejection of this in, for example, Islamic 'theology' is one of the many reasons for the decline of science in the Islamic world.

I would not say the methods of science and religion are opposed, I don't think. I would rather say they are orthogonal. Gould's NOMA, if you like.

Problems only arise, it seems to me, when religion is ill-advised enough to make testable claims about nature. This it generally avoids doing.

 

[exchemist]

I would not say the methods of science and religion are opposed, I don't think. I would rather say they are orthogonal. Gould's NOMA, if you like.

Problems only arise, it seems to me, when religion is ill-advised enough to make testable claims about nature. This it generally avoids doing.

Yes! This has just come up in discussions with @Vouthon and @Augustus .

It seems there is good reason to think the Reformation played a significant role in getting people's minds more onto investigating the facts of nature, rather than spiritual contemplation etc. The irony is that the Protestants also started to take the Old Testament more literally at the same time.......and eventually of course they found they could not marry up the two. This, sadly, was the start of the rejection of science by what have become the Fundies.

A complex story, indeed.

 

[Jim]

Problems only arise, it seems to me, when religion is ill-advised enough to make testable claims about nature. This it generally avoids doing.

I see the problem now as people using differences in ways of thinking as reasons for drawing lines of alienation between themselves and others, and for stigmatizing people across those lines.

 

[exchemist]

I see the problem now as people using differences in ways of thinking as reasons for drawing lines of alienation between themselves and others, and for stigmatizing people across those lines.

No I don't think so. People are on the whole adept at using different ways of thinking to deal with different sorts of issue. There is no reason, in my observation, to believe a religious person is constrained to think in a different way from a non-religious one.

I'm not quite sure what the "problem" is you have in mind, but if it is the over-publicised and hyped "clash" between science and religion, the explanation is simple and well-worn. Religious fundamentalists make the mistake of thinking the Old Testament can be read literally. That is usually because they are extreme Protestants who take sola scriptura to extremes, rejecting all the old theological interpretation and reinventing the wheel for themselves, badly. The consequence is they think their religion makes testable claims about nature. Unsurprisingly, these conflict with science.

There is no conflict between science and religion in principle. The "problem" is the fundies. And that is to do, not so much with the way they think but one particular axiom they have chosen, which is that every word in the bible must be taken literally.

 

[Etritonakin]

My interest in this topic might be because one of my spiritual teachers might have said that that the ancestors of humans have always been human, and I was trying to see how that might be true. I know that on one side some people are concerned about evolution theory being used in public schools to discredit their beliefs, and on the other side some people are concerned about people trying to use public education to promote or defend religious beliefs.

Some people might be trying to defend science against attacks from religious factions, but science is being attacked on many fronts including by people who think they’re defending it. If you’re defending science, why have you chosen this particular battle ground?

Some people might be trying to defend faith in God against attacks from anti-faith factions, but faith in God is being attacked on many fronts, including by people who think they’re defending it. If you’re defending faith in God, why have you chosen this particular battle ground?

Whenever there is great controversy, there is often truth to all sides -and also error.
If we are able to find the truth in all -and remove the errors -we become knowledgeable and eradicate conflict.

The "VS" part is absolutely pointless. The truth is that both evolution and creation exist -and it is logical and apparent that evolution naturally leads to creation -to the the development of creativity.
This is due to the fact that evolution -in its specific or broadest sense -begins in simplicity or relative simplicity. Creativity requires great complexity -and therefore must follow.

The non-religious might have difficulty believing that the sum of "everything" could have developed self-awareness and creativity from simplicity just as naturally as they believe an individual human has -but it would actually require less than that which preceded humanity -and would also be a perfectly logical and natural explanation (for which there is actually plenty of available indirect evidence) for the extreme and specific purposeful complexity of the universe, atoms, etc. -and that which followed -including ourselves.

It also seems it is difficult for some religious to consider that God may have developed/evolved from the most simple state of "everything" -but biblical scripture (perhaps others) literally states as much -and also supports the idea indirectly. ("I AM THAT AM", "I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End.”, “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End,” says the Lord, “who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.”.... The fact that God does NEW things indicates development in itself -and, if of the increase of his government there will be no end, it begs the question of how little was once governed.)