[Ophiolite]

Do you believe in God? If so, briefly explain your view.
I am a devout agnostic. I am quite confident the God of the bible is a fiction.

How do you think the universe began?
I suspect the present form of the observable universe went through what is commonly called the Big Bang. Although I have philosophical objections to this concept the weight of evidence is in favour of it. You should note that Big Bang theory does not actually deal with the origin of the universe, but only its development from a point only a tiny fraction of a second after that origin.

How do you think life originated?Through gradual development of increasingly complex chemical reactions in a rich diversity of chemicals produced by several natural means on the primitive Earth.

Explain how you believe life forms evolved?I have no belief in this matter. Belief is a matter of opinion. It is subjective. It implies uncertainty about the issue under consideration. So I accept the enormous body of evidence from palaeontology, biology, genetics, embryology that life evolved as envisaged in the Modern Synthesis and modified by subsequent studies. (Details will be provided on request.)

How old do you think the earth is and why?4.5 billion year +/- based upon vast bodies of mutually consistent evidence from geophysics, astronomy, geology, cosmology, etc

Do you believe in life on other planets, aliens, and UFOs?
I have no firm opinion on this matter as one cannot make meaningful predictions from a sample size of one. I suspect that primitive life is abundant in the universe, but intelligent life is less common. I should be astounded if UFOs turned out to be alien spacecraft. There are many more mundane explanations that account for such sightings.

Is evolution still happening, and if so, what do you think will be the end result?
Of course evolution is still happening. We routinely observe it. I suspect, from context, that like many laypersons you are obsessed with the evolution of humans rather than evolution in general. (If so it is an arrogance I find difficult to understand.) So there is no end result, but evolution will continue delivering responses to changing environments and probably the occassional introduction of novelty over the next billion years. Beyond that would require more data to predict.

Do you believe in life after death? Explain.It seems highly unlikely. There seems to be no significant evidence for it. Please note the following: if there is life after death there is no reason to assume it would be eternal life. There is no reason to believe it would be remotely akin to the Biblical Heaven and Hell. Life after death could exist even if there were no God, of any kind.

How do your beliefs in origins and evolution affect your sense of purpose for your own life?
They demand of me the following:
Respect for life in all its varied forms.
Cooperation with my fellow humans.
Full effort to achieve all that I am capable of


Thanks!!!!
You are welcome.

Moontanman, on 25 January 2012 - 02:33 PM, said:

Open message to the OP, you say you go to bible college, i am going to assume that means you are religious, your use of the word evolutionist, suggests you are not only religious but a fundamentalist. I wonder how you would react if some one went to a religious forum and asked questions about the beliefs of Creatards? Yes, the term Evolutionist is insulting, so is Darwinist, they both suggest that not only is evolution a religion but that to believe evolution is the best explanation for the biodiversity makes you an atheist and that evolutionism is the religion of atheism. It is not, you are being systematically lied to by the people you are trusting to direct your education. Who, i would like to ask you, is the author of all lies?

Excuse the forthcoming bad language (or not - on this issue I really don't care) I am frigging well tired of the ignorance of individuals who should know better. Evolutionist is a perfectly respectable term to apply to those of us who believe in evolution. The fact that you are unaware of this indicates that you are prone to the same emotional knee-jerk reactions we rightly accuse many fundamentalists of. In support of my view I need go no further than to note the title of Ernst Mayr's book, Toward a New Philosophy of Biology - Observations of an Evolutionist . If one of the founding fathers of the Modern Synthesis feels it is acceptable, even honourable to be called an evolutionist then it is fine with me. It ought to be fine with you also.

[Tres Juicy]

Ophiolite, on 27 January 2012 - 12:36 PM, said:

Explain how you believe life forms evolved? I have no belief in this matter. Belief is a matter of opinion. It is subjective. It implies uncertainty about the issue under consideration. So I accept the enormous body of evidence from palaeontology, biology, genetics, embryology that life evolved as envisaged in the Modern Synthesis and modified by subsequent studies. (Details will be provided on request.)

Quote

Evolutionist is a perfectly respectable term to apply to those of us who believe in evolution.

[Ophiolite]

Well spotted. Your reward is a + like. However, recognise the precise meaning of words varies with context. In my reply to the bible scholar I was making a subtle distinction. In my rant to Moontanman I was lapsing into the colloquial.

[Phi for All]

Ophiolite changed my mind about the Evolutionist argument. -ist can denote "someone who studies" as well as "follower or believer". Creationists don't seem to take exception to being called Creationists, so I suppose it's not necessarily an attempt to demean Evolution by suggesting it's a belief.

Ophiolite, on 27 January 2012 - 12:50 PM, said:

In my rant to Moontanman I was lapsing into the colloquial.

We need a corollary to Skitt's Law for ranting. Whenever you're ranting at someone, you're bound to make a mistake that's much worse than what you're ranting about.

[DrRocket]

gufis253, on 24 January 2012 - 09:53 PM, said:

Hey everyone.
I'm going to a Bible College right now, and we're taking a class called Science and the Bible. We're learning about evolution vs. creationism, and later on in the course, we have to write a report. Because we don't want to make things up and assume what people who believe in evolution think, we have to ask some questions. I will be handing in your answers completely unaltered.

It would be awesome if you could answer them as best you could.

• Do you believe in God? If so, briefly explain your view.
• How do you think the universe began?
• How do you think life originated?
• Explain how you believe life forms evolved?
• How old do you think the earth is and why?
• Do you believe in life on other planets, aliens, and UFOs?
• Is evolution still happening, and if so, what do you think will be the end result?
• Do you believe in life after death? Explain.
• How do your beliefs in origins and evolution affect your sense of purpose for your own life?
• Any other comments.

Thanks!!!!

1. I believe that there is order in the universe and that the laws that govern that order have an intrinsic beauty that is not the result of happenstance. I am comfortable calling the source of that order "God".

2. The origins of the universe from about 10^-33 sec onward are pretty well described by existing theory based on general relativity. Prior to that we are pretty clueless. It is not even crystal clear that the universe "began" and no one has a clue as to how it began if it began.

3. I have no idea how life originated, and neither does anyone else. There are some responsible speculations, but not much in the way of deep understanding -- yet. However, molecular biology is making rapid progress and I have no doubt that in the not-to-distant future that the mechanisms involved will be much more fully understood. But your question is really the question as to how those mechanisms came to be and historically how and when they operated. That is not a scientific question and you are free to indulge your fantasies as you please -- which gets back to the non-scientific question as to the source of order in nature.

4. While there is not yet any quantitative, predictive single theory of evolution, what we know of genetics combined with direct observations of nature makes it a pretty good bet that the basic notion of natural selection is responsible for speciation. This is quite consistent with the observation that nature is orderly.

5. I am very damn certain that the Earth is a LOT older than 6000 years. Radiometric aging shows that the Earth is about 4.5 billion years old and our knowledge of physics tells us that the material of which the solar system, and thus the Earth, is composed originated in some supernova.

6. There is thus far zero evidence of extraterrestrial life. However, the universe is a REALLY big place and there is ample opportunity for life to have arisen by the same processes, which we do not yet understand elsewhere. Thus while one cannot state with certainty that there is extra-terrestrial life, I would be rather surprised if there were not. However, the universe is a REALLY big place and it is quite likely that we will never encounter that life.

As to UFO's certainly there are UFOs. I once say an object flying in the air that I could not immediately identify, hence at that time it was an UFO. Turned out to be an eagle.

Claims of alien visits, alien abduction, etc. are utter nonsense.

7. Of course evolution is "happening". I have no clue what the "end result" will be, and neither does anyone else. One can hope that evolution will result in people in the future who do not compose lists of leading inane questions. But there is little evidence at this juncture.

8. One might hope that the order in the universe is such that what we see in this life is not the end. But there is zero evidence either way and the question is essentially unanswerable. I hope to not find out for quite some time.

9. One has some purpose in the hope of educating people to rational thinking and application of that scientific knowledge that we do have. Countering the idiotic notions of creationists provides some purpose, and quite a bit of amusement. But the existence of such irrational people is also a source of melancholy -- evolution in modern times is apparently not all that efficient at weeding out the profoundly stupid.

10. Science has nothing to do with the Bible and vice versa. If you are being taught anything different from that then you need to learn what science is really about lest you become part of the problem rather than part of the solution.

This post has been edited by DrRocket: 27 January 2012 - 06:44 PM

[Ophiolite]

Phi for All, on 27 January 2012 - 04:04 PM, said:

Whenever you're ranting at someone, you're bound to make a mistake that's much worse than what you're ranting about.

I've made this my aim in life, mainly because it's so easy to hit targets.

[Moontanman]

Ophiolite, on 27 January 2012 - 12:36 PM, said:

Excuse the forthcoming bad language (or not - on this issue I really don't care) I am frigging well tired of the ignorance of individuals who should know better. Evolutionist is a perfectly respectable term to apply to those of us who believe in evolution. The fact that you are unaware of this indicates that you are prone to the same emotional knee-jerk reactions we rightly accuse many fundamentalists of. In support of my view I need go no further than to note the title of Ernst Mayr's book, Toward a New Philosophy of Biology - Observations of an Evolutionist . If one of the founding fathers of the Modern Synthesis feels it is acceptable, even honourable to be called an evolutionist then it is fine with me. It ought to be fine with you also.

I disagree, words have meaning and the meaning is all about context, in the context of creationism the term evolutionist is demeaning, it is an assertion that evolution is a religion, a belief system that relies on faith. Taken out of context evolutionist is just a word, it could, in the right context be used to describe someone who thinks that the evidence for biological diversity is best explained by the theory of evolution.

Creationists use the term Evolutionism to describe all of science from the big bang to stellar processes that create stars and galaxies, the synthesis of heavy atoms, to the origin of life to the complex life we see around us today. Evolutionism, a faith based belief system that has no evidence to back it up what so ever, they describe people who hold this belief to be evolutionists, in this context it is an insult.

If someone I know well calls me Indian I understand it can be a term of endearment, and while not entirely accurate it can also just be a descriptive term, only someone who knows me well could possibly know why it can be used on me and the word is not demeaning. But if some one uses it as an insult the word becomes an insult, in the context of racism Indian can be an insult.

In the context of the OP evolutionist is indeed an insult....

This post has been edited by Moontanman: 27 January 2012 - 05:08 PM

[Tres Juicy]

Moontanman, on 27 January 2012 - 05:06 PM, said:

In the context of the OP evolutionist is indeed an insult....

I would have to agree here. Although that's not the fault of the poster. It is the fault of whoever wrote the questions.

The questions seem to have been written with an agenda in mind...

These in particular:

Quote

How old do you think the earth is and why?

Do you believe in life on other planets, aliens, and UFOs?

Is evolution still happening, and if so, what do you think will be the end result?

Do you believe in life after death? Explain.

How do your beliefs in origins and evolution affect your sense of purpose for your own life?

I can imagine that the answers to these will likely be used as ammunition to ridicule people with differing views and science in general

This post has been edited by Tres Juicy: 27 January 2012 - 05:23 PM

[Moontanman]

Creationist also commonly assert that Darwin is the Prophet of Evolutionism and that we Evolutionists worship him the same way they claim to worship Jesus... Sometimes they also call us Darwinists... Talk about projection.... it's all used to paint the theory of evolution in a bad light because they just can't believe a dog can give birth to cats or that an ape gave birth to a human which is what they assert Evolutionists claim...

This post has been edited by Moontanman: 27 January 2012 - 05:33 PM

[Arete]

Moontanman, on 27 January 2012 - 05:31 PM, said:

Creationist also commonly assert that Darwin is the Prophet of Evolutionism and that we Evolutionists worship him the same way they claim to worship Jesus...

Use of the word Darwinist is a litmus test to detect those who haven't actually read anything written by Darwin.

I study evolution, but would define my profession as an evolutionary biologist, rather than an evolutionist. In same sense I haven't heard physicists call themselves thermodyamicists, chemists call themselves covalenticisits or geologists call themselves extrusionists, etc. Why the exception for one particular theory?

This post has been edited by Arete: 27 January 2012 - 05:47 PM

[iNow]

Moontanman, on 27 January 2012 - 05:06 PM, said:

I disagree, words have meaning and the meaning is all about context, in the context of creationism the term evolutionist is demeaning, it is an assertion that evolution is a religion, a belief system that relies on faith. <...> Creationists use the term Evolutionism to describe <...> a faith based belief system that has no evidence to back it up what so ever, they describe people who hold this belief to be evolutionists, in this context it is an insult.

Tres Juicy, on 27 January 2012 - 05:21 PM, said:

I would have to agree here. <...> The questions seem to have been written with an agenda in mind. <...> I can imagine that the answers to these will likely be used as ammunition to ridicule people with differing views and science in general

Moontanman, on 27 January 2012 - 05:31 PM, said:

Creationist also commonly assert that Darwin is the Prophet of Evolutionism and that we Evolutionists worship him the same way they claim to worship Jesus... Sometimes they also call us Darwinists... Talk about projection.... it's all used to paint the theory of evolution in a bad light because they just can't believe a dog can give birth to cats or that an ape gave birth to a human which is what they assert Evolutionists claim...

Quite right. Go straight to the source to find out for yourself:

http://creationwiki.org/Evolutionism

[imatfaal]

Whilst I agree there was an agenda - some of the counterblast has been strong.

For instance I googled "Prophet of Evolutionism" (in inverted commas) and got 73 results - dropping to 24 when the duplicates were weeded out. Of the first two pages/20 results - 5 were from opponents of creationism. I don't see this as a common assertion.

There is a very dangerous movement to the right and to reactionary religious views (from an already extreme position in some cases) and I applaud and understand the passion of those who set themselves against it. Myself I do not think that the best way to counter that is through the same form of argument - they use perversion and distortions of the truth that are truly shameful, the rationalist response must surely constrain itself and stick strongly to the facts and to logic.

edit - to clarify; I didn't mean to imply that any of the posters here were using "perversions and distortions of the truth" - just that sometimes the response was a little too robust

This post has been edited by imatfaal: 27 January 2012 - 06:27 PM

[Phi for All]

imatfaal, on 27 January 2012 - 06:16 PM, said:

There is a very dangerous movement to the right and to reactionary religious views (from an already extreme position in some cases) and I applaud and understand the passion of those who set themselves against it.

Adding a foundation of religion to any argument increases it's longevity exponentially. Aggression in the name of religion guarantees a more earnest pledge to continue fighting no matter the cost. Since this in itself is extremely destructive, ill-considered and ultimately futile, there must be someone who gains from prolonged armed aggression fueled by religious fervor. Find those people or groups and you will probably find them helping to make the problem last as long as they can.

[StringJunky]

There's nowt wrong with being called an Evolutionist...it's just a label like "String Theorist" to denote the viewpoint that a person holds...it's a differentiating convenience. Nothing to get ones knickers in twist about.

[Moontanman]

imatfaal, on 27 January 2012 - 06:16 PM, said:

Whilst I agree there was an agenda - some of the counterblast has been strong.

For instance I googled "Prophet of Evolutionism" (in inverted commas) and got 73 results - dropping to 24 when the duplicates were weeded out. Of the first two pages/20 results - 5 were from opponents of creationism. I don't see this as a common assertion.

There is a very dangerous movement to the right and to reactionary religious views (from an already extreme position in some cases) and I applaud and understand the passion of those who set themselves against it. Myself I do not think that the best way to counter that is through the same form of argument - they use perversion and distortions of the truth that are truly shameful, the rationalist response must surely constrain itself and stick strongly to the facts and to logic.

edit - to clarify; I didn't mean to imply that any of the posters here were using "perversions and distortions of the truth" - just that sometimes the response was a little too robust

I can see what you are saying and i readily admit to a pretty extreme bias but in my defense i do live in the middle of the bible belt, i see this stuff every day. i am bombarded everywhere I go by people who when meeting you the first thing they want to know i where you go to church and if you don't they you are fair game to them, you need to hear the great news....

[DrRocket]

Moontanman, on 27 January 2012 - 05:06 PM, said:

In the context of the OP evolutionist is indeed an insult....

Consider the source and the insult disappears.

Rather like engaging in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent.

[Moontanman]

I have to say that i have heard the term Darwinists being used to describe anyone who believes in evolution quite a bit of late and not by just opponents of creationism, professional creationists like Ray Comfort, Ken Ham, Kent Hovind, and their ilk use the term regularly. But to be honest, being dishonest and misleading and misrepresenting science is how these guys make their living...

[Moontanman]

Darwinism and a few others explained


http://www.youtube.c.../11/2TkY7HrJOhc

[iNow]

Moontanman, on 28 January 2012 - 04:13 AM, said:

http://www.youtube.c.../11/2TkY7HrJOhc

From the video:


http://darwinwasrigh...m/12thFFoC.html

Quote

Science is a search for truth –whatever the truth may turn out to be, even if it’s evidently not what we wanted to believe it was. In science, it doesn’t matter what you believe; all that matters is why you believe it. This is why real science disallows faith, promising instead to remain objective, to follow wherever the evidence leads, and either correct or reject any and all errors along the way even if it challenges whatever we think we know now. But creationist organizations post written declarations of their unwavering obligation to uphold and defend their preconceived notions, declaring in advance their refusal to ever to let their minds be changed by any amount of evidence that is ever revealed. Anti-science evangelists display their statement of faith proudly on their own forums, as if admitting to a closed and dishonest mind wasn’t something to ashamed of or beg forgiveness for.

They don’t want to do science. They want to un-do science! They try to segregate experimental science from historical science, ignoring the fact that both are based on empirical observations and both can be checked with testable hypotheses. Worse, they want to redefine science in general so that astrology, subjective convictions of faith, and excuses of magic can supplant the scientific method whenever necessary in defense of their beliefs. They’re only open to critical inquiry so long as that is not permitted to challenge the sacred scriptures nor vindicate any of the fields of study to which they’re already opposed. In short, everything science stands for, -or hopes to achieve- is threatened by the political agenda of these superstitious subversives.

You can believe whatever you like. As long as you admit that it is a belief, you don’t have to defend it. But if you assert your belief as a statement of fact, then you do have to defend it! Stating anything as definitely true when there is insufficient evidence to back it –is dishonest. Making such positive proclamations without any evidence at all is a matter of faith. And promising in advance to forever defend an unsupportable a-priori preference even against an avalanche of evidence against it -is apologetics, which is all creation “science” really is.

[Moontanman]

DrRocket, on 27 January 2012 - 08:47 PM, said:

Consider the source and the insult disappears.

Rather like engaging in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent.

I understand that but I honestly think these two threads were really more of a troll than a real request for home work help. The questions were loaded, and reveled the OP's, or the person who put them up to it, personal biases. The only reason i answered i and i think many others as well, was the off chance that the two people might actually take a step back and look at what they are being taught. These Christian schools turn out people with degrees that are about as real as "I have a PHD in Truthology from Christian tech" it's sad, any person with an iota of a realistic world view or self respect or even respect for others would refuse to even admit to such a silly degree.

One of these "christian colleges" (this is not an isolated case, there are many of these christian diploma mills) is really a small building in the middle of nowhere where preachers and pastors send off for their PHD's which are based on what they believe about the Bible not any real knowledge. Then they use these fake PHD's to exploit the gullible and less than knowledgeable people for their own gain. It gets next to me, knowledge is often hard won, it takes real effort, the people who actually work to obtain this knowledge deserve respect for that fact alone. It's difficult to not be insulted by the shenanigans of these people, possibly that is a character flaw on my part...