The origin of species today. (From another Chris thread)

[Niachu]

Evolution: it works.

 

[Holdek]

The Theory of Evolution includes both natural selection and genetic drift.

Intelligent design is creationism repackaged with implicit, rather than explicit, sourcing to God.

I don't even know what I'm supposed to vote for here.

When I was a kid my school taught that The Bible is 100% accurate in every detail, and that Evil-lution is a lie from Satan.

The hell kinda school did you go to?

Oh wait, Catholic schools are still a thing...

Hm? I'm Catholic and in my experience, Catholics are a little more relaxed around evolution. I'm not sure if that's universal though, because my dad hated the idea that we "descended from monkeys". (I'm aware of what's wrong with that line, bare with me).

Nowadays, I see Creationism as something that's symbolic than something literal.

The Catholic Church officially supports evolution.

 

[Watcher]

The Catholic Church officially supports evolution.

Historically they've had to update their ideals just so they don't seem retarded. Like they previously thought the world was flat too (and it's stated in the bible)

 

[Holdek]

The Catholic Church officially supports evolution.

Historically they've had to update their ideals just so they don't seem retarded. Like they previously thought the world was flat too (and it's stated in the bible)

Better than fundamentalist Protestants.

 

[Hasharin]

The Catholic Church officially supports evolution.

Historically they've had to update their ideals just so they don't seem retarded. Like they previously thought the world was flat too (and it's stated in the bible)

Better than fundamentalist Protestants.

For me, it seems that there are more Protestants nutjobs than Catholic ones. And majority of the latter are in Poland.

 

[Holdek]

However, religion has their own objectives as well. History records show a Jesus, parts of Noah's ark were discovered, and the Koran was written by a real prophet (no name out of respect) Wether or not you believe these events prove a religion is up to you.

Jesus is not historic. This debate has been going on for hundreds of years and the general consensus was even if he did, he was likely a completely different person than the one described in the Bible. Considering the only "historical evidence" is that he was most likely baptized and ordered to be crucified by Pontius Pilate. With hundreds of years of embellishment and ideas absorbed from other religions at the time (like how Jesus wasn't actually born on Christmas. They adopted that holiday from the Pagans.) Parts of Noah's Ark were not discovered, people claim that they went to mount Sinai and found wood there, it's all ludicrous. Regardless of whether the Koran was written by a real "prophet" it doesn't make what it said true.

The problem I have with things like believing Noah's Ark actually happened was also believing that other things in that story also occurred. Things like Noah living to be 600 years old and being a guy who lived in the Middle East and taking 2 of every species from all over the world, and putting it on a boat. Then there's the issue of how do you get the Australian animals back to Australia if you are a man that didn't even know such a place existed.

Re: the "historicity" of Jesus.
Actually, if you corner a believer, the only (non-biblical) " "historical" "evidence" " (note the extra-sarcastic double quotations) they can point two boils down to two quotes:

1 quote from the Annals of Tacitus.
1 quote from the The Antiquities of the Jews.

The problems with both are as follows.
The quote from Tacitus merely acknowledges that Christians existed (a point not in dispute) and that they apparently followed someone called The Chrestus. It doesn't explain who the Chrestus was, not does it corroborate that this Chrestus person/thing was real. The godbotherers also neglect to mention all the times that Tacitus mentioned other non-Christian deities. Using their logic, one could "prove" Mithras was real, because Tacitus mentioned that deity and his cult.

The quote from Flavius Josephus is even more fraudulent.
But to save myself the trouble of retyping the rebuttal .....here is some delicious copypasta.

• 
  Okay...be honest now...have you ever read the Antiquities? I don't mean read just those paragraphs the pastor snipped out, but the entire book itself?
  
  I hate to break this to you, but the Testimonium Flavianum is actually way worse than the Tacitus quote, evidence wise.
  In fact, it's a proven sham, and anyone who has ever read the Antiquities can spot that.
  Here's why:
  
  Here's the Antiquities...
  http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2848
  
  Go ahead an read 3 or 4 pages of the Antiquities for yourself. Doesn't matter which pages. Any 3 or 4 pages will do. Soak in Josephus's writing style.
  I think, if you read enough of it, you'll notice...
  
  *Flavius is a historian, not an theologian.
  *Flavius is (shock!) totally old-skool Jewish and couldn't care less about all those kooky Christians and their silly schismatic heresies.
  *There were oodles of different people named Jesus mentioned in the Antiquities; 'coz, as a name, "Jesus" was as common as crabgrass back then, and 6 or 7 Jesii are mentioned in the Antiquities. (My fave was the priest who got ganked by his own brother.)
  
  Go ahead, read a few more pages. I'll wait.
  
  Okay, are you sure you get his writing style yet?
  Good. Now, go to the page (in my copy its on page 620) where the Testimonum is and read the entire page it is on.
  
  (*record scratch noise*)
  (*car crash noise*)
  (*broken pottery noise*)
  Good lord, the redactional seams are visible from the surface of the moon!
  Yep. That weird pro-Christian tonguebath sounds suddenly unprofessional, out of character and out of context; and the sudden alien-ness of it well understood by any Hebrew scholars, textual criticism boffins and anyone who is paying attention.
  It doesn't sound like same writer at all...because it isn't. Scholars suspect that this was a pseudepigraphic interpolation placed there by the church father Eusebius. The passage is long enough to run word entropy analysis on it, and it matches Eusebius's smarmy style.
  Oh, that and old copies of the Antiquities, that were published before AD 200, don't have the Testimonium in it.
  
  Also, Do you find it kinda fishy how this interpolation is shoved where it is? It's like you can almost hear Eusebius wetting himelf and squealing..."Oooh, oooh, oooh, I found a paragraph then mentions Pontius Pilate! Let's shove in this bit of propaganda here! Let's ignore that the paragraph after is about the temple of Isis and the one before is about Pilate farting around with aqueducts! Pilate! Pilate! Pilate! It's kinda sorta maybe the right timeframe! Stick it in! Stick it in! Stick it in!"

Feel free to use that the next time some William Lane Craig wannabe foists The Testimonium Flavianum as if it were a smoking gun and not the naked and obvious fraud it is.

You are aware that this view is in the minority among historians though, right? It's generally agreed that there was a man named Jesus, called "Christ" by his followers, who was baptized by John the Baptist and was crucified by Pontius Pilate. That's it.

First, Josephus makes two, not one, references to Jesus. The first, the Testimonium, is considered partially authentic, but dressed up by Christians later on. The second is by way of describing the death of Jesus' brother James.

Second, Tacitus definitely does state that that Chrestus, whoever he was, was real, because he says that he was crucified by Pilate and was the leader of some sort of superstitious belief.

Third, Roman historian Suetonius makes reference to Chrestus stirring up trouble among the Jews.

 

[Picklepower]

Schools should be required to teach both sides of the Astrology/Astronomy controversy, Astrologists are being left out of the "academic" community, because they don't fall in line with big science!!!. You know Americas ancestors in Europe, believed in astrology quote abit, but now with people in office like Obama, our kids will be taught that stars are just big balls of hot gass, is that what you want your children being taught? If stars have no play in our destiny, than what's to stop a child from becoming another Columbine shooter, if our events are just random, then why not?

 

[Holdek]

Schools should be required to teach both sides of the Astrology/Astronomy controversy, Astrologists are being left out of the "academic" community, because they don't fall in line with big science!!!. You know Americas ancestors in Europe, believed in astrology quote abit, but now with people in office like Obama, our kids will be taught that stars are just big balls of hot gass, is that what you want your children being taught? If stars have no play in our destiny, than what's to stop a child from becoming another Columbine shooter, if our events are just random, then why not?

Or at least "teach the controversy."

 

[Arkangel]

Or at least "teach the controversy."

The whole "Teach the Controversy" mantra is really a made up concept. In reality, there isn't any real controversy within science concerning the validity of evolution. Evolution already has so much evidence in it's favor that at this point, it would take something completely monumental to completely overturn our understanding of biology; something that would win someone a Nobel Prize if discovered. So far, nothing of the sort has come along, and contenders of the throne like Intelligent Design have been discredited and proven false in both the science lab and in court (Kitzmiller vs. Dover).

If you're gonna "Teach the Controversy", you may as well also teach about the stork in Sex-Ed class or Alchemy in the Chemistry class.

 

[Holdek]

Or at least "teach the controversy."

The whole "Teach the Controversy" mantra is really a made up concept. In reality, there isn't any real controversy within science concerning the validity of evolution. Evolution already has so much evidence in it's favor that at this point, it would take something completely monumental to completely overturn our understanding of biology; something that would win someone a Nobel Prize if discovered. So far, nothing of the sort has come along, and contenders of the throne like Intelligent Design have been discredited and proven false in both the science lab and in court (Kitzmiller vs. Dover).

If you're gonna "Teach the Controversy", you may as well also teach about the stork in Sex-Ed class or Alchemy in the Chemistry class.

 

[hellbound]

Wait, what I know as genetic drift isn't a separate theory but one of the more minor mechanisms of evolution (change in frequency of an allele too neutral to be selected for by random sampling). What is the theory of genetic drift?

 

[Watcher]

Or at least "teach the controversy."

The whole "Teach the Controversy" mantra is really a made up concept. In reality, there isn't any real controversy within science concerning the validity of evolution. Evolution already has so much evidence in it's favor that at this point, it would take something completely monumental to completely overturn our understanding of biology; something that would win someone a Nobel Prize if discovered. So far, nothing of the sort has come along, and contenders of the throne like Intelligent Design have been discredited and proven false in both the science lab and in court (Kitzmiller vs. Dover).

If you're gonna "Teach the Controversy", you may as well also teach about the stork in Sex-Ed class or Alchemy in the Chemistry class.

It's only a controversy in American politics when dealing with the religious American base.

In the rest of the world Evolution is taught in schools and has been for years.

It generally reminds me of things like how the rest of the world uses the Metric system wheras America uses Imperial. It's this very outdated sensibility that the rest of the world has long since moved past.

It's also amusing to me how badly people want to try and disprove evolution, when it's one of the theories in science that has the most evidence. To put it into perspective, gravity is a theory as well and it doesn't have nearly the same amount of evidence of it's existence. And it's entirely due to people putting their fingers in their ears and saying it's not enough. So they continually find more and more. Cell biology is also a theory and it is the very backbone of modern medicine, and it relies on evolution in it's entirety.

 

[Holdek]

Or at least "teach the controversy."

The whole "Teach the Controversy" mantra is really a made up concept. In reality, there isn't any real controversy within science concerning the validity of evolution. Evolution already has so much evidence in it's favor that at this point, it would take something completely monumental to completely overturn our understanding of biology; something that would win someone a Nobel Prize if discovered. So far, nothing of the sort has come along, and contenders of the throne like Intelligent Design have been discredited and proven false in both the science lab and in court (Kitzmiller vs. Dover).

If you're gonna "Teach the Controversy", you may as well also teach about the stork in Sex-Ed class or Alchemy in the Chemistry class.

It's only a controversy in American politics when dealing with the religious American base.

In the rest of the world Evolution is taught in schools and has been for years.

Well, rest of the developed world, anyway.

 

[exball]

Or at least "teach the controversy."

The whole "Teach the Controversy" mantra is really a made up concept. In reality, there isn't any real controversy within science concerning the validity of evolution. Evolution already has so much evidence in it's favor that at this point, it would take something completely monumental to completely overturn our understanding of biology; something that would win someone a Nobel Prize if discovered. So far, nothing of the sort has come along, and contenders of the throne like Intelligent Design have been discredited and proven false in both the science lab and in court (Kitzmiller vs. Dover).

If you're gonna "Teach the Controversy", you may as well also teach about the stork in Sex-Ed class or Alchemy in the Chemistry class.

Hold up, my dad didn't win baby me from a stork in a game of poker?

 

[Surtur]

For the record they only teach Evolution in American schools.

 

[Arkangel]

Hold up, my dad didn't win baby me from a stork in a game of poker?

Actually, he lost that poker game.

 

[Holdek]

For the record they only teach Evolution in American schools.

Perhaps at this moment, but: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louisiana_Science_Education_Act

 

[Surtur]

For the record they only teach Evolution in American schools.

Perhaps at this moment, but: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louisiana_Science_Education_Act

One state passes a controversial law that has heavy opposition. Not likely to become a trend.

 

[teheviltwin]

One state passes a controversial law that has heavy opposition. Not likely to become a trend.

I think the thing I find most worrying about the US at the moment is that belief in evolution has declined in republicans by about 11% in the last four years. I always take these political polls with a grain of salt because it does depend on how the question is worded but apparently the public trust in scientists is at a record low.

I've watched and read quite a bit of creationist material and a lot of it seems to be just a lack of understanding but some of it is deliberately fraudulent. In particular, the levels that the Intelligent Design crowd are happy to stoop to. Even when it comes to the very basics like the difference between the general use of the word 'theory' and 'scientific theory'.

Our kids are going to grow up in a world where the economy is most likely going to be based on knowledge and invention. I can't, for the life of me, understand why people are happy to even try to adulterate science with the supernatural when it comes to their children's education.

 

[Holdek]

For the record they only teach Evolution in American schools.

Perhaps at this moment, but: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louisiana_Science_Education_Act

One state passes a controversial law that has heavy opposition. Not likely to become a trend.

It passed the state senate 35-0 and the house 94-3.

And you can bet these will come up for votes again: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_freedom_bills