Evolution vs. Intelligent Design discussion

What happened to this group, guys? It's gone cold.

Busy, busy busy busy gotta go. Dunno about anybody else.

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Some would say that as a result of a variety of interacting factors and stochastic events, this group has been selected against by the natural forces that drive the evolution of groups.

Others would say that this group was poorly designed by its creator, for some mysterious reason that only the group's creator knows.

Ah, but that creator may one day judge this group, and, based on whether its net content favored or did not favor belief in the group's creator, condemn the group and all of its members to an eternity.

Note that I don't specify an eternity of any particular thing, just an eternity. It might be an eternity of watching reruns of I Love Lucy, for example, or sitting next to George W. Bush at a Republican fundraiser that never ends, but I'd like to think that Group Heaven is at least a possibility...

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I don't know about you, but I don't believe in any creator-RGB.

Logan wrote: "I don't know about you, but I don't believe in any creator-RGB."

May Ifni have mercy on your soul, Logan. When she spins the Wheel of Fortune in your life and it comes out double 00, don't blame me...;-)

rgb

Humorous comments aside, I would guess that part of the issue is that there is just only so much to say. Those who acknowledge evolution can certainly lay out various forms of evidence and try to explain it logically, but the people who deny evolution don't really do so for logical or factual reasons, but merely reasons of preference.

It's hard to use logic and evidence to address something that has no relation to either.

After a while, both sides probably just get tired of rehashing the same thing over and over.

Daniel wrote: "Humorous comments aside, I would guess that part of the issue is that there is just only so much to say. Those who acknowledge evolution can certainly lay out various forms of evidence and try to ..."

Well, alternatively it is easy to use logic and evidence to address matters of fact like whether or not the biosphere evolved or was created in six days some 6000 years ago. Logic and evidence in that case lead on to only one, nearly certain conclusion -- that it evolved as one small part of the ongoing natural time evolution of a complex Universe over the course of roughly 4 billion years, beginning some 9 or 10 billion years after an event that we have come to call "the big bang", although that isn't really a very good description. We can instantly and conclusively reject the hypothesis that the Universe, or the Earth's biosphere itself, or humanity, or the Holocene (the current interglacial era), are less than 6000 years old. A glance at the sky at night reveals the light of many stars that are farther away than 6000 light years, and were billions of years old when they gave off the light that we see today.

The people who deny evolution don't deny it for logical or factual reasons, nor for reasons of preference (whatever that means) -- they do it because they were indoctrinated in a mythology before they were old enough to reason and taught not to question that mythology under any circumstances lest horrible consequences befall them. They were threatened with hellfire and damnation and brainwashed into believing that they were the inevitable consequence of any weakening of their "faith" in the truth of the mythology no matter what reason, logic or evidence is presented that contradicts it.

It is really very sad. We see the evil consequences of this sort of deliberate eliding of reality -- editing out inconvenient facts in order to fit it to some prescribed scriptural narrative -- in the behavior of those who subscribe to all of the world's scriptural religions. Islam, for example, is based on the Quran, which threatens "the fire" in verse after verse, sura after sura -- in addition to mandating the murder of apostates. Christianity is little better -- unbelievers are still consigned to an eternal fire even if their lack of belief is itself totally honest, the result of using their reason and common sense to do the best they can to make sense of the world of their experience. Backed by extortion in the form of horrendous consequences and socially reinforced by countless means, the distortion of reality that results from belief in antique myths leads to many, many unwise decisions being made, many lives lost, many wars fought, much wealth squandered and in the end, much needless suffering inflicted in this world by those trying to avoid an imagined punishment in an imaginary afterlife at the hands of an imaginary being that cares deeply about things that really do not matter at all.

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rgb wrote: "The people who deny evolution don't deny it for logical or factual reasons, nor for reasons of preference (whatever that means) -- they do it because they were indoctrinated in a mythology before they were old enough to reason and taught not to question that mythology under any circumstances lest horrible consequences befall them. They were threatened with hellfire and damnation and brainwashed into believing that they were the inevitable consequence of any weakening of their "faith" in the truth of the mythology no matter what reason, logic or evidence is presented that contradicts it."

Reasons of preference refers to people believing what they want to be true as opposed to searching for and/or accepting the truth as it is. I do believe that many prefer to deny evolution because of brainwashing and some deny evolution because the idea of being on the same 'same level as animals" is repulsive to them and some for other reasons still.

I agree that it is all very sad.