Heresy - An opinion or a doctrine at variance with established religious beliefs Harsh words and if not true in itself it certainly can lead to loss of faith, i.e. having heretical opinions. Since Christianity teaches that mankind is made in the image of God and evolution theory teaches that mankind evolved without divine guidance from apes that does appear to meet the definition of heresy. Various atheists push evolution theory as an attack on religious beliefs and Christianity in particular; William Provine said "Evolution is the greatest engine of atheism ever invented." In his book The God Delusion, the atheist biologist Richard Dawkins claims that evolution is not compatible with belief in a Creator God because of the automatic nature of the evolutionary process. Evolutionist Jerry Coyne says "Atheism—at least the refusal to accept gods for which there's no evidence—is a logical outgrowth of science, " and "I have argued that religion is to science as superstition is to reason; indeed, that is the very reason they are incompatible. " Michael Ruse says, "Evolution is promoted by its practitioners as more than mere science. Evolution is promulgated as an ideology, a secular religion -- a full-fledged alternative to Christianity, with meaning and morality. I am an ardent evolutionist and an ex-Christian, but I must admit that in this one complaint -- and Mr. Gish is but one of many to make it -- the literalists are absolutely right. Evolution is a religion. This was true of evolution in the beginning, and it is true of evolution still today." Some try to find a compromise through Theistic Evolution. Of this Jerry Coyne says "In the end, theistic evolution is not a useful compromise between science and religion. Insofar as it makes testable predictions, it has been falsified, and insofar as it makes claims that can't be tested, it can be ignored. " Not a lie; it’s simply wrong.
Returning to the nub of the matter initiated when I started this thread, (not intending it simply to become yet another example of fruitless and pointless debate concerning the veracity of Evolutionary Theory), what if anything would be different in the teaching of Jesus of Nazareth found in the scriptures concerning our conduct towards God and our neighbour, which He claimed would result in a metaphorical categorisation as either 'sheep' or 'goats', (with attendant consequences), at the judgment seat of God for each of us, what if anything would have been different than what we actually now have in the scriptures, if mankind was indeed actually, physically, a product of Evolutionary Natural Selection? I don't believe the message that Jesus Christ delived to mankind by word and deed, as recorded in the scriptures would change by a single iota if Evolutionary Theory had been widely accepted as true during His time on earth. Can anyone in here postulate what Jesus Christ would have preached against the notion of Natural Selection, if it had been widely accepted at the time that Jesus preached and lived his message to mankind? Would He have wasted a single word railing against it or desisted from teaching anything that he actually taught, as a result of accepting the theory as a plausible method of God creating life on earth? .
I think that's the point. For the same reason I did. It's an evolutionist saying that the TOE is "a full-fledged alternative to Christianity".
And since when have the opinions of an avowed atheist been awarded credence by believers? What he says is obviously TOSH. .
If Jesus had accepted the TOE as true then he would not have quoted anything from Genesis 1-11. That excludes Creation Week, Noah's Flood, and the Tower of Babel.
Statements of avowed atheistic believers of evolution, to be more precise. So if you're saying that whatever believers of evolution say should not be awarded credence by us believers, I am very much in agreement with you! What I've been saying is that those Christians who have come to accept macroevolution have been deceived by those untrustworthy atheists who have committed themselves to their godless faith (they have no compunction about lying to others, and they deceive themselves so as to ease their consciences.)
I would agree that although evolution is not considered a "religion" most of its adherents certainly promote it with a religious fervency.
Let’s not gaslight here. They’re defending the integrity of their profession against constant unfounded attack by the intellectual equivalent of flat-earthers.
I believe in climate change, it's a fact. But the hysterical statements that some make are hard to believe. I live near LA and on a recent radio talk show one of the hosts proclaimed that the 2028 Olympic games in LA might not happen due to intense heat due to global warming
"Since when have the opinions of an avowed atheist been awarded credence by believers?" Is what I wrote and precisely what I meant - no more. "What he says is obviously TOSH." But he would say that, wouldn't he. The fact that you are quoting what an atheist says about religion, God and evolutionary theory indicates to me that you may have been 'taken in', even in your incredulity of the mechanism of Natural Selection as possibly God's method of Creating a universe containing creatures capable of 'seeking after him and finding Him'. Deniers of truth come in the form of both atheist believers in evolution and also fanatical believers in Young Earth Creationist Dogma. It is not what they believe that makes them deniers of truth. It is the fact that their dogmas are more powerful goads, prodding them and keeping them locked in their chosen beliefs, than is the truth itself. The truth is unable to change their unreasoning minds. And you and I know exactly who the TRUTH is, don't we. Ever wondered how so many people still go on believing Trump even after he has been multiple times publicly proved a bold faced liar? It's because they don't recognise truth when they see it but prefer to be lied to as long as they hear what they WANT to hear. The human mind can believe strange things when it ceases to reason but wants to believe in spite of even the truth it perceives. .
As a professing Christian who has no trouble committing to the whole of the Nicene Creed (save for the filioque) and one who happily reads and values the Genesis accounts of Creation. As a reasonably read, thinking person, of the 20/21st century period I also accept the proposition of the Theory of Evolution, and perhaps with a little less conviction (as it is beyond my field of expertise) the propositions of macroevolution. There is a law of natural regression that suggests that everything slows down, goes rusty and mouldy, and ultimately falls over or comes to a halt. All systems have a loss factor, some sort of friction in the system. The car does not go forever, ultimately you need to put petrol in the tank or power in the batteries. Perpetual Motion is physically impossible. The Theory of Evolution, and Darwin's Natural Selection, might be seen to in a way contradict this law, in that optimistically it suggests that things are getting better and that success in this depends upon adaption. This seems to suggest a chain (a very long chain) of happy accidents. The other proposition is that this system is having fuel put in the tank, or power in its battery, to enable and fuel that adaption. So I very much see that there is not simply room left in the proposition to allow for God, and indeed without God, the proposition is a little loose. There is a game to play that asks what was before that (the chicken or the egg). So we may ask What came First, the Big Bang or God? Moltmann argued that God is the Creator of all. He argued that those who argued that God spent a week setting up the experiment and then sits back and watches it all unfold an argument for God the Retired Creator. If you believed that God is actively involved in the world, and that creation is ever-changing, adapting, and evolving, then God must be surely involved in this process. This of course is entirely plausible, and upholds the contention of the law of natural regression and a Theory of Evolution. I think is also worth pointing out that there were those in the church who argued very strongly for a theory of terra centricity based on the canon of scripture and even excommunicated those who dared suggest a theory of helio centricity. The one thing I am very clear about is that we should talk about the Theory of Evolution. Based on the current evidence (including Natural Selection) this does seem the best account for the process. However, I don't agree with those who speak of the fact of evolution, as there will come a time when we know more about this subject.
Yes, and therein likes a huge problem. We're talking about a chain of happy accidents long enough to wrap around the globe several times. The first happy accident would have been the spontaneous generation of a single-celled organism. The second happy accident had to be the ability of that organism to reproduce. Then came the time when it somehow was able to become a multi-celled organism. Then come the specializations of some of the cells. And on and on. When it comes time for the first fish to come out of a plant, it gets interesting since both a male and a female must come about at the same time or else they cannot reproduce. Then the multiplied fish somehow develop into amphibians. Etc, etc, etc. We are talking about billions of happy accidents necessary to result in the vast variety of species, and the odds against all of these accidents is so great I wonder if the number exceeds the stars in the universe. It simply begs credulity. As some have written in books, it's less likely than a 747 jumbo jet assembling itself out of a scrapyard. At what point will macroevolution proponents admit the virtual impossibility that their hypothesis is true? But instead they teach the idea in universities as nearly-settled fact! If that is not dishonesty, what is? After all these years of digging, they really only have a handful of possible (potential but unproven and unprovable) transitional forms. The 'walking whale,' if that's what the skeleton really was. The reptilian jaw bones that they think could have evolved into tiny, specialized, mammal inner ear bones. A set of anthropoid skulls that maybe, perhaps, they have organized into proper sequential order (but for all we know they may all have existed contemporaneously). They truly don't have much physical evidence to point at for all their efforts. It's hardly enough to convince me that Christians need to modify the way they interpret scripture. Meanwhile, they ignore the fact that in some places the lowest layer of fossil-containing rock strata exhibits a virtual explosion of all life forms, which suggests a sudden and contemporaneous appearance of all major life forms (as well as a sudden catastrophe, such as a massive flood, that buried the life forms with extreme rapidity and preserved even the soft tissues of some of them). Some might label me a 'science denier' (or some such) for not believing in the macroevolutionary hypothesis, but at least I'm not a 'statistics denier.'
These are all absurd, bogus objections. I didn’t realize there could be so many ‘straw men’ outside a corn field! Rather than parrot anti-science propaganda ad nauseum, it would behoove you to familiarize yourself with the subject using reputable sources. You will find that there are indeed cogent answers to the questions those unfamiliar with the theory of evolution often raise. The issue, however, is not what you or I ‘believe’; Nature works the way it does whether anyone chooses to acknowledge it or not. The issue is the notion that sacred texts somehow override the sciences, which is not the traditional understanding held by the Church. Crude literalism - which the Fathers would have seen as tantamount to a denial of the Bible’s inspiration - combined with an insistence on adhering to 18th century biology is the theological outlier here, not the view that seeks to find harmony among all the disciplines out of the conviction that truth is self-consistent. Christians engaged in scientific endeavors were well aware that there were serious problems with a literal reading of Genesis long before Darwin. We don’t have an obligation to be experts in every subject, but we do have an obligation not to bear false witness, and to take proper care that we do not do so. In any case, if the Scriptures teach the truth, then they must be consistent with the findings of science, and if science disproves a particular scriptural interpretation, so much the worse for the latter. Theology may be the ‘Queen of the Sciences’, but it is not a queen among slaves. The alternative is tantamount to a skepticism and a detachment from reality so radical as to border on the insane and the solipsistic.
Don't just run your mouth with slanderous allegations. Prove what you say! But you can't, can you? You just get your jollies from bashing me.
It depends on the definition of religion. Many definitions include worship of a deity or deities but if Buddhism or Taoism is a religion then worship of a deity is not a necessity. One basic definition is "a cause, principle, or system of beliefs held to with ardor and faith" [Merriam Webster]. Evolution would qualify under that definition. Evolution provides a set of beliefs concerning the cause, nature, and purpose of the universe, and mankind's place and purpose within it. Aside: the terms microevolution and macroevolution are generally credited to the Russian Yuri Filipchenko and brought into the English-speaking world by Filipchenko's student Theodosius Dobzhansky. The terms do not have precise definitions in current usage. That really should be another thread. This thread has drifted well off the original topic.
And I gave sensible information that backed it up. If someone wants to say that the information was "absurd, bogus" then they should be able to back up that statement with proof. By any chance did you read the article I linked to in post #99? If not, here is some of what you missed: "We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, . . . in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated commitment to materialism. . . . we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door." (Richard Lewontin, evolutionist and professor at Harvard University, now deceased) Speaking of the trust students naturally place in their highly educated college professors, one such instructor wrote: "And I use that trust to effectively brainwash them. . . . our teaching methods are primarily those of propaganda. We appeal -- without demonstration -- to evidence that supports our position. We only introduce arguments and evidence that supports the currently accepted theories and omit or gloss over any evidence to the contrary." (Singham, Mark, "Teaching and Propaganda," Physics Today, vol. 53, June 2000, p. 54.) You see, I have shown how people are being deceived. It's being done to millions, probably billions of people. Nothing personal intended by my statement about Christians having been taken in by the fanciful tales being told in classrooms around the world. They have indoctrinated the masses, and it is ongoing; many of the indoctrinated are now teachers or professors themselves, so the lie perpetuates itself.
There’s nothing rational or evidence-based in these sentiments. This is paranoid delusion. Given that you have yet to interact with the actual scientific theory but only caricatures of it, you’ll forgive those of us who actually do something of the actual theory if we aren’t as persuaded by your ‘refutation’ as you are. You’ll probably find a more receptive audience in the Moon Landing Hoax crowd, the Flat Earth Society, or anti-vaxxers, where critical thinking is not a requirement for membership.