The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #118764   Message #2573950
Posted By: Uncle_DaveO
23-Feb-09 - 01:40 PM
Thread Name: BS: Want to get God out of US Inauguration?
Subject: RE: BS: Want to get God out of US Inauguration?
Mrzzy said, in part:

What about "There is no evolution because I believe in the Bible" - when evolution has been thoroughly demonstrated to be true?

Two comments:

First, people (perhaps including some here) confuse "evolution" with "Darwin's theory of evolution". That there has been change in flora and fauna over time by (gradual or sporadic) change is pretty well demonstrable. I'll deal with this again later.

Darwin's theory of evolution is another matter. The theory as he posited it is not completely adopted today by those who purport to be Darwinians, and it's certainly not the only theory around.   I believe Darwin's approach to be close to what actually happens, but there were other theories before Darwin came along, and I believe some afterward, some of which depended on a god's intervention, some depended upon the will of the species to change, and so on. While Darwin's theory is the most systematic and believable (I believe), there are still those who buy the others, so "evolution" or "the theory of evolution" are not to be equated with "Darwin's theory of evolution".

The fundamentalists (or at least some of them) even deny my first paragraph, that there has been evolution. They do it in a way that I pejoratively characterize as "making God a trickster", who planted false clues in what we would read as the geological record or the paleontological record. Thus some of them determinedly cling to the idea of a creation once and for all, unchanging down to today.

I think it's important to remember the difference in language and preconceived concepts when talking about such things, to avoid talking past each other.

Dave Oesterreich