Why Evolution Should Be Taught

by hamilcarr 360 Replies latest jw friends

Satanus

"Come at me w that banana! Go ahead!", he screeches.

S
Caedes

How does astrology undermine my position that the real myth and fantasy is evolution?
Answer the question and I will tell you.
inrainbows

burn
There have been (and still are) evolutionist/atheists in the world who want to deny or limit the right to practice religion, for instance in China or North Korea. Stalin famously persecuted religious believers of all kinds.
I am sorry, but your attempt to link intolerant totalitarian ideologies with a scientific theory is a complete failure.
Political attempts to link with evolution have been similarly unsuccessful, so don't take this personally.
Your fallacious presupposition is shown in your usage of "evolutionist/atheists". On some subconscious level you equate the two - although you might deny this your own words show otherwise.
Evolution has NOTHING to do with atheism. You will learn NOTHING in a science class that disproves the existence of god.
What you learn in a science class will disprove the claims made by some people that the creation myths invented by bronze-age Levantine pastoralists/iron-age Arabian merchants/bronze-age agriculturalists from the Indian sub-continent/etc., etc., etc., are literally true.
Some ignorant ancient making up a creation myth that is obviously not true when examined against the available evidence does not disprove god.
Some modern-day apologist insisting those myths are true, or that variants on those myths that STILL conflict with the actual evidence are true doesn't disprove god.
The hubris of those seeking to ignore the evidence supporting modern evolutionary theory is that they limit the power of god. Their faith is too limited to accept that god might actually be clever enough to make the Universe the way it wants just by setting the ball rolling. Their minds can only comprehend a 'carpenter god' who has to get its hands dirty in an episodic creative process.
Either that or they realise that accepting that various Holy Books are not the literal word of god but imperfect documents authored by mostly well-meaning men means they also have to abandon condemnation of people leading lives that do not harm others on the basis of their beliefs, habits or sexuality based upon those some Holy Books.
And they are too scared and desperate to abandon the facile assurance that believing they are leading life exactly how god wants because some book says so gives them.
And this again is a failure of faith in god, because they end up worshipping a squashed dead tree with ink smeared on it instead of god as god might be. They make an idol in their minds; god as they want it to be.
And using this imaginary idol, this composite false-god of wood-pulp, ink, fear and insecurity, they condemn others or try to force the propagation of their own fantastical beliefs in the public school system.
Naturally they have a complete right to believe in whatever ignorant rubbish they wish. But not to have it taught in schools, and not to climb onto a pulpit and condemn others without the reaction such an action deserves.
They need to have the moral high-ground they conceitedly believe they hold taken from them by wholesale rejection and repudiation of such hate-mongering, not the lukewarm acceptance by less radical and more reasonable co-religionists.
A modern liberal Christian who does not condemn Christofascism acts in the same irresponsible fashion as a modern liberal Muslim who does not condemn similar Islamofascism.
You might disagree with me, but I would dearly love you to demonstrate through logical reasoned debate the fault in my argument.
Love and Kisses
inrainbows
nameless_one

I could just as easily point out that if macroevolution was a fact, beyond any reasonable doubt.... then why aren't Jewish boys born without foreskin. The Jews have been circumcising on the 8th day for how many years? Why do I still have to shave/wax my legs, underarms and bikini?.....
A comparable question might be, if all parents gave their child an ankle tattoo of a butterfly at 8 days old, would babies start being born with butterflies inked into their ankles?

I've been following this thread but really prefer to just watch quietly. I did have to comment on this though. No hard feelings intended yknot, it just seems that you are adamantly opposing something you don't fully understand?
Warlock

How does astrology undermine my position that the real myth and fantasy is evolution?
Answer the question and I will tell you.
Ceades,
What do you think? I'm a fucking kid? I don't live in Disneyland, like you do. Those gods, scientists, that you believe in, are absolutely telling the unbiased truth about evolution. They have no reason to tell you other than the truth about the origins of life.
No biases.
No leanings.
No grants available to conduct their 'research'.
No reason to 'cheat' on their findings.
They are the MOST honest people on earth.
Warlock
Caedes

Still can't be honest enough to answer the question then? You're squirming.
Do you actually have some evidence of wholesale cheating in the scientific community? Or are you just pulling that claim out of your arse?
Incidently science hasn't come up with any theories on the origin of life (only some hypotheses) although I fail to see that the failure of the scientific community to prove a theory of abiogenesis has any bearing on the veracity of the theory of evolution. Still someone like you is unlikely to let facts cloud your dogma.
BurnTheShips

On some subconscious level you equate the two - although you might deny this your own words show otherwise.
No I do not, I accept evolution as an explanation for biological diversity. Atheists, however frequently tend to subconciously link the two.* If it were otherwise, why are the so many most famous evolutionists notorious atheists? Dawkins, for example, uses evolution as an anti-theist weapon.
Evolution has NOTHING to do with atheism. You will learn NOTHING in a science class that disproves the existence of god.
Many Atheists use evolution to bludgeon believers. There is a great deal of psychological and cultural overlap here. Please forgive me if I take them at their word.*
The hubris of those seeking to ignore the evidence supporting modern evolutionary theory is that they limit the power of god. Their faith is too limited to accept that god might actually be clever enough to make the Universe the way it wants just by setting the ball rolling. Their minds can only comprehend a 'carpenter god' who has to get its hands dirty in an episodic creative process
I am in full agreement.
*Any creationist lawyer who got me on the stand could instantly win over the jury simply by asking me: 'Has your knowledge of evolution influenced you in the direction of becoming an atheist?' I would have to answer yes. ~ Richard Dawkins
Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist. ~ Richard Dawkins
The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference. As that unhappy poet A.E. Housman put it: ‘For Nature, heartless, witless Nature Will neither care nor know.’ DNA neither cares nor knows. DNA just is. And we dance to its music. ~ Richard Dawkins
For Darwin, any evolution that had to be helped over the jumps by God was no evolution at all. It made a nonsense of the central point of evolution. ~ Richard Dawkins
[Darwins's notebooks] include many statements showing that he espoused but feared to expose something he perceived as far more heretical than evolution itself: philosophical materialism -- the postulate that matter is the stuff of all existence and that all mental and spiritual phenomena are its by-products. ~ Stephen Jay Gould
Naturalistic evolution has clear consequences that Charles Darwin understood perfectly. 1) No gods worth having exist; 2) no life after death exists; 3) no ultimate foundation for ethics exists; 4) no ultimate meaning in life exists; and 5) human free will is nonexistent. ~ William Provine
There is indeed one belief that all true original Darwinians held in common, and that was their rejection of creationism, their rejection of special creation. This was the flag around which they assembled and under which they marched. When Hull claimed that “the Darwinians did not totally agree with each other, even over essentials”, he overlooked one essential on which all these Darwinians agreed. Nothing was more essential for them than to decide whether evolution is a natural phenomenon or something controlled by God. The conviction that the diversity of the natural world was the result of natural processes and not the work of God was the idea that brought all the so-called Darwinians together in spite of their disagreements on other of Darwin’s theories. ~ Ernst Mayr
We have thus arrived at the answer to our question, What is Darwinism? It is Atheism. This does not mean, as before said, that Mr. Darwin himself and all who adopt his views are atheists; but it means that his theory is atheistic, that the exclusion of design from nature is, as Dr. Gray says, tantamount to atheism. ~ Charles Hodge
Evolution is the greatest engine of atheism ever invented. ~ William Provine
BTS
Junction-Guy

The point has been made that Evolution and Atheism are 2 totally unrelated topics, and in the real world, that may be the case with certain groups of people, but on XJW boards it seems that Atheism and Evolution can't be separated. This no doubt has to do with all the brainwashing by the JW cult to create an aversion to all things religious (JW's excluded of course).

I believe in Creation, not Evolution. If someone hands me a square peg and claims it is round, I would deny it to no end, despite what so called "educated" people would claim.

That being said, if by some chance that evolution were true, it wouldn't make a difference to me as an XJW. I have been through alot in my life, suffered alot of heartache, alot of disappointments. Some monkkey or fish crawling out of the sea billions of years ago wouldnt mean a damn thing to me.

Also if evolution were true, then we wouldn't have to live "green". We could pollute the earth to no end, humans would die out, then the evolutionary process would begin all over again, and a billion years in the future people once again would be debating the existence of God.

I believe in Creation, and see no tangible benefit to believe otherwise, therefore the case is closed for me.
Junction-Guy

So really then, what is your agenda for promoting it, and why do you try to force others to believe it?
Caedes

JG
For the same reason that science covers such areas as gravity or the earth being (nearly) spherical, science limits itself to provable theories rather than myth and superstition. For that reason evolution (as a proven theory) should be taught at school as a fundamental part of biology. It isn't a case of forcing people to believe it, it is a question of ensuring that superstition doesn't replace science in the science classroom.
It is only promoted since some theists have an issue with it (because it undermines a particularly dogmatic literal interpretation of the bible) and are seeking to undermine the teaching of scientific fact.
Of course yours was a rhetorical question since no amount of evidence will force you to admit that you might be wrong.

Why Evolution Should Be Taught

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