…without a creator. I agree that many people are too eager to attempt to use evolution as a proof for their atheism (i.e., a belief that there is no God, as opposed to skepticism on the matter). I agree with Derb’s comment, though.
43 thoughts on “A Creation Myth”
Comments are closed.
But there is a Creator: Bos’n Higgs!
I had accepted the assertion that neanderthal and modern human were two distinct species, then I read this…
the Neanderthal–human divergence might be within the realm of modern human genetic variation
Which is another way of saying neaderthals are just a variation within the human species.
Are Neanderthals distinguishable from NFL nose tackles or London rioters?
The thing that really opened my eyes about the working of evolution by natural selection was reading stuff like Dawkins’ The Selfish Gene and The Ancestor’s Tale, and science writer Matt Ridley’s Genome, The Red Queen, and The Agile Gene. The view of evolution at the gene level is radically different from what most people think of as evolution.
That of course is not to say that evolution by natural selection doesn’t have problems; The Red Queen is about one of the most fundamental ones: what is the evolutionary advantage of sexual vs asexual reproduction? This is a highly nontrivial question that is not yet settled.
Glad to read Derbyshire’s takedown of the creationists in all guises. The intellectual dishonesty of the IDiots is breathtaking…
Atheism at root is not a “belief that there is no God,” it is the absence of a belief in God(s). Prior to Darwin there was no valid theory as to how all of these diverse living things got here; this was a major weak point for a rational, scientific worldview. Part of the appeal for some atheists is that Evolutionary Theory provides an answer to the religious claim that “God put it all here” by providing a more plausible and evidence-based explanation of how it all came to be.
Atheism at root is not a “belief that there is no God,” it is the absence of a belief in God(s).
No, that’s agnosticism. The way most people define those terms, anyway.
Here’s the test. If you go around trying to convince people there’s no god, and object to public rituals where He’s mentioned, you’re not an agnostic — you’re an atheist.
Literally it just means ‘not a theist.’ I think most people find it irritating to have someone express a belief they don’t hold. I find it hard to understand how and why people don’t love truth or don’t care. Objective facts do seem to stand on their own being stubborn things. We might not all reach the same conclusions. Which to me just means taking more time to consider the facts.
People that don’t know how to reason aren’t the worst however. It’s people that are supposed to be skeptical scientists that hold a belief because it’s valuable to them to do so when they know they have to lie to do it. Since other people rely on these experts I think they should somehow pay for what they do.
To me, they are no longer scientists, they’ve become a subset of the lying political class.
Well, when I finally found Derb’s comment (down in the middle of the Radio Free NJ comment thread), I especially agreed with this bit:
“I watched the clip, but without much interest.”
Geez.
Damn your “spam filter.” I wrote a long post about how sexual reproduction allows for hybrid vigor and it was rejected and the work lost. Screw it, I’m not going to retype all that.
“Prior to Darwin there was no valid theory as to how all of these diverse living things got here; this was a major weak point for a rational, scientific worldview.”
This is what always gets me. Even if no one else around you has a valid understanding of why something works, that doesn’t make empiricism “weak”. It doesn’t make whatever the prevailing mythology of the day is “strong”. It just means that you don’t know yet.
The idea that you need to be able to see clear through to the foundations of the universe in order to be able to say anything to Bob the storyteller, who thinks he has all the answers because he says God a lot, is somewhat annoying.
I suppose it also goes along with the idea that various worldviews are in some sort of authority dominance-contest. This may be true of idiotic human politics, but it has no bearing on the truth and falsehood of any given worldview.
Facts, theories, worldviews – it doesn’t make sense to evaluate them as true or false based on any sort of competition. For something to be true, it has to stand on its own without reference to competitors, only to our knowledge of the world.
Damn your spam filter. I left a lengthy post giving the detailed proof of the non-exisence of a god (based partly on an elementary proof of the Riemann hypothesis as a minor Lemma), and your spam filter dumped it. Well, I’m certainly not going to type all that in again…so just take my word for it.
Science and religion are not really mutually exclusive; although, some people like to treat them that way because they think they know all the answers or feel superior to the other group.
If science has taught us anything, it is that things exist that we cannot perceive.
Darn your spam filter. I left a lengthy post giving the detailed proof of the exisence of a god (based partly on an obvious disproof of the Riemann hypothesis), and your spam filter dumped it. Well, I’m certainly not going to type all that in again…so just take my word for it.
Unfortunately my empirical observation is that we live in a human world that is more political than empirical.
We are rapidly accumulating evidence that your spam filter is damnable. I was going to post short, elegant solutions to two of the Clay Millennium problems, but your spam filter dumped them. You’ll just have to read about it in the papers like everyone else….
But seriously, thanks for the pointer. I left a comment at the site.
cthulhu: The advantages of sexual reproduction are not “settled”, perhaps, but there are compelling hypotheses, so there’s no serious problem. (Sexual reproduction leads to more variation which leads to better adaptability to changes in environment, both the physical and other-beastie sorts.)
Rand: On “atheists”, absolutely true. I was raised as one and thus seem to have missed the “you must complain about religion at all times like some sort of obsessed asshat” requirement (which seems to dog a fair proportion of atheist “converts”).
The “Professional Atheists” annoy me more than almost all of the religious types.
(When J. Random Christian tries to witness to me, I realize he’s trying to be nice, even if it’s ineffective and sometimes annoying, and I disagree with pretty much all of his truth claims.
When Jack Atheist rails about God most of the time it seems like he’s just being a jerk, even though I agree with his core thesis.)
The problem is that there is no concrete provable answer to the question and we (Humans) hate not having the answers. That is just human nature.
“weak” vs. “strong”
Was it Feynman that had that interesting classification of problems that included something like strong and weak? (I don’t remember them.)
A thing that fascinates me is that all world changing ideas start with a minority of one. Seems obvious except that one is usually confronted by most others declaring how ridiculous their new thought is. Being an INTJ means I identify very closely (and with the poster of the mouse giving the finger to the hawk diving in on him.)
Damn you spam filter. You just sent the above into a black hole and I’m not…
God and Evolution are not mutually-exclusive concepts. Holding one idea does not negate the other. It should be noted that Gregor Mendel, the father of genetics, was a friar, and that Georges Lemaître (who proposed the Big Bang) was a priest. Belief in God – or not – is unrelated to the process of science. Evolutionary theory says nothing about God at all – not even whether He is necessary to kick-start the whole universe – because nothing interesting one could say about God is testable. And if one believes in God, then one cannot dictate to God what tools He may or may not use to achieve His ends.
Does that mean Creation should be taught in schools or be in textbooks? Hell no, that should be taught in church. After all, if it was important to your religion, would you leave teaching it up to the unionized teachers of America?
Belief in a God could make science more difficult, though (just how difficult depends on your concept of God). If the results of an experiment conflict with the teachings of your religion, you’ll need to decide whether to ignore the results or the teachings (well, some people manage to believe both–the teachings on Sunday, the experiment the rest of the time).
I thought Gnosis was with knowledge, agnostic was without knowledge.
When jesus instructed his disciples to go out and preach the good news at a village and the villagers practiced hospitality and invited them into their homes, they would talk in parables and if the people had “ears that hear” they would know what you really mean’t because they had gnosis. If they were agnositic and were without that inner knowledge you kindly thanked them and moved on.
The one problem I have had with Intelligent design advocates that I have actually talked to, if you suggest, could the intelligent designers have been aliens that messed with DNA they immediately shot that down and it was actually god that was the designer. For me that was just creationism with another name rather than a totally unknown source of intelligence.
I’ve often wondered if the volume of said rants is directly proportional to the polemicist’s realization that secular humanism, irrespective of its metaphysical veracity, is anything but a philosophical panacea. Since Ken brought-up Briggs-Myers, go look at the paltry percentage that NTs comprise and figure what capturing even 100% of that demographic (if it isn’t already) would mean. What do we tell everyone else that “can’t handle the truth!”? /shrug
anything but a philosophical panacea
One of the things about quantum physics that tickles me is it’s lack of determinism. Anything is possible.* Hard to reconcile for some.
*At least, that’s what I interpret Pournelle heard Hawking say at a 70s lecture. It may have been updated since then.
Now if only people (once they actually pay attention or care) would understand the difference between possible and likely.
if you suggest…
Great point about intellectual honesty.
God and Evolution are not mutually-exclusive
I absolutely know there is a creator (but understand completely those that reject that assertion.) Evolution seems a bit less defined (because followers often have the intellectual honesty of a faith healer.) Animals breed within their kinds (a broader classification than species which has an ambiguous definition itself.) Animals within their kinds can be very diverse and incapable of interbreeding by some within the set. This is easily shown with modern examples. Missing links are still a problem for evolution theory.
Lateral inheritance (not by progeny but virus) may provide a resolution. The implications are worth considering.
Sure, but once you’ve started aggregate things, scaling up all the way to, oh, I dunno, nation-states, the predictable inevitabilities become downright depressing. De-coupling from that as much as possible certainly relieves the (at least existential) burden. The movie is entertaining sans spoilers, and even the same movie could be enjoyable multiple times with a sufficiently short memory, no?
I thought Gnosis was with knowledge, agnostic was without knowledge.
Not exactly. The word gnosis does mean knowledge, but Gnostics used the term in a special way. The gnosis from which they took their names was not the gnosis the disciples preached openly in homes and churches. It was a body of secret knowledge that Jesus allegedly imparted to a special rank of followers from whom the Gnostics claimed descent.
Agnostic was a term invented by Thomas Huxley to indicate that he had no “secret knowledge” of whether God existed. This was merely a clever play on words. The “secret knowledge” he was denying had no relationship to the “secret knowledge” the Gnostics claimed to have.
So, “agnostic” is not the opposite of “gnostic,” despite what syntax would seem to indicate.
Edward, what a great clarification. Rand you have the best.
inevitabilities become downright depressing
Clinically in my case. I always tell them, pills do no good in my case. Lobotomy would work (and is actually still in use unbelievably) but I’m a somewhat, uh… hesitant?
I keep telling people that if you have any intelligence the only reasonable view is depression. Speaking of which, where is Carl Pham lately? I need his cheerful perspectives.
Science and religion are not really mutually exclusive;
Science owes its existence to religious philosophy and an article of faith. The scientific method is based on the Thomistic belief that the universe that is law-like and knowable.
That belief cannot be proven by science itself. The most a skeptic can say is that the scientific method is useful because it appears to have worked so far. Of course, every gambler thinks his system is working when he’s winning at the table.
Clay Says:
September 7th, 2011 at 8:19 pm
“Part of the appeal for some atheists is that Evolutionary Theory provides an answer to the religious claim that “God put it all here” by providing a more plausible and evidence-based explanation of how it all came to be.”
How did it all come “to be”? Evolution does not even presume to answer this. Evolution seeks to explain how “it” evolved.
Moreover, in the end, we are faced with an insurmountable conundrum: knowing how gives no knowledge of why.
Hmm…I think “why” may be a loaded question, presupposing purpose. There may not be any “why.”
Daver Says:
“Belief in a God could make science more difficult, though (just how difficult depends on your concept of God). If the results of an experiment conflict with the teachings of your religion,”
Science is wrong all the time and in a constant state of change. It would be nice if people would allow religion to change too without saying that any change renders the entire philosophy void.
People are just as dogmatic about their beliefs about science as about religion; human nature is human nature after all.
That’s covered Titus. If there is no why, then eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we die.
Religion of course has changed–it’s no longer kosher to take your misbehaving children outside the city and stone them to death, and throwing your daughters to the mob to be raped and killed is no longer considered a sign of a worthy person.
There’s a problem when your religion consists of a book which is supposedly the Holy Writ of God–you can’t change it, you can only change which sections of you ignore and which you emphasize and how you interpret it.
John Brunner in Stand On Zanzibar had a religion that believed in the inerrancy of its Bible. And in order to be truly inerrant, they published a new one every year. Kind of like the CRC, I suppose.
Some people do treat science as a religion. I don’t want to fall into the no true Scotsman fallacy, but that’s not how real science is done; if you think that scientists aren’t willing to revise their beliefs you haven’t been reading the science magazines.
(When J. Random Christian tries to witness to me, I realize he’s trying to be nice, even if it’s ineffective and sometimes annoying, and I disagree with pretty much all of his truth claims.
When Jack Atheist rails about God most of the time it seems like he’s just being a jerk, even though I agree with his core thesis.)
Of course. It’s the difference between a sales pitch and a boycott pitch. J R Christian thinks he’s found something good and he wants to share, while Jack Atheist demands that you sacrifice somethign meaningful.
Ya know, the Dawkins types aren’t far removed from Al Gore.
Offend both – buy cross-shaped incandescent light bulbs.
Titus Says:
September 8th, 2011 at 2:20 pm
‘There may not be any “why.”’
Ever read any Kilgore Trout? Well, I won’t spoil it and give the answer away if not.
But, beyond the fundamental existential question, there are a host of other “whys” which cannot be answered. For example, why does such a miraculous molecule as DNA exist in the first place? And, how is it able to self-replicate into ever more complex structures and systems?
And, maintain stability when doing so? As a controls engineer who is intimately acquainted with how difficult it is to actively stabilize just about anything, I have long thought this was one of the most underappreciated miracles of life – the mere fact that it holds together long enough to perform all those complex biological functions, or to maintain stable populations without crashing and snuffing itself out.
Why?
“And, how is it able to self-replicate into ever more complex structures and systems?”
That is, WHY is it able to do this. I mean, you can say “well, it has this special atomic structure and these various bonds” and so forth, but WHY does it have these things? It just is? It just does?
We see it every day, so we tend to take it for granted. But, there are gobsmacking miracles taking place right before our eyes every single day.
I’m not saying it’s God what done it. I’m just saying… man, that’s pretty heavy stuff.
Sig,
Definitely with you on the Jack Atheist Asshat thing. I concluded that Christianity was nonsense at a tender age and moved on without much sense that I’d demonstrated any particularly noteworthy intellectual feat in coming to said conclusion. Granted, deciding I didn’t believe in God and Jesus was a bit more mental effort than learning not to pick my nose and eat it or how to tie my shoes, but it sure didn’t qualify me for a Nobel Prize.
The noisy – exclusively lefty – atheists, on the other hand, never seem able to stop bloviating about how damned smart they are to have figured out that the Bible and that book by those Grimm brothers are rough equivalents. Hey, cure cancer or figure out how to get mass into LEO for a sawbuck a pound and I’ll fill out the paperwork for you and send it to Sweden myself. But if all you know is Jesus and the Tooth Fairy are bunkmates – SHUT THE FUCK UP, ALREADY! Been there, done that, wore the T-shirt out ages ago and now it’s a dust rag in the garage. Jeez – you should pardon the expression.
And don’t get me started on how these same boobs think rejection of Christianity is not just a necessary but a sufficient condition for regarding oneself as a rational human being. Hoo boy!
Dick, what’s doubly frustrating is that a great many so-called atheists have dumped Christianity and embraced an even more primitive form of religion – animism in the form of Gaia-worship. Remarkably, they’ve even adopted many of the elements of Christianity: a Pope (Al Gore) and saints (James Cameron, David Suzuki, James Hansen, Michael Mann), a catechism (IPCC reports), a fiery hell (runaway greenhouse turning Earth into Venus) and penance for “sins” in the form of Carbon Credits.
When I was a little kid in the mid-70s, our elementary school used to open every day with the Lord’s Prayer and singing O Canada. Today the Lord’s Prayer is gone and they watch An Inconvenient Truth in its stead.
“…rejection of Christianity is not just a necessary but a sufficient condition…”
Rejection of Christianity is not necessary for regarding oneself as a rational human being. It’s not necessary to reject anything without proof to be considered a rational human being. Indeed, rejection of something without proof qualifies one as irrational.
It doesn’t mean you have to accept it. That would be irrational as well.
For all I know, there is no God but Allah, and Mohammed is his Prophet. But, if so, he’s a jerk and I won’t follow him, whether he made me, and can banish me to the depths of Hell to burn for all eternity, or not. If He did, he also gave me Free Will, and He’ll just have to deal with it.
He gave you free will? Let me check the list. Nope. No free will for Bart. We’ll send a service representative to fix that. No problem. We’re backed up a bit here. Should be there in about forty years. Just try to keep predictable in the mean time.