The Problem with Christians

[LadyForCamus]

Christianity is not science.  At the end of the day it is a matter of faith and reason. My reason to believe is multifaceted but I regard the Scripture as being accurate because of its ability to reliably predict the future.

So, if predictions are sufficient to believe in a thing, would you not then have to agree that the predictions that evolution makes- which unlike your scriptural ones are not simple post hoc rationalizations made to retrofit the text to modern events, but actual predictions made before and unambiguously about a given event- that have all been proven true, are sufficient evidence to accept evolution?

I mean, if you want a prediction coming true, Tiktaalik is about as perfect an example as you'll ever get. So why is it that the vague bible prophecies, that have to be self-servingly "interpreted" by religious figures to match, and which give you no evidence at all for the cause of those predictions, are sufficient for you to believe in god, but an actual scientist that you can talk to right now making a specific prediction about what sorts of organisms they might find in a specific place in the fossil record if evolution were true, and then that same scientist going out and finding exactly that creature at exactly that place is not sufficient to accept evolution? Are predictions good enough or not?

Concerning evolution, I don't regard it as being scientific. If you called it a faith, that would make more sense to me. One thing I would like to know is, what are the stages of the evolution of humans? Apart from neanderthals, what was the progenitor to humans? And what was the progenitor to that?

I'll give you a tip: if you're going to ask a question, look it up on Google before you ask it, especially if you're phrasing it as a sort of gotcha question that you think doesn't have an answer, because if it turns out that there is an answer, then all your confidence is going to look as though it was borne of ignorance, rather than intellectual rigor. In this case it's particularly embarrassing because your question suggests that you think Neanderthal is the only progenitor species we know of, which hasn't been true for at least fifty years: we actually have a pretty clear ancestral record, for humans. In fact, we can chart the development of the Homo genus from the great apes, all the way back to the basal primate species some 65 million years ago, and we did this through observation, repeatable testing, and examination of the evidence.

You know, all the best practices of science.

Exactly this. Apparently, to these guys direct observation is ESSENTIAL in science (when the science contradicts their beliefs), but when it comes to claims of Christianity it's perfectly sound and reasonable to accept predictions as reliable evidence. No direct observation necessary. So. Hypocritical.