RE: Why the religious will never admit you won the argument (and why they don't care)
June 23, 2016 at 12:09 pm
(June 22, 2016 at 10:33 pm)robvalue Wrote: Seriously Steve, please watch my video in the previous post. It addresses a lot of the misconceptions I suspect you have.
I'll say what I think is happening, and what happens quite a lot.
I think you are genuinely trying to follow the science. And that is admirable. However, any time the science runs contrary to your religious beliefs, you're going to stick with the religious beliefs. I'm not saying you're consciously doing this, but I am saying it is the net result. This becomes a hard barrier to learning. If you have preconceived notions that science "must" line up with, you are not doing science. Science is about working upwards from the evidence, wherever it may lead.
As I said, it's not just you. I've seen this everywhere. You're trying (in my opinion) to hold a scientifically respectable version of evolution in your head, along with whatever religious beliefs you have that try to explain the same thing. This causes you to have to sabotage or modify the scientific model so that it doesn't cause you cognitive dissonance.
This is just my opinion about what is happening. You needn't reply, but maybe you'd like to think about it for a moment. Why do theists spend so much time hammering away at the theory of evolution, while never being at all bothered by most other scientific theories? The fact that it is still standing, after all this assault, is testament to its strength. Theories are falsifiable. They're not decided by opinion.
PS: I have no vested interest in the theory of evolution being true. If it wasn't true, it wouldn't matter to me. I'm not trying to make you believe it either. I'm addressing the underlying issues that I think are present in your thinking. You have to decide if you're interested in science or pseudoscience. It seems to me you've been reading a lot of anti-evolution material. That's fine, you should read things from everywhere. But do read other things. Read genuine scientific books and articles. Read things written by qualified people who don't oppose evolution. Learn about what it is you're disagreeing with.
Your definition of evolution is too simplistic.
Quote:From Wikipedia
The "theory of evolution" is actually a network of theories that created the research program of biology. Darwin, for example, proposed five separate theories in his original formulation, which included mechanistic explanations for:
By using your simplistic version, you have grouped everything together and in doing so, somehow endowed the 'fact' status of some portions of evolution on theories that still have a long way to go (irreducible complexity, biological networks, "tree of life" doesn't appear to be a tree, fossil record/intermediate forms, convergent genetic evolution, junk DNA perhaps not junk after all, natural selection not enough for traits with a low selection coefficient, etc.). I am sure we will learn more about each of these things and theories will come and go as new information emerges.
To be honest, I don't know to what extent evolution is true. It really does not matter to theism in general or Christianity in particular. I don't and won't argue the specifics of the science because, 1) I am not qualified and 2) I have never seen such an argument as productive. This is about as far as I go--pointing out that you (in the general sense) cannot look down on people who object to the whole ball of wax being 'fact'.
