(February 12, 2014 at 11:56 pm)orangebox21 Wrote: Why does calling something "religion" denigrate it? Seems like the prejudice toward the word is on your side?You referred to atheism as a religion in order to accuse atheists of using the fallacy of appeal to authority. So you're saying that you don't see this as a negative characteristic of religion?
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
-Stephen Jay Gould
-Stephen Jay Gould
