(December 30, 2014 at 6:46 am)strawdawg Wrote: I don't claim to have all the answers, I'm not sure anyone does. But I'm willing to share with you what I know or think I know.That's one of those things that did not occur to me while I was a believer. Why shouldn't we have all of the answers, if we have a book inspired by the greatest intellect in the entire cosmos? More than that, why do the people who read the same book come away with so many different (and in some cases conflicting) interpretations? Why would god's guidebook for humanity need interpretation at all?
One of the answers to this is that it was only inspired by god, but written by fallible men. But wouldn't it be the mark of the greatest being in all existence that his inspiration could overcome the fallibility of men? And why would he rely on men if he could see that they were having trouble making his message clear? He wrote the ten commandments onto stone tablets that he chiseled out of the side of a mountain, but making words appear on parchment was too much effort?
"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
