"A wise man ... proportions his belief to the evidence."
— David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Section X, Part I.
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Help Me Understand
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 "A wise man ... proportions his belief to the evidence." 
The official position of the Catholic church is to accept evolution, but with the caveat that one must accept as truth the absurd idea of Adam and Eve because if they don't the entire house of cards collapses immediately. No Adam and Eve, no fall, no original sin, no need for Jesus, no church. It's all rather silly.
 RE: Help Me Understand
September 16, 2015 at 5:08 pm
(This post was last modified: September 16, 2015 at 5:10 pm by Regina.)
I think you have have "objections" to evolution in terms of small details, like exactly which species you would start classifying as "early humanoids" or exactly how the evolution of humans came about for example.
It becomes silly when you try to dispute that the Earth is only a few thousand years old. There is now flat-out undeniable geological, paleontological and even historical human evidence (early tools/buildings) that the Earth is far older. Genetic evidence in humans alone proves modern humans have existed for at least 100 000 years, and didn't leave Africa until around 70 000 years ago.
"Adulthood is like looking both ways before you cross the road, and then getting hit by an airplane" - sarcasm_only
"Ironically like the nativist far-Right, which despises multiculturalism, but benefits from its ideas of difference to scapegoat the other and to promote its own white identity politics; these postmodernists, leftists, feminists and liberals also use multiculturalism, to side with the oppressor, by demanding respect and tolerance for oppression characterised as 'difference', no matter how intolerable." - Maryam Namazie  (September 16, 2015 at 1:39 pm)Randy Carson Wrote: God established an infallible Church This is an empirically false statement.  (September 16, 2015 at 5:05 pm)Cato Wrote: The official position of the Catholic church is to accept evolution, but with the caveat that one must accept as truth the absurd idea of Adam and Eve because if they don't the entire house of cards collapses immediately. No Adam and Eve, no fall, no original sin, no need for Jesus, no church. It's all rather silly. The biblical creation story is a jumbled mess of competing ideas. The primary idea is that it's about the progenitors of the Israelites/Hebrews/Jews. After all, the Bible is not about all of humanity but only about one small slice of it. That's why thinking that the Adam & Eve story is about all of humanity is completely wrong. Assyria, Persia, Arabia, and Ethiopia were just down the road from the Garden of Eden where Adam & Eve were running around naked. And they were all there after Noah's flood when Nimrod became the bigwig in Babylonia and built cities in Assyria. And the king of Tyre lived in the Garden of Eden. So only a crazy person will take the story literally. That means that the creation story is actually a complex metaphor like so many other Bible stories are. If a person was so inclined he could write his own national history using the same format that the Bible writers used. A person who thoroughly knows his national history would understand such a story but distant outsiders would probably be completely clueless and think that the stories mean something else. The fools would probably start a religion based on it. There is no God creature in this solar system.
"Adulthood is like looking both ways before you cross the road, and then getting hit by an airplane" - sarcasm_only
"Ironically like the nativist far-Right, which despises multiculturalism, but benefits from its ideas of difference to scapegoat the other and to promote its own white identity politics; these postmodernists, leftists, feminists and liberals also use multiculturalism, to side with the oppressor, by demanding respect and tolerance for oppression characterised as 'difference', no matter how intolerable." - Maryam Namazie  RE: Help Me Understand
September 16, 2015 at 5:46 pm
(This post was last modified: September 16, 2015 at 6:26 pm by Salacious B. Crumb.)
Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.' -Isaac Asimov-
 (September 16, 2015 at 5:29 pm)Wyrd of Gawd Wrote: The biblical creation story is a jumbled mess of competing ideas. The primary idea is that it's about the progenitors of the Israelites/Hebrews/Jews. After all, the Bible is not about all of humanity but only about one small slice of it. That's why thinking that the Adam & Eve story is about all of humanity is completely wrong. Assyria, Persia, Arabia, and Ethiopia were just down the road from the Garden of Eden where Adam & Eve were running around naked. I've always found the "racial origins" stuff in Genesis to be the most laughable, in terms of it being obviously based on no more than the info available to the Hebrews in the ancient Near East. They describe three races (Ham, Shem, and Japheth), the ones which were in range of knowledge of those writers... but somehow God didn't "inspire" them to know about the Chinese/Japanese/SE Asians, or the Native Americans, or the Indians/Dravidians, or the Polynesians, or the Aboriginal Australians. Funny how "God" never knows about things beyond the realm of the human authors of the book, while they're being "divinely inspired" to write this stuff down. I'm sure it sounded reasonable to the ancient Hebrews, but that anyone could think this is more than a Bronze Age mythology today simply astounds me.
A Christian told me: if you were saved you cant lose your salvation. you're sealed with the Holy Ghost
I replied: Can I refuse? Because I find the entire concept of vicarious blood sacrifice atonement to be morally abhorrent, the concept of holding flawed creatures permanently accountable for social misbehaviors and thought crimes to be morally abhorrent, and the concept of calling something "free" when it comes with the strings of subjugation and obedience perhaps the most morally abhorrent of all... and that's without even going into the history of justifying genocide, slavery, rape, misogyny, religious intolerance, and suppression of free speech which has been attributed by your own scriptures to your deity. I want a refund. I would burn happily rather than serve the monster you profess to love.  You can fix ignorance, you can't fix stupid. Tinkety Tonk and down with the Nazis. |
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