quote:

ORIGINAL: Real0ne

quote:

ORIGINAL: MrRodgers

quote:

ORIGINAL: Marini

quote:

ORIGINAL: kdsub

So ... you have mo more forgiveness than Christians... no moral high ground for you?

Butch, that's what they all do on here!!
They lump us all together, and try to blame shit that happened hundreds of years ago on us.

What makes it even crazier, is we are all different.
Christians run the gamut---the possibilities are limitless.

They throw us all in the same pot.

The only thing, MOST of us have in common, is we BELIEVE in a higher power.

Newsflash!
ALL BELIEVERS ARE NOT THE SAME!!!!!
We are not a monolithic group!!

Yes believers are monolithic and in the single most important way.

All theistic believers I've seen, read and known, believe stone age fairly tales, which in representing the beliefs of some several billion people in the big 3 are believers where simply the latest rendition of which is a very similar ancient fairly tale based on something called the Quran.

So pick a god, pick a book, pick a dogma and and one become monolithic in their faith.

then you need to explain why atheists hijack those same anceint religious beliefs, restate them in secular terms and claim it all as their own dogma?

It appears that contrary to 'God religions' atheists believe instead of thou shalt 'not' steal or covet, they champion thou shall steal and covet as long as they can get away with it.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Marini

This is the 3rd time I have addressed this issue on here.
I clearly stated, the awful comments I have read on here for YEARS, was
not the case in this thread.
Threads drift and people go off topic all the time.
I have not noticed people being so indignant about threads drifting before,
but I am going to start watching.
Threads often drift a bit/off the immediate topic.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Real0ne

oh contrare, in fact its you who has to show me an openly professed atheist society with thou shalt not steal and thou shalt not murder as their dogma that predate believers if athiests want to claim it, otherwise it plain and simply pliagerism and theft from believers.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Real0ne

quote:

ORIGINAL: MrRodgers

quote:

ORIGINAL: Real0ne

quote:

ORIGINAL: MrRodgers

quote:

ORIGINAL: Marini

quote:

ORIGINAL: kdsub

So ... you have mo more forgiveness than Christians... no moral high ground for you?

Butch, that's what they all do on here!!
They lump us all together, and try to blame shit that happened hundreds of years ago on us.

What makes it even crazier, is we are all different.
Christians run the gamut---the possibilities are limitless.

They throw us all in the same pot.

The only thing, MOST of us have in common, is we BELIEVE in a higher power.

Newsflash!
ALL BELIEVERS ARE NOT THE SAME!!!!!
We are not a monolithic group!!

Yes believers are monolithic and in the single most important way.

All theistic believers I've seen, read and known, believe stone age fairly tales, which in representing the beliefs of some several billion people in the big 3 are believers where simply the latest rendition of which is a very similar ancient fairly tale based on something called the Quran.

So pick a god, pick a book, pick a dogma and and one become monolithic in their faith.

then you need to explain why atheists hijack those same anceint religious beliefs, restate them in secular terms and claim it all as their own dogma?

It appears that contrary to 'God religions' atheists believe instead of thou shalt 'not' steal or covet, they champion thou shall steal and covet as long as they can get away with it.

I gotta read these. Do you have a few ? Plus tell me, what commandments did the Jews live by before Moses went on his hike up to see god ? Tell me RO, how did the 'Exodus' survive and for over 40 years, getting away with stealing all they could, lie, fuck everybody and even kill ? How did the Sumerian and other civilizations survive ?

How did any ancient cities and civilizations form and survive and for 1000's of years...without all of these divine books and commandments ? Were the 3 big new books 'revised' editions or were they 'new episodes ?' Did god need these addendums ?

Or as archaeological evidence proves, it all...never did happen ?

The problem you have is everything you post with the intent of proving the atheist legitimacy backfires and comes back to bite you in the ass. One need only quick goog and discover:

The Sumerians originally practiced a polytheistic religion, with anthropomorphic deities representing cosmic and terrestrial forces in their world. During the middle of the 3rd millennium BCE, Sumerian deities became more anthropocentric and were "...nature gods transformed into city gods."

you are incorrect. your means fail to justify your ends

quote:

ORIGINAL: Real0ne

quote:

ORIGINAL: MrRodgers

quote:


then you need to explain why atheists hijack those same anceint religious beliefs, restate them in secular terms and claim it all as their own dogma?

It appears that contrary to 'God religions' atheists believe instead of thou shalt 'not' steal or covet, they champion thou shall steal and covet as long as they can get away with it.

I gotta read these. Do you have a few ? Plus tell me, what commandments did the Jews live by before Moses went on his hike up to see god ? Tell me RO, how did the 'Exodus' survive and for over 40 years, getting away with stealing all they could, lie, fuck everybody and even kill ? How did the Sumerian and other civilizations survive ?

How did any ancient cities and civilizations form and survive and for 1000's of years...without all of these divine books and commandments ? Were the 3 big new books 'revised' editions or were they 'new episodes ?' Did god need these addendums ?

Or as archaeological evidence proves, it all...never did happen ?

quote:

ORIGINAL: blnymph

quote:

ORIGINAL: MrRodgers

quote:

ORIGINAL: Marini

Please don't tell me you have not seen or read the vitriolic hateful things that have been written by people about Christians on here, for YEARS.
pages and pages, threads and threads of gleeful Christian bashing

I'll tell you, I've seen no such thing and we are talking 100's of 1000's of threads on the subject of religion. I've also never seen or heard any such thing out here on the flatland. Occasional, yes, but nothing like you write here...and for YEARS ?

This is hardly a thread about religion or christianity - This is a thread about creationism.

Creationists are not the representatives of global christianity. Neither the catholic, orthodox, lutheran, anglican and a few more churches, nor jews, nor many muslims have any problems with Darwinist evolution theory. The only ones who can not come to terms with evolution are a loud minority of evangelical literalists. When these get opposition they love to behave as if they were persecuted martyrs in a Neronian arena and blame the cruelty of atheists or whoever else.
,

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ORIGINAL: Milesnmiles

quote:

ORIGINAL: MrRodgers

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ORIGINAL: Milesnmiles

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ORIGINAL: tweakabelle
The "inconvenient truth" is that it is facile to argue that belief in "something" is better than belief in nothing. It all depends on what that "something" is, and how that "something" is interpreted and put into practice by believers. It's a case by case thing, and it's riddled with unavoidable value judgements. Generalising it, as you have done, at best only muddies the waters.

And yet you do it so well. The statement; "There's a long list of murderous ideologues who all believed in "something" when the entire world would have been far better off had they believed in nothing", is hardly a "case by case thing" is it.

quote:

ORIGINAL: tweakabelle
So I am afraid that, if your intention is to advance a persuasive argument, you are going to have to do a lot better than: 'It's better to believe in something than nothing'. Perhaps it might be, but then again perhaps it might not be. So it neither adds weight to your argument nor does it advance the discussion an iota.

Oh okay, so, show me where the belief in nothing has advanced anything.

A belief in nothing like for example, any god 'the creator' or the divine or any mythology, doesn't result in war, oppression, brutality, torture, imprisonment and murder...like religion (beliefs) do. Then science takes over and that's the only reason we've 'advanced' as far as [we] have.
Don't have to look very far to see the damage when theocracy and despotism rear their ugly heads.

You need to take a closer look at history, you seem to be overlooking the fact the mankind seems to love killing and warfare and that Religion is only one of the many excuses mankind has for engaging in it.

You also seem to be forgetting that there are religions that are conscientious objectors and do engage in such things as “war, oppression, brutality, torture, imprisonment and murder”, although you might point out that has caused others to turn on them with “oppression, brutality, torture, imprisonment and murder” but that cannot said to be the fault of their beliefs.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Milesnmiles

quote:

ORIGINAL: MrRodgers

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ORIGINAL: Milesnmiles

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ORIGINAL: MrRodgers

quote:

ORIGINAL: Milesnmiles

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ORIGINAL: tweakabelle
I'm not sure that it's a clever argument to claim that it's better to believe in "something". There's a long list of murderous ideologues who all believed in "something" when the entire world would have been far better off had they believed in nothing. Self proclaimed believers in ideologies and belief systems that claim to be absolutely right have far more blood on their hands than nihilists.

I fail to see any merit in the argument that it's better to believe in one version of a fairy tale than to with hold judgement until the question is resolved. I do see a lot of potential dangers in this position, and am reminded of those dangers every time a religious fundamentalist (of whatever hue) insists against all reason that their particular fairy tale is the Truth the whole Truth and nothing but the Truth and threatens to kill anyone who disrupts their childish certainties.

Sure there is a "long list of murderous ideologues who all believed in "something"" but then what about the even longer list of those who believed in "something" and were not "murderous ideologues" and whose belief changed the world for the better? An inconvenient truth?

Examples ?

You're kidding right?

Go ahead, I'll debate the subject with you.

Stalin, Mao?
Gandhi, Martin Luther King?

quote:

ORIGINAL: Milesnmiles

quote:

ORIGINAL: MrRodgers
My threads are in general terms and not specifically directed at any one person unless I write that in.

Then don’t quote others, just use the little box at the bottom of the page. Because when you quote someone, even if you remove everything they say, it still says down at the bottom of your post; (in reply to Milesnmiles) and that gives the appearance that you are “specifically directing” it at someone, unless you “specifically” say otherwise.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Milesnmiles

quote:

ORIGINAL: MrRodgers
Yes believers are monolithic and in the single most important way.

All theistic believers I've seen, read and known, believe stone age fairly tales, which in representing the beliefs of some several billion people in the big 3 are believers where simply the latest rendition of which is a very similar ancient fairly tale based on something called the Quran.

So pick a god, pick a book, pick a dogma and and one become monolithic in their faith.

And atheists never put anyone down?

quote:

ORIGINAL: Milesnmiles

quote:

ORIGINAL: MrRodgers

quote:

ORIGINAL: Milesnmiles

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ORIGINAL: MrRodgers
...
In fact, usually the opposite is true. It is the 'god-fearing' allegedly devout practitioners that all throughout history, have been violent subscribers to such spiritual despotism and fascism.
...

You must know that there have been atheists that have been violent despots as well.

The problem is not religion or atheism the problem is that mankind is rotting at the core and something has to be done about it.

There may have been but I don't know of any. However, for the fascist and yes, the big 3 too, religion is a ripe fruit of cooperation even obedience of society at large in a highly religious and faithful country. Much easier to take control using the church and many despots did just that.

Again you need to take a closer look at history, there have been Religions that not gone along with despots and have lead their followers in peaceful revolt.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Real0ne

Thats the seperation between idiots and people with more than one brain cell.
Unlike the loony atheists who all suffer from cognitive dissonance, religious people realize that you cant touch time, or space, or the title 'Ron' either, but they are all very real.

quote:

ORIGINAL: bounty44

still one more time for all you comrades, not to mention the pseudo-intellectual snobs:

evolution is an atheistic religion masquerading as science.

in terms of the "scientific" rigor with which things are looked at, there does not have to be a difference between the two.

evolution denies a creator from the beginning. creationism either presupposes one, or at least allows for one.

however, evolutionists continue to believe as they do IN SPITE of having no evidence and in the face of an abundance of evidence that might steer a more open minded person towards a creator.

quote:

ORIGINAL: PyrotheClown

quote:

ORIGINAL: Real0ne

oh contrare, in fact its you who has to show me an openly professed atheist society with thou shalt not steal and thou shalt not murder as their dogma that predate believers if athiests want to claim it, otherwise it plain and simply pliagerism and theft from believers.

Show me somebody who's been burned at the stake,beheaded,or stoned to death in the name of atheism

quote:

Evolution in Nazi Germany and War

Extensive research into the existing documents has recently thrown much light on the influence of Darwin on Hitler and the Nazi ideology. The concept that "all men are created equal" and the egalitarian ideal which has dominated the American ideology for the past 20 years, and to a lesser degree since the founding of our country, is not universal among nations or cultures.22 The Germans specifically taught that they were a superior race, and thus it was best for all that they ruled.23 As Tenenbaum noted:

the political philosophy of the Prussian, then the German State, was built on the ideas of struggle, selection, and survival of the fittest, all notions and observations arrived at later on by Darwin. . but already in luxuriant bud in the German social philosophy of the nineteenth century, which culminated in Hegel's political philosophy of the State. Thus developed the doctrine of Germany's inherent right to rule the world on the basis of superior strength . . of a "hammer and anvil" relationship between the Reich and the weaker nations.24

The inequality doctrine was thus an integral part of German philosophy. As a race, they were superior to others, thus had a right based on evolution to subjugate others. Tenebaum concluded the Nazis incorporated the . theory of evolution in their political system, with nothing left out, neither bone nor hide. Their political dictionary was replete with words like space, struggle, selection, and extinction (Ausmerzen). The syllogism of their logic was clearly stated: The world is a jungle in which different nations struggle for space. The stronger win, the weaker die or are killed.25

In the 1933 Nuremberg party rally, Hitler proclaimed that "a higher race subjects to itself a lower race and thus establishes a relationship which now embraces races Of an unequal value. There thus results the subjection of a people under the will [of the higher race]. . a right which we see in nature and which can be regarded as the sole conceivable right because [it was] founded on reason [of evolution}"26

It is now well-known that Hitler openly intended to produce a superior race and relied heavily upon Darwin and Darwinian thought in both his social and extermination policies. Nazi Germany actually glorified war as it was a means of killing the less fit. War was actually necessary to "upgrade the race."...

For several reasons, therefore, Darwinian evolution was championed in Germany more than most other parts of the world. At the 1863 National Conference of German Scientists, Ernest Haeckel of the University of Jena, one of its leading proponents, supporters and writers, forcefully presented his views and began four decades as "Darwin's chief apostle." He was especially active in writing about "social Darwinism," or the application of Darwinian theory to explain the historical and social development of civilization, and why some were advanced, others primitive.37 But, as Gould concluded:

Haeckel's greatest influence was, ultimately, in another, tragic direction national socialism [Nazism]. His evolutionary racism; his call to the German people for racial purity and unflinching devotion to. . his belief that harsh, inexorable laws of evolution ruled human civilization and nature alike, conferring upon favored races the right to dominate others. . . his brave words about objective science all contributed to the rise of Nazism. The Monist League that he had founded and led. made a comfortable transition to active support for Hitler...

Conclusion

The evidence is very clear that Darwinian ideas had a tremendous impact in German thought and practice. It was also a thoroughly secular movement relying on science and the positivistic movement, even though Germany as a nation had been the leader of the Protestant reformation. Darwinian ideas had a tremendous influence on causing World War II, the loss of 40 million lives and the waste of about 6 billion 1945 dollars. Firmly convinced that evolution was true, Hitler saw himself as the modern saviour of mankind. He felt that the world would thank him someday for his "scientific socialism" programs. By breeding a superior race, the world would look upon him as the man who pulled humanity up to a higher level of evolution.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Marini

This is the 3rd time I have addressed this issue on here.
I clearly stated, the awful comments I have read on here for YEARS, was
not the case in this thread.
Threads drift and people go off topic all the time.
I have not noticed people being so indignant about threads drifting before,
but I am going to start watching.
Threads often drift a bit/off the immediate topic.

quote:

1. Nazism and evolution

Much has been written about one of fascism’s more infamous sons, Adolf Hitler. His treatment of Jews may be attributed, at least in part, to his belief in evolution. P. Hoffman, in Hitler’s Personal Security, said: “Hitler believed in struggle as a Darwinian principle of human life that forced every people to try to dominate all others; without struggle they would rot and perish … . Even in his own defeat in April 1945, Hitler expressed his faith in the survival of the stronger and declared the Slavic peoples to have proven themselves the stronger.”1

Sir Arthur Keith, the well-known evolutionist, explains how Hitler was only being consistent in what he did to the Jews—he was applying the principles of Darwinian evolution. In Evolution and Ethics, he said: “To see evolutionary measures and tribal morality being applied vigorously to the affairs of a great modern nation, we must turn again to Germany of 1942. We see Hitler devoutly convinced that evolution produces the only real basis for a national policy … . The means he adopted to secure the destiny of his race and people were organized slaughter, which has drenched Europe in blood … . Such conduct is highly immoral as measured by every scale of ethics, yet Germany justifies it; it is consonant with tribal or evolutionary morality. Germany has reverted to the tribal past, and is demonstrating to the world, in their naked ferocity, the methods of evolution.”2

2. Racism and evolution [right up your alley Vincent]

Stephen J. Gould, in Natural History (April 1980, p. 144), said that “Recapitulation [the evolutionary theory which postulates that a developing embryo in its mother’s womb goes through evolutionary stages, such as the fish stage, etc., until it becomes human] provided a convenient focus for the pervasive racism of white scientists; they looked to the activities of their own children for comparison with normal, adult behavior in lower races” (brackets mine). Gould also concludes that the term “mongoloid” became synonymous with mentally defective people because it was believed the Caucasian race was more highly developed than the Mongoloid. Therefore, some thought that a mentally defective child was really a throwback to a previous stage in evolution.

The leading American paleontologist of the first half of the 20th century, Henry Fairchild Osborne, adds fuel to the fire with his belief that “The Negroid stock is even more ancient than the Caucasian and Mongolian … . The standard of intelligence of the average adult Negro is similar to that of the eleven year old of the species Homo sapiens.”3

Many of the early settlers of Australia considered the Australian Aborigines to be less intelligent than the “white man,” because aborigines had not evolved as far as whites on the evolutionary scale. In fact, the Hobart Museum in Tasmania (Australia) in 1984 listed this as one of the reasons why early white settlers killed as many aborigines as they could in that state. In 1924, the New York Tribune (Sunday, February 10) had a very large article telling their readers that the missing link had been found in Australia. The missing link referred to happened to be aborigines from the state of Tasmania.4

The incredible thing is that we live in a society that states it wants to be rid of racist attitudes. Yet we are conditioned to racist attitudes by our very education system, and the whole foundational basis for racism permeates people’s minds.

It was the evolutionary view that convinced anthropologists there were different races of humans at different levels of intelligence and ability. It is the Christian view that teaches there is one race (in the sense that we all came from the same two humans, and therefore there are no lower or higher evolutionary groups) and that all people are equal.

At one school a teacher said to her students that if ape-like creatures had evolved into people, then this should be seen to be happening today. Some of the students told her that this was happening today because some aborigines are primitive and therefore, still evolving. Regrettably, in the children’s eyes the teaching of evolution had relegated the Australian Aborigines to a sub-human level.

3. Drugs and evolution

Many people would not think of evolution as being in any way related to the taking of drugs. However, the following letter of testimony from a man in Western Australia shows clearly this relationship.

At school, the theory of evolution was presented in such a way that none of us ever doubted it was scientific fact. Although the school was supposedly Christian, the biblical account of creation was presented as a kind of romantic fiction, not intended to convey literal truths about God, man or the cosmos. As a result, I assumed the Bible was unscientific, and therefore practically of little or no use.

It never occurred to me that evolution was only an assumption—a concept concocted in someone’s head—and I regret to say that I wasn’t sufficiently interested to go check out the so-called “facts” for myself. I assumed that reliable people had already done that.

After I left school, I began to put into practice the assumptions and presuppositions I’d picked up during childhood. My naive belief in evolution had three important practical consequences:

1. It strongly encouraged me to look to drugs as an ultimate source of comfort and creativity.

2. It led me to the conclusion that God, if He was around at all, was a very distant and impersonal figure, separated from humanity by very great distances of space and time.

3. It led me to increasingly abandon the moral values I had been taught at home, because when man is viewed as an arbitrary by-product of Time + Matter + Chance, there is no logical reason for treating men or women as objects of dignity and respect, since in principle they are no different from the animals, trees, and rocks from which they supposedly came.

I want to elaborate on just one point, the great faith in dope that I had as a result of being convinced that evolution was “fact.” After leaving school, I became increasingly susceptible to drugs. Drug-taking seemed to me to make sense because in principle it fitted with what I’d been taught about the nature and origin of man. “From chemical reactions hast thou come, and unto chemicals thou shalt return.” And so I did.

My faith in drugs as a source of comfort and creativity was almost unbreakable even after ten years of total devastation, during which my job, personality, and relationships had fallen apart. Even after I came to Christ, I still continued using drugs, or feeling strongly drawn to them, until some Christians had pointed out the truth about man’s nature, origin, and destiny as recounted in Genesis. It was only when I perceived the truth of this, that my private love of drugs was completely and voluntarily abandoned. I now know that my hope is in the person of Jesus Christ, and in Him only. It’s no longer a platitude, but a living reality. I’m free, and it is the truth which has made me free—free from any desire for dope, free from the compelling faith I once had in chemicals as a result of believing a lie—the lie of evolution. I appeal to you parents and teachers, to re-examine the evidence as I have done.

4. Abortion and evolution

Many will remember being taught at school that as an embryo develops in its mother’s womb it goes through a fish stage with gill slits, etc., and other evolutionary stages until it becomes human. In other words, the idea is that as the embryo develops it passes through all the evolutionary stages reflecting its ancestry. This theory of “embryonic recapitulation” was first proposed by a man called Ernest Haeckel. Not many people realize that this whole theory was an intentional deception. I quote, “But it still remains true that, in attempting to prove his law, Haeckel resorted to a series of dishonest distortions in making his illustrations. Branding them as dishonest is not too harsh, since Haeckel mentions where he originally procured some of his drawings without mentioning the alterations he made.”5

Eventually, Ernest Haeckel admitted this fraud, but the deplorable aspect is that this theory is still taught in many universities, schools, and colleges throughout the world. Admittedly, evolutionists who have kept up with the latest writings know that this view is wrong and refrain from teaching it in their classes. However, in most of the popular school textbooks and reading materials this view is still promulgated in various forms, often very subtle.

As people accepted that the child developing in a mother’s womb was just an animal reflecting its evolutionary ancestry, there was less and less problem about destroying it. As evolutionary ideas became more accepted, the easier it became to accept abortion. In fact, some abortion clinics in America have taken women aside to explain to them that what is being aborted is just an embryo in the fish stage of evolution, and that the embryo must not be thought of as human. These women are being fed outright lies.

Again, let me state here that abortion certainly existed before Darwin popularized his evolutionary theory. However, his evolutionary theory has been used to give abortion its respectability, and thus we see the great increase in abortion today.

5. Business methods and evolution

In the last half of the 19th century, a widespread philosophy known as “social Darwinism” dominated the thinking of many industrial tycoons of the era. They believed that because evolution was true in the biological sphere, the same methods should apply in the business world: survival of the fittest, elimination of the weak, no love for the poor.

In 1985 one of Australia’s large banks (the National Australia Bank), in a commemorative magazine concerning their merging with another bank, was using Darwinian principles of survival of the fittest to justify its merger. There are many other examples in history books of famous businessmen who have accepted evolutionism and applied it in the business field.

6. Male chauvinism and evolution

Many try to blame Christianity for the chauvinist attitude of many males in our society. They claim the Bible teaches that men are superior to women and that women are not equal to men. This, of course, is not true. The Bible teaches that men and women are equal, but they have different roles because of the way God created them and because of their reactions to the temptation of the serpent (1 Timothy 2:12–14). In New Scientist, Eveleen Richards states: “In a period when women were beginning to demand the suffrage, higher education and entrance to middle-class professions, it was comforting to know that women could never outstrip men; the new Darwinism scientifically guaranteed it.” She went on in the article to say, “ … an evolutionary reconstruction that centers on the aggressive, territorial, hunting male and relegates the female to submissive domesticity and the periphery of the evolutionary process.”6 In other words, some have used Darwinian evolution to justify that females are inferior. However, there are those in the feminist movement today who use evolution to try to justify that females are superior. There are even those who use evolution to justify children’s rights. When you think about this, any theory that justifies either male or female supremacy justifies neither.

Christian women need to realize that the radical feminist movement is pervaded by evolutionist philosophy. Christian women need to be alert and not be deceived by such an anti-God movement.

A whole book could be written about the justification of many of the evils we see today from a foundational acceptance of evolutionary philosophy. But at this stage people start saying to me, “Are you blaming evolution for all the evils in society?” My answer is, “Yes and no.” No—because it is not primarily evolution that is to blame, but the rejection of God as Creator. As people reject the God of creation and therefore reject His rules, they abandon Christian ethics and accept beliefs in accordance with their own opinions. Yes—because, in a very real sense, the justification for people rejecting the God of creation is the so-called “scientific” view of evolution. Evolution is the main justification today for rejecting belief in divine creation.

quote:

ORIGINAL: bounty44

"From Evolution to Creation: A Personal Testimony"

by Gary Parker, Ed.D.

quote:

Moderator: "Dr. Parker, I understand that when you started teaching college biology you were an enthusiastic evolutionist."

Yes, indeed. The idea of evolution was very satisfying to me. It gave me a feeling of being one with the huge, evolving universe continually progressing toward grander things. Evolution was really my religion, a faith commitment and a complete world-and-life view that organized everything else for me, and I got quite emotional when evolution was challenged.

As a religion, evolution answered my questions about God, sin, and salvation. God was unnecessary, or at least did no more than make the particles and processes from which all else mechanistically followed. "Sin" was only the result of animal instincts that had outlived their usefulness, and salvation involved only personal adjustment, enlightened self-interest, and perhaps one day the benefits of genetic engineering.

With no God to answer to, no God with a purpose for mankind, I saw our destiny in our own hands. Tied in with the idea of inevitable evolutionary progress, this was a truly thrilling idea and the part of evolution I liked best.

"Did your faith in evolution affect your classroom teaching?"

It surely did. In my early years of teaching at both the high school and college levels, I worked hard to convince my students that evolution was true. I even had students crying in class. I thought I was teaching objective science, not religion, but I was very consciously trying to get students to bend their religious beliefs to evolution. In fact, a discussion with high school teachers in a graduate class I was assisting included just that goal: encouraging students to adapt their religious beliefs to the concept of evolution!

"I thought you weren't supposed to teach religion in the public school system."

Well, maybe you can't teach the Christian religion, but there is no trouble at all in teaching the evolutionary religion. I've done it myself, and I've watched the effects that accepting evolution has on a person's thought and life. Of course, I once thought that effect was good, "liberating the mind from the shackles of revealed religion" and making a person's own opinions supreme.

"Since you found evolution such a satisfying religion and enjoyed teaching it to others, what made you change your mind?"

I've often marvelled that God could change anyone as content as I was, especially with so many religious leaders (including two members of the Bible department where I once taught!) actually supporting evolution over creation. But through a Bible study group my wife and I joined at first for purely social reasons, God slowly convinced me to lean not on my own opinions or those of other human authorities, but in all my ways to acknowledge Him and to let Him direct my paths. It is a blessed experience that gives me an absolute reference point and a truly mindstretching eternal perspective.

"Did your conversion to Christianity then make you a creationist?"

No, at least not at first. Like so many before and since, I simply combined my new-found Christian religion with the "facts" of science and became a theistic evolutionist and then a progressive creationist. I thought the Bible told me who created, and that evolution told me how.

But then I began to find scientific problems with the evolutionary part, and theological problems with the theistic part. I still have a good many friends who believe in theistic evolution or progressive creation, but I finally had to give it up.

"What theological problems did you find with theistic evolution?"

Perhaps the key point centered around the phrase, "very good." At the end of each creation period (except the second) God said that His creation was good. At the end of the sixth period He said that all His works of creation were very good.

Now all the theistic evolutionists and progressive creationists I know, including myself at one time, try to fit "geologic time" and the fossil record into the creation periods. But regardless of how old they are, the fossils show the same things that we have on earth today -- famine, disease, disaster, extinction, floods, earthquakes, etc. So if fossils represent stages in God's creative activity, why should Christians oppose disease and famine or help preserve an endangered species? If the fossils were formed during the creation week, then all these things would be very good.

When I first believed in evolution, I had sort of a romantic idea about evolution as unending progress. But in the closing paragraphs of the Origin of Species, Darwin explained that evolution, the "production of higher animals," was caused by "the war of nature, from famine and death." Does "the war of nature, from famine and death" sound like the means God would have used to create a world all very good?

In Genesis 3, Romans 8 and many other passages, we learn that such negative features were not part of the world that God created, but entered only after Adam’s sin. By ignoring this point, either intentionally or unintentionally, theistic evolutionists and progressive creationists come into conflict with the whole pattern of Scripture: the great themes of Creation, the Fall, and Redemption -- how God made the world perfect and beautiful; how man's sin brought a curse upon the world; and how Christ came to save us from our sins and to restore all things.

"With the Scriptures so plain throughout, are there still many Christians who believe in theistic evolution or progressive creation?"

Yes, there am. Of course, I can't speak for all of them, but I can tell you the problems I had to overcome before I could give up theistic evolution myself. First, I really hate to argue or take sides. When I was a theistic evolutionist I didn't have to argue with anybody. I just chimed in smiling at the end of an argument with something like, "Well, the important thing is to remember that God did it."

Then there is the matter of intellectual pride. Creationists are often looked down upon as ignorant throw-backs to the nineteenth century or worse, and I began to think of all the academic honors I had, and to tell you the truth, I didn't want to face that academic ridicule.

Finally, I, like many Christians, was honestly confused about the Biblical issues. As I told you, I first became a creationist while teaching at a Christian college. Believe it or not, I got into big trouble with the Bible Department. As soon as I started teaching creation instead of evolution, the Bible Department people challenged me to a debate. The Bible Department defended evolution, and two other scientists and I defended creation!

That debate pointed out how religious evolution really is, and the willingness of leaders to speak out in favor of evolution makes it harder for the average Christian to take a strong stand on creation. To tell you the truth, I don't think I would have had the courage, especially as a professor of biology, to give up evolution or theistic evolution without finding out that the bulk of scientific data actually argues against evolution.

"In that sense, then, it was really the scientific data that completed your conversion from evolution, through theistic evolution and progressive creation to Biblical, scientific creationism?"

Yes, it was. At first I was embarrassed to be both a creationist and a science professor, and I wasn't really sure what to do with the so-called "mountains of evidence" for evolution. A colleague in biology, Allen Davis, introduced me to Morris' and Whitcomb's famous book, The Genesis Flood. At first I reacted strongly against the book, using all the evolutionist arguments I knew so well. But at that crucial time, the Lord provided me with a splendid Science Faculty Fellowship award from the N.S.F., so I resolved to pursue doctoral studies in biology, while also adding a cognate in geology to check out some of the creationist arguments first hand. To my surprise, and eventually to my delight, just about every course I took was full of more and more problems in evolution, and more and more support for the basic points of Biblical creationism outlined in The Genesis Flood and Morris' later book, Scientific Creationism.

"Can you give us some examples?"

Yes indeed. One of the tensest moments for me came when we started discussing uranium-lead and other radiometric methods for estimating the age of the earth. I just knew all the creationists' arguments would be shot down and crumbled, but just the opposite happened.

In one graduate class, the professor told us we didn't have to memorize the dates of the geologic systems since they were far too uncertain and conflicting. Then in geophysics we went over all of the assumptions that go into radiometric dating. Afterwards, the professor said something like this, "If a fundamentalist ever got hold of this stuff, he would make havoc out of the radiometric dating system. So, keep the faith." That's what he told us, "keep the faith." If it was a matter of keeping faith, I now had another faith I preferred to keep.

"Are there other examples like that?"

Lots of them. One concerns the word paraconformity. In The Genesis Flood, I had heard that paraconformity was a word used by evolutionary geologists for fossil systems out of order, but with no evidence of erosion or overthrusting. My heart really started pounding when paraconformities and other unconformities came up in geology class. What did the professor say? Essentially the same thing as Morris and Whitcomb. He presented paraconformities as a real mystery and something very difficult to explain in evolutionary or uniformitarian terms. We even had a field trip to study paraconformities that emphasized the point.

So again, instead of challenging my creationist ideas, all the geology I was learning in graduate school was supporting it. I even discussed a creationist interpretation of paraconformities with the professor, and I finally found myself discussing further evidence of creation with fellow graduate students and others.

"What do you mean by ‘evidence of creation?’"

All of us can recognize objects that man has created, whether paintings, sculptures, or just a Coke bottle. Because the pattern of relationships in those objects is contrary to relationships that time, chance, and natural physical processes would produce, we know an outside creative agent was involved. I began to see the same thing in a study of living things, especially in the area of my major interest, molecular biology.

All living things depend upon a working relationship between inheritable nucleic acid molecules, like DNA, and proteins, the chief structural and functional molecules. To make proteins, living creatures use a sequence of DNA bases to line up a sequence of amino acid Rgroups. But the normal reactions between DNA and proteins are the "wrong" ones, and act with time and chance to disrupt living systems. Just as phosphorus, glass, and copper will work together in a television set only if properly arranged by human engineers, so DNA and protein will work in productive harmony only if properly ordered by an outside creative agent.

I presented the biochemical details of this DNA-protein argument to a group of graduate students and professors, including my professor of molecular biology. At the end of the talk, my professor offered no criticism of the biology or biochemistry I had presented. She just said that she didn't believe it because she didn't believe there was anything out there to create life. But if your faith permits belief in a Creator you can see the evidence of creation in the things that have been made (as Paul implies in Rom. 1:18-20).

"Has creationism influenced your work as a scientist and as a teacher?"

Yes, in many positive ways. Science is based on the assumption of an understandable orderliness in the operation of nature, and the Scriptures guarantee both that order and man's ability to understand it, infusing science with enthusiastic hope and richer meaning. Furthermore, creationists are able to recognize both spontaneous and created (i.e., internally and externally determined) patterns of order, and this opened my eyes to a far greater range of theories and models to deal with the data from such diverse fields as physiology, systematics, and ecology.

Creationism has certainly made the classroom a much more exciting place, both for me and my students. So much of biology touches on key ethical issues, such as genetic engineering, the ecological crisis, reproduction and development, and now I have so much more to offer than just my own opinions and the severely limited perspectives of other human authorities. And, of course, on the basic matter of origins, my students and I have the freedom to discuss both evolution and creation, a freedom tragically denied to most young people in our schools today.

Creationists have to pay the price of academic ridicule and occasional personal attacks, but these are nothing compared to the riches of knowledge and wisdom that are ours through Christ! I only wish that more scientists, science teachers, and science students could share the joy and challenge of looking at God's world through God's eyes.

* Dr. Gary E. Parker did his doctoral work in biology and geology. He is the author of five widely used programmed instruction books in biology.

http://www.icr.org/article/from-evolution-creation-personal-testimony/

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ORIGINAL: bounty44

"The Evils of Evolution"

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1. Nazism and evolution

Much has been written about one of fascism’s more infamous sons, Adolf Hitler. His treatment of Jews may be attributed, at least in part, to his belief in evolution. P. Hoffman, in Hitler’s Personal Security, said: “Hitler believed in struggle as a Darwinian principle of human life that forced every people to try to dominate all others; without struggle they would rot and perish … . Even in his own defeat in April 1945, Hitler expressed his faith in the survival of the stronger and declared the Slavic peoples to have proven themselves the stronger.”1

Sir Arthur Keith, the well-known evolutionist, explains how Hitler was only being consistent in what he did to the Jews—he was applying the principles of Darwinian evolution. In Evolution and Ethics, he said: “To see evolutionary measures and tribal morality being applied vigorously to the affairs of a great modern nation, we must turn again to Germany of 1942. We see Hitler devoutly convinced that evolution produces the only real basis for a national policy … . The means he adopted to secure the destiny of his race and people were organized slaughter, which has drenched Europe in blood … . Such conduct is highly immoral as measured by every scale of ethics, yet Germany justifies it; it is consonant with tribal or evolutionary morality. Germany has reverted to the tribal past, and is demonstrating to the world, in their naked ferocity, the methods of evolution.”2

2. Racism and evolution [right up your alley Vincent]

Stephen J. Gould, in Natural History (April 1980, p. 144), said that “Recapitulation [the evolutionary theory which postulates that a developing embryo in its mother’s womb goes through evolutionary stages, such as the fish stage, etc., until it becomes human] provided a convenient focus for the pervasive racism of white scientists; they looked to the activities of their own children for comparison with normal, adult behavior in lower races” (brackets mine). Gould also concludes that the term “mongoloid” became synonymous with mentally defective people because it was believed the Caucasian race was more highly developed than the Mongoloid. Therefore, some thought that a mentally defective child was really a throwback to a previous stage in evolution.

The leading American paleontologist of the first half of the 20th century, Henry Fairchild Osborne, adds fuel to the fire with his belief that “The Negroid stock is even more ancient than the Caucasian and Mongolian … . The standard of intelligence of the average adult Negro is similar to that of the eleven year old of the species Homo sapiens.”3

Many of the early settlers of Australia considered the Australian Aborigines to be less intelligent than the “white man,” because aborigines had not evolved as far as whites on the evolutionary scale. In fact, the Hobart Museum in Tasmania (Australia) in 1984 listed this as one of the reasons why early white settlers killed as many aborigines as they could in that state. In 1924, the New York Tribune (Sunday, February 10) had a very large article telling their readers that the missing link had been found in Australia. The missing link referred to happened to be aborigines from the state of Tasmania.4

The incredible thing is that we live in a society that states it wants to be rid of racist attitudes. Yet we are conditioned to racist attitudes by our very education system, and the whole foundational basis for racism permeates people’s minds.

It was the evolutionary view that convinced anthropologists there were different races of humans at different levels of intelligence and ability. It is the Christian view that teaches there is one race (in the sense that we all came from the same two humans, and therefore there are no lower or higher evolutionary groups) and that all people are equal.

At one school a teacher said to her students that if ape-like creatures had evolved into people, then this should be seen to be happening today. Some of the students told her that this was happening today because some aborigines are primitive and therefore, still evolving. Regrettably, in the children’s eyes the teaching of evolution had relegated the Australian Aborigines to a sub-human level.

3. Drugs and evolution

Many people would not think of evolution as being in any way related to the taking of drugs. However, the following letter of testimony from a man in Western Australia shows clearly this relationship.

At school, the theory of evolution was presented in such a way that none of us ever doubted it was scientific fact. Although the school was supposedly Christian, the biblical account of creation was presented as a kind of romantic fiction, not intended to convey literal truths about God, man or the cosmos. As a result, I assumed the Bible was unscientific, and therefore practically of little or no use.

It never occurred to me that evolution was only an assumption—a concept concocted in someone’s head—and I regret to say that I wasn’t sufficiently interested to go check out the so-called “facts” for myself. I assumed that reliable people had already done that.

After I left school, I began to put into practice the assumptions and presuppositions I’d picked up during childhood. My naive belief in evolution had three important practical consequences:

1. It strongly encouraged me to look to drugs as an ultimate source of comfort and creativity.

2. It led me to the conclusion that God, if He was around at all, was a very distant and impersonal figure, separated from humanity by very great distances of space and time.

3. It led me to increasingly abandon the moral values I had been taught at home, because when man is viewed as an arbitrary by-product of Time + Matter + Chance, there is no logical reason for treating men or women as objects of dignity and respect, since in principle they are no different from the animals, trees, and rocks from which they supposedly came.

I want to elaborate on just one point, the great faith in dope that I had as a result of being convinced that evolution was “fact.” After leaving school, I became increasingly susceptible to drugs. Drug-taking seemed to me to make sense because in principle it fitted with what I’d been taught about the nature and origin of man. “From chemical reactions hast thou come, and unto chemicals thou shalt return.” And so I did.

My faith in drugs as a source of comfort and creativity was almost unbreakable even after ten years of total devastation, during which my job, personality, and relationships had fallen apart. Even after I came to Christ, I still continued using drugs, or feeling strongly drawn to them, until some Christians had pointed out the truth about man’s nature, origin, and destiny as recounted in Genesis. It was only when I perceived the truth of this, that my private love of drugs was completely and voluntarily abandoned. I now know that my hope is in the person of Jesus Christ, and in Him only. It’s no longer a platitude, but a living reality. I’m free, and it is the truth which has made me free—free from any desire for dope, free from the compelling faith I once had in chemicals as a result of believing a lie—the lie of evolution. I appeal to you parents and teachers, to re-examine the evidence as I have done.

4. Abortion and evolution

Many will remember being taught at school that as an embryo develops in its mother’s womb it goes through a fish stage with gill slits, etc., and other evolutionary stages until it becomes human. In other words, the idea is that as the embryo develops it passes through all the evolutionary stages reflecting its ancestry. This theory of “embryonic recapitulation” was first proposed by a man called Ernest Haeckel. Not many people realize that this whole theory was an intentional deception. I quote, “But it still remains true that, in attempting to prove his law, Haeckel resorted to a series of dishonest distortions in making his illustrations. Branding them as dishonest is not too harsh, since Haeckel mentions where he originally procured some of his drawings without mentioning the alterations he made.”5

Eventually, Ernest Haeckel admitted this fraud, but the deplorable aspect is that this theory is still taught in many universities, schools, and colleges throughout the world. Admittedly, evolutionists who have kept up with the latest writings know that this view is wrong and refrain from teaching it in their classes. However, in most of the popular school textbooks and reading materials this view is still promulgated in various forms, often very subtle.

As people accepted that the child developing in a mother’s womb was just an animal reflecting its evolutionary ancestry, there was less and less problem about destroying it. As evolutionary ideas became more accepted, the easier it became to accept abortion. In fact, some abortion clinics in America have taken women aside to explain to them that what is being aborted is just an embryo in the fish stage of evolution, and that the embryo must not be thought of as human. These women are being fed outright lies.

Again, let me state here that abortion certainly existed before Darwin popularized his evolutionary theory. However, his evolutionary theory has been used to give abortion its respectability, and thus we see the great increase in abortion today.

5. Business methods and evolution

In the last half of the 19th century, a widespread philosophy known as “social Darwinism” dominated the thinking of many industrial tycoons of the era. They believed that because evolution was true in the biological sphere, the same methods should apply in the business world: survival of the fittest, elimination of the weak, no love for the poor.

In 1985 one of Australia’s large banks (the National Australia Bank), in a commemorative magazine concerning their merging with another bank, was using Darwinian principles of survival of the fittest to justify its merger. There are many other examples in history books of famous businessmen who have accepted evolutionism and applied it in the business field.

6. Male chauvinism and evolution

Many try to blame Christianity for the chauvinist attitude of many males in our society. They claim the Bible teaches that men are superior to women and that women are not equal to men. This, of course, is not true. The Bible teaches that men and women are equal, but they have different roles because of the way God created them and because of their reactions to the temptation of the serpent (1 Timothy 2:12–14). In New Scientist, Eveleen Richards states: “In a period when women were beginning to demand the suffrage, higher education and entrance to middle-class professions, it was comforting to know that women could never outstrip men; the new Darwinism scientifically guaranteed it.” She went on in the article to say, “ … an evolutionary reconstruction that centers on the aggressive, territorial, hunting male and relegates the female to submissive domesticity and the periphery of the evolutionary process.”6 In other words, some have used Darwinian evolution to justify that females are inferior. However, there are those in the feminist movement today who use evolution to try to justify that females are superior. There are even those who use evolution to justify children’s rights. When you think about this, any theory that justifies either male or female supremacy justifies neither.

Christian women need to realize that the radical feminist movement is pervaded by evolutionist philosophy. Christian women need to be alert and not be deceived by such an anti-God movement.

A whole book could be written about the justification of many of the evils we see today from a foundational acceptance of evolutionary philosophy. But at this stage people start saying to me, “Are you blaming evolution for all the evils in society?” My answer is, “Yes and no.” No—because it is not primarily evolution that is to blame, but the rejection of God as Creator. As people reject the God of creation and therefore reject His rules, they abandon Christian ethics and accept beliefs in accordance with their own opinions. Yes—because, in a very real sense, the justification for people rejecting the God of creation is the so-called “scientific” view of evolution. Evolution is the main justification today for rejecting belief in divine creation.

https://answersingenesis.org/creation-vs-evolution/the-evils-of-evolution/