Dawkins on Evolution

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Adam and Eve Are Dead…Finally

Well actually they never existed…and the proof is available for all to see.

Christian scholar Dennis R. Venema is the BioLogos senior fellow for science and the biology chairman at Trinity Western University.  He writes that the chimp genome displays “near identity” with the human genome as detailed by (Francis) Collins’s team.  The detailed analysis involves sequences of genes and the makeup of individual genes, but especially important are the locations of “pseudogenes” that are seemingly no longer active. The cumulative evidence, Venema concludes, shows that “humans are not biologically independent, de novo creations, but share common ancestry” with prior primate species.””

Atheist-turned-Christian Francis S. Collins is the director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), a federally funded organization. Collins’s wrote a 2006 bestseller, The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief, where he said there are scientific indications that anatomically modern humans emerged from primate ancestors perhaps 100,000 (currant science says 200,000) years ago, long before the apparent Genesis time frame, and that they originated within a population that numbered something like 10,000, not two individuals. Far removed from the traditional belief that God specially created man and woman in the Garden of Eden, and they were biologically different from all other creatures alive at the time.

In his recent (2011) pro-evolution book, The Language of Science and Faith, Collins and co-author Karl W. Giberson step up matters, announcing that “unfortunately” the concepts of Adam and Eve as the literal first couple and the ancestors of all humans simply “do not fit the evidence.”

The story of Adam and Eve in Genesis has long been subjected to scientific challenges, but “there was a lot of wiggle room in the past. The human genome sequencing took that wiggle room away” said Randall Isaac, executive director of the American Scientific Affiliation.  DNA science is totally changing what many believed about human beginnings.

Will the Adam and Eve question become a groundbreaking science-vs.-religion dispute, in the 21st-century? The modern day equivalent of the once disturbing argument about whether the Sun orbits the earth or vice-versa?  The possibility is there: the emerging science could be seen to challenge what Genesis records about the creation of humanity and also the species’ unique status of being created in the “image of God,” Christian doctrine on original sin and the Fall, the genealogy of Jesus in the Gospel of Luke, and, perhaps most significantly, Paul’s seminal teaching that links a historical Adam with redemption through Christ.

The fall-out from the non-historicity of the Biblical Adam and Eve will be huge.  Many people in the earth sciences have known for some time that the Genesis stories are just myth, the science behind the notion is just too darn strong to endlessly ignore.

South Carolina pastor Richard Phillips, chair of the Philadelphia Conference on Reformed Theology worries, “Can the Bible’s theology be true if the historical events on which the theology is based are false?” If science trumps Scripture, what does this mean for the virgin birth of Jesus, or his miracles, or his resurrection? “The hermeneutics behind theistic evolution are a Trojan horse that, once inside our gates, must cause the entire fortress of Christian belief to fall.”

All these years Christianity has been working under the assumption that Genesis is true and that all humans who lived in the past, and are alive today, are descendents of Adam and Eve.  The whole dogma of original sin and the blood sacrifice of Jesus to redeem humanities sin goes out the door.  Combine the fact that DNA, and other evidence, says that Adam and Eve did not exist…with other revelations that science is making about the Biblical myths, and I predict that Christianity is facing a real crisis of belief.  
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Christians Are Whiners

The Christian complains about an increasingly secular world, but the Republican Party is controlled by right wing evangelical fundamentalists.  No atheists allowed

The Air Force academy in Colorado is run by right wing evangelical fundamentalists. You either bend to what they want or you are an outcast and stand to lose your appointment.

“Evangelical Christians are at it again. The proselytizing only-through-Christ bunch have now taken up desecration of non-Christian religious sites: Not Jews this time but Wiccans. What the hell goes through the minds of these evangelicals who think they can tell other religions—at a military academy no less—what to believe? At their core, evangelicals who despise pluralism are infantile.”
http://www.veteranstoday.com/2010/02/03/christians-desecrate-wiccan-religious-site-at-air-force-academy/

The troops on the ground in Afghanistan and Iraq are of the same family group of fundamentalists and they threaten the lives of atheist troops.

In most of the South and especially throughout the “Bible Belt” you are mostly a social outcast if you don’t fall into the dominant Christian group of your town- i.e. Baptist, Pentecostal, etc.

In the Middle East and Much of Asia if you decline membership in the Islamic religion you are a social outcast to 98 percent or more of the population…if you’re Jewish you are dead-meat.

In China the Christian believing population is exploding so fast the government is scrambling to keep up and control it.

In Australia the churches have access to school classes and it is smiled upon by the government.

So I’m just wondering where the hell Christians are getting this bit about secularism is getting worse and worse.  Maybe in Europe, where it is predicted that nine countries will go atheist in the next few years, but I certainly don’t see it in the rest of the world.

Christians are just a bunch of whiners anyway. 🙂

“None of today’s problems are caused by Atheists – just think about it.” Cobourg Atheists

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The True Core of the Jesus Myth

The True Core Of The Jesus Myth by Christopher Hitchens

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And the Exodus story is BS also @ 6min+

Wasted Life

“I listen to all these complaints about rudeness and intemperateness (regarding atheists), and the opinion that I come to is that there is no polite way of asking somebody: have you considered the possibility that your entire life has been devoted to a delusion? But that’s a good question to ask. Of course we should ask that question and of course it’s going to offend people. Tough.”  Daniel Dennett

The last time religion and politics were mixed, people were burned at the stake.

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Religion Continues to Kill

Our Bible is not as loving as a lot of people would like you to believe

^“If your very own brother, or your son or daughter, or the wife you love, or your closest friend secretly entices you, saying, “Let us go and worship other gods” (gods that neither you nor your fathers have known, ⁷ gods of the peoples around you, whether near or far, from one end of the land to the other), ⁸ do not yield to him or listen to him. Show him no pity. Do not spare him or shield him. ⁹ You must certainly put him to death. Your hand must be the first in putting him to death, and then the hands of all the people. ¹⁰ Stone him to death, because he tried to turn you away from the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. ¹¹ Then all Israel will hear and be afraid, and no one among you will do such an evil thing again.”– Deuteronomy 13:6-11

Religion today is every bit as violent and dangerous as it was in the Dark and Middle-Ages. Within the last fifteen to twenty years the following religious conflicts have killed millions of people and totally ruined countless other lives.

Palestine–Jews vs. Muslims
Balkans-Orthodox Serbians vs. Catholic Croatians & Orthodox Serbians vs. Bosnian and Albanian Muslims
Northern Ireland-Protestants vs. Catholic
Kashmir-Muslims vs. Hindus
Sudan-Muslims vs. Christians and Animists
Nigeria-Muslims vs. Christians
Ethiopia and Eritrea-Muslims vs. Christians
Sri-Lanka-Sinhalese Buddhists vs. Tamil Hindus
Indonesia-Muslims vs. Timorese Christians
Caucuses-Russian Orthodox vs. Chechen Muslims and Muslim Azerbaijanis vs. Catholic and Orthodox Armenians
India vs. Pakistan-Muslim vs. Hindu-they have already fought 3 wars against each other and now both of these countries have nuclear weapons.

I believe that religion in all its forms and practices is the most deadly and destructive and evil force ever let loose on this planet…it is without a doubt the number one cause of human death and destruction.

Christian evangelical fundamentalist are actively working and praying for the end of the world.  Muslims believe they make it straight to heaven if they kill in what they think is defense of Allah, so the source of human bombers is pretty much inexhaustible.  Don’t forget those 72 virgins waiting for them. Talk about infantile and delusional behavior.

How long should we allow religion to hold sway over us?

How long should we allow the mentally unbalanced to run the asylum?

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Intelligent Design and Science

Interesting find while surfing this morning. The ID people keep claiming they’re all about science, but the never reveal any.

ISSR Statement on the Concept of ‘Intelligent Design’

The authors of this statement constitute a group set up for the purpose by the Executive Committee of the International Society for Science and Religion. Through a process involving consultation with all members of the Society, the statement has now been accepted by the Executive Committee for publication as a statement made on behalf of the Society.

The International Society for Science and Religion is a scholarly society devoted to ongoing dialogue between the sciences and the community of world faiths.  It was established in 2002 for the purpose of promoting education through the support of interdisciplinary learning and research in the fields of science and religion, conducted where possible in an international and multi-faith context.

The society greatly values modern science, while deploring efforts to drive a wedge between science and religion. Science operates with a common set of methodological approaches that gives freedom to scientists from a range of religious backgrounds to unite in a common endeavor. This approach does not deny the existence of a metaphysical realm but rather opens up the natural world to a range of explorations that have been incredibly productive, especially over the last 400 years or so.

The intelligent-design (ID) movement began in the late 1980s as a challenge to the perceived secularization of the scientific community, which leaders of the movement maintained had been coloured with the philosophy of atheistic naturalism. ID theorists have focused their critique primarily on biological evolution and the neo-Darwinian paradigm. They claim that because certain biological features appear to be “irreducibly complex” and thus incapable of evolving incrementally by natural selection, they must have been created by the intervention of an intelligent designer. Despite this focus on evolution, intelligent design should not be confused with biblical or “scientific” creationism, which relies on a particular interpretation of the Genesis account of creation.

We believe that intelligent design is neither sound science nor good theology. Although the boundaries of science are open to change, allowing supernatural explanations to count as science undercuts the very purpose of science, which is to explain the workings of nature without recourse to religious language.  Attributing complexity to the interruption of natural law by a divine designer is, as some critics have claimed, a science stopper. Besides, ID has not yet opened up a new research program. In the opinion of the overwhelming majority of research biologists, it has not provided examples of “irreducible complexity” in biological evolution that could not be explained as well by normal scientifically understood processes. Students of nature once considered the vertebrate eye to be too complex to explain naturally, but subsequent research has led to the conclusion that this remarkable structure can be readily understood as a product of natural selection. This shows that what may appear to be “irreducibly complex” today may be explained naturalistically tomorrow.

Scientific explanations are always incomplete. We grant that a comprehensive account of evolutionary natural history remains open to complementary philosophical, metaphysical, and religious dimensions. Darwinian natural history does preempt certain accounts of creation, leading, for example, to the contemporary creationist and ID controversies. However, in most instances, biology and religion operate at different and non-competing levels.  In many religious traditions, such as some found in Hinduism, Buddhism, and Taoism, the notion of intelligent design is irrelevant. We recognize that natural theology may be a legitimate enterprise in its own right, but we resist the insistence of intelligent-design advocates that their enterprise be taken as genuine science – just as we oppose efforts of others to elevate science into a comprehensive world view (so-called scientism). See the website: Here

Intelligent design is nearly universally condemned as science and as a concept. Most people recognize it for what it really is; a wedge devise to sneak WASP religion into our school systems. The only support for it is from evangelical fundamentalists, Young Earth Creationist (YEC), and some Old Earth Creationist (OEC).

Now proponents of Intelligent Design (ID) are using ‘Stealth Candidates’ who are running for positions on local and state school boards without declaring or admitting that they will advocate teaching ID in schools when elected. They just don’t get it…and they will try anything, including dishonesty, to achieve their goals. That they would use dishonesty in the furtherance of their religious sect speaks volumes about the true value of their faith.

Most people don’t analyze this battle enough, and don’t seem to realize that the ultimate goal of the religious right is to take over our country and remake it into a religious society; kind of like the Dark Ages in Europe when the Catholics ruled, and the strength and direction of your belief…decided whether you lived or died.  A lot of people don’t realize that the religious right has taken control of the Republican Party.

Cognite tute-think about it/use your head.

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Sunday Sermon for Evolutionists

In May of 2007 the Gallup poll ask Americans this question: “Do you, personally, believe in evolution or not.” This was probably not the correct way to word this question, since there are actually two different beliefs in evolution. There is Theistic Evolution, where believers think that Evolution was started by God and then left alone. Then there is Natural Evolution, where Evolution was purely natural without outside forces (God) aiding the process.
Now this had the actual effect of combining non-believers and partial-believers together. The way the question was asked did not separate the Theists from the non-Theists, and the basic outcome was a statistical dead heat.

• 49% believe in “Evolution.”
  48% do not believe in “Evolution.”
  2% had no opinion
  I don’t know what happened to the other 1%

  Level of education had an effect on what beliefs were; to no ones surprise.

  74% of people with masters or higher degrees believe in Evolution
  48% of people with college degrees believe in Evolution
  50% of adults with some college believe in Evolution
  41% of adults with High School or less believe in Evolution

To kind of bring this together, one can go back to November of 1997, for another poll conducted by Gallup where it was found (thru using better questions) that those believers in Evolution could be broken down thusly:

• 40% believe a God Started Evolution
  9% believe in a purely natural evolution

I haven’t seen any more recent surveys, using good questions, but past data suggests that the numbers don’t significantly change from year to year.

So, in the USA at least, the non-believers are a “Big Minority” 🙂 We people that call ourselves non-believers, atheists, agnostics, or whatever, are a really small group-in the USA. But, it is nice to know that whether one is right or wrong in this matter is not decided by polling the public. We come from the place of believing in the logic and proofs of science. We look at physical proofs that can be empirically tested, not mythical tales that involve magic.

We can look at evidence from dozens and dozens of sciences that are unanimously saying that most of what religion teaches and believes is not true. Even the “soft sciences” such as world history, biblical scholarship and linguistics, are disputing biblical tales that have been believed for nearly two thousand years. I mean, do you seriously think that the humans that were spread over almost every continent on earth 12,000 years ago were speaking the same language?

We have a growing tide of knowledge coming our way…every day. I don’t think many Christians yet realize how far gone their “truths” are. Some of the things now known are able to debunk religion by proving parts of the Bible wrong. If one, or two, or three parts are wrong…how about others?

Sidebar: Newsweek magazine in 1987 (yea…I know) said; “By one count there are some 700 scientists with respectable academic credentials (out of a total of 480,000 U.S. earth and life scientists) who give credence to creation-science…” That means that less than one half of one percent of scientists support the biblical creation of earth and man.

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