Life Evolves

Is evolution the root of all evil?

Thu, 08 Nov 2007 20:54:22 +0100

It didn't take long. A tragedy happens and the creationist movement clings to a clearly mentally disturbed person's rants and raves and the root of all evil is placed at the foot of the scientific theory of evolution. How sick.
http://www.creationontheweb.com/content/view/5435
Creation Ministries International, within a day of the Finnish massacre at a high school, uses the tragedy to try and blame a 'belief' in evolution for the actions of a disturbed young man who took not only the lives of innocent children and adults, but his own life as well. Where do these people really think the blame lies? In a complete misunderstanding of natural selection and survival of the fittest - that's where.
So were there no bad people before evolution? Was life blissful before evolution? I think not. In any case in this silly finger pointing game that the creationists play -counting the innocent bodies - is crass stupidity What if I count all the bodies on the side of all different types of 'faith' religious belief and obedience to God/Gods that have been used to 'justify wars and killing? I think I would win hands down. There are far more bodies as a result of religion than evolution. But really that is not the point. A scientific theory cannot be held responsible for how a person thinks and behaves in the same way that a church cannot be held responsible for a deranged killer who hears the voice of 'God' command him to kill!
War in the name of religion is responsible for countless millions of deaths of innocent men women and children over the course of human history - but that's ignored by the creationist movement or consigned to history and human ignorance (but what about the religious war of Iraq? - see below).
Science explains how life develops and suddenly it is responsible for the massacre of innocent children in a school because a person is deranged and doesn't understand how false his 'arguments' are, how he has misinterpreted a scientific theory. So, goes the creationist argument, let's all dismiss the science and go back to God. The consequence, of course, would be that all killing and massacre would then have to be deranged people killing others in the name of a deity (doesn't really matter which one you choose).
As for the recent war in Iraq, President Bush had God on his side, interestingly so did Saddam Husssein (who should now be having a nice warm chat with him since his execution - I wonder if Saddam berated God for not supporting him more fully in the war!)
Let's look at the scientific theory of evolution and look for tracts or instances that support indiscriminate killing and war. If we do, we find the following supporting quotations:
" " ( )
Yes, that's right, nothing.
Now let's look to some of the religious texts and tracts and see what we find!
'Then you must utterly destroy them; you shall make no covenant with them and show them no mercy' (Torah, Book of Deuteronomy 7:1-2)
'All who take the sword will perish by the sword' (New Testament, Matthew 5:43-44)

'Fight in the cause of God against those who fight you, but aggress not' (Koran 2:190)

'Whoever fights in the cause of God, then gets killed or attains victory, we will surely grant him a great recompense' (Koran 4:74)

'When all efforts to restore peace prove useless and no words avail, lawful is the flash of steel' (10th Sikh guru, Guru Gobind Singh)

'May your weapons be strong to drive away the attackers, may your arms be powerful enough to check the foes, let your army be glorious, not the evil-doer' (Hinduism's Rig Veda 1-39:2)

In fairness we do also find this quotation

'Thou shall not kill' (Torah, Book of Exodus 20:13)

So once again we find the pathetic attempts of people unable to come to terms with a relatively simple scientific theory applying it out of context and out of synch with any form of reality.

Evolution is NOT about the origins of life it is about how life, once started, develops. How difficult is this concept? A five year old could learn it, yet creationists refuse to see it - because they do not wish to see it.

The wretch who took life in the Finnish school massacre was quoting 'soundbites' of evolution - e.g. 'survival of the fittest'. This is actually a very good example of why evolution and the theories that support it should be better taught in schools, more fully developed in schools and made more central to the curriculum. If evolution were properly taught then people would understand that it is not about origins, they would know that survival of the fittest was nothing to do with being stronger or pushing 'weak' animals out of the way or killing them to cling on to life and that evolution as nothing to do with origins and the start of life.

I could easily use this upsetting Finnish tragedy to create an argument for better teaching of evolution in schools - but I won't since this tragedy has nothing to do with evolution or religion.

It is also interesting to note that, just as in England, religious education is compulsory in all state schools for primary and secondary children. So, should we blame poor RE teaching for the massacre?

Comments

Slow, Slow, Quick, Quick, Slow

Tue, 30 Oct 2007 19:21:47 +0100

So how fast does evolution proceed? How do the religous fundamentalists explain the 'old' look of the earth and certain observable scientific facts that contradict a 'young Earth'?

I visited a tourist attraction at the weekend - somewhere that was one of my inspirations for studying geology. It was Wookey Hole caves. A giant underground cave complex in the Mendip Hills in the UK. Apart from the blatent tourist line fed to visitors about a witch turned to stone by a monk (clearly untrue but a fun story), and the superficial way that the geology was explained (I found myself doing a more specialist guide tour explaining some of the features and deposits) - necessary for the range of ages and science understanding of the visitors, I found myself yet again turning to creationist claims and finding huge holes and gaps in their interpretation of the evidence and a total lack of understanding of science and geology.

I simply offer 1 thing - the formation of stalagmites and stalactites. We can, and have measured the rates of formation for well over a hundred years. We have descriptions of the caves going back over a thousand years; these wonderfully impressive formations take hundreds of thousands of years to build in caves - yet we are told that the earth is less than 10,000 years old.

What explanation can the creationist come up with?

The only ones that fit are:

1. They formed faster in the begining and have slowed down.
2. They were created almost fully formed when the Earth was created.

This took me back to a creationist meeting I attended where the explanation for the apparent age of the universe according to measurements of the distances between ourseleves and other atronomical bodies using the speed of light as a constant and measuring light years and extrapolating from this the age of the universe was the simple retort that aetheistic scientists assume that the speed of light is constant, whereas it could have slowed down! And this came from a PhD scientist! I was so gob smacked that I just laughed at him. He then informed me that despite the fact I was being disrespectful, I should know that science has managed to slow the speed of light to almost a standstill experimentally (which is true).

Of course, when I stated that I would happily show him there and then how to slow doown the speed of light using a diamond or any other transparent or translucent material, he scoffed at me. It was clear that he had no understanding of the properties of light and that when light travels in a vacuum (space) its speed is indeed constant but that when it travels from one mediumk to another it can indeed be slowed down. A stick apparently bending in a glass of water demonstrates this just as well.

Comments

Let's end the silliness over creationism NOW!

Tue, 23 Oct 2007 17:33:42 +0200

Isn't it about time we stopped fussing over creationism in schools? It has no place in any rational person's education.

If people wish to believe that the universe and all that therein is was created less than 10,000 years ago and that it came in a 'mature form' then fine, but please don't try and convince me (on no evidence whatsoever) that:

dinosaurs and people walked together;
meat eating dinosaurs only ate vegetables until 'original sin';
the speed of light has slowed since the 'creation';
and all the other crackpot ideas...

Now, as long as they don't interfere with my life or scientfic and technological progress let them be to live in their deluded world. The problem is that they do try and interfere with progress. If we took the central message of 'intelligent design' creationism to heart, then we would make no scientific progress. In essence, the ID crowd simply say that anything that they cannot explain

But I am sick and tired of these so called upstanding Christian, seekers of truth who do nothing but deceive and lie. Even when you show conclusively that they lie they just ignore you and carry on lying. If that is what it means to be a 'card carrying Christian' then I, for one , resign from the club!

At least some places are being sensible. Here are a few reports of how creationism is being squeezed (quite rightly) out of the education system;

Creationism to be banished from Swedish schools

Published: 15th October 2007 07:57 CET
Online: http://www.thelocal.se/8790/

The Swedish government is cracking down on religion in schools. New rules will include a ban on biology teachers teaching creationism or 'intelligent design' alongside evolution.

Council of Europe Reject Creationism

By Gilbert Reilhac

STRASBOURG, France (Reuters) - Europe's main human rights body voted on Thursday to urge schools across the continent to firmly oppose the teaching of creationist and "intelligent design" views in their science classes.

The Council of Europe's Parliamentary Assembly approved a resolution saying attacks on the theory of evolution were rooted "in forms of religious extremism" and amounted to a dangerous assault on science and human rights.
The text said European schools should "resist presentation of creationist ideas in any discipline other than religion." It said the "intelligent design" view defended by some United States conservatives was an updated version of creationism.
Creationism says God made the world in six days as depicted in the Bible. Intelligent design argues some life forms are too complex to have evolved according to Charles Darwin's theory and needed an unnamed higher intelligence to develop as they have.

Anne Brasseur, an Assembly member from Luxembourg who updated an earlier draft resolution, said the report showed how creationists -- most recently a shadowy Turkish Muslim writer Harun Yahya -- were trying to infiltrate European schools.

"The purpose of this report is to warn against the attempt to pass off a belief -- creationism -- as a science and to teach the theses of this belief in science classes," she said. "Its purpose is not to fight any belief."

The vote was due in June but was postponed because some members felt the original text amounted to an attack on religious belief. A few changes were made to spell out that it was not directed against religion.

The Council, based in the eastern French city of Strasbourg, oversees human rights standards in member states and enforces decisions of the European Court of Human Rights.

The resolution, which passed 48 votes to 25 with 3 abstentions, is not binding on the Council's 47 member states but reflects widespread opposition among politicians to teaching creationism in science class.

Some conservatives in the United States, both religious and secular, have long opposed the teaching of evolution in public schools but U.S. courts have regularly barred them from teaching what they describe as religious views of creation.
Pressure to teach creationism is weaker in Europe, but has been mounting. An Assembly committee took up the issue because Harun Yahya has been sending his lavish Islamic creationist book "Atlas of Creation" to schools in several countries.

Supporters of intelligent design want it taught in science class alongside evolution. A U.S. court ruled this out in a landmark decision in 2005, dismissing it as "neo-creationism."

Comments