Christianity and Evolution

[NewGuy2005 51]

22 minutes ago, billvon said:

That quote was from a Pope.  I don't think you can get more official than that.

Yes, the Pope giving us all a demonstration of the process of compartmentalization of conflicting information. 

[riggerrob 558]

Thanks for informing us about this new book.

The bigger debate reminds me of a church sermon that I wrote a few years back. The sermon's title was "Religion or science? What is your best guess?"

The sermon starts with the notion that the Bible is a "best guess" based upon human knowledge at the time it was written by early Jews. When they lacked an explanation, they just added "God in the gaps." Over the years, geneticists, archeologists, climatologists, biologists, astronomers, etc. have added to this knowledge and confirmed some of the basic concepts written in the Bible.

I want to be clear when I state that there are few errors in the Bible, rather there are large gaps in the knowledge of the original authors. As scientists dig up more evidence, we slowly fill in gaps in the that knowledge. Much of what we believe as "scientific fact" will be laughed at a few decades in the future. Every year scientific "fact" has to be re-written in light of new evidence. During my lifetime, I have seen the introduction of plate tectonics, genetics, the Big Bang, quantum mechanics, home computers, etc. 

My studies of climatology (see Bryan Fagan's numerous books) confirm the basis for the biblical story of Noah's Ark. There is ample sedimentary evidence from Lake Winnipeg to the Black Sea confirming a huge flood roughly 7,000 years before Jesus Christ.

For example, I don't believe that the Big Bang is the total explanation of how our universe was created, rather, it believe that the Big Bang is just one phase of a constantly recurring cycle of expansion and contraction of our galaxy. Those celestial cycles last so many billions of years that they are too big for the human mind to graps, so we settle for the much shorter and simpler "Big Bang" Theory.

[riggerrob 558]

On 1/5/2022 at 9:44 AM, gowlerk said:

He seems like a better salesman than most. But it is still nothing but his personal speculation on a matter that no human can possibly know or understand. In other words it is just made up shit, but with an attempt to frame it in a way that helps reconcile it with the little knowledge that we have. It is no better than sticking with the 6 day and one day of rest formula in the end. His job is to do the best he can to maintain the power of his church. 

Unfortunately, the Pope is not powerful enough to change the minds of every Catholic on the planet. Sometimes he has to wait for an entire generation to die of old age before he can slowly change Catholic dogma. The same thing happens in every other large organization: churches, royal families, political parties, CSPA, Transport Canada, etc.

[billvon 2,380]

7 minutes ago, riggerrob said:

Unfortunately, the Pope is not powerful enough to change the minds of every Catholic on the planet. Sometimes he has to wait for an entire generation to die of old age before he can slowly change Catholic dogma. 

Yep, which is true of everything else as you mentioned.

For example, interracial marriage.  It's not that the worst bigots of the 60's discovered that race wasn't all that important, and thus dropped their condemnation of interracial marriage.  It's that most of them are dead.  And their equivalent generation today grew up seeing interracial marriage in newspapers, on TV, in magazines and in movies.  So even if they have the same basic level of intolerance, if someone bring up interracial marriage their first response is "but that's always been here; it's part of my cherished childhood memories.  So that's fine.  It's not like they are nonbinary freaks who don't know their own sex!"

And in 30 years, those people will be dead, and we will have a new generation who grew up with genderfluid people and just don't care about it.  I am sure they will have a new thing to refuse to tolerate - but at least they've been raised to be more tolerant to a few more things.

And thus the cause of civil rights lurches and stumbles forward, driven more by human mortality than enlightenment.

[Coreece 189]

4 minutes ago, billvon said:

I am sure they will have a new thing to refuse to tolerate

The in-coming planet killer asteroid is God's Will, who are you to destroy it!

[kallend 1,621]

35 minutes ago, riggerrob said:

During my lifetime, I have seen the introduction of . . . quantum mechanics,. . . etc. 

.

You must be pretty old.

Planck - 1900

Einstein - 1905

 Schrödinger, Heisenberg - 1925

Dirac - 1926

[SkyDekker 1,121]

18 hours ago, kallend said:

Heisenberg

He must have started cooking meth later in life...still looked good for his age.