Reason, Religion, and Science

The only reason you disagree is your religious beliefs. You have no scientific reasons to doubt common descent at all. You flail and fail almost every day with some new “flavor of the week” Creationist dog dirt which you don’t understand and can’t defend. This latest infatuation with Jeanson’s pseudoscience is a prime example. Last week you were in love with “Mike” Behe’s drivel. In all the years you’ve been on line I’ve never seen you express the slightest desire to educate yourself on actual evolutionary biology. Not once.

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Unfortunately this is now the world we live in, where science is only seen as a device to validate someone’s religion, politics, or ideology.

Without any intent to shame you, can you share the example? As I’m sure you know, this only makes me respect you more…

That’s why it’s so important we keep promoting good science even on out of the way blogs. Every little bit of science education helps. Scientific literacy (or its lack) is a HUGE problem going forward in this country. That’s why we get the climate change deniers, the anti-vaxxers, the “COVID-19 is a hoax” morons which unfortunately includes the very “leadership” of the country. It’s a good fight and I intend to keep fighting it as long as I am able.

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It’s frustrating. I think the mingling of religion and science doesn’t help the situation.

What’s even worse is religious organizations like the DI deliberately misrepresenting science to push their religious/political agenda. If I could I’d make their kind of deliberate lying about science a hefty fine and significant jail term.

The consequences of decades of this sort of behavior are being felt right now in real time and it’s terrifying.

Scroll down in the comments section in this thread for an example:
http://disq.us/p/11a5d63

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You attempt to minimize the disagreement. You don’t agree with common descent of humans and chimps, of crocodylians, of paleognath birds, and in fact of any two species we’ve been able to discuss. You don’t agree that gene gain or loss actually happen. You use the weasel-word “simple” to disguise your disagreement over adaptations. And you think you accept speciation and population genetics only because you know nothing about them.

Why should the classification system be valuable if it represents nothing real?

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More precisely, one of them is science, and the others are not.

It discusses common descent, and I’m sure you think that’s science. Seriously, there is a lot of content in the book.

Sure, but I thought we were talking about the GAE theory, not the book. I would claim that common descent is not part of the GAE theory. It’s a prior inheritance from standard biology, of which the biological aspect of GAE is a modification.

There are a large number of ideas in the GAE book, and many of them are secular scientific ideas. It puts these scientific ideas in dialogue with theology, which is a virtue, not a vice.

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Again, I wasn’t talking about the book. I was talking specifically about the GAE theory.

I don’t see the value in finding “common ground” with such individuals. Such individuals, rather, should be excluded from serious discussion and any possible position of influence. Spewing their idiocy on an informal forum like this is OK, though, I guess. But it does risk giving them ideas that deserve to be treated as anything other than a sick joke.

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I’m not sure what you think we are doing to platform @colewd. As far as I know, he is only posting in the forum.

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“No evidence” is a pretty categorical statement… can you back it up?

When it comes to public discourse, Science has always been mingled with religious and philosophical positions.
This is true of all religious positions including atheism.
Why do you find this frustrating? Isn’t it a good thing?

Theism is not a religion.
Atheism is not a religion.
Worldviews are not religions.

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Fair point…
So, you think @Herman_Mays would be ok with mingling World views with Science?

I hope you know the guy well enough to speak for him. (He seems to have an overall grouse with using Science to validate religious beliefs, political beliefs as well as ideologies, if you read above).