Huckster hides behind his religion. The guy killed more people with the death sentence than almost George Bush. Now he’s let a convicted rapist out of jail who goes to murder and rape another lady right after. He needs to go.

I would rather err on the side of God. Your faith or my faith – which is more valid ?- Ill take faith in a loving God.

i’m fascinated. i’m not sure how belief in “a loving God” automatically shuts the door to belief in either evolution or natural selection. unless by belief in “a loving God” passmore means “uncritical and literal interpretation of a document written by men who believed the earth was flat.”

i’m also not sure how passmore has addressed the validity of his belief in “a loving God.” he has asserted such belief, but provided no argument to support its validity.

finally, i have to wonder what passmore is scared of, that belief in “a loving God” is preferable to belief in a scientific theory.

Natural selection, like heliocentrism, is a settled scientific theory that has no alternatives currently under any serious evaluation. While there are nuances of exactly how it happens at various levels that are still under research, the overall process is not. Like much in this country that passes for discourse, we want to be “fair and balanced”, and thereby give equal time to 2 views which do not have equal weight.

On one side you have tens of thousands of scientists, hundreds of thousands of man-years of research, thousands upon thousands of tests and re-tests, and deep exploration of the crevices of the theory’s impact on the world as it exists. On the other side, we have a book written by people 2 thousand years ago, changed repeatedly over it’s life for political purposes, translated poorly, repeatedly, which is itself internally inconsistent with its own dogma, and yet believed by many to be inerrant.

Someone’s walking on quicksand, and it ain’t the scientific community. Whatever place it may hold elsewhere, faith has no place in scientific inquiry.

Evolution is the not the only game in town. It’s the most likely game in town by an incredible margin because it explains the existing data better, and provides more accurate predictions than any other competing theory/hypothesis.
The idea of Intelligent design doesn’t qualify as science, let alone as a competing scientific theory.

Apart from Brett, McFox and Sassy’s comments, which statements have been derogatory?

Chris makes a good point in drawing a distinction between the pure science of natural selection and the broader aspects of evolution. My concern is that social and political pressures do affect the quality of the scientific work. Very real human frailties produce a very flawed outcome. Even peer reviewed work can be bad work because people are afraid to rock the boat or risk looking like a fool.

So natural selection is the only standing theory, and I admit that I don’t have a better scientifically testable theory. I don’t see how that makes evolution from simple chemicals to complex life good science. It’s the only game in town, so that makes it right? So I’m not convinced, but you knew that already. I don’t have to believe it, and that doesn’t make me stupid. I know that I’m not.

To be frank, it rubs me the wrong way when people denigrate others just because they hold different views. I have friends who believe things that I don’t embrace or relate to, but I respect them in any case. There are so many people who don’t hold scientific perspectives on life, and they never will. There are also many people who will never believe in God. Some people believe in crystals or pyramid energy or reincarnation or pick your own favorite. There are factions within each group as well. The different groups think very poorly of each other. Everybody is so certain that they have all the answers, and of course nobody has all the answers.

Why is there so much intolerance? Why is it okay for one person to call the other a fool, an idiot or a liar? How is that supposed to be enlightened thinking?

The fact that one side sees it in such terms does not suddenly make it a fact. A discussion of the impact of nuclear power has both a scientific component and a sociopolitical component. Nuclear power itself is purely a scientific concept. It is only how we react to it that becomes sociopolitical. Confusing people’s hypersensitive over-reaction to the nature of scientific inquiry for the nature of scientific inquiry itself is the mistake.

There is no scientific foundation for using any other model other than natural selection as the currently accepted theory that best explains the way species have changed over the millions of years that this planet has been around. If instead you think we should teach mythology as fact, then that’s a sociopolitical discussion, but it sure as heck ain’t science.

Evolution is not just some dry theory of physics or fact of biology. It profoundly shapes the way that people view themselves, others and the world around them. To claim that it hasn’t been used to forge sweeping political and social change for the last century and a half is as you put it “disingenuous and a fabrication of the largest order and demonstrates a staggering ignorance”

I’m quite sure that, while I have been accused of many things in my life, “regurgitating other people’s thoughts” is not one of them. If anything, I have been accused of being overly rigorous with logic, and thereby “cold”. If the alternative is a blissful ignorance of the world and a willful participation in the unwinding of the Enlightenment, I will gladly be called cold. The cold nature of continuous inquiry will always interest me more than the warm certainty of faith.

Perhaps. Are you sure that you aren’t doing just that?

Evolution is as much a social and political movement as anything else. As soon as human motives become engaged in any scientific endeavor it becomes suspect.

If you have a more testable and survivable theory for the nature of things, then I’m sure the scientific community would love to hear it, and would likely end up with a Nobel prize. Baring you actually having something better, I see it as little more than faith attempting to wave a shiny lie to distract people from what’s going on.

Natural selection is not only science, it is outstanding science. It is the foundation of nearly all modern biology, as well as pharmacological research. You can say it’s bad science, but that’s little more than puffery. Hundreds of thousands of man years have gone into testing, evaluating, re-testing, re-evaluating and digging into it.

Evolutionists may have some facts, but even taken together these do not make Darwinian evolution a fact. One important fact that is missing is proof that macro evolution happens at all. Saying that it must happen because we’re here isn’t really science.

You make it sound like someone who doesn’t believe in macro evolution can’t think scientifically. You mention that science is testable. Evolution isn’t testable. Proponents of evolution have nothing better to put forward so instead of just admitting it and looking for a better answer they cling to what they have. This is a very human response, but they even refuse to admit that much.

If evolution is science, it is very bad science. If scientific answers to life origins are so important then why not look for a better, more testable theory?

There are not absolutes in science; there is only currently accepted theories, which may, at some point, with enough evidence, be disproved. Nobody has submitted a theory that has proved to be a viable alternative to natural selection. Fact is something you can measure, theory deals with the why and how. The more facts you accumulate, the more confidence someone can have in the theory, but it never ceases to be a theory.

You can dig out the “we can’t see it” rubric all you want, but there’s a heck of a lot more evidence for natural selection than there is for some sky-father who inspired some book written thousands of years ago. Science is always willing to re-evaluate and revise its views based on evidence. Testable, documented, valid evidence.

Teaching school-age kids that evolution is a fact does not serve them as well as teaching them to actually think about whether or not evolution is a fact.

The problem with your argument of “scientific faith”, is that that word doesn’t mean what you think. Rooted in the Latin word fides, faith means complete trust or confidence. I don’t know anyone in the science community that has complete trust or confidence in anything. Not even gravity. It’s all up for question. That questioning, however, must be rooted in evidentiary arguments, not some scribbles in a political treatise handed deemed infallible and inerrant.

And yes, I do believe that many, many, many, many years ago, homo sapiens came from monkeys, in the loosest term, as they have also changed. How does that not make our achievements less? How does that change me? It doesn’t. It’s simply evidence. Heck, we transplant pieces of pigs into humans because they are so biologically, and genetically, similar. Doesn’t stop me from eating bacon.

As for the origin of the Universe, I leave that to the astrophysicists, as it is so far from my area of expertise. Perhaps, and equally valid and demonstrable to your “God created it” childhood taunt, is that it was sneezed into existence. I’ll leave you with that origin myth:

In the beginning, the universe was created. This made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move. Many races believe it was created by some sort of God, but the Jatravartid people of Viltvodle VI firmly believed that the entire universe was, in fact, sneezed out of the nose of a being called the Great Green Arkleseizure. The Jatravartids, who lived in perpetual fear of the time they called “The Coming of the Great White Handkerchief” were small, blue creatures with more than fifty arms each. They were unique in being the only race in history to have invented the aerosol deodorant before the wheel.

In the end, nothing those of us on the science side of things can say will shake people’s inerrant belief in faeries until they themselves are willing to forgo thousands of years of mythos and step into the light once more. You can attempt to compare the two things, but that is foolhardy, and it only further illustrates the intellectual dishonesty and laziness of the creationists. Then again, if you weren’t intellectually stunted, you wouldn’t believe in creation in the first place.