Evolution, abiogenic, or God-caused

Creationism, Evolution, and other science issues

Moderator: Moderators

User avatar
Willum
Savant
Posts: 9017
Joined: Sat Aug 02, 2014 2:14 pm
Location: Yahweh's Burial Place
Has thanked: 35 times
Been thanked: 82 times

Evolution, abiogenic, or God-caused

Post #1

Post by Willum »

Aristotle and Socrates disagreed on a very great deal.

One thing, they, indeed the Western and Eastern world agreed on was:
Evolution was a fact.
The only dissent was:
Was evolution biotic, or did some force (God/demiurge) create life and cause it to evolve.

2,600 years ago the ENTIRE civilized world agreed that evolution was a fact.

In another thread it was established that God fits no definition of biological life, he does not respirate, need to reproduce, eat, etc., so let's leave that line, or address it here:

Life from non-life

So the topic of debate is:
If the entire civilized world agreed that evolution was a thing, Hellenic, Middle-Eastern and even the far East, 2,600 years ago, how did we take such a great step backwards, that we are arguing something plain and obvious to primitive peoples?

PS - No, I will no cite a reference for Aristotles' and Socrates' disagreement, it is easy to look up and it will do you good to look it up, or demonstrate the fallacy.

DeMotts
Scholar
Posts: 276
Joined: Tue Apr 28, 2015 1:58 pm
Has thanked: 1 time
Been thanked: 22 times

Re: Evolution, abiogenic, or God-caused

Post #2

Post by DeMotts »

[Replying to post 1 by Willum]

Is it fair to say that Aristotle and Socrates believed in "evolution" in the same sense we do now? Aristotle created his scala naturae to position the various forms of life on a hierarchy, but his hierarchy was based on a assessment of the level of "perfection" in a form life, with inanimate matter at the very bottom, then plants, invertebrates, and vertebrates ranked with fish at the bottom and humans at the top. This is an inherently flawed assessment of course, all creatures are equally evolved - a fish is not "less perfect" than an elephant. The fish is as "perfect" as it needs to be for it's environment. So while I would agree that Aristotle and the acient Greeks had a more naturalistic take than perhaps young Earth creationists, it is ultimately a teleological argument.

Also, your statement that "2,600 years ago the ENTIRE civilized world agreed that evolution was a fact" isn't correct. Their view wasn't the evolution that we understand now, and furthermore I have a hard time believing that the ENTIRE civilized world was on board with this view - you're only representing the views of the ancient Greeks and ignoring ancient Egypt, China, etc.

I wouldn't say that we took a great step backwards. I would say that our views, influenced by numerous factors, have evolved. :D

User avatar
Willum
Savant
Posts: 9017
Joined: Sat Aug 02, 2014 2:14 pm
Location: Yahweh's Burial Place
Has thanked: 35 times
Been thanked: 82 times

Re: Evolution, abiogenic, or God-caused

Post #3

Post by Willum »

[Replying to post 2 by DeMotts]

Well, allowing they didn't have microscopes and major excavation, they did arrive at a sufficient conclusion that, at least the entire thinking world arrived at the conclusion.
That it was in a cruder form, doesn't really displace the argument.

Why is it today, there are thinking people whose mode of thinking was displaces 2,600 years ago?

DeMotts
Scholar
Posts: 276
Joined: Tue Apr 28, 2015 1:58 pm
Has thanked: 1 time
Been thanked: 22 times

Re: Evolution, abiogenic, or God-caused

Post #4

Post by DeMotts »

[Replying to post 3 by Willum]

Some people still think the earth is flat. You can convince some people of pretty much anything, because people are susceptible to explanations they find convenient. Those who determine truths about the universe and reality drag everyone else forward, and our body of knowledge as a whole increases.

User avatar
Neatras
Guru
Posts: 1045
Joined: Sat Dec 24, 2011 11:44 pm
Location: Oklahoma, US
Been thanked: 1 time

Re: Evolution, abiogenic, or God-caused

Post #5

Post by Neatras »

DeMotts wrote: [Replying to post 3 by Willum]

Some people still think the earth is flat. You can convince some people of pretty much anything, because people are susceptible to explanations they find convenient. Those who determine truths about the universe and reality drag everyone else forward, and our body of knowledge as a whole increases.
Creationists fall into the trap of thinking their intuition is sufficient to dismiss complex and nuanced scientific theories, or even the scientific process as a whole. It brings to mind the South US citizen stereotype of a hillbilly clutching his bible saying, "Well o' course it works like dat, I coulda told you dat!" whenever a study confirming a widely held belief (but with controlled, repeatably tested experimentation that provides insight into the process behind it) arises.

This is a classic case of the Dunning-Kruger effect. When someone is so horribly bad at a topic that they have no idea how deep the pool is, they get the thought in their heads that the pool is shallow, and since their understanding is shallow enough, they assume that means they know enough to pass judgment. It's a sad state of affairs indeed. Nuance doesn't exist intuitively because that would mean there are complex exceptions to the "rule" that the layman sees on his every day car drive to work.

For flat earthers, the earth being flat is intuitive. We perceive only one direction as down, and no matter how far in any direction I go longitudinally or latitudinal, I always "perceive" down in the same direction. The sun and moon seem to go in circles "around" me, so it "makes sense" that they're in motion and the Earth is a still disc. They settle on intuition and ignore things that infringe on that. And no amount of evidence shown will faze them because their intuition tells them that the evidence is wrong. If your intuition gives you bad advice, and your intuition tells you that you shouldn't listen to anyone else's advice, you will only act according to bad advice.

And that's the state we see Creationists in, time and time and time again. Where intuition becomes doctrine. And because they have the most anti-intellectual institution backing their scientifically illiterate stances (the church), it's not as if scientific evidence would persuade them. To get a creationist to understand evolution, they must first accept that their intuition is not a reliable method of discerning reality and its nuanced, complex components and mechanisms.

This isn't even getting into the topic of how religious indoctrination compels people to stake their entire identity on whether or not their imaginary god made them out of clay, dust, water, or whatever. When your entire belief is that you are "nothing" without your god, of course you'll perceive other perspectives as an attack on yourself. So in addition to demonstrating that intuition is not reliable, we also have to demonstrate that scientific evidence is not an attack on your identity or personal beliefs. It is merely a descriptive process meant to figure out how reality works.

But the average person is too scientifically illiterate to let these emotional attachments go, so that leads to scientists treating the layperson to a long and evidence-filled lecture that goes in one ear, out the other.

A quote comes to mind from a former Young Earth Creationist who went on to work in the oil industry.
But eventually, by 1994 I was through with young-earth creationISM. Nothing that young-earth creationists had taught me about geology turned out to be true. I took a poll of my ICR graduate friends who have worked in the oil industry. I asked them one question.

"From your oil industry experience, did any fact that you were taught at ICR, which challenged current geological thinking, turn out in the long run to be true? ,"

That is a very simple question. One man, Steve Robertson, who worked for Shell grew real silent on the phone, sighed and softly said 'No!' A very close friend that I had hired at Arco, after hearing the question, exclaimed, "Wait a minute. There has to be one!" But he could not name one. I can not name one. No one else could either. One man I could not reach, to ask that question, had a crisis of faith about two years after coming into the oil industry. I do not know what his spiritual state is now but he was in bad shape the last time I talked to him.
Creationists will readily dismiss the above testimony as either a fake story or misguided. But what they can't do, what they will never even attempt to do... is give facts in place of claims.

Checkpoint
Prodigy
Posts: 4069
Joined: Sun Mar 27, 2016 10:07 pm
Has thanked: 105 times
Been thanked: 63 times

Re: Evolution, abiogenic, or God-caused

Post #6

Post by Checkpoint »

Willum wrote: [Replying to post 2 by DeMotts]

Well, allowing they didn't have microscopes and major excavation, they did arrive at a sufficient conclusion that, at least the entire thinking world arrived at the conclusion.
That it was in a cruder form, doesn't really displace the argument.

Why is it today, there are thinking people whose mode of thinking was displaces 2,600 years ago?
That's why, they "are thinking people", those who form their own conclusions and don't just go along with the crowd or the past.

The statuscro is the place to begin...

Checkpoint
Prodigy
Posts: 4069
Joined: Sun Mar 27, 2016 10:07 pm
Has thanked: 105 times
Been thanked: 63 times

Re: Evolution, abiogenic, or God-caused

Post #7

Post by Checkpoint »

Willum wrote: [Replying to post 2 by DeMotts]

Well, allowing they didn't have microscopes and major excavation, they did arrive at a sufficient conclusion that, at least the entire thinking world arrived at the conclusion.
That it was in a cruder form, doesn't really displace the argument.

Why is it today, there are thinking people whose mode of thinking was displaces 2,600 years ago?
That's why, they "are thinking people", those who form their own conclusions and don't just go along with the crowd or the past.

The statusquo is the place to begin...

User avatar
Willum
Savant
Posts: 9017
Joined: Sat Aug 02, 2014 2:14 pm
Location: Yahweh's Burial Place
Has thanked: 35 times
Been thanked: 82 times

Re: Evolution, abiogenic, or God-caused

Post #8

Post by Willum »

[Replying to post 7 by Checkpoint]

I am not sure what you are saying.
Are you defending, by analogy, that some people have regressed from believing bacteria cause sickness, to illness are fro spirits or God?

That they have thought about it and come to the conclusion that archaic ways of thinking represent a "thinking people?"

One could give similar analogy to "flat Earth," and so on.

puddleglum
Sage
Posts: 685
Joined: Fri Jun 12, 2009 12:35 pm
Contact:

Post #9

Post by puddleglum »

It is impossible to show that all people once believed in evolution because there are no records of what most people believed. The reason so many believe in evolution today is that they think that the natural processes that are going on today have always gone on. 2 Peter 3:2-8 say, " scoffers will come in the last days with scoffing, following their own sinful desires. They will say, “Where is the promise of his coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things are continuing as they were from the beginning of creation.� For they deliberately overlook this fact, that the heavens existed long ago, and the earth was formed out of water and through water by the word of God, and that by means of these the world that then existed was deluged with water and perished."

They believe everything has always gone on as it is today and they deny that a worldwide flood occurred. If these things were true then evolution would have to be true in order to explain the existence of life. Belief in evolution and an old earth is such a part of our culture that even many Christians are deceived and interpret the Bible to make it compatible with modern theories. In fact there is scientific evidence that supports the belief that God created the earth but it is overlooked or explained away. You can find some of that evidence here:

https://clydeherrin.wordpress.com/2016/ ... ng-navels/
His invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made.
Romans 1:20 ESV

User avatar
Willum
Savant
Posts: 9017
Joined: Sat Aug 02, 2014 2:14 pm
Location: Yahweh's Burial Place
Has thanked: 35 times
Been thanked: 82 times

Post #10

Post by Willum »

[Replying to post 9 by puddleglum]

It is also unnecessary to show everyone believed it. There would always be the ignorant and uncaring. But evolution was accepted as a fact 2,600 years ago.

The rest of your post is non-sequitur.

Post Reply