This weekend, I finished "Evolution for Everyone: How Darwin's Theory Can Change the Way We Think About Our Lives" by David Sloan Wilson.Wow. If I could choose one book to recommend to everyone this year, it would be this book. I don't think I'll ever think about culture and the natural world the same again. I enjoyed it so much, and it blew my mind so much, it actually has me considering going back to grad school for another master's and/or a Ph.D....and I swore last year that I was done with college (it helps that almost every kind of library has some form of tuition reimbursement).
So...READ IT!! We'll never evolve as a culture until our leaders can understand HOW and WHY culture evolves....
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8 comments:
Nick
Please tell me you don't believe in evolution......sigh.....
I don't BELIEVE in evolution. I KNOW about evolution. It's a scientific fact, not a belief.
Either you BELIEVE the teaching is true or you don't. The Bible doesn't say we evolved it says we were CREATED in the image of God. So the big question- When did people stop evolving? How come we don't have apes walking around talking? or how is it that we still have apes and monkeys and they are not evolving?
People never stop evolving. We're still evolving to this day, although it's primarily cultural now because we've attained a certain dominance over our environment. Evolutionary tendencies can be seen all around us. The reason why we love sugar and fat so much is that in the past, these substances were scarce, prior to civilization. We were genetically programmed to seek out as much of it as possible. Evolution's way of helping us to achieve this goal was to make us LOVE the taste of it. Our genetic evolution, however, is having trouble keeping up with our cultural evolution, which is why obesity is on the rise. Genetic evolution takes generations upon generations to produce visible alterations...we're talking thousands of years. So, in other words, after generations of overeating and killing ourselves off, if we didn't take care of the problem cultural, like improving medical care or creating foods that taste like sugar when they're acutally not....we would either evolve a distaste for so much sugar or our species would die off. Some members of our species are already dying off at young ages. That's just one example of evolution. And there are mounds and mounds of fossils that illustrate the evolution of primates.
As far as monkeys talking...did you know that monkeys can be taught sign language? They simply don't possess the biological ability to produce the kinds of sounds we do. Sometime in the past, neither did human beings. It's logically possible that in a hundred thousand years, apes could talk. Everything is constantly evolving.
Just one to two hundred years ago we were all smaller. If you think this is a radical claim, just visit England some time and walk through their older buildings...hotel rooms, etc...
Believing in evolution doesn't mean that you can't believe in God. Religion and Science are two completely different ways of viewing the world. You could easily believe that God created the process of evolution...in fact eventually, if trust rational scientific inquiry, you would have to believe.
In Galileo's time, the church believed that the Earth was the center of the universe...and they believed that this was proof that we were God's chosen people...proof that we held dominion over our world as a gift from God. When Copernicus and Galileo began to publish essays claiming that the sun was at the center of the universe, they were arrested as heretics...what they were speaking was considered blasphemy. Galileo was confined to house arrest for the rest of his life, although he continued to publish essays. It took the catholic church until 1970's for the Pope to admit that the church may have misjudged the man.
This is a problem that has existed since the beginning of scientific and rational thought. The main reason for this is that religion seeks to explain the world in spiritual terms, in terms of the subjective experience, while science seeks to explain from an objective point of view that is inarguable fact. I'll leave you with this example:
A group of children is sitting in a classroom in a circle...can you picture it? In the center of the circle, a child stands holding one of those kushy balls or stress balls, whatever you want to call it. Also in the center stands a Jew, a Christian, and a Muslim, and a scientist (who could also be classified in one of the other categories).
When the child tosses the ball into the air, he allows it to come back down and drop on the floor. He immediately asks "why did the ball come back down?"
The Jew might say "God caused the ball to come back down." The Christian might say "Jesus caused the ball to come back down." The Muslim might say "Allah caused the ball to come back down." But the scientist will almost certainly say "Gravity causes the ball to come back down." Now, there shouldn't be any problem for the relgious folk to agree that their explanation can be true, along with the theory of gravity.
That's right....just remember that gravity is also "just a theory." But it's so widely accepted within the scientific community as a force that exists in nature, it is taken as "fact." The same is also true of evolution. It's just not as accepted by the religious community.
Well spoken, Nick, you smarty-pants. That's why I love you.
Nick,
Glad to see you reply. I started to think you wouldn't, not wanting to go there. Sorry, I just couldn't leave that stone unturned.
Hey Jen,
Nice to meet you. I'm Cindy from the Western Branch.
As for the evolution teaching I can't believe someone would willingly accept the teaching. Monkeys and apes have always been monkeys and apes and humans have always been humans. God created man in his own image, he created woman from the man and the animals were all created as they are by God. As for humans not being able to talk years ago Adam named every one of the animals and Adam WAS in the beginning. Apes will never talk. God never created them to talk. Man created evolution not God. There's no way a person can believe the teachings God gave us in the Bible and evolution at the same time. One contradicts the other. Man will always come up with their own ideas to explain away God's word. As for gravity man may have named it but God made the world perfect everything in order just like he made our bodies to heal themselves of some illnesses. God created all things but man came up with evolution. There's just no truth in it!!
this debate drives me insane. i don't believe darwins theory of evolution is completely correct, but i do think evolution happens. if you open your eyes you can see it. Apes and monkeys not talking is a weak attempt to prove that evolution does not exist. Monkeys whatever kind of monkeys they were, or whatever else they were, probably just evolved into monkeys. The monkeys as we know them today, will never talk... but the monkeys of tomorrow, or the whatevers of tomorrow which will be evolved from the monkeys of today, might learn how to talk for all i care. We can't know that yet."For the bible tells me so" is also a weak form of reasoning.i personally believe in God and don't see belief in evolution in any way as a threat to that belief. I think a very important lesson we all need to learn is that it's ok and even a very positive thing, to doubt. That is what science is all about. People who have set their minds on a certain belief and do not want to accept anything else feel threatened by new theories, with and without flaws. Many Christians think that scientists are out to discredit christianity, the Bible, and the existance of God, but this is usually not the case. Good scientists are simply curious about how the world works and are out to find the truth. Their method of searching for truth is however very different from the method of many religious people ... in fact, its completely the opposite. Instead of taking a theory, or religion, or idea for granted, as truth, scientists who do their job right(obviously there are scientists who aren't very scientific because scientists are people and people aren't perfect) ... examine, come up with an idea, test that idea, DOUBT that this idea is automatically correct, test again, and again, come up with new hypothesis, and eventually come to a conclusion.. and its pretty much still called THEORY.... because good scientists are careful. . . they know, that not everything is always as it seems. science strives to learn .. and science doubts. Doubt is a hard pill for christians to swallow. I know because i grew up in a christian family and also believed at one time that faith is the answer. I do not have anything against christianity or believing in God.. so im not out to attack it, but what worries me is blind acceptance of ANYTHING. Is it not possible that the bible was written by men, (i'll even go as far to say for this example men inspired by God) ... but that these men (Paul, for example) weren't around since the beginning of the earth and mankind, and described their God-inspired version of the creation how they best could, as men who couldn't possibly at that time in history have known anything about evolution? Again here, men aren't perfect and can't know everything. Bad example maybe but im just trying to say that i think people take the bible too literally. 6 days. God is God. I have no problem believing he could have created everything in 6 days... but,eh, man is man, and if God inspired man to write a book about his creation and rules and love, i'm pretty sure he would be smart enough to allow man to write it in a way that man could understand. . . or maybe the bible wasn't inspired by God, and maybe man wrote a book ( several books, letters etc. ) that were inspired by similar beliefs from earlier cultures and mixed with the culture of the day. . . and even if that were the case... you can still believe in God, and christianity is still a pretty good religion. Why put God in a box? the Bible isn't the only text that claims to be the truth and inspired by God. Isn't it possible that man keeps coming up with ways of explaining that which he can't really explain? i know i haven't listed the best examples this time, its because im tired, but i think , if there is a God , and i believe there is, that he is much greater than we tend to think of him. . . through science, we are simply examining the world around us, and trying to be honest with ourselves about the results of our experiments. so far, the scientific method has proven to be pretty damn reliable. that doesnt mean every conclusion is correct... but conclusions of science evolve as , i believe we do too. keep your minds open and don't believe everything you hear or read, whether it be an article in a science magazine or a sermon from a good-hearted preacher... have patience and keep your eyes and mind (and heart) open and realize not everything is as it seems. so far what i have heard, read and seen about the evolution lead me to think it's on the right track , if not a complete truth. i have seen the fossils in a museum, i havent read all of 0rigin of the species, but some of it ( it was pretty boring) ... but i cant say either way yet. but i know when i look around me that life is constantly changing.. and evolving. and i am still learning. it just aggravates me to think that anyone would say it is DEFINATELY not true... just because there is another THEORY (or rather religion which also cannot be proved) which when interpreted in a narrow manner, seems to say the opposite. ITS OK to believe in God and be a christian, as long as you don't let your mind be shut off to possiblities.whats possible is possible. its also ok to believe in evolution, i mean my goodness, there is ALOT of evidence for it. but keep your minds open. allow the truth to be revealed to you... noone knows the whole truth. there is too much of it to learn in a lifetime. . .but its worth a try. but you wont get very far if you become satisfied with the first appealing suggestion.
Amen, sister!!
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