anglican church apologises to Darwin

[jverne]

"Charles Darwin, 200 years from your birth (in 1809), the Church of England owes you an apology for misunderstanding you and, by getting our first reaction wrong, encouraging others to misunderstand you still,'' the article says, according to extracts printed by The Mail on Sunday newspaper.

obviously they have a sense of humor.

http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/story/0,22049,24345772-5016574,00.html


well, it's nice that they apologized for being dumbasses, but i'm sensing an agenda behind this.
it's like they want to make evolution part of their religious belief and thus thinning the line between secular and religious knowledge. is the term "flock to" someone correct?

but to do that they'll have to sort out the incompatibility of biblical genesis and Evolution, in other words...make shit up.

 

[Leto]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligent_design

Maybe they believe in evolution, but that it was directed by the Creator?

 

[Kadayi]

All the theorising about the earth being 6000 years old is based off of some stupid calculations that were conducted by some monk back in the middle ages who added up the generations in the old testament and arrived at a mean figure. It's never been a 'fact' within the bible, merely a daft hypothesis one person came to, that has become cemented in some creationists minds. The C of E have never been particular advocates of that line of thinking, and I'd say by and large their take on genesis is very much in the allegorical, and has been for many years:-

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegorical_interpretations_of_Genesis

The C of E is a far more pragmatic and practical church than the sort you find in the US.

Good of them to offically acknowledge the poor judgement made by previous ministers regarding Darwins work. That his grandson doesn't see the point shows poor judgement on his part tbh. The only downside is that the Dawkins will no doubt be champing at the bit with some complaint or other about it. In fact he'll probably write up a few snide newspaper columns and maybe another book out of it, pompous prick that he is.

@Leto

Intelligent design is a US phenomena driven by creationists desire to see the theory of Evolution devalued in the US education system. It's not something the C of E advocate here in the UK tbh, as we have a national curriculum all schools must adhere to.

 

[Absinthe]

Hey, let's rag on Dawkins.

**** that guy.

 

[Operational]

Evolution != Atheism.

 

[Atomic_Piggy]

I'm sure he cares now!

 

[Solaris]

Evolution != Atheism.

I disagree.

Perhaps it still allows for some form of deism, but it shows that god is not useful. We can explain everything right up to the big bang very clearly now, so we have no need to envoke a creator.

It's like having a crime and one person thinks john did it, but all the evidence shows steve did it, we know steve snuck into the house, his hands are on the stolen painting, and we have footage of steve selling the painting. As the evidence that steve did the crime increases, the absurdity of the idea that john did it increases. Once the level of evidence that steve commited the crime, reaches the level of evidence we have for the current model of how we got here, it becomes impossible to believe John did it unless you are insane.

I hope the analagy makes sense.

 

[Operational]

I disagree.

Perhaps it still allows for some form of deism, but it shows that god is not useful. We can explain everything right up to the big bang very clearly now, so we have no need to envoke a creator.

And atheists like you and I don't. But for the people who do believe in God it's not contradictory to also believe in evolution. God is all powerful, so they say, so there is nothing stopping him from controlling all the seemingly random events in the cosmos and the evolution of life that eventually brought us into being.

It's like having a crime and one person thinks john did it, but all the evidence shows steve did it, we know steve snuck into the house, his hands are on the stolen painting, and we have footage of steve selling the painting. As the evidence that steve did the crime increases, the absurdity of the idea that john did it increases. Once the level of evidence that steve commited the crime, reaches the level of evidence we have for the current model of how we got here, it becomes impossible to believe John did it unless you are insane.

I hope the analagy makes sense.

It does, but it's also wrong. Since John=God in your analogy to fix it John would be a supposed invisible being silently directing Steve's actions with no evidence for or against his involvement.

I recommend a look at this video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KnJX68ELbAY

 

[No Limit]

I disagree.

Perhaps it still allows for some form of deism, but it shows that god is not useful. We can explain everything right up to the big bang very clearly now, so we have no need to envoke a creator.

It's like having a crime and one person thinks john did it, but all the evidence shows steve did it, we know steve snuck into the house, his hands are on the stolen painting, and we have footage of steve selling the painting. As the evidence that steve did the crime increases, the absurdity of the idea that john did it increases. Once the level of evidence that steve commited the crime, reaches the level of evidence we have for the current model of how we got here, it becomes impossible to believe John did it unless you are insane.

I hope the analagy makes sense.

You seem to think of religion as what is published in the various bibles, obviously science has proved those wrong. But there is still the question, where did all the matter originally come from? What started the big bang? Why the **** are we all here? It is not unreasonable for someone to have a religious reasoning behind that.

 

[Laivasse]

I recommend a look at this video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KnJX68ELbAY

Great vid, saying stuff I've been saying for years. A widespread understanding of the points expressed therein would lead to much less conflict between the religious and scientific worlds.

I can approve of, if not necessarily sympathise with, the words of that pentecostal paleontologist who said something like 'To treat the Bible like it is a common history is to degrade it's inner meaning', or whatever. That is in itself not an unreasonable viewpoint to hold, regardless of whether it equates to cherrypicking or whether you consider the bible to be horseshit, and if more religious people had the intellectual flexibility to grasp this point - and the others in the vid, particularly the one about science not relating to religion since most notional god-concepts have Him/Her/It existing outside the laws of science anyway - then there'd be considerably less ignorance and considerably more capacity for critical thinking in the world.

I was talking to my girlfriend's mother the other day, trying to drop a few hints that Palin wasn't the hot shit that Christian fundies are making her out to be. She's a reasonable and smart woman (my girlfriend's mum, I mean), so I thought it might do some damage when I mentioned 'she's a Creationist, you know...' The response I got was 'But all religious people are creationists!!' I wanted to facepalm my own head right off... but then there's also the fact that a lot of Americans just don't know, or are wilfully ignorant to, the true depths of ignorance and stupidity which are being referred to in the term 'creationism.'

 

[jverne]

but how can you be christian and not believe in genesis?...where it's obvious that god just created everything. he even used a mans rib to create a female.

every evolutionist christian/jew/muslim is actually rejecting scripture. how can that be right?

in genesis god first created man and then the garden...rejecting such a big event is kinda stupid don't you think?

creationism is actually the only pristine interpretation of the bible, everything else is just a bastard child of different ideas and interpretations.

 

[Laivasse]

They just say it's allegorical and problem solved.

It's kind of meaningless to say that every evolutionist CHristian/whatever is rejecting scripture because they don't literally believe the Genesis story, since by that rationale every religious person is rejecting scripture anyway - by wearing clothes made of more than one fibre, by not stoning insolent children, by touching a woman when she's on the blob, whatever...

Every single person who follows a religious text cherry picks from it and ignores other parts. This is necessarily so, since to the best of my knowledge they're all self-contradictory at various points. A bigger deal tends to get made of Genesis, IMO, because it's at the beginning of the Bible and it's the only part people manage to read before getting bored shitless and saying 'OK, I get the gist of it.' The other parts that get big publicity are the controversial ones that bigots tend to latch onto, like the homophobic stuff. But the thing is, the Christians who are taking a literal, hardline interpretation of these things aren't necessarily following the Bible any more closely than those Christians who accept evolution - they just differ in the passages they choose to ignore. I'm sure if you quizzed the average creationist on all the obscure passages in Deuteronomy about eating donkey menstrual blood every Tuesday (or whatever), you would find that their interpretation of the Bible is far from 'pristine'.

The whole point of the clergy, after all, is to interpret the insight which is supposedly encoded in their holy books so that it can be transmitted to the community at large. If I'm playing devil's advocate for a while, Christians can argue that it doesn't matter if they cherrypick certain stuff to follow from the Bible; they can just say 'we know it's a confusing, often non-literal, and occasionally contradictory text - that's why we have professionals to digest it for us.'

 

[jverne]

They just say it's allegorical and problem solved.

It's kind of meaningless to say that every evolutionist CHristian/whatever is rejecting scripture because they don't literally believe the Genesis story, since by that rationale every religious person is rejecting scripture anyway - by wearing clothes made of more than one fibre, by not stoning insolent children, by touching a woman when she's on the blob, whatever...

Every single person who follows a religious text cherry picks from it and ignores other parts. This is necessarily so, since to the best of my knowledge they're all self-contradictory at various points. A bigger deal tends to get made of Genesis, IMO, because it's at the beginning of the Bible and it's the only part people manage to read before getting bored shitless and saying 'OK, I get the gist of it.' The other parts that get big publicity are the controversial ones that bigots tend to latch onto, like the homophobic stuff. But the thing is, the Christians who are taking a literal, hardline interpretation of these things aren't necessarily following the Bible any more closely than those Christians who accept evolution - they just differ in the passages they choose to ignore. I'm sure if you quizzed the average creationist on all the obscure passages in Deuteronomy about eating donkey menstrual blood every Tuesday (or whatever), you would find that their interpretation of the Bible is far from 'pristine'.

The whole point of the clergy, after all, is to interpret the insight which is supposedly encoded in their holy books so that it can be transmitted to the community at large. If I'm playing devil's advocate for a while, Christians can argue that it doesn't matter if they cherrypick certain stuff to follow from the Bible; they can just say 'we know it's a confusing, often non-literal, and occasionally contradictory text - that's why we have professionals to digest it for us.'

here you did two good things, sir:

1. you showed that the average religious person is a fake and a hypocrite (oh..and ignorant)
2. you just confirmed religion is not the carrier of morals











i'm wondering what part of "god made the heavens and the earth first, man second and the garden third" Christians don't understand?

 

[Laivasse]

Who knows, that particular line could be re-spun to mean something vague and wanky like:
'rude physicality came before and is inferior to life, through which things of beauty can come to be... now turn to page 314 of your hymn books'

My point is that Christians aren't necessarily breaking their own rules by believing in evolution, since they can always use the argument 'the bible's just there for spiritual guidance, it's not a science textbook.'

 

[The Monkey]

I recommend a look at this video.
*snip*

I didn't like how he tried to excuse himself by saying most evolutionists believe in God, as if there was something wrong with being an atheist.

 

[Kadayi]

1. you showed that the average religious person is a fake and a hypocrite (oh..and ignorant)
2. you just confirmed religion is not the carrier of morals

Actually Lavaisse did neither, but it's always amusing to see you find an excuse to apply your own agenda to an interpretation in order to run down religious people and religion at the drop of a hat. Plain truth is there's no one highly religious on these boards, they all got scared off long ago by trolls like Mecha, so the necessity to slag them off at every opportunity is somewhat diminished. Give it a rest.

My point is that Christians aren't necessarily breaking their own rules by believing in evolution, since they can always use the argument 'the bible's just there for spiritual guidance, it's not a science textbook.'

Agreed pretty much all religious works are allegorical in nature, and the stupidity I find with many of my fellow atheists is that they fail to comprehend this simple truth in their arguments or even acknowledge it (often deliberately so), as well as not remotely consider the context within which these works were written.

The youtube Operational posted summed up the real problem, which is 'dumb people easily mislead' truth of the matter is, if it's not one thing it's the other.

I didn't like how he tried to excuse himself by saying most evolutionists believe in God, as if there was something wrong with being an atheist

I think the point he was making was that Evolution = Atheism isn't necessarily a truism as Creationists (and some Atheists as well) would have you believe, and that in fact it's entirely possible to subscribe to the notion of a godhead and still hold with Evolution, and that many people do.

 

[Operational]

I didn't like how he tried to excuse himself by saying most evolutionists believe in God, as if there was something wrong with being an atheist.

I posted his first of thirteen videos on the subject (with more to come) and while he never explicitly states he is an athiest I'd be surprised if he wasn't. The only reason he doesn't explicitly state it one way or the other is because his videos aren't about faith vs atheism but disproving concrete falsehoods of creationism.

 

[Kadayi]

I posted his first of thirteen videos on the subject (with more to come) and while he never explicitly states he is an athiest I'd be surprised if he wasn't. The only reason he doesn't explicitly state it one way or the other is because his videos aren't about faith vs atheism but disproving concrete falsehoods of creationism.

Post more when they appear. I thought that one was rather good.

 

[Eejit]

I disagree.

Perhaps it still allows for some form of deism, but it shows that god is not useful. We can explain everything right up to the big bang very clearly now, so we have no need to envoke a creator.

Actually, there is no theory of abiogenesis that is even close to being universally accepted among scientists. Bit of a gap in the "everything" still.