The Scopes Monkey Trial is 100 years old this year; surprisingly we still have evolution-deniers

Cypress

Well-known member

A Century Ago, a High School Teacher From a Small Tennessee Town Ignited a National Debate Over Human Evolution​

The Scopes “monkey trial” garnered international attention, and the battle that was fought continues in some form in other states today

“On the surface, the trial was about something that seemed small—whether a high school teacher who taught evolution in his biology class broke the law,” says Brenda Wineapple, author of Keeping the Faith: God, Democracy and the Trial That Riveted a Nation, published last year. “But it was really about change, and how we embrace it or resist it.”

 
The Scopes Monkey trial is adequately covered in Wikipedia, Encyclopedia Britannica, and other online sources if you need help with understanding the basics and the context.
I don't believe in the strict interpretation of evolution. I do believe that species evolve but there is an intelligent force working that drives it.
 
I don't believe in the strict interpretation of evolution. I do believe that species evolve but there is an intelligent force working that drives it.

Drives it how, specifically? Does the intelligent force "cause" some adaptations? Or do you believe in a God who merely put in place those things in nature which can lead to evolutionary adaptation?

How does your vision of this intelligence operate within the structure of biological change over time?
 
Drives it how, specifically? Does the intelligent force "cause" some adaptations? Or do you believe in a God who merely put in place those things in nature which can lead to evolutionary adaptation?

How does your vision of this intelligence operate within the structure of biological change over time?
I don't pretend to have the answers as to the specific machinations that drive biological evolution.
Having studied the theory of evolution I think that the theory that everything from cellular development into complex animals and humans happens by chance is preposterous. It's like saying that if you throw the parts of a Maserati up in the air gazillions of times, one time it will fall into a fully assembled vehicle.
There must be an intelligent force that drives the so-called evolution of species.
 
I don't believe in the strict interpretation of evolution. I do believe that species evolve but there is an intelligent force working that drives it.
The mystery is the origin of life, the genesis of DNA, but not the evolution of life. We have the broad outline of descent with modification reasonably well worked out.

We're probably in the middle of another scientific revolution in biology at this point in the 21st century, because it's becoming fairly clear that the neo-Darwinian synthesis of natural selection and genetic mutation actually explains very little about living organisms at the level of systems biology.
 
I don't pretend to have the answers as to the specific machinations that drive biological evolution.
Having studied the theory of evolution I think that the theory that everything from cellular development into complex animals and humans happens by chance is preposterous. It's like saying that if you throw the parts of a Maserati up in the air gazillions of times, one time it will fall into a fully assembled vehicle.
There must be an intelligent force that drives the so-called evolution of species.

The idea of pure random behavior is critically wrong in understanding evolution. It isn't just throwing up the pieces of a Mazerati and getting one fully assembled. Not even close to that.

Take something like the evolution of the eye. It sure does seem pretty amazing but it can be broken down into smaller, less-developed stages that still have functionality but are not an eye.

Here's what that looks like and the animals that have it:

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The key is that it doesn't all just come together in one swoop.

Sure there's an element of "chance" and probability to it, but there's also a HUGE amount of time to do it in. Evolution has the advantage of working on life over the course of millions of years. Small changes add up in that time.
 
The creation is just way too much to fathom. Anyone who says they know how we got here and how we developed and how the hundreds of thousands of different species on Earth had the impetus to develop is blowing pompous smoke out his ass.
 
The creation is just way too much to fathom. Anyone who says they know how we got here and how we developed and how the hundreds of thousands of different species on Earth had the impetus to develop is blowing pompous smoke out his ass.
Science wouldn't be either fun nor necessary if we already knew the answer to everything. We should expect that reasonable answers are hard to come by, and take monumental efforts of human intellectual toil and creativity.

What religious fundamentalists and secular materialists need to learn is that science and religion are asking fundamentally different questions.

My opinion is that at the end of the day truth is ultimately unified, and the universe of empirical facts and the universe of values dovetail and cross paths in some way we do not understand.
 
Science wouldn't be either fun nor necessary if we already knew the answer to everything. We should expect that reasonable answers are hard to come by, and take monumental efforts of human intellectual toil and creativity.

What religious fundamentalists and secular materialists need to learn is that science and religion are asking fundamentally different questions.

My opinion is that at the end of the day truth is tely unified, and the universe of empirical facts and the universe of values dovetail and cross paths in some way we do not understand.
Yes....I do believe religion/mysticism and science are on convergent paths.
 
Evolution was a revolution over 166 years ago, not so much these days. Too much evidence to consider it "revolutionary" today. It's more like bog-standard science now.
Darwin's theory of evolution is not science. It is thus not considered science. You should learn what science is.
 
The creation is just way too much to fathom. Anyone who says they know how we got here and how we developed and how the hundreds of thousands of different species on Earth had the impetus to develop is blowing pompous smoke out his ass.
You just explained the complete unfalsifiability of the unobserved past. You also correctly explained what Cypress can't seem to grasp is that there cannot be any "why" to science, just "what."
 
The idea of pure random behavior is critically wrong in understanding evolution.
This is very poor wording on your part. "Bahavior" is arbitrary, or is governed by rules, and is never random. Hence, there is no such thing as "random behavior." It is a contradiction in terms.

Otherwise, Darwin's theory of evolution is based entirely on random occurrence of events.

It isn't just throwing up the pieces of a Mazerati and getting one fully assembled. Not even close to that.
Examples involving engineered things are inherently invalid and don't work. Evolution is like shaking up a solution of many substances and the heavier substances settling to the bottom, the lightest substances floating to the top, liquids separating based on density, etc.

Take something like the evolution of the eye.
I believe you mean a hypothetical evolution of eyes since no one knows how eyes evolved, or if Darwin's theory is even correct.

The key is that it doesn't all just come together in one swoop.
Correct. All acceptable proposals for how eyes might have evolved per Darwin's theory of evolution involve very small changes over long time periods.

Sure there's an element of "chance" and probability to it,
It's better to say that it is simply entirely random. The moment you claim a "probability," you put yourself on the hook to explain both what that probability is and how you computed it.

but there's also a HUGE amount of time to do it in.
Correct ... according to Darwin's theory. If some Christians are correct, everything happened a few thousand years ago, and I'm going to have some explaining to do when I get called into Peter's office.

Evolution has the advantage of working on life over the course of millions of years.
Well, it has the advantage of working over a long but unknown period of time. It could be millions of years. It could be billions of years. Nobody knows.

Small changes add up in that time.
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My opinion is that at the end of the day truth is ultimately unified,
How is the truth of the supernatural unified with the truth of nature?

and the universe of empirical facts and the universe of values dovetail and cross paths in some way we do not understand.
If we do not understand it, and we don't observe it, then it looks exactly the same as truths that never cross paths in the first place.
 
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