Willowtree's Scientific Evidence against Evolution

At the risk of repeating what others have said I'm a scientist who is also a Christian. I believe in God, in Jesus etc and I believe in evolution. I'm a Roman Catholic. I asked our priest about Creation, he said he believed in evolution. I asked our Archbishop about Creation, he said he believed in evolution. Now, I'm not trying to say that evolution must be right because these people believe in it, all I'm saying is that it is possible to be a Christian and an evolutionist. I can't reconcile the two of them. As we understand Creation theory today, Creation theory and evolution are mutually exclusive, it's either one or the other. However what I can reconcile is the possibility that Creation as described in Genesis has been described wrongly by the MAN who wrote it down. Maybe it's allegorical. Doesn't it say somewhere that a thousand years is but a day to the Lord? I don't know how they can be reconciled for everyone, but I can reconcile them for myself and blame the fallibility of Man who recorded the events that he wasn't present at.

Willowtree, how on earth can you say that an evolutionist declaring themselves a theist has no relevance to this debate when time and time again you have, without a shred of evidence, confidently asserted that evolutionists are atheists. By pointing out I am a theist AND and evolutionist, that blows your assertion out of the water! I call that relevant. Can you really not see why a direct refutation of a point you made is relevant? Are you seriously saying that anything which contradicts your "worldview" is irrelevant? Think on this, if mankind had ignored evidence which was contrary to their "worldview", we would all still believe that the Earth was flat. You can't just ignore evidence which is contrary to your theories, otherwise you introduce bias into your thinking and it becomes anything but logical.If you continually bang on about evolutionists being atheists, don't be surprised if people contradict you, in fact you should expect it. From experience I've found that a large number of scientists are practicing Christians.As for Milton being independent corroboration - nope. His views count as OPINION, not evidence. I suggest you check out the meaning of the word "corroboration".Now as for theist scientists, we don't tend to use our religious beliefs in our work because we measure and assess things that are quantifiable. God's love isn't, the Truth of the Gospels isn't and so we can't use it in our analyses. How can you incorporate the Love of God into a calculation for the mean length of a gene across a number of species? Or even the mean shoe size of the average UK resident?If you really want a serious debate on the subject, you can't continually yell "Irrelevant" when someone points out a fact that is in contradiction to your "truths". The object of debate is not to score points, but to learn from others, to gather new information, to test your ideas and beliefs, to see how other opinions agree or contradict you and in the light of the information gathered you can maybe refine your ideas - that is what debate is all about. If you close your mind to unpalatable facts, you will never learn, you will never grow as a person and you run the risks of repeating the same fallacies all your life instead of refining your thoughts and maybe getting nearer to the truth, whatever that is.Just a last wee point. If Milton considers all religion as inferior pursuits, surely he is saying something that you totally disagree with, something in which you consider him to be wrong. Do you think the same could be said of any of his other opinions, eg the thylacine/wolf skull similarities or are these utterances immune from "wrongness" just because they suit your argument?[This message has been edited by Trixie, 01-07-2004]

What you actually said was "Why even reveal ones theism if it has no relevance to the subject ?" I just tried to answer your question from my point of view, being a theist who had just revealed their theism in this debate. surely that qualifies me to have an opinion on the matter?Can I point out that I have made no comment about "theistic evolutionists/deistic evolutionists" since these are terms that I don't use, certainly I can't ever recall having used the term "deistic evolutionists".As for your comment "the claim of rational enquiry that invokes a neutrality toward the Divine is dishonest", I'm sorry, but it's nonsense. How on earth can I invoke the actions of God and use these in my conclusions when I set out to determine the average shoe size of UK citizens? The average shoe size of UK citizens will be the same whether I invoke God or not!!! Same for the question "Do these bacteria grow in oxygenless atmospheres?" If they fail to grow, I'm going to look a bit daft if I report "No they don't grow without oxygen in this experiment because God didn't want them to". There's nothing dishonest about explaining science without mentioning God's input.I do like your comment "The rest of your pro-theistic evolution sermonizing is embarrasssing." My beliefs are personal to me and if I can live with them, then it doesn't really matter what you think, to be honest. I tend to be a bit more concerned with what God thinks - that's all that matters to me in my relationship with God. I don't have to justify my beliefs to you, just God.Have to say that I have done my homework on your ideas about God sense and I personally find your arguments about God removing your ability to recognise him as Creator because you DON'T recognise him as Creator a bit odd. I mean, I'm hardly going to say to my three year old "No you can't go out to play because you don't want to go out to play" Surely God would be more interested in trying to get the non-believers to believe. Isn't that why His only Son died in agony and humiliation on the cross? To save sinners and non-believers? Bit of a waste of time if God is going to prevent you from believing just because you don't believe.I haven't mistaken you with the stereotype you referenced. All I had to go on was your own posts and that's what I based my observations on.Now, I think we should leave this as it doesn't seem to be going anywhere productive and I think it may be in danger of degenerating into something distasteful. I have no intention of offending you and I have no intention of allowing you to offend me for a third time. Let's just turn the other cheek

I'm not quite sure I follow your train of thought, Willowtree. I DON'T credit God with creating everything - I'm a firm believer in evolution and I don't believe a word of the Creation story of Genesis, neither the version of chapter one nor the version of chapter two.