{Update @11:10pm October 7: due to the overwhelming amount of comments and the real life I have to live, I will only reply to questions I deem logically reasonable to answer. All polite and expletive-free comments will still be approved, and when I can, will answer the questions contained within comments. If some of my regular readers see something that they want to debate and I haven’t answered/debated yet, GO FOR IT! 
Your input is appreciated, and it’s a chance for sharpening your dialogue and debate skills!}
Secular-minded individuals have a double standard when it comes to education.
In math class, the whole point is finding the right answer to an equation. 9×9=81. 2+2=4. X-3+2=4. We’re told there’s a wrong answer and a right answer- companies go to great lengths to print nifty things called answer booklets to prove this point. It’s quite easy to see the whole idea of math is to get THE answer. Sometimes there’s more than one answer, but simply any answer will not do.
Then we move onto the touchy subject of science, where these secular thinkers are bent on proving things by science. To say science proves one theory is to say science disproves another.
Now we arrive at the literary and sociology level. We’re told there are no metanarratives, no real truth. “Everything is relative…” Everything is up to you. You must have choice. You should decide for yourself and let no one tell you what to do.
Now the ultimate question: Could you use the “no metanarrative” view at an evolution debate?
Isn’t evolution a metanarrative?
“That just your metanarrative.” They may reply.
What’s wrong with that view?
That’s not just a double standard, it’s a self-contradicting teaching theory. No wonder people are confused these days! Maybe it’s no wonder that math people, science people, and literary people so often don’t get along. Because they’ve been immersed in different views of “real truth.”
I’m not sure I fully understand your point. Are you saying that evolution is a philosophy and not a scientific theory? It’s only a philosophy to someone who tries to counter it with a non-scientific alternative like intelligent design (and the futile debate begins).
Please try not to think of atheism or secularism (if that’s a word) as a different religion. Speaking for myself only, I don’t believe in anything supernatural, including gods. Evolution is one scientific theory about life on Earth. If another, better scientific theory comes along, I’ll go with it. However, that theory can’t involve supernatural intervention that is unobservable and about which data cannot be gathered. That isn’t science and never will be.
In other words, evolution is about data, which makes it closer to math than to a liberal art like philosophy or art interpretation or what have you.
Sorry if I missed your point. Sometimes theists and atheists are speaking a different dialect of the same language.
Hello!
It can be very confusing when you are confronted with a belief system entirely different from your own. I’ve come to enjoy debating well, it keeps a person sharp. So don’t apologize for having questions! It helps both of us think more about what we believe and makes us stronger thinkers.
If you don’t like the idea of atheism being a religion, let’s start by calling it a worldview for now. Everyone has a worldview, a belief system for seeing the world.
Evolution is a theory, but not a scientific one. I simply don’t see the evidence. I don’t see or hear of things evolving, I don’t see changes in animals or insects, other than scientifically proven mutations. If you could show me some evidence that would hold up evolution, that would be helpful! What is your belief of evolution — how did it all begin? I’ve never see life come from non-life, and the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics and the theory of evolution contradict!
You also said intelligent design was not science and never would be. Does believing in God completely disqualify one from science? Does it seem like theists are begging the question when they argue for intelligent design? It appears that evolutionists are assuming the same thing they try to prove. By totally closing off the idea of God, they only leave naturalism. Basically, both sides do a lousy job of understanding each other. If either party would leave presupposed ideas behind and open-mindedly study science and design, leaving the outcome up to science; we might actually get somewhere. Instead of walking into the laboratory thinking they will prove the other person wrong, scientists should have a teachable mindset. This is most likely why there’s such a divide.
I am a theist, but I have stepped outside my ideas and played skeptic. It was by playing skeptic and asking questions I actually found more evidence for intelligent design. If you’d like me to detail on this, let me know and we can go further.
This article, however, was about the case for metanarratives. Metanarrative basically means big story or picture (model below), and with the belief, a consistent, absolute truth. Do you believe in an absolute truth?
We can see the Creation-Fall-Redemption cycle playing out all around us. There’s varying views on creation (origins), lots of different views on the fall (where did we go wrong?); and redemption (how do we get right again?). The question I was subtly asking was “Do your ideas match up?” It’s illogical that our public educators teach evolution as truth; yet truth is relative or non-existent in the arts. When a worldview doesn’t have a logical response to one or more of the questions, it can be proven false. It has to be consistent. Since I am speaking to the average reader (which is a theist), I was speaking the dialect, so to speak, of theism.
Hope this answered your questions. If I may, I’d like to recommend a book by John Lennox: “God’s Undertaker”. You may find it very interesting!
It’s not that I don’t “like” the idea of atheism being a religion. It’s simply not. I was a Christian for 30 years, so I understand it and know what a religion is. Atheists don’t worship a supernatural being, have a holy book, or gather to practice symbolic rituals. It’s not a worldview either. The only difference between me and you is that you include religion in your life and I don’t. Otherwise, we both have families and friends and jobs and food and sleep, etc.
To say you “don’t see the evidence for evolution” is to be willfully ignorant of it. From chemical protein tests, to mutating bacteria, to vestigial body parts, the evidence is voluminous. As for you not “seeing” evolution, speciation events aren’t heralded by press releases. Since the fossil record does not preserve DNA, we can’t map a before-and-after DNA sequence, we can’t make the comparison. There are separate species of birds alive today that have almost identical skeletal structures. If you lived for 100,000 years and spent all your time observing and testing, then you’d see your speciation events.
I simply don’t get why some Christians can’t understand that “God did it” is not a scientific perspective.
Atheists do worship something, themselves. While man is not supernatural, they do hold man in the highest regard. I’d say the holy books of atheism would have to be Dawkins or Sagan or Hitchens. You read them for information and inspiration as we read holy books. In a sense, atheism, though supposedly free from God, mimics the life of a Christian. You can’t get away from it.
Mutating bacteria happening over and over again, varying in type but still bacteria; is not evolution. It’s a process that occurs even in humans. We grow new skin, but we’re still human. We have bacteria that changes, we’re still human. Why do the seasons not change? Why don’t they evolve? Why do we have no evidence of monkeys evolving from humans from the beginning of time? We see fossils labeled “3 million years ago” but were there humans around to prove it? Why don’t we have evolving writing on tablets?
We haven’t lived 100,000 years so you can’t very well tell me that I’d see these the events.
The point of atheism is simple, any proof of existence of god you give me utterly fails by using assumptions that are too strong to be considered reasonable. Even Gödel’s ontological argument fails for this reason, and it was a very carefully thought one.
Atheism is not a religion in the sense that it doesn’t possess some sort of organisation that provides moral guidelines for you to follow, it is not the worship of oneself, and it is not the worship of the human condition it can basically be described as just a set of opinions that pretty much strip life and of any higher meaning, undoing the hierarchy created by christian philosophy. Your wrong assumption when calling atheism a religion is that this hierarchy was somehow preserved leaving human beings at the top of the tree, once you remove the top head that would be god.
Back to evolution, if you must know fossil dating is performed usually by measuring the emissions of radio-active compounds on the fossil samples, it assumes that the concentration of such radio-active compounds all around us (in the air, water, earth, etc…) hasn’t changed significantly over the course of the life of the earth (if anything, it should have diminished, since radiation emissions occur from the degradation of these compounds so this assumption would not be a bad one since we would by that be under-estimating the age of fossils) the point is while some (whatever) animal lives (humans, being animals too, don’t fail this rule) are permanently ingesting trace amounts of radio-active compounds that are everywhere, because you can’t just tell atoms to stay where they are, so once it dies, this process stops and from that point on the amount of radio-active compounds in the hard tissues (bones, teeth…) is fixed and these compounds start to decay, since they don’t decay always at the same rate, rather they decelerate when the concentration dwindles it is possible to measure the age of the fossil by how much radio-active energy is being emitted. There are also other ways of dating fossils but I think it’s technical enough, and by now you should realize that they don’t just take the bones to a lab and decide on how old they would have to be to really piss off intelligent design supporters.
“What’s wrong with that view?
”
That it’s wrong?
The evidence supports the fact of evolution through the process of natural selection.
You can believe whatever you want. But that doesn’t change the facts.
How is it wrong? You shouldn’t make a claim and leave it.
Natural selection never produces new species, or even cross species, which I’ll guess is your point. It doesn’t create anything new. Changes made by experiments actually brought around death or dysfunction.
If I can “believe anything I want to” why bother arguing with me?
My article wasn’t even about proving evolution, which logically leads me to believe you’re in cohoots with previous commenters.
A species is defined by the inability – or rather the disinclination – to breed with another species.
You can breed new fruitfly species in the lab just by feeding them different food for a couple of generations. They aren’t going to breed with others anymore. Same as when species are kept apart in nature for some reason (such as being isolated on an island)
They may be a new species, and I should have clarified myself, but they certainly aren’t a new insect altogether. It can also be accredited to variance in the insect itself, which is not evolution.
And that experiment is designed, not mimicking natural selection. You have to feed them and help them along.
Yes, in your lifetime you can only expect to see changes in species that could very well be accounted by variance in a species phenotype and could hardly be called a new species, but nevertheless, if the process is iterated long enough you will witness changes that are well beyond the initial scope of variance in the species’ phenotype and lead to your intended complete change in the species’ phenotype, although your best bet is to watch it in the lab because the species are already quite well adapted to their environments, since they have had a few million years to do so…
I might as well add my two cents to this debate.
You are such a narrow minded person and youdon’t leave any door open for naturalists. I’ve been a naturalist all my life and don’t see proof for God anywhere.
Thanks for your thoughts!
Look who’s being narrow-minded, Naturalist. Have you ever studied Intelligent Design before? It seems harsh to call someone narrow-minded when you aren’t open to someone thinking differently than you. I’ve studied Dawkins, Sagan, Derrida, Darwin, Huxley, etc. The best way to understand someone else is by learning about their ideas.
You’ve been a naturalist all your life. Someone had to teach you that, and you had to make a choice to believe it. One isn’t born an naturalist.
What proof would you need to believe in God?
I don’t bother studying Intelligent Design because I know it’s flawed. It defeats science in all sorts of realms.
So Intelligent Design is a “science stopper”?
Isn’t science a search for truth? A way of discerning what is and is not? To quote Casey Luskin:
“ID is invoking precisely the correct causal mechanism to explain the origin of information in biology.”
And, you’re very sure about something you know nothing about.
Christians have made little contribution to science. The idea of a belief in god makes for bad ideas when they come to the science table. Everything is biased.
Have you ever studied the people of science? Gregor Mendel. Sir Bacon. Galileo. Kepler. Descartes. Kelvin. Boyle. Newton. Though some of the men weren’t full out Christians, they were theists, or believed in some kind of designer.
As for bias, you’re arguing with me through the lens of belief in naturalism, and I’m arguing with you through the lens of the belief in supernaturalism. There will obviously be some bias. You’re arguing with me with the bias of naturalism.
That’s a load of junk. What they found had already been discovered long ago by other scientists.
I don’t know why you think I have a bias, because I’m only trying to reason with you. I am doing my utmost to be unbiased. I think everyone here can see that you’re completely biased towards supernaturalism, when it’s a false view.
Naturalist,
Could you name these other scientists? After all the science books I’ve read from both sides, the founders and discover-ers were the same. I’ve not heard it any different, even in revisionist textbooks.
What is your idea of unbiased debate?
Unbiased means to not be limited by your ideas when debating. I don’t have any idea who those people are, but my professor once told me that scientists were before them who made discoveries and the theists claimed them for themselves. I never said it was a fact, it’s just an idea.
Perhaps you should have clarified yourself.
The very foundation of debate is ideas.
ID is per definition not science. It’s pseudo science at best and boils down to “Look a gap in evolution. So god did it!”. It’s not based on facts or evidence. It’s not consistent with reality and doesn’t make any predictions.
And most importantly, ID is creationism with all direct references to god removed. Literally. ID only sprang up after court cases that ruled that creationism can’t be taught in public schools because it’s religion. Then another court case found that ID is religion too
Mr. Ford can’t be found in the gaps in our knowledge about engines.
Whenever I mention “creationism” I am hammered to say “ID”. They basically mean the same thing, but in my experience, people of your sort prefer the term ID.
Additions welcome, here’s my addition.
There is no way of knowing truth. Even the math teachers are wrong.
How do you know that’s true?
Nobody can know the truth about God. God can’t be experienced, and truth is gained by experience.
So you’re certain that nobody can know truth about God except yourself? What experience taught you this truth?
What are you talking about? I don’t see how that could do anything. You are attacking my beliefs and it’s not fair in debate.
Moralists,
Debate, in a sense, IS attacking the other person’s beliefs, but doing it in a polite, questioning way. I think you’re attacking my beliefs, if anyone is,indeed, attacking…
I’m only trying to make you think! I have no idea where you’re coming from, other than you believe truth is relative and that you’re a naturalist
I’m a college student at the U of Dayton. I don’t believe in God, and religion isn’t for me. There’s not enough scientific evidence for it. Me, I’m an honest person, live a good life, and try to help others out, because it’s a nice thing to do and feels good to help. Is that enough background?
I don’t believe in truth can be known, and morality is not a set thing. We can all make up our own ideas, so there’s nothing wrong with there being a difference in the standard teachers use in the classroom. I don’t know how many times I must clarify this before you understand what I’m trying to say to you. People have different religions, right? There’s the god of Muslims, the god of Christians, the god of Hindu, the god of Buddhism, and all the other gods of different religions. But they are all the same, right? They all think they are true, and they all get to the same place, so they all work. It doesn’t matter which God they all believe in, but they all end up where they want to go.
What you told me was helpful. “Religion isn’t for me, there’s not enough scientific evidence for it.” You shouldn’t believe in science, either; there’s not enough scientific evidence for that!
What is your standard of “nice, good, and honest?” If truth can’t be known, you shouldn’t be telling me truth about religion/morality. How do you know all this truth about religion?
If you study the religions of the world, you will see that Hindus believe in many gods, Buddhists do not have a god, Muslims and Christians are fairly agreed that their gods are not the same. If all religions are true, Christianity (and hence intelligent design) is true. Hindus believe god is a force/experience. Judaism, Islam, and Christianity believe that god is personal. If all religions are the same, Muslim jihad and Christian love would both be right… yet there is conflict.
I understand that you may think this is all my interpretation, but then again, you did ask.
There is an absolute truth. If a door was locked, you couldn’t say it was open, and open it. The door is absolutely locked. You must get a key to open it. That’s a fact. I hope I’ve made you think!
I could break the window! I don’t think I understand that idea.
Good nice and honest are determined by my feelings. Feelings are changable and not set, just like truth.
How would you break the window in real life, so to speak?
I have no idea what you’re talking about. There’s always another way in no matter if the door is locked or not.
This lady doesn’t like people like us.
evolution is a fact. that’s it. done. it’s a fact. she doesn’t listen, and she never will becuz I already tried asking her questions and she stopped answering.
Mr. Tyler,
I, do in fact, enjoy debating with people like you. I’ve said this before. It keeps me sharp, and if asked in the right way, questions lead to logical and right conclusions. Your ranting and raving several weeks ago wasn’t appreciated, as it was mean-spirited and expletive filled. If you were to actually discuss issues regarding your church and God, I told you I could do that. But the ranting and raving wasn’t doing anything but stirring up trouble. If you don’t like my blog, why come back?
Becuz I want to help you free yourself from religion. What are you going to do with your life, Loralee? Thats a important question. There is no god. Why would he start the hole world to leave it blow up in global warming, or let it get worse and worse and worse?
Knowing your slightly biblical viewpoint, it would be weird for the loving God of Christianity to leave the world to blow up in a non-existent theory. However, he does let evil happen so the need of a Savior is emphasized. Redemption. It’s part of the metanarrative.
What am I going to do with my life? God knows, but my current plans are becoming a writer or apologist, hopefully marrying a strong Christian, and being a homeschooling mom.
GO LAURA!!!!!!!!
Thanks Jake
Your welcome
I’m going to agree with Moralist and say truth can’t be known. 2 against 1. You’re outnumbered.
Does being unpopular make a view wrong?
Kingston, despite his attack on the very notion of epistemology, still has a working epistemology: democracy.
Hey dude. I remember you.
Outnumbered no more. I stand with Lauralea.
And what’s more, *eyes twinkling* you’re outnumbered because we have an infinite God on our side! Or rather, we are on His side. I would apologize for speaking as a Theist, but I’m afraid I can’t speak any other way.
~Homeschool Graduate
I’m pretty sure we decided God doesn’t exist early on in this debate.
We, nothing!
I think that was one of your biased opinions! It’s my biased opinion that He does exist. You can’t just leave Him out just because you don’t like Him. Of course, neither should I be able to include Him just because I happen to believe Him. I was being supportive of Lauralea, and I allowed myself to go beyond what had been proved in the debate. For that I can and will apologize.
Of course, it remains to be proved that God doesn’t exist. And that I can’t do.
I’m pretty sure we didn’t decide anything about God. After all this debate, I’m afraid we haven’t gotten very far!
@Homeschool Graduate, right on, right on!
Here’s some evidence for evolution.
Abortion: We know its morally acceptable to abort a fetus because it’s only evolving. Only when it is born does it take on human form.
Peppered moths: They changed color
Flies with four wings instead of two
It is a known fact that fetuses, as you say, are indeed human while in the womb. Check out this link: Tell me what you see.
Peppered moths: It is also a known fact that the moths were a variance in species, and the pictures that surfaced were actually dead moths pasted onto trees.
As for flies, I’ve only recently studied this experiment. The experiment itself was designed! At the end of the experiment, the flies were still flies, they were weak, and the second set of wings didn’t move. The modifications that mimicked evolution actually made for misshapen fruit flies.
I see faked photos from a pro-life site.
Okay, the peppered moths I will say are kind of old hat.
I know I am asking many questions, but I’m curious why you don’t back up the claims you make. How are they faked? Did you take them? If I were to take you to a clinic that has 4D ultrasound, would you think the machine was faking the photos or lying? Just because the photos were from a pro-life site you don’t agree with doesn’t mean you discard the evidence. I could be absurd and say atheists breathe, but if I stopped my breathing, it wouldn’t change the fact air is air.
Abortion is acceptable and right. A woman should not have to deal with a kid that was the product of a raping incident. That’s painful.
What makes abortion acceptable? So let me get you straight: You’re saying even though the evolving human is somewhere in the middle of the process, they will eventually become humans. Am I right? Have you ever considered premature babies? I know one that was born 4 1/2 months early, and she looked like a human to me, and she’s doing great now!
Would you kill a two year old that reminded you of something painful?
I think peppered moths, yes they are proven wrong, but even in textbooks, the students can decide for themselves. It’s not like we’re telling the students it’s fact, or that it’s only acceptable to believe this over creation. There’s all sorts of way we could have come to be, and evolution is simply the best. We are only trying to keep the students open-minded, and that’s done by giving them a broad education. Evolution is one of many metanarratives, as you said so in your blog. But is it truth? That is up to each student to decide. It’s my job to lead them towards a logical conclusion, but they ultimatley decide for themselves if it’s right or if it’s wrong.
Thank you for your thoughts.
There are many ideas of how the world came to be. Steady State Universe Theory. Oscillating Universe Theory. The Inflationary Universe Theory. Intelligent Design. Evolution. Are you teaching these many ideas in your classroom, Science Teacher? Many textbooks I’ve read and heard of portrayed evolution as fact, and when ID was mentioned, it was distasteful at best.
It seems you’re accepting false evidence for the sake of proving what you want. If I started to do that, I’d be blasted. (Which is kind of happening here already!)
Evolution is A metanarrative, but is the right one? I don’t believe so.
What is a logical conclusion? It sounds like you’re leading them towards evolution. What if they decide to believe ID and mark a test answer with their concluded belief? Would they be wrong?
I enjoy such back and forth talks.
If a student didn’t mark the answer correctly, of course we’d have to mark it wrong because they didn’t make a logical conclusion. Like I said, it’s ultimately up to the student what they decide. But who’s to say?
So it’s up for the student to decide if they want to agree with evolution and if they aren’t in agreement, they are marked wrong? If they have to form their own logical conclusions and are still wrong, why let them form their own opinion? It doesn’t sound like education to me, but rather, indoctrination.
There is a mountain of evidence for evolution. So much that’s impossible to present all of it in a highschool science class. Evolution is fact in the sense that it’s observable. It’s also fact in the sense that it’s widely accepted and not disputed in the scientific community. The disagreements are about the mechanisms that govern it, not that it happens.
There is little direct evidence for the different cosmological models, so don’t act like it’s the same.
The fossil record makes creationism observable as well. If observation is all it takes to prove something, I could see a man falling down over and over and think men fall down all the time. Science is not all observation. It’s also thought, and a belief from a set of presuppositions.
Last I checked, there was a huge dispute over science! Evolution is being taught in schools, when 54% of people think creationism/ID should be taught as well. That’s a pretty good rift.
Evolutionary theory as a “fact/truth” has yet to be proven. True, there are observable parts that can be verified, but that doesn’t make the whole theory true. Is there a scientist that can point to a common ancestry for both plants and animals? The fact that life came into existence from primordial ooze would suggest that all life on this planet “evolved” from the same single cell organism. I have yet to find one shread of information that scientist have been able to link all living organisms together. Furthermore, has there been a single experiment (lab or computer model) able to re-create/re-construct a living organism (even single cell) coming from non-living material?
Another point of contention is why has life only evolved on this planet? If Evolutionary theory is correct, life should be plentiful. Is it too convenient to say that conditions on other planets are not conducive to sustain life? Many creationist would say that it’s a cop out. I say that’s it unknown and will remain that way until we have the resources and technology to further explore our neighbors.
There are many theories about how the universe and life came into being. It’s nice to see so many people on both sides able to have a discussion without name calling and insults. I would like to say thank you to all because it really gets you to think about what you believe and why you believe it.
Let’s present them with alchemy vs chemistry, miasma theory vs germ theory. Teach the controversy! They can make up their own mind!
All the claims ID makes can be disproven. Sometimes it’s a bit complicated, but it’s most certainly not a difference of opinion.
All the claims evolutionists make can be disproven, if you actually open up your mind a bit and leave your beliefs about God out.
My addition to his conversation is this: look at the facts. The evidence for an old world is all around. Old world= evolution. Christians don’t bother reading facts these days. D**n you.
When I was at Niagara Falls, I learned the rate of erosion was 3.5 feet per year. The stunningly beautiful gorge is about 7 to 8 miles long from falls to the lake (Ontario). If you did the math, that would place the age of them at about 8 to 9,000 years.
Or, try tree rings. Sequoia trees in California don’t die, unless fire or human damage occurs. The rings have dated these huge trees back to 4 to 6,000 years, which would line up with the biblical flood.
When the astronauts landed on the moon, they thought the dust might swallow them and spaceship. Had there been millions of years for dust to settle, this would have been true. But when the spaceship landed and the astronauts stepped out, there was only a couple inches of dust.
Last I checked, I was a Christian, and these are facts.
The Niagara falls are a glacial feature. They were only created about 10000 years ago during the ice age. And there were trees millions of years ago. It’s just that those particular trees are only a few thousand years old.
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-age-of-earth.html
http://www.talkorigins.org/origins/faqs-youngearth.html
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-noahs-ark.html
http://www.talkorigins.org/origins/faqs-flood.html
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/
I’ve reviewed these links before. My question is, what caused the ice age, if not the flood?
but would still like to know how you know there are other types of trees. Could you give me the names of a few scientists that discovered these other trees that existed before the trees I mentioned, as well as their species and estimated date of beginning?
You’re on fire keep it up!
Thank you Cassody.
Yay! Laura! I’m so proud of you.
I love my little sis!
Wow, Lauralea,
What a lot of flack for a simple post about metanarratives! You do a great job of explaining things in the face of disbelief, and I wanted to tell you so. Much better than I would, but I suppose that’s your debate training and also due to your deeper study of the arguments. I know the arguments, but they never surface in my mind when I want them to . . . !
But I’ll lend my prayers while you do the heavy lifting.
~Homeschool Graduate
Thanks for the prayers!
I never took a real speech or debate class, but I do plenty of reading. And Summit. I went to Summit.
Wow everyone,
I started this post as a way to get my regular readers to think about metanarratives and ended up with hundreds of hits on this post and a new comment every 10-30 minutes during a 12 hour period.
I used evolution as an example, but I never meant to full out “attack” evolution, though I don’t agree with it. Just thought I would clarify that.
You said evolution is a metanarrative, and that’s wrong. It’s a theory. What is a metanarrative, anyway?
How do you know something is labeled wrong if you’ve no idea what the label is?
See above comments for definition.
It is really obvious that you don’t have anything reasonable to stand up against. You can’t argue with your belief system sticking out. It’s assuming what you try to prove. All these people have tried reasoning with you but you still remain narrow-minded. It is like one of your earlier commenters said a futile battle. You’re really not as smart as you think you are. If you believe in God, fine, but don’t let that get in the way of science. It flaws your arguments.
To paraphrase Lennox: “Scientists can be at war with God, but is science itself at war with God? Musicians can be militant atheists, but music is not at war with God. Statements made by science are not scientific statements.
Maybe you should leave God out of the argument as well. Your disbelief in God has nothing to do with science… right?
Don’t get weary in well doing!
Trying not to! Except for a few hours here and there, I’ve literally been at this, (answering, sometimes studying, and approving comments) all day.
It’s been fun though. But it kind of messed up my day!
Lots of comments! It reminds me of this post http://echoesinthewind.wordpress.com/2011/03/01/confused/
That was when I first met you and accidently spelled my name with an i on the end!
Evolution is the widely accepted theory. Time to jump on board…
People,
She didn’t even write about evolution, which reveals how uncapable you are of proper thinking.
Katie
Where are all these people coming from Lauralea btw
Good question! I’m thinking a couple atheists started texting/emailing/Facebooking all their like-minded friends “Dude, check out this lady’s blog…”
I’d be scared! You’re doing a good job!
What kind of parents did you have that made you think like this? Evangelical Christians don’t teach their kids to think and can’t stand on their own two feet when plopped in the middle of real life.
agreed
How do you know what’s real life?
My parents didn’t teach me this stuff. I read.
she’s being like god and not answering our pressing questions as we’d like her to.
Look who isn’t answering questions…
how often do we see Christians speaking our dialect? never, because they can’t. but when i think about it, they probably have no idea what we’re talking about. #redundant #bias
Comment Explosion! Keep up the good work, Laura!
I think you’re wrong. I’m sure. I can prove it. You can’t have belief in God without first having disbelief in God.
YEAH! We’ve stumped her!
Oh, what a mixed mess of invective and open-minded, well-meaning questions.
To address the initial question posed, my wife suggested a clever analogy to me. Think about the task of building an airplane. Science and mathematics are concerned with figuring out how to get the thing to fly. The arts are concerned with figuring out what colours to paint it and how to upholster the interior. There are clear correct and incorrect solutions in the first case: if the plane doesn’t fly, the scientists were wrong. On the other hand, there isn’t really a wrong answer to the question of the best colour to paint the thing. It’s an aesthetic question.
It is not inconsistent to say that empirical questions have clearly right or wrong answers, while aesthetic questions do not. It’s also not surprising that artists and scientists often fail to get along. One is accustomed to treating aesthetic questions as primary; the other elevates empirical questions. (These are, of course, broad generalizations. I’m closer to the empirical stereotype, but my wife is able to see things from both sides.)
Having said all that, evolution as a biological theory is firmly empirical. Those things that biologists believe, they believe on the basis of evidence. To reject evolution, you must come up with a theory that explains those empirical observations better (or at least as well). No alternative has been proposed yet that comes close to passing that test.
So much for your original question. Now, looking through the comment thread, it seems to me that nobody has yet given Lauralea a substantive answer to her request for evidence. So here it is: anyone who doesn’t think there is much evidence for evolution should check out, at least, the Talk Origins archive. Perhaps start at the essay 29+ Evidences for Macroevolution. A bit of honest searching will show why you shouldn’t expect to see abiogenesis these days, as well as answers to other common misconsceptions about evolution. Wikipedia also does a passable job of presenting the reasons scientists accept evolution.
Thanks for the links, Mr. Mills; and thank you also for being polite!
I’ve already looked over both of these sites. I’ve not yet looked at Wikipedia, but I will. Because I’m short of time: http://www.trueorigin.org/ and http://evolution-facts.org/index.htm
Lauralea, I’m pleased that you’re willing to look at these resources. On the question of the metanarrative …
Unless you are willing to dismiss all of science as “just another metanarrative”, then evolution is very much “simply true or not” – as much as relativity or quantum entanglement. And, although evolution (like these other scientific theories) is often misunderstood, I’d say the evidence (ring species, genetic patterns indicating common descent, bacterial and viral adaptation, etc) resoundingly supports the modern scientific consensus. That’s why it’s the consensus.
I would like to encourage you to keep exploring. If you read the popular-level accounts of evolution with an open mind, then you are in store for a wonder-filled journey of discovery and delight. The Ancestor’s Tale is my favorite of Dawkins’ books on this theme – but really any of his science books (ie, any of his books besides The God Delusion) would do. There are other writers out there too – such as Stephen Jay Gould – but I’m less familiar with them.
It’s the open mind part that’s tough. I know – having read a whole lot of supposedly great apologetics that turned out to be garbage, I now have very little patience for claims that if I just read this book or look up that author, I’ll finally change my mind. Is my mind closed? Perhaps. I worry about it. I still try to force myself to consider carefully arguments for the existence of a God, or life after death. But it’s tough.
So I wish you the best of luck with your own quest for understanding. As long as you’re trying, and as long as you allow for the possibility that what you believe really really firmly may be wrong, then you’re a mile ahead of 90% of the planet.
Thanks Mr. Mills! I will definitely keep reading, reasoning, and researching. There’s a fine line between being open minded and letting your brain fall out.
Hi!
One thing is clear. You haven’t read “The God Delusion” by Dawkins. Please read it, you may find answers to a lot of your questions.
Now, if you’ve already read that, have a working knowledge of how theories are tested in science(those are called experiments) and are still trying to solve a problem like evolution with something called the God Hypothesis (why do you people use words like ‘Intelligent Design’? There’s a 3 letter word for it- God.), Sorry kid, I wish I could help you!
Hello,
I am currently working on The God Delusion, and plan on reading his Blind Watchmaker sometime in the future. The answer I originally wanted was a reply to my original question, the problem of metanarratives, absolute truth and postmodernist claims. Thanks for your help.
See, my reply was in general to your tone (reflected in your comments and other posts). If I try to address your original post, they are just a stack of statements that I have trouble to understand.
1) “Then we move onto the touchy subject of science, where these secular thinkers are bent on proving things by science. To say science proves one theory is to say science disproves another.” What do you mean by touchy? each and every theory (eventually with the increase of our knowledge of the world) rests on a firm mathematical basis. Do you know, how many solutions are there to a quadratic equation? One mathematically sound theory may not stand the brunt of history if it is not backed by experiments. Science certainly is not ‘touchy’, rather a rough thing.
2) “Now the ultimate question: Could you use the “no metanarrative” view at an evolution debate?” Why? in what sense is life itself not a scientific pursuit? It certainly is not confined in literary or sociological level (where you may easily propose a Harry Potter to be alive and I’d love you for that). It is a scientific question and science needs to answer that. You can propose your own hypothesis but please don’t plead to be treated as a special ‘touchy’ literary case.
3) “Isn’t evolution a metanarrative?” meta-narrative? really? Dawkins has a favorite story about extinction of Dinos. He tells it to explain difference between ‘claims’ and ‘Valid theory’(like Natural Selection). Please check some videos in you-tube. Tell me if you can’t find them.
Hello Lauralea,
I tend to separate the physical world and the social world. I am a naturalist when it comes to the physical world, including biology and the science of evolution, but I am a postmodernist when it comes to the social world. And these two worlds have different currencies for truth. The currency in the physical world is evidence, whereas the currency in the social world is subjective experience.
I am trained as a family therapist. If a client tells me that she was sexually abused, I’m not going to demand evidence because we’re operating in the social world, and whether or not she was actually sexually abused is irrelevant. If a person defines situations as real, they are real in their consequences.
So from a constructivist perspective, I have no doubt that God is real for the people who believe in him. If I have a client who claims that God is a reality to her, than I accept that, and I believe that God exists for her. But from an empirical perspective, I have no reason to believe that there is such a physical, real entity as a god, so I find no reason to believe in one.
Kevin, Iowa
What separates the two realms for you? How do you know there is a divide?
If everyone can believe what they want, who is right?
The divide is a fuzzy one, Lauralea, and like most dichotomies, it is good to beware of the distinction I am making between the physical world and the social world. They obviously overlap. Beliefs, ideas, thoughts, and feelings are, after all, products of complex chemical and biological processes that are physical rather than metaphysical, natural rather than supernatural.
You ask, if people can believe what they want, who is right? There obviously isn’t a correct belief when it comes to personal tastes in fashion, food, music, and so on. If you recognize God as being the socially constructed concept that he is, then no one is right or wrong about his nature. A person can’t be wrong about her own fantasies.
But when someone asserts anything, whether it is the existence of an identification card or the existence of a God as a matter of physical reality, then the burden of proof is on the person making the positive claim. And in the end, the only way to know who is right about which beliefs are true is through publicly verifiable evidence. Evidence is tangible—that is, it has to exist, measurable, repeatable, and falsifiable. If the assertion is false, then its falsehood can be demonstrated.
Here’s another example from my therapy background that illustrates social and physical realities: There have been several documented cases of individuals with paranoid schizophrenia truly believing that they have no stomach. For them, their lack of a stomach is a fact. But the physical reality is that they indeed have a stomach. Most of the time, people’s beliefs match up with physical reality. Indeed they generally need to for us to survive. But in the case of an individual with schizophrenia believing he doesn’t have a stomach, there is clearly a “correct” belief here, and it’s the one that corresponds with the physical reality.
You seem very sure of something you claim cannot be pinned down. If there is a distinction, how do you know it exists?
“A person cannot be wrong about her own fantasies.” Why do so many people have the same fantasy of evolution- or why do bad things happen, if everything is a fantasy?
And evidence, how do you know if it’s a fantasy? I know you can’t be wrong, but if everyone is in their own fantasy, why have a debate, such as this one? Science is a search for the truth, but we all have our own truth, nothing can be wrong. So where is the divide?
The distinction between the social world and the physical world is not something I claim surely exists. Rather, it’s just a way that I’ve found to hold a naturalist worldview while allowing for subjective realities within a social context.
Empirical evidence is mutually buttressed by multiple observations across settings, observers, and time. Evolution isn’t an atheist article of faith, it is tangible, observable, verifiable, and falsifiable, the complete opposite of fantasy.
Contrast evolution with the creation story. There is overwhelming and mutually buttressed evidence (from chemistry, biology, astronomy, anatomy, astrophysics, botany, geology, zoology, molecular biology, physics, and physiology) that all species of plant and animal life on the earth have evolved gradually through the process of evolution through natural selection. There is no credible evidence, on the other hand, for the earth being created by an intelligent creator.
Then why use it when you debate if you’re not sure it exists?
Design requires a designer. Let’s say you were walking through the woods and saw a clearing. In the clearing was a weathered cabin. Around the cabin you notice there are several stumps, root clumps, and holes from tree roots. Would you easily and reasonably conclude that the trees happened to fall the right way and fit together to make the cabin… or would you think some ancient person built it?
How can we tell that evolution exists from physiology and anatomy, other than the classic “we came from monkeys” idea?
The appearance of design is an emergent property from simpler chemical processes. For example, snowflakes appear designed, but they occur naturally.
I just read this the other day, thought it fitting: http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/cm/v17/n1/snowflakes
And how do you know that for sure if you’re not sure?
She does not get the concept she is trapped in her own metanarrative. She needs to rethink what her metanarrative is in the light of the helpful suggestions you’ve made.
Would that metanarrative be re-thought in the terms and rules of your metanarrative?
You dodged the question, AtheistDad
Keep it up, you’re keeping them scrambling.
Everyone, this is Lauralea. This has been an exciting debate!
Due to the overwhelming amount of comments in the past two days, and one person going so far as to invite other atheist/humanist bloggers to try to stump me (hasn’t happened yet!); I’m going to stop replying to these comments unless there’s a specific flaw I’ve not already talked about.
My original question has only been answered by a few of you. That is the question of metanarratives. If you have no idea what a metanarrative is, then don’t answer. If you’ve no idea what to say other than join the conversation about evolution (a tangent in my post), please don’t make assumptions and try to prove your point.
Thanks for your responses, I’ve learned a lot from all of you, but whoever contacted Richards Dawkins or the Friendly Atheist (my stats showed a referral from these multiple times); I think you’ve gone a little far. I believe it’s time to stop debating because we’re making little progress.
You dare me to comment. So I comment. How can you prove a God exists if there is none?
If God existed, he’d tell me.
If evolution existed, the evolving trees and animals would tell me.
Actually, Jake, they are telling you- try to listen.
actually, John, God is telling you- try to listen. The whole world screams design. There maybe order in chaos, but who created chaos? what started everything?
@Jake: What you ask, is a legitimate question. If you really want to know more about how people answer these questions, how they argue and how design really pushes us to another regress instead of really answering, please try to read books like The God Delusion and the references therein. (At least sit through the 4th chapter). You don’t have to believe me, see for yourself.
What do YOU believe about the beginning of the world?
You scream for tolarence in public schools but what you all is missing: tolarence
Any type of scientific experiment to prove life came from non-life, will have been a controlled experiment designed by the scientist and therefore created by an intelligent being,: a human or supernatural being. This would then prove that life coming from nonlife had to come about by some intelligent being acting upon matter.
Angie,
Not at all.
Suppose that we have good reason (from observing other planets, or from geological evidence) to believe that conditions X, Y, and Z were present before the onset of life on Earth. Then suppose a scientist sets up an experiment where, in laboratory setting, she recreates conditions X, Y, and Z in a sterile environment (ie, a chamber without any living organisms in it). Now suppose that, over time, she observes evidence that life has arisen in the previously sterile chamber.
This would be scientific evidence of life arising from non-life. All the scientist has done is to recreate, as closely as possible, the conditions of the early Earth. If life could arise under conditions X, Y, and Z in the lab, then we have good reason it could arise under conditions X, Y, and Z in nature, in the absence of intelligent beings.
It may be that nobody will be able to do this in a lab. After all, it could be a one-in-a-million-years fluke. In that case, it’s not surprising that over millions of years it happened on Earth, but it’s unlikely to happen within the lifetime (or, more to the point, within the funding cycle) of a single researcher.
(Current research in this area is inconclusive so far. However, note that there seem to be many possible approaches. This suggests that a wide range of initial conditions may be able to give rise to life from non-life. Isn’t that exciting!)
So far there is no reason to suspect that abiogenesis is impossible. On the other hand, even if it is shown that conditions X, Y, and Z could lead to abiogenesis, there is no way to prove whether that is how life did arise on our planet.
And, of course, all of this is largely irrelevant to the question of whether life evolves. Darwin’s theory, and its modern refinements, talk about how existing life forms can progressively change into different life forms; it works whether life arose spontaneously, was seeded by aliens, or was created by a supernatural entity.
Suppose- theoretically speaking- not sure.
You couldn’t have done the thought out experiment designed by a scientist to prove chance happenings. Someone instigates life, or conditions for life. Life in the lab starts with the idea from a scientist. You can’t get around scientists doing any kind of experiment without designing. It goes for any type of experiment.
How do you know what gasses were around at the beginning?
“Now the ultimate question: Could you use the “no metanarrative” view at an evolution debate?”
Answer: Yes.
Isn’t evolution a metanarrative?
Answer: No, it is not.
This debate shows us one thing – the person who comes out with questions like that, has no idea what evolution is, what science is, what atheism is, what the fact is and so on. If you do not know what evolution is, you should not debate it. First thing you need to do – go to the library and read some books claiming it. Or just ask people for evidence, links, meanings, definitions. Claiming something without having an idea about it – far from that what is called Intelligence.
Thanks for your thoughts. I have studied evolution in depth.
I apologize for my manners, but no, you didn’t. There would be no questions like “Isn’t evolution a metanarrative?” if you did. Saying it, I keep in mind that you are inteligent Person, and would not deny logic or evidence, even when it’s about to destroy some of the beliefs.
I’m asking these questions to make people think. I write to Christians. Theoretical questions often provide the best conditions for learning.
If you don’t believe that I’ve read atheist books, that’s fine. I know otherwise. (I’m reading Hitchen’s “God is Not Great” at the moment)
One can not believe that You’ve learned, lets say mathematics, if You keep asking “isn’t 2+2=5?”
One cannot believe you’ve studied debate when you appear to misunderstand theoretical questions designed to either confirm, disprove, or study a topic in depth.
Do you believe in a metanarratives?
So creation is true because it says in the Bible. The whole Bible is a story that God planned out for all of us to live by!
The Bible is an outdated, revised, messed up book full of bloody stories and gristly accounts of early man hacking the life out of each other.
Why not take the example of Job. God proved his hate for Job by sending down evil tortures on him. Some loving God.
Go to the public library (yes, they still exist) and select 5 random books about evolution. How many of them would be in agreement with how life came to be, why life happened, if every living thing evolved from a single ancestor, etc? Of course, if they were all in agreement, who would buy or bother to read the books. My point is that much confusion comes from the fact that scientists cannot seem to agree. For example, scientists in Italy on two different experiments recorded neutrinos traveling faster than the speed of light. Immediately, other scientific groups dismissed the findings saying that it was impossible. Can Einstein be wrong? You bet. It doesn’t seem very “free thinking” to think otherwise. Can Christianity be wrong? You bet. To dismiss it on the simple fact that Lauralea cannot get God to visit you at home, is simply illogical. Logic dictates that all possibilities be left on the table until they can be discounted with emperical data. So I ask, is there irrefutable evidence on God’s existence? Is there irrefutable evidence that Evolutionary theory is correct?