Controversial Islamist author slams Darwin

good going on getting the conversation back to the topic!

tho i can see it again going into evolution doesnt support God argument,

anyway, was checking up about creationism, and found a lot of different variations of it, wikipedia, is just brusting with information on it, all very interesting, and does bring up some questions about the soundness of Darwins theory,

but id just like to go back to a point me and TA were having about how the "fact finders" still believe in God,

i found this guy Arthur Peacocke, Dawkins even admits hes a good scienctist

check out him on wikipedia, tho not full on detail, it shows an interesting theory of his on both evoultion and God.

o and before people go into a rant about how bad god is and this theory is nonsense, and how stupid i am and ignorant of that is true in the world, i have stated its interesting! not that i believe in it, but find it INTERESTING.

Yeah, you're kinda right and so is TA.

Basically TA is completely right when he says we are all born atheists. No child is born believing in God, let alone a particular religion. The fact that the vast majority of people the world over share the religion of their parents speaks volumes. However there is something in the human condition that leads us to religion.

Every culture in the world ever discovered has had it's God's and its superstitions, anthropologists tell us that. So how do we explain it. There's absolutely no Darwinian benefit to religion. It doesn't aid in our survival and it doesn't aid in our ability to reproduce, so if religion were an evolvable trait natural selection would've erradicated it a long time ago. Therefore most scientists now subscribe to the theory put forth by evolutionary psychologists that religion, or any superstition, is a by product of other psychological predispositions that have survival benefit.

To give you a couple of examples. Human beings impart intention naturally. This had major survival benefit when we first evolved on the African plains. A person who saw a saber-tooth tiger and imparted intention on to it's behaviour, ie, "It's going to eat me, run", had obvious survival advantage over somebody who said, "It's a tiger, I have no idea what it's intention is, therefore I stroll right past it."

This rule of thumb was written into our genes and still holds true today even though we don't live on the african plains. We apply that same rule of thumb to our existence and assume there is ntention behind it so we naturally come to an anthropomorphic idea of a creator.

Similarly if we see a shadow or we catch something out of the corner of our eye we will naturally think it's a burglar or ghost or whatever because doing so has survival benefit. If we're right we can survive and if we're wrong we still survive. However if we on't react and always took the most reasonable and logical explanation, and we're wrong, we die.

Another example is that a child's brain is pre-programmed to believe everything it's told from it's parents or elders. This again has survival benefit. If a mother tells it's child not to go swimming in the river because there's crocodiles and a child's brain were pre-programmed to take a skeptical, scientific approach to advise like that, it wouldn't be long for this world. So a childs brain is exactly like a computer. It stays like this until about aged seven when the conscious critical faculties start to develop. However like a computer without firewalls (the critical faculties) a child's brain is suseptible to infection of mind viruses. The child's brain has nothing to differentiate good advise like "don't walk to close to the cliff's edge" from really bad advise like "God exists and Catholicism is the only true religion, etc." Therefore religion can be viewed as a virus of the mind.

So these are just two examples (and there are dozens more) of how, given the type of brain we've evolved , superstition (religion) can and does arise.

There's also the whole issue of memes but that's long and complicated.

Basically, religion was born out of the balling infacy of mankind when we knew absolutely nothing, and infancy is very endeering in infants, not so much in adults.
We also have, ironically enough, evolved the type of brain that is sort of pre-programmed not to believe in evolution but in creation. When we look around at the world everything complex that we see from computers to tables is designed. Something even more complicated then it was responsible for it's design and we are so stupid that just because we, and all natural things, look designed then we too must have been designed but of course we weren't.

Well the way I look at it is to imagine a primitive man looking up at the sun; seeing it shine, feeling it burn his skin and not knowing what it is. As Butters said it then goes to a point of 'Just incase that big shiny ball has power over me, I'll err on the side of caution' Now, however, we are a point in our evolution where we shouldn't need that sort of fear to drive us, but it seems that many still do. Perhaps it is as Butters says, that we have begun to evolve to a point of expecting a creator, and thus facilitating those who would brainwash youngsters with religion.

Who gives a ****! What a chimp.

actually for the first time in a very long while, butters had a post with some actual thought behind it, interesting read, but im sure ull forgive me for not agreeing with everything it! ass of course im allowed to, instead of quoting the full thing ill just take up the point TA makes,

is a child being brainwashed into following a religion? there is a lot of point towards it i agree, but in were i grew up, i wasnt taught to much religion, and of what i was taught was really the childish version of god, told maybe the parables from the bible, which are just life teaching and the like, nothing really putting pressure on the notion of hell and the like,

you say we have evolved to the point were we expect a creator, this i disagree with, you are born neither not knowing of a god or of anything in that nature, u learn things like this, you mind grow, takes on new information, you asses it, you put it into use, i suppose we could go deeper into it and ask are we all born with the notion of right and wrong, was it built into out genes as well, i believe Dawkins argues that theory, if its correct is really up for discussion, and interesting discussion id say to.

on another note, i found this discussion on the internet, with richard dawkins, now to me neither side sounds really convincing, tho of course both sides calim victory, personally i believe the kinda draw level, both seem really uneasy at public speaking, anyway 2 part discussion, have it on while you reading posts r somehting

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/aud...cle1570989.ece

As far as I was aware, Islam & Chrisitianity both share the Old Testament.

^^ From that article. I'm sure the odds would be dramtically reduced if a condom was used against an infected person. Actually, I'll just do the maths. Assuming a condom is 95% effective then the risk is 1 in 10,000 assuming the 1 in 500 figure is correct. Therefore the risk in places like Africa would still be high especially given that people rarely have sex only once in life. This doesn't mean to say that it wouldn't save a load of lives. Interestingly though, would people neceassarily listen to the Pope if he said Condoms were acceptable?

Anyhow back to topic. Does evolutionism (which clearly is true) explain how life actually started? I know it explains how it evolves. Just interested in the answer to this one.

just incase we go crazy here id like to point out that its only a few sects of Christianty that believe in creationism!, most others including the RCC believe in evloution