Can a Christian believe in evolution and do Christians believe neanderthals were human?

[jinglebelly]

Just curious

Himalaya,

It wouldn't surprise me if there were a quite amazing number of scientists out there looking for evidence of an immortal soul
Any scientist worth their salt will admit we know sod-all about the workings of the human brain. I very much doubt that the working hypothesis on the soul is 'it doesn't exist'.

Functional MRI is doing quite a lot of work, but it's still operating on a very basic level, and scientists working in the field know that.

As far as I'm concerned, the point of talking about the unknowable is that it's fun, and that it leads to MN threads like this one, where no-one is slinging buns despite the underlying topic being about religion.

"It wouldn't surprise me if there were a quite amazing number of scientists out there looking for evidence of an immortal soul"

As a skeptic this is something that interests me..i.e what is consciousness. What is it that makes 'us' 'us'. I have a good understanding of science, am as rational as they come but yet I do ponder on this point.

Mind you, scientific theories/explanations for stuff like this are no less wondrous than religious/ephemeral reasonings so if (as I suspect) 'the soul' is a product of carbon chemistry then it's still a beautiful thing!!!

Himalaya, there are lots of rational ways of looking at the world that are not scientific. The areas you talk about with regard to beauty are interdisciplinary research areas, and some methods used will be scientific, but other methods will be rational without being scientific.

I don't draw a line for scientists. Different scientists have different ideas about what can and cannot be researched in a scientific manner. There are lots of grey areas in terms of how much of human behaviour can be looked at most appropriately through a scientific approach. Sometimes other approaches are more useful.

I would say that the immortal soul is supernatural, and the supernatural cannot be studied through science. Others may disagree, but it is certainly not the case that the scientific community has said it does not exist!

Jingleberry, there are a lot of denominations and it would hard to be succinct if I tried to describe them. I know some quite well and others not at all. It might worth starting a new thread in the religion section?

Alistron1 couldn't agree more, even if turns out to be all just about electromagnetic fields it's still beautiful and amazing.

MillyR you are a beacon of reason on this thread, and I salute you.

PT, thank you. I have felt a bit like I've gone on far too much, so it is nice of you.

MillyR, you know far more about comparative religion than I do, you have made some points that have got me thinking! (Though I doubt that I will ever be anything but an atheist).

Tell you what, if you carry on doing voice of reason, I'll carry on explaining the scientific process to the best of my ability.

And since we've not had many emoticons on this thread and it's all been very intellectual and serious (and the better for it), have some .

PT, I would also consider myself to be an atheist, but am quite happy to participate in religion in a cultural sense. My knowledge of religion isn't from any kind of academic background. I just have very religious parents, and heard academics discussing it as I grew up. As my parents are from different denominations, I have some awareness of differences and misconceptions about differences! I'm sure someone with an active involvement in religion could give much more accurate answers than I've done.

It is really challenging to work out which approach is best suited to answering different questions about humans. I wish I had a spare year to look at the philosophy behind different approaches in detail. Possibly I would have more time to do that if I gave up MN.

Pointythings you say that scientists can (and probably are) investigating the existsnce of immortal souls.

MillyR you say souls are supernatural and so can't be studied using scientific or rational methods.

...and yet you are in violent agreement! I am
all for non bun-throwing discussions, but not for smoothing over differences because it's nicer that way (which I think is what is happening with the religion-evolution discussion in polite society).

I am not sure how you tell the difference between something supernatural which is real but about which there is no evidence, and something supernatural which is made up.

Why is it reasonable to believe in immortal souls but not on invisible leprechauns?

Himalaya, I didn't say the idea of an immortal soul couldn't be studied using a rational approach. Philosophy is a rational discipline that has rather a lot to say about both God and the soul.

I don't understand your distinction between the immortal soul and the invisible leprechaun. Which one are you saying is real and which one are you saying is made up? I'm also not sure what invisibility has to do with the status of the leprechaun's existence. There are lots of invisible things that exist in the natural world.

I'm also not sure what I am meant to be disagreeing with PT on. Perhaps I have missed something in the thread. The immortal soul question seems to be an aside, not central to the evolution/creationism discussion.

Himalaya - I've read a couple of book by scientists researching 'the soul'.

The first one was The Spiritual Brain: A Neuroscientist's Case for the Existence of the Soul The Spiritual Brain: A Neuroscientist's Case for the Existence of the Soul by Mario Beauregard.

The second is by a doctor investigating near death expericences, there is an ongoing research project at Southampton general Hospital, very interesting stuff! The book is called What Happens When We Die and is by Dr Sam Parnia.

MillyR, maybe I got the wrong end of the stick but you said "there are certain topics that science can't really comment on" and "I would say that the immortal soul is supernatural, and the supernatural cannot be studied through science."

...reading again I see that you say that the soul can be studied rationally but not scientifically. I am not sure I understand the distinction. At its most basic science means looking at the evidence and making sense of it. Any philosophy which isn't rooted in evidence at the points where it intersects with the physical world is built on shaky foundations.

For this reason, cartesian duality (the idea that the mind and the body are made of two quite different kinds of stuff) is no longer taken seriously as a working hypothesis in modern philosophy or science as far as I know.

Jinglebelly cites a couple of popular books, but this doesn't support the case existence of the soul is a seen as a live option in serious science. There are no researchers on autism, cancer, infertility etc...saying 'we have made a breakthough by understanding the role of the soul in this condition'

I make no distinction between invisible leprechauns and immortal souls. Neither are detectable, and there is no evidence that either exists. Sure there are plenty of real invisible things - magnetism, gravity, oxygen, electrons...but they are detectable.

Pointy things - I would say that the working hypothesis on the immortal soul is exactly the same as the working hypothesis on invisible leprechauns. There is no evidence that either exist. Hypotheseses are proposed explanations for observable phenonmenon. There is no observable phenomenon in either case, so no need for a working hypothesis.

Getting back to the point about evolution and religion, it was that biology (not just evolution, but development, neurology etc... ) provide a coherent explanation of life without recourse to supernatural (and unknowable) explanations. Lots still to discover, but no soul-shaped-hole in the evidence.

So people can and do say they believe in evolution and in Christianity, but they are ignore the fact that biology comes to some strikingly different conclusions about how human beings work than the religious viewpoint offers.

People skate over this and concentrate on the creation in 6 days thing - as if reading 'days' as 'few million years' solves the problem of reconciling the two explanations of the origins of life.

Right at the beginning of the Adam & Eve story, the bible actually tells you that they were not the only people on earth. When their son Cain, kills Abel and God casts him out, he says 'but the others will kill me'. What others? Then he goes off and meets his wife. Again, where did the wife come from if there were no others?

I personally think that it was all going wrong on Earth and that Adam & Eve were the start of a new people who would perhaps get it right. The bible has been translated so much that it's possible that some of this got lost in translation.

Himalaya, in terms of rational thought, I would say that most study of human experience involves both material reality and the socially constructed and the interaction between the two. There are some areas of rational thought which are overwhelmingly about material reality (studied through Science) and some areas that are overwhelmingly about social constructions (Art, Literature) and studied through other rational means.

I don't believe that all of human behaviour can be adequately explained through biology. Different human groups have taken on different niches through culture rather than evolution. So while you can explain some of human behaviour through genetics, a lot of it is down to culture and the difference between the way of life of people in different parts of the world is largely explained by cultural rather than genetic differences.

As Rappaport wrote:

'...the use of human populations in ecological analyses preserves a view of humanity as a part of nature at the same time that it recognises the uniqueness conferred upon the species by culture. As such it preserves the terms defining the condition of a creature that can live only in terms of meanings, largely culturally constituted, in a world to which law is intrinsic but meaning is not.'

Putting aside the rather more controversial topic of human behaviour, I do think that one of the questions you raised about suffering is really important. It is obvious that animals experience a great deal of suffering, and did so before the existence of humans. I find the existence of suffering in the natural world and the existence of a god who is all powerful, all good and the creator of the world impossible to believe in.

That doesn't mean it is impossible to believe in the supernatural, but it would mean that 'God' is either evil, incompetent or did not create the world. That would leave dualistic religions in which one of the creator Gods is evil, or Gnosticism, in which God didn't create the world and hasn't the power to greatly change the world that does exist.

Possibly nothing I have said is what you are trying to have a conversation about.

Himalaya - for me, there's no "clash" between what science tells me about how humans and other animals work, and what religion tells me about having a relationship with God. They are ways of looking at very different things, so their conclusions are complementary rather than conflicting.

The cliched example is something like art - I can analyse the canvas, the paint, the symmetry and proportions of the picture by methods which are scientific. And I can look at the picture and have it prompt spiritual thoughts.

I'm not sure what things you consider to be incompatible - maybe you could list a few?

I think the reason most people have these problems and ask these questions, whether they are members of a relegion or not, is because the whole caper is so open to interpretation, and is therefore a total mess.

The only relegious groups I have any modicum of respect for are the ones that live to the actual letter of their respective texts. If the Christian Bible says homosexuality is evil, and you're supposedly a Christian, you can't cherry pick and say "I don't think this is applicable now, so I will disregard it".

Well, when the Bible says:

"If there is a man who lies with a male as those who lie with a woman, both of them have committed a detestable act; they shall surely be put to death. Their bloodguiltness is upon them"

How do you circumvent that? Whas part of the Bible as "the word of God" can people disregard? And if you are cherry-picking the Bible, what are you actually basing your faith on and why call yourself "a Christian" at all? Why not just say that you like the idea of a benevolent and kind God and that you think he's hip to whatever your particular society deems acceptable at that particular time?

So when people say they don't believe in evolution, I think they are at least being true to their relegion. I think they're morons, personally, but this dishonest approach to relegion is even more stupid.

ThePerfectFather - the part you are quoting there is almost certainly from the Old Testament. When Jesus came, he taught that he "completed" the requirements set by the Old Testament, and was the start of a new religion. That's why we are "Christians" rather than Jews. So there is no requirement whatsoever of Christians to obey all the requirements laid down for the Jewish people in (what Christians call) the Old Testament.

Additionally, the Bible as "the Word of God" is very much open to interpretation - while some Christians believe that it means every word is there because God wanted it there, others believe it was written by people as a description of their understanding of God and their relationship with God over time, and is therefore "inspired by" God, rather than "as dictated by" God.

You've just made my point for me. Some people believe it was inspired rather than dictated. They can believe that all they want and good luck to them, but they are interpreting the Bible. Once you allow that, you open the floodgates to a splintering of the relegion and end up with all the many different groups that there are today all derived from a single text and a single group of people thousands of years ago.

I don't believe that Jesus at any point says "It's ok for you to just ignore all the nasty Old Testament stuff, because I'm basically a hippy".

In fact he reiterated the whole "the Bible is the word of God" thing and he referred regularly to the Old Testament as the word of God.

The difference between Christians and Jews is not that Christians can ignore the Old Testament, it's that Jews ignore the New Testament.

Yes, and yes. I haven't been able to read the rest yet. Be back soon! :)

Jinglebelly I'm a Lutheran (well, of a sort, that's what I was raised as) and we're similar to Catholics. From the very little I remember from what I recall from confirmation class, Martin Luther formed the Lutheran church because he was fed up with, among other things, the sale of indulgences happening at that time. (Which, excuse my ignorance, I think meant that the people could give money to the church after their loved ones had died to assure their souls places in Heaven, or something.) Anyway. So we use a lot of the same language and creeds as the Catholics, but our ministers can marry and we don't have monks, nuns, etc. There are two types of Lutherans, ELCA and Missouri Synod, and I believe the ELCA just voted to allow gay clergy people here in the US.

Alistron

What is consciousness?

A chap who I think has a great intellect,
Dr Jonathan Miller said:." I can tell you all about the human body; but I cannot explain consciousness; and I dont think anyone ever will. "

Well, NEVER, is a big word. but I rate Dr Jonathon and am disappoined he seems to have stopped coming on radio and TV...Fiddling with opera perhaps.

MillyR and AMuminScotlandI agree you can study things that are (material reality) and social constructions (literature, paintings, music) etc... And sometimes you can study the same thing in both ways. But religion asserts that there is a third class of things - the supernatural, that is real not fantasy, but not real in a way that can be studied by normal means.

There is no evidence that the supernatural exists, so you just have to go with your gut feeling or with authority. The problem is that these ideas don't say different things about completely differerent areas of concern, they say conflicting things about the same stuff.

So if you think about a loving, all knowing, perfect, all powerful creator god with a special relationship with human beings, and then you think about Human beings, their place in the universe and their evolution the stories just don't match up.

You can go down MillyR's logical route and say that 'God' is either evil, incompetent or did not create the world. So you end up with Gnosticism, Deism or some other hands-off conception of god.

But that is not (as I understand it) what mist people believe in. The kind of god who cares about individuals, what they believe, wear and eat and who they have sex with, the kind who incarnates himself to sacrifice himself (to himself?) to redeem the sins of the first human -- that kind of god is just not compatible with evolution.

I don't know if religuous people go through mental gymnastics to reconcile the two views or if they just try not to think about it too hard.

Agree with MillyR, about philosophy. Philosophy is the queen of the sciences. the poet and the philosopher understand more about love and self-sacrifice (and hence God) than the scientist with teh microscope. The metaphysical is beyond the limits of scientific enquiry.

I don't think I go through mental gymnastics, or just "not think about it". I guess I have a way of thinking about it which is quite different from yours, so perhaps its as hard for me to see why you find it a problem as it is for you to see why I don't.

To my view, God isn't very interested in what I wear or eat or who I have sex with. God would only care if I was harming myself or others by what I did. So, if I was naked in a nudist camp, God would be fine about it. If I decided to walk naked down the High Street, God would be worried about me. If I have sex outside of marriage or similar, God would care (like any good parent) about whether I was happy, and if I was promiscuous God would probably be worried that I had self-esteem issues. But I don't think that God is that bothered if I have sex outside of marriage, or with someone of the same gender, so long as I'm doing it in a supportive and caring relationship, not being unfaithful, considering the welfare of any children, etc.

That God became incarnate to change the relationship which was possible between God and humanity, whether you word that as sacrifice or ransom or payment for sin, or just good example or building a bridge which had never existed before.

I think humans can no more understand the extent of God, or Its plan, anymore than, as the author of Sum said, "a flatworm knows that the earth is round."

AMumInScotland - your views sound like most modern liberal-minded people's views. They are also completely divorced from any Christian relegious texts.

What people think God is "to them" is totally irrelevant. At no point does the Bible say that God is just what you want him to be. It also doesn't say "as society changes, God changes his mind about stuff". The softening of relegion is entirely linked to the gradually liberalisation of society. But God is unchanging and isn't going to say "well if people are cool with gay marriage now, then so am I". He's going to be more annoyed than ever ( and he was angry in the first place).

God is very, very clearly laid out in the Bible. He has rules, he has things he does and doesn't want you to do. Does God say he's cool with sex before marriage? No. In fact the Bible talks about marriage a lot as being the "cure for sexual immorality".

But modern society in many Western countries is perfectly content to allow sex before marriage and most people are fine with it. This is not God's view, so to say that it is is being revisionist.

And CheerfulYank - I must say, God's opaque "plan" is a cop-out. Jesus sought to explain much of the Bible and God's message through parable and teachings - he did not wander around saying "just believe it or go to Hell, there's a plan that doesn't concern you".

Just saying "well I have no idea and that's fine" is blind-faith, which is surely the worst kind.