to wonder how people can not believe in Evolution .......

[cookielove]

After a discussion at work which actually started about a childs' dress (day nursery) leading onto the duggars and then religion, it came clear to me that several of my work colleagues do not believe in evolution and not only that but also dinosaurs not existing

Now i can understand the more religious people not believing as Evolution and adam and eve clash, but for those who were not religious how can you not believe in Evolution. Its proven.

I mean really how can people not believe in Evolution or dinosaurs.

I quote one of my work colleagues 'well there's lots of dinosaur toys so they must have been real' .... WTAF?

Please tell MN that you believe in Evolution, and dinosaurs ......

Popcorn, love your neighbour seems clear, until you consider all the smiting of neighbours that went on under the direction of the same god in the old testament. Did he change his mind?

Hi giraffe :)

Yes people did make mistakes in the OT about how to relate to God, just as we all still do today, of course.

If humans hadn't made any mistakes and had got it all right then there would have been no need for Jesus to set us straight and take our sins upon himself.

Jesus often talked about how the pharisees and religious leaders of the day demonstrated pride and hypocrisy.

Jesus gave us the parable (metaphorical story) of the Good Samaritan to demonstrate how we should be kind to our neighbours of other backgrounds. This Samaritan was the only person to stop and help a stranger who'd been robbed and beaten, when a priest and Levite had walked past ignoring him. The Samaritans were considered heretical by other Jews.

He also said we should "love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you". So this compassion is purposeful and goes far beyond what biology and genes would suggest we should do.

Snorbs, I was thinking of the Clapham sect (as you almost certainly knew!)

I think you meant that for NobleGiraffe not Snorbs - but anyhow, if they hadn't heard of the Clapham Sect they're given rightly honourable mention in my last link, along with the shameful bishops.

I was responding (somewhat belatdly!) to Snorbs' post of 22:17 last night. Yes, I've read the books and watched the movie - Wilberforce was opposed by just about everyone really, poor chap. No wonder he got so ill. (Loving how this same conversation about religion keeps migrating from thread to thread!)

Noblegiraffe -- empathy, the idea that someone feels pain and that another person can put themselves in their place/feel it too/project it back to themselves, is a hypothesis that can't be tested. Reason can indeed lead one to understand that the other person can feel pain, but what is it that makes that a factor in how we deal with the other person?

empathy, the idea that someone feels pain and that another person can put themselves in their place/feel it too/project it back to themselves, is a hypothesis that can't be tested.

It can, actually. 'Mirror neurones' and all that stuff. Of course we're just at the very start of working out what really happens in people's brains but there's no 'can't' about it.

"empathy, the idea that someone feels pain and that another person can put themselves in their place/feel it too/project it back to themselves, is a hypothesis that can't be tested."

Is it? They seem to have done plenty of research on it. Neuro-imaging shows that when people are shown someone in pain, this activates part of the pain matrix in their own brain. The study here concludes 'Our data suggest that we use similar decoupled representations to understand the feelings of others and that our ability to empathize has evolved from a system for representing our internal bodily states and subjective feeling states.'

There is interesting also research being done into the relatively recently discovered mirror neurons and their role in empathy.