'She believes we're decended from apes!'

[Bumperlicioso]

Said with incredulous laughter by a very religious acquaintance. Does religion preclude a belief in evolution? Apparently there is nothing to support it according to same acquaintance.

Kendodd - You are an "agnostic".

The thing is though 'the story of creation' isn't even a good metaphor for evolution. It is nothing to do with whether it happened over 6 days or 6 eons. It is the idea of the 'Garden of Eden' - that there was some time when humans existed and all was good and that something we did turned it bad (sin) and that to be better people we have to be reconciled with the creator.

Evolution didn't work like that at all. Humans (and animals) got strong and smart and fast because of predators and competitors, and the ever present risk of starvation, they developed immune systems because of disease. The capacity for love and hate, nurturing and violence etc.. are all part of our evolutionary heritage (which doesn't mean we can't decide to favour one over the other as human beings - it just means that those moral choices clearly don't come from any creator who oversaw the completely amoral process of evolution).

Even amongst people that have given up on the idea of god, and sin the idea that there is some 'natural' self or state of being where people were better and days were good remains a strong myth (see the thread on patriarchy over at the feminism board, for example - if you dare ).

We are descended from primitive humans whose appearance could be said by some to be more ape-like than human-like.

Apes are descended from actual apes.

"It's a theory that the uiverse is a living thing. I only thought of it because the universe started off as a tiny, tiny mass that grew and expanded and will eventually die. Is that not what living things do? "

Universe expands because it is pushed apart initially and there is little in the vacuum to stop this inertia. It did not and does not "grow" like living things do, increasing its mass by making new parts of itself.

And universe will only "die" in the sense that a fire eventually "dies" when it runs out of fuel. Suns will eventually run out of fuel and go out one by one, and the universe will be a freezing cold place, inhospitable to living beings.

In other words, your "theory" is not even a theory, it is a misunderstanding. Sorry.

No. Religion does not preclude a belief in evolution. I went to a Catholic school (many years ago) and there was never the slightest doubt about evolution in my biology classes.

There does seem to have been a big rise in Creationism and other literal/unhistorical readings of the bible recently though. I don't know why. Sometimes it feels as though the world is just becoming increasingly stupid.

If we genuinely believe that the mutations are random (and not guided by a god) then we have a problem with the watchmaker hypothesis. If you could restart the evolutionary process again it is extremely likely that it would not end up in the state it is now (because the mutations are really random). This means that humans and all other species would not exist (at least in their current form).

The trouble with the 'universe as living thing' idea is that living things self-replicate - they reproduce. I like the rest of what you wrote though PunkPixie - we are indeed all part of the universe ... 'we are stardust' :)

I think the tree bit of the garden of eden story is quite a good metaphor for the evolution of consciousness - especially self-consciousness. Before we had this capacity, we would have had no knowledge of good or evil, no moral decisions to make.

ElBurro, the mutations themselves are random, but the ability of each mutation to survive/reproduce is not random at all, but dependent on how well it fits its environment.

I find the Eden story an excellent poetic description of the dual emergence of self-consciousness and moral sense in the species that became homo sapiens. I particularly like the fact that Adam and Eve are put in the impossible position of having been given an insane injunction against eating from the tree of knowledge, while being created with an insatiable curiosity to seek it out. It encapsulates the conundrum at the heart of our species' flawed (or failed) attempt to behave as moral beings.

Scientific it obviously isn't.

To be fair (and given that I despise all religious beliefs equally) it's not just a percentage of Christians who believe rubbish like Creationism. Some normal-looking people, who are capable of putting on their own pants and remaining in gainful employment, believe that human beings arrived in a flying saucer...

I have met some people who are surely from another planet...

I also think of it as a metaphor for climate change:

The garden of Eden is the world in which we have evolved - with basically a stable climate since around the first human settlements.

The 'tree of knowledge' is the fossilised trees that we call coal. It was digging this up and burning it that enabled the explosion of knowledge, technology, many many more people to be supported on the earth.

But by 'eating from the tree of knowledge' we set forth a train of events which will lead to the banishment of humans from the garden, as the garden itself changes with temperature rising and climate becoming more volatile.

Not saying that the bible authors were precient about the green house effect, just that reading it now there is poetic resonance.

If there was a god you think he would have given people some clear writing on the wall not to get hooked on fossil fuels.

Zephrine, thanks I agree. But my point is that there are many almost an infinite number of states that evolution could have arrived at even given the constraints that the environment has on it. We are at just one of those - and the problem with the non-interferring god hypothesis - is that the human-centric versions of god that theists believe in do not fit with all the other possible states that we could have arrived at.

ElBurro - my view is that you're right that evolution could have gone in all kinds of directions, but I think that any of them would have led to the evolution of a self-aware creature at some stage. That might have been an insect or a cetacean, or something which has no close relatives in this world, instead of an ape, but it would have happened to some line of evolution eventually.

And I believe that self-awareness and the capacity for moral choice are what makes us "in the image of God", and gives us a special place in creation and the possibility of a relationship with God, rather than us having been "designed" from the first to have hair and two legs.

So I don't think that man was made to be physically in the image of God, or that our existence required special intervention, but I do believe that God put the universe together in a way which would lead to "us" (a self-aware creature) and that God wanted that to happen and wanted to have the possibility of having a relationship with the self-aware and moral creatures that emerged. But God would have been just as happy to try to have a relationship with giant lizards with three eyes if that's how we had turned out.

The majority of Christians believe in evolution (since the majority are Catholic, Episcopalian etc).

BalloonSlayer: primitive humans and other ape lineages share a common ancestor.
We are apes, too.
(Sorry to split hairs!)

Given a second chance, evolution would hopefully not lead to our current and rather dumb arrangement of air passage right next to the food one. Think about that the next time you worry about small DC eating grapes.

gaelicsheep: "Without wanting to offend anyone, I'm afraid I do believe there is an inverse relationship between fundamental religious belief and intelligence. Lack of intelligence and/or an enquiring mind would preclude a belief in evolution if they don't understand it." - were you being ironic about not wanting to offend anyone? If not, that wasn't a very intelligent statement!

How's about this: everyone is different. Some people have religious beliefs and also believe in evolution. Some people have no religious beliefs and also believe in evolution. Some people have religious beliefs and don't believe in evolution. And some people, perhaps (have to be inclusive, eh? ) believe in nothing.

Sorry but that is crazy talk. You don't choose to "believe" in evolution or not, like you choose to believe in a God or choose your brand of religion. Evolution has happened over millenia and the proof is everywhere. You need to be a special kind of nut to refuse to understand the reality of evolution.

Choosing to believe in evolution is like choosing to believe in your left leg. It is just a fact. (Unless you are an amputee of course but YKWIM.)

I always want to send creationists off to Lyme Regis to look at the fossils.

Cote - it's an interesting point you make about people "refusing to understand the reality of evolution." This is actually a classic example of cognitive dissonance - i.e. the all-too-common phenomenon of trying to convince oneself of something that isn't true so as to save face/ retain the appearance of being right or consistent or whatever. Everyone does it - whether in relation to religion or an argument at a dinner party or a family feud or whatever. So it's not the preserve of a "special kind of nut" - it's a normal, incorrect, but still normal human behaviour.

Oh religion is all about cognitive dissonance. If you are intelligent enough not to shit on your own breakfast dishes, you are intelligent enough to realise that the possibility of a big invisible supernatural being that takes an active interest in you is utterly fucking ridiculous.
The reason the superstitious get so squawky about people pointing out the idiocy of their various beliefs is because they know, deep down, that their imaginary friend doesn't exist. but they have either invested a lot of time and money in it, lost out on good things because they abided by idiotic taboos set up in the name of the imaginary friend - or they get some class privilege by being of the class that the imaginary friend was set up to benefit, and down't want to give that up.

SGB - I completely agree about the intellectual dishonesty involved. However, I also believe that the predisposition to be religious is an evolved trait that must have been selected for in our evolutionary history (either by improving our chances of procreating or improving our chances of survival). Therefore I don't blame the individuals who are religious for their beliefs. However it does get me going when they seem to want to have it both ways by declaring that their particular religion is both rational and consistent with a scientific view. There has recently been a discussion about this here;
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/philosophy_religion_spirituality/1120303-Science-and-religion-could-you-help-me-with-more-examples-please

ExpatInScotland - if what you believe is true then why do so many religions involve the sacrifice of animals (i.e. other sentinent beings who have evolved like us) in their rituals. I think that this is called human exceptionalism - the belief that humans are special and not like other species - this idea seems to be central to many religions. Evolution however tells us otherwise.

springchicken, i find the way you have spoken in your last post to be extremely offensive. Its not okie to make fun of, and be so rude about people.

I dont think evolution makes sense. At least, no one has explained it to me in a way that i can accept as scientific. It requires a leap of faith that i cant really be bothered to make. If people want to aggree that God could have allowed it to happen, then fine. thats faith... But scientifically, i dont buy it.

SGB - I know you find it hard to believe, but most of us who claim to believe in the existence of God do actually believe it. We're not pretending, in order to hide the fact that deep down we know it isn't true - we actually believe that it is true.

I'd cheerfully give up believing if I wasn't sure it was true - it would be much easier and simpler to just believe in what science can prove, and it would really suit me a lot better in many ways.

Thanks for the discussion on my thread. I'm afraid I don't always have the courage of my convictions or eloquence to argue what i really think. However we are diverting to an interesting point, which I have had a threadcabout before years ago: is belief in God a choice? I don't believe in God but I'm not sure it's a conscious choice I have made, I just don't believe. And I'm not sure what it would take for me to believe. I'd quite like to believe in God, it seems quite satisfying but I just cant make myself. Is it a choice?