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"All the above" -- got it.
Throw it all out and hope they all stick?
More than one is too much.
That's like saying that Newton developed a theory to describe how apples fall from trees.
Can I recommend that you don't try to disparage that which you clearly don't understand.
I agree with the scare quotes, because what you are describing is not an atheist. Unless what you mean by 'has released himself from the domain of a Christian Church' is that he or she has realised that they no longer believe in gods. That the evidence they have been given is not sufficient.
Of course. As soon as I realised I 'believed' (there's those scare quotes again) in evolution then gee, you won't believe the amount of effort I put into trying to get girls to have sex with me. Or maybe it was just all that testosterone pumping around my adolescent body. But you could be right and it actually was me reading 'The Naked Ape' when I was 14.
I'm just going with what I've been told, by way of one atheist or another. Personally, I don't expect every atheist to have the same set of reasons for why he/she doesn't believe, just like I don't expect every Christian to have the same set of reasons for why they do believe. This is mainly because I know that the term "sufficient" is a somewhat tenuous and subjective qualifier where Christianity is concerned.
Right. Because some (not all) have said so. But if you want me to ignore what I've heard because those folks don't know their own atheism, then fine. Define it for them, Bradskii. i don't care.
It's not that they don't know. You were indicating that you'd accept it as a definition of atheism. It isn't.
So you do believe that True Scotsmen exist after all.......................... I see.
Sometimes they do. I already qualified it earlier so you don't have to talk now like I've been nothing but dogmatic.
Oh, boy. "Atheism" is not only not a belief, it isn't really a philosophy or way of life or dogma or any kind of thing we usually associate with the ending "ism". I can tell you with confidence the amount of time I have spent thinking about the "sin nature of mankind" and that is zero.
What are you contrasting evolution to? "Atheism"? Not even related.
What a very narrow view of Darwin's efforts. He wasn't trying to explain a certain group of finches, he was working to explain the pattern of all life, and he succeeded.
What?
No, that didn't help at all. Darwin wasn't the first to come up with the notion that species could change. Charles own grandfather, Erasmus Darwin, was one of those who worked with those ideas. But, it was Charles that worked out a coherent theory of *how* species changed and why -- natural selection.
Oh, wait, you were serious.
The emergence of science in western Europe comes with the rediscovery and repopularization of pre-Christian ideas and knowledge from ancient Greek and Roman "natural philosophers" as it squeezes out from the repressive thumb of the Church. Science does far better when it escapes to Protestant nations with freer governments and more non-noble men of wealth. The same phenomenon that allowed non-religious art to flourish like the Dutch masters.
I hope this can be true. I used to think it, but the more I hear the less compatible Christianity seems to be with science.
A thought that never occurred to me when I chose this profession a decade before I left the Church.
Or more time to reject it.
The first "insane human belief" Christianity seems to have wiped out after invading Europe 1700 years ago was the notion that the world could be understood rationally through the study of nature.
Any group that includes all "fish" and their most recent common ancestor also includes a group of fish called "lung fish" and that group of lung fish includes all quadrapeds, including all reptiles, all amphibians, all birds, all dinosaurs, all lizards, all mammals, including all humans.
You must know some really weird people...
I quoted that from the 1872 copy of On the Origin of Species. Years later for whatever reason, Darwin felt it necessary to emphasize his belief that God created the first living things.
And macroevolution. Even some creationists now admit speciation is a fact, Some even admit the macroevolution of new genera or even families. But of course, they insist that it's "not real macroevolution." But given the scientific definition, they might as well argue that bats are birds. (which conforms to a literal reading of the Bible on that subject)
It's directly observed to happen. The Bible nowhere says that new species do not evolve from existing ones.
It's directly observed to happen. No point in denial. The only escape for YECs is to redefine the term to mean "evolution so extreme that no one person could ever observe it."
And hominins produced different chimps and humans but they are still hominins. In fact, there is greater genetic diversity between elephants than between humans and chimps.
You've admitted as much yourself. Elephants are a family, with a number of genera.
Nowhere does it say that new "kinds" can't evolve. As "Answers in Genesis" and other YECs now admit, new kinds of species, genera, and sometimes families develop from others. They just don't want to use the E-word.
God is not obligated to do everything He is capable of doing.
Do you not see that creation itself is a miracle? What could be more miraculous than the creation of a world with living things that can change to adapt to their environments, producing new kinds of living things? YECs continously sell God short.
