51 thoughts on “The Weirdness of Anti-Darwinism”

1. What is not understood by the vast majority of people who like to participate in these discussions, is that the complexity of biological organisms is almost beyond comprehension. To truly understand the process of DNA replication in the cell, the effect of single point mutation in a gene, the nature of three dimensional protein configuration that holds shape based on the weakest of electrostatic charge, the process of conformational change in a protein based on receptor binding…one who is honest with himself realizes that such a system cannot randomly create and modify itself. Both the origin of life itself (discussed thoroughly by Stephen Meyer in “The Signature in the Cell”) and higher speciation (Meyer’s “Darwin’s Doubt” covers this quite well) are simply random events. Molecular biologists at the highest levels fully appreciate that neo-Darwinian evolution is a failed theory, but high school biology teachers (and rank & file college professors) continue to spout this as gospel truth. Behe’s book is mentioned in previous comments and provides a good overview.

   Abiogenesis (life from non-life by random chemical action) is absurd the more one understands the biology involved. This is why the latest-greatest theory is “Directed Panspermia” which basically posits that space aliens have traveled about the galaxy seeding life on various worlds, and THEN neo-Darwinian evolution gets a chance. Of course the obvious question to ask is this: Where did the aliens come from? But that is never even examined.

   We find a universe (matter, energy, space, time) that sprang into existence ~13.8 billion years ago. How does something come from nothing? We find the universe has physical laws that are so finely tuned in relation to each other so as to permit life. We find life arising. We find higher organic species arising.

   Take another step: most of us believe in objective moral law (even though our culture is trying to dive headlong into moral relativism), but morality cannot arise from mere matter. Physical elements (no matter now intricately arrayed) do not have moral properties, they merely are. A gun has no morality, but the use of that gun has significant moral implications. If we are nothing more than chemicals floating in space, there can be no objective moral truth.

   We make choices, we are volitional creatures. Purely physical systems do not decide, they simply move from states of higher energy and order to state of lower energy and order (understood as the law of entropy). A complex array of dominoes does not choose what to do, it simply moves in the pattern which was designed. This is how purely physical systems act. And before someone wants to bring in quantum physics, just because our ability to observe, measure, and predict is lacking, this does NOT mean that there is no underlying law. Besides, randomness does not equal volition.

   We are conscious creatures, and consciousness is not a physical property. Ideas are immaterial things, they do not occupy space. How do you get immaterial objects if we materialism is true (that is, the claim that ALL that exists is matter, energy, space, and time)?

   If one can honestly ponder the above issues, this question MUST be asked: Given that we find ourselves in a world with all of these characteristics, what is the best explanation for the existence of such a world? An eternal, powerful, intelligent, artistic, loving entity from OUTSIDE of this material world…or somehow nothing created something and “just happened to bring about such a world”???

2. The problem with the theory of evolution can be summed up in two worlds: Information Theory. DNA is information. Information does not just “happen”. It REQUIRES an intelligence. Now, this doesn’t necessarily mean “God” as in the Judeo-Christian modality. In fact, I rather doubt that this is the case. But I also KNOW that it’s not possible that a bunch of dead, non-intelligent “stuff” just happened to randomly do this and that, given enough time, and produced beings who can do Tensor Analysis, build space craft, computers and submarines and compose symphonies.

   My personal belief is that the entire universe is “intelligent”. And, according to those who have actually practiced Buddhism, and even some forms of Contemplative Christianity, this is precisely what is going on. The God of the Bible is simplistic projection of what humans think “A God” would be like. This is, I have doubts, is what’s truly going on. But it is highly disingenuous of people like the late Christopher Hitchens, or the ridiculously overrated Richard Dawkins to immediately use the Judeo-Christian model of “A God” to counter atheistic science.

   There are too many things that I have personally experienced which inform me that there is more going on that a purely mechanistic universe. I rather suspect most people have. Why do you have real love? I’m not talking about lusting after the hottie down the hall. I’m talking about real, genuine love. There is NO reason for this. Love, BTW, is NOT the same thing as altruism. Obviously, I’m nice to my neighbor because it just makes sense to be, rather than be an ass. That’s NOT the same thing as love. Or why does Beethoven’s 9th. for example, well up emotions in me the way it does? I’ve experienced many more strange things than this, but these are things I think most, if not all of us, have experienced. There is absolutely NO reason for this to be present in a purely mechanistic universe. Period. Even given INFINITE time.

   I don’t *know* what is going on but I do know this. Anyone who claims to be an Atheist is a moron, a liar or a fool. I have respect for those who claim to be Agnostic. That is a reasonable position. But Atheism, which seems to correlate positively with Autism, BTW, (and Dawkins is absolutely on the Autism scale, as are MANY, but not all, scientists) is not a reasonable position for a truly open minded free thinker.

3. Jesus, look at these desperate idiots.

   The thing that gets me about creationists is their dogged refusal to engage with what biologists are actually saying. All straw men, all the time.

   I figure if they really cared about science and the truth they’d behave like it.

   But maybe they’re just stupid.

   • They are limited in what they can conceive, what they can sustain in terms of reality. They are as they were made 🙂

     • I see what you did there. Ha!

       They use their processing capacity for other things, or differently.
       It’s a dialect, a language that speaks to them in a way they like and understand.
       It makes sense to the way they view and predict the world. Their language for themselves.
       When people speak to me in, say, Tagolog or Welsh? I get a bit confused.
       If it’s in Albanian, Russian, or Italian, I also get a bit anxious…!

   • Wilbur, you really should understand that when someone says “show me,” there is an intelligence at work.

     • You can’t even engage honestly with a 30 word blog comment. Why should anybody waste his time on you?

       If you cared to learn, you could easily learn. I think you refuse to learn because you’re afraid you’ll find out how silly creationism is. God knows why it’s an issue; it’s got nothing to do with Christianity. I thought humility, on the other hand, did — but I’m just an old lapsed Catholic and I could be mistaken.

       Z was right: It’s a complete waste of time to try to communicate with creationists.

       • My question to you then would be this: What grave damage is being done, in the real world at this very moment, by someone believing something which you find to be silly?

         Why can you not simply let them believe whatever it that they want, and worry about “fighting” them only when their silly belief causes some real world harm to you?

         For not having a religion, atheists do an awful lot of proselytizing.

         If those who think differently than you be fools, let them be with their foolish notions, and bypass them on your way to ever greater heights of discovery.

         Surely your own search for truth can’t be frustrated by mere fools, so why pause your trip to enlightenment to harangue the idiots you encounter upon the road?

         • There is nothing more arrogant or self-assured than an atheist.

4. I agree that evolution best explains the fossil record and that the DNA record represents an accretion of genes that are additive from the most primitive micro-organisms to the most complex animals and plants. I also agree that the clever use of statistical techniques enables us to generally understand when different species split off from one another.

   But what really fascinates me is the reception that Darwin received during the period between the publication of Origin of Species and 1914. I don’t know how many biographies there are of men who came of age during that time frame which attest that Darwin, along with Marx, was decisive in turning them towards atheism . What was latent in Western culture during that time that produced such a uniform and widespread reaction? Perhaps atheism was already being whispered in dorms and classrooms. Darwin and Marx merely made it respectable.

   I think the weirdness of anti-Darwinism has a great deal to do with the weirdness of its reception by the elites. Given where the descendants of those elites are taking us today, the weirdness of anti-Darwinism is altogether understandable.

   • The elites are anti-Darwin too, nowadays.

     You can’t separate multiple populations of moderately intelligent animals for 2,000+ generations, put them in wildly differing environments, and expect them not to differ physically and cognitively.

     If they don’t understand that (and they very angrily claim not to), they don’t understand evolution.

     I think they’re telling the truth. I think they’re stupid.

   • Great, great comment. Damn.

5. Darwin was taken up as the new religion by atheists. Christians than defended their religion by attacking atheist. Darwin had no dog in that fight. The first (and last?) atheist to criticize Darwin’s theory was Henry Adams, who worked at the American Embassy in London during and after the War Between the States. A page from his autobiography–

   “He felt, like nine men in ten, an instinctive belief in Evolution, but he felt no more concern in Natural than in unnatural Selection…
   Natural Selection led back to Natural Evolution, and at last to Natural Uniformity. This was a vast stride. Unbroken Evolution under uniform conditions pleased every one–except curates and bishops; it was the very best substitute for religion; a safe, conservative, practical, thoroughly Common Law deity. Such a working system for the universe suited a young man who had just helped to waste five or ten thousand million dollars and a million lives, more or less, to enforce unity and uniformity on people who objected to it; the idea was only too seductive in its perfection; it had the charm of art. Unity and Uniformity were the whole motive of philosophy, and if Darwin, like a true Englishman, preferred to back into it–to reach God a posteriori–rather than start from it, like Spinoza, the difference of method taught only the moral that the best way of reaching unity was to unite. Any road was good that arrived.
   Steady, uniform, unbroken evolution from lower to higher seemed easy.
   So, one day when Sir Charles came to the Legation to inquire about getting his “Principles” properly noticed in America, young Adams found nothing simpler than to suggest that he could do it himself if Sir Charles would tell him what to say.
   Ponder over it as he might, Adams could see nothing in the theory of Sir Charles but pure inference…He could detect no more evolution in life since the Pteraspis than he could detect it in architecture since the Abbey. All he could prove was change.
   All this seemed trivial to the true Darwinian, and to Sir Charles it was mere defect in the geological record. Sir Charles labored only to heap up the evidences of evolution; to cumulate them till the mass became irresistible. With that purpose, Adams gladly studied and tried to help Sir Charles, but, behind the lesson of the day, he was conscious that, in geology as in theology, he could prove only Evolution that did not evolve; uniformity that was not uniform; and Selection that did not select. To other Darwinians–except Darwin–Natural Selection seemed a dogma to be put in the place of the Athanasian creed; it was a form of religious hope; a promise of ultimate perfection. Adams wished no better, he warmly sympathized in the object; but when he came to ask himself what he truly thought, he felt that he had no Faith; that whenever the next new hobby should be brought out, he should surely drop off the Darwinism like a monkey from a perch.

6. There seem to be a lot of closed minds on both sides. Evolution as it is currently taught in schools has some massive holes in it but also has adherents who take it as Gospel. We have much more to learn.

7. “gravity is 9.7536 m / s2”

   Almost anything can be “proven” with math. Math is a language. It’s not science.

   • So you can use math to change the rate at which a brick accelerates when you drop it?

     Neat trick.

8. I’m not sure what “brand of Christianity” you are talking about here, but John C Wright is a Catholic convert.

9. The “Theory of Evolution” is an absurd waste of time.

   It’s pretty easy to work out logically the fact that God exists, and from that, that God created the Universe, and from that, that God created life, and from that, that God created human beings. What we can’t work out is HOW God created all these things, because we simply lack the faculties to understand it. And honestly– who gives a shit? Assuming we could ever access that knowledge–which we can’t– how would that affect us regarding our day to day lives, or our relationships with each other, or the world in general?

   • That’s what I tried to touch on. The answers you seek do not answer the questions posed by others.
     Both sides end up frustrated and angry because they get no true explanation that satisfies from the other.

     Enough. This War must end. You are both trying so hard for the good, to find what is right.
     Sorry I’m so far behind, but reconciliation is far more than possible.

     As an “atheist”, let me assure you, my brother, you’re belief in God is the most natural thing in the world.
     Atheists react emotionally because it does not answer their questions in a way that holds meaning for them. Same for you.

     It’s a problem of dialect, not intellect.
     Speech for information is emotionally neutral. No one argues about installing a car speaker.
     Emotional speech, triggering an immediate gut reaction, declares loyalty and position.
     We use sound signalling, our distinctive hoots and calls, not visual triggers of tail or feather, to organize our mobile, shifting groups.
     We have done it this way for millions of years.

10. My Dad always warned me to avoid people who wear their religion on their sleeve.

    This is sage advice. People who wear their piety like a broach are usually compensating for some concealed deficit of character.

    Hence the apparent preference for ignorance. They would sooner appear dumb to the world’s mysteries than relinquish the rightous’ compensatory pose.

    • The louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons.

      –Ralph Waldo Emerson

11. I didn’t know what occasionalism was, so I Googled it. Here’s something from something called the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy:

    Occasionalism
    In the minds of most philosophers with a passing familiarity with early-modern philosophy, occasionalism is typically regarded as a laughable ad hoc or ‘for want of anything better’ solution to the mind-body problem, first opened up in Descartes’ Meditations. As typically presented in philosophy textbooks, the doctrine (usually identified exclusively with Nicholas Malebranche) certainly seems laughable: beginning from the assumption that the actual transmission of anything between body and mind is impossible, occasionalism holds that, for example, when my finger is pricked by a needle, no physical effect—neither the puncture of the needle nor the activity of my nerves—reaches my mind, but rather God directly produces the sensation of the prick within my mind on the occasion of the needle’s contact with my finger. Similarly, when I will to retract my finger away from the needle, my incorporeal will is utterly impotent to produce any such corporeal movement, so God again intercedes and directly produces the movement of the finger on the occasion of my willing.

    Such supposedly was the doctrine of occasionalism, which, when presented in such a manner, occasions little more than an eye-roll from modern readers. Yet, this “textbook view” of occasionalism (much like the contemporary fixation on Descartes’ Meditations over his Principles of Philosophy) has everything to do with the interests, problems, and concerns of philosophy in the late and post-modern periods, and almost nothing to do with the actual doctrine of occasionalism in its own historical context. Indeed, occasionalism is not peculiar to early-modern philosophy or Cartesianism at all, but was an influential school in both Latin and Islamic medieval philosophy extending back to the tenth century. Moreover, for a strange and systematically theological system of metaphysics, occasionalism is the progenitor of a number of remarkable developments in Western philosophy, some of which laid the foundation for the development of modern science itself.

    Has anyone ever figured out how the human mind-body thing works?

12. The trouble with science is not science per se, but rather the eternal and immutable arrogance of some scientists (the ones that get all the press, it seems) and the idiots who follow them (who are legion).

    I’m an engineer, I know how science works, I practice it daily. Engineering wouldn’t exist without the scientific method and discover-able, repeatable physical laws that govern the way the natural world functions.

    That said, no real scientist can ever say “This is how X works for certain, end of story forever.” because that’s not how science actually works.

    Pretty much anything reported in the MSM these days as “science” is mostly hubris on the part of one or more scientists combined with ignorance on the part of one or more reporters.

    Global warming is “settled science” because a few dozen leftist scientists all agree that the world should be governed by leftist politicians to avert “global climate change”. The proffered solution to which just happens to be the collection of every leftist economic and political wet dream ever conceived of. Anyone who doesn’t wish to live in a horrific leftist utopia is labelled a “science denier”.

    That’s not science, it’s propaganda.

    Evolution is science only in as much as the theory can be supported by evidence.

    It’s not “settled”. Science is never settled. It’s an ongoing struggle to understand the world around us, using what evidence we can find and verify. Science is a method, not a set of ideals or beliefs (though many modern primitives treat it as though it were).

    Humans yearn for something larger than themselves to believe in, and since the modern left has all but destroyed traditional religion, many fools who cannot bring themselves to embrace the death cult of leftism as their new quasi-religion instead turn to SCIENCE (or rather, science-ism) as their higher power.

    These unfortunates worship at the altar of Neil Degrasse Tyson or Bill Nye the “Science” guy, both charlatans of the highest order, held aloft by fools who mistake hubris, arrogance, and bluster for wisdom or enlightenment. The fact that they are both factually wrong nearly all the time when they post “scientific shit” on Twitter, sails right by most all of their acolytes.

    If anyone should point this out, they get screamed at and sent dozens of meme pics with the science-ist gods’ likenesses inside a demotivator frame emblazoned with the words “Do you even Science, Bro?”.

    Unfortunately, science, like all other formerly noble pursuits of man, has been overrun and then corrupted from within by the terminally stupid.

    Marching in lockstep toward their glorious modern future, as they chant with one voice, “DERP, LOL, DERP, LOL, DERP, LOL . . .”

    • How the fuck is it that some of you can format your posts properly, while mine end up as nothing but huge walls of text?

      I assure you, they were not submitted that way.

      For example, the preceeding sentence should have been separated from this one and the one that came before it by a hard return and a blank line, yet none so appear.

      What am I missing here? Does this place require HTML tags for formatting, or am I just not one of the cool kids who gets to have properly formatted posts?

      • Well fuck me sideways, THAT post retained the formatting, kind of.

        What’s going on here guys? The results don’t seem to be repeatable.

        • Your posts are evolving.

          • Touche’ sir.

        • Nunya, if your comment is long enough, the commenting software compresses the post until the reader clicks the “read more” link. Then you see the uncompressed post with all its formatting.

          • Ahhhhh, that’s an answer that makes sense.

            Thank you.

    • Agree, science is making the best guess we can with what we have at hand.

      The 6,000 year Creation is a great example.

      An honest Scottish scientist asked an honest question- “How old is the world?”
      The best available evidence he had then was the Bible, so he counted and estimated the lineage listed therein, and came up with “Adam was made in 4004 B.C.”

      Six thousand-year days sounded good and proper in those times, as surely we live in the last Day.
      It was an honest question, with an honest an answer as he could get. Definite A grade for effort.

13. If evolution is a science it should be able to to predict not only the future but also the past. But I keep reading how scientists are “astonded” at this or that new fossil from long ago and have to rethink everything. If each new fossil requires a rewrite maybe there is something wrong with the theory.

    The main problem of course is that there is no feedback mechanism, it’s all random. And if it is random then new polar bears are born in the tropics and die, but only random polar bears (again) born in the Arctic (both a male and female – remember new species can’t breed with others, which is the definition) has the new species happening. Nope.

    And didn’t you just write about how psychology isn’t a science? But it does better predictions than Dawinans.

    I an not a creationist but Darwin is BS, and most use it like PC to hate on the rubes in flyover country, so I will go Trump on this one.

14. A pretty good book that helps to explain Christian skepticism regarding Darwin is Darwin on Trial by Phillip E. Johnson. A second book, Darwin’s Black Box by Michael Behe , helps the mind stay open to all possibilities. The first is written by a Berkeley law professor who became a Christian and approaches the topic as a trial lawyer, as in, if evolution were a crime, would there be enough evidence to convict.
    The author of the second, though making no claim to Christian faith that I am aware of, gives us boatloads of info on the biology of our world after the advent of the electron microscope that challenge the orthodox view of evolution, which was cemented in place well before this development. After reading Behe, mutation and natural selection – which should have been debunked long ago but are still being taught as the mechanism of evolution – look silly.

    • Selection ‘debunked’? Doubtful but interesting. Guess I’ll ogle fat, weird chicks instead of fit, healthy ones then.

      • Where do fat, weird chicks come from?

15. This is an excellent post, though unfortunately I am not in a position to give it the thoughtful comment it deserves (my family is insisting on keeping the TV going full blast, you really don’t want to attempt to make points about theology while dealing with that).

    To address the two earlier commentators, Alexandros is correct. Much of American Protestantism is just resurrected versions of medieval heresies. A Catholic would argue that this is what happens without the magisterium. This might be an American thing instead of a Protestant thing. The old school Protestant churches that predominate among European Protestantism, the Lutherans, Anglicans, and Presbyterians, are least prone to this sort of thing, and many individual American Catholics are, they just don’t pay much attention to the content of what they are taught.

    To respond to Delbert McClintock, that species evolved was pretty much accepted scientific opinion before Darwin, and obvious from both fossils and observing existing species. “Darwinism” is specifically a theory that the mechanism behind evolution is random genetic mutations, of which the ones that turn out to be advantageous or at least compatible with the current environment get passed down to an increasing number of animals in subsequent generations, while traits not compatible with the environment tend to vanish from the genetic inheritance because animals who hold them die before they can reproduce.

    Darwin figured this out during a lifetime of first hand observation and thinking. Other scientists had the same idea about the same time. Alfred Wallace came up with this about about the same time, contacted Darwin, and they agreed to present their findings jointly. Most scientific discoveries and technological innovations are really group efforts. Popular culture, which amplifies ignorance, insists on holding up one person as the one who discovered or invented this or that, which I suspect is a holdover from paganism. This is done with the arts too, hence the need to call Shakespeare the greatest writer in the English language, or even more ridiculously the greatest writer ever, though there is no way you can intelligently make that sort of value judgement.

    • Has this theory ever been proven? We know species do evolve; do we really know what drives this evolution? There is a kind of symmetry to nature; solar systems have a similar ‘structure’ and behavior to atoms. Planets revolve around a star, electrons revolve around a nucleus; that kind of thing. So maybe there is this same kind symmetry between how an individual evolves, and how a species evolves. An individual starts as a single cell that follows a ‘plan’ and eventually produces a complex organism with myriad specialized cells. Perhaps evolution is a little more mathematical than “random mutations” (which sounds like hand waving to me).

      Again, has anyone ever produced anything useful from Darwin’s theories (in the sense that Pasteur produced something extraordinarily useful)? That to me would be proof. Einstein’s theories gave us very demonstrable proof (nuclear weapons and energy). Anything like that from Darwin?

      • “We know species do evolve…”

        How, exactly, do we “know” this? Think about it. Can we study evolution in a lab? No. Do we have a “control earth” that we can compare our “experimental” earth with? No. Have we actually witnessed, with our own eyes, under controlled conditions, an individual unit of a species “evolving”?

        And don’t talk to me about fossil “evidence”. What do fossils prove? We think we can date them, but of course we have no idea if our methodologies are accurate, because we can’t go back in time and verify the results. We think they represent earlier versions of present species, but again, how would we know unless we could see, with our own eyes, the continuous development over millenia IN REAL TIME. Which is, of course, utterly impossible.

        Evolution is a nice theory, but that’s what it is– a THEORY. It can’t be verified, it can’t be reproduced, it can’t be witnessed, it can’t be measured. Which means it sure as heck isn’t “science”.

        • We know species evolve because of shared DNA, and the ability to determine when and where “splits” in the “tree” occur. Again, we can see members of an extended family evolving (as outside DNA is folded in through marriage), so it is not unreasonable to accept that species can evolve over time as well. My guess is that the common DNA for a species has code built-in to produce this evolution; perhaps code to produce multiple “branches” with the most successful branches continuing on. It would be interesting to know which posters here have children, and which don’t 😛

          • “Not unreasonable”…”my guess”…”perhaps”

            Thanks for making my argument for me.

          • It’s a shame I can’t make your reading comprehension better, too 🙁

          • LOL…finishing with the Ad Hominem. The last resort of a rhetorical loser.

        • But it can be measured. We can trace DNA branches back, back, all the way back.

          That ‘so what makes it a Theory- a body of laws proven by observed replication, such as Theory of gravity or electrical Theory; and no, we don’t exactly know what those are either.

          Most use “theory” when they mean conjecture. Properly, it goes: hypothesis, conjecture, then Theory (after much testing and observation.).

          • Sorry, Theory of electricity, as opposed to applied electrical Science.

          • You can trace DNA branches…so what? The high-tech equivalent of Dinosaur bones. Just because something existed at some point in time, doesn’t explain HOW it existed.

    • The American thing you’re seeing comes mainly from 1844.
      A chance remark from the Royal Society- “all that can be known is known”- combined with the rising tide resulting from a new technology. Scots-Irish liquor distillation, a closely kept secret for cenuries, was all the poor immigrants had left to sell. Since it’s easier to get one wagon of barrels over the hill than an oxen train, whole crops were being converted to the Demon Plague. Plus, poor folk could bring a jar or jug of shine to that wagon and get actual money on the spot; try doing that at the miller.

      A host of fiery Methodist traveling preachers arose to entertain bored, isolated farm families.
      The ills of the Demon Plague, and the declaration of the renowned Royal Society, surely meant that the End Times were at hand. The Day was called, and American churches began to feverishly prepare in what was called the Millerite Revolution. Thus we have the Millenial evangelicals- Pentacostal, Baptist, Adventist, Latter-Day Saints, and what have you.

      The Lord didn’t come. Instead, we got the War with Mexico and the Civil War.
      Repent, ye sinners!

16. Can you tell me what exactly Darwin “discovered”? I have read “On the Origin of Species” and can’t find anything in it that any farmer (or parent) doesn’t know. This is not a comment on evolution itself, just Darwin’s contribution (or lack thereof) to science. Pasteur gave us vaccine theory; what did Darwin give us?

    • Fun fact: Pasteur recanted germ theory on his deathbed. Well, maybe “recanted” is a little strong. Better to say, he acknowledged the validity of germ theory’s opposite number– the yin to it’s yang, if you will. If you are sceptical about modern western medicine– and you should be if you are even half aware– it’s worth your time to investigate this line of reasoning further.

      • Darwin and Wallenby gave us the idea that the world is ancient, and that it changes, albeit with glacial slowness, concepts which inform all the natural sciences, especially those that arose after Darwin, such as Mendel’s genetic maths, molecular chemistry, or cosmology.

        The original argument was not how things began, but whether things changed at all.

        Also, when a Christian asked, “how did we get here?”, he’s not asking about the mechanics.
        Those hold no emotional meaning for him.
        What he’s really asking is “Why did He put us here?”

        Let me tell you then what God is, and why Christians and atheists fight.
        Let the War be over.

        “God”, or the gods, is social probability modeling.

        As social animals, our first learning develops social modeling- how to behave around, to predict and react to others. Our parents are our first models; we imbibe their example in the deep core of emotion, long before speech comes into play. Mummy will always feed us, but, because we are primates, Dada will always be the alpha.

        The difference tween believers and non is that believers see everything through the lens of Someone In Charge. It’s the only thing that makes sense to them.

        Nonbelievers see things as Process. 3 must follow 2 because that is what makes it 3.
        They don’t feel the emotional pull or need of supplication.

        What they are arguing is worldview. Social models allow us to interpret and predict a world of potential threats and alliances. We all do it, thus it’s natural and universal.

        Note that most of your processing space is devoted to probability modeling.
        We’re constantly running scenarios, as fantasies or worries. We even do it in our sleep.

        (Note also that in our current culture, liberals are “Down with Daddy! My siblings will help”, and this is reflected in their broken homes and multicultural outreach. Traditionalists are more “Don’t piss off Daddy! Make Daddy proud” types, more focused on and conducive to stable, enduring child rearing structures. Sure they might be hellions, but don’t you say sh*t about their kinfolk, and get yourself to church.)

        So I declare the War to be over.
        Believers feel and see Someone In Charge, and base their expectations on it.
        Non believers are more mechanistic in their expections. Why clutter things up?
        Both are trying their best. Neither is blind on one side or crazy on the other,
        so just translate, ok? Since now you know what to expect of each other.

        • Oh, and the Bible, or holy books?
          Whole other thing.
          The Bible is a political history of two great kings- Lord Ham of the OT, who resurrected a shattered world after a 400 year dark age and took in the refugees who had desperately preserved it’s cultural fragments, and of Good King Jesus, a royal bastard and reformer rejected by a corrupt ruling class, whose message needs no magic to be valid.

          (Paul, a spy for the secret police, had a mission: the King was dealt with, but the rebellion remains. Uncover the leaders. The Jews would not have him back, so he turned to the Greeks and Armenians. Polite phrases for “bastard”, such as “a son of the holy ghost” or “a son of the Allfather” gave him grounds to claim that the authentic male heir to the line of David, through his mother, was a semi-deity like Herakles, born of the union tween a god and a mortal woman. Plus, he saw that wife Mary Magdalena and then brother James had a good thing going, and wanted to take it for himself.

          In turn, he received his reward for successfully exposing the Apostles to public execution: Vespasian is fallen, Galla is now Emperor; the previous administration shall be purged… most especially it’s spies.)

          All religion begins as politics, someone convincing a crowd, but they are dust now and only the words remain. The alpha is dead, his story stays as a flagpole around which we can organize ourselves, which was the alpha’s function in life. The details are crushed by time, yet the gist remains. The magic? Forgotten referents, used as an emotional hook. That’s ok.

          Why both priests and professors are wrong is because there is another factor they cannot use or explain. The “spiritual” refers to the non-physical part of the world, quite real, but literally immaterial. Try to grab a beam of sunlight! Try to see a radio wave!

          We have feral abilities for sensing the immaterial, electromagnetic world; however, the part of the brain that perceives such doesn’t readily use use words. Since it processes information in a holistic, aphasic manner (try to put a dream into words), we get prophets, oracles, and madmen.

          Every language, in every culture, has had the same terms for the same phenomena- gods, ghosts, heavens, hells- for thousands of years.Yet, what is our big brain answer to this? Why they just made it all up! That’s right, every civilization, even the primitives, made exactly the same mistakes over and over and over. For 10,000 years.

          Man, that had to be hard. The acute observation and reasoning it took to arrive to the conclusion that other people were, and are, stupid and crazy. Know what that proves?
          That we are the first, and smartest, smarties ever born!
          We are the best monkeys, yeah!

17. “Many people calling themselves Christian think Catholics are all wrong and a corruption of Christianity.”

    This is too weird, for me Christianity has always been the Catholic Church, I never liked Protestantism and Evangelicals. I studied in Catholic schools and learned evolution, creationism is a evangelical madness.

    Early Christianity was extremely varied, there was Gnostic and Marcionist sects that denied the Old Testament and had their own version of the New Testament.

    • “I studied in Catholic schools and learned evolution, creationism is a evangelical madness.”

      “Evangelical madness”? Really? Care to explain?

      Be advised, that I don’t give a shit either way. I just find it absurd that people make sweeping, unverifiable statements like this, with absolutely no hope of backing them up logically or rationally.

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