Followup post to "Half of all Britons are basically retarded"

Thanks to the comments of AnthonyK I went to check out http://campaigndirector.moodia.com/Client/Theos/Files/RescuingDarwin.pdf

It's a fairly long document but is very well-written. So far I have read around half of it, and so perhaps I am commenting without all the available information, but here are some notes I made as I was reading the first 3 chapters.

My initial impression of the document was that it appeared to be a way of "scientifically" portraying some apologetic reasons for Darwin's "Faith". However, so far it has been a very good representation of the thoughts and behaviour of people when discussing Darwin's theories. I worried perhaps that there was too much emphasis on Darwin's religion, and (without time to check the references, at the moment) that there could be some quote mining, possibly.

For some reason this document was the first time I'd noticed how often people talk about the struggles they have when discussing ideas conflicting with Christianity. Surely it should be the other way around - after all, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and nothing could be more extraordinary than the god hypothesis (hypotheses?). Logically I'd expect the default belief to be that of "I'll believe it when I see it", but it seems that society somehow manouevres that stance to be the "alternative" to religion.

Of course, it was good to see Darwin's appreciation of charitable work done by his church. I'd like to make the point that the common belief that atheists are much less charitable is based on very flawed information!

I disagree with the point that there is no struggle between religion and science. I tried for a long time to resolve all of the contradictions between the two; scientific evidence is overwhelming, but could the Bible perhaps be moulded to fit it? Maybe Genesis could be talking about "days" as "a period of time", for example. The general order in which things happen in Genesis could just be a metaphor for evolution...

I'm not sure when I realised that clinging to the Bible with the very ends of my fingernails was pretty much pointless; if you don't try and make science and religion co-exist then life becomes infinitely easier (and not (just) because I can sin without fear of recrimination!).

• The Bible says we are made in God's image. Evolution is firmly opposed to that.
• The Bible says that prayers can make a difference to the world. The scientific method relies on this not being the case.
• The Bible says that miracles can happen. No reliable evidence gives any example of this.

Those are just three of the most obvious reasons why religion just doesn't work. There are many more, and yet religious people are happy to criticise the theory of evolution by natural selection because of the "lack of evidence" in the fossil record. It almost seems like it must be a joke!

The article also briefly discusses the concept of Deism - that god created the world and then sat back to watch it happen, using evolution as the method of advancement. If this is the case, Deism is basically atheism to all practical intents and purposes. Why perform complex rituals if god is just sitting back and watching? How do you explain all of god's appearances to people in the Bible? Really, Deism is just Atheism but with a more Christianity-friendly approach.

"Why should you be so aggressive? Is anything gained by trying to force these new ideas upon the mass of mankind?" (Edward Aveling, The Religious Views of Charles Darwin (Freethought Publishing Company, 1883), p. 5)

I haven't been able to read the full book being quoted. However, I believe that the aggressiveness of many "militant" atheists (perhaps including Aveling) is ridiculously overstated. In fact, almost any questioning of religious beliefs seems to cause offence - a far cry from the aggression of, for example, the crusades. But even so, I believe such verbal (and peaceful) aggression is absolutely required to stop people and their children dying from their religiousness and scientific ignorance.

"There are not, and cannot be, any Divine interpositions in nature, for God cannot

interfere with Himself. His creative activity is present everywhere. There is no

division of labour between God and nature, or God and law…For the Christian

theologian the facts of nature are the acts of God.".

This quotation from Aubrey Moore is essentially a form of Deism invoked when the quoter would like to appear more reasonable and less religious. However, this refutes the concept of prayer and worship; the natural laws as we know them do not cover god's interference and actually all available evidence shows that no matter how hard you pray, god cannot break natural laws. To say that god is natural laws seems to move the goalposts to make the statement, and religion, essentially meaningless.

Various comments are made in the article about scientists being religious. Of course, being committed to a religion was socially necessary in the 19th- and early-20th-centuries. It is still socially necessary now, to some extent - looking at American politics for example.

"In January 1961, a bill to repeal Tennessee’s so-called “monkey laws”, still in force 30 years after the Scopes trial, was passionately opposed by people who argued

that evolution “drives God out of the universe” and “leads to communism”. 6"

On a side note, I've recently been reading the original Iron Man comics, and found some entertaining references to communism. It's amazing how an uncontroversial political ideal can become a symbol of fear and hatred to so many, when its underlying principles are quite reasonable. People don't seem so scared of those principles when the media and government help out by making the language more palatable.

"Respondents were told that “Darwinian evolution is the idea that life today, including human life, developed over millions of years from earlier species, by a process of natural selection,” and were asked what they thought of this. About a tenth (9%) of respondents said, ”it is a theory which has been disproved by the evidence”, with a further tenth (10%) saying “it is a theory with very little evidence to support it.”"

People do have very funny ideas about evidence, don't they?!

Anyway, enough for now... I'm bored of typing.