If you are an atheist...

[youngskywalker]

If you are an atheist goes that automatically make you an evolutionists by default? Are there any alternatives floating around out there?

[tb24]

Well, for me, I consider my beliefs evidence based. Be it on medicine (e.g. homeopathy is nonsense), creationism or any other absurd claims. I'm open to anything but will base my judgement on evidence rather than anecdote or who's saying it.

 

As it stands, evolution is the best explanation for the facts at hand. The thing about science, is that you're allowed to change your mind based on new information. Should something come along to disprove evolution, any decent scientist would simply alter their view. However, this is unlikely to happen due to the sheer amount of evidence there is.

 

I believe most atheists think this way. We look for the most plausible answer. Religions invent a hypothesis and look for facts to back it up, science looks at the facts and formulates a theory to best describe them.

[Rooster_DAR]

Well, for me, I consider my beliefs evidence based. Be it on medicine (e.g. homeopathy is nonsense), creationism or any other absurd claims. I'm open to anything but will base my judgement on evidence rather than anecdote or who's saying it.

 

As it stands, evolution is the best explanation for the facts at hand. The thing about science, is that you're allowed to change your mind based on new information. Should something come along to disprove evolution, any decent scientist would simply alter their view. However, this is unlikely to happen due to the sheer amount of evidence there is.

 

I believe most atheists think this way. We look for the most plausible answer. Religions invent a hypothesis and look for facts to back it up, science looks at the facts and formulates a theory to best describe them.

 

Well stated!

[Ross MwcFan]

Evolution sounds like the best plausible answer that I've heard so far.

 

I've only actually heard one other answer, which is some sky fairy with a white beard did a magic spell, and 'poof', humans and animals appeared.

 

Just... doesn't... quite sound that believable to me. I dunno, maybe I'm just being silly and it's the most obvious answer.

Edited August 1, 2011 by Ross MwcFan

[Feelin Frisky]

If you are an atheist goes that automatically make you an evolutionists by default? Are there any alternatives floating around out there?

 

Yes. But you probably will not have heard of this one. To me it seems reasonable and likely. Evolutionists are at odds with "intelligent designers". Well what if there is a kind of intelligent design at play which is NOT super-natural? It's is a whole aspect of nature that people who believe strictly in "natural selection" have not looked at or have been hardened too because the intelligent designers are usually so quick to assume super-nature and then take that to mean their whole catalog of wacky Judeo-Christian faith/lore is the god's honest truth verbatim. There's a new theory called "facilitated variation". Google it. It may take some reflecting and thinking to get into it if you haven't come to it by reason like I have. But it's worth the thought.

 

I personally had no faith whatsoever--I cleansed myself long ago. But I simply can't believe that natural selection is everything. Adaptations are far too cunning. If you look at nature closely, they types of things that animals, birds etc develop appear "engineered" and highly considered. The owl for instance has special wing tips to change air-flow so that they are effectively silent to the rodents they prey on. But does an owl possess the intelligence to understand the need for such an adaptation and somehow will it into his progenies genetics? No. Within species is a theory of "facilitated variation" where natural evolutionary process take place unconscious to the waking perceptions of the individual life unit in a species.

 

Natural selection often ignorantly assumes that animals just exist and nature knocks off the ones that are week. Well, animals don't just exist. All of them got to be what they are through successive adaptations that are somehow unconscious parts of their being. I have a suspicion or theory about how that might work. It involves "sleep".

 

Every animal sleeps. Why? The answer is not that it rests or repairs. It's that it grows during sleep. And the part of sleep when it grows is a deep part of sleep in which growth hormone, like HGH in humans, becomes deployed. But the growth is not just in size or height or muscle but in microscopic enhancements to the brain which make the animal more capable to understand and deal with it's reality. Who is to say that this is not the very engine of evolution and that sleep is actually the main purpose of life. Everything else is either to get food or procreate but when we are safe we go into a dream state where we live who dramas we never remember because there is an aperture between hemispheres where right brain and left brain dominances are switched when changing from the waking state and sleep state. Dolphins actually sleep one hemisphere at a time. While they swim around and support themselves. Why? Because sleep is critical to mind growth in complexity and it could be that in that growth process is the capacity for facilitated variation put into their genes for development by their offspring.

 

I don't think that the advancers of facilitated variation are quite going so far as I am and are looking at it much more evidential on a biological level. But if you can name a species of animal or plant, I can point out to you an adaptation that has been made on a species level that is way too clever to be written off to natural selection. There is no white guy god designing stuff. That is for certain. But we have to be careful not to take our reaction to "intelligent design" too far so that we close our mind to aspects of nature that demand some abandon to appreciate.

[shadowofman]

Evolution is a fact. It is the mechanism and degree of evolution which is in dispute. I actually have not met a single person which denies that organisms change over time as anything might change over time. Only those that disagree over the degree of change and the geologic timeframes often discussed in natural history.

 

I'm researching facilitated variation now. Seems to be something like epigenetics maybe? I will report back on my thoughts.

[D-Lish]

If you are an atheist goes that automatically make you an evolutionists by default? Are there any alternatives floating around out there?

 

If you're an Atheist I doubt you'd even question evolution... What other theory is out there besides divine intervention....

[HeartOfAPhoenix]

If you're an Atheist I doubt you'd even question evolution... What other theory is out there besides divine intervention....

 

 

The acceptance that we will never know for certain so you don't necessarily believe in either theory.

[D-Lish]

The acceptance that we will never know for certain so you don't necessarily believe in either theory.

 

That's not my acceptance, and it never has been.

 

I think religious minded people can't accept that life is RANDOM... For me there is nothing wrong with that.

 

That's the difference between an Atheist and a Thumper- accepting that life can be random and things don't need to have meaning...

 

If there is something out there unexplained, I am perfectly happy leaving it that way until it can be explained. If it doesn't happen in my lifetime- oh well.

 

I'm okay with the unexplained- so many people are not.

[HeartOfAPhoenix]

That's not my acceptance, and it never has been.

 

I think religious minded people can't accept that life is RANDOM... For me there is nothing wrong with that.

 

That's the difference between an Atheist and a Thumper- accepting that life can be random and things don't need to have meaning...

 

If there is something out there unexplained, I am perfectly happy leaving it that way until it can be explained. If it doesn't happen in my lifetime- oh well.

 

I'm okay with the unexplained- so many people are not.

 

I agree 100%, I label myself as an atheist because I don't know the name of my beliefs to be honest. So far nobody has any evidence that one theory or the other is the truth. Sure they have evidence that things evolve, and also have evidence that Jesus Christ walked the earth... but they do not have evidence that either one proves either theory. So I leave my beliefs neutral and avoid being caught in the cyclone of wondering.

[shadowofman]

Actually, there is no evidence that the "Christ" has ever existed. Sure thousands of men named Jesus walked and continue to walk the earth. And many of them had mother's named Mary. Hardly considered evidence. The gospels were written nearly a hundred years after his supposed time. And the Gnostic Christians wrote of a spiritual being, the "Christ". Not a flesh and blood man. So the earliest Christians likely disagreed with the gospels included in the Bible by Council of Nicaea.

[HeartOfAPhoenix]

Actually, there is no evidence that the "Christ" has ever existed.

 

Israel discovered several artifacts proving that the Jesus Christ described in the bible did in fact exist and walked the earth; however, the evidence does not prove he did what the bible describes (like healing the blind).

[shadowofman]

If possible, please link a source for this supposed archaeological evidence. I am incredibly skeptical.

[HeartOfAPhoenix]

I'm sceptical as well, I'm not really a believer in the whole ordeal I got that info from my EXTREMELY religious grandparents. I'll ask them where they found that info when I see them again. Most likely a book but if so I'll post a link to the book.

[shadowofman]

Professor Kirschner describes facilitated variation as an additional concept working along side natural selection, and not at all in opposition. Natural selection is by far a well understood mechanism and the foundation of evolution. Epigenetics and facilitated variation are subtle phenomena working under this reality broadly described by Darwin.

[shadowofman]

So far the only supposed evidence offered was by filmmaker James Cameron. That's right! Avatar creator James Cameron claims to have found the ossuaries of the whole Jesus clan including Mary Magdalene. The majority of credible archaeologists disagree with the assertion.

[Feelin Frisky]

Professor Kirschner describes facilitated variation as an additional concept working along side natural selection, and not at all in opposition. Natural selection is by far a well understood mechanism and the foundation of evolution. Epigenetics and facilitated variation are subtle phenomena working under this reality broadly described by Darwin.

 

Yes.

 

I didn't intend to imply otherwise. I did however speculate very much on my own about what that "might" mean. I don't mean to sound defensive but what I will say will undoubtedly read like it is. Scientists can only go on empirical evidence and the matter of my speculation is largely untestable because it involves the workings of the sleep state minds of living beings. Most evidence of evolution comes from dead stuff or is mostly viewed in living things as observable physical adaptations--not how growth hormone triggered during delta wave sleep may be a facilitator of variation. I believe I stipulated that the theory of facilitated variation is rather embryonic and likely to be centered only on the provable. I don't need proof myself to reason the implication. I discovered facilitated variation as a theory through exploring my own reason for intricacies I just can't buy from natural selection. Intelligent design by a god is not on the table for me however.

[shadowofman]

You ideas are interesting. Have you been listening to Radiolab? I actually have had the same thoughts since I listened to the episode on sleep. The ability and the luxury of sleep is likely the environmental conditions needed to evolve such complex cerebral cortexes as we find in humans.

 

These are all advanced genetic concepts which scientists are feverishly testing. It would be very interesting to test the effects of sleep on the genome. I would not at all be surprised if there is at least some influence. But sleep is not required for epigenetic change. Even plants undergo such change.