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Hey all,

 

I pretty much bacame an evolutionist ten years ago. Only recently did I decide to publicly retract my belief in christianity. I felt much like Darwin, himself probably felt. Mostly scared about what the response would be. We do live in a highly christian influence country and I did committ the unpardonable sin. But this is not the subject of this post.

 

The subject is the magic of evolution. Have you ever been contemplating an evolutionary idea and it just seemed to add some sort of meaning to your life. Let me give you an example.

 

I've experienced the feelings of jealousy many times when I've been dating girls. I had 100% trust in them, but when they were hanging out with other men the jealousy feeling was sometimes uncontrollable. It never caused me to act out, but rather discomforting feeling. In the past, such feelings were thought to be pathological. That is, they were signs of insecurity and we were supposed to dispell of them as quickly as possible.

 

But from an evolutionary perspective, such feelings are warranted. Recognizing paternity is a must. It is not natural for men to raise other men's children. I believe it was the precursor to taboos on premarital sex and practices like genital mutilation and chastity belts.

 

What I'm getting at is this. Once I recognized such feelings were natural and not pathological it helped me accept myself. I wasn't a sinner who needed to change, but someone who merely needed to understand their motives and only needed acceptance. I would refer to this as spiritual growth. There are many, many other examples, and I was curious if any others felt the same way.

 

I have not given up on God totally. I said earlier that it is not natural for men to raise other men's children. We see that happening everyday with adoptions and second marriages. It's a great thing and that is my concept of God. But I won't be selfish and say that it makes humans any more special than other animals. I do believe that we all evolved from tiny, single-celled organisms. So either all animals have God, or no animals (us included) have God. I won't let the 'survival of the fittest' slogan convince me that we are mere ruthless, selfish, animals. I'm already convinced of that and I think it's okay

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blind_otter

I just read an article on the evolutionary function of jealousy. Our ancestors had much shorter lifespans, and lived in smaller social groups with fewer available mating partners. So of course it was a life or death situation, to pass on your genes, and with much fewer opportunities both in quantity and length of relationship it only makes sense that those who tended to be jealous tended to reproduce and pass on their genes more often than the lackadaisical mate who cared nothing about his partner's fidelity.

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I think understanding our biological/sociological makeup goes a long way in helping us to understand the whys and hows of human behavior and emotions. If you have some knowledge of what's going on, you're better able to recognize and address it.

 

Religion did the same thing (and still does) in times and places where education and technological advancement was not available.

 

For instance, it was once considered a "sin" to eat the meat of certain cloven animals. (may still be in some religions :confused: ). But that was because many people would get sick, and therefore it was thought to be wrong and/or evil.

 

Now, we know all about bacteria and how to properly cook our meat to prevent illness … things they didn't understand way back then.

 

I think your education and your faith can co-exist simultaneously without you having to give up one for the other. As a matter of fact, having BOTH may help lend credibility to the other. ;)

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I think your education and your faith can co-exist simultaneously without you having to give up one for the other. As a matter of fact, having BOTH may help lend credibility to the other.

 

I agree – I don't think the theory of creation can exist without the theory of evolution, because it's two sides of the same coin. Creation – where God is placed in the formula – figures in man's spiritual side, dealing with the soul. Evolution covers the physicality of man.

 

kinda like if you're Christian, you understand that Christ's resurrection isn't possible if there wasn't his crucifixion ... because to embrace only one is to reject it as a whole.

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What I'm getting at is this. Once I recognized such feelings were natural and not pathological it helped me accept myself. I wasn't a sinner who needed to change, but someone who merely needed to understand their motives and only needed acceptance. I would refer to this as spiritual growth.

 

(The following is not "why Flavius says you should be a Christian", it is just a note about what any of this has to do with Jesus Christ.)

 

Konfused, I'm happy you are growing into accepting yourself. But I'm not so sure that what you believed before was Christianity at all, but maybe some cartoonish derivative of it. Why would any follower of Jesus' teaching need evolutionary philosophy to "recognize that such feelings...are natural"? That "such feelings are natural" is precisely what the Bible teaches, and not in a subtle way at all. Such natural human tendencies are in the Nature of Man, and the Nature of Man unfortunately culminates with with death. (I'm not talking hell here, I do mean being dead.) Christ is all about understanding motives and accepting humans in their flawed state (i.e., "...that God was, in Christ NOT HOLDING MEN'S SINS AGAINST THEM" 2 Cor 5:19) AND about showing the better way by which God leads us upward to eternal life. Sorry if you got hold of some bad stuff, but the teaching of Jesus could really not be much more clear, that "God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him." [Jn. 3:17]

 

Those who reject the way of love Christ preached are left to fend for themselves in a world that is all about scarcity, competition, complexity, frustration, and death (that's from Genesis 3:16-19, but I think Darwin's volumes captured that truth in even more vivid relief than Moses did.) Some folks do better than others, but nobody makes it out alive.

 

So I should ask -- what about Jesus Christ's teaching is contrary to what you believe now?

 

I don't make the Evolution/Christianity dichotomy that you do. But even if I did, I must recognize that Darwin never claimed to proscribe the Way of Life. He was just publishing a theory of how a biological world of entropic decay and mass-extinction could produce new and better life forms. The social and intellectual upheaval that ensued really doesn't bear too heavily on what Jesus declared, that "the Kingdom of God is here."

 

Blessing to all. And my prayers for all who have fashioned the way of Christ into a tightope, or a maze, or a noose. May God help them.

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I pretty much bacame an evolutionist ten years ago. Only recently did I decide to publicly retract my belief in christianity.

 

The two are not mutually exclusive, in most incarnations. The study of Christianity can be just as rigorous and rewarding as the study of evolutionary biology, though it's a lot easier to quit. Their directives are not even similar. Darwin says "this is the way things are," and Christ said "this is the way things should be."

 

I dislike the word "evolutionist" to mean someone who believes in evolution. Evolution, unlike creationism, is a doubtless scientific reality, it is not a belief. You are either an evolutionist or you are incorrect.

 

It is not natural for men to raise other men's children.

 

That's a limited view of evolution. For one, I strongly believe evolutionary drive has a negligible effect on most humans. I think social construction has undone evolution, and inexplicable compassion has freed us from evolution's mechanism of species improvement--notably, cruel death before maturity.

 

This has reversed the denotation of natural, to mean what is socially natural. This is why many consider homosexuality unnatural, despite its well-documented pervasiveness in nature. On the other hand, most people would consider refusal to take care of kids not biologically connected to you to be socially unnatural. Most people concerned about their own genetics are seen as self-centered and sufferers of all sorts of social disorders--from egomania to racial prejudice.

 

Nature does not reflect what we consider natural; rather, the term "natural" describes what occurs in nature. If you consider humans to be natural, despite medical science and sexual deviance and whatever else is notably un-natural, then human behavior is natural, which includes the fact that humans will take care of children not belonging to their loins. Interestingly enough, we're not the only animal that does this.

 

Once I recognized such feelings were natural and not pathological it helped me accept myself. I wasn't a sinner who needed to change, but someone who merely needed to understand their motives and only needed acceptance. I would refer to this as spiritual growth.

 

It's good that looking into evolution helped you relax a little about your jealousy. However, jealousy isn't neccesarily indicative of spiritual growth, and it is possible that it would still be in your best interest, socially, to work on it.

 

I think it's weak to associate unfavorable personality traits with evolution. There's an evolutionary explanation for why rapists victimize people, but there is not a social excuse for it.

 

So either all animals have God, or no animals (us included) have God.

 

Of course. But humans are the only animals that humans can relate to. We can't ask our dog if he has a relationship with God, we can only convince ourselves that it doesn't. Is knowing about God a prerequisite of having God? It's possible that instead of being the only animals that have God, humans are actually the only animal that has a problem with God.

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I just read an article on the evolutionary function of jealousy. Our ancestors had much shorter lifespans, and lived in smaller social groups with fewer available mating partners. So of course it was a life or death situation, to pass on your genes, and with much fewer opportunities both in quantity and length of relationship it only makes sense that those who tended to be jealous tended to reproduce and pass on their genes more often than the lackadaisical mate who cared nothing about his partner's fidelity.

 

You pass on your genes if you are fertile, and - of utmost importance - attract the opposite sex. Can't see that jealousy has anything to do with it.

 

You just get clobbered on the head by the dude that's composed.

 

Very little is known about behavioural genetics. (Which suggests the usual flooding of theories and guesswork.) A fascinating subject, though.

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blind_otter
You pass on your genes if you are fertile, and - of utmost importance - attract the opposite sex. Can't see that jealousy has anything to do with it.

 

You just get clobbered on the head by the dude that's composed.

 

Very little is known about behavioural genetics. (Which suggests the usual flooding of theories and guesswork.) A fascinating subject, though.

 

Wow, really? And I took a whole class on evolutionary psychology in college years ago. I guess the professor just made everything up, those dern academia idealogues. What will they think of next?

 

Just google it yourself, if you want more information. "evolutionary function of jealousy" it's pretty easy.

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I don't make the Evolution/Christianity dichotomy that you do. But even if I did, I must recognize that Darwin never claimed to proscribe the Way of Life. He was just publishing a theory of how a biological world of entropic decay and mass-extinction could produce new and better life forms. The social and intellectual upheaval that ensued really doesn't bear too heavily on what Jesus declared, that "the Kingdom of God is here."

 

Darwin most certainly understood the implications of his theory. That is why he waited so many years to publish. Only when his colleague A.R. Wallace formulated the same theory did Darwin finally publish. He did make references to god. He thought that the creator breathed life into the first single-celled organisms. But he also said he could not believe in the Christian god because of the ramifications of the "survival of the fittest". It's a very often quoted passage about a parasite designed to eat a wasp. He was very clear.

 

The two are not mutually exclusive, in most incarnations.

 

Death and replication are the most fundamental concepts of evolution. There is evidence of virgin birth (parthenogenesis) in some lower animals so this may not invalidate the theory of evolution. However, there is no evidence of an organism dying and then coming back to life. Such evidence would invalidate the entire theory.

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Wow, really? And I took a whole class on evolutionary psychology in college years ago. I guess the professor just made everything up, those dern academia idealogues. What will they think of next?

 

Just google it yourself, if you want more information. "evolutionary function of jealousy" it's pretty easy.

 

I think you drastically overestimate the credibility of this research. After all, who needs evidence when it just makes such great "intuitive sense."

 

It is definitely a good thing to have theories, though.

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I think you drastically overestimate the credibility of this research. After all, who needs evidence when it just makes such great "intuitive sense."

 

It is definitely a good thing to have theories, though.

 

You are correct in stating that evolutionary psychology is intuitive. And we'll never be able to gather evidence to verify such a theory. But at present, what is a better hypothesis?

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Darwin most certainly understood the implications of his theory. That is why he waited so many years to publish. Only when his colleague A.R. Wallace formulated the same theory did Darwin finally publish. He did make references to god. He thought that the creator breathed life into the first single-celled organisms. But he also said he could not believe in the Christian god because of the ramifications of the "survival of the fittest". It's a very often quoted passage about a parasite designed to eat a wasp. He was very clear.

 

 

Got to take issue with this. You're correct about the publishing of OoS coinciding with Wallace's research, but Darwin made it clear himself for years afterwards that he believed in God. What made him lose faith in an all-loving god was the death of his young daughter. He could not work out God's love, and suffering. Like lots and lots of people.

And he wrote: [FONT=Times New Roman][sIZE=3]"I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent God would have created the Ichneumonidae (wasp whose larva eat living caterpillars) or that a cat should play with mice."

 

You can believe in God and accept the theory of evolution. Darwin did for most of his life. My husband does, also. But what a lot of people can't believe is that a loving, all-powerful God would allow so much suffering in the world.

[/sIZE][/FONT]

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Death and replication are the most fundamental concepts of evolution.

Death and replication are not the most "fundamental concepts" of evolution.

 

Heritable variation and natural selection are the most fundamental concepts of evolution.

 

There is evidence of virgin birth (parthenogenesis) in some lower animals so this may not invalidate the theory of evolution. However, there is no evidence of an organism dying and then coming back to life. Such evidence would invalidate the entire theory.

 

You are way sidetracked. Christians consider both the virgin birth and the ressurection of Christ as supernatural miracles. By definition, something supernatural does not invalidate a natural theory.

 

I stand by what I said. Christianity and evolution are not mutually exclusive. Most who think they are certainly don't understand evolution, and arguably miss a few nuggets of Christianity as well.

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