The Creation Debate: What have you read?

[Banquo's Ghost]

I read a Dutch translation, so I guess I should have voted differently

Damn, I knew I was gonna get killed on that one!

[Redleg]

Read them both - creationism is for religous teachings, if one takes them for the metaphorical information that it contains one will learn much more then attempting a literal. Literal interpations of the bible leads one to miss the point of the metaphorical lesson that is contained in scripture.

Now I found The Origin of Species to be a very good read toward he theory of evolution based upon natural selection. A theory that Darwin proved based upon the observations of artifical selection.

None of your poll selections defines how I view both. Darwin never publicily stated his religous views while pursueing the course of his study of natural selection and evolution. So claims that he was a devote christian or not are not valid.

Contrary to what some modern creationists claim, Darwin had no deathbed conversion to Christianity, he issued no last-minute retraction of his theory. But although his theory of natural selection posed perhaps the greatest challenge to a literal belief in scripture, he was buried in Westminster Abbey, in recognition of his remarkable achievements. Darwin refused to discuss his own beliefs about a supreme being in public, once writing to his friend Asa Gray, "I feel most deeply that the whole subject is too profound for human intellect. A dog might as well speculate on the mind of Newton." Yet he closed The Origin of Species on a more inspirational note:


There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.

http://www.strangescience.net/darwin.htm

[doc_bean]

None of your poll selections defines how I view both.

Err..there's another fairly big thread about that...

[solypsist]

Science is responsible for me not being dead by age 25, not being disfigured or made insane by disease, and saved me from a life of agrarian slavery. Can't say Religion has done much help for me, other than some subjective (and somewhat selective) moral codes for society aka crowd control.

Gotta put my chips behind Science for teh win on this whole "debate"

[Reenk Roink]

Science is responsible for me not being dead by age 25, not being disfigured or made insane by disease, and saved me from a life of agrarian slavery. Can't say Religion has done much help for me, other than some subjective (and somewhat selective) moral codes for society aka crowd control.

Gotta put my chips behind Science for teh win on this whole "debate"

Religion saved my sister from an existential crisis awhile back, gave her meaning and purpose in life, and made her very happy...

But I still don't see a science vs. religion "debate".

[AntiochusIII]

But I still don't see a science vs. religion "debate".

Maybe because it is logically impossible, and only idiots actually believe that they are, somehow, by God and your local mathematician, diametrically opposed?

Gah! is my decision. Having read neither in full; most of the Bible, though, in several translations of the good ol' King James', which is, of course, quite more than a millenia after the supposed death of the poor Jew. Of evolution apart from the Biology course I've read quite a few secondary sources on Darwin himself.

Of course, the theory of evolution makes sense, is plausible, and well supported, whereas gah! is more intellectual than this latest wave of Evangelical fervour that comes once in a while in American history and gives the common man, the Middle Class man, and the activist Woman something to sing and dance about.

[Crazed Rabbit]

Not all of either, but much of both.

As it is, my position is like the Vatican's: darwinian evolution (dawkins aside) does not mean that God did not create the universe or spark life. Nor does it mean we evolved by chance.

Crazed Rabbit

[Reenk Roink]

Maybe because it is logically impossible, and only idiots actually believe that they are, somehow, by God and your local mathematician, diametrically opposed?

Gah! is my decision.