Not really derail. Belief in the myth of global (or local humanity-destroying) flood and other Genesis-literalist myths are perpetuated primarily by YEC propaganda sites and organizations like this. If they didn't exist, Genesis would have long ago been necessarily classified as "allegory" by the large majority of Christians (not just 45% or whatever it is now in the USA), and whatever religious right anti-science agenda existed would be thoroughly marginalized. These sites (and book/lecture etc. extensions) are a lot more influential in America than you would ever guess.

Oh btw, Bill Nye will be debating evolution vs. creationism with Kent Ham on Feb. 4 at 7 p.m. EST. Not sure I like it given Nye's field isn't biology or anthropology, but it should be fun nonetheless.

Agreed, I said this earlier:

I think it's ironic that Kent Ham looks like the missing link. I look forward to watching this.

I've googled the issue and could post links that question interbreeding - not from Christian sites, just a general uncertainty that it has yet been established. I'm not going to post any because I don't really care - even if there was interbreeding I don't see it as any kind of issue for Christians.


I don't know. There's no Biblical data on hominids, human evolution, Neanderthals, etc. Since there isn't, I don't see any relevance or importance to the issue. There's exactly zero comment in the Bible about how God created anything so any process would fit the Bible. What is important is that God created the universe, earth, man, etc - how he did doesn't matter.

Perhaps Bill Nye is thinking that exposing as many youngsters to the science would be a good outcome overall (and he might be right), but the biggest problem with his accepting this debate is it makes it look as if there is a debate to be had (and is the reason why Richard Dawkins does not accept debates like this, with the dryly delivered line "It will look good on your resume, but not so good on mine"). Let's also not forget that Ken Ham and his ilk are very polished at delivering their version of reality, and will have home field advantage.

Yes, it's a bit like discussing with someone who argues that oranges are made from steel.

Obviously if this become a large section of the people it would (like creationism) because a rather huge problem (you really don't want your house to be re-inforced with orange peel) and not just a smeared bug on the intellectual windscreen. But to actually go into debate with these people would probably not be the right tactic. I mean, there is nothing to debate.

Some might argue that my example is absurd. And yes it is. So is creationism.

I recently heard author/skeptic Brian Dunning make this same point about the dangers of debating, and the "wrong" message it sends, perhaps borrowed from Dawkins line of thinking, but is this really right?

I mean, when it comes down to the minutia and intricacies of some of these things that I will probably never grasp, isn't there still some unanswered questions and hypothesis still floating around? It always felt to me when watching these that the real problem is the same as in almost every other debate, that no one wants to be wrong and simply want to "win", where no new information is being added to either side. I don't mean the greater points or facts, but the more subtle points. Two sides come in, talk about some things, and leave exactly the same way they came in.

Creationism isn't an academic disagreement with evolution. It is the spearhead of a a religiously funded campaign against modern biology. Evolution basically tells us that natural science can't be used to argue that humans are the pinnacle of creation, and this is something that puts a big dent in many (if not most) revealed religions.

The message being spread these days isn't chiefly that evolution is wrong. It is that no decent and upstanding <insert name of religious adherence here> should accept it. Remove the religious pressure groups and there isn't much "intelligent design" left in the world.

To pretend there is a debate between creationism and evolution is to mask what is really going on.

Yeah I wasn't criticising you, I didn't think you were a YEC anyway. Was just commenting on the site.

Wat.

Lol re Dawkins' comment. IME there are many many Christians who believe in the bible literally. The average Christian just isn't very scientifically minded. Once you believe in an all powerful God the rest all falls into place with faith in that God.

The group of liberal Christians that critically dissect their faith is a huge minority (just based on my experience and those I have spoken with). Most of the big denominations in evangelical Christianity are going to hold to very conservative literal views and preach the same from the pulpit.

FWIW, although Evangelicals are lagging behind the overall number of self identified Christians that accept evolution/old earth is pretty substantial, probably over 40% in the USA (over 50% for Catholics).

Obviously creationism isn't scientific, but I was under the impression that evolution has not been proved, in the macro sense, that we evolved from lower primates.

What would you consider proof? There's an overwhelming amount of evidence for it.

Common descent has been proven beyond any reasonable doubt and has virtually complete scientific consensus behind it (so **** sapiens and other primates have a common ancestor).

There is somewhat less than complete consensus behind natural selection as the sole mechanism behind evolution. So you could say there is still room for Christians to believe in "God" (of the gaps) hiding somewhere in the mechanism without completely being at odds with evolutionary science.

So, Neanderthals definitely didn't have souls, but their half human, half neanderthal children might have? What if a child was 1/4 Human, or 3/4 human, would it have a soul in both cases or just one of them?

You can see why I might be confused. It seems to me that either Neanderthals had souls, rendering the whole issue moot, or there's some percentage of human DNA that a creature must posses in order to have a soul. I'm curious what that percentage is. If we spliced the DNA of some other non-human animal such as a pig, or a Chimpanzee, with ours, and created a human/pig or human/chimp hybrid, might it have a soul?

Some nitpicking:

Scientists generally avoid saying "proven". But yeah, extremely strong scientific consensus, multiple lines of evidence etc.

It's not the sole mechanism, not even Darwin claimed that:

"I am convinced that natural selection has been the main but not the exclusive means of modification" - (from Origin of the Species).

Genetic drift and epigenetics play a role and, more trivially, sexual selection and artificial selection.

It's always logically possible that god plays some part in a mechanism (even if only as its author), so this is kinda true but doesn't follow from the previous claim.

This doesn't seem that problematic for Christianity.

All they need to say is something like "I don't know, but if it did have a soul then it could be saved and if it didn't then it doesn't matter".

It might also seem at first troubling as to where souls were introduced in the evolutionary chain but again they can just say "god infused souls at point X" where X is an unknown point of sufficient advancement.

Yes, the answers will be a bit hand wavy but they won't offer any contradiction or inconsistency.

Ok, but if I want understand the mechanism, or the rules, by which souls are awarded or acquired, for lack of better terms, by specific of God's creatures, how would I go about that? Surely it can be quantified or described.

A human simply has a soul. A non-human doesn't. So where does that leave a hybrid of the two? This situation wouldn't normally occur, humans can't breed with animals, but for (what I think is) the first time in history we have become aware that it might have. We actually have an example of that in the Human/Neanderthal interbreeding for which there's strong evidence, so this isn't necessarily just a thought exercise. I think it raises new questions.

Maybe you can't go about it. This doesn't pose much of a problem though.

Again, so what if Christians don't know if a hybrid of the two has a soul? It might be irritating to have an unanswered question like that but doesn't create a problem for Christian doctrine. It's not like you can say Christianity is false because we don't know if half-breeds have souls.

No, I suppose not.

TD indicated that also, but some of the minority of scientists that communicate with the general public say it regularly as a means to convey how strong consensus is, which is all I was doing. I think it would be confusing for a lot of the general public to hear a scientist refer to the earth revolving around the sun as a "best explanatory model" or whatever.

I meant the larger the gap in complete scientific understanding (God-free modeling ) of a subject the more Christians are able to feel as a matter of practicality intellectually justified in the belief God played a roll, and there seems to be a much larger gap in fully understanding evolutionary mechanisms than there does common descent. The better scientists are able to more convincingly model what drives speciation (and hopefully ultimately abiogenesis) the more maintaining belief becomes less intellectually practical and eventually more socially marginalized.

To be fully human the book of Scientificus Novanus, Chapter XII, Verse LLVI, states:

Human DNA >= 99.90317688971 %

Neanderthal = .000000000100000001%

Denisovan = .0000000000000000000000000000000110000000000001%

Common Ancestor = .0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 00001%

Any creature not meeting above standards is soulless.