Evolution/natural selection. Yes or no?

[Lord Geordie]

I think were all decendants of alien life forms who visited this plantet many eons ago. Maybe Darth Vader is My daddy too

Edited March 15, 2013 by Lord Geordie

[paul65]

I carnt really be bothered to explain it.

Fankyou

[Diceman]

Confirmation bias (also called confirmatory bias or myside bias) is a tendency of people to favor information that confirms their beliefs or hypotheses.^{[Note 1][1]} People display this bias when they gather or remember information selectively, or when they interpret it in a biased way. The effect is stronger for emotionally charged issues and for deeply entrenched beliefs. For example, in reading about current political issues, people usually prefer sources that affirm their existing attitudes. They also tend to interpret ambiguous evidence as supporting their existing position. Biased search, interpretation and memory have been invoked to explain attitude polarization (when a disagreement becomes more extreme even though the different parties are exposed to the same evidence), belief perseverance (when beliefs persist after the evidence for them is shown to be false), the irrational primacy effect (a greater reliance on information encountered early in a series) and illusory correlation (when people falsely perceive an association between two events or situations).

A series of experiments in the 1960s suggested that people are biased toward confirming their existing beliefs. Later work re-interpreted these results as a tendency to test ideas in a one-sided way, focusing on one possibility and ignoring alternatives. In certain situations, this tendency can bias people's conclusions. Explanations for the observed biases include wishful thinking and the limited human capacity to process information. Another explanation is that people show confirmation bias because they are weighing up the costs of being wrong, rather than investigating in a neutral, scientific way.

Confirmation biases contribute to overconfidence in personal beliefs and can maintain or strengthen beliefs in the face of contrary evidence. Poor decisions due to these biases have been found in military, political, and organizational contexts.

[henry d]

Well not really as most of the Christians in the world are catholics..

Roman? Greek? Hungarian? One, Holy, Catholic and therefore apostolic? Very much a generalisation.

[paul65]

The only evidence of mass extinction of species is the dinosaurs... there is nothing anywhere to suggest a 'near extinction level event' occurred anywhere else in the archaeological or geological past.. Noah and his ark belong firmly in the same place as god creating everything in 6 days and then having a kip on Sunday! http://www.truthbeknown.com/noah.htm Apparently Noah was 600 years old when all this happened....... and people believe this hogwash!?

 

Mass extinction? I must have missed that post. As for archaeological evidence, there are huge gaps in that as demonstrated by the structures at Göbekli Tepe dated at around 11000 BC that predate any civilisation, agriculture, etc.

 

Ancient flood myths exist throughout the world always with similar characters. This suggests that they are part of a shared oral history from a time when humans were not widespread and the story stayed with them when they migrated. If really ancient humans clustered around coastal areas and the sea level rapidly rose, they could be wiped out and there would be little evidence of them except what was passed down orally. Of course, then modern people could choose to smugly ridicule the tales because we know better.

[paul65]

Confirmation bias (also called confirmatory bias or myside bias) is a tendency of people to favor information that confirms their beliefs or hypotheses.^{[Note 1][1]} People display this bias when they gather or remember information selectively, or when they interpret it in a biased way. The effect is stronger for emotionally charged issues and for deeply entrenched beliefs. For example, in reading about current political issues, people usually prefer sources that affirm their existing attitudes. They also tend to interpret ambiguous evidence as supporting their existing position. Biased search, interpretation and memory have been invoked to explain attitude polarization (when a disagreement becomes more extreme even though the different parties are exposed to the same evidence), belief perseverance (when beliefs persist after the evidence for them is shown to be false), the irrational primacy effect (a greater reliance on information encountered early in a series) and illusory correlation (when people falsely perceive an association between two events or situations).

A series of experiments in the 1960s suggested that people are biased toward confirming their existing beliefs. Later work re-interpreted these results as a tendency to test ideas in a one-sided way, focusing on one possibility and ignoring alternatives. In certain situations, this tendency can bias people's conclusions. Explanations for the observed biases include wishful thinking and the limited human capacity to process information. Another explanation is that people show confirmation bias because they are weighing up the costs of being wrong, rather than investigating in a neutral, scientific way.

Confirmation biases contribute to overconfidence in personal beliefs and can maintain or strengthen beliefs in the face of contrary evidence. Poor decisions due to these biases have been found in military, political, and organizational contexts.

Also seen in religious and scientific circles. In fact anywhere a persons lifetime's beliefs and possibly life's work are threatened.

[henry d]

Confirmation bias ...

So how come after 49 years of atheism I became a Christian?

[FalconFN]

 

Roman? Greek? Hungarian? One, Holy, Catholic and therefore apostolic? Very much a generalisation.

Does it matter which? The Roman Catholic church is by far the biggest and either way they all hold the same values of discrimination and intolerance, or am I wrong and there is a tiny minority that shout down the masses? Please don't distort the core of my point with pedantic nit-picking.

[Diceman]

It is rare for me to agree with Henry on topics like this, but he has a point about many of the historical events in the Bible being backed up by archeology and other independent evidence.

The question marks are around the accuracy of the biblical accounts and the interpretation of their causes.

 

So, lots of cultures have a 'flood myth' It is entirely likely that an enormous flooding event (maybe a tsunami as we saw on Boxing day a few years ago?) actually happened, and impacted populations thousands of miles apart. How to explain it when you have no understanding of tectonic plates and underwater earthquakes? It is easy to see how a supernatural explanation could become the accepted story, passed on down the ages, embellished and altered with each telling and each translation.

 

If the Daily Mail can get the details of a story so wrong and popularise that false message within hours of the event, it is hardly surprising that a true story reported in a book thousands of years old with hundreds of authors and thousands of editors (all suffering from confirmation bias) could well be somewhat distorted...

[Mk1 Man]

So how come after 49 years of atheism I became a Christian?

 

 

Did you bump your head

[henry d]

Does it matter which? The Roman Catholic church is by far the biggest and either way they all hold the same values of discrimination and intolerance, or am I wrong and there is a tiny minority that shout down the masses? Please don't distort the core of my point with pedantic nit-picking.

Of course it is nit picking, you say "the modern church" then change it to "most of the christians are catholic" so how am I to keep up either give a specific or just identify a specific one in your original post please?

[Diceman]

So how come after 49 years of atheism I became a Christian?

 

Only you can answer that, Henry. Were you really an atheist or more of an agnostic though? (genuine Q)

[henry d]

It is rare for me to agree with Henry on topics like this, but he has a point Thanks I appreciate your honesty

 

...It is easy to see how a supernatural explanation could become the accepted story, passed on down the ages, embellished and altered with each telling and each translation.

The problem is that ancient cultures, world wide, have a culture of handing down information by oral tradition and it is extremely accurate as I mentioned before the aboriginal Australians handed down many stories relating to 10K years ago about lower sea levels across the continent and even areas of the barrier reef exposed as dry land. The early Jewish traditions were for young boys to be able to recite word for word the Torah along with the hugely pedantic methods, when they moved to papyrus etc. of using several scribes to copy out the scriptures where one would write from start to finish, another from the end to the start another from the middle to the front and another from middle to end, the scriptures where counted letter for letter, iota for iota, and any scripture that did not conform was burned. Beats any proof reader of today by a light year.

[henry d]

Only you can answer that, Henry. Were you really an atheist or more of an agnostic though? (genuine Q)

 

Although I prayed during the attacks in the Falklands it was totally empty and only a "just in case" to save my sorry *** and I had no qualms about Lt Gavazzi or the poor Argentinians we shelled constantly at night. I had no empathy with the dead bodies, I only had me in mind, agnostic...minimally, aethiest probably, pagan muppet interested in himself only... definitely.

[FalconFN]

Of course it is nit picking, you say "the modern church" then change it to "most of the christians are catholic" so how am I to keep up either give a specific or just identify a specific one in your original post please?

Ok, by the modern church I was refering to all Christians, of whatever denomination, that worship today, as opposed to early Christians that lived in less knowledgeable times. Most Christians ARE Catholics and I am confident in asserting that the majority of Christians worldwide (and I include all donominations in this) preach love are inclusion but practice discrimination. It is akin to Orwell's doublespeak where the Bible says one thing but the Church does the opposite - a simple example is with the second commandment (about not making graven images of God, or anything else, and bowing down to them) and then splashing pictures and carvings of God and the gory death scenes of Jesus all over churches - or worse bowing down to Popes and bishops! Doublespeak and doublethink.

[FalconFN]

Although I prayed during the attacks in the Falklands it was totally empty and only a "just in case" to save my sorry *** and I had no qualms about Lt Gavazzi or the poor Argentinians we shelled constantly at night. I had no empathy with the dead bodies, I only had me in mind, agnostic...minimally, aethiest probably, pagan muppet interested in himself only... definitely.

The fact that you have found solace or 'truth' in Christianity is great for you, but in my humble opinion religion should be kept well away from faith.

[henry d]

.......a simple example is with the second commandment (about not making graven images of God, or anything else, and bowing down to them) ....

Nope, how many times do I have to refer people to the second commandment....

 

Matthew 22:35-41

One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question: ³⁶ ‘Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?’

³⁷ Jesus replied: ‘“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” ³⁸ This is the first and greatest commandment. ³⁹ And the second is like it: “Love your neighbour as yourself.” ⁴⁰ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.’

[henry d]

The fact that you have found solace or 'truth' in Christianity is great for you, but in my humble opinion religion should be kept well away from faith.

Religion in what respect, ecclesiology, eschatology, worship? What exactly do you mean by faith and what by religion, lots of people, my self included in the past, have an idea of what each means and generally this is not what it means to others.

[Diceman]

muppet interested in himself only... definitely.

 

I doubt that Henry.

[FalconFN]

Nope, how many times do I have to refer people to the second commandment....

 

Matthew 22:35-41

One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question: ³⁶ ‘Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?’

³⁷ Jesus replied: ‘“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” ³⁸ This is the first and greatest commandment. ³⁹ And the second is like it: “Love your neighbour as yourself.” ⁴⁰ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.’

With all due respect, you have used the old testament as a historical text and intimated that you agree, or at least are comfortable, with the version of events set out in Genesis but you are conversely happy to ignore one of the ten commandments, which again to me suggests doublethink.

[FalconFN]

Religion in what respect, ecclesiology, eschatology, worship? What exactly do you mean by faith and what by religion, lots of people, my self included in the past, have an idea of what each means and generally this is not what it means to others.

Many wouldn't agree but to me the two are different and I see them as:

 

Faith = A complete trust and confidence in something

 

Religion = A human construct and system to control faith.

 

Faith is something you have inside and religion is the outside influence to that faith.

[henry d]

With all due respect, you have used the old testament as a historical text and intimated that you agree, or at least are comfortable, with the version of events set out in Genesis but you are conversely happy to ignore one of the ten commandments, which again to me suggests doublethink.

Apologies for another off thread tangent, but here goes....

Nope, Jesus as God incarnate condensed the ten into two, which if you read it in context makes sense. God created man in his image and if you love your neighbour as yourself then you honour God, if you love God fully you will honour him by loving your neighbour...

 

Faith = A complete trust and confidence in something

 

Religion = A human construct and system to control faith.

 

So religion = A human construct and system to control complete trust and confidence in something.

 

Sorry its doesn`t work, I can almost agree with faith, but to me religion is an outworking, or need to rejoice over the spiritual or transcendental side of faith.

 

I doubt that Henry.

 

No really, it changed though.

[Mk1 Man]

Religion isn't the problem...it's the people with a blinkered belief that everyone else should be religious as well and try to ram it down your throat that are the problem.

 

If you want to be religious...Fine..but keep it to yourself.

 

Just because something happened or has been discovered and there's a coincidental sounding bit of literature in the bible doesn't mean that the bible is right.

[Diceman]

Religion isn't the problem...it's the people with a blinkered belief that everyone else should be religious as well and try to ram it down your throat that are the problem.

 

If you want to be religious...Fine..but keep it to yourself.

 

Just because something happened or has been discovered and there's a coincidental sounding bit of literature in the bible doesn't mean that the bible is right.

 

Perhaps I'm feeling especially soft tonight but once again I have to defend Henry.

I have had many arguments with him on this subject over the years and he has never tried to ram his religion down anyone's throat. He never starts the argument but usually responds when the "R" word comes up. I don't see why he should keep his views to himself - what a boring forum it would be if everybody thought the same thing. I disagree with almost all of his religious views but he has never been anything but polite, measured and intelligent in his posts. We will never see eye to eye on this subject but that doesn't mean I won't buy him a beer one day. So I can tell him how wrong he is to his face

[henry d]

Religion isn't the problem...it's the people with a blinkered belief that everyone else should be religious as well and try to ram it down your throat that are the problem.

 

If you want to be religious...Fine..but keep it to yourself. By the same reasoning does that mean if you have political beliefs you should also keep them to yourself?

 

Just because something happened or has been discovered and there's a coincidental sounding bit of literature in the bible doesn't mean that the bible is right. So when the scientists say the big bang happened and the bible agrees, science is right and religion wrong? Wow that is something, the bible says it first then the science proves it, but the bible is wrong! Perhaps the Enuma Elish is right and Marduk did form the heavens and earth from Tiamat`s body that he hacked in two?

 

We will never see eye to eye on this subject but that doesn't mean I won't buy him a beer one day. So I can tell him how wrong he is to his face

 

Looking forward to it