Iron Chariots Wiki - User contributions [en]

User:Geezerbill

2011-06-21T22:16:54Z

Geezerbill: Created intro

My name is Bill and I'm an atheist. Since you're reading ironchariots.org, then I'm sure you already know what that term means: it simply means that I don't believe in any deities. Why am I an atheist? Well after sincerely trying a number of different religions in my life (not just Christianity), I eventually came to the conclusion that the concept of deity is simply unnecessary and in fact counter-productive to understanding anything about life and the world around me.

I don't live in Chicago, but I enjoy watching episodes of The Atheist Experience on the web. I think I first heard of ironchariots.org through somebody on Yahoo Answers. Their "Religion & spirituality section mainly consists of the same 10 questions posted every hour. But we've turned it into a fun drinking game: type ''*drink*'' every time you see a question that's already been posted thousands of times!

I've been in more than my fair share of debates with theists, both on-line and off-line. I've published atheism-related articles here and there since the 1990s. At this point, I can recite rebuttals in my sleep. I don't kid myself into thinking that monotheism is going to disappear any time soon, but I do believe in exposing bogus theistic arguments when I see them. So I'm here to both learn more and contribute what I can.

Cosmological argument

2011-06-21T21:56:40Z

Geezerbill: Removed the link for 'first cause argument' since it just redirects to this same page. Reworded the second sentence appropriately

The '''cosmological argument''', also known as the '''first cause''' or '''prime mover''' argument, attempts to infer the existence of [[God]] from general facts about the world [1]. It typically argues for the existence of God based on the premise that everything must have a cause. According to this line of reasoning, a first cause is logically necessary, since an infinite chain of causes leaves everything without a cause. This first cause is assumed to be [[God]].

There is also a specific form known as the [[kalam]] argument, which argues that the universe must have an external cause, which is, of course, God. A more technical review of some cosmological arguments can also be found in the [[Cosmological Arguments]] entry.

==Apologetics==

The argument runs like this:
# Everything that exists must have a cause.
# If you follow the chain of events backwards through time, it cannot go back infinitely, so eventually you arrive at the first cause.
# This cause must, itself, be uncaused.
# But nothing can exist without a cause, except for God.
# Therefore, God exists.

==Counter-apologetics==
===Infinite regress===
The most concise answer to this argument is: "[[Who created God?]]", which in turn raises the question "Who created God's creator?", and so on ad infinitum. This is also related to the phrase "[[It's turtles all the way down]]".

The typical response to this is that God always existed. This attempt to terminate the infinite regress is flawed as an uncaused god is posited as the first cause, but the notion of the universe being uncaused or containing its own cause is rejected out of hand. If we are to posit that the universe had to have an uncaused god to set it into motion, why not save a step and say "the universe always existed?"

===Internal contradiction===
There is a contradiction between the first statement and the second statement. If "everything that exists has a cause" then there cannot exist anything that does not have a cause, which means that there is no first cause. Either some things can exist without causes, or nothing can. It can't be both ways.

Changing "Everything that exists has a cause" to "Everything that ''begins'' to exist has a cause" produces a variant known as the [[Kalam]] cosmological argument.

It is also not necessarily impossible for there to be an infinite chain of causes and effects. Among scientists, it is widely agreed that our universe began with the Big Bang. but we don't know what occurred in the first split second after the Big Bang, nor can we comment on anything that came before it, as no experiments have yet been devised that could test any hypotheses about these early moments. (For further discussion on this topic, see the [[Big Bang]] article.)

===First law of thermodynamics===
This argument can be associated with the First Law of Thermodynamics, which says that the amount of mass and energy in the universe will remain constant. They cannot prove the proposition "everything has a cause" without proving the First Law of Thermodynamics. Since this law only talks about mass and energy, space-time itself can, as far as we know, pop into existence whenever it wants. Some scientists, especially those who favor M-theory, say that, in a multi-universe model, when two universes collide it could create a matter and energy in a big bang, which would be the cause of mass and energy. Therefore, it is entirely possible for the universe to arise from material sources.

===Why assume the first cause is god-like?===
:''See also: [[Which god?]]''
Even if we grant that a first cause exists, it makes no sense to assume that it is any kind of god, let alone [[Yahweh]]. The idea of an intelligent, universe-creating god "just existing" is '''far''' more difficult to explain than the universe itself "just existing". [[Intelligence]] is one of the most complex things we are aware of in the universe. To assume the existence of a being who is so intelligent that it can design an entire universe, as well as micromanage the personal lives of billions of people on earth through prayer, would require an enormous amount of explanation.

Christians try to avoid this issue by saying "God does not need a cause because He is outside of time." This is a glib non-answer. If all that is required to get around the first cause argument is an entity that exists outside of time, then all we need to do is postulate a single particle that exists outside of time and triggered the Big Bang. It need not have any additional powers. Besides, this particle might even exist, depending on how you define "outside of time." Photons, light particles, do not experience time, since they move at the speed of light. Therefore, according to this argument, light can pop into existence without cause.

Theists will object that this particle should have a cause. But they have already refuted this argument by granting that there exists an uncaused cause in the first place. If God can exist without a cause, why not a particle? Why not the universe?

== An Inductive Cosmological Argument ==

Richard Swinburne develops an inductive cosmological argument that appeals to the inference to the best explanation. Swinburne distinguishes between two varieties of inductive arguments: those that show that the conclusion is more probable than not (what he terms a correct P-inductive argument) and those that further increase the probability of the conclusion (what he terms a correct C-inductive argument).

Swinburne notes that if only scientific explanations are allowed, the universe would be a brute fact. If the universe is finite, the first moment would be a brute fact because no scientific causal account could be given for it. If the universe is infinite, each state would be a brute fact, for though each state would be explained by the causal conditions found in prior states plus the relevant physical laws, there is no reason why any particular state holds true rather than another, since the laws of physics are compatible with diverse states. That is, although the features F of the universe at time t are explained by F at time t1 plus the relevant physical laws L, and F at t1 is explained by F and L at t2, given an infinite regress there is no reason why F or L at tn might not have been different than they were. Since F and L at tn are brute facts, the same holds for any F explained by F and L at tn. Hence, regardless of whether the universe is infinite or finite, if only scientific evidence is allowed, the existence of the universe and its individual states is merely a brute fact, devoid of explanation.

The universe, however, is complex, whereas God is simple. But if something is to occur that is not explained, it is more likely that what occurs will be simple rather than complex. Hence, though the prior likelihood of neither God nor the universe is particularly high, the prior probability of a simple God exceeds that of a complex universe. Hence, if anything is to occur unexplained, it would be God, not the universe. On the other hand, it is reasonable to appeal to God as an explanation for the existence of a complex universe, since there are good reasons why God would make such a complex universe “as a theater for finite agents to develop and make of it what they will” Consequently, if we are to explain the universe, we must appeal to a personal explanation “in terms of a person who is not part of the universe acting from without. This can be done if we suppose that such a person (God) brings it about at each instant of time, that L operates” . Although for Swinburne this argument does not make the existence of God more probable than not (it is not a P-inductive argument), it does increase the probability of God's existence (is a C-inductive argument) because it provides a more reasonable explanation for the universe than merely attributing it to brute fact.

Swinburne's point is that to find the best explanation, one selects among the possible theories the theory that provides the best explanation. In light of the complexity of the universe, which of the overarching theories of materialism, humanism, or theism provides the best explanation? Swinburne notes four criteria to be used to determine the best explanation: an explanation is justified insofar as it provides predictability, is simple, fits with our background knowledge, and explains the phenomena better than any other theory He suggests that fit with background knowledge does not apply in the case of the cause of the universe, for there are no “neighboring fields of inquiry” where we investigate the cause of the universe. Indeed, he suggests, this criterion reduces to simplicity, which for him is the key to the inductive cosmological argument Appeals to God's intentions and actions, although not leading to specific predictions about what the world will look like, better explain specific phenomena than materialism, which leaves the universe as a brute fact. Swinburne concludes that “Theism does not make [certain phenomena] very probable; but nothing else makes their occurrence in the least probable, and they cry out for explanation. A priori, theism is perhaps very unlikely, but it is far more likely than any rival supposition. Hence our phenomena are substantial evidence for the truth of theism”.

A second reason for Swinburne is that explanation can be reasonably thought to have achieved finality when one gives a personal explanation that appeals to the intentions of a conscious agent. One may attempt to provide a scientific account of why someone has particular intentions, but there is no requirement that such an account be supplied, let alone be possible. We may not achieve any better explanation by trying to explain physically why persons intended to act as they did. However, when we claim that something happened because persons intended it and acted on their intentions, we can achieve a complete explanation of why that thing happened.

Third, appeal to God as an intentional agent leads us to have certain expectations about the universe: that it manifests order, is comprehensible, and favors the existence of beings that can comprehend it. For Swinburne, who in his works often discusses this antecedent probability, this accords with his predictability criterion. Finally, Swinburne introduces a fourth feature, namely, the simplicity of God that, by its very nature, makes further explanation either impossible or makes theism the best explanation. This consideration leads to discussion of God's properties and the nature of simplicity.

Still, Mackie notes, raising the probability of God's existence is not of great assistance, for “the hypothesis of divine creation is very unlikely.” Indeed, it is very unlikely that a God possessing the traditional theistic properties exists. Hence, increasing the probability of something very unlikely initially leaves us with the unlikely. Swinburne's response is that although theism is perhaps very unlikely, it is far more likely than any supposition that things just happen to be. So we return to what constitutes the best explanation of the existence of the universe.

'''See also'''
An atheistic argument from contingency
http://forum.richarddawkins.net/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=105133

{{Arguments for god}}

[[Category: Cosmological arguments]]

== Footnotes ==

[1] This is a typical understanding of this argument type, see e.g. the [http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/cosmological-argument/ Cosmological Argument] entry at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

Talk:Logical fallacy

2011-06-21T21:39:29Z

Geezerbill:

This page needs to give brief descriptions of the logical fallacies (maybe not all of them, but at least the important ones) and then link to the "full article" of that fallacy. A person who comes to this page wants to survey a variety of logical fallacies briefly and then decide which need to be investigated further, i.e. go to the "full article".

[[User:Chisophugis|chisophugis]] 22:58, 18 August 2009 (CDT)

==Proof by Example vs. Hasty Generalization?==
I noticed that "proof by example" and "hasty generalization" are listed in the bottom section as being two different fallacies. Aren't these really two different names for the same fallacy? (For example, "Stalin was a communist, therefore all atheists are communists too.") [[User:Geezerbill|Geezerbill]] 16:39, 21 June 2011 (CDT)

Talk:Affirming the consequent

2011-06-21T21:33:28Z

Geezerbill:

I created a page for this fallacy since there was no existing page for it, and it tends to show up a lot in theism vs. atheism debates. [[User:Geezerbill|Geezerbill]] 16:33, 21 June 2011 (CDT)

Affirming the consequent

2011-06-21T21:32:43Z

Geezerbill: Created new entry

'''Affirming the consequent''', sometimes also called '''asserting the consequent''' or the '''converse error''', is a type of [[logical fallacy]] where a premise is asserted as true simply because a conclusion implied by the premise is true. This is a fallacy because it assumes that the conclusion could only have been reached in one particular way.

For example:
:# If an animal is a rat, then it has four legs
:# My dog Lassie has four legs
:# Therefore, Lassie is a rat

==Formal Construction==
* ''A'' implies ''B''
* ''B''
* Therefore, ''A''

==Further Examples==
*Creationism example 1
:# If the universe was created by God, then there would be order and natural laws observed in the universe
:# We see examples of order and natural laws in the universe
:# Therefore, the universe was created by God
This argument assumes that a deity is the one and only explanation for order in the universe. And even if we do assume that a deity is the only explanation, it doesn't automatically mean that it must be the Christian deity. The [[Flying Spaghetti Monster]] is a good counter-example that satirically exposes the underlying fallacy of this argument.

*Creationism example 2
:# If the Biblical flood story is true, then there was a boat built with the dimensions described in the Bible
:# We found a boat with these dimensions
:# Therefore, the Biblical flood story is true.
To see why this is a fallacy, consider the same logic applied to the story of Cinderella and the existence of Cinderella's castle in Disneyland.

==See Also==
* [[Flying Spaghetti Monster]]

Existential fallacy

2011-06-21T20:58:33Z

Geezerbill: Added internal link for 'logical fallacy' page

An '''Existential fallacy''' is a type of [[logical fallacy]] when the existence of a thing is implied, when it otherwise shouldn't from the premises.

===Formal Construction===

# All S are P
# Some P are S

== Examples ==

* Example 1
:# All leprechauns are people
:# Thus, some people are leprechauns

* Example 2
:# All answered prayers would come from a god
:# Thus, some answered prayers do come from a god

* Example 3
:# God is love
:# Some love is God

Evolution

2011-06-21T20:17:21Z

Geezerbill: /* Common Misconceptions about Evolution */

{{wikipedia}}

'''Evolution''' is a [[scientific theory]] describing change in [[Wikipedia:allele|allele]] frequency over time. It is also used as shorthand to refer to [[Charles Darwin]]'s explanation for the diversity of [[life]] on [[earth]], stating that all life descended from a common ancestor by the processes of evolution driven by [[natural selection]].

Evolution is often linked to [[atheism]] in popular culture. This is because it is currently the theory that is most in the public eye in the battle of [[science vs. religion]].

== Common Misconceptions about Evolution ==

While there isn't enough room here to list and address every fallacious argument that creationists use against evolution, there are some very common misconceptions about the basics of evolution itself, which still persist:

* Evolution only concerns itself with the diversification of living species, and does not (nor is it meant to) address other topics such as the origin of life itself, the [[Big Bang]], the formation of planet Earth, and so on. These are each covered by different scientific fields of study, such as [[abiogenesis]], [[cosmology]], and [[physics]]. Creationists often misuse the term "evolution" to erroneously refer to pretty much ''any'' science that contradicts a literal interpretation of the Book of Genesis (see the Jack Chick tract '[[Big Daddy? (Chick tract)|Big Daddy]]' for an example).
* Evolution is both an established fact and a scientific theory. In science, a theory is not the same thing as a hypothesis. Those who try to dismiss evolution with the claim that it is "[[scientific theory|just a theory]]", are ignorant of the meaning of the word "theory" as it's used in science.
* Being an atheist is not a requirement for understanding and accepting evolution. There are plenty of theists who see no personal religious conflict in accepting evolution and believing in a deity. Evolution is a biological science and does not say anything about deities, one way or another. Likewise, not believing in a deity does not automatically mean that one accepts evolution; for example there are non-theistic groups such as the [[Raelianism|Raelians]] who deny evolution.

== The Evidence for Evolution ==

An in-depth study on the subject of evolution is beyond the scope of this wiki. Only those [[argument]]s that relate directly to atheism and the existence of [[God]] should be cited in articles. For more information, please visit any or all of the following:
* [http://www.talkorigins.org TalkOrigins website]
* [http://wiki.cotch.net/ Evolution Wiki]
* [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evidence_of_common_descent "Evidence of Common Descent" at Wikipedia]
* [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_transitional_fossils "List of Transitional Fossils" at Wikipedia]
* [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_evolution#Genetics "Human Evolution" at Wikipedia]

See also:
* [[Evolution (Way of the Master)]]

== The Untenability of Theistic Evolution ==

Theistic evolution = matter + evolutionary factors (chance and necessity + mutation + selection + isolation + death) + very long time periods + God.

God is, in Philosophy 101 terms, supposed to be all good, all powerful and all knowing. These attributes do seem to clash with using natural selection. First, if God is all powerful and all knowing, He could simply create the life forms He wants and not have to rely on a mechanism to do the work for him. An obvious reply to this is, however, to re-emphasis the view that God is the divine watchmaker who builds a world that can run on its own. Of course, many religious thinkers, such as Berkeley, regard this view as unacceptable. After all, if laws and mechanisms do all the work, what need is there for God? In any case, this does rekindle the old debate over the degree of God’s involvement in the world.

Second, if God is all good, then natural selection seems incompatible with God. This is so for two main reasons. The first reason is that natural selection seems to be terribly wasteful and brutal. It seems almost inconceivable that an all good being would allow so many species to simply perish. The second reason is that natural selection seems arbitrary. It is, after all, a chance driven mechanism. To leave survival up to chance hardly seems like the action of a perfectly good being.

"Of all species that have ever lived, 99.9 percent are extinct."
: From Teresa MacDonald, Director of Education, KU Natural History Museum & Biodiversity Research Center.
: Webpage: http://www.nhm.ku.edu/woodpecker/dodo.shtml

Undoubtedly, it is logically possible that God somehow directs a seemingly naturalistic process like evolution. But it is equally possible that Poseidon causes plate tectonics, or that Ra initiates nuclear fusion in the sun, and yet no one today appeals to these gods to explain earthquakes or solar fusion. Ockham's razor, the idea that explanatory entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity, recommends that we avoid appeals to any such divine explanations.

Because evolution is not goal-oriented, TE necessarily discards the biological teleological argument for the existence of God, which claims that postulating God is necessary to account for purposiveness in nature. Modifying theologian William Paley's renowned analogy, evolution is a blind watchmaker. Nevertheless, some TE proponents try to retain God's creative hand by suggesting that God directs some apparently random mutations. Not only is there no shred of evidence for this, but it doesn't even make sense: directed variation would make natural selection unnecessary for the diversification of life—but that certainly is not the case. Moreover, it raises thorny questions about whether God is responsible for pernicious mutations and the possible (often horrible) disorders that result from them. Kenneth Miller, for example, rejects creationism but leaves the door open for God to intervene through quantum mechanics.

Such divine action may be scientifically untestable even in principle, and there is no reason to favor it over natural quantum probability. Such vague speculations don't even touch questions about the purpose of natural selection or whether God is responsible for malicious mutations.

Is nature goal-oriented, with humans as the jewel of creation? Evolution is an immensely slow, wasteful, pitiless, and cruel process—hardly the most elegant process of creation open to a goal-oriented, omnipotent, and benevolent God. If humanity is the final goal of creation, whence the 3.5 billion (3,500,000,000!) years since the origin of life, or the 13.7 billion years since the Big Bang? What is the point of this immense amount of time if human beings and their world are the pinnacle of the Almighty's creation?

Although evolution does not work with a purpose in mind, it is often called a tinkerer for continuously "testing" whether new mutants can survive their local circumstances in the struggle for existence (natural selection). The vast majority of mutants are selectively neutral or negative with regard to the evolution and survival of Homo sapiens, and thus their evolution is "wasteful" if measured against the goal of producing human beings. Such a wasteful process is hardly consonant with a goal-oriented, omnipotent, and omniscient God.

Furthermore, there is no progressive trend in evolution toward the development of human beings. Evolution can be seen as a huge tree with many branching points, not a direct line to humans. We are just a not-yet-extinct part of one of the very many branches of the enormous tree of life. The development of life has been interrupted by innumerable extinctions, some with so many different plant and animal species dying out in the same time period that they have been dubbed mass extinctions. The (hitherto) biggest mass extinction was the Permian-Triassic extinction event 251 million years ago. So many animal species lived long before the first humans appeared largely because of this repetitive cycle of speciation and extinction. But what was the point of all these extinct animals, if the goal of creation is man and his surrounding nature? To what purpose were the dinosaurs? What was the point of the trilobites? These groups of animals did not even contribute to the origin of humans. Why did God create complete ecosystems only to have them virtually annihilated, so that entirely different ecosystems would temporarily emerge in their place, only to meet the same fate, over and over again?

Had the asteroid which wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago missed the earth, it's likely that our little branch on the tree of life would never have developed, since the end of dinosaur dominance made it possible for our small mammal ancestors to flourish. How are such chance contingencies in the history of life compatible with the alleged providence of a Creator?

Worse still, consider the vast amount of suffering needed to secure our existence through natural selection. The environment "selects" those organisms best adapted to it, not the most even-tempered ones. Consequently, numerous predatory creatures have evolved which regularly inflict suffering on prey and host animals. The screw-worm fly (Cochliomyia hominivorax), for instance, lays its eggs in the wounds or eyes of mammals (including humans), causing any wounds to widen when the eggs hatch and the larva eat the surrounding tissue. This attracts more congeners, further widening wounds. Untreated, such parasitism often leads to a gruesome death. Or consider the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) which causes autoimmune deficiency syndrome (AIDS). It is a great evolutionary success which creates immense suffering among human beings. Immense suffering, like wasteful "trial and error," is not incidental, but inherent to the process of evolution. And it does not sit well with the notion that evolution has been set up or directed by a loving God. The theistic retort that "God moves in mysterious ways" goes well beyond the evidence from evolutionary biology. There is a far simpler and elegant explanation for that evidence: there is no divine will to grope at in the dark, just the indifferent, pitiless, and naturalistic forces of evolution. Since evolution is a slow, wasteful, and brutal process, prima facie it is not the way in which a goal-oriented, omnipotent, omniscient, and loving God would choose to create the world. Thus a naturalistic explanation for the origin of all species, including Homo sapiens, is more plausible than a theistic one.

Paradoxically, TE proponents need science and religion to thrive together, yet require a radical separation between the two along the lines of something like Stephen Jay Gould's nonoverlapping magisteria (NOMA) thesis. In Gould's view, science and religion are two different, nonoverlapping domains of teaching authority. Science deals with empirical facts and theories, while religion deals with questions of meaning and morality.[19]

Historically, scientific and religious developments have influenced one another and continue to do so in everyday life. Questions about abortion, euthanasia, sexual orientation, humanity's place in the cosmos, and so on were once thought to fall within the domain of religion. And historically, religious doctrine has often implicitly dictated scientific theses, such as traditional views about our place in the universe or the age of the earth. (And religion continues to do this, but to a lesser degree as religious doctrine continues to lose ground to advancing scientific understanding. We'll return to this point later.) So radical a separation between science and religion is largely just an artificial construct.

In order to avoid conflict between science and religion, Gould naïvely expects theists to concede that God refrains from intervening in the natural order by means of miracles: "Thou shalt not mix the magisteria by claiming that God directly ordains important events in the history of nature by special interference knowable only through revelation and not accessible to science." Is Gould oblivious that exactly this is an essential component of religion? What would Christianity be if Jesus did not miraculously rise from the dead, for example? Though Gould contends that the Roman Catholic Church embraces NOMA, he apparently overlooks their innumerable references to miracles. Their declaration that the Fall of Man was a real historical event is a gross violation of NOMA to which Gould only devotes one footnote! An appeal to nonoverlapping magisteria appears to be nothing more than a politically correct answer to the question of how science and religion relate to one another.

* [http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/bart_klink/evolution.html The Untenability of Theistic Evolution]

* [http://www.christiananswers.net/q-aig/aig-c015.html 10 Dangers of Theistic Evolution] - shows the incompatibility of Christian teachings and the theory of evolution.

Some literalist Muslims reject origin of species from a common ancestor by evolution as incompatible with the Qur'an. However, even amongst Muslims who accept evolution, many believe that humanity was a special creation by God. For example, Shaikh Nuh Ha Mim Keller, an American Muslim and specialist in Islamic law has argued in Islam and Evolution that a belief in macroevolution is not incompatible with Islam, as long as it is accepted that "Allah is the Creator of everything" (Qur'an 13:16) and that Allah specifically created humanity (in the person of Adam; Qur'an 38:71-76). Shaikh Keller states in his conclusion however:

"As for claim that man has evolved from a non-human species, this is unbelief (kufr) no matter if we ascribe the process to Allah or to "nature," because it negates the truth of Adam's special creation that Allah has revealed in the Qur'an. Man is of special origin, attested to not only by revelation, but also by the divine secret within him, the capacity for ma'rifa or knowledge of the Divine that he alone of all things possesses. By his God-given nature, man stands before a door opening onto infinitude that no other creature in the universe can aspire to. Man is something else."

According to Qur'an, Adam is the first human being and the father of humankind. First Adam was created from clay, God himself formed the material of which Adam is made and breathed his spirit into him, and then Eve was created from Adam, the Qur'an does not report when she was created . Subsequently all humankind was created from clay. Today, some modern Muslim commentators have decided that, since the Qur’an makes no mention of the evolution of one species to another kind of species, the Darwinian theory of evolution is contrary to the teachings of the Qur’an. An apt verse that summarizes the process of human creation is:

"From the (earth) did We create you, and into it shall We return you, and from it shall We bring you out once again

Qur'anic verses 3:59, 35:11, 96:2, 20:55, 6:1, 24:45, 15:26, 7:11, and 19:67 are all related to the origin of mankind. Some critics of Islam and many Muslims state that the Qur'an and modern evolutionary theory are not compatible.

[[Category:Science]]
[[Category:Evolution]]

Evolution

2011-06-21T20:11:51Z

Geezerbill: /* Common Misconceptions about Evolution */ Fixed the internal link for the Chick tract

{{wikipedia}}

'''Evolution''' is a [[scientific theory]] describing change in [[Wikipedia:allele|allele]] frequency over time. It is also used as shorthand to refer to [[Charles Darwin]]'s explanation for the diversity of [[life]] on [[earth]], stating that all life descended from a common ancestor by the processes of evolution driven by [[natural selection]].

Evolution is often linked to [[atheism]] in popular culture. This is because it is currently the theory that is most in the public eye in the battle of [[science vs. religion]].

== Common Misconceptions about Evolution ==

While there isn't enough room here to list and address every fallacious argument that creationists use against evolution, there are some very common misconceptions about the basics of evolution itself, which still persist:

* Evolution only concerns itself with the diversification of living species, and does not (nor is it meant to) address other topics such as the origin of life itself, the [[Big Bang]], the formation of planet Earth, and so on. These are each covered by different scientific fields of study, such as [[abiogenesis]], [[cosmology]], and [[physics]]. Creationists often misuse the term "evolution" to erroneously refer to pretty much ''any'' science that contradicts a literal interpretation of the Book of Genesis (see the Jack Chick tract '[[Big Daddy? (Chick tract)|Big Daddy]]' for an example).
* Evolution is both an established fact and a scientific theory. In science, a theory is not the same thing as a hypothesis. Those who try to dismiss evolution with the claim that it is "[[scientific theory|just a theory]]", are ignorant of the meaning of the word "theory" as it's used in science.
* Being an atheist is not a requirement for understanding and accepting evolution. There are plenty of theists who see no personal religious conflict in accepting evolution and believing in a deity. Evolution is a biological science and does not say anything about deities, one way or another. Likewise, there are non-theistic groups such as the [[Raelianism|Raelians]] who deny evolution.

== The Evidence for Evolution ==

An in-depth study on the subject of evolution is beyond the scope of this wiki. Only those [[argument]]s that relate directly to atheism and the existence of [[God]] should be cited in articles. For more information, please visit any or all of the following:
* [http://www.talkorigins.org TalkOrigins website]
* [http://wiki.cotch.net/ Evolution Wiki]
* [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evidence_of_common_descent "Evidence of Common Descent" at Wikipedia]
* [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_transitional_fossils "List of Transitional Fossils" at Wikipedia]
* [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_evolution#Genetics "Human Evolution" at Wikipedia]

See also:
* [[Evolution (Way of the Master)]]

== The Untenability of Theistic Evolution ==

Theistic evolution = matter + evolutionary factors (chance and necessity + mutation + selection + isolation + death) + very long time periods + God.

God is, in Philosophy 101 terms, supposed to be all good, all powerful and all knowing. These attributes do seem to clash with using natural selection. First, if God is all powerful and all knowing, He could simply create the life forms He wants and not have to rely on a mechanism to do the work for him. An obvious reply to this is, however, to re-emphasis the view that God is the divine watchmaker who builds a world that can run on its own. Of course, many religious thinkers, such as Berkeley, regard this view as unacceptable. After all, if laws and mechanisms do all the work, what need is there for God? In any case, this does rekindle the old debate over the degree of God’s involvement in the world.

Second, if God is all good, then natural selection seems incompatible with God. This is so for two main reasons. The first reason is that natural selection seems to be terribly wasteful and brutal. It seems almost inconceivable that an all good being would allow so many species to simply perish. The second reason is that natural selection seems arbitrary. It is, after all, a chance driven mechanism. To leave survival up to chance hardly seems like the action of a perfectly good being.

"Of all species that have ever lived, 99.9 percent are extinct."
: From Teresa MacDonald, Director of Education, KU Natural History Museum & Biodiversity Research Center.
: Webpage: http://www.nhm.ku.edu/woodpecker/dodo.shtml

Undoubtedly, it is logically possible that God somehow directs a seemingly naturalistic process like evolution. But it is equally possible that Poseidon causes plate tectonics, or that Ra initiates nuclear fusion in the sun, and yet no one today appeals to these gods to explain earthquakes or solar fusion. Ockham's razor, the idea that explanatory entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity, recommends that we avoid appeals to any such divine explanations.

Because evolution is not goal-oriented, TE necessarily discards the biological teleological argument for the existence of God, which claims that postulating God is necessary to account for purposiveness in nature. Modifying theologian William Paley's renowned analogy, evolution is a blind watchmaker. Nevertheless, some TE proponents try to retain God's creative hand by suggesting that God directs some apparently random mutations. Not only is there no shred of evidence for this, but it doesn't even make sense: directed variation would make natural selection unnecessary for the diversification of life—but that certainly is not the case. Moreover, it raises thorny questions about whether God is responsible for pernicious mutations and the possible (often horrible) disorders that result from them. Kenneth Miller, for example, rejects creationism but leaves the door open for God to intervene through quantum mechanics.

Such divine action may be scientifically untestable even in principle, and there is no reason to favor it over natural quantum probability. Such vague speculations don't even touch questions about the purpose of natural selection or whether God is responsible for malicious mutations.

Is nature goal-oriented, with humans as the jewel of creation? Evolution is an immensely slow, wasteful, pitiless, and cruel process—hardly the most elegant process of creation open to a goal-oriented, omnipotent, and benevolent God. If humanity is the final goal of creation, whence the 3.5 billion (3,500,000,000!) years since the origin of life, or the 13.7 billion years since the Big Bang? What is the point of this immense amount of time if human beings and their world are the pinnacle of the Almighty's creation?

Although evolution does not work with a purpose in mind, it is often called a tinkerer for continuously "testing" whether new mutants can survive their local circumstances in the struggle for existence (natural selection). The vast majority of mutants are selectively neutral or negative with regard to the evolution and survival of Homo sapiens, and thus their evolution is "wasteful" if measured against the goal of producing human beings. Such a wasteful process is hardly consonant with a goal-oriented, omnipotent, and omniscient God.

Furthermore, there is no progressive trend in evolution toward the development of human beings. Evolution can be seen as a huge tree with many branching points, not a direct line to humans. We are just a not-yet-extinct part of one of the very many branches of the enormous tree of life. The development of life has been interrupted by innumerable extinctions, some with so many different plant and animal species dying out in the same time period that they have been dubbed mass extinctions. The (hitherto) biggest mass extinction was the Permian-Triassic extinction event 251 million years ago. So many animal species lived long before the first humans appeared largely because of this repetitive cycle of speciation and extinction. But what was the point of all these extinct animals, if the goal of creation is man and his surrounding nature? To what purpose were the dinosaurs? What was the point of the trilobites? These groups of animals did not even contribute to the origin of humans. Why did God create complete ecosystems only to have them virtually annihilated, so that entirely different ecosystems would temporarily emerge in their place, only to meet the same fate, over and over again?

Had the asteroid which wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago missed the earth, it's likely that our little branch on the tree of life would never have developed, since the end of dinosaur dominance made it possible for our small mammal ancestors to flourish. How are such chance contingencies in the history of life compatible with the alleged providence of a Creator?

Worse still, consider the vast amount of suffering needed to secure our existence through natural selection. The environment "selects" those organisms best adapted to it, not the most even-tempered ones. Consequently, numerous predatory creatures have evolved which regularly inflict suffering on prey and host animals. The screw-worm fly (Cochliomyia hominivorax), for instance, lays its eggs in the wounds or eyes of mammals (including humans), causing any wounds to widen when the eggs hatch and the larva eat the surrounding tissue. This attracts more congeners, further widening wounds. Untreated, such parasitism often leads to a gruesome death. Or consider the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) which causes autoimmune deficiency syndrome (AIDS). It is a great evolutionary success which creates immense suffering among human beings. Immense suffering, like wasteful "trial and error," is not incidental, but inherent to the process of evolution. And it does not sit well with the notion that evolution has been set up or directed by a loving God. The theistic retort that "God moves in mysterious ways" goes well beyond the evidence from evolutionary biology. There is a far simpler and elegant explanation for that evidence: there is no divine will to grope at in the dark, just the indifferent, pitiless, and naturalistic forces of evolution. Since evolution is a slow, wasteful, and brutal process, prima facie it is not the way in which a goal-oriented, omnipotent, omniscient, and loving God would choose to create the world. Thus a naturalistic explanation for the origin of all species, including Homo sapiens, is more plausible than a theistic one.

Paradoxically, TE proponents need science and religion to thrive together, yet require a radical separation between the two along the lines of something like Stephen Jay Gould's nonoverlapping magisteria (NOMA) thesis. In Gould's view, science and religion are two different, nonoverlapping domains of teaching authority. Science deals with empirical facts and theories, while religion deals with questions of meaning and morality.[19]

Historically, scientific and religious developments have influenced one another and continue to do so in everyday life. Questions about abortion, euthanasia, sexual orientation, humanity's place in the cosmos, and so on were once thought to fall within the domain of religion. And historically, religious doctrine has often implicitly dictated scientific theses, such as traditional views about our place in the universe or the age of the earth. (And religion continues to do this, but to a lesser degree as religious doctrine continues to lose ground to advancing scientific understanding. We'll return to this point later.) So radical a separation between science and religion is largely just an artificial construct.

In order to avoid conflict between science and religion, Gould naïvely expects theists to concede that God refrains from intervening in the natural order by means of miracles: "Thou shalt not mix the magisteria by claiming that God directly ordains important events in the history of nature by special interference knowable only through revelation and not accessible to science." Is Gould oblivious that exactly this is an essential component of religion? What would Christianity be if Jesus did not miraculously rise from the dead, for example? Though Gould contends that the Roman Catholic Church embraces NOMA, he apparently overlooks their innumerable references to miracles. Their declaration that the Fall of Man was a real historical event is a gross violation of NOMA to which Gould only devotes one footnote! An appeal to nonoverlapping magisteria appears to be nothing more than a politically correct answer to the question of how science and religion relate to one another.

* [http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/bart_klink/evolution.html The Untenability of Theistic Evolution]

* [http://www.christiananswers.net/q-aig/aig-c015.html 10 Dangers of Theistic Evolution] - shows the incompatibility of Christian teachings and the theory of evolution.

Some literalist Muslims reject origin of species from a common ancestor by evolution as incompatible with the Qur'an. However, even amongst Muslims who accept evolution, many believe that humanity was a special creation by God. For example, Shaikh Nuh Ha Mim Keller, an American Muslim and specialist in Islamic law has argued in Islam and Evolution that a belief in macroevolution is not incompatible with Islam, as long as it is accepted that "Allah is the Creator of everything" (Qur'an 13:16) and that Allah specifically created humanity (in the person of Adam; Qur'an 38:71-76). Shaikh Keller states in his conclusion however:

"As for claim that man has evolved from a non-human species, this is unbelief (kufr) no matter if we ascribe the process to Allah or to "nature," because it negates the truth of Adam's special creation that Allah has revealed in the Qur'an. Man is of special origin, attested to not only by revelation, but also by the divine secret within him, the capacity for ma'rifa or knowledge of the Divine that he alone of all things possesses. By his God-given nature, man stands before a door opening onto infinitude that no other creature in the universe can aspire to. Man is something else."

According to Qur'an, Adam is the first human being and the father of humankind. First Adam was created from clay, God himself formed the material of which Adam is made and breathed his spirit into him, and then Eve was created from Adam, the Qur'an does not report when she was created . Subsequently all humankind was created from clay. Today, some modern Muslim commentators have decided that, since the Qur’an makes no mention of the evolution of one species to another kind of species, the Darwinian theory of evolution is contrary to the teachings of the Qur’an. An apt verse that summarizes the process of human creation is:

"From the (earth) did We create you, and into it shall We return you, and from it shall We bring you out once again

Qur'anic verses 3:59, 35:11, 96:2, 20:55, 6:1, 24:45, 15:26, 7:11, and 19:67 are all related to the origin of mankind. Some critics of Islam and many Muslims state that the Qur'an and modern evolutionary theory are not compatible.

[[Category:Science]]
[[Category:Evolution]]

Talk:Evolution

2011-06-21T20:10:17Z

Geezerbill:

Shouldn't evolution be in 'the arguments against existence of God' category?--[[User:Wissam hemadeh|wissam hemadeh]] 14:58, 6 March 2010 (CST)
: No. Although evolution theory explains certain things that other people "explain" by saying "God did it", someone ''could'' actually take any or all of what evoultion theory says happens (or has happened) in the real world and simply think, "that's how God did it". - [[User:Dcljr|dcljr]] 02:16, 11 April 2011 (CDT)

== Common Misconceptions about Evolution ==

I added a new section, "Common Misconceptions about Evolution", because in my experience most people who claim to 'not believe in evolution', don't really have much of a clue of what evolution actually is in the first place. I sure don't expect it to cover all of the different false accusations and fallacious arguments that creationists make (2nd law of thermodynamics, Noah's Ark allegedly discovered, Darwin's alleged death bed recant, etc.), but I think explaining what evolution ISN'T is fitting for a small page on what evolution IS. [[User:Geezerbill|Geezerbill]] 15:10, 21 June 2011 (CDT)

Evolution

2011-06-21T20:05:25Z

Geezerbill: Added a new section, "Common Misconceptions about Evolution"

{{wikipedia}}

'''Evolution''' is a [[scientific theory]] describing change in [[Wikipedia:allele|allele]] frequency over time. It is also used as shorthand to refer to [[Charles Darwin]]'s explanation for the diversity of [[life]] on [[earth]], stating that all life descended from a common ancestor by the processes of evolution driven by [[natural selection]].

Evolution is often linked to [[atheism]] in popular culture. This is because it is currently the theory that is most in the public eye in the battle of [[science vs. religion]].

== Common Misconceptions about Evolution ==

While there isn't enough room here to list and address every fallacious argument that creationists use against evolution, there are some very common misconceptions about the basics of evolution itself, which still persist:

* Evolution only concerns itself with the diversification of living species, and does not (nor is it meant to) address other topics such as the origin of life itself, the [[Big Bang]], the formation of planet Earth, and so on. These are each covered by different scientific fields of study, such as [[abiogenesis]], [[cosmology]], and [[physics]]. Creationists often misuse the term "evolution" to erroneously refer to pretty much ''any'' science that contradicts a literal interpretation of the Book of Genesis (see the Jack Chick tract '[[Big Daddy]]' for an example).
* Evolution is both an established fact and a scientific theory. In science, a theory is not the same thing as a hypothesis. Those who try to dismiss evolution with the claim that it is "[[scientific theory|just a theory]]", are ignorant of the meaning of the word "theory" as it's used in science.
* Being an atheist is not a requirement for understanding and accepting evolution. There are plenty of theists who see no personal religious conflict in accepting evolution and believing in a deity. Evolution is a biological science and does not say anything about deities, one way or another. Likewise, there are non-theistic groups such as the [[Raelianism|Raelians]] who deny evolution.

== The Evidence for Evolution ==

An in-depth study on the subject of evolution is beyond the scope of this wiki. Only those [[argument]]s that relate directly to atheism and the existence of [[God]] should be cited in articles. For more information, please visit any or all of the following:
* [http://www.talkorigins.org TalkOrigins website]
* [http://wiki.cotch.net/ Evolution Wiki]
* [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evidence_of_common_descent "Evidence of Common Descent" at Wikipedia]
* [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_transitional_fossils "List of Transitional Fossils" at Wikipedia]
* [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_evolution#Genetics "Human Evolution" at Wikipedia]

See also:
* [[Evolution (Way of the Master)]]

== The Untenability of Theistic Evolution ==

Theistic evolution = matter + evolutionary factors (chance and necessity + mutation + selection + isolation + death) + very long time periods + God.

God is, in Philosophy 101 terms, supposed to be all good, all powerful and all knowing. These attributes do seem to clash with using natural selection. First, if God is all powerful and all knowing, He could simply create the life forms He wants and not have to rely on a mechanism to do the work for him. An obvious reply to this is, however, to re-emphasis the view that God is the divine watchmaker who builds a world that can run on its own. Of course, many religious thinkers, such as Berkeley, regard this view as unacceptable. After all, if laws and mechanisms do all the work, what need is there for God? In any case, this does rekindle the old debate over the degree of God’s involvement in the world.

Second, if God is all good, then natural selection seems incompatible with God. This is so for two main reasons. The first reason is that natural selection seems to be terribly wasteful and brutal. It seems almost inconceivable that an all good being would allow so many species to simply perish. The second reason is that natural selection seems arbitrary. It is, after all, a chance driven mechanism. To leave survival up to chance hardly seems like the action of a perfectly good being.

"Of all species that have ever lived, 99.9 percent are extinct."
: From Teresa MacDonald, Director of Education, KU Natural History Museum & Biodiversity Research Center.
: Webpage: http://www.nhm.ku.edu/woodpecker/dodo.shtml

Undoubtedly, it is logically possible that God somehow directs a seemingly naturalistic process like evolution. But it is equally possible that Poseidon causes plate tectonics, or that Ra initiates nuclear fusion in the sun, and yet no one today appeals to these gods to explain earthquakes or solar fusion. Ockham's razor, the idea that explanatory entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity, recommends that we avoid appeals to any such divine explanations.

Because evolution is not goal-oriented, TE necessarily discards the biological teleological argument for the existence of God, which claims that postulating God is necessary to account for purposiveness in nature. Modifying theologian William Paley's renowned analogy, evolution is a blind watchmaker. Nevertheless, some TE proponents try to retain God's creative hand by suggesting that God directs some apparently random mutations. Not only is there no shred of evidence for this, but it doesn't even make sense: directed variation would make natural selection unnecessary for the diversification of life—but that certainly is not the case. Moreover, it raises thorny questions about whether God is responsible for pernicious mutations and the possible (often horrible) disorders that result from them. Kenneth Miller, for example, rejects creationism but leaves the door open for God to intervene through quantum mechanics.

Such divine action may be scientifically untestable even in principle, and there is no reason to favor it over natural quantum probability. Such vague speculations don't even touch questions about the purpose of natural selection or whether God is responsible for malicious mutations.

Is nature goal-oriented, with humans as the jewel of creation? Evolution is an immensely slow, wasteful, pitiless, and cruel process—hardly the most elegant process of creation open to a goal-oriented, omnipotent, and benevolent God. If humanity is the final goal of creation, whence the 3.5 billion (3,500,000,000!) years since the origin of life, or the 13.7 billion years since the Big Bang? What is the point of this immense amount of time if human beings and their world are the pinnacle of the Almighty's creation?

Although evolution does not work with a purpose in mind, it is often called a tinkerer for continuously "testing" whether new mutants can survive their local circumstances in the struggle for existence (natural selection). The vast majority of mutants are selectively neutral or negative with regard to the evolution and survival of Homo sapiens, and thus their evolution is "wasteful" if measured against the goal of producing human beings. Such a wasteful process is hardly consonant with a goal-oriented, omnipotent, and omniscient God.

Furthermore, there is no progressive trend in evolution toward the development of human beings. Evolution can be seen as a huge tree with many branching points, not a direct line to humans. We are just a not-yet-extinct part of one of the very many branches of the enormous tree of life. The development of life has been interrupted by innumerable extinctions, some with so many different plant and animal species dying out in the same time period that they have been dubbed mass extinctions. The (hitherto) biggest mass extinction was the Permian-Triassic extinction event 251 million years ago. So many animal species lived long before the first humans appeared largely because of this repetitive cycle of speciation and extinction. But what was the point of all these extinct animals, if the goal of creation is man and his surrounding nature? To what purpose were the dinosaurs? What was the point of the trilobites? These groups of animals did not even contribute to the origin of humans. Why did God create complete ecosystems only to have them virtually annihilated, so that entirely different ecosystems would temporarily emerge in their place, only to meet the same fate, over and over again?

Had the asteroid which wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago missed the earth, it's likely that our little branch on the tree of life would never have developed, since the end of dinosaur dominance made it possible for our small mammal ancestors to flourish. How are such chance contingencies in the history of life compatible with the alleged providence of a Creator?

Worse still, consider the vast amount of suffering needed to secure our existence through natural selection. The environment "selects" those organisms best adapted to it, not the most even-tempered ones. Consequently, numerous predatory creatures have evolved which regularly inflict suffering on prey and host animals. The screw-worm fly (Cochliomyia hominivorax), for instance, lays its eggs in the wounds or eyes of mammals (including humans), causing any wounds to widen when the eggs hatch and the larva eat the surrounding tissue. This attracts more congeners, further widening wounds. Untreated, such parasitism often leads to a gruesome death. Or consider the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) which causes autoimmune deficiency syndrome (AIDS). It is a great evolutionary success which creates immense suffering among human beings. Immense suffering, like wasteful "trial and error," is not incidental, but inherent to the process of evolution. And it does not sit well with the notion that evolution has been set up or directed by a loving God. The theistic retort that "God moves in mysterious ways" goes well beyond the evidence from evolutionary biology. There is a far simpler and elegant explanation for that evidence: there is no divine will to grope at in the dark, just the indifferent, pitiless, and naturalistic forces of evolution. Since evolution is a slow, wasteful, and brutal process, prima facie it is not the way in which a goal-oriented, omnipotent, omniscient, and loving God would choose to create the world. Thus a naturalistic explanation for the origin of all species, including Homo sapiens, is more plausible than a theistic one.

Paradoxically, TE proponents need science and religion to thrive together, yet require a radical separation between the two along the lines of something like Stephen Jay Gould's nonoverlapping magisteria (NOMA) thesis. In Gould's view, science and religion are two different, nonoverlapping domains of teaching authority. Science deals with empirical facts and theories, while religion deals with questions of meaning and morality.[19]

Historically, scientific and religious developments have influenced one another and continue to do so in everyday life. Questions about abortion, euthanasia, sexual orientation, humanity's place in the cosmos, and so on were once thought to fall within the domain of religion. And historically, religious doctrine has often implicitly dictated scientific theses, such as traditional views about our place in the universe or the age of the earth. (And religion continues to do this, but to a lesser degree as religious doctrine continues to lose ground to advancing scientific understanding. We'll return to this point later.) So radical a separation between science and religion is largely just an artificial construct.

In order to avoid conflict between science and religion, Gould naïvely expects theists to concede that God refrains from intervening in the natural order by means of miracles: "Thou shalt not mix the magisteria by claiming that God directly ordains important events in the history of nature by special interference knowable only through revelation and not accessible to science." Is Gould oblivious that exactly this is an essential component of religion? What would Christianity be if Jesus did not miraculously rise from the dead, for example? Though Gould contends that the Roman Catholic Church embraces NOMA, he apparently overlooks their innumerable references to miracles. Their declaration that the Fall of Man was a real historical event is a gross violation of NOMA to which Gould only devotes one footnote! An appeal to nonoverlapping magisteria appears to be nothing more than a politically correct answer to the question of how science and religion relate to one another.

* [http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/bart_klink/evolution.html The Untenability of Theistic Evolution]

* [http://www.christiananswers.net/q-aig/aig-c015.html 10 Dangers of Theistic Evolution] - shows the incompatibility of Christian teachings and the theory of evolution.

Some literalist Muslims reject origin of species from a common ancestor by evolution as incompatible with the Qur'an. However, even amongst Muslims who accept evolution, many believe that humanity was a special creation by God. For example, Shaikh Nuh Ha Mim Keller, an American Muslim and specialist in Islamic law has argued in Islam and Evolution that a belief in macroevolution is not incompatible with Islam, as long as it is accepted that "Allah is the Creator of everything" (Qur'an 13:16) and that Allah specifically created humanity (in the person of Adam; Qur'an 38:71-76). Shaikh Keller states in his conclusion however:

"As for claim that man has evolved from a non-human species, this is unbelief (kufr) no matter if we ascribe the process to Allah or to "nature," because it negates the truth of Adam's special creation that Allah has revealed in the Qur'an. Man is of special origin, attested to not only by revelation, but also by the divine secret within him, the capacity for ma'rifa or knowledge of the Divine that he alone of all things possesses. By his God-given nature, man stands before a door opening onto infinitude that no other creature in the universe can aspire to. Man is something else."

According to Qur'an, Adam is the first human being and the father of humankind. First Adam was created from clay, God himself formed the material of which Adam is made and breathed his spirit into him, and then Eve was created from Adam, the Qur'an does not report when she was created . Subsequently all humankind was created from clay. Today, some modern Muslim commentators have decided that, since the Qur’an makes no mention of the evolution of one species to another kind of species, the Darwinian theory of evolution is contrary to the teachings of the Qur’an. An apt verse that summarizes the process of human creation is:

"From the (earth) did We create you, and into it shall We return you, and from it shall We bring you out once again

Qur'anic verses 3:59, 35:11, 96:2, 20:55, 6:1, 24:45, 15:26, 7:11, and 19:67 are all related to the origin of mankind. Some critics of Islam and many Muslims state that the Qur'an and modern evolutionary theory are not compatible.

[[Category:Science]]
[[Category:Evolution]]

Kent Hovind

2011-06-21T17:03:02Z

Geezerbill: Added section on Hovind's "doctorate" and its questioned validity

{{apologist-stub}}
'''Kent Hovind''' is a [[young earth creationist]] preacher based in Pensacola, FL.

Many of the arguments he uses to "disprove" evolution are so bad that even other young earth creationists have distanced themselves from him. He is currently serving 10 years in prison for tax evasion.

==Creation seminar==
The centerpiece of Hovind's work is his seminar, in seven parts:
# The Age of the Earth
# The [[Garden of Eden]]
# [[Dinosaurs]] and the [[Bible]]
# Lies in the Textbooks
# The Dangers of [[Evolution]]
# The Hovind Theory
# Questions and Answers

While the contents of the seminar change from time to time (e.g., in 1999 he claimed that a shadowy "New World Order" group wanted to reduce the population to half a billion people by May 5, 2000), the seminar has remained roughly the same over the years.

==$250,000 challenge==
For several years, Kent Hovind has attempted to imitate the [[James Randi]] [[Million dollar paranormal challenge]] by purportedly offering $250,000 to anyone who can "prove evolution." Hovind's challenge is riddled with flaws, for example:
# Even the wording of the challenge strongly indicated that Hovind has an unusually poor understanding of evolution.
# Hovind's standards of "proof" are higher than any proof that could reasonably be expected from any scientific discipline. For instance, he says "Prove beyond reasonable doubt that the process of evolution... is the only possible way the observed phenomena could have come into existence." There is not a single scientific theory, no matter how well-confirmed, which is regarded as the only ''possible'' explanation for any phenomenon.

Someone could make a similar challenge asking people to prove that the theory of gravity is the ''only possible way'' the observed phenomena could take place, and nobody would ever be able to claim the money.
No matter how widely accepted ''any'' theory is, somebody could still say: "God just makes it seem that way."
# The judges of this challenge are anonymous and secret, to be hand-picked by Hovind. It is virtually inconceivable that Hovind would pick judges who are not sympathetic to his beliefs.

==Doctorate Credibility==
The validity of Hovind's doctorate title has often been criticized. Hovind received a doctorate in Christian Education from Patriot University in Colorado Springs, Colorado (now Patriot Bible University in Del Norte, Colorado). In addition to the school being a correspondence school and non-accredited, Patriot University appeared to be degree mill, meaning it offered degree titles with unreasonably low graduation requirements and in a matter of months rather than years. The school's current policies allow students to attain doctorates for as little as $85 per month.

==Legal troubles==
Hovind has had several run-ins with the law (see [[Wikipedia:Kent Hovind|Wikipedia's article about him]] for details). While this does not directly affect the quality of his arguments on [[creationism]] ("Kent Hovind is a crook, and therefore is wrong about [[evolution]]" would be an [[ad hominem]] fallacy), it does raise questions about his character. In particular, if he is found to be willing to lie about the taxes he owes, he may also be willing to lie about evolution, especially if he believes that a lie will be more effective than the truth in bringing people to [[Jesus]].

On July 13, 2006, Kent Hovind and his wife Jo were arrested on 58 counts of tax evasion. The case went to trial Oct. 17. On Nov. 2, 2006, they were found guilty. On Jan. 19, 2007, Kent Hovind was sentenced to 10 years in prison. Jo's sentencing was delayed pending an appeal of Kent's sentence, but on Jun. 29, 2007, she was sentenced to 366 days in prison.

==External links==
* [http://www.cseblogs.com/ Kent Hovind's Blog]
* [http://www.drdino.com/ Creation Science Evangelism]
* [http://www.drdino.com/downloads.php Hovind's Creation Seminar]
* [http://www.dinosauradventureland.com/ Dinosaur Adventure Land]

===Sites critical of Hovind===
* [http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/hovind.html Kent Hovind's $250,000 Offer] at [[Talk Origins]]
* [http://www.kent-hovind.com/ Analysis of Kent Hovind]
* [http://home.austarnet.com.au/stear/kent_hovind_page.htm Kent Hovind's challenge to evolutionists, and other links] at [[No Answers in Genesis]]
* [http://www.noanswersingenesis.org.au/bartelt_dissertation_on_hovind_thesis.htm The Dissertation Kent Hovind Doesn't Want You to Read] at No Answers in Genesis
* [http://web.archive.org/web/20011217095048/www.geocities.com/Tokyo/Temple/9917/hovind/wild_hovind.html The Wild, Wild World of Kent Hovind]
* [http://web.archive.org/web/20020217021622/www.geocities.com/Tokyo/Temple/9917/vlaard/index.html Dr. Dino's "Challenge" is a Fraud?]
* [http://journeymanheretic.blogspot.com/2010/02/inside-mind-of-creationist-critical_23.html Inside the Mind of a Creationist: A Critical Analysis of Kent Hovind's "Doctoral Dissertation"]

[[Category:People|H]]
[[Category:Christian apologists|H]]

Kirk Cameron

2011-06-21T16:33:43Z

Geezerbill: Reworded the opening sentence for a little more elaboration

[[Image:Kirk-cameron.jpg|thumb|Kirk Cameron]]
Kirk Cameron is a former teen idol and child actor, best known for his role as Mike Seaver on the 1980s sitcom ''Growing Pains''. He says [[I used to be an atheist|he used to be a devout atheist]], until he asked himself [[Pascal's Wager|"What if I'm wrong?"]] Today he is an ardent apologist, appearing in the movie version of ''[[Left Behind]]'', and hosting [[The Way of the Master]] with [[Ray Comfort]]. Kirk also starred in the movie [http://www.fireproofthemovie.com/main.php Fireproof] in which he portrays a firefighter who, during marital struggles, follows his father's suggestion to turn to God and the Bible to try to save the marriage.

After converting to Christianity, he began to insist that story lines be stripped of anything he thought too adult or racy in ''Growing Pains''. This caused a rift between him and the cast and the ultimate demise of the show.

== See also ==
* [[crocoduck]]
* [[Banana argument]]
{{wayofthemaster}}
[[Category:People|Cameron, Kirk]]
[[Category:Christian apologists|Cameron, Kirk]]
[[Category:Entertainers|Cameron, Kirk]]

Talk:Kirk Cameron

2011-06-21T16:28:42Z

Geezerbill:

I believe it was Ray Comfort rather than Kirk Cameron who did the banana demonstration ...
Hope I'm not mixing up theri Names. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Of90cKxSeuw

:you're right, it was mainly him, but kirk is ray's close accomplise and co-hosted the show when the banana argument was presented. --[[User:Daemonowner|Daemonowner]] 05:01 12 july 2010

:Cameron is better known for the [[crocoduck]] analogy, so I added that to the top of the "See Also" section. [[User:Geezerbill|Geezerbill]] 11:28, 21 June 2011 (CDT)

Kirk Cameron

2011-06-21T16:16:51Z

Geezerbill: /* See also */ Added 'crocoduck' to the 'See Also' section

[[Image:Kirk-cameron.jpg|thumb|Kirk Cameron]]
Kirk Cameron is a former child star who used to play Mike Seaver on ''Growing Pains''. He says [[I used to be an atheist|he used to be a devout atheist]], until he asked himself [[Pascal's Wager|"What if I'm wrong?"]] Today he is an ardent apologist, appearing in the movie version of ''[[Left Behind]]'', and hosting [[The Way of the Master]] with [[Ray Comfort]]. Kirk also starred in the movie [http://www.fireproofthemovie.com/main.php Fireproof] in which he portrays a firefighter who, during marital struggles, follows his father's suggestion to turn to God and the Bible to try to save the marriage.

After converting to Christianity, he began to insist that story lines be stripped of anything he thought too adult or racy in ''Growing Pains''. This caused a rift between him and the cast and the ultimate demise of the show.

== See also ==
* [[crocoduck]]
* [[Banana argument]]
{{wayofthemaster}}
[[Category:People|Cameron, Kirk]]
[[Category:Christian apologists|Cameron, Kirk]]
[[Category:Entertainers|Cameron, Kirk]]