Subject: The Everlasting Man
assuming youre an atheist, your faith in no god is based purely on the theory of evolution. since charles darwin publicised the theory of humble beginnings (a bang and ameoba and millions of years of gradual change) it has given people reason to believe that we came from something apart from a god, should i say "natural" beginnings.
If it wasn't clear from the first installment, by now it should be obvious that Martin knows hardly anything at all about either evolution or atheism. First, atheists don't have "faith in no god" - that's a misconception which apparently spreads because many people feel better thinking that atheism is as much of a faith as their religion is. You can always be sure that when you hear that idea come up, you're dealing with someone who doesn't have the first clue about atheism - and sadly, in too many cases, it turns out that they aren't actually interested in learning about atheism anyway. Chances are if you try to educate them, you'll only be banging your head against a brick wall.
Secondly, whatever atheism is, it's not "based purely on the theory of evolution." Disbelief in the existence of gods doesn't require evolution and atheism in turn isn't logically necessitated by evolution. Lots and lots of theists and Christians accept the evolutionary explanations for the current diversity of life without much problem - it's only a small subset of fundamentalist and evangelical Christians who have much of a problem.
Third, Darwin's theory of evolution had nothing to do with "a bang" nor did it have anything to do with the origin of life. That again is a common misconception spread by creationists who simply don't understand anything about evolution (or, if they do, then they are deliberately lying about evolution). The theory of evolution assumes the prior existence of life and describes how that life developed - where life originally came from is a separation question.
If evolution is proven one day, it will cause me to seriuosly reconsider my faith in the christian god. as yet, it is not proven and it does not look likely to be proven, so i am on safe ground.
If proof of evolution (which exists abundantly, demonstrating once again that Martin has never seriously studied the topic) would cause him to stop being a Christian, it can only be because his Christian belief is incredibly thin and weak. It relies, evidently, upon a couple of key ideas which are contrary to reason and contrary to science - thus forcing him to deny reality simply in order to maintain an ineffectual religion.
Why is it that others can be religious and be Christian while also accepting evolutionary theory? Because their religion isn't dependent upon an anti-scientific mindset. They can believe that their god is the ultimate cause of everything without also presuming to know, in detail, how their god went about it all - thus, they can accept the idea that their god could have used evolution. Fundamentalists and evangelicals with weak religious beliefs can't handle that sort of possibility.
"There are no such things as missing links. We might as well quit looking for them."
-- Dr. Austin Clark, biologist at Smithsonian Institue in Washington
What are we to make of this quote? I see many creationists use it, but I never see any references to where it originally came from, thus preventing anyone from checking it out. Without any idea about the context in which it appeared, it's impossible for us to seriously evaluate it - especially when one considers how often creationists take quotes out of context an distort their original meaning.
It should also be noted here that the quote implies that Austin Clark is a biologist at the Smithsonian Institute - but that isn't true. Clark was a curator at the Smithsonian Institute during the first half of the twentieth century. He's been dead for nearly 50 years now. Another common tactic of creationists is to cite scientific sources from 50 or 100 years ago without noting their age and without apparently understanding that science actually progresses - thus, the personal opinions of scientists from those many decades ago don't necessarily hold true today.
Part three of this conversation on evolution, atheism, and religion will appear tomorrow. Part one appeared yesterday.
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