Creationists rewrite natural history – Telegraph — — The big news in England is the sudden restructuring of the BBC including massive layoffs. Since this is a non-profit organization paid for by taxes, exactly what changed? Until recently the organization was hyper-critical of Bush and the right-wing. But has this perhaps been changed to a new Christian fundamentalist direction? Are they now kow-towing to creationists? I think so. Curiously the first evidence of this appears in licensed content broadcast in, of all places, Holland.
The world’s best known wildlife broadcaster, Sir David Attenborough, has called on the BBC to stop Christian fundamentalists from deleting references to evolution from his documentaries.
Censored versions of Sir David’s award winning programmes have been broadcast in Holland without any references to evolution, speciation, descent and timescales of millions of years, after being censored by Christian creationists who are opposed to Charles Darwin’s ideas.
“Instead of saying “70 million years ago, something happens,” they say “a very long time ago something happens”. They also omit paragraphs such as: “This is inherited from my warm-blooded ancestors,”” Sir David told the Telegraph. “I would much rather they kept to the letter, as far as that is possible, of what I said.”
FACT: creationists do not take the bible literally because unless they speak greek, hebrew and/or aramaic, they are quoting and interpretation, not the actual bible
so in reality, each an every creationist is actually, continually bearing false witness against their neighbor, and well apparently, that’s bad.
#1 “I am interested why people care about this issue so much”
What do creationists expect to get out of imposing their belief on me or anyone?
Even if it could be proved that god exists and created the universe 4000 years ago I still can’t think of a good reason to worship him any more than say, Lara Croft should worship Eidos plc.
Sorry John(and I can’t believe you don’t already know this, unless your more xenophobic than most), the BBC is financed by *license fee’s*, but is a public non-profit company.
You are correct that BBC is financed by licence fees, however the BBC has a mandate to ‘maximize value’ of the licence fees by produce for-profit television, hence UK Gold TV that shows BBC re-runs (with advertisement) BBC America (which is for profit), all the Merchandising that comes with Teletubbies, Bob and the Builder and the rest of them. The BBC is most certainly working with an eye towards making a profit.
The fact that everyone who owns a TV has to play over $225 a year to the BBC, and that if you don’t own a TV the licencing inspectors have the right to enter your home without a warrant or probably cause, is the result of a parliamentary kingdom that really wants to be a totalitarian dictatorship and just cannot quite admit it yet.
-Ben (who used to work for the BBC)
Oh ya, and for the all people who are saying that ‘every war is fought over religion’, can you please clarify which religions were fighting in the following wars:
Vietnam
Korean
World War 2
World War 1
1812
In fact, as far as I can tell, in the last 100 years or so, the west has been involved in very few wars that have been specifically about religion. The Roman Empire went on a campaign to conquer quite a huge portion of Europe, and none of it was religiously motivated. Gangis Khan was not fighting over religion.
Indeed, it seems that, with the exception of the crusade and a few wars between protests and catholics during the reformation, very few wars indeed have been fought over religion.
Oh ya, and one last thing, regarding The big news in England its news all over the UK, not just England…. (you wouldn’t want the Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish to feel left out)…..
#35 – Ben,
I thought that was an odd claim too. Many wars have been fought over religion, but not all. Some are over other ideologies.
Of those that you listed, WW II was over a mix of Catholicism (and an attempt to expunge the Jewish influence in the bible) and social Darwinism (an evil of which Darwin understood full well the potential and wrote strongly against). I know of no religious influence in the others that you mention.
I personally tend to make the statement that many of the world’s most violent and bloody wars were caused by religion, while noting that we are indeed a violent species even in the absence of religion. Religion just makes things worse and adds one more reason to kill each other, and one with a particular fervor to it as well.
#35 & 37
i’ll take it one step further: wars are only ever fought to attain wealth and power, any other reason cited is strictly propaganda to raise armies
but back on topic, creationism is religious, period, that’s not a theory, that’s a fact, to say otherwise is to bear false witness, and the bible has a law designated to stop exactly that.
38. creationism is religious, period, that’s not a theory, that’s a fact, to say otherwise is to bear false witness, and the bible has a law designated to stop exactly that.
Can’t argue with that! I hadn’t thought of saying otherwise ‘bearing false witness’, but that is a very good point…. I’ll have to remember that if I ever find myself arguing with a fundamentalist wack-job (okay, not very likely UK but its seems your religious right are getting itchy feet and coming over this way….)
#2
“once again, “dvorak.org/blog” decrees from on high that Christians are evil and most be stopped.”
Christians are not evil, they’re just stupid.
I was with some buddies talking about the meaning of hand signs and this Bible thumper blurted “All hand signs are Satanic.”
I replied to him if that were true then all the deafs and the mutes will go to hell, that shut him up alright.
A Theory is an educated guess not fact, so evolution is fact, stop calling it a guess.
That’s all. If people woudl hear that it it was a fact and not have it tied to a THEORY a guess a maybe, well this could have happened, it might be like this it is PROBABLY this and that, they woudl stop trying to call it all into question and the argument would end.
That’s all I want. Just make it the fact, the real honest to goodness truth like breathing air, gestation, earth gravity, etc. We have all accepted these are facts and they are known even by the creationists as fact as they are proven. So stop with the second guessing drop the theory part and call it the Fact of Evolution and get it the smeg over with.
I grow tired of the debate back and forth and forth and back. Just drop teh pretenses and make it as immutable as objects fall at the same rate within the earth’s atmosphere. When it is fact state it as such, don’t dicker over the word Theory and just state Fact of Evolution.
I am sick and tired of hearing all the pallid argumenst over which is which. Either PISS or get off the pot!
Cursor_
41. Cursor
While I appreciate the frustration at the use of the word ‘theory’ as if its not yet fully proven, I think it’d be wrong to call scientific theory a fact because there is always the possibility that someone will come along and challenge a ‘fact’ and prove it wrong. Any theory can be disprove in light of new evidence. That doesn’t just go with evolution, but with all theories.
It’d be shame for science to become as dogmatic as fundamentalist theology has, because the beauty of science is that it allows continued exploration, even if it seems to undermine the basic principles of science. Unless some clever clogs figures out a way of empirically proving that that the empirical method is invalid, anything else can be disproving without undermining the discipline as a whole, which is why everything should be considered a theory….
Also, it’d be a real shame if scientific validation of Darwinism didn’t continue, as I am sure that everything there is to know about the processes of evolution has yet to be discovered. What we need to get away from is evaluation of the Darwinism from the ass-backwards method of starting with a conclusion (ie: Darwinism is wrong because the Bible says so) and then works its way backwards to try and prove that. If I under Dawkin’s “The Selfish Gene” correctly (and I will be the first to admit that I may not of) while the basic principle of Darwinism has stood up to academic rigour, a lot of details have been better understood by subsequent studies.
#41 – Cursor_,
You are confusing definitions 1 and 2 of the word theory. Scientifically, theory has a very different meaning than in the rest of English language.
the·o·ry
–noun, plural -ries.
1. a coherent group of general propositions used as principles of explanation for a class of phenomena: Einstein’s theory of relativity.
2. a proposed explanation whose status is still conjectural, in contrast to well-established propositions that are regarded as reporting matters of actual fact.
#32
FACT: creationists do not take the bible literally because unless they speak greek, hebrew and/or aramaic, they are quoting and interpretation, not the actual bible
You know your comment makes no sense, right? If the exact meaning of a passage is conveyed into another language, there is no difference. “Do not kill” can be translated into various languages and you get the same meaning. Have you read the news where they translated a foreign diplomats words? Did you say, “Well, I can’t believe that because it’s not in its original words.” If it’s confirmed that the meanings are exactly the same, is there a difference? “Go to the store and get milk,” is the same as “Go get some milk at the store.”
#44, interesting that you chose “do not kill” as an example.
Throughout Exodus 20:13, the very same word that is translated as “kill” in “thou shalt not kill” is used 16 times and variously translated as “kill, slayer, manslayer, murderer, and put to death.” In other words the meaning is changed to fit what the translator thinks makes sense. They don’t all mean exactly the same.
whether or not you believe in evolution, creationism or something in between. The fact is that no one alive today could possibly know beyond a doubt how the universe, the earth and human beings came into being.
Yes their is a lot of good evidence for this and that but no one really knows how or why it all happened. Anyone who asserts that they know exactly what happened is a fool. I think a hundred years from know when we know more about the universe, people will look back at us and wonder how we could have been so stupid. Just like we look back at the middle age peoples and wonder the same about them.
44. Hai-Peng“Do not kill” can be translated into various languages and you get the same meaning.
But its an interesting point about language and taking one text as an all encompassing reference point for anything and everything. While “do not kill” may mean the same in all language, the nuances between “do not kill” versus “do not murder” can be important, as can “do not kill” versus “do not kill people” versus “do not kill your neighbor” etc. Some say, for example that the one of the ten commandments is “do not kill”, so even if an invading army is marching through your country, you still aren’t allowed to kill. Others say that the commandment is “do not murder” which can mean anything from “do not kill secret” (which is what murder was in Old English/Old Norse) to “do not kill without permission”.
While books, stories and texts of various sorts can be helpful in providing answers to questions like when is it okay to kill and when is it not, the problem with hoping that any one book or philosophy or religion will provide all the answers to everything, and thus relieving the individual of any responsibility to work through things themselves.
So yes, you can read the Bible and get the meaning and a fair bit of understanding of the text and what the authors meant to say, but if you start splitting hairs or delving too deep into the specific meaning of words or texts, as fundamentalists often do, then you run into problems of inconsistencies.
#44-46,
And, just for humor’s sake since it’s all a heaping steaming mound of dung to me, consider the fact that the ancient language from which the original New Testament was translated had a word for maiden. It did not have a word that could distinguish between virgin and unmarried woman. So, perhaps Jesus was not born of a virgin, but was instead just an illegitimate child. It makes no difference to me as an atheist other than that I find the bible rather humorous at times. Violent and despicable most of the time, but still humorous in spots.
Creationism is just another tool of the church to extract money from stupid people. Religion has never been about anything, but scamming money from people who cannot think for themselves. Except of course the Catholic church where it’s divided between money and buggering alter boys.
#49 – Glenn E,
So I quess you have to ask yourself this. Would you rather follow a bunch of guys who ultimately don’t believe in any moral code (”right vs wrong” is meaningless in the animal kindom)? Or a bunch of guys that at least expouse a moral code (supposedly from God), even if they don’t always follow it?
Right and wrong have a lot of meaning in the animal kingdom, and not just for humans, a species of animal in case you are unaware. The moral code is strong in primates as a rule. Many species, including many monkey species, have slightly simpler, but very strict moral code. They also punish cheats, even at significant personal expense, just like humans. In short, our moral code evolved as most of our behavior did. There are two morals processing centers in the human brain. One makes quick decisions for simple situations. The other is for processing more complicated moral issues. Interestingly, the results are largely the same across very diverse cultures when given analogous hypothetical situations, indicating a strong physical and inherited basis for our morals.
As for the morals of those who follow god, have you actually read Deuteronomy? Joshua? Both are almost completely filled with genocide after genocide. Both describe numerous cases where not a single person was left alive, men, women, and children were all slaughtered mercilessly. What the hell kind of morals is that promoting?
In fact, all but the worst fundamentalists today interpret the bible and treat much of the seriously violent crap as allegory. That most believers do this is strong evidence that their morals do not come from the bible. How could the bible possibly give hints about what sections to ignore. If we all learned our morals from the bible, we’d be killing each other left and right. Please read my own blog post entitled ‘Thou Shalt Kill’. I provide numerous examples of the horrific violence of the bible as well as further links for more reading on the subject.
Glen E, M. Scott’s explanation (as usual) is very well put, understandable and factually accurate… and yet I can’t help imagining the minds of christians shut down when they read it because monkeys with souls just doesn’t fit into their little fantasy.
With this information in hand, would you follow a group who have hijacked morality as theirs alone; who have morally raised themselves above others when they can’t even live up to their own lofty expectations; a group who, when they see knowledge encroaching on their looniefest, lash out by invading learning institutions to turn back knowledge to the dark ages?
… or would you follow the group who does nothing more than behave instinctively with good morals?
Wrong. Period.
Animals do not have morals. ethics, virtue, vice, sin. Every single one of those things is a purely, 100% human intellectual construct.
You are putting the existential cart before the horse.
Ants are social animals. But they don’t consciously decide to form a social group, it’s evolved behavior which confers an advantage, survival-wise. What you mistakenly call “moral” behavior in primates is behavior which has been selected for. Only since we arrived at the stage where we could reason abstractly and convey that reasoning to others – and then invented concepts of “right” and “wrong” – were the very concept of morals or ethics become possible.
Morals and ethics, lad, are human intellectualizations of evolved social behavior, and by definition are beyond the mental faculties of nonhumans. The very ability to conceive of right / wrong, true / false, past / present / future is what sets us apart mentally from all other creatures and is the exact reason why we have civilization.
There is not, never has been, and never will be a “bad” or “good” animal. No dog ever thought of harming another dog to improve his social status. No cat ever decided to commit a destructive act for the pleasure of it. Those things require a threshold degree of self-awareness; we are the only creatures so far to have crossed that threshold. We have egos – animals don’t.
When you say apes use morals, don’t you get the fact that apes – and their behavior – existed BEFORE humans ever did?? The behavior came FIRST – the rational, intellectual explanations for the behavior are unique to us. Because of their dependence of the ability to conceive of the passage of time, the ability to deliberately construct narratives, the ability to distinguish between the self and everything that is NOT self – these are necessary to constructing abstract principles of behavior, and they are things only humans are capable of.
Your intentions, as well as the side you take in many of the contentious issues on DU are all creditable and proper – we’re almost always on the same side, which is a Good Thing – but your knowledge of evolutionary psychology is virtually nonexistent, and as with your moral judgements about humanity’s preeminence in the hierarchy of life on Earth, weell-intentioned but scientifically invalid ideology you were iindoctrinated with in your youth has effectively blocked your acquisition of objective knowledge in certain areas, in exactly the same fashion that people indoctrinated in religion in childhood are blocked from grasping why science is not a faith or belief system. The same thing you rail against people such as MM doing regarding religion, you yourself are doing with your ideological and scientifically unsupported denigration of humankind’s place in the natural world.
Before you tell MM how believing there’s a God is irrational, think about the parallel way you set humans apart as the “enemy” of the rest of nature. You see HIS ideology as a mistake, but not YOURS – failing to understand that that’s the egocentric way EVERY ideologue thinks!
POT (to kettle): You’re black.
KETTLE: WTF??
BTW – the ‘wrong – period’ is directed at M Scott’s #51, not JimR. 🙂
I should add Lauren, that I am willing to admit the possibility that humans have the most developed sense of morals. I don’t believe this to be the case, but could admit the argument. However, to state that morals suddenly sprang full formed into being in our species and ours alone is arrogant in the extreme and ignores a wealth of scientific research into the evolutionary roots of our morals.
Personally, I think bonobos have a higher sense of morals than we do, as evidenced by the fact that there has never been a single recorded case of intra-species lethal violence in bonobos. Our species, by contrast, has raised intra-species violence to an art form, a highly despicable and unconscionable art form, admittedly, but far beyond any normal level of violence in any other species. It is one of the ways that we differ in magnitude, though again, not in kind, from the rest of the species on the planet.
There are a few ways in which we differ in kind. I think menopause is one of them. Our inability to easily detect the fertile time of the females of our species may be another. However, there is little or nothing in our behavior that is truly unique in kind, though many of our characteristics differ hugely in magnitude from their precursors in other animals.
Anyway, I fail to understand how you can have attained the level of scientific knowledge that you have while still retaining the near religious sanctity of the uniqueness of humans. This is very odd to me.
Wow….a total hijacking of a thread…..lmao
I guess it’s not all that bad though, at least Bush wasn’t mentioned. 🙂
#52 – JimR,
One minor point. I didn’t say monkeys had souls. Why would I? I don’t believe humans have souls. Hmm… maybe I should stop using the term “soul searching” and switch to introspecting.
On the rest, you are correct. I have a very difficult time making arguments that would be likely to convince the faithful. My problem in that area stems from the fact that I’ve never had any faith. The closest I’ve ever come is agnosticism. And, even at that, I made up my mind a long time ago that even if god existed, the Judeo-Christian-Islamic religion had it all wrong.
Of course, now I’ve gone completely over to antitheism. So, that point is moot.
There’s actually a very good blog I stumbled across from someone who was a deeply religious Christian and makes far better arguments about the source of our morals than I can. Or, at least the arguments are a lot more likely to appeal to the faithful. Evanescent’s post My Morality Rumination is an excellent read on the subject of morals that has a far greater chance of appealing to the faithful than I can.
#48, Scott,
Good point and I don’t think you realize just how close you are to the truth.
Well it is unknown about Jesus’s case, it was not unusual in those days to classify any out of wedlock birth “a gift from god” or immaculate. This is because the society of the time poorly understood human conception plus the need to be a virgin on the wedding day. No one wanted to known as a whore or have one in the family.
As in later years, a young pregnant woman would often be married off to an older widower much senior in age. I strongly suspected that this is what happened to Mary, mother of Jesus. She got knocked up and married to Joseph.
*
When they were translating the Hebrew writings into the Greek Septuagint and similar translations, they converted the Hebrew word “almah” as the Greek equivalent of our English word for virgin. “Almah” appears 9 other times in the Hebrew Scriptures; in each case it means “young woman”. When the scriptures referred to a virgin (and they do over 50 times) they always used the Hebrew word “betulah”. 7 So, Isaiah appears to have referred to a young woman becoming pregnant — a rather ordinary event.
Some English translators are accurate to the original Hebrew:
Revised English Bible: “…a young woman is with child…”
Revised Standard Version: “…a young woman shall conceive…”
James Moffatt Translation: “…a young woman with child…”
New Revised Standard Version: “…the young woman is with child…”
Other translations mistranslated the Hebrew and referred to the woman as both pregnant and a virgin; that is, a miracle had occurred. This avoids the conflict that would otherwise occur between Isaiah and Matthew 1:22-23. (The author of Matthew quoted Isaiah as describing a virgin who was pregnant before</b becoming sexually active):
New International Version: “…the virgin will be with child…”
The Living Bible: “…a child shall be born to a virgin…”
Contemporary English Version: “…a virgin is pregnant…”. In a footnote, they say that the “Hebrew word did not imply a virgin birth”. They give “young woman” as an alternative.
http://www.religioustolerance.org/virgin_b1.htm
Oopps, didn’t close the bold in #59. Sorry guys.
#48, Scott,
Several parts of the Old Testiment are known to have been copied from other religions, such as the creation of the earth, and the great flood.
The virgin birth may have been copied from another religion 3 History records that:
Buddha was born of the virgin Maya after the Holy Ghost descended upon her.
The Egyptian God Horus was born of the virgin Isis; as an infant, he was visited by three kings.
In Phrygia, Attis was born of the virgin Nama.
A Roman savior Quirrnus was born of a virgin.
In Tibet, Indra was born of a virgin. He ascended into heaven after death.
The Greek deity Adonis was born of the virgin Myrrha, many centuries before the birth of Jesus. He was born “at Bethlehem, in the same sacred cave that Christians later claimed as the birthplace of Jesus.” 4
In Persia, the god Mithra was born of a virgin on DEC-25. An alternative myth is that he emerged from a rock.
Also in Persia, Zoroaster was also born of a virgin.
In India, there are two main stories of the birth of Krishna, one of the incarnations of Vishnu, and the second person within the Hindu Trinity. In one story, Krishna was said to have been born to his mother Devaki while she was still a virgin. In the other, he had a normal conception and birth.
Virgin births were claimed for many Egyptian pharaohs, Greek emperors and for Alexander the Great of Greece.
One source 5 is quoted as saying that there were many mythological figures: Hercules, Osiris, Bacchus, Mithra, Hermes, Prometheus, Perseus and Horus who share a number of factors. All were believed to have:
been male.
lived in pre-Christian times.
had a god for a father.
human virgin for a mother.
had their birth announced by a heavenly display.
had their birth announced by celestial music.
been born about DEC-25.
had an attempt on their life by a tyrant while they were still an infant
met with a violent death.
rose again from the dead.
Almost all were believed to have:
been visited by “wise men” during infancy.
fasted for 40 days as an adult.
http://www.religioustolerance.org/virgin_b1.htm
Lauren,
If you’re that interested in this, it’s quite amusing to watch the first part of this particular film. The second and third parts go off into unproven and poorly founded arguments, many of which get mention as false on snopes.com. So, if you view parts 2 and 3, take them with an enormous grain of salt. The first part really is worth the watch though. Fast forward through about the first 5 minutes of mind numbingly dull music video.
http://zeitgeistmovie.com/
If you prefer text form, this web page provides good reason to at least question whether Jesus ever actually existed as a human being if not enough evidence to come to the conclusion that he certainly did not.
http://www.rationalrevolution.net/articles/jesus_myth_history.htm
60 & 61 Not Lauren the Ghoti & Misanthropic Scott:
If you really interested in the subject of influence that other religions have had on Christianity (and the Old Testament), “The Pagan Christ” by Tom Harpur which goes into detail on the subject….
#58, M Scott, sometimes in a effort to keep my posts short and too the point they ‘lose something in the translation’ and they can become rather ambiguous. in my post (52) I meant that any Christian should have no problem understanding your post and I don’t think anyone could have said it clearer or simpler. Their mind would shut down because they have a preprogrammed firewall to do so, and not because you aren’t unconvincing. Quite the contrary. On most subjects you are exceptionally convincing and I always read them.
The monkey soul… same thing, I could have worded it better. I meant that a christian might jump to the monkey soul implication (as they would have to reconsider evolution, species and then souls which could cascade to their religious demise), not that you in any way suggested it.
While I’m gushing all over you I may as well clear up another thing. The other day when i said you would be miserable in heaven because there would be no global warming… It was a joke. I think I offended you somehow, but I just meant that you love to argue the subject sooo much that heaven would be boring for you.
And on the GW topic, I’m 90% with you. I have been “green” my whole life. The only area we disagree is with our trust in the IPCC. I suspect there are distortions from political and Special interest groups (Greenpeace) that unfortunately have diseased their scientific principles. So I won’t be a hypocrite and shy away from that even though I like you. 🙂
In fact, to anyone who cares a lick, I like everyone on DU even though I disagree a lot.
This crack is good shit!
(that was a joke)