Evolutionism

Who can say we are smart eonugh or advanced enough to understand divine intervention?

If we are the creators creation how would we know?

If evolution is the creators complex plan how would us mear mortals know?

How would we know if there is a creator and if everything we call science is just our feble attempts to understand that which we will never understand?

I can acceipt there is a lot I don't nor ever know. That is the wonder of life as we know it.

I can live with that.

To respond to the initial question, the reason the dictionary doesn't contain "evolutionism" has to do with its roots. Someone who agrees with the theory of evolution based on presented evidence isn't an "evolutionist" nor are the agreeing with an ideology or philosphy beyond perhaps rationalism. However, arguing against "rationalism" sounds like a losing battle right away so the biblical literalists invented the term evolutionism to try and make what they were arguing against sound as though it were on equal footing with them without directly engaging rationalism. There's nothing stopping the co-existence of someone believing in theistic deity, however, if, as is common in the evangelical and southern baptist churches, a literalist interpretation of the modern translation of the bible is required it creates a point of conflict as there are many scientifically falsifiable claims within the bible.

So, in short, if you follow the spirit of christianity, there's nothing there to contradict what the scientific method has produced (evolution, parthenogenesis, thermodynamics, astronomy, astrophysics, etc.)
However, If you require that the bible is a literal book espousing the true word of your deity, the falsifiability of its claims become a threat to your faith and thus you get things like the Creation Museum with mountains of simply made up information presented as uncontroversial and arguing against a version of paleontology which became outdated 30 years ago.

That said, I'm an atheist and my opinion on church ideology may be specious.

Yes I keep forgetting that when people hear evolution Vs creationism they think it's Theism Vs Atheism and nothing could be further from the truth.

Creationism is the Idea that the whole universe was created as it is by an intelligent creator. Which is absurd and contradictory to everything we know and why its such a huge battle to keep it out of schools in the United states and other places. It has nothing to do with weather a god or anything else exists. When scientist fight the teaching of creationism in the court they often use religious people as key witnesses to drive that point home, most famously Ken Miller a god believing catholic. Evolution has nothing to do with the existence of a god however it does contradict the story of genesis to some people, which makes some people very upset.

Evolution is not fact. You have good observations and a sound theory and in your “Final Thoughts” you formulated a well proposed statement that I have no issue with; but, that does not constitute fact.

Evolution is a fact. The origin of species are theories and will remain such until someone builds a time machine or somewhat manages to get out of the universe. one of those theories is based on darwin's theory of evolution, which have been refined over time, mostly thanks to dna and fossil evidence... an other is basically the same old "I reckon someone else must have done it", which could be true, yet miserably ignores simple logic by failing to explain why some things need to have been created yet others do not.

To briefly interject on the "evolution is a fact"argument occurring, I think you're all agreeing but getting hung up on an irrelevant semantic...

Let me remind you that "fact" is merely the patterns observed thus far....

As they are good patterns, and seem to be solid... So did a bunch of other patterns and observations, till we learned better...

So, before anyone gets all uppity, remember that please....

We are at but a moment in time...

I don't have an issue with evolution at all, but I did find the following conversation between Richard Dawkins and Ben Stein to be interesting and thought provoking:

Ah, yes, Ben Stein emphasizing on points Professor Dawkins didn't make.. Its a famous scene and a prime example of badly attempted dishonesty in creationist journalism.. But I won't go down that rabbit hole yet unless it gets caught up.

Brenna: No, two theories are not necessarily mutually exclusive. However one of the two opposing ideas in this case is not a theory while the other one is. And also, if you were an engineer and designed your machines the way they are 'designed' in nature, depending on the type of machine, you would earlier or later definately be fired. The 'designs' we find in nature for the most part are bad, incomplete or unnecessary and I can provide prominent examples, if needed. Long story short, the world looks exactly as we would expect it to be without divine intervention in its creation but nothing like it should look like if any intelligent, let alone benevolent being, was in charge of any bit of it. If a god is responsible, it is either being dumber than a fish or more cruel than anything that would remotely deserve worship. In either case it makes an enormous effort, as Dawkins quoted, to make sure we have no indication of its existence.

Rickie: Let's assume it is correct and we have no indication for a god nor against a god. Is it not the same with Santa Clause? If we cannot tell, disbelief is the only reasonable position to take until such time that more evidence comes in. In a court room, the accusation would be existence (or intervention or whatever that follows), and if we have not enough to tell either way, while we cannot assert the accused is innocent, we must not rule him guilty for the time being. But of course the existence of an intervening or smart god is a scientific claim that can easily be and has easily been falsified.

Lila: I would disagree that the spirit of Christianity doesn't necessitate creationism. Sure, there are people calling themselves Christians and accepting evolution and viewing Genesis as the book of fairy tales that it is, but without the story of Adam and Eve and their sin, let alone the horrific constantly broken commandments that follow it throughout the pentateuch, salvation through the Messiah becomes unnecessary. Without both a few old testament stories and the life, death and resurrection story of Jesus of Nazareth being literally true, the entire Christian doctrine collapses. So while you can maintain an occasional good teaching or two (and none of the good ones are original nor exclusive to Christianity), if you want to keep believing or following any core doctrinal aspect of the Christian faith, you must reject evidence and reason against at least a few rather important and equally falsified parts of the Bible and insist they are literally true.

Jestor: That's right, we haven't observed it all yet. Facts usually grow in number, they don't die per se. What ever other facts we may find in the future, the observation of evolution that we keep making every day will always remain an observation, always remain a fact. We may find new facts and have to refine our scientific models of reality, but we will never find a piece of (this) reality that would tell us we never found any of the pieces we have today.

There are billions of suns and multi billions of planets. Keeping that in perspective, who are we to cling to our beliefs to the exclusions and intolerance of others. I/ we may be wrong. There is a good chance I/we are wrong.

Discussion stimulates the mind and thoughts, that's good, just be flexble with your conclusions and others.

Peace

Gisteron,

I agree with you in general and find the idea of externalizing responsibility morally troubling, however, as you mention, ostensibly the basics of christianity are the teachings of jesus whom in message is comparable to Buddha and other such figures. When I said "in the spirit" of, this is what I was referring to.

As far as the people espousing the "we just don't know and we're probably wrong"...
There are a few things to consider here: 1. Evolutionary theory can predict outcomes. That is to say, given a set of variables, evolution can reliably predict the way an organism will evolve. Theistic creationism has no such consistency. 2. Evolution matches with what we observe. Creationism adapts what we observe to a preconceived belief and when taken with literal interpretations of the bible contradicts what we observe. 3. Evolution has a specific set of criteria which could prove it wrong. Creationism in general, theistic or deistic, has no such criteria, its advocates have a constantly moving goal post preventing it from ever being disproved.

We are not wrong about evolution. We have direct observation of it both in the fossil record and in the small scale with bacterium and other small organisms. Could we learn more about it, about mechanisms in evolution we weren't aware of? Sure, but then the predictive models would likely be less accurate than they are. Could we be wrong on parthenogenesis? Certainly, but, again, there is a specific set of criteria under which it could be falsified. From a rational world view, any time you find yourself holding a belief that cannot be disproven without divine intervention, its time to reassess your logic from the ground up.