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Folks -- just some passing thoughts. I also had a problem
with the "creation of man/woman" section in Genesis. And had an even larger
problem with the story of Noah & the survivors. We are all Jews, right,
since the Jews were the only people in the Ark? But just a little bit
further in the Bible, the Egyptians are introduced. Where did they come from?
Another non-Jewish ark? Myself, I have never had any problems with
"out-of-Africa" theory of evolution. But perhaps the creationists do.
I will continue to try to figure out why I should take the
Bible as absolute truth. But have little faith that I will resolve my
quandary!
-- Sandy Leo
A Californian Stratigrapher & a firm believer in the
the theory of evolution From: paleonet-owner@nhm.ac.uk [mailto:paleonet-owner@nhm.ac.uk] On Behalf Of Kenneth A. Monsch Sent: Wednesday, February 16, 2005 2:16 AM To: paleonet@nhm.ac.uk Subject: Re: paleonet Faith and skepticism To those who are still interested,
This thread is turning out to be pretty long. I
won't have much to say about Peter's last message. Bill C. has already answered
to a few of Peter's points. What I do agree on with Bill is that a deity cannot
be part of your scientific paradigms, but from this doesn't follow that
believing in God is invalid (hard to imagine for some, but I'm not the only one
who can argue that this is possible). Just keep Him out of your scientifc
theories. When you say "a human has an appendix because God put it
there, or 'designed' it this way" you have obviously left a framework
of scientific thinking. Peter said in his last mail that since creationists
don't trust reason, it's very hard to get anything across to them. The
problem is aggravated by this that they THINK they are reasonable, because they
are convinced they do science! Sigh. But by educating the masses, we can at
least reach the ones who are undecided, who still have a door ajar to reason. Or
we should start at school, where children are still shaping their own opinions.
The problem, creationists seem to be aware of it. Think of the 'evolution is
only a theory' stickers. But let us not give up. Just a last point for Bill C.:
the Bible is not a scientific book, and shouldn't be regarded this way. For
religious books, 'discrepancies' such as the two creation stories can be
explained and still accepted. If two scientifc works say different things,
often it is thought that one must be wrong and the other must be right (though
sometimes the truth may prove that neither is completely right!). A discussion
about this could go on and on and on needlessly, so I'll just concentrate
on one point. One Genesis story says that both A and E came out of the
dust. Another says that A came out of the dust, and that E came out of A. So
eventually E still came out of the dust, right? (Don't worry, I don't believe in
these stories in a literal sense!)
Ken
***************************************************************************
Dr. Kenneth A. Monsch tel +48-71-3754017 Department of Vertebrate Zoology fax +48-71-3222817 Institute of Zoology University of Wroc³aw ul. H. Sienkiewicza 21 50-335 Wroclaw POLAND |
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