Should Religions Be Taught in Schools?

[Region of Dwipantara]

We are humans. We have intelligence. We create stuff. We even edit genes.

What am I assuming? That another being could do this in prehistoric times? Not much of an assumption at all. Highly mathematically possible. More probable than what you are suggesting. Much higher according to the Drake equation even.

But you have no actual evidence for it happening.

And there's a lot of evidence that doesn't support design.

You know you have a nerve that goes from your brain all the way around your heart, and loops back up into your voice box? It's a bit ridiculous, who would design that? It's even more ridiculous in giraffes, who have the same nerve. That's like 28 feet of extra nerve, for something that could be inches if it took a more direct route. Ah, but it evolved in fish, who don't really have necks. So it made more sense at the time.

Or the fact that your brain has no way to tell your fingers to move individually. Every time you move just one finger, your brain has to send a separate message to the other four telling them to "ignore what I just said."

Or the fact that so much of your brain is just wired into really old, antiquated, and entirely unrelated systems. Because it was easier to work with those then to create something new. (Evolution is a lazy engineer.) I was telling a girl once about the Khmer Rouge, and she threw up. Why on earth did that happen? Because there is no "moral outrage" section of the brain. Evolution didn't have one, and couldn't be bothered to create one, so it just linked moral outrage to the part of your brain that deals with bad tastes and smells and called it a day.

All this makes sense in the context of evolution. But if it's designed, then the designer is a mad idiot.

Blasphemy! Didn't you know that the Almighty God has successfully created 94% of humans sufficiently good to operate? Only a small 6%, or 7.8 million babies anually, are born with horrific genetic disorders leaving them scarred and in agonizing pain for potentially a lifetime. Try competing with that, atheists!

[Neutraligon]

Then we are talking about reprogramming behavior from following light to following scent and some tactile information I presume.

Still, there should be lots of dead first generation mutants. Convenient for you that plants are so poorly preserved in the fossil record.

The entire point is that only benefaction mutations tend to stick around. You don't find as many deleterious ones, because those animals don't reproduce as much.

But since you mention it, there are plenty of animals with deleterious mutations, and probably always have been. You can't always tell just by looking, though. And you want us to go a step further, and tell if they've got a deleterious mutation from looking at a fossil cast of their bones. That's a bit ridiculous.

Well that and..what is deleterious today might not be deleterious when those animals existed.

[Temple State]

it would be entirely reasonable for them to think that they evolved. Assuming of course that different versions of them came about and there where "species of robots"

But we know they'd be wrong, even though circumstantial indications pointed to such a faulty belief. Just giving you an example of how studying the created does not tell you anything about what created it.

Also, the only "evolution" in action there would be intelligent design.

[Godular]

When facts rather specifically stand against that opinion, it most assuredly can be wrong.

Example? (And not the creation one, we all heard it already)

You don’t control this discussion, but I’ll be your huckleberry.

Some time ago, I once had an idea that light and gravity were like matter and antimatter, but along the lines of chronological progression. I’d worked things out remarkably well, and the facts as I understood them at the time largely supported them. I brought it up in another discussion and Salandriagado smacked me down HARD. He presented me with evidence that effectively shattered the very foundation of my model. I tried to defend it, but eventually I had no choice to acknowledge that while my model was spiffy, it simply could not work.

I could have popped in with ‘well that’s your opinion’, but that would have denied the advances made by physicists both in theory and experiment. The idea really was just an opinion, but I had to admit it was incorrect.

An opinion can be incorrect. You don’t dismiss the contradictions because it’s ‘just an opinion’. Denying the facts arrayed against you is self-delusion, and self-destructive.

[Lanorth]

I don't think so. I believe religion is slowly becoming less relevant as more and more people become atheist, worldwide. The number of religious people, especially in my country, the UK, is falling significantly. I believe it will get to the stage one day, that religion here is irrelevent and that it won't be taught in schools.

[Neutraligon]

it would be entirely reasonable for them to think that they evolved. Assuming of course that different versions of them came about and there where "species of robots"

But we know they'd be wrong, even though circumstantial indications pointed to such a faulty belief. Just giving you an example of how studying the created does not tell you anything about what created it.

Also, the only "evolution" in action there would be intelligent design.

You would first have to demonstrate they where created. Given that you do not have evidence, you cannot make that claim. Like I said, if all evidence pointed to them evolving into existence, then they would have every reason to believe that they evolved. Of course using your example, since they are changing out parts and altering their own coding, they would be unlikely to think that they evolved. In fact, given what you described, they did not evolve as the term is used in biology.

[Godular]

ALL evolution is microevolution.

Just a ton of missing links.

Tell me how you make a machine that needs exactly 10000 pieces to work perfectly together to work at all and if only one is missing or out of place, it doesn't work, through throwing it blindfolded in place?
You need 10000 generations that each add one piece in consecutive order and while they are building this new function they are wasting energy on it while it is still not in functional order, which makes them less suited for survival until the work is finished.
It makes absolutely zero sense. Even after a couple of generations, wasteful mutants like that would be wiped out according to your own maxim of survival of the fittest.

Just because you don’t understand the process does not mean the process is impossible to occur naturally.

[Region of Dwipantara]

it would be entirely reasonable for them to think that they evolved. Assuming of course that different versions of them came about and there where "species of robots"

But we know they'd be wrong, even though circumstantial indications pointed to such a faulty belief. Just giving you an example of how studying the created does not tell you anything about what created it.

Also, the only "evolution" in action there would be intelligent design.

The '''intelligent''' design hypothesis is merely an unproven, unnecessary middleman to the already working scientific model that, like unneeded red tapes, must be cut out.

[Neutraligon]

But we know they'd be wrong, even though circumstantial indications pointed to such a faulty belief. Just giving you an example of how studying the created does not tell you anything about what created it.

Also, the only "evolution" in action there would be intelligent design.

The '''intelligent''' design hypothesis is merely an unproven, unnecessary middleman to the already working scientific model that, like unneeded red tapes, must be cut out.

Not a hypothesis since it cannot be tested.

[Region of Dwipantara]

I don't think so. I believe religion is slowly becoming less relevant as more and more people become atheist, worldwide. The number of religious people, especially in my country, the UK, is falling significantly. I believe it will get to the stage one day, that religion here is irrelevent and that it won't be taught in schools.

Population growth is a significantly more important factor in determining the future of religion.

[Temple State]

Just a ton of missing links.

Tell me how you make a machine that needs exactly 10000 pieces to work perfectly together to work at all and if only one is missing or out of place, it doesn't work, through throwing it blindfolded in place?
You need 10000 generations that each add one piece in consecutive order and while they are building this new function they are wasting energy on it while it is still not in functional order, which makes them less suited for survival until the work is finished.
It makes absolutely zero sense. Even after a couple of generations, wasteful mutants like that would be wiped out according to your own maxim of survival of the fittest.

Just because you don’t understand the process does not mean the process is impossible to occur naturally.

Possible is one thing. Probable is another. The probability is infinitesimally small. Over any time span. Especially when taking into account that the mutant lineage would have to be able to preserve itself while suffering from wasting energy on incomplete functions.

[Temple State]

The '''intelligent''' design hypothesis is merely an unproven, unnecessary middleman to the already working scientific model that, like unneeded red tapes, must be cut out.

Not a hypothesis since it cannot be tested.

Nor can blind macro-evolution be.

[Neutraligon]

Not a hypothesis since it cannot be tested.

Nor can blind macro-evolution be.

Define macro evolution. Explain how it is functionally different from micro-evolution. Hell for that matter...define evolution when it comes to biology. You going to answer me on exactly what classes you took, what books you used?

[Region of Dwipantara]

The '''intelligent''' design hypothesis is merely an unproven, unnecessary middleman to the already working scientific model that, like unneeded red tapes, must be cut out.

Not a hypothesis since it cannot be tested.

Okay, then I guess an 'guess'. Also the (un)intelligent design has a big, big flaw that many evangelicals haven't considered: it cam be claimed by any religion. If there's a magical being designing things out of boredom, its possibility of being Yahweh is the same as its possibly of being Allah. Or Brahma. Or whatever that Scientology wackos worships.

[Neanderthaland]

The entire point is that only benefaction mutations tend to stick around. You don't find as many deleterious ones, because those animals don't reproduce as much.

But since you mention it, there are plenty of animals with deleterious mutations, and probably always have been. You can't always tell just by looking, though. And you want us to go a step further, and tell if they've got a deleterious mutation from looking at a fossil cast of their bones. That's a bit ridiculous.

Well that and..what is deleterious today might not be deleterious when those animals existed.

This is kind of an aside, but I find it interesting and want to share it:
There's a kind of protozoan that infects the beaks of birds. Trichomonosis. It can create cysts, and cause holes to appear. Weakening beaks, and even causing them to break off.

Now you'd never guess where else paleontologists found trichomonosis holes: in the jaws of dinosaurs. In particular they found them in the skull of Sue, one of the largest T-Rexes on record, and they now believe it may have been what killed her.

This makes absolute sense if you know about bird's evolutionary history. Not much sense otherwise.

[Temple State]

Nor can blind macro-evolution be.

Define macro evolution. Explain how it is functionally different from micro-evolution. Hell for that matter...define evolution when it comes to biology.

The proposed accumulative changes of a lineage from one kind into another. In modern taxonomy one family to another.

[Godular]

Just because you don’t understand the process does not mean the process is impossible to occur naturally.

Possible is one thing. Probable is another. The probability is infinitesimally small. Over any time span. Especially when taking into account that the mutant lineage would have to be able to preserve itself while suffering from wasting energy on incomplete functions.

Microevolution is ALL evolution. You’re acting as if one day an egg cracked open and out popped a rabbit. You didn’t pay a lick of attention to that image, did you? You very apparently whiffed on the point of it.

[Neutraligon]

Define macro evolution. Explain how it is functionally different from micro-evolution. Hell for that matter...define evolution when it comes to biology.

The proposed accumulative changes of a lineage from one kind into another. In modern taxonomy one family to another.

Define kind. As to macroevolution, good thing that is not how modern biology defines macroevolution. Hell, in modern biology the concept of family pretty much has no meaning.

[Neanderthaland]

Possible is one thing. Probable is another. The probability is infinitesimally small. Over any time span. Especially when taking into account that the mutant lineage would have to be able to preserve itself while suffering from wasting energy on incomplete functions.

Microevolution is ALL evolution. You’re acting as if one day an egg cracked open and out popped a rabbit. You didn’t pay a lick of attention to that image, did you? You very apparently whiffed on the point of it.

Everybody knows that only happens on Easter.

[Kernen]

Christian doctrine should be taught, all else should be banned and only referred to as pagan and heretical.

Sure sucks for anybody who doesn't want to be christian, I guess.

[Temple State]

Possible is one thing. Probable is another. The probability is infinitesimally small. Over any time span. Especially when taking into account that the mutant lineage would have to be able to preserve itself while suffering from wasting energy on incomplete functions.

Microevolution is ALL evolution. You’re acting as if one day an egg cracked open and out popped a rabbit. You didn’t pay a lick of attention to that image, did you? You very apparently whiffed on the point of it.

Explain to me how the incremental changes in the lineage to developing new limbs and more advanced functions than the tweaking of a protein here or there, can possibly happen when such a mutant lineage would die out from wasting energy on a useless incomplete function for untold generation before it is ready? It would not give them any advantage until it is complete, so according to "survival of the fittest" it would not survive. Hence, no macro-evolution. Just kinds changing colors and sizes basically.

[Neutraligon]

Christian doctrine should be taught, all else should be banned and only referred to as pagan and heretical.

Sure sucks for anybody who doesn't want to be christian, I guess.

Sure sucks for any Christian who has differences from whatever sect Temple wants to teach.

[Neanderthaland]

Microevolution is ALL evolution. You’re acting as if one day an egg cracked open and out popped a rabbit. You didn’t pay a lick of attention to that image, did you? You very apparently whiffed on the point of it.

Explain to me how the incremental changes in the lineage to developing new limbs and more advanced functions than the tweaking of a protein here or there, can possibly happen when such a mutant lineage would die out from wasting energy on a useless incomplete function for untold generation before it is ready? It would not give them any advantage until it is complete, so according to "survival of the fittest" it would not survive. Hence, no macro-evolution. Just kinds changing colors and sizes basically.

Because that never happens. Evolution does not select for any change that isn't immediately useful.

Which is why you get all these jankey features in animals. Like the neck nerve thing. It would be great if evolution had said, "you know, let's not loop that around the heart, I bet it will cause problems later." But didn't, because it couldn't.

[Neutraligon]

Explain to me how the incremental changes in the lineage to developing new limbs and more advanced functions than the tweaking of a protein here or there, can possibly happen when such a mutant lineage would die out from wasting energy on a useless incomplete function for untold generation before it is ready? It would not give them any advantage until it is complete, so according to "survival of the fittest" it would not survive. Hence, no macro-evolution. Just kinds changing colors and sizes basically.

Because that never happens. Evolution does not select for any change that isn't immediately useful.

Don't forget neutral, things that are neither deleterious nor beneficial are not weeded out.

[Temple State]

Explain to me how the incremental changes in the lineage to developing new limbs and more advanced functions than the tweaking of a protein here or there, can possibly happen when such a mutant lineage would die out from wasting energy on a useless incomplete function for untold generation before it is ready? It would not give them any advantage until it is complete, so according to "survival of the fittest" it would not survive. Hence, no macro-evolution. Just kinds changing colors and sizes basically.

Because that never happens. Evolution does not select for any change that isn't immediately useful.

EXACTLY. Now stop fantasizing about macro-evolution, because it is beyond the span of immediate usefulness.