Tuesday, February 22, 2011

Here's another comment I wrote at Our Daily Journey With God.


Human Ape

Mr. Felton, from your wonderofcreation: “The difference between people and nature”.

That bugs me a lot because people are part of nature, not separate from it.

I know Christians believe a god magically created people out of nothing to be completely separate from nature. According to Christianity the human apes on this planet are god’s favorite species in the entire vast universe. Let’s throw out all common sense and say that’s a valid idea.

Normal people, also known as atheists, understand reality so they know we are part of nature. (Ken Miller, a Catholic, described this reality better than any atheist ever did: “We not only live in a natural world, but we are part of it, we emerged from it, or more accurately, we emerged with it.”)

I’m going to pretend both ideas are equally valid, even though there’s only one version of reality and that version does not have any magic in it.

My question is, who is more likely to respect nature, normal people who understand they are part of nature, or Christians who think they are completely separate from nature?

I would say, in general, the people who know they are part of nature are more likely to respect nature instead of destroying nature or not caring about it.

I think that’s extremely logical. If it’s “people versus everything else”, some people are going to say we are more important than every other creature, therefore we are not going to worry about their existence when it’s inconvenient for us.

Also, like I wrote earlier, it’s the biologists who love evolution who are doing more than anyone else to save endangered species. An example were these young people I recently met on a Florida beach. They were going out of their way to protect sea turtle eggs under the sand on that beach. They were all biologists and none of them were religious.

The truth is Christians may talk about saving the planet, but it’s the atheist biologists who are actually doing something about it. And their scientific research is extremely important for this goal to save other creatures from extinction. Meanwhile Christians sure spend a lot of time denying the foundation of biology which is evolution.

By the way, I got to highly recommend Ken Miller’s radio speech which can be read and/or listened to on this website. Even if you disagree with him, everyone should listen because he speaks eloquently, and because he’s brilliant. His only character flaw is he’s not a normal person (aka atheist).

If there's anything that might make Christians understand why denying evolution is a waste of a life, it is this speech by Ken Miller.

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