1. They're stupid.
2. They're too lazy to study what they're denying.
3. The religious implications of evolution make them cry.
All religions deny evolution but as usual I will write only about the Christians because they are the majority religion in the United States of Jeebus.
Of course all non-religious people accept evolution because the only alternatives are religious fantasies. Therefore it's fair to say denial of evolution is a religious problem. Some religious people say they accept evolution but since they virtually always invoke their magic fairy to invent, use, or guide evolution they are really evolution deniers because natural processes don't need any gods.
For Christians what are the religious implications of evolution?
One of the most important religious implications is the magic Jeebus man. Jeebus was an idiot so even if he lived in the 21st century he would probably be an evolution denier. But he lived almost 2,000 years before Darwin was born. Jeebus never heard of evolution or natural selection. According to the beliefs of Christians, Jeebus was the son of an all-knowing god but Jeebus didn't know anything. Like every other human ape who lived in ancient times Jeebus believed in the magical creation of species out of nothing. This means if Christians accept evolution they are admitting Jeebus was an uneducated moron. They are also admitting they worship a dead ape because one important fact of evolution is people are nothing more than apes as are our closest cousins, the chimpanzee apes. I would call the scientific fact that the dead Jeebus was just an ape (a not very bright ape) a major religious implication of evolution, and a good enough reason to throw the magic Jeebus in the garbage where he and all other fantasies belong.
Another important implication of evolution is this question: If a god fairy had absolutely nothing to do with something as complicated as the development of new species, why would it be necessary for anything else? It's fair to say if evolution is true then every god ever invented was a god who never had anything to do. A useless god is a god that doesn't exist.
So Christians have two big problems. Their dead Jeebus was an idiot and their god fairy never needed its magic wand. Therefore Christians must either completely deny evolution or they must dishonestly pretend evolution requires supernatural intervention. Either way, Christians have to be science deniers if they want to be Christians.
There is a better way for Christians to accommodate the religious implications of evolution. They could grow up, educate themselves, and face facts. They have to accept what Lawrence Krauss said in a YouTube video:
If you look at the universe and study the universe, what you find is that there is no evidence that we need anything other than the laws of physics and the other laws of science to explain everything we see. There's absolutely no evidence that we need any supernatural hand of God.
EVIDENCE FOR EVOLUTION (455 posts)
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Christians have many misconceptions about evolution. They have these misconceptions for two reasons. They are too lazy to study science and they are too stupid to understand science.
Christians think there is a debate about the basic facts of evolution in the scientific community. That is a misconception. Evolution has been accepted as an established truth by the world's biologists for more than a century. There is no debate about the basic facts. If you're a Christian and you still think there is a debate about the truth of evolution, that doesn't mean there's a debate. It only means you're an uneducated moron.
Perhaps the most annoying misconception about evolution is the belief of Christians who call themselves theistic evolutionists. Their belief is evolution could not work without the existence of their god fairy. They think evolution needs a supernatural user or a supernatural inventor. Or they think evolution by natural selection needs their fairy to wave its magic wand to guide and help evolution. They are just plain wrong. Evolution does not need the adjective theistic for the same reason there is no theistic gravity. Natural processes do not need supernatural bullshit.
Another misconception about evolution is extremely dishonest. Christian science deniers like to pretend there are real scientists who prefer the magical intelligent design creationism fantasy instead of evolution. They are wrong because real scientists don't invoke magic to solve scientific problems. That should be obvious to everyone but Christians are fucking idiots so they don't understand. I shouldn't be surprised. They wouldn't be Christians if they weren't insane.
Too many times I've seen this misconception: Evolution is random therefore it's impossible. If evolution was random of course it wouldn't work but natural selection is not random. For the convenience of any Christians reading this here is an excellent explanation of natural selection from Jerry Coyne, the biologist at the University of Chicago who wrote the masterpiece Why Evolution is True.
natural selection: The nonrandom, differential reproduction of alleles from one generation to the next. This usually results from the carriers of some alleles being better able to survive or reproduce in their environments than the carriers of alternative alleles.
Chance alone cannot explain the marvelous fit between individuals and their environment. And it doesn't. True, the raw materials for evolution--the variations between individuals--are indeed produced by chance mutations. These mutations occur willy-nilly, regardless of whether they are good or bad for the individual. But it is the filtering of that variation by natural selection that produces adaptations, and natural selection is manifestly not random. It is a powerful molding force, accumulating genes that have a greater chance of being passed on to others, and in so doing making individuals even better able to cope with their environment. It is, then, the unique combination of mutation and selection--chance and lawfulness--that tells us how organisms become adapted.
Another complaint about evolution is the dishonest idea that evolution has holes in it. Even some people who should know better say evolution has holes. They are wrong. Evolution is the strongest fact of science. The Encyclopedia Britannica was not making things up when they wrote this:
"There is probably no other notion in any field of science that has been as extensively tested and as thoroughly corroborated as the evolutionary origin of living organisms."
There will of course always be research opportunities in evolutionary biology and that's a good thing. But no biologist calls these points for future understanding "holes". Saying evolution has holes is as stupid as saying the orbits of planets around stars have holes. Reality has no holes in it.
A discussion of other misconceptions can be found at 15 Top Misconceptions about Evolution.
Christians, if you have read this far, congratulations. Now all you need to do is grow up and throw out your magic Jeebus man.
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The Irish are brilliant. I am, by the way, half Irish and half Luxembourg.
Atheist Ireland is an Irish advocacy group. We promote atheism and reason over superstition and supernaturalism, and we promote an ethical, secular society where the State does not support or finance or give special treatment to any religion.
Perfect logic from Why I am an atheist – Gavin McBride, Ireland:
I am an atheist more as a result of an application of another rule in my life more than any other reason.
I live my life by a simple rule as follows:
“The world is full of claims being made, 1000s a day, and it is impossible to consider them all. When a claim comes before me therefore that is entirely unsubstantiated in any way I dismiss it instantly”.
GIVEN therefore that the idea there is a god entity is entirely devoid of evidence, arguments, data or reasons to lend it even a modicum of credence I am therefore forced to reject that claim. There simply is no evidence, argument, data or reasons on offer to me to suggest there is a non-human intelligence responsible for the creation and/or subsequent maintenance of our universe.
As soon as some are offered I will consider them. That is after all the very definition of being open-minded. Alas in 18+ years of requesting them I have never been given a single iota.
I am not looking for anything as lofty as “proof”. I merely want to hear evidence and arguments to even lend the idea credence. Alas even setting the bar this low has resulted in nothing of note from the “other side” so to speak.
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The Web's Best Videos on Evolution, Creationism, Atheism and More
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Imagine being a preacher man or preacher woman and you figure out you've been preaching bullshit your entire career. Now that you have grown up and thrown out theist fantasies you have a bit of problem. The only career you've ever known is the worthless preacher business. Do you change careers or do you continue preaching bullshit while not believing any of it?
Hello Christian tards if you're reading this. Your preacher might be an atheist. Isn't that interesting?
The Clergy Project is a confidential online community for active and former clergy who do not hold supernatural beliefs.
From Minister To Atheist: A Story Of Losing Faith
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What is faith?
Faith: trust or belief without proof
When I was young and had to endure religious brainwashing (from insane ugly nuns wearing something close to a burka) I noticed a few things were repeated a few thousand times. For example "the magic Jeebus man died for your sins" and the idea that faith is a virtue.
After I recovered from the intense child abuse I wondered where they got the idea that believing in evidence-free bullshit is a good idea. Of course the reason they love the word faith is because it gives them an excuse to believe anything, no matter how ridiculous, childish, and insane. Without idiotic faith in bullshit every religious cult would go extinct. Most important for religious assholes is faith in heaven and hell. To prevent the extinction of their cults they have to threaten their victims with torture in a magical hell and they have to promise them something equally batshit crazy, a paradise in a magical heaven. They never use the word magic but that's what every single one of their fantasies is, faith (without evidence and without common sense) in magic. These fucking idiots and there's billions of these tards, they have to believe in magic because of their cowardly fear of reality.
Magic is too childish a word for them. Calling their bullshit magic would be too honest. So they use code words like design or they say god can do anything, but they never say god can perform any magic trick. I noticed that whenever I point out the obvious fact their fantasies are beliefs in magic, they refuse to admit it. They are so dishonest they can't even be honest to themselves.
What can be done make these morons grow up? Not much. They either have or don't have what it takes to stop being a coward.
One thing that might be helpful is for them to at least be aware there are more than one billion normal people (atheists) in the world, so it is possible to grow up.
I think that what's going to kill religion is the internet. Of course some people will use the internet to spread lies about everything to defend their magic Jeebus man, but more intelligent people are likely to find out there might be something wrong with having faith, also known as believing in magical bullshit that could never possibly have one shred of evidence.
FAITH: No one word personifies the absolute worst and most wicked properties of religion better than that. Faith is mind-rot. It’s the poison that destroys critical thinking, undermines evidence, and leads people into lives dedicated to absurdity. It’s a parasite regarded as a virtue.
-- PZ Myers
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Bald cypresses abound in northeastern North Carolina's Cypress Swamp.
And now for something completely different. Some real science.
More evidence for evolution and as usual it's interesting.
This is about speciation. The definition of speciation from Jerry Coyne's Why Evolution is True:
speciation: The evolution of new populations that are reproductively isolated from other populations.
Which by the way is how modern human apes and modern chimpanzee apes developed from common ancestors who lived about six million years ago. These two lineages after splitting apart evolved to adapt to their different environments. Our lineage is of course just one small twig on the vast tree of life. We are not a big fucking deal.
Tree species reflect Earth's supercontinent split. A genetic analysis of cypresses show how ancient rift affected their evolution.
An ancient family of trees, the cypresses, got their start on the supercontinent Pangaea before it split apart. New genetic research indicates this continental split helped shaped the evolution of these trees, which now include giant redwoods and sequoias.
More than 200 million years ago, Pangaea contained all the modern continents, squished up against one another. The separation of these continents isolated populations of living things, putting them on different evolutionary paths.
Scientists have already found evidence of the separation of the continents in the family histories of reptiles, amphibians, and mammals.
"Until now, there has been no equivalent evidence for any plant family," researchers report in a study published May 1 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The cypress family, Cupressaceae, a group of conifers with scalelike leaves, is believed to have originated more than 200 million years ago, when Pangaea was still intact, according to the researchers.
By looking at changes in the DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid, the code that makes up genes) of 122 species of cypress, the researchers were able to reconstruct a timeline for their evolution. They also included fossil evidence in the analysis.
The most recently evolved subfamilies of cypress, Cupressoideae and Callitroideae, split from each other about 153 million years ago, as the two remnants of Pangaea pulled away from each other. The northern half, Laurasia, contained what would become North America, Greenland, Europe and much of Asia, while the southern half, Gondwana, would later become South America, Africa, India, Antarctica and Australia.
The legacy remains. Living members of Cupressoideae occur mainly in former Laurasian continents, while Callitroideae are found on the fragments of what was Gondwana, according to the research team, which was led by Kangshan Mao of Lanzhou University, China.
Cypress are now found on all continents except Antarctica, they note.
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This will probably sound like a "sexist pig" thing to say but I noticed airheads are incurably stupid.
airhead: A common derogatory term for a foolish person (most frequently young and female)
I wrote the following comment which is awaiting censorship at Intelligent Design is NOT Creationism:
"Intelligent Design is NOT Creationism"
If magical intelligent design creationism wasn't virtually identical to magical bible creationism it would be so obvious you science deniers wouldn't have to spend so much time lying about it.
Christians should be honest. They should admit "intelligent design" are code words that really mean "supernatural magic". You will still be ridiculed for believing in it but at least nobody will accuse you of being a liar.
"Real scientists are finding more and more evidence within nature that points to the existence of an intelligent designer."
Translation:
Real scientists are finding more and more evidence within nature that points to the existence of A GOD FAIRY WITH A MAGIC WAND.
This claim is just plain dishonest. Real scientists do not invoke magic to solve scientific problems. And you're not fooling anyone when you call magic "design".
"It’s very exciting stuff."
Your god-did-it might be interesting to you but you have no idea what you're missing.
One of my favorite quotes:
"The religious imagination is paltry and petty compared to the awesome reality." -- PZ Myers
You invoked some of the science deniers who work for the Christian Creationist Discovery Institute. They are lawyers and fake scientists who have never discovered anything. They are dishonest and they know it. They laugh at their customers all the way to the bank.
I wrote about your favorite science deniers at my blog. To find it type "darwin killed god" in the google search box then click the I'm Feeling Lucky button.
From a previous comment about one of the dishonest science deniers at the Christian Creationist Discovery Institute, Michael Behe:
"That man is a genius, and very unpopular with evolutionists."
He's a lot more than unpopular. He's a laughing stock. He has tenure at Lehigh University and their Biology Department is ashamed of him. Behe has ruined the reputation of Lehigh. The Biology Department published a statement about Behe and if you read between the lines you will notice they are calling Behe a liar.
Lehigh University Department of Biological Sciences
Department Position on Evolution and "Intelligent Design"
The faculty in the Department of Biological Sciences is committed to the highest standards of scientific integrity and academic function. This commitment carries with it unwavering support for academic freedom and the free exchange of ideas. It also demands the utmost respect for the scientific method, integrity in the conduct of research, and recognition that the validity of any scientific model comes only as a result of rational hypothesis testing, sound experimentation, and findings that can be replicated by others.
The department faculty, then, are unequivocal in their support of evolutionary theory, which has its roots in the seminal work of Charles Darwin and has been supported by findings accumulated over 140 years. The sole dissenter from this position, Prof. Michael Behe, is a well-known proponent of "intelligent design." While we respect Prof. Behe's right to express his views, they are his alone and are in no way endorsed by the department. It is our collective position that intelligent design has no basis in science, has not been tested experimentally, and should not be regarded as scientific.
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