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Originally posted by g.f.p.
Forgive my lateness in posting this, I’ve been away. I see the conversation has moved on. Nonetheless, I feel compelled to reply to this, because it seems you missed my point.
You presumably fall back on your assumption that all religions are contradictory, which is understandable, given the state of the world today. However, I never said that two contradictory things could be true. Nowhere did I state that P & ~P was logical. Since everyone contributing to this thread seems so fond of logic, I will eschew rhetoric and re-express my point symbolically, even though it is not my strongest subject.
Organized religions claim that they are exclusively correct in their beliefs, and that therefore everyone else is wrong. I will represent this as
P v Q v R v S
(P,Q,R,S being religions, and the OR statement being the Exclusive OR, or more correctly (P v Q) & ~(P & Q), but give me a break, I have to write this in a hurry)
My assertion that all religions can in fact be correct was
P & Q & R & S
It was not, as you seemed to take it
P & ~P
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But the point is that different religions
are mutually exclusive in that they believe
different things. thats what makes them
different religions. Did jesus physically get up out of his tomb on the third day after his death? Some religions say yes, some say no. They cannot both be correct.
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If evolution was in fact accepted as a law instead of a theory, this conversation would be moot. Little children would learn about it alongside the laws governing gravity and electricity in public schools, and that would be the end of it. But Evolution is not, for all extents and purposes, a fact. It remains an unproven theory.
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Trust me, the fact that in America religion can dictate what a science teacher can and cannot teach in a classroom is one of the most incredibly farsical things in existence today. The reasons are
purely political and religious. They have absolutely nothing to do with science. You try to find me a respectible science journal which seriously suggests that The Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection is
fundamentally* incorrect...
It is "only a theory" that the earth rotates around the sun. Read that statement again. It is only a theory. But for all intents and purposes it is treated as fact. Why? Because it is a theory that is backed up by all of the evidence, and has withstanded years of attempted falsification.
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Here is my third theory. Humans have always been here, and always will be. I have no evidence to back up this unproven theory, but that's not my point. I've had this conversation before, and it only took me a minute to come up with that idea. Surely other people could come up with other ideas, if they actually tried.
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Hey...we can all go ahead and make up our own "theories". But this is NOT A THEORY in the scientific sense. A theory is ALWAYS backed up with evidence. A theory is ALWAYS falsifiable. Once a theory is falsified, then it is no longer considered a theory.
I could come up with a "theory" that the earth was shat into existence by gigantic interstellar ants, but it wouldn't make such an idea debatable. Are you seriously suggesting that humans have always existed, or were you using that example to make a point? If you honestly belive that, you are hideously misinformed. Not only is it lacking in evidence, there is also very specific contradictory evidence. Your "theory" is falsified. Either way, you have not really suceeded in making any valid point. Agreed, we can all come up with stories to answer any particular question. But that in itself means nothing.
Edward O Wilson explains far more elloquently than I ever could on what the word "thoery" means in the scientific sense.
On Scientific Theory
* You may indeed find an article which questions particular details of evolution by natural selection. Such debating is purely natural, and exists in all areas of science. But these "disagreements" are always abused by being blown out of proportion by people who want to use them to prove the overal theory incorrect. Richard Dawkins illustrates the absolute absurdity of such arguements with a wonderful example.
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It is as if the discovery that the earth is not a perfect sphere but a slightly flattened spheroid were given banner treatment under the headline:
COPERNICUS WRONG. FLAT EARTH THEORY VINDICATED
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That is why I highlighted the word "fundamentally".