Another chance: How does belief in evolution resemble a religion?

Question

I'll make it a bit easier this time, just fill in the blanks:

Like religious belief, evolutionary belief includes its:

devil

demons

rituals

saints

evangelists

holy sites

holy relics

rituals

dogmas

doctrines

sacred writings

personal devotions

etc.

Just name some for each category - whoever names the most will win the points! What fun!

Love Jack

Answer 1

sigh

No.

Most of the things you list are supernatural in nature. If you'd said "bad guys" and "good guys" -- except that there not concensus about all of those, among believers in science. We'd all agree that, for instance, Pat Robertson is a bad guy. But there's no cannonical list (so to speak).

Ditto good guys. Darwin, for instance, isn't important because an imaginary being wants me to think he's important. He's important for what he wrote. His ideas actually map on to reality really, really well (on the whole).

Rituals? No. Not purely symbolic behaviors. Science, and the communication of its results. They aren't rituals. Their purposeful behavior.

Not holy anything. There are important places and things: the Galopagos Islands, for instance. But that's not about woo-woo; it's a place to see how natural selection works, and was important to development of the theory.

Lucy isn't a holy relic, she's an important piece of our figuring out our history, in a really practical way.

Dogmas are irrationally believed things. Religions have them; science tries not to.

Teachers are not the same as evangelists. (Well, in some ways, Dawkins is kinda both, I suppose.)

personal devotions? I don't even know what that means!

If you understood anything about evolution, you wouldn't keep asking this mis-guided question.

Rationality is not the same as irrationality. Evidence is not the same as lack of evidence.

Answer 2

For evolutionists ( AKA Atheists) the paired up items are as follows:

devil - Jesus

demons - Christians

rituals - Evolutionist conventions

saints - Obviously Darwin, but also Weed-smoking hippies like Carl Sagan

evangelists - All biology professors

holy sites - Galapogos islands, San Francisco, Weed farms

holy relics - Missing links, Piltdown meltdown man, Kennewick man, forged chinese fossils

rituals - See above

dogmas - Piltdown dog (just joking).  Anything Christian is evil, anything that refutes evolution should be shouted down , suppressed.  First amendment doesn't apply to Creationists.

doctrines - Evolution of Species (modified to meet current trends and to "fix" the many flaws of course)

sacred writings - Evolution of Species and other works by Darwin of Nazareth

personal devotions - Jerking off to Lucy, the missing link chick (who cares if she's a rotten 3 million year old corpse - she's HOTTT !

Answer 3

Did you ever take a science class in school? Do you even know what science IS??

Answer 4

There is not a shred of scientific evidence that supports the concept of species to species evolution. Darwin himself stated that the fossil record would bear him out; that we should literally be tripping over the fossils of transitional form species. To date there have been exactly none. Only a couple of hoaxes that were proved to be such.

Evolution is the anti-religion religion.

Answer 5

Why don't you and your ilk go and discuss this topic in Religion and Spirituality? I'm certain you'd find more people there inclined to listen to the kind of nonsense you are bringing forth (Sadly, community guidelines won't let me go into detail).

People like you, who don't want to understand science, should just keep reading their Bible, all the certainties provided - or not???

Answer 6

The only similarity is that both require faith. Evolution still lacks absolute proof, so faith is still needed in order to believe in it. However, much, much less faith is required to believe in evolution than is needed for any religion.

Answer 7

Well, as a BA Psych with interest in evolutionary social psych, but not much background in the biological texts,

all I can say is

There is no proof,

and therefore belief is the basis of its contentions.

Answer 8

"Evolution" is a scientific theory. Science involves observing things, measuring and quantifying. Religion involves only faith. Faith requires no observation, no facts or figures. Faith requires a suspension of of reality. Scientific theory requires testing and mathematical predictability.

Your question implies some similarity, there is none. The extreme christian fundamentalists have tried to brand scientists as secularists. Persecuting the worlds greatest thinkers has been sport for religious leaders for at least 2000 years. Attacking intellectualism is what keeps mankind from advancing (evolving) toward his truest potential.  

Your "fun" exercise, helps fuel the fires of intolerence.