Why isn't Evolution considered a religion?

Question

Being neither observable nor reproduceable (true scientific method) evolution is embraced as "Science" while Creation is scoffed at by the "Scientific" community. It takes an equal amount of faith to believe that the Grand Canyon was made over "millions of years" as it does to believe it was made durring the "Flood of Noah." None of us were there to see it happen.

Answer 1

Because evolution doesn't involve a commerce in the supernatural. There's no trade of belief and ritual for supernatural gain.

Evolutionary science is the result of observation and reason freed from a priori assumptions about the world. A belief that it is raining outside based on the observation that someone who's just stepped inside is dripping wet and the sound of water falling on the roof can be heard is not a religion. It is the produce of reason.

Yes amigo evolution is observable. It makes a simple prediction, that genes that aid in survival are represented in greater numbers in succeeding generations. that prediction has been observed to be true in countless experiments and in observations in the wild. It predicted that the hereditary mechanism was flawed in a way that introduced variation between related individuals nearly a century before the discovery of DNA and mutations thereof. Distinct species have been noted in human created enviroments that didn't exist 200years ago, species which are closely related to but distinct from naturaly occurring species.

The flood of Noah requires magic at every turn to be made to work, magic has never dared show itself in a lab, is not needed as an explanatory mechanism and is the product of intellectual infantilism. The forces of erosion are and have been observed. The observed way in which sediments are deposited defies any serious suggestion that the grand canyon or any other geological feature is the result of a global flood.

Answer 2

wrong (or you are kidding, right?)

let's start with the Grand Canyon: erosion is observable daily. It is easy to build models that show how long it can take to carve out something the size of the Grand Canyon.

as for evolution, well (1) it makes a lot of scientific sense (favourable traits spread in a species), and (2) it has actually been observed, not just by Darwin but by others.

evolution is not over, you know - it is still happening. There's less food up North, so if your genes want to make you a big polar bear, you're at a disadvantage vs another bear with genes to grow smaller. Near term all bears grow smaller because there's less food around - but longer term, the species ends up smaller (irrespective of the amount of food) because having the genes to grow large is a disadvantage.

Another example, edelweiss flowers in the Himalayas. They're much larger than the small kind you find in the Alps. They're very popular with tourists / mountaineers. Over a couple decades, the flower's stem has evolved to become much shorter, and the flowers to a smaller size. Why? Because large flowers standing tall were ideal picks for human visitors, so were picked, so it is the smaller, shorter flowers that spread their genes. Incidentally, it is also probably the reason why in the Alps, where there's been many more tourists for much longer, the edelweiss is a short, tiny flower.

another example: a species of butterfly with light-coloured wings, to match the light-coloured bark of regional trees (to avoid being eaten by birds). Then in one area, concentration of polluting industries led to the trees' trunks becoming progressively darker (with soot). Guess what, the nearly white butterlies suddenly were at a disadvantage as they had become much more easily visible - but those with slightly less clear colours suddenly gained an advantage. Within a matter of a few generations, the butterflies of that species, in that region, were largely grey, not white.

so on one hand you've got Creation - which contains zero scientific reasoning, and is impossible to verify. And on the other you've got evolution - which does contain logical, scientific reasoning, and is observable today, at least on a small scale.

Answer 3

There is no evidence for a world wide flood while is there is evidence to suggest to us how the Grand Canyon might have been formed.

The Vatican has a very reputable science division and a good scientist, athiest or not, would not deny evidence based on the fact that it might support something taked about in the bible, such as a world wide flood. The problem is, there is no evidence of such an event. There is evidence of local floods. Here were I live one can climb a 3000 ft hill and find seashell fossils but on closer inquiry one would find this is due to plate upthrusting. The water was not 3000 feet higher here in the past. The hill was 3000 feet lower.

Answer 4

I know this isn't what you want to hear, but Evolution is both observable and reproducible. It isn't something that happened and has stopped, it continues today. We can observe how it happens in quickly reproducing organisms (such as how Tuberculosis evolves to resist medical treatments) and in the fossile record.

It is possible to be religious and accept evolution at the same time. Just accept the fact that the account in the Bible is meant as a story to describe how God created the universe. The reality was too hard to explain, so a story was put in its place. By making that one small adjustment, you don't have to fight these battles. Who started/created the Big Bang is truly a matter of religion, I doubt we can understand that mechanism.

Answer 5

Evolution isn't considered a religion for the same reason that Creationism isn't considered a science. Science takes raw data (facts) and organizes them into a coherent explanation to explain the universe. Creationism takes material from a religious text as uses that to explain the universe. Science can change due to new interpretations of facts but religious texts cannot change. The basic underlying method is: Organizing Facts = Science, Belief in Ancient Texts = Religion.

Answer 6

Who says it isn't observable nor reproducible? Have you every heard of Tuberculosis? Or the hawthorn fly? That was an observation in evolution. And they have reproduced it with many different types of lifeforms. So there is a considerable amount of science behind the theory. That is what makes it a theory and not a hypothesis. Where as there is no science behind creationism.

Answer 7

The essential difference between evolution and creationism has to do with epistemology.

If all memory were erased from all humans, so that we had to start over from the Stone Age and work our way back up to scientific enlightenment, the theory of evolution would reemerge approximately in the same form we have it today.

However, different religions would grow up among men, with different theological tenets, and it is unlikely that Christianity and its attached creation mythology would reappear in anything that closely resembled its current form.

The reason for that is simple. Evolution is the END RESULT of a lot of objective scientific inquiry. That is, evolution is the un-preconditioned ANSWER to many questions having to do with biological history.

By contrast, creationism is the INITIAL ASSUMPTION of a particular gang of quasi-religious pseudoscientific pretenders. That is, creationism is a PREJUDICE having advocates who fraudulently demand that it be taken as the answer.

Answer 8

For the same reason that photosynthesis isn't considered a religion. Because it is a matter of biology, not theology. Atoms have never been directly observed either, though, like evolution, their existence is supported by mountains of evidence. Do you have the same problem with atomic theory? Do you think the existence of atoms should be taught to children in school?

Answer 9

"The Scientific method is a body of techniques for investigating phenomena and acquiring new knowledge, as well as for correcting and integrating previous knowledge. It is based on observable, empirical, measurable evidence, and subject to rules of reasoning" (wikipedia)

Evolution (and the Geology that you mentioned too) is based on copious observable, empirical evidence and subject to rules of reasoning. Therefore it is science.

Observations include the fact that everything has parent(s) and inherit traits, the vast fossil record showing systematic changes in morphology through time, observed instances of speciation by biologists, present and past biogeography, comparative anatomy, anatomical and molecular vestiges, ontogeny and developmental biology, genetic mutations, dna, sterility of the offspring of related species, increasing genetic information within species, and natural selection in the laboratory.

These observations are repeatable. And those which involve experiments in the laboratory, are reproduceable.

Creation "Science" is scoffed at because it employs dishonest methods (eg. lying about what the opposing science says), logical fallacies, and decides on the conclusions first and then selects small pieces of evidence to support them. ie. it is not subject to rules of reasoning. It is essentially propaganda - look up the "wedge statement" by the Discovery Insititute.

Answer 10

In arithmetic axioms are basically assumed real for the point of seeing what outcomes from that assumption. there isn't any assumption made in keeping with observations of the genuine international. neither is there any assumption that those axioms are themselves real in any experience. arithmetic is instead in actuality those needed truths of the variety "If X then Y" the place X consists of contraptions of axioms and Y consists of needed conclusions in keeping with those axioms. traditionally The church fought for years against non-euclidean geometry. lots so as that the advent of non-euclidean geometry became at the back of schedule by way of fact mathematicians (quite Gauss ) feared for his or her saftey.