Utterly Meaningless

Why does it take a greater level of critical thinking to believe that life evolved than to believe that life was created? Both theories are based on faith…not based on anything any person alive has ever witnessed firsthand.

Both theories are based on faith

One is based on logical inference and the other is based on magical thinking. Definitely not the same.

Life out of substance where there was no life doesn’t denote magical thinking?

Abiogenesis is not a part of evolutionary theory.

Ahhhh, OK. I always thought it was.

So where did life originate?

No idea. Life on Earth may have originated somewhere out there (in outer space). Or it might be abiogenesis. Or maybe God said “Let there be light.” Doesn’t really matter, though, because all of the evidence that we have indicates that life all life on Earth evolved from a common ancestor. That’s what drives the creationists nuts.

It might further drive the creationists nuts to know that some of us don’t really care how we got here. I personally think the people of ancient Atlantis were visited by lizard people from space guided by an interstellar entity. It could just as easily have been the Great Green Arkleseizure though.

For this coming Sunday in the NYT:

Ever the questioner . . .Dr. Sagan parses the difference between belief and science this way: “I think if we ever reach the point where we think we thoroughly understand who we are and where we came from, we will have failed.”

The search for who we are does not lead to complacency or arrogance. . .

“It goes with a courageous intent to greet the universe as it really is, not to foist our emotional predispositions on it but to courageously accept what our explorations tell us.”

Daryl, maybe it was a PUN, for a statistician to say about evolution: “I don’t see it changing!?”

But I’ll stick with Darwin’s less certain ( thus more certainly correct) view —

“Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert . .“

Doesn’t really matter, though, because all of the evidence that we have indicates that life all life on Earth evolved from a common ancestor. That’s what drives the creationists nuts.
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That, combined with any sort of uncertainty. Uncertainty about the starting point, if there was one, uncertainty about the exact and complicated and difficult to understand process so far, and uncertainty about the future.

The need to have an answer — any answer, no matter how silly — drives a lot of people.

Nance

Yeah, it’s like the root of all evil! Look what it’s done not just to schooling (and homeschooling) but to our judicial system, medicine, criminal justice, journalism, international “intelligence” gathering . . .