Whats that?

It just makes you a person that believes in science and not magic. Do you believe in magic?


What if a person believes in gravity? Does that make them a gravatist?

do we really need another evolution thread? i think that thread is 2 doors down

Do we need a term to label a person for each thing they believe? I'm also a disenfrancisementalisationist.

oooo thomas....say that 10 times fast lol

that's why i try to use general terms but apparently that's not acceptable either

I've been labelled many things, but none of the labels I've been given here have offended me.

is that a challenge????

a scientist? huh
read some, he went to bible college to study to be a preacher and when he graduated he traveled to study birds before he started preaching.while on his trip he read a book from a know GOD hater by Charlse lyal it was called the principles of geology trying to say that earth was millions of yrs old(b/s) and slowly changed his faith
he WASN'T BY ANY MEANS A SCIENTIST

Correction there, The Origin of Species used Empirical Method in its writing. The theories he proposed were likewise subject to and backed by other experiments and observations. Darwin kept methodical notes and also his wording was very careful. he was operating in a day when the church still held massive sway in a persons life in a lot of ways beyond spiritual. Comparing him to a scientist of this day there is no comparison but in his day he was fully a scientist by any stretch of the imagination. His observations created a huge stir for a long time.

Also it does not matter if a known God hater wrote a book on geology that changed Darwin's mind. Darwin got a chance to understand the phenomenon he witnessed on a tiny group of islands where there was distinct diversity among the islands but the species were closely related. There were features of Evolution like Mutation and Punctuated Equilibrium that Darwin at the time didn't understand. He gave us a framework of an idea that a lot of others have built on.

To belittle him like that is a little short sighted. Have you done anything that had that much impact on science? I see too much evidence pointing at Evolution as a fact. There is more to it than just Darwin. The thing that sucks for me is how everyone knows Gods plan when God didn't tell anyone squat of his real plans.

I did read some. I did go to college too. Origin of Species made me want to go to the Galapagos. Darwin had to gently bash the Church's view on life because if what he found through careful and methodically cataloged evidence for his arguments. He went as far into the biology of each creature he observed including food types. The man almost got himself thrown out of the university with his book but it was carefully written.

Then along came Mendel and his research almost wound up lost in obscurity! I take it Mendel also is an idiot?

Maybe you should study a bit before you make comments. Darwin originally attended university to study to be a doctor like his father, but was more interested in natural sciences and didn't spend much time in his studies. His father was angered by this and enrolled him in another university to be a Anglican parson. While there he continued his person studies of natural sciences. His cousin Fox introduced him to the popular craze for beetle collecting which he pursued zealously, getting some of his finds published in Stevens' Illustrations of British entomology. He became a close friend and follower of botany professor John Stevens Henslow and met other leading naturalists who saw scientific work as religious natural theology, becoming known to these dons as “the man who walks with Henslow”.

Darwin’s family tradition was nonconformist Unitarianism, while his father and grandfather were freethinkers, and his baptism and boarding school were Church of England. When going to Cambridge to become an Anglican clergyman, he did not doubt the literal truth of the Bible. He learnt John Herschel's science which, like William Paley’s natural theology, sought explanations in laws of nature rather than miracles and saw adaptation of species as evidence of design.On board the Beagle, Darwin was quite orthodox and would quote the Bible as an authority on morality. He looked for "centres of creation" to explain distribution, and related the antlion found near kangaroos to distinct "periods of Creation".

By his return he was critical of the Bible as history, and wondered why all religions should not be equally valid. In the next few years, while intensively speculating on geology and transmutation of species, he gave much thought to religion and openly discussed this with Emma, whose beliefs also came from intensive study and questioning. The theodicy of Paley and Thomas Malthus vindicated evils such as starvation as a result of a benevolent creator's laws which had an overall good effect. To Darwin, natural selection produced the good of adaptation but removed the need for design, and he could not see the work of an omnipotent deity in all the pain and suffering such as the ichneumon wasp paralysing caterpillars as live food for its eggs. Though reticent about his religious views, in 1879 he responded that he had never been an atheist in the sense of denying the existence of a God, and that generally “an Agnostic would be the more correct description of my state of mind.”

At Edinburgh University Darwin neglected medical studies to investigate marine invertebrates, then the University of Cambridge encouraged a passion for natural science. His five-year voyage on HMS Beagle established him as an eminent geologist whose observations and theories supported Charles Lyell’s uniformitarian ideas, and publication of his journal of the voyage made him famous as a popular author. Puzzled by the geographical distribution of wildlife and fossils he collected on the voyage, Darwin investigated the transmutation of species and conceived his theory of natural selection in 1838. Although he discussed his ideas with several naturalists, he needed time for extensive research and his geological work had priority. He very clearly was and considered himself to be a scientist.

self preservation of one, or some, in this world, or for the afterlife, has always spawned what was deemed as evil in all cases, which can be nothing more than human tragedy and atrocity perpetrated upon members of the same species, therefore, self preservation of all as one and equal, could be the only opposite of anything ever called as evil???

Would you consider the illustration to the left good or evil, or would you consider neither?

(----------------------------

lol...

just a thing.

"Good" and "Evil" is subjectively based. Depending on where you are in the world it will depend on several factors. One only needs to glance through an issue of National Geographic or watch that show "Taboo" to understand this.

People also find themselves in difficult situations where split second decisions have to be made in the interest of self preservation. Generally "good and evil" is not a top priority in those moments.

I refuse to use "evil" as a noun. People are not "born evil" in my estimation. Actions can be evil, people can have a high propensity to allow or commit evil acts but there is no such thing as evil people or motivations to act out of evil.