(no subject)

[dreamer_easy]

In hopes of showing that "religion" and "scriptural literalism" are not synonymous, I was curious about the proportion of religious people who believe in Creationism, so I started poking around in Google for polls, and immediately ran splat into this brick wall:

"In an August 2005 Gallup poll, 58% of the public said that creationism was definitely or probably true as an explanation for the origin and development of life, but 55% also said this about evolution. Since creationism and evolution are incompatible as explanations, some portion of the public is clearly confused about the meaning of the terms."

http://people-press.org/commentary/display.php3?AnalysisID=118

religioustolerance.org discusses the sometimes contradictory results of such polls. One explanation is that people who accept evolution, but also believe in God, may have difficulty choosing between "evolution" and "creation" as simple alternatives. (If commenting, please read their discussion rather than responding to my extremely brief summary here.)

Comments

[caelidh.livejournal.com]

Yeah.. well it depends on how well they defined CREATIONISM.. There is biblical creationism... the LITERAL 6 day account...

and then there is a more philosophical view... that GOD CREATED the world..

There is a very good book by Eugenie C Scott called EVOLUTION vs CREATIONISM.

It discusses and breaks down the definition and explanations and science behind everything and compares them and the history of the Creation "science"...

[thegameiam.livejournal.com]

By "Scriptural Literalism" do you mean "taking translations literally"? Certainly, while the opening chapters of Genesis talk about "evening and morning, the second day" - the word yom there is regularly used to mean things that are not "this particular 24 hour period." c.f. Aleinu: "ba-yom ha-hu ..." which can either be "and on that day" or "once the preceding things have occurred."

I don't have much patience for people who take translations literally.

All that said, I believe that many people mix up evolution with the origin of species - the former is observable scientific fact, the latter is speculation (because it was a singular event in the past - therefore, the best we can figure out is how it might have happened). So I personally believe in both Divine creation, roughly according to the Bible, and also believe that evolution is a mechanism set in place by God much the same way that the Krebs Cycle is. How should I answer a poll like that?

[stevencaldwell.livejournal.com]

It's fascinating, this whole creation/evolution thing when you approach it from a Buddhist perspective. There is no creation, no destruction; there is only change and flow.However, we are the creators of our own worlds (to a point) amidst this constant flow, though our choices and acts. So, is it 'Creationist-ish' or 'Evolutionist-ish'? Dare I utter the oft-quoted Middle Way between these extremes? Or is that just Intelligent design?

[kateorman.livejournal.com]

Buddhists have more important tofu to fry.

[stevencaldwell.livejournal.com]

Mu

[kateorman.livejournal.com]

Does a god have Buddha-nature?

[stevencaldwell.livejournal.com]

That depends on your definition of Buddha Nature. If you see Buddha Nature as representing our potential to become Enlightened; sort of a gravity or trajectory of spiritual development then, yes, a god does have Buddha Nature. There are numerous accounts of the Buddha teaching to gods and goddesses and them achieving Enlightenment both in the pali and sanskrit texts. Thus, they have Buddha Nature.

If, however, you see Buddha Nature as a spiritual component of living beings you are getting dangerously close to the idea of a soul or unreducable essence. This would be contrary to the law of Patitya Samutpada - Conditioned Co-Production or Contingency which states that all things are dependent upon conditions - even conditions are conditioned. Similarly in the Heart Sutra, as you well know, 'Form is no other than Emptiness, Emptiness no other than form' There is No-Thing. Therefore, how can a god or anything else for that matter, have Buddha Nature.

Here endeth the lesson!

[kateorman.livejournal.com]

Holy crap, I was just making a rubbish pun! ("Does a dog have Buddha nature?" "Mu".) That actually answers a conundrum for me, though, about the relationship between the Zen bits of me and the Pagan bits of me. If even the gods are empty then the two things fit together nicely.

Does a cat have Buddha nature?
Wuf.

[jvowles.livejournal.com]

SOOO tired of "either/or" options.

Science is about How.
Philosophy & Religion is about Who and Why.

An omnipotent being can create a universe according to whatever rules it wishes. God can be the actor behind the actions; we only have the means to detect the actions.

But making predictions and decisions about how to interact with the physical world based on what people allege a mythical sky being did a few thousand years ago? Not the most productive way to figure things out.

Around the time our country was founded, there was a fair amount of support for the idea of god as a master clockmaker who set things in motion and stepped back to watch.

[dameruth.livejournal.com]

Word. I'm a professional biologist, and I have never really understood why science and religion are supposed to be so mutually exclusive. They deal with entirely different questions.

[hexacontium.livejournal.com]

They might deal with different questions but many people think there's only one mehtod and one answer. I wonder if any strongly religious people studied together with you and kept it up. I remember two girls starting out in geology with me. They thought they could separate the scientific stuff from their faith. Slow concepts such as plate tectonics and mountain building where a problem, paleontology as well, but they really gave up during a course dealing with isotope dating methods and went next door to environmental studies simply because they could not cope with the confusion in their heads :(

[kateorman.livejournal.com]

I'm trying to remember if the first person to question the literal account of the Flood was Leonardo Da Vinci. Something about snail fossils up mountains. I know what it was! They were sea snails, and the mountains were more than 40 days and nights' crawl from the ocean. Might not have been da Vinci, though.

[kateorman.livejournal.com]

Science is about How.
Philosophy & Religion is about Who and Why.

"Non-overlapping Magisteria" or NOMA, as advocated by Stephen Jay Gould.

the idea of god as a master clockmaker who set things in motion and stepped back to watch

Later to become Isaac Asimov's "Darwinian Pool Table". I suspect that a lot of people who seem confused about the definitions in fact take that view - that nature operates according to natural law, but that God wrote those laws.

[purplecat]

I'm fairly sure I met a Christian once who explained to me that, as far as they were concerned, the account in the bible was true but that God had clearly put all the physical evidence for evolution in the world as well in order to keep us busy. Being God, this evidence was, of course, water-tight. Therefore Evolution was a process genuinely at work in the world at the present time. Creationism was true but to all intents and purposes as far as Scientific Method could go Evolution was true too both at present and historically.

[kateorman.livejournal.com]

God's a bit of a clown, apparently.

[purplecat]

I've always kind-of wondered if God's idea was to give us something interesting to do instead of, for instance, killing each other, but nevertheless leaving us the free will to do either. If so it seems rather sad.

[kateorman.livejournal.com]

Curse our sudden but inevitable betrayal!

Ya boo sucks to God!

[stevencaldwell.livejournal.com]

To be frank, I am a bit tired of God.

What is it with God (and debates about him/her) anyway. Perhaps if we stopped talking about hir s/he might go away?

It's rather like a fanboy/girl egoscanning a fanzine for their own name; does s/he have to have hir name mentioned and opinions opined about hir in order to justify their existence? Are we doing God any favours by pandering to hir ego?

S/he's pretty needy if you ask me, so that's why I'd rather do without. Anyway, I'm the needy one in my universe. There isn't room for the two of us.

Re: Ya boo sucks to God!

[kateorman.livejournal.com]

"Who is this God person anyway?"

Re: Ya boo sucks to God!

[antikythera.livejournal.com]

The argument goes something like this: “I refuse to prove that I exist,” says God, “for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing.”

“But,” says Man, “the Babel fish is a dead giveaway isn’t it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don’t. QED.”

“Oh dear,” says God, “I hadn’t thought of that,” and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.

-- Douglas Adams

[pbristow.livejournal.com]

Should I wade into yet another discussion about a false dichotomy, or should I go and slit my throat... It's so tough to decide when the options are set out so plainly! =:o?