Good news: More Americans believe in the devil than in evolution
posted at 2:00 pm on December 12, 2008 by Allahpundit
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Via the new Harris Poll, a long-distance dedication to my pal CJ, the creationist-slayer. Key data points are in yellow. I’m not sure how to explain Catholics’ greater credulity on matters as diverse as evolution, ghosts, and UFOs, but your theories are welcome. As for the top line, we already have theistic atheists. Why shouldn’t we have atheistic theists, too?
One other intriguing data point at the link: More Americans believe the Old Testament is the word of God (55 percent) than the New Testament (54 percent). Presumably the former attracted Jewish votes that the latter didn’t, but that margin should have been more than offset by a subset of Christians — like, say, George Bush — who don’t regard the OT as literally true but surely take the gospels at face value. Here’s David Brody of CBN picking up on that on CNN yesterday. Exit quotation: “Well, hello! It’s the Holy Bible!”
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yeah they were designed very well
absolutely, especially since evolution doesn’t happen.
so then its a matter of FATIH that it happens. lets see we can take leftovers from turkey processing plants, and make oil of out it, and we don’t have to wait millions of years, but we cannot figure out the steps it took for a bacteria, or any single-celled animal, to become multi-cellular…but evolution had to happen…sure. given enough time…right. so evolution is NOT science, just atheist faith.
right4life on December 18, 2008 at 3:53 PM
I believe Catholicism has accepted evolution. Does the Pope is an atheist?
DarkCurrent on December 18, 2008 at 4:24 PM
DarkCurrent on December 18, 2008 at 4:26 PM
Multicelluar life = turkey oil? What are you talking about?
DarkCurrent on December 18, 2008 at 4:28 PM
right4life,
I’ve been meaning to ask for a couple of days what your objection to the possibility of a multiverse is. I’ve lost track in the long thread where you seemed to object, but I believe you did. If that’s the case, can you explain why in your view a multiverse (or metauniverse) is ruled out?
DarkCurrent on December 18, 2008 at 4:47 PM
That’s exactly the meaning of what I wrote. Mohammed built Islam; he claimed that he was visited by the angel Gabriel several times and gave him the message from God that the Jews and Christians got wrong.
If it was a mere “attempt to re-create the religion of Abraham,” Mohammed was very, very successful. Now we have a world full of 1.2 billion Muslims. Muslims believe that all Christians are polytheists and are going to Hell.
WTF.
Pelayo on December 18, 2008 at 5:16 PM
I was referring to the belief that it takes millions of years to create oil/coal but we have figured out a way to do it quickly….not so with evolution. we still haven’t figured out the mutation sequences, after 150 years of work…
right4life on December 18, 2008 at 9:55 PM
the pope accepts theistic evolution, but thats not evolution, its not taught in schools. and I doubt Dawkins would agree with theistic evolution.
evolution is totally naturalistic, and the evolutionsits know it….and they understand the implications of the theory…
Naturalistic evolution has clear consequences that Charles Darwin understood perfectly. 1) No gods worth having exist; 2) no life after death exists; 3) no ultimate foundation for ethics exists; 4) no ultimate meaning in life exists; and 5) human free will is nonexistent.”
Provine, William B. [Professor of Biological Sciences, Cornell University], “, “Evolution: Free will and punishment and meaning in life”, Abstract of Will Provine’s 1998 Darwin Day Keynote Address.
right4life on December 18, 2008 at 9:57 PM
I don’t object to the idea of it per se…but to say its ’science’ and ID is not…is a bit much. since there is no evidence at all of any sort that multiverses exist or could even be possible…its pure speculation….but it is accepted as science…not because its ’science’ as far as being observed, measured, a mathematical formula for..but because its the only hope to counter the other theory that explains why the universe is the way it is: the anthropic principle…basically the universe is the way it is because its designed that way.
so the multiverse is just a desperate attempt to maintain science as atheism.
right4life on December 18, 2008 at 10:00 PM
and the way I read prophecy..they’re going to win…in the short term…their ‘mahdi’ will come….christians call him the anti-christ…the beast…
although they’re in for an ugly surprise…
right4life on December 18, 2008 at 10:11 PM
I think we’ve know how to get oil out of animal carcasses for a few millenia now. It’s not particularly difficult. You just squeeze. You’re comparing that to evolution of multi-cellular life in the lab?
DarkCurrent on December 19, 2008 at 4:57 AM
I don’t believe the idea of a multiverse is widley accepted as anything more than interesting speculation. Though why you’d wonder if it is even possible seems a bit puzzling. If there’s a God anything’s possible right?
As for the idea that the universe and the life it is designed (the God Hyphothesis), that doesn’t really seem to solve the puzzle either. A God capable of creating a universe would have to be an incredibly sophisticated being/entity, right? But on the other hand theists claim that incredibly sophisticated things can’t arise spontaneously – they have to be designed. So who designed God? And who designed/created whatever designed/created God? So on and so forth. You see the God Hypothesis really solves nothing.
DarkCurrent on December 19, 2008 at 5:18 AM
only in the sense that we have figured out how to short-cut what naturally would be a long process…but we have not managed to figure out anything comparable for evolution.
right4life on December 19, 2008 at 10:19 AM
I wonder about it being included in ’science’, since there is no evidence for it, but it is accepted in science, and ID is not, which tells me that science has become atheism.
He did not arise spontaneously…He always was, is and will be…He is the uncaused cause, the beginning, the end.
He solves the problem quite nicely…
right4life on December 19, 2008 at 10:21 AM
That doesn’t explain how He got designed?
DarkCurrent on December 19, 2008 at 6:01 PM
how can God get designed? He is the designer..He is eternal..none before. none after.
there was never a time before Him.
right4life on December 19, 2008 at 9:26 PM
Ah – more magic. It must be nice to be able to invoke magic in your arguments. So He created Himself? Evolution’s a stretch, but self-creating deities pose no logical problems?
So, what objective evidence do you have that God is eternal and there were none before and after? Don’t tell me God told you, since that’s just hearsay. Perhaps some meta-God in the multiverse created your God. Maybe He doesn’t even realize it Himself. Care to disprove it?
DarkCurrent on December 19, 2008 at 10:17 PM
at least I don’t try to call my *magic* science like the evolutionists do….obviously God was not creatd, surely you know this? He always was.
what objective evidence do you have for evolution? none. I do know the Bible is full of prophecies, many of which have come true, or are coming true as we speak..Israel…Iran getting ready to invade it.
you have 2 choices of course…reject Him, and then of course don’t complain about the consequeces…if there are any…right? go ahead and roll the dice and see. or accept Him, and if He doesn’t exist, then you haven’t lost anything anyway. if the evolutionists (atheists) are right, then they don’t ‘win’…we all just cease to exist….if they’re wrong…then they lose everything…
If God does not exist, then of course you are here by just chance, your life is meaningless and purposeless…and soon you will just be dust. what are the odds that all this just ‘happened’?? I’ll bet against that any day of the week.
right4life on December 20, 2008 at 12:14 PM
I’m asking for your evidence. Claiming I have none doesn’t provide you any. Where’s YOUR evidence?
DarkCurrent on December 20, 2008 at 12:29 PM
I just mentioned some of it, Israel exists, as the Lord says it would…iran is their primary enemy, again as the Lord foretold…now the One who knows the future, knows the past.
the many prophecies in the bible all the evidence I need. no evidence would be enough for you, so you get to find out the hard way. its a little game called bet your life…and your eternity….if you lose…God have mercy on you…but He won’t. and neither will anyone else.
right4life on December 20, 2008 at 5:08 PM
Did you ever consider the possibility that the modern day existence of Israel might be a example of a self-fulfilling prophesy? That brings to mind another question I’ve had: Why is God so interested in the Middle East to the exclusion of the rest of the world?
DarkCurrent on December 20, 2008 at 5:34 PM
What do you mean “He always was”? How do you know? You don’t, it just sounds good to you, probably heard it from a preacher or some obscure passage in the bible. Now you believe it with pride and without question-as if you really know when in fact you have no clue if he’s real or not. The lack of evidence points to his inexistence.
This is the incredible arrogance and ignorance of theists. Apparently you know this mythical Creator exists, not only that, you know his thoughts-but when presented with another credible explanation of the universe that goes against your dogmatic programming, suddenly you guys become skeptics and scientists. What a joke.
You demand proof for evolution and the big bang (of which there is in abundance), but then suspend the same rules when inquiring about your god. If there is a first cause, what caused God? How could a super-sophisticated being come from nothing? Maybe he had a creator, and someone created him, etc (infinite regression). If there was a god you would not need to believe in him and I as an atheist wouldn’t question it
because his existence would be self-evident to us all.
If you theorize there could be a god, but we can’t prove it, I’m with you there. At which point, the inquiry stops. But now if you’re going to tell me he loves you, talks to you, likes to see you sing, dance and pray to him, that he’ll send all the bad people to burn for eternity and all the good people will go to a magical paradise then I think you’ve lost your mind and bought into children’s stories.
Further evidence there is no god is the plethora of different religions. If there was a real god there would be only one, or you wouldn’t need religion-he’d simply tell you what to do to get in his good graces.
Now with all these competing religions claiming to be the ‘true’ one, while all the others are misguided cults, naturally it leads to religious warfare and genocides. Islam is on a rampage again and just proof of why religions are dangerous and inhumane, outmoded ideologies that need to go the way of the dinosaurs.
An aside: good points DarkCurrent, nice to see all the atheists on these boards.
thinkagain on December 21, 2008 at 12:42 AM
thinkagain, Rick Warren was on Fox and Friends last week when he used the argument that two billion people can’t be wrong. “Authority of the many” is a false argument. Mr Warren is ignoring the six billion people who believe something else. Why God revealed himself to an obscure group of peope is really the key. God ignored many, many larger and more well known civilizations. Chrisitanity grew, but there was a lot of sword play involved, but second to Islam.
Pelayo on December 21, 2008 at 12:51 PM
Indeed Pelayo, also referred to the argumentum ad populum (appeal to population/numbers) fallacy. Millions once believed the earth was flat and slavery and theories of racial superiority were true. Now we know they were totally wrong.
Theists don’t seem to trouble themselves with these common sense questions, like the plurality of religions, the fact that muslims, jews and hindus believe just as strongly in their gods and religions as christians do. Or the absurdities and contradictions in the bible betraying the flawed human (not divine) origins. Nor does the idea occur to them that these religions could be contrived by devious individuals to steal their money and turn them into their servile pawns. God will cease to exist the day people stop believing.
Reply to a couple of other posters on flat-earth and geocentrism in the bible:
The bible has repeated references that shows they believed the earth was flat and geocentric, which makes sense for their time when our scientific understanding of the universe was primitive. Refer to this link for proof.
When you check the link above, you’ll see how humans saw their world 2000 years ago and its a very childish, narrow perspective compared to ours. A 7 yr old of our time knows more about our world than they did at the time of Jesus. Yet Christians would have us believe those ideas were the best that could be offered by God and we need to reject today’s science (with their war against evolution).
The existence of Israel, so-called prophecies and miracles which have never been scientifically validated are not proof of God’s existence. Show me a piece of his divine clothing and let scientists analyze it, or perform a miracle that can be verified then you might be on to something Christians. Otherwise its all man-made nonsense from the Iron age.
thinkagain on December 21, 2008 at 3:02 PM
Some might find this site informative:
Skeptic’s Annotated Bible
It lists tons of flaws, absurdities and contradictions contained in the Bible that Christians might not have considered or were aware of.
thinkagain on December 21, 2008 at 3:11 PM
thinkagain, if you look toward the right hand top corner of the SAB page, you will see links to the Skeptic’s Annotated Quran and another for the Book of Mormon.
Pelayo on December 21, 2008 at 4:32 PM
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