LAZtheinfamous

Here's a song you might like... Free Will by Rush


"Freewill"

There are those who think that life has nothing left to chance
A host of holy horrors to direct our aimless dance

A planet of play things
We dance on the strings
Of powers we cannot perceive
'The stars aren't aligned
Or the gods are maligned'
Blame is better to give than receive

[Chorus:]
You can choose a ready guide in some celestial voice
If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice
You can choose from phantom fears and kindness that can kill
I will choose a path that's clear
I will choose freewill

There are those who think
That they were dealt a losing hand
The cards were stacked against them
They weren't born in Lotusland

All preordained
A prisoner in chains
A victim of venomous fate
Kicked in the face
You can't pray for a place
In heaven's unearthly estate

[Chorus]

Each of us
A cell of awareness
Imperfect and incomplete
Genetic blends
With uncertain ends
On a fortune hunt that's far too fleet

[Chorus]

As to your assertion that belief in creationism and freewill are mutually exclusive and diametrically opposed, you are incorrect. Creationism is the belief that God created the Earth and all that is upon it. It has nought to do with predestination or freewill. Indeed, Catholicism, the root of all Christian religions, believes that free will and choice of actions are what seperates humans from animals AND that God created us with freewill. We make choices for which there are consequences. We also believe in creationist evolution. There is no conflict here. Evolution does not mean free will and creationism does not mean predestination. In fact, the New Testament explicitly denies the concept of pre-detemined fate.

Or maybe I am just confused and require your pity for being on a 2000 year old bandwagon.

Personally I think LAZ has made an interesting point.

@Nomad: If that is the case how come I have seen so many religious people say that the idea of us evolving from apes is both idiotic and sinful? A prime example would be to look at the bible belt in America, where pretty much anything you do can have a mob calling you the spawn of the devil and trying to lynch you.

Because, Skringly, those are the extemists, a bit like not every Muslim is toting a backpack full of explosives. Don't worry, to them being a Catholic means being condemned to hell also. Note that I only speak from my own experience as a Catholic, which is the font of all Christian faiths. Many of them seem to have forgotten or are in denial that the Catholics carried the Christian message for 1500 years until Luther posted a message on a church door to kickstart the Protestant movement.

I can reassure you we do not have closed minds like them. We believe in all 3 "radical" ideas: Creation by God, evolution through nature and Freewill. Pre-destination is not a part of the faith and, as mentioned above, is taught by Jesus in the New Testament to be a concept that has no bearing on his teachings and thus our faith. We are taught that animals act through instinct (I don't agree with this or you wouldn't be able to teach an animal tricks...) and humans have freedom of choice for their actions, hence the concept of reconciliation, a practice that exists only in the Catholic church for exactly that reason. Our choice have consequences and those are to be considered before we CHOOSE to carry out the actions.

From the Catholic Catechism: On Free Will
God created man a rational being, conferring on him the dignity of a person who can initiate and control his own actions. "God willed that man should be 'left in the hand of his own counsel,' so that he might of his own accord seek his Creator and freely attain his full and blessed perfection by cleaving to him."

Freedom is the power, rooted in reason and will, to act or not to act, to do this or that, and so to perform deliberate actions on one's own responsibility. By free will one shapes one's own life. Human freedom is a force for growth and maturity in truth and goodness; it attains its perfection when directed toward God, our beatitude.

On Evolution:
Pope Pius XII declared that "the teaching authority of the Church does not forbid that, in conformity with the present state of human sciences and sacred theology, research and discussions . . . take place with regard to the doctrine of evolution, in as far as it inquires into the origin of the human body as coming from pre-existent and living matter—[but] the Catholic faith obliges us to hold that souls are immediately created by God" (Pius XII, Humani Generis 36)

Pope Joh Paul II:
"'Humani Generis'," he stated, "considered the doctrine of 'evolutionism' as a serious hypothesis, worthy of a more deeply studied investigation and reflection on a par with the opposite hypothesis. ... Today, more than a half century after this encyclical, new knowledge leads us to recognize in the theory of evolution more than a hypothesis. ... The convergence, neither sought nor induced, of results of work done independently one from the other, constitutes in itself a significant argument in favor of this theory."

Nomad, an excellent find with the pope quotes. And to answer the question, this is more directed towards the bible belt of the US. From what I've seen most of the rest of the world's christians seem to put a bit more thought into it. I got a great reply from a buddy of mine who is a professor of anthropology around here:

"Laz, in my many, many arguments with people telling me I'm going to hell for daring to teach evolution, I've very often used some version of the free will vs. predestination argument. It's an inherent problem of Judeo-Christian belief systems that they teach that God is omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent, yet humans have the freedom to sin, and it's a problem that most people don't notice because they've quite simply taken free will and an all-powerful god as givens without considering that the two principles don't mesh. And Doug, in my experience, the overwhelming majority of anti-evolutionary arguments come out of the Judeo-Christian tradition; Buddhists, Hinduists, and others, on the whole, don't seem to have as much of a problem with evolution, though there are exceptions in certain sects.

I have frequently encountered that the biggest problem a lot of creationists seem to have with evolution is the notion that humanity is just another animal- that rather than being specially created by God in our current form to be the masters of all we survey, we had to climb the ladder, as it were, like every other living thing- that we were neither specially selected to be the coolest thing on Earth, nor are we particularly unique in the history of life, given that we're only the last of a long series of upright-walking, tool-using, self-aware apes. Evolution strips away of a lot of the anthropocentric sense that the world was made for us and that we're special and separate from every other living thing, and that makes a lot of people deeply uncomfortable, as the primacy of humanity, like free will, is one of those things most people take as a given. I spend a lot of my semesters patiently teaching my students not to draw a line between themselves and other animals- as I say the very first day, 'You're an animal too; get used to it." Also, an inevitable consequence of evolution is also the possibility- indeed, the likelihood- of eventual extinction, and that also upsets people a great deal. Creationism is a safe refuge for those who want to hide from these truths. It's telling that, when Darwin first published Origin of Species, which didn't discuss human evolution, most people at the time said, "Oh, cool, that makes sense, well done." Then, twelve years later, when he published The Descent of Man, which basically says, "Hey, you know all that evolution stuff I told you about awhile back? That happened to us too," suddenly many of the people who'd previously supported him went out of their way to talk about how deeply flawed the entire notion of evolution was, and that was when the public backlash began. I get a similar response with a lot of my students- they're cool with evolution as long as the examples I use are of moths and dinosaurs and other nonhuman organisms, and they start to fight me when I start talking about human evolution. Mind you there, are some people who fight me from the beginning- this term I had one girl who just stopped taking notes, glared at me, and slowly shook her head for the entire evolution lecture- but you just can't please some people. "

Although, I also liked his answer from earlier in his career; "This is part of the class, it is a requirement, learn it or fail".

People just have to wake up and accept the following:
Kingdom - Animalia
Phylum - Chordata (having a backbone)
Class - Mammalaria (that's why women have breasts/mammaries)
Order - Primate (just like the Old World apes)
Family - Hominidae
Genus - Homo
Species - sapiens
Sub Species - sapiens sapiens

Yep we're an animal all right.

Don't believe me, go to the local pub on a Friday night.


"This is part of the class, it is a requirement, learn it or fail". - congratulate him for me on this!

Creationism is the template of the predestination argument, and evolution is the free will argument.

I'm gonna go ahead and say that it's the exact opposite.

Creationism states that the world was created as such by God a few millenia ago. But from there on, he hasn't had any profound influence on the development of this world. The world was made and then it was left to make its own choices to go forward.

Evolution, on the other hand, is the pinnacle of predestination. Evolution is not choice. You don't choose to carry the mutation that ensures the best survival rate for your species. You don't choose to still make it even if you're not of the dominant strain. If you carry the mutation, your offspring will go on. If you don't, you are ultimately doomed.

@Nomad- I don't that calling the freaks that say we didn't evolve from apes are extremists because, if so, every person below the Mason-Dixon line (bar a few) are extremist lol. God, when I was living in Virginia over the summer I thought my head was going to explode with all the nonsense people spewed.

That said... well not sure what I was going to say. I think people that believe we didn't evolve from Apes need to be taken out back and dealt with like every politician in the US. And trust me, that doesn't end well for either party involved lol

@Ark: It's not just the south. Granted, I go to the Catholic University of America so of course lots of people will lean towards the extreme side of things in matters of politics and religion, but it's downright strange how many otherwise completely rational people having difficulty coming to terms with evolution.

@Wrathchild: If you are at the Catholi University, just point them at my quotes above and let them argue with the Catechism and the 2 most popular POpes in modern history...

@Ark:- actions speak louder than words. Maybe it's time for them to join the modern era...