Posted 18 February 2009 - 12:05 PM
I find that Western youth generally leans towards evolution which I think is simply because of our schooling practice and the resulting peer group pressure(conformity), and as people mature they start thinking more deeply about other possibilities.
Due to the human condition of conformity the mainstream of scientists once believed and argued that the Earth was flat to the death of opposition in some cases, so could evolution be a flat Earth theory? with our way of thinking I believe its quite possible, though that doesn't make me immediately think of the other popular option on the table, intelligent design/creation, the answer could potentially be a mixture of old and new possibilities. Scientific theories like clothes fashion change with the progress of time, generally the shifts in our beliefs and innovations are made by the individual who is initially ostracised, while the mainstream follow and push ideas that are in trend simply because they lack the mental power or courage to question others or the wisdom and discipline to question their own beliefs.
I believe Religion is unfairly judged by science simply because Religion relies on things that cannot be measured by science such as spiritual feelings of connection, love and faith, and if it cant be seen or measured with the primitive tools of today's science they will refute its existence, unless of course your a virus, or the chemistry of water crystalisation patterns, you see scientists can believe in many things without seeing them! scientists believed in bacteria long before they could see them, so why do scientists think its rediculous for other institutions to feel, suspect and believe in a divine creative being before it is seen?
I think both Religion and evolution seems to be accepted by people who don't really want to question it, and science just like creationists rely mostly on "faith" and weak evidence that evolution is the answer, and just like religion people seem to just "follow" and regurgitate the evolution theory as was shown to them.
I recently watched a documentary about the evolution of man and they stated that due to the area in which mans ancestors were living and evolving being abundant in seafood and freshwater allowed us to develop and increase our brain size and the abundance of food and water gave us more time for recreation that allowed us to develop our cultural skills while our brain evolved. Well if that's the case there should be crocodiles flying space ships to Mars! Look at crocs, they've been here for millions of years longer than us, they laze about for 95% of the time, they don't have to look for water, they have food on tap, yet they have retained a brain the size of a pea and well their cultural and social skills aren't that advanced from last time I checked, you wont find a crocs playing a guitar around a fire or chatting about astronomy.
Science likes to argue that the croc its already perfect? maybe science should worship crocodiles as their God?, but to me I'm sure the croc can be majorly improved, for example to evolve to handle colder temperatures and expand outside of its cramped and limited tropical habitat range, get a larger brain to avoid violent and deadly confrontations between each other, but no, they have stayed basically the same for millions of years.
If evolution is true why has man a relatively new species on the planet come to a point where he can look at the night sky to ponder and question his own origins? where other animals that have been on the planet for millions of year longer than us have remained with a brain the size of a pea?
I think I have a reasonable understanding on micro and macro evolution and to cover this would be a huge rant so I'll just say I'm not convinced.
Where science believes similarities between animals shows proof of evolution I would argue that it in fact is proof of a creator, just as one can tell a Picasso painting from the work of da Vinci without even looking at the artists signature, all creators have a pattern or style to their work that is reflected from one creation to the next.
I think humanity is still in the dark ages and I'm not finding any quality answers to the big questions, so I'm not 100% committed to any theory just yet, I do have some beliefs from a young age that we are a small part of a greater creation or being, and electricity is a force that connects all life and matter, all animals are in a way an electrical machine. Our biggest flaw is that we gather our thoughts through the perspective of our tiny little eyes in a universe sized beyond our visible perception
Look at any solid object through the most powerful microscope and there are gaps and holes everywhere both in the atoms and between them, but when we view this object from our much larger eye perspective it all looks solid and connected. I was reading that Neutrinos are so small they can pass through your body and solid matter without touching a thing, when I think and compare this in our visual scale to me the Neutrino seems like our space ships flying between the planets. So I wonder what does a human body look like from the perspective of a neutrino? Now Imagine what the universe would look like if your eyes were a trillion x trillion kilometres in diameter and you were looking at the universe from a distant corner or from the outside, beyond the edge? From such a distant and big eyed perspective our planets/stars/galaxies could look connected, so what you could now see perhaps appears solid. Religions tell us that God is all around us, could this just mean that we are actually part of this divine being?
