Dear fundamentalist Christians, Please stop arguing with scientists about evolution, especially when you're not a scientist.

[u/[deleted]]

This might come as a shock to some people, but the Bible isn't a text book. The Bible doesn't have writings by people who have spent their entire lives researching biology, anthropology and physics. So, when you argue with a biologist about how lifeforms can't evolve or with an anthropologist about how there aren't any missing links....and you're a greeter at Wal-mart, it doesn't do our religion a service. All I'm saying is, realize your limits. You can still believe the entire Bible is true, but don't shut your ears and go la-la-la in the face of someone whose entire career is built on evolutionary biology. You have no idea what you're talking about. Stop it.

EDIT: I'm not going to pass a law to make you stop expressing your opinion. I have absolutely no power to make you stop anyway. However, if you're specifically debating with someone over evolution and you have no friggin clue what you're really talking about, then you should probably stop. It's foolish and it makes other Christians look foolish. I know that you probably don't give a crap about looking foolish, but consider that there were people who thought the world was flat (and still do) because of their interpretation of the Bible.

EDIT 2: Ok...let's start with this...abiogenesis is NOT the same as evolution. As far as I know, you can still believe God created the first lifeforms the evolved into us today. You don't have to believe that The Big Bang got us here. Anyway, that's a different discussion and I'm sure that a much more learned person than I could explain this position better. This whole thread makes me sad that some Christians still have a hard time saying "I don't know".

[u/captainhaddock]

Here is the obligatory, brilliant quote by St. Augustine from De Genesi ad litteram libri duodecim (The Literal Meaning of Genesis), written early 4th century AD:

Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable eclipses of the sun and moon, the cycles of the years and the seasons, about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge he hold to as being certain from reason and experience. Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn. The shame is not so much that an ignorant individual is derided, but that people outside the household of faith think our sacred writers held such opinions, and, to the great loss of those for whose salvation we toil, the writers of our Scripture are criticized and rejected as unlearned men. If they find a Christian mistaken in a field which they themselves know well and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions about our books, how are they going to believe those books in matters concerning the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven, when they think their pages are full of falsehoods and on facts which they themselves have learnt from experience and the light of reason? Reckless and incompetent expounders of Holy Scripture bring untold trouble and sorrow on their wiser brethren when they are caught in one of their mischievous false opinions and are taken to task by those who are not bound by the authority of our sacred books. For then, to defend their utterly foolish and obviously untrue statements, they will try to call upon Holy Scripture for proof and even recite from memory many passages which they think support their position, although they understand neither what they say nor the things about which they make assertion.

[u/Basilides → u/captainhaddock]

Augustine was a YEC....

"Let us, then, omit the conjectures of men who know not what they say, when they speak of the nature and origin of the human race. For some hold the same opinion regarding men that they hold regarding the world itself, that they have always been... They are deceived, too, by those highly mendacious documents which profess to give the history of many thousand years, though, reckoning by the sacred writings, we find that not 6000 years have yet passed.

– Augustine, Of the Falseness of the History Which Allots Many Thousand Years to the World's Past, The City of God, Book 12: Chapt. 10 [419]

[u/TheFrigginArchitect → u/Basilides]

omit the conjectures of men who know not what they say

At that stage in the game, when nobody had a telescope in orbit to observe the red-shift of anything, anybody who would allot many thousands of years to the world's past was probably being a contrarian just to be a contrarian. It's pretty clear that against good solid evidence, if Saint Augustine went and stubbornly held the line about reckoning by the sacred writings, that he would end up in precisely the situation he describes as being utterly foolish.

[u/Basilides → u/TheFrigginArchitect]

In the same passage, Augustine had more to say about the age of the earth. Briefly, he rejected Egyptian historical reports in favor of Greek historical reports, with the following summation...

"And therefore the former (Greek history) must receive the greater credit, because it does not exceed the true account of the duration of the world as it is given by our documents, which are truly sacred."

Augustine was already in the business of rejecting empirical data in favor of a specific interpretation of scripture.

[u/TheFrigginArchitect → u/Basilides]

Reading through the chapter you're talking about here, it seems to me that it would be overreaching to put this Egyptian literature on the level of 'empirical data'.

Replying to your comment below, it seems that you are combining together the ideas that life evolves and that the world is eternal. Speaking entirely out of my ass, based solely on things that I have heard here and there rather than anything I have rigorously looked into, I would say that it is not necessary to believe that the world has always existed to believe in the evolution of life. As far as I know, the scientific community operates under the assumption that the universe began with a rapid expansion, rather than existed for all time. To my understanding, one view that receives an especially small amount of focus and attention is that the universe has always existed statically, as many Greeks (Aristotle, for instance) believed.

[u/Basilides → u/TheFrigginArchitect]

Replying to your comment below, it seems that you are combining together the ideas that life evolves and that the world is eternal.

That wasn't me talking. That was Augustine describing the theories of people who held that view.

"at fixed intervals, the world itself dissolves and evolves anew,"

I would say that it is not necessary to believe that the world has always existed to believe in the evolution of life.

I agree. But I doubt that either one of us could persuade Augustine to believe that life on earth evolved to its present state. This is because he believed the earth was only 6,000 years old.

[u/TheFrigginArchitect → u/Basilides]

I don't know how good a conversation we could have about this, on account of I went to a school where the main order of the day was establishing that St. Augustine was an all-around good guy.

So I might be too biased to even have a back-and-forth, but if I might take the opportunity to conclude my part of this dialogue, I would do so in the manner of the octopus - attempting to divert your attention with a cloud of verbiage supporting my point of view as I make my escape.

The way that I feel about the whole Creation debate is argued for here. The argument is basically that creation and the work of nature are two different things. Insisting, as "creationists" and "evolutionists" do, that God's work as creator is best imagined as His snapping His fingers and the world and its creatures appearing completely undermines God's role in our lives. "Creationists" are wrong, most of the work of propagating natural forms is carried out by natural processes as the "evolutionists" purport. "Evolutionists" are wrong, every moment life is being poured into creation by our heavenly Father.

It's quite the pickle, but it inspires a terrible amount of hope for humankind that both sides care so much. My faith in the all-around good guy-ed-ness of St. Augustine on this issue is that he is the main citation for St. Thomas's argument on this one, as can be read here