Well maybe our ancestors had dragon myths in Africa, and carried them around the world. Think head north, the dragons are coming as a motivation, sod climate stuff and desertification, or whatever.

Sadly not.

There’s a rise in this country too.

The majority of the uk are becoming less religious, but the rise in the belief in creationism and an increase in a literalism is alarming.

But whats the cause for the alarm its just an idea about the world that people are comfortable with. I’m and atheist, I’m quite accepting of the methods and mechanisms of evolution but….. I’m not an evolutionary biologist by trade. Most of what I understand about evolution is probably inaccurate or out of date – it was probably inaccurate and out of date even when I was being taught it.

What most people have is a belief rather than an understanding – I believe that it works but I’ve no idea how to actually make it work – and thats the position of the vast majority – they may believe in evolution but I’d suspect in most instances what they believe about evolution is very much wrong. While they’ll all say they believe in one thing you’d actually find most peoples understanding of evolution vary widely. Luckily my beliefs and most people’s beliefs are of no consequence in the majority of circumstances – I can’t break science by having a poor understanding of it or by having no faith in it at all.

People only really want enough information about how things are as they are to be satisfied that the world is the way it is for a reason. Once they have a reason they don’t need to worry about it anymore.

People are generally more interested in why things are how they are than how. If you start to think how things are way the are then that gets to longwinded and grey- particularly as in science there is no ‘fact’ just the best understanding we can have at this time. People like black and white

‘Why are there no dinosaurs anymore?’
“God/Flood/Ark/Noak”
“OK”

or

‘Why are there no dinosaurs anymore?’
“big meteor”
“OK”

Same thing really

If you go on to explain that there was a big meteor and the dinosaurs didn’t disappear in a big flaming death ball but in fact their ‘sudden’ disappearance actually took 40,000 years, and that many of the species dinosaurs we know of would never have met each other – they missed each other by 100s of 1000s of years…….. you’ve ruined the answer. They only wanted to know that there was a reason.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon

There are two distinct cultural traditions of dragons: the European dragon, derived from European folk traditions and ultimately related to Greek and Middle Eastern mythologies, and the Chinese dragon, with counterparts in… other East Asian countries.

The two traditions may have evolved separately, but have influenced each other to a certain extent, particularly with the cross-cultural contact of recent centuries.

Although dragons occur in many legends around the world, different cultures have varying stories about monsters that have been grouped together under the dragon label. Some dragons are said to breathe fire or to be poisonous, such as in the Old English poem Beowulf.[3] They are commonly portrayed as serpentine or reptilian, hatching from eggs and possessing typically scaly or feathered bodies. They are sometimes portrayed as hoarding treasure. Some myths portray them with a row of dorsal spines. European dragons are more often winged, while Chinese dragons resemble large snakes. Dragons can have a variable number of legs: none, two, four, or more when it comes to early European literature.

The answer to your question would appear to be “no they don’t.”

Jeeze…..

You lot are forgetting the Reptillian Agenda – hence the dinosaurs and dragons ‘myths’

http://www.collective-evolution.com/2013/10/17/david-ickes-theory-of-the-reptilian-human-hybrid-apocalypse/#_

Blog – Reptilian Agenda

As you can see, some perfectly sane people on the internet say so, so it must be true

I can’t break science by having a poor understanding of it or by having no faith in it at all.

Well this is the important bit really. Stem cell research being a victim in the USA.
So yes you can (indirectly) “break” science.

Arguing with creationists is deeply depressing. Been there, done that, and hats off to anyone prepared to give it a try, but it’s a thankless task.

People are generally more interested in why things are how they are than how.

Speak for yourself. I’m an engineer, not a philosopher; I don’t really aspire to attempting to answer thought exercises like “why are we here”, I’m comfortable that there might not actually be an answer to that. But the question of “how did we get here?”, now, that’s an interesting question, and as a Brucie bonus we can actually have a fair crack at answering some of it.

By the same argument, we might as well cancel History lessons in schools. Libraries, they can go too. After all, we don’t need to know all that stuff, we can’t change any of it. Right?

Of course, creationists fail to see evolution that’s right in front of them. Why do your children have some aspects of them that look like their parents? If we all originated from the same parents (Adam and Eve), then surely we’d all look exactly the same

I’d like to see the explanation for the existence of cockatrice, chimaera, basilisk, dryad, griffin, hyppogriff…
If they were ‘steady-state’ creatures, what caused their extinction?
Seriously, people thought of them as actual, real creatures, just as much as dragons, but there’s no fossil record for a creature with the body of a lion, and head, wings and forelegs of an eagle, or the fore parts of a cockerel and hind parts of a dragon. Dragons are mythological, just like werewolves, and hundreds of other creatures that primitive, or highly suggestible people, believe in.
There’s certainly some evidence that large fossilised bones and teeth gave rise to the idea of strange monsters like dragons that roamed the earth in ancient times. Not so far from the truth, really… 😀

The explanation of the Griffin comes from hundreds of fossilised Protocrotops fossils complete with eggs found in Mongolia.

Cockatrice looks like archeopteryx to me, a transition creature that creationists say have never been found.

I was under the impression that much of werewolf mythology had been put down to Rabies?

I believe there’s a fair number of recorded cases of rabid wolves biting multiple people, and you can imagine that if you living in a village in medieval Europe and see your friend get bitten by a wolf. A few weeks later, he starts foaming at the mouth, howling at the moon, and biting other villagers. Suddenly that story your grandmother told you about the Wolfman sounds like a decent explanation for what’s going on?

Of course, creationists fail to see evolution that’s right in front of them. Why do your children have some aspects of them that look like their parents? If we all originated from the same parents (Adam and Eve), then surely we’d all look exactly the same

There were unprecedented levels of milk deliveries to the garden of eden. Next…

Personally, I’m with mccruiskeen. Not such a big deal.

And given the stats at the start, why aren’t you all celebrating the massive increase in people claiming no religion rather than obsessing about a minor detail? Could it be that you find joy in denigrating other peoples beliefs rather than concentrating on your own. Does this make you feel superior?

Who’s feeling superior? Are you? People can believe whatever they want. Doesn’t mean they are right and certainly doesn’t give anyone to state things as ‘fact’ without having some form of evidence to back it up. I have no problem with people believing in religion or anything else, but the pedalling of certain creationist views, particularly in schools is worrying when it’s done in the absence of any other theories. Give people all the evidence for all theories and let them decide. If your views are correct, then you should be able to articulate them in a way that will make them stand out as true rather than every ‘fact’ being a specific point to counter other peoples views

Personally I believe creationism to be utter tosh and I’m quite prepared to be proved wrong when I’m dead or something comes along to counter what appears to be the undeniable facts (to me) of evolution

Mr Woppit – Member
No emoticon for a sneer.

Come now, that’s not very evolved behaviour…

Cougar – Moderator
Apparently “evolutionists” can’t possibly know what happened a couple of thousand years ago because they weren’t there. I need a new ironyometer, my old one’s just melted.

Bloody scary isn’t it! Creationism and creationists seriously worry me.

People are generally more interested in why things are how they are than how.

Speak for yourself. I’m an engineer, not a philosopher; I don’t really aspire to attempting to answer thought exercises like “why are we here”, I’m comfortable that there might not actually be an answer to that. But the question of “how did we get here?”, now, that’s an interesting question, and as a Brucie bonus we can actually have a fair crack at answering some of it.

By the same argument, we might as well cancel History lessons in schools. Libraries, they can go too. After all, we don’t need to know all that stuff, we can’t change any of it. Right?

I’m not suggesting people are wanting to get all deep and philosophical about it – actually quite the opposite. Theres lots to know about in life – and the fundamentals time, materials and life are only a small part of what people need to know to get on with their lives. A lot of people are more interested with what they do with their lives than what life is, in the same way their more interested with where they can go in their car than how their car works. They can take comfort that if their life or their car breaks someone who’s made it their aim in life to fix these things can fix it.

To be ‘scared’ of what people believe about when those people and their beliefs are in no real position and have no desire to effect change doesn’t seem very rational.

Plenty of things I’d be more scared about – it terrifies me that educated outward looking people can’t understand poverty even when its right under their nose. They might care about it they might not but either way they fundamentally don’t understand it. Thats a mass delusion, widely commonly held misapprehensions. Not a prejudice but a failure to even recognise the nature of a situation and it causes chronic misery and pain and it kills people. Not in the famine and starvation sense, apervasive and corrosive lack of understanding turns humble lives into dreadful lives and destroys people. I’ve a funeral to go to today in fact, for someone who deserved a longer happy humble life.

My rational head says thats where my fear should be addressed

Arguing with creationists is deeply depressing. Been there, done that …

Thanks for trying though.

…it’s a thankless task.

Ah…. Sorry 😉

The issue as I see it, is that belief is an earlier stage in development than rational thought. Only when belief has failed can rational thought be evolved…in fact we could look as rationalism as a propper stage in the sociological evoloution in man.

All you need to know:

I don’t really aspire to attempting to answer thought exercises like “why are we here”

Wait until you have a small child. Before breakfast yesterday, I got questioned on what is in fireworks, how to make gunpowder, how to get the materials to make gunpowder, what else explodes, why stuff explodes, why stars explode, why some stars explode and some fade away, and discussion of black holes was only stopped by finding Peppa Pig on TV.

I do aspire to know stuff. It’s not useful – very little of my degree in physics and astronomy comes in handy running a bike shop – but I can’t understand people who don’t want to learn.

Hmm, this threads ok. But the crop circles one is more amusing.

The issue as I see it, is that belief is an earlier stage in development than rational thought.

That’s a rather patronising view – people 50,000 years ago were genetically identical to us, they were just as smart, just as capable of inventive thinking. It’s actually that inventive thinking, combined with too little data, that led to religion. They were trying to understand a dangerous, capricious world, and it made sense that a powerful being was controlling things – it still makes sense to millions.

@bencooper – you lucky, lucky, bastard!
This morning’s question from my 16yr old was on differential calculus, I suggested he pop into the chapel down the lane and pray for guidance.

+1 for bencoopers post

To be ‘scared’ of what people believe about when those people and their beliefs are in no real position and have no desire to effect change doesn’t seem very rational.

IIRC (and I might not) Blair believed God was on his side when sending uk troops to war. A complete lack of any evidence pointing to the existence of the fabled and still unfound WMD in Iraq? Forget that, God is ON OUR SIDE.

Just one example. I’m sure there’s many more.

The issue as I see it, is that belief is an earlier stage in development than rational thought.

I’m not so sure.

Belief is common, necessary even, when we don’t really know any better. We’re only really now scratching the surface, but the questions were always there. Where did we come from, what are we here for, what are all those funny dots in the sky, the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything.

In the absence of any other knowledge, it’s easy to see how theories start. Some bloke dresses up smartly, rocks up to some shepherds and starts telling them plausible but irrefutable “facts” that he’s pulled out of his arse, they go “ooh, we’ll do what you tell us because you’re obviously clever.” He tells them that good things will happen if they ‘follow’ him and bad things will happen if they don’t, they then go and tell their friends, and a meme is born a couple of millennia before Twitter.

But time marches on, we make discoveries. We work out what the heavenly bodies are, and even visit a couple. We don’t know everything, sure(*), but we know enough to recognise holes in the original stories that you can drive a space shuttle through.

So now we can look at these things for what they are, a product of their time when we didn’t know any better, or we can desperately back-pedal and retroactively start crossing out the bits we don’t like, whilst hand-waving some of the more ludicrous claims as “allegorical” and neatly side-stepping the fact that once of a time we were all shouting “blasphemy” and killing scientists who dared challenge beliefs like the Sun going round the Earth.

This is the bit I have a problem with. Why would you cling to things demonstrably false, crying “but it’s the word of goooooooooddddd!!” despite massive inconsistencies in the source texts and a fairly hefty incompatibility with modern life? I heard tell somewhere that the dinosaurs were put on the Earth by the devil to trick us. Really? If you can’t see that as a massive reach, there’s something wrong with your thought process.

Look at the crop circles / UFOs thread running concurrently. Some people want to believe, and they’ll desperately believe any old toot even when the evidence is on bloody YouTube. Two blokes go, yeah, we did it, here’s how, and some people still go “ah, yeah, but, you don’t know, might be aliens as well”, yet you read in a book about some bloke claiming to be the son of god (in stories written several centuries after his claimed death) and this is somehow inarguable proof?

(* – to Paraphrase Dara O’Briain, “science knows it doesn’t know everything, otherwise it’d stop”)

Could it be that you find joy in denigrating other peoples beliefs rather than concentrating on your own. Does this make you feel superior?

Its hard not to tbh as their view is Look I have a big book and it tells me what happens. I know it contradicts myriads of divergent evidence that shows the universe,life and the planet are billions of years old but I am going to cling to it dogmatically without any evidence, except my faith, to support it.

now anyone is free to feel like this and believe this if they wish but it is hard to not feel superior to folk who hold views that are counter the evidence and have no evidence to support them – its as likely as the Icke view above and I have the same level of respect for the adherents of each view

Inventive thinking is not the same as rational thought though is it? And no one is genetically identical to us as each person is a unique mix of genetic coding with that being expressed as the visible and observable phenotype.

If belief was so easy that a powerful being controlled things, can you explain why everyone didn’t have the same belief at the same time and why it takes a “keeper of the truth/shaman/priest” to tell everyone and enforce their world view.

That’s a rather patronising view – people 50,000 years ago were genetically identical to us, they were just as smart, just as capable of inventive thinking

I’m not sure that’s true. They (probably) had the same capacity for thought as us but we have more tools at our disposal to help us think and are more connected so we can benefit from collective thinking.

Why would you cling to things demonstrably false,

People (en masse) do not like change. A nice comfy blanket that’s been around for centuries isn’t going to disappear very quickly.

By believing the scientific version, you’re ahead of the curve, so to speak – come back in a few hundred years and see where the western world is. If its all gone tits up we’ll be scientologists, otherwise (hopefully) the continuing practical application of the scientific method will have produced our best and most accurate explanation of all things.

Remind me, when was the scientific method first formalised? Ancient Greece? The point being, its influence takes time.

Cougar you have agreed with me, if you look at the bit where I said that rational thought follows on where belief fails. Belief is a necessary evoltionary mechanism to ensure the survival of species. Children have a total belief and faith that parents are omnipotent and follow their instruction intially without question until such time that they have develped the mental capacity and experience of life to develop rational independent thought.

the other thing to bear in mind is that animal behaviourist have also observed beleif and rational thougjt development in higher primates, so its not just a human thing.

they were just as smart

That will explain the space travel then -Look at religious explanations they are only thousands of years old – do you really think they are just as clever as the explanations given today?

they may have had the same potential as us but knowledge is built on the back of the genius of previous generations and takes time to “seed”
You need plenty of stuff before you can have the internet for example

The hive mind is also much larger by the billions and that will have been for a number of generations.
I suspect 50,000 years ago they knew more about survival than we do though they were so shit at MTB that they had not even invented the bike

Some bloke dresses up smartly, rocks up to some shepherds and starts telling them plausible but irrefutable “facts” that he’s pulled out of his arse, they go “ooh, we’ll do what you tell us because you’re obviously clever.”

Cougar – Now I am not religious but at least if you are going to refute a book, have some knowledge of it.

The “shepherds” were actually fishermen and they weren’t considered to be simple “fisherfolk” but more likely, successful business men.

Why did he dress up smartly?

Not that it really matters but at least don’t show complete ignorance you are trying to criticise. 🙄

I think you are referring to the disciples there when cougar is referring to the flock in generalou probably missed that as you were so keen to have a pop, get a rise, look the awezomes 🙄
as for facts out of the twelve disciples Jesus chose, only seven of them are known to have had a profession. They are Matthew who was a tax collector, Simon Peter, Andrew, James and John who were fishermen, Simon the zealot who was a political activist and Judas Iscariot who was a treasurer.

If you are going to comment on a book make sure you get your facts correct – I think that was your point wasn’t it……oh the ironing

Thanks for that valuable contribution
Bless you my child

Belief is a necessary evoltionary mechanism to ensure the survival of species

The evolutionary advantage belief conferred was that it helped people to structure complex societies. It’s not ‘necessary’ as such because it’s entirely conceivable for a complex society to develop without religion.

I said that rational thought follows on where belief fails

Everyones world view is a mix of what you refer to as rational thought and belief. It’s the percentage of each in an individual that causes the arguments!

In the absence of any other knowledge, it’s easy to see how theories start. Some bloke dresses up smartly, rocks up to some shepherds and starts telling them plausible but irrefutable “facts” that he’s pulled out of his arse, they go “ooh, we’ll do what you tell us because you’re obviously clever.”

So, a bit like the mods on here 😉

Cougar you have agreed with me, if you look at the bit where I said that rational thought follows on where belief fails

Perhaps. Is that evolution though, or just culture? (Ie, are we smarter now, or just better informed?)

Cougar – Now I am not religious but at least if you are going to refute a book, have some knowledge of it.

You’re assuming I was refuting any specific book. I was talking about religion generally.

The “shepherds” were actually fishermen and they weren’t considered to be simple “fisherfolk” but more likely, successful business men.

I’m pretty sure that Christianity, or indeed most religions, didn’t restrict themselves to a single profession.

Why did he dress up smartly?

Sorry, that was an allegory.

Point I’m making is, in the land of the blind the one eyed man is king. From a point of ignorance, “hey, god did it” is as plausible as any other theory, more so if it’s two thousand years ago, we’re still frightened of falling off the edge of the world if we travel too far and the competing theory to ‘god’ is that we’re a chunk of rock hurtling through space round a firey ball of plasma, and all the other dots in the sky are suns just like our own. Hell, in the fifth century I’d have stoned myself to death for that sort of wild and crazy notion.

As religions gained traction, and as people realised that actually this might be a great way of getting other people to do what they tell them, then competing theories become a problem and you risk losing control. How do you show that your god is more powerful, more ‘real’ than the others? Well, you build great monuments and ostentatious places of worship, dress your holy representatives in gold and finery, show your power. Money’s easy enough to come by after all, just demonise being rich and wait for the coffers to fill.

Christianity’s relatively fluffy these days, but I can’t remember the last time I saw a shabby bishop.

Point I’m making is, in the land of the blind the one eyed man is king.

Religion has no monopoly on that.

Almost everyone in the world stands in that relationship to Quantum Physics.

It is interesting this. Rational thought can come up with irrational or wrong answers when it’s starting with bad or missing data, so, just because someone in the past came up with a worse answer than we can doesn’t mean they were less developed, they were just in a less good position to come to good conclusions. (in the same way that a lot of us, today, would make bad decisions about hunting or crop growing that our ancestors would have done better with- sure, they might have thought that the sun was the left testicle of the god Parabollicka but that didn’t stop them working well with their understanding of the world.

The problem only comes when people refuse to accept the better explanations. And even then, it’s often not a problem- the sun could still be a testicle, would make no difference to my day to day life but would probably cause some issues if I worked for NASA.

Rational thought can come up with irrational or wrong answers when it’s starting with bad or missing data

Truely rational thought can generate wrong answers. It can’t generate irrational answers. The problem is that none of us are capable of truely rational though.

In my experience there is absolutely no point in debating anyone who has a faith based standpoint. How can you discuss anything rationally with someone who doesn’t need any evidence and who claims to have the answers based on their magic book?