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Comment by dr42 | Hacker News Reader

While the dictionary doesn't define atheism as holding a belief in evolution, I would suspect there is an extremely high correlation between them. It's always the religious fundamentalists that reject evolution because anyone with any kind of scientific mind would accept the mountains of evidence.

If one rejects the spiritual or mythological explanation for things being the way they are, it's hard to come up with another possibility. Evolution or creationism, but I seldom hear of a third theory. There are of course many threads of opinion within the basic umbrella of evolution.

If god didn't plant all those bones to make it look like evolution then who did?

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Many atheists I know don't know nearly enough about evolution to have a belief in it. They mostly don't know or care who planted those bones.

The issue is that we have the tendency to consider as atheist only the people who self-identify as such, while there's a lot of atheists who don't know they are one, they just don't have a belief in god(s).

As someone who lives in an increasingly less religious place - where even the majority of self-identified Christians is pro-choice - that describes almost everyone of my age that I know of.

Catholic church has no problem with evolution, only fundamentalists do.

Where did parent say otherwise?

If it wasn't God who created the Universe than who did? It created itself somewhere? That's where any rational mind should stop shouldn't it?

We perceive the things in some way, which doesn't mean it is the right way or the only way.

I'm not sure I follow you. Or rather I follow what you're saying, but don't see how it relates to my comment in any way.

I don't think a rational mind should just stop and give up trying to explain things. I believe in science, which is why I believe in evolution, or rather the evidence for it.

What I'm saying is evolution as we see it is part of a bigger picture, and the Universe can be part of something bigger. You trying to describe the elephant just looking at it's ear.

We were talking specifically about evolution, not the big picture. Taking your analogy, parent wasn't trying to "describe the elephant", just "its ear", so it's perfectly fine to look just at it.

If I start talking about traffic jams in big cities and do so for a long while without giving the whole picture, then everybody will think that's just how big cities operate.

describe the elephant just looking at it's ear.

You might be able to clone one from an ear.

If you come to Mars and you manage to grab one animal's ear without the rest of body, you hope to clone the whole animal?

I didn't know I get to come to Mars as well. Well this is fantastic. I'll certainly give it a go. I take it you are paying for the tickets? I'd like a first class window seat if that's at all possible. Have the lab cleaned up and I'll go find a suitable elephant.

If it wasn't God who created the Universe than who did?

Define "God".

God is something outside (and can be inside at the same moment) the Universe, meaning that it is something we cannot grasp. If we cannot grasp how God operates then whatever we look at is just an observation of a single event, however long we look at it. So whatever time we perceive within our Universe it may be just a single very short moment to God. Hence evolution isn't really how we interpret it - it can be completely possible that how God creates us we perceive as evolution.

So, let me replace "God" with your definition ("something outside the Universe").

If we cannot grasp how something outside the Universe operated then whatever we look at is just an observation of a single event, however long we look at it. So whatever time we perceive within our Universe it may be just a single very short moment to something outside the Universe. Hence evolution isn't really how we interpret it - it can be completely possible that how something outside the Universe creates us we perceive as evolution.

As you see, they're just completely meaningless statements. They apply just as well to George Carlin's "Big Electron" as to a random fluctuation in an energy field, and anything else we can imagine.

It's not even wrong.

Exactly. It's the same as telling to a blind person about the shades of colours. Only in our case I'm blind too and simply dreaming up that what we touch isn't all there is.

God is something outside (and can be inside at the same moment) the Universe, meaning that it is something we cannot grasp, and who wants me to vote Republican.

There, fixed it.

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