I think I understand what you're saying here, and strictly speaking it would be true for the most part, if the people you are talking about had arrived at their beliefs through a rational process. But of course, if they were relying on reason, they might never have come to hold those ideas in the first place.

For the sake of discussion I'm going to take the opposite tack. I think god and evolution are a better combo than either one alone. To start with, the popular understanding of the processes and implications of evolution is almost as sketchy and unhinged as as the popular understanding of god. But when do we judge a field by the popular understanding of it? One might understandably reply that even the clergy have untenable beliefs, so it's not just a problem of the unwashed masses.

All true enough so far, but let's look at the other side. One doesn't have to look far to find numerous evolutionary biologists who are devout Christians, or to find credentialed physicists who know their specialty like the back of their hand but have no idea how it interfaces with other scientific disciplines. The short and sweet of it is that the "clergy" on either side is little more prepared than the "laity" to understand the broader philosophical and social implications of their craft, let alone communicate it well to the general public.

My claim is that the perceived conflict between science and religion is just that; perceived. Perceived by both the majority of the followers, and many of the leaders of both camps. Anyone who takes their cues from popular consensus is likely to see nothing but conflict. Humans are designed to be particularly sensitive to conflict, and quite capable of overlooking absence of conflict.

There are plenty of religious scholars, philosophers, and historians who understand that a literal interpretation of ancient scripture is not the highest understanding of what was originally a metaphorical or allegorical work of literature, no matter how many followers and leaders choose to see it that way. Allegory is art; not science. Art and science are more dissimilar than even apples and oranges. They are more like apples and ball bearings. No head to head comparison is useful. There is no natural competition between them. Science is understood objectively. Art is understood subjectively. Both are needed. Both are true. Both are difficult to understand.

I totally agree. I have met clergy that tell me in private, they have no believe, but their vocation of helping people through religious ideology satisfies their career. My question to them is always the same, which is "how do your reconcile your fraud?" or 'how do you square in lack of authenticity with yourself?" The answer is that it pains them and that they privately do int incorporate deities or saints, etc. in their ministry. Like myself, who didn't come out of the atheist closet until I retired, because it would have ended my own career by being fired to some other reason that they can always set one up for. So, I was just as guilty by not being authentic as anyone else. People not only loose their career but also family and community. That is the reality. So let's not judge to harshly.

Not meaning any offense to my American friends, we are little better here, I just love this guys work.

I am not sure what part of evolution is based on "need" - evolution has no clue what the organisms it is working on "needs" - only which set of genes suffices in the circumstances - agree wholeheartedly with everything else however ...

"Evolution is not a guided process. Evolution is not a random process. Evolution is the combination of randomness and need." Please explain what you mean by 'need' in the context in which you use it?

Narrow is the Gate

David Glenn Cox

Caution – The following is intended only for mature audiences – if you are easily offended by logic or common sense, please return to the comfort and safety of your television set.

I’ve had this up my nose for a while now. Political events and court rulings have pushed the irritant further, until it disturbs my rest. I’ve been taught since childhood that I must respect others religious beliefs. For many years that did not seem to be a problem. My own experience with religion has always been somewhat jagged. At six years old, I was dragged to a Mass inside of a dark church filled with candles, incense and stained glass. It was more than a bit intimidating to a small child. Add in a ceremony led in a foreign tongue, by men in strange gowns and confusion reigned.

At age eight or nine, I was given the choice to attend catechism rather than Mass and thought, this might be an adequate substitution. Strange women in black robes told us to sit in the desks and be quiet. We were given mimeograph sheets of a group of men to color with crayons. This woman was strangely attired, her head bound in white cloth, like an accident victim asked, if I recognized the man in the center of the picture? I suspected a trick question, but after looking around the room at the signage on the walls, I muttered… “Jesus?”

“That’s right!” she cooed, “and who is this?” pointing to a robed figure in the crowd on the blue lined mimeographed page. I was stuck and I knew it, I decided as a little lost lamb I would “bah” politely and tell the truth by answering, “I don’t know.”

“What!” she shrieked, “You don’t know the Apostles?” She then made some further remark about my home training to which I took offense. If you want to berate and eight year old for not being able to point out the Apostles in a mimeographed line up, that’s one thing, but now you’re talking about my momma and daddy. All of a sudden, an hour of candles, incense and Latin, didn’t sound so bad. Even as a child and even at that young age, I thought to myself, “Really? People really believe there’s a man up in the sky with nothing better to do than to grade us on our good deeds or our transgressions?

Even as a child, I thought how boring it must be to be God. Tens of millions of little girls hitting their brothers or little boys hiding their sister’s Barbie in retaliation, every single frigging day! But as I got older, I began to understand more and the plot thickened. God knew me before I was born, he knew after being hit I’d hide my sister’s Barbie and what’s more, he knew she’d hit me and did nothing about it! A manufacturer’s defect, for which, the manufacturer took no interest in correcting. You see, we were all born with original sin.

In a garden, on another continent, eons before recorded history began, Adam and Eve had transgressed by eating of the forbidden fruit, for which a penalty was imposed on every man and women born ever after. Questions entered my young mind, about when exactly did this God begin to know us before we were born, if he didn’t know what his creatures would likely do, if left alone? If God is omnipotent, why did he need to ask Cain where Able was? Why did God wait to turn Lott’s wife into a pillar of salt? Didn’t he know ahead of time she would look back? So Lott does the lord’s bidding and for one small, insignificant, casual transgression God zaps Lott’s wife, leaving the old man a widower. How could Lott ever eat French fries again?

You can see where this is going, if my neighbor were to tell me his dog talks to him at night. And his dog has a plan for his salvation and for the salvation of the entire human race, I should respect his opinion? I won’t argue the point, for he must be troubled, but when he begins to tell me I should eat Alpo and Gravy Train as a sign of respect to his delusion…Houston, we’ve got a problem!

There isn’t a single shred of evidence for the existence of a Jesus, a Moses, an Abraham or a Noah. If you want to believe in such fairy stories, go right ahead. I won’t try to stop you. But when you throw open the doors of your church or temple and try to tell others what they should do according to your God’s law? Then Mister, were gonna scrap. You know, they say faith can move mountains, but it hasn’t moved one yet.

If your God is against Gay Marriage, don’t get one. If your God is opposed to abortion, don’t have one. This religious freedom thing is a two way street! My country gives your phony bologna church a tax free status, isn’t that enough for you? This vaunted Judeo Christian belief is the source of most of the world’s wars and the sufferings of millions, for thousands of years and I’m supposed to respect those beliefs because…?

Because of witch burnings, the Spanish Inquisition and the Holocaust, I should respect your beliefs? It was Christians doing the lord’s bidding who burned the library at Alexandria, thus destroying centuries of the accumulated knowledge of mankind. If I’m to be held on a charge of original sin, aren’t Judeo Christians to be judged on their more recent sins and genocides? This image of saintly do gooders, doesn’t match the image of war planes and rocket launchers. Like hamburger joints, the picture of what you order doesn’t match the product received. I will willingly forgive all, but not because a make believe deity sitting upon a golden throne tells me so. I will forgive all, because it is the only logical way to progress.

These faiths have an unsurpassed record of being wrong about everything. Wrong about astronomy, wrong about medicine, wrong about history, wrong about race. After five thousand years of complete and utter non-stop failure, murder, war, terror and torture, we’re still expected to say; I respect your closely held beliefs.

After the death of my parents I felt alone in the universe and like a hungry fish, I bit at the shiny hook. I needed to know I wasn’t alone, but I was. When I asked a Priest why there was no protest over the US invasion of Iraq, the Priest explained, “The Bishop told us not to mention it.” Right there at that exact moment, it occurred to me that this was my last service as I thought, WWJD? I have known some wonderful people who called themselves Christians and Jews who did their level best to live a good life. I have also known thousand’s, who’ve managed to break most of the Ten Commandments in a single weekend, still claiming to be believers. Oh, those crest fallen preachers are so sorry, but only after they’ve been caught!

So if the Jews are God’s chosen people, what are the rest of us… chopped liver? The Calvinist with their doctrine of predestination, millions going through life as blank slugs, ineligible for eternal paradise, because there is not enough room in heaven for everybody. A God who can create a whole universe, but can’t add a new wing on to paradise, perhaps God should call Bob Villa home. They’re all selling the doctrine of exclusivity, if you’re not one of us you can’t get in. It’s that Judeo Christian sign hanging from the country club gate that says “Member’s Only!”

God loves you, but you don’t pray correctly and you don’t dress correctly. You don’t eat the right foods or study from the right books. There is something wrong with you, but with enough time, money and supplication, maybe they can sneak you through, but you just had to eat that pulled pork sandwich, didn’t you? And you were so close to an eternity of streets paved with gold and choirs of angels.

You would sit at the right hand of God as an intermediary to the supplications of little girls who’ve hit their little brother or little boys who’ve hidden their sister’s Barbies. You’ll watch millions of baby’s die of hunger around the globe. You’ll watch women die, because they lack birth control. You’ll watch genitals mutilated for God’s glory, because even though God is perfect and were made in his image, we require some slight modifications.

Sorry, but I don’t believe a word of it! Not one! When something good happens we must thank the lord for his tender mercies, but when something bad happens, we mustn’t question the will of God. Sometimes the rains falls on the just, as well as the unjust, bunk! In a random and chaotic universe, this God seems rather random and chaotic! Either this God is a schizophrenic basket case or he doesn’t exist. “You have sat too long for any good you have been doing lately … Depart!”

Maybe I’m being too harsh on a belief system which thrives on telling the faithful they’re no good from birth, in a self fulfilling prophecy of helpless inadequacy.A faith which says the poor shall always be with us, so why bother? A racist, sexist, self-absorbed belief system, which glories above all other glories in individual salvation, while the rest of the world can go to hell. A beehive which values the salvation of a single individual bee over the entire hive and if you’ve read this far, maybe you’re offended. I don’t much care; after thousands of years bloody Judeo Christendom, you should be offended and ashamed.

Most Christians that I know are fairly ignorant of the actual process of evolution. I have had a few tell me, we were never gorillas. No kidding we went a different evolutionary route than gorillas. It seems they are taught evolution in church.
I am not sure if they are being insincere in their beliefs or if they are just so "indoctrinated" and fearful that they have no truth in their lives

Does randomness reduce chance?

some people may not approach topics from such an absolutist viewpoint