That’s okay, you know how it is with the internet, sort of difficult to pick up what people mean at times.
This’ll be a somewhat lengthy response, apologies in advance.
On Prophecy: I understand I can’t dissuade you from believing that the world is going to end, as it’s pretty much the main part of your religion. But it’s important to look at all the other “prophecies” that have come to pass, that didn’t happen. I’m going to use an example here: The May 21, 2001 prediction of Judgement Day that was made by the Family Radio group in Oakland California.
The folks at Family Radio predicted that the world was going to end on May 21st, with the old man running it, Harold Camping, predicting “a big earthquake that will make the one in Japan seem like a Sunday school picnic” as what would happen when God decided to start destroying the world.
Now, of course this didn’t come to be. But did that dissuade Harold Camping? No, it did not. Instead, he moved his date forward, to October 21st, 2012. And that date came to pass, and still, nothing. People can make predictions, and the predictions can be somewhat fulfilled, or can be unfulfilled time and time again, but the people will continue to believe in them. Why is this?
Confirmation Bias is a tendency of people to favour information that confirms their beliefs or hypotheses, meaning that people can (and often do) ignore the evidence that challenges what they believe. It’s why so many people still believe in doomsday predictions when all the previous ones have failed, and why people do things like believing that vaccines cause autism, or why some people listen to Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly exclusively, or others to Rachel Maddow and Piers Morgan. It’s easier to hold on to information that agrees with your worldview than it is to face things that don’t agree with it. And no, I’m not immune to it, either. We all do it, it’s just part of being human.
When we notice it, though, that’s when we have the choice to do something about it. A person who sticks to only one side of the media could choose to be more openminded and try to find more neutral or even opposing news sources. A person who believes in doomsday predictions might choose to really think, what reason is there to believe in doomsday predictions if none of them have come true in the past? Is it really worth wasting time out of my life worrying or hoping that it’s going to end soon? Should I really be taking it “on faith” just because someone who is routinely wrong was randomly right once in the past?
That’s just something to think about, I’ll share a couple of links at the bottom if you’re interested in learning some more about it, but if not that’s okay, no hard feelings.
On evolution: If you don’t mind me asking, which parts of history do you think disprove human evolution? How is evolution like a puzzle that “seems” accurate but is not?
Theories have been made and disproven in the past, but that’s because it’s in the nature of science to refine our explanations of things until we arrive at the most likely solution judging from evidence, tests, and observation.
Have you ever had a vaccination against the flu, or something else? If so, you have an understanding of biological evolution to thank. If we did not understand how evolution works, then we wouldn’t be able to address the constantly changing nature of disease (how do you think drug-resistant bacteria came to be? They evolved to adapt.) If we didn’t understand evolution and natural selection, we wouldn’t understand biology.
That is the reason why it’s necessary for us to teach evolution in schools. If we don’t understand evolution, then we don’t understand biology. And if we don’t understand biology, we’re doing a great disservice to our nation, because we’d be raising a generation of children who would have no understanding of basic science, and our education and health would suffer for it.
On Faith:
I have absolutely no doubt in the power of faith. I bet that sounds weird coming from an atheist. I believe that what you believe is absolutely real to you, or any of the other faithful people out there. But that’s just the thing – it’s real to
you, not necessarily to everyone else. There is a scientific explanation for many things (like the rainbow after the storm –
Wikipedia: How Rainbows are Formed), but if you believe absolutely with all your heart that god sent you that rainbow, there’s nothing I can say that will change your mind.
It’s just important to remember that faith is a personal thing that is only meaningful to people who are faithful. Science, however, is something that applies to everyone, even those who disagree with it. We evolved, there is evidence that confirms it (
University of California: Berkeley - What is the evidence for evolution?), and even if it doesn’t send the same feel-good feelings up and down a person’s spine as the thought of a supreme deity lovingly creating them from dust or whichever creation myth they adhere to, it doesn’t mean that evolution is false.
Links "Superstition" - QualiaSoup (Youtube)
Confirmation Bias (Wikipedia)
What is Evolution? - Stated Clearly (Youtube)
Facts about Human Evolution - SciShow (Youtube)
University of California: Berkeley - Understanding Evolution Resource Library