On the other hand, there is a deeper problem, which this fellow sort of alludes to but never actually gets at, which is the loss of sin and its consequence for human behavior. That's never really been answered satisfactorily, and even Richard Dawkins - a man whom I greatly admire - was forced to fall back on what was essentially "mystical thinking" whenever he was called on to explain the epistemological foundations of his own atheist morality.

However, to THIS fellow in particular, I would say that nothing in Darwinian evolution precludes the notions of sin or of divine law. It invalidates Biblical literalism, yes, and YEC in particular, but those theories were always tentative at best, and never without their critics.

BTW, if anyone has kept abreast on the topic of rape bastards, I'd love to hear what the latest academic findings have been! Last I heard, researchers were doing some kind of genetic testing on people whose families came from areas temporarily colonized by Viking raiders, in order to find out how much Viking rape DNA might have survived. It's a fascinating subject, if a little morbid, and one which never fails to stir up some lively drama.

( My personal hypothesis is that not many rape kids survived - because, according to Darwinian logic, once the rapist sailed off home again there'd be no reason for the men of the once-raided community to keep the child alive. A mother may have an interest in protecting such a child - after all, it is still HER child, containing her own genetic material - but trauma and resentment would be sure to lower maternal resolve.

If true, this means that rape would NOT be a valid reproductive strategy under strictly Darwinian rules (as the products of such unions would typically die) - yet under non-Darwinian rules, which do not place any importance on the survivability of offspring, rape might very well be fine (barring any moral arguments about sin and coercion)! Thus, ironically, and completely contrary to what the fellow in this video claims, we might say that Darwinian evolution is against rape, YEC, for! )

Here's what I reckon. Our minds have evolved various strategies for survival and reproduction, often independent of one another, and our too-smart homo sapiens brains don't always do a good job of managing those strategies. For example, our brains have evolved for us to experience sexual attraction, and after a first time with a partner our brains trick us into thinking we're in love so we fornicate like hell, increasing the odds of fertilization as well as forming a stable enough bond to help the kid reach maturity. But also in there is a drive to hook up with new partners, and that compromises the stability of the bond I was just talking about. Two different impulses, each of which can boast at least some reproductive benefits, but coming into conflict and making for a flawed overall strategy.

That's what the lack of an intelligent designer gets us.

Side note, I think most of our most inexplicably destructive impulses come from the fact that we're of ape stock, and instincts that may have served us well a million years ago, don't work so well in modern society. Racism, schadenfreude, road rage, even self-destructive habits like cutting, I think they all are matters of ape instincts that can't be turned to their original purposes (mostly bashing in the heads of rival ape tribes).

Rape is an anti-social behaviour in a social species and is generally not tolerated. That makes it a pretty ineffective way to pass on your genes since no one wants to be around a rapist.

Evolution doesn't do a thing to justify rape in our species. Maybe in ducks.

"My personal hypothesis is that not many rape kids survived - because, according to Darwinian logic, once the rapist sailed off home again there'd be no reason for the men of the once-raided community to keep the child alive."

I think dying at the hands of their invaders would have given the able-bodied menfolk plenty of reason to not slaughter the new crop of bastards. Or do much of anything, besides rot in the fields or fill a crow's belly.

Not all the men-folk were slaughtered in Viking raids. The local betas, in particular, would have fled, hid, or just given up, in hopes of being taken as slaves by a particularly strapping Viking warrior. What's more, men from neighbouring villages would have had an easy time coming in and staking their claim upon whatever remained, further bolstering the community.

To the best of my knowledge, raids rarely resulted in the whole-scale extermination of targeted communities, and even if they did, my hypothesis would still stand, as a burnt-out village with no survivors would not be capable of sustaining a new generation of rape bastards, anyway!

Probably the only times in which rape proved to be a successful reproductive strategy were instances of slave-wifery, such as Pillager's Deuteronomy; again, getting back to my other point, about how an anti-Darwinian Biblical literalist position is far kinder to rape than Darwin.

Oh yes, it was true, but some time ago. Fortunately there is a written record of all that raping and slaving and mulitple wives, it's called the King James Bible.

well, whatever you do, don't overreact to their overreaction

Deuteronomy 21:10-14: "When thou goest forth to war against thine enemies, and the LORD thy God hath delivered them into thine hands, and thou hast taken them captive, And seest among the captives a beautiful woman, and hast a desire unto her, that thou wouldest have her to thy wife; Then thou shalt bring her home to thine house; and she shall shave her head, and pare her nails; And she shall put the raiment of her captivity from off her, and shall remain in thine house, and bewail her father and her mother a full month: and after that thou shalt go in unto her and be her husband, and she shall be thy wife. And it shall be, if thou have no delight in her, then thou shalt let her go whither she will; but thou shalt not sell her at all for money, thou shalt not make merchandise of her, because thou hast humbled her."

Deuteronomy 20:14" "But the women, and the little ones, and the cattle, and all that is in the city, even all the spoil thereof, shalt thou take unto thyself"

Hey, you have give people incentives for taking out the neighboring Enemies of God.

if evolution is true then why do people still believe in god? Wouldn't we have, like, evolved past that by now or something?

I'd like to think that one day, if it hasn't already, evolution (or more likely anthropology) is actually going to prove (or disprove, equally important) religion and faith as simply a natural outcome or side effect of us being sentient, social creatures. I hope to see the discussions such discovery would lend itself to.

Well duh, of course evolutionists would say they proved god doesn't exist. Are you stupid or something? Nothing doesn't just magically start to evolve into people, a divine being clearly did it.

It would reduce Jesus from suffering savior to just another statistic: an anti-authority rabble-rouser being put to death for seditious behavior, via a standard execution method intended to leave a visible warning to others.

What really troubles them is, "If evolution is real, then we have no souls".

>> Really, what it boils down to is "if evolution is real, then Original Sin probably isn't,

I don't see how this follows at all. As I mentioned above, evolution need not repudiate the concept of sin; natural selection (or rather, natural selection combined with what we suspect to be true based on other scientific disciplines, such as geology and genetics) repudiates the commonly-accepted origin story of sin, as presented in the Book of Genesis, but all a theologian have to do is say that the Bible got this wrong, or (more likely, given the importance of Biblical inerrancy to most traditions) that the tale of the Serpent was allegorical. "Knowledge" is often interpreted as "sex", anyway, which would actually make more sense within a Darwinian framework - sexual "misbehavior" being the product of worldly, selfish, evolutionary concerns, in contrast to the "pure" behavior of the mind and spirit. Both Darwin and the Bible agree, the flesh is what drives us to most of our misdeeds.

Now I am not saying that *I* believe in sin and wish to argue its existence here, nor will I dispute your other claim, Mr Stopheles, that, in a world absent of sin, Jesus' sacrifice would not be necessary (at the very least, Jesus' sacrifice wouldn't have had the cosmic importance ascribed to it by Christian thinkers). But nothing in the theory of evolution precludes the existence of sin.

oops.