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Creationism Museum Opening in Kentucky
Noel Linback writes "A new creationism-espousing museum is opening in the state of Kentucky. According to a New York Times article the museum depicts humans and dinosaurs living together in traditional 'diorama' style exhibit. 'Whether you are willing to grant the premises of this museum almost becomes irrelevant as you are drawn into its mixture of spectacle and narrative. Its 60,000 square feet of exhibits are often stunningly designed by Patrick Marsh, who, like the entire museum staff, declares adherence to the ministry's views; he evidently also knows the lure of secular sensations, since he designed the Jaws and King Kong attractions at Universal Studios in Florida. For the skeptic the wonder is at a strange universe shaped by elaborate arguments, strong convictions and intermittent invocations of scientific principle. For the believer, it seems, this museum provides a kind of relief: Finally the world is being shown as it really is, without the distortions of secularism and natural selection. '"
I mean, the whiskey has to count for SOMETHING, right?
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
And they rested on the seventh, but that was due to union regulations.
Just remember: not everyone who partakes in Christianity (big C or little c) believes the world was created 4,000 years ago. Some of us actually believe in evolution. (Well, us non-fundies anyway.)
Slashdot: where repeating an article in a post is "+5 Insightful"
Or in other words: I really don't care about this "museum", but get the fuck out of our public education!
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
We have lots of cave drawings of man with impressive animals like wooly mamoths and the like. So why are there not cave drawings of man with really impressive animals like the dinasaurs. I mean I I was impressed enought to paint the large elephant like creature you would think that a 20' high meat eating moster would at least reate a few pictures.
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
Why is the dinosaur eating a golf ball?
-nick
Satan.
See, isn't this easier than thinking?
Tags != Comments, and -1 (Troll) != -1 (I Would Respond Angrily To This Poster So They Must Be Trolling)
If having state-of-the-art special effects and fake sea breezes makes you happy, then go for it. Probably would be cheaper and more effective to just down a fifth of bourbon, but this is for the whole family.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
"It's a great place for children who are in public school and haven't really decided what to believe yet."
Who ya gonna believe! GOD or some hairy liberal professor!
Welcome to the 21st Century, America!
you had me at #!
The dinosaurs wouldn't uh... stand still long enough. Cave-men drawn pictures are time-exposed shots.
Some of the contractors might tell you it actually took a lot longer, but Satan just sent them here to deceive us.
I'll let these folks have their museum, they (like me) have the right to free speach and can exercise it as they wish. I just hope that no public money was used in the building of this shrine.
I'm not positive that science has everything right but as far as I know, humans are a much later development than the dinosaurs. Mixing the two seems sort of cartoonish at best and ignorant at worst. Based on this, I do not think that the museum will win any "converts" that had been sitting on the fence. The propoganda is too easily disproven.
What I find odd is that the same people that promote this unscientific kind of bullshit still want the benefits of science and technology.
most non-christians and even many christians don't really know the real Jesus. There's a perception that he's gentle and kind and meek...but that isn't the savior you get to know when you really get up to the higher tiers of a REAL Christian church. We know our Jesus. He was ripped, aggressive, a take-no-prisoners-in-your-face kind of guy. And why not? He was god, he had the truth, can't argue with that! Yes, you non-believers (or unenlighted faux-believers) can wallow in your ineffectual caricature of our Christ, being "charitable" to the lazy and satanic poor, and promoting hellish pacifism...but we'll be down at our Kentucky museum observing truth, smashing whiskey bottles on the Devil's head, cuttin down some trees to burn some scientific lies, and paving an extra-wide thoroughfare to heaven for us and our kids!...Have fun taking the rutty dirt path to hell...sinners.
I always wondered why God had to rest... Maybe I need to go down to Kentucky and find out! Also, I never understood why "sea creatures and birds" required their own separate day... But hell, once you start asking these questions, it's just endless so I'll stop now and go watch some Finches evolve while the Kreationist Kentuckians struggle to maintain consciousness....
Your post was funny, but it's not a "compromise" position. Some christians believe that the bible contains the truths necessary for salvation, but a theory of the origin of biological diversity is not among those.
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
Ken Ham (President of Answers in Genesis, sponsor of the museum) would be amusing to watch if he wasn't so scary. There was a segment in the documentary "Friends of God" which showed Ken speaking to a group of children about dinosaurs and evolution. His logical argument to the children was that since scientists weren't around 4,000 years ago but god was then we have to believe god and not the scientists.
"Intelligent Design" groups have been running tours through legitimate museums, providing their own narrative in order to dispute the information provided by the museum displays. Maybe after this museum opens some atheist tour group so do the same thing...take tours through Ken's "museum" and provide scientific narrative to dispute his biblical nonsense.
"We make our world significant by the courage of our questions and by the depth of our answers." Carl Sagan
You are aware of course that the Bible, as we know it today, was a govenment project........
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
For every argument made against irrationality, there will always be irrational arguments made to contest the rational. There is no way of winning against the irrational. So it goes. Religion will always win so long as the human mind is irrational.
So it's sort of like Disneyland with a Old Testament theme going on?
How, exactly, did these nutjobs scrape together the heaps of money that must have been required to build this carnival side-show?
Or... maybe I underestimate the spending power of the evangelicals.
...if there is anything as real evidence of there being anything to creationism, its the exhibit itself.
See, we can create things that we can imagine!
And sometime in the distant future, if man doesn't destroy himself first, we may just come to understand physics enough and develop such technology that enables us to create a new galaxy and live long enough to see it evolve and even influence it and the life in it.
But Why? Survival instinct of conscious beings! What else could it be?
Today we play on the fence of whether or not we get past the self destructive waring mentality....
If the universe exist and no one is there to see it, does it matter?
I always question that phrase; who gave the bible authority? I'm reasonably certain of my history, and in this case, it was mankind who gave the bible any authority at all, if it really has any.
That question is more important than the question of what truth's if any, does it hold.
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That would explain why all the prophets were put to death for criticizing the government of their day.
Maybe they were too busy running away to get a good look at it?
You'd think that being the master of deception he'd at least be able to draw more than rough stick figures and such. Satan needs art classes. Or maybe it's because he was younger and less experienced back then...
Give Kashyyyk back to the Wookies
Models of kids are apparently interspersed with friendly looking dinos at the museum... kinda like cigarette companies used to use friendly cartoon animals to promote their agendas to young minds.
Which leads me to wonder...
How similar will the agenda at this high profile (Google News front page, Slashdot front page, BBC front page) museum be? Will there be attempts to assault the scientific data for evolution, or will there be an innocent theme park feel to the whole thing?
Are we looking at religious people expressing their beliefs or a group beginning a new phase of the ongoing war for the minds of American children ala big tobacco through the middle of last century.
Regards.
You know, even though this museum isn't scientifically accurate, it looked pretty cool on the news tonight. They have one exhibit with a human and a dinosaur hanging out together.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 is the magic number.
heh. Did you see the "dragon hall" ?
dragon hall
I guess the dragons didn't make it to the ark because they followed the unicorns.
In other news the controversial creationism musuem in Kentucky has closed due to lack of interest. While being replaced with a new evolution museum paid for by scientists around the country. Due to open in the fall of 08. :)
Another fine tradition, fleecing the flock. Just how much of this is pushing a religious agenda and how much is a money making scheme? Overall if your faith in religion is based on something that defies not only science but common sense I'd re-examine your religous beliefs. If all the evidence says you are wrong it's not faith it's delusion.
...is she still your sister?
http://answersingenes.blogspot.com/2006/12/creatio nism-explained.html
That just about covers it, I think.
668: Neighbour of the Beast
I disagree that the acquisition of authority by the bible, or any text, can be simplified as a "gift" by mankind. Now, the most pernicious abuses of the bible were in cases where it was the authority of the sword (convert or die) that was spreading its ... "adoption" as an authority.
To get more particular, one must divide up the question: whence its authority *to *speak *on __________ ?
On scientific issues, it acquires authority insofar as its statements are intersubjectively confirmable, falsifiable, and corroborated by other disinterested stories. e.g. there are plenty of historical statements that are verifiable through other means. But the Young Earth hypothesis doesn't really pass this test (the Young Earth hypothesis, btw, is a relatively recent addition to christian thought).
On moral issues, I think it acquires authority insofar as its statements ring true with human experience. The golden Rule has got legs and is mirrored in almost every moral tradition. The stuff about sequestering women as "unclean" during their menstrual emmissions, not so much...
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
The best way to protest this is to get a couple thousand people to show up there and laugh for 5 minutes on queue. I recall a similar protest was done in India some years ago and it is brilliant.
Just laugh as hard as you can at them for 5 minutes. Rinse. Repeat.
"If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid." - Epictetus
And on the Seventh Day... god rested by switching off the creationists brains!
This museum, while attempting to provide a self consistent set of conclusions, fails to limit itself to observable and verifiable fact. In fact I feel it mocks Christianity by further limiting the power of the creator. Limiting such power has always been popular in the sinful human population that wishes to transfer power from the creator to itself. Just look at catholicism and the belief that certain religious leaders can speak for the almighty. For example, when I was growing up it was quite a popular belief that the creator put fossils and likes on earth as a test of fate. Those that continue to believe the bible even in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary are those with sufficient faith to be saved. Now these sinful humans are trying to rewrite the bible and limit the power of the almighty by saying that dinosaurs existed and the grand canyon and the fossils were caused by the flood. You know, if the creator wanted a grand canyon, or fossils, or dinosaurs, or floods, or whatever, there is nothing to stop the desire becoming a reality, no matter what greedy and corrupt humans have to say.
I wonder if the future will see this museum as an artifact of a time in Christianity when the leaders were more concerned with wealth and personal power than serving the almighty. If, perhaps, someone like Martin Luther will emerge to blog 123 ways that the christian church is corrupt, and call for a post-christian movement.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
16,000 children under the age of 5 died yesterday because they didn't have enough to eat. This church, along with the rest of us, will have to answer some pointed questions in the afterlife about priorities.
Equine Mammals Are Considerably Smaller
Mixing the two seems sort of cartoonish at best and ignorant at worst.
/worst/ that perpetuating this sort of nonsense can create.
It is ignorant at BEST. God only knows the
Human beings are so stupid. I am embarrassed to be one. Nietzsche thought it would take humans another 200 years before we got religion out of our system. I think he was right. We have another hundred years to go.
I'd defend the right of the people who started this to continue on as long as they can support it, but I'm not sure it should be called a "museum". A museum implies some hind of historical accuracy.
Perhaps "theme park", or "house of ill repute" instead?
For linux tips: http://www.linuxtipsblog.com
several groups (both religious and secular) will be protesting. come join us!
http://www.genesispark.org/genpark/ancient/ancient .htm
Do a little reading before you post. There are even fossilized dinosaur tracks with human footprints going through them. http://www.bible.ca/tracks/tracks.htm
You're both joking, but you're absolutely right. Christopher Hitchens once said in an interview: "Yes, and the Seventh-Day Adventists, who descended from the Millerites. I can see that Scientology now enjoys charitable status as a religion, which I think is a real triumph. I can't get over that. You can set some idea of what it would have been like to live in third-century Nicea when Christianity was being hammered together - an experience I am very glad I did not have. Religious diversity is confused with pluralism. Because of multi-culturalism and what is called "political correctness," religion has a certain protection that it couldn't expect to have if it was a state-sponsored racket like the Church of England." Not that it's cool to be an apologist for oil wars or anything, but the guy *really* likes the Kurds...
If you can see it, then it can see you. A quick dinner, and no one is left to paint the picture.
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
The problem is that most 'true believers' aren't just content to hold their own beliefs, and to indoctrinate their kids while they're young and accepting. All the born-agains I know says that it's also god's will for them to convert others and "bring us to Christ's truth." That's not tolerance, and if the rational people of the world refuse to make a stand against this kind of ancient bullshit, then religious mania will take us over. Just look at the 'moral majority' of the 70s carrying Reagan into office, or our current situation with George Bush.
And it's ridiculous to put religious belief on par with scientific explanations for how things came to be. Science generates hypotheses; those hypotheses are tested with observation and experiment, and the ones that hold up become theories, which will be amended or rejected when contradictory evidence is found. When science doesn't know an answer, it speculates, but it does not proclaim. Contrast this with religion, which tells us god made everything, and our brains can't comprehend the awesomeness of it all. What proof do they offer for these extraordinary claims? Oh, no proof, see, because it's all about faith--believing DESPITE the fact that all they really have to back it up is a book, and the words of 'holy men' who, of course, have a vested interest in keep the sheeple flocking in one direction.
Religion is poison to rationality, and we lose sight of that at our own peril.
of reality... sheesh.
I dont care if you belive in creationism or not, the idea that we were wandering around with dinosaurs is ludicrous. Why cant there be room for evolution in 'gods plan'?
Sure we can debate until we are blue in the face what actually started this mess we call the universe, since NO ONE knows the truth yet, but i dont see why 90% of the rest of the scientific discoveries cant be embraced by the religous kooks without their god going up in a poof of logic. If their god is that subject to being sent out of existance via logic, its time to find another thing to believe in.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Sorry, if you believe in some fantasy, you're retared.
I'm drunk but I'm atheist while being sober. Sorry.
You know what's really scary? God evolved.
TLF
I do not respond to cowards. Especially anonymous ones.
It always amazes how these people underestimate the scale and beauty of "god"'s creation by so many orders of magnitude. Apparently their god would not have been subtle enough to make life which could adapt to a changing world? There is nothing in any science which confirms or denies god's existence. Imagine if they had won over the astronomers, we would have been stuck with a tiny god who could only manage one little planet, and one star. Now we know about the vast beauty of the stars and galaxies spread across the sky. Surely if you are going to believe in a creator, this sort of knowledge can only increase your respect for it? There I go again, trying to apply reason to religion. But why doesn't it ever work?
Home fucking is killing prostitution.
In there examples the closest thing to a cave drawing was only mineral stains on rock. The rest were 'modern' illistrations of accepted legends of the time. And as to the foot prints, a walking foot print does not look like any of those depicted.
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
Now I'm torn between supporting young-earth creationnists or an organisation with a marquee on its website. Help me Slashdot !
For the believer, it seems, this museum provides a kind of relief:
No, actually it makes me consider becoming an atheist again. But my faith is in God not silly people.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
There are "cave" drawings of men and dinosaurs. You haven't heard of the Ica Stones? And where do you think the idea of dragons came from?
I'm not sure this will be a safe place to bring children.
After all, Gravity is only a theory, so there's no reason for builders of faith to follow those state-enforced secular building codes describing what kind of load bearing supports are required.
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
You can't prove God does (not) exist
Nor can I disprove the existence of unicorns living in Venus's core. So as long as we can't put cameras there, we might as well just accept that we'll never know, right?
don't teach creationism nor evolutionism as an exact science
And why in the hell not? Evolution is a scientific theory, and a widely accepted one at that. There's no reason it shouldn't be taught. Creationism on the other hand is religion and nothing more.
I see a lot of atheists that hang on to evolution and the big bang theory as a religion, something that has to be and is true, no matter what other people think or say. Why? Because you feel the need to be religious about something? What if I come up with a scientific theory that better fits the bill? You're going to massively change then? Or am I going to be incorrect.
Hey, feel free to try. If it has significant basis in fact and mountains of evidence behind it like evolution before it, then sure, we'll "massively change." You seem to think this is some kind of a game, evolutionists vs. creationists. In reality, the "debate" doesn't exist. Evolution is scientific theory and is based on facts. Creationism is based on a book, and on no facts whatsoever. Game over.
The human mind only knows what it experiences (including the experience of receiving communication from others in any form). The accuracy of said experiences, as well as the soundness of the interpretation, is always questionable.
Some people are very uncomfortable with uncertainty. They desperately crave a solid and unquestionable source for correct knowledge. So, in the absence of such a source, the mind will play games with itself to create one. Hence the popular religious trend of interpreting mythology as if it were history.
It is true that scientific knowledge is not rock-solid. It is vulnerable to inaccuracy and just as questionable as any other kind of knowledge. So, the religious believers are correct in pointing this out. However, there is a very important difference of methodology at work. The scientific process is one of perpetual questioning and re-examination of fact, and hence of perpetual refinement of accuracy. The religious process utterly lacks this element, and as such it has no demonstrable means of approaching any kind of practical validity. That, however, does not prevent people from convincing themselves that their religion of choice is correct and unquestionable, and that any and all evidence to the contrary must be in error.
So long as this thought process is confined to the realm of private institutions (museums, churches, clubs, and what have you), I am fine with it. Just don't go infecting public education with your myths.
Urm, even if you reject the scientific theory of evolution, it's just ridiculous to reject natural selection. You can easily observe it in your own lifetime, as Darwin did.
apterous.org
One of these theories tries to explain why the world works the way it does. The other one basically tells you not to wonder why it works beyond "god made it so". Only one of these theories counts as any kind of science.
Home fucking is killing prostitution.
Why do some of you people keep saying 4,000 years ago? The "Young Earth Creationists" generally refer to the date of creation to be ~6,000-10,000 years ago. The "Mesopotamian Wars of the Early Dynastic Period" were around 2900 B.C. folks. Never mind that we have have recoded histories dating back at least 5,000 years. So what's the deal, am I missing something here?
"And fried chicken, mmmm..."
The fundementalist wings already are. Or have you been under some rock for the last six years?
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
why its always America where the most obviously stupid beliefs actually get followers?
I fully support philosophical materialists' right to raise money and build museums teaching what is consistent with their world view. I don't support philosophical materialism being taught in the publich school science classroom.
But Herr Heisenberg, how does the electron know when I'm looking?
Must be some lame moderators today, your post is nothing but total BS. You describe evolution as a "religion" (wrong: scientific theory). Or the "Nobody said that the world was made in 7 24h days" (wrong: the bible, try reading it). You make specious arguments, such as the "there were no 24 hour days" (wrong: at the time the bible was supposedly written BY MAN there were). You're obviously misinformed when you say "The only religion that teaches [literal 24 hr days] as far as I know is catholicism and maybe some other offspring religions in Christendom." Not to mention just about everything else you say is basically wrong.
As to your question to me: What if I come up with a scientific theory that better fits the bill? You're going to massively change then? Yes, absolutely, because evolution is NOT a religion. But I'm not holding my breath here. I'd like to see a religious nut say the same.
For you to discard the viewpoints these people by a caricature of "nutjob" demonstrates your intellectual carelessness. People who disagree with conventional wisdom may have some unique insight. People who disagree with you may have some good points to make? How much literature on the subject of Intelligent Design have you read? Have you read any of Ham's writings?
For you to call names indicates that you are ignorant. Thankfully, ignorance is fixable, an exercise left to the reader.
But Herr Heisenberg, how does the electron know when I'm looking?
Why on earth do they need to build a museum - Do they not have enough churches already?
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Who says certain governments haven't already pushed things down this path? You could swear that some Western elements are simply OBSESSED with the middle east...
Why? America is too divided. Let the middle states continue to separate. We all win. They get to embrace their beliefs and values and we get a country that isn't run by them. Perfect.
Quack, quack.
If the PP says my +1 Insightful view on it is this, it's not required that you mod him that way.
Unless, of course, you're creationists. In which case you really ought to just believe what he says. He is telling the Truth, you know, so there's no sense in questioning it.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
so heavy that he cannot lift it?
Shortly after Man created God in his image, some Greek wise ass thought of that one - literally a classic.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
I'm attaching this as a reply to the first post in the hopes that it will be seen by people entering the thread and thus head off some inevitable posts. Creationists, this is addressed to you.
Here goes:
The word "theory" is not synonymous with the word "hypothesis" in science.
Please, please try to remember this when you instinctively want to cry "but it's only a theory!" when talking about evolutionary theory. As has doubtless been explained to you ad nauseum by the scientifically-inclined, Theory is a designator that must be earned and requires a reasonable body of supporting evidence. So while indeed the colloquial allows the use of "I have a theory" to mean a hypothesis, this is not correct in science.
Make whatever other arguments you will, but please stop making this elementary mistake. cheers.
P.P.S. I'm doing Science and I'm still alive.
I'm surprised they aren't highlighting things like this already:
Intelligent Design Sorting
Further proof from our sacred peers that all that fuss made about needing poker chips to clear our tubes of all that p0rn was a public service. Good thing at least one Centre of Excellence is giving us the information we need to know.
--
~AC
OK, so man and dinosaurs lived together. That must mean then, that all the Biblical hero's were pansies. I mean all they did was kill few wolves (David) and enter a Lions den (Daniel) . If they were real hero's why did they not slay one of the T-Rexes that were wondering around eating everything in sight or enter a den of hungry Velosoraptors. Then they would have been real hero's.
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
Sure, it consists of laws (i.e., observations), hypotheses, theories, as well as methods that allow us to test theories against observations. The theory of evolution invokes the law of natural selection, and has withstood the scientific method quite well. Is there something else you have in mind for what science consists of?
Please, please, be sure to understand that laws are not "above" theories. If anything, they are beneath theories in that they are only descriptive, whereas theories are also explanatory.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Don't confuse science with religion - the big bang theory is not taken on faith. It is a falsifiable scientific theory like any other. It most certainly can be proved wrong, if evidence is found that is not consistent with the model of the universe expanding from a denser state. Scientists spend a lot of time and money looking for such evidence, for example, the WMAP probe, which measures the properties of the cosmic microwave background to test the big bang theory. So far, the theory has checked out, but it would be dropped like a ton of bricks if we found, for example, stars much older than the expected age of the universe.
Science is about verifying and testing our theories, not about saying "why don't we just agree to disagree" so that we can all feel fuzzy and warm in our ignorance.
PS: While we're at it, I love the way creationists can't tell the difference between the big bang theory of the universe, and the evolution theory of biological life. Is schooling in America that bad that supposedly 'educated' people are having trouble differentiating between galaxies and animals?
Creationism also rejects modern geological knowledge. How many geologists do you think use "creation science" to predict where to strike oil?
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
...is a recognition from both sides that evolution is not in opposition to the bible or Christianity. Many (most?) Christians know this already, but there are a few (like the folks that made this museum) who haven't figured it out yet. There are also many non-Christian evolutionists who think that evolution is counter to Christianity. I was raised a Christian, though I am no longer one, but I don't see that evolution contradicts the bible.
The bible is full of events natural events that science has gone on to explain but which we don't fret about. Every time someone falls to the ground they were being pulled by a magical force which science later called "gravity". Does knowing the way in which gravity works, and the ability to predict its effects contradict the bible? No: people assume that God created gravity and that is the method by which he keeps people stuck to the Earth and the planets and stars in rotation. What about disease? When it was discovered that bacteria and viruses cause disease, and that we could control the effects to a large degree, was the bible's absence in describing the physical mechanism of disease a sudden point of contention? No.
So why is it that natural selection, an obvious, elegant, and indeed predictive theory (see drug resistant pests) seen as something else? Why can't natural selection be the mechanism by which God brought forth first the plants, then the animals, and then man, as described in Genisis?
He does not need to be a "God of the Gaps" filling in only that which we don't know. He can be God the architect, designer of all that which we do know, and also that which we have yet to discover.
Personally, I don't believe in God, but most of my family does. I am continually surprised that they struggle so hard with evolution.
Cheers.
I really hope more people will take a first-year philosophy course to understand from Aristotle that "creationism" as used here is simply an invalid concept (or "weasel-word" if you prefer).
It integrates wholly disparate concepts into a single term, that is, that the earth is a few thousand years old, and that a higher power created it. Neither premise is remotely dependent on, or even much associated with, the other.
Politicians construct intrinsically-misleading terminology all the time, but I'd hope Slashdot aspires to somewhat more constructive discussion...
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
this is a perfect example of why a .museum top-level domain (TLD) is a bad idea unless we open up the TLD space to any word
http://british.museum/
I'll thank you not to associate the Faith of the Venus Core Unicorns with Abrahamicism. It's demeaning.
Brother James, Priest of the V.C. 'Tween Temple Horn
The typical counter-argument to this is: "If has no beginning or end, why can't our universe exist under the same condition?"
So please try again.
That's the nice thing about religion. There's always an easy answer for a complicated problem. Usually, it's either God testing your faith or Satan trying to thwart you, and that's good enough. Have faith! Don't question, believe blindly.
I slowly get a hunch just why the government is suddenly so keen on supporting religion and faith based education...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Real science is all theory. Any real scientist in any field knows that a new accurate observation can completely change one's understanding of a phenomenon, requiring revision or abandonment of the theory in question. In science nothing is provable, only disprovable, and this is what I think scares the crap out of idiots like you. Don't bring up the "law of gravity" argument, because there's no such thing. Newtonian gravity just another theory, albeit one with a pretty good track record on the large scale.
Don't bring up the "but math has proofs" argument argument either. Pure mathematics isn't a science. It doesn't work that way.
All the creationists I've known are either con artists looking to pull the wool over peoples' eyes for their own benefit, or idiots who accept whatever they're told by a con artist.
#1.
No, DNA mutations have been observed. Most of these mutations have NO adaptation value AT THE POINT IN TIME THAT THEY OCCURRED. Changes to the environment AFTER those mutations caused them to become advantageous.
#2.
Yes, it has. The easiest example is a colony of fruit flies. Split them into two sub-colonies and within a dozen generations they will no longer be able to inter-breed between the colonies. They have become two different species.
Your fish/frog example is flawed because there is no reason to believe that one those different animals could achieve gestation within each other. Modern fish came from animals that were ALMOST identical to modern fish. Modern frogs came from animals that were ALMOST identical to modern frogs.
#3.
And yet the evidence seems to support that theory.
And not only that, but the theory of evolution is the basis of our entire medical science now. And that seems to work, also.
If I weren't already catholic I'd probably steer clear, based on those things you said. Most of them were false, but I imagine you know that.
The only one I'll address is "their teachings are not Christian and aren't considered so by anyone other than themselves".
Everyone in the world, except for a few Protestant sects, considers the Roman Catholic Church to be Christian. By that I mean literally about 97% of the world.
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
> Young earth hypothesis is a recent addition to Christian thought?
Ancient Christian scholars came at it from a completely different angle and believed Genesis to be metaphorical. You see, their opponents argued that, "If God is omnipotent, why did it take Him seven days to create the world?"
I don't know if the earth is only 4000 years old or not. I do know that God is beyond time. For him one day is like a thousand, and a thousand days are like one.
There are even fossilized dinosaur tracks with human footprints going through them.
No there aren't
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/paluxy/tsite.html
Education is a better safeguard of liberty than a standing army.
Edward Everett (1794 - 1865)
I weep for America when, in otherwise legitimate media, the articles actually approach a topic from a superstitious angle: "... For the believer, it seems, this museum provides a kind of relief: Finally the world is being shown as it really is, without the distortions of secularism and natural selection." I'm not an American, but from what I have read of NYT's articles, I got the idea they was the kind of newspaper that would not stoop as low as to lend any credibility to superstition.
By that reasoning, there is no activity safe from government regulation.
I mean, seriously, how far is it from asserting that a non-taxed entity should not be allowed to build museums dedicated to a ridiculous (in someone's opinion) theory to preventing _anyone_ from voicing a contrary opinion? Maybe it's all of twenty years' more legal evolution, but that's way too close for me.
(And, no, I'm not talking about whether the theory of the evolution of species is considered legal or not, I'm talking about the evolution of the interpretation of the Constitution that was originally intended to protect the individual's freedom to think things another person thought weren't worthy of being thought. And, no, the freedom to think, without the option of attempting to implement the thought, is not really freedom to think. It would be like the freedom to write source code without the freedom to compile and debug it. Or maybe the freedom to write comments but not actual code.)
joudanzuki
I agree 100% with your "let's peacefully co-exist". I am content to let everyone believe what they want and to express what they like as long as they do the same for others. So don't take my expression below to be an attempt to convert or insult yours or anyone elses beliefs, but rather as an expression of my view.
... as a religion". If someone came up with a better explanation I would most certainly consider it; that's why science is not a religion: it adapts. The bible is purportedly unchanging, and for that reason alone it is of limited usefulness as it can't take into account new discoveries. Science can. Sure, there are some scientists who hang on to pet theories in spite of evidence to the contrary, but fundamentally science is an endless exploration of what is, and it allows for error. Ptolomy was overturned by Copernicus. Newton was overturned by Einstein. It's amazing how non religious science is, given that it's coming from people, an inherintly religious tending breed of creature.
I am an athiest and I believe natural selection to be the orgin of the species, as it were. The big bang is too abstract for me to seriously consider, but it might as well be true as it doesn't say much practical to current existence. But in response to your claim, I really don't think that many people "hang on to evolution
I don't discount the usefulness of myth (and I use that term entirely non-pejorativly). Myth is an important part of the human experience, and can help us discover truths about ourselves on which science has nothing to say.
There are many branches of Christianity. If your branch is not based off of the Anglican branch, you believe in a concept call purgatory where all people go to when they die to be purified before going to heaven (where nothing imperfect may enter). If you're a universalist Christian, you believe that God is merciful and would not irreversibly punish people for eternity for wrongs done in a the short (on the cosmic scale) span of 100 years. So everyone can go to heaven, even Hitler and Stalin. The catch is that the more imperfect you are, the more time you spend in purgatory and it's not at all a pleasant place, so it's best to conduct your life so that you can spend as less time there as possible.
So getting back to your question about infallibility. Relative to us, God is effectively infinitely perfect, just as relative to us, the universe is effectively infinitely big. While the universe isn't actually infinitely big, it's unknowable with our puny brains if God is actually infinitely perfect.
But if he is, I'd reason that the reason we aren't perfect is a mercy. Let's face it. Perfection is *boring*. Just imagine. You know everything, so there's nothing to learn or discover. You have no needs, so there is nothing to strive for. There is no uncertainty (either good or bad) so there is nothing to look forward to. Our imperfection makes us exciting so God likely lives vicariously though us the way some parents live through their successful children. If that's the case, then reincarnation might be possible so that we can escape all that perfection...or maybe not and we'd be stuck in God's shoes.
That's OK with me, those humans were inspired by God, weren't they?
The problem with any sort of literal interpretation of the Bible, IMHO, comes when you read it from the first to the last page, like I did, on three different translations (sorry, I don't know enough of the original languages...).
Read Matthew, chapter 1, versicles 2 to 16, and Luke, chapter 2, versicles 23 to 38. Now, tell me, is it possible for any sane-minded person to believe that *everything* in the Bible is literally true, in all respects? Shouldn't we assume that at least some interpretation, or at least some pretty involved explanation, is needed?
If the genealogy of Jesus, God Himself, is not quite clear, then why should we assume that the Bible tells everything, to the smallest details, about how the creation of the world was done? The Bible is unsure whether the grandfather of Jesus was Jacob (Matthew 1,16) or Heli (Luke 3,23). If they couldn't keep an accurate count of Jesus' ancestors, then why should we assume it got all the days involved in the creation of the Universe right?
I bet if that jesus dude were alive today to see the ramifications of his tomfoolery, he would be the first to apologise and say he was only doing it for kicks.
..its embarrassing.
I slowly get a hunch just why the government is suddenly so keen on supporting religion and faith based education...
It just took them a century of decimating our schools first. Government has accomplished this (not through any specific actions, but by simply relaxing standards and allowing schools to churn out graduates with oatmeal for brains) to such good effect that people in this country will, by and large, believe anything. It astounds me how many people I know honestly think that belief is more powerful than fact, that the Universe is as they would wish it to be, rather than as it is.
Fact is, we live in the Golden Age of the Talking Head, and as long as the Head we happen to be watching has a nice hairdo we'll take whatever it's saying at face value. Don't believe me? Just look at what we've been putting in the White House these past thirty-odd years. It is worrisome, since America is under attack from several quarters, including an overreaching government that just won't back off. If there's any one thing We the People desperately need at this point in our history, it is the ability to think clearly. We can't afford too many more mistakes, and frankly our Creationist friends are not helping.
Put it this way, if your mental faculties are so bereft of logic and reason that you are capable of accepting the Bible as historical fact, as the literal Word of God, then you're also an easy mark for the first demagogue to come along, for the first politician that says whatever you want to hear. And those guys are very good at telling us what we want to hear: it's their stock-in-trade. So yes, I tend to agree with you about so-called faith-based education.
And I'm not picking solely on Christians here: whenever I say "Bible" or "Word of God", feel free to substitute your own Holy Book and your own personal Supreme Being. Pick your poison, it's all the same in the end. The powers of unreason that kept humanity in the dark for thousands of years are alive and well, haven't changed their agenda one whit, and have one of their most powerful tools in organized religion.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
I haven't read who you were replying to, but I've sure seen a lot of joe-sixpack-types proclaiming loudly how glad they were that evolution proved religion wrong so they could watch their pr0n on Saturday night and going to church on Sunday morning with a clean conscience.
Evolution is not _a_ religion, but it has sure been used as a substitute for religion by a lot of people who don't want to think.
The argument here is not between religion and science. It's between people who don't like what the other guy is thinking.
Personally, I'd prefer you to think, using the best tools you have, even if they're wrong.
joudanzuki
Drink enough of it, and you'll see dinosaurs. Big, pink dinosaurs.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
*pedant hat on* In fact, no Fundamentalist Christian (as far as I know) would believe that the Earth is 4000 years old. 4000 years ago would be the time of Abraham, at least according to the Bible + the secular sources used to calculate the time where there are no biblical sources.
Spelling/grammar nazis welcome (English is not my first language and I am trying to improve my spelling/grammar)
Nobody who saw the 20' high meat-eating monster lived long enough to paint a picture. Hard to paint whilst being digested.
Gee, maybe this creationism stuff is logically consistent.
Nah, just kidding.
Am I part of the core demographic for Swedish Fish?
Creationism must be one of the lease troublesome aspects of christianity. The bible is a list of events that can only be considered insane: Water becomes wine, Virgins have babies, Apples have knowledge, oceans go dry, and the end of the world has been near for almost 2000 years now.
Saying you are a christian that believes in evolution is like saying your beliefsystem is only 99.99% screwed up.
don't cut it off www.mgmbill.org
From the headline, I thought that creationism had ended and someone had put up a museum so we would never forget or repeat the blunders of the past.
No such luck.
Am I part of the core demographic for Swedish Fish?
Evolution has nothing to do with religion. I don't care if you're Hindu, Voodoo, Greek (pagan), Seikh, Muslim, Wiccan, or Catholic--evolution has nothing to do with religion.
If you decide to ignore all the evidence out there that supports evolution (including its laboratory use, and as a basis for creating new technology), that's your choice, but realize you lose credibility with everyone else that decides not to ignore the evidence.
Also, Catholicism supports theistic evolution. Even Pope Benedict's more recent comments on the situation weren't actually against evolution in spite of what many have said, but rather the use of evolution to push atheism.
Peacefully co-exist? Sure, but you and everyone else that says evolution isn't science should just be honest and say that you don't really believe in science, instead of hiding behind some pseudo-science like ID.
// file: mice.h
#include "frickin_lasers.h"
Why are you protesting? Who gives a shit? As long as they keep their creationist crap out of our schools, that's all I care about.
Supporting World Peace Through Nuclear Pacification
So why are there not cave drawings of man with really impressive animals like the dinasaurs.
That's easy, everyone that tried to draw pictures of T-Rex got eaten before they could finish. First example of this was discovered by seekers of the Holly Grail looking for the castle aaaagh.
If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people
I have no fscking idea what you're talking about.
America is too divided... for what? Let the middle states continue to... separate? Is that what they're doing?
And what the hell is a "middle state"? I live in Iowa, and we don't have this bullshit here. It really only seems to be Kansas...
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
The Flood? Well, here's how it could never happen.>br>
First- the global flood supposedly (Scripturally) covered the planet, (see that, George? If so, why are you still being so stupid?) and Mount Everest is 8,848 meters tall. The diameter of the earth at the equator, on the other hand, is 12,756.8 km. All we have to do is calculate the volume of water to fill a sphere with a radius of the Earth + Mount Everest; then we subtract the volume of a sphere with a radius of the Earth. Now, I know this won't yield a perfect result, because the Earth isn't a perfect sphere, but it will serve to give a general idea about the amounts involved.
So, here are the calculations:
First, Everest
V= 4/3 * pi * r cubed
= 4/3 * pi * 6387.248 km cubed
= 1.09151 x 10 to the 12 cubic kilometres (1.09151x102 km3)
Now, the Earth at sea level
V = 4/3 * pi * r cubed
= 4/3 * pi * 6378.4 km cubed
= 1.08698 x 10 to the 12 cubic kilometres (1.08698x1012 km3)
The difference between these two figures is the amount of water needed to just cover the Earth:
4.525 x 10 to the ninth cubic kilometres (4.525x1009 km3) Or, to put into a more sensible number, 4,525,000,000,000 cubic kilometres
This is one helluva lot of water.
For those who think it might come from the polar ice caps, please don't forget that water is more dense than ice, and thus that the volume of ice present in those ice caps would have to be more than the volume of water necessary.
Some interesting physical effects of all that water, too. How much weight do you think that is? Well, water at STP weighs in at 1 gram/cubic centimetre (by definition)...so,
4.252x1009 km3 of water,
X 106 (= cubic meters),
X 106 (= cubic centimetres),
X 1 g/cm3 (= grams),
X 10-3 (= kilograms),
(turn the crank)
equals 4.525E+21 kg
. Ever wonder what the effects of that much weight would be? Well, many times in the near past (i.e., the Pleistocene), continental ice sheets covered many of the northern states and most all of Canada. For the sake of argument, let's call the area covered by the Wisconsinian advance (the latest and greatest) was 10,000,000,000 (ten million) km2, by an average thickness of 1 km of ice (a good estimate...it was thicker in some areas [the zones of accumulation] and much thinner elsewhere [at the ablating edges]). Now, 1.00x1007 km2 X 1 km thickness equals 1.00E+07 km3 of ice.
Now, remember earlier that we noted that it would take 4.525x1009 km3 of water for the flood? Well, looking at the Wisconsinian glaciation, all that ice (which is frozen water, remember?) would be precisely 0.222% [...do the math](that's zero decimal two hundred twenty two thousandths) percent of the water needed for the flood.
Well, the Wisconsinian glacial stade ended about 25,000 YBP (years before present), as compared for the approximately supposedly 4,000 YBP flood event.
Due to these late Pleistocene glaciations (some 21,000 years preceding the supposed flood), the mass of the ice has actually depressed the crust of the Earth. That crust, now that the ice is gone, is slowly rising (called glacial rebound); and this rebound can be measured, in places (like northern Wisconsin), in centimetres/year. Sea level was also lowered some 10's of meters due to the very finite amount of water in the Earth's hydrosphere being locked up in glacial ice sheets (geologists call this glacioeustacy).
Now, glacial rebound can only be measured, obviously, in glaciated terranes, i.e., the Sahara is not rebounding as it was not glaciated during the Pleistocene. This lack of rebound is noted by laser ranged interferometery and satellite geodesy [so there], as well as by geomorphology. Glacial striae on bedrock, eskers, tills, moraines, rouche moutenees, drumlins, kame and kettle topography, fjords, deranged fluvial drainage and erratic blocks all betray a glacier's passage. Needless to say, these geomorphological expressions are not f
If you mod me down, I *will* introduce you to my sister!
The museum also hands out copies of the 9 commandments for the true believers as they walk in the door. The commandment that "thou shall not bear false witness" has been left out for concern that it would be bad for business to remind visitors and the employees that by entering they taker their first step toward Hell.
Yep. I hear the toothbrush was invented here in Kentucky: Anywhere else and they would have called it a "teethbrush".
Because the biblical explaination covers both creation of the galaxies (or rather, of all the stars in the universe) and animals, and thus people who believe there is an inherent contradiction between science and religion pit the two alternating theories as: genesis vs. big bang and evolution.
Of course, this brings us to people who believe there is an inherent contradiction. Heck, no one is going to be swayed by a comment on slashdot, so I'll leave it at that.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
Clearly I am not drinking the right stuff!
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
I want to go. Honestly I do. I have this urge to buy some bib overalls, a flannel shirt, and blacken a couple teeth for a souvenir photo shoot.
Where is Michael Moore's weekly TV show when you need it? Maybe a Penn and Teller Bullshit special?
The question of creationism has always puzzled me. When I was younger I believed in it whole heartedly. Now that I'm older I have had to rethink my beliefs which I think everyone should do regardless of what you believe, you should always re-evaluate everything. But I don't think that the percentage of people that believe in Creationism are going to be compelled by a museum. I mean personal beliefs usually have some kind of variation between others (different religions and your own ideas), but I guess if you're in an organized religion they might be quite similar. I just don't think you can have a museum on Creationism, I think peoples efforts would be better spent on a museum of Religion. This would be more beneficial to everyone knowing the history of theirs and others beliefs. Knowing what is actually true about someone else's religion could help them to understand others as well.
What I purpose is a place where you can go and be educated on every belief. I myself think that atheism requires just as much faith as a person who believes in god. Who are you to know for a fact that something intelligent didn't create everything, something had to come from somewhere no one knows so why it is that it has to be nothing. Frankly I haven't seen much come from nothing I haven't seen any proof of that so I don't know why people think that it takes less faith to believe that there is no god than it does to believe that there is. Frankly you will never convince someone who has a strong faith to switch in either direction. That is why I think that it fits in as well, I'm sure that there are a lot of people on Slashdot that will disagree with me. I've met quite a few in my travels and at work when the subject comes up. But I think that we can all agree that people generally need to make the decision themselves, be it one way or another.
Back on topic I think it would be better to give a whole history of different beliefs such as Greek/roman gods, Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Atheism, and much much more. I think it would be more educational for people and help them with clarity on their own beliefs. I guess when I was younger I was exposed to all the differing views on everything so that I could make a more educated guess at the time in what I believe. Not that it would help much because I always wonder as I think most of you must.
Of course this is all just my opinion, I'm pretty sure someone will disagree or say it wouldn't work or that it's no different than what is proposed. I just think it would be a good idea in my own head.
Newton's gravitation was "just a theory". Now we have a better one, called Relativity.
But even here, the old, disproved theory of Newtonian physics is still incredibly useful 99% of the time.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
I came to believe in a god while studying physics in college. Years later, I concluded the God of the Bible was indeed that god. After many more years, I still believe in physics and God. It took a long time, but I finally figured out that the Bible was meant to be understood, not taken in a wooden, literal sense. Now, I am amazed at the picture Genesis 1 draws of evolution. The Bible actually predicted what we have discovered since Darwin, but only if one gets past the idea that "days" has to mean 24 hour periods. As a reformed fundamentalist, I am now embarrassed by those who insist on trying to force their ideas into a weird mold and then justify it as "faith". Why couldn't God create evolution and then have a brief description of the process written?
When in Los Angeles, visit the Museum of Jurassic Technology. See their model of Noah's Ark.
Others have already pointed out a couple easy-to-refute claims.
But the real reason people don't usually refute these claims is, we don't have the time. It's obvious that "creation science" is as much pseudoscience as the Q-Ray to anyone who pays attention. Real scientists, in general, would much rather go about discovering reality than disproving your biblical fantasy.
It'd be kind of like asking the government to go around disproving every UFO sighting and conspiracy theory. It's a pointless waste of resources.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Ah, but Wild Turkey is made by Austin, Nichols, which is a subdivision of the French company Pernod, which got its start producing Absinthe.
So maybe us patriotic Americans should be drinking Jack Daniels and calling "Freedom Whiskey". But yuck, JD is like drinking undiluted maple syrup. I'll stick to the Kickin' Chicken straight up with a glass of water on the side.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
http://www.coolios.net/img/motivational.php
This piece in the LA Times hits the mark a little closer for most of us: 'Yabba-dabba science'.
which is a subdivision of the French company Pernod
On the other hand, the French just had one of their most rational elections in a long time. I'll lift a glass of gen-u-ine Baker's to them for getting it (more than usually) right. I can tolerate ownership of a US-based beverage company by a French business because: as hard as it is to run a business in France, I can sure understand why they'd want to invest in one that makes their products in the US... and, no question, the French know a thing or two about swell stuff to drink.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
It is funny how there are basically two kinds of believers. The Fundamentalists and those who interpret the bible. We always make fun of fundamentalists but often forget that picking the 'best' parts parts is equally ridiculous. It defies the meaning of faith. Why is some particular part 'holier' than the others? Most believers fail to answer this. I laugh at fundamentalists as much as the next guy, but lets not forget that denying parts of your texts is just damn ridiculous.
I think they should call it the yaba-daba-doo museum...
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
I dunno man, really cool special effects have been making movies succeed despite the ridiculous stories attached to them for a long time now..
Commodore64_love: I don't comprehend people who're so frightened of death that they'll bankrupt themselves to stay alive
Seriously, there are a lot of Christians out there (like me) that almost fell out of a chair when reading this crap.
:-), I do not think it should be "illegal". Abortion is a personal choice and should be a freedom that ever women has. Granted, my personal opinion is that no one should ever have an abortion unless there is a medical reason. However, I have no right to force my own opinion on any other HUMAN!
:-)
:-(
Yes, I believe is some spiritual life. However, if someone tells me the Earth is only 6,000 years old, well, I think that person should be committed. It is sad, IMO, that a few wacho "christian" sects get to totally destroy the reputation of Christians with most most people. To me it is no different than people who think all Muslims want to strap a bomb to themselves and blow up kids or something. Or that all Jews "own the world's wealth".
I am glad I do not live in that crappy state. I am a card-carrying-member of the ACLU and I donate every month (they have a monthly plan). I hope that this kind of crap can be stopped.
A lot of people I know don't think you can be a Christian and support an organization like the ACLU. Why, because the ACLU supports RIGHTS that some so called "Christians" don't agree with. Well, I am not one of them. While I do not support abortion (I have 3 kids and I am working on #4
Oh, well, let me get off my soap-box
I just want to leave my fellow geeks with the knowledge that not all Christians are sick-freaks like the ones in the article. Seriously, what intelligent human would think the Earth is only 6,000 y/o? We have tons of scientific evidence showing how old the Earth is.
Every time I read a story like this, I cringe! It makes me sad about the fact that so many Christians are mislead and uninformed
General, you are listening to a machine! Do the world a favor and don't act like one.
How to creationists deal with a WRITTEN Japanese and Chinese history streatching back almost
10,000 years???!!!
I wonder if its anything like the creation exhibit in this Simpsons clip.
By reading this signature, you hereby agree with the content of the above comment.
Not to mention that JD has changed their "100 year old recipe" as recently as 2005...
I'll stick with beer...
Nephilium
No, you have it exactly wrong: belief has nothing to do with it, and that's the point.
The schools should be teaching what is supported by evidence (e.g., evolution), not what is proposed to prop up a theology (e.g. creationism).
Do you live in Kansas?
Support the mob or mysteriously disappear.
This is quite possibly the best posting I have ever read on Slashdot. My hat is off to you.
The Bible tells a rich history of God with man. Why does man have to make up stories because there were certain details left out? I don't take sides with the young earth or ye old universe theory, but it bothers me when someone thinks they're so right they have to do something like this. It's almost as bad as bickering between denominations. Anyway, I know God is real, but that doesn't mean I know everything, and odds are neither does this guy.
God spoke to me.
I think you mean:
~(p ^ q) => ~p v ~p
I myself am certain that in no possible world does one equal two. Not even God (should one exist) could make one equal two.
Does this sig remind you of Agatha Christie?
... I always thought Creationism belonged in a museum.
-- -- The Dragon De Monsyne
Are you kidding? This museum is doing us a tremendous favor. If anything, we should send them money.
The intelligent design movement managed to make creationism look vaguely scientific. Its proponents had academic degrees and wrote books; Behe is actually a biochemist. They didn't make patently absurd claims about world being 6000 years old, they didn't use the Bible as a primary source, and they didn't directly refer to God and Jesus in every third sentence. They didn't do science, but they did a decent job of pretending to, and made creationism look almost respectable.
But if you want to see creationism made to look ridiculously unsophisticated and ignorant again, nobody could do a better job than this museum. Apatosaurus living with Adam and Eve? Dinosaurs on Noah's Ark? If you were trying to parody creationism, or create a strawman of all the worst creationist arguments, you couldn't do a better job. And the intelligent design guys- Behe and Dembski- will suddenly find that when they're arguing for creationism, people will be asking them if they believe that Jesus rode a Velociraptor.
So I say, put the Genesis account on display, in all its glory, and let people see it. I think most people will leave thinking exactly what they thought when they came in: evangelicals will leave still knowing that every word in the Bible is true, people looking for a laugh will emerge thinking that while science doesn't have all the answers, it's a lot better than a bunch of ancient myths, and kids- well, I say, let them see dinosaurs and men living alongside each other. Because while adults like to be told what they already know, kids like to ask questions, and I think those dioramas will get them asking a lot of questions.
I think they might be on to something... its quite possible that natural selection is wrong, given that people this stupid exist! Otherwise their ancestors would have been eaten by bears.
Also, they probably feed their plants with Brawndo: "Its got what plants crave!"
(1) "Evolution is just a THEORY"
This is the most common (and the most disappointing) creationist argument I hear on a regular basis. While it's true that evolution is a theory, this statement is made in an attempt to cast doubt on evolution by implying that evolution is akin to a wild guess that scientists came up with after a night of heavy drinking. Newsflash: it's not going to work. Most educated people understand that you're confusing the word "theory" (which means an explanation or model that is capable of predicting future events) with the word "hypothesis" (which means an educated guess). Calling evolution a "theory" isn't an insult. For the millionth time, I will repeat this: gravity is also "just" a theory (for example, google the "General Theory of Relativity"). I might even add that most scientists would consider evolution to be a better-supported theory than gravity, because of the fact that gravity cannot (currently) be quantized, despite decades of attempts. If you want to debate evolution, fine- but don't play these childish word games.
(2) "But evolution has never been observed!"
Most creationists, faced with the mind-numbingly obvious fact that viruses and other creatures (like those famous moths) evolve right in front of our eyes, make a distinction between micro-evolution and macro-evolution. Micro-evolution is "proven", they say, because it only represents a change in allele frequency within a species. Macro-evolution, defined as change from one species to another (aka "speciation"), is more of a problem for creationists. They often insist that speciation has never been observed outside of laboratory experiments. This is blatantly false. Many examples of speciation have been observed in the wild- for example check out this large list of peer-reviewed journal articles here and also here.
The next step that creationists take in response to this rebuttal is to claim that speciation proves nothing- only a change from one kind of organism to another will prove evolution. What's a "kind", you might ask? No one knows. Creationists will give vague examples, such as saying that a dog is a different kind of animal than a whale, but a rigid definition has never (to my knowledge) been offered or universally accepted by the major creationist organizations. It's just a convenient goal post which keeps getting pushed back every time new evidence is found. The fact is, speciation is rather easy to observe in organisms which breed relatively quickly. Observing the creation of, say, a new phylum or order could take many millennia. Unfortunately, human civilization hasn't been around that long. Plus, standard biological nomenclature isn't based on evolutionary criteria, so it isn't clear to me that equating a "kind" with a phylum or order is meaningful in this context.
(3) "But Intelligent Design is different than Biblical Creationism! It's a purely scientific alternative theory."
Don't try to pretend that "Intelligent Design" is somehow different than creationism. Especially don't try to pretend that it's a scientific theory. Seriously. No one's buying it. "Intelligent Design" is a disguise- a secular-sounding term thrown over religious creationism to try to smuggle it into a state-funded science class
For want of a better word, "Amen!" :-)
If I was created by a God, that God has no dominion over me. I won't bow, grovel or worship him. He is no more or less equal than any other creature in the Universe.
If God created Adam and Eve, then they were His children and His responsibility. It was His duty to teach them, to guide them, to nurture them, to comfort them, to correct them when they made mistakes, and to keep them safe from their own ignorance. Creating beings with free will, whether by divine powers or natural conception, makes you responsible for those who are created. If they screw up their lives because you left them in an environment with dangerous elements that your children have no experience in dealing with, then it is your fault. Heck, from the perspective of Adam and Eve, the snake was probably a perfectly legitimate source of guidance; nobody had told them it wasn't!
In any case, if Adam and Eve existed, then they had pretty much the worst growing up experience possible. They were given curiosity but were kept ignorant, provided with dangerous temptations, and given no guides save for malicious entities that they had never even been warned against. When the urge to satisfy that curiosity (at the urging of a creature made by their same creator and dwelling in their own safe garden) became too great, they were irrevocably changed, cast out from paradise, and defamed as the originators of sin for the rest of eternity. At THIS point, their all-powerful 'parent' offers no comfort or assistance, but decides that NOW He would put protection on the one thing that might, possibly, have reversed the change done to them.
You are arguing that this deity loves us, and that we should worship Him? The average everyday, non-omniceint, flawed-in-various-ways father and mother that most of us had growing up is far more worthy, in my opinion (not that I worship anybody, but maybe I'm just a bit too cynical).
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
Your response is as predictable as it is wrong: evolution is not "a single set of related concepts that have no applicable use anyway, outside of nomenclature", it's at the heart of modern biology and medicine, and, increasingly, computer science.
Why didn't this get tagged with "haha" ?
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
A good book by Richard Dawkins who wrote 'The Selfish Gene'. Here's a summary:
.. no, that's holy? . .. We are used to not challenging religious ideas but it's very interesting how
Richard Dawkins on why religion sticks: "There is no such thing as a Muslim Child. There is a child of Muslim Parents. There is no such thing as a Christian Child. There is a child of Christian Parents.
My specific hypothesis is about children. More than any other species, we survive by the accumulated experience of previous
generations, and that experience needs to be passed on to children for their protection and well-being. Theoretically, children might learn from personal experience not to go too near a cliff edge, not to eat untried red berries, not to swim in crocodile-infested waters. But, to say the least, there will be a selective advantage to child brains that possess the rule of thumb: believe, without question, whatever your grown-ups tell you. Obey your parents; obey the tribal elders, especially when they adopt a solemn, minatory tone. Trust your elders without question. This is a generally valuable rule for a child. But, as with the moths, it can go wrong.
Natural selection builds child brains with a tendency to believe whatever their parents and tribal elders tell them.
Such trusting obedience is valuable for survival: the analogue of steering by the moon for a moth. But the flip side of trusting obedience is slavish gullibility. The inevitable by-product is vulnerability to infection by mind viruses.
Sociologists studying British children have found that only about one in twelve break away from their parents' religious beliefs."
Remember the old consistency thing. People are loathe to change their mind:
"It would be a severe disadvantage, for example, when hunting or making tools, to keep changing one's mind, so under some circumstances, it is better to persist in an irrational belief than to vacillate, even if new evidence or ratiocination favors a change."
Douglas Adams: "Religion . . . has certain ideas at the heart of it which we call sacred or holy or whatever. What it means is, 'Here is an idea or a notion that you're not allowed to say anything bad about; you're just not. Why not? - because you're not!' If somebody votes for a party that you don't agree with, you're free to argue about it as much as you like; everybody will have an argument but nobody feels aggrieved by it. If somebody thinks taxes should go up or down you are free to have an argument about it. But on the other hand if somebody says 'I mustn't move a light switch on a Saturday', you say, 'I respect that'.
Why should it be that it's perfectly legitimate to support the Labour party or the Conservative party, Republicans or Democrats, this model of economics versus that, Macintosh instead of Windows - but to have an opinion about how the Universe began, about who created the Universe .
much of a furore Richard creates when he does it!
Everybody gets absolutely frantic about it because you're not allowed to say these things. Yet when you look at it rationally there is no reason why those ideas shouldn't be as open to debate as any other, except that we have agreed somehow between us that they shouldn't be."
Andrew Mueller: "Pledging yourself to any particular religion 'is no more or less weird than choosing to believe that the world is rhombus-shaped, and borne through the cosmos in the pincers of two enormous green lobsters called Esmerelda and Keith'."
Sam Harris: "We have names for people who have many beliefs for which there is no rational justification. When their beliefs are extremely common we call them 'religious'; otherwise, they are likely to be called 'mad', 'psychotic' or 'delusional' . . . Clearly there is sanity in numbers."
Richard Dawkins: "The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodth
God gave humans and angels Free Will, something not even He could divine. Than he apnked us for using it, but thats another story. Actually, it's The Story.
-peace
"A few great minds are enough to endow humanity with monstrous power, but a few great hearts are not enough to make us w
I try to think of how to respond to this question and prove that I have no desire to reduce myself to angry invective, as such is not my intention at all. First of all, I will at least "expose" myself to be a Roman Catholic so that you know where I am coming from in general as I respond to your post. As for indoctrination, I agree with you entirely up until the point of attributing child-rearing as a practice in indoctrination. In and of itself, Truth demands Freedom, for if there be a grounding to the world, it must be conformable to reason. However, a dissociation of humanity flows from a lack of desire to rear our children in those experiences which we vouch (with life and practice) to be true. However, I will agree that an essential element of child-rearing also requires the formation of a truly-questioning mind.
The Fathers of the Church viewed Christianity as more akin to philosophy than the religions of the day. Since the Gospel is primarily about an encounter with the Truth (although with personal dimension in Jesus Christ), it remains, in the final analysis, in the category of philosophy than it does in "religion," although it holds within it the dynamism toward re-ligation of humanity with the Truth. While the specifics of this may be contested, I am not trying to give a comprehensive view of doctrine or convince its validity. Instead, it is my desire to show you that, viewed as a branch of philosophy (although with a cultural-historical component which makes it somewhat different), Christianity is not an effort of believers to indoctrinate into the Truth. Instead, it is the higher (and true) calling of the Christian to be a light for the world through living in accord with that Truth. In so many ways, Christian groups try to reduce the end of Christian life to nothing more than political activism. In its essence it is not that at all but is instead an offering of encounter with Love in the lives of the believing community. These acts of love, supported by the Love of Christ, are to be part of the ongoing exodus in which the believers not only act positively but also come upon the limitations of themselves and their reason, continually moving forward in dialogue with the world, while remaining distinct from those portions of life which, by their nature, destroy the dialogical character of man.
With respect to your last comment, I would say this: Undialogical religion is a poison to rationality but philosophical thinking and morality are necessary components of a complete rationality. Without direction, materialistic thinking becomes utilitarian and is thus necessarily placed at the feet of power for its direction. Each century has shown us how any group (Christians included) ultimately destroy themselves and many others when power becomes the measure of action. Truth is the final end of all good science, just as it is the end of all true religion. Philosophy/Morality/Personal-encounter are part of the same complex of rationality of which materialistic science is also a member. The two mutually support each other and most definitely do not abrogate the other's raison d'etre.
I hope that this was not read in a spirit of anger because that is far from my desire. Dialogue is man's highest goal, and I merely mean to enter into dialogue.
DeMorgan's law follows from the law of the excluded middle and the law of noncontradiction.
Given an infinite universe and infinite timeline, a being could evolve with a super intellect and that could live forever and could master space-time, create a means of time travel. He could understand the placement of every atom and sub particle and master quantum math. Given a long enough timeline over multi space-times a being could become omnipotent and omniscient.
This is known as the appel-vendal theory.
I hate slashdot
Probably because Japanese written history only goes back about 2400 years and Chinese written history 3200 years.
I don't have the Chapter & Verse lined up yet, but you have to be really careful here sir.
... almost makes sense. (I think you have to combine a couple of portions of development, but you could find a six part division there somewhere.)
The most powerful decision you have to make regarding your faith is whether to go "pure literal" all the way, and hang on tight for the ride, or agree right at the outset to adopt one of the "Parable-Symbolic" type interpretations.
If you have chosen the crisp literal style of belief, you do not believe in classical evolution.
If you say you did, "I'm sorry, I didn't hear you. Can you repeat that?"
On the other side, if you tag onto a couple of crucial hints that "Jesus spoke in parables", then you can freely interpret "days" as broad as the revelations phrase "end of days". (Clearly, the world will not end on July 7 after holidays sales are posted. Christ will reappear whenever He wants to... for large values of whenever.)
Then "God created the world in six *epochs*"
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
"But here steps in Satan, the eternal rebel, the first free-thinker and emancipator of worlds. He makes man ashamed of his bestial ignorance and obedience; he emancipates him, stamps upon his brow the seal of liberty and humanity, in urging him to disobey and eat of the fruit of knowledge." - Mikhail Bakunin
It's a circular phenomenon. The ongoing failure of America's educational systems is producing a vast number of individuals with limited critical-thinking skills and no grasp of scientific method. These minds are fertile ground for irrational and unsupportable belief systems such as Creationism, yet you can't ignore the people who hold such beliefs simply because they are ignorant. They are dangerous because they make considerable efforts to acquire influence, and to inculcate others in their dubious thought processes. Worse yet, they eventually become part of the aforementioned plutocracy, which magnifies their power and influence manyfold.
If civilization is to survive and avoid another Dark Age, we're going to have to fight on multiple fronts. It's not going to be easy, because willful ignorance is a powerful force. It's easy to simply dismiss Creationists and the like as the foolish, uninformed people that they are. That's a serious mistake, though, because they are organized and have a definite agenda.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
bart: "according to creation theory, there were no cavemen"
homer: "good riddance! their drawings sucked and they looked like hippies"
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
Cause the flood wiped out the dinosaurs hundreds of years before David and Daniel, duh!
Don't trust a bull's horn, a doberman's tooth, a runaway horse or me.
We actually know for a fact that Jesus rode a raptor into Jersualem: http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/UnNews:Legitimate_Bib lical_archeologists_discover_raptor_tracks_in_Jeru salem/
Show me one religion that hasn't changed or "adapted" over the years. I don't think you can say that, because science adapts, that excludes it from being a religion (not to say that science is a religion, but to contest your apparent requirement that, in order for something to be a religion, it must not adapt or change).
When the Bible says (Genesis 1,20, KJB) "And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creatures that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven", it doesn't mention which mechanism God used to do that. He could very well be using Evolution.
A truly literal interpretation of the Bible can be very dangerous. God said (Genesis 1,29) "And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed , which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat". OK, let's see those fundie boys eat some poisonous fruits, please...
As to the interpretations you mention about the differences in both genealogies of Jesus, neither holds water. Matthew 1,16 says "And Jacob begat Joseph,the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ". Therefore your "A" explanation is not true, the Holy Bible very clearly states it's *not* the genealogy of Mary. Regarding the "B" explanation, at one point there's a 14 generation gap between both genealogies. If you are ready to assume that "begat" is so flexible that could mean either father and son or great-grand-grand-grand-grand-grand-grand-grand-g
I think that, unfortunately, many of the "rational" people in America have come to believe that religion is necessarily a poison to rationality. They sit in a festering pool of evangelical sludge, so it's not hard to see why they might come to that conclusion, but it's not true. Religion and rationality don't have to be mutually exclusive. One might have religious beliefs due to religious experience, for instance, but still maintain a rational fallibilism by which he acknowledges that his religious standpoint on existence is not necessarily true, and that his religious experience - while convincing - may be caused by explicable, physical phenomena rather than something spiritual. That would not make religion a poison to rationality, for the believer is maintaining a rational frame of mind by keeping a degree of agnosticism regarding his or her spiritual side. Religion only becomes a poison to rationality when it becomes insane and people start holding infallibilistic doctrines that cause them to assert their beliefs as unquestionably correct despite any new evidence to the contrary. That is insane, but it is not representative of all religion. So, while the creationists and the intelligent designers are obviously off their rockers, don't extrapolate from these (albeit too common) instances into a universal claim that all religion is a poison to rationality. It can be a very beautiful thing. It's kind of like a paintbrush - in the right hands, it can do amazing things. In the wrong hands, it produces nothing worth noticing. In the REALLY wrong hands, it gets sharpened down into a weapon and someone ends up with it embedded in his braincase.
You're right, religeon adapts for sure. Humans will adapt and modify anything they get their hands on. But by declaring a particular book "sacred", be it the bible, the koran, or whatever, they are stuck with certain things that don't make sense any more. Like stoning to death adulterers and disobedient children. Most modern Christians adapt by ignoring large portions of the bible, which is fine with me (and highly beneficial for them), but most still claim the book is infallable. Even though they find rationalizations for their selective reading, they believe the ancient books are sacred. Sacred in the sense that they cannot be questioned.
In contrast, science is fundamentally based on the premise that nothing is too sacred to be questioned. And this has proven itself a very practical and useful thing.
I actually think that before the advent of the printing press, religion worked much better. Via oral tradition the "sacred" teachings could adapt over time as people left out bits that became unpallatable, or added bits of new wisdom that seemed to fit things better. The idea that it was set in stone was good, but the fact that it wasn't literally set in stone was also good. But once it was we got stuck with an old version of mankind's wisdom, which only partly applies to modern life.
Well, it's one thing to criticize infallibilistic dogma, and it's another to criticize religion. I'm all for the former, since the former is clearly insane. It just bothers me when people claim that they're one and the same.
Not everyone who attends church every Sunday is following what is in the scriptures (the same holds true for people of Jewish and Islamic faith as well) and you are correct that God will see right through the people who treated others like crap, but went to church every Sunday. However, to blame them rather than scripture for your disbelief is simply sad. Furthermore you are not religious because God is not what you want him to be? This seems rather selfish. Christianity is simple: Christ died to pay the price for our sinful nature. All we have to do is accept that. The rest is just strengthening the way you live your life, treat others, and look at the world.
When I look around I see so many mysteries, and so much complexity that still cannot be explained by evolutionary science. The internal workings of a cell are a perfect example of this, or perhaps the eye. It's like throwing a few buckets of paint at a wall and expecting a beautiful portrait, or splashing ink on a page and getting Shakespeare. It just won't happen. Darwin himself struggled with this particular point. I won't go as far as to say the world is only a few thousand years old, or that nothing evolves, but perhaps God is there making that little change happen to please himself.
Just wanted to say a few things before you get modded down into non-existence.
Evolution isn't any more "non-science" than astro-physics is non-science. Sure, it's pretty hard to set up an experiment to test evolution. But the same can be said for most of what goes on in space. That hasn't kept science out. Unfortunately, it does mean that the scatter is a little larger and research takes longer. But research still does happen because predictions can be made and then you wait and see if the observations match up.
Evolution is falsifiable. If we actually wanted to run experiments we could. It might take a few hundred million years, but we could do it. Creation, on the other hand, is not falsifiable. But that won't stop those with blinders on from claiming they are similarly situated.
Wow... either you are a liar or not paying attention in class. Science NEVER proves anything. The scientific method is about collecting facts and developing theories to fit the facts. Experiments are then performed to attempt to falsify those theories. No theory has been or will ever be "proven" There is more evidence (A LOT more) for the theory of evolution than there is for the theory of gravitation... should we stop teaching kids about gravity? You haven't studied the evidence for evolution (or you aren't smart enough to understand it) based on your post
It takes a big man to cry, but it takes a bigger man to laugh at that man.
Why? Because the Germans claimed in their war-propaganda that Natural Selection and Darwin proved the German race was superior and they would defeat everybody else.
So Williams Jennings Bryan fought Evolution, because he was opposed to the notion of Darwinism in our human society.
From wikipedia
I guess what I just find so ironic is how 80 years later, the people arguing this stupid battle... the ones arguing against Evolution because of a belief that it will undermine the moral fabric of the society... are the people with no morals.
Kids often visit museums. If you're looking to influence young minds and you can't get into schools, museums are the next best thing.
You're getting a physics minor and you don't know the difference between "theory" and "hypothesis"?
/. so I'd think would be reasonably intelligent, are part of the reason why they US is a laughingstock around the world for the huge percentage of people who don't believe in evolution. (one helluva a run on sentence but I hope you get the point).
Are you graduating from Pat Robertson's Regent University School of Law? It puts more lawyers into the Bush administration than Yale and Harvard (and probably those two combined).
The huge amount of difference between "theory" and "hypothesis" that Americans don't seem able to understand amazes me. No wonder that people such as yourself, who post to
riding round the world on an old motorcycle
"Probably would be cheaper and more effective to just down a fifth of bourbon, but this is for the whole family."
it's Kentucky, bourbon is for the whole family there.
I don't think you understand how religion works. If somebody is determined to believe the entire earth was covered in water, they'll just tell themselves God must have added the water and then taken it away.
Stars, day and night, hurricanes, tornadoes, ocean waves, the moon, earth quakes, rain, seasons, etc have all been attributed to God when there was no better explanation. If you don't know how something happens, just attribute it to God.
...but this is for the whole family.
So's the bourbon. What's the age there? Two?
What?
Why are you protesting? Who gives a shit? As long as they keep their creationist crap out of our schools, that's all I care about.
This museum represents a direct attack on science. I give a shit because I happen to think that science and scientific literacy are important. The stuff presented in this museum is blatantly wrong, and ridiculous, and is a menace to the public understanding and enlightenment even without government support (though, I would not be surprised if the museum has not benefited at least indirectly from the tax breaks our government is too happy to give religious institutions.) The only educational value it has to serve as a case-in-point as to how excessive religious faith can obliterate any trace of rationality in an otherwise intelligent individual.
Also, some schools (hopefully only private/religious schools) are undoubtedly planning field trips to this museum (an earlier article I read noted the parking lot which was designed to comfortably accommodate school buses). It's bad enough that parents and churches poison impressionable, helpless children's minds with this garbage, but now they'll have a multi-million dollar, Universal Studios caliber set of displays and presentations to even more thoroughly inculcate kids to this backwards, pre-medieval nonsense.
So schools shouldn't teach about atomic theory, like protons, neutrons, etc.? Or electrical theory? None of that stuff is proven, since we can't exactly see inside atoms.
Do you go to the Bob Jones school of physics? You really have no business in a science class.
I think you're confusing the distinction between theory and hypothesis. The former comes from the latter, but only after it has not been shown by every available means to be false.
...I hate string theory, hope it dies a horrible painful death... ...My personal feeling is that both Evolution and Creation are non-science due to their subject matter...
.02 cents.
:-P
By your own admission:
By the way, I'm a Christian, and one who holds to the young-earth ideas...
...you appear to lack the objectivity required to be of any use in science, and I would advise you to abandon it and pursue a course of study more concordant with your abilities.
Just my
Well, you got that much right. 0.02 of a cent is a generous estimate of the value of your statements. BTW, I want everybody to take note how polite I'm being here, despite the strain.
Probably because Japanese written history only goes back about 2400 years and Chinese written history 3200 years. ...Yes... but combined, they cover 5600 years... which is a perfect fit for ID fact..errr..theory.
"If anything can go wrong, it will." - Murphy
Why must this museum be in Kentucky? Goddammit. As if that state needs to provide more low-hanging fruit for lazy comedians to throw. Can't we just stick with bourbon, college basketball, horses, and coal?
... okay, maybe Kentucky should apologize for that one....
Kentucky gave us Hunter S. Thomson, Johnny Depp, Muhammad Ali, George Clooney
But I digress. Does anyone else find it ironic that this museum is in the same state from which John Scopes came? Scopes taught in Tennessee but is from the Bluegrass State. How about that the pioneering geneticist Phil Sharp was a Kentuckian?
Hope they eventually move this damn museum to Mississippi -- where it belongs.
So whaddaya expect for nuttin'?
Evolution is a science. Why is it a science? Because it follows the scientific method. There is evidence and rules what can be treated as evidence. When the evidence no longer fits the model the model will be changed to fit the evidence. An this goes on and on until the evidence and the model fit together like a fine wine and cheese.
Creationism on the other hand cannot follow the scientific method. For one thing there is only one theory and that theory can never be modified. Where on the other hand the theory of evolution has changed in the last 150 years since is formulation. Creationism is just the opposite of science. Since you can't change the theory you have to change the evidence. You can't do that in science. You have to go by what the evidence says.
My friend as Penn & Teller say, "Creationsim is Bullshit!"
Supporting World Peace Through Nuclear Pacification
i must unfortunately disagree for one reason.
children are first and foremost believe everything they are told by an authority figure. if a child's parents and all other adults are telling the child that creationism is correct and evolution is evil, the child will with a high probability believe that.
Those raptors are still here now: http://xkcd.com/c87.html
The schools should be teaching what is supported by evidence (e.g., evolution), not what is proposed to prop up a theology (e.g. creationism). Unless you researched everything yourself, then there is belief. Who do you trust?
Good research is repeatable. And in fact, good research isn't accepted unless it's demonstrated to be repeatable.
Geez, ever take a lab class?
No, schools should be teaching facts.
That's a pretty bold statement. At one feel swoop you've just eliminated most of the humanities from schools.
Literature? Not fact-based. Gone.
History? Whoa, quite a can of worms! One man's history is another man's horrific distortion of the past. Whose history of, say, World War II will we be teaching this week?
Math? Well, according to Goedel even arithmetic will contain statements that are true but cannot be proven. Does this mean they aren't facts?
By the way, the idea that the universe is 6,000 years old is based on those genealogies, so if the GP is correct about "begat", that date could be a bit skewed.
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Unless you researched everything yourself, then there is belief. Who do you trust?
Creationism and Evolution have one thing in common - a big stack of paper that tells what each is. But that's where it ends.
Creationism says "This stack of papers states the absolute proof and if you challenge it you are a heretic who will burn in hell."
Evolution(ism) says "These papers say the way we think things are based on the information we've found so far. If you can refute the evidence and findings in them, please do so, and add your evidence and findings to the stack of papers."
One requires blind belief in "information" that cannot be examined or refuted. The other requires no belief and encourages examination and refutation.
Your response, which of course is the standard response, is totally and completely unsatisfactory and disintegrates upon a close inspection.
First is the age old question of free will/predestination. If God knew what was going to happen, or what any individual is going to do a priori, just how is that free will?
Second your comparison of parent-child relationship. What father would condemn his children to internal suffering just because of their lack of faith in the existence of an invisible being?
Or even just the wrong invisible being... There is a strong correlation between religious affiliation and prevailing culture. So those unlucky individuals born into Muslim, Hindu or Buddhist cultures are going to have a much higher likelihood of being "cast into the lake of fire". Geography apparently strongly determines the demographics of hell.
Next, why is freewill always associated with the propensity to disobey and unbelief? A rational creature can have freewill but still be inclined to obey or believe in a deity, especially with the presentation of some physical evidence. Likewise one can be inclined to disobey and not have free will. The whole freewill notion is a red herring.
And why does this god of yours desire to "bring even more glory to Himself"!!! Think about this for a while. The desire for Glory is one the more detestable qualities of megalomaniacs, despotic rulers and warrior kings.
Do you not think it is much more likely that this alleged desire for "glory" is just a transference of the manners of warrior kings to a blasphemous vision of God? A god made in man's image.
You are worshiping a bronze-age god and using dark-age apologetics to justify it. As Sam Harris has noted there is a new wine being poured why not catch it with a clean glass.
If you can't prove them true how do you know they are ? And if you don't know if they are, why should you teach them as if they were ?
So yes, as far as I'm concerned, an unproven mathemathical statement isn't a fact. It is, at best, an educated guess.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
I think that's what they once said about the extremist Madrassa in muslim world. And now, I'm sure you've started hearing about muslim groups pressuring schools and governments to kowtow to their idiotic beliefs about depicting Muhammed or acknowledging the holocaust? Fanatacism never stays confined anywhere -- religion by it's very nature perpetuates itself and attempts to dominate every aspect of Human affairs. So you SHOULD give a shit. Sooner or later, they WILL try to force schools to teach this nonsense again, and museums like this make it easier to strengthen public support for their bullshit mythologies. The very existence of this monument to delusion and contempt for science is an abomination.
No...Church can 'preach' that which you apparently believe. Schools can 'teach' that which is observable in nature and verifiable in the lab.
And the whole 'You can't prove evolution' argument is false. It can be viewed, recorded and reproduced in micro-cultures easily and it's effects can be extrapolated equally in the macroscopic universe looking at many things such as DNA similarities and physical similarities between varying species.
You don't like learning scientific doctrine? Don't go to school. If you wanna get your personal views of big daddy God and his magical wonder book reinforced by other like minded peoples, go to your Church. Or a Church run 'school'. Just leave the public schools the fuck alone for those who don't want Jehova crammed down their throats.
This just shows how evil and destructive the theistic movement is -- they've already brainwashed society into thinking that evolution is an untested theory. It HAS been tested -- undergrad students (and even high school students) routinely run experiments in which they allow various traits to evolve in micro-organisms. There are thousands of examples of species that have evolved in the last century, many of them extremely novel. Novel ecosystems have developed. Entirely new metabolic pathways have appeared -- I somehow doubt that titanium-oxidizing bacteria, nylon-oxidizing bacteria, or fungi that subsist on high levels of ionizing radiation, developed before Human were around to provide pure titanium, nylon, or Chernobyl-level nuclear disasters.
"Creationism is Evolution's way of seperating the dumb from the lesser-dumb."
>> Sure, it's pretty hard to set up an experiment to test evolution.
s t_arguments
not with fruitflies it isn't... we have lots of proof of evolution. for real. just not the monkey/human 1million year experiment kind... missing links? yes, we have them.
here's some interesting fuel for your fire: http://wiki.cotch.net/index.php/List_of_creationi
music - http://www.subatomicglue.com
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creationism
interesting read, lots of sources referenced.
music - http://www.subatomicglue.com
Do you even know what science is? Name ONE scientific fact please.
JESUS SAVE ME..... .....from your followers.
-
It is *MY* belief that the Bible, and religion in general, has been hijacked by nutjobs who have bastardized and perverted the Bible and religious teachings into things that they are not.
Keep in mind, following the Ten Commandments and the Bible DO NOT make you a religious nutter. They just make you more polite, and generally more pleasant to be around. It's when religion gets taken out of context, exploited, and contorted into something far different than what it was meant to be do people become the religious extremists that we have today. This goes for pretty much ANY religion, not just Christianity.
Scientology is one exception: It just stupid no matter how you look at it, drunk or sober.
-
Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....
...and it's obligatory for a discussion of this nature, I will now purport to be offended by something totally irrelevant to the main line of debate in order to (1) score emotional points from lurking idiots, currency which I will presumably spend soon to reinforce my absurd point of view and (2) draw attention away from the spotlight you're attempting to shine on the more subtly positioned points in the arguments you're advocating.
Here I go.
"Fat Americans"??? How dare you!
Note how I used quotes improperly to put words in your mouth--words you didn't actually type. I'm hoping to establish a precedent here of being able to use quotes that approximate what you have said. This way, in later replies when I completely go off the reservation, I can continue to "quote" you as if I know what you're really saying and reference to your actual words are all but irrelevant.
(This post is a result of my attempt to see things from the Creationist point of view, to better understand where they're coming from. If you're a Creationist, how'm I doing so far?)
but have you considered the following argument: shut up.
Well, yes...but only because I "believe" in science.
but have you considered the following argument: shut up.
I don't understand your issue here--every public school science curriculum I've ever observed does exactly everything you ask of it and more when it comes to evolution...indeed, ALL science. They begin teaching science to students by teaching them the scientific method, which encompasses the basic definitions of scientific terms like "hypothesis," "theory," "experiment," etc. So, by calling it "the Theory of Evolution," right off the bat everyone knows what that means. Any student who paid attention during that first week of jr. high science ought to also be able to tell you the difference between the fact of evolution and the theory (also more casually referred to as "Darwinism")...something which I fear you perhaps cannot? This covers the first paragraph or so you have written...of course your statement that schools shouldn't teach theory, only fact, is bogglingly flawed. Pretty much all of science is about theory. Facts form little more than an almanac. Without theories, which is nothing more than a fact-based model used to make predictions, we would not have science at all. Nor would we be able to make scientific predictions, as the ability to predict is what separates science from, well, just about everything else. Quick litmus test to tell if we're talking about science...ask yourself, does it make reliable predictions? Astrology? No, therefore not science. Astronomy? Yup, therefore science. Gravity? Yup, therefore science. Mythology? Entertaining and interesting, but no predictions result, so no, not science. "Intelligent" design? Hmmm...
but have you considered the following argument: shut up.
You'll all be dead within 100 years anyway. It's funny how anytime something about God is posted we all have an opinion. Here's my 2 cents...
If you don't believe in God, then I propose that for 24hrs you take notice that most everything in your life more than likely rotates around something man made. Whether it be the screen you're reading this through, the chair you sit, or the cup that holds your drink. You could very well be an unaware caged being. Take a camping trip and observe things not made by human hands.
If you're a Christian, then I suggest you stop beating people over the head with the bible. Live by example & not comparison. Realize there IS a place/need for science. This isn't a fairly tale world we live in.
Most of us possess strong beliefs whether it be in God or not. Science has a great need for fact, religion has a great need for faith. People of science find it difficult to believe in what they can't see & those of religion question the knowledge of man. I agree with both. It's difficult to believe in what one can't see & it's equally difficult to have faith in a species as corrupt as humans. However, in the end I feel actions speak louder than words. Have you stepped up and taken part in something aside from you own interests, or are you spinning your wheels a pissing contest?
Actually, both of those theories are backed by fact, but make unsubstianted claims that life didn't originate or change over time in any other ways. For example, Glofish definitely came to be through creationism. If it ever wanted a religion, it would be able to name both their creator and their purpose in life. And certainly there are many fossil records as well as contemporary experience in husbandry that shows evolution does take place and is the origin of many species. But, there are also inherent properties of hydrocarbons and DNA that limits the number of ways a particular desired trait can be realized. There are probably only so many ways a carbon-based organism can have vision, hearing, muscles, metabolism... This boils down to laws of physics in our Universe, but who is to say if the universe is intelligent and can be considered a kind of God, or what does this god want? Individual humans are intelligent and have certain moral objectives. It appears that millions of humans together have collective intelligence and morals that are sometimes more and sometimes less than that of an individual. It certainly seems unscientific to exclude the possibility that the universe at large has intelligence, moral objectives and a hand in making human species who we are.
I do think it's extremely unlikely that intelligent universe/god(s) would care about our sex lives or support war in Iraq. If anything, it behooves on us to fight increase in entropy whenever we can.
And the whole 'You can't prove evolution' argument is false. It can be viewed, recorded and reproduced in micro-cultures easily and it's effects can be extrapolated equally in the macroscopic universe looking at many things such as DNA similarities and physical similarities between varying species.
Don't forget that creationists claim there is some invisible line between "micro" and "macroevolution" which I think they draw between phylums and say that only microevolution has been proven. Of course they haven't bothered to show any data that suggests this line needs to be drawn in first place...
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
Creationism is falsifiable. The Genesis creation story makes some very specific claims about the way everything was created which should have predictable effects on the fossil record.
For instance, all of the animals were made on the same day according to Genesis. This means that we should see fossil cows at every level of the geological column. Do we? No. Creationism is not only falsifiable, it is falsified.
All I want is a secure system where it's easy to do anything I want. Is that too much to ask ~~ Randall Munroe
50% Insightful
20% Interesting
20% Overrated
So far, no one's calling me a troll, or flamebait, or even offtopic. The worst I get is "overrated", which is fine, I think, for a one-liner like that.
Care to tell me what your basis is for judging me "not insightful"?
If I had to define my own insight, it's very simple: There's nothing wrong with creationism. There's nothing wrong with astrology, either. But let's not pretend that either one has any basis in science. If it's in the classroom at all, put it in sociology.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Your epistemology of science appears to be a little too simple. The anomaly of Mercury's perihelion was known since the beginning of the 19th century but it had no effect on newtonian mechanics whatsoever until Einstein presented a rival theory. Also, all theories require supplementation by the ceteris paribus clause (i.e. everything else is the same). This means that a contradictory observation may ALWAYS be explained as failure of the ceteris paribus clause rather than failure of the theory. And so on and so forth, it's actually worth reading something on epistemology and scientific method (Popper, Lakatos, Kuhn...), you may be surprised by how science actually works.
Without commenting on the validity of the Bible, I have to comment on the validity of some of your arguments.
If the whole Earth was covered in uniform water sheet, would that actually cause a depression ? After all, the rock, being solid matter, and the magma beneath it, being liquid, won't compress significantly under the pressures involved; most likely the glacial depression was made possible by pushing the land mass deeper into the mantle and displacing the magma, which would have the effect of rising the other areas of the world a bit. This isn't possible if the whole globe is uniformly covered; there's nowhere to displace magma to.
Secondly, the Ice Age lasted for thousands of years, while the biblical flod supposedly lasted a few months. Maybe there simply wouldn't be time for significant depression - after all, the rebound is a very slow process, taking tens of thousands of years, so why would the depression be any faster ?
Nonsense. The atmosphere is concentrated near Earth because it experiences the pull of gravity like anything else. The air pressure is caused by the weight of air atop you; the air pressure at sea level is greater than that at the top of Everest because there is more air above you weighting down on you. This greater pressure compresses the air, making it thicker. As you go upwards, there's less air atop you, hence less weight, hence less pressure; less pressure means that air isn't crushed into such high density and is therefore less dense. Because air is denser nearer the surface, the majority of Earth's atmosphere is concentrated near the surface.
The gravity at Everest, or even at Low Earth Orbit, is not significantly weaker than at surface. In fact, since the strength of gravity is inversely proportional to the distance to the Earth's center of gravity (which we can assume to be at the geometric centre), and Earth's radius is (according to Google) about 6378.1 kilometers, and the height of Everest is 9 kilometers (to err on the side of caution), the gravity at the top of the Everest is about 0.2 percent weaker than at sea level.
Or see Venus: the planet has less mass than Earth, but far thicker atmosphere.
So, in conclusion: increasing Earth's radius by 9 kilometers wouldn't have any noticeable effect whatsoever on the atmosphere.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
The parent comment voices my concerns perfectly. I wish I had mod points!
Given the sorry state of public education, the vacuum in children's heads can easily be filled with garbage. This museum is a giant garbage funnel planned and funded by the fundamentalist nutjobs. It's not harmless, it IS an attack on science.
When one person suffers from a delusion, it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called Rel
So English is not my first language, develope some manners.
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
"No, schools should be teaching facts." And creationism is a fact how? The fact of the matter is that the only profession that can be taught entirely with 100% proven facts is Mathematics. All other professions must insert a factor of uncertainty into their teaching. History, science, linguistics and other subjects all require speculation and inference from evidence. If schools were to teach only facts, they'd be teaching very little, if at all. No, schools should not teach only facts. Instead, they should teach fallibility. They should get students to understand that their knowledge is never definitive, and that the very foundations of science are constantly changing. And that, my friend, is a fact.
My new blog
I always knew the world was only 6000 years old, and my granny told me all the true stories of The Holy Bible [TM]. But I also always kept wondering who censored the dinosaurs out of these wonderful stories. Something looks strange here. Can someone help please?
open (SIG, "</dev/zero"); $sig = <SIG>; close SIG;
Except that nowhere does it say that a "day" in the context of Genesis is the standard 24 hours we're used to - it could been a few million years. Thus, creating every creature in a 2day" could in fact be referring to a span that covers the timeline given by evolution.
:P
True, I don't believe a word of creationism, but if they can provide evidence, I'll at least listen before laughing in their faces
Goten Xiao
Watch my keen, tactical observational and logical skills:
Bears, boars, and lions all exist, so they made it to the ark. These creatures are manly.
Dragons, unicorns, and faeries are all mythical, so they didn't. Girls like these creatures more, in general.
Humans tend to like things similar to themselves. Therefore, dragons, unicorns, and faeries are girly.
Girls take FOREVER to get ready to go anywhere.
Therefore, they all missed the ark because they were "still putting on their face" when the ark left.
Damn women.
On a side thought, if the entire world was flooded, why don't we find fossils/fish remains on the top of tall mountains, usually? You'd think the fish of the world would have swam to these new areas.
You probably ought to have taken a look at the Wikipaedia entry on Goedel before you posted ... it would have saved you some embarassment.
What a long, strange trip it's been.
If you believe the Bible, people never lived in caves. Adam and Eve went straight to a bronze-age livestyle, raising crops and livestock, and living in more or less decent housing. If anyone in their time lived in caves, it would have been some poor stupid shmucks who had no idea how to build a house. (All normal people are born knowing things like that and can undertake great engineering projects like, say, a giant floating Ark, without much instruction) Surely, we can't expect stupid people like that to know how to paint, can we?
The title *should* have been:
Creationism relegated to museum.
I'll make this short:
Evolution is just a theory. This is undeniable.
But so is gravity.
And thermodynamics.
And well, pretty much every act of physics and biology.
That's the funny thing about facts: You can never be 100% sure about them. I mean, okay, so for the past, I don't know, some-odd billion years or more, we've seen evidence that objects of mass have an attractive force between them. We called it gravity. But, you know, I suppose any day now, theoretically, it could just stop, hey why not? Gravity's just a theory!
The Creation Museum is "powered" by the organisation Answers in Genesis, which as an employer requires something more than a good CV:
"All job applicants need to supply a written statement of their testimony, a statement of what they believe regarding creation and a statement that they have read and can support the AiG statement of faith." - AiG website.
Isn't this a form of disrimination? Is this legal?
This museum represents a direct attack on science.
Disney has several theme parks around the world that feature furries and princesses. Do you feel that those threaten science as well?
Don't take this the wrong way - I completely agree with you. But don't take the cause as the effect. The real threat here involves the idiots poisoning their children with this particular set of ignorant and dangerous misinformation, not the means by which they do it.
A theme park, IMO, at least puts this set of beliefs into a suitable context - One of fantasy and humor... "Pikachu, watch out! Jehova has immunity to lightning! Wait until he morphs into Jesus-form and then target his metal hand-spikes!".
>My friend as Penn & Teller say, "Creationsim is Bullshit!"
The Creation Museum opens Monday at 2800 Bullitts^H^H^H^Hshitburg Church Road, Petersburg, Ky.; (888) 582-4253.
Cryonics - Keep cool and carry on.
1 x 0 = 2 x 0
1 x infinity = 2 x infinity.
1 x 360 degree rotation = 2 x 360 degree rotation...
There are lots of times 1=2.
http://www.answersingenesis.org/ http://www.creationmuseum.org/
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Majikthise: "We'll take care of the eternal verities, thank you very much."
"That's right," shouted Vroomfondel, "we demand rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty!"
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Can we have some examples to back up your assertions?
Patriotism is a virtue of the vicious
I don't recall who, but a comedian once said "I wish I could be a 2nd grade teacher, because when you're in second grade, you don't know ANYTHING! You can go up on the board and write 'Two + two = chair' 'Oh my god, they're writing it down! They're actually writing it down!'"
This is why I think religion is dangerous to a young mind.It's all fine and dandy when you're an adult (or even a teen) but when from day 1 you're told that God does everything, or something like that, well, it's pretty much the foundation for all your future thoughts and will be difficult to get around that thinking.
Disney has several theme parks around the world that feature furries and princesses. Do you feel that those threaten science as well?
Of course not, for the reason you mention; "A theme park, IMO, at least puts this set of beliefs into a suitable context - One of fantasy and humor...". Granted, a very young child may not clearly see a distinction between fantasy and reality, but that's something most of them grow out of fairly quickly, as long as the proper context is there. In my mind, that's the primary distinction between a book like the Bible and one such as the Silmarillion. One literary work is presented with the proper context and respect (as a work of fantasy and the product of an active imagination) while the other is not.
Don't take this the wrong way - I completely agree with you. But don't take the cause as the effect. The real threat here involves the idiots poisoning their children with this particular set of ignorant and dangerous misinformation, not the means by which they do it.
I agree, but if they didn't utilize any "means" to achieve their mind-warping abuse of children's minds (as well as the minds of anybody else whose bullshit filter isn't working properly) then it would sort of be a moot point. This "museum" just adds insult to injury, by attempting to adopt a somewhat academic/scientific/educational veneer, just like the whole ridiculous "Intelligent Design" movement. To me, it's bad enough if a child is taught that, according to the Bible, the world was created and populated directly by God, with a literalist spin, and is told to "have faith" in that story. At least then it's being taught in something resembling its proper context as a religious belief. In my opinion, it's still "wrong," but whatever. What's even worse, however, is when the fundamentalists put on lab coats and pose as respectable researchers, and masquerade their faith-derived nonsense as scientifically well-supported fact.
That's why I say it represents it as an attack on science (and this museum is by no means the only representation -- how I wish it was), which makes it that much more offensive and infuriating to me as someone who respects real science and reason.
Cute, but it wouldn't work because typically real museums are public and have to allow everyone in, including the creationist groups (assuming they don't harass the other visitors), but Ham's creationist museum is private and probably simply would ban entry to any group that they perceived as "hostile".
But 1 is not proven to equal 2 in those equations. Try again.
Steve Magruder, Metro Foodist
The bible has quite a few references to dragons. Everyone knows that 'dragon' is code for dinosaur. ;)
What about datation with Carbonium 14? I can't believe in 2007 there are still so many people believing in stuff like creationism and that humans lived at the same time as dinosaurs. Maybe they're right, not all humans evolved...
Bye -Gabriele- http://flickr.com/photos/gabriele83
Geez, ever take a lab class? Yes I have. Do you know the mind of God? I do not. All I was trying to say is have an open mind because there are at least two sides to a story.
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
I wonder which version of the Noah's Ark story they teach? Two of every kind of animal as in Genesis chapter 6, or 7 pairs of clean animals and one of unclean animals from Genesis chapter 7. How can both be literally true? The stupidity of this "museum" is off the charts.
The Uncoveror: It's the real news.
I'm often asked what I would have been if I didn't become a systems analyst. My answer is that I would have been a pastor. I still think about joining the clergy today, but I realize that my own demons to work out before I would trust myself to minister to God's people.
That being said, as a faithful Christian (I'm home this morning from service b/c I getting ready for a Memorial Day trip) and a scientist, I'm baffled and somewhat disturbed by the strident anti-intellectualism within the church. I've always know that religion and the denial of new discoveries go hand and hand (how long did it take the Catholic Church to accept that the world ain't flat?!), but damn!! Is it me, or have mainstream Christianity gotten dumber since I was a kid? I don't remember hearing about creationism in the 80's. My Bible-thumping mom always doubted evolution (growing up in the rural south with no running water) but that never stop her from letting me go to the local natural history museum. But then again, this is the age of Prosperity Ministry where everyone thinks that God is gonna give them a BMW they sprinkle holy water on and where people actually don't vote b/c they think the Apocalypse is going to start before the '08 election.
Maybe its because my pastor had a degree in Mathematics and my Sunday School teacher was also my Junior High biology teacher, but we didn't have this conflict when I was growing up. Nobody in my congregation. Even little old ladies who actually remember and protested the Scopes trial, didn't bat an eye when I said I wanted to study evolutionary biology. (I ended up studying engineering and physics.) And I guarantee you that even back in the 80's, we didn't think pollution and Global warming were tree-hugger pipe dreams. Then again, my church, despite their conservative leanings, support needle exchange and condom distribution. I used to think that my church was backwards -- now I realize that by church standards I went to worshiped with Churchills and Einsteins.
The more a think about it, the more its seems like I was in the Twilight Zone -- where people in the faith community actually encouraged rational scientific thought. As I walk through churches now, I feel like Luke Wilson in 'Idiocracy' where short of Halleluiah and patent Holy Roller babble, nobody likes to think anymore. Example: I was asked about speaking in tongues by a woman I know here in New York. When I explained what it actually meant in the Bible, I was told that I was too book smart and that I had no faith. WTF?! Substitute 'faggy' for 'no faith' and you have Idiocracy court room scene. Sad part about it, this woman is my age, not some old sharecropper like my parents who didn't have alot of formal education. Whether it be this ignorant ass creationism crap or Harry Potter, its almost as if I stepped I'm alien stranded on a planet of Pod People where TD Jakes and the recently deceased Jerry Falwell do all the thinking. Forget about substantive debates like euthenasia, abortion, global warming or gay marriage. We literally had a TV minister teaching people that Tinky Winky was going to make your children gay and fossils are a trick of the devil. Hell, people give me funny looks when I reference AW Tozier, St Augustine or CS Lewis. I bet more of you guys know who these people are than an average church goer.
A lot of young adults I know throughly reject going to church b/c they feel they need to be idiots to sit through service. Right now, I'm disillusioned in general with the Church as a body, because I feel as if the barbarians have taken over. Maybe I should just stay home -- except I still have some faith in God and I refuse to let stupidity keep me from worshipping Him.
Evolutionism and Creationislm (bad spelling) are two opossite ends of the spectrum. One is Judeo/Christian at its fineist (once again, horrible spelling), the other pretty much directly attacks it.
... they can come to that conclusion on their own -- or not.
The theory of evolution and creationism are on opposite ends of a spectrum, if the spectrum you are talking about is one of scientific credibility and reason. I wouldn't call creationism Judeo-Christian belief at its finest, unless by "finest" you mean "most demonstrably incorrect."
You cannot just teach one or the other and expect to make everyone happy. There are only two possible solutions to this.
The "solution" is that you accept the fact that you can never make everyone happy and, after accepting that, accept the fact that the science education of children should not be compromised by anyone's religious beliefs. Anything else would be a ridiculous expression of excessive political correctness. The same sort of argument you're making here could be made against teaching about a heliocentric solar system, or a spherical Earth, if only you can find a parent who has a strong religious conviction that the Earth is flat and at the center of the universe and that contradicting theories/ideologies are the devil's work.
2) Teach both. Unfortunately, this has issues as well, in that you are limiting yourself to Judeo/Christian and Science. You must include all religions. Actually, my public high school is doing this as an elective, they cover Christianity, Judiasm, Islam, native-American views, so forth and so on. Present the kids with all the information from different religions and theories in science, let them make up their own mind. I support this, but only in the teenage years, when the student's mind have evolved to the point where they can make an informed decision. Some will probably choose to go with views different than what their parents believe, most will go with how they have been raised, but at least the information has been presented in a non-biased manner.,
Evolution should be taught in science class, for the reasons I've already outlined. Creationism has no place in science class.
In my opinion, comparative religion should be taught as social studies. Creationism could be touched on here, as a part of a larger study of the beliefs of the Abrahamic faiths. Evolution would probably be outside the scope of this particular set of classes, except to possibly mention that it (or science generally) is where naturalists and non-religious people tend look to find answers to some of the questions that religions try to answer.
Personally I think such classes should be taught as a fairly young age, for a similar reason that you suggest it should be taught later. Teaching comparative religion later rather than sooner does relatively little good, if your goal is to open minds and really, truly educate. At a young age, children are hardwired to believe virtually anything a parent or other authority figure tells them. It's not the school's place to tell children what religion they should believe, but I think it would be great if they were simply made aware of the fact that other religions exist, with an education of some of their more salient, defining features.
This idea is objectionable to religious people of many stripes because I think deep down they realize that kids are smart enough to realize that looking at all of these different faiths side by side, that they can't all be true, and some of them will wonder if there is a good reason to believe one set of religious beliefs over another. The truth is, there really isn't, but there's no need to explicitly tell the children that
But why should schools take it upon themselves to potentially plant such a seed of doubt in the child's religious faith? To me, it comes down to trying to cultivate healthy critical thinking skills in students and allowing them some chance of making a personal
And is it that much of a leap of faith to assume if God can create the world as it says in genesis to believe He could have created molecules with an atomic structure such that carbon dating says they're billions of years old? Or that as you said, that He could maybe just possibly decide to put fossiles in different layers so we *believe* that it's so much older than it really is? If He created the universe, is it really going to be that much harder for Him to create it with a bit of physical history? Umm. No.
I think therefore I am... a Linux geek.
Do you want the UFO museums, fairy museums, mythical monster museums and so forth to close as well, or is it just this one particular museum that bothers you?
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
Bah, you can use facts to prove anything. -Homer
Jeremy
You are so right! God is fucking with our minds! That must explain dinosaurs.
Right, I remember that part of Genesis.
"And Lo, the LORD made the world in such a way as to deny evidence of himself and give credence to natural processes because the LORD is a funny f$%#er. And the LORD took a couple hours off for a good snigger"
Disclaimer: MINAA (Mummy! I'm Not An Animal!)
I myself am certain that in no possible world does one equal two. Not even God (should one exist) could make one equal two.
One does not equal two for the simple reason that we decided it doesn't. We could have decided that one equals two in the same manner that we decided that two equals deuce. It all goes back to our founding standards. Now if you are referring to the conceptual number of items which we represent via the number one not being equal to the conceptual number of items which we represent via the number two, then that is something entirely different. But many people seem to think that there is some magic behind the numbering system, math, and science, when, in fact, many years ago, we just decided on our base numbering systems, and our basic assumptions of science.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
Having an open mind is fine, but you shouldn't open it so far that your brain falls out.
-- The Guardian has a piece on the World's First Creationist Museum, opening soon in deepest flyover-state, USA.
God almighty, preserve us from your followers. I've never understood the reverence afforded to a story book written by barely-literate nomads; especially when other creation myths are far more entertaining (and not to mention whose gods are less dour.) Indeed Genesis itself is a heavily plagiarised version of the much earlier Enuma Elish Babylonian creationist myth... Jeez, New Yorkers ain't that bad.IX CCXLIX XVII II CLVII CXVI CCXXVII XCI CCXVI LXV LXXXVI CXCVII XCIX LXXXVI CXXXVI CXCII
1 whole = 2 halves.
Disney has several theme parks around the world that feature furries and
princesses. Do you feel that those threaten science as well? 1- They aren't calling them museums.
2- They have exhibits that teach science.
You can't take the sky from me...
Numbers are abstract concepts. They can be defined in many ways. These might not be useful, nevertheless they're not invalid.
so what? that doesnt mean god did it. it just means we dont understand it yet, as illustrated by the GP when he talked about lightning being a mystery thousands of year ago.
also, why is your explanation at all credible? it's just made up. what is the evidence to back up your position that god created the universe? ABSOLUTELY NOTHING WHATSOEVER. science has the humility and integrity to freely admit when something is unknown. religion arrogantly assumes an absolute answer on no evidence whatsoever, and has very little capacity to correct its position in the face of real evidence.
We can go through time right back to the Big Bang, saying "ok, and what caused the big bang... ok and what caused that...? and where did the laws governing this process come from?" until eventually we must come up with one of the non-scientific arguments "nothing did it" or "God did it".
How about, "we dont know?" if it turns out to be impossible for us to probe beyond the big bang, than we will never know. that is absolutley no reason to assume a god did it. we will just have to accept that we will never know what caused the big bang. or perhaps we are able to see beyond the big bang, and it turns out the thing that outside the universe is simply eternal (but not a god).
you suffer from typical myopic "god of the gaps" mentality, in that anything that isnt explained or explainable must be the work of god. that is UTTER logical fallacy.
(1.21 gigawatts) / (88 miles per hour) = 30 757 874 newtons
Don't try to pretend that "Intelligent Design" is somehow different than creationism. Especially don't try to pretend that it's a scientific theory. Seriously. No one's buying it. "Intelligent Design" is a disguise- a secular-sounding term thrown over religious creationism to try to smuggle it into a state-funded science classroom.
Hello. I'm a creationist, and I read Slashdot. My field of expertise is computing, but I also have a graduate degree in philosophy which included "philosophy of science", and I like a good argument. I would like to address point #3 briefly.
In your first paragraph (of point #3) you point out a strong correlation between belief in intelligent design and certain religious views. You are appealing to the prevailing Slashdot bias against organised religion when you do this
First of all, I find your use of the word "briefly" patently offensive: Your post is one of the longest in the thread.Secondly, your long-winded philosophical bullshit on the "slashdot bias" against organized religion ignores the fact the GP wasn't expressing a bias, he was responding to a false claim that Intelligent design is science, a scam to sneak creationism past the separation of church and state.
Finally, you got modded up for that bullshit, proving that there is a bias FOR the view you cast in a light of oppression, not against it.
You can't take the sky from me...
And why, pray tell, would the people who wrote down the bible use the word "day" when they really meant "millions of years"?
This kind of "re-explanation" of the bible has been going on for hundreds of years now. It used to be that the 6 days of genesis really were 6 days. It used to be that stoning the unbelievers was the thing to do. Advances in science and changes in society have chipped away at the bible little by little. In the end, there will be nothing left.
Well the whole thing about God being perfect, but making humans flawed, blaming humans for being flawed, and then punishing someone else to make up for those flaws .....that seems a tad silly as well.
It's just evidence that the Divine sense of humor is beyond human comprehension. =)
—(Louis Black, during an HBO broadcast show)//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
You really should have read the Wikipedia entry before posting that reply -- you now have just shown your lack of knowledge on this subject.
Suffice to say that Goedel's Incompleteness Theorem turning mathematics world upside down by demonstrating that within a mathematical system there will be propositions that are true, but cannot be proved so by formal proof.
It's actually quite fascinating, and for more thoughts on the implications, I highly recommend the book "Goedel, Escher, Bach" by Douglas Hofstadter.
Flamebait? You have to be kidding!
"Creationists" open up a museum to promote an utterly non-scientific interpretation of the history of life on this planet. I take out the time to (yet again) point out that the fundamental precepts of their philosophy are baseless (and probably harmful), therefore their museum is nothing but an organized disinformation campaign. And I get marked as flamebait. That just sucks.
"I mean, the whiskey has to count for SOMETHING, right?"
I think you meant that the whiskey has to ACcount for something.
blah blah blah
if science is necessarily naturalistic, then how do we know that a naturalistic explanation like "big bang + evolution" is true, as opposed to a credible falsehood?
As the naturalistic explanation describes a greater diversity of the observed data compactly, it's more probably the truth. (See Minimum Description Length Induction, Bayesianism, and Kolmogorov Complexity", by Paul M. B. Vitányi and Ming Li [subscription PDF, free PS] for the math to prove this.) You can write the equations for all the most complicated models in physics (which describe pretty well all observed phenomena) and put them legibly on a one square meter poster, with the worst inconsistency being between quantum mechanics and relativistic gravity. The bible takes longer and presents more internal contradictions (or as the Catholic Church prefers to call them, "Mysteries of Faith").
This whole "falsification" thing seems a little two-edged to me. Please demonstrate that it cuts creationists but not evolutionists in light of "creationism as an attempt to falsify evolution".
Simple; falsification means that some hypothetical data might be found to prove the theory wrong. For example, Evolution (on Earth) might be proven false (and Intelligent Design true) by, say, the landing of UFO's and the appearance of the immortal alien designers who have been engineering the Earth's ecology for the past four billion years or so. "Yes, we've been doing this for entertainment. If you want, we can give you a courtesy copy of the 'Making Of' special to watch. We nearly went broke when the giant reptillians market went bust and have been struggling frantically to catch up with the competition ever since. One of our VP's for marketing has a possible comeback idea that he thinks will appeal to the same key demographic, though he won't say where he got it; your females won't need much modification, but the males of your species are going to need to grow a lot more tentacles over the next couple generations...."
Shortly before the collapse of civilization into a bad Hentai piece, the scientists admit that, yes, evolution is a crock, that whole thing (at least hearabouts) was "intelligently designed", allowing for the loose value of "intelligent" that "entertainment executive" gives us.
However, there is no* possible datum that might appear that would disprove their proposition "life was intelligently designed". It might become an observed fact (if they get really miraculously lucky), but it won't ever be a theory, because it's not falsifiable. Intelligent design isn't merely wrong, it isn't even wrong .
* I suppose the appearance of God announcing "Say, I thought I left an nice damp chunk of iron here; where'd all this wet carbon-based goo wandering about come from?" shortly before correcting the problem might change a few minds before wiping them out, but technically that doesn't rule out that the whole thing is one of Satan's practical jokes.
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
I think this may actually infringe on the whole "Separation of Church and State" Thing going on in that constitution thingie. Ya know the one.
Attacks on religion, religious thought, and religious people are, of course, perfectly acceptable. It doesn't matter if we offend Christians as long as no atheist feelings are hurt.
... I do not find a
I'm not concerned with feelings, Christians, atheists or otherwise where public understanding and scientific literacy is concerned. If someone's presentation of scientific theories, or logical statements of fact are offensive to some Christians, that is just too bad for the Christians, just as it is just too bad for atheists that we (at least those of us who live in the United States) have to endure the incessant, grating displays of piety that religious people are so enamored with (though that's something I'm more annoyed at than I am personally distressed about).
I am a Christian, although honestly I think exhibits of dinosaurs and humans living together are just as laughable as you. Do I think the Earth and everything on it was created in a literal 7 revolutions of our planet? Not even close. 4.5 billion years sounds good to me. Does that mean I need to go protest/attack those who think otherwise? Nope! They can believe what they want to on this subject because I don't think this is an issue of salvation.
As I said in another post, what really gets me riled up is the presentation of ideas that you describe as "laughable" as being somehow scientifically or academically credible, when they are anything but. It's deceptive and is, as I've said, it seeks to actively undermine and degrade science by employing a scientific facade to fool the ignorant and gullible. It's just bad for Kentucky residents' scientific literacy and in my opinion, the lack of critical thought and scientific literacy in the public at large is a serious problem.
Do I think humans and monkeys share a common ancestor? Once again, no. Can I prove that I'm right? No. Can you prove that I'm wrong? No. We each have our own belief in this case. You can try to build your side up as the side of reason and science, but it's based on just as much assumption as you say mine is. Neither of us has proof, so we fill in the blanks with what we've each reasoned as the most logical answer.
I can say that my side is built on the side of reason and science, simply because it is. Of course, you could say your own position is more reasonable (and from your point of view it may be, if you rate the Bible as being a very credible source of knowledge about the nature of the universe) but it certainly isn't as scientifically well-supported. That doesn't prove outright that I'm right and you're wrong about whether or not humans and other animals share a common ancestor, but logically one would have to conclude that I am at very least, more likely to be correct on this point.
So just listen: This museum is not an attack on your beliefs in science any more than it's an attack on my beliefs. It's a presentation, albeit rather extravagant and fancy, of their beliefs. Your beliefs still get plenty of attention, whether in schools, TV, movies, magazines, etc. Get over yourself, you arrogant jerk. You and I both disagree with them, yet somehow I can continue to live my daily life without the need to feel offended that someone somewhere may disagree with me. And lay off this crap about wanting to save the children. If it were up to you, they would be spoon-fed evolution from day 1, nothing else. How's that any different or better? At least with religion in the home and evolution in school they get more than just one viewpoint.
Where to begin?
Although I find the Creation Museum offensive in that it is an affront to what I think museums should generally be about -- presenting accurate information about the subject matter and that they should strive for some degree of scientific legitimacy when treating that concern science, like biology (origin of species, the history of the world's ecology), geology (age of Earth) and cosmology/physics (age and origins of the universe)
Okay, I agree with you on all points. But I'm still not convenced that you are not waisting your time with it. The dumb asses are going to believe what they are told in church no matter what. The smart ones will realize its a crock on their own. Since you can't do nothing about former and the latter seem to be a okay on their own.
Besides I find that these things tend to die on their own. It's a new thing right now, in a year or so people will have lost interest in it and that will be it. Evolutionist, like me, will go to it for its entertainment value and the True Believers will go for the religious expirence. Once they have gone it's, been there, done that.
Since is by nature can never have nothing new to offer ether, it is a self correcting problem.
Supporting World Peace Through Nuclear Pacification
You assume that evolution teaches against creationism. You assume that evolution is an attack on creationism. Unfortunate (for creationists) that the evidence simply supports evolution and not creationism. Creationists are mad because they perceive that they have been attacked by evolutionists. While it is true that creationists are mad, it isnt because evolutionists have attacked them, it is because scientific evidence simply contradicts what creationists believe. This is a perceived attack where no attacker exists unless you presume that the evidence itself is the attacking entity. The evidence simply exists, it does not attack.
If creationists' faith is so easily shaken then perhaps it was weak from the start. So easily brought down by a non-attack. That's some pretty shakey stuff.
Jarjarthejedi,
I aplaud your willingness to take a skeptical view of claims made by science. I would, in fact, extend this idea to say that all claims made by humanity should be viewed skeptically, be they religious, scientific, philosophical or historical. What you are criticizing is the uncertainty (or doubt) inherent in all of the endeavors of mankind. Pardon me for my boldness, but I would like to offer a book recommendation that might help you to understand where mankind is in terms of the epistemological underpinnings of science. This book talks about the uncertainty inherent in all scientific facts and how that then informs the conclusions drawn while analyzing those facts. I don't want to tell you what to think and I don't want to push you into intellectul pursuits in which you have no interest. But if you are serious about criticizing science, this book presents as succinct and well-written an account of how scientists have defended the value of their pursuits as I have encountered. I always find that the best way to criticize something or someone is to, as fully as is possible, understand the arguments that they are making.
The book I'm talking about is called "What Is This Thing Called Science?". It was written by A.F. Chalmers. I commend this work to you and anyone else reading this post that has an interest in understanding how scientits can claim the knowledge that they claim.
I am not a lawyer. This post does not constitute any form of legal advice.
In just the same way, religious texts were written by man. Indeed, in Christianity they even held councils to decide what texts should go into the bible and what should be left out. If, as you imply, things are flawed just because they are the work of man; then the Bible (and indeed other religious texts) fit right in
If I have nothing to hide, you have no reason to search me
Facts and theories are different things - facts are things which happen, theories are models which explain why.
Evolution is a fact and a theory - it's is a proven fact that we developed from earlier simpler lifeforms, and theory of evolution is the model which explains the mechanism by which this happened.
Your statement that schools should not teach theories even if evidence supports them means that no theories could be taught in science lessons, which is rather bizarre.
on the other other hand they're one of the states with counties still embracing the prohibition.
in this age of communication i'm just not getting through
You're the perfect example of why people like Sam Harris seem to have a such a dislike for religious moderates even though you are more or less on the same side, at least to some extent.
Part of the problem is the way in which you are couching your terms, eg:
Attacks on religion, religious thought, and religious people are, of course, perfectly acceptable. It doesn't matter if we offend Christians as long as no atheist feelings are hurt.
This statement completely misses the point, and only shows your inability to see where the other side is coming from. Atheists aren't offended by someone believing in God, and in fact, this protest has nothing whatever to do with that. It has everything to do with certain religious groups denial of reason and rationality, and the utter hypocrisy that goes with it. When reason and rationality is abandoned then there is no longer a check on religious dogma, and that's when bad things happen. You need look no further than Jim Jones, David Koresh or any number of other cults that abandoned reason and rationality to worship a charismatic leader. Creationism is nothing more than a less dangerous version of the same mistake. These statements are not an attack on religious belief, they are an attack on anti-rationalism. From my pespective, it is you who are being the arrogant (and hypocritical) jerk by not acknowledging that the spread of this kind of thinking is damaging.
By not speaking out, you are an unwitting enabler for extremist views. You are not doing yourself nor your faith any favors by playing games of equivocation while ignoring the dangers of pervasive ignorance.
Shop Smart, Shop S-mart!
Forgot to address this bit in my last post:
... it's a human invention and so long as its being practiced by humans, it will be subject to human limitations. That said, I think it's fair to say that it's established itself as far and away the best way we have available to us to gain understanding about the world. The alternatives -- religion, superstition, haphazard guesswork -- occasionally bear fruit, but have not amassed anything close to the mountain of seemingly accurate knowledge about existence as science.
... that it's not really the place of the religion to make claims like "men do not share a common ancestor with other animals" or "the Earth is at the center of the universe" or "the seasons change because Persephone must periodically visit her husband in the underworld for stretches of time, which upsets Demeter." The facts and workings of the universe are the domain of empirical observation and the scientific method. However, the argument goes, religion can still exist, to concern itself with the meaning of what we learn from science, or perhaps provide moral insight.
I think evolution and science in general have their limits. Science can't explain everything. But guess what, neither does the Bible.
* There are a lot of subjects not discussed in the Bible where we need science to shed some light.
* There are even some subjects in the Bible that science complements rather nicely.
* There are areas where science is lacking that the Bible (and religion in general) helps to enlighten.
It doesn't have to be "There can be only one!"
Science has its limits. Science is just our provisional understanding of the universe and a set of methods for achieving that understanding
Seeing as how that's the case, I've been able to rationally work out how it is useful to rely on those inferior methods, or credit them with any serious consideration, while science is available to us.
The most logical argument I've heard for what you posit, that it doesn't have to be one or the other (religion or science) is the non-overlapping magisteria (NOMA) argument. That is, that the proper domain of science is to address how things are and how they work, in the physical universe
Personally I think there are some problems with that argument, in part because I think we could be better served by pursuing the social sciences and philosophy to fill the void that the natural sciences leave, but in any event the NOMA argument doesn't seem to be the one you're making, as you seem to subscribe to the notion that we should have a "God of the gaps" that supplies answers to questions that science cannot definitively provide, that supernatural/religious speculations and explanations are fair game and even to be encouraged. I (surprise) don't agree with this. I think it's preferable to admit ignorance or uncertainty about something than it is to make something up, or to rely on personal revelation to get such answers, or to trust some ancient "authority" like the Bible.
There are a couple reasons I believe that, one of which I've already pointed out -- that science just has the better track record where such things are concerned. Another reason would be that to me, the scientific approach just seems a whole lot more sensible. Yet another would be because having such beliefs can be an impediment to gaining scientific understanding -- if you think you've already got the answer, you may stop looking (link is Neil de Grasse Tyson at the Beyond Belief 2006 conference talking about some of science's greatest thinkers invoking gods and "intelligent design").
I think I'm done for now.
While i agree with the spirit of your commments, i think we should refrain from arguments that blatantly sound like religious discourse.
It's The Golden Rule: "He who has the gold makes the rules."
All I have to say is wow. So your really doin it huh? I mean all you can do is laugh, i mean really?! I think every intelligent person just wants to slap them in the face and just tell them to wake up!
You're protesting the right of a private group to open up a museum of their own? That's sick and an abuse of the right of the people to assemble.
Does God treat us as servants or friends? Check my homepage.
Not a bad question.
Tell me this, can people ever be made to believe something that clearly is not true? How about Pagan religions? How about Voodoo? Ancient Greek gods? Ancient Roman gods? Ancient Norwegian gods? Hindu gods? Those have all been considered actual religions.
Is there a difference between teaching and preaching? Teaching creationism is just: "a giant magic man in the sky created everything by force of will." That's all there is to it. But I get the idea that some creationist are more interested in preaching.
And is it that much of a leap of faith to assume if God can create the world as it says in genesis to believe He could have created molecules with an atomic structure such that carbon dating says they're billions of years old? Or that as you said, that He could maybe just possibly decide to put fossiles in different layers so we *believe* that it's so much older than it really is? If He created the universe, is it really going to be that much harder for Him to create it with a bit of physical history? Umm. No.
This belief that the scientific age of the world is different than the actual age of the world is actually held by many religious people. Although I don't share it, I have no objection to it as a religious belief (not unlike how when I dream at night, I inhabit worlds that appear older than the dream). This is a perfect example of something that may be appropriate in (privately funded) religious classes and obviously totally inappropriate to teach in science class (because it concedes that the world is scientifically old).
Each and every dollar dedicated to creationist propaganda makes it easier to further the creationist agenda and to introduce creationism and other religious doctrines in schools.
If we give them no money - if nobody visits, they earn nothing. With time, we can make stupidity, if not painful, at least expensive.
http://www.dieblinkenlights.com
Very good research?!
Where can it be found?
http://www.dieblinkenlights.com
Lots of people try to pull this one - the old "if my idea's so wrong, why don't you let everyone decide!" method. The reason that doesn't work is because creationism is just ONE of MANY crackpot ideas. No scientist backing evolution is really saying that God didn't create the universe, they're saying that all the evidence we have points to the conclusion that God did not create the universe 6000 years ago, nor are all the animals that exist today in the exact same state they were when they were created. So, when all evidence points to the conclusion that the idea is totally ridiculous (an assertion that must be weighed very carefully, I agree - but creationism is just insane), we can't afford to waste our time teaching our students about it alongside serious education. If we forced ourselves to address every single absurd theory out there when teaching our children, we'd never get anywhere. We'd waste all of our time going over why invisible flying monkeys aren't really responsible for keeping us from flying into space as opposed to gravity, or why it's probably not true that those who eat paint are less likely to get cancer, or why creationism is probably not right. We have to admit that we can come to a rational conclusion (i.e. creationism = crazy) and know to not waste our children's time on it.
Good whiskey,fast horses and fine women. Or is that Good whiskey, fine horses and fast women? Being a native son myself I can attest to the quality of the 'whiskey', especially Makers Mark and a few local products. Horses I know just enough about to stay away from, ie they are very large and tend to be rather nervous and excitable. Now the women part I have to admit confuses me, I married a 'fine' little Kentucky wildcat about 30 years ago, but I have also been familiar with a few 'fast' Kentucky gals in the past. As to the topic at hand, this is as of yet another sad story among many these days. Rest assured though there are a good many intelligent and reasonable folk still around these parts.
Wabi-Sabi
Matthew
Most creationist nicely avoid this by saying "God made the fossil record this way to test our faith".
This way, creationism becomes non-falsifiable and thus, not a science.
So, they have a choice between being non-science or being already proved wrong. And this is the only question that should remain.
http://www.dieblinkenlights.com
Science isn't portrayed as truth, like a lot of pseudoscientists like to claim. It's simply a model of the universe. The interesting thing is that if your model predicts and behaves in the same fashion as the universe, the two structures are essentially isomorphic - i.e., the same thing just with the fundamentals relabeled. Dark matter, gravity, etc. might be a little different than our current formulations, but we might as well think about them the way we do because we can predict REAL results using our model.
Religions and pseudosciences in general do not make predictive theories. You speak of science and religion as being on opposite ends of the spectrum but actually they aren't even on the same spectrum at all. Pseudoscience directly appeals to the paranormal, which is impossible to study with science. Something that is purely paranormal also is completely of disinterest to humanity, since this phenomenon will have no affect whatsoever. Once the paranormal begins to interact with the universe, however, we can study it with science. Science and mathematics are THE tools to use when something has an effect upon the universe.
For example, take ESP. If ESP can manifest itself, then people should be able to use their ESP better than guessing. But all proper studies of ESP never show any positive result. So then you can chalk it up to methodology problems, so we change them a bit to give more leeway to the psychics and show again only a negative result. You do this enough and the only evidence for ESP becomes purely anecdotal, and it can only be used in a very noncontrolled, very unspecific setting, and so essentially becomes meaningless. Science can NEVER say that this ESP doesn't exist, but that it doesn't seem to manifest itself.
Religion is the same way. It makes certain claims about how the earth developed or is. I.e., it is making naturalistic claims. Like the ESP, we should be able to test these claims about the natural world with science. But we find that many of these claims (cataclysmic flooding) probably did not happen, are (in the case of irreducible complexity) just outdated and wrong or (in the case of specified complexity) plain bad math. Better yet, with science we have a pretty good understanding of the natural world. However, you can never use science to talk about whether a supreme being that never makes its presence known created all the rules of the universe first and set them free to interact.
Faith is that leap someone makes that, given how much we understand about the world, am I going search for an answer in a deity, or just let it be unknown. How much extra theory do I tack onto our BASIC, solid understanding of how things work. Faith is really how much you are willing to dull Occam's razor.
But what a lot of IDers and such wish to do is essentially redefine science to include the paranormal. That is where the conflict really lies. That's also why option 1 of teaching neither is ridiculous. Science isn't religion and religion isn't science. You teach science using science, not with some hocus pocus mix of fantasy.
The problem science gets such a bad rap in certain areas of the world is that people are scientifically ignorant. They have this idea that current science is a model that, at some time in the future, will be repalced wholesale by some newer model. That's not at all how science works. Rather, our understanding deepens. Newton's theory of gravity still works fine in so far as it works. We aren't going to throw out our ideas of the electron, or atom. Because they have predictive power.
This museum does NOT represent a competing and solid theory about human and dinosaur evolution. It's not science at all. Not necessarily because it didn't follow the above trappings of science, but because its underlying methodology is not scientific.
We should be clear about these limitations. Quantum mechanics for instance is not something humans have a great deal of intuition about. Really, if we were just relying on human intuition and thought, we shouldn't be talking much about quantum mechanics. But we have the incredible tool of mathematics. Granted, the mathematics we do is limited by how our brains are wired, but it allows us to probe things to a detail lost on the layperson.
I don't think it's unreasonable to assume that one day humanity will possess understanding of the universe "so far as it matters." I.e., we have the precision down such that we can do, perhaps, interstellar space travel, without ending up in the wrong coordinate after 2 years of flight. Hell, right now, Newtonian mechanics is all that is really needed for travel within our solar system.
I liked what you said re: supernatural / natural being the same thing. yes, creationists are generally nuts - but most humans have some things that they irrationally hold on to because they think its important; i'm willing to be patient, but it's unfortunate that you often can't hold a discussion with these people. we all have ideas of God. that "Supernatural" aspect of him - God being unknowable - that is, accepting mystery and ambiguity, is often thrown out in favor of an idea of God that we can hold on to (i.e., a God who made the earth 6,000 years ago, and put dinosaurs there as a prank to "test our faith"), and when that /idea/ of God is challenged, we figure that if our idea can't hold, then God can't exist, and therefore doesn't love us.
you said,
"If God was shown to exist, he would be a very natural being"
yes! that's exactly what we believe. we believe that God was in Jesus reconciling the world to himself. a man, the only true man, being what he is supposed to be, the rest of us being fallen. we notice that existence is characterized by suffering. we believe that God revealed himself in Jesus, who died for the sins of a fallen world. there is no proof for this. my faith in God is about being loved.
i was speaking to a monk about this.. not all christians are like american christians. in Russia, i met several scientists who became Christians because they saw mystery and wonder in their work, and wanted to be reconciled to God, forgiven, loved so as to love. in the west, we talk about "what we believe". zen buddhists are different; they believe that you ought to sit and count your breath. around the world, and through history, christians have believed that God designed us for eternal life in love and friendship with him, which is something that we believe because we love one another right here, tasting this this life. the truth of Christ is not proven by dinosaur bones; it is a rather concrete practice of acting rightly, practicing mercy, accepting mystery, believing in love (that is, God in Christ), and obeying in faith by being reconciled to the world. when we stop living this way, we look for dead anchors to hang our faith on, such as an unneccessarily literal interpretation of genesis.
i don't mind questioning things. i became a christian while doing so. i'm sorry some of us are hateful towards.. smart people. often we are more worried about defending ludicrous ideas than we are concerned with showing Jesus' love in the flesh, i.e. making friends with scientists regardless of what they believe.
i don't see what the hubub is. evolution really says nothing regarding the existence of God. it just sees complex forms coming from concentrations of energy. rather amazing...
its not a protest against their right to open it. but i cant really blame you for not reading that site, since it looks like it came from 1995.
Sure creationism runs against scientific evidances we have today, but so are some of the concepts in sci-fi/fantacy fictions (e.g. time travel). After all there's something call freedom of speach in this country. They can open up whatever kinf of museum they like, so long as they are not infringing on someone else's freedom. Simply stating Darwin's theory is wrong inside the Museum simply cannot count as attacking the scientific opionion. They are just respectably presenting their different opionion, whether it seems logical, or even downright silly to you.
You don't have to do a lot of empirical research to reach an informed judgment on the question of evolution. You can check the argument yourself. Structurally, the reasoning is a trivial induction, which would take down arithmetic if you doubted it. For points of attack, then, that leaves reproduction, variation and death. So what is it? Things don't die? They don't reproduce? Or you can't see that people's children take after them without being identical?
The most bizarre thing about this whole debate is that evolution not 'just a theory.' It is one of those incredibly, blatantly obvious things that can't possibly be doubted once it has been pointed out, with an empirical component like that putting your tongue in a functioning toaster is a bad idea, and a logical one like that if you throw your stuff out then you won't have as much stuff as before. The amount of reasoning required is less than that needed to open one of those damned plastic clamshell packages that so many small electronic doodads come in. The only possible way to doubt it is to go 'oh! oh! I am afraid of this conclusion' and turn your brain off in the middle of the oh so huge three-step chain of reasoning.
Seriously, anyone who is able to doubt evolution is not qualified to operate heavy machinery, much less teach or run a museum.
And, by the way, this is not intended as an attack on anyone's religion. Merely on their mental competence or (given that it is more probable that they are lying than that they haven't noticed that people and animals have offspring and die) moral character.
If I had mod points, I'd mod you up. The problem with your post, although I agree with it, is that you are attacking the whole religious system... and there are still many intelligent people that believe in some sort of god. Those intelligent people still have some part of their brain that has not properly evolved and you have to be careful not to offend them. You need to be a bit more subtle in your approach.
Meh.
Yes, I know. Now can you answer my question: if you can't prove a particular statement, how do you know it is true ? Or, in other words: does Goedel's theorem give a way to identify a particular statement as belonging to these unprovable true statements (and if such, wouldn't that actually be the proof for those statements ?), or does it simply state that they exist ?
Remember, the original point was about considering particular unprovable statements as facts, not that such statements wouldn't exist.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
Why? Creationists thrive on their ability to make politicians think there is a controversy, and an active debate. Why give them any more attention than the guy on a street corner wearing a sandwich board proclaiming that the end is nigh? If they want to spend 27 million on their sandwich board, then fine.
Showing that lots of people accept idea A and reject idea B is their tactic. Let's focus our attention on showing why appeals to authority and popularity are flawed, rather than trying to convince the public through the use of that same flawed logic.
Now I am a pretty rabid atheist but I *love* believers such as yourself. I just wish the rest of your lot were more like you. I have no problem with personal belief, respect mine, and I'll respect yours.
As for the throwback evangelicals you have in the USofA... I don't know. It seems like there is a powerful combination of politics and greed at work in US Christianity. It is very disturbing.
Fortunately you are not alone. Many other countries have believers that are well-mannered and polite. And not all atheists are as ideologically extreme as Dawkins. So in countries like Australia we still have a sense of proportion about religious issues, i.e. most people don't give a damn about other peoples' beliefs. (Not that we don't have some contaimination of political debate with religious ideology, but it isn't too bad. Yet.)
Whichever way you look at it, it's true. I'm not.
Not to mention...it's not exactly new news either.
Between the falling angel and the rising ape
Its not Tree of Knowledge, as in knowledge was bad. Its the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, a very specific kind of knowledge, as in knowing that there is an alternative to Good is bad. Its a recurisvely-named tree. It is the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Don't eat of it, or you will gain the knowledge of Good and Evil. Evil is going against the command of not eating from the tree. So if you go against the command of not eating the tree, you will know what evil is.
So, it turns out that they're not refusing the evidence you cited, but in fact embrace it, and so your response is "they're lying! They really don't believe it, but they're lying to us to suck us in". Well, you're wrong. I'm trying to help you understand something here, because it's quite obvious you're quick to criticise but slow to understand that which you reject. The YEC position (and I don't consider myself a YEC) is that natural selection and changes in allele frequencies in a population over time have played a *very* large part in the 6000 year history of the world, and their worldview. For you to say that they only concede it so as to not lose membership is a major (yet common) misunderstanding of the YEC position. I direct you to:i nches.asp
http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v14/i3/f
Most people are blissfully unaware of the objections cited to Darwinism, and so they wonder at how people can reject it. Maybe taking the time to understand the objections might make things a bit clearer.
This is probably correct, but they don't expect this to happen. Since for them the Bible is revealed truth from God, it will *never* contradict facts of the world. So if something is actually true, then the Bible will never claim that it is false.http://www.nd.gov/ndgs/NDNotes/ndn9_h.htm There are lots of fossils of sea creatures in west at all elevations. Most creationists would say that dragons were the remaining dino decendants of the ones who went on the ark.
Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
Who told you God would judge you on doctrinal issues? That is old testament stuff! Now yes we are all judged according to the word, but it is your faith in Christ that determines the outcome. There is much more to it than that and I don't wish to force it on you in this forum, but I ask that at the very least read the books of the new testament and then make an educated decision based on what you've read. Do not assume that what you have heard from others is truth. God bless you :-)
Interesting someone(s) moderated this as flamebait: This is straight from Dawkin's the book. The first few paragraphs summaries how children stick steadfast to their parents religion, no matter what. Wonder how many of those flamebait moderators even read that far? It's not enough for them to disagree. They'd rather moderate it out of existence. This is why religious debate with "the faithful" is pointless, though points to Dawkins for having the guts to try. Points to him too for giving atheists permission to challenge zealotry.
/ 06/george_bush_god_told_me_to_end_the_tyranny_in_i raq.html
Otherwise stuff like things happens: "George Bush: 'God told me to end the tyranny in Iraq'" http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/news/archives/2005/10
Before you go to boycott the museum, shouting your precious science minds, please take a look and explain chirality of molecules. ;-)
Many important molecules required for life exist in two forms. These two forms are non-superimposable mirror images of each other, i.e.: they are related like our left and right hands. Hence this property is called chirality, from the Greek word for hand. The two forms are called enantiomers (from the Greek word for opposite) or optical isomers, because they rotate plane-polarised light either to the right or to the left.
Nearly all biological polymers must be homochiral (all its component monomers having the same handedness. Another term used is optically pure or 100 % optically active) to function. All amino acids in proteins are 'left-handed', while all sugars in DNA and RNA, and in the metabolic pathways, are 'right-handed'.
A 50/50 mixture of left- and right-handed forms is called a racemate or racemic mixture. Racemic polypeptides could not form the specific shapes required for enzymes, because they would have the side chains sticking out randomly. Also, a wrong-handed amino acid disrupts the stabilizing -helix in proteins. DNA could not be stabilised in a helix if even a single wrong-handed monomer were present, so it could not form long chains. This means it could not store much information, so it could not support life.
Now, the question itself about DNA molecule's "cleaner mechanism" while enzyme is moving along DNA fixing its chirality to prevent DNA's immediate death. So, if DNA randomly has been created from an explosion, HOW the molecule "knows" that that cleaner mechanism will be extremely required to prevent it's self death? However, I think evolutionists already constructing Boeing 747 from a pile of its details, using an explosions of "Tomahawk" missles... ;-)
As to the origin of the optically active enzymes, we can only speculate'. However, if we can only 'speculate' on the origin of life, why do so many people state that evolution is a 'fact'? Repeat a rumour often enough and people will swallow it.
Incidentally, calling it "Darwinism" is deliberate and pejorative, since Darwin only provided our initial form of natural selection. The modern understanding of evolution is vastly more sophisticated and predicated on vastly more evidence. You may as well call classical mechanics "Galileoism", despite the fact that classical mechanics is vastly more advanced than anything Galileo would have understood, and has moved past many of the misconceptions of that age. This leads me to believe that you ARE a young-earth-creationist. Otherwise, you would have no reason to deliberately cast doubt on an establised and well-supported scientific theory.
i think i read something somewhere (sorry, can't find a link) saying that 'day' was a semi-mistranslation; it was supposed to be like 'back in my day' sort of day. ah, if only i could read languages other than english, i'd have this settled by now. anyway, there's plenty of other stuff that's messed up about genesis, even in that little bit (like how all plants were created before all animals... yeah right).
in other religions a lot of creation myths don't actually describe the beginning of the universe, simply the reconfiguration of things that were already there, so personally i think that people have been taking the jewish/christian/whatever religion a bit too far.
the privacy of one's mind is important.
you do have something to hide.
Give him a enough millions of years, and sure, no problem.
Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
"several groups (both religious and secular) will be protesting. come join us!"
Oh, dear. The big meme the creationists are presently pushing is "teach the controversy." This is a huge straw man, because there is no controversy, as far as teaching science is concerned. By even making a big deal about this, you may actually be helping promote the creationist agenda.
Sitting in my day care, the art is decopainted.
Sure creationism runs against scientific evidances we have today, but so are some of the concepts in sci-fi/fantacy fictions (e.g. time travel).
... and putting it all in a "museum" (not a church, not a temple, not an amusement park -- but a museum) with a suggestion of academic scientific credibility -- does not represent an attack on scientific opinion or science generally, in your view? If so, we're going to have to simply agree to disagree.
... there is not, so some have devoted a lot of time and money to creating a facsimile of science that roughly corroborates their religious claims, but is actually more focused on casting ill-founded doubt on good science (this is "creation science" and "intelligent design" in a nutshell).
Yes, but the context makes all the difference. Fictional works tell you outright that they are, you know, fictional. There's a not-so-fine line between telling a story and making it clear that it is a work of pure imagination or speculation, and opening a museum that teaches religious ideas as something resembling scientific fact, when in truth, there is nothing scientific about them, when many of the ideas being presented have, in fact, have long been debunked and discredited by those who actually practice science.
After all there's something call freedom of speach in this country. They can open up whatever kinf of museum they like, so long as they are not infringing on someone else's freedom.
I've never said otherwise. Freedom of speech, however, also means having the freedom to protest things you find disagreeable, not just about government, but about the way private organizations conduct themselves. There is a public interest at stake here, as pointedly noted in my original comment.
Simply stating Darwin's theory is wrong inside the Museum simply cannot count as attacking the scientific opionion. They are just respectably presenting their different opionion, whether it seems logical, or even downright silly to you.
So taking evidence out of context, making completely evidentially unsupported claims, using unsound methodology, and a lot of jargon-filled hand-waving to make a polished, professional presentation that directly contradicts the consensus view held by virtually all scientists in the pertinent fields (biology and geology, most notably)
I'm just calling this like I see it. It's a blatant attack on science in the same vein as the Catholic church's attempted suppression of Galileo's discoveries about the solar system. Religious organizations today cannot prevent scientists for publishing findings that contradict their beliefs (in part, because of that free speech thing and also because of their waning influence in the academic community, especially certain fields), so they do everything they can short of that. Some tell their flock not to read certain books. Some try to get themselves placed on school boards so they can excise any reference that's made to evolution -- or to force the teaching of an alternative point of view, as if there is one with any credibility
Darwin and most evolutionary biologists didn't develop the theory of evolution to specifically discredit Judeo-Christian beliefs (even if it does have the side effect of sometimes eroding one's belief in religion sometimes), but some people of faith feel sufficiently threatened by the theory and thus see a need to attack "in kind." They can't produce good evidence that supports their beliefs, however, so what they do instead is try to prevent the science from reaching the public in any way they can, or failing that, they try to discredit the science itself -- which is almost always done in a logically fallacious, intellectually dishonest manner.
If you only bother to look, the behavior of those who created this museum creates a pattern that is plainly indicative of a direct assault on science/evolution, and not just a friendly espousing of their own beliefs in a good faith effort to educate.
An interesting anagram of "BANACH TARSKI" is "BANACH TARSKI BANACH TARSKI"
To answer your question more completely, we don't do it for the same reason we don't offer a rebuttal on the benefits of crack in health class, the idea that f = ma^2 in physics class, and how the holocaust never happened in history class. The world is full of crackpot ideas and giving equal time to all of them is ridiculous on its face. If you want your idea to get into schools, convince the experts in the field that it has some merit. Do what the rest of modern science has done and gather the data and convince the establishment that you're right. Until then, you're just another "crack is good for you" fringe case.
An interesting anagram of "BANACH TARSKI" is "BANACH TARSKI BANACH TARSKI"
we got enough debate topic in this country already. Frankly I think both camp need to lay off their attack off each other and start learning how to "repectably disagree" the other's opionion. Let them open their Museum in their own right, and you can open your museum dedicated to scientific theories behind Darwinism and how it had positively advance science and improve our lives.
We still have not bagged all the polygamist and other more extremism and racists in this country yet. Can't we focus on them first before we can have a candid, yet gentlemen like discussion on the subject? If you truely believe in Science, then you should also believe that the truth in science will prove itself over time. Blasting different opionion will be the last thing that will persuade others to listen to you anyway. That's just human nature that even physical science cannot give you a straight mathematical formula on.
When creationists try to present creation theory in the classroom, alongside evolutionary viewpoints, they are viciously attacked.
That's because they don't have a scientific theory, and therefore shouldn't be presenting what they do have (which is an untestable hypothesis) in a science classroom.
"God did it" is not a theory.
why not let them stand side to side and see who wins? Let the almighty scientific method do it's work and bring forth the truth.
It did. The battle has already been fought over the last 100-150 years. Creationism lost. The debate is long over. It's only the creationists that haven't realized this yet.
To anyone who knows something about YEC, your statements look foolish and uninformed. You say, "They only acknowledge that changes in allele frequencies may have occurred, because it doesn't seem to contradict the bible and because too many of Christians accept some kind of evolution for them to completely deny it". That's just ridiculous. Maybe you'll persuade some high school atheist who doesn't know what he's talking about - but you shouldn't wonder that the YEC ignores you when you say such stupid things. All you're saying is "they're lying". You offer no reason for someone to believe this other than your incredulity.
I'm not here to defend the YEC position, just to point out your ignorance, so I won't be commenting on this. I don't use the term Darwinism as a pejorative. YEC is not a pejorative, just a way of identifying a particular set of beliefs. A Darwinist as it is mostly used refers to someone who not only believes in a change in allele frequencies in a population over time, but also the idea that all living things share a single common ancestor, and usually also the belief that the first life arose spontaneously solely through natural processes not guided by any intelligence.That is all. Evolution is a word that is easily used equivocally. By using the term Darwinist it makes it much more clearly what is spoken about. If you like, the term Neo-Darwinist is used usually to take into account the modern views where they differ from Darwin.
As for me being a YEC, I'm not (though I once was). But maybe you'll just accuse me of lying too...seems like an easy way to always think you're right.
...your "creation science" museum has a notice saying:
"Please note that the Creation Museum is a smoke-free facility. Firearms and pets (other than service animals) are not permitted in the museum."
http://www.creationmuseum.org/plan-your-visit
The real outrage here, is that you're saying bourbon is whiskey. That's gross.
Adventure, Romance, MAD SCIENCE!
Actually I don't believe in 'Evolution', I just don't see the point in believing in it!
However, I do understand that it is the best explanation we have for the diversity of life forms.
A belief is essentially an implicit assumption that something is true.
-Nivag
The hilarious irony is that they believe that all of the species of finch could have arisen from just two WITHOUT any new alleles (since new alleles would imply "macroevolution"). But naturally, it's impossible for two finches to have more than four distinct alleles for a gene. For two finches on the Ark to give rise to thousands of distinct species would require much more genetic variation than two finches can carry. See how easy it is to discredit their insanity? If they had even the tiniest shred of real interest in science, they'd be forced to abandon their position immediately. Science is incompatible with dogma, with myth, and most especially with faith.
You're so mired in your faith that you don't even see it anymore. The entire point of using the term "Darwinist" and "Darwinism" is to try and make the scientific belief in evolution appear as some kind of religious, cult-like following of a man, rather than science. You don't go around calling certain scientists Newtonists, Einsteinists, Planckists, Fermiists, or Hawkingists. There is no theory of "Bohrism" or some monstrous anti-god movement called "Lewisism". Zealots refer to the theory of evolution as "Darwinism" as part of a deliberate attempt to create a dichotomy for Christians between following Jesus and following Darwin.
Of course -- they believe in all kinds of different things that are mentioned in the bible, like a Human surviving inside of a whale's gastrointestinal tract, unicorns, dragons, giants that are half-human/half-angel, etc. One way or the other though, they follow a belief system in which evidence is rejected when it disagrees with fantasy.
Keep in mind, we're talking about people who, if the bible claimed their fridge contained milk, would simply ASSUME that the milk was there and refuse to check. Likewise, if the bible claimed that there was no milk in the fridge, they wouldn't bother checking there even if they were about to starve to death. Biblical inerracy is one of the most truly amazing forms of Human stupidity.
If you don't recognize the fundamental contradiction between basing one's knowledge on a book of fairy tales and basing it on observation of the real world, I doubt you
Whatever your reason for thinking this, I don't know. But if you think you'll persuade me, or indeed any theist, by telling us we're liars then you'll be sorely disappointed. I know I don't lie, so telling me I am a liar is not going to achieve anything. Who are you hoping to convince? Or do you have a chip on your shoulder from when you went to church, and now you think all theists are your natural enemies? Perhaps some of that Dawkins hostility has found its way to you. Whatever your problem is, there's no way you'll discuss anything meaningfully with a theist with your current attitude.
I quoted that article not to justify any YEC belief, but just to show you that they don't reject natural selection. It doesn't matter if the conclusions they draw are completely wrong - the fact remains that they believe in natural selection and a change in allele frequencies in a population over time.
Maybe moonshine will help to resolve the gasoline shortage.
I think it's necessary to point out that your web site there has as many colour and format changes in it as the time cube! You might wanna fix that.
Having been raised by religious people, having lived among them for two and a half decades, having spent two decades as one of them, and having studied six millenia of Human history, I know everything I need to know about religion. I've waded knee-deep through the hypocrisy, hatred, violence, bigotry, and general delusional behaviour of theists... and from what I've seen, my personal experiences with religion were far, far more benign than what of the world's population experience (I've never seen anyone beheaded or burned alive, for instance).
Technically, Goedel's theory says that there are true statements in a mathematical system of sufficient power (arithmetic) that cannot be proven WITHIN the system. One can always jump to a meta-system and possibly show the statement in question is in fact true. Of course, the same argument then applies to the meta-system, it too will have true but unprovable (within the metasystem) statements.
So, proof of these unprovable statements is sometimes at hand, just not within the system you started with.
Gerry
Life needs more saving throws.
Evolution has nothing to do with the 'origin of life.' Evolution only states that life tends to adapt itself to it's environment, and that over time, those adaptations can result in some pretty big changes.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
Oh, nobody is against adaptation of the life. It is very often if you take a horse of one kind and bring it elsewhere to other climate, then kind changes very strongly. Yet horse it persists. It does not turns to be a barking frog neither a flying monkey. However the therm of "evolution" means "The gradual development of something from a simple to a more complex form". An "organic evolution" means "the process by which different kinds of living organisms are thought to have developed and diversified from earlier forms during the history of the earth.".
The idea of organic evolution was proposed by some ancient Greek thinkers but was long rejected in Europe as contrary to the literal interpretation of the Bible. Lamarck proposed a theory that organisms became transformed by their efforts to respond to the demands of their environment, but he was unable to explain a mechanism for this. Lyell demonstrated that geological deposits were the cumulative product of slow processes over vast ages. This helped Darwin toward a theory of gradual evolution over a long period by the natural selection of those varieties of an organism slightly better adapted to the environment and hence more likely to produce descendants. Combined with the later discoveries of the cellular and molecular basis of genetics, Darwin's theory of evolution has, with some modification, become the dominant unifying concept of modern biology.
Yet this theory is not proven. And probably never be.
"why don't we find fossils/fish remains on the top of tall mountains, usually?"
Actually, we do. You'd be surprised to see how few million years plate tectonics needed to change some sea bottom into very tall montain (there is one famous example between India and asia, but also many more around the world). Of course, the sediment layers in which fossils usually form tend to be destroyed by erosion when they are in direct contact to the athmosphere.
I'm just wondering if something like that is even legal? I don't know the US legal system, but so far i thought that even asking religious questions in a job interview shouldn't be done. They are asking that of every applicant for a job position - including for example applications for a programming job. Someone who really needs a job will even write a statement like that, but it's degrading.
I drove by the museum yesterday on my way back to Atlanta. I convinced my wife that we should pull over and check it out. I said "They have dinosaurs on Noah's Ark! I gotta see that!" and she was convinced. On the outside the building looked nice. I was disappointed to see that it was closed. We saw the rallyforreason.com guys sitting outside. What was more concerning was that we saw a guy walking towards the rallyforreason tent with a rifle. This made us decide NOT to get the documentation that was being handed out by these guys.
Oh well, we can check it out next time. I'm sure it will be good for a laugh.
Excellent argument there.. that's like saying if you gave Microsoft enough million years they could make Windows secure.. possible, but not very likely :P
which is totally what she said
First, as far as Genesis goes, it was written by one person, Moses. Two, it was not a first hand account of creation. How it was conveyed to Moses is not said, personally I suspect a vision of some sort. That worked well for other authors of the Bible. That being said, there probably wasn't a time stamp in the corner of the vision telling him how much time passed between the "days" as you see on many camcorders and cameras these days. Three, Jewish historians, not being all that concerned with the passage of time, commonly used figurative (rather than literal) language when expressing time. And being Jewish, Moses obviously didn't write this in English, "day" is a translation, perhaps the best word, but not the best idea.
I have yet to find any reference to a "young earth Jew." Those that can read the original language and study the culture it came from don't seem to believe this seemingly American English Christian young earth view of the world.
I'm probably wasting time responding to an AC post, but ...
Saying that God doesn't exist is just as ridiculous as ignoring scientific facts.
Not really. Saying God doesn't exist is like saying unicorns and ghosts don't exist. I'm a simple expression of rational skepticism given the lack of supporting evidence for things such as gods, fairies and Santa Claus. There is a remote possibility that something like God does exist, but the most logical assumption should be that there is not.
Many of the most famous scientists and brilliant minds responsible for much of the body of scientific knowledge believed in God. Newton and Galileo all the way down to Einstein believed in God. So, what, you are smarter than them now? Gimme a break.
The argument you are basically making here -- that these smart people believed in God, so God probably exists -- is a textbook example of the appeal to authority logical fallacy.
Sometimes smart people believe silly things. There have been brilliant people of many different religious persuasions throughout history, as well as brilliant naturalists/atheists -- including Einstein.
Einstein did not believe in a personal God and explicitly said as much in life on multiple occasions. Confusion is understandable, but what Einstein referred to as "God" could just as accurately be called "the universe" or "nature." See the philosophy of Spinoza, natura naturata, etc.
I hope this helps to illuminate the atheist/agnostic position for you a little.
Tyreth took his toys and left, your logic was probably causing some long-dormant neurons to fire up. Rational thinking is the enemy of Religion.
Trolling is a art,
Two, it was not a first hand account of creation. How it was conveyed to Moses is not said, personally I suspect a vision of some sort.
Like when Bush says "God speaks to me"? You really believe that?
Trolling is a art,
All I was trying to say is have an open mind because there are at least two sides to a story.
The fact side and the fairy tale side?
Trolling is a art,
Well, if Creation is so provably wrong whats the harm in setting creation and evolution side by side in a science class? Shouldn't you always present what the other group believes and then give a counterargument? If you want a fair comparision I'd say a science class would be the best place. Technically though, both should be taught in a history class because both happened in the past.
Well, my basic position is, that since intelligent design and creationism are not valid scientific theories, they shouldn't be taught as a part of the science curriculum. The "harm" that may be done is to confound students' notion of what science is by introducing non-scientific concepts in the wrong context. I think that one of the major failings of our education system presently, even without creationism or ID in the classroom, is that we just don't do a good enough a job of teaching exactly what science is.
In my opinion, before we start teaching students in an in depth manner about things such as physics, chemistry and biology (including evolution), the primary focus on science education should first be to build up the scientific literacy of students, and it should be a recurring, oft-reviewed theme/focus throughout their entire science education. A lot of time and energy should be devoted to making sure they understand the scientific method, empiricism, the meaning of words like "theory," "hypothesis and "falsifiability," in the scientific context. I also think we should give the students a very basic primer on the academics of science and science publishing -- about peer-reviewed journals, science ethics panels, some basics on how universities and other institutions.
An introduction to science and the "culture" of science, in other words. Part of educating about science could possibility include an explicit education about what science is not. In this context it may be acceptable to engage the students of examples of science and non-science -- give (or solicit from students) examples of pseudoscience, unfettered non-scientific speculation about the natural world, and religious claims that all may superficially resemble scientific theories, but don't live up to those standards and must be classified merely as unsupported or discredited hypotheses/ideas.
I do not expect that such an education would be viewed with welcoming good feelings by creationism or intelligent design advocates, but it is the only way I can think of to get creationism in science-related classes that does justice to the education of the students, otherwise the only proper place for it in school would be in social studies classes, as I've already mentioned. It is not appropriate to give evolution and creationism something resembling "equal time" and respect in science class because they are not anything close to being equally credible or scientific, and suggesting that they are would present a distorted, misleading view to students.
In all reallity we all believe in creation it's just a debate over the creator. Yours is astronomical chance; mine is an omniscient God.
If we're still talking about evolution here, I don't believe the origin of species and species diversity was created by "astronomical chance" -- I believe it arose as a result of the operation of non-chance mechanisms -- namely selection pressures (natural selection, sexual selection) and that these processes themselves arose through other mechanistic physical processes that can be observed and understood.
Thank you for your comment.
I do understand about the "many intelligent people still believing in a 'god'" and so on and so forth. I used to be one of them. Trust me, I've tried the "dialog" or "tread lightly" approach, that does not work either. What I've learned over the years while trying to limit the influence and damage of these "crazy" and harmful ideas is this: the issue must be addressed head-on and no quarter is to be granted.
Most of those "intelligent people" that your refer to are "too far gone", and will either simply continue to believe in the non-existent and "live accordingly" or worse, they will "project" a life according to the precepts of the mythological as mandatory. I can live in "peace" with the former but the later need to be confronted as sociopaths, for they are sick and dangerous people.
"Intelligent design" has been thoroughly discredited, not only lacking of merit, but in fact, part of a larger more dangerous agenda: the imposition of the biblical account of creation (the work of humans) as "fact" despite being devoid of any supporting evidence.
Humans have adjusted to the loss of the flat Earth, and the earth not being the center of the universe, and the fact that the stars are not pin-pricks of light shining down from "heaven", "we" can survive accepting the scientific take of the history on this planet, and the evolutionary development of spices.
Your post is long on assertions and rather short on evidence. This is a classic case. What do you mean by "information" and how would we measure it? This is important, because without a halfway decent definition of the quantity "information" your whole point falls apart. If you're looking for an example of a beneficial mutation, you might want to look into the assorted mutations that imbue resistance to antibiotics or the now famous "nylon bug" in which a mutation allows a certain bacterium to "eat" nylon. The mutations are understood (i.e. mapped to a particular piece of DNA--the researchers know what happened) and they're clearly beneficial in that environment.
No, they haven't. You're just not looking deeply enough into those specific examples and understanding why they are the way they are.
It's very important to note that it was a seal or some such animal and not something else. The effect that whoever told you about this didn't mention to you (I'll be charitable and assume that it was an honest mistake) is called the "reservoir effect." For radiocarbon dating to work, the organism should be at equilibrium with atmospheric carbon. This isn't the case when organisms get most of their carbon from "old carbon reservoirs" like the seal in question did. The classic example is mollusk shells, which can often be constructed from the carbon in limestone to which the creatures are attached. In that case, the amount of "old carbon" from the rock will dwarf the amount of "new carbon" from the atmosphere, causing old dates. The same is true for the seal example (from Wakefield's "Mummified seals of southern Victoria Land"). The seal in question lives in an area where large quantities of old carbon are known to be in the food chain.
Basically, you've taken a well-understood special case and made a hasty generalization to completely discard a huge pile of evidence to the contrary. It's important to understand that knowing how to use the tools is just as important as the accuracy of the tools themselves. Organizations like AiG often exploit this in their "research" and forcibly "break" the dating methods and pretend to be surprised. I recommend reading into the topic a little bit before discarding good research and essentially calling the vast majority of scientists incompetent based on stuff you read on the Internet.
An interesting anagram of "BANACH TARSKI" is "BANACH TARSKI BANACH TARSKI"
An interesting anagram of "BANACH TARSKI" is "BANACH TARSKI BANACH TARSKI"
I'm late in responding to you because of the way you ended up "quoting" yourself, I didn't realize you had posted something new. Anyway.
So you have a problem with my opionion of leaving them along and believe in what ever they wanted to believe instead of shoving your conviction in science down their throat? Because that's what your reply sounds like to me.
If being uncompromising about identifying creationism nonsense for what it is constitutes "shoving my conviction in science down their throat", then yes. I think I'm being pretty mild in my expression of my opinion, to be honest though. I'm not calling for a jihad against creationists, or that the government outlaw the dissemination of their lies, or that they be in any other way have their liberties suppressed. I think that a peaceful protest of the museum that seeks to raise public consciousness about the factual errancy of the museum and the problems that go along with promulgating scientific illiteracy is a perfectly respectable, appropriate, measured response to its existence.
we got enough debate topic in this country already. Frankly I think both camp need to lay off their attack off each other and start learning how to "repectably disagree" the other's opionion. Let them open their Museum in their own right, and you can open your museum dedicated to scientific theories behind Darwinism and how it had positively advance science and improve our lives.
You see, from my point of view, I am respectfully disagreeing with the creationist position, their actions and policies -- that is, I am affording them all the respect they deserve. I also must respectfully disagree with your assertion that the country has exceeded its "debate quota" and that issues such as this should be quietly ignored. Civil discourse, non-violent protest and rational argument are some of the ways in which society can make progress.
We still have not bagged all the polygamist and other more extremism and racists in this country yet. Can't we focus on them first before we can have a candid, yet gentlemen like discussion on the subject? If you truely believe in Science, then you should also believe that the truth in science will prove itself over time. Blasting different opionion will be the last thing that will persuade others to listen to you anyway. That's just human nature that even physical science cannot give you a straight mathematical formula on.
As human beings, we are capable of sustaining a discussion on multiple subjects. Personally I am not opposed to polygamy in principle, the some of the anecdotes of polygamy that have reached me are certainly objectionable -- but yes, there are polygamists who exploit women and young girls, there are racists committing hate crimes, etc. -- but there will always be these sorts of people. Since you're saying we should "wait" to have this debate, maybe you can tell me exactly what criteria will need to be fulfilled before it is appropriate to have this discussion. I personally see no point in waiting -- the creation museum is up now, the anti-science religious agenda is in swing now -- the time to oppose it, is now.
Besides that, we all "waste" time and resources on a variety of trivial amusements. One statistical I recently overheard stated that Americans spend about 4 hours per day, on average, watching TV. In light of that, how is a day spent protesting the creation museum, and several hours spent blogging and discussing any kind of woefully disproportionate response that we should feel bad about?
One problem, as I see it, is that people like me are often accused as belonging some extreme fringe, the "militant, zealous advocate of atheism and science" reverse image of the "fundamentalist Biblical literalist," with the suggestion that our sometimes strident, combative tone is somehow wrong, irresponsible. I know that some of what I say may be offensive, but it's only because in our culture, religion is such a fixture and "faith"/piety is regarded
A common technique to deal with that is calibration with tree ring data. Most organisms are at equilibrium with the atmosphere when they die, so the question is, how much C14 is in the atmosphere? If you can get your hands on wood from old trees, you can trace back the years and then measure the carbon ratios for a given year. After that, you have a very good measure of what to expect to find in organisms from that year. As it turns out, C14 dating has been very successful when proper calibration is done. This field of research is called dendochronology. It should also be noted that for timeframes longer than a few tens of thousands of years, we have to go to something other than C14 dating, so C14 is really not relevant to anything but the "last mile" of evolutionary theory. Even so, I think it's important to point out that it's not the mess that most people seem to think it is.
Well, as I pointed out, the first assumption is testable for more than 10,000 years back. The second assumption is a consequence of atomic theory and has serious consequences if it's not true. Nobody has proposed an alternate atomic theory in which decay rates change in appreciable amounts. You'd be fiddling with some fundamental values in physics. That's not to say that it's not possible. It's just highly unlikely. The constancy of radioactive decay is not the house of cards so many people make it out to be.
Another fact is that the radioactive dating methods tend to agree with each other, even systems that are based on different types of decay. Changing one type of decay would not be expected to have any effect on other types of decay. Likewise, different elements would be affected differently. We don't observe anything to support this, unless all of the decay rates have been fiddled with and tuned in such a way as to completely negate any measurable effects. Having an open mind is one thing, but essentially discarding most of modern physics simply because you're not comfortable with dates that C14 dating produces takes epistemological nihilism a bit too far, IMO.
An interesting anagram of "BANACH TARSKI" is "BANACH TARSKI BANACH TARSKI"
So we have to accept that words can be redefined to probe whatever we want to probe?
That is nonsense frankly.
If one wants to follow textually what the bible says then one day is one day, you can't both have your cake and eat it.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
If the transmission of knowledge from god to us poor humans is so unreliable, then how religious peeople can use it a source of scientific knowledge?
Sorry, but the more people try to find justification for the complete shambles that creationism is, the most ludicrous it sounds as a credible explanation of how things work.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
In science, asking the recursive "why?" question eventually leads to "I don't know, it requires more research". In creationism, the recursive "why?" question always leads back to faith. Faith is not falsifiable, hence it is not science and should not be taught as such.
*Condense fact from the vapor of nuance*
Leaving aside the interesting issue of whether there actually are any ancient depictions of dinosaurs vs mythological beasts, the premis that any such depictions prove than man and dinosaurs coexisted is totally illogical (never mind proved wrong by the fossil record).
We know that chinese villagers, for example, built fences out of dinosaur bones that had been uncovered, and it's not be surprising if dino skull finds were the basis for dragons. Knowledge of long extinct dinosaurs isn't limited to modern man - only understanding of them is.
There's no reason to suppose that early man of *any* age failed to observe surface finds of dinosaur bones that had weathered out of rocks. No reason also to suppose that as hunters and butchers they were too stupid to know how a skeleton corresponded to a living animal.
An ancient picture of a dinosaur no more suggests that dinosaurs were alive then than a modern picture suggests that they are alive now.
"(By the way, I'm a Christian, and one who holds to the young-earth ideas. I'm working on a Physics minor and have a great deal of interest in Quantum theory (I hate string theory, hope it dies a horrible painful death) and physics in general."
Leave school before you waste anymore of daddy's money. Go to Seminary, where your utter lack of the basics of science will actually help you instead of hinter you.
Everyone knows that God does not exist, due to the existence of the Babelfish.
People used to go to sideshows with three legged men and Platypus boy. Didn't mean that they were really three legged men. Just another side show to milk money from the rubes - and what better way to do that then to pray on their beliefs. (pun intended)
I sig, therefore I am.
Creationism is very specific about who created what. Hint: it is not talking about humans thinkering with genes in a fish.
The most fundamental idea behind creationism is that all beings were created simultaneously in a puff (if a divinity is involved or not is frankly beyond the point). This is demonstrably false, there is absolutely no observable fact whatsoever supporting this.
Assuming, without conceding, that hydrocarbons and DNA limits the number of ways life evolvs, this still does not invalidate evolution theory. The materials of evolution may be limited (and this who knows, we have observed life in only one planet, and once in a while we are surprised by new discoveries) but the mechanism that uses those materials works and needs no outside intervention of any creature, god or whatever you wnat to call it.
Who is to say the universe is intelligent? Well, define intelligence and tests to check if one is in play. Evolution is full of examples of dumb turns and jumps which show that it is a blind, random process.
Unscientific is going babbling about an "intelligent Universe" without any proof more substantial than wishful thinking or baseless speculation.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
No, which is why I don't advocate adding the words and works of George Bush to the Canon of Scripture. Any other stupid questions?
http://www.actionbioscience.org/evolution/benton.h tml
There are plenty of methods to accurately measue the age of rocks and fossils.
What is your point exactly anyway?
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
I am not religious and have absolutely no problem to learn about creationism in the correct context where it belongs: that of religious beliefs.
In a biology class creationism should be kicked out immediately, since it is not science.
Each individual should decide what is more important to him, but if you go to a science class you should go in the expectation that things that are not based in demonstrable facts and the scientific method wont interfere with your education.
If parents (idiotic ones) belive that evolution clashes with their beliefs, they can change school, remove the child from the science class or provide more religious education. What is completely unadmissible is that science is compromissed because a few Ayatollahs can't stomach the way science works.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Why are one man's delusions worthy of being put in a holy book and another's not?
Trolling is a art,
so long as it is done in a properly academic and honest context You can start by being honest about evolution as the origin of Man. It's just as much a guess as Intelligent Design yet you and your kind gladly dismiss Intelligent Design as fairy tales and wishes while propping Evolution up as the only "logical, reasonable, and scientific" choice. Teaching Intelligent Design is really nothing more than teaching about the gaps in Evolution Theory and leaving them to a supernatural power. Frankly I'd be glad just to see the gaps in Evolution Theory being taught without the reference to the supernatural, but unfortunately that's not what we're seeing in many places. The faults in Evolution Theory are glossed over and the supernatural explanation is attacked and degraded. In the end, it is just a platform for anti-religious ramblings, which I think we can agree have no place in classroom.
Funny stuff. I had a good laugh after reading this. Where do you find these great comic writers?
Actually, they are invalid for "proving" 1 = 2. That was my point. You created a mathematical fallacy.
Steve Magruder, Metro Foodist
Yes, 1 x 1 = 2 x 1/2 (what you just said), but that doesn't make 1 = 2.
Steve Magruder, Metro Foodist
Believe what you like.
It is "pure science." Science sometimes makes "assumptions" as well, when it is sensible and useful to do so. However, the assumptions tend to be based on strong, supporting empirical evidence. This is what a "theory" is. Nothing about science says "this is absolutely, positively, for certain how things are." Science is a model of the universe assembled by a certain set of methodologies. Science has given us a model (evolution by natural selection and similar processes) that is a predictive, falsifiable explanation as for how life has developed into all of the living forms observed today. It is backed by heaps of good evidence, has made many possible many successful predictions and as yet, has not been disproven. Specific details are still being worked out, or are in dispute, but this does not evidence against the theory (for example, you can "assume" gravity exists from the evidence without knowing exactly how strong gravity is -- not knowing the precise strength of gravity is not evidence against its existence) but in broad terms, common descent is accepted as scientific fact within the pertinent fields with a fairly high degree of confidence.
Because of the time scales that evolution operates on to produce large scale morphological and physiological changes, and the limited amount of time that modern science has existed, and the short lifespans of humans, it has not been possible for us to observe the living evolution of something like a species of bacteria to something like a trilobite, for to follow the evolution of a "lower" ape to something like a chimp or human. However, that's not the only valid method of observation. Science has provided us with "proofs" of the mechanisms that show how changes like this can occur, and by indirect observation (referring mainly here to the fossil record) and logical extrapolation, we can reach a logical conclusion that such large scale morphological and physiological changes have occurred by the specified mechanisms (natural selection, etc.)
This "assumption" that we are commonly descended is based in science -- it is science (and I will remind you that science is the the only logical, well-established method we have available to us for figuring out the natural world) and thus, is quite reasonable.
Invoking the supernatural is not reasonable, because there is no evidence to support the specific supernatural claims being made.
On the issue of the Creation Museum being a museum, I am of the opinion that museums should strive to provide information that is as accurate as possible. This goes for the Ripley's Believe it or Not museum, as well as the Coca-Cola museum, museums of history, natural history, art, or anything else. Their primary focus does not have to be scientific, but when the claims made by the museum broach the domain of science -- that is, when they have presentations that make claims about the natural world (such as whether or not dinosaurs or humans side by side) and present them as fact, they should have the intellectual integrity make sure the picture they present is consistent with our best scientific understanding, and not depict scenes that have been thoroughly discredited by science.
For example, I have no problem with Ripley's Belief it or Not museum, assuming they have presentations that educate people on a fact such as, "this man have 12 fingers" and that if they giv
If you are a christian you should be thouroughly ashamed of yourself.
Read the ten commandments please.
Even an atheist like me knows some of them.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
There are a couple clips of Neil deGrasse Tyson's presentation rom the Beyond Belief 2006 conference on YouTube that highlights the danger that adopting a philosophy of ignorance like "intelligent design" rather than continuing a robust scientific inquiry, even for highly intelligent individuals.
They're beautifully insightful and worth watching, in my opinion, and relevant to the direction our conservation has taken, so I'll link them here: Part 1 & Part 2.
Creationism is falsifiable. The Genesis creation story makes some very specific claims about the way everything was created which should have predictable effects on the fossil record.
Neither the Creation Theory nor the Evolution Theory exclude one another. It is only those on both sides of the theories that exclude the other. Is it not interesting that both sides choose to allow emotion to enter into their arguments.
GO BACK TO THE EVIDENCE FOLKS!
The Bible does NOT say the earth is only 5000 or 6000 years old. The Bible does NOT say a day is 24 hours. Both issues are silent.
The Evolution Theory does NOT say that all this began from an accidental spark to ignite the Big Bang. The Evolution Theory does NOT say how it all started. Both issues are silent.