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Texas Creationist Museum Facing Extinction
gattaca writes "A small Texas museum that teaches creationism is counting on the auction of a prehistoric mastodon skull to stave off extinction. The founder and curator of the Mt. Blanco Fossil Museum, which rejects evolution and claims that man and dinosaurs coexisted, said it will close unless the Volkswagen-sized skull finds a generous bidder. 'If it sells, well, then we can come another day,' Joe Taylor said. 'This is very important to our continuing.'" Meanwhile, the much larger Creation Museum in Kentucky that we discussed and toured when it opened last year seems to be thriving.
'If it sells, well, then we can come another day,' Come again?
I don't want Karma, I just want to be a smart ass. All in favor, mod me up.
Has any fellow European of mine ever come across any serious creationists? Is this solely an American phenomenon?
... no one buy it!
Two states where I'm pretty sure you could find arguments against evolution just by looking at the local populace. I guess if they don't believe in evolution they don't feel the need to do so themselves.
today is spelling optional day.
Falsiblity. Predictive ablity.
Some resemblence to the facts we can find in nature.
'Sensible' is a curse word.
Lets just hope it didn't procreate first!
If I bid on that fossil those creationists better start playing ball. Jesus descended from a fish and although he spread love and happiness to his diaspora of disciples he probably was the kind of person who would punch you in the arm every thirty seconds while you talked to him face to face. Jesus was a land of contrast.
All the substantiation behind it maybe? The fact that it doesn't break laws of thermodynamics etc.
If an all-powerful god can create all of life and everything, how do you explain cancer and the other flavors of suffering god's creatures are facing? If he's involved in the day to day, he's pretty nasty, our best hope is that he's an absentee landlord.
Sheldon
Believe whatever you want while within your church. Just keep it out of the science classroom.
Rule #1 -- Politics always trumps technology.
I'm a Christian of the preterist nature. I believe in evolutionary forces as part of God's creation. I don't believe in a 6000-year old Earth (neither do most Jews who hold the Old Testament in a different way than many Christians do). I also think the debate of evolution versus creationism is really repugnant and a waste of time when there are so many other things we can be spending our time on (we meaning "us Christians.")
I can't even begin to count the billions of hours wasted by Christians in living life in ways completely counter to what our God teaches us. Look at the battle over the 10 Commandments, laws of the Israelites' God that have been countermanded by Christ's teaching to a much more simpler set of rules (completely love God first, completely love others second). And yet, when we dig deeper into the "Why" of modern Christian thought, we come up against the same problem that I see in those who are pro-government: we need "leaders" and we need "rules" and we need "penalties" to keep us in line.
What has happened to the powerful individual in today's society? Evolution versus creationism is a debate that strikes at the heart of my question: why is it that we need "teacher-leaders" to stick to a specific standard, rather than what the individual kid in a unique place in their specific city/society needs to be taught? I can't even understand why science is taught to ALL children, along with higher level maths, when the kids today can barely count, let alone read or speak properly. I had a 20-something in my town use a calculator at a checkout line 2 weeks ago when I gave her $21.01 for a $6.06 charge. Unbelievable.
Creationism and evolution are both articles of faith, and really have no purpose for MOST students. Then again, I truly believe that even High School is worthless for 70% of society considering what it is churning out.
Evolution must be better because God thinks so, how else can this museum be on the brink of extinction?
But seriously, my professor probably has a better explanation than your pastor.
Theories can be tested to be proven or disproven using scientific methods. Creationism cannot. What scientific research would you propose to test the "theory" of creationism? Evolution can be studied by examining DNA progression, fossil records, etc.
today is spelling optional day.
Think about it.
I have. Have you, or do you let your pastor think for you?
"Theory" is just a term for "scientific idea that has some measure of acceptance and support." The theory of evolution has a huge amount of support, and is tested every day.
...either smite them with bankruptcy or send a saviour to the auction, their accountant has been weighing their sins and thinks a press release might help. /ducks
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Holy dog shit! Only steers and creationists come from Texas...
.... and this guy doesnt look like a steer to me!
Theory means something different in the language of science than it does in everyday speech. All of science is theory. Gravity is a theory. The 'law' of supply and demand is a theory. Theories do not pretend to be fact, but good theories accurately predict outcomes. It doesn't matter whether they are true or not, they provide us with information. Creationism is not a theory because it can not be used to predict useful information. Theories can never be proven 'true' but they can be proven not to predict things correctly. As creationism makes no predictions that can be shown to be false, it can not be disproved like a real theory can. Therefore, it is useless mental masturbation. Evolution is not, it makes useful predictions, and so far, all of them have been shown to be true. So evolution has utility, whereas creationism has none.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
I think the point is that he's supposed to talk up his love for everybody, but in secret only loves the ones that suck up to him. That's why animals have such a rough go of it, they aren't smart enough to brown nose the one way that really counts.
I read the internet for the articles.
Score one for reality...
Does their Planetarium at the bigger museum have the sun revolving around the earth?
The KY Creation museum isn't too far away from here and everyone that I've talk to that has gone or wanted to go hasn't done so out of religious belief but out of morbid curiosity or think it's funny. Their success is the same as that of the bearded lady, or so it seems to me. Once people get over the initial shock and humor it'll fade into obscurity.
Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what your country did to you
that's a very very transparent troll. C- for effort though.
(1.21 gigawatts) / (88 miles per hour) = 30 757 874 newtons
Because all dinosaur fossils that have been found are way older than all human fossils. Besides, how did Noah fit 2 of every dinosaur on the ark?
I sometimes wonder about the wisdom of giving free publicity to organizations like these. From my standpoint they represent an institutionalized mental illness- that of denying reality. Denying reality is certainly akin to "doing the same thing over and over expecting a different result".
I do understand the religious issues that fuel these kinds of organizations. But it has always seemed to me that since "truth" is central to any religious belief, that an attempt to derail truth through ignorance or outright deception was a horrible "sin".
With the way organizations like this adhere to biblical writing, one might be able to accuse them of having a book as "god" rather than the apparently supernatural "God of the Gaps" most people seem to engage in their spirituality.
The inerrancy of God seems plausible to me. The in inerrancy of a book seems like sheer insanity.
Another consultant who stuck it out.
"We are the Priests, of the Temples of Syrinx..."
If it fails, then I guess that's evolution - it wasn't fit to survive in its environment. Perhaps some nice creationist being will be kind enough to make them survive market forces.
bang goes my karma... again...
Agreed, saying creationism is right just because is the equivalent of saying 5+3 = 13 because god says so.
I would think someone should do a little research before making comments on such a subjet.
Couldn't this story have waited until AFTER they had to close?
First of all, we are talking scientific theory vs. layman's theory.
What a non-scientist calls a "theory", a scientist calls a hypothesis, and isn't remotely worth of theory status.
1) Evolution is a scientific theory. To achieve theory status in science, you typically have to test something rigorously and show it to hold up well. The theory of evolution has mathematical/statistical models defining it, explains evidence found on earth very well, and can be tested.
2) A law is achieved by one of two methods: a theory that is not disproved (or even seriously challenged) for a ridiculously long time can achieve "law" status in the books. Alternatively if it can be rigorously proven that no other explanation is possible, the process might be sped up a bit.
3) Creationalism, as the ministers at the church I went to when I was younger suggested, DOES NOT conflict with evolution. The former is the who and why, the latter is the how.
May I ask how your pastor described a theory and went over it?
Also, may I ask how creationalism can be mathematically and statistically defined, as well as tested? For all I've seen in this argument, I've yet to see a good mathematical or statistical model for creationalism, or an accurate test.
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
A theory in science is defined to be something that is both testable and falsifiable. Relativity, both special and general, is a *theory*. To this day, relativity is still known as the "theory of relativity" - in spite of the fact that there is solid, factual evidence to suggest that relativity is, in fact, a correct interpretation of the laws of physics at speeds approaching c and in gravitational fields. Creationism, or Intelligent Design, on the other hand, is not a theory. Why? Because it's not falsifiable - you can't definitively say "if life was created, we would not see [some property of life]" because the counter argument "because God made it that way" can always be made.
Oh, and ending a statement with "Think about it" does not strengthen your point.
The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources. - Albert Einstein
And it was labeled a "theory", as all good scientific explanations are. At the time. I think by now, "theory" is a misnomer when it comes to evolution. Scientifically speaking, it's on the same par as the "laws" of gravitation, planetary motion, and thermodynamics. Note I put these things in quotes, because even laws are subject to change, such as when Newtonian gravity was altered and enhanced by Einstein's theories.
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
The closest word to theory in the sense you use (as in 'guess') in the scientific community is 'hypothesis.' An hypothesis is just a guess. Maybe a somewhat educated one based on observation, by still just a guess.
OTOH, a theory is something much more substantial than a guess -- it is falsifiable, repeatable, consistent, and verifiable. Gravity is "just" a theory. Evolution and gravity meet these same scientific criteria.
Creationism does not. It is not verifiable (no, your 'Good Book' doesn't count). It is not falsifiable (we can't prove that without it, there would be no man). And it is not repeatable. (We can't just make a man in a lab from dirt.)
So Creationism doesn't meet the criteria for theory. It merely meets the criteria for hypothesis, and not a very good one as it's based on only one observation -- a 6,000 year-old story written in a book.
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So biology professors have a higher genetic fitness than Christian fundamentalists? :-P
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
Y'know, it occurs to me that anti-evolutionists don't just have a problem with evolution, but also geology, cosmology, carbon dating, physics. Any I missed?
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
The funny part about the original CNN article I read on this said that Heritage Auction Galleries estimated the age of the thing to be at around 40,000 years old. At least the musuem guy is letting smarter people sell the thing.
Actually, I think a better argument is the predictiveness argument: Science is about learning to understand and predict the world around us, so we can make it better. (Of course 'better' has a host of different meanings, but regardless of which we choose, we need to be able to understand and predict, so we can choose the results of our actions.)
Evolution makes predictions that are accurate enough to be useful, regardless of whether is it aboslutely true or not. (For the record: It's as true as anything we've ever come up with.)
Creationism makes no predictions. In fact, it prevents them: Why did this happen? God did it. Will it happen again? If God wants it to. Will it stop? If God gets bored. Can we influence it? If God decides to be influenced, yes. In the end, 'God' is unknowable and unexplainable, so by saying God did it we have stopped all thought, inquiry, or prediction on the topic.
Which is probably why it is attractive to some people: They don't want to think.
'Sensible' is a curse word.
How can they sell this skull as a 40,000 year old artifact if they claim it's less than 6000 years old?
"...which rejects evolution..."
"Rejects evolution" has lots of possible senses, and I'm wondering if the museum asserts:
a) Rejects that evolutionary processes occur
b) Rejects that evolutionary processes exhaustively explain human existence
c) Rejects the premise that evolution leads by logical inference to an atheistic position
Anyone know what specifically the museum asserts? My usage subset above, in my mind, ranges from "indefensible" to "very reasonable"--and on the basis of "rejects evolution" alone I'm not sure what an appropriate response would be.
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
It's about 35 miles from me on the road to Lubbock. He has some really nice fossils, but his interpretation is just plain weird. He built a huge human leg bone to show people what the "giants" would have looked like. The problem is he didn't take into account the strength of the bone and simply scaled it up to giant size. The local schools take classes on field trips to see the museum, I need to ask the high school kid that works for me what they are told when they visit. Knowing the teachers around here they teach this stuff in their class, it's shame really.
Sexuality. Other religions.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
The Popes have said evolution is largely correct.
that wouldn't be anti evolutionists that would be people who are creationalists. It is possible to be both anti evo and anti creation.
From the BioTech Life Science Dictionary: theory definition:"In science, an explanation for some phenomenon which is based on observation, experimentation, and reasoning. In popular use, a theory is often assumed to imply mere speculation, but in science, something is not called a theory until it has been confirmed over the course of many independent experiments." What makes it better than proposing Creationism?
- Evolution is supported by repeatable, publicly observable experimentation. Creationism is not
- Evolution is supported by massive amounts of publicly observable evidence. Creationism is not.
- Evolution is falsifiable. Creationism is not.
- Evolution makes testable predictions. Creationism does not.
Think about it. I strongly urge you to begin doing so, rather than following the lead of charlatans.Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
"Creationism does not. It is not verifiable (no, your 'Good Book' doesn't count). It is not falsifiable (we can't prove that without it, there would be no man). And it is not repeatable. (We can't just make a man in a lab from dirt.)"
I have to chime in on this. These same points would also seem to apply to evolution.
specifically:
verifiable - Design and evolution are 2 conclusions both reached from varying interpretations
repeatable - You can't evolve man in a lab either.
falsifiable - based on number 2 it will always be a matter of probability whether man evolved.
The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources. - Albert Einstein
I sincerely hope that all the real natural history museums have the sense not to bid on this. Not only would they be funding an institution that opposes and mocks them, they'll be passing up the opportunity to buy the mastodon skull and everything else that this "museum" holds at bargain prices when it goes bankrupt.
Did Creationist Museums and Humans actually co-exist?
(god, I hope this shit isn't still about in a 1000 years).
Genesis 1:32 And God typed
into something like a museum of human gullibility, a museum of political credibility or some other absurdity.
"is counting on the auction of a prehistoric mastodon skull to stave off extinction."
Makes for a nice lead in, but the large gold nugget that is also being auctioned off, and expected to bring +USD$1 mil., will do a considerable bit more staving if you ask me. I can understand how a restored mastodon skull paper-weight would grab more attention leading up to said auction, however.
We are refining too much still to give it the same respect as gravity in terms of bredth and depth, but all things considered it is extremely unlikely that the "final" theory will be significantly different from what we have now for a scientist, or noticably different for the those who haven't studied it extensively.
What I call the "final" result is the state where all the main points and conjectures are highly unlikely to change, and the smaller details are what will get filled in. More or less the state (I think) Gravity is at today.
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
Say you are a legitimate museum/educational institution capable of purchasing this skull.
Do you:
a) Purchase the mastodon skull to preserve an excellent fossil and put it on display for educational value, including its true age?
b) Allow this absurdity and insult to rational intelligence that is a Creation Museum die?
Forgot about all of those mundane things. What's cancer in the grand scheme of things? The question I've always posed is: If God is all-powerful and loves us so much, then why the hell did he create a universe that's going to end in a big freeze or big rip, the end result of which is the extinction of every single life form in the universe.
Keep your fucking Bible out of my science classroom please. We can talk about creationism in theology class, where it belongs.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Modern medicine and drug-resistant diseases.
Biology and it's whole sub-genere called 'medicine' come to mind...
'Sensible' is a curse word.
Oh great and powerful wikipedia, what say ye? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory
My wife teaches middle school science. One of the curriculum requirements is for students to understand what theory and law means in science (not as detailed as the link, the kids are only 12). Oh, yeah, and she teaches in KY a few miles from the creationist museum. Ironic, eh?
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
You say it like we don't know - it's called 'evolution theory' or 'the theory of evolution' which is kind of a hint. Difference being, unlike the Church's angle, this one features this thing called evidence.
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
Words, eh! Who'd have though they could have more than one meaning:
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=theory
Evolution would be under definition #1, whereas creationism comes under definition #7.
Genesis 1:32 And God typed
Biology, biotech, even some branches of chemistry.
Two words are guaranteed to send them into a rage: human cloning.
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They're starting to push it here too, albeit rather quietly for now. I noticed some bias in that direction when watching some TV programs. Though it should be noted that our most important TV stations are abused nearly daily by the pope or other religious personalities who deliberately violate our constitution by telling common people and the government what they want to be done. Other EU countries will have different mileages, I hope.
"..."The Word" is inerrant in the Bible, but the Bible is not The Word!"
I have seen the Light and the Light is not bright!
Inerrant is as inerrant does, Brother! Amen, pitipat and don't sit down!
The real question is why a creationist museum would use a tool of the devil, meant solely to lure people in to rejecting the idea that the Earth was created around the same time as the Predynastic period in Egypt as its centerpiece. I'd ask Kent Hovind but he's going to be in jail for tax evaison until 2015 or so.
Books used to be copied by scribes, and (despite a lot of care) sometimes typos would be introduced. Later scribes, making copies of copies, would introduce other typos. It's possible to look at the existing copies and put them into a 'family tree'. "These copies have this typo, but not that one; this other group has yet another typo, though three of them have a newer typo as well, not seen elsewhere..." This is not controversial at all when dealing with books, including the Bible.
Now, this process of copy-with-modification naturally produces 'family trees', nested groups. When we look at life, we find such nested groups. No lizards with fur or nipples, no mammals with feathers, etc. Living things (at least, multicellular ones[1]) fit into a grouped hierarchy. This has been solidly recognized for over a thousand years, and systematized for centuries. It was one of the clues that led Darwin to propose evolution.
Now, more than a century later, we find another tree, one Darwin never suspected - that of DNA. This really is a "text" being copied with rare typos. And, as expected, it also forms a family tree, a nested hierarchy. And, with very very few surprises, it's the same tree that was derived from looking at physical traits.
It didn't have to be that way. Even very critical genes for life - like that of cytochrome C - have a few neutral variations, minor mutations that don't affect its function. But we find a tree of mutations that fits evolution precisely, instead of some other tree. Wheat engineered to use the mouse form of cytochrome C grows just fine. (Imagine if a tree derived from bookbinding technology - "this guy used this kind of glue, but this other bookbinder used a different glue..." - conflicted with a tree that was derived from typos in the text of the books. We'd know at least one tree and maybe both were wrong.)
The details of these trees are very specific and very, very numerous. There are billions of quadrillions of possible trees... and yet the two that we see (DNA and morphology) happen to very precisely match. This is either a staggering coincidence, or a Creator deliberately arranged it in a misleading manner, or... common ancestry is actually true.
[1] Single-celled organisms are much more 'promiscuous' in their reproduction and spread genes willy-nilly without respect for straightforward inheritance. With single-celled creatures, it looks more like a 'web' of life than a 'tree'. But even if the 'tree' of life has tangled roots, it's still very definitely a tree when it comes to multicellular life.
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
Think of it as evolution in action...
-- L. Niven
Why not.... for once that dada21 doesn't mention Free Markets anywhere. :)
The reality is that some (read: a lot) of people need leaders to reach their full potential. Some need leaders just to get through the day. The same goes for "rules", though I do agree that "penalties" are often not the optimal way to get someone to do (or not do) something. Furthermore, a 1-1 teacher-student relationship for basic education is inefficient and impossible. As for what basic education is, consider the ever expanding body of human knowledge: in order to function at a basic level, you need to know more than you did 200 years ago.
As for your statement that creationism and evolution both being articles of faith, or that they have no purpose for most students, I'd argue that that's complete and utter nonsense. Evolution is a fact. The theory of evolution explains the why on a scientific level, while creationism explains it by assuming the bible is infallible. The purpose of both is to understand the world around you, which is critical for being an independent and powerful individual. Your argument that it is irrelevant for most students indicates that you believe that most students (and people, if you believe in life-long learning) need leaders to guide them through the world.
It seems even you understand that the powerful individual, as described in various American Myths, is the exception rather than the rule.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
Y'know, it occurs to me that anti-evolutionists don't just have a problem with evolution, but also geology, cosmology, carbon dating, physics. Any I missed?
Logic?
ZuluPad, the wiki notepad on crack
This XKCD followed by this one.
Creationsists: The universe doesn't care what you think.*
*Please follow that statement by imagining me pointing and laughing, derisively, at you; for at least several hours (e.g. hahahahahahahahahahahahaha...and so on).
I've noticed that people who believe in creationism tend to end all their arguments with "think about it". If it were provable, you wouldn't HAVE to think about it. Also, the "y'all" in your post leads me to believe you may work for the museum.
There is only one source of observation for young Earth creationism and -- a 6,000 year-old religious text with ZERO basis in scientific observation of reality. There is NO physical evidence on this planet that proves that the two differing and conflicting creation stories in the Book of Genesis is literal word-for-word truth. None. repeatable - You can't evolve man in a lab either. No, but evolution can be and has been observed in a lab.
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Evolution is a silly idea propped up by priests of science with big names and bigger egos. You don't belive it, fine, you're "unscientific", a "moron", and "just plain wrong".
Creationism is a silly extension beyond what the Bible says. You don't believe it, fine, you're "anti-God", a "moron", and "just plain wrong".
Every single Bible says God created the heavens, the earth, every and every thing else (have fun proving/disproving that this is actually what happened), but nowhere does it indicate what time table is to be used, just "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth." Period. It may have been one minute or 70 quadrillion eons before the next sentence.
Both camps are exercises in futility, extremism, and name-calling.
I can see why people would reject evolution. For one thing, as was pointed out by an earlier articled linked to by slashdot, it's counterintuitive. It is not consistent with our every day experience, or at least not with aspects of our experience that we recognize as having those qualities. Secondly, it can be very hard to keep up with. There are aspects of evolution that are rock solid. They're facts about things observed in the laboratory. Then there are things that are highly plausible, such as that we got here through this mechanism. But when you start making claims about specific things that "must" have occurred, you're on damn shaky ground. When humans left Africa, or IF they did, has been revised more times than I can count. When we and chimps branched from our common ancestor keeps getting revised. Now, that's all well and good, except for the fact that any time the layman comes into contact with these theories, they're STATED AS FACT. Ever watch the Discovery channel? Ever notice how none of the dinosaurs have feathers? And yet no mention is made of the fact that we now know that they do and that the original notion that they were scaly was based on assumption (we didn't have good evidence either way). Let me reiterate: Scientists tend to make bold fact-like statements about science that should never be stated that way, because they just fucking don't know! It's no wonder people think scientists are arrogant. They make bold statements and think they're right. Then they change their minds and think they're right. Scientists are never wrong! Isn't that convenient. Perhaps it's not fair to say, but the fact is that evidence supporting specifics of evolutionary theory are trivial compared to the kind of certainty we have about things like physics, chemistry, and biology of living organisms. Yet those, as with any science, are inherently uncertain. Evolutionary biologists need to get off their high horse and admit that they're stabbing in the dark.
That being said, what I cannot understand is why you would want to invoke a much more ridiculous hypothesis like creationism. It's not even a hypothesis. It's not science. It's not falsifiable. Ok, so it's certain and unchanging. I can understand that. But there's no objective evidence for it. Or at least, the evidence there is does not point in the direction of creation than any other alternative, so choosing creationism is arbitrary. So, when it comes down to it, many people probably choose creationism for two reasons: (1) tradition, and (2) because the scientists leave them feeling like a chump who trusted them, just to be betrayed when the scientist changed his mind (while being completely apologetic about having been wrong).
See, scientists are role models. Yes, I realize that they're just presenting the hypothesis that best fits the evidence (sometimes; sometimes they have personal or political agendas), but they need to be damn careful about how they present their theory and explain better their uncertainties and alternative explanations.
Oh, and the scientists who try to use evolution to disprove God are just as screwed up as the creationists who try to use God to prove evolution. God and evolution are not mutually exclusive.
Which is probably why it is attractive to some people: They don't want to think.
Either that or they don't want others to think.
If one looks at the history of the argument, it came to prominence around the time of WWI, and mostly starts as a critique against Social Darwinism.
It also serves as a critique against the Nazi belief of the Master Race, and so on.
In this regard, I suspect then the reason it's mostly an American phenomena has to do with the social structures we live under. In much of Europe, there still is a monarchy even if it is relegated to ceremonial status. So there's a inherent acceptance that some people are born just better than other people. The exact opposite condition is true in America, as rather there is a kneejerk reaction against any suggestion that having the right parents makes you better.
This is obviously over simplifying it, but in discussions I have had with evolution opponents, this is the heart of the issue even if most cannot articulate it or do not understand it themselves.
See, evolution does work...
Dr.E.
Eric Aitala
www.f1m.com
Is heliocentrism true? How about Number theory? Both theories.
I can't think of any logical reason you would pay with $21.01 for something that costs $6.06
They go bust, then someone buys the property and makes a true science museum of it. That would be a wonderful example of evolution at work.
I'd call it the "Ha Ha Science Museum"
Keep religion out of school, and we'll keep reality out of church.
Noah was actually 600 ft tall. The ark was dimensioned in cubits, which is the length of the forearm. So Noah's ark was 100 times bigger than people suppose, with 1,000,000 times the volume. Plenty of room for 2 of everything, and more than 2 for the tasty ones.
Didn't you ever wonder why the Middle East is a giant desert with so few trees, gopherwood or not?
Ok, I'm kidding. Noah wasn't a giant. The dinosaurs probably drowned. That's right, the flood explains everything. Everything! Got it?
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
A perfect God is not only good but also evil, since perfection implies no lacking, including not lacking that which is evil. A lacking of evil would imply that there is something external to his all-encompassing perfection.
if you do not believe in evolution, then please reject using all antibiotics, vaccines, and antivirals. All of these depend on evolution of microbes. I think that this would be the best use of a darwin award.
Sadly, the rest of us will see evolution at its best(worst?). Major Bacterias are gaining antibiotic resistance.
Bronze age fairy tales vs a mountain of verifiable facts that also are the basic foundation of genetic research.
What possible prediction can anyone make from Creationism?
Evolution predicts that since all living things on the planet share DNA, then medical research using animals should produce useful medical procedures for humans.
When you cut someone open, it's not full of clay.
Bavarian Purity Law of Rice Krispie Squares: Rice Krispies, Marshmallows, Butter, Vanilla.
I mean that silly skull can't be older than 6,000 years, obviously not worth much. ;)
-- I'm not a pessimist, I'm a realist. It's not my fault that life sucks so much. --
English
Prediction: The real iPhone killer is going to be sex robots from Japan. Think about it.
Y'know, it occurs to me that anti-evolutionists don't just have a problem with evolution, but also geology, cosmology, carbon dating, physics. Any I missed?
Logic?
"Logic is overrated." -Mr. Spock's ex-wife
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
Your pastor is an idiot, and you just committed the etymological fallacy.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
It's obviously not a day over 6000 years old.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
You're so very sad to believe that. Evolution is Proven scientific fact. It was a theory when Darwin made his observations. Since then we've proven it. There's this thing called the fossil record... we use an accurate measurement called radio carbon dating to determine an object's age. If you seriously believe that dinosaurs and people coexisted then you are indeed a very deluded individual. Is it that difficult to believe that perhaps god gave his creations the ability to evolve, to adapt and change with an environment that is in perpetual flux? Honestly. Get your head out of your rear end and pick up a 5th grade science book.
This is getting worse than Mac vs PC.
I have a question that has always troubled me regarding evolution vs. intelligent design. Is there any meaningful way, or even a need, to differentiate "created" things from "naturally occurring" things? Homo Sapiens may have "evolved" over millions of years, but there are objects on this earth (now even "living" objects) which are 100% the "creation" of us as a species, which would be very difficult to explain from an evolutionary standpoint.
At some point, we may become so advanced, technologically, that there is nothing curently living which is beyond our ability to recreate in a laboratory setting. How would one determine what occurs naturally and what was created? There will be lots of legal issues related to "accident of nature" or "industrial accident" related to when created things go bad, and how to prove they were created versus just having occurred by themselves.
To some extent, this is us "playing God" with nature. Somewhere down the road, a wholly "created" being will gain consciousness, evolve some (if left alone long enough), then wonder where he came from. Then they will have the same argument we are having now.
I'm no fan of ID as having "scientific" merit. But it does have philosophical merit. And some of the thought experiments make my head hurt.
(Posting Anon, because I don't like to discuss my personal politics or religion in public.)
It means scientific theory, not something ai thought about while have a few bears with my buddies.
Evolution is real, it makes predictions, is falsifiable.
There are warehouses of evidence.
Plus, your pasture should probably actually study the history of the Bible. It becomes very obvious, even at a cursory glance, that Genesis isn't a literal book; Which would explain why Genesis I and II contridict each other about creation.
Gravity is also a Scientific Theory.
Evolution isn't an attack on religion, it's just another piece of evidence that the Genesis creation stories are a fable. Also, getting hung up on the creation stories MISSES THE POINT.
I suggest you read your Bible, cover to cover. Take some notes.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
We can observe bacteria evolving to become resistant to anibiotics, we can also observe other lifeforms evolve. What makes man so radically different that that it is excluded from evolution?
Sorry, you're thinking about the scientific term "hypothesis", not theory; many times fundies mix up the two because, well, they don't remotely understand science, its terms or the scientific method in general.
0x09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0
See this reprint of an 2006 article published in Science, in particular this graph.
Basically, only Turkey does worse than the U.S. in terms of what fraction of the public accepts that humans evolved from earlier species of animals.
That single line just destroyed all credibility in your ability to properly debate the topic.
Firstly, you don't understand the basic definition of "theory". They aren't guesses. Theories are frameworks built by facts and observations. Evolution wouldn't be a theory if it didn't have observable evidence to support it. It would be a hypothesis.
Evolution is fact. Make no mistake about this. The concept that life changes and adapts to it's environment through the randomness of mutations, the non-randomness of natural selection and time has been observed, documented, tested and re-tested several times. The 'theory' part of Evolution comes from our attempts to understand how and why these changes happen. Like gravity, nobody debates that it exists, however we are still figuring out exactly how it works. Just like gravity. That's why gravitation is a theory.
Before you attempt debating scientific concepts, you may want to learn both the terminology and the concepts themselves.
As a Christian, I have toi say that the parent comment is the best modded comment I've seen today. Science and religion ask completely different questions. Science asks "how", religion asks "why".For the religious to try to undermine a useful scientific theory with an untestable "theory" like "creationism" is to show an appalling lack of faith in the God they claim to worship.
My take on it? Creationism per se is bunk, and evolution is the best theory I've seen to explein how God went about growing this wonderous universe.
Yes, I know it's heresy to admit being a Christian at slashdot, where athiesm is the site relgion and its proponents will stone with mod points anyone who dares believe that God exists, so mod me down. Arguing the existance of God with an athiest is like arguing the existance of red with a blind man.
You're an athiest because God wants you to be an athiest. "All we are is dust in the wind" - Kansas.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
> I had a 20-something in my town use a calculator at a checkout
> line 2 weeks ago when I gave her $21.01 for a $6.06 charge.
> Unbelievable
Perhaps she was calculating the odds that a seemingly educated customer would make a big deal about getting 95 cents instead of 94.
Theories are not proven or disproven. This is not mathematics. The proper terminology is "validate" and "invalidate".
Once Mike Huckabee is elected president and amends the Constitution to "be with GOD" it will be my sworn duty to hunt each of you down and have you burned at the stake for your heretical treason.
Scaring children with hell is fun!
Worship me, or I will torture you forever, love, God.
--
And oh, if you look it up, actually, the Winter solstice is the reason for the season.
Science is about learning to understand and predict the world around us, so we can make it better.
Making the world better has nothing to do with science. Often understanding the world does make it better (medicine) but often it makes it worse. The hydrogen bomb, global warming, pollution, and most other ils of the modern world not faced by our forebearers are caused by knowlege and use of principles unknown to our anscestors.
Sometimes science makes the world better and sometimes makes it worse; but whether for good or evil, science seeks only to understand the universe. It does not seek to "make the world a better place".
If you want to make the world a better place all you have to do is follow Jesus' mandate to "stop being such a God damned greedy, selfish asshole dickweed fucktard". Science isn't likely to keep your best friend from fucking your wife, or keep your corporations from shipping your jobs off to India and China, or keep the bank from forclosing your mortgage.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
"Y'know, it occurs to me that anti-evolutionists don't just have a problem with evolution, but also geology, cosmology, carbon dating, physics. Any I missed?"
Critical thought? Although all fundamentalists can claim this distinction...
"The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance - it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel Boorstin
Why do creationists only believe in the 9 commandments? I thought they wanted to get through the gates of heaven, yet seem only to want instead to bear false witness. What a useless bunch of hypocrites and thats no theory its a fact!
As for theories, you seem not to understand that in science theories, like the "theory of natural selection" that are most useful to scientific understanding are hypotheses that have been tested repeatedly and found to be highly predictive. Theories survive in science only if scientists can not disprove them and instead find that "the facts" are rather explained by them or are constitent with them despite many independent tests.
Darwin's theory is so valuable scientifically, because it explains virtually ALL of modern biology and indeed forms the basis of what we know in biology. There are NO FACTS about Biology that are inconsistent with Darwin's theory of natural selection, except perhaps antiquated ideas Darwin may have had about the precise mechanisms of how characterisitcs of organisms are inherited. However, these do not repudiate the main tenants of his theory.
If you get sick you might prefer to see someone who is trained in medicine, which is based on biology and an understanding of how natural selection has created the human body rather than your local pastor or witch doctor. Of course, the choice is yours, since afterall you may think there are 100's of virgins up there waiting for you.
Best of luck in your choice.
You go to a pastor to explain science to you?
Gravity is 'just a theory' too.
Technoli
There are three meanings of theory, and people frequently misunderstand them.
..." This is the meaning that creationists usually think they are arguing against. But in science, it is never correct to use theory in this sense, though even scientists speaking casually often use it like that. The correct word for this in science is "hypothesis". It is certainly not the correct definition for the phrase "the theory of evolution".
(Theory defitition 1): "supposition" or "hunch". This is the use in the sentence "If my theory is correct, then
(Theory definition 2): "a description of a process that explains observed facts". These vary in their degree of supportability, and sometimes, multiple warring theories are supported to different degrees by existing experiment. For example, there are at the moment multiple theories about what process gives matter mass. Examples: The theory that matter is atomic, i.e. not continuously divisible. The theory that natural selection coupled with variation leads to evolution. The theory that particles have mass because of their interaction with the Higgs field.
(Theory definition 3): "a body of knowledge and understanding that supports much other past and future work"; it describes an entire framework of internally consistent principles, understanding and data. Meanings used in this sense:
* Atomic theory (the understanding of the structure of the atom and it's constituent particles and interactions that underlies all of nuclear science and chemistry)
* Evolutionary theory (the understanding of how organisms and species give rise to one another, and the genetic mechanisms thereof that underlies all of biology)
It's instructive to note that evolutionary theory and atomic theory are approximately equivalent in terms of evidentiary support and use in their fields. Both arose as type-2 definitions around the same time (mid 19th-century), supplanting prior theories (matter is continuous, God created all organisms at one time and they have been unchanged since then). Both have since then become into type 3 theories that completely underly the relevant fields (chemistry, biology).
Religious fundamentalists don't understand the difference between these definitions, and they think evolution is a "type 1" theory, more properly called a hypothesis. It is not. Evolution is the entire framework of over a century of biological research. Attempting to understand research in biology while rejection evolution is like attempting to understand chemistry while rejecting the atom. Or attempting to understand higher math while rejecting arithmetic. It's flat-out ludicrous.
(This is a repost of my statement from the last time we had this debate. I will keep reposting it, hoping to educate a few people eventually.)
I stole this sig from someone cleverer than me.
On another note, I believe evolution is the most substantiated theory, therefore I believe it. You give me some tangible evidence that equals that in place defending evolution and I would give religion a far shake. Unfortunately, at the moment all I see are multiple interpretations of a couple of books containing moralistic short-stories (which are good for teaching lessons of consequence, but then so is Aesop's fables) and a lot of talking.
A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort.
that's too bad. survival of the fittest i guess.
wait, that sounds familiar
The real question is: Why is there something, rather than nothing?
The generally accepted theory is that the universe had a beginning. And that before that was nothing. How did we get something from nothing?
Physics also tells us that due to entropy, if matter were eternal then the universe would have died from heat death an eternity ago. All usable energy would have been gone long ago. We can imagine other theories to explain the universe, but no "real scientist" has a viable alternative to the fact that at a particular moment in time the universe began.
So, forget about how changes in the universe brought us to today. The real question remains: Why is there something, rather than nothing.
But we do have mammals that lay eggs.
Which is a pretty good argument for why there is no designer (first comment has permalink).
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
I think I got it. The powerful desire for creationists. If evolution does not exist there is no reason you can't marry your sister, first cousin.
The early christian church inherited their metaphysics from the plantonists, as anyone who has read Augustine's 'Confessions' knows. The emphasis on unchanging enternal and transcendent forms in Christian metaphysics is really a hold-over from the greek pagan influence upon the early christians, just as the emphasis on telology and final causation in physics was a hold over from Aristotle's metaphysics and epistemology. Now final causation and telology was purged from physics by Descartes, and telology and final causation and unchanging forms was purged from biology by Darwin. A real christian - one who understands its intelectual history - knows that evolution is the proper christian view of biology and that creationism and unchanging forms in biology is pagan. There is no necessity to interpret the 'each after its own kind' from genesis in accordance with Plato's or Aristotle's metaphysics. Unfortunatly most creationism advocates or lay christians know little of the intellectual and philosophical history of their own religion, and they end up looking like dumb-asses to those people who do. MB Foster's article sheds some light on the purge of telology in physics (and I would claim that Darwin does for Biology what Descartes did for physics): "The avoidance of final explanations by the physicist is not cited as a fact, but prescribed as a rule. The scientist, he [Descartes] says, ought to abjure the search for final explanations because the purposes of God are in-scrutable. This argument is an enthymeme of which the premises to be supplied are that nature is created by God, and that the activity of creation is not directed by an intelligible purpose. So that Descartes' prescription to the physicist is based upon the metaphysical implications of Christian dogma." See The Christian Doctrine of Creation and the Rise of Modern Natural Science M. B. Foster Mind, New Series, Vol. 43, No. 172 (Oct., 1934), pp. 446-468 Use JSTOR or http://www.hotlinkfiles.com/files/871262_6rahe/mbfoster.pdf%5Dmbfoster.pdf
"Y'know, it occurs to me that anti-evolutionists don't just have a problem with evolution, but also geology, cosmology, carbon dating, physics. Any I missed?" I don't have a problem with physics. For me it is the Physics law of Entropy that causes me to doubt Evolution.
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
Overgeneralize much?
the only creationism testing I can imagine would involve scientifically fixing the timeline to match the creationist theory. So, if you could scientifically support the life at 6000BC or whatever, then you'd be on to something. Just remember that you cannot typically prove something conclusively, you can only show evidence either supporting or not supporting it. Right now, evolution has genetics, carbon dating, and resulting fossil records on its side. Creationism, typically has misinterpreted genetic tracking (all humans tracking back to 4000AD in the MidEast being 'proof' of the Noah deal), and ...? Now, disproving carbon dating (showing that the decay rates are wayyyy misinterpreted), or, something, would be the scientific method of trying to support creationism. All I've seen to this point are half-baked efforts to take partial data and twist them to make creationism seem possible. (the t-rex seems to have been a plant-eater. surely it could have coexisted with man only 6000 years ago...)
That was probably one of the most vicious verbal left hooks that I've ever seen thrown in a bare-knuckle debate.
IMHO, the boxing analogy is reasonably apt - when it comes down to it, you have two people who are trying to beat the living daylights out of each other, which is not the most civilized thing in the world... but when someone lands that huge shot out of nowhere, civilization goes right out the window, and you find that you gotta stand up and cheer.
Strike while the irony is hot! -- The Freethinker
"Any I missed?"
Yes, the commandent against bearing false witness.
The most common reason I've ever heard people state for rejecting evolution is simple hubris - "I didn't come from no ape. Humans ain't animals. We're SPESCHUL." Some people don't want to believe that they might have a lot in common with the poo chucking monkeys at the local zoo. It's horribly arrogant, especially given the nature of the people making the claims.
You are still innocent until proven guilty. What's changed is what they do to innocent people. - notnAP, #26891325
That's not correct - evolution has been proven to happen. Species have been proven to have evolved to adapt to their environment, which is the basis of Darwin's work. The problem is that when one says the word evolution - everyone immediately thinks of man evolving from apes - which depending on which circle you are in may be a theory or a fact. I prefer to keep an open mind about it, but keep in mind that one cannot accept scientific theories from someone with another agenda such as a pastor. I have a hard time believing that man and dinosaur existed at the same time due to the geological evidence of where dinosaur bones have been discovered, but if dinosaur bones are found in the same dig as prehistoric human bones, or if human bones are found in dino droppings, I'll be onboard.
I think I got it. The powerful desire for creationists. If evolution does not exist there is no reason you can't marry your sister, or first cousin, etc...
Well said. If you're not pro evolution you're instantly "one of them. You're either for us or against us!" This mentality shows why some evolutionists and some creationists are more similar than they are willing to admit.
The fact that you yourself are ostensibly unable to comprehend the idea of "faith", which underpins all religions, doesn't mean that anyone who holds religious beliefs is "uneducated" or "right on the bottom". In fact, I'm sure there are a lot of people who are much more intelligent than you are, who much more thoroughly understand evolutionary theory than you do, and who are much more generally enlightened and educated than you, but who still hold religious views which might properly be called "creationist" views.
There's a lot of this sort of bigotry--apparently rooted in insecurity--on Slashdot. In the end, though, you end up looking more like an ignorant, black-or-white thinker than the people who you intend to mock, but whose views to choose to caricature rather than actually understand. That's not to say that there aren't some hard-core "creationists" who are irrational, but they are certainly a minority amid a sea of people who are more-or-less intelligent than you but who believe in God, and you don't allow for that at all. That's why you sound like an idiot to me.
Funny their vaunted fossils will likely end up in the hands of those they've sworn to oppose.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
Salesperson: "That's $1.89"
Dilbert: "Just for simplicity, I'll give you $7.14. As an Engineer, I feel a professional responsibility to make things easy for people"
Salesperson: "...carry the three??" (as he counts with his fingers)
"Y'know, it occurs to me that anti-evolutionists don't just have a problem with evolution, but also geology, cosmology, carbon dating, physics. Any I missed?"
But they save their strongest hate for evolution. The problem with the theory is exclusive to Christianity because it strikes to the core of the religion. The theology is straightforward: Christ died as a means to offer salvation from Hell. But the sticking point isn't that Genesis has a different account of the origin of the universe, it's that Christ died to save us from Adam and Eve's sin in tasting the fruit of knowledge. That sin tainted not only those two, but all their progeny, i.e. everybody. So there's nothing we can do, unless we accept that Jesus had a really bad weekend for our sins. That's our ticket to Heaven. But if we accept evolution, then there was no Adam and Eve, no Eden, no original sin, and therefore, no need for Christianity. That means a lot of people stand to lose a lot of money.
That's the reason nobody who's strongly opposed to teaching evolution talks about their reasoning beyond "It's not what the Bible says." Even believers cherry pick what they want to believe in the Bible; I don't know many Christians who believe that the Earth is the center of the universe, for instance. But if we start discussing the real reasons churches oppose evolution, then some people who maybe haven't really thought about it will start to see how truly weak the foundations of Christianity are.
...
Hell, just saying "how Europe thought before that whole Darwin guy showed up" should be enough. Given that you seem to believe that prior to Darwin's theory of natural selection, all European scientists were young-Earth creationists who believed that species were eternally unchanging; I'm not sure that you should be criticising others for lacking knowlege of history...!
Suffice to say that that was most definitely not the case. Google 'Lamarckism', for example, and 'orthogenesis'.
What's purple and commutes? An Abelian grape.
And for the believer, that answer is God. But that just begs the question: Why is there God instead of no God? You can't get something from nothing.
So you believe in fate, predisposition and a clockwork universe? To me, that's a far more disturbing world than the one with the bearded old guy in the sky occasionally raining down fire and brimstone.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
True, but predictiveness is easier to explain why it's bad than just testablitly. It looks outward to the world, instead of in to science itself, which can make testablity sound like 'because we say so.'
It's just a different perspective on the debate.
'Sensible' is a curse word.
So is gravity, but you don't see people flying around creating anti-gravity museums in the sky...... and no, Star Trek doesn't count.
http://www.CelloFourteGroupie.net
And it was labeled a "theory", as all good scientific explanations are. At the time. I think by now, "theory" is a misnomer when it comes to evolution. Scientifically speaking, it's on the same par as the "laws" of gravitation, planetary motion, and thermodynamics. Note I put these things in quotes, because even laws are subject to change, such as when Newtonian gravity was altered and enhanced by Einstein's theories.
I think the difference is that physical laws can be tested, measured, and verified repeatedly in almost any university lab. You can demonstrate gravity pretty easily by dropping various objects from the top of a ladder and measuring positions. You can design all kinds of controlled experiments to test gravity. Evolution is much more difficult to place into a controlled experiment, especially with the mechanism being random mutation, so it probably won't become more than a theory any time soon.I'm kinda pro- both. South Park said it right: Maybe evolution is the how and not the why (Go, God. Go!, Ep 12, Season 10).
How many people can read hex if only you and dead people can read hex?
Not everyone who questions evolution is a biblical, 6-day, creationist.
Nope, no problems with any of those. There's nothing factual, based solely on empirical evidence in any of these fields that conclusively proves macro-evolution. Micro-evolution is undeniable -- species are constantly changing. But the jump from a new breed of dog to man evolving from a single-celled organism is just a bit too much for me, given any time frame. There's no interemediary reliable fossil record, even though we've gone through enough rock to have seen that by now (geology), no proof that just because there are (as far as we can tell, and the evidence makes sense) old stars that this somehow proves the evolution of life (cosmology), no empirical proof that carbon dating is even accurate, let alone that this only proves that some creatures are very old if it is accurate, not that they evolved (carbon dating), and I'm missing what in physics conclusively proves evolution.
Creationism and evolution both require faith. I realize that makes you uncomfortable, but perhaps when we can both realize the severe limitations of our knowledge and stop accepting assumptions as fact, we can discover the truth together. This is what science is about, isn't it?
Regarding sexuality and other religions, I do have a problem with ideas that are wrong, as everyone does. That does not stop me from loving people, and listening to and learning from them.
prediction: modded down: -1 disagree
Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars.
That's a pretty stupid reason, care to expound upon that? I'm sure it's been debunked before as I can pretty much predict what it will be.
kurzweil_freak
5th Kyu Genbukan Ninpo/KJJR student
Be the darkness that allows the light to shine.
Care to explain to me precisely what the magnetic fields of Uranus and Neptune have to do with evolution?
Also, helium diffusion shows the earth to be 6000 years old. The levels of helium found by an evolutionist third party sent to an evolution-believing lab were correctly predicted by creationists, because they assumed that 6000 years worth of helium would have been lost.
The ol' helium article.
Helium is a very light atom, and some of the helium in the upper atmosphere can reach escape velocity simply via its temperature. Thermal escape of helium alone is not enough to account for its scarcity in the atmosphere, but helium in the atmosphere also gets ionized and follows the earth's magnetic field lines. When ion outflow is considered, the escape of helium from the atmosphere balances its production from radioactive elements (Lie-Svendsen and Rees 1996).
Rebuttal
How can we take you guys seriously in a scientific setting when you don't even know the basics of what you're talking about?
I just read Slashdot for the articles.
Your second article concludes that radioisotope data is incorrect because radioactive decay was significantly accelerated during the Genesis flood. The simple and more logical explanation is simply that the radioisotope data is as it is because the materials had more than 6000 years to decay.
That it also begins under the assumption that a radioisotope is only valid for dating over the period of one half-life also makes it a rather suspect batch of reasoning.
"Because Science" is one step from "Because old book". Try "Because of my experiment testing my falsifiable assertion".
Am I the only one confused as to what BioChem has to do with either Astrophysics or Geology?
I see your Theism and Atheism and raise you Agnostic ....
Puteulanus fenestra mortis
Neither of those has any bearing on the theory of evolution. They are in entirely different realms of science. Calling a physist an 'evolutionist' is degrading to biology, physics, and yourself.
I only read the first paper, but from it I quickly noticed that it has no provision for the magnetic field ceasing, re-starting, or changing polarity in an already-formed planet, and we have evidence that all of those have occured in Earth's past.
The best theory is the one which accounts for the largest precentage of facts observable, with the least number of assumptions. His theory in that paper made at least one more assumption than any other theory to explain the same phenominon, and could not account for large percentages of the facts already known.
'Sensible' is a curse word.
...
c) Rejects the premise that evolution leads by logical inference to an atheistic position I don't think anyone has ever seriously asserted that accepting evolution necessarily implies atheism. Even Dawkins, outspoken atheistic evolutionary biologist that he is, doesn't try to assert that (he only uses evolution as evidence that it is not *necessary* to invoke a deity in order to explain the universe_.
What's purple and commutes? An Abelian grape.
Actually, interesting that you bring up gravity. Last time I checked, we *still* have no clue what the heck gravity is. How it acts at such great distances and such. We can describe it mathematically (G m1 m2 / d^2), but we don't really know the reason for it. Why is it that this works? How can it act apparently instantly across great distances that even photons can't reach as quickly?
Perhaps your smart-ass answer isn't far off - it's God's will. Whatever it is, we do not thoroughly understand it. All we can do is take advantage of it (through mathematics).
You're correct, in that Creationism is not a theory. It's an explanation. The truth is, the whole point of Creationism is its attempt at explaining issues that evolution generally just ignores, and at best has no real answers for - and never will. Evolution explains how we got from point A to point Z, and does a pretty good job at it. Creation explains how we got from "nothing" to point A. Creationism assumes an immortal intelligent being (who had no beginning) that designed point A. The theory of Evolution simply starts with point A. The problem is, lots of people still have questions about how we got to point A, and when it comes to dealing with that, the Evolution answer (when there is one) is no more repeatable, falsifiable, or verifiable than the Creationist answer. Much as we hate it, there will never be a scientific theory to deal with this because the answer (whatever it is) lies outside our universe, and therefore is completely inaccessible.
I would also suggest that the argument analogy you presented is inaccurate and misleading, as most analogies often are. Such topics cannot be summed up or dumbed down in such simplistic manners. Case in point, the popular "let me explain this as a car" analogy given so often on Slashdot. Your analogy presents a pre-determined supposition that God does indeed exist, which is the point of the argument in the first place, yes? You're an athiest because God wants you to be an athiest. "All we are is dust in the wind" - Kansas. I'm not sure what to make of this. Are you implying that atheism is a state at which humans arrive at, being theistic at first? I would propose that humans come out of the womb atheistic and them develop theism at a later date. This can probably be proven by the fact that there are plenty of religions out there that do not advocate "God" in a Christian fashion, or are monotheistic, or something completely different. Unless you're one of the "all paths lead to God" people, of course...
Huh? Evolution does not preclude a "first human." In fact, it pretty much demands it. Your logic is rather weak.
I'm Christian and I don't have a problem with evolution if I can believe it on scientific grounds. I have some reservations about macro-evolution, but none of those reservations are religious-based. If my scientific reservations about evolution could be resolved, I have no problem with that evolution and Christianity co-existing. Those that seem to have a problem with Christianity and evolution co-existing are fundamentalist extremists: Both religious and scientific extremists. These people usually misunderstand what the Bible says, what science says... or both.
And don't forget world 36 on Super Mario Brothers. That one can be pretty tricky if you don't know what to expect.
At least with Mac vs PC, there are comparable metrics. Of course, we could always take the creationist approach to that argument and say "God created Mac," but I suppose that might be padding Steve Jobs' ego a bit too much.
"What makes it better than proposing Creationism?"
The fact that evidence can be presented to at least partially support the theory instead of pointing to the bible and saying "Look no further than the words in this book for proof"
A book that has no scientific basis. The bible for all the power people like to give it is nothing more than the collected writings of a cult ( for its time the followers of Jesus must have been considered cultists ) about their cult leader. Nothing more nothing less. The teachings of Jesus were meant to ease the troubled minds of a people who were gradually becoming more and more oppressed by a steadily growing ruling class. Lessons like turn the other cheek and blessed are the meek for they shall be rewarded in the kingdom of heaven are just ways to slowly ease the masses minds into submission . Submission at the hands of a "Great Power" . A power that you have no control over. One that in fact RULES YOU. Notice how when something good happens to a deeply religious person they are quick to thank god but the instant something bad happens they blame themselves because they must have brought this on themselves. The church; at least in catholic and christian franchises is nothing more than a control scheme that takes away any sense of self accomplishment and replaces it with S+M style self loathing and low self worth.
Evolution for all it assumes is still more provable( if thats a real word) than the writings of a few guys blindly following another guy around the sand 2000 years ago.
You Creationists love strawman arguments, don't you?
Evolution says *nothing* about "point A". Nothing at all. What you're talking about is the Big Bang Theory, which has absolutely nada to do with evolution. Different branch of science. Evolution is biology -- Big Bang is cosmology or physics.
My blog
someone should nominate them for Darwin's award.
I think I figured it out. Both are right - the Creationists and the Evolutionary followers. I argue only about the time scale. Assuming both are right, that is, life is 6000 years old and 4 billion years old, how can it be? It is possible if the scale of time, that is, how long is a year?, how is a second measured?, different from each other. If you take the time taken by the Milky Way to rotate once around its axis as a year (why not?), well, then the Earth is, sorry for the pseudorandom number, 10 years old. Taking the duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium-133 atom as one second is JUST ONE WAY of defining time. I hope this solves all the misunderstanding.
Oddly enough, I have no beef with people who don't want to think. In a way, much of our progress depends on them: Civilization advances when we can do more complex things without thinking about them, because we have built tools and systems for doing them.
I do have a problem with people who extrapolate that desire to how the universe should work. The universe is complex, and it takes a lot of thought to understand even a small part of it. If you don't want to think, that is fine with me. Just don't claim that you should be able to understand something without thought. Understanding is thought.
'Sensible' is a curse word.
I can't believe this comment has gone this long without an explanation. In good faith I will assume you are not trolling.
There is a lot of good information at Talk origins. In summary, it says "The entropy of a closed system cannot decrease." (Which, I believe, is what you are referencing.) It goes on to say "However, they neglect the fact that life is not a closed system. The sun provides more than enough energy to drive things."
Ed
"Long time listener, first time caller."
What's purple and commutes? An Abelian grape.
I am what many here would consider a "creationist." I have a personal relationship with God and think that the evidence at hand shows that this world and everything on it wouldn't be here if it weren't for a designer of some sort. To the news from this article I have the following to say:
GOOD! CLOSE THE DOORS, DESTROY THE JUNK "SCIENCE!" PLEASE!
This kind of person isn't a "fundamentalist" or "creationist" or any of the so called "conservative" labels; this kind of person is one thing and one thing only: Stupid. They are the kind of person that upon finding yourself allied with them you find yourself looking for anti-stoopid soap. The only thing you have to say to them is, "GET OFF MY SIDE!!!"
Dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb. I cannot wait for that idiotic waste of real estate to have it's doors closed permanently and the pertinent materials sold off to *real* museums and institutions of higher learning.
I have no tag line
What's purple and commutes? An Abelian grape.
OK, I give up. I can't take the disconnect anymore. I am officially calling it quits on the religious denomination of my upbringing. Help me get started on picking a new denomination: what's theologically similar to Southern Baptist but doesn't insist on provably incorrect biology?
No, atheism isn't an option. I still believe in God and Jesus, but I believe that they're getting pretty pissed at people insisting that the sky is hot pink because they're misinterpreting an allegorical passage as factual.
How about it, Slashdot? Which church welcomes scientists?
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
So, besides Creationism and Evolution, what other options are there? I would have thought that both of those cover everything.
Actually, Darwin did suspect there was something like DNA. He obviously didn't and couldn't know about the chemistry that makes it happen, but he did know that there must be some mechanism whereby traits can be passed from generation to generation, as well as mutated.
kurzweil_freak
5th Kyu Genbukan Ninpo/KJJR student
Be the darkness that allows the light to shine.
Science asks "why" questions as well, and answers them based on the evidence gathered from research on "how" and "when" questions. This is the difference between ultimate and proximate questions. Although natural selection answers the "how" question of evolution (making Darwin very popular), selfish gene theory answers the "why" question of evolution (making Dawkins very popular, never mind his recent militant anti-religion stuff).
Also note that the selfish gene theory poses a "why" question as well: why do organisms bother with sex when asexual reproduction seems to better propagate such selfish genes? The best answer to that question, so far, is the Red Queen theory; organisms have sex in order to switch up their offspring's genes so that the parasites that adapted to the parents' will not immediately infect and kill any such offspring.
This is why most scientists are secular, most of the "why" questions of the universe can be answered with empirical evidence almost as effectively as are "how" questions.
Arguing the existence of God with an atheist is more like arguing the existence of Zeus with a Christian. Religious people tend to think the myths they were brought up with as children are fact, and the ones they were introduced to later in life are fiction.
There is nothing daring about believing in anything; there is, however, something daring about believing in nothing.
Ni.
I prefer using (EOM) to (NT) due to the Microsoft NT operating system.
-- Boycott Shell
As far as the whole "evolution is a theory" argument, my general response is "so is gravity" :)
Want Big Business out of government? Take away the incentive and start by getting government out of big business!
For me it is the Physics law of Entropy that causes me to doubt Evolution.
Aha! 16 replies, and only one true interesting one. Would you care to elaborate a little? I'm fuzzy when it comes to the intersection of evolution and entropy.
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
- A pluralised second person (Several latin languages have them. See: Spanish, with -ais)
- A non-genitive third person pronoun (as "it" tends to be something of an insult when used with regard to people)
"Y'all" merrily fills one of those voids, yet is generally despised by those who fail to see its utility. Not only that, but with the apostrophe, it's technically correct.
There is "you all" and a few other multi-word forms that accomplish the same feature, but how is that any different from "do not" and "don't".
I am from Texas, and possess whatever accent I so choose (generally, I'm accused of being from Canada, regardless of where I am at the time). My only regional giveaway is that I use "y'all", not because I'm from Texas, but because it's an exceptionally useful word - same as any other contraction.
Now sod off, wanker.
No, you're misrepresenting the creationist argument here. The don't say that there is no tree, or propose an alternate tree. They suggest that there are hundreds, thousands, or tens of thousands, depending which creationists, of trees. Each tree started from one created instance of that "kind", which various creationists see as equivalent to some level between genus and species, inclusive.
Each tree, they would agree, has such branching in it. They'd probably agree with most anyone else about the exact branches within it. But they dispute the extrapolation that these separately identifiable trees are in fact independent trees, not sub-trees of a single tree. Your argument works against someone who disputes the highest branches, but says nothing about the trunk.
They don't seem to have much problem with mythology, ambiguity, contradiction or syllogism.
Or basic monetary fraud. They've got that one down cold, but I guess it didn't work in the case of this museum. They just couldn't find enough dopes to send them money in exchange for tickets to heaven.
You are welcome on my lawn.
You're right, that's a really good question to ask. Physicist have been asking that for a while.
Same thing. Good question, let's study it scientifically and see what we can find out. Or let's just say God did it. Just as useful, right?
[citation needed] Please define "an eternity ago" and "long ago". Then we can see exactly when our universe was supposed to end. I've never really read any physics books that said "Well, everything we know tells us the universe should have ended [insert timeframe here], but we're still here. There's no way our theory can be wrong; the universe just CAN'T exist now, must be God!
kurzweil_freak
5th Kyu Genbukan Ninpo/KJJR student
Be the darkness that allows the light to shine.
I think what the parent poster was referring to is the general teaching among creationists that the world is only a few thousand years old. This concept certainly does go against many areas of science, most specifically the use of carbon 14 dating (as the parent pointed out) which is based on principals in physics and chemistry.
until they go under then buy it off the auction for 20 bucks.
--- If the bible proves the existence of God, then Superman comics prove the existence of Superman.
Mrs. Garrison: Now I, for one, think evolution is a bnuch of BULLCRAP. But I've been told I have to teach it anyway. It was thought up by Charles Darwin and it goes something like this: [goes up to a large poster of evolution and begins pointing things out with her pointer.] In the beginning we were all fish. Okay? Swimming around in the water. And then one day a couple of fish had a retard baby, and the retard baby was different, so it got to live. So Retard Fish goes on to make more retard babies, and then one day, a retard baby fish crawled out of the ocean with its [waves his left hand limply] mutant fish hands... and it had buttsex with a squirrel or something and made this. [points to a rodent] retard frog squirrel, and then that had a retard baby which was a... monkey fish-frog... And then this monkey fish-frog had buttsex with that monkey, and... that monkey had a mutant retard baby that screwed another monkey and... that made you! So there you go! You're the retarded offspring of five monkeys havin' buttsex with a fish-squirrel! Congratulations!
where athiesm is the site relgion
Well, it was, but atheism ceased to be cool when it was widely adopted by an army of Internet cretins who combine the manners and charisma of Richard Dawkins with the intelligence of Tom Cruise. All fundamentalists believe they are right, but the atheist fundamentalists refuse to admit that they believe anything at all.
These days, agnosticism is where it's at, since agnostics don't even believe there's no God.
>north
You're an immobile computer, remember?
as much as i would love to purchase this skull for a local museum, this place needs to close. Its time these morons realize evolution is correct.
No, I'm an atheist because I don't believe in god; Not because your fictional magic man in the sky wants me to be.
I never said anything about a "first human." I said that if we accept evolution, then the account of creation--and therefore original sin--in Genesis is false. No Adam, no Eve, no serpent, no fruit. The logical assumption would then be that the first human wasn't named Adam, wasn't made out of mud, and didn't have a wife made from his rib, and didn't spawn the entire human race from a genetic pool of two people. He or she evolved from a primate somewhere in Africa. I don't see that as weak logic. Explain my weak logic using what I said rather than what you'd have liked me to say.
And if you're right about Christianity and evolution happily coexisting in the same cosmology, where does that leave the foundation of Christian faith? If Christ did not die to give us a chance at forgiveness for original sin, what did He die for? And if people misunderstand what the Bible says, please explain what the methodology is by which we should determine which sections of the Bible are literal and which are metaphorical.
I don't have any particular problem with Christianity, if that's the scheme somebody chooses to believe. I just don't think it makes any sense.
Which is a pretty good argument for why there is no designer (first comment has permalink). Monotremes are really, really, *really* weird creatures. They branched off from other mammals *very* early, way before the placental/marsupial split. They have bits and pieces of pre-mammal, for instance from the Wikipedia article:
I mean, 10 sex chromosomes? Bits of bird DNA? Talk about a throwback, or at least something that managed to evolve to the modern day from something that wasn't-quite-a-mammal, at least as we think of them today.
I agree, there is no designer.
With the first link, the chain is forged.
This constant harping that, "Evolution is just a theory" shows a dire lack of scientific understanding. The common usage of "theory" as something that is just a guess is wildly inaccurate from a scientific standpoint.
Theory, noun: a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world; an organized system of accepted knowledge that applies in a variety of circumstances
Hypothesis, noun: a tentative insight into the natural world; a concept that is not verified
Evolution is a theory in the above sense. Creationism is a hypothesis. There is a gaping chasm between the two. Evolution is well-supported by existing empirical evidence. It is, as all scientific "truths" are, the best explanation we currently have of the facts that we have observed. As with all scientific explanations, Evolution encourages continued research and revision as new data are discovered. Creationism, in addition to lacking the external evidence that Evolution enjoys, restricts the incentive to continue research and to revise the hypothesis over time.
In short, Evolution explains the observed facts as best we can at this time. It remains open to revision as new data are discovered. It does not purport to be "true for all time", and, in fact, no scientific explanation can make such claims.
I have a question that has always troubled me regarding evolution vs. intelligent design. Is there any meaningful way, or even a need, to differentiate "created" things from "naturally occurring" things? Homo Sapiens may have "evolved" over millions of years, but there are objects on this earth (now even "living" objects) which are 100% the "creation" of us as a species, which would be very difficult to explain from an evolutionary standpoint. You might be interested in reading Jacques Monod's utterly fascinating Chance and necessity, whose first chapter explores precisely that question.
Even given that your argument is correct (and I personally don't think it is) that there is not enough evidence to prove evolution conclusively, at least there is evidence. As far as I can tell there is no empirical evidence to show creationism at all and; just to be clear; not accepting the evidence for evolution is not, in it self, evidence in favour of creationism.
Can you suggest any other mechanism or process that can adequately explain the observation that species apparently change, diversify and become other than what they started out as?
Volkswagen is the biggest auto manufacturer in Europe, so that must be one heck of a skull! Or did they mean a VW model? Which one?
Beauty is in the beholder of the eye.
You know, that could be because evolution is proven scientific fact. The only "theory" left is the exact sequence of how it happened, not that it happened. That's been proven, over and over.
And creation is religious hocus pocus. It's false, and unless you redefine god or define the beginning of the universe as creation, it's been proved false. Intelligent design is bullshit, pure and simple.
So then he's sending me to hell simply because he wants to send me to hell? Nothing for me to do about it, eh?
Pretty impressive as Trolls go. Surprised people still bother responding to the tired "Evolution is just a theory" one.
Look, the willingness to believe a far fetched story that has no substantiation apart from a single book, the only provenance of which is questionable at best and the authority of which relies essentially on assertion by those who have the most to gain from it, is, to be kind, unbelievably stupid. Particularly when there's significant evidence that the account presented in the book is, at very least, deeply flawed, if not outright fictional.
There is absolutely no virtue to being willing to ignore rational arguments in favor of soothing traditional stories passed down from the ages. It's not bigotry, it's calling it what it is - a lot of stupidity.
Which is not to say that people who believe it are stupid, merely that they believe stupid things. And that's the central flaw in the argument that you present. Just because people who are smarter than I believe stupid things doesn't mean that those things aren't stupid. For example, James Watson (one of the co-discoverers of the structure of DNA) is clearly an intelligent man who's made significant contributions to science, and who still holds the idiotic belief that some races are naturally more intelligent than others owing purely to genetic reasons. The man? Smart. The belief? Stupid.
The only thing you're doing is according a specific bit of irrational stupidity a privileged place.
Also, not all religions depend on faith. Buddhism springs to mind.
IANAP (I am not a physicist), but my understanding of general relativity is that all objects with mass tend to curve spacetime and curved spacetime is directly responsible for what we perceive as "gravity". The Wikipedia gravity well article has a decent picture that might do a better job of explaining this concept then words do.
How can it act apparently instantly across great distances that even photons can't reach as quickly?Actually, I recall reading somewhere that they did a test awhile back and figured out that gravity is limited to C, i.e: if you could make the sun wink out of existence, Earth would continue in it's orbit for 8 minutes or so as if nothing had happened. Then again, I just did a Google search and can't really find anything conclusive on this. One site seems to think that gravity propagates out at more then 300 times C. Another claims it's limited to C. Any actual physicists care to comment?
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
How can it act apparently instantly across great distances that even photons can't reach as quickly?
It cannot. If the sun disappeared this instant the Earth would continue in orbit under its gravitational field for 8 minutes more: the time it takes light to travel from the sun to the Earth. In fact, rather ironically, it is the theory of relativity which, in its general form, explains gravity that also requires that information is never transmitted faster than the speed of light. So far from gravity having instantaneous action at a distance, the study of gravity has shown us that nothing can have instantaneous action at a distance...at least if you you like to have cause precede effect.
Most museums, even onces dedicated to fairly trivial subjects, have a mission to educate people about their subject. It seems to me that the Creation Museum might be the only museum who's mission to actually actively uneducated people. Their mission is that visitors will leave dumber than they were when they came in.
I'm embarrassed, I live only a few miles from the Creation Museum (luckily on the Ohio side of the river).
Science damn you!
The Bible simply never says that the Earth is the center of the Universe.
I can show you the color red all day long and since you're blind, there's no way you'll see it.
And my kids knew when they were little as well as they know now that Santa Clause does, indeed, exist, and who he really is.
I am Santa Clause. But I am Santa Clause to the only two children in the world who matter.
As to forcing morality, although a lot of so-called "religious" people do that you'll find that the religions themselves do not. For instance, the Baptists will tell you drinking is a sin, despite the fact that Jesus not only drank but turned water to wine, and in fact all the apostles were shitfaced drunk on Jesus' last full day as a human.
A lot of the evangelists will go on and on about homosexuality, even though it's not even mentioned in the New Testament, and the old testament has more to say about the evil of pork than homosexuality.
It's not up to me to prevent you from sinning, and nothing in the Bible says it is up to me. My only responsibility is for my own actions, not yours. You can argue that zebras don't exist if you wish, but I've been to a zoo and know better.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
The Problem of Induction.
Grue and Bleen.
Theory, as used in science.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Ha! Mine's "so is the existence of a gas called oxygen".
to show me the artfacts. I really am not interested in the beliefs of its curator
In Texas, I do recommend: http://www.creationevidence.org/ It's small, but you'll at least get to see some things that will make you think presented by some people that do believe in science.
I didn't intend to say that evolution isn't necessarily testable by the strict scientific definition, only that it isn't very feasible in most current labs. Like you said, it might take several million years, and I don't think any scientists living today plan on trying to organize an experiment that would take that long. I wouldn't say that experiments involving evolution are impossible (I'm not a biologist, and I would actually assume that small-scale experiments aren't extremely difficult), but I don't think you'll see the biology department at every medium-sized university in the country have a lab next year where they have five different species of mammals that they evolved themselves.
There are plenty of Christian theologians that completely dismiss that view, so don't feel compelled to latch onto the sick and twisted view of Yahweh as the only such view of Yahweh and run around badgering Christians about their mean and cruel God (ala Dawkins).
It's apparent to me that
1. thought is a chemical reaction, and nothing more
2. every action has an equal and opposite reaction.
Knowing these two gacts I fail to see how anyone could believe that we do, in fact, have free will. I think free will exists, but it's only as an illusion. There has to be something that makes you try to avoid the tigers, or you won't procreate.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
Don't you know? Haven't you heard The Secret? Cancer is just a bunch of grouchiness all stuck together in a ball of frowny faces and puppydog tears...and happy thoughts will keep the universe all snuggly-wuggly safe forevers! You just have to believe! WEEEE!!!!!!!!
We just need more hugs! And...those little red pills...they were just here on my nightstand...where...what the FUCK!!! WHO TOOK THE LITTLE RED PILLS FROM MY NIGHTSTAND!!!
My debut novel AMITY now available: http://jeremydbrooks.c
I am not sure about other fields, but when physicists ask "why", we end up with people like Brian Green who tries to explain the universe via a loaf of bread, and ants crawling on phone cables, and other ridiculous analogies. You end up with string theorists who use the same math, but see different pictures in their head, and claim that their visions are the only correct way. Religious adherence to scientific methods are fine, but the fundamentalism and dogmatism are tearing academia apart. This is the main reason that I got out of quantum information and into computer security.
of what the bible says I would not have any troubles with believing god made the earth in 7 days... I figured it is all about *believing* no matter how absurd the claims are
So you had a hallucination while you were under a great deal of stress and in a lot of pain, and you now believe in the zombie jew who is his own father?
That's just stupid. I'm sorry, I can't think of a better word for it than stupid.
An atheist is an atheist because he has USED his brain to understand that any god concept that is at all coherent is demonstrably false, not because "god" wants him to.
As best as I can see it, the rise of creationism in America (since it's very isolated to America - it doesn't exist in Canada, for example) can be attributed to three major issues.
1. Evangelical Christianity offers an alternative to Evolution - Creationism - given the incredible penetration of Christianity in America Creationism is then allowed to hang on the coat tails of God's ethos.
2. Pathetic education system fails to teach critical thinking, foundations of science, or agno-skepticism to the masses. Resulting in irrational people, who don't understand evolution, and who are not naturally cautious of objects or concepts for which there has been zero proof despite millennia's of people 'searching for God'. It also results in mistakes such as the almost universal mis-understanding of definitions like 'theory' (essentially 'fact' for any Americans who still aren't sure), and also 'faith' (belief without reason or evidence).
3. The last one comes from people watching very popular (in America, from my understanding) movies called "The Land Before Time", about dinosaurs who... Exist Before Time. Children are very malleable at young ages - and they preserve what they learn with dogmatic resolution when they grow up (although not faith, they can still be reasonable, if they've been taught how to be). Which means many many families associate dinosaurs with 'before time', which is only true if you believe time began 6000 years ago. Be mindful of dinosaur movies aimed at your public America!
Good luck with your problems America, if you can't solve them though - I say take all the smart people and run away while you still have the reputation that other countries will let you in relatively easily. Anti-intellectualism is like sailors deciding to forget everything they know about wind and sail on some other belief (astrology, faith, chicken bones) - eventually they end up on the rocks.
When you cut someone open, it's not full of clay.
I assume you realize that the people who wrote Genesis would have seen, or heard of, some human injured at some point, and would have not attempted to claim people are filled with clay--which leaves us with allegorical interpretation, or the notion of the conversion of the original matter by divine means.
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
Atheism is not a religion
If it weren't, athiests wouldn't be so fanatical.
I'll accept that if Christians stop telling me I'm going to hell for, apparently, being what god wants me to be.
According to the New Testament, ignorance is a "get out of hell free" card (it's somewhere in "Acts of the Apostles"). Disbelief in God won't send you to hell, but rather belief coupled with wanton disobediance will. You won't hear me saying you're going to hell.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
The analogy fits perfectly; I've experienced God, so there's no way I'll be argued out of belief by someone who has not experienced God, any more than you could be argued into believing Red doesn't exist by a man blind from birth.
Your analogy presents a pre-determined supposition that God does indeed exist, which is the point of the argument in the first place, yes?
As I said, there is no point in arguing God's existance with me. Argue with an agnostic instead. I'm only illustrating my personal experience. George can argue that xebras don't exist all day, but since you've been to a zoo there's no way he'll convince you.
Are you implying that atheism is a state at which humans arrive at, being theistic at first? I would propose that humans come out of the womb atheistic and them develop theism at a later date.
I would agree with you. The kid either has to be taught about God, or experience him directly.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
In the book of Joshua, that 'the sun stood still in the midst of heaven'. From this verse, and a few others, many groups (from the Catholic chuch in the middle ages to certain Baptist sects today) feel that the Sun orbits the other, and saying otherwise is going against the word of (their) god.
Have you been touched by his noodly appendage?
Atheism is not a religion, so it can't be the religion of /. Also, comparing atheism to a handicap is... flame bait.
Vital papers will demonstrate their vitality by moving to where you can't find them.
I know you're a trolling fake for the simple fact that when we southerners want to have our argument taken seriously, we never use "Y'all." We know when we're speaking to a wider audience, and we know that "y'all" sounds ignorant to others. Only someone wanting us to believe he is a southerner would address us as "Y'all" in such a post.
Anyway, fish bitin'? How 'bout trollin' some more? Y'ont to? Do ya reckin them thar fish was creationalized or evolutionated?
Atheism is not a religion, it's just the lack of belief in deities. It is the default position. There is no doctrine, ritual, or morality associated with a lack of belief.
No, Agnosticism is the lack of belief. Atheism is the active belief that God does not exist. Hence Agnosticism is the 'default' position in that they have made no decision about the existence of God and could be swayed either way by evidence. An Atheist, on the other hand, actively denies the existence of God without proof of his non-existence (lack of evidence of existence is NOT the same as proof of non-existence).
This is why militant Atheists are just as intolerant and bigotted as fundamental Christians. When you are unwilling to accept even the possibility that you may have some things wrong you are very unlikely to find the truth.
I'm afraid I'm not very good at communication today. If I have personally expoerienced a thing, there is no way to convince you that thing doesn't exist.
And Zeus did indeed exist. He was the nerd caveman who was curious about the fire the lightning bolt started, and brought back a flaming spear from the forest the jock cavemen ran from. Then he killed one of the jocks with his flaming spear.
Thor invented the hammer. He was a nerd, too.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
Your method of dividing everything up into two categories, "created" and "nature" is interesting. May I take it another step and suggest that you try to categorize the "creator" (god) this way. If god is "nature", then why can't the rest of what we see and know (other than what we ourselves have created) be "nature" as well? If god is "created" then who or what created it? And what can be attributed to the creation of the creators creator? Is that natural or created? It would then seem a bit like the old world belief that the world is sitting on the back of a giant turtle. What is under the turtle? Another turtle of course. How many turtles are there? Trick question... it's turtles all the way down. (paraphrased from a Carl Sagan novel).
No man is an island... But I wouldn't mind having a bigger moat.
Then by all means, go jump from a tall building, since the last I heard, Gravity was "just a theory" too.
http://greenobyl.com/ please.... think of the children!!
Have you been touched by his noodly appendage?
Atheism is a religion just like null is a value.
Sure if uninitialized it's the default, but you still have to check for it.
Any sane programmer would just add it to the enumeration, otherwise you get:
return (hisReligion != null) ? "Athiest" : allReligions.get(hisReligion).getName();
rather than:
return allReligions.get(hisReligion).getName();
With a guarantee of no nulls mucking up the works.
If anyone being cannot accept you for whatever property you may have set, despite obviously dangerous ones (like serial-killer=true), then they are stupid.
I've seen people get pretty militant about their atheism, as much as I've seen people get militant about their Christianity. The problem is both parties tend to think, "they're all like that" without looking at the bigger picture. Rather than saying "Christians say this" or "atheists say that", people ought to be a bit more specific and say "a small, vocal minority of Christains say this" or "a small, vocal minority of atheists say that". You can turn anything into dogma if you work at it (even a lack of dogma). The trick is recognizing that individual people choose that path. It's not all atheists or all Christians, so don't get dragged into that just because a few idiots on the other side did. That's how stupid shit escalates.
I can appreciate that. And when learning Spanish I too found the lack of such a word in the English language perturbing. And I swear I wasn't trying to be a language nazi. But I couldn't help myself. While I have no problem with you using the word, when an AC spouts off some gibberish about "Evolution is just a theory" I'm gonna have to call the douche bag out.
Prediction: The real iPhone killer is going to be sex robots from Japan. Think about it.
I never said anything about a "first human." I said that if we accept evolution, then the account of creation--and therefore original sin--in Genesis is false. No Adam, no Eve, no serpent, no fruit. The logical assumption would then be that the first human wasn't named Adam, wasn't made out of mud, and didn't have a wife made from his rib, and didn't spawn the entire human race from a genetic pool of two people. He or she evolved from a primate somewhere in Africa. I don't see that as weak logic. Explain my weak logic using what I said rather than what you'd have liked me to say.
Easy enough, just replace the apple, serpent, and knowledge as source of orignal sin with something else. In this case, the fact that the first human would have, by definition, had sex with a protomonkey in order to procreate.
In other words, Jesus died for our monkey sex.
Don't listen to Christians. Rather, read the Bible. It says that you are not, in fact, going to hell. The book of Acts says quite plainly that hell is for willfully disopbedient believers.
Relax, you're not going to hell, although dying itself is rarely pleasant.
BTW, Satan exists -- I was married to her for 27 years.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
It's my understanding that in certain parts of the country, "y'all" is singular, with the plural form being "all y'all".
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
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...some people seem to feel the need to fill it with whatever garbage they can find to put in it. And there just wasn't much knowledge on that bookshelf when the Holy Bible was authored.
Science does use some placeholders (i.e., they make educated guesses based on the best research at the time), while things like macro-evolution are still theories, there are still compelling pieces of evidence that point to it occurring systematically.
One such example involves our equine friends, who seem adept at blurring species lines. Consider that nobody who's remotely competent and familiar with these species would confuse a zebra, ass, and horse with each other. But yet any of these species can produce hybrids in any combination with the others. Some of the hybrids are fertile...not very fertile, but fertile in somewhat uncommon instances. The old Latin idiom that translates, "When a she-mule gives birth", is roughly equivalent to the modern expression, "Once in a blue moon". That is to say, the Romans recognized that mules could produce viable offspring, just not very often.
Now that in itself doesn't mean much. For a species to macro-evolve into another, it has to change *and* procreate successfully (and subsequent generations must also have some ability to do the same). But what this does point to is an extreme degree of genetic similarity that would indicate a rather recent macro-evolutionary divergence. These equines seem to have shared a common ancestor in the distant path, they grew apart from each other, and the sum-total of micro-evolution that occurred in each population over time resulted in three distinct species, that are too far apart to be defined as one species, but still close enough to retain a high degree of social and genetic compatibility.
Of course, the placeholder comes in because science has no examples of such a common ancestor. No such fossils have been discovered, and quite likely won't be (fossilization is an extremely uncommon occurrence, and the chance of weathering or excavation ever exposing any given fossil from its entombment in the Earth's crust are even more remote still. But until more is discovered about how these equids are so similar, yet distinct, a good scientist would just install a best-guess placeholder and make it clear that's all it is. The Creationist reaction seems to be to come up with a relatively bizarre explanation that involves an extreme degree of magical thinking, which also has no logical basis, no supporting evidence whatsoever, and could not be reached as an independent conclusion by someone who hadn't been taught the specifics of the Creationist's religion. There's no room in science for that sort of garbage.
I hope I live to see the day when the majority of adults in the USA give up the magical thinking of religion (c'mon, invisible friends who have special powers and quirky, psychotic personalities are for kids!), and realize they can reason things out and reach halfway reasonable conclusions. Another Museum of Willful Ignorance going out of business is an encouraging sign.
For me, I see no big difference between humans and any other species. An average human is ot much smarter than a monkey (similar language and communication processes etc), has the similar sociality to dogs (group forming, leaders...), and technology similar to that of an ant (an ant nest is not much different than a skyscraper). Not looking into any evolution evidence, for me it is logical to conclude based purely on observation that all these lifeforms somehow are related, most probably by causation (one leads to another).
Drat, sigged again! Oh well...
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
Very well, then. How did everything come to be and what's at the edges of the universe? Is there anything outside that? Until you can answer that, science is just glorified book keeping and religion can still exist. Let's all just stop being dickwads about it all and move on. (...And strand the 'science is black magic' creationists on an island.)
So, purely by reasoning, regardless of the truth of evolution, and regardless of arguing over open or closed systems, the argument from the second law of thermodynamics is self-contradicting, as either our facts are wrong (there is no order), or the SLoT itself is wrong (at least for this part of the universe).
Great job by Taylor and his team on casting the footprints in the limestone creek bed, but how loony do you have to be to come to the conclusion that the size 25s next to the dino tracks HAD to be a giant human?
He should stick to casting and model-making, and leave the thinking and research to the TRAINED PROFESSIONALS.
Haven't creationists ever noticed that the only people who don't believe in evolution are...creationists? I don't believe there is such a thing as a non-creationist non-evolutionist. Just sayin'.
My debut novel AMITY now available: http://jeremydbrooks.c
talk.origins is happy to relieve you of this particular doubt.
The second law of thermodynamics states, for any closed system not in equilibrium the entropy over time must increase. Living beings are not closed systems, though, and neither are the abiotic processes that generate organic materials. The entropy in a part of a system can always go down as long as entropy in other parts of the system go up. So, assemblies of molecules in water can lose entropy as long as some other part of the system they interact with (the water they float in, or the air above it) gain enough entropy to offset the loss. The Sun is constantly raining useable energy into the systems on Earth, so there's constantly a temperature differential to drive processes and remove entropy from earthly systems; the entropy doesn't disappear of course, the entropy of the Sun merely goes up covering the balance in the other part of the system, the Earth.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
Yes.
Also, they don't drag their knuckles on the ground and throw their poo.
Eccentric Irish billionaire makes offer for Mastodon skull that would save museum: cgi-times.co.uk/article.pl?sid=07/07/24/174240
"Theistic evolution is a good middle ground way of looking at things, but in believing it, you have to interpret the bible non-literally. That doesn't work for fundamentalists."
I'm sorry, but I don't understand why "non-literally" is a problem unless those same fundamentalists follow absolutely everything in the Bible, including such things as, oh, not wearing mixed fibre clothing, stoning adulterers, or truly believing that when Caesar Augustus decreed that "all the world should be taxed" the Bible really means the entire world. In my experience, what "literal" means to most people is a weak excuse for irrationality or for hypocrisy in what people follow versus what the Bible literally says. "Literalists" are usually highly selective and inconsistent with their "literalism", so why not on this issue?
If there are any *real* literalists out there, they are very rare indeed. An entertaining and informative example of the disparity between what some fundamentalists claim and what it would actually take to be a literalist is in the form of A.J. Jacobs "Year of Living Biblically".
so... we are the borg?
http://www.CelloFourteGroupie.net
For your position to hold any water, you have to explain this synchronization mechanism. For instance, you have to show that micro-evolution is not drifting, but simply a random variation around some 'prototype' individual that all members encode in their genes. But then explain influenza. Or you have to show that geographical separation is impossible. In all cases, the burden of proof is upon you, as you seem to posit some synchronization force that keeps localized micro-changes from drifting.
If you think that creationism and evolution both require faith then you either don't know what faith is or don't know what evolution is. Likely both.
Regarding your amazingly vague statement about wrong ideas... Good luck with that. I do like my bigotry with a side of condescension.
and nobody cares about your whiny prediction of a -1 mod. Your post could reasonably be construed as a troll with such gems as "no empirical proof that carbon dating is even accurate" (just because you don't understand radioactive decay doesn't mean that scientists don't) and of course your classic case of completely-hypocritical-skepticism with a dash of misunderstanding-of-science-as-a-whole, "There's nothing factual, based solely on empirical evidence in any of these fields that conclusively proves..." I mean... if you want to jump onto THAT particular bandwagon then here's an interesting observation... I don't think anybody has ever disproved Descartes' Deceiver Hypothesis (first 4 paragraphs of his 3rd meditation, not to be confused with the deceiver from the 1st mediation and no, not even Descartes disproved it, the ninny) so there is nothing based-solely-on-empirical-evidence that proves you exist (indeed, empirical evidence would be useless in such a pursuit).
Oops... I forget... people are only irrationally skeptical of things they disagree with (or if they're foundationalists... but whatever).
Live according to the Categorical Imperative. If the Categorical Imperative tells you not to live by it... ignore it
Similar to the upcoming US election results
Here's an example of one place where the Bible mentions the sun moving. This is clearly poetry; anyone who thinks this passage was meant to be taken literally should have their head examined. For the director of music. A psalm of David.
The heavens declare the glory of God;
the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
Day after day they pour forth speech;
night after night they display knowledge.
There is no speech or language
where their voice is not heard.
Their voice goes out into all the earth,
their words to the ends of the world.
In the heavens he has pitched a tent for the sun,
which is like a bridegroom coming forth from his pavilion,
like a champion rejoicing to run his course.
It rises at one end of the heavens
and makes its circuit to the other;
nothing is hidden from its heat. - Psalm 19:1-6 (NIV)
If you want to pick an example of modern Christians choosing which parts of the Bible to ignore, you should at least browse through Leviticus.
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I think he was referring to spontaneous biogenesis
Non-fundamentalist Christians believe that much of the bible is metaphorical -- especially the early parts of Genesis. These stories evolved from legends that the Hebrew people told for many generations. Parts of the Christian creation story are very similar to parts of Babylonian creation stories. Thats not surprising. Abraham was from the Babylonian region. Ironically, the Christian creation story is probably a result of cultural "evolution".
There's another post in this thread asking for some methodology that can be used to determine which parts of the Bible are metaphorical and which are "factual". Thats a subject that has been debated for centuries and resulted in the large variety of Christian sects that we have today.
I, personally, think that it doesn't really matter. I'm a non-fundamentalist Christian. I see the Bible (especially the Old Testament) as a cultural guide rather than a declaration of historical facts.
The point of the story of the Fall of Man is not that a talking snake gave an apple to the first two people. The point is that all people have an inherent impurity that requires an act of God to remove.
Look at all the guys on our side who jumped on the bandwagon however.
-The world would be a better place if everyone had a hoverboard
I think part of it is that people don't know how it's supposed to be used. Fake southerners/Texans in the media often use it incorrectly in place of the singular 'you'. This turns it into just an excuse to laugh at a group for being different.
But then again, I could be wrong.
Surely agnosticism would be the true default?
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Make it a T-Rex skull, and *I'll* bid on the damn thing.
You have no IDEA how much English lacks and the Texans are inventing!
Slovenian, for example, doesn't just have plural and singular, they have dual! That's ok, though, cause Texans have got us covered:
ya: second person singular
y'all: second person dual (just two)
all y'all: second person plural.
Yeah!!! Go texas!!!
I hate those fucking hicks.
Wait... where does the New Testament mention Hell? I remember some allegories about pruning sick branches, and maybe a verse or two about "wailing and gnashing of teeth", but Hell? I'm pretty sure that's post-Bible Christian doctrine.
Correct me if I'm wrong, please.
If you're from Texas, then you should know that "y'all" is singular.
The plural is "all y'all".
For security, the MD5 hash of this message and sig is 09f911029d74e35bd84156c5635688c0.
premise 1 isn't a fact. A chemical reaction may be but a single observable component of a thought. Something has to initialize the first reaction that starts the "chain" or "thought process" there can be no infinite regress.
... doesn't hold. If premise 1 holds your argument is sound (has all true premises) but is not valid (conclusion does not follow from the premises). Back to the drawing board.
I don't see how newton's 2nd law fits into free will at all...... other than through a gross misinterpretation of it. So, unfortunately for your argument
1. Point of contention
2. Random nonsense
Therefore: Conclusion of whatever I want...
Live according to the Categorical Imperative. If the Categorical Imperative tells you not to live by it... ignore it
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
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apparently god also wanted the atheists here to mod you +5 insightfull
Gravity.
Scientists are still arguing over whether matter deforms space or gravitons carry gravitational force quanta.
It's only theory folks. Sticks you down to the planet pretty good though...
The correct mod would be "-1, Wrong". There is no distinction between micro- and macro-evolution. The only people to make that distinction are creationists of the "Answers in Genesis" variety. The same exact mechanism responsible for micro-evolution is responsible for macro-evolution; therefore, macro-evolution is the same exact thing as micro-evolution.
Making a distinction between micro- and macro-evolution is akin to saying that you believe a car can drive from Los Angeles to San Francisco, but it is completely inconceivable for it to drive from Los Angeles to New York City. Not only that, but you would require to sit in the car the entire way to accept that accomplishment, in spite of the fact that the trip would take longer than your life span. In short, you're asking for an impossible and unnecessary requirement to accept successful testing, all the while you reject the basic premise to be tested out of sheer incredulity. Nice work.
Finally, I find it humorous that you have a problem with ideas that are wrong, yet apply that judgment to concepts that are strictly personal, with zero impact on anything outside of someone else's head.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
[[Arguing the existance of God with an athiest is like arguing the existance of red with a blind man.]]
Your analogy is flawed because it assumes that the existence of God (like the color red) is a proven fact.
My analogy:
A Christian arguing the existence of Jesus with a Hindu is like a Hindu arguing the existence of Vishnu with a Christian (or perhaps either arguing the existence of Santa with a 3 year old)
I will concur that strong atheism is not the default position, as a strong atheist actively believes that no gods exist. Weak atheism, on the other hand, is just a lack of belief. Agnosticism requires one to consider the possibility of deities and decide that the truth value is unknowable.
Consider someone that grows up removed from society, and is not exposed to any religious texts. If they don't think up the idea of gods on their own, then I would argue that weak atheism is the default. If they think up the idea of gods on their own but remain agnostic, perhaps that is the default. Maybe it's more likely that there is no universal default and it varies from person to person.
Either way, I'd argue we are born weak atheists because we have no knowledge of gods. Not that that it really matters, we're all born illiterate too.
Pure politics that's the nature of Creationism. When you have a federally tailored and controlled education system and when that system is vulnerable to and controlled by to lobby manipulation, Creationism is what you get.
Sure if uninitialized it's the default, but you still have to check for it. I disagree... Looking at this from the standpoint of set theory mathematics Agnostic is the default value.
Definitions:
Atheist = believes there is no God
Agnostic = don't know if there is a God or not
Theist = believes there is a God
Assume Set A = all knowledge in the Universe
Assume Set G = a proposed subset of A that represents God (for arguments sake)
Set sP1 = knowledge experienced by person #1 which is a subset of A
Set sP2 = knowledge experienced by person #2 which is a subset of A
Set sP1 != sP2
When we're born our knowledge is basically null, so the only valid logical position to take is agnostic. That is to say, you don't know if God exists or not because you haven't gained any knowledge at all yet.
Let's assume sP1 discovers subset G, their position would change to Theist.
The only way to prove G doesn't exist in set A is to explore all of set A to exclude the possibility of the existence of G.
Thus sP2 = A is the only way to logically prove G doesn't exist and thus be an atheist.
Red light exists, but "redness" is a part of your own subjective experience. There's no point arguing with a blind man about aspects of your subjective experience.
I mean, I can see red things myself, but from my perspective, I have no way of knowing whether or not you do in the same way. I cannot prove that anyone but myself subjectively sees the pretty colors that I see. I can't really prove (to anyone but myself) that any of you experiences reality in a similar way at all.
I believe you do, but that belief is not based on fact- it's based on a theory that I came up with, to explain the actions of other people. And as we all know, a theory is not a fact.
To some extent, this is us "playing God" with nature. Somewhere down the road, a wholly "created" being will gain consciousness, evolve some (if left alone long enough), then wonder where he came from. Then they will have the same argument we are having now.
Right, and it is at least theoretically possible that we ourselves are such a creation made by Martians or whatever, though the evidence seems to point very strongly to the contrary (for the arrival of humans anyway, maybe not for the beginnings of life on earth).
And this is the point at which ID becomes completely self-contradictory in its attempt to hide its religious origins. ID claims that it is impossible for humans to be naturally occurring, because our bodies and intelligence are "irreducibly complex" and thus must be of artificial origin. But this Designer must, themselves, be intelligent in order to design. But intelligence can't arise naturally. So the Designer must therefore have been Designed, and their Designer too must have been Designed, and that Designer too, and there can never be a first Designer because no Designer could arise without another Designer behind them. It's a contradiction.
Now were this Religion, this question of "Who created the Creator?" is much easier to answer -- God exists outside time, He has no "beginning" or "end", He just IS. If you already have faith in a supernatural deity that created the universe, then this isn't that hard an answer to grasp. But because the whole point of Intelligent Design is to hide the fact that it is really just a way to dress up Creationism as though it were Science, they can't just come out and say that. Thus they are stuck with this obvious contradiction.
I'm no fan of ID as having "scientific" merit. But it does have philosophical merit. And some of the thought experiments make my head hurt.
Well as a philosophical question, yes it's interesting. How can we know the difference between "natural" and "artificial" if the artificial is so sophisticated as to able to perfectly imitate the natural? And is there any difference at that point? This isn't so different from the philosophical question of how one can ever know that the reality that we perceive is the reality that exists since we only know of it through our subjective senses.
But that's not the question ID is asking. It's not philosophical at all, because in ID it isn't even a question. It attempts to be empirical, but in doing so just creates contradictions that can't be resolved without appealing to religion.
The enemies of Democracy are
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God wants everyone to believe in Him and be with Him in Heaven... if one ends up in Hell its one's own choice. Hell doesn't exist because God, in His wrath, wants to punish the wicked. It exists because we, in our infinite stupidity (self included) constantly turn away from God. Hell is simply the finality of our choices here on Earth. If we choose to live a life of sin and debauchery then we will spend our eternity living with that choice.
That said, there is an interesting poem by Robert Service (a famous Canadian poet) who wrote a poem called Barb-Wire Bill which goes well with this verse from scripture (trust me, it isn't preachy).
Because of this verse, many atheists will be in Heaven and many Christians in Hell. I think, anyway...
This is where all religions fail, and why atheism is NOT a religion. It is not for the atheist to prove the non existance of anything. To prove non-existance of anything is an impossible task and is therefore an unreasonable request. No, it is the person who believes in god who is burdened with the task of proving his existance. If he really does exist, then there should at least be the possibility of providing that proof. A task which to date no religion has been able to provide.
When my mother was giving birth to me she had severe, unforseen complications and to cut a long story short lost huge quantities of blood. This would not ordinarily have been so much of a problem but she has a very rare group and the small hospital she was at didn't have sufficient supply, so her condition deteriorated quickly throughout the night. Emergency supplies were literally helicoptered in to save her and from i'm told it was touch and go, she very nearly died. She was conscious through most of the ordeal but told me that towards the end she "saw the light" approaching her, as so many people have reported in their own similar experiences when they are close to death. It must be born in mind that my mother is actually quite religious and had a very strict christian upbringing, she most certainly believes in god. Her explanation for this spiritual experience though: that she had lost a lot of blood and was suffering the bodies natural reaction to that state. The prospect that she had seen the face of god did not even enter her mind.
You had a nasty car crash, fine. I've been knocked off my motorbike by a car at speed, that hurt me a lot too. That i am alive today is not because some magical man in the sky picked me out as special, as someone that should live rather than die that day. To believe that god chose you to live because you are special is really the very height of arrogance, worthy of the pope himself. What makes you more special than any of the children dying around the world in poverty, war and famine every day? Are you saying that in god's eyes your life is worth more than theirs? Because for your entire belief in what happened, that god intervened and showed you the way back, for that to be correct that is what you must logically embrace. Another question you might like to ask yourself, as the annointed one, is if you are so special then why did god let you get into the crash in the first place?
You have to be careful with what "Intelligent Design" means. Science does not say whether or not God (let's not kid ourselves about the "designer" euphemism) shaped evolution. Science can not speak to the existence of "God" because by nearly every definition of "God" this entity exists everywhere (and you can't detect something without some kind of differential, so anything that exists everywhere is effectively invisible) and/or outside the closed system of the universe. If I grew a civilization of artificially intelligent agents in my computer with no way for them to detect outside the closed system of the computer they could not scientifically prove my existence or the existence of something universal in their universe (if you'll excuse the pun) such as say the OS, unless they could somehow find something outside the OS.
Intelligent Design proponents say something very different. They don't say some Creator may have done this or that its consistent with science. They say a Creator must have done this, and that science alone can not explain the changing of species. They rarely try to prove this negative (their theory fails to be science if only because its not falsifiable) and when each example is shot down (as they have routinely been) they skitter from example to example.
This ignores the false choice of the idea in the first place. The set of possible origins of biological life are not "Evolution brought about by nature" and "Evolution brought about by God". The number of alternate theories even if our current understanding of science was insufficient are large (from quantum effects of DNA causing beneficial mutations to occur to little green men to a lack of understanding on our part) that "disproving" evolution through natural means would not be evidence in favor of ID.
Its a stalking horse intended to attack evolution now that Creationism is discredited to all but those who feel the need to cling to it for purely religious reasons.
Now, more than a century later, we find another tree, one Darwin never suspected - that of DNA.
Well, technically, the graph of DNA inheritance is a directed, acyclic graph, but not a tree. A tree is a special case of a DAG where each node has at most one parent. Those of us who reproduce sexually have two parents, and so likewise do our DNA sequences.
An interesting anagram of "BANACH TARSKI" is "BANACH TARSKI BANACH TARSKI"
It surprises me how many christians there are on a website that I consider pretty intelligent.
As a student of genetics and bioinformatics I'm struck by the incredible beauty and complexity of DNA replication and the incredible redundancy, junk DNA (95% of DNA), and self-correcting ability that allows for a high degree of resistence of mutation. It all seems too convenient.
What also strikes me is how complex the process is. Occam's razor and Murphy's Law[FOOTNOTE] tend to indicate that self-replication should favour:
* simple one step processes over complex multistep processes
* simple simple molecules over huge multipart multifunction molecule
* compact molecules over molecules that are spread out
* self-replicated undifferentiated structures that are continuous sheets (e.g. sheets of crystals ) rather than localized highly specialized molecules that form larger even higher specialized meta structures the form even larger and higher specialized meta structures that eventually make people and animals.
Howver the opposite happens. It doesn't make sense, but that's the way it is. It's not a black or white picture as you suggest. Once you accept that somehow the processes are put in place and that somehow replication of the meta structure called "animals" is as important as the replication of the simple molecules, you end up with evolution. But it's a big assumption to assume that existence are so convenient as to allow life to exist without a cause. This is especially the case when life appears to be the only highly complex, highly hierarchal, compound in the universe. For the most part, Occam's razor and Murphy's Law[FOOTNOTE] are pretty good guides for molecular chemists.
---
[FOOTNOTE]
Yes, I know Murphy's Law it's not a scientific principle, but it's obvious that more complex molecules should break down more often than simpler ones.
1 Corinthians 6:9 New International Version (NIV) Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders. And the old testament puts homosexual activity in with sacrificing your children to Baal. I'd say thats pretty bad.
So I put it to Slashdot - Can anyone name a closed system? Something that has no outside inputs or outputs.
I am not stubborn. I am right!
A couple prank journalists made a gonzo expedition to the opening of the Cincinnati Creation Museum in _Let There Be Retards_.
--
make install -not war
Linguistics
Some scientists are finally able to create new life from inanimate matter. They approach God and say, "we don't need you anymore, we can create life, too", and they challenge him to a test where they will both create living beings from dirt. God agrees and the challenge begins. A scientist reaches down and grabs a handful of dirt, to which God replied, "No cheating, get your own dirt".
I think to the anti-creationist, evolution is not falsifiable.
Evolution fails to explain the most fundamental aspect of the theory, the coordinated evolution of independent biological organisms. What do I mean? I once heard, as an example of evolution, that humans may lose a toe over time. How then does the theory of evolution explain the "coordination" this change in the procreation of all humans across the planet?
Unless something exterior directs changes during the procreation of life, each biological life that comes into existence must be root an independent tree of evolutionary change. Given the starting point of biological life on earth, and the time frames involved, What do we have so many humans, so many instances of life with basically the same biology?
There has to be something that makes you try to avoid the tigers, or you won't procreate.
Yep, I have got 2 things that would make me avoid tigers.
1. I know that they can, and most likely will kill me. This is due to experimentation by people who refuse to believe this (consider this group the creationists)
2. I have a little bit of intelligence, and can therefore derive a logical conclusion from the experimentation of the idiots who want to play with the big kitty.
I am not stubborn. I am right!
Great post. I too have a Christian -- in fact, Catholic -- upbringing, yet I've at least been enlightened to realize the difference between faith and evidence. My belief is that faith is entirely relevant within the context of religious or spiritual dialog, as it does attempt to answer a different question than that which is examined in science class.
What I have a real problem with are people that can not or will not differentiate between the two, and force the use of faith as a legitimate scientific method for determining the validity of hypotheses and theorems. It's a misappropriation of resources by schools to force the teaching of belief within a secular environment. But worse yet, any challenge to the idea of "intelligent design" is met by these people as heresy. You can't logically deny the possibility of the existence of a Flying Spaghetti Monster if you allow a concept like ID to be accepted as a valid theory. No one is actually suggesting that there actually is a FSM, but you can't deny its possibility under ID either. It's entirely hypocritical.
Rule #1 -- Politics always trumps technology.
You have understood my interpretation of perfect. In my opinion, for something to be perfect it must be without flaw to all those who CAN judge, not just all those who feel like judging, it is the apex of a Thing. If I claim this beer, that I am currently drinking, to be perfect, well that may be so to me and maybe correct in the confines of my mothers basement (as we're on slashdot, lets keep it real). However, if I was to sit in the bar and state that this beer is perfect then other IPA drinkers may agree with me, but others in the bar who didn't like beer, or liked a different beer may disagree with me, thus the beer cannot truly be defined as perfect. In addition, if the beer was to have self-awareness it could not define itself as perfect, it needs to be judged by others as such. So now - we have Christians who believe that God is perfect, we have a group of Muslims who believe God is perfect, but do they believe each others God is perfect, they believe each others God is lacking something. As such neither concept of God can be perfect.
How's that sound?
A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort.
OSGGFG - Open Source Gamers Guide to Free Games
How can you assume causation when there are still apes around, if we evolved from them (or something very similar to them)? There's a million other questions like this, but they all point to the same idea: evolutions neat, linear process does not seem to exist in nature.
Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars.
So biology professors have a higher genetic fitness than Christian fundamentalists? :-P
Of course not. The fundies are outbreeding biology professors in prolific fashion. We're well on our way to a massive garbage avalanche.
"Evolution is a theory too" You seem to imply that Creationism is also a theory. Creationism is not a theory, it is just a fantasy. Logically, it is the same to believe in Creationism than to believe in the FSM or in Santa Claus.
PEÃ'AROL: SerÃs eterno como el tiempo y floreceras en cada primavera
>I think to the anti-creationist, evolution is not falsifiable
Of course evolution is falsifiable. Doing so would get you the Nobel Prize and lasting fame and fortune. All it would take is one seriously out of sequence fossil (e.g. a mammal in a bed of trilobite fossils.) Creationists implicitly acknowledged this when they attempted the pathetic forgery of human footprints with dinosaur tracks at Glen Rose, Texas. The rest of your post isn't about falsifiability, but rather about your misunderstanding of evolutionary biology.
>Evolution fails to explain the most fundamental aspect of the theory, the coordinated evolution of independent biological organisms. What do I mean? I once heard, as an example of evolution, that humans may lose a toe over time. How then does the theory of evolution explain the "coordination" this change in the procreation of all humans across the planet?
You are confusing the fact of evolution with your failure to understand the mechanism of evolution and then trying to use this as an argument against evolution. This is the logical fallacy known as the Argument From Personal Incredulity. The explanation for the "problem" that you raise is natural selection. Every year there are humans born with more toes or less (fingers too) than the normal number of five. If humans with six fingers and toes had a survival advantage over those with five, or if they were significantly more attractive to the opposite sex, they would have more offspring than the fivers. After a sufficiently long time, all of us would be sixers.
>Unless something exterior directs changes during the procreation of life, each biological life that comes into existence must be root an independent tree of evolutionary change. Given the starting point of biological life on earth, and the time frames involved, What do we have so many humans, so many instances of life with basically the same biology?
You have just stated the principle of descent with modification. It is an argument for evolution, not against it.
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
What we have here is people using science to support their religious claims. This "museum" is chock full of "evidence" that their fundamentalist cosmology is correct. They put on the trappings of science to give authority to their religious ideals of biblical infallibility, inerrancy, and literalism.
These claims of infallibility are at the heart of what makes religious systems tick; without it religion becomes more of a safe social club with little memetic virulence. These claims of absolute knowledge are the very currency of religion, and this is why science and rationalism threaten all current metaphysical, spiritual, and moral institutions.
Since the churches don't have power in modern civil governments anymore, they can't force retractions using torture, imprisonment, and death. This is simply a different tactic, and it won't work.
Also, it seems to me that slashdot is more agnostic than atheistic, in that we think these wild claims people make about God are pretty fuckin' silly! Or pretty fuckin' scary. Although I'm sure many of us have read and agreed with Dawkins and Harris, we cannot completely rule out the idea even though we find it extremely unlikely.
I will say that if I had such an experience (I have not), the fact that others claim equally powerful and incompatible ones might give me pause. I'm not sure how I would reconcile it, really. Doubting that another person's very convincing religious experience is as "real" as my own seems to me very similar to believing that I love my wife more than my friend loves his. Sure, I feel like it may be the case, but deep down, I know that he feels the same way about me and neither one of us is likely to be right.
An interesting anagram of "BANACH TARSKI" is "BANACH TARSKI BANACH TARSKI"
You know things are shaky when mods-on-crack mod more appropiately than mods-on-god.
It's bad enough that Americans refuse to adopt the sensible Metric system, but it's worse that they refuse to reject superstition and idol-worship.
Actually, maybe not adopting the superior Metric system is worse.
A careful reading of Genesis (I'm told) indicates that Adam, Eve, and family weren't the only humans. Seth married someone, after all, but I think there's stronger "evidence" in the text. Or, of course, you could be a devout Christian without being a literalist, at which point the whole story is a metaphor and quite compatible with science.
But of coutse those Christians aren't nearly so entertaining to poke fun at.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
English is an evolving language not limited by clueless academicians or governments who believe that they can prescribe how language should be used. The people who use the language get to define it.
Humans like to have answers. So when we think of questions about our origin, or the nature of the world/universe, we will assign answers. As we progress, our answers tend to have more factual basis.
Long ago, humans saw the sun and the moon in the stars in the sky, and thought that there must be some god/gods/magical-force moving those objects around.
Also long ago, at the start of written history, the answer to "where did we come from" was "my grandfather can trace his ancestors back though many generations, and according to the story, all the way back to a time of the magical creation of the world".
But now we know quite a bit more about how planets work, how biology works, how physics work. These are the result of logical and scientific reasoning.
Religion often holds on to ideas after the ideas contradict logic.
I would suggest you upgrade your beliefs. The creation story you are talking about is based on logic that is a few thousand years old.
Our answers are not perfect now. But they keep getting better. Perhaps if 5000 years, if you believe the whole of science as it existed in 2008, you would likely be viewed as superstitious.
I guess the museum just wasn't intelligently designed.
That's an interesting take on it. How far back to the creationists' trees currently go?
I suspect that this will be case of the trees creeping back farther and farther as more genomes are sequenced and compared. Very similar to old time creationists, "Nothing ever changes" becoming, "Well, things change, but only a little" then, "They vary based on their own genomes but mutations always kill you" then, "Well, there are neutral mutations, but no beneficial ones" then, "Well, there are beneficial mutations, but they don't add 'information'" then, "OK, some 'information' can be added, but it's rare and it's not enough and when they do happen, it's because of The Designer."
The arguments get more sophisticated and nuanced as their older forms are refuted, and while there are still throwbacks who make the older claims, the newest and slickest organizations avoid those pitfalls. I suspect that if what you're saying is the current popular argument, we should be seeing a lot of bickering about what constitutes a "kind" in the coming years as the more progressive creationist organizations travel farther up the trees and the more stubborn ones stand firm.
An interesting anagram of "BANACH TARSKI" is "BANACH TARSKI BANACH TARSKI"
"So god is a giant hermaphroditic bacterium?"
Actually that would explain a lot of things....
Athiests are no more fanatical than Round-Earthers. Perhaps you're thinking of anti-theists.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
If creationism actually had any scientific validity to it, you might have a valid point. But it doesn't, so your intended point is ridiculous.
tic
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Genesis 1:11 And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so. 24 And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so.
The fossil record will match the genesis order of creation. - For example there would be no record of land animals before birds or sea creatures.
So, yes, creation can be [dis]proven.
Arguing the non-existence of god with a religious person is like arguing the existence of color with someone who was born blind.
:)
There, fixed it for you.
tic
Disbelief in God won't send you to hell, but rather belief coupled with wanton disobediance will.
Then what's the point of believing in god in the first place? To me that seems like locking yourself into a prison of your own designing.
tic
Evolution is not, by any means a linear process. The classic "if we evolved from apes why are they still here?" argument is evidence of a lack of understanding of evolution. We did not come directly from apes. Instead, we share a common ancestor with modern great apes. But even if we did evolve directly from them, there is no evolutionary rule against them existing. This is the core idea of speciation. If it were linear we'd only have one living species at a time. Instead, an isolated group of a species is put under a stress that favors a specific trait(s). This causes the group to begin to show more of that trait in each generation. Eventually the changes become so compounded that the isolated group is no longer genetically compatible with the original main group. Now you have a new species. The "million other questions" about evolution usually have definite answers, it's simply that most people are not aware of these aspects. The evolution taught in (US) schools is an extremely simplified and if you take this Readers Digest version as all there is to it, it may seem flawed. This is not a failing of the evolutionary theory, but simply a failing in our ability to effectively communicate it to the average person.
<gir voice> I love this sig... </gir voice>
Stuff that starts pointless flamewars between thirteen year old idiots about how religion is teh stupid in order to get hits that generate ad revenue.
Where would you class someone who was raised with religious teachings but after due consideration and study decided it was all mythological nonsense? As someone else pointed out, there are no agnostics when it comes to believing or not in Santa Claus. I believed in Santa - when I was young and ignorant.
(Personally I like Carlin's way of putting it: "I was a Catholic until I reached the age of reason." which is sort of what I think is beginning to happen to humanity as a whole...)
tic
and the old testament has more to say about the evil of pork than homosexuality.
There are many politicians who don't understand this message, apparently.
tic
Not necessarily. The Bible's account of creation is one chapter long--about a page. It's not a science text and its purpose wasn't to dwell on how it all happened. Whether it took God six literal days to do it or if some of it happened through mechanisms we can understand such as evolution is not the point of the Bible and is why the story is makes up an extremely small percentage of the Bible.
The Bible's account of creation does not necessarily preclude evolution.
Whether or not one subscribes to the concept of original sin from Adam and Eve, we are all imperfect and sinful. Especially by the standards given to us by Christ. He died not just for the sins we inherited (if you subscribe to that concept) but especially for the sins we commit all by ourselves. Christ's sacrifice for the forgiveness of our sins doesn't require us to inherit sin from Adam. We are entirely capable of generating our own sins on a daily basis. We have plenty to be forgiven for even without Adam and Even.
Thoughtful studying of the text by a reasoned and educated mind that is interested in finding the truth rather than creating false conflicts between science and Christianity.
"the first human would have, by definition, had sex with a protomonkey in order to procreate."
Wherever you would draw the line between ape and human, as if there was a sharp change, you would find a population somewhen in history with a mix of ape and human properties.
The trouble is, y'all Texicans invented a new word when us Aussies already had the perfectly acceptable "youse".
If youse had just given us a yell, y'all could've had it free.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
>> And if people misunderstand what the Bible says, please explain what the methodology is
>> by which we should determine which sections of the Bible are literal and which are metaphorical.
> Thoughtful studying of the text by a reasoned and educated mind that is interested
> in finding the truth rather than creating false conflicts between science and Christianity.
A proper way to do that would make me reconsider my current opinion on the Bible, so I would appreciate some more information on how to find the difference between literal and metaphorical bits.
And before you come with vaguenesses, it would have to provide an explanation for quite some things in a way that only leaves one interpretation open for things like the differences in the genealogy of Jesus in Matthew (or Mark) and Chronicles, God's total change of character between OT and NT, the Bible being the infallible word of God and apparent contradictions within the Bible, a way to read Job as one complete story, and much more.
That is mighty convenient, so you found a way to be a Christian in a modern world by calling the Bible a Cultural Guide.
Too bad for me I cannot make myself live such a huge contradiction. To me, if a religion is based on rules and stories, and you want to call yourself a follower of it, you should follow each and every rule without questioning (which is pretty hard if you actually READ the rules and stories).
But if you want to reconsider what is supposed to be Gods word, then why not make the leap to a pure rational worldview?
"please explain what the methodology is by which we should determine which sections of the Bible are literal and which are metaphorical."
Does it matter? Would it make one jot of difference to the overall message of love and charity conveyed by the Bible if the entire thing were metaphor? Of course not. The message loses nothing at all by being considered to be entirely metaphorical.
I see that everyone else responding to your post has taken a fully allegorical view of this part of Genesis. That's one interpretation that's open, and it's true that to understand the meaning of the Fall you have to think of it in terms of what our human nature is like and not only as an isolated historical incident. However, I'd like to point out that evolution does not preclude the existence of a literal individual Adam (and Eve), though obviously some elements of the story (like Eve being created from Adam's rib) have to be taken symbolically.
The first man and woman, in the biblical sense, need not have been the first biped humanoids or even the first Homo sapiens sapiens. The biblical story would seem to indicate that they were the first humans who could understand good and evil and be morally responsible for their actions, and it attempts to explain this to us. Our moral accountability, not our cranial sizes or our use of tools, are what distinguishes man from animal.
Evolution doesn't rule out taking Adam to be the literal father of all mankind, either. Our most recent common ancestor cannot have been more than 60,000 years ago based on Y-chromosonal studies, and is very likely to have been less than 8,000 years ago.
And don't forget the all-important "youse guys" for referring to a company or some other structured group.
So I put it to Slashdot - Can anyone name a closed system? Something that has no outside inputs or outputs.
A Fundamentalist's mind.
Edward@Tomato - /home/Edward/ man woman
man: no entry for woman in the manual.
"Qua!?"
This is not a signature.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
That is pretty irrelevant... If we are creating something that already exists, that specific object or creature was man-made, but as a whole, the species it is mimicking evolved naturally.
There will be lots of legal issues related to "accident of nature" or "industrial accident" related to when created things go bad, and how to prove they were created versus just having occurred by themselves.If this becomes an issue, it will be because of bad (as in poorly-skilled) scientists not bothering to document what they are doing, then releasing whatever it is they created in a place where we, as a human whole, are not entirely familiar, such as a rain forest.
Of course, if it is released into a section of a rain forest not currently being monitored, it will have to be in large enough quantities to not only survive, but thrive. If there are enough of them to thrive, there will be enough to seriously unbalance the local ecosystem. If there are enough to seriously unbalance the local ecosystem, other scientists are going to find out. When other scientists find out that something has suddenly caused an imbalance in an ecosystem, they are going to try and find out why. When they try to figure out why, they will discover the creature the bad scientists created. When they discover those creatures, they will begin to question why they, if they were native to the local ecosystem, suddenly caused an imbalance (and no, evolution is not the answer, as evolution is not an over-night thing where an ape gives birth to a human).
Those scientists studying this thing will come to the conclusion it was brought in from outside, and is not native to that particular ecosystem.
Those scientists will then attempt to figure out where the creatures were brought in from, and when they find that they are found nowhere else, will begin wondering what happened.
Here's the kicker, however: If there were enough of these creatures created to survive, let alone thrive, it would have cost potentially hundreds of millions to billions of dollars in money (pretty easily noticeable when organizations are spending that type of money, even in corrupt nations) and would require a huge amount of logistical work to be able to bring all of those creatures to the location where they were put.
A lot of people will know where the creatures were from, even if they don't know they were man-made, and even for fanatical groups, there are people who talk when they are supposed to keep silent. Someone, somewhere, is going to say something that will eventually get back to the investigating scientists, who will then have a pretty good idea of where to look for the origin of these creatures.
And, of course, if you say that the person who orchestrated the creatures killed off everybody who was involved, there would be questions and investigations as to the deaths of people, which will, with so many dead, lead back to the orchestrator.
Let's ignore the cost of housing these creatures until there are enough to even survive. Or the food. Or the waste they will produce.
Perhaps several billion dollars for such a cost would be an understatement, after all.
Calling a sword by a pretty name is no more than adding perfume to poison.
If there were a closed system, we would experience no effects from it and it would experience no effects from us. Therefore we would have no way of knowing of its existence. All we can say we can name or know of is our system i.e. our universe- things which affect us. Our universe counts as a closed system by definition- if something else were to be able to affect us we would count it part of our universe.
Agreed. I *really* have to take my hat off to that guy, assuming he was trolling. I mean, yeah, trolls suck, but at the same time I can appreciate the skill involved, just like I can admire good graffiti while hating graffitists.
Look at this: there are well over a hundred replies ultimately stemming from his original post. And it's gotta be the oldest line ever. I mean, what did he do differently? Was it the folksy tone? The phrasing "pretty much just a theory at this point" or whatever? The reference to the pastor? The smug "Think about it"? The "also a theory"? It's such a short post that it's gotta have a lot of trollishness per word, requiring a clever mind.
To use another analogy: it's like if someone orchestrated a armed invasion of a toothpick factory and then built a full-sized model of the Eiffel Tower with them. Obviously a brilliant mind, but you gotta wonder what would be possible if he worked for good instead of evil...
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
I don't think that's true.
....that creationism nonsense has suckered so many. I used to be very tolerant of religion: believe what you like as loong as you don't inflict it on me. But now, I see blind faith as the true enemy of reason and truth and i don't care which blind faith you're talking about. They're all dangerous once the "faithful" abandon reality in favour of whatever nonsense they choose to believe. Look at where blind faith too Bush and his followers. They were SURE there were WMD in Iraq......never mind there was no proof of any WMD. They just KNEW. The same goes for creationism, where the incredulity of the believers is used as "proof" to support their contention. "The universe is so complex, it can ONLY have been created!". Crap.
Only boring people are ever bored.
That's something that's always bothered me about the whole God thing. If God is omnipotent/omniscient, and created us knowing how we were going to be, then how can we have free will? I think the people that wrote the bible were just messing with our heads.
Creationist museums are like museums of human stupidity, we must save them, and encourage more of them, they are quite educational.
No, a theory just explains a fact. Like the theory of gravity.
Arguing the existance of God with an athiest is like arguing the existance of red with a blind man.
I prefer to think of it as arguing the existence of a purple elephant with a drunk man.
you just quoted Kansas...after trying to square your pathetic circle.....after bad ideas..comes bad taste....figures..
There is a theory which explains the facts of evolution.
But of course they are just facts, and not beliefs.
You can choose faith and beliefs, I'll choose facts and knowledge.
Cynics require facts and truth, the naive accept beliefs, and trust faith.
truth = fact, certainty, reality, actuality, veracity, verity
faith = confidence, trust, reliance, conviction, belief, assurance
Einstein or the Pope? Sorry the choice to me plain as to who to listen to.
This is not a 1+1=2 scientific endeavor. We're talking about dozens of individual books written by dozens of authors over the course of over a thousand years. People spend lifetimes reading and analyzing the Bible, usually doing so in the context of the cultural, political, and religious environment in which they were each written. To expect me to give you some magical answer in a few posts on Slashdot when people spend lifetimes in the endeavor is simply not realistic.
Now I don't believe you have to spend a lifetime of investigation to discern which parts may be metaphorical and which are literal. But you do have to make an honest effort to investigate it for yourself, and that's going to require reading the entire Bible with an open mind and an open heart and an honest desire to learn. If you investigate it determined to find faults, you're going to misinterpret every verse and only confirm your own preconceptions and misconceptions. If that's your attitude going in, I guess I wouldn't even recommend you spend the time on it.
On the other hand, if you're really interested in understanding the topic, you'll find the investigation very enlightening. Even if you don't ultimately find that you agree with Christianity, at least you'll have educated yourself enough on the topic to have meaningful conversations about it.
I'm sorry, but those things simply illustrate that you know far too little about the Bible to make an educated critique of the Bible or of Christian beliefs. They are also completely off-topic to the discussion of how evolution may or may not be compatible with Christianity. Even so, I would be happy to have that discussion but I've had this type of discussion many times before and have long-since learned that the most useless discussion is with one who is determined to not learn. I don't mind a difference of opinion and agreeing to disagree, but I find that when it comes to topics like this, the person that is challenging Christianity really isn't interested in learning why their understanding of Christianity is incorrect. Inevitably people who make these kinds of challenges suffer from incorrect perceptions of Christianity; or think that Christians (at least the vast majority) believe things that aren't stipulated by the Bible. Most attacks on Christianity and the Bible are strawmen--sometimes erected intentionally and sometimes simply erected out of ignorance of the topic.
Like I said earlier, people that insist on a contradiction between science and Christianity virtually always suffer a lack of knowledge of science, Christianity, or both. The frustrating part is that these people are usually the most extreme and not interested in actually learning about the topic on which they lack knowledge.
Thank you south park for pointing out what has occurred to every 10 year old, preacher, religious parent, and drunk pontificator in the last 95 years.
XML causes global warming.
OK great, but the Bible was written by men whose idea of a year was pretty much the then-layman's equivalent of "the time it takes for the Earth to complete one orbit about the Sun." Same thing for the day.
Interesting points.
There's also some fascinating history research about the fall of the Arabic world, most likely due to a strong increase in fundamentalist religion - when Europe was in the "Dark Ages" the Arabic world was anything but, off inventing math, chemistry, dentistry, improving education, many scientific improvements to mankind. European royalty would send princes etc to school in the islamic world to get a proper education.
According to what I've read on this, though, the fundamentalists started gaining power and started shutting down education,
explaining that everything happens "as Allah wishes" and turning away from reason. I read (during the height of the British school teacher being arrested for letting the class name a teddy bear "allah") that upon hearing the explanation for how oxygen combines with carbon in wood to make fire, one student claimed "Oh, it burns because Allah wishes it to".
This sounds exactly like what is happening in the southern US, with a strong surge away from science/education and towards religious fundamentalism. This is not far removed from Creationists trying to push a 5000 year old fable as a replacement for detailed scientific work in evolution.
I used to be baffled that creationists would settle for such a lame explanation of the start of history when any decent supreme being should stand up and take a bow for the beauty and complexity of quantum mechanics, which leads to chemistry, which leads to DNA, which leads to the amazing diversity of life on our planet.
I now realize it's about power. This is why the original bible was in latin, you had to go to the priest to decode and dispense the meaning of life/universe/everything. A well designed control system to keep the population stupid and afraid so they do what you want and hand over their money/lives/etc to the Roman Empire.
The evangelical movement has rediscovered this power and lust to control the people around them. What better way to get them in the door but to make them superstitious and afraid, dependent on the church for every idea/decision in life?
Doh! Ranting again. Sorry!
Bavarian Purity Law of Rice Krispie Squares: Rice Krispies, Marshmallows, Butter, Vanilla.
Evolution is a theory too
And gravity is a theory too!
And day now, someone could "prove" it doesn't work!
The Earth just sucks!
But hey- that's ID!
GOD made it that way, right?
Pinoqachole cannot explain everything, dammit!
And neither can Newton.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligent_falling Intelligent Falling explains it all.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
There is a lot of good information at Talk origins. In summary, it says "The entropy of a closed system cannot decrease." (Which, I believe, is what you are referencing.) It goes on to say "However, they neglect the fact that life is not a closed system. The sun provides more than enough energy to drive things." The Sun or the Earth itself in the case of chemosynthesis based foodchains (usually at the bottom of the oceans). Either way the argument holds.
May contain traces of nut.
Made from the freshest electrons.
What I've yet to hear is a convincing argument for taking the descriptions of creation as being literal rather than metaphors for how the world came to be. Personally I don't see evolution as at all incompatible with personal faith, but evidently others do or there wouldn't be any calls to present the biblical version of events as comparable to the prevailing scientific theory. Both are subject to human interpretation/translation so to accept either as an absolute truth seems unreasonable.
"Algebraical symbols are used when you don't know what you are talking about" - BCS
Don't let your mullah -sorry pastor- do your thinking for you.
Personally I consider the reliability of the Bible as a historical document as pretty much zero. I'm sure some of the people in it may have existed, and that some of the more mundane events are real, but at the same time it's near impossible to separate from fiction - especially since only miniscule portions of it has any support from other sources.
But then I'm an atheist.
You'll find many christians that DO think they know what is metaphor and what is "true", but how far they stretch is very personal. Do they believe in Jesus' miracles, for example? Why should/should not those be metaphors too? How do they handle the vast number of inconsistencies in the Bible? You could ignore it, or (like me) see it as one of the thing indicating how unreliable the Bible is as a source for anything, or you can just proclaim part of the story a metaphor.
I've not seen any convincing criteria for determining in a sound way what is supposedly fact and what is metaphor.
You are nothing more than a closeminded and ignorant fool if you sincerely use the above reasoning to back up your belief in creationism/disbelief in evolution My favorite part is you stating there is a lack of intermediary fossils, of which there are hundreds and thousands of, but you creationists always like to pretend they don't exist. Then you list each point of evidence that supports only the age of the earth/universe as if that's the only thing backing up evolution, one more example of you being a jackass reading off his argument from creationscience.com I mod you -5 Plagiarized argument.
*woosh*
I've read the book of Acts, and i remember no such passage.
Would you mind giving a little more details?
hi Letxa,
I appreciate your effort. I do feel my questions are reasonable.
I have read parts of the Bible and backgrounds about the Bible. I know people like to interprete it in many ways, not even agreeing on translations. I've seen explanations that are very peaceful, others that are aggressive, others that are bizarre.
So I tried to find out how this is possible. My current belief is that people just cherrypick, and ignore the parts they do not like. I hoped you could give a sound way to avoid that.
You suggest I read the entire Bible with an open mind. Well if I read it I can't help to incorporate my knowledge on history, church divisions, what I read about predecessing versions of stories such as Abraham and Isaac.
"If you investigate it determined to find faults, you're going to misinterpret every verse and only confirm your own preconceptions and misconceptions. If that's your attitude going in, I guess I wouldn't even recommend you spend the time on it."
There is a range between meekly accepting every word and misinterpreting every verse almost deliberately. I think in my previous post I indicated my willingness to listen.
"I'm sorry, but those things simply illustrate that you know far too little about the Bible to make an educated critique of the Bible or of Christian beliefs. They are also completely off-topic to the discussion of how evolution may or may not be compatible with Christianity."
That is because they were not MEANT to cover evolution. This branch of this thread is about how to read the Bible and see which parts are to be read literally and which ones not.
And I am not one of those who think evolution and christianity are mutually exclusive.
"Even so, I would be happy to have that discussion but I've had this type of discussion many times before and have long-since learned that the most useless discussion is with one who is determined to not learn."
It might be that you just have a weak case and choose people who already know too much about it.
"I don't mind a difference of opinion and agreeing to disagree, but I find that when it comes to topics like this, the person that is challenging Christianity really isn't interested in learning why their understanding of Christianity is incorrect."
WOW STOP. I didn't start this topic, i was not challenging, you were offering.
As stated, I did read about and in the bible and I like to think I know more about it than the average Joe (who does not know the difference between pesach and eastern, if he knows what eastern is at all). I am still looking for an overview of what rules in the Bible still apply, and why. Could you maybe point me to some online source on that?
"Like I said earlier, people that insist on a contradiction between science and Christianity virtually always suffer a lack of knowledge of science, Christianity, or both. The frustrating part is that these people are usually the most extreme and not interested in actually learning about the topic on which they lack knowledge."
You spent a lot of words on not answering my sincere questions. Too bad.
Evolution is not linear, when I say 'causation' I just mean that speciation comes from adaptation to environment rather than from someone high in the sky playing with tiny creatures on a blue planet. It should be clear to anyone reading Darwin's book that evolution does not cause old species to die (I read the book while a teenager). He got the idea while at Galapagos islands and islands are very good environments to understand the evolutionary processes because it's there that groups are isolated and are under environmental pressure. The pressure of the environment leads to speciation because small groups of individuals find innovative ways to adapt so that they can get a higher share of the available food or escape predators etc. Species die only when they are totally unable to use their environment for their survival. For example: if the oxygen gets lost from our planet probably all species breathing it will die except anaerobic bacteria and those species that can adapt to another breathing pattern. If, however, only 1% of the available oxygen gets lost, then the most species will be able to still live, and the most sensitive of them will probably adapt to become new species. It is the sudden change in environment that causes the death of species. If the change is gradual and smooth, new species arise while old species need not die. Furthermore the environment may be different among continents, so for example in one continent the conditions may be favourable for a new species while in another continent it could be an old species which has the evlutionary advantage.
Its a specious argument that says "Since entropy = stuff going chaotic over time, how is it possible for simple things to evolve into complex things".
It took me a while to grapple the argument, and from the best of my understanding, creationists have latched onto the word "entropy" without either understanding the context, nor explaining how the hell evolution has anything to do with the dynamics of heat in closed ordered physical systems.
Its completely barmy as hell, but unfortunately an entire generation of christian kids are getting there science educations trashed by this deliberately dishonest piece of pseudo-science.
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
Well, there's your false assumption. Christianity is based on the teachings of Jesus Christ -- not the rules and stories of the Old Testament. Those stories and rules, the ones that outsiders like to point to as being so ridiculous, are there for background. They were the legends of the Hebrew people and give Cultural Guidance. Jesus only ever stated two rules.
He did give a good deal of advice though.
- etc. etc.
you want to call yourself a follower of it, you should follow each and every rule without questioningThat's a ridiculous straw-man. Jesus himself questioned God. Of course we question it. If there was never a question, there was never a decision made. Being a Christian means making that decision.
That is one of the things confusing me: why did Jesus then say he did not come to abolish the law of the profets, but to fulfill them? Matthew 5 v.17-18, and in a milder form in Lucas 16 v.17.
Me: you want to call yourself a follower of it, you should follow each and every rule without questioning.
You: That's a ridiculous straw-man. Jesus himself questioned God. Of course we question it. If there was never a question, there was never a decision made. Being a Christian means making that decision.
How do you weigh that against the citations above? And a bit further in Luke 16 you are told to listen to Mozes' law and the profets.
You will probably accuse me again of using false arguments, but this is how I see it.
Prove it.
There is a God. He just doesn't like Creationism.
I would set a sealed jar upon a windowsill and point a webcam at it, run some motion detection software, and see when a new fully-formed (macro-sized) organism spontaneously appears in it. This is the only way you could get positive evidence for creationism. Any bets on how long this would take? I call Inf.
Graffiti is a good analogy. It's a public art that abuses someone else's resource as a canvas. I used to find this sort of thing annoying. These days I figure it's pretty harmless, and I can find it sort of amusing as long as it's done well. A "good troll" has to be funny, quite ludicrous, but just convincing enough to rope people in to argue against something completely illogical.
I totally would, but I don't have mod points and there's no, "-1 Tiresome would-be martyr with a persecution complex" option.
You misunderstane me. I say "mod me down" because it doesn't matter, my karma is excellent and will remain so, despite the occasional "troll" or "flamebait" moderation.
My "freaks" column is small, my "fans" column is impressive. I have no reason to feel persecuted, or a martyr. If I were worried about karma I'd post anonymously.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
If you have experienced God you cen no longer deny Him. Once you have been to the zoo, you can't not believe in Eliphants, no matter who argues their nonexistance.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
Dude, the elephant's pink, didn't you get the memo?
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
I do accept the existence of elephants though, so long as no contradictory evidence shows up.