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Theologian Attempts Censorship After Losing Public Debate
RockDoctor writes "Theologian John Haught publicly debated prominent evolutionary scientist and atheist Jerry Coyne at the University of Kentucky back in October. Before the debate, both parties agreed to the debate being video-taped. Coyne is of the opinion that he convincingly won the debate over Haught. But we'll never know, because Haught, with the assistance of staff at the University of Kentucky, who sponsored the debate, is banning publication of the video of the event. They are even refusing to release the half of the debate containing Coyne's comments and questions."
I think I speak for many /.ers when I say... "Oh Jesus". Honestly, if you attempt to justify religion on anything resembling logic you lose. Speaking of "faith" at least gets you out of the logic trap, assuming the person you're speaking to accepts faith as a viable substitute for logic - and of course atheists do not.
If you can read this... 01110101 01110010 00100000 01100001 00100000 01100111 01100101 01100101 01101011
"A truly scientific worldview would lead to opinions such as: we don't know, there is no proof one way or the other." ...therefore, till new proofs appear, we'll stick to the simplest explanation, the one without the imaginary friend, that is.
Occam's razor, they call it.
A "literal interpretation of Genesis" tells the reader that God lied to Adam and Eve; punished them for disobedience; and then chose to throw them out because their disobedience had made them more like God, so they had to be prevented from living forever and becoming even more like God.
(Chapters 2 and 3, if you want to cross-check that for yourself.)
You really sure you want Genesis to be literally interpretable? Because it makes your God out to be evil, selfish and kinda insecure.
Wow, you sound like the open minded leading scientists who rejected the big bang theory back in the day because it was developed by a priest and "smelled of creationism".
As demonstrated by the priest referred to above, the religious may also use facts, proof and logic. They just don't do so on religious matters, there they have articles of faith. Of course some atheists seem to have articles of faith themselves, their faith is merely of the opposite polarity. When true scientists are asked about God the answer tends to be: I don't know, there is no evidence one way or the other.
Ah, but you're all just ACs. Just trolling, I guess, rather than interested in learning any new truths. For everyone else reading this, I thought I'd include a standard rejoinder about the nature of scientific 'proof', just in case.
When one does not have proof, one need not avoid any conclusions; evidence is sufficient. Most of the evidence suggests that there is no imaginary friend; all of the evidence otherwise is provided by anecdote, fallacy, fraud, or fiction. There is evidence that his friend is imaginary, in one sense of the word. There are indicators in the brain that are associated with religious activity; literally faith is all in your head.
I'll believe in god when there is more evidence in favor of its existence than there is against it. I won't do it because some random clown on the the street with a bullhorn (or on the Internet) yells about it. That isn't evidence. You believe; too bad for you. If I knew more about you, I might even be able to explain why you believe (probably because you were raised with the notion of god as a child, but perhaps not). But your belief is not evidence.
See? An open mind that evaluates evidence and comes to a conclusion using the best data available. That's how you have to deal with the scientific worldview.
Sounds like he succeeded. Didn't publish a video is not merely an 'attempt'. Now then... you can call it an 'attempt' as soon as we see the content available despite their efforts.
Actually it sounds like the University itself is responsible for the censorship... specifically Mr. Rabel, and I would say based on the article... it sounds like the uni is a biased venue that would choose to publish or not publish based on who won. Shame shame.
The participant decided he didn't want it published after the fact, but since he had already granted his permission, the ball rests totally in the uni's court....
I believe they are, but only if you water down the religion side so much it's barely a religion at all.
It's not simpler because now you have to explain:
Who is god?
Why did he make the world?
Why 7 days?
What made god?
That last one is important, because whatever your answer just was, could probably be applied to the original question.
Life is too short to proofread.
So God is the original troll? Given how the universe feels, your explanation makes me MORE inclined to believe in God.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
Um, this thing you call "belief"? Science doesn't use it.
Of course it does. There are frequently no absolute answers (especially at the leading edge of science) and scientists base their work on what they believe to be true. Occasionally, someone comes up with a new hypothesis and gets hell from the other scientists for their crazy theories. Sometimes those crazy ideas are shown to work better than the established theories and everyone has to shift their belief. Scientific belief is a lot more fluid than religious belief, but don't kid yourself - it is a fundamental part of science and there is always a lot of resistance to changing it.
http://blog.nexusuk.org
If he'd just let this public debate be viewed by the public, we wouldn't have to assume anything. We could make our own conclusions. If he's going to great lengths to hide it, we're going to assume the worst. It's a pretty big leap of logic to assume that everything was all unicorns and flowerbeds when he's flipping out about it like he is.
The problem is that they claim their book is the word of their god. If they can discard parts as allegory, but others as truth, then how do they decide? At whom's whim does the decision rest?
That people need to create new explanations for why the Bible says something that they decided it doesn't mean to say anymore makes me think that the book wasn't right in the first place and people are desperate to keep it relevant. If 'god' didn't want people to think the world was 6,000 years old, why say it was in the book? Seems like 'a long long time ago' would have conveyed the same idea, but prevented people that believe the book to be true from running around with obviously flawed information. Even George Lucas figured out it was easier to be vague, one would think the creator of all things would at least be at that level. That some are 'quite comfortable' with their ever changing assumptions regarding the content of their book doesn't make them enlightened, it makes them look like they would rather change the entire meaning of the book rather than admit it might not be true.
Making one's faith fit science seems to be a lesser evil that forcing the science to the faith, but in the end you are still forcing something to be 'true' when an entirely different conclusion could reached by throwing away the requirement that the answer hold to a bronze age religion.
"If you accept that the world wasn't made in seven days, when the genesis story says it was, then... how can you trust any of it?"
If you find a error in a textbook, would that cause you to loose all trust in its whole content?
But the more important question is:
Is that even a error or isn't it just a completely wrong way to understand a biblical text? Most of time literal interpretation seems to completely miss the point. They are like claiming "The Fountainhead" is a book about modern architecture. Some answers aren't much smarter either, they are like claiming "There is no real Stanton Institute of Technology, therefore Any Rand's objectivism is proven to always wrong."
Also: The hebrew word used for day in the genesis story can be translated to both "day" and "time span".
Jan
As I noted on the web site, this is likely actionable by Coyne.
He expended time and effort to prepare for and engage in the debate with a justified expectation of having the video posted. An agreement, with consideration given. Sounds actionable to me. Haught should be made to deliver on the agreement, or give compensation.
What made god?
The typical response is that God is eternal, but if you are willing to believe that then why not simply believe that the universe itself is eternal?
You only have to look at the world to see how ridiculous the Christian notion of God is. Imagine you were a student living on campus. Your room is cold and damp, the heating is broken, the mattress has springs poking out, mud comes out the taps, there are large cracks in the windows. You ask faculty staff if the landlord can do something about it, and they tell you "Yes, he is well aware of the situation and could fix everything with the wave of a hand. And most of all he loves you, he wants you to have a good life. Thing is he doesn't get involved directly, you have to fix everything yourself. If you keep texting him he might offer some words of encouragement, but you still have to do all the work."
You sigh and spend months cleaning, fixing and tidying the place, making it liveable and saving yourself from hypothermia. Just as you are re-painting the last damp stained corner the faculty staff member turns up again and says "Wow, you must be thankful that the landlord provided all this stuff and helped you with all this work by sending ambiguously worded emails to us. You didn't get cc'ed in? Well, take our word for it, none of this would have been possible without his support. Don't forget to thank him if you don't want to spend your post-student life flipping burgers for eternity."
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC