Slashdot Mirror
Bill "The Science Guy" Nye Says Creationism Is Not Appropriate For Children
timeOday writes "BigThink has released a video missive by Bill Nye ('The Science Guy') in which he challenges the low level of acceptance of evolution, particularly in the United States. He does not mince words: 'I say to the grownups, if you want to deny evolution and live in your world, in your world that's completely inconsistent with everything we observe in the universe, that's fine, but don't make your kids do it because we need them. We need scientifically literate voters and taxpayers for the future. We need people that can — we need engineers that can build stuff, solve problems.'"
Bill Nye is awesome.
uses the theory of evolution?
George Fox Evangelical Seminary
Bill Nye said kids shouldn't be taught that certain scientific theories are wrong. He never even said creationism, once.
This headline is just sensationalist garbage.
Bill Nye: You are allowed to be an ignorant drain on our society but for the sake of your children's future, don't force them to ignore the things you're afraid of accepting and understanding.
-SaNo
Of course, most American parents don't understand evolution at all, so it will be impossible to fix this mess. If our population was better educated, we'd be ok, but both parties have done their best to destroy it while telling everyone they are fixing the problems.
...you can't reason with the irrational, so I doubt his point will sink in. If anything, it will likely cause them to react in anger ... "It's an attack on OUR BELIEFS!", and they'll dig their heels in a little deeper.
"False hope is why we'll never run out of natural resources!" - Lewis Black
I recently surveyed a few of my adult friends. Somewhat surprisingly most did not realize that the stars in the sky are "suns", most attributing their sparkle to reflection from our sun.
My parents are catholic (practicioners). I'm an atheist despite they doing everything they could to make a believer. I'm also an engineer.
What?
-SaNo
Knowledge of the mechanisms of natural selection, the fossil record, and the tree of life isn't very useful in most fields.
When do "engineers that can build stuff, solve problems" ever use any of that?
Why do you tell? Let it happen! Please! I want to see a whole country go bancrupt. Please!
Fine. You go America. We'll just see what the power map of the world is fifty years from now once your post-awesome country is filled with idiots and therefore of no relevance in that world.
But. I would rather you did turn yourselves around as, even with your bad stuff, I think you're generally OK.
You're using a modified version of the solipsist argument. The answer to the solipsist argument is to shoot the solipsist in the head. Quit being a moron, and join the real world.
"we need engineers that can build stuff, solve problems"
Even people who don't believe in evolution can still become engineers who "build stuff, solve problems"
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
Evolution and God/Creationism are not necessarily mutually exclusive.
Teach Children what you believe in your home, and teach them that other people believe other things. Regardless of your religion you can and SHOULD teach good scientific principles, the scientific method, proper observation, mathmatics and critical thinking skills are all things we need (like Bill said) there is nothing about religion that should prohibit a home from teaching God and all of those things.
Design/build a bridge, building, microprocessor, software, chemical plant, airplane, ... you get the picture (and do it well).
What Bill Nye is really talking about, without saying it outright, is religion in general. He is calling out indoctrination by catechism.
More apt is panel #4 of this cartoon.
This is a fundamental aspect of many religions and is most commonly associated with Catholicism, though is also popular in many evangelical Christian churches.
-chill-
Bill Nye talks specifically about denial of belief in the theory of evolution. While he doesn't use the word creationism, his comments can only apply to that "world-view" which he believes is contrary to the evidence around us.
This headline captures exactly the message of the video, I have no idea why someone would interpret that video otherwise.
No it isn't. There is no assumption or conclusion that some aspect of the world may not exist. One can say "I think therefore everything is" without concluding that "I think therefore everything was".
But the motivation was the fact that the submitter has obviously completely forgotten what the article said in writing the summary, erecting another Dwakins-like strawman/windmill to fence with.
From the poor victimized Christians as they suffer the intolerant bigotry of those liberals who just won't let them do the Lord's work.
Really, how dare those liberals say they're all in favor of acceptance when they reject a religious theocracy.
I don't know if it's part of their expectations, but it seems Christians always want to make themselves out to be martyrs. They always want the rest of us to believe they're being fed to the lions. They don't grasp the concept of church and state, they think the Muslims are taking over, and they protest that their free speech is being threatened when the rest of us refuse to go along with their will. Apparently we can't say no to them without being bullies.
Prove to me that your memory is reliable, i.e. show me how I can rely on my memory other than through faith.
Do not use your memory to form your argument, or ask me to rely on my memory.
Go!
I don't have faith in my memory. I trust my memory. Unlike faith, trust us earned and subject to review. If I were to grow old and senile and found myself forgetting things, I'd be less inclined to trust my memory and more inclined to start writing more things down to get through my day.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
Try David Hume's The Problem with Induction. The conclusion is that there is no reason whatsoever to trust inductive reasoning since it requires inductive reasoning to justify itself and thus begs the question. You can go on an say that since science is based on induction that there is no reason whatsoever to trust science.
What it really comes down to is whether you axiomatically accept induction as a valid method of proof or you run into a wall based on your own existence.
An alternate method of your argument is to prove that the universe didn't start just one second ago with a creator making the universe and setting all of the velocities, potentials, etc (or the Universe was created 6000 years ago and God just liked to hide dinosaur bones and ancient rocks for some reason). Or even better consider that the universe is just one frame and time does not exist.
My suggestion, don't waste your time on this. It is a good philosophical question, but if you plan to live in the real world then you are going to have to accept induction and science even though the logic to do so is tough.
Part of an old post:
People who believe in the literal Word of God as the Bible remind me of the grand-daughter of a family friend --- he was a woodworker, old school, wanted me to be his apprentice so he could put me to work re-sawing wood rather than purchase a band saw. He made a cradle as a gift for the grand-daughter in question, for her to keep her dolls in --- she was very impressed when her mother told her, ``Your grandfather made this by hand.'' and immediately evinced a desire to see him and to see his shop and to watch him make something. The visit was arranged and upon arrival, the young lady was taken out to the shop and the large door rolled open, revealing rack upon rack of chisels, saws, hand planes, a simply unbelievable quantity of clamps and other hand tools --- the girl let out a shriek such as only a 5 year old girl can and yelled, ``Mommy! You lied! Grandpa doesn't make things by hand! He uses tools!''.
God is quite capable of using DNA and RNA and quantum mechanics and other theories which we have yet to learn about to make people and the world.
Moreover, those who believe that humanity is incapable of learning how God works are being blasphemous and not remembering the lesson of the Tower of Babel (Genesis 11:6) which indicates that humanity's learning capacity is without limit.
Believing in God doesn't mandate a belief in Creationism (though believing in Creationism requires the belief in God). Anyone whose faith is so fragile that it could be damaged by a rigorous class in evolutionary biology should go back to CCD or Sunday School or whatever their faith's equivalent is.
William
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
There's nothing wrong with believing in a higher power, but scientifically, there's no use either.
Never say never. Ah!! I did it again!
Adapt or Perish Mr. Nye.
Contrast
Let there Be Light
With
All of a sudden there was a big bang.
Ya, that really clears things up.
believe in a creator makes ALL KINDS of problems. mentally, you are weaker when you think 'magic works!'.
essentially, religion is a statement that 'OUR magic works, theirs does not'.
you want kids growing up thinking that?
oh, wait, we already do that. and just LOOK at all the great minds we have in the US, these days (rolls eyes).
the world laughs at us. I hate that. I wish we could eliminate religion. we, as a people, would grow up SO MUCH if we let go of bronze age fairy tales and started to accept the world for how it really is and not how some sheep hearder told us to be.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
Bill "The Science Guy" Nye? No no no. It's "Bill Nye The Science Guy"! (Billlll Nyeeee the Scienceee Guyyy.)
No, it's called philosophical bullshit.
If memory was so unreliable, all that technology around you, the development of which definitely relies on the human ability to remember, correctly interrelate, and innovate... simply wouldn't be there. Ergo, memory is incontrovertibly demonstrated to be very effective and reliable.
Here's a pro tip for you: As soon as you have to reach into the murky waters of philosophical nonsense for excuses to shore up your superstitions, you've not only jumped the shark, the shark has bitten off your genitals.
Scientists and rational beings can. Religious zealots and irrational beings can't.
Did you hear about the 17 people beheaded by the Taliban for the crime of 'mingling'? And you expect the zealots to even have a rational conversation about evolution?
Not going to happen.
There's nothing wrong with believing in a higher powe
there is when you use that belief to impose upon other people's lives with it.
Yes, I'm left. You have a problem with that?
Yeah, I know - but thank you for the good response. I was just poking fun at the submitter for having seemingly completely forgotten what the article he was summarising was actually about.
Faith may not be earned, but can *definitely* be subject to review.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Bill won't ever amount to anything as a scientist.
Now Dr Morgus, look at what he's done. Why I be he's headed for dry ground right now.
Let's see Bill turn New Orleans into the Aquarium of the Americas, higher order indeed, Bill doesn't even know the secret symbol.
If the man was serious he would ask parents to teach their children to be rational beings -- not to blindly accept whatever theory he find politically convenient at the moment.
There is no theory that should simply, at face value, be or not be accepted -- the facts tell you which ones to believe and which ones to reject. That is science.
Mr. Nye has confused his politics and his profession.
I would, but you should prove first that you exist at all (as opposed to being a figment of my brain). When you fail that, kindly remove yourself from existence.
(Just a morning talk show on a music station, not some sort of bible-thumping show. It was just a random topic that went by)
DJ: "If evolution is true, then how come chimps don't evolve into people... any more?"
And that is what passes for scientific debate here in the You Ess Aye.
Nye's point isn't that people shouldn't believe in gods, but that they shouldn't shove demonstrably false beliefs about the world down the throats of unsuspecting kids. Yes, many great scientists were and are religious, and there's nothing wrong with that. What's wrong is teaching children that there were dinosaurs in Noah's Ark, or that there even was a Noah's Ark at all, because that is objectively false, misleading, counterproductive and, frankly, very stupid.
I may be mistaken, but I don't believe he ever denied God. He preached against people teaching their children to reject the scientific process. His statements are congruent with yours.
You are equating faith with belief. Faith in most Christian settings incorporates belief with fiducia (trust).
Let me consult my dictionary and get back to you
How do you know that all this technology is around you? More specifically, how do you know that everything you are looking at does what you think it does?
Also, if philosophy is bullshit then we might as well crawl back to ~C4 BC and start again. This is why there are rarely any bright individuals in computer engineering classes: they simply don't see the value of any learning beyond how electricity works.
I don't think it's necessary to believe Darwinian evolution as the origin of the species to be a successful scientist. It is possible to "believe" in the observed existence of mutations and natural selection - the development of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, moths changing from white to black to white as the environment gets dirty and then cleans up - and still believe that the origins of the human species were other than random.
I think it's hard to simultaneously be a scientist and a young earth creationist, although I suppose you can hold the view that God created the universe 6000 years ago to exactly mimic a 14 billion-year-old expanding universe, and that everything we measure about the universe is consistent with a 14 billion year age because God is really smart. But given that that universe is indistinguishable from one which is actually 14 billion years old, you're also happy to believe all of astrophysics models the universe correctly, because you know God made a perfect fake.
Yes! Stand up for ignorance!
Yes, teach them silly things that contradict reality and to be willfully ignorant.
He's no tyrant. However, there are more than a few wannabe tyrants among the US Christian community who feel they are charged by God to be a tyrant over others. And there are many, particularly those that push Intelligent Design, that don't want people to be capable of arguing in their own defense or contradicting the weak arguments of those they support.
No, but if you're willing to reject evolution in favor of irrational beliefs then your ability as a scientist cannot help but be compromised.
Lemme guess, this is one of those "there's no right answer except goddidit" bullshit-pseudophilosophical puzzles?
Reductio ad absurdum. You can only regress faith so far before you have to accept faith as faith. There are no solid foundations, except for the ones you find and accept for yourself.
Good-bye
"Sir, your foreman reports a large crack in the bridge."
"My belief system denies the existence of frangible bridges. It is safe."
Engineers who are willing to let political, religious, or ideological beliefs prevent them from drawing logical conclusions from observed data don't build things and solve problems: they destroy things and kill people.
If you want a real-world example?
"Sir, your engineers report that it is unsafe to launch the shuttle when it's this cold. The O-rings will crack."
"Underling, my political sponsor requires that a Teacher needs to be in Space because his boss's State of the Union speech won't sound as good if we delay the launch. It's worked before. Launch the shuttle."
In the case of Challenger, it was engineers trying to report their observations, and being overriden by management that was more interested in the politics/optics of a situation, but the same principle applies.
If an engineer is willing to reject the conclusions derived from following the scientific method in biology class, how can I, driving over his bridge, trust that he didn't also reject its results in metallurgy class?
I'll probably get modded down for this, but personally, I don't see a conflict between Creationism and Evolution. Are there forms of Creationism that can conflict? Sure, but that doesn't mean that the two are completely irreconcilable.
For example, if you look at the creation account in Genesis, and take into account that the word that translates as "Day" can also mean "period of time", "Age", or "epoch", and not necessarily a defined period of time, then you can easily interpret it as mirroring what science tells us about how the Earth was formed and life evolved.
Consider, that we started off with a massive release of energy, then the solar system coalesced from a cloud of dust and gas. As the Earth formed, vapors condensed into liquids, the land cooled and solidified, and the sky cleared (making the sun, moon, and stars visible). Plants developed, and then animals of increasing complexity developed, culminating in Man.
Tradition has it that the book of Genesis was written by Moses, who learned of the Creation directly from God. If you consider the level of understanding that would have been available in his time (Rabbinical tradition holds as being around 1300 BCE), the descriptions in Genesis are a rather good description of what modern-day science thinks on the subject today.
The important thing is to keep each subject in context. Moses wasn't concerned about describing the details of how life was created. For his account all that was necessary is to describe that it was created.
It's not necessary to pick one or the other. You can provide a balanced view of both sides to you children. I know my very-religious physicist parents did.
Whether or not you believe in one god, thousands of gods, three gods "in one," or whatever else should have absolutely no bearing on science, and should not even be mentioned while teaching a lesson about science. You can teach your kids whatever you want; but when my kids are in science class, they had better be taught science, and not anyone's religion. If you want your kids to learn that the theory of evolution is falsehood, home school them, send them to a private school, or whatever else -- and the rest of us will just continue to be astounded by their ignorance of science.
Palm trees and 8
Q: Why can't we just agree that Christianity is a 2000-year old superstition?
A: Because the insecure, the critical thinking-challenged, the ignorant, the gullible, and those seeking power all like the idea of a magical sky-daddy.
Belief, even misguided, is one thing. Literal belief is another.
I bet you pull down a lot of bucks as a professional philosopher
So, your children are your serfs, which you can boss around? Belief in a creator negates the scientific endeavor.
Many scientists over the years have believed nothing and questioned everything, even as they were unravelling the mystery of evolution and cosmology. Your point?
And acceptance without proof is faith.
Simple. I can prove it to you by first remembering some observation of the world, and then communicating that memory to you, which you can then verify yourself.
If you want to get into some deeper philosophical crap about who's to say *that* memory was not simply created, or that *you* are simply a memory that I have created, then it really does not matter. Science continues to be about understanding reality. Whether you go into some crap about that reality being just a figment of our imagination, a computer simulation, or something else, really does not matter because whatever it is, science is about observing and understanding *that*. This is not "faith".
This is distinctly different than religion, which is simply believing something for no reason than because you are told it is the truth.
Based on the transcript, I don't think that's what Bill Nye is saying here. From the video transcript:
Evolution is the fundamental idea in all of life science, in all of biology. It's like, it's very much analogous to trying to do geology without believing in tectonic plates. You're just not going to get the right answer. Your whole world is just going to be a mystery instead of an exciting place.
He's not really talking about spiritualism, religion, or any other belief systems; he's talking about a small subset of people bent on eschewing very carefully collected, studied, and reviewed data because they perceive it as an attack on their personal belief system. The Science guy is concerned that bad and irrational decisions are being made under the guise of "its my religion". His purpose is not to decry religion, but to defend science, evolution specifically as it is the target of attacks. I think the thought process is less "don't let religion get into science" and more "think rationally about scientific matters." His plea for "...scientifically literate voters and taxpayers for the future." and "...people that can—we need engineers that can build stuff, solve problems" is less about evolution versus religion and more about ensuring that future generations are trained to think logically; to think things through instead of standing on ceremony, that is, actually try to find the best solution, not just one that someone wants.
Does this mean he's against creationism in the classroom? Probably, because it's inconsistent with pretty much every other scientific model out there. But I don't think he's intending to harp on the idea of there being a creator; just people who want to push their agenda at the expense of education
" if philosophy is bullshit then we might as well crawl back to ~C4 BC and start again."
Im all for this, with minor changes.
" if religious bullshit is to be respected, then we might as well crawl back to ~C4 BC and start again."
There.
NO SIG
+1 for correct use of the phrase "begs the question".
it is funny for you to see bill nye as the threat to your liberty when organized religion is the biggest liberty crushing enterprise ever
it is the same as this bullshit argument about "religious freedom" we hear about when the almighty catholic church might have to cover the reproductive healthcare costs of its employees. "religious freedom" from the perspective of the catholic church here is the "freedom" to be the freedom destroying oppressive force in question.
religious freedom is an oxymoron. there is no such thing as religious freedom. there is only the "freedom", ie, the slave's choice to give up your freedoms to a hierarchy of force that happens to dress in robes. who believes it holds absolute ability to interpret right and wrong based on what some grumpy old men (it's always men) think, who believe they have a monopoly on interpreting the will of a god. and if you disagree with them, force is used against you within the religious hierachy
this is "religious freedom"? there's no such thing. a true grasp on the concept of freedom and liberty requires that you reject organized religion in your life
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Amen!
why?
This argument, or arguments like it are used in the stupid "prepositional apologetics" arguments. The idea is that you can not know anything so must trust divine revelation..... but
If we can not assume that our memories are roughly accurate (not precise but sort-of OK) and our seances are likewise then nothing meaningful can be said about anything. if your seances or memory are not real then no argument or evidence even divine revelation can be trusted, how do you know that a voice or feeling form god is real? It is just another illusion like anything else, no mater how good it gets. No argument can be made and no progress and no decisions of any sort so it is a pointless and stupid stance.
Arguments based on this stance or arguments like this (that our senses or memories or logic can not be trusted to be roughly accurate) are ultimately self defeating and delusional since they all by definition as arguments rely on all three while arguing that at least one is itself a delusion. Meaningless unprovable arguments like this are not even good enough to be wrong and not worth anybodies time.
I agree. Why does a belief on God have to exclude an acceptance of evolution? Or vice-versa? I believe in God, I also think that evolution is scientific fact. If anything, the wonders of science strengthen my belief and increase my awe of Gods power. There are many mysteries I do not understand, both scientifically and theologically. But I have often wondered, Why couldn't God use evolution as part of the creative process?
I wish I could think of something witty for my sig.
and he is of course as the current fashion requires dismissing the huge body of evidence that shows that There Is An Order to things
i would put that the first couple picoseconds of Time are beyond what Science can state as Truth and also show me an entire line of Fossils that show how a Proto-Quadraped became say a Horse (with complete skeletons at each stage).
oh and how is it that we are finding Fossils in ground that should have been washed off the Land surface a half million years ago??
Every Scientist needs to start assuming
In The Beginning [GOD|BANG]
and then go from there.
(oh and some sort of Plasma explosion can in no way shape or form prove that a Big Bang Occurred)
Any person using FTFY or editing my postings agrees to a US$50.00 charge
Whether we agree to that or not (I'm an atheist so I think Genesis has no more to do with reality than Aztec mythology, but anyways), the question is inevitably centered around the question of what to teach children in a science class. In my view, and in the view of people I know who are Christians, it is not appropriate to teach Genesis in the science classroom, not even in the context of "Genesis and cosmology/geology/evolutionary biology don't need to disagree."
Simply put, it is not appropriate to discuss religion in a science class. How a person reconciles their faith and science is a matter between them, their god, and if they choose, their pastor/priest/rabbi/mullah/whatever.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Damn straight! When my son turned 5 I gave him his first pack of cigarettes and said, "Smoke up, Johnny!" I don't need no stinkin' nanny state!
Fight the power!
Prove to me that your faith is reliable using facts from memory; asshat.
The thing is, faith is just your own intuition. Science can at least be proven and as we learn more we can prove more. We have things called hypotheses because we cannot prove them and haven't tried yet. We have theories because we have tried to prove them and, so far, it looks good but it's not 100%. Then we get to Laws; these we know are true and you can go shove them up your God's ass.
Note: to those who can safely straddle the line of spiritual/religious and scientific, I apologize for my rude demeanor.
-SaNo
Go take another hit off the bong you fucking retard.
If you want to get into some deeper philosophical crap about who's to say *that* memory was not simply created [...] then it really does not matter.
Why is it "crap"? Why does it not matter?
Is it because you don't like to accept that you have started by accepting something without proof, i.e. had faith?
Science continues to be about understanding reality.
Indeed. But we cannot begin understanding reality unless we begin with faith - in our memories.
I dont need to prove my memory, dufus. Thats why I have a wall in my cave, to paint on it. A clay tablet, to write on it. A stone wall, to carve stories on it. Papyrus, later paper, later the press, later this, that, and those. And finally, this thingie here we call a macbook pro 15 in late 2011.
The fact that counciousness is our memory and our memory compresses, sometimes loosing stuff, sometimes modifying and interpreting, cannot be weilded as evidence for the inexistance of shit we write to and ITS reliability. All to the contrary: the fact that we devised stuff to remember better is proof that both our memory sucks and we dont like it.
NO SIG
When you're done congratulating yourself for defeating strawmen, no matter how funny the involuntarily irony of that may be, can you come back to the argument you clearly have nothing in hand for? Haha...
Bill Nye made a simple and important point about why people should encourage their children to learn about evolution. How did you interpret that as a tyrant bossing you around?
Totally agree. I feel like majority of religious people are rational enough to realize that creationism and evolution can go hand in hand, unfortunately, it's the ones who can't accept the idea of God using science that are the loudest people out there...
What's your point?
Well, my qualifications are all in mathematics.
And mathematics is a product of philosophy.
So, yep.
Consider the faiths based on $RELIGIOUS_WORK. Some take $RELIGIOUS_WORK as true. If said $RELIGIOUS_WORK doesn't provide for evolution, and while science can verify that evolution can (be induced to) happen, then $RELIGIOUS_WORK is, at best, incomplete or, at worst, wrong. I don't think the religious fundamentalists like either prospect. By the same token, science cannot *prove* there is/are/were no deities associated with $RELIGIOUS_WORK. I suppose both science and religious go through cycles or refinement of understanding, but in the end, only science will present, in principle, testable questions, whereas religion cannot. For example, fundie Pat Robertson is now claiming people's prayers diverted hurricane Isaac away from Florida. It's a bullsh!t statement being after-the-fact. Prayer can be made to justify anything (there is some video on youtube demonstrating such).
For the record, I believe religion and government are the same: they're both man-made.
That street goes both ways.
No, that's not right. There STILL isn't anything wrong with believing in a higher power, even when you try to "impose" upon others. The problem there is you trying to impose. That's a huge problem. You shouldn't be forcing others to believe in your view. This is exactly what Bill Nye is talking about. That's poor logic reasoning. The problem is with the morons trying to force/impose others to believe what they believe. That's a seperate problem from the fact that they do believe in a higher power. You're the typical person that takes two different concepts, and lumps them into one, and then cries afoul of both, when realistically there is one problem. That's the type of talk that makes the religious people hate the non-religious people. Because instead of attacking their stupidity in forcing others to believe the same, we just attack their belief. Of course they get defensive over that. And frankly, even if we DID change their belief, they would still be assholes. Because then they'd just be people of a different believe system trying to force that down everyone's neck. The problem is NOT the "belief system" the problem is the "forcing" of the belief system.
Well and scientists who hold on to their preconcieved notions derived from flawed analysis can be every bit as dogmatic.
"Who are you to tell me that the Earth revolves around the sun! I'm still a good engineer and plenty of others believe the same as I do! I can teach my kids whatever I want!"
1) Popular ignorance is not intelligence.
2) Being intelligent in once sense does not make you intelligent in all senses.
3) Obviously no one can stop you from teaching a child whatever you want, but it doesn't change that you're being willfully ignorant, and if you teach your children that "God created the two lights" instead of "The moon reflects the sun's light." you're well within your power and a giant asshole to boot.
Ah, solipsism rears it's ugly head.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
It's not the people who don't believe this or that theory that are the problem. It is the people who don't care one way or the other. America is declining not because of a the hard core bible thumpers, America has always had plenty of them. America is declining because there are too many ignorant idiots who don't have to work hard or get an education cause the government is going to take care of them.
It led to an interesting discussion. I posted the following comment:
"I like Bill Nye's approach to a lot of scientific teaching, loved most of his TV show growing up, but he does not in any way put forward an argument for evolution or against creationism in this video. He simply waves his hand and says - without offering a logical, this 'leads-to-that' argument - that by not believing in evolution your world view is inconsistent. I'm afraid that doesn't pass muster for me, though I would be interested in hearing a more in-depth discussion on the subject from him.
Personally, I don't believe in *macro* evolution (one species evolving into another) - and yet my world view is 100% functional and, I believe, logical. The great thing in the end, though, is that if evolution is true my worldview remains intact: evolution itself is not integral to it one way or the other :) I believe God created the universe and everything in it, and while I believe He did it within the literal amount of time described in the Bible it would also be entirely believable that He did so over eons and used evolution in the process - it would not change the fact that He did it!"
My friend replied saying that just because I disagreed with the video didn't mean I should disparage it. I almost couldn't believe what he was saying: I felt like I had been very respectful in my comment, and I was responding to a video that I felt was disparaging my position (not the other way around). Thus I replied with this:
"I in no way meant disrespect! I tried to use very civil words in my comment above, and if I came across impolite in any way then I apologize.
However, I do find it somewhat funny that your reaction would be to accuse me of disparaging something I disagree with when that is exactly what the original video you linked to was itself. Bill Nye, who again I respect greatly for his skill at combining education and entertainment, put forward the following:
1) The idea that the denial of evolution is unique to the US - which I very much doubt, as both Christians and some other religions (Islam, in particular) tend to hold views that contradict with macro evolution.
2) That not believing in evolution - which we cannot measure and observe in a lab - is comparable to not believing in plate tectonics (which we can observe and measure).
3) That we need good scientists and engineers, and therefore should not teach our children creationism. This in effect implies that someone cannot hold a creationist viewpoint and also contribute in those fields, which is preposterous (I personally know several scientists and engineers who hold beliefs similar to my own, and who are still very effective in their work - and I have read the works of many others who are much higher up in their respective fields).
These things all disparage creationist viewpoints, without any actual argument from logic about why evolution is right. That was all I was trying to point out previously, and I tried to do so in every bit as nice and calm of a way as Bill Nye portrayed in his video."
I have not yet heard back from him again.
William George
No need to try again. Still not the same as faith.
Why don't you think he literally did it in a week?
I mean, if he created them at all, if he created them in a day, a week, a few hundred years, then he would have had to create them as if they appeared to have been formed over billions of years by sequence of events following physical properties from an initial singularity.
If he can do that, then surely he can do it in a week. Why not? Why even bother to even take a tiny sprinkling of evidence to go with your blind faith?
And you can teach your children whatever you like; just don't force schools to stop teaching for the good of the public just because you might not believe in something as true.
-SaNo
Prove to me that your faith is reliable using facts from memory; asshat.
That would be begging the question. I can only decide to have faith in my memory and work from there. And so do you, even if you don't like to accept it.
Science can at least be proven and as we learn more we can prove more.
Of course. But all science is based on faith in memory. (Or, more generally, a certain inductive faith.)
Then we get to Laws; these we know are true and you can go shove them up your God's ass.
Oh, but now you're equating faith and God. I'm just talking about faith.
"we need engineers that can build stuff, solve problems"
Even people who don't believe in evolution can still become engineers who "build stuff, solve problems"
Not without a fair amount of mental gymnastics. I've always wanted to sit in on a "Christian Science" class and answer all the questions with "Because God wills it to be so". Seems like an easy A.
Additionally, we accept (as a thought exercise) that there is an omnipotent being, then it could create the universe in such a way that it would seem as if it had existed for eons before its creation. It's possible that such a being could have created the universe just yesterday, with all systems in place, all fossils in the ground, all memories in our heads, which would be completely indistinguishable from a universe that existed for billions of years. After all, such a being is omnipotent.
This does not mean that studying the systems and history of the universe would be fruitless. Of course, it would be completely impossible to prove or disprove, as such an omnipotent being would be capable of masking its existence if it so chose.
I will teach my kids whatever I want to teach them.
I don't think he ever said you can't. What we're talking about is what should be curriculum for students in the public schools. Fortunately you and I pay the taxes that fund these institutions, unfortunately that means we have to come to an agreement on what should be taught in said institutions. Furthermore, if you found Bill Nye to be a good educator with his programs and efforts then perhaps you should take his suggestions as more than telling you what to do. "Tyrant"? Please leave the hyperbole rhetoric to the politicians.
Furthermore: Belief in a creator does not negate thescientific endeavor.
No but we're getting to (well, some of us have crossed it long ago) the point where some of the things that science is teaching us blatantly contradicts several ancient doctrines. And while you can claim that believing the Earth is only 6,000 does not negate the scientific endeavor, it sure hinders an awful lot of fields. You can teach your children whatever you want in your home but in order for them to function in society or for higher learning institutions to accept them as scholars, we need to lay down some ground rules. I'll tell you what, I'll keep writing book reviews and you can tell us how much better off your child is for you teaching them creationism over evolution. Can the rest of us please move forward?
Many scientists over the years have believed in God or a god, even as they were unravelling the mystery of evolution and cosmology.
Sure they have! And some scientists have been racists, liars, bigots, adulterers, murderers, swindlers, politicians and even lawyers! But that doesn't make those actions or ways of life right. Read about the twilight years of Georg Cantor and we'll talk about how smart it is to consider everything a genius claims or believes in to be absolutely true. Unlike a cosmologist espousing about god or Georg Cantor claiming Bacon was Shakespeare, Bill Nye is talking about the scientific community's views on creationism versus evolution. And I can assure you that nobody is publishing in peer reviewed journals about creationism or intelligent design while peer reviewed journals dedicated to evolutionary biology are currently being peer reviewed the world over.
My work here is dung.
That's my only problem with Bill's video: it was guaranteed to trigger the knee-jerk response of "You can't tell me how to raise my kids!". It was spoken from the heart, and as such a lousy piece of propaganda. To convince Americans, you have to weave in freedom "you're free from long dead guys telling you how to live your life!" and money "using the theory of evolution at work makes you more money than if you don't". It's sad, but true.
On more abstract notes: actually, we can. You can tell your kids that there's a giant bearded guy in the sky who is responsible for everything that's happening, and we can tell you that you're wrong and reducing the odds of your kids being successful. If you think someone telling you that you're being an idiot is the same as a tyrant telling his serfs to fork over more wheat bushels, you have unlearned every lesson a serf has ever learned. And finally, Creationism is not the same as belief in god. One deals with the unknowable, the other is just a creation myth that some people decided to take literally.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
Well, for starters, you're conversing with others over the internet. Given many, many people posting here all possess knowledge which I myself do not have, they therefore must be separate entities, and not just figments of my imagination. Therefore, the internet exists, since I am seeing information which I have not previously been aware of.
In fact, the sheer fact that I CAN acquire information in any form means that my memory exists inside of which to place said information.
The existence of the internet just proves that the collection of many memories of varying information was effective enough to create this communication medium which would otherwise have not existed.
How do you know that all this technology is around you? More specifically, how do you know that everything you are looking at does what you think it does?
Also, if philosophy is bullshit then we might as well crawl back to ~C4 BC and start again. This is why there are rarely any bright individuals in computer engineering classes: they simply don't see the value of any learning beyond how electricity works.
What proof do you have that electricity, or philosophy exist?
Why do you think that that is proof?
How do you know you are thinking?
Engineers can play the reduction to the absurd game too. We just understand that it's not productive, so we generally don't jack off on mental masturbation that way. We prefer space elevators and other impractical, but at least possible diversions for that.
The fact you believe religion needs protections means you're a fucking relic who is dangerous to society.
What they know is a lot of talking points and straw men that look like genuine knowledge to someone who isn't familiar with the subject matter. But this does not mean that they actually know the science behind the theories they claim to refute.
Well, for starters, you're conversing with others over the internet.
You remember this.
Given many, many people posting here all possess knowledge which I myself do not have,
And this.
they therefore must be separate entities, and not just figments of my imagination. Therefore, the internet exists,
And you used what you remembered to conclude this.
since I am seeing information which I have not previously been aware of.
As far as you can remember.
This problem is old and familiar. The only thing you can really do is acknowledge that it is exists. Carry on fighting, though...
You cant PROVE anything to another human being, it takes faith on some level. I have no direct personal proof that the Sun is a huge ball of gas, i take it on faith that the scientists are telling me the truth. Their claims are lent credence by their methods and willingness to accept they are possibly wrong.
Good-bye
No, but the rejection of critical thinking and rationality necessary to defend the belief in the biblical creation story in the face of contrary evidence is something that stunts the mental development of children in all other areas of science and understanding. The belief in biblical creation is itself not the problem, but rather one of the most common causes of the problem. It would also be bad if they were taught to reject physics in defense of a geocentric flat earth story.
Who can argue with a Guy who creates a world in 7 days before he even has days to create it with? ....too bright, so he started over again and then got seriously confused. Guy then said "To hell with it. Let there confusion." and never looked back.
And Guy said: "Let there be days" and there were days and Guy saw that the days were
Yep, from what i hear a hand full of people can build an ark that weighs close to 9000 tons out of gopher wood in about a week's time and fill it with 100,000+ animals with food and shelter for all for over a year with only hand tools...
--- If the bible proves the existence of God, then Superman comics prove the existence of Superman.
This is your big concern in a society where little Johnny can hardly do 8th grade math, let alone Physics 101 or even Earth Science?
While I agree with all the usual bantering that goes on around here about evolution should be taught (blah blah blah), you people are really missing the big picture. Today's science education isn't suffering because of creationism/evolution. It's suffering because kids don't bother with nearly any school work at all. Money isn't a fix. The community is more involved with their TVs than their children. This decline will continue as long as you continue to give merit to strawmen.
God told me your faith is really screwed up and I should help you. :)
Seriously though, "faith" is, in my opinion, the second most abused and misused word from the bible, "Hell" being the first.
I believe in God, but not religion; I have spent decades studying the bible (including multiple translations -- don't know which ones Lucifer may have tampered with) and faith is NOT needed, God wants you to find him, but he wants you to put in the effort too.
My favourite question for religious people is "What fruit did Adam and Eve eat?" -- It's answered on the very first page of most bibles, and yet so many will say "Apple"... How could anyone want to stand in front of God (or Jesus) and explain how they didn't even bother trying to understand the first page of the book that will bring them salvation? I'm terrified, whether God is real or not, I'm doing my best to make sure when I stand up I at least have a chance. And this is just one example, there are hundreds more still.
And considering how many churches Jesus went to, I don't think once a week church attendance may count for much :(
What is even funnier is that the Bible tells up how many people will go to heaven in Revelations (I know it is debated a lot, and many translations change it, and many churches have alternate theories, etc) but in the end, it states it quite bluntly. 144,000 will go to heaven, are you really that sure you'll be one of them that you would put it on faith alone? How many other millions are doing the same?
Anyways, good luck, and start reading that bible and asking the hard questions, the ones your pastor, priest, brother, or other religion leader doesn't want to answer or just hand-waves away and then you can know God (in my opinion) versus just taking it on faith.
Creationism is not the problem. It is merely the outward manifestation of it. The problem is mindless evangelicals that expect blind devotion and for you to check your brain at the door. This creationism nonsense is just the most visible part of their worldview. These people are extremists even by the standards of other religious people.
They're like the Amish except with no balls. They make a lot of separatist noises and then just whine and pretend they are somehow victimized by society.
It's also useful to note that this lot were the only people to defend those recent "legitimate rape" remarks.
Creationism is just a symptom of a much more fundemental problem.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
I explained why it does not matter.
No, we do not need "faith" in our memories. Only that whatever is in them is the subject of our scientific study.
Really. It does not matter if the entire universe is nothing but a figment of my imagination and nothing and nobody else is real. If I can still use science to observe and predict, then science is useful for that.
And that is how it is different from faith.
Your memory is not reliable. Objective testing has shown that beyond a shadow of a doubt.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Yep, the guy with multiple Ph.D's disagrees with the your particular brand of invisible sky daddy, must be a dumbass.
There is no memory shortage. yes I have heard of XFCE. Go away.
Mommy, what did they do in Sodom that was sinful?
If the practiced Sodomy in Sodom, did they practice Gomorrahy in Gomorrah?
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
Well, since you refuse to accept memory as being in any way reliable, I say that your memory of having qualifications in mathematics are invalid, and your only real qualification is as an alligator wrestler. It doesn't matter that you can't remember wrestling any alligators, your memory is not acceptable as evidence. Now go find some alligators and wrestle them. I believe you'll find them hiding in the trees around your house. They're the flat green things - be careful, they're dangerous.
I think therefore I am - that one is easy.
And I don't care whether what I am seeing right now exists - all that matters is that I perceive its existence.
But I can't be so sure about one second ago. This is why I have to have faith in my memory, i.e. trust it without proof.
You do as well, of course. Embrace your faith.
Engineers can play the reduction to the absurd game too.
Engineers never reduce enough. Otherwise they would be mathematicians, and not be so laughably angered by philosophy.
Oh no, words from a private citizen, how terrible. Your false equivalency falls flat when compared to the actual legislation being effected by people who use government to coerce people into doing what they want to do.
Discourse, discussion and debate are fine and useful within a societal context. If you don't want your beliefs and actions questioned by anyone, nor want to question them yourself, I suggest you head up into the mountains and find a nice cave to hermit in.
But explaining away something by referring to that higher power's whims can be wrong.
When all is said and done, we'll find that we were created by various alien races. So Evolutionists and Creationists let's chill out and enjoy the ride.
> Belief in a creator does not negate the scientific endeavor.
Yes it does. Science is based on empiricism, not in belief in a 'Holy Book' without questioning.
If you train your children to accept things from authority on faith, you are off to a bad start.
the expansion and contraction we see at long ranges could simply be the crest and trough of something like waves on the surface of the ocean, a minor local event in a universe infinite in time and space. that's what i believe
the big bang fits too neatly with creation myths of abrahamic religions
what proof do i have for my belief? none
just a sense from looking at history and how anthropomorphic thinking and self-centeredness gradually gives way to finding ourselves at the center of a vast, uncaring universe. i feel the big bang theory is the last gasp of mankind's religious prejudices about reality affecting our science
oh and look, the big bang theory started with a priest at a catholic school, of course. who else would see the creation of the universe in this way, in a mind saturated with the "let there be light" family of books:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges_Lema%C3%AEtre
the big bang theory will be upended. i have no proof
just a gut feeling from the trajectory of mankind's thinking and what reality has shown in contradiction. the big bang theory is another creation myth, like any other
it's turtles, all the way down
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turtles_all_the_way_down
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I accept my memory as reliable. My acceptance is an act of faith.
The same applies to you, whether you want to admit it or not.
Survival of the Fittest is scientific justification for war, conquest, oppression and slavery. Survival of the Fittest used to be justification for sexism, racism and overt class privilege. Christianity is love they neighbor and do unto others. Darwinism is the right of force and power to do whatever it wants.
When Rome fell, the Catholic Church picked the Philosophical Torch from the Greeks. The history of western culture and human rights and Christianity cannot be considered without Christianity. The Catholic Church was the most powerful political entity on the planet for a thousand years or so. Until about 1820 or so when some fellow said 'God is Dead' all the best, brightest minds and most powerful politicians of the world believed in God and Christianity.
Don't get scared and hide yourself in ignorance and intolerance when the main stream media trots out a few redneck cartoon character christians. It is called Hick-sploitation. That is the name for this type of deception and opinion molding.
Might is Right. The ends justifies the means. Survival of the Fittest. This is the whole enchalada of what you embrace when you fly the Banner of Darwinism.
The proper thing to do is to read religion, philosopy, science and political theory and come up with a system of Morality appropriate to this time and place. Not some crusty old agenda that is nearly 200 years old.
The appropriate thing is for all of us to have a discussion and a say in what morals we want and how we want to live as a group. Or if God is really dead, do morals exist?
Should the republicans and Darth Cheney be deciding your morals?
How about "I did not have sexual relations with that woman" Clinton deciding the morality for your wife and sister?
The 3 month fetus when taken out from the mother's womb will die.
The infant has survived that event.
When you're carrying a baby inside you and it will force its way out YOUR clacker, THEN you can decide what to do with YOUR body and give birth.
In the mean time, the LIVING WOMAN who is having the baby has HER body and HER right. Why should that be abridged because she has a foreign body parasite living in her?
PS 80% of fertilised eggs don't make it to the womb to gestate even to zygote stage. This means that NATURE is committing AT LEAST 4x as many abortions as humans.
Science must submit to Christian Oppression. Thanks be to God!
You seem to be using "ignorance" in a different way than the rest of us. But maybe you will come to your senses if your kid decides to forgo education in order to seek out a Jedi temple to learn the Force...
This is the kind of thread I save my Mod points for...
Awwww crap I posted.
Not really, it goes both ways. Suddenly buildings with the 10 commandments can't have them because it's offenseive to people that don't believe in that. Honestly, everyone (and I really mean everyone) should just stop being so easily offended.
As a friend at work says, he's part of the church of Bill and Ted, there's one rule "Be excellent to each other." If everyone followed that one rule there would be no need for any other rules... or religions.
--- If the bible proves the existence of God, then Superman comics prove the existence of Superman.
No more than anyone else. Whereas the Religious Right has actual politicians in office pushing woman-hating laws.
While I have no love for such fairy tales, the First Amendment guarantees that won't happen.
Yeah but he's not nearly as powerful as the Religious Right is.
I'd argue that, far and away, deliberately keeping children ignorant by giving them tightly controlled, fundamentalist christian approved "educations" rife with nontheories like intelligent design is an actual threat to this nation.
Agreed. We should just cut the insurance companies completely and go single payer.
Indeed. And when it comes to health, when you have an emergency you can just die!
Except in a civilized world, we work to prevent people from dying needlessly. Even when idiots like Jenny McCarthy and the Anti-vaxxers push to allow communicable diseases to spread, and "christian scientists" convince their children that they really do want to die from their treatable ailment.
No, but they can certainly subsidize those terrible, cleaner options. Or we could go the other way and cut oil subsidies.
No, tyrrany is something else entirely. Go ahead though, let the Religious Right get real power. That will show you tyrrany.
"And what's the deal with forcing me to buy hospital insurance. "
And there it is, the real reason you are pissing and moaning. I wondered what's up your ass, and there it is. Birther too, I suppose?
Why? Why is it needed to assume something that you know for a fact you cannot prove?
I know free will likely doesn't exist, I still live as if it did. I also know that everything I have a word for doesn't exist in the way I perceive them to exist either, and to my best knowledge everything is everything. Yet I still say "I" and manage to eat food and whatnot. I still have them, I just don't have too much stakes in these illusions.
Which of course pisses people off who don't enjoy that luxury.
The Real World, an objective view of existance, is impossible from within it. So what you're really talking about is delusion and insanity. It's okay to not know, but it's insanity to pretend you do.
Which is, of course, the irony in all this. Lots of comments here by not really bright people who are proud of not being blind believers, as if that would make them smart in the least; they have no impatience for the unsolvable uncertainties of our existance, and would like to replace them with webs of words which ultimately all fall down when inspected.
"But we're not doing that, they [e.g. religious people] do that!!eleven". Awwww, cute. Here, have a false dichotomy medal.
Science depends on processing observations.
Processing observations requires trust in memory.
You thus cannot do science without memory.
You thus cannot use science to prove reliability of memory.
Your trust in your memory is thus an act of faith. As is your trust in science.
That's OK, though. Once you've accepted it, all science is good and proper.
Yes, we all had the thought in our first philosophy class "what if all memory is wrong!?!?!?". Then we hit double-digits in age, and got over ourselves. Some, on the other hand, still persist. Congratulations on being stuck in middle-school philosophy.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
And faith that remains in contradiction to evidence is mental illness.
Who need faith? Why not have it both ways?
1. Start with the working assumption that your memory is completely unreliable. Reason through all of the conclusions about the nature of the reality that you can arrive at based on that assumption. (I'll wait here)
OK, now let's start with the opposite working assumption:
2. Assume that your memory has some validity. Now work through all of the conclusions about the nature of reality that you can arrive at based on that assumption (keeping in the back of your mind, of course, that your conclusions are all contingent upon that assumption).
That's OK, so is everybody else.
Im sorry, I have argued with my friends about this for hours... It simply backs you up into a logical corner where there is no rational means of escape. Its like arguing with a small child that simply wont admit its wrong, and starts thinking of other silly ideas to fill in the gaps.
You are free to believe whatever fantasies you want, but the real question is whether or not you are capable of setting aside those beliefs when it is time to do science or engineering work. If someone is just not capable of establishing such a separation, what are they going to do when other beliefs are challenged, a common occurrence in science?
Palm trees and 8
Scientifically, there's no use in debating philosophy, ethics, etc. either. They're orthogonal issues, except when stupid creationists try to take ancient writings as literal truth.
It is possible to believe that God created the world and to be a very good scientist at the same time.
Left-wingers try to present a narrative where this isn't possible, in order to falsely use science as a proxy weapon against religion.
I used to think that pointing this out had a point - nowadays I don't think they can be cured as long as they live.
Quite. I should perhaps have said "sufficiently reliable".
But I'm just toying with these clowns, angered by the idea that science can't prove itself, who seem to think there is an answer to this old and routine philosophical problem.
I guess the typos should be obvious enough, fix and parse accordingly, if you can. Otherwise, don't even tell me, I don't give a fuck... I'm not trying to convince anyone of anything, I'm telling a bunch of people why I find them lame and mediocre and dumb, and brownshirts in spe. In turn they don't care about that, either, so all is well ^^
Why is it "crap"? Why does it not matter?
Because such a train of thought leads nowhere useful. The end of this line of thought is, "Everything may, or may not be real, including me." Well... okay. Now what?
He said it himself "we" need them. Who we? Not the idiots we. They maybe dumb, but they ain't that dumb. They keep their kids stupid and they win.
I see what you are saying. Jesus was a carpenter, so you are saying Jesus crafted the different animals by hand. I understand your point now.
(poe's law disclaimer: yes I am joking)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe's_law
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
'I say to the grownups, if you want to deny evolution and live in your world, in your world that's completely inconsistent with everything we observe in the universe, that's fine, but don't make your kids do it because we need them. We need scientifically literate voters and taxpayers for the future. We need people that can — we need engineers that can build stuff, solve problems.'
I love the arrogant presumption that my children are a public resource at the collective's disposal. The last I checked, they were individuals entitled to pursue happiness in any way that suited them, not resources at Mr. Nye's disposal tasked with building whatever kind of world he wants to live in. Maybe they have other ideas about what kind of world they want to live in?
Assholes like this guy worry me a lot more than any creationist.
Progressivism: Parasites helping parasites to help themselves - to other people's stuff.
No one said you shouldn't believe in god, not even Bill Nye. He did say you shouldn't believe in creationism. If you've chosen to shoehorn your deity into the tiny niche of having created every form of life on the planet in 6 days despite a mountain of physical evidence to the contrary, that's your own issue.
Never understood people's tendency to believe in a god of the gaps... don't they realize that the gaps are always getting smaller?
When a culture's belief in a mystical diety and the adherence to mythological writings of primitive people thousands of years ago impede real scientific and social progress of a nation, I will not sit quiet and act like it's okay for them to continue having those beliefs. I *wish* religion were harmless, but it does far more harm than good. And the good, charitable things that religion does inspire can happen just as easily without it. If you want to believe in god, then do so. But for the sake of humanity, do not brainwash your children with those fantasies. *At least* let them make up their own minds when they become an adult if they want to be Christian or Bhuddist or whatever.
That's by far the highest probability, Hazel, as all the evidence points that way; whereas the concept of "the world is illusion" is not borne out by experimentation, observation, or any other tool we have at our disposal. You can come back and argue your case with some authority when it has more behind it than "gee, what if!" And guess what? In order to do that, you have to leave the realm of philosophy.
I go with the model that works. Science uniformly and dependably works; technology uniformly and dependably works; religion and superstition and pretending an unprovable idea is valid on equal terms just because you thought of it... none of that is worth more than a laugh at a party. Except to "philosophers", who are suffering from a massive case of confirmation bias -- having wasted so much time and energy on nonsense, they have to pretend their process is worthwhile, or their self-image collapses in a heap. Most people aren't strong enough to face reality after embracing nonsense. Hence religion, superstition, and this kind of speculative "reality is an illusion" philosophy.
That's what the evidence says, Hazel. The evidence doesn't indicate -- in any way -- that the world is other than our instruments say it is. See, that's the lovely thing. We observe; we develop instruments, like voltmeters; the voltmeters measure the results of our designs; these results confirm that our interactions are doing just what we think they should. It's a complex web of inter-related observations, one which does an excellent job of explaining and justifying itself -- in contrast to speculation that all is illusion, a situation neither engendered by anything other than your imagination, or confirmed by any kind of observation.
See, science (and in derivative fashion, technology) has this very powerful set of benefits behind it: It works. It's self-consistent. It's productive. Philosophy is in no way endowed with these same characteristics. Which makes it not only comfortable, but productive, to go with science.
Ideas don't deserve equal consideration just because they're ideas. That's the bottom line, and that's where religion, superstition, and philosophical mumbo-jumbo all fall flat on their faces. When you can put something behind your speculation that all is illusion (or any variant thereof), then fine, come back to the table, and we can give it serious consideration. In the meantime, it's baseless speculation, and not particularly valuable baseless speculation at that. For value to accrue, you have to demonstrate some verifiable, repeatable connection to reality. If you can't get to that state... you have only ideas of no real value. Or IOW, philosophy.
Let us bow to our masters in white coats. They are infallible and without corruption. The business side of science never corrupts the scientific method.
http://pigeonchess.com/playing-with-pigeons/
I prefer "cogito ergo es"
"I think therefore you is"
Mon chien, il n'a pas du nez. Comment scent-il? TrÃs mauvais!
By the way, it seems like this conflict between your religion and your scientific or mathematical background is causing you some pains.
I've seen several other people try to develop these weird and wonderful theories or apparent logic as to how "faith" is on the same footing or equally valid as science, or even for why god exists, would you believe. But all of them have always reminded me of the quest for perpetual motion machines, where people lose sight of the forest for the trees and come up with ever more crazy contraptions to achieve their preconceived ideas of what is possible.
If you want help sleeping at night, I offer you some advice. Don't try to come up with any more of these things. Don't bother arguing with people on the internet about it. Accept that your science and your religion live in completely separate and incompatible realms. "Don't cross the streams", if you will.
And yes, that does entail accepting evolution as the scientific explanation for the species of life on earth. That is no different than accepting the world is more than 6000 years old according to a similarly large plethora of evidence. Or that pi is not exactly 3.
-- Nicholas Humphrey, addressing Amnesty International
The comparisons from here on in get worse and worse as he continues to argue that freedom of speech should *never ever* be compromised....except to suppress ideas he disagrees with. The full speech is one long Author Tract about how we should implement utterly draconian Soviet-style anti-religious policies banning parents from bringing up their children in their own beliefs in favour of forcing them to bring them up in *his*.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
god is fiction you twat.
... fwiw, one of the most competent engineers that I know is a home-schooled dyed-in-the-wool creationist, has a gaggle of kids, goes to Church on Sundays. And not just regular-old-competent but rather a go-to guy for building stuff and solving problems whose ability to understand the interactions of a dozen complex systems is beyond question. That doesn't prove much, but working with a person like that reminds me on a daily basis that theology and engineering can be (at least for one person) completely orthogonal areas of life.
This reminds me of one of the planks of Mark Graber's post at Balkinization on amending the American People. Read the whole thing, but I've excerpted one relevant bit:
Creationism is just a symptom of a much more fundemental problem.
I see what you did there.
Ceci n'est pas un sig.
And yet here I am receiving about three dozen responses which insist there is an answer.
Plus yours, which dismisses a problem as childish simply because it's intracable. Or, more likely, because it requires every logical man to accept faith ("I agree" would have been sufficient, chump - no need for the insults).
Tell me, "Neutron Cowboy", when you studied this problem in "middle school", which texts did you find to approach it best?
You know... I love philosophy most of all because it really angers shallow westerners. It makes them all hot under the collar like no other subject. Even the most basic 101 questions get them all in a tiz. No! stop thinking about existence! we need to play/write iPhone apps!
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-speciation.html
Your worldview is ignorant, and not based on where science is. Evidence for speciation has been around for decades. Do you always base your beliefs on nonsense that has to be over a hundred years old by now?
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
I'm an engineer and I believe we were created by a loving and merciful God. Jesus is pretty awesome :) To anyone who reads this post, and to all who don't you are loved!
The flying spaghetti monster is quite capable of using DNA and RNA and quantum mechanics and other theories which we have yet to learn about to make people and the world.
Bunk,
There's no reason to believe in creationism OR a god.
Sure, if you redefine creationism, but the accepted meaning of the word right now means the belief that creatures were literally willed into being by a deity (presumably with an I Dream of Jeannie pop-in effect) rather than evolving from lower lifeforms.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creationism
If it weren't for your ignorance about this you might be an all-round intelligent guy.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Among other things not appropriate for children are Absolutism and Intolerance of conflicting perspective.
Atheists get pissed about religious people forcing their perspective on others but fail to see how they are doing the same. At the core of this whole debate is people failing to respect and be tolerant of others who do not share the same world view. That's what needs to be addressed. Otherwise, you may was well bring out the pitchforks and head up the witch hunt because that's how history is going to repeat itself.
Believe what you want, respect others may not see it that way. It's not OK to persecute people for being, or thinking, differently. Teach your kids that and everything will be better than it is now.
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
2) That not believing in evolution - which we cannot measure and observe in a lab
Any Genetically engineered food you happen to be eating uses the same theory and principal as evolution. That food however, was made by humans in a controlled environment. Willful ignorance, and this is why I can’t discuss this with anyone... the easiest way to lose friends is to attempt discussing Religion or Politics
"Millions of years" "God doesn't exist" and "common ancestor" have exactly nothing to do with knowing about and using observable, repeatable, usable things that are actually science and not science fiction.
Bill Nye is just being a bigot if he think being a Creationist prevents you from using science.
Nothing science has actually observed does anything to negate the idea of intelligent design.
Intelligent Design is about understanding how God did it and how his creations work. Evolution (in the Bill Nye sense) tries to make God irrelevant which is just stupid and not science at all.
Work Safe Porn
They are THEY'RE humans.
What the fuck are you like?
When it comes to the "right" of the fetus over another human, THEIRS rules supreme. As soon as they drop out into meatspace their rights are ENTIRELY AT YOUR WHIM.
DO YOU REALISE HOW STUPID YOU ARE?
And you will be raising similar fuckwitted idiots if you get your way.
YOU are fine with tyrants bossing people around as long as YOU are the tyrant.
Your statement is only true if you are correct and He doesn't exist.
If He does, then believing in Him has a use - even for a scientist. If He does exist and is all powerful and can operate outside of the physical laws that He set up for the universe to work in - what us plain folk would call miracles or divine healing for example, then any scientific experiment done that doesn't come out the expected way has one other variable that could have been the cause. Depending on the nature of God and the covenants established between Him and His creation that the scientist is ignoring, it may have an eternal use as well at least from that scientist's individual perspective. In addition, if He does exist and the scientist is on good terms with Him, the scientist might ask for some divine insight into problems that would advance science at a more rapid rate.
We've had a long period of both scientific and technological advancement, and I'm very glad for that because living in the world of a few centuries ago wouldn't have been much fun compared to today. After all, technology is letting us have this conversation in the first place.
Who knows what the next few centuries will bring? Maybe, if there is a higher power that is tired of the attitudes of scientists and engineers, He'll throw up some roadblocks or intentionally mess with them. Maybe He'll just take them out early. At least one God described in human history has been known to take out unbelievers from time to time and all He promised was that He wouldn't take most everybody out at once again in a particular way. But even messing with experiments would keep things interesting now that the scientists think they know everything. Neither would be very good for the advancement of our world.
You certainly can "do" science, because you can prove that your memory is satisfactorily reliable within the reality that you observe, simply by making observations and verifying them.
Yes, once you accept that, all science is good and proper. It is not, however, "faith" in the same way as religion is. Not in the slightest.
What if we used the belief to get money to fund science? Now there is niche!
Rewrite that post omitting all sentences which have required you to remember one or more experimental results.
Can you remember what I'm actually arguing, AC? Surely your memory isn't that bad.
Good engineering requires design and creation. The alternative is kludgy hardware and spaghetti code. Just sayin' :)
If your belief in God hinges on the particulars of how specieces developed in history, I'd say the real problem is how weak your faith is. People throughout history have had to endure far more crushing scientific findings that "the earth is more than 10k years old" which isn't even stated in the bible. How about a Heliocentric solar system? Germs? Cells? If I remember correctly the first time they found sperm under a microscope it was rather catastrophic to the idea of conception.
No, it isn't, but it's great the way the everyone on the Internet has a medical qualification.
Anyway, do you remember the evidence you used to uncover a contradiction?
Teach faith in your church's sunday school. Teach real science in schools (we pay for that with our tax money - whatever fairytale you wish to propagate over the weekend on your own dollar is your own business).
No, the headline isn't a good summary. However, if it had read "Young-Earth Creationism Is Not Appropriate For Children" it would have been just fine.
The belief that the world is billions of years old and that biological diversity has grown gradually through a process of mutation and natural selection is in no way incompatible with the belief that God created the world or that He has guided the process. From Asa Gray- said by Darwin to be Darwin's best advocate- to the present day, hundreds of millions of people, including a good number of evolutionary biologists, have held both of these beliefs.
Evolution is, however, inconsistent with an overly literal and naive reading of the first chapter of Genesis. Those misguided individuals who promote the idea that Genesis was a scientific account and try to force schools to ignore the mountains of evidence for evolution and/or to "teach the controversy" are a threat to basic science education. As a science educator Nye has an interest in helping combat that threat. But he is not trying to pick a fight with all theists here.
"faith" is just another name for a mental illness with the level of dysfunction directly corresponding to the certainty of the belief
you can bet that future generations will look back on this time with the same disdain and sympathy as we look back on the ancient peoples who sacrificed animals in order to make the sun come up the next day
I wish I had mod points for this one, someone vote the parent up.
Science and religion are not incompatible in the least. Science is not an attack against God, it is goal is to understand how the world and those beings that populate it were created and the rules that govern their existence. It does not have anything to do with the question if there was or was not a creator. It has no opinion on that as a matter of fact. Science and Religion address completely different classes of problems. I am a firm advocate of teaching evolution and countless other theories supported by evidence. I believe to teach anything else in our science classes is deep folly. It goes contrary to the scientific method, and will not make good scientists. Don't bring your why to my science class, its going to confuse the students horribly.
Religion is about the mystery and that which can not be known. I am a practicing Catholic, and I have a deep faith that there is a creative force behind the universe. That does not mean that I am naive and believe that stories told to and by an ancient people can be the whole truth. Try to explain things like the principle of least time, quantum mechanics, or the geometry of spacetime to someone five or tens thousand years ago. You can't, so you tell things in allegory and stories. If you believe that the bible is the exact word of God (which I do not), do you think he would try to tell it how it is? Or would he make broad brush strokes and make sure the principles are communicated without worrying about too much about the mechanism? Religion has little to do with how things were done, religion tries to answer something that can't be supported by evidence, but must be taken on faith.
Take science for what it is, the beautiful pursuit of how the world works and the rules that govern its creation and continued existence. Religion is about something else, it is about believing and having faith in something greater then oneself. For those that do believe, science shows us the brush strokes of our creator. It doesn't tell us that he does not exist. So quit worrying about the scientists and engineers of the world teaching your children that organisms have DNA that changes over time, and those mutations and adaptions bring about new organisms. It doesn't hurt their belief in a higher power, in fact it should only reinforce it.
Jeff | MemVance - Memory Advanced | View my blog on memory and study techniques
Evolution, in its current state, is religion, though.
Define religion and then tell me that the what-we-understand-today-about evolution doesn't fit that to a T. In fact, let's go over the gradeschool definition:
Evolution is an organism's way of adapting over the course of millions of years to become a completely different organism in order to survive in a habitat in which the original organism would no longer thrive.
-- A basic definition that's obviously incomplete, has exceptions, etc. but covers most of the bases in the theory. Now tell me: How is that not religion? How do you not look at that, reasonably, and realized it's completely fucked-up theory that's full of stupid and guesswork? "Takes millions of years" is the first clue. We haven't been monitoring it for millions of years. A con man would say "Millions of years" so he could never be proven wrong. We simply don't have the number of fossils it would take to support such a claim. (So the tiemframe gives the theory a little elbow room, so what?). We also don't have the realtime observations to support it. Millions of years is hundreds of thousands of generations for horses, but billions of generations for, say, fruitflies. The closest we've come to a realtime observation would be seeing a bacteria get over its citrus allergy.
Second -- It assumes that the organism's internal, blind workings can predict, accurately, not only that the environment WILL change, but HOW it will change, and adapt accordingly, MILLIONS OF YEARS before the environment changes (as environmental changes on the scale that necessitate evolution don't take millions of years. They take thousands.) I could write a thousand pages on why this is so stupid, but no one would listen, because you'll just "explain it away" -- which is precisely what religious zealots do when confronted with truth that shatters their doctrines. "Only a tenth of a percent adapt correctly, and the rest go extinct!" Oh ok. Whatever.
Third -- We assume that everything in our nature is product of evolution. Comparing apes to men, this is simply ridiculous, especially given the supposed timescales. To assume that evolution changed us from a tree-swinging monkey into what we are today -- within ~3 million years -- considering that each change needs millions of years to make... From the attraction to breasts, to the colors of our hair, to the thickness of our fingernails, the way our hair grows (or doesn't grow), the way we poop, the stomach bacteria we farm, the way we speak, the way we write, the way testosterone and estrogen affect us, to our gestational periods to this and that -- there are simply too many thousands of variables and factors to consider being beneficial to our race that we are FORCED to assume have mutated, correctly, over the extremely short duration in which men have been on the planet -- in even the most generous timeframes.
Fourth -- The Galapagos islands are quietly considered ideal circumstances to view evolution -- but they are and lack everything we believe drives evolution -- predators, biodiversity, adversity, food shortages, mating competitions, etc. Our models are obviously whack, but that doesn't stop us from preaching them as not only gospel truths -- but gospel truths that only idiots would deny.
Well, I'm not afraid of being called an idiot, because I can see very plainly that this emperor has no clothes. Not even Bill Nye has the power to dress him with his rationalizations.
I like Bill Nye's approach to a lot of scientific teaching, loved most of his TV show growing up, but he does not in any way put forward an argument for evolution or against creationism in this video. He simply waves his hand and says - without offering a logical, this 'leads-to-that' argument - that by not believing in evolution your world view is inconsistent. I'm afraid that doesn't pass muster for me, though I would be interested in hearing a more in-depth discussion on the subject from him.
There is plenty of good popular science literature out there that answers this question thoroughly. You can start at Amazon.
Personally, I don't believe in *macro* evolution (one species evolving into another) - and yet my world view is 100% functional and, I believe, logical.
Your world view is not logical, because the separation into "macro" and "micro" evolution is not logical in the first place. Your definition is inherently flawed, because the very notion of "species" is an artificial human construct that is useful for categorization, but does not have any strict definition and does not correspond to anything definite in real world. As two distinct populations evolve, eventually they diverge far enough that we start calling them different species, but that boundary is pretty arbitrary. And basic logic indicates that if "micro" evolution takes place, then, given sufficiently large time period, it will inevitably transform into "macro" as differences accumulate.
The idea that the denial of evolution is unique to the US - which I very much doubt, as both Christians and some other religions (Islam, in particular) tend to hold views that contradict with macro evolution.
The largest Christian denomination, Roman Catholics, do not consider evolution to contradict their views - that's an official Catholic dogma. Most European Protestants don't have a problem with it, either, nor do the majority of Orthodox. So, in the Christian world at least, denial of evolution is pretty much a US-only thing - it happens elsewhere, but on a much smaller margin to the point where other believers consider such people kooks. Only in US 45% of all residents not only reject evolution, but believe in young Earth creationism.
Similarly, Islam is not anti-evolution. In fact, its creation story is more ambiguous, because it speaks of "stages" of creation rather than "days", so it's easier to interpret it metaphorically right away. Even historically, Muslims have actually been pretty acceptive of evolution, including evolution of man - just as with Christians, it can all be easily reconciled by considering evolution itself a divinely guided process, a God's tool of creation. Creationism in Islam is restricted to a few countries, like Turkey, and even there only to some fundamentalist schools of thought within Islam, not the entire population.
That not believing in evolution - which we cannot measure and observe in a lab
Of course we can measure and observe it in the lab - we routinely do just that on bacterial cultures and some insects.
The Real World, an objective view of existance, is impossible from within it. So what you're really talking about is delusion and insanity. It's okay to not know, but it's insanity to pretend you do.
Which is, of course, the irony in all this. Lots of comments here by not really bright people who are proud of not being blind believers, as if that would make them smart in the least; they have no impatience for the unsolvable uncertainties of our existance, and would like to replace them with webs of words which ultimately all fall down when inspected.
Well said. It does interest me that a simple question provokes so much emotion, though.
Or perhaps I should be glad - sometimes people grow up, look back and realise that, when they've become emotional, it's because they had't really understood something but didn't want to accept it.
Technically your number 3 is correct, but the sort of cognitive errors (such as in your number 2) by failure to accept reality, even in a limited fashion, would seem to have to potential to limit them.
Plate tectonics cannot be "put in a lab" either and require significant time scales also. Yet you put macro evolution (the instantiation of new species from previous species) which has been observed and measured also, in a different category.
Simply because it disagrees with an irrational (not based in observed reality with logical and critical thought applied) view you fail to even realize you apply a different thought process to it(or so I read into your post).
The vast amounts of evidence supporting evolution (both micro and macro) makes operating with any other assumption illogical and irrational without equally substantial and solid evidence.
Mcyroft
https://signup.leagueoflegends.com/?ref=4c3ed6600b6ea
Useful mathematics are always rigid scientific metaphor; philosophy is speculation on the fundamental nature of knowledge, existence and reality. Math is science. You can't develop it beyond the trivial without using scientific method (and even the trivial benefits from this.)
Consider the arrow of time; the physics math works in either direction, and as it turns out, there's evidence for that (as demonstrated by relativity and the observation vector across space-time when the observer is approaching or receding from the observed.) Because the physics is solid, we had reason to think that the specific metaphor, that is, the math, was telling us something solid as well, and so it was.
Really not on board with the idea that math is a product of philosophy. A product of thinking, yes. A product of speculation on the fundamental nature of things... no. It's the other way around. Math acquires relevance and respect when it *matches* the fundamental nature of things. Otherwise, it is meaningless. base 10: 2+3=4 is math; but it's meaningless, because it doesn't match the fundamental nature of reality. base 10: 2+3=5, on the other hand, is science and provides meaningful tools and context with science, or without it. Not so for philosophy -- unless philosophy is just parroting the science. And if that's the case... then philosophy's value is questionable at best.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
You are literally insane if you put any stock in these ideas. Your mind would be utterly disconnected from reality at a fundamental level. YOU'RE SAYING REALITY ISN'T REAL. Do we have to put faith in some concrete connection between perception and reality? Yes. It's called being sane.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
They can believe in fairy stories and screw around with education to their heart's delight. Then countries like China that don't deny reality will pass them by and eventually trample them.
I have no problem with teaching evolution in schools. It should be taught because that's how things work. However, I don't see what creationism has to do with engineering. Just go look at Cologne Cathedral, for instance, and you can see that great engineering can be accomplished without any knowledge of evolution.
Proverbs 21:19
He is an idiot - we all know the flying spaghetti monster created us; there is unfalsifiable evidence of it, though we reject that dogma.
"We are born. We live. We die." Well... okay. Now what?
Yeah, 'cause up until the theory of evolution came rolling around, taxpayers, voters, and engineers were incredibly incompetent. Amazing how belief in evolution completely changed the field of engineering, as well as increased voters ability to pick the wrong/right candidate, and force people to pay their taxes.
You failed science class didn't you?
Science is about creating theories and working to prove or disprove them. Scientists never ask for unquestioning obedience, they want you to be able to verify their work. We don't give credibility to scientists that don't provide evidence or ways to duplicate their results.
Science isn't about magic or faith. All civilizations will eventually come up with the same scientific theories - the same obviously isn't true for religion. If we as a society want to progress forwards technologically and scientifically we need to push rational thinking and science on kids, not blindly believing centuries old myths.
Personally, I don't believe in *macro* evolution (one species evolving into another) - and yet my world view is 100% functional and, I believe, logical. ... I believe He did it within the literal amount of time described in the Bible
Hell even your use of language is inconsistent, referring to one somebody as "He" and another as "he". That's the problem with crazy... you don't even realize that your world view is illogical and inconsistent.
I have not yet heard back from him again.
We isolate extremely crazy people into psych wards to protect from them doing harm. Your ex friend is doing the same thing, just on a much smaller scale... the safest way to deal with an irrational person is to just not interact with them. You just never know when something irrational like not capitalizing a pronoun is going to start the next Inquisition.
No, I just don't believe that speciation is evidence for true macro evolution:
http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/cfl/species-kind
William George
Evangelicals don't believe in "God". They believe in "God of the Old Testament", and in particular adhere to a literalist interpretation of scripture, both Old and New.
Yes, you can point out all kinds of issues and flaws in the theology. These issues have been known for millennia. Orthodox Christianity (i.e. the various Catholic churches) very early on accepted a partially metaphorical perspective, which makes it just barely compatible with modern science. But Evangelicals are not orthodox Christians, so don't try to use orthodox Christian interpretative devices.
Trying to explain to an Evangelical how science is compatible with belief in God is like a Muslim trying to explain to a Christian how Muhammed is a prophet, and how Islam is compatible with Christian historicism. What you and others are doing is proselytizing, whether you realize it or not.
The best way to handle zealots and fundamentalists is to leave them be. Confronting them only steels their resolve in their particular beliefs. The way to defeat ignorance is to contain it, and let it die quietly. It'll resurrect as some other kind of ignorance anyhow. It's the nature of civilization.
You trust your memory to remember that it has earned trust.
Try again.
Dispense with the rhetorical bullshit already.
You could keep track using external devices if you really gave a rats ass about your useless ideas.
If I put any stock in what ideas?
So sanity is to accept faith in one's memory?
The creation story is only one of the allegories in the Bible. Let's pick another: Moses parted the Red Sea. Wouldn't that be an awesome way to facilitate, say, evacuations from hurricane-threatened regions? Think of the billions that could be saved by designing a flood control system on the principle of divine intervention rather than hydrodynamics.
Belief in a creator doesn't prevent you from solving problems or building stuff, right up to the point where you're willing to ignore empirical evidence in favor of your belief. Creationism happens to be the point where such dissonance is most obvious (things like parting the red sea, converting water to wine, or walking on water generally being considered one-time-only miracles). Willingness to ignore data to protect belief does not solve problems: it allows them to fester and grow - a string of 360 consecutive months with above average temperature? The will of god and nothing we can do about it. 40,000 people killed in car accidents? God's just calling people home...nothing you can do.
What about invisible pink unicorns, and all the other fairy tells? Pretend is fun.
I can't believe i'm doin it. But i gotta defend the amish here.
I've known and worked for them in the past. And for the most part they're fine. Don't really LIKE them.. Because i like my modern world.
But they do NOT preach to other people. They don't shove their religon in your face. They are what i consider a 'good' religon on the planet. Just because they mind their own business and don't tell you what you should or should not be doing with your life.
Oh sure they have their own internal problems. But who doesnt. But overall they are mostly harmless.
And i'm pretty sure if the world ever failed and our technology got wiped out. They'd be just fine. lol
Overall tho they are in that group of religious nuts who are not dangerous to the rest of the world. Amish, quakers, buddhists, and maybe a few others. They don't preach to you if you don't wanna know. They don't get in your face. They mind their own business. They don't seem to cause too many problems in the world.
And theres damm few other religions that can say that. The rest of them all love to preach to everyone and tell us we're all going to hell.
We need scientifically literate voters and taxpayers for the future. We need people that can — we need engineers that can build stuff, solve problems.
While I agree with his premise, I know several engineers that can build things and solve problems that are also fundamentalist christians. Most engineers, by their nature, deal with the here and now, not the past, whether 4B years ago or 10,000 years ago. So, while I agree with his premise, his implied conclusion does not directly correlate. That said, I am all for a scientifically literate society, mathematically literate, too.
How do you remember which observations you have made? Don't you need your memory for that?
Some responses to your points:
There is plenty of evidence already available for evolution, and addressing creationism is a fool's errand.
That's because your world view diverges utterly with reality. It actively rejects the mountains of archaeological evidence, the diversity of species we have, and the fact that bacteria grow resistant to our antibiotics damn near as we watch.
Only insofar as you don't actually wander down into scientific fields that completely break without the concept of evolution. Sadly, your worldview is not logical.
He's focusing on the US because that's where he lives. He also realizes that there's a destructive campaign to get Creationism, wrapped up under the false banner of "Intelligent Design," put into science classes. And I suspect he feels that he has a duty to speak out against such nonsense and to admonish people not to deliberately withhold knowledge from their children because it possibly contradicts their beliefs. And even if those other countries and religions reject evolution, it only means that they too are wrong.
He's right. You can measure evolution in a lab. Like plate tectonics, sometimes that lab is out in the world.
Correct. Literal creationism is used as an anti-scientific weapon by christian fundamentalists in the US.
There is zero evidence for creationism. There are mountains of evidence for evolution. The only side here that actually needs to defend themselves are the creationists.
Because as I foolishly attempt to here, arguing with a creationist as to why their deeply held beliefs contradict reality is often a frustrating, fruitless exercise.
I always preferred the nose-wiggling image of the divine.
This is not the funny you're looking for.
Winnar!
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
there is when you use that belief to impose upon other people's lives with it.
That sword cuts in both directions, mind you.
In debates about Christianity, there are two groups: those looking for answers, and those looking to just ask questions.
Give us some detail.
This question has been tackled at length, and I know there is no answer. It's just fascinating to watch so many dilettantes think they have an answer.
Wholeheartedly agree. Not only that, but this quote of his...
...don't make your kids [deny evolution] because we need them. We need scientifically literate voters and taxpayers for the future. We need people that can — we need engineers that can build stuff, solve problems.
...bothers me since it suggests that denying evolution precludes the possibility of a person becoming an engineer or being scientifically literate, which is far from the truth.
There is a danger of predisposition, I'll grant, since some people have taken things too far and chosen ignorance as a complement to faith, but I do not believe that to be the norm (and most of the hillbilly, backwards types that get cited for that problem are just idiots, period, not because of their beliefs, but rather regardless of them). For instance, I was raised in a household that held to Creationism, came to believe it myself (and continue to do so), yet I went to a good university, graduated with a Computer Science degree, went on to pursue graduate work, and finally went into industry, where I seem to be doing just fine last I checked. I'm not unfamiliar with the ideas behind evolution, nor am I incapable of applying them when the situation presents itself (e.g. genetic algorithms), nor do I think I would disagree with any scientifically-minded people about the physical properties of the world as it is today, which means that there is very little ground where we might even possibly disagree.
As for where I would disagree with other scientifically-minded people, those are in areas that are generally unrelated to my work, so the most "harm" I can typically do is to share my personal beliefs over casual conversations, such as what I am doing here in this post. Even if the opportunity arose for me to cause actual harm via my line of work (e.g. tampering with scientific data), I wouldn't do so for the same sorts of reasons that most people here would't tamper with data for an opposing political party: it's simply wrong to do so, even if you disagree with them. Simply put, they're my personal beliefs, and they have not stood in the way of getting work done, building things, or engaging in higher academic pursuits. The same is true for most or all of the other Creationists I personally know (many of whom are well-educated and have pursued work in engineering or science), so I fail to see what Mr. Nye's concern over denying evolution is in this matter.
It sounds more like he's actually concerned with scientific illiteracy, but that he's misidentified the cause of it (I'd blame it more on apathy, personally). To that I say that regardless of beliefs, we all should be able to agree that we could use more parents encouraging their children to engage in critical thinking and a pursuit of interests related to the STEM fields. Let things shake out as they will.
Feel free to imagine me away and see whether it works.
To know God you have to study God's works. We call this Science. Darwin Studied God's works and showed us Evolution, That is God's work. If you can't cope with that you will never know God.
Just a question how many of those are honorary?
He did graduate with an bachelors in mechanical engineering, but the all knowing wikipedia seems to show that all of his doctorates are honorary. And when exactly did mechanical engineering become branch or origins theory theology or evolution. While I respect the man and his efforts to promote science i have to say this isn't his area of expertise. Secondly in my humble opinion, origins, which is not provable either way scientifically (as per the scientific method requirement of repeatability and ) this is a moot point.
---Saying gnome 3 is better than windows 8 not so much a compliment as it is damning with light praise.
Remember that stupid post you just made?
Checking your post history confirms that my memory recalls it perfectly in all it's stupidity.
Your trivial idea that memory is only a product of faith has already been stomped flat. There's no point in addressing it further -- it's just basic navel-gazing for the naive. What we're talking about now is your failure to think the consequences of all the evidence against your idea through.
As far as I would be concerned, were I to care about such things, the "relegation to God" and "explanation by God" almost seems to me like calling God's name in vain. It presupposes that our current level of understanding is final, and that we know enough to surely and squarely decide, "oh, God willed it so", or "that's a miracle!". Heck, the whole spiel seems utterly pointless. If you presuppose that God made everything and is running the show, so to speak, why the heck repeat oneself? One often sees signs proclaiming "let God into your life" on billboards. Look, doofuses, either you believe God is already there, or you're just so thoroughly confused it's no wonder people look down on those of any faith. Learn to form a self-consistent sentence, or a bunch, to begin with.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
Any stock in your "memory is an illusion" bullshit.
Yes sanity is to accept faith in one's perception and memory, I'd say that's the core basis of sanity. What sane being recalls something to the best of their memory and thinks "This memory I have is most likely inaccurate?"
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
It is really unfortunate that people can't discuss these sorts of things and stay friends.
William George
Maybe God created everything by sparking off the Big Bang. Maybe God created everything ten minutes ago, styled to look as though it had been around for uncountable millenia (well, about 14 thousand million years).
Maybe God did it for the lulz.
No, it is not. It is a scientific theory.
Let us stop right there. You don't even appear to know what evolution is. Evolution works on populations. In simple terms evolution can be defined as the change in the genetic makeup of a population over time.
That the Earth is many times older than the Genesis account has been known since the 18th century. As I said to another poster, this absurd claim that we have to directly observe every moment is as absurd as demanding to know the syntax of every generation of spoken language from Proto-Germanic to Modern English.
The fossil evidence isn't even the only line of evidence. In general, the molecular data agrees with the fossil data giving us two independent lines of evidence; the twin-nested hierarchy. It has not been reasonable to attack evolution based on fossil evidence for over a century, and certainly not reaosnable to claim the relative scarcity of fossils (which there are far more of than you seem aware) for half a century.
I have no idea where you learned above evolution, but certainly not from any biology source. Every population has variability, it's always present. Some members of a population will be more able to survive the environment some will not. Those traits which tend even slightly to give a reproductive advantage will be selected for. Many traits are in fact neutral, and thus have reasonably good odds of simply being selected for (neutral selection or neutral drift), but can in fact at a later time either prove beneficial or harmful. Some genes in fact remain, but are suppressed through developmental processes (a whole other area that I challenge you to learn about), but can be re-expressed, thus leading to humans with long body hair all over their body or snakes with limbs and many other atavisms which are suppressed developmentally, even though the genes remain in our genome.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Scientifically, there's no use in debating philosophy, ethics, etc. either.
I consider ethical behavior to be a phenotype, so yeah there is.
The study of consciousness and the brain is also scientific, and directly related to philosophy.
-- Let us endeavor so to live that when we pass even the undertaker shall be sorry. -- M. Twain
At least with car insurance I can opt out (don't drive a car; walk. Or use a horse. Or take the train).
Indeed. And when it comes to health, when you have an emergency you can just die!
Of course, it whooshes above pro-lifers' heads all the time, so they got used to the sound and don't notice anymore. Most of them are pro-war, too. The mind just boggles.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
How do you know that all this technology is around you?
Are you typing this on your paper philosophy degree, or a keyboard?
Also, if philosophy is bullshit then we might as well crawl back to ~C4 BC and start again.
Yes, it's philosophy that brought us out of the caves and developed all this technology. How many philosophy majors are Intel and Microsoft employing these days?
Bill is absolutely right on this subject, but he should not be campaigning for Obama. Science and politics are not a good mix. What if Obama loses; where does that leave Nye? Not good.
What I find most objectionable about Nye's endorsements of Obama is that Nye is also head of the Planetary Society, an advocacy / education organization for planetary science. Obama has clearly demonstrated a hostility toward planetary science and science in general when he de-funded new planetary flagship missions and killed almost all Mars science; this was done at the same time that funding was increased for the pork-barrel Houston projects such as the Rocket to Nowhere (SLS).
Creationism does not mean what you think it means. You can believe in God and evolution, but not creationism and evolution.
creationism [kree-ey-shuh-niz-uhm] Show IPA
noun
1.
the doctrine that matter and all things were created, substantially as they now exist, by an omnipotent Creator, and not gradually evolved or developed.
2.
( sometimes initial capital letter ) the doctrine that the true story of the creation of the universe is as it is recounted in the Bible, especially in the first chapter of Genesis.
bless thy noodly appendages.
But that is exactly what speciation is. You, or rather the liars at AIG, have created a private definition. Inventing private definitions to win debates is a form of dishonesty, in my view.
Have you ever pondered actually reading a book on evolution by a biologist. You know, sort of like how you would consult a dentist on dentistry rather than, say, a witch doctor?
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Well not really, because engineering takes a great deal of critical thinking for success, as well as a firm mental grasp on physics(most engineering, anyway). If someone can't conceive of the evolution of species, I have difficulty imagining them inferring complicated causal relationships based on the laws of thermodynamics. Engineering is more than brainless memorization, which is all the Holy Book really prepares one for.
My dear friend, all I argued was that memory - hence science, which uses memory - requires faith.
Who here said that memory is an illusion? That was just you and a bunch of other dorks trying to read between the lines.
Celebrate the faith you need to do science, I say!
Re: point 2, evolution can and has been observed in the lab. It's actually a fairly simple phenomenon to demonstrate with bacteria and antibiotics. With the right set of circumstances, antibiotic resistant bacteria will evolve rather quickly. Measurement of the process of evolution is pretty straightforward, though the exact method and data are dependent upon what you are trying to measure.
Re: point 1, evolution denial among western nations is really only prominent in the US. Yes, there are nations in the world that subscribe to it in some way but think on this: do you want to defend the idea by saying that it's okay because Iran has similar viewpoints? Can you name another western nation where it has such and influence on national politics?
Re: point 3, baseless rejection of theories will affect workers in different fields differently. For example, a Christian Scientist would probably do fine in civil engineering but would do very poorly in medicine. A young earth creationist would be unable to function in many disciplines of biology, archeology, and geology. A person that denies evolution will not do well in medicine or many areas of public policy, such as health.
And mathematics is a product of philosophy.
Yeah, I can see philosophers developing mathematics:
2+2=4... or does it? Who can say for sure?
These people are extremists even by the standards of other religious people.
Unfortunately I don't think you can call such a widely held belief extremist. CNN's article about this video references a Gallup Poll that found 46% of Americans believe "God created human beings pretty much in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years or so." I find this incredibly depressing.
Check a dictionary. Creationism does NOT mean 'belief in God'. Faith is perfectly compatible with all science, really, if you reduce it to 'God created the initial conditions such that the universe evolved as he wanted it.' But that is not creationism, that's just religion. Creationism, BY DEFINITION, means you do not believe in evolution.
creationism [kree-ey-shuh-niz-uhm] Show IPA
noun
1.
the doctrine that matter and all things were created, substantially as they now exist, by an omnipotent Creator, and not gradually evolved or developed.
2.
( sometimes initial capital letter ) the doctrine that the true story of the creation of the universe is as it is recounted in the Bible, especially in the first chapter of Genesis.
No, I just don't believe that speciation is evidence for true macro evolution:
Of course not, because "macro evolution" doesn't exist outside Young Earth Creationist talking points. In biology, there isn't "micro evolution" and "macro evolution"; there's only "evolution" (which is supremely well documented, including speciation).
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
I'll take the ramblings of a madman with several honorary Ph.Ds over the ramblings of a backwoods redneck 'murican any day.
I doubt it's truly possible to "set aside those beliefs". By the usual religious self-admitted statements, it seems like isn't. Purity of the soul is supposedly a good thing, but it admits that setting things aside, compartmentalizing them, just doesn't work. Your thoughts must be pure. Yeah, you'd like to do that nice girl you just saw, and it's a bad thought to have in spite of you never ever having touched a girl, for example. That means, to me, that one can't set the beliefs aside, and that religious people self-admittedly are simply broken in a way that makes them to an extent unfit to do science.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
Funny you should mention Sodom and the tone of the Bible, as having grown up firmly indoctrinated in the Christian church, the story of Lot and his wife were instrumental in me realizing that 1) a lot of it (no pun intended) is hooey, and 2) even if it's not, I don't want to follow this god.
For those who don't know, Lot and his wife were told to flee Sodom and Gamorrah before it was destroyed by God for being so wicked. They were told to not even look back at it by angels sent to help. On their way out, though, Lot's wife turned back and looked, and was instantly turned into a pillar of salt.
Obviously, the moral is not to screw around with God. If he tells you not to turn around and look at something, you'd better damn well not turn around and look or else the consequences could be severe. Practically speaking, though, I was never able to get past how insanely petty this was. This woman presumably had family and friends left in the city. There's presumably a lot of hoopla and chaos happening. Why did she turn around? Was it because she couldn't bear the thought of her family and friends suffering? Was it because she wanted to make sure that the rest of her family was going to make it out alive? Was it just a loud noise that caught her attention? Who knows? Maybe she thought the angels didn't literally mean don't look back, kind of like how even today we say, "I left my home and never looked back." In most cases you don't literally mean that you didn't turn around and catch one last glimpse of it, you just metaphorically mean that you moved on with your life.
At any rate, we have a woman who was probably just an average schmo, likely not particularly evil, else the angels wouldn't have bothered rescuing her. Her crime was taking one last glimpse of the family, friends, home, and life that she would never return to again. She was obviously a loyal follower of God, as she simply picked up and left based on the word of two strangers saying they were angels and her husband who, incidentally, offered two virgin daughters to the wicked men of Sodom intent on raping Lot's guests. So if you're keeping score, Lot offers up his two virgin daughters to be gang raped and gets to live a happy, productive life. Lot's wife commits the cardinal sin of turning around to see everything she knows destroyed by fire, and does she get any measure of sympathy or mercy? Oh hell no, she's killed (or worse, she wasn't and is eternally suffering, being forced to look back at the destroyed city) for something that anybody in their right mind should understand and would probably do.
Anyway, I empathize with Lot's wife, and like I said, this story made me realize that I don't want to follow a god that is so petty and vindictive that he would do such a heinous thing. If that means I'm going to hell, then so be it. Spending eternity slavishly following such a spiteful creature seems like just another definition of hell.
Yet here I am, thousands of years later, and people following this crap are teaching their kids to doubt science, that if the Bible is interpreted as A and science says B, you'd better go with A. After all, if God would punish an innocent woman by turning her into a pillar of salt, you don't want to fathom what he'd do to you if you believe in evolution. Bill Nye is right, teaching creationism to kids as anything other than a fanciful myth is crazy and a disservice to them, their community, and mankind as a whole.
I accept my memory as reliable. My acceptance is an act of faith.
Where do you come up with this shit?
I don't need 'faith' to accept my memory as reliable. I can test it easily at any point.
Even when the belief system officially encourages and endorses the forced imposition of the belief system?
Red to red, black to black. Switch it on, but stand well back.
A "religious scientist" who stands by preconceived notions derived from flawed analysis is not a scientist. He/she is a religious person. See Christian Science for a better example. That is *not* a scientist.
A scientist is someone who makes an observation about the world, forms a hypothesis, uses the scientific method to investigate, and comes to a conclusion that is supported by the results of the investigation. For all of the true scientists out there adhering to the scientific method, there are a very good number of them who... *gasp!* believe that there is an intelligent and invisible force driving the creation of our universe and life as we know it!
Nikola Tesla held certain beliefs and principles in line with some different religions. Nikola Tesla believed in God. Would you accuse him of deriving his views on natural science and electrical engineering from flawed analysis? Does that make you all of a sudden lose confidence in Alternating Current as a viable method of transmitting electricity over long distances?
Protip: Not every scientist who believes in an intelligent creator or an all-powerful life force is a "bad" scientist. Troll harder.
Your question isn't intractable. It's sterile. It has the same amount of predictive and analytical power as "Goddidit". It's utterly boring. It leads nowhere. Not only that, but the Greeks already knew about it and found it to be an approach that lead nowhere. The best - and really only response - I got to this question is "Who cares?" As for which texts we read in "middle school", Plato's cave analogy was a nice starting point. Descartes in High School was a bit more interesting, but he fell flat due to the necessity to use circular reasoning to get anywhere with that approach.
What makes me roll my eyes isn't the philosophy, it's the attitude of people like you who think they've found some special trick question. You haven't. You're merely regurgitating a 2000 year old discussion that was rejected pretty much immediately. You're like a 9 year old who yells citizen's arrest! every time he sees his parents speeding. It merely betrays your own shallowness and lack of understanding.
And what's with the quotes. Did you do the appropriate air quotes with your fingers as well?
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
I thought the whole "legitimate rape" issue was that some people interpreted Akin's remarks to mean that if the woman got pregnant then the rape wasn't "legitimate", but he really meant "forcible rape". In other words, if all parties consented but there's some legal reason why you're not allowed to have sex, it may be defined by law as "rape" even if it doesn't fit the usual definition of "nonconsensual sex".
If I'm a freshman in college and my girlfriend's in high school, it may be statutory rape for us to have sex even though both of us consent to it. I didn't legitimately rape her, so that sort of sex presumably has no impediment to pregnancy. On the other hand, if I hold her down and force myself on her without her consent, that legitimately is rape, and Akin believes (falsely) that she is somehow less likely to get pregnant.
dom
BILL NYE
the SCIENCE GUYYYY
3
maybe we should put some other verses from the bible on buildings. like these :
Deuteronomy 21:18-21 : Stone disobedient children
Leviticus 27:1-7
Leviticus 21:5
Exodus 21:7-10 says men can sell their daughters into slavery
Yes, I'm left. You have a problem with that?
I love philosophy most of all because it really angers shallow westerners.
So the reason you really love philosophy is because it pisses off shallow people? That's... pretty shallow.
It's all an illusion!
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
I think you're right here, and we have to specify that when we talk about Creationism, we're talking about God--errr, some, unknown all-powerful, unspecified being that is most definitely NOT just a thinly disguised Judeo-Christian God so that the theory's followers can claim it's not a religious theory--just magically making every living thing appear on Earth as they are today and there is no long-term change to any species.
Because here's the thing. Evolution doesn't prohibit the existence or influence of any given deity. Evolution is completely indifferent. Maybe some God created the system of Evolution. Maybe some deity created the universe and set in motion the events that would create evolution. Evolution is about how one species becomes another, how small changes in genetics add up over time and how that reflects on the world. Why life started in the first place, if there is some intrinsic meaning to life, or other questions of a similar nature are, to my understanding, irrelevant to the point of figuring out how life changes.
Science doesn't have to prove itself. It yields technology that works. If faith, or revelation, or scriptural study were a valid means for obtaining knowledge than we would have technology based on knowledge obtained through such means.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
So what was the point? Just to flamebait rational thinkers with the F-word by making a philosophical abstraction of a physical process?
On a physical level no faith is required, your brain is hardwired to trust your perception and memory unless it's horribly broken.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
example ?
1) The idea that the denial of evolution is unique to the US - which I very much doubt, as both Christians and some other religions (Islam, in particular) tend to hold views that contradict with macro evolution.
Individuals not believing in evolution certainly isn't unique to the US, but the sheer number of such individuals is unusually high, especially for a wealthy, educated nation. The US is second only to Turkey in lack of acceptance of evolution. More importantly, the US is the only first world nation where we still have regular arguments about teaching creationism in school.
2) That not believing in evolution - which we cannot measure and observe in a lab - is comparable to not believing in plate tectonics (which we can observe and measure).
There are lots of other things that we can't easily observe in the lab do you doubt them too? For example, do you doubt how fossils form? You can't observe it happening, the process takes too long. You can, however, observe bits and pieces of it and from that extrapolate out the whole process. Similarly you can in fact see evolution working in the lab, the E. coli long-term evolution experiment is the prime example (where batches of e.coli unexpectedly developed the ability to metabolize citrate). But, and I mean as little disrespect as possible, you'll just claim that's 'micro' evolution, somehow not accepting of the fact that 1,000,000 micro-meters adds up to a full meter.
That we need good scientists and engineers, and therefore should not teach our children creationism. This in effect implies that someone cannot hold a creationist viewpoint and also contribute in those fields, which is preposterous (I personally know several scientists and engineers who hold beliefs similar to my own, and who are still very effective in their work - and I have read the works of many others who are much higher up in their respective fields).
I agree, the idea that individuals who hold creationist beliefs cannot advance science is incorrect. However, when you set up a system to constantly and relentlessly snipe at the largest, most well developed, most well researched, and most empirically verified theory in modern biology, you create an environment where kids are left very confused. They can choose to ignore the whole subject, despite the fact that it forms the underlying basis for all modern biological science. Or they can choose to look at the subject and reject the mountain of evidence that supports it. Well, the 3rd option is to walk away to one extent or another, from the faith their parents have taught them, which is why religious people feel under attack.
For what it's worth, I don't think you deserve the troll mod that you've been smacked with. I'm of the opinion that only abusive or flamebait comments should be modded down, and I don't think yours is either of those.
There are plenty of people who believe God "used evolution as part of the creative process." In fact, pretty sure that's basically the official stance of the entire Catholic Church. But that IS NOT creationism! Creationism does not mean 'God created the universe'; it means 'God created all creatures as they currently exist'
creationism [kree-ey-shuh-niz-uhm] Show IPA
noun
1.
the doctrine that matter and all things were created, substantially as they now exist, by an omnipotent Creator, and not gradually evolved or developed.
2.
( sometimes initial capital letter ) the doctrine that the true story of the creation of the universe is as it is recounted in the Bible, especially in the first chapter of Genesis.
This is laughable. So you are telling me that something that for all we know could be the direct result of a supernatural being imposing it's will is proof to you that a supernatural being never created the environment you think contradicts itself.
I guess your rejection of critical thinking might be a problem too. You see, the biblical story can be summed up with a supernatural being did some supernatural stuff and the results are what we know today, even what the theory of evolution thinks it knows. The biblical explanation also says the supernatural being gave dominion over the world to man and gave man the ability to use tools and such to exploit it. which sort of implies that anything about evolution that we can use to further our existence is on purpose.
Now before you reply, let me define supernatural. It means above nature or above natural means, not bound by the rules of nature. We are confined to the rules of nature, by default any GOD is not and in not being confined, their works if they exist(ed) can just as easily create our reality in what we can understand from a strictly natural observation. Evolution does not in any way disprove creation, it provides us with a useful set of tools that can used to further our existence and comfort.
I do agree that a flat out rejection of one or the other can be problematic but that is a symptom of how it is portrayed more then how it is. If people insist creation disproves evolution or evolution disproves creation, you will have one asserted over the other.
That article only describes what the layman would call micro-evolution. They are still the "same" plants, fruitflies, worms, etc. Speciation is fine given the right definition.
The only evidence for god so far is in the brain.....(google G-spot of the Brain)
People can create religious epiphanies and experiences at will (to people that are suscptible of course). Is that really god they see ? If it is i would consider that proof that god IS in fact man-made.
You speak of faith as if it is a good thing...
It is definately NOT a good thing.... Faith in things there is not a shred of evidence for is not a virtue... It is a mental illness...
Believing in something you have no evidence for, so badly that you can kill yourself and fellow human beings for it IS NOT A VIRTUE...
If you go on a bus and you see someone speaking to god you first reaction i ASSURE you will not be to pray along with him.... It will be "oh my god i gotta get off this bus!""
If someone is crazy enough to believe in any type of god with no proof, aside from a book, what others tell them, intuition, or the voices in their head, no amount of reasoning will convince them otherwise. It is futile. We are mere animals. We just recently discovered fire. It is turtles all the way down. I see your Vishnu and raise you a noodly appendage.
Yes. And we end up like we are... what we need are correct solutions, not feel good hopes.
Why? Because its all fictional make believe based on the fantasies of a book/religion. Its fake. Its not real.
Believing in creationism is exactly the same thing as believing in jack and the beanstalk. If you grew up and everyone told you the story of jack and the beanstalk was real then you would believe it was real as well. Creationism is just a fictional idea that isnt based on any kind of proven and worldwide known facts or science. Every single thing about creationism can be proved undeniably false. It lacks any and all real world knowledge or common sense.
Creationism does nothing but keep our species from being evolved because it cock blocks learning, knowledge, understanding and reason.
I'd love to have this in a pamphlet!
So if you believe in creationism you can't be a good engineer? In the real world, no one really cares what you believe with how the world was made, but rather if you can improve what's here now.
"just people who want to push their agenda at the expense of education" .... by pushing his agenda through the vehicle of education. The idea of "educating" out these non-believing people by way of indoctrinating their children. It's a pretty perverse notion. That's not to say Evolution shouldn't be taught, but it shouldn't be taught in dogmatic fashion. It cross the line from Science to Religion when its done that way. Personally, I much prefer the latimes article by the biologist compared to rantings of this TV show scientist.
The issue I take with his statements is the finality of them. The implied assertions that:
1. Not believing in Evolution means you're stupid or intellectually limited and guaranteed to harm society.
2. Incapable of becoming a useful person in society.
You're viewing his words through your own prism. That's only half a step towards completing a view of the world.
Creationists are not exactly stupid
You are correct: they are willfully ignorant.
Look where all this talking got us, baby.
The term used in the Bible, in English at least, is "kind" rather than species. I'm not sure of the original Hebrew word, or what subtleties it conveys, but I suspect that the difficulties in discussing this stem from our imperfect classification system. We can make one group of flies, over generations, incapable of complete interbreeding... but do these 'new' groups of flies have any real distinction? Does one have an extra set of legs, or has one lost the ability to fly? (not that I would necessarily think either of those to be sufficient for a new 'kind', just trying to put out some examples).
Also, as I pointed out, I do think it is entirely possible that God used evolution in the creation process - I won't die for the young earth viewpoint :) What I would die for is the idea of intelligent design: that God orchestrated creation, whether in six days or in six billion years. I still happen to favor the young earth stand, but I am open to discuss and debate such things!
William George
You do realize there are people with Ph.D's.....in religion, right?
Obviously, the education system is the work of the devil. Those degrees are only signs of how high you are in the devil's rankings.
(I feel like I'm gonna pay for that comment somehow...)
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
"we need engineers that can build stuff, solve problems"
Even people who don't believe in evolution can still become engineers who "build stuff, solve problems"
But the problem is people can never not be impartial about anything. Your thoughts, feelings, perceptions and personal beliefs always play a part in what youre doing, even if its science.
Sure you can be religious and smart but if youre trying to be a scientist in any field that challenges your personal beliefs then you will always either on purpose or subconcisiously skew your "science" to your viewpoints thereby not actually performing science.
Creationists much like religious people have no place in a modern world because all of their thoughts are predominantly moderate by old world thinking. We now live in an age where science, fact, reason and knowledge are what is important. You can not have any of those things with creationism or religion because they do not do anything except hold back our ability to learn and evolve.
Bill is a clueless idiot. Evolution is not in conflict creationism; only the "young earth theory" idiots.
Young Earth creationists and Bill Nye represent the screwball ends of the spectrum.
Rants like Bill's only serve to strengthen my belief that Darwinists are in deep denial. The fact they can't face is that their ideas are speculative. Since they are speculative, intelligent, informed persons can disagree. In order to protect themselves from this uncomfortable fact, they erect elaborate sematic barriers.
There are two possible origins of the Earth. Either it is the product of mindless natural processes or it was terraformed. (The Bible says it was terraformed by someone called "God".) They both sound pretty unlikely, but there don't seem to be any other possibilities. One of them must be true and the other false. The problem is that neither side can produce evidence which makes sense outside of their world view.
In their frustration with this situation, evolutionists plow ahead with ineffective philisophical and semantic arguments. Mostly they just attach labels to things. Evolution is scientific. Belief in a creator is religious. Belief in evolution is rational. Each of these statements is true in a way. But, scientific does not mean true. Religious does not mean false. Rationalism is a philosophical system which in some ways resembles a religion, so the rationalism of Evolution is not a strong argument in its favour.
Their opponents remain unimpressed by these specious arguments, so now they are resorting to hand wringing. If we don't shape up and start believing in Evolution right quick scientific and technical progress will halt as our minds are sapped by the illogic. We'll all have to go live in caves. Believe or the end is nigh!
The hand-ringing evolutionists say that it is illogical to reject evolution (a product of the scientific method) and reject modern medicine (another of its products). Just for fun and because turn-about is fair play I propose that evolutionists reject the work of scientists who held ideas contrary to evolutionary theory.
Yes less then 31% of the people in the US are Scientifically literate. I got this fact from a pod cast on astronomy.fm Not sure who said it.
All of the human lexicon is made up of terms we (humans) have invented. What I am saying is that taking a group of flies and making two groups that no longer interbreed is not in any way evidence that single-cell organisms could eventually end up in something as complex as a fish, much less a human being. Separating these ideas of small changes within a type of organism from the idea that one organism can evolve into something totally different, bearing no resemblance to what it came from, is a legitimate distinction. You can all it whatever you like, but being pigeon-holed into using one specific term that you approve of while not allowing other concepts is a much worse form of dishonesty.
Further, I have read lengthy excerpts at least, if not always whole books, from biologists on both sides. I will freely admit that much of the detail and nuance (on both sides) is lost on me, as I don't have a deep education in the life sciences, but I follow along as best I can.
William George
You're getting into a moot point that does not really have any place to go.
Either our senses are so unreliable that everyone around us is knowable, even say Faith since that would have had to come from some kind of stimuli; or we have to accept that our sens are reliable to a degree.
It'd be similar to saying, do we see the same colors?
How do I know my red is not your green? (we actually do have ways to know this but suspend that for a sec)
Any test or stimuli you give me or vise versa would come up as me doing the color as I would.
Also RE: philosophy, wasn't there a language teacher recently that got some thesis published to great accolades, but then came out saying he basically BS'd the whole thing? Just strung a whole bunch of large words together and voila philosophy.
Let's see an architect BS their way into building a building.
We have no evidence that was _observed_ two million years ago. We have observations from a few decades, and all else is extrapolation.
You say that, but that same argument reducto ad absurdum: We have no evidence that everyone dies when they swallow the output end of a shotgun. We have observations from a few decades, but all else is extrapolation. I believe you won't, because you've never done it before.
Not that I necessarily want you to die, but the above makes my point.
Support the EFF and Creative Commons. The war is coming, and they're supporting you...
Actually you're voicing a common misconception - Laws and Theories are at pretty much the same level of "certainty" and neither is at 100%. One of the guiding principles of science is that *nothing* can be known with 100% certainty, and even if we eventually develop a 100% accurate understanding of the universe we'll never know for sure that we've done so - we could have developed completely false theories that just happen to agree 100% with all observed phenomena.
Which brings me back to the distinction between Theory and Law. Laws describe what happens - gravity falls off with distance as Fg = G*m1*m2/r^2. Voltage divides across resistors in series as V1=r1/(r1+r2). Basically laws are the mathematically predictive side of science. On the other hand theories explain why things behave the way they do - what are the physical processes in play that cause the behaviors described by the laws. Oft times the theories will then suggest special cases where the laws won't behave as expected and such discrepancies can be tested for to verify the theory, other times (such as in quantum mechanics at present) there are numerous theories, many quite outlandish, but none predict definite "corner cases" where their predictions would differ measurably from the established laws, and we're left in the unsatisfying position of having well-tested laws without correspondingly accepted theories to explain why they work.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Bill Nye is in a position to get laws passed that favor his viewpoint (force children to abandon god, allah, yahweh, Reincarnation, etc).
Really?! Bill Nye is trying to force children to abandon god? You actually believe that?
Mainly because I'm tired of people telling what to do. "Don't smoke weed". Really?
Whatever you're smoking, you should probably smoke less of it.
Look where all this talking got us, baby.
Giving honor to God by capitalizing pronouns when referring to Him is a logical outflow of my belief that He is the 'original person', so to speak. The source and author of all other personhood. It would be similar to referring to a head of state with special terminology or respect, but on a much grander scale. How is any of that inconsistent?
Also, the friend of whom I spoke is still my friend (or at least I hope he is). I don't understand why folks can't discuss these sorts of topics without falling to the level of breaking relationships. Strike that, I actually can understand it - I just find it very sad: many negative emotions are brought up when confronted with truth that 'breaks' someones world-view, and those emotions change the way you react to a person involved in that process... I just wish people could get over that so that we can have more open discussions about these things. The same applies to politics, etc.
William George
Creationists: Putting the Fun, Duh, and Mental in Fundamentalism!
THE SOFTWARE, IT NO WORKY!!!
You could have incredibly deep, intricate, and subtle theories about the nature of your god and the mythologies that surround him, but at the end of the day it's still make believe. Why not just forget it all and apply your intelligence to the real world? In another generation or two nobody will take the bible any more seriously than they take greek myths. Humanity is moving forward. We're living in exciting times, you know? We're getting a handle on the mechanisms of cell diversification. We've got computers that can model the celestial mechanics of galaxies. We've got a global network that allows millions of minds to collaborate in real time from around the globe and we can carry access to that network around in our pockets. We've got a nuclear powered laser blasting semi-autonomous robot exploring mars! Forget the superstitious hokum and come join us in the future. It's going to be amazing.
Creationism is what people that can not understand Science use as a crutch to turn people away from the true study of God. Creationism is like that of a tool of the devil him self.
Darwin in hid study of God showed us Evolution the work of the true God.
I just have to send this to my boss, who home-schools his kids in creationism.
On second thought, maybe I'll wait until the economy improves.
I can't prove that my memory is reliable, because it isn't. I have several memories that I know are not accurate because they involve things that did not exist at that time. So I can disprove the reliability of my memory.
It is also the best way I have to function and is usually reliable enough to get along, so it is what I'm stuck using.
If "day" does not mean a necessarily defined period of time, then what is the point of specifying a precise number of "six" such non-units ?
It was six tasks that each took some arbitrary period of time, followed by an extra arbitrary period of time for "rest" (really ?). Specifying the unit of time seems superfluous and misleading in that case.
but it has not stopped me from being an engineer and solving problems. All the debate between creationism and evolution encompasses is how the universe got here. That has no bearing on how it behaves now and consequently doesn't stop me from designing a rocket to go the moon or a weapon of mass destruction or other techy stuff. My daughter is quite bright and intelligent enough to make her own decisions - by teaching her creationism, I'm teaching her my view of the world. It doesn't have to be hers (although I hope that it will be). It's absurd to think that someone who believes in creationism can't be an effective scientist or engineer. God sure had it pegged that haters would label believers in Him as haters. People's egos are waaaaay too huuuuuge to accept the simple truth. In the meantime, I'll just keep plugging along with my dimwitted view of the universe, happily solving all kinds of engineering and technical problems despite my handicap. I've yet to encounter a problem I've solved where not believing in evolution prevented me from solving it and the current list of problems I have yet to solve don't seem to suffer that either. I guess if I run into a problem I can't solve, I can always ask an enlightened, more evolved human to solve it for me.
Now - I'm not saying that evolution didn't occur, because it did.
Creationism does NOT make evolution impossible.
How long was a *day* to someone who is immortal? 24 hours? 24 years? 24 centuries? 24 million years? 24 billion years? who knows.
All we know is that life was created - the primordial ooze had to become energized to start the life process somehow.
When supposedly all there were, were Adam and Eve - how did their kids go out into the world to find their mates? They were the first to be in the creators image - but is that actually true.
Adam was created to be in his image, if the stories hold true, a perfect being. No single being can be perfect unless they can procreate. So perhaps Adam was initially hermaphorditic, and he was able to spawn children of his own.
The rib taken from Adam to create Eve was actually genetic code dropping the female sex parts from Adam, and placing them in Eve (otherwise a clone, of Adam).
They then later procreated in the 2 part process, having Cain and Abel - who then went out to take their mates from among Adams first offspring, who were also hermaphroditic (and more than likely capable of generating much higher levels of differences in genetic code for their offspring). This started the evolution of modern man.
Man evolved from lower life forms, but didn't become that perfect creation until it reached the level to rise above the rest of the animals.
Evolution and Creationism tell the same story, from different perspectives and for different audiences.
That's the difference.
So Bill, people teaching Creationism are teaching evolution, they just don't realize it.
lol - so apropos - keyword was atheism
"For what it's worth, I don't think you deserve the troll mod that you've been smacked with. I'm of the opinion that only abusive or flamebait comments should be modded down, and I don't think yours is either of those."
Thank you! I very much appreciate your saying that :)
William George
Wow you deduce that i am a redneck from one post you are talented, or a bigot hmm which one could that be. and I would like to be shown where I was wrong assuming i am of course, but i have the feeling that you can't.
---Saying gnome 3 is better than windows 8 not so much a compliment as it is damning with light praise.
There's nothing wrong with believing in a higher power, but scientifically, there's no use either.
there is when you use that belief to impose upon other people's lives with it.
Heehee, at first I thought you were responding to the utility portion of the statement, then I noticed you left that out of your quote and really meant the what's-wrong bit. But still, inadvertently you did refute the "there's no use" statement. :-)
In my professional experience, electrical engineers tend to be a conservative group, particularly RF engineers. Often they compartmentalize the science they need and use to get their job done, and don't allow it to affect or inform their views on climate change, evolution, social issues, etc.
Has anyone else found that to be the case?
His plea will fall on deaf ears because hard-line conservative Christians believe so adamantly in creationism. Furthermore, Nye is competing with all the opposing propaganda that comes from the churches, Fox News, and the like. Ever wonder how bad it is?...Take a look at Jesus Camp or the HBO documentary called "Friends of God" or something like that.
Science has been subverted as a tool. It used to be a tool for understanding the world, and forming theories about how it works. Now Science is a church, that demands obedience, and which even has rabid followers that have special words equivalent to heretic. The Climategate fiasco proved this to anybody who has a brain. Science is now a tool to force the masses to assent to whatever massive societal engineering methods that our new priests decide is right.
Science is great, it's just that the scientists have many agendas, many of which are unsavory, and all of which require subterfuge in order to make the public go along with them.
Say wha? Now I've deduced that you are the perfect example of why Europeans hate Americans, you are a rambling idiot. That being said; no that post was not directed at you personally, but you were generalizing and so am I, you attacked his education, I'm attacking the entire all backwoods redneck american creationists.
My point is, guy has more education and knows more about the subject than your average creationist American.
That means I solve problems.
Not problems like 'what is religion?' Because that would fall within the purview of your conundrums of theology.
I solve practical problems!
For instance, how am I gonna stop some big mean motherhubbard from convincing children to believe in Creationism?
The answer? Use a gun. And if that don't work... use more gun!
Belief in evolution is really just the marker trait. If you reject the objective evidence in exchange for a mythological story (where the actual scripture in no way suggests that evolution wasn't how the creation was accomplished) in the case of evolution, where WON'T you do the same? You either do or do not accept that where observation is at odds with belief, belief must change to accommodate observation, not the other way around. If you do NOT accept that, your thinking is fundamentally incompatible with science and engineering.
You are welcome to believe that God created everything. When confronted with the evidence for observation, you can say to yourself "AHA! So that's how he did it!" and everything is just fine.
On the other hand, if your first instinct is to deny the observation or claim that they are a trick of the devil, where does it end? If you implement an economic policy and it ends in tears, will you deny that evidence too and claim it's a trick of the opposition? If you implement a bridge and it gallops and collapses, will you look into why and build bridges differently after that or will you declare that God didn't want a bridge there? Will you take your new knowledge and apply it to existing bridges to see if modifications are needed or will you accept ion faith that they are just fine?
It's great that no matter what science discovers that you find a way to attribute it to a god. However, it leads me to ask what kind of god do you believe in?
It's clearly not the god of the bible, since you don't believe in creationism and presumably you reject slavery, stoning, burning goats, the subservience of women, and genocide. If god told you to murder your son, would you do it? Would you applaud someone else who claimed to murder his son on god's orders?
So if you reject the bible and manage to attribute god to every natural process, aren't you just deifying nature?
I think it has a longer history as a military acronym: fucked up beyond all recovery.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Science isn't important to everyone, so they won't care about this. You can live your entire life without knowing where humanity came from or how your iphone works. For the most part, you're asking the masses to care about a niche topic that most people don't give a shit about. Once they get past high school science, they don't want to step into another science classroom again, then they get bummed out in college cuz they gotta take animal biology or something.
I know people who don't believe in God or care about science at the same time. If you ask them about evolution they'll tell you they don't care. If you ask them about science facts they'll laugh at you and call you a nerd or whatever then buy you a beer.
I know the argument will be, "well their religion is impeding on our right to science," but look at it from another perspective. What has science really given us? -Ok, we fill space with pieces of metal with cameras.
-We made cars and electricity that are now polluting our world beyond belief.
-It increased the lifespan of humans and survivability which may or may not be leading to overpopulation, dwindling resources per capita, global warming, etc.
-Gave us better ways to kill eachother.
Most of the pros can also be seen as cons. I did a fellowship researching green energy and the question that always came up, was "what is the total impact on the environment?" We'd look at things that we think to be clean, but ask the question, "is the manufacturing/disposal process clean?" and so on...
The point is, science is only important to people who think it's important. A lot of people will say it's bad because of the total impact its had on this world. The same can be said for religion. I'm an agnostic, if it's not clear, but I'm starting to care less and less about which side is right, because I'm not sure it will really matter who is right. It's not like there will be a huge "in your face, you're wrong parade" by either side if God were to return to earth or be completely disproven somehow and everyone who was right will inherit a billion dollars or something. It's kind of a pointless fight.
"Why is it "crap"? Why does it not matter?"
You're argument depends on belief in God or some omnipresent, omnipowerful, omniscient creature. If we lived in a world where someone could simultaneously manipulate everyone's perception of reality without error, we could just as easily live in the matrix as a world with a creator. It is not a leap of faith to disbelieve in the matrix. Your argument is invalid.
In this universe such people and solutions will just poof into existence!!
Creationism is just a symptom of a much more fundemental problem.
I see what you did there.
Spelled "fundamental" wrong? ;)
Yep, the guy with multiple Ph.D's disagrees with the your particular brand of invisible sky daddy, must be a dumbass.
Yes, because having a PhD automatically makes you an expert in everything and you should trust what they have to say about anything.
Sorry, mild pet peeve, but seriously, holding a PhD doesn't mean that you are intelligent or even know what you are talking about, as theories can go stale. At best they might be worth taking about, but I've meet some PhD's that knew a lot about a very narrow topic but not much about anything else.
Let's show that "memory is reliable" though Science!
You want to show that "memory is reliable", so we'll disprove that "memory is -un-reliable".
To disprove that memory is unreliable, have a test subject remember a phrase, such as "This is a test of whether memory is unreliable", and write that phrase onto a page of book, along with a time stamp stating when the phrase was written. Instruct the subject to write that phrase into that book, once per page, at random times, until the book is full. When the book is full, with one phrase and time stamp per page, take the book, compare all the written phrases, and see whether they match each other. If the phrases match each other, then memory is reliable. If the phrases differ from each other, then memory is unreliable.
For more rigor, run the experiment with multiple test subjects.
Run the experiment and tell us your results. I hypothesize that the written phrases will match each other, certainly p .05.
After the king james version some one translated "Bring them out so we may know them" to "have sex with them". Yikes. The ancient hebrew/aramic word for know is Yeda and it means to know well. Of the 47 places yeda is used in no place does it strictly mean sex. In fact it is written that David knew god. Was david but fucking god, or did he just, well, know him.
In fact the cannanites were in a time of sporaic war with their rivals, which is why they had a gate keeper named Lot. Now Lot was a sneaky guy who didn't even live with his own people. When he let in two demanding late night strangers and hid them in his home, the people had every reason to be alarmed. Perhaps they meant harm to the village. Asking to meet them and learn their bussiness under such cshady circumstances seeme reasonable. And indeed they did come planning to destroy the place and ulimately did.
The word "them" in bring them out, is gender neutral. The towns people did not know if the strangers were all men, angels, or a family. The word for the towns people is mixed gender "all the people", and so the idea they would be raping anyone in front of their wives and kids seems absurd. Finally, when offered the claimed virgin (but married) daughters of lot, the less than horny towns people turned them down, not being interested in sex but safety.
Finally one can note there were not witnesses other than lot and his wife (and retinue) that escaped so we only have lots story, and that story seems to be plagerized form the book of judges where the same thing happens including offering virgin daughters to protect angels. If this were on CSI-Gomorrah today we would find out that actually lot got paid off to open the town gates to an invading army that razed the place and Lots wife was going to spill the beans so he killed her and told everyone she turned into a pillar of stone. Then he just recycled the story from Book of Judges when asked what happened.
Anyhow. No butsects in soddom. Eziekiel tells us exactly why got sent the destroying angels: the prideful 1%s didn't realize they didn't build their own wealth, society had, and they were not giving back.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Disbelief in evolution is disbelief in antibiotic resistance in contagious and harmful bacteria (MRSA for example). Evolution explains how some bacteria are able to randomly survive exposure to antibiotics and produce offspring with similar resistance. With successive generations and successive random variations, additional resistances can be distilled.
Evolution explains how weeds can become Round-Up resistant. Genetically modified and manipulated plants are about as "intelligently designed" as you get, but there evolution is, randomly guiding plants to do successively better with each generation against this poison. If nothing else, this demonstrates that "intelligent design" and "evolution" have similar outcomes in similar time (I'll grant that intelligent design beat evolution by a decade, but I maintain that isn't a relevant time period).
Science is just that. A tool.
Sure there are some scientists that would use it for pushing an agenda, but 99.99% of scientists are in it for the improvement of human knowledge.
The "climategate" fiasco showed this - some anti-science people looked at a few emails out of context and jumped to conclusions that the science was bad, but then there was an extensive review that found it to be valid.
The great thing about science is that it ISN'T a religion, so anyone can get the training needed and work it out for themself, they aren't demanded to be obedient to a priest or labeled as heretics if they make a breakthrough.
Holy crap, this argument is just hiding behind, "HE'S MYSTERIOUS".
Belief in God means a dismissal of reason for however long it takes to convince yourself of your faith.
I am not religious, my son is asking me to explain the religious believes of some of his play-friends and the obvious to him collision with science. I explain that Science and Religion are not mutually exclusive.
I explain that Science does not teach "Absolute Truth" - it teaches to conduct experiments to measure and observe facts, then build theories to predict outcomes of future experiments, perform future experiments, confirm or deny theory. Nothing in the Scientific Approach requires for the facts to be "Absolute Truths" - they only need to be "Observable Truths".
Religion deals with "Absolute Truths" - it's not testable and measurable. It is Philosophy.
Maybe both should be studies at school - evolution in science class, creationism in philosophy class.
Engineers aren't scientists, and they especially don't care about evolution. An engineer can take some formulae describing how a particular phenomenon works, because god wills it to be so or otherwise, and design stuff.
Even most biologists can probably get away with not believing in evolution with no more than the usual irrationality required to dismiss evolution in the first place. An evolution-dismissing evolutionary biologist would require some serious mental gymnastics.
creationism is just a symptom of a much more fundemental problem.
I see what you did there
interesting and insightful
Creationism is not the problem. It is merely the outward manifestation of it. The problem is mindless evangelicals that expect blind devotion and for you to check your brain at the door. This creationism nonsense is just the most visible part of their worldview. These people are extremists even by the standards of other religious people.
They're like the Amish except with no balls. They make a lot of separatist noises and then just whine and pretend they are somehow victimized by society.
It's also useful to note that this lot were the only people to defend those recent "legitimate rape" remarks.
Creationism is just a symptom of a much more fundemental problem.
You sir are an a-hole.
A Christian with balls.
You realize that there are probably no more than a handful of biologists in the last fifty years that reject evolution, so I'm thinking here you haven't read very much at all from biologists against evolution.
At any rate, in the scientific language, macro-evolution refers to speciation and higher, so you're attempt to claim problems by word redefinition pretty much pins you to the wall.
What would you call the molecular evidence for humans and the other apes having a common ancestor, including ERVs, anything but evidence for macroevolution? Or does this simply go beyond you trying to prove evolution false by rhetorical games, and lean more on you just reject evidence that you don't like.
Go for it, Mr. Expert. I want you to explain ERVs common to great apes and humans in any other terms than common descent of those lineages.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Thank you.
No, that's far too common to qualify as mental illness. Faith that remains in contradiction to evidence is normal. It's the rational among us who are abnormal.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
But they are not the same. They are a different species. You have seen the genetic variability between two related populations diverge sufficiently for a new species to arrive. That is evolution in a nutshell. You're just using the tired old Creationist line about "kinds", but Creationists have become slightly more clever and don't choose to use their old claims without masking them.
But go on, here's a challenge for you. I want you to explain common ERVs in the same locales in the genome between humans and the other great apes in any other way but because the original insertion was in a common ancestor. Get to it, can't wait to see what you come up with,.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
3) That we need good scientists and engineers, and therefore should not teach our children creationism.
I wonder how many people actually watched the video rather than just reading the Huffington Post headline. Bill did not say we shouldn't teach creationism, much less use the word. He said, and I quote: "Evolution is the fundamental idea in all of life science". Only for the fundamentalist Christian, who takes the Bible to be literally true, might a belief in creationism be mutually exclusive with accepting evolution as a valid and productive scientific theory.
Subscribing to young earth creationism doesn't necessarily mean the individual is unable to think critically in general. An alarming amount of cognitive dissonance would easily enable that belief to be written off by the believer as a simple exception in a world view that is otherwise near-identical to the world view shared by the rest of the first world.
Not all people bother to develop a coherent world view. It's not always important to them.
Creationism and evolution aren't mutually exclusive. God damn people. You fuckers with binary need to learn not everything is a one or zero.
Eliminating creationism is extremely simple. Just explain life without a prime mover. Once that happens, creationism as a theory is gone. But to continually argue that creationism precludes or eliminates evolution is stupid. And wrong. And you know it.
Another liberal obama-lover attacking traditional christian values.
Young Earth creationists and Bill Nye represent the screwball ends of the spectrum.
Rants like Bill's only serve to strengthen my belief that Darwinists are in deep denial. The fact they can't face is that their ideas are speculative. Since they are speculative, intelligent, informed persons can disagree. In order to protect themselves from this uncomfortable fact, they erect elaborate sematic barriers.
Uhhhh... Evolution as a principle is not speculative. It's just the way things on this scale work.
Reconciling evolution with Christianity requires a person to effectively reinterpret the book of Genesis. The religion was not created by people who did not take the creation myth literally. Why is it suddenly acceptable to interpret it that way now? That's not faith, that's convenient revisionism. It's rationalization.
Moreover, it sounds like you're misunderstanding the Tower of Babel story. God punished the builders of the Tower of Babel because he knew man's capacity was without limit and he didn't want us to reach the sky. So I guess that means that pursuing knowledge is a sin, which is a recurring theme in the scriptures, starting with the very first sin of eating from the tree of KNOWLEDGE which was the source of man's fall.
Christians were perfectly happy accepting science up until the moment someone told them the universe was massive and didn't revolve around them. Then they got angry. But eventually, they found a way to accept that belief by basically choosing to ignore that Hebrew cosmology lies at the heart of the old testament. Then they started happily accepting scientific advancement again until someone told them man wasn't made from clay. I wish I could predict when this wave of hysteria will subside and christians will once again choose to ignore some major component of their faith in order to reconcile it with reality.
The real question is, what will be the next scientific discovery to challenge christianity? What will trigger the next bout of histrionics and require christianity to, yet again, reinterpret some fundamental aspect of the doctrine of the faith. How long will it take for the religious among us to finally accept that revising their religion every time we figure out something new is only a temporary solution to an ongoing problem? Just accept the reality that it's a myth and move on. I don't see anybody having a hard time accepting that Zeus wasn't real, why is it so hard for us to get over Yahweh?
2.1 billion years ago, cells with nucleaus' started appearing, about 500 million years later, those cells became animals and 60 million years after that, some of these animals developed vertebrates.
It does sound funny and stretches the mind.
I mean, most of us have trouble remembering where we put our keys, but then we pretend like we can really wrap our heads around numbers this big...
Firstly, plate tetonics makes a great corollary. It's a past scientific dispute which had somewhat similar patterns of denialism, and of course, that we all accept as true today. Secondly, evolution can be and is measured and observed in labs today. Get some fruit flies and run your own tests, if you're skeptical. There are plenty that you can replicate for yourself. Thirdly, we obviously do need good scientists and engineers. I was raised as a creationist, and when I got to college, needed a solid dose of education to catch up on scientific topics in general. Granted, not everyone in every field needs to even understand biology...but many do, and most of us will at least need some scientific understanding to complete our degrees. No point hindering kids by teaching them BS.
Support more choices in goverment-Vote 3rd party.
Nye: "We need people that can — we need engineers that can build stuff, solve problems."
Well throughout history I don't believe that Nye can provide any actual correlation of a scientific advance that required a belief in evolution other than the study of evolution itself. While evolution is interesting and I like to read about it myself, but it exists primarily to employ college professors and scientific pundits who make their living pushing it. A belief in evolution is not a prerequisite for any field of scientific endeavor, not even in biology or human physiology.
So according to Nye we can't have electrical engineers, mathematicians, etc. unless they have a belief in evolution. To me this is abandoning empiricism and elevating evolution to some sort of religion that if you are not a member of the faithful then you obviously wouldn't have the mental ability to become a member of the holy order of the scientist.
I imagine people will be able to discover new drugs, new consumer electronics, new fuel technologies, etc. whether they believe in evolution or not.
Next thing all you buzz kills are gonna tell me is that Santa Claus is fake.
Not ALL philosophy is bullshit. But the kind that starts with things like "if a tree falls in a forest..." and "how do you know you exist?" are interesting thinking exercises with very little applied value. Other kinds of philosophy, such as thinking about how we generate and validate knowledge, has proven to be very useful.
Evolution is scientific. Belief in a creator is religious. Belief in evolution is rational. Each of these statements is true in a way.
False.
No one who understand what science is believes in evolution. Science is not a system of beliefs, it is a system of evidence based reasoning. It is not proper to say "I believe in evolution", but rather "the theory of evolution is the hypothesis best supported by the evidence". In science, nothing can be fact, or definitively proven. We rather conduct experiments to reduce uncertainty in a theory, or to disprove a theory. So, evolution is not scientific, nor is it religious. Evolution and creationism are ideas; two competing hypotheses describing a process. Evolution is supported by the scientific process, while creationism is not supported by scientific evidence. Creationism however is supported by a faith based belief system, and people such as yourself (im assuming) who only know belief systems in turn think that scientists believe in evolution. Perhaps it is not your fault that you are unfamiliar with evidence based reasoning, what skepticism really means, and the scientific method, but that is all the more reason for you to support better science education in our nation's schools.
"We are born. We live. We die." Well... okay. Now what?
This conclusion is also unhelpful. That's the point -- let's stick to discussing things which have some utility.
After the king james version some one translated "Bring them out so we may know them" to "have sex with them". Yikes. The ancient hebrew/aramic word for know is Yeda and it means to know well. Of the 47 places yeda is used in no place does it strictly mean sex. In fact it is written that David knew god. Was david but fucking god, or did he just, well, know him.
I think the new translation gets it right. Context is key.
"Bring them out so that we may get to know them; have a little chat, and welcome them to the city"
âoeNo, my friends. Donâ(TM)t do this wicked thing. Look, I have two daughters who have never slept with a man. Let me bring them out to you, and you can do what you like with them. But donâ(TM)t do anything to these men, for they have come under the protection of my roof.â
So you're saying Lot didn't want to introduce the strangers to his neighbors, and that's it? What's with the "protection" talk, and the attempt to appease?
If this were on CSI-Gomorrah today we would find out that actually lot got paid off to open the town gates to an invading army that razed the place and Lots wife was going to spill the beans so he killed her and told everyone she turned into a pillar of stone. Then he just recycled the story from Book of Judges when asked what happened.
If Lot could recite from the Book of Judges, then he's definitely a prophet. Or a time traveler.
You should really read up on some of the research regarding memory. It's not nearly as reliable as you think it is. Our brain is constantly re-writing itself and it's freakishly easy to plant memories or make subtle changes to things people weren't paying very close attention to. It generally works for what we need it to do, but when it comes to witnessing crimes this can be a life-or-death issue for the accused.
I guess you could say that based on my faith in science I reject my experiential belief that my memory is reliable and accept it's unreliability.
Never claim two high dimensional vectors, or complicated functions, are orthogonal unless you can find the dot product between them. Lots of religions discovered that their religious beliefs and science weren't so orthogonal after all. Creationists and evolution, for example.
I don't care what you teach your kid, you do not have the right to teach other's kids your religion. Its insulting, and it is tyranny of your own making.
Science is science, religion is religion. There is ABSOLUTELY no rational for teaching religion as science. End of story.
Imagine you are a fly, and you are behind a window, and you see the outside world. And you smash into the glass, over and over. That is faith. You KNOW it is there.
I will disagree with you that there is a "small subset of people" part of your statement.
The total number of people who deny evolution is almost 40%. I would not call 120,000,000 people a small number.
And theres damm few other religions that can say that. The rest of them all love to preach to everyone and tell us we're all going to hell.
Or try to blow us up and send us there personally. Barbarism.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - Evelyn Beatrice Hall, re Voltaire
Many religions speak of instances of deities lashing out against faithless individuals. Many religions also have accounts of the 'faithful' themselves taking it upon themselves to invoke gods will upon the non-believers for the betterment of mankind. This isn't just a game where you can hedge your bets, pick a faith, and hope it's the right one (assuming a right one exists or has even been discovered). Even if it were, your best bet would be to start every day by saying: "To any or all placate-able deities (or just really powerful entities), I pay you my respect that you please look upon the Earth with favor, spare us your wrath for another day, and help me on this science project." If that sounds absurd, it's no worse than picking any single faith on the grounds that you are no worse off. While the roulette wheel approach might seem harmless, people take faith seriously and the impacts of the decisions they make based on it have real effects on the lives of others.
Account -> Discussions -> Disable Sigs
It's not just depressing, it's downright disturbing. People that hold irrational views in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary are dangerous, pure and simple.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - Evelyn Beatrice Hall, re Voltaire
You shouldn't accept your memory as reliable or as fact. It's colored by emotion, perspective and experience.
Even people who don't believe in evolution can still become engineers who "build stuff, solve problems"
Yeah, and the thought of it scares me a lot.
Young Earth creationists and Bill Nye represent the screwball ends of the spectrum.
Rants like Bill's only serve to strengthen my belief that Darwinists are in deep denial. The fact they can't face is that their ideas are speculative. Since they are speculative, intelligent, informed persons can disagree. In order to protect themselves from this uncomfortable fact, they erect elaborate sematic barriers.
Uhhhh... Evolution as a principle is not speculative. It's just the way things on this scale work.
No, I suppose it isn't. Gradual genetic change in a population certainly takes place. The speculation part is that all living things in all their variety were produced by long strings of such changes. (With the help of some selecting factors.)
This is what I meant when I said that evolutionists rely too heavily on semantic arguments. They call both the genetic changes and a bold theory about them "evolution". They then pretend that we must accept or reject them both together.
You really don't seem to understand science at all. You don't "believe" in scientific theories. Evolution is a theory, not a fact. A theory is a "system of ideas intended to explain something" As such, evolution is the best scientific system put together that explains our observations of the world. It's not perfect, but very few theories are perfect. Even in pure mathematics there are contradictions and holes.
If you refuse to accept the usefulness of evolution to explain the world, then you should similarly refuse to teach any scientific theory, which would make for extremely incompetent engineers.
Seems creationism, evoultion, big bang, Deity, all attempt to find a beginning. The interesting thing is you all hit the same roadblocks. if you believe in Big Bang then where did the elements and energy come from to make the big bang? It obviosly couldn't have been the VERY beginning. Same with Deity, even if they created everything, or had a hand in the big bang, etc... then where did they come from? I fail to see how finite humans have enough knowladge beyond their own beliefs (and yes if you believe the big bang theory it is still nothing more than your belief system) to say you know the universe began with X or Y or X is aarogant and stupid from anyone's point of view. Here's my advice, live your life the best you can, help people, and gain all the knowladge and understanding you can, be willing and able to help the human race, seek truth but don't be close minded (both believers in God, and those who do not believe are guilty of being close minded or of thinking they understand things when in fact they do not) everyone has the ability and obligation to be a contribution to ours, and our children's future. Be apart of it, and help lift yourself and others up.
Damn you, AC, I was going to post something similar and you had to go flaming. He's no idiot, but "creationists" are not necessarily anti-evolutionists. Every Christian believes that God created the universe, but all but a few morons accept that evolution is how he went about making different species. Even the Pope says so.
Teaching your children about God is not the problem, stupidly denying science is the problem. And I suspect that the antievolutionists are wolves in sheeps' clothing, not unlike that evil preacher from Florida who demonstrates at military funerals with "god hates fags" placards. That goes against every single thing Jesus taught; God loves gays, he just doesn't like what they do -- but he doesn't like my or your sins, either. Gays are forgiven like any other Christian, we all sin. How can that Florida asshat consider himself a Christian?
I suspect that many of these creationists are simply trying to make unbelievers out of believers. I'm convinced that Pat Robertson has converted far more Christians to atheism than Richard Dawkins ever dreamed of converting.
Free Martian Whores!
Reminds me of Sinefield episode where the finish all the sentances "Yada yada yada..."
Which makes sense if you think about it. (As someone you know well, doesn't need the details, as they already know)
While I have no love for such fairy tales, the First Amendment guarantees that won't happen.
Phew, that's a relief! The government would NEVER subvert free speech!
/sarcasm
While I don't think there is any fear of an anti-creationism law being passed, I think it's more due to the right-wing nuts than any sentimental fondness on the part of the government for any of the various portions of the Bill of Rights that they ignore on an increasingly frequent basis. That said, I don't think creationism should be taught in science class, either.
Sure I'm paranoid, but am I paranoid enough?
Evolution is not science in the traditional way.
Exhibit 1) Evolution isn't falsifiable. The reason you never hear any numbers associated with evolution is because numbers are inherently falsifiable. How many years does it take for a mutation? how many mutations occurred between point a and point b? How long did it take? How large would the population have to be for a 50% chance of that occurring within the specified time frame? These are all questions with answers. They just really really really don't want you to know the answers.
Exhibit 2) Evolution isn't forward science. All of what is traditionally called science creates a hypothesis and does experiments and then dares anyone to do an experiment that falsifies the theory. So if x and y then causation z will occur. All confirmation is always done after the hypothesis is created, thats what science is and what it has always been.
Exhibit 3) Evolution is backwards science. Evolution and the big bang are the only 2 examples I personally know of where a scientific theory is sold using backwards "confirmation". Rather than saying I believe that big bangs can occur in the future and this is how it would happen and here I have created one, the priest of evolution says I believe this and here is the argument that supports me and don't look at the stuff that doesn't and there is no way you can create your own experimental data because this has already happened. This is closer to politics or philosophy than to what we all know as science.
Exhibit 4) All believers of the evolution religion hide their real logic. Its A) I don't believe in God or super smart aliens and B) I exist therefore C) evolution must be true because look I exist I know I am right. If you talk to any evolution convert in depth you will get to this point after explaining the previous points. They will typically hide it as deep down they know its tribal magic science they believe in not real science following real rules.
Exhibit 5) If you are smart you realize spontaneous evolution is not less likely than evolution over time. The typical argument is look if a simple organism can preserve the state of a dna sequence then the derivative change will eventually occur. So if a rabbits always exist eventually one will mutate to a 5 footed rabbit. BUT they hide the fact that this involves 2 assumptions. 1) there needs to be a real path between every living thing that is stable so that mutation to mutation its actually possible in a non magic level of probability. 2) They totally ignore the competing factors, AIDS is a simple example, AIDS in a population of super sexual beings would eliminate the population over time completely due to secondary disease, a mutation to make you get aids at 40 but make you super sexy would destroy everyone who had sex with you eventually wiping out your entire circle of partners world wide and killing a species. Its not at all clear in a science sense if spontaneous evolution of an entire planet is more or less "Magical" than evolution.
Exhibit 6) The big bang is magic. Evolution has just pushed all the magic into one moment. Instead of design you get a magic event that just "happens" to unwind to create this massively unlikely evolution. Its a religious belief. It may be what happened. It may be that the Norse are right and an invasion of ice giants proves it one day. But its not science its magic.
Exhibit 7) Evolution is a quasi scientific explanation to how life got here. The universe is big. There should be others evolved. The odds of another civilization evolving 1 million years or even 1 billion years using spontaneous evolution before us is very likely relative to the other possibilities being discussed given how big the universe is. But the idea that another civilization evolved to super smart godlike aliens and then created us is not considered. Why? Does this offend the religious evolution beliefs? Certainly if evolution is likely this is a near certainty. Why isn't the super smart alien
Huh. I'm a natural cynic and I don't believe everything that is in the Bible's various incarnations as the word of God. In this case my cynical approach generates a distinctly positivist theory. By that I mean that I interpret the Genesis 11:6 lesson as "Nothing good will come from a language that your current rulers don't understand."
Imagine, 3000 years ago, a city-state's citizens aren't happy with their abusive nepot ruler and begin to usurp him via messages using a different language or code (think pig latin or something similar). Messages being passed around (orally since vast majority cannot read) that only the usurpers can understand could be very dangerous to a dictator. Seems like a good way to control the masses would be to tell them God frowns upon alternate languages. It has added bonuses...
-Creates linguistic unity among those being ruled, and forces conquered peoples to adopt the conquerors dialect
-Any believer who hears the usurpers secret language would make a stink and turn them in
-Foreigners will be easy to identify and isolate
-Enforcing linguistic rules through academics enhances the ruler's perceived divine right
The Bible's proliferation is strongly correlated to the "dark ages" and a lack of representative government for over 1000 years and I think the Tower of Babel "lesson" is a part of the reason why. Luckily for us, Christiandom went through the reformation and many those archaic beliefs were pushed to the wayside in order to make room for the things we see before our eyes every day that couldn't be explained by the written word. The earth circling the sun, geology showing how ancient this planet is, newly discovered lands with people who had their own "pagan" religions, etc...
Even today we see that many people cannot grasp the intricacies of the explanations for our world and this leads them to simpler models. Some people just want to be held by a warm embrace to the bosom of an organized religion. That is fine for them, but when someone starts trying to override science with religion in school, or apply cherry picked interpretations of an old book written by men, to explain scientific advances, it rubs me the wrong way.
After the king james version some one translated "Bring them out so we may know them" to "have sex with them". Yikes. The ancient hebrew/aramic word for know is Yeda and it means to know well. Of the 47 places yeda is used in no place does it strictly mean sex.
There are certainly a few places where it is used to mean sex. For example, "And Adam knew [yada'] Eve his wife; and she conceived, and bare Cain" (Genesis 4:1) certainly draws a cause-effect relationship between the "knowing" and the "conceiving."
Even in the passage dealing with Sodom and Gomorrah, when the men of Sodom demand "Bring them out unto us, that we may know [yada'] them" (Gen. 19:5), Lot tries to appease the mob with his daughters. He says, "Behold now, I have two daughters which have not known [yada'] man; let me, I pray you, bring them out unto you, and do ye to them as is good in your eyes." (Gen. 19:8) The plainest reading of this description suggests his daughters were virgins.
So you are correct that yada' [insert Seinfeld jokes here] doesn't always mean sex, it certainly can refer to a carnal knowledge.
Amen to that.
That's sort of what the Catholic Church did. One of the original amendments of god in the bible is, "Thou, shall not worship any other god than me", meaning no worshiping of deities other than the creator himself. Yet the catholic church has their pope, (a deity since they treat him as some holy or divine being). They even changed the bible so that amendment says something that suits them better.
Another interesting tidbit. In the constitution of the United States, it explicitly lays out the separation of church and state. Had the catholic church been a backer of the free the colonies, certainly a debt for their (economic) favors would have included them in the governance of the new land and today they would have significant influence in the most powerful nation in the world.
If god does/did support the Catholic church or Christianity, it would not be beyond the reaches of clairvoyance to be able to foresee the end of the reign of creationism and the Church, especially because the holy book seems to give such emphasis on the gods need/desire to be worshiped, and have compelled the leaders of the church in the 1780's and 1790's to stand beside France and fund a revolutionary war against Britain (a defector of the church in fact if memory serves) and claim a right that would place such encumbrances in the constitution of the new nation sufficient to secure the power and influence god and the worshipers would certainly covet.
After all, isn't that part of investing in nation-building? Securing your interests in the new nation? That's what the US did in Iraq anyway.
Having said all of that, I have no evidence that god does not exist; and conceding to her existence, she certainly does not favor Christianity, Islam, or any of the other religions that emerged from the old testament.
Building our relationship with god as individuals is important because when we can find strength, reason or courage and do what we believe needs to be done, we are stronger because of god. Perhaps irrationally stronger but who can claim that reason is better or more important than intuition?
I am an engineer, and I spend my days building stuff and solving problems, and a belief in evolution has nothing to do with my ability to perform this work. While I certainly believe in the concept of evolution and the FACT that evolution does occur, that does not mean or require that I believe man evolved from apes or any other create or species that has ever existed. Simply because evolution DOES happen in small ways now doesn't mean it DID happen in huge ways thousands to millions of years ago. Nor is a belief that God directed the creation of the Earth in any way contradictory to the theory of evolution. The fact is people are going to believe whatever "feels" right to them, and there's nothing wrong with that. The more intelligent a man, the more convince he should be that he doesn't know anything.
http://www.godandscience.org/apologetics/einstein.html
Even Einstein realized there was a beginning to the universe. The question we all wrestle with, is what was the beginning? Jesus said before the world was, I Am. Evolutionists would say there was a massive firey explosion that started from a pinhead and we evolved from a spec on a meteor. For me personally, the fact that there's all these fossils, yet we can't find the millions of intermediary fossils we should expect to find in between all the Earth's layers, and the well documented life of Jesus solidifies my faith in God. I just can't imagine thinking we're all just a big accident flying around on a planet with no purpose. I also look to the people of the New Testament. They witnessed firsthand the prophecy of the Old Testament being fulfilled. These weren't simple card tricks or vague predictions, they were very specific and made thousands of years before Jesus. The fact that his disciples died such cruel deaths, and lived such hard lives, tells me what they were seeing first-hand was real. Real people don't allow themselves to be tortured to death for a lie they've been living. Study the life of Paul, and you'll see what I mean. God gave us all free will, so in the end all we have is ourselves to blame. If I'm wrong, I'll be with every other person after I die, or be turned into nothing. If you don't accept Jesus as your savior, and I end up being right, it's an unimaginable torment forever. Again, why risk that?
John 3:16
If god used these things to create the universe, then who and by what means was god created? and so on and so forth...
The term used in the Bible, in English at least, is "kind" rather than species. I'm not sure of the original Hebrew word, or what subtleties it conveys, but I suspect that the difficulties in discussing this stem from our imperfect classification system. We can make one group of flies, over generations, incapable of complete interbreeding... but do these 'new' groups of flies have any real distinction? Does one have an extra set of legs, or has one lost the ability to fly? (not that I would necessarily think either of those to be sufficient for a new 'kind', just trying to put out some examples).
Note that not being capable of interbreeding is also not a useful trait to distinguish species. We used to go by it a while ago, but we found out it to be not all that consistent in practice. Many species in the wild don't interbreed because of physiological differences but can technically produce offspring with artificial insemination. Some can become impregnated that way and will produce an embryo, but will be unable to give birth to it. Some will give birth, but the offspring will be sterile with a certain probability, which can sometimes go all the way to "practically certain". It's not clear how to count either of those. Not to mention ring species and such.
As I've mentioned earlier, this all is due to the fact that nature doesn't really have strict boundaries between species. This is the inevitable consequence of the process from which they are created. When you have a single interbreeding population, any genetic differences that arise are quickly spread around it. When populations diverge, their respective differences begin to accumulate, being different partly from chance (neutral mutations), and partly from natural selection favoring different mutations due to different environment. If you reunite the populations, so long as there is some means of establishing gene flow between them (direct or indirect interbreeding etc), they will again exchange their genes, and, given enough time, homogenize through natural selection favoring the same combinations in the same environment. Obviously, at some point the accumulated differences are so vast that there is no possibility of natural gene flow; at that point you can definitely say that the species are distinct. That puts the upper boundary on the notion, but not the lower one.
Actually, come to think of it, even the upper boundary is not that clear. We can now splice genes from one organism to another in a lab, even between vastly different ones (like plants and animals). Technically, this is gene flow, and if we keep doing it, and then let natural selection apply to the resulting creatures, given enough time, this would work the same way as natural interbreeding does. And who's to say what's "natural"? The difference between artificial insemination and gene splicing is not all that great, conceptually; and one could argue that, insofar as humans themselves are "natural" - being a product of a "natural" process of evolution - then so are their activities, and the products of their activities. Nature itself doesn't really care about the distinction of whether a tree burns because it's hit by a lightning, or because an ape cut it off and used it to build a fire. And genes don't care whether they're combined by a "natural" process of directing semen at where it can combine with ovum and exchange genetic material with it, or by a white-coated guy in the lab.
Also, as I pointed out, I do think it is entirely possible that God used evolution in the creation process - I won't die for the young earth viewpoint :) What I would die for is the idea of intelligent design: that God orchestrated creation, whether in six days or in six billion years.
That idea by itself is not contrary to the observed evidence, so I don't see why it would pose any problem for one's scientific endeavors. Of course, it is also not science in and of
One major issue that many fail to understand is that science cannot define truth. Science and Philosophy are two separate realms. Science is the process of creating and disproving theories based on currently known facts. The important limitation here is "current" and that theories can only be disproven, never proven.
What is the probability that a scientific theory will never be changed or proven incorrect in the future? This is an unanswerable question, as we don't know that which we don't know. We can't even produce a probability of correctness, yet still there is belief that currently held scientific theories are true.
The logically correct conclusion is that belief that current scientific theories are true is as much a matter of faith as belief in a god/gods. Faith that scientific theories will never be changed, faith that humanity will never discover some new fact that changes or invalidates current theories, faith that humans are capiable of discovering everything there is to know about the universe we live in.
As a parent, I should be able to teach my children whatever I please. This rant sounds like a bunch of nazis that want to dictate what your children should believe.
Just because this TV show host has the evolution religion (which many of the folks here seem to also have), does not mean he is 100% correct.
Just because Christianity is easy to disprove does not make the Torah wrong. The Torah is correct whether you like being responsible for your actions or not.
Creationism is just a symptom of a much more fundemental problem.
I see what you did there.
I honestly cannot tell if you think he made a pun on fundamentalists, or you are lampooning him for casting stones at others while spelling poorly.
The Daddy casts sleep on the Baby. The Baby resists!
"You sir are an a-hole."
The truth is bitter.
"A Christian with balls."
Little teeny, tiny ones Mr Anonymous.
"Gold still represents the ultimate form of payment in the world." - Alan Greenspan, 1999
God is quite capable of using DNA and RNA and quantum mechanics and other theories
oh yes! he creates disease, pain, suffering. he's quite the DNA expert.
of course, he's as evil as can be! what else can you say about a 'god' who unleashes such evils to the world and just sits back and laughs.
oh, and according to many, if you make a mistake in choice, you will spend *forever* in pain.
yeah, real loving caring god you guys got there.
go ahead and rationalize it away with this or that quote. you won't accept the truth that our world is controller-less and always has been.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
They prefer the euphemism "faithful."
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - Evelyn Beatrice Hall, re Voltaire
I suppose that is a good point. I personally define creationism a little more loosly as the entire process employeed by God (or whomever you prefer) to get from "nothing" to what we now have, whether that be through evolution, big bang, or what-have-you.
Perhaps to be more correct, I should have said that I believe many religious people realize that the science of evolution does not discount the involvement of a diety.
I recall reading a story a few months ago on this subject, and was surprised to see how large a percentage of religious americans accepted evolution as compatible with their religious beliefs. Before then, it seemed all I heard about were the extremists who fight against evolution whole-heartedly. This is what prompted my initial comment.
Your invocation sounds like some of the Roman invocations I've seen in history books. But the reality is that if there is only one God, He would rightly be mad at generalizing an invocation to anything that might be out there.
I happen to believe there is just one, and that He has made himself known to humanity. Others would disagree. Regardless, as He has done so to me, I must follow Him. And as an engineer, there are definitely times I will gladly acknowledge His help. There are also times in my personal life that I gratefully acknowledge His protection and help. The slashdot group ignores instances of divine intervention because they can't be reduced to a repeatable experiment, but they are sufficient for me.
Engineers aren't scientists, and they especially don't care about evolution. An engineer can take some formulae describing how a particular phenomenon works, because god wills it to be so or otherwise, and design stuff.
Easy counter-example: if you truly believe that $GOD determines the True and Natural Order of things, and the bridge falls over, is it a failure of mathematics or $GOD's Divine Will?
Once upon a time, the study of the heavens and the gods was a pursuit in understanding our world and our place in it. It was a humble pursuit by humble people who only wanted to learn more about that which they did not understand.
Now it seems that, at least for the mass audience, religion has become a yoke, a system of limiting knowledge. And sadly, it seems to be for the purpose of maintaining societal hierarchies. Keep them dumb, that'll keep them poor. If they're poor, they'll be hungry. If they're hungry, they'll do what you say.
The CB App. What's your 20?
Belief that all currently held scientific theories are true is, in fact, religion. It is a matter of faith as science doesn't deal in truth.
God is quite capable of using DNA and RNA and quantum mechanics and other theories which we have yet to learn about to make people and the world.
What sort of God do you refer to?
Do you really think that a good God would resort to 4 Billion years of "clumsy, wasteful, blundering, low, and horribly cruel works" to make people? This positions imagines a malevolent God more akin to a devil.
Source?
The various fly and bacteria studies are not what I consider true indicators of the level of evolution needed to develop advanced lifeforms from single-cell organisms. I know of those tests, and do not in the least deny their direct findings... but taking that and then saying that from these results we can be sure that a single cell lifeform can evolve into a complex, multi-organ creature is what I call into question. That is what we cannot directly test and observe, while we can measure plate tectonics directly and observe the results of their interactions.
William George
St. Augustine agrees with Bill Nye::
Saint Augustine (A.D. 354-430) in his work The Literal Meaning of Genesis (De Genesi ad litteram libri duodecim) provided excellent advice for all Christians who are faced with the task of interpreting Scripture in the light of scientific knowledge. This translation is by J. H. Taylor in Ancient Christian Writers, Newman Press, 1982, volume 41.
Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable eclipses of the sun and moon, the cycles of the years and the seasons, about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge he hold to as being certain from reason and experience. Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn. The shame is not so much that an ignorant individual is derided, but that people outside the household of faith think our sacred writers held such opinions, and, to the great loss of those for whose salvation we toil, the writers of our Scripture are criticized and rejected as unlearned men. If they find a Christian mistaken in a field which they themselves know well and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions about our books, how are they going to believe those books in matters concerning the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven, when they think their pages are full of falsehoods and on facts which they themselves have learnt from experience and the light of reason? Reckless and incompetent expounders of Holy Scripture bring untold trouble and sorrow on their wiser brethren when they are caught in one of their mischievous false opinions and are taken to task by those who are not bound by the authority of our sacred books. For then, to defend their utterly foolish and obviously untrue statements, they will try to call upon Holy Scripture for proof and even recite from memory many passages which they think support their position, although they understand neither what they say nor the things about which they make assertion. [1 Timothy 1.7]
God is quite capable of using DNA and RNA and quantum mechanics and other theories which we have yet to learn about to make people and the world.
The problem isn't what he's capable of. The problem you face is that he is unnecessary for anything and everything we observe in the real world. DNA and quantum mechanics and everything else work perfectly well without a guiding hand, and we do not have a single piece of scientific evidence pointing towards any unexplainable influences. Not one. Millions, billions of measurements, not one shred of finger of god.
Sure, maybe he's just playing hide&seek really well, but you know what? So do Eris Discordia and the FSM.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
For example, if you look at the creation account in Genesis, and take into account that the word that translates as "Day" can also mean "period of time", "Age", or "epoch", and not necessarily a defined period of time, then you can easily interpret it as mirroring what science tells us about how the Earth was formed and life evolved.
Genesis is hopelessly flawed, It is a earth and human centered creation account.
According to Genesis earth was created "epochs" before the Sun and stars! Also it is (as is religion in general) very ego-centric in that it teaches that all this (that is the universe) is created for humans... hog wash. Ego-centric religions must go the way of animal sacrificing religions... in the dust bin where they belong.
Actually, in ancient Hebrew "Yeda" is commonly used as a euphemism for sex. For example (My translation from Hebrew): "And Adam YEDA his wife Eve and she became pregnant and she had a son" (Genesis, chapter 4 verse 1)
This post is a little closer to what I believe.
Here's my personal background: I am a devout Catholic, and also a scientist (B.S. Chemistry, 2008, Illinois State Univ.). As a scientist, I do "believe" in the Truth of evolution (it seems odd to use that word, "believe", given the context). As a Catholic, I do believe in the Truth of the Bible.
Epistemology 101: Truth Cannot Contradict Truth. Specifically, this document references another, Humani Generis, which the author paraphrases: "there was no opposition between evolution and the doctrine of the faith about man and his vocation, on condition that one did not lose sight of several indisputable points". Among those points, Catholics must believe that souls are created immediately by God (something that science can neither prove nor disprove), and that modern humans are descended from precisely one original pair of humans (the proverbial Adam and Eve). Beyond that, everything else is good.
Basically, it is permissible for a Catholic to believe in evolution, so long as we accept certain points.
What frustrates me is this: fundamentalists of all religious beliefs strip out nuance. I say, "of all religious beliefs" because the scientific fundamentalists preach dogma without nuance just as much as the religious fundamentalists do. Both "sides" attempt to stay as "sides", and preclude the other from participation at the talking table, without trying to find a way to make the other work within their own world view.
he creates disease, pain, suffering. he's quite the DNA expert.
That is the problem with this contrived new-age approach (ie old earth creationism) is that God comes out looking very limited or evil entity. Of course the traditional explanation for these things you mention are the Fall. However these defects have been in existence long before there were any humans to "Fall". The gloss approach express in the grandparent is flawed on so many different levels.
It is myth people! Attempting to find coherence of a myth to reality is a fools errand.
Bill's major point seems to be that the next generation of scientists will be somehow rendered incompetent unless their worldview is based on an acceptance of the theory of Evolution as indisputable fact. He doesn't phrase it that way, but that's the impression I'm left with by this and other, similar, points of view. It would seem to me that many, if not most, fields of science could be performed perfectly well without needing to be grounded in that way. He says towards the end: 'we need engineers who can build stuff - solve problems' - as if to say: a child who is taught Creationism couldn't possibly learn maths, physics, chemistry to the degree required to become an engineer...huh!?
(Moving away from Bill Nye) As far as what's appropriate for children to be taught; schools should be required to teach a science curriculum that covers a set of topics that is common across the board. Beyond that, I don't think it's anybody's business to tell a parent what is right for their kids to be taught. If parents choose to send their kids to a school that teaches Creationism *in addition* to the core curriculum, then so be it.
"we need engineers that can build stuff, solve problems"
Even people who don't believe in evolution can still become engineers who "build stuff, solve problems"
Only met one creationist engineer. Unsurprisingly nobody took him seriously once that came out, though his short-lived term at the company had to do with other more serious secular issues that he had.
I'm not an expert in biology, and never claimed to be :) However, a quick Google search of the terms you used pulls up several results that look well researched and which, via a cursory reading, appear to be written by folks who are experts. I have found such results on both sides of this argument, which tells me that this is not as firmly established of a conclusion as you might think. For example, check out this article (one of the better ones by the look of it, given the number of citations and general quality of writing):
http://www.evolutionnews.org/2011/05/do_shared_ervs_support_common_046751.html
In the end, none of us were there when either God created the world, or life evolved, or a combination of the two. As such we cannot absolutely say what happened one way or the other. The upshot of that is that it also doesn't matter to the vast majority of modern disciplines: someone can be a perfectly good engineer, doctor, etc without needing to believe one way or the other on this topic! Now someone who didn't believe in gravity - that person I might not want building an airplane... or someone who didn't understand the size of viruses, allergens, etc building an air filter for use in medical applications. Bill Nye implying that because we need smart and well educated kids to continue our society we should teach evolution is a non-sequitur.
William George
Of course they are mutually exclusive.
One is based on the idea that we get truths from some Holy Book (of which there are many inconsistent instantiations, you pick one because some guy says this is the right one, and go to war if some other guys say no ours is the right one) or you get truths from empirical observation. No Magic Book, just hard work.
These are mutually exclusive views of what to base thought on. You cannot weasel around it. One or the other.
Choose.
Actually, there's a lot wrong with believing in a higher power, as it makes it easier to escape from responsibility, shift blame and claim higher authorities to acts that you'd not even consider had they come from another human being.
There are also advantages, apparently mostly in the health area, as some recent studies have indicated.
So the sum total is still out. But you can't say there's nothing wrong.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
And what does any of that have to do with your desire to teach your children bullshit and lies?
I'm sure plenty of people didn't watch it, but the very title of the YouTube video is "Creationism Is Not Appropriate For Children". He also said,
"To the grown-ups, if you want to deny evolution and live in your world that is completely inconsistent with everything we observe in the universe - that's fine. But don't make your kids do it, because we need them. We need scientifically literate voters and taxpayers for the future. We need engineers that can build stuff, solve problems."
By doing this, he is implying that a creationist cannot 'build stuff', 'solve problems', or vote in a way that is responsible. This is quite insulting to me personally, and I think is counter-productive to any discussion of this subject. This is akin to an 'Ad hominem' attack in logic.
William George
Your question isn't intractable. It's sterile. It has the same amount of predictive and analytical power as "Goddidit". It's utterly boring. It leads nowhere.
And yet it's brought out a good 80+ wrong answers and the chance for people to think again about their premises.
I hope for the world's sake that you're no teacher.
Not only that, but the Greeks already knew about it and found it to be an approach that lead nowhere.
Perhaps you're misinterpreting some Greek writing, or misunderstanding the question.
The best - and really only response - I got to this question is "Who cares?"
All questions can be answered like that. Like I said somewhere else in this thread, why aren't we all out playing football on this sunny day?
As for which texts we read in "middle school", Plato's cave analogy was a nice starting point.
OK, so you remember reading about Plato's Cave at school and you think that this answers all the elementary philosophical questions. Well, nope. Plato was obsessed with the idea of an ephemeral world of change and decay as perceived by the senses and felt that his mind's eye could go beyond that and somehow witness the truth. It was a great genesis for mathematics but produced a rather mediocre start to science. And it had fuck all to do with trusting one's memory..
Descartes in High School was a bit more interesting, but he fell flat due to the necessity to use circular reasoning to get anywhere with that approach.
"That approach" being...
it's the attitude of people like you who think they've found some special trick question. You haven't.
In the dozen or so responses I've made in this thread before you posted, I've told people repeatedly that this is a well-known question and that they should think twice before thinking there's a good answer. But you might as well carry on a roll of historical ignorance with some contemporary. ignorance.
You're merely regurgitating a 2000 year old discussion that was rejected pretty much immediately.
Nope. The question has not been "rejected" ever, just deemed unanswerable. But it's formed part of "sterile debate" on the power and limitations of philosophical induction per Hume, leading to Popper's falsifiability, and all the other Philosophy 101 names you could have dropped if you hadn't engaged bullshit mode.
You're like a 9 year old who yells citizen's arrest! every time he sees his parents speeding. It merely betrays your own shallowness and lack of understanding.
I'm not sure what speeding being a summary offence (E+W) has to do with this discussion, but OK.
And what's with the quotes. Did you do the appropriate air quotes with your fingers as well?
I thought air quotes were an illustration of incredulity. But your nick was just as middle-school as your argument. Not that it matters - you'd have been equally wrong without the silly name.
Scientific people do not accept their memory as reliable. They know that it isn't. However, they also realize that with a healthy dose of care, memory is largely acceptable, and can be used when nothing of higher reliability (like a video or written document) is available.
No need to rely on faith if you have a couple facts. We can actually make fairly good educated guesses at the reliability of memory. We don't have to "believe" - we can test and measure. In fact, we've done so.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
How do you know that you have this evidence?
You're begging the question, chump.
Sure they can. They will build "Stuff'.. and solve "problems", just not ones that need solving and not stuff we really need. Just like there are alot of people in IT who can answer your tech support call, but wont solve your problem..
"Personally, I don't believe in *macro* evolution (one species evolving into another) - and yet my world view is 100% functional and, I believe, logical. "
It isn't logical. Because (A) speciation has been observed in modern times (for any sensible scientific definition of "species"), and (B) the distinction between microevolution and macroevolution by biologists is merely one of convenience, at the point of speciation. When you look at the details, there is no line between the two scales of evolution. It's arbitrary. If microevolution happens, sooner or later it's going to lead to speciation, and *boom*, you've got macroevolution. The only way to stop microevolution would be for genetic copies to be perfect, which isn't possible with real-world DNA/RNA systems. The only way to stop speciation if mutations happen would be to maintain genetic exchange between individuals in a population in the face of all sorts of processes for isolating small populations and letting them accumulate genetic differences. You'd have to have every creature trapped on an island somehow manage to interbreed on a regular basis with the individuals back on the mainland -- keep sharing those mutations around to maintain genetic compatibility. Same for every aquatic creature living in a lake somehow managing to interbreed with others in an adjacent lake separated by, say, a mountain range. Same for species across whole continents or multiple continents or oceans. Interbreeding is the only way to maintain exchange of the mutations between individuals in populations (in sexual organisms, anyway), and that would inevitably get increasingly difficult over some geographic area for some types of creatures. Once that exchange breaks down, you'll eventually have speciation. Once there is speciation, even if the populations get back together they may not be able to interbreed anymore, and they will forever go their separate ways and diverge from that point on.
The real question is how on Earth macroevolution could *not* happen, given what is currently understood about genetics and populations, let alone the selection process that will drive specialization in different environments. There is no scientific basis for what you say you accept versus not accept about evolution.
Believe what you like with regards to God. My opinion matches yours pretty closely (that if God wanted to create life via evolution, He could, or not), but your rationale for rejecting "macroevolution" doesn't make any *scientific* sense. It is indeed on par with not believing in plate tectonics. More precisely, a scenario where people believe in "microtectonics" because plate motion can be directly measured at rates of a few cm/yr today, but they don't believe in "macrotectonics", the idea that the accumulation of plate motion can create entirely new oceans thousands of km wide and whole mountain ranges where none existed before. Any scientist is going to say: But, but, it's the same darn process!
Just to clarify, you're saying that Lot, the nephew of Joseph's great-grandfather Abraham, plagiarized a story from the Book of Judges...a book about events that didn't take place until many generations later, AFTER Joseph was long dead, AFTER the Egyptians enslaved the Hebrews, and AFTER Moses lead the 12 tribes of Israel out of Egypt? Basically, like saying that George Washington got battlefield tactics from a history book about World War I.
"These are mutually exclusive views of what to base thought on. You cannot weasel around it. One or the other."
Sorry, no. No weaseling needed. They aren't mutually exclusive. You're obviously biased against the Bible and transferring that prejudice to Creationism. Let the hate go dude.
Just to flamebait rational thinkers
No. The intention was to flame the irrational ones who thought that the question is answerable, until reason overtook emotion and allowed them to reconsider their position.
your brain is hardwired to trust your perception and memory unless it's horribly broken.
I'm sorry for your limitation. I'm able to make a conscious choice to make up for the fact that, in reality, memory and perception are often quite unreliable so need reflecting on and compensating for.
Can't it be both?
(It's not; I totally glossed over the spelling mistake.)
casting stones
I see what you did there. Fundamentalists stone adulterers and bad spellers, amirite?
Ceci n'est pas un sig.
Please provide a scientific definition of 'kind'.
It is important to remember that for almost 2,000 years the Bible was treated as allegory. No one treated it as the literal word of a sky wizard and it was interpreted with regard to the world view of the people that wrote it. It was analyzed with regard to who wrote it and what their world was like when it was written.
It was 20th-century American lay-ministers that created this rejection of centuries of logic and rationality (all things being relative, of course) and began insisting that, even though it was written by imperfect humans, the magic sky wizard's perfect meaning was conveyed literally in the writings.
tl;dr -> The literal interpretation of the Bible is an American corruption of Biblical tradition by uneducated fanatics.
I don't know if Bill could have just come out and say that. It would be offensive; better beat around the bush. Politically it's stupid to talk about religion (or politics lol). So he attacks the fruits of their beliefs instead. That only works because of a commonplace preconception of a distinct and favorable distance the concept of science has from religions; Bill is awesome.
Fundamentally creationism is the result of using the context of a religion and trying to explain observations and questions in that context. So for what its worth, a plausible definition would be applying creativity and imagination to explain an observations or answer a question in a religious context.
If you understand science to be a religion (and it fits the definition http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/religion except item 4 because scientist isn't in the list) modern scientific theories are also results of creationism insofar that an application of creativity and imagination are/were used to explain observations and answer questions in the religious context of science and its underlying belief(s). All scientific knowledge is based on at least one belief => that what is observed and/or measured is the truth. And while that may not be completely untrue, it also is not completely true; you just have to make up your own mind, take it on faith, or not.
Bill is an idiot.
This is a counter example of what exactly? It has nothing to do with evolution. Nor does it have anything to do with religion, except possibly for some kind of super extreme psychology that has a 100% external locus of control.
There are lots of great engineers who have plenty of irrational beliefs. So long as none of them are directly related to the practice of their trade, they don't matter. Engineers do not depend on their general critical thinking skills.
If the other side were defending their belief in Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny would you say the same? Would you call for respectful discourse if it was the Santa-Bunny(TM) verses the FSM?
I agree there are blowhards of all types who take the easy ad hominem route to shut down debate. And I would agree with your call for civility if the issue was a private debate among friends, but when anyone's god is brought forth into the public square and held up as the model from which laws and public policy should be made?
I say F_CK THAT SH_T !!!
Once anyone brings their god into the public square, it's fair game for inspection, criticism, and even cold hard mocking. This is not to imply that mocking someone's god should be the first option, but reasoned debate will seldom carry the day when face to face with Blind Willful Ignorance masquerading as faith.
I'm less interested in getting the Fundie-Tards(TM) persuaded to join my side than I am in getting them to BACK THE F_CK OFF and stop pushing their third century BS in ways that render me a second class citizen and a lesser human being. If ridicule, mocking, satire, laughter or any other tool in the free speech arsenal can cause enough of the public to stop drinking the Fundie-Tard(TM) kool-aid; then load me up.
I suspect he meant "you sound like making a silly joke or a retard". Then you clarified it.
1) The US is the poster child of creationism. It's about the only developed country that has such a large segment of it's population reject evolution.
2) Evolution has been observed in the wild and in labs. Even the so-called 'micro' and 'macro' evolution. If such a foundation of science is beyond your comprehension, it puts the rest of your world view in question. You are either simply ignorant of the fact (which is not a crime) or willingly ignorant of the facts (which again tells me something dangerous about your world view).
3) See point #2.
And before you reply 'blah blah blah evolution is wrong! blah blah blah no evidence! blah blah blah science is faith!', why don't you begin by explaining this 'theory of creation' that you seem to hold so dear. See how well your 'theory' holds up.
Good luck!
Yep. Bill Nye is an ignorant jackass using his modest amount of celebrity to advance his political agenda. Any remaining respect I had for him just flew out the window.
"Given the overwhelming amount of evidence against this position, why?"
We all look at the world through our perspective, which is affected - or 'colored' - by the presuppositions we begin with. Because of that, the modern evolutionist sees all of this 'evidence' from a standpoint that presupposes the universe having existed for immense lengths of time. When things can be interpreted one way or another, they default to the interpretations that lend themselves to their already-established world view. No matter how logical an argument you build up, if the foundation you build upon (the presuppositions of your world view) are wrong then the conclusions you come to can be wrong as well.
I find that so many things which are claimed as evidence for evolution / ancient age of the world / etc can be explained in other ways with equally logical reasoning. For example, the layers of sediment that are claimed to indicate various epochs of world history could have been laid down much faster by massive flooding and the resulting deposits. Carbon dating, and indeed many forms of radiometric dating, are dependent upon our estimates of what the environment must have been like (ratios of carbon-12 to carbon-14 for example) - and if you start with different estimates you end up with drastically shorter ages, well in line with a young earth.
In the end, it comes down to the fact that none of us living today were there when any of this took place. I believe one person was (God), and the information He passed along in the books now collected as the Bible give an exact answer to most of the questions of origin. I believe in the validity of the Bible for a whole host of reasons, which are too numerous to describe here (but I can link you to books on the subject if you are interested) - and because I believe the Bible has held up in many areas which can be reasoned and compared to other historical documents then I don't have any reason to distrust it on the origin of life.
William George
What has utility?
You appear to only want questions to which there are clear answers, rather than questions which prompt further thought.
You're going around saying the sky is green, despite more proof to the contrary than has ever been amassed for any other principle. Evolution is better understood than gravity and more certain.
To begin to remedy your deep ignorance, examine how algae and fungi (especially slime molds) can exist as both unicellular and multicellular entities, and switch between these states. See also this.
The first step here is admitting that you have been wrong in thought for a very long time, and doing penance by rectifying your ignorance, and setting aside fairy tales in exchange for facts.
We use the memories we have faith in to confirm that science works.
...because over on the right-hand side I saw "Bentley the Bulldog Puppy is fussy" and I watched THAT video instead.
I then forwarded the link to the puppy video to 4 different chicas...now all 4 want to screw _me_ . THANX BILL YOUTUBE PUPPY NYE RANDOMNESS God!
I hypothesise that you will have to use your memory in order to remember all the above, and again to check each page, and again to recall your results for a conclusion.
You are welcome to try again, but better minds than ours have found no appropriate experiment.
It seems you had faith that you would correctly remember why you were checking my post history.
First of all, old Earth and evolution are orthogonal. They are only related in that both are the natural outcome of applying scientific method to the available data. But there's no such thing as "evolutionist perspective" - there's the perspective that accepts the methodology, and there's the one that rejects it.
Sure, you can always come up with a self-consistent explanation of YEC. For example, you can say that God has just created all things as they are, including light travelling from distant stars, as if they were actually created billions of years ago and started shining then - which would be rather a necessity in any form of YEC (unless you're also willing to rewrite a good half of physics). The common point for all those explanations is that they are necessarily much more complicated than old Earth - for example, they need to introduce some arbitrary changes in conditions solely to explain discrepancies in observed data, with those presupposed changes not having any other evidence for their existence. In other words, it's a massive exercise in fudging facts to fit assumptions. That's not bad in and of itself, and we often do it elsewhere, but only when we don't have any better explanation. And when we have more than one, the one that has to make the least amount of assumptions to explain what we observe, and to predict future experiments, is the one that we prefer.
Of course, as soon as you drag the Bible into it, it becomes a matter of faith and not science. I am an atheist; I do not believe Bible to be divinely inspired in any sense, nor am I at all impressed with its predictive capability, so it's simply not something that I would consider in this discussion.
Note also that even some parts of the Bible may be shown to be true, or even predictive, it does not follow that others parts similarly are. For example, one can accept the literal correctness of every single word in the Bible insofar as it describes events, while rejecting any claims God makes about himself in the Bible (e.g omniscience or omnipotence).
You realize that the term know as used and meant in the KJV is matched in other language translations. It's only the fact that modern English has mostly lost this meaning of "To Know" that supports your flawed understanding. The historical meaning is true to the translation and intentions, and is matched by other language translations that pre-date the KJV.
It's a symptom of the slow progression in our society from a weird but long-held belief that "ignorance isn't bad" to "my ignorance is as good as your knowledge" to "your knowledge is bad and therefore my ignorance is superior".
...and yes, a lot of it goes back to evangelicals and the fact that it's far harder to fleece someone who will rationally evaluate the things they are told.
The whole fight here I think is much more cultural and political than it is religious. The logic seems to go along the lines of they believe that they are the majority in the country and are being forced to endure a remote government controlled by a minority of people with completely different moral and cultural ideas. Thus "I'll teach my kids what I want without some foreign socialist president telling me to teach something else." Politically the local lawmakers know they can get elected by supporting local laws and opposing federal laws. Evolution is just one of thse hot button issues that gets people elected and gets the populace mad when told that they're not allowed to believe it or teach it. America has a long history of of people refusing to be told what to do. This is why you will see some people who've never been to church in their entire lives protest against the teaching of evolution, because they treat it like an "us vs them" fight.
Sounds like an asshole to me.
Well, people all around the world create their gods in their own image. Naturally, some of them end up with an asshole god.
So are we still talking about sodomy? I'm so confused...
:-P
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
But we don't. We have lab notebooks in which we write down how we did experiments, why we did experiments, and what the result of those experiments were, so we're not relying on our fallible memories.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Perhaps "reliable" is too likely to be read as "always 100% correct", and I apologise for that.. I didn't want to confuse the basic question, but what you've said is quite true.
You can indeed show that memory is not always reliable.
But you can only do that once you have assumed by faith that memory is at least mostly reliable.
Liberals are perfect little government bitches that help make dictatorships possible.
They love to talk about "tolerance" unless it's teaching your kids about God (or anything they don't believe in).
They love to bash on Jews and Christians but Muslims (who want them dead and are against gays) are off limits.
Liberalism = insanity - they just make fun of people rather than discuss real issues because they don't really have much of anything to debate. They are morons.
They elected Obama who is bankrupting this country and turning it into tax land.
Obama wrote a racist book - but since it's against white people, it's ok for liberals. And they love how he hates Israel. Liberalism is a disease of ignorance and emotionalism.
Was david but fucking god, or did he just, well, know him.
I don't believe David was fucking God, but I'm pretty sure God was fucking David.
I mean, it was the Old Testament, God was a sadistic bastard back them, and fucked everyone.
He is so right, forcing a child to believe in creation is child abuse.
Nope, you'd fail. It's only because God wills it to be so when it's good and to our benefit. However we lost the last high school football game because Tommy is a klutz, not because God wanted us to lose.
Ie, too many people are inconsistent here. If they believe in God as a micromanager for all facets of the universe and everything that ever happens is His will then they'd have to reject free will for humans. If they accept that God exists but allows free will then they'd have to accept that God is hands-off manager and that bad things will happen that He did not cause. Granted these are complex theological debates that have gone on for centuries. However we have far too many fundamentalist Christians in the US who fully accept the inconsistent view that it's all God's will except for the bad stuff. It's a sort of children's Sunday school version of theology.
Really, you may laugh at this but I think a lot of these people are dumbing down Christianity also.
They probably had a Dremel and lots of duct tape too.
Evolution is scientific. Belief in a creator is religious. Belief in evolution is rational. Each of these statements is true in a way.
False.
No one who understand what science is believes in evolution. Science is not a system of beliefs, it is a system of evidence based reasoning. It is not proper to say "I believe in evolution", but rather "the theory of evolution is the hypothesis best supported by the evidence". In science, nothing can be fact, or definitively proven. We rather conduct experiments to reduce uncertainty in a theory, or to disprove a theory. So, evolution is not scientific, nor is it religious. Evolution and creationism are ideas; two competing hypotheses describing a process. Evolution is supported by the scientific process, while creationism is not supported by scientific evidence. Creationism however is supported by a faith based belief system, and people such as yourself (im assuming) who only know belief systems in turn think that scientists believe in evolution. Perhaps it is not your fault that you are unfamiliar with evidence based reasoning, what skepticism really means, and the scientific method, but that is all the more reason for you to support better science education in our nation's schools.
Note that I said these statements are true only "in a way". That means that I consider them misleading.
Your are correct, I do believe that scientists who claim that "the theory of evolution is the hypothesis best supported by the evidence" are heavily influenced by their belief systems. They are atheists. According to their belief system, there is no creator, so the world must be of natural origin. Can I conclude differently when prominant evolutionists say things like 'evolution seems imposible, but we are here, so I have to believe it occured'? I am bemused and somewhat insulted by your assumption that I reach this conclusion only because I am not sufficiently informed.
I respect and value the scientific method. But I also understand it. I know that it is a tool for exploring natural processes. If the world is of artificial origin, then those who insist on studying its orgin as a natural process will inevitably reach incorrect conclusions.
I think people like Bill Nye are doing themselves a disservice when they assume that anyone who finds the arguments for evolution unconvincing must be ignorant or worse. It creates the impression that they are hopelessly blinded by predjudice./p.
They're like the Amish except with no balls.
Please don't bash the Amish. As strange as they are to us outsiders they're far better folks than fundamentalists in a very important way: they don't push their religion on anyone, including themselves. This is consistent (unlike rampant evangelical hypocricy) in various ways:
1) They respect the First Amendme and aren't trying to take over the government to dictate their way of life to others.
2) They don't proselytize outsiders.
3) They don't force their children to adhere, allowing them to make their own choice of faith following the "rumspringa".
There are many other differences. The relevant one to this story is that the Amish don't reject the truth of science, but only the comforts it has provided. They embrace a simple life for its sake alone, and don't tiptoe around the hypocricy of living according to some idiot's interpretation of an ancient text while fully embracing a modern society.
So, no, they're nothing like the Amish. That said, I'm with you on the "no balls" part.
How do you remember what to write down in them?
How do you remember that you wrote down the results in the lab book you refer to?
Asking these sort of inane questions will anger just about anyone. Not just shallow westerners.
These sort of questions are akin to asking "Why does...?" and then following up with "Why?" to the answer and every subsequent answer afterwards... You know, the kind of stuff done by children; whether they may be really interested or just flat out trying to annoy you. Generally it's the latter.
I accept my memory as being mostly reliable.
My acceptance of this is not an act of faith.
I can prove the reliability of my memory against established facts. I can also prove that it isn't reliable under all situations.
Despite the instances where my memory is unreliable, I work under the assumption that it is. Similarly, I still go to restaurants despite the possibility of food poisoning. That is, the successes outweigh the failures.
Holy carp anyGould how stupid do you need to be?
um you mean the prideful 90% don't you? Remember if God could find 10 just people in the town he would have spared the city.
Holy shit! Are you saying that if a rape occurs, and no one _observed_ it (think date-rape drug), then it couldn't have happened. No matter what the mountain of evidence pointing the other way?
I wish I lived in your reality.
God is quite capable of using DNA and RNA and quantum...
Wait, which god? Also, what is a god and how would you describe it's abilities and ways we can perceive it?
Evolution is scientific. Belief in a creator is religious. Belief in evolution is rational. Each of these statements is true in a way.
False.
No one who understand what science is believes in evolution. Science is not a system of beliefs, it is a system of evidence based reasoning. It is not proper to say "I believe in evolution", but rather "the theory of evolution is the hypothesis best supported by the evidence"...
I understand your core point, that "science is not a system of beliefs". However, it also bears noting that ambiguous use of this term "believe" can lead to unproductive bouts of talking past one another.
To wit, one may believe in science in the same way that one believes in gravitation or in the blueness of the sky -- in this sense, "belief" is more of a statement of expectation or a statement of one's view of the universe based on learned experience. Meanwhile, one can believe in a supernatural entity who is both all-forgiving and vengeful at the same time, which in most cases is *not* based on learned experience. The two meanings of "belief" are broadly similar, but the distinction is an important one.
(I say "in most cases" as there do appear to be instances of people who have had experiences related to such a being; meanwhile, I have also had extensive conversations about the subjectivity of reality with a close friend of mine who suffered from a schizophrenic disorder. I accept that reality is subjective and an individual experience. I also hold to the view that any subjective experience of reality that is not broadly shared with others is of dubious value in formulating reliable judgments about the world around me.)
Looked at differently, "belief" could be interpreted as a statement of trust in received wisdom. How many of us actually have experience carrying out the vast array of experiments upon which modern science is based? No one can, as there's simply too much to fit into one lifetime. We must, to some extent, take scientific findings as a matter of faith. The big difference between faith or belief in science, and faith or belief in (a) deit(y/ies), is that science can be replicated and verified, while supernatural events cannot be. Faith or belief in the supernatural must ultimately depend upon the authority of the person from whom such information comes. This may help explain the correlation between the rise of fundamentalism and the rise of authoritarianism in the US.
Cheers,
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
All Science is speculative, this is just part of Science. Science is not a dogma, nor a belief of any kind. It is a methodology. It is a way of arriving at answers. Whether or not those answers are true to false is not part of Science. The theory of Evolution has the most evidence. It can be objectively tested and happens in laboratories constantly. If someone comes up with an explanation that is more accurate and can be objectively tested, then it will supplant Evolution.
The gripe of the "Darwinists" is that people are losing the ability to reason in a scientific manner. It is this ability to reason that created the Cultural and Industrial revolutions that led people to invent the modern world. The number of people who do not believe in Evolution is a symptom of a culture that does not understand or embrace a scientific methodology.
The alternative is a faith based methodology. The last time a faith based methodology dominated, we now call it the "Dark Ages." These two go hand in hand. The Darwinists don't want to see us return to a state of ignorance.
Videotape yourself putting something in one of several opaque containers, leaving the room, and then returning a while later and selecting the opaque container with the item you put in it.
Repeat 100 times. Conclude that your memory is reliable X% of the time. You could even figure out how reliable your memory is as a function of how long you leave the room.
See, science is fun!
....so then, why is your 'faith' better than my 'faith'?
Or are you just trying to justify your blind faith by attempting to make it seem like everyone has blind faith?
I have come to think that the unyielding rigidity of fundamentalism (be it Christian, Buddhist, Muslim, Pastafarian, what-have-you) indicates a form of mental illness. I speak not in hyperboles -- a flat-out refusal to accept empiric reality represents a turn straight into pathology. Entropius's description here of the irrational universe and inherent disorder cleaved to by young-Earth creationists depicts an alarming rejection of reality and embrace of capriciousness.
How very worrying.
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
>> We need people that can — we need engineers that can build stuff, solve problems.
Off the top of my head ...
George Washington Carver - Creationist
Benjamin Franklin - Creationist
Thomas Edison - Creationist
Louis Pasteur - Creationist
James Prescott Joule - Creationist
Blaise Pascal - Creationist
Issac Newton - Creationist
Galileo Galilei - Creationist
Leonardo da Vinci - Creationist
Religious choice has nothing to do with science and engineering ability. Creationists have progressed mankind and asshats like this are just spitting in their eye. Let alone in the America's founding fathers eyes ... I mean seriously, who the hell is this guy to tell people how to raise their children. Talk about an un-American point of view. Maybe the United States isn't the best place for him.
To modern creationists ... science doesn't disprove God ... it just shows a glimpse of how the universe was created by God and discovery of the laws enacted to facilitate it. Most creationists stopped fearing science decades if not centuries ago ... although some lag behind the times and give us all a bad name the same way morons like this guy give atheists a bad name.
Err, yes. Which are then verified by making more observations.
Yes, you use your mind for the entire thing. But the point is that it is all consistent within that universe that your mind is presenting to you. So it is really irrelevant whether "reality" is formed by an alien who has stuck a probe up your butt and is implanting memories, or the matrix, or an external hard reality. The point is that science works, within those confines.
Please try to understand this before coming back with another inane "but don't you need your memory for that?" retort.
So creationism = "I don't know".
Whenever I don't know how something works, I can just say it is the doings of a god(s). That way I can stop worrying about it. This formula has worked for thousands of years - why stop now?
"Note also that even some parts of the Bible may be shown to be true, or even predictive, it does not follow that others parts similarly are. For example, one can accept the literal correctness of every single word in the Bible insofar as it describes events, while rejecting any claims God makes about himself in the Bible (e.g omniscience or omnipotence)."
This is almost correct, and would be except for one point: Jesus' death and resurrection. If Jesus rose from the grave, then that in and of itself would be evidence in favor of the claims God makes about Himself. If that one point is not true, all of Christianity falls apart... but likewise, if true then it would revolutionize our understanding of the world (and I would contend that it has). Consider these points:
- If Jesus had not risen, then why would the authorities who crucified Him not simply display His body as proof when it was claimed that He had come back from the dead?
- If His close followers had not seen Him after His resurrection, why would they have gone on to do what they did? Of the eleven disciples left after the crucifixion, ten of them were killed in horrible ways later on for their beliefs. None of them got rich off it, or gained political power (some of that came much, much later). Why would that many people who all *knew* whether the beliefs they were spreading were true or false be willing to go on to die for it... unless it were true?
There are many other resources on this topic I would happily share, some written by folks where were atheist and out to prove the Bible wrong, if you are interested.
William George
And yet it's brought out a good 80+ wrong answers and the chance for people to think again about their premises.
I saw very little thinking about premises, and very little results from your attempt at socratic teaching. All in all, I rate your attempt a flat zero.
I hope for the world's sake that you're no teacher.
From the feedback I've gotten, I'm pretty sure I'm a better one than you.
All questions can be answered like that. Like I said somewhere else in this thread, why aren't we all out playing football on this sunny day?
The trick is knowing when it is a good answer, and when it is a bad answer. As for your follow-up question... stop trying so hard, and you might actually become interesting.
As for which texts we read in "middle school", Plato's cave analogy was a nice starting point.
OK, so you remember reading about Plato's Cave at school and you think that this answers all the elementary philosophical questions.
No, I remember that Plato's cave was a nice starting point about this idea in middle school. Did you read what you quoted? Not sure why you think that it was supposed to answer all questions. Extrapolating much from your own experience?
Nope. The question has not been "rejected" ever, just deemed unanswerable. But it's formed part of "sterile debate" on the power and limitations of philosophical induction per Hume, leading to Popper's falsifiability, and all the other Philosophy 101 names you could have dropped if you hadn't engaged bullshit mode.
It's been rejected as the basis of any form of reasoning about the physical world, as well as reasoning about moral imperatives or the limits of logic. The answers it produces are either trivial, useless or contradictory. For what it's worth - you should be able to tell by now with which philosophers I'm throwing in my lot.
I'm not sure what speeding being a summary offence (E+W) has to do with this discussion, but OK.
I figured as much. The similarity still amused me.
I thought air quotes were an illustration of incredulity. But your nick was just as middle-school as your argument. Not that it matters - you'd have been equally wrong without the silly name.
Yes, because we all need to pick obscure names out of little known short stories in order to be taken seriously. You would have loved my nick that I used on some gaming boards. It was a great way to pick out posers, know-nothings and kids who thought they were hot shit. As for your incredulity about learning about Plato's cave in middle school, that says more about your education than about my knowledge of philosophy.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
I think we could come closest with something along these lines: 'each created kind is a unique combination of non-unique traits'. It was described this way in an article I read -
"Perhaps each created kind is a unique combination of non-unique traits. Look at people, for instance. Each of us has certain traits that we may admire (or abhor): brown hair, tall stature, or even a magnificent nose like mine. Whatever the trait, someone else has exactly the same trait, but nobody has the same combination of traits that you do or I do. Each of us is a unique combination of non-unique traits. In a sense, that’s why it’s hard to classify people. If you break them up according to hair type, you’ll come out with groups that won’t fit with the eye type, and so on. Furthermore, we recognize each person as distinct.
We see a similar pattern among other living things. Each created kind is a unique combination of traits that are individually shared with members of other groups. The platypus, for example, was at first considered a hoax by evolutionists, since its “weird” set of traits made it difficult even to guess what it was evolving from or into. Creationists point out that each of its traits (including complex ones like its electric location mechanism, leathery egg, and milk glands) is complete, fully functional, and well-integrated into a distinctive and marvelous kind of life."
This was taken from a discussion on the topic here: http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/cfl/species-kind
William George
but.... thre verses later
Behold now, I have two daughters which have not known man; let me, I pray you, bring them out unto you, and do ye to them as is good in your eyes: only unto these men do nothing.... —Genesis 19:8
known here is clearly a 'sexual' reference.
also
Even as Sodom and Gomorrah, and the cities about them in like manner, giving themselves over to fornication, and going after strange flesh, are set forth for an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire. —Jude 1:7
46137
All of your points are terrible. Every single point you present a pretty concrete claim, but on each I can think of pretty substantial examples that contradict them. I would recommend you some books, or to go back to school, but if you can make a post like this I have to assume you have no desire to understand.
No, he isn't.
" So you are telling me that something that for all we know could be the direct result of a supernatural being imposing it's will "
For all we know, there is no supernatural being. Because in all we know, there is zero evidence of one.
"Evolution does not in any way disprove creation,"
actually, it does. Creating is an idea put forth in the Bible, and it has been thoroughly shut down.
If you would bother to understand what Science is, you would understand that.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Many Christians hold views that do not in the least contradict macro-evolution. The Catholic Church, for instance.
Finally one can note there were not witnesses other than lot and his wife (and retinue) that escaped so we only have lots story, and that story seems to be plagerized form the book of judges where the same thing happens including offering virgin daughters to protect angels. If this were on CSI-Gomorrah today we would find out that actually lot got paid off to open the town gates to an invading army that razed the place and Lots wife was going to spill the beans so he killed her and told everyone she turned into a pillar of stone. Then he just recycled the story from Book of Judges when asked what happened.
Not to nitpick, but "The Book of Judges" comes a ways after the story of Lot which happened in Genesis. Lot was a contemporary of Abraham. Abraham was the father of Isaac who was the father of Jacob (Israel), whose descendants (the Israelites) came out of Egypt and established themselves in Canaan with "Judges" hence the name - The Book of Judges. So perhaps the Book of Judges (supposed centuries after Lot) are the ones recycling part of Lot's tale?
An astronomer, a physicist and a mathematician are on a train in Scotland. The astronomer looks out of the window, sees a black sheep standing in a field, and remarks, "How odd. Scottish sheep are black." "No, no, no!" says the physicist. "Only some Scottish sheep are black." The mathematician rolls his eyes at his companions' muddled thinking and says, "In Scotland, there is at least one sheep, at least one side of which appears to be black from here."
This is almost correct, and would be except for one point: Jesus' death and resurrection. If Jesus rose from the grave, then that in and of itself would be evidence in favor of the claims God makes about Himself.
It does not. If Jesus died and was resurrected, all it demonstrates that one particular person is capable of resurrecting once after dying. It does not demonstrate that he is God, much less an omnipotent once.
(I wouldn't be at all surprised if we will be capable of doing the resurrection trick with recently deceased people in the next couple hundred years or so)
Then again, I do not believe that the recounting of events in the Gospel is literally true in every single word, though it's likely to be based on some real events. Specifically, short of the Gospel, there's a considerable shortage of contemporary or near-contemporary sources that mention resurrection.
So just because it says that Jesus died and was resurrected, or that other followers went around and died for their believes, doesn't necessary make me treat it as true. Some probably did; Paul, for example, was a definite fanatic, and surely there were others like him (esp. if Jesus selected them based on criteria of blind loyalty). Specifically:
Why would that many people who all *knew* whether the beliefs they were spreading were true or false be willing to go on to die for it... unless it were true?
They didn't have to know; they only had to believe. And human belief is a thing so flexible that it can, at times, be scary. Many Christians believe in Jesus through some "personal experience" they've had; but it's clearly not something material, that an outside observer can watch and record - the only observable thing is the change of behavior. Well, and the activation of certain neural centers in the brain, once we've started exploring that area Who's to say the apostles didn't have their own "personal experiences"?
Obviously, the education system is the work of the devil. Those degrees are only signs of how high you are in the devil's rankings.
BS - Beginning Satan MS - Minor Satan PhD - Pretty high Devil
(I feel like I'm gonna pay for that comment somehow...)
Yes. A DCMA notice is on the way for use of my copyrighted and patented concept.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
He's a top engineering student and a devote Muslim and he doesn't believe at all in evolution. When they can take a mind like his and turn him against reason so completely I have no problem believing that anti-scientific beliefs will be around in the world's population groups for as long as humans exist.
I love Bill Nye, I think that his message is right on. But I'd just like to point out that his doctorates are honorary. His highest attained degree is a Bachelor of Science. This is not meant to take him down a notch, but rather to share because I was surprised to hear that he had 2 Ph.D.s, which is quite an undertaking. (Speaking as someone with one Ph.D.)
>>>let the Religious Right get real power. That will show you tyrrany.
I find it funny you fear the religious right so much. It is the Media/Corporate-serving Left that has been causing most of the problems lately. Like shutting-down Megaupload. Arresting & prosecuting Jamie Thomas millions of dollars for downloading 30 songs. Passing or trying to pass laws like Protect IP, SOPA, and CISPA.
Forcing us to bail-out GM when it should have been left to die. Forcing us to provide Corporate Welfare for Solyndra and hundreds of other companies (most of which went bankrupt). Forcing 50 million uninsured Americans to buy product from the Insurance Megacorps (made their stock go up the very next day).
I see the religious nuts as annoying, but I don't have to fear they will arrest me under PIPA, fine me millions of dollars, or force me to provide bailouts/corporate welfare/buy a product which I don't want. All that shit is coming from the left.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
"(I feel like I'm gonna pay for that comment somehow...)"
Pretty sure some folks wooshed on that, so there you go, you were preaching gospel and thought it was sarcasm.
There are probably tons of atheists who believe that the Earth is only 6,000 years old; after all, just because you don't believe in God doesn't mean that the Earth (and everything on it) didn't spontaneously come to exist in a single moment not all that long ago...
You know, there are people in this world who actually don't have memories. There's an interesting documentary about a particular English individual called 'The Man with the Thirty Second Memory'. It's quite heartbreaking. If you haven't already watched it, I suggest that you do so. I would have thought it rather an insult to his memory to persist with your absurd navel-gazing.
And of course we use faith when we take most of what we experience as in some sense truth. This is the only rational course of action, and I'm fairly sure that Philosophy as a discipline moved on from questions such as these a fairly long time ago. More interesting, and more difficult ones, are available. Perhaps you could put your playful attitude to work on the problem of the existence (or non-existence) of Morals.
Running to an anti-evolution site to handwave away evidence. Shocking.
Okay, specific examples:
http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0001026
Explain them some other way. Do you think God inserts ERVs at specific points in animals already seen to be closely related by phylogeny just to test faith?
And as to your last paragraph, I guess even you know how weak your argument is, so it's time to trot out epistemological nihilism. I dunno, can you be absolute sure that I don't exist and you're just debating with yourself? You see where that kind of ludicrous thinking leads, to the denial that any knowledge can be reliably determined.
At any rate, kids should be taught to science in class, even if they're going to become tax attorneys and never use it again, just as they should be taught accurate history (as accurate as we can determine at that time), even if they're destined to be beautician. To argue against teaching knowledge because its application may not be obvious, or applicable to everyone, is a backwards way of trying to justify teaching things that are known to be wrong in any given field.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Yes they are mutually exclusive. For starters, there are no evidence of a god. Even appealing to the idea of a prime mover does not mean that the prime mover was a god. And for that matter, what prime-moved the god? (Oh yes, I forget, it always existed, right?)
Evolution is based on facts.
Creationism is based on shit people make up.
I accept my memory as reliable. My acceptance is an act of faith.
Your faith is misplaced. Human memory is significantly better than random chance and guessing, but it's a far cry less reliable than say... ANYTHING ELSE. So much so, In fact, that in criminal cases the ones concluded on memory alone (eye-witness testimony) are the most often overturned. Memory is so unreliable that airplane pilots of various stripes must use a checklist to start/fly/land their plane correctly and safely. When pilots realized the unreliability of their memory, the incidents of accidents and pilot error went down dramatically. In fact a large number of complex operations rely on checklists to complete because of the unreliability of our memory. Better to rely on more permanent and reliable mediums like say, the written word, video, etc.
Bill Nye is in a position to get laws passed that favor his viewpoint (teach children that Creationism is wrong & their parents are nutty twits, in the government schools). He's not a tyrant himself but he is friends with those who are tyrants in the CA Legislature and Congress.
As for why I'm "tired" of being bossed around? Mainly because I'm tired of people telling what to do. "Don't smoke weed". Really? Who the hell am I hurting if I'm just sitting here watching Star Trek and a cigarette in my mouth? If I am DUI then sure: Arrest me and throw me in jail with the alcohol drunks, but not when I'm just sitting at home not hurting anybody.
There are also other things that government forces you to do. Like give-up the password or encryption key on your hard drive. Force you to submit to car searches along highways (why? You don't have a warrant). Hold-up people at the TSA and demand to know why they are carrying $4000 in cash. And on and on.
That my friend is the opposite of liberty. It's tyranny.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
So humans are apes, right? Part of "ape kind".
But it appears to me that even accepting your classification, it's worthless. Even Linnaeus's system inherently recognized relationships between presumably distant ancestors. How do chordates hang out in the "kind" system. How do you separate birds from dinosaurs, fish from amphibians? Because you've constructed a completely self serving system that doesn't actually classify anything save in a fashion that meets some bizarre literal reading of Genesis, you create a system of no utility whatsoever.
If I look at the genome of two species and see that they hold about 98% common in genes, and not only that, despite some chromosomal differences, it appears that the loci of most of the genes can be mapped one to the other, how does that fit into "kinds"? You can reject common descent and the twin-nested hierarchy if you like, but at least it makes solid predictions which we can then go test. "Kinds" is little better than a child's form of classification, if that. I think even the Greeks had better classification systems than you put forward here. Do you realize how embarrassed you should be?
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
The subject line was supposed to read "Creationism faith!" (oh, and I left out the /sarc tag... but that was on purpose; I'm hoping for some downright incredulous responses!). :p
Aw, Geez... that's twice that /.'s eaten the "not equal to" symbol that was supposed to be between "Creationism" and "faith;" don't I feel stupid...
Actually, Climategate showed us that scientists would rather plug their fingers in their ears and scream than confront serious flaws in a field that is mainly dealing in prognostications. Then they are investigated by other scientists, with a vested interest in keeping their priesthood's reputation intact. It's little surprise that, similar to Catholics investigating child molestation and pedophilia, these scientists claimed they found nothing wrong.
Sorry, you can't build a reputation back up by simply shouting down the critics. It has to be done with honesty. Of course, this is a heresy against the priesthood of Science, who would have us believe that their credibility never suffered after Climategate.
His multiple PhDs are honorary
>>>>>Congress mandates we all must drive hybrid cars? We all must install solar panels on our roofs? We all must buy CFLs or LED bulbs? Being forced to buy something you don't want to buy.
>>
>>No, but they can certainly subsidize those terrible, cleaner options.
No? Try "yes". According to the Supreme Court ruling, Congress has the power to mandate we buy any product of their choosing, and if we don't comply they can fine us through the IRS. And I don't agree CFLs are cleaner:
They create pollution when they are shipped from China. They create pollution when they are shipped back for recycling. They create pollution if they break open (mercury vapor). They waste energy when you have to open your house and let the vapor (and heat) escape outside. And they rarely last any longer than a normal incandescent bulb since their resistors/capacitors typically fail when exposed to the heat generated by the bulb.
Plus they are dim when you first turn them on (I have to wait 4 minutes until the light's bright enough to read my book). CFLs are a perfect example of a product that is actually worse than the one replaced.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
It is the Media/Corporate-serving Left that has been causing most of the problems lately.
is it backwards-day again today?
last time I checked, the Right is the side that wants corporations to get more and more powerful. that's not a Lefty characteristic.
the Occupy guys are the right or left? the left, in case you weren't sure. they were protesting the overy-strong and unbalanced control the extreme rich have and how corps are the new princes and kings of today.
the Right wants to arrest anyone who challenges the status quo.
sir, you really have things backwards. you really do.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
Creationism is just a symptom of a much more fundementalproblem.
I saw what you did there....
God was not there.
Batman was. There is no evidence to prove batman was not there at the start, and I believe that batman was there, based on the teachings of Detective Comics.
A proper science class should ensure kids understand that science is the best process we have for determining what is true or not. Additionally, science excludes all notions of 'faith' as contributing to that method.
This has a corrosive affect on religions belief.
Well if you claim anyone qualified to look into things science related are on the same side, then you're going to have trouble. Who else would be able to look into the research? Someone with no scientific background? It wasn't the same scientists looking into it, or even just one related group. Multiple independent groups cleared them of wrong doing.
When the critics have no idea what they're talking about, it's fine to shout them down.
You are forgiven as you know not what you do.
How memory works is still an open question, but it has a lot to do with varying the strength of synaptic connections between neurons in the brain. If you're interested, this is a good place to start reading. Not sure what the relevance is to this conversation though.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
You are confusing faith and belief.
Many religious people have faith in God. I believe evolution is a fact, and that the Theory of Natural Selection is the current best explanation for this fact. Belief is not blind faith. Belief is something you think is true due to some sort of evidence.
Note: evolution is a fact because it has so much evidence supporting it: the fossil record, selective breeding, genetic engineering, etc... The Theory of Natural Selection is the best theory we have come up to explain the fact of evolution, just like Newton's "Laws" of gravity were the best theory explaining the fact of gravity until Einstein came along.
Anarchists never rule
Always black and white with this subject when the multiverse is grey...
Belief in God is fine. It feeds the soul. It speaks to the world of spirit. It's a really great thing. But it's a really rare belief system that demands it's practitioners to be -in the moment- and holding spirit with presence. The Bible points us toward that state of mind, but too many are worshiping the words instead. That leads to absurdities like expecting the words to literally explain all that is in a dynamically changing environment.
Belief in Science is fine. It feeds the mind. It speaks to the world of experience and logic. It's a really great thing. But it's a really rare belief system that demands it's practitioners to be willing to toss aside all theories to consider another. Science demands that we treat all our scientific knowledge as theories, but too many are clinging to our models as facts, and the map is never the territory. This leads to absurdities like scientism and the belief that science can fully explain all aspects of our existence and consciousness.
Life contains many mysteries. Use all your lenses, including science, spirituality, and any other reality tunnel you've got, to see the mysteries from many perspectives.
Metaphysics is fun to debate and read, but has very little bearing on the real world. Our best evidence that the world is real is that we all see the same world. All dreams are private. I think it is important to explore questions like "how do we know what is real"; it isn't bullshit, but it can rarely be used to argue against realism and empirical evidence with a straight face.
Anarchists never rule
Why would you need faith to accept your memories are real when it is so easy to test. You could survey people about past events you remember, you could write things down and compare to you memory later, you could video stuff... I'm sure you could move from faith to belief in only a few weeks of experimentation.
Anarchists never rule
So how did offering his daughters resolve that?
I'm not sure "know" in a general sense (the non-sex sense) makes sense in the context of his offering of his daughters in place of the men.
You are confusing faith and belief.
Faith is something you believe with no evidence, or despite evidence contrary to that belief. A normal person's belief that the sun is a big fusing ball of mainly hydrogen does not require any faith. You can look up lots of evidence, do you own experiments, learn some physics, that in turn can be corroborated by your own experiments. This path would be a bit extreme, but should be sufficient to help even a skeptic to believe the sun is in fact a large fusing ball of gas. A rational belief doesn't require 100% certainty. Outside of math and logic nothing can be known with 100% certainty.
Anarchists never rule
Why would he though? He's God! He can just zap us in to existence! Surely, that's better than having distant cousins eat each other just so they can survive. We've defeated evolution to some degree. Evolution in its pure form is unimaginably brutal.
The religious suffer from a cognitive bias where they assume that any contradicting evidence is more proof of their man in the sky. The point of the Origin of Species was to give us a mental framework that required no man in the sky!
Science shows that your God tries very, very hard to look like the null hypothesis; which is, complete and total none-existence.
Oh, there you go. Back to nuttery.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
The agreement between our current scientific understanding of evolution of life and the Book of Genesis is pretty good considering that Genesis was written 4,000 years ago by several uneducated authors who had likely never traveled more than a few miles from their home village and were relying on even earlier oral traditions. The creation sequence described in Genesis is 1) light, 2) Earth's rotation to provide day and night, 3) dry land on the Earth, 4) plants and vegetation, 5) moon and sun to mark night and day, 6) fishes and birds, 7) mammals and all kinds of terrestial creatures, 8) Man. Our current scientific understanding of the evolution of life is 1) big bang to create all space, time, and mass, 2) stars form, 3) pre-earth forms, 4) moon forms from impact of planet with pre-earth, 5) oceans condense, 6) early life, both photosynthetic and non-photosynthetic, arrives in ocean and on whatever 'land' exists in warm earth with no polar ice, 7) life evolves in oceans to more complex multi-cellular forms, invertebrates, and then vertebrates (fishes), 8) More dry land forms and life forms colonize it, 9) mammals, 10) man. The key thing is that both creation accounts rely on a sequence of events arising from creation out of nothing at all which is counter-intuitive to our imagination working alone. If you put most of us down in a little village 4,000 years ago and asked us to describe creation, we would likely either say 'it's always been this way,' or 'the gods formed everything from the raw materials at hand.'
So, you have no faith in your memory.
He was and you are missing the point.
Whether you know of something or not does not mean it is real or not. You are stuck in a fallacy trying to state that only what you can see exists. There certainly are people who believe a supernatural being exists and there are people who have believed it for a couple hundred centuries or more including eye witness accounts of it. that is not exactly empirical evidence but it is far from zero evidence. Come back to reality and stop insisting what you don't know to be true.
Hahaha.. you are so funny. Tell me, where has it been shut down. Where exactly has science proved that supernatural events never- ever- happened at all. Show me where science has tested supernatural events- the same events that very well could have created all that science knows.
Creation simply is not testable.. period. All science can do is say we think or see it happening this way instead based on this evidence. Anything other then that when talking about some super powerful being creating something and it is not science. You are completely free to choose to believe whatever explanation is presented otherwise, but you simply cannot lie and say it has been shut down or disproven by science.
I simply cannot stop laughing at you. If you actually knew what science was, you would have not posted your reply.
Now go on and troll about how science disproved supernatural events and makes factual statements about things that simply cannot be tested. I will need a good laugh later when I check back in.
Thank you. This. Things like Descarte's Evil Genius are age old and simply flacid. There tends to be one of two responses. 1) The kid gets all wide-eyed and is in awe as they think that they just freed themselves from the Matrix or 2) the kid recognizes "how can you confirm the perfectly unconfirmable" as the bullshit dead-end it is and moves on.
In my experience the people who bring this line of thinking up use it as a win/win cop-out. Don't have faith in your memories? HA! Then how can you trust your evidence? You DO have faith in your memories? See, I told you that you had faith! Let us not tarry lest we be late for church! Alternatively they may try to say that your faith in memory is just as weak as their faith in the sky daddy and thus therefore just as valid.
What a bunch of garbage. Who does Nye think he is, telling people what to teach their kids, especially when it comes to something as sacred as their religious beliefs. This country was founded upon the principle of freedom, including very specifically the freedom to worship as you choose. I am concerned at the growing societal pressures attempting to force people to give up their beliefs.
Not that this undermines your overall point, but I get tired of hearing this. I'm tempted to blame Indiana Jones but I'm not certain that's the origin of this meme. Science very much does deal in truth. Capitalizing the "T" doesn't make it some mystical transcendent concept. A descriptive proposition is true to the extent that it accurately describes reality. Science is all about coming up with accurate descriptions of reality, and is therefore all about the search for truth.
How you should make the point I think you're trying to make is to say that science does not "state as truth" as the GPP wrote; it searches for truth. Since there is an infinite amount of truth to be found (in an infinite universe), it can never say that it has found all of the truth, but it can say with various degrees of certainty that "that's the truth over there". And most importantly, if it doesn't know where the truth on some question is to be found, it's happy to admit such, rather than make up some bullshit just so it can claim to have found the truth; but at the same time, it always assumes that there is some truth to be found, even if it hasn't found it yet.
"The answer is probably..." and "We don't know yet" are the twin mantas of science.
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
Go back to shilling, you sockpuppet idiot.
>They're like the Amish except with no balls.
Actually, the Amish don't discount technology and science as evil or anti-christian, but they feel that a simpler life is a better life. IIRC they feel that the modern western life distracts from Fod, not that it conflicts with God.
"You will do foolish things, but do them with enthusiasm." - S. G. Colette
And yet it's brought out a good 80+ wrong answers and the chance for people to think again about their premises.
And yet, over 90% of those answers were actually people telling you what an idiot you are, and pointing out (just like NeutronCowboy did) that your question is flawed and pointless.
I hope for the world's sake that you're no teacher.
Same towards you. I took real philosophy courses in high school and university and you know what? All of them pointed out that questions like yours are pointless mental masturbation used by idiots to make themselves feel like they're smart.
In the dozen or so responses I've made in this thread before you posted, I've told people repeatedly that this is a well-known question and that they should think twice before thinking there's a good answer. But you might as well carry on a roll of historical ignorance with some contemporary. ignorance.
Just because you make a false claim about your pointless question being significant, deep, and meaningful doesn't mean that it is, it just means you're obsessive about trying to make yourself feel like you're smart. Sadly, it also shows that you aren't.
Nope. The question has not been "rejected" ever, just deemed unanswerable.
That's funny, I've seen it rejected at least thirty times, just in this slashdot thread. This means that you not only fail at philosophy, you also fail at reading comprehension - which probably explains why you fail so hard at philosophy.
You're like a 9 year old who yells citizen's arrest! every time he sees his parents speeding. It merely betrays your own shallowness and lack of understanding.
I'm not sure what speeding being a summary offence (E+W) has to do with this discussion, but OK.
There goes that failure at reading comprehension again. Since you obviously have the reading skills of the 9 year old in the given example, I'll explain it for you:
He was pointing out an example of an immature person taking an action they know damn well is only going to annoy the people they're acting towards (the kid yelling "citizen's arrest!" in a situation where it isn't appropriate), and saying that it was equivalent to your own actions, which it is.
Or neither. This is a core construct in our society, and each side should get equal time and the individual should choose which they believe in.
Not offering both sides to a particular issue for debate is anti-science in itself.
I happen to think creationism is a crock, but that's my decision and i wouldn't want either side forced on to me so i was unable to make that decision ( forced by the absence of the other )
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Your proof is invalid.
Try again.
+1; Smackdown
Yes. But hopefully, not by you.
This is possibly the greatest thing said all year besides the news saying SOPA has been dropped.
as I don't have a deep education in the life sciences, but I follow along as best I can.
Which, and I genuinely don't mean disrespect, wouldn't appear to be very well.
At the root of all 'evidence', is faith. Its the trust that you are telling me the truth AND Im parsing it correctly. There is a universe of error possible between those states.
Good-bye
Yup, the Sodomites wanted to rape the intruders. That was definitely wrong.
I rather think the offer of the virgin daughters to the prospective rapists was just as wrong.
Both these were only trivial wrongs compared to the actual breach committed by the Sodomites, which was to transgress against the rules of hospitality upon which civil society was founded. In context Lot's offer was arguably the very opposite of wrong, (though that may not be obvious to C21st eyes).
Look, I have two daughters who have never slept with a man. Let me bring them out to you, and you can do what you like with them. But don’t do anything to these men, for they have come under the protection of my roof.-- Gen 19:8 [emphasis added]
So important is it for Lot to make good his promise of hospitality that he offers up his daughters (perhaps he should have offered his goats ... or were they more valuable?). The fact that the Sodomites refused even this generousity merely exacerbated their serious transgression. That's why they got nuked.
Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident a security. --Edmund Burke
The research has been under contention for years. The gridding scandal alone is worthy of consideration, as are the selective tree-ring samples.
My point is that the people chosen to investigate the Climategate principals were not interested in the truth of the matter, they were there to create a whitewash.
And your last statement is pretty telling. All you need to do is label somebody a denier, then you can claim they don't know what they're talking about, and then they can be safely ignored. This is the kind of thinking that caused the entire third world to walk out on Copenhagen, once the cat was out of the bag.
What "multiple Ph.D's"?
He's got a BS in Mechanical Engineering and a couple honorary degrees. I'm not arguing against your overall point, but at least be accurate.
1. I remember your post.
2. I look it up in your post history.
3. They match.
Let me prove your stupid memory/faith assertion as completely wrong in about the simplest way possible. How is it that you get home each day? Or don't starve to death? Or know how to talk?
Because... you... remember... these... things.
If this isn't enough proof for you, then you are just refusing to accept reality.
If we're allowing that any intelligence behind the universe may be incomprehensible (and the universe it's behind thus likewise incomprehensible), then we're down to an unprovable assumption either way: either we assume the universe is comprehensible, or we assume it is not. Since we can only make an assumption either way, there can be no logical argument for or against either proposition.
But there can be a pragmatic one.
If the universe may or may not be comprehensible, but we can't know and can only assume either way (and must, by our actions, tacitly make one assumption or the other), then there are four possibilities:
- We assume the universe is incomprehensible, and it is, so we never comprehend it and never could.
- We assume the universe is incomprehensible, but it's not, so we never comprehend it even though we could have if we had tried.
- We assume the universe is comprehensible, but it's not, so we never comprehend it no matter how hard we try.
- We assume the universe is comprehensible, and it is, and eventually we manage to comprehend it.
The only chance we have of ever comprehending the universe is if we (at least tacitly) assume that it is comprehensible. So since we're making a baseless assumption either way, pragmatically we ought to make the assumption the operation under which at least gives us a chance, instead of just giving up from the outset. That is the real harm of "God did it" explanations: they give up on understanding and just suggest that we cannot understand. It's a quitter's answer.
Thus given that assumption that the universe is comprehensible, the workings of any God there might be behind it must be as well, at least insofar as they effect the universe and are thus evident to us at all. So to the extent that the evidence suggests there is no comprehensible design behind the universe, the evidence suggests that there is no design behind the universe at all. "There's a design, we just can't understand it" is merely giving up trying to understand.
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
Try to get your evolution teacher (Bill ...) explain the incorruptibility of Catholic saints who've died years and years go. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incorruptibility
Sounds like an asshole to me.
Well, people all around the world create their gods in their own image. Naturally, some of them end up with an asshole god.
So are we still talking about sodomy? I'm so confused...
:-P
Short answer: Yes. Any discussion about "the" bible is necessarily a discussion about butt-fucking, anal deities, sexually transmitted diseases and how these things reflect upon people whose imagination is so perverse and perverted that they are ready, willing, and able to believe in this utter and complete nonsense.
To sum up, god created the world, sheep, man, the anus, the penis, the woman and the vagina, and sexually transmitted diseases IN THAT ORDER. (Read Genesis, you'll see it's in there. Even if some items are not mentioned by name, the world was obviously first, followed by animals, THEN man, who was not gender differentiated, but had a digestive tract, and hence an exit for the alimentary canal, or the asshole, as we call it today. Only when woman was separated from man, did man get a gender, which means the anus came first, the penis later, the same day and probably hour as woman. Woman having been created in her current form originally, unlike man who had to be altered, woman and her vagina were created simultaneously. Obviously there is no sense making STD's before there were two different sexes, so they HAD, logically to be last.) Wow. Listen to me trying to apply LOGIC and REASON to Judeo/Christian mythology...
But if the nonsense in "the" bible, (like it's somehow special, or like they like to pretend how there's only ONE, when there are in fact dozens, if not hundreds of major different versions,) is to be taken at face value, that's the order things had to be done in. It's not like "God" created syphilis, THEN woman... that's just nonsensical. Incidentally, how DO Jew/tians (Jews and/or Christians) explain the sudden appearance of viruses? Let me guess, the little red guy with the tail and horns who looks suspiciously like depictions of "Pan"...
Yes they are mutually exclusive. For starters, there are no evidence of a god. Even appealing to the idea of a prime mover does not mean that the prime mover was a god. And for that matter, what prime-moved the god? (Oh yes, I forget, it always existed, right?)
Evolution is based on facts.
Creationism is based on shit people make up.
You're right, there is no evidence of a God. You're right, the idea of a prime mover doesn't mean the prime mover was a God. What prime moved the God? No idea. And the rest of your quote was just prejudiced BS.
ID doesn't require an omniscient and omnipotent God. Claiming that ID and evolution are mutually exclusive just shows how little you actually know about what you are railing against.
Uh mental gynmastics is just what is needed to understand most of the complicated math and physics. People who understand science usually don't understand it automatically, it takes work and failing a whole bunch and then convincing yourself that, yes, the textbook is right. You need to be able to warp your mind into believing things that aren't obvious. Most complicated stuff doesn't make sense until you've thought about it a long time. I'm not saying this to say that religion makes sense or that religion is the truth. I'm just saying that science takes mental gymnastics too. In science, people repeat mental gymnastics using math and people repeat mental gymnastics using life experience that is subjective to their own lives.
I'm on the science's side here, but I would have set up some serious consultants to come up with better phrasing than ..."because we need them." I expect that choice of words to only harden the stance of hard-core believers.
Just to clarify ... you are saying that Genesis was committed to its final written form before the stories which are retold in Judges were part of the oral tradition of the ANE?
That being said the idea the yeda in the context of the narrative in Gen19 has a meaning that is anything other than a sexual one is drawing an impossibly long bow.
loooool
If you think that's "left" you're delusional. Everything in the US Federal Government is right of center, all that differentiates them is to what degree and how pro-corporate they are.
I'm sure the Republican party will get right behind those same things. Oh right, they were behind SOPA/PIPA right up until the people of the country turned against it.
So jump across the aisle and the only thing that changes are the companies, and even then that isn't guaranteed.
You should. Only they'll start ramming Jesus down your throat, cut your ability to afford medical care, give more money to the richest in the country, and cut back your rights as far as they can.
You are utterly out of your gourd.
That's not what I saw. I saw that they had the power to tax, which they do. But please, bark up and down about how they "banned incandescent bulbs" to force us to buy CCFLs, when they didn't actually do that.
Don't confuse the narrative's internal chronology (fiction) with the actual chronology (history) in which individual stories arose. Perhaps OP would have better referred to the story which also appears in Judges, but presumably pre-dates both.
How do you explain the fact that Lot asked the people of Sodom not to do such wickedness? (Gen 19:6).
You also need to explain why Lot offers his daughters INSTEAD (it is clear that Lot thought the men of Sodom had sexual intentions).
Would you claim that Genesis 4:1 was not strictly talking about sex? The NET bible specifically links the use of the word in Gen 19:5 with Gen 4:1.
Perhaps Eve became pregnant some other way?
Also, I accept that the KJV might be ambiguous, but it is far from being the best translation available these days. Most other translations agree that a sexual act is being referred to here in Gen 19. These translations would not follow the KJV if they thought the translation was doubtful. The footnotes in the NET do admit that there is some debate over what is meant, but gives clear reasons for why they chose the wording they did. None of it has to do with the KJV. You need to give textual critics a bit more credit than that.
Whilst I can see your logic, it sounds like it is you who is using the KJV to promote your interpretation. One simply cannot take one meaning of a hebrew word and apply it verbatim to all uses of the word. Just like english, the meaning of a word can depend on the context. Translations such as the NET do not take this sort of thing lightly, and when all translations agree, it kind of puts the burden of proof on anyone claiming otherwise.
This seemed like a reasonable sig at the time.
After the king james version some one translated "Bring them out so we may know them" to "have sex with them". Yikes. The ancient hebrew/aramic word for know is Yeda and it means to know well. Of the 47 places yeda is used in no place does it strictly mean sex.
There are certainly a few places where it is used to mean sex. For example, "And Adam knew [yada'] Eve his wife; and she conceived, and bare Cain" (Genesis 4:1) certainly draws a cause-effect relationship between the "knowing" and the "conceiving."
No it does not. To mean that requires a phrase or adjective as you just proved! It clearly shows that you need to supplement the description with the word Conceive or it would not make sense. To know someone intimately is not so say you want to fuck them, it is intimacy. If you add the word conceived now you are saying it was sexual intimacy. But without the adjective sexual, the word simply means what it means which is to know well.
But don't take my word for it, look in a torah or look up the aramic or the greek.
Even in the passage dealing with Sodom and Gomorrah, when the men of Sodom demand "Bring them out unto us, that we may know [yada'] them" (Gen. 19:5), Lot tries to appease the mob with his daughters. He says, "Behold now, I have two daughters which have not known [yada'] man; let me, I pray you, bring them out unto you, and do ye to them as is good in your eyes." (Gen. 19:8) The plainest reading of this description suggests his daughters were virgins.
So you are correct that yada' [insert Seinfeld jokes here] doesn't always mean sex, it certainly can refer to a carnal knowledge.
So then david did butt fuck god? I'll alert the pope and all the rabiis, and ayatollahs of your discovery.
I urger you to google the phrase Yeda Yahweh. Either there a lot of people who want to fuck god or maybe you have it wrong?
Meanwhile here is what others say:
" "Yadha" never means "same-gender sexual activity" in any of its mearly 1000 appearances in the Bible."
"There is no Old Testament text in which yadha' is said to refer to homosexual coitus. The less ambiguous word shakhabh, however, is used for both homosexual and bestial intercourse, in addition to
coition between man and woman. Shakhabh appears fifty times in the Old Testament; if it had been used instead of yadha' in the Sodom story, the meaning of the text would have been unmistakable. As it is, we have no grounds to assume that the wrath of the Almighty was turned against these cities because homosexual practices occurred there."
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Clearly they would offer that no matter how much humans through their own personal intelligent design and modify dogs appearances they never stop being dogs as evolution says they should.
Evolution never says that, and the analogy to natural selection is to think about how much greater the modifications of nature could be if working on the principles of success rather than the trivial human inkling of noticed traits in breeding animals. Darwin noted to great lengths the changes by dog breeders and pigeon fanciers go to illicit in their relevant stocks and points out that given geometric growth potential and linear growth actuality that a great many animals that could exist, do not exist because they lose the struggle for existence and any edge in that will pay huge dividends to those descendants with that same benefit and so the natural propensity for life is to improve over time. Which in no way implies dogs becoming non-dogs but rather dogs becoming a rather large group with many very different species without that group given natural selection and millions of years.
It is no longer uncommon to be uncommon.
but.... thre verses later
Behold now, I have two daughters which have not known man; let me, I pray you, bring them out unto you, and do ye to them as is good in your eyes: only unto these men do nothing.... —Genesis 19:8
known here is clearly a 'sexual' reference.
also
Even as Sodom and Gomorrah, and the cities about them in like manner, giving themselves over to fornication, and going after strange flesh, are set forth for an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire. —Jude 1:7
No sorry. You are referring to modern english bibles where this mis translation has been inserted. GO back to the hebrew and you will find that they said "virgins" not "not known man". The references to fornication do not particularly refer to homosexuality. Besides do you seriously think Ezekiel would have not mentioned this if that had been the issue??? really? kind of a big omission.
Let's face it Cananites and Benjamites and ishmalites were all just losers in the battle to write their own history. It's like the Hatfields writing about the McCoys. The Hattfields are going to say what a bunch of filthy motherfuckers the McCoys were. Don't make it so.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Actually, in ancient Hebrew "Yeda" is commonly used as a euphemism for sex. For example (My translation from Hebrew):
"And Adam YEDA his wife Eve and she became pregnant and she had a son" (Genesis, chapter 4 verse 1)
Okay what other words could fill in the that blank and make perfect sense? How about "loved"? Why even say she got pregnant? why not say Adam YEDA his wife and she had a son"? Unless perhaps that would be ambiguous?
This is like the oldest "that's what she said" euphamism being over applied. Yeda appears in the bible hundreds of places with no secual connotation. at most there are ten places where it is used in a context for sex and in 100% of those there is a supplemental phrase to indicate it means sex was involved. So no it's not a common euphemism. It's a rare one applied to a very common work that means "know" not "screw".
Yeah, but they built in Creative mode.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Reductio ad absurdum.
Stop quoting harry potter and lets get back to the topic of "Why science and observation is sup par to the belief of the HAND OF GOD". You only have 50000 years to prove it.
statutory rape exists when the rape is completely rape by act of law between two otherwise consenting people. Rape exist when one party doesn't consent and unfortunately, statutory rape is the same generally because the law assumes one or both of the parties cannot give consent for whatever reason (age, mental state).
You are right that the legitimate rape was claimed to be an attempt to make a claim about rape other then statutory. but the claim attached didn't seem hold water much either. There are some doctors out there claiming that the violence associated with rape (not just holding someone down but the forcing and stuff too), combined with the mental trauma makes pregnancy highly unlikely. Evidently, there doesn't seem to be a statistical recognition of that.
As of now, it is just a bunch of words people bring out like the tubes or I invented the internet. or 640k should be enough for anyone.
Get Bill Ney to explain the incorruptibility of catholic saints. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incorruptibility
Using a story to emote faith, rather than rational argument.
How quaint.
But your problem is that his statement was bound in empirical fact where yours is bigoted ignorance. In making it, you responded to someone presenting logical evidence with you adopting the "creationist mindset".
Now you can worship Bill Nye all day long for all I care. It doesn't matter to me. But don't counter fact with bullshit you made up on the spot because your feelings are hurt.
No, I guess they shouldn't get told that the microbe de-volved back into something slimy.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I don't have faith in my memory. I trust my memory. Unlike faith, trust us earned and subject to review. If I were to grow old and senile and found myself forgetting things, I'd be less inclined to trust my memory and more inclined to start writing more things down to get through my day.
From here.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
who can claim that reason is better or more important than intuition?
Reasoning tells you how to investigate, intuition tells you what investigate. It's the difference between believing what feels true, and what is true.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
How do you explain the fact that Lot asked the people of Sodom not to do such wickedness? (Gen 19:6).
You also need to explain why Lot offers his daughters INSTEAD (it is clear that Lot thought the men of Sodom had sexual intentions).
The word "wickedness" is mistranslated from the Hebrew as well. Wickedness does not imply satanism as it does today. the literal word is "to break" custom or abrahm's laws. In this case the custom is a man is obligated to protect guests under his roof including giving his own life if necessary. To force him to give over those under his obligate protection would break custom. Lot thus took extra-ordinary measures. Apparently this was not unprecedented however as giving over a woman to appease an unruly crowd with sex was also used in Judges 19. There are many examples of extreme hospitality to strangers in the bible starting with Abrahams injunctions, and there are multiple examples of mass killings when hospitality is abused. (ask the sodomites, or the benjamites or the people of Gileah.)
Lot himself was considered an asshole by the people he worked for (cananites) as well as by his relatives. If there is any validity to their feelings about Lot then perhaps this also explains why he would think offering his daughters was a grand idea.
Just like english, the meaning of a word can depend on the context.
my point exactly. The over whelming context here is that Ezekiel tells us exactly why god wanted to destroy Sodom. He never mentions homosexuality. Supporting this are lesser contexts. There are excellent words for sexual congress especially prohibited congress like bestiality in hebrew and used elsewhere in the bible but these are not used. In context the towns people would not have know the gender or angel status of the strangers (and it appears the aramic uses a genderless term as well). The passages says it was all of the people, not all of the men, that were gathered. So were the children going to be raping as well? If they were sex crazed then why the refusal of the daughters? Would not their concern over their safety from late night strangers hidden by a untrusted man and a gate keeper who of all people should know better, be a much much much more plausible explanation for "All of the people" turning out instead of, say, a few horny drunks? That's the context.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
However, when you set up a system to constantly and relentlessly snipe at the largest, most well developed, most well researched, and most empirically verified theory in modern biology
I hear this all the time. I can't think of a bigger lie you could use to describe the situation.
Evolution is better understood and better documented, than, say, photosynthesis? Metabolism? Cellular Mytosis? Respiration? Germination? EVOLUTION IS THE LEAST-DOCUMENTED, WORST-UNDERSTOOD, LEAST-PROVEN BIOLOGICAL PROCESS WE STILL POSTULATE AS A SPECIES.
I've sat down, in a lab, in Highschool, and watched some of these things happen in a microscope. I actually OBSERVED it happening. I've seen animals give birth. I've seen seeds grow. I've watched a person breathe and stay alive by breathing. Some of these things, in fact, go against evolution, but that's not this discussion. Apparently NONE OF THESE OBSERVATIONS HOLD A CANDLE TO PEOPLE BULLSHITTING ME ABOUT WHAT HAPPENS OVER THE COURSE OF MILLIONS OF UNDOCUMENTED, UNOBSERVABLE YEARS.
I have NEVER, EVER in my life, nor has ANYONE ELSE ON THE PLANET ever witnessed evolution firsthand. We have never seen a frog species become lizards. We have never witnessed lizards become birds. We have never witnessed fish become frogs or mushrooms become plants. My ant farm only grew ants. My squash seeds only grew squash plants. You mention that bacteria has gotten over a citrus allergy -- that's not proof enough. That is NOT the leap it requires for animal species to beneficially change in the time periods we allot for evolution to work.
No, my friend. If you want to prove to anyone that evolution is real, all you have to do is raise a few thousands of generations of fruit flies in perfect blackness. If they are born without eyes in the thousandth generation, then evolution, as we know it, holds water. If they don't -- then we still don't know what the fuck we're talking about, because that would go against everything we understand about what evolution HAS TO BE in order for our biosphere to remotely function the way it does.
Otherwise, you are trying to throw clothes on a naked emperor.
What a bag of wind this all is..
You did EXACTLY what I said you would do -- talk it all away-- starting with semantics, no less! There is no faster way to admit that you don't know what the fuck you are talking about than arguing semantics and being wrong about it. Look at your definition of evolution vs. what I had written -- "DUHR NOT ORGANISM! POPULATION!!!!!!" is your big argument. Guess what? That's IMPLIED when it goes over "millions of years," you pedantic ass.
That's just one thing. Every single thing you tried to "disprove" shows you misunderstood the argument. I pointed out that everything that we try to explain away with evolution cannot be explained by evolution, because we simply haven't had the timeframe for our population to change accordingly. You cannot have MILLIONS of positive changes in a population over the course of 3 million years when each change potentially will take TENS OF MILLIONS OF YEARS to propogate -- and it completely ignores the static noise of constantly changing genetics! EVERYTHING THAT SEPERATES US FROM TREE CLIMBING OLD-WORLD MONKEYS HAD TO HAPPEN AT NEARLY THE EXACT SAME TIME. Do you realize the likelihood of that? It's ZERO. Do you realize the likelihood of ANY of that being beneficial, especially considering the contractions in the human family tree over the course of the millenia? Please understand, in my previous post I was talking generalities, and you are attempting to explain away many of them with nothing but bullshitted arguments that some author pulled out of his ass to sell shitty books, like "BOOBS R CAUSE UPRITE WALKRS!" Seriously?
Oh, and I could go on about the evolutionary timeframe we have. What radical changes we made 1 million or 3 million years ago. Especially considering we're the dominant species. Almost makes it easy to ignore fossil data that shows that dominant species rarely change over the course of hundreds of millions of years -- but no, don't tell me -- some asshole already explained that away in a completely untested, unprovable "Scientific Theory" (AKA GOSPEL TRUTH!) that makes enough sense for you to tell me that I'm an idiot for even bringing it up. I'm guessing it has to do with... hm... endothermia?
Try reading my arguments again. Try UNDERSTANDING THEM before you attack them. Ignore the mods, because they're just as willfully ignorant as you are, they'll +1 you simply because they hope the emperor has clothes as much as you do. I know your bullshit arguments like the back of my hand. I know what evolution is supposed to be. I know what it's supposed to explain, and I know that #1 defense is "YOU JUST DON'T UNDERSTAND IT" -- so try to unbrainwash yourself enough to read my arguments in a rational voice. The very fact you approach my arguments irrationally causes you to make such glaring mistakes in your reasoning.
How do you explain the fact that Lot asked the people of Sodom not to do such wickedness? (Gen 19:6).
You also need to explain why Lot offers his daughters INSTEAD (it is clear that Lot thought the men of Sodom had sexual intentions).
How would you explain that Lot raped his own daughters? Gen. 19:36
Lot is a sicko.
Imagine some sicko who is ethnically different from you lives nextr door, everyday he walks by your house giving you the stink eye and eyeballing your pre-pubscent daughter lasciviously, he keeps shouting that your religion is poison and telling you that you are gonna die and god is gonna kill you. One day he sneaks some men wearing turbans in at midnight to his house.
You are worried. What do you do?
Later on after everyone in town is murdered, and he is having incest with his daughters, he tells your next of kin his wife "died" mysteriously.
At this point would your kin believe him if he told them you were an angel rapist and some angels killed you?
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
[1] http://pastebin.com/PesPA0VL
I saw very little thinking about premises, and very little results from your attempt at socratic teaching. All in all, I rate your attempt a flat zero.
Then you're not reading hard enough. Count the number of experiments people have tried to make up in this thread.
From the feedback I've gotten, I'm pretty sure I'm a better one than you.
I expect you realise the absurdity of that statement, given what it assumes.
The trick is knowing when it is a good answer, and when it is a bad answer.
IME, "Who cares?" is what a child answers when they find a question difficult. It's possible to say "That question is unanswerable because..." or "That question is unimportant because...", but your main focus has been on being angry at someone for asking a question - and that's damn entertaining.
No, I remember that Plato's cave was a nice starting point about this idea in middle school.
Are you going to continue keeping your mouth shut on why, or are you going to explain it to the class and risk revealing your misunderstanding?
Did you read what you quoted? Not sure why you think that it was supposed to answer all questions.
It's a habit of dilettantes to remember something they read and assume it's an answer to the subject at hand.
It's been rejected as the basis of any form of reasoning about the physical world,
How can a question be rejected as a form of reasoning?
Faith in memory is certainly a basis for any form of reasoning about the physical world, if that's what you're worried about.
as well as [discussion] about moral imperatives or the limits of logic.
Such as, say, the problem of induction. Some AC in this thread, evidently with more clue than every other poster combined, immediately identified this early on.
The answers it produces are either trivial, useless or contradictory. For what it's worth - you should be able to tell by now with which philosophers I'm throwing in my lot.
I've already learned that you're one of those people too afraid to present a concrete argument.
As for your incredulity about learning about Plato's cave in middle school, that says more about your education than about my knowledge of philosophy.
Your reading comprehension is just awful. I can only hand hold you so much.
I'm sorry. I thought you were trolling or bored, but I think you're just of limited wit.
You seem awfully familiar...
And yet, over 90% of those answers were actually people telling you what an idiot you are,
Well, no, only a few (like yourself) were empty enough to provide nothing but insults. But it's good when wrong people get angry. Anger is a natural immature response to lack of understanding. When people mature, they often look back at when they got angry and review what made them angry.
Same towards you. I took real philosophy courses in high school and university and you know what?
I hear what you're saying and it sounds like "I took a class I am smart". There's a dissertation behind me full of the philosophy of mathematics, and my supervisor's name would be recognisable if you have any interest in the history of mathematics. If you want, I am happy to play big name and big word games, but that doesn't really show anything. I'm not playing academic top trumps - I'm trying to stimulate thought from a bunch of intellectual teenagers. That's never easy, but it's occasionally productive.
All of them pointed out that questions like yours are pointless mental masturbation used by idiots to make themselves feel like they're smart.
Then either the department was awful, or - more likely - you completely misunderstood the message.
Just because you make a false claim about your pointless question being significant, deep, and meaningful doesn't mean that it is
Where did I say it was deep? It's obviously significant and meaningful that everyone has to have faith in their memory. It's prerequisite to everything you do. The fact that it causes so much anger rather than quiet acceptance is kinda interesting.
That's funny, I've seen it rejected at least thirty times, just in this slashdot thread. This means that you not only fail at philosophy, you also fail at reading comprehension - which probably explains why you fail so hard at philosophy.
To reject something, one must show that it is inconsistent. Apart from a couple of instant recognitions of the question and the work that's come from it, all I've read are people providing wrong answers and people telling me the answer doesn't matter. The "wrong answer" set have hope; the "don't care" set are like the jocks who say, "Why do you like math, nerd? Is that going to get you girls, nerd?" and are merely laughable.
When I hear terms like "fail hard" I know I've got a Keyboard Warrior.
He was pointing out an example of an immature person taking an action they know damn well is only going to annoy the people they're acting towards (the kid yelling "citizen's arrest!" in a situation where it isn't appropriate), and saying that it was equivalent to your own actions, which it is.
No, I still don't understand, sorry. What is wrong with a child demanding that the driver stop speeding? To cry "citizen's arrest!" would be a misunderstanding of the law where I live, but the sentiment is perfectly understandable. Maybe you have put yourself in the driver's seat and think that you know better than everyone from society's legal system to the concerned kid in the back - looking it at like that, I can certainly understand why that analogy has been raised.
I don't follow that. The reliability of memory is a question worth asking and answering, no matter what your initial assumption is. Which, btw., differs by person. Some are rarely confronted with the unreliability of their own memory and thus assume that it is reliable. Some have had early confrontations with the fact and have thus formed a different base assumption.
Interestingly, there have also been studies on the meta-reliability of memory, i.e. about how reliable people think their memory is, compared to how reliable it actually is.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
The concept of the supernatural is incoherent. If it interacts with the natural world, we can observe it through those interactions just like we observe any other part of the natural world, and it's as good as natural itself. If it doesn't interact with the natural world, then it doesn't interact with us, seeing as we live in the natural world, and we can never have any experience of it whatsoever and have no reason to stipulate its existence or for that matter care whether or not it exists since for all intents and purposes it may as well not.
In any case all we have to go on is our experience of the natural world, and a choice to either assume there is some sense to be made of that experience, or to assume there is no sense to be made of it. We can't really know either way, we can only assume, but to assume the latter is simply to give up on trying to make sense of it (even if we potentially could), so we rationally must always assume the former, and try to make sense of it as best we can. That means assuming that there are explanations, but never assuming what they are (for assuming a given explanation stops you from trying to make sense of things just as much as assuming there are no explanations does); just moving gradually forward with progressive tentative hypotheses. In other words, doing science.
Anything else is irrational, and someone disagreeing with that "premise" doesn't change that. It's possible to start from an incorrect premise, and it's possible to argue about premises. it just pushes the argument back further, from science to epistemology in this case, and I think I have a pretty sound argument here in favor of a scientific epistemology. I've only glossed over it very briefly here, but I'm happy to write you an essay about it if you have a problem with this short version.
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
The idea that the denial of evolution is unique to the US - which I very much doubt
Let me just stop you right there. It is certainly, unequivocally, definitely unique to USA. In other developed (as in "industrialized", "high tech") parts of the world, a politician saying that he does not believe in evolution would get politically mauled and ridiculed, for good reason. He/she would be passed of as "insane", since it is by definition "insane", in light of the world we live in. There is nothing to doubt - it is fact.
In many countries (Germany, Sweden, Switzerland, Finland comes directly to mind) there are parties calling themselves "Christian democrats". If they as much as uttered that they would want religion to treated as science and religious theories taught in scientific subjects in schools, they would be out on their asses before they could say "amen". From your statements, you obviously have no idea of what religion looks like in other developed countries. You would probably be surprised to know that most members of these parties probably wouldn't even say that they "believe in God" - but in the principles among Christian values. They are traditionalists, and it is possible to believe in Christian morals without thinking that there is any factual essence to the stories in the bible.
It is pre-enlightenment to have these ideas perpetuated. The rest of the industrialized world can't believe (since it contradicts reason - see how that works?) what is still happening in USA. It's not that we think "all Americans are idiots" - of course not. But we do think the discussions you have on a national level where Christian make-believe is treated by many as on par with science, are "insane". It is unfathomable that there is a large population who still, at least 300 years past their absolute expiration date, continues to "believe" in this.
"In God we trust", Christian creationism, circumcision, general anti-science movements... And this in a country that at the same time are at the forefront of science endeavors and have been so for at least 80 years. That you haven't had a new civil war is beyond me. That you don't split your country up in different fractions is beyond me.
The definition of Faith is "Belief Without Reason", which is not to say that faith is definitively irrational, but that as soon as you think critically about something you have faith in, as soon as the mere possibility that you would reject an idea if you found evidence that disproved it - it ceases to be faith.
You can only have faith in something which you are deliberately not thinking about, it's either blind acceptance - or not faith.
If you honestly still think faith and memory are remotely comparable, let's look at your own requirement:
"Do not use your memory to form your argument, or ask me to rely on my memory."
You put this in because it's obviously impossible, but let's flip it on it's head for a second - if we replace the word 'memory' with the word 'faith' is is equally impossible?
"Do not use your [faith] to form your argument, or ask me to rely on my [faith]."
That's suddenly an incredibly easy requirement to meet - isn't it? :) I have no faith, so I don't need to worry about risking involving it in my argument, and your faith is irrelevant, so we don't need to worry about that either :)
No, you don't - because you have "reason" to accept your memory as reliable. If you have "reason" to accept that "God is true" then you don't have faith in god, you have evidence proving the existence of God - and your not a very nice person for holding out on all the rest of humanity for the past 8,000 years of people believing in the existence of Gods entirely absent of evidence (aka, Faith).
Given that Lot describes his daughters as "did not know a man" ("Lo yad'oo ish"), it is quite clear that "yada" is this context means sex. This is in fact quite common in biblical Hebrew and is sometimes used even in modern Hebrew, mainly in poetry.
And unless you've conclusively tested your memory, your faith is in this case as well entirely misplaced. Memory is extremely fallible and prone to being easily manipulated, forming false memories or making us forget or misinterpret things we believe to remember. In other words, if you have faith in your memory, you're an idiot.
So I guess your chosen simile is more apt than you thought - blind faith is ALWAYS a bad idea.
at least they were built by evolutionists.
You be quiet about that meek shall inherit the earth now. Fox News says God told them that we have to be rich and hate the poor now to get into the heavens.
Or maybe his entire story was bullshit from the start. Consider what comes next in his tale:
"Genesis 19:30 And Lot went up out of Zoar, and dwelt in the mountain, and his two daughters with him; for he feared to dwell in Zoar: and he dwelt in a cave, he and his two daughters.
31 And the firstborn said unto the younger, Our father is old, and there is not a man in the earth to come in unto us after the manner of all the earth:
32 Come, let us make our father drink wine, and we will lie with him, that we may preserve seed of our father.
33 And they made their father drink wine that night: and the firstborn went in, and lay with her father; and he perceived not when she lay down, nor when she arose.
34 And it came to pass on the morrow, that the firstborn said unto the younger, Behold, I lay yesternight with my father: let us make him drink wine this night also; and go thou in, and lie with him, that we may preserve seed of our father.
35 And they made their father drink wine that night also: and the younger arose, and lay with him; and he perceived not when she lay down, nor when she arose.
36 Thus were both the daughters of Lot with child by their father.
My interpretation? Lot was a pedophile, and needed a cover story to explain why "somebody" set the town on fire and killed his wife so he could run off into the hills to fuck his underage kids in a cave without anybody catching on.
Yep, from what i hear a hand full of people can build an ark that weighs close to 9000 tons out of gopher wood in about a week's time and fill it with 100,000+ animals with food and shelter for all for over a year with only hand tools...
No, no, it's a metaphor or a parable or a mistranslation or a typo.
Any time there's some particularly egregious nonsense in the Bible, all the excuses come out.
"No, obviously God didn't create the Universe in six Earth days. When the original Hebrew says 'six days' it is a misinterpretation of a phrase meaning 'roughly six, but may be more, and possibly a lot more units of any time period whatsoever' and therefore clearly means 'fourteen billion years ago'. "
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
God is quite capable of using DNA and RNA and quantum mechanics and other theories which we have yet to learn about to make people and the world.
Yes, but if you can use DNA and RNA and quantum mechanics to explain how the world was made, why do you need a God at all?
If you have two dishes, one of tagliatelle, oil, garlic and black pepper, and the other of tagliatelle, oil, garlic, black pepper and God, and they taste the same, what is the point of adding God?
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
This is exactly the thinking that Bill Nye is talking about, you have mentioned passages from the bible/koran/etc as if they were facts, not the fairy stories that they actually are! Next you'll be saying that your invisible sky daddy is real, he's about as real as my orbiting chocolate teapot!
Sorry, but Bill Nye is a hypocrite. He is a denier of the scientific method in regards to climate research. His views in this regard are nothing more than cargo cult science as the great Richard Feynman, a real scientist, once described.
I've noticed that the Slashdot editors have become extraordinarily biased in these matters. I can't read the original posts that disagree, only the rebuttals. This degenerates the conversation to a bunch of blue-campers agreeing with each other at a great distance from the red camp. I dare you to make it possible to read everything that gets censored (put it somewhere harder to reach, but still accessible), so we can evaluate the degree of editor bias that's spoiling these conversations. Then we can start to talk about how well the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics (and human observations) agree with this great faith-based deception called Evolution.
Funny I thought acceptance without proof was acceptance.
Belief without proof is Faith.
I accept my memory as mostly reliable because there's nothing that can be done if it is not. If my memory changes every night as do my circumstances in a perpetual and perfect experiment like those performed on the people in Dark City, there is nothing that I can be done about it. It's not faith because I do not believe that my memory is infallible. Even worse, the possibility exists that our memory is continually invented on the spot. However, that's the same as the evil homunculus problem, and the answer is the same if my memory is a fraud then the fraud is so good that I have never seen evidence of it and probably never will, and thus makes no difference to me. The fraud appears to be as reliable as the real thing.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
Evolution is only a theory. Creationism is a successful Fantasy Role Playing Game.
Many people with Ph.D. are religious. Here you can find some interesting (statistical) information: Does More Educated Really = Less Religious?
In love, war and slashdot discussions, everything is allowed.
We need more Luddites that believe what I do is magic and voodoo and will sacrifice their 18 yr old daughters to me to continue giving them iPads and toasters that work!!!!
Not the same AC. I'm arguing for fun
I'm not playing academic top trumps - I'm trying to stimulate thought from a bunch of intellectual teenagers. That's never easy, but it's occasionally productive.
Nah, it's often easy, and often productive. Intellectual teenagers tend to like their thoughts stimulated, so it's easy to get them to do so. If the teen doesn't do that, I wouldn't call such a teenager an intellectual one.
Case in point: look at how many replies you got, and how only a few resort to insults (I didn't bother to verify, but I have faith in your claim)
What's hard is trying to get adults to be intellectual. I mean, just look at politics ;p
It's obviously significant and meaningful that everyone has to have faith in their memory. It's prerequisite to everything you do.
Not necessarily. My faith tells me there's somebody out there (ergo not everyone) that does not have faith in their memory, yet can still do things.
To reject something, one must show that it is inconsistent.
Not really, there's really no prerequisite to reject anything. There may be consequences if one rejects something without showing inconsistency, but the act of rejection itself can still proceed despite those consequences.
The "wrong answer" set have hope; the "don't care" set are like the jocks who say, "Why do you like math, nerd? Is that going to get you girls, nerd?" and are merely laughable.
Why is it laughable? So the jocks have a different set of values and priorities. There's no divine decree saying which set of values is correct.
The research has been under contention in the US by oil companies for years. The big scandal of "climategate" was someone had an insecure email server.
If you yourself were to learn how climate science works and then investigate the same thing, you would come to the same conclusion. The catch is it takes some work to become educated, you can't just make guesses that you're right.
I'm guessing you're going to be defending the flat-Earth supporters next? There's evidence that the world is round, but who can really prove it! Better to just assume it's flat like the Bible says.
The belief that the world is billions of years old and that biological diversity has grown gradually through a process of mutation and natural selection is in no way incompatible with the belief that God created the world or that He has guided the process.
Yes, it is. Repeating this drivel over and over and over has become the latest fashion of putting your fingers in your ears and going "lalalala".
Evolution is the death sentence to any and all religious creation myths because it removes the necessity of creation. If life can evolve on its own, and we have no evidence of any outside influence (godlike, alien or anything else), then the most likely answer is that it has, and anyone claiming otherwise carries the burden of proof.
So unless you have any evidence for evolution being "guided" or whatever, you're just someone who can't let his pet myth go despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
That's something of a non sequitur, though.
I completely see where you're coming from—if there is no necessity for a God to make the world be as we see it, then Occam's Razor says that we should assume that there isn't one.
However, that only means that it's less likely that there's a God. It doesn't disprove the existence of God. I mean, that's sort of the whole problem with God in science: He's unfalsifiable.
I understand your desire to disabuse people of what you see as a dangerous delusion of belief in God, but logically, your argument that these two things are "incompatible" simply doesn't hold up.
Dan Aris
Fun. Free. Online. RPG. BattleMaster.
Perhaps "reliable" is too likely to be read as "always 100% correct", and I apologise for that.. I didn't want to confuse the basic question, but what you've said is quite true.
You can indeed show that memory is not always reliable.
But you can only do that once you have assumed by faith that memory is at least mostly reliable.
You keep using that word. I do no think it means what you think it means.
Dan Aris
Fun. Free. Online. RPG. BattleMaster.
Some AC in this thread, evidently with more clue than every other poster combined, immediately identified this early on.
Yes, that AC identified what you were going on about. He and about 1-2 others thought you were actually interested in a discussion, rather than provide you with entertainment. About half of the other posters identified what you were going on about, and also identified the complete lack of discussion that was going to be had. The rest hadn't heard about it, but implicitly arrived at the same conclusion.
Yep. Hell of a thread. Without your guiding hand, we'd all be stumbling around in the philosophical dark, futilely raising our pitch forks against our own ignorance. Congratulations.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
teach children to investigate, explore and seek proof. Why to we waste time and energy poisoning them with the idea that they should "believe" anything, at all, ever?
And I don't care whether what I am seeing right now exists - all that matters is that I perceive its existence. But I can't be so sure about one second ago. This is why I have to have faith in my memory, i.e. trust it without proof.
Why do you place a higher certainty on your perception than on your memory? Why would you make a distinction? If there is no distinction and trusting your senses is a matter of faith, why do you need to ask the (then) superfluous question about the accuracy of memory? If trusting your senses is not a matter of faith, why then trusting your memory is?
You do as well, of course. Embrace your faith.
And what's your point? Why would you use a loaded word like "faith", instead of, let's say, "assumption"? What's your agenda behind the use of that word? I do embrace my assumption that both my memory and perception are somewhat reliable. No, I don't have faith in it. I assume it to be true. I could assume it is false (and probably some people do), but the assumption that memory and/or perception are absolutely unreliable is less useful than the assumption that they are reliable, *even* if they turn out to be absolutely unreliable. That is, even if all my memories and perceptions are false and my thoughts *right now* where the only truth (side question: why would my thoughts *right now* be spared, as implied by "I think therefore I am"?), the assumption of unreliability is still no more useful than the assumption of reliability. So, right now, I'm not having "faith" that I read your message a few minutes ago. I'm making a cold, calculated decision between the two assumptions, on the basis of which one is more useful.
Engineers never reduce enough. Otherwise they would be mathematicians, and not be so laughably angered by philosophy.
Well, I am a mathematician... I am not angered by philosophy, but I'm angered by crappy philosophy. I'm curious, though: as a mathematician, do you take your axioms as "faith" as well? (If "yes": really!? If "no": why not?)
And evolution apparently does not have to take very long time either. According to this http://tinyurl.com/9ottnlz Danish researchers have found and documented evolution in cod over 15 generations.
Yes, Bill Nye is so wise...I'll turn over my children now... please make all of my decisions for me.....
Stalin, Mao, Lenin, all thought the same way.
We know there were cannanites. We know roughly where sodom and Gomorrah were located and ruins have been located there. We know these cities perished. OP did not say angels were present or real. OP suggests that story is a conflation of common legends (e.g. book of judges). OP suggested fictional TV show explanation for alternative interpretations of reported events. So what offends thee?
Well said. It does interest me that a simple question provokes so much emotion, though.
That's easy. It provokes so much emotion because you intentionally chose the wording to provoke that emotion ("prove... other than through faith", in an anti-faith thread). You can't prove/show anything through "faith", the question itself is ill formed. However, had you posted the question in another forum (say, a philosophy class, or even another thread on slashdot), or had used less inflammatory words, the result would most likely have been different.
Try this: "Tell me why you think that your memory is reliable."
"Tell me", instead of "prove" (or just drop the first half of the question), because you know well that if you reduce any question to "but it all may just be an illusion", which was your goal, then nothing can be proven. "Think that", instead of "show through faith", because faith, specially in the context of this thread, implies a suspension of reasoning.
Your use of "prove" and "faith" was to provoke a reaction, which is perfectly acceptable if your goal is to stir a discussion (a technique used often in philosophy classes). But wondering afterwards why the "simple question" provokes the reaction, when you worded it precisely with that goal, is hypocritical.
The theory of Evolution has the most evidence. It can be objectively tested and happens in laboratories constantly. If someone comes up with an explanation that is more accurate and can be objectively tested, then it will supplant Evolution.
I sincerely believe that this is an illusion. Evolutionists see these evidences as persuasive because they believe they offer our best clues as to how Evolution works. But if someone seriously doubts that Evolution explains life's origin, they have no persuasive value. The Evolutionist sees enlightenment in peppered moth studies, the doubter sees wishful thinking.
The gripe of the "Darwinists" is that people are losing the ability to reason in a scientific manner.
My gripe is that the Darwinists are trying to hitch their unprovable atheistic views to the wagon of science. This undermines the whole idea that science involves impartial reasoning. Respect for and interest in science can only suffer as a result.
It is this ability to reason that created the Cultural and Industrial revolutions that led people to invent the modern world. The number of people who do not believe in Evolution is a symptom of a culture that does not understand or embrace a scientific methodology.
The alternative is a faith based methodology. The last time a faith based methodology dominated, we now call it the "Dark Ages." These two go hand in hand. The Darwinists don't want to see us return to a state of ignorance.
I see you are a victim of Rationalist disinformation. The whole idea of an age old struggle between faith and reason is a fiction invented by Enlightenment writers who played fast and loose with the facts. In reality, many of the founders of entire branches of science, such as Newton and Priestly believed in God, in special creation, and in miracles and wrote extensively on these subjects.
Really. It does not matter if the entire universe is nothing but a figment of my imagination and nothing and nobody else is real. If I can still use science to observe and predict, then science is useful for that. And that is how it is different from faith.
Please have the intellectual honesty to address the point before being condescending:
That's OK, though. Once you've accepted it, all science is good and proper.
the world laughs at us
I wish more Americans would understand and be embarrassed by this, instead of hiding behind the "well at least we have the freedom to be total fucking idiots unlike you socialists in Europe" argument.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Any faith that has any regard whatsoever for evidence one way or the other, is not longer faith, it is knowledge.
Note: evolution is a fact because it has so much evidence supporting it: the fossil record, selective breeding, genetic engineering, etc...
The problem is that highly inteligent and informed persons believe it is not a fact on the basis of the very same evidence. Even some Evolutionists admit that the fossil record, superficially at least, seems to support special creation. Selective breeding has limits which cast doubt on the idea that organisms can evolve indefinitely. Genetic engineering is not readily distringuishable from special creation, so citing it as support for the plausibility of Evolution seems perverse.
The Theory of Natural Selection is the best theory we have come up to explain the fact of evolution, just like Newton's "Laws" of gravity were the best theory explaining the fact of gravity until Einstein came along.
Some Evolutionists disagree with you and advance competing theories such as Punctuated Equilibrium, but OK, what if it does best explain the fact of Evolution. It still doesn't touch the question of whether Evolution (in the Origin of Species sense) is a historical fact. After all, we can erect highly convincing theories to explain the motivations of characters in Star Trek, but that does not remove it from the realm of fiction.
You seem to be using "ignorance" in a different way than the rest of us. But maybe you will come to your senses if your kid decides to forgo education in order to seek out a Jedi temple to learn the Force...
Not a great example to use on slashdot...
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Damn you, AC, I was going to post something similar and you had to go flaming. He's no idiot, but "creationists" are not necessarily anti-evolutionists. Every Christian believes that God created the universe, but all but a few morons accept that evolution is how he went about making different species. Even the Pope says so.
I wouldn't trust the Catholic Church's opinion on the plausibility of scientific theories. Look at the whole thing with Galileo. In fact I think the Church's support of Evolution says more about its enbarassement over that than about the compatibility of Evolution with belief in God.
The problem I have with the evolution-is-compatible-with-belief-in-God camp is that we have two extrodinary claims here. One is that a fantastically powerful and skilled superhuman created the world. The second is that complexity arises naturally. We pretty much have to believe in one of them. Two accept both (absent extrordinary proof) is unnecessary.
Teaching your children about God is not the problem, stupidly denying science is the problem. And I suspect that the antievolutionists are wolves in sheeps' clothing, not unlike that evil preacher from Florida who demonstrates at military funerals with "god hates fags" placards. That goes against every single thing Jesus taught; God loves gays, he just doesn't like what they do -- but he doesn't like my or your sins, either. Gays are forgiven like any other Christian, we all sin. How can that Florida asshat consider himself a Christian?
I suspect that many of these creationists are simply trying to make unbelievers out of believers. I'm convinced that Pat Robertson has converted far more Christians to atheism than Richard Dawkins ever dreamed of converting.
Though I don't find Evolution convincing, I do agree with you that most forms of Creationism could almost have been deliberately designed to make objections to Evolution seem irrational.
good for you! I'm all for your children being less able to provide for their offspring than mine are for theirs. I would hope you'd want them to have the opportunity to be useful members of a productive society, but, hey, us heathens will always need missionaries!
... to evolve.
There's a dissertation behind me full of the philosophy of mathematics, and my supervisor's name would be recognisable if you have any interest in the history of mathematics
Ah - now things are coming together. It explains this sentence quite nicely:
I'm not playing academic top trumps - I'm trying to stimulate thought from a bunch of intellectual teenagers.
I met a few people like you while working on papers myself. Super smart, super knowledgeable, but quite insufferable. Their contributions to the field were often good, but not nearly as good as their attitude indicated.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
Bill Nye Claims: "don't make your kids do it because we need them. We need scientifically literate voters and taxpayers for the future. We need people that can — we need engineers that can build stuff, solve problems."
Then maybe you should stop killing them with abortion and contraception? It's well known that intelligent atheists fail to breed.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Sorry, but we can both observe and measure evolution in a lab, and have done so consistently. The mechanisms through which the process of "evolution" works have been exploited by humanity since at least the Agrarian Revolution -- witness the diversification of "wolf" and "dog."
The really interesting thing is when we see things resembling evolution in non-living systems -- like the AI researcher whose models began deactivating themselves during the culling phase of the selection period to increase their chances of survival.
Evolution and Creationism co-exist. Who created evolution ? God did !
and we all know that like a liberal he is an expert at child psychology among every other topic in the world and their views are the only ones that should count.
>>>I saw that they had the power to tax, which they do.
Which means they have the power to punish as well, by fining people who didn't buy a certain product. Thanks Obama and Heritage Foundation for creating this stupid plan.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
I will never understand why people don't stop to think that PERHAPS religion and science are meant to work together. They are talking about the same universe after all..
If they can't even accurately predict what the weather is going to be like in two weeks, I don't think they can accurately guess what happened millions of years ago. Just saying. So I think I'll take everyone's opinion on this matter with a pinch of salt. Sometimes humans think they are better than they really are.
I don't believe the world is millions of years old. I think this is a theory based on instrumentation that is not always correct. We all know that computers and even microscopes can make things look one way or another when they aren't. It's my right to disagree, and I think that as absurd as it may sound, your belief in evolution requires a bit of faith just as my belief in creationism requires some. I think it would be respectable of everyone not to teach it as fact but a belief. In fact, it shouldn't be required of anyone to sit through classes that are based on beliefs because it's your right to believe or not believe in anything you want, regardless of how ignorant you sound.
Telling lies to your children isn't appropriate either Mr. Bill Nye. By the way explain How intricate the brain is? Explain how the planets are so precisely arranged that the scientists can precisely pinpoint where they want to land a spaceship. Explain the intricate design of your eyes Mr. Bill Nye. So, Mr. Bill Nye, if you came across a house in the wilderness, you say to your self...it just came to be there by chance, NO. you realize it had to be designed. With intricate design comes a designer. Maybe Bill evolved from a monkey...notice his way of thinking.....wanna a banana Bill? Romans 1:18 thru 23; 18 For God’s wrath is being revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who are suppressing the truth in an unrighteous way, 19 because what may be known about God is manifest among them, for God made it manifest to them. 20 For his invisible+ [qualities] are clearly seen from the world’s* creation onward, because they are perceived by the things made, even his eternal power and Godship,* so that they are inexcusable; 21 because, although they knew God, they did not glorify him as God nor did they thank him, but they became empty-headed in their reasonings and their unintelligent heart became darkened. 22 Although asserting they were wise, they became foolish 23 and turned the glory of the incorruptible God into something like the image of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed creatures and creeping things. Even Bill Nye cannot explain how things came to be......but he is a science guy.....so funny. Bill can't even use his own brains to figure these things out.
And I am not an Unknown annonymous coward.
By David O'Rourke
What about his implied claim that only Evolution taught Engineers are capable of understanding the world? This seems rather narrow, being that the engineers that built the Great Pyramids, Great Wall of China, and Roman Aqueducts almost certainly worshiped their own pagan gods. This is also to say nothing of the Muslims and Hindu's that moved mathematics and algebra forward as well as giving us our number notation. Their beliefs and worldview didn't cripple their understanding of science.
After the king james version some one translated "Bring them out so we may know them" to "have sex with them". Yikes.
Indeed, that's the problem with the NIV. There's a place in Acts describing how they all shared possessions, the KJV says "thay had everything common." NIV says "everything IN common" which is not what the original Greek says.
Eziekiel tells us exactly why got sent the destroying angels: the prideful 1%s didn't realize they didn't build their own wealth, society had, and they were not giving back.
Indeed, you find the evil of greed all through the bible. It says "the love of money is the root of all evil". Yet so many 1%ers actually think they're going to heaven. Perhaps they will, if they can get their camel full of possessions through the very small gate they called the "eye of the needle".
I can never figure out how someone can consider himself both a conservative and a Christian. Jesus was a liberal, Caiphas (the one who condemned him to death by torture... er, which political group is for the death penalty?) was a conservative. So conservative that they crucified Christ for his progressive ideas.
Free Martian Whores!
Especially since it is proven that humans tend to re-write our memories as we grow older so that they cease to match the facts of past events.
Breeding *out* traits - like the diversification of the wolf and dog - is not evolution. It is changes within a broad species or lifeform grouping, and it does not introduce any new genes, traits, etc. The same is true of the fly experiments. Evolution - in the Darwinian sense - would require new information / genes / etc to be introduced into a population without grafting on from an external source... and without manual, human intervention. That has not been empirically verified.
William George
Bill's video missive was all fine until he issued his appeal to parents to not teach children their own belief's. It's the same as if Bill had said that there's no evidence for Judaism and so parents should not raise their children as Jews. Ridiculous. Yes, the world needs engineers. And yet the world also needs artists, musicians, and even people with religious faith. Science itself needs people with a good morale and ethical point of view, and fundamentally in our world, the instilment of these values comes from religion. Religion might not be the only source, but it is the dominant place from which these values come.
Bill, and all of the /. community, should recognize that NO theory in science is sacrosanct. The fundamental approach to science is its openness to other ideas that challenge the accepted belief. It is that basic approach that leads to advancement. And it means that being closed minded and intolerant of others is anti-science.
Darwin's theory of evolution is not a law. Its a theory. It is generally accepted by science as true. It is the best explanation for the facts at hand. But is it proven that humans evolved from non-human forms by the facts and data that we have, or is it just a proposal based on sets of data points and the supposition that those points form a curve that leads to modern human form?
Scientists need to use their self-proclaimed higher intellect to be open, respectful, and tolerant. Just because someone else doesn't subscribe to the same ideas as Bill Nye the Science Guy doesn't make them deserving of Bill Nye's contempt. Nor does it give him the right to tell parents how to raise their children.
I see what you did there.
So? He did what you see there - beat that!
np: Seefeel - Vex (Succour)
"I'm not anti-anything, I'm anti-everything, it fits better." - Sole
Could you point exactly where in the literature that any researcher on hominid or hominoid evolution makes this claim. You are aware that bipedalism and the ability to climb trees are not mutually exclusive.
Again, all you're demonstrating is your ignorance and your ability to construct strawmen of evolution. I cannot imagine that you ever read a book on hominid evolution to be able to make moronic statements like the one above. It's so idiotic that it's not even wrong.
But, as Richard Dawkins so ably pointed out to the standard Creationist complaint against the evolution of an eye that half an eye is of no use, that in fact, if you look at the range of eyes in nature (everything from photo-sensitive patches on primitive animals to the complex eyes of the octopus to the vertebrate eye), that in fact half an eye is better than no eye at all.
And I'd question the "radical changes" claim. Morphologically, we are not all that different from the other great apes. In fact, it's a real problem in that we are not, even after four million years, fully adapted to bipedal locomotion, and thus back and joint problems are so prevalent among humans. Our spines, knees and ankles are only partially evolved towards bipedal motion, so it would appear that your basic claim that all features have to be present in complete form to be useful is, even in the very example of H. sapiens, utterly and completely wrong.
Here's my tip, my friend. You are ignorant. You don't understand evolution, in general or in specific lineages. Get educated, because what you write is silly, uninformed and does you no credit at all.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
If you espouse such moronic claims as that, expect to be ridiculed. You have a right to express your opinion, you have no right to have your opinion automatically modded up. People with stupid ideas are mocked.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Bill Nye is a joke. I used to really like his shows and got my kid and others to watch. He had a decent way of getting scientific ideas across to kids and making it enjoyable for most of them. BUT ....
He only uses science when it suits his views. He is very closed minded and ignorant on several issues. I agree with him on creationism being a belief and evolution a theory that could be disproved (hasn't been yet but could still be, that is the way science is).
On the subject of global warming he totally ignores basic science and goes on his own BELIEF that CO2 is the problem and man made CO2 in particular. There is ZERO proof to that theory that has held up to any scrutiny. From the infamous hockey stick chart to the feedback that CO2 was supposed to have on water vapor (the elephant in the room) all have been shown to be wrong. The chart was bad statistics, selective data sources and appalling code that would spit out a hockey stick with random noise injected. The feedback that was supposed to be huge is in fact neutral or slightly negative. Sorry Bill you lose.
Indeed, you find the evil of greed all through the bible. It says "the love of money is the root of all evil". Yet so many 1%ers actually think they're going to heaven. Perhaps they will, if they can get their camel full of possessions through the very small gate they called the "eye of the needle".
You cite one of the best known phrases in the bible, that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to reach heaven. And yet it is so ignored: it's meaning were not perfectly clear, but not welcome.
It is funny to note however that Camel is a mistranslation of Gamel, which means rope. I like the camel image much better since it is so memorable, but I guess rope does make a lot more sense for what was really said.
Other amusing mistranslations are the Leper Jesus dined with was a Jar maker, not a leper at all. and then there's that unic, who was just a traveler not a unic.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Religion was created for 1 reason, to relinquish the fear in death...people fear their own demise, so they create a false idea to help them better cope with the inevitability of death. No one wants to believe that when they die it is absolute, but we have all been around long enough to finally grow up and face reality, we are born, we live and then we die just like nature intended, so these religous fanatics can stop trying to get us to believe in a figment of their imaginations and jump on the reality train, now the way I see it is if your so affraid of dieing then stop praying to the skies and help the rest of us in trying to figure out how we can prolong our own lives in the form of science not fairy tales...
Whether the writings were inspired or not depends on your belief system, but we do know that the writings were selected by a committee. I believe it was a Roman who set up the committee. Originally an Atheist, he "saw the light" and decided to assemble the writings, what to include and what should be left out.
"The big scandal of "climategate" was someone had an insecure email server."
Hahaha. OK, man, keep telling yourself that. Meanwhile, people whose critical thinking organs are still intact see this for what it really was - a scandal of titanic proportion that blew the AGW carbon doomsday scenarios out of the water.
Yep, the guy with multiple Ph.D's disagrees with the your particular brand of invisible sky daddy, must be a dumbass.
Their answer to that is that too much education is bad. Seriously, my Southern Baptist grandparents gave me books that say exactly that.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
So... Bill Nye is saying that if you teach your kids about creationism, they will be scientifically illiterate? He must be off his rocker. I know there are extreme cases where parents try to shelter and brainwash their kids, but that's a different issue. How about we present our kids with what we believe and why, and show them what other people believe and why, and then let them figure out what they believe? I happen to believe in a creator, and I also happen to be an electrical engineer. My father is a pastor who taught me about creationism as well as the big bang theory. It didn't prevent my enthusiasm for science. Actually, the fact that there are so many different theories is what motivated me to learn and study science more. Bill Nye may know science but he needs to study some logic perhaps.
You are equating faith with belief.
And...?
Drill baby drill - on Mars
Because the word sodomy dates back to....1300 and the KJB dates to 1600?
It was a nasty translation indeed. So nasty it broke the time space bearer.
hmm looks like someone just honored their spiritual contract with evil, this happens a lot in the entertainment biz, someone talks smack about God or Jesus or God's creation, and they're all over television and movies with a bunch of offers.
Really? What was the scandal in it? Did you even read any of the emails? Did you read ALL of the emails?
Sounds like the Fox News summary is all you're going off of here.
I have all the emails, and read many of them. In it we are privy to descriptions of how to subvert the peer review process, threats to "beat the shit" out of people who disagree with the very questionable statistical maneuverings that the CRU team has foisted off on the world, talks about selective gridding (ie the west coast of S. America was gridded so the highest temperature reporting stations were the only ones included in the data set), talks about how to waste the yearly budget without attracting the auditors, conspiracies on how to avoid the requests for original data (all deleted to avoid the requests), collusion with the media to paint the people who were skeptical as nuts, loonbags, and oil company employees, etc.
It's clear to me that you didn't actually read any of the mails. If you did, you'd be appalled not only at the CRU team, but also at the media and the bodies that investigated the leaks themselves.
It doesn't really matter, though. The cat's out of the bag, the third world will not go along with any Copenhagen-style schemes, China and India won't, and it's partly because of these mails.
Your continued tactical use of insults, insinuation, and other dirty schemes also shows you to be irrational and unable to critically think. Denier is the new nigger, right?
I sincerely believe that this is an illusion. Evolutionists see these evidences as persuasive because they believe they offer our best clues as to how Evolution works. But if someone seriously doubts that Evolution explains life's origin, they have no persuasive value. The Evolutionist sees enlightenment in peppered moth studies, the doubter sees wishful thinking.
Once again, Science is not about beliefs, only process. I can make falsifiable tests for evolution. I can observe evolution in nature. Why do you think parasites and diseases become resistant or even immune to drugs or insecticides? We can observe their genetic changes that give them that advantage. These experiments and observations are what gives Evolution the upper hand in the debate, not dogma.
Science does not care about religion, any religion (or atheism for that matter). Science is not a set of answers, it is a method to solve some questions. Any question for which falsifiable experiments or observations cannot be created, for example "Is there a God?", is a question that Science cannot answer.
My gripe is that the Darwinists are trying to hitch their unprovable atheistic views to the wagon of science. This undermines the whole idea that science involves impartial reasoning. Respect for and interest in science can only suffer as a result.
There are bad scientists. That does not mean we need more bad science, such as Creationism or Intelligent Design, to compensate for them.
, many of the founders of entire branches of science, such as Newton and Priestly believed in God,
Being religious does not preclude someone from being rational; nor does it preclude them from being a scientist. The important thing is not what you believe, it is process you use to find your answers. Atheists can, and frequently do, employ faith-based methodologies. They are not the exclusive purview of religion. The change that occurred during the Enlightenment is not that most of the thinkers were not religious, quite the opposite, but the methods they used to solve problems concerning the physical world changed.
I don't expect to persuade you. Anyone who "sincerely believes" enough will see what they want to see. There is nothing wrong with that and I think there is an important place for such things, but it isn't in Science.
Upon reading what I wrote, I realized I shouldn't have placed Creationism along with Intelligent Design. Creationism is perfectly fine as part of religious studies. Intelligent Design, however, is an attempt to make Creationism appear more scientific. Intelligent Design fails as a Science not because of its answers, but because it doesn't use a scientific methodology to arrive at those answers.
I wonder if he ever considered that the titans of science where for the most part...Christians.
Not 'Knowledge' but 'Knowledge of Good and Evil':
Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil
I only want to see they he got the gorillas in...
If you believe that you can understand God, wouldn't that mean that you are one?
Because the alternative is madness. As in, it's not possible to make a coherent decision if your memory is non-functional.
Consider:
The only way to make a non-arbitrary decision is to assume my memory isn't horribly sabotaged or failing. If it is, I couldn't make a non-arbitrary decision anyway, so it doesn't matter. If it isn't, I've made a non-arbitrary decision.
I assume you also reviewed the data yourself as well and made your own climate models that show the planet is absolutely not warming at all? Looks to me like you got the Fox News Highlights of the emails.
It must be fun living in a fantasy where millions of people are involved in a conspiracy to...improve the world?...and it's up to you to spread the truth.
Climate scientists have been wrong is the past. Models from a few decades ago predicted that the world would be cooling to a new ice age, but as more data was collected and models improved, that was reversed. According to you, they should have continued on that path and labeled the people disagreeing with them as loonbags - but they didn't because that's not how science works.
China and India obviously don't care about the environment or killing their population. Air quality is so poor that people need masks to breath outside in some areas. If you look at climate change in a pure short term economic point of view, then of course you're not going to go with it.
Take some time to learn about what science is, maybe take a class or two at your local high school. It's not like a religion at all - ask Bill Nye
At the end of the day Evolution is just a theory as creationalism is. No one has ever, EVER been able to PROVE evolution. They just assume it is and we know how that can turn out - To be WRONG. My personal theory is we mutate though cosmic rays, not selection. Hey, before you pick up the poison pen, it's a theory just like the others. The difference is I'm probably right. I have a feeling I'm a lot smarter than Darwin was.
are you just reading strongs concordance and substituting alternative meanings at will?
textual critics do in fact think about these things when translating a verse. How do your hebrew/greek credentials as well as knowledge of the culture of the day stack up against theirs?
This seemed like a reasonable sig at the time.
Hello, I believe the universe can be billions of years old. I have no problems with evolution. Still, I still believe in a literal Creation.
If science and theology disagree, this normally means theology is incorrect.
This is a powerful article for this discussion
God spoke to me
"Looks to me like you got the Fox News Highlights of the emails."
I think there's a scratch in your record.
"Take some time to learn about what science is, maybe take a class or two at your local high school. It's not like a religion at all - ask Bill Nye"
Of course it's a religion. Your statements above prove it. I don't need to investigate the data myself to know that many other scientists wanted it, needed it to replicate the research of the CRU, and were denied it.
You can stay with your religion if you want. It's almost impossible to reason with somebody regarding their faith, anyway. Your shoddy attempts at discrediting me, coupled with your sophomoric insults, proves that you're not interested in reason.
You really should read the mails, though, because it's clear that you haven't even done that. I would consider it the bare minimum of due diligence that should be undertaken when looking at a topic like this. Of course, if you're happy to leave the interpretation of the facts to the priests, there's no reason to investigate them motivations, poor character, or ridiculous subversion of the process of science for yourself.
The OT was already compiled before christ was born. You can see Josephus' quotes for that.
The NT was compiled in the early 2nd century, and the compilation was completed in the following centuries (I'm not sure of the specifics off hand). In any case, for the books we know to be authentic (most of Paul's writings for example), they were written in the late 1st century. We have eye-witness accounts from people who knew the original authors.
The study of this stuff is quite interesting, but also it can prove quite revealing about how trustworthy the bible really is (or isn't).
This seemed like a reasonable sig at the time.
You think that science can be used to observe and predict because you have faith in your memory.
If you didn't have faith in your memory, you'd have no idea whether science can be used to observe and predict.
>God is quite capable of using DNA and RNA and quantum mechanics and other theories which we have yet to learn about to make people and the world
The more that is understood about the creation, modification and origin of e.g. DNA the further back in the process
your starting point will have to be. The tools used by your God will become smaller and smaller, and more abstract
'Yes, we now know how DNA came about, but you know, God could also use as his tools to make people, the world and the whole Universes, known and unknown'
> those who believe that humanity is incapable of learning how God works are being blasphemous and not remembering the lesson of the Tower of Babel
>(Genesis 11:6) which indicates that humanity's learning capacity is without limit.
In a space of infinite size, with time stretching infinitely before and behind us, there is the opportunity for an infinite number of things; including things that
we could *never* comprehend. Of course, we'll never know that, since we don't understand them, and remain blithely arrogant of the fact that we know everything.
Stupid humans.
I'm gosgog.
Evolution continues to evolve from factual observance and intelligent minds!
Creationism evolved from folks who had limited ability minds to either discover & find out why! As a result all religions emanated from GREED. Leaders who realized that mankind (womankind too!) were nervous because they realized to some extent that the Human Body is only a shell that contains a mind. So where the hell did the mind go when the body ceased to function?? iT MADE THEM NERVOUS! So those bright bastards who wanted to get rich and Powerful came up with, Religion, Insurance and various other forms of extortion Like Mafia. LETS FACE IT MOST FOLKS BELIEVE IN RELIGION BECAUSE THEY HOPE THINGS MIGHT BE BETTER WHEN THEY'RE DEAD! I now reside in staunchly "Catholic Country... you won't believe these dumb bastards! Then look at the Idiots in the MUSLIM world. Hey if you have to have GOD(S), just be like the Greeks or the Hindus...much more Fun and dont waste money on funerals etc, Spend it having a good time ALIVE!!
Im surprised just how many /. folk seem to come from church / creation backgrounds.
Like many of you I was brought up on this type of indoctrination and as I have gotten older (i am currently in my mid 20's) have questioned more and more of it. I think many of you are failing to give religion the 'respect' it deserves... I dont think any particular mainstream religion is true anymore, but I also fail to see how evolution / naturalism can account for matter in general and life in particular, seriously how could it given our current understanding of cosmology? and the huge leap between evolution of physical matter to evolution to an imaterial consciousness... Some form of religion makes much more sense IMHO... But the problem is, each particular religion can be shown to be bogus, which leads me to my current position, which is god/s or whatever initiated the big bang and guided evolution or provided consciousness to creatures but otherwise has never interfered again, which explains the lack of miracles present in the christian church at least...
Anyhow. No butsects in soddom.
Impressive story, but there has to be a money shot, which is why Lot's daughters laid with him. So, no sodomy, but yes incest!
Upward mobility is a slippery slope - the higher you climb the more you show your ass.
"Knowledge of Good and Evil" is a subset of all knowledge. And if you think about it, if Adam and Eve didn't know what is good or bad before eating the fruit of that tree, how would they know it was wrong to disobey God and eat the fruit. Punishing someone for something they could not possibly know was wrong is in itself wrong.
Mr. Nye, Out of what shall they build things? Oh! Out of all this "stuff" that just so happens to be everywhere. This stuff that we can't seem to completely disassemble, duplicate, or even fully understand. Your world would seem to be made up of two kinds of people: 1. Those who think that all this "stuff" just poofed into existence-or was always here* lying around. and: 2. Those who think that it was deliberately planned, engineered, and created specifically to interact in such a finely detailed and controlled way that those of us inside this reality do not have the ability to see the seams. I would suggest that the second group, if properly educated, would be much better at interacting with this "stuff." Personally, I believe that the first is much like a bunch of fleas denying the existence of a Dog, but I digress. What if the digital construct, or simulation scenarios postulated by some are correct...sort of. What if God transcends the concepts of digital, analog, chemical, organic, etc. What if in His realm light is downright pokey. What if He deliberately set up a construct in which the most curious of concepts could be brought to life and tested: The possibility of failure. Pretty liberal for One who can only know perfection, don't you think? What if the ability to begin to understand this "stuff" was tossed along with Heavyside's apple cores and orange peels when he threw out Maxwell's multidimensional math and rewrote his work - omitting most of it? (The parts he couldn't understand?) Please explain all this Mr. Nye. I don't understand maths, I just know what I like. SG *Please tell us "Engineered Reality" idiots just exactly where "here" is. While you are at it could you also say what's outside? Hebrews 11:3 (vortex atom? Spun-up energy, you know, like invisible yarn.)
Just in case you don't know this, Answers in Genesis is considered a joke by everybody who isn't a Young Earth Creationist. Seriously, we've all seen the site, and we all laughed for a few minutes before we started cringing at the thought of how many people actually believe that. You will never convince anybody of anything by posting a link to AIG; it's equivalent to just saying, "I don't know what I'm talking about and am going to ignore everything you say."
Karma: Terrifying (mostly affected by atrocities you've committed)
Eziekiel tells us exactly why got sent the destroying angels: the prideful 1%s didn't realize they didn't build their own wealth, society had, and they were not giving back.
Good point.
Kind of like the only act of voliance that Jesus did was kick the banker's ass out of the temple.
The thing is, there isn't an alternative to science. There's science (reality), and then there's make believe. You seem to personally hold a grudge against all the scientists in the world (seems like you never interact with them), but that doesn't change that science is all there is.
There is both. God created the world. He made the earth and let it evolve. When man reached a level that pleased god, he gave that man a soul, cloned him, and then let them multiply to present day status. There was no missing link. The human species has evolved from an early human animal. Fin
Dropping the F word again doesn't answer the AC's post.
Please address the AC's point, or go away. I'm not planning on "stealing" the AC's thread. I just want to keep you honest, or to uncover your dishonesty. Address the AC's point and you may deserve a further thought; drop another "you need to have faith" and you'll prove that you are trolling.
Really. It does not matter if the entire universe is nothing but a figment of my imagination and nothing and nobody else is real. If I can still use science to observe and predict, then science is useful for that. And that is how it is different from faith.
Hint: he stated that the question is pointless. You have received enough replies to have an idea of what that means, including mine, which you decided not to address. Hint #2: To prove that the question is not pointless, you need to show that the answers lead to [observably] different results. Go.
I am touched that you are so keen to want me to respond ;-). I'm out of productive concentration today, so here goes...
Why do you place a higher certainty on your perception than on your memory?
Memory is required to reason, while perception is only required to observe. We can do mathematics in our mind's eye (per Plato) but only because we possess memory. In particular, without memory we could identify neither contradiction nor perform philosophical induction. Memory is something more fundamental than any perception we have of the external world.
Why would you use a loaded word like "faith", instead of, let's say, "assumption"?
Faith is a type of assumption. Consider:
1) An applied assumption about an imagined world - an axiom;
2) An applied assumption about the real world based on observation but lacking theory - a working hypothesis;
3) An applied assumption about the real world lacking any evidence - faith.
I'm making a cold, calculated decision between the two assumptions, on the basis of which one is more useful.
Usefulness is not a measure of truth.
To prove that the question is not pointless, you need to show that the answers lead to [observably] different results.
OK, you're proposing a definition for what makes a question "not pointless". Various responses:
1) Given enough time, whatever humans do, I don't think the universe will be observably different. Any two alternatives only make a fleeting difference, just as a constantly tricked mind may be repeatedly remembering an inconsistency then forgetting that it has ever identified that consistency. Your little "observably" is implicitly considered below, though it may be that we're just not yet sufficiently advanced to devise an experiment to identify inconsistencies;
2) A question doesn't have to admit an answer to be worth asking. I expect that sort of whining from engineers, but as a mathematician, you should know better - hopefully you are right now thinking of a list of "prove xyz" requests which cannot be answered except with "I cannot do that, and here is why...". You could argue that the request is then badly formed, but sometimes you only know that after thinking about the question, and it's more stimulating and less limiting to phrase the matter in terms of a possibly unanswerable question than it is to simply say "oh btw here is an unattainable goal";
3) I want to know my own nature. It makes a difference to me. If I can be somehow taken out of my body and be shown that my mind is being occasionally tricked, I want to know this. Perhaps there's a way I can identify fight the trickery, if only I train my mind - and this brings me on to...
a) The fact that, indeed, our mind does often create false memories - this is good motivation;
b) To someone in the latter stages of dementia, there may be little difference between reality and nonsense created by the mind. To the sufferer, the effect may be unobservable - he is in exactly the position you describe as "pointless" to consider. But to the external observer, the effect is not only obvious but usually thoroughly distressing. Is it inconceivable to take one more step back - to consider a position extrinsic to the normal mind as normal minds can find one wrt/ Alzheimer's patient? And maybe there are physical processes which could allow us to admit the existence of such a position.
i gtg...
back. hm, feel free to pound me with retorts to the above, i haven't read it through.
I repect a well-thought-out answer which addresses the points raised. I agree with much of what you say here.
I am interested in the question of why each side in this debate sees the other as composed of arrogant fools blinded by prejudice. I suspect the answer is that many of the most vocal are.
The examples of observable evolution in nature which you cite certainly do exist. The question about which reasonable and well-informed persons disagreed is: what is their significance? The Evolutionist believes he is looking at a little piece of a process similiar to that described by Charles Darwin, a process which will in time produces truly radical changes. But, one who suspects the existence of an inteligent creator may see designed-in adaptive mechanisms and feedback loops. As far as I have been able to determine, there is not sufficient scientific evidence to answer this question.
Unfortunately, way the most vocal public advocates of Evolution understand the meaning of the evidence is so shaped by their atheism that they are unable to even parse expressions of doubt. They are so sure that a naturalistic creative mechanism much exist that that naturalistic theory which best fits the evidence is the best theory of all. When some demure, they become angry, make bombastic statements, and launch into wholly ineffective appeals to be rational. This is ineffective because rationality is not the problem, differing assumptions are.
Of course, Creationism has even worse nuts who play right into the hands of the Evolutionist demigogs. Could God have created the fossil record and the light from distant stars? No doubt, if it were absolutely necessary. But since it wasn't necessary, to assert that he did is silly. They should just admit that they misunderstood Genesis.
It seems that for you the word "believe" has some kind of baggage. I assume this is connected with Rationalist rhetoric which contrasts "belief based systems" with "evidence based systems". When I said that I "sincerly believe" I meant that I had come to a conclusion after giving the matter serious attention.
I agree that the real change that occured during the Enlightenment was not that most thinkers were no longer religious. Rather, thinkers began to understand that the world is a machine. This was contrary to the assumptions of many who had supposed that God commanded the flowers to bloom and the lightening to strike.
But, rationalist philosphers liked to tell a different story, suggesting that the universe-is-a-machine view is incompatible with the idea that God interacts with the natural world in any way at any time. I suppose on the background of that culture they may have seemed like opposits, but today, when even the uneducated know that the universe is a machine, such arguments simply puzzle the believer. It is amusing that these worn-out arguments keep getting brought up on Slashdot. ("Please, no devine intervention! I want my universe to stay rational!")
Your remarks on the difference between Creationism and Intelligent Design are insightful. I would expand on them by calling Intelligent Design the bastard child of Rationalism. Rationalist thought places the idea of a creator into a compartment called "faith" or "belief" which exists alongside another compartment called "reason". It is frequently claimed that these compartments represent "different kinds of truth".
The problem with this kind of reasoning is that if the word really was created by an inteligent being, that is an historic fact which nothing can alter. It does not matter what we believe or do not believe about the identity and motivations of that being. It does not matter if we surround belief in this historical fact with the most absurd superstitions imaginable. It does not matter if we believe that it never happened. Our mental state cannot alter history.
Intelligent Design is an attempt to meet Evolutionists on terms which the Evolutionists have themselves chosen. All peripheral assertions which could possibly be superstition or kn
The comments here sound a lot like the Republican national convention. A bunch of people parroting platitudes to each other, knowing everyone else agrees. Except there's also the "i'm smarter than most other people" snobbishness going around.
True. Who is Forrest Mims?
are you just reading strongs concordance and substituting alternative meanings at will?
textual critics do in fact think about these things when translating a verse. How do your hebrew/greek credentials as well as knowledge of the culture of the day stack up against theirs?
Well since it's clear there is no butt sex in Lot's tale. Ezekiel never says it. The Torah rabbinical annotations agree. And in this case were down to arguing about just a single word "Know" that in overwhelming preponderance does not mean anal rape, I'd say I'm on very good grounds.
However the best evidence I know for the homosexual interpretation comes from the Quran, which seems to say this explicitly. However we have to realize the Quran is distant in time and space from the supposed writing of the events. This would however indicate the mistranslation predates all modern scholars carefully deciding on the right interpretation.
But serious single word errors are common and have huge consequences. How did for example the scholars translate "Jar Maker" to "leper" and "Traveler" to Unuc? Those are fairly well documented translation errors still in use.
I am touched that you are so keen to want me to respond ;-).
Oh, please, don't be condescending. That's ridiculous. Either respond honestly, or don't do it at all.
I'm out of productive concentration today, so here goes...
I believe you. 28 Slashdot posts so far today. It doesn't seem that you are even trying to concentrate.
Why do you place a higher certainty on your perception than on your memory?
Memory is required to reason, while perception is only required to observe. We can do mathematics in our mind's eye (per Plato) but only because we possess memory. In particular, without memory we could identify neither contradiction nor perform philosophical induction. Memory is something more fundamental than any perception we have of the external world.
That was not my question. I asked why do you place higher certainty on your perception than your memory, not which one is more useful.
Why would you use a loaded word like "faith", instead of, let's say, "assumption"?
Faith is a type of assumption. Consider: 1) An applied assumption about an imagined world - an axiom; 2) An applied assumption about the real world based on observation but lacking theory - a working hypothesis; 3) An applied assumption about the real world lacking any evidence - faith.
No, it isn't, unless you stretch the word "faith" to mean that. An assumption is just that, an assumption. "Faith" is an unquestionable belief, an assumption isn't. If I assume that my senses and memory are worth anything, I arrive to a set of conclusions. If I assume the contrary, I arrive to another set of conclusions. It just happens that one of those sets of conclusions is empty. You are free to linger on that set. I'm not claiming the truthfulness of either assumption. I'm just claiming that I considered one assumption, got the empty set, and now I'm considering the other assumption, which I haven't finished exploring.
I'm making a cold, calculated decision between the two assumptions, on the basis of which one is more useful.
Usefulness is not a measure of truth.
When did I say it was?
To prove that the question is not pointless, you need to show that the answers lead to [observably] different results.
OK, you're proposing a definition for what makes a question "not pointless". Various responses:
1) Given enough time, whatever humans do, I don't think the universe will be observably different.
I didn't say "given enough time". I didn't say the set of results "X time into the future, for some value of X". I also didn't say that it was a sufficient condition for usefulness, merely a necessary condition. But you are right, after the extinction of the human race, the question of whether I am blowing my nose right now, will be unanswerable and pointless, even though it is not pointless now. Feel free to construct an scenario in which the competing answers to your question lead to observably different results.
Any two alternatives only make a fleeting difference, just as a constantly tricked mind may be repeatedly remembering an inconsistency then forgetting that it has ever identified that consistency. Your little "observably" is implicitly considered below, though it may be that we're just not yet sufficiently advanced to devise an experiment to identify inconsistencies;
Let me simplify this for you. I "observe" (for some definition of "observe") my memory (whatever that is), and perceive it to be (sufficiently) accurate. Even if my memory is not accurate and my perception of it is just an illusion, I still perceive it to be (sufficiently) accurate. That is what makes your question unanswerable, and that is precisely what makes it meaningless
For in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow. Ecclesiastes 1:18
Stay stupid my friends!
Let me tell you how to live your life so you do not have to go and think for yourself it is easier that way.
You are stuck in a fallacy trying to state that only what you can see exists.
By definition, if I cannot observe something, it cannot affect me. If something, such as a god, were capable of having any effect whatsoever in the universe, by definition, that effect would be observable by us. We would perceive that effect as a deviation from our understanding of the laws of physics, and we would have to throw away all of our theories that do not explain that observation, and try to find a new theory that incorporated it. If this happens often enough, the scientific theories about the nature of the universe would begin to describe a universe guided by a deity, and science would confirm (presumably your) religion.
including eye witness accounts of it.
How can an eyewitness account confirm a god? How did these eyewitness accounts come to you? In a book written by a person? What makes you think the thing the eyewitness observed was actually a god? What makes you think that the written account of that story was even truthful, or translated correctly?
that is not exactly empirical evidence but it is far from zero evidence.
From a scientific standpoint, it is exactly zero evidence. From a faith-based perspective, people tend to believe what they want to believe, and so I completely understand and appreciate that things written in a book that all of your peers believe is true and accurate means that you're likely to believe it's true and accurate. I don't suffer from your groupthink and confirmation bias, and so written 3rd-party anecdotes such as this don't sway me.
Another way to think about "evidence" in situations like this: if these observations happened today, and were written down by someone in the same manner (i.e., we can't talk to the person making the observation, or the person that recorded the observation), would a courtroom in the US admit that account as evidence?
Creating is an idea put forth in the Bible, and it has been thoroughly shut down.
Hahaha.. you are so funny. Tell me, where has it been shut down. Where exactly has science proved that supernatural events never- ever- happened at all.
I think the other poster was talking about the literal creation stories, where earth was created 6000 years ago, life was created exactly as it appears today, etc. None of that is consistent with our observations of the world around us and there are no plausible theories that incorporate both the creationist account and those observations.
I agree that it's ridiculous to suggest that science test supernatural events, but I don't think that's what the parent poster was suggesting.
Creation simply is not testable.. period.
The question of whether a deity created the universe can't be tested. That the universe was created 6000 years ago can be. It's possible to whittle away pretty much everything in the creation myth that doesn't involve a god doing something. What we're left with is something indistinguishable from the thing that science explains with evolution and abiogenesis, plus some supernatural component that by definition we can't test, because we can't observe. And if we can't observe it, it can't affect us, and so what's the point in thinking about it?
Also, the word 'town' or 'village' here is a little stretched in its usage. I remember reading Twain's Innocents Abroad where he remarked on the size of the 'kingdoms' of the holy land. I believe he said something to the effect that he and his small party of tourists could concur six or seven in an afternoon without the aid of the ladies in the party and by nightfall they could have an empire. His point was that the word 'kingdom' was translated from a word meaning a few houses and their surrounding plots and vineyards. The 'towns' of Sodom and Gomorrah were probably just a couple houses and their gardens so destruction of these places would have been an evening's work and not much would have been lost.
Translation is a funny, funny thing.
All civilizations will eventually come up with the same scientific theories
Then why is evolution so convoluted that the only defensible position on evolution is "You don't understand it as well as *I* do! Why don't you read this book by ______, it explains everything?"
"That's funny, because _____ came out with a book 1 month after your guy did, and it supports what I'm saying!"
There are no lab results or tests we can run in a class room that will verify evolution, they only poke holes in it. In fact, classrooms themselves seriously mitigate the importance of evolution as a science. Whereas current "scientists" (e.g. people who call themselves scientists because they read books written by philosophy professors) will tell you that biology is a product of evolution. It's what they honestly believe, which is why they think it is so important. "What does this beetle have iridescent shell? EVOLUTION! Why does this bird have red feathers? EVOLUTION! Why does this slug have such a toxic chemical makeup? EVOLUTION! Why does this... EVOLUTION? Where did this learn... EVOLUTION!"
If that were the case, then we don't need classrooms -- we should all just evolve to know everything, because biology doesn't happen without evolution. How did I learn to ride a bike? Must have been evolution. Humans evolved to ride bikes, just like Japanese honeybees evolved to figure out a way to kill Japanese giant hornets.
"That's not what evolution is!" You claim, "Evolution is _________" -- I know. I know you have some 12 different bullshit alternate definitions, and I'm not saying your favorite definition isn't infinitely superior to the one I'm attacking. You see... because I'm attacking the definition that 90% of Magazine-Cover biologists USE in APPLICATION of our theory of evolution -- not the one you masturbate to in your favorite book. I also know that, without writing a 10,000 page essay on evolution, you'll still be pedantic about my definition, no matter how superb it was, and its squirrely nature as a non-science makes it easy to be pedantic about definitions.
If you want to argue that convolusion seperates religion from evolution, you're gravely mistaken.
But no, please go ahead and tell me that I'm stuck in the 19th century. That's one of my favorites. Then pull open your nearest NATURE and read someone say "It likely evolved this mechanism due to "
...wait, then why do textbooks have derivations? Can't you just follow those to the source. Sure, it can be difficult, but there is no need to convince yourself when the proof is on the page. If it's wrong, you can even challenge it because the error is on the page.
Who said that there should be an alternative? My point is that just because somebody claims to be a scientist, we should not take him at his word. A real scientist would not have done the things that the fake scientists at the CRU did.
This is why I call science a religion, and why I think it's clear that you are simply interested in believing scientists without questioning them. If science were not a religion, you would be appalled at the so-called climatologists working at Hadley for their statistical manipulation, cooked data, and destroyed original data. Instead, you tell me that I need to "take science classes." If you can't see the irony in that, you would make a fine Jew or Jesuit.
Oh, please, don't be condescending. That's ridiculous. Either respond honestly, or don't do it at all.
OK, I see a light-hearted introduction isn't your thing. That's sad. Never met an entirely serious man who has anything worthwhile to say, but let's see what else is on the plate...
I believe you. 28 Slashdot posts so far today. It doesn't seem that you are even trying to concentrate.
Gee, sorry for chilling, uh, mom. They were almost all inane and must have taken a few seconds each. I did make about 5 minutes' effort on your post, though I can see it was probably wasted.
That was not my question. I asked why do you place higher certainty on your perception than your memory, not which one is more useful.
No. You questioned the difference. I don't place so much certainty on my perception. It's quite irrelevant anyway.
An assumption is just that, an assumption.
And there are categories of assumption, as illustrated.
"Faith" is an unquestionable belief, an assumption isn't.
What rot. Faith of all sorts is tested and rejected all the time. I think you're trying to build a strawman to fit what I assume are preconceptions about religion.
If I assume that my senses and memory are worth anything, I arrive to a set of conclusions. If I assume the contrary, I arrive to another set of conclusions.
Even to argue like this requires a faith ("assumption" about some aspect of reality without evidence) in your memory.
It just happens that one of those sets of conclusions is empty.
It's not empty. It just means that you perhaps can't define life and reason and science in the way you may want.
and now I'm considering the other assumption, which I haven't finished exploring.
Recalling that you must assume that your memory is reliable in order to be able to rationally consider whether it is reliable. What's more, I'm betting you're going to spend the majority of your life assuming it despite a total lack of evidence - i.e. faith.
Usefulness is not a measure of truth.
When did I say it was?
"decision... on the basis of which one is more useful."
Why so arbitrary?
Feel free to construct an scenario in which the competing answers to your question lead to observably different results.
I don't see why one has to be in the position of constructing an experiment in order to usefully ask a question. It's a stupid argument which could have been used (and, indeed, has been used) to defeat all sorts of hypotheses which later experimentation has revealed to be true. For one thing, the question as posed is too vague to create an experiment.
We know far too little about how memory works to try to figure out whether there might be an experiment to suggest that humans e.g. repeatedly forget certain inconsistencies. We may not be able to prove that memory is reliable, but we might be able to show that it is in some fundamental way unreliable such that we have so far all been missing some crucial aspect of reality.
Let me simplify this for you. I "observe" (for some definition of "observe") my memory (whatever that is),
Not good enough. How do you observe it? What is it exactly that you're observing?
and perceive it to be (sufficiently) accurate.
How do you perceive that without relying on your memory? If you mean that right this moment you see no inconsistencies, that could just be because you've forgotten them.
Even if my memory is not accurate and my perception of it is just an illusion, I still perceive it to be (sufficiently) accurate.
Only by assuming that your memory is accurate can you perceive i
I agree, you shouldn't take anyone's claim at face value. Science however gives you methods to verify claims so you don't have to go off faith. That's where it differs from religion.
It's a bit of a silly argument. One that philosophers really love to spend centuries on. There is however a very simple answer: there is no truth, there are simply degrees of belief (not faith, belief). This Bayesian view of knowledge dismisses your argument as silly, as belief is not a boolean. You will have to quantify it. So yes, I have about five nines 99.999% belief in the accuracy of my memory, maybe more. This is quite in contrast with my 0.0000000001% belief (maybe less) in a divine being. You call both 'faith'. I call the first true, the second false.
Truth in this Bayesian sense is intimately tied with evidence. To ask 'is this true', you are actually asking: how much evidence would you need to be convinced otherwise? Much more useful than the sophistry that you employ in this thread. So my question to you is: what type of evidence do you need to be convinced that your memory does or does not work? And have you witnessed that evidence?
But you're still not willing to castigate the Hadley CRU for destroying their original data in order to thwart researchers who wanted to attempt to replicate their results? If you aren't than to you, science is a religion. If you are willing to admit that Climategate was real, and the whitewash has damaged the reputation of science in general, and badly damaged the reputation of climatology specifically, then there's hope for you.
You see, when scientists are allowed to conduct themselves in a manner like unto a priest, science is a religion. We don't need that original data, we should just trust them, right?
It still think you're either a pharisee or a Jesuit.
GO back to the hebrew and you will find that they said "virgins" not "not known man".
That gives even further emphasis to "yeda" being a euphemism for sex beyond the "wicked thing" remark from Lot. Now there's proof you're being an unreasonable troll.
If they were sex crazed then why the refusal of the daughters?
Because they craved angel anus. If they weren't sex crazed, the offer of the daughters makes no sense whatsoever.
There is a story about a guy who gets on a train. He looks out the window and see sheep. They are all white so he declares all sheep are white- none can be black or blue because he has never saw any like that. Are you saying that this guy is correct or something in his declaration simply because you too have only seen white sheep? You have other problems too. Why are you insisting that a divine intervention would have to deviate from the laws of physics as we know it? That is only a precondition imposed by you- you are essentially saying X can only do Y, Y can't happen therefore X is not true. But what you are neglecting is that the understanding of X or Y can very well be the basis for your understanding of the laws of nature/physics. But your rules of physics seem to not be hard set rules when we look at quantum applications so again, you have perpetuated the myth that everything has to be how you know it.
How can an eye witness confirm anything happen? How can any history be recorded and told after it happened? what makes you think the English actually lost the American revolutionary war or that injustices occurred in the practice of slavery? If eye witness accounts have no legitimacy at all, then most of what we know can be tossed to the side.
And here you go putting a fallacy into play. Why is it that you insist that there is only way to show something and that is through science? There is no scientific evidence that Hilter existed. There are however, written accounts and documents as well as eye witnesses to events. Do you refused to suffer group think in this regard too? Now yes, we have video and audio recording of Hitler, but go back in time a bit before that was available. Do any of them exist?
So if the mob kills all witnesses to the crime, the crime never happened?
That was not my question. I asked why do you place higher certainty on your perception than your memory, not which one is more useful.
No. You questioned the difference. I don't place so much certainty on my perception. It's quite irrelevant anyway.
No, these were my exact words: "Why do you place a higher certainty on your perception than on your memory? Why would you make a distinction?" And now I have to ask why questioning your perception is irrelevant but questioning your memory isn't.
What rot. Faith of all sorts is tested and rejected all the time. I think you're trying to build a strawman to fit what I assume are preconceptions about religion.
No, I'm not building a strawman. Before embarking on the reply, as a non-english speaker, I did a "define:faith" in google, just to be sure of the meaning. First meaning I got: "Complete trust or confidence in someone or something". If that's not the same, I apologize. But that's irrelevant. You are extending the definition of "faith" to cover each of the contradictory hypotheses that I assumed. Did I have "faith" in that memory is completely unreliable when I made that assumption, and then changed my "faith" when I assumed the contrary? If you answer "yes": well, great, I had "faith" then, but only after you twisted the meaning beyond recognition.
If I assume that my senses and memory are worth anything, I arrive to a set of conclusions. If I assume the contrary, I arrive to another set of conclusions.
Even to argue like this requires a faith ("assumption" about some aspect of reality without evidence) in your memory.
Let me get this straight. Assuming that something is true in order to advance an argument requires "faith" in that something?. Ok. Twisted meaning of faith. I also have faith in the axioms of euclidean geometry, and sometimes I even have faith in the axioms of non-euclidean geometries, because I assume them to be true when I do geometry.
It just happens that one of those sets of conclusions is empty.
It's not empty. It just means that you perhaps can't define life and reason and science in the way you may want.
"in the way I may want"? No, it means that if I assume that memory is absolutely unreliable, I'm not even able to think, because by the time I finish a thought, the previous one is already in the past, i.e, a memory. Even the assumption that memories are wrong are just a memory by the time that you start thinking about the consequences. "I'm assuming that all my memories are wrong. Given that... oh, wait, I remember that all my memories are wrong. Including this one. So I'll assume that all my memories are wrong. What I was doing? Oh, yes, trying to get to any conclusion under the assumption that all my memories are wrong. But that is a memory. So it is wrong. Why is it wrong? Ah, because I assumed that memory is wrong. Gah, I just remembered that. Invalid. Why?...".
and now I'm considering the other assumption, which I haven't finished exploring.
Recalling that you must assume that your memory is reliable in order to be able to rationally consider whether it is reliable.
Recalling that when? While I'm doing my reasoning? Well, yes, I recall "I'm assuming that my memory is reliable". But that's just my assumption, so there is no contradiction there. To think about the consequences of the assumption that memory is reliable I must assume that memory is reliable. Duh. To think derive any arithmetic result, I must assume the axioms. There is no circular thinking there. I'm not concluding my assumptions in either case.
What's more, I'm betting you're going to spend the majority of your life assuming it despite a total lack of evidence - i.e. faith.
That's ridiculous. Do you spend your who
No, these were my exact words: "Why do you place a higher certainty on your perception than on your memory?
Already answered: I don't.
Why would you make a distinction?" And now I have to ask why questioning your perception is irrelevant but questioning your memory isn't.
Already answered: see text beginning, "Memory is required to reason, while perception is only required to observe..."
I did a "define:faith" in google
Google doesn't come close to providing a good primary definition - people who were once faithful to something (e.g. their god) are often no longer faithful. Assuming you don't have an OED copy or subscription, you can at least check online for the primary Collins definition:
"strong or unshakeable belief in something, esp without proof or evidence"
So, like I said, you have a strong belief in your memory without proof or evidence. You have faith in your memory.
You are extending the definition of "faith" to cover each of the contradictory hypotheses that I assumed.
In order to contemplate various hypotheses, you have to have faith in your memory. Otherwise you could not be sure that you have been contemplating anything.
Then, when you continue doing science, you are holding onto that faith in your memory.
Assuming that something is true in order to advance an argument requires "faith" in that something?
It is impossible to assume anything without using your memory. Even an argument about memory requires you to use your memory. Perhaps you are so slow that you cannot grasp that, in which case I apologise and am probably wasting your time.
"I'm assuming that all my memories are wrong. Given that...
The alternative is not that your memory is always wrong but that it is unreliable. Geeks and their false binaries!
To think derive any arithmetic result, I must assume the axioms.
To be able to assume anything, you must first assume that memory is reliable. But that itself is an assumption. "Memory is reliable" is as vacuous to logic as "logic is logical".
Do you spend your whole life asking you this question (every time you access one of your memories), having the discussion in your mind, and concluding that you have faith?
You don't have to think about your faith all the time. You just carry on with your life while having faith.
I didn't say [usefulness] is a measure of truth.
So why did you raise it? What are we discussing, if not truth? I might as well say that I prefer the option of unreliability because I prefer the letter U to the letter R. Explain your context or expect your audience to try to fill in your gaps.
Well, construct any scenario, in any time scale, in which there is an observable difference. If there is no scenario in which there is a difference, then the question is irrelevant.
That's as good as three hundred years ago saying, "Construct any scenario in which man can fly. If you can think about no such scenario, then asking questions about human flight is irrelevant." A scenario could involve a memory probe which identifies the brain processing certain events on a minute timescale but rejecting them before they reach short term memory because they identify certain contradictions. We may be continually filtering out a huge chunk of somehow observable reality, subconsciously making simplifying assumptions to maintain consistency.
[I observe] the figment of my imagination that claims to be a memory.
How are you observing it without assuming that it is there?
Thus perceiving it as sufficiently accurate.
Are you sure? It was a split second between results and conclusion. Are you su
Also, afk now and I probably won't be reading your response. I can only procrastinate so much. Thanks for taking up my time! ;-)
I could also argue that whatever power(s) that be may not yet have decided to reveal themselves or are waiting for us to find them and are absolutely fuming that we are so easily misled by false prophets. For any definition of a deity that could be pleased by a particular action there exists a defintion of a deity who would be displeased by it. If recognizing the correct deity and the particular way they want us to behave is truely as important as people tend to believe then the reason for your decision had better be pretty solid. If an engineer believes that it is ok for important decisions to be based upon personal emotional responses and intuition without being able to back up such decisions with repeatable tests, then I want to know which cars, bridges, and medical devices they were responsible for designing. It's fine to take your best guess at something as a starting point, that's part of science as well, but if you expect to apply your ideas or communicate them to others you had better have an objective justification and a way of consistently and repeatably demonstrating your assertions.
Account -> Discussions -> Disable Sigs
There is a story about a guy who gets on a train. He looks out the window and see sheep. They are all white so he declares all sheep are white- none can be black or blue because he has never saw any like that. Are you saying that this guy is correct or something in his declaration simply because you too have only seen white sheep?
This guy is "correct" in the sense that Newton was correct about gravity. Both created a model of the universe that accurately allows them the ability to predict something, like the color of sheep. If this man never sees a sheep that isn't white, his model is sufficiently accurate and might as well be absolute truth.
On the other hand, if this man ever came across wool that came from a sheep that wasn't white, he would have to decide between (a) theorizing the existence of sheep of other colors, possibly resulting in a quest to confirm his theory and advance his knowledge of the universe; or (b) he can shrug his shoulders and say "God did it," and never be the wiser.
Why are you insisting that a divine intervention would have to deviate from the laws of physics as we know it?
Because no known mechanism exists for a divine being to affect our universe. If the deity appeared before someone, and spoke to them, somehow the deity is affecting our universe, by creating the perception of the deity's image and voice in the mind of an observer. If the deity is actually creating audible pressure waves in the air, and emitting photons that can be picked up by the observer's eyes, those are things that can be measured by other processes. The spontaneous creation of photons and sound would be an interesting event, and if they can't be explained, would require some theories as to where they came from.
At the very least, these observations would register as evidence that our theories are incomplete, and any model/theory that outright forbids the events that were observed would be immediately suspicious.
But your rules of physics
My rules of physics? Your bias is showing.
seem to not be hard set rules when we look at quantum applications so again, you have perpetuated the myth that everything has to be how you know it.
I disagree. Nobody ever said we have a complete understanding of the universe. But we do know a great deal about it, and the theories that we've devised are consistent with all of our observations, including the fact that we observe people that believe in gods, and we observe literature that makes claims about gods. All it takes is one reliable observation to destroy a scientific theory (or at least spur a refinement to it). If you want to replace theories of evolution with something based on a religion, start with finding that observation that disproves evolution.
How can an eye witness confirm anything happen? How can any history be recorded and told after it happened?
All of these are excellent questions, and there's an entire field devoted to this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_method
WIth respect to the American Revolution, on one side we have thousands of independent accounts, self-described as historical records, on the winning side and losing side, in agreement about events, and attesting to the validity of formal written records, with ample physical evidence of the events. On the other side, we have a small number of accounts written thousands of years ago, with many claims that are provably false. Totally the same thing.
Why is it that you insist that there is only way to show something and that is through science?
Science doesn't "show something". Science is how some of us attempt to explain that which we have been shown. If you show us something that is inconsistent with our theories of the universe, our theories will be disproven
Well, based on this, definition kinds don't exist, thus proving creationism incorrect I guess.
Of course I wish the original data was available, and the scientists should have made a better effort to make sure the raw materials were still around.
On the other hand, I can understand why they might get rid of boxes of data that had long since been processed after no one looking at them. It's not like anyone wanted to look at the data until they heard it was gone.
Your point is taken. As an engineer, I must examine all of the data points. In the case of religion, this includes historical data points throughout time.
If a forum reader has never experienced God personally, then he or she is most likely to fall in the group that takes everything that the Bible says or any Christian says as a mere story with no basis in truth or reality and dismiss every miracle or healing or time that God spoke with His people completely because that particular exact thing cannot be duplicated on demand today, regardless of how many people witnessed it when it happened. I think I can safely say that this position represents the vocal majority on slashdot - and most of the world for that matter.
But to ignore a pattern of data points is equally wrong. It is true that many of the data points are recorded in the Bible. Most on slashdot don't like that. But most on slashdot also studiously avoid any place where they might discover new data points about present day Christianity themselves.
In the church that I have attended for a few decades, there have been people that I personally knew, and knew the histories of, healed. It doesn't happen often - you can't just go there on a given Sunday and see a healing, but if you attend long enough you will see people healed and you will have come to know them well enough to realize that they aren't faking it. The pastor isn't getting any glory for it. It isn't particularly publicized to bring in people because if you are going to church to see God perform, then you are going for the wrong reason. In my case, my wife was healed by being prayed for by a lay person. The doctors had narrowed her problem down to one of two things - neither of which they could fix. She went up, was prayed for, and came back with no symptoms. She has remained OK since, although the person who prayed for her said she might need prayed for again at some point. I know she wasn't faking, because I lived with her symptoms for months before she was prayed for and she hasn't had them since. She wasn't faking them. She was healed - just like the Bible describes in 1 Cor. 12. That is a personal data point, but it is no less relevant than all the data points being reported by missionaries around the world and other people in the Christian church today. God just doesn't do things that are reproducible, so the forum crowd waves the data points away and says none of them matter.
We do routinely have messages in foreign languages and interpretations by people who do not speak or understand the language being spoken. The first common comment is - well if neither one understands the language how do you know that that is what is being said? Partly, this is on faith and the other gifts operating that will check you if something seems off. But at rare times, there is a third party in the audience who does speak the language and will come up after the service and ask either the person giving the message or the interpreter something like - where did you learn to speak X as it is uncommon today? Neither the party giving the message nor the party giving the interpretation have ever learned it, but the third party can vouch that the interpretation was correct. This is again as told in 1 Cor. 12
Other times, a word of knowledge has been given to me as an individual where someone comes up and says God told me to pray with you about this or that you need to be aware of this. They have no way to know that I am dealing with the particular issue or have a problem at that particular point in my life about what they tell me, but it is spot on. Not even my immediate family knows about some things I deal with. But God does. This is also seen in 1 Cor. 12.
God is at work today, just as He was in the early church, and He is at work in churches and individuals all over the planet. There are also, sadly, a huge number of churches and individuals that have the name of Christ but who are far from Him. You have to pray to Him and ask His direction to find a good church for you to go to wher
TL;DR: quick, mod this down, it's proposing an unorthodox way of thinking
Let me start off by saying I don't believe in Evolution, but neither am I a Creationist.
I take issue with Creationism for different reasons than Mr. Nye. At the same time he's painted this black and white where it isn't. I think that's harmful. His statements imply that non-belief in evolution is irrational and harmful. I wish to point out that non-belief in evolution is rational and not harmful. Please take my statements at face value without assuming I'm part of some politically active group that may drive you crazy. I'm most likely not and whoever it is may drive me crazy too.
Below I paraphrase statements he made from the video. I hope to have captured the spirit of what he said if not every word.
1. Denial of evolution is unique to the United States.
2. The United States is still where most innovation happens.
These statements are painted in broad, national, politically-charged strokes. I personally know people from Japan, Spain, Korea, China, France and England that don't believe in Evolution. The latter statement is clearly subjective. But since he believes the 2, what's he worried about? The facts he believes do not support his hypothesis that this will hurt the US. This seems to be a political argument rather than a scientific one.
Evolution is the fundamental idea in life science. Like trying to do geology without believing in tectonic plates.
Tectonic plates have effects on a time-scale observable to man. Evolution, even if it were true, does not happen on a time-scale that is within the human lifespan (granted, viruses have changed into slightly different viruses but I don't think that's Evolution anymore than breeding Chihuahuas is Evolution). Bottom line: This is comparing apples to oranges.
Physics gives us power plants. Medicine gives us, well, medicine. Evolution gives us arguments about Evolution.
If you don't believe in evolution your world is a mystery instead of an exciting place.
That's a loaded statement. This is basically tantamount to saying "if you don't have the same world view as me, you're a fool and you're missing out." He doesn't have any real argument here. I don't believe in Evolution and the world is an exciting place and no more mysterious for lack of Evolution. Just because Mr. Nye can't imagine alternatives doesn't mean his is the only legitimate choice.
The world becomes fantastically complicated when you don't believe in evolution dinosaurs, fossils, etc
The fossil record's support of evolution is not nearly so cut and dry as Mr. Nye implies.
Again, he can't imagine an alternative, so it must not work. I'm sure he's met people without plausible answers. I propose an alternative explanation to Evolution for the structural similarities between the bones of birds and dinosaurs.
If you see structural similarities between the iPhone and the iPad, do you conclude the iPad evolved from the iPhone? They're non-living of course but they had the same designer, so there was a similar thought process. The living machines in nature similarly have the same designer. Is that not a plausible explanation for the structural similarities we see?
People can identify Porsches, Van Gogh paintings and numerous other things when they've come from the same designers. Why should living things be random?
Obviously this is not an exhaustive argument about Evolution, but I put forthe the above is a logical, non-complicated and non-mysterious line of reasoning.
Distant stars deep time
Yes, science is wonderful and has much to offer. What do these statements have to do with believing or not believing in Evolution? I'm fairly confident someone could devote their life to studying the stars and Evolution would never become part of the discussion. Likewise Physics and Chemistry.
These are just more loaded statements. He's implying just because you do not accept one theory you must reject all science.
I say to the grown
IMHO, creationism and evolution are not mutually exclusive. Why cannot the creatures be created, and have the ability to evolve in their environment.
Bill Nye's secular humanism is inappropriate for children.
All in all, Bill Nye comes across as an angry athiest, pissed off at Christianity and trying to twist evolutionary theory to bash Christian beliefs.
-- Ed Carp, N7EKG erc@pobox.com PGP KeyID: 0x0BD32C9B What I'm up to: http://intuitives.mine.nu
Evolution doesn't really explain anything. Why is there a Universe? Why is there Consciousness. Why is there any life at all? None of these questions are explained by evolution. So, why is evolution pushed so hard by the liberals who run our schools? Two reasons. One, religions are worshipping Dogma. If religions were worshipping the creative almighty, then people who claimed to be religious would be trying to be creative: artist, writer, musician, sculptor, comedian, etc. Most Priests are frauds who want your money, and worship. Worse yet, horrible acts of inhumanity are perpetrated by people who claim to be religious, but aren't really. Second, As Obama said a few weeks ago, "If you're rich, it's not because you made it happen, it's because somebody helped you get there." The liberal College Professor subscribes to this idea with Evolution, which teaches that we're all an accident, a genetic mutation, which is absurd, and again, an attempt to get your money. Without the absurdity of liberalism, student loans that aren't paid back, college professors would be poor. Creationism is a much more pro-active philosophy for life than Evolution. If you want to read a great book, that explains a lot of things like the secrets of Life and Death, read "The Healthcare Guide for Republicans", ebook at Amazon. mensunion org
all this anti-Christian bigotry. and yet evolution has NO explanation to the origin of the universe. We Christians do :)
This is where I lose respect for /. commentators on this issue and others like it. Most of it is just plain ridicule. Don't try to be reasonable here. Their minds are maid up and any one with your point of view is an idiot. It doesn't matter if what you say here is actually true. And, there, you get branded as a 'troll' for your trouble. QED.
Right,
because 'science literacy' equates to a 'better person' - no bias there Bill.
how bout 'better schools' and 'better parents' and 'better character' = better person (i..e for being voters/taxpayers and people that can 'build stuff')
because none of the people that 'build stuff' & do stuff, and vote intelligently, or lol PAY TAXES (can i get out of paying taxes for not being scientifically literate? i dont know that big govt would want to go down that road)---
--- none of these have spiritual beliefs right? right.
Believing in Science, or Believing in nothing, is still a belief system, it is still a prejudice, a bias, a non-objectiveness.
whats sad amongst all these posts is the level of disrespect given to anyone that disagrees, or wants to practice their nationally granted freedoms. Seems somewhat telling of the character issues of the proponents of the 'just science' crowd.
And yet they call that a fallacy because all of what you know is not the entirety of what exists. dyeing wool is a common thing. He could just say a merchant did it and be both right or wrong.
How interesting. So you do not think that outside of an entity being divine, that it can interact with the known universe in ways that are not divine. As soon as entity is classified as divine, its abilities would be beyond any limitation you would arbitrarily place on it.
As for incomplete theories and suspect models, isn't the exact opposite happening? Well, first, when did science decide it knew everything and we couldn't know more? That alone seems a bit concerning, but the crux of the argument put forth seems to be that it is impossible for a divine or supernatural being to exist because science knows it all.
Not at all. You are the one insisting a set of rules exist that can never be broken despite it happening all around you on a quantum level.
lol.. You where just saying the opposite. Please make up your mind. Now, as I previously said, nothing is stopping your understanding of the universe as being the result of a creation. Do you understand that? What you know could be the direct result of a direct act. It may not point to that act either and even lead you to conclusions other than it. You can say the theories of evolution are supported by fact and are useful. You can even say creation is not needed, but you cannot say it "shuts down" any account of a creation.
I am often amazed at how people offer answers based on so little observation - which I believe is the antithesis of scientific theory. Most of the discussion regarding the relevance of the Bible is at best misinformed and for the most part deliberately vitriolic and intended to completely discredit it as a source of any knowledge.
I find both Faith and Science necessary and compatible. They are both means of knowing reality - one gives me the why of things and the other answers the what, the who, the when, and most importantly the how of things. You are wrong when you state that obedience and faith are not found in science - there is obedience to the method,and faith in its results. Most important of all for science is the faith in man's reason that it is possible to make sense of and understand the world. If the method is not faithfully followed then how can we be certain?
Science is not equipped to answer the why, that is the domain of Faith - it is what all human beings desire - whatever they call it - to know why. In anticipation of the most obvious objection - not everyone asks why, not everyone wants "the why." It is irrelevant only because they have made it so - at one time it was a question they asked but now choose not to. Just because they choose not to ask the question does not make the need for the answer disappear.
"Little observation and much reasoning leads to error; much observation and a little reasoning to truth." Carrel, Alexis
I'm not a big fan of socialized medicine, but I also don't believe it is the end of the world.
I am amazed that the majority of people who are 'foaming at the mouth' crazy in their opposition to socialized medicine are also 'foaming at the mouth' crazy in their support of socialized religion. Not all, but there does seem to be a strong interest on socialized religion from the right wing in America...
I have no interest in socialized religion.
I see it, too. He misspelled "fundamental."
Keep searching for balance and understanding. God and religion are not the same thing. Religion is an activity of man, not of god. You might have been taught that doubting and questioning is a bad thing.
In the Bible Jesus is quoted as saying:
But remember that according to Christian belief Jesus was just a man, not a god. Jesus had his doubts and was not 100% sure of his own beliefs:
If Jesus was 100% sure he would survive death on the cross, then he really wasn't sacrificing anything through his death. Christian belief says that the sacrifice Jesus made gives mankind redemption or forgiveness from sin and pays for mankind's salvation. Well if Jesus was 100% sure he wouldn't really die, then there was no sacrifice, and then there is no redemption and no salvation. So in Christian belief, Jesus's moment of doubt is the central defining moment.
So if you have doubts about your beliefs that should not be a problem. Jesus had doubts. Any Christian that thinks you should have no doubt isn't doing what Jesus did. If you are going to base your beliefs on books written by humans, remember that even the best of us are fallible. Jesus was not happy with the way religion was practiced in his time. You can also be unhappy with the way religion is practiced in your time. Just try not to die for your beliefs, live for them instead.
I do believe that scientists who claim that "the theory of evolution is the hypothesis best supported by the evidence" are heavily influenced by their belief systems. They are atheists. According to their belief system, there is no creator, so the world must be of natural origin.
Science first, then atheism. Religion has the advantage that, in general, children are raised to believe in it based on dogma. Rational thinking and the scientific method dispels mysticism. The evidence points to evolution not because scientists are atheist, but because scientists looked at the evidence.
Science is not Perfect and doesn't have all answers. Science is our study of life and the Universe around us but we haven't been doing it long enough to claim we really know how the Universe actually started. lf the Universe is Billions of years old then how much can we possibly know in our miniscule few hundreds of years of Scientific Observation? Only Human arrogance can make such grand statements. We have dozens of THEORIES and not as many proveable facts as we've all been led to believe. A TRUE Scientist has to be open minded enough to belive that ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE. Charles Darwin may have been the 1st Creationist, before he passed away he converted to Christianity. l'm not saying ANY particular Religion is the absolute Truth, but Real Science has to have the possibility of some sort of lntelligent Life that could have started our Universe. There are still many questions that we just can't answer, for example: "the Law of Cause and Effect" if Something can not come from nothing...then What "Caused" the BIG BANG to happen? Where did the Original Matter and Energy come from and how did space go from Inorganic matter to Organic matter? Why does the Universe move like a giant clock that is counting down? Why is our Respiratory waste product of Carbon Dioxide what gives life to plants and their waste product is our Oxygen, our source of life? What a strange coincidence! lf it takes 2 people to make 1 Person then what would it take to make our Entire Universe, Our Planet Earth and All of the various and complex forms of Plants, lnsects, Sea Life, Animals and Humans??? "lt Simply Just Happened by Chance" of the Big Bang theory just Does NOT seem like a Truly Valid Scientific Explanation...does it?
Religion has the advantage that, in general, children are raised to believe in it based on dogma.
This is unfortunately true. I believe that religion should be based upon reason.
Rational thinking and the scientific method dispels mysticism.
Very effectively. Many if not most religions are heavily polluted with mysticism. Rational thinking cleanses religion.
But the core question here is: did the species evolve or were they created in much their present form by one or more superhuman extraterestials of extrordinary skill and posessed of immense resources. To argue about whether this idea is part of a mystical belief system is to miss the point. The point is that it either is or is not an historic fact. What religionists do, say, or believe is totally irrelevent.
It is not irrational to believe that superhumans created the world if there is evidence which tends to support such a view. It is not irrational to believe that these same superhumans communicated with man in the past if there are historical documents which attest to this. This does not mean that everyone has to believe that these evidences are reliable, but to say that those who do are behaving irrationally is dishonest.
The evidence points to evolution not because scientists are atheist, but because scientists looked at the evidence.
That is what they assert. Now you have repeated this assertion. What is that worth to me?
I disbelieve them because when they are backed into a corner they make statements which sound like expresions of faith in Rationalism and argue on a philisophical rather than an evidentary basis. What little evidence they do cite is compatible with Evolutionary theory, but is also compatible with belief in a creator.
Then there is the fact that in incautious moments Evolutionists have frequently admitted that some line of evidence (frequently the fosile record) is more in accord with Creation than Evolution. They have lately taken to claiming that they have been misquoted. But, what they deny is not the substance of their remarks but their seeming lack of faith in Evolution. They assert (likely truthfully) that they do not believe in creation and are certain that furthur research will clear up these little difficulties.
So, I have to conclude that the evidence is against you. Their science is informed by their atheism.
Consider the cognitive load (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_load) represented by the religious world view. Compare and contrast that with the cognitive load of other modes of knowing. Additionally, consider the conservative nature of the religious mode--it's great for addressing problems of hundreds or thousands of years ago. Perhaps not so good at addressing the problems of today, especially those that are really quite different in type or scale than the ancient problems. Additionally, consider the consequenses of incorrect action--If the God-Is-Coming-Don't-Worry-About-The-Environment crowd is wrong, things can get quite bad for many people relatively soon (possibly beginning already, likely within the next decade or two. Certainly by next century). If the evidence-best-thinking crowd is wrong then the worst case of embracing it is slower-than-expected economic growth in the short term, but possibly brighter longer term due to the investment and increase in knowledge.
Me? I'm not too into the stories that are easily manipulated by authoritarians, whether intentionally or not, and that rely primarily on me trusting them to not be fooling me, and to not be fooling themselves. I'd rather live on the raw edge of our best efforts to come to grips with reality itself, rather than falling back to the safe cozy narrative of my forebearers.
That is what they assert. Now you have repeated this assertion. What is that worth to me?
I disbelieve them because when they are backed into a corner they make statements which sound like expresions of faith in Rationalism and argue on a philisophical rather than an evidentary basis. What little evidence they do cite is compatible with Evolutionary theory, but is also compatible with belief in a creator.
Then there is the fact that in incautious moments Evolutionists have frequently admitted that some line of evidence (frequently the fosile record) is more in accord with Creation than Evolution. They have lately taken to claiming that they have been misquoted. But, what they deny is not the substance of their remarks but their seeming lack of faith in Evolution. They assert (likely truthfully) that they do not believe in creation and are certain that furthur research will clear up these little difficulties.
So, I have to conclude that the evidence is against you. Their science is informed by their atheism.
[citation needed]
Surprisingly, a large percentage of fundamentalist Christians are engineers.
This doesn't mean a large percentage of engineers are, but it is worrisome, nonetheless.
It has been my experience that people who follow a technical specialization curriculum tend to avoid a liberal education, and when questions of origin and morality come up, they fall back on the rhetoric they learned as children, regardless of how good they are at solving engineering problems. Most don't concern themselves with the moral implications of their work as long as they do what they are paid to do, and as long as the paycheck is enough to buy the toys they want. Ignoring philosophy is not the same as considering it, and our consumer/cashflow culture makes it easy to ignore morality and replace it with canned responses.
To argue about whether this idea is part of a mystical belief system is to miss the point. The point is that it either is or is not an historic fact. What religionists do, say, or believe is totally irrelevent.
Funny, because you claim the opposite, that it is atheism that is the important factor. When you acknowledge my points for the opposite, you again repeat your claim and say religion doesn't matter.
[scientists looked at the evidence] That is what they assert. Now you have repeated this assertion. What is that worth to me?
Not less than your empty assertions are to me. If you want details of the assertion, fine, but I figured by now you've heard them.
It is not irrational to believe that superhumans created the world if there is evidence which tends to support such a view. It is not irrational to believe that these same superhumans communicated with man in the past if there are historical documents which attest to this.
And your evidence?
This does not mean that everyone has to believe that these evidences are reliable, but to say that those who do are behaving irrationally is dishonest.
When enough of the evidence accumulates, at some point you've either got your head in the sand or you're just clinging to mysticism for any number of reasons, and then trying to hide behind the cover of "reason", like the Discovery Institute.
I disbelieve them because when they are backed into a corner they make statements which sound like expresions of faith in Rationalism and argue on a philisophical rather than an evidentary basis. What little evidence they do cite is compatible with Evolutionary theory, but is also compatible with belief in a creator.
"Little" evidence? The fossil record and DNA record show evolution, not an intelligent designer. There's a clear progression from the simplest forms like bacteria to the more complicated forms. The genetic and fossil record show branching, which is what you would expect from evolution, but not creationism. An intelligent designer wouldn't limit themselves to branching, and would instead mix and match features arbitrarily.
They assert (likely truthfully) that they do not believe in creation and are certain that furthur research will clear up these little difficulties.
That's the way science operates. When the overwhelming evidence points in one way, "little difficulties" are acknowledged and worked on. Yet creationists focus on these little difficulties while accepting the huge flaws in their own theories. Mote, meet beam. Beam, meet mote.
And yet they call that a fallacy because all of what you know is not the entirety of what exists.
Basically this argument boils down to the assertion that because something could exist outside of the observable universe, it's appropriate to believe something exists outside of the observable universe. I don't subscribe to that notion. If it's outside of the observable universe, it cannot interact with the observable universe. Once it interacts with the observable universe, it becomes observable and we can learn something about it. Until then it's just mental masturbation and I have more interesting things to do with my life.
As soon as entity is classified as divine, its abilities would be beyond any limitation you would arbitrarily place on it.
I'm not quite sure I'm following. If I'm on the top of a building with a large rock in hand, and I'm intent on dropping it on someone's head, but a god is intent on preventing me, somehow, when I release that rock, something has to prevent it from reaching its target. Either His Divine Hand would knock the rock aside, or maybe the god will be sneaky about it and poof into existence a penny that causes a child to stop and pick it up, which causes my target to pause for a moment after I released the rock. But what if I plastered the city block with a million cameras and sensors? Surely I would observe the penny poofing into existence. Oh but gods are craftier than that, right? They'll just go back in time and create the penny before I put up all of my cameras. There's no way to win this argument. Either gods interact with the universe in ways that we can observe, or for some reason they want to be sneaky and avoid anyone claiming to be a scientist from ever seeing them.
Well, first, when did science decide it knew everything and we couldn't know more?
I think maybe this comes from my suggestion that if it ain't observable, it ain't knowable? I don't know how much that has to do with science per se, but for me, it's common sense. What's the point in trying to figure something out that's impossible to ever figure out? Either gods interact with the universe in ways we can study, or they don't. If they don't, they can never influence our lives, and so they essentially don't exist. "But you'll see!" implies that they'll interact with our universe sometime in the future. We can talk again when that happens.
You are the one insisting a set of rules exist that can never be broken despite it happening all around you on a quantum level.
I don't believe I'm insisting on anything of the kind. I suspect we have simply misunderstood each other. I agree that our understanding of the universe is incomplete. But I do know that the model we do have has no gods in it, and no evidence of gods exists that would invalidate those theories, so the theories stand as the most likely and most complete model of the universe. If you want to add some observations that disprove any of those models and point us in the direction of gods, please do so.
lol.. You where just saying the opposite.
Do you think it is more likely that I believe inconsistent things, or that I've failed to communicate my (internally consistent) position to you?
but you cannot say it "shuts down" any account of a creation.
I didn't say that. I suspect you're trying to argue with me about something an earlier poster said. Some literal accounts of creationism (which you've acknowledge were non-literal fables mixed in with the apparently otherwise historical records) can be easily disproven ("shut down") by observations (facts) of evolution. But of course you can't say that it's impossible. The difference is that I see no reason to believe something simply because it isn't impossible. There are effectively an infinite number of other possible explanations for the orig
The belief in biblical creation is itself not the problem, but rather one of the most common causes of the problem. It would also be bad if they were taught to reject physics in defense of a geocentric flat earth story.
Exactly. I would go further, the main problem with creationism when it is disguised as science is that it needs to invalidate a great many, if not most, areas of real science. Creationists happily try to do that, this creates a scepticism to all things scientific that can never end well. Seriously, many of these guys outright try to ridicule established science in order to strengthen their pet myth. This is very sad, I would hope that we were finished with such bullshit sometime in the middle ages.
Are you a grammar Nazi? I'm trying to improve my English; please correct my errors!
I agree with you. You also hint at a potential limitation of science, itself: That we, as humans, may not even be capable of observing/measuring/verifying all things. --- What discipline, then, would any thing or phenomenon, falling outside of science's limitations, be encompassed by?
Whether it is appropriate to believe something or not is sort of beside the point. The point is that it is inappropriate categorically deny something because you didn't see it or do not understanding how it could happen.
lol.. So it would have to happen the exact way you think it would happen. What if the divine intervention was making someone pause and check their pockets for an article they needed and the penny fell out at that time? You see, divine intervention does not have to work outside the laws of physics, it can work well within them for the most part.
There is a story about a flood coming and a preacher not leaving saying god will take care of him. As the town was evacuating, several people stopped and asked the preacher if he wanted a ride, he said no, god will take care of me. The river swelled past the banks and flooded the last road out of town and someone on a boat came by and said, hop in preacher, I'll get you to safety. The preacher said, that's ok, the lord with take care of me. Finally, the town is flooded and the preacher is sitting on a roof top and a helicopter came by. It lowered a rope and a guy who said put this harness on, well will fly you to safety. The preacher said, that's ok, god will take care of me. Later that night, the preacher went to sleep and fell off the roof and into the flood waters and died. He gets to heaven and asks why god didn't take care of him. The reply was, he sent the town folks to help you and the preacher denied that, he sent a boat to fetch you to safety and the preacher rejected that, he even sent a helicopter to help him and the preacher refused that. What more did the preacher expect to be done.
Whether you want to believe that any of those attempts to get the preacher to safety was divine intervention or not is beside the point that the intervention does not need to be some elaborate work of smoke and magic in order to happen.
But this is a bit beyond the concept of creationism though.
I am an electrical engineer, a programmer, and a reasonably intelligent voter. I have huge issues with any so-called scientist (he is a celebrity now, not a true scientist) who chooses to raise a theory to the level of a scientific law without repeatable observable proof (impossible in this case). I am not saying his faith is wrong (and yes to unconditionally believe in the un-provable is an act of faith, not reason). I am saying ignoring other possible (I said nothing about being probable) theories is against the very meaning of science. His given statements are no better than the statements and actions of the Catholic Church towards Galileo and other abused scientists of their time. Luckily, he has no true power to start enforcing the pogrom he seems to desire. For now I will ignore the ravings of this d-list star and e-list scientist, and hope he retakes an introductory science class. One that will reteach him the difference between a theory and a law, and why we differentiate between the two.
The alternative is not that your memory is always wrong but that it is unreliable. Geeks and their false binaries!
*sigh*. I don't know how to classify this. You just changed the argument right there. We know that memory is unreliable! (If we assume that it is, of course it is. If you assume that it isn't absolutely unreliable, once you get to neuroscience, you conclude that it is unreliable, eliminating contradictions even). I stated this already. So I guess I don't have "faith" in my memory being reliable because, well, I don't claim that it is.
What are we discussing, if not truth?
Moving the goalposts much? Your original question wasn't about truth.
I always wondered if that story was actually meant to explain some odd stone/salt formations in the desert somewhere. I mean like the flood "explaining" the reason for rainbows?
Whether it is appropriate to believe something or not is sort of beside the point.
I disagree; I think it's exactly the point. To teach your children facts (that evolution occurs), and that the logical inference from those facts (a scientific theory of our evolutionary origins) is wrong only because it disagrees with your religion's holy book, which must be correct for all sorts of reasons logical fallacies, prevents your children from understanding, utilizing and trusting the scientific method.
The point is that it is inappropriate categorically deny something because you didn't see it or do not understanding how it could happen.
Perhaps there is a fine line between categorically denying something, and categorically refusing to accept something. I feel I'm doing the latter, not the former.
What if the divine intervention was making someone pause and check their pockets
Between the time a god considers intervening, and the time someone decides to pause and check their pockets, something must have happened to the person's mind to make them change their behavior. Absent intervention, they wouldn't have paused and checked their pockets, right? The mind is a product of the brain, and the brain is a physical system bound by exactly the same laws of physics everything else appears to be bound by. So something physical must have happened in the brain of this person to cause them to change their behavior.
Or would you turn around and say that the mind is magical and, like gods, not bound by the physical universe?
But you do not get to tell others they can't believe something, or they have to think like you, or they have to dismiss their religion and supplant it with what you feel is better
If this were the right attitude, we'd still be burning witches and imprisoning anyone that suggested the earth was round, or that the sun doesn't revolve around it. At some point you have to take a stand and call ignorance what it is. Thinking about the last few hundred years, are you really of the opinion that the world would be a better place if religion were always allowed to trump science?
Historically, science has always ultimately prevailed, and what once were absolute religious truths are now fables and moral tales. "We know better now." Do you believe that that trend has somehow stopped in 2012? Surely by now we've figured out what parts of the bible are just bedtime stories, and which parts were historically accurate? In 2112, everything that people believe is historically accurate in the Christian bible will continue to be considered historically accurate?
Religion and science can coexist perfectly well together and even conflict with each other as long as people understand one is religion and one is science.
I think I agree with this. The trick is in how you handle the situation where they contradict each other. You can either apply critical thinking skills, and maybe learn something, or you can be ignorant. One of these advances mankind's understanding of the universe and improves the standard of living across the globe. The other makes you feel warm and fuzzy and occasionally results in your neighbor being persecuted.
The historocity of the bible is well founded.
The "historocity" of the bible is changing all the time.
But you ask why believe in it,- because you can.
Sorry, but that is unconvincing. There are many things that I could choose to believe in simply because I can. There are many other religions that are far older than Christianity that I could choose to believe in, just because I can. There are things that I can make up and start believing in. I see nothing about any one of these fantasies and mythologies that encourage me to "believe".
just that religion has a r
What was the word used to describe people who go around asking questions such as "can an omnipotent god create a rock so large it can't lift it" again? And I don't mean "jackass", even though very appropriate ;)
In capitalist USA corporations control the government.
but taking that and then saying that from these results we can be sure that a single cell lifeform can evolve into a complex, multi-organ creature is what I call into question. That is what we cannot directly test and observe,...
I've been following this discussion far longer than I had ever intended.
I have been impressed by your rational and reasonable, polite replies. It's a welcome sight for such a hot button issue. :-)
One thing that caught my attention, is the 'That is what we cannot directly test and observe,...' statement.
While you may be partially correct[1], do try to keep in mind that most, if not all, evidence in evolution suggests that the changes you are labeling 'macro evolution' usually take longer than mankind had anything resembling modern science.
[1] It depends on what your parameters are for the definitions of 'directly test and observe' are.
We have fossil evidence, backed up by radiological dating, we have observed speciation in the wild....all something to take into account.
If you are talking 'running this in a lab' over the weekend, then no, you will not observe 'macro evolution' happening. Think millennial, epochs, ages, whatever. The experiment required to test 'macro evolution' would need to run thousands of years for any useful amount of data, forget it in your lifetime.
If I have mistaken your POV, I am sorry, and humbly will accept correction.
I do not mean to question your faith, only point out that evolution needs to be viewed from a time perspective that makes no real sense to equate to a human life, or even a double handful of current human generations, and that seems to be hard for us to accept. YMMV.....
signed,
rts008, on a Public Terminal, and strange keyboard...*sigh*
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
Questions like that are good to ask those who believe in some omnipotent god, and are good to offer to militant atheists who think that god can be disproven by logic.
It may help both to accept that, if such god exists, it must exist outside of logic.
I'm not going to address the whole thing, but to disabuse you of your misunderstanding of words...
To use a car analogy, a "reliable" car doesn't work always and forever. Otherwise I'd have said something like "perfect memory" - but that would be daft, because everyone with a memory is aware that memory isn't perfect (long before scientific study).
Read "sufficiently reliable", if you really want, in the sense that you have to assume that your memory is sufficiently reliable to reason.
Moving the goalposts much? Your original question wasn't about truth.
My OP asked for a proof of some aspect of the real world. That's a question seeking truth, not utility.
Read "sufficiently reliable", if you really want, in the sense that you have to assume that your memory is sufficiently reliable to reason.
Crap. And you are unable to infer from my position from the rest of the posts that that is precisely what I was saying all along. Come on, honestly, cant you figure out that given the context, "if I assume that all my memories are wrong" doesn't mean anything more than "extremely unreliable"? Otherwise the statement wouldn't make any sense.
My OP asked for a proof of some aspect of the real world. That's a question seeking truth, not utility.
Holy shit. You are really good at this [trolling thing]. No, your question asked for proof. That's seeking proof, not truth nor utility. Just proof. Even assuming that you asked for truth (I'll grant you that if you want), your question was malformed, and so was your answer: you can't prove anything through faith. I stated that before. I merely answer the next question that comes to mind, which is how to behave, and that is a question of utility, not truth. My bad for giving a useful answer.
Really, my bad. I think there is only one way of dealing with you. Reboot. Ask the question again with a precise definitions of all your terms, and I shall answer that and only that, so that you don't get "confused" (clearly on purpose) about what we are talking about. At this point, I have no idea of what you are asking. Proceed under that assumption.
You missed the best that part. What did Lot's daughters do to him in the hills after they left Zoar? Genesis 19:30-38. That is some messed up shit, why would he tell the story of that.
Thank you for your kind and thoughtful response! I very much appreciate polite exchanges of thoughts on issues, as you seem to :)
I think what I was trying to point out with the fact that we can't observe full-blown evolution in the lab within a human life (or even many) is that because of the timescale required we can never be absolutely certain of evolution - just as we cannot travel back in time to observe the big bang, or a more recent creation event by God. Thus none of us as humans can ever be 100% certain in the scientific sense of any of these things... and yet some people argue so hard that evolution is for-sure, with no alternative but insanity.
Now you are right that there are a lot of evidences we can look at to give us ideas as to what happened in the past, and to back up theories we may come up with. The problem here is that the way we look at those things - fossils, ratios of radioactive isotopes, sedimentary layers, etc - all depend on the world view with which we approach them. For the evolutionist, they all look like great proofs of the belief in an ancient universe... but for someone like myself, they look like great evidence for a world-wide, cataclysmic flood. We can't observe either theory directly, because they require scales beyond our human ability (time for evolution, and planetary-level destruction for something like observing a Biblical flood) which we therefore cannot recreate.
Likewise, the ideas behind radiometric dating hinge on decay rates being constant (which it looks like may not be the case, though so far observations are only showing minute deviation) and that we can properly estimate the ratios of isotopes in the original environments - which, again, cannot be directly observed.
Because of these things, it seems to me that it is very possible to be a productive, thinking individual in society - no matter whether one believes in evolution or not. That is the issue I took with Bill Nye's video: he paints with a very broad, and I believe inaccurate, brush. I like his style of teaching, and loved his show as a kid, but I think that if he really cares about the future of education and the sciences in America then there are other things he could do that would be much more productive than trying to squash competing origin theories :)
William George
lol.. I never said teaching kids about evolution was wrong, I said denying them creation or anything else because you insist evolution is the only true way was wrong. As I previously said, kids can easily approach things from separate paths as is easily demonstrated with their ability to play the game games on vastly different interfaces. Kids are not a static only one way will ever work.
That's fine and all if it is you and the kids you have a valid right to interact with. But don't try to force your beliefs onto anyone else- especially through the government who is supposed to not take any sides whatsoever at all on religion because of the Constitution.
But you have to think about some things too. Have you ever stopped to realize that a good majority of kids who claim something about creationism are just rebelling against what they think is the accepted norm for the sake of pissing you off? I used to do that in high school biology class all the time. I even claimed to be a Buddhist for 3 weeks to frustrate the teacher come time to dissect a frog. I dared him to give me bad grades or punish me for my religious beliefs. I then became a born again Christian right before becoming an evangelical Atheist because I didn't like the way he treated a friend of mine. 25 years later and I'm here playing devils advocate with you over the insistence that kids only learn that their religion, their parents religion, is wrong when forced to attend a government mandated education course.
So you are saying that if a supernatural being existed that was capable of doing something to impact our universe, he would have to do it in some spectacular way that is directly obvious to you and anyone else you think needs to know or understand it and no other way is possible? On what grounds to you base this necessity for some mind blowing interaction setting off seismographs and radar defense system that can only happen how you insist it must happen?
The point of my statement was to show how simple and subtle the interaction could possibly be and how difficult it might be to understand it or detect it.
Your strawman is bordering a false dichotomy. Burning witches and claiming the earth is flat is not something directly or even indirectly supported by
I guess I'm just more willing to accept a scientific theory than another explanation in this case. :-)
IMHO, you have presented reasoned points, and while I may not fully agree, I respect your viewpoint.
Something all sides of a disagreement seem to often forget in the heat of the argument: the diversity and differing viewpoints of mankind seems to be one of our greater strengths as a species.
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
To argue about whether this idea is part of a mystical belief system is to miss the point. The point is that it either is or is not an historic fact. What religionists do, say, or believe is totally irrelevent.
Funny, because you claim the opposite, that it is atheism that is the important factor. When you acknowledge my points for the opposite, you again repeat your claim and say religion doesn't matter.
The difference is that in one case there is a causal relationship, in the other a causal relationship is impossible because the supposed effect proceeds the cause chronologically. A particular scientist is an atheist. This causes him to reach the conclusion that Evolution explains the origin of specials. A religionist has irrational beliefs about the creator and the process of creation. This cannot cause Creation not to have occured millions of years before he was born.
It is not irrational to believe that superhumans created the world if there is evidence which tends to support such a view. It is not irrational to believe that these same superhumans communicated with man in the past if there are historical documents which attest to this.
And your evidence?
It seems to me that at this point reasonable persons can interpret the physical evidence either way. The historical documents are contained in the Bible. There have been numberous arguments advanced to discredit it, but I find them about as convincing as conspiracy theories about the destruction of the World Trade Center. They are structured along the same lines of "questioning the official story" and "I don't understand this, therefor something sneeky is going on".
If you cannot respect such a point of view, discussion is pointless.
"Little" evidence? The fossil record and DNA record show evolution, not an intelligent designer. There's a clear progression from the simplest forms like bacteria to the more complicated forms. The genetic and fossil record show branching, which is what you would expect from evolution, but not creationism. An intelligent designer wouldn't limit themselves to branching, and would instead mix and match features arbitrarily.
Again, this is a question about which reasonable persons can disagree. Is the branching really due to common descent, or is it the inevitable result of any attempt to classify a large body of work? After all, we can classify computers in much the same way, but they don't even reproduce.
Nor is the progression clear. First of all, there are aknowledged gaps. Entire careers are devoted to trying to figure out why the intermediate forms 'didn't find their way into the fossile record'. Second, trees derived from the fossile record often fail to match trees derived from genetic analysis.
With the tree in doubt, it is hard to assert that features were not mixed and matched. In fact, I seem to recall that there are seeming examples of mixing and matching. These are cases where identical or highly similiar features seem to have evolved more than once. (There are of course theories to explain this this away. But, there always are.)
They assert (likely truthfully) that they do not believe in creation and are certain that furthur research will clear up these little difficulties.
That's the way science operates. When the overwhelming evidence points in one way, "little difficulties" are acknowledged and worked on. Yet creationists focus on these little difficulties while accepting the huge flaws in their own theories. Mote, meet beam. Beam, meet mote.
It is the Evolutionists who are calling these questions "little difficulties". In reality we are talking here about holes you could drive a truck through. We are talking about the fact that new kinds appear in the fossil record suddenly and remain for millions of years virtual unchanged before becoming extinct. We are talking about the way
It seems to me that at this point reasonable persons can interpret the physical evidence either way. The historical documents are contained in the Bible. There have been numberous arguments advanced to discredit it, but I find them about as convincing as conspiracy theories about the destruction of the World Trade Center. They are structured along the same lines of "questioning the official story" and "I don't understand this, therefor something sneeky is going on".
Ahhh yes, Giuliani's Law. When beliefs don't fit the facts, invoke a tragedy to bludgeon the opposition into submission...
And yes, I agree with you that young-earth Creationists are walking around with beams in their eyes and offering the extract motes from the eyes of Evolutionists. So what? They are just a distraction. It is almost like their purpose in being is to make intelligent and well informed persons believe in Evolution.
... or attack the extreme edges of belief while simultaneously agreeing with and insulting the opposition. Incidentally, this popcorn is really delicious!
Yes, but arguing creationism in the face of evidence to the contrary strongly reinforces debate skills and rhetoric.
Eziekiel tells us exactly why got sent the destroying angels: the prideful 1%s didn't realize they didn't build their own wealth, society had, and they were not giving back.
I see what you did there (I think).
lol.. I never said teaching kids about evolution was wrong, I said denying them creation or anything else because you insist evolution is the only true way was wrong.
Where did I say that you said teaching kids about evolution was wrong? I'm talking about taking facts, and using critical thinking, logic and reason to arrive at theory. These are the skills that we need to teach our children. When you subvert the "critical thinking" part and tell children that their reasoning is wrong because it disagrees with a special book, they don't learn this lesson. They don't learn to think critically ("don't ask why this book is special, just accept that it is") and they don't learn to trust logic and reason (it's wrong here, so it's not trustworthy), and by extension, the scientific method.
These children will be at an enormous disadvantage in fields that require correct application of the scientific method, because they will accept things as dogma, and will confuse dogma with science.
The evolution debate is just the classic example of this. You may feel you have a good handle on the limits of science and the limits of religion, but kids aren't learning about the evolution debate that way.
So you are saying that if a supernatural being existed that was capable of doing something to impact our universe, he would have to do it in some spectacular way that is directly obvious
You say spectacularly obvious, and I say observable. Advances in technology and our ability to model physics in computers allows us to "spy" on realms of the universe we couldn't even imagine a few generations ago. The wiggle room for a god to mess with us in a way we can't detect gets smaller and smaller with every advance.
To be honest, this sounds like the earlier argument: you can never rule out that gods are just being craftier than we are at trying to observe their actions, no matter how good we get at observing the universe. They're gods, right? We'll never be able to perfectly model the entire universe (the simulation would be larger than the universe itself, which obviously can't happen), so we'll never be able to rule this out.
Your strawman is bordering a false dichotomy. Burning witches and claiming the earth is flat is not something directly or even indirectly supported by scripture.
You're right, sorry.
But the scripture does say very specific things about the act of creation that are provably false. A few hundred years ago, most people would claim those things were factual. Today, those things are now considered allegories.
I'm calling bullshit. What science has prevailed against was early dogma or otherwise known as mans attempt to understand and explain the universe. ... it has addressed where man has taken figurative language as literal and shown it not to be practical or possible but it has never proved anything to be wrong in it.
I think you and I have different ideas about what it means to prove something wrong. If a group of people say X is true, and you demonstrate that X can't really be true, you've proved it wrong. The fact is that there are many stories in the Christian bible that were accepted as absolute truth just a few generations ago, and now they are commonly held to be allegories. The Christian bible is changing in the sense that what we accept and take from it is changing. For someone to say that it is an inviolate source of literal truth, except for the parts that w
Wow.. There are so many things wrong here it's funny. Kids are not binary switched that either presume A or B and are incapable of knowing A and B or C,D,E,F either. They in fact can possess and process both evolution and creation and can in fact separate them for their uses as needed. The only reason a child would say evolution is incorrect is when someone either told them that, or someone told them that it makes the bible incorrect. As I previously stated, all you have to do is say science uses this and finds it useful when doing science and there is no conflict at all. The answer is not to restrict one or the other but to actually place them as they are- science and religion.
How about another earlier argument, just because you don't know about it or it doesn't work the way you expect doesn't mean it doesn't exist, didn't exist, or never existed (remember the black sheep). By the lack of information or evidence, the best you can say is I see no evidence to support that claim from a scientific standpoint. There is a reason why you couldn't purchase a flat screen TV in 1920.. It's because out technology has not advanced far enough to make it possible at the time. However, that does not mean it could never be possible.
Actually, they are not provably false. What you seem to refuse to understand is that what you know and see today can be the direct result of a creation event in the past. The dating of the rocks, the universe, all that can be because of something happening with the creation. All you have is a provable and reliable alternatives to any creation story.
To argue about whether this idea is part of a mystical belief system is to miss the point. The point is that it either is or is not an historic fact. What religionists do, say, or believe is totally irrelevent.
Funny, because you claim the opposite, that it is atheism that is the important factor. When you acknowledge my points for the opposite, you again repeat your claim and say religion doesn't matter.
I think I misunderstood your point and made an unhelpful reply yesterday. Let me try again.
I believe my position is consistent. The fact that millions of persons with absurd religious beliefs believe in Creation does not make it false. Nor does the the fact that atheists believe in Evolution make it false.
However, what a person believes does affect how he views ambiguous evidence. When a person known for his public advocacy of atheism says that there is "overwhelming evidence for Evolution" we should ask whether that is really the opinion of a dispationate scientist.
Conversely, when a person (such as myself) who believes the Bible is a historical document claims that there is overwhelming evidence of creation, we should understand his conclusion in the context of his beliefs.
To accept the evidence which favours one's position and to label the contradictory evidence as "areas which will no doubt be clarified by new evidence and furthur research" is not a valid basis for telling others what they must believe. Nor is it how science is supposed to work.
When he let in two demanding late night strangers and hid them in his home, the people had every reason to be alarmed
This is a FAR more reasonable reason for every man (young and old) to surround the house than that they all wanted to give head to angels. I mean, seriously?
Evolution works on the individual gene, but is seen in the population.
[Note: I'm going to pull in quotes from your other post to keep this down to one reply.]
A particular scientist is an atheist. This causes him to reach the conclusion that Evolution explains the origin of specials.
You keep on repeating this, but it doesn't make it true. I argue instead that science reaches the conclusion of evolution, and it leads to atheism. That's true from my personal perspective, and that's also what history shows. Early scientists were religious, even greats like Isaac Newton. As science progressed, and especially with the science of evolution, religious belief among scientists went way down.
The reason is obvious, and you already agreed with the basic point: "Rational thinking and the scientific method dispels mysticism." Now the challenge for you is to prove the Bible isn't Hebrew mythology when looked at under a scientific and rational lens, as that is what drives a large percentage of creationist thinking, and is particularly true in your case.
The historical documents are contained in the Bible. There have been numberous arguments advanced to discredit it, but I find them about as convincing as conspiracy theories about the destruction of the World Trade Center. [..] If you cannot respect such a point of view, discussion is pointless.
Ridiculous. On the one hand you talk dismissively about fringe conspiracy theories, and on the other hand you ask for respect for your belief in ancient Hebrew mythology. Discussion is worthwhile if sincere arguments are being made. Respect for viewpoints doesn't have to be part of the picture.
Again, this is a question about which reasonable persons can disagree. Is the branching really due to common descent, or is it the inevitable result of any attempt to classify a large body of work? After all, we can classify computers in much the same way, but they don't even reproduce.
Why limit yourself to computers? We're talking about the tree of life, so to make an accurate comparison you should talk about all of technology, the basis for intelligent design. There you see mixing and matching everywhere. All kinds of devices contain clocks (cars, microwaves, coffee makers, cell phones, etc.), yet you wouldn't classify them as a tree that inherited the clock feature.
That's just one example, and there are countless other innovations like plastic, metals, semiconductors, integrated circuits, etc. I defy you to come up with a tree classification for technology that doesn't have a pervasive mixing and matching across branches unlike anything seen in the tree of life.
With the tree in doubt, it is hard to assert that features were not mixed and matched. In fact, I seem to recall that there are seeming examples of mixing and matching. These are cases where identical or highly similiar features seem to have evolved more than once. (There are of course theories to explain this this away. But, there always are.)
It's a matter of scope. Of course it's possible for something to be evolved multiple times, as a simple probability argument will tell you. Yet while you might find some examples, the tree isn't pervasive with them. Also, in some cases that naively suggest mixing and matching, we still find evidence for common descent, as in the whale.
Nor is the progression clear. First of all, there are aknowledged gaps. Entire careers are devoted to trying to figure out why the intermediate forms 'didn't find their way into the fossile record'. Second, trees derived from the fossile record often fail to match trees derived from genetic analysis.
I'll grant you it's an uncertain science, and there are bound to be misclassifications, yet the overall structure is there. Also, while creationists will harp on gaps, history has shown that they are continually filled in as more discoveries are made in the fossil record.
We are talking about the fact th
Funny that the one who whistle blowed that is a devout Christian, woops there goes your whole argument.
The two can coexist even when they contradict and children are completely capable of doing it. Your problem seems to be that you do not want them to know their religion.
The two concepts can coexist, for some definition of coexist.
For children to be successful in a field that requires the correct application of logic, reason, or even the scientific method, they must trust logic, reason and possibly the scientific method. When you teach them that logic and reason sometimes "don't work" because they lead you to conclusions that disagree with a religion's holy book, the child grows up believing in logical fallacies (most importantly, appeal to authority and appeal to majority), and their education (and future ability to succeed in one of these roles) is impacted negatively.
Do you disagree with this, or just that it's appropriate for someone to point it out as something we should stop doing?
Why might you ask? Well, since pretty much every (state and federal) government for the last 50 years has put in policies that claim to promote in education the mythical high paying science/engineering pathway. In reality such programs have been consistently cut or left to exist as a hodge podge of disparate islands clinging on hoping they can maintain some sort of funding to survive another year.
Saying you value something and then vanishing the money and support for it is the norm. Nye is dreaming if he thinks Democrats or Republicans and for that matter the American people care about stuff from the land of STEM.
Why do you not pay attention? Is it because it doesn't agree with what you want to believe or something? That does not need to happen as I already stated that the current Scientific understanding can easily be the direct result of creation and science can not prove it wrong because it is untestable. Does that upset you or something insomuch that you cannot recognize it? Here, let me put it in other words, the child will think science is there because God wants him to use it and take advantage of. There will be no "sometimes logic" or "sometimes reason", it will be pressing the A and B button on one game controller and the right shift and space bar on the computer to play the same damn games and figure out the same damn puzzles.
If the child extends the logic and reason to their religion, they might enter your holy grail of atheism and decide religion isn't real, they might not. They might enter it without ever applying logic or reason and insist that things can only be one way to be all rosy or if there is another way it will somehow rape your computer, kick your wife and steal you dog from you.
This entire controversy between science and religion is purely manufactured by people who have grudges against each other over religious beliefs. You certainly seem to fail the reason test that you proclaim to be the high and mighty- at least in your dealings with me on the topic. But let me reiterate, religion and science can easily coexist.
They actually admitted in the emails that they tried to Jew out the people requesting the data by deleting it, discussed the illegality of deleting it, and deleted it anyway, despite it being illegal, in order to thwart possible criticism of eir shoddy research.
It's pretty clear that you haven't got a fucking clue about Climategate. It's almost unbearable to read your ill-informed posts on the matter. But, go ahead and trust them - they are your new god. Have faith in them.
You failed science class didn't you?
Science is about creating theories and working to prove or disprove them. Scientists never ask for unquestioning obedience, they want you to be able to verify their work. We don't give credibility to scientists that don't provide evidence or ways to duplicate their results.
Science isn't about magic or faith. All civilizations will eventually come up with the same scientific theories - the same obviously isn't true for religion. If we as a society want to progress forwards technologically and scientifically we need to push rational thinking and science on kids, not blindly believing centuries old myths.
The idea that all civilizations will eventually come up with the same set of theories is an interesting theory with only 1 data point.
you are making a LOT of assumptions in that statement that you may not realize.
1) That the laws of the universe are time invariant. The jury is out on this. Theories of science are at best 2000 years old. Data is fit to the theory as experienced within that 2000 years. Its very possible that the same data experienced 1 million years later could give different results. You have no valid counter argument to this because you have only been part of a scientific civilization for ~2000 years. Even astronomy that believes it has mapped out billions of years has been active for less than 2000 at anything close to todays level.
2) The laws of the universe are distance invariant. The only true data points you have are observations within a single solar system. This is insufficient to be sure that physics isn't different elsewhere. The way in which its different will have to fit with the observed data within our 2000 year 1 solar system observations but this is very possible
3) You are assuming that all life forms will be mapped onto the universe in the same way we are. For example, there is nothing in science arguing against a civilization that is traveling backwards in time. There equations would be different. If there were creatures that are mapped onto matter using quantum physics so that their body isn't all here but some of it is there and there and there, those creatures would have a different set of physics.
4) Your assumption assumes that there are not alternate ways to fit to the same data. For example, quantum physics fits to the same data as newtoniant physics (we think). In reality, quantum physics in real objects gets to complicated that we don't know for sure. But these two theories seem to fit. What if there is a strange quantum theory that also predicts the same outcomes? string theory is an example of many different theories that are not yet differentiated from the standard model clearly.
5) you write off complicated effects that are not easily factored in. Our theories of decay are under attack by people claiming that the sun can affect the half life of some radioactive decay. This effect if true has escaped notice for the entire time we have been doing this type of thing and represents an example of where the dominant cause may have been semi constant and thus the effect was attributed to chance where its possible that the rate of neutrino or some other particle gives a much better fit.
There are a lot of scientists who are close-minded and cannot imagine a world of philosophy that may not follow sciences rules. The ability to imagine a world you don't necessarily believe in allows you to better formulate the rules of the world you do believe in and also gives you perspective on how weak your claim to mastery really is.
=)
Quantom theory does seem to intertwine the observation with the result. Perhaps how you see it affects what "it" is....
Why do you not pay attention?
You're not answering my question, and I feel like I'm talking to a wall that responds with ad hominems.
You seem to think that kids can grow up safely isolating their "sciency" sides from their "religious" sides. I don't feel the two are so easily separated. A parent can't teach their child to think critically while simultaneously smacking them on the head when they think critically about their religion. The child isn't going to learn to trust in reason when you have a minder following up and saying, "Good job thinking rationally. Unfortunately you're wrong because a bunch of people believe something different, and they are many and you are one, so you must be the one that's wrong. Also, please don't look up 'appeal to majority' or 'appeal to authority' on the Internet." The child will be less effective trying to understand the world around him if he's been raised to accept "God did it" as an acceptable and satisfying conclusion for anything he doesn't understand. The child will be less successful in a research role, where the strictest application of logic and reason is needed, if he doesn't trust that logic and reason will work, because it's clearly wrong for things that his religion teaches him.
Note that I never said the child will be ineffective, or will fail completely, just that this belief system will undermine his education.
There are really two ways I think to fully reconcile a belief in both science and religion. Either someone must redefine logic and reason so as to accept religion as a rational belief, or they accept that their religions beliefs are irrational. Nobody has to stop believing something, just because it's irrational, but this delusion that a religious mythology (again, at the exclusion of all other religions) must be correct, for logical reasons that have been considered critically, suggests to me that logic, reason, and critical thinking mean something very different to this person than it does to me. And how can you have a meaningful conversation about something if you can't even agree on what it is that you're talking about?
If you agree that a religious belief is irrational, the rest of the discussion falls into place: If faith in the irrational in any way compromises faith in the rational, teaching the irrational is at the expense of the rational, and in a world where performance of the rational is more important to success and progress, this child will be less successful.
Your question has been repeatedly answered all through this thread. Just because you do not like the answer does not mean you get to ignore it in favor of waiting until you get one what you want to see.
Here is your problem. A parent does not teach a child to discover everything the parent thinks they should know. Can you imagine how insanely stupid it would be for a parent to say what happens when you touch that hot stove instead of don't touch that, it is hot and will hurt you? Can you imagine a parent saying cross the street to see what happens and hope they use logic and reason to discover the importance of looking both ways before a they jot out in front of a car and get killed? No, they tell them not to play in the street and they tell them to look both ways. Parents tell children the story of the boogerman and other tales to make them afraid to venture off without them at night when everyone is asleep. Should the parents just say ignore that and see what happens when their child runs out and joins crack alley while mom tries to get some sleep?
Children need to learn facts and behavior. Teaching them religion is not in any way detrimental to thinking critically or logic and reason. This concept you keep insisting is nothing but a fabrication that exists in your mind because of your disdain for religion.
Not any more then memorizing the 50 states or the capitol of those states will. Not any more then reading comic books or playing fictional games will. Are you suggesting they do not do that either? I happen to know that some of the smartest geeks and scientists, probably the very same ones you aspire to, were heavily invested in video games that did not follow your version of scientific reality or comic books. They probably do more harm to critical thinking then any religion could do because they actually expect you to work through puzzles and anticipate what comes next without following the laws of nature. Religion basically says, this is what happened and this is why we worship. It is literally memorizing states and capitols compared to comics and video games.
No!! there is not only two ways. Please start using this logic and reasoning, this critical thinking you keep claiming is so important.
Please stop putting your religious (or bigoted to be more accurate) beliefs in front of logic and reason. You are worse then a jehovas witness with this shit.
Or you are really bad at your jobs and just rationalize what you do, like this unprovable supernatural thing in the sky you worship.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
"I will teach my kids whatever I want to teach them."
And that is the problem. Just because you are able to have offspring (which all animals are) doesn't mean you are a good teacher.
Most wars and death and destruction came about because the children were indoctrinated by their parents and then grew up with those beliefs.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
. .that what what is called evolution today is really scientific? Have you really looked at all sides of the scientific part of the argument? Even Darwin (ever read his book?), although he believed new species often came from natural selection, did not try to use it to prove that some original species came from nothing. He thought that was rather a stretch to say from what he had seen. I like Darwin. He made excellent observations. I wonder if he would agree with everything his writings are used to support.
Suggesting a problem with evolution has probably alerted the Slashdot opinion police. With their twitching fingers always ready to click, mod down and quash any opinion or belief contrary to the acceptable Slashdot norm, I doubt my blog has any chance for survival in this hostile forum. But I'm not a troll, I only wish to register a minority opinion. People used to be able to in this forum – without the majority shouting them down in lynch mob fashion. But I better start my point about the other side – that should sound friendly.
Many (but not all) Creationists demonstrate sloppy workmanship in their study of science or their own Bible. Is it a shock or surprise that many are stuck in their traditions so deep that even if incontrovertible proof not supporting a tradition came up, they would try to crush such opposition starting with personal attacks on the individual suggesting such changes. I've been on some of their forums also. Many of them believe that the earth was created in 7 days but it is the result of a mistranslation of the original Aramaic language in the first verse of the Bible. What it really says is that in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, and the earth became without form and void. There is no verb of “to be” in Aramaic. Go ahead and Google it. Why is it so important? If the seven days were to fix what the earth became, there had to be something before (read animals that left bones) that needed to be replaced. In accuracy of language one word can make a big difference. The devil is in the details.
Now the unfriendly part. Entrenched evolutionists are also very difficult to reason with. Traditions have built up in the scientific world not much different from the idea that the sun revolves around the earth. To criticize evolution is to blaspheme the God of Science. Oh my. Evolutionists seem to always like to look at things from a high level perspective. The story goes that there was a primordial soup in which organic molecules formed by chance that by chance formed into systems that became one celled organisms and eventually animals. But talk to some high level biochemists with Phd's to hear what they think of the probability of that. Here's one link.
http://www.unravelingtheword.info/HomePage/Home/ProbabilityOfLife.htm
To summarize, this paper assumes ALL of the oceans are a primordial soup and gives the probability of forming a typical 400 amino acid chain for a protein (in 10 billion years) as being 10 to the -570th power.
“. . .any attempt to build a probabilistic model for protein formation, based on independent concatenation of amino acids, would assign probability zero to this event and discard independent trials as a plausible mechanism. “Chance” is not a reasonable mechanism to form a single average length protein, much less all the other proteins, DNA, RNA, and membrane molecules needed to produce a living cell. . .”
So please, try and convince me. Or, do the usual, start the yelling, call me a troll, heretic, and quickly mod me down and out. And put another notch in your Naugahyde science belt for being a hero. Or, mod me up at least enough for debate – if that is still permitted in Slashdot. As for Bill Nye. . . I think he is at his best teaching elementary science, not politics.
Here is your problem. A parent does not teach a child to discover everything the parent thinks they should know. Can you imagine how insanely stupid it would be for a parent to say what happens when you touch that hot stove instead of don't touch that, it is hot and will hurt you?
That's interesting, and I think this highlights a fundamental difference between us that might explain why communicating is so difficult.
I actually believe strongly that you should teach the child this way. You shouldn't actually allow your child to get burned, but if you let them touch the stove before it's actually dangerous, or quickly enough that they can feel the heat without getting burned, they'll learn much better than if you just tell them not to do something.
Teaching a child to simply accept what you tell them, without allowing the child to understand why, through their own curiosity, experimentation, and their own thought processes, creates a child that is dependent upon other people telling them what's true. And that's how they'll live the rest of their life. No curiosity, and no ability to actually reason through what they're experiencing and draw their own conclusions, because they never learned to do it.
Children need to learn facts and behavior. Teaching them religion is not in any way detrimental to thinking critically or logic and reason.
It is when you tell them not to think critically or apply logic and reason to the things you're teaching them. Telling a child to accept something simply because you've told them it's true actually precludes critical thinking, right?
However, I totally accept that it is possible to teach a child about a religion's creation stories, provided the storytelling doesn't come with any "you must accept this as literal truth without questioning it" baggage. Children should learn to question things. That's really the crux of the issue, isn't it? You can tell them the creation stories, just like you can tell them the facts that underpin evolutionary theory. Teach them never to accept things blindly, whether the ideas come from religion or science. Teach them to think, not simply accept.
Everything in religion that conflicts with science can be rationally explained as God created all of science
This is irrational when you consider that:
1. Other religions proclaim things in direct contradiction to each other, and your own religion. Since the same argument could be applied to every religion, that means each religion's claims about creation are equally rational and (presumably) all equally on the same footing as scientific consensus. With no rational differentiation between them, adherence to one at the exclusion of all others is inherently irrational.
2. I could just make shit up that meets your requirements. I can claim that we are all elements of the imagination of a giant space lizard. This magic space lizard just made the entire universe to look like what it is, invented science and Al Gore. We can't see the lizard or test that he exists because he's outside our universe, thinking all of this up. You can't prove he doesn't exist, therefore I am rational believing he does.
"But I have this book!" is an argument rooted firmly in a logical fallacy. By definition, logical fallacies cannot contribute to a rational argument.
All your objections claimed to date can be rationally explained away and it is your own irrational thoughts clinging onto your insistence that you are somehow right and everyone else is wrong.
Here is where I think we really do just disagree on what it means to be rational. Naturally we aren't going to come to any sort of agreement if we don't agree on the thing we're even talking about.
You are worse then a jehovas witness with this shit.
...and, this will be my last response.
Believing in God doesn't mandate a belief in Creationism (though believing in Creationism requires the belief in God).
Nonsense - do you deny the existence of the Flying Spaghetti Monster ? Heretic !!
That would be foolish. Even if we ignore all the dangers out there that could simply kill the child, if it takes them 20 years to discover that 2+2=4 or 2*2+4 some other bit of knowledge, they could easily be way more retarded in their mental development then any understanding of any religious theory could possibly lead to under your insistence that they are incapable of segregating it from other things such as science. Instead, you impart what they need to know to be safe, you impart what they need to know to learn, and when they are capable of figuring it out on their own, they will do so. It does not make anyone independent on someone else to tell them everything the rest of their life unless there is a mental issue preventing them from learning which would negate your concept anyways,.
It is not more irrational then saying Usian Bolt runs faster then you do. It is no more irrational then pluto being a planet for 50+ years then all the sudden there being only 8 planets in the solar system,.
I think you are forgetting that before there is scientific consensus there is hypothesis and testing that can be incorrect. If you expect everyone not to understand or believe something is true before there is a consensus, then all scientific advancement will stop at the point of consensus and never move forward again. But you are also forgetting a very simple example that is very logical, if the answer is 4, is it because 2+2 was the question or was it because 2*2 was the question or was it because 2n-2 where n=3 was the question. We already have fields of study that posit multiple ways of achieving the same answers and expect the child to competently learn and understand the differences. They are even expected to segregate the usage depending on the situation and environment. Your contention is completely over blown and lacks reason.
And how is that any different then a child ready or watching a Harry Potter book/movie then getting on the computer and using the knowledge learned to play and complete a game? Quite a bit if the people w