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Why Are Some Hell-Bent On Teaching Intelligent Design?
Funksaw writes "Here's an op-ed by first-time politician, long-time Slashdotter Brian Boyko, where he talks about his experiences testifying at the Texas Board of Education in favor of having real science in science textbooks. But beyond that, he also tries to examine, philosophically, why there is such hardened resistance to the idea of evolution in Texas. From the article: '[W]hat is true is that evolution tests faith. The fact of evolution is incontrovertible and supported by mounds of empirical evidence. Faith, on the other hand, is fragile. It is supported only by the strength of human will. And this is where it gets tricky. Because to many believers, faith, not works, is the only guarantee that one can pass God's litmus test and gain access to His divine kingdom. To lose one's faith is to literally damn oneself. So tests to that faith must be avoided at all costs. Better to be a philosophical coward than a theological failure.'"
As scientific knowledge advances, god shrinks.
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I don't know the real answer to a problem, so I'll just make something up and claim it solves it.
Da derp dee derp da teedly derpee derpee dum. Rated PG-13.
Check out Bob Altemeyer's - 'The Authoritarians' and his chapter about religious fundamentalist. It explains quite a bit about this strange ID movement - (and it is based on experiments and only theories) :
http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/
If God did create us, how bad an engineer do you have to be to put a sewage outlet right in the middle of a recreational area?
Science advances one funeral at a time- Max Planck
The argument seems to go as follows:
If evolution is true, then Genesis is false
If Genesis is fals ethen the whole of the Bible is called into question.
If the Bible is called into question then it is no basis for morality.
If the Bible is no basis for morality then the ten commandments are invalid.
Therefore if evlution is true, there's no prohibition on murder.
Clearly we could play a game of spot the logical fallacy but this seems to be the issue creationists have with evolution.
Fundamentalist Christians. Seriously, this is not in need of a deep philosophical examination. Those that follow stone age mysticism get upset when science threatens & exposes their religious insecurities. When there's a lot of them, they will use legal means to enforce their superstitions. Like Texas.
Ummm... the way TFT(itle) is worded throws some gas over fire.
How's that for a believer: "If you believe in Inteligent Design, then you are bent by hell"?
How this way of framing the topic helps a civilized tone for a discussion?
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
... it pretty much removes God from the whole picture. His place is then relegated to the creation of life in it's absolutely fundamental form, where evolution takes over. Personally, I think that abiogenesis is the better rational explanation. The people who want intelligent design (or, let's call it by name: "creationism") have a problem with God of the gaps, so they desperately try to cling to a gap that has been filled a long time ago. The remaining gaps (like the actual "first life" and the "big bang") seem too insignificant for their great Skydaddy's glory.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
If "God created everything in a week" was accurate and provable, then it would be knowledge. Fine, heaven might have an entrance quiz, but regurgitating facts isn't an exhibition of faith.
If there's nothing to test the view that you hold, it's simply not faith.
There should be more evolution taught to enhance the levels of faith that Christians can hold. Surely learning about evolution, picking up a PhD, topping it with a Nobel prize for presenting categoric evidence for evolution, chucking in the missing link, and proving Monkeys evolved from humans - and then turning around to say you never actually believed any of it. Surely that's got to get you high "faith marks".
It also doesn't help that the scientific community uses the word "theory". The typical religious person thinks this means their view is just as valid. It also means every argument about evolution starts with "It's just a theory right? I just want my theory to be taught as well..." (which makes me start to twitch with the urge to slap these people and scream at them).
We need to retire the use of the phrase "theory" when used in the context of a scientific theory. Terminology needs to change and evolve to combat the fact that the mainstream interpretation of the word "theory" flies directly in the face what the scientific community wishes to convey.
Science for science's sake is pointless unless it can be communicated to others after learning something. Choosing and adapting terminology can seem silly and trivial when faced with what the subject matter is about, but can be just as important in combating ignorance.
That's the creationist side as seen by someone on the side of science, but it is not at all how the creationists view themselves. They aren't afraid of their faith being tested, because they believe their arguments are unbeatable and their faith secure - though they may worry about their children being lead astray.
The key to understanding creationists is to realise that it isn't about creationism itsself. They have, as they would proudly call it, a 'God-centered worldview.' Everything comes down in some manner to their religious beliefs. Not just creationism, but their moral and political views, their attachment to national identity, their community, and their general vision of how things 'should be' in the world. They view Christianity not just as another religion among many, but as a defining aspect of western civilisation and that element which makes it great and has brought such prosperity through the ages.
They also believe that Christianity and morality are one and the same. God is the standard of morality, the definition, and the source. Only Christians, as followers of the true God, know how to be moral people. Others might perform a reasonable immitation by following some social norms, but they are just denying that Christianity is their source. This is why they insist upon placing the ten commandments on public buildings: For them, 'Thou Shalt Not Kill' is the very reason murder is illegal: Had God not proclaimed that, and the faithful not kept it, then there would be no way for people to realise murder is an immoral act. Likewise for the theft thing.
So that which threatens the doctrine of creation is far more concerning than a scientific debate: It is nothing less than an existential threat to civilisation itsself. Their concern is that if the population in general lose belief in the bible as inerrant - not belief in Christianity in general, but belief in the rock-solid beyond-debate 'truth' of the bible - then they will lose all spiritual direction. The bible will become fuzzy, a document where people can dismiss bits they don't like (The irony of this is quite lost on them as they happily tuck into their pork sausages). Before you know it, homosexuality will be accepted, prayer will be illegal, everyone will be having casual sex and marriage will be a thing of the past. Then people will start worshiping pagan idols, gangs of violent atheists will start roaming the streets killing people for fun, and eventually God will abandon the country and send the communists to take over and punish everyone.
That's why they are so insistant. They believe the bible is the foundation for America and western civilisation in general. Take away the foundation, and the whole structure collapses. Creationism and patriotism are intertwined, almost inseperable.
Derren Brown did a TV special on religion as an exponent of the placebo effect. This video is, in my opinion, one of the best smackdowns on religion that I have seen. Aside from demonstrating how to brainwash an athiest into having religious belief using neuro-linguistic programming along with auditory and spatial anchors, he mentioned that religious belief was not necessary.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ust-pJC-9j8
This is why, I think, that just about any kind of religious belief, or any crazy meme for that matter, if dressed up correctly can induce the Placebo Effect (yes, even Scientology).
Hanging on to faith, in absence of evidence, is the only thing that can keep the placebo effect going... but the truth is that religion need not be the placebo!
READY.
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I grew up in Texas and have lived here all of my life. The resistance to evolution can be summed up in one sentence:
"You can't tell me what to fuckin' believe!"
If some long haired city boy told them their face was on fire the'd refuse to believe it, basically.
People teach intelligent design because they're afraid that if their kids grow up to be less ignorant and blinkered than they are their kids will leave them either physically or emotionally. Lots of parents try to define small universes that keep their kids close, and not just right wing fundies either, this kind of crap transcends political divides.
It's a legitimate concern, if you let your kids break down the walls that hold you in they might go somewhere you can't follow, but it could probably be better dealt with by addressing your own problems rather than creating problems for your children.
Biblical creationists believe that evolution undermines the idea of divine creation, specifically the idea that man is created in God's image. This is a very important belief for them. Without it, their world crumbles.
When you present them with facts and evidence supporting evolution, they're not dispassionately evaluating the evidence, but desperately trying to avoid confronting it, to the point of profound intellectual dishonesty.
They are what used to be called neurotic, irrational and disturbed in one specific area or about one specific thing, but otherwise relatively functional human beings, able to work, raise families, etc, etc.
The answer to the question of why Biblical Creationists are like this is the same as the answer to the question of why some people are holocaust deniers, or Marxists, or followers of any other ideology or belief that is in obvious defiance of objective reality. They have invested their sense of self into this belief, and they cannot abandon that belief without sacrificing their sense of self along with it.
So they hold on to that belief, no matter what.
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
or be both, which these Texans seem to be.
If god exists, then he does, end of. Therefore what is there to fear from facts?
I therefore strongly suspect those objecting to teaching evolution don't believe in god at all, really. They have another agenda.
I think you are misunderstanding their motivation. Their motivation is not to prove/disprove the existence of God in any rigorous way, but to go to heaven. The Christian belief system says that the only way to do that is through faith, which in modern times is interpreted as belief. This means that it is best for them (and their children) to avoid any attempt at rigorous proof if it could end up with them seeing the alternative as a viable possibility. To them this is losing faith, which their god will punish with eternal torture. (OK for Christian pedants their god will allow them to be eternally tortured by someone else despite having the power to stop it).
In the end, it all boils down to this basic issue:
Fear of Death
So people will do everything they can to maximize their chances against it. And if it means believing in something against all odds, and the greater the odds, the greater your belief, the greater your chances, then so be it.
There's nothing more to it.
(Speaking as a Bible believing Christian)
You're ignoring the fundamental problem with Genesis 1 (and thus, creation: including animals). If Man did not exist yet, who was observing the creation? How did man come to know about it?
The obvious theological answer was that God and/or angels told someone about it between Adam and Moses (inclusive). The problem with many of Gods (OT) explanations is that they tend to be in dreams and visions, which aren't usually literal. If it was angels, then surely we got the simplified version. "Ooh, ooh! Tell me again about the divergence of Lorises and Pottos!" "Sigh. Listen, kid, he just made them, OK?"
All this arguing over evolution is silly. Faith does not need it, but that doesn't mean that it outright contradicts faith.
I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.
The reason there are lots of politicians hell-bent on teaching Intelligent Design is really very similar to the reason the muslim world is currently the most fundamentalist on the planet: there is a perverse incentive in re-enforcing religious dogma. We will take Texas first because its easier, and for the most part, more familiar. Currently in large swaths of Texas "religious" is conflated with "good" and "moral". Therefore, anyone who wants power has to present themselves as being Christian, and thus "good" and "moral". Of course if you claim you are Gods warrior, anything you do in His name is justified, and thus you can plunder and steal as much as you want. Provided of course you are still rabidly defending "God". However if you start to weaken peoples fervent religious devotion and encourage them to think for themselves, well then they probably are a bit more likely to call you out for having your hand in the cookie jar, no matter how holy you claim to be.
The situation is very similar in the Islamic world as well, with the huge amount of oil money coming in perhaps even exacerbating it. A lot of people(chief among them hardcore Christians) point to Quranic verses etc as proof that Islam is unable to modernize, but in reality, with one important exception(which I will get to later), the rules between the Abrahamic religions are very similar. The only difference is that modern Muslims actually adhere to them, whereas very few Christians actually follow the bible with any sort of rigor.
The obvious question of course then is why? If the religions are fundamentally the same, why the discrepancy in how closely modern believers follow the rules? The answer again lies in perverse incentives. The fact that the industrial revolution was born in Europe gave Muslim leaders and interesting case study, what happens to religious leaders when society "modernizes"? The answer is that in most of the Western world(with the rural US pretty much being the only real exception) religious leaders went from the top of the social pyramid to near the bottom in a very short period of time. Muslim leaders like being at the top of the pyramid, especially since the aforementioned difference between the religions, the acceptance of polygamy by most Islamic societies, mean that being at the bottom of the social period means that you will have very few chances to get married(and in conservative societies, that often translates to very few opportunities to have sex). So you better believe that they will resist social modernization as much as possible.
Long story short, if someone is vilifying science and praising religion, they are doing it solely for the sake of their own pocket book(and perhaps marital bed)
Monstar L
If your faith cant stand a test. It wasn't very strong.
I still can't believe we don't treat religion as a mental illness. You go around tellin everyone an invisible guy watches you all the time and tells you what to do.... They lock you up. You call that invisible guy god... And that's just a ok fine. Here have some tax exempt status.
Religion is one of the major things holding back the human race. The faster we wise up the better.
As someone who views herself as a fundamental christian (and at one time parroted the creationism agenda), let me state that if God did choose to create via evolution, great! (When studying genetic algorithms way back, I imagined a sufficiently advanced "candidate solution" (read: self-aware, thinking, communicating) belittling another for believing in a "Programmer".) There are a few issues with creationist's explanation of Genesis that gloss over some obvious points in the text. There are also some problems with evolutionist's view of the evolution of homo sapiens, which may better be explained by the roughly 6000 years timespan given for the existence of Adam. (However, these issues themselves have a bearing on both traditional christian and contemporary political dogma, which explains why discussing them in a religious context would be avoided.)
My view of the typical american evangelical movement and it's copious output of media, is that it's largely a money-making business, where control over the consumers increases profits. It's often a materialistic theology, far removed from the spiritual. Unfortunately on the other hand there are some vocal scientists too with an anti-religious agenda, that is not really born out by science, only by sophistry.
Religion and science do not stand in opposition to each other, nor should one "find some balance/tradeoff" between the two. Both the study of creation (science) and the study of the Creator (religion) should be taken to it's fullest - only then can one arrive at the same answer for both.
Re Why are we even having this conversation?
It turns science in to just another humanities subject and real environmental pollution into ~ "conversations with heavy industry".
The faster science is watered down the less you have to worry about "work" by epidemiologists, statisticians, and public health staff.
Most importantly the next generation will not even want to understand the word epidemiologists.
State govs can save on science teaching, pollution testing and any technical/professional expertise.
Heavy industry can go on without filters or site remediation.
People of faith vote for 'their' winning political team. Creationism is just the cover term for a lot of educational changes to defund expensive science.
Your down to one fixed text, a dry-erase board and some seating/desks. No more labs, chemicals, staffing costs, new computers, field trips, expensive new text books...
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
> "To lose one's faith is to literally damn oneself."
That is a memeplex defense mechanism. Adopt a meme into a larger group of memes that to even question anything in the group will lead to failure, and that contrary evidence, no matter how well-proven, is the work of a sinister agent actively attempting to deceive you.
The scientific validity is thus irrelevant when it is fraudulent; e'en honest scientists are being deceived.
These things, by the way, are rampant in political narratives on the left as well as the right.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Electrons move around a nuclei the same way planets move around suns
If you believe that you'll believe anything. This model of atomic structure hasn't been valid for almost a century. If you're going to talk about science, at least try to keep up with it.
> Electrons move around a nuclei the same way planets move around suns
Not even remotely. This idea was proposed back when humans had no understanding of subatomic behavior, and they were drawing assumptions based things they did know, like the solar system. If you want to actually know how electrons and nuclei behave, try to wrap your mind around quantum mechanics. It's almost impossible as it bears little resemblance to anything else you might be familiar with.
It's an interesting example, though, because it illustrates how whenever humans don't know what they're talking about, they fill in the gaps with things that are familiar. Like chariots carrying fire through the sky and an anthropomorphic God creating the universe.
From there your comment just goes further off the rails. Nobody thinks they're "smarter than everyone else". But observation and reason let us learn about the world, and we've learned over and over that mankind's notion of God is always several steps behind our observational understanding. Everything that has improved in the past two centuries has been at the hands of man. We're slowly figuring out ways to improve our lot in life. God's word was around for thousands of years before the enlightenment and didn't improve anything.
The universe is amazing, and every facet fills me with awe. But that doesn't mean there needs to be a personality behind it. I can take it for what it is without having to project my ideas of meaning onto it.
From the article: '[W]hat is true is that evolution tests faith. The fact of evolution is incontrovertible and supported by mounds of empirical evidence.
1. It is not a fact that human beings evolved from primordial goo. That would be an unsubstantiated assertion based on an extreme extrapolation of limited evidence of small-scale phenomena.
2. Therefore, "evolution" only tests misguided faith. In fact, even the idea that humans evolved from goo is not ultimately incompatible with faith in God or in intelligent design. This is because the point of ID/Creationism is not how God created, but that God created.
The idea that the Creation stories in Genesis are meant to literally describe how God created is another matter entirely, and it is the blind insistence upon this presupposition that results in so much hot air being expelled on both sides of the issue.
Faith, on the other hand, is fragile. It is supported only by the strength of human will. And this is where it gets tricky. Because to many believers, faith, not works, is the only guarantee that one can pass God's litmus test and gain access to His divine kingdom. To lose one's faith is to literally damn oneself.
That's because that's what Christ said. "Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned." Mk 16:16
So tests to that faith must be avoided at all costs. Better to be a philosophical coward than a theological failure.
Many people's faith is, sadly, based on fragile ideas like Creation stories being literal, or every word written in the Bible being intended literally. To those people, their faith would be quite jeopardized by atheists yelling loudly that there is no God, that the Bible is wrong, that we evolved from goo, etc.
Other people's faith may be based on rational thinking, such as the ideas that the universe or living beings are too complex to have happened randomly, or that the evidence of Christ's resurrection is strong. Such faith can handle Creation stories not necessarily being literal, and the idea of evolution, and the idea of the Bible being inspired by God yet composed by humans and therefore not literally perfect (or always literal).
It is a popular--and recent--misconception that faith and reasoning are incompatible. Many, if not most, of the great minds of the ages were believers in God or in other forms of religion. The idea that religious people are necessarily irrational fools is simply a lie; there are plenty of both religious and atheistic people who are irrational fools.
"Those who consume the bulk of goods are those who make them. We must never forget this secret of our prosperity."
Why Are Some Hell-Bent On Teaching Intelligent Design?
Well, as you say, they are Hell-Bent. If you truly believe in God as the ultimate Truth, then you don't try to twist facts to fit your superstitions - because everything we can learn about the reality He has created will give us a greter understanding of Him.
The Bible, on the other hand, is just a collection of stories, told and retold by people to people and interpreted by people. How can it be anything but imperfect? Even if everything was directly inspired by God, it still had to be put into words of an imperfect language with a limited set of concepts. A person who really trusts God must by necessity see the Bible imperfect, even based on these simple considerations. Yes, it has its good points, and the stories about Jesus are inspirational, certainly; but to an open minded person, so is Harry Potter, to pick something at random.
So, the reason why some people chose to believe in the Bible rather than God, and try to twist reality to fit into a story about how the God of the Bible created everything in 7 days, must be because they are "Hell-Bent": they have bowed down to evil. What we call evil is so often about refusing to accept the plain truth in front of our eyes and the consequences of that refusal.
Anyway, that is my opinion, polished up and sprinkled with religion. Take the religion away and it is still true.
If you want to stop ID then you must explain to religious people why ID is actually the work of Satan deceiving them into blasphemy. Since there is plenty of evidence of satan in human suffering this should not be a problem to accept but it's not a language either side of this fucking debate seems to understand.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Surely one must begin by teaching what 'intelligent' means. Unfortunately this isn't yet understood even by modern mainstream science, and just captures an intuitive notion that we can roughly grasp, but noone yet can really pin down. The same happens with evolution (which really by now should have been founded on solid maths and physics, rather than being put forward as a biological principle in line with nineteenth and early twentieth century tradition).
John_Chalisque
You cannot teach religion in school.
Not every religion believes in creationism, nor in intelligent design. Both are mainly espoused by only 4 religions.
All scientists believe in evolution. The facts are there to present in unbiased form.
You can teach the facts of religion, in unbiased form, perfectly fine. I know this, because I've witnessed it, in a Catholic (!) school in the UK. They covered most major religions and the differences between them, without claiming any of them was right or wrong. No, Catholicism didn't get preferential treatment in that class. Faith and religion are important factors in most societies and covering them (correctly) in school is probably a good thing to ensure well-informed individuals.
It seems like you might have some interesting things to say, but...friend, please fix your Return key.
"Those who consume the bulk of goods are those who make them. We must never forget this secret of our prosperity."
A man of faith is someone who accepts anything his religion tells him without question.
In other words a fecking idiot.
Go well
Why are some hell bent on blowing them self up in suicide attacks?
yes...this is the answer to the questions posed by TFA
it's about money and dumbing people down to make them better consumers
in America today, one form it takes is fundmentalist religious people fighting science on religious grounds...
another form is the 'pink washing' of the breast cancer causes....we know now that certain plastic food containers cause breast cancer...so the companies that use those very plastics (which are not illegal) actually contribute to Susan G. Komen and get a little pink ribbon on their logo...
it's taking advantage of people's failings for profit
religion is just the vector in this case
Thank you Dave Raggett
You and the author of TFA take a mind-numbingly reductive framing of the issue and it just causes **more** arguments and solidifies the opposition harder...
Your first problem is that you take the word of an idiot.
These Texas book controversies...they **defy all logic**. You'd agree and so would TFA's author. People have written tomes on this very discussion thread that impressively elucidate the sub-moronic notions of these wackos...
Yet you just **assume** that their words can be taken at face value that they truly are describing their reasons for pushing these textbooks.
And it's about textbooks, and public education and society in general here...if these people just kept their mouth shut and let professionals write the text you'd have *no gripe* with their dumbness...
No...YOU are an idiot for **taking their stated reasons seriously**
You do exactly what they want, fall into the predictable opposition mode...
WHICH HELPS THEM SELL MORE FUCKING TEXTBOOKS
This really is about money pure and simple....there is a built-in market for these textbooks and in the greater sense suppressing science helps corporations avoid accountability on a host of issues...
religion is only a *vector* in this instance
stop playing their fool's game
Thank you Dave Raggett
Why do you all persist in thinking that you can change the mind of a zealot? It doesn't matter whether that person is waving a bible or a Kalashnikov. As long as they think that "God" wants them to act a certain way, they are going to do so. Short of killing them there is very little you can do to stop them. Forget about convincing them not to kill all us infidels or stopping them from forcing their distorted world view upon everyone else.
There's nothing more dangerous than a religious zealot and a bomb. That fact holds true the world over and it doesn't matter where or how that person prays. Bombs are the chosen weapons of God.
Theories that humanity was "seeded" by aliens are a non-theological example of Intelligent Design theory.
In their 1966 book "Intelligent Life in the Universe" I.S. Shklovski and Carl Sagan present a good case for scientists and historians to consider the possibility of early contact between life on Earth and extraterrestrials. Intelligent Design is not a concept that is owned part and parcel by creationists.
That said... I have a problem with teaching Intelligent Design in public schools. I'm a creationist... I believe the truth of the Bible. I also don't believe it is the job of government to indoctrinate students in religion. Mine or anyone else's.
There was a time where teaching students of science the theory of Spontaneous Generation was perfectly legitimate. It was "good science" based on the best information that was available at the time that the theory was still viable. Evolution is the best scientific theory that explains the evidence as we have it right now. And so it should be the theory taught to science students. Perhaps one day evidence may arise to discredit evolution but that day has not come. If parents want to teach their children alternate views they are welcome to do so via religious education, private education or homeschooling. Presenting alternate views that have little or no hard evidence is unwarranted.
Not confronting the evidence for Evolution is intellectual dishonesty at best and intellectual sloth at worst.
Brought to you by Frobozz Magic Penguin Fodder.
If we are going to split hairs... everything we think we know actually boils down to BELIEF. All of our observable evidence comes from observations on one tiny spot within the universe. We have yet to breach the surface of the available evidence that explains the universe and our place in it. However we have to function like those beliefs reflect reality. I believe that Einstein's theory of relativity is true... but even if I didn't believe it that doesn't make me fling off the planet. Gravity still keeps me tethered to the planet's surface. Maybe one day we'll discover a better theory than relativity... until then it's still the best we've got and so it's the theory that we should be teaching science students.
Brought to you by Frobozz Magic Penguin Fodder.
No progress can be made except through increased autism.
Autism was named such because of its observed symptoms. Among these often encountered is a lack of need and/or ability to join in with or be a part of groups and teams. The "au" to me leads to "auto-" or self. Unfortunately, there are too many drawbacks to extreme cases of autism. This aspect is key.
Humans have a tremendous need to identify themselves with brands, teams, clubs, products, politics and religions. (I'll just overly simplify by saying "symbols" and cleverly call people with this affliction "symbol-minded.") The need is tremendous and even that is a bit of an understatement. If you have ever experienced an event that completely destroyed your sense of reality, you will know how jarring and disorienting it can be. (A common example is living in the illusion that 'love' is some kind of cloud shared by two people and that there is some sort of psychic bond between two people. Another might be in facing the disparities of practical reality and ideology associated with the nature of love relationships. I could just say a really bad romantic betrayal, but it doesn't get into the detail enough.) I can think of few experiences among people which would be common enough to understand what it means to have your reality shaken up. But to have experienced that type of event many people can begin to understand what it would mean to lose a part of one's self identity.
Religion is just one common part of one's self-identity. It's a part of one's understanding of reality and a part of one's comfort within existence. To question that is to invite change. And change is always unwanted... well almost, but conditions have to change in order to beget a desire for change if that makes sense. (For example, I have had my job for a while and I have a new boss and he is terrible, so now I think I need to get a new job.) As animals we do not want change. We fight to the death, often, in effort not to change. Wolves will fight other wolves for territory -- the ones that were there first will fight not to change and the intruders are probably responding to a change in their original territory. The result is a winner gets to have the disputed territory. And we all fight for the right not to change. And yet change is what improves us. (yes, change can also make things worse.)
So why are some hell-bent on religion? It's change and they don't want it. Children are taught to believe things but as they grow they learn more and more about the world independent of their early childhood teachings. If by chance they come across thoughts which suggest that there are alternative ways of seeing the world at a young enough age, there is some hope that they will grow up with some questions about their taught beliefs. But if that doesn't happen, then they are increasingly locked into their sense of reality. And as that firms up, the pain of a change of reality becomes worse.
Consider Santa Claus. Most people don't have traumatic memories associated with the realization that a fat man doesn't come down the chimney. There can be lots of rational reasons we tell ourselves we "never really believed it in the first place." But I can tell you, at some point, I truly believed there was a Santa Claus. And when I realized there wasn't, it still took me a few years to adjust to it. As a young school kid, there was a stage where people didn't want to admit they doubted there was a Santa Claus. Would I stop getting presents? Would people who still believe think I'm stupid? So at first, I was a closeted Santa doubter. But as I grew with my peers, they too came around. Now we can all speak freely about there not being a Santa Claus.
But why is this belief in God so different? Is it because adults all over seem to believe it? Is it because the same forces that caused reluctance to admit doubt in Santa are still at play? I think so.
Having my touch of autism has enabled me to not get so locked into mythological thinking so much.
I get chills when I see phrases like:
The fact of evolution is incontrovertible
I 100% believe the theory of evolution provides the best fit with the available data. But stating any theory is a "fact" and "incontrovertible" is just too far. One of the issues is that it is hard to experimentally falsify the thoery of evolution. Either we are scientists and honest about what we do, or we are not. Get off my lawn.
No real scientists, who is 'faithful' to his own profession, will claim that anything is an absolute and irrefutable fact. It's always religion that claims to know the ultimate truth about anything and everything. Science in itself is obligated to accept change, when there is a new and better concept, which allows better predictions for example. Most Religion however is very slow to accept any change to their doctrine, it only adopts new principles when there is no other way around it.
This whole theory-nonsense is just a futile attempt to drag scientific theories, based on logic, observation, tons of empirical evidence, that have been challenged again and again and didn't fail to the same level as crackpot theories. It's very similar to calling Atheism a religion.
There's nothing wrong with pointing to gaps. That's what science is all about.
True
And there's nothing wrong with suggesting God as one candidate theory to explain a gap. All theories are allowed.
False, if you are talking about scientific theories. Let me quote:
A scientific theory is a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world, based on knowledge that has been repeatedly confirmed through observation and experimentation.
That's why the "God theory" is not a theory, and why ID is completely incompatible with the scientific method.
Science can't work with untestable theories, but unfortunately that's not the same as proving them false. We could be unlucky. The truth might be beyond our testing. There's no harm in facing that possibility.
Just mention a few other candidates besides God to explain the gaps. And show some examples of what used to be gaps, that have now been filled in. Now you've got a science course, that covers everything that ID supporters can ask to cover.
Unfortunately that doesn't work in practice, because you end up teaching that any idea can be considered a scientific theory, and that is completely false. Yes, one could say
There are some people who think X, Y and Z, but that's just unsubstantiated ideas
and see the wrath of ID'ers strike down on you. No religious person would want their "theories" to be associated with the "theory" that a great ball of pasta is what makes the world turn. Or that there is a pink unicorn whose dreams we inhabit.
The P believes in "facts" and thinks he follows science.
Ah, a Mr Gradgrind
I'm a Christian. It seems reasonable to me that the current thinking of the age of the universe (~14 billion years) and the earth (~4 billion years) is correct. It seems reasonable to me that the evolutionary theory is at least mostly correct. I believe God created everything, and this does not contradict the prior statements.
I really dislike young earth creationists expounding their views publicly. It gives people the false impression that one cannot be a Christian without thinking the Earth is 6017 years old, or whatever figure they're on these days.
That's not the point. Just as Pope Francis has recently expounded that the Catholics should concentrate on the love, mercy and salvation aspects of the Gospels rather than the continual harping on about homosexuality, birth control and abortion, so Christians in general should concentrate on the key message rather than getting swept up in an argument that is more likely to turn people away.
Sure, if you want to believe an alternate view of the age of the stuff around you, go for it, but please don't condemn others to missing out on their salvation by your stubborness.
Rant over. The Lord bless you and keep you all. :)
Ydco co
False. Evolution is the natural phenomenon we observe. The theory of evolution is the scientific explanation for it, which doesn't require a big bang. Hell - the universe could have been farted into existence and the theory would still hold water, as it is based on evidence, experimentation, predictions, and so forth. You clearly have no idea.
You all worry about believers when the Beliebers are the real problem of our generation. I say kill it with FIRE!
I believe the core issue that those such as the Texas board members struggle with isn't with scientific evidence of a particular theory, but rather the conclusions that some choose to draw from that evidence. A child's perception of God and Nature is necessarily challenged as she matures. Some resolve that struggle by denying God, some by denying what is discovered during study of God's creation. Some from the board have evidently taken the later course, which reminds me of a quote from Augustine of Hippo, who wrote in part:
"It is too disgraceful and ruinous, though, and greatly to be avoided, that [the non-Christian] should hear a Christian speaking so idiotically on these matters, and as if in accord with Christian writings, that he might say that he could scarcely keep from laughing when he saw how totally in error they are."
Luke, help me take this mask off
You are confusing the layman's use of the word "theory" with the scientific meaning of the word. "Theory" in a scientific context means the best explanation available for which a preponderance of evidence exists. It does not mean "guess".
Both sides are often arrogant as they believe they have everything figured out absolutely.
I have to say that I disagree with this. If you talk to a true scientist, rather than a non-scientist on a secular agenda, they will say that like any theory it is falsifiable, it may not be complete, yet there is so much evidence for it that to falsify it you would need an extraordinary discovery. Abrahamic theists, on the other hand, do believe that their knowledge is absolute.
Here here!
Faith is not the absence of doubt and hosting doubt does not mean denying faith.
Brought to you by Frobozz Magic Penguin Fodder.
If an alien race turned up and said "WE MADE YOU" would you start flailing BUT NOOOOOO TEH FACTS SAY EVOLUTION as some Christians do? There's a infinitesimally slim chance of happening but it would test your faith in science as you have been taught it.
What about your logic from before? You said that the key difference is that a scientist will believe one thing until evidence shows that believe to be false. If said alien race would have very convincing evidence, then they might as well be our creators.
Most scientists won't refute the possibility that, at some point in evolution, there was intervention, by something Christians might call Creator, because they are always external influences. They just don't believe that this mystical, omnipotent engineer, who came up with all these things all by himself, observes everything and pulls the strings, is a necessity to explain the existence of the universe and our own existence.
But the much bigger question is. Just because someone created you, do you have to obey them 'for ever and ever''?
Groups of people bind best if they have some external threat to bind against. It's not the only way to maintain group cohesion and loyalty, but it sure helps.
It used to be that the devil (an invention chiefly of the medieval church, who found him very handy) performed this role. However, it's getting harder to convince people that there's this evil creature running about the place doing evil through magic. So he's fallen out of favour, So either a substitute is required, or at the very least a proxy.
That's where evolutionary science comes in. It's an attack on everything that your society, family and faith is based on! We must fight it! Come to church!
What also helps bind groups together admirably is the suggestion that they are an oppressed minority. It certainly helps when you really are an oppressed minority, but if you aren't, claiming you are is the next best thing. Hence the idea that christianity is under siege, when in many places it is the dominant cultural force that is sometimes the oppressor, not the oppressed. So the suggestion that liberals/guv'ment/heathens are forcing evolution on their helpless children is a powerful way of keeping the faithful in line.
At the moment, anyway.
Show me the repeatable experiment where you go straight from the periodic table of elements to self-replicating life.
Which is not to say that I really think the Almighty trotted out the universe in 168 hours, either.
Let's just take comfort in the realization that no one "knows", put what is "known" out there, and let people grow in the knowledge that there is still plenty to sort out.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
1 - Religion is the belief that humans have souls, coupled with faith in a system souls exist as part of.
2 - Science is the belief in natural order, coupled with faith in our current understanding of it's rules.
These two concepts are not mutually exclusive. The issue is not and never has been about any incompatibility between science and religion.
The conflicts I've witnessed have been based on groups or individuals attempting to mislead for material or influential gain, an unwillingness to accept a personal misunderstanding, or an inability to comprehend the above fundamentals. Anyone promoting hate because of this issue has an agenda, something to learn or a need for compassion.
France just introduced a secular charter for schools, a rough English translation of which is here. Amongst other good things, it states quite plainly that there is no religious opt-out for religious belief and no exclusions from the teaching of knowledge and science. Simply put, kids get taught good science and if it offends their parent's religious sensibilities (or the teacher's) then TOUGH.
That was a refreshing comment to read.
Thanks for expressing it so well.
It's a legitimate concern, if you let your kids break down the walls that hold you in they might go somewhere you can't follow, but it could probably be better dealt with by addressing your own problems rather than creating problems for your children.
A mark of a good teacher, is when the students surpass the teacher. IMHO, and so I was led to believe. (as in 'we stand on the shoulders of giants.')
I've helped raise/teach a stepdaughter, that both myself and her mom are proud of.
I was taught to be skeptical, examine all of the data(don't be biased about the source! ALL the data!) for ourselves, and make up our own minds.
Be wary of strong feelings about a subject, it may be an emotional response instead of a rational one.
Ask questions, lots of questions. Don't be satisfied until you understand it.(a bit problematic, where do you stop?)
Don't be afraid to learn about something...the more challenging the subject, the greater reward on understanding.(this was from the POV that 'learning was fun', not a dull chore)
I tried to pass this on to my stepdaughter, and it took root!
I truly hope she passes me by, then will I feel I have done my part here.
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
Aside from the fact it's not necessarilly mutually exclusive, I'll just drop this quote here that both sides can use ad nauseam.
"Wrong, Wrong, Wrong, Absolutely brimming over with Wrongability"
Use this on each other, and at least get a laugh out of it, possibly..
Coz eternity my friend, is a long *ing time.
I occasionally interact with people who are convinced that "evilution" is taught out of a desire to attack religion and make people into amoral monsters. And they will go on, at length, about their beliefs about the "motives" of scientists. And somehow, none of the motives they invent actually fit very well with anything I see when I talk to scientists. I mean, yes, I occasionally encounter people who really do seem to have those motives, but in general they're not particularly regarded well by the scientific community.
And I occasionally interact with people who have all sorts of really strange beliefs about the "motives" of religion, and similarly, what they say has very little to do with what I mostly encounter among religious people. Although I do occasionally encounter people who appear to have those motives, but they are not regarded well by the religious community.
It seems interesting to me how well these groups parallel each other, and how well each of them plays into the other's narrative of persecution or abuse. And how much both of them rely on the assumption that you can't ask people what they think, or why they think it. Slashdot tends to have more of the people who have a very naive view of what religious faith is, or why people have it, but I've hung around on other sites that tended towards the very naive view of science, and it was just as funny there.
So far as I can tell, in the real world, the majority of religious people have beliefs that are a lot more complicated, and a lot more coherent, than the strawmen that I mostly see attacked on Slashdot. But since they don't usually go around trying to get on TV news and insist that they are the only representatives of their faith, people are less aware of them. In general, most of the time if you know someone's religious beliefs, it's because they're jerks; the non-jerks won't generally get pushy about it and tell you all about it unless you actually ask what they think. And, of course, if you've made up your mind that they're all idiots and you don't want to know, then you're the jerk whose opinions they will take as representative of people who hold your beliefs. (This goes both ways.)
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
They believed that wrong model of the atom, and about a half-dozen other models (plum pudding, for example), until data existed that allowed them to figure out which one was right. The experiments which allowed them to trash those incorrect models are celebrated at some of science's greatest achievements.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
But women have strong DRMs in their mind.
If you want to get down to it, 2+2=4 only works in a particular mathematical framework whose axioms are drawn from "common sense", i.e. socially and evolutionarily constructed heuristics. There's not many of those axioms, but if you change them - and there are plenty of branches of mathematics that do - you can indeed get 2+2 not equal to 4. No real point here, but it is an issue that has been addressed.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Back in the 1800's, people with asthma were told to go to live in desert environments like Phoenix to avoid all the allergens that can trigger asthma attacks. Doctors told people to do this even into the 20th century. The result is a huge concentration of the genes for asthma (and people with asthma) in the Phoenix/Arizona area.
The whole US is similar. The US was founded by religious zealots who were driven out of European countries because they were too nutz and people couldn't stand them any more. The genes for that brand of nuttiness have been mixing and gaining strength in the US ever since.
I'd like to see gun nutz go off to live somewhere (maybe the Citadel?) where their genes can similarly gather strength away from the rest of civilization. By strengthening that gene the problem will eventually solve itself- sooner or later they'll start letting children (not adults with child-like mentality, but actual children) carry guns and then the'll kill each other off before they can reproduce and we will have finally cleared the American gene pool of that bit of pollution.
What does "Eternal" mean? Is there anything or process which is "Eternal"? If not then how could anything come into existence without an external agency of some sort? If the stuff of the universe is eternal, without beginning or end, then the stuff should qualify as God. If the stuff of the universe was brought into existence by an external eternal agency then that agency should qualify as God. Classic 'chicken and egg' problem. If the stuff of the universe is eternal then it eventually creates a myth concerning a chicken. If the stuff of the universe is not eternal then we seem to be dealing with a pretty amazing chicken. A chicken like that ought to be able to bring me back from the dead, extend eternal life to me in a pretty snazzy environment, answer all my questions, give me a perfect understanding, and keep me from becoming bored forever and ever, Amen.
I don't know what X is supposed to be, but he spelled boycott wrong.
They're using their grammar skills there.
The very founders, maybe. Many of us are descendants of dreamers who dreamed of a better life, gamblers who took the risk of leaving their homeland, and maybe a smidgen of serial killers who fled before they were caught.
It's about constructing a story to fit the fact that are available. By contrast physics offers the possibility of repeatable experiments: I can experience gravity because I engage with it every day. Evolution is a story made up about facts, but is not testable like gravity. When the facts about 'garbage DNA' changed, evolutionists were immediately able to construct an explanation for why the new facts are consistent with evolution - as were the old facts. Evolution may or may not be true - but its claims on truth are on the level of history, not the level of chemistry
Other than dated manuscripts, there is no absolute road map for the design, just a rough idea. Yet science helps us understand that indeed a design is present. The Higgs Boson particle is a great example. Its spin shows that it is slightly unstable. When the time comes, all of this will disappear, that is amazing.
Let there be light, and BANG there it is. ( or the latest theory has a four dimensional universe creating ours through a Black Hole, fascinating )
I do not understand this war on ideas and thought from ANY party. The truth will come forward, just let it. If you are confident that your ides are sound, let it go forward for review by others. There seems to be too much wisdom in those old documents to simply ignore.
It's a definite belief that nowhere in the universe is there an alien species that corresponds to the characteristics of a 'god'. It is a claim to certainty that is wholly unsustainable; noone's been able to look under every rock in this solar system, let alone the rest of the galaxy. Now agnosticism - that's at least honest...
I thought that this was well-established by now: It's so that the newborn can pick up some of his/her mother's digestive-tract bacteria. They need 'em.
The funny thing is, Darwinian Evolution is wrong.
It was one of the first things a professor of Population Genetics taught us upon entering his class. No, not a hush-hush "Here's the real truth" conspiracy revelation -- rather, it was wrong in the sense that it represented a simplified sub-set of modern understanding. Evolutionary Theory had moved so far forward from Darwin's time, that those in the field referred to the current body of work as Neo-Darwinian Evolution, incorporating modern insights and knowledge that fundamentally changed our understanding.
For instance, consider Kimura's Theory of Neutral Evolution. You probably learned in grade school that most mutations are bad, and a few are good, right? Kimura posited that instead, a few are bad, a very few are good, but most do not affect an organism's fitness, they are "neutral". It sounds like a trivial observation, but it has enormous consequences for genetics as a statistical science. For instance, it is one of the vital components that contribute to the genetic signature of Linkage Disequilibrium, which allows us to spot selection pressure on the genetic scale, with the practical application of drawing our attention to portions of the genome likely to be interesting.
A large segment of the public sees Evolution as being a field of dusty bones, with little more consequence and applicability than Kipling's Just-so Stories. On the contrary, without evolutionary theory, nothing in the statistics of genetics makes sense; understand it allows you to make predictions vital to new hypothesis-forming, and in some cases even test them. A dynamic, fascinating field of study is being ignored in the debate, and that's the real tragedy.
The law of thermodynamics is not directly applicable to biology. Terms like chaos, order, and complexity have completely different meanings in the fields of thermodynamics and biology. You know what has orders of magnitude more "order" than all the life on earth from a physics perspective? The sun. A big giant ball of gas that has not yet expended all its fuel.
There is absolutely more entropy now than before the earth even existed. Why? because before the earth existed, the sun had more unspent fuel (of which the earth would only receive a very tiny fraction). This huge loss of order and increase in entropy of the sun is what allows life on earth to exist. The earth is not a closed system.
Ask any physicist and they will tell you the same thing.
That's good... Was not familiar with the term.
The answer is simple: Fear of change.
As I posted a few days ago:
[...] most people are really, really conservative at heart. Not in the political sense, necessarily. As a species, we hate change. Things that naturally change unsettle us. That's why for 99% of human history, things simply were. Fixed and eternal. You know, gods and their laws. Morality. Even today, just the idea that morals and ethics is something that changes and evolves is revolting. That fucking underage kids was perfectly fine in some ancient societies is not a topic for a polite dinner conversation, and the first instinct I bet almost everyone who just read that had was something along the lines of "what was wrong with them?".
It really is this simple: If the world is in continuous change, then the very idea of an unchanging, eternal god, good, truth, etc. is in doubt.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Despite all the tongue in cheek stuff here on /., I have to wonder aloud how could evolution work at all?
Let's say that in order to make the evolutional move from one species to another, we have to cross a chromosome boundary. Some animals have 22, we have 23, right? So if an animal with 22 mutated and was accidentally born with 23, it could not breed with it's brethren. Unless another animal was similarly mutated to have 23 chromosomes. What is the likelihood that two mutated animals would even live in close enough proximity to one another to successfully mate?
I tend to think that an intelligent being whom we know as God created successive and improved series of creatures. Sure there can be evolution by natural selection within a species, but not across the chromosome boundary. Of course I also tend to think that God is much more tangible than spiritual.
Of course we then have to wonder how God came into existence.
Really, teaching kids about "intelligent design" isn't so bad, depending on the teacher of course. My highschool biology teacher had an entire week where we compared evolution and intelligent designed (this was 20 years ago) and he didn't present either as fact. It was more of a "what do you guys think? argue your point!" type of exercise and I think it was great. It was one of few times in my highschool experience where everyone had an opinion and they were all interesting.
You may believe in both based on the evidence or feelings you experience. People believe in religion based on their experiences or feelings.
And do you spot the incredibly significant word which is present in your first sentence and missing from the second one? You've summed it up neatly - science is based on looking at the evidence, whilst religion is based on believing what you want to believe.
That's good... Was not familiar with the term.
Apparently, neither is whatever overly defensive Christian wingnut modded my comment. Or, alternately, they are all too familiar with the fear.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
and assumed that stardust simply assembled itself to form us. After lots of thinking and reasoning, intelligent design is the only thing that makes sense to me, and there are interesting observations on our psychology, and that of the rest of the animals, that to me support this. But I can't attribute it to some deity or god in any traditional sense, I don't believe in these kinds of supernaturals.
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But humans are very good at maintaining two conflicting views at the same time. Frankly, if we couldn't we'd go mad.
So it's quite possible for an evolutionary scientist to do his job based on a firm assumption that all life on earth evolved from a single-celled organism -- and yet go to church on Sunday and sincerely praise God for creating Adam and Eve in His own image. We just compartmentalise our conflicting sides.
Ok, I haven't lived in Texas for 2 decades now, but I was also born there, went to college there, etc..
A relatively small group of religious conservatives have somehow taken over the Board of Education.
Just how this happened, and why people put up with it, is something I cannot explain. Sure, Texas has it's share of religious whack jobs, but really no more than (and possibly fewer than) many other states a bit farther to the north and east.
What's worse is that Texas has also become the state that many other states look to, to set a baseline for what textbooks their schools will use.
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
But a story about a 600 year old man and his sons building a boat with bronze age technology to hold every life form on the planet with sufficient genetic diversity to prevent inbreeding with a year of supplies, collecting them from every remote corner of the planet, and returning them all to their native habitat afterwards (which somehow wasn't destroyed by the flood) makes perfect sense. From polar bears to penguins, koalas and kangaroos to the Inaccessible Island rail, a flightless bird. Over 8000 species of ants alone. Don't forget the fresh water tanks for any aquatic life that wouldn't survive when salt water flooded their habitat. Returning all those fresh water life forms back to their home lakes and ponds all over the world afterwards must have been some trouble....
Honestly, I have an easier time believing a bearded man in a red suit comes down a billion chimneys on Christmas eve delivering toys.
My rights don't need management.
Now now, wingnuts are on both sides of this discourse. Indeed, it would be easy to contend that it was a left sided wingnut that authored this article; the definition may have offended him. Knowledge and wisdom is everywhere, we just need to tap it.
Religion teaches a bad habit that is useful to the Powerful: Leaving it to God to deliver justice in the afterlife. By telling the masses that God will hold the high and mighty to His justice in the afterlife, the masses allow themselves to keep getting stepped on. They think the bad guys have it coming to them after they die.
Just imagine if the people demanded justice in this life? Heck, it would hardly be worth exploiting people anymore.
Just an idle thought I had...
Now now, wingnuts are on both sides of this discourse.
Sure, I'll agree to that readily enough. That doesn't change the total level of wingnuttery though, it only spreads it about
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
It hasn't been about whether evolution is true or false for a very long time. It's about whose team you're on and how many points they're up by in the third quarter. Texans can't help themselves. They have to pick a side, and when they do they support it all the way.
Go to any small town in East Texas on a Friday night in September. Around 7PM, folks start streaming out of their houses and heading to stadiums whose size rivals that of some colleges' playing fields. They're there to rally their team on, violently if necessary.
Texans choose sides in ALL aspects of their lives. Ford vs. Chevy. Big Mac vs. the Whopper. Citizens vs. Illegals. Cattlemen vs. Farmers. Evolution vs. Creationism. Whatever the issue, no matter how weighty or how trivial, Texans can figure out a way to polarize it and turn it into a contest. And if it has team jerseys, all the better.
In some ways, this is Texas' greatest strength - that its citizens are willing to stake everything on the team they support, win, lose, or draw. In other ways, the stubborn unwillingness to give up, even in the face of overwhelming strength or indisputable argument can lead to, well I think we all remember the Alamo.
People tend to think of the idea of "teaching the controversy" as an insidious effort to get religion's foot in the door. In fact, it's one of the most amazing things that Team Texas Religion has ever done- offer a compromise. For a Texan to even admit that the other side's point of view EXISTS is jaw-droppingly astounding. To offer to teach it alongside their own is nothing short of miraculous.
The only way to resolve this conflict is to understand Texas and embrace its stubborn, contentious, headstrong culture. Ignoring it will only make the issue worse. The sooner people realize this, the better off we'll all be. Texas, as much as we hate to admit it East of the Mississippi, isn't all that different from the rest of the country.
I think you're underestimating infant mortality rates in prehistory -- and even, say, 400 years ago.
"It is a popular--and recent--misconception that faith and reasoning are incompatible. Many, if not most, of the great minds of the ages were believers in God or in other forms of religion. The idea that religious people are necessarily irrational fools is simply a lie; there are plenty of both religious and atheistic people who are irrational fools."
You appear to differentiate between religious and atheistic people. That's not always the case. Classical Buddhism is a famous example of an atheistic religion, although in popular versions of the religion Buddha is transformed into some sort of demigod. Some animistic religions could also be considered atheistic ("godless" or creator-less) if the believers consider supernatural beings as simply immortal essences, different but not superior to humans.
I don't have time to type up an entire paper on this or anything as I have got to run out the door for work, but. Evolutionist have faith also. For example, to overcome the delicate balance that is needed for life to exist evolutionist have invented the multiverse. We just happen to be one of an infinite number of universes out there that just happened to get all the combinations correct. Evolutionists are always saying something like "Show me your God." Well, I say show me one of these other universes. Oh, but you can't because there is even a get out of jail clause in the multiverse theory for the evolutionists that says something to the effect of, the universe is expanding faster then the speed of light therefor we will never be able to see one of the other universe despite have the best possible equipment at the time. At least I believe I will eventually see God, your theory says you will never get to see one of the other universes and just accept it on blind faith.
I feel it would be helpful to pause, step back... way back and draw some comparisons to another rather significant paradigm shift.
Today, grab someone of (Abrahamic) faith and ask them how they can believe in their holy text(s), nay how they can even have faith at all, given that we now know the Earth revolves around the Sun rather than other way around. With a very high degree of likelihood, this person will look at you like you're crazy. Indeed, how often have you heard folk clamoring that Epicycles be taught alongside Kepler? Why not? Why not teach both and let the children decide?
The funny thing is that this is exactly what was going on a few hundred years ago. We've been here before. Let me repeat that. It may seem ridiculous today. But this same sort of controversy raged over the sun and planets in much the same fashion. It's hard to draw too many parallels because of the differences in political, education and religious institutions. But you can BET if we'd just figured this out now, you absolutely would have the same patterns. So let's pause and think about the past...
It took about two hundred years to plod through this controversy to get to the point where nobody questioned things, nobody fought for Aristotle over Copernicus, nobody worried how to interpret Joshua 10 in light of our new understanding. TWO HUNDRED YEARS.
I would not be surprised if it takes this long for us to move beyond this controversy over Evolution. Furthermore, I fully expect the result to be largely the same. At some point Young Earth Creationism in all its forms will fade into a distant memory. The modern forces seem just to cancel themselves out. On the one hand, all relevant information is incredibly available. But on the other hand, the Internet fosters filter bubbles. Nonetheless, there are plenty of signs that we'll progress through this... eventually.
Will faith disappear? Will religions just fold up? Not at all. Again, looking back at the Copernican Revolution as a guide, everyone will just move on.
I have every ounce of respect for Agnostics. Atheists in most cases are people with self-esteem issues.
I agree that atheism is in general a somewhat religious position, but I disagree that it's generally a self-esteem issue; or at least, that it's any more of one than religion itself. Religions teach that believers are special, after all. Atheism, on the other hand, teaches that none of us is inherently more special than any of the rest of us, at least for reasons of spiritual association.
I am personally an agnostic, so naturally I want to agree with you, but I believe the situation is a bit more complex than you make it out to be. There's reasonably good evidence that gods are in fact not influencing us in various ways that they've been said to do before. Ongoing absence of evidence is evidence of absence, it's just not proof.
Atheism is also a fairly rational response to persecution by theists. People who are religious or pay lip service to religion have been the majority for much of recorded history, and they have often oppressed those who do not claim to share their beliefs, and even some who do. In the absence of evidence of validity of religion, it is rational to disagree with it.
Ultimately, I do feel that most of the followers of YHWH are foolish and even more of them are broadly ignorant. I don't know that I'm smarter than those people, but I'm probably much more used to engaging in critical thinking. I've literally overheard people say that giraffes disprove evolution. Some people are so married to their narrow worldview that they'll snatch at anything to avoid admitting that they're crazy. They might have a perfectly fine mind, but they're not actually using it. These are the dangerous people, because they will support anything you can whip them into a froth over.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
You have just demonstrated that you have no idea what atheism is.
Ha ha - you linked to The Daily Mail, who have been demonstrated to misrepresent findings to bolster their peculiar take on science. Try again.
I am pretty sure we have "supported by mounds of empirical evidence" that suggest that it is far from fragile.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
(Playing Devil's Advocate here)
where did the energy/mass come from to make god?
Energy and mass (and also time) are phenomena associated with this universe. God isn't part of this universe. So your question isn't valid.
Some forms of Christianity like to emphasise the trancendence of God - he is unknowable and independent of the material universe. There is an abstract canopy above one of the altars at St Paul's Cathedral which is, apparently, supposed to remind us of this.
Having said that, Christianity also likes to emphasis God's immanence - a complete contradiction of the above. Still, if you can grok the Trinity, you can grok that contradiction too.
I find myself questioning the motives of those who would throw a symbolic bible, koran, or what ever, in my face. The "holyer than thou's" are by far the most sinister.
"[W]hat is true is that evolution tests faith."
If so then it is also true: "Faith Challenges evolution"
And though I absolutely agree with evolutionists that those dinosaur bones are indeed very old - yes, much older than 5,000 years, I have yet to find a place where a number of years is placed on the first verse of the Bible- the one where it says he created the heavens and the earth. In the original, verse two says it "became" without form and void, not "was". Something cataclysmic happened between v1 and v2. Day one through seven fixing the earth started after that."
To each his own choice of what to believe. And more power to you to have your own belief! But keep in mind Freedom of speech came about because many of the Colonies started when persecution of religeous 'heresy' forced people in Europe to come to America. Stagnant religeon politically connected tried to shut people up. They left. Again we see the same thing. IMO, Evolutionists sometimes show just as much venom about not permitting doctrinal 'heresy' in the schools. And I'll bet tax dollars from the Christians far exceed tax dollars from agnostics. Why not allow both? Let the kids debate and consider the merits and problems of both! Isn't that one thing our country has in its Constitution that is so excellent? "
Seriously, if evolution continues to be forced as teaching in the schools, "blow back" of one type or another may become the expected result. IMO, it doesn't have to be that way.
People tend to think of the idea of "teaching the controversy" as an insidious effort to get religion's foot in the door. In fact, it's one of the most amazing things that Team Texas Religion has ever done- offer a compromise. For a Texan to even admit that the other side's point of view EXISTS is jaw-droppingly astounding. To offer to teach it alongside their own is nothing short of miraculous.
I don't think it's amazing at all. Except for citizens vs illegals, in all your other examples the opposing sides are both "limited" to their state's borders and inconsequential to the rest of the country. With textbooks, for whatever reason their state controls the majority of the printing. If they outright tried excluding evolution from the textbooks they print, school boards in more enlightened areas *will* get alternatives, and then Texas loses their underserved pseudo-monopoly.
it was because religious folk like pushing their beliefs onto others and cannot stand that anyone would ever do the same, even if the latter is supported by fact and not faith.
Actually, Christianity in particular teaches that our degree of moral relativism is to compare ourselves to Jesus and that basically, we all suck. So be humble, patient, kind, loving, charitable and exhibit self-control in an effort to try to be more like Jesus.
The funny thing is that I was an atheist, then an agnostic for the better part of 6 years so I understand the view points very well. Since then, God literally and unequivocally changed my life in a manner that left no doubt. It shook every thing that I thought I knew or didn't know in a manner that I'm still coming to grips with today, but I understand faith in a completely different way now. I KNOW God exists and because of that, it causes me to think more critically about everything that tries to indicate otherwise. It's really easy to jump on a train of thought that appears to provide an explanation as a best probable case in the absence of God but when you start thinking as critically about the holes in those explanations as you do about the validity of faith, you'll realize there are A LOT holes on both sides.
But in the end it boils down to this:
1. An atheist chooses to believe that God does not exist and by extension of the belief has a strong and overwhelming tendency to view all people of faith as ignorant fools. This has a natural effect of making that person feel relatively smarter than all of "those people" providing a huge self-esteem crutch.
2. An agnostic is generally humble enough to understand how much he does not know.
3. A Christian either believes God exists or has experienced the grace of God directly, thus either believing or knowing respectively. God's existence can be proven to a person, but in the same way that if I walk down the street and talk to a guy in a blue shirt and then tell you, "yesterday I talked to a guy in a blue shirt" I cannot prove it to you. I know it to be true and I can tell you the story but you're acceptance that I'm telling you the truth depends largely on whether or not you view me as credible or insane.
After having doubted for so long I feel absolutely obligated to tell people about the changes that God has made in my life. It's difficult to get into on here, but just imagine struggling with something for 2 years to the point that you understand you are helpless to overcome it, then finally praying about it and having the struggle immediately end...permanently. There's much more to it than that and many things in my life since, but everything in my life I've chosen to trust God with has been blessed. My marriage was really tough for a little while (for both of us), and I trusted God with it and it's wonderful now. My finances and career were struggling (and I'm very experienced at what I do) and I trusted God with them and both have never been brighter. Each time I made a decision to trust God in this way, he answered in a manner that left no doubt (which is a much longer story).
And ask yourself that for a minute: as an agnostic just how convinced would you have to be? That's exactly how convinced I am and I tell everybody about it because I want for them exactly what I've been blessed with and more.
"Don't teach a man to fish, feed yourself. He's a grown man. Fishing's not that hard." - Ron Swanson
There is a simple reason why Texans are opposed to evolution in schools. A majority of parents hold to a Theist Philosophy. They believe in some concept of a god or deity creator. In our nation a philisophical battle has been waged for many years between theists and their humanist counterparts. An argument can be made that humanism is religous due to the belief in man's reason as the highest authority and the replacement of the theistic idea of a savior deity with man himself: "No deity will save us; we will save ourselves" -Humanist Manifesto. Evolution is not incompatible with faith; it is merely incompatible with a theistic faith just as a deistic creation story or intelligent design is incompatible with a humanist faith. The religon verses science argument in this context has been often used by humanists to gain the upper hand over theists in the public arena. The truth is that both theists and humanists have faith in their underlying assumptions: there is a god or there isn't a god. These assumptions lead them to different conclusions in their scientific endeavors. Scientists dig up a bird fossil. Theists conclude that his was an extinct bird species and humanists conclude that this was a transitional form between reptiles and birds. So which is it? Is the scientific method even capable of deciding? Assumptions can kill you and perhaps having a variation of starting assumptions will lead to a broader, more diverse, and more effective scientific establishment than if we as a society say that the only valid starting assumption for science is that "There is no god."
Christian organizations which understand that the Christian faith and evolution (or science in general, when practiced with integrity) are not at odds:
http://biologos.org/
http://truecreation.info/
http://asa3.org/
An excerpt from TrueCreation.info:
In general, the scientists who dissent from the basics of evolutionary theory are driven by ideological goals, usually based on faith, whether or not it is faith in the God of the Bible. In many cases, they do not hide the fact that they use presuppositional logic when formulating their “theories”; that is, they start by selecting their desired outcome and then seek only evidence that supports that outcome. They readily and openly admit that they sift facts through a filter, discarding any facts that do not fit with a literal interpretation of the Bible because they “simply cannot be true.” Presuppositional logic may be fine for understanding some foundational parts of the gospel message. It is of dubious value when used as an apologetic tool. But it fails miserably and completely as a scientific method. Let’s be clear — this is not science. If you seek answers to questions about the natural world using presuppositional logic, you will open yourself up to any number of incorrect answers. This goes a long way toward explaining why the results disseminated by the various “creation science” and “intelligent design” organizations rarely agree with each other! Which “Bible-based” outcome would you like? You can choose from many different ones, simply by believing the results from the various organizations I will describe below. I say “believe” rather than “accept”, because your reception of these results will be based on faith, not reason, nor trust in the practice of reason. Some evangelical Christian educators lambaste the teaching of evolution and “materialistic” science, claiming that it is an example of a heinous relativism that pervades the American educational system. They are encouraging relativism by using presuppositional logic.
Even extremely intelligent persons who are trained in the scientific method, with degrees from prestigious universities, may fall into the trap of thinking that yielding the scientific method to presuppositional logic is acceptable if done under the guise of Christian education. After all, the end justifies the means, right? Author Michael Hawley, in his book Searching for Truth with a Broken Flashlight, explains the psychology of this trap. In short, people will believe what they want to believe, and when they let this drive their approach to science, they will construct all sorts of flawed arguments to prove it to themselves. In many cases, they simply let themselves submit to the argument from incredulity. The human mind excels at both of these logical failings. Some will turn this around and say that this is exactly why scientists accept evolution and other theories; they want to “believe” in evolution. They completely miss the point of how and why the modern scientific method has been applied since its inception almost 200 years ago. When the scientific method is practiced using deductive and inductive logic with integrity, the impact of individual beliefs and human failings such as confirmation bias is minimized. When over 99% of scientists from different specialties and a variety of backgrounds (including many evangelical Christians) practice the scientific method with integrity and objective reasoning and come to agreement on a theory, you can trust that the theory is a solid one.
As long as there are taxpayer-funded schools operated by bureaucrats, this debate will happen again and again. Abolish public schooling, let idiots send their kids to people who will teach them superstition, and smart people can send their kids to learn science.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Agnostics deal in facts. Atheists deal in beliefs. Christians deal in beliefs. It's one of the cruel irony's of the world. An agnostic takes no issue with faith by his very nature.
Funny how we don't talk about agnostics when it comes to vampires, fairies, Zeus, or any number of other things, but when it comes to "God", all of a sudden if you hold the belief that "God" doesn't exist and is instead mythology like all the other crap you don't believe in, you aren't dealing in facts.
The facts are the evidence doesn't support a lot of the bullshit you find in the Bible. The facts are that there are a lot of religions around the world, with conflicting beliefs based on similar crap evidence. If the "God" of the Bible really wanted to make himself known, to be worshiped, to have certain rules followed, etc, then masquerading as man-made mythology is a really stupid plan.
I have every ounce of respect for Agnostics. Atheists in most cases are people with self-esteem issues.
So you respect people who are either too afraid or naive to take the same step they do for all other kinds of mythology and superstition, but think it's just a lack of self-esteem that leads to atheism. Right.
As scientific knowledge advances, god shrinks.
Wouldn't that make them Heaven-Bent instead of Hell-Bent?
Disclaimer: I'm an ex-Muslim
Disclaimer: There's lots of interpretations of Islam. I'm just telling you my history with it
However, the intelligent design stuff if very familiar to me. In Islam, we were always taught that there is no conflict between science and religion. This makes us different from Christianity. God made gravity. God made plants. If there's aliens, God made aliens. The sun and the moon all rotate perfectly because of God's amazing creation.
Whenever a new scientific fact came up, religious leaders rushed to find any kind of vague wording that would show that Islam thought of it first... or that it is perfectly compatible.
The key point here is that in my life with Islam, there was never a conflict between science and religion. All the science existed because God created the universe and all the rules and mysteries...
So why are people hell bent on teaching intelligent design? Well, at the core, it takes all the scientific facts of evolution... and then says... God guided it.
It tries to remove the grand inconsistency between science and religion.
Now, let me be clear, I understand the nuances of the differences. Intelligent design makes it's case on showing that gaps in the evolutionary history point to an intelligent designer. This is a huge point.
However, look at it another way. Intelligent design is basically evolution with a little disclaimer saying 'god did it'. It is certainly better to teach intelligent design than to teach creationism. At least you get some into the actual science of evolution, the fossils, the species, the mutations...
It helps the god-fearing folks to come into the world of science without losing their faith.
I think you really need to step back and look at the big picture.
Education is something that ultimately raises kids. You cannot separate education from values. This is why every tyrant, every political group, every parent, every culture... wants control of education. You control education, you control the kids.
In the case of evolution, sure, you might think it is all about science. But in terms of the greater social battle for our kids, you'd be naive to think it is just about teaching science. The schools are always a battle ground for the values in society. And it will be fought there.
I'm not saying, we shouldn't teach outright evolution in schools. I believe it to be absolutely true. I'm just trying to explain why it is such a threat and why intelligent design is to tempting to teach. You could even see it in a more structured way. That it is a way to bring a scientific concept to a religious community. It helps reduce social tensions and battles for the schools. It helps transition away from the view of pure creationism.
Value based changes take decades and often multiple generations. Let's not pretend otherwise or ignore that evidence.
Given that unborn babies are fed via the mother, that makes little sense - the desired bacteria can simply be provided via the same delivery system as food and other nutrients. Unless you specifically meant rectal/ anal bacteria, in which case carry on.
Why is it that many people who claim to support standards have such atrocious spelling and grammar?
It's as if none of you think the Jewish, Muslim, and any other faith is not all based on a similar creation story.
Having spent a fair amount of time in Texas over the years I think can understand why there might be a certain degree of skepticism about evolution.
Evolution theory is shoddy pseudo-science; a mass of changing assumptions based on data that is not clearly understood. If you think the odds are that in evolution are good, you're probably expecting a MegaMillion lottery win every day for the rest of your life. I have yet to see how intelligent people can look at the assumptions made, see how often they change, see how slim the "facts" really are, and still believe in evolution. Spend some time with Ken Ham and the Creation Museum. Feel free to not believe, but be willing to have your "science" challenged. Go in with a scientific mind and let me know how good your science is afterwards.
In some ways, this is Texas' greatest strength - that its citizens are willing to stake everything on the team they support, win, lose, or draw. In other ways, the stubborn unwillingness to give up, even in the face of overwhelming strength or indisputable argument can lead to, well I think we all remember the Alamo.
Well that's the story they've been telling themselves. Texas was one of several Mexican territories that broke away and declared itself an independent Republic. That lasted for about ten years until the Mexican army started taking territory back. So Texans asked the United States to adopt the republic as a state so as to obtain the support of the US Army.
And Texas history has continued along those lines to this day. Fiercely independent, just as long as federal subsidies continue to flow in.
People tend to think of the idea of "teaching the controversy" as an insidious effort to get religion's foot in the door. In fact, it's one of the most amazing things that Team Texas Religion has ever done- offer a compromise.
The Supreme court ruled against teaching religious based doctrine in public schools. So its not so much Texas "offering a compromise". They are still weaseling around, trying to engineer a loophole in Federal law. They should take a page from their beloved football and accept the fact that the referee has made the call and that's all there is to it.
With this sort of attitude toward the US legal and judiciary process, I say we give them back to Mexico.
Have gnu, will travel.
It's funny you should say that. There was a comment earlier in the this thread about how Creationists, when presented with more evidence of Evolution, just move the goal posts and say "now there's two more gaps in the 'just a theory' of Evolution!"... My thought was: "Huh. Just like Global Climate Change 'skeptics'."
Ever notice the similarity? I have.
Warning: This sig is not thread safe. For more information see Slashdot's sig policy.
Slashdotter here, who disbelieves evolution.
Well that's pretty silly: evolution has been observed. From colour changes to speciation to the evolution of new biochemical processes.
Perhaps you were thinking about, well, what were you thinking about?
As for "evolution is incontrovertible" argument...
Wekk, yeah. It's been seen happening. You might question the whys and the causes, but simply dismissing evidence is beyond silly.
"Entropy and Evolution"
Have you actually read that paper? The person firstly confuses ambiogenesis (the initial event at which non life became life) and evolution. He's also tying himself in knots by using physics names. The thing is crystallization is a spectacular decrease in entropy too and is explained from something from the outside too: the outside being a heat sink. He clearly is massively overinterpreting the second law and has no understanding of it.
- "A Second Look at the Second Lawâ,
Basically the same paper. Not surprising it wasn't published in a maths journal: there's no maths apart from restating some well known equations.
It's also the same flaw:
He claims:
``if an increase in order is extremely improbable when a system is closed, it is still extremely improbable when the system is open, unless something is entering which makes it not extremely improbable''
Which is easily dismissed. A hot blob of mineral is extremely unlikely to turn into a crystal in a closed system since it won't cool and therefore won't crystallise. In a (cool) open system, it is very likely to crystallise since it will loose heat, yet nothing is required to enter.
Generations past have accepted the sun as been the day's source of light, and the moon the night's. Are their identical sizes (identical as far as our eyes are concerned) a massive coincidence? Or evidence of design.
It's only exactly the right size at a particular point in the orbit. Sometimes annular eclipses occur when the sun is closer and the moon further away. So, it's a good coincidence, but not quite so perfect as you assume.
- If you saw a exponential decay curve (i.e. a long tail curve), with the tail quite apparently truncated at some point, would you assume an event likely caused the truncation?
Depends what it was a measurement of. If, for example it was a measurement of a non-continuous quantity, then I'd assume the last one had gone. For example, measuring the decay of a very small number of atoms. ...trees...
There are only a handful of trees left of that age. No way an exponential curve would be smooth with that little data.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
The law of thermodynamics is not directly applicable to biology.
Sure they are. Doesn't mean that isn't a completely junk interpretation of them.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
This model of atomic structure hasn't been valid for almost a century.
That's a sugar-coated way of saying that this model was wrong, and scientists had been believing the wrong thing up until less than a century ago.
You scientists sure know your way around words.
I think this comment succinctly sums up the differing frame of mind between faith and science.
With faith, the most fundamentally important thing that you can do it not change your mind. If new evidence arises that challenges your worldview, you are obligated to ignore it or discredit it or... anything but let it shake your worldview. Changing your mind is acceptance of having been wrong, which is the ultimate admission of failure.
Science, on the other hand, represents a dedication to discovering the truth. Being closer to correct now is more important than pretending that you knew the correct answer all along. If you find evidence that your previous model was wrong, you are obligated to change your model to fit all available data and be correct now. There's no shame in having been wrong in the past. There is shame in deliberately being wrong now.
The troll AC bring up science's greatest strength as a failure is a strong sign that there will not be a reconciling between people who are ruled by one mindset or the other.
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a youtube comments section scrolling - forever.
I saw a blog article that tries to reconcile belief in God with known facts. It is called "On Defending God's Reputation From Brain-Washed Idiots". Maybe folks here will find it relevant.
Interesting point, though as even the Christian tradition uses the term 'god' of beings other than the 'prime mover', you're probably out of line with the common usage of the term. But of course the point does still stand; proving a negative is of course impossible, especially for such a being.
The Moon hasn't always been the same size in the sky. It is slowly moving away, so it has been larger in the past and will be smaller in the future. It's just that *now*, it is roughly the same size as the sun (depending on how far out it is, as its orbit is not perfect). So no, not a coincidence - you just misunderstand what's going on.
The second law of thermodynamics? Give it a rest. The Earth is an open system, and so that does not apply.
Trees? Ha! You are seriously claiming that the only evidence for the flood is in tree rings? Where is the geological evidence that should be literally everywhere? It's not there. Get a grip. Pointing to one interesting (to you) thing and claiming that it overturns the metric ass-loads of evidence to the contrary is not science. It's not even thinking. It's idiotic.
A brief saunter through the Oxford English Dictionary http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/161944?redirectedFrom=religion#eid seems to support your definition of 'religion' as having rites and worship associated with it. I guess it's more accurate to describe atheism as a 'personal belief' or 'faith'; thanks for making the point. And thanks for reminding me that the agnostic who lives as though there is no god is showing a faith in there not being one, and is, actually, therefore a 'weak atheist' rather than an agnostic; a true agnostic should probably try to propitiate ALL the gods anyone has ever reported!
Many Christians believe in the genesis myth, and the very important concept of first sin of Adam&Eve. This was the condition for Jesus sacrifice. Evolution disproves the concept of both the genesis and Adam&Eve and as such the first sin. Because of that Jesus sacrifice was pointless and thus science disproves the whole foundation of Christianity.
If someone wonders how evolution disproves genesis and Adam&Eve: evolution states that humans have evolved from a common ancestor. Everyone is an intermediate: Evolution proves that there was never a first human pair Adam&Eve. I am an intermediate between my children and my parent; my parents are an intermediate between me and my grandparents, and so on. If you go down your family tree, you will find the first branch of Chimpanzee and Homo, then a long long time ego the first branch of vertebrates fish and vertebrates amphibians.
Evolution is the first threat to the basic concept of Christianity: of Adam&Eve and the first sin for which Jesus sacrificed himself. That is why many are in denial of it and try to remove it from the curriculum.
http://www.mueller-public.de - My site http://www.anr-institute.com/ - Advanced Natural Research Institute
They believe the bible is the proof that their faith is correct. For their faith to be protected, the bible must be all true. That is why they cannot believe in evolution. If the bible isn't all true, then they feel they have no proof to back up their faith. The whole problem they face is that if you need proof of your beliefs, they you don't have any faith at all. So the Christians claiming intelligent design is the proof of their faith, it is actually proof that they have no faith at all. Faith means believing without proof. They can't seem to do that.
I have every ounce of respect for Agnostics. Atheists in most cases are people with self-esteem issues.
There are two kinds of atheist. Most atheist see a picture of Jesus and it doesn't bother them any more than a picture of Santa would bother any of us. The ones that are the most vocal (especially on places like /.) are those with the religious akin to "daddy issues". There are a certain chunk of vocal atheist who were, in some way or another, screwed up by religion.
On the other side, there certainly are a large number of Christians, particularly "young earth" Christians who use their faith to shield themselves from their own insecurities. Most Christians aren't like that, but certainly a good many young earthers are.
My point is that atheist can hardly claim the title of being the rational ones. Personally, I'd consider myself an "old earth" Christian. I follow Christian teachings on faith but there are limits to the Bible's scientific accuracy because it was originally written by and for an audience that lived 2000 years ago. I must say though, that I have a lot of respect for agnostics. It takes some degree of courage to admit that you don't know everything. Anyone who claims to only believe in what is scientifically proven has to admit that mankind's knowledge of the very origins of life itself are somewhat limited.
The Gospel according to lolcat
Any large group has dregs. The Christian faith contains many types of people from geniuses to people who are almost fit to be in a shelter for the learning disabled. those that take every word in the Bible literally are the bottom of the waste basket in the faith. It does not even cross their minds that God could use evolution to create the universe and all that are in it. The faith is upheld by those able to understand what a wonderful, lovable, doctrine that was brought forth by Christian teachings. The New Testament is a radical departure from any prior faith or thought system. It is miraculous in its doctrines as well as a miracle in its linguistic construction. The NT may well be the highest use of language arts of any document in all of history. Portions of the Old Testament also demonstrate linguistic and philosophic sophistication never seen before or since its creation. The fruits of the Christian faith alone prove it to be of miraculous quality. Yet all the primitives can see are half sentences that they spew out of context.
Excellent comment.
Has there been any rabbi or Jew writing about teleology in the inspiring way that the Christian priest Teilhard de Chardin has? Where we're going is at least as interesting as where we're coming from.
To be, or not to be: isn't that quite logical, Slashdot Beta?
Here's the issue that no one talks about:
1. An alleged deity created us with brains and logic.
2. The same alleged deity created evidence of evolution, going back billions of years.
The funnymentalists feel that we should ignore that evidence, and believe their definition of the literal truth of the Bible.
No one seems to notice that if we *ignore* evidence, and believe, based on a book, that the evidence was created to lay a false trail for us to follow, either a) all of that stuff was created by their-definition Satan (except that the Christian Satan is not supposed to have the power to create), or b) that given that was all created to lay a false trail, their alleged deity is lying and trying to mislead us.
Given the lemma in a), b) is the only other choice. This, of course, would lead to the question of the difference between their alleged deity and their mythical Satan. Or maybe it's just that the funnymentalist evangelicals are, as shown by their deeds, Christian Satanists, twisting the truth to mislead everyone else.
mark
This was my post. I posted it anonymously by accident. I'm replying to it so that I get any replies that may come later.
"Faith is believing what you know ain't so." -Mark Twain
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
That many Americans are dumb enough to support teaching it in science classes, instead of just having a comparative religions class separate from the science class. Which might even promote silly things like tolerance and understanding.
You cannot teach religion in school.
Not every religion believes in creationism, nor in intelligent design. Both are mainly espoused by only 4 religions.
All scientists believe in evolution. The facts are there to present in unbiased form.
You can teach the facts of religion, in unbiased form, perfectly fine. I know this, because I've witnessed it, in a Catholic (!) school in the UK. They covered most major religions and the differences between them, without claiming any of them was right or wrong. No, Catholicism didn't get preferential treatment in that class. Faith and religion are important factors in most societies and covering them (correctly) in school is probably a good thing to ensure well-informed individuals.
It was the same in Canada when I went to school. Besically religion was a world religion class where the major religions we covered (sorry, no FSM!). But there was no right or wrong judgement.
"For every expert, there is an equal and opposite expert"
The god that people follow is they god that they aspire to. Those people who are marching around with 'God hates fags' signs are people who want god to hate homosexuals because they hate homosexuals, and they want validation from a superior position that their fear is correct. People who preach about angry violent gods want there to be angry violent gods because they want to be angry and violent. Listen to the lies about religion that people tell you. There is no god, but you can understand a religious person's agenda by looking at the god they are preaching about.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
Why teach all sorts of subjects when you can teach intelligence and design in one swift sweep?
"We have Adam (allegedly made by God), then God anesthetizes him to extract a rib to make Eve.(cloning?)" --- That's worse than incest.
" it is best for them (and their children) to avoid any attempt at rigorous proof"
The very definition of faith. Explaining this is fraught with uncertainty.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
So they are basically taking Pascal's Wager, where the rest of the western world chooses a more rational perspective.
Look at how many people here -- intelligent people, educated people, privileged people -- who would never condone bullying someone on account of their race, culture, sexuality, or nationality ... are happy to do so to people's religious beliefs.
I'm just saying, if we're really against double standards, we need to be honest with ourselves, and more accepting of people of religious faith.
They believe the facts are on their side. And they just want all the facts to be taught in the classroom, not to leave out all the ones that are uncomfortable for evolutionists. If you want to stop misunderstanding their position, you could start here: http://www.answersingenesis.org/get-answers
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
"You cannot teach religion in school"
Oh? Please, go on.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Slashdotter 1: "Your religion is stupid and your god is all wrong!"
Slashdotter 2: "Good point, dude. I'll switch..."
Slashdotter 1: "Your distro is stupid and your display server is all wrong!"
Slashdotter 2: "DIE, DIE, DIE IN ETERNAL TORMENT!!!"
"Our opponent is an alien starship packed with atomic bombs," I said. "we have a protractor"
It has been my experience that many of those those who try to convince me that Creationism is false and Evolution is correct go blithely from evolution to creation, and intend to disprove Creationism in the process of proving evolution.
Yep, one does not prove the other. Mostly. Certainly evolution doesn't prove much about creation.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
If they had a plausible explanation, I would have to consider it.
Since evolution creation, we risk mixing the two and causing all sorts of problems.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
It kind of makes you wonder if this God shits. And if so, what does it do with it's sewage?
Holy shit. Literally.
I'm reasonably certain that this sub-thread has wandered off into specific areas of blasphemy. Faeces Dei.
Then again, since the Latin faex means "leavings, dregs", faeces Dei could conceivably mean humanity itself, depending on your point of view... and from that perspective, we have a possible answer to your question -- what does this god do with its sewage? It creates a universe.
Now, wishing someone "have a crappy day!" could instead be interpreted as a positive wish for an enriching holy experience. Hmm.
(I might have too much time on my hands.)
Cheers,
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
It is the theory of evolution by natural selection. Natural selection is the theory. Evolution (in fossile record) is the observed fact. In fact when people fight the theory of "evolution" they are losing, they are fighting the part which is fact : evolution, compeltely ignoring that that natural selection is the theory.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Because, as the inventor of Pastafarianism correctly noted... there are *more* than just two sides. There is an inherently unbounded number of perspectives. To that end, in formal education, it's best to only discuss what we can actually prove with the tools that we have available. Other perspectives are best left as discussions for philosophy, not science.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
No need to change axioms either; 2 + 2 = 11 in trinary.
It's dickheads with huge egos that think they can put their words in God's mouth. "Intelligent Design" is about writing their own bits to add on to the Bible.
It has nothing at all to do with religion, it's just the age old story of people trying to get power over others by any means possible. To do it they pretend God does what he's told by them.
Race, gender, origin culture - those CANT be changed. Your beliefs and your actions are YOUR responsibility and they can be changed. It is NOT THE SAME. If you believe puberty defines adulthood and have sex with 12 year olds... are we imposing double standard by discriminating against your beliefs? You have the right to those beliefs but we don't have to let you act on them and we don't even have to leave you alone to your beliefs.
These religious bigots have made life miserable to all who don't think like they do throughout the history of mankind. The largely quiet minority of people without faith have not been treated fairly for just as long.
These fanatics who are acting up because their rigid delusions are at greater risk as science/education progresses forward and they NEED to be properly put into their place. They may have a legal right to their primitive beliefs but that doesn't mean we should be P.C. and let them be completely untouched. Just as we shouldn't fully accept those Nazi wannabees simply because they have the right to exist. We must be in their face at least as much as they are in ours... it's not like they are keeping to themselves in their compounds... and even if they were - isolation and ignorance (living in a bubble) doesn't help anybody in the long run (it increases intolerance - but yes, there are limits to tolerance and one can be tolerant while still trying to convert or educate them.)
We are becoming a society of cowardly wimps (if not already.) If you can't have your ideas questioned you can't learn and you're going to eventually have trouble with science and logic. The REAL problems these religious fanatics pose to society is their opposition to critical thinking in education - as the job market moves towards more thinking jobs it gets harder to simply train workers without making them think a little for themselves.
I'm so sick of this bullying PC crap going on today - it's being abused like it was a mild form of the word "terrorism." Adulthood involves facing bullies.
I think; therefore, I am dangerous.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
If Genesis is believed to be complete fiction, then why should anyone believe anything else in the bible?
That's why I said "directly". Thermodynamics applies to everything. But it applies to examples framed in terms of heat energy and work, more directly than for example pulmonology. Yes human lungs are definitely subject to the laws of thermodynamics just like every other thing in our universe, but the relationship is more indirect.
ID postulates that life was too complex to have evolved on it's own, so it must have been Created by some unnamed Higher Power.
Just because it's not Adam and Eve and Steve from Genesis doesn't mean that it's not creationism.
Most Prostestant churches view the Apocrapha as having some value as a secondary source, but do not consider it to be equal to the Bible. The "Book of Mormon", on the other hand, is considered heresy.
Unless you're a Mormon.
That's the problem with faith. Let's assume I suddenly wanted to be a Christian. I suddenly have a heart full of faith.
Which one do I choose?
Faith is belief without proof. And all religions have no proof. So how do you choose?
Same problem you describe with the bible. These books are in, these ones are out. These guys add this part in and these guys leave it out. Everyone thinks differently and everyone thinks they're correct. That's the "bug" with faith. No proof means you can reach any conclusion you wish, since no proof is required.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Atheists are not anti-theists by choice. Either they just don't believe in a god, or they've concluded that one doesn't exist. They don't really believe that God doesn't exist, since they don't believe there is a single God to not exist. They are correct in that there is no objective evidence or valid argument for the existence of a god. Some of them do get arrogant and annoying, but this is also true of Christians (and probably every other religion as well, but I'm not as familiar with them).
People who describe themselves as Christians haven't necessarily had some sort of personal revelation; many believe because they were taught it at a very young age and haven't rejected it.
I also find your faith a bit disturbing. You said that trusting God helped your marriage (fine, I can see that), and also your career and finances. In the Bible, Jesus is pretty clear that money is unimportant, sort of a booby prize. The big thing, though, is that you seem convinced that, by trusting God, life will be wonderful. There's plenty of people who believe in and trust God who have crappy finances and careers. (I know some.) There's no causal relationship there, and if there were my priest friend would not be struggling with her student loans and her husband (also extremely religious) would be able to find a job.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
"You can't tell me what to fuckin' believe!"
Well I wish they would let that apply to other groups then.
Twinstiq, game news
The Republicans have learned that saying they're against evolution gets them the votes and campaign contributions from a large chunk of people who don't believe in evolution, and they want to perpetuate that block of voters. Doing anti-evolution textbooks doesn't just get them a lot of the kids, it gets the support of their parents.
And if you sell people on being anti-science about evolution, you can sell them on being anti-science about climate change. The party's Corporate Sponsors really care about that, because lots of them are in businesses that cause bad changes to climate, and they don't want laws interfering with them.
It's also about affecting how history is taught, particularly about race relations. My father was born in Texas, and moved a few times when he was a kid; he had to relearn the history of the War Between The States when he'd move, because it was different in different states. Texas still wants you to see it Texas's way. And there are other social issues, like gun rights, where the right-wingers have been pushing their views into textbooks as well, just as left-wingers have done.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Science it has no place at all. Religion has no place in reality.
Humans wrote the bible... while God wrote the rocks. I am going with what God wrote!
That's the beautiful thing about the scientific method. It is, by design, intended to adjust our explanations as more information becomes available. Science provides a method to *refine* our understanding of our world whereas most religious beliefs attempt to avoid new information in favor of preserving the established explanation. So think of it this way: science accepts evidence and throws out old explanations in favor of getting closer to the truth whereas religion throws out new evidence in favor of preserving old established explanations.
+1 Funny. Good catch.
Agnostics are smart enough to know how much they do not know. Atheists choose to believe that millions of educated people around the world believe in a fairy tale, commit their money and their lives voluntarily, simply because all of those people didn't ask enough questions? Based on your above comment, there should likewise be huge numbers of people around the world that believe in vampires, fairies, or Zeus...yet there are not.
Something I learned a long time ago - if a lot of people feel a particular way something, whether I like it or not there is probably a reason. Very seldom does anybody hold a belief without believing they have a just cause for doing so. Millions of people around the world have differing views on how governments should operate. Oddly, they are all valid in different situations even if they may not be my ideal.
A lot of people support gun control and a lot of people support the opposite. Both views are valid and there are strong arguments for both.
A lot of people believe abortion is the most horrible thing they can imagine. A lot of people believe it is a necessity of modern society. Both views are valid.
I respect people who are wise enough to respect other people's view points. I've been an atheist. I've made the arguments and I've walked in those shoes. I've talked to a number of other people with the same views enough to fully understand it. Atheism tends to result from anger towards religion and naturally leads to becoming an intellectual security blanket.
I'll tell you when I realized just how screwed up my views were. My father is a surgeon. One of the smartest, wisest and most generous people I've ever known and I'm extremely proud to be able to claim him. We sat down to watch TV one night when I was in town and I wanted to show him one of my favorite TV shows, "The Big Bang Theory". That led to him making a comment that he wasn't complete convinced of it before we watched the show. My immediate reaction was to think how stupid he was.
Do you have any idea how screwed up your views have to be to take somebody whom you have every ounce of admiration for and immediately think them foolish for not sharing a view point? That's messed up but people do it every day. Shortly after that I started to think like an agnostic. I was a lot less angry and I stopped thinking anybody foolish for having a different point of view. Eventually out of curiosity I finally sat down and read the Bible. After reading it, seeing the sheer degree to which it is manipulated, misrepresented, and butchered on a daily basis in public was shocking. Most people just don't realize it because they haven't read it. Just taking a line out of context here or there or a blurb here or a blurb there, without understanding the context with which is was written is an injustice. When you read it, you gain a completely different perspective on it. You understand who wrote what, when, writing styles of the different authors, variances in the old and new testaments.
There is a reason that many people used to just hand out copies of the New Testament. As a Christian, that's really the only part you should care about. The entire old testament is basically Jewish history. That's how I read it at least, but I'm not a biblical scholar. There is some excellent and time tested wisdom in Psalms and Proverbs that anyone can take to heart, but they aren't commands or beliefs you're intended to hold. Merely a lot of sound advice.
Christianity, when you really break it down is pretty simple: love.
When you realize that, you start to realize just how grossly misrepresented Christianity has to be for people to react so negatively to it.
"Don't teach a man to fish, feed yourself. He's a grown man. Fishing's not that hard." - Ron Swanson
The moon has been moving out in its orbit since it was formed - it started out closer and thus visually much larger than the sun, will someday be visually smaller than the sun, and will end up a long time hence completely gone away (like in Space 1999, but that was because of a disaster with stored nuclear waste as I recall). At some point between "bigger" and "smaller" it ends up about the same visual size as the sun. What bearing does this have on evolutionary questions? If you don't believe in the time scales that solar system development are thought to have taken (as your Noah comment would tend to paint you as more of a biblical literalist) than probably we don't have a common basis for understanding.
The tree ring data sounds interesting - I would have thought that there would be not enough data to have any particular conclusion but would be fascinated to see your source. I think a planetary flood within the past 5000 years would leave more obvious physical signs, and having the human population reduced to a handful at that time would have clear and obvious genetic effects. Heck, repopulating the Americas and Australia would be a challenge.
Wait, so factual information regardless of source is "misrepresenting" something? If one thing doesn't change with partisan hacks, it's "attack the messenger" and "flail uselessly" when faced with something they don't like. And since that's the standard M/O for the global warming movement, I shouldn't be surprised at a comment like that.
Om, nomnomnom...
What you say is not true.
To be, or not to be: isn't that quite logical, Slashdot Beta?
Agnostics are smart enough to know how much they do not know.
But either not smart enough or willing enough to apply what they do know.
Atheists choose to believe that millions of educated people around the world believe in a fairy tale, commit their money and their lives voluntarily, simply because all of those people didn't ask enough questions?
Yes, absolutely. People believe in all kinds of foolishness. There are millions of Mormons, and that religion was started by a conman who claimed he was given a set of golden plates on which he based the Book of Mormon.
Based on your above comment, there should likewise be huge numbers of people around the world that believe in vampires, fairies, or Zeus...yet there are not.
Some myths and old gods have fallen by the wayside. But there's crap huge numbers still do believe in, like astrology, psychic healing, crystals, etc, and countless whacky religions.
Do you have any idea how screwed up your views have to be to take somebody whom you have every ounce of admiration for and immediately think them foolish for not sharing a view point?
I respect my immediate family. They're intelligent people, yet none of them are atheists. I accept that otherwise smart people can believe in stupid things, especially when it comes to religion. It fills a need. "You've got to believe in something," is a common phrase.
When you read it, you gain a completely different perspective on it. You understand who wrote what, when, writing styles of the different authors, variances in the old and new testaments.
Yes, it's a human document mixed from many sources, contradictory in parts, selected by human committee, with further variances introduced through translations, scribe errors, and in some cases insertions of text at a later time. The New Testament isn't even written in the language of Christ.
There is a reason that many people used to just hand out copies of the New Testament. As a Christian, that's really the only part you should care about. The entire old testament is basically Jewish history. That's how I read it at least, but I'm not a biblical scholar.
Yeah, there's a lot of history, but there's also plenty of non-history parts there, including laws. Now you'd think a divine being like "God" would want to make it clear what laws should be followed, but of course there is confusion and disagreement. Which prophet do you want to believe? Even if you accept Jesus, there's still this:
"Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished."
Christianity, when you really break it down is pretty simple: love.
Sure, it's mostly hippie philosophy combined with religious dogma, minus the sexual liberation of the 1960s.
When you realize that, you start to realize just how grossly misrepresented Christianity has to be for people to react so negatively to it.
So when are you going to give away all of your savings to the poor? If somebody attacks you, will you not defend yourself? Are you going to love somebody that rapes and murders your wife? Those are all things a good Christian should be willing to do, if they actually believed their soul depended on it.
Yes, I did specifically mean that. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gut_flora#Acquisition_of_gut_flora_in_human_infants
The part I've never understood is that God is supposed to be omniscient and omnipotent and does things than humanity is incapable of understanding, and yet this all powerful God is only able to create a static system, and not a dynamic one? The two are only arbitrarily incompatible.
Essentially the case brought up by many is this: teach both. In my studies of the topic, I've found that there's evidence that seems to support both sides of the issue. The hard fact is, we don’t have proof of either theory, we just have data, which is always open to interpretation. We cannot observe the events that led to/created life, we just have archaeological data. What schools should teach, then, is not the conclusions, but the raw data. Teach students to analyze that data and fairly teach both theories (both the good and the bad), and let them decide which theory they think best fits. If Evolution better fits the facts, then let them make that decision. If Intelligent Design does, then leave that up to the student. The point is, when there are valid cases made for two sides of an argument, it is intellectually dishonest to only teach one side. That doesn't teach kids how to reason and use logic, it teaches them to blindly believe whatever they're taught. It's the same reason so many math classes stress proofs.
What I see is many from each side afraid of the other side being taught, but they shouldn't be. If their theory fits the facts, it should hold its own. I have to say that I see the intelligent design side faring better in this aspect, as most don't want evolution NOT taught, just their side taught as well, whereas most people on the evolution side are adamantly opposed to Intelligent Design being taught.
It's perfectly clear. God created the earth, but made it to appear as though it were billions of years old with a fossil history, etc. That way those who fall for the evidence can be condemned as disbelievers and condemned to Hell and eternal torment. Nice catch, God!!
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
These groups work together, convinced they are doing what is right, to indoctrinate young minds that secular education has been taken over by atheists like Aldous Huxley and Richard Dawkins, hellbent on disproving the notion that the Bible is a historically and scientifically accurate document. Like most advocates of pseudoscience they also claim the rigors of scientific method prevent one from having an open mind. They also claim that our current scientific process keeps out sound alternative theories like Creationism, both unintentionally and by an intentional conspiracy.
The main problem, as I see it, is that both the students and the teachers are instructed that they must not question their narrow interpretation of the King James Bible and all the contradictions and mental contortions that belief system requires. To doubt the "Word of God" is to invite eternal damnation. Unlike most modern Christians, who have morphed their religious thinking into a kind of fuzzy deism, where anything truly awful in the Bible is an allegory or a misunderstanding, the strict King James Version believer must not question, and indeed has a moral obligation to force God's word and God's law on this nation, which is clearly a Christian oasis created by and watched over by the Christian God. Following this mandate, only that which affirms that the Earth is a few thousand years old and that a flood wiped out everything that wasn't on Noah's Ark is the truth.
And it just gets crazier from there, unfortunately, but I won't delve into that topic since it deviates from the OP.
Since most people misunderstand what science is, this large percentage of Christian Americans see this movement as proof of a conspiracy that atheism is trying to remove truth from the educational system and other areas of society, because that truth is religious in nature. They perceive science as a debate that can be won, and science class as a conspiracy that is attempting to undermine truth and morality. And as a result, those of who are not willfully ignorant are destined to spend a great deal of time, energy and money keeping religious dogma out of science books.
Sure, it's a political thing, the whole teaching of the ID "debate", but if there is a failing in the teaching of Evolution Theory, that failing is the WAY it's always been taught in public schools.
It really isn't until you go into college and are exposed to a variety of disciplines that the history of HOW Evolution is flushed-out, and it is a fascinating history, intertwined with the history of the era it was developed in.
A HS education is a very limited and skeletal education. Very rarely in HS are you exposed to the depth and breadth of how interrelated the development of scientific method is with the era and personalities it emerged within. In HS, so much of what you are taught is over-simplified and disconnected from the reality, is it any wonder people are prone to misunderstanding and fall prey to the need for their natural doubts borne out of simple ignorance to be assuaged ?
Political battles are ultimately social battles; manipulating people who lack the education and awareness of history are relatively easy to wage.
The solution is to teach more history, and how the process of discovery has brought us here from there. The best HS history classes I had where the classes we watched James Burke's "Connections" series.
You don't win a debate based on ignorance and faith by demanding more faith in science; you win it by simple education of human history, and by teaching people the difference between belief that's based more on tradition and assumption, vs. understanding based on simple discovery.
Making this entire thing out as a political battle and resorting to what amounts to scientism is just keeping it political, and keeping things polarized, and preventing the educational process from fulfilling it's potential.
Just stop it.
Their side isn't science. Teach it in religious studies. Is that really so difficult to understand?
You can teach the facts of religion, in unbiased form, perfectly fine. [...] Faith and religion are important factors in most societies and covering them (correctly) in school is probably a good thing to ensure well-informed individuals.
Well said, and true. I've had a similar experience, in my elementary school one could elect to take a class of comparative religion instead of the default one (which was literally called Christianity, taught by an actual methodist preacher in our school. No, seriously, the teacher was a methodist minister in his spare time. No chance of even a mediocre grade if he knew you to not be religious). The alternative class was as you describe.
The issue here is that creationism belongs in history, comparative religion, or social science classes as a side note (luckily I resisted the temptation to mention a folklore class), not presented as a viable alternative to evolution in biology lectures.
Are you a grammar Nazi? I'm trying to improve my English; please correct my errors!
Given that 'theism' is the belief that there is a god who does intervene in the world, (Deism being the belief that a god set the world going but now is no longer involved) atheism is a belief that there is NOT a god who can or has intervened in the world. It's a belief in a negative, which every logician will tell you is unprovable. Atheism, on the strict definition, is therefore illogical. Claiming a seat on the 'end of the fence' and labelling it 'atheism' won't actually do - it's a piece of Humpty-Dumptyism, making words mean what you want them to, not what they are defined as meaning. On the subject of alien, I'm suggesting that since it's obvious that any 'god' will be external to this world in some sense, it can therefore be argued to be alien. Actually it's possible to translate 'holy' as 'alien'... But it's not an important point; the core point is that there can be no certainty that there isn't something out there that matches the features of a 'god'.
People who really believe in religion and other forms of spirituality are not threatened by science. The findings of science do not shake their belief in whatever unknowns they believe are out there.
Creationism and Intelligent Design, as used by many of the Christians asking for legislatures to pass laws for enforce their religion and theology, are rhetorical positions that defend the most vulnerable elements of their religion and social thinking, for most perhaps all of these people are also social conservatives. By being conservatives they believe that they are better than their fellows perhaps in holding the beliefs defended by the rhetorical positions, such as their reading of Scripture that is as subjective and open to dispute as they insist that Scripture in inerrant. This is the clue to the real motive behind such people. it is to win moral arguments by force and that motive is supported by arrogance and entitlement, much as supports the Tea Parties in the House of Representatives.
A rhetorical position is a delaying tactic, a distraction, to steer the discussion away from a weak justification for a prejudiced position. It might be necessary to defend school curriculum in Texas from this attack, but ultimately if the political will is to allow such a travistry in Texas and other states, such as mostly in the Midwest and South, we can react by moving the innovative parts of society out of those places that don't want it in order to accept the sham pushed by some of these Christian congregations, and on the general matter of politics, whether social conservativism or movements like the Tea Parties, other more enlightened places in the nation can seek to separate themselves from these backward or self-interested places, for energy policy and the self interest of carbon fuel producing interests in Texas, and other states, who have funded the extreme conservatives in these states and the Congress, can be removed from the commonwealth, or thse other places separate themselves from them.
Having gone to an Orthodox temple for awhile* where the rabbi was a staunch Creationist (Young Earth, not less) and very anti-science, I can attest that one big reason is that science is scary to these people. You see, they like the comfort of "knowing" what is going on in the world. How was the world created? Read Genesis and find out. Genesis hasn't changed in a thousand years and likely won't change in the next thousand. Meanwhile, science is saying one thing today and then something different tomorrow. Science changes with every new discovery.
Now, you and I might say "but that's science's greatest strength" and we would be right. But to creationists, a "how did it happen" story that changes isn't comforting. Instead, the certainty of "In the beginning...." is touted as a strength and the changing nature of science is put forward as a weakness. (Much in the same way that a politician who changes his view when new information is brought to light might be painted as "flip flopping" for daring to change positions.)
So the answer to "Why do they keep pushing Intelligent Design" is that they want to prevent science by all means necessary and return to a world where the answer to everything was just "pray harder**."
* I went to that temple only because I was living with my parents at the time and they were members there so I got membership for free. My tongue paid for the membership, though, every time I bit it when the rabbi went on a "science is weak for changing" rant. That wasn't the time or place for an argument... especially since many of the congregants believed the same thing. I'd have a better chance of changing a person's mind by posting "Why Windows is superior to Linux" on Slashdot!
** Note that they also believe that "pray harder" only works if you adopt THEIR religion's god. And not just their religion's god, but the particular sect of their religion's god. Any variation, no matter how slight, will render "pray harder" ineffective (in their minds). Of course, this can be applied after the fact. You tried to pray away your sickness and you got worse so obviously that means that you didn't accept their god properly and fully. Shame on you!
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
To the contrary the Bible says quiet the opposite at Proverbs 5:18, 19:
Let your water source prove to be blessed, and rejoice with the wife of your youth,a lovable hind and a charming mountain goat. Let her own breasts intoxicate you at all times. With her love may you be in an ecstasy constantly.
That sound like more than just mindless procreation, so the next time some bible thumper insists on ridiculous ideas (such as sex is only for procreation) ask them for scriptural proof because at John 17:17 Jesus said; "... your word is truth," so anyone who speaks truth will have sound scriptural support from God's word; the Bible, to back up their claims (2nd Timothy 2:15).
Wait, that quote scans a bit odd, don't you think? I mean, does "her breasts" and "her love" refer to the charming mountain goat? Or... Surely not the hind, lovable though it may be? Or is it the wife who is being metaphorically referred to as both a goat and a hind? And then there's the literal but clearly wrong (I sure hope!) reading, which is that the "wife of your youth" was in fact literally a hind! Or a goat! Or possibly both at once... It's all so confusing.
You see, this is why I no longer read the bible, it's so filled with contradictions and mistranslations and double meanings. On the other hand, I certainly don't trust the clergy to explain it all and give us the One True Meaning, that's precisely how things like a celibate priesthood and the idea that sex is strictly for procreation crept into Christianity to begin with.
Frankly, it's much easier to just worship Cthulhu. You can be sure He knows what sex is for!
People have no problem believing what they want, but have to learn science. Belief has been ingrained for centuries so it's a bit hard to overcome. Take Islam where they pray and virtually recite litanies many times a day. It doesn't take long at all to create believers. Start with children in the formative years and they are bound for life. All Religions do this to some extent. Using this approach: Some teach peace, some teach creation, Some teach that all others must be destroyed, most teach they are the only correct way, but it's very difficult for a true believer to stray from orthodox teachings when they conflict, or even appear to conflict with science. It's simple human nature. It's how I quit smoking 2 1/2 packs of unfiltered Camels a day with no after effects. Practiced on a small scale, it's simple rote memory, but when repeated often, on schedule, many times a day for many days, weeks, months, or years, it becomes ingrained..You could even call it Brain Washing and not be far off. Call it what you want, affirmations, prayers, or litanies. If they are repeated many times a day, and particularly on a schedule, they are very effective even at the subconscious level.
The planetary model, or analogy is still used in basic teaching of atomic structure because it approximates the way things appear to behave and it's easy to learn.
One needs to have been raised around Bible Thumpers to understand their commitment to beliefs. Facts have no place in their mind.
That would be nice, as opposed to the drivel you linked to.
Gee, maybe the LA times would be more up your alley.
Damn that factual information...I guess DM did get it right huh?
Om, nomnomnom...
I think literacy and global communication will put deity-based religions into some kind of big decline, (Thanks, Joseph Campbell.)
although I could be very wrong about this.
Faith in Capitalism is becoming scarier to me than the mob of religious believers.
They feared that it could be used to suppress protest or support unpopular rule.
If by evolution you mean the addition of information via useful mutations in the human genome, it is yet to be observed. What *has* been observed instead is functional deterioration of the genome - see http://rt.com/usa/intelligence-stanford-years-fragile-531/ .
(For a more - vigorous - view, see http://evolutionsciencenow.blogspot.com.au/2013/04/are-humans-getting-better-what-is.html )
So crystallisation via cooling is a "spectacular decrease in entropy", capable of disproving the papers referenced earlier. How did you assess this? By seeing regularity in simple repeating crystal structures versus the liquid blob? By this logic, the regularity of molecules in a solid is evidence of the same thing. But no one calls cooling of a liquid to a solid a "spectacular decrease in entropy".
So the similar size of the earth and the moon are a coincidence...
> There are only a handful of trees left of that age. No way an exponential curve would be smooth with that little data.
You must be very familiar with the details. Anyway, the point is not that there is a smooth curve. The point is that there is a curve which stops abruptly at a time which matching the date of the Genesis flood. There are no trees with more rings. But the oldest trees are *still* growing. So there is no reason that there should not be trees with more rings.
If the ages of the oldest trees is another coincidence, it roughly coincides also with the the span of recorded history and the time since the ancestors of the Danes separated from the ancestors of the Turks.
There are other coincidences.
> So the similar size of the earth and the moon are a coincidence.
Correction... "similar size of the sun and the moon in the sky"