YEC vs. EVO presuppositions / methodology

Ok, here is what I am driving at Faith. You have chosen a world view based on the teachings of the bible, you have claimed bible infalibility as axiomatic fact.This choice you are making, is arbitrary.You are choosing it simply because you "like it" regardless of it's explanatory relevance to the world around us.I can make any arbitrary choice I please and it will have the same standard of validity. That being "I like it."Thus, I can declare the earth is made of cheesecake and the clouds are made out of cotton candy. I can build an entire system of logic and phylosophy around those premiss.But nothing changes the fact that there is no reason to actually belive those premisis! Do you understand that?

I really don't care about wether or not the Bible is true, that's a philosophical question and totally unrelated to this thread.Faith made the statement that we should accept her position without question or challenge. I am asking her to convince us of why we should not challenge her position. So far the only reason she has given is that if her position is challenged then she won't play. I see nothing wrong with that, but that is NOT what Faith has said. That is a misrepresentation of her position.IMHO this is important...Faith has said that the evidence must fit. She has said that if the evidence does not fit, then either the method or evidence itself must be wrong.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

Yaro, all this is completely irrelevant and off topic. We are not arguing for or against premises here as has been stated many many times.

You are off topic, jar. This is not a place to question the premises, this is for discussing the differences -- [abe: defining the premises and indicating the consequences from the premises] -- not to argue for your premise against mine.This message has been edited by Faith, 11-22-2005 11:50 AM

I have no idea what you are referring to. Please reference the post where I said this and quote me correctly instead of paraphrasing.

Well, not all YEC's hold the same positions about their beliefs. And many creationists, of every kind, believe that they can support their position starting from the same premise of scientific empiricism that evolutionists begin with. Unlike you, they believe that unrestricted scientific empiricism can substantiate the Bible, even starting from a position of the supremacy of scientific knowledge.Those are the creationists we want to talk with. People who simply want to promulgate their beliefs, absent any level of scientific evidence, shouldn't expect to find a welcome here. Well, it can and does happen, has happened, because not all creationists are like you. Many of them are foolish enough to believe that their views can be supported by valid science. No, I completely get it. People like you can never be a part of the debate, and so you shouldn't be surprised to find yourself not welcome here. But not all YEC's are like you. Not all creationists are like you. Proponents of intelligent design are definately not like you.The site doesn't exist just to talk to YEC's. It doesn't exist to talk to people like you. People who believe that valid naturalist science can prove design are definately not like you, and those are the people we're interested in talking to.Those are the only people with whom the debate can proceed. It can't proceed with people like you.

Didn't you promise not to get personal?I am trying to define the YEC premise. This has nothing to do with personalities or how they engage in debate. I also started out believing it's possible to avoid the Biblical premise. But the fact is that all YECs DO share this premise: God has spoken and we work from there. You haven't addressed this. In fact your entire post is irrelevant.

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I shouldn't have to prove this at all, it's obvious.

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I shouldn't have to refute it because it is obviously false...

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Over and over at EvC the claim is made that the Flood has been soundly proved never to have occurred, just for one instance. This submits God's authority, which says it did occur, to the authority of science

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But nobody who says that beleives that God said it. So THEY aren't putting the authority of science over God's authority. THey are putting it over your authority.

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Over and over we are told that any reference to the Bible as authority is out of place on the science forums.

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Because it is. The science fora are for scientific discussion - if you wanted to discuss whether or not science did support your religiosu beleifs then that can be discussed without assuming that your religious beliefs are true (indeed such arguments must not rely on that assumption because to do so would be to beg the question). Thus there is a valid reason for the exclusion.

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Leave the mutations bit out of this. It is not applicable. It is another subject. And your nasty attitude is very wearying and inappropriate.

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I disagree it is a good eample of both the failure of YEC methodology and as an example of the fact that YECs are strongly interested in defending their own beliefs even when the Bible is not directly relevant.
The simple fact is that you lack even a basic understanding of our own argument. For your argument to work it must be possible for multiple individals to have the same allele - but a mutation only affects a single copy of an allele. Therefore it cannot be the case that a single mutation will always remove an allele from the gene pool as you claim. Often it will not.The YEC methodology is all about generating excuses to avoid admitting error. And in doing so it generates more errors.

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I am not asking you to believe anything. I am merely declaring my premise and how it is treated at EvC

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Well you already knew that there would be people here who disagreed with your premises. And if you won't argue for your premises then you certainly can't expect them to change their minds.

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I am representing the viewpoint of YECs correctly, and all your arguments about this or that interpretation are irrelevant. You know very well that what I am saying does fairly represent the YEC position and that's all I'm talking about

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Well I am pointing out that the public claims of YECs are not entirely accurate. It is for instance true that the people you accuse of rejecting God's authoirty are in fact rejecting your authority, not God's. It is also true that YECs are prepared to argue against the Bible - I've seen them do it. So I take any claims about YECs primary concern being the defence of the Bible with more than a pinch of salt.

I haven't followed the thread today, but this is false and absurd on the face of it. People accept the Bible for subjective reasons but not arbitrary reasons. You ought to recognize that and correct your post, imo, if you want to try to make a valid point.

Once again you have misrepresented what I have said. I have not argued for one position over the other.I have simply asked you to show the evidence for why your position should be considered. Surely there is some reason beyond Faith says so?Is my summation of your position correct?If so, why should such a position be considered?

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

It is not offtopic, but if you would rather adress it in another thread I will open one.In any case, re-read my post and notice that I am not arguimg for or against a certain premiss. I am demonstrating to you that your premiss is arbitrary meaning that any conclusions reached from that premiss are going to be just as arbitrary.I am not saying one is beter than the other, only pointing out to you that your premiss has NO MORE value than any other EQUALY ARBITRARY premiss.

But where would all the evos go?

Let me add, crash, that you sure seem very interested in talking to Faith....hmmm...something doesn't add up.This message has been edited by randman, 11-22-2005 12:04 PM

Faith made a statemnt that the bible MUST by necessity trump any other world view. If the other world view doesn't agree, then the bible prevails regardless of evidence etc.Placing the bible in such a position is an arbitrary choice. I could say the Lord of The Rings is such a tome. It's arbitrary and unproductive.

It's not clear to me how you come to the conclusion that you're able to speak for literally every YEC.Now, granted, your thoughts on the subject are probably more advanced than your peers. And the sooner they come around to your way of thinking, the sooner we won't have religion injected into science classes. In fact it's my hope that YEC's evenutally abandon "godless science" altogether and move into caves.But a lot of YEC's don't agree with you. They believe that their premise about the Bible can be defended by the same science that evolutionists practice. Well, you've asked me not to address that premise. And I've already told you that I find your conclusion from your premise to be valid - given that God exists, and that the Bible was authored by him, and that he's intended it as a literal history (which I think you can support from the Bible itself), the argument that science must take a backseat to that is pretty much inescapable. But, I don't share your premise, so that valid argument isn't true to me. Make sense?I''m not going to have this argument with you, because we're in total agreement. And I've told you this several times so I don't understand why it doesn't sink in. Given your premise your argument is inescapable. Fine. I don't give you your premise, though, but you're not interested in arguing about that with me. Also fine.The argument you need to be having is with your YEC peers, who do not believe that your argument is valid. You need to have the discussion with them, not with evolutionists. They're the ones who have the relevant challenge to your argument, they're the ones that share your premise. They're the ones with whom the discussion can proceed.Not me, though. Not us. Since we'll never grant your premise, and you'll never accept ours, it doesn't matter how valid each of our arguments are; neither will accept the other as being true. (Stop me if you don't understand the difference between a valid argument and a true one.)Have the discussion with YEC's, they're the ones that you need to talk to, because believe me, most of them do not see the validity of your argument - but they're sure as hell not going to believe me when I tell them.