International opinions: USA on science!

As an American, I find the foreign policy far more troubling. America has a long tradition of new religious cults, and generally manages to take these in stride.The biggest problem here is the collapse of the newsmedia. Most of what remains has become little more than an arm of the entertainment industry. This affects our politics; a politician who tells entertaining lies will get more coverage than one who is boringly honest.

That would be a kind of philosophical creationism, which is fully compatible with evolution. However, usually the term "creationism" is used to refer to "Young Earth Creationism", which is part of the beliefs of a 20th century religious cult.

I expect Moses understood that the creation and flood stories had human origins and were not the direct inerrant writings of God.

A flagellum is not a wheel. It might be a describable as kind of propeller, but that's not the same thing as a wheel.

I have thought about it. And no, it does not defy logic.Perhaps it is improbable, as some argue. But there is no principle of logic that says improbable things cannot happen. If you want to argue this, you will need a better argument than "defies logic." Why do creationists keep using such arguments? Is it that they lack integrity. Anybody who looks at the facts can see that Pasteur's concern was not with abiogenesis as the term is used today. Theologians who use such bogus arguments take Christians to be gullible fools. Regrettably, their assumptions about Christians are too often correct.

---

Compassionate conservatism - bringing you a kinder, gentler torture chamber

You are presupposing that there has to a first cause. I have never brought up the FSM. For a list of related bogus claims that creationists make, see Creationist claims about Pasteur and Spontaneous Generation For a scientific answer to those claims, see Pasteur, fermentation, contagion, and proving a negativeBy the way, in case you haven't noticed, we are way off topic for the current thread. That would take us even further off topic. But you could start a suitable thread defending the argument, and I am sure you will quickly see it demolished.

---

Compassionate conservatism - bringing you a kinder, gentler torture chamber

Sure, you are. You don't recognize your own assumptions, but that's a common problem. I don't have to abandon anything. I am still agnostic about Big Bang cosmology, and also about whether the universe is eternal. That's where you are assuming a first cause. I can tell it is an assumption, for you make no attempt to justify it. Clearly you are stumbling over it.Consider the continuum of positive real numbers. There is no first such number. Given any positive real number x, then x/2 is a smaller real number. Similarly, assuming that time is a continuum, there is no obvious reason for a first event. Every event could be preceded by an earlier event, and could be caused by some of the earlier events. There is no obvious reason why there needs to be a first cause. I can't find any basis for that conclusion, so I do not find it inevitable. No. It is my way of saying that either the creationists are mistaken in their understanding of what Pasteur showed, or the creationists are dishonest and are deliberately misrepresenting it. Personally, I lean toward the "dishonest" conclusion, since I'm sure that at least some of the creationists are smart enough to know better.By the way, we are still a long way from the topic on this thread. I guess there is a vague relation, in that you are in the USA and are demonstrating your own confusion about science.

---

Compassionate conservatism - bringing you a kinder, gentler torture chamber