Creationism IS a 'Cult'ural Movement!

Well you would be wrong in assuming that is where we are going and if you will walk along I hope that you will see that not only is Biblical Creationism just a cult, it is one that is based on ignorance and cupidity and an act of hubris.So I will try yet another approach.If you were presented with a pile of coins, what would be the Biblical Creationist Method of sorting into their "kinds"?

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

I mean, about certain things you have to make a choice. Do you risk traffic on the thruway or try to take a detour? I would consider the God/no-God choice to be one of those things, since the choice presumably affects your life (and your forever, according to most religions).
Secondly, for the God/no-God choice it's unlikely that better evidence is going to come along. You can wait until you die, I guess, and see if anything happens after that, but that's higher stakes poker than I have the stomach for.

Oy vey! I'm creationist, ok, so I think I'll decline your gracious invitation.

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You can wait until you die, I guess, and see if anything happens after that, but that's higher stakes poker than I have the stomach for.

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But it's all play money, so no big deal.

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I have always preferred, as guides to human action, messy hypothetical imperatives like the Golden Rule, based on negotiation, compromise and general respect, to the Kantian categorical imperatives of absolute righteousness, in whose name we so often murder and maim until we decide that we had followed the wrong instantiation of the right generality. -- Stephen Jay Gould

If we're actually going to discuss whether creationism is a cult we should start with a working definition of cult. This one's from answers.com: This one's an excerpt from the Britannica definition: This one's an excerpt from the Encycolpedia of American History. I like this one because it's more nuanced: --Percy

Keep in mind, it's not just a "God/no-God" question. If you conclude in the affirmative, you are then faced with the follow up question, which one?Sticking with your poker allusion, it seems to me that the best choice would be to go with religions that don't claim to be the only right one. Christianity means putting all your eggs in one basket, it seems to me. No, the logical choice would be several of the pan-theistic religions. Keep your options open I say. That way, if only one of them is right, at least you shouldn't get bad marks for having chosen the wrong one since they don't really tie you down to one anyway.

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Those who would sacrifice an essential liberty for a temporary security will lose both, and deserve neither. -- Benjamin FranklinWe see monsters where science shows us windmills. -- Phat

You make a good point! It reminds me of a story of a soldier in Vietnam wearing a cross, a star of david, and a crescent. He explained it as "In my business you can't afford to offend anybody".But on a serious note, one is of course stuck with doing your best to figure out which one is right. I have philosophical problems with pantheistic kinds of religions because I presume the creator(s) to be of greater complexity and depth than the creation. Same with evolution, from a very wide angle point of view: random mutations and natural selection - a couple of sentences are supposed to explain the fantastic complexity of life? I don't think so, Tim.

IF biological evolution is the wrong way to think, explain to me how you came to this conclusion, and be honest. Did you attempt to study it? Did you hear anyone else tell you why it was wrong and accept their logic?Did you get struck off your horse on the way to Damascus?Share with me the reason that you became so anti-establishment in this
topic?

Why do you need to presume this? You seem to be overlooking the possibility of processes creating complexity. Why not, if the sentences describe a very powerful mechanism?

I came to evolution from a strict religious upbringing. So, for me, emotionally, to be an evolutionist would be anti-establishment. But I have done my best to be open to the possibility. I was first introduced to evolution in high school. I was shocked. What disturbed me really was the age of the earth issue. I guess I just never could see any merit to the evolution argument. They showed us these family tree charts and I could see that they had just made them up, somebody's idea of how things might have evolved. We had all these fossils, but I couldn't see how they were anything more than dominoes to be arranged as one wished. This stuff hadn't been tested - nobody had evolved anything in the lab. And the proposed mechanisms - even as a teenager I could see that they violated the basic principles of statistics. It seemed then, as it does now, a quaint idea from a time when people thought they could invent perpetual motion machines. That evolution has gained such traction is to me one of the more bizarre chapters in history.
So that's a very brief answer. Yes, I do periodically follow some new development in evolution, and there's some very interesting discoveries, but nothing to suggest that anybody has really discovered any mechanism where species can evolve in the grand scale that Darwin proposed. There is increasing evidence for, shall we say, shared information or even shared heritage, but we knew from the start that species are similar to each other. What is lacking is any serious explanation of how species can evolve from each other, not to mention repeatable experimental proof that they do indeed evolve (save me the bacteria resistance), and no amount of bluster can hide that lack.

Did you ask how they developed the family tree charts?And did you ever wonder why, when several independent researchers develop a "family tree chart" ("phylogeny" is actually the proper term) using different, independent techniques, they come up with largely the same history?Without even talking to each other or comparing notes or anything? How does that happen if they're just being made-up? How so? Because my impression is that evolution is exactly what we should expect from the basic principles of statistics.Look, I'm not going to pretend that these issues are simple. Living things are complex and their evolutionary history is equally complex. Complex forces are acting on them - it's a complex world we live in. Understanding things like how random mutation + natural selection result in novel morphology, or how new species develop from old ones (a phenomenon directly observed both in the wild and in experiments) takes time and effort and information not generally made available to high school students.Your knowledge of biology will have to become collegiate at least before you're able to understand how evolution is proven by both logic and evidence, observation and experimentation, the fossil record and the genetic record.If you're willing to put in the effort, I'm sure we're all willing to explain to you. If, like most creationists, your purpose here is only to snipe at the most proven theory in scientific history from a blind of ignorance and misinformation and then retreat in the face of scientific rebuttals... well, I wish you would come out and tell us, so we can get to ignoring you as soon as possible.

I think this is where the problem would arrise. If you do not believe the earth "old", then I can easily see how swallowing evolution would be a problem. Without an understanding about how geology has come to its conclusions, how can anyone be expected to understand evolution? It would be pointless to study the results of evolution while at the same time rejecting the results of geology. I am not exactly critizing the fact you reject evolution; based on your pre-existing ideas of the age of the Earth the 'Theory of Evolution' immediatly becomes impossible.Instead of basing your focus on the problems evolution presents in your young earth view. Would it not be better to first focus on the primary problem of the Earths age, before discounting evolution in a seriously lacking timescale?ABE: I didn't address the topic, sorry mods. Edited by Vacate, : No reason given.

Hi Mystic,Though I'm replying to your message, I'm actually addressing this to everyone else.Hi, everyone else!Looked at in one way, Mystic's description of why he rejects evolution is off topic. The topic is whether creationism is a cult. But looked at in another way his message provides some key evidence for considering that question. Concerning whether creationism is a cult, the important part of Mystic's message begins at, "I was first introduced to evolution in high school." In the description that follows, what about it sounds like a cult?One characteristic of a cult not mentioned in the definitions I cited earlier is that they define the world in terms of us and them, and this is done by cutting off sources of outside information while substituting their own information. Conservative Christianity clearly does this with creationism by creating an insular subculture immune from outside influences - immune, that is, except for those who send their children to public schools.But does having one or even a few of the characteristics of a cult make creationism a cult? All the definitions of cult say that they exist outside the auspices of mainstream religion. A recent poll revealed that 53% of Americans believe the universe is less than 6000 years old - they outnumber us, so if anyone's a cult it's us. 44% of Americans believe that Jesus will be returning within their lifetime. This is mainstream. If creationism were ever a cult, and I don't believe it ever was one, then it certainly is not one now. Once a cult grows to the point where it includes about half of everyone, that's not a cult anymore.Are creationism's ideas fuzzy and wrong? Yes. Are the fundamentalist ideas driving creationism irrational and dangerous? Yes. But is creationism a cult? No. It's far worse than that.--Percy

Maybe not, but we can prove that gravity exists here on Earth. Can you prove God exists here on Earth? If there's no way to prove God, then are there any ways to disprove Him? If not, then the idea of God is non-falsifiable (cannot be proven false), and therefore NON-scientific. At least, this is how I understand it. And, if it's non-scientific, any scientist would have to be quite foolish to attempt to study it in a scientific manner.

The bulk of the history of mankind is absent of the theory of evolution, and I'd argue that since its introduction into scientific thought, anyone not accepting it would be (perhaps by definition) not smart .J0N