What is an Articulate Informed Creationist

I was just pointing that that your posts weren't really contributing to the discussion. Maybe I should have said so more explicitly.

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I've done everything the Bible says, even the stuff that contradicts the other stuff! -- Ned Flanders

i must admit, buz, this is a debate technique that is hard to win against. bring up a bunch of off-topic drivel as if it were somehow related to the point, and when someone rebuts it, decline comments because it's off-topic.you do this alot, actually. is this what it is to be an articulate creationist? spewing red-herrings and cultural bias?

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Nah, I think he is saying that when Catholics misapply scripture, they cease to be Christians. No exceptions there.

but when muslims misapply scripture, they're just being muslims?

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From NJ in the Behe thread

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...I'll kindly remind you what the Scopes Trial was all about. Proponents of evolution said that schools must make a special dispensation for the theory. They won that case. Now that somebody wants ID to have the same privileges that evolution had, its no dice.

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To anyone who knows about the case this is just complete nonsense.Tennessee passed a law (The Butler Act) that made the teaching of evolution illegal.Scopes had broken that law and agreed to be a test case.Scopes LOST, as he needed to do because the aim was to get the law declared unconstitutional (which it was). And that meant it had to be taken to appeal to a higher court which had the power to make such a declaration. (And that didn't happen, so really the ACLU lost the legal battle but after that nobody bothered to really enforce the law until it was taken off the books).So where did NJ get his idea that the case was about getting "special privileges" for evolution ? Is it a guess based on ID propaganda ? Or is it simply that he wants to pretend that the opposition is doing the same things that the ID movement is up to ? It certainly didn't come from any remotely accurate account of events.Why do creationists say things like this, rather than actually finding out the facts ?Edited by PaulK, : No reason given.

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, as I never learnt a scrap of US history at school, as I'm on the other side of the pacific pond to it, but didn't all the Bible-thumpers in Europe flee persecution and head over to the New World? Isn't that why Europe is nice and secular and America is full of fundies? Isn't that what the Thanksgiving stuff about the Pilgrims is all about?

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Heh. That's sort of what I say sometimes, too.But only a portion of the thumpers left the mother country. And the Puritan zealots only formed a portion of the population, and mostly in portions of New England at that. The US was primarily settled by people hoping to strike it rich.My guess is that as the American population was pushing West, they were too busy shootin' Indians and beatin' slaves to really give much thought to deep thinkin'. And, in fact, they probably had to justify their depravities in some way, and the Bible was as good a place as any to look.

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I've done everything the Bible says, even the stuff that contradicts the other stuff! -- Ned Flanders

Yeah, I sort of figured that.However, isn't the 'Bible Belt' between the east and west? I thought that the western states, like Washington and California, weren't as 'fundie' as the south-easterly states. Thus, if your guess were true, and gun-toten' lead to religiousity, then I'd expect more fundies on the west side. Unless something worked to reverse the trend in those states.

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Why the U.S. is a bit of an anachronism in the "western world" so far as religiosity is concerned is a fascinating and complex subject, worthy of a thread of its own (and a bit off topic here).You're right about the fleeing from religious persecution as one historical factor (it makes you look at persecution in a different light - speaking from a modern European perspective, maybe it wasn't such a bad idea!). However, there are other theories as well.It has to be said that the people doing the persecuting were probably just as religious as the sects being persecuted.Large scale migration from Ireland may be another factor, as Ireland is still to this day easily the most religious country in the north-west of Europe. The Catholic potato famine mass migration in the mid-nineteenth century is well known, but I think that there was also a very large migration from the Protestant north earlier in America's history, and this may have been very influential. The brand of Protestantism in Ulster today is very similar to the U.S. fundy type, so the influence of those early migrants may have transferred down the generations.Theories that have less to do with history are about things like feelings of economic insecurity in a very competitive society leading to a greater need for the surety of an afterlife as compared to very irreligious societies like the Scandinavian countries, where sinking into real serious poverty can't really happen, because of their social policies. Another thing may be the geographic isolation of large swathes of the population during the nineteenth and early twentieth century from the centres of learning and scientific progress. Relating that to your own country, isn't Queensland much more fundy than the rest of Australia?I think that the U.S.'s high rate of religiosity compared to other "first world" countries is probably the result of a complex combination of reasons, which is why it's difficult to answer Straggler's question:

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What is it about the U.S that makes this [the election of a remarkably unarticulate, uninformed, creationist President]* possible as compared to other comparable nations?

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*Bracketed words mine.

Queensland isn't isolated, as from Port Douglas south there is a corridor of towns and cities that stretch down to Wollongong, and then across to Melbourne and then Adelaide. The only isolated major towns/cities aren't in Queensland: Broome, Alice Springs, Perth (+ surrounding towns) and Darwin. And the fundies don't like the last one! I can't find any stats on it to back up my viewpoint that QLD isn't any more fundy. But, it is true that AiG sort of started here (Of course, AiG actually started (under that name) in the US, and only later 'recolonised' the Australian branch, before then pulling away. And the Australian branch was actually an amalgamation of two creationist organisations, Ken's was in Brisbane and John's was in Adelaide) Creation Science Foundation - CreationWiki, the encyclopedia of creation science

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Creation Science Foundation Ltd (CSF) was the former name of Answers in Genesis in Australia. It was founded by Ken Ham and John Mackay, and was the main driving force of creation science in Australia throughout the 1980s and the 1990s. The organization's headquarters until the early 1990s were in a warehouse on the corner of Bradman and Bellrick Streets in Acacia Ridge in Brisbane, Queensland, and then moved to new offices in Overlord Place, Acacia Ridge”another suburb of Brisbane.

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So I get to drive past their HQ every time I go straight from uni to work.Edited by Doddy, : No reason given.Edited by Doddy, : No reason given.

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I've also seen it argued before that many Americans (both today and historically) viewed America as some sort of Promise Land granted to them by God and their mission as God's new Chosen People was to spread across the land claiming it for God and democracy. (See Manifest Destiny)This may have contributed to the special kind of zeal and the Christian style Nationalism you see in the American fundamentalist circles. It definitely contributed to (along with the racism inherent in the idea of Manifest Destiny and prevalent in most Americans in the day) the slaughter and otherwise horrible treatment of the Indians.Another contributing factor is our historical policy of religious freedom which means that every sect and style of belief has had a chance to flourish (excepting some of the more extreme cults like the Branch Davidians).Sorry for bringing this further off topic. This could definitely could be a topic of its own. Maybe I'll start one to help me flesh out ideas for the novel I am working on.

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"You are metaphysicians. You can prove anything by metaphysics; and having done so, every metaphysician can prove every other metaphysician wrong--to his own satisfaction. You are anarchists in the realm of thought. And you are mad cosmos-makers. Each of you dwells in a cosmos of his own making, created out of his own fancies and desires. You do not know the real world in which you live, and your thinking has no place in the real world except in so far as it is phenomena of mental aberration." -The Iron Heel by Jack London

Due to the egalitarianism of Aussies, we spread our wackos right across the land, thank you very much.
Tho` we did have a fundy Premier in Queensland who did the equivalent of Bush in uniting opposition.Meanwhile, back at the topic---how about helping inarticulate, uniformed creos better their argument by letting mentors (of either leaning) guide their debate? Occasionally, I find posters who show potential, but in the hurly-burly of the EvC mart, they get misled or swamped. As the poet said,'It`s not about winning, but how you play the game'. All in the interests of a better forum, of course.

An Articulate, Informed Creationist would present the detailed models that explain everything that is seen better than the current models; would not attack evolution or cosmology or geology, but rather present their model that could explain what is seen and defend it both here and in peer review.So far of course, NO Biblical Creationist, YEC, IDist has been able to present ANYTHING that has stood up to examination but there is hope.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

Questions, Can I even answer these questions in this thread without going off topic, and if not then where can I go to answer these questions? Are these questions off topic, or do they fit in with this topic? I, personaly, am a 'big picture' thinker, I attempt to look at the whole, determine where the majority of the interpritations of the evidence leeds, etc. etc. to determine what the big picture is, and go from there. Appearently I find it quite difficult, or so I've been told to stay on topic, since I generaly try to include some of the evidence/interpritations/reason behind my statements. i.e. why I make a particular statement. I do not include this information to intentionaly lead the thread off topic, but give the read an idea as to where i am coming from. Is this wrong? Or can I even ask this question in this post since it is not pertenate to the topic? Every oppinion can be informative, at least to a degree, even the ones that appear to be nonsence, i.e. the basic premise can still be agreed upon even if the method of getting to that premise is not. (science does this all the time) for instance: * ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny is still stated as a proven scientific fact in science and biology texts books (at least on the middle to highschool level) even though it was disproven within months of the theory being published. and: Evolution has no problem siting that cave pantings depicting man with bison, deer, and giraffs, etc. as proof that man cohabitated with these animals, but when the same cave painting depicts what can only be a dinosaur, the drawing is relagated to a mythological creature because the idea of man and dinosaurs living together is inconsistant with the currently held interpritation of the geological column. Ergo there is a certain amount of nonsence on both sides of the fence.For the most part it seems (at least from my point of view) that most of the replys to my posts attack the foundations of my belief rather than the statements I make (even if I don't include these foundations in said posts) in which case I find myself hard pressed to both defend my foundational ideas/beliefs/reasons and yet unable to; because, to do so in most cases seems to go off topic. For instance statments like this: Which I personaly would concider an attack on my foundational (i.e. creationist) view point. Am I aloud to put forth an arguement against such a statment (since many have done so against me) in the thread in which it appears or not? Does looking at evidence from a different referance frame and coming to a conclusion based on that referance frame indicate misinformation? This is an attempt to argue that ones perspective does not alter the conclusion/observation and therefore equates to misinformation.As to this: "we cannot expect our creationists to be scientists, when by definition they are not." I would have to say that the most articulate of creation scientists are too busy gathering observational data to support thier view concerning their piers; to bother debating their view on a forum such as this. Which leaves a great deal of laypersons with varing degrees of understanding and articulation concerning that which is being debated. But even when a creatinist sites one of these scientists via a link I have found that the sitation goes greatly ingnored simple because of where it comes from. And when these laypersons attempt to site such scientists 'in thier own words' they generaly misrepresent the idea or confuse the facts and end up being accused of siting misinformation.I have also noted a strict adherance to ones own personal and widely varing views on both sides of the fence as well as on the part of those who ride the fence. Which begs the question; are we tring to determine the truth (whatever that may be) or are we debating just to win the arguement? And if one wins or loses a particular debate does that realy prove whether their idea is right or wrong, or just that they do not either have enough information or the skills to argue their point of view articulatly enough to win the arguement?* L. Rutimer, professor of zoology and comparative anatomy at university of Basel 1868. coraborated by William His Sr. professor of anatomy at the university of Leipzig and a comparative embryologist. (My highschool biology text book still included Haekel's work as proof of evolution, back in 1995)Edited by imageinvisible, : some spelling

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This post may contain information, logic/reason exercises, and/or questions used to illustate what I base my logical conclusions on and to expond upon a particular idea. That information/etc. should not be debated in this thread, and any questions that do not fit the topic should not be answered in this thread. Many of these questions/etc. are retorical and/or are included to elicit a mental response not necessaraly a verbal (or in this case a literary) one.

After having waded through your latest post, I am unclear what you are asking.Are you asking permission to ramble incoherently in unbroken paragraphs? You missed a couple:personaly
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