we are going to find very, very few well-informed creationists, as creationism is largely misinforation
Which I personaly would concider an attack on my foundational (i.e. creationist) view point.
it is not an attack on your views. it is an attack on the methods of those who taught you your views. the pillars of the creationist community that believe they should "lie for jesus." ask the people who aren't creationists just how many times they've seen some particularly false claims repeated (why, you've got a few in this very post!), or how very rarely they run into a creationist who even understands what evolution actually is? the creationist
campaign is largely misinformation.
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?
here would be the place, i believe.
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?
well, no. evidence, reason, and logic are all good things. the problem seems to be that the creationist argument is made up of a bunch of little, disparate claims that add up to the "don't trust science!" whole. these little claims are often thrown in as support for various arguments (where they might have no real relation) but are themselves wholely different debates that deserve to be examined in detail. normally, we call this sort of thing a "red herring." it derails debate by redirecting it to a rather insignificant throwaway argument. example:
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.
no, it's not still used. there have been whole threads on this topic, where no creationist has ever been able to cite a single valid example of recapitulation theory in a middle or high school textbook. only a few vague examples of drawings that looked like haeckel's in rather trivial ways. the historical aspect (regarding the outting of the fraud) outnumbered the vaguely similar drawings 3:1, but "not mentioned at all" was the runaway winner of that survey. this particular topic was one of our former member's favourite red herrings. he'd throw it into every conversation, everywhere.
this example, really, has very little to do with your argument, however, it does support my statement about misinformation.
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.
this is another topic that continues to fill up entire threads. and it's actually not nonsense, if you think about it. we have thousands of cave paintings of mammoths. we have artifacts made by primitive man using mammoth parts. we have both found in the same locations in the geologic column. cave paintings are not the
only evidence.
now, to contrast, we have a single picture of what appears to be a dinosaur. on closer examination, it's a snake, with a set of legs painted on. the snake part is exactly identical to thousands of other snake paintings made by the same natives in the region. meanwhile, we have no evidence of any sauropod living withing 65 million years of a hominid. no artifacts, no locations where both are buried, and a huge gap in the geologic column between the two.
see... one has to actually look at the evidence, and not just say "OMG it looks like a dinosaur." and besides, this particular claim is silly for two other reasons:
1) evolutionary theory has absolutely no problem with dinosaurs being alive today. "living dinosaurs" colloquially speaking are animals that are found to be living today that were previously thought long extinct, such as the coelocanth. such an animal does not disprove evolution, or show that the fossil record is errant -- just incomplete. which we knew all along.
2) in fact, there are
animals alive today that fall under the superorder
dinosauria. there's a good chance that you
ate one as recently as today. so yes, people DO live with dinosaurs.
but, as you have noticed, we have now spent more time discussing matters that do not pertain to the thread than we have the actual topic. when someone goes to support their argument with relatively unrelated
falsehoods, people generally try to take the time to correct those errors rather than ignore them as "off topic" and let them seem correct.
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.
funny, we have a lot of scientists of the
evolutionist persuasion here. frankly, you're not going to find creationist scientists very often because
creationism isn't science. that's been ruled a number of times in court, btw. your portrayal of the situation is precisely the reason why -- science isn't "here's my view, let's find data to support it." that's often what creationists do: support their apriori viewpoints through selective use of data. in academic circles, that's called "dishonesty."
you also have the problem that because
creationism is so largely composed of misinformation, people in higher education very, very rarely are creationists. it's quite hard for someone to get through 8 or more years of school, recieve a doctoral degree in biology, and still hold the same falacious viewpoints regarding what creationism says evolution is. and those few who somehow do make it through are generally weeded out on the job for the same reasons nasa would fire a geocentricist astronomer.
no, nearest we can tell, the only thing the real, legit, creationists scientists are doing is
publishing books directed at the general population. thus the reference to behe, who seems to be doing no actual research at all (and regularly gets torn apart by lowly graduate students in the various fields he dares to abuse in his books). and even he is
barely a creationist. he accepts common descent, for instance.
but by far, most of the creationist support is comprised of church-going, relatively average people, without science degrees behind their names. it's important to remember that because, as i said, we do have
working scientists here. we cannot expect our creationist members to make the same sort of academic arguments, backed by experiments and research, that the scientists will make. creationists are not scientists, they are people of faith.
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.
creationists are also well known to misrepresent scientific references. i have seen darwin, gould, and dawkins quotemined into supporting creationism. that generally falls under "pull the other leg, it's got bells on it." but most examples are more subtle. like omitting the word "inclusions" when describing the radiometric dating of a lava flow. makes it sound like the lava flow is really, really old even though it was witnessed only 50 years ago, so radiometric dating must be flawed. when in reality, the study they cited was about the little bits of older rock contained in the fresh lava.
again, this is because of the "here's my point of view, what evidence can i select to support it" methodology. by selecting only parts of that study, a creationist makes it sound like there's a real problem. similarly, by selecting the ONE textbook out of several hundred thousand that seems to present haeckel's flawed hypothesis as fact (and generally, further distorting it so it's solid), creationists make it seem like haeckel is still being used by decietful evilutionists as a cornerstone of evolution. when in reality, it was overturned by
evolutionary embryologists (not creationists!) months after it was first published.
or similarly, they select the one cave painting that looks a little like a dinosaur, and not the thousands that far more like identifiable creatures we knew lived with primitive man. and they of course select the version of the picture that looks
most like a dinosaur, instead of the snake you'd see in person.
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.
but, as you will likely note, not a lot of creationists are out there reading science journals. they get their information from somewhere. and THAT source is misrepresenting things and providing misrepresentation. and some of these sources... well, it stretches the limits of credulity to think it's always an honest mistake. especially when the sources of creationist propaganda are so readily known for shutting down discussion that might expose their errors.
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?
if you want to know the truth, take some biology classes. seems to me that if one is to understand the "controversy" one should actually be exposed to the real information. not evolution filtered through creationism. but beware -- you might find it interesting. and it might take 8 years and a doctoral degree before you get to the really good stuff.
frankly, the same can be said of religion. i've been arguing against fundamentalists on this site on an almost purely
biblical basis for the last few years. you would not believe the resistence to learning about the bible that i have encountered among people who claim to honor it. seems to me that some of these people treat their religion the same way they treat science: "here's what i believe, now what can i quote to prove it?"
™ Version 4.2
