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Author | Topic: Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
dwise1 Member Posts: 5930 Joined: Member Rating: 5.8 |
I do believe that the average creationist is well-meaning and sincerely believes they are being honest. Its the leaders and "experts" that are dishonest and deceptive. Do you really consider Kent Hovind to be an honest, truthful advocate for creationism? Ken Ham? These men are shysters, snake-oil salesmen. Is that how the "truth" is advanced? God forbid! At one point I tried to classify different types of creationists and to analyze how and why those types develop. Of course, one disadvantage we have in such efforts is the creationists' own reluctance, avoidance, and outright refusal (often quite hostile) to discuss such questions, so all we have to go by are our observations in the field. I will try to return to this topic in the future. Obviously, there is a wide range of types of creationists with their associated behaviors, even though we normally only see a rather small subset within that spectrum because we normally only see the ones who wish to confront us, to "fight evolution" head-on. Most of the followers are not motivated enough nor feel ready to confront us and most of the professionals and experienced creationists avoid us because they have learned through bitter experience that their claims cannot withstand direct examination and so find other venues that they can control or exploit (eg, creationist "debates"). My classification approach was not to define types as RAZD had done in this topic in Message 1081 (26 Jul 2017), but rather a kind of a sequence of levels that an individual creationist could progress through with each level having certain characteristics, including an increase in dishonesty as one moves up through each level. Each level is primarily identified by the level of activism and involvement and a principal driving force in shaping the characteristics of each level is how the activities of that level bring them into contact with non-creationists and how they then respond to discovering the problems with their claims and with their YEC beliefs. Basically I break YECs out into three groups: inactive, active, and professionals and activists. Similarly, I break the non-creationists into two main groups: knowledgeable (ie, us), ignorant (further sub-divided by what they are ignorant of: science, creationist claims. And then there's the general public, the typical target of the creationists (they prefer to avoid us non-creationists, especially us knowledgeable ones) since members of the general public are usually easy pickings since they tend to be ignorant of science and of creationism. Of the inactive creationists, I have written:
quote: Of the active creationists, I have written:
quote: I then sub-divide the active creationists as inexperienced or experienced:
quote: And of the professionals and activists:
quote: I also discuss non-creationists in a similar manner, though classified differently. In my introduction:
quote: Those groupings are knowledgeable non-creationists and ignorant non-creationists with the latter group sub-divided as those who are knowledgeable about science but ignorant of creationist claims and those who are ignorant of science (and of creationism, it goes without saying). Those who are ignorant of science usually share somewhat the same "folk science" as the active creationists (eg, comic books, sci-fi B movies, poor quality science textbooks, "common sense") and so are vulnerable to creationist claims and arguments. Anyway, I should cut this short now. As I said, these are my draft notes so far.
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dwise1 Member Posts: 5930 Joined: Member Rating: 5.8 |
Or, to put it another way: If they can warp the Bible to fit their preconceived notions, they can warp anything else too.
And cherry-pick what they want while ignoring the rest. Because that is how religion works. But it is not how science works, where you have to take everything into account and cannot afford to ignore anything. And you cannot simply re-define an inconvenient fact out of existence or into something else like they do all the time with religion. Edited by dwise1, : added qs box
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dwise1 Member Posts: 5930 Joined: Member Rating: 5.8 |
But generally, speaking creationists are honest, since honesty is a very important requirement of their religion. The Father, Son and Holy Spirit demand honesty. They may start out honest, but "creation science" corrupts them very quickly. It starts with being taught that if the claims of "creation science" are wrong, then God does not exist (or something to that effect; actual mileage may vary case-by-case). Then whenever the believer encounters any evidence contrary to "creation science" or any of his YEC beliefs, he has to start lying to himself, to deceive himself. One creationist lie follows another, creating a slippery slope that turns him into a dishonest hypocrite, a typical creationist. I do agree that in Christian doctrine honesty is a very important requirement and that the religion demands honesty. That was very much a part of my own Christian training before I left over half a century ago. And it was also very much a part of my fundamentalist training as a "fellow traveller" with the Jesus Freak Movement (circa 1970 at the epicenter, Chuck Smith's Calvary Chapel, Costa Mesa, Calif.). Though the fundamentalists were also very heavily into Satan and demons (opposing both, of course, but they did obsess a lot) and emphasized how lies and deception serve Satan, not God. So then, the question remains: Why do you persist in your lies and deception? (plural "you" being applied to the YEC/"creation science" community as a whole, as well as to many individuals within that community) By preaching honesty and practicing gross dishonesty, you are also practicing hypocrisy. I'm sure that you have heard or may feel that you "true Christians" are hated. Well, there is some truth behind that, but not for the reasons that you (pl.) want to whine about. One of the reasons is because normals are disgusted by your (pl.) flagrant hypocrisy. Your "true Christian" witness and Christian example serves to thoroughly discredit Christianity and to drive away those who otherwise might have wanted to consider becoming a Christian, but then they'd be afraid of becoming like you. At this point, I would like to express to you our appreciation for your zealous and untiring contributions to the growth and spread of atheism. Now if we could only get you to stop misrepresenting what atheism is. Now on the subject of the corrupting influence of creationism on Christians, let me introduce you to Carl Drews, a believing, practicing Christian who has seen it in action. He joined a fundamentalist church whose work he really liked, but then he had to leave them in disgust because the pastors advocated and supported "lying for the Lord" (another example of hypocrisy that normals hate and point out). His autobiographical page, My Story, tells that tale of how his pastors cared nothing for whether the creationist materials were true, but only whether they could be used against evolution -- ie, "the ends justify the means", the lowest form of opportunistic morality which the Radical Religious Right used to denounce as "secular humanism". It also describes his first exposure to creationist materials, a cartoon pamphlet, in 1985. Through an email, he verified that it was Chick Pubs' "Big Daddy?", but instead of the current edition which was reportedly rewritten by Kent Hovind, that was the original, which I had also read circa 1970 during my fundamentalist training with the Jesus Freaks at Chuck Smith's Calvary Chapel. That part of the story illustrates the creationist practice of misquoting sources which is common creationist practice. The part about the classes at his church serve to illustrate the lack of quality and veracity of other creationist materials which is sadly very typical of all creationist materials. In this case I think it was probably the "Back to Genesis" seminars or at least something similar. Every week he would research the claims of the presentation and return the next week with notes about what he found to be wrong -- he posts a lot of those notes elsewhere on his site. That brings us to another problem: hardly any of his fellow students cared that there were serious problems with what they were learning, that those claims were not true. The Trinity demands honesty, you say, so why did those "true Christians" not care about honesty? The problem there is that creationists who go to those classes and those meetings are not interested in the truth nor in honesty. Rather, they are looking for ammo to use in their own proselytizing efforts. For that purpose, they don't care whether the claim is true, but only that it sounds convincing, since the intended use is to convince others to convert (or to convince themselves that their creationist beliefs are true). On a science and religion forum maintained at conservative Christian Calvin College in the 1980's/1990's, I found this quote by Scott Rauch (Page Not Found - Error pages | Calvin University (link broken -- can't keep the stupid forum software from making that a link)):
quote: From Carl Drews' page:
quote: They lied. The pastors of a fundamentalist church lied. Solely because they had been seduced by the lies of "creation science." "Creation science" started out as a deliberate crafted deception to fool the US courts, but then it spread to the churches which it immediately started to corrupt. It has already cost far too many Christians (now ex-Christians) their faith and keeps many more from ever taking Christianity seriously. It has been called "one of the major causes of atheism and materialism."
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dwise1 Member Posts: 5930 Joined: Member Rating: 5.8 |
I got that Raup quote from Darwin on Trial (2nd edition) by Phillip E. Johnson, p.187. Then why did you try to claim to have worked with the original? Proper scholarship requires that you cite your actual source, which in this case was Johnson. And how did Johnson present his quote? Did he cite the Raup article or did he cite his actual creationist quote-mine source? I'll bet that he also lied and cited the Raup article. Read my page, MOON DUST. At a debate I attended, Henry Morris countered the complaint that creationists use outdated sources that have since been superceded by more recent discoveries by citing a NASA document from 1976, "well into the space age" (a proclamation required of all creationists repeating this claim), which used direct measurements to predict that an old moon would have a layer of dust a couple hundred feet thick. I requested further information from the ICR and got it, a letter written by creationist Harold Slusher who cited that "1976" NASA document for values to plug into a formula of his own making. Then I found that "1976" NASA document in the university library and found that it was papers from a conference held in August 1965 and printed in 1967, both dates predating the Apollo 11 landing. On top of that, Slusher misquoted his own actual source, some unnamed creationist, and committed the error of including a factor in his formula, both of which inflated the figures for the moon a factor of 10,000 -- instead of being 280 feet thick,that dust layer turns out to be about a third of an inch thick. Morris cited that NASA document as his source even though he had never ever seen it ... well, until I mailed him a photocopy of the front cover which he and Gish subbornly ignored. He lied about what his source was. And even though the ICR tried to distance itself and forget about that claim, decades later their books are still being sold with Morris continuing his lie by citing that NASA document as his source, thus deceiving each new generation of creationist newbies. Object lesson for you: always go back to the original source to verify that your secondary and tertiary sources had not misquoted it and misrepresented it. ABE: IOW, your creationist handlers are lying to you. They have always been lying to you. You cannot and must not automatically trust anything that they tell you. You must test and verify everything they say. When they quote somebody, then go straight to what they are quoting to read what was actually said. When they cite a scientific source, then go straight to that source to see what it really said. When they tell you something about how science works, then go directly to the science and learn for yourself how it really works. Your creationist handlers are not the Trinity. They are men. Dishonest men. Dishonest men whose goal is to deceive you. They are not gods, despite how much they want to deceive you into thinking that they are. They are men and they are liars and deceivers. Do not be fooled. 1 Thessalonians 5:21: "Prove all things; hold fast all that is good."Other versions say "test everything". Edited by dwise1, : Added By Edit (ABE)
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dwise1 Member Posts: 5930 Joined: Member Rating: 5.8
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My aptitude for mathematics is Einstein-like, but I can't figure out how to got from = 100 99,990,000 / 10,000 to = 100 9999 Damn your miserable innumerate hide! You're making me use an emoticon: Assuming Windows:
IOW, extremely simple, basic arithmetic. I completely fail to understand how it could possibly be beyond your ken. Kill Clippie!
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dwise1 Member Posts: 5930 Joined: Member Rating: 5.8 |
My aptitude for mathematics is Einstein-like, but I can't figure out how to got from = 100 99,990,000 / 10,000 to = 100 9999 Or is your problem algebraic? Multiplication (and hence division, which is simply multiplying by the reciprocal) is associative. That means that:(a × b) × c = a × (b × c) Therefore, we can associate the factors in question thus: % error = 100 (99,990,000 / 10,000) yielding % error = 100 9999 QEF Yet again, extremely simple math.
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dwise1 Member Posts: 5930 Joined: Member Rating: 5.8 |
God arranged to have his Word recorded in written form to preserve its accuracy down through the centuries. An oral method wouldn't work as it would be very prone to mistakes when being passed from one person to the next. Plus there would be no way of checking if the contemporary version of the story is faithful to the original. The Jews went to extreme lenghts to ensure that each and every word was accurately copied from one Bible copy to the next. OK, I actually had a class in Rabbinic Literature. Yes, the standards for transcribing the Torah itself were placed extremely high, but what of the rest of Scripture? BTW, for you religious idiots, the Torah is the first five books of the Old Testatment. But then your "Bible" includes the "New Testament", which falls outside of the Jewish tradition, so you are completely and utterly screwed when you try to claim Jewish tradition in preserving the alleged integrity of your "New Testatment" passages. Do your continuous attempts to deceive really have no boundaries? Have you ever studied Greek? That is no non sequitur, because the New Testament was written in Greek, even though some of the source manuscripts were in Aramaic. I did study Greek, Koine Greek, the Greek of the New Testament. For two semesters. We used the Bruce Metzger New Testament. For each and every passage in the New Testament, all the various variations from the many source manuscripts were presented. And they showed your traditional interpretations to be a lie. There are many different manuscripts for each verse, very few of which agree with each other. Some differences, like Luke 2:14, completely change the meaning. Even Revelation 22:18-19, which promises great punishment to anyone who would add to, delete from, or change that revelation, has differences in its manuscripts (testimony to how little the early Christians cared about the Scripture they were creating?). So who decided which versions to use? Fallible Man. Furthermore, some manuscripts are in Aramaic and some in Greek, so the Aramaic manuscripts had to be translated to Greek. And then there was yet another chain of translations before it got into your own hands. Do you have any idea what's involved in translating from one language to another? You read the source language and you then try to express what you think it says in to target language. IOW, at the core of translation is the act of interpretation by a fallible human. And if that fallible human is biased by his religious beliefs, then there's the chance of even more error slipping in. Every step of the way we see fallible Man constantly poking his pudgy fingers into the Bible, injecting error at every turn. And then we have the theologians and preachers who take that finished product and twist and interpret it to mean whatever they want it to mean regardless of how far they have to stretch it. There are many aspects of Christianity that I just simply cannot believe, but the one that I really cannot believe in is their central belief in the infallibility of Man. True story; even though it's sure to go right over your head, lurkers may even get a laugh out of it. An activist creationist posted it in his newsletter.Some theologian had tried to explain away the Resurrection by claiming that Jesus had a twin brother -- ridiculous on several levels, including the fact that it's just a story so there's nothing to explain away, plus why would a Christian want to explain away the central foundational myth of his own religion? Anyway, this creationist cited the wisdom of a child who pointed out that the Bible says that Mary was "with child", not "with children." Well, first off, there's no such expression in English as "being with children" and "with child" would indeed be used properly for twins, triplets, etc. Second, that's not what the Bible says. In the Greek, it says that she "had in belly". No explicit mention of any children. Similarly, I've seen "sun" and "son" being conflated (including on Star Trek:TOS, "Bread and Circuses") and an interpretation of "atonement" as meaning "at one-ment", all of which can only possibly work in English and would be completely meaningless in the original language. From Mein Bester Feind (2011), Moritz Bleibtreu as an Austrian Jewish art dealer just before the Anschlu showing to his life-long Christian friend a Michelangelo sketch with an oddity due to a misinterpretation of the Bible (translated from memory):
quote: How very true. Edited by dwise1, : "There are many different manuscripts ... " Edited by dwise1, : Fixed a couple details in the movie reference Edited by dwise1, : Left out one letter
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