Coffee House Musings on Creationist Topic Proposals

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But you'll never learn, you'll be a eunuch all your life.

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• Their only form of "education" is indoctrination whose purpose is to dictate to the students what they are supposed to believe and to force them into compliance. As a result, they cannot even begin to understand actual education whose goal is that the students understand the ideas without requiring belief in those ideas.
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  An example that I have often given is that in 1981 the United States Air Force Communications Command Leadership School taught us marxism, socialism, and communism. The purpose of that instruction was not to turn us into Commies, but rather for us to know our enemies.
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• Since everything that they do involves worship, they think that everybody worships something. As a result, they make ridiculous claims that we worship certain things.
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• They think that science is a faith-based system. Absolutely ridiculous, but since they have no understanding of what science is nor how it works and is practiced, they only fool themselves and make it even more impossible to have any kind of discussion with them.
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• The main point that I want to raise is that they think that science works like their religion: solely through appeal to authority.
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  Their religions are based on Revelation which some Authority gave to them in its entirety, completely whole and perfect. From that point on, that Revelation may degrade over time, but in its original form it is perfect! BTW, a few fundamentalist Christians arguing for the infallibility of Scripture will include the proviso: "in its original form." The main distinguishing feature here is such revelations will decay and degrade over time; there's no such thing as learning more, but rather of losing parts of it. And if any part of the revelation is wrong, then that can never be determined nor can it be corrected.

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  In contrast, science has someone making a discovery which is usually not complete and parts of which might not be correct. From that point on, that idea enters into an iterative process of testing and refinement, learning ever more while correcting any part that is not correct. That scientific process results in increasing knowledge along with mistakes being corrected.

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  Especially creationists try to apply their revelation-based model to science. For example, candle2's attacks on radiocarbon dating includes chastising its discoverer, Dr. Willard Libby, for not having complete and perfect knowledge of all the problems the method might encounter. That's not how science works, nor does it present a problem for science since we can still discover those problems and figure out how to deal with those problems. Something that is not possible in his religion's revelation-based system.

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  Another consequence of creationists' confusion on this point leads them to focus their attacks on the founder of a science. As you point out, evolutionary theory has developed considerably over the years and is now much more than original Darwinism. And yet creationists will take every opportunity they can to attack Darwin himself in any way they can find. That is because if you can discredit the Giver of a Revelation, then you also discredit that Revelation -- that is exactly how their own religion works.

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  That also opens up the problem how to evaluate a work for how authoritative it is. For religionists, the authority of Scripture (eg, the Bible) rest solely on its authorship: this book was written by this authority, therefore it is authoritative. Remove that authorship (ie, show that it was actually written by somebody else) and that work loses all authority -- its entire worth is based solely on the identity of its author.

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  For scientists and mathematicians, the authority of a work like Euclid's Geometry is whether it works. Even if Euclid's Geometry turns out to have not been written by Euclid but rather by somebody else, it is still valuable because it still works.

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  In The Age of Reason, Part 2, Thomas Paine presented that idea:

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  But, before I proceed to this examination, I will show wherein the Bible differs from all other ancient writings with respect to the nature of the evidence necessary to establish its authenticity; and this is the more proper to be done, because the advocates of the Bible, in their answers to the former part of the Age of Reason, undertake to say, and they put some stress thereon, that the authenticity of the Bible is as well established as that of any other ancient book; as if our belief of the one could become any rule for our belief of the other.

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  I know, however, but of one ancient book that authoritatively challenges universal consent and belief, and that is Euclid's Elements of Geometry; and the reason is, because it is a book of self-evident demonstration, entirely independent of its author, and of everything relating to time, place, and circumstance. The matters contained in that book would have the same authority they now have, had they been written by any other person, or had the work been anonymous, or had the author never been known; for the identical certainty of who was the author, makes no part of our belief of the matters contained in the book. But it is quite otherwise with respect to the books ascribed to Moses, to Joshua, to Samuel, etc.; those are books of testimony, and they testify of things naturally incredible; and therefore, the whole of our belief as to the authenticity of those books rests, in the first place, upon the certainty that they were written by Moses, Joshua, and Samuel; secondly upon the credit we give to their testimony. We may believe the first, that is, we may believe the certainty of the authorship, and yet not the testimony; in the same manner that we may believe that a certain person gave evidence upon a case and yet not believe the evidence that he gave. But if it should be found that the books ascribed to Moses, Joshua, and Samuel, were not written by Moses, Joshua, and Samuel, every part of the authority and authenticity of those books is gone at once; for there can be no such thing as forged or invented testimony; neither can there be anonymous testimony, more especially as to things naturally incredible, such as that of talking with God face to face, or that of the sun and moon standing still at the command of a man. The greatest part of the other ancient books are works of genius; of which kind are those ascribed to Homer, to Plato, to Aristotle, to Demosthenes, to Cicero, etc. Here, again, the author is not essential in the credit we give to any of those works, for, as works of genius, they would have the same merit they have now, were they anonymous. Nobody believes the Trojan story, as related by Homer, to be true- for it is the poet only that is admired, and the merit of the poet will remain, though the story be fabulous. But if we disbelieve the matters related by the Bible authors, (Moses for instance), as we disbelieve the things related by Homer, there remains nothing of Moses in our estimation, but an impostor. As to the ancient historians, from Herodotus to Tacitus, we credit them as far as they relate things probable and credible, and no farther; for if we do, we must believe the two miracles which Tacitus relates were performed by Vespasian, that of curing a lame man and a blind man, in just the same manner as the same things are told of Jesus Christ by his historians. We must also believe the miracle cited by Josephus, that of the sea of Pamphilia opening to let Alexander and his army pass, as is related of the Red Sea in Exodus. These miracles are quite as well authenticated as the Bible miracles, and yet we do not believe them; consequently the degree of evidence necessary to establish our belief of things naturally incredible, whether in the Bible or elsewhere, is far greater than that which obtains our belief to natural and probable things; and therefore the advocates for the Bible have no claim to our belief of the Bible, because that we believe things stated in other ancient writings; since we believe the things stated in these writings no further than they are probable and credible, or because they are self-evident, like Euclid; or admire them because they are elegant, like Homer; or approve of them because they are sedate, like Plato or judicious, like Aristotle.

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