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Member (Idle past 2931 days) Posts: 504 From: Juneau, Alaska, USA Joined: |
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Author | Topic: Chick tracks misrepresent the intellectual veracity of scientists | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
Lithodid-Man Member (Idle past 2931 days) Posts: 504 From: Juneau, Alaska, USA Joined: |
This idea stems from my recent posts in the "Boot Camp" forum entitled "The lies behind the Miller experiment". My point is not to debate the points in the Chick track Chick.com: Big Daddy? but to discuss the reasons why so many YEC's come into this forum thinking that these points will change the opinions of those of us who feel that the world around us is shaped by materialistic forces. I understand that such a discussion would have to be constrained to avoid turning into the same old material.
So here is my proposed discussion:1) Why is the above-mentioned track, along with statements on numerous YEC websites and videos (Hovind's especially) presented as how evolutionists react to YEC arguments? 2)Do people really believe a college professor is that ignorant? Or do they believe the entire scientific community stands on such a weak firmament that an undergrad could crush it with a few assertions? I recognize that there are YEC creationists out there who don't follow the above, my beef is not with them. My wish is to understand and to educate the ones who come into this forum thinking we are ignorant of Paluxy tracks, Nebraska man, and Darwin's doubts about eyeballs. I do not believe this topic fits into the Chick tract disscusion as I want to talk about the broader issue of why so many newbies enter this debate with the false impression that their arguments are new information. Where is this coming from? As a young teen I was part of the YEC horde, but I was lucky enough to hear the right arguments at the right time. "There but for the grace of God go I" is an atypical athiest's view that describes my condition. During my tenure as an evanagelelist I thought that any evolutionist I met would fall before my meager facts. I never had opportunity to test this before. I do not know which forum would be appropriate for this topic (if any). I did not want this to be another discussion of Chick. I want to discuss the logic of misinformation between YEC leaders and their followers. This message has been edited by Lithodid-Man, 11-20-2004 09:03 AM "Statistics are like a bikini. What they reveal is suggestive, but what they conceal is vital." Aaron Levenstein
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AdminJar Inactive Member |
Message moved from PNT by AdminJar.
This message has been edited by AdminJar, 11-23-2004 05:45 PM
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Coragyps Member (Idle past 735 days) Posts: 5553 From: Snyder, Texas, USA Joined: |
I wonder, L-M, if that trait of many creos is just another manifestation of their common tendency to take anything that their particular authority says as *The Truth*. Willowtree, not to pick on him now that he's gone, seemed to regard anything Gene Scott said as absolutely unassailable - the very mouthpiece of YHWH on Earth, by all appearances. The typical Christian fundy will claim that this sort of truth is all from the Bible, but very frequently will filter this through another entity before passing it on to the rest of us - Dr Scott, or AiG, or whatever. What their source says is, in their view, incontrivertible and the rest of us should just accept it, already!
I kind of put this phenomenon up to the apparent worldview, or mode-of-knowing, among fundamentalists, that Authority is superior to reason or knowledge. I can't bring myself to an understanding of how people can function like that, but I know a lot of 'em that seem to do so.
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Lithodid-Man Member (Idle past 2931 days) Posts: 504 From: Juneau, Alaska, USA Joined: |
I agree with your point, Coragyps, but I want to get at a slightly different point here. The creationist faith in their leadership is definately a significant part of WHY they believe the lists of assertions to be facts. What I am after is the why and wherefore behind this idea that the lowliest of them (for instance, a school-aged child) believe that they can enter a debate on cosmology, geology, biology, chemistry, etc. with an expert in any of those fields and have them back-peddaling in minutes and repenting soon after.
The answer, I believe, is that this message is a critical part of the scam on the part of their leadership. Their goal isn't just to 'educate' their followers but to empower them. Give them slings and stones to fight Goliath. They tell you that if you have enough faith and a factoid or two concerning polystrate fossils and whale legs you will bring down the staunchest believer in evolution. I remember this from my evangelical days. It was an exciting possibility, the Holy Grail of all conversions. Not that it ever happened, to me, other church members, the pastor. But we knew it could happen and wasn't even that hard to do once you knew the magic words. I know there are YEC creationists out there who are very interested in the subject on an academic level. They are not the subject of this topic. I want to try to understand the people we see here who appear to run screaming out of the wilderness and splatter on the castle walls leaving both creationist and evolutionists asking, "What in the hell was that?" (Sorry, the mental image is a gem. There is an old Christian comic book I used to have that showed the Romans fighting the Picts. There was a series of panels in which a satanic-driven Pict ran screaming from the woods and jumped onto a Roman pike leaving the centurian confused. The image seems appropriate for the short-lived posters here).
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Gary Inactive Member |
To find out where the Chick tract information comes from, just look at the sources mentioned in the tracts. Oftentimes, it comes from Kent Hovind, as well as the good old Bible, but there are also mentions of other people such as Scott Huse, in this one for example.
I think that Jack Chick and other prominent creationists have very strong imaginations. That's the only place this stuff could have come from. Creationist literature spreads among the Christian community, and as their imaginative ideas spread, however false they are, they get reinforced. In the scientific community, such ideas are quickly struck down due to the availability of evidence to the contrary, but this does not happen among those who value faith more than evidence. Prejustices against those who believe in evolution are also reinforced, as people tend to dislike anyone who thinks differently from themselves, and these prejustices grow stronger and stronger until they reach the level seen in Big Daddy and other tracts.
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NosyNed Member Posts: 8996 From: Canada Joined: |
2)Do people really believe a college professor is that ignorant? Or do they believe the entire scientific community stands on such a weak firmament that an undergrad could crush it with a few assertions? I think that there are many people who are intimidated and resentful of those with an education. They really want to think that these people can be brought down. We have one example (at least) here and my mother tends to be another. She is very sensitive to her lack of formal education and really does think that what she thinks about a topic can trump someone who has spend a couple of decades looking into it. Even when a few questions demonstrate to her that she really doesn't know a damm thing about it she can carry on with this belief. (It is, btw, not a good idea to ask those questions very often. -- again like our example here).
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Lithodid-Man Member (Idle past 2931 days) Posts: 504 From: Juneau, Alaska, USA Joined: |
I think that there are many people who are intimidated and resentful of those with an education. They really want to think that these people can be brought down.
Which is, I think, why educated people make a good Goliath. Even outside of the creationist realm there are often repeated stories, jokes, urban legends etc. which center around good 'ole common sense prevailing against edjumacation. I encounter this at some level quite frequently and consider it to be, for the most part, harmless. For example, we have a local legend of giant shrimp as big as lobsters. Certain old timers know where they are but they are from so deep they explode when brought to the surface. I have met a good number of fishermen who each claim to have seen this, even ones who "proved" it to a biologist (never can remember their name...) Now I know that this is completely untrue. I don't think it is untrue because some book told me it isn't true or because I never leave the lab to see these fantastic things. I know it is untrue because deep water animals don't explode just because, they explode because they are fish with a swim bladder. Shrimp aren't fish, don't have a swim bladder don't explode. I have, in my lab, a good collection of shrimp from as deep as 6500 meters (over three times as deep as the deepest part of Icy Straits where this supposedly occurs). I am absolutely positive that none of these shrimp exploded. This actually illustrates my whole point better than I had before and makes a great analogy to the creationists in question. I know that the fisherman's story isn't true (they are dishonest in telling the story first hand, but probably believe it to be true) because of a basic background in the mechanics of deepsea biology, morphology of marine animals, and the physics of liquids and gasses under pressure. To the person telling the story it is completely plausible. The deeper you go, the bigger the animals. The deeper you go the higher the pressure and the higher liklihood of destruction when brought to the surface. So giant shrimp that explode when brought up seem logical. Likewise certain creationists enter these discussion not understanding what level of background knowledge is required to see why their arguments make no sense (awkward sentence!). They repeat an assertion over and over not getting that we we don't so much disagree with their point as much as the point itself is meaningless. "Why is the Miller experiment the best evidence for evolution even though it was proven false?" "If evolution is true there should be this number of supernova remnants..." "How can a whale's pelvis be vestigial when it supports muscles used for reproduction?" And so on. What I think happens is that these points are made, it is quickly pointed out that the argument itself is flawed (has nothing to do with evolution, is misdefining terms, and so on) but the poster may lack the background to understand why it is flawed. So we will respond, "vestigial does not mean useless" and they will repeat "but there are muscles attached to it" until the thread dies a lonely death. This message has been edited by Lithodid-Man, 11-23-2004 11:15 PM
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sfs Member (Idle past 2534 days) Posts: 464 From: Cambridge, MA USA Joined: |
I don't think the phenomenon is unique to creationism. If people have no direct experience of an area of human endeavor, they tend to assume that mastering it can't really be that big a deal. Some years ago I saw the results of a survey of fans of professional sports, and how well they could play the sport. I don't remember the exact figures, but a ridiculously large fraction of the people in the stands thought that, with a little training, they could do as well as the guys on the field. And many people have little or no direct experience with science or scientists.
I would hope that higher education would expand people's awareness of what they don't know, but I'm not sure that it always does; some people seem to assume that because they're educated in one field, they're experts in all. Philosophy seems to bring out the worst in people in this regard: I've seen more than one highly educated person who knew next to nothing about philosophy trying to lecture a professional philosopher on the subject.
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coffee_addict Member (Idle past 477 days) Posts: 3645 From: Indianapolis, IN Joined: |
I agree completely. I used to give private clarinet lessons. I actually had some students that thought a few weeks of it would make them even better than me. My dad is a pianist and he has some very interesting stories on how people who don't know jack about music think that they know music better than a 60 year old pianist who's been performing since he was 15. Actually, once my dad got into a debate with some guy he met at this convention. I wasn't paying attention so I don't know what they were talking about, but I started paying attention when I realized that this guy just admitted he didn't know how to write music and he needed someone to write down music that he has in his head. My dad was furious afterward because this guy was really ignorant about music and he thought he knew everything.
Hate world. Revenge soon!
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contracycle Inactive Member |
Or, how people who don't know jack about Marxism feel able, nay even duty-bound, to correct my obviously erroneous misunderstandings. Or make easily falsifiable claims to what Marxism is, cl;aims, does, despite these being wholly untrue.
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Lithodid-Man Member (Idle past 2931 days) Posts: 504 From: Juneau, Alaska, USA Joined: |
If people have no direct experience of an area of human endeavor, they tend to assume that mastering it can't really be that big a deal. And therefore feel confident in mocking it. Some time ago here I replied to a message (I have to find it to remember to whom) because the poster had said that it is very easy for evolutionists to make statements (on origins and relationships) that then become instant dogma. I felt the need for a swift and ruthless reply. Adding your two-bits to the realm of scientific knowledge is, as many of you know, a difficult process that involves long research and analysis, multiple written drafts, usually several rejections, peer review, and then your 'baby' is out there in the cold, dark, world. To say it is "easy" shows that the person believes science is nothing more than assertions made by scientists. Like scientists hold a press conference and declare their fossil to be the missing link and that is it.
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Coragyps Member (Idle past 735 days) Posts: 5553 From: Snyder, Texas, USA Joined: |
I didn't express myself too completely or well last post.
What I was thinking toward was that the standard-issue creationist puts such stock in the words of Authority - Bible, AiG, whichever - that they just assume that everyone else does, too. I get the impression, as you say, that this sort of poster thinks that we Evilutionists just don't have their little piece of (dis)information yet, but that as soon as the tidbit with its authoritative source ("some scientist said...") is presented to us, we'll recognize the wisdom there and convert. And when we argue against their factoid or its source, they have no clue of how to reply except to repeat the assertion or dodge the reply altogether. Either "well, it's still True" or "here's something completely different that's True."
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CK Member (Idle past 4128 days) Posts: 3221 Joined: |
Part of the problem is the difference in mindset - science deals in the collective evidence presented in a field. Creationism (and the christianity that spawns it) is based on testimonials and the authority of the individual presenting it.
It's why they get insulted when we say "but where is Dr.X's evidence for that statement - which peer reviewed journal?" They take it as a slur on the witness rather than the standard scientific enquiry that it is.
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nator Member (Idle past 2170 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: |
I think that there are many people who are intimidated and resentful of those with an education. They really want to think that these people can be brought down. We have one example (at least) here and my mother tends to be another. She is very sensitive to her lack of formal education and really does think that what she thinks about a topic can trump someone who has spend a couple of decades looking into it. C'mon, Ned, why're you putting down ol' buz? All he does is use his common sense in this town.
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nator Member (Idle past 2170 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: |
quote: Arrogance and ignorance go together, particularly in America, I think. Americans as a group are pretty much willing to give their (educated or not) opinion about anything and never, ever want to be seen as not knowing something. As many of you know, I work in the specialty food industry and it is a serious challenge for me to remain professional when some uninformed customer starts telling me something that I know to be false. Part of our mission at my business is to educate our guests, and it falls upon each of us who deal with the public to learn and hone the difficult skill and art of giving good service that makes it possible for us to correct them without making them feel stupid.
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