Hello everyone

Welcome back. I'd like to offer some comments, but since I have a small window of opportunity I must restrict myself to the first 14 messages which I was able to read this morning.Over the years I've encountered many former YECs who had started out fervent proponents of "creation science" but then switched sides after they actually started learning about their claims. I can't say that I've seen the opposite happen. For decades I've maintained that "creation science" poses a danger to its followers faith, especially with the extreme black-and-white theology that it and fundamentalist Christianity promote, such that everyone must choose between their form of Christianity or atheism and that if evolution is true then God doesn't exist. Obviously (to the non-fundamentalist mind) such teachings are false and can cause great damage.I have to agree with Pressie (Message 5) and vimesey (Message 11) that you appear to still be trapped within that mindset. I will offer some comments on parts of your posts.BTW, so that you might know something about the source of those comments, I have been an atheist for the past 50 years ever since I started reading the Bible and quickly discovered that I just couldn't believe any of what I was reading. I am familiar with fundamentalist teachings and mindset having been a kind of "fellow traveller" in the early 1970's when several friends converted as part of the "Jesus Freak Movement", plus I have been involved in creation/evolution discussions since the mid-1980's. I got involved in "creation science" when an ICR presentation was held at the local university in 1981 (I was on duty that night and could not attend). Surprised that it was still around (I had heard two claims in 1970, one of which I knew to be blatantly false (the NASA moon program story) and the other which I was very skeptical of (living clams carbon-dated as thousands of years old, which is actually due to the reservoir effect)), I thought that there might be something to their claims after all and I wanted to learn more so I started researching it. The more I read, the more I realized that the whole thing was just a sham. I could understand why "creation science" would be so appealing to the fundamentalist mind, but ethically and morally there is no excuse for basing one's faith on outright lies and deception. It was about a decade later that I came to realize through on-line discussions with creationist the extent of "creation science's" pathological stranglehold on the fundamentalist mind.From your OP, Message 1: To start with, all ideas of a God or gods are man-made. Created by fallible, highly limited, definitely finite Man. Even if something exists that could be called "God", the human mind would not be able to fathom it and would instead its own ideas of what that Something is and what It would want of us. All the gods are human creations whose purpose has been to fill in the gaps of our ignorance and to stand for ideas and ideals.That does not mean that the gods cannot be useful, but at the same time we cannot afford to take them too seriously. The fundamentalist ideas of God are an example of ideas being taken far too seriously. One such fundamentalist idea is that their views of God are the only ones. That is simply not true. That is absolutely true. And it has been the creationist argument and the basis for the entire "creation science" strategy, the "Two Model Approach" (TMA). Postulate that two and only two mutually exclusive views of origins exist, the "creation model" and the "evolution model". Narrowly define the "creation model" to be YEC, which means that the "evolution model" then contains every other idea, including "most of the world's religions, both ancient and modern" (as Dr. Henry Morris of the ICR had written to me in support of the TMA). Obviously to anyone at all familiar with logic, the TMA creates a False Dilemma, AKA "false dichotomy".A major problem that creationist had was that "creation science" was created as a legalistic deception in order to sneak their religion past the courts in the wake of Epperson v. Arkansas (1968) which had led to the striking down of the "monkey laws". The only way for that deception to work was to avoid anything that would expose their position as being purely religious. Of course, the moment that they would actually present their "creation model", that would immediately expose their deception; that is exactly what happened with the 1981 Arkansas "balanced treatment" law which defined what the "creation model" was, so the identical Louisiana law, which was struck down by the US Supreme Court in 1987, made sure to leave out that definition. As a result, in public debates and presentations, creationists would go out of their way to avoid ever presenting their "creation model", discussing it, or even defending it; it was always their "evolutionist" opponents who had to present it and to try to get it discussed.As a result, creationist employed their false-dilemma TMA to "prove" creation solely by attacking "evolution". Consider that their "evolution model" is a false caricature of evolution, a hodge-podge steaming mess of out-dated, disproven, and conflicting ideas, including many supernaturalistic ideas from the countless "world's religions, both ancient and modern". What would it take to actually disprove that "evolution model"? A model with interdependent ideas could be disproven by showing that single parts are false, but that is not the nature of their "evolution model". All of those ideas exist independently of each other, so if even one of those ideas turned out to be true, then that would prove the "evolution model" and disprove the "creation model" (the other edge of that sword). So each and every idea would need to be addressed and disproven individually. With so many different ideas, the task of disproving every single one of them would be intractable. Since the "evolution model" also includes ideas that we haven't even come up with yet and hence those ideas could not yet be tested, your disproving of the "evolution model" could never be anything more than tentative. But since a major portion of the "evolution model" is based on the supernatural, on all those non-YEC "world's religions, both ancient and modern", and since it is impossible to examine or test or disprove anything supernatural, that means that it is impossible to disprove their "evolution model". So the most that they could ever do would be to try to instill doubt.And all the while their "creation model" remains unproven and unexamined. But thanks to the TMA it can still be disproven. All it takes is for one idea about evolution to be true and that will prove the "evolution model", which in turn will disprove the "creation model". Nobody has ever been able to disprove God (or any other god for that matter) nor will anyone ever be able to. And yet "creation science" with its Two-Model Approach does succeed in disproving God.BTW, "creation science" has long been referred to by its opponents as being a game of "Hide the Bible". With the Supreme Court decision in 1987 officially recognizing "creation science" as being religious and hence not to be allowed in the public schools, we suddenly saw the adoption of "intelligent design" by the creationists as their new deception, a new yet all too familiar game of "Hide the Creationism". To me, this is an example of your still holding onto the ideas of your former religion. Your statements are not true for all religion, but rather describe a pathology that certain ideas about the nature of religion can lead to.This quote from Thomas Paine's Age of Reason, PART FIRST, 1794, may help to break the ice here:

quote:

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As it is necessary to affix right ideas to words, I will, before I proceed further into
the subject, offer some other observations on the word revelation. Revelation, when applied to religion, means something communicated immediately from God to man.

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No one will deny or dispute the power of the Almighty to make such a communication, if he pleases. But admitting, for the sake of a case, that something has been revealed to a certain person, and not revealed to any other person, it is revelation to that person only. When he tells it to a second person, a second to a third, a third to a fourth, and so on, it ceases to be a revelation to all those persons. It is revelation to the first person only, and hearsay to every other, and consequently they are not obliged to believe it.

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It is a contradiction in terms and ideas, to call anything a revelation that comes to us at second-hand, either verbally or in writing. Revelation is necessarily limited to the first communication- after this, it is only an account of something which that person says was a revelation made to him; and though he may find himself obliged to believe it, it cannot be incumbent on me to believe it in the same manner; for it was not a revelation made to me, and I have only his word for it that it was made to him.
  —Thomas Paine

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Basically, religion is what Man creates out of that hearsay, among other things. Religion is neither perfect nor absolute nor totally true. It cannot possibly be, nor should anyone reasonably expect it to be, since it is the creation of imperfect, fallible Man. One of my problems with Christian theology, especially of the fundamentalist variety, is that it would require me to believe in human infallibility, which I cannot believe in. Fallible Man created religion. Fallible Man wrote the Bible and all other sacred writings. Fallible Man interpreted and misinterpreted the Bible and other sacred writings. Fallible Man translated the Bible and other sacred writings and, since translation is the act of interpreting what is written in order to write the equivalent meaning in another language, fallible Man also mistranslated those works. Fallible Man in his interpretation and misinterpretation of those writings and in his misunderstanding of oral teachings created the doctrines of his religions which he then taught along with his misunderstanding of those doctrines to each subsequent generation, each of whom misunderstood it in their way and passed that misunderstanding on to the next generation. Fallible Man created the various theologies out of his various misunderstandings and misinterpretations of doctrine. Throughout that entire edifice we can find the pudgy fingerprints left from Man having fat-fingered the entire Holy Mess together.Even though Christian theology is supposed to be based on Revelation, in reality it is based on hearsay, as per Paine, upon what the original developers of that theology had been told was Revelation. But regardless of whether that Revelation is true or not, the vast body of Christian theology consists of Man's fallible interpretations of that Revelation and his interpretations of interpretations, etc *. Furthermore, each denominational and sectarian split in Christianity leads to more versions of Christian theology which diverge from each other. And when an individual adopts as his own his particular congregation's version of Christian theology, he does so with incomplete and imperfect knowledge and understanding of that theology, compounded by his teachers' own imperfect knowledge and understanding. Ultimately, it is not Christian theology that is believed in and practiced, but rather each individual believer's own person imperfect version of that theology.Is there such a thing as a completely true theology? No, obviously not. Obviously, all theologies are false, because they all contain false ideas. However, by the same token all theologies (with a few possible exceptions) are true, because they all contain ideas that are true. It's not black or white, but rather a universe of gray out there. So instead of rejecting the entire religion just because you discover parts of its theology to be false, why not reject those false parts or even try to correct them?Now, a big problem for religion is the general lack of corrective measures. Science has corrective measures built into it, but then science has it easy since you can objectively test scientific ideas and findings. You cannot test religious ideas objectively. Which is a pity, because it is the religious questions that are so much more interesting and important.{* FOOTNOTE:
Similarly, the style in which parts of the Talmud are written is that each page consists of concentric rings of writing. Innermost is a passage from the Torah. Surrounding that are the commentaries on that scripture written by the first group of rabbis. Surrounding that are commentaries on those commentaries and surrounding that are commentaries on the commentaries on the commentaries.
} Good idea. But to try to find the answers, you need to know the questions.One thing that a lot of Christian theologies get wrong is that they think that they have all the answers. They don't. But where they're really missing the boat is that religion is not about having all the answers. Rather, the role of religion is to get us to ask the right questions. Seeking the answers is so much more important than having answers and you need to be asking the right questions in order to seek the answers.Questions are also important in science. Since science is an on-going investigation of how the universe works, the best answers are the ones that raise more questions. That is the main reason why "God did it" is not a suitable answer in science, because "God did it" raises no further questions and stops all further investigation.For all its flaws, theology has one thing going for it that science doesn't. The questions of science are of limited scope and are relatively easy. The truly interesting and important questions are beyond the ability of science to answer. It is theology that tries to tackle those questions, that has any hope of seeking answers. But as we use theology for this purpose, we need to learn to deal with theology's problems as well.From your Message 7: Hopefully you have since then learned what a theory actually is (not some wild guess) and what the relationship is between theories and facts.From your Message 8: That's correct. The question is not the Bible itself nor belief in divine creation itself, but rather what you believe about those things. If you are a biblical literalist and you interpret the Bible in a particular way, then not only are you placing yourself at odds with evolution, but also with the whole of reality. In that case, not only must you deny evolution, but you must also deny things that you see, but cannot admit that you see, in everyday life.Gary, a friend at church (Unitarian Universalist), once told me his story. He used to be a devout fundamentalist and he used to have to keep his eyes blind to contradictory evidence that was all around him. Finally the effort of that constant self-deception wore him down. He applied the Matthew 7:20 test to Christianity and found that it failed that test. He became "a complete atheist and a total humanist" and describes himself as feeling much more spiritually fulfilled now than when he was a Christian. The only thing he misses is being able to personally express his gratitude to a god. No, not "any theist". You are lumping in millions of non-Christians there. Rather, you are talking about literalists. And it's not the creation story that conflicts with evolution, but rather their interpretation of it, which would include how literally to interpret it. Doesn't that depend on what their beliefs are and how they view those beliefs?As I recall one theistic evolutionist having described it, those beliefs basically boil down to:1. God created the universe to run by natural processes.
2. Science is the study of how the universe operates.What kind of scientific evidence could invalidate that?Now, if a theistic evolutionist were to try to pull the creationist trick of dictating to God how He had to have created the universe and of dictating to the universe how it must work and what can or cannot exist, then that theistic evolutionist's beliefs would rightfully be in danger, just like the creationist's. If they follow a false theology that claims to have all the answers, then your statement would be true.If they follow a proper theology that asks the questions and seeks the answers, then their religion and science can very well be compatible.Remember, your old theology is not the only one that exists. And most certainly not one of the better ones, as you've already discovered.From your Message 10: This is yet another example of your old theology continuing to blind you. Your old theology taught you that only someone who holds to that theology could be considered to be a Christian. That is false. In reality, there are a great many Christian theologies, all with certain key similarities and many minor differences. You are fixating on some of those minor differences, which your old theology had falsely taught you were major or even essential, in order to pronounce a Christian to be "non-Christian." There may well be an inherent conflict between reality and an authoritarian theology with contrary-to-fact teachings. Obviously, such a theology's teachings are false, so it has much to fear from science.If a religion's teachings are true, then it should have nothing to fear from science and there should be no conflict.

I see the two terms meaning different things. Furthermore, I see agnosticism as a position that is both compatible with theism but also necessary for an honest theist.My agnosticism is acknowledgment of a simple fact: humans are incapable of actually knowing anything about the supernatural. The supernatural is beyond the ability of our own senses or any of our instruments to detect it. Thus we cannot observe the supernatural, nor measure it, nor test it in any way, nor determine whether it even exists. Since we cannot gain objective knowledge of the supernatural, we cannot know it nor know about it. Acknowledging that we do not really know anything about the supernatural nor can we know, is the only truly honest position to hold concerning the supernatural.From that position, you have to start making assumptions. A theist would assume that the supernatural exists as well as supernatural entities (AKA "gods") and would start to build up a theology about the supernatural and those gods. Or adopt the stories that others have built up over the years. But to remain honest, the theist would need to he doesn't actually know these things for a fact and that he cannot, but these are the things that he believes and has faith in. No proof, but faith.An atheist is one who does not believe in the gods. That is the basic definition. From there, there is a wide range of details to the beliefs of an atheist. If he is honest and holds to the agnostic realization, then he would not claim to actually know that the supernatural does not exist, but rather he does not believe that it does. Or he may accept the possibility that the supernatural could exist, but he does not believe that any theists are correct in their pronouncements about the supernatural -- remember, the gods are the creation of Man and it is primarily those gods that atheists do not believe in. While there are a few anti-religion atheists, they are relatively few and mainly the by-product of fundamentalist Christians having deconverted who deal with the pain and suffering they had endured as Christians by lashing out at their former tormentors. But most atheists are quite content to leave the theists to themselves and ask only that the theists afford them the same courtesy. Of course, theists and especially evangelical Christians cannot respect the beliefs of anybody else, so these peaceful atheists end up having to defend themselves. And since in the US for the past three decades the Religious Right in its various forms has been trying to destroy religious liberty and to use the government to impose their religion on the rest of society, atheists and other believers in religious liberty have had to stand up to those transgressors.BTW, I once saw this on a bumper sticker:

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Militant Agnostic:
"I don't know ... and neither do you!"

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Well, there are creationist and then there are creationists.Most creationists we encounter are the sheep (feel free to associate that with "fleecing" if you'd like). They just accept everything that their handlers (eg, creationist teachers, preachers, professional creationists' presentations and publications) feed them and regurgitate it all on us without having digested any of it. IOW, they believe everything that they're told and they don't understand any of the claims. Ever notice that the worst thing you could do to a creationist, something would really anger him, would be to try to take his claims seriously and try to discuss them with him. At first I thought that they knew that their claims were false and they didn't like my calling their bluff, but after a while I came to realize that those creationists simply were incapable of discussing their claims because they didn't understand them themselves.Those sheep obviously are not party to any strategy planning outside of organizing street or school proselytizing efforts. And even then, they are normally fed pamphlets and the like which are basically scripts for conducting a conversion. Those usually involve hitting the mark with "unanswerable" questions intended to take the mark by surprise, to shake him up, and make him more vulnerable, easier to convert. If the mark doesn't really know much about science or about creationist claims (which is most of the general population), then the creationist can control the encounter and keep them on script. If the mark is knowledgeable, then the creationist loses control of the situation and either desperately tries to disengage or frantically tries to regain control. And the sheep don't come up with those scripts and materials, but rather they are published or researched from published materials. Somebody who is capable of more planning had produced them.The planning is handled by the higher echelons, by the professional creationists and the highly motivated amateurs who do have some science or technical background. Like the leadership of the ICR and other creationist organizations. For that matter, I believe it was largely Drs. Gish and H. Morris of the ICR who devised the "Two Model Approach" deception. In the foreword of Dalrymple's Age of the Earth, he told of when Gish and Morris visited a USGS research center in the early 1970's. They did not try to hide the religious nature of their materials and the main reaction they got from their audience of scientists was everybody trying to help them by correcting their glaring mistakes in geology and especially their misunderstanding of thermodynamics. In observing them in later years, I found that they would go out of their way to avoid discussing specific topics with scientists, but rather concentrated on tricking local educators into their "debates".And as I understand the history, at first the ICR made no attempt to hide the religious basis of their material and it was court decisions against them in the early 1970's that established the precedence that you cannot bar the teaching of evolution for religious reasons. That obstacle prompted them to invent the game of "Hide the Bible" in which they superficially scrubbed all their materials of overt religious references and started claiming that their objections to evolution were purely scientific, nothing at all religious about it. That was also the time when they devised the Two Model Approach.So the planning did take place in the upper echelons, the ravening wolves, and the plans then were passed down to the lower echelons, to the sheep, for actual fielding and implementation. Once all the sheep had the scripts in hand, the entire scam started running itself.

Haven't you heard about the oil exploration company operating in Israel that's using the Old Testament to find oil? So far, all their drill holes have come up dry, but they have faith and they persist and, despite their stock having fallen drastically,they continue to find new "true believers" to invest in God's Plan for this company.At the same time, oil exploration companies using secular science have successfully found oil and natural gas deposits in that same area. Which demonstrates the superior effectiveness of the Bible over science!{now removing tongue from cheek}

If anything, I would think that he's pleasantly surprised that Faith has jumped in and provided a living example of the mental pathologies that can be caused by religion in general and "creation science" in particular. Kind of like when Faith jumped right into that thread several months back about whether it's worth it to try to reason with a crazy person.I wonder if we could add a third category to the Cheers/Jeers, something like a rolling-the-eyes emoticon. ( but a serious one, not the cutesy one in the table )

What about the Battle at Helm's Deep? Or the defense of Minas Tirith? Or the battle before the very Gates of Mordor? There were quite literally armies of eyewitnesses to those events, so surely them must also be true!And what about Edgar Rice Burroughs' eyewitness account of seeing his uncle, John Carter, back off to Mars (AKA "Barsoom")? Or his receiving a middle-of-the-night communique from Napier on Venus via his typewriter that started working itself? As Burroughs personally attested to, he submitted the resultant manuscript directly to his publisher exactly as he had received it; any changes made to it since then would be done by the editor "who would even change the Word of God."More along the lines of the witnesses in the Bible, at one Navy school I met a Master Chief reservist whose civilian job was as a court bailiff. He told us something that he had personally witnessed. To put it overly delicately, in a sexual assault case an expert witness presented information about a bodily fluid that had a bearing on the case. When he asked the jury if they had any questions, one female juror asked a irrelevant question regarding her own experience with such fluid. No idea what the answer to her question was, because Master Chief had to quickly duck out the door to keep from laughing out loud.Now, you had better believe that there is no better and reliable eyewitness than a Master Chief Petty Officer and you know that he would not have led us astray about anything. But the same story reappeared elsewhere a few more times. It's even on snopes.com (http://www.snopes.com/college/risque/salty.asp), for those who what to find out what I trying to be so euphemistic about. So why did Master Chief tell the story as if he had witnessed it himself? To make the story better! Sound familiar?

You have no idea how carefully. When she wanted me, a non-geologist, to produce rock samples and explain in detail how they formed and how we can tell how they formed, I recommended that she approach a geologist who would do a far better job than I ever could. She immediately flew into a hysterical rage.She absolutely does not want to ever learn the truth. Deep down, she must know that she must avoid learning the truth regardless the cost. scienceishonesty (AKA "SIH") was in the same position as she is, only he was not able to protect his ignorance as much Faith is. It would be a very good idea for her to have a heart-to-heart with SIH, even though his own creationist past is still poisoning his mind regarding the alternatives to "creation science".In the meantime, even though Faith refuses to benefit from the facts, there are many lurkers who still can.