The spectacular fall of YEC beliefs

Putting God in the Constitution as was done in the Declaration of Independence would not be joining church and state but it would be declaring the essential Christian nature of the nation.

Which raises two points:

1. "God" was never put into the Constitution -- except for an Anno Domini dating convention, as I recall -- , which renders your statement completely moot, or purely hypothetical at best. If you know of any place where "God" was put into the Constitution, then do please point it out and quote it exactly.

2. It would be difficult to argue that your particular "God" was placed into the Declaration of Independence (which is not part of the Constitution -- your wording was confusing and appeared at first to say otherwise). It did not mention the "God of the Bible", but rather "Nature's God". What that should mean can be found in Thomas Paine's Age of Reason in which he compared the false "God of the Bible" with the true "God of Nature." The language of the Declaration so strongly parallels Paine's that some think that he may have co-authored it or at least influenced it strongly.

   One of the major problems that Godists have is in misinterpreting each and every mere mention of the word, "God", as referring directly and solely to their own particular idea of "God". Virtually every different religious group (and even many individuals within each group) has its own particular idea of "God" which differs from the ideas of the others, often greatly. Just because someone uses the word "God" does not mean that he is referring only to your "God" -- there's even a Unitarian hymn which says, "Some call it God, some call it evolution" (so obviously not your idea of "God").

The point that I do see raised over and over again in the writings of the Founding Fathers and of the Constitution's first interpreters is the idea that every single person has "rights of conscience" in which he believes and practices and worships only in accordance with his own conscience and that nobody can be allowed to abridge his rights by forcing a particular religion upon him -- giving the State control over the practice of religion would lead to such an abridgment. In addition, religion has proven to have such a corrupting influence over government that government must be protected from religion. That is why the metaphor of the Wall of Separation appears and was used even before the drafting of the First Amendment (and of course long before Jefferson coined that specific term in his 1811 letter to the Dansbury Baptists); eg, Madison's "Great Barrier which defends the rights of the people". One interpreter pointed out that believers will use government to commit atrocities which atheists would not, so, as much as he hated atheists, the government is by far much safer in the hands of atheists than in the hands of believers.

Please learn some history along with some basic geology.

I don't think they're necessarily dying off - the Bible belt is fertile ground in more than one sense.

That has long been my own observation for decades. The evangelical groups that would tend to be YECs proselytize aggressively, so there are constantly new batches of brand-new creationists who are then trained in the "new" "scientific findings" that support YEC and that "no scientist has been able to respond to nor has even tried. Of course, that "new" stuff is decades old and had been soundly refuted decades ago, but those new creationists are never told about any of that. I have personally witnessed young creationists triumphantly present "new scientific evidence that will blow you evolutionists away", only to learn that their
new" claim is older than they are and was refuted before they were even born and here is the a detailed explanation of your claim and why it is wrong. In one particular case in particular which I report about on my site (his "new" claim was Setterfield's old c-decay claim; and, yes, he was the one who proudly proclaimed that it would blow us evolutionists away), the poor creationist just stood there, dumbfounded, in shock, completely blown away himself.

As long as new batches of suckers are born every few years and as long as their religious leaders continue to lie to them about YEC, YEC will still be around.

Found this nice graph:

Nice graph. There's another situation afoot in which upwards of 80% of the young people raised in fundamentalist/evangelical/YECish/etc churches not only leave their faith but also leave religion behind altogether. I had understood them to be the major source of the growth of the Nones. I wonder how they are factored into that graph.

A thought on how the strongly affiliated could be holding steady could well be due to their aggressive proselytizing, such that they try to counter the hemorrhaging of their next generation with new converts. Kind of similar to the Shakers, who practiced strict celibacy and hence literally could not grow a new generation. They only way they could survive was to constantly recruit new converts, mainly out of orphanages from what I've heard.

To have a better understanding of “establishment of religion” you should read Memorial and Remonstrance

Especially apt since it was written by James Madison a few years before he drafted the First Amendment. That is something that the Radial Religious Right used to harp upon constantly, "original intent".

And of course Faith must keep herself very carefully ignorant, as evidenced by her refusal to read that document (Message 48). If she only read the first paragraph, then she would have missed so many points:

• That neither government nor religion can dictate individual beliefs.
  
• That civil government has no authority over religion nor faith.
  
• That religion is weakened and corrupted by government support.
  
• That in matters of faith we must not allow the majority to impose tyranny over the minorities.
  
• That neither government nor religion be allowed to "overleap the Great Barrier which defends the rights of the people." IOW, the Wall of Separation being described by the drafter of the First Amendment.
  
• A listing of the great evils that happen when there is a church-state establishment.
  
• How those evils and tyranny will drive people away from our shores. Mention and comparisons are made with the Spanish Inquisition that was still in effect at the time (from c. 1492 to c. 1835, a "brief and minor issue" according to apologists).
  

Basically, Madison was against almost everything that the Religious Right is for. And for which Faith has voiced support and desire for in the past (before she took the fall-back position of not wanting to turn the USA into such a religious tyranny, only that she desires to live in one).

... Bibles printed for use in the schools, ...

You should provide more information on this and other of your "points".

This one kind of sounds like the first chapter of Chris Rodda's Liars for Jesus, which examines a number of Christian revisionist authors (eg, William Federer, David Barton), compares how each version borrowed from and extrapolated from each other, and then presents the actual history of what had actually happened. Not an easy read, because she gets into a lot of detail and quotes sources extensively.

The first chapter deals with a claim that Congress had ordered by printing of Bibles. In reality (as I recall, so do look it up and read it for yourself), a publisher had printed too many Bibles to sell and so was lobbying Congress to buy them off of him. I think that his over-production had something to do with the Colonies not yet having the capacity to print enough books which used to be imported from England but now that source was gone, etc.

... against any kind of state enforced church or doctrine imposed on the people, basically an elaboration of freedom of conscience which was the big Puritan concern of the day; and Madison's concern was more for the church because an alliance with the state corrupts it. No, it is not against Christian principles running the government, it is against forcing people to believe something, which has nothing to do with having a basically Christian worldview as the foundation of governing principles.

No, you still do not understand. So then please just read it! It's in English!!, so how hard could it possibly be?

I should point out a bit more of the history, as I do on my own site (http://dwise1.net/rel_lib/memorial.html). Patrick Henry had introduced into the Virginia legislature a bill to "[establish] a provision for Teachers of the Christian Religion" (ie, clergy) -- IOW, to pay clergy with government funds derived from taxpayers (from my page linked to above):

quote:

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Patrick Henry's constituents had been complaining to him about the decline of public morality, much as the Religious Right does nowadays. In response, he sponsored a bill that would allocate public funds (ie, tax money) to "[establish] a provision for Teachers of the Christian Religion" (ie, clergy). Thomas Jefferson's faction opposed the bill and were able to delay a vote on it until the next session. Then they were able to persuade James Madison to write a pamphlet opposing the bill which they then distributed throughout the state. That pamphlet, A Memorial and Remonstrance, proved so effective that when the State Legislature reconvened, Henry's bill was dropped without even being brought to a vote. Instead, Thomas Jefferson's Religious Liberty bill was voted into law.

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... , which has nothing to do with having a basically Christian worldview as the foundation of governing principles.

Which yet again forces me to ask just what the f*** you are talking about. Just what exactly does a Christian worldview have to do with the outright humanistic principles of self-governance that this great nation was founded upon. The Christian worldview would have been the Divine Right of Kings, which King James sought to enforce with his reinterpretation of the Bible (AKA the KJV) and which the Declaration of Independence completely and utterly blew out of the water! And the Preamble to the Constitution of the United States of America:

quote:

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We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

---

I was around and fully awake in the early 1980's and I was listening to the bullshit lies of the Radical Religious Right. They had a word to describe everything that is said in the Preamble to the Constitution of the United States of America: secular humanism!

We completely rejected the Christian ideas of the Divine Right of Kings. We took it upon ourselves to create our own government by ourselves and for ourselves. Just what does any stupid god have to do with any of it?

Yet again, your blatantly absurd and baseless assertions are nothing but nonsense. We cannot even figure out what you might think you are talking about.

I lived the first 45 plus years of my life as a secular liberal who believed in evolution ...

And yet you display a complete and utterly ignorance of evolution. Interesting.

So then what you thought was evolution actually wasn't. So your entire rejection of evolution is based on false ideas about evolution based on your abysmal ignorance of the subject.

So your rejection of evolution is actually a rejection of some false and hopelessly muddled ideas you had had about the subject which had nothing whatsoever with the actual subject of evolution.

So all your statements about having "believed in evolution" and having subsequently rejected it are completely meaningless.

So what's your point?

Edited by dwise1, : o -> So

Would you also object to the idea that the first moves toward literacy in Europe were made in order to teach the Bible?

I would not make such a bold statement, but then so what?

Certainly, the Catholic model was that the Universal Truth must not be misinterpreted, so the laity had to be kept insulated so that they would not arrive at heretical ideas because they naïvely did not know how to properly interpret Scripture.

The Protestant model, born of Gutenberg's press, held that every member needed to read Scripture for himself.

The decor of Catholic versus Protestant churches still echo this difference. Catholic churches are filled with imagery and art which constantly remind its worshipers of the lessons they have been taught, whereas Protestant churches are barren of any art since they are expected to read the Bible for themselves to remember the lessons taught.

Which brings us to the issue of literacy. My understanding is that the original purpose of Sunday School was got teach church members, mostly adults, how to read. These people worked long hours in factories every day except for Sunday, so Sunday was used to teach them how to read.

So what?

Consider a hypothetical person. He lies constantly. Cheats everybody. Has stolen from many. Has killed a number of people in cold blood with absolutely no remorse whatsoever. But he always treats his mother extremely well.

Is that a good person just because of how he treats his mother? Or is he a horrible persons for all the other outrageous crimes against humanity that he has committed?

Given your lack of a functioning moral compass, I feel it necessary to state that, no, he is most definitely not a good person.

Now apply that exercise to a religion. This hypothetical religion has done a small number of good things, but on the whole it proves to be completely evil. So is that religion completely good just because of a small number of good things it has wrought? Or is it evil because of the vast amount of evil that it produces?

Again, your lack of a functioning moral compass would lead you astray. No, despite those few good things that religion has caused, even accidentally, it is still evil.

So just what do you think you are accomplishing by bringing up one or two accidental good things?

BTW, it was the Soviet Union, an officially atheist government, which accomplished one of the highest literacy rates in the world. So does that lead you to proclaim that Soviet Communism is a wonderfully ideal system? If not, then why not?

If you are not already familiar with it, at talkorgins.org Jim Foley has his hominid FAQ, Fossil Hominids: The Evidence for Human Evolution (1996-2016). In the "Creationist Arguments" section is a link, Comparison of creationist opinions, though the page itself is entitled "Comparison of all skulls".

Basically, the creationist claim is that apes and humans are not at all related and hence all hominids are either 100% ape or 100% human and that the dividing line between the two is clear. So Foley presents a summary array of six hominid skulls and the verdict published by ten (10) creationists in twelve (12) different publications -- twice by Gish and three times by Taylor (one of which is co-authored with Van Bebber), in which they contradict themselves. The six hominid fossils in the summary chart are: ER 1813, Java, Peking, ER 1470, ER 3733, and WT 15000. The ten (10) creationists are: Baker (1976), Bowden (1981), Cuozzo (1998), Gish (1979 & 1985), Line (2005), Lubenow (1992), Mehlert (1996), Menton (1988), Taylor (1992, co-authoring with van Bebber in 1995, 1996), van Bebber (co-authoring with Taylor in 1995). That gives us twelve (12) published works that had been researched for this article.

Go to the page to read the chart yourself (please do, since my own summary here could contain a miscount or two since there are multiple verdicts by some creationists):

In the case of ER 1813, all creationists classified it as 100% ape except one, Line, who classified it as human but wrote that he couldn't really tell, which itself is a tell (poker term meaning some kind of unconscious behavior a player has which gives away that he's bluffing).

In the case of Java, five (5) creationists classified it as 100% ape, three (3) classified it as 100% human, and one, Taylor, classified it twice as 100% ape (once alone in 1992, and again co-authoring with Van Bebber in 1995) and a third time as 100% human (1996).

In the case of Peking, four (4) creationists classified it as 100% ape and five (5) classified it as 100% human, while one, Taylor, classified it once as 100% ape (1992) and then twice as 100% human (1995 co-authoring with van Bebber and again solo in 1996).

In the case of ER 1470, two (2) creationists consistently classified it as 100% ape and five (5) consistently classified it as 100% human. Again, Line classified it as human, but wrote that he couldn't really tell (again, a poker-type tell), so not 100%. Lubenow classified it as human, but he really couldn't tell (yet again, a poker-type tell), so not 100%. Gish is the surprise, classifying it as 100% human in 1979 and then switching to 100% ape in 1985 (so much for the divide between "kinds" being so clear that "any drunk off the street can do it" (sorry, a casual Navy DP contractor specification for how easy to use a computer program must be)).

In the case of ER 3733, one (1) creationist classified it as 100% ape whereas all the rest (nine (9)) classified it as 100% human.

And again, in the case of ER 3733, one (1) creationist classified it as 100% ape whereas all the rest (nine (9)) classified it as 100% human.

Cuozzo classifies all six hominid fossils as 100% ape.

Line classifies four (4) of the six(6) hominid fossils as 100% human and the remaining two as human with some doubts since he really couldn't tell despite the creationist claim that the dividing line is so clear that anyone can see the difference.

Lubenow classified ER 1813 as 100% ape and the rest human: four (4) were 100% human, whereas one, ER1470, he classified as human but with some reservations (he couldn't tell despite the standard creationist claim of how clear the dividing line is).

So then, if the gaps are {paraphrasing}"so obvious"{/paraphrasing}, then why are the {scare_quotes}"most highly trained and astute"{/scare_quotes} professional creationists unable to agree which are 100% ape and which are 100% human?

I mean, it's all so obvious to anybody, right?

Curious minds want to know.

Christians need to accept the revelation of the God's creation - to wit: the earth. Science suggests that the earth is billions of years old and that life began as relatively simple creatures, with more complex creatures added as millions of years passed to the present day.

Wow! That is perhaps the first sane utterance I have ever heard from a creationist! And I've been studying "creation science" since about 1981, so that's saying something!

Any actual creationist would believe that the World is the result of their Creator's act of Creation. Faux creationists, whom we have all seen far too often, would instead insist that their vastly fallible false interpretations of frail and faulty human-made scrivenings should be able to take precedence over empirical evidence. Man wrote the Bible; God wrote the World.

But then ...

The obvious gaps in the fossils record are consistent with the Christian theory of a progressive creation. This is an "evolution" of sorts, but has nothing to do with Darwinsim or biological evolution.

... suddenly you veer left off into the weeds, where you stumble out of the car and throw up all over your own shoes.

You seem to want to ... I'm not quite sure what. Do you think that science is a negotiation? Are you trying to compromise on one point in order to gain another?

UGH!!!!!!

If there is indeed some "Christian theory of a progressive creation", then propose a new topic in which you present everything you know about that "theory" and we can examine it and comment on it which you will respond to, most especially to our questions!

Otherwise, nobody has any clue what you are babbling about.