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Author | Topic: What I have noticed about these debates... | |||||||||||||||||||||||
nator Member (Idle past 2198 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: |
quote: In my experience, most non-believers are happy to let anyone be as religious as they like as long as it doesn't impose upon others' right to live and believe as they wish. This is where a lot of the conflict comes from, because many of the Christians who frequent these discussions obviously believe that everyone in the world should believe as they do.
quote: Well, I hope that we take each person on their individual merits, but it does become painfully obvious that many, many, many Fundamentalist religious people come here and loudly denounce evolution without haveing a CLUE about Biology or science. This does tend to influence one's opinion of the intellectual honesty of Fundamentalists in general.
quote: A big part of the problem is that the religious folks often refuse to put on the "science", or "logic" glasses when looking at scientific or logical issues.
quote: I don't mind if someone has a different way of looking at life. I do mind when people want to teach religious non-science in public school science classrooms. I don't mind if someone wants to believe in the supernatural. I do mind when they distort and abuse science to make their argument seem more intellectual to the scientifically-illiterate.
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nator Member (Idle past 2198 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: |
quote: Hey!
quote: This one message board is enough for me, thanks. I like that there are so many scientists here, and that the moderation is fair and effective. It's true that the debate gets intense, but the rules are enforced pretty well, and that is rare in web-land.
quote: No. Any particular belief of an individual has no effect at all, actually. I could believe in invisible pink unicorns and this would not be an abuse of science.
quote: First of all, it is true that scientists are biased. Scientists are biased in favor of the evidence, as anyone playing by the rules of real scince aught to be. This is the kind of bias you have when you are biased in favor of the idea that the sun will rise tomorrow. Now let me explain to you the fundamental difference between real science and Creation "science". Real science always works from the evidence found and observed in nature, then formulates hypothese and theories in order to explain that evidence. If reliable new evidence comes to light, it may strengthen the existing theory, or it may contradict it, in which case the theory is modified or replaced. It is this tentativity, or falsifiability, of science, that makes it so dynamic and powerful. What we think is true about nature can change if the evidence is there. Creation "science", by contrast, begins not with the evidence found in nature, but with a given interpretation of the Protestant Christian Bible. All of nature must be made to fit into this interpretation of this religious book, which is also held to be without error. So, there is nothing at all which can count against this Bible. This is unbeatable dogma, not falsifiable science.
quote: Really? Like who? OTOH, so what if there were? Just because they believe something is supernaturally-caused doesn't mean that it was just because they say so. They have just as much evidence as my cat does that the world was created by an intelligent being.
quote: Oh my, yes.
quote: Again, this is irrelevant to if it is true or not.
quote: No argument there. However, I am curious; what do you think of Theistic Evolution?
quote: Oh, but Creation "science" is very much an intellectually-dishonest, manipulative, and calculated effort to dress up religion in scientific-seeming veneer in order to sound impressively plausible to the scientifically-uninformed. They do not play by the rules of science and co-opt the respectability and educated "feel" of science to promote their religious dogma. Creation "science" doesn't care a bit about science. They only care about convincing people to believe them. They distort real science and lie to make that happen. ------------------"We will still have perfect freedom to hold contrary views of our own, but to simply close our minds to the knowledge painstakingly accumulated by hundreds of thousands of scientists over long centuries is to deliberately decide to be ignorant and narrow- minded." -Steve Allen, from "Dumbth"
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nator Member (Idle past 2198 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: |
Sorry, this little fish ain't takin' the bait.
I don't bother debating with crazy, angry, so-called "Christians". You certainly have some anger-management issues, don't you? You certainly do fear women, too. Wow, if being a Christian means I have to be like you, no thank you. I was wondering...are you in a mental hospital for the crimially-insane somewhere and read a lot of law books?
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nator Member (Idle past 2198 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: |
quote: The Theists are the one making a positive claim, "God exists." It is up to them to provide evidence for this claim.
quote: The Atheist doesn't have to prove god's non-existence. The non-existence of God is the default option because there isn't any evidence for God, only personal faith and belief.
quote: mmmm, I think it is actually a question of evidence and faith. Belief without evidence = faith. It is also not accurate to say that Atheists do not believe in God because they perceive the Bible to be false.
quote: Einstein didn't believe in God like you probably think he did. He for sure did not believe in a personal god, and also called himself an Agnostic. He did not accept any of the traditional arguments for the existence of God. [This message has been edited by schrafinator, 12-05-2002]
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nator Member (Idle past 2198 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: |
quote: Wow, you do really need to look into some anger-management therapy or something. Wow, being a Christian makes some people really furious and abusive and abrasive.
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nator Member (Idle past 2198 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: |
quote: No, not "just as much", TB. There are far, far more "If man evolved from monkeys, why are monkeys still around?" folks around than the opposite.
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nator Member (Idle past 2198 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: |
quote: quote: Almost none. It almost never happens in science that someone lies or fakes data, because the peer review system is so stringent and the culture demands honesty and integrity. Remember, just because a scientist says something doesn't mean that everyone automatically believes her. Other scientists immediately begin work to replicate the experiments to see if the results are the same. ...and if they do lie or cheat, they are found out by other Scientists, and their entire careers are ruined. The scientific community holds professional integrity to be extremely important. What happens to all of those hundreds of Creationists who lie about their credentials or who make up data or do shoddy work? Nothing, usually, because within the Creation "science" community, it doesn't so much matter if you do these things as long as what you are saying supports the dogma. Here are a couple of links; the first is about questionalble Creationist credentials, and the second is a discussion of how creationists handle their errors compared to real science. http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/credentials.htmlScientific Creationism and Error quote: Oh, for heaven's sake, this is from over a hundred years ago!
quote: You still don't get it. Science begins with the evidence. It observes what is in nature. It then creates explanations,called theories, which explain the evidence. Everything in science is subject to change in the light of new evidence. Creation "science" does not begin with the evidence. It begins with inviolate religious dogma. This dogma can never change, so the evidence must be ignored or forced into the unchangeable dogma. It is not a simple matter of a different interpretation of the evidence. It is a matter of Creation science claiming the authority of science when they don't even come close to actually doing science. When the evidence leads them down a certain path, the scientist says, "OK, this is where the evidence leads." When the evidence lead a Creationist down the same path, they say something like, "The evidence LOOKS like it leads us here, but it really doesn't because the Bible says that it can't. I'll just come up with ANY explanation for this phenomena that fits the Bible no matter how it contradicts the evidence."
quote: Fear of thought. A sad but common quality of many Creationists. Why do you fear thinking about Theistic Evolution? ------------------"We will still have perfect freedom to hold contrary views of our own, but to simply close our minds to the knowledge painstakingly accumulated by hundreds of thousands of scientists over long centuries is to deliberately decide to be ignorant and narrow- minded." -Steve Allen, from "Dumbth" [This message has been edited by schrafinator, 12-05-2002] [This message has been edited by schrafinator, 12-05-2002]
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nator Member (Idle past 2198 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: |
quote: What ways?
quote: You are assuming that the Bible is true, and that Jesus existed, and if he existed, was actuallythe son of god, of course.
quote: But what if the Bible is wrong and it doesn't fit?
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nator Member (Idle past 2198 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: |
quote: Yep, you sure do fear women.
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nator Member (Idle past 2198 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: |
quote: Hey Percy! How is this for some evidence? The "Yes But" problem It pretty clearly correlates level of education with the liklihood of disbelief of evolution; the less education one has, the more likely it is that you disbelieve evolution, AND the more likely it is that you do believe that God created the Earth and everything in it 10,000 years ago. [Fixed quoting. --Admin] [This message has been edited by Admin, 12-05-2002]
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nator Member (Idle past 2198 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: |
None of the people on your list who are dead, which are most of them, count, because they can't have evaluated the 100 or so years of evidence-gathering that has gone on since theiy departed the scene.
Chandra Wickramasinghe is not a Creationist. There was a court case in which he was called to sestify about evolution... From the court proceedings transcript: McLean v. Arkansas Board of Education "The Court is at a loss to understand why Dr. Wickramasinghe was called in behalf of the defendants. Perhaps it was because he was generally critical of the theory of evolution and the scientific community, a tactic consistent with the strategy of the defense. Unfortunately for the defense, he demonstrated that the simplistic approach of the two model analysis of the origins of life is false. Furthermore, he corroborated the plaintiffs' witnesses by concluding that "no rational scientist" would believe the earth's geology could be explained by reference to a worldwide flood or that the earth was less than one million years old."
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nator Member (Idle past 2198 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: |
quote: Thanks! It's been very useful. [Fixed quoting. --Admin] [This message has been edited by Admin, 12-05-2002]
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nator Member (Idle past 2198 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: |
Thanks for posting these tables, Percy!
Yes those are exactly the stats I was talking about.
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nator Member (Idle past 2198 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: |
quote: I have to say, though, that in Biology or Geology circles, why wouldn't Creation "science" be ridiculed just like claims of free energy machines would be ridiculed in physics, or claims of being able to turn lead into gold in chemistry, or claims of proof of alien abduction or Psychic ability in Psychology?
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nator Member (Idle past 2198 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: |
I took a pretty Biology-intensive major at my small liberal arts college, although it was specialized to concentrate on mammals and later, Equines. I had Intro to Biology in my freshman year and it was a difficult course, but I loved it and, if I can say, got one of only two A's given in the class.
Then I had a whole year of Mammilian Anatomy and Physiology, followed by Equine Health, Equine Nutrition, Equine Exercise Physiology, Feeds and Feeding, Equine Lameness, etc. I didn't know anything about the creationist movement until I took an eye-opening course entitled "The Nature of Scientific Inquiry", one of the 8 or so core liberal arts classes that everyone had to take. We talked about all kinds of pseudoscience and anti-science, including some basic logic and debate tactics and fallacies. Creationism was in there, but only as part of a much larger group of non-scientific beliefs. I didn't really "get into" the whole issue until I met who was to be my husband. Yuo all know him here as Zhimbo. He was a Cognitive Neuroscience undergrad at a different liberal arts university (Oberlin) and happened to be interested in the issue. HE actually borrowed my textbooks from the above-mentioned class to teach an Experimental College class called "The Fringes of Science". Through him, I heard about more detail about philosophical skepticism, and the seed of interest in science, skepticism, and this debate which had been planted a few years before in that class, germinated. For the record, Creationism wasn't singled out or really even ridiculed, even in "The Nature of Scientific Inquiry" class. It was just explained to us how it was not scientific, but religious in nature. [This message has been edited by schrafinator, 12-06-2002]
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