Why Are Some Hell-Bent On Teaching Intelligent Design? 1293
Funksaw writes "Here's an op-ed by first-time politician, long-time Slashdotter Brian Boyko, where he talks about his experiences testifying at the Texas Board of Education in favor of having real science in science textbooks. But beyond that, he also tries to examine, philosophically, why there is such hardened resistance to the idea of evolution in Texas. From the article: '[W]hat is true is that evolution tests faith. The fact of evolution is incontrovertible and supported by mounds of empirical evidence. Faith, on the other hand, is fragile. It is supported only by the strength of human will. And this is where it gets tricky. Because to many believers, faith, not works, is the only guarantee that one can pass God's litmus test and gain access to His divine kingdom. To lose one's faith is to literally damn oneself. So tests to that faith must be avoided at all costs. Better to be a philosophical coward than a theological failure.'"
God of the Gaps (Score:4, Insightful)
More importantly (Score:5, Funny)
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I'm not the OP but the logic is pretty straightforward. By definition, in any universe where omniscience exists, free will cannot also exist.
If anyone can know with absolute certainty that I will do something, I therefore cannot choose to do anything else.
Re:More importantly (Score:5, Informative)
I'm not the OP but the logic is pretty straightforward. By definition, in any universe where omniscience exists, free will cannot also exist.
If anyone can know with absolute certainty that I will do something, I therefore cannot choose to do anything else.
But that logic falls apart when we examine the act of choice closer. Why did you make a particular choice? If determinism holds - if your actions are somehow preordained, for example by following logically from a complete description of some former or latter moment of time, such as "the beginning", or the combination of your personality and history, or anything else - and this means determinism coerces your will, then surely the alternative - that you simply choose randomly - means that the metaphorical dice coerces you just as much.
What's actually happening here is that reality has been reduced [wikipedia.org] to the point where free will lies in peaces, and since none of these pieces is will by itself it can't be found. But of course in reality people are highly predictable; sure. they can choose something else than what someone who knows them very well predicts, they just don't want to. In a 100% deterministic system, this predictability tops at 100% certainty, while in a system with a random dice added to process it's that dice, not the person, who is "free" to take unexpected pics (because if the dice is the person or his "will", we've just pushed the problem one step back and recurse right back to it).
tl;dr If you compare a philosophical and juridical concept with a concept in physics, you'll get "sounds like purple" as an answer.
Re:More importantly (Score:5, Funny)
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Just FYI:
http://www.biblica.com/bibles/faq/11/ [biblica.com]
Quote:
Almost the entire Old Testament was written in Hebrew during the thousand years of its composition. But a few chapters in the prophecies of Ezra and Daniel and one verse in Jeremiah were written in a language called Aramaic. This language became very popular in the ancient world and actually displaced many other languages. Aramaic even became the common language spoken in Israel in Jesus' time, and it was likely the language He spoke day by day. Some Aramaic words were even used by the Gospel writers in the New Testament.
The New Testament, however, was written in Greek. This seems strange, since you might think it would be either Hebrew or Aramaic. However, Greek was the language of scholarship during the years of the composition of the New Testament from 50 to 100 AD.
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And of course, the new testament isn't part of Judaism. Per that faith jesus was a false messiah.
Their position on the new testament is too complex for me to summarize.
http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/11498-new-testament [jewishencyclopedia.com]
Re:More importantly (Score:5, Interesting)
The bulk of the bible was written in Hebrew and Greek, not just Aramaic. Also, there is no "original" bible. We have fragments. Some rather large ones (Textus Receptus, Textus Sinaiticus, and Testus Vaticinus." Which adds to your translation of a translation thought.
As someone who has done Biblical translations...
There has been much study done on the various texts, and ones found from quite a long time ago, e.g. Dead Sea Scrolls. What has been found is that the "Old Testament" was kept very rigorlessly and was virtually unchanged after centuries. The Levite Priests in charge of copying the texts would typically destroy copies that had even a single stroke out of place. Yes, others outside the temple also made copies, but they were not considered authoritative copies - and those copies would usually end up with commentary as well.
Most of the debate about texts does not occur over the "Old Testament" texts written in Hebrew, but the "New Testament" texts written in Greek. The entire "New Testament" was written first in Greek; Aramaic versions would have been translations much like our English versions are. Quite a few of the texts for the "New Testament" have been proven to be passed down without change; the issue comes in that there has had to be many comparisons done as monks would write their commentaries in the margins in many cases and those commentaries became hard to decipher.
Regarding what is considered to be the "Canonical" text - that is what makes up the official Bible - that was settled in 300 A.D and has not changed since. There is a secondary set of books called the Apocrapha that some consider to be part of the Bible, however those books did not meet the requisite criteria for the council in 300 A.D for them to be considered "Canonical" texts. Many things, like David Brown's DaVinci Code, rely more on the Apocrapha texts to do what they do.
Most Prostestant churches view the Apocrapha as having some value as a secondary source, but do not consider it to be equal to the Bible. The "Book of Mormon", on the other hand, is considered heresy.
Re:More importantly (Score:4, Interesting)
Well, no, it's just an inconsistency in the Bible. I don't actually presume that a deity would care for much of anything at all.
That being said, I don't think you quite have your finger on Ares's heart; the Greeks recognized him as a bloodthirsty killing machine. The god of war isn't merely a metaphor for life's struggle, unless perhaps you're a Klingon. In the Roman empire this was downplayed, but only because they were so preoccupied with the idea of him as a protector; Roman farmers would call on him to rid their crops of blights.
Old-Testament Yahweh has a lot more in common with Zeus's habit of dispatching judgements from afar, or perhaps the even more self-centred attitudes of an older deity like the Titan Cronus. (Not to be confused with Chronos.)
The New Testament formulation of God is, quite simply, entirely different, and draws a lot of inspiration from things that had been attributed to Apollo and other largely benevolent gods, in tone if not in subject matter. (Zeitgeist technically deals with this, but the research and objectives of that documentary are so profoundly deficient I wouldn't wish it on anyone. So don't watch it. Just don't.) The Romans were gradually refining their concept of divinity and probably would have produced a weak form of monotheism on their own within a few centuries, centred around the cult of Apollo, if the Christians hadn't shown up. (I say "weak" both because few people cared and because the other deities would no doubt still have held some tokenary power.)
In order to compete, the Christians naturally had to produce a message that was more enlightened and loving than what the established theology could offer. The result is a totally different deity; a profoundly loving one. With all the dying for the sins and so forth. This is where the harmonizing comes from that I bring up. (Fun trivia: earlier versions of the New Testament described Jesus's childhood and revealed that he was a total jerk who abused his powers but then saw the error of his ways.)
That all being said, you're probably already moving past the Bible when you make statements like that, which is good, but it leaves me wondering why you'd bother with trying to understand a deity's motives anyway. If life's just a struggle, you don't need any divinity telling you that; that's just evolution in action. (And a rather turbulent subsection of it at that; there are plenty of people and organisms on this planet that are very much at peace.) At most you've described a situation that calls for a deistic universe, with no intervention on the part of a blind watchmaker.
If it's the afterlife you're worried about, may I point out that the concept of eternal damnation in Hell was invented in the middle ages as a way to scare heretics? It's vastly less credible an idea than the Bible itself. There are Anglican ministers who preach that it doesn't exist.
Re:More importantly (Score:5, Funny)
Sex is for procreation not recreation! Sinner!
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Let your water source prove to be blessed, and rejoice with the wife of your youth,a lovable hind and a charming mountain goat. Let her own breasts intoxicate you at all times. With her love may you be in an ecstasy constantly.
That sound like more than just mindless procreation, so the next time some bible thumper insists on ridiculous ideas (such as sex is only for procreation) ask them for scriptural proof because at John 17:17 Jesus said; "... your word is truth," so anyone who speaks truth will have sound scriptural support from God's word; the Bible, to back up their claims (2nd Timothy 2:15).
Re:More importantly (Score:5, Funny)
> who puts child production/care next to waste treatement plants?
Libertarians, because regulations are evil.
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Sex is for procreation not recreation! Sinner!
Sex is to quiet those voices... the voices that keep telling me to ...
Wait, nevermind.
If you get a book and a funny hat and a bunch of people standing behind you cheering you on, you can do whatever the voices tell you to do, and even tell people about the voices.
Re: (Score:3)
If you think humans were badly engineered then spare a thought for the birds. God gave them a cloaca.
Re:More importantly (Score:5, Funny)
Take a look at a platypus sometime. I mean, the damn things are basically beavers with webbed feed and a duck's bill. And they lay eggs. It's like he took all the left over bits from other creations and just tossed them together in a salad bowl.
Or, as Robin Williams postulated, the platypus is proof that God smokes pot. [youtube.com]
Re:More importantly (Score:4, Informative)
And that they are secret agents.
Re:More importantly (Score:5, Informative)
And he put the retinas in backwards too.
Also, what type of idiot wires up the larynx via the heart? I could maybe understand if there was a ganglion down there, but no - it's just a nerve that doubles back on itsself for no good reason.
Re:More importantly (Score:5, Informative)
Backwards in humans, but an improved design in cephalopods [wikipedia.org].
Praise Cthulhu
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The problems is that users have also been finding recreation in that sewage outlet in ways said engineer had not intended.
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Actually the way the anus and prostate are arranged is very convenient for male-on-male buttsex...what's up with that, God? Huh?
"Oh you better not stick your weener in another guy's pooper, but I'll put some fun bits in there and make some of you guys sexually attracted to men. Trololololol!"
Re:More importantly (Score:5, Funny)
If God did create us, how bad an engineer do you have to be to put a sewage outlet right in the middle of a recreational area?
You can hardly blame God for that. God merely created us in his own image ... blame the engineer who designed God!
Re:More importantly (Score:5, Funny)
It's ancient aliens all the way up.
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That's the sound I made while watching Prometheus.
Re:More importantly (Score:5, Interesting)
If God did create us, how bad an engineer do you have to be to put a sewage outlet right in the middle of a recreational area?
Assuming we were designed (a big assumption), it's a lot easier to credit engineering skill when you get a second degree burn, and you end up healing. Think about it; how would you handle a design requirement for an empty planet with no replacement parts readily available?
Re:More importantly (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is that we created god - and we obviously weren't very good engineers because the god we created seems to be a bit of an arsehole.
Re:More importantly (Score:5, Insightful)
If God did create us, how bad an engineer do you have to be to put a sewage outlet right in the middle of a recreational area?
That's a flippant quote, but seriously, the number of major design flaws is staggering.
eg. Why does food go down the same hole as the air? How many people choke to death on food every day?
Re:More importantly (Score:4, Insightful)
Why does an omnipotent being need to compromise?
Re:More importantly (Score:4, Insightful)
Because the sperm needs a temperature a bit lower than body temp in order to be generated.
And isn't that a really dumbass design? Surely an intelligent designer would have made sperm nice and happy at body temperature. And here's the silly thing: there's a fair bit of body temperature variation in mammals, yet none seem to manage to have the testes inside.
Why don't male birds with even higher body temperatures fly around with a pair of danglies hanging below their feathers? Perhaps the designer decided that birds were to get better features like body temperature sperm and uniflow lungs.
Re:God of the Gaps (Score:5, Insightful)
Um, no. God only shrinks if you're explanation for every problem is "God did it". If that's why you believe in a deity, then you miss the point of faith.
To make the point differently, just because I know exactly how a chair was built, it doesn't mean that I stop believing that a carpenter built it.
Re:God of the Gaps (Score:5, Insightful)
The point of faith is to believe that God cares about you, or that at least there is some kind of meaning or justice in the universe. Otherwise it's just the cold, unfeeling place that science tells us it is.
The problem is that every time science figures out some natural process and shows that it is in fact governed by hard, unfeeling laws or simple randomness it detracts from the idea that God cares. People start to realize that instead of just having faith that he will make things work out they have to try to understand the world and control it as best they can.
Re:God of the Gaps (Score:4, Insightful)
This god allows those that don't believe in it to burn in some stinking hell for eternity, doesn't sound like it cares to me.
Re:God of the Gaps (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:God of the Gaps (Score:5, Insightful)
This idea that an impersonal universe must be one without warmth, feeling, meaning or justice is one of the great PR success stories of religion. It's complete bollocks though.
Re:God of the Gaps (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem is that every time science figures out some natural process and shows that it is in fact governed by hard, unfeeling laws or simple randomness it detracts from the idea that God cares. People start to realize that instead of just having faith that he will make things work out they have to try to understand the world and control it as best they can.
No, it doesn't detract from that idea at all. There is nothing incompatible with the ideas that God created a universe governed by natural laws and that God cares about human beings.
The real problem is that you throw around the phrase, "He will make things work out" without qualifying it. There are people who believe in predestination, that we are all puppets controlled by God, and there are people who believe that God doesn't exist. But there are many more people in between.
Re:God of the Gaps (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem is that every time science figures out some natural process and shows that it is in fact governed by hard, unfeeling laws or simple randomness it detracts from the idea that God cares.
Nah, you'd have to be pretty delusional to believe that god cares. Just look at the horror and misery going on around the world all the time - if there was a god that cared, it wouldn't be like that. And the old bullshit line that it's all part of god's mysterious plan, is nothing but desperate rationalization.
Re:God of the Gaps (Score:5, Interesting)
The universe is God's body. God is just this naval-gazing super entity sending out shards of life force to explore it's own existence.
The God I believe in doesn't give a damn about individual lives or planets any more than I stress out when I lose a hangnail. If it's a *big* hangnail, there may be a moment of pain, but individual cell death is not noticed at all.
Sure my view doesn't give one the "comfort" of an all-knowing and all-powerful benevolent God, but God has only been "benevolent" for about 2000 years in the first place. Prior to that it was a veangeful creature of anger and smiting, thrashing people into submission if they didn't sacrifice enough goats and cattle.
Re:God of the Gaps (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:God of the Gaps (Score:5, Interesting)
Um, no. God only shrinks if you're explanation for every problem is "God did it". If that's why you believe in a deity, then you miss the point of faith.
Not at all, that was the exact purpose of faith in it's original form –to explain away thing we couldn't yet explain, and to explain things to people who couldn't understand them.
Why did this huge flood happen that ruined our crops? Dunno^W I mean... God did it! ...
Why do we celebrate $festival around the end of december? Because god told you to! (Or alternatively, because it's when you need to feast on the animals you don't need to survive the winter, because otherwise they'll eat all the grain stores and no animals at all will survive, including you)
Why do we have a 40 day fast at the end of winter? Because god told you to! (Or alternatively, because the village elder didn't want to tell you that the supplies were running out and that everyone needed to survive on fuck all until the harvest came in)
Re:God of the Gaps (Score:5, Insightful)
The same paradigm was the first thing that popped into my mind when I saw this topic.
From since my childhood, I was raised religious ( Baptist, Pentecostal ), and I was of the observation that the whole purpose of the Church was to teach obedience to authority. We were supposed to be sheep and "turn the other cheek". As far as I was concerned, Christianity was something like a mental computer virus which was crafted to enrich the coffers of the church and religious leaders at the expense of anyone who they could convince to take their teaching seriously. The centerpiece of the whole thing seemed to be the great ceremony of the passing of the plate, as well as getting out there and converting others to the faith. It seemed to me that being a Christian meant: 1) I would not steal anyone else's stuff, 2) I would not fight back if someone else took my stuff, and 3) I would pay a 10% tithe on everything I make to the people who taught me to do this.
What got me was this faith thing.
From personal experience, "faith" seemed to have little correlation to reality. As far as I was concerned, "faith" was what I had if I went-a-gambling; and I was told gambling was sinful. I have had faith in a lot of things. Things that should have worked, and didn't because of some unforeseen element - which became apparent to me after the fact the thing did not work as intended. Due diligence seemed to have far more effect on a positive outcome than hope.
From what I can tell of religions, it appears the ones I have been influenced by seemed that God was some sort of another word for Statistics. Maybe I would get what I prayed for, maybe I would not. I still lack conclusive evidence that God is some sort of businessman who has accounts payable and a big bag of blessings and curses which he levies on those who pay up in Church and those that drank beer on Sunday. Maybe God is Statistics. More like "What goes around comes around."
From the Bible: "In the beginning was the Word, the Word was with God, the word was God." ( John 1:1 ). The Word in my understanding is the basic physical laws that runs this universe. The same stuff scientists study. It was science who convinced me that there is some sort of intelligence out there which resulted in the formation of me and everything I observe. The religious people call this God, Spirit, and all sorts of other names, but it seems to be a universal human observation that we are likely not the top in the chain of command in the Universe.
I would venture to say that every religion I have encountered is very destructive to my faith in God, as they seem to try in every conceivable way to lead me into some sort of belief system where creation is some sort of business, with all sorts of freeloaders needing to be paid off in order to keep the God they refer to happy. I try to think of myself as an ethical person - and there are things I have to know for sure, not faith, before I feel comfortable trying to influence anyone else with it. I do not give investment advice for the same reason. I am often wrong. I felt very uncomfortable counseling people in grief that some tooth fairy was going to swoop down and take care of their problems. Nor could I believe that God was a force I can bargain with. The Bible has God referring to himself as: "I am that I am" ( Exodus 3:14 ).
As far as I am concerned, science verifies God. For years I have had the tagline:."Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21].
That one line of scripture, taken right out of the Bible, summarizes my whole take on it. Incidentally, it was a preacher on "The Simpsons" that turned me onto it.
Re:God of the Gaps (Score:5, Interesting)
It is a simplistic view. I feel Feynman puts it more maturely than I can... http://calteches.library.caltech.edu/49/2/Religion.htm [caltech.edu]
Re:God of the Gaps (Score:4, Interesting)
When you have faith, true faith you see the weird man-made scaffolding of intelligent design theories as unnecessary and counterproductive. Where God seems to conflict with science some choose to believe that one is right and the other is wrong when the truth is that both are in harmony and it is our understanding of both that is flawed. Those who read only their own ephemeral rules, theories and prejudices into the bible have not accepted the spirit which is necessary to guide each of us through the poetry of God's creation whenever it seems to conflict with the logic of what we think we know.
A faithful person also knows (as any honest scientist should know), that those "gaps" where God must exist are enormous. The amount of her universe(s) we truly understand is vanishingly small, far less than 0.00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001% of the universe is known to us. What we know is certainly smaller than ourselves, our brain [discovermagazine.com], a leaf of grass [bartleby.com], , DNA [sciencedirect.com], atoms, quarks, strings and everything [livescience.com]. While we've come to learn more about each of these things with each passing day, we should accept that a scientist 50 or 100 years from now would look at the social constructs we know as scientific beliefs [wikipedia.org] as being remarkably simplistic. Even for agnostics and atheists who choose to disbelieve in a universal creator with more embedded intelligence than the 3 pounds of chemicals within their brains, the Judeo-Christian bible contains remnants of the human story which pre-dates agriculture and civilization. In this age of short attention spans we need such an anchor to counter-balance pop-cultural fads and give us a longer view of humanity.
assumptions about idiots (Score:5, Interesting)
You and the author of TFA take a mind-numbingly reductive framing of the issue and it just causes **more** arguments and solidifies the opposition harder...
Your first problem is that you take the word of an idiot.
These Texas book controversies...they **defy all logic**. You'd agree and so would TFA's author. People have written tomes on this very discussion thread that impressively elucidate the sub-moronic notions of these wackos...
Yet you just **assume** that their words can be taken at face value that they truly are describing their reasons for pushing these textbooks.
And it's about textbooks, and public education and society in general here...if these people just kept their mouth shut and let professionals write the text you'd have *no gripe* with their dumbness...
No...YOU are an idiot for **taking their stated reasons seriously**
You do exactly what they want, fall into the predictable opposition mode...
WHICH HELPS THEM SELL MORE FUCKING TEXTBOOKS
This really is about money pure and simple....there is a built-in market for these textbooks and in the greater sense suppressing science helps corporations avoid accountability on a host of issues...
religion is only a *vector* in this instance
stop playing their fool's game
Re:God of the Gaps (Score:4, Insightful)
I think that might be a bit simplistic....apart from anything else, you'd have to ask 'why should they care so much about that?'. The reasons suggested for why religion exists and is held so strongly are quite numerous, and I'd expect quite a few to be true. For example:
Religion is evolutionarily useful to humans because it helps a group perform acts of high altruism towards each other without becoming unable to perform acts of extreme warfare on the tribe next door with different beliefs. If you think of anything which becomes hotly debated like evolution vs creationism as a potential group marker, you could consider a battle over it in schools to be a battle over a child's group affiliation.
Religions are like mind-viruses that exploit human mental weaknesses, and the successful ones have evolved to do this better than others. One way to be successful is to co-opt humans' moral sense and transmission mechanism. Humans have an urge to transmit their codes of morality, especially to children, and so religions (like Christianity) which make their followers believe that belief is morally good will produce believers who honestly and fervently try very hard to push an environment on children which will make them believe the same. And, of course, morality involves emotions like disgust and admiration that don't disappear just because you realize they're illogical.
Religions were invented as ways to explain in the absence of a better method: to explain how the world is how it is, and also to explain why we have moral feelings. But as it's passed down generations the religious then take it as a reliable source of knowledge and so a challenge to this method of knowledge gathering becomes a challenge to the validity of morality (as they see it).
Religion comes from detecting agency where there is none. When humans see something happening/moving/whatever it's safer to assume something is behind it (like a predator) and run, and so humans are biased towards this. Apply this to trees falling, storms happening, floods, and build from there. So this plays to people's fears that there's something huge and dangerous there you don't want to annoy or challenge. Saying 'you didn't do all this!' in the face of a perceived claim of the opposite is quite a big challenge.
Re:God of the Gaps (Score:5, Interesting)
As scientific knowledge advances, god shrinks.
I would challenge you to prove that statement. There is nothing inherent in scientific knowledge that would cause a belief in god or faith to shrink. The catholic church is the largest private funder of the sciences, it seems that they wouldn't be doing that if it was going to ultimately cause their demise.
Re:God of the Gaps (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, the concepts (modern biology and classical mechanics) that paint us as talking monkeys on a floating rock also allow us to better understand and cure disease and land on the fucking moon, respectively, which seems to suggest that those ideas are more sane, rational, and explanatory.
Re:God of the Gaps (Score:5, Funny)
Re:God of the Gaps (Score:5, Insightful)
What a load of Dingo's kidneys!
Science provides all the morals you need. The golden rule for instance as the most stable (for a species) paradigm. I hope you did not think that Jesus invented it or even stated it for the fist time. From it follows "do not kill" (unless for food), do not destroy the natural world, promote biological diversity, create sustainable socio-economic system est.
My personal altruism (which is said by the people around me to be global) is a DIRECT result of me realizing the realities of Life, Universe and Everything through Science. And some people tell me that as an atheist I have no moral compass? Really? I yet have to see a group of religious people that measures as high in moral as my beloved, non-religious relatives and friends. On the contrary - I never fully trust religious people because their allegiance lies to a lie, not to reality and the other fellows human beings. Religious folks will happily treat you inhumane if it advances their "saving the soul" quest. History, anyone?
Another thing - it is said that Science does not answer fundamental questions. Which ones exactly? :)
Why are we here? - because matter organizes itself under specific conditions in line with the laws of Nature. Yes, the path from hydrogen to living organisms is long and fascinating but we already have pretty good idea what happened.
Why do we die? - the easiest one. The Universe changes. Living organism that do not die, do not change and will become extinct.
Why do we spend the intermediate time wearing digital watches? - I'll let you answer that one yourself
And since we are on DNA wave - do you remember who was against the building of "Deep thought"? The theologians and the philosophers!
- "What is the meaning of us arguing if there is (or not) God if that machine gives us His telephone number in the morning?"
And so on...sure to some question we can only give probable answers (actually if you are pedantic every answer is a probability, absolute certainty does not exists) but a probable answer is MUCH better than fictional one.
Re:God of the Gaps (Score:5, Insightful)
Reason trumps faith and belief, yes, absolutely.
But don't gloss over some of those questions. Some of them have scientific answers which we all ignore. Some don't have answers at all yet. Is there scientific evidence that you have free will? If not, why do all our laws and social systems revolve around the assumption of free will? Does "matter self-organises" really answer the question of the meaning of life, which for ordinary people tends to be, what meaning shall I give my life? How should I approach suffering? Should we allow euthanasia for the ill?
I think it is safer to say many of these questions, whilst not "answered" by myth, are open to debate. We don't even know the relationship between consciousness and the body -- the brain may be the CPU, or the brain may be a receiver like a radio, we don't know, and Occam's razor doesn't help because there is just no easy answer to this one. Science can make huge contributions to our understanding of ourselves, but let's not gloss over how much is yet unknown.
I think by claiming too soon science has this stuff answered, we just give more ammo to the religious people who want to impose their brand of answers. The truth is, much of it is just not known.
Myths don't answer it. Science maybe one day will. :)
Re:God of the Gaps (Score:5, Insightful)
He says, on the Internet.
Re:God of the Gaps (Score:4, Interesting)
2) see point 1.
3) Always to be taken non-literally in order to cherry pick good bits and ignore bad
4) miracles? nope, sycophants ramblings on how great they thought their leader was
every high ground religion tries to claim (eg moral) is bogus as their holy books are hypocritical (see point 3)
Some research about Authoritarians explains a lot (Score:4, Interesting)
Check out Bob Altemeyer's - 'The Authoritarians' and his chapter about religious fundamentalist. It explains quite a bit about this strange ID movement - (and it is based on experiments and only theories) :
http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/
If evolution is true... (Score:3, Insightful)
The argument seems to go as follows:
If evolution is true, then Genesis is false
If Genesis is fals ethen the whole of the Bible is called into question.
If the Bible is called into question then it is no basis for morality.
If the Bible is no basis for morality then the ten commandments are invalid.
Therefore if evlution is true, there's no prohibition on murder.
Clearly we could play a game of spot the logical fallacy but this seems to be the issue creationists have with evolution.
Re: (Score:3)
That sums it up pretty well. And doesn't even touch upon the inherent contradictions in different parts of the Bible (particularly in different chapters of Genesis), which anyone could spot if they had actually read it, rather than going on the "edited highlights" of a preacher from one particular part of the established church.
Re:If evolution is true... (Score:5, Interesting)
Having read Genesis, I have had a question that no one has been able to answer to my satisfaction, since I was 8 years old.
Genesis 4:17 "Cain knew his wife, and she conceived and bore Enoch; and he built a city, and called the name of the city after the name of his son, Enoch."
Where did Cain's wife come from?
We have Adam (allegedly made by God), then God anesthetizes him to extract a rib to make Eve.(cloning?)
Then Adam and Eve have Cain, then Abel. Cain kills Abel, God marks him and 'runs him out of town'.
Then Cain gets married...and has a kid, then builds a city.
Married to who? Eve?(at this stage Eve is the ONLY female on the planet, supposedly) Then Cain built a city. A city? For whom? WTF is going on here?
So....my take on all of this is:
Adam is screwing his gender-changed clone, and making babies; the baby boy is screwing either his mother, or his imagination, and they have a kid.
So, all humans come from this mess?
Or...
Quantum physics has been getting weaker all of this time...back then there were people popping into existence, now we only get sub-atomic particles popping in, soon to be 'nothing' popping in, then the process reverses?
Or....
Recreational drugs were much better back when this book was written, than they were in the 1960's and 1970's.
Whew!!!! Enoch's family tree looks like a coconut tree...straight trunk, no branches, and just a few nuts at the top. Holy Hapsburgs, Batman!
And that's just the first handful of chapters in this book so many people have tried to get me to take seriously all of my remembered life! No thanks!!!
And don't even get me started on the biggest con job ever pulled on a husband....Immaculate Conception!
"Honest dear hubby, it was either that toilet seat in Jerusalem, or God did it!"
Hmmmm...Does this mean Jesus was a bastard? Oh, the Irony!
Re:If evolution is true... (Score:4, Informative)
The text was written by and for people who lived in a time when most people had lots of kids, both sons and daughters. The author probably assumed that his readers would assume that Adam and Eve had daughters as well as sons.
It also says in Genesis 5:4 that Adam lived for 800 years and had sons and daughters so someone who read the whole text would not be confused, except by the age of the guy I guess.
Genesis (Score:4, Interesting)
(Speaking as a Bible believing Christian)
You're ignoring the fundamental problem with Genesis 1 (and thus, creation: including animals). If Man did not exist yet, who was observing the creation? How did man come to know about it?
The obvious theological answer was that God and/or angels told someone about it between Adam and Moses (inclusive). The problem with many of Gods (OT) explanations is that they tend to be in dreams and visions, which aren't usually literal. If it was angels, then surely we got the simplified version. "Ooh, ooh! Tell me again about the divergence of Lorises and Pottos!" "Sigh. Listen, kid, he just made them, OK?"
All this arguing over evolution is silly. Faith does not need it, but that doesn't mean that it outright contradicts faith.
Re:If evolution is true... (Score:4, Insightful)
Threatening The Emotional Crutch of Idiots (Score:3)
Fundamentalist Christians. Seriously, this is not in need of a deep philosophical examination. Those that follow stone age mysticism get upset when science threatens & exposes their religious insecurities. When there's a lot of them, they will use legal means to enforce their superstitions. Like Texas.
Re:Threatening The Emotional Crutch of Idiots (Score:5, Informative)
That probably isn't the whole story.
There is some evidence that there is a loose confederation of well-funded lobbyists and influence-mongers [theguardian.com] who have a vested interest in casting doubt on science in general, the so-called "merchants of doubt". The same organisations tend to be behind denial of acid rain, anthropogenic climate change, and the danger of tobacco.
Denying evolution indirectly helps the bottom line of tobacco companies, fossil fuel companies and so on. Why wouldn't they help out the cause?
Polarising message (Score:3, Insightful)
Ummm... the way TFT(itle) is worded throws some gas over fire.
How's that for a believer: "If you believe in Inteligent Design, then you are bent by hell"?
How this way of framing the topic helps a civilized tone for a discussion?
Re:Polarising message (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Polarising message (Score:5, Insightful)
"Hell-bent" doesn't mean "bent by hell", it means "bent to hell", as in "directed towards hell". The overall idiom means "fixated on achieving a goal to the extent that it causes one's ruin". This particular usage of the word "bent" has fallen out of favour, but the idiom "hell-bent" hasn't.
Because... (Score:4, Insightful)
... it pretty much removes God from the whole picture. His place is then relegated to the creation of life in it's absolutely fundamental form, where evolution takes over. Personally, I think that abiogenesis is the better rational explanation. The people who want intelligent design (or, let's call it by name: "creationism") have a problem with God of the gaps [wikipedia.org], so they desperately try to cling to a gap that has been filled a long time ago. The remaining gaps (like the actual "first life" and the "big bang") seem too insignificant for their great Skydaddy's glory.
Re:Because... (Score:5, Interesting)
Just completely hypothetically, imagine you had a computer program that ran a massive physics simulation. And imagine your lifespan is such that you can observe it for massive periods of time. So you set up the starting conditions for a Big Bang, and hit the 'run simulation' button, and watch it go. And eventually, as you knew they would (because of the physics you programmed, and because of statistical likelihoods), some of the matter clusters into solar systems and planets, then on one planet some primitive proteins come about in some inorganic process, then prokaryotes, then an evolutionary process that eventually results in humans.
At that point, you could conceivably think, OK, these interesting entities in a remote corner of my simulation are doing some weird things. They seem to be controlling themselves in this structure in their heads. Perhaps I can put some hooks into the simulation so that I can observe what's happening in those brains. If I can reverse-engineer the structure that's evolved, I guess I could read their thoughts - and even write their thoughts.
And there's a mechanism, whereby "the guy running the simulation" can appear in visions, hear "prayer", and, if he also manipulates the rest of the simulation, perform "acts of god".
I thing somewhere there's a calculation that indicates that, if Moore's Law continues, the probability that this universe is a simulation running on a computer is greater than the probability we're in "real life". But I can't help but instinctively think it's fanciful.
Surely that argument is backward (Score:3)
If there's nothing to test the view that you hold, it's simply not faith.
There should be more evolution taught to enhance the levels of faith that Christians can hold. Surely learning about evolution, picking up a PhD, topping it with a Nobel prize for presenting categoric evidence for evolution, chucking in the missing link, and proving Monkeys evolved from humans - and then turning around to say you never actually believed any of it. Surely that's got to get you high "faith marks".
I disagree. (Score:5, Interesting)
That's the creationist side as seen by someone on the side of science, but it is not at all how the creationists view themselves. They aren't afraid of their faith being tested, because they believe their arguments are unbeatable and their faith secure - though they may worry about their children being lead astray.
The key to understanding creationists is to realise that it isn't about creationism itsself. They have, as they would proudly call it, a 'God-centered worldview.' Everything comes down in some manner to their religious beliefs. Not just creationism, but their moral and political views, their attachment to national identity, their community, and their general vision of how things 'should be' in the world. They view Christianity not just as another religion among many, but as a defining aspect of western civilisation and that element which makes it great and has brought such prosperity through the ages.
They also believe that Christianity and morality are one and the same. God is the standard of morality, the definition, and the source. Only Christians, as followers of the true God, know how to be moral people. Others might perform a reasonable immitation by following some social norms, but they are just denying that Christianity is their source. This is why they insist upon placing the ten commandments on public buildings: For them, 'Thou Shalt Not Kill' is the very reason murder is illegal: Had God not proclaimed that, and the faithful not kept it, then there would be no way for people to realise murder is an immoral act. Likewise for the theft thing.
So that which threatens the doctrine of creation is far more concerning than a scientific debate: It is nothing less than an existential threat to civilisation itsself. Their concern is that if the population in general lose belief in the bible as inerrant - not belief in Christianity in general, but belief in the rock-solid beyond-debate 'truth' of the bible - then they will lose all spiritual direction. The bible will become fuzzy, a document where people can dismiss bits they don't like (The irony of this is quite lost on them as they happily tuck into their pork sausages). Before you know it, homosexuality will be accepted, prayer will be illegal, everyone will be having casual sex and marriage will be a thing of the past. Then people will start worshiping pagan idols, gangs of violent atheists will start roaming the streets killing people for fun, and eventually God will abandon the country and send the communists to take over and punish everyone.
That's why they are so insistant. They believe the bible is the foundation for America and western civilisation in general. Take away the foundation, and the whole structure collapses. Creationism and patriotism are intertwined, almost inseperable.
Re:I disagree. (Score:4, Funny)
So to sum up: They're stupid.
Re:I disagree. (Score:5, Interesting)
Clearly you didn't read it. The argument is that they see this not as an attack on their beliefs, but an attack on their values and their friends and their community and their country.
The ironic part is that their brand of fundamentalism is not a traditional belief at all; it only dates back to the 1950s or so.
Re:I disagree. (Score:5, Insightful)
Another point from the creationist / young earth / Intelligent Design side, ignoring any argument based on the story of creation or Adam. The young earth creationist who takes the story of Noah literally, doesn't agree with your interpretation of the fossil record and evolutionary history at all. Picture Japan's violent tsunami multiplied to a global scale, eroding away practically everything. The majority of the fossils and layered geological records then deposited as the turbulent ocean calmed down and the water receded from the land. The large flow of receding waters carved out river basins and canyons quite quickly from the soft sediments.
For someone with this world view, the "Facts" of evolution are not incontrovertible. The story of evolution, as derived from the fossil record, is based on assumptions that the creationist doesn't agree with.
That's not to say that the creationist disagrees with the facts of biology, as derived from examining living animals and how they change over time. It's the extrapolation of currently observed processes into the unknowable past that they disagree with.
Nah, it's just pure stubbornness (Score:5, Interesting)
I grew up in Texas and have lived here all of my life. The resistance to evolution can be summed up in one sentence:
"You can't tell me what to fuckin' believe!"
If some long haired city boy told them their face was on fire the'd refuse to believe it, basically.
Re:Nah, it's just pure stubbornness (Score:5, Interesting)
As a ~30-ish year "Native Texan", I can say that the only people who I've seen take that attitude are being presented with an aggressive argument about evolution (e.g. "Where is your god now!?"). Totally subjective, one data point, people I know, etc.
I think the first step is to introduce the concept of an evolving world with a nod to possibly being part of "God's Plan"; a salesman won't get his foot in the door by opening with an insult.
Re:Atheism is a self esteem issue (Score:5, Insightful)
Agnostics deal in facts. Atheists deal in beliefs. Christians deal in beliefs. It's one of the cruel irony's of the world. An agnostic takes no issue with faith by his very nature.
Funny how we don't talk about agnostics when it comes to vampires, fairies, Zeus, or any number of other things, but when it comes to "God", all of a sudden if you hold the belief that "God" doesn't exist and is instead mythology like all the other crap you don't believe in, you aren't dealing in facts.
The facts are the evidence doesn't support a lot of the bullshit you find in the Bible. The facts are that there are a lot of religions around the world, with conflicting beliefs based on similar crap evidence. If the "God" of the Bible really wanted to make himself known, to be worshiped, to have certain rules followed, etc, then masquerading as man-made mythology is a really stupid plan.
I have every ounce of respect for Agnostics. Atheists in most cases are people with self-esteem issues.
So you respect people who are either too afraid or naive to take the same step they do for all other kinds of mythology and superstition, but think it's just a lack of self-esteem that leads to atheism. Right.
It's a fringe group (Score:4, Informative)
Ok, I haven't lived in Texas for 2 decades now, but I was also born there, went to college there, etc..
A relatively small group of religious conservatives have somehow taken over the Board of Education. [rationalwiki.org]
Just how this happened, and why people put up with it, is something I cannot explain. Sure, Texas has it's share of religious whack jobs, but really no more than (and possibly fewer than) many other states a bit farther to the north and east.
What's worse is that Texas has also become the state that many other states look to, to set a baseline for what textbooks their schools will use.
Biblical Creationists are Neurotic (Score:5, Insightful)
Biblical creationists believe that evolution undermines the idea of divine creation, specifically the idea that man is created in God's image. This is a very important belief for them. Without it, their world crumbles.
When you present them with facts and evidence supporting evolution, they're not dispassionately evaluating the evidence, but desperately trying to avoid confronting it, to the point of profound intellectual dishonesty.
They are what used to be called neurotic, irrational and disturbed in one specific area or about one specific thing, but otherwise relatively functional human beings, able to work, raise families, etc, etc.
The answer to the question of why Biblical Creationists are like this is the same as the answer to the question of why some people are holocaust deniers, or Marxists, or followers of any other ideology or belief that is in obvious defiance of objective reality. They have invested their sense of self into this belief, and they cannot abandon that belief without sacrificing their sense of self along with it.
So they hold on to that belief, no matter what.
Perverse incentives (Score:5, Insightful)
The situation is very similar in the Islamic world as well, with the huge amount of oil money coming in perhaps even exacerbating it. A lot of people(chief among them hardcore Christians) point to Quranic verses etc as proof that Islam is unable to modernize, but in reality, with one important exception(which I will get to later), the rules between the Abrahamic religions are very similar. The only difference is that modern Muslims actually adhere to them, whereas very few Christians actually follow the bible with any sort of rigor.
The obvious question of course then is why? If the religions are fundamentally the same, why the discrepancy in how closely modern believers follow the rules? The answer again lies in perverse incentives. The fact that the industrial revolution was born in Europe gave Muslim leaders and interesting case study, what happens to religious leaders when society "modernizes"? The answer is that in most of the Western world(with the rural US pretty much being the only real exception) religious leaders went from the top of the social pyramid to near the bottom in a very short period of time. Muslim leaders like being at the top of the pyramid, especially since the aforementioned difference between the religions, the acceptance of polygamy by most Islamic societies, mean that being at the bottom of the social period means that you will have very few chances to get married(and in conservative societies, that often translates to very few opportunities to have sex). So you better believe that they will resist social modernization as much as possible.
Long story short, if someone is vilifying science and praising religion, they are doing it solely for the sake of their own pocket book(and perhaps marital bed)
ha. (Score:5, Insightful)
If your faith cant stand a test. It wasn't very strong.
I still can't believe we don't treat religion as a mental illness. You go around tellin everyone an invisible guy watches you all the time and tells you what to do.... They lock you up. You call that invisible guy god... And that's just a ok fine. Here have some tax exempt status.
Religion is one of the major things holding back the human race. The faster we wise up the better.
Faith and evolution ARE compatible (Score:5, Insightful)
From the article: '[W]hat is true is that evolution tests faith. The fact of evolution is incontrovertible and supported by mounds of empirical evidence.
1. It is not a fact that human beings evolved from primordial goo. That would be an unsubstantiated assertion based on an extreme extrapolation of limited evidence of small-scale phenomena.
2. Therefore, "evolution" only tests misguided faith. In fact, even the idea that humans evolved from goo is not ultimately incompatible with faith in God or in intelligent design. This is because the point of ID/Creationism is not how God created, but that God created.
The idea that the Creation stories in Genesis are meant to literally describe how God created is another matter entirely, and it is the blind insistence upon this presupposition that results in so much hot air being expelled on both sides of the issue.
Faith, on the other hand, is fragile. It is supported only by the strength of human will. And this is where it gets tricky. Because to many believers, faith, not works, is the only guarantee that one can pass God's litmus test and gain access to His divine kingdom. To lose one's faith is to literally damn oneself.
That's because that's what Christ said. "Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned." Mk 16:16
So tests to that faith must be avoided at all costs. Better to be a philosophical coward than a theological failure.
Many people's faith is, sadly, based on fragile ideas like Creation stories being literal, or every word written in the Bible being intended literally. To those people, their faith would be quite jeopardized by atheists yelling loudly that there is no God, that the Bible is wrong, that we evolved from goo, etc.
Other people's faith may be based on rational thinking, such as the ideas that the universe or living beings are too complex to have happened randomly, or that the evidence of Christ's resurrection is strong. Such faith can handle Creation stories not necessarily being literal, and the idea of evolution, and the idea of the Bible being inspired by God yet composed by humans and therefore not literally perfect (or always literal).
It is a popular--and recent--misconception that faith and reasoning are incompatible. Many, if not most, of the great minds of the ages were believers in God or in other forms of religion. The idea that religious people are necessarily irrational fools is simply a lie; there are plenty of both religious and atheistic people who are irrational fools.
Re:Faith and evolution ARE compatible (Score:4, Interesting)
In practically every thread you get someone who tries to reconcile evolution with theism. They say, well, "God created the system of evolution. Tada!" or "God guides evolution. Tada!"
The truth is that when evolution is properly understood it is a complete replacement for the theistic creator hypothesis. It actually goes even further than this and give us yet more evidence that God doesn't not exist.
The problem with evolution is that it's not the kind of system a God that cared and loved us would design.
Does survival of the fittest seem righteous to you? Why should the most well adapted survive? Surely a better system would be one where people with kindness, co-operation and charity thrive and the selfish, brutish and dishonest perish? Yet we do not live in this world.
Theism as a whole has the problem that it makes a really bold claim: "God exists and he loves us." and then it has to retreat almost immediately behind a series of adhoc justifications for why the observed universe doesn't match what we'd expect if that claim were true.
If God really existed the universe would be hugely different to the one we currently live in. If God really existed science would have found him by now.
This is yet another problem with the theism. The complete and utter confusion about what God wants. You're sat in this thread quoting the Bible as if it were the word of God, yet there are literally thousands of independent strands of Christianity alone. I don't even mention that even there were 2 billion Christians, 71% of the words population think your view is a heresy. You would even be called a heretic by members of your own superstition.
Again, would this confusion about religion be expected if there was a God who loved us? Absolutely not.
The people in previous times didn't have the weight of evidence we do today. Faith and reason are incompatible. Faith is based on truth by revelation; that is, that some people a long time ago had the "word" revealed to them and every one else is left in the dark. The only hope we have is to just trust them. Reason works by studying, debating and seeking out evidence. Anybody can critique that evidence, review it and discuss it.
These are diametrically opposed view of the universe and completely incompatible.
Re:Faith and evolution ARE compatible (Score:4, Funny)
Why is it so hard to accept that human beings evolved from goo? Have you looked inside a human body? Dude, we're *still* goo!
Intelligent Design != Creationism (Score:4, Interesting)
Theories that humanity was "seeded" by aliens are a non-theological example of Intelligent Design theory.
In their 1966 book "Intelligent Life in the Universe" I.S. Shklovski and Carl Sagan present a good case for scientists and historians to consider the possibility of early contact between life on Earth and extraterrestrials. Intelligent Design is not a concept that is owned part and parcel by creationists.
That said... I have a problem with teaching Intelligent Design in public schools. I'm a creationist... I believe the truth of the Bible. I also don't believe it is the job of government to indoctrinate students in religion. Mine or anyone else's.
There was a time where teaching students of science the theory of Spontaneous Generation was perfectly legitimate. It was "good science" based on the best information that was available at the time that the theory was still viable. Evolution is the best scientific theory that explains the evidence as we have it right now. And so it should be the theory taught to science students. Perhaps one day evidence may arise to discredit evolution but that day has not come. If parents want to teach their children alternate views they are welcome to do so via religious education, private education or homeschooling. Presenting alternate views that have little or no hard evidence is unwarranted.
Not confronting the evidence for Evolution is intellectual dishonesty at best and intellectual sloth at worst.
Yuk (Score:4, Insightful)
I get chills when I see phrases like:
The fact of evolution is incontrovertible
I 100% believe the theory of evolution provides the best fit with the available data. But stating any theory is a "fact" and "incontrovertible" is just too far. One of the issues is that it is hard to experimentally falsify the thoery of evolution. Either we are scientists and honest about what we do, or we are not. Get off my lawn.
Re:Yuk (Score:5, Informative)
Evolution is fact because it has been observed. I suppose there remains a possibility that what has been observed has been totally misunderstood by everyone, but that applies for just about any fact.
The theory of evolution is not a fact. However, if the theory of evolution is proven wrong, that will not invalidate evolution, which remains a fact. As things stand, however, the theory of evolution is looking pretty robust in providing an explanation for evolution. However, like all good science theories, it is always up for being challenged and adapted in the light of observed evidence.
The key issue understanding the difference between "the theory of evolution" and "evolution". They are not the same thing, and if an argument challenging evolution has its basis in misunderstanding that, then it has failed before it has even started.
There is a fascinating parallel... (Score:5, Insightful)
I occasionally interact with people who are convinced that "evilution" is taught out of a desire to attack religion and make people into amoral monsters. And they will go on, at length, about their beliefs about the "motives" of scientists. And somehow, none of the motives they invent actually fit very well with anything I see when I talk to scientists. I mean, yes, I occasionally encounter people who really do seem to have those motives, but in general they're not particularly regarded well by the scientific community.
And I occasionally interact with people who have all sorts of really strange beliefs about the "motives" of religion, and similarly, what they say has very little to do with what I mostly encounter among religious people. Although I do occasionally encounter people who appear to have those motives, but they are not regarded well by the religious community.
It seems interesting to me how well these groups parallel each other, and how well each of them plays into the other's narrative of persecution or abuse. And how much both of them rely on the assumption that you can't ask people what they think, or why they think it. Slashdot tends to have more of the people who have a very naive view of what religious faith is, or why people have it, but I've hung around on other sites that tended towards the very naive view of science, and it was just as funny there.
So far as I can tell, in the real world, the majority of religious people have beliefs that are a lot more complicated, and a lot more coherent, than the strawmen that I mostly see attacked on Slashdot. But since they don't usually go around trying to get on TV news and insist that they are the only representatives of their faith, people are less aware of them. In general, most of the time if you know someone's religious beliefs, it's because they're jerks; the non-jerks won't generally get pushy about it and tell you all about it unless you actually ask what they think. And, of course, if you've made up your mind that they're all idiots and you don't want to know, then you're the jerk whose opinions they will take as representative of people who hold your beliefs. (This goes both ways.)
I can't believe that live could have evolved... (Score:5, Insightful)
But a story about a 600 year old man and his sons building a boat with bronze age technology to hold every life form on the planet with sufficient genetic diversity to prevent inbreeding with a year of supplies, collecting them from every remote corner of the planet, and returning them all to their native habitat afterwards (which somehow wasn't destroyed by the flood) makes perfect sense. From polar bears to penguins, koalas and kangaroos to the Inaccessible Island rail, a flightless bird. Over 8000 species of ants alone. Don't forget the fresh water tanks for any aquatic life that wouldn't survive when salt water flooded their habitat. Returning all those fresh water life forms back to their home lakes and ponds all over the world afterwards must have been some trouble....
Honestly, I have an easier time believing a bearded man in a red suit comes down a billion chimneys on Christmas eve delivering toys.
Evolution vs Intelligent Design=Texas HS Football (Score:5, Insightful)
It hasn't been about whether evolution is true or false for a very long time. It's about whose team you're on and how many points they're up by in the third quarter. Texans can't help themselves. They have to pick a side, and when they do they support it all the way.
Go to any small town in East Texas on a Friday night in September. Around 7PM, folks start streaming out of their houses and heading to stadiums whose size rivals that of some colleges' playing fields. They're there to rally their team on, violently if necessary.
Texans choose sides in ALL aspects of their lives. Ford vs. Chevy. Big Mac vs. the Whopper. Citizens vs. Illegals. Cattlemen vs. Farmers. Evolution vs. Creationism. Whatever the issue, no matter how weighty or how trivial, Texans can figure out a way to polarize it and turn it into a contest. And if it has team jerseys, all the better.
In some ways, this is Texas' greatest strength - that its citizens are willing to stake everything on the team they support, win, lose, or draw. In other ways, the stubborn unwillingness to give up, even in the face of overwhelming strength or indisputable argument can lead to, well I think we all remember the Alamo.
People tend to think of the idea of "teaching the controversy" as an insidious effort to get religion's foot in the door. In fact, it's one of the most amazing things that Team Texas Religion has ever done- offer a compromise. For a Texan to even admit that the other side's point of view EXISTS is jaw-droppingly astounding. To offer to teach it alongside their own is nothing short of miraculous.
The only way to resolve this conflict is to understand Texas and embrace its stubborn, contentious, headstrong culture. Ignoring it will only make the issue worse. The sooner people realize this, the better off we'll all be. Texas, as much as we hate to admit it East of the Mississippi, isn't all that different from the rest of the country.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:But I don't know the real answer! (Score:4, Informative)
You've got a lot of factual oversights and selective omissions here. I'm not a physicist, so I can't comment on the astronomy matters, but I do know about the rest. I have a feeling you're a troll and you don't actually believe any of this, but let's see if we can set the record straight at least a little.
The known mutations in the human genome divided by the mutation rate shows that humans were mutation free...6000 years ago and that all women on earth share the same mother.
The human genome is nothing but mutations, all 3.1 billion bases of it. We can compare the human genome to the Chimpanzee genome and meticulously reconstruct all of the differences and indeed the whole history of changes between the two. Mitochondrial Eve only affects a very small part of the human genome, the mitochondrion, which we also share with all other animals on the planet (as well as plants, fungi, and protists), and dates back to at least 140,000 years ago, not 6,000 years ago. I would be more than happy to devastate you with further discussions about evolutionary history.
Everything on earth still has Carbon-14 in it. Instead of explaining this as "background carbon", the Occam's Razor answer is that everything is less than 10,000 years old.
The background noise in radiocarbon dating is caused by nuclear testing, cosmic radiation, and spontaneous decay. This can be demonstrated under controlled conditions. Occam's Razor requires that all evidence be accounted for. (Do you propose we just pretend nuclear testing didn't happen, or that nuclei don't emit neutrons when they decay?) Keep in mind that C-14 is very rare, only accounting for a trillionth of all carbon on the planet. It's not as if there's a whole bunch of the stuff that came out of nowhere. It's stochastically normal for spontaneous decay to occur at that frequency. Even with the background levels, radiocarbon dating is useful up to about 60,000 years ago, six times longer than you suggest.
Every culture talks about dragons as if they are real, but we have mythologized them. Why? Creationists believe the simpler answer is that dinosaurs are dragons.
All dragon myths have been traced to regions that have crocodiles. Crocodiles are scary.
No intermediate forms, almost at all. Virtually every fossil is a modern-day creature as is.
This is just clear misinformation; there are relatively few living fossils [wikipedia.org]. Almost all fossils are of extinct species—like the ground sloth [wikipedia.org], the Hallucigenia spiny worm [wikipedia.org], and seventeen thousand species of trilobite [wikipedia.org]. Also, doesn't that conflict with your obsession with dinosaurs?
Every culture talks about a flood, almost always one in which a guy often named something akin to "Noah" saves some combination of himself, his wife, his family and a bunch of animals with the help of his god. How do they all get this story when they didn't talk to each other.
But they did talk to each other; there were trade routes from Greece to Ireland in the 8th century BC. The legend of Noah is clearly derived from the Epic of Gilgamesh. Doesn't that mean you should worship the Sumerian pantheon?
So to me, the better question is why censor creationism? If it's so wrong, won't that be easily seen by everyone?
Creationism was rejected by mainstream Christianity precisely because it depends on heaps of factually inaccurate statements. Neither the Anglican Church nor the Catholic Church believes any of the bullshit you're spinning. It is dangerous precisely for the reasons outlined in the news article on which we're commenting: because it claims to offer cowards a better chance of avoiding Hel
Re:Because they have an audience. (Score:4, Insightful)
People teach intelligent design because they're afraid that if their kids grow up to be less ignorant and blinkered than they are their kids will leave them either physically or emotionally. Lots of parents try to define small universes that keep their kids close, and not just right wing fundies either, this kind of crap transcends political divides.
It's a legitimate concern, if you let your kids break down the walls that hold you in they might go somewhere you can't follow, but it could probably be better dealt with by addressing your own problems rather than creating problems for your children.
Re: (Score:3)
or be both, which these Texans seem to be.
If god exists, then he does, end of. Therefore what is there to fear from facts?
I therefore strongly suspect those objecting to teaching evolution don't believe in god at all, really. They have another agenda.
I think you are misunderstanding their motivation. Their motivation is not to prove/disprove the existence of God in any rigorous way, but to go to heaven. The Christian belief system says that the only way to do that is through faith, which in modern times is interpreted as belief. This means that it is best for them (and their children) to avoid any attempt at rigorous proof if it could end up with them seeing the alternative as a viable possibility. To them this is losing faith, which their god will puni
Re:why do athiests love to hate belivers so much? (Score:5, Informative)
If you believe that you'll believe anything. This model of atomic structure hasn't been valid for almost a century. If you're going to talk about science, at least try to keep up with it.
Re:why do athiests love to hate belivers so much? (Score:5, Insightful)
This model of atomic structure hasn't been valid for almost a century.
That's a sugar-coated way of saying that this model was wrong, and scientists had been believing the wrong thing up until less than a century ago.
You scientists sure know your way around words.
I think this comment succinctly sums up the differing frame of mind between faith and science.
With faith, the most fundamentally important thing that you can do it not change your mind. If new evidence arises that challenges your worldview, you are obligated to ignore it or discredit it or... anything but let it shake your worldview. Changing your mind is acceptance of having been wrong, which is the ultimate admission of failure.
Science, on the other hand, represents a dedication to discovering the truth. Being closer to correct now is more important than pretending that you knew the correct answer all along. If you find evidence that your previous model was wrong, you are obligated to change your model to fit all available data and be correct now. There's no shame in having been wrong in the past. There is shame in deliberately being wrong now.
The troll AC bring up science's greatest strength as a failure is a strong sign that there will not be a reconciling between people who are ruled by one mindset or the other.
Re:why do athiests love to hate belivers so much? (Score:5, Insightful)
> Electrons move around a nuclei the same way planets move around suns
Not even remotely. This idea was proposed back when humans had no understanding of subatomic behavior, and they were drawing assumptions based things they did know, like the solar system. If you want to actually know how electrons and nuclei behave, try to wrap your mind around quantum mechanics. It's almost impossible as it bears little resemblance to anything else you might be familiar with.
It's an interesting example, though, because it illustrates how whenever humans don't know what they're talking about, they fill in the gaps with things that are familiar. Like chariots carrying fire through the sky and an anthropomorphic God creating the universe.
From there your comment just goes further off the rails. Nobody thinks they're "smarter than everyone else". But observation and reason let us learn about the world, and we've learned over and over that mankind's notion of God is always several steps behind our observational understanding. Everything that has improved in the past two centuries has been at the hands of man. We're slowly figuring out ways to improve our lot in life. God's word was around for thousands of years before the enlightenment and didn't improve anything.
The universe is amazing, and every facet fills me with awe. But that doesn't mean there needs to be a personality behind it. I can take it for what it is without having to project my ideas of meaning onto it.