Global Warmoing spinoff: what to say to a Creationist

[Kulindahr]

The domestic cat is yet another. It only arises in the mammal kingdom maybe 4000 or less years ago. Perhaps it was the arrival of a cat that led to Adam and Eve being thrown out of the mythical Eden?

OMG! It wasn't a serpent at all -- that was the cat's tail!

So it would have been a black cat, crossing their path....

Where did everything come from originally?

Well, Stephen Hawking once said something along the lines of "God poked nothing, and it began to spin".

Why do some things evolve and others do not?

No challenge, no development.
And mutations strike in no pattern.

There's actually a card game for demonstrating this for high school kids. One thing it demonstrates is that given two identical populations, one may not turn into anything different even though it has the same exact set of mutations and all, while the neighboring one veers off to different behavior and appearance, because of one shift in their environment that the other population doesn't have to deal with. Mutation deals the cards, so to speak, but merely holding them in your hand doesn't change things -- it takes a shift that requires some of those cards to be used, and others to fall out as useless, until the hand you hold is so different from your original one that they can no longer 'breed'.

How did the same "sludge" evolve into mankind, plants, rocks, dirt, water, animals, planets, countless solar systems, etc? That takes a tremendous amount of faith.

The astrophysics and geological parts don't take faith at all; that's just like dominoes falling, really -- a few simple, basic rules.

The real leap comes at non-life --> life.

After that, it's a matter of applying the same general rule used for geology: what we see going on now is the same basic set of things that have gone on to get us here. So when you observe that the "chargers" ridden by knights on the First Crusade would mostly be classed as ponies today, and then look at the fossil record, it's pretty obvious that it traces back to eohippus. While that line is pretty much a line, if you turn to cats, the descendants of the ones eohippus had as contemporaries have branched into groups that can't even mate.

At that point (along with numerous other sorts of animals which show the same thing), it's sort of like drawing lines through points and seeing them converge just like perspective lines in realistic paintings: they all head for a vanishing point.

Sort of like the universe -- both seem to arise from singularities (which BTW inspired an alternate to "the God of the Gaps" -- the God of the Singularities [and a t-shirt I saw on a grad student in physics, depicting a black hole with a white beard and the caption "the Singularity is Watching You"]).

 

[Kulindahr]

Not a copout...just an answer to your question about evolution. I think most would be surprised to know how uncomplicated and intuitive the basics of the theory of evolution actually are.

I've seen it modeled with playing cards and with (twenty-sided) dice. The best, though, is the old computer "game" of life, where with a small set of basic rules you can get things worthy of hanging on a wall as art -- and that's merely binary!

Oh, trust me, they are out there.

Yeah. They're the ones who say that God let the devil put the fossils there to test our faith.

I once asked a guy who said that to me, "Are you sure God didn't put them there to test if we have brains?"

Then we're not talking about evolution.

I think you're playing with semantics -- leading evolutionary biologists have different views on this; some consider evolution a continuous process from basic chemistry on. So he's talking the broader term, you're talking biological evolution.

 

[Kulindahr]

And how am I 'fundamentalist' then? There really isn't such a thing as a 'fundamentalist atheist' is the point---the assertion is a fallacious attack.

So? That's why I responded to WHAT I responded. How is that difficult?

So the lazy naivete assumes it is what it is when the lazy bullshitter just makes shit up and pretends to be an authority on the matter?

Assumptions then.

Actually, I don't. Those of us who don't believe any of the bullshit are quick to point out HOW it is bullshit. Then there are those who make up bullshit to justify their beliefs in a book that is rife with being wrong.

Probably fixed.

I feel like I'm talking to Fred Phelps' daughter -- so proud of her ignorance and refuses to admit it isn't.

How many foreign languages do you speak? How much ancient literature have you read? How many archaeology courses?

Genesis is foreign, ultra-foreign. It takes incredible arrogance to think that by glancing at it in translation, you can tell what it's supposed to be. What you're doing is the fallacy that drove the movie "Galaxy Quest": assuming, without investigation, that it's what YOU think it is. That's the error that gave me such an oppressive childhood, the error that kept me believing a seven-day creation for years -- and an error I finally ditched when the consequences of a tiny bit of scholarship showing me the sort of literary form Genesis 1 really is.

I don't have any links for the royal chronicle material; last time I looked for some all I found were in German and Latin, and I've gotten too rusty in those to try wading through them again. But it's a form found in Sumerian, Akaddian, and Egyptian at the least, and Genesis 1 matches the form.

At that point I'll just point out one reason people like to pretend that Genesis 1 is what it appears to the uneducated mind at first glance: it's easy. It's lazy. Wrestling with it for what it is, a piece of literature in an alien literary form from a very foreign ancient culture is work -- just like thinking in a foreign language is work, and handling vector transformations is work... and grasping how simple rules can drive a process generating astounding complexity is work.

 

[frankfrank]

I don't have to say very much to make my Christian beliefs entirely compatible with other things which are being discussed...

1. God created life, AND the possibility for some chemical reactions to cause new life to spontaneously appear from certain combinations of molecules under favorable environments.

2. God also created evolution, realizing that no environment is forever static, because every molecule (and many chemical elements, as well) contains chaos and is affected by entropy, and life needs the ability to adapt to changes. Everything up to the largest macrosystems contain chaos as well (such as climates and plate tectonics, and even the supernova which erupts in the near-center of a galaxy).

3. The "seven days of creation" happened in a physical plane well beyond the three dimensions we experience, and we cannot fathom the behavior of time in that realm. My best guess is that all the seven days are eternal, and run simultaneously, so they are all in effect right now.

 

[Kulindahr]

My oh my, you really believe you AREN'T making personal attacks and AREN'T baiting, now are you, hm? Quite so, I see. Quite so.

Move the goal post clear to England for all I care, you still fail at defending your imposition on matters you clearly have no desire to discuss. He stated his case, I made it clear that I don't agree. Everything else you've done is sleight-of-hand to distract from the indefensible.

The only thing indefensible is treating Genesis as though some newspaper reporter wrote it -- that's ignorant idiocy.

I made the comparison to Phelps' daughter to try to wake you up. Now you've demonstrated I was right on target: I've been discussing and attempting to explain things to you, and you react like a typical fundamentalist -- don't want education, don't need education, proud to have no education, think it makes you superior.


Your view of the Bible is exactly that of the most ignorant fundamentalist who thinks that the KJV was dictated by God: it's what it looks like to you.

Look -- when you can come back and tell me why von Rad reads Genesis 1 literally for systematic theology reasons while Westerman doesn't for the very same reason, and show how they're both neglecting the text by so doing, we might have a starting point here. But until then, getting back to the thread topic --

Don't bother saying anything to creationists; ignorance fighting ignorance, when both sides agree on almost everything, is pointless.

 

[Kulindahr]

1. God created life, AND the possibility for some chemical reactions to cause new life to spontaneously appear from certain combinations of molecules under favorable environments.

If I'm following you here, that "AND" should be a "BY": He set the conditions and set it to run.

That's not necessarily a bad thing to tell a Creationist. You'll run into the literal seven day nonsense, though.

3. The "seven days of creation" happened in a physical plane well beyond the three dimensions we experience, and we cannot fathom the behavior of time in that realm. My best guess is that all the seven days are eternal, and run simultaneously, so they are all in effect right now.

Whoa!

You sound here like some of the ancient Babylonian rabbis or a substantial strand of the early church fathers -- kind of like Westerman, for that matter. You've gone literal-allegorical, in which the details actually are literal, but their connection to us lies in a symbolic, exemplary realm.

Some would call it science fiction.

Creationists would object that since we're Adam's descendants, it all actually happened "here".

 

[rareboy]

I agree with some of the comments here regarding that evolution requires more faith than faith in a God that created everything.

I believe that God created everything - but to me it doesn't matter how he created.

Wanting to know all the specifics and making human reasoning out of creation makes me think that maybe their faith isn't that strong to just believe.

What is faith anyway?

Being afraid to wanting to know all the specifics and understanding the science of evolution makes me think that maybe the fundamentalists are afraid their faith can't withstand the challenge of factual reasoning.

The idea that something that can be and has been daily replicated in the lab again and again for the last one hundred years and has been scientifically demonstrated and measured through selective breeding of plants and animals for the last two millenia can still be held by the intellectually impoverished and willfully ignorant to be something that requires more faith than belief in Michelangelo's God organizing the planet over six calendar days just boggles the mind.

Why it is that people who hear daily about viruses mutating to become resistant can't understand how chemistry and physics is altering every living thing on earth at vastly different rates of speed

just

is

unfathomable.

And why is it that the Judeo-Christian notion of creation is the one that the American fundamentalists believe takes precedence over the creation stories of other religions? You never hear some baptist saying that they think the Incan theory or Hindu theory has more credibility than Genesis, yet the beliefs of these peoples was/is no less or more valid than their own.


I pity the fools.

And I'm glad that my world is bigger and infinitely more interesting than theirs.

 

[kallipolis]

And you think that the theory of evolution's deficiencies in explaining the origins of life is equivalent to men riding on dinosaurs the belief that the earth is only 6,000 years old? I went to Catholic school, and we learned that evolution was a valid, scientific theory, that it explained how men evolved, but that it was part of God's plan and that evolution was not inimical to Catholic teaching. I'm an atheist now, but I'm glad I wasn't raised in a tradition that rejected scientific truths in order to conform to the bible.

A highly pertinent observation.

Traditional Christianity does not teach Creationism, rather accepts Evolutionary Theory as part, and parcel of God's revelation.

 

[bankside]

Kulindahr, you make a lot of noises about being the rational christian and often also that atheists are irrationally dogmatic and so on.

In order for me to accept that contention about your own rationality, you'd need to demonstrate that you accept some greater-than-zero probability that god and all that entails had just been made up by a few centuries of charlatans, but that you happen to find other probabilities to be greater. That would be the basis for both a rational discussion and a rational belief.

From what you report, however, that is not the pattern of your life's intellectual contemplation of these subjects.

On the subject of evolution for example, you give every impression from your past writing that you only truly accepted it once you found a way to believe that evolution was god's doing. I think that amounts to intellectual self-deception; evolution is demonstrable regardless of any implications for god's existence. You seem to think reason is the way of discovering and learning about god's universe. And not just any god, but the Christian God's universe. But unless reason can lead you to discover that, perhaps, it might not be the universe of any god, it isn't reason at all.

Same thing with global warming and creationists - you're looking for strategies to get them to think about global warming, its implications, the politics of it, etc., all without unsettling their creationist viewpoint. What I was trying to get at in my earlier post was that it shouldn't matter if their creationism is undermined by reality. If creationism can't withstand global climate research, oh well. If not, well that's a plus for them and it keeps their theory in the running.

 

[Kulindahr]

Being afraid to wanting to know all the specifics and understanding the science of evolution makes me think that maybe the fundamentalists are afraid their faith can't withstand the challenge of factual reasoning.

Having spent years among them, it's my view that they're just afraid to think. The only thing generally that passes for thinking among them is saying how they feel about Bible passages.

There's a huge part of the fundamentalist community who actually look down on churches with pastors who have gone to a seminary, sometimes even to a Bible College. If they dislike education for their own leaders, can they really be expected to appreciate facts or thinking?

And I'm glad that my world is bigger and infinitely more interesting than theirs.

No kidding.

 

[Zeno Lorea]

What to say to a creationist?

Where the heck am I supposed to even encounter a creationist if I rarely go to the hills of East Africa, the USA or the woods of Papua?

 

[Kulindahr]

What to say to a creationist?

Where the heck am I supposed to even encounter a creationist if I rarely go to the hills of East Africa, the USA or the woods of Papua?

In that case, when you're sure you've met one, say,

Wow! Stand still and let me look at you! I've never seen one of you before!

There are some in here who would specify precisely where in the USA you may go to find them. LOL

Just about anywhere, unfortunately.

While only mildly irritating for some reason to me, I ask the OP why he titled this thread the way he did? When in actuality the only "spin-off" would be the hopes of getting the commentators in the Global Warming post to participate in this one. Why not call it what it is? A creation vs evolution or vice- versa , depending on one's view on the "vs" part. Some insist the latter is defending against the former. Some, the former against the latter. However one looks at it, why not call it what it is?

Again...not a biggie, but just strikes me as irritating.

It's a spin-off because it was something I was going to post in that thread, but decided it had drifted too far off that topic. The discussion there led to this.

I'd still like this to be about what you'd say to a Creationist, specifically on scientific subjects. I'm not sure there is much to say about global warming -- they'd probably deny that any data from before ten thousand years ago isn't real, for starters.

 

[Kulindahr]

Now then, not obfuscating at all, but using the agreed upon source, and choices, how can one not conclude that by definition, Evolutionism and/or Creationism is a religion? Evolution in and of itself, is not a religion,but a science, until one adds the "ism" to the back of the word. Same goes for Creation, except it's not a science per se, but rather a "belief" in a Creator based upon their "faith". When the "ism" is added, the human element is projected and all humans believe in something. Even Atheist. Thereby making, by definition, Atheism a religion.

I think you and FirmaFan are doing something important here: defining terms. Evolutionary scientists regularly use words that almost seem designed to make people disbelieve evolution, because they're actually speaking a different language that uses words with the same spelling and pronunciation -- an example is "adaptation", which to ordinary people means an adjustment made, but to evolutionary scientists means merely an existing aspect of something. albeit one that has become useful. So ordinary people see the word adaptation, and their thought is of something devised after a change is encountered, whereas the evolutionary scientist means something that was already present but has become useful -- so the ordinary person understands the evolutionary scientist as meaning, "All those frogs noticed it was getting cold so they altered their genes so they could deal with it."

Of course that sounds foolish! And it sounds like either magic or a religion.

Which brings me to the term "evolutionism" and "evolutionist": since a scientist is one who does science, an evolutionist is one who "does" evolution, i.e. does science in that particular realm. But "scientism" and "evolutionism" aren't such neutral things, and can be legitimately used to designate the status of holding science or evolution as a faith. The core of scientism would be the belief that if science can't prove it, it isn't real; the core of evolutionism would be... what?

 

[Kulindahr]

Thank you for explaining your reasoning. Accepted, but still yet irritating, although less so now....LOL

Now, let's be fair, and in using your comments above....all you were looking for was non-Creationist to comment on your topic? Or were you looking to engage with Creationist in this forum? Just curious. Kinda of gives me an understanding of where you're coming from.

Well, it was a response to something in the other thread, for starters. I decided it would be useful to throw it out for others to say, "Yeah, that might work", or (as has been said) "Silly -- nothing will work", or "I talk to them like this, and it gets somewhere".

I assumed to begin with that I'm not likely to find any Creationists on JUB. There are a few of us ex-Creationists, and I think our input is invaluable: if you haven't been in that milieu, odds are you haven't a clue how to talk to one.

And that's a big point, too: if the ignorance that Creationism represents is to be combatted, it's not just going to be by schools, and definitely not by the media, which itself is ever more polarized, but by ordinary educated people asking the right questions.

And that reminds me of another thing I've said to Creationists, after they've told me (for whatever reason) that Genesis 1 is literal:

"What about Genesis 2?"

Those don't fit -- they can't both be literal. And there's another place to make a crack in the monolithic mental madness, on the way to making an open mind.



Maybe I should have called this "What would YOU say to a Creationist?"

 

[BigChicken]

What I've always found interesting about the fundamentalist christians is that they are quoting from a collection of writings that were written about things that happened years (sometimes many years) after the events supposedly happened. I know if I tried to write about something that actually happened to me personally even just a few years later, I could not be 100% accurate about every detail that happened. And yet, the fundamentalists believe that supposedly every word of the bible is 100% true and accurate. Of course, they are also very selective about which parts of the bible they want to emphasize. There is a part in Matthew where, in Jesus' own words, it says that when a divorced person marries another person, it is the same thing as adultery. When I bring this up to divorced and remarried christians, they don't what to say about it, or they say that some later book of the bible says it is okay to marry divorced people as long as certain rules apply to the divorce. It's a pretty silly religion.

 

[Kulindahr]

What I've always found interesting about the fundamentalist christians is that they are quoting from a collection of writings that were written about things that happened years (sometimes many years) after the events supposedly happened. I know if I tried to write about something that actually happened to me personally even just a few years later, I could not be 100% accurate about every detail that happened. And yet, the fundamentalists believe that supposedly every word of the bible is 100% true and accurate. Of course, they are also very selective about which parts of the bible they want to emphasize. There is a part in Matthew where, in Jesus' own words, it says that when a divorced person marries another person, it is the same thing as adultery. When I bring this up to divorced and remarried christians, they don't what to say about it, or they say that some later book of the bible says it is okay to marry divorced people as long as certain rules apply to the divorce. It's a pretty silly religion.

It's not a silly religion, it just gets silly -- like almost anything -- when people try to twist it to fit what they want to believe rather than what the "data" is saying. A good illustration is Lysenko in the Soviet Union, who held to Lamarckian 'genetics': his position was upheld by the Communist Party as "socialist biology", held to not because it has anything to do with the data but because it fit an ideology.

In a way, the issue about the "data" of scripture can be looked at by examining one word. In English it's "inerrant". It goes back to a Greek word used by various church fathers to describe the scriptures, but there's a problem: the term means "without error", but as used by the fundamentalists it means that every detail is correct and perfect, but as used originally it meant going to a goal or target without fail.

So they're using two different words, and the modern use is a rare one in Christianity. It makes sense in light of their view of the Bible as a manual or a news report without mistakes in it, a view that makes the scriptures a rather cold and sterile thing -- ion spite of the fact that the Bible itself says that "the word of God is living and active". To the fathers, the Bible was not even merely a tool, but a weapon with a job to do, and inerrant meant it didn't fail at that job; to the fundamentalists, it's a law book to thump people on the head with.

 

[Kulindahr]

So, it is a method of collectively gathering other's ideas and viewpoints in order to establish a "How To" manual? Sounds reasonable enough.

More a resource than a manual. Unless you're dealing with inanimate objects, I don't consider manuals worth the ink used to print them.

So with your assumption that you're not likely to find any Creationist on JUB, is it safe for me to assume, since this is a gay site, that it is also your assumption, that if one is gay they are presumed not to be a Creationist? If that is not the correct assumption, then IMO, parts of your reasoning above are likely invalid. For example to clarify....Not all gays are on JUB, but all gays that are on JUB are either ex-creationist or are not creationist. If that isn't so, then that part of your tort doesn't make sense. Therefore, if all gays on JUB are not creationist, but have invaluable input for the non-creationist, then where by coming onto a site like this, where everyone is presumed likely the same, do you plan to use the invaluable input that is received? If this isn't making sense, I don't know how to explain any better. I could throw something out there that I'm not sure many people would be able to comprehend at all...but I thought that would make it worse.

We all run into Creationists. We're also all probably on other boards, too.
Though I didn't make an absolute, I made a probability. Partly I presume there aren't likely to be any fundamentalists on JUB because gay fundamentalists tend to fall into two categories: used to be, or seriously in the closet and lying to themselves about who/what they are.

How are the combatants in this battle against the ignorance of creationist to fight? How does one battle ignorance? Ignorance is understandable. Closed mindedness not so much. I submit, rather than being ignorant, they are more closed minded. Ignorance can be overcome with knowledge, closed mindedness is harder to overcome, but is doable, but not with the childish invaluable input that I've seen so far from this thread. Actually reading some of the replies makes me cringe. How can people, who know what it's like to be ridiculed, oppressed, downtrodden, name called and worse, turn around and do the exact same thing that they went through, to other people? I cannot grasp that idea.

There's a good reason for posing such questions here: we all ought to learn to treat others with the respect with which we expect to be treated. Dishing crap for crap is kindergarten ethics -- if we're old enough to be on JUB, we should be beyond that.

Your comments on Genesis got me to thinking a little bit. Even dusted off my old KJV and read the first 2 chapters, my dear ole sunday school teacher would be proud of me! But anyways...being that I have labeled myself as a Theistic Evolutionist (with a twist) that being biological evolution, I personally don't see a conflict with what I presume you to mean, Genesis verse 1 and 2. I do believe He literally created the earth, how much time went by, me nor anyone else knows. Then, verse 2, to me, gives an insight as to what it was like, not so unlike scientist believe in the formation of the planet. For me, and I realize it may not be possible for everyone to grasp it the way I see it, it only confirms at one fleeting point, creation and evolution began together. It was only when mankind came on the scene that the "ism" came into being and a chasm was "created" (pun) between the two. So my question to you is, why can't the 2 be literal?

Not 1:1 and 1:2, but 1 and 2 -- more accurately, since the monk who decided where to divide chapters wasn't exceptionally astute, it's 1:1 - 2:3 (the royal chronicle) and 2:4 - 25 (rural/pastoral something-or-other).

Trying to reconcile results in some incredible literary gymnastics. If one knows the literary type, it's plain they're not meant literally in the first place, but taking them as though they were newspaper reports, which is what fundamentalists do, they can't both be "right".

I just remembered an aspect of the two literary types there which helps understand the two chapters: think of the first as something put together for a formal announcement, to put an accomplishment into memorable terms, and the second as the way someone down at the corner pub would tell it -- they're not in the same form, character, or style, and they don't have the same interest.

If you're interested, read my reply to the poster after this, his comments got me to thinking as well, and I wanted to convey to him what a confusing life I had growing up.

 

[bankside]

Being from my neck o the woods, it's pretty much a given you're either a baptist, holy roller (pentecostal) or a sinner. That's the only choices you had.

If those were the choices, why on earth didn't you just choose "sinner"?

 

[Kulindahr]

If those were the choices, why on earth didn't you just choose "sinner"?

If only it were that easy!

 

[Stardreamer]

Look, Kulindahr. HE said he found the order the same. So at that was the argument engaged....

So let me add some clarification with apologies because you do have a small point about my wording. Perhaps it would have been better if I had said relatively the same. This was intended to be a very high level summary of millennia of events in 31 chapters intended for an bronze age audience. Even assuming God fed them the information as some fundamentalists believe somehow by dreams or visions the writers themselves were not likely capable of intellectually digesting the information much less the intended audience except as a simplified story/vision.

For what it is, and Kulindahr's description of the format hits it pretty well, it does a pretty good job but its not an accurate scientific product. Its like looking at a book written by Dr. Suess to explain nuclear fission to school children, its not going to go into the weeds of actual nuclear physics and what information that is in it is going to be useless for scientific purposes but it helps the kiddies get a simplified idea.

And thanks a lot for your informed discussion on this Kulindahr, I've learned a whole lot from this.