(October 23, 2015 at 4:51 am)TheRocketSurgeon Wrote: Blondie - All jokes aside, there really is not an "other side" to this "debate". There's not really a debate.

What we have operating here are people who started out with an a priori assumption, that the Bible is 100% literal and accurate, and they do everything in their power to uphold that belief no matter what they must twist in order to make it fit the presumption.

On "the other side", you have 150 years of scientists fighting with one another to confirm or deny ideas that, initially, went against the weight of thought on the subject. You have people who have every reason to not believe anything anyone else says, since they come from various countries and religious backgrounds, agreeing with one another on 99% of the details of the theory. To put it another way, roughly half of the evolutionary biologists out there are religious, and most of those are Christians. Two popes have come out and said that evolution is reality. Why would any of them agree with evolutionary biology if it was made up?

Try to picture someone agreeing with the Creationists who didn't already start out as a Creationist. Just try to picture it.

Debate was the best word I could use here.  My brain isn't functioning at the moment.

I respect that you're putting some proper thought into all this

Yeah, there is a group of people trying to make out that there is some sort of controversy or debate, but there really isn't. There are just people who refuse to let go of unjustified assumptions. These people generally do not understand the first thing about what science actually is. They try and paint it as a conspiracy to hide the "truth of the bible" and such nonsense.

Ignor: Yeah it sure seems that way... now that it's obvious (to most people) that taking the bible literally is incredibly foolish, that kind of opens the door for everyone to just call whatever bits they don't like metaphorical and ignore them without further explanation.

(October 23, 2015 at 5:00 am)Blondie Wrote: Debate was the best word I could use here.  My brain isn't functioning at the moment.

I wasn't trying to insult you for using that particular term. It's quite literally what the Creationists are trying to do, present their case as if they represent a legitimate "other side of the debate", when in reality there's no debate... just people putting out a lot of propaganda to make it look like there is one. They believe that it is a win for them if they can look like they have a viable alternative to offer, that of the literalist view of the Bible, and to be fair they manage to do an incredible job of convincing people that there is in fact a debate among scientists.

There just isn't one. No serious, working scientist has the first issue with evolution and descent from common ancestry.

The fact that I so often hear "well I'm just not sure what to think" tells me how successful the propagandists have been at making it appear there's a controversy, that scientists don't know what they're talking about, etc. 

It truly breaks my heart to see it, not because I'm anti-Christian, but because I think that ignorance of who we really are as a species is critical to understanding our place in this world (and its ecosystem), understanding why we act and think the way we do (including belief in group-think ideas such as religion, sports, fascination/obsession with sex, and nationalism, for examples), and to preventing the sort of backward slide into religious fundamentalism that gutted the scientific advances of the Muslim and Roman worlds, 900 and 1800 years ago (respectively). Consistently, almost 50% of Americans report belief in a 6000 year old world in which we were magically and specially created, and even among the other 50% most people think that evolution is "not enough" to explain how we got here... so, magic. America can continue to go the way of scientific progress, or we can step back into common ignorance by favoring magical explanations over reality; we have the historical examples of this happening. When it happened to the Romans, we got the Dark Ages, a millenium of war and fanaticism. When it happened to the Muslims, we got a millenium of war and fanaticism. I don't want that for my country or my planet... since this time, we have nuclear weapons.

EDIT: That was always supposed to say "900 years ago" for the Muslims, not 90.

(October 23, 2015 at 5:54 am)TheRocketSurgeon Wrote:

(October 23, 2015 at 5:00 am)Blondie Wrote: Debate was the best word I could use here.  My brain isn't functioning at the moment.

I wasn't trying to insult you for using that particular term. It's quite literally what the Creationists are trying to do, present their case as if they represent a legitimate "other side of the debate", when in reality there's no debate... just people putting out a lot of propaganda to make it look like there is one. They believe that it is a win for them if they can look like they have a viable alternative to offer, that of the literalist view of the Bible, and to be fair they manage to do an incredible job of convincing people that there is in fact a debate among scientists.

There just isn't one. No serious, working scientist has the first issue with evolution and descent from common ancestry.

The fact that I so often hear "well I'm just not sure what to think" tells me how successful the propagandists have been at making it appear there's a controversy, that scientists don't know what they're talking about, etc. 

It truly breaks my heart to see it, not because I'm anti-Christian, but because I think that ignorance of who we really are as a species is critical to understanding our place in this world (and its ecosystem), understanding why we act and think the way we do (including belief in group-think ideas such as religion, sports, fascination/obsession with sex, and nationalism, for examples), and to preventing the sort of backward slide into religious fundamentalism that gutted the scientific advances of the Muslim and Roman worlds, 90 and 1800 years ago (respectively). Consistently, almost 50% of Americans report belief in a 6000 year old world in which we were magically and specially created, and even among the other 50% most people think that evolution is "not enough" to explain how we got here... so, magic. America can continue to go the way of scientific progress, or we can step back into common ignorance by favoring magical explanations over reality; we have the historical examples of this happening. When it happened to the Romans, we got the Dark Ages, a millenium of war and fanaticism. When it happened to the Muslims, we got a millenium of war and fanaticism. I don't want that for my country or my planet... since this time, we have nuclear weapons.

I did not take it as an insult. Just couldn't think of a better term for it and creationists says debate. I think there are alot of misled Christians who will dismiss science all together those are the ones that are truly ignorant.  I have never dumped science in the name of religion or belief.  I love science and math.  Someone told me that I should have been a math teacher at one point and time.  I am not going to condemn it. I would hate to think where we would be if science or math was completely out of our picture as a human race as a whole.  The up and down of the Middle East with the Muslims, those people are seriously ignorant.  The ones who are not ignorant keep the other Muslims ignorant by means of control in the name of thy holier than thou religion.  They ban any or all of science and its advancements.

Comparable to the Mickey Mouse museum as far as scientific value is concerned.

I love maths too, I used to be a maths teacher

The problem with "creationism" is it is no explanation at all. It's a story about magic. It can never be science until it makes some actual testable claims. Those that it has made, such as a young Earth, are demonstrably false.

Most religious people seem to accept all of science just fine, except for the specific parts which make their religious narrative seem foolish. This is exactly where religion is a roadblock to education.

Learning for yourself is always good, though. You shouldn't take anyone's word for things and just leave it at that, be they a scientist or a creationist. If you have no choice and need to take someone's word though, (proper) scientists are the best word you can take.

Here's something creationists like to show off - a list of around 200 scientists of various specialities, alive today (or recently deceased), who allegedly are creationists.

http://creation.com/creation-scientists

Looks impressive, doesn't it?

Here's something creationists never mention - a list of 1379 contemporary scientists, who accept evolution and are named Steve (or Stephanie).

http://ncse.com/taking-action/list-steves

Questions?

(October 23, 2015 at 6:57 am)Homeless Nutter Wrote: Here's something creationists like to show off - a list of around 200 scientists of various specialities, alive today (or recently deceased), who allegedly are creationists.

http://creation.com/creation-scientists

Looks impressive, doesn't it?

Here's something creationists never mention - a list of 1379 contemporary scientists, who accept evolution and are named Steve (or Stephanie).

http://ncse.com/taking-action/list-steves

Questions?

Yeah, except that most of the people on the Creationist list either aren't actual scientists, or are scientists who are pissed off that their names are on that list because they don't in fact agree with Creationism:

I wonder how many of those 200 are the result of quote mining too. Or just plain making up quotes, as sometimes happens.

It's not automatically condemned because of religion. It's regularly dismissed because it is not science. Heck, it's not even good theology.