Epiphany 3
Changing ownership on a business is always brutal.
Oh hey, did you watch Bill Nye debate a creationist? Because I haven’t. Seriously, if you try to debate that evolution doesn’t occur, you’re literally ignoring the last 100 years of medicine. Period. I don’t care what your religious beliefs are – evolution has been unequivocally proven to be true so many ways, I don’t even know where to begin. Bacterial? Moths? Sparrows? Finches? And then we can start talking about Human Mitochondrial DNA tracking, or even the fact – straight up provable, measurable FACT – that humans have evolved in the last century, physically.
If you say you don’t believe in evolution, you’re effectively saying you don’t believe that water, when boiled, produces steam.
So I didn’t watch the debate, and at the time of typing this, I still haven’t seen video of it. No need. Bill Nye is a fairly eloquent master of his school of education, and watching him kick a young earth creationist up and down the street would be like watching a linebacker kick a puppy.
OK, fine, I’ll probably fire the video up after I post this. But I’ll do it with a giant glass of ice cold vodka, and drink until the bible-thumper’s argument stops being annoying.
If you read of my death by alcohol poisoning the day this comic posts… well, now you know why.
Saw something similar in australia … Dawkins was on tv being interviewed with the head of the Catholic Church in australia, George pell. If you want to watch it – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tD1QHO_AVZA
George Cdl. Pell is the Archbishop of Sydney, which is merely a large and prominent archdiocese. He isn’t President of the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference, which is no more the head of the Catholic Church in Australia than James W. Porter II, president of the NRA, is head of the gun owners in the US. Bishop’s conferences are not intermediaries between a nation’s bishops and the Pope. They tend to be professional organizations with a habit of public commentary and lobbying.
I don’t have an hour for the Dawkins/Pell show. The Catholic church has no doctrinal problem with evolution (or any honest scientific inquiry). There have been exactly NO scientific theories which affect her doctrines. That’s why she does not take the usefulness of evolutionary theory in describing the world as a valid argument against the existence of God, or support for the idea that the universe “just happened” as opposed to “was created using a plan.”
…The biggest fuckin’ problem about this is the fact that as far as Ham and his bunch of flat-earth bibble-banging morons are concerned, this whole debate was a victory JUST BY GETTING NYE TO SHOW UP.
This, right here, explains exactly how I feel on the whole friggin’ deal, better than I ever could.
You know who else would have been happy to shoot Ham’s young earth creationism down? Pat Robertson.
Bother…
http://store.xkcd.com/products/science-works
What sort of idiot is this!? š®
He’s refuting half of his own arguments!
Debating creationists gives them credibility they don’t deserve.
Oh look. Someone else who doesn’t know the difference between a young-earth theorist and a creationist.
Oh, look, someone who thinks there’s a relevant difference.
Creationism is the belief that all of creation is guided by an intelligent force.
The Young-Earth theory asserts that the earth is less than seven thousand years old.
Thanks for playing The Internet’s favourite game, “You Don’t Know What You’re Talking About!”.
Both are unproven claims without a shred of evidence to support them.
As I understand it, so is a good deal of physics. String theory, for instance. Not only unproven but untestable. All you can really say about it is that it makes some equations work out prettily. Sounds a bit like faith to me.
NB I am not a believer. Closer to the atheist edge of agnosticism. But fair is fair.
The Young-Earth theory is counter-science. We know for a fact using the scientific method that the earth is older than a few thousand years.
Creationism can be defended with Newton’s third law of motion. If you view every reaction and it’s cause as a line of dominoes you can trace newton’s third law by the falling of dominoes. However, without an outside action, that line will just be standing dominoes spanning both ways into infinity.
Due to Newton we know that nothing happens without a cause. Therefore there had to be some beginning, some spark which started the first domino falling. Aristotle discusses this in his series “Physics”, calling this force “The Unmoved Mover”. Like Black Holes and other stellar phenomena we know of it’s existance not by direct observation, but by evidence of reactions caused by it.
Newton had ONE law of dynamics: Force = mass x acceleration. The so-called “three laws” are merely applications of his one law. Newton’s Law does not support the Prime Mover argument.
But using a fallacy to support a conclusion does not make the conclusion wrong. It just means you haven’t proven it.
According to the Principia, he had no less than four laws. His third law states:
Lex III: Actioni contrariam semper et Ʀqualem esse reactionem: sive corporum duorum actiones in se mutuo semper esse Ʀquales et in partes contrarias dirigi.
which can be found in the first volume of the Principia. And informing me that I’m using a fallacy and telling me that the example I’ve given does not suport my argument and then giving no supporting evidence is not helpful. Evidence, stats and sources.
I’d be surprised if you can define “Theory.”
I think Heidi and Alex should partner on buying the shop,
I’m pretty sure they could get Omar to throw Mick in on the deal.
Then Mick could find out if male enhancement products will keep him alive…
I hate that this guy get’s laeled as a creationist, and makes the rest off us look like googly-eyed window lickers. Creationism and evolution are not mutually exclusive. It is possible to have a theor of creation that is both faith based and evidence based. This guy’s particular brand of creationism, which is easily refuted by the most basic observation of the world, is not held by mainstream creationists.
I wish I’d proof read that post before making myself look like a goggly-eyed window licker…
Unfortunately it’s a term that’s been co-opted by the nutjobs. I know plenty of intelligent, religious people – including one priest and one soon-to-be-ordained individual who both believe God created everything but still think evolution hits the nail right on the head. I flat out asked the priest at one point what his explanation for the whole Adam and Eve thing was and he just told me “It’s just a myth, a parable to explain the fundamentally flawed nature of humanity.” Pretty goddamn cool answer from a man of the cloth.
Sorry, no. If you label yourself a creationist then are choosing a label that is blatantly ignorant and anti science. You can still be religious, and/or a Christian and accept empirical evidence along with having your faith, but that does not make you a creationist. Words change meanings. I grew up a conservative. That means I believe in a literal inertpretaion of the constitution. Now to call myself a conservatives owuld be to accept a label that means puritanical throwback who wants government out of the places it can help people and into your bedroom.
I was going to agree with Snakedriver, but you are correct I suppose – Intelligent Design I believe is the new correct term for a belief that the scientific processes we observe and can measure/document did not occur by chance.
The term creationism and intelligent design share the same meaning. Just because those fun guys at WBC call themselves Christian doesn’t change what a Christian actually is. It just means that an ignorant douche is using the label. Kind of like gang-bangers calling themselves soldiers.
That’s a pile of retreaded horsepoo. I call myself a conservative, and that DOES NOT mean I accept everything the farthest right believes. In fact I don’t believe that the government has ANY place in people’s private life. You want to use drugs, feel free. It’s a waste of our tax dollars to keep fighting Prohibition IIā¢. You want to have sex with any gender or number of partners, Have at it. It’s none of my business. Accepting the label of conservative doesn’t automatically mean anything unless you let it.
This guy is a Young-Earther. There are different types of creationists, some who actually believe the science of evolution. Some believe that it is how god created man, and that the bible is not a direct literal story of the creation of the earth. Imagine that, people not thinking that God opened windows in the hard firmament above the clouds to let water in to fill the oceans.
Although I understand the different types you describe, I still can’t get behind any “scientific theory” that starts with “God did it.”
Show me evidence that God did it, and I will change my mind. But the argument of Creationism is ALWAYS going to be a lame horse, because at the root of it, the claim is that God Did It. And we do not have any supporting evidence of this extraordinary claim.
Meh, I don’t ascribe to any religious beliefs about the formation of the universe. To be frank, I am of the opinion that there does not have to be a god per se, maybe a universal mathematical formula that when discovered will allow the prediction of the future of our cosmos. But when it comes to the formation of the universe, at current there is nothing that I would say is any better than “God did it” As far as I’m concerned, quantum mechanics is pretty well the same level of absurd as religious beginnings.
I’ll see if I can explain:
I have my own theory on the formation of the universe. Our universe was created in a big bang at the beginning of time. So the answer of “What came before the big bang?” is that there was no time before the big bang in our universe.
Of course, that is simply a belief, and may as well be “God had a bad bowel movement and created the universe.” There is no empirical evidence of what did or did not exist prior to that incident. To the atheist, that explanation of the universe makes more sense, because it does not require a deity. But it still requires the assumption of something which we have no proof. Adding a god puts a face to that unknown, but by no means solves it. This is what I believe drives many theists to make the leap that God has his hands in the shaping and forming of creatures. Well that and a bit of human arrogance. They want something to exist to explain HOW it just happened to be lucky enough to create ME!
If you want that to be *scientific* evidence, you’re SOL. There are plenty of things that science can’t prove, starting with math & logic. Divine intervention is another.
If you want PERSONAL evidence that God is real, you can do what fellow atheist John C. Wright did.
Do you really want to go down that path? The idea that “Current science can’t explain everything”? Because that’s not a good idea. Science continually expands our understanding of the universe, with provable results. It’s why you can even type your response here.
I’m okay with this idea, by the way. Because that makes your god into a slowly shrinking circle of ignorance and unknown answers. Eventually, that circle will shrink until virtually nobody will believe in your god, as you run out of topics to cling to that “science can’t explain.”
Science, history, and logic (of which math is a subset — logic applied to numbers) are all tools for discovering truth. They complement each other. The scientific method depends on logic and often also on math, both of which precede it, and neither of which it can prove. Using the scientific method to prove logic or math is is to pretend that a structure supports its foundation, rather than the other way around.
There is not one scientific (or historical) theory which cannot be disproven with sufficient contradictory evidence. In fact, that’s one of the prerequisites of a scientific theory or hypothesis. Contradictory evidence has proven huge heaps of scientific theories wrong. And I fully expect huge heaps more to be proven wrong in the future. Current scientific theory is always only our best understanding of the natural universe, based on the logical examination of the evidence we’ve collected. The same cannot be said of logic or math.
Science cannot prove history. It can only support historical evidence, by demonstrating that it has the properties of an artifact of a given time, or impeach it, by demonstrating that it does not. The primary forms of historical evidence are and will always be documents and testimony. The methods used to measure the reliability of conflicting testimonies and documents are not, strictly speaking, scientific.
I have no problem with the idea that science can’t explain &/or prove everything. In fact, I have no problem with science depending on unproven axioms, e.g., the law of non-contradiction. The scientific method is meant to discern the laws governing the physical, natural universe. It was originally an outgrowth of theology. The thinking was, “We have a reasonable and logical god. The universe is the work of his mind, and so it, too, should be reasonable and logical. By exploring how it functions, we can hope to better understand the mind which created it.”
Then Roger Bacon came along and declared that if science couldn’t make us immortal, it was worthless. He is the one who changed science from a field of pure inquiry into one where you looked for things you could engineer into wealth and power.
As I said above in reply to Terry, scientific inquiry will never affect the doctrines or dogmas of the Catholic Church. I don’t believe in a god of the gaps. I believe in one God who is three persons, one of which became an entirely human man and entered the world he’d created as such while retaining his full divinity, and then submitted to death at our hands, to pay for our crimes against him which separated us from him, so that we could experience, share, and return his love for eternity.
I believe in a God that is Love and Truth and Beauty, whose essence, powers, abilities, methods, and means are beyond the ability of limited human minds to ever fully imagine, let alone understand.
Science is only a tool, created by men and like all our creations, prone to failure. It is not a god. Do not let it become one for you.
It’s kind of interesting, that term “your god”. See, *my* God is the force behind the cosmos, and therefore all scientific discovery is the discovery of His creation. The perfection with which creation exists is only more evidence of a design behind it. Contrary to being a circle of unknown with the darkness drawing ever-nearer, my God is the light toward which science is drawn in each discovery. This is why there’s a Pontifical Science Council, why the Vatican has an observatory and why the Church has founded so many schools worldwide.
I do find it fascinating how, in spite of saints who to this day are flying, bi-locating, healing and appearing after their deaths, all evidence of the divine, the atheist will merrily and faithfully insist thta these are all hallucinations, delusions, frauds or simply the result of hundreds of mentally-ill individuals who just happened to gather at the same place at the same time and saw the same thing. And took photographs.
And yet the atheist who believes that all the matter in the universe just popped into existance for no reason at all is met with pats on the head for their clarity of thought.
Creationism is as broad a term as theism.
And now that I think about it, “conservative” is worse as it has literal meaning as a word, as well as multiple ideological meanings that to me often have little to do with the base word.
Sorry, it is possible to BELIEVE in Creation, but it is not possible to have a THEORY of Creation. You obviously don’t know what a theory is.
Theory is a system of ideas intended to explain something, such as a single or collection of fact(s), event(s), or phenomen(a)(on). As we can not currently either prove nor disprove the cosmos being guided by any means other than the continuing accumulation of evidence, I’d say that Creationism is, indeed, a theory.
How’s life under that bridge? Damp? Goat-infested?
Watch a debate with cretinist or rewatch couple of episodes of Blackadder? Decision, decisions, decisions.
You could always create a lump of purest green.
I just wanted to let you know that the image captions stopped being accessible on mobile some time in the last few weeks.
pace yourself with that vodka… it’s a LONG ride…
That Guy in the video is very annoying, always looking over the top of his glasses.
If all those agonizing scenes with Mick pretending he didn’t want to bang Heidi was just a setup for this, all. I can say is…awesome!
As for nye and ham, didn’t watch it. Heard mixed reviews, but some of those were from people ticked that bye was debating at all.
In any event, nye did better than me, I’m sure of that. My response to ham would’ve been similar to vinny, here: http://youtu.be/g4bftQ4xxFc
” and watching him kick a young earth creationist up and down the street would be like watching a linebacker kick a puppy.”
No it wouldn’t.
Puppies are cute, and much smarter.
A particularly ugly, horrible puppy.
I didn’t watch the Nye/Ham debate, and am unsure whether I will bother to do so. I think that people are missing the point altogether whenever they debate when or how the world was created. Citing Jesus’ first miracle, turning water to wine, illustrates God’s nature and power. Wine is something that takes time and there’s no natural way around it. Grapes must be grown and cared for, harvested, crushed, fermented, filtered, aged, etc. Creation and evolution are not at all mutually exclusive and religion is not anti-science. God is fully capable of speaking into being an ancient world with lengthy history. Theists who argue against an old Earth or evolution are effectively denying God’s ability to do so. Six day creation of everything in a fully functional universe that acted as though it had been there for billions of years? Perhaps. Simply a fable that the ancients could wrap their brains around? Could be. However, if you blanketly label people who have faith as a bunch of nutty morons, that’s just rude and intolerant. If someone has injured you from the cover of religion, that is highly regrettable, and scripture defines their actions as one of the worst kinds of sin. But, don’t use their actions to justify mistreatment of the rest of us. I haven’t thumped anyone with my bible today, and I have no intention to. In the end, we each have to reconcile with our own choices and actions. In the meantime, I gladly sit and share beer and company with people I agree with and those that I disagree with alike. We were created as creatures of free choice, and that was no mistake. Indeed, it is cause to celebrate. God does not call us to argue with non-believers, even though there are Christians who seem to want to make an industry of it.
So, you believe that pi = 3, locusts have 4 legs, heaven is held up by four pillars and contains storehouses of hailstones? It’s in the Bible. It must be true.
There is a difference between faith and blindly accepting myth and allegory at face value.
Besides, everyone rational knows Hinduism has the real creation story.
This is the mindset I have to consistently combat.
You say:
> Creation and evolution are not at all mutually exclusive and religion is not anti-science.
I disagree for one reason and one reason alone – that the most powerful, and important words, in science, are: PROVE IT.
Your paragraph makes a ton of claims, none of which are even slightly proven.
> Wine is something that takes time and thereās no natural way around it. Grapes must be grown and cared for, harvested, crushed, fermented, filtered, aged, etc.
This has been proven.
> Citing Jesusā first miracle, turning water to wine, illustrates Godās nature and power.
This citation is made up bullshit.
> God is fully capable of speaking into being an ancient world with lengthy history.
Prove it.
> Six day creation of everything in a fully functional universe that acted as though it had been there for billions of years? Perhaps.
No. Not “perhaps.” Prove it.
> However, if you blanketly label people who have faith as a bunch of nutty morons, thatās just rude and intolerant.
I frankly have zero fucks to give if the religious feel I’m a big old meany because I demand proof that their bronze-age goat herder fairy tale is actually true. Once upon a time, the churches killed people like me, often torturing them to death. Today I have the freedom to demand proof. So I do.
> We were created as creatures of free choice,
Prove it.
For a while there, I was afraid that you had moderated me out of the comment section. I’m glad to see that you didn’t, however, I’m sad to see that my comments were taken in such an inflammatory way. Allow me to give the disclaimer now that I mean all of the following with respect to you.
“This is the mindset I have to consistently combat.”
You choose to combat. I had no intention of eliciting a combative response. I assure you that I didn’t intend to come to your corner of the internet to commandeer your bandwidth nor to attack you.
“…that the most powerful, and important words, in science, are: PROVE IT.”
Semantic disagreement: science is about testing, not proof. This is why repeatable experiments are so important to science, hence why there are so few scientific ‘laws,’ and so many ‘theories’ that we can treat as truth, and can use them as such for further experimentation. Is it such a stretch to think that God could be the original creator and master of science itself? What if He designed it deliberately as the encoding language by which creation functions? Let’s face it: even if by chance, science is ingenious. The very fact that stuff works in the order that it does is pretty amazing. Can’t you concede that the mechanics of science as a marvel of deliberate engineering is as valid a possibility as its properties settling out of the Big Bang? Bear in mind I’m not asking you to believe that but to acknowledge that it is a possibility.
“This citation is made up bullshit.”
You mean like infinite universes or superstring theory? My original point was that the debate is pointless, and this is precisely why. Much of the evidence of the “proof” of any religious view is self-supporting. Secular science is not innocent of this either.
If you refuse to even humor the thought experiment I proposed, that is your prerogative. When I say, “we were created as creatures of free choice,” please take that to mean whether we were created from the dust of the earth by God, or through billions of years of natural selection, you are here, and we do make choices on a level that no other creature is capable of. Either God endowed us with this ability because He wanted us to be creatures of free choice to accept or reject Him according to our own free will; or we achieved free choice through natural selection as a survival skill, and it serves us every day when we make countless choices behind the wheel of the car, or in a dark parking lot, or picking what food is best to eat, or choosing which people to associate with. Or both. In any case, it was no mistake. Consequently you have a right and even an obligation to choose what is best for yourself in the same way that I have every right and obligation to choose what is best for myself.
“Once upon a time, the churches killed people like me, often torturing them to death.”
And, the secular used to throw people like me to the lions for the sheer entertainment value of watching those stupid, awful Christians get eviscerated. There’s been enough murder, torture, and whatever else that comparing notes there is fruitless and meaningless. Humanity has a rich and unfortunate history of being awful to each other for all kinds of reasons. If someone has injured you, personally, under the cover of religion, that was wrong of them. Taking your anger out on someone else who would ask only that you respect their right to their own beliefs though? You wrote, “I donāt care what your religious beliefs are,” but it sure doesn’t seem like that’s true.
“Today I have the freedom to demand proof.”
Really? I’m not shoving anything down your throat. If you think otherwise, I’m afraid you’ve misunderstood. It was never my intent to change your belief system or convert you with a few words on your web page. You have made no secret of your atheism, and I wrote my comment on the assumption that you wouldn’t be challenged by my words. If you would like, read my original comment again, and understand that I’m not trying to convince you that I’m right. If I had hard proof to offer that would back up my faith, would you honestly accept it?
I have friends (read: the kind of friends that are like family) who have beliefs that differ wildly from my own in religion, politics, and about every other contentious way. I think they’re wrong. They think I’m wrong. There’s no name-calling between us, no incendiary language (i.e. “bronze-age goat herder fairy tale”), neither of us assumes that the other is stupid or evil, and we do still have a lot of common ground beyond our differences.
Judging from your writings, although you and I disagree a lot on politics as one example, I’m pretty sure we can agree much about policy and implementation, just from different view points. In this case, I think you’ve got the God thing dead wrong. However, you’re obviously an intelligent, hard-working guy that I can relate to in many ways. Your comics are great, and FTF is a personal daily treat for me. It seems that you are in a winning pursuit of personal success, chasing your passions in life. You have a solid support system of a lovely family and great friends. I’ve often thought that if we were ever in the same town, I’d love to buy you a drink and swap stories for a while. It may be that where and how I bow my head is a hard line for you though.
Maybe I’m being dense, but I don’t understand how one atheist (who is a research scientist) can feel that my personal beliefs are completely valid, but simply not for them; and the next atheist feels compelled to belittle and demand proof, and seek to convert the religious. If I am ultimately wrong, why can’t you just let me be wrong and leave it at that? And does being wrong on the existence (or not) of a Supreme Being devalue someone as a person? I certainly hope not for all of our sakes: yours, mine, and everyone else! It’s your corner of the internet, and you can obviously do what you want here. I can ask for you to respect the beliefs without getting behind them, and I can ask you to refrain from name calling and belittling, but it is only a request. Hell, delete my comments if you feel like it.
> science is about testing, not proof.
And without proof/evidence, you have nothing to test.
> You mean like infinite universes or superstring theory?
Both of these theories came from observable data in the universe. “God Did It” is not derived from observed evidence.
> Canāt you concede that the mechanics of science as a marvel of deliberate engineering is as valid a possibility as its properties settling out of the Big Bang?
Sure. First, give me evidence of your claim. If I see such evidence, I will test it, or read the test results of others. If the evidence is legit, I will change my mind.
Until then, no.
> no incendiary language (i.e. ābronze-age goat herder fairy taleā)
That’s incendiary? The old testament IS a bronze-age myth, invented by goat herders, who thought the world was flat, bats were insects, and had no idea what bacteria, soap, or molecules were. How is saying that incendiary?
> Maybe Iām being dense, but I donāt understand how one atheist (who is a research scientist) can feel that my personal beliefs are completely valid, but simply not for them; and the next atheist feels compelled to belittle and demand proof, and seek to convert the religious.
1. Atheism is not a religion. Atheists do not have a written code of tenets to adhere by. The only thing I have in common with your friend, or any other atheist, is a lack of belief in deities or higher powers. That’s it.
2. Who’s seeking to convert?
Moses did spend time herding goats while in exile from Egypt, but prior to that, he spent time as a well-educated bronze age nobleman and aristocrat in the ruling family of the most advanced civilization on earth. Sure, you’re a lot more knowledgeable and wealthy than he was, but that’s mainly an accident of history. It doesn’t make him stupid or a liar.
As for evidence: what would you actually accept? One of the things that gets posted in laboratories, especially biology labs, is “The test subject, under carefully controlled laboratory conditions, will do whatever it damn well pleases.” Even more so when it is omnipotent, and refuses to force you into belief without your consent.
I keep linking to John C. Wright because when he was asked this question, he had to admit that he would reject any supernatural evidence (i.e., acts done by a being not limited to the universe as we experience it, nor bound by its laws) because it was supernatural. So, in a moment of honest inquiry, Mr. Wright asked God to prove himself, if he was actually real. Mr. Wright presumed that if god was omnipotent, he could overwhelm any doubt. He presumed that if God wanted to do him good, and knowing the truth about God was a good thing, God would have motive to do so. And he presumed that God in his omniscience would know that Mr. Wright was serious in his inquiry.
So: there’s your test. It’s not a scientific test, but it IS a logical test. If God is who I say he is, and you are more interested in knowing whether he’s real or not than in anything you get from being an atheist, he will give you your evidence, just for the asking.
“Both of these theories came from observable data in the universe.”
I’ll give you a pass on string theory. It does make a nice place holder on observable phenomena that we don’t otherwise scientifically understand. But, I’m calling BS on multiverse. Every few years, there’s some pop science news article crowing about new ‘proof,’ but that’s about the size of it.
“If the evidence is legit, I will change my mind.”
Again, I’m not trying to change your mind. Just simply asking you to respect the beliefs of others, even if only on face value.
“Thatās incendiary? The old testament IS a bronze-age myth, invented by goat herders, who thought the world was flat, bats were insects, and had no idea what bacteria, soap, or molecules were. How is saying that incendiary?”
There is derision in your tone and you know it. And in all fairness, the New Testament was “written” by a physician, an accountant, and a fisherman, among others although we believe it as well as the Old Testament are the inspired Word of God. I’m not asking you to believe such, but show a little courteous respect.
“1. Atheism is not a religion. Atheists do not have a written code of tenets to adhere by. The only thing I have in common with your friend, or any other atheist, is a lack of belief in deities or higher powers. Thatās it.”
I’ve only ever seen a few flavors of atheists, although I’m not going to claim to know them all. There are many who simply do not believe in a higher deity, and that’s fine. There are others who sneer at religion and want to kick it like a puppy. And then there’s this: http://firstchurchofatheism.com/ My friend would be in the first camp. Would it be wrong to say you are in the second? I don’t know what to say about the third.
“2. Whoās seeking to convert?”
In my experience, it’s been those who are constantly challenging the faith of others and demanding proof. Or, the aforementioned third camp. It’s like some people make a hobby out of non-belief in God, almost like a religion.
There are Christians who interpret The Great Comission to mean that we need to nag the heathens into belief. That’s not me. I’m pretty sure that God’s intent was to take The Gospel to those who haven’t heard it yet. And, most people in the western world have at least a passing familiarity with the basics of Christianity. Frankly, if jlgrant ever has a come-to-Jesus moment, it’s going to be between him and Jesus, and won’t have beans to do with me. For sure, I’d be available for support, but I’m not holding my breath either. My point is that I’d like a similar degree of respect in return.
Nobody watched that debate with the intent of making up their mind. They did it to cheer on their own side. Debates generally don’t settle fact. That’s not even really what they are for.
My thing is, I like debates. They are my version of sports. I love debate and I would willingly engage in a debate on the existence of cats, taking the “cats aren’t real” side. With my actual cat sitting in the audience.
Much like court trials, they don’t determine truth, they are a scoring system. The side that is factually wrong can still win and the side that is correct can still lose.
Religion didn’t debate Science. Nye debated Ham. People seem to not quite get this.
Cats are totally not real.
“God” or “Big Bang”…. until you can explain the exact mechanism of either, they’re equally valid answers, as they both rely on faith.
No matter which one is correct (if they are even distinguishable), evolution proceeded immediately after. That much is true.
The Big Bang does not “rely on faith.” It is the product of observation, repeatable experimentation and peer-reviewed hypothesis. Overwhelming bodies of evidence that back each other up over multiple generations of study and overlapping fields of work.
Just because YOU PERSONALLY don’t have a degree in astrophysics does not mean that the conclusions of astrophysicists is something you can only view as “faith.” That line of reasoning would mean you would be unable to accept anything you don’t personally see, including the existence of Antarctica, the flu virus and the combustion of gasoline inside your engine (all things I am fairly sure you haven’t personally seen).
The Big Bang is a Theory. It is a Theory because it is not a repeatable experiment, the next chance for recreating the event is several googolplex years away. So, yes if you assert that the Big Bang is the only possible explanation, then you are doing so on faith. Personally, I feel the Big Bang was the mechanism that created the universe however, I will remain open minded as to the ignition source of the fuse.
You don’t have to exactly repeat something to build up evidence for it. In this case, they can look at the expansion of the stars and trace them back to a common point – that alone is enough to bump it above the level of pure faith. It’s solidly in the realm of math and observation. Astronomers provide this chunk of the overall body of evidence.
Then there’s all the stuff that isn’t actually a test of the BB theory, but still backs it up. Particle physicists are able to study the distribution of matter in ways that are frankly too exotic to cram into a comic strip comment section. Different scientists can study the radiation pattern of the universe, and mathematicians so their thing, and all of this stuff adds up to a body of evidence. Not faith, piles and piles of actual evidence from hundreds of fields and thousands of observations. That’s how science works. It all adds up from many, many sources.
As for the ignition source, the body of scientific evidence doesn’t necessarily oppose a religious explanation for the event.
“You donāt have to exactly repeat something to build up evidence for it.”
But isn’t that the rules set up by science? Scientist are the ones that assert that if something cannot be duplicated by multiple scientists over and over, than it has to be ruled conjecture. Religious people can show evidence all day that “backs up” creation, but because it can’t be proven by repeated experiment, it’s ruled fiction. Most religious people I know don’t want to throw out science, they just approach scientific results from a different angle. What’s wrong with that? Isn’t that the nature of science…to question common knowledge?
> Most religious people I know donāt want to throw out science, they just approach scientific results from a different angle. Whatās wrong with that? Isnāt that the nature of scienceā¦to question common knowledge?
To question common knowledge based on what has been observed.
For instance, it was believed for almost 100 years that the Clovis culture was THE first human settlement in North America. Nobody could find evidence that anything had existed prior to that, and it was pretty much accepted across the board that anyone claiming to have evidence of an older culture was probably running on faulty evidence.
Then the discovery of the Buttermilk Creek site came along. Evidence that was observed to be radically older than Clovis. So Archaeologists changed their views, based on what had been observed, tested, and studied.
What’s wrong with the “religious theories” applied to science is that they are not based on what is observed. They are from baseless conjecture. Saying “I think God did it” requires the claimant to give any evidence at all that this is true.
Put simply, theories do not come from “just making shit up and running with it.”
THIS. So much this. Clovis is a wonderful example.
Scientists will change their mind entirely when they are proven wrong, even (often) at the cost of their entire career and life’s work. They will challenge the new information vigorously, some will hold out until things are proven beyond a reasonable doubt, and they will exhaust MASSIVE effort trying to debunk the new science. And when the smoke clears, they nod, shake hands, update their books and move on. Because new evidence that can not be refuted exists, and science works on evidence.
Religion does not do this. It fundamentally can’t. At best, it will schism into warring groups with different canonical traditions and maybe after a few centuries one side simply dies out. At worst, you will have large chunks of the planet still bitching about which person Mohammed chose to be the next Caliph.
This is simply not true. The Church has altered many of it’s stances over the centuries based on new evidence, and has been responsible for much of the evidence produced. From maps to the stars to evolution right up to the big bang, which was the brainchild of a priest, the church has kept the tradition of education and discovery alive.
And islam holds that math is evil. It is not a reasonable representation of the world’s religions. It’s barely a reasonable representation of itself.
Fr. Lemaitre’s theory is an explanation of observed evidence, much like Newtonian celestial mechanics. If a better explanation for why the universe expands comes along, then it can be replaced. Your criticism of the Big Bang theory is equally applicable to any theory on the origin of new species, except for the time frame.
Science can prove that species evolve and change among their species. But where has science proved that one species has evolved into another species?
Dinosaurs to Birds
Cross check: if this does not happen, where are the fossils of humans 300 million years ago? Where are the horses?
Cross check: Species keep going extinct. If no new species replaced them, we’d have run out.
Check: Speciation has been observed to happen both in labs with drosophila, and in the wild with birds, bacteria and several insects.
This indicates you’re not actually interested in science. You’re interested in what some religious figure tells you about science.
At some point there was an Equine that was an ancestor to horses and donkeys. They have both drifted to the point where you could not QUITE call that original species one or the other, and their genetics remain close enough to produce an offspring, but as mules are genetically hobbled, they cannot breed with either horses OR donkeys, and as such the two remain distinct species.
Others clearly have examples, as well.
You wrote: … that humans have evolved in the last century, physically.
Could that be based on having plenty of better and dependable food sources? I can’t see that as evolution per se: its like putting ‘Oxygen Plus’ on plants. Bigger is better? No, Khan from Star Trek isn’t here yet.
You wrote: If you say you donāt believe in evolution, youāre effectively saying you donāt believe that water, when boiled, produces steam.
Psssst … steam is INVISIBLE (look it up) but water vapor is visable.
Jim
> Could that be based on having plenty of better and dependable food sources?
With all due respect, you are moving the goalposts. Food source changes are a mitigating factor in evolution – and extinction. Heck, it’s likely the number 1 reason the Neanderthals died out.
But if you want a very simple example of relatively recent evolution in human beings, we needn’t talk about it making us bigger and stronger in ways that might not last if we were thrown into a period of starvation. Let’s look at Lactase Persistance.
Assuming that you aren’t in the evolutionary minority and have Lactose Intolerance, then every time you drink a milkshake, or yogurt, or put cream in your coffee, your body is able to digest that stuff because most humans have evolved lactase persistance as a method of being able to eat foodstuff that contains milk, far beyond childhood.
This is only one, tiny example of evolution within the boundaries of recorded human history. We can talk about the disappearing Palmarus Longis muscle. We can discuss the Duffy Antigen system. There’s a common fallacy that humans haven’t evolved in ways that anyone can really measure. This is absolute bullshit.
Really? Can we just enjoy the comic without having to be told how stupid we are by the atheists?
I post blog posts about things that people ask me, usually online. The debate was a big damn topic at the time. Sorry it wasn’t your cup of tea.
As someone who is religious but not, repeat NOT, Christian, I get tired of people who tell me about how bad “religion” is and then back up their claim with exclusively Xtian examples.
Can’t we all just get along?
I know of lots of people that have a body but no mind.
But no one who has a mind but no body.
There…fixed it for you!
Looks like we got on this conversation just in the knick of time. What does that make us?
Big damn internet debaters, sir.