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posted by LaminatorX on Monday September 08 2014, @11:15AM   Printer-friendly
from the plowing-the-sea dept.

For over a decade I have enjoyed debating with creationists who are capable of intelligent, rational conversation. Currently I am attempting to share my viewpoints with a coworker who is particularly intelligent and rational, but who is at this point a young-Earth creationist. We take turns posing questions and formulating replies, and have not once lost our cool with each other. At this point I would very much like to share with him what I learned on evolutionofdna.com some years ago while researching for a previous debate, but the site has apparently been down for some years with no sign of returning. Does anyone know a way of retrieving an archive of it, or obtaining what it once held through other channels? If so I would be deeply grateful.

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  • (Score: 4, Informative) by Kilo110 on Monday September 08 2014, @11:19AM

    by Kilo110 (2853) Subscriber Badge on Monday September 08 2014, @11:19AM (#90691)
    • (Score: 2) by mhajicek on Monday September 08 2014, @03:47PM

      by mhajicek (51) on Monday September 08 2014, @03:47PM (#90805)

      Thanks!

      --
      The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
  • (Score: 1, Flamebait) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Monday September 08 2014, @11:21AM

    by GreatAuntAnesthesia (3275) on Monday September 08 2014, @11:21AM (#90692) Journal

    [quote]creationists who are capable of intelligent, rational conversation[/quote]

    http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/head-explode [tumblr.com]

    • (Score: 2) by WizardFusion on Monday September 08 2014, @11:31AM

      by WizardFusion (498) Subscriber Badge on Monday September 08 2014, @11:31AM (#90693) Journal

      Yes, surely this guy is a living oxymoron

      • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Ethanol-fueled on Monday September 08 2014, @01:11PM

        by Ethanol-fueled (2792) on Monday September 08 2014, @01:11PM (#90723) Homepage

        Sounds like submitter is working on a project boyfriend.

        Of course, project boyfriends and girlfriends are always a bad idea.

        I also work with plenty of those "Obama is the antichrist and the end-times are nigh" types and I don't even go there, because you can't reason with idiots. To admit that a belief in a supernatural being is illogical is to admit that much of their life is a lie, and many don't have the strength to do that.

        Just let it go, man.

        • (Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Monday September 08 2014, @02:43PM

          by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Monday September 08 2014, @02:43PM (#90775)

          "I also work with plenty of those "Obama is the antichrist and the end-times are nigh" types"

          He sticks it to them severely by being what boils down to a middle of the road pre-neo-con revolution republican, and they just hate that. Thats pretty much the same scheme the neo's used to kick us "real republicans" out during their revolution and takeover, and they just can't get it thru their head that what worked during a palace coup of their internal political party will not work with the general public. The best tactic ever for fight #1 is not by definition the best tactic ever for fight #2 just cause it worked once, it makes them look like idiots but they don't care, they'll just try it even harder and then surely it'll work next time.

          I've heard with my own ears from my leftie coworkers that they didn't think they were voting in Richard Nixon with a sun tan. I kid you not, those exact words. The prez is seen as a parody to his own party sycophants, which is ridiculous.

          For example, Tommy Thompson is further left than Obama, which is also ridiculous.

    • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday September 08 2014, @12:51PM

      by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Monday September 08 2014, @12:51PM (#90717) Homepage Journal

      <quote> or <blockquote> works but the site doesn't currently do any parsing of [tags] of any sort.

      --
      My rights don't end where your fear begins.
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 08 2014, @05:04PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 08 2014, @05:04PM (#90840)

        It would be nice if was an alias for

        Just to make typing easier.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 08 2014, @05:07PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 08 2014, @05:07PM (#90842)

          sheeeit
          teach me not to preview
          I meant <q> was an alias for <quote>

    • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Common Joe on Monday September 08 2014, @01:56PM

      by Common Joe (33) <{common.joe.0101} {at} {gmail.com}> on Monday September 08 2014, @01:56PM (#90749) Journal

      Everyone has their flaws and their prejudices. Even if the person is an all around intelligent and good guy or gal, they may still have flaws that (generic) you find extreme. For many years, I was awkward in interacting with people. Thanks to the time and feedback that others have given me, I've learned to compensate for that and can interact socially very well now.

      Quite frankly, the creationist who doesn't get emotional about the differences between him and I is the person I love to talk with. Not only will he not judge me, he'll engage my brain and challenge me on this topic. Ultra-religious people who only listen to themselves and people who agree with me are incapable of challenging me on this topic. One of my good friends who is Jewish holds 3 PhDs. Great conversationalist even though he and I disagree on certain political topics.

      For most creationist, I tend to stay well away from that conversation, but this person? I wouldn't be surprised if in five years, he does a 180.

      • (Score: 4, Insightful) by VLM on Monday September 08 2014, @03:28PM

        by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Monday September 08 2014, @03:28PM (#90798)

        " I wouldn't be surprised if in five years, he does a 180."

        Most of the ones I've talked to see themselves as a member of a club, where membership is publicly displayed by certain unthinking chants, like stating a belief in god or stating a belief in creationism. Exactly like the purpose of a mating call, identify friend and foe of your tribe. The only way they'll do a 180 is if their group does a 180. Then they'll have a new set of unthinking mating calls that have no meaning to them other than identifying who's in the group and who's out. I'm not sure that's necessarily a substantial net gain to society or knowledge.

        I suppose in an abstract sense it would be nice if mating calls were aligned to reality, but do you really fundamentally care if a bluebirds mating call is "chirp chirp" or "hey baby come here often?"

        Even worse, people who are so desperate to categorize humanity as friend/foe that they'll try even discussion of geological records, if that goes away they're just as likely to try something even WORSE as a mating call like vi vs emacs or quantum mechanics interpretations or race to decide who they'll hang out with and who they'll hate. So a "win" is not necessarily going to result in an overall "win". The kind of person who wants to damn people who disagree with them to eternal hellfire are not necessarily going to take a personality 180 just because they now don't care about biology and are really into text editor selection.

        • (Score: 2) by mhajicek on Monday September 08 2014, @03:52PM

          by mhajicek (51) on Monday September 08 2014, @03:52PM (#90809)

          This one does seem unusual. I asked him about the tree ring record, stating it goes back about 10,000 years, and if he could accept it. After a little thinking he said he could. I then asked him about the ice core record, which goes back at least 100,000 years. He wasn't familiar with it and said he'd have to do research and think about it, which I think is a laudable response.

          --
          The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 08 2014, @05:13PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 08 2014, @05:13PM (#90848)

            Sooner or later it is going to come down to either, "God is tricking us with <insert fossil record>" or God would not try to trick us and everything is at it appears. And that determination will have nothing to do with logic, just faith.

      • (Score: 5, Interesting) by aclarke on Monday September 08 2014, @05:08PM

        by aclarke (2049) on Monday September 08 2014, @05:08PM (#90843) Homepage

        Hmm, moderate or post, such a tough choice.

        I'm a Christian. I grew up in private boarding schools where I got a full-on indoctrination into young-earth creationism. I may not be the smartest knife in the block I'm not an idiot; I have degree in engineering from a world-class university to remind me I'm capable of applied rational thought.

        I'm not sure that since high school I've ever really internally identified with the "literal 7 day" camp. It's also just not something I've felt the need to really confront or work through until I started doing more concentrated reading and thinking about it maybe a year and a half ago, 20+ years after high school. There are a lot of reasons why an intelligent and rational person may not accept evolution. Here are a few:

        - People on both sides of the fence conflate the evolution/YEC debate with athiesm/theism. In reality, one can find many theist evolutionists, and probably many atheists who "believe in" some origin theory other than evolution.

        - There is a huge amount of indoctrination and social pressure in many fundamentalist Christian circles to accept creationism. Going back to the previous point, questioning this theological pillar is tantamount to questioning one's faith, which most people would probably look at as one step before abandoning one's faith. Therefore, even an intelligent person might be tempted to just "put that one back on the shelf" when life is busy and there are hundreds of other more immediate issues vying for their attention.

        - People may have attended schools their whole life that tought creationism and taught against evolution. This is a hard current to swim against. Being able to admit one is wrong is part of being intelligent and rational. However, it's also reasonable to assume that a person in this situation is going to take things slowly and make sure that their new world view makes sense before taking it on. Much of this may be happening in the person's mind, even if they are not talking to YOU about it.

        - There is a lot of YEC literature out there, published by people with PhDs. Personally, for a long time I just thought, "people a lot smarter and more educated than me are on both sides of this debate" and left it at that. Then again, if you'd come to me as an "evolutionist", that's probably how I would have responded unless I could see that you were looking for a fight, in which case I'd give you one by taking the seven day creationist viewpoint just because I probably enjoy winding you up as much as you enjoy winding me up.

        So, on this subject I've read more lately. I've read not just about "is evolution a good theory", but "how does this affect my faith". It's a crucial issue as much fundamentalist Christian theology hinges on there being a mitochondrial Adam and Eve due to the doctrine of original sin. As someone else pointed out in this conversation, there is some good Catholic writing on this subject.

        As others have also pointed out, even those of us who might pride ourselves in being rational could probalby be found guilty of irrationality in many areas of our lives. Maybe those on here looking for cheap moderation by laughing at creationists should slow down a little and look at some of their own inconsistencies first. Remember that "being rational" is not for every definition the same as "being rational in all ways, all the time."

        • (Score: 2) by Common Joe on Monday September 08 2014, @06:29PM

          by Common Joe (33) <{common.joe.0101} {at} {gmail.com}> on Monday September 08 2014, @06:29PM (#90901) Journal

          Excellent post. For me, there are a thousand things to say about this topic. You hit a number of highlights for me and did it in a less wordy way than I would have. (Thank you!) I grew up in with a strong Catholic background. I am no longer religious, but I do believe in God. (I define religion as being man made.) I have no rational argument to support my belief in God, however. I've already mentioned my Jewish friend. I have a friend who is atheist who is married to a Muslim. I have Christian friends. I also have yet other friends who are like me, agnostic -- some who believe in a god and others who don't. I don't think I know anyone who is Buddhist, but it wouldn't surprise me.

          Remember that "being rational" is not for every definition the same as "being rational in all ways, all the time."

          I would also add that one man's rationality is another man's stupidity. For a classic example, we have republicans thinking democrats are morons and vice versa. I believe covers at least 2/3 of the U.S. right there. Add in the independents and most people in the U.S. think most other people in the U.S. are morons. I think there's supposed to be humor here somewhere...

          Hmm, moderate or post, such a tough choice.

          This ain't Slashdot. In Soylent News, you can moderate and then post. However, once you post, you lose the ability to moderate in that news article.

        • (Score: 0, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 08 2014, @07:21PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 08 2014, @07:21PM (#90928)

          For a self-proclaimed "rational" person to hold a religious dogma, he must isolate a part of his brain where magical thinking is acceptable and where the Scientific Method that guides his day to day existence is banished.
          It's very illogical and anti-scientific (not just unscientific).
          The Venn diagram showing science and religion has zero overlap between the two:
          One says I'll believe it when I see it; the other says I'll see it if I just believe it.

          When I watch what "Christians" are doing, the question quickly arises: WWJD?
          Invariably, it's the opposite of what the "Christians" are doing.
          The religions I've seen, as practiced, aren't so much a route to self-improvement as they are simple tribalism.
          The 7 Deadly Sins aren't supposed to be an a la carte menu where you can embrace the ones you think were just thrown in to get the number up to 7.

          ...and I like the grace and symmetry of a continuous Big Bang/Big Crunch cycle, but the guys who are studying it say they can't find enough mass in the cosmos to validate the notion. 8-(

          -- gewg_

          • (Score: 1) by hendrikboom on Tuesday September 09 2014, @01:16AM

            by hendrikboom (1125) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday September 09 2014, @01:16AM (#91044) Homepage Journal

            The Venn diagram showing science and religion has zero overlap between the two

            Then there's the prophet Bahá'u'lláh, who said that true religion is never in conflict with true science.

            -- hendrik

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 09 2014, @03:54AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 09 2014, @03:54AM (#91090)

          ...For those who don't believe, no proof is possible.
          -- Stuart Chase, an American engineer and economist.

          http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x5039618 [democraticunderground.com]

          It is IMPOSSIBLE to prove or disprove the existence of anything beyond the detection capabilities of one's five senses (seeing, hearing, touching, smelling, tasting).

          Beyond that, you enter the realm of true faith should you believe such a thing exists or is even possible....

          Even then, your five senses are needed in various capacities in order to enter this state.

          Your senses are needed to have 'normal' faith in the real world. Some examples:

          You see a chair, it looks sturdy and able to hold your weight if you sit in it but won't know that until you do (touching it by sitting down). At that point you have faith in the maker of the chair that it is strong enough to hold your weight in a seated position WITHOUT collapsing under your weight and surely injuring you.

          You stand at a crosswalk at a busy intersection. The light turns red and you walk across the street to the other side in front of assorted vehicles that have stopped for the red light. You are demonstrating faith in the vehicle drivers--your fellow human beings (self-driving vehicles notwithstanding)--that he or she will obey the traffic laws and allow you to cross the street safely without encroachment of said vehicles into your path, or being injured or killed as a result of being hit by one of them.

          Now then....

          If one can have (have to have?) faith just to function 'properly' while alive and living on Planet Earth, why is so difficult to (properly) take a 'leap of faith' into a realm of being not detectable by one's five senses?

          Here is how one Book bests puts this:

          But without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.
          -- Hebrews 11:6 KJV http://biblehub.com/hebrews/11-6.htm [biblehub.com]

          If you don't even belive in the possibility that the above quote is true then, as Stuart Chase is quoted as saying, no proof is possible.

          To put it another way, nonbelivers have more to lose if they are wrong than believers do.

          If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable.
          -- 1 Corinthians 15:19 KJV http://biblehub.com/1_corinthians/15-19.htm [biblehub.com]

          And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire.
          -- Revelation 20:15 KJV http://biblehub.com/revelation/20-15.htm [biblehub.com]

          16:19 There was a certain rich man, which was clothed in purple and fine linen, 

            and fared sumptuously every day: 

          16:20 And there was a certain beggar named Lazarus, which was laid at his gate, full of sores, 

          16:21 And desiring to be fed with the crumbs which fell from the rich man's table: 

            moreover the dogs came and licked his sores.

          16:22 And it came to pass, 

            that the beggar died, and was carried by the angels into Abraham's bosom: 

          the rich man also died, and was buried; 

          16:23 And in hell he lift up his eyes, being in torments, 

          and seeth Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom.

          16:24 And he cried and said, 

            Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip 

            of his finger in water, and cool my tongue; for I am tormented in this flame.

          16:25 But Abraham said, 

            Son, remember that thou in thy lifetime receivedst thy good things, 

          and likewise Lazarus evil things: but now he is comforted, and thou art tormented.

          16:26 And beside all this, between us and you there is a great gulf fixed: 

          so that they which would pass from hence to you cannot; 

          neither can they pass to us, that would come from thence.

          16:27 Then he said, 

            I pray thee therefore, father, that thou wouldest send him to my father's house: 

          16:28 For I have five brethren; 

            that he may testify unto them, lest they also come into this place of torment.

          16:29 Abraham saith unto him, 

          They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them.

          16:30 And he said, 

            Nay, father Abraham: but if one went unto them from the dead, they will repent.

          16:31 And he said unto him, 

            If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead.

          -- Luke 16:19-31 KJV http://www.togetherweteach.com/TCB/New/03Luke/03luke16.htm [togetherweteach.com]

          • (Score: 2) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Tuesday September 09 2014, @09:56AM

            by GreatAuntAnesthesia (3275) on Tuesday September 09 2014, @09:56AM (#91155) Journal

            > If one can have (have to have?) faith just to function 'properly' while alive and living on Planet Earth, why is so difficult to (properly) take a 'leap of faith' into a realm of being not detectable by one's five senses?

            It's not. In fact it's frighteningly easy. The trouble is, under that view, where everything impossible is possible, then all impossible things are *equally* possible. Why should I take my leap of faith into biblical scripture rather than, say, the Q'ran, or ancient Greek or Viking mythology, or start believing that pokemon canon is real, or maybe just wander off into some wild fantasy realm of my own devising? We're into invisible teapot territory. At some point you have to draw a line, otherwise you become crippled by existential doubt and can't even get out of bed in the morning because WHAT IF MY BEDROOM FLOOR DOESN'T EVEN EXIST, MAN? In other words you have to make certain assumptions about reality just to be able to function. Those base assumptions are the foundations upon which you can use logic and reason to build up an entire worldview. However I think it makes sense to make as few assumptions as we can reasonably get away with, and try not to choose those assumptions arbitrarily.

            I personally have drawn my existential line at the limit of my senses, (with the proviso that those senses can be fooled / can malfunction from time to time). You might argue that this line is no less arbitrary than the one you have drawn that extends past your senses to include your faith, but I'd argue that your choice of faith is completely arbitrary, because you chose that one over all the others which each have just as much/ little evidence. Since, from the outside, each faith appears to be as worthwhile/worthless as the next, and they are pretty much all mutually exclusive, and they don't actually offer any useful answers or explanations anyway, I see no need to include any of them.

            • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 09 2014, @04:06PM

              by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 09 2014, @04:06PM (#91286)

              Men are Moved by two levers only: fear and self interest.
              -- Napoleon Bonaparte

              Without a 'moral absolute', you get today's world in all its misery and injustice.

              With one, you have (had) 'heaven' [togetherweteach.com] on [togetherweteach.com] earth. [togetherweteach.com]

              The Bible and the Message It contains are, to me, the best explanation as to why things are the way they are on Planet Earth and what one can do about it.

              People have given their lives to insure the Bible and Its contents were handed down properly through the generations from the past to the present (now).

              If the Bible was a 'work of fiction' as others have said past and present with various degrees of dissent/contempt, why would people give their lives for a bound volume of lies?

              Consider The LOLCat Bible. [lolcatbible.com] Why spend the past seven years (2007-2014) faithfully 'translating' the KJV version of the Bible into LOLSpeak if the source material is a 'work of fiction'. That would appear to be pointless, wasted effort as the Bible 'speaks for itself' if one considers it to be 'a work of fiction'. Could it not be said that the reason why the LOLCat Bible exists is the same reason that there exists many translations of the Bible in various languages spoken all over the world--that the Message It contains is worth getting out to as many people as possible?

              But as you said in your post you draw the line at the 'edge' of your five senses. That is your choice in the matter and I respect that. This post is 'food for thought' for you in case you are open to change your mind later. To avoid any future arguments this will be the last post in this exchange--I can't really come up with a better response/counterexample than this that you might consider worthwhile to reply to if you want to.

              • (Score: 2) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Tuesday September 09 2014, @05:38PM

                by GreatAuntAnesthesia (3275) on Tuesday September 09 2014, @05:38PM (#91339) Journal

                > With one, you have (had) 'heaven' on earth.

                The bible has had two thousand years of dominance over European thinking to produce heaven on Earth. All we've had are centuries of constant wars, slavery, pestilence and misery. Didn't work. We're trying something new, it's called "science" and so far it's not working out too badly. We've a lot of work to do, but on the whole most things seem to be trending in the right direction.

                > People have given their lives to insure the Bible and Its contents were handed down properly through the generations from the past to the present (now).

                People have given their lives for the Q'ran and Haddith too. Does that mean those works *must* be true too? Oh wait, they can't be true if the bible is true, the two are mutually exclusive. Ditto for Buddhist martyrs, Sikhs, Hindus, and all the other thousands of faiths that people have died for over the millennia... I'm afraid your bible martyrs, while tragic, don't actually prove anything, except that people will die for religion, which isn't exactly news. It says nothing about the truth or otherwise of what they died for.

              • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 09 2014, @08:48PM

                by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 09 2014, @08:48PM (#91464)

                If the Bible was a 'work of fiction' as others have said past and present with various degrees of dissent/contempt, why would people give their lives for a bound volume of lies?

                Those people may have believed it to be true, but believing something to be true doesn't make it so, no matter how hard you believe. Yes, millions (and even billions) of people can be wrong. Science works for discovering truths, religion on the other hand has got us nowhere for discovering truths about the world we live in, why is your version of Christianity correct and the other versions are wrong? Whenever science discovers something that contradicts what was previously thought to be true what was shown to be wrong is discarded or modified. Whenever religion 'discovers' something new you often just get a new version of that religion alongside the old one.

                Consider The LOLCat Bible. Why spend the past seven years (2007-2014) faithfully 'translating' the KJV version of the Bible into LOLSpeak if the source material is a 'work of fiction'.

                For fun, perhaps. I've only read the beginning of Genesis of the LOLCat Bible, and it doesn't seem serious at all, I can't imagine the translators mean for the translation to be taken seriously. It isn't one person working on it for 7 years either, it is a project started 7 years ago that is worked on in an ad-hoc manner by many volunteers doing as much as they like.

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 09 2014, @08:23PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 09 2014, @08:23PM (#91449)

            To put it another way, nonbelivers have more to lose if they are wrong than believers do.

            Hardly. If I was to follow a religion in a gamble to secure a better afterlife I would have to make sacrifices in what looks like the only life I will ever have, to me that would be losing a lot. Now, that isn't why I don't believe in any religions, I don't believe because I don't find the evidence for any religion compelling, but your statement is only true if you take for granted that there is an afterlife.

            And how do you choose which religion is the correct one? Can you honestly say you'd be a Christian if you grew up in a Muslim family in Iran or a Hindu family in India?

  • (Score: 4, Informative) by Gobo on Monday September 08 2014, @11:34AM

    by Gobo (1189) on Monday September 08 2014, @11:34AM (#90694)

    You have enlightened him also in the equally likely theory of the Flying Spaghetti Monster? http://www.flyingspaghettimonster.com/ [flyingspaghettimonster.com]

    • (Score: 2) by mhajicek on Monday September 08 2014, @03:54PM

      by mhajicek (51) on Monday September 08 2014, @03:54PM (#90810)

      I have, and asked His Noodliness to reach out his noodly appendage and bless him.

      Personally I'm living in fear of the coming of the Great White Handkerchief.

      --
      The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by cmn32480 on Monday September 08 2014, @12:13PM

    by cmn32480 (443) <reversethis-{moc.liamg} {ta} {08423nmc}> on Monday September 08 2014, @12:13PM (#90700) Journal

    In James Michener's book "Space", I seem to remember a dialogue between a reverend and a scientist (who I believe were father and son), and the end result being that the happy medium is (roughly) as follows.

    S: How old is the universe?
    R: The bible teaches that it is only a few thousand years old.
    S: Science says the universe is millions of years old and was created by the Big Bang.
    R: What set the big bang in motion?
    S: We don't know, we are researching and trying to figure that out.
    R: Could God have set it in motion?
    S: Certainly.
    R: Tell you what, until there is evidence to the contrary, I'll give you your millions of years if you give me that God could have caused the whole thing.

    It has been many years since I read that book as a teenager, and my memory could be flawed. But without evidence to the contrary, this seems a good compromise. I'd have to go and find the book to get the exact passage, but given the way Michener writes, it was probably pages and pages.

    --
    "It's a dog eat dog world, and I'm wearing Milkbone underwear" - Norm Peterson
    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by quadrox on Monday September 08 2014, @12:22PM

      by quadrox (315) on Monday September 08 2014, @12:22PM (#90704)

      The difference between the two vies is that there is a solid scientific foundation for claiming that the universe is millions of years old, whereas claiming that god is behind it all has no supporting evidence whatsoever.

      In science the point is not to make friends or accept compromises, the point is to figure out the truth. Saying that god is behind everything does not exactly encourage further research, in fact religion encourages blind faith without proof, which is an approach that is fundamentally opposided to all science and learning. Therefore making the sort of compromise that you described is neither good nor reasonable.

      • (Score: 2) by quadrox on Monday September 08 2014, @12:25PM

        by quadrox (315) on Monday September 08 2014, @12:25PM (#90705)

        Please excuse my atrocious spelling and grammar - what a mess :)

        • (Score: 4, Funny) by isostatic on Monday September 08 2014, @01:41PM

          by isostatic (365) on Monday September 08 2014, @01:41PM (#90739) Journal

          I blame god

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 08 2014, @06:01PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 08 2014, @06:01PM (#90889)

            There is evidence for that. [fieldofscience.com]

      • (Score: 4, Insightful) by cmn32480 on Monday September 08 2014, @01:34PM

        by cmn32480 (443) <reversethis-{moc.liamg} {ta} {08423nmc}> on Monday September 08 2014, @01:34PM (#90736) Journal

        I agree with you for the most part.

        I believe that the whole point was that part about "without evidence to the contrary, your theory is also plausible". This is not complete acceptance, but simply an acknowledgement that there are other theories out there. Some of those theories will be proven, some will be disproven, and some will not have either distinction.

        There are things that we don't understand, and cannot attribute (at this time) to any know science. Is it so wrong, that while we look into them, research, experiment, and theorize, that perhaps belief in a higher power is not such a bad thing? If nothing else, it makes you feel a little less insignificant in the ever-expanding universe.

        Blind faith is not necessarily a good thing, but in the absence of evidence to the contrary, faith is a place to start while answers are being looked for.

        --
        "It's a dog eat dog world, and I'm wearing Milkbone underwear" - Norm Peterson
        • (Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 08 2014, @02:28PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 08 2014, @02:28PM (#90765)

          There are things that we don't understand, and cannot attribute (at this time) to any know science. Is it so wrong, that while we look into them, research, experiment, and theorize, that perhaps belief in a higher power is not such a bad thing?

          YES, that attributing the unknown to a higher power IS A BAD THING, because if left alone long enough, the religious types will go ballistic when scientists eventually reach those unknown and thus "intrude" into their God's domain. The problem with religion is it cannot accept the possibility that their teaching is wrong. Faith is, by definition, blind.

          Famous example: Galileo. Had the Church NOT taken a stand in the Geocentric vs Heliocentric view of the world, they would have no objection to Galileo promoting the Heliocentric view. And why did the Church chose one of the view? Because it was not understood and cannot attribute to any known science at that time.

          • (Score: 2) by etherscythe on Monday September 08 2014, @10:36PM

            by etherscythe (937) on Monday September 08 2014, @10:36PM (#91012) Journal

            It is possible to have plausible belief systems based at least in part by evidence. Even if you argue the "decreasing God of the gaps" there will be room for significant roles for a creator deity to play in the foreseeable future (see: what happened before the Big Bang, dark matter, Heisenberg uncertainty). In fact, I think the empirical dissolution or reinforcement of religious belief will herald in a whole new age, the shape of which we can hardly imagine currently.

            As a counterpoint: there are Christians who are extreme hypocrites and do not show any evidence of actually believing what they claim to believe, if you give their actions even a cursory analysis. They are quite numerous. Does this make all believers hypocritical? No. While some people exhibit the Dunning-Kruger effect quite clearly, there are others who have complex and compelling relationships with both faith and reality. It may be that the submitter's friend is just such a one. I have known a few myself.

            At risk of invoking Godwin, I will just point out that history has shown what happens when groups of people are demonized based on simplistic criteria, and it's not something we want to fall into, particularly if we want to maintain the moral high ground.

            --
            "Fake News: anything reported outside of my own personally chosen echo chamber"
        • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 08 2014, @06:55PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 08 2014, @06:55PM (#90915)

          I think that naming your ignorance God and pretending that, having named it, you have converted ignorance to knowledge is a sorry approach to the unknown. --John Popelish

          -- gewg_

      • (Score: 2, Insightful) by hendrikboom on Monday September 08 2014, @01:57PM

        by hendrikboom (1125) Subscriber Badge on Monday September 08 2014, @01:57PM (#90752) Homepage Journal

        If God designed the entire universe complete with evidence, cosmic background radiation and fossil record and all. to convince human being that the world is billions of years old rather than thousands, well. I'll believe in the old universe, as is evidently He desires me to.

        -- hendrik

        • (Score: 3, Insightful) by VLM on Monday September 08 2014, @02:19PM

          by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Monday September 08 2014, @02:19PM (#90760)

          "evidently He desires me to"

          There's a fun argument lurking here, where a stereotypical answer to "why does god let evil exist" and "why didn't god help his chosen people in the early 40s in central europe" and "why did god let grandpa die young" and all that kind of stuff is something along the lines of a supreme being can't be constrained by human morality and ethics, who are you as a mere mortal to tell a supreme deity how to behave, etc.

          So that argument applied to observations of reality, is God may very well be evil as humans define evil, and being a jerk, he might not want us to pay attention to reality and all that.

          Of course the response is something along my personal beliefs of I refuse to worship a deity that pragmatically has made bad decisions, and this tends to really piss off his followers, so in meatspace I don't talk much about how I personally believe the judeo-christian god is a god of evil so I refuse to worship. Think about it... any big human org, whatever they talk about "quality is job one" "we love multiculturalism an diverse opinions" whatever that human group emphasizes is usually a lie, or at best some kind of long term opposite of current reality goal. So all this "jesus is love", stuff thats out there, well, being the opposite is quite realistic for human group behavior. If there is a god, at least WRT how he behaves to us, he is kind of a jerk, isn't he, just observationally? So this whole "ignore the fossil record" thing is pretty much par for the course, if a jerk says it, even if its a really powerful jerk.

          • (Score: 2) by mhajicek on Monday September 08 2014, @03:59PM

            by mhajicek (51) on Monday September 08 2014, @03:59PM (#90812)

            God created the universe five minutes ago, with all the layers of rock and fossils in place and the light from the stars all on it's path as if the universe had started 13.7 billion years ago. Just to fool us, 'cause, you know, He's just that kind of guy.

            And on the eighth day, when he had rested, he created darkness.
            And for all around him he needed a cloak to hide himself from his tired labours.
            And the antelope and the deer and the ostrich and the zebra hid
            their faces and ran like tiny children
            into the shrivelling blackness around them.
            And the trees grew hoods and the cows winced.
            And all the crops began to droop.
            Even the coal rattled in terror for, lo, there was no light anywhere.
            And he was well pleased with his labours and he smiled and was unable to find his way out of the room.
            Consequently, he blundered around his new creations;
            stamping helplessly left and right upon the new buds of his endeavour.
            Octopuses, caterpillars, tendons and worms were squashed like buds.
            Easter bunnies ruptured like eggs.
            At length he found the door, and, fumbling with the handle,
            he chanced to knock the key on to the ground.
            As he lowered his nose to rummage around that vast appendage where he might see something on the floor,
            beheld a ray of light coming in from the hall.

            Kevin?Supper's ready.
            Mom, I'm locked in!
            Kevin... Supper's ready!
            Mom!

            --
            The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
          • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 08 2014, @07:37PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 08 2014, @07:37PM (#90939)

            Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent.
            Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.
            Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil?
            Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?
              --Epicurus (341 BCE - 270 BCE)

            Trying to use logic to disprove belief systems is bound to fail.
            It's a case of "My unprovable opinions are as good as your vetted scientific facts".

            ...and it's just bizarre that people put such great stock in a book with so many self-contradictions.
            Bible Inconsistencies; Bible Contradictions [infidels.org]
            Self-Contradictions of the Bible [google.com]

            -- gewg_

            • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 08 2014, @08:04PM

              by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 08 2014, @08:04PM (#90952)

              The question of theodicy is really one of shades of gray.

              A thoughtful believer will explain it with some form of "suffering builds character" or just because it appears to be evil to you does not make it so. That changes the argument from whether there a god to the nature of good and evil - and whether a happy fluffy existence without any suffering is really a good existence.

            • (Score: 2) by TheGratefulNet on Tuesday September 09 2014, @02:03AM

              by TheGratefulNet (659) on Tuesday September 09 2014, @02:03AM (#91055)

              ah, one of my favorite quotes.

              or, if you prefer the softer version, take the woody allen quote:

              "If it turns out that there is a God, I don't think that he's evil. But the worst that you can say about him is that basically he's an underachiever."

              I don't think there is a god, though. there are a lot of really confused people on this planet and they are still stuck in the bronze age of thinking. that pretty much explains all of the 'god stuff'.

              --
              "It is now safe to switch off your computer."
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 08 2014, @05:24PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 08 2014, @05:24PM (#90856)

        The difference between the two vies is that there is a solid scientific foundation for claiming that the universe is millions of years old, whereas claiming that god is behind it all has no supporting evidence whatsoever.

        That is a half truth. It isn't that there is no evidence for God being behind it, it is that the question of whether God is behind it is unanswerable. Not just unanswerable with today's level of science (which would simply be a "god of the gaps" situation), it will never be answerable because of the recursion that then follows from asking who is behind God.

        No, that sort of "compromise" is exactly the correct one. The line between science and religion should rightly be drawn between the knowable and the unknowable because the very definition of faith is actively choosing to believe something that you know to be unprovable. Any other kinds of faith are just glorified superstitions.

    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by dublet on Monday September 08 2014, @01:00PM

      by dublet (2994) on Monday September 08 2014, @01:00PM (#90719)

      This means that the reverend in this scenario is describing a god of the gaps [wikipedia.org]. This means the deity concepts retreats continually as science advances. You make someone's deity into an argument of ignorance. "We don't know what caused it, so it must've been a supernatural power."

      From a scientific point of view it's much better to admit we don't know something and need to figure out why we don't know it than simply to say it's a deity's "will".

      • (Score: 3, Insightful) by mhajicek on Monday September 08 2014, @04:02PM

        by mhajicek (51) on Monday September 08 2014, @04:02PM (#90813)

        That is what most of the creationist arguments I've heard boil down to. This is why I think education can help. Get them to draw a line in the sand, be it the age of the universe or macro-evolution or something else, and then cross it.

        --
        The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 09 2014, @04:44PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 09 2014, @04:44PM (#91301)

          That may help with the small subset of religionists who have been formally trained in rational thought for other specific domains. Unfortunately they are a very small subset and for most others that attempt will just force them to dig in their mental heels reject whatever facts and evidence you have presented.

        • (Score: 2) by zsau on Friday September 12 2014, @03:20AM

          by zsau (2642) on Friday September 12 2014, @03:20AM (#92243)

          Won't work, any more than getting them to read the bible will. The first two chapters of Genesis, the creation story "from God's perspective" and "from the perspective of man" as it's commonly put, contradict each other. Are birds created before the male human being, or after him? Are male and female human beings created together, or separately? There's an undeniable grammatical construct that proves the contradiction, but what do so-called "literalists" say of it? That it doesn't mean that. That it can't possibly mean that, because if it meant that, the Word of God would contradict itself, but the Word of God can't contradict itself. So they read and translate their assumptions back into the text.

          There other inconveniences throughout the bible for people's theological precommitments. I don't mean silly things like how many people there were in this or that army, but critical theological concepts. How many gods are there? Did stuff exist before God created the world? What happens to us after we die?

          Education's got nothing to do with it. The people who translate lies into the bible (when they're not there in the original text) have extensive educations in theology and Biblical Hebrew. They're not fools. They know exactly what they're doing. It's tribalism and power plays, not religion and fools.

    • (Score: 2) by cosurgi on Monday September 08 2014, @01:34PM

      by cosurgi (272) on Monday September 08 2014, @01:34PM (#90737) Journal

      nah, my 7 year old daughter just told me yesterday that god may have created universe (after I told her that we don't know what caused the universe to exist). But a second later she asked what caused god to exist :) And I told her about the concept of "turtles all the way down" (under the flat disc of Earth), I suppose you know this one.

      --
      #
      #\ @ ? [adom.de] Colonize Mars [kozicki.pl]
      #
      • (Score: 2) by mhajicek on Monday September 08 2014, @04:04PM

        by mhajicek (51) on Monday September 08 2014, @04:04PM (#90814)

        But God created Himself!

        If something can self-create, why can't the universe self-create?

        --
        The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
        • (Score: 2) by PinkyGigglebrain on Monday September 08 2014, @06:04PM

          by PinkyGigglebrain (4458) on Monday September 08 2014, @06:04PM (#90890)

          What if the Universe IS God?

          I would recommend reading Joseph Cambell's works. For me it had a lot of "Whoa!, I never thought about it that way" moments.

          --
          "Beware those who would deny you Knowledge, For in their hearts they dream themselves your Master."
          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 10 2014, @10:06AM

            by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 10 2014, @10:06AM (#91611)

            What the fuck does that even mean? Don't just suggest I read a book to find out, provide a brief explanation so I can decide if a book on the idea is worth my time, but on the face of it it seems nonsensical.

        • (Score: 2) by zsau on Friday September 12 2014, @04:03AM

          by zsau (2642) on Friday September 12 2014, @04:03AM (#92259)

          The universe created God.

          And then God created the Universe. Being omnipotent and omniscient, God was able to create a universe which would subsequently develop intelligent life. The intelligent life would start worshipping and believing in God, bringing God into existence a la Terry Pratchett's Small Gods. Thus, God would exist so as to have been able to create the universe in the first place.

          Any questions? No? Good. All problems solved.

    • (Score: 2) by edIII on Monday September 08 2014, @07:16PM

      by edIII (791) on Monday September 08 2014, @07:16PM (#90925)

      To me the compromise is simple. They consider themselves rational and intellectual?

      1) Can you prove or authenticate the text of the Bible as coming from God/Jesus, without using the Bible itself as a plea to authority?
      2) Is the Bible written by God/Jesus or was it written by man?
      3) If written by man, is it possible they fully understood what was said to them? The context? Where they just metaphors? Could of have been an attempt to explain a logarithmic scale of how Earth came to be?
      4) If not written by God, do you believe any of it is subject to change or revision?
      5) If God is capable of absolutely anything (infinite in all respects), why couldn't God create an entire universe before creating the single planet (seed) that started humanity?

      See, most religious nuts simply cannot get past #1. The Bible is automatically self-authenticating (it *must* be God) and is literal. At least, their intellects are incapable of exploring the metaphors and meanings separate from what may have been taught them from others. Conformity is important because conformity is a measurement or scale by which you determine your eligibility to get into Heaven. It is usually always another man that is informing you that you have been measured and found wanting. According to who? Nobody gets called out to the carpet enough to justify their "models" of the Bible.

      If you find somebody that you can get to #2 accepting that it had to man that literally wrote the Bible from their experiences with God, it's almost always upsetting just to get there. They all want direct human communication with God in their language. At that point you can at least discuss the possibility that divine information was imparted to people on Earth, but that we are not getting the specifics right. The very least, you establish that man is fallible, and therefore his interpretations (First Council of Nicaea), might also be fallible.

      #4 is where you find out if they are truly an intellectual, and rational as they claim. Scientologists are in the exact same boat. Many that I have met are incapable of looking at anything Hubbard wrote as being wrong. Every part of Dianetics and the OT bridge is perfect and doctrine .

      The moment you subscribe to a doctrine you have fallen intellectually, and this applies to scientists equally as well as religious fanatics. If they are willing to discuss anything past this point open minded, then it really should not be much effort at all to establish the possibility that evolution and a planet billions of years old are still within God's plans.

      Ultimately the goal should just be an agreement that any discussions around how we are going to live and manage our resources will be subject to empiricism instead of divinity. Empiricism we are doing pretty good with. Understanding the divine accurately (they don't respond to Q&A, no Reddit AMA has been forthcoming) is next to impossible.

      If they really do seem to have a noggin up there capable of some high horse power, but are just a little lost with the emotions and rightness/wrongness of something, you could also have a bit of fun...

      Question: Considering the Bible/Torah/Quran as "eruptions" of perfect divine information being transmitted to Earth about love for everything and everyone, does it appear that there are inconsistencies and conflicts in the interpretation that clearly arise from ancient and modern cultural influences?

      Scientists may not agree all the time, but scientists don't erect a large wooden representation of a string and burn it in the yard of String theorist. Religious people can't even agree on doctrine, and will expend countless lives and resources to take your head for it :)

      --
      Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
      • (Score: 1) by hendrikboom on Tuesday September 09 2014, @01:26AM

        by hendrikboom (1125) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday September 09 2014, @01:26AM (#91048) Homepage Journal

        3) If written by man, is it possible they fully understood what was said to them? The context? Where they just metaphors? Could of have been an attempt to explain a logarithmic scale of how Earth came to be?

        A friend of mine, who knows Hebrew, tells me that the language in Genesis is a few hundred years older than that in the rest of the Torah. And further, that the language back then had few words for abstract concepts. So everything abstract *had* to be expressed in metaphor.

        Trying to reverse-engineer the language to find out what was originally intended is quite possibly infeasible. One thing you shouldn't do is take any of it literally.

        -- hendrik

      • (Score: 2) by mhajicek on Tuesday September 09 2014, @02:31AM

        by mhajicek (51) on Tuesday September 09 2014, @02:31AM (#91065)

        Hey that's a good idea. String up the string theorists!

        --
        The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 08 2014, @12:29PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 08 2014, @12:29PM (#90707)

    What always seemed the obvious answer to me was both are true. There obvious was a start, however far back, and we did not originate from colliding matter. And all spiecies continously evolve.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 08 2014, @01:26PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 08 2014, @01:26PM (#90732)

      YEC is in direct opposition to scientific facts. They cannot both be true. The Catholic perspective is closer to what you mention.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 10 2014, @10:37AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 10 2014, @10:37AM (#91617)

      There isn't obviously a start. What we have is a point where we seem to be unable to tell what came before it, that isn't necessarily the start.

      Or are you referring to the start of life on Earth, I don't see why that couldn't have come from colliding matter, we just aren't sure how yet.

  • (Score: 2) by Geezer on Monday September 08 2014, @12:31PM

    by Geezer (511) on Monday September 08 2014, @12:31PM (#90709)

    By any measure, aren't the terms "rational" and "young earth creationist" mutually exclusive? The willful denial of repeatedly-demonstrated scientific evidence is certainly irrational.

    • (Score: 1) by cout on Monday September 08 2014, @12:34PM

      by cout (4526) on Monday September 08 2014, @12:34PM (#90710)

      We are all a quirky mix of rational and irrational.

    • (Score: 1) by eapache on Monday September 08 2014, @12:34PM

      by eapache (3822) on Monday September 08 2014, @12:34PM (#90711)

      Rationality does not require empiricism as a premise. In fact the older philosophical schools contrasted the rationalists with the empiricists as entirely different approaches.

      • (Score: 2) by Thexalon on Monday September 08 2014, @01:13PM

        by Thexalon (636) on Monday September 08 2014, @01:13PM (#90724)

        Or alternately, it is quite possible to make perfectly logical arguments with bad premises.

        One of the first instances of an irrational response to a scientific argument: One of the Pythagoreans, probably Hippasus, demonstrated conclusively that the ratio of the hypotenuse to the sides of an isosceles right triangle was an irrational number. When he ends up dead (possibly at the hands of said Pythagoreans), it is attributed to divine punishment for his presumption.

        --
        The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 08 2014, @01:21PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 08 2014, @01:21PM (#90730)

      Depends on how much they have really looked into the issue. One can be ignorant but still rational. Inform them gently and they might not have a knee-jerk rejection of the facts.

    • (Score: 2) by Freeman on Monday September 08 2014, @05:53PM

      by Freeman (732) on Monday September 08 2014, @05:53PM (#90880) Journal

      You are assuming that God couldn't have created the Earth and made the rocks to appear to be millions of years old. He created Adam as a full-grown Adult. Another possible explanation of the rocks appearing to be "millions" of years old could be the Flood. https://answersingenesis.org/the-flood/global/worldwide-flood-evidence/ [answersingenesis.org] Call me crazy, but assuming something like the Flood happened. The Earth would have gone through a Lot of Stresses. Which accounts for animals being buried almost instantaneously and preserved (Fossils/Dinosaurs) and definitely has something to do with the layout of the earth as it is now. Again, assuming you believe in the Bible. Another thought that has run across my mind from time to time is what, if the planet was more or less here already. God just took the planet and molded it to his liking and bam you have Earth. Genesis 1 verse 2 "And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters." That verse makes it sound like there was something there. How long had the planet been there, before God did something with it? Millions of years? Perhaps.

      --
      Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
      • (Score: 2) by Geezer on Tuesday September 09 2014, @09:53AM

        by Geezer (511) on Tuesday September 09 2014, @09:53AM (#91154)

        So I should assume that this "god" is perfectly capable of not only being an absentee landlord, but a liar and fraudster as well? That certainly opens up a whole new can of circular logic, doesn't it?

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 08 2014, @12:37PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 08 2014, @12:37PM (#90713)

    Classic creationist cartoon tract [chick.com] from the '70s.

    • (Score: 1) by linuxrocks123 on Monday September 08 2014, @01:21PM

      by linuxrocks123 (2557) on Monday September 08 2014, @01:21PM (#90728) Journal

      I'm running into Poe's Law here ... is that a parody site, or serious?

      Given http://www.myparentsopencarry.com/ [myparentsopencarry.com] is for real, it is legitimately hard to tell.

      • (Score: 2) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Monday September 08 2014, @01:29PM

        by GreatAuntAnesthesia (3275) on Monday September 08 2014, @01:29PM (#90733) Journal

        As far as anyone knows, the Chick tracts are quite serious. They have their own TVTropes page: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/ComicBook/ChickTracts?from=Main.ChickTracts [tvtropes.org]

        Warning: TVTropes will eat your afternoon. Only click if you have nothing better to do with the rest of your day.

      • (Score: 2) by khallow on Monday September 08 2014, @02:17PM

        by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Monday September 08 2014, @02:17PM (#90759) Journal

        Serious. I've run into those things before when I was a kid in need of salvation, apparently. I remember one where some businessman gets rich, uppity, and up to his eyeballs in sin. When he kicks the bucket, he goes to the pearly gates and gets rejected. They don't take American Express (and of course, he's got to whine about that in a totally unsympathetic way). The last scene is some angel dumping him into the flaming pit while simultaneously doing the "eyes lifted to heaven" schtick. I'd walk into walls more than I do, if I did that all the time. The moral basically is that you'll be a nasty bastard in life and burn in hell in death, if you don't do exactly what we say.

        It's a remarkably cruel thing to spring on a youngster who may not be mentally prepared to dispute even such outrageous and brazen propaganda. But it's the real deal.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 08 2014, @08:14PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 08 2014, @08:14PM (#90959)

        Nope, it's for real: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chick_tract#Anti-evolution [wikipedia.org]

        (insert "I don't want to live on this planet anymore" obligatory cartoon here ...)

  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by gman003 on Monday September 08 2014, @01:21PM

    by gman003 (4155) on Monday September 08 2014, @01:21PM (#90731)

    Since you've done it for over a decade, I assume you've figured this out, but I'll post this for others. When you're debating creationism, you are not debating science. You're debating theology. If they cared one whit about provable hypotheses or physical evidence, they wouldn't be young-earth creationists to begin with.

    So your argument needs to focus on proving that evolution is theologically consistent - which it easily can be, if you treat Genesis as a metaphor or parable like literally 90% of the bible is. My favorite tactic is going through the "seven days" list while going through the scientific version of history from the beginning of time, and showing that once you drop the "it all needs to happen in 168 hours" requirement, it pretty much lines up.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 08 2014, @01:56PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 08 2014, @01:56PM (#90750)

      There are some interesting idea's out there.

      http://godandscience.org/apologetics/day-age.html [godandscience.org]

    • (Score: 2) by VLM on Monday September 08 2014, @02:31PM

      by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Monday September 08 2014, @02:31PM (#90768)

      "once you drop the "it all needs to happen in 168 hours""

      For some fun, try, something like, you petty little human, how dare you try to force an all powerful eternal god to use the same length hours as we use, just because our clocks happen to work at such and such speed so as a inferior to us his clocks must obey ours. If you continue on that path of disbelief, next thing you know you'll be telling god how to rewrite his commandments or revising the gospels to tell a different story. Go ahead, tell your all powerful god that you as a human do not permit him to take a billion of our years for one of his hours because you are a superior being as a human so he as a god has to obey you, just warn me ahead of time so I can cower under this lightning rod and start recording a youtube video because his response to your disrespect toward his lack of omnipotent power is likely to be pretty epic. Or TLDR I wouldn't go outside the range of a lightning rod if I was all "I forbid god from creating the cosmic microwave background and fossil record and he must obey me". Disbelief in his works as a doubting thomas and all that. Maybe if you repent and start to believe in his omnipotent works and convert to what he wants you to believe, which is clearly modern geology and modern evolution, then, if you're lucky, he won't damn you to eternal hell. Maybe.

      Then again we have a lot of psuedo-christians going around insulting God to his face claiming to be worshipers while denigrating him constantly and they're not getting the lightning bolt treatment, so either he doesn't give a flying F or he doesn't exist, which tends to piss off his believers when you bring this second part of the argument up. So if he doesn't give a flying F about really naughty people, or he doesn't exist, then ignore him, and chill, it doesn't matter as long as you're not naughtier than the worst of us.

  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Covalent on Monday September 08 2014, @01:43PM

    by Covalent (43) on Monday September 08 2014, @01:43PM (#90741) Journal

    People use the term "person of faith" all the time to describe themselves. They do this with a sense of pride, because to them believing in something without evidence is a virtue.

    I like to tell people I'm a "person of evidence". I don't "believe" in anything (not even gravity!) I look at the evidence and try to make the best decisions I can based on that evidence. I have a lot of evidence that gravity is real, so I act accordingly. But I don't BELIEVE in gravity. Gravity might be something totally different from what I think it is. And being a person of evidence is a virtue - it helps people to view reality without being encumbered by fantasy. It helps people not judge others and be fair and equitable. It makes people treat each other with respect and decency.

    You can doubt some of the details of evolution. But it is very difficult to not have a lot of confidence in evolution if you look at the evidence in a fair way. To quote Monty Python "...LOOK AT THE BONES!!!" Then tell me how two Dreadnoughtuses (Dreadnoughti?) fit on the ark:

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2014/09/04/this-is-the-kind-of-dinosaur-you-find-in-hollywood/ [washingtonpost.com]

    --
    You can't rationally argue somebody out of a position they didn't rationally get into.
  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 08 2014, @01:57PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 08 2014, @01:57PM (#90751)

    Ask yourself some other questions though. Why do you hound this poor person? Is it because you care for this person? Or is it out of some sort of self driven need to be right all the time?

    Ask yourself another question does it matter? No really? Why does it matter which way it happened? Does it affect you day to day in your personal life?

    He has chosen a life where he tries to better himself (most young earth people are like that). Yet you want to step into the middle of that and meddle with it. It is like walking up to someone who is trying to quit smoking and saying hey want a light and here is one? As that is exactly what you are doing.

    This sums up best how you should not live your life. http://xkcd.com/386/ [xkcd.com] So what if they are wrong?

    At this point I would very much like to share with him
    I seriously doubt you want to 'share'. You want to tell him. You are being a bully. In fact I have seen this tactic many times used in evolution/creationism atheist/christian debates. One or the other side paints themselves into a corner and instead of admitting they are not that good of debater they throw their hands up and start to google around to find more ammo. In extreme cases they call in the troops (you almost did that here).

    Again I ask you to ask yourself what do you hope to accomplish with 'debating' like this? Is it to actually better someone? Or is it to make you look smart and feel that way? Be honest with yourself. It is the start of being honest with others.

    Dont confuse being a bully with being stupid. Not all bullies are dumb boxes of bricks. I have known in my life many *very* smart ones.

    Also even if you are not by some stretch you are not being a bully... Here are good tips for work. Dont share your religious views, dont date your coworkers, dont share your political views. All three of those are hot buttons and bring drama into your work place. Somewhere you usually need to focus, instead of worrying about what your coworkers are doing behind your back because you did something stupid. You are setting yourself up to be someone like that. In fact depending on how your other coworkers feel about how you handle this you may find yourself on the outside. I seriously suggest backing off and find other pleasant common ground. You may even win this battle. But you may find you lost the war. But may find it very hard to do your normal job because of how you treat others. I suggest a re-examination of why you are badgering people.

    • (Score: 2) by mhajicek on Monday September 08 2014, @04:12PM

      by mhajicek (51) on Monday September 08 2014, @04:12PM (#90817)

      I hope you come back to read my response, since posting as AC you won't get the notice. I only engage in these debates (and 9/11 debates) with those who also want to engage in them. I've had several past creationist coworkers who were not open to the discussion, and so I just let them be in that regard. Hounding them would be pointless if they're not open to discussion. I even had one coworker who said it was against God to ask questions about the Bible. What do you say to that? Nothing.

      --
      The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by bzipitidoo on Monday September 08 2014, @02:13PM

    by bzipitidoo (4388) on Monday September 08 2014, @02:13PM (#90758) Journal

    When you try to show them the evidence-- tree ring data, glacier cores, dinosaur bones, trilobite remains, potassium-argon dating, amount of heavier elements in the sun, analysis of craters on the moon-- you're on the wrong track. Evolution is not their problem, science is. Their reply is always a pleading of ignorance, the thought that we just aren't smart and should leave the thinking to God. They will say "that doesn't prove anything". They love to claim that no one knows, no one can know. They confidently say we don't know how old the Earth is, because there's no proof.

    They missed the basics of science. What is proof? What can be proven? They don't realize that the standard of proof they demand all too conveniently makes it impossible to prove anything at all. In effect, they demand proof of the supernatural. Can you prove the Earth is more than 5 days old? How do you know God didn't create the Earth 5 days ago, or 5 minutes ago, complete with people who believe they remember things that happened 5 years ago, and geology that looks millions of years old? Can it be proven one way or the other? No. That's also what the Flying Spaghetti Monster is about. You don't know. No one knows. He's omnipotent and supernatural, he (God or the FSM) could have done it. Science therefore excludes supernatural explanations. They are unprovable. We work with the idea that what we observe is reality. It may not be, it may all be a big supernatural illusion, but that does not matter. If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it can be treated as if it is a duck. In short, it is a duck.

    Often they get it all backward. Despite that science and rationality cannot work with the supernatural, they try to employ it to prove that God does exist. The God of the Gaps. They like to think that if science can't prove that animal B evolved from animal A, that proves God did it. Find an animal in between, and they'll just say there are still gaps, not seeing that gaps can be inserted infinitely. Or they do grasp that, but not the implications, and are all pleased and smug that they've got you, smirking at you as you struggle to fill the gaps. Another backward thing they do is start with a conclusion and try to cherry pick facts to fit it.

    No, it's not just Evolution that they refuse to accept. It is science. We've surrounded ourselves with the fruits of scientific discovery, but they don't see it. They blithely drive that miracle of technology, the automobile, full of all kinds of metallurgic and chemical wizardry, which goes back to our discovery of the elements and that they fit fairly neatly into a table, the Periodic Table of the Elements, complete with a radio that could not have been conceived if we didn't somewhat understand the electromagnetic spectrum, and they seriously believe we don't know jack! They might have a magic smartphone in a pocket, eat food that could only have originated from hundreds of miles away, or from a greenhouse, wear clothes that could never have been made by hand. and so on, but they never understood any of it and dismiss it all out of hand. It's crazy the way they will shrug off Global Warming as if it's a political position and scientists are all together in a political party, producing papers that are just as much propaganda as anything a real political party would do. They just don't get it. And they have little idea how ignorant they really are. While they see the possibility of conspiracy where it is extremely unlikely, they overlook far more obvious and certain conspiracy elsewhere. Big Tobacco said it: "doubt is our product". The few members of the Tea Party who have gotten a clue lament how easily the Tea Party can be had. Corporate interests have noticed, and, rather than agitate for better education, have, like a pack of fools, responded by running fairly clumsy propaganda campaigns. But those campaigns are good enough to fool the Tea Party.

    • (Score: 1, Troll) by khallow on Monday September 08 2014, @03:20PM

      by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Monday September 08 2014, @03:20PM (#90793) Journal

      No, it's not just Evolution that they refuse to accept. It is science. We've surrounded ourselves with the fruits of scientific discovery, but they don't see it. They blithely drive that miracle of technology, the automobile, full of all kinds of metallurgic and chemical wizardry, which goes back to our discovery of the elements and that they fit fairly neatly into a table, the Periodic Table of the Elements, complete with a radio that could not have been conceived if we didn't somewhat understand the electromagnetic spectrum, and they seriously believe we don't know jack! They might have a magic smartphone in a pocket, eat food that could only have originated from hundreds of miles away, or from a greenhouse, wear clothes that could never have been made by hand. and so on, but they never understood any of it and dismiss it all out of hand. It's crazy the way they will shrug off Global Warming as if it's a political position and scientists are all together in a political party, producing papers that are just as much propaganda as anything a real political party would do. They just don't get it. And they have little idea how ignorant they really are. While they see the possibility of conspiracy where it is extremely unlikely, they overlook far more obvious and certain conspiracy elsewhere. Big Tobacco said it: "doubt is our product". The few members of the Tea Party who have gotten a clue lament how easily the Tea Party can be had. Corporate interests have noticed, and, rather than agitate for better education, have, like a pack of fools, responded by running fairly clumsy propaganda campaigns. But those campaigns are good enough to fool the Tea Party.

      How'd I know that a perfectly good discussion about disproving creationism was going to devolve into an unscientific bash at climate skeptism and the US tea party? I guess it was that the first two bits of evidence you thought of were tree rings and ice cores. A bit of obsessive foreshadowing I guess.

      As to the "unlikely" conspiracy, we have the obvious problem that climate alarmism gets funding - this is abused to the extent that a lot of mostly irrelevant stuff is blamed on "climate change" such as specific examples of extreme weather (eg, the silliness over the New York hurricane, Hurricane Sandy), oyster spat die-offs, moose health issues, coffee plant diseases, water mismanagement, and overly generous US flood insurance (completely explains studies which allege that climate change is causing an increase in insurance payouts) to name a few in no particular order (which I recall seeing in recent months), the commonly mentioned "consensus" studies which don't seem to be based on actual knowledge of climate (so if these studies are true, you have a bunch of people who happen to believe something for mostly ideological or dogmatic reasons, which is a typical political party exercise), and of course, huge sums of public funding which just happen to be spendable only because a good portion of the public is convinced that climate change is a real problem (which provides the motive for funding climate alarmism). Even the big oil companies have gotten wise to which direction that particular gravy train is traveling and many of them have their own renewable energy programs steadily milking said public funding.

      My view is that sure, it might be that climate skeptism is the new creationism. Show evidence of this. Don't just back it up with bullshit assertions and your own flavor of propaganda.

      Similarly, the tea party insults are egregious. The US has things like ballooning deficits as far as the eye can see - these can't be covered merely by collecting more taxes. There's also ample evidence of rampant government abuse such as the NSA spying scandal that has nothing to do with which flavor happens to be in charge, but it has a lot to do with a government having a huge, captive revenue stream and spend it on unaccountable things. Keep in mind that if the government is collecting revenue, then that revenue can be used on the security apparatus, even if you pass a law saying it can't. They just need to make sure that the information doesn't get out. Sure, the tea party is hypocritical, just like every other significant political force in the US and they often want their cake and to eat it too (particularly, the ones who want massive budget cuts, as long as they don't touch the largest few components such as Social Security, Medicare, or defense spending).

      But you've said nothing about them that doesn't hold for anyone else, including the groups concerned about climate change or scientific research. It's easy for anyone to be had. There's always someone ready and able to exploit your particular flavor of beliefs and desires.

  • (Score: 2) by subs on Monday September 08 2014, @02:21PM

    by subs (4485) on Monday September 08 2014, @02:21PM (#90761)

    Religious identity, religious views and in fact any news that are not held for strictly rational reasons, are deeply internalized by those that believe them. Therefore, any attack on the religious view is perceived as a direct attack on fundamental core of the identity of the person. Many religious people will place the comfort derived from this identity over and above any interest in knowing the true state of affairs in the real world. If that's the case, then no amount of argumentation will convince them. Moreover, being too fervent in the argumentation, you can quite easily attract their ire. So tread carefully.

    If they do claim to be more interested in the truth than being comfortable in their beliefs, then you're past the biggest hurdle. The next steps consist of addressing the fundamental falsehoods that creationism is based on, and luckily for us, that has already been done in a neat video series [youtube.com]. Watch it and perhaps get your coworker to watch it as well and think about it. IMO the most important takeaway for believers from that series is for them to ask themselves what if there is a God, but the Bible is not 100% accurate in describing him. IOW, it's not that "God is wrong" or "God is a liar", it's that the people who wrote, edited and copied the Bible over the centuries made mistakes. If they can't imagine that possibility, then in fact they would not be worshipping God, they'd be worshipping a book.

    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by opinionated_science on Monday September 08 2014, @05:36PM

      by opinionated_science (4031) on Monday September 08 2014, @05:36PM (#90864)

      Religion is a social construct, and depending on nature of the society will diversify to fill social territory left untended.

      Hence, in the USA there are many offshoots of the original european religions, including the original religions.

      The current conflicts in the middle east are competitive political conflicts to occupy social territory.

      Ultimately, religion only exists because adults are allowed to teach it to children, and its communication entirely uncritical. Often with penalties for non-compliance.

      Science teaches critical thinking, and does not depend on who did what or who said what. Newton's mathematics are independently verifiable. As are Einsteins. The experiments are all repeatable. Extraordinary claims, require extraordinary evidence, is a human mantra to live by.

      The problem with religion in modern society, is that it is no longer needed. The power structures it used to provide centuries ago have been replicated within government and other social groupings - at least in the "Western world". The founding fathers very wisely saw that Church and State were competing interests.

      We are all born human, first. Everything else second.

  • (Score: 5, Informative) by Common Joe on Monday September 08 2014, @02:22PM

    by Common Joe (33) <{common.joe.0101} {at} {gmail.com}> on Monday September 08 2014, @02:22PM (#90763) Journal

    Translation is a tricky business. I know since 1) I'm learning another language 2) It's my wife's profession.

    With that said, the door buster on this problem is in the translation. I didn't use much Google-fu, but this website has what I've heard from multiple sources: http://www.accuracyingenesis.com/day.html [accuracyingenesis.com]. It should be a good starting point for your to gather the arguments you need.

    Basically, the original Hebrew never meant seven 24-hour periods. It meant seven periods of time.

    As a side note and personal opinion of mine, I feel neither side acknowledges something extremely interesting: that the story of creation in Genesis actually corresponds pretty well to what atheistic scientists say today. Am I stretching it some? Definitely, but don't forget scientists don't understand the universe either. (See Dark Matter for an example.) If I have the time and if there is interest, I'll try writing a longer post later highlighting some of the similarities.

  • (Score: 2, Interesting) by sea on Monday September 08 2014, @03:03PM

    by sea (86) Subscriber Badge on Monday September 08 2014, @03:03PM (#90787) Homepage Journal

    I'm going to throw in my two cents and suggest that instead of endlessly debating with partial information that you've gleaned from the internet and various flyers, why don't you both sign up for some courses in the sciences and get a solid foundational background knowledge.

    While doing those courses make sure that you read the textbooks as well. The reasoning and evidence for each theory as well as the history of the field is almost always included in a good textbook (and even in some of the bad ones).

    You're going to want at least the following: Biology, Oceanography, Geography, Astronomy, Ecology, and Chemistry. (You can be light on the Chemistry and still get through with the others)

    Remember, the online debates and factoids involved are equivalent to the Wikipedia plot summaries for a book. Studying the sciences in depth is equivalent to reading the actual book.

    Oh, and as a bonus, it's a constructive use of your time. Debating (in this case) is a waste of time. You always end up where you started and gain no new knowledge. You both would be much better off if you went full scholar and tried to figure this thing out with the aid of a significant chunk of our accumulated knowledge.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 08 2014, @05:47PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 08 2014, @05:47PM (#90876)

    Just tell him that you give in but with the assumption that God created everything in the middle of the sentence you are currently uttering just to have an argument to watch.

    If one assumes a supernatural entity that is just as likely a point of creation as any other given point in time.

  • (Score: 2, Insightful) by turgid on Monday September 08 2014, @08:08PM

    by turgid (4318) Subscriber Badge on Monday September 08 2014, @08:08PM (#90955) Journal

    These people will never be convinced, and I'm sure they like to keep these debates going to continuously shore-up their personal belief system by renewing the arguments daily. They are leaches on our time, energy and patience. Nowadays there's more than enough easily-accessible information for them to educate themselves.

    If you really must, and for your own sanity, point them at some books and let them get on with it themselves and focus yourself on something more productive and personally fulfilling.

    I seem to attract the religious loonies of life. Usually it's the Jehovah's Witnesses trying to convince me with their little leaflets and books and their "interesting things that scientists are telling us." They honestly can't see that they're being brainwashed with half-truths. There are other "Christian" types too, who "believe in a creator." Did you know that if you read all the "evidence" about Noah's Ark it's really interesting and it was real? And the human body didn't evolve, because someone at my church said so and gave me a booklet?

    I am getting heartily sick of these people too and the ever-increasing loudness of their protestations and their demanding that we kow-tow to their superstitions and pussy-foot around their exaltations lest we provoke them to offense or - worse - violence.

    A few weeks ago I bought a book at the airport while waiting for my flight. It is God is not Great by Christopher Hitchens. I can thoroughly recommend it. It pulls no punches. It deals with the origins of (and absurdity and atrocities of) Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Also Buddhism and Hinduism are ripped apart. Strangely, Scientology is not mentioned.... But he does mention the constant death threats he received from "devout Muslims" (and the kindness and help he received from other "devout Muslims.").

    However, I would not recommend that book to your parasite immediately. The Greatest Show on Earth (the Evidence for Evolution) by Richard Dawkins, so far, seems very good. I'm only four chapters in, but I've never studied Biology. I've never doubted Evolution since I was lucky enough to be brought up in a liberal secular household and recieved my education in Scotland. Dawkins explains very clearly and unambiguously at the start of the book the definition of a scientific theory (that only a pig-headed imbecile could chose to ignore) and that Evolution is as much a fact as gravity and so forth.

    The best book I ever read, when I was 12 years old, that turned me on to science (in particular Physics and Cosmology) was a Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking. That is required reading for any informed Human Being. Shortly after that, I read In Search of Schro(e)dinger's Cat by John Gribbin.

    Having read these books, being aware of the four (so far) Fundamental Forces of Nature, the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle and the vast timescales involved when contemplating the history of the universe, even someone of modest intelligence should be able to entertain the idea that random events subject to the natural forces could produce "structure." For example, stars, galaxies, planets, complex chemicals... Maybe even life.

    A good popular science book on Geology should round things off. However, like biology, I know little of Geology, but I plan to fix that some time soon.

    You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink. Don't die of thirst trying to lead a stubborn horse to the pool.

    This willful ignorance is a cancer eating humanity from within.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 08 2014, @10:02PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 08 2014, @10:02PM (#91004)
    I recently saw the movie Jack reacher. In short he is an investigator-bad-ass who asks the deeper questions no one else asks. All the other characters consider it an open and shut sniper case. Jack shows up to put away for good this sniper guy who he doesn't like. In the end it was only Jacks efforts that save the guy because he did the work no one else would. I think we all know someone who won't look past what they already think and expand their mind to see truth. Like these characters Jack Reacher had to deal with. Questions that need to be asked are not allowed.

    Communities like ours are overwhelmingly evolutionist. We have backgrounds in all kinds of science and math and logical things. Unfortunately those of these backgrounds have less inclination to scientific due diligence than MythBusters where they leave more questions and possibilities unanswered than answered. When science claims all the answers but their answers are outnumbered by the resulting questions which they don't acknowledge even exist I have a problem with science. (I speak generally but the real problem here is with scientists who act in a way to promote this generalization. I speak generally because the majority of scientists in my experience are like this.)

    How many grad students are allowed to think something different than their major professor. All of them are but it is not far enough different to count as anything but parallel. You can think your own thing if you can pay your own way. Science is now bound by government grants. We know government is not a bright lot but they direct, via money, what is researched or effectively allowed to be thought. If you step off of the evolution or whatever line you are bled dry or fed to the piranhas. Real scientist don't put up with that crap but unfortunately every scientist coming out of a University is set up to only survive by walking that line so none step out of line, they are more easily managed and controlled that way.

    All of science is controlled financially and intellectually. We now have a generation of scientists that have to walk the straight and narrow path of their religion or starve. The only real credible scientists left are the ones who can talk about the unresolved questions in science and admit that they have faith they will be sorted out later though they can't see the answer now. And if they can get away with saying that then good but are they independent enough to not be beholden to the almighty dollar of another? When money starts to enter, truth starts to leave. This is parallel to the idea that a paid clergyman is inherently flawed. Money enters, ideas (scientific or religious) dilute. He wants to not starve so he will preach whatever will keep him fed even if it contradicts what he thinks is true. Good luck finding a church where the guy preaching isn't paid by the church.

    TL;DR: I don't trust anyone that is financially or intellectually owned by a controlling party, scientist or clergy. And there are damn few who are not.
  • (Score: 1, Interesting) by CirclesInSand on Monday September 08 2014, @10:05PM

    by CirclesInSand (2899) on Monday September 08 2014, @10:05PM (#91005)

    I left slashdot to avoid the trolling globalwarming/evolution/political party articles. Please don't bring them in here. This article will not elicit any intelligent discussion, just arguing and name calling.

    If you had posted an article like "evolution of certain bacteria found to be useful in medicine" or "unusual evolution of fungus observed", these would be article worthy of discussion. But this article is nothing more than "I know people who don't accept evolution aren't categorically stupid but how do I convince them that they are wrong..." which I had hoped was below the standards of soylent news.

    • (Score: 1) by In hydraulis on Tuesday September 09 2014, @02:50AM

      by In hydraulis (386) on Tuesday September 09 2014, @02:50AM (#91070)

      I rather like these topics. They provide me a place to learn from those who have studied theology (know thine enemy), and those who have scrutinized the bible for passages the faithful would rather you didn't know about.

      You can never have too much ammo, nor hard-earned wisdom guiding your use of it.

      • (Score: 2) by carguy on Tuesday September 09 2014, @03:15AM

        by carguy (568) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday September 09 2014, @03:15AM (#91083)

        Agreed, nice to look through these different approaches. I haven't had too many chances to try it yet, but this one seems to have promise -- I posted a similar link in a different thread:

        Of all the ways I've heard humanism described, one of the best was when someone referred to it as a post-theological lifestance. That is, humanism is best understood as a worldview that transcends theology altogether, as not just another alternative in the supermarket of American belief systems.

        The "post-theological" concept requires a big-picture view. Since the term itself implies chronological stages, we should first take note that most animals can be accurately described as pre-theological. That is, most animals have never attained the brain capacity to contemplate deep, theological ideas. Even your pet dog, which is comparatively one of the smartest animals in the world, does not ponder many profound philosophical questions as he sits on your back porch. ...

        http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/our-humanity-naturally/201102/being-post-theological [psychologytoday.com]

  • (Score: 2) by toygeek on Tuesday September 09 2014, @08:29AM

    by toygeek (28) on Tuesday September 09 2014, @08:29AM (#91140) Homepage

    http://www.jw.org/en/bible-teachings/questions/science-and-the-bible/ [jw.org]

    Myth: The Bible says that the universe was created in six 24-hour days.

    Fact: According to the Bible, God created the universe in the indefinite past. (Genesis 1:1) Also, the days of creation described in chapter 1 of Genesis were epochs whose length is not specified. In fact, the entire period during which earth and heaven were made is also called a “day.”—Genesis 2:4.

    --
    There is no Sig. Okay, maybe a short one. http://miscdotgeek.com
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 09 2014, @04:53PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 09 2014, @04:53PM (#91310)

      Indeed. The whole concept of day and night is absurd when applied to an omnipresent being that is by definition simultaneously on both the sunlit and shaded portions of the Earth, as well as the nearly always lit Terra-solar Lagrange points and the depths of intergalactic space.

  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by TheLink on Tuesday September 09 2014, @09:36AM

    by TheLink (332) on Tuesday September 09 2014, @09:36AM (#91148) Journal

    This universe is so weird and amazing[1] in so many ways and yet people assume that if there was actually a God who could and did create such a universe, he and what he did would still be so simple to explain.

    Soylentils should be familiar with simulations, emulators and virtual machines. Let's say I took one week to build a simulation of a 13 billion year old universe and started it 5 minutes ago. How old is it actually? What if I make a few copies and start and stop them at different times? How old would those be? What if I merged some changes back?

    I also see lots of people doing the equivalent of Sims saying that there are no Great Designer/Programmers because the rules of the Sim universe don't allow for any.

    It is true from what we see of this universe, there doesn't absolutely have to be a creator. But to be so certain there isn't one seems to take a great deal of faith or hubris.

    I'm a Christian and I believe that from current scientific evidence the universe is billions of years old and that we evolved. I also believe that _requiring_ people to believe in a 6000 year old earth/universe in order to be Christians is heresy. There are only a few things required to be a Christian. After all how much did the criminal on the cross need to believe in order to be saved: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke+23%3A39-43&version=ESV [biblegateway.com] ? How about the Ethiopian eunuch?

    I'm curious though what is your true purpose trying to convince him (and debating with the others)?

    [1] At least two amazing things:
    1) That anything exists at all
    2) That consciousness exists. Based on current known science, it doesn't actually have to exist - we could all be philosophical zombies: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_zombie [wikipedia.org]
    see also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_problem_of_consciousness [wikipedia.org]

    I find it funny that scientists can't explain the very first observation they all make ;).

  • (Score: 1) by resignator on Tuesday September 09 2014, @06:41PM

    by resignator (3126) on Tuesday September 09 2014, @06:41PM (#91382)

    A few obligatory links:

    http://www.talkorigins.org/ [talkorigins.org] - great Usenet archive pertaining to the debate
    http://www.atheist-experience.com/ [atheist-experience.com] - an Austin based cable access show covering all topics regarding atheism
    http://www.nonprophetsradio.com/ [nonprophetsradio.com] - live internet atheist radio show

    I would also highly recommend these youtube channels:
    Thunderf00t - "Why do people laugh at creationists?" over 30+ videos exploring the topic
    aronra - "The Foundational Falsehoods of Creationism" and excellent series
    cdk007 - great videos regarding the origins of life, etc.
    NonStampCollector - humorous cartoons pertaining to creation/religion/science debate

    If you want a good laugh or want to study the "facts" theist repeat ad nauseam:
    https://answersingenesis.org/ [answersingenesis.org]