Senate Creationism (Now Discussing: Creation Museum)

The refusal to adapt knowledge if new evidence comes to light cuts against the concept of what knowledge is, however. If you discover that new facts alter how things should be interpreted, but refuse to do so, that has jumped the gap from knowledge to faith. It's not knowledge if it's being held to despite evidence, since that's not a preferential matter.

 

Of course you are right.

I chose to interpret that sentence, probably because i suspected that it would fall in line with that particular poster's point of view, as "we ought to be willing to change if sufficent evidence comes up".

it probably wasn't warranted considering he was talking specifically about knowledge... I was trying to read between the lines while subtly shifting the topic to what i wanted to talk about

 

Stagnation never helps anything. The entire purpose of knowledge is to build on what has come before, in order to improve one's understanding of the world. Stubbornly refusing to adapt to change will only stunt your development.

Creationists still cling to the idea that their holy book is infallible, and any new evidence is wrong by default. They wallow in their blindness, refuse to learn more, and expect that what they believe is true in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

 

Look I know this is a bit off-topic but these are the end of days for this forum so please just bear with me as I want to put this notion to bed so that we can all move on. Objective “truth” exists in relation to the physical world, such as the moon orbiting the earth or gravity or the changing of the seasons, but there can be no such thing as objective or absolute moral truth because morality does not exist independent or outside of the human mind.

Morality is a social construct, a socially agreed set of 'norms' which do not exist in nature. There is no inherent "good" or "bad" and there is no inherent "true" or "false" when it comes to morality or values. If human beings were wiped off the face of the earth, no objective or absolute moral framework would remain behind. The ants and the mosquitoes won’t agonize over what is right and wrong according to any universal moral absolutes as determined by an almighty creator.

Human beings are social creatures with highly complex brains. We strive for social order to create the social conditions (that is, the institutions of our society) that ensure the survival of our species. We tend to create hierarchy, stratification, and we implement social rules which allow us to go about our business with a certain level of predictability and we do this by applying reason and force.

However, our history is replete with examples of the subjective nature of morality, as is evidenced by the many ways we have labeled our fellows human beings and have ascribed value (or lack thereof) to those labels. Now you claim that murder and rape and theft have always been "wrong" but that is a false assertion. Those things are only wrong or right in the proper context, and context is subjective.

Look at the history of your own country. It was certainly not deemed to be "wrong" according to any universal truths to own black people as slaves, to punish them, torture them, kill them and rape them. Those kinds of activities went on with impunity from the law because black people were deemed to be property of the whites, they were deemed in society and law to be something less than human, a chattel. The same is true of the Native Americans. The same was true of married women. You couldn't legally rape your wife. The very same thing happens today in parts of Africa and the Middle East (hell, Palestine is a perfect example of how the concept of the “other” dehumanizes to such a degree that moral choices are made simply based upon your tribe).

Social and cultural norms determine social standing and social standing determines your value in a particular society, particularly in terms of how you are treated. There is no moral “absolute” which determines this and never has been. It was acceptable to steal from Jews, it was acceptable for freed slaves to steal from their former masters, it was morally right to steal from the rich to give to the poor, hell, back in the day it was a legal right for the lord of the land to rape the wife of a subject on her wedding night. It is still acceptable in some cultures to kill to preserve honour. On the other hand, theft, murder and rape were and are decidedly unacceptable activities if perpetrated against others. When is it right or wrong to steal or rape? Depends on the context.

Of course, the social context which provides the framework for our moral choices has all changed and may change again in future depending on our needs and our environment. Morality evolves and changes with the times in the same way as any social construct evolves and changes On this basis, I simply cannot accept this “absolutist” worldview you are preaching, it just smacks of naivety and christian apologist agenda. I am presuming here, but you come across as someone who is young and hasn’t done much or travelled much or seen anything or done anything and your naive smugness if very off putting.

I'm not even bothering to respond to you because I already know your position and your response (I've read Lee Strobel and Ken Ham) and so any kind of meaningful debate is simply not possible. I'm really just responding for the benefit of anyone who may be reading this thread.

Now, where were we?

 

How did you reach this conclusion? Do you know all about everything?

Animals don't have the same level of consciousness we do, so they're held to a lower standard.

OK, so why do people with no history of mental illness or extremely erratic behavior sometimes choose to kill themselves or murder others? If survival was the highest aim for humanity, murder would've never existed.

This claim of yours seems pretty objective.

Just because certain groups of people have gone against absolute morality in the past, that doesn't mean it never existed. Free will dictates having both options available.

Rape and theft are always wrong, but there's a hierarchy to be considered. For example, we have a greater responsibility to protect the innocent than to enable the evil, so even though lying's wrong, turning over Jews to Nazis during WW2 would've been even worse.

I am 33 years old. Do you think I am smug simply because you disagree with my views, or do you have evidence for this opinion?

 

33, wow. I was personally expecting late teens to early twenties

 

Maybe you don't understand the nomenclature, Moviefan. The phrase "X does not exist" is equivalent to "there is no credible evidence to support the existence of X."

So yes, we can truthfully say that morality does not exist outside of the human mind, because there is no evidence to support that assertion. If you disagree, show what evidence you have found so that we may reevaluate our positions.

 

So, your view of what's absolutely moral is the correct one why? It seems like you've just came up with a few blanket claims about what is or is not moral and then have decided to act as though there's any reason why that must be the case.

 

One of the things that get me about the whole "creationism in the classroom" fiasco is that the proponents of creationism/intelligent design try to skip around the scientific method to get their theories into curriculum. The theory of evolution had to go through the scrutiny of the scientific community and many rounds of peer review to become presentable in an educational setting, and the creationists think they can effectively skip that and say their ideas are just as plausible. What they are doing is cheating the system. I don't recall Jesus telling the crowds to lie, cheat and decieve in the Sermon on the Mount.

 

Yes, it's the blatant dishonesty which baffles me as well. The whole "wedge strategy" which underpins the creationist/ID agenda is based upon known falsehoods dressed up in scientific language in order to deceive volunteer school boards (comprised of parents) that it passes the methodological threshold of "science". The whole agenda just seems to be contrary to ordinary concepts of honesty and integrity. If Jesus exists, I'm sure he would be p*****. Plus there's the fact that there are absolutely no barriers whatsoever to religious education in the US, it is widely available, largely free of charge and you can even get a degree from a bible university. Why is there a need for a political agenda at all?

 

I think it's all about a perception of authority science is deemed to possess, thus in order to get creationism taken seriously it must be classed as science rather than what it is - RE.

As far as I can see there is no basis for creationism to be deemed as an equally compelling theory to evolution save through blatant linguistic abuse, much of the kind used to disparage climate change science.

 

I really don't think that the two are too comparable. The scope of climate change really gets into a lot of areas that I question the understanding we have, such as the feedback systems in place, to what extent natural variation plays a role in changing climate, etc.

 

Science has often been incorrect or incomplete in the past. But it's the best thing we have. Future generations may think we were idiots for believing in evolution, due to some new amazing scientific discovery, just like we now know that the world isn't flat. But whether what science says now gets thrown out later or not, I'm gonna believe it now because the smartest people on the subject and the best evidence that we have at the moment says that it's true. To the best of our scientific knowledge, the earth is older than six thousand years old and we arrived here via evolution. So I believe it. It's been proven to my satisfaction. Now, I believe God created the earth; he just used the lengthy processes of the universe and evolution to do so. If Christians would wake up and realize that they can accept what I just said without damaging their faith one whit, it would be one of the most massive image rehabilitations in the history of Christianity.

Accept evolution, throw "Creationism/ID" out of the window (and the classroom) and live your happy Christian lives. It's possible; I'm doing it. And you won't look like such idiots. As a Christian, it's annoying to me how the terms "creationism" and "intelligent design" have been co-opted to mean anti-science propaganda. I believe in that God created the universe (which is what creationism really means) and that He is an intelligent Being with a will (which is what intelligent design really means). Unfortunately, those terms now mean disingenuous anti-science propaganda. It puts me in the odd position of believing in creationism, but not Creationism, if you know what I mean. The words now come preloaded with the meaning that you're going to try to insert false and misleading information into school textbooks. God, I hate that.

 

I think it is entirely reasonable to believe that god created the earth and everything in it, if you are willing to accept that the text of the bible is not the literal innerant word of god or at least if you are willing to accept that the bible is the approximate word of god as translated through the hands of hundreds of thousands of scribes, over the centuries, with a million typos and fictional stuff thrown in. It is the bible which creates the disconnect between science and religion in terms of the physical world. Creationsim/ID is just the attempt to reconcile the physical world with the words of the bible, because biblical literalists simply cannot accept that the bible is wrong. If genesis is wrong then that taints the whole story.

Rogue1-and-a-half You and others seem to have developed a christian faith which is in many ways divorced from the literal text of the bible which is great because that means that you do not have torture yourself trying to reconcile the contents of an ancient document with the physical world. I think that mental torture (the cognitive dissonance) actually sends people barking mad, which is why the likes of Ray Comfort and Kirk Cameron appear to have such a tenuous grip on sanity.

 

The point I like to make in the debate about the truth of the Bible is that "truth" is not synonymous with "fact." There is a way in which something "rings true" or has truth in it without necessarily being entirely factual. You find this all the time in art. I love the great art because it has truth in it; it is true. It speaks to me of truth about life and the way people live it. In this sense, I defend the Bible as true. It doesn't have to be entirely factual in a detailed way. So, let's posit that God inspired the author of Genesis to write the creation story. Would it have been possible for God to explicate the actual methods of evolution, geology, etc. that He used to create the earth to that person? Of course not; the brain of that individual would not have understood a whit of what was going on if God had tried to explicate the scientific method. So, positing that God created the earth through evolution and that He also inspired the author of Genesis to write the creation story, it still makes perfect sense to me that God would inspire the Genesis author to write a loose, symbolic, factually inaccurate myth. And that's what it is. The truth behind it is that God did indeed create everything; the Genesis story is a story written in mythical format, not a factual account.

Thus I don't go around arguing that bananas prove that God exists.

 

I'm not entirely following the "truth" and "fact" distinction there, because I can't accept "truth" is independent of "fact". But if you were to replace "truth" with "meaning" then it makes more sense to me. I think that the curse of our complex brains is that we strive for meaning in everything, we are very emotional beings and tend to wax lyrical about things that inspire emotion and get choked up over nice sunsets and things. Dogs, ants and antelopes don't wonder why they exist and try and discern meaning in death like we do. The bible has power because it attempts to explain why we are here and how we got here. I too love great art, but I would say that art has "meaning" rather than "truth".

 

Well, it's a complicated, not very well articulated distinction. A good example is Fargo, which opens with the assertion that it is a "true story." In one way, that's demonstrably false. It isn't based on a factual story. But they put that there, I think, because they wanted to underline that they feel that the story is, in the way it depicts emotions and human frailties, "true." Likewise, I'm a believer that there can be more than one "truth" certainly in art. Because art does attempt to depict life in all its messiness and variety, I think that a book that is very hopeful and optimistic can be "true," but so can a book that's very hopeless and pessimistic. Both reflect our realities and, if done properly, both do so in a way that brings the emotions and empathy for both situations home to us. The world is both a wonderful place and a horrible place; they're both true - it just depends on who and where you are. That's just to kind of clarify how I'm thinking about it.

But your post is actually a fair approximation of what I'm getting at and I can agree with it. I think our truth/meaning difference is basically semantics. I know for a lot of people the truth is what represents the facts. In Christian circles, we're all tied up in the "truth" of God's word ("Sanctify them with your truth; Your word is truth."), so that's the word I use because it's important for me, and for the Christians that I talk to about this, that we hold on to the idea that the word "truth" can be applied to the Bible. For someone not invested in the specific word "truth" I think "meaning" is a fine approximation of what I mean. I mean, I say the Genesis story is a myth, but the "truth" behind it is that God created all things; you could just as easily say that it's a myth, but the "meaning" behind it is that God created everything. I'm perhaps stretching the word "truth" a bit, but it's in order to maintain some semantics that are important to Christians. As a Christian, I think I'm supposed to have a very narrow idea of truth; the thing above about having more than one truth would get me kicked out of some churches. But anyway my artistic bent has given me a looser approach to truth.

And I think part of it is also, now that I think about it, that I believe facts are really nearly impossible to represent correctly or even recall correctly. Even a meticulously researched and sourced book of history doesn't really tell the "fact" in my opinion. It may tell some artistic truths and maybe some of the facts, but one had best not simply assume that all is entirely factual. We can't get free of our perceptions and our biases most of the time and the mind is very easy to trick. We miss facts a lot, I think, and accept things as facts that aren't a lot. It's human nature, a flaw of our flesh. Is that why we ask a witness to "tell the truth" instead of "tell the facts?" Because said witness cannot actually swear to tell the fact; error is always possible. But they can tell their truth, which is the sincere, unimpeded effort to tell what happened from their perspective. I dunno, this just came to me, so I'm just spitballing so don't hold me to that last bit.

 

I understand what you are saying. I'm no philosopher or scientist for that matter but the concept of "truth" is very problematic and is a very loaded term. I think this gets to the crux of the "science versus creationism" distinction though. Scientific "truth" is the end result of a specific investigative methodology which attempts to explain phenomena "objectively", that is, without personal bias and interference through processes of hypothesis, observation, experiment and peer review. I guess that is better described as "knowledge" rather than "truth" because it is more akin to an objective fact rather than a subjective interpretation of the phenomena.

In any event, isn't it wonderful that a christian and an atheist can converse and co-exist in perfect harmony without the need for one to stamp out and salt the earth of the other?

 

I only have a couple of problems with what you're saying, other than the obvious.

1: If God were omnipotent, He could make one of His creations understand anything He wanted him to via divine revelation. Can you imagine a good/nice/honest/benevolent reason why He wouldn't or couldn't impart at least a schoolboy level understanding of truth to his chosen ones? Especially given that:
2: The evolution of the human brain has not seen noticeable change in several hundred thousand years at least. Some claim we have the same brain hardware today that we did over 1,000,000 years ago. Our brains were most probably up to the challenge at the time these stories were written, regardless of the exact time line.

 

I believe God could do that. But then what would the prophet do with this knowledge? He wouldn't have the words to describe what he knew to others. And if he made up words, or even used new words given to him by God, it would take him more than a lifetime to write it all down, let alone teach it to anyone else. And what people do with that knowledge? Considering the history of mankind, I'd bet on Bad Things (TM). It's been my experience that God lets us know what we need to know when we need to know it. And He never overrides our free will to force us to accept that knowledge.

 

Establish a plausible creation story.

Limiting oneself to the lexicon of available words in Genesis, it would be easy to get the events of creation in an order that doesn't contradict logic and evidence. Child's play, in fact.

Why do you assume that? Notice I said a schoolboy level of understanding. I'm going to assume that you assimilated that info in less than one school term.

Sooo, you think it's the duty of god/religion to keep humanity retarded?

Oh this should be good. Please elaborate on your experience!

Do you have proof that free will is real?

 

You made a free choice of your own will to use this forum, didn't you?

 

Well did I?