Bill Nye: “Creationism is not Appropriate for Children”

[Herkimer Jitty]

Yminale wrote:

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What did I say about overestimating the virtues of humanity.

Nothing substantive.

[Deckerd]

Yminale wrote:

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Of course I know this but all Christian denomination support some form of creationism and the trend has been to more young-earth creationism.

Stop making it up as you go along. The largest denomination by far is the RC faith and you should have a look at what they say about young-Earth. In fact look at any denominations aside from a few pockets of nutjobs mostly in the USA.

[J. Allen]

Yminale wrote:

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What did I say about overestimating the virtues of humanity.

Several things that have nothing do with what I just said.

Has it occurred to you that you are not paying attention.

That statement doesn't make any sense.

In the case of Dawkin, Harris, Hitchens and Randi, it's pretty specific.

They speak plainly and do not coddle others. Some people find that offensive when their beliefs are questioned.

Please, I provide medical care in an underprivileged area in the US. Don't talk to me about better food when there are no grocery stores or life saving medicines when no on has insurance. Like I said, things change but they don't get better.

You don't understand. Not only that, you're now mixing in politics where it doesn't belong. Please stay on the subject of our discussion with as little deviation as possible, please.

But that's different then claiming Christianity is stagnant.

Something no one here has done.

What they say is irrelevant. I understand human nature too well to care about people's stated belief. If that bothers you, too bad. (and I have being address your statements, if you don't like how I interpret them either clarify or stop being aggrieved)

In other words, you know what you know, and no one else's perspective is going to matter.

If you would have told me that you had no intention of engaging in discussion, it could have saved all of us a little extra time.

Has it ever occurred to you that I'm not addressing YOU specifically but trying to make a general point to the entire board. I quote you to reference those joining in.

So you answer my questions indirectly, but you're not addressing me specifically, but everyone in general, by also answering their questions indirectly.

Fascinating.

Deckerd wrote:

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Stop making it up as you go along. The largest denomination by far is the RC faith and you should have a look at what they say about young-Earth. In fact look at any denominations aside from a few pockets of nutjobs mostly in the USA.

Nothing Yminale has said up to this point has contained any actual information, or pushed any specific argument. It's been one generality after another from start to finish. The responses can be cut and pasted into any question we've asked, because they don't actually address anything at all, save for some vague, esoteric meanderings that serve no practical purpose.

[{ Emilia }]

Deckerd wrote:

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Stop making it up as you go along. The largest denomination by far is the RC faith and you should have a look at what they say about young-Earth. In fact look at any denominations aside from a few pockets of nutjobs mostly in the USA.

This.
Some of the nonsense in this thread shows a serious lack of perspective. The whole creationism debate is a very American phenomenon.
Christians in other parts of the world do not reject science/evolution.

The idea that it is incompatible with faith is just ridiculous. Reasonable Christians do not take every single word in the bible literally. They interpret it. That book is several thousands of years old, written by people with a completely different understanding of the world.

While there are a lot more atheists in Europe than there are in the US I feel that Europe's atheist tendencies are often overstated here. We still have a lot of Christians here. The difference is we have a substantially lower number of batshit-crazy Christians.

Every single European Christian I know would laugh in the face of silly ideas like "young Earth". Evolution is a fact. Even the Vatican endorses it and the guys there speak for more than a billion of Christians.

Vatican endorses evolution.

Can this thread please lose the tunnel view of American fundamentalist crazies?

[Robert Maxwell]

{ Emilia } wrote:

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Can this thread please lose the tunnel view of American fundamentalist crazies?

That would sure be nice.

In addition, Yminale seems less interested in the advance of human knowledge than he is in the protection of religion from reality. I will reiterate what I said before: if your belief system is so easily shattered by scientific fact, it does not deserve to exist. Period. We should absolutely not hamstring science just so we don't upset fundie lunatics who aren't living in the real world to begin with. That anyone would even promote such an idea is disturbing.

[iguana_tonante]

Nerys Ghemor wrote:

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However, you seem to ignore the fact that there is a significant number of people who are of faith but have no problem whatsoever with mainstream science. That, I think, is a reasonable choice to make. (...)

And thank you to MLB for reiterating the point that there need be no conflict between science and faith--only between science and literalism.

Except for Yminale, nobody here have ever said that science and faith are inconciliable. In fact, I find it the most common stance. Most believers I know feel like that. Most atheists I know feel the same. Most people on this board, apparently a wretched hive of scum and villany, feel exactly the same. So the idea that you are fighting this great struggle to make this point across is completely contrieved.

[gturner]

{ Emilia } wrote:

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This.
Some of the nonsense in this thread shows a serious lack of perspective. The whole creationism debate is a very American phenomenon.
Christians in other parts of the world do not reject science/evolution.

The idea that it is incompatible with faith is just ridiculous. Reasonable Christians do not take every single word in the bible literally. They interpret it. That book is several thousands of years old, written by people with a completely different understanding of the world.

While there are a lot more atheists in Europe than there are in the US I feel that Europe's atheist tendencies are often overstated here. We still have a lot of Christians here. The difference is we have a substantially lower number of batshit-crazy Christians.

Every single European Christian I know would laugh in the face of silly ideas like "young Earth". Evolution is a fact. Even the Vatican endorses it and the guys there speak for more than a billion of Christians.

Vatican endorses evolution.

Can this thread please lose the tunnel view of American fundamentalist crazies?

Europe has fewer Christian fundamentalists but millions of Muslim ones. Good luck with that.

One of the reasons Americans tend to be far more religious than Europeans is that we're closer to God, since he of course lives here.

It's well known that Kentucky coaches can phone God for half-time advice for just 25 cents because it's a local call.

[Robert Maxwell]

gturner wrote:

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Europe has fewer Christian fundamentalists but millions of Muslim ones. Good luck with that.

One of the reasons Americans tend to be far more religious than Europeans is that we're closer to God, since he of course lives here.

It's well known that Kentucky coaches can phone God for half-time advice for just 25 cents because it's a local call.

I know you like to spam nonsense around here, but that is enough. Do it again, and it will be an infraction. Either contribute constructively to the thread or find something else to do.

[Mr. Laser Beam]

This reminds me of the old Far Side cartoon about God's kitchen. He's got a big box of something called "EARTHQUIK" and says "Something tells me this thing's only half-baked."

[gturner]

Robert Maxwell wrote:

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I know you like to spam nonsense around here, but that is enough. Do it again, and it will be an infraction. Either contribute constructively to the thread or find something else to do.

This thread could go for a thousand pages and nothing much constructive will happen, in terms of anybody changing their opinions. At least now it includes a sports joke.

One of the reasons I don't think we should be too upset over Christian fundamentalists arguments over evolution is that their constant denials of it cause everyone else to learn lots of things about evolution that they'd never think twice about, just to refute the latest creationist arguments. It causes even non-scientists to dig through sources, research, learn, and understand the finer points of evolution, look up instances of observed speciation, and dig into a technical subject that they'd otherwise have little interest in and only a cursory knowledge about.

Nobody disputes that airplanes can or rockets work, so most people are never motivated to learn hardly anything about aerodynamics or thermodynamics. Nobody disputes plate tectonics, so only geologists dig into the details of plate movements. Nobody disputes that information can be transmitted via radio waves, so only electrical engineers dig into the details of how that happens and develop an understanding of how to make it work. Nobody disputes entymology, so few people can identify more than a few species of beatle or tell a gnat from a fruit fly.

If not for the creationists, most of the people in this thread arguing for evolution would probably know vastly less about evolution, its mechanisms, and the nitty-gritty details and debating points. If not for the mistaken notions circulating about evolution Steven J Gould probably wouldn't have penned a word on the subject.

Eliminate the creationists and you'll create a world where the average internet poster would do little better than a seventh grader on an evolution quiz.

ETA: Think of your best arguments for evolution, speciation events, details about punctuated equilibrium, etc, and ask yourself why you happen to know something so far outside your field. The answer is almost certainly that you dug into the subject to slam a creationist, and that you learned many of the particular facts and finer details you can cite so you could beat down particular creationist assertions. Without those maddening assertions, your time would probably have been spent surfing Youtube Fail videos.

If creationists didn't exist, we'd end up with a public that was far less knowledgeable about evolution, with only specialists and biology majors knowing details beyond what was covered in their high-school science class, and most people only vaguely remembering any of that.

[Dorian Thompson]

I figured out creationism wasn't real when it dawned on me that Cain and Abel would have had to fuck their sisters for the human race to continue. I remember the kids way back in grade school asking how Cain and Abel could have had babies if there were no one else.

[1001001]

{ Emilia } wrote:

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This.
Some of the nonsense in this thread shows a serious lack of perspective. The whole creationism debate is a very American phenomenon.
Christians in other parts of the world do not reject science/evolution.

Yes, to be clear: this is an American Protestant phenomenon.

I was taught evolution....by priests.

[B.J.]

^Same for my kids. They're currently in Catholic school learning *gasp* evolution!

[Crazy Eddie]

Yminale wrote:

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If you read between the lines, I think that's exactly what he's saying. Religion only works if it's presented as unerring eternal TRUTH.

That depends on what it works FOR. As a tool of indoctrination, ideological uniformity and thought control, then religion is indeed untenable unless it is taught along absolutist terms. If, on the other hand, religion is being used as a way to spiritually and psychologically uplift a population while at the same time providing a social framework through which they can coordinate their own enlightened self-interest while pretending to be better people than they are, then "unerring eternal TRUTH" is irrelevant.

This is the difference between fundamentalism and casual religion. Most believers are casual; they believe the tenants of their religion are true because they're used to thinking that way and either never really thought about it or never saw a compelling reason to modify it. A fundamentalist clings to those beliefs as a matter of urgency; it colors every aspect of his life as an interpretive lens and is pretty much the first thing he thinks about when he tries to interact with the world.

In that sense, creationism is science through the lens of religious fundamentalism. It is something you should expect to find in a fundamentalist school; by contrast, rational and thoughtful individuals is NOT something you generally expect to find in fundamentalist schools.

Atheists aren't being honest. They know promoting critical thinking will weaken religions because religions require the absence of critical thinking.

Positive atheists believe as much, but it's a bit of a stretch to say they know this. It is a tenant of faith for positive atheism, actually, that "reason will some day conquer religion." The truth is, it probably won't, it will simply make religious believers more reasonable.

[RoJoHen]

J. Allen wrote:

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Nothing Yminale has said up to this point has contained any actual information, or pushed any specific argument. It's been one generality after another from start to finish. The responses can be cut and pasted into any question we've asked, because they don't actually address anything at all, save for some vague, esoteric meanderings that serve no practical purpose.

I want to hear more about the evil Atheist Agenda. Atheist, I assume, is a some crazy anti-religious freedom fighter...or Yminale just doesn't understand the concept of subject-verb agreement.