Sciences vs. Religion

[The Atheist]

It is bullying. It is verbal abuse.

Huh. Mocking an irrational belief is bullying, but standing and verbally abusing young women having an abortion isn't.

Who knew?

[Vota]

Pendragon, I never responded because I was taken aback by you asking me to cite what I said. I had assumed you knew specifically what I was referring to, and so I refrained until I recently came back to peruse the thread and you said you never got a response.

Genesis

1:20

And God said Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven.

1:21

And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that is was good.

1:24

And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so.----one could make the case that each use of "kind" in these passages could refer to variation of species.

2:7

And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed of life; and man became a living soul.----BUT, then God created man out of basic elements, shaped it's genetic dna, grew it without the female egg and her dna, and then grew it into a man in double quick time.

2:22

And the rib, which the Lord God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man.----Again God makes a woman without a fertilized egg, so perhaps some kind of cloning from the dna in Adam's rib? Either way, it's double quick time and doesn't provide any room for evolution.

Now I claim that The Theory of Evolution, and The Holy Bible's account of the creation of the plants, animals, and men/women of the earth, directly conflict with each other. In passages 2:7 and 2:22 it specifically states that God directly created man, and then a woman from that man's, Adam, rib. This directly conflicts with evolution. I don't see anyway of trying to explain these two passages as being long periods of time for natural selection to occur, or the fusing of 2 chromosomes to create the off-shoot that would become man. I guess one might try to make the case that Adam was a neanderthal or whatever the main ancestor is that we and chimps evolved from, but the Bible looks pretty literal here. Also, nowhere does it state in the generations of Adam and Eve's children any evolving or changing other than shorter life spans. Adam and Eve had cattle, and their children traded, and were social, and had spoken and written language; they were not super primitives akin to packs of chimpanzees or the like.

This was my original point and why I asked how you reconcile God, The Bible, and The Theory of Evolution.

[Pendragon]

Volta

This of course speaks of creation. I said I believed in creation by God. Where does it say animals cannot change? They produce "after their kind." The point of creation is that the original species is created. There is no "one creature becomes something wildly different". They evolve along their own species. A Sabretooth is still a big cat even if it has evolved and spawned other, modern big cats. Giant Sloths no longer exist but two-toed and three toed sloths do. Eohippus vanished but modern horses are now here. Man has changed as well, not from an ape--which Darwin did not claim anyway--but from one equipped to stand a harsher life to modern man in a modern world.

Evolution doesn't remove creation, it provides a scientific look at the progression of each species since creation.

Let me ask you this: These animals are mentioned in the Bible:

Unicorn many places, but Job 39:9-10 especially
Sytar Isiah:13:21 and other places
Leviathan Job 41:1 among other places
Behemoth Job 40:15
Cockatrice Isiah 11:8 and other places
Dragon all throughout the Bible

What are they and where are they today?


Whew: Confusing to me is that if you tell a creationist that evolution is demonstrable, they begin to cry foul.
If you tell scientific people that you believe God was the spark of life, the beginning of all things, and science tells what happened since, you are told you are mixed up.

Two camps--two immovable stances.

Oh, well, I cannot fully agree with either, but I have made my stand and I stick with what I believe.

God bless

Pen

[Ecurb]

When Hopi Indians demand that my children be taught Hopi fairy tales as fact, I will indeed mock their beliefs.

.

I doubt the Hopi have sent a delegation to England to demand that The Atheist's children be taught Hopi myths as fact. Yet (in an attempt to mock Hopi myths) The Atheist calls those myths "fairy tales". He thus demonstrates his ignorance of literary genres, which wouldn't be so bad were it not so hackneyed. How many times has The Atheist called myths "fairy tales" on these boards? Dozens? How many times have other atheists used that same trite comparison? Thousands?

Mockery can be an effective rhetorical tactic -- but only if it is funny, or witty, or original. Since The Atheist mentions "straw men", perhaps, like another straw man, he should visit the Emerald City to ask The Wizard for the help he so sorely needs.

[mal4mac]

... what was the disaster that caused the death of the dinosaurs and early mammals that hit so fast that mammoths are found still with food in their mouths?

Mammoths were not early mammals. They came a long time after the meteor struck. Last I read, it was a combination of the retreat of the ice age and the advance of man that most likely did for the mammoths. But I'm not up with the details of current "mammoth lore", so I stand to be corrected on these matters.

Large herbivores are always eating, so if it fell off a cliff I wouldn't be surprised if it had food in its mouth.

[The Atheist]

Mockery can be an effective rhetorical tactic -- but only if it is funny, or witty, or original.

Seems to be working pretty well on you, so it's fine so far.

I must note that the mockery in this thread has been aimed at ridiculous posts rather than religion, as you can find by checking back. I haven't mocked Pen, or even Yes/No.

I've mocked Yes' silly "arguments" and I've mocked your irrelevant attempts to get at me, and glenn's absurd attempts to paint science as whatever he failed to paint it as.

Which is why you've tried to turn the obvious strawman around. You know what it means, and you know you used one, so the egg is all on one face only so far.

Yours.

Au revoir!

[The Atheist]

I'll just drop this here to show just how post-religious the world outside Ecurb's house is: http://www.timesfreepress.com/news/2...has-profe/?wtf

The board of trustees is requiring professors and staff to sign a statement saying that they believe Adam and Eve were created in an instant by God and that humans shared no ancestry with other life forms.

Shall we touch on that abortion situation as well, since it got ignored when I first mentioned it?

[The Atheist]

This stuff is jumping out at me today! More post-religion world where gays are accepted universally and Jesus loves LGBT: http://news.msn.com/in-depth/no-long...oin-trail-life

Just as well I can't be bothered searching for evidence.

[MorpheusSandman]

It is true that Universities rely on public funding and religion influences the public. I have no expertise as to the extent that religion (in this manner) influences scientific funding – my guess is: not very much. The amount of money spent funding Creation Science is probably a drop in the bucket, as well as coming from private instead of public sources. If religious people want to fund Creation Science, I see no problem with that. I’ll grant that it’s probably a waste of money, but so is buying big-screen TVs and seeing the 7th "Batman" movie. In addition, there’s some value to diversity -- of the many seemingly whacky theories that are funded, perhaps one will prove valuable. I think creation science, searching for sasquatch, and looking for alien spaceships is a waste of time and money – but I don’t see any real harm in it (as long as it’s privately funded).

Well, your guess is only that: a guess. It generally takes millions to run institutes like Discovery (and, just quickly checking Wikipedia, it seems they run at about $4 million annually), and if you think millions are "drops in the bucket" to the thousands of scientists out there that struggle even for a few thousand to get research projects off the ground. Anyway, we very much differ on how much of a "problem" we have such things. Buying a big-screen TV and seeing the new Batman movie are not "wastes of money" if they satisfy the person buying/seeing them, which is really all that technology and art is good for. However, when there's an institution whose aim is to debunk evolution, prove Creation, and spread lies and propaganda about both, it's satisfying/helping nobody and actually hurting the progress of science and the good that science could be doing for people. Yes, there's value to diversity, but not when it comes to our attempts to understand how reality works and how to manipulate it to our benefit; in that arena, religion and any other superstitions/magical beliefs have no value, certainly not when compared to science. Anything that's not capable of revealing truths/facts and engineering those things to society's benefit is, conversely, harming the one thing that can. You see no harm in it, but imagine the millions (if not billions) that go to such delusive projects that could be going to science/scientists that may discover the cure for cancer through stem-cell research.

It seems to me that there are some potentially reasonable, non-religious objections to stem cell research, too.

I don't see what they are. Most of the objections lie in the notion that the minute a sperm meets an egg God injects a soul into the fetus, which obviously has not the slightest basis in reality and an entire basis in religious belief.

To return to my Native American analogy – it’s one thing for white educators to demand that Natives renounce their superstitious ways and send their kids off to boarding school to be assimilated into a Christian and Scientific society, and another for Hopi parents to decide to do it on their own, and try to persuade their Hopi friends to do the same. The first case demonstrates bigoted ethnocentrism; the second shows reasonable self-criticism.

Well, this is a public debate/discussion forum. Anyone reading it is absolutely free to buy into/reject the arguments of either side. Neither the Atheist or myself have the power to demand anyone renounce their religions or superstitious ways, but insofar as we see it valuable/desirable for them to do so, I really don't see any problem with mockery. People are equally free to mock my arguments or beliefs or lack thereof in converse. While I rarely adopt such a style myself, it does have its place when it comes to tackling the most frustrating and ignorant posters (which are, thankfully, fewer on here than most other forums I'm a part of).

That rhetorical style is a form of bullying.

Oh, now, come on; given the anonymity and freedom of the internet I have difficulty describing any action as "bullying" that doesn't cross-over into real life (like, say, kids on FB taking their online bullying into the school). Outside of that, people are free to leave any message board where they feel they're being "bullied" or treated unfairly and go somewhere else. What's more, in a forum like this, there are about equally as many posters arguing for one side as for the other, so it's hard to "bully" when there are equal numbers. What's more, mods and admins tend to restrict the harshest direct attacks, ad hominem, flaming, etc. Things like "that argument is ridiculous!," if bullying at all, must surely be considered the most minor kind of bullying imaginable given the severity of bullying that actually takes place offline and elsewhere online.

Finally, I agree that when people's morals come from religion, there is no way to address it other than in religious terms. That's why I see your approach as ineffective. Alternative theologies or textual interpretations are more likely to change the moral postition of fundamentalists than arguments about science vs. religion.

If people understand their morals are rooted in their religious beliefs, but then are lead to question those beliefs because of the ways in which science contradicts those beliefs, then I think that CAN be an effective way to change them. After all, science has probably done more to convert theists to atheists and engender the kind of modern freedom skeptics have than anything else. In the past, because of the overwhelming authority of religion (especially the church), most atheists/skeptics had to remain quite anonymous or subtle in their unbelief; now, because religion has a formidable challenger to their authority in science, atheists and skeptics have become far more emboldened to speak up and out. As is typical when any majority rule is challenged, the rulers see this as an affront to their rights (which are actually ruling privileges), rather than the minority claiming the rights that were denied to them for so long (same thing happened with every 20th century civil rights movement).

[Ecurb]

OK, Morpheus! You win. The Atheist is not guilty of bullying, only of ATTEMPTED bullying. I'll grant that he probably doesn't ACTUALLY bully anyone. Nonetheless, when he ridicules religion in an ethnocentric and bigoted fashion, he gives atheism a bad name. I'll bet some educated, liberal Christians object when some internet poster calls himself
THE Christian, and then attacks all non-Christians with threats of hellfire and damnation. Attempted bullying may be worse in some ways than actual bullying. Is the intent of the guilty party ameliorarted by his rhetorical incompetence?

A quick google reveals that in the U.S. about 3% of GDP is spent on scientific research, which amounts to about $510 billion. $4 million is .000008 of $500 billion. Of course we can argue about how money should be spent -- but relgiously oriented research comprises such a small percentage that surely there are other, more significant wasted funds. When you spend $500 billion, some of it will be misspent. (By the way, I agree that it's reasonable to argue about PUBLIC funding, but if private sources want to support Discovery, what can we do about it? Also, if we fund only mainstream scientific projects, wouldn't that retard the progress of science by limiting the "Scientific Revolutions" Kuhn talks about? By the way, acc. the web site I found, more scientific research is privately funded than publicly funded.)

Since I support both abortion rights and stem cell research, I don't want to get pulled into an argument on the other side. However, since you ask, it is reasonable to argue against abortion by suggesting that if we agree to value human life, any support for abortion is dependent on suggesting that at some point the fetus is not human. Traditional dividing lines include birth, viability, and "quickening". Nonetheless, ANY dividing line is at least somewhat arbitrary -- and the least arbitrary is conception. Every dividing line beyond that is subject to "slippery slope" objections. If we decide abortion is morally unacceptable, we should reconsider the moral acceptability of stem cell research. (I'm better at arguing in favor of postions with which I AGREE -- but this argument doesn't seem completely unreasonable.)

As to whether science vs. religion arguments are a reasonable or effective way to change the moral positions of believers: I'll grant that it is possible that pointing out scientific inaccuracies in the Bible might convert some Christians. However, science prvides no alternative moral compass. In order to argue about morality, we must make a moral argument, not a scientific one. You are correct, though, in suggesting that the first step might be declaring moral arguments based on the indisputable truth of the Bible (or some other religious text) unreasonable.

[Ecurb]

I'll just drop this here to show just how post-religious the world outside Ecurb's house is: http://www.timesfreepress.com/news/2...has-profe/?wtf

The board of trustees is requiring professors and staff to sign a statement saying that they believe Adam and Eve were created in an instant by God and that humans shared no ancestry with other life forms.

Horrors! Bryan College -- that great center of scientific research -- has demanded acceptance of Fundamentalist positions. The College was named after William Jennings Bryan, twice a candidate for the Presidency and later the Secretary of State, under Wilson. Bryan later lectured on the Chatauqua circuit and wrote best-selling books and pamphlets decrying Darwinian Evolution. Most famously, Bryan acted for the Prosecution in the Scopes Monkey trials, where he was humiliated on the witness stand by the famous atheist attorney Clarence Darrow.

I would object if Bryan College ALLOWED the teaching of Darwinian Evolution. It would be an insult to the man after whom that influential institution of higher learning was named. What's the point of a Bryan College that teaches Darwinism?

In other science-reigion news, the Instute for Advance Studies, at Princeton, issued a press release yesterday stating that it's members unanimously support the theory that the earth -- far from being a spheroid hurtling through the universe -- is actually the back of a giant turtle.

[The Atheist]

...bits not answering questions about "post-religion" removed....

Nice of you to give me such a good write up, and I'm delighted that I'm giving atheists a bad name, but I'd much rather you answer the questions.

Note that I didn't ask about christians objecting to abortion - your reading comprehension letting you down again, sweetie? - I asked how old men screaming abuse at young women seeking abortions fitted into the wonderful "post religion" world that seems to be only in your head.

I imagine you must also realise that christians have perpetrated actual violence against doctors who perform abortions, have carried out attacks on abortion clinics and have subverted legislation in states of USA to make abortion more difficult to obtain.

All in the name of an invisible sky-fairy. I can see why you're giving that one the swerve.

Please do go on, though.

[The Atheist]

Horrors! Bryan College -- that great center of scientific research -- has demanded acceptance of Fundamentalist positions.

We all know who Bryan was, so regurgitating the obvious is pointless.

You do, however, nicely move the goalposts by talking about teaching evolution, which is barely mentioned.

You really do have a comprehension problem. I hope that third-form class you teach is in something other than English.

(What's an "Instute"?)

I see you avoided the other link. It's ok - I don't wonder why that is.

[mal4mac]

We all know who Bryan was...

Not outside the USA. I don't expect you to have heard of second rate British politicians/lawyers. Being interested in Evolution, the name kind of rang a bell with me, but I needed the reminder about his involvement in the monkey trial (Darrow, of course, is first rate, so I didn't need a reminder about him...)

[The Atheist]

Not outside the USA.

Well, I'm in New Zealand and knew all about him, but I have done a bit of work on Scopes.

I don't expect you to have heard of second rate British politicians/lawyers.

Unfortunately, I probably have. I won't mention any names, however, since politics is verboten and your damned Law Lords are still hearing cases in the Privy Council. (Aren't the politicians all second-rate? Don't answer that!)