On it goes. Experts will continually twist their findings to fit their predisposed view of the world.
You mean your worldview you attempt to follow which suits your religious beliefs while scientists follow the evidence and scientific method in order to make up their minds.
If you don't see that difference I'm not sure we can have a fruitful discussion.
Now who is really twisting things to fit their point of view?
Another evolutionist:
Cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door? Is that really unbiased research? hahah, yeah.
Haeckel's works, even though proven to be a fraud now, still is being taught as fact in biology textbooks. Why all this misinformation being taught if there is still so much overwhelming evidence?
...Cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door? Is that really unbiased research? hahah, yeah.
Is that what you think science ought to be? "Unbiased research"? Do you not realize that if the scientific method eliminated all operational "biases" or what I prefer to call predispositions, it would literally cease to function in any meaningful way? Science works precisely because the methods are rigorously predisposed to investigate NATURAL CAUSES AND PHENOMENA IN THE NATURAL WORLD. By its very purpose, science is unwaveringly committed to materialism.
Honestly, what would you have scientists do in such cases in which there are no answers, or when the data is contradictory or confounding? Please explain to us what good would be served in appealing to a higher power or divine intervention whenever the solutions are not obvious?
One of the fundamental problems with intelligent design that practically all IDers refuse to acknowledge is how their proposed philosophical reforms to the scientific method would irreparably damage the function and use of science—ALL SCIENCE. As soon as divine intervention becomes an option IN A NATURALISTIC CONTEXT, then any true investigation of the natural world is impossible.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Shades
Haeckel's works, even though proven to be a fraud now, still is being taught as fact in biology textbooks. Why all this misinformation being taught if there is still so much overwhelming evidence?
It isn't. This is yet another tired, old myth that continues to have traction despite having been debunked on countless occasions as early as several decades ago.
A year later when other experts were able to examine it,proved to be nothing special at all.
Before you can speak intelligently about the history of the human species, you must read this and this. Until then, I will continue to assume that you have a poor grasp of this topic.
An important point to be made from the article you posted is in recognizing that one of the strengths of science is its ability to self-correct. So many creationists see the changing opinions and ideas in science as a fundamental weakness, when in fact, it is through experimentation, challenges, adaptations and improvements that science works.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Shades
...Experts will continually twist their findings to fit their predisposed view of the world.
Sure. We all have them, and it is nothing to be ashamed of. You have your own "predisposed view of the world" that puts enourmous pressure on you to ignore evidence, or to simply claim an opinion without having a good understanding of the counter arguments. I suspect that your own worldview has its own underpinnings in your curious belief that you claimed earlier—to have some sort of special insight into "what the Bible really says".
But this isn't about "twisting" findings, or fudging the data. It is about an exercise in scientific materialism, and what this project has to say about our world. You are free to reject it, but do be aware that the same scientific method that has fine-tuned the theory of evolution is the same scientific method by which your modern Western world of technological and social convenience and comfort was created and continues to function. You in a sense owe a good portion of your existence (and I am not speaking entirely of your physical well being) to the same enterprise that you claim is faulty and biased. Well, it certainly does employ a fundamental bias, and thank God for that, because without it, you and I would likely not be having this conversation.
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Dealing with Everything from Dead Sea Scrolls to Red C Trolls
Quote:
Originally Posted by woob
"...harem warfare? like all your wives dressup and go paintballing?"
Creationism and ID proponents continue to flummox me with how they manage to take willful blindness and ignorance of reality to new heights.
It actually stuns me that people can happily cherry pick tiny bits of irrelevant information to form their world-view while choosing to ignore the overwhelming amount of scientific evidence that contradicts their narrow view of reality.
It's rather like watching a drowning man continually yell out that Hydrogen does not in fact exist and that there is no way he will drown because there's no such thing as water.
I'll just say it nice and plain for those who have trouble understanding: evolution is as close to scientific fact as you can get. Period.
How anyone can fool themselves into believing otherwise is just bizarre to me.
__________________ @crazybaconlegs ***Mod edit: You are not now, nor have you ever been, a hamster. Please stop claiming this.***
Creationism and ID proponents continue to flummox me with how they manage to take willful blindness and ignorance of reality to new heights.
It actually stuns me that people can happily cherry pick tiny bits of irrelevant information to form their world-view while choosing to ignore the overwhelming amount of scientific evidence that contradicts their narrow view of reality.
It's rather like watching a drowning man continually yell out that Hydrogen does not in fact exist and that there is no way he will drown because there's no such thing as water.
I'll just say it nice and plain for those who have trouble understanding: evolution is as close to scientific fact as you can get. Period.
How anyone can fool themselves into believing otherwise is just bizarre to me.
heres how the YEC trick their followers into believing their trash...
It actually stuns me that people can happily cherry pick tiny bits of irrelevant information to form their world-view while choosing to ignore the overwhelming amount of scientific evidence that contradicts their narrow view of reality.
How anyone can fool themselves into believing otherwise is just bizarre to me.
I imagine some people have to. They have no choice. Otherwise, they'd have to face the reality that all that they've been taught, all the time and effort they spent into blind belief (or whatever thing they have dedicated themselves to), and that a core pillar of their life - has in fact, been a lie.
People often believe what they want to believe. Otherwise, they would never be able to get through their (perhaps likely miserable) day/lives.
I imagine some people have to. They have no choice. Otherwise, they'd have to face the reality that all that they've been taught, all the time and effort they spent into blind belief (or whatever thing they have dedicated themselves to), and that a core pillar of their life - has in fact, been a lie.
I think it's even deeper than that, it's not just the dislike of the alternative, it's a just a basic part of the brain to resist changes to beliefs.
This puzzlement can produce an unfortunate tendency on the part of skeptical thinkers to demean and belittle people whose beliefs don't change in response to evidence. They can be seen as inferior, stupid, or crazy. This attitude is born of skeptics’ failure to understand the biological purpose of beliefs and the neurological necessity for them to be resilient and stubbornly resistant to change. The truth is that for all their rigorous thinking, many skeptics do not have a clear or rational understanding of what beliefs are and why even faulty ones don't die easily. Understanding the biological purpose of beliefs can help skeptics to be far more effective in challenging irrational beliefs and communicating scientific conclusions.
Here's a Richard Carrier video along those lines, with lots of talking about how the mind works and beliefs and stuff like that:
__________________ Uncertainty is an uncomfortable position.
But certainty is an absurd one.
...they'd have to face the reality that all that they've been taught, all the time and effort they spent into blind belief (or whatever thing they have dedicated themselves to), and that a core pillar of their life - has in fact, been a lie.
Think about it like this:
I attend a large and growing church that is quite successful in large part because of the impact of its particular brand of faith / theology, and the benefits it has provided for a high number of people who have suffered through addiction, family conflict, broken marriages, and for some, unspeakable tragedy. For them, this church has been the catalyst for a cascade of positive and beneficial change. What accompanies that change is a commitment to a specific understanding of who God is, how the world works, and what we can believe or know to be true about the world. A theological system is enfused into their very positive experiences, and I believe that it is at this point, that people shape their own respective worldviews. Why do some people seem so blindly committed to an irrational set of beliefs in the Garden of Eden, the comprehensiveness of "sin", the devil, angels, and the hope of an eternal reward? Because these same beliefs—or at least those who propogate them—are in many ways directly responsible for affecting the most profound and deeply meaningful positive changes in one's life. In essence, it amounts to the results: How can a belief system be wrong when the benefits of that system have improved a person's life so much?
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Originally Posted by chemgear
People often believe what they want to believe. Otherwise, they would never be able to get through their (perhaps likely miserable) day/lives.
For many religious people, the idea of God, and their own cosmological dualism becomes so effective and engrained that there really is no possible way that they can rationalize it out of existence. I readily admit that this is still something that I struggle with a great deal. By way of another example, I have a very good friend who talks daily to God, utters prayers and has them answered, and can "sense" the presence of "evil", the devil, demons, what have you, and knows how to eliminate its effectiveness. She once told me that that God has prevented her from "seeing demons", because by her own admission she is not emotionally or circumstantially capable of dealing with the onslaught of oppression and terror that is most certain to accompany it.
She is not crazy. She is not somehow emotionally or mentally unbalanced. She is highly intelligent and sincere. But, she has such a deeply engrained sense of the world, that there is no possible way for her to rationalize any possible counter explanations. These are the sorts of people that I deal with on a daily basis. Their world is "real" in a sense that I cannot describe, but that reality sets them in a place where they have stopped questioning its feasibility.
__________________
Dealing with Everything from Dead Sea Scrolls to Red C Trolls
Quote:
Originally Posted by woob
"...harem warfare? like all your wives dressup and go paintballing?"
Creationism and ID proponents continue to flummox me with how they manage to take willful blindness and ignorance of reality to new heights.
It actually stuns me that people can happily cherry pick tiny bits of irrelevant information to form their world-view while choosing to ignore the overwhelming amount of scientific evidence that contradicts their narrow view of reality.
It's rather like watching a drowning man continually yell out that Hydrogen does not in fact exist and that there is no way he will drown because there's no such thing as water.
I'll just say it nice and plain for those who have trouble understanding: evolution is as close to scientific fact as you can get. Period.
How anyone can fool themselves into believing otherwise is just bizarre to me.
I find it bizarre as well.
Debating with friends there blind faith usually comes down to one word...Fear.
The same fear our parents instilled in us as kids if we didn't believe in Santa we wouldn't get a toy on Christmas, Adults have fear of burning in hell if you don't believe and of course the fear of nothing after you die.
There's certainly no evidence of an anthropomorphic Abrahamic god. It's not incumbent on non-believers to prove non-existence. It's just not a rival belief system. Not sure why this is hard for theists to wrap their heads around.
As to Christianity, isn't it basically a cobbled-together pastiche of assorted Middle East god myths with Greek influences? All sorts of historical holes. It's just plain and simple not only bad science, but bad humanities as well.
There's certainly no evidence of an anthropomorphic Abrahamic god. It's not incumbent on non-believers to prove non-existence. It's just not a rival belief system. Not sure why this is hard for theists to wrap their heads around.
As to Christianity, isn't it basically a cobbled-together pastiche of assorted Middle East god myths with Greek influences? All sorts of historical holes. It's just plain and simple not only bad science, but bad humanities as well.
Yeah, I remeber reading an article on this once. Basically the stories in the bible were a giant game of broken telephone that took place over a couple thousand years, and they connected a lot of the dots, with all of these ancient cultures. Damn I wish I could find it.
Oh, and to the original premise. A lawsuit was merely implied. Whether it goes ahead depends on the willingness of the atheist group. They still made their point and got the message out.
Oh, and to the original premise. A lawsuit was merely implied. Whether it goes ahead depends on the willingness of the atheist group. They still made their point and got the message out.
Yup. they did make their point that their insensitive pricks, and the message is out that they're enormous d%%he bags.
Sooooo . . . . good for them.
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My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Like many IDers, the claim that the human eye is an example of irreducible complexity and that it cannot have evolved has been repeatedly and easily dis proven.
Your video demonstrates many of the failures of evolutionary science. It attempts to link a variety of different creatures and use them as an example of how the eye is suppose to have developed. We are asked to imagine how one developed into the next one. A sensor or nerve that detects heat in the first couple creatures is suppose to transform into a lense that divides the light spectrum by colours and communicates that to the brain which then adds depth to the image. In every stage of this development the mutation has to be beneficial in order for the creature to survive while its peers and forerunners do not. And of course time has erased all evidence of these stages keeping only the final product: us.
We know from what we can observe(not imagine) that a human's eyes form first as part of the brain moves towards the surface of the face during development. That would not be the case with all of the supposed links the video strings together. It also makes it difficult to imagine anything but, a functioning eye to be beneficial to a creature being as the opening makes the brain more vulnerable to attack. The armour around our skull is there for good reason.
The fossil record is concerning as well: It is held up as evidence of evolution much the same as these different creatures in the video are. At the same time it is acknowledged that this record is far from complete. Apparently fossils don't form that often. Yet at the same time each of these stages of evolutionary development supposedly take hundreds of thousands of years or even millions of years to happen. Now events like Mount St Helens don't occur every year or even every decade. Every hundred years would be my guess or at least every thousand years. In fact I'm certain that there would be several events within a thousand years that would form fossils. This makes sense because fossils are found all over the world. Yet unless you believe that the occurances of conditions that make fossils are more rare than the occurances of positive mutations you can't see the fossil record as anything more than a negative to the theory of evolution.
After all the fossil record provides only evidence of death and extinction. The source or development of this life is the part that is imagined. The links and missing links that are thought to connect these creatures have also got to be imagined. This is done all under the banner of science. i could see it as science if it was balanced with a healthy dose of skepticism but, it Evolutionists takes imagination and calls it fact instead of theory. They then defame and belittle anyone who questions their "evolutionary fact".
