Evolution-Creationism Debates

Yeah, you're right. It's a theory that addresses some of the concerns, but it causes several new ones.

Not Three Laws compliant.

It would be nice if God actually told us that. What's the point behind not explaining the metaphor?

In those days, mankind was apparently too primitive and ignorant to comprehend the idea of billions of years. Heck, it took us thousands of years just to figure out the concept of zero!

edited 10th Feb '14 2:15:22 PM by Fighteer

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

That's probably true but what's stopping God from telling us this shit now?

Well, if you look at the Bible, you'll notice the Israelites are portrayed as taking everything completely literally. Especially in the New Testament.

He doesn't need to, because we can figure it out for ourselves, maybe? Would make sense to me. We have the technology to do it now.

edited 10th Feb '14 2:18:27 PM by Zendervai

Not Three Laws compliant.

Er, he wants us to trust the translated words of some six thousand year old goatherds because Faith?

edited 10th Feb '14 2:17:49 PM by Fighteer

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

No, I mean why doesn't It come down and explain that the Bible was a metaphor and the fundamentalists are wrong if that's the way things are? There's no real reason not to since they evidently can't figure it out for themselves.

edited 10th Feb '14 2:19:05 PM by Kostya

Well, that is fairly straightforward. Either God is the biggest troll in the universe, or the Judeo-Christian religions are based on the fanciful imaginings of six-thousand year old goatherds.

edited 10th Feb '14 2:21:45 PM by Fighteer

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

For the record, I do not trust a story-based religion about its unscientific ramblings of unscientific biology. If the results could not be proven, the hypothesis was proven false and therefore the myth is busted. We humans do not have the average lifespan to see mutations of species happen to vertebrae, but that doesn't mean the same phenomenon cannot happen to germs and bacteria, which happen at a much faster (and observable) rate, therefore retroactively proving our current scientific recording of evolution correct.

Same as usual.... Wing it.

God apparently has some sort of "non-interference" rule. After all, if he really didnt write it, and wasnt the one who told us to take it literally in the first place...

Y'all know that this thread is basically being used to get around the fact that "god is totally real/no he ain't/yes he is/no he ain't/ad-infinitum" "debates" are banned, right?

Even if that wasn't the case, I'd probably lock this thread anyway if I were a mod because there's no point in debating about unfalsifiable views like YEC.

edited 10th Feb '14 5:22:50 PM by Ekuran

It's still useful to talk about why it's wrong, because it reminds us of things to watch out for when we ponder what we do believe.

This "faculty lot" you speak of sounds like a place of great power...

Yeah, we should stick to creationism.

No young Earth creationism is falsifiable, in so far as anything is. It being true would require either a global conspiracy (this is usually what they say), Satan having far more power then he should, or God effectively being a liar.

Saying the idea that the Earth is young comes with implications. A list of thing we should or shouldn't expect to see. Unfortunately what we see doesn't aline with those expectations.

Now creationism is general might be unfalsifiable.

edited 10th Feb '14 6:57:58 PM by supermerlin100

Many YE Cs do effectively say that God is a liar. One of Hams points when Nye brought up the spruce tree older than Ham says the Earth is was that we couldn't know it wasn't created just like that. They also claim things like the speed of light being a variable.

edited 10th Feb '14 8:41:46 PM by tricksterson

Trump delenda est

It's only falsifiable when you say stuff like God/The Devil created everything so it looks exactly like you'd expect from evolution just to mess with us. Except that creationists rarely go that far, since they believe that the evidence isn't consistent with evolution anyway.

Blind Final Fantasy 6 Let's Play

There's no logical reason for God to make an Earth that appears ancient. It would just confuse people and it's awfully convenient that it matches all the scientific predictions we have.

The whole "world was created to look old" thing leads ultimately to Last Thursdayism.

From a religious point of view, especially for the Abrahamic faiths it also undermines their basic prepositions since it renders their holy books inherently unreliable. The "Word of God" doesn't mean much when you turn around and then say that all of reality is one big lie (or at least put together in an inherently deceptive and misleading fashion).

That's why creationists rarely emphasize it. If it was their main argument, then they'd basically be conceding anyway. It seems more like an argument they accidentally slip into when pressed.

Blind Final Fantasy 6 Let's Play

Yeah, that's the main problem. Once you're willing to assume enough created-to-look-old things to bring the age down to 6000 years, you might as well make it pretty much any time you wanted using similar assumptions. It becomes rather arbitrary.

Join my forum game!

I think this thread is mostly on-topic. We usually remember to stick to the actual debate that is the topic of this discussion, and tangents about the veracity of a given religion generally only occur when someone involved in the actual real-world discussion "out there" (that we're observing here) makes a connection between their beliefs and their argument.

Or so it seems to me.

In any case, my understanding is that this is a thread where we talk about the real discussion about evolution and creationism - debating whether either view is true is not the main topic of this thread, at least in my opinion. That said, such debates would inevitably arise; but I don't see it as such a bad thing.

Quod gratis asseritur, gratis negatur.

Creationism imprisons the mind. An interesting Slate piece about HBO's new Questining Darwinism series, which features various interviews with creationists. Revealing.

Schild und Schwert der Partei

"But doubt can be as terrifying as it is liberating. And it’s the terror of doubt that fosters the toxic, life-negating cult of creationism... Creationism, the documentary reveals, isn’t a harmless, compartmentalized fantasy. It’s a suffocating, oppressive worldview through which believers must interpret reality—and its primary target is children. For creationists, intellectual inquiry is a sin, and anyone who dares to doubt the wisdom of their doctrine invites eternal damnation.

Of course, that entire article is directed at a tiny fraction of even conservative Christians.

edited 11th Feb '14 9:07:27 AM by demarquis

HERETIC! Everyone knows the world was created Last Tuesday!