Exactly. Who’s to say that God didn’t alter the path of a free radical here, or made a neutrino interact with an atom there? That’s “theistic evolution” in a nutshell. There’s no evidence for it, but there’s also no evidence against it - nor can there ever be. To say nothing about the “first cause”, i.e. the inherent unknowability (is that a word?) of anything that happened “before” the Big Bang.
To be clear: I’m an atheist, because there’s no evidence for the existence of God, and because the question itself is rather meaningless for me. But looking down on everyone who believes in some form of higher power - often for very understandable, human reasons - just strikes me as a very assholeish thing to do.
My SQL prof at uiniversity was a devout Muslim, and, quite possibly a YEC, given that he seemed to know how old the world was gong to be. He was absolutely sure of the date of the universe’s end, had a spreadsheet with figures and everything (I didn’t enquire as to the date, as I’d prefer it to be a surprise).
The problem with this is that it is incredibly easy for Creationists to generate new silly arguments in short, easy to spread soundbites - and incredibly difficult to answer those arguments in a way that people will understand while keeping the answers short enough that they will actually be read or listened to.
That’s why the Gish Gallop is such a difficult debating tactic to fight against. One side gets to spew out a load of completely incorrect accusations that have absolutely no relationship to each other, and then sit back and grin while the other side tries to rationally explain how the whole thing was nonsense. And any refutations are skipped due to there being no time for them, the first side then gets to crow, “see! They won’t answer those because they know they can’t!”
By engaging them in debate, we imply they have something to say. They don’t. We should treat them exactly as we would a flat-earther; with scorn and mockery.
Creationism like this just says that god did, it end of story, and any furthering of knowledge ends there. That isn’t teaching, it’s un-teaching. Likewise, saying that we should teach both ‘theories’ in school and let the kids decide for themselves… this is just as bad or worse.
science isn’t a democracy where we vote on what’s right or wrong, we test and that gives us an answer (not necessarily correct).
Why on earth would we want our kids to decide? How completely irresponsible would we be throwing information at them and telling them that it’s up to them to decide what is right! That’s like sending them to the cafeteria saying that scientists think that fresh vegetables are a good meal; and that Hostess’ nutritional theory is that twinkies are.
Our job as parents and teachers is to instruct them with the best information that we can possibly give them, based on the generations of intelligent people figuring things out, working off of what they were taught, discovering new knowledge, passing it on. That’s how our society learns, and that’s how we progress.
I appreciate Bill Nye on doing the debate, but I agree that it probably wasn’t a great tactic, and just allowed a crackpot to be elevated to a level of a scientific discussion.
What I would like to see is the Catholic Church, who completely accepts evolution, to take these guys to task. I would so love to see this new Pope come over and do some serious biblical education, and let our teachers to teach the science.
What it did is hurt the US’ reputation abroad as people around the world slapped their foreheads and went “They’re STILL debating this ?”
I mean this shit was settled in the fourth century. Here’s a quote from St. Augustine (“De Genesi ad Litteram”):
“Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable eclipses of the sun and moon, the cycles of the years and the seasons, about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge he hold to as being certain from reason and experience. Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn. The shame is not so much that an ignorant individual is derided, but that people outside the household of faith think our sacred writers held such opinions, and, to the great loss of those for whose salvation we toil, the writers of our Scripture are criticized and rejected as unlearned men. If they find a Christian mistaken in a field which they themselves know well and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions about our books, how are they going to believe those books in matters concerning the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven, when they think their pages are full of falsehoods and on facts which they themselves have learnt from experience and the light of reason? Reckless and incompetent expounders of Holy Scripture bring untold trouble and sorrow on their wiser brethren when they are caught in one of their mischievous false opinions and are taken to task by those who are not bound by the authority of our sacred books. For then, to defend their utterly foolish and obviously untrue statements, they will try to call upon Holy Scripture for proof and even recite from memory many passages which they think support their position, although they understand neither what they say nor the things about which they make assertion”.
Except we are losing the debate by sitting on our hands. 46% of American believe God created humans in the present form according to Gallup. And best tool you can give them is to be the jerk they expect that treats them with “scorn and mockery.”
I am soooooo glad Mr. Nye came to that and this was brought up here. Christians are not a monolithic group and there is a lot of diversity in the group, there are many many of us who know evolution is real and that the earth/universe is quite old. Even my pastor acknowledges the creation of the universe didn’t happen the way we have it in Genesis, duh…
The whole debate made me mad, Mr. Nye engaging with someone who obviously is not discussing the same thing is just sad. What’s the point? Who does it serve? It makes one person and by extension a great deal of people who think similarly look like fools instead of working on education and critical thinking. Folks who loose face in such a way just knuckle down harder.
Are you willing to accept the possibility that for roughly half the U.S. population, you will always be the loser in debates on this issue? That you cannot convince or cajole or ‘convert’ them to a more rational, scientifically accurate view of how the universe works? That they will never accept a scientific explanation that does not accept God as the primary agent?
That is the very real ideologically-charged environment in which you live.
Society can change – if you said in the 19th century that devout Lutheran Scandinavia would be one of the least religious places in the 21st, most people would be very surprised.
Those people aren’t going to be convinced by a debate where there’s a lack of time for full explanations of how the science works and why it supports evolution.
To really make an impact, science education in general needs to be improved, and there needs to be some way to make it clear that religion and science are two entirely separate things.
It’s not hard to accept both. They are compatible. Evolution could very well be the method of creation figuratively described in the bible. Just explained in terms of what people could comprehend over 2000 years ago. Even if man is completely the result of evolution the very physical and chemical processes that allowed this could have been created by some presence. If someone had written about these processes in the bible 2000 years ago he prob would be deemed crazy and the book burned. The same goes for things like visions and messages from god being communicated through the temporal lobe mirroring the effects of temporal lobe epilepsy.
I mean personally I don’t believe in any organized church, The ideas are a little too convenient towards manipulating a population for better growth. (populations without fear of god/hell/punishment/evangalism would probably be less successful thousands of years ago, maybe even now.) But to say they are incompatible is taking things a bit too literal.
