Yes, but itās the House. Thereās a reason the House canāt have a pet hamster anymore.
Spontaneous generation of life is actually a massive pill to swallow if you even have a basic understanding of thermodynamics. It is tricky to imagine how that first spontaneous bit of DNA in the primordial soup managed to create a self reproducing functional cellular machine.
But the creation debate isnāt about that at all.
I finally figured out why creationism is such a big deal for the Christians. They need the whole creation story up to the bit with Eve, the apple, and the snake to make Jesus relevant. Using their interpretation of the story it is what sets Christianity vastly apart from itās official predecessor religion and without it there is no need for a divine sacrifice in the old pagan style.
Self defined original sin needed a human/divine sacrifice, the messiah stuff is just to give him an ancient back story. Ask any Jew who was interested enough to learn and they will say that messiah is a human who is supposed to bring world peace, not be a god or have anything to do with sin other than help inspire goodness.
So fervent creationism is Christians protecting the essential bedrock of their faith, you can have functional Christianity without Moses, Abraham, King David, or pretty much any of the Jews; but you canāt have modern Christianity without the story of the seduction of humans by the snake(identified by them as Satan) in Garden of Eden defined through the lens of the Church.
In the creation debate unfortunately science is used by one side as a ninja snake bomb to hide behind and to confound people who actually want to have a scientific debate.
The Corporatists and Theocrats have succeeded in turning us into a nation of idiots.
Every time I see that misstated āmillions of yearsā claim, I wince.
Itās funny that Ken Ham et al cannot even bear to correctly state their adversaryās position. Itās billions of years, Ken. Billions with a B.
When I hear the āmillionsā claim, I think of how gleeful Republicans are when they use āDemocratā as an adjective (when āDemocraticā is of course the correct, non-pejorative term). I think Ham and his ilk use āmillionsā instead of ābillionsā for the same derogatory reason.
Iām not sure who your two sides are. From your set-up, it seems that Christians (all of them?) comprise one side, and the other side isā¦ all other faiths (plus atheists)? Who are only using science to bash creationism because itās a handy tool? It seems to me that youāre really talking about a theological debate rather than a scientific one.
As a filthy atheist myself, I donāt have view over whether the Christian creation myth is superior to, say, the Hindu one, or the Australian Aborigine one, but I would be interested in watching such a debate. Maybe a knock-out tournament, with each religion paired against another, and to the overall winner, the kudos of winning. Perhaps it could be held every year, so that different religionists could enjoy the vicarious thrill of watching their religionās position in the league rise and fall, without all that messy martyrdom.
Science has the debate about the origins of life, of course, but in the manner of science, it is debating actual science: forming hypotheses, testing them, discarding the ones that donāt work so well. Iām afraid supernatural entities creating stuff by act of will alone are disqualified from scientific consideration by virtue of being, well, supernatural.
Also, a basic (mis-)understanding of thermodynamics is clearly going to mislead when one is dealing with subjects more complicated than a water-heater.
Actually no it isnāt, new models suggest that it is more likely to occur then not given the right fairly common basic baseline conditions, precisely because of thermodynamics and organic chemistry. The dissipation of heat leads to elements groupings that are more efficient at dissipation simply due to the way dissipation and convection moves and groups them. Of course while thermodynamics plays a huge role, we arenāt talking about the second law of thermodynamics because this isnāt a closed system.
here, here, i second this idea.
maybe we can call it the Dumber Games?
I suggest a small tweak that can solve this problem:
We create two science committee: One called āHouse Committee of Scienceā and other called āFun House Committee of Scienceā.
-The first one will review and debate real science. Boring, dull science.
-The second one will review talking snakes claims, women birthing rabbits, frog rains, phlogistron outbursts and mole-men.
Of course, all reports from the Fun House Committee of Science will be illustrated by Ruben Bolling and published as Super Fun House Committee of Science Pax.
Perfect Boing Boing fodder! Science and cryptozoology, walking hand-in-paw/flipper/tentacle/protuberance.
As for spontaneous generation of life I think it has become nearly an article of faith, mostly in the face of the creation-to-salvation agenda driven opposition, that it was perfectly natural for this to happen. I am hoping that we have a definitive reproducible(heh!) answer in my lifetime. There is just so much Goldilocks required, too much heat energy would denature the chemistry involved too little and nothing happens. What is the catalyst?
Nelsie, if you have ever watched a creation vs evolution debate it is almost always a Christian using sciencey sounding words to irritate their opponent and mask their agenda which is actually missionary activity and not science at all, though I also think it is mostly for the sport. Obviously to the scientific minded people the real science side wins hands down and we are embarrassed by the tap dancing BS creationist, but they win the moment they are allowed onto the stage. I have never seen a Hindu, Australian native, or Rabbi who cared enough to show up for a creation debate or more importantly let it influence their public policy.
This is awesome.
Can I second this?
The Catholic Church has found a way for evolution and their faith to not conflict and accepts and teaches scientific evolution in itās schools.
Iām not sure how that works into your concept but thatās a huge faction of Christians who donāt fit it.
This is all just a big misunderstanding. The science committee isnāt supposed to PROMOTE sceince any more than the House Un-American Activities Committee from the 50s was supposed to promote Communists.
Iām really surprised there arenāt more representatives from Kansas on this committee.
Iām not sure who your two sides are. From your set-up, it seems that Christians (all of them?) comprise one side, and the other side isā¦ all other faiths (plus atheists)?
One side is the Abrahamist (Jews, Christians, Muslims, Mormons, et al.) view, and the other is, yes, everyone else. These are people who, by definition, believe that they are the chosen favorites of the one and only true god and keepers of the one and only true book.
Itās more or less impossible for that view not to create two opposing sides.
And for the record, no, I do not distinguish between the varying denomonations of Abrahamism.
Ah, I see where youāre coming from with the āsnake bombā remark now. It wasnāt clear to me that you were talking about Creationists misusing science.
As to the origins of life, whatever explanation science comes up with, itās bound to be perfectly natural; it wouldnāt work as an explanation otherwise. For myself, I doubt that weāll make a lot of progress soon; itās just too deep in time for us to be able to make out much detail. Maybe when weāve examined a few more planets.
Wait, I thought the collective of dunces was āa confederacy?ā
Nelsie, Ah, I see the error, must have been thinking too much about snakes.
Ninja smoke bomb, Foosh
(dissapears)
MiketheBard, Interestingly for the Jews the chosen concept is found most starkly in Christian bible stories like Jesus telling the Gentile woman wanting to hear about God a parable of not throwing the food(word of God?) intended for the masterās(God) children(Jews) to the dogs(gentiles), but rather letting the dogs(again gentiles) eat the leftover scraps, and you wander why there were constant pograms in Christendom. Even the concept of dividing the world into Jews and Gentiles, a bizarre concept if you think of it, is Christian, it would be an alien concept to an Iraqi, Japanese or Indian person. Jewish scripture mostly talks about Israel and other nations depending on whether they were good or bad, for instance there was a Persian king called a Messiah of God.
I assume that the scriptural inferiority complex was probably officially incorporated as part of the early imperial Roman church post council of Nicea as making a strong divorce from whatever the beliefs of the many diverse proto-Christianities and messianic claimants of that era especially the ones with more historically normative views about what qualified as a Jewish messiah.
(catches breath)
So I accept that even today there is massive diversity in Christendom compared to most religions but with creationism you really run into the true Scotsman paradox where the creationists would instantly decertify a non-creationist.
But now qualifying all of my previous statements as referring to Christian-creationists it seems to be the one unalterable story of original really evil knowledge fruit eating sticky-through-generations sin which must be true for them to need a literal divine human sacrifice, which is why they are such fanatics over that particular story over all others. āOtherā Christians in addition to disbelieving a strict 24/7 creation also donāt seem so terrorized over sin and hell or legalistic justification of their religion and just appear to like meeting their friends for inspiration on Sundays or helping people as a corporate group.
These dolts are just dying to bring on a new dark ages. Their ignorance astounds me. They are massive beneficiaries of science in countless ways, from healthcare to the cars they so love, to the safety they fetishize. They are truly stupid and ignorant, ugly people, and if we donāt take our nation back from them the future will indeed be very dark.
The question, as ever, is what spontaneously created God?
