Comments on: College Requirement: Four Years of Darwinism

By: J.R. "Bob" Dobbs

J.R. "Bob" Dobbs — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 23:10:37 +0000

Aw shit, another drive by poster.

Perhaps proven science is a good reason to not believe.
[Nothing+nothing=Nothing]=/=Science and accepted fact

By: Thanamine

Thanamine — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 17:23:45 +0000

Faith is not blind devotion even when what people believe in seems to be farfetched or capable of being scientifically disproven. I believe in creation and there’s no reason for me to believe that God didn’t start things off with a big bang of light. The theory of evolution and creation must both rely on a power supply that never had a beginning due to the simple proccess of elimination. Something can not be created by nothing and since all evidence points to this universe counting as “something” then the point of origin does not coincide with our most easily proven “fact”.
The world being formed in a short or long time is a moot point as scientifically there really is no “reason” for anything to exist at all. (Nothing + Nothing = Nothing for an infinite amount of time) seems like sound science to me but we have quite a bit of evidence supporting the existence of “things” which can’t possibly come from nothing. My belief is that ( God = Everything ) and the proof that I have based that belief on is the existence of “Any things”. Though my personal faith is in the Bible that does not mean that I believe a person needs to do anything more than seek God to find him no matter what their religous background is. I also believe that we all are aware of God, have some sort of relationship with him, and know whether it’s a good one or a bad one.

Those who convince themselves of the non-existence of God are usually just disgusted at how intolerant some humans are and proclaim their gods to be. Especially my fellow christians

By: Sue Blue

Sue Blue — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 01:38:58 +0000

Jeremy – your whole comment is right on. One of the aspects of so-called christian “morality” that really appalls me is the idea that an outside supernatural being had to give humans their sense of right and wrong, and that fear of punishment by that being is what keeps people on the straight and narrow. Without the idea that some sky-daddy is constantly looking over their shoulder, they would just be unable to keep from cheating, stealing, raping and murdering. They really believe this. They have no personal responsibility for their actions other than “faith” that God will overcome their inherent “evil”. And then they think that, no matter how badly they have behaved, “repenting” to their sky-daddy makes everything all right – so they never really have to pay for fucking over anyone else.

By: Jeremy White

Jeremy White — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 14:15:09 +0000

cipher,

It seems like a good possibility to me.
Richard Dawkins has a chapter in The God Delusion regarding reasons why people are predisposed to believe in God — there’s some compelling arguments in there too.

People have evidently overcome those natural inclinations that support a belief in a god. I’m still amused (and saddened) that some people can become educated and still not apply logic and reasoning to their religious beliefs. The media, political campaigns, government, etc… all do their part in the use appeals of emotion, appeal of fear, wishful thinking, appeal of authority, etc… to perpetuate illogical thinking.

After you get over the hurdle of realizing, “Hey, just because it feels good to believe something doesn’t mean I’m right!”, it becomes hard to believe that you were ever so stupid. And it’s a hard hurdle for many people to jump. It’s not only a change of thinking, but admitting neither heaven nor morals are real is uncomfortable until you accept that you can finding meaning in your own life without your life having a “purpose” and you can still behave morally without the fear of going to hell. (btw, how does christianity make people behave morally? if they accept jesus, regardless of how they lived, they’ll go to heaven. can’t they be as immoral as they want?)

By: cipher

cipher — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 14:52:00 +0000

Honestly, I don’t believe thinking logically is necessarily the default natural state of the human mind. We evolved in order to survive in a dangerous world, not in order to figure out life’s mysteries.

Stephen Jay Gould suggested years ago that among early hominids, natural selection favored the ability to focus on one limited set of visual or auditory stimuli, to the exclusion of all others. One had to be able to concentrate on spotting looming predators, and anything else was a distraction. The ability to see “holistically”, to perceive the whole picture, wasn’t an advantage.

By: Parrotlover77

Parrotlover77 — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 00:07:53 +0000

I wasn’t raised fundie, I was raise Methodist, but at Sunday School when I’d ask tough questions like “how did God create the world in seven days if it’s billions of years old” you should know that they have answers – oh do they have answers. Critical thinking is not encouraged, but those who think critically are, indeed, given answers. It may be complete and utter BS, but it’s an answer. The answer to my above question? They invoked the theory of relativity. Seven “days” during that time were from a different frame of reference (near the speed of light, I presume?)… Anyway, don’t brush them off as stupid. The fundies are not as stupid as we make fun of them. It takes a kind of intelligence to twist facts and evidence into the knots needed to match the accounts of the bible with real science. Are they intelligent? Heavens, no. But they are not as stupid as you might think. There is a reason why they are able to convince millions that their form of BS is more truthy than the competing religions and, well, truth itself.

By: Sue Blue

Sue Blue — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 03:55:40 +0000

Hmm. Funny, Genesis never mentions any supervolcanic eruptions. You’d think an almighty God would have clued the authors of the Bible in on that one. I love it when these creationists try to fit geology and evolution into their scheme. They wind themselves into knots like Gumby playing Twister trying to fit the plain facts in with their Bronze Age worldview.

It’s really hard to get how pervasive this worldview is unless you’ve been raised in it. There isn’t a single aspect of biology, geology or astronomy that they haven’t tried to parse from the garbled mythology of the bible.

By: Andrew N.P.

Andrew N.P. — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 19:40:07 +0000

They don’t go into the difficulties of where all the water came from or where it went, or how Noah got all the animals (from all over the world! Did kangaroos fly Qantas to Mesopotamia?) into the ark, or how he fed and cleaned up after them, or how the few species he might have crammed into a wooden tub might have differentiated into all the millions of species that exist today.

On that note, there's a (relatively) recent AiG article I found particularly mind-blowing: Lucy Was Buried First. It's all about apes, humans, and the Tower of Babel, but the part I wish to draw your attention to is toward the beginning. Quoth Kurt Wise, Ph.D.:

Dotted around the world, sitting on top of rocks we think date from the end of the Flood, are piles of sediment thousands of feet thick. We deduce, then, that these are post-Flood sediments, leaving a record of conditions on the earth for the centuries immediately following the Flood. The nature and thickness of the sediment suggests that centuries of catastrophes continued to occur while the unstable earth was recovering from the violence of the Flood. Some of these catastrophes, such as supervolcanoes, created excellent conditions for preserving fossils. These fossils show animals appearing on each continent—and being buried in local catastrophes—long before humans are found on that same continent. (Emphasis added.)

Okay, so not only is the world scrubbed of all life by a year-long Flood, but now they're assuming that for several centuries afterward the earth was a hotbed of catastrophic seismic and volcanic activity. Yet somehow life survived; somehow we survived. This may explain why fundies aren't too worried about global warming or nucular war. If hundreds of years of God's wrath can't kill us, nothing can.

By: Lindsay

Lindsay — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 19:37:30 +0000

SB:

It’s just very interesting…I just have a hard time understanding sometimes because I don’t come from a background where the bible is taken literally. I just mentioned that I think there could be some that don’t buy it b/c it seems that some of the regulars on this blog grew up in a fundementalist enviroment. Me wondering if they all bought into Noah’s flood was more of a rhetorical question…I just find it hard that living in this century that it is that easy for people to still buy into biblical mythology.

By: Sue Blue

Sue Blue — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 17:49:00 +0000

And, sadly, most of the kids just nod and say, “that’s cool.” Most have never been taught critical thinking skills or logic, and even if they do question it, they are usually satisfied with whatever technical-sounding explanation their teacher spits out. Questions of the “wrong” sort are not encouraged.

By: Sue Blue

Sue Blue — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 17:43:27 +0000

Lindsay – the trouble is that the church isn’t presenting the Flood myth as an amusing children’s story on a felt board. They take these high-school kids, who have been primed with anti-evolution rhetoric since birth, out to sites of geologic interest and ply them with a bunch of sciencey-sounding stuff like “sedimentation rates” and “particle sorting” and all sorts of fluff, then tie it in with “this is the same kind of thing we see in places covered with water today. So – this proves that the whole world was covered with water, just as it says in Genesis.” They don’t go into the difficulties of where all the water came from or where it went, or how Noah got all the animals (from all over the world! Did kangaroos fly Qantas to Mesopotamia?) into the ark, or how he fed and cleaned up after them, or how the few species he might have crammed into a wooden tub might have differentiated into all the millions of species that exist today.

By: Lindsay

Lindsay — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 13:14:10 +0000

Sue Blue – I wonder how many of those kids from your ma’s church buy into their flood theory? A lot of kids do get caught in the net but I think there is still a good number who don’t quite buy it. These kids have some degree of exposure to the outside world (unless they are perhaps fundie mormons?) so I would imagine a few would question the validity of their church’s “scientific proof.”