For the few regular readers that I have, you may or may not have noticed that lately I very rarely post about creationism. The main reason for this is because the debate is well and truly over and it has been for a long, long time. Creationists (I include ID as a sub-category of creationism) should know this, and I'd wager that most professional creationists do realise it. People like Answers in Genesis, Creation Ministries International, Creation Science Evangelism, The Discovery Institute, Institute for Creation Research and any others you can think of are actively putting out information that they must know is false. They are after all the deceitful demagogues that I mentioned in my 'Two Types of Creationist' post back in 2010.
If on the odd chance they are really just willfully ignorant and delusional, what can we do about that? We can't go around locking them up or sending them into looney bins can we? The scientific battle is over, but the social war will never end. I hate to be so pessimistic, but I fear that as long as humanity is rife with shit-heads like the aforementioned creationist groups whose main goal is to undermine science with a religious agenda we will never stamp out the pestilence that is creationism.
We will never get rid of magical thinking, faulty reasoning and conspiratorial tendencies. These mis-firings of our thinking faculties are hard wired into humanity.
This is not to say that we do nothing, I still make efforts in my personal life to combat creationism. A few of the Christians that I know (that number dwindles by the year too) are still creationists. I don't try and force them to accept evolution, but I do try and convey to them how serious the evidence for evolution really is, within the context of an amicable conversation. I have a few books and online resources that I try to pass along to them, but they're rarely, if ever interested. There seems to be comfort in delusion. They're more content thinking wrong-headed beliefs are true than actually learning something new.
If there is some 'miracle' cure for the plague of creationism, I'd love to know about it but until then, I think I'll just carry on as I have been, pessimistic about the intellectual honesty of humankind, and continuing to learn new things myself every day.
I think that once you learn the basics of it...it's ovah. I get the answers in genesis newsletter and for a while I read Ken Hams most currents essays, but it's the same (general) thing over and over. My early posts talked a lot about it, but not lately. I do know that there are sites dedicated to I.D., mmm, Talk Origins is really good. Awesome buddy,
ReplyDeleteKriss
Every creationist I have debated doe not care about learning something new. We'll go around and I'll shoot down every claim they make, cite papers detailing evolution observed in the lab and transitional fossils, and at some point, their mind snaps and they go right back to the beginning; "Evolution is a lie!" And then I'll go find something better to do with my time.
ReplyDeleteTo trust contrary to Scripture means putting ones trust in man - that is, per the evolutionists, a souped - up monkey brain. I don't have any beef with chimps, it's people I don't trust. Six twenty-four hour days?? You bet yet boots I believe that!
DeleteI don't have much to say and I probably won't check back on this for a long time (if ever). I don't know if you're an evolutionist or not, but since you're talking about the "scientific battle" I would assume so.
ReplyDeleteFirst off:
Evolution is based off of the idea that everything is purely physical (no God, soul, etc.) and thus, everything can be eventually explained by scientific reasoning. The "Big Bang Theory", what most evolutionists claim to be fact, is directly disproved by these laws of physics: Conservation of Mass (matter can neither be created nor destroyed) and Conservation of energy (energy can neither be created nor destroyed).
There is no scientific process in which something can come out of nothing. It is a PHYSICAL impossibility. The only other option evolutionists have is to say that whatever was there first (a hydrogen atom that explodes or whatever you wish) was always there, for an infinite amount of time, or that a non-physical, possibly all-powerful being (God, Allah, or other) actually planned and created the earth purposefully.
Out of these two options, it is much more logical that a deity (not constrained by physical limitations such as time and the laws of physics) created all of the physical limitations and beings in existence rather than a fluke chance of a purely PHYSICAL atom (that inexplainably has existed for all time before it) explodes and forms a perfectly shaped universe filled with matter and energy (that we already know CAN'T be created physically).
Second:
I'm not a biblical scholar. I can't argue well against other religions because I know nothing about them. However, I have read a few books regarding the historical accuracy and logical possibilities of the Christian God's existence, and I'm pretty convinced.
All of this to say, don't write off Christianity in the name of science, because science cooperates much better with an aphysical God than it does with evolution and the "Big Bang".
(That was really freaking long. Sorry about that.)
It looks like you didn't read the title of my blog 'Undeniably Atheist', nor read the contents of the post, so I will not dignify your comment with a point-by-point rebuttal. I'll just say that what you're postulating has no real merit to it. You didn't actually address evolution at all and your cosmological argument is very weak.
ReplyDeleteJust saying you're "atheist" doesn't say whether you believe in evolution or not. Most do, but some are simply turned away because they can't see a "God".
ReplyDeleteOne thing I forgot to mention is that my above argument proves nothing about or for Christianity. It simply states a few scientific impossibilities of evolution that disprove most of its theories (regarding the origin of the universe).
My only goal is for someone to read it and begin to think for themself without automatically disregarding the possibility of a Creator beforehand. Thats all.
"Evolution is based off of the idea that everything is purely physical..."
ReplyDeleteNo it's not. I think you're confusing the theory of evolution (which, btw is accepted by prominent theologians like Collins, Swinburne, Craig, Plantinga, etc) with metaphysical naturalism.
"The "Big Bang Theory", what most evolutionists claim to be fact, is directly disproved by these laws of physics: Conservation of Mass (matter can neither be created nor destroyed) and Conservation of energy (energy can neither be created nor destroyed)."
LOL! Firstly, the Big Bang has absolutely nothing to do with the theory of evolution. Secondly, there's no such thing as "conservation of mass" (everyday, matter is converted into pure energy at the LHC, so it's clearly not conserved. Thirdly, it's pretty much accepted in the physics community that tiny fluctuations in the quantum fields during the early universe were responsible for the vast structures we see in the universe today (See L. Krauss's A Universe from Nothing). Fourthly, if you define 'nothing' as the absence of energy, then we can do a quick calculation to show why the statement "Out of nothing, nothing comes" is demonstrably false; the positive energy of matter perfectly cancels the negative energy of gravity, which means the total energy in the universe is precisely 0. Therefore it's perfectly possible for the universe to have formed from nothing.
"Out of these two options, it is much more logical that a deity (not constrained by physical limitations such as time and the laws of physics) created all of the physical limitations and beings in existence rather than a fluke chance of a purely PHYSICAL atom (that inexplainably has existed for all time before it) explodes and forms a perfectly shaped universe filled with matter and energy (that we already know CAN'T be created physically)."
False dichotomy. You've entirely ignored the popular 'multiverse' and cyclic models in modern cosmology, and neither require a God to personally intervene and kick-start the universe and the laws of nature. Also, you seem to be arbitrarily exempting God from having a cause of its own existence. Instead of asking "Why this universe and not another?", I could easily turn it around and ask "Why this God and not another?"