Comparitive delusions

I'm sorry too, jar, that you find it hard to believe.

Support you assertion Faith or retract it. It really is as simple as that.So far you have never provided any evidence in support of your assertions. Once again you make yet another such unsupported assertion, one that stands in direct contrast to actual evidence here at EvC. Please show us where a critter or landscape or date was presented without any evidence to support that presentation?You made the statement Faith. Perhaps for once you will support your assertion?added an e to her to make hereThis message has been edited by jar, 03-17-2006 09:34 AM

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

That is not the point. If you admit that you only look for scientific evidence in popularized accounts of science then you have de facto conceded that you do not have a clue what scientific evidence exists. You are admitting you are not in a position to make any claims about who has what evidence or what that evidence is. Thus, your claims about scientists unsupported assertions are pure wild conjecture on your own part. And your assertions that creationists are just interpreting the facts differently is also falsified. If you do not even bother to find out what the facts are by examining the primary literature (or better, the available raw data) then you are not "just interpreting facts"..you are ignoring them.

Many believers also believe many of these things. I do not consider myself a creationist in the biological/geological/archeological level of earth and its formation, but I of course DO believe that some guy as you so disdainfully call Him DID rise from the dead 2000 years ago! You are confusing two basic issues, here. One does not have to be an atheist or an agnostic in order to be a doctor/physicist/geologist/biologist! In the Book Nook, I point out the behavior of Sir. Richard Dawkins. Dawkins, he himself a "famous" atheist, runs up against one of his colleagues. In fact, even some of Sir. Richards educated friends assert that he gets carried away with his rant against religion in general. I agree with you, and I think that we need to differentiate between a "creationist" and other Christians. I don't believe that Christians need to be AIG or ICR creationists! When someone challenges the divinity of Christ, it has everything to do with mine. I could care less about the age of rocks. If they are found to be a couple of billion years old, that does not disturb me in the least! My faith is not challenged by any evolutionary assumption. When the existance of Jesus is questioned, however, that gets my attention. IMO, the literalness of the resurrection is the ONLY thing that matters in the Bible in regards to my faith. I tend to let the biologists/geologists/archeolgists and historians do their jobs and admit my ignorance of the disciplines involved. Are you telling me that those who have examined the evidence for Jesus Christ are so unbiased as to not be willfully ignorant as well? We are crossing over from facts into beliefs right about now...and I have no problem respectfully disagreeing with you. My evidence is in my heart, as it is for hundreds of thousands, if not millions of other christians. (Not all who call themselves christian even believe the evidence in themselves.) I agree, and I think that this again proves why we should differentiate between faith driven christians and the others who embrace biological creationism, an invention of the human mind! I quite agree with you, Mammuthus. I respect scientific disciplines enough to stay out of meddling with their authenticity without understanding the process which led to the conclusions. I only ask that the scientists respect my faith/belief enough to stay out of the process which defines the reasons for my faith in Jesus Christ...if they seek to disprove it.

And of course, if a small part of the accusations were true you would expect AIG and ICR to jump on it. When a few mistakes are made they do but, of course, it is never they who catch them.When creationist organizations and "researchers" actually show that ALL of geology, physics and biology is wrong then there will be some interesting times. Meanwhile, the fact that they can't tells many people something but not Faith who doesn't follow that to a logical conclusion.

I promise Phat that almost all of us do. We are not all Dawkinists. In fact, my Christian friends are probably the harder on the "crazy, fringe cultist" that make up the minority of Christians than I am. Exactly!! This is the reason why many (the majority of) Christians are worried about the extremists. It is hard to remember that the fundies are a minority when they are so vocal.My daughter was somewhat interested in religion a few years ago and went to Sunday school for awhile of her own volition. Unfortunately for the Christians her exposure to fundies on the web turned the whole thing into a laughing matter to her. Now I have to regularly remind her that they don't really represent the majority. (They are "no true Christians". )This message has been edited by NosyNed, 03-17-2006 10:22 AM

Oh for crying out loud. My objection was very very simple. I found examples in some posts on the other thread WHICH I GAVE AS MY EVIDENCE, of statements about past scenarios presented as if they were fact. The evidence is there. I started out with the evidence.This is common. There is nothing unusual about it. It doesn't mean those who believe these stories don't have what they consider to be evidence for it all, it just means that they present it that way, without the evidence, and tend to present it MORE that way to the poor layman who has no way to question it.Clever to demand that the poor layman become a scientist in order to protect himself against possibly false information which is really no more than propaganda.And again, I'm sure this is nobody's fault. Scientists think they are simply presenting the truth and they think there's plenty of evidence for it and that the layman can just take it as they give it.

Oh for crying out loud! Why must you continue these rants? Are you not aware that they are not good witnesses? Look at Neds comments above. What would you say to his daughter? Would you tell her to focus on Biblical literalism and throw the wisdom of collective human research away?Would you tell her to have an open mind and let God speak to her?She may well be reading this exchange of words and ideas that we all are having, after all!

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My reaction to the way people are customarily presented with unprovable conjecture in the supposed ancient scenarios of the ToE and OE is something that's bugged me all the way back before I was a Christian.

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That it is conjecture is your opinion, currently unproven.Regardless of how you feel about it, again, what gives you the right to start pointing fingers when you clearly believe some very odd things? It is hypocritical of any creationist to say that that scientists believe in a fantasy called evolution (and they do say this) when they believe in all number of bizarre fantasies in the bible.

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Mostly the ToE where I would try to track down the evidence for some scenario or another, in layman's terms of course, and couldn't.

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In the Grand Canyon thread, you dismissed a lot of Rox's posts as conjecture and didn't even ask for further explanation. So pardon me if I consider that you didn't look very hard.

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I haven't accused anyone of evil motives -- or delusion or anything else. Oh my mistake -- I did accuse you of delusion about how creationists are the ones guilty of fantasies etc. So you are delusional that we are delusional. That's true.

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Excuse me? When were you made the final arbiter of what is true and what is not?Normally people who believe bushes and snakes can talk, the dead can rise from the grave, and food can be conjured from nothing are considered deluded or just plain crazy. So when those same people say that the world is only 6,000 years old and the entire geological column is a result of a giant flood because it's written in this old religious book, I consider them to be deluded as I have the training and knowledge to look at the geological column itself and draw a more informed conclusion.It's very easy to call someone deluded because they don't agree with you, like you are doing now. I'm calling creationists deluded because I have examined the evidence, and it does not support their position.

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That's my statement. There is no more. It has nothing whatever to do with my religious beliefs and there's no point in arguing with you about all that anyway, as you clearly are not open to any of it and it's just a distraction from the point I wanted to make.

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Faith, you're calling me and other scientists delusional because we don't agree with your religious beliefs that the world is only 6,000 years old etc., so I'd say it certainly has something to do with them. I don't especially care what point you were trying to make because, right now, I'm making one of my own - that creationists have no right to start pointing fingers about who is deluded until they can reasonably defend their own delusions.{edited for my terrible spelling}This message has been edited by IrishRockhound, 03-17-2006 05:06 PM

Except everybody, from Message 10I said it before and I'll say it again. The moment you have all the training to understand the evidence, and you have seen all the evidence, you are no longer a laymen. However, most scenarios have been explained in laymen's terms, what scenarios could you not find layman's terms for?This message has been edited by Modulous, Fri, 17-March-2006 05:05 PM

I QUOTED A NUMBER OF POSTS AT LENGTH IN ORDER TO MAKE THE NECESSARY DISTINCTIONS. THEY ARE CLEAR. THERE IS NO POINT IN GIVING FURTHER PROOF AS NOTHING I SAY IS EVER ACCEPTED BY ANYBODY. KEEP YOUR EYES OPEN. I'VE EXPERIENCED THIS A LOT. DISBELIEVING ME ABOUT SOMETHING LIKE THIS IS CALLING ME A LOT WORSE THAN DELUSIONAL, BUT THAT DOESN'T COUNT, DOES IT. YOU GUYS MANAGE TO GET EVERYTHING SO WRONG ABOUT MY MOTIVES AND WHAT I'M SAYING THE WHOLE THING HERE IS RIDICULOUS.

It's hard not to picture that your fingers were in your ears when you typed that.This message has been edited by docpotato, 03-17-2006 10:45 AM

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Many believers also believe many of these things. I do not consider myself a creationist in the biological/geological/archeological level of earth and its formation, but I of course DO believe that some guy as you so disdainfully call Him DID rise from the dead 2000 years ago! You are confusing two basic issues, here. One does not have to be an atheist or an agnostic in order to be a doctor/physicist/geologist/biologist! In the Book Nook, I point out the behavior of Sir. Richard Dawkins. Dawkins, he himself a "famous" atheist, runs up against one of his colleagues. In fact, even some of Sir. Richards educated friends assert that he gets carried away with his rant against religion in general.

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Um... perhaps I'd better clarify here.Phat, personally I'd challenge the divinity of Jesus because I'm not Christian and I think 9/10ths of the bible is a waste of paper. Objectively, though, I'm not going to challenge it because I recognise that people believe in it because they have faith and they are Christian.Let's be clear here - there's a difference in acknowledging something because you have faith, and acknowledging something because you have examined the evidence and come to a conclusion about it.I gave that list above because I wanted to present some recognisable examples of things that are believed on faith - from a strict scientific point of view, people who believe these things are deluded. And from a strict scientific point of view, people who accept evolution and the 4.6 billion year age of the Earth are not deluded, because that's what the scientific evidence points to.

Indeed, you did make clear distinctions between what you thought were facts and what you thought were interpretations being presented as facts. I have already agreed that those are reasonable distinctions.
It was when you qualified those interpretations as "unprovable", "pure conjecture" and "wild speculation" that I felt you needed to provide some evidence in support for those qualifying assertions. Perhaps you misunderstood what it was that I/we were asking you to support. I thought I was clear on what I felt was poorly explained. If not, then I apologize for the lack of clarity.What is it about these interpretations that make you believe they are wild speculation rather than conclusions drawn from careful investigation of the evidence? What? You think we are calling you a liar? What you are saying may be ridiculous but that doesn't say anything about your motivations. We can say you are wrong, even ridiculously wrong. However that is not a judgement on your intent but rather a judgement on the content of what you stated. Stating something that is untrue does not necessarily make you a liar, but it does make you wrong.

Could you give a reference to which post you are talking about, please?