A lot of these misunderstandings could be cured by having honest and open conversations with atheists. I have actually seen Christian apologists who speak honestly about atheists, so I know it's possible. I just wish it were more common.
Actually, I just found this link through Google, but I'm pretty sure that this was the same page as I had found five years ago -- the author's name, Mike, looks familiar as do the major points. Please note that he is writing as a Christian.
Here is the list of those 10 things, albeit without the expository text which I will leave to you-all to read for yourself at that page (though I will occasionally include some bits as in #1 or interject my own notes):
Make sure you’re arguing about the same definition of God.
Bottom line: Don’t let your conversation turn into the tattoo scene from Dude, Where’s My Car?
DWise1 NOTE:
This is why I am constantly asking creationists, "What are you talking about?", by which I am asking what they think evolution is, how it works, and why they have a problem with it. So far in over three decades of asking that question, no creationist has ever answered it. Indeed, one creationist was so terrified of the question that he canceled their email accounts.
As Philip Yancey said, “No one ever converted to Christianity because they lost the argument.”
Don’t treat your conversation as a confrontation — treat it as a collaborative effort to get closer to truth.
Please, don’t start the dialogue by talking about hell.
DWise1 NOTE:
Despite GDR's stated desire for proselytizing to be based on appeals for becoming a better person, the sad truth is that Christianity is almost always hawked and sold as "after-life insurance" by trying to scare the mark into ensuring that he avoid eternal torture after death.
Part of that appears as what I call "The Christian Death Threat", a gleeful proclamation that you're going to burrrrn. That is often hurled at a mark after failing to convert him or at an opponent after losing to him (eg, by Kent Hovind at a high school kid who had just mopped the floor with him in the Q&A after Hovind's presentation -- reported somewhere under No Answers in Genesis) as well in the typical examples of "Christian love" in emailed run-by flamings.
Don’t give an atheist your unsolicited opinion about why he embraces atheism.
Stop saying evolution is wrong.
Whenever possible, direct the conversation toward Jesus.
Don’t unintentionally create more atheists.
Theology that claims the Bible is scientifically accurate produces atheists who reject the Bible as bad science — and well-intentioned believers who defend it as good science. ... Sloppy theology creates sloppy atheism.
DWise1 NOTE:
There's also the all too common scenario of believers depending on that bad science (eg, "creation science") finally learning how bad it is and, realizing that "their religion had been lying to them all along" (actually it was their religious leaders lying to them, even when unintentionally), becoming atheists angry at how religion had betrayed them. Not the best kind of atheist to create -- it is far better to become an atheist by having outgrown religion.
Ask about meaning and purpose.
A joyful, Christ-filled life is a far more powerful argument than anything else.
My Google search on 10 things I wish christians knew about atheists through which I refound the above also links to similar lists, some by atheists (which would make them more pertinent and important to be read by Christians intending to "minister" to atheists.
We don't need “purpose” from the universe. We’re freer and it is more noble, admirable, to give point to our lives ourselves rather than accept it from your fictitious sky pimp.
Isn't what Dredge is pushing characteristic of abuse? Destroying in the victim any sense of worth outside of the abuser. Making the victim of that abuse dependent on the abuser, thus trapping the victim in a cycle of never-ending and ever-escalating abuse and exploitation.
So Dredge is pimping for his own pimp who's also pimping for his own pimp, etc? A pyramid scheme creating a hierarchy of pimps.
The idiot Dredge has dredged up yet another tired old refuted argument: Omphalos ("belly button").
And being a typical clueless creationist, he understands neither what he's claiming nor the problems with his claim. No creationist ever knows what they're talking about.
So why do we see the one pattern of trillions that just so happens to be the one pattern that common descent and evolution would produce?
Some of the funnier bits from Drs. Henry Morris and Duane Gish (founders of the Institute for Creation Research (ICR) and co-creators of "creation science") was when they had to bend themselves into pretzels trying to explain away why all the evidences look like and point to evolution and an old earth.
quote:The Omphalos Argument was advanced in 1857 by an experimental zoologist, Philip Henry Gosse, who was obsessed with the need to protect his extreme fundamentalist view of special creation from the geological evidence against it. The argument derives its name (Omphalos (Ομφαλος) means "navel" in Greek) from an old theological question (of the same general class as counting angels on the head of a pin): Since the navel is evidence of a past event (i.e. having been born of a woman) and Adam was not born of a woman but rather was created whole and fully formed, did Adam have a navel? The answer is: if it would have so pleased God for Adam to have the appearance of having been born of a woman, then he would have had a navel.
In his book, Omphalos: An Attempt to Untie the Geological Knot (1857), Gosse argued that everything was created with the appearance of a history; everything was created fully-formed with evidence of its growth and development and pre-existence, all of which had never actually happened. Thus, any scientific findings supporting the earth's great antiquity could immediately be discounted as false evidence of a non-existent past. The earth only appears to be ancient because it was recently created with the appearance of great age. It isn't that the scientists have gotten the story wrong, it's just that they don't realize that it is ONLY a story.
So the apparent fossil remains of non-existent creatures were created in the strata to give the false impression of evolutionary change. The proper ratios of parent and daughter isotopes were created in new rock to lend it spurious age. Light was created in space with the proper Doppler shift to make it appear that the distant galaxies had produced it. And so on.
Yes, this did indeed give rise to the theological position of Last Thursdayism (which schismed further into Last Wednesdayism, etc). Even Gosse himself anticipated that conclusion, which formed part of the reaction against his ideas:
quote:Indeed, Gosse himself developed this effect of "Indeterminate Creation" to its logical conclusion. Why assign the Creation to 6000 years ago? Why not 4000 years ago or 1000 years ago or 100 years ago or 10 years ago or 10 days ago or even a few minutes ago? If the Creation had occurred a few minutes ago with all the false evidence of pre-existence, even down to our individual memories, intact, then how could we know it?
Of course, the Omphalos argument fell into disrepute with everybody almost immediately. Many just laughed at it, but others were deeply offended by the idea of God being a lying and deceitful prankster who had written an enormous and superfluous lie in the rocks. But even worse for many believers was the thought that the events of the Bible, most importantly the Resurrection, might have never happened and so their faith might be based solely on a Divine Hoax.
From a religious viewpoint, it can be interpreted as God having created a "fake" universe, such as illusions of light emitted from supernovae that never really happened, or volcanic mountains that were never really volcanoes in the first place and that never actually experienced erosion.
In a rebuttal of the claim that God might have implanted a false history of the age of the universe to test our faith in the truth of the Torah, Rabbi Natan Slifkin, an author whose works have been banned by several Haredi rabbis for going against the tenets of the Talmud, writes:
quote:
God essentially created two conflicting accounts of Creation: one in nature, and one in the Torah. How can it be determined which is the real story, and which is the fake designed to mislead us? One could equally propose that it is nature that presents the real story, and that the Torah was devised by God to test us with a fake history! ...
One has to be able to rely on God's truthfulness if religion is to function. Or, to put it another way—if God went to enormous lengths to convince us that the world is billions of years old, who are we to disagree?
Of the hundreds of different patterns we could have seen in the fossile record why do we only see the one throughout every relationship? Would you expect a god to follow one pattern throughout all of creation? Why would he use the one and only pattern that shows this hierarchy?
I think you should make your argument much more explicit. sensei doesn't seem to have the sharpest katana or tantō. He probably won't understand your reply.
The basic idea that is so obvious that it should not need to be explained is: The creation by fiat of an omnipotent Creator would result in an arbitrary pattern (if any pattern at all). In such a fiat creation, the resultant pattern (or lack thereof) would be completely independent of how the Creator created.
IOW, the patterns in the resultant creation could be anything.
And yet, the patterns are exactly what we would expect if that hierarchy had been evolved. Why would the Creator have chosen that specific pattern, one that looks for all the world like evolution?
If that hierarchy did not evolve but rather was created in an act of fiat creation, then all that evidence of evolution would be false, a lie. And since the Creator deliberately planted that "false evidence of evolution", that would make the Creator a Liar. Indeed, that was a big reason why everybody rejected Gosse's "absolute defense of the Bible against geology", because it proposed a Trickster God, like Loki.
Or, better, go to your local university, take a semester of biology, evolution or genetics. When you're done come back here and we'll discuss what you learned.
That should be a requirement for all creationists:
They need to learn everything they can about science (which includes evolution) and also about creationism. That way they will have some chance to understand our answers to their "questions", but also they will be able to see where creationism is lying to them and thus avoid being deceived.
The same applies to us normals too.
An example of that is the autobiographical story of a former YEC, Dr. Mary Schweitzer, PhD Biology:
quote:Based at North Carolina State University, Schweitzer is currently researching Molecular Paleontology, molecular diagenesis and taphonomy, evolution of physiological and reproductive strategies in dinosaurs and their bird descendants, and astrobiology.
She published her findings that raises questions about fossilization and which creationists continue to lie about.
I mentioned her to candle2 in Message 1014 where I embedded the video of Aron Ra's interview with her:
In that interview she described her journey from YEC to practicing scientist. As a young-earth creationist intent on learning the evidence so that she could disprove "evolution" (ie, whatever bullshit bogeyman strawman that creationists push), she enrolled in Dr. Jack Horner's class (BTW, Michael Crichton based Dr Alan Grant in Jurassic Park on Dr. Jack Horner, who was a technical advisor for the movie).
Not only did she learn that evidence she wanted to learn more about, but she also discovered lots and lots of evidence that the creationists had never told her about and would continue to hide from her as they insist that that evidence does not exist. IOW, she discovered that the creationists had been lying to her and her fellow creationists all along. And now she has learned from what they do with her own research how much creationists lie about their scientific sources.
BTW, in that video she states outright that the reason she accepts evolution is because of the data -- the data that Dredge keeps trying to deny. And she is still a Bible-believing Christian, just no longer a YEC (again, because of the data that creationists don't want her nor you to ever see).
Another example of how creationists' and religious fanatics' abject ignorance of science keeps them from understanding the truth comes from a fundamentalist conspiracy theory site from the 90's, Cutting Edge Ministries at http://www.cuttingedge.org/NEWS/n1260.cfm (link broken):
quote:
TITLE: EXACT ILLUMINIST TIMETABLE FOR PRODUCING ANTICHRIST HAS BEEN REVEALED TO CUTTING EDGE MINISTRIES!
Subtitle: We have been given the exact timetable for producing Antichrist, including the exact date he is planned to arise. We have also been given the precise occult thinking by which this timetable was produced. If God does not act to prevent the Illuminati from carrying out this Plan, Antichrist will likely arise as the Illuminati has scheduled.
. . .
JUPITER NOT A PLANET, BUT AN UNLIT GASEOUS BODY
It seems pretty outrageous to think of Jupiter becoming a star. Some investigation of the makeup of Jupiter on some scientific web sites is in order, especially because of Cooper's bold statement that Jupiter has a makeup "exactly" like that of our Sun. Here are a few comments about Jupiter from the NASA web site located at: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/galileo/Jovian.html#king (link broken)
quote:
"Jupiter contains two-thirds of the planetary mass of the solar system. In composition it resembles a small star. Electrical activity in Jupiter is so strong that it pours billions of watts into Earth's own magnetic field every day. No planet has greater influence on its neighbors. Most of its mass is hydrogen and helium --- it does not burn like the Sun. Models of star formation suggest that Jupiter's mass is only about one-eightieth of the mass needed for ignition, which occurs due to heating from internal gravitational collapse. Jupiter's smaller size leaves its center too cool to ignite."
quote:
"(Jupiter does NOT produce energy by nuclear fusion as in the Sun; it is much too small and hence its interior is too cool to ignite nuclear reactions.) Jupiter is just about as large in diameter as a gas planet can be. If more material were to be added, it would be compressed by gravity such that the overall radius would increase only slightly. A star can be larger only because of its internal (nuclear) heat source. (But Jupiter would have to be at least 80 times more massive to become a star.) "
These comments from NASA, and this astronomy research group, seem to be clear that Jupiter could never ignite on its own. We then posed the following question to the Arizona Space Exploration and Astronomy research group "Could Jupiter be ignited by a huge nuclear device ?" The answer we got back was:
quote:
"Jupiter could not be ignited. The central temperature is the determining factor. A self-gravitating mass of hydrogen 20% the size of the Sun, or smaller, does not have a high enough central temperature to induce nuclear fusion. Temperature equates to average kinetic energy of particles; it takes a very high temperature to get even a small fraction of hydrogen ions to overcome their electrical repulsion and fuse." [Guy Smiley dated 2/2/99]
We were still not sure exactly why Jupiter could not ignite, especially if it were hit with the huge atomic explosion of 1,750 Megatons, as occult sources are saying will occur when the 49.7 pounds of plutonium in the spacecraft Galileo is turned into the planet on December 6. After all, the largest thermonuclear explosion on earth was the Russian test of only 100 megatons in 1961. The answer we received from a Christian scientist, Dr. Kent Hovind, [
Dinosaur Adventure Land
] explained the science to us so we could understand. In the NASA excerpt, quoted above, we learned that "most" of the mass of Jupiter is Hydrogen and Helium, a most explosive mix, if it is mixed with sufficient oxygen in order to burn this mixture. Dr. Hovind says Jupiter does not contain enough oxygen in order to sustain the type of continuous burning that would be needed to produce a star. Now, we understand and now it all makes sense. No matter how large the initial explosion might be, the lack of sufficient quantities of oxygen would snuff out any resulting fire rather quickly.
Stars shine through the fusion reaction in their cores which requires very high temperatures that results from the gravitational collapse of their mass. As a result, if a ball of gas containing hydrogen is not massive enough to trigger that fusion reaction, it cannot become a star. In my 1971 astronomy class, we were taught that Jupiter is about one-tenth of the mass needed to become a star.
Even though that was the answer to their question, those fundies were so ignorant and scientifically illiterate that they couldn't recognize that those were the right answers. So they instead fell for Mr. Kent Hovind's equally scientifically illiterate "answer" that stars burn like a candle and so would need oxygen for the bonfire on its surface. Absolutely wrong, but in their stupidity that stupid "answer" was all that they could understand. Just think of what a difference it would have made if they had ever bothered to take a science class.
BTW, Galileo plunged into Jupiter's crushing atmosphere on Sept. 21, 2003. Of course, there was no explosion since its two reactors, each containing 17 lb of plutonium (or 34 lb combined, not the 49.7 lb claimed), were designed to minimize the effects of any event such as a crash, an explosion, fire, reentry into the atmosphere. More information can be found at Galileo (spacecraft) - Wikipedia.
Stupid is as stupid does. And a large part of the cure for creationist stupidity is education.
Areas of ignorance abound. Feel free to hide your god in any of them.
By all means, yes!
It's so much fun to watch that god panic as our knowledge increases and that gap it's hiding in closes up.
Or does a God of the Gaps in a closing gap act more like the proverbial frog in water that being heated up to a boil, blissfully ignorant of its own impending demise?
You keep talking about "evolutionists", a completely made-up word, but you never define it. Instead, you adamantly refuse to ever define it, let alone answer any of our questions about your assertions about those mythical "evolutionists."
And yet you repeatedly demand that we define terms that we have already defined and described and discussed for you. Why the fuck would you expect us to do what you refuse to do?
You hypocritical dishonest creationist. Which is admittedly entirely redundant since creationists are by their very nature dishonest, hypocritical, and damned liars.
There is evolution from common ancestor by natural processes alone, there is theistic evolution (the idea that evolution was helped along or guided by a deity) and there is seperate creation, where species have not crossed boundaries. And there is Dawkins outer space theory.
If we would find and record species in a lab or on another planet, crossing boundaries that were forbidden by seperate creation, from single cell all the way to variety of complex life forms, then that would be falsification, for example.
What are you talking about? Are you saying the same thing as your fellow creationist here, candle2? -- from his Message 189:
candle2 writes:
True evolution would for example be a cat evolving into a dog. You don't have this.
For example, a pig's offsprings will, and always has been pigs. The same is true for humans.
Over the decades, I've seen many other creationists repeat that interpretation, usually claiming that evolution would depend on a dog giving birth to kittens or a chimp giving birth to a human.
Since you're a creationist, is that your position too? Why?
If that is not your position, then why not?
Your description is telling us that you do indeed think that evolution would require such "crossed boundaries".
That tells us that you do not know what evolution is nor how it works.
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