The main point I took away from this part of the discussion was how creationism, touted as "a better explanation", actually destroys our ability to explain anything, let alone have any chance to learn anything. And it yet again raises the spectre of "God and the Creation are lying to us." It also reminds me of my topic, So Just How is ID's Supernatural-based Science Supposed to Work? (SUM. MESSAGES ONLY) (opened 27-Nov-2007, closed 06-Jun-2011), in which I asked how Intelligent Design's (ID) plan to include the supernatural in science was supposed to work (no answers in nearly 400 messages).
Here's the video:
The video is a conference between Erika (Gutsick Gibbon), Jordan (Reason to Doubt), Dapper Dino, and geologist Jon B. (@ageofrocks) serving as a fundraiser for Jon B.'s field research in the Caucasus. It is nearly 5 hours 40 minutes long with the first hour and more spent discussing Jon B.'s research and responding to SuperChat donations.
The section I'm quoting starts at 2:55:55 with my quote being a copy-and-paste of the video transcript. In addition, I've added my own emphasis.
And then you you look at regular radiometric dating of any variety. Pick any variety, right? And how they corroborate one another through time and through space. And creationists will look at radiocarbon dating and they'll say, "Well, you know, the fact that contamination exists means that actually the entire concept of deep time is incorrect and we're really missing the boat on this." And even though it says 70,000 years, what it really means is 6,000 years. And, you know, they'll go on and on and on. Then you can show them this entire other body of data that helps us contextualize the even the carbon 14 dating and the contamination and things of that nature because it's like a diamond is going to be found in, you know, rot that's I don't know, throwing something out there. 500,000 or not 500,000 um 500 million years old, right? And we know that those methods are consistent if the law of radioactive decay is consistent, which to our understanding it is. And to deal with that, a creationist will look at that and say, well, there must have been a magic mechanism. And it's like you you really want to lecture me about assumptions when you're taking a much larger body of data that is completely inexplicable and entirely preclusionary. Whereas with carbon 14 data, we we do have an explicable explanation. You know, we have an explanation to to simplify for for why we're seeing the signal that we're seeing. And we have the comparative method and we have actualism that helps us make sense of it. But and that's not good enough. But it's okay for you to look at the this entire other enormous body of evidence and say, you know, damn, God might have done it that way. magical mechanism, whatever.
2:57:25 Dapper Dino:
It's almost like uneven levels of credility are another aspect of pseudocience.
2:57:35 Jordan:
the thing is like okay let's say the calibration thing it it's it's nonsense whatever right and they have some magical explanation for C14 well the C14 also agrees with the uranium thorium which would have to be wrong in a different magical way and that also corresponds to dendrochroninology which that would have to be wrong in yet another different magical way and you could just every single thing ties together all of which would have to be wrong for unconnected magical reasons at different rates like like at that point like God's just trying to lie to us. And if an omnipotent being wants to lie to us, I can't possibly be expected to find out.
2:58:22 Jon B.:
See, this is why I said you should formulate uh Oh gosh, I I just lost it. I'm sorry. [being in Europe, this is way past midnight for him] Well, I used ... the transcendental argument against creationism in this way because to explain the the geological evidence, they have to come up with so many nonsense ways about how the physical word world can behave arbitrarily in ways that are literally like end up tricking us by by creating coherent data sets that don't reflect what we think they're reflecting. uh it just makes the entire world unknowable, undescribable and unknowable by the scientific method that is right. So it creates a world that is nonsense. Therefore it has that that worldview has to be nonsense
2:59:00 Erika (Gutsick Gibbon):
which is so antithetical to what every early Christian largely scientist thought of of the world and investigating it. I mean the the idea was you were discovering creation the the glory of creation and that it was meant to be explicable. It was meant to be understandable and to know the world around you is to know God. Romans 1:20, right? And so it's like the idea that a creationist would be willing to take that concept today, which you know, young earth creationism is is incredibly new, which is something not, you know, it took me a while to figure out just how new it is. But by and large, people accepted the ancient age of the earth by goodness the the 1920s, um, much earlier, but even then, your your run-of-the-mill creationists were cool with it. It's like to take that idea of of using creation to whatever enhance your faith and to take that and say actually the whole of creation is lying to you, right? Or it is, as you guys said, unknowable, which is arguably worse is I mean that feels that even feels theologically gross to me. And I'm not I'm not even religious, right? Like I I don't know that doesn't seem to mesh with the character.
3:00:11 Dapper Dino:
Yeah, I generally would feel like I wouldn't want to uh believe in a God who made knowledge impossible a priori.
3:00:18 Erika (Gutsick Gibbon):
Well, and I don't even think God paints himself like that. Like if you want to take take the the the Bible as a holy text, as the means by which God is interacting with the creation, like that seems totally antithetical to to what he's going for. Um
3:00:18 Jordan:
but it is, but that's the irony of this because that's that's what they don't see. um they they want to think like the philosophy, the theology is on their side. So we're going to like we know in advance that that science has got to be on our side, right? Uh but they just they have to employ this um put it like you have to say that the the world is nonsensible, not knowable, a priori that's the way I mean so it's internally contradictory from the start. So, I mean, I just say, yeah, use take this philosophical route and turn that against them. If if those are the games you want to play to explain uh the the evidence we find in something as common as radiocarbon, right? Then that's where you're going to end up with an unknowable world. Um, and they do.
3:01:14 Erika (Gutsick Gibbon):
Let's let's stay let's take this to the next bombastic level. Let's go from radiocarbon to Grand Canyon. You guys want to watch a Grand Canyon short? I can't wait. Yeah, let's do it. Let's do it. This is from this is also from CMI.
Also, Erika's Bible reference at 2:59:00:
KJV:
Romans 1:20 For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, [even] his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse:
I understand that to be the source of the oft cited motivation for early scientists, to learn more about the Creator by studying His Creation. Which leads to the Haldane anecdote in which a lady asked him what his studies had taught him about the Creator: "An inordinate fondness for beetles."
Thoughts? Reaction? Discussion?
And we could expand discussion under the topic, such as another unintended consequence of how creationism actually opposes and seeks to disprove the Creation.
The creationists are trained to be highly gullible, so that they easily fall victim to a con-artist such as Donald Trump.
Agreed. I place that fault at the feet of all religion. Belief in fantasy (Trump, creation, Jesus, Big Foot …
[fantasy] … that maybe this year the Dallas Cowboys will have a season in which they … win games! More than just a few. Playoffs. NFC. Lombardi !! [/fantasy]
Fantasy lets humans cope with a reality they do not want there to be and makes them pliable, susceptible, manipulable to the will of their cult. That is where the war lords find their priests with their battalions of believers willing to kill.
"There’s simply no polite way to tell people they’ve dedicated their lives to an illusion,” -Daniel Dennett
One of man’s greatest achievements was to reach out his mind and teach sand to think.
I became curious and intrigued by this young lady after watching you bring her up a lot, and I went to her website to browse. This is the first video I watched. (It is long, but interesting)
The Proud Scientific Ignorance Of A Christian Nationalist
I was impressed with her balanced treatment of early Christian belief and dogmatic development, and this inspired me to continue watching and listening to the video. (Of course, I had no idea who Douglas Wilson even was)! But that did not matter.
She knows her science, and she even knows early church history in the context of developing ideas.
I have traditionally labeled myself as a Cosmological Creationist in that I believe that God initiated everything, yet not as Biblical Creationists portray it.
In particular, I noted her acceptance of Augustine's interpretations over Ken Ham's and Doug Wilson's.
When both religious and non-religious people reach the same conclusions then you know religion isn't the reason.--Percy God alone is God *but* God is not alone~Ellis Potter We see Monsters where Science shows us Windmills.~Phat, remixed
Critics would of course say that "God" is a product of human imagination...but then again God may well declare that all of creation is a product of His imagination! It is all in the perspective of the observer.~Phat
[Erika, "Gutsick Gibbon"] knows her science, and she even knows early church history in the context of developing ideas.
She's a graduate student working on her PhD in something like Primate Evolution or Paleoanthropology; she recently made passing reference to starting on her dissertation in November, so she's getting close to her doctorate. Being in the midst of intense academic work reading and researching scientific papers, she's living in the zone with honed skills for looking everything up and analyzing and critiquing everything. She's also intimately familiar with the primate (and especially hominid) fossil record including how to evaluate and compare skeletal details and trends that laymen (and especially creationists) aren't even aware of. To wit, she is ever ready to pull ape/hominid/human skulls off the shelf behind her to show you what she's talking about and to compare those features between species (eg, the role of the placement of the foramen magnum, that hole in your head through which the brain connects to the spinal cord, plays in determining the upright (or not) posture of the specimen, differences in dentition including whether or not they display sexual dimorphism, etc). Her knowledge and training in academic rigor and thoroughness, along with her passion for the subject matter, do tend to make her videos long, which she often makes self-deprecating reference to.
Her personal history includes growing up in Christian schools where she was constantly fed creationist "science". Her awakening came when she transferred to a public high school and was able to read an actual biology textbook for the first time. Her passion for responding to creationist claims is undoubtedly due to her having been lied to for most of her childhood by creationists. Also, gibbons are her favorite primates, so she chose them to be part of her video name (I think she started out on forums, so her moniker may date back to then -- like my own dates back to when I first signed up for AOL and in turn came from how I labeled my data diskettes at work based on my VAX11 username, dwise).
Another person with whom she has cohosted call-in shows is Forrest Valkai, a degreed biologist and science communicator from Oklahoma (@RenegageScience Teacher). He is also enthusiastic about science and is good at explaining how science works. He is a source of good information. He is also more open about his atheism, something about which I don't recall Erika being explicit. Besides his call-in show appearances, he also has a YouTube channel, Reacteria. One of Forrest's favorite things to do when a caller is about to dump a PRATT on them (remember, PRATTs are not just for creationism) is to scribble on his handy white board his prediction of what the caller is about to say -- we hear the same tired old PRATTs so often that we can smell them coming from a mile away.
Here is a call-in that Forrest and Erika co-hosted, "Evolution Denying CREATIONIST Claims Universities Are INDOCTRINATING Students | Forrest & Erika", in which the caller made the typical accusation of university students being "indoctrinated" and forced to accept evolution (same typical nonsense as spouted by Candle3, eg in Message 248, which is why I saved it to use in a response). They both responded by describing to the caller what their own classes are like as graduate science students:
The video is 1:26:20 long. I remember it as including Forrest and Erika describing how graduate studies in science are actually conducted, wherein their homework assignments are to read multiple scientific papers and to critique them, including showing where they are wrong and/or how they could be improved, quite the opposite of the caller's claim that they are required to dogmatically accept what is being "preached" to them. That last is actually much more descriptive of what happens in Christian colleges where indoctrination has precedence over education.
An example of that last is found in the California State Board of Education's visitation committee at the Institute for Creation Research's (ICR) "graduate of science school" during their accredidation battle in the late 1980's. The visitors witnessed a microbiology (or biochemistry) class in order to show them that the class used the same textbook as secular universities do. However, what the instructor was doing was having the class go through the text page-by-page with a black marker to redact out everything that the school didn't agree with; eg, "Well, we don't believe that so mark it out." Kind of like the Jefferson Bible where he deleted all supernatural references. Or life-long YEC Dr. Kurt Wise's childhood exercise of taking scissors to a bible and cutting out every part that he felt depended on literal Creation; you couldn't pick up the resultant book without it falling apart in your hands -- he accepted that evolution is a powerful irrefutable idea, but his religious beliefs still required him to reject it.
So I rewatched the video for some timemarks, which is what delayed my reply to you:
18:00 -- Forrest describes having read and critique scientific papers for homework
46:00 -- Forrest and Erika explaining to caller why science is not dogmatic.
51:00, 1:10:00 -- Forrest predicts on his white board what the caller is about to say.
1:18 -- Erika goes into how scientific papers form the scientific concensus.
That short list fails to convey the exceptional job they do in that video. Try to watch the entire video as Forrest and Erika try to educate the caller as to how science works and how science education works at the graduate level, which is where the adventure really begins.
From another Forrest Valkai call-in where the caller expressed interest in learning more about science:
I transcribed the following text starting at 27:30. I set the utube tag parameters at that time, but I don't know whether that will work:
Forrest Valkai:
Bro! If you like the mysteries, let me tell you the good news about science: that's the whole job. It's figuring out the mysteries. So get in here, dude, and start asking the questions.
It'll take you a long time of everybody telling you what we know. You're in for like a solid half a decade at least of everybody telling you what we do know. And then you're going to get to the point where they start telling what we do not know and that is when you start doing the really fun stuff.
It's like what my father-in-law, an electrical engineer with a BS Math, said: "You don't really start learning mathematics until after you've learned calculus."
{
ABE:
The time parameter works, giving you the entire video but prepositioning the time-bar to the specified time. Cool!
After you hear the part I transcribed, keep listening as Forrest relates his struggles with simple algebra until he finally met the right teacher who explained it in the manner he needed, after which he went on to excel in math. It's fucking inspirational! (yes, he does use that word a lot) His enthusiasm shines through and can be infectious, but we do need more of that kind of contagion.
}
In the same video, Forrest Valkai presents results of a poll on how evolution is covered in secondary level classes:
28% taught it correctly
13% included creationism (eg, "balanced treatment", "equal time")
60% played it safe by watering it down or avoiding teaching it in order to maintain a low profile and avoid parent complaints, etc
So like 70% of students are never properly taught about evolution, which is why they become such easy marks for creationist deception.
... , and she even knows early church history in the context of developing ideas.
Then you may find another person's videos interesting. Daranté LaMar (usually written Darante') is an ex-pastor turned atheist. He is very non-polemic and speaks calmly to the concerns of believers, having ministered to them for years.
Here is one of his videos, The Top 10 Lies I Told As A Pastor - And Didn't Even Realize It, for your consideration:
Share and enjoy!
Edited by dwise1, : ABE
Edited by dwise1, : Corrected typo: "game" S/B "name" as in "so she chose them to be part of her video name". Sorry about that, Chief!
I had seen you online earlier and just noticed and watched the video you added to your earlier reply to my post. Message 7
Thanks for giving me something to do!
Let's take further conversation regarding Darante LaMar and his comments over to the Who Made God thread.Message 876
Edited by Phat, .
When both religious and non-religious people reach the same conclusions then you know religion isn't the reason.--Percy God alone is God *but* God is not alone~Ellis Potter We see Monsters where Science shows us Windmills.~Phat, remixed
Critics would of course say that "God" is a product of human imagination...but then again God may well declare that all of creation is a product of His imagination! It is all in the perspective of the observer.~Phat
The transcript jives with my own experiences with creationism over the last decade plus. The observation that creationism makes us know less is a good one.
I've always viewed it as a more basic problem in creationism. It just can't explain the data in a logical, reasoned manner. The best creationism can do is make really lame arguments about bits and pieces of scientific methodologies, but it is completely incapable of creating an overarching model of anything in science, be it biology, geology, or cosmology. The closest parallel is Flat Earth conspiracy theories.
Using radiometric dating specifically, the observable facts are the observation of fossil species and the ratio of isotopes in the igneous rocks above and below them. As it turns out, there is a high degree of correlation between the species you find and the ratio of isotopes in the rocks above and below them. Why? How does YEC explain this? Short answer: YEC can't even understand the question. However, modern geology has a very well tested and expansive answer that explains the data really, really well.
So why would we throw away the extremely well vetted and reasoned explanation for something that can't even understand the question. YEC is equivalent to a scientific frontal lobotomy.
I'd argue that that's kinda the point really. The more ignorant you are, the easier it is to be brainwashed.
There's also a serious amount of people that are ignorant and don't even realize it, that think they're actually extra smart, they're ahead of the curve so to speak. Especially in Creationism but I see it in other topics as well, it's a powerful feeling when you think you've found an issue with a scientific topic, while hundreds or thousands of scientists say otherwise and the research shows otherwise.
I see it in Dutch news ever so often with things like Global Warming and Climate Change, an article showing a trend of hotter and hotter years on average and then some bloke comes and comments "Oh yeah? Well, it was actually pretty cool here the last few years" and then they spout out about the 'climate agenda' and 'where all the money is'
As you've all seen before many times, it's easier to create doubt and faux skepticism in people through lies and bullshit, the Gish Gallop is a good example of that.
It's a lot harder and takes a lot more time to correct and be exact, scientific and increase knowledge. Explaining things always takes longer than just asserting a lie about something, which makes it hard to convince people when there's active noise being thrown around.
So, creating stupid people is basically the goal. Despise, fear and doubt the smart, the scientists.
They have an agenda, They have no morals, They want to just earn money, They lie to you for their own personal gain,
Etc etc etc.
So to loop back, when you say:
The observation that creationism makes us know less is a good one. I've always viewed it as a more basic problem in creationism.
It's a problem from our perspective, but for Creationism, it isn't a problem whatsoever, not only is ignorance desired, it's pushed for, and not only that, but that ignorance needs to be worn like a tight skin suit around your whole sense of self so if it's ever challenged in any way, it can feel like a personal insult.
A change to that state will be fought against and only the people who are in the same boat as you, should be trusted.
You can't do that as effectively if the person is actually intelligent.
There's also a serious amount of people that are ignorant and don't even realize it, that think they're actually extra smart, they're ahead of the curve so to speak. Especially in Creationism but I see it in other topics as well, it's a powerful feeling when you think you've found an issue with a scientific topic, while hundreds or thousands of scientists say otherwise and the research shows otherwise.
The observation that creationism makes us know less is a good one.
That has also been painfully apparent to me for the 44 years that I've been studying "creation science" and the 40 years of discussing it. And whenever I had tried to bring it up in discussion with creationists it was completely ignored.
This spotlights perhaps THE primary difference between science of creationist-style pseudoscience: science builds a comprehensive body of knowledge and understanding in which everything is interrelated, whereas creationism just creates a disorganized pile of single-shot ad hoc excuses and "refutations" not related to each other and even often contradicting each other.
Refer to my web page draft, Fundamental Differences Between Scientists and Creationists in which I contrast scientists (who are motivated by seeking knowledge and learning more about the universe) and creationists/apologists (who think, "I already know the Truth", and so are motivated by "defending that Truth against science" as well as wanting to convince others into converting, or at least against deconverting (the intended primary function of apologetics) ). By objectively seeking knowledge, science builds a comprehensive body of knowledge, which is self-consistent, or at least seeks to be. Hence, what we learn in science actually makes sense overall with every field and subject depending on and supporting the other fields, and serves as a foundation for learning ever more and for developing a sense of whether new information makes sense. In contrast, creationism builds nothing except for a pile of separate "refutations" which are unrelated to and inconsistent with each other, thus failing to build any kind of overall view, except for their ubiquitous say-nothing incantation, "goddidit". Hence, nothing in creationism makes any sense and provides no foundation for further study -- something of an inverse-Dobzhansky:
"Seen in the light of evolution, biology is, perhaps, intellectually the most satisfying and inspiring science. Without that light, it becomes a pile of sundry facts -- some of them interesting or curious, but making no meaningful picture as a whole. . . . Does the evolutionary doctrine clash with religious faith? It does not. It is a blunder to mistake the Holy Scriptures for elementary textbooks of astronomy, geology, biology, and anthropology. Only if symbols are construed to mean what they are not intended to mean can there arise imaginary, insoluble conflicts. As pointed out above, the blunder leads to blasphemy: the Creator is accused of systematic deceitfulness."
The scientific view can be described as a comprehensive collection of models that describe natural phenomena and are all inter-consistent -- if a proposed new model conflicts with others, then that indicates a problem which needs to be resolved and hence launches further research. The creationist view consists of virtually no models at all, so there's no hope for inter-consistency.
To that last (citing from memory), in the late 1980's the late Robert Schadewald's reports on the International Conferences on Creationism (ICC) included coverage of creationism's "Young Turks", new creationists who were dissatisfied with how the older creationists were running things and dared to call bullshit. One "Young Turk", geologist Dr. Kurt Wise, in his presentation pointed out that creationism has built practically no models and needs to start building some. He ran through the list of different sciences, noting that none of them has a creationist model, except for one (maybe biology or geology) but even that one is little more than nascent. He implored the creationist audience to get serious and develop comprehensive creation models; over 30 years later we can see that nothing has been done on the front.
If someone wants to take exception to the lack of any creationist models by citing creationism's Two Model Approach of "the creation model" versus "the evolution model", I am ready to discuss that.
With science, we have learned a lot and are able to learn so much more. With creationism, there's nothing to learn and no means by which to learn anything. Not a difficult choice.
YEC is equivalent to a scientific frontal lobotomy.
Reminds me of the classic exchange:
"Jeez! Do you have to be completely brain-dead in order to be a creationist?"
"destroying knowledge" is the most spine chilling phrase I've read.
Je suis Charlie. Je suis Ahmed. Je suis Juif. Je suis Parisien. I am Mancunian. I am Brum. I am London. Olen Suomi Soy Barcelona. I am Ukraine.
"Science adjusts it's views based on what's observed. Faith is the denial of observation so that Belief can be preserved." - Tim Minchin, in his beat poem, Storm.
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