Creationists think Evolutionists think like Creationists.

Oh, I understand you don't care whether I believe you are not.I am simply saying that there are others here who feel that you HAVE to provide this information, or else you are in violation of the rules, and as such are in danger of being suspended for violating the rules.Of course, this is what they say, but we both know the real reason they want to ban some-so I don't think you have to worry about it. You are not a creationist.

No, there is nobody that feels that way.Again - what was the last scientific article you read? Please be specific. I'm looking for authors, title, and date and journal of publication.Also, are you interested in sharing your background, or not? If the answer is "no" please just say so.

That was not his point.Whom do you hope to deceive by pretending that it was?

Please substantiate your opinion. I believe that was his point.Also please avoid breaking the rules any further.Rule #4Points should be supported with evidence and/or reasoned argumentation. Address rebuttals through the introduction of additional evidence or by enlarging upon the argument. Do not repeat previous points without further elaboration. Avoid bare assertions.

Certainly. We all know that that was not his point because we can all see that that was not what he said.I didn't think even you would need this explaining to you. And yet it was not what he said.I've noticed that a lot of your beliefs are at right-angles to the evidence. Have you noticed that? It is really most striking. Hypocrisy is definitely among the more amusing of your vices.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

His persecution complex is what gives me the giggles. (Oh, and so does the excellent illustration of the Dunning-Kruger effect!)Edited by articulett, : Changed "the" to "his"

Yes, it was, but you somehow missed it anyway. You're not in any danger of being suspended, and certainly not of being banned (which at EvC Forum is an indefinite suspension).What was meant when I said I was now aware of "this side of Boder-dash" was that had I been aware of your issues with comprehension and rational thinking and following the rules then I would not have joined the thread as a participant.You cannot be banned for your position on the issues. Check out the Forum Guidelines, you won't find anything in them about positions. Now check out the Forum Rules at EvolutionFairyTale.com, which includes this gem: And it gets even better when you participate over there, because moderators like Adam Nagey and Ikester have no qualms about quashing discussion and banning people merely for advocating an evolutionary position. Of course they'll explain that it's because EvolutionFairyTale.com isn't a bulletin board but a ministry, as if that makes it okay.But there's nothing analogously like that here.So you can advocate whatever positions you like, but it really helps avoid drawing moderator attention if you follow the Forum Guidelines. For example, in a subsequent message you cited rule 4:

4. Points should be supported with evidence and/or reasoned argumentation. Address rebuttals through the introduction of additional evidence or by enlarging upon the argument. Do not repeat previous points without further elaboration. Avoid bare assertions.

Forum Guidelines violations were what I believe Subbie was referring to and was certainly what I had in mind when I said I was now aware of what you were doing. For example, when asked to support your claims about near-death experiences you refused to provide any substantiation whatsoever. This is a fairly blatant Forum Guidelines violation, and ignoring the Forum Guidelines tends to attract moderator attention. Compounding this behavior by following it with blustering accusations of Forum Guidelines violations directed at others isn't viewed as very constructive, either.The goal of EvC Forum is to host productive discussions between creationists and evolutionists. Please help make this possible. Thanks.--Percy

I have actually read a lot on this "controversy", and I think it sheds a lot of light on the topic at hand. The truth of the matter is that Gonzalez had secured very little grant money, had no major grants from the big foundations like NASA and NSF, had stopped doing new research, and had only graduated one student. What publications he did have during his time at ISU were based on work he had done during graduate school and postdoc work. Admittedly, Gonzalez showed a lot of promise during grad school and during his postdoc years which is why he was hired on at ISU. However, once Gonzalez was on his own he failed to do what is required of scientists at research universities, get funding and graduate students. This is why he was denied tenure, and there is very little Gonzalez can do to deny this.Tenure is something that is EARNED, not given simply by being around for a little while. Gonzalez hadn't earned it by every measure available. All of this can be determined without ever mentioning his ID leanings.So what does this have to do with the topic at hand? Creationists think adherence to theology is more important than adherence to reality. Glenn Morton speaks of this very thing in his autobiography:

quote:

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By 1986, the growing doubts about the ability of the widely accepted creationist viewpoints to explain the geologic data led to a nearly 10 year withdrawal from publication. My last young-earth paper was entitled Geologic Challenges to a Young-earth, which I presented as the first paper in the First International Conference on Creationism. It was not well received. Young-earth creationists don't like being told they are wrong. The reaction to the pictures, seismic data, the logic disgusted me. They were more interested in what I sounded like than in the data!
http://home.entouch.net/dmd/gstory.htm

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Creationists assume that evolutionists are just like them. They figure that adherence to this supposed "evolutionary theology" is more important than anything else, including the data. They never stop to think that maybe, just maybe, the data actually matters. That scientific research really matters. That getting grant money to do original research matters. That graduating new scientists actually matters.

Hi, Marc. You should be shy about asserting it because it is the very point under discussion here.Imagine a discussion in which the point of debate was whether my father’s shirt is blue or green.Your comments could be parelleled within this shirt discussion as the simple comment: It’s blue.A parallel of my response would be, What do you hope to accomplish by simply asserting it like that? I submit that you will accomplish nothing.It would not be hard to envision the discussion between you and someone else using your tactics to proceed thus: It’s blue. No, it’s green. No, it’s blue.I ask again: what purpose is served by asserting things like this?----- Yes. Why shouldn’t they be?----- But, in finding truth, blunt assertions are absolutely useless, and are, in fact, more likely to be counter-productive.If you think this is just a philosophical war that you have to win, I will bow out and leave you to it.But, if you are interested in finding truth (or at least in finding the best approximation of the truth possible), then I urge you to do something more than bluntly assert your position.Perhaps to be more in line with the topic, do you think atheists and evolutionists view this whole debate as simply a philosophical war of swaying opinions, the way you have clearly revealed that you view it?Some do, I’m sure. Some would do well to make it clear that they don’t.I think evolutionists and atheists would do well to make it more clear to creationists what their thought processes are. For reference, reread Otto Tellick’s Message 365 for the analytical/empirical approach and thought processes that I perceive as the real basis for evolutionist worldviews. How often does this type of thinking come out in the posts of evolutionists? Not often enough, I’m afraid.If anything, I would hope this thread would be a good place for us all to drop our assertions and our personal opinions, and focus on learning the differences. But, it seems apparent to me that that may be too much to ask from any of us, given the history each of us has with the others.----- I didn’t ask you to smile and make nice: I asked you to support your claims and to tailor your arguments to your audience.If you just want to win, keep shouting your opinion until the moderators close the thread down, and you can claim that you won, and will likely have a lot of people on your side who agree that you won.But, if you want to learn something, stop shouting and back up your arguments.----- And, I repeat my former statement: they would do well to make it clearer to non-creationists that this is actually the case.And, I feel, in this case, you’ve extrapolated a literary point beyond its intended meaning.----- Perhaps there should be. What purpose is served by forbidding inquiry? You said yourself that forming a conclusion before finding evidence to support it is an invalid means of gaining knowledge.How then can Christianity be anything but an invalid means of gaining knowledge? No evidence is ever required, and is, according to you, in fact discouraged.----- Why is testing bad, Marc?----- I submit that this is because you did not pursue a degree in the biological sciences. I took a class called Evolutionary Biology, which, due to the fact that it was given at a Christian university, was basically a semester of demonstrations of the veracity and explanatory power of evolution.Every class period proceeded as followed: Here is a study that was done by _____ and ______ in ______. If evolution were true, we would expect result A. If evolution were not true, we would expect result B. Which result do you think happened?I feel that, during my education, I was encouraged, and even explicitly asked, to test the specific claims of evolution (to the extent that I had the materials and capacity to do so), to consider it rationally, and form my own conclusion on it, in every course I took.So, I explain your views on the subject as your being unaware that you lack sufficient experience within the field to know what is encouraged and what isn’t. Maybe we could do a better job of making it clear that this is what we’re doing, and maybe some of us could do a better job of actually doing this, but your views about our overall community’s demeanor exist at a considerable cant to reality.

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-Bluejay (a.k.a. Mantis, Thylacosmilus)Darwin loves you.

I don’t want to, because it’s not necessary to counter the word every, that was the subject of the quote. If it’s said (message 275) that religion answers EVERY question for Bryan, and I can show only one place where his answer to a question was I don’t know, then a very brief quote mine was all that was necessary to show that religion in fact doesn’t answer every question that he has, or has asked of him.

Yet another GREAT example of how Creationists think. You didn't want to.You found a quote that provided the answer you wanted, and so you pulled out that one piece of data and ignored all the rest of the data.This is the same thing I point out time after time when dealing with Biblical Christians.I did post the whole discussion, and for a reason. When you see all of the passage you see that his religion did answer all his questions, that he considered whatever said as being all he needed to know.This is exactly why Creationism and Intelligent Design can NEVER become Science.

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Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!

I didn’t really distinguish between someone who converted to atheism vs one who never was religious to begin with.I’ve read a lot of posts by atheists on forums like these for the past 10 years, and it’s safe to say that they’re populated by lots of both, converts and the never-religious. I’ve never seen a single one say anything about any discomfort they are feeling or have ever felt about their atheist views. The opening posts of this thread sure don’t show it. Victor Stenger, author of How Science Shows That God Does Not Exist, says that [scientists have pointed] to the beauty and majesty of nature and the great pleasure and inspiration that science brings to its practitioners. In his 1980 hit public television series Cosmos, astronomer Carl Sagan extolled the grandeur of the universe, life, and the human brain. In his book Pale Blue Dot, Sagan asks; How is it that hardly any major religion has looked at science and concluded, This is better than we thought! (p255) Later on that page, he quotes Richard Dawkins; The feeling of awed wonder that science can give us is one of the highest experiences of which the human psyche is capable. It is a deep aesthetic passion to rank with the finest that music and poetry can deliver.Isn’t the above possible without paying much, if any attention to science? Or are you saying that the above described bliss in atheism is just a little bit exaggerated, a little bit shallow? That’s something that’s changing fast in our society, I’ve seen it with my own eyes in my 55 years of life. I’ve lived in Northern Ky all my life, and as just one example, co-habitation was shamed, practically unheard of 40/45 years ago around here. It’s much more common now, and goes almost completely un-noticed. A couple of them show relief and contentment. I don’t have specifics. The earth was more generally thought of to be fairly young at that time, and of course Darwin knew that young-earth-evolution could never be possible. I know of no evidence that suggests that Darwin was keenly interested in geology or astronomy, so it makes sense that he would have been uncertain about evidence for an old earth. There’s no other subject in school that is quite like the science of today. Speculation about events of millions of years ago, ruling out anything but naturalism for all of reality — in what is supposed to be an objective, publicly required/established subject. It’s the state of education in America all right, and shows the dangers of establishment, be it religion or naturalism (opposition to religion). Sorry, too old for that.

quote:

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Darwin’s Dangerous Idea / Daniel Dennett - 1995
The End of Faith/ Sam Harris - 2004
The God Delusion/ Richard Dawkins - 2006
Letter to a Christian Nation/ Sam Harris - 2006
The Atheist Universe / David Mills - 2006
Breaking the Spell/ Daniel Dennett - 2006
Everything you know about God is wrong/ Russ Kick - 2007
The Quotable Atheist / Jack Huberman - 2007
The Atheist Bible / Joan Konner - 2007
Nothing - Something to Believe / Lalli Nica - 2007
The Portable Atheist / Christopher Hitchens - 2007
God is Not Great / Christopher Hitchens - 2007
God - the failed hypothesis - How Science Shows That God Does Not Exist / Victor Stenger - 2007
50 Reasons People Give For Believing in God/ Guy Harrison - 2008
Godless: How an Evangelical Preacher Became One of America’s Leading Atheists / Barker/Dawkins - 2008

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Not peer reviewed you say? Why do you insist on peer review — where do you see peer review as something that the public specifies, or even seriously considers? "Origin Of Species" wasn't peer reviewed. Peer review seems to be for science what the courts are to Democrats — the judge/jury said this, so that trumps everything that a much larger group of people thinks. As Thomas Sowell put into words very concisely; People who are very aware that they have more knowledge than the average person are often very unaware that they do not have one-tenth of the knowledge of all the average persons put together.

I don’t think it’s all that unusual for a person to hold personal opinions, yet not insist that only those opinions be used to structure or maintain how a society operates. My previous posts may have swerved a little too close to an implication that I’d favor some specific Christian meaning to be imposed upon society, and I wouldn’t really fear any bad consequences if it happened, but I do believe the US is capable of being a pluralistic society. I’m like anyone else, I have less fear of my own worldview destroying liberty than I do of another worldview destroying liberty. I think it should be that way, but it seldom is. Humans are the only species on the planet that organize societies to the extent that certain humans main function is to focus only on that organization. From policemen to politicians, and so many others in between. If meaning doesn’t come from a creator, everything’s changeable, there are no unalienable rights. Liberty is endangered when there are no unalienable rights. If humans assign meaning, humans can change meaning. I know of no society, present or past, with liberty equal to the US, that was founded and operated only by naturalistic reasoning. That accusation can go both ways. I can find confirmation in real world observations in un-scientific things, like the history (predictability and un-predictability) of human nature. Yours can appeal to humanistic dogma, such as new understandings of the world that require political overhauls, like dismantling capitalism to control global warming, or move toward a one-world government. I think it’s because a supernatural being can have motives and goals that are more deep and noble than humans can understand. The meaning stays constant and doesn’t change. I do agree with it, I just think those meanings that you describe can take off in different directions pretty quickly, in societal/political decisions. Many people believe that working out how things came about naturally is unknowable. Trying to work it out naturally isn’t just to politely ignore the possibility of an unknowable entity, it’s an attempt to disprove an unknowable entity. That's a motive that's equal to religion.

I’m countering the assertion of the subject of this thread, that evolutionists think differently than creationists, that evolutionists have a more neutral, more superior method of thinking than do creationists.Your green/blue analogy made no sense to me. Debates about the support of worldviews, accusations of differing worldviews having inferior thinking skill goes far deeper than assertions of green or blue. Because evolutionists make no attempt to be above it. There is a logical fallacy called argument by emotive language - using emotionally loaded words to sway the audience's sentiments instead of their minds. It’s also used on forums to bind groups of evolutionists together to bombard one creationist poster. Bluntness is often the only useful tool to counter it. Do you deny that evolutionists use them quite often on these forums? They obviously don’t find them useless in support of their worldview. Actual truth will never be found to the extent that worldview debates will cease to happen. And the beat goes on with emotive language in these debates. Can you see it from evolutionists in this thread? If not, I’ll be glad to specify some message numbers for you. When facing multiple opponents, it’s important to be concise — to say a lot with as few words as possible. If you term that as blunt, that’s your decision. If by whole debate you mean this thread, yes I think they do. I would love to see one evolutionist explain to me how the opening posts of this thread were anything more than an attempt to sway opinions, to bluntly belittle creationists way of thinking. I agree — 365 was a good one. Were my responses too blunt? Why do you think I was out of line by quoting Francis Crick? Why was my quote of Francis Crick shouting? Why didn’t it back up my arguments, wasn’t it thorough enough? I could add some very similar Victor Stenger comments, or Daniel Dennett comments, and then compare them to countless evolutionist comments about creationists anywhere on the net, including the opening posts of this thread, or in many places at the talkorigins website, or any evolutionist website. Why would they do well to do that? To expose a weakness that evolutionists would jump all over? Evolutionists certainly imply that science answers every question they have. If my perception about that is wrong, then THEY need to make it clearer to creationists, that science really does leave some gaps in the naturalist worldview. Inquiry leads up to a Christian worldview. Even if a toddler is informed by his Christian parents that he is a Christian, there’s little his parents can do (short of keeping him locked up in the basement) to keep him from inquiring about some details about Christianity to keep him interested by the time he’s..15 years old. If we ask a 15 year old on the next block, who’s never been told anything about religion if he’s ready to adapt a naturalist if it feels good do it worldview, no inquiry will be involved. He’ll be there in a heartbeat,if he compares it to a worldview with 10 commandments. Scientific speculation/evidence about millions of years ago isn’t required. Christianity offers loads of knowledge in human behavior. Beware of False Teachers (The Bible Speaks:Subtopic) It would depend on how the word evolution was defined at that particular time. I suspect the result was A every time, if evolution simply meant change over time. But if it meant Genesis-is-false-common-descent, I’m not so sure. So you think the starter of this thread, with his assertion that evolutionists possess a superior thought process to creationists wasn't typical of the evolutionists community's demeanor? I guess the authors of the dozen or so books I linked in message 432 further screwed things up for you as well?What did you think of the Bible verses in the above link? Ever see them before? Do you have any expertise in the Christianity field?

Atheists very much do. Many of them, like myself, come by atheism after a period of believing much of the same things you do. Maybe, but why turn our backs on another source of it? Is your life literally so full of awe and wonder that there's no room at all for more? We should all be so lucky, I guess. I don't see where you've quoted any of those individuals describing bliss in atheism.That's true. It's getting better, and I think prominent atheist figures like Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris - as well as individual atheists who do come out to their friends and family - have much to do with that.But it's by no means easy. In many ways atheists are America's "last minority." I never said it was a harrowing process for everyone. But even the people who feel relief, it's the relief that comes at the end of a worrying period of losing one's faith. Not at all. By Darwin's time the Christian "young Earth" had long been rejected by the geological community as well as by mainstream Christians. I guess, but I still don't see any of your evidence that Darwin hopped off the Beagle and immediately put together a cabal of atheist geologists. I'm not sure there were any, or that Darwin would have needed any. The geological consensus against the 6000-year-old Earth was developed primarily by Christians. I wonder if you could point to even a single high school science textbook that so much as defines "epistemological naturalism", much less "rules anything out" but it. Science textbooks communicate the scientific consensus. What on Earth else should they do? Creation stories are the subject of a comparative religions class, not a science class. If you're so old, that only makes it more important for you to start getting caught up on the science if you'd like to have an informed opinion about the origin of life. I'm not saying "enroll in classes" but there's a significant weight of scientific expertise available at this board - students and professors who would like nothing better than to ease the burden of your incredible scientific ignorance.Maybe instead of spinning insulting yarns about how they're all involved in a conspiracy to murder dissenting voices, you might ask them some questions? Questions are the beginning of knowledge. Peer-review is how we distinguish between writing that is science - that is the "scientific literature" - and writing that is about science, meant to give laypeople an approximate explanation of it. When you say "the scientific literature", but what you meant was the science-subject popular press, you're engaged in a fundamental misrepresentation about the nature of science and the scientific consensus. You're right, which is why "On the Origin of Species" has only historical interest, not scientific authority. (The arguments that "On the Origin of Species" presented to laypeople, on the other hand, were peer-reviewed by the Linnean Society.) Peer-review is how the scientific consensus on an issue emerges. You've correctly identified that it is important to scientists; surely it can't be taken as a bad thing that we just don't take a scientist's word for stuff? That we subject all scientific experiments and conclusions to review by those best equipped to assess them? Why not just come out and say that you fundamentally reject the very idea of expertise?