Creationism IS a 'Cult'ural Movement!

I concur with Modulous that the digression onto the scientific method is probably not on-topic. The OP asserts that creationism is like a cult movement in that it's central authorities (Answers in Genesis is the example) provide articles of faith to which cult members are expected to adhere. The moondust argument was the example Jon offers, where AIG encourages creationists to no longer use the moondust argument.But these aren't articles of faith. They're offered as scientific positions that at best should be understood because of the arguments and evidence behind them, but that at worst can be learned by rote. We all learn lots of scientific facts by rote, like that water freezes at 32F, and there's nothing wrong with that.Also, regarding cults, Jon doesn't seem to be applying the term in the same way I think of it. The critical component of religions that become cults is their brainwashing aspect, and Jon's examples seem more like just evangelical religion behaving like it always does rather than behaving as a cult.--Percy

Don't let Jar's love of the Socratic method sour you on science. All he's asking is what qualities you think would serve best for classifying the coins into categories and subcategories: Weight? Shape? Thickness? Type of image? Language? Material of composition? Density? Language? Country of origin? Denomination? Currency type? Age? Amount of wear? Hardness? Use of mythic images?But I think we're way off topic. The opening post tried to argue that creationism is a cult, but I don't think it is. It's just a response of conservative Christianity to what they perceive as the threat of public school science education concerning evolution.--Percy

If we're actually going to discuss whether creationism is a cult we should start with a working definition of cult. This one's from answers.com: This one's an excerpt from the Britannica definition: This one's an excerpt from the Encycolpedia of American History. I like this one because it's more nuanced: --Percy

Hi Mystic,Though I'm replying to your message, I'm actually addressing this to everyone else.Hi, everyone else!Looked at in one way, Mystic's description of why he rejects evolution is off topic. The topic is whether creationism is a cult. But looked at in another way his message provides some key evidence for considering that question. Concerning whether creationism is a cult, the important part of Mystic's message begins at, "I was first introduced to evolution in high school." In the description that follows, what about it sounds like a cult?One characteristic of a cult not mentioned in the definitions I cited earlier is that they define the world in terms of us and them, and this is done by cutting off sources of outside information while substituting their own information. Conservative Christianity clearly does this with creationism by creating an insular subculture immune from outside influences - immune, that is, except for those who send their children to public schools.But does having one or even a few of the characteristics of a cult make creationism a cult? All the definitions of cult say that they exist outside the auspices of mainstream religion. A recent poll revealed that 53% of Americans believe the universe is less than 6000 years old - they outnumber us, so if anyone's a cult it's us. 44% of Americans believe that Jesus will be returning within their lifetime. This is mainstream. If creationism were ever a cult, and I don't believe it ever was one, then it certainly is not one now. Once a cult grows to the point where it includes about half of everyone, that's not a cult anymore.Are creationism's ideas fuzzy and wrong? Yes. Are the fundamentalist ideas driving creationism irrational and dangerous? Yes. But is creationism a cult? No. It's far worse than that.--Percy

I cannot elaborate any better than Neil deGrasse Tyson. See Message 13. Using your message as an example, I was speaking generally of conservation Christianity and creationism, but you raise an important point. In the west, are there other broad avenues to ignorance, skepticism and rejection of modern science besides conservative Christianity?--Percy

Sorry, I didn't mean to offend you. I thought we'd already accepted as a baseline in this thread that in the aggregate conservative Christianity is ignorant, skeptical and resistant to the views of modern science. This was the premise of the OP where, for example, Jon mentions the moondust argument that AIG urges creationists to abandon. The reason AIG said this is because many creationists continue to use the argument as an expression of their skepticism and rejection of the views of modern science (certainly you don't disagree with that), and they could only do so out of ignorance, unless you want to consider the more sinister scenario where they know the argument is false but use it anyway because of its effectiveness when used on those unfamiliar with science.As I said, I was speaking generally, but if you're wondering if I think you yourself lack knowledge of and are skeptical and resistant to the views of modern science, then the answer is yes, I do. These qualities were made very clear in Message 85 where you accused scientists of making up family tree charts, claimed the theories had never been tested, claimed they violated the laws of statistics, called evolution a quaint idea, called acceptance of evolution bizarre, and equated it to perpetual motion machines.So I'm really sorry that you're having such a negative reaction to my characterization of your views, but it's hard to avoid the conclusion that you reject evolution not out of detailed study of it but out of lack of knowledge of much of anything about it.--Percy

Let me address this in the context of the quality you probably most objected to: ignorance. No one knows everything, everyone is ignorant of many things, and everything anyone knows is stuff they were at one time ignorant of. So let me know if I'm telling you something you didn't already know.One of the most important qualities of science is tentativity. Science is not about revealed truths, it's about learning how the universe works. Our knowledge grows incrementally, and as it grows we usually find that what we used to know needs to be modified, or perhaps is even wrong. For example, a little over a hundred years ago there was a huge debate about the age of the earth with estimates ranging from 20 million years to hundreds of millions of years. As time went by and older and older rocks were discovered the age of the earth was gradually pushed further and further back in time until today the evidence indicates that the earth is about 4.56 billion years old.So of course science changes its views. It must change its views. It can be no other way if our knowledge is to grow. Just ask yourself how much sense it would make to declare the state of scientific knowledge today to be the truth from now on forever and ever. What happens if someone discovers the true nature of dark matter or finds that the laws of gravity work differently over cosmological distances, what would we do then if we'd already declared our current state of knowledge to be the final word? We'd be stuck, right? Science couldn't move forward.So by necessity science is always tentative. Some things have been established with more certainty than others, but every scientific theory is tentative and therefore open to modification and even rejection in light of new evidence or improved insight.So about moondust. Given the state of knowledge at the time of the moon's surface (practically nothing), NASA judged the possibility of deep moondust sufficiently probable that the design of the lander should take the possibility into account. In other words, they designed for it not because rigorous analyses said the dust must be there (insufficient hard data to do this), but because of the uncertainty that it might be there and the potentially disastrous consequences if they didn't design for the possibility. Once we got there we discovered that the moondust wasn't very deep, that the regolith (the material covering most of the lunar surface that comes from the steady bombardment of material and particles from outer space) was quite firm, perhaps fused from eons of hot/cold cycles.So, did I tell you anything you didn't know? Would you consider it presumptuous to say that anything I told you that you didn't know were things you lacked knowledge of? Did you know the definition of ignorance is "lacking knowledge"?Addressing the rest of your post, you seem to be saying that rejection of evolution is so widespread that responsibility cannot be laid at the doors of conservative Christianity. Yet each time the creation/evolution debate makes the news, who is pushing the creation side? Can you find a single example of when it wasn't evangelical Christians? The widespread rejection of evolution is actually just a measure of the success of the creationist grassroots strategy of lobbying state and local school boards and textbook publishers, and of the failure of science education in this country. It has nothing at all to do with the evidence for evolution. I suspect most who reject evolution are largely unaware of that evidence, much like you. And here you're demonstrating one of the qualities of a cult by placing things in an "us versus them" context where their behavior is less than honorable. The truth of the matter is that creationists avoid the halls of science as if they were the inner regions of hell. It *is* possible to have a scientific discussion between creationist and evolutionist, but only if the creationist understands and accepts the nature of science and the process of scientific investigation. What we instead usually encounter is creationist hostility toward science, such as that of Discovery Institute which views the ultimate battle as one against methodological naturalism, the foundational viewpoint of all science.--Percy

If I could borrow a Sam Harris argument (see Beyond Belief 2006: Session 1, his talk begins at the 52 minute mark), religion is the source of many beliefs that in any other context would be considered loony. If you believe that pouring milk on your breakfast cereal and saying a few words over it can turn it into the body of Julius Caesar, then you *have* lost your mind. But if you believe that saying a few words over a wafer transforms it into the body of Christ at mass, then you're just Catholic. Quoting Harris, "Religion, because it's been sheltered from criticism, allows people, perfectly sane perfectly intelligent people, to believe en masse things that only idiots or lunatics could believe in isolation."Conservative Christians believe the Bible is scientifically accurate when it is not, and the problem originates there. Science classrooms no more indoctrinate students into a religion than a comparative religions class indoctrinates students into Judaism or Islam. It's ludicrous to see it otherwise. But because of the credence given scientific views in the western world, conservative Christians feel it necessary to counter those views by building an elaborate framework of misrepresentations that is neither science nor religion but simply falsehood.And if I could borrow from Neil deGrasse Tyson (see Beyond Belief 2006: Session 2), the danger is potentially imminent. Arabic science flourished from 800-1100 AD. This flourishing is why we use Arabic numerals. Arab science gave us the concept of 0 and named most of the stars, and it was Arab scientists who translated ancient books on an unimaginable scale, which is the primary reason so many ancient texts are available to us today.Arabic science ended around 1100 with a theological revolution led by the Imam Hamid al-Ghazali who believed things like math were evil. The Arab world was sent into a dark ages from which they have yet to emerge, giving us only two Nobel prize winners despite their 1 billion population, versus Jewish Nobel prize winners of 23% of the total despite their meager 13.3 million world population.Those of us who love science and progress look fearfully at the Christian evangelical movement, whose creationist offspring has not contributed an iota of scientific knowledge, because in it we see a coming dark ages.--Percy

I suggest you look at the facts. Creationists never submit creationist papers to mainstream scientific journals. They instead hold their own conferences. Creationism has never made any contribution to science. It's sole goal is to disparage evolution in an effort to remove it from public school science curriculums.What rock are you living under to question almost every fact brought up? Yes, you're right, we should substantiate what we say with evidence, but is it your purpose to stymie discussion by requiring us to substantiate every little item? Do you really know almost nothing about the history of the creation/evolution controversy? Do you really believe that creationists can go in their corner, play for a while with finger paints, then emerge saying it is great art while declaring that anyone who says otherwise needs to prove it?Creationism did not emerge from a tradition of science. It emerged from a literal interpretation of Genesis, so of course it doesn't correspond to the evidence. Creationists do almost no research that qualifies as actual science, and it displays no intellectual honesty when it tries to hide these simple facts by declaring that creationism is as much science as evolution, and that creationists perform actual research. And they only contradict these claims when it is revealed that they actually want to undermine the foundation of science, methodological naturalism.What are the odds that an ancient mythic tradition would correspond to scientific facts discovered thousands of years later? And why do they need to anyway? Genesis is not a scientific text. It's an ancient people's remembrance of their search for their creator.The topic's title asserts that creationism is akin to a cult movement. I think we've already established that it is far worse than that. It is a broad religious movement that threatens to end scientific progress.--Percy

Hi Mystic,There's no need to oppose everything that's said regardless of whether you have an effective or even an appropriate response. The discussion is in danger of become nonsensical. The issue isn't one of ancient persecutions but of contemporary tolerance for beliefs that are loony in anything other than a religious context. Please address yourself to the actual point. If the Bible were scientifically accurate, i.e., agreed with current scientific theory, then creationists would not be forced to contrive alternative "scientific" views. I'm not making wild generalizations, but merely identifying the motivating force for the creationist movement, namely broad disagreement of literal Biblical interpretations with modern science. There can be no dispute about this. Creationism wouldn't even exist were it not for these disagreements. You've either missed or ignored the point, which had nothing to do with Islam itself as a religion. The point was that the introduction of anti-scientific theologies into influential religions can bring entire cultures crashing down into a dark ages, which seems precisely what evangelical Christianity is trying to do in the United States today. I think you might be better served to go off and marshal your facts rather than giving voice to your frustration. You're response has little to do with my point about the threat of anti-scientific thinking to our culture, and introducing Newton into the argument does not support your viewpoint.Creationism has not made even a single scientific contribution. If you think otherwise then I suggest you spend some time trying to find some of those contributions, and until you do to stop accusing me of making wild generalizations. Creationism makes no scientific contributions because it rejects rather than embraces science. Creationism is defined by what it is against, which is evolution specifically and science generally (old earth from geology, big bang from cosmology, etc.), and it is defined by what it is for, which is endeavoring to persuade people despite the absence of evidence of a literal interpretation of the Bible.Newton was not a creationist in the sense of the word as we use it here (the term likely did not exist at the time), and he was definitely pro-science and pro-math, which as not the case with al-Ghazali, the Arab cleric most responsible for the Arab dark ages that still envelopes them. But Newton was a devout Christian who accepted that God had created man and the universe. In fact, it was his religious views that prevented him from making more discoveries than he did. He discovered how gravity kept the planets in the orbits around the sun and the moon in its orbit around the earth, but when it came to taking into account how the planets remained in their orbits despite the tugs from other planets he could only conclude that it was the work of a grand designer, which you can think of either as God or as the intelligent designer of the modern ID movement.Had Newton not been blinded by his God answer he would have discovered perturbation theory to explain the stability of planetary orbits, since it involved math that was well within the intellectual means of the inventor of calculus. It was LaPlace who developed perturbation theory about a century later. In other words, Newton is a prime example of religious belief blocking scientific progress.--Percy

The original point was that anti-science forces that co-opt an influential religion like Islam can bring down a civilization. Mocking skepticism is not valid rebuttal. Please address the original point.--Percy

Hi Mystic,You've misconstrued the argument. No one said anything about Christian persecution or criticism of Christian beliefs. It's about tolerance for looniness. Let me try again.If you believed that pouring milk on your breakfast cereal and mumbling a few words would turn it into the body of Julius Caesar, then you *have* truly lost your mind. But if you believe that saying a few words over a wafer at mass transforms it into the body of Jesus Christ, then you're just Catholic.The former belief is judged crazy within our society, while the latter is judged just a normal religious belief. The point is that religious claims should not prevent us from passing judgment on belief. If the belief that pouring milk on cereal will turn it into the body of Julius Caesar is lunacy, then belief that the wafer at mass becomes the body of Jesus Christ is also lunacy.But that isn't the judgment we make. We instead judge the Julius Caesar believer crazy, but the Jesus Christ believer Catholic. And we make that judgment because the Catholic does not stand in isolation but is a member of a rather large body of Catholics who all believe the same thing. By way of membership in a larger community of similar believers the Catholic escapes the judgment of lunacy that he would otherwise deserve.In other words, as well described in the classic book Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, lunacy can take over large groups, and the size of the group prevents it from the norms of criticism to which it might otherwise be subject.But the Catholic sacrament is just a familiar example. Evangelical Christians believe a number of equally loony things, such as that if you call something science then it is science, or that science isn't the study of the natural world, or that there's no evidence for evolution or an ancient earth, or that scientists just make up data (since it's all made up I guess all the scientists just get together at a secret conference every year and hold a lottery to see who wins the Nobel Prize). Such beliefs display an appalling ignorance of science, both of its practice and its details.The argument being made in some quarters is that in order for our culture to protect itself from fates like those that overtook the Islamic world that we must confront irrational religious beliefs. I'm definitely not convinced that confrontation is the right approach, and I'm not even sure that a right approach exists. Like the gentle giants of the Thomas Covenant series of Stephen R. Donaldson (are his books still read?), we may be driven into inaction by sheer dismay at the power of the forces of ignorance.--Percy

Hi Mystic,I don't know how familiar you are with history, but most people are aware that there have been many great civilizations across the centuries, and none have lasted longer than a few centuries. History is not a joke. Santayana was not kidding about doom and the lessons of history. The European dark ages lasted a thousand years, and the Islamic dark ages endure still. Is the western world now somehow immune to the forces of cultural and societal decay? I wouldn't bet on it.If you think what I'm saying is an eye opener, just listen to Neil Tyson's talk at the Beyond Belief 2006 conference: I think you need to go off and do something else for a while. Most of your responses are content-free expressions of either rejection or amazed disbelief. You seem completely unaware of quite an awful lot. We'd be glad to fill you in (not so you can believe it, just so you can know about it and discuss it instead of just saying, "Get a grip!"), but we can't do that or discuss very much while your primary reaction is rejection.--Percy

Boy, you're an expert at misconstrual. For the second time, you haven't been invited to leave the forum, and I'm not participating here in this thread in Admin mode and so could not do that anyway.I'm suggesting that you take a break so that you can refresh your creative muse and regain perspective, because your replies lack content. There's no administrative force behind this suggestion whatsoever. People are giving you science and history and definitions and argument and discussion, and what's coming back from you is very little, mostly just stuff along the lines of "Get a grip," and "I'm resisting the urge to just bust out laughing," and "Oh, that's too funny," and ignorant statements about evolution and even Newton, and so forth and so on.What you should bring to the party is a willingness to understand and assess what people say to you, and in return offer your well-considered judgements as well as the evidence and rationale for your own point of view. Just saying, in effect, "No, you're wrong," in post after post interspersed with erroneous statements isn't really holding up your side of the discussion.--Percy

No one's trying to convert you, just educate you. Your attitude is killing you.You're confusing Neil Tyson with Sam Harris, and I offered no quote from Tyson anyway. I referenced Harris concerning tolerance of loony ideas under a religious umbrella. I referenced Tyson concerning the threat of anti-science ideas to modern civilization.I listen to Hovind and Gish, I don't see why you shouldn't listen to genuine scientists. Neil deGrasse Tyson has written a number of popular books and magazine columns and articles on astronomy, he's currently the director of the Hayden Planetarium in New York City, and he's also a Bush appointee on the committee studying future directions for NASA. Give it a listen: --Percy