clipka <ano### [at] anonymousorg> wrote:
> Just came across this refreshingly unbiased documentary:

> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2xyrel-2vI

I like this part of the wikipedia article on the Dover trial:

  After the trial, there were calls for the defendants accused of not
  presenting their case honestly to be put on trial for committing
  perjury. "Witnesses either testified inconsistently, or lied
  outright under oath on several occasions," Jones wrote. "The
  inescapable truth is that both [Alan] Bonsell and [William]
  Buckingham lied at their January 3, 2005 depositions. ... Bonsell
  repeatedly failed to testify in a truthful manner. ... Defendants
  have unceasingly attempted in vain to distance themselves from their
  own actions and statements, which culminated in repetitious,
  untruthful testimony."

"Honest creationist" really is an oxymoron. I have had discussions with
creationists, and it's incredible how much they are ready to lie, distort
and fabricate, even though honesty ought to be one of the core principles
of Christianity.

I think creationism (especially young-earth creationism), when instilled
enough into a brain, causes a cognitive dissonance where the person just
cannot comprehend that they are willfully lying and distorting, and have
this notion that they are still being honest even though they obviously
are not.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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On Sat, 18 Jan 2014 14:11:49 -0500, Warp wrote:

> "Honest creationist" really is an oxymoron.

Something we agree on.

My younger brother, who has a degree in philosophy and religion, has a 
good friend who's a young earth creationist, but who has enough of a 
science background that he has built some of the most dishonest circular 
arguments I've ever seen.  If you don't know science, you'll get sucked 
into his explanations and citations from "Answers in Genesis" (the people 
who brought you - and I'm not making this up - the "Creation Mueseum", 
which more or less depicts the time of the dinosaurs as if The 
Flintstones were a documentary).

Debating with him is one of the most pointless exercises I've ever 
engaged in.  It got so bad, that for my own health, I blocked him on 
Facebook so I wouldn't have to read his drivel, because it drove my blood 
pressure up trying to reason with him.

My premise being this:  I disagree with him, he believes his god is 
infallible.  So, I'm arguing against his god, whom he absolutely believes 
in.

Nothing I can say will *ever* change his mind.  Hence, no point in 
debating with him about it.  He's never going to see the reality of the 
situation, because it contradicts his deeply held belief that the bible 
is never wrong.  In his mind, the only way he agrees is if I agree with 
him that everything I know to be factual is wrong.

A perfect demonstration of how not to debate a topic.

Jim

-- 
"I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and 
besides, the pig likes it." - George Bernard Shaw

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Jim Henderson <nos### [at] nospamcom> wrote:
> Nothing I can say will *ever* change his mind.  Hence, no point in 
> debating with him about it.  He's never going to see the reality of the 
> situation, because it contradicts his deeply held belief that the bible 
> is never wrong.  In his mind, the only way he agrees is if I agree with 
> him that everything I know to be factual is wrong.

This wouldn't be so bad if they just kept to themselves with their
world view. After all, everybody's free to believe whatever they want.

However, the problem is that many of them are trying to *force* their
belief system onto others, especially children, by lobbying the
government and other means. This is not something that we can just
ignore, like we can eg. with the Moon landing conspiracy theorists
(who are obnoxious but at least aren't trying to pass laws to enforce
their beliefs on others.)

I once had a long email conversation with a young-earth creationist
about the subject of honesty, and why most creationist arguments and
tactics are not. For example, I tried to explain to him why quote-mining
is a really dishonest tactic.

(The intellectually honest thing to do when you see an isolated quote
from eg. an evolutionary biologist that seems to go completely against
the theory of evolution is to ask yourself questions like: "Why is this
known biologist seemingly saying something against evolution? Is this
quote possibly taken out of context? What did this person mean by this?
Has he explained what he meant in the rest of the text, or in other texts?
Has he been asked about this and responded, and if so, what did he say
about it?" Then the honest person would try to find out and draw
conclusions only *after* he has all the facts. But no, this is not what
a creationist does. Instead, a creationist is extremely opportunistic:
The isolated quote seems to say something against evolution, and it's made
by a known scientist. To hell what he really meant by it and what else he
has said on the subject, just take the quote and use it as a weapon.
Intended meaning is not important, only the impression that the isolated
quote gives.)

However, no matter how I tried to explain this, it didn't seem to register.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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On 1/18/2014 11:08 AM, Jim Henderson wrote:
> On Sat, 18 Jan 2014 14:57:39 +0000, Orchid Win7 v1 wrote:
>
>>   The question is, WHY ARE THERE UNBELIEVERS?? Why do people
>> have these weird beliefs in the first place?
>
> See "The Believing Brain" by Michael Schermer.  Or, as I recall, he wrote
> a book titled "Why People Believe Weird Things" (or something close to
> that.)
>
> Jim
>
>
>
Hmm. Thought I had that one. But, the one I have is "Paranormality: Why 
we see what isn't there.", by Richard Wiseman, but yeah, you're only 
missing the extended part of the title.

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On 1/18/2014 12:44 PM, Jim Henderson wrote:
> On Sat, 18 Jan 2014 14:11:49 -0500, Warp wrote:
>
>> "Honest creationist" really is an oxymoron.
>
> Something we agree on.
>
> My younger brother, who has a degree in philosophy and religion, has a
> good friend who's a young earth creationist, but who has enough of a
> science background that he has built some of the most dishonest circular
> arguments I've ever seen.  If you don't know science, you'll get sucked
> into his explanations and citations from "Answers in Genesis" (the people
> who brought you - and I'm not making this up - the "Creation Mueseum",
> which more or less depicts the time of the dinosaurs as if The
> Flintstones were a documentary).
>
> Debating with him is one of the most pointless exercises I've ever
> engaged in.  It got so bad, that for my own health, I blocked him on
> Facebook so I wouldn't have to read his drivel, because it drove my blood
> pressure up trying to reason with him.
>
> My premise being this:  I disagree with him, he believes his god is
> infallible.  So, I'm arguing against his god, whom he absolutely believes
> in.
>
Yeah, got one of those calling everyone else fools and claiming that 
they just don't "see the truth", and quoting Ray Comfort, and AIG, etc., 
while never coming up with anything other than Bible quotes to support 
his claims of the infallibility of the Bible, and the truth of god, over 
here:

http://yearwithoutgod.com/2014/01/02/am-i-doing-it-wrong

What started out as a fairly sane discussion about someone "trying out" 
atheism, and his comment on people telling him that doing so was a bit.. 
odd, if nor absurd, has turned into nothing but a back and forth between 
a few ex-believers, and a full blown creationist. Unfortunately, I 
decided to get involved as well, and.. haven't quite gotten around to 
getting so completely fed up as to nuke the email updates for the 
discussion, and let the rest just go at him.

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On 1/18/2014 4:09 PM, Warp wrote:
> (The intellectually honest thing to do when you see an isolated quote
> from eg. an evolutionary biologist that seems to go completely against
> the theory of evolution is to ask yourself questions like: "Why is this
> known biologist seemingly saying something against evolution? Is this
> quote possibly taken out of context? What did this person mean by this?
> Has he explained what he meant in the rest of the text, or in other texts?
> Has he been asked about this and responded, and if so, what did he say
> about it?" Then the honest person would try to find out and draw
> conclusions only *after* he has all the facts. But no, this is not what
> a creationist does. Instead, a creationist is extremely opportunistic:
> The isolated quote seems to say something against evolution, and it's made
> by a known scientist. To hell what he really meant by it and what else he
> has said on the subject, just take the quote and use it as a weapon.
> Intended meaning is not important, only the impression that the isolated
> quote gives.)
>
Actually, its worse than that. One of the posts linked to, in comments, 
form the blog post I mention in the other post I made is a short bit 
showing some original footage taken by Ray "The Banana Man" Comfort, in 
which he asks two people a fairly nuanced question (to which, I 
personally, would have said no way to, regardless of circumstances), 
about whether or not they might kill someone for a lot of money, if they 
*knew* that the person paying them was the wife of the man she wanted 
killed, and he beat her near to death. He then went and found believers, 
asked them if they would do it for free, then "edited" the result, so 
that it looked like he also asked the non-believers the same, "Would you 
kill someone for free." Noting - no mention of the wife having been 
beaten up by the guy doing it.

Its not just a case that they cherry pick what they need out of 
something something someone has said, but they, sometimes, completely 
substitute questions that where never asked, at all, so that the cherry 
picked bit sounds even worse than that it did, when taken out of context.

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Patrick Elliott <kag### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
> http://yearwithoutgod.com/2014/01/02/am-i-doing-it-wrong

It seems to be a lost battle to try to explain to people that "atheism"
is not a movement, a world view, a set of dogmas, or anything, really.

The words theism and atheism deal with one question, and one question
only: Do you believe in the existence of a god? If you do have such a
belief, then you are a theist, else you are an atheist. What other views
you have is completely inconsequential.

If you want to "try atheism", you could just as well become a Raelian
or a Buddhist. They don't believe in a god, so they are, by definition,
atheists. You can, in fact, believe in all kinds of supernatural hocus
pocus, spirits, the afterlife, psychic powers of the brain, the unicorns
of Atlantis... and still be an atheist, if you don't believe in a god.
The term does not imply anything beyond that one single question.

I'd even go so far as to say that theism isn't a world view either,
and for the exact same reason: It deals with the same question and does
not imply anything else beyond that.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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> Seriously? They made it illegal to teach people evolution? For 40 years??
>
> Huh. Well, I suppose that explains it all then... o_O

Suddenly, the sceptical reporter's astonished mutterings of "why have we 
never heard about any of this before?" take on a whole different tone...

I guess if you haven't *seen* the vast swathes of evidence, it's easy to 
believe the (commonly repeated) claims that none exists.

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On 18/01/2014 11:09 PM, Warp wrote:

> This wouldn't be so bad if they just kept to themselves with their
> world view. After all, everybody's free to believe whatever they want.
>
> However, the problem is that many of them are trying to *force* their
> belief system onto others, especially children, by lobbying the
> government and other means. This is not something that we can just
> ignore, like we can eg. with the Moon landing conspiracy theorists
> (who are obnoxious but at least aren't trying to pass laws to enforce
> their beliefs on others.)

This is the thing.

If you want to believe that God exists, sure, you can do that. But if 
you want to claim that this is a scientifically verified fact... erm, 
no. No it is not. Get lost!

Perhaps people misunderstand what science is. Science isn't the study of 
what is true, it is the study of what we can *prove* to be true. God may 
actually exist - but since it is impossible to prove or disprove this, 
the question is outside the remit of science.

And another thing. Every time somebody stands up and defends evolution, 
they start receiving death threats. When was the last time a good honest 
Christian received death threats from the scientists for daring to teach 
Genesis?

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Orchid Win7 v1 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> If you want to believe that God exists, sure, you can do that. But if 
> you want to claim that this is a scientifically verified fact... erm, 
> no. No it is not. Get lost!

Almost every single "proof" of a god's existence amounts to a very
straightforward argument from ignorance. Almost all of them take,
basically, the form of:

"You have no explanation for this, therefore God."

All of the classical "proofs" are like that. For instance:

"The universe's existence must have had a cause (because my personal
common sense says so, and I'll ignore any possibility of the contrary.)
You can't explain what that cause was, therefore it was God."

"The universe is clearly designed for us in mind. You can't explain how
else it's like that, therefore it was made by God."

"The reader's digest version of the popular science version of scientific
law X (most often "thermodynamics") says this. Therefore God."

"Abstract concepts exist. They come from God. (Proof skipped as
unnecessary.)"

"Evolution cannot explain X. Therefore God."

And naturally "God" is never something like Brahma or Allah, or an entity
completely unknown to us. Of course it's always the God of the Bible.
What else?

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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