The Official Perfection KOs Creationism Thread Part Four: The Genesis of Ire!

[ironduck]

Smidlee, you really base your views on the natural world on some debates?

Have you tried reading some science textbooks?

 

[ironduck]

I'll trust that you believe this, but I have never heard of a church (outside of Scientology) charging membership fees.

I said they expect members to pay membership fees. For instance, Eran says that mormons are expected to contribute money to the church. Most christian churches I know of have collections. They also have taxes in this country that is directly for church members.

Change your mind or are we talking about two different things?

 

[El_Machinae]

Ah, you're talking about donation. The donations are seen to be voluntary, and not at all required. Often (hopefully) the donations are earmarked for charity.

It sounds the same as any other club

 

[ironduck]

I thought that was what I said - members are expected to pay a fee. Whether you call it tax, donation, fee, contribution, or otherwise, the end result is the same: cash.

And yes, in this perspective clubs trying to make a sell would be similar. I do, however, have a stronger dislike for political and religious clubs making sells at teaching institutions than I do with sports clubs and suchlike.

 

[warpus]

Expected, but not required. That's what makes it a non-business.

 

[Eran of Arcadia]

As far as Mormonism, if you don't pay tithing you are restricted from a few things but have access to most of the services of the church. One can certainly be a member, even active, without paying a cent.

 

[The Last Conformist]

TLC - I can understand allowing companies to offer jobs, selling products is something entirely different, which I don't understand why is allowed. And since soliciting a religion in my opinion is selling a product it seems odd for me to allow it. Same thing really goes for political parties in a sense, if it's just a matter of trying to get voters rather than an attempt to engage in open debate.

Well, I don't see why they should not be allowed to. I mean, students are supposed to be adults, able to make their own decisions.

Would you be opposed also to thing like the students' restaurants, that sell the students food?

(And yes, these are private businesses, renting space on the campus for their activities.)

 

[ironduck]

I don't really have any experience with campuses, only individual lecture buildings, so I can't say in that regard. But I sure would have felt it annoying if the uni buildings were full of people trying to sell me stuff or get me to join their clubs. That's what poster boards and such are for..

 

[Abaddon]

Dont Groan

Creation: ‘where’s the proof?’​

When the person you talk to on creation insists that you ‘leave the Bible out of it’, they are really saying the deck should be stacked one way.
by Ken Ham

Over the years, many people have challenged me with a question like:

‘I’ve been trying to witness to my friends. They say they don’t believe the Bible and aren’t interested in the stuff in it. They want real proof that there’s a God who created, and then they’ll listen to my claims about Christianity. What proof can I give them without mentioning the Bible so they’ll start to listen to me?’

Briefly, my response is as follows.

Evidence

Creationists and evolutionists, Christians and non-Christians all have the same evidence—the same facts. Think about it: we all have the same earth, the same fossil layers, the same animals and plants, the same stars—the facts are all the same.

The difference is in the way we all interpret the facts. And why do we interpret facts differently? Because we start with different presuppositions. These are things that are assumed to be true, without being able to prove them. These then become the basis for other conclusions. All reasoning is based on presuppositions (also called axioms). This becomes especially relevant when dealing with past events.

Past and present

We all exist in the present—and the facts all exist in the present. When one is trying to understand how the evidence came about (Where did the animals come from? How did the fossil layers form? etc.), what we are actually trying to do is to connect the past to the present.

However, if we weren’t there in the past to observe events, how can we know what happened so we can explain the present? It would be great to have a time machine so we could know for sure about past events.

Christians of course claim they do, in a sense, have a ‘time machine’. They have a book called the Bible which claims to be the Word of God who has always been there, and has revealed to us the major events of the past about which we need to know.

On the basis of these events (Creation, Fall, Flood, Babel, etc.), we have a set of presuppositions to build a way of thinking which enables us to interpret the evidence of the present.

Evolutionists have certain beliefs about the past/present that they presuppose, e.g. no God (or at least none who performed acts of special creation), so they build a different way of thinking to interpret the evidence of the present.

Thus, when Christians and non-Christians argue about the evidence, in reality they are arguing about their interpretations based on their presuppositions.

That’s why the argument often turns into something like:

‘Can’t you see what I’m talking about?’

‘No, I can’t. Don’t you see how wrong you are?’

‘No, I’m not wrong. It’s obvious that I’m right.’

‘No, it’s not obvious.’ And so on.

These two people are arguing about the same evidence, but they are looking at the evidence through different glasses.

It’s not until these two people recognize the argument is really about the presuppositions they have to start with, that they will begin to deal with the foundational reasons for their different beliefs. A person will not interpret the evidence differently until they put on a different set of glasses—which means to change one’s presuppositions.

I’ve found that a Christian who understands these things can actually put on the evolutionist’s glasses (without accepting the presuppositions as true) and understand how they look at evidence. However, for a number of reasons, including spiritual ones, a non-Christian usually can’t put on the Christian’s glasses—unless they recognize the presuppositional nature of the battle and are thus beginning to question their own presuppositions.

It is of course sometimes possible that just by presenting ‘evidence’, you can convince a person that a particular scientific argument for creation makes sense ‘on the facts’. But usually, if that person then hears a different interpretation of the same evidence that seems better than yours, that person will swing away from your argument, thinking they have found ‘stronger facts’.

However, if you had helped the person to understand this issue of presuppositions, then they will be better able to recognize this for what it is—a different interpretation based on differing presuppositions—i.e. starting beliefs.

As a teacher, I found that whenever I taught the students what I thought were the ‘facts’ for creation, then their other teacher would just re-interpret the facts. The students would then come back to me saying, ‘Well sir, you need to try again.’

However, when I learned to teach my students how we interpret facts, and how interpretations are based on our presuppositions, then when the other teacher tried to reinterpret the facts, the students would challenge the teacher’s basic assumptions. Then it wasn’t the students who came back to me, but the other teacher! This teacher was upset with me because the students wouldn’t accept her interpretation of the evidence and challenged the very basis of her thinking.

What was happening was that I had learned to teach the students how to think rather than just what to think. What a difference that made to my class! I have been overjoyed to find, sometimes decades later, some of those students telling me how they became active, solid Christians as a result.

My 6000th post deserves a classic thread, a thread with longevity.

http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v22/i1/creation.asp

Why do people seek to find answers that arn't there? Creationism is clearly false, so why do so many people believe it, and expend resources trying to prove it?

Moderator Action: Merged with existing thread

 

[The Last Conformist]

I don't really have any experience with campuses, only individual lecture buildings, so I can't say in that regard. But I sure would have felt it annoying if the uni buildings were full of people trying to sell me stuff or get me to join their clubs. That's what poster boards and such are for..

Oh, they're generally found outdoors, or in "public" areas like at the cafeterias, not right outside the lecture halls or labs.

 

[brennan]

Evolutionists have certain beliefs about the past/present that they presuppose, e.g. no God (or at least none who performed acts of special creation), so they build a different way of thinking to interpret the evidence of the present.

I would challenge this: I think that you would be hard pressed to find a scientific argument that 'supposed' the existence or non-existence of God, the flood or any similar Biblical material. Science doesn't pre-suppose anything - it just goes out and looks at reality and says 'gosh, how does that happen'. Darwin was as surprised at the evidence for deep-time as anyone.

 

[The Last Conformist]

Why do people seek to find answers that arn't there? Creationism is clearly false, so why do so many people believe it, and expend resources trying to prove it?

In Ken Ham's case, one suspects it's because he makes a living out of it.

 

[carlosMM]

Darwin was as surprised at the evidence for deep-time as anyone.

surprised, shocked, dismayed.

He was a devout Christian, and for long years struggled to find ways to reconcile his scinetific facts with his religious beliefs. He gave up when he saw that the religion simply did not fit the facts (and when Wallace wrote to him), and published.

 

[brennan]

Sadly, this point never seems to hit home with the Creationists who say science is all a lie and a fraud perpetuated by unbelievers.

 

[Cheetah]

I'm going to my first live Evolution v. Intelligent Design debate on monday!

Main debatants are Paul Nelson (for the ID-side of course) and Trond Amundsen, professor of biology at NTNU.

This could be fun. I've never seen a real life ID/creationist before.

It's open for questions, so if anyone has any good ideas about things to ask, I'll try to ask them.

 

[brennan]

Read up on the weaknesses in ID beforehand, you will see that everything the guy says has been shown to be false, but he'll still trot out the same BS. He'll try to make it funny as well - making an audience laugh gets them on his side. Oh and he'll say 'lies' a lot. Mainly while telling his own whoppers about evolutionary science.

I recommend talkorigins as good reading.

 

[Erik Mesoy]

I second that reading of talkorigins, and I predict that Paul Nelson will put up strawmen and similar plausible-but-not-applicable things. Read up on those and try to counter them. My guesses are that among other things, he will talk about "evolutionism" as an atheist ideology (counterpoint: insist on "evolution"), mumble the usual "theory" thing again (counterpoint: Theory of gravity), irreducible complexity (counterpoint: scaffolding makes irreducibly complex buildings), evolution of the eye and the wing (read up on these, or maybe carlosMM can give a briefing), unreliability of carbon dating (counterpoints: margin of error, or radiation change after Hiroshima/Nagasaki, or different cosmic ray levels in land/water), and a bunch of other things where he refers to something technically true and claims that it is evidence against evolution.

 

[ironduck]

These people are simple con men and speaking in front of a large crowd that's looking for entertainment is their finest hour.

 

[Cheetah]

These people are simple con men and speaking in front of a large crowd that's looking for entertainment is their finest hour.

Well, I sure hope it's going to be entertaining.

I'll read a bit on talkorigins too I guess, but the points Erik made seems pretty good.

I was thinking of adding the point of the Pandas without opposable thumbs and such to, but using that as an argument against an Intelligent Designer while discussing with my friends was kinda useless.

But I wonder how Nelson is going to go at it. If he is going to argue that every specie was created more or less like it is today, or that the Earth is close to 6000 years old, I doubt anyone will take him seriously. But if he is simply going to argue that there might be an Intelligent Designer behind it all, there won't be much of a discussion - It's hard to discuss a persons beliefs.

 

[Perfection]

See if you can't dig up a video of him debating on the Interweb. I doubt they change things up a lot.