Young Earth Creationist

Do these people have any claims that can be held without too much laughter? Just wondering on their perceptions on things.

:behead:
:hang:
:sabres:

 

I can not laugh at them, but I have a hard time understanding them.

 

The only reason I can see for YEC's to hold on to their beliefs is so that they can take the entire bible literally. Other than that, they don't have a leg to stand on. Then again, those who don't take it all literally, wind up cherry picking the things they agree with and claiming other things to be metaphores and parables that apparently only they can understand. An example would be taking the commandments in Leviticus literally would be justification to stone gays, adulterers, etc... those who don't take it literally, claim that it was laws meant for those people at that time and no longer apply once christ came along. Most YEC's have a very poor to no understanding of biology and evolution.

 

As a cherry picker, myself, I'll let the slur slide. I think the YECs do believe that if any part of the Bible goes or is given a non-literal interpretation, why not all? It also simplifies life to be able to read all of the important answers in a book, and all you have to do is believe it, no matter how ridiculous it seems. Amazingly, there are some very intelligent YECs,with science degrees. To me, this shows the power of early indoctrination or the ability of people to believe just about anything if they have a need to do so.

 

There's a catch. To be a young-earth creationist, you basically have to deny entire fields of science and/or believe that god wants to trick people into thinking things that don't agree with the bible.

I think this can only happen through indoctrination/brainwashing or with a lot of misguided determination.

So to answer your question, no.

 

Isn't it odd that you agree with me, then in the same breath say that all they do is have to believe, no matter how ridiculous it seems? YOU just happen to believe that dead people come back to life after 3 days yet there is no evidence for this ever happening outside the bible. YOU just happen to believe that man can walk on water yet there is no evidence for this ever happening outside the bible. YOU believe that women can get pregnant without sexual intercourse from men, yet there is no evidence for this ever happening outside the bible, yet a YEC believes that the earth was made in 6 days, yet there is no evidence for this ever happening outside the bible.... See why I called you (and other christians) Cherry pickers? You apply a set of standards to some claims (not believing in a 6 day creation) but not all claims equally (other alleged miracles). Its not being intellectually honest.

 

I plead guilty to the cherrypicking re the literal interpretation of scripture, but not to the literal interpretation of my words. When I said all they have to do is believe all that stuff, I meant in their own minds that's all they have to do. It simplifies life's choices. But I don't approach reality that way, so my choices are difficult. I don't believe in miracles.

 

I think the common thought is that either it is just science got it wrong (and the fossils are the cause of the flood) it it was Satan, that evil creature leading people astray with evolution.

 

Right, but to do that, one must be willing to take the authority of someone who has probably only ever found small mollusk fossils and imprints over that of people who spend their entire lives studying this stuff. You have to discard the words of thousands to millions and more experts, machines, and studies.

That's not just a case of believing something because it's what you were taught. That is a function of a profound desire to believe something.

 

There was a very interesting radio program I heard on Wisconsin Public Radio today (feb 5th). The guest was paleontologist, and he wrote a book about "your inner fish," relating to how we share a lot of history with fish. The first caller I heard asked if fish could feel pain (in terms of catch-and-release fishing), but the after that a number of creationists called in.

I was absolutely astounded by the level of ignorance some of these people showed. It truly is amazing. And when he corrects them, they don't say "oh, ok, you're right." You know they just continue on the same way, and will repeat the same faulty arguments the next time they talk about it.

Anyhow, here is a link to the web page. You can listen to it online. It was at 11.
http://wpr.org/ideas/programnotes.cfm

The one after that was pretty interesting, too.

 

I agree, but belief in an old earth and evolution ultimately require an act of faith. There is no way of "proving" that Satan didn't put those fossils there. We have to go on an intuitive judgment, which I share, that he didn't, and an intuitive judgment, which I also share, that people who think that he did are barking up the wrong tree.

 

I don't really think that counts as "faith." I don't think it takes faith to dismiss completely unfounded assertions. If that were faith, everything you see or experience or are would be an act of faith. Every thought you have. Your might have to have faith in your own existence, because who's to say you aren't someone else having a dream? And then what is the point of having the word?

 

To remind us of our fallibility.

 

But then, any god must rely on his own fallible faith as well. How can he be sure that his infinite knowledge of reality and all it encompasses wasn't just created by some more powerful god for his amusement? Perhaps god's existence is merely the dream of some other creature.

Fallible it may be. We are limited in how we acquire knowledge, so mistakes happen. But I don't think it has much to do with faith. It's just the best way to learn. You compound evidence, build an argument with more and more things in its favor, etc. I think faith is merely believing something out of the ordinary without evidence. I do not think that everything a person knows is faith.

 

I think when a substantial number of highly educated people are convinced of something that differs from my own belief, it is a bit arrogant, as well as risky, to say:"I'm right & they're wrong even though what they're saying is logically possible." I was recently debating someone with a science background on the Atheist/Agnostic forum and discovered, much to my amazement, that he believed we can create or fundamentally alter our own entire universe, even adjust the constants for it, just by trying to observe it. "Horsefeathers!" said I. But actually, he has a lot of support among the scientists who developed quantum theory. QM and relativity theory have pushed many fine scientists to the frontiers of sanity, and certainly the universe(s), as we view them today, are far different from the mechanistic Newtonian one that actually made sense. I understand that whether an electron or other atomic entity shows particle-like or wave-like properties will depend on the experimental situation, or the apparatus it's forced to interact with. There are also reputable scientists who actually take seriously the StarTrek idea that we might someday go back in time to ask Jesus if he really is the Son of God. Which is why I rely on faith as my ultimate defense.

In the first instance, there's what Santayana calls "animal faith" in the basic rules of logic and our sensory experience. As you probably know, there are intelligent people running around today who believe that the material world is an illusion, we can't believe a thing our senses tell us, and deep meditation will make us aware that we all are one with each other and God. Pan-psychism, the idea that our minds are all somehow part of the same consciousness, is a common Asian belief that is shared by lots of New Age intellectuals in the United States, and they draw on modern physics, especially QM, vacuum energy, and the zero-point field to make their case. I sense that (if you really exist) you're not one of these people, and neither am I, or I wouldn't be wasting my time trying to communicate with you. But I'd have to acknowledge the possibilty that we could be wrong and they could be right. I have faith in science, which obviously a lot of people don't. However, I'm open to the possibility that science could be more limited than many of us think. People like physicist Fritjof Capra have criticized contemporary science for embracing a reductionist paradigm that is unreceptive to non-reductionist phenomena, making it difficult to understand things like life and human consciousness. I tend to reject "scientism" (as opposed to science) that views scientific truth as the only truth that matters. I think that faith, or intuitive risk taking, is an important complement to science in making decisions about the nature of reality and our place in it.

 

I don't quite understand what you are getting at here. Do you understand WHY the material world is considered an illusion? Think about it like this: I am typing on a keyboard, which seems to be independently arising. But actually, it is made of plastic and other materials, but let's focus on the plastic. It is made from petoleum, which was created from the dead bodies of microscopic life forms millions of years old, which consisted of sunlight and carbon dioxide. So in actuallity, my keyboard is a combination of light, carbon dioxide, and many other components. The illusion is the keyboard is not dependent on all of these factors, when in actuality it is.

Sorry, don't have much time to go into this further.

Peace and love

 

I'd express this much as you did, but I'd leave out the word "illusion". I think the keyboard is an independent entity, composed of components from various sources. It might be useful for some purposes to think about those interconnections. Everything is interconnected to other things. That doesn't mean the keyboard loses its entitivity and ceases to be a typewriter. At the moment, I'm using the keybord, but I'm barely conscious of its existence because I'm focused on the thoughts I'm typing. But I think the typewriter still exists as an independent entity. I can come back to it with complete confidence that it will be there again, and not just because I'm hallucinating it. Not everyone would agree. In the Buddhist sense, of course, "illusion" has a different meaning entirely (like you, I don't have time to elaborate, but I'll pick up on that later). Kant convinced most western philosophers long ago that our perceptions of the things around us and what they really are like are two entirely different things, and I agree. My dog, with its more acute senses of smell and hearing, would have an entirely different experience of the keyboard than I do. And the physicists tell us that this solid looking device I'm typing on is really a quantized, semistable bundling of energies.

But the important point is that the existence of material reality is not the point I was trying to make in my reply to FreakerSoup. My point was, as you've helpfully demonstrated, that some highly intelligent people could challenge my assertion that the typewriter is not an illusion. They have FAITH in a belief system that makes it possible to challenge my assertion. If I stick to my guns, as I have done, it isn't because I'm right and they're wrong, because I can't prove that by means of logic and evidence. It's because I'm making an intuitive bet based on my judgment, experience, and instincts, undoubtedly shaped by my cultural conditioning. That's why I say even science is ultimately rooted in faith.(Not quite the same as an opinion, because it's embedded in a relatively stable belief-value structure).

 

Misfeed.

 

Perhaps we are using different definitions of illusion?

The illusion is not that a keyboard isn't a keyboard- the illusion is that a keyboard is ONLY a keyboard and nothing else. But as we both agree, a keyboard is made up of many different elements and it is still a keyboard.

Peace and love

 

Getting back to the original subject, New Earth Creationism, science and faith, I thought of some other examples that might better illustrate my point concerning the need for faith along with reason:

1. New Earth Creationists challenge one of the basic tools science uses to determine the age of the earth: Radiometric (radioactive) dating. I think the assumptions behind radiometric dating are reasonable, but they are assumptions. I would describe the acceptance of those assumptions as an act of faith--as opposed to logic. It is possible to defend the Ptolmeic view that the sun and planets revolve around the earth if we're willing to make the complex assumption of "epicycles", which is what people did while Copernicus was still regarded as heresy. It's really Occam's razor , the preference for simpler explanations, that decided this issue, but Occam's razor isn't provable by logic or evidence. What is it then?

2. Behaviorism was thought to be the ultimate in "scientific" psychology in the 1950s and 60s. Behaviorism, popularly known as "rat psychology", prided itself in studying "behavior" and treating the brain or mind as a "black box", i.e.,irrelevant. Some psychologists still think this way. I had a long discussion with one of them, who is a tenured professor of experimental psychology at a major university. The subject was human consciousness, which I regard as the most immediately accessible aspect of our existence. He maintains that consciousness doesn't exist--not that it's unimportant, irrelevant, something to exclude for purposes of experimentation, but that it literally doesn't exist. Okay. Maybe he's an android or some kind of zombie, who doesn't have this faculty. I can't rule that out. I suspect this is a case where he's been so conditioned (using behavioral terminology) to exclude consciousness from consideration that he denies its very existence. I am absolutely confident that it does exist, and that other people including him and probably the rats have it, as well. But I can't prove it, particularly to somebody who is vigorously denying it. Once again I invoke the five letter F word.

3. Rene Decartes, who did believe in consciousness and made it the centerpeice of his philosophy (I think, therfore I am) did not believe animals have consciousness. He thought they were just automatons, without any inner life or feelings. When dogs yelped when being subjected to physical abuse, it was just like a squeak in the machinery, nothing to worry about. And people acted on that assumption, much to my horror. It reminds me of Adolf Eichmann's remark that Jews were "unimportant biological material". Beliefs have consequences, and what one believes is obviously extremely important. But I'm sure I couldn't prove to Decartes or to people who think like him that dogs have feelings and consciousness, and I couldn't prove to Eichmann that Jews are worth caring about. I might persuade them or at least others that this is true, but logic and evidence would only take me so far. I'd have to appeal to their intuition and willingness to take the risk of a different point of view.