The Ultimate Question for a Creationist?

Great Debates
121

[QUOTE=Darwin’s Finch]
All fine and well, but a) that has nothing to do with Creationism, per se, and b) just as showing a fault in evolution does not make Creationism true by default, showing a problem with Biblical inerrancy doesn’t make evolution true by default.
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Well, it’s rhetoric rather than logic. People are creationists *because * they are religious. If you can rattle them with a Biblical contradiction–show them that maybe there’s something about Christianity that people haven’t been telling them–it might make them question other commitments which derive from their singleminded Christianity.

122

[QUOTE=solkoe]
You have the right not to participate and you can ignore any post you want. I certainly didn’t start this thread to annoy anyone.
The question was valid when I started the thread. After reading all the posts telling me it isn’t possible, I still think there is a way to make them pee their pants.
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To be honest, contrary to popular belief, creationists aren’t “inbred to the point of mental deficiency” stupid, I mean sure there are SOME, but I’m certain there are some on BOTH sides of the issue. Most of them are simply misguided in a way, and the problem with human nature is:

  1. We hate being wrong
  2. We hate change
  3. We hate looking like a-holes

If someone, otherwise incredibly intelligent, was misguided their whole life into only believing, say, creationism and they’re proven wrong. I’d say a lot of the time they KNOW they’ve been killed, but that would mean everything they’ve known for the past <x> years was wrong. And when your entire world shifts like that and you’ve beena rguing it fervently until you came across a really good point you look like an a-hole for arguing it so much, and just generally feel dumb. This nature of not liking to be wrong (especially since our culture seems to value the “winner”) you start rationalizing, not because it’s the best or most logical avenue, it’s because you just LOST and you have to RECLAIM your HONOR and TITLE. And how DARE they shake your world with FAC… er… HORRID FALSE CLAIMS!

I’m sure there are some dumb people that can be asked a question that will make them piss themselves, but these people are called sheep usually, and switch sides at the hint of it being “what everyone else thinks.” But I believe most people on both sides are of average to pretty far above-average intelligence, and it’s not that they don’t know when tehy’re beaten so much that they misuse their intelligence to rationlize themselves right.

Theres only one thing I’ve ever been able to do to hold an argument after the initial bam-bam-bam-rationalize exchange, and that’s simply that (and you can see this with any forum troll instantly) when they start trying to argue for the sake of being right (or arguing in the case of the aforementioned troll) they start making logical fallacies left and right.

“Well how could we be wrong for that many years!?”
“Sorry, appeal to tradition.” http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/appeal-to-tradition.html

“Well, prove God doesn’t exist”
“Burden of proof, can’t prove a negative.”

“God must exist! If God did not exist, then all basis for morality would be lost and the world would be a horrible place!”

“Appeal to Consequence, just because making it untrue has potentially negative consequences doesn’t make it fact.”
Etc. etc.

By a certain point most people will either give up and walk away out of sheer frustration or concede, though I’d expect the former most of the time. You need a fairly sizable mental library of fallacies and what they all do though.

123

[QUOTE=Mijin]
… “Why doesn’t God heal amputees?” …
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CMC+fnord!

124

[QUOTE=lekatt]
Well, I am basing what I say on the video, fossil remains, which would fit into a pickup truck, do not show any evolution of animals.
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[QUOTE=lekatt]
I should have said the fossils involved in the socalled evolution of man.
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Of course, if we’re basing beliefs primarily on volume, I could fit the evidence for Jesus (for example) into my glove compartment.

125

[QUOTE=Sophistry and Illusion]
Well, it’s rhetoric rather than logic. People are creationists *because * they are religious. If you can rattle them with a Biblical contradiction–show them that maybe there’s something about Christianity that people haven’t been telling them–it might make them question other commitments which derive from their singleminded Christianity.
[/QUOTE]

It’s fun (but not particularily advised in an uncontrolled environment) to point out various ritualistic, and belief influences in Chrisitanity. That whole birth of the god Mithras and birth of baby Jesus thing especially stirrs up fires. It tends to shake people when they hear a religion that predates theirs mimics the story quite closely.

Church has to get followers somehow though, and adapting your traditions and beliefs is the easiest way to get people to convert to your religion after it’s finally become recognizable and not-underground. Which arguably religion about as “we want to win, we don’t care what actually happens” as major parties in the US, they don’t care about issues so much as they do about votes(or followers), and if they have to align themselves with a certain issue or make everything not their beliefs look like evil incarnate to get them so be it.

126

[QUOTE=Revenant Threshold]
If it does, that doesn’t necessarily mean they don’t really believe in creationism. Many people who are that certain of creationism are often equally certain that not believing it mean you don’t get a seat upstairs, or (possibly more importantly) that teaching it in schools means kids are being indoctrinated into it. I don’t think unethical means of debate alone suggest they aren’t true believers.

I’m not disputing your own story. I just think that coming it at it from the perspective of “Aha, lots of people who think like this are lying to themselves; I know what they really think” is about as effective as if they said exactly the same to me, and i’d be both insulted and convinced that debate won’t work (after all, if they think i’m lying, nothing I could say can convince them). I’m sure it would work in some cases, but i’m not willing to insult everyone else and risk them never listening to any other argument I might make.
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Your ethic on this does you great credit.

Perhaps then, it would better not be expressed as bluntly and omnisciently as “You know, in your heart of hearts you KNOW…”, but rather, pointing out that creationism does seem to consist of a large set of arguments hastily created in reaction to mainstream science - a big set of excuses as to why it’s not what it looks like?

127

[QUOTE=Bryan Ekers]
The Great God Wiki says otherwise:
Emphasis added.
Emphasis added, from the Newspaper of the Hampshire Constabulary, December 2006,here (pdf file). I don’t know if police boxes are still used for temporary detainments (i.e. as a “mini jail”) but Doctor Who started back in 1963 when that function, if falling out of fashion even then, was at least fresh in the public’s memory.

So goes nitpickin’ somewheres else, bub.
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No, here’s a good place to nitpick. The Great God Wiki only says that arrestees would be temporarily detained until a police vehicle arrived to cart 'em off - it doesn’t say that they would be detained in the police box. The officer did the detaining, with the aid of handcuffs if necessary.

My forty-plus years as a UK resident is my cite.

128

[QUOTE=Mangetout]
Your ethic on this does you great credit.

Perhaps then, it would better not be expressed as bluntly and omnisciently as “You know, in your heart of hearts you KNOW…”, but rather, pointing out that creationism does seem to consist of a large set of arguments hastily created in reaction to mainstream science - a big set of excuses as to why it’s not what it looks like?
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Oh, certainly. I would say that what confuses me about creationism the most (and about denial of macroevolution more specifically) is that there are a lot of counter-arguments used against evolutionist arguments, but there don’t seem to be many arguments actually for creationism itself. It seems, as you say, entirely reactive. I mean, to me, microevolution is a bit of biology and common sense; if it doesn’t mean macroevolution happens (which again seems like common sense to me), i’d like reasons why not rather than denials of my reasons..

129

I think the people that are creationists are sincere in their beliefs, they just have a need to believe in it, so they would rather ignore anything that disputes it.

If I remember rightly in the Genesis accounts, Man was supposed to be the only creation from dirt that God breathed life in, if this is so then everything else was just brought forth by God and human’s are just dirt with the breath of God, so man would not have any of the DNA of other living things.

I have been to funerals where the clergy person said,“Remember Man you are but dust and to dust you shall return”. If this were the case than man would be less than any other of the other living things, not superior to them.

Monavis

130

[QUOTE=Lobohan]
How many skeletons would make you believe?
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42

:smiley:

131

[QUOTE=solkoe]
Perhaps you could answer why a man such as Mr. Hovind is so obsessed with spreading this message. Why bother? If faith had more value that material things, why not leave science out of it. We certainly don’t have science seminars in the Catholic Church. As a Catholic, I could care less about evolution or a six day creation story. It has nothing to do with my relationship with God.
As a science junkie, my feelings are otherwise.
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Umm… Total nutcase?

I could no more explain the motivation of “Dr” Hovind than I could that of Charles Manson, Jim Jones or George Bush.

132

[QUOTE=Jragon]
It’s fun (but not particularily advised in an uncontrolled environment) to point out various ritualistic, and belief influences in Chrisitanity. That whole birth of the god Mithras and birth of baby Jesus thing especially stirrs up fires. It tends to shake people when they hear a religion that predates theirs mimics the story quite closely.
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Such claims are vastly overstated. Proponents of this view claim that Mithras was born of a virgin, for example. Well, Mithras was supposedly born out of solid rock, leaving a cave behind. It’s arguably true, but only in the sense that solid rock cannot have sex. Mithras was supposedly a teacher, just as Jesus was, but such claims would typically apply to any religious leader. There are likewise claims that Mithras was buried and rose again after three days, but none of these citations come from the Mithraic literature itself, nor do any of them predate the life of Christ.

In fact, in the Wikipedia discussion page on Mithraism, there are various complaints about inconsistent claims regarding what Mithraism states (the alleged virgin birth parallelism, for example), as well as the lack of substantiation for many of these alleged similarities.

133

Missed the edit window, but here’s what I wanted to add:

Whatever similarities exist between Christianity and Mithraism exist are either superficial or appear solely in writings that postdate Christianity. As Komoszewski, Sawyer, and Wallace said in their book, Reinventing Jesus, “Only after 100 A.D. did the mysteries begin to look very much like Christianity, precisely because their existence was threatened by this new religion. They had to compete to survive.”

134

Christianity is a charismatic, messianic religion. I can’t be arsed to look up the exact chapter & verse, but Jesus Christ’s final words to his disciples were along the lines of: “Spread my bullshit far and wide, to the four corners of the earth, to all men, women & children.” It’s unclear whether Mr. Hovind actually believes that he’s doing God’s work, or whether he’s abusing people’s faith in Christ to feed his charisma and stroke his own ego – but I strongly suspect it’s the latter.

135

There are three things that “evolutionists” don’t often do in debates with Creationists, that I wish they’d do more often, that would play better to the audience than just waffling on about radiocarbon dating or whatever.

  1. Explain the scientific method, in simple terms. Give examples of scientists making surprising claims, and then those claims being supported (or not) by evidence.
    Discuss how “Creation Scientists” don’t do this.

  2. Talk philosophically at times. For example, Creationists often say things like: “Without God, truth is relative” or “Atheists believe that there is no such thing as morality”, and they rarely get picked up on statements like this.

  3. Most importantly, talk about Creationism. For example, it’s difficult for people to imagine “macro-evolution” but instead of going on the defensive, I wish sometimes the debator would point out that the rapidity of speciation that would have had to follow The Flood is incredibly fast, and many times quicker than we’re seeing right now. Perhaps with an illustration of one big cat “kind” and all the many animals that had to derive from it.
    Or just read out some of the more daft stuff from the bible: unprovoked genocide, “virtuous” rape and incest etc.

136

[QUOTE=Lobohan]
How many skeletons would make you believe?
[/QUOTE]

I think quantity and quality both are important. As I have said before, fossils don’t speak, so what is said about them must be opinion. It is alright to have opinions if they are stated as opinions. If they are stated as fact that is being dishonest.

137

[QUOTE=tomndebb]
If anyone, at this point, really thinks that you are going to get through to lekatt on these issues, please open a separate thread to do it.
As with posters who would find a way to condemn President Bush if he rescued a baby from a burning house or posters who would find a way to rationalize his actions if he threw a baby into a burning house, we have all seen. already, that lekatt’s views of the world do not coincide with anything presented by faith or science, so please do not hijack this thread with head-butting-wall posts.
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An off topic personal insult and I see there is another one further in the thread. I forgive you Tom. I hold no grudges or animosity toward my enemies.

138

Good points, Mijin, but in practice, it’s almost impossible to debate anything effectively with almost any creationist. Because of their reactive nature, creationist arguments/refutations don’t form a coherent whole - instead, they’re granular nuggets of denial that don’t connect - so you’ll find yourself at one moment trying to counter, say, the notion that everything points to a young Earth, and the next moment trying to deal with the (contradictory) argument that everything looks old because it was made that way - it’s too easy for the creationist to completely change subject on their side, because all of the arguments on their side are constructed as different subjects, rather than a coherent whole.

139

[QUOTE=lekatt]
I think quantity and quality both are important. As I have said before, fossils don’t speak, so what is said about them must be opinion. It is alright to have opinions if they are stated as opinions. If they are stated as fact that is being dishonest.
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You state this as if it’s different for fossils than it is for any other class of evidence. Why?

140

[QUOTE=KGS]
Christianity is a charismatic, messianic religion. I can’t be arsed to look up the exact chapter & verse, but Jesus Christ’s final words to his disciples were along the lines of: “Spread my bullshit far and wide, to the four corners of the earth, to all men, women & children.” It’s unclear whether Mr. Hovind actually believes that he’s doing God’s work, or whether he’s abusing people’s faith in Christ to feed his charisma and stroke his own ego – but I strongly suspect it’s the latter.
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Not all of Christianity is charismatic and messianic, there are actually thousands of different Christian religions, some very conservative and some very liberal. Your quote of the Bible is offense to all intelligent people, even those who don’t particularly believe the Bible. I would venture it safe to say Dr. Hovind is presenting his side of the Creation vs. Evolution debate. He has every right to do so and should do so. That is the foundation of democracy.