But the shark is clever; he’ll just swim away and will try again, in a couple of months.
Because most so-called scientific “laws” apply only in certain conditions and in certain circumstances. Both original biogenesis and the Big Bang took place in circumstances to which the laws that you see them as violating were never meant to apply.
Science is not a collection of laws that are always and everywhere true, it is a way of understanding the world. Its “laws” are, for the most part, just helpful aids to remembering what works in most of the circumstances you are likely to encounter, but they are not the essence of science itself.
As for why this board trends atheist (although it is not hostile to religious believers as such, and many believers are respected members of the community here), it was originally founded for and by people who were fans of Cecil Adams’ columns. Adams writes about many topics in a skeptical, undogmatic, and scientifically informed way, so his columns appealed to people who were themselves skeptical, undogmatic, and scientifically informed. Such mental attitudes have a strong, though not inexorable, tendency to lead people toward atheism (and, conversely, atheism tends to foster such attitudes in people), so although Adams’ columns were not atheistic as such, they often appealed to atheists and attracted them to these message boards.
Too bad nobody did much in the responses except act smug, mock the OP, link to acomic strip, and name check thermodynamics. If this place is actually about fighting ignorance, then this thread is a SDMB failure. If this place is about patting ourselves on the fanny over how smart we believe ourselves to be, then 10/10. Edited to add: njtt added a worthwhile post while I was typing.
What is your evidence that this board is overwhelmingly atheist?
The shark is not ignorant.
I know for a fact that reef shark has brought up if not these exact points then ones very similar to it in the past, and has gotten good answers. I can’t shake the feeling I’ve seen more or less this exact thread before. If it was a new poster, I would have been a lot nicer. But it isn’t, and we’ve all been here before, and we’re all a little bit frustrated. Not to mention that the OP’s tone was… You get the picture.
Who said God said it? Wasn’t that another human?
Yeah, but why would he lie?
My response was reasonable - if the OP thinks Big Bang Theory is untenable, what (if anything) does he propose instead and why?
What would you have anybody respond to, the question posed in the thread title, the wikipedia quote, or the non-sequitur about the BBT and thermodynamics?
Add your own post (and now mine) to this list of failings. You also didn’t do whatever the hell it is you think we should be doing in response to the OP.
Forthcoming chick tract: The Conceited Forum
Page 1 would be a description of a drive-by witnessing “What about the laws of thermodynamics amirite?”
Pages 2 through 19 would be people patiently explaining the flaws in the OP. But at the bottom of every page would be the line “Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools – Romans 11:25”
Finally on page 20 there’s a cartoon of someone weeping, but it’s just out of pure frustration that threads like this exist, then John 3:16, the end.
Because we’ve all become totally deranged by [del]learning some science[/del]letting Satan get his hooks in us.
We salute you, our half-inflated dark lord!
There can be no other explanation.
I haven’t been on these boards much in the last few months, but I recognize reefshark and I remember that he posts a lot of creationist PRATT. He never (or hardly ever) accepts corrections and he spews a ton of ignorance.
He’s not posting a serious thread, so why treat it as such?
You’re not providing much of an answer yourself, either.
Uh, no. Creationists are deeply immoral people who have no problem lying through their teeth. They are not interested in actually learning about the topic. There is no ignorance to be fought, because creationists don’t want their ignorance fought.
Yours is, by far, the haughtiest post in this thread.
That’s only worth a HAW-HAW. A reference to Fang might’ve got you the third HAW.
I assume you mean Young Earth Creationists.
What I really mean is the semi-organized cult-like movement that spreads disinformation about science in order to defend creationism. This is mostly a YEC movement, but it can include other forms of creationists.
If someone is religious, that’s of no concern to me (I’m religious too). If someone wants to personally believe that the Earth started 6000 years ago or 6000 days ago, then what do I care?
What rankles, though, are the people who aren’t content to simply believe what they want to believe, but instead run around making definitive statements about complex topics they haven’t studied. This is a form of lying. And for these people to claim to be religious is eye-rolling. Most religions condemn outright lying like this. But as the saying goes, even the devil can recite scripture.