What Are Creationists Afraid Of?

The New Individualist ^ | 1/2006 | Ed Hudgins

[curiosity]

Depending on the nature of the "God" in question.

Of course.

Of course, there's also the question of whether or not God's defined morality is his own arbitrary choice.

Traditional Christianity and Judaism hold that it is not his arbitrary choice, but is in accordance with his Love for his creation.

Certainly, other religions have a god or gods that act quite arbitrarily. I don't think they're much better than atheism in providing a metaphysical grounding for ethics.

Are you saying that Saddam Hussein is an atheist?

Whether he was an atheist is debatable, but immaterial to my point. I provided him as an example of someone who personally benefited from mass murder.

It's not difficult to justify mass murder for the same reason for a theist. Simply claim that God doesn't frown upon such actions. How can you prove that wrong?

You can't, but it's not relevant to my point, which is that there is no way to logically ground morality without reference to the supernatural. One (of many) fatal flaws of objectivism is a failure to recognize this.

[Rightwing Conspiratr1]

It borders on racist, IMO. Par for the course.

Sorry I'm not a follower of racist darwinism. I'm one of the dangerous defective products of evilution that they talk about exterminating from the gene pool. A Christ believer and follower.

[Senator Bedfellow]

You made the crack. I'm sure any alternate explanation you care to offer would be welcomed.

[P-Marlowe]

[bobdsmith]

But it is an Intellligently driven process, isn't it? It is not random. It is PURPOSE DRIVEN®.

Random does not equal purpose driven, and vice-versa. The weather system is not random, but that does not make it purpose driven.

It is not purpose driven. Noone sets out with the purpose of creating that system in that state. It just emerges. Yes if you go down far enough there are actions being made with a purpose, but the overall system is not guided or designed. Who would have an economic recession as a purpose?

Did the keyboard that you are typing on just appear out of thin air? Or did someone design it? Did someone manufacture it? Did someone find a buyer for it? Did someone ship it to a distribution center where it was distributed to a retail store where you found it?

I was just looking at the instant oatmeal box on my desk. It probably took the efforts of 150 people to get that oatmeal on the store shelve. It is not a random process. It is an intelligently driven process with dozens of independent intelligent decisions bringing it about.

I am not talking about manufacturing. I am talking about the market system. Ie the kind of stuff the stock people try to predict.

To compare the market to evolution is to admit that "evolution" (such as it is) is an intelligently driven process. Are you willing to admit that FACT?

People compare market systems to weather systems. Would you accuse them of admitting that the weather system is intelligently driven?

[CobaltBlue]

That's because you're not trying to describe how bees came to be the way they are. Describing how something already is doesn't require much in the way of explaining its creator.

Which is also true for evolution. Evolution is not abiogenesis. Abiogenesis is a theory about the origin of life - that it came into being from inanimate objects like "primordial soup."

Evolution is about how living organisms change over time. There's no reason to explain the Creator.

[freedumb2003]

It always surpises me to see you on the CRIDer side of these. I have found you to be one of the most intelligent, rational and thoughtful posters on FR.

I can't see the rationality of discarding or ignoring the huge mass of evidence in support of evolution.

Nor of merging philosophy/mythology with science.

But perhaps I mis-state your position? These threads get long and nuances can be missed.

[mlc9852]

I think DNA will answer a lot of questions. I just hope scientists are open to all possibilities.

And thanks for not being a "mean" evolutionist! :)

[P-Marlowe]

I am not talking about manufacturing. I am talking about the market system. Ie the kind of stuff the stock people try to predict.

Manufacturing is part of the market system. You cannot separate it. If nothing is manufactued, nothing is marketed.

I don't think you have a clue about what you are posting.

[freedumb2003]

And thanks for not being a "mean" evolutionist! :)

Evolutionists are not, by and large, "mean." But we do get frustrated. We expose most "arguments" presented by CRIDers as being logical fallacies (Strawman #1, followd by Begging The Question, Argument Through Force, Propter Hoc) or outright lies (Darwin's supposed "deathbed recantation").

Creationists tend to say that all Evolutionists are damned souls whose sole purpose is to destroy Christianity, which is, in itself a Strawman and Argument Through Force fallacy.

Creationists are much, much, much "meaner" than Evolutionists (and yes, I can prove it).

[Stultis]

The agents in evolution also have purposes. An individual organism has the purpose to survive and reproduce.

From whence did it derive it's "purpose"?

It doesn't matter. Evolution doesn't care. By what means could evolution possibly decide: "Ah, an agent is acting purposefully. Since I'm a purposeless process, I must stop immediately!"?

To state that an organism has any inherent "purpose" is ludicrous from a purely naturalistic standpoint.

Why?

Any purpose that an organism has is the result of that purpose being programmed into it.

And yet purposeful actions occur all the time without the specific purpose having been programmed by anyone or anything. Again this is the example of markets. No one "programmed" the incredibly complex and delicately balanced (and, btw, IRREDUCIBLY COMPLEX) system that manages to get just enough food into New York City ever day to feed 8 million people. And yet there it is, fulfilling its purpose almost flawlessly and constantly adapting to innumerable vicissitudes.

[jwalsh07]

Yes, individual (and corporate) agents in the market place have purposes, but those purposes are particular to the agents. There is no explicit design or intent on the part of the agents involved to build capability and complexity and new functions in the market. The latter happens "by itself," although because of the diverse and eclectic activities of the agents, but without their design.

Not true Stultis. Markets can and are created by design absent central planners. The derivative market being a case in point. Built in capability, complexity and new functions. And all toward a purpose, that being liquidity for the larger market so they can transfer risk. Oh yeah, and it keeps the gamblers out of the casinos and in front of their MACS.

[mlc9852]

I'm a creationist and don't think I am mean at all. But there are some evos on here (and they know who they are) who delight in calling those who don't agree with them stupid, ignorant, etc. I am perfectly happy to listen to all points of view and ask questions and try to learn. Name-calling does not make for intelligent discussion. But I know there are mean-spirited people on all sides. If we here on FR can't have civil disagreements, there is no reason to think the country at large can.

[xzins]

Moreover, people who are mechanistic evolutionists also have no purpose greater than that of the rock from which they say they came.

The purpose of the rock is...well...just to be there until it isn't...and one day it'll all burn up.

One insight that verifies God is that the mechanistic route removes real meaning from life.

[jwalsh07]

Perhaps market is the wrong word then.

Perhaps.

I was assuming the market is a system that emerges as a result of many people wanting to buy and sell with each other. Throw in a few thousand people and the system becomes very complex and chaotic. Order forms - there appears to be an overall direction and purpose, and the assumption might be that a super intelligence would be necessary to control something that complex. But there is noone guiding the direction of the overall system, and it has no purpose. It wanders of its own accord. What appears intelligently design is simply a consequence of lots of "dummies" trading with each other.

I hope you don't tell your stockholders that. :-}

[Rightwing Conspiratr1]

[P-Marlowe]

It always surpises me to see you on the CRIDer side of these. I have found you to be one of the most intelligent, rational and thoughtful posters on FR.

Many thanks for your compliments. However, any intelligence that I have, or that you have, is not the result of random changes in chemicals over the eons. It is the result of being endowed by our creator with such properties. The chemicals in the brain are not randomly and purposelessly arranged in such a way that they magically produce intelligence, they are specifically and purposely arranged in a manner in which they become the physical means in which intelligence is carried to and through the organism.

I personally am surprised when I see many people who claim to believe in the God revealed in the Bible, yet they reject His assertion that their existence is due to a direct act of creation by that God as he himself revealed in stone on the Tablets that he presented to Moses on Mt. Sinai.

I appreciate the fact that you think I am intelligent, but I am not so "intelligent" that I would dare to pretend that my existence on this planet is not the product of something so much greater than myself that I am wont to describe it.

As far as the evidence for evolution, what evolutionist have is a stack of bones that speak to common design as much as common ancestry. The fact that we can observe that things "evolve" is as much evidence of divine purpose and divine design as it is Darwinistic evolution. To deny the existence of a supernatural cause simply because it does not comport with a purely naturalistic premise or axiom is hardly honest science. Science is the search for the truth. Evolutionists (especially the rabid evolutionists who mock the idea of an intelligent designer) are not on a search for truth. If they were, they would not disallow any premise and they would not blackball anyone who dares to suggest that naturalism does not hold a lock on the truth.

[Muleteam1]

Unfortunately I think few others will but thanks.

Muleteam1

[microgood]

We need not fear that with evolution, or without a god, there is no basis for ethics. There is an objective basis for ethics, but it does not reside in the heavens. It arises from our own human nature and its objective requirements.

Nothing but moral relativism disguised.

Creationists and advocates of intelligent design come to their beliefs in part through honest errors and in part from evasions of facts and close-minded dogmatism. But we should appreciate that one of their motivations might be a proper rejection of value-relativism, and a mistaken belief that acceptance of divine revelation is the only moral alternative.

There are several alternatives, about 6 billion or so. So which moral alternative should we pick? Attila the Hun had his own moral alternative. So do the muslims in Pakistan who do honor killings. How, then, do we pick the right one?

If we can demonstrate to them that the basis for ethics lies in our nature as rational, volitional creatures, then perhaps we can also reassure them that men can indeed have morality—yet never fear to use that wondrous capacity which allows us to understand our own origins, the world around us, and the moral nature within us.

We haven't seen this level of naivete since the Enlightenment period (Hume, Berkelely, Locke). In fact, that was the true beginning of the moral relativism we see here now, as well as political correctness and multiculturism, i.e. liberalism.

C.S. Lewis warned us about the reductionism we would get in the PostModern world trying to use science/evolution to solve all of mankind's problems. The man was truly a prophet.

[xzins]

Why is abiogenesis never discussed?