>>DoodleDawg wrote: “Mr. Olive discounts most major branches of science because they conflict with his Biblical belief in creation...”
>>Joey wrote: “Right, and I have no problems with that — I live out in the country and most of my neighbors share such beliefs. But there is a clear distinction to be recognized. It’s this: the faith of my neighbors tells them the Bible is right and modern evolution-related science is wrong.”
It my case it turned out to be the other way around. I was an evolutionist for most of my life, until I was exposed to scientific data that demonstrated the accuracy of the biblical narrative on the flood. It was quite a revelation.
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>>Joey wrote: “But our FRiend, Olive-boy, goes the next step beyond and redefines his terms, claiming now that the Bible is science and modern science is just a religion. None of my neighbors, so far as I’ve ever heard, would say such a thing.”
I have never said modern science is a religion, Joey. The pseudoscience of evolution is a faith-based religion — no doubt! But science is not a religion.
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>>Joey wrote: “My own beliefs are the more obvious ones: when God spoke to ancient Israelites he spoke in their language using words & ideas they could understand. He didn’t try to explain the secrets of science to them because that was irrelevant. What they needed to understand, first & foremost, is the same thing we need: that God created the natural realm and rules over it. So, if science now discovers another natural process, that doesn’t a whit diminish God’s role, it only shows us His creative genius in making even inanimate objects capable of doing amazing things.
FWIW.”
That is best characterized as, pseudohistory meets pseudoscience.
Mr. Kalamata
I'm guessing it was similar to the revelation you claim to have had over Lincoln. If so then I'm sure it was quite imaginative.
The pseudoscience of evolution is a faith-based religion no doubt!
Of course it is.
But science is not a religion.
And religion is not science. Or at least it shouldn't be.
That is best characterized as, pseudohistory meets pseudoscience.
So I've observed from reading your posts.
Considering Olive-boy's highly transactional relationship with the truth, I don't believe this version of events for a moment.
What's far more likely is a common human experience: like anyone growing older, Kalamata at some point naturally decided to make his peace with God and so prepare for the next life.
In Kalamata's case that meant a church whose definition of "salvation" included full adherence to their own interpretations of Biblical texts, interpretations we might summarize under the heading, "Biblical science".
Now Kalamata tells us he is both highly educated and some sort (unspecified) of scientist meaning we should well be able to presume he understands the basic ideas of what methodologically natural science is all about -- natural explanations for natural processes.
But late in life his mission became to seek out and find data and arguments which, far from being "natural explanations for natural processes" are instead: "science" which conforms to & confirms the Bible.
And, lo and behold, it turned out there is such data and argumentation, a lot of it, because a good number of others were engaged in the same enterprise.
It began with what was long called "creationism", and about 30 years ago picked up the name "intelligent design", focused on such concepts as "irreducible & specified complexity", added to "hydrological sorting", "ecological zonation" and "differential escape" it gets us through Genesis & Noah's flood and is well on its way to becoming what Kalamata calls "Biblical science" and what Ken Ham describes as "a natural understanding of the Bible".
Notice here Ham's word "natural": meaning no, not "natural" as in "natural explanations for natural processes", but rather as in "what we would naturally understand the Bible's words to mean".
Today Intelligent Design is a multi-multi million dollar industry employing many "scientists" like our own Kalamata to spread the word and even write "peer reviewed" articles for its own "scientific" publications.
It fights its war-on-science on many fronts, though curiously, does not seem to have assaulted our courts since being yet again defeated in the 2005 Kitzmiller vs. Dover Schools, now 15 years ago.
So how does (we are told) a highly educated scientist like Kalamata with lifelong work experience, lobotomize his brain into believing that "Biblical science" is the real deal while natural-science as we understand it is "just another secular religion"?
The answer is: using well known denial tactics which begin, first & foremost, by ignoring all data that conflicts with your own constructs, then exaggerating the importance of any which might be used to support your ideas.
Kalamata: "I have never said modern science is a religion, Joey.
The pseudoscience of evolution is a faith-based religion no doubt!
But science is not a religion."
And this is Denier Rule #2: redefine every word to suit your own purposes.
In this case when he says "science is not a religion", he means (by his definition) that his own version of "Biblical science" is not a religion.
When he says, "the pseudoscience of evolution is a faith-based religion" he means by that not just Darwin's basic simple theory of evolution, but any and all facts or ideas from any branch of science -- be it geology, biology, physics or astronomy, etc. -- which might conflict with his own version of "Biblical science".
Now it's immediately obvious that such denier tactics are the same ones our Democrat fellow citizens use, for example, to concoct cockamamie "articles of impeachment" when no crime exists.
And even though Kalamata can see that such behavior in Democrats is deeply pathological, he refuses to see it in himself.
And why?
Because, he says, the alternatives are just too unacceptable.
That's because Kalamata blames the evil trinity of Darwin, Marx and Lincoln for all the world's ills, he attacks them all with equal ferocity, will not admit any of their ideas as potentially valid, and flat-out denies any data which might support them.
In Kalamata's mind, to grant any of it is not just to reject his own understandings of the Bible, but also to accept as "OK" all the world's modern ills.
His logic goes something like this: if you believe Darwin, then you are responsible for AIDS, for homelessness and mass shootings by lunatics.
If you also think Lincoln did right, then you are responsible for Hitler, Stalin, Mao and the 100 million people they killed.
Of course nobody here thinks much of Marx, but to Kalamata it's all the same -- Marx's atheistic socialism combined with Darwin's atheistic evolutionism and Lincoln's atheistic tyranny join to make Big Government the "trinitarian deity" of our atheistic fellow citizens.
And that, I think, is how Kalamata lobotomized himself.
Kalamata referring to yours-truly's mainline theological beliefs: "That is best characterized as, pseudohistory meets pseudoscience."
Right, nothing which conflicts with his own constructs can break through into Kalamata's newly lobotomized brain.