Democrats use science as a weapon

http://toddkinsey.com/blog/2011/08/17/democrats-use-science-as-a-weapon-2/ ^

[Todd Kinsey]

For the better part of a century, socialists (Democrats) have been using science as a weapon to destroy the very fabric of American society. Today they propagate the global warming myth, forty years ago they were sounding the global cooling alarm, and they’ve used junk science to teach evolution in our nation’s schools.

To the socialist it is somehow easier to believe that aliens put us here or that we emerged from some primordial sludge than it is to believe in God. Socialist leadership, under the guise of “organizing”, use the environment, gay rights, immigration, or any number of causes as a form of religion to keep their unwitting masses in line. Their absence of God, and therefore morality, leaves these desperate souls longing to believe in something. How else can you explain a human being that is willing to risk their life to save a tree or a whale, yet they have no qualms about aborting a baby or assisted suicide?

[TXnMA]

The difference between scientists and dogmatists is that scientists are always seeking better data so that they can refine (read "change and improve") their understanding.

Dogmatists merely clamp down like a snapping turtle onto their misperceptions, and cling to them, no matter how vigorously truth swirls about them. They are easy to spot: they're the supercilious ones who delight in pointing out how wrong scientists once were -- while rejecting their improvements in knowledge.

IMHO, every poster on this thread should watch this video -- several times -- while measuring their current world view (and concept of our Creator) against it...

[TXnMA]

I'm a latecomer to this thread, so you may encounter "comments on old stuff" from me as I read through it.

"The less educated someone is the more likely they are to be a creationist. "

~~~~~~~~~

This scientist's refinement of that statement:

"The less educated someone is the more likely they are to be a 'Young Earth Creationist' "

[betty boop]

...creation's functional integrity....

"...envisions a world that was brought into being (and is continually sustained in being) only by the effective will of God, a world radically dependent upon God for every one of its capacities for creaturely action, a world gifted by God from the outset with all of the form-producing capacities necessary for the actualization of the multitude of physical structures and life forms that have appeared in the course of Creation's formative history, and a world whose formational fecundity can be understood only as a manifestation of the Creator's continuous blessing for fruitfulness. In such a Creation there would be no need for God to perform acts of 'special creation' in time because it has no gaps in its developmental economy that would necessitate bridging by extraordinary divine interventions of the sort often postulated by Special Creationism...."

...'We knew of old that God was so wise that He could make all things; but behold, He is so much wiser than that, that He can make all things make themselves.'"

IOW, "special creation" is not needed because of the (kenotic) nature of God's "intelligent design," which "suffices for all things, and more than suffices" as Heraclitus put it. We are speaking here of the Logos, the Word of God....

Thank you so very much, Matchett-PI, for your outstanding essay/post — and the valuable links!

[GourmetDan]

"The difference between scientists and dogmatists is that scientists are always seeking better data so that they can refine (read "change and improve") their understanding."

Of course, it is critical that everyone believe that scientists have no dogma. It makes them seem 'objective' and 'believable'. That is why statements like this are constantly being made.

In truth, philosophical naturalism is scientific dogma and all observations are filtered through that dogma first. In reality, scientists are neither objective nor believable but are committed to philosophical naturalism. That is why all of their 'theories' conform to that belief.

[metmom]

Excellent insight.

[betty boop]

In truth, philosophical naturalism is scientific dogma and all observations are filtered through that dogma first.

So true it bears repeating!

The above bolds tell how the philosophical naturalist qualifies his observations (evidence). If an observation doesn't meet the criteria of the dogmatic "naturalist" presupposition, it is "no data." It is simply excluded, ignored.

Of course, this virtually guarantees that you're going to find exactly what you're looking for, every time....

Thank you so much for your outstanding observations, dear brother in Christ!

[Matchett-PI]

allmendream wrote: "The less educated someone is the more likely they are to be a creationist."

TXnMA replied: "This scientist's refinement of that statement: 'The less educated someone is the more likely they are to be a 'Young Earth Creationist'"

Or as Gagdad Bob would put it: "Literal Creationists":

"....Antibiotics are effective even for literal creationists. ..." [snip]

<>

"...There are radical secularists just as there are religious fundamentalists, and I certainly belong to neither group. People in my camp (which it should go without saying does not include literal creationists)...."

[Mind-numbed Robot]

Just a quick comment about the term “Old Earth” without chasing down its source. As I understood it when posted it was a question about reconciling the geological information about the age of earth with the Biblical description of creation. It was a scientists asking a theologian.

According to the Biblical description man was the last to be added and the previous creations were sequenced in days. I don’t know what the latest scientific estimation of the earth’s age is but I think it is in the 100s of millions or even billions of years. Regardless, with the concept of eternity in mind, going both backward and forward, how is a billion years any different from a day, even in the horizontal realm? Each would just be specs on a horizontal timeline and even those would eventually disappear into irrelevance.

To me, that is just another scientific non-starter in the dispute about the presence of God in the creation. Others say not to take Genesis literally, and I don’t, but I think this is just as good an explanation.

With man being created after the table was prepared for him, how is that process any different from the previous miracles of creation? Do we ask how God made light, water, earth, time, space,etc.? The scientific difficulty is in unraveling the system that God created so that we might understand and utilize more of it.

[xzins]

That’s just the kind of post to make me describe myself as a literal creationist. The problem, of course, is that I define “literal” as “literate” instead of as “mindless.”

How in the word literal came to mean “mindless” is beyond me.

So, I am a literate creationist. I read the text literately.

[betty boop]

Dogmatists merely clamp down like a snapping turtle onto their misperceptions, and cling to them, no matter how vigorously truth swirls about them. They are easy to spot: they're the supercilious ones who delight in pointing out how wrong scientists once were — while rejecting their improvements in knowledge.

Beautifully and truly said, dear TXnMA! [Plus a great "turn of phrase."]

The latter observation, re: "the supercilious ones," is particularly galling to me. I see the disparagement of, say, Ptolemy, is fairly routine with some of our correspondents. But just because a man doesn't get everything right doesn't mean he got nothing right. That would be an impossible standard.

Ptolemy's mistakes were the foundation for improvements in knowledge, as man's observational tools improved over time.

It seems to me that, not only do men learn from their mistakes, but that is the only way that human knowledge can really progress.

Of course, this is the problem the dogmatist is trying to obviate by the construction of his dogma. Truth is not something to be discovered; it is something we already have in hand — and our job is to make the natural world (or at least other people) conform to it.

Looks to me like they got the problem exactly bass-ackwards.

I just loved the video! Thank you so very much for the link!

[Don't know why, but in viewing it, an image of the Mandelbrot set came to mind....]

Speaking of worldviews, it seems they basically only come in "two flavors": (1) created universe or eternal universe. Western civilization and culture is premised in the first. The odd thing is it was in the West that the sciences originally developed; yet scientists today — the dogmatic ones anyway — reject any idea of created universe because it implies the existence of God and, more specifically, the idea of Logos....

And so we read all these "eternal universe" scientific cosmologies, by the dozens. All of them are exercises in philosophy, not science. But they are passed on to the public as if they were science.

Please understand, I am not in any way anti-science, I am anti-scientism.

FWIW, to me a simple "proof of the existence of God" is the recognition that a universe that contains intelligent beings cannot have had other than an intelligent Cause. "Things are the way they are, and not some other way" because of this intelligent Cause. Thus it is because of this Cause that the universe is knowable — and man capable of knowing it.

Why do the scientistic dogmatists find this so objectionable? Even they must depend on a knowable universe. Otherwise, science would have nothing to do.

Or might that constitute "proof" that they're not really doing science???

Thank you ever so much, dear brother in Christ, for your outstanding essay/post!

[betty boop]

A key point is that the Absolute does not deny our freedom, but is its first and last guarantor. Once you understand this, then you should immediately understand the danger of the left, which again replaces the Absolute with its own totalistic and coercive philodoxy....

Current dogma holds that all cultures and moral values are conditional, nothing human is innate.... Challenging this position, Gairdner argues that relativism is not only logically and morally self-defeating but that progress in scientific and intellectual disciplines has actually strengthened the case for absolutes, universals, and constants of nature and human nature.

Gairdner refutes the popular belief in cultural relativism by showing that there are hundreds of well-established cross-cultural 'human universals'. He then discusses the many universals found in physics — as well as Einstein's personal regret at how his work was misinterpreted by the public's eagerness to promote relativism....

So, one of the 'paradoxes' (not really, since it makes perfect sense) is that liberal relativism leads to the false absolute that in turn paves the way for totalitarianism in all its guises (eg., political correctness, speech codes, government regulation of "corporate" speech, the monomania of multiculturalism, cultural marxism masquerading as 'diversity,' the harsh intolerance of the tolerance mongers, etc.)....

Here is one thing that puzzles me about our trolls. Let's stipulate that I am indeed a dangerous, deluded, and obnoxious assoul. That being the case, why on earth would you want there to be any possibility of someone like me micromanaging your life? Because it is for the very reason that I regard you as a dangerous, deluded and obnoxious assoul that I don't want you or anyone else micromanaging mine. Is that really so outrageous?

Wonderful, dear Matchett-PI!!! Thank you so very much for posting!

And I just loved this:

Yes, bodily tissue breaks down in order for life to continue, but that is not the purpose of your life. Nor is stupidity the purpose of intelligence, at least outside liberal academia.

:^)

[Todd Kinsey]

My wife has been a NASA contractor most of her career so I’ve seen that before but it’s still amazing. Thanks - TK

[GourmetDan]

" Regardless, with the concept of eternity in mind, going both backward and forward, how is a billion years any different from a day, even in the horizontal realm?"

Well it's those pesky "...and there was evening and morning, Day X..." words in Genesis that is the problem.

"Regardless, with the concept of eternity in mind, going both backward and forward, how is a billion years any different from a day, even in the horizontal realm? Each would just be specs on a horizontal timeline and even those would eventually disappear into irrelevance."

'Old Earth' adherents would like the problem to 'disappear into irrelevance' so that man's word could be reconciled to God's Word; but it is easy to recognize a poor argument. And comparing man's claim of billions of years vs the Biblical claim of ~ 6,000 years with eternity is just a poor argument.

"To me, that is just another scientific non-starter in the dispute about the presence of God in the creation. Others say not to take Genesis literally, and I don’t, but I think this is just as good an explanation."

The real argument is Biblical accuracy vs the accuracy of the word of men and, as the Word says, "Let God be true and every man a liar."

[GourmetDan]

" Regardless, with the concept of eternity in mind, going both backward and forward, how is a billion years any different from a day, even in the horizontal realm?"

Well it's those pesky "...and there was evening and morning, Day X..." words in Genesis that is the problem.

"Regardless, with the concept of eternity in mind, going both backward and forward, how is a billion years any different from a day, even in the horizontal realm? Each would just be specs on a horizontal timeline and even those would eventually disappear into irrelevance."

'Old Earth' adherents would like the problem to 'disappear into irrelevance' so that man's word could be reconciled to God's Word; but it is easy to recognize a poor argument. And comparing man's claim of billions of years vs the Biblical claim of ~ 6,000 years with eternity is just a poor argument.

"To me, that is just another scientific non-starter in the dispute about the presence of God in the creation. Others say not to take Genesis literally, and I don’t, but I think this is just as good an explanation."

The real argument is Biblical accuracy vs the accuracy of the word of men and, as the Word says, "Let God be true and every man a liar."

[TXnMA]

"My wife has been a NASA contractor most of her career so I’ve seen that before but it’s still amazing. Thanks - TK"

~~~~~~~~

I have tried to imagine the reaction of the human who recorded Genesis to that movie - and my imagination totally fails.

1. Even the opening scene -- with HST in orbit above the round earth -- would have been totally incomprehensible to him.

2. From his location in the Middle East, he could have seen no more than two galaxies (M31 and our own Milky Way, "from the insde out") with his unaided eyes

3. His world-view and language simply had no concept of (or word[s] for), "galaxy"...

Yet, fundamentalists still insist that Genesis provides a description of Creation (when timelined by Bishop Ussher) that is totally adequate for interpreting the universe and timescales we now are able to see and measure...

I am a scientist -- and a Christian, and a believer in the truth of Genesis. But I do not see any merit or piety in insisting that Genesis be considered a science textbook.

[TXnMA]

"Well it's those pesky "...and there was evening and morning, Day X..." words in Genesis that is the problem."

Those are God's "yoms" (not man's) in Genesis.

~~~~~~~~~

You posted your 493/494 while I was composing my # 495 -- otherwise, I would have included you in its ping list.

Please watch this movie linked therein.

Then, please explain to all of us what authority, hubris, piety, or sinfulness qualifies you to insist that the "yoms" of the God who created what you see in that movie -- must be timed by the rotation rate of this third-rate ball of mud, circling a second-rate sun, out on the fringes of our ordinary galaxy (among untold billions of galaxies). [A ball of mud that He created, BTW...]

IOW, who told you that you have the right to "set the clock of" our eternal, immortal, timeless, omnipresent, omnipotent Creator?

IMHO, if you believe you have that right, then your concept of our God is immeasurably too small.

[TXnMA]

"Well it's those pesky "...and there was evening and morning, Day X..." words in Genesis that is the problem."

Those are God's "yoms" (not man's) in Genesis.

~~~~~~~~~

You posted your 493/494 while I was composing my # 495 -- otherwise, I would have included you in its ping list.

Please watch this movie linked therein.

Then, please explain to all of us what authority, hubris, piety, or sinfulness qualifies you to insist that the "yoms" of the God who created what you see in that movie -- must be timed by the rotation rate of this third-rate ball of mud, circling a second-rate sun, out on the fringes of our ordinary galaxy (among untold billions of galaxies). [A ball of mud that He created, BTW...]

IOW, who told you that you have the right to "set the clock of" our eternal, immortal, timeless, omnipresent, omnipotent Creator?

IMHO, if you believe you have that right, then your concept of our God is immeasurably too small.

[Agamemnon]

Looks like I get to join the discussion for Chengdu, CHINA today.

"... Then, please explain to all of us what authority, hubris, piety, or sinfulness qualifies you to insist that the "yoms" of the God who created what you see in that movie -- must be timed by the rotation rate of this third-rate ball of mud, circling a second-rate sun."

Let's just state for the record that you or someone else created your little movie clip. What an illusion of "creation" of anything cinematography is! Talk about hubris: Neither you nor the guy sitting in the director's chair with the beret, sun-glasses and megaphone were there at the Creation of the Universe either. Movie - schmoovee. Take 5.

Is the finger of God writing completely at His will and at His volition, nay, His own "hubris" and "piety" -- as you termed it -- somehow just not good enough for you? ("And he gave unto Moses, when he had made an end of communing with him upon mount Sinai, two tables of testimony, tables of stone, written with the finger of God." Exodus 31:18)

"For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth the sea and all that in them is and rested the seventh day wherefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day."

You fail to recognize the perspective of the inscribing Author of the Ten Commandments, themselves there, little man.

FReegards!

[GourmetDan]

"Those are God's "yoms" (not man's) in Genesis."

IMHO the text uses "...and there was evening and morning, Day X..." to invalidate that very claim. Not that it has ever stopped anyone who arrogantly wanted to re-define God's Word from doing so. Not from the beginning when the father of lies told the first lie, "Did God really say...?".

Of course, my post 479 said, "Nothing is unreasonable or impossible except a literal interpretation of Genesis..."

We are seeing the proof of that statement in your posts.

"You posted your 493/494 while I was composing my # 495 -- otherwise, I would have included you in its ping list."

Oh well, that makes ALL the difference. LOL!

"Please watch this movie linked therein."

Oh, I see. The universe is really, really, really big so we know the Bible is wrong. The only thing that is really apparent from your movie is the degree of credulity that is necessary to accept it as 'truth'.

"Then, please explain to all of us..."

Oh pardon me. I did not realize that you spoke for everyone. The drama simply reeks.

"...what authority, hubris, piety, or sinfulness qualifies you to insist that the "yoms" of the God who created what you see in that movie -- must be timed by the rotation rate of this third-rate ball of mud, circling a second-rate sun, out on the fringes of our ordinary galaxy (among untold billions of galaxies). [A ball of mud that He created, BTW...]"

Simply the authority of Scripture in which the God I serve is able to accurately describe His works of creation. Evidently your god is so small the he is unable to communicate effectively but needs the word of men to speak for him. And you apparently feel well-qualified to speak to me about 'authority, hubris, piety, and sinfulness'. I suppose that you must have more experience with that than I do.

My God who, btw, does not reckon the Earth to be a 'third-rate ball of mud, circling a second-rate sun, out on the fringes of an ordinary galaxy among untold billions of galaxies'. The God I serve reckons the inhabitants of the Earth to be the primary focus of creation and redemption who are worth the life of His Only Begotten Son.

And the sheer number of assumptions that underly your 'movie' is staggering. Any one which that is incorrect simply obliterates the whole story. But such is the 'authority' of the words of men.

"IOW, who told you that you have the right to "set the clock of" our eternal, immortal, timeless, omnipresent, omnipotent Creator?"

Of course, you simply beg the question when you assume that I am the one who has done what you claim and not you yourself. Should I be impressed with your use of logical fallacy? Is that what passes for sound argument in your experience?

"IMHO, if you believe you have that right, then your concept of our God is immeasurably too small."

And IMHO, John 8:43-45 applies here.

[TXnMA]

"And comparing man's claim of billions of years vs the Biblical claim of ~ 6,000 years with eternity is just a poor argument."

~~~~~~~~~~

Actually, the Bible makes no such claim. That age is the spawn of man -- not of God. Specifically, it was this chap

who, ca 1658 wrote this jewel of logic:

For as much as our Christian epoch falls many ages after the beginning of the world, and the number of years before that backward is not only more troublesome, but (unless greater care be taken) more lyable to errour; also it hath pleased our modern chronologers, to adde to that generally received hypothesis (which asserted the Julian years, with their three cycles by a certain mathematical prolepsis, to have run down to the very beginning of the world) an artificial epoch, framed out of three cycles multiplied in themselves; for the Solar Cicle being multiplied by the Lunar, or the number of 28 by 19, produces the great Paschal Cycle of 532 years, and that again multiplied by fifteen, the number of the indiction, there arises the period of 7980 years, which was first (if I mistake not) observed by Robert Lotharing, Bishop of Hereford, in our island of Britain, and 500 years after by Joseph Scaliger fitted for chronological uses, and called by the name of the Julian Period, because it conteined a cycle of so many Julian years. Now if the series of the three minor cicles be from this present year extended backward unto precedent times, the 4713 years before the beginning of our Christian account will be found to be that year into which the first year of the indiction, the first of the Lunar Cicle, and the first of the Solar will fall. Having placed there fore the heads of this period in the kalends of January in that proleptick year, the first of our Christian vulgar account must be reckoned the 4714 of the Julian Period, which, being divided by 15. 19. 28. will present us with the 4 Roman indiction, the 2 Lunar Cycle, and the 10 Solar, which are the principal characters of that year.

We find moreover that the year of our fore-fathers, and the years of the ancient Egyptians and Hebrews were of the same quantity with the Julian, consisting of twelve equal moneths, every of them conteining 30 days, (for it cannot be proved that the Hebrews did use lunary moneths before the Babylonian Captivity) adjoying to the end of the twelfth moneth, the addition of five dayes, and every four year six. And I have observed by the continued succession of these years, as they are delivered in holy writ, that the end of the great Nebuchadnezars and the beginning of Evilmerodachs (his sons) reign, fell out in the 3442 year of the world, but by collation of Chaldean history and the astronomical cannon, it fell out in the 186 year c Nabonasar, and, as by certain connexion, it must follow in the 562 year before the Christian account, and of the Julian Period, the 4152. and from thence I gathered the creation of the world did fall out upon the 710 year of the Julian Period, by placing its beginning in autumn: but for as much as the first day of the world began with the evening of the first day of the week, I have observed that the Sunday, which in the year 710 aforesaid came nearest the Autumnal Æquinox, by astronomical tables (notwithstanding the stay of the sun in the dayes of Joshua, and the going back of it in the dayes c Ezekiah) happened upon the 23 day of the Julian October; from thence concluded that from the evening preceding that first day of the Julian year, both the first day of the creation and the first motion of time are to be deduced.

— J. Ussher, The Annals of the World iv (1658)

Even so, Ussher himself claimed that Genesis was inadequate to his his task, so he depended on five other "authorities" in determining his ca 6,000-year age of Creation...

Scripture had very little to do with that number; Please don't blame God for it.