Free Republic
Browse · Search
Bloggers & Personal
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

How 19-year-old activist Zack Kopplin is making life hell for Louisiana’s creationists
io9 ^ | January 15, 2013 | George Dvorsky

Posted on 01/16/2013 4:41:13 PM PST by EveningStar

click here to read article


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-2021-4041-6061-80 ... 261-267 next last
To: allmendream; All
Science is not at all in conflict with my Christian faith, neither does it conflict with the faith of most Christians who have no use for creationism.

A foundational Christian belief (indeed of all traditional Monotheists) is expressed in the Apostles Creed, which begins: I believe in God, the Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth.

This affirmation of God as Creator is repeated in subsequent doctrinal formulations which are accepted by all Christian churches, such as the Nicene Creed:

We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of all things visible and invisible.

It is the duty of anyone who claims to be a Christian to affirm the fundamental belief in God as Creator. Granted, the creative process is shrouded in mystery, and surely transcends human comprehension. However, whatever their belief in the development of species, Christians are bound to affirm God as Creator.

Those who claim to be both Christians and evolutionists might want to consider Francis Schaeffer's "Ghost in the Machine" analogy:

Suppose someone who is given to myths and superstitions insists that the clock in the tower above the town square is actually powered by ghostly figures. To which a rational person would respond: "Any sane person can see that the clock is operated by a nuts & bolts mechanism of gears and levers. You are free to believe it is due to some mystical 'power,' but it is quite certain that your superstition is utterly superfluous." I.e., the clock works perfectly well without an imagined "ghostly presence."

Likewise, Christian evolutionists may insist that some unseen Divine power lies behind the process of evolution, to which evolutionists respond: "The mechanisms of evolution are well-established and fully explicate the existence of the universe and all that is in it without resorting to some invisible mystical force."

The term "affirm" is important - and quite revealing: you who are so quick to defend the Infallibility of scientists and to "affirm" the theory of Evolution, are you also as ready to affirm the historic Christian belief in God as Creator?

41 posted on 01/16/2013 5:57:39 PM PST by tjd1454
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 19 | View Replies]

To: Rightwing Conspiratr1
"{Creationism is only a prominent belief in America among the less educated and in Muslim nations."

The most destructive people in America, and in the world today, are the supposedly "educated". It ain't that they don't know nuthin', it's that what they "know' just ain't so. They think they know everything, like our "Demander 'n Chief".

Those who pose the greatest threat to the world at this time are "intellectuals" who are overloaded with false "facts" and "knowledge", often in the guise of science. They are followed by those who are almost void of knowledge altogether.

42 posted on 01/16/2013 6:05:02 PM PST by inpajamas (http://outskirtspress.com/ONE)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 38 | View Replies]

To: YHAOS

[ They are at it again Beep! ]

Even the stupid qualify for redemption...
You need not be smart to be redeemed..

The redemption lottery can be laughed by “WINNERS”...
Throwing their ticket into the trash..

When they find out what they did with their ticket..
Mentally..... “it” might seem like a lake of fire.. (to them)..

“IT”, what is the IT?... AH!..its the stuff dreams are made of...
I will cover that next week in a symposium.. for those stupid enough to attend..


43 posted on 01/16/2013 6:08:06 PM PST by hosepipe (This propaganda has been edited to include some fully orbed hyperbole..)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 40 | View Replies]

To: allmendream
Scientists have conveniently defined Evolution as "the stuff I see" so that they can say "I win". Sorry it's not really like that.

Bacteria becoming resistant to penicillin? Not interesting.
Fruit fly developing different wings? Big yawn.

Show me a reptile becoming a mammal.

Evolution says that animals of one Class can become members of a different Class. Show me that. Go into a lab and get it up as a demonstration. But you can't do that, can you? All you have is Faith that at one point, things like that happened. Just not lately.

44 posted on 01/16/2013 6:09:04 PM PST by ClearCase_guy (Nothing will change until after the war.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 39 | View Replies]

To: CIDKauf; allmendream; All
Our limited minds cannot grasp the mysterious force that moves the constellations. Albert Einstein (1929)

Scientific rationalists (and their supine "Christian evolutionist" lackeys) are guilty of a stunning arrogance and hubris, full of unquestioning faith in their own Dogmas, imagining that with their finite, limited minds, on this speck of dust on the edges of one of billions of galaxies, they have solved the Mysteries of the Universe...

45 posted on 01/16/2013 6:10:55 PM PST by tjd1454
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 36 | View Replies]

To: EveningStar

I see absolutely no conflict between the reality of God’s creation and the scientific truth of the big bang. I find nothing more awe inspiring than the thought of God saying ‘Let there be light’ and the universe appearing before him from nothing.
I see absolutely no problem with God-directed evolution.


46 posted on 01/16/2013 6:11:37 PM PST by HogsBreath
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: ClearCase_guy
I think that the way that particular evolutionist religion works can be sumnmed up as:

"There is no god but the failed theology student Charles Darwin and Stephen Hawking is his prophet (or profit) or whatever." Many of them also believe in "global warming" or "global climate change" or whatever this week's pc term for climate bullshit may be.

47 posted on 01/16/2013 6:12:18 PM PST by BlackElk (Dean of Discipline, Tomas de Torquemada Gentlemen's Society. Broil 'em now!!!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 30 | View Replies]

To: GreenHornet

Yep. On the right, the liberals call it “extremism”. On the left, they’re called “activists”. - Bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha! (laughter to keep from busting).

For the purposes of Obama’s gun grab, if you’re Tea Party, you’ll be labeled an “extremist” by Holder, and, as such, you’ll be disallowed a gun. The “Occupy Crowd” will probably be issued firearms due to their “exemplary” behavior.

The fool has said in his heart, “There is no God.” - So, I no longer argue with them. It’s a waste of time, and it makes the piggys mad besides.


48 posted on 01/16/2013 6:13:45 PM PST by Twinkie (JOHN 3:16)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 14 | View Replies]

To: Repeat Offender
>> So is evolution. At least there are witnesses to mine. <<

Evolution is not a religious belief, it is a theory based on evidence and observation. If that makes it a "religious belief", then the theory of gravity is a "religion" too. I have not seen one study on world religions ever list "Evolutionism" as a religious belief.

49 posted on 01/16/2013 6:21:57 PM PST by BillyBoy ( Impeach Obama? Yes We Can!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 27 | View Replies]

To: tjd1454

“Many hold tenaciously to a strange view that theism is by definition excluded by science. Such a position is not logical, since theism or atheism is a product of one’s assumptions. I unashambly start not only from a theist position, which rather than be contradicted by my scientific enquiries, is confirmed by them, but also recognize that God can reveal himself to us, and this I believe He has done in Jesus Christ.” Andrew McIntosh


50 posted on 01/16/2013 6:30:34 PM PST by CIDKauf (No man has a good enough memory to be a successful liar.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 45 | View Replies]

To: EveningStar

someone please tell me where the edge of space is located then explain what lies beyond that and beyond that?

I almost believe we are in a Matrix type world.

Watching a two hour program on space on PBS really screwed with my head man and I’m a bible believing Christian.


51 posted on 01/16/2013 6:32:01 PM PST by Hammerhead
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: allmendream
That is not evolution, the bacteria did not become a different species. Unless you are one of those people who use evolution for every possible fluctuation in species population. Micro-evolution is the change in population density (Kettlewells moths); macro-evolution is the change of one species to another (different DNA). All you are doing in your experiment is changing the population density, not the population.
52 posted on 01/16/2013 6:33:42 PM PST by wbarmy (I chose to be a sheepdog once I saw what happens to the sheep.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 39 | View Replies]

To: inpajamas
Those who pose the greatest threat to the world at this time are "intellectuals" who are overloaded with false "facts" and "knowledge", often in the guise of science.

Most creationists I know are quite comfortable with the observable science of genetics. The fiction that creationists make inferior doctors, genetic researchers, and scientists is something espoused by the more radical and idiotic "intellectuals". Speciation, abiogenesis and many other theories that come under the rubrick of evolution are NOT facts, have not been demonstrated or tested.

53 posted on 01/16/2013 6:39:31 PM PST by Rightwing Conspiratr1
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 42 | View Replies]

To: BillyBoy
then the theory of gravity

There's a reason it is called the LAW of Gravity. Gravity has been proven. Evolution has not. Evolution is a theory; gravity is a law. Gravity can be prove without faith in it; evolution cannot.

What definitive evidence is there evolution exists? Where are the fossils definitively linking monkeys to man or dinosaurs to chickens? It seems in every instance there is a missing link? How is an eye created, or what makes an eye even work. Where are the animals with precursors to eyes so we can see what came before the eye?

Where are the fossils of cats with wings? Where is the evidence life can be created from randomly exploding matter ala Big Bang?

Isn't natural selection and survival of the fittest the underlying current of evolution? I find it laughable one could believe that all of these things happen to come about perfect and right each and every time without Divine intervention. Probability would indicate that at least once we would find some developed species like a dog with gills, or even the fossils of a failed species of like nature. There is no evidence or observation of such.....it is blind faith evolution must be so.

54 posted on 01/16/2013 6:40:08 PM PST by Repeat Offender (What good are conservative principles if we don't stand by them?)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 49 | View Replies]

To: wbarmy
Not all evolution leads to speciation.

Evolution is defined as a change in the DNA of a population.

And the DNA of the population in the experiment I set up does change. DNA for proteins vulnerable to heat change to make proteins that are heat resistant all across the bacterial genome. That is evolution.

When I started out all ten plates had the same DNA from the same ONE bacterium, after I finish I would have ten distinct subpopulatins with new and novel DNA configurations that make them resistant to the stress I subjected them to.

55 posted on 01/16/2013 6:42:40 PM PST by allmendream (Tea Party did not send GOP to D.C. to negotiate the terms of our surrender to socialism)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 52 | View Replies]

To: ClearCase_guy

There is also evidence that it happened that way. A model whereby it happened that way is useful and predictive.

An assumption that it happened by miraculous means is useless in terms of explanation and prediction.

Science is of use.

Creationism is useless.


56 posted on 01/16/2013 6:46:04 PM PST by allmendream (Tea Party did not send GOP to D.C. to negotiate the terms of our surrender to socialism)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 44 | View Replies]

To: allmendream

>> Creationism is useless.

What if the world really WAS created by a Creator?

Would Creationism then be useless? Or would it be descriptive?


57 posted on 01/16/2013 6:50:47 PM PST by Nervous Tick (Without GOD, men get what they deserve.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 2 | View Replies]

To: allmendream
Science is of use.
Creationism is useless.

Again, this is just an article of Faith. I know that science is of use. But only a committed aetheist says that "Creationism is useless". Your materialist religion does not sit comfortably with the Christian religion -- so you say that Creationism is useless. But followers of Christianity find that the salvation of their soul to be a useful goal, and we see that Creationism can be a part in that journey. Your religion does not require it, and so for you it is useless. But it is not useless for everyone. You have a narrow, materialistic view -- which is fine for you, but you seem to feel that no other views have anything to offer. That's just bigotry.

58 posted on 01/16/2013 6:56:33 PM PST by ClearCase_guy (Nothing will change until after the war.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 56 | View Replies]

To: kearnyirish2
Now that doesn’t sound very scientific, does it?

It does to me! Do you know that Wolfgang Pauli went off the deep end late in his career? ( He died at 58, so it wasn't a case of feeblemindedness. ) He was the most brilliant of the brilliant, and it's as though he felt he had conquered the mystery of matter, and was ready to take on existence itself. I guess you could say he foundered in these waters, but his ideas still persist, as witness this 2007 conference on Wolfgang Pauli’s Philosophical Ideas and Contemporary Science. Also note, as per Wikipedia, he was a critic of evolutionary biology! Pauli!

59 posted on 01/16/2013 7:03:00 PM PST by dr_lew
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 29 | View Replies]

To: EveningStar

Some of the most accomplished scientists of my personal acquaintance, respected, published, peer-reviewed and published, one a leaders of research in a land grant college, are creationists, if for no reason other than that which seems utterly impossible may well be just that.
They do not publish their unorthodox convictions, of course, inasmuch as closed minded evolutionists control the gates to tenure.
There remains a very large, multimillion dollar reward, unclaimed, for a proof that that which we call life could have spontaneously arisen from non-life. We see evolutionary changes occurring, but none producing wholly new species, and none breaching the limits of the genetic information already available.
A bald assertion does not to me constitute proof that life was initiated by evolutionary modifications of non-living material. Believing that RNA and DNA molecules assembled themselves, or that mindless forces did the job, is simply too much for me to swallow.


60 posted on 01/16/2013 7:04:22 PM PST by Elsiejay
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-2021-4041-6061-80 ... 261-267 next last

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
Bloggers & Personal
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson