Evolution vs. Creation Debate in Tucson, Arizona May 10

Calvery Chapel Tucson and Fellowship of Christian Athletes ^ | May 10, 2003 | Fellowship of Christian Athletes

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Saturday May 10, 2003

All Saturday meetings except the debate will be held at Calvary Tucson’s East Campus 8725 E. Speedway Blvd.

9:00 AM “Origins of Life and the Universe” . . . . .Hank Giesecke

10:00 AM “Fifty Facts Why Evolution Doesn’t Work” . . . .Russell Miller

11:00 AM Lunch

1:00 PM “Age of the Earth, and Intelligent Design” . . . .Hank Hiesecke

2:00 PM “Data from Mt. Saint Helens” . . . . .Russell Miller

3:00 PM Break

4:30 PM Dinner available at U of A’s McKale Center

6:00 PM Debate at University of Arizona McKale Center “Alternative World Views: Evolution and Creation”
Dr. Duane Gish and Professor Peter Sherman

Sunday May 11, 2003
Calvary Tucson East Campus
8:00 and 10:20 AM “Take Creation Captive”.......Hank Giesecke

Calvary Tucson West Campus
9:10 and 11:30 AM “Creation or Chaos”......Dr. John Meyer

Calvary Tucson East Campus
6:00 PM “Why 600 Scientists Reject Evolution” ......Dr. John Meyer

[whattajoke]

Yes, again, SLP, give us something re atlaws post up top (303, i believe).

You made a bold, potentially groundbreaking, assertion... one which could end up seeing grant money and Time Covers.

Please, back it up.

[Stop Legal Plunder]

Evolution contributed to a paradigm shift but it is not, in and of itself, a worldview.

The title of the debate announcement that prompted this thread is "Alternative Worldviews: Evolution and Creation." You may wish to limit evolution to biology, but few others do.

I don't know the "USENET kook" Jabriol, but I also don't see you refuting what he said. Tell me, what is wrong with rape, from the evolutionary perspective? And if you decline to answer that, then please tell me why you believe rape is wrong, and not just illegal.

[Dataman]

Your point is?

You guys kill me. You ask for evidence, you are supplied with it and your response is, "SO?!"

Is it that you don't understand the text or is that just your standard response to material you cannot address?

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you so much for linking to the Origins thread! And thanks for the heads up!

[Dimensio]

Tell me, what is wrong with rape, from the evolutionary perspective?

Evolution is not a system of ethics nor a direct means of deriving ethics, so rape is neither right nor wrong according to evolution (it is also neither right nor wrong according to gravitational theory). Evolution describes what is, not what 'should be', not 'what we should do' and not 'what is right'. Evolution describes a process, it's not a guide for living our lives. His "argument", if you could call it that, was that rapists were just acting out their natural urge to procreate and pass on their genes, and thus that made it "right" according to evolution. It has been explained to him that evolution does not define "right and wrong" and it has also been explained that if a rapist is caught and sent to prison that he will have a very small chance of ever reproducing again, but he deliberately ignores anything that refutes his garbage, because he's too much of a coward to address criticism.

I believe rape to be wrong because it is something that I would not done to myself or to people for whom I have affection. As such, I support societial rules that prohibit and punish rape, for they provide a direct benefit to me. True, such rules means that I would face punishment should I wish to rape another, but I'm willing to accept the tradeoff because of the gains for me and the fact that I really don't want to rape anyone. Were I so inclined with such desires, I would be forced to weigh my desire to commit rape with the fear of possible punishment and the desire to avoid such punishment.

[f.Christian]

You're missing the point. The whole idea of individual liberty is rooted in rebellion, in the idea that "No one has the right to tell me what to do!". Evil began when Lucifer cried out his eternal non serviam to God in Heaven, and to this day human beings follow in his footsteps, refusing to submit their own wills to any authority.

Rebellion is pandemic in our society; everywhere, people cry out for freedom from Church, State, parents, teachers, or anything else that denies them the satiation of the senses or the deification of the Self. The worship of the goddess Liberty has become our national cult; piety towards our Creator and loyalty towards our ancestors (i.e. traditionalism) have been cast aside by our culture. Confronted with the majesty of God and His Law, we turn instead to the worship of the golden calf of that makes us happy -- our own selves. But there is no happiness there. There is no freedom there. There is only us, enslaved to our nerve endings for all eternity.

The freedom promised by this world is an illusion. Every man who "liberates" himselves from the Yoke of God only ... chains himself --- to the millstone of his own desires. The way of Self, as both Our Lord and the Buddha pointed out, is the most abject slavery of all. Only by dying to Self -- by renouncing the illusion of individual liberty and submitting our wills to God -- can we hope to live. In a very real sense, the only way to be free is to become a slave of Christ. "He that loses his life for My sake shall find it."

Only by acknowledging Jesus Christ as our LORD -- not our buddy or our peer but as our absolute Master -- can we ever be free. Christianity is a religion of humilty, not pride; of submission, not of independence. Only by throwing away our pride, by humbling ourselves before God and the authorities he institutes here on Earth (even when it hurts!), and by dedicating ourselves to obedience, order, and our duty can we ever cast of the shackles of unquenchable desire and truly be free.

"Where the Spirit of the LORD is, there is liberty."

23 posted on 05/01/2003 1:40 PM PDT by B-Chan (Catholic. Monarchist. Texan. Any questions?)

[Dataman]

I observe that the root of most blind devotion to evolutionism, particularly in those who feel compelled always to reply with quickdraw bile to even the suggestion of anything like Biblical creationism, in unthinking post after unthinking post, is moral and spiritual, not intellectual.

Well said and very true.

[exmarine]

This is hilarious - the debate isn't till May 10 and this thread has grown to 348 posts on sheer animus alone! ROFL.

[BibChr]

What do you mean by "good"?

Dan

[Stop Legal Plunder]

I believe rape to be wrong because it is something that I would not done to myself or to people for whom I have affection.

So for you morality is self-referential. It's immoral if it makes you uncomfortable directly or by doing so to those for whom you have affection. What, then, do you say to sadomasochists? They can turture others without violating your standard above.

As such, I support societial rules that prohibit and punish rape, for they provide a direct benefit to me.

How selfish and presumptuous! Who are you to impose your morality on someone else? What if I worship the Hindi god Kali and show my devotion through ritual killings? Your concept of morality cannot logically say mine is wrong. It also cannot logically say that Saddam's ethics is wrong.

True, such rules means that I would face punishment should I wish to rape another, but I'm willing to accept the tradeoff because of the gains for me and the fact that I really don't want to rape anyone.Were I so inclined with such desires, I would be forced to weigh my desire to commit rape with the fear of possible punishment and the desire to avoid such punishment.

This view is commonly known, and rejected, as "might makes right." The powerful are above the law, because they can escape the penalties, but the rest must submit because the rulers of the state can make them. This is ethics devoid of ethics and reduced to power. You might not choose to exercise the power in a manner akin to people like Saddam and Stalin, but their behavior is consistent with your standard. Which, incidentally, is consistent with the claimed biological mechanism of "survival of the fittest."

[f.Christian]

To: f.Christian

I've struggled with this for years. First being fully indoctrinated on young earth creationism (before it had that name), then being fully indoctrinated with evolutionary naturalism.

Never have fully sorted it out, but I have reached a few conclusions.

I. The Bible is open to some limited interpretation. Day-age, for starters. Which hebrew words are used for "made"? For that matter, look at what leading Jewish theologians say about it, its vastly different that what they teach in mainstream protestant sunday school.

II. Science itself is not anti-God. It is a study of that which God has made, and can provide a multitude of lessons about the nature of God.

III. Science is limited to naturalistic assumptions. Meaning, being based on repeatable experiments, it [i]a priori[/i] excludes the miraculous. Some misunderstand this and conclude miracles are impossible. No, they are just not subject to investigation by science, because they are by their very nature non-natural, non-repeatable.

IV. The Theory of Evolution is a mixture of good and bad science, and advocated zealously by the naturalists. The naturalists seem to think that the T-of-E removes the need for a God. Ignoring the whole question of where did the universe come from in the first place.

V. The two single biggest problems for the T-of-E are macroevolution and abiogenesis.

A) Abiogenesis, that life arose from inorganic material, is, scientifically, a discipline in shambles. A lot of time and energy spent, a lot of speculations made, and so far, nothing but some impossible speculations to show for it.

Oddly ... the impossibilities are suppressed --- the cleverness of the speculation trumpeted, and in some quarters people think its already proven.

B) Macro-evolution - perhaps a bad term. I mean to say, descent with change is proven - children differ from their parents, over time this can lead to changes in a species.

But, the assumption or speculation that this accounts for the grand diveristy of all life on the planet has not been proven, and in fact, scientifically, is a huge and largely unsupported leap. Put another way: the fossil record supports this theory very poorly.

7 posted on 04/28/2003 8:03 AM PDT by FactQuest

[whattajoke]

and you, of course, would be out raping people were it not for your christianity?

I contend that I therefore must be more "moral" than you simply because I have never committed a crime, and yet I'm not living a life in fear of supernatural reprisal.

hmm, I like that.

[Right Wing Professor]

Now you've done it.

(Entering academic bore mode)

It's actually 'bated breath' (nearly everyone, including the NY Times, gets the spelling wrong). 'Bated' is an archaic form of 'abated'. 'With bated breath' is therefore equivalent to 'Holding one's breath'.

Having said that, I prefer the sushi explanation (post 334)

[whattajoke]

You guys kill me. You ask for evidence, you are supplied with it and your response is, "SO?!" Is it that you don't understand the text or is that just your standard response to material you cannot address?

I don't understand the text (post 322). You caught me. First, please notice your post was to a fellow creationist, not to a non-creationist, so the lack of response could be due to that... Also, please note that posting 2 paragraphs from a book does not exactly stand up to the rigors of scientific, or historical proof.

OR, perhaps it's due to an exhaustive google search on your source got me exactly nowhere. Of the several books on Amazon with that title, none are published or written by Silver and Burdett. None go past 700 pages to your cited "page 710." But I did find some interesting things. To wit:

Silver Burdett is indeed a publishing house of elementary and middle school textbooks, so it's very possible that I missed the one you cited. NOTE TO LURKERS: I am fully allowing that this book with this passage may very well exist, I just simply didn't find it. Actually, I expect that it does indeed exist.

However, making matters murkier, it appears quite clear that Silver Burdett, an arm of the Scott Forsman Publishing company, is more or less the Christian publishing wing. "Silver Burdett Ginn Religion" is one of the monikers they use. Which is perfectly fine... until they try to get their worldview into public schools. I happened to find this review of another one of their social studies books. Derive from it what you wish:

This one has various passages in which the writers obscure or erase the distinction between history and legend, between fact and folklore. For example:

On page 52 the writers conflate myth and legend with oral history, and in their glossary they do it again: They claim that oral history means "The history or traditions of a people handed down from one generation to another by word of mouth." That is just false; the writers have applied the name oral history to folklore. Oral history is, by definition, a record of a person's oral account of his own observations or experiences -- his account of things that he himself saw or did. It isn't a recitation of a creation myth, a fairy tale, a traditional belief, a traveling-salesman joke, or any other kind of hearsay. Nor is there any oral history "of a people." An item of oral history can only be ascribed (and indeed must be ascribed) to a discrete, identified individual.

On page 154, at the beginning of an effort to promote Christian religious beliefs as historical facts, the writers declare that "Practically all that is known about Jesus" comes from "four books called the Gospels, or `Good News'." Then the writers summarize several Gospel narratives, including the ones in which "Jesus rose from the dead [three days after he was crucified], appeared to his followers, and told them to preach his message to all the world" -- as if those miracle-stories present things that are "known" and factual! What an abomination! By falsely representing the Gospels as historical documents, and by concealing everything that New Testament scholars have learned about the Gospels during the past 100 years, the Silver Burdett Ginn writers have made their purposes unmistakable.

In their zeal to preach, the writers present as fact a miracle-story that was set forth by the 4th-century Christian writer Eusebius; it is the notorious story in which Eusebius claimed that the emperor Constantine had told him about a "vision" of a flaming cross in the sky. The Silver Burdett Ginn writers explicitly refer to Constantine's vision as a historical "event," and they characterize Eusebius as a "Roman historian" (without disclosing that he was one of Constantine's sycophants). Worst of all, they omit the most memorable aspect of Eusebius's narrative, which is this: Eusebius himself recognized that his cross-in-the-sky story was lame, so he tried to prop it up with a line that only a sycophant and apologist could write --

If anyone else reported [seeing a miraculous sign in the sky] it would not be easy to believe, but when the victorious emperor himself confirmed it on oath in writing to the author of this narrative many years later when I was judged worthy of his acquaintance and conversation, who would hesitate to credit the story?

I would answer: Nearly everyone, excepting the hopelessly credulous.

So much for Eusebius -- and so much for the Silver Burdett Ginn missionaries. So much for World Cultures, too. This book is a mockery, in every sense.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

William J. Bennetta is a professional editor, a fellow of the California Academy of Sciences, the president of The Textbook League, and the editor of The Textbook Letter. He writes frequently about the propagation of quackery, false "science" and false "history" in schoolbooks.

[whattajoke]

re: "bated breath"

just wanted to thank you for making me that much smarter today... There are many of these types of sayings that people constantly get wrong, usually only verbally though. There is an epidemic of coworkers saying/writing, "mute" instead of "moot" and I'm waiting for Webster's to add, "nother" to the lexicon instead of "another." (not exactly the same, but still...)

"Baited" breath sort of makes sense in that when something is "baited" they are expectantly waiting, in a way. As for the correct, "bated," I'll ignore the obvious Onan reference.

[balrog666]

Of course, I find it interesting that most creationists only present their version of Creationism as a possible alternative to evolution, even though there have been hundreds, if not thousands, of creation stories throughout human history. Why is yours so special that it receives exclusive consideration?

They translated it into English. Maybe that makes it "special".

[BMCDA]

Déjà-vu placemarker

[Right Wing Professor]

As for the correct, "bated," I'll ignore the obvious Onan reference.

You ignored it quite masterfully :-)

[Saturnalia]

Velivosky was right!

/injecting even MORE stupidity into this thread

Ha, I want to see you creationists and "scientists" disprove Last Thursdayism! You can't, can you? I win!

[Dimensio]

and you, of course, would be out raping people were it not for your christianity?

This does seem a bit inflammatory, but at least one FReeper has admitted that without their religion they would be a murderous psychopath.