Posted on 06/20/2007 5:24:39 AM PDT by spirited irish
Because trashing one's opponent is easier than engaging his arguments. This is the standard Neo-Darwinist M.O. from what I can tell.
Thanks for your kind words, .30carbine!
IMHO, in the context of the discussion at hand, it tells us that belief in creationism, in and of itself, cannot be held to be a moral indicator.
js said..I’m merely curious about the former screen name of lifebygrace. People have posted here for years without figuring out how to address a post to no one.
Irish-—And did it take years for you to “figure out how to address a post to no one?” My oh my! What an achievement! (sarc)
Turn off your ‘suspicion radar’-—paranoia is not a pretty sight.
Wielding the broad brush today?
For goodness sake. Let it go. I have no former screen name, and how I posted without pinging anyone really isn’t that great mystery. Nor is it really that big of an issue.
Metmom: Thanks for your comment on my post regarding science. The point that I was trying to make is that people often set up an offense/defense against God by pointing to science.
People say things like: “Science is a great unifier...science is a revealer of truth...science requires humility and discipline... and so on.” If you read carefully the language that they use in describing the ability of science to reveal truth, it becomes clear that they are really rejecting God by setting up science itself as a sort of...god.
Sometimes people do this knowingly...but more often, people do this without realizing it. Even Christians — and for Christians, that’s a real snake in the grass.
I was merely cautioning people — from the perspective of one who has several years of experience inside of academia, and in particular the fields of biogeography, ecology, and geography — that the real practice of science in the United States and indeed around the world is far more pedestrian and that it really ought not be placed up on a pedestal — and evolution, in particular, doesn’t belong up there either.
God is truly great, you know...He is capable of accounting for every one of the questions “science” (and, let’s be careful about personifying it this way shall we?) might raise. God doesn’t need our help in explaining the creation account through evolution - He exists outside of time, His ways are not our ways, and He is big enough and great enough and complex enough to certainly have created the world and all the amazing diversity of life on it without such a pedestrian explanation as evolution. He doesn’t need our help, but he does need our faith and our trust and our constancy in remembering who He is and what He is capable of.
Sorry. No can do. People who claim to be biologists, or trained in biology, who are demonstrably anti-science, do not compute.
It is equivalent to someone claiming to be a priest or pastor arguing that religion is false because Jim Jones was a pastor, or because priests have been guilty of child molestation.
Neither claim passes the smell test.
Since you took care not to post to me, you are obviously not including me or what I said in your argument.
But it is true that the methods of religion are not reliable in obtaining factual knowledge about the material world. Else juries would not need to be presented with forensic evidence, and they would be instructed to determine guilt or innocence through prayer.
Can we inquire as to what capacity your several years in acamemia was spent?
Looking back on this comment, I find it interesting that the post that led to it was attempting to discredit science as an enterprise because scientists sometimes engage in puerile behavior.
If there is something to be said about evolution, by all means say it.
I'm going to repeat my original claim, since it hasn't actually been addressed. Science studies the same problems with the same methodologies in every country of the world. Scientists have no religion or nationality when using the methods of science. To the extent that individual scientists inject politics into their work, they will have transient success. Perhaps they will maintain employment, but their work will be forgotten.
Muddling words is a favorite spit wad. I'll never forget the lengthy discussion on realism v. realism which took the whole thread away from the point you were making. Jeepers!
The word “Creationism” is another case-in-point in that most on the evolution side of the debate really mean to say “Young Earth Creationism.” And yet there are many different flavors of beliefs within the reach of the term itself depending on how one wishes to wield it in a debate: TalkOrigins.org on ‘what is creationism?’
Panspermia (alien seeding) for instance, is just another creationist belief though it certainly is not Judeo/Christian nor does it have anything to do with Western culture over the millenia. Nor do Islamic views have anything to do with the insights of Jerusalem, Athens and Rome.
And here, there appears to be a desire to paint Christian views of creation with the Islamic brush. LOL! The two concepts of the Creator couldn’t possibly be further apart. One would have you kill and die for Him – the other died for you. And it goes from there.
Moreover, within Judeo/Christian beliefs there are several different views of creation – some in opposition to evolution, some not – but all of them originating from different interpretations of Scriptures – not the record in nature or science.
The main difference among Christians has to do with Romans 5:12–14 and I Corinthians 15:42–48: one side says that Adam was the first mortal man and the other says that Adam was the first ensouled man. Thus, the interpretation among Christians concerning Genesis 1-3 (the origin of man) cuts this way, generally speaking:
Gosse Omphalus Hypothesis which says that Adam was the first mortal man and that God created an old looking universe some 6000 years ago in proper or absolute time.
Old Earth Creationism which says that Adam was the first ensouled man, that the universe is some 15 billion years old in proper or absolute time, that evolution occurred and Adam was ensouled some 6000 years ago in proper or absolute time.
Special Creationism which says that Adam was created some 6000 years ago in some unspecified time and place.
My view – which is akin to Jewish physicist Gerald Schroeder's is that we must consider both relativity and inflationary theory – that some 15 billion years from our space/time coordinates is equal to 6 equivalent earth days at the inception space/time coordinates. There is no conflict with Genesis 1.
It's kind of interesting that you associate the practice of "muddling words" as being more or less exclusive to the evolutionists.
Before answering your question, tacticalogic, I thought I'd stroll over to Darwin Central to see what, if anything, they were saying about our recent exchanges -- yours, Stultis', and mine. And they are in full cry, doing just what I suggested Neo-Darwinists routinely do as a matter of M.O.: Trash the opponent rather than engage the argument. But then, that's a whole lot of trouble, because you have to understand the argument first.
They're not only trashing me personally, but also editor-surveyor and metmom; GodGunsGuts; others....
Jeepers, I think these people really need to get a life!
And so I'd have to say: No, I'm not painting with too broad a brush here....
I'm so very tired of it.
Neither side has clean hands, but the evolutionists are like sharks going into a feeding frenzy when they smell "blood in the water" over word usage.
And they are seldom happy when we throw word usage back at them, e.g. randomness v unpredictability, combinatorics v Bayesian probability, and so on.
How does that go about kissing frogs and finding princes...
It's odd, Alamo-Girl, that people seemingly prefer to have a one-size-fits-all definition rather than recognize that it's important to be discriminating WRT "objects" that seem to have something in common but which, if you dig a little deeper, are rather more unlike than alike. But then, maybe this is just intellectual laziness. Doctrinal thinking is "nice" because it means the thinking's already been done for you -- it's "pre-fab." Just invoke and repeat as often as needed. Sigh....
Anyhoot, that's just the way the cookie crumbles, I guess!
Thank you for your uplifting essay/post, my dearest sister in Christ!
Sure. I have an undergraduate bachelors degree in biology, with a minor in interdisciplinary science (where “interdisciplinary” really meant, “lots of geology with a smattering of oceanography, climatology, and other -ology classes mixed in”).
I have a master’s degree in Environmental Science. During my course of study, I was required to take various philosophy and economics courses dealing with worldview, environmental ethics, policy, etc. These were taught from a rather liberal perspective which, frankly, I did agree with at the time.
I began a doctoral program in geography, for which I received a fellowship, but did not complete it — by that time, I had realized that academic research was not really where I wanted to go. My talents were more in the administrative and teaching arena, and that — and my family — were what I decided to focus on instead of slogging through a dissertation.
I supported myself in grad school by working as a field botanist, and by doing habitat, land use, and environmental impact assessment work. Later, I worked professionally for some years at a university-based state research program, and most recently was the director of a federally funded national research organization whose members were universities and whose representatives were college professors representing various disciplines but whose research usually found common ground in the arena’s of geography, ecology, and environmental studies.
These days, though, I’m retired from the lobbying and the grant-writing and grant reviewing and the dealing with academia that came with my position and I am pleased to “just” be a stay at home mom.
Doctrinal thinking is intellectually lazy.
This is so true.... Unfortunately, evo correspondants who fit this description seem to be fairly scarce at FR, since the Great Exodus....
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