I went to the creation.com site, they are f'n crazy

"My 2000 year old book says we were created from dirt, therefore all this evidence about evolution that I don't understand must be false!"

I do believe in the Genesis account and that God created. However I don't interpret the OT to say the earth is "x" years old. To maintain and defend a young earth position seems unecessary.

Like Zumby pointed out, YEC are a subset of Christians. There are lots of reasonable Christians that believe God created but realize this can't be clearly defined.

edit: sadly I do concede that virtually all Christians are way too ignorant re evolution and related topics (incl. me).

As a mostly pointless aside, I want to point out that Prozac is not anti-suicidal, whereas a medication like Lithium has actually been shown to reduce suicide rates in patients taking it. Speaking of which, Low-dose lithium uptake promotes longevity in humans and metazoans. Maybe add a dash of lithium to the water supply too?

Do you take the Genesis account to be literal, or metaphorical? I was never able to square any literal interpretation with evolution, but I can at least understand it as metaphor.

YEC's just make me scratch my head in dumbfounded bewilderment. It's cool if they don't agree and all, but don't point back to Hovind et al as if we haven't specifically refuted that same argument just 30 seconds ago, amirite?

Evolution is not incompatible with faith, but that's what a YEC wants you to believe. It isn't the 'religion of atheism'. AronRa addresses this specifically in his excellent 'Foundational Falsehoods of Creationism' series. The entire series is well worth the watch, if you haven't yet seen it.

Potholer54's 'Evolution Made Easy' is also worthwhile.

Evolution isn't a difficult concept. When I actually took the time to learn about it and understand what the Theory actually was, I was angry about all the lies I had been told by Church Leaders, and was amazed at how simple the Theory really is.

Last i knew the subset was around 40% of US Christians (could be wrong). If so its a pretty big subset.

I'm unaware of any data that takes into account each person's religion, so the below will probably have to suffice for now. (I suppose we could generalize, e.g. there are 'X' amount of Christians in the US and 'Y' percent of them are (for example) Southern Baptists—which are YECs).

http://www.gallup.com/poll/21814/Evo...nt-Design.aspx

This isn't actually sad at all. Almost everybody is ignorant regarding almost all theories. I no more expect the lay person to have a detailed understanding of evolution as I do for general relativity or climate change or any other scientific theories. That is why they are called lay people. The problem is when people, without said expertise, assert the precise opposite of the consensus view among the experts for the singular reason that it seems to help along their religious views. Hopefully this won't seem nitty, but I think this distinction that it isn't actually the ignorance itself that is being decried is important.

nooberftw, where's the proof that the young child in the photo isn't human? It certainly doesn't look like a baseline human but then neither did the Elephant man, there have to be have been DNA tests done, that would prove it so just link the results for me.

No need to, I do actually understand that. I don't think you understand what I'm trying to say though.

How does nooberftw come to think that Evolution is a myth at all? Do you know any Atheists that think Evolution is a myth?

You aren't understanding my viewpoint, I'm not talking about individuals. I'm also not just talking about Christianity so let's not fixate on that particular belief system.

Yet another pointless, off-topic post, keep up the crap work Hainesy. Yawn.

Why do you need faith if you have evidence?

Stop. Watching. Hovind. Videos.

And yet, they are. There are evil people called scientists who actually study these "red algae," also known as Rhodophytes (although this particular alga, Noctiluca scintilans, is a dinoflagellate).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noctiluca_scintillans
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhodophyta

i found a video of nooberftw on youtube!

Gee, another product of religious 'education'. Atheism is a bunch of crap. Wonder how he got from knowing nothing to thinking that....

How is a youtube video of a news clip in a foreign language supposed to be helpful to me?

Should I take this as an implication that there are no sources available that have actually studied it?

It seems to me that you are only trying to convince yourself that there is evidence of your god. It's called faith because there is zero evidence for it. You only believe because you don't want to spend eternity being tortured. Tell me, does Hell seem like the kind of thing an all-loving god would conjure up? Or does it seem like the kind of place that barbaric people (who find non-existence after death too hard to imagine) wish their enemies would go after they die? You say there's more evidence than ever? Then why would atheism be sharply on the rise in America?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_evidence
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objections_to_evolution

How about you read those unbiased pages about evolution instead of the circlejerk material Hovind feeds you? Your god will be proud of you if you trust him enough to keep your faith after reading quality information about evolution. You could even accept evolution without abandoning your god.

all i can say is I hope your wrong

Do you take the Genesis account to be literal, or metaphorical?

I don't know.
I am firmly and happily agnostic on this.
IMO this is the wisest position to take (and very easy to defend)

I am cool with learning about evolution. I will check out your links.
It DOES frustrate me when Christians make ignorant claims re evolution. Similarly its frustrating when atheists make ignorant claims about Christianity. Its not about what I agree/disagree with, people should just stay silent or ask questions on issues they don't understand. I take my Christian peers to task on this too when they make sweeping statemetn re evolution that are clearly ignorant and false.

No not nitty. I agree.
I realize my faith is a bigger deal than I thought before.

Fair enough.

Also fair.

For my own part, I was raised in a conservative protestant denomination, baptized at 14, and attended a Christian University. I've read the Bible many times. My faith journey took me from conservative Christian to charismatic (speaking Words of Knowledge and speaking in tongues), to deist, agnostic, and now atheist. I say this that you know that in matters of faith, I'm speaking from my own experiences, not ignorance.

Yeah cool. I never thought you were speaking from ingorance FWIW

Ignoring the poll data part of my post does not do you any credit.

You completely failing to understand that I'm not talking about religious individuals but an overall concept as represented by 'the religions' doesn't do you any either. It's really not hard, why are you having such a problem with it? You keep banging on about subsets and Christianity, this is much bigger than that. You're not the only game in town and can't lay claim to being the only religion that creates individuals like nooberftw and generally hinders learning through it's 'exclusive beliefs'. Who else thinks that evolution is a myth?

Whilst I appreciate you taking the time to list all those stats I have two issues with them, firstly they may not be accurate, secondly they don't actually counter anything I'm saying. 57% of Christians may think you should "Teach knowledge about the world’s main faiths even-handedly, without any bias towards any particular religion" but does that stat reflect what's actually happening in schools? No, I don't believe that it does. In our country, it's a legal requirement to have a Daily Act of Worship.... In many Islamic countries, children are forced to believe in Islam. Overall the effect is to propagate and perpetuate the religious systems by urging it on children regardless of how those children then go on to feel about it as adults.

What do you think would happen if we could hide all religion from children until they were old enough to make an adult judgement?

I get that there is a broad range of thought, what you don't seem to get is that the religions themselves are not the sum of the interpretations of the individuals that subscribe to them. Perhaps a better way to phrase what I'm saying would be to say that I have a problem with organised religion.

Religions are made up of religious individuals. If you want to argue that there are some properties of religions which are not reducible to the (aggregate) of individuals beliefs and practises then I'm all ears. Is, for example, religious indoctrination an emergent property? Does it supervene on the collective?

Not sure if you're just using the words "you're" when you mean "one's", but I'm a card-carrying gnostic atheist. My issue with you is not that I disagree with your metaphysics but that it has been shown in scientific psychological studies that weak arguments, when presented in the same setting as strong arguments, actually reduce the impact of the strong arguments. That is to say: if one has three arguments for a proposition, and one is a little wobbly, you would be better not to present it at all than to give it the chance to destroy your overall credibility. Your weak arguments are actively hurting atheism in this forum.

Secondly, their is a very obvious hypocrisy in your criticism that I am using individuals, subsets and specific religions as counter-examples to your claims about religion: you, in this very thread, have taken quotes from individuals and subsets of a specific religion and then used those examples to condemn religion as a whole. But somehow, I'm not allowed to point at other individuals and subsets to suggest that your generalisation is on shaky ground?

But you have NO stats, and NO empirical evidence for any of your propositions. Your conviction in the force and accuracy of your arguments is entirely FAITH-based.

Well first off, let me reiterate that I agree that the RE syllabus is biased towards Christianity, and that it could be made more fair and enlightening. I'd also go further and say that I believe that a big problem with the RE syllabus is that it is virtually worthless as it is currently taught, precisely because it does NOT go into any detail on the social, historical or literary impact of Christianity and, as far as I remember, doesn't cover important Christian thinkers like Augustine, Aquinas etc, and therefore is not only biased but fails to achieve the possible benefits of that bias. I also agree that the DAW should be scrapped.

However, the data does contradict various implications of your childhood indoctrination hypothesis. But until you a) understand that religions = religious individuals and b) study data, even though it might potentially have flaws, is better than just making crap out of your head, I cba pursuing this with you. You clearly have no respect for rationality or empiricism.

You've asked me this before: there I would speculate that there would be a big uptick in atheism. It's no mystery as to how most people initially get their religious beliefs. As the study shows, most UK Christians AGREE with your hypothesis. Yet you still maintain that informing them of that fact is somehow the most useful thing you can do to increase atheism. Again, you clearly value your own gut-feelings more than empirical evidence, so I won't waste my time and energy pursuing this further.

Same as point 1, but yeah, I disagree that religions are somehow greater than the sum of their parts. But, given that this belief allows you to simply disregard any contradicting evidence based on individuals or subsets of religious believers, I can see why you would find that argument useful.

The Republican Party is made up of individuals too, they have a Party doctrine/philosophy, does that mean that all Republicans think that way? It it possible to object to the overall philosophy of the Republican party without necessarily disagreeing with individual Republicans?

Yes, indoctrination is emergent, why do so many schools urge religions on young children if it hasn't been recognised that it's the most important method by which religions (and other belief systems that use the same unethical methods) will survive. Adults are also indoctrinated too but it has so much more impact on children.

You don't need to explain to me how it's possible to undermine your own position with a weak argument. Where we disagree is that it's weak. I think I have a completely different perspective to you and see the roots of (what I consider to be) the problem in a way that individuals more engaged with a culture can't see because they consider it natural and even expected.

I find it very easy to imagine myself as an alien visiting this planet for the first time and being amazed at the multiple and obvious examples of the emperor's new clothes on display and the indigenous population's inability to see what they're doing.


Nope, I've pointed out that the overall philosophy can result in individuals such as nooberftw but I'd consider him to be an extreme example. Unfortunately they're often the best way to illustrate a point.

How does one prove that indoctrination is taking place except through obervation and an analysis of the current state of affairs? The only rational explanation I have for why there are 2.5 billion Christians and 1.6 billion Muslims is indoctrination. I also see the methods by which that is achieved in practice on a daily basis. There's no faith involved.

Do you have an alternate theory that explains the massive incidence of conflicting belief systems?

I think you underestimate the impact of constantly repeating the same message.

No, the data proves that it's not as effective as it might be and that people reject systems of belief or choose to interpret them individually, that's all, and it applies to any belief system including political. I think that it's you that's not being rational and are completely ignoring the evidence that is all around you. So, be arsed, or don't be arsed, same difference to me.

I don't think you comprehend how vital that 'initial' exposure is to informing adult beliefs and how vital it is to religions that they cause it to happen and how devastating it would be to them if it was prevented from occurring.

"Start children off on the way they should go, and even when they are old they will not turn from it" Proverbs 22:6

It's not a case of "greater than the sum of their parts", that's not what I said. Refer to my answer to your first paragraph.