I like that this website immediately hits you up for donations. Always be on your grift, that’s the evangelical way.

Asking for donations is grifting?

I also get a donation request from Wikipedia. Are they grifting?

I assume you think the government's methodology is preferable: Take people's money by FORCE!

Yes, if it’s going to support this kind of scam. $500? ****ing parasites.

PS: I thought you were going to take your discussion of bronze-age mythology over to RGT?

I assume you feel the same way about the grifters at the People for the American Way and the Southern Poverty Law Center?

Mods will probably boot the evolution derail anyway, so may as well start the discussion here and now.

If you sincerely believe that AiG is a scam, then please report them to the appropriate government authorities (along with your evidence, of course) so they can be properly investigated and shut down if they are, in fact, a scam.

To my knowledge these groups aren’t actively pushing scientific illiteracy, so no. But also, isn’t this a rather obvious deflection? What does it say about these creationist grifters that you cant actually defend what they do without changing the subject?

lmfao, this is what Answers in Genesis spends their grift $ on:

As best I can understand this guy's argument, it amounts to the following:

1) God created uniform laws.
2) Scientists rely on uniform laws to do things like predict the location of planetary bodies.
3) According to Darwin, evolution depends in no small part on random chance. It is not predictable in the same way that the location of Jupiter is predictable.
4) Therefore evolution is not science.

Needless to say, this argument has problems. 1) is an untestable faith-based presumption. 4) doesn't follow logically from 2) and 3). Just because some outcomes (the location of Jupiter) are predictable, it doesn't follow that any theory that accounts for randomness is junk science.

I will quickly get out of my depth talking about hard science, but I believe that a great deal of physics at the sub-atomic level is based on concepts of randomness. Also, there is nothing inconsistent about a uniform rule and random outcomes. We know the exact probability of rolling snake eyes with a pair of dice. But the outcome of each roll of the dice is of course random. And if I rolled dice non-stop for a million years, eventually I would have an extremely unlikely sequence in which I rolled snake eyes 30 times in a row.

But more generally, these YEC arguments always follow the same pattern. They are essentially attempts at a theoretical proof. But invariably, the presumptions for these proofs are faith-based and therefore impossible to verify, the entire proof is a formal logic fail, or both.

In addition, the arguments never engage with scientific data. For example, we have a lot of evidence that the oldest of the Hawaiian Islands are millions of years old. How do YEC respond to that data? For the most part, they simply ignore it.

That's because the only alternative to ignoring the data is to say that God made the Hawaiian islands appear to be old as a test, a trick, or as some sort of cosmic goof. But again, that's just an unfalsifiable, faith-based conclusion.

I actually have a co-worker whose parents guilted her into taking the kids to the Creationist Museum, man you wouldn’t believe the admission price. When you consider that they’re not doing any of the scholarship or preservation of a real museum, plus they set up shop out in the sticks in KY、that place must be taking in cash hand over fist. To say nothing of how much they take in through online donations.

Actually, YOU are deflecting. You are welcome to engage the article if you'd like.

Thanks. Was there something in that article that was influential enough to convince you that the earth isn't billions of year old? If so, what was it? If not, why did you link it?

I don't even know what I am supposed to be taking away from this billboard.

School shootings happen because kids don't love jesus enough

There’s not much to say, it’s a bunch of really dumb assertions that fall apart immediately.

Of course there were scientists long before Darwin came along, no one disputes that. I’m sure even in the 21st century there are some people doing good science in physics or chemistry or computer science or whatever that also hold goofy backwards views on biblical creation. You’re probably at a disadvantage trying to do biological science if you think evolution is bunk, but even then I suppose in theory you could find some niche subject to publish on.

This was more or less my point.

Dug a bit more into Answers in Genesis. Forgot how these YEC groups tend to just be fronts for gay bashing and spreading homophobia

You are using race as a place holder for economics. One of the reasons B'more schools suck is because of a decreasing tax base as result of economic shifts from manafacturing, etc. I don't think their schools suck due to many of them being predominantly black. Adding white kids to the mix is not going to change the outcome.

The creationism thread in RGT is largely lagtit whining because he’s not allowed to call people “sodomites,” so, yeah.

lagtight,

Against my better judgment, I engaged the article. Your thoughts?

Thank you engaging the article in a thoughtful manner.

Will give you a detailed response when I get home tonite and can use my laptop instead of my phone.

There is plenty to object to in that article but perhaps the easiest to refute

That's not at all true. There is an entire branch of mathematics and physics that studies systems that are fundamentally unpredictable and produce wildly different results every time you run the experiment. Even some simple children's toys exhibit this behavior. Explaining why this system is unpredictable and others aren't is well within the scope of science and is often shown in an undergrad level classical mechanics or differential equations class.

Bringing christinanity in to bolster the incorrect claim as the author did is just bizarre, but irrelevant.

Right. You explained my point about physics more clearly than I did.

The idea that the universe follows consistent natural laws is definitely not something the Christians were the first to come up with.

Which naturally explains why there were never any non-Christian astronomers in the ancient world.