Most Americans Believe In Creation

Originally posted by melatonin

Originally posted by ppkjjkpp
Good job on attacking America.

Don't worry, we used to do it too. You can apply the same analogy to much of forensic science. There's an important point there, it might have went over your head though.

Actually I have read many science textbooks starting from Grade 6. They all started out with the Big Bang when the evolution chapter came up. Science requires you to observe and test hypothesis which you can't. Honestly look up the definition of science.

Pity you didn't read them closer...

Without having the book, how can I know? I'm certainly not taking your word for it. What I do know is that none in the UK do, my partner is a biology teacher. Why would they mix physics with biology? Two different parts of science.

The observations are the data, the data can be used to test hypotheses.

Well I guess you know what you know and I know what I know.
But still what is science defined?


[edit on 24-1-2008 by ppkjjkpp]

Originally posted by ppkjjkpp
Well I guess you know what you know and I know what I know.

Heh, don't worry, I'll be doing a bit of research later if I can. So far you're full of poop, so I won't be surprised to find this recent point is.

But still what is science defined?

A human endeavour to explain the natural world using the scientific method and the body of knowledge produced by this endeavour?

Originally posted by melatonin

Originally posted by ppkjjkpp
Well I guess you know what you know and I know what I know.

Heh, don't worry, I'll be doing a bit of research later if I can. So far you're full of poop, so I won't be surprised to find this recent point is.

But still what is science defined?

A human endeavour to explain the natural world using the scientific method and the body of knowledge produced by this endeavour?

You are missing that it has to be observed and testable.

How do we define science? According to Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary, the definition of science is "knowledge attained through study or practice," or "knowledge covering general truths of the operation of general laws, esp. as obtained and tested through scientific method [and] concerned with the physical world."

Scientific method is:

: principles and procedures for the systematic pursuit of knowledge involving the recognition and formulation of a problem, the collection of data through observation and experiment, and the formulation and testing of hypotheses

Originally posted by ppkjjkpp
You are missing that it has to be observed and testable.

I defined what you asked for. If you wanted the scientific method, I would have done so.

Scientific method is:

: principles and procedures for the systematic pursuit of knowledge involving the recognition and formulation of a problem, the collection of data through observation and experiment, and the formulation and testing of hypotheses

The data is from the observations. I've said this thrice now. The theory of evolution is verified by observations.

reply to post by ppkjjkpp


And I see Christians attacking atheists all the time. Not only taht, but they come to my door at 8:45 in the morning on my day off, to tell me about THEIR religion and try to recruit me. That is not respecting MY religion.

reply to post by melatonin


Ok then, what have we observed of evolution?

Originally posted by ppkjjkpp
...Also most Americans believe in creation and God. This means that they are the majority and democracy serves the majority. So if 15% of the population doesn't accept creation and God, that's fine, but they are the minority and should not rule the media and schools as they already are. ...

I see what the problem is. Not many people understand the following quote.

"In the land of the blind; the one-eyed man is king."
Desiderius Erasmus

So I'll explain. You can't have the blind following the blind and expect progress to be made.

Originally posted by ppkjjkpp
Ok then, what have we observed of evolution?

Here would be a good start:

www.talkorigins.org...

Originally posted by ppkjjkpp

How do we define science? According to Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary, the definition of science is "knowledge attained through study or practice," or "knowledge covering general truths of the operation of general laws, esp. as obtained and tested through scientific method [and] concerned with the physical world."

If science is "obtained and tested through scientific method [and] concerned with the physical world", religion has no place in a science class.

QED

But I don't suppose logic applies when god is involved, eh?

g

Originally posted by gekko

Originally posted by ppkjjkpp

How do we define science? According to Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary, the definition of science is "knowledge attained through study or practice," or "knowledge covering general truths of the operation of general laws, esp. as obtained and tested through scientific method [and] concerned with the physical world."

If science is "obtained and tested through scientific method [and] concerned with the physical world", religion has no place in a science class.

QED

But I don't suppose logic applies when god is involved, eh?

g

thats not my point. my point was to say evolution has no place in science class beyond microevolution.

Originally posted by melatonin

Originally posted by ppkjjkpp
Ok then, what have we observed of evolution?

Here would be a good start:

www.talkorigins.org...

We have not observed any of that. good try though.

reply to post by ppkjjkpp


I reread your first post, and your exact point is somewhat fuzzy. You do mention education of evolution vs creation though.

Anyway.

Isn't evolution just a long string of micro-evolutions put together? How can you believe one is proven and not the other?

It's like saying: "I believe your words, but not the sentences they make."

Originally posted by ppkjjkpp
We have not observed any of that. good try though.

It is full of observations. Data which has been used to test the predictions made from the theory of evolution.

That is how science works.

Go back to your original quote:

principles and procedures for the systematic pursuit of knowledge involving the recognition and formulation of a problem, the collection of data through observation and experiment, and the formulation and testing of hypotheses

Collection of data through observation - check

Formulation and testing of hypotheses - check

Then you might read this from the pages I linked earlier. Read and learn. You don't get to determine what science is. Sorry about that.

[edit on 24-1-2008 by melatonin]

reply to post by ppkjjkpp


What wars? Crusades. That's a big one. There were several wars fought because God said that such and such peoples were barbaric and should be cleaned out or Christianized. It's not just extremists. Christianity has been used to justify everything from murder to slavery, just like every religion.
Creationist's get bashed for their beliefs because most of them are deliberately misinterpreting information and passing it on to other people who then belief the false information that they get. Honest, hard working Creationists try to find proof of Creationism and generally can't find evidence or find evidence that can fall both ways.

People throughout the world don't hate Christianity for it's beliefs, they hate it because the people who practice it call them sinners and worse because they follow their religion, which in the case of Islam shares the same root religion, Judaism! Yet Christians hate the Jews because of their partial link to an event that happened 2000 years ago. I get ticked off because for some reason People are assured that Jesus was a white guy with great personal grooming who lived among other white folks in Israel.

Christianity persecutes more than it is persecuted, yet for some reason we whine more about it.
And also, from what I understand, God never said to be against someone for their beliefs or sexual orientation, he said God alone can judge another man's action, yet you want to judge everyone based on a belief not everyone shares. God alone knows what's best for us, but he never said to make the laws according to his will.

[edit on 24-1-2008 by RuneSpider]

[edit on 24-1-2008 by RuneSpider]

reply to post by ppkjjkpp


So what the majority wants, the majority should get, even if it's wrong? There was a time when owning slaves was acceptable, there was a time when owning women was acceptable. Did that make them right, even if the majority thought that way?

Even if all the scientists in America believe evolution, that is still the minority of Americans. You could call Americans ignorant because of this but it doesn't really matter because the 'ignorant' people are still the majority.

I'm sorry, but do you even realize how inconceivably ignorant this statement is? I mean really, take a good step back and read what you typed. At the risk of invoking Godwin's Law, you realize that it was this exact line of thinking that led to 6 million dead Jews?

"Oh, well, they may think that way, but they're not me and I'm in the majority so who cares?"

Honestly disgusting, is all I have to say.

reply to post by WraothAscendant


Peer Review is nothing like voting. The reviewers aren't there to decide if they like the submission or not, nor are they there to decide if it gets turned into a 'fact'. They are there to point out flaws in the work, to filter outstanding, non-repeatable claims, and to catch any inconsistencies they can find, offering input wherever they want. A fact is a fact, there's no body of experts somewhere who decided one day that the sky should be blue. That's not what these people are doing.

I am not sure that I agree with your figures. I would like to see the stats and how/where you arrived to them.

Also I think that even creationists have arguments within itself about how things came about.

....and the evening and the morning were the second day......are you saying this is a staunch fact or are you leaving a deterministic view of to what time period actually was marked as a day...

...what about animals are you saying they have not adapted to their environments...of course they have...but couldnt this have been a product that God built into the animals to do so.

.....Look at the space on the Arc and how many animals Noah had to gather....there is no way looking at the species today that Noah would have that type of room on the Arc..I have been in a replica of the Arc and I am telling you my friend....NO WAY

.......So if athiests do not believe in the Lord so be it, but as one who believes in creationism...I think it is important to look at science, to look at the Bible and to realize that man himself (includes women) is limited in the imagination and understanding that God has....and that in looking at this we must see that even as creationists (even in believing) that evolution, though not from man to monkey, but with in the animal kingdom
is a viable source to questions people have.

Remember the Bible tells us that God created the heavens and the earth, it does not tell how the heavens and the earth works.

I am not sure that I agree with your figures. I would like to see the stats and how/where you arrived to them.

Also I think that even creationists have arguments within itself about how things came about.

....and the evening and the morning were the second day......are you saying this is a staunch fact or are you leaving a deterministic view of to what time period actually was marked as a day...

...what about animals are you saying they have not adapted to their environments...of course they have...but couldnt this have been a product that God built into the animals to do so.

.....Look at the space on the Arc and how many animals Noah had to gather....there is no way looking at the species today that Noah would have that type of room on the Arc..I have been in a replica of the Arc and I am telling you my friend....NO WAY

.......So if athiests do not believe in the Lord so be it, but as one who believes in creationism...I think it is important to look at science, to look at the Bible and to realize that man himself (includes women) is limited in the imagination and understanding that God has....and that in looking at this we must see that even as creationists (even in believing) that evolution, though not from man to monkey, but with in the animal kingdom
is a viable source to questions people have.

Remember the Bible tells us that God created the heavens and the earth, it does not tell how the heavens and the earth works.

Originally posted by WraothAscendant
reply to post by cambrian77

 

Unfortunately, facts aren't something you can vote on.

And what is peer review if not a form of voting?

Not only that but evolutionary science is canonized by... voting. I'm not making this up. Have you ever seen how when evidence supporting evolution is later retracted how it is almost certain there will be a mention of some scientists who had "been proclaiming all along" the evidence was dubious? This is precisely why. It is decided by a vote. Then, if evidence is later debunked, the opposing scientists can say they were right all along.

Where does this voting stuff come from? Heh.

Science does work to a degree by consensus. But this is based on the weight of evidence. Thus, as you probably know, we might see a study saying wine is teh sux0rz and causes cancer, and then another might say the reverse. Then we wait for more evidence before making strong conclusions. Maybe it was poor methodology that led to inconsistent results etc etc.

Science can be a messy procedure at times. That's why it is always tentative. But some bits are more tentative than others, and evolution just ain't that tentative.

What you have got to understand is that scientists are a bit ADHD-like, they get bored of replicating old well-established areas of science, they are always looking for the new shiny methods and rapidly move into new areas to remove the veil of ignorance.

In the early stages, the results tend to be messy and opaque. With time and effort, these are clarified. I'm amazed sometimes that people are critical of science for being extensively self-critical and tentative. That's its strength. It doesn't matter who you are, you can be of Einstein proportions, but your data and inferences can be turned over by a capable postgraduate whippersnapper.

It's a self-correcting approach to the world, and that is its strength. Not a weakeness. While religion is stuck with a now unchanging book (unless you're mormon, heh) that requires data to be twisted and contorted out of all recognition to fit, science just moves with the evidence, providing new insights into nature and new technologies continuously.

Religion = stale, rigormortified, stinks like a rancid fish.

Science = fresh, evolving by evidence and natural selection of ideas, like a shining lighthouse in the shroud of foggy ignorance.

I've never been able to understand why some people are so threatened by evolution. It seems perfectly reasonable to me that, if there is a God or not, has nothing to do with scientific reasoning. After all, it's all made sense so far, Chemistry, Math, Astronomy, Engineering, and even Biology. Not having all the answers doesn't invalidate what we know, or what we will know or will not know. And that doesn't mean that science is invalid. God has NOTHING to do with this. Why should it? God and faith are NOT science.

I always figured, that if there's a God he's smart enough to have set things up to run on it's own. Why in the world do some people feel that God must have some direct hand in things? And if God doesn't, God doesn't exist? That just seems ridiculous.

Like Bible Literalism. Do you really believe that the earth was created in 7 days? When was the last time you saw a burning bush? The story of Earth is infinitely more sophisticated than that. These beliefs belong in the world of faith - not science. And it's okay to believe in what they mean. But we're not children anymore, Man has grown and yes, hold our childhood stories dear and learn from them, but we don't mistake them for more than that.

We don't know the answers to the ultimate questions. Who knows, maybe it's impossible to know. After all, it's hard to wrap our minds about 'infinity' and "in the beginning there was nothing". But just because we don't understand it, doesnt' mean there isn't an answer, or that it's evidence of God. God isn't about evidence. Afterall, that's what faith is about, right? Real faith is knowing in the absence of evidence. God isnt' meant to be known, he wasn't even meant to be named, depicted, idolized, quantified. Bible literalism flies in the face of all of that.

Quit looking for boxes to put things in.

edit: spelling error

[edit on 24-1-2008 by Jadette]