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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: Really? The Loch Ness Fucking Monster??
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Liberty
ship's football fanatic
# 713
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Posted
About 10 years ago some friend of a friend came to speak to my house group (part of a perfectly normal (as churches go) mainstream church).
This guy told us that Nessie disproved evolution, because she proved that dinosaurs and humans lived at the same time. His theories included that the fossils we see of big dinosaurs are from pre-flood times. See, reptiles (including stick insects) grow to the size of the space they're in, so pre-Noah's flood there was more land, dinosaurs were big. Post-flood they are small, just the iguanas, lizards, Nessie's and stick insects we see today. Nessie is a dinosaur. Apparently.
I also seem to remember him saying something about how the human appendix is not at all vestigial as vegetarians would die without it.
Working with young kids as I do, I've never looked at the class tank of stick insects in the same way ever again.
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"I'ma be what I set out to be, without a doubt, undoubtedly"
Posts: 1879 | From: SW2 to 20009 | Registered: Jul 2001
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orfeo
Ship's Musical Counterpoint
# 13878
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Liberty:
This guy told us that Nessie disproved evolution, because she proved that dinosaurs and humans lived at the same time.
Ah, I think I finally get it now. Because you can't evolve from something that hasn't died out yet, right?
Oh Lordy.
Also, who knew that humans were reptiles? NEAT!
[ 10. July 2012, 08:06: Message edited by: orfeo ]
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Technology has brought us all closer together. Turns out a lot of the people you meet as a result are complete idiots.
Posts: 18173 | From: Under | Registered: Jul 2008
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Robert Armin
All licens'd fool
# 182
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Posted
I think I'm missing something here. If evidence was found that dinosaurs and humans had existed together at some time (even if they still did) why would that disprove evolution? No one uses the fact that insects exist alongside humans as an argument against evolution, or do they?
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Keeping fit was an obsession with Fr Moity .... He did chin ups in the vestry, calisthenics in the pulpit, and had developed a series of Tai-Chi exercises to correspond with ritual movements of the Mass. The Antipope Robert Rankin
Posts: 8927 | From: In the pack | Registered: May 2001
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Matt Black
Shipmate
# 2210
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Posted
Not really; it's more about demonstrating that The Evil Godless Atheist Scientists™ are wrong. Once you can demonstrate at least to yourself that they are wrong about something, then they can be wrong about everything, including evolution.
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"Protestant and Reformed, according to the Tradition of the ancient Catholic Church" - + John Cosin (1594-1672)
Posts: 14304 | From: Hampshire, UK | Registered: Jan 2002
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ken
Ship's Roundhead
# 2460
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Robert Armin:
No one uses the fact that insects exist alongside humans as an argument against evolution, or do they?
But no-one ever claimed that us chordates were evolved "from" insects either.
Of course no-one ever claimed mammals were evolved from dinosaurs. Seeing as we've been around as long or longer than they have.
Maybe its the ambiguity of that unhelpful word "reptile".
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Ken
L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle.
Posts: 39579 | From: London | Registered: Mar 2002
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orfeo
Ship's Musical Counterpoint
# 13878
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Robert Armin:
I think I'm missing something here. If evidence was found that dinosaurs and humans had existed together at some time (even if they still did) why would that disprove evolution? No one uses the fact that insects exist alongside humans as an argument against evolution, or do they?
You're missing the same thing I was missing on page 1 around the time that I was thinking that crocodiles and spiders don't disprove evolution either.
Let's face it, these people who are complete nincompoops. The problem isn't that they failed science so much as that they failed logic and have no semblance of reasoning capacity. I mean, if I wanted to disprove evolution, I sure as fuck wouldn't choose Nessie as my argument even if Nessie was proved to exist.
[ 10. July 2012, 11:40: Message edited by: orfeo ]
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Technology has brought us all closer together. Turns out a lot of the people you meet as a result are complete idiots.
Posts: 18173 | From: Under | Registered: Jul 2008
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Tortuf
Ship's fisherman
# 3784
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Posted
On the first page of this thread Yorick made a point that many have not taken. We tend cling to some beliefs that people who did not grow up with our same environment and assumptions find incredulous. For Yorick it is the belief quote:
that a bloke who was conceived without sexual union and born to a bronze-age Middle-Eastern peasant virgin woman was in fact also God The Fuckoff Almighty . . .
I use that same notion (different language) sometimes in comparative religion Sunday School classes when people make fun of, say, Hindu beliefs.
If you have grown up with the belief that the Bible is a historically accurate document evolution is not a scientific theory. Evolution is an atheistic attack on the Bible. So, you have to go about proving that the tenets of evolution are wrong. If Nessie is a dinosaur and still around, it tends to show that the evolutionists got it wrong. Never-mind, as Robert Armin and orfeo pointed out, the presence of Nessie, even as a dinosaur, does not disprove evolution. You hang on to what you can get.
Many of us on the Ship believe that the Bible need not be historically accurate to be true and holy. In doing so we make value judgments about the accuracy of the Bible, and thus of what portions of the Bible should be taken in without mental editing of what it actually "says." If you believe God inspired the Bible and meant it to be accurate, such editing is hugely egotistic and wrong.
We say we must be right because the greatest minds in the world, along with tons and tons of evidence, say we are right about evolution. Keep in mind that the brightest minds in the world have held one scientific theory after another that has later been proven wrong. Remember all the folks who poo pooed plate tectonics?
Posts: 6963 | From: The Venice of the South | Registered: Dec 2002
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Matt Black
Shipmate
# 2210
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Posted
![[Overused]](graemlins/notworthy.gif)
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"Protestant and Reformed, according to the Tradition of the ancient Catholic Church" - + John Cosin (1594-1672)
Posts: 14304 | From: Hampshire, UK | Registered: Jan 2002
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Dafyd
Shipmate
# 5549
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by ken:
Of course no-one ever claimed mammals were evolved from dinosaurs.
Typical godless evolutionists. Talk about moving the goalposts - they don't even set them up in the right place to begin with.
Still glass half full: even godless evolutionists have to concede that mammals weren't evolved from dinosaurs.
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we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams
Posts: 10567 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Feb 2004
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Mockingale
Shipmate
# 16599
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Tortuf:
On the first page of this thread Yorick made a point that many have not taken. We tend cling to some beliefs that people who did not grow up with our same environment and assumptions find incredulous. For Yorick it is the belief quote:
that a bloke who was conceived without sexual union and born to a bronze-age Middle-Eastern peasant virgin woman was in fact also God The Fuckoff Almighty . . .
Yorick's point was that there is no qualitative difference between a belief in creation exactly as it sets forth in the book of Genesis and belief that God became a man and died in order to save us from sin and death.
The difference is that the first belief requires a belief against evidence. The Bible makes a lot of statements which can be proven false by simple observation. The heavens don't rotate around the earth, and didn't stop during some ancient Hebrew battle. Pi is not exactly 3. The mustard seed is not actually the smallest of seeds. If you're looking for the Bible to be a science book, you're going to be sorely disappointed. There's another thread in Purgatory about why the Bible doesn't contain "useful information" like medical practices and architectural primers. But that's not the point of the Bible. It never was.
You don't need to reject reality to believe that Jesus is God.
I worry about any faith that requires self-delusion and rejection of objective reality in order to maintain. In that worldview, anyone who investigates the natural world and comes to different conclusions is a tool of Satan. Hell of a place to put your head.
Posts: 679 | From: Connectilando | Registered: Aug 2011
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Curiosity killed ...
Ship's Mug
# 11770
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Posted
Tortuf, your reasoning doesn't work in my experience. The people I know who choose to believe in creationism are all teenage or adult converts, either to Christianity from a background of no faith, or to a more evangelical Christianity from the CofE. These people were not brought up with the Bible as the roots of their understanding, they choose to follow it.
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Mugs - Keep the Ship afloat
Posts: 13794 | From: outiside the outer ring road | Registered: Aug 2006
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ken
Ship's Roundhead
# 2460
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
Let's face it, these people who are complete nincompoops. The problem isn't that they failed science so much as that they failed logic and have no semblance of reasoning capacity.
No, that's really not true. These people aren't any stupider than anyone else. What they are is ignorant, not the same thing at all. Not everyone can know everything. Does everyone know how a differential gearbox works? Or what route the armies took to the Battle of Blenheim? Or how to cook cassava? Or the nam,es of the stars of Orion's belt? (*)
They don;t know much about biology or genetics. Maybe because they aren't interested in it, or its not important to them, or they never had a chance to learn. That's not a problem for the rest of us. (**)
The real problem for the rest of us is that that ignorance is recruited by others in organised political campaigns against science and healthcare and other worthwhile things. They are being lied to. Led astray. But thaat makes them fellow-victims, not stupid.
(*) Heck, even I don't know one of those things and I'm an all-time super-genius nerd with thousands of books on my shelf and heaps of university degrees and suchlike paper.
(**) Its no more a problem for me that my neighbour doesn't know the difference between a clade and a grade in phylogenetics than it is a problem for my neighbour that I don't know anything about... well, whatever it is that I don't know anything about because as I don't know anything about the things that I don't know anything about I don't know what they are.
[ 10. July 2012, 14:36: Message edited by: ken ]
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Ken
L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle.
Posts: 39579 | From: London | Registered: Mar 2002
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lilBuddha
Shipmate
# 14333
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Posted
quote:
originally posted by ken:
The real problem for the rest of us is that that ignorance is recruited by others in organised political campaigns against science and healthcare and other worthwhile things. They are being lied to. Led astray. But thaat makes them fellow-victims, not stupid.
What it makes them is dangerous. Stupid can be excused as those who can accurately be described as stupid are not at fault. Willful ignorance is less excusable. Victims? I suppose. But complicit victims.
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I put on my rockin' shoes in the morning
Hallellou, hallellou
Posts: 17627 | From: the round earth's imagined corners | Registered: Dec 2008
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aumbry
Shipmate
# 436
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Posted
In the 1970s belief in the Loch Ness Monster was held by some quite well regarded natural scientists. Peter Scott was one of them. I think he even managed to take a picture of its fin although I suppose it could have been a giant herring. Not much earlier the fossil fish coelocanth had been discovered to be lounging around in the deep.
It seems unlikely but who knows? Certainly Christians are asked to believe some pretty outre sort of stuff compared with which the existence Nessie seems quite a possibility.
Posts: 3869 | From: Quedlinburg | Registered: Jun 2001
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Mockingale
Shipmate
# 16599
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by aumbry:
In the 1970s belief in the Loch Ness Monster was held by some quite well regarded natural scientists. Peter Scott was one of them. I think he even managed to take a picture of its fin although I suppose it could have been a giant herring. Not much earlier the fossil fish coelocanth had been discovered to be lounging around in the deep.
It seems unlikely but who knows? Certainly Christians are asked to believe some pretty outre sort of stuff compared with which the existence Nessie seems quite a possibility.
Way to miss the point.
Posts: 679 | From: Connectilando | Registered: Aug 2011
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aumbry
Shipmate
# 436
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Mockingale:
quote:
Originally posted by aumbry:
In the 1970s belief in the Loch Ness Monster was held by some quite well regarded natural scientists. Peter Scott was one of them. I think he even managed to take a picture of its fin although I suppose it could have been a giant herring. Not much earlier the fossil fish coelocanth had been discovered to be lounging around in the deep.
It seems unlikely but who knows? Certainly Christians are asked to believe some pretty outre sort of stuff compared with which the existence Nessie seems quite a possibility.
Way to miss the point.
What does that mean in English?
Posts: 3869 | From: Quedlinburg | Registered: Jun 2001
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ken
Ship's Roundhead
# 2460
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by aumbry:
In the 1970s belief in the Loch Ness Monster was held by some quite well regarded natural scientists. Peter Scott was one of them.
![[Killing me]](graemlins/killingme.gif)
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Ken
L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle.
Posts: 39579 | From: London | Registered: Mar 2002
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Tortuf
Ship's fisherman
# 3784
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Curiosity killed ...:
Tortuf, your reasoning doesn't work in my experience. The people I know who choose to believe in creationism are all teenage or adult converts, either to Christianity from a background of no faith, or to a more evangelical Christianity from the CofE. These people were not brought up with the Bible as the roots of their understanding, they choose to follow it.
Then they have emotional reasons for finding a way to support their newly found beliefs, just like people who grew up surrounded by those beliefs.
As long as we liberals are willing to treat those who believe differently than us as lesser beings we are in no position to complain about how conservatives treat us. Everyone is entitled to have their beliefs treated with some dignity.
Posts: 6963 | From: The Venice of the South | Registered: Dec 2002
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Unreformed
Shipmate
# 17203
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Posted
Somebody should send these people what St. Augustine said:
quote:
Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable eclipses of the sun and moon, the cycles of the years and the seasons, about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge he hold to as being certain from reason and experience.
Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn. The shame is not so much that an ignorant individual is derided, but that people outside the household of faith think our sacred writers held such opinions, and, to the great loss of those for whose salvation we toil, the writers of our Scripture are criticized and rejected as unlearned men. If they find a Christian mistaken in a field which they themselves know well and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions about our books, how are they going to believe those books in matters concerning the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven, when they think their pages are full of falsehoods and on facts which they themselves have learnt from experience and the light of reason? Reckless and incompetent expounders of Holy Scripture bring untold trouble and sorrow on their wiser brethren when they are caught in one of their mischievous false opinions and are taken to task by those who are not bound by the authority of our sacred books. For then, to defend their utterly foolish and obviously untrue statements, they will try to call upon Holy Scripture for proof and even recite from memory many passages which they think support their position, although they understand neither what they say nor the things about which they make assertion.[1 Timothy 1.7]
It'd be quite funny to see them call St. Augustine a modernist, liberal heretic.
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In the Latin south the enemies of Christianity often make their position clear by burning a church. In the Anglo-Saxon countries, we don't burn churches; we empty them. --Arnold Lunn, The Third Day
Posts: 246 | From: Richmond, VA | Registered: Jul 2012
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Curiosity killed ...
Ship's Mug
# 11770
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Tortuf:
Then [Christian converts] have emotional reasons for finding a way to support their newly found beliefs, just like people who grew up surrounded by those beliefs.
As long as we liberals are willing to treat those who believe differently than us as lesser beings we are in no position to complain about how conservatives treat us. Everyone is entitled to have their beliefs treated with some dignity.
Mmm - where did I say I treated someone as an inferior being? All I said there was that the people I knew who were creationists or YECcies were later converts, not brought up with these beliefs.
But having been around when Young Earth Creationism has been asserted, and books and websites have been cited, there is no way I have found to say anything different. I have said that I believe in evolution, and had eyes rolled around me. I've also said, in answer to a student asking where the dinosaurs went that some of them evolved into birds, and heard sharp intakes of breath from all the other adults in the room.
But it's really hard. Another lad who'd been brought up RC was spluttering about the nonsense in the Bible - particularly how Noah's Ark was impossible, all the animals and everything in a boat ... I'd have chatted about allegory and metaphor (well, in term of underlying truths) but I opened my mouth to say something and one of the YECcies had leapt out of an office and was saying but of course it was true. There were all these pictures on Ararat, and of course it was totally real ... I shut my mouth. But thought it was such a great opportunity lost.
And any argument back publicly is shouted down by ill-informed guff*, and total lack of understanding of anything scientific. So when everything I say is trashed, it's very difficult to feel that wonderfully loving back.
*different people, different workplaces, more than once.
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Mugs - Keep the Ship afloat
Posts: 13794 | From: outiside the outer ring road | Registered: Aug 2006
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Tortuf
Ship's fisherman
# 3784
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Posted
Read other posts in the thread to answer your first question.
Posts: 6963 | From: The Venice of the South | Registered: Dec 2002
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Curiosity killed ...
Ship's Mug
# 11770
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Posted
Oh, so that wasn't a personal attack? It can't have been aimed at me; the only comments I've made on this thread before the one you responded to have been a crack about birds evolving from dinosaurs another comment that earwigs are not crustaceans. So why address it personally?
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Mugs - Keep the Ship afloat
Posts: 13794 | From: outiside the outer ring road | Registered: Aug 2006
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Tortuf
Ship's fisherman
# 3784
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Posted
Are we having a bad day?
Did you notice the separate paragraphs?
Posts: 6963 | From: The Venice of the South | Registered: Dec 2002
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Mockingale
Shipmate
# 16599
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by aumbry:
quote:
Originally posted by Mockingale:
quote:
Originally posted by aumbry:
In the 1970s belief in the Loch Ness Monster was held by some quite well regarded natural scientists. Peter Scott was one of them. I think he even managed to take a picture of its fin although I suppose it could have been a giant herring. Not much earlier the fossil fish coelocanth had been discovered to be lounging around in the deep.
It seems unlikely but who knows? Certainly Christians are asked to believe some pretty outre sort of stuff compared with which the existence Nessie seems quite a possibility.
Way to miss the point.
What does that mean in English?
It means that you're a moron.
Posts: 679 | From: Connectilando | Registered: Aug 2011
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orfeo
Ship's Musical Counterpoint
# 13878
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by ken:
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
Let's face it, these people who are complete nincompoops. The problem isn't that they failed science so much as that they failed logic and have no semblance of reasoning capacity.
No, that's really not true. These people aren't any stupider than anyone else. What they are is ignorant, not the same thing at all. Not everyone can know everything. Does everyone know how a differential gearbox works? Or what route the armies took to the Battle of Blenheim? Or how to cook cassava? Or the nam,es of the stars of Orion's belt? (*)
They don;t know much about biology or genetics. Maybe because they aren't interested in it, or its not important to them, or they never had a chance to learn. That's not a problem for the rest of us. (**)
The real problem for the rest of us is that that ignorance is recruited by others in organised political campaigns against science and healthcare and other worthwhile things. They are being lied to. Led astray. But thaat makes them fellow-victims, not stupid.
(*) Heck, even I don't know one of those things and I'm an all-time super-genius nerd with thousands of books on my shelf and heaps of university degrees and suchlike paper.
(**) Its no more a problem for me that my neighbour doesn't know the difference between a clade and a grade in phylogenetics than it is a problem for my neighbour that I don't know anything about... well, whatever it is that I don't know anything about because as I don't know anything about the things that I don't know anything about I don't know what they are.
The reason I think they're stupid is not so much because of things that they don't know, but because they see fit to make PRONOUNCEMENTS on topics they clearly don't know anything about. There's a fundamental difference between recognising your own lack of knowledge and parading it as if you DO know something.
I have certain creationist tendencies myself. Yes. Gasp. But I can clearly understand that the existence of Nessie would totally fail to disprove evolution. Which is probably why it annoys me so much that someone would be foolish enough to open their mouth and declare that Nessie disproves evolution. You can only say that if your knowledge of the theory of evolution consists of believing that it says dinosaurs are inherently 'old creatures' and we are inherently 'new creatures'.
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Technology has brought us all closer together. Turns out a lot of the people you meet as a result are complete idiots.
Posts: 18173 | From: Under | Registered: Jul 2008
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Golden Key
Shipmate
# 1468
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Posted
Tortuf, re your long post about different perspectives and backgrounds.
I think one thing that critics of creationists often miss is that many people live by stories. Myths, in the deep sense of the word. Some non-creationists do get that, at least to an extent: Carl Sagan could spin a really awe-inspiring speech about evolution; and I saw Richard Dawkins and his wife, Lalla Ward, do a great symphonic reading of his book, "The Ancestors' Tale".
Poet Muriel Rukeyser has a great line: "The universe is made of stories, not of atoms."
I think there's much to be said for both creationism and evolution. I've also been firmly rooted in the first chapter of Genesis, plus assorted other nature verses (even the animistic ones), since I was very little. I ain't givin' it up. To do so would be like ripping the yarn in a sweater to shreds, somehow undying it, and possibly putting it back on the sheep to start over. But I also love science, in the sense discovering, observing, and figuring out. This is one place where my "holding everything as puzzle pieces" comes in handy!
![[Smile]](smile.gif)
As to Nessie: I have no idea if s/he/they exist...but I firmly believe a world with such beasties is better than one without them. (Well, most of them--we can skip things like the chupacabra! ![[Eek!]](eek.gif) )
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Blessed Gator, pray for us!
--"Oh bat bladders, do you have to bring common sense into this?" (Dragon, "Jane & the Dragon")
--"Oh, Peace Train, save this country!" (Yusuf/Cat Stevens, "Peace Train")
Posts: 18601 | From: Chilling out in an undisclosed, sincere pumpkin patch. | Registered: Oct 2001
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Golden Key
Shipmate
# 1468
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Posted
(Missed the edit window.)
The creation story in Genesis 1 hits the spot for a lot of people. (As, I imagine, other people love the creation stories of their traditions.)
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Blessed Gator, pray for us!
--"Oh bat bladders, do you have to bring common sense into this?" (Dragon, "Jane & the Dragon")
--"Oh, Peace Train, save this country!" (Yusuf/Cat Stevens, "Peace Train")
Posts: 18601 | From: Chilling out in an undisclosed, sincere pumpkin patch. | Registered: Oct 2001
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Boogie
Boogie on down!
# 13538
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Golden Key:
I think one thing that critics of creationists often miss is that many people live by stories. Myths, in the deep sense of the word. Some non-creationists do get that.
Yes - I have a wonderful children's big book which tells the story of evolution in pictures and poetry. It really does inspire awe and wonder.
The creation story is true for me, at a deep level. The fact that the world wasn't created that way misses the point entirely imo.
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Garden. Room. Walk
Posts: 13030 | From: Boogie Wonderland | Registered: Mar 2008
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The Great Gumby
Ship's Brain Surgeon
# 10989
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Golden Key:
As to Nessie: I have no idea if s/he/they exist...but I firmly believe a world with such beasties is better than one without them. (Well, most of them--we can skip things like the chupacabra! )
I firmly believe that a world in which all beings excrete nuggets of pure, clean carbon-free energy is better than one where we don't. Either other people disagree or beliefs, whether firm or otherwise, don't count for shit.
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The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool. - Richard Feynman
A letter to my son about death
Posts: 5382 | From: Home for shot clergy spouses | Registered: Feb 2006
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aumbry
Shipmate
# 436
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Mockingale:
quote:
Originally posted by aumbry:
quote:
Originally posted by Mockingale:
quote:
Originally posted by aumbry:
In the 1970s belief in the Loch Ness Monster was held by some quite well regarded natural scientists. Peter Scott was one of them. I think he even managed to take a picture of its fin although I suppose it could have been a giant herring. Not much earlier the fossil fish coelocanth had been discovered to be lounging around in the deep.
It seems unlikely but who knows? Certainly Christians are asked to believe some pretty outre sort of stuff compared with which the existence Nessie seems quite a possibility.
Way to miss the point.
What does that mean in English?
It means that you're a moron.
I apologise if I have displeased Madam.
Posts: 3869 | From: Quedlinburg | Registered: Jun 2001
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Imaginary Friend
Real to you
# 186
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Golden Key:
I think there's much to be said for both creationism and evolution.
Maybe, but only one of these has any place in a science classroom. By which I mean that stories that help us make sense of the world are undoubtedly valuable, but they are a different kind of beast from the idealized sterile scientific investigation and the knowledge which can be gained from it.
However, the flip side of that is that many people have an over-inflated opinion of what science can achieve. In particular, science itself cannot prove that science is somehow the most fundamental Truth (that would be circular logic). But this is a point which is often missed, and is not well taught, in my experience.
On a different tack. One time I was at church on a Sunday evening (the same church that Liberty referred to above) and the preacher, who was a former pastor and well-respected member of the congregation, was giving one of his stump-sermons inveighing against the evils of modern life. He had several of these, one on Teh Gayz, another against general "loose morals", but that evening he was in full flow about how ridiculous the very idea of evolution was. His argument was essentially one of incredulity (great logic!) but at one point he very smugly "disproved" evolution by pointing out that one cannot drop a rowing boat into a lake, leave it a hundred years, and expect it to "evolve" into an aircraft carrier. I kid you not: That was his argument! Which illustrates the point that many who argue against evolution don't really understand what the theory says and how a scientific understanding of evolution goes. (There are notable exceptions to this, of course, and I don't want to tar all creationists with this brush.)
I try to take this as a cautionary tale: One can make oneself look bloody stupid if one talks at length about a subject about which one knows little.
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"We had a good team on paper. Unfortunately, the game was played on grass."
Brian Clough
Posts: 9455 | From: Left a bit... Right a bit... | Registered: May 2001
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Curiosity killed ...
Ship's Mug
# 11770
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Posted
The other argument I've heard, while looking at foetal development (yes, really)*, was that when you look at the world and how specialised something like a duck is and how unspecialised man is, how can we say evolution happens? Surely man would be more specialised, and this is proof that man is created.
*if you look at foetal development it is another area that suggests/demonstrates evolution.
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Mugs - Keep the Ship afloat
Posts: 13794 | From: outiside the outer ring road | Registered: Aug 2006
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Sioni Sais
Shipmate
# 5713
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Posted
Ducks aren't limited at all! They swim quickly, dive, eat almost anything (raw), fly faster than most birds and will attempt to mate with almost any other fowl. They hone your shooting skills and are good to eat too.
Man on the other hand is slow on land and in water, can't climb very well, isn't desperately strong and is prone to disease. A lot of smaller, lighter animals can see him off. What he can do is think intellectually and creatively and make things, which enables man to do far more than any animal.
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"He isn't Doctor Who, he's The Doctor"
(Paul Sinha, BBC)
Posts: 24276 | From: Newport, Wales | Registered: Apr 2004
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Imaginary Friend
Real to you
# 186
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Posted
And man (and woman) can run long distances without tiring. As described in a recent Slate article. If the premise of this piece is to be believed, humans evolved in very specific ways to be able to hunt in a manner that no other creature could.
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"We had a good team on paper. Unfortunately, the game was played on grass."
Brian Clough
Posts: 9455 | From: Left a bit... Right a bit... | Registered: May 2001
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Tortuf
Ship's fisherman
# 3784
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Imaginary Friend:
. . . humans evolved in very specific ways to be able to hunt in a manner that no other creature could.
This is true. Very few other creatures hunt in cocktail lounges.
Posts: 6963 | From: The Venice of the South | Registered: Dec 2002
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Imaginary Friend
Real to you
# 186
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Posted
You've been listening to Sine again, haven't you? ![[Paranoid]](graemlins/paranoid.gif)
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"We had a good team on paper. Unfortunately, the game was played on grass."
Brian Clough
Posts: 9455 | From: Left a bit... Right a bit... | Registered: May 2001
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ken
Ship's Roundhead
# 2460
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Imaginary Friend:
quote:
Originally posted by Golden Key:
I think there's much to be said for both creationism and evolution.
Maybe, but only one of these has any place in a science classroom.
Hear hear!
quote:
[...] he was in full flow about how ridiculous the very idea of evolution was. His argument was essentially one of incredulity (great logic!) but at one point he very smugly "disproved" evolution by pointing out that one cannot drop a rowing boat into a lake, leave it a hundred years, and expect it to "evolve" into an aircraft carrier. I kid you not: That was his argument! Which illustrates the point that many who argue against evolution don't really understand what the theory says and how a scientific understanding of evolution goes.
Yes. That's ignorance rather than stupidity. The bloke has never actually learned anything about the subject.
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
I have certain creationist tendencies myself. Yes. Gasp.
Any Christian has to be a creationist of course, in that we belive that God creates the world.
But we don't have to be liars. We don;t have to p[retend that the world looks like its young when in fact it looks like its old. The vast majority of the YECcies are simply ignorant and are accepting what they are told by people they trust. I don't think they are all stupid (and sometimes it seems to me that there is a lot of snobbery coming from thise that do think they are all stupid) and I don't feel very angry at them.
But I feel very angry at some of the so-called Creation Science people and the IDiots. They are liars. Someone who claims to have studied biology or geology seriously and also claims that the world looks as if it is only a few thousand years old is lying about one or the other claim. So there is no point in arguing with them about the scientific details - they don't care about that - it is their morality, their politics, and their theology, that are broken, not their science. But some of them at least are are lying. I don't know why they are doing it. Maybe its a social control thing, a way of dominating others, a source of political power, of controlling votes, maybe they like the adulation of all their followers. Or it might be just a career move. A modern version of the snake-oil salesman, quacks peddling fake goods from town to town.
There is a logical get-out for YEC of course, it is possible to beleive that the world looks ancie3nt but is in fact young. The notorious Omphalos theory, the idea that God created the world recently but deliberately fixed it so that it looks older. As suggested by Philip Henry Gosse who was a much cleverer man than most people recognised. But most YECcies don't accept it for other reasons, chiefly that it makes God out to be a liar (actually Gosse thought that it didn't for possibly rather vague handwavingy reasons to do with cyclic natural phenomena but his critics never really accepted that) The Omphalos has (for Gosse if for no-one else) the convenient property that the Young-Earth Creationist who is also a scientist can continue to believe in the Bible, and to believe that the Bible claims that God created the world in six ordinary days, and also can continue to study the natural world, without having to tell any lies. The so-called "Creation Scientists" can't.
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Ken
L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle.
Posts: 39579 | From: London | Registered: Mar 2002
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LeRoc
Famous Dutch pirate
# 3216
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Posted
The Loch Ness monster is proof that my time machine works!
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I know why God made the rhinoceros, it's because He couldn't see the rhinoceros, so He made the rhinoceros to be able to see it. (Clarice Lispector)
Posts: 9474 | From: Brazil / Africa | Registered: Aug 2002
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The Great Gumby
Ship's Brain Surgeon
# 10989
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by LeRoc:
The Loch Ness monster is proof that my time machine works!
Aaaand we're back to Doctor Who again.
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The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool. - Richard Feynman
A letter to my son about death
Posts: 5382 | From: Home for shot clergy spouses | Registered: Feb 2006
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Tortuf:
quote:
Originally posted by Imaginary Friend:
. . . humans evolved in very specific ways to be able to hunt in a manner that no other creature could.
This is true. Very few other creatures hunt in cocktail lounges.
Bravo.
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This is the last sig I'll ever write for you...
Posts: 63536 | From: Washington | Registered: Jul 2001
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The Great Gumby
Ship's Brain Surgeon
# 10989
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Posted
There's a lot of attention on Accelerated Christian Education (ACE) at the moment. If you want to know more, Jonny Scaramanga has an excellent blog on Leaving Fundamentalism where he discusses his experiences of being brought up in that environment.
It's truly eye-opening.
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The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool. - Richard Feynman
A letter to my son about death
Posts: 5382 | From: Home for shot clergy spouses | Registered: Feb 2006
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Uncle Pete
Loyaute me lie
# 10422
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Gamaliel:
Has anyone spotted this yet?
It's from the Scottish Herald and deals with a US fundie classroom curriculum that appears to use Nessie as an argument against Evolution:
Someone may have to tidy the link up for me ... I'm not that good with this sort of thing:
http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/education/how-american-fundamentalist-schools-are-using-nessie-to-disprove-evolution.17918 511
As the previous poster just said - you didn't bother to read the thread did you? Just jumped in to babble away?
I don't fix a moron's coding. I just leave it for people to laugh and snicker at.
PeteC
The Kindly Hellhost
[ 11. July 2012, 17:49: Message edited by: PeteC ]
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Even more so than I was before
Posts: 20466 | From: No longer where I was | Registered: Sep 2005
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Gamaliel
Shipmate
# 812
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Posted
Many apologies. I overlooked the first section/s and only caught it part way through.
![[Hot and Hormonal]](icon_redface.gif)
I submit to shame and ridicule.
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Let us with a gladsome mind
Praise the Lord for He is kind.
http://philthebard.blogspot.com
Posts: 15997 | From: Cheshire, UK | Registered: Jul 2001
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Kelly Alves
Bunny with an axe
# 2522
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by The Great Gumby:
quote:
Originally posted by LeRoc:
The Loch Ness monster is proof that my time machine works!
Aaaand we're back to Doctor Who again.
This is what leapt to mind first, for me.
(Gamaliel, you're not a moron. A space cadet, maybe, but not a moron. )
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I cannot expect people to believe “
Jesus loves me, this I know” of they don’t believe “Kelly loves me, this I know.”
Kelly Alves, somewhere around 2003.
Posts: 35076 | From: Pura Californiana | Registered: Mar 2002
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Liberty
ship's football fanatic
# 713
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
The reason I think they're stupid is not so much because of things that they don't know, but because they see fit to make PRONOUNCEMENTS on topics they clearly don't know anything about. There's a fundamental difference between recognising your own lack of knowledge and parading it as if you DO know something.
It worries me in education how easy it is to BS an answer than to say "I don't know", or "it's not clear". My TA told my 2nd Graders that the sky is blue because it reflects the sea... and the sea is blue because it is deep. He admitted to me later that he knew he was guessing. God knows what stupid things I've said in ignorance, when I think I know but actually don't. But I refuse to say stuff that I know I don't know.
As Rumsfeld said... unknown unknowns, known unknowns etc.
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"I'ma be what I set out to be, without a doubt, undoubtedly"
Posts: 1879 | From: SW2 to 20009 | Registered: Jul 2001
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Wilfried
Shipmate
# 12277
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Lothiriel:
Yeah, whatever so-called YEC "scientists" practice, it ain't science. They begin by stating their conclusion as fact, and selectively choose "evidence" that seems to support it.
That's how religion works, so why shouldn't science? Mind you, I'm a card carrying Christian.
quote:
Originally posted by EtymologicalEvangelical:
So perhaps if certain vociferous fanatics give up associating science with atheism, you might just find a bit more moderation on the fundie front.
Just as "violence begets violence", so idiocy begets idiocy.
Uh, no. As the product of two, count 'em, scientists, particle physicists no less, I can say that if scientists are atheists, it's simply because they don't care about religion, not because they equate science and atheism. And if they get vehement, it's as a reaction to the anti-intellectual denial of empirical evidence that gets passed of as religion. Otherwise they just couldn't be bothered. My parents were de facto atheists, but they didn't call themselves that because they simply didn't care enough to take a position, unless idiot Christians got their dander up. The same is true of most of my atheist, or simply a-religious friends. They're mostly willing to live and let live, except when confronted with creationist-type idiocy, or narrow minded, bigoted, anti-dead-horse-of-the-moment demagoguery. Of course, some of them have been clobbered by enough of that kind of religion that their reaction has become knee-jerk. My evangelism, such as it is, is to show them that religion doesn't have to be like that, and sometimes they calm down. Undo the damage, as it were. Dawkins has an audience because the straw man he sets up as religion is the religion people actually see around them.
Posts: 429 | From: Lefty on the Right Coast | Registered: Jan 2007
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beatmenace
Shipmate
# 16955
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Posted
Oh I know LeRoc....when i last spoke to Nessie she was very upset to find out she did't exist.
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"I'm the village idiot , aspiring to great things." (The Icicle Works)
Posts: 297 | From: Whitley Bay | Registered: Feb 2012
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