My blog will be silent for the next few days, because I will be on vacation in the Caribbean. I’ll be doing a lot of diving, and I am especially excited, because I will be seeing things like this:
And this:
Expect something the week of the 15th!
Out for More Than A Week
Hey, have a great vacation. I’ve only been diving once, but loved it. And not even a wreck or sculpture garden were involved. Lucky you!
When you get back, maybe you can respond to PZ.
I almost forgot, I’m going to hear the master himself tonight. Wish you could be there!
There is no reason to reply to PZ on that. Reasonable old-earth creationists don’t think the days of Genesis “line up” with the order of evolutionary events. Reasonable old-earth creationists don’t consider the Genesis accounts to be history. As a result, they don’t think you need to “line up” the days with with anything. When I originally read that blog, I agreed with PZ that it is silly to try such a thing.
Of course, this entire blog and many other excellent resources such as AiG and TrueOrigin linked on the right show that his idea of young-earth creationism being kooky is simply the result of his own ignorance. Young-earth creationism, like understanding AGW doesn’t exist, is a result of looking at the data instead of relying on propaganda.
As you know, my comments on your blog tend to be pointless and generally just a way of amusing myself, however, I hope you have a great vacation. I’m absurdly jealous about the diving excursions. Please bring back pictures!!! And don’t do anything stupid underwater… it could kill you! 🙂
Of course, if I do something stupid while diving, THAT could kill me.
Besides, I think I have used up my “stupid things I could do” quota for the next few years, if you know what I mean…
No, there isn’t reason to respond. I just wanted you to see the * text:
“However, by far the most common kind of creationist haunting our country today is the young earth creationist, who dispenses with all that conciliatory fol-de-rol and simply declares science completely wrong in its interpretations and that the earth is literally and actually less than ten thousand years old and that God did it all in precisely six 24 hour days. This has been a trend; anecdotally, I’ve found the YECs are much more common and much more arrogant in their beliefs now than, say, twenty years ago. It’s what Answers in Genesis promotes, after all.”
Have a good trip!
Apparently, you have a hard time reading, since the home page of this blog informs you that I read PZ regularly. Thus, I had already seen that text. As I said before, such statements show PZ’s ignorance. There are all manner of YECs, and many of them are more dedicated to science than PZ, because we actually look at the data rather than simply taking it on faith that the earth is billions of years old.
As I have said before in another posting, if you are committed to materialistic evolution, you have no choice but to believe in a billions-of-years-old earth. As a result, there is no way you can objectively view the situation. When you dispense of a fervent faith in materialistic evolution, you can use the data to inform you on such matters, making your decisions much more scientific.
Incidentally, as is usually the case when PZ discusses creationism, he is dead wrong. Polling indicates that for the population as a whole, the percentage of YECs is slightly higher than OECs, but not by much. Also, those percentages have not changed over the years. In addition, if you look at college grads, OECs are more common. Interestingly enough, the percentage of those who believe in purely naturalistic evolution is about the same regardless of college education.
Hi I’m new to you, and I teach out of your books. I like the historical science, and I’m not a Ph.d. I’m not published. I am interested to know, however, how are materialism and evolution connected? I grew up very Christian, and now am just very passionate about teaching. I don’t care what the curriculum is. Unbiased, proper science could be taught from the Hindi faith done properly, faith aside! I feel that the goals become convoluted when approached with such prior feelings to “how things came to be.” Science is not to “prove” anything; it’s to research, and learn about everything. Scientist are VERY wrong sometimes,but what about, for instance, people that think particle accelerators will create an Earth consuming black hole. This is a lack of understanding of the subject they are messing with. They just know…black hole=bad. These black holes, which haven’t happened yet they require too much energy, couldn’t do anything beyond an atomic scale before detiorating. Do you believe in black holes? Astronomically they are pretty obvious anymore. A star moving in a rapid elipse around a black point can easily reveal its mass…simple Newtonian stuff. That math I can do, and it makes very good sense. I’d be interested to hear from you. Please comment or e-mail.
Hello, and thanks for the post. I would disagree with you regarding the idea that science can be taught properly from any framework. I could certainly teach ASPECTS of science from any point of view. Balancing chemical equations, for example, is not dependent on what your faith is. I do think that overall, however, science can only be taught properly from the correct point of view.
After all, my goal as a scientist is to determine the actual way the universe works and the actual way it came to be. Please note that this is NOT the goal of many scientists. Many scientists (like my PhD advisor) say that science cannot determine the actual way the universe works or the actual way it came to be. They say that science’s only job is to develop the best MODEL for the universe. They don’t care whether or not the model represents the actual universe or not. As long as it can correctly model all aspects of the universe, that is all science can hope to do. Obviously, I disagree with them.
From my approach to science, then, whether you are a materialist or a theist matters a GREAT DEAL. Indeed, even the kind of theist you are matters a great deal, as different religions posit their gods as interacting in the world in different ways. If my goal is to find the actual way the universe works and the actual way it operates, then, it is important to have the correct Creator in my scientific framework.
In addition, imagine teaching US law without ever mentioning the US Constitution, which is the source of all US law. I suppose it might be possible to do, but the students would have a hopelessly inadequate understanding of US law if they don’t know the ultimate source and how that source produced the law they studied. In the same way, without a proper understanding of the source of nature, your knowledge of the universe will be hopelessly inadequate.
There is no real connection between materialism and evolution. Many evolutionists ARE materialists, but many are not. Those who are materialists put their faith in blind chance and lots of time. To them, time is the “magic wand” by which even the most impossible thing becomes commonplace. Evolutionists who are not materialists understand that there are many, many impossible steps to the process of evolution. Thus, they posit a supernatural being that pushes evolution along, making the impossible steps possible. So while evolution makes materialism POSSIBLE, it still does not make it RATIONAL.
I agree that science is wrong a lot of times. Indeed, my textbooks spend a great deal of time discussing this fact. Nevertheless, science has produced a lot of understanding and has made life a lot better for most people. Like any human endeavor, however, it is fallible.
Those who think that particle accelerators can produce earth-consuming black holes don’t understand basic physics. However, those who don’t believe in the existence of black holes also don’t understand basic physics. Black holes have been indirectly detected by more means than the one you mention, but that is one way to indirectly detect that black holes are, indeed, real.