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"A Creationist can not perform what he thinks is correct science without performing what the rest of the world is incorrect science." I'm sorry, but that's bul

"A Creationist can not perform what he thinks is correct science without performing what the rest of the world is incorrect science." I'm sorry, but that's bullshit. The whole Science VS Faith thing is a false dichotomy, the two are not inherently incompatible except in the minds of unfortunate extremists on both sides of the argument. Implying that they are ignores the fact that the vast overwhelming majority of science has been performed by so-called "creationists". Society simply didn't tolerate atheism prior to say 1960.

jmillikin 16y ago
I'm sorry, but that's bullshit. The whole Science VS Faith thing is a false dichotomy, the two are not inherently incompatible except in the minds of unfortunate extremists on both sides of the argument. Faith is, fundamentally, the process of maintaining beliefs in the face of 1) absent evidence and 2) conflicting evidence. Science is the process of discovering evidence. While theoretically compatible, in practice, people performing science often discover evidence that conflicts with widely-held beliefs. When those beliefs are part of an ongoing faith, the faith-holders usually react violently against the scientists. Implying that they are ignores the fact that the vast overwhelming majority of science has been performed by so-called "creationists". Society simply didn't tolerate atheism prior to say 1960. I'm not sure what you're arguing here, since it seems to go against your main point.
- jstrate 16y ago
  I agree that science and faith are theoretically compatible, but you intentionally omit that they have been compatible in practice for hundreds of years. I would say that the evidence that they are compatible is overwhelming: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Christian_thinkers_in_science http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Christian_thinkers_in_s...
  - sirrocco 16y ago
    For that list to have any significance you'd have to put it side by side with a list of people who didn't have faith . You would also have to remove many of the believers on the list because being a person without god in 1400 would probably have made you a witch and you'd probably burn at the stake or something.
    - pbhjpbhj 16y ago
      >For that list to have any significance you'd have to put it side by side with a list of people who didn't have faith . So you're saying that Newton, say (who incidentally wrote many theological treatise), no longer is a scientist [of any worth] if there were more people at the time who didn't have a faith in God? The fact that there may or may not be scientists without faith is orthogonal to the fact that scientists with a faith in God produce worthwhile results, or do you disagree?
- Helianthus16 16y ago
  >Faith is, fundamentally, the process of maintaining beliefs in the face of 1) absent evidence and 2) conflicting evidence. This is the tired beaten horse of atheistic criticism, taking the general principle that one must make a leap out of indecision and doubt in order to achieve any sort of meaningful viewpoint and twisting it, torturing it into the statement "Faith is explicitly about not making sense." Faith _is also_ the means by which we escape such boring philosophical questions as "Is the sun going to rise the next day?" or "How do you _know_???" Whether or not you believe that the word "faith" applies to your acceptance of the precepts of science ("I believe the world is consistent.") does not change the fact that the mechanism by which you escape a possibly infinite amount of doubt is by taking the leap outside of it. "Doubt does me nothing; faith gives me something to work with."
  - ugh 16y ago
    I’m not really sure why I need faith to be fairly certain that the sun will rise tomorrow. I don’t need to be certain in any absolute terms, being extremely certain based on past evidence is good enough for me. I’m not plagued by doubt and suggesting that living without faith would leave one in doubt seems dubious to me. I can work with not being absolutely certain.
    - Helianthus16 16y ago
      Prolly too late for you to see this, but that "[working] with not being absolutely certain" is precisely faith in its truest, most broad form. God in this faith is not the sky wizard of atheistic clap-trap, but a question: if some entity is responsible for all of this bullshit existence, is that person on our side? Faith is the answer 'yes.' Atheism doesn't have an answer via attacking the question, which is fine until we are forced to face it. which will happen.
- jerf 16y ago
  "Faith is, fundamentally, the process of maintaining beliefs in the face of 1) absent evidence and 2) conflicting evidence." That's your definition. There are multiple different definitions, even in a dictionary. It is an error to choose one and insist that it applies to all things that get the word "faith" applied to them. Definitions do not have that power. It's a common error, but an error nonetheless. A definition I find much more useful, the relevant metric of a definition, is that faith in a statement is acting as if the statement is true. I sit in a chair and by doing so demonstrate faith that it will hold my weight. I have in the past sat in chairs where my faith was misplaced, so this isn't even a faked up academic point, I really do have less than 100% confidence in this statement from either a Bayesian or a frequentist point of view, but nevertheless I have this faith and act on it. In my opinion, this is a much more useful way of understanding it, and in particular as my example shows actually reaches well beyond the "merely religious"; matters of this sort of faith come up in all sorts of places, including science and engineering. I readily agree in advance that scientific faith and religious faith are not the same thing, but they are points on a continuum, not binary opposites, and ultimately we must all have some sort of faith in the things that are beyond the purview of science, which, regrettably, includes rather a lot of very important things. Push comes to shove I don't have enough evidence to accept any cosmology as 100% likely to be true. Per that article about archilects a few days ago, some form of Intelligent Design is a lot lot less "stupid" than people think; strict atheism is nowhere near as casually obvious as it was forty years ago. (We have a tentative-but-developing recipe for building gods, things that would make the Greek gods look like children by comparison. You may have faith that no such entity anywhere ever been created (by any means), but you really can't prove it, nor can you prove that no such entity lies somewhere in our history or possibly at the root of the current universe.) Yet by my actions I demonstrate faith in some belief. So do you. Neither of us have 100% confidence in the strict mathematical sense. If there's some way to get to 100% confidence, I don't know what it is. The definition of faith as "choosing to believe things you know are false" is not a useful definition in describing or learning about the world. It's a rhetorical beating stick that allows you to dismiss claims without having to examine them. And you have not done the real work necessary to make your point relevant, which is to establish that your particular definition applies to the person in question with evidence beyond mere assertion.
lutorm 16y ago
You may think it's bullshit. I disagree. It's true that in many cases, there is no conflict. There is no conflict (currently, at least) between believing that God was responsible for the Big Bang and belief in cosmology. In the case of believing that the Earth is <10kyr old, however, the conflict is clear. I don't see how one can argue with that without resorting to contrived beliefs that God set up a huge hoax by making the Universe seem to be 14Gyr old. (That's not a disprovable belief, of course, so it could be the case.)
- bugsy 16y ago
  You make a good point that a claim to creationist belief might be in terms of a belief that God set in motion the Big Bang. Noting of course that belief in the Truth of the Big Bang is as scientific as a belief in the Truth of the existence of God. Neither claim has been verified, both have arguments for and against, both have reasonable alternative theories. > In the case of believing that the Earth is <10kyr old, however, the conflict is clear. I have found that in the "scientific creationist" camp (scientific because they propose experiments to test hypotheses and write up their results in a paper format so that the experiment is understood and replicable) there is a lot of useful discussion about assumptions regarding dating. Not talking about the blind faith camp, talking about people asking how remnants of helium isotopes can be found in ancient rocks when the expected diffusion rates of the helium give a substantially different date than measuring remnant radioactive isotope content. These are interesting findings. They may not prove anything about God, but they are at least exploring interesting scientific issues. For example, most of them will be OK with saying the earth is about 4.5 billion years old as long as we acknowledge that by "years" we mean not in terms of orbits of the earth around the sun, but in terms of the time for radioactive decay to occur, assuming a given set of original conditions which may or may not be correct.
- pbhjpbhj 16y ago
  >>A Creationist can not perform what he thinks is correct science without performing what the rest of the world is incorrect science. >(That's not a disprovable belief, of course, so it could be the case.) Do you see the inconsistency here. You're saying on the one hand "it's bad science" and other the other admitting that their isn't any scientific reason to declare the position as false. A "running start" theory appears to be unfalsifiable and thus outside of the realms of scientific result.
chc 16y ago
Science and faith are not inherently incompatible, but it's quite possible for specific instances (e.g. young-Earth creationism vs. everything science has discovered about the universe) to be wildly incompatible.

jmillikin 16y ago

I'm sorry, but that's bullshit. The whole Science VS Faith thing is a false dichotomy, the two are not inherently incompatible except in the minds of unfortunate extremists on both sides of the argument. Faith is, fundamentally, the process of maintaining beliefs in the face of 1) absent evidence and 2) conflicting evidence. Science is the process of discovering evidence. While theoretically compatible, in practice, people performing science often discover evidence that conflicts with widely-held beliefs. When those beliefs are part of an ongoing faith, the faith-holders usually react violently against the scientists. Implying that they are ignores the fact that the vast overwhelming majority of science has been performed by so-called "creationists". Society simply didn't tolerate atheism prior to say 1960. I'm not sure what you're arguing here, since it seems to go against your main point.

jstrate 16y ago
I agree that science and faith are theoretically compatible, but you intentionally omit that they have been compatible in practice for hundreds of years. I would say that the evidence that they are compatible is overwhelming: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Christian_thinkers_in_science http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Christian_thinkers_in_s...
- sirrocco 16y ago
  For that list to have any significance you'd have to put it side by side with a list of people who didn't have faith . You would also have to remove many of the believers on the list because being a person without god in 1400 would probably have made you a witch and you'd probably burn at the stake or something.
  - pbhjpbhj 16y ago
    >For that list to have any significance you'd have to put it side by side with a list of people who didn't have faith . So you're saying that Newton, say (who incidentally wrote many theological treatise), no longer is a scientist [of any worth] if there were more people at the time who didn't have a faith in God? The fact that there may or may not be scientists without faith is orthogonal to the fact that scientists with a faith in God produce worthwhile results, or do you disagree?
Helianthus16 16y ago
>Faith is, fundamentally, the process of maintaining beliefs in the face of 1) absent evidence and 2) conflicting evidence. This is the tired beaten horse of atheistic criticism, taking the general principle that one must make a leap out of indecision and doubt in order to achieve any sort of meaningful viewpoint and twisting it, torturing it into the statement "Faith is explicitly about not making sense." Faith _is also_ the means by which we escape such boring philosophical questions as "Is the sun going to rise the next day?" or "How do you _know_???" Whether or not you believe that the word "faith" applies to your acceptance of the precepts of science ("I believe the world is consistent.") does not change the fact that the mechanism by which you escape a possibly infinite amount of doubt is by taking the leap outside of it. "Doubt does me nothing; faith gives me something to work with."
- ugh 16y ago
  I’m not really sure why I need faith to be fairly certain that the sun will rise tomorrow. I don’t need to be certain in any absolute terms, being extremely certain based on past evidence is good enough for me. I’m not plagued by doubt and suggesting that living without faith would leave one in doubt seems dubious to me. I can work with not being absolutely certain.
  - Helianthus16 16y ago
    Prolly too late for you to see this, but that "[working] with not being absolutely certain" is precisely faith in its truest, most broad form. God in this faith is not the sky wizard of atheistic clap-trap, but a question: if some entity is responsible for all of this bullshit existence, is that person on our side? Faith is the answer 'yes.' Atheism doesn't have an answer via attacking the question, which is fine until we are forced to face it. which will happen.
jerf 16y ago
"Faith is, fundamentally, the process of maintaining beliefs in the face of 1) absent evidence and 2) conflicting evidence." That's your definition. There are multiple different definitions, even in a dictionary. It is an error to choose one and insist that it applies to all things that get the word "faith" applied to them. Definitions do not have that power. It's a common error, but an error nonetheless. A definition I find much more useful, the relevant metric of a definition, is that faith in a statement is acting as if the statement is true. I sit in a chair and by doing so demonstrate faith that it will hold my weight. I have in the past sat in chairs where my faith was misplaced, so this isn't even a faked up academic point, I really do have less than 100% confidence in this statement from either a Bayesian or a frequentist point of view, but nevertheless I have this faith and act on it. In my opinion, this is a much more useful way of understanding it, and in particular as my example shows actually reaches well beyond the "merely religious"; matters of this sort of faith come up in all sorts of places, including science and engineering. I readily agree in advance that scientific faith and religious faith are not the same thing, but they are points on a continuum, not binary opposites, and ultimately we must all have some sort of faith in the things that are beyond the purview of science, which, regrettably, includes rather a lot of very important things. Push comes to shove I don't have enough evidence to accept any cosmology as 100% likely to be true. Per that article about archilects a few days ago, some form of Intelligent Design is a lot lot less "stupid" than people think; strict atheism is nowhere near as casually obvious as it was forty years ago. (We have a tentative-but-developing recipe for building gods, things that would make the Greek gods look like children by comparison. You may have faith that no such entity anywhere ever been created (by any means), but you really can't prove it, nor can you prove that no such entity lies somewhere in our history or possibly at the root of the current universe.) Yet by my actions I demonstrate faith in some belief. So do you. Neither of us have 100% confidence in the strict mathematical sense. If there's some way to get to 100% confidence, I don't know what it is. The definition of faith as "choosing to believe things you know are false" is not a useful definition in describing or learning about the world. It's a rhetorical beating stick that allows you to dismiss claims without having to examine them. And you have not done the real work necessary to make your point relevant, which is to establish that your particular definition applies to the person in question with evidence beyond mere assertion.

lutorm 16y ago

You may think it's bullshit. I disagree. It's true that in many cases, there is no conflict. There is no conflict (currently, at least) between believing that God was responsible for the Big Bang and belief in cosmology. In the case of believing that the Earth is <10kyr old, however, the conflict is clear. I don't see how one can argue with that without resorting to contrived beliefs that God set up a huge hoax by making the Universe seem to be 14Gyr old. (That's not a disprovable belief, of course, so it could be the case.)

bugsy 16y ago
You make a good point that a claim to creationist belief might be in terms of a belief that God set in motion the Big Bang. Noting of course that belief in the Truth of the Big Bang is as scientific as a belief in the Truth of the existence of God. Neither claim has been verified, both have arguments for and against, both have reasonable alternative theories. > In the case of believing that the Earth is <10kyr old, however, the conflict is clear. I have found that in the "scientific creationist" camp (scientific because they propose experiments to test hypotheses and write up their results in a paper format so that the experiment is understood and replicable) there is a lot of useful discussion about assumptions regarding dating. Not talking about the blind faith camp, talking about people asking how remnants of helium isotopes can be found in ancient rocks when the expected diffusion rates of the helium give a substantially different date than measuring remnant radioactive isotope content. These are interesting findings. They may not prove anything about God, but they are at least exploring interesting scientific issues. For example, most of them will be OK with saying the earth is about 4.5 billion years old as long as we acknowledge that by "years" we mean not in terms of orbits of the earth around the sun, but in terms of the time for radioactive decay to occur, assuming a given set of original conditions which may or may not be correct.
pbhjpbhj 16y ago
>>A Creationist can not perform what he thinks is correct science without performing what the rest of the world is incorrect science. >(That's not a disprovable belief, of course, so it could be the case.) Do you see the inconsistency here. You're saying on the one hand "it's bad science" and other the other admitting that their isn't any scientific reason to declare the position as false. A "running start" theory appears to be unfalsifiable and thus outside of the realms of scientific result.

chc 16y ago

Science and faith are not inherently incompatible, but it's quite possible for specific instances (e.g. young-Earth creationism vs. everything science has discovered about the universe) to be wildly incompatible.