My main problem is with Christians who push their religion and morals on people by law.
I'm a secularist through and through.
I do believe it necessary for a society to define a set of moral values, though, as purely "rational" thought will lead to egocentrical behavior and therefore to immorality (even the value of human life in humanism is nothing that is derived solely from rationality).
I'd say they haven't applied general knowledge (about psychology mostly) to their God beliefs. By the end of university you should have the critical thinking skills to disprove one's own beliefs... and question is whether one will actually critically examine one's beliefs.
Knowing of psychological "theories" is one thing - following their line of thought and applying them in every situation is something completely different. Sadly, although universities seem to teach much knowledge these days, the limits to its application are something that students are never taught.
Using psychology (a "science" based primarily on statistic observances) to predict or model
individual beliefs is, on a side note, completely bonkers. It's simply using a faulty method - much akin to using political sciences in order to "predict" the way a single individual will vote.
You can't be informed and a creationist. Being informed would disprove such a belief.
Geocentrists would have argued similarly back then.
You can be informed on any subject at hand, know the theory and know the evidence. Creationists will have to discard some observations and attempt to justify that in order to defend their hypothesis - the validity of their claims will then rest on how well-thought that justification is.
Or tell me, critical thinker, what evidence have you personally witnessed?
That goes for any scientific subject.
Have you ever written a paper for any scientific journal? Check your literature - check the papers that you quoted and try to see whether or not their citation references line up. I'll say that about 30-50% of the citations I've tried to follow up on (that reference to a statement) link to secondary literature, which link to secondary literature, which link to secondary literature which end up dead.
To trust the current scientific "system" as blindly as many university students do is stupid and dangerous. Claims are often taken at face value and reviewed only decades later, ultimately destroying years of research. The notion that spinach contains 26mg/100g iron, for example, was held for decades before someone noticed that the original paper made a
decimal mistake. By then, there were entire iron diets that were to supposedly help during iron deficiency anemia (even though the iron in spinach can only poorly be absorbed due to oxalates).
Don't get me wrong - scientific study is deserving of better funding and is key to prosperity and wealth. But many academics fail to realize that the evidence and "data" quoted in papers is published to suit the needs of the researcher. Confirming null hypotheses usually doesn't get you in the Nature journal.
tl;dr: It's important to know about theories, but it's perfectly fine to doubt the validity of some evidence.
Being creationist really isn't any different from denying germ theory. It just isn't respectable.
The thing I enjoy about Creationists (and trust me, there are quite the bright minds within this line of thought) is that they teach us a lot about the limits of science and they make us realize that a lot of the "evidence" we commonly quote has often neither been reproduced or sighted
by us and is merely the result of us blindly following the claims some professor has made.
Again, ignorant people, probably influence by the a type of media they've badly chosen to trust.
How much data have you collected on the topic? Where are your credentials?
Really, I do hope you'll have the chance to work in the field of natural sciences one day and realize that there's a lot of pressure on young researches to produce some kind of evidence for hypothesis X and that a lof of data will be discarded if it doesn't suit the needs. I can only speak for the German academic field, but I am certain this goes on elsewhere also.
If you have ever had a talk with your mentor that went along the lines of "well, you
could use that data, but that would decrease the significance of your hypothesis and we want to get this published!", you will understand that some evidence is to be viewed critically.
But sure, all those who do not follow mainstream views are obviously ignorant, stupid and redneck bible-belters.
Who's the one oppressing and violating other human beings again?
Most people aren't scientists. Most people do best when they accept the scientific consensus.
Tough question.
I would say that expert opinion is (currently) the best way to go in all personal questions (especially health).
The problem is the "slippery slope" of being entirely dependent on a caste of professionals that, in turn, decide who joins their "caste".
When differing opinions are censored (IPCC scandal) because they don't fit the message the majority of scientists want to convey, then we have a problem.
Maybe if you don't care about others, but for those who do, we oppose religion because it violates, oppressed, and repressed people.
Guns don't kill people,
people kill people.
Hitler battled Christianity, considering it inferior.
Stalin and Mao wanted to eradicate religion altogether.
I care very much about other humans - but your argumentation goes to show the atheist creed of "there is no other way but mine". You
don't even notice it, but you're implying that someone who is religious
can't care about other people.
That's the kind of arrogance that makes me sick to my stomach.
