Bill Nye the Science Guy and Creationism

[JonFromMinnesota]

But hey, even if god made the vaccine, I ask you this: who made the disease?

You already know the answer will be "because man sinned"
The important question that should be asked is "If God allowed a cure to be made, then why were the first vaccinations created using fetal tissue from kidney cells?"

 

[JonFromMinnesota]

All disease is the result of this and all treatment of disease is the through the kindness of God in allowing man to discover such cures and antibiotics.

Did you know the first polio vaccinations were created using fetal tissue? Isn't that a big "no no" in Christianity?

 

[PsychoSarah]

Did you know the first polio vaccinations were created using fetal tissue? Isn't that a big "no no" in Christianity?

Funny thing is, the bible doesn't really have an issue with that. I don't know why people associate religion with that topic.

 

[DogmaHunter]

That's a baseless and unfounded allegation based on what YOU believe.

No. That's is exactly what you said.

If encounters with the supernatural are not verifiable and if they can't be differentiated from mere mistakes or even hallucinations, then by definition "encounters with the supernatural" are just claims and nothing more...

True; just as it is true that the claim we live in a purely physical world does not automatically translate to being truth.

It's a good thing then, that most rational people don't claim that.
Rather, it goes like this: "we only have evidence for a physical world".
That doesn't exclude something beyond "the physical". But it DOES mean that "only the physical" is demonstrable. And therefor, one has no rational reasons to believe something "beyond" the physical exists. No, it doesn't mean that something "beyond" doesn't exist, nore does it mean that one claims that "nothing beyond" exists.

It only means that one, at this point, has no reason to believe such a thing exists.

What would be the point of creating a world and then having nothing whatever to do with it?

How should I know?
I can easily turn that around... what would be the point of creating a universe that's 90 billion light years across, just to have homo sapiens evolve on a little blue insignificant pixel that orbits an insignificant star? You could destroy the entire solar system and the universe would remain virtually unchanged.
This is a really weak argument of yours..

If there is a God, then He could create a world as easily as an author could pen the words, Let there be light. A being capable of creating the universe could do so in any many He chose. Why would he tell his creation a falsehood when a trillion year creation is no less a miracle than a 6 day creation?

Beats me. Usually, when I ask theists questions about seemingly senseless things in context of their religion, I get an answer like "god's ways are mysterious". So I'll run with that one.

In the original covenant, man was required to make sacrifices to God. Why? Because life was a struggle and to take the best he had and simply eliminate it meant that his faith had to mean a great deal to him. Encounters between God and man were more direct. God physically spoke to His prophets, and their authority on earth was absolute. Christ showed himself to Saul of Tarsas and proved Himself to His disciples, but message of Jesus Christ was the forgiveness of sins by faith alone.

Yep. Like I said: mere claims.
Not any different from any other, mutually exclusive, religions.
Indistinguishable from mere mistakes, hallucinations or imagination.

Faith is the acceptance of things unproven.

Right. Which is not a good or rational thing. Believing things with no rational reason is not a virtue. It's gullibility.

Unbelievers scoff and are confident in their disbelief. Believers are humble with their knowledge that God is real.

Faith is not knowledge.

 

[DogmaHunter]

And those who claim that there wasn't a divine act have the responsibility to prove there wasn't.

Shifting the burden of proof is a fallacy.

 

[florida2]

The polio vaccine was thanks to God and God alone.

Shame that God couldn't be bothered to share it until the 20th century and millions had to suffer in the meantime. If I was an all-loving and all-powerful deity I'd be pretty cruel letting so many people suffer when I could easily improve their lives. It doesn't make sense.

 

[joshua 1 9]

Since when are you an expert in it?

I am not an expert on it, I just know what classes they have to take to get their degree. When they were in High School maybe there was one chapter in their science book about Evolution and that was it. Oh there was a lot of discussion about that part of the book outside of the class. But my son asked me about it, then when we were done talking he elected to avoid the discussions because for him it was a waste of time. It is really much ado about nothing, but it is a litus test for a lot of people. It is as if they are forced to choose between science and religion. That is why I repeatedly say people do not need to choose one or the other, there is no conflict between science and religion. In the last election my son and I got very involved in the board of education and we made sure that the people that were elected represented what we believed. I am sure the people there really felt they were doing what was right, but they did not represent us and we got rid of them. Some people take the issue to court and that is absurd, if you want to fight the board of education you do it at the elections when people go to vote.

 

[Smidlee]

Galileo's permanent house arrest begs to differ. Linnaeus's refusal to acknowledge carnivorous plants as existing because "such a thing would be blasphemy and usurp the natural order established by god" begs to differ. Copernicus publishing on his deathbed to avoid punishment from the church begs to differ.

Galileo arrest was more on a personal issue than his view. It's the same someone can take the Bible and hit someone on the head doesn't make it a religious argument. The science of Galileo show the earth was stationary. First Isaac Newton showed by gravity Galileo model made more sense in spite of the lack of scientific evidence which wasn't seen until a hundred years later.
Atheist tries to rewrite history is the one who claimed it was a religion vs science argument just like the flat earth myth.

 

[joshua 1 9]

Before the scientists got involved, you had life with Polio... just sayin'

What you seem to forget is that God is the one that gives man the ability to do what he does. God can and does work through man so that all honor and glory belongs to Him. All the more that He is even able to accomplish what he is doing using man (and women). A lot of times I can not even get my kids to do what they should be doing. It is just so tempting to do it for them because that is a lot easier then getting them to do it for themselves. Once I actually did my sons homework for him because that was easier then getting him to do it for himself. But then I realized I was not helping him or doing him any good by doing it for him. So I let him suffer the consequences so he would learn how to do things for himself. The same with God. He is a Father type and He does not spoil us. He wants us to learn how to do things for ourselves. If we not, if we are hard headed and stubborn, then He will allow us the freedom to suffer the consequences. He gives us that choice.

 

[joshua 1 9]

For real have they not studied evolution? I'm thinking of going into engineering too but I've already taken 4 classes that teach evolution & I'm a junior. It's not just biology that teaches it. Like in astronomy we learned stellar evolution & obviously in DNA Science evolution was a huge part of it.

The son that is doing college right now is trying to decide between computer engineering and computer science so I have a list of all the classes he will have to take for both of those degrees. He has already been taking them in High School otherwise it would have taken him five years to get though college but now it will take more like three or four. My brother was like that. He did college in three years and graduate school in three years and NONE of them got any training in evolution other then the little bit that was required in High School. Back when I took biology evolutionary theory was not even a part of it and my Biology teacher was a graduate of Harvard University.

 

[joshua 1 9]

Ok.. I thought you knew more about science.. Umm.. simply put.. evolution is only one very small part of science.. there are other disciplines of science that have nothing to do with evolution. Evolution is just one tiny part of science. So to say the following:

is a false statement.

I worked in construction for 50 years and most of my education was in math and physics. In college I was theater major and I did work as an electrician on lighting for three years before I came to my senses and decided I wanted to do traditional construction work 9 to 5. We talk about how there are people that can teach and they are not the same as the people that can get out in the world and get the job done.

I have college biology books here that I get from Amazon when they get outdated and sell for ten or fifteen dollars. So I have read the chapters in the basic 101 books on evolution. Also I have a few ecology books from the university. There is a lot of information on the internet. For example if I want to figure out how atoms make up elements then I can find information online. Even the classes my son is taking at school I can watch on youtube from some of the best universities out there. So anyone that wants to educate themselves has a LOT of resources now a day. I remember around 20 years ago when Harvard was first experimenting around with putting their classes online. I watched the classes they had available on computer programming. Now lots of professors are filming their class and putting them online on youtube. You may not get a degree but you can get a college education at home on your computer with just what they have on youtube. Or just buying the older outdated books from the university for ten cents on the dollar.

 

[TLK Valentine]

It doesn't matter at all if you are not interested in the truth.

What does popularity have to do with truth?

 

[TLK Valentine]

How do you know?

Simple -- I looked at the number of Polio cases before we actually started doing something about it compared to the number of cases after we started doing something about it... and I did the math.

Another one of those utterly spurious generalisations by atheists to sound intelligent and worthy of applaud...I don't think.

Obviously.

 

[DogmaHunter]

Galileo arrest was more on a personal issue than his view. It's the same someone can take the Bible and hit someone on the head doesn't make it a religious argument. The science of Galileo show the earth was stationary. First Isaac Newton showed by gravity Galileo model made more sense in spite of the lack of scientific evidence which wasn't seen until a hundred years later.
Atheist tries to rewrite history is the one who claimed it was a religion vs science argument just like the flat earth myth.

Good job on denying history.

The focus on Galileo was directly related to his views being in contrast with the christian doctrine of the time.

In fact, it took many many years before the vatican officially recognised that yes, the earth orbits the sun and not the other way round.

The Inquisition started investigations concerning Galileo's theories headed by Cardinal Robertus Bellarminus and gave Gallileo an offical "warning" to stop defending his theories publicly in 1616. In that same year, they banned the works of Foscarini and started reviewing Copernicus. In 1620, they came with 10 "corrections" to Copernicus' works. The book could no longer be sold or printed without those 10 "corrections".

At first Galileo complied with the "warning", but several yeas later again started to engage the whole heliocentrism vs geocentrism debate through one of his students.

In 1624, Galileo received permission of the pope to write a new book in which he was allowed to again theorize about heliocentrism - with emphasis on the word "theorize". As in: it was forbidden to talk about it as if it was a fact.

He completed this book in 1632, but the inquisition forced him to change the title.
He was forced to remove all hints about the tides from the titled, because he had used the concept of tides to previously theorize that the earth wasn't stationary, for which he received the "warning" in 1616.

The only reason why the book was allowed to be printed, is because he included in the prelude that "all of which follows is only hypothesis". Without mentioning that, the book couldn't be printed.

The book was written in the form of a dialogue between 3 people. At the end of the book, he attributed a few statements of the pope to one of the people that clearly lost the argument. This was Galileo's way of saying that the church's position in the helio- geocentrism debate was incorrect. This infuriated the pope so he ordered another investigation by the inquisition, which resulted in his house arrest.

And, of all things, in 1992 the Pope issued an apology for how Galileo was treated. In other words: the vatican itself admits it. Why can't you?

 

[DogmaHunter]

What you seem to forget is that God is the one that gives man the ability to do what he does.

...or so you claim.

God can and does work through man so that all honor and glory belongs to Him.

EVEN if that were true, then it was still incredibly cruel to wait that long to "make a scientist discover it".

All the more that He is even able to accomplish what he is doing using man (and women). A lot of times I can not even get my kids to do what they should be doing. It is just so tempting to do it for them because that is a lot easier then getting them to do it for themselves. Once I actually did my sons homework for him because that was easier then getting him to do it for himself. But then I realized I was not helping him or doing him any good by doing it for him. So I let him suffer the consequences so he would learn how to do things for himself. The same with God.

Riiiiight.......... because getting a bad grade is of the same order as having millions die in agony.........

He is a Father type and He does not spoil us. He wants us to learn how to do things for ourselves. If we not, if we are hard headed and stubborn, then He will allow us the freedom to suffer the consequences. He gives us that choice.

Tell it to the millions upon millions of people who died in agony of polio...
"sorry folks, you had the freedom to come up with a cure for it - your fault that you didn't"

/facepalm

 

[TLK Valentine]

What you seem to forget is that God is the one that gives man the ability to do what he does. God can and does work through man so that all honor and glory belongs to Him.

Tell you what, then -- God can get the honor and glory for creating the Polio in the first place.

 

[Jimmy D]

Tell you what, then -- God can get the honor and glory for creating the Polio in the first place.

I don't think so, you know how it goes...

Good = God did it
Bad = Sin did it

 

[TLK Valentine]

I don't think so, you know how it goes...

Good = God did it
Bad = Sin did it

Which is a shame, since Poliovirus is a remarkable little rascal, meaning that this "Sin" thing is at least as intelligent and creative as God...

 

[joshua 1 9]

Tell you what, then -- God can get the honor and glory for creating the Polio in the first place.

God will not take the credit for the mess that man and the devil made out of this world. Although Jesus died for the sin of mankind so that we could be forgiven and receive eternal life. God established law and for those who violate that law then there will be consequences. When was the last time someone got away with breaking the law of gravity? Only with God He waits for people to complete their sin and then they will reap what they sow. People do not sow and reap in the same season.

 

[joshua 1 9]

EVEN if that were true, then it was still incredibly cruel to wait that long to "make a scientist discover it".

God waits for people to cry out to Him for help. At the end of WW2 people had seen a lot of suffering and they were crying out to God at that point in time. There was a lot of break through in research and a lot of lives were saved. By comparison the world today is calm and peaceful. We do not see massive destruction where millions of people are destroyed. Remember that science created ways to destroy all those people. Now people tend to want to use science more for good then evil. Even science has found a way to sustain more people today then has ever lived before. Although many believe this will not last for long. We will have one last world war and then 1,000 years of peace.