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The Danger of Creationism

SkyWriting

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Which in the context of anti-vax movements has deadly consequences.

The deadly consequence's started with people's behavior long before there were any vaccines. This is the 3rd strain of coronavirus to create a pandemic. SARS in 2002-2003 and MERS in 2012.
 
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Astrid

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But you do have to be anti science to reject the ToE.
 
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Astrid

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"Spevulstion" is about things for which there is no firm evidence.

To claim that interpretation of all past events cannot be tested,
reproduced, or falsified is sheer twaddle.
 
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pitabread

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The deadly consequence's started with people's behavior long before there were any vaccines. This is the 3rd strain of coronavirus to create a pandemic. SARS in 2002-2003 and MERS in 2012.

What does this have to do with the price of tea in China?
 
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SkyWriting

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What does this have to do with the price of tea in China?
This is the first time we considered a Vaccine to be of value through other outbreaks were far more lethal. You can't just blame antivaxers for not jumping in the pool all of a sudden. Perhaps some people don't trust "Trump's vaccine".
 
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pitabread

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This is the first time we considered a Vaccine to be of value through other outbreaks were far more lethal. You can't just blame antivaxers for not jumping in the pool all of a sudden. Perhaps some people don't trust "Trump's vaccine".

I'm not sure what you mean by other outbreaks being more lethal. While the case fatality rates were quite high, the relative transmissibility of those viruses were not (one of the consequences of highly fatal viruses). The outbreaks ended up being contained as a result.

In contrast the current SARS-CoV-2 is far less deadly, but far more transmissible, thus infecting a substantially larger population and causing vastly more overall deaths.

I'm also not sure what you mean by "first time we considered a Vaccine to be of value"? We've been using vaccines for over a hundred years. There are already mandates in place for individual (typically at childhood) to receive vaccines for various diseases. This is not a new thing at all.

It's also worth noting that anti-vaxxers have been around long before this outbreak. You can go back over a hundred years to advent of the smallpox vaccine and see similar types of resistance.
 
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Juvenal

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I'm not aware of any academic achieving tenure or advancing in rank by debunking pseudoscience. I am, however, aware of numerous studies showing the presentation of contradictory information serves little purpose beyond confirming false beliefs.

Creationism is arguably a gateway drug to more general denials of science, but in the case of Covid-19, I question whether it's an argument that we should be having.

With apologies, this is deadly serious. When approaching these discussions in online fora, or with my students, my greatest fear is that something I write or say will, because of my approach, encourage behavior that will lead to someone's death. We're talking about c. 650k dead in the US and 4.5MM worldwide, so far, with an understanding, by comparison with expected death rates, that these are underestimates.

Covid-19 is far more dangerous than creationism. And if there are professional creationists, or creationism organizations, looking to use their influence to encourage NPIs and vaccinations that will save the lives of those they can reach, we should, in this instance at least, recognize them as the allies they are.

This is not a novel approach. African Americans have reason to distrust government medical programs, and that distrust has, unfortunately, resulted in a reluctance to accept the entirely unrelated Covid-19 vaccination. In response, we look to African American allies, from popular political figures to church pastors to unlink these issues, in order to save lives.

Creationists distrust the core theory of biology because they believe it presents an eternal threat to their immortal souls.

There's a locally influential Southern Baptist preacher, from Texas, I correspond with regularly on another board. This is someone who, in 2021, still views the Civil War through the filter of States Rights. But through listening to fellow, right wing fringe, conservative Christians on the site, who nevertheless accept evolution, his own views have been moderated.

He was vaccinated last week, in part, I like to think, because of the personal appeals I've made to him expressing my helplessness in reaching out to his fellow Christian tradents about the need to take the appropriate cautions against Covid-19, people who, as I've said to him directly, will not listen to me.

The Sarfati who appears in your o/p was once a member on this other, conservative Christian-run site, which is unquestionably far more liberal than CF in allowing flames and insults, until he was kicked off because of his inability to engage in anything approaching civil behavior, even with his fellow Christians when they disagree with him. By that standard, he is, objectively, obnoxious.

But if he can reach those who won't listen to me, and help to save lives from Covid-19, I'm not going to work against him by undoing the unlinking of evolution to basic public health measures supported by modern epidemiology.

As I'm on record saying to a certain Texas preacher, his politics are atrocious and his religious is naive, and I'd like the chance to keep on telling him so, a sentiment I'm willing to extend more broadly to the "C" section of the C/E community here.

Don't die of Covid, folks. I'd be indescribably disappointed.
 
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Tom 1

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This is an interesting article on the roots of ideas like creationism - The Wasting of the Evangelical Mind
The basic idea is that while the puritans, whatever other faults they may have had, came from a milieu of religious traditions that by and large had come to respect education, the revivalist movements in the US largely rejected knowledge and the kind of broad education promoted by Christian humanists in favour of instinct and intuition. Over time, the evangelical and other movements that came out of this have attempted to form their own style of 'education' which is rooted in magical thinking and a rejection of anything that seems to contradict crude, simplistic interpretations of the bible, to one degree or another. This way of thinking appears to form the whole mental world within which a fair number of people seem to live. What from the outside seem to be conclusions reached through reliance on random and sketchy notions is referred to as 'common sense'. In a way that is true, as it is a way of perceiving the world that is very common within those circles, reinforced through their favourite news media echo chambers. Attempts to confront this worldview with external realities is like playing charades in the dark with people wearing welding goggles.
 
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SkyWriting

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When approaching these discussions in online fora, or with my students, my greatest fear is that something I write or say will, because of my approach, encourage behavior that will lead to someone's death.

That's not your problem. One voice has little effect on these things. It takes about 7 encouraging "touches" to make a difference. You can't overrule somebody's parents and friends.
 
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SkyWriting

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You'd be surprised. People in leadership roles can have tremendous influence.
I will be when I read your evidence from my trusted sources.
So you believe you are easily swayed by my sources?
 
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Juvenal

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That's not your problem. One voice has little effect on these things. It takes about 7 encouraging "touches" to make a difference. You can't overrule somebody's parents and friends.

In the words of Charles Dickens.

“But you were always a good man of business, Jacob,' faltered Scrooge, who now began to apply this to himself.

Business!' cried the Ghost, wringing its hands again. "Mankind was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my business. The deals of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!”​

You'd be surprised. People in leadership roles can have tremendous influence.

In the words of Stephen Jay Gould.

The patterns of human history mix decency and depravity in equal measure. We often assume, therefore, that such a fine balance of results must emerge from societies made of decent and depraved people in equal numbers. But we need to expose and celebrate the fallacy of this conclusion so that, in this moment of crisis, we may reaffirm an essential truth too easily forgotten, and regain some crucial comfort too readily forgone. Good and kind people outnumber all others by thousands to one. The tragedy of human history lies in the enormous potential for destruction in rare acts of evil, not in the high frequency of evil people. Complex systems can only be built step by step, whereas destruction requires but an instant. Thus, in what I like to call the Great Asymmetry, every spectacular incident of evil will be balanced by 10,000 acts of kindness, too often unnoted and invisible as the ''ordinary'' efforts of a vast majority.​

Perhaps it's true that it requires seven touches, from seven of us, to make a difference, and perhaps it takes ten thousand, but if not us, who, and if not now, when.
 
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loveofourlord

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I actually brought this up to my mom, but in the context of satan, and the end times, and antichrist and such. That there is just so much distrust built into Chrsitianity about certain things, and just the idea that, "X is a plot by satan." that when there is something real and serious people just think it's another one of these plots. Sort of the reverse cry wolf, so many wolf cries that people see the wolf everywhere.
 
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loveofourlord

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Except that historical sciences is just a talking point by creationists to whine about anything they don't like, and yes evolution is repeatable it's by definition that way. You don't have to repeat the event, just be able to repeat the experiment or study done to prove the event. If creationists want to be taken seriously they need to least understand the sciences they are attacking.
 
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loveofourlord

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Some drugs are even harmful if you don't have the disease, or the problem, as if they don't have th virus/poison/radiation or such they are designed to go after, they will go after the next closest one.
 
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tas8831

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...but what I meant is that historical science deals with speculations about events in the past that can't be re-created in the present,
Speculations? Do you consider recreation of a specific event a requirement in science? Eyewitness testimony is notoriously unreliable.
True, yet a very common creationist tactic is to conflate the theory of evolution with abiogenesis, demanding that we must explain how life began in order to assess how it changed later. Anti-science types often append such idiosyncratic and arbitrarily-applied requirements to scientific issues so as to avoid having to admit their ignorance/inability to deal with material they do not like. For example, creationist Paul Nelson used to claim the entire field of molecular phylogenetics moot because we did not also explain what the shared mutations did, which he should have understood is totally irrelevant.
I'm not going to argue about evolution vs. creation because that's not the point of this thread, but you don't have to be anti-science to reject certain scientific claims.
You do have to be anti-science to think a dichotomy dreamed up by creationists to avoid having to admit they've got nothing to offer scientifically has merit.
When I have done searches for this subject, the ONLY returns I ever seem to get are to creationist sources, emphatically declaring there to be some kind of gulf between what they define as 'operational' and 'historical' science. Their "reasoning" is as obvious as it is specious.
 
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tas8831

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From Darwin's travels?
His memoirs are not evidence. His writings explained his findings, and his theory was premised on his findings. He actually collected a great deal of evidence.
The scrolls used to assemble what we call the bible, on the other hand...
 
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tas8831

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See, here's the thing. I explain to you why I don't believe something
You don't really explain anything, you just assert. Your reasons are vacuous and unfounded. And pretty arbitrary, especially given that I provided evidence that the 'alternative' treatment of the day' is hardly reliable, when advocates of its success rely on fraud and exaggeration.
 
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tas8831

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Cool, we agree! But it looks like your fellow super-Christian Mark doesn't... Oh dear...
 
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Mark Quayle

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ok
 
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