Things creationists hate

challenger · Jun 7, 2004

Sorry if this has been posted before, but its an interesting site, IMO

Things Creationists Hate
The Scientific Method

Creationists detest it so much that they've apparently invented their own, improved version, with the following highly logical rules:

Take as a given fact all those parts of the Bible we tell you to.

Use not the null hypothesis; make no attempt to disprove any creationist hypothesis; report not any negative findings.

Quote as authoritative anything a fellow creationist writes, regardless of his qualifications or subsequent discrediting of his methods or results.

Misquote or quote out of context famous "evolutionists" so that they appear to admit evolution isn't real.

Don't waste your time with actual laboratory or field experiments. All the answers are in the Bible.

And Stephen Reese reminds us that creationists can't seem to abide peer review. They must REALLY hate it because no one has ever seen a trace of creationist peer review.

...

The Holy Bible

That old Book persists in saying things that the creationists, who claim to take it as literal truth, have to admit are metaphorical (like the "doors" in the firmament that let the rain through). That means, of course, that they have to arbitrarily decide which parts are literally literal, and which are only metaphorically literal (and can't they twist the English language!). I've never yet read a justification for who gets to make that determination and how, so I'll summarize it thus: Everything is literal except things that even we creationists can't stomach.

Even worse, the "scientifically accurate" Bible reveals not a single fact about nature that wasn't commonly known at the time. If only it had revealed the atomic structure of matter, or the inverse square law, or the existence of bacteria--or even the heliocentric solar system!

Still doubt that creationists hate the Bible? Ask several if they've ever read it--all the way through, cover-to-cover. 97% of the time the answer will be no. They're sure every word is literally true, and the divine message of God, but somehow they've never quite found the time to actually read the thing. Is this irony thick enough yet?

Can any of the YECs out there answer everything on this site? I'd be surprised.

Edit: An aside, if any of you YECs are really sure that you're right and I'm wrong, maybe you'd like to put your money where your mouth is at www.250kchallenge.uk.tt. The payout if you win is 25,000:1 after all

DrunkenWrestler · Jun 7, 2004

What a wonderful website.

Their Own Eyes

...defeat them doubly. First, creationists trot out that old saw about how "nothing as complex as an eye could evolve in stages, since a half-eye is no good at all." Darwin himself trounced that one roundly by merely observing that there are creatures alive today with eyes in all "stages of development," from a few light-sensitive cells, to a cup-shaped receptor with no proper lens, to eagle eyes far sharper than ours. Other creatures seem to get along fine with half-eyes and even 1/100 eyes.

Then for the final insult, human (the pinnacle of creation) eyes are clearly an engineering mistake! The retinas are inside out. The nerves and blood vessels come out through the light-sensitive area of the retina, producing a blind spot, then spread over the front of the light-receptor cells, so that light has to get past the fibers into the receptors. Why aren't the nerves and capillaries behind the receptors, where they would be out of the way and there would be no need for a blind spot? Squid eyes are arranged just that way. Since ours aren't, one is reminded of the maxim that evolution has to work with the materials at hand, adapting systems already in place, with results that often seem jury-rigged or needlessly complicated. Would an Ultimate Engineer make such an obvious blunder, especially having got it right in creatures created earlier?

Other Cultures

Like those damn Egyptians that didn't seem to notice a world-wide Flood, though they were around at the time and had a liking for writing everything down (they'd write down what people wore to parties, darn it, why would they fail to note a Flood that covered the entire Earth? AND they were there before and after the time of the Flood, so either they stayed there, high and dry, or one of Noah's sons, who was not Egyptian at all, emigrated to the Nile and reinstituted the dead and damned Egyptian civilization perfectly, including the practices that got them damned in the first place!). Or the Asian Indians, or the Chinese, or any of the other cultures that also possessed written histories, yet failed to note any of the cataclysmic acts of the Judaeo-Christian god. (Satan must have told them to not write it down... yep... that must be it.)

1,000 Pennies

Ten bucks worth of pennies is all it takes to show how fast a little selection can turn randomness into perfect order. (For fans of those tiny Chick Publications comic books: This is an analogy. If you don't know what that is, stop now.)

Randomly scatter the pennies on a table. Apply a little "natural" selection (after all, you're not supernatural): pull out all that come up heads and set them aside (they will "survive"). Flip all the tails again. Save the heads. Repeat until "perfect order" is achieved.

How many "generations" will that take to "evolve" the race of pennies from evenly mixed to pure heads? Nine or ten, with average luck. Make it slightly more realistic by giving the "favored race" (Darwin's term) just a slight survival advantage: save just two or three each time. You can still have all heads in less than an hour. All it takes is "random replicators" (Dawkins's term) and a bit of selection pressure. The point is, a random system can become very organized, very fast, with just a little selection pressure.

ego licet visum · Jun 7, 2004

I love how heaven is hotter then hell lol

rebazar · Jun 7, 2004

Instead of starting a new thread, would science minded people like to comment on this:

Mathematics, material science, is indispensable to the intelligent discussion of the material aspects of the universe, but such knowledge is not necessarily a part of the higher realization of truth or of the personal appreciation of spiritual realities. Not only in the realms of life but even in the world of physical energy, the sum of two or more things is very often something more than, or something different from, the predictable additive consequences of such unions. The entire science of mathematics, the whole domain of philosophy, the highest physics or chemistry, could not predict or know that the union of two gaseous hydrogen atoms with one gaseous oxygen atom would result in a new and qualitatively superadditive substance--liquid water. The understanding knowledge of this one physiochemical phenomenon should have prevented the development of materialistic philosophy and mechanistic cosmology.

Technical analysis does not reveal what a person or a thing can do. For example: Water is used effectively to extinguish fire. That water will put out fire is a fact of everyday experience, but no analysis of water could ever be made to disclose such a property. Analysis determines that water is composed of hydrogen and oxygen; a further study of these elements discloses that oxygen is the real supporter of combustion and that hydrogen will itself freely burn.

[from The Urantia Book]

Enjoy

Aggie · Jun 7, 2004

Are you sure this wasn't this supposed to go in my "logical fallacy" thread?

aeroz19 · Jun 7, 2004

This is really immature.

I am a YEC, but I don't know any of the YEC scientist names out there that I keep seeing referenced (or any names of any scientists except Newton and the biggest ones). I have to, as I calculate forces and moments in my Engineering classes, and they're measured in Newtons in the metric system. But yeah, maybe I'll start looking into those names.

(That lil face isn't what it is on Yahoo; it doesn't convey the right expression. Oh well.)

I have a challenge for you all who mock Creation science and Christianity: instead of making fun of it, look into it deeper. You might find out why we're Christian. There is a lot more to it than the science.

USincognito · Jun 7, 2004

aeroz19 said:
I have a challenge for you all who mock Creation science and Christianity: instead of making fun of it, look into it deeper. You might find out why we're Christian. There is a lot more to it than the science.

Do you honestly believe that those here who are not Christian or are Christian and not YEC have not looked "deeper" into the issue?

What actually happens is the more people learn actual science and not the dressed up theology of Creationism, the more likely they are to reject it. If they're not too wedded to YEC literalism, their faith remains intact, and often bolsterd.

Aggie · Jun 7, 2004

I have a challenge for you all who mock Creation science and Christianity: instead of making fun of it, look into it deeper. You might find out why we're Christian. There is a lot more to it than the science.

Have you looked at any of the threads where I told about how I used to be a creationist, and as I looked into it more deeply I accepted evolution?

The same thing that happened to my creationism happened to my Christianity about nine years later, although evolution wasn't my reason for abandoning it.

Philosoft · Jun 8, 2004

rebazar said:
Instead of starting a new thread, would science minded people like to comment on this:

Mathematics, material science, is indispensable to the intelligent discussion of the material aspects of the universe, but such knowledge is not necessarily a part of the higher realization of truth or of the personal appreciation of spiritual realities. Not only in the realms of life but even in the world of physical energy, the sum of two or more things is very often something more than, or something different from, the predictable additive consequences of such unions. The entire science of mathematics, the whole domain of philosophy, the highest physics or chemistry, could not predict or know that the union of two gaseous hydrogen atoms with one gaseous oxygen atom would result in a new and qualitatively superadditive substance--liquid water. The understanding knowledge of this one physiochemical phenomenon should have prevented the development of materialistic philosophy and mechanistic cosmology.

Technical analysis does not reveal what a person or a thing can do. For example: Water is used effectively to extinguish fire. That water will put out fire is a fact of everyday experience, but no analysis of water could ever be made to disclose such a property. Analysis determines that water is composed of hydrogen and oxygen; a further study of these elements discloses that oxygen is the real supporter of combustion and that hydrogen will itself freely burn.

[from The Urantia Book]

Enjoy

Therefore God exists?

I don't get it. Pure material reductionism is inadequate. We stipluate that. What is the author trying to show here?

Jet Black · Jun 8, 2004

rebazar said:
a further study of these elements discloses that oxygen is the real supporter of combustion and that hydrogen will itself freely burn.

[from The Urantia Book]

is it a first grade chemistry textbook from the 1920s?

USincognito · Jun 8, 2004

Philosoft said:
Therefore God exists?

I don't get it. Pure material reductionism is inadequate. We stipluate that. What is the author trying to show here?

Are you unfamiliar with Urantia?

Take Biblical fundamentalist literalism to it's most extreme... and then 10 steps more. The Urantia Book is Urantia.

Gracchus · Jun 8, 2004

rebazar said:
Instead of starting a new thread, would science minded people like to comment on this:

From the Urantia Book:

Mathematics, material science, is indispensable to the intelligent discussion of the material aspects of the universe, but such knowledge is not necessarily a part of the higher realization of truth or of the personal appreciation of spiritual realities.

This assumes without evidence the existence of "higher realizations of truth", and "spiritual realities".

Not only in the realms of life but even in the world of physical energy, the sum of two or more things is very often something more than, or something different from, the predictable additive consequences of such unions.

Summation, in mathematics, can only be performed on metrical spaces. Concepts that are not metrical cannot be summed, but then mathematics doesn't claim they can be.

The entire science of mathematics, the whole domain of philosophy, the highest physics or chemistry, could not predict or know that the union of two gaseous hydrogen atoms with one gaseous oxygen atom would result in a new and qualitatively superadditive substance--liquid water.

Is there evidence for this assertion? It seems completely falsified to me.

The understanding knowledge of this one physiochemical phenomenon should have prevented the development of materialistic philosophy and mechanistic cosmology.

Since it didn't, the assertion must be wrong. Q.E.D.

Technical analysis does not reveal what a person or a thing can do. For example: Water is used effectively to extinguish fire. That water will put out fire is a fact of everyday experience, but no analysis of water could ever be made to disclose such a property.

Actually, an analysis of the physical characteristics of water, and of the fire will determine whether or not a given amount of water will put out a given fire. In practice it is usually simpler to just dump on water until the fire is out.

Analysis determines that water is composed of hydrogen and oxygen; a further study of these elements discloses that oxygen is the real supporter of combustion and that hydrogen will itself freely burn.

Burn means "combine with oxygen". Water is burned hydrogen. Since the hydrogen in water is completely oxidized, water cannot burn, but it can, by carrying away heat, remove one of the three necessary components of fire: heat, fuel, and free oxygen.

There is no "higher realization of truth", or "spiritual reality" here. And a complete balancing of the equation of the fire would include the quantities of reactants and products, as well the initial, transitional, and final energy states. I have found the Urantia book impressive only in size, inaccuracy and chutzpa. Worse, it is boring.

Jet Black · Jun 8, 2004

creepy. I have never heard of this book before, then in one morning I hear of it three times and everyone seems to have read it :/

Aggie · Jun 8, 2004

Burn means "combine with oxygen". Water is burned hydrogen. Since the hydrogen in water is completely oxidized, water cannot burn, but it can, by carrying away heat, remove one of the three necessary components of fire: heat, fuel, and free oxygen.

Not to mention that it can also block free oxygen from reaching the burning substance, and thus prevent it from oxidizing.

I think that's the main way water helps put out fires.

Data · Jun 8, 2004

rebazar said:
The entire science of mathematics, the whole domain of philosophy, the highest physics or chemistry, could not predict or know that the union of two gaseous hydrogen atoms with one gaseous oxygen atom would result in a new and qualitatively superadditive substance--liquid water.

Uh, oxygen has two free electrons which it can donate, the hydrogen ion lacks one, and they are more stable when toghether - this is quite possibly the simplest chemistry you can do, and very, very predictable.

Sopharos · Jun 8, 2004

Data said:
Uh, oxygen has two free electrons which it can donate, the hydrogen ion lacks one, and they are more stable when toghether - this is quite possibly the simplest chemistry you can do, and very, very predictable.

Slight correction, mate. Oxygen has 6 electrons in its outer shell, and for lighter elements with no electrons in the d orbitals, basic octet rules applies. With two electrons needed to form the full 8-electron outer shell, it has room for two hydrogen atoms, which each has one electron.

For heavier elements, it's a lot more complicated, but this can be easily explained by the interactions between d and s orbitals.

For some rough information, try:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electron_configuration

Data · Jun 8, 2004

Sopharos said:
Slight correction, mate. Oxygen has 6 electrons in its outer shell, and for lighter elements with no electrons in the d orbitals, basic octet rules applies. With two electrons needed to form the full 8-electron outer shell, it has room for two hydrogen atoms, which each has one electron.

For heavier elements, it's a lot more complicated, but this can be easily explained by the interactions between d and s orbitals.

For some rough information, try:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electron_configuration

Mm.. oh well, I was close. I was running off 7th form chemistry

Sopharos · Jun 8, 2004

Data said:
Mm.. oh well, I was close. I was running off 7th form chemistry

Get your lazy a** to school and do something constructive for a change, you dirty bunker!!! j/k

Philosoft · Jun 8, 2004

USincognito said:
Are you unfamiliar with Urantia?

Yeah, but why am I not surprised that you're not?

Take Biblical fundamentalist literalism to it's most extreme... and then 10 steps more. The Urantia Book is Urantia.

Ow. My head.

Mekkala · Jun 8, 2004

rebazar said:
Instead of starting a new thread, would science minded people like to comment on this:

Mathematics, material science, is indispensable to the intelligent discussion of the material aspects of the universe, but such knowledge is not necessarily a part of the higher realization of truth or of the personal appreciation of spiritual realities. Not only in the realms of life but even in the world of physical energy, the sum of two or more things is very often something more than, or something different from, the predictable additive consequences of such unions. The entire science of mathematics, the whole domain of philosophy, the highest physics or chemistry, could not predict or know that the union of two gaseous hydrogen atoms with one gaseous oxygen atom would result in a new and qualitatively superadditive substance--liquid water. The understanding knowledge of this one physiochemical phenomenon should have prevented the development of materialistic philosophy and mechanistic cosmology.

Technical analysis does not reveal what a person or a thing can do. For example: Water is used effectively to extinguish fire. That water will put out fire is a fact of everyday experience, but no analysis of water could ever be made to disclose such a property. Analysis determines that water is composed of hydrogen and oxygen; a further study of these elements discloses that oxygen is the real supporter of combustion and that hydrogen will itself freely burn.

[from The Urantia Book]

Enjoy

I'm not going to list what is scientifically wrong with that quote from Urantia, since others in this thread seem to have done so quite well already... but I'd like to comment that this is why I think the Urantia book cannot possibly be genuine. Supposedly it was dictated by superbeings who know everything there is to know... yet they know less about basic chemistry than the dumbest high school student? Riiiiiight...

Things creationists hate

Non sunt multiplicanda entia praeter necessitatem

Eat your Wheaties and know your logical fallacies.

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