Ken Ham & Bill Nye Creationism vs Evolution debate

brandonbaker said:
Not sure if you're trolling here or actually believe this. Do I need to explain the difference between a physical process, unguided by sentience or intentionality and a deliberate, conscious creation of the universe by a omnipotent god?

History is full of seemingly trivial disagreements between scientists and creationists (e.g. evolution vs. intelligent design), but once the scientific view breaks through, it serves as a catalyst for a deeper understanding of our universe.

The creationist way of thinking is a dead end. There is literally nowhere left to go if God is your starting point. Nothing left to discover and no new paths to take. "It was God, and that's pretty much all you need to know."

With physics as your starting point, the entire universe is open for discovery.

People say science is devoid of meaning and lacks emotional appeal, but I'd rather derive my philosophy from real life than Mother Goose, irrespective of the crudeness of the former and the palatability of the latter.
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You dismiss the possibility that creationism and evolution are completely devoid of one another. Please consider this.

The Bible is purely metaphorical literature and it was intended to be metaphorical literature when it was written. It was meant to be inspirational rather than dogmatic and authoritarian. To view it in any other way does it serious injustice. And the Book of Genesis, upon which the majority of creationist interpretation is founded, is perhaps the most purely metaphorical chapter of the entire set of volumes. Genesis marks the foundation of the human thought process, and that process was intended to be grounded in logic and reasoned inquisitiveness. Genesis is about the development of the human mind and not necessarily about factual accounting of universal matter. As such, modern-day creationism is antithetical to the original purpose of the Book itself - creationism is actually the very blasphemy that the Bible itself advises people to avoid.
Genesis needs to be studied in conjunction with science and with a literate analysis of metaphor in order to be understood properly.
The Bible was written with the same intentional vagueness and ambiguity that was intentionally applied to the original U.S. Constitution - it is a style which allows for interpretation and understanding to evolve continually and coincidently with the evolution of human scientific knowledge and experience.

Neither creationism nor science seem to properly recognize the actual purpose and value of early scripture as metaphorical literature written for the earliest peoples whose entire understanding of the universe could only be reached by commonplace metaphor.
 


EricVonDoobie said:
^ You missed my point 100%. Obviously they're completely different schools of thought.

What I am saying is they both believe in things that are not answers at all to anything, and after doing a lot of self examination of their own beliefs (primarily through infinite regression) will arrive at the exact same conclusions: there was no beginning, no creation, no scientific explanation, etc.

So indirectly they believe the exact same thing.
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I understood your point. But simply because neither explanation answers that question doesn't lend any similarity whatsoever to both explanations. Their only similarity, really, is that neither one answers the "ultimate" question. Other than that, they're completely different.

And besides, the big "question" is meaningless. You're setting up the question as "What's the first number in an infinite regression? Oh, can't think of it? Ha, you're stumped! All potential answers are the same."

The question itself is unanswerable, and therefore meaningless.
 
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jhoffy22 said:
You dismiss the possibility that creationism and evolution are completely devoid of one another. Please consider this.

The Bible is purely metaphorical literature and it was intended to be metaphorical literature when it was written. It was meant to be inspirational rather than dogmatic and authoritarian. To view it in any other way does it serious injustice. And the Book of Genesis, upon which the majority of creationist interpretation is founded, is perhaps the most purely metaphorical chapter of the entire set of volumes. Genesis marks the foundation of the human thought process, and that process was intended to be grounded in logic and reasoned inquisitiveness. Genesis is about the development of the human mind and not necessarily about factual accounting of universal matter. As such, modern-day creationism is antithetical to the original purpose of the Book itself - creationism is actually the very blasphemy that the Bible itself advises people to avoid.
Genesis needs to be studied in conjunction with science and with a literate analysis of metaphor in order to be understood properly.
The Bible was written with the same intentional vagueness and ambiguity that was intentionally applied to the original U.S. Constitution - it is a style which allows for interpretation and understanding to evolve continually and coincidently with the evolution of human scientific knowledge and experience.

Neither creationism nor science seem to properly recognize the actual purpose and value of early scripture as metaphorical literature written for the earliest peoples whose entire understanding of the universe could only be reached by commonplace metaphor.
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So I suppose the scores of people who were stoned and killed in the name of this book were also just metaphorical? I suppose the "healings" attributed to the text in this book were also just "metaphorically" attributed to the power of scripture?

The fact is that humans have interpreted and attributed much of their history straight from the Bible, both good and bad.

How many historical figures have attributed their deeds (again, both good and bad) to Aesop or Grimm? Not many. Those are truly meant as metaphorical and fictional. To soften the meaning of the Bible by calling it metaphor is the very definition of a cop-out.

And for the sake of paying my rent this month, I'm going to have to back out of this thread as I feel myself being sucked down the rabbit hole.

I'm just passionate about this topic. Don't mean to get hostile with any of you gay webmasters. <3
 
brandonbaker said:
Their only similarity, really, is that neither one answers the "ultimate" question. Other than that, they're completely different.
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The entire point of either position (creationism or scientism) is to answer this question, so it's kind of funny you're trying to downplay that one "small" similarity.

And besides, the big "question" is meaningless. You're setting up the question as "What's the first number in an infinite regression? Oh, can't think of it? Ha, you're stumped! All potential answers are the same."

The question itself is unanswerable, and therefore meaningless.
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That's not how I'm setting up the question, that's how the question is by nature.

You're inadvertently proving my point though. You have to explain where something came from, so both lend themselves to asking where they came from, they both reach the same logical conclusion.

Also in your example, all potential answers are the same, since there is either no answer or a literally infinite amount of possibilities.
 
In essence, scientism sees science as the absolute and only justifiable access to the truth.
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Guess I am a follower, then.

Oh wait, yes, I am a scientist.

::emp::
 
mikeshinobi said:
this whole trend of "intelligence shaming" is just neat

you don't believe in god? you must be pseudo-intellectual, and fat :^)
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Blame the pseudo intellectual Reddit atheists who post facebook arguments with theists and start religious threads. I am atheist and hate most atheists. If you don't believe in God keep it to yourself. These loud mouthed atheists are worse than religious preachers.
 
I think we can agree that most of us don't believe in Jello that grows giant cocks out of its ass and runs around eating up Rice Krispies and pissing Mountain Dew.

I don't personally feel the need to bring up how I don't believe in the above, and I would really get annoyed if someone did bring it up and start arguments about it with people who did on a regular basis.
 
I dunno what's harder, watching creationists bumble through a debate or reading a wickedfire thread where everyone thinks "religion" = western faith = christianity. Both sides are equally fucktarded.

Gonna struggle through that video tonight. I hope the dude brings up the idea that evolution is being guided by some law in the universe, or force or what have you. Terrence McKenna called it "novelty" and Alan Watts talked about the purpose of the universe is to "people" such as the purpose of an apple tree is to "apple".

Let's not even get started about the primacy of consciousness or matter!

WHOOOO! I'm gonna nerd out tonight, boyssssss
 
GimpSpack said:
Maybe atoms have always existed. Maybe existence is the default, rather than "nothingness."
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Sure. I could dig that. But then we'd still be trapped in the same set of questions. What is the Ground of Being upon which this somethingness sits? Is it nothingness? Is it both somethingness and nothingness? Is it neither somethingness nor nothingness?

And that's the point. The transcendental cannot be explained or grasped by something consciousness only capable of perceiving and chugging along within the mundane world. Yet we know logically the full capacity of what is has to extend past what we experience. That's why we get hit with stupid questions like "what happened before the big bang" and and equally naive resolutions like "maybe atoms have always existed." If you come up against paradoxes and meaningless questions, you aren't seeing the full picture. And that's the case with every person who's ever lived. The only way to resolve the issue is to stop asking the questions. But that's no fun.

Science has it's limitations. Metaphysicians have sought to go a little farther, being okay with not-knowing. It's an intellectual exercise, and likely a grasp at warding off death anxiety and the fear of annihilation, which is all any of us do every moment we are alive.

We can condemn the silly religions for believing in limited gods. It gets kind of hard to find error in ideas like Brahman or śunyata, and pretty hard to even comprehend them. So we group those ideas up with the retard ideas so we can throw the baby out with the bathwater. Philosophy and spirituality are some of the fundamental driving factors in all intellectual activity and research.

Let me remind in general that when you get your doctorate in ANYTHING (except shit like a Psy.D and other lil nomenclature exceptions), you're getting a Doctorate of Philosophy, and every pursuit falls under it's umbrella. The only difference lies in the approach. The end goal for all is... futility.


jstover77 said:
Certain linguistic anthropologists think that religion is a language virus that rewrites pathways in the brain, dulls critical thinking."
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You'd really like this random movie I saw on Netflix, which was 10/10 called "Pontypool." It's about language viruses, and if you spend the time to think about it, it has implications that get you pondering what life really is... which some might say is just an organized flow of information.

mikeshinobi said:
this whole trend of "intelligence shaming" is just neat

you don't believe in god? you must be pseudo-intellectual, and fat :^)
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I don't think it's shaming intelligence so much as shaming militant atheism's conceited confidence in it's absolute correctness.

To me, the only fully mature and responsible stance is Agnosticism. Sure, you can lean one way or the other. But if anyone claims to know for certain, they've leaped the gap from knowledge to certainty by invoking our friend, faith.

Of course, we eventually need to grab on to some kind of axiom so we have a guide in our research, if we're actually researching and practicing science and spirituality and not just sitting on the sidelines on the internet being dicks. Notice I said science AND spirituality. Let's not be lopsided faggots.
 
I've done homework on this, and actually found Christianity to have some pretty solid historical evidence.

Not arguing Creationism vs Evolution, as I do believe if there's a God...he could have created the universe or Macroevolution.

I think many Christians shoot themselves by stating "this world is 6,000 years old, by Creationism, and there's no alternative"...especially sounds foolish if they have no evidence to back up this claim.
 
I have two simple questions I ask 'religious people' (western religions).

What is your stance on nature vs nurture?

Justify judgment.

(Given your god created and maintains nature and nurture is out of each person's control)

Western religions base their structure off judging people for their actions. Eastern religions (generalizing here) are smart enough to know you can't fault someone for their actions and therefore tend to focus on a structure that will lead people to growth and understanding.
 
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