Creationism in schools

Really? It all came from a big ball of pure energy, creating a very universe upon which the physical universe was created.

In fact, if you read any recent articles about the multi-verse, then you know that there are different universes with fundamentally different rules then our own.

No opportunity, huh? Interesting.

YOu lack the ability to actually hypothesize, and seem to have no skeptical ability to challenge your own preconceptions - only everyone elses. A common trend in atheism these days I am afraid.

 

Not so much exploded as expanded, but yes, common mistake.

Because God isn't an actual explanation for anything, it is just another variable that results in numerous other questions.

Well, RNA is more likely to be what life first used as genetic material, just like viruses do.

Not really considering we haven't explored much of the Universe, at all. The vast majority of our solar system hasn't even been explored.

Uh, how do you draw that conclusion when you are missing out on a large subset of variables?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Jesus, Jesus, Jesus. You act like before Jesus everybody was a barbarian and none of the ideas stated by him were ever heard before.

 

Yep, the mistake is an atheist one.

How does an expansion leave cosmic background radiation from an explosion? It doesn't.

We are not going to change our religion because of your misconceptions, and we sure as hell are not going to reinterpret scientific theory just so you can call us and our faith idiotic.

The parsimonious parcing of objective science for emotional opinions is supposed to be what you guys are all against? Until the science doesn't line up with your conclusion .... interesting.

When has answering a single question in science not lead to other questions?

One standard for God and us, another for you I see.

Thesis + antithesis = synthesis = new thesis? Sound familar? It shoudl if you know science.

Probably. Now all you have to do is have the exact and perfect conditions for the exact and perfect amount of time in the proper sequence to get the building blocks to combine .... and then you still need some unknown source to give those block the nudge into life.

And yet, when it suits you, it is explored enough to conclude that there is no possibility of God out there.

Once again, standards cannot, indeed should not, change on a dime just to be disagreeable.

Because not everything is in books. I asked for and recieved 'proof', many Christians have. Its not something we can create on a whim FOR YOU. It is however enough to push us toward a conclusion when as you are belatedly admitting (but no doubt not admitting) that the scientific evidence is inconclusive.

We call it faith.

What do you call your utter conviction in the face of similiar uncertainty?

They were. Read your history.

 

...How does an expansion leave radiation from an explosion? There was no explosion. You do realize that radiation doesn't just come from explosions, right?

Fine, let me rephrase that: God wouldn't actually be the answer to anything. Instead of just "how", we now have another question, "why". The how isn't explained by God because it isn't a description of a process, it is just magic.

Yes, we do.

I forgot how much you love strawmen arguments. How about sticking to what I am saying instead of putting words in my mouth?

Okay, when you invoke probabilities, you aren't dealing with faith. Probabilities is math and you can't just say one thing is more probable than another out of faith.

Really? What specific morals did Jesus create before anybody else?

 

I have no idea what you are on about. I'm just asking you a simple question.

You said there was a belief that all atheists share that relies on faith. Which one is it? Thats all I'm asking.

 

The cosmic background radiation exists because of the explosion, the 'expansion' itself results from the force of the explosion.

"About 15 billion years ago a tremendous explosion started the expansion of the universe. This explosion is known as the Big Bang. At the point of this event all of the matter and energy of space was contained at one point. What exisisted prior to this event is completely unknown and is a matter of pure speculation. This occurance was not a conventional explosion but rather an event filling all of space with all of the particles of the embryonic universe rushing away from each other. The Big Bang actually consisted of an explosion of space within itself unlike an explosion of a bomb were fragments are thrown outward. The galaxies were not all clumped together, but rather the Big Bang lay the foundations for the universe."

http://www.umich.edu/~gs265/bigbang.htm

And there is your 'expansion'.

http://www.universetoday.com/74664/cosmic-microwave-background-radiation/

"The cosmic microwave background radiation is one of the main proofs of the Big Bang Theory. Inflationary cosmology predicts that 10-37after the Big Bang, the universe underwent intense growth that smoothed out nearly all inhomogeneities. This was followed by symmetry breaking(phase transition that set the fundamental forces and elementary particles). Shortly after the Big Bang, the early universe was made up of a hot plasma consisting of photons, electrons, and baryons. As the universe expanded, the plasma was cooled by adiabatic cooling to the point that electrons and protons could combine to form hydrogen. This happened when the universe was approximately 379,000 years old."

You have fundamentally, and I believe deliberately, misrepresented part of a scientific theory ... and why? Is this thing not taught in high school?

Ummm, more speculative nonesense where you clearly skip over everything anyone writes to continue your own prejudices. A fundamentalist uses 'magic', a moderate Christian uses ... evolution and the Big Bang.

Only your prejudice of our religion and pure blind avoidance of reality allows you to conclude that these things are mutally exclusive and all Christians hold a fundamentalist view point.

Once again, we see that you take things as you want them, not as they are.

So what is it?

No, I am dealing with something called statistics. Its part of science. And when they no longer agree with you? Well, nice to see how quickly you will dump and entire field of mathematics.

All men are equal before God.

I am sure that principle was in place during the Rome of slaves an emperors, the Assyrians, Egyptians and Brabarian hoards were all actually nice mead hall going Pagans and the world was clearly a place of rules, law and order, nation states, and fully devloped economies and systems of laws.

Dropped science, dropped mathematics, and now drops history .... all to avoid having to admit that he should tolerate rather than deride other faiths.

 

You already know the answer to that question and I have no desire to watch you hijack another thread with a bit of circular logic already advocated by someone in this thread alone and found on every atheist web site out there fed as doltish propoganda to the masses.

We do not have to sign up to be repeatedly abused by you guys. Your atheism rests totally on faith and has zero evidence, yet modern militant atheists dickishly run around deminding evidence and then come up with silly, stupid excuses to avoid acknoweldging their own burden of proof.

Its nothing more than being a jerk, and you will pardon me if I have no wish to have you advocte the same circular fallacy that violates the rules of logic (which you have been shown again) while you sit back and insult me.

See if you can come up with something relevant to this thread and drop the personal animosity ... for once.

 

http://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/site/faq.html

Like I said, it is a common misconception.

You didn't even address anything I said, at all, you just started attacking me personally. Do you think God is an explanation as to how the Big Bang occurred? A scientific explanation.

What is what? I was agreeing that we have to show how life started, not just how amino acids can form RNA.

What strawman did I create? Point it out to me.

Are you actually going to confront a question in your life or just run rings around it? Is there ANY rationale for you saying that God is more probable?

That phrase isn't found in the Bible. However, I get what you're trying to say. But really, Jesus didn't even start that, it was found much earlier in the OT.

Malachi 2:10

Uh, do you remember Jesus ever saying that slavery was immoral?

 

Really, so the previous documents are wrong. Apparently, when something violently rips itself apart sending debris and shock waves out in all direction it is an expansion - because, at least in theory, this expanding .... well, no way it can be an explosion (even though most scientists list it as exactly that), it is creating the universe as it expands outward - we think - because we have no idea what lies behind the other side of that veil do we?

Basically, for sematic purposes, you choose to call the violate expansion and propulsion of material and space expansion rather than an explosion.

Definitions might help:

: a large-scale, rapid, or spectacular expansion or bursting out or forth

Oh look, your semantic definition is part of the definition of explosion, only the Big Bang's violent, large scale, and spectacular expansion make it an explosion.

You just don;t get it do you? SOMETHING caused teh Big Bang. You have no idea what. Christians like me think ... God did it (or some Creator being at a minimum).

Your hypotheisis as to how that ball of gas magically appears and violently expanded fo no particular reason?

Oh wait, only your magic theories require respect.

No, the question was what is missing that makes RNA turn in DNA that is actively alive. You stated we know what that is. Prove it.

Calling everything I write a strawman perhaps? Never seen that tactic before.

Why not go back and read any of the dozen of so times where I have alked about the components of an explosion, and referrenced stastical analysis against CONSTRUCTIVE ends from violent explosions.

This would be the reason you term it an expansion - not explosion. Because, as your name applies, you are grasping.

Why don;t you tell me why statistics, which I introduced and referrenced in terms of probablity, is wrong? Because you say it? And once again, WE have the burden of proof to show that accepted statistical analysis about probability are ... accurate - YOU have no burden proof ONCE AGAIN?

Amazing.

Knowledge through osmosis and denial. Atheism is a truely magical faith.

My God, do you even understand teh very basics of the faith that you attack all the time?

Jesus is not in the OT

There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

— Galatians 3:28

Does he have to? If all men are equal before God? Or would it better to incite servile insurrection ala spartacus that leads to mass killing, death, and further repression - then you could call us murderers right?

Well, you'll do that anyway.

because it is not about truth to you, obviously, its about lording over others.

Remember, most people look at atheism today and think only one thing:self worship.

 

No, but the Big Bang being analogized to an explosion that we are used it is just a pop sci explanation. You can call it an explosion, but it certainly wouldn't be like any type of explosion we have ever seen.

But that is not a SCIENTIFIC explanation because it doesn't explain anything. It is like me saying that an eternal magician did it. It doesn't explain why and what matters is that it doesn't explain how.

I don't have any theories and neither does anybody else. We only have hypotheses, but we still have no evidence which is what is required.

DNA isn't alive. What the hell are you talking about? I don't know of anybody, besides you, who claims that it is. DNA is genetic material in living things, but that doesn't mean it is a living thing itself. You don't call a motor a car, do you?

So you have no idea what a strawman is, clearly.

Because I had no idea you did this? What the (*)(*)(*)(*) am I, a mind reader? Could you at least point me to this?

Yes, so must NASA :rolleyes

You're making the claim here, buddy. Did I say anything was more probable than something else? No. Do you understand what the onus of proof means?

Amazing.

Could you point out where Jesus WAS in the Old Testament?

Does he have to? Sure, if he is really against it. However, Jesus just seems to accept the institution as it is throughout the entirety of the NT.

 

Oh, so you are an expert on explosions now are you? So tell me, what about the Big Bang is different? Othere than the unproved speculation that the shock wave of the ... not explosion ... is the beginning and end of the universe?

Does it not have a KNOWN fuel source? In this case pure energy. Does pure eneregy collect for not particular reason? Explode for no particular reason? or does it require a trigger like every other explosion in the .... universe reated by an explosion?

You've seen this before, and all you are doing is playing semantic games. If you 'call' it an expansion, well, I guess we can just do a magic hand wave on the reasons for a sudden fuel based, violent expansion? Tell everyone else that they are just be popishly sci fi man?

What does it take to be atheist? Just make stuff up and accuse others of doing it with an attitude - you've just mastered modern atheism.

What part of religion is not science and science is not religion did you not figure out?

You asked about HOW? And that is science.

When asked about purpose? We say God - you say .... its not actually an explosion, just violent, uncontrolled expansion that accidentally created everything in a way that invalidated probability and statistics. So there.

ROFL!!!!!

That is all you have. Expansion.

http://io9.com/5543843/scientists-create-artificial-life-+-synthetic-dna-that-can-self+replicate

Agh yeah, it is. Self replicating DNA is the building block of ALL life on earth. It is the fact that it self replicates that defines life slick, its not like an engine that just is in a body and you know it ....

Well, that is if you wer not changing your standards every other sentence, or ignoring accepted scientific theory because it might challenge you faith.

Well, that would be one right there.

Seriously? You are too blind to figure out that running around accusing people of using strawman arguements is a strawman?

Well, here is the definition for you - again:

http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/straw-man.html

When someone points out that you have a double standard when you deny all evidence presented by claiming the universe is vast an unexplored, but then turn around and conlcude that there is no God because ... the evidence in the largely unexplored universe is conclusive.

Odd how the universe can be both conclusive enough for certainty in everything you state, but wildly speculative in anything everyone else notices - including scientists, statiticians, and historians.

Noticing this is not a strawman.

The strawman is simply waiving your hand at a stated concern with your arguementation and declaring the issue a strawman .... because you say so.

You weigh evidence on deliberately double standards. That simple. You analysis resulting from the failure to objectvely apply standards is false.

That is logic. Not a strawman.

It is up to you to clarify, not put on a super victim cloak.

Yep, one analgous story is now all of NASA.

"The Universe must have been born in this single violent event which came to be known as the "Big Bang.""

http://science.nasa.gov/astrophysics/focus-areas/what-powered-the-big-bang/

"This and other cosmological problems could be solved, however, if there had been a very short period immediately after the Big Bang where the Universe experienced an incredible burst of expansion called "inflation." For this inflation to have taken place, the Universe at the time of the Big Bang must have been filled with an unstable form of energy whose nature is not yet known. Whatever its nature, the inflationary model predicts that this primordial energy would have been unevenly distributed in space due to a kind of quantum noise that arose when the Universe was extremely small. This pattern would have been transferred to the matter of the Universe and would show up in the photons that began streaming away freely at the moment of recombination. As a result, we would expect to see, and do see, this kind of pattern in the COBE and WMAP pictures of the Universe.

But all this leaves unanswered the question of what powered inflation."

Another interesting observation from NASA.

All you did was hunt and peck, its basically called a lie of omission. You saw ONLY what you wanted to and nothing else.

From the guy that has not presented any proof?

Fell free to referrence any of the dozens of times I have made that same case. But why do it yet again when we see how you selectively read everything and forget anything that doe snot conform itself to your preconceptions.

You state that the chances of all this happening randomly are greater than than them happening by design. Well, how did you ARRIVE at that conclusion?

You didn;t did you. You have, once again, no evidence whatsoever to back up your claim.

Do you understand what the burden of proof is? Interestingly enough, real atheists do!

"The first thing to keep in mind is that the phrase “burden of proof” is a bit more extreme than what is often needed in reality. Using that phrase makes it sound like a person has to definitely prove, beyond a doubt, that something is true; that, however, is only rarely the case. A more accurate label would be a “burden of support” — the key is that a person must support what they are saying. This can involve empirical evidence, logical arguments, and even positive proof."

http://atheism.about.com/od/doesgodexist/a/burdenofproof.htm

More sophistiric double standards.

Too proud to admit that you were wrong, and now fallaciously claiming that I said Jesus was in the Old Testament after you quoted the OT in referrence to Jesus.

Are we seeing trend of dishonesty and pride in your statements. You cannot be wrong, because .... YOU cannot be wrong. There can never be a God in your life, because you have no open mind and have been locked in a chain of denial at all costs.

Jesus is not in the OT. We have this thing called the NT for a reason.

No, he doesn't. Because you see God, unlike you, is aware of things called context. The context is Rome, a Rome that crushed servile insurrection with an iron fist. So, an already persecuted church that strated preaching anti-slavery? Would be utterly crushed.

It is not armed revolt that brought an end to slavery is it? It was reason, logic, and moral suasion - with William Wilburforce doing it on one end of the Atlantic and a group of Abolitionists who finally generated enough indigantion and rejection to fight a vicious and deadly war to eliminate slavery.

And the first abolitionists? You guessed it - Christians, who sighted the very Bible you say supports slavery to justify the admonition against slavery.

Do we see the pattern here?

You just don't want to see how religious people can view the evolution and the Big Bang as instruments that support God. So you don't.

You just don't want to see the actual teaching of religion, because you don;t want to. So you misquote them in ignorance.

You just don;t want to see the common held practice of Christianity that all men are equal before God in our teachings. So you don't. And you accuse in a further demonstration of ignorance of supporting slavery.

This is, like most modern atheists, not about evidence - it is about taking a acrap on people based on their faith choice to derive some semblance of self worth. That has become a far too common trend in modern atheism - one that makes real atheist deeply ashamed.

 

LOL! I am skeptic, so enough to ignore the possibility of a creator, more than anything because it creates other problems.

If is there a creator, who or what created this creator. You only add a problem, with that solution.

What I know is that we don't know everything, but the idea of God doesn't fit in any point of what passed, so there is no possibility for now of its existence.

You only can work with proved facts. And God isn't.

 

Well, for one, it doesn't have a center. Two, there was no pre-existing matter or time. Three, no matter was accelerated outside of the BB. Do you know why we call it the "Big Bang"? Fred Hoyle, who developed the Steady State Theory sarcastically called it that.

Okay, so you admit that God doesn't explain "how", thank you.

Mmm, okay?

Sorry, but there are more facets to life than self-replication. The reason they called it the creation of "artificial life" is because the DNA was inserted into a bacterium, which then replicated. It isn't as if the DNA replicated on its own in some tube. DNA has to be inside of a cell for it to replicate. Meaning, the bacterium may be alive, but the DNA is no more alive than a cell wall.

A strawman is a misrepresentation of an argument. What argument have I misrepresented? In what way have I misrepresented it?

Hmm, too bad I never made such an argument, ever. Which is why it is a strawman.
Give me one post where I state that, conclusively, there is no God. I'll save you some time, friend, that post doesn't exist.

Does or does not the NASA website state that the Big Bang is NOT an explosion? Simple yes or no will suffice.

Any proof of WHAT?

Nope, sorry, I never made that argument. You are making yourself look absolutely stupid by saying, over and over and over again, that I made a particular argument when that argument was never made by me.

Right, it would be a double standard if I made such a claim. Too bad I didn't, huh?

I never said that Jesus was in the OT, now did I. DID I? I thought that you were being sarcastic by saying "Jesus is not in the OT" and then using the eye boggling smiley.

Hmm, Moses seemed to do just fine with God's support. But apparently God likes Moses and the Hebrew slaves, but not the slaves of Rome, right?

And who were the people that owned slaves? Christians. Wow, a split between views of a vague book, what a shocker.

Yes I do, you just don't think I do.

LOL, what did I misquote?

I said the phrase wasn't in the book, which it clearly isn't. I'm sorry that I'm technically correct.

Have you ever been on the show Sweet Sixteen? You've showed more drama in this one post than is ever on that show. Seriously, and I'm the one playing the victim? I haven't once claimed I was being persecuted. Not once. How many times have you referenced atheists persecuting Christians in this ONE thread? Quite a few times.

 

If you are worried about your position coming under the most basic level of scrutiny, perhaps you should re-think your position.

 

obviously, creationism doesn't occur unless there is a god (or Gods) to make it happen.

but creationism being a myth doesn't necessarily equate with God being a myth.

plenty of people who believe in God are just as opposed to creationism being regarded as science as I am.

 

because they are pretending creationsim is science.

if they recognise it isn't, and don't try to make it a competitor to science by wanting to teach it as an alternative to, say, evolution ....

then they really don't need to explain anything.

 

Absolutely correct. It wasn't "science" that created the conflict or even the discussion. It was religious organizations that wanted their religious beliefs taught in schools.

 

I would like to agree with this one but find it hard to. I spent a large amoutn of time in my teens and twenties studying religion because so many people had some kind of religion leading me to think it was desperately important. When I found nothing of substance after a good decade of searching, I felt that religion had robbed me of a decade.

What did I learn about religion?
Religion is the mythology of the present. Today's religion will be the next chapter in Bulfinch's Mythology.

Religion is wishful thinking. It's composed mainly of what people wish was true but, usually, is not.

There is not much difference between religion and superstition. Superstition is maintained by numerous errors in thinking. This explains why most defense of religion are riddled with fallacies.

Religion is a placebo. It can give you a sense of hope and purpose when real circumstances makes it hard to have hope or purpose. This is the only good thing I have to say about religion.

 

I don't believe that Christians would support an unbiased course on Christianity as it would address the plagerism in the Bible from the Tales of Gilgamesh as well as facts like the "Books of Moses" were not written by Moses, Noah's flood did not happen, the world was not created in seven days by a supernatural being, and the only "fish" capable of swollowing a man (Jonah) whole (megladon) had been extinct for millions of years.

Christians would not like their religion be addressed as mythology in school and yet that is the only way it could be presented.

 

As to the question

The problem with God-creationism is that God is inherently non-explanatory. If we're basing this on a miraculous God, literally any sort of existence can be explained by appeal to it. Mechanisms, the "how" of things, don't exist and cannot exist in this theistic model. Replying that God created mechanisms is no help because the question is "how" did God create mechanisms.

If the answer is miraculous, then no mechanism was employed. On the other side, the question of how God created mechanisms implies that God used mechanisms to create mechanisms, which means that mechanisms existed before God created them, which means that God did not create mechanisms.

It's in this that the disingenousness of standard and/or scientific creationists and cintelligent design proponentsists becomes apparent. Creationists look for signs of creation but their very own notion of a miraculous God implies that literally anything can be a sign. This being the case, they have no way of distinguishing signs of creation from non-signs and hence are involved in a pursuit that they should know is inherently impossible according their own presumptions.

 

Once again we are crossing th streams here.

Religion should not be taught in the science classroom. Neither should history. Gym class should likewise not be a part of a science class.

However, religion, in an objective, comparative sense, SHOULD BE taught in schools. That way, when we see things like the Taliban treatment of women and closure of schools is an abberration and violates the teaching of Islam.

After all, studying evolution and the Big Bang, is not going to help us figure out the Taliban - or how to defeat them. That is going to take theological study to undermine their propoganda, cultural study to figure out how to get the message out and deal with locals, and historical and current analysis of events to figure out where, when, and how to apply force and resources.

Again, science is not everything, and our schools have to equip us for the world.

 

Once again, why are atheists spending so much time telling the majority of Christians what they already know? Why continue to invest so much time and energy battling creationism from fringe Christian sects?

Even Intelligent Design is on the wane, and most Christian writing on the subject these days is about harmoning the two beliefs ... yet atheists continue to pound of the fundamentalist approach and continue to ignore educational issues about religion .... not science. Why?

Atheists BTW, have their version of Creationism - its called agnostic atheism.

Let me show you:

"One important element to remember in regards to negative proof is that once positive evidence has been presented the burden shifts to the skeptic to refute the evidence presented. One cannot keep arguing from the position of "negative proof" after the presentation of evidence. This point, however, is completely lost on most creationists and intelligent design advocates who shout from the rooftops that there are no transitional fossils long after they've been repeatedly shown them. "

There you are, a strong evidenced based case is which for fossils, DNA, and other evidence, and the frustration, indeed anger, at fundamentalists rejection of evidence.

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Negative_proof

But many atheists do the same thing in return regarding God. There are many sceintific observations that Christians point to in making a similar, evidenced based case toward God. Here is one (one I have repeatedly shown).

http://www.godandscience.org/apologetics/is_god_real.html

And yet, each and every thing presented is often dismissed with absurd, contradictory claims - much like a Creationist rejects any evidence or explanation of evolution, even though the evidence is overwhelming. This process reaches its illogical conclusion with the agnostic-atheist claim that there isn't even any claim in atheism's God construct, and that no evidence or proof is required - even as such atheists attack and belittle others for a lack of evidence.

Agnostic atheism? That is the Ceationism of the atheist world, it rejects evidental reasoning as soundly as any Christian fundamentalism.

Ergo, the question is why so many atheists are so concerened about Creationism in a literal sense (when even most Christians do not accept that), but are absolutely silent on their own illogic?

Well, you don;t see it that way? Neither do Creationists.

 

Excellent post.

 

Once again I have no problem with objective school courses that address religion but I don't believe those that believe in the different religions really want to have them addressed as mythology which is what they are. Today's religions are fundamentally no different than the mythology of the Greeks.

Certainly the cultural problems related to all religions could and should be addressed whether it's the extremism of Islamic fundamentalism as represented by theTaliban, the extremism of Christianity or the extremism of Jewish Zionism all of which present serious problems in the modern world.

 

Actually evolution is great source for identifying the peculiarities and origins of human behavior. This is yet another reason why denying evolution is dangerous. It virtually beheads an important scientific approach for understanding who and what we are and why and how we came to be this way.