Why must the creationists always lie?

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2008-09-13 12:30am

Here's yet another obviously lying creationist E-mailer, complete with the usual free webmail address:

Name: Jason R. Howe
E-Mail: jasboxer@yahoo.com

I have been an intelligent design believer since youth--believing the universe and earth was billions of years old, but needed a designer to put the creation into motion.
Having finished one graduate degree in the field of science, and now working on a doctorate in the field of science, I am questioning my beliefs of proposed theories.
I didn't read through your entire website, but during our research seminars at school, we discuss that creationism and evolution can both be construed as scientific theories as they have the potential to be empirically falsifiable.
What frustrates me as a scientist is that we take Darwin's Theory and bastardize it. We forget that he was a theologian and that he believed that a creator was the only way the earth is filled with diversity in nature.
I appreciate your attempt to disprove the theory of creation, and I will continue to review your website and others to clinically evaluate the theories of evolution and creation.
As an atheist, how do you explain the Big Bang Theory. I have no knowledge of any laws or theories in physics which can explain this phenomena. I am aware of several hypothesis that we have discussed in regards to the Big Bang Theory.
We have discussed with philosophers that there are no true atheists. If a person believes in the Big Bang Theory, or the Theory of Evolution, they believe in a creator--although it is not a supernatural, but natural creator--therefore, theat person cannot be considered an atheist. If a person believes in a creator, they believe in a god or God, one being natural, the other supernatural. Thus, the closest a person can declare they are an atheist, but philosophically, they are not.
Thank you for your website.
jason

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Ho hum, how typical. I responded thusly:

I wrote:Jason R.Howe wrote:
I have been an intelligent design believer since youth--believing the universe and earth was billions of years old, but needed a designer to put the creation into motion.

Having finished one graduate degree in the field of science, and now working on a doctorate in the field of science, I am questioning my beliefs of proposed theories.

I didn't read through your entire website, but during our research seminars at school, we discuss that creationism and evolution can both be construed as scientific theories as they have the potential to be empirically falsifiable.
Not to sound like a cynic, but you would not believe how many people I have had E-mail me claiming to be graduate scientists, only to completely fold when I start asking them to employ some of the principles they should have learned in first year.
What frustrates me as a scientist is that we take Darwin's Theory and bastardize it. We forget that he was a theologian and that he believed that a creator was the only way the earth is filled with diversity in nature.
The fact that he was once a theologian is completely irrelevant to his theory. The fact that you think we "bastardize" his theory by ignoring his theologian past is a very troubling for your claim to be a scientist. A graduate scientist should know that the personal background and motives of the person who creates a theory has absolutely NOTHING to do with the theory itself.
I appreciate your attempt to disprove the theory of creation, and I will continue to review your website and others to clinically evaluate the theories of evolution and creation.

As an atheist, how do you explain the Big Bang Theory. I have no knowledge of any laws or theories in physics which can explain this phenomena. I am aware of several hypothesis that we have discussed in regards to the Big Bang Theory.
It is rather absurd to say that there are no theories in physics which can explain Big Bang Theory, when Big Bang Theory itself is a theory in physics. This is yet another piece of evidence that you are lying about your claim to be a qualified scientist. I cannot imagine a scientist saying something so profoundly ignorant.
We have discussed with philosophers that there are no true atheists.
Let me guess: these "philosophers" are actually fellow members of your church youth group.
If a person believes in the Big Bang Theory, or the Theory of Evolution, they believe in a creator--although it is not a supernatural, but natural creator--therefore, theat person cannot be considered an atheist.
Wrong. An atheist is someone who does not believe in deities. Natural mechanisms are not deities.
If a person believes in a creator, they believe in a god or God, one being natural, the other supernatural.
Atheists need only believe in the natural universe, which is not a god. A god, as any theist would define it, is a sentient being, not an unthinking set of physical mechanisms and natural laws. According to your absurd definition, the universe is a god. And even if we were to accept this silly definition, it would still be ridiculous to claim that atheists need to "believe" in the universe, since no belief is necessary. We can OBSERVE the universe, thus eliminating the need for faith. If God could be directly observed and measured, his existence would be scientific rather than religious.
Thus, the closest a person can declare they are an atheist, but philosophically, they are not.

Thank you for your website.
jason

Please, do me a favour and stop lying about your background. You do not have a "graduate degree in the field of science", and you did not discuss this with qualified "philosophers".

Admiral Valdemar · Post by **Admiral Valdemar** » 2008-09-13 12:42am

IF he were an actual qualified scientist, he'd be a very bad one at any rate. It's becoming more common to find people who say "Well, I did such and such, and I can safely say it's wrong. See, my vague, uninformed opinion is factually correct because I said I weighed up both sides of the argument".

What's this? More tired "atheism purports X" arguments too? Yawn.

Meanwhile...

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2008-09-13 12:44am

The thing is, I lived in a church college residence for a couple of years when I was in school. I overheard the religious studies people having these kinds of conversations where they say things like "there are no true atheists" all the time; they always think they're so smart because they bounce these arguments off each other and they all agree that they're excellent.

Feil · Post by **Feil** » 2008-09-13 12:47am

I want a Masters' in SCIENCE. That would be awesome.

"What's your degree in?"
"Urban Planning. You?"
"SCIENCE!"

Admiral Valdemar · Post by **Admiral Valdemar** » 2008-09-13 12:58am

Darth Wong wrote:The thing is, I lived in a church college residence for a couple of years when I was in school. I overheard the religious studies people having these kinds of conversations where they say things like "there are no true atheists" all the time; they always think they're so smart because they bounce these arguments off each other and they all agree that they're excellent.

Really now, would we expect any different from self-perpetuating myths?

MGS2 A.I. dialogue wrote:Col. Campbell: You exercise your right to "freedom" and this is the result. All rhetoric to avoid conflict and protect each other from hurt. The untested truths spun by different interests continue to churn and accumulate in the sandbox of political correctness and value systems.

Rose: Everyone withdraws into their own small gated community, afraid of a larger forum. They stay inside their little ponds, leaking whatever "truth" suits them into the growing cesspool of society at large.

Col. Campbell: The different cardinal truths neither clash nor mesh. No one is invalidated, but nobody is right.

Rose: Not even natural selection can take place here. The world is being engulfed in "truth."

Col. Campbell: And this is the way the world ends. Not with a bang, but a whimper.

The rise of Creationism/Intelligent Design amongst the developed and developing nations is cause for concern because of the very way these people go about spreading their deluded memes. Now that the UK is looking at 1 in 10 children believing in some sort of Creation story, and science teachers being afraid to draw a line in the sand and tell them the straight facts for fear of being politically incorrect and even intolerant, then something is seriously wrong.

You've heard the stories over the LHC this week. The mass media, even the liberal, somewhat more educated parts of it like the BBC, still "told both sides" of the story and kept the story of a potential cataclysm in the public eye. The lies, golden mean fallacies and worshipping of ignorance, be it from preferring celebrities or religious idols (are they any different?) over progress in science is a frankly depressing sign of the times. We're not the dark ages, but we're getting far too close for comfort in the 21st century for my liking.

Anguirus · Post by **Anguirus** » 2008-09-13 01:06am

Feil wrote:I want a Masters' in SCIENCE. That would be awesome.

"What's your degree in?"
"Urban Planning. You?"
"SCIENCE!"

I know a kid at my college who's majoring in Biology, Chemistry, Biochemistry, and Physics (and getting obscenely good grades in all of them). We refer to him as a Science! major. "Uh...what science?" "All of them!"

Admiral Valdemar · Post by **Admiral Valdemar** » 2008-09-13 01:11am

At college, I did physics, biology and computing. But to be anyway competent in any scientific discipline, I did only biology at university, and even then you can only know a certain chunk of even that today.

Anyone who has even the most rudimentary grasp of science should know how it works and have a functioning, analytical mind. Even the litmus test of being able to get a science degree doesn't work if you subconsciously ignore large parts of the discipline because it clashes with your own ideologies.

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2008-09-13 01:19am

People with a rudimentary grasp of science would know what kind of flaws you're supposed to identify in a theory, and how you would describe them. Nobody in science goes after an accepted theory by saying "explain how it works". That's fucking retarded; anyone with a science background would research it thoroughly, far past the point when it is necessary to ask some guy on the Internet to explain how it works. It's not as if there aren't plenty of resources, which leads to the other problem with fundies: they always claim they've done all sorts of research, yet it's obvious they've never cracked open a single textbook or even ventured beyond the sheltered world of fundie-approved websites.

Admiral Valdemar · Post by **Admiral Valdemar** » 2008-09-13 01:26am

That was why they need a functioning, analytical mind to go with it, because you need to understand the how and why, not regurgitate something you read off a trivia site. Anyone can say the world orbits the sun because of a force called gravity, or that cells make up the human body. Ask those not so well versed in the scientific principles to go beyond a simple textbook explanation, such as to hypothesize over unknowns, is a better test.

Not that finding many people who even grasp basic workings of scientific theories is easy anyway. Just finding people who can even explain evolution without invoking a total red herring is becoming harder today, to say nothing of those who can contemplate how the theory came about and what consequences it has for science.

The novice fundies are those who cannot even get their story straight i.e. talking about apes becoming humans. The real problems lie in those who can at least get past that hurdle, understand what evolution means, then twist it to appeal to their senses and that of those they wish to impress.

Let's face it. When they still have problems with infinite regression concerning a creator vs. creation ex nihilo, you're not talking about people who do more than the most minimal critical thinking on their subjects.

DPDarkPrimus · Post by **DPDarkPrimus** » 2008-09-13 01:48am

Feil wrote:I want a Masters' in SCIENCE. That would be awesome.

"What's your degree in?"
"Urban Planning. You?"
"SCIENCE!"

Hey, Dr. Science has a degree in science!

CaptainZoidberg · Post by **CaptainZoidberg** » 2008-09-13 01:21pm

Feil wrote: "SCIENCE!"

I'd be willing to bet that there are liberal arts colleges that offer generic "science" degrees. The tech school that I'm at right now offers a generic "Humanities" degree.

So, are you going to ask him to email you with a university address, or prove in some way that he's actually a grad student? Honestly it might be possible that he did indeed get a Bachelor's Degree in science, but went to a school with a lightweight program.

Plekhanov · Post by **Plekhanov** » 2008-09-13 01:51pm

It seems that because their whole world view is based upon the blind acceptance of authorities so they assume that people with a scientific world view think in the same way. Hence the attacks on Darwin to try and undermine his 'authority' and attempts to quote mine Origin of Species which so far as I can tell some creationists genuinely seem to think biologists treat as an inviolable perfect text.

This obsession with received knowledge from authority also of serves as a motivation to try and pretend to be appear as 'an authority' ie. a scientist if they think they can get away with it, hence the false claims about holding degrees, wearing lab coats in videos, getting doctorates from diploma mills and so forth.

Conversely whilst athiests obviously lie and sometimes do so to try and win arguments I don't think I've ever witnessed an atheist pretend be a vicar or similar for anything other than comic effect. I suspect because we tend not to care so much for arguments from authority and so just don't see the point.

Superman · Post by **Superman** » 2008-09-13 02:45pm

Creationists had better hope that lying about having degrees doesn't violate the whole "thou shalt not lie" business. If so, I'm pretty sure they're all going to hell.

Mayabird · Post by **Mayabird** » 2008-09-13 03:11pm

Superman wrote:Creationists had better hope that lying about having degrees doesn't violate the whole "thou shalt not lie" business. If so, I'm pretty sure they're all going to hell.

It's just bearing false witness against their neighbor that's a sin, not lying, you see. They can't lie in court when testifying, but lying about creationism isn't bearing false witness, since it's God and everything about God is right. The ends justify the means when bringing people to God, no matter what the means.

Also, it's quite possible that they absolutely believe everything they say, even the stuff that's absolutely wrong and a pack of lies that they should damn well know, because they've trained themselves to ignore or explain away any cognitive dissonance they experience.

Plekhanov · Post by **Plekhanov** » 2008-09-13 03:17pm

Superman wrote:Creationists had better hope that lying about having degrees doesn't violate the whole "thou shalt not lie" business. If so, I'm pretty sure they're all going to hell.

The commandment is actually 'though shalt not bear false witness against your neighbour' which isn't quite the same as 'don't lie'. It does say not to lie at other points in the bible, but true to form it contradicts itself by encouraging lying elsewhere:

1 Kings 22:2223 " 'By what means?' the LORD asked.
" 'I will go out and be a lying spirit in the mouths of all his prophets,' he said.
" 'You will succeed in enticing him,' said the LORD. 'Go and do it.'

"So now the LORD has put a lying spirit in the mouths of all these prophets of yours. The LORD has decreed disaster for you."

And in Exodus says that god rewarded midwives who lied in his service so they probably don't worry too much about being hell bound just because they deliberately go round lying.

Post by **Alyrium Denryle** » 2008-09-13 03:36pm

DPDarkPrimus wrote:
Feil wrote:I want a Masters' in SCIENCE. That would be awesome.

"What's your degree in?"
"Urban Planning. You?"
"SCIENCE!"
Hey, Dr. Science has a degree in science!

I do find it telling that he does not specify what his degree is actually in. When I let people know I am grad student, i even specify the specific sub-field of biology I work in, and what organisms I work with predominantly. I dont just say that I am a science grad student.

Perhaps asking this kid who's lab he is in would be a good test.

kc8tbe · Post by **kc8tbe** » 2008-09-13 08:08pm

I appreciate your attempt to disprove the theory of creation, and I will continue to review your website and others to clinically evaluate the theories of evolution and creation.

Like, will he do a double-blind study where one group of patients is infected with normal "creationist" bacteria and the other is infected with antibiotic resistant "evolutionist" bacteria? I think the word he's looking for is critically.

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2008-09-13 08:09pm

kc8tbe wrote:
I appreciate your attempt to disprove the theory of creation, and I will continue to review your website and others to clinically evaluate the theories of evolution and creation.
Like, will he do a double-blind study where one group of patients is infected with normal "creationist" bacteria and the other is infected with antibiotic resistant "evolutionist" bacteria? I think the word he's looking for is critically.

Who wants to bet that despite saying the above, he didn't actually bother reading any of my website beyond the front page?

Admiral Valdemar · Post by **Admiral Valdemar** » 2008-09-13 08:21pm

He may have clicked the links, skimmed over it, then felt justified in saying he'd reviewed your site. He then went on to accidentally visit the TO.org homepage, which gives him the experience needed to say he has overlooked the main evolutionist argument database and found it wanting.

SpacedTeddyBear · Post by **SpacedTeddyBear** » 2008-09-14 12:19am

Darth Wong wrote:
kc8tbe wrote:
I appreciate your attempt to disprove the theory of creation, and I will continue to review your website and others to clinically evaluate the theories of evolution and creation.
Like, will he do a double-blind study where one group of patients is infected with normal "creationist" bacteria and the other is infected with antibiotic resistant "evolutionist" bacteria? I think the word he's looking for is critically.
Who wants to bet that despite saying the above, he didn't actually bother reading any of my website beyond the front page?

Wouldn't that go against the rules established by Creationists? To not thoroughly read you opponents arguments, or simply ignore it and claim victim when confronted with their own stupidity?

Kitsune · Post by **Kitsune** » 2008-09-14 01:44am

They read enough to take quotes out of context but somehow they lose all the connecting information.