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2nd Term Part VIII - The Thin Red Line

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Re: 2nd Term Part VIII - The Thin Red Line

dxmnkd316 said:
I guess I don't entirely blame them. I mean, Spain, Greece, and a number of other countries have absolutely fked the rest of the EU. They've stopped even trying.
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Honestly, that's like saying Mississippi and Louisiana have absolutely farked the rest of the U.S. - but I suppose the difference is the US has both unified fiscal policy and monetary policy and the EU only has unified monetary, and the strong economies (Germany, France) either won't or can't support the weaker ones (Spain, Greece) like the stronger U.S. states (California, Texas) inherently do.
 
Re: 2nd Term Part VIII - The Thin Red Line

Since this thread is a dumping ground for some of the "other" types of debates on this forum, I'm just going to put this here about the evolution debate going on in the nation.

Back on 10/19 a friend took me to see a speaker who's a retired physician and teaching professor at Washington Univ. (I'd have to research the name, don't have the flier with me at the moment) that goes around to speak to various groups on the subject of evolution vs. creationism. He takes the side of creationism, showing the differences in the anatomical structure of apes, humans, and "Lucy," the acclaimed missing link from ~10 years ago. The doctor takes the creationist side in his discussion, which I expected since this was hosted by a church. (My friend in a Christian with firm creationist views while I'm an atheist.)

I had a whole series of gripes with how he presented the "proof" to the people there, clearly he was obfuscating the scientific method of how theories are set and disproved, if they can be. What bothered me most, though, is that while he's declaring we're all descended from Adam, and that the Earth is around 6,000 years old, he's saying that evolution of the human race couldn't have happened. That got me thinking about the differences in appearance between Africans, East Asians, Central Asians, Middle Easterners, Europeans, and Native Americans, let alone physical differences between the various nationalities. Even if we were all to have the great Come-to-Jesus moment and agree that God created Man, evolution would still have to hold true. How else do you explain the physical differences between a Swedish man and a Japanese man if we're all descended from Adam (or most recently, Noah, with his Great Arc and millions of species of animals it must have stored)?
 
Re: 2nd Term Part VIII - The Thin Red Line

6,000 years old?

I can throw out the entire evolution and grant him creationism and still call him a complete idiot. There is no way in hell the earth is only 6,000 years old. No way.
 
Re: 2nd Term Part VIII - The Thin Red Line

ScoobyDoo said:
6,000 years old?

I can throw out the entire evolution and grant him creationism and still call him a complete idiot. There is no way in hell the earth is only 6,000 years old. No way.
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I wouldn't call the man an idiot, just very committed to his religion, able to make himself fit his literalist raising on the Bible into explanations of the world.
 
Re: 2nd Term Part VIII - The Thin Red Line

We should call it what it is: superstitious. It's the imposition of supernatural explanations over the natural universe. It's not idiocy or weakness, it's just the way a large part of the population (perhaps a majority) need to operate to make peace with themselves. Peace is hard to find.

It's only a problem when it tries to compete with reality, because then the only way it can win is through obfuscation and logical fallacy. As long as it is a source of comfort for believers, let it be. With a large part of the population (perhaps a majority) it will make no difference whether their picture of the universe is real or imaginary. Like Sherlock Holmes, who was uninterested whether the Earth went around the Sun or vice-versa, it won't matter in their lives. For their kids for whom it might matter, they'll figure it out.
 
Re: 2nd Term Part VIII - The Thin Red Line

Kepler said:
We should call it what it is: superstitious. It's the imposition of supernatural explanations over the natural universe. It's not idiocy or weakness, it's just the way a large part of the population (perhaps a majority) need to operate to make peace with themselves. Peace is hard to find.

It's only a problem when it tries to compete with reality, because then the only way it can win is through obfuscation and logical fallacy. As long as it is a source of comfort for believers, let it be. With a large part of the population (perhaps a majority) it will make no difference whether their picture of the universe is real or imaginary. Like Sherlock Holmes, who was uninterested whether the Earth went around the Sun or vice-versa, it won't matter in their lives. For their kids for whom it might matter, they'll figure it out.
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Fair enough. I think you can still fit religion and religious views into your life without complete discounting scientific facts. It seems so much to me a complete waste of energy and time to be arguing about the age of the Earth or evolution when the facts are overwhelmingly on one side of the equation. And yet, despite all that I can believe in God and believe he created everything.
 
Re: 2nd Term Part VIII - The Thin Red Line

ScoobyDoo said:
Fair enough. I think you can still fit religion and religious views into your life without complete discounting scientific facts.
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Absolutely you can. God will always rule over the gaps. That's why we created Him.
 
Re: 2nd Term Part VIII - The Thin Red Line

ScoobyDoo said:
Even the Pope disagrees with him. Yes, the Pope.
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The Whore of Babylon has been jiggy with evolution for a long time. The CCD I went through (just after dinosaurs roamed the Earth) stressed that there was no contradiction between science and religion. Science gives the what, when, and how; religion gives the why.
 
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Re: 2nd Term Part VIII - The Thin Red Line

burd said:
Yeah. The who created whom in whose image part kind of got flipped, didn't it?
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But if cattle and horses and lions had hands
or could paint with their hands and create works such as men do,
horses like horses and cattle like cattle
also would depict the gods' shapes and make their bodies
of such a sort as the form they themselves have.

-- Xenophanes
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Fun trivia: The Warriors is based on Xenophon's Anabasis, but Xenophon was not Xenophanes.
 
Re: 2nd Term Part VIII - The Thin Red Line

Foxton said:
Powerful if you are the ********.
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I'd say witty riposte, but I have no idea what you're saying.

It's powerful considering it's coming from the some of the people the Dems supposedly have been looking out for for almost a half century.
 
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