Creationist Scientist Wants Airtime on Cosmos for Creationist Views
- Thread starter Rhykker
- Start date
And yet the only time someone made a list of scientists who didn't accept evolution there were only a few hundred names (less than one percent of scientists), most of them weren't in a biological field and some of them wouldn't even confirm that they denied evolution when asked. But the truth isn't really relevant to creationists.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Scientific_Dissent_From_Darwinism
Why would Cosmos waste their time by having these people on the show when they could use it for something more constructive like having a Carl Sagan cosplay competition?
They wouldn't, of course, but in the United States at least there is a drive to present creationist ideas (almost exclusively Christian creation ideas) as being the subject of some great campaign of prejudice. Every time a creationist is not allowed to share his or her ideas in a place where those ideas don't belong, people can shake their fists and claim discrimination. Of course to fight this "unfair" discrimination, there are people who need just a small donation to protect your religious freedom for you. Act now and you can get a "free" copy of our latest literature on how we are winning the culture war and preventing the Atheist Agenda from trying to steal our faith.CriticalMiss said:
Thanks for clearing that up, hopefully others will read it as it is really well put. I just couldnt think of the words at the time i wrote the comment,. But from my reasoning, creationism is the direct opposite of science.Gorrath said:
Yeah, I don't think Cosmos is going to say anything about Creationism... Neil Degrasse Tyson hates it, so...
When people talk about being creationists and "creation science," rarely are they talking about the idea that god created the universe and science is an explanation for how it developed from there. They are talking about a literal interpretation of creation as described in the bible. Which is obviously not congruent with any of the available scientific evidence.Spacemonkey430 said:
This. This is exactly what would have to be aired if they chose to air something about the subject. Something that helps define where scientists draw the line between faith and trust. Something that tells others why we, as scientists, cannot use creationism as a theory. Something that explains why is evolution respected as a valued subject more in the science classroom than creationism.TheSYLOH said:
Now, the original Cosmos and this one have a good habit of story telling. And that's usually how they explain things. If this is what they want to air, this is most likely how they'll do it.
That is actually a slippery slope. If they did that, then it would be viewed as an attack on religion. It would actually be better for them to not mention it at all.TheSYLOH said:
That's a point I actually give the show huge credit for. In the very first episode they have that line, "Your god is too small!" along with Neil explaining that science and the evolution and complexity of life are to him a deeply spiritual experience. I'm an agnostic personally, at this point in time no one knows for sure exactly if anything spiritual or supernatural in any form exists, we can only look towards the scientific process when trying to explain the universe.Nooners said:
Neil's science is too tight, we should be feeling enlightened at our new perspective of ourselves on the cosmic scale, and always continue to expand our knowledge, not shut our eyes and ears to the world because of some false belief that science and (at least some) aspects of religion can't coexist. It pains me to see religious people deny themselves some enlightenment in favor of purposeful ignorance for what I can only assume is the fear that their beliefs are too opposed to science.
It never ceases to amaze me that a being that supposedly created everything in the Universe needs so much spare change from people. So called 'Megachurches' make millions every year in the USA alone, but beardy cloud man still needs more. Probably gambling debt from all that dice playing Einstein was trying to cover up.Gorrath said:
First off, the idea that we know as much about the universe as we did in the bronze age is false. Just flat out untrue, and I have trouble taking you seriously if you actually think that, but I'll treat your post seriously none the less.BanicRhys said:
Here's the problem with those "less popular ideas" you accuse people of disregarding: the people arguing for them have presented no evidence to support them, they're based on thousands of year old religious texts, and no evidence we've accumulated about the way the Universe was created or works actually supports anything they say. And to top it all off, their "hypotheses" which aren't flat out proven false are generally untestable and therefore useless on any real scientific level.
Whereas we have observed and discovered direct evidence of things like Evolution, and now the Big Bang which indicate that those things do exist, and did happen. We may not understand all of the mechanisms behind them yet, but they're accepted scientific theories because we've been able to test and verify them sufficiently that we know they are the most likely scenario's.
The same can't be said for creationism. And I want to point out that the most vocal creationists are rarely people who simply say that God created the universe and physics took over from there. These are most often people who believe in a literal interpretation of creation as described in the bible. These people are wrong. This isn't something that's even up for debate really. We know that the creation of the Earth and all life on it did not happen the way the bible says. This is established scientific fact. If they actually had an argument, they'd be spending their time coming up with testable hypotheses, gathering evidence, and seeing if it supports their ideas. They don't do this though.
To suggest for even a moment that their arguments are just as likely to be true as established scientific theories is false. There's no other way to put it. They haven't made their case, they haven't found any actual evidence to support their claims, and they haven't been able to discredit any of the actual theories which have become accepted. Until they can do any of those things, they're nothing more than con artists or the victims of religious con artists themselves.
Indeed, but what we have at work here is a philosophical round about that was created specifically to disregard everything you can demonstrate and replace it with whatever you feel like inserting. In these sorts of debates the creationist will claim that we "know" nothing, their definition of "know" being that of absolute certainty. They will then claim that absolute certainty cannot exist (except for a special pleading fallacy with God as the subject). So since we don't "know" anything, every idea is equally valid. Of course nearly no one who makes this absurd philosophical argument actually holds to it in any instance where they "know" something. It simply gets trotted out as a way of not having to actually address an argument with anything of substance. Arguments composed of logical fallacies and absurd philosophical musings tend to only serve as a smokescreen to hide the flaws in unfounded conjecture or ignorance.Scrumpmonkey said:
Of course you likely know all this already, I'm mostly rambling in case someone else does not see what's at play here.
I'd never insist Creationism is a science and I'm one of the people who believe in it. I believe in Evolution too. Oh dear God I just contradicted myself. I'm a sane religious person who doesn't dismiss certain sciences but still believes in happenings like Creationism! Yeah if you couldn't tell I'm sick to freaking death of stuff popping up like this and then I come under fire because I so happen to be a believer. Anyone who claims themselves as a Creation Scientist is ignorant. Now a "Creationist" as in someone who believes in The Creation fine. There are some of us out there who actually believe certain things in the Bible are more metaphorical than literal. Who knows? Perhaps The Big Bang and The Creation are one and the same thing? One day the Universe is just there.Ratty said:
An interesting theory was shown to me one day by a Religion Professor at University of Dallas. Judaism, Islam, and Christianity all have some form of second coming or coming of the savior at the end of the world. While she was explaining this she drew two parallel lines and then had them slowly intersect showing that while we may follow different beliefs and practices they are all converging on the same point in the end. Who's to say that The Big Bang and The Creation aren't similar to that? I'm mad at these threads showing up here. I'm mad because I know the majority rule of the place and then I suddenly feel alone when I'm the one guy on the opposite side of the fence trying to inject logic or at least some decency into the thread but get jumped on because I share the unpopular opinion.
Mmm I would say it's an oxymoron only in and of itself. There are plenty of creationists that work in medicine, tech, engineering, etc. Adventist hospitals and cancer centers, for example, are pretty damn impressive - the religion has nothing to do with the application of medical tech. So I think many times it's more of a situation of, here is this researcher, or here is this doctor, or this engineer and he or she also just happens to have creationist beliefs. Just like another researcher may be Jewish or Hindu or anything else.Ninmecu said:
Only when it comes to robing creationism - as a system of religious belief - in the cloth of science would it be an oxymoron (because we aren't able to examine it by applying the scientific method), rather than as a blanket statement for any individual who maybe does work in the sciences and also just happens to be a creationist as a matter of personal religion.
I do think it's interesting that it seems only the American religious right is so forceful about shoe-horning an ideology into whatever venue it can in order to justify it and pass it off as examinable, provable law of the universe. This doesn't happen with any other religious group. I wonder why.
At any rate and to the point of the article, if this is such a big deal to the vocal minority among the creationist community, why don't they make their own show? It's always, "Science in schools? We want equal attention! Constitutional separation of Church and State be damned!". "Shows about the universe on television? Give us some air time on the show that you created and paid for! We're entitled to have our voice heard via your venue and funding!". Just - why not make their own show and leave other people's shows alone?
You never cease to amuse me CM. Thankfully, Heisenberg caught Einstein red-handed and old Special Pleading Fallacy was rumbled. Being that I'm a towering nerd, I've always loved the line from Star Trek V where Kirk asks, "What does God need with a starship?" That single line was one of the first instances where I started to really contemplate whether what I'd been force fed my whole youth was actually true.CriticalMiss said: