re: #125 sprucepinehollow

I feel a little like like a meat cutter applying for membership with PETA, but here goes…
I’ve enjoyed reading LGF for the past month, but I’m still trying to figure out the culture. Seems like the evolution/creation debate is a big deal. Some of you appear to be really tired of talking with religious people about the subject, yet articles continue to be posted.

Only the people who want to see the subversion of the science education of America’s children by religious dogma in public high schools to proceed under the public radar do not want to see this discussion continue here because of the public attention it might draw to the issue. And most of the religious people, if by religious you mean Judeo-Christian, as you most probably do, ACCEPT evolutionary theory; the Roman Catholic Church, for instance.

My ideas/questions regarding the evolution/creation debate:
-Seems like a lot of group think going on here, with religious views often dissed and mocked.

Genesis Literalist Creationists are advocating the indoctrination of our youth in empirically disproven dogmas in public schools. This cynical and malignant effort richly deserves to be denounced. Most Christians and Jews aren’t Genesis Literalists, and for good reason; it requires massive reality denial.

-History is full of biased scientists and religious leaders. LGF tends to portray scientists as human machines, incapable of having pre-conceived ideas or bias and Creationist leaders as idiots and liars. Am I correct?

No. Individual scientists can be biased, but science as a peer-reviewed process, with experiments repeatedly checked by other researchers, winnows out those biases. The Disco Institute folks and others of their ilk are cynical manipulators of the naive faithful.

-Is there a logically sound argument that refutes Behe’s book “Darwin’s Black Box,” specifically the idea of irreducible complexity? Is there a logically sound argument that refutes the “watchmaker” argument?

Ken Miller has done it to Behe. And Paley’s watchmaker argument has been refuted since the 1860s, when Thomas Henry Huxley destroyed Bishop Wilberforce’s attempt to employ it in an Oxford debate. The intervening years have only served to further discredit it.

-I don’t have a major problem with theistic evolutionists.
-I have a problem with atheists who claim that humans can do anything wrong… or right.

Atheists are as moral as are other folks, but nice try at diverting the discussion from the presence vs. the absence of empirical evidence to Bad Old Atheists vs. Good Old God, as the Disco Institute’s Wedge strategy document recommends.

-Where is LGF on the separation of church & state issue?

On the side of the first amendment to the US Constitution, as clarified by Thomas Jefferson:
usconstitution.net

-Science seems to be creating its own high priesthood, where issues can only be debated by scientists, not laymen.

When the attempt to elevate creationism or its PR propaganda relabeling ID to the status of empirical science fails, creationists always endeavor to reduce empirical science to the status of religion. But this endeavor also fails, because the essential difference of the presence vs. the absence of empirical evidence remains.

Any help on enlightening me on the LGF culture, the near total lack of patience with people who take opposing views on evolution would be appreciated. This is an honest request, I’m not trying to make a back handed slap at LGF. I’m heading out of town early, so mostly listen for now, but I’ll be back… unless I get booted. Thanks!

It is about anti-idiotarianism, and does not give anyone’s pet idiocies free passes. It is an equal opportunity sacred ox gorer.