tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3375512083268389933.post8974398187377658350..comments2023-09-30T10:36:23.154-05:00Comments on Accidental Historian: Look What I Just Stepped In...Gedshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15047239425466517786noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3375512083268389933.post-89112968827520419192008-06-23T19:16:00.000-05:002008-06-23T19:16:00.000-05:00It's actually possible to refute Ken Ham's, "the F...It's actually possible to refute Ken Ham's, "the Flood did it," explanation with a simple experiment using common household items. Take a colander, put some things in it and put it in a bowl. Fill the colander with water, then remove it from the bowl. As the water comes out, it becomes pretty obvious that things don't settle in anything closely approximating order.<BR/><BR/>Looking at pictures of post-Katrina New Orleans or Cedar Rapids, IA from the last week or so will pretty much do the same thing...<BR/><BR/>Your thing about the gatekeepers is a good point. For every articulate, witty spokesman of science like Ken Miller or Stephen Jay Gould there are a bunch of guys like, well, the guys <I>The Big Bang Theory</I> makes fun of.<BR/><BR/>It how we end up with situations like the one last year where science discovered that there is, indeed, some genetic variance among the races and white supremacist science guy was the first to break the news. The rest of the scientific community simply lacked the PR sense to say, "Hey, this doesn't mean anything in terms of who's better." Some genetic variation is normal and would be expected with millennia of somewhat isolated breeding populations dealing with wildly different environmental conditions.<BR/><BR/>But that's kind of a nuanced concept and without someone to explain it the crazies tend to get the floor.Gedshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15047239425466517786noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3375512083268389933.post-4899580320794678432008-06-23T10:50:00.000-05:002008-06-23T10:50:00.000-05:00I actually saw Ken Ham in person once myself, also...I actually saw Ken Ham in person once myself, also in the early Nineties. (Making me close to ten years old.) At the time his business-casual wardrobe and thick Australian accent were very impressive, as were his constant repetitions: "You dig in the ground, and what do you find? You find billions of dead things, buried in rock layers, laid down by water--all over the earth!" This in defense of a Flood which was literally worldwide--I didn't hear or remember much of the other stuff. <BR/><BR/>What bugs me about the Creationist rhetoric I was raised with is that people seem to equate "evolution is true" with "God doesn't exist." As though the hardcore, 7-day creationists had received a memo from God, written on stone tablets in letters of fire, that says <BR/><BR/>"I, THE LORD, CREATE THINGS ONCE, AND AFTER THAT EXPECT THEM NEVER TO CHANGE. I DO NOT TINKER WITH MY CREATION. ADDITIONALLY, HOMOSEXUAL ANIMALS ARE EVIDENCE THAT SATAN HAS INFLUENCE OVER THE ANIMAL KINGDOM. NOT THAT I CREATED GAYNESS. BE SURE TO TELL EVERYBODY." <BR/><BR/>It's the difference between a top-down and a bottom-up perspective on the universe. A theologically based worldview is always top-down. "God created the world, so we know the big picture, but He left the details to us to discover." The perspective of science is necessarily bottom-up, building a perspective gradually from an assemblage of facts. "We can't say for sure, but based on the following pile of things we've observed, such-and-such is the assumption we're going to go with for practical purposes."<BR/><BR/>Of course the gatekeepers of science have as crappy a track record as their religious counterparts when it comes to ignoring real facts. Not to mention twisting small discoveries in limited fields into an excuse for broad, sweeping social changes which benefit very few except the powerful people spearheading them. Such as Social Darwinism. Or the Inquisition.<BR/><BR/>Evolution as such is not threatening to God as such any more than heliocentrism or elliptical orbits or germs. But it is unpopular for the same reason. Animals changing slowly into other animals seems to threaten the Biblical story of Adam giving names to all the animals, or the story of Noah rescuing all the animals to reproduce "after their kinds." But then there are Biblical passages which describe the sun as going around the earth. And if germs are actually little animals, how did Noah manage to collect all different kinds of them? Furthermore, how do you explain the continual and extremely rapid evolution of bacteria and viruses which accounts for there being a new "common cold" and a new flu every season?<BR/><BR/>Progressively more convoluted rationalizations! Ad hominem dismissals of opposing viewpoints, couched often as not in condescending expressions of pity for the unenlightened! You can find the breed in the classroom and the lab as easily as the pulpit and the call-in prayer show. <BR/><BR/>The internet seems even more infested with them than it is with porn. And much like porn, they are part of a genre that never seems to evolve.Fiat Lexhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10441862977921307080noreply@blogger.com