29 OCT 2014 by ideonexus
How to Argue with a Creationist
Nye did not win, because he was fighting the wrong war.
Nye argued like a scientist. He presented the evidence, gave logical explanations, and generally relied on demonstrable facts. He did a flawless job, but changed absolutely no-one's mind, because anyone who cares about science, reason and evidence already accepts evolution.
Ham didn't even really argue. He just riled people up for a crusade - it was the evil liberal commie atheists trying to teach satan's lies, and him and his book of ... 1 
notes
notesDon't use science, use religious rhetoric.
06 JAN 2013 by ideonexus
The Question of God is Not Valid to Science
I don’t think you can refute creationism. Science only explores the natural world, not the supernatural world, and God is a supernatural question. Even creationists will admit that God is supernatural.
The question of God is not a question that’s answerable by science because you can’t create an experiment that shows God doesn’t exist. That’s what scientists do. They create experiments to prove the negative. In fact, most of science is failure—failure to prove your hypothesis. If...
1 You cannot prove God does or does not exist, and science is concerned with what is provable.
18 JUN 2012 by ideonexus
A Watch Implies a Watchmaker Argument
In crossing a heath, suppose I pitched my foot against a stone, and were asked how the stone came to be there, I might possibly answer, that, for any thing I knew to the contrary, it had lain there for ever: nor would it perhaps be very easy to shew the absurdity of this answer. But suppose I had found a watch upon the ground, and it should be enquired how the watch happened to be in that place, I should hardly think of the answer which I had before given, that, for any thing I knew, the watc...Folksonomies: creationism
Folksonomies: creationism
1 notes
notesEarly example of it from 1802.
13 APR 2012 by ideonexus
How Can You be a Creationist Farmer?
It always seems amazing to me that evolutionists pay so little attention to this kind of thing, and that cotton growers are having to deal with these pests in the very states whose legislatures are so hostile to the theory of evolution. Because it is the evolution itself they are struggling against in their fields every season. These people are trying to ban the teaching of evolution while their own cotton crops are failing because of evolution. How can you be a creationist farmer any more? When evolving bugs keep destroying your crops?
13 APR 2012 by ideonexus
Summary of the Scope's "Monkey Trial"
The trial itself was originally planned as a publicity stunt by the town fathers of Dayton, Termessee. Anxious to gamer attention and to provide a test case to challenge the re¬ cently passed Tennessee Butler Act, or "monkey laws" that banned the teaching of evolution, the civic leaders recruited a local high school teacher, John T Scopes, to be their guinea pig. Scopes volunteered to take time off from teaching gym to teach biology for one day so that he could test the law, although later h... 1 notes
notesAnd its significance in the Creationism VS Evolution debate.
23 MAR 2012 by ideonexus
If You Can Outlaw Teaching Evolution in Public School
If today you can take a thing like evolution and make it a crime to teach it in the public schools, tomorrow you can make it a crime to teach it in the private schools, and next year you can make it a crime to teach it to the hustings or in the church. At the next session you may ban books and the newspapers... Ignorance and fanaticism are ever busy and need feeding. Always feeding and gloating for more. Today it is the public school teachers; tomorrow the private. The next day the preachers ... 1 notes
notesYou can ban it everywhere and society will descend into darkness.
18 MAR 2012 by ideonexus
Did Adam and Eve have Navels?
All other men, being born of woman, have a navel, by reason of the umbilical vessels inserted into it, which from the placenta carry nourishment to children in the womb of their mothers; but it could not be so with our first parents. It cannot be believed that God gave them navels which would have been altogether useless. Folksonomies: bible creationism
Folksonomies: bible creationism
1 notes
notesThe navel is a scar from the umbilical cord. So no; yet the pair is almost always depicted with belly buttons.
05 JAN 2012 by ideonexus
Creationsim VS "I Don't Know"
Where did the primal seed of the big bang come from? How did life begin? How did monarch butterflies evolve the ability to navigate to their winter home? God did it, says the believer. I don't know, says the agnostic. The two statements have exactly the same explanatory value. Zero.
Why then opt for one rather than the other? The first provides an illusion of understanding, and reinforces the ancient belief in a personal divinity who attends to our individual lives. The second is a goad to c...Neither explains any natural phenomena, but the latter leads the door open to curiosity.
13 DEC 2011 by ideonexus
The Strong Anthropic Principle
The weak anthropic principle is not very controversial. But there is a stronger form that we will argue for here, although it is regarded with disdain among some physicists. The strong anthropic principle suggests that the fact that we exist imposes constraints not just on our environment but on the possible form and content of the laws of nature themselves. The idea arose because it is not only the peculiar characteristics of our solar system that seem oddly conducive to the development of h... 1 notes
notesOur existence puts constraints on the very laws of nature.
13 DEC 2011 by ideonexus
The Weak Anthropic Principle
Our very existence imposes rules determining from where and at what time it is possible for us to observe the universe. That is, the fact of our being restricts the characteristics of the kind of environment in which we find ourselves. That principle is called the weak anthropic principle. (We'll see shortly why the adjective weak" is attached.) A better term than "anthropic principle" would have been "selection principle," because the principle refers to how our own knowledge of our existenc... 1 notes
notesA quick definition and explanation of this theory of why we live in a universe where we could emerge.
