Sep 07 2007
You’ve gotta love tolerance
[CBC News]
Faith-based schools that teach creationism in science class won’t receive the public funding Ontario’s Progressive Conservatives have proposed, a party spokeswoman said.
âIf there are schools that teach creationism in science class, they would not be eligible to be funded as part of this proposal,â Ingrid Thompson said Wednesday afternoon, clarifying controversial remarks made by PC Leader John Tory earlier in the day.
Read about it here.
[From me]
I guess tolerance only applies to those who are opposed to Judeo-Christian values. Nothing like teaching a balanced curriculum. All the more reason to homeschool.
What do you think?
75 responses so far
I think people who are clinging desperately to new-earth creationism have their blinders on. While I believe there are some legitimate issues with full-on Darwin evolution (irreducible complexity, for example), you really have to suspend logic to believe in God creating the earth with the appearance of age and with fake dinosaur bones. My faith in God is not tied to how God created the world - God is all powerful and who am I to put him in a little box and say he could only create the world in one way? I believe God created all things, and I don’t know exactly how he created the universe, and I’m okay with that. I think it would be silly to believe something that goes against all the scientific evidence found so far. If you have to fight against science to backup your belief system, then there’s a problem. If God is indeed the creator of all, including natural laws and all of creation, science should not be a lightning rod for debate.
So that’s the problem I have with this whole debate - it sets the extremist Christians against the evolution extremists. Like most things, I think the reality is in the middle. God created all things, and he set in motion processes that evolved through his guiding hand. That’s not Darwinian evolution at the macro level, but it’s the logical conclusion for me.
I think home schooling and private schooling are good options for those who wish to teach their children curricula that do not meet the standards for public funding. American Jews and Catholics, among others, have a long history of it.
I don’t think that withholding public funding to indulge a particular religion’s doctrines is the same as intolerance for that religion. Prohibiting the teaching of the religion and its doctrines would be intolerance. For example, we (American society) do not tolerate religious doctrines that teach that children should not receive health care (like Christian Science), or religious doctrines that require the carrying of weapons at all times, including on a commercial airline (like Sikhism), or religious doctrines that insight murder (like radical Islam or white supremacy). The motive in each of these cases is the preservation of society, not the censorship of any particular religion. However, certain religious beliefs (like those I mentioned) may suffer censorship as a result.
Greg,
I find “irreducible complexity” to be the single most valuable contribution that the creationist movement has made to evolution theory. For one thing, it is a testable theory and for another, it has caused evolutionists to pay more attention to how various complex biological structures arose.
Just a clarification: the “Darwinian evolution at the macro level” you refer to seems like the term that new-eathers use (”macro-evolution”) to mean speciation. It sounds like you do accept that speciation occurs; you just believe that the hand of God is at work to guide it.
I agree fully with Greg .
It is a wonderful scientic endeavour effort to understand the vast,boundless universe and the mysteries of nature.Science has not answered all the questions .By this, I am not putting down Science .At the sametime ,the scientific enquiry has not prevented me from admiring the works of GOD.We should don’t mix these the two things. Both the efforts are worthwhile and wonderous- exploring nature and enjoying nature.
We need Science and it has unravelled many mysteries of nature .It has expanded our horizons.It only makes me more religious.
As for tolerence,it is obvious .Tolerence is always used against Christians and Christian values.
I think you simply don’t understand, or are pretending not to understand, what science is. Furthermore I think accusing the Ontario PCs of intolerance based on this one example ill-fitting is not very responsible. I happen to know you’re probably right, but you don’t.
Geekwad,
Glad to have you back. I’ve missed your insight.
Martyraj,
Since the US is a republic and laws are made by the officials that we ourselves elect, and if you are right about intolerance toward Christianity, then it seems that Christians are by and large intolerant towards Christianity. I don’t know of many other countries in the world that can boast of its people discriminating against themselves!
But seriously, you say that tolerence [sic] is always used against Christians and Christian values - did you really mean to say “always” or were you just using the word as hyperbole? If you really don’t know of instances where US law was intolerant against non-Christians and non-Christian values, I’d be happy to give you a few references.
Well said, Greg.
I don’t equate support for the teaching of creationism with the belief that God created the heavens and the earth. New-earth creationism is shoddy science mingled with an unwillingness to look at a complex issue with intellectual honesty. We dishonor God by not using the minds he gave us to look at the world around us and observe what is actually there.
As for whether this is intolerant, I’m a firm believer in church-state separation because I don’t want the government teaching children about God. In this case, the state should not be in the business of funding a curriculum that relies more on matters of personal conscience than on readily observable evidence. Parents who want to teach their children differently should be free to do so at home, in church, and/or in private schools.
I’m more concerned with freedom of any beliefs. Darwinism takes more faith than creationism. Now I don’t know exactly how God created the earth but the earth didn’t just form that is stupid and intellectually crazy.
According to the Bible, the Earth did “just form”, because God told it to. According to many distinct but agreeing schools of science, there is a pretty darn convincing causal chain going back more than six billion years that doesn’t invlove any steps where magic was required.
I have trouble understanding why you think it requires faith to say to say, “this is my most likely explaination that does not conflict with available evidence,” You seem to think that it is a value judgement, when it’s simply a matter of deduction. Perhaps because you think believing the wrong thing is a sin, you see a moral dimension to questions where it doesn’t really exist.
Geekwad,
What evidence? You really think the earth just formed? You really think the universe just became? That takes faith.
Groups the Ontario Progressive Conservatives are intollerant of (in increasing order):
* Sick people
* Poor people
* Gay people
* Female people
* Poor female people
* Poor gay people
* Poor sick people
* People who look like they might be terrorists
* Single mothers
The idea that they are intollerant of Christian belief is… uninformed, IMHO.
Well,
I don’t live there so I will leave that to you.
No, I don’t think the Earth just formed. I’m pretty sure the Earth accreted thanks to the gravitational influence of the sun on local matter. As for the Universe, I entertain a number ideas. I’m pretty confident I know generally what was going on in our neighbourhood six to four billion years ago, but when you ask me what was going on around the time that a time reversal of our Universe suggests all the matter was in the same place, well that’s a lot longer ago and I’m that much less certain.
If I said, I was unshakeably certain of either of those things, you’d be right. But that’s not how science works, and thank-you for demonstrating my point.
Kevin,
I realize the point of your post is tolerance for literalist Christian viewpoints, but if you don’t mind, I simply have to digress a bit.
It is so difficult for me to understand the importance of this issue. I feel that there are far more important things to worry about. Having said that YEC’s have made this into an enormous issue with their insistence on, and dogmaticism about their view of the first chapters of Genesis. It appears to be an issue upon which all orthodoxy seems to rest in their minds.
And I see this as a large stumbling block before unbelievers.
The Church hasn’t always taught literalism about Genesis 1-3, and has often held a healthy skeptism about that very topic. St. Augustine tells us that we must approach those verses with humility, and should be willing to change our minds about what we belive about the interpretation of those verses, as new information is devloped over time.
“in matters that are obscure and far beyond our vision … we should not rush in headlong and so firmly take our stand on one side that, if further progress in the search of truth justly undermines this position, we too fall with it. That would be to battle not for the teaching of Holy Scripture but for our own, wishing its teaching to conform to ours, whereas we ought to wish ours to conform to that of Sacred Scripture”
St. Augustine, De Genesi ad litteram libri duodecim (The Literal Meaning of Genesis)
For your consideration…
A couple of years back the Texas Education Agency met to hear and select new science curriculum. Texas, Florida, New York and California are closely watched because publishers print what these states choose and most of the other states just accept it.
When the Intelligent Design people and the Evolutionary folk got up to speak one group referred time and time again to scientific evidence while another mentioned religion and faith time and time again.
That’s right, the Intelligent Design supporters stuck to mentioning scientifically observable evidence. The Evolution supporters appealed to tradition, “accepted theory” and especially the bias of “faith based groups”. They offered very little scientific evidence.
MIT,
The point I was making was not about Evolution or Big Bang. I’m saying the non-faith groups want tolerance but they don’t show it to those of us who are tolerant towards them.
Bloginafogpastor,
I think the hearing record before the Texas Education Agency in 2003 reveals a much different story. Most advocates of intelligent design creationism called for including it in science curricula as a matter of religious freedom. In the end, the decision was much on the basis of what the scientists said was important to Texas: Four of eight creationists voted in the majority to let the text publishers put science in science texts, especially biology in biology texts. I have linked to the key transcripts at my blog, in the “why study evolution” section, if you care to read it.
Among key testimony left out of the hearings was our four Nobel winners in medicine who noted that evolution is important to medicine, especially to the diabetes, heart disease, and cancer research done in Texas.
Since that time, intelligent design creationists had a chance to make their case in federal court, in Pennsylvania. Held to the high standards of evidence and expert witnesses under the federal civil rules of procedure, they were unable to make a case that there is any science anywhere in intelligent design. Refutations of all examples offered for irreducible complexity are now on the record. If that’s the most important concept, and it is now refuted, the question is even less salient about why we should bother with intelligent design. Not in science, perhaps in philosophy, or in social studies under “failed crank political movements.”
“Darwinism” prefers skeptics come along, and belief is generally frowned on. Scientists don’t believe in hypotheses, they test them to disprove them instead. Darwin’s theories of evolution have withstood tens of thousands of formal assaults over the last 150 years. Evolution takes no faith; one need only look at the evidence.
Cosmologists — noting here that the formation of the Earth is not a part of evolution theory in any way — note that gravity is the key force in the formation of the Earth. We Christians, as a statement of faith, believe God to be the ultimate mover behind the creation of gravity. I don’t know what creationists believe. I suppose, if one is almost wholly ignorant of gravity, one might confuse science statements about the Earth’s formation as “it just formed.” There are any number of children’s books with more accurate descriptions.
Accuracy is important to Christians, too. We believe it’s wrong to tell things we know to be inaccurate, especially to children. That’s one more characteristic that distinguishes Christians from creationists, as best I can tell.
Thank you for any correction I might find. The message was related to me by one of the attendees that day. I’ll check out your links when I have time.
I agree with the first post by Greg. The world was indeed “formed.” It doesn’t matter how - God has the power to do it any way He wants. I’m almost 50 yrs. old - I was taught creation, plain and simple. Now I wonder exactly what that involved. School is not the place for children to learn about God or religion, just as the church is not the place for politics.
Yeah, I’m gonna make a statement here that apparently isn’t very popular…
I think TRUTH should be taught in the school system. Just because you do not believe something doesn’t make it untrue. Is God true-yes-fact! Is the Bible true-yes-fact! People saw Him, they’ve talked to Him, and people have attested to His miracles. The fact that people deny that, is not scientific, it is an issue of the soul and facing reality
This is insane. Look. Science is the only method we have of validating the truth of statements. It may not be the best possible method, but until someone steps up to the plate with something better (I’m looking at you, Mr. Creationism Is Truth), it’s all we have.
Creationism is designed specifically so that its truth cannot be tested. The scheme changes whenever science and technology advance to the point of being able to test some aspect of it. Fossils? Put there by Satan. Light that takes millions of years to get here? Created in-transit. No evidence of a global flood? Worldwide geologist conspiracy.
The article is not about whether or not Creationism can be addressed in school. It is about whether it is appropriate for science class. This is not an argument that reasonable people have.
AAA.Org said
Since the US is a republic and laws are made by the officials that we ourselves elect, and if you are right about intolerance toward Christianity, then it seems that Christians are by and large intolerant towards Christianity. I donât know of many other countries in the world that can boast of its people discriminating against themselves!
AAA,
There is only one country in the the world where this can happen .And thatis US of A.
What bothers me is that people tend to forget universally accepted principals like tolerance , freedom of speech,right to personal beliefs etc. only when dealing with things Christian.
There is evidence of global flooding…do your homework. Creation is more scientific than the idea of humans coming from apes…come on. I think it is sad that our children get fed “scientific” knowledge that isn’t that knowledgable. I think Creation is more appropriate for the science class than many of these so called “theories” that get fed to eager learning minds.
martyraj,
What bothers me is that people tend to forget universally accepted principals like tolerance , freedom of speech,right to personal beliefs etc. only when dealing with things Christian.
This post was about loss of funding for pushing personal beliefs (creationism) onto the general society. Where is the intolerance for Christians’ personal beliefs and principals in this?
I’ll grant you that prohibiting creationism in public science classes curtails your free speech, but we are not guaranteed the freedom to say whatever we want in public.
I think it should be illegal to teach falsehoods to children. For example, to teach that there is evidence of global flooding, without also teaching the falsification of such ideas, should be some sort of educational malpractice, at least.
By the way, not only do humans and great apes share ancestors, humans ARE apes.
We ought to teach evidence, too, so people won’t get suckered in by creationists, perhaps.
Ed,
I’ll let M speak for himself. But who is getting suckered? It takes more faith to believe the earth just happened.
what are you talking about? humans are apes…now thats a leap of faith
Iâll let M speak for himself. But who is getting suckered? It takes more faith to believe the earth just happened.
Agreed! I don’t believe the earth just happened either
Show me someone who thinks “the Earth just happened” and I’ll show you a creationist’s straw man.
Only an idiot would think that.
In the universe we live in, nothing “just happens.” Forces are constant — as Psalms tells us God said it should be — and gravity, common chemistry and nuclear physics are quite adequate to explain how the Earth formed. “Just happened” doesn’t cut it.
The question should be this: Do you believe, as Christians, that God is the ultimate driving force in the universe? Or do you believe as creationists, that magic was involved in the creation of the Earth contrary to the forces of the universe?
The problem is, I think a lot of creationists do believe the Earth just happened, at the whim of a god who does slap-dash work.
Yes, humans are apes. It’s a classic story about trying to figure out how to catalog life on Earth. Linne used his classification system, and humans come out as apes. Genetically, we know that to be true as well. The question again becomes whether we take the Christian view that such materialist showings are accurate because God is behind creation, or whether we take the creationist view that whoever did the creating made that DNA similarity just to vex scientists and prevent medicine from finding cures for disease. Ultimately that’s what the creationist view requires. The Christian view is that God wouldn’t be so deceptive.
Where do you come down? Christian, or creationist?
Ed,
I believe God created the earth. How He did it- I don’t know. But I don’t believe like atheists that the earth just formed from nothing.
I sure don’t believe in evolution. The Bible clearly says God made Adam. There is no evidence to “prove” evolution as many say.
Kevin,
No one I know (except of creationists) believes that the earth just formed from nothing.
If you don’t know how God created the earth as you admit, then how do you know He didn’t create it from a large, rotating cloud of dust, rocks, and gas?
When you say “prove evolution”, do you mean you require proof in a logical and pure mathematical sense? If not, then what do you mean by “proof”?
I don’t have any problem with God forming the earth with rocks. But He made the rocks then. There has to be a creator. Stuff just doesn’t form out of nothing.
Evolution - I can never believe. The Bible clearly says God made Adam from the dust of the ground & all of the animals too. I realize you don’t accept the Bible as being true. But I know the God of the Bible personally.
But He made the rocks then.
How do you know He didn’t make the first rocks some 10 billion years ago?
The Bible clearly says God made Adam from the dust of the ground & all of the animals too.
Do you know that the term, “dust,” in the Bible means only that part of the earth’s soil which is composed of inorganic compounds, or might it include the organic compounds that are found in the earth’s soil as well? How do you know that the “dust of the ground” that God used was not actually the organic compounds that He formed when He formed the earth? How do you know the process that God used to form man and other life was not evolution?
One response that I expect is that creation was accomplished in 6 days. But how long is a “day” before there is an earth?
I know the God of the Bible personally.
I’d like to hear more about that. That might be a good idea for a new topic: asking Christians (and other theists who might be here) to describe their personal relationship with God.
AAA,
You don’t have to twist my arm. I will post one tomorrow morning.
I don’t know that the world isn’t billions of years old. If I found that to be true it wouldn’t destroy my faith. I believe in the literal 6 days but it is like the NT says that 1000 years is like 1 day to God- I’m OK with that. I just believe God made the earth- how? I won’t know until I get to heaven.
Look for my story tomorrow.
Kevin,
First of all I want to again thank you for having this dialog on your blog, so very few Christians of whatever philosophical stripe permit such varied discussion.
While you and I disagree on some of the details, I strongly concur with your statement “But He made the rocks then. There has to be a creator. Stuff just doesnât form out of nothing.”
That is the classical Christian doctrine of Creatio Ex Nihilo. I strongly believe that God in His creative power started from that which was not, that is, He created what is from nothing. Creation which lays before us in its galactic splendor, and even down to our own planet are not co-eternal with God but the work of His Divine will.
AAA,
The post was about Christain organisations that are denied public funding based on their belief.
I want to know where Atheists were denied their right to express their views in public.
As Christians, we strive for accuracy. We love the truth.
Here’s an exercise. Take this statement:
Can we find anyone who makes such a claim who is atheist? Can we find anyone who makes such a claim as science? I’ll wager no one in either category has ever made such a claim.
Ed,
Then tell me where those who do not believe in God think the earth was formed from. It didn’t just happen.
martyraj,
I want to know where Atheists were denied their right to express their views in public.
As far as I know, there are no atheist groups in the US that are demanding to teach atheism in public schools (outside of a philosophy or theology classes where theistic views are also welcome). Let me know if you hear of one, then we’ll talk
Kevin,
Then tell me where those who do not believe in God think the earth was formed from. It didnât just happen.
We think the earth came from dust, rocks, and clouds of gas that formed the whole solar system as gravity caused this material to collect.
AAA,
you said:
Who made the dust, rocks and clouds of gas?
Who made the gas and dust?
I do solemnly believe and confess that at His “command all things came to be: the vast expanse of interstellar space, galaxies, suns, the planets in their courses, and this fragile earth, our island home.”
He then brought forth the human race “from the primal elements, and blessed us with memory reason and skill.”
While I am not a literalist, I still believe the story of Genesis is true, and that it tells us about God, humanity and how things came to be.
That which is, came forth from His will alone, ex nihilo.
Kevin,
Who made the dust, rocks and clouds of gas?
The material for our solar system is made up of material jettisoned by the explosion of more ancient stars. The earliest stars were formed out of hydrogen, helium and lithium, the simplest of the elements having only 1, 2, and 3 protons respectively. These were the only elements in existence in the early universe.
Before these more ancient stars exploded and jettisoned their heavier elements back into space, they imploded under their tremendous gravitational force. The gravitational force was strong enough to form the heavier elements from the 3 simple elements through a process of nuclear fission.
MIT,
While I am not a literalist, I still believe the story of Genesis is true, and that it tells us about God, humanity and how things came to be…That which is, came forth from His will alone, ex nihilo.
Are you saying that you don’t necessarily deny the science behind the universe’s origins, you are simply saying that that God is the force behind it?
When the only tool you have is a bible, every problem looks like a nail
AAA,
That is very much what I am saying, along with St. Augustine, Doctor of the Church. I believe that His was the motive force behind the somewhat intriguing physics of the Big Bang.
Sometime I would like to converse with you via email, if you care to.
Oops, sorry! I must have cross-posted my last comment - it was meant for “Really?” (http://kevinbussey.wordpress.com/2007/09/11/really/)
MIT,
That would be nice. Please feel free to contact me any time at webmaster@askanatheist.org
I think the “God of the Gaps” is the most realistic of all creationist positions. I think it has problems (enough problems that I personally tend not to believe it in the final analysis) but in my estimation, it is the only creationist position that doesn’t require one to deny the reality he observes.
Kevin,
I can’t tell you from what or where or whom atheists think the universe originated. We have the evidence of the Big Bang from a short while after the initial expansion, photographs from the COBE project.
In a quick lay summary, after the initial expansion, it was so hot in the universe that energy was all that existed. After a sufficient period of cooling, subsubatomic particles could form; a short while later in cosmological terms, subatomic particles formed, and then the simplest atoms, hydrogen, which bound into hydrogen molecules. With “lumps” in this mass of gas and energy, gravitational attraction formed rather large lumps that formed the first protostars, and then the first stars. Some of these early stars went nova, as someone already explained, and from those intense nuclear reactions heavier elements were formed. The rest of the universe is explained readily by a continuing cycle of star formation, novation, and gravitational attraction forming new stars and, with heavier elements available, planetary bodies.
Chemical reactions spontaneously form the chemicals of life (which have now been observed in every corner of the universe).
We can look at that evidence — hard photographic evidence, hard radioactive evidence, hard evidence in light and sound and chemistry and physics — and conclude as the creationists do that God had no role in it, and so the explanations God’s creation offers must be wrong, or we can be awestruck and wonder what else God’s hidden out there to find.
It’s a choice. We can choose the story God’s creation gives us, or the a different one written by men trying to understand it.
AAA,
Bible classes are not taught in public schools in US and to the best of my knowledge anyware in the world.
Ed Darell,
we can be awestruck and wonder what else Godâs hidden out there to find.
This is what I have chosen to do.
martyraj,
Bible classes are not taught in public schools in US and to the best of my knowledge anyware in the world.
Just a quick search on Google turned up this one. I’m betting it’s not an isolated case (I stopped looking after finding this one):
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/11/national/11design.html?ex=1294635600&en=cdc4e76a71d20b5c&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss
I’m also betting one can find bible classes in public school in other countries too but that may be beside the point.
Martyraj,
Bible classes are routinely taught in European countries, and have been since public education became available there. Many of them as you may know have State Churches, and Christianity has been normally taught in the schools. With the advent of “new” faith communities, they also have rights to religious education in the schools there.
For example in England you can review the National Religious Education counicl here:
http://www.religiouseducationcouncil.org.uk
What do you mean “U.S.?” In the United States, Bible classes are taught in a majority of states. This is highly controversial. While study of Bible as literature is standard, and meets national literature standards, many states have schools that teach the Bible as religion, as faith. There is a national organization out of North Carolina that fights to get religion classes into the schools. Texas’ legislature authorized them during this past session, and we have a couple of suits going which will determine how much religion can be taught — see my blog and search for “Odessa.”
martyraj,
What bothers me is that people tend to forget universally accepted principals like tolerance , freedom of speech,right to personal beliefs etc. only when dealing with things Christian.
What is your take on Christians being singled out for intolerance (quoted above) given the information about teaching the Bible in public schools that you were unaware of?
Ed Darell,
Can you give me the complete url to your blog ?
you can post it here.
You can get there by clicking on my name in the posts.
Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub is http://www.timpanogos.wordpress.com
Also, for Bible classes, the wrong way and the right way, check out the Texas Faith Network, part of the Texas Freedom Network: http://www.tfn.org
See the studies they’ve commissioned on various Bible curricula.
Ed ,
Thanks for your reply and I reading your posts and about this issue and get back to you .
The misunderstanding (on my part) might be due to term “‘Public Schools”.
I am from Inda .
Here , public schools mean schools fully funded by government .In govenment schools, there is a moral education class for one period (45 min) every day .
As for schools run by religious groups and private organisations ,they have the right to conduct their religious practices in their schools which in practice usually means one morning prayer and one religious education class every day .
AAA,
In India , Atheists also have the right to preach their views in schools run by them and they do it as other groups do .
Public schools in the U.S. are also government-funded schools. And while the law is that such institutions may not instruct in what religion to follow, they may instruct about religion, especially in relation to history or literature.
So, legally there could be Bible study courses here, in either social studies (as history) or as literature. In point of fact every state has some Bible studies. A lot of those classes step over the legal line and instruct in which religion to follow, rather than sticking to the law, studying about religion.
Ed ,
By Bible Classes ,I meant what is taught in Sunday Classes(i don’t know how it is called in USA) in Churhes.The purpose of which is to is to teach their faith to their members .
I myself taught moral education to High School Students (students in the age group 15-17 with 10 yrs of Education) in the I school I worked. I gave them Moral and Value Education with reference to Christainity ,their Faiths and also Non-Religious point of view eventhough I had full liberty to take Bible Classes as my School is a Christian Institution.
As for Religion being taught in Classes ,we study about all major religions in India at School level in History Classes.
Thanks for your information and insights.
I like the idea of teaching all these points of views, but what does that tell our children? I think part of the problem is that we are not defining out truth, we just give them everything and tell them to figure it out for themselves. And for young minds, i believe that to be very dangerous, when they are looking to us to give them truth.
M, please go tell that to the fundamentalists and creationists. That is exactly what the recommended curriculum is from the Discovery Institute, for biology — tell the kids about everything, and let them figure it out.
I agree, that’s dangerous.
Kevin, I really admire your “jedi mind trick” debate technique. You invent an untenable position, and then try to convince your opponent that it’s what they believe. Brilliant in it’s deceitful cunning.
How come when you say you don’t know how God created all the “stuff”, you seem to understand what that means, but when others say we don’t know where all the stuff came from, you can’t hear us?
How come the creation of all the stuff bothers you, but the space it’s in doesn’t? Where is it all coming from? There used to be very little space. Now there’s a hell of a lot of space, and there is more of it every moment. The creation of the Universe is continuing around you, but you’ve decided to be blind to it.
Geekwad,
I’m your father….
Really- what trick have I done? I believe that God created everything. I don’t know how & actually that is OK.
Kevin,
Iâm your fatherâ¦.
Good one!
I laughed out loud (really!) and people in the office wondered what I was laughing at! 
what trick have I done?
I actually wouldn’t characterize it as a “trick” per se but rather a logical fallacy. What you do is fairly common (and fairly obvious): you defeat strawman arguments in an attempt to support your position. For example: you argue that the earth doesn’t come from nothing, and imply that defeatubg tge strawnab supports your theory that the earth was created by God. But no one that I know of (with the possible exception of creationists
) argue that the earth comes from nothing.
All things came from nothing is the most illogical statement I have ever heard in my life . I would call it intellectual deceit and wondereing how someone in their right sense would accept it .
and imply that defeatubg tge strawnab supports your theory
Alrighty then!
That should have said:
“and imply that defeating the strawman supports your theory”
I don’t see what God adds to the explanation of how stuff got here. If God can create stuff, then there is a way to create stuff. Why would I not suppose that if God can create stuff, then so can a natural process? What is God for?
We both agree that neither of us knows how stuff is created, but (for the sake of this discussion*) we also agree that stuff was created. The only difference is that you assert for no reason at all that God did it, while I make no such assertion on the subject. If my position is that stuff comes from nothing, then so must yours be.
But that is not anyone’s position, no matter how many times you say that it is. Do you believe that it is? Calcified thought processes are a symptom of the conservative mind. Or are you just being disingenuous?
*) I don’t think it’s really necessary that stuff was ever created. The Universe is seemingly bounded on at least one end in both time and space. Which is to say that time had a beginning, and at the beginning, there was no space. But the space that wasn’t there was full of stuff. The stuff could have always existed. The “big bang” was the initial expansion of space Of course, that just changes the question to, where is all the space and time coming from.
Dude, stuff does come from something…GOD! The idea that yours comes from nothing doesn’t make sense. And that is not calcified conservative talk, the fact of God creating the heavens and the earth is much more logical than poof it was just there.
It is not any more or any less logical. It is simply less likely.
M,
If you believe that everything must come from something, then where do you believe God came from? Or is God’s existence an exception?
By the way, we can observer particles (a matter - antimatter particle pair) appearing from nothing.
the fact of God creating the heavens and the earth is much more logical than poof it was just there.
I’m aware of a few theories about the origins of the universe that make a lot of sense, but I haven’t seen any proofs. What proof are you talking about?
Also, why do you consider God’s creation of the heavens and the earth a fact? Facts are what we observe, not our understanding or beliefs about what we observe.
Remember this about “tolerance”…
Those who scream TOLERANCE the loudest are normally (not always) the most INTOLERANT among us.
I agree Phil .
The same with those who claim they are for SCIENCE and talk against Christians and Christianity.
In fact , they are the most UNSCIENTIFIC and tend to believe Christians are against Science(or/and don’t know /understand science) .
This is the only thing they seem to accept without any proof or evidence .
Geekwad- are you serious? Satan plants fossils???!!!! Hasn’t the Infernal Lord got anything better to do with his unholy time? I thought he was supposed to be busy elsewhere, like possessing 12 year old kids and spinning their heads at 360 degrees - sane, intelligent stuff like that. But no. He gets around, in cahoots with evil, lying, misleading geologists. Fascinating.
No, seriously - are there really people who make this assertion???? If so, it’s so tragic that it’s funny.
martyraj,
Those who claim they are for SCIENCE … tend to believe Christians are against Science
Just to clarify my own position, I think most educated Christians, like most educated people in general, accept science as a valid source for knowledge. From their posts, I think many Christians who post to this blog accept science. Conversely, many uneducated people don’t really know enough about it to form an opinion.
I am not addressing either of those groups on this thread, however. I’m addressing educated Christians who I would expect to know enough about science (via their education) to understand what science asserts and why.
Francoise,
are there really people who make this assertion????
Sadly, yes. Some of the “young-earthers” explain fossils by either accusing scientists of “planting” the fossils or accuse God of “planting” them. But it gets better. Since the light from many stars and galaxies take more than 6,000 years to reach us (millions, even billions in some cases), they also accuse God of creating the light from the stars and galaxies so that it appears to us that the light has been traveling that long.
These are an example of the type of people I’m addressing on this thread. People who demonstrate enough knowledge about science to talk about certain scientific details, while at the same time trying to dismiss scientific claims by misrepresenting them.
Phil,
Do you feel that people must agree with each other in order to be tolerant toward each other? To me, tolerance is about respect for individuals who may be different than I am in some way, and wanting those individuals to be able to live as they choose, as long as it does not prevent others from doing the same. I don’t see how disagreement equates to intolerance.
Just a note: it’s sometimes hard to tell someone’s demeanor over written media so I imagine it is possible to “hear” a hostile tone in my posts. But I assure you, I can’t recall even one post I’ve made to this blog where I was responding in a hostile manor. In general, I always try to give others the benefit of the doubt when reading their posts: unless the text itself is overtly hostile, I try to read the post as a friendly post.
Actually, it’s about a bunch of would-be politicians who are promising money for faith-based education. When pressed for specifics by an aghast secular Canadian public, they made various consoling noises, like that religion would not be taught in funded science classes.
And this is held up as an example of intolerance. Later on, it is held up as an example of the continuing decline of an America that never was. Gee, does anyone have an agenda?
The Ontario election mentioned in the article Kevin originally linked to was held yesterday. This is the first time I have ever seen a conservative candidate go down in flames over God. John Tory tried to make religion an issue in the election by promising to create a new faith-based schooling system. He actually succeeded in that faith-based schools were the defining issue of the election, except that it completely blew up in his face. No one was buying what he was selling. Many were horrified. It backfired so bad, he failed to win his own riding. I think one of his colleagues will have to give up theirs so that the leader of the party can be part of the government. That’s pretty much the ultimate humiliation for the leader of a Canadian political party.
I think it’s a real benchmark event. It was getting dicey there for a while. Our Prime Minister is a fundamentalist. He’s the first PM to routinely invoke God when giving political speech, in the style of US Presidents. I was really worried we were starting to see a swing to the religious right, but I think last night’s election results are a strong sign that’s not going to happen.