<p>People have listened to me and many individuals are open to the consideration that their beloved faith, often outlined long ago by ignorant men, is at logical, scientific, and factual odds with modern understanding. Perhaps you aren’t one of them, but you can’t speak for everyone. Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and Sam Harris haven’t topped bestseller lists because “no one will listen.”</p>
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<p>Read more closely. Ideological adversaries aren’t there to appease or accommodate the favor of apologists from all persuasions. If people are honestly offended by arguments against the factual compatibility of their faith, then they shouldn’t initially expose themselves to such.</p>
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<p>I do prefer in-person discussions, but I am content with this medium of exchange.</p>
<p>I never intimated that evolution disproves anyone’s particular cloud-fairy. However, many religious factions, from a variety of convictions, take evolution as an patently stark violation of their holy book and resist its factual stature. Evolution itself commonly contravenes a theologically endorsed certitude of what their god has accomplished, but isn’t a system that debunks the supernatural altogether. It derails the ancient notion that life has existed in immutable form since the beginning of biotic existence and that it is necessary to account for biological diversity and complexity in living quality by deferring to the account of supernatural creation.</p>
<p>Infidels.org is composed of peer-reviewed papers*; answersingenesis.org is a preposterously ignorant, non-peer-reviewed website that aims to actively deceive by instilling brainless nonsense. </p>
<p>*From the website: “3) The article must have passed, or be likely to pass, peer review. (Note: This is a guideline for determining whether or not you should submit work to the Secular Web. It does not mean that your work can skip peer review.)”</p>
<p>Yes, there are many divergent perspectives on what “God” (or gods) actually mean(s). However, those from today’s prevailing notion of monotheistic standards primarily conceive of their god as omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent and their godly entity cannot operate without the possession of those traits.</p>
<p>Creationism is essentially an ideology that uses fundamentalist theology, biblical authority, and revelation to indoctrinate such a bag of tricks.</p>
<p>I don’t mean this as a personal indignity against you, but rather from my utmost sincerity, your reasoning skills and scientific understanding honestly need a tremendous amount of work. As they are now, they are incredibly frail and if you plan to attend a university setting in the next year or two, you are going to need some intensive remedial work. I’d presume that you live in a rural area some where in the southeastern United States so you’ve probably been customarily surrounded by those who share equivalent theological persuasions. But those more cultured and educated are not going to be fooled by the silly little sophistic conceits that you employ in your sense of argument. And to do so, it’s going to take a stupendous degree of nondiscriminatory judgment on your part, at least to an extent greater than the judgment you’ve displayed within this discussion. </p>
<p>And you stated previously that you lament the reality that many perceive creationists as “ignorant fundamentalists” but that’s not exactly unfitting when they perniciously twist, dishonestly meddle with, or misrepresent objective findings, promote conclusions that aren’t verified within the scientific community (fallacious sprees of phony arguments), and willfully deny established findings. You, in particular, masquerade about as someone who is superficially studied in the biological realm, but the way that you draw conclusions, blunder with simple biological vocabulary, and egregiously contravene scientific findings openly communicates the fact that you have absolutely no true understanding – or even a rudimentary acquaintanceship – of the biological matters at hand. </p>
<p>So to precisely pinpoint why people commonly hold that honest perspective regarding creationists, I believe that it mainly boils down to the outward manifestations of willful ignorance. It certainly is not, as is often irrationally presumed, that others explicitly loathe the character of creationists, per se. That is not the active source of dissension. In fact, many are often nice people, and you certainly seem to be no different, but your ideas are simply factually incorrect, untenable from a contemporary understanding, incompatible with scientific discovery, and irreconcilable with any objective system of study. </p>
<p>Creationism is largely a scientifically illiterate political faction that comically attempts to baselessly alter what is and what is not considered science, simply because they ceaselessly rebuff accounts that conflict with their fundamentally distorted perception of reality. And it’s not just scientific ignorance – but that pertaining to argument, reasoning, and basic discourse as well.</p>
<p>Neither can you, so I don’t see why you’re using that argument.</p>
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<p>Rather, they have topped bestseller lists because sympathetic parties purchase their books; of course, there are some individuals who have had their ideologies changed by those publications, but I doubt the effectiveness of those aforementioned authors in permanently changing the worldview of large swaths of the human population. I will stick to my current position that caustically shoving one’s ideologies down another’s throat will not get you anywhere in the larger scheme of things.</p>
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<p>And neither are politicians who endeavor to speak in a halfway decent manner.</p>
<p>Again, this commonsensical perspective has been far outstripped by a modern understanding of physics. The quantum laws by which particular events are governed are not causal laws. The quantum level is not understandable by simply applying one’s armchair philosophizing or general, large-scale analysis of natural interactions. </p>
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<p>Cheery-picking half a sentence out of his post is a very crafty maneuver. Grasp the larger point of his illustration of her completely asinine, unfounded contributions.</p>
<p>Their literature would have never topped bestseller lists if exclusively secular elements of society (if that is what you mean by “sympathetic parties”) purchased the works. </p>
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<p>Freeing the slaves was an instance of moral ideological enlightenment. Was that a peaceful endeavor? Moreover, the quoted statement above and this: “of course, there are some individuals who have had their ideologies changed by those publications” are contradictory statements.</p>
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<p>If you would like an in-person discussion, then name the time.</p>
<p>I do not find science and religion to be mutually exclusive. However, I find it unfortunate when someone is blinded by their religion and rejects science because they see this battle being played out. Truly, if someone believes in God, and that He created the universe, I would hope that they would positively view the sciences that seek to better understand it.</p>
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Religious people will be less likely to take your arguments seriously when you call their God a “cloud-fairy”. As for lifeforms changing over time, that’s a proven fact, and only the fringe (and generally most outspoken) of the religious claim that evolution is false. I mean, even the Vatican has recognized evolution.</p>
<p>There is no definitive scientific evidence that God set everything into motion, some billions of years ago. There is no definitive scientific evidence that He did not. Neither of these can logically be arguments for or against religion, as such a thing would be logically false. I, personally, believe that there is a God and that He set the Universe into motion. This is not mutually exclusive of any science, including evolution or extraterrestrial life. I find evolution no inconsistent with the belief that God made Man in His likeness (a conscious being). This does not have to mean that He picked up a lump of clay and shaped it into a human, and that was that.</p>
<p>There is, in actuality, little difference in scientific evidence between believing that God set everything into motion and many of these unfounded theories of what caused the Big Bang, or what existed before it (note that I say “what caused it”, not “that it happened”).</p>
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It is difficult to take a website named this seriously, given that it is intentionally baiting religious people by its name. It does not even pretend to consider both sides, with its mind made up by its name. And yes, there are religious people who are also close-minded, but I am not one, nor do I claim affiliation.</p>
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Care to explain? I suppose quantum mechanics accounts for complete and total entropy, devoid of all particles and energies, bursting into matter and energy? If not, I stand by my previous statements in this comment about unfounded views of what happened before the Big Bang.</p>
<p>As you can see from the latter half of what you quoted, I clearly indicated that it was not only exclusively secular elements of society that purchased the work. And to think that you have the audacity to lecture me on reading closely!</p>
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<p>Scholarly works of a higher grade reveal the main motives behind the Civil War, in which the plight of the slaves was utilized for a political end, not because of any instances of “moral ideological enlightenment.” Slavery, while not the principal ideological impetus, was crucial to the start of the Civil War, but one would have to be greatly mistaken to regard it as its root. The book “For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War” is an excellent source of further information. (a review can be found [here](<a href=“http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0377/is_n129/ai_20289713/]here[/url]”>http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0377/is_n129/ai_20289713/)</a>) Furthermore, my statement is not contradictory; I stated that in the larger scheme of things, large swaths - not necessarily the fraction that are moved by the impressively emotional prose of those writers - of the human population will remain insensible to such arguments so long as they are presented in such an abrasive fashion.</p>
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<p>After class next Tuesday sounds good to me. Don’t forget to bring your manuscript.</p>
<p>Out of curiosity, do you consider all religions “diametrically opposed” to scientific pursuits and methodologies, or are you speaking of only the ones that are commonly practiced here in this part of the world?</p>
<p>“Sympathetic party” is a vague, imprecise descriptor and certainly isn’t the best word choice to specifically identify who you happen to be referencing. </p>
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<p>I’m not necessarily speaking of the American Civil War, in particular. Abolitionism (and other sociopolitical hostility), active conflict, and eventual political interdiction on such an inhumane affair didn’t lend much in the way of diplomatic resolution. Abrasively opposing such a practice eventually “got them somewhere.” But regarding the central concern, religion, particularly in the United States, has acquired this outlandish, indiscriminate protection from criticism where any argument against its factual basis or incongruity within its own realm is rebuked as an illiberal assault, no matter how gentle or validly expressed. Many religious apologists are provoked to fury or simple dismay at any argument against their faith because they often view such arguments as criticism of themselves.</p>
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<p>These are not compatible statements.</p>
<p>As for the “emotional prose” of these writers, I don’t think you have much of an idea of what you’re talking about and I scarcely believe that you have actually read at least one book published by each of the three.</p>
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<p>Oh, are you enrolling in the same science class?</p>
<p>By definition, religion is not a pursuit that thrives on the basis of the scientific method and by disinterring objective fact. It has no dispassionate objective of describing the world accurately through the lens of systematic and methodical endeavor but rather through the perceptions of a particular culture at a particular time.</p>
<p>Why is it that you must nitpick things that are actually quite simple? I am not propounding a very difficult concept here.</p>
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<p>-.- Dude. Changing the minds of a few does not create a movement. Those individuals are not the majority.</p>
<p>However, if you misunderstand by what I mean by “the larger scheme of things,” I will happily clarify. A majority of religious individuals have not had their worldviews fundamentally altered by Dawkins’ writings; the readers either they have had their beliefs reinforced, or a smaller slice of them have changed their ideas. Pretty simple, no?</p>
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<p>Actually (and much to my displeasure), I have endured Dawkins’ histrionics.</p>
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<p>Let’s stop the discussion of abolitionism, because you are clearly not up to speed. Stick to biology.</p>
<p>To the religiously ingrained, they are very much considered “histrionics.”</p>
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<p>No, actually it’s the other way around since you refuse to acknowledge a simple instance of impolite criticism was actually necessary for social enlightenment.</p>