Symmetric Chaos
Fractal King
Originally posted by ushomefree
That is beside the point; you didn't watch the video presentation. Period. (What exactly, "specifically," are you arguing about regarding the video presentation?) You do not know!
If only he had made a point by point, specific analysis of his thoughts on the video. Maybe it would look like this and be found on pages one and two:
- Hmm. He starts by, in essence, billing the Bible as a valid science book. Yet this fails to account for numerous interpretations, language and translation differences, and the fact that people can "find" supposedly correct cosmology in the Bible, but a fair number of other passages are way off. It's a post hoc ergo propter hoc argument....assigning meaning after the fact instead of as a predictive agent, which would lend it credibility. It's no better than the idiotic Nostradamus apologists, who claim success by reinterpreting things to predict past events. Also, he incorrectly asserts that the Christian god is the only mythological god said to create something from nothing, when in fact they are littered throughout mythology, both predating and post-dating Christianity.
- Second Law of Thermodynamics argument?! *yawn*
- Also ignores theories that account for the existence of matter by entirely causal forces.
- He likes throwing out buzzwords of theoretical physics. He must've claimed about a dozen times that "all evidence points to a creator" or "scientists agree..." without saying why, explaining how, or naming the scientists and evidence for such statements. I haven't even heard an argument yet other than explaining the history of our cosmological knowledge then finding a Bible passage that fits it loosely.
- Calling creation a "miracle" and stopping at that as a final explanation is horrible. This is the antithesis of scientific inquiry.
- Still trying to sell the Bible as a literal science book. Lots of Bible passages are cited, yet all are fairly vague stretches to meet the analogies he sees with modern physics. I could find plenty of these in any religious text, so long as I'm allowed to use such vague criteria to match them as "factual."
- Hey! I heard the words "fine tuning!" I was wondering when he'd pull out the anthropic argument. Seriously, he was dying with the Bible as literal science book schtick.
...I'm 25 minutes in. I'm stopping due to my brain feeling like it's dying. If anyone else besides the dynamic evangelical duo watches it (not recommended, btw), let me know if I missed anything.
....
Anyway, I had fun with the first half. Second half commentary (sarcasm returns, btw).
- Directed panspermia. A fun theory, vaguely scientific. Aliens bringing life to earth. He enjoys destroying it as the straw man that it is, but then of course reverts to form and inserts god as the only other answer. Clearly he isn't versed with anything done in the past 25 years toward testing for the creation of the basic building blocks of life in earth's primordial atmosphere. I'll cite them if anyone's interested, since I don't want to be accused of saying things without evidence. His probability equations suffer from similar flaws, and the misunderstanding of natural selection that leads many people to see it as impossible (it is far from it).
- Thermodynamics again. Sheesh. Hasn't he read an evolution text in the past 50 years?! And of course, the only way to reconcile the law (to him) is the Bible's explanation. Not only was this dealt with, but it was explained a long time ago by a testable (and since confirmed) source.
- Bible as literal science again. Though he has to mire through metaphor in order to produce a ridiculous interpretation of passages to match our known history.
- Lulz at the "test" for creationism. It's a test to try to disprove evolution, which is what all creation "science" is. Ah, wait, maybe not....It attempts to find the point at which Adam and Eve were created. Yeah. Also, let's be clear, he is talking here about a variation on young earth creationism....Bible as literal fact, not metaphor, and is even further toward the extreme than ID. No one but the most religiously-blinded should ever listen to this man. He's a waste of time.
- Part of his "scientific" way that his theory could be falsified (which all science needs) is that if science showed that humans don't have "spirit attributes," and his other criteria actually have little to do with disproving a Christian god. The analogical gap between, say, the anthropic principle and believing the specifically Christian god are monumental.
- He ends by saying there's no reason for hostility in these debates. I disagree. When one pushes religious dogmatic faith as science, and perverts actual science, we should all be fearful and upset. This man, by the sounds of it, would not be opposed to handing out Bibles in classrooms. Creationists, IDers, crazy people....believe what you want, teach it to your kids, whatever. Just don't try to push your beliefs on the public.
Originally posted by ushomefree
You did not watch the video presentation; you said so yourself.Just stop, Digi!
Were you really so dense as to miss him making a joke or is it just brain damage?