I seem to be getting a load of flat earth groups pushed on my Facebook feed by the algorithm. They seem to have a decent number of people who identify as atheists posting, though to be honest they put up such blatantly obvious garbage I suspect most are just mocking and/or trolling the true believers.
I saw an amusing bit on IG: the other day in which a man quipped, "So, you're a big Flat Earther? Put it on your resume. Add it to your business card. Lead with that."
I don’t see a reason to assume that YEC people, whether at the “top” or “bottom,” profoundly wrong though I believe them to be, and with terrible effects on things in the world, are being dishonest. Just in general, on general principle, first of all. But one example I have known is someone I knew in college, who really truly believed in it, believed evolution was false and wrong, etc., and he’s now a professor at a religious fundamentalist college in the biology department. We don’t honestly talk much (he’s a fundamentalist and we’ve had some … disagreements), but I don’t think he’s being dishonest. And again I do think these notions are both false and are causing damage (bad doctrine hurting people’s approach to the faith, and it seems to support denying environmental concerns and climate change and so on, though technically there’s no reason to believe, even with a 6,000-year-old Earth, that man can’t screw it up just as much as a 4.2 billion-year-old Earth—maybe it’s a political thing brought on by fundamentalism being allied with the US far right). But I would not accuse people of lying over that—just being terribly, terribly wrong.
Discworld is awesome. I’m not sure I’d start with the very first book, The Colour of Magic—I think he hits his stride after that with pretty much all of the others, and you can really jump in anywhere. Equal Rites, maybe. Or Mort, though it’s about Death—as a main character—so if that’s triggering for you (he’s not a bad guy though), I’d start with one of the others.
I don’t see a reason to assume that YEC people, whether at the “top” or “bottom,” profoundly wrong though I believe them to be, and with terrible effects on things in the world, are being dishonest.
Some certainly are being dishonest. I've met some, spent a few hours over dinner discussing some details of 14C dating and over a few weeks exchanging emails relating to an article being written, pointing out the various fundamental flaws with their analysis ... and, then when that article was published those fundamental errors were still present. When someone knows that their work is rubbish and publishes it anyway, what word other than "dishonest" would you use?
I don’t see a reason to assume that YEC people, whether at the “top” or “bottom,” profoundly wrong though I believe them to be, and with terrible effects on things in the world, are being dishonest. Just in general, on general principle, first of all. But one example I have known is someone I knew in college, who really truly believed in it, believed evolution was false and wrong, etc., and he’s now a professor at a religious fundamentalist college in the biology department. We don’t honestly talk much (he’s a fundamentalist and we’ve had some … disagreements), but I don’t think he’s being dishonest. And again I do think these notions are both false and are causing damage (bad doctrine hurting people’s approach to the faith, and it seems to support denying environmental concerns and climate change and so on, though technically there’s no reason to believe, even with a 6,000-year-old Earth, that man can’t screw it up just as much as a 4.2 billion-year-old Earth—maybe it’s a political thing brought on by fundamentalism being allied with the US far right). But I would not accuse people of lying over that—just being terribly, terribly wrong.
I accuse some of them of lying because they make claims that are objectively untrue. "Coelocanths are exactly the same now as they were in the Cretaceous" (they aren't, not even in the same genus); "There are no transitional fossils" (there are thousands) and so on. If you keep making the same objectively false claims over and over, you're lying.
Except there are vastly more YEC than flat-earthers, @KarlLB ?
You may know more than me of course! And I suppose they may be an overlapping group.
Well, flat earthers are usually YECcies. They're a subset. I noted over 20 years ago that if your argument for YEC is biblical literalism, you ought to believe the earth is flat with a dome over it to be fully consistent.
And that in spite of being hairy, bearing live young and suckling them, bats really are birds, not mammals, and that eagles fly with their eaglets on their backs
If you keep making the same objectively false claims over and over, you're lying.
Not necessarily. You have to know the statement is objectively false for it to be lying.
If you’re just repeating what you’ve been told without knowing better, you’re wrong but you’re not lying. If you’re rejecting what someone knowledgeable tells you about how you’re wrong because, for whatever reason, you trust the person who’s feeding you wrong information more than you trust the knowledgeable person, you’re wrong but you're not lying.
I cannot remain in any kind of fellowship with people who think I, and people like me, should be put to death. Not never no how. Whatever kind of biblical justification they think they have. I have an almost equally hard time with the idea of remaining in fellowship with people who think I can't possibly be a Christian and a gay man simultaneously. Logically, they shouldn't want to be in fellowship with me, since they don't believe I can be part of any fellowship they belong to anyway.
If you keep making the same objectively false claims over and over, you're lying.
Not necessarily. You have to know the statement is objectively false for it to be lying.
If you’re just repeating what you’ve been told without knowing better, you’re wrong but you’re not lying. If you’re rejecting what someone knowledgeable tells you about how you’re wrong because, for whatever reason, you trust the person who’s feeding you wrong information more than you trust the knowledgeable person, you’re wrong but you're not lying.
These people have been told, over and over, in person and on line for decades.
It's the people at or near the top I have in my sights here. You're not telling me Kent Hovind doesn't know most of his talking points have been refuted, thoroughly, a thousand times. We even had a word for these repeatedly debunked arguments back in the day - PRATT - Point Refuted A Thousand Times. We only went for that because million made it PRAMT which wasn't as funny.
I cannot remain in any kind of fellowship with people who think I, and people like me, should be put to death. Not never no how. Whatever kind of biblical justification they think they have. I have an almost equally hard time with the idea of remaining in fellowship with people who think I can't possibly be a Christian and a gay man simultaneously. Logically, they shouldn't want to be in fellowship with me, since they don't believe I can be part of any fellowship they belong to anyway.
And even if they don't think you should be put to death, they think God should, and will, torment you eternally because that's only just and right.
If you keep making the same objectively false claims over and over, you're lying.
Not necessarily. You have to know the statement is objectively false for it to be lying.
If you’re just repeating what you’ve been told without knowing better, you’re wrong but you’re not lying. If you’re rejecting what someone knowledgeable tells you about how you’re wrong because, for whatever reason, you trust the person who’s feeding you wrong information more than you trust the knowledgeable person, you’re wrong but you're not lying.
These people have been told, over and over, in person and on line for decades.
They may have been told over and over, but that doesn’t mean they’ve accepted what they’ve been told. I know lots of people who’ve been told things over but don’t trust or believe what they’ve been told over and over.
It's the people at or near the top I have in my sights here. You're not telling me Kent Hovind doesn't know most of his talking points have been refuted, thoroughly, a thousand times.
Well, no, I’m not going up tell you that because I have no clue—and don’t care—who Kent Hovind is. YECers and Flat-Earthers are nowhere on my radar screen.
I don’t have anyone in my sites. I was only responding to the one sentence I quoted—“If you keep making the same objectively false claims over and over, you're lying.”—with the assumption that “you” there is a generic you, which makes the statement a general statement.
And as a general statement, it’s wrong. Even if a person keep making the same objectively false claims over and over, that person is only lying if they know what they’re saying is false.
I don’t see a reason to assume that YEC people, whether at the “top” or “bottom,” profoundly wrong though I believe them to be, and with terrible effects on things in the world, are being dishonest.
Some certainly are being dishonest. I've met some, spent a few hours over dinner discussing some details of 14C dating and over a few weeks exchanging emails relating to an article being written, pointing out the various fundamental flaws with their analysis ... and, then when that article was published those fundamental errors were still present. When someone knows that their work is rubbish and publishes it anyway, what word other than "dishonest" would you use?
But did they actually agree with you that it was rubbish? Just because you told them it was, and showed reasons why, it doesn’t mean they accepted it and “knew” it was rubbish. They might have even seen some of your points, but not believed it was sufficient evidence to change what they’d concluded and written.
If you keep making the same objectively false claims over and over, you're lying.
Not necessarily. You have to know the statement is objectively false for it to be lying.
If you’re just repeating what you’ve been told without knowing better, you’re wrong but you’re not lying. If you’re rejecting what someone knowledgeable tells you about how you’re wrong because, for whatever reason, you trust the person who’s feeding you wrong information more than you trust the knowledgeable person, you’re wrong but you're not lying.
The imperfect analogy I would make is that selling snake oil is not the same as consuming snake oil.
Is it really that harmful? Actually, I think the anti-scientific mindset is pretty harmful. Witness the anti-vaccer proponents. There appears to be an overlap between anti-evolution thinking and anti-vaccer thinking.
Deluded or dishonest? You’re probably right for some people. I can remember a discussion with a visiting speaker to my local church who was both confident and sincere. After quite a long discussion I realised that it was vital to his mindset that scripture be without error. For him, he was defending not just his faith but as he saw it the faith of others from what he saw as a secular attack. I disagreed with his mindset but after the conversation had no doubt about his integrity.
One of James Barr’s most telling points in his book “Fundamentalism” is that fundamentalists fight hard because they see their faith is at stake. As someone who escaped fundamentalism after a significant struggle between my personally integrity and the beliefs of other Christians, I recognise that fight.
But I do wonder. There is a market to be fostered. There are itching ears to be scratched. There’s a difference between propagating and exploiting. The more aggressive arguments do read to me as continuing unfair attacks on the integrity of findings made by the scientific community. I find it quite difficult to believe that all such confident attackers are sincere.
Nailing my colours to the mast, I see the resurgence and propagation of anti-scientific thought as generally dangerous.
Latimeria is the genus to which modern Coelocanths belong.
This genus is not found in the fossil record. Cretaceous coelocanths belong to different genera such as Macropoma, Macropomoides and Megalocoelacanthus.
To claim that Coelocanths have not changed is therefore simply and demonstrably untrue. It's not debatable. Extant ones are different to extinct ones. Repeating the statement that they are the same is dishonesty, not honest error.
If you don't know who Kent Hovind is, then you have perhaps fortunately never had much contact with YECcies. I have, and have watched them repeat the same PRATTs for thirty years. They float round and round the YECiverse, their falsehood is well known but they continue to be disseminated. It's dishonesty.
It seems to me that one needs quite a lot of stamina to put in the effort to support any conspiracy theory. I don't think it is dissimilar to believing in a religion in that sense.
Categories of truth become malleable as one is regularly forced to confront reality by rearranging the cards you have to make the pieces fit. I know that's a mixed metaphor but I cannot think how to express it any differently at the moment.
To me it feels like honesty/dishonesty cut across different beliefs, in the sense that one can clearly "honestly believe" something which seems ridiculous to everyone else and "dishonestly believe" something standard in order to manipulate others for personal gain.
There's also a thing about wilful ignorance where someone seems unwilling to accept reality because they have invested so much into the conspiracy.
I’m not sure how wilful such ignorance is in practice. It certainly can be. Sometimes I think people turn a blind eye as a result of a self-protective instinct.
It can take courage to face reality. Changing one’s mind can be quite difficult when factoring in previous investment. Pride can get involved.
For the record, fundamentalist evolutionists have spouted a lot of dishonest and quasi-scientific stuff over the years, and much of the anti-evolution nonsense was in response to arguments (from people who should have known better) that the theory of natural selection could explain everything about Human existence and behaviour.
I am often surprised at how deep wrong ideas can go, it is possible to go mining in some areas of human thought for a long way before hitting bedrock. Depth unfortunately does not make an idea credible.
YECers are generally very settled on YEC as ultimate truth and this leads motivated reasoning when dealing with science in general.
The first is the primary factor -- any opposing proof you can show them is only ever a provisional problem that can be explained around, and there's a cottage industry constantly thinking up new explanations for various scientific phenomena (see the various 'solutions' for the speed of light issue that they've come up with over the years).
Secondly, some of them seem prone to adopting weak explanations which they don't believe personally if these function as a 'Noble Lie' to protect YEC in the minds of their followers.
For the record, fundamentalist evolutionists have spouted a lot of dishonest and quasi-scientific stuff over the years, and much of the anti-evolution nonsense was in response to arguments (from people who should have known better) that the theory of natural selection could explain everything about Human existence and behaviour.
Do you have examples of dishonest quasi-scientific stuff? Or are you thinking of evolutionary psychology?
Problem is "evolutionist" isn't a job or a role or an identity so it can be hard to know who's being referred to.
Yes. There is a difference between evolution as a theory and its associated findings, and what has sometimes been labelled evolutionism, which I believe is more of a philosophical extension.
Yes. There is a difference between evolution as a theory and its associated findings, and what has sometimes been labelled evolutionism, which I believe is more of a philosophical extension.
I'm not sure it really exists. "Evolutionist" IME is just a word Creationists use to describe anyone who accepts the reality of evolution or indeed any other science that they oppose, like geology and palaeontology. It's like having a word for people who don't think the earth is flat.
For the record, fundamentalist evolutionists have spouted a lot of dishonest and quasi-scientific stuff over the years, and much of the anti-evolution nonsense was in response to arguments (from people who should have known better) that the theory of natural selection could explain everything about Human existence and behaviour.
Do you have examples of dishonest quasi-scientific stuff? Or are you thinking of evolutionary psychology?
Problem is "evolutionist" isn't a job or a role or an identity so it can be hard to know who's being referred to.
I’m pretty old so this may be my memory playing up! And I accept that “evolutionism” has been used as a kind of swear word in some Creationist commentaries.
But I vaguely remember Bertrand Russell said something about this and similar arguments in “A History of Western Philosophy”.
If I can find my copy (!) I’ll check and get back to you. Russell was precise.
Latimeria is the genus to which modern Coelocanths belong.
This genus is not found in the fossil record. Cretaceous coelocanths belong to different genera such as Macropoma, Macropomoides and Megalocoelacanthus.
To claim that Coelocanths have not changed is therefore simply and demonstrably untrue. It's not debatable. Extant ones are different to extinct ones. Repeating the statement that they are the same is dishonesty, not honest error.
I’ll take your word for all of that. I have no clue what Latimeria, Coelacanths, Macropoma, Macropomoides or Megalecoelacanthus are. But I trust that you do.
And no, I’ve never encountered YECers in the wild. Pretty much the only place I hear about them is the Ship.
But you’ve missed my point. If, in the context of YECers you’d ended your post with something like “If they keep making these statements that they know to be demonstrably false, they’re liars,” I probably wouldn’t have argued. (I say “probably” because I think such a statement fails to take into account how some people can be so invested in a particular worldview that they reject as untrustworthy anything that conflicts with that worldview, even when the rest of us can see that what they reject is unquestionably true.)
But you didn’t say that. You switched to the generic you—“If you keep making the same objectively false claims over and over, you're lying.”—making the statement read as a generalized observation, not limited to Hovind or YECers. And as a generic statement, it is incorrect, because by definition, lying means something different than making demonstrably false statements. It means making statements one knows to be false.
I agree - I perhaps missed out the qualifier "that you know are not true". I thought that was clear from context.
I'm sure there are plenty of YECcies who don't know that the things they repeat are untrue. But there's an industry above them that does know, but keeps feeding them these PRATTs anyway. They're the liars.
For the record, fundamentalist evolutionists have spouted a lot of dishonest and quasi-scientific stuff over the years, and much of the anti-evolution nonsense was in response to arguments (from people who should have known better) that the theory of natural selection could explain everything about Human existence and behaviour.
Do you have examples of dishonest quasi-scientific stuff? Or are you thinking of evolutionary psychology?
Problem is "evolutionist" isn't a job or a role or an identity so it can be hard to know who's being referred to.
An extra-terrestrial philosopher, who had watched a single youth up to the age of twenty-one and had never come across any other human being, might conclude that it is the nature of human beings to grow continually taller and wiser in an indefinite progress towards perfection; and this generalization would be just as well founded as the generalization which evolutionists base upon the previous history of this planet.
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell (2015). “Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays: Top Philosophy Collections”, p.66
It’s a criticism of the notion of continuous progress, which he associates with those he calls evolutionists.
(Personally, I think he had a pessimistic view of the future. Here’s a quote for your “amusement”.
After ages during which the earth produced harmless trilobites and butterflies, evolution progressed to the point at which it generated Neros, Genghis Khans, and Hitlers. This, however, is a passing nightmare; in time the earth will become again incapable of supporting life, and peace will return.
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell (1992). “The Basic Writings of Bertrand Russell, 1903-1959”, p.459, Psychology Press
For the record, fundamentalist evolutionists have spouted a lot of dishonest and quasi-scientific stuff over the years, and much of the anti-evolution nonsense was in response to arguments (from people who should have known better) that the theory of natural selection could explain everything about Human existence and behaviour.
Do you have examples of dishonest quasi-scientific stuff? Or are you thinking of evolutionary psychology?
Problem is "evolutionist" isn't a job or a role or an identity so it can be hard to know who's being referred to.
Eugenics comes to mind. And I'm pretty cozy with the theory of evolution, but I've seen some fuck-ugly come out of scientists who took their ideas too far into human life and started playing God with imperfect information. A little humility goes a long way, and that's something everyone could learn from. Self included.
For the record, fundamentalist evolutionists have spouted a lot of dishonest and quasi-scientific stuff over the years, and much of the anti-evolution nonsense was in response to arguments (from people who should have known better) that the theory of natural selection could explain everything about Human existence and behaviour.
Do you have examples of dishonest quasi-scientific stuff? Or are you thinking of evolutionary psychology?
Problem is "evolutionist" isn't a job or a role or an identity so it can be hard to know who's being referred to.
Eugenics comes to mind. And I'm pretty cozy with the theory of evolution, but I've seen some fuck-ugly come out of scientists who took their ideas too far into human life and started playing God with imperfect information. A little humility goes a long way, and that's something everyone could learn from. Self included.
I'd draw a line between science and what philosophy people might draw from that science with their philosophy hat on. Those may be ideas held by people who are scientists, but they are not scientific ideas.
Well, it certainly may be that I come across them, but if I do, I have no idea that they’re YECers, other than to guess based on church affiliation or attendance at a conservative church-affiliated school. It’s just not something that comes up.
I could have been more clear—what I meant was that I don’t encounter YECers pushing their views in the wild. My impression is that here, they’re preaching to themselves. Pretty much the only place I encounter the arguments of YECers is here.
For the record, fundamentalist evolutionists have spouted a lot of dishonest and quasi-scientific stuff over the years, and much of the anti-evolution nonsense was in response to arguments (from people who should have known better) that the theory of natural selection could explain everything about Human existence and behaviour.
Do you have examples of dishonest quasi-scientific stuff?
Stephen Jay Gould's The Mismeasurement of Man has many examples of scientific racism. (Obviously opposition to scientific racism doesn't explain modern creationism in white fundamentalist churches.) Eugenics, while not strictly a scientific error, often invoked a lot of scientific fallacies.
For the record, fundamentalist evolutionists have spouted a lot of dishonest and quasi-scientific stuff over the years, and much of the anti-evolution nonsense was in response to arguments (from people who should have known better) that the theory of natural selection could explain everything about Human existence and behaviour.
Do you have examples of dishonest quasi-scientific stuff? Or are you thinking of evolutionary psychology?
Problem is "evolutionist" isn't a job or a role or an identity so it can be hard to know who's being referred to.
Eugenics comes to mind. And I'm pretty cozy with the theory of evolution, but I've seen some fuck-ugly come out of scientists who took their ideas too far into human life and started playing God with imperfect information. A little humility goes a long way, and that's something everyone could learn from. Self included.
I'd draw a line between science and what philosophy people might draw from that science with their philosophy hat on. Those may be ideas held by people who are scientists, but they are not scientific ideas.
That's an important distinction, though I think there have certainly been scientists who have fallen into the trap of engaging in philosophy and even politics. No True Scotsman may be in play here. And yes, these are not scientific ideas, certainly!
I'd draw a line between science and what philosophy people might draw from that science with their philosophy hat on. Those may be ideas held by people who are scientists, but they are not scientific ideas.
Marilynne Robinson used the word "parascience" for philosophy that its proponents claim is drawn from science or even that its proponents claim is science, but which nevertheless is not science.
For the record, fundamentalist evolutionists have spouted a lot of dishonest and quasi-scientific stuff over the years, and much of the anti-evolution nonsense was in response to arguments (from people who should have known better) that the theory of natural selection could explain everything about Human existence and behaviour.
Do you have examples of dishonest quasi-scientific stuff? Or are you thinking of evolutionary psychology?
Problem is "evolutionist" isn't a job or a role or an identity so it can be hard to know who's being referred to.
Eugenics comes to mind. And I'm pretty cozy with the theory of evolution, but I've seen some fuck-ugly come out of scientists who took their ideas too far into human life and started playing God with imperfect information. A little humility goes a long way, and that's something everyone could learn from. Self included.
I'd draw a line between science and what philosophy people might draw from that science with their philosophy hat on. Those may be ideas held by people who are scientists, but they are not scientific ideas.
That's an important distinction, though I think there have certainly been scientists who have fallen into the trap of engaging in philosophy and even politics. No True Scotsman may be in play here. And yes, these are not scientific ideas, certainly!
No fault in being both a scientist and a philosopher or politician, but it's a mistake to attempt to derive the latter from the former. Science can tell you that the climate is changing, and that humans are changing it. It can tell you the likely outcomes of it. It can propose strategies to affect it. What it can't do is decide that those consequences are bad or good. They just are.
Science can tell you that the climate is changing, and that humans are changing it. It can tell you the likely outcomes of it. It can propose strategies to affect it. What it can't do is decide that those consequences are bad or good. They just are.
I think scientific findings can, properly, make reference to the quality of the evidence but that’s the only kind of qualitative assessment I’d expect to find.
I think there may also be some confusion about predictions. Scientific hypotheses are testable so in that sense they make predictions. “If you do this or observe this, this will happen”. And such assertions are verifiable by others repeating experiments. But that’s a limited part of the general colloquial understanding of predictions.
I think that’s the kind of thing Russell was assessing and criticising in the quotes I provided. In particular I smiled (somewhat grimly) at the quote ending ‘and peace will return’.
In general I think he was just cautioning that findings should not be taken too far.
So I like your phrase “They (consequences) just are”!
For the record, fundamentalist evolutionists have spouted a lot of dishonest and quasi-scientific stuff over the years, and much of the anti-evolution nonsense was in response to arguments (from people who should have known better) that the theory of natural selection could explain everything about Human existence and behaviour.
Do you have examples of dishonest quasi-scientific stuff? Or are you thinking of evolutionary psychology?
Problem is "evolutionist" isn't a job or a role or an identity so it can be hard to know who's being referred to.
Desmond Morris. RIP
Dishonest or hypotheses which ultimately failed?
untestable unprovable 'Just so' stories. Yes, I suppose dishonest.
Comments
I thought it balanced on the back of a tortoise.
I think Gamaliel is referring to Discworld.
The idea long predates Discworld.
I've never read Discworld.
For shame! Try Small Gods.
Or Carpe Jugulum!
I accuse some of them of lying because they make claims that are objectively untrue. "Coelocanths are exactly the same now as they were in the Cretaceous" (they aren't, not even in the same genus); "There are no transitional fossils" (there are thousands) and so on. If you keep making the same objectively false claims over and over, you're lying.
If you’re just repeating what you’ve been told without knowing better, you’re wrong but you’re not lying. If you’re rejecting what someone knowledgeable tells you about how you’re wrong because, for whatever reason, you trust the person who’s feeding you wrong information more than you trust the knowledgeable person, you’re wrong but you're not lying.
These people have been told, over and over, in person and on line for decades.
It's the people at or near the top I have in my sights here. You're not telling me Kent Hovind doesn't know most of his talking points have been refuted, thoroughly, a thousand times. We even had a word for these repeatedly debunked arguments back in the day - PRATT - Point Refuted A Thousand Times. We only went for that because million made it PRAMT which wasn't as funny.
And even if they don't think you should be put to death, they think God should, and will, torment you eternally because that's only just and right.
I have no time for these people.
Well, no, I’m not going up tell you that because I have no clue—and don’t care—who Kent Hovind is. YECers and Flat-Earthers are nowhere on my radar screen.
I don’t have anyone in my sites. I was only responding to the one sentence I quoted—“If you keep making the same objectively false claims over and over, you're lying.”—with the assumption that “you” there is a generic you, which makes the statement a general statement.
And as a general statement, it’s wrong. Even if a person keep making the same objectively false claims over and over, that person is only lying if they know what they’re saying is false.
But did they actually agree with you that it was rubbish? Just because you told them it was, and showed reasons why, it doesn’t mean they accepted it and “knew” it was rubbish. They might have even seen some of your points, but not believed it was sufficient evidence to change what they’d concluded and written.
This, a thousand times this.
I think the point of principle you make is fair.
The imperfect analogy I would make is that selling snake oil is not the same as consuming snake oil.
Is it really that harmful? Actually, I think the anti-scientific mindset is pretty harmful. Witness the anti-vaccer proponents. There appears to be an overlap between anti-evolution thinking and anti-vaccer thinking.
Deluded or dishonest? You’re probably right for some people. I can remember a discussion with a visiting speaker to my local church who was both confident and sincere. After quite a long discussion I realised that it was vital to his mindset that scripture be without error. For him, he was defending not just his faith but as he saw it the faith of others from what he saw as a secular attack. I disagreed with his mindset but after the conversation had no doubt about his integrity.
One of James Barr’s most telling points in his book “Fundamentalism” is that fundamentalists fight hard because they see their faith is at stake. As someone who escaped fundamentalism after a significant struggle between my personally integrity and the beliefs of other Christians, I recognise that fight.
But I do wonder. There is a market to be fostered. There are itching ears to be scratched. There’s a difference between propagating and exploiting. The more aggressive arguments do read to me as continuing unfair attacks on the integrity of findings made by the scientific community. I find it quite difficult to believe that all such confident attackers are sincere.
Nailing my colours to the mast, I see the resurgence and propagation of anti-scientific thought as generally dangerous.
This genus is not found in the fossil record. Cretaceous coelocanths belong to different genera such as Macropoma, Macropomoides and Megalocoelacanthus.
To claim that Coelocanths have not changed is therefore simply and demonstrably untrue. It's not debatable. Extant ones are different to extinct ones. Repeating the statement that they are the same is dishonesty, not honest error.
If you don't know who Kent Hovind is, then you have perhaps fortunately never had much contact with YECcies. I have, and have watched them repeat the same PRATTs for thirty years. They float round and round the YECiverse, their falsehood is well known but they continue to be disseminated. It's dishonesty.
Categories of truth become malleable as one is regularly forced to confront reality by rearranging the cards you have to make the pieces fit. I know that's a mixed metaphor but I cannot think how to express it any differently at the moment.
To me it feels like honesty/dishonesty cut across different beliefs, in the sense that one can clearly "honestly believe" something which seems ridiculous to everyone else and "dishonestly believe" something standard in order to manipulate others for personal gain.
There's also a thing about wilful ignorance where someone seems unwilling to accept reality because they have invested so much into the conspiracy.
I’m not sure how wilful such ignorance is in practice. It certainly can be. Sometimes I think people turn a blind eye as a result of a self-protective instinct.
It can take courage to face reality. Changing one’s mind can be quite difficult when factoring in previous investment. Pride can get involved.
To stop learning is to start dying.
The first is the primary factor -- any opposing proof you can show them is only ever a provisional problem that can be explained around, and there's a cottage industry constantly thinking up new explanations for various scientific phenomena (see the various 'solutions' for the speed of light issue that they've come up with over the years).
Secondly, some of them seem prone to adopting weak explanations which they don't believe personally if these function as a 'Noble Lie' to protect YEC in the minds of their followers.
Do you have examples of dishonest quasi-scientific stuff? Or are you thinking of evolutionary psychology?
Problem is "evolutionist" isn't a job or a role or an identity so it can be hard to know who's being referred to.
Yes. There is a difference between evolution as a theory and its associated findings, and what has sometimes been labelled evolutionism, which I believe is more of a philosophical extension.
I'm not sure it really exists. "Evolutionist" IME is just a word Creationists use to describe anyone who accepts the reality of evolution or indeed any other science that they oppose, like geology and palaeontology. It's like having a word for people who don't think the earth is flat.
The irony is they have actually created a word for non-flat earthers - "Globers".
Desmond Morris. RIP
I’m pretty old so this may be my memory playing up! And I accept that “evolutionism” has been used as a kind of swear word in some Creationist commentaries.
But I vaguely remember Bertrand Russell said something about this and similar arguments in “A History of Western Philosophy”.
If I can find my copy (!) I’ll check and get back to you. Russell was precise.
And no, I’ve never encountered YECers in the wild. Pretty much the only place I hear about them is the Ship.
But you’ve missed my point. If, in the context of YECers you’d ended your post with something like “If they keep making these statements that they know to be demonstrably false, they’re liars,” I probably wouldn’t have argued. (I say “probably” because I think such a statement fails to take into account how some people can be so invested in a particular worldview that they reject as untrustworthy anything that conflicts with that worldview, even when the rest of us can see that what they reject is unquestionably true.)
But you didn’t say that. You switched to the generic you—“If you keep making the same objectively false claims over and over, you're lying.”—making the statement read as a generalized observation, not limited to Hovind or YECers. And as a generic statement, it is incorrect, because by definition, lying means something different than making demonstrably false statements. It means making statements one knows to be false.
I'm sure there are plenty of YECcies who don't know that the things they repeat are untrue. But there's an industry above them that does know, but keeps feeding them these PRATTs anyway. They're the liars.
I'm amazed you don't come across YECcies in the wild. They make up something like 30% of the US population. https://news.gallup.com/poll/647594/majority-credits-god-humankind-not-creationism.aspx
Dishonest or hypotheses which ultimately failed?
It wasn’t “ History”’. But this one made me smile
It’s a criticism of the notion of continuous progress, which he associates with those he calls evolutionists.
(Personally, I think he had a pessimistic view of the future. Here’s a quote for your “amusement”.
Eugenics comes to mind. And I'm pretty cozy with the theory of evolution, but I've seen some fuck-ugly come out of scientists who took their ideas too far into human life and started playing God with imperfect information. A little humility goes a long way, and that's something everyone could learn from. Self included.
I'd draw a line between science and what philosophy people might draw from that science with their philosophy hat on. Those may be ideas held by people who are scientists, but they are not scientific ideas.
Well, it certainly may be that I come across them, but if I do, I have no idea that they’re YECers, other than to guess based on church affiliation or attendance at a conservative church-affiliated school. It’s just not something that comes up.
I could have been more clear—what I meant was that I don’t encounter YECers pushing their views in the wild. My impression is that here, they’re preaching to themselves. Pretty much the only place I encounter the arguments of YECers is here.
That's an important distinction, though I think there have certainly been scientists who have fallen into the trap of engaging in philosophy and even politics. No True Scotsman may be in play here. And yes, these are not scientific ideas, certainly!
No fault in being both a scientist and a philosopher or politician, but it's a mistake to attempt to derive the latter from the former. Science can tell you that the climate is changing, and that humans are changing it. It can tell you the likely outcomes of it. It can propose strategies to affect it. What it can't do is decide that those consequences are bad or good. They just are.
I think there may also be some confusion about predictions. Scientific hypotheses are testable so in that sense they make predictions. “If you do this or observe this, this will happen”. And such assertions are verifiable by others repeating experiments. But that’s a limited part of the general colloquial understanding of predictions.
I think that’s the kind of thing Russell was assessing and criticising in the quotes I provided. In particular I smiled (somewhat grimly) at the quote ending ‘and peace will return’.
In general I think he was just cautioning that findings should not be taken too far.
So I like your phrase “They (consequences) just are”!
untestable unprovable 'Just so' stories. Yes, I suppose dishonest.