So Bill Nye is going to debate Ken Ham...

[BlaqueKatt]

Oh, I totally agree. It's not true, it's not real. But I'm still suspicious of calling something a lie, when it's sincerely believed.

so you're totally ok with racism and homophobia? many people sincerely believe non-whites are inferior and gay men are child molesters.....

You have a right to have beliefs, you DO NOT have a right to have those beliefs respected, ideas aren't people and have zero rights.

[Nyoibo]

From the 30 minutes or so I watched of it before I had to leave, I think Nye was articulate for the most part and did well, the crowd was respectful and his opponent stayed quiet, I only heard Nye's opening piece, I didn't hear the rebuttals though

[siead_lietrathua]

oh they structured it very well. everyone had set times to speak, mics were cut if they went over and to prevent them talking over each other. i also think it helps that, while both passionate about their causes, Nye and Ham both know that if they played respectful it would look better for both groups as a whole. it seems like a lot of the time these debates just wind down to an insane level of interruptions on both sides.
nye spent most of the time refuting stuff ham was throwing out there, so you really didn't miss much Nyoibo. if you've seen a lot of creationist debates, you can almost skip right to the Q&A.

also, typing Ham so many times has me hungry. lol.

[Gravekeeper]

Remember, intelligent people are the most easily made cultists.

No, intelligence is not a factor in your vulnerability to a cult. Vulnerability is the biggest factor in your vulnerability to a cult. The biggest indicator of cult suspect ability is stress. The majority of people who join a cult do so because they are coping with personal stress and their coping tools are not working. Lesser factors are what you would expect: Gullibility, naivety, disillusionment with society, a lack of assertiveness, etc.

Ironically enough, its western Evangelicals who have a particular vulnerability to cults. Because the group structure and psychological dynamics of a cult are similar too what they already know. Since most western cults tend to employ western style spiritual / religious aspects.

That said, I do think that bullshit explanations are better than "Shut up, you're a bad person for asking" which is the more 'Respectable' approach.

Honestly, you wouldn't have a problem with creationism, global warming deniers, birthers, etc if you actually DID just say "Shut up, you're wrong". Instead you have a news network and a bunch of idiots in power who have been systematically encouraging these fringe concepts and using false equivalency to pretend they have legitimate positions.

Creationism is a uniquely American problem and what we're watching is its last dying gasps. Originally, creationists succeeded in getting evolution banned from the US public school system. What follows is the legal scurrying of a bunch of fundementalist morons.

In 1975 the Supreme Court ruled that Creationism was a violation of the Establishment Clause and had it removed from public schools. The morons went back to the drawing board and came up with "Creation Science". That lasted till 1987 when the Supreme Court, again, ruled that Creation Science was a violation of the Establishment Clause and had it removed. Morons crawled away and came up with Intelligent Design. In 2005 it was ruled that Intelligent Design was a violation of the Establishment Clause.

So you're watching the last dying gasps of a bunch of fucking morons that keep trying to rebrand the same stupidity in a new package in an attempt to impose religion on the public school system.

[siead_lietrathua]

So you're watching the last dying gasps of a bunch of fucking morons that keep trying to rebrand the same stupidity in a new package in an attempt to impose religion on the public school system.

hence the cdesign proponentsists? http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Cdesign_proponentsists

because it's more than a little fail when someone messes up the copy/paste function in a 'school book'.

[Hyena Dandy]

so you're totally ok with racism and homophobia? many people sincerely believe non-whites are inferior and gay men are child molesters.....

Why do you think "Not a liar" means I'm okay with something?

"Either it's true or a lie" is a false dichotomy. Someone can be wrong and not know it. To be a liar, you have to be saying something that's untrue CONSCIOUSLY. Otherwise you're just wrong.

[siead_lietrathua]

Why do you think "Not a liar" means I'm okay with something?

"Either it's true or a lie" is a false dichotomy. Someone can be wrong and not know it. To be a liar, you have to be saying something that's untrue CONSCIOUSLY. Otherwise you're just wrong.

well, as i said, these guys have been corrected constantly on what the proper definitions of things like "theory" are, and still misuse them. they've been corrected on how sediment forms, on the BS they make up about the cosmos and red shifts, etcetc.

they also mine quotes from the opposing side to fuel their own cause, and edit videos they do if interviews to make the opposing side seem like monsters.

so, yeah, while not all creationists are liars, the ones fueling the movement (like comfort and the hovinds) (sounds like a band lol) are total, busted, liars that just keep on lying.

[Rageaholic]

there is an idea as to why genesis is pushed SO hard as fact, even if the rest of it can be taken as "poetry" as ham put it, they need genesis for the "original sin" concept. see, if adam and eve didn't exist, then there IS no "original sin". from that starting point you can pick apart the whole mythos until god looks kinda like a jerk.
they can't let that happen. because if people start thinking god is a jerk, then whether or not he exists doesn't matter. it all becomes about whether or not he is worth WORSHIPING.

Original sin is usually the go to argument when justifying oppressive dogma. It tells folks that there is something inherently wrong with them despite being created by an all perfect God. So if you ask a fundamentalist why God would create homosexuals if he's so against them, I'd bet good money that their answer would have to do with original sin screwing up humanity.

(and even then, it still makes no sense. why wouldn't god just start from scratch if he didn't like how we turned out?)

[Kheldarson]

Original sin is usually the go to argument when justifying oppressive dogma. It tells folks that there is something inherently wrong with them despite being created by an all perfect God. So if you ask a fundamentalist why God would create homosexuals if he's so against them, I'd bet good money that their answer would have to do with original sin screwing up humanity.

(and even then, it still makes no sense. why wouldn't god just start from scratch if he didn't like how we turned out?)

Well, for one, that defeats the purpose of giving us free will. If we aren't supposed to make mistakes and then come back, why would he give us that?

And even Catholicism teaches that homosexuality came from original sin, but it comes out of humanity itself becoming skewed as a whole from that act.

[s_stabeler]

Original sin is usually the go to argument when justifying oppressive dogma. It tells folks that there is something inherently wrong with them despite being created by an all perfect God. So if you ask a fundamentalist why God would create homosexuals if he's so against them, I'd bet good money that their answer would have to do with original sin screwing up humanity.

(and even then, it still makes no sense. why wouldn't god just start from scratch if he didn't like how we turned out?)

You have it the wrong way around, based on my (limited) knowledge of Genesis. The Original Sin was the taking of the apple, since Adam and Eve were prohibited from taking them. The apple gave knowledge of sin to Adam and Eve. The idea of original sin is that the act of taking the apple corrupted humanity, basically.

Original Sin, more or less, is how the Catholic Church justified saying that you had to be baptized to got into heaven.The idea being that Baptism cleansed the Original Sin, while if you died unbaptized, you were doomed to hell.

I don't disagree that original Sin has a lot to answer for, despite what I've said.

[siead_lietrathua]

free will is BS in christianity. not only do the scriptures say that god knows everything, and has everything you do planned (don't ask me to quote chapter and verse, it's somewhere in saul's letter's i'm slagging through ATM)
but the choice of "do what i say or i'll burn you" is NOT free will.

[Kheldarson]

free will is BS in christianity. not only do the scriptures say that god knows everything, and has everything you do planned (don't ask me to quote chapter and verse, it's somewhere in saul's letter's i'm slagging through ATM)
but the choice of "do what i say or i'll burn you" is NOT free will.

God does know everything, but that doesn't mean you don't have free will. The idea is called "middle knowledge" or scientia media, and is from the Molinistic theory of grace. This means that God has a plan, and gives you grace to complete the plan, but you still have the choice to co-operate with the plan or ignore it entirely. God knows the results of either choice, but leaves it to you to make the choice for yourself. He has contingency plans for whatever you choose to do.

And He doesn't say "do what I say or you'll burn". You just get what you decide in life: you are either with Him or not. If you choose to not be with Him in this life, then you won't be in the next.

[siead_lietrathua]

what if god makes you do evil things as part of his plan though.
judas is my fave example of this. someone had to betray christ for the story to work right. in one of the gospels, jesus picks judas himself as his betrayer. so, judas was doing god's will in an evil act. yet, jesus himself made claims that his betrayer will burn, and the assumption has always been that judas is in hell.
if gods will makes you do evil things to set in motion his great master plan, and you follow his plan exactly, to the worst of evils, do you STILL deserve to burn for being evil, or to go to heaven for following god's will?

and sorry, but the idea that you can be with him or burn is a free will choice is bullshit.
it's like having a boyfriend that says "love me, or i'll beat you every day of your life until i kill you" and then saying that the person chose to be beaten, because ya know they chose not to love the abusive boyfriend.
(using male based genders for simplicity, this could obviously work either way)

frankly if my options are to love a sociopath and hope he doesn't beat me anyway as part of his 'plan', or just accept the beatings but know i stood my moral ground... well... i'll take hell.
besides, a god that created evil in the first place (you CAN have free will and no evil, after all) would still fall under the "is that god actually worth worshipping?" category.

edit: had to add this in, because it is a better way to explain what i'm going with here.
part 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUtSM2oVy_E
part 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nv9IvCpiHxA
part 3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H0wSjJAsrAk

[Rageaholic]

Well, for one, that defeats the purpose of giving us free will. If we aren't supposed to make mistakes and then come back, why would he give us that?

Well it depends on the interpretation.

According to fundamentalists, everyone is damned by default simply by being born with original sin. In that case, one wonders why God keeps us around if most people will be damned.

but the choice of "do what i say or i'll burn you" is NOT free will.

And this too.

[Kheldarson]

Hell as a place to burn isn't taught in Catholic dogma. It's just a place without God. So you're literally choosing between being with God or without. That's all. Or infinite love vs. infinite nothing.

As to Judas, nobody knows if he went to heaven or hell for his role in Jesus' betrayal. There's actually an argument that he was more likely going to hell, if that's where he went, for committing suicide, not because he betrayed Christ. Because recall that Peter betrayed Christ as well, but, unlike Judas, he asked for forgiveness.

Also, it didn't have to be Judas. The only time Jesus pegged him as the betrayer was after Judas had made the decision himself.