Why do theists... partial rant

[Cacotopia]

EDIT SOME THEISTS

ask for information instead of asking the internet for the question of how evolution works, it's been asked thousands of times. You were supposed to learn about that in school, did you sleep through that segment/entire year in your biology classes? And evolution is a subject that is touched upon and explained further several times throughout your school career. How is it you have forgotten this information all of a sudden?

Or any other science question. Why can't you be proactive in the learning process and seek knowledge for yourselves?

I see the repetition exists here as well, the big bang being about something from nothing, if monkeys and humans are related how are there still monkeys? Why can't we see evolution happen?Where are all of the transitional species? Do all the elements and metals exist today have always existed? The list goes on. The theory of blah is just a theory.

All of these questions are proof of the fact that you never once bothered to read about anything of what you are asking in the first place. It screams your ignorance on the topic. I also see threads that wonder why atheists are so abrasive and crass? Well, this is a reason. You ask the same questions over and over and over again, we give you the answers and links to further your education on the topic, you argue against it, then you conveniently forget it all and then ask the same dumb questions all over again.

The Big Bang is a scientific theory about how the universe started, and then made the stars and galaxies we see today. The universe began as a very hot, small, and dense superforce the mix of the four fundamental forces(weak interaction, strong interaction, electromagnetism, and gravity), with no stars, atoms, form, or structure (called a "singularity"). ~~~where in that statement does it say "nothing"

You could at least search the board itself for your question before posting it again for the who knows what ##th time. I'm fallin' back into the angry atheist again. I'm trying back away from it but is hard to keep my composure when the same 10-25 question pervade the forum board again and again. It;s like a kid that learns only because we had to waterboard the information into them and then they forgot and we have to keep teaching the exact same thing over and over and over again until the end of time.

 

[Jayhawker Soule]

Let me fix this silly rant for you:

Why do some theists ... partial rant​

There -- at least slightly better.

 

[Cacotopia]

meh.

 

[Jumi]

Did you notice, that some of us theists are in the so called pro-evolution camp? It's the same headache for us.

I'd say some people have a tendency to make repeated statements about things they don't know and don't readily accept corrections to them. Being theist or atheist doesn't make someone an exception in this, really.

 

[Terese]

Not all theists have problems with evolution and the big bang. But some theists unfortunately do post such threads. In my opinion these people don't want to be convinced and don't want to understand since it contradicts their worldview of things.

 

[Audie]

Of course it is creationists, not theists as such.

Anyway they are not asking because they want answers.

They are asking what they think are stump a chump challenges.

 

[Cacotopia]

Did you notice, that some of us theists are in the so called pro-evolution camp? It's the same headache for us.

I'd say some people have a tendency to make repeated statements about things they don't know and don't readily accept corrections to them. Being theist or atheist doesn't make someone an exception in this, really.

I know I just find it comes from that side of the camp more often.

 

[shunyadragon]

meh.

You would be referring to some or many theist, mostly fundamentalist Christians, some Muslims, Jews and the extreme conservative Orthodox and Roman Church believers.

I am a Baha'i and believe as all Baha'is the harmony and science and religion.

 

[Cacotopia]

I would be referring to anyone that asks the same questions whilst not seeking rudimentary knowledge prior. Or asking questions without thinking at all. This doesn't exclude your faith, if a member of your faith asks a question that's been asked a plethora of times then they will be in the same boat. I know you can't speak for everyone that is a part of your faith. So it is an incredulous claim to say that no one in the Baha'i faith has ever asked an ignorant question.

 

[Cacotopia]

I understand I just generalized in the OP but read it with a grain of salt.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

ask for information instead of asking the internet for the question of how evolution works, it's been asked thousands of times. You were supposed to learn about that in school, did you sleep through that segment/entire year in your biology classes? And evolution is a subject that is touched upon and explained further several times throughout your school career. How is it you have forgotten this information all of a sudden?

FWIW, little to none of my formal schooling ever really covered evolution. It wasn’t covered in my one mandatory high school biology course (I was more of a physics guy, so I didn’t take biology after that).

In my high school geography class, before our physical geography unit, our teacher told the class that he was a young earth creationist and didn’t actually believe the stuff he was required to teach us about the age of the Earth.

And all this was at a public high school in a developed country.

In university (for a degree in civil engineering), my geology course touched on a bit of evolution, but only tangentially and only in the context of fossils. If I had done, say, electrical engineering instead, I wouldn’t have even had that much.

I think things have improved at the high school level since then (I graduated in 1996), but there are still kids in private schools or who are home schooled who probably still aren’t being taught evolution... or if they are, they’re also being taught all the reasons why their teacher thinks it’s false.

 

[Jumi]

I know I just find it comes from that side of the camp more often.

Sure. There aren't that many atheists that are creationists (in the sense the word is commonly used), remember only one such posting here. Similar threads come from other groups as well, you'll see it from another point of view if you were theist. I'd say I'm rather lucky to have debated from both viewpoints.

 

[Quintessence]

Like @9-10ths_Penguin, I was quite surprised at the assumptions made about public education as far as learning about biological evolution goes. For the most part, folks do not learn about biological evolution in public schools. I only learned about chunks of it because I took a college-level class in high school, and even then it was very cursory. I didn't really learn about biological evolution until I took an entire class on it for my life science major. It's definitely not a subject that's explained "several times" throughout your average person's school career. Not even if you're a life science major.

But in many respects, all of that is besides the point. Asking a question doesn't mean someone is intending to learn. I would wager that the majority of the time, neither supporters of mythic creation narratives nor supporters of empirical creation narratives ask questions with the intent to learn or understand someone else's perspective. I mostly see asking rhetorical questions to butt heads and engage in social posturing. Little listening, little learning, and a lot of egotistic self-righteousness. That, really, is the obstacle - when no sides involved in the discussion actually want to listen and learn from each other. They'd rather tell everyone what to think than listen to each other's stories.

 

[Jumi]

Like @9-10ths_Penguin, I was quite surprised at the assumptions made about public education as far as learning about biological evolution goes. For the most part, folks do not learn about biological evolution in public schools. I only learned about chunks of it because I took a college-level class in high school, and even then it was very cursory. I didn't really learn about biological evolution until I took an entire class on it for my life science major. It's definitely not a subject that's explained "several times" throughout your average person's school career. Not even if you're a life science major.

Yeah we tend to forget that people haven't taken the same paths in life as ourselves. We had in high school a course where we would do calculations on Mendel's pea inheritances, then look into dog breeding, petri dishes, microbe cultures with some antibiotics... learning about evolution later on, this stuff made much more sense. With that it's pretty much an immunisation to some common "creationist" stuff.

 

[Quintessence]

Yeah we tend to forget that people haven't taken the same paths in life as ourselves. We had in high school a course where we would do calculations on Mendel's pea inheritances, then look into dog breeding, petri dishes, microbe cultures with some antibiotics... learning about evolution later on, this stuff made much more sense. With that it's pretty much an immunisation to some common "creationist" stuff.

Yeah, that's another challenge with learning biological evolution. It's not biology 101. Well, it is biology 101, but what I mean is that for biological evolution to make sense, you first need to understand other things about biology. In particular, basic principles of genetics and inheritance that you talk about here.

 

[exchemist]

EDIT SOME THEISTS

ask for information instead of asking the internet for the question of how evolution works, it's been asked thousands of times. You were supposed to learn about that in school, did you sleep through that segment/entire year in your biology classes? And evolution is a subject that is touched upon and explained further several times throughout your school career. How is it you have forgotten this information all of a sudden?

Or any other science question. Why can't you be proactive in the learning process and seek knowledge for yourselves?

I see the repetition exists here as well, the big bang being about something from nothing, if monkeys and humans are related how are there still monkeys? Why can't we see evolution happen?Where are all of the transitional species? Do all the elements and metals exist today have always existed? The list goes on. The theory of blah is just a theory.

All of these questions are proof of the fact that you never once bothered to read about anything of what you are asking in the first place. It screams your ignorance on the topic. I also see threads that wonder why atheists are so abrasive and crass? Well, this is a reason. You ask the same questions over and over and over again, we give you the answers and links to further your education on the topic, you argue against it, then you conveniently forget it all and then ask the same dumb questions all over again.

The Big Bang is a scientific theory about how the universe started, and then made the stars and galaxies we see today. The universe began as a very hot, small, and dense superforce the mix of the four fundamental forces(weak interaction, strong interaction, electromagnetism, and gravity), with no stars, atoms, form, or structure (called a "singularity"). ~~~where in that statement does it say "nothing"

You could at least search the board itself for your question before posting it again for the who knows what ##th time. I'm fallin' back into the angry atheist again. I'm trying back away from it but is hard to keep my composure when the same 10-25 question pervade the forum board again and again. It;s like a kid that learns only because we had to waterboard the information into them and then they forgot and we have to keep teaching the exact same thing over and over and over again until the end of time.

As others have pointed out, your post exposes your own blind spot, by tarring all "theists" with the same brush. You are badly misinformed. In fact it is only a handful of (admittedly very noisy) sects that mandate creationism as part of their theology. Mainstream Christianity has accommodated itself to science for at least 200 years now.

But to try to answer your question about why members of these sects don't look it up for themselves, it is because they are not interested in the answer. What they want is a fight, with people they can regard as non-believers. This makes them feel righteous.

In fact, I read that when William Dembski (of ID notoriety) at one stage ran a course at a Baptist theological college (he was later sacked for being a jerk, to nobody's great surprise), his students could earn points towards their coursework by going on-line to harass "evolutionists". We used to come across what may have been these "seagull" posters at science forums I belonged to. They used to last about 72hrs, annoy everyone with disingenuous questions normally starting, "I'm open-minded about evolution...." , earned their points, and were gone.

The rhetorical methods of these people are usually very similar. They rely on basic errors about science and evolution, to which they stick like glue, regardless of the counterarguments. One is the old chestnut of demanding "proof" of evolution, ignoring that theories in science cannot be proved. Another is focus on the randomness involved in the mechanism of evolution (e.g. the "tornado in a junkyard" cliché) , while being very careful to ignore the process of natural selection, by which the advantageous changes are picked out and amplified. A third - and worst of all - is the rehash of William Paley's old Argument from Design, dressed up as the pseudoscience of "Intelligent Design".

I see all three rhetorical approaches are in use on this forum as we speak.

P.S. There is also a fourth, the bogus thermodynamic argument. This is less commonly encountered, as you need to have studied a bit of science to be able to advance it, whereas these people generally know zippo science. Speaking as a chemist by training, this one is a particular bête noire of mine.

 

[Cacotopia]

FWIW, little to none of my formal schooling ever really covered evolution. It wasn’t covered in my one mandatory high school biology course (I was more of a physics guy, so I didn’t take biology after that).

In my high school geography class, before our physical geography unit, our teacher told the class that he was a young earth creationist and didn’t actually believe the stuff he was required to teach us about the age of the Earth.

And all this was at a public high school in a developed country.

In university (for a degree in civil engineering), my geology course touched on a bit of evolution, but only tangentially and only in the context of fossils. If I had done, say, electrical engineering instead, I wouldn’t have even had that much.

I think things have improved at the high school level since then (I graduated in 1996), but there are still kids in private schools or who are home schooled who probably still aren’t being taught evolution... or if they are, they’re also being taught all the reasons why their teacher thinks it’s false.

I wasn't aware. I graduated in 2003 and but was first introduced to evolution in 6th 7th and 8th grade science class, and it was a religious school, and then more in depth in 10th grade, and this was also a Catholic school. Never had the privilege of attending public schools, I think my social skills would be better if I had had attended public schools for a few years though.

As others have pointed out, your post exposes your own blind spot, by tarring all "theists" with the same brush. You are badly misinformed. In fact it is only a handful of (admittedly very noisy) sects that mandate creationism as part of their theology. Mainstream Christianity has accommodated itself to science for at least 200 years now.

But to try to answer your question about why members of these sects don't look it up for themselves, it is because they are not interested in the answer. What they want is a fight, with people they can regard as non-believers. This makes them feel righteous.

But why enter an argument when there is no point other than rile others up that is childish.

And I did edit, though I could not edit the title.

 

[exchemist]

But why enter an argument when there is no point other than rile others up that is childish.

And I did edit, though I could not edit the title.

Yes, fair enough, you did. But I'll leave my post as it is, for the sake of making the point to other readers.

Christianity is an evangelising religion: there is a drive to convert unbelievers. My suspicion is that in some of these sects this imperative has been redirected into a feeling that what they see as the "godless" "falsehoods" of "materialism" have to be met head-on and fought. This involves yet another perennial confusion creationists make, which is also shared by some atheists actually, between the methodological naturalism of science (science seeks to explain nature only in terms of natural processes) and a materialist philosophy (in which the physical world is presumed to be all that exists, ie. excluding God, the concept of the soul etc.) So they wrongly conclude science is atheistic, when in fact it makes no argument one way or the other.

So I don't think it is just childish trolling, misguided though it is.

However, just to amuse readers, in Dembski's case it almost certainly was childish behaviour. After the ID movement lost the Dover School case, Dembski took part in the making of a video lampooning Judge Jones, which included farting noises. Dembski apparently made the farting noises himself. Here is a link to the ID website referring to this video: Flatulence removed from "The Judge Jones School of Law"

People to take seriously?

 

[Skwim]

I wasn't aware. I graduated in 2003 and but was first introduced to evolution in 6th 7th and 8th grade science class, and it was a religious school, and then more in depth in 10th grade, and this was also a Catholic school. Never had the privilege of attending public schools, I think my social skills would be better if I had had attended public schools for a few years though.

But why enter an argument when there is no point other than rile others up that is childish.

So what? Some people delight in trolling. Here is an amusing list of The 18 Types Of Internet Trolls

And I did edit, though I could not edit the title.

But you can, provided not too much time has passed. Just above your "Joined:," "Messages:" information you'll see Top Posters... Thread Tools ▼ ...Unwatch Thread. Scroll over Thread Tools ▼, and select "Edit Title."

.

 

[viole]

Y
Christianity is an evangelising religion: there is a drive to convert unbelievers.

I am aware that this is off-topic, but why is that?

I used to do that in my evangelical days, but now I cannot really find any logical reason why I did that. That sounded like spreading Good News, but a moment of reflection shows immediately that they are actually Bad News, and that people are much better off by not knowing anything about that.

Ciao

- viole