Rant on.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
I mentioned in some earlier post that I have a co-worker who is a Creationist.\u00a0 Well, this past Saturday we had an opportunity to talk more about his beliefs.\u00a0 It still astounds me that somebody who otherwise seems as bright as he does rejects science so strongly.\u00a0 He not only believes the Earth is six-thousand years old and was created by God, but he also believes the Ark story as the literal truth.\u00a0 All while acknowledging the Bible was written by human beings.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Look, it’s simple:\u00a0 Humans are flawed.\u00a0 Humans wrote the Bible.\u00a0 The Bible, therefore, is not the direct Word of God as some like to claim.\u00a0 Its authorship is imperfectly documented, but it is agreed by most men wrote it.\u00a0 It’s pretty universally agreed men copied it over and over, thus introducing the possibility for more flaws.\u00a0 As I told my co-worker–I’ll call him Disciple–the Bible is intended as a book of inspiration, not science.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
On top of that, he spouted off the arguments I know have been disproved over and over again.\u00a0 For example, concerning the ark story, he mentioned sea shells and the like have been on mountaintops and asked me to explain that without using a flood.\u00a0 That was easy:\u00a0 Mountains are made, in part, by the Earth pushing against itself.\u00a0 What was once at the bottom of a sea collecting shells might be pushed up slowly until it’s sitting on top of a mountain.\u00a0 It’s basic geology, folks.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
I asked him how the ancient Egyptians could be around more than six thousand years ago, and he didn’t have an answer.\u00a0 It’s a sticky question, as there is not only scientific evidence of it, but there’s also a paper trail of sorts.\u00a0 Much of what the ancient Egyptians did is lost to history, but not everything.\u00a0 Some of their written records–not technically on paper, mind you–survive to this day.\u00a0 Those records form a chronology which leads into other civilizations’ records, etc., right up to modern day.\u00a0 I don’t personally know how long that written record extends, but it goes back farther than six thousand years.\u00a0 There is also scientific evidence–dating of artifacts and such–to back this up.\u00a0 Or perhaps the written records back up the paper trail.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Somewhere during the conversation, specifically on the subject of evolution, he used the phrase “irreducible complexity” and even pointed out that a car can be broken down to individual parts, and that a human is far more complex.\u00a0 I am not sure what he meant by that, but I did tell him our bodies, however complicated they might be, are not<\/em> irreducibly complex.\u00a0 That’s a convenient phrase for “I don’t understand it.”\u00a0 It’s something which cannot be proven.\u00a0 It’s garbage the Intelligent Design folks feed to their flock, and the sheep spew it back out.\u00a0 The sheep can’t even see how silly what they’re saying is.\u00a0 How can something be irreducibly complex?\u00a0 The answer is that it can’t.\u00a0 Everything can be broken down into pieces which can be explained.\u00a0 No, the eye did not suddenly develop fully-formed as an eye.\u00a0 Nobody has claimed that.\u00a0 It’s the result of a long, drawn-out evolution of its parts.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I suppose what bugs me most is the garbage in, garbage out bit.\u00a0 The common folks giving these arguments don’t think about what they’re saying, really<\/em> think about it, or they would see how damned silly it is.\u00a0 My friend even got into the Big Bang, asking where did all of matter come from.\u00a0 Why must it have a source?\u00a0 Why can it not have simply always existed?\u00a0 He could not accept that, or that his beliefs claim God did magical things.\u00a0 He stated God wouldn’t use magic, because where would the magic come from?\u00a0 Disciple wouldn’t see that creation, as described by Christian and other belief systems, is a magical act.\u00a0 The sudden coming into existence of everything cannot be described in a scientific way; it is magical.\u00a0 God may be the source of that magic, but it is hocus pocus stuff nonetheless.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I am really starting to ramble now, I know, but this is how riled bullshit like this gets me.\u00a0 Evolution is a well-proven fact.\u00a0 The age of the Earth is proven to be billions of years, not thousands.\u00a0 The Big Bang…well, there’s some controversy still about the specifics, but the age of the universe and most of the concepts of the Big Bang are well-proven.\u00a0 The problem with these things, and with science in general, is there are a lot of unanswered questions and more than a few blanks on specific items.\u00a0 We humans don’t like questions without answers, so some fill in the blanks with theological beliefs rather than conduct research to find the real answers.\u00a0 It’s easier to take garbage in and put garbage out than to apply thought.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Rant off.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Rant on. I mentioned in some earlier post that I have a co-worker who is a Creationist.\u00a0 Well, this past Saturday we had an opportunity to talk more about his beliefs.\u00a0 It still astounds me that somebody who otherwise seems as bright as he does rejects science so strongly.\u00a0 He not only believes the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/555"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=555"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/555\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":557,"href":"https:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/555\/revisions\/557"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=555"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=555"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=555"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}