Showing posts with label Creationism and Evolution. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Creationism and Evolution. Show all posts
To have a decent society, we have to respect what people believe about the spiritual world. To have decent politics, we have to respect the facts of the physical world. As a religious believer, Edwin Poots is entitled to his own faith. As a prospective first minister of Northern Ireland, he is not entitled to his own facts.
This is not about intolerance of religious beliefs. It is about the need to recognise that discourse in a democracy has to be based on rationality and respect for evidence.
On a bend in the Shannon in Co Limerick, there is a graveyard with three burials. One of them has been dated by radiocarbon analysis to 7530-7320 BC; another to 7090-7030 BC; the third to 6610-6370 BC.
Except, if Poots is right, these burials are an elaborate hoax. In 2007, William Crawley asked Poots, on BBC Northern Ireland’s Sunday Sequence, “How old is the earth?”
Poots replied: “My view on the earth is that it’s a young earth. My view is 4000 BC.”
This is not about intolerance of religious beliefs. It is about the need to recognise that discourse in a democracy has to be based on rationality and respect for evidence.
On a bend in the Shannon in Co Limerick, there is a graveyard with three burials. One of them has been dated by radiocarbon analysis to 7530-7320 BC; another to 7090-7030 BC; the third to 6610-6370 BC.
Except, if Poots is right, these burials are an elaborate hoax. In 2007, William Crawley asked Poots, on BBC Northern Ireland’s Sunday Sequence, “How old is the earth?”
Poots replied: “My view on the earth is that it’s a young earth. My view is 4000 BC.”
Continue reading @ Irish Times.
From Science ➤ The appointment of a creationism advocate to lead the agency that oversees Brazil’s graduate study programs has scientists here concerned—yet again—about the encroachment of religion on science and education policy.
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| By Herton Escobar |
President Jair Bolsonaro’s administration on Saturday named Benedito Guimarães Aguiar Neto to head the agency, known as CAPES. Aguiar Neto, an electrical engineer by training, previously served as the rector of Mackenzie Presbyterian University (MPU), a private religious school here. It advocates the teaching and study of intelligent design (ID), an outgrowth of biblical creationism that argues that life is too complex to have evolved by Darwinian evolution, and so required an intelligent designer.
Researchers are decrying the move. “It is completely illogical to place someone who has promoted actions contrary to scientific consensus in a position to manage programs that are essentially of scientific training,” said evolutionary biologist Antonio Carlos Marques of the University of São Paulo’s Institute of Biosciences.
Continue Reading @ Science.
Hemant Mehta in the Friendly Atheist on: Ex-Christian: My Faith Shifted After Seeing Ken Ham Get “Destroyed” by Bill Nye.  |
Douglas was in law school — and taking seminary classes on his own over the summer because he was still a devout believer — when Creationist Ken Ham debated Bill Nye in 2014. That debate shifted his thinking.
… When [Ham] debated Bill Nye the Science Guy on the scientific legitimacy of creationism, I was about halfway through law school and organized a debate watch party, ordered pizza, and gathered my evangelical colleagues to root for Ham together. So imagine how devastating it was to watch my childhood icon be so embarrassingly destroyed before my very eyes. Ken Ham brought faith to an evidence fight, and even my fundamentalist creationist eyes could see it. I resolved in that moment to learn more about evolution, astronomy, and geology so that, when it was my turn to debate the Bill Nyes of the world, I would do better than Ken Ham had.
We know what happens when fundamentalists “learn more.” They stop being fundamentalists. (“The more I tried to investigate, the more problems I ran into.”)
Eventually, Douglas was convinced that the religion he dedicated his life to was just flat-out wrong:
… my desire to be an effective apologist left me with nothing to defend. I had wanted nothing more than to reinforce my faith, but willing myself to believe something that just didn’t make sense was no longer sustainable. So adrift on a sea of chaos, I called my then-fiancé, who was doing missions work in Asia at the time, and begged her not to leave me as her faith insisted she would have to.
You know the article is effective because one of the comments is from someone asking, “what is the purpose in giving this antichrist space on your website?”
It’s a compelling story. It’s also not uncommon. The most fervent believers often become the most active atheists.
Andrew J. Petto: Over the course of the past few years, I have participated in occasional conversations about evolution with a local pastor. When directly quoted, the pastor's comments are provided in italics and my responses in Roman type.
The materials that follow are compiled from several conversations and each one is titled with a Roman numeral to indicate different series in the conversation and different issues dealt with in each.
Each of these series may contain several exchanges, but they all are part of a give-and-take that began with a couple of particular questions or comment from the pastor so they are combined into a single section.
The materials that follow are compiled from several conversations and each one is titled with a Roman numeral to indicate different series in the conversation and different issues dealt with in each.
Each of these series may contain several exchanges, but they all are part of a give-and-take that began with a couple of particular questions or comment from the pastor so they are combined into a single section.
I. Dear Pastor: Thank you for the opportunity to discuss with you the topic of evolution and your church's doctrines on faith and science.
Continue reading here.
Hemant Mehta with a brief overview of a recent poll conducted in Canada on beliefs in evolution and creationism.
Lena M looks at how the myth of creationism is loosing traction in Australia.
Mick Hall @ Organized Rage warns that:
The new Sultan Recep Tayyip Erdoğan attempts to turn Turkey into a poor imitation of the Ottoman Empire.
For the few not already aware of it factual status, The Independent reported last week that Pope Francis has stated that evolution is a fact, and in the words of the paper ‘put an end to the “pseudo theories” of creationism and intelligent design ...’
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