
15 Answers to Creationist Nonsense - makimaki
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=15-answers-to-creationist&print=true
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MicahWedemeyer
Don't waste your time on your average religious nutjob. They're just not worth
it.

Pull these arguments out for things like schoolboard meetings and the local
PTA/PTO. As long as we can keep evolution in schools, we can always hope that
children will end up smarter than their parents.

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albertcardona
Mind that _your average religious nutjob_ is in its way to a Black Swan: they
are breeding at a faster pace than the rest of us. They will outnumber us, and
at some point quite dramatically (growth is exponential, but one doesn't feel
it until it's too late and the new _nutjob_ majority too sudden).

~~~
kurtosis
Yeah but this assumes that children will believe just like their parents. It
ain't necessarily so!

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greyman
I vote for religion vs atheism topics not to be discussed here in HN.

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makimaki
I don't know man.. if the mods want to remove it, its up to them. I'm just
following the submission guidelines.. submitting what 'gratifies one's
intellectual curiosity.' This goes beyond hacking and start-ups, from what
I've read.

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greyman
Yes, I get your point and I also do not feel strongly against this submission.
If it climbed to the frontpage, so be it, I am fine.

What I am against is to regularly have such topics here on HN, since except of
intellectual curiosity, there is also a wide range of very personal issues
involved. People have different perceptions about what is a fact, proof or
superstition, they went through different experiences etc. And, when those
topics are discussed on the internet, it usually leads to nowhere, because it
is very hard to even agree on basic assumptions.

It is fine to discuss this stuff in general, but I just think that the
Internet is not a good medium for it. In my experience, it's usually better
just to respect everyones right to ones own belief and focus on other things.

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deathbyzen
I actually didn't realize that I was this misinformed about evolution. Even
the first example they bring up about "theory" not meaning what Creationists
purport it to mean was enlightening.

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geebee
Good article. Though I actually don't like their answer to objection #2 -

2\. Natural selection is based on circular reasoning: the fittest are those
who survive, and those who survive are deemed fittest.

My response would be that this is a mischaracterization of the theory of
evolution. My knowledge is grade-school level, unfortunately, but I always
thought that the theory of evolution was that random mutation, filtered by
natural selection, let to speciation.

That _is_ a refutable hypothesis - ie., something that can be supported or
refuted by the evidence. To me, the circular thing seems true, but irrelevant.

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pavelludiq
Science says X, and creationists sat 2+2=5, they also say that X is wrong,
even if it is, 2+2 is not 5, even if big brother says it is, its not! We have
nothing to prove or disprove, there is no creationist theory, 2+2=5 is not a
theory! And if god exists(we can't be sure) isn't it possible that he created
the universe, so that life can spontaneously emerge and evolve? Im not
religious at all, but evolution doesn't disprove god(nothing does, and nothing
proves it either), it just disproofs creationism. And here is a good question:
Who created god?

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tomjen
I have flaged this, it does not belong on Hacker News.

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makimaki
So what do you think belongs on Hacker News? Would love to hear your opinion.

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DanielBMarkham
I've flagged this as well. In my opinion, it's inflammatory.

My personal philosophical problem with it is that you can be an ID'er without
being a religious creationist. But we all get lumped in together. I don't like
that.

A second problem is that religious creationists are going to be emotionally
moved to respond, and the other side is already prompted to give the religious
guys a pounding. Everybody will be talking past one another.

So nothing gets accomplished except for a bunch of posturin and noise.

Thanks but no thanks.

