Top Ten Creationist Arguments

So my buddy Todd posted this video on facebook (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSxgnu3Hww8) watch it if you want but I will outline it here. The idea is that there are ten arguments made against atheism and this video is supposed to refute them, in fact on Todd's post it even went so far as to suggest using these counter arguments. I asked Todd if he wanted a reply but he made no answer, of course this is not surprising as he is not on Facebook real often so he probably has not seen it yet. However I have thought about it for a couple of days and decided to reply because I think it is important not only for non-believers but for those who would use these arguments in the way they are presented here.

The top ten are:
1. Carbon Dating
2. Proving evolution
3. Monkeys
4. Human eye
5. Atheism religion
6. Scientist X
7. Chance
8. Christian Nation
9. Thermodynamics
10. Hitler

We'll do them in order but first two definitions.

Ad hominem; an argument which appeals to feelings or prejudices rather than logic usually by attacking an opponent's character rather than his contention.

Straw man argument; a weak or imaginary argument set up to be easily refuted.

The first argument presented in the video is that Christians complain that carbon dating is inaccurate and therefore an unreliable way to date the Earth. The video rightly points out that carbon dating is not the means which is used to try and determine the age of the Earth and that we can be sure that the Earth is something like 4.5 billion years old. The straw man argument here is that all Creationists/Christians believe in a six day creation. The ad hominem is that since all Christians believe in the six day creation they therefore cannot take part in Science which is why they say silly things like, "Carbon dating is used to measure the age of the Earth." Of course I have heard some folks say this arguing against atheism and it always makes me cringe because I do not think the Bible teaches six day creation.

The word used for day in Genesis is "yom" (day) as in "Yom Kippur" (the day of atonement), but the word does not mean necessarily a 24 hour period. Rather it means a period of time which can mean anything from an hour, day, year, time, lifetime, period of time; the word is used in many different ways. I think here the intention of the author is not to explain the Earth was made in six twenty-four days but rather that God (YHWH) made the universe and everything in it. Why do I think this? Simple, the Torah was not written for skeptical 21st century scientists but rather to a group of people who had just left Egypt for the desert. They had been a culture for 400 years which taught the universe was birthed by the great celestial cow (btw did anyone notice the first idol they made was a calf? That was not coincidence) and Moses is writing to tell them that the Egyptian gods are no gods at all. Rather the universe and everything in it was made by the God of Abraham Isaac and Jacob and this God had sent Moses to them to lead them to Canaan. Therefore the creation account in Genesis is not, was not intended to be, and should never be thought of as an exhaustive scientific treatment on Creation. Rather it is a social/political document intended to serve as the foundation for the body politic of Israel. Which is exactly what it did. So to say that "All Christians believe in a six day Creation and the carbon dating is how we measure the Earth's age," is demonstrably false and as such point one is invalid.

Two. When it comes to proving evolution the majority report among the scientific community is that evolution is how all life came to be. However it is by no means the exclusive report. In fact as more study is done more people are becoming persuaded of the intelligent design model of the universe. However the video declares that evolution is settled proven science, but doesn't actually say why. So to argue this way is to say, "Evolution is settled science and therefore it does not need to be defended beyond the assertion that it is settled science." This is roughly akin to saying, "I know there is a God because the Bible tells me so and the Bible is the word of God." Another definition? Circular argument; an argument which assumes the truth of the conclusion and uses the conclusion to prove the assertion. And so goes step two.

The third is "Christians ask if we evolved from monkeys why are there still monkeys?" and then says "This is like saying if we came from England then why is there still England?" The problem is that this equivocates on what the phrase "came from" means. Equivocate; to change the definition of a word or phrase to suit one's argument. No one seriously believes that when we leave our homes for work or play that our home spontaneously ceases to exist until we return, and yet that is exactly the ad hominem which is used against the Creationists on this point. Also to evolve from one sort of creature over hundreds of thousands or millions of years is different than sailing across the ocean. Furthermore the whole idea of natural selection is that when a favorable adaptation comes along the species which adapts better to environmental pressures is able to supersede the non-adapted species and therefore is able to better breed/hunt/compete often resulting in extinction of the other. So the definition of "came from" is changed and thus the argument against the Creationist argument falls on its head. Furthermore no one is saying that we evolved from chimps, rather that we and chimps would share a common ancestor. An ancestor btw which is conspicuously absent from the fossil record.

The fourth point focuses on the human eye, but it centers around the idea of irreducible complexity. Darwinian Evolution argues that complex systems build slowly over time passing from one state of usefulness to the next until a fully formed eye for example is formed. Now it is important to remember that natural selection tells us that mutations which are not beneficial pass away because other members of a specie are able to use different mutations to their advantage and so cause those without the mutation to become extinct. The problem for the eye is that eyes are not good for much except for seeing. So if an eye has to develop over time a filled sack, a lens, an iris, rods, cones and an optic nerve then all of these things would have to form at the same time and rate because an eye is not much good without them. Thus the eye is irreducibly complex. The video however just points out that not everything which detects light uses an eye which apart from being startling startling example of the obvious says nothing whatever to gainsay the irreducible complexity of the eye itself. Of course then it complains that the human eye is somewhat lacking when compared to eyes of octopi, but of course this also says nothing about the irreducible complexity of the eye. It just says the narrator would have done it differently.

Next the video denies that atheism is not a religion because atheists do not believe in God. However religion is not a belief in God only, but psychologically it is a worldview which explains the universe around us, how we fit into it and where we come from. This is called a heuristic device and there is a wonderful book called Did the Greeks Believe in Their Myths by Paul Veyne which explores this in depth. For this point of view, that religion is a heuristic device, atheism absolutely is a religion and science is its dogma.

Then we are told that the vast majority of scientists do not believe in God and the video, without actually saying so, hints that those who do are a little weird citing Newton and alchemy as an example. Of course no one's belief in God makes God real anymore than unbelief makes God real so to cite the argument of "Scientist X is a theist" in reverse as a means to disprove the existence of God is to commit the same logical error about which the video complains. Furthermore I think that our narrator would not desire to set aside the findings of the human genome project because its director is a theist, even if that did make him weird, so the argument is a little hypocritical.

Next the video tells us that Creationists complain that chance is the driving force behind natural selection and that can't be so. Then the video tells us that it is not chance, but rather chance plus lots and lots of time. Here's the thing. There is no such thing as chance as a causative force. Chance cannot cause anything to happen because there is no such thing as chance. Chance is the measure of human ignorance of the odds. For example if you play poker you are not playing a game of chance. You do not get your cards by chance, you get them by the order in which they were shuffled divided by the number of players and in relation to your position to the dealer. Since chance, at best, is a short hand phrase for mathematical probability it therefore cannot do anything because it has no being, will or power and thus cannot cause anything to happen. So the narrator is saying that nothing plus lots and lots of time causes everything. Do I really need to say more?

America's not a Christian nation, neither are it documents Christian and many of its founders were not Christian, however since this is really just a restating of the "Scientist X" argument it holds no water either and for the same reason no matter which way you argue it.

The four laws of thermodynamics are;
Zeroth's Law "If system A are in thermal equilibrium with system C then they are also in thermal equilibrium with each other."
1) Increase in energy in an internal system = heat supplied + work
2) When two systems are near but separate and are allowed to interact with each other they will reach thermal equilibrium. The total entropy of the two systems will be less than or equal to the final combination
3) The entropy of a perfect Crystal at absolute zero is zero.

There took about ten second to find them on wikipedia. However since the process of entropy causes complex systems break down as they achieve equilibrium with the surrounding space it is fair to say that entropy destroys it does not build. So while it is true of closed systems, it still applies to things like the sun and earth because entropy tells us that eventually these systems will reach 0 energy no matter how complex they are now. In other words entropy does not build even if liberally salted with chance and time.

Finally the Hitler argument. This is the third stating of "Scientist X" argument, but whatever. For the narrator to complain that Creationists say that Hitler was an atheist and then argue that he was Catholic is dishonesty at its absolute finest. Furthermore Hitler's greatest intellectual influence was Nietzsche who absolutely was an atheist. Nietzsche further taught that since there was no God there was foundation for truth or morality and that life was meaningless. Therefore the existential hero was "das uber mensch" (the super man) who strove for power and meaning in the here and now even though ultimately these things did not exist. Hitler embraced this philosophy we know because he handed out copies of Thus Spake Zarathustra to his cronies who would one day form the leadership elite of the Nazi Party. We also know these men were deeply influenced by it because the existing writings of Goebbels, Himmler, Hess, Goering, etc tell us plainly that they were. Seeing as how Nietzsche was an avowed atheist and the fundamental underpinning philosophy of the Nazi movement was Nietzschean in its orientation it seems strange to object to the claim that Hitler was an atheist.

However it it is neither a proof for or against the existence of God whether Hitler was an atheist or not. So the point is moot.

There are a lot of people who will say very silly things to try and prove the existence of God, but to broad brush all Christians with these strokes is not to argue against the existence of God at all, but rather to argue against the silly arguments of some Christians. In other words the thinking atheist would appear to be nothing of the sort.

Rick Perry? For Real! Rick Perry?!

There is a very fundamental distinction between an error and a lie.

When George W. Bush told us that he believed that there were wmd in Iraq and that he sent men men there because of it I believe him. I believe him because I think Bush is a conscionable man. I believe he saw what he wanted to see, heard what he wanted to hear and surrounded himself with yes men and consequently committed a gaff of epic proportions in nearly every way, but I don't think he lied.

lie (v); to make an untrue statement with intent to deceive.

To lie is to say something that you know to be untrue for express purpose of subverting the truth. To err is to believe one thing to be true and misjudge or act upon bad information resulting in a mistake. Another fine example would be the democrats believing that after Bush fatigue had settled in that the election of Obama was a mandate to federalize healthcare with the blessing of the American people. You see that was a mistake.

However...

Rick Perry ran for re-election saying that his leadership had led to a balanced budget. Of course as soon as he was re-elected he promptly announced that in fact the state was 15B in debt and he planned to pay for it by closing schools and cutting off finding for police, firemen, etc. Now you see that's a lie.

Some Perry moments of amazing leadership...

Taking the stage and hinting that Texas would secede if healthcare legislation passed.

Declaring that Texas would take no filthy lucre from the federalies while actually taking the federal money and using to disguise the budget shortfall in Texas during his re-election campaign.

Disgracing Kay Bailey Hutchinson by calling her a big spending Washington insider who was soft on abortion, and then (as soon as he had won the primary) asking her to stay in Washington because Texas needed leadership like hers on the national stage.

Planning to use imminent domain to seize millions of acres of private land to build a toll highway from Mexico to Kansas City so Wal Mart can circumvent child labor laws.

Contracting the construction of said road to a Spanish contracter and thus cutting the local boys out of the loop.

Declaring that we need to punish those horrible criminal illegal aliens all the while declaring that we must roll back regulations on the companies who hire them.

Ordering the state's attorney general to sue the EPA when the agency threatened to cut off highway funding because Texas air was so bad.

Complaining about filthy federal money while suing the feds to keep it coming.

Ordering the attorney general to counter sue the plaintiffs on behalf of energy companies when lawsuits were brought against gas drilling firms because of an outrageous spike in child lukemia in neighborhoods near drilling sites.

I gotta tell you folks, if Perry is the nominee for the Republicans...

I'm voting for Obama.

The jobs are not coming back, but we are not doomed.

I want to tell you a story about Laura. Laura went to work for telecommunications company x in 1978. Her job at tcx was to file paperwork to reflect record changes from hands who were working in the field. She and 5-10 others had this job at the office covering the area where she worked. As time passed her job was centralized to cover a larger area, then a state and as technology and computers advanced she covered more and more.

Laura no longer works at tcx though not for any blame to anyone. However the job she did still exists. Only now it is done in one office for the entire nation. There is no longer paperwork to be filed it is all handled by computers. The techs in the field do not rely on calling a person to reflect changes anymore rather this is handled by the tech working on his own computer which he carried with him. So a job which used to be handled by a few employees at the hundreds/thousands of offices around the nation is now handled at one office.

Is this because tcx is evil and wants to be rid of employees? No. It is because technology and computer advancements allow tcx to provide an ever expanding base of services to more and more people for less money. Which is what the consumers want.

Point?

I was listening to NPR today and there was a panel of guests who were trying to explain how this program or tax plan would create jobs or the removal of that program and rolling back of those taxes would create jobs, and it struck me that these people are wrong. All seemed to agree that the problem worldwide is chronically high unemployment, but their great ways to solve the problem are empty because they are based on assumptions which were true thirty years ago. There are some who complain that our problem is that we have shipped manufacturing overseas and have driven farmers out of business and have become a service economy which is not rebuilding its infrastructure etc etc. These are all true in my opinion. However even if we did all of these things unemployment would still be 10% and growing ever higher.

The reason why is that even if we were to reopen steel mills in Pennsylvania the unemployed would not be rehired. The work which used to be done by men operating cranes would now be done by computer programed cranes which would do the work more safely, more efficiently and cheaper. If foreign automaker 'Y' were to come here and buy and retool every plant which has been closed by Detroit's "Big Three", the retooling would make obsolete many of the jobs the unemployed autoworkers would be hoping to fill. The same is true of road construction, office jobs such as record keeping etc, large scale manufacturing of any sort on and on. We The People demand goods and services at such a cheap rate that they must be manufactured by cheap labor elsewhere to accomodate us. The net result of this is that the wage structure for American workers deteriorates year after year. At some point it will be low enough that manufacturing will return to our shores, but when it does the jobs will go to high tech engineers and not wrench tuners.

In other words even if the tax thing does this and the manufacturing thing does that and the government program does the other thing the jobs will still not come back because the middle class blue collar worker is obsolete. His job is done faster, cheaper and better by a machine, and the buying public will not tolerate him anymore. Consequently the long hoped for return of good paying jobs that will allow a man to feed his family are not coming. The hope is based on a vapor and a dream that died when I was still a child.

However hope is not lost. The answer lies not in large scale government/industry programs but in self reliance and local economy. A group of people who are determined to grow their own food and trade for goods and services with the people who are their neighbors have no need for the pie in the sky age to come when everything will revert to 1965. A family that makes it own clothes, grows its own food, tends keeps and sells its animals to its neighbors does not have to worry if the government shutdown is going to prevent the food stamp or social security check from coming. Of course this will mean a great rethink on the American Dream, but hopefully enough people will realize that the dream has died and a new one must take its place. I think it can, but not if we insist on long gone models which are failing everywhere in the Western World.

So yeah I had this happy thought today and wanted to share it with you. I really do think it can be a happy thought if we will just learn to change our way of thinking.

Have a nice day.

The Danger of Cause-Head-ism

Tennessee Ernie Ford sang a song that I think was called "Fifteen Tons".

Ya move fifteen tons and what do ya get?
Another year older and deeper in debt
St Peter don't ya call me cuz I can't go
I owe my soul to the company store.

The song is about the plight of the coal miners in Appalachia in the early 20th century. Coal companies would hire people to work the mines and since these were almost always in very remote areas they would provide housing for the miners for a cost. Basically the miners had to buy their houses from the coal company. The general store was also owned by the coal company as was everything else the miners needed to have but could not produce for themselves. However the companies were careful to have the pricing structure established far above fair prices to ensure that the miners would always be just a little short on their pay and consequently they would borrow money from the company which would be paid out to them in loans notes or coins called "scrip". The miners would borrow money in scrip and would then have it deducted from their pay the end result being that the miners would not only pay all of their wages back to the coal companies but would also borrow money from their employer resulting in a workforce which was not only unpaid but also forever in debt to the company.

The practice is now illegal in America.

However Wal Mart keeps the practice going in other parts of the world, such as China, where workers are compelled to live in company housing and repay to Wal Mart all of their wages which they earn producing textiles for American markets. The workers either live in the company housing or have the cost of doing so deducted from their pay to ensure that they are unable to do anything other than to subsist.

But hey t-shirts at the wally world are $10 for the back-to-school sale.

OK I know I have b---hed about this before but I want to point something out.

I have two friends who recently pointed out to me how much they love Wal Mart while at the same time boldly wearing their cause in direct contradiction to this practice.

The first was a person who declared that Wal Mart was good and Target was bad because Wal Mart was selling the Lady Gaga CD and Target was not. This person took this as a slur against gays, and for all I know it was, and recommended that people should therefore shop at Wal Mart.

The next person was raging against illegal immigrants and how they are hurting the economy and America's workforce as well as putting undue strain on our already over taxed healthcare system.

First. Are we to understand that there is a moral equivalency between Lady Gaga CD's and slavery? If you are so devoted to your cause, and hey I think gay rights is a good one, that you are willing to overlook the grossly evil practices of Wal Mart around the world for the sake of your pet issue being pandered to then you have just given everyone else reason to completely disregard your cause. Because you, by your stance, are declaring loud and clear that you don't actually care about right and wrong you just want your way and damn the consequences. Also Wal Mart has so pathologically discriminated against women that the employees of Wal Mart actually won a class action judgement against the company for sex discrimination. But that somehow is OK too.

So if I get this right, then we are to believe that evil employment practices and discrimination are to be tolerated just so long as it is not I who am being discriminated against, right?

Second. Wal Mart is the largest employer in the USofA and has a long established practice of refusing to pay benefits to their employees. They systematically keep the work hours beneath the threshold where they would be required by law to offer these benefits. Furthermore any and all attempts to unionize Wal Mart have been met with swift and harsh retribution which is why all the meat in Wal Mart is now pre-packaged and there are no butchers there anymore. The result is that the employees of the largest employer in America are forced to to take remedial pay without benefit. This means that they will have to apply for every social aid program which comes down the pike in spite of their employment which means that the free lunches, breakfasts, books, shoes etc that go to schools in your neighborhood probably are not just for illegal brown people but for the children of the person ringing up your milk at Wal Mart. Also the long lines at the emergency rooms and free clinics are also made longer by the persistent refusal of Wal Mart to care for its employees or their children by providing benefits which a generation ago were the norm. And, thanks to Nafta, the subsidized sugar, corn, grain etc which flows freely over our southern border into Mexico has destroyed the agriculture industry in Mexico resulting in the massive influx of dispossessed people coming to America looking for anything to do at all and the having to take the remedial jobs (which apparently are destroying our economy I guess) such as working at Wal Mart which means that their kids are seeking free lunch and free medicine every time they get sick.

So if you have a cause about which you are passionate, and hey passion is good, and you shop at Wal mart, just know that every dollar you spend their either directly or indirectly contravenes your cause in some way and also contributes to evil probably far greater than the one you are trying to prevent.

So try and remember that the next time you plunk down $200 at Wal Mart and b--ch the checker doesn't speak English.

Just thinking.