Thursday, March 01, 2007

Know thy enemy...

And what better way to get to know them than to read what they have to say about you? I like to get myself all worked up with things like that, and so I found creationwiki.org. Just reading what they have to say about creation vs. evolution gets me kinda hot & bothered in a not-so-good way. Stating that "theory of evolution is a philosophical perspective that stems from an atheistic worldview," as they distinguish between biological evolution (which they're ok with?) and the theory of evolution (I guess no longer calling it micro or macro evolution?).

From their writing and use of the word atheist, it seems that they choose the word with the intention of implying that certain scientific theories were developed under the belief that no god exists. "General Theory of Evolution...was derived from atheistic presupposition." I'd imagine leaving god out of a theory would make it "atheistic" in the sense that, well, the theory isn't theistic (Atheism is derived from the Greek word "atheos" - "a" meaning no or without and "theos" meaning God). The general theory of relativity would also be an atheistic theory in that sense.

Clearly the reality is not that scientists said "we made this theory on the belief that there is no god," but instead "we made this theory based on observations without considering if there's a god or not." The creationist sites word things, with clear understanding of the connotation behind the word "atheistic," in order to use the negativity around the word to their advantage.

I think the overall feeling I have gathered from reading this site is that they believe if you don't say "god did it" then you are saying "god didn't do it." This is why they want creationism taught in schools, they feel that without saying god was involved, they think their children will really be learning god wasn't involved.

I can't say I disagree; the more people learn about evolution and science, the less they believe that god is involved. I don't think that atheism reigns supreme in the scientific community for any other reason that people who once were deists aren't seeing any evidence for god, and yet are seeing evidence that clearly contradicts what they did learn about god as children. The site even acknowledges "the ability of the teaching of evolutionary biology to turn people away from a belief in god."

Funny how the truth and knowledge does that, isn't it?

1 Comments:

Blogger beepbeepitsme said...

See, the beauty of a pressuposition, (according to the theistic mindset), is that it is an axiom which canot be questioned as it is accepted as true.

Because they have the pressuposition that god exists, they obviously believe that anyone who doesn't have this pressuposition, MUST be working from the axiom that god does NOT exist.

This just shows that not only do they like to use the tu quoque fallacy (the you too fallacy), with gay abandon, but also the fallacy of the false dichotomy. (Either a worldview based on acceptance of the existence of god, or a worldview based on the non-acceptance of the existence of god.)

It also is a great example of how little they understand the scientific process. As it neither assumes a god, not assumes the non-existence of one.

9:17 PM  

Post a Comment

<< Home