Joolya Answers Homeschooling Fundie

Fundie comments in italics. Joolya comments in plain text. Click here for whole conversation, or check out Pooflinger, who is the bugger that got me back into this mud-wrestling pit.

Calling someone an idiot according to the Bible is punishable by hell.

I didn't say "idiot", i said "ignorant". Idiocy is forgivable. Ignorance is correctable.

I DID NOT question YOU. You sought me out. Not the other way around. I simply stated my beliefs.

I am a biologist and when you slam 150 years of biology, you are slamming me. I was speaking on behalf of my colleagues.


This is my blog. I say what goes here.

Fair 'nuff. You're still wrong about the science, though.

I also said they were REASONS WHY I BELIEVE.

See, what bugs me is people trying to justify *faith* using the tools and language of *empiricism*. If it's your faith that the world was created in 6 actual days 6,000 years ago, then you have absolutely no need to mine for data.

For one thing, no amount of data will ever change your mind, because that would mean renouncing your faith. For another thing, it's bad theology to "put God to the test" looking for evidence of your beliefs, no? I say this as a nonreligious person, so maybe you disagree. It's a trap, your reasoning. You already choose to believe the Hebrew Bible story of genesis literally, so you look for evidence to support your belief. If you find contradictory evidence, you must ignore it or explain it away because it does not jibe with your belief. If you cannot ignore the data and reassess your world view, this rocks the entire foundation of your religious beliefs. Which would be jarring, to say the least. Therefore, you have a vested interest in believing what you believe ... it's a viscious circle.

Darwin, on the other hand, came to his conclusions after many, many years of thought and study and went against the grain of learned though of his time, and indeed of the past thousands of years.

many scientists are out to prove that Darwin's theory is correct - that all things can be explained by natural causes... naturalism, humanism, athiesm, etc. These are religions just like Christianity - which must be "defended at all costs".

We aren't trying to prove it. That is fait accompli. Some scientists are seeking to refine our understanding of evolution. Some, like me, are just trying to figure out how things work using the TOOLS that are made possible by evolutionary theory. Biology really doesn't make sense otherwise. It's Occam's razor. If it walks like evolution, and quacks like evolution ...

Now there is a lot of dispute within biology as to the precise mechanisms and rules of evolution, but pretty much NONE on the yes/no question. What I think fundamentalists fail to understand is that not everyone is a fundamentalist. I would be very, very, very surprised if God suddenly appeared to me and said, "You know, this whole evolution this is bollocks. Here's how it works for real," but it wouldn't rock my world. (Actually, I take that back - I would probably be committed if I mentioned that to anyone.)

But let's say that many, many papers came out in the peer-reviewed literature that refuted, oh, the age of the Earth. I would be surprised, but I would have to take it in stride and rethink my model, my conception of how the world works.

This actually happens, on a small scale, in my field all the time. For example, everyone says Protein X does such-and-such, careers are made on this, papers are published, and then all of a sudden someone comes out with a paper that say, "Actually, Protein X does this-and-that!" Everyone is very skeptical and a lot of people (the ones who said it did such-and-such) are pretty touchy. But IF lots of other people think really hard and do some experiments to show that X does this-and-that, eventually everybody adjusts and life goes on.

You [Sprittbee] have a huge, huge stake in evolution being incorrect because you've decided to base your life, your self, on a literal reading of the Christian Bible. A worthy book, but hardly universally agreed upon. For you, there is a deep moral and personal imperative for me to be wrong.Scientists have come to depend on the evolution of organisms because for 150 years, this framework has passed test after test. It is NOT a moral issue. While I'd be quite surprised to learn that you were correct about God, creation, etc., if it could be convincingly demonstrated to me, I should have to acquiesce. That has never happened.

So, just like you want to share the Good News with your neighbors, I feel impelled to share Enlightenment Reasoning with my neighbors. Because I think it would be helpful and save people from delusions.

Finally, to sum up, there are indeed many sides to any story - but not all of them are equally legitimate.Best of luck to you.
7/20/2006 6:18 PM

Okay, one last, final, really this time, last thought.

Science means saying "I don't know" a lot. A lot? More like most of the time, if you're an honest scientist.

You say, "How does this work? I don't know. I wonder how I can figure it out. I will think about it and try to test it, or come up with a hypothesis and see if what is in the world matches what is in my head - or not."

It's like being in the dark and making a circle of light with a match. At first the circle is very small and surrounded by darkness. Then you build a fire. Now the circle of light is bigger, but the circumference of the circle - the amount of known darkness - is much bigger! Every new discovery generates more questions. We don't WANT to run out of questions. How boring! Not to mention, we're out of a job. ;)

Faith is the opposite of questioning. Faith is saying, "I know this to be true," not "I have no idea."

So comparing faith and empiricism is comparing apples to oranges. People have conflicting impulses when it comes to making sense of the mystery that is life: to ask questions and to seek certainty. So you see, science is not a religion the way that Christianity is a religion.

Possibly it is more like Buddhism.