I first posted briefly on this subject here. These Young Earth Creationists really have succeeded in making fools of themselves. OK so we can laugh, but don't forget that about 40% (last figure I heard) of Americans are supposed to believe in this YEC stuff. I am wondering what impact this forcing of science into a preconceived YEC mold has on American science. It's a little worrying that America is the leader of the Western World. Is this one of the signs that The West is History? No laughing matter really.
The underlying fundamentalist malaise seems to be one of priding itself in demonstrating faith via a kind of fideist based self flagellation of the intellect. The more one makes an unnecessary fool of oneself in the name of faith the greater the sense of spiritual achievement. Bit by bit one is broken into assenting to increasingly bizarre and irrational beliefs/practices and before long one finds oneself on all fours barking like a dog and yet being proud of it - or should I say "pretending to be proud of it with a teeth gritting faith". This is thought of as being what "fools for Christ" and "Kingdom thinking" is all about; namely, suspending the rational mind in favour of the opinions of some jumped up religious wallah who thinks he is in touch with God. The resultant "group think" creates a peer pressure which helps ensure nobody dare dissent as that would be regarded as the thin end of the Satanic wedge. Everyone is minding everyone else's faith and keeping it in line with the group status-quo.
The underlying fundamentalist malaise seems to be one of priding itself in demonstrating faith via a kind of fideist based self flagellation of the intellect. The more one makes an unnecessary fool of oneself in the name of faith the greater the sense of spiritual achievement. Bit by bit one is broken into assenting to increasingly bizarre and irrational beliefs/practices and before long one finds oneself on all fours barking like a dog and yet being proud of it - or should I say "pretending to be proud of it with a teeth gritting faith". This is thought of as being what "fools for Christ" and "Kingdom thinking" is all about; namely, suspending the rational mind in favour of the opinions of some jumped up religious wallah who thinks he is in touch with God. The resultant "group think" creates a peer pressure which helps ensure nobody dare dissent as that would be regarded as the thin end of the Satanic wedge. Everyone is minding everyone else's faith and keeping it in line with the group status-quo.
At least somebody around here really likes ham.
I hate defending creationists, but the central claim of the video can quite easily be evaded. You don't have to say that special creation requires that sabre tooth tigers were created with sabre teeth. You can say, pointing to the story of the fall where both humans underwent physical change and became mortal and the earth and plants changed too, that all animals who gave up vegetarianism grew their teeth. Surely that's not as big a physical change as going from immortality to mortality. It's reading in to the text, yes, but that's not something creationists have anything against doing.
ReplyDeleteGood blog, by the way.
I hate defending creationists, but the central claim of the video can quite easily be evaded. You don't have to say that special creation requires that sabre tooth tigers were created with sabre teeth. You can say, pointing to the story of the fall where both humans underwent physical change and became mortal and the earth and plants changed too, that all animals who gave up vegetarianism grew their teeth. Surely that's not as big a physical change as going from immortality to mortality. It's reading in to the text, yes, but that's not something creationists have anything against doing.
ReplyDeleteGood blog, by the way.
I haven’t been able to find out what Ken Ham’s Answers in Genesis are saying now-a-days about the origins of the ostensive carnivorous adaptations (which doesn’t include just teeth) of cats, tyrannosaurs etc. According to the book “Reason and Faith” (Forster and Marston 1989 – two anti-YEC authors) Henry Morris proposed that carnivorous animals developed their adaptations by a very rapid kind of evolution after the fall, which seems a remarkable claim for an anti-evolutionist like Morris. (See pages 345 and 379 of the said book).
ReplyDeleteBut that was then: Since the days of Henry Morris and his book “The Genesis Flood”( circa 1965) things have changed at AiG. For example “The Genesis Flood” proposes that the Cosmos may be in the region of 10,000+ years old. This figure gave Whitcomb and Morris a little more room for speculation and maneuver as it includes a large slab of mainstream prehistory (~5000+ years). In fact 10,000 years, of course, takes us back to the end of the Ice Age which from a YEC perspective could plausibly be construed as being bound up with the flood without them needing to disrupt the Cenozoic dating of the “Recent” period.
I’m not sure when it happened but clearly this more flexible time scale has since been rejected by AiG in favour of the tighter 6000+ year chronology. So far I have been unable to discover if today’s AiG believe that carnivores, with all their blatantly physiological adaptation to predation, were created “as is” or propose that they fundamentally changed after the fall. If you have news of what AiG actually believe on this score please let me know. Trouble is, given that history goes back ~5000 years, as always, poor old AiG don’t have much time to play with,