4. Besides your rather ridiculous assertion that “atheism” is being taught in schools, your final point is the most unique and interestingly fallacious.

Similarly there is no controversy within the religious world about the idea of a creator, or Creatonism, in principle.

Which story of creation, how many creator(s), which creator(s), when, in what order, how? I suggest you learn about world religions instead of holding this absurd, arrogant position, that you have presented above.

5. Learn to quote. Don’t paraphrase what Ghandi said and then put it in quotes as though he were speaking. And I won’t bother wasting my time teaching you about the Big Bang, presenting all of the evidence and explaining the entire notion of Inflation to you; that is what Wiki, Google, and Talk Origins are for. But you have erected an oversimplified strawman (redundant perhaps?) to try and compare what an actual science with actual evidence and predictive powers that is actually falsifiable, to a completely mythological story about the magic loving man in the sky creating the universe in 6 days.

6. Again, you are showing a complete lack of understanding of the topic at hand. Are you actually comparing the reasonabless of a very understandable property of quantum mechanics (that particles and antiparticles pop into and leave existence in vacuums), to the reasonableness of an omnipotent, omnicient, self-creating, intelligent being creating the universe? Occam’s razor: it slices, dices, and removes supernatural entities.

7. Isn’t there some sort of law about bringing Hitler into conversations as a giant red herring, where the larger the discussion gets, the higher chance we have of somebody bringing up Hitler?

8. I’m fairly certain that practically every formal debate that has been constructed to an impartial audience, the side supporting Creationism/ID has been completely and utterly destroyed. Remember the radio debate that PZ Myers did? Completely destroyed his opponent. If a Creationist/ID proponent actually could keep up with his opponent, it would be headline news (at least in our circles), but no, you have creationist blogs responding to the Myers debate by saying “Let’s just forget it ever happened” and a total weakness to criticism.

Obviously, you are defining an open mind as “a mind that agrees with me”. You have presented nothing but evidence that you have a complete misunderstanding of the scientific facets of the topic, rather than anything compelling that would make me, or any other proponent of science, consider your point to be anything but the rantings of somebody who takes media like “Expelled” and “The Case for a Creator” to be accurate, realistic, and reasonable.

You lose. Good day ma’am.

4. Although a statistic used to show that many people want Creationism to be taught in public schools, may not in itself have much credibility. But just because it is an old document it doesnt mean that opinions have changed. Many people, religious, atheist and agnostic alike, would agree that if atheism can be taught all the way through a childs education, then so should religious ideas, (because religions gets so much negative coverage from the media), and teaching both sides of the science vs religion debate is how an open mind is developed. Not by instilling certain attitudes an beliefs into children from a young age.
You also say that there is NO controversy in the scientific world about evolution in principle, and that is why it and it alone should be taught in schools. Similarly there is no controversy within the religious world about the idea of a creator, or Creatonism, in principle.

5. If I.D. is not credible science, neither is the Big Bang Theory, because they both make a leap of faith between fact and the creation of the universe. Your argument would have ben considerably more persuasive if you had not tried to use one theory to prove another theory wrong.
And, secondly, how is modern religion not open to change. Although Gandhi said that ‘he’d be a Christian, if it weren’t for the Christians’, that doesn’t mean that all religious people are close-minded, and certainly not that religion is by definition, unchanging and therefore rendered as unadaptable.

6.I think that the claim you made in your sixth pont about how if evolution was proved wrong and an alternative came about scientists would jump at the new discovery, is incorrect. Perhaps, some scientists would, but certainly not the majority of the scientific world, because that would ridicule the majority, who have been imposing their incorrect views upon our childrens education. And you could kindly explain why the concept of a creating entity is so ridiculous to you, because there appears to me to be a similar number of holes in the Big Bang Theory as there are in the concept of a God.

7.I agree with your point that numbers shouldn’t be used to prove whether something is an intellectually, scientifically and morally sound concept, because most statistical polls can be easily manipulated, and besides the majority is not always right. HITLER. Need I say more.

8.I have to agree with you on your eighth point. Tim was incorrect when he said that mutations are rare and usually lethal, but maybe he was talking about mutations on a macroscopic level. Or perhaps his knowledge of biology is unsound, either way its really not a point worth raising.

Im sure that if you disagree with my points, and they are not intellectually valid, then I will be notified. But i have to say that you would not last in a debate, with a truely open minded person. Or any member of my philosophy class, because you argue like a close minded, middle class, conservative participant named Beardon.

I hope the dialogue that happened here was seen for what it was: not an attack on the church or Tim or even on ID, per se. Really, it was to point out the problems with the arguments presented in the paper we saw being given to teachers locally (the same arguments are often repeated in the ID community, so it’s necessary to point out the flaws where we see them).

Please send my regards to Tim, and I hope we talk again soon!

– Hemant

After talking with Tim about his paper “Creationism for My Child’s Teacher,” we agreed that a number of valid objections were raised on this blog, particularly related to some of the sources that were used. As soon as Tim and I had that discussion, he asked me to take the paper off the website, which I did. (As a side note, Tim doesn’t need me to be his cheerleader, but I can’t help but point out that he would never intentionally mislead anyone, and that as soon as he was convinced that his paper was doing just that, it came down. While his sense of humor clearly didn’t come through very well as a “blogger,” I can only say that I know him to be a very honorable man.)

Anyway, I was rather surprised to see that you are linking to some HTML version of the paper (I’m not exactly sure where that even came from!) It seems strange to me that you and many of the bloggers on this site were so intent in having us remove the paper (which you sincerely convinced us was the right thing to do), only to have you keep the paper online yourself.

I’m sure the reason you’ve taken that step is so that people who stop by and hadn’t read the paper from our site would know what the discussion was about. But I personally think that they can get enough from the context of the blogs to understand what’s going on. Obviously, you can choose to keep the document online if you wish…it just seems curious to me.

Thanks for listening, Hemant. I’d just like to say once again that it was a pleasure having you join us at Parkview, and we wish you the best!

i’ll weigh in with Siamang here – he has the most problems with my paper.

let me say again – i did not ever intend for this paper to be a web discussion. it was a project i did for my own church. Yes, the 20 teachers were all my kids teachers – 3 kids + multiple teachers along the way.
it’s on the web only because i made it available to the people at church (it’s cheaper than printing a bunch of copies).
i’m not trying to promote it as a document for the purpose of furthering ID.

Yes, Siamang – i did read the article in NG. it’s what really made me want to put the cover on there. the article was pathetic. i don’t have a copy of it any more, but it was in my memory just a 4 page article with mostly pictures. It seemed to me that if NG wanted to put up a defense of evolution, they did a poor job. but i do agree that defense was their intent.

lets see – nice shot at the “doubt if they still have heard a decent argument for anything but naturalism.”
got my science education on the internet – $25 for a degree in anything i wanted.

Quote mining. Lying. Lazy.

The quotes in question are really minor for me. i did quote them from sources i thought i could trust. i don’t have the energy to decide whether you are right or they are – so i’ll take them off. not important. if they were misquoted, my bad.

I did Google the Second law of the thermowhatchacalit (too big a word for me)

Here is Wilkipedia’s explanation:
“In a general sense, the Second Law says that the differences between systems in contact with each other tend to even out. Pressure differences, density differences, and particularly temperature differences, all tend to equalize if given the opportunity. This means that an isolated system will eventually come to have a uniform temperature. A thermodynamic engine is an engine that provides useful work from the difference in temperature of two bodies. Since any thermodynamic engine requires such a temperature difference, it follows that no useful work can be derived from an isolated system in equilibrium, there must always be energy fed from the outside”.

i’m sure i oversimplified the case in my dumb document, but i just see no place in our world where systems left to themselves ever get better without help from the outside.

however – to be fair – Wilkepedia goes on to say; “It is occasionally claimed that the Second Law is incompatible with autonomous self-organisation, or even the coming into existence of complex systems. The entry self-organisation explains how this claim is a misconception. (I read that but couldn’t understand it; man this science junk is hard).

so i’ll take that out too.

and yes, Cautious- i know that the CAtholic church believes a lot of things about a lot of things. and i agree with them on some and disagree on some others.
but again – i’m not saying i know which version of Genesis is the right one, or if one or the other is allegory.
i don’t know if humans are really old, or young. i don’t know whether the earth is young or old. i was just fascinated by the possibilities for a young earth.

it really doesn’t matter to me either way. we have pastor’s on staff who believe both ways on the issue. I have great friends who believe God started the Big BAng and that was it. they can still be Christians.

(by the way we have just under a billion members -but it’s in our 5 year plan) WORLD DOMINATION FOR PARKVIEW\FIELD\WHATEVER.

which leads me to my final comment because i need to get the pizza ordered.

i’m tired of arguing this subject. one more time, i wrote this paper to open the minds of my kids teachers to the possibilities of creationism. i may have misquoted, i may have oversimplified – i didn’t take the time i would have if i’d planned on it being the only discussion on an athiest websight.

i feel like this thing is taking us away from the larger discussion.

Siamang says, “The real God, if He’s really out there, wrote the whole universe. Don’t fear it.” seriously, i couldn’t fear it any less! i want us all to study the crud out of the universe. because every time we do – more people have the opportunity to see the God who made it.

but this will mean – ladies and gentlemen – that you have to open yourselves to the possibility of the supernatural.

I’m very cool with Anthony Flew’s “God of the GAps” as a start. but that still means “supernatural.”

The paper will be off your web – shortly. i apologize for taking up the space – i thought that’s why Al Gore made it so BIG.

Let’s go back to talking about God.

Tim

Let me make an appeal to authority similar to what the pastor’s pamphlet does:

If the Roman Catholic Church, the largest religious organization on the planet, that’s been around (in various manners) for almost 2000 years, is willing to accept:
a) dinosaurs and people didn’t co-exist
b) the universe and earth are both billions of years old
c) humans have been around for a hundred thousand years
d) the first dozen or so chapters of Genesis are myth and not historically true

…then why can’t Parkfield Christian Church?

Roman Catholic Church: one billion or so members
Parkfield Christian Chuch: probably not that many

Coincidence?

…well no, there’s no correlation at all between what a church accepts of science and how large its membership is. Which I think points towards a much larger truth at play here: People who are religious are going to believe whatever they want about science, regardless of how true or untrue those beliefs may be.

So the job of us who accept science is to try to promote better teaching and understanding of issues that not everyone might understand or been taught very well in school.

(sadly it’s not a high-paying job…)