11 year old not allowed to join Scouts as atheist

[BSA24]

>>>>>

While I'm not a young earth creationist by far (I'm an evolutionist (biologist by education) as evolution is the best explanation for some of the stranger things in the living world), your argument about technology being science is a little bit strained. Besides evolutionary theory, most of the science in the world today can be explained without need of belief in evolution. Heck, most of the biology needed by an MD doesn't need evolutionary theory.

 

 

[BSA24]

>>>>>

And frankly Merlyn, your behavior on these forums on behalf of atheists is ample good reason why they should be excluded.

 

[BSA24]

Why is it that the Girl Scouts accept atheists and the sky has not fallen on them? They have as many members as BSA does, and I don't see the girl scouts that meet in the same hut our boy scouts use as being in total meltdown because they have atheist members. They still have the same oath they have always had, and I haven't seen anyone try to undermine anything in the program.

 

There is no logical reason for BSA members to predict doom when the evidence shows no doom will occur.

[Sentinel947]

BSA24- thank you for clarifying your opinion a bit.

 

I'll add there is one positive aspect to Young Earth Creationism( I'm not one) that science does not deliver.

 

Religion comforts and assures people. Whether you believe it's fake or not, part of life is living contently. When people are too content in their religious( Or any idea) to accept the advances of Science, we see the conflicts we are having today between the Youth Earth people and the rest of us.

 

Science uncovers how we live biologically, how we function(again biologically and mentally), how the world around us works, how we can manipulate things to perform various tasks. There are more things Science does for us, but for the sake of time.....

 

Only a fool would say Creationism or Any religion really answers those questions.

 

To break it down, Science is always asking What? Why? How? Religion asks, Is that moral? Is it ethical? Should I live my life like that? Should I do that?

 

Science and my Religion don't conflict because I see them as answering two fundamentally different sets of questions.

 

[packsaddle]

Sentinel947, the question of 'why' has many meanings. Some of the more philosophical aspects of that question cannot be answered by science and I suspect that those aspects wouldn't even be attempted by science. So I try to set aside questions of 'why' which have an element of 'purpose' in them and leave those to individuals to work out for themselves in whatever way they find works best for them.

Science already has its hands full just trying to figure out 'how'.

 

BSA24, that was quite a stick you just poked with. It will be interesting to read whose eye it finds.

[Peregrinator]

Young earth creationism denies every science we have. To believe in it, you must deny that we are able to make a computer. It is more difficult to build a computer than it is to determine the age of the earth, and many of the same disciplines and knowledge are used in both.

 

Would you care to elaborate on how YEC denies computers? I don't know whether it does or not but I would certainly be interested in finding out how. In what way is geology or paleontology important to the building of computers? Or is it some other discipline?

[Sentinel947]

I mean questions of Why like "Why does the Earth rotate?" "Why does the sun rise?" "Why is the sky blue?" Those are why questions answered by Science, but I do see your point.

[Peregrinator]

The earth is not young. That is a fact. The universe is at least 13.6 billion years old. That's not a "maybe." That's a fact.

 

FYI:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_the_universe#Assumption_of_strong_priors

 

"Calculating the age of the universe is accurate only if the assumptions built into the models being used to estimate it are also accurate."

 

I am not making light of those assumptions -- I know there is good reason to believe them -- but even a high degree of certainty about something doesn't equal fact.

[AZMike]

BSA24:

 

"Everything we have as a species - all of our advances and abilities - from how to exercise - nutrition - making gadgets and machines - building homes - everything we do is based on a science. Experiments and observations of the world. The human race lives longer, more comfortably, and with greater power over the world today because of scientific advances.

 

Science gave us EVERYTHING that we have."

 

Good and bad?

 

"Science" (you actually mean technology, as opposed to the problem-solving methodology of the scientific method, which was itself the creation of religious men like Gregor Mendel) has given us nuclear weapons, deforestation, napalm, holes in the ozone layer, nicotine-enhanced cigarettes, Zyklon-B, land mines, eugenics, abortion, infecting unknowing black people with syphilis in Tuskegee, and much much more.

 

"Science" can give us human cloning for personal organ farms, animal-human hybrids to help "advance" scientific knowledge, and destroy the citizens of an enemy nation by using genetically designed bio-weapons. "Science" has nothing to tell us about whether we "should" do such things. That is the field of religion and morality. Science covers the domain of observable facts; religion covers the field of meaning. Possessing one without the other is like putting a loaded M4 rifle in the hands of an uneducated toddler.

 

"Without it, we would walk everywhere we went, hunt food with sharpened stones and sticks, and wear animal skins"

 

That sounds like a pretty good outing, there.

 

"We'd have our children at 12 years old and die at 25 years old. 90% of our children would die."

 

As opposed to the approximately 50 million children aborted in the U.S. since 1973, and the 1.21 million abortions which were performed in the United States in 2008, the most recent year for which data is available, which is about 3,322 aborted boys and girls per day. Yeah, we are a very civilized society due to our "science."

 

Real science is important and useful, which is why religion and science are children of the same father, why the Church was the creator of the university system, and why millions of scientific advances have been due to the patronage of the Church.

 

Yes, YEC is probably incorrect. Does someone believing it invalidate all scientific knowledge? Probably not. There are equally unlikely and unprovable beliefs held by secularists, like abiogenesis.

(This message has been edited by AZMike)

[BadenP]

Pere

 

YEC is illogical and not empirical, it can not be proven, whereas using scientific dating methods science has proven the earth is billions of years old. That is a proven fact instead of some misread and misinterpreted scripture, which has been redacted and rewritten hundreds of times over the last milennia, and which is the only support YEC has to support their position. As a minister I really have to feel sorry for those poor souls who put all their faith in one passage of the creation story in Genesis and use it to try to persuade others that it is scientific fact. However it is not true when you take the timing of the creation as literal 24 hour days instead of the original prose as it was intended, and written thousands of years ago at a time when humanity had no real concept of science at all.

 

I have actually researched and written a sermon comparing the the creation story with the scientific theory of the origin of the earth and show how compatible and similiar they are if you don't get hung up on each day being a literal 24 hours.

[BSA24]

>>>>

Would you care to elaborate on how YEC denies computers?

>

That sounds like a pretty good outing, there.

>

As opposed to the approximately 50 million children aborted in the U.S.

 

[Peregrinator]

YEC is illogical and not empirical, it can not be proven, whereas using scientific dating methods science has proven the earth is billions of years old

 

I agree that YEC is not empirical, but illogical? How so?

 

And those scientific dating methods are based on certain assumptions for which there is considerable evidence, but not proof. Assuming the assumptions behind the scientific models are correct, then yes, the earth is billions of years old. That is not proof, not in the mathematical sense. (And even mathematical proofs are based on certain axioms which are themselves not provable. For example, the Pythagorean theorem is true in a space in which Euclid's Fifth postulate holds. It is not true in a non-Euclidean space, e.g., the surface of a sphere.)

[Peregrinator]

In order to believe in a young earth, you have to believe that scientific knowledge of the atomic level is incorrect. You have to believe that we can't determine the age of a rock. You have to believe we don't know how fossils form.

 

Why do you have to believe those things in order to believe in a young earth? Please explain.

[packsaddle]

Sentinel947, I really mean this in the spirit of friendship and brotherhood. When you ask questions like, "Why does the Earth rotate?" "Why does the sun rise?" "Why is the sky blue?" those are exactly questions that science can't answer. The earth rotates. What science can do is offer explanations for what that rotation means for day length, tides, distribution of fluids on the planet, etc. But it can't answer 'why' except that there must have been some force to consolidate a rotating mass with a certain amount of angular velocity and resulting momentum.

As to why the sun rises, is a matter of perception and it only 'apparently' rises, as you well understand, as the outcome of a fixed perspective on a rotating sphere which orbits the sun. There is no 'why' to respond to unless it relates to the aforementioned rotation.

As to the blue sky, there certainly is no 'why' at all. There is no 'blue'...only a certain dominant wavelength of light that we translate into 'blue' in our brains. Here's the weird part. Most of us share the ability to sense that wavelength as being different from other wavelengths (red, for example). But we don't know for sure that 'blue' as you perceive it is the same 'blue' as I perceive it. I can't explain 'blue' to another person unless I use a blue subject for comparison, such as a blue sky. The best we can conclude is that we both detect the same wavelengths in the same region of the spectrum. I only know what that translates into in my head. But all WE can do is agree that we both respond to that 'color'.

Sensory perception is just fascinating.

[BadenP]

Pere

 

You are grasping at straws and pseudoscience once again. Are you aware that the Catholic, Episcopalian, Anglican, ELCA Lutheran, Methodist, Presbytarian, etc. hierarchies ALL accept the scientific evolution of the earth scenario as truth, with the addition of an intelligent creative force, ie God, guiding the process. If almost all of the mainstream Christian Churches are in agreement then your arguments become the voice of a very small minority who build Creationist Museums and show modern humans and dinosaurs coexsisting at the same period in time, and truly believe the entire world was created and fully complete in six 24 hour days, which is not only illogical but just not true or proveable.