Freethought & Rationalism Archive

Vicious Love · 08-08-2007, 12:12 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Paul2

Well to be fair, he could be delusional.

I'm pretty certain he's both, actually.

shirley knott · 08-08-2007, 12:32 PM

The funniest part of this is that the truth of the argument that modern biology and, especially, modern geology were founded by YEC's is much clearer, much more non-controversial.
But, sadly for afdave, much more destructive to his cause.
Or as others have put it, what do you call an honest creationist?
An evolutionist.
What do you call an honest YEC?
An ex-YEC.

hugs,
Shirley Knott

deadman_932 · 08-08-2007, 01:04 PM

There is no evidence Jefferson was a "YEC" at all, or even near that. YECS accept a YOUNG EARTH DATE for creation that follows the Ussher-style "reasoning"

The evidence FOR Jefferson being a YEC is zero. The evidence against it is much more persuasive.

Back in the early 1800's there was a big debate going on about "plutonism and neptunism." This sort of presaged some later debates about how land masses formed and changed, etc. Anyway, in this debate Jefferson basically said "a pox on both your houses" in his: "Notes on Virginia"

See, at the time, Jefferson had ALSO begun engaging in another debate of the time...the "fixity" of species...the idea that God created all life perfectly as in the bible.

Previous scholars ( and including Roman, Greek, & later rennaisance/ Enlightenment figures ) had hinted that species DID die off

But the standard "Biblical view" was that they didn't change or die off because GOD made them, and GOD doesn't make crappy designs. Right?

Problem was that Jefferson and others were interested in this, and began finding bones of a "Giant" that people like Cuvier identified as ...an elephant. AN ELEPHANT in NORTH AMERICA?!?!? People were shocked. In fact, part of the orders for Lewis and Clark were to try to seek out this "mastodon" that was also called the Great American Incognitum...that unknown critter that some people said they had HEARD in the far west forests. Of course, just like creationism, this was bullshit.

What it meant to Jefferson was that species were NOT fixed and could go extinct. It meant that even near-unbelieving Deists like Jefferson could be a bit more dubious about some Old Man God in the sky, and most importantly, it showed a deeper age to the Earth than the Ussher-style interpretations allowed for.

Jefferson had already been investigating things like Amerindian Mound burials and in fact, he can be said to have conducted the first organized stratigraphical archaeological excavation. He realized that man had been on the continent for a LONG time, since no local Natives knew shit for shingles about those skeletons buried in the Mound-culture tumuli.

Another point is that WE KNOW Jefferson read James Hutton, and Playfair -annotated copies of which existed in Jefferson's library, which was the best library in America -- both of whom had already postulated a deeper age for the earth ( Million years PLUS) than allowed by Biblical "begats" and similar bullshit.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Edit: Jefferson was a man of Science, not unlike Ben Franklin. Both followed Lockean views on sense-perceptions (what you can see, etc.) being that which you can rightfully speculate about.

Hutton's arguments alone, from centuries ago, kick the crap out of AFDave's YEC nonsense --Jefferson could hardly fail to be persuaded. Hutton's views in his Theory of the Earth (1788) famously are encapsulated in his line:

"The result, therefore, of this physical [geological] inquiry is, that we find no vestige of a beginning [to the Earth] -- no prospect of an end. "

Toto · 08-08-2007, 01:11 PM

This thread has been split from Have you READ the Bible?

The floor is open for the questions of:

Should it be further split? and Which forum should host it?

I can tell you that anyone venturing into CSS and quoting David <admitted prevaricator and amateur historian> Barton will not last long, if the participants can keep from laughing too hard.

The discussion on the issue of whether the success of nations is tied to recognizing Biblical principles seems more fruitful. Not that there is any more validity to it, but there seems to be an undercurrant among would be theocrats to claim that following God's law is the key to national welfare. Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell were roundly criticized for the idea when they claimed that America's tolerance of abortion, homosexuality, etc. caused God to withdraw his veil of protection and allow the Islamic suicide hijackers to wipe out the World Trade Center.

This is the same sort of thinking that led the Taliban in Afghanistan to impose harsh sharia on their country. Things didn't seem to be going well, so they assumed that they needed more favoritism from Allah, so they redoubled their segregation of women to avoid any unwanted sexual thoughts and blew up the idolatrous Buddhist art work that might be provoking Allah.

We saw the same sort of thinking amoung Christian Reconstructionists, who were sure that the Y2K bug was going to put an end to Western Civilization as we know it and cause Americans to turn to god. Gary North even described the upcoming Y2K crash as a test of secular humanism. Well, secular humanism won that one, but he's back peddling his same old snakeoil, waiting for God to strike down the heathens.

What is behind this thinking? You can view it as delusional, but it's more than that. Some people want to see morality correlate with success, because they want to believe that there is some sort of justice in the world. They never learned that life is not fair, perhaps. Or do people like Dave want god to strike down their enemies?

Minimalist · 08-08-2007, 01:17 PM

YOu may find this interesting, deadman.

http://www.earlyamerica.com/review/2...on_paleon.html

Quote:

One of the first glimpses of Jefferson's interest in paleontology can be found in his Notes on the State of Virginia. It is his most impressive scientific achievement, in which he recorded his observations of flora, fauna, mountains, rivers, climate, population, laws, politics, customs and fossils of his native state. In Notes Jefferson, also, refuted the contentions of Count de Buffon that the animals common to both old world and new are smaller in the new.
One of the reasons Jefferson wrote and published Notes was to refute a claim by the eminent naturalist, the Comte de Buffon, that human and animal life in America was degenerative and therefore inferior to the life forms in Europe. Buffon believed, Jefferson wrote in his Notes,"that nature is less active, less energetic on one side of the globe than she is on the other." Jefferson added with more than a hint of sarcasm, "as if both sides were not warmed by the same genial sun," and launched into a lengthy refutation of Buffon's hypothesis with convincing evidence that animals are actually larger in America than in Europe. The mastodon, or mammoth,was his clincher; Europe had produced no animal to match this behemoth...his shipment of mastodon fossils to Paris, therefore, was not entirely Enlightenment altruism; it was also a final salvo in a scientific war. Buffon's suggestion that infant America was nature's retardate drove him to collect the ancient bones of the mammoth...When he received his fossils, he catalogued them carefully and precisely, as was his habit, sending them off to Philadelphia for admiration, and to Paris for edification. He kept a few choice specimens, however, for his Monticello museum--trophies of a sort in commemoration of his private victory in the battle of New World versus Old. (McLaughlin, 1988)

Truly one of the great minds of the age.

Toto · 08-08-2007, 01:18 PM

From CSS:

Nation Founded on Christian Principles?

Is the Constitution based on Xian Principles? [split from 'Danbury Baptists Letter'

Societies worse off 'when they have God on their side'

Quote:

Cross-National Correlations of Quantifiable Societal Health with Popular Religiosity and Secularism in the Prosperous Democracies: A First Look
Gregory S. Paul

Abstract
Large-scale surveys show dramatic declines in religiosity in favor of secularization in the developed democracies. Popular acceptance of evolutionary science correlates negatively with levels of religiosity, and the United States is the only prosperous nation where the majority absolutely believes in a creator and evolutionary science is unpopular. Abundant data is available on rates of societal dysfunction and health in the first world. Cross-national comparisons of highly differing rates of religiosity and societal conditions form a mass epidemiological experiment that can be used to test whether high rates of belief in and worship of a creator are necessary for high levels of social health. Data correlations show that in almost all regards the highly secular democracies consistently enjoy low rates of societal dysfunction, while pro-religious and antievolution America performs poorly.

http://moses.creighton.edu/JRS/pdf/2005-11.pdf

The ideas that America was founded as a Christian nation, or that our laws are based on Christianity or the 10 Commandments, or that religion is correlated with well being, have been sounded defeated.

deadman_932 · 08-08-2007, 01:40 PM

Thank you, Minimalist. In return, I'd recommend John C. Greene's "The Death of Adam" (1959) Iowa State press. WELL worth having in terms of historical-research value. Cheers!

Minimalist · 08-08-2007, 01:41 PM

Quote:

Like the founding of religous colonies, like the Pilgrims.

Okay. True of the Massachusetts Bay Colony....although their idea of religious freedom was "freedom" for themselves.

What about Virginia, which was founded as a commercial venture? Or Georgia, which was founded as a debtor's prison? Or Maryland, founded by Catholics? Or, New York, founded by the Dutch?

History should be taught in schools just to shut up some of these morons who know nothing about it.

deadman_932 · 08-08-2007, 01:43 PM

Toto: um...just as a point, could you moderators talk about LIMITING the AFDave threads and the splits they engender? He seeks refuge in multiple threads, as I'm sure you're aware.

Minimalist · 08-08-2007, 01:45 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by deadman_932

Thank you, Minimalist. In return, I'd recommend John C. Greene's "The Death of Adam" (1959) Iowa State press. WELL worth having in terms of historical-research value. Cheers!

Thank you. I may have to check the library. Amazon lists it as "unavailable."

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08-08-2007, 12:32 PM	#42
shirley knott Regular Member Join Date: May 2007 Location: Madison, WI Posts: 416	The funniest part of this is that the truth of the argument that modern biology and, especially, modern geology were founded by YEC's is much clearer, much more non-controversial. But, sadly for afdave, much more destructive to his cause. Or as others have put it, what do you call an honest creationist? An evolutionist. What do you call an honest YEC? An ex-YEC. hugs, Shirley Knott

08-08-2007, 01:04 PM	#43
deadman_932 Veteran Member Join Date: Jun 2007 Location: Altadena, California Posts: 3,271	There is no evidence Jefferson was a "YEC" at all, or even near that. YECS accept a YOUNG EARTH DATE for creation that follows the Ussher-style "reasoning" The evidence FOR Jefferson being a YEC is zero. The evidence against it is much more persuasive. Back in the early 1800's there was a big debate going on about "plutonism and neptunism." This sort of presaged some later debates about how land masses formed and changed, etc. Anyway, in this debate Jefferson basically said "a pox on both your houses" in his: "Notes on Virginia" See, at the time, Jefferson had ALSO begun engaging in another debate of the time...the "fixity" of species...the idea that God created all life perfectly as in the bible. Previous scholars ( and including Roman, Greek, & later rennaisance/ Enlightenment figures ) had hinted that species DID die off But the standard "Biblical view" was that they didn't change or die off because GOD made them, and GOD doesn't make crappy designs. Right? Problem was that Jefferson and others were interested in this, and began finding bones of a "Giant" that people like Cuvier identified as ...an elephant. AN ELEPHANT in NORTH AMERICA?!?!? People were shocked. In fact, part of the orders for Lewis and Clark were to try to seek out this "mastodon" that was also called the Great American Incognitum...that unknown critter that some people said they had HEARD in the far west forests. Of course, just like creationism, this was bullshit. What it meant to Jefferson was that species were NOT fixed and could go extinct. It meant that even near-unbelieving Deists like Jefferson could be a bit more dubious about some Old Man God in the sky, and most importantly, it showed a deeper age to the Earth than the Ussher-style interpretations allowed for. Jefferson had already been investigating things like Amerindian Mound burials and in fact, he can be said to have conducted the first organized stratigraphical archaeological excavation. He realized that man had been on the continent for a LONG time, since no local Natives knew shit for shingles about those skeletons buried in the Mound-culture tumuli. Another point is that WE KNOW Jefferson read James Hutton, and Playfair -annotated copies of which existed in Jefferson's library, which was the best library in America -- both of whom had already postulated a deeper age for the earth ( Million years PLUS) than allowed by Biblical "begats" and similar bullshit. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Edit: Jefferson was a man of Science, not unlike Ben Franklin. Both followed Lockean views on sense-perceptions (what you can see, etc.) being that which you can rightfully speculate about. Hutton's arguments alone, from centuries ago, kick the crap out of AFDave's YEC nonsense --Jefferson could hardly fail to be persuaded. Hutton's views in his Theory of the Earth (1788) famously are encapsulated in his line: "The result, therefore, of this physical [geological] inquiry is, that we find no vestige of a beginning [to the Earth] -- no prospect of an end. "

08-08-2007, 01:11 PM	#44
Toto Contributor Join Date: Jun 2000 Location: Los Angeles area Posts: 40,549	This thread has been split from Have you READ the Bible? The floor is open for the questions of: Should it be further split? and Which forum should host it? I can tell you that anyone venturing into CSS and quoting David <admitted prevaricator and amateur historian> Barton will not last long, if the participants can keep from laughing too hard. The discussion on the issue of whether the success of nations is tied to recognizing Biblical principles seems more fruitful. Not that there is any more validity to it, but there seems to be an undercurrant among would be theocrats to claim that following God's law is the key to national welfare. Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell were roundly criticized for the idea when they claimed that America's tolerance of abortion, homosexuality, etc. caused God to withdraw his veil of protection and allow the Islamic suicide hijackers to wipe out the World Trade Center. This is the same sort of thinking that led the Taliban in Afghanistan to impose harsh sharia on their country. Things didn't seem to be going well, so they assumed that they needed more favoritism from Allah, so they redoubled their segregation of women to avoid any unwanted sexual thoughts and blew up the idolatrous Buddhist art work that might be provoking Allah. We saw the same sort of thinking amoung Christian Reconstructionists, who were sure that the Y2K bug was going to put an end to Western Civilization as we know it and cause Americans to turn to god. Gary North even described the upcoming Y2K crash as a test of secular humanism. Well, secular humanism won that one, but he's back peddling his same old snakeoil, waiting for God to strike down the heathens. What is behind this thinking? You can view it as delusional, but it's more than that. Some people want to see morality correlate with success, because they want to believe that there is some sort of justice in the world. They never learned that life is not fair, perhaps. Or do people like Dave want god to strike down their enemies?

08-08-2007, 01:40 PM	#47
deadman_932 Veteran Member Join Date: Jun 2007 Location: Altadena, California Posts: 3,271	Thank you, Minimalist. In return, I'd recommend John C. Greene's "The Death of Adam" (1959) Iowa State press. WELL worth having in terms of historical-research value. Cheers!

08-08-2007, 01:43 PM	#49
deadman_932 Veteran Member Join Date: Jun 2007 Location: Altadena, California Posts: 3,271	Toto: um...just as a point, could you moderators talk about LIMITING the AFDave threads and the splits they engender? He seeks refuge in multiple threads, as I'm sure you're aware.

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