Shibushi and rational response
May. 14th, 2007 03:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stormsewerI have recently been informed that there is a building in Japan whose official name is Kagoshima-ken Shibushi-shi Shibushi-cho Shibushi no Shibushi-shiyakusho Shibushi Shibu (which translates to "The Shibushi Branch of the Shibushi City Hall of Shibushi, Shibushi District, Shibushi City, Kagoshima Prefecture). And it just so happens that I'll be riding a boat to Shibushi City later this week.
I also watched the debate between the Rational Response Squad and The Way of the Master dudes. Yeah, I think the atheists won (which is not really surprising if the debaters know what they're doing and we're considering logical reasoning as the basis of argument), but two things that bugged me about the Rational Response Squad:
1. They kind of dropped the ball on the idiotic opening argument of busting out a Coke can and arguing that it's silly to assume that the Coke can didn't have a creator, and therefore it's silly to assume that biological life didn't have a creator. They did come up with the "If everything requires a creator, God requires a creator, as does that creator, etc. Ultimately there IS something that exists without a creator, and so there's no logical necessity to insert a creator as having formed the universe, which could just as well be the thing that doesn't have a creator (and we'll even invoke Occam as a reason for not inserting a creator)" type response, which is good.
But what they didn't bring up is the point that comparing a Coke can (or a building, or a watch in the desert) to biological life is a blatantly false analogy. Coke cans don't contain a code for making Coke cans, a code that, when mixed together with the code of another Coke can, will result in a brand new Coke can different from any other Coke can that's ever come before (assuming that Coke can is able to keep its code functional long enough to remix it in this way). (On a side note, the Ray Comfort guy made a big stink before the debate about how he was going to provide irrefutable logical proof of the existence of God without reference to faith or the Bible. It was a big claim, and I was excited to see what he was going to trot out. How disappointing when he pulled out the Coke can and proceeded with the oldest trick in the book.)
2. The religious side came off as patient and considerate, but the atheists came off as strident assholes. I can kind of understand why that would be. From the religious perspective, they're thinking "Everything's cool. We've got the truth, so nothing to worry about. We'll try to save these blasphemous sinners, but we know we're already saved, and no 'logic' or 'evidence' is ever going to change that. So, whatever." From the atheists' perspective, they're understandably frustrated as hell with all the false analogies, false dilemmas, appeals to emotion and authority, straw men (the implication that evolutionary theory predicts the existence of the fossil of a half-duck half-alligator could only be the result of wholesale ignorance or wholesale deception), etc. that these smug fucks are constantly trotting out as if they're iron-clad arguments. What's even more frustrating is how many people seem to fall for it. Plus, which side of this debate do you think keeps their real names and addresses a secret due to the massive number of death threats they receive? That would make anyone a little irritable. And I don't know if I could have avoided rolling my eyes myself at several points during that debate. But still, I'd prefer it if my side kept to the moral high ground (since I clearly think we deserve it).
And can I just say that, as someone who studied evolution at a religious university, I see no reason why evolutionary theory and theism necessarily have to be in conflict? It still kind of confuses me that this is such a large part of the debate. I guess the problem is that, as noted above, evolution kind of takes the teeth out of the argument from design, that old standby.
I also watched the debate between the Rational Response Squad and The Way of the Master dudes. Yeah, I think the atheists won (which is not really surprising if the debaters know what they're doing and we're considering logical reasoning as the basis of argument), but two things that bugged me about the Rational Response Squad:
1. They kind of dropped the ball on the idiotic opening argument of busting out a Coke can and arguing that it's silly to assume that the Coke can didn't have a creator, and therefore it's silly to assume that biological life didn't have a creator. They did come up with the "If everything requires a creator, God requires a creator, as does that creator, etc. Ultimately there IS something that exists without a creator, and so there's no logical necessity to insert a creator as having formed the universe, which could just as well be the thing that doesn't have a creator (and we'll even invoke Occam as a reason for not inserting a creator)" type response, which is good.
But what they didn't bring up is the point that comparing a Coke can (or a building, or a watch in the desert) to biological life is a blatantly false analogy. Coke cans don't contain a code for making Coke cans, a code that, when mixed together with the code of another Coke can, will result in a brand new Coke can different from any other Coke can that's ever come before (assuming that Coke can is able to keep its code functional long enough to remix it in this way). (On a side note, the Ray Comfort guy made a big stink before the debate about how he was going to provide irrefutable logical proof of the existence of God without reference to faith or the Bible. It was a big claim, and I was excited to see what he was going to trot out. How disappointing when he pulled out the Coke can and proceeded with the oldest trick in the book.)
2. The religious side came off as patient and considerate, but the atheists came off as strident assholes. I can kind of understand why that would be. From the religious perspective, they're thinking "Everything's cool. We've got the truth, so nothing to worry about. We'll try to save these blasphemous sinners, but we know we're already saved, and no 'logic' or 'evidence' is ever going to change that. So, whatever." From the atheists' perspective, they're understandably frustrated as hell with all the false analogies, false dilemmas, appeals to emotion and authority, straw men (the implication that evolutionary theory predicts the existence of the fossil of a half-duck half-alligator could only be the result of wholesale ignorance or wholesale deception), etc. that these smug fucks are constantly trotting out as if they're iron-clad arguments. What's even more frustrating is how many people seem to fall for it. Plus, which side of this debate do you think keeps their real names and addresses a secret due to the massive number of death threats they receive? That would make anyone a little irritable. And I don't know if I could have avoided rolling my eyes myself at several points during that debate. But still, I'd prefer it if my side kept to the moral high ground (since I clearly think we deserve it).
And can I just say that, as someone who studied evolution at a religious university, I see no reason why evolutionary theory and theism necessarily have to be in conflict? It still kind of confuses me that this is such a large part of the debate. I guess the problem is that, as noted above, evolution kind of takes the teeth out of the argument from design, that old standby.
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Hi!
Date: 2007-05-18 11:22 am (UTC)If you're not sure, you can choose trial!!!
Vizit http://pta.zwit.org/
Re: Hi!
Date: 2007-05-18 01:11 pm (UTC)