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Tuesday, February 15, 2011

Russian Young Earthers!!!

29 percent of Russians are YEC. That’s how many believe humans and dinosaurs co-existed. Therefore, they must be YEC!

Except not really (expand the “People” section and look at Religions). Russia is 15-20% Russian Orthodox and a whole 2% “other” Christian (which I’m sure includes cults like Mormons). Combining those only yields 22% (and note that the Russian Orthodox Church, as far as I’ve heard, isn’t YEC anyway).

Yet still, the new atheists always lament the existence of religion as the primary cause of doubt in science, especially regarding the doctrines of Darwin. And they are confident that if we just get rid of religion, “reason” will be victorious. That’s why we’re treated to books like The Triumph of Evolution and the Failure of Creationism by Niles Eldredge, or Why Intelligent Design Fails (edited by Taner Edis and Matt Young).

But when you look at a country where religion was persecuted for 70 years, where less than half the people are religious at all (this includes the non-Christian groups, such as Muslims, etc.), you quickly discover that this lack of belief doesn’t seem to have much impact at all on whether someone will accept the “scientific” worldview.

Naturally, the poll given is only one sample, and so strong conclusions cannot be drawn from it. Still, the conclusion arrived at by those conducting the poll is that science is not taught very well in Russia, and that is probably true. But even so, there’s very little religious pressure in Russia to cause people to believe dinosaurs and people co-existed, and these people have heard enough of the science to know what a dinosaur is.

22 comments:

  1. Peter, do you believe that dinosaurs and homo sapiens walked the earth at the same time? if so, I am interested to know what source(s) you rely on, aside from your Bible, to arrive at this conclusion so I can review them. Thanks.

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  2. TAM,

    I believe it is impossible for you to get away from your talking points, no matter how foolish your adherence to them makes you appear.

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  3. Simple question - do you or do you not believe that human beings walked the earth with dinosaurs? If so, what do you rely on to form that belief? If the answer is radiometric dating denial, that's fine. I would just like to know.

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  4. TAM,

    Go play your games elsewhere. You've been answered repeatedly elsewhere, to no end. You just skirt the issue and run to the hills when you're refuted. I'm not going to waste my time on you. When you begin to actually interact with the arguments you're given instead of pasting stuff from your wiki searches, then maybe you'll command some attention.

    Besides, I've given answers to your question many other places on this blog. If you're too lazy to look, that's your problem, not mine.

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  5. "29 percent of Russians are YEC. That’s how many believe humans and dinosaurs co-existed. Therefore, they must be YEC!"

    Not necessarily creationists, but definitely they're uneducated morons, not to mention insane.

    http://darwinkilledgod.blogspot.com/

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  6. Human Ape,

    If you believe people who disagree with you are insane, that itself is crazy talk.

    And you wonder why people don't take atheists seriously?

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  7. "If you believe people who disagree with you are insane"

    I have no problem with people who disagree with me, but I have a big problem with people who are stupid enough to believe people lived at the same time as dinosaurs. They ARE insane.

    Every educated person knows dinosaurs went extinct about 65 million years ago, and our ancestors didn't start looking like modern humans until between 100,000 and 200,000 years ago.

    To be wrong by 65 million years, that's pure out-of-control stupidity and a serious mental illness.

    http://darwinkilledgod.blogspot.com/

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  8. Maybe the Russian people have just started watching the Jurassic Park series of movies.

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  9. Human Ape said:
    ---
    I have no problem with people who disagree with me, but I have a big problem with people who are stupid enough to believe people lived at the same time as dinosaurs. They ARE insane.

    Every educated person knows dinosaurs went extinct about 65 million years ago, and our ancestors didn't start looking like modern humans until between 100,000 and 200,000 years ago.
    ---

    And yet right there, while calling those who disagree with you insane, you commit such a basic logical fallacy that your own sanity must be questioned yet again.

    Claim 1: people who are stupid enough to believe people lived at the same time as dinosaurs are insane.

    Claim 2: Every educated person knows dinosaurs went extinct about 65 million years ago.

    Now that you've equated being uneducated with insanity, you're off to a great start.

    You would do good to remember a famous Lincoln phrase: it is better to be thought a fool than to open one's mouth and remove all doubt.

    In any case, all of your "arguments" are merely ad hominem assertions that you're right and those who disagree are stupid. If you have nothing of substance, you can go your way. If you continue to post nothing, I will delete your nothing from here.

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  10. BTW, Human Ape said:
    ---
    To be wrong by 65 million years, that's pure out-of-control stupidity and a serious mental illness.
    ---

    I think I'll accept that criteria for a moment. Certain meteorites have been radiodated. The H Chondrites dated by Rb-Sr method yielded an age of 4.59 billion years (+/- 0.06 billion years).

    Quick note: 0.06 billion years = 60 million years. Thus, the range of difference between +60 million and -60 million gives you 120 million year variation.

    Isn't it nice to know that the error bar alone is rendered insane by the Human Ape?

    And he thinks himself to be a scientist.

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  11. What does the human ape guy do with Mary Switzer and Jack Horner finding unfossilized red blood cells in dinosaur bone? Not just one, but several.

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  12. Concludes that 65 million years isn't long enough to completely fossilize something?

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  13. Freddy, c'mon, you're better than that: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/dinosaur/blood.html

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  14. Human Ape,

    You are not allowed to use profanity here. This is your only warning.

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  15. Mission Atheist person,
    That article reflects out-dated information. Are you even familiar with your own scientific journals? Start here:
    http://www.physorg.com/news160320581.html

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  16. Human Ape doesn't say that YEC's are stupid because they disagree with him. He says they're stupid because they disagree with testable, repeatable, scientific evidence.

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  17. Testable, repeatable, scientific evidence does not affirm in any fashion the historical philosophy Darwinians have constructed to explain the origins of life on the planet.

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  18. Dave said:
    ---
    He says they're stupid because they disagree with testable, repeatable, scientific evidence.
    ---

    As soon as you get your time machine working so we can observe the past, or as soon as you recreate dinosaurs in the lab and test their evolution, then you'll have a leg to stand on with that argument.

    Bottom line: both of you think YECs are stupid merely because they disagree with your presuppositional paradigm, nothing more.

    "Science" itself is nothing but a plastic entity in your hands. When you want to mock those who disagree with you, it becomes "The Truth." When it doesn't work as you expect, it's just a methodology.

    Well, let me use some induction for you. Science has asserted dogmatically things throughout history as being "The Truth" which they later say were flat out false. "The Truth" used to be that the Earth was the center of the universe--this was a scientific understanding (I guess that Ptolemy guy wasn't just stupid, but insane too!). Phlogiston used to be considered necessary for combustion. Time used to be considered as a universal standard that was invariable.

    There are far "crazier" notions in string theory than there are in any religious view, and they're just as provable. Tell me how you go about proving the existence of one dimensional loops that are smaller than subatomic particles. If you're honest, you'll have to acknowledge that the only evidence for them is a mathematical model, and that mathematical model only happens to work because it beneficially manages to cancel out a bunch of infinite variables. If I said "Reality is the leftover bits of what exists after you cancel out to infinite quantities" then would you call me stupid or crazy?

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  19. [cont.]

    So let's use induction. Science changes its mind every 15 minutes about what "The Truth" is. Therefore, in 15 minutes, "The Truth" will be something else.

    For now, dinosaurs evolved into bird. Except when birds evolved into dinosaurs. Except when both did each simultaneously.

    For now, time is relative. Except when me measure the age of the Earth, in which case we have to stipulate the hypothetical existence of an infinite Earth and establish that as the reference point for time. (Have you ever noticed that the Universe is supposed to be about 15 billion years old, but the Earth is only 4.5 billion? If we're basing the passage of time on the relative framework, and our relative framework is Earth-bound, just how do we establish how much time has passed in the claimed 10 billion years that that relative framework didn't exist?)

    No, Dave. You can't pretend you have science on your side. But even if you did, the way you treat science, it's a Nerf gun. I'm not intimidated.

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  20. By the way, I have to point out that all the atheists, in their infinite nawledg have only managed to completely miss the entire point of this post.

    29% of Russians believe dinos & man coexisted.

    Only 2% of Russians fit in the pool that could possibly be YEC.

    How is YEC responsible for this?

    You (atheists) can now return to ignoring the issue further.

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  21. By the way, I have to point out that all the atheists, in their infinite nawledg have only managed to completely miss the entire point of this post.

    Your point is too modest to be interesting, which is probably why it was ignored.

    No one's claiming that if religion were wiped out, then people would be more well informed about science, including the parts that the religionists disagree with. Or if you can dig up a few who have, that just shows they're wrong. Most atheists would not subscribe to the more extreme statements of, say, Hitchens on a bender.

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  22. Thnuh,

    I stated in my original post: "Yet still, the new atheists always lament the existence of religion as the primary cause of doubt in science, especially regarding the doctrines of Darwin" (bold added, italics original). And this is true. It's not just Hitchens, but you can include Dawkins, Harris, Coyne, etc.

    So you say: "Or if you can dig up a few who have, that just shows they're wrong. Most atheists would not subscribe to the more extreme statements of, say, Hitchens on a bender."

    I would like to think you're correct, but given how many atheists slavishly devote themselves to the cause of the new atheists, I think it is you who would be in the minority here.

    In any case, I'm not at all impressed with any of the atheists who've thus far responded. Not a single one of them are capable of reading anything in context. TAM and Human Ape are both convinced I'm arguing for both A) YEC and B) human/dino co-existence, when I was mocking the poor logic skills of atheists who conclude that human/dino-coexistence = YEC in the very first pararaph of my post.

    The fact is, my post has absolutely nothing to do with YEC or human/dino co-existence. It has to do with secular scientists lying about how religion poisons everything and how religion is the cause for all the thinking they label as "backward." Instead of addressing the point of the post, the atheists in here have come with their agenda and tried to hijack the conversation.

    They've impressed no one.

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