Show me the Evidence!

Creationists blow one's mind ... or is it that their minds are blown?

They demonstrate the long-suspected principle that religion and logic do not mix. Oh sure, religion has provoked a considerable amount of desperate philosophical imaginings, but no cogent arguments for the existence of any deity. A cogent argument provides acceptable premises and logical links to a supported conclusion. Imaginings are not acceptable premises. Only concepts can be defined into existence.

In essence, there are two chief forms of existence ... physical and conceptual. To exert a meaningful impact, such as creating a physical universe for instance, an agent must be physical. So, "proof" of such an agent would only require physical demonstration. Nobody disputes the existence of god concepts. Thousands of deities have been invented. The problem is that we have no incontrovertible evidence for the physical existence of the conceptualized potent Creator, aka God.

Evolution can be physically demonstrated. If you cannot get to a museum, you can read of the physical evidence for biological evolution.

In keeping with their fatal attraction for fallacies of logic, creationist cannot, or will not, see that they are creating a false dichotomy when they attack biological evolution. Even if the modern synthesis (scientists are way beyond Darwinism) were incorrect, this would not mean that their imagined deity exists. Look under any anti-evolutionist and you will find an argument to ignorance. Typically, you will also find a great deal of ignorance too.

Pitiable and Pwned

You have to feel sorry for them. They have staked their lives and their "future" on society-manipulating lies. They are repeatedly refuted and publically trounced, but they either cannot see this, or they see it but refuse to admit it. Why are they so easily pwned? They are mostly poorly educated, certainly mostly narrowly educated, and are typically logic-deficient. They mostly lack basic comprehension and have zero critical thinking skills. In fact, they appear to believe that critical thinking signifies no greater cognitive challenges than entertaining negative thoughts.

Who are "they"?

They are fundamentalist religionists and creationists.




Here's a pertinent section of a brief dialogue with one. GooTube's 500 character limit and non-consecutive posting of comments necessitates this format. I reproduce it because he is attempting to claim that he did not say what he did, or rather, that he did say what he did not. Considering that this particular creationist frequently accuses others of lying, I think that this is precious:

Creationist:

The New Testament contains several independent sources ...

Response:

Copycats are *not* independent. Pagan writers contemporaneous with Jesus would be considered independent. None of those writers mention any of the events and some falsify the historical references. The NT contains 200,000-400,000 errors, some of them significant and deliberate alterations, some added as late as the early 17th century. The Gospels are cross-contradictory on significant details.

Creationist:

Saying the NT is a "copy" or the Gospels are copies is a lie. And so are your so-called "Bible errors and contradictions". I have already slammed this video's author on that one. Are you wanting to get your ass kicked too? Give me just one of your so called "contradictions" or "errors" in the New Testament. Don't cut and past tons of them from some web page because I'm not going to waste my time answering each and everyone. Just one will do.

I did so. Here. The creationist's denial was predictable.

Creationist:

I already covered these so-called contradictions. These aren't contradicts. They depict each individual's perspective of the incident. I will only waste my time with your first line. You need to explain to me why you think Mt 28:1, Mk 16:1, Lk 24:1 and Jn 20:1 are contradictory.

(Actually, no I do not need to explain any such thing. He requested some evidence, I provided it. There is lots more where that came from.)

Response:

Yes, they are contradictions. They say different things. That's what a contradiction is -- saying something different.You made the claim that the Bible contains no errors and no contradictions. Prove it. Denial is not proof.

Creationist:

No, they don't contradict. That is why I wanted you to explain to me where you think they are contradicting so I can see exactly where you are hallucinating a contradiction.

Response:

It comes as no surprise that you have a problem acknowledging the differences between accounts of who visited the tomb, jeffrey. I take it that you agree with all the other contradictions.

Creationist:

There are differences in the accounts but no contradictions. Exactly where are you seeing this? you need to explain it to me because it's not in the Bible. The contradiction exists in your imagination.

(Interesting that he acknowledges "difference", but denies "contradictions". As I demonstrated, the contradictions, and many more, exist in the Bible and not merely in my imagination.)

Response:

I suggest that you haul out your dictionary and check the definition of contradiction. Not that I would ever expect you to be honest enough to admit that a contradiction is a contradiction. After all, you have already contradicted yourself within your comments.

Btw, who wrote Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John?

This could prove interesting!

Homo religioso

In the beginning was the Big Bang, followed by Inflation. Some ten billion years later a tiny planet, our Earth, formed from an accretion disk in a galaxy that was later to be named the Milky Way. During the Hadean Eon, the planet cooled and its petrogenesis settled to governance by radioactivity-driven tectonism.

In the primordial atmosphere, biopoiesis eventually generated the self-controlling, self-replicating assemblages of chemicals necessary for life. From the earliest minimal assemblages, ocean-bound life gradually evolved greater and great complexity. The earliest organisms derived energy from chemicals, and later organism evolved the ability to extract energy from the nearest star, the Sun. (Nature is full of complex and complicated systems, complex adaptive systems (CAS), which comprise a large number of mutually interacting and interwoven parts.)

Eventually, photosynthetic organisms developed the ability to generate oxygen. The toxicity of oxygen placed stresses on organisms yet presented the opportunity for evolution of greater complexity. Some organisms coped with oxygen-stress by enveloping other organisms that already possessed the metabolic machinery necessary to metabolize oxygen and/or to conduct photosynthesis. The regulatory path to multicellularity had begun.

Eventually organisms emerged from the sea and invaded the land. The planet experienced a number of catastrophic extinction events that pruned the numbers of species, opening new niches.

One such event resulted from the collision of an asteroid with Earth some 65 million years ago. The Chicxulub impact wiped out the dominant animals–dinosaurs–and permitted tiny mammals, including the primates, to prevail upon the land. Primates evolved from tiny insectivorous mammals and ultimately evolved into primates with a large brain/body ratio–our hominid ancestors. We share more than 98% of our DNA with chimpanzees, our closest relatives from which we split about 5 to 7 million years ago.

Homo sapiens had emerged by about 250,000 years ago. Humans have a propensity, which is presumably absent in other animals, for inventing supernatural deities to "explain" that which humans could not yet understand. Some religious superstitions were written down by their inventors with the attached claim of having been dictated by the purported deity.

Ultimately, some of the more intelligent members of our species began to undertake systematic, empirical investigations of the natural world. These investigations yielded the information above (though in much greater detail), supplanting the need for God of the Gaps explanations. Not all Homo are particularly sapient, so Homo religioso continued to cling to supernatural non-explanations, inventing elaborate justifications for their superstitions.

In ill-conceived attempts to justify emotion-laden superstitious beliefs, some Homo religioso employ fallacious illogic and distort the established facts of science in inane attempts to substantiate their "Special Creation" by an invented deity.

The failure of all such attempts merely further demonstrates the fact that atheism truly is the most rational position to take with regard to reality.