fieryy:
Fighting racism with the Bible and its Genesis history? This has to be the joke of the century, considering the fact that racism had been justified with the Bible and is still justified with the Bible.

Did you know that the situation where everyone descended from just one couple happened not once, but twice in Genesis? Clearly, every human being ever descended from Adam, because Adam himself called his wife the "mother of all living". (Genesis 3:20)

But then again, every human being that existed after the flood descended from just one couple: Noah and his wife. How then can you claim that the Bible teaches that there are different races, not to talk of justifying the disgusting behavior we know today as racism?

LordReed:


That was not the question you posed. The question you posed was: You mean this quote of Stephen Jay Gould's is "thoroughly meaningless" and "rubbish"? You know more about evolution than Stephen Jay Gould?

Well, it was a pertinent question, as I could not guess what you referred to as thoroughly meaningless. I had to ask to be sure which "statement" you were referring to as "meaningless".

And I have showed you it is indeed meaningless and not a position Gould subscribed to.

Your new question is akin to asking why some things trend. The response is they trend for all sorts of reasons, their popularity doesn't validate anything about the trend itself. The trend of people latching unto evolution as a basis of racism doesn't mean evolution teaches racism.

We have, up until now considered Stephen Jay Gould's views. What about this statement from the co-discoverer of the DNA helix structure, James Watson, in which he made very clear the implications of evolution when he stated in his 2007 memoir: “There is no firm reason to anticipate that the intellectual capacities of peoples geographically separated in their evolution should prove to have evolved identically.” Source

People also use Christianity as a basis for racism does that mean the bible teaches racism?

Christianity has as its authority on doctrines and beliefs the Bible. So, anyone who holds a view which the Bible as a whole does not support has deviated from Christianity. And what does the Bible have to say on racism?

"The stranger who resides with you shall be to you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt; I am the LORD your God." Leviticus 19:34

“...God is no respecter of persons But in every nation whoever fears Him and works righteousness is accepted by Him” Acts 10:34-35

"and He made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth..." Acts 17:26

So clearly, the Bible does not support racism. The Bible does not even know "races" as most people define them today. The Bible teaches that everyone descended from just one man (and one woman). If the Bible then is the authority of Christianity, it follows that one can never use Christianity to justify "racism".

Cc: fieryy

LordReed:


First off, Gould was merely reporting what others thought and did not espouse such beliefs himself. Read the entire chapter this excerpt came from: http://www.sjgarchive.org/library/ontogeny.html
jump to the chapter Racism.

Secondly, in that same chapter he says: "We never have had, and still do not have, any unambiguous data on the innate mental capacities of different human groups—a meaningless notion"

So I repeat it is meaningless.

Thirdly, Gould's book The Mismeasure of Man, clearly shows that he had no such notions of racial superiority based on biological evolution.

Clearly the author in the OP pointed out that Stephen Jay Gould himself was an anti-racist. So, your assertion that he didn't hold racist views has little to no bearing on the issue. The main question is this: why, according to Stephen Jay Gould, did biological arguments for racism "increase by orders of magnitude following the acceptance of evolutionary theory"?

LordReed:
Still peddling this rubbish of "evolution teaches some people are less evolved". A thoroughly meaningless statement since evolution does not espouse a hierarchical structure of the evolutionary path.

Hear Stephen Jay Gould:

"Biological arguments for racism may have been common before 1850, but they increased by orders of magnitude following the acceptance of evolutionary theory. The litany is familiar: cold, dispassionate, objective, modern science shows us that races can be ranked on a scale of superiority."

You mean this quote of Stephen Jay Gould's is "thoroughly meaningless" and "rubbish"? You know more about evolution than Stephen Jay Gould?

by Lucien Tuinstra

Published: 27 December 2019 (GMT+10)

Sadly, it seems that racism is rife in Italian football (soccer). The highest football division (Serie A) is in the news fairly regularly as one after another reported incidents of abuse are added to the long list of prior instances. Those within the main footballing authority, UEFA, have been scratching their heads on how to tackle this problem. However, the graphic designs recently launched by an Italian artist, to enhance UEFA’s anti-racism initiative, were not warmly welcomed, to say the least.

The artwork shows three chimps with coloured faces that supposedly represent different people groups. This includes variations in the colour and shape of their eyes although these differences are probably too subtle to have been picked up by most people. Evidently, artist Simone Fugazzotto believes that all people, regardless of their skin, have evolved from ape-like creatures. He explains the rationale behind the images as follows:

“I thought I’d make this work to teach that we’re all apes. So I made the western monkey -- white with blue eyes -- the Asian monkey -- with almond eyes -- and the black monkey in the middle, which is where everything comes from, this is what the evolutionary theory tells us. The monkey becomes the spark to teach everyone that there is no difference. It’s not that one is man and one is monkey. At this point, we are all monkeys … if they really feel the need to tell a black (player) that he is one.”

‘Now the monkey comes out of the sleeve’, as the Dutch proverb goes. Finally, here is someone who hits the nail on its head and, in so doing, reveals the double standard of the critics. The artist has incurred their wrath merely because he has reflected in his work the story that students are taught in schools and universities around the world: evolution. And keep in mind that he was actually trying to make an anti-racism point with his images! The fact of the matter is that, as CMI writers have been saying for a long time, evolution adds fuel to the fire of racial prejudice. In fact, some evolutionists have admitted as much. Evolutionary propagandist (and staunch anti-racist and Marxist) Stephen Jay Gould once said:

“Biological arguments for racism may have been common before 1850, but they increased by orders of magnitude following the acceptance of evolutionary theory. The litany is familiar: cold, dispassionate, objective, modern science shows us that races can be ranked on a scale of superiority. If this offends Christian morality or a sentimental belief in human unity, so be it; science must be free to proclaim unpleasant truths.”

Of course, science per se shows no such thing. Rather, it is the evolutionary indoctrination masquerading as science which implies a scale of superiority. Is it any wonder that after years of sowing this false teaching, we are reaping the harmful consequences left, right, and centre?

And the racism problem in sport is far from being a peculiarly Italian one; see this example from the Australian Football League. A few months earlier, a Dutch news article highlighted once again the pitiful state of mind of some football fans, who assault black players with monkey sounds and banana peels and hurl insults at them. It is bad enough that these things happen, but it is sad that the sporting bodies don’t really know how to tackle this problem, let alone the root cause. Dutch league player Urby Emanuelson remembers one incident vividly: “The supporters of the opposing team made monkey sounds to several black players … ”

One of the players walked off in disgust and the rest of the team joined him in prematurely leaving the football pitch; the game was cancelled.

The BBC and other media rightly highlight these issues but offer no solution either, since they are equally confused (see No monkey business here please, we’re the BBC!). Why are people perplexed if children behave like animals, when in the school classroom they are taught that, in fact, they are! This erroneous education is continued into adulthood (colleges, universities and the media) and consistently applied by ‘faithful students’ on the stands of many football stadia and elsewhere.

But that’s not all. These insults and other loathsome actions are directed at ‘black’ players of the opposing team while, typically, the players of their ‘own’ team are spared. This bias is also seen in other areas of the game. Biases have the nasty habit of making people blind to their own shortcomings. For example, I have repeatedly witnessed supporters screaming at the referee when he blew the whistle against the home-team, when clearly a foul was committed. These same people would gladly turn a blind eye to a player from their home-team pretending he had been fouled. You wonder whether they needed glasses or if they just fancied blaming someone for the lack of ‘spectacle’ on the pitch.

Rooting for biblical roots

The Bible teaches that we all come from the first man Adam (and later Noah). We are all members of one human family. However, a consistent application of evolutionary teaching implies that some human beings are less evolved than others. This fallacious doctrine does nothing to decrease the bad behaviours we see in sinful children, adults, and society in general (e.g. football supporters). If anything, it aggravates it.

Is there an antidote to this prejudice? Yes, there is! CMI has long argued that the only remedy is to proclaim the truth and authority of the Bible, particular its Genesis history, and expose evolution for what it is: a deceptive anti-God philosophy that has undergirded many tragedies in this world and stifled science.

Source: https://creation.com/racism-campaign-backlash

...

.,.

GoodBadandUgly:


Oh I see so your involved in the self deception too? That’s awesome!
Creationism: Let’s start with the presumption that a being which there is no evidence for, created all of this. Now let’s try and manipulate the data to fit this narrative.
Evolutional Science: lets observe nature and let her tell the real story as it is.

Johnydon22 come and see the newest logician on board the skeptic train.

,,

,

..

.

GoodBadandUgly:


What they are doing is not science.

You mean what they are doing is not naturalism? Yeah, I agree.

hakeem4:

There are no scientific authorities !!!!! Because someone with PhD said something doesn’t make it true

How I wish all you skeptics would listen to this advice of yours. But I doubt you will, because the mainstay of your arguments against creationism is appeal to the opinion of evolutionist scientists.

GoodBadandUgly:


I had to come back and laugh at this post, the same creation.com that says the earth is 6000 years old? please make sure you send your children to school

Yes the same creation.com that says that the earth is 6000 years old. How is it funny, and what connects it with children going to school?

Bear in mind, the people who hold this opinion are PhD scientists in different areas of science.

GoodBadandUgly:


LMAO seriously creation.com? that's hilarious, you call what those guys do as science? don't fool yourself. These so called "scientists" hold presumptions, their goal is to manipulate reality to fit into the origin bible story of the bible.

So much misconception compressed into a single post. Well, I want to assure you that you're bringing nothing new that we have not seen on this board. Take your time to learn the creationist position, before proceeding to engage it in argument.

hakeem4:
you get your facts from a creationist website not even a peer reviewed journal

This "peer-reviewed journal" line, which in reality means "evolutionist approved", is old nah. It wasn't even effective at any time, but it's so ugly from overuse now. Say something meaningful.

https://www.nairaland.com/5246294/creationists-publish-notable-refereed-journals

GoodBadandUgly:


Lmao your very funny and your arrogance is naive. You clearly cannot grasp 13 billion years and the theory of gene mutations.
just so you know evolution is a FACT observation in nature, natural selection is the theory which explains it.
Evolution is still happening as we speak on a smaller scale, bacterias become immune to the antibodies humans take so now the new generation has evolved by adapting to their environment.

Hahaha Please visit [url]Creation.com[/url] and see all these points you raised debunked by PhD scientists.

AntiChristian:


Na dibia/babalawo they request for human blood not God. God should have the power to do all things without restrictions.

But God did not at anytime request for human blood. Or did He?

OP, you just listed the conditions of the old covenant, a covenant based on promises that were not so good. In fact the old covenant was based on the hard-hearted, stiff-necked, self-righteous promise of the children of Israel that "All that Jehovah hath spoken we will do." They said this three good times in Exodus 19:8, Exodus 24:3 and Exodus 24:7. I will not go deep into theology but this is in fact the words of a man or a people who still trust in their own ability to fulfill perfectly God's requirements, who are yet to understand their need of help in form of a Saviour/Redeemer in whom they have to place faith. Another way to say it is that those are the words of a man who trusts in his own works. Indeed ever since the fall, God has been trying to get man to see his need in his fallen state of a Redeemer who will both redeem him from the condemnation of breaking the moral law in the first place, and give him power to live in harmony with God's commandments.

However, what has been the case? From Cain till now there has never been want of men who still trust in their ability to keep God's commandments. And what better way to teach man his need of a Saviour, not just to deliver him from condemnation of breaking the law, but also to help him abide by God's commandments, than to enter into a covenant with him which required him to keep the laws given to him, and receive blessings or break them, and receive punishments (which punishments would have been their just reward for transgression in the first place had God decided to leave them on their own to face the moral law)?

So the old covenant (which the children of Israel willfully entered) was essentially a covenant of do and live, do not and die (which death you deserve even without the covenant anyway, because you have broken God's moral law). Three times God gave them opportunity to admit their inability to keep perfectly His requirements: before He proclaimed the 10 Commandments, after Moses had told them the additional laws which God gave, and after Moses read all the laws which God had given from a book after putting them in writing. (Exodus 19:8; 24:3; 24:7). In each occasion, the reply was the same: "all that the Lord has said, we will do." Did the children of Israel keep the covenant? Emphatic NO! They couldn't keep it. But pious men throughout the Old Testament saw their need for the Redeemer, and looked forward to Him whose was coming was announced immediately after the fall, as early as Genesis 3:15.

However, the new covenant were based on God's better promises. Hear God speak: "Behold, the days come, saith Jehovah, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah: not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt; which my covenant they brake, although I was a husband unto them, saith Jehovah. But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, saith Jehovah: I will put my law in their inward parts, and in their heart will I write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people: and they shall teach no more every man his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying, Know Jehovah; for they shall all know me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith Jehovah: for I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin will I remember no more." ASV — Jeremiah 31:31 - 34

So in the new covenant, God promises by a special power (received by faith in Christ) to etch His moral law on the heart of the believer, so that the heart would be transformed to be in harmony with God's law.

Such is God's love for erring man. OP, you can still choose to respond to His love today.

Mindfulness:


Send him an email.

Okay.

Mindfulness:


He wrote a book in which he expressed his idea. You can agree or disagree with him. He hasn't held a gun to anyone's head forcing them to accept his notion of what morality is.

Good to know that he has not made a statement with which everyone is obliged to agree. I only wonder whether he recognizes his statement as such.

Mindfulness:


Freedom of speech.

Great! But freedom of speech does not confer on him the right to define what is moral and what is not, any more than it confers such right on everyone else.

Mindfulness:
“Morality doesn’t mean ‘following divine commands’. It means ‘reducing suffering’. Hence in order to act morally, you don’t need to believe in any myth or story. You just need to develop a deep appreciation of suffering.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, 21 Lessons for the 21st Century

Open to discussion.

What gave the author of the quote the right to speak as the moral arbiter of the universe, defining what is moral and what is not?

DikeDiMighty:


On the Christian side, be truthful my dear friends...deep down, do you actually believe these things:

I don't believe these caricatures of the Biblical facts which you have listed. However, I believe every word of the Bible. Every word.

Is anything wrong with that?

SniperAssassin:
Won't anybody try and answer these questions?

Good day bro. Please kindly visit [url]Creation.com[/url].
Use their search engine to locate topics. I'm sure they have answers to these questions you've written here, and many many more. They have published over 10,000 articles on topics like evolution, origin of the universe, age of the universe, and even philosophical questions.

Not just about Ensatina, but creationists actually have things to say on the phenomenon of ring species as a whole:

https://creation.com/birds-of-a-feather-don-t-breed-together

SniperAssassin:
Hello DoctorAlien.
I have read about the RATE project on Wikipedia and while it had some strong names on its team, there were still numerous issues with it that do not allow us to accept a young age of the earth.

For one, the members of that project admitted that there was evidence for an age of the earth as far back as 500 million years.

Also, the conclusions that they came to had two major problems with them

This is from the Wikipedia page
"Accelerated nuclear decay Edit
Based on these findings, the authors postulated that nuclear decay rates were accelerated by a factor of approximately 500 million during the Creation week and at the time of the Flood. Short-lived isotopes such as 14C were not affected, while long-lived isotopes such as 40K were affected by a factor of a billion or more. Stable isotopes were apparently not affected.

They identified two unresolved problems with this theory. One was excessive heat generation, which would have been sufficient to raise the temperature of the earth's surface to 22,000 °C,[3] sufficient to evaporate the earth unless some extraordinary cooling mechanism were applied. They acknowledged that neither conduction, nor convection, nor radiation could remove this heat quickly enough, and that therefore a new, esoteric solution would have to be found. They further acknowledged that this solution would also have to have cooled some material more than others to prevent the oceans from freezing over.

The other problem is excessive radiation generation, which would have killed Noah and his passengers on the Ark by the radiation generated from ratioisotopes such as 40K in their own bodies.
"
Full link:https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/RATE_project?iorg_service_id_internal=1547440102204384%3BAfqFiKJD9A_en_jW

So I hope you understand why their findings cannot be accepted, as they themselves know that there are problems with their conclusions

Also, the change in the speed of light also known as c-decay, comes with some serious problems of its own, the major one being:
The mass of an object is dependent on the speed of light.

You probably already know the equation :
E=mc^2
Where
E=energy
M=mass and
C= speed of light in a vacuum

It basically states that matter and energy are two forms of the same thing and that in an object they are proportional to each other with c as their constant. So if the speed of light were to, for instance, decrease, then the amount of matter in a body would also have decreased. But we know that matter and energy can neither be created, nor destroyed, only converted to another form or energy, so it makes it impossible for the speed of light in a vacuum to change.

Hello friend!

Your contributions are highly valued. Let me start by pointing out that in my own opinion, Wikipedia is the last place one should go to find information about creationists and presentations of creationist positions on some topics. Wikipedia has been shown to be deeply biased against creationism.

That said, it is no news that creationists and even the scientists on the RATE project actually acknowledge they had to make some assumptions in their research, and that potentially there are questions left unanswered in the project. However, check here for a more reliable representation of both the RATE project and the creationist position on the age of the Earth: https://creation.com/radiometric-dating-questions-and-answers

On the decay of the speed of light, it may interest you to know that creationists are not really asserting that c is decaying. Instead, their attempts at explaining the speed of light problem focuses on a different area. See the following article for some creationist attempts at the problem: https://creation.com/images/pdfs/cabook/chapter5.pdf

Cheers.

wirinet:


I found a couple of physicists on the site. This is what I found on googling their names;


In effect he is saying E = mc2 is incorrect.

There is another Eugene Chaffin , Who makes wild hypothesis on accelerated nuclear decay,


So scientific paper whatsoever detailing his research, so we can even know what he is talking about.

Can't find anything on Prof. Sung-Do Cha, save his preaching the Christian gospel of the earth is 6,000 years. I doubt he is a physicists.

Non of them even attempt to discuss the speed of light issue.

Although I don't trust information from Wikipedia, that is not even the main issue. The question is, are these two the only physicists you saw on that list? If they are, then you did not search the list well, and you need to search again, for surely they are not the only physicists on that list.

If they are not the only physicists you saw, and you cherry-picked these two and deliberately excluded the rest, only to bring discrediting information about the two you picked from Wikipedia of all sources, then you're not exhibiting honesty.

You can doubt the qualifications of these people all you want. The only problem is that your doubt cannot remove their qualifications.

And you attempted to shift the goalposts, claiming that none of them attempted to discuss the speed of light issue. How convenient! From asking for a PhD physicist who believes in a 6000-year old earth to asking for their attempts at discussing the speed of light issue. Well, it may interest you to know that two other physicists on that same list from which you picked only two, by name Russell Humphreys and John Hartnett, have actually attempted the speed of light problem. I can give you a link to a beautiful article on that.

Cheers.

wirinet:


No PhD holder in physics can hold the view that the earth is 6000 years.
Physics is the letters, alphabet and currency of the material universe. A mere look at our nearest neighbouring galaxy, andromeda with is 2 million light years away, tells you that the light you are seeing now from the galaxy left 2 million years ago.

Check here: https://creation.com/creation-scientists. You will see a list containing the names many PhD physicists who believe the Earth is 6000 years old.

Meanwhile, don't think that speed of light is a problem only for Creationists. Big bang proponents had to tackle what was known as the horizon problem. You can read up about the horizon problem. They invented a mysterious fudge factor in the name of inflation to make up for that difficulty.

Nor have Creationists no explanations as to why we can see light from distant galaxies in a 6000 year old universe. Browse through Creation.com for Creationist answers to these and similar questions.

Good day.

LordReed:


Completely ignoring the fact that radon is an intermediate decay step between uranium and polonium.

Red herring. We're not talking about the decay steps of Uranium. Instead, if the halos were caused by radon and not polonium, how could the radon have stayed to cause the halos?

Probably your best guess is something similar to the feedback to which Jonathan Sarfati responded. The feedback claimed that "“Critics of Gentry, including Thomas A. Baillieul (Baillieul 2005) and John Brawley (Brawley 1992), have pointed out that Po-218 is a decay product of radon, which as a gas can be given off by a grain of uranium in one part of the rock and migrate to another part of the rock to form a uraniumless halo. Apparently a large number of radon atoms are caught or adsorbed at a particular point. This has not been proved experimentally, but is supported by the fact that Gentry’s “polonium halos” are found along microscopic cracks in rocks that also contain uranium halos (Wakefield 1988).”"

Jonathan Sarfati responds that "there would be no tendency for radon to accumulate at a given spot in the mineral crystal and decay to to produce the spherical radiohaloes. So no wonder there is the admission “This has not been proved experimentally.”

LordReed:


Scientists such as Tom Baillieul and John Brawley have done research and published articles refuting Gentry's theory of polonium halos. John Brawley is an amateur scientist who published an article about research he conducted which concludes that there are other radioactive materials that form halos which are indiscernible from polonium halos, making it impossible to tell whether or not the halos that Gentry studied are indeed formed by polonium (Brawley 1992). Baillieul refutes Gentry's claims by examining his assumptions about the halos that he observed. Baillieul claims that the assumption that the rock which these supposed polonium halos were found is primordial is not true. As Baillieul explains, Gentry is a physicist, not a geologist, and as a result he is not able to properly put the rocks being examined in their proper context. Gentry's samples were sent to him by colleagues from around the world, so he cannot be entirely sure how they fit into the geological time scale. Baillieul asserts that the types of granite that Gentry uses are not actually primordial, and that some of them are not even granite as Gentry claims. Baillieul then challenges Gentry's assumption that the particular ring-shaped halos that he observed can be positively identified as the result of alpha particle bombardment. Gentry bases this assumption on past research done at a time when the structure of the atom was just being discovered. Baillieul believes that that there are still some unanswered questions about being able to positively identify the type of radiation that caused a halo based on properties like the ring structure and color of the halos. He believes that for this reason the assumption that the observed halos are caused by alpha particle bombardment is at best speculative. Finally, Baillieul claims that even if it is assumed that the halos are cause by alpha radiation, that it seems more likely that the halos would have been caused by the decay of Radon 222. Radon 222 decays to Polonium 218, and is also part of the decay series of Uranium 238. Since Uranium 238 has half-life of approximately 4.5 billion years and can constantly supply a rock with Polonium, there is no reason to assume that the rock must have formed quickly or be "primordial." Baillieul claims that because Gentry's assumptions do not hold up to scrutiny, polonium halos do not provide adequate evidence to support the theory of a young Earth (Baillieul 2005)

This is interesting for many reasons. Although he apparently mentions the radon explanation, we can clearly see the fury of Tom Baillieul's more recent (relative to Brawley's) effort directed away from the Radon explanation in particular, to surprising targets such as the processes of Gentry's experiment,
the process of identificationn of the halos, and even to Gentry's qualification (pointing out that Gentry is a Physicist, and not a geologist). Well, this may be because he understands that the Radon explanation is ridiculous.

While I can only guess which radioactive material that Brawley was talking about could produce halos indiscernible from polonium's, the Radon explanation has not escaped the notice of creationists. Responding to a feedback mentioning the Radon explanation as found in a Wikipedia article, Jonathan Sarfati put it thus: "The radon explanation is just nonsense, which shows the critics don’t understand basic chemistry. Radon is known as one of the noble gases, meaning that it has very weak interaction with other atoms because of a full valence shell. That means there would be no tendency for radon to accumulate at a given spot in the mineral crystal and decay to to produce the spherical radiohaloes. So no wonder there is the admission “This has not been proved experimentally.”"

Jonathan Sarfati pointed out though that current creationist explanation differs from Gentry's, and he directed readers to this article: https://creation.com/radiohalosstartling-evidence-of-catastrophic-geologic-processes-on-a-young-earth

All in all, the Radon explanation seems to not be satisfactory.