Of course you don't Mr Viljoen.

>>Pericles, I don’t know why you would expect me to feel guilty<<

And there's little point in my explaining to you, either.

>>for people like Boyle, Faraday, Newton, (maybe not so clear with Babbage), their faith was not a side issue<<

No did I suggest for a moment that it was a "side issue". I am well aware that religion was a dominant force in society for many centuries. As recently as my parents' generation, churchgoing was an automatic Sunday occurrence. That does not make either parent a creationist. Nor a believer in Intelligent Design.

>>If you want to believe they [creationism and ID] are totally different beasts, then I think you’ll find yourself out of step with people like AJPhilips.<<

I do believe they are separate beliefs. And being "out of step" doesn't concern me.

The creationist believes specifically in a "young" earth whose age can be measured using biblical timelines (i.e., "follow the begats").

ID proponents are happy to accept any convenient, or expedient, timeline, but reject evolution, i.e. insist that we were all "designed" the way we are.

But you knew that, didn't you? You are simply arguing for argument's sake.

>>I agree definitions are important.<<

So perhaps you would be good enough to provide your own definitions, of creationsim and ID. I've shown you mine, now you show me yours.

You suggest that I am "out of step" with AJ Phillips, perhaps you would also provide a short list of people you believe are "in step" with your own views?

>>many Christians today don’t accept an historical Genesis. Yet this was the standard interpretation given by all scholars, including Jesus, the New Testament writers, virtually everyone up until the times of Lyell and Darwin, current Hebrew linguists, and any ten year old kid who ever read it.<<

You're safe on the last one. I doubt there are many ten-year-old kids outside creationist households who have actually read the Bible.

But do feel free to expand on the "current Hebrew linguists" who believe the Bible to be literally true.

Who they?

Pericles

Hang on.... "You would have us believe that all "Bible-believing Christians" are creationists? That's pretty much of an insult to the millions of Christians who are not Creationists, but "believe" the Bible."

But isn't that what 'being a Christian' means?

There is no room to pick and choose from the Bible, this is true, this is a metaphor, this is not true, surely?

If one is a Christian, it goes without saying that the Bible is The Truth, and it is as infallible as the Pope is on birth control and not sacking priests who 'lose their way' with children (all the time-especially in the USA and Eire/6 Counties).

To suggest it is possible to be a Christian and not believe the Bible.... somehow... that just does not compute.

I suppose Spong has tried to do that, but he ends up sounding like a decent humanist with a side bet on heaven.

It's all, or nothing, at least as far as calling oneself a 'Christian' goes.

I am sure there are other titles to be used that allow for some not-quite-sure-but-I-think-there-might-be-something-there type of vague thinking that will allow for some form of god, but clearly not 'God'.

Of course, after a while, if the Bible is not to be believed in its entirety, one has to wonder just what is being believed in, and why, by people who call themselves 'Christian' yet do not allow themselves to embrace all of it with absolute 'faith'.

I'd be inclined to think they are either kidding themselves, or are just cultural Christians who have no real connection to the belief system at all but are unable to be honest with themselves and stand upright ready to be counted as... well, 'something else'

Okay then, Dan. I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt. But I find it too difficult to believe it was just a coincidence, so I’ll assume that someone from creation.com is a regular reader of OLO and read my posts.

Moving on... reverse psychology doesn’t work on adults...

<<Thanks for bringing [creation.com] to people’s attention.>>

The only attention brought to it by me reveals the inaccuracies and deliberate misinformation.

<<So if your son is like you, and was ever confronted by something that challenged his usual precepts, I’d imagine he’d research it properly rather than run out of the room.>>

There is enough misleading information out there from the noisy Creationist minority for anyone to hear the other side of the story.

“There are no transitional fossils”;
“Evolution is like is like claiming that a hurricane in a junk yard could form a 747”;
“The chances of life forming by itself are 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 to 1”;
“Mutations are never seen to add information to the genome”;
“The Grand Canyon could have been carved out by the Flood”;
“The depth of fossils found in strata is consistent with the creature’s ability to escape the rising waters of the Flood”.

All of which are demonstrably false.

Teaching religious belief as though it were on equal footing with legitimate science is wrong on so many levels.

<<Thanks for again highlighting what was written by Richard Lewontin. It was an amazing admission of philosophical bias.>>

The word “admission” is used here to make it appear as though there is something to hide, when in fact most, if not all scientists would agree with Lewontin.

If science showed that the universe and life appeared abruptly 6,000 years ago, then so be it. But the divine could never enter the realm of science as science deals with the natural, not the supernatural.

And again, reverse psychology won’t work.

Continued...

...Continued

<<People highlighted [the passages from Darwin’s ‘Descent of Man’], not because it makes Darwin seem without compassion, but to show how closely Darwin’s ideas lend themselves to social Darwinism and its consequent abuses.>>

So what does that have to do with the science then? And if that’s the case, then why re-word the quotes and take them out-of-context?

C’mon Dan, you know as well as I do that it’s designed to make people feel sick from the very thought of evolution.

Creationists are so lacking in the evidence department, they’re forced to play on the emotions of others instead of dealing with the facts.

As was done in Expelled...

<<Thanks for your opinion on the movie ‘Expelled’.>>

Facts, Dan, not opinions. Although my opinion of Expelled still shows quite clearly so, you’re welcome.

<<[Expelled] was well researched...>>

So well research, in fact, that it:

-Attacked evolution without even bothering to define it;
-Confused abiogenesis with evolution;
-Claimed that abiogenesis meant believing that a complex cell just sprang into existence;
-Twisted the facts about the dismissals in an attempt to create martyrs where martyrdom did not exist.

<<...and cleverly communicated some of the important issues going on here.>>

Stein couldn’t even get a simple quote right. Or did you mean “clever” - as in sneaky and devious?

<<As for your other questions about the Himalayas, etc...>>

Please don’t dodge and weave. It’s most unhelpful.

Can you give any evidence for a young Earth? You should have plenty of references at creation.com

Then we can see just how it “accurate, informative and enlightening” creation.com really is.

Thanks.

P.S. For what it’s worth, I agree with the differences Pericles has pointed out between Creationism and ID, although I would add: “happy to accept any deity” as well.

The problem I have with ID, is that it was pre-dominantly an attempt to sneak religious belief through the backdoor and into science classes - bypassing the separation of church and state - by taking out references to any specific God.

Although I’m not sure what the significance in Pericles being out-of-step with me is.

Pericles,
It’s true that ten-year-olds today don’t read very much. Apart from compulsory school reading, my ten-year-old mostly only reads the TV guide and instructions for computer games. But that’s another story.

You ask for my definitions of those words. I pretty much agree with a lot of what you’ve said in your definitions. And I’m sorry for saying you and AJ would be out of step when apparently you are not. You are both saying that ID is different from creationism.

A word like ‘creationist’, as you say, can be used very generally. If it means someone who thinks God created the world, then it would include virtually all Christians (as well as many other people), as all Christians hold some kind of doctrine of creation. Many mix evolution in there somewhere or somehow.

I define a Biblical creationist as someone who accepts Genesis as history, with a relatively young earth, global flood, and all humans descending from Adam and Eve, etc.

This is what you read about in the OT and NT.

As I understand, any Hebrew scholar at any mainstream university will tell you that this is what the language of Genesis is attempting to communicate, even if they don’t believe it themselves. Any ten-year-old will also probably interpret it accurately, but might or might not believe it.

Intelligent design is more divorced from the Bible and finds its origins in natural theology. One good definition for modern ID is the study of patterns in nature that are best explained as a result of intelligence. The SETI project (supported by Carl Sagan) might well fit under this category.

Blue Cross seems to understand the issues better than most with his ‘all or nothing’ type attitude. Despite how most Christians apply it, that is the way the Bible presents itself. As CS Lewis once said (not a word for word quote) in the context of a man crucified and then rising from the dead, ‘Christianity is either marvellously true or hopelessly wrong. What it will never be is a little bit true.’

Now the term creationist is sometimes used as shorthand for Biblical creationist, as I’ve defined it above. This use of shorthand happens in various places. It happens in magazines, it happens in newspapers, it happens here, and it happens on the creation.com website.

I don’t think creation.com could be accused of conflating their definitions or equivocation, as they clearly set out their position in various places on their website.

What the Bible appears to be saying is how is was understood, by ordinary people and by nearly all scholars up until around the nineteenth Century.

To what extent those of faith renounced their acceptance of an historical Genesis, especially in the nineteenth and early twentieth Centuries before the modern creationist movement began to grow, may be an interesting investigation. Mendel may be a good case in point. But overall, the claim that most branches of modern science were founded by believers in creation is easily defensible.