Anyone else watch the Creation Debate? Thoughts?

If you didn't, it's still posted for free on YouTube.

View: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6kgvhG3AkI&feature=share

It wasn't much better than I expected, though Bill tried his best. I was particularly impressed with how even though he had to have known he wasn't going to change many minds, he kept using the debate as a platform for science education. I know we have several people from outside the US in here who might have not appreciated his push for American exceptionalism, but he pushed education and scientific awareness, and that's what counts to me.

P.S. to mods, please feel free to move this topic if you think it belongs in Tilted Philosophy.

 

I've given up bothering with this stuff. No one's gonna change anyone else's minds at this point.

Science and religion are not mutually exclusive and they don't need to tread on each other's.

The purpose of science to to gather facts in order to enhance our understand. Faith is an entirely different entity.

As a scientist, however, it pains me to see such a hardcore group of people trying so hard to cling to intellectual bankruptcy. The facts are the facts. We know that evolution has occurred and we're gaining greater understanding of the molecular mechanisms behind it. It's what has kept life thriving on this planet and it's allowed humans to be where we are at the present.

Evolution is not part of a belief system. On the other hand, I see no reason why belief in God is at all incompatible with the mechanism of evolution. One has really nothing to do with the other.

Sorry to jump on a soapbox. I get frustrated with ignorance.

 

Oh no, I agree. Faith and science can coexist. It's Ham's particular brand of pseudo-science intermingled with religion trying to be passed off as a legitimate option in science education that bothers me.

 

I just couldn't bring myself to watch it.

Creationists-- especially activist creationists-- give religious people a bad name.

I love religion, but I really loathe fundamentalism. And I loathe it especially when it takes its inflexible literalism, uncreatively rigid theology, and relentless exclusivism, and not only applies them to things like science, but then wishes to force the same application on everyone. I hate seeing extremist religion marry itself to pseudoscience in an attempt to force fundamentalist theology into science education.

That's almost-- but not-- as bad as other people sweepingly equating religion and fundamentalism entirely.

In either case, I wish that someone could just tell the fundamentalists that if you're reading Genesis instead of physics, cosmology, geology, and archaeology textbooks, you are deeply missing the point of Genesis, and misunderstanding what scriptures are for. I wish someone could tell them that in part so that they would shut the fuck up, but in part so that scientists could then get back to scienceing, which is what they're best at, and stop trying to have metaphysical debates with religious fanatics, which is not what they're best at.

I love science, and I love religion, but they serve two different purposes, and represent not merely different paradigms for approaching life in the world, but in fact tools and discourses for answering questions completely at variance with one another. Science is ultimately about asking "How?" Religion is ultimately about asking "Why?" They should never be forced to have to debate with one another, and they wouldn't if one were not being twisted and warped beyond reason into something completely counterproductive to itself and to life as a reasoning being-- and, much as I hate to have to say it, that one isn't the science.

 

I watched a couple minutes of the debate but had to get back to work. Ultimately, I don't think either party was going to sway anyone who has already made up their mind. The best thing about this debate was the fact that it remained, from what I can tell, civil and lacking the histrionics that usually revolve around these kinds of debates. Absolutely fabulous.

@levite, How vs. Why is a great way to look at. I've just never felt the need to find an answer to Why.

 

I haven't watched it and I'm not sure if I even want to. There will be a limit to what science can find out, but I'm not sure worshiping a 'creator' would be the best use of time, even if that could be proven.

Religion needs to have a different role in modern society, and I am worried that it isn't shifting fast enough to the positive aspects and explaining the harm that can come from certain destructive activities. And those aren't using birth control, masturbation, and gay sex.
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I haven't watched it and I'm not sure if I even want to. There will be a limit to what science can find out, but I'm not sure worshiping a 'creator' would be the best use of time, even if that could be proven.

Religion needs to have a different role in modern society, and I am worried that it isn't shifting fast enough to the positive aspects and explaining the harm that can come from certain destructive activities. And those aren't using birth control, masturbation, and gay sex.

 

Yeah, @Baraka_Guru, I think that's well put. Religion is a source of ethics: it's not the only possible source of ethics. But religion is also about spiritual discipline, enlightenment of the soul, and seeking to touch God. Science has nothing to do with those things, and shouldn't be expected to offer them-- any more than religion should be expected to offer concrete information about cosmology, evolutionary biology, or suchlike.

Science, it is true, does not directly need religion. Atheists, most of whom embrace science as their primary way of phenomenologically interacting with the universe, use secular philosophy to create their ethics. And secular philosophy and (non-fundamentalist) religious ethical philosophy actually exist in something of a symbiosis, each contributing ideas to the other (usually at least a little reshaped upon adoption from one to the other), and each serving to hone the other, either by cooperative study or by debate. So in a very indirect way, science benefits a little from religion. But it does not directly need religion; whereas non-fundamentalist religion does need science, since scientists and their work represent God's gifts of reason and intelligence operating to help us improve our understanding of life in the physical universe, and creating opportunities to do good through technology.