Negreanu and Jesus

[Your Mom]

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I think you are over-reacting to Daniel's journal entry about getting the ride from the black man. He did not come across as prejudiced to me. He is simply acknowledging that stereotypes exists and we are all aware of them even if we do not endorse them. To just pretend that race isn't an issue in our society would be silly.

The thing that I found most interesting in that story was the role that money plays in most peoples lives. So many people are just struggling to get by and yet people like Daniel regularly gamble with such huge sums of money.

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He did come across to me as assuming everyone ELSE is prejudiced. The thing that really cracked me up was when he was stating how racist the media is and if you saw Farhenheit 911 you would no what he is talking about.

So you have to see 911 to know that the news is racist? You can't tell that by watching the news? Hmm..... Baaah.

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I like how Moore disproves his own point in his movie. He says that fear causes crime in our country. Then he says that as murders went down, news reports of it went up. This disproves his entire thesis in the movie. What a joke that guy is.

[gumpzilla]

The problem with all of the folderol about a young earth is, as others have pointed out, there's no arguing with somebody who is determined to think it, because God could have set everything up just so. And, as much as you might like to think otherwise, there's no way to prove them wrong. For all we know, the universe could have been created 6000 years ago in such a manner that, to the best human observation can detect, it appears to be billions of years old.

The reason that this kind of argumentation is silly isn't that it's wrong. Rather, to steal Pauli's kickass phrase, it's that it isn't even wrong. There's no way that you can falsify the claim and it has zero predictive power. In other words, it's a pretty useless belief, and from a scientific perspective totally worthless. Conventionally accepted scientific beliefs, however, do have some predictive power. Using these to try and construct a picture of how the world came to be, then, seems like a more fruitful logical endeavor.

[SoftcoreRevolt]

Fear of crime causes more crime in SOME situations, but not a dramatic rise in it, just isolated incidents. But the second point is correct, fear of crime grew as crime began to fall in the 90s, as the news began reporting more and more graphic incidents of crime and ignoring the overall trend of crime reduction. There's a fantastic discussion of this in "The Mythology of Crime." Perhaps I should trade Daniel my copy of it for that book on Christ he is offering.

And as innacurate as Moore can be, the man can edit together one hell of a story.

[BarronVangorToth]

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No, neither one is accepted at all (by anyone who knows anything about biology or geology). They are equally silly.

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I didn't stipulate as to the backgrounds of the people. But suffice it to say that there are tens of millions upon millions of people that believe each -- but more that believe one over the other. It is illogical to assume that none of them would have appropriate backgrounds.

Regardless, this is a situation where I am trying to explain something to some people who think I'm saying something that I'm not, rather than saying what I am.

Reading into static statements with personal biases leads to these irrelevant tangents. The only question I had for which I waded into this argument of two sides that will never agree, is whether to specify what Daniel said, merely for my own curiousity.

Barron Vangor Toth
www.BarronVangorToth.com

[InfernoLL]

Why would anyone be afraid that there is an afterlife?

[Brad F.]

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15 Answers to Creationist Nonsense

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This will be my last post in the subject.

I am a Christian, believing in a supernatural being that created us for companionship purposes. I have many specific religious beliefs, and I believe them as fact based on faith and previous experiences.

All I was saying in my original post was that I feel that neither side has proven to me what is actually true. I CAN be convinced that a certain evolutionary or 'New Earth' theory is true based on facts. But posting a link to a site calling creationism nonsense isn't going to help me or anyone on the fence like me.

One of the women that I most respect in the world, faith-wise and otherwise recently had lunch with me after graduating in biology and said that she is beginning to see that the most likely truth is that God created the earth through the means of evolution. She's seen much of the evidence and sorted it through, and she no longer takes the 'God created the earth in 6 days' literally. Days could've meant a lot of things before we came up with the concept.

So I am leaning towards this as fact, given that someone I respect, who went to a Christian college even, feels that this makes the most sense.

But just for future reference for those that don't understand 'Christians' view on creation: It is really hard to break away from what is the literal meaning of the bible. While all of us being related to Adam and Eve sounds silly to most in this forum I'm sure, until I got to college I wouldn't accept anything else. Period.

I really enjoy being a Christian, but part of that is learning new things every day. God is a complex being, and therefore has many qualities and truths that I don't even come close to comprehending as of yet.

The unfortunate thing about this is that many christians have so much that MUST be true in order for them to believe in Jesus as they do. For example, many feel that if they started to doubt the 6-day creation belief they would have to doubt their faith in God as well.

For those that are set in their ways and won't listen to good, sound arguments are going to be that way unfortunately. I'm not one of those, thank God. (No pun intended)

That's all I'll say on the topic. But I hope I've shown from another spectrum that Christians aren't all blind and stubborn. Unfortunately the ones that get out in the media seem to be.

Just wanted to be a little more clear what it's like in my belief system. That's all.

Brad

[Your Mom]

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Fear of crime causes more crime in SOME situations, but not a dramatic rise in it, just isolated incidents. But the second point is correct, fear of crime grew as crime began to fall in the 90s, as the news began reporting more and more graphic incidents of crime and ignoring the overall trend of crime reduction. There's a fantastic discussion of this in "The Mythology of Crime." Perhaps I should trade Daniel my copy of it for that book on Christ he is offering.

And as innacurate as Moore can be, the man can edit together one hell of a story.

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That's just it though. It's a story -fiction

[xorbie]

Brad, I appreciate your post. I agree that it seems that for many Christians, the very act of questioning their belief is seen as a sin, and the path to darkness or hell or what have you.

Also, and this is just for the record, evolution has nothing to do with the creation of this earth or even with the creation of life. The latter is dealt with largely by abiogenesis - the creation of life from non-life. Evolution has to do with the change in genetic make up of a population.

[fishsauce]

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Maybe Daniel should listen to some Bill Hicks.

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Nominated for "Best Post in Thread"

I think everyone (who can stomach it) could benefit from some Bill Hicks therapy.

[goldseraph]

Discussion of origins and religion is intelligent and commendable. This obsession with Daniel's life and everything he says/writes is not.