Intentional Ignorance

Bill Nye 'The Science Guy' Hits Evolution Deniers

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/abc-blogs/bill-nye-science-guy-hits-evolution-deniers-123047918--abc-news-tech.html
In a clip posted to online knowledge forum Big Think via YouTube, former children's show host Bill Nye spoke out against the denial of evolution, saying such views harm young people especially and hamper scientific progress.

Response from tallest4eva 2012/08/28:
The only thing worse than ignorance, is intentional ignorance!!!!
How weak are people's faiths that evolution causes them to lose their faith!!!
If you believe your god can do anything, then why don't you just believe that god(s) did it, when you come across a scientific theory with insurmountable evidence!
People who deny the clear evidence of evolution are similar to clerics in the past who jailed Galileo for postulating the laws of motion and theorizing that the Earth was moving around the sun and not the other way around. A question to ask them would have been "How does the Earth traveling around the sun actually disprove the existence of a god(s)?"

Here's the real baseline. This is what we know.

Many things written in the many religious texts are not factual but mythological:
The Earth was not created 6,000 years ago in 6 days.
Olódùmarè didn't not mold the continents from a handful of earth.
The Kamiyonanayo did not emerge from a beaten and shapeless kind of matter to form the heaven and the earth.
Zeus and his pantheon did not wrest the world from the tyrannical rule of his titanic parents.

The list goes on. For the most part, even though people of faith claim they believe this, they are only really deceiving themselves. When push comes to shove, most rational people don't!

The universe is unimaginably vast and humanity has only really been exploring it for a several thousand years (a blip of time in astronomical time). The universe is governed by laws of nature: gravity, the theories of general relativity and quantum mechanics. We are a species of primate that ascended into sentience in the very thin biospshere around a relatively tiny planet revolving around a mid-size star at the end of one of the spiral arms of a mid-size galaxy. If there is a god(s) (or Star Maker as Olaf Stapledon put it), his manifestation is basically in the form of these laws of nature which govern the universe. There are no localized aberrations to these laws of nature that affect humanity in anyway! We are born, live and die with every atom, quark, molecule in our bodies conforming to these laws of nature.

Science is just man's cumulative attempt to understand and document these laws of nature.

The rise of atheism in America

http://news.yahoo.com/rise-atheism-america-110700315.html

Here's any interesting back and forth between a couple of us regarding this article about the rise of atheists and agnostics in the US.


Mattie:
I believe in God I just do not practice a religion so what does that make me?

Real Truth:
A theist.
Jessica,an agnostic is someone kind of right in the middle. The don't believe or disbelieve,simply because there's not enough evidence either way.
If it was proven a creator or god existed,they'd accept it,just as if it was shown they don't,they'd accept that just as easily.
It's a common mistake.;-)
A theist is someone that believes in a 'god',and maybe even God,but doesn't follow any religion associated with it.
A deist is someone that believes in a creator of some kind,but this creator doesn't interact with us,and may not even know we exist.

tallest4eva:
@Real Truth
You described a theist as "..If it was proven a creator or god existed,they'd accept it.."
I think that applies to everybody! Atheists generally believe in science! If god was proved to exist, it wouldn't be religion or faith anymore, it would be in the realm of science! I think all atheists would believe in this proven god. In fact, as soon as god is proven, legions of scientists would wish to delve further: how does this proven god impact his influence? does he/she exist in another spatial dimension we cannot perceive? How come different cultures on Earth perceive and discovered him/her differently? How come he always manifests himself wearing those fruity white robes? =D
But seriously, I think the difference between a theist and an atheist is that atheists have gone through the critical thinking and realized how improbable the existence of a god is, and therefore refuse to belief it without further evidence! The intention is to afford religious beliefs no undue favor, but treat them the same as other equally unproven stories.
If I asked a rational person if they believed pink unicorn-like sentient beings orbited the dwarf planet Pluto, they will not believe it. They do not need to empirically disprove that theory before they choose to disbelief it. In a scientific or social setting, the burden is on the person putting the theory forward to prove the truth of the belief. The only difference with religion is that most theists were born into a world that believed an equally unproven religious doctrine, that is why these beliefs hold a higher validity status.
I can't be a theist just like I can't belief in pink unicorn-like sentient beings orbiting the dwarf planet Pluto without proof! I am not afraid of being wrong of either, because as soon as a telescope grabs the first pictures of pink unicorns around Pluto, I'll believe. Similarly, as soon as god is proved, I'll believe too. In fact, I believe the ensuing burgeoning scientific field of Deitology would be real interesting.