What our world has become.
POSTED BY: Fremdfirma
UPDATED: Monday, June 29, 2026 21:34
VIEWED: 23018
PAGE 12 of 20
Quote:
Originally posted by rue:
I knew someone who knew someone ... who was a petroleum geologist by training and trade. And who was also someone who followed a creationist religion. On the one hand he would date strata as being so many million year old, on the other he believed the earth was only ~5000 years old.
The problem with rampant contextualism is that one can have a fractured approach to a single reality.
Well, with all due respect to that guy, I'm a guy who believes in a "creationist" religion and who also believes that the earth is 4.5b years old and the universe is 14.5b years old. I happen to believe that truth is that which corresponds to what is actually the case. It seems pretty compelling that the earth is old so to hold a belief that doesn't correspond with reality isn't really very intellectually responsible. Of course, God's existence is still and open question, so I also happen to think that we should pursue the truth of that matter as well. /soapbox
Maybe the solution to what you describe as "rampant contextualism" is to recognize the3 singular context of reality.
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I agree. But while his example is extreme (I truly wonder how he never put the two ideas side by side in his head) I've met many people who do similar things. Iraq - started on a lie but a justified war nonetheless. Or, to use SignyM's example, the US culture praises goodness but rewards greed. And so on.
Anyway, I have to go (family stuff), but I truly hope we all can discuss this further.
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Quote:
Originally posted by rue:
(I truly wonder how he never put the two ideas side by side in his head)
Very simple, he probably believes that the world was created with "apparent age", meaning that those layers he was dating to millions and billions of years ago were actually only a few thousand years old but had the appropriate balance of isotopes to appear much older. This is the sort of mental gymnastics required to be a Young-Earth Creationist.
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Quote:
Originally posted by Causal:Quote:
Originally posted by FutureMrsFIllion:
So because you would have walked by this man - you are a better human being than those that say they wouldn't? They are lying? Or self righteous?
Well, I'm not sure where you might have gotten that impression, but thanks for the accusations.
I'm not saying I'm better than the people who would stop. I'm just saying I'm not worse. And this thread (at least, when I wrote my initial post) had an awful lot of sneering about the people who would have walked. So my point was not that I'm better than others, but that I'm not worse. You've got the time and the loose change to stop and appreciate? Good for you. But don't look down on me for choosing not to.
And I'm quite sure that most of those who claim they would have stopped aren't lying. But a goodly number have been self-righteous about it--as if their choice is somehow morally superior to mine. And it's that implication that I resent. I think I have the freedom to be entertained at a place and a time of my choosing, especially if I have somewhere else to be. I don't want people acting as though I'm somehow a soulless robot because my choice would have been to keep walking.Quote:
Casual, I always stop to listen, I always drop a little change and I always put money in a beggars hand. That is who I am and what I do, doesn't make me better than anyone else and doesn't make me self righteous either.
Not saying it does. I'm not sure exactly why you're taking me completely personally. I'm not suggesting that everyone who has said "I'd stop" is a self-righteous prig, and I'd appreciate it if you would recognize that that's not the case. But I don't always stop, and don't always drop change, and don't always put money in a beggar's hand. And that doesn't make me a monster. So perhaps what you're really saying is, "I'm not self-righteous!" to which I reply, "I know; I never said you were." And what I'm really saying is, "I'm not a soulless bastard!" To which I await your reply.
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As I am sure you know I do not think you are a soulless bastard. Quite the opposite. But, at the same time when you make a broad statement that "there is a lot of self-righteousess comin of this thread" you imply that anyone that doesn't agree with you is self-righteous. I simply choose to point out that in saying that, well it makes you sound as if you are. Slippery slope my friend. At some point in the next 500 years or so we have GOT to stop making personal attacks in these threads. I would hold my breath, but then I would die. "crap:
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There was n article in the NY times about Marcus Ross, a creationist paleontologist.
I don't know how to split a link (
sorry!), but here's the intro:
His subject was the abundance and spread of mosasaurs, marine reptiles that, as he wrote, vanished at the end of the Cretaceous era about 65 million years ago. The work is “impeccable,” said David E. Fastovsky, a paleontologist and professor of geosciences at the university who was Dr. Ross’s dissertation adviser. “He was working within a strictly scientific framework, a conventional scientific framework.”
But Dr. Ross is hardly a conventional paleontologist. He is a “young earth creationist” — he believes that the Bible is a literally true account of the creation of the universe, and that the earth is at most 10,000 years old.
For him, Dr. Ross said, the methods and theories of paleontology are one “paradigm” for studying the past, and Scripture is another. In the paleontological paradigm, he said, the dates in his dissertation are entirely appropriate. The fact that as a young earth creationist he has a different view just means, he said, “that I am separating the different paradigms.”
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Quote:
Originally posted by FutureMrsFIllion:
As I am sure you know I do not think you are a soulless bastard. Quite the opposite.
Thanks for saying. Sorry I got touchy.
Quote:
But, at the same time when you make a broad statement that "there is a lot of self-righteousess comin of this thread" you imply that anyone that doesn't agree with you is self-righteous. I simply choose to point out that in saying that, well it makes you sound as if you are.
I'm don't think that I can agree with the notion that my statement implies what you think it does, but I'm sorry I made you feel that way.
Quote:
At some point in the next 500 years or so we have GOT to stop making personal attacks in these threads. I would hold my breath, but then I would die.
Don't do that! Who'd bestow titles??
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from the article:
"For him, Dr. Ross said, the methods and theories of paleontology are one “paradigm” for studying the past, and Scripture is another. In the paleontological paradigm, he said, the dates in his dissertation are entirely appropriate. The fact that as a young earth creationist he has a different view just means, he said, “that I am separating the different paradigms.”
Either he has a serious fractures in his view of reality, or he's a hypocrite comfortable with pretending to be a scientist.
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Back to contextualization: Rue once gave this example of even animals being able to abstract from experience: If animals couldn't abstract from context, then each appearance of (say) water- in a bowl, a puddle, falling from the sky, in a stream- would lead to a whole welter of questions each and every instance: Do I fight it? Mate with it? Avoid it? Eat it?
Somehow they are able to abstract a generalized feature (water) from its context. I concluded from this example that the real function of brains is to be able to abstract a general principle from a welter of details (context).
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Always look upstream.
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Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
Back to contextualization: Rue once gave this example of even animals being able to abstract from experience: If animals couldn't abstract from context, then each appearance of (say) water- in a bowl, a puddle, falling from the sky, in a stream- would lead to a whole welter of questions each and every instance: Do I fight it? Mate with it? Avoid it? Eat it?
.
Who say they don't? Water in a river is a whole different experience than water in a puddle and I think an animal would indeed contemplate before acting. Avoid or drink, definitely.
But if the animal didn't naturally view water in context, it would ask those questions any time it encountered water at all. The same puddle, the same questions, every day.
No one says the ability to break away from context isn't there, but even that requires a certain context: the will to do so. We pay attention to what is already familiar because we want to pay attention, not because we are compelled to do so. Familiarity breeds safety and inattention. That's what frees us up to focus on particular things for any length of time at all.
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Quote:
Originally posted by marina:
But Dr. Ross is hardly a conventional paleontologist. He is a “young earth creationist” — he believes that the Bible is a literally true account of the creation of the universe, and that the earth is at most 10,000 years old.
I believe the literal truth of the Bible, too. But there's some contention on what's meant to be read literally, literally-concretely, and figuratively. For instance, where it says Jesus will return with a sword in his mouth--surely that's figurative, right? So what else might be? Or take the 10,000 year thing. That's predicated on a particular reading of a Hebrew word with not one but three literal definitions.
And just to keep us all honest, let's not play epistemological imperialism with the scientific method. That just follows logical positivism, which fell out of vogue 50 years ago (due, I might add, to an abysmal failure to defend its first principles).
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