The science versus religion issue in five words

April 25, 2016 • 4:00 pm

Reader Randy E. found this on tw**er, and it’s pretty funny:

IMG_1614

Of course “pics” here means “reliable evidence,” as of course there was no photography when most religions arose. But just think how many words theologians have written to circumvent this criticism!

42 thoughts on “The science versus religion issue in five words”

      1. How about why it doesn’t refute Ham? I wasn’t there to see him born so how do I know he didn’t spontaneously appear as a figment of my imagination? Of course, this is the exact ridiculous path the presuppositionalists go down, as they start explaining to you that you can’t know anything. Ultimately, the turtles end at God because God knows everything so he can tell us we don’t know anything, except of course that we know God exists because that’s the only thing we can know other than we don’t know anything but the one thing about how we don’t know anything…

      2. “I wonder why Ham thinks “were you there” refutes evolution but not xianity.”

        The “were you there?” is a gambit used by Ham-like creationists to reduce the standing of science – in particular science about past phenomena – closer to the level of “faith.” Especially when The Resurrection is under consideration. It’s the “I know you are but what am I” move as in “Sure, we Christians weren’t there to see Jesus resurrect, and it takes some faith, but YOU use faith too. Science wasn’t their either when X, Y or Z was supposed to be occurring!”

        So to them it’s not inconsistent; they are admitting to faith but are trying to even the field.

        2. Since creationists are usually interested in providing evidence and at least paying lip service to rational inquiry, I don’t think that’s a plausible explanation, at least as a primary motivation. Moderate religious types and accommodationists might be more open to the “everyone’s a fidelist” position, since they make a virtue out of multiple faiths rather than claim supremacy for one brand of it. It’s more a philosophical bait-and-switch than a straightforward example of skepticism.

          I think it more likely that the creationists simply go with a “common sense” approach and place human testimony above physical evidence, even when the latter is shown to be superior. It would explain why they elevate gospel writings over, say, radiometric dating or fossil evidence. Add in their belief that the books are inspired testimony of the Most Reliable Being In The Universe, and the “were YOU there” gambit makes a little more sense.

          1. reasonshark,

            Yes, creationists do pay lip-service to rational inquiry. But as I tried to get across, the “were you there?” card is played
            as a way of leveling the playing field by reducing the confidence science can have about events of the past. This is why it’s so typical to see Creationists try to divide science into “Operational Science” – this is the science that studies things now and which they can’t deny – and “Historical Science” – in which science studies past events, and they want to reduce the confidence placed in science there.
            And For instance:

            https://answersingenesis.org/what-is-science/what-is-science/

            “Just as evolutionists weren’t there to see evolution happen over several billion years, neither were creationists there to see the events of the six days of creation.

            So there is that reducing science down to the same level with the “you weren’t there either” gambit. And then they talk about differing presuppositions, and:

            “The difference is that creationists have the Creator’s eyewitness account of the events of creation, while evolutionists must create a story to explain origins without the supernatural.”

          2. Let’s say I write an affidavit claiming that another man told me he saw Ken Ham murder somebody. I wonder if Ham would describe my affidavit as an eyewitness account.

        3. Of course, in that case, the next move would be: “why should faith in what the Bible says take precedence over faith in what the methods of science seem to demonstrate?”

          1. Alas, the responses to that are predictable. If science is true, then there’s no meaning, morals, nor value to life; but if the Bible is true, then Jesus somehow gives us all three. If science is true, then when you die you’re dead; but if the Bible is true, then when you die you sing in the Heavenly Choir Eternal. If science is true, then we’re just pond scum that morphed into apes; but if the Bible is true, then we’re animated mud sculptures with an inherited sin disorder.

            I’m sure you know the drill….

            b&

            >

      3. Remember they see the Bible as eyewitness accounts (Except for the bits dictated to Moses by God). Even though the eyewitnesses no longer exist, they give great credence to the stories handed down through the generations – surely, if somebody made something up, they would be caught out.

  2. Images of a lady or a bearded dude in various food items, old cloth or walls etc. are not acceptable types of pics.

  4. I have mental images of some of the disciples reaching for their sketch books as Jesus walks in with bloody holes.

  5. This is brilliant as it is always their comment that ‘no one has ever seen something (complex) evolve.

  9. Dear Religion,

    Instagram to show that it’s still happening.

    Sincerely,
    Science.

    P.S. Or Tw**t me, whatever…

  10. Imagine if everyone in Jesus’ time had a cell phone. There never would have been any UFO sightings.

    1. There were Biblical UFO sightings?
      Oh, of course, the Ecclesiastes bad trip.

  11. Didn’t Oral Roberts have a photo of a hundred foot tall Hey-Suess telling him to build a church-hospital somewhere?, Oh, wait, maybe that was photo-shopped.

  12. I do love the quote, and I hate to say this, but there are in fact thousands of pics. That is to say, artists’ impressions.

    They vastly outnumber pics of the Big Bang, in fact.

    Not sure what that proves…

    cr

    1. Given the ease with which PaintShop can be used to fake a painting, right down to an individual grain of pigment…

      Among the claims I have seen recently; the Romans would have stripped him naked for maximum humiliation and would have used ropes to tie the arms, not nails.

      1. Well, in terms of humiliation, one gathers the Romans weren’t particularly bothered about Jesus one way or the other. So he probably would have got the standard deal of the day, whatever that was. (But I can quite see the Catholic church wouldn’t want nude Jesi hanging all over their walls).

        I believe death was actually caused by asphyxiation, so the ropes would have worked equally well. (They used ropes in Life of Brian, but then nails might have been a bit too gory for that. They also had little platforms for the crucifees to stand on – probably essential if they didn’t want to kill the actors).

        I’ve also read that nails, if used, would have had to be through the wrists, because if located in the palms they would have ‘pulled through’. I’m not aware if anyone’s carried out an experiment to check that. (vbeg)

        cr

          1. Oh yes, I do recall hearing of that. Guys musta been nuts. I’m not sure how accurately the original cponditions would have been replicated, though.

            cr

    1. It would if you had ignored the part of the post that equates “pics” to “reliable evidence”.

      It strikes me that if creationists could not use fallacious arguments such as:

      Ad Hominem (Argument To The Man),
      Affirming The Consequent,
      Amazing Familiarity,
      Ambiguous Assertion,
      Appeal To Anonymous Authority,
      Appeal To Authority,
      Appeal To Coincidence,
      Appeal To Complexity,
      Appeal To False Authority,
      Appeal To Force,
      Appeal To Pity (Appeal to Sympathy, The Galileo Argument),
      Appeal To Widespread Belief (Bandwagon Argument, Peer Pressure, Appeal To Common Practice),
      Argument By Dismissal,
      Argument By Emotive Language (Appeal To The People),
      Argument By Fast Talking,
      Argument By Generalization,
      Argument By Gibberish (Bafflement),
      Argument By Half Truth (Suppressed Evidence),
      Argument By Laziness (Argument By Uninformed Opinion),
      Argument By Personal Charm,
      Argument By Pigheadedness (Doggedness),
      Argument By Poetic Language,
      Argument By Prestigious Jargon,
      Argument By Question,
      Argument By Repetition (Argument Ad Nauseam),
      Argument by Rhetorical Question,
      Argument By Scenario,
      Argument By Selective Observation,
      Argument By Selective Reading,
      Argument By Slogan,
      Argument By Vehemence,
      Argument From Adverse Consequences (Appeal To Fear, Scare Tactics),
      Argument From Age (Wisdom of the Ancients),
      Argument From Authority,
      Argument From False Authority,
      Argument From Personal Astonishment,
      Argument From Small Numbers,
      Argument From Spurious Similarity,
      Argument Of The Beard,
      Argument To The Future,
      Bad Analogy,
      Begging The Question (Assuming The Answer, Tautology)
      Burden Of Proof,
      Causal Reductionism (Complex Cause),
      Contrarian Argument,
      Changing The Subject (Digression, Red Herring, Misdirection, False Emphasis),
      Cliche Thinking,
      Common Sense,
      Complex Question (Tying),
      Confusing Correlation And Causation,
      Disproof By Fallacy,
      Equivocation,
      Error Of Fact,
      Euphemism,
      Exception That Proves The Rule,
      Excluded Middle (False Dichotomy, Faulty Dilemma, Bifurcation),
      Extended Analogy,
      Failure To State,
      Fallacy Of Composition,
      Fallacy Of Division,
      Fallacy Of The General Rule,
      Fallacy Of The Crucial Experiment,
      False Cause,
      False Compromise,
      Genetic Fallacy (Fallacy of Origins, Fallacy of Virtue),
      Having Your Cake (Failure To Assert, or Diminished Claim),
      Hypothesis Contrary To Fact,
      Inconsistency,
      Inflation Of Conflict,
      Internal Contradiction,
      Least Plausible Hypothesis,
      Lies,
      Meaningless Questions,
      Misunderstanding The Nature Of Statistics (Innumeracy),
      Moving The Goalposts (Raising The Bar, Argument By Demanding Impossible Perfection),
      Needling,
      Non Sequitur,
      Not Invented Here,
      Outdated Information,
      Pious Fraud,
      Poisoning The Wells,
      Psychogenetic Fallacy,
      Reductio Ad Absurdum,
      Reductive Fallacy (Oversimplification),
      Reifying,
      Short Term Versus Long Term,
      Slippery Slope Fallacy (Camel’s Nose),
      Special Pleading (Stacking The Deck),
      Statement Of Conversion,
      Stolen Concept,
      Straw Man (Fallacy Of Extension),
      Two Wrongs Make A Right (Tu Quoque, You Too) and
      Weasel Wording

      then they would have very little to say.

        1. What a useful list. Here’s my favorite:

          ARGUMENT FROM FALLIBILITY

          (1) Human reasoning is inherently flawed.

          (2) Therefore, there is no reasonable way to challenge a proposition.

          (3) I propose that God exists.

          (4) Therefore, God exists.

        2. No, not that one. This one:

          ARGUMENT FROM BLINDNESS (II)

          (1) God is love.

          (2) Love is blind.

          (3) Stevie Wonder is blind.

          (4) Therefore, Stevie Wonder is God.

          (5) Therefore, God exists.

          1. Fun, aren’t they?

            I like these, from near the bottom (there are 666 in total):

            KAREN ARMSTRONG’S ARGUMENT FROM SOPHISTICATED THEOLOGY
            (1) All the new critiques of religion are unsophisticated, facile, theologically incompetent, and misunderstand religion.
            (2) Mocking the angry, cruel, unjust god of the Old Testament has little effect on sophisticated moderates.
            (3) Religion isn’t about the absurdity or implausibility of so many religious beliefs.
            (4) Rather, living a certain sort of life makes a person religious.
            (5) Therefore, God exists.

            KAREN ARMSTRONG’S ARGUMENT FROM APOPHATICISM (II)
            (1) Apophaticism shows that God is ineffable.
            (2) Thus talk about God literally has no content at all.
            (3) Thus God transcends all human attempts at understanding.
            (4) God as a powerful creator, supernatural personality realistically understood and rationally demonstrable — is a recent phenomenon.
            (5) The idea of God is actually a symbol of indescribable transcendence.
            (6) Many people experience indescribable transcendence.
            (7) Therefore, God exists.

          2. The first time I heard that one, as a joke from a friend on a road trip many many moons ago, I couldn’t stop laughing for several minutes.

            b&

            >

    2. It’s a fake! I tried Google Translate on it and the only word that came up, curiously enough, was ‘krill’.

      (Wondering if it relates to Jonah and the Whale, instead?)

      cr

Comments are closed.