LitNet se briewekolom hier:
http://litnet.co.za/Category/menings/seminaarkamer/senet-briewe
kry heelwat briewe van kreasioniste. Ek het die afgelope week of drie nogal heelwat pret gehad met hulle. Sien bv. hier:
en hier:
Dalk is daar 'n paar lede hier wat lus is om by die geveg te gaan betrokke raak. Jy sal egter baie geduld nodig hê… 
Ongelukkig sluit dìè vereiste my dan uit. 
My grootste probleem met kreasioniste is dat hulle ’n klomp is wat duidelik onbevoeg is om enige wetenskaplike argumentslyn te volg, en ewe skielik van mening is dat wanneer dit by ewolusie kom, hulle meer weet en verstaan as al daai derduisende spesialiste wat hul lewens toegewy het om die teorie en bewyse vir ewolusie te bemeester en uit te brei. En dìt omdat hulle ’n hele vyf minute met hul sprokiesboek en twee minute op ICR en CMI se webwerwe gespandeer het. Dit blyk nie moontlik te wees nie dat ’n kreasionis ooit iets nuuts sal leer daaroor.
Dit vat ’n spesiale soort arrogansie om sò verwaand op te tree. En ek het bra min tyd vir sulke lafhede.
'Luthon64
Sterkte Brain. Het iemand al ooit 'n kreasionist oor tuig?
Die argument op News 24 is nou al 6 maande aan die gang en is nou net tussen Christine en Athiest oor geloof.
Ja ek weet dis 'n stryd: maar ja ek het twee kreasioniste al oortuig…in ongeveer 50 jaar!
Die doel is nie om die kreasioniste van enigiets te oortuig nie. Hulle koppe is inderdaad klankdig. Die debat kan wel van nut wees indien dit aan min of meer neutrale waarnemers demonstreer dat die kreasioniste stapelgek is.
@ Brianvds: I’ve been following the debate and made some small contributions but as Mefiante said it is useless to argue with religionists like these. They are hard-wired to misinterpret information that doesn’t suit their genetic codes, value systems, memes whatever. They will e.g ignore your repeated question to spell out the theory of creationism; what’s more are incapable of moving outside the quasi-historic bible stories. When I researched my book, I questioned the validity and indeed the very existence of ‘historic’ figures such as Moses Jesus etc. No evidence exists that Moses actually existed (And I base this on work done by a number of theologists). He certainly never wrote the first five books of the Bible. That is well documented. I also tried to find ANY mention of Moses in Egyptian Hieroglyphs or of the role played by the so-called millions of Jews that eventually fled Egypt (of course Egypt as we know it now was a very different geopolitical entity then.It struck me as weird that no such evidence has to date been found despite the careful carved-in-stone records of the Egyptians. One would think that the demise of a whole army and its leader would be recorded somewhere, despite the tendency of the Egyptians to deface some unpopular Pharoes.
Ask a Christian a very simple question: Who wrote the Synoptic Gospels? They either don’t know or say it was written by the original disciples of Jesus. This illustrates their ignorance of the Bible’s biography and the very essence of their belief system. Yet they attack scientific research! It boggles the mind!
Maybe we should stop defending evolution and attack the basis of false belief systems, but I won’t hold my breath. In any case that is the purpose of my book which by the way is not a great seller for obvious reasons.
If memory serves, the ancient Egyptians also lived right through Noah’s flood without noticing.
As I said before, the idea of debating the creationists is not to convince them of anything, but simply to show to more or less neutral observers that creationism (which, to uninformed people, can have considerable surface appeal) is nonsense.
You are of course right that one should focus less effort on defending science and more on attacking creationism, which is why I keep on asking them for their model. I try to do so without attacking religion in general, because I don’t want to alienate religious, but otherwise more or less rational, people.
This creationism thing has become a veritable epidemic in South Africa, especially among Afrikaners (who, ever since losing their political power, have been in crisis and have thus turned to Jesus in a big way). The other day my pupils at the school where I teach asked me what I think of the Big Bang. They asked because the science teacher told them they shouldn’t believe in it and should believe the Bible instead!
Lucky thing is, next year I take over as science teacher. It looks like I’m going to have my work cut out for me to undo all the damage that the current one is doing.
;D ;D ;D
Lucky thing is, next year I take over as science teacher.
Well, yesterday she told me how fast her class is making progress. She did the lizard, the fish and the frog with them in a single day!
Of course, to a biologist the phrase “the fish” is like the proverbial red flag to a bull - is she aware that there is no such thing as “the” fish, and that there are thousands upon thousands of species of fish? Presumably she does, but did she tell this to the kids? Did she go to some lengths to show them how all of these fish are nevertheless built on remarkably the same body plan? That humans have that same body plan? Did she bother to go find photos on the web of fish embryos and human embryos so that she could show the kids how remarkably similar they are early in their development? I doubt that, especially since she apparently rejects evolution and will therefore not be primed to notice this sort of thing.
In the meantime, every now and then she sends someone to call me out of my class to come help her with the science bits she doesn’t understand - her only knowledge of the subject she teaches is whatever is in the kids’ textbook (and the bloody thing is peppered with blatant errors). She also earns quite a bit more than I do.
That’s how it goes when schools appoint people with qualifications in education instead of qualifications in the subjects they teach.
Oh well, we’ll put it all right next year… >:D
According to the bible there are at least 2 fish and 5 loaves. That’s now unless Jesus is around, then there’s enough fish for EVERYBODY!
Somebody really should set her straight here, you can’t deny empirical evidence like that.
That is an interesting hypothesis: that there were only two species of fish until Jesus multiplied them. He was certainly no loafer.
And a good thing too. In botany, I found Smiths’ Sea Fishes an indispensable specimen press.
R.
For really recalcitrant specimens, “Field guide to world beetles” also works wonders.
Trivia question: Who had an “inordinate fondness for beetles”?
The Flying Spaghetti Monster. He touched them all with his noodly appendage.
Yoko Ono?
No, she just feeds off them.
'Luthon64
Was it not Darwin who said this?
Hint: There is a difference between the person who said it, and the one who had the inordinate fondness for beetles.