samedi 5 octobre 2013

Heard of Libby Anne?

Brought up as Creationist. Let's skip how Georgia Purdom [PhD Molecular Biology] describes her change of mind for now and go to her response.

[Here is the series: 1) Creation vs Evolution : Heard of Libby Anne? , 2) Did Libby Anne misunderstand at least Something about Young Earth Creationism? Or: Why don't they teach logic in these schools?! 3) Further Faulty Logic in Craig A. James's "refutation of a dialogue" 4) Stupid Word Game, Craig A. James? 5) Whose assumptions are best or least well proven? 6) Somewhere else : Is the Genesis "the Basis of the Whole Bible" or are there others? 7) Great Bishop of Geneva! : How is Chick erroneous about where we got the Bible from? 8) Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere : ... to Hitchens on Revelation, Decalogue and Evidence for Moses. 9) Correspondence de / of / van Hans-Georg Lundahl : Notifying Craig A. James of a refutation of his refutation ... ]

If your beliefs can’t stand up to scrutiny, you need to rethink your beliefs. If cutting yourself off from anything that might ever challenge your beliefs is the only way you can keep them, you have a serious problem.


From Rebutting Ken Ham’s Response

Oh, sure. However high school and friends (or sometimes non-friends) you are automatically exposed to might not be the best occasion. It is the age that God has usually meant for starting families and not for debating your beliefs with others. Secular powers have lately made a Hell for people that age by near compulsory high school plus near compulsory co-education. Lately meaning last century or perhaps just last fifty years - since before I was there anyway!

Since homeschooling in Vienna ended at my age 11 1/2 to when I was forced to get to a boarding school after a short second home schooling, my beliefs and right wing loyalties were challenged all right. At the boarding school they were challenged. It did not mean I ceased to believe the Bible, only I started to believe the Catholic Church (in its historic tradition) in order to do so. At University, in the Military, back at University, my beliefs were challenged. Every step of the way. I was labelled as a devout young man, because my father confessor encouraged it, because I enjoyed it as long as I secretly hoped to get out of Sweden into a Monastery and then get out of the Monastery into marriage with a nice Catholic girl outside Sweden. But very much also because certain someones were making my fight for my creed more difficult than it need be, even for a shy boy or young man, by stamping truly intellectual beliefs which I held to independently of devotion going up and down as "too much devotion or fervour".

It led to a first drop out from University, for social circumstances rather than Academic reasons (though I failed the one test I had time to prepare for in the year 92-93, it was not a big one either), to several changes of environment and ... challenges against my beliefs. In Sysslebäck a Catholic was challenged from Communist and Fundamentalist alike. And one with a not so ecumenic outlook from Liberal Christians as well.

I came to Sysslebäck in 95 and left it via prison (with asylum) - for a shooting which killed noone and which I consider as legitimate self defense. I came to Rosengård - and left it 2004. It is an immigrant dominated part of Malmö. There I had my last appartment.

I have toured Europe 2004 - 2005. I have toured France up to 2009. I am touring the Paris region as a homeless man since then. Everywhere I come, though most certainly not from everyone, I am by sufficient people ignored, pitied, stamped as alcoholic or madman, or I get my beliefs challenged. And in the Internet, I go where I get my beliefs challenged. Or where there is at least some half promise of it.

And I do challenge Scientists for debate. It is often not I that cop out.

Three or Ten Dimensions, with Bubbaman

Some things tend to make me yawn. You linked to a site saying I think more than once: "The author of this essay is trying to put religious logic into an atheist's argument. The professor would never do that." And a few more. Believe me, or watch, Atheists do argue lamely and do forget the façade of impeccable logic (and impeccable superiority to Christians therein) that is so much easier to keep up when no Christian is around to challenge it.

These dialogues are not made up.

And how is Craig A. James to know what the Atheist Professor said? Was he there? No, he just sees what mistakes the Atheist Professor made. But he does not give a better solution. The solution that he does give opens up other faults in the atheist logic, like begs the question where atheists think morality comes from in general, not at all limited to where they get their version of it for themselves.

The Premise of Duality is a religious concept, not a scientific one. The author of this essay is trying to put religious logic into an atheist's argument. The professor would never do that.


From: Refuting the Atheist Professor vs the Christian Student

Well, there goes the Professors argument for the argument of Lucretius. If Duality is unscientific it is also unscientific to have a preference and so to deny God on the charge of having "created evil despite being good". But also to have a morality above one's personal preference and binding it. Which has opened very dark passages of the history of the previous century. Up to congratulating policemen on their act of hysteria around the President for protecting him probably just from getting a slap in his face.

Miriam Carey, RIP!

Some people can't really receive gate crashers very well. In my much better case, I was of course not driving a car, but still: I woke up with a torch shining in my face and a rifle in front of it, answered calmly, and when the farmer knew I had been there for just one night and intended to be somewhere else the next, I got a very nice breakfast. Honey on the bread, milk in the coffee.

Sorry, rambling. Back to Libby Anne:

Second, I find the last part of this paragraph a bit insulting. Dr. Purdom doesn’t know me, and she wasn’t there when I was in college. The idea that I “fought for a while” and then “gave up” is ludicrous. I “fought” for months. And it wasn’t a college professor I was “fighting,” either. It was another student in my dorm, a student who found science and evolution fascinating and was himself fairly agnostic. I spent almost an entire year arguing with him about creation and evolution daily, and I continually went back to my sources, reread my books, and made sure I was using every young earth creationist argument in the book. I even took him to an Answers in Genesis conference. That’s not fighting “for a while.”


Again from Rebutting Ken Ham’s Response.

Months in her language is longer than a while. In mine, a while is so undefined it can for instance be months. She was not herself enjoying the kind of linguistics education that her hero Craig A. James recommends. And it seems this kind of prolonged exposure is precisely what certain people want to happen to Christians, especially "Evolution deniers". I boldened the word him in this quote, since this means there just might have been some kind of hormones into play as well.

Let us note this kind of prolonged exposure can have very different results, even for people finding people of other beliefs they can agree socially with. In Libby's case, apostasy followed (sorry for being cruder than Georgia Purdom), in mine Catholic Conversion and some other conversions of lifestyle too, in Cassandra Bernall's case she became a Goth Chick up to a conversion a few months before she died in the shooting, saying, famously, yes. Cassandra Bernall was physically eliminated. I was socially eliminated. Atheists and Goth Chicks that remain so tend to be encouraged. A recipe that sounds like a Lenin omelette (the one you famously cannot make without breaking eggs, you know, but in this recipy it is a moot point what he refers to as broken eggshells ...), yes to me it sounds like a Lenin omelette.

Back to Libby Anne:

In the end, I didn’t “give up.” Rather, I realized I had been wrong. There’s a big difference there. And once I saw that creationism didn’t actually hold water, and that evolution was supported by the evidence, I had the intellectual honesty to change my mind. Why? Because that’s what you do when you realize you were wrong.


Realising one has been wrong can sometimes be a kind of Stockholm Syndrome, i. e. a kind of giving up.

When I realise "I had been wrong", I say about what I realised it. And how wrong I had been. And what argument made me change my mind. At sixteen I realised I had been wrong to believe there were Bible believing Christians not so different from today's Protestants all along the Church History and beside the usually larger Catholic Church. I realised Protestantism is not a direct product of Matthew 28, but a by product of Catholicism, which comes from Matthew 28. I have never since wanted to be a Protestant. Except the first year and then only for a while, as a High Church Lutheran preparing for a negociated union with Rome. The other guys who had that plan drifted off very soon, I was living my life and - at the boarding school and out of it and up to including Sysslebäck, most of the time - I was living it badly. When I got around to the Catholic Church at age 20, 1988, I had things to confess.

Later I realised I had been wrong to presume Vatican II Catholicism is just Catholicism with a new outlook. So I became a Trad. And a few more conversions forth and back since. But never back to Protestantism.

Libby does not tell us what made her at once see creationism doesn't actually hold water. But here is one important thing she does tell us:

Does Dr. Purdom think I didn’t read those books too? Does Dr. Purdom not think my parents’ house was awash with creationist literature from early on? Does Dr. Purdom think that my parents never “asked questions” to make sure I really understood what I was being taught? If so, Dr. Purdom would be wrong, very, very wrong. Creationism was discussed at the dinner table, while working on family projects, and on car rides. My parents always discussed sermons with us after church, and our church frequently taught creationism from the pulpit using AiG materials.

...

I wonder if Ken Ham remembers the little girl in braids who stood in awe in his presence and eagerly asked him for his autograph all those years ago. Probably not. But that little girl, that little girl fascinated by science and ever eager to find truth, she’s still here. She’s just sitting on the other side of the fence now.


I think some of the people that remember me being curious about dinosaurs and how long ago they lived (Evolutionist scenario), and listening eagerly to how stars form and how gravity holds them in galactic orbits shook their heads at my change of mind at age 9. The first time in my life ma had a chance to educate me on her own. And, if still alive, they still shake their heads.

But girls that they do not want me to make Catholic, Young Earth Creationist, Thomist and Reactionary in moral, legal and other philosophy, or Geocentric, they do tend to shut them off from me. As if they did not agree about - what was it Libby said? Yeah:

First, if the only way to preserve your creationist beliefs is to not have them challenged – i.e. not attend a college that teaches any contrary view – that says more about your beliefs than anything else. [...] If your beliefs can’t stand up to scrutiny, you need to rethink your beliefs. If cutting yourself off from anything that might ever challenge your beliefs is the only way you can keep them, you have a serious problem.


I do not have it.

But they seem to think I have never read the right books. Believe me, from their point of view I have. I was a pesky, soon fat little researcher in Evolutionist and Heliocentric (and all that modern Cosmology) lore. Now I am not. I am a refuter of such things. What was it again that Craig A. James said the Philosophy Professor should have done?

But real professors (especially in philosophy) are faced with smart-alec kids like this in every freshman Philosophy 101 class. Most of them learn to gently correct these young hotheads so that they can get on to important lessons.

Professor: So what is the point you are making, Young Man ?

Student : Sir, my point is your Philosophical Premise is flawed.

Professor: Flawed ? Can you explain how?


A real professor would have cut this student off by now and suggested some reading and a writing assignment to force the student to defend his position. And while writing the essay, the student would probably discover his errors.


And if the student has not realised he was wrong, at least the Professor has shut off the discussion, so the other students are cut off from anything that might challenge their belief systems. Maybe the Professors produced by modern education are better at Football (as Kent Hovind is good at Tennis) than at serious argumentation. Must laud the candour with which Craig A. James admits this.

That is one reason for putting Creationist arguments in blog form - essays here and close to in extenso discussions on the other blog I linked to. Because that way students do not depend on their professors' loud voice and authority. They are not cut off unless they want to.

These dialogues are not made up.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
Nanterre UL
St Placidus and Martyrs
of Messina
5-X-2013

PS, I do not know on what point Libby gave up defensibility of Young Earth Creationism, but I do know that as one try was to make me realise the Bible I believed divine came from the Catholic Church I did not yet believe divine, and this led me to become a Catholic, so one other try was Distant Star Light Problem and this led me to Geocentrism./HGL

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