Actual experience shows that scientific hypothesis can accurately predict the future. Not ALL the future, but enough of it to be useful.

How much we need is dependent on the person - and is not a good way to decide what is truth. Con-men make an excellent living promising people what they "need"

/Bevin

Exactly. Useful but not complete. Only God knows the complete future.

Only when god promises something he can be trusted. I don't have any problem being dependant on God. Humans come and go. They are special but they can let you down but God never lets one down.

Summary:

There are no short-age recent-creation global-flood detailed models that predict the world around us accurately

The detailed long-age evolution/continental-drift model does predict the world around us accurately

Genesis is written in simplified and symbolic language addressed at people with a completely wrong picture of the physical world and knowledge of only a very small part of the Earth's surface

But some people find evolution emotionally unsatisfying, and therefore it is incorrect and we should read Genesis as a literal scientific account of the whole earth's history

/Bevin

From my point of view, your world is a dream world. It is a world where pleasant-emotional-feeling is everything and unpleasant-truth is assumed not to exist.

There are times when I envy people with your mind-set, blasting down life's highway, and feeling groovy - I see them in the Catholic Church, in the Later Day Saints, in the SDA, in the eastern religions, in the drug-cultures, in the environmental movements, etc. Their lives look like fun...

Then there are times when I see that way of predicting the future has utterly failed them - and they are instead smeared all over the guard rail that they failed to discern.

Then I look at my life - and decide that the real world is much more interesting than the shallow emotional highs that pretending emotion is everything gives

/Bevin

Your point of view reveals that you can neither perceive nor predict what either of our worlds is like. This is partially because you assume rather than attend. You did not anticipate my interpretation of the Flood story. Neither did you attend it. For if you had, you would have observed far-reaching implications for your material world.

On the contrary, C.S. Lewis, whom you find so lacking, was able to predict your attitudes 60 years ago. In "The Abolition of Man" he describes "the [individual] who has never been able to conceive of the Atlantic as anything more than so many million tons of cold salt water."

It is the result of propaganda masquerading as education, and so it is that "We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful."

You know Bevin, what I think? I think it is incomprehensible to you that some people who are creationists are not weak minded individuals who need a crutch. The reality is that there are strong, secure, self-confident, happy, content men and women who believe the creation story because they trust God that what he says he means. I know you say you do as well. That is good. I can't understand your position but I am not here to judge you.

But you need to also realize that there are highly intelligent people (people way smarter than me who have many doctoral degrees and are brilliant) who do not believe evolution despite all the "evidence" but choose to believe the Bible. Yes it is a choice but it isn't a choice made because of ignorance or unstable psycholigically messed up people. (Sure, some such people exist who are creationists, but the same could be said for some evolutionists.)

In the end, the only real prediction or future knowledge that impacts us all is how the world will end and that Jesus is coming back. Oh sure, we need to take care of our planet and be responsible etc, but in the end no matter how careful and smart we all are, it is going to end and Jesus is going to come back. That is what matters more than creationism or evlution.

Thank you - that is a refreshing contrast to EDD's insults.



I have spent my entire working life (30 years) in an environment where a person with a B.Sc. is low on the totem-pole, where Ph.D's are common, and where academics, researchers, and engineers mingle.

I have also spent a lot of time around the medical profession.

The most important lesson I have learnt from this is that "smart" in one area does not mean smart in another, and that within any area of expertise there are people who have specialized in it, and who are still more often wrong than right and in constant combat with their peers about their area of expertise.

One just has to look at the millions of educated, stable, fully-functional people who are committed Later Day Saints to realize that emotional needs cause people to both select their inputs and select their analysis of those inputs.



Agreed

/Bevin

I regret that you feel insulted. It's quite surprising that a person who continually describes me as deluded by emotionally satisfying nonsense should be so easily offended.

You unburdened yourself of your opinion about my thinking. In a setting of discussion, it seemed only reasonable that I should be allowed to reciprocate. Clearly that was a mistake on my part, for which I apologize.

At the risk of being accused of further insults, I would like to point out that for as long as we have written records, thinking people have made a distinction between 'smart' and 'wise.'

Smart is easy. Wise is-- otherwise.

I have friends who are sincere college-educated adult members of the Church of Jesus Christ of the Later Day Saints.

Trying to understand them, and trying to understand why such a choice does not work for me, has led me to understand that everyone strives for an position which is emotionally satisfying for them.

However exactly what makes up an emotionally satisfying understanding of the world varies greatly between people. I put almost no weight on factors such as emotional-pleasantness, purpose/meaning, being part of an elite social group, and a lot of weight on matching measurable facts about the universe and being able to predict. This matches the mind-set of most of the people I work with. My wife, and most SDA/LDS/RC/JW/USA_conservative_christian, are almost the opposite in what they think is important and what is not.

However, this does not make my wife, nor other members of this group, disfunctional. They are absolutely middle-of-the-road typical fully-functional members of a very large fraction of society. But from the extreme end where I, and many of the people I work with, exist - yes, they appear to not know or correctly analyse the issues.

And this appearance is reinforced when you, as a typical member of this group, explain your position in terms of feelings of meaning and purpose, and suggest that I am gelded since I don't perceive these unmeasurable undefinable properties as important.

/Bevin

This is a fundamental error. Neither meaning nor purpose are feelings.

mean·ing
1. Something that is conveyed or signified; sense or significance.
2. Something that one wishes to convey, especially by language: The writer's meaning was obscured by his convoluted prose.
3. An interpreted goal, intent, or end: "The central meaning of his pontificate is to restore papal authority" Conor Cruise O'Brien.
4. Inner significance: "But who can comprehend the meaning of the voice of the city?" O. Henry.

pur·pose
n.
1. The object toward which one strives or for which something exists; an aim or a goal: "And ever those, who would enjoyment gain/Must find it in the purpose they pursue" Sarah Josepha Hale.
2. A result or effect that is intended or desired; an intention. See Synonyms at intention.
3. Determination; resolution: He was a man of purpose.
4. The matter at hand; the point at issue.

Your continual insistence that they are feelings, despite evidence to the contrary is irrational.



An interesting and eclectic agglomeration of qualitatively different things. For one who values logic so highly, you are extremely careless with your categories. Perhaps that's why you are quick to perceive insults. Or perhaps you put more weight on emotional-unpleasantness.

To former generations it would have been considered self-evident that a worldview consisting entirely of two categories 1)Whatever is measurable and 2)everything else, is clearly missing something.

Really, "The Abolition of Man" might be worth your while.