Monday, April 20, 2009

Great Definition of Creationism

Courtesy of Stephen Wells:

"Creationism is biology for people who think the animal kingdom consists of horsies, doggies, kitties and fishies."

No details needed.

8 comments:

A World Quite Mad said...

Oh, that's bloody brilliant! My biologist mother-in-law will get a kick out of that! :D

alex said...

So people like Robert Grossetest, Gregor Mendel and Louis Pasteur are merely exceptions that prove the rule, or they make a mockery of the "rule"?

ScienceAvenger said...

Neither. They are people from another era and should be judged as such, not by modern standards. The implicit assumption of such statements, that scientists and thinkers from from antiquity who held notions we know to be bizarre today would have held those same notions were they to have lived today is absurd in the extreme.

And BTW, exceptions to not prove anything except that said rules are not 100% perfect, but then, evry thinking person should understand this already.

Troublesome Frog said...

I'm pretty sure that Grosseteste did not believe in the germ theory of disease. Maybe we should revisit that idea as well.

ScienceAvenger said...

Exactly TF. If we examined the beliefs of thinkers of old, we'd find all sorts of idiocy, by todays standards. They were racists and sexists, often didn't know about things we consider basic, like cells, atoms, a sun-centered solar system, and the waning value of the horse. Creationist reference to thinkers of old is just another example of cherry-picking towards a desired end, rather than an honest evalaution of data prior to drawing a conclusion.

alex said...

"Creationism is biology for people who think the animal kingdom consists of horsies, doggies, kitties and fishies."

No details needed EXCEPT FOR THE FACT THAT I'M ONLY TALKING ABOUT /MODERN DAY/ CREATIONISM, AND I'M ONLY TALKING ABOUT CERTAIN TYPES OF CREATIONISM, NOT THE KIND THAT, SAY, FRANCIS COLLINS BELIEVES IN. I SHOULD EXCLUDE HIM FROM MY MOCKERY BECAUSE HE'S A MUCH BETTER SCIENTIST THAN I AM.

ScienceAvenger said...

Noooo, I should exclude Francis Collins because he's not a creationist. He's a Christian, yes, but he accepts evolutionary science. It's the second part that matters, not the first. He's no more a creationist than Einstein.
As a matter of record he's a better scientist than me, true, since I'm not a scientist at all, nor have I ever claimed to be.

Was there a point to all that spittle?

Troublesome Frog said...

EXCEPT FOR THE FACT THAT I'M ONLY TALKING ABOUT /MODERN DAY/ CREATIONISMI think that the word "is" covers that pretty well. It was OK to believe in demons causing sickness a few centuries ago. These days it is a sign that you've missed out on modern science.

Really, Alex. You're getting a little scary.