Why are creationists drawn to philosophy forums?

[Kuznetzova]

All over the internet, and in chat rooms, and in discussion forums far and wide, there is always some entrenched minority of Creationist Christians present in them. This is true on IRC. It was true on stickam. Second Life had a few small philosophy groups, who were also infected by Bible-thumping creationists. It was true on various other forums like this one, and this forum itself. But why is that? Why are creationists and religious zealots drawn to philosophy forums?

Before you shoot back a kneejerk response to this thread, please slowly and carefully review the following points:

• I invite you to visit one, or both, of the online encyclopedias of philosophy freely available on the internet. One of them is called Encyclopedia of Philosophy at the University of Tennessee at Martin.. The second one is called the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
• Visit either or both of those websites. Click through the articles located therein, randomly. Skim the articles and slow down when something interesting catches you. Perform this exercise for 2 to 3 hours. Within those hours of reading articles, you will not encounter the word "God" even a single time. Not even once. Mark my words.
• Creationists who loiter on philosophy forums have never exhibited a capacity to talk about Applied Ethics, Metaphysics, philosophy of science, epistemology, or any other established branch of philosophy. You never hear them using any of the established lingo from those subjects.
• You never see a creationist catch someone using a known Logical Fallacy. In almost every case, it is the creationist who himself is utilizing a known logical fallacy.
• A handful of very famous logical fallacies are worth mentioning in passing here: Reification Fallacy. Naturalistic Fallacy. The Is-Ought Fallacy.
• You never hear a creationist mention things such as "normative language" and "descriptive language". No other established lingo from Ethics appears in their posts.
• You never see a creationist talking at length about Intrinsic versus Extrinsic properties.
• You never hear nor see a creationist talk about theories of truth, such as consequentialism, or the Coherentist theory, or the Correspondence theory of truth.
• You never see a creationist discussing synthetic a priori statements and their relationship to knowledge.

Given the above list of observations, the question as to why creationists continue to invade forums is even more perplexing than ever. (I hate to make flat-out generalizations like I'm about to do,) but when you get down to brass tacks, creationists simply don't know the first thing about philosophy. Time and time again, their posts exhibit complete ignorance of all branches of the subject matter.


So why the heck are they here?


Bibliography,

http://plato.stanford.edu/

http://www.iep.utm.edu/

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Hume%27s_law

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/intrinsic-extrinsic/

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/consequentialism/

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/truth-coherence/

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant- ... #KinProCon

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moore/#3

[The Voice of Time]

While my knowledge of philosophy either history or subjects is not zero or in that direction even, I must say I don't have significant interest in or try to lead discussions into established philosophy. My constant attacks on Prof about what I think is repeated Naturalistic Fallacy is an exception of that rule. The Naturalistic fallacy and strawmen are examples of things I know about and which I have used when I talk, but you won't hear me use a lot of standard lingo on the whole. Does it really boost your efforts that much? I mean, philosophy is not a competition for memorizing either, and by my opinion a lot of the lingo I have heard just makes me roll my eyes and think like "Why do you have to make things so obscure and complicated? Why not just speak standard English FFS!" not to mention the times I get like "Does this person even understand the words he/she is using?" or "Is that an invented word? (neologism, to be complicated)" and last but not least "Does this word even have a standardized meaning?", because that is a topic which repeatedly makes talking in unusual or arcane lingo a bit of a problem for everybody involved. Namely: most words refer to concepts, and concepts refers to historical debates, and historical debates usually have all people trying to be the winner, and so eventually... history must repeat itself. Nobody seems afraid of singing Waterloo, to be metaphoric.

[Elizabeth44]

A motive that, to some degree, moves some professional (academic) philosophers to argue with creationists on occasion is the felt need to combat the insupportable hold that a particular mistaken view of the nature of science has on some supporters of the evolution story.

Some of these academic philosophers may very well find "special creation" views worthy of more consideration than this kind of view is usually given. [

Elizabeth

[reasonvemotion]

Kuznetzova.

From your post above, it raises all sorts of questions on your choice of avatar.

[Mark Question]

is philosophy weak or strong if creationists are drawn to philosophy forums?

[The Voice of Time]

Kuznetzova.

From your post above, it raises all sorts of questions on your choice of avatar.

I'm not religious, but even I know that Jesus has fairly little, that is nothing, to do with "creation", and most European religious people do not believe in creationism I think, especially those of the Protestant persuasion where Jesus has a much more significant role than in Catholicism or Orthodoxy.

[reasonvemotion]

Protestants believe that the sacrifice of Christ was sufficient for salvation and they follow essentially the same Bible as Catholics minus the Deuterocanonicals/Apocrypha.

[The Voice of Time]

Protestants believe that the sacrifice of Christ was sufficient for salvation and they follow essentially the same Bible as Catholics minus the Deuterocanonicals/Apocrypha.

I come from a purely protestant country (about 1% Catholics). Believe me, there is a lot of difference to what they believe in de facto, because they have different ways of viewing the same content and they pick out their pieces which they find interesting, and each protestant country has developed their own mini-culture surrounding their church is how I see it, some protestant churches drawing further away from Catholicism and some sticking a bit closer. In Norway Jesus is the man, Catholic influence from the past nearly zero, and the whole bible to people here, as I see it, could be summed up as "be benevolent as Mr. Jesus, he was a fine man". I was forced to go to church when I was very young, and I can't ever remember to have heard them talk old testament for instance, it was treated as just a compliment to the New Testament.

You can't sum up protestants through talk like that RE, it is very superficial, you must understand that the real religion doesn't work like that, religion work on the priest-to-priest and region to region level, and then on the state to state (or national-organizational) level. Each priest adds up to the sum of what interests the regional and national religious doctrine, and while in some countries it often works the other way also (Norway not being so much one), by large it is the priests who makes the biggest difference, and that counts for all religions.

[reasonvemotion]

There are so many people who have no idea of what is truth and what is not. Many times there are distorted and false messages being preached and what is disturbing is that people who do not know the scriptures are being deceived.

Why are people gullible and accepting of these false teachings. They do not read the Scriptures or they leave it to others to deliver its teachings without questioning or searching for it themselves in the Scriptures.

It is exactly as you have said and therein lies the opportunity to mix truth with deception.

You can't sum up protestants through talk like that RE, it is very superficial, you must understand that the real religion doesn't work like that, religion work on the priest-to-priest and region to region level, and then on the state to state (or national-organizational) level. Each priest adds up to the sum of what interests the regional and national religious doctrine, and while in some countries it often works the other way also (Norway not being so much one), by large it is the priests who makes the biggest difference, and that counts for all religions

I have debated enough on this topic on this Forum and there is a point where one has to stop.

All the answers to your questions are in the Scriptures, you only have to ask.

[The Voice of Time]

As an interesting side-note to that thought RE, I was reading a popular book called "Inside the Kingdom" about Saudi-Arabia, and in that book one has a classical example of the priest-to-priest influence, because the monarchy has to actively keep their priesthood in line so that their selection of verses from the Koran is on parallel with the political interests of the country. An example given in the book was one time when one of the monarchs was attending a sermon, and the Imam started talking verses dealing with aggression towards infidels, before the king stepped in and came with his own verses from the Koran dealing with the brotherhood of the Abrahamic Religions and the respect they should show for each other, the underlying political interest being that the former verses indicated that Americans were infidels, and the second as brothers in similar faith. There is an extensive religious police in Saudi-Arabia that works to keep the Imams within line of the acceptable, trying to avoid extremism for instance.

[Foma]

I wonder if you are ignoring the role philosophy has played and continues to play in supporting the status quo.

A vast majority of philosophers up until at least Schopenhauer's time spent a great deal of time in justifying not only the status quo but also the existence of some sort of divine spirit.

[Kuznetzova]

...then a creationist invades the thread, she says nothing about normative language. She talks about "truth" , but mentions nothing about various theories of truth from philosophy.

Is this a self-fulfilling prophecy or what?

[tillingborn]

I wonder if you are ignoring the role philosophy has played and continues to play in supporting the status quo.

A vast majority of philosophers up until at least Schopenhauer's time spent a great deal of time in justifying not only the status quo but also the existence of some sort of divine spirit.

There are a number of factors that I wonder whether you are ignoring. Western philosophy began when Thales challenged the status quo by arguing that events in the physical world had natural causes rather than being the whim of 'some sort of divine spirit'.
That was the essence of Pre-Socratic philosophy, but then along comes Socrates with his idea that the main purpose of philosophy is to work out how to lead a life that is most likely to get you into heaven. Turns out it involves humility, sacrifice and obedience. Plato, like a lot of Socrates' disciples, was an aristocrat with a vested interest in maintaining the status quo, so too Aristotle. The philosophical schools after those three were much more concerned with lifestyle than before, Stoicism and Epicureanism both stressed the same restraint in ambition that suited the ruling elite (I'm no expert, but I understand that Confucianism has the same interests). When the Romans came along, they adopted Greek philosophy and Stoicism in particular. Eventually they realised that cults are easier to maintain if there is a cult figure, they chose this bloke called Jesus Christ who had a bit of a following. It may be a coincidence, but Plato's more enthusiastic followers believed he was a son of the god Apollo and that his mother, Perictione, beautiful and aristocratic, was a virgin when her husband, Ariston, also very well connected, tried to force himself upon her. He failed and Apollo appeared before Ariston in a vision, which persuaded him to leave his wife alone until she gave birth to the god’s son. The thing is, toffs don't make good role models for the hoi polloi.
You should also consider that the philosophy of a civilization is fashioned in large part by it's philosophers, it would be strange if a group of people revered someone they believed advocated the antithesis of everything they believed. I think you are putting the cart before the horse, it is the status quo that supports philosophers who argue in their favour.

[SouthDakotaSkeptic]

Creationists often try to justify their beliefs "philosophically" (sophistically) through the use of something called the Transcendental Argument for God (TAG), which is the assuming the consequent fallacy dressed up in fancy-sounding language. Basically, they argue that Christianity / a literal interpretation of the Bible is the only logically possible worldview, so the truth of the Bible is presupposed and science / secularism / Hinduism / any non-evangelical worldview is presupposed to be false.

[Hjarloprillar]

Creationists often try to justify their beliefs "philosophically" (sophistically) through the use of something called the Transcendental Argument for God (TAG), which is the assuming the consequent fallacy dressed up in fancy-sounding language. Basically, they argue that Christianity / a literal interpretation of the Bible is the only logically possible worldview, so the truth of the Bible is presupposed and science / secularism / Hinduism / any non-evangelical worldview is presupposed to be false.

Or they simply enjoy being logically eviscerated
My sister is a creationist Maddie i said.. you ideas are crap.
Only an utter fool would believe the world was created in 4004 bc
I tested
you at 134 iq what happened.
She married a catholic now creationism is not an issue
how fickle is that.