I do not think that was a joke…
Well, I’m not a huge fan of resolving apparent conflicts by trying to read texts in a particular way to arrive at something not known to be actually false. I think one should probably interpret religious texts with the same sorts of canons of construction with which one reads other texts, and when I do that I am confronted with what I regard as a variety of conflicts with reality that are nonresolvable.
Treating the text as something which MUST be true, so that any epistemic or linguistic trick in the book MUST be employed if it is the only way out of a difficulty, seems to me to get the whole process of inquiry wrong. Instead of asking what the authors of a text meant, it asks what sorts of meanings might be attributed to the authors without making them wrong – but that is only a guide to particular sorts of things they could (and often “could” only by really stretching the bounds of plausibility) have meant, not a guide to what they actually did mean.
The difficulty here is a sort of “de gustibus non est disputandum” problem. I personally cannot stomach any of those methods of solving the problem. They seem to me to violate a whole range of rules which, though practical rather than logical in character, are the guides to sound thinking. But the falsity of the results reached by those methods, though it seems likely, is often not really demonstrable.
And, too, I know people who really do more or less fit Gould’s NOMA, who regard religious texts as largely allegorical attempts to make statements about morality or human nature or some such thing. Eliminate religion’s “truth” claims in favor of some sort of set of moral postulates or lessons, and you eliminate conflict. Now, I would not read the core texts of these people’s faiths in that way, but they do seem to read them that way.
So, I’m not sure I really disagree with you, exactly. I generally find religions that do make truth claims absurd, and religions that don’t make truth claims irrelevant. But I find that “religion” is too broad a category of views for me to say that “religion” conflicts with science. In my experience, it usually does; but not always. I could not square any religion that was worth the trouble of believing with an evidence-and-inquiry based epistemology, but some people are willing to believe in religions which I would place in the “not worth the trouble” category.
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Why not? Do you have some information I don’t?
John asked him who he got his self study in information technology from.
It was definitely a joke. 
He was teasing because John didn’t really read his answer carefully. 
Oh it most certainly was. BTW, my original intent was to just ignore it. I did start consider answering him legitimately, but then thought, why waste a good joke…
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No, I asked him where he got his biology from. I don’t think you’re reading carefully.
That’s not so scary, then. So how about providing a serious answer?
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He said “information education” John. 
That’s the part you quoted.
You have apparently misinterpreted that phrase as “information technology”, which it most certainly is not.
Ok, fine I will. At first I wasn’t sure if your question was sincere, or another chance at a slam on those “creationists who only get their information from one site”.
But since you’ve asked more than once, I feel your question is legit. And since I have a lot I could share about myself, bear with me (I’m at work), and I’ll try to share a lot more tonight. Sound good?
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I’ll let @jeffb clear it up. Maybe I did understand him wrong. There was a question about how much science he had studied in general, so I took his second sentence to mean information technology, but perhaps that isn’t what he meant.
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Yes. It’s just a continuation of the need for you to talk about the things you mention or not mention the things you don’t want to talk about.
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If someone said they taught themselves physics from Flat Earth websites you might wonder how well they understand physics.
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I was going to ignore this, because I thought I explained well my position on interpretation. But I’ll bite: what facts do YEC ignore? And why are they facts rather than interpretations? Perhaps it should be a new thread depending on how long your list is.
I believe he has explained his career field is in IT. You can teach yourself that. I learned on my own how to understand basic html when I had to take over website maintenance for my job. I could learn a lot more if I cared about it.
Also, I do care how evolution is taught currently or I wouldn’t come on this forum and ask questions. The comparison to flat earthism is stale.
Facts are interpretations. As Gould put it:
The facts that YEC’s have to ignore is the fact that the Earth is 4.5 billion years old, that other galaxies are millions and billions of light years away, the fact that life has been on this planet for billions of years, and so forth.
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The fact life has been on the planet evolving for close to 4 billion years is a biggie. It’s a fact there was no global covering mega-Flood only 4500 years ago. It’s a fact all extant animal species weren’t bottlenecked down to one or seven breeding pairs in that same 4500 year ago time. Fact doesn’t mean “absolute truth”. It means confirmed to such a high degree it is virtually universally accepted as objective reality. The YEC claim of “same data different interpretation” is about the lamest hand-waving excuse imaginable.
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You are the only one who introduced term “information technology” in this thread.
There’s actually more evidence for a flat Earth than there is for most YEC claims.
Chiming in 50+ comments in to the thread.
FWIW I disagree with Coyne about inevitable conflict. I think there is room for Gould’s non-overlapping magisteria, if both/all groups stay within their own remits. If religion makes only spiritual claims, not empirical claims, and science makes only empirical claims, they won’t conflict. That’s not what happens, it’s true, but if it did, there wouldn’t be conflict, and therefore conflict is not inevitable. Quod erat demonstrandum.
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Why do you think it’s stale? Just because you’ve heard it so often and you don’t like the comparison? It’s quite useful, if only that thinking about it (which you should try) will give you an understanding of how biologists feel about creationism, and why they feel that way. Creationism is to biology as flat-earthism is to astronomy (and various other fields).
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Yup.
…
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