Despite Ken Ham’s Wrangling, Creation Museum Left Off List of Places Every Kid Should Visit

So there is still hope in this world 🙂

Why even bother with fundamentalists? I know they are easy to pick on…but there are much more “worthy” opponents in terms of religious beliefs.

It is idle to talk always of the alternative of reason and faith.  Reason is itself a matter of faith.  It is an act of faith to assert that our thoughts have any relation to reality at all.  If you are merely a sceptic, you must sooner or later ask yourself the question, “Why should ANYTHING go right; even observation and deduction?  Why should not good logic be as misleading as bad logic? They are both movements in the brain of a bewildered ape?” 
–G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

You’re presenting the same bad rationality as others have, that anything you don’t know 100% about is “faith” and all “faith” is equal.

If I say I’m not walking through a burning building because I don’t wish to be burned would you say the opposite proposition of going into a burning building is equally as reasonable because we can’t be 100% certain that the fire does exist and will burn you.

We use our capacity for reason because we must, the only alternate would leave us sitting in the mud doing nothing which gets use nowhere.

The right question to ask  is what can we know within what we have to work with.

They remove the Creation Museum and include the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute. That sort of behavior goes a long way to securing my business. Good for them.

Who wants to bet that Ham would play the victim and claim the evil, liberal, commie scientists are oppressing him?

Why would you think that I am using the rationality that all faith is equal when the entire point of my post was to detract from fundamentalists whose faith I clearly disagree with?

If anyone says that all faith is equal it is surely the person who has no faith, not the person who has a faith. It is always the amateur who can not make distinctions, not the expert. 

With the burning building, you can be 100% certain that there is a fire…but only if you believe that your observations correspond to reality. It would only be if  you doubted your observations (in other words, if you didn’t have faith that your observations corresponded to reality) that you wouldn’t be sure and that going into the building might possibly be reasonable.

You say that we use our capacity for reason because we must…and I say that we must believe that our capacity for reason conforms to reality in order to use it. You have to believe that implicitly even if you are hesitant to admit it explicitly. 

And you’re all proud of this?

 Yes, lots of hope that anti-Christian bigotry and viewpoint discrimination will prevail.

The Creation Museum lies to children and promotes scientific ignorance. So, I can’t speak for everyone, but I’m quite happy it’s not on the list.

Sorry that I misinterpreted your post the only time I’ve ever heard a sentiment like your quoted portion is in the context of someone saying “how can you expect nature to select for a coherent working brain/mind.”

In that mindset my comments were meant to provide a natural basis for a accurate
sensory perception and reasoning not for them being currently right.

But anyway after reading your second and third comments I fine my problem would be that I don’t fine that definition of faith to be very useful.

As you said “Even in this example, though, we still have to have faith that our reason conforms to reality”.

Assuming that we’ve scrutinized our reasoning of any given belief to the fullest of our ability and limit it to the extent of our doubt, the issue of does our reasoning/senses conforms to reality or do we just think so due to unknown factor X is (to me) a pragmatic one.

Essentially if my ability to perceive reality is so compromised that I can’t/could never realize it, I end up with the same problem I have with solipsism, so what? Beyond acknowledging it there doesn’t seem to be much need or use for it (I can’t build or criticize with it).

I guess to put it another way is if I’m in a room where I can only discern a door and I move to leave by it I don’t believe that it’s correct or meaningful to say I had faith there was a door and no windows, if that makes any sense…if it doesn’t I have to bow out since I’m out of ideas about how to articulate my thoughts on this.

Also I would like to apologize for my other comment. I see I made you upset I’ am sorry it was not my intent to insult or anger you, I apologize.

 or common sense at least.

relieved is the best word. When you see they said the places needed to be educational, you can see why the Building of Lies was left off the list.

Thanks Adam. Your replies make a lot more sense with the misinterpretation. I wasn’t really upset in my other response either, just trying to cut to the chase, so no hard feelings.

I think that what Chesterton is really getting at in the quote I posted is that there is an axiomatic acceptance of reason that is implicitly done. Similar to how axioms can not be proved using a system based on them but are useful when accepted, so the use of reason can not be proved using reason but much can be done once we accept the use of reason.

That accepting the “axiom of the use of reason” (I actually kind of like that) is what I am referring to as having a characteristic of faith about it. 

The one thing one can not do is say, “I use reason because reason tells me to.” This is where what I am describing differs from solipsism*. Solipsism goes in a circle of doubt, you can always ask “how do you know?” and never be convinced. With reason, you can not use the axiom to prove the axiom, or you are actually not reasoning and the circle is broken immediately.

This is really the root of the problem that I have with those who believe that they have a stranglehold on the use of reason and that all faith is by nature anti-reason. They fail to recognize exactly what Chesterton said, that “Reason is itself a matter of faith.” 

*After rereading what you said about solipsism, I’d also like to add that I agree with you in that if you analyze something and find that you can not be sure whether your reasoning/senses conform to reality, that is the same as solipsism and not what I am trying to get at. I really want to strike at why we use reason at all in the first place.

 “Why bother” with fundamentalists?

Cause it’s not rational Christians who are trying to turn America into Jesusland.
Cause it’s not rational Christians who are actively reducing womens’ rights to “the kitchen and the bedroom.”
Cause it’s not rational Christians who agree that gay people should be imprisoned, transgender people should be institutionalized, and those closeted should stay there.
Cause it’s not rational Christians who think atheism is evil and atheists are the next Hitler.
Cause it’s not rational Christians who want to bomb Planned Parenthood.
Cause it’s not rational Christians who lie to our children about truths of science.

I could continue to go on and on, there are so many more examples of this kind of abuse of religious power.

 Anti-Christian, you say? Didn’t realize there was anything anti-Christian about not wanting children to visit a place that denies rationality and science.

Look at it this way.

I firmly believe that you have every right to stand in the public square and profess your religious beliefs. Yet I also have the right to point and laugh.

I would like to think the letter I sent to BudgetTravel stating how insulting and ridiculous the AiG museum is made a difference. Maybe it did not, but I am pleased with the outcome regardless.

 He already did awhile back when we rallied to vote.

Man, you’re lucky.  You start waiting for claims of oppression and censorship from creationists, and you get it in less than three hours.  I’ve been waiting years for them to produce evidence that meshes with everything else we know about the world, and I’ve never gotten anything.

 fundamentalism is a symtom, faith is the disease.