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Truth

Entry 197, on 2005-07-21 at 14:16:20 (Rating 3, Comments)

I've recently been debating aspects of the old religion versus science argument with a person through email. This started with him commenting on one of my web pages, which he claimed was emotional and not founded in real facts.

Although he never admitted it, I suspect he was a creationist. Like many creationist, the extent of his argument seemed to be there are areas in the theory of evolution where some debate is still occurring. Many creationist believe that, by some unspecified process, this means evolution is invalid, and creationism is true.

Of course, neither of these beliefs is true. Because some details are still being debated doesn't mean the basic theory is being questioned in any way. There is absolutely no realistic alternative to evolution (creationism doesn't count, because it is neither realistic nor scientific). Also, even if evolution was shown to be untrue (that's virtually impossible), it wouldn't make the huge problems with creationism any less of an issue.

So I answered this person's questions and asked him for his alternative explanations. For example: if evolution isn't true, what is the alternative? He conveniently avoided these questions, I suspect because he knew I would destroy his alternative theories (as I said above, I presume he was a creationist even though he wouldn't admit to it).

So, he "gave up" on me because he couldn't convince me I'm wrong. He says because I wasn't able to accept the truth, I say because he gave me no good reason to believe I am wrong. The ironic thing was his last comment was something like "seek the truth". But in reality, who is really seeking the truth? Is it me, who looks at objective evidence and accepts what is most realistic, or is it him who accepts a particular set of beliefs on faith, no matter what the facts are? I think I know the answer!

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