So I'm in a fun situation, dating a security guard from Richmond, part of a family infamous in Richmond (aka the ghetto of the Bay Area) for fighting. He told me the story around 3am this morning, I remember there was something to do with his grandmother having a kid with some guy and then his dad being a marine or something, I don't even know. But my co-worker from the area has heard of this family and the stories. He's been nothing but awesome to me, even when I told him something that I could have kept to myself. He can't stop thinking about me and I can't stop thinking about him. Not sure how this will turn out in the long run, but I want to see where it goes.
There is one problem (beyond him being a couple of inches shorter than me), last night, we were out on my balcony and were talking about what we believed. He does not believe in evolution. I had been up for 20 hours at that point, and not being a biologist myself, I am never able to refute these points even when not dead tired. The points? That things had to be designed, this could not have come about by random chance. My rebuttal: it isn't random chance, it is the process of evolution. Beyond that, I got nothing.
This isn't a deal-breaker - at least not now (definitely not now), but I'd like some back-up in the future. I don't think this guy is a young-earth creationist, just someone that thinks things were "designed". I don't even know if I care to discuss it at this point, but it might come up again, and I want more evidence than things I remember from the Dawkins book. So, lay it on me: I'm dating a creationist, what do I say to point out that he is full of it?
P.S.: Email me for remaining, hot, details - not all, perhaps, but more of them
10.15.2008
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
Look up Ken Miller on YouTube. My committee is considering inviting him to speak next year, and we watched a few video clips at our last meeting. He directly refutes a lot of the creationsists' points. Can I remember any right now? No. What I do remember is that he's a good speaker, he makes good arguments, he uses visuals, and he's really easy to follow.
Maybe he's an Intelligent Design type. If that's the case, ask him why the Designer did such a piss poor job. Ask him if things have to have an ultimate cause, what caused the Causer? There are a lot of really good examples in human evolutionary history. Take malaria. Being homozygous recessive for sickle cell kills you - it just doesn't kill you as fast as malaria, giving you time to reproduce. Incidentally, the reason people see design where there isn't any is because of evolution. We evolved to see patterns and make connections. We're so good at figuring out cause-effect relationships that we get false positives. There is no penalty for thinking there might be a lion around when there isn't, but there is certainly a penalty for not being able to figure out that there's a lion around. This is why the scientific method and statistics are so vital to figuring out how the world actually works.
Post a Comment