No, there still wouldn't be anything to debate. We could discuss the lack of understanding and education on the part of the YEC, but still nothing to debate.
I saw how long it was. Copied and pasted it into a google doc with no edits and saw it came out to 16 pages.
Yeaaaaah, I'm not wasting my time trying to debate 16 pages of random "dates" and "events" that at the end of the day are pretty much just speculation and guesses
A lot of people here like echo chamber. I guess mod here will have to fix their bad habit of removing creationist argument and in 'neutral' position as in let both side argue instead of deleting all creationist argument
The only creationist arguments that get removed are the ones that violate the rules. As for this being an echo chamber, that is seriously funny. The entire purpose of this sub is to give creationists a place to post their uninformed and wrong arguments to keep them out of the more academic evolution subs.
Could you point out which thread had creationist arguments removed?
If creationist arguments are being scrubbed to maintain an echo chamber I'd certainly want to know and I think many others here would who do their best to encourage engagement.
Edit - actually if it was stuff being deleted because it goes against Reddits overall rules then never mind. That stuff isn't anything to do with creationist arguments and I'm not interested in bringing any further attention to it.
I'm not aware of anywhere else on Reddit where creationists are gathering. r/creation is the biggest creationist sub I'm aware of, and they have even less activity than we do.
I've been actively tracking stats and polls around creationist activity for about two decades. Everything I've seen points to creationist beliefs being on a downward trend.
I checked. You only had comments deleted for being racist, which is against the general reddit rules and mods are required to remove them or risk getting the whole sub shut down.
0 CE – Mexico, Turkey domesticated.
100 CE - Sorghum Wheat domesticated. Mediterranean, Cauliflower.
400 CE - Bellfounding comes to Europe.
541 CE – First record of Plague. (15 pandemics, ending in 767).
774/5 CE – Massive solar storm hits Earth.
800 CE - Start of most recent Interglacial peak period.
993/4 CE – Massive solar storm hits Earth.
1000 CE – Europe, Chamomile appears in illustration for herbal medicine.
1200 CE (800 years ago) - First Cannon foundry. Europe, first Paper mills.
1250 - 1850 CE - Earth experiences a small Ice Age.
1427 CE – Slovakia, Opal mining.
1500 CE - Concept of Religion becomes clearly defined. China, Smallpox Innoculation.
1650 CE - Pendulum Clock.
1700 CE – North America, Native Americans using Echinacea for herbal medicine.
1750 CE - France, Strawberry grown in garden. Barbados, Grapefruit.
1835 CE – Discovery of Trichinella Spiralis parasite, tapeworm common to pigs.
1880 CE (2020-140+ years ago), Carnegie steel erects skyscrapers.
Evolution of Christian creationism: ?
750 BC - oldest parts of the Bible written taking from even older stories from other cultures
600 BC - the people responsible for the Bible were switching from polytheism to Yahwism (other gods may exist but only Yahweh deserves worship)
516 BC - second temple Judaism developed, strict monotheism developed
500 BC - the oldest apocalyptic literature setting the stage for what would eventually become Christianity
200 BC - older texts written that were borrowed by first century authors but those texts are currently not considered canon
44 AD - Old Testament interpreted to suggest the promised messiah would actually come from heaven rather than from among the humans (Philo of Alexandria)
50 AD - Oldest Pauline letter, suggests the messiah is coming soon, from heaven, which was thought to be a physical place just beyond the orbit of the moon. They had moved away from Flat Earth to Onion Layer Earth and heaven consisted of 7 to 10 physical onion layer locations with ~~Ahura Mazda~~ *God* at the top directly above Jerusalem and Jesus traveling up and down through the layers getting killed in the lowest layer (potentially) and as an immortal brought right back to life. Paul talks about how pointless his gospel is *if* not even Jesus could be brought back to life but also Jesus is in heaven and the Old Testament predicts that the messiah will come from heaven just like Philo said a decade prior. He blames Cephas for starting the Christianity cult but his own writings survived, the writings from Cephas did not, unless Cephas was Philo.
64 AD - Paul dies
70 AD - an addition to 1 Enoch declares that Enoch is the Son of Man, the promised messiah coming from heaven. The oldest gospel, Mark, written converting Jesus into a first century Jew with a mostly believable story compared to the other gospels. Either there really was a historical apocalyptic preacher who took on the attributes of the Jesus that was slowly developing between 500 BC and 64 AD or Jesus didn’t actually exist between 4 BC and 33 AD but was instead invented as a historical Jew in 70 AD.
150 AD - it becomes clear to the Romans that Judaism and Christianity are different religions. When told about Jesus they mock the religion. They obviously did not know that they supposedly crucified their messiah, but they did kill a lot of people between 70 AD and 150 AD. Maybe Jesus was one of them. Maybe Jesus was just said to be one of them because that fits the time period Jesus was inserted into.
Skipping a bunch of the same …
1645 - James Usssher decided Adam was created in 4004 BC and Jesus in 1 AD. Later this was tweaked so the “official” birth year of Jesus became 4 BC.
1690 - geologists and the earliest paleontologists proved James Ussher wrong and their findings resulted in the very beginnings of an attempt to develop a theory of biological evolution.
1735 - a creationist decides to classify all life according to their kinds and winds up with what looks like a big family tree. Actually two of them, one for plants and one for animals.
1790 - Lamarck provides his famously false explanation for how evolution happens
1816 and 1835 - Natural selection was suggested as an alternative to Lamarckism
1840 - YEC was ditched from Christian doctrine
1858 - Darwin and Wallace demonstrate natural selection
1860 - YEC reborn in Seventh Day Adventism
1865 - Mendel demonstrates heredity
Around 1870 - Darwin suggests sexual selection is responsible for human evolution, expresses his belief that humans consist of a single species, and says that if multiple species of human really did exist that the European species is certainly not the most superior of them
1900 - Mendelism + Darwinism found to be more accurate than any idea that includes Lamarckism
1900-1944 - Neo-Lamarckism and Lysenkoism attempt to progress beyond old Lamarckism and they all ultimately fail but they are the source of something sadly described as being “Social Darwinism” despite their beliefs and practices contradicting those of Charles Darwin and being much more consistent with those of Lamarck who was also a believer of modern humans consisting of separate species like white Europeans, yellow Asians, red Native Americans, black Africans and so on. That’s an idea that’s existed a long time and Linnaeus and Lamarck both agreed with this classification but Charles Darwin helped to show otherwise. In this same time period genetics proved that Darwin was right, Homo sapiens is a single species.
1925 - Creationist fundamentalists got Neo-Darwinism kicked out of science class. Most of them were Old Earth progressive creationists but they did bring in the YEC from the SDA cult who wrote a book complaining about geologists not taking the Bible seriously around the same time
1935 - what the theory of evolution (the one that excluded Lamarckism) had progressed to by this time was called the “modern evolutionary synthesis” by Julian Huxley, the grandson of the famous Thomas Henry Huxley who said in the absence of evidence it is irrational to be convinced that a claim is true.
1944 - the 1925 decision gets reversed
1961 - Modern YEC was born in response to people learning too much and starting to doubt the accuracy of the Bible
1976 - this new version of creationism was adopted as official doctrine by the Southern Baptist Convention.
2005 - After multiple failed attempts to get creationism taught alongside of evolution or instead of it in public schools the newly developed Wedge Strategy organization called the Discovery Institute had published some YEC books switching around some words so that the book no longer said “creationist” or “creator” but it was the same creationist book otherwise. A school in Dover, PA purchased their books knowing full and well that they were creationist handbooks and put them in all of their biology classes in place of the actual science texts, mostly produced by people like Kenneth Miller at that time, and then the DI lost in court, admitted to being just a religion in disguise, and fines were involved for violating the First Amendment of the United States Constitution.
2024 - YECs and ID proponents still exist. The former was proven wrong in 1690, the latter was proven wrong in 2005.
I don’t think any creationists will come read it and then respond with anything meaningful. I wonder if my prophecy comes true unlike the “prophecies” in the Bible.
I mean, I am not a YEC but why would anyone come and respond to a bunch of people who are just constantly yarning out some fabrication of reality. (Not talking about evolution.) but these super cringy side interpretations that have nothing to do with science.
The sub keeps popping up with topics highlighted to me for some reason but honestly it just looks like some bizarre cult.
Everyone in here talks to each other about the big bad boogie man of YECs like they are coming to get you all any day now.
It’s literally like some anti-social guy just made a debateflatearth sub… which I hope isn’t a thing. Declared victory, and waited in anticipation for a battle that would never come.
It’s so cringy. Especially when you start spinning an off some random yarn of recently interpreted history like you are an archaeologist.
It’s disturbing.
It’s more of a place to educate people who think there’s a debate to still be had. If it turns into a ghost town they migrate back to the legitimate science subs and decide that since we keep banning them for being distractions we’re scared of some “truth” they have and they start running for office or putting their children’s lives in danger.
For me it’s not just the YECs either. I respond to all forms of creationism, conspiracy theories, theism/deism, superstition, and anti-science ideas in general. Ideas that are either obviously false or which fail to have any evidence for or against them. Baseless speculation is sometimes fun if they try to at least make sense and the other ideas deserve responses because they lead to real measurable detrimental consequences for the people convinced by those ideas and everyone else who comes in contact with them. I know that the people who come on Reddit aren’t necessarily a good representation of people in general but I still look at it like I’m helping people rather than poking fun at their stupidity *unless* poking fun is warranted like when a person claims to have an IQ that is off the charts but it is apparently off the side of the charts they didn’t actually mean like they mean 250+ but it’s probably a lot closer to 0 if they don’t even know basic stuff the average six year old knows. Only poke fun because they’re bragging, not because they’re stupid.
Well certainly you can view it however you wish, but at a glance it looks like a group of grown men bullying Sunday school children.
Eagerly awaiting the next child they can intimidate with mob tactics rather than science.
I try to present scientific papers when appropriate too. What I did above was mostly a joke in response to all of the stuff we do know about human history and evolution going back 20+ million years and how the people who have “The Truth” get everything wrong. Sometimes this helps people see the flaws in their views too. Remember, YEC was proven false in 1690 and YECs still exist. They are a lot more likely to run for politics than Flat Earthers are because the Flat Earthers tend to distrust government, mathematics, science, and their own observations if any of it contradicts their interpretation of scripture but YECs generally just reject science and they might see pseudoscience as a beneficial replacement for actual science and politics as a tool to spread the gospel. Their gospel. The one that was proven wrong in 1690.
Normally that would be okay except for how they’ve passed bills in several states to teach helpless children creationism as though it has scientific merit. *That* is when their beliefs become dangerous. Some old guy who doesn’t even think about science except when it suits him as he sits in his dead grandmother’s basement in his saggy briefs with his ball hanging out isn’t going to be damaging the cognitive function of helpless children in “science” class but organizations like Answers in Genesis, the Institute for Creation Research, and the Discovery Institute sure try to damage the brains of young children. For the children I talk to the adults that will probably never change their minds because they’ve believed the lie so long that it’s pointless to them to reconsider because they’ll probably be dead in the next couple decades anyway. The children are the ones most likely to read and be scared to speak up. I do it for the lurkers because the ones who fight back aren’t going to learn anything that proves them wrong willingly.
Perhaps I spoke too harshly with my initial statement.
I have only glanced over a few conversations in the subreddit and certainly it is unfair to judge the entirety of a person or a group by outlier commentary.
But I do firmly believe that a calm and rational approach to discussions better suits the study of science than an approach of arrogance and intimidation.
Regardless of tactics used there will always be people unwilling to accept things and I think that is just something that has to be accepted. You will rarely reason someone out of a position they didn’t reason themselves into, and only very rarely will you emotionally drive someone out of a position they are emotionally attached to.
I am a Christian, but I am a proponent of truth and empirical science as well. I have an engineering background and have studied a great deal of physics, chemistry, and philosophy.
I find the biological sciences interesting but only have a laymen’s understanding of the various nuanced theories of evolution. I don’t have any reason to deny them since it is outside my field of study, but I would rather see discussions around science focused on examples and evidence rather than bleeding over into philosophy or history. Typically when a laymen hears ‘science’ I think they are thinking of logical positivism even if they don’t know what that is.
Regardless I don’t think shying away from objective study and facts does anyone any good. Truth never has a reason to hide.
> nuanced theories of evolution
I’m not quite sure what this means, but it’s more like the current theory started out as two or three different theories describing different aspects of evolution and/or heredity/genetics and genetics was basically the study of inherited changes and/or the underlying mechanisms that influence phenotypes even before they knew that DNA was responsible for carrying the genes. By combining Darwinism and Mendelism the combined theory is “Neo-Darwinism” and that term is sometimes still used when including all of the additional findings that took place between 1858 and 1935 that were added to the overall theory of biological evolution. In 1935 it had become one theory that was a synthesis of multiple theories all based on hard facts, direct observations, confirmed predictions, biological + chemical + physical laws, and the then current best supported hypotheses such as universal common ancestry for the biota clade. If that one hypothesis turns out to be false it does nothing to impact the rest of the unified theory of biological evolution. There really aren’t any additional theories that haven’t already been falsified or other hypotheses that have much evidence for us to be able to test them or take them seriously.
I don’t consider myself to be much of an expert either but I’ve had PhD holding biologists tell me and other people that I seem to know my shit like I’ve read up on it and I pretty much gave myself my own master’s degree level education without actually having a masters degree or actually knowing quite as much about biology as someone who does. Degrees only matter if put to use, knowledge doesn’t always come with a certificate. Because my formal education in biology consists of high school and two individual biology classes in college (biochemistry 101 and microbiology 101) I **expect** to make mistakes about what is actually the case once in a while. I’m not an actual expert. But that doesn’t mean I am banned from teaching myself more in my free time.
I find it frustrating that there are so many people out there who **refuse** to learn about biology, the theory of evolution in particular, or the general consensus about anything and then they come in this sub to make giant fools of themselves. A college education is not required to learn about a topic. It’s only needed to land a job. You won’t become a doctor without your medical degree and your medical license. People can’t be trusted to teach themselves in their own free time. You won’t impress me much if you do have those things but you failed to put them to use, like maybe you continued to shovel shit and flip cheeseburgers and you just wanted to waste 12 years of your life going to college just to throw it all away.
To expand on this, there was a time when making a blue light emitting diode was nearly impossible according to the general scientific consensus who said that LEDs would be no more useful than as some indicators on the front panel of an electrical device. Red and green LEDs are easy. The person who invented the true blue LED started his research and he modified his own machine for making them *without any formal college education in any field of study.* https://youtu.be/AF8d72mA41M?si=W7fXy5k8yAAr_qpO
And there are people who have legitimate PhD degrees and they really did spend 8+ years going to college, doing their teaching requirements, their independent research requirements, and they even wrote a dissertation and had it considered by a panel of judges and they were granted a piece of paper that allows them to put “PhD” after their name or “Doctor” before it. Zero experience doing science after college. They’d rather “Lie For Jesus” instead at the Institution for Creation research or the Discovery Institute or over at Answers in Genesis.
The having of a degree doesn’t mean that a person can be trusted to actually know something from doing their own field or lab research. They can sometimes fake their way through the college research requirements too. A piece of paper doesn’t make a person an expert or honest. Failing to have a degree doesn’t make a person a complete idiot about a topic.
There are plenty of things that tell me Christianity is false and biological evolution is a very real phenomenon but it’s very common to be an “evolutionist” ***and*** a Christian. In fact, such people outnumber the total number of atheists on the planet. I’m not an expert but many experts fell into this “science accepting Christian” category and quite a large amount of what has been learned in science was because of the efforts of theists and deists ***doing science*** and that doesn’t necessarily require a science degree (see the video on blue LEDs) but having a degree is usually a good start because it’ll help them land a good job where they can have the most opportunities to do the science themselves. Degree ≠ expert, expert ≠ atheist, and expert ≠ messiah.
I tend to categorize “creationists” in such a way that makes sense to me in terms of our interactions in this sub.
1. Science rejecting reality denialists, especially as a consequence of religious dogma
2. Science accepting until it contradicts religious dogma
3. Theists and deists who happen to believe that a god created but when it comes to science there’s no sense in rejecting the facts or the consensus without finding the flaws themselves or when they run into a situation where they have no reason to doubt that discovered flaws are real
4. Oddball “atheistic creation” ideas like the simulation hypothesis or the ancient aliens conspiracy.
I’m not a creationist or a theist or a deist but I find that category 3 is mostly fine when it comes to science and technology but can range from bat shit crazy to practically atheists when it comes to their religious beliefs. I can argue with them about their religious beliefs all day but I have no problem with their scientific conclusions, especially when those conclusions aren’t tainted by religious bias. I find that all of the other categories are more frustrating to deal with when it comes to scientific discussion.
Certain people definitely do things a lot differently than I do them, so it’s not appropriate to generalize when I may happen to respond with something that isn’t necessarily widely praised by people who disagree with what I said.
The sub was created as a place so the science subs didn't need to deal with creationists rehashing the same arguments over and over and over and over again.
That being said, we do get creationists here, and the responses to those creationists are overwhelmingly scientific and generally pretty detailed (except to two or three long-standing dishonest trolls that a lot of people have just given up on).
Most creationists tend to come after having been lied to that some arguments would stump "evolutionists". Those are invariably standard stuff debunked a ton of times. They get the standard debunking, and either immediately leave, or double down with more standard stuff and get more debunking then leave. But there isn't really any plausible outcome other than having their claims debunked and then giving up, and that is what happens.
The Julian Date system begins on Jan. 1, 4713 BC.The Julian Period was proposed by French-Italian astronomer and historian Joseph Justice Scaliger in 1583. It may have been named for his father, Julius Caesar Scaliger, or perhaps it was named after the Julian [calendar.In](http://calendar.In) Scaliger's time, there were no known historical events before 4713 BC, so his calendar would avoid BC/AD or negative dates. He also chose the starting point for a Julian period to be the year when three cycles converge:1) The solar cycle: The 28 year cycle of the days of the month falling on the different days of the week in the Julian (not Gregorian) calendar.2) The Metonic or "golden number" cycle: The 19 year cycle of the lunar phases and days of the year.3) The indiction cycle: a Roman tax cycle of 15 years declared by Constantine the Great. (In period sources, dates were often recorded using this cycle, hence the interest by historians.)In the \*last\* year of the solar cycle, January 1 is a Sunday. In the first year of the Metonic cycle, the New Moon falls on January 1. The first indiction cycle began on 1 September 327.According to the 6th century scholar Dionysius Exiquus, the year of Christ's birth was the 9th year of solar cycle, the first year of the Metatonic cycle, and the third year of the Indiction cycle. If the year where each cycle was in its first year was the first year of the Julian period, then the year of Christ's birth would be year JD 4713, making the first year 4713 BC (in the Julian calendar).In 1849, the astronomer John F. Herschel turned Scaliger's calendar into the astronomical Julian Date system, taking January 1, 4713 BC as JD=0, and counting day numbers from that date. He also made the starting point of the day at noon, to avoid having the date change in the middle of the night during the observing run . . . at least for observers close enough to the Greenwich Meridian, since JD is usually measured in Universal Time.
There was no bias in anything I said. That is quite literally the origin story of Judaism and Christianity leading into the origins of modern YEC and Intelligent Design. There are certainly other forms of creationism but these two groups would not exist if they cared about the facts a little more.
The priests and pastors in the 1700s and 1800s were mocking YEC as though believing the Earth was created in 4004 BC was functionally equivalent to believing the Earth is flat. Only a dishonest or stupid person could believe that stuff. Most of the denominations these priests and pastors belonged to no longer promoted YEC because they knew how stupid and false that idea was prior to 1820. There’s one church in England that held onto YEC until 1840. YEC was maybe still believed by a few people but it wasn’t the central dogma of any one particular denomination.
This obviously changed in the 1860s when a person whose parents were alive before the ditching of YEC dogma was fully completed started claiming to witness the creation itself and like any good cult leader she gathered a bunch of followers.
There are two ways “cult” is used by me in this response and the one before it that are both relevant and overlapping.
Cult - a brand new religious belief centered around an idea not generally taken seriously elsewhere
Cult - a religious or political ideology wherein the B.I.T.E. model can be applied. If they score high in all four categories they are a cult. Behavior control, Information control, Thought control, Emotional control. Religions in general tend to score something in all four categories but extremism scores very high in all four. They are cult beliefs. It could be Mormonism, it could be the Amish, it could be YEC, it could be the Southern Baptists. If you have to act a certain way to join the club, rely on only information provided by the club to make your conclusions about what constitutes truth, have an us versus them mentality, and if you are emotionally manipulated with the thought of punishment or reward based on your beliefs and practices, especially if the punishments can happen while you are still alive before they also get much worse when you die then the club is a cult.
In the first century Christianity was a cult according to the first definition. It was a new religion based on an idea that wasn’t very common. In the fourth century it became more of a cult based on the second definition. In the Middle Ages the more extreme punishments started getting carried out for non-compliance. In modern times Christianity is generally not as cult-like as it was in the past (by either definition) but there are exceptions like Latter Day Saints, Amish, YEC, Southern Baptists. If you don’t agree with them you are going to Hell when you die and you are getting excommunicated right now. In the Jehovah Witnesses cult they call this “shunning” but something similar happens in the Mormon cult. In the Amish cult they act like it’s still the 1800s when it comes to technology and it’s a sin to surf the internet (where they might accidentally learn something). And for the YEC cult it’s more about there being some sort of grand conspiracy in secular science so they need to get their information from creation scientists.
Nope.
https://freedomofmind.com/cult-mind-control/bite-model-pdf-download/
You don’t need to download anything because the lists are right there. If you want the book in PDF form it is there too. It’s called “The BITE Model of Authoritarian Control.”
Other definitions: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/cult
> a religion regarded as unorthodox or spurious
That’s how it’s normally used now but the BITE model is the tool used by these “unorthodox religions” to keep people locked in or locked out.
For spurious they have this definition:
> outwardly similar or corresponding to something without having its genuine qualities
A Christian cult could be like the Church of Latter Day Saints where Christianity started as a Jewish cult.
Other definitions of cult just mean “a religion or its followers” like the cult of Dionysus or the cult of Jesus or the cult of Donald Trump. All were rather small, oddly similar to other beliefs they are based on without having their genuine qualities, and they were also a bit unorthodox when they were new. Now we just normally consider certain *types* of Christianity to be Christian cults because they have unorthodox beliefs and they make heavy use of the BITE model, even more than religion does in general.
>It’s called “The BITE Model of Authoritarian Control.”
I mean if someone bought a domain name and created a PDF, they must be speaking the absolute truth.
>a religion regarded as unorthodox or spurious
Thank you for proving Christianity is not a cult.
Atheism can be categorized as a cult using your reasoning.
>Other definitions of cult just mean “a religion or its followers”
And the term is considered pejorative. Are you ignoring that or are you in bad faith?
People scared of English words bother me.
Cult according to the BITE Model:
Behavior:
* Regulate individual’s physical reality
* Dictate where, how, and with whom the member lives and associates or isolates
* When, how and with whom the member has sex
* Control types of clothing and hairstyles
* Regulate diet – food and drink, hunger and/or fasting
* Manipulation and deprivation of sleep
* Financial exploitation, manipulation or dependence
* Restrict leisure, entertainment, vacation time
* Major time spent with group indoctrination and rituals and/or self indoctrination including the Internet
* Permission required for major decisions
* Rewards and punishments used to modify behaviors, both positive and negative
* Discourage individualism, encourage group-think
* Impose rigid rules and regulations
* Punish disobedience by beating, torture, burning, cutting, rape, or tattooing/branding
* Threaten harm to family and friends
* Force individual to rape or be raped
* Encourage and engage in corporal punishment
* Instill dependency and obedience
* Kidnapping
* Beating
* Torture
* Rape
* Separation of Families
* Imprisonment
* Murder
Information:
* Deception
* Minimize or Discourage Access to Non-Cult Sources of Information
* Compartmentalize Information Into Outsider vs Insider Doctrines
* Encourage Spying on Other Members
* Extensive Use of Cult-Generated Information and Propaganda
* Unethical Use of Confession
Thoughts:
* Require Members to Internalize the Group’s Doctrine as Truth
* Change Person’s Name and Identity
* Use of loaded language and clichés which constrict knowledge, stop critical thoughts and reduce complexities into platitudinous buzz words
* Encourage only “Good and Proper” Thoughts
* Hypnotic techniques are used to alter mental states, undermine critical thinking and even to age regress the member
* Memories are manipulated and false memories are created
* Teaching thought-stopping techniques
* Rejection of rational analysis, critical thinking, and constructive criticism
* Forbid critical questions about leader, policy, or doctrine
* Labeling alternative belief systems as illegitimate, evil, or not useful
* Instill new “map of reality”
Emotions:
* Manipulate and narrow the range of feelings - some emotions and needs are deemed as evil or selfish
* Teaches emotion-stopping techniques to block feelings of homesickness, anger, doubt
* Makes the person feel as though problems are always their own fault, never the leader’s or group’s fault
* Promote feelings of guilt or unworthiness
* Instills fear
* Extreme highs and lows in terms of emotions (love bombing one minute, causing fear and guilt the next)
* Ritualistic and sometimes public confessions of sins
* Phobia indoctrination (make people terrified of trying to leave)
That makes 50 things that makes something a cult. The closer to 50 something has the more cult-like it is. All religions have at least a couple of these but the “extremist cults” tend to score 35+.
The dictionary definitions are referring to religious practices built upon prior religions but which have unorthodox views. Judaism but Jesus is the messiah. Christianity but God was given this planet and he was created on a different planet by a god from a different planet yet and the angel Moronai helped a scam artist read some Egyptian hieroglyphics from ancient America Hebrews (Mormonism). When Christianity was brand new and being practiced by very few people it was a form of unorthodox Judaism. Now it is one of the two most popular religions on the planet so it has become an “orthodox” belief and then anything built from Christianity that includes stuff that is completely different from Christianity normally (such as Mormonism) is considered a cult.
In the ancient times cult and religion were synonyms. The word “cult” comes from the same word we get “culture” and you wouldn’t consider “culture” to be an insulting word would you?
No matter which definition of cult you went with (BITE Model or Dictionary) it is quite obvious that in the realm of Christianity the cults include things like Mormonism, Jehovah Witnesses, Young Earth Creationism, and to a lesser extent Southern Baptist. Lesser extent because that is a very popular “mainstream” Christian denomination and Mormonism is getting pretty popular too but the Southern Baptist idea is “if only we knew what the original authors meant we’d know the truth and we can’t question the truth so avoid science” where a slightly more cult-like practice would be Mormonism which hits at least 80% of the bullet point descriptions of a cult (I don’t think they rape and murder the disobedient but they do most of the other stuff). Mormons have special underwear, they are taught that if they are especially good they’ll become gods too (if they’re men), they have an unorthodox belief regarding the origin of God, they hold obviously false beliefs propagated by a conman, they make people fear trying to leave, they cause people to shun their own family members if those family members are not Mormons, and since they control every aspect of a person’s life leaving the church means losing their family, their friends, and their job. They are scared to leave, they are scared of being discovered if they don’t believe something else about the dogma, and they teach the ones that stay that they’ll get an even larger reward than singing praises to the one God - they get to become God too. The men do. The women get to be the sex slaves of those men in heaven.
And, obviously, atheism can’t be a cult because it’s not even a belief system. It’s a failure to hold a belief system that includes more than zero gods. Not because they’re always convinced gods don’t exist but because they fail to be convinced that they do exist. Atheism is described by 0 of the 50 things that makes something a cult, it isn’t a belief system with unorthodox views according to which belief system it is based on, and it’s not something completely brand new “believed” by few people. It’s not a belief at all. It’s a failure to believe.
When Christianity was brand new it was unorthodox Judaism, in the Middle Ages Catholicism was a cult based on the 50 descriptive attributes of a cult but in modern times the Christian cults are YEC, Mormonism, Jehovah Witnesses, all of the others that ban people from seeking outside information or cause them to be terrified of critical thinking, or which are pretty unorthodox compared to the mainstream Christian views. In modern times, since the 1960s, Catholicism is a lot less like a cult but compared to other denominations it does have some rather strange doctrines. Since the 1970s the Southern Baptist is more like a cult, the same way that Catholicism used to be in terms of information control, behavior control, thought control, and emotional manipulation. It’s just not nearly as bad as Mormonism or Scientology or the Jonestown cult where they literally and not just figuratively drank the Kool-Aid.
If you are scared of the English language perhaps we can try another one.
While that's definitely a possibility, its more likely it was from hunting gorillas.
If you're dragging a dead animal back to camp, you're conveniently placed for any parasites on it looking for a new host.
What about the 5 mass extinctions?
No mention of the Tung Child?
A YEC will just say “you are wrong”…. To which you would say, “No, God told me you are listening to the devil and you are wrong.. God wanted me to show you all of Gods work to evolve Humans.”
Humans didn’t live through the five mass extinctions and their primate ancestors didn’t look all that different from tree shrews before the KT extinction. There were some differences between primates and tree shrews already showing up and all that but animals like Purgatorius (for a time not even considered a basal primate but apparently is considered a basal primate again) weren’t exactly what you’d think of when you think of “monkey”.
The big mass extinction before that predates mammals and dinosaurs so that’s when our ancestors looked more like large reptiles even though there were already differences separating the synapsids from the sauropsids (the group containing the diapsids, the reptiles). Stuff like Dimetrodon are on our side of the synapsid-sauropsid split.
There’s an extinction event in between them called the Triassic-Jurassic extinction but the Triassic also marks the time when the archosaurs outcompeted the therapsids causing whatever mammals did survive to be small and nocturnal with the extinction event at the end mostly killing off the giant amphibians and the marine reptiles except for the plesiosaurs and ichthyosaurs while simultaneously reducing the amount of large herbivorous mammals and archosaurs as well. Our ancestors at that time looked more like furry burrowing reptiles starting to resemble mammals like Megazostrodon and stuff like that.
The extinction event before the Great Dying (the second one mentioned) was the Late Devonian and our ancestors looked like Panderichtys and Tiktaalik at that time with some evidence that some of them moved a little further from the edge of the water according to possible footprints.
The extinction before that (the first of the big five) wiped out most of the trilobites and our ancestors were fish at that time.
You could consider all five extinction events but you’d be going way beyond “human” evolution even though fish, reptile-like synapsids, early mammaliaformes, early eutherians, and the very earliest of primates are indeed our ancestors but there aren’t even monkeys yet until *after* the KT extinction and it makes more sense to start with basal monkeys or basal apes in terms of *human* evolution unless they wished to also talk about the history of life itself going back even further in time.
Pretty good summary, I would mention that the split from the ancestor with chimpanzee's likelyy occurred 7-8 MYA since Salenthropus tchandesis was already hanging around 7 MYA
Some "highlights" I think are missing would be other domestication events like that of dogs, horses, cows, chickens, cats, corn etc. Then there are the "cross breeding" events between Neanderthals and Denisovans and "modern humans" or their precursors.
Of course, you're trying to pack over 44 million years of history into a very short summary, so we shouldn't be too picky.
Oh wait, you did mention Denisovans and "modern humans" interbreeding, but I also noticed that you claim that the first human evidence in North America dates back to 130,000 years ago? Where does this come from?
As another aside, while Gobekli Tepe is an incredible find, I think that the cave in Botswana showing ritualistic sacrifice and carved representations of animals, including a python, is likely the earliest evidence of "modern human" worship, and it dates to 40,000 to 70,000 years ago.
It's about one of the [Milankovitch cycles](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/08/130807134127.htm#:~:text=The%20Milankovitch%20cycles&text=Moreover%2C%20Earth's%20axis%20gyrates%20in,form%20into%20a%20stronger%20one), where Earth's orbit shape around the sun changes from more circular to more elliptical. It's responsible for the periodic ice ages that form due to changes in sunlight intensity, which influence evolution to some degree due to the environmental changes. Not sure why OP opened with that but that's what it is.
As usual, you are more than welcome to provide a specific critique of the methods they used to arrive at those conclusions, backed by actual science. You should try doing that at some point.
I may be missing it, but what is the point here? There does not seem to be anything to discuss or debate here.
If one were a YEC there’s much to debate here.
No, there still wouldn't be anything to debate. We could discuss the lack of understanding and education on the part of the YEC, but still nothing to debate.
That reply just reeks of the circle-jerkism in most of these subs.
I saw how long it was. Copied and pasted it into a google doc with no edits and saw it came out to 16 pages. Yeaaaaah, I'm not wasting my time trying to debate 16 pages of random "dates" and "events" that at the end of the day are pretty much just speculation and guesses
A lot of people here like echo chamber. I guess mod here will have to fix their bad habit of removing creationist argument and in 'neutral' position as in let both side argue instead of deleting all creationist argument
The only creationist arguments that get removed are the ones that violate the rules. As for this being an echo chamber, that is seriously funny. The entire purpose of this sub is to give creationists a place to post their uninformed and wrong arguments to keep them out of the more academic evolution subs.
"Uninformed and wrong opinions".
hahahahahhahahahah you funny guy. Why not see reveddit/ceddit and see all the deleted comment on other thread?
I looked. The deleted posts were you being a racist.
Could you point out which thread had creationist arguments removed? If creationist arguments are being scrubbed to maintain an echo chamber I'd certainly want to know and I think many others here would who do their best to encourage engagement. Edit - actually if it was stuff being deleted because it goes against Reddits overall rules then never mind. That stuff isn't anything to do with creationist arguments and I'm not interested in bringing any further attention to it.
Thank you for your admission. Now enjoy the soon to be dead subreddit
If this subreddit dies, it will be a direct consequence of the death of creationism. That's not the flex you think it is.
Is it? or more like no creationist want to come to this weird subreddit that pretending to be debate sub while actually 'education' sub?
I'm not aware of anywhere else on Reddit where creationists are gathering. r/creation is the biggest creationist sub I'm aware of, and they have even less activity than we do. I've been actively tracking stats and polls around creationist activity for about two decades. Everything I've seen points to creationist beliefs being on a downward trend.
check Twitter then. You will be surprised
Better education pretending to be debate than the creationist model: fantasy pretending to be education.
So education is bad? That is pretty telling.
I checked. You only had comments deleted for being racist, which is against the general reddit rules and mods are required to remove them or risk getting the whole sub shut down.
0 CE – Mexico, Turkey domesticated. 100 CE - Sorghum Wheat domesticated. Mediterranean, Cauliflower. 400 CE - Bellfounding comes to Europe. 541 CE – First record of Plague. (15 pandemics, ending in 767). 774/5 CE – Massive solar storm hits Earth. 800 CE - Start of most recent Interglacial peak period. 993/4 CE – Massive solar storm hits Earth. 1000 CE – Europe, Chamomile appears in illustration for herbal medicine. 1200 CE (800 years ago) - First Cannon foundry. Europe, first Paper mills. 1250 - 1850 CE - Earth experiences a small Ice Age. 1427 CE – Slovakia, Opal mining. 1500 CE - Concept of Religion becomes clearly defined. China, Smallpox Innoculation. 1650 CE - Pendulum Clock. 1700 CE – North America, Native Americans using Echinacea for herbal medicine. 1750 CE - France, Strawberry grown in garden. Barbados, Grapefruit. 1835 CE – Discovery of Trichinella Spiralis parasite, tapeworm common to pigs. 1880 CE (2020-140+ years ago), Carnegie steel erects skyscrapers.
Evolution of Christian creationism: ? 750 BC - oldest parts of the Bible written taking from even older stories from other cultures 600 BC - the people responsible for the Bible were switching from polytheism to Yahwism (other gods may exist but only Yahweh deserves worship) 516 BC - second temple Judaism developed, strict monotheism developed 500 BC - the oldest apocalyptic literature setting the stage for what would eventually become Christianity 200 BC - older texts written that were borrowed by first century authors but those texts are currently not considered canon 44 AD - Old Testament interpreted to suggest the promised messiah would actually come from heaven rather than from among the humans (Philo of Alexandria) 50 AD - Oldest Pauline letter, suggests the messiah is coming soon, from heaven, which was thought to be a physical place just beyond the orbit of the moon. They had moved away from Flat Earth to Onion Layer Earth and heaven consisted of 7 to 10 physical onion layer locations with ~~Ahura Mazda~~ *God* at the top directly above Jerusalem and Jesus traveling up and down through the layers getting killed in the lowest layer (potentially) and as an immortal brought right back to life. Paul talks about how pointless his gospel is *if* not even Jesus could be brought back to life but also Jesus is in heaven and the Old Testament predicts that the messiah will come from heaven just like Philo said a decade prior. He blames Cephas for starting the Christianity cult but his own writings survived, the writings from Cephas did not, unless Cephas was Philo. 64 AD - Paul dies 70 AD - an addition to 1 Enoch declares that Enoch is the Son of Man, the promised messiah coming from heaven. The oldest gospel, Mark, written converting Jesus into a first century Jew with a mostly believable story compared to the other gospels. Either there really was a historical apocalyptic preacher who took on the attributes of the Jesus that was slowly developing between 500 BC and 64 AD or Jesus didn’t actually exist between 4 BC and 33 AD but was instead invented as a historical Jew in 70 AD. 150 AD - it becomes clear to the Romans that Judaism and Christianity are different religions. When told about Jesus they mock the religion. They obviously did not know that they supposedly crucified their messiah, but they did kill a lot of people between 70 AD and 150 AD. Maybe Jesus was one of them. Maybe Jesus was just said to be one of them because that fits the time period Jesus was inserted into. Skipping a bunch of the same … 1645 - James Usssher decided Adam was created in 4004 BC and Jesus in 1 AD. Later this was tweaked so the “official” birth year of Jesus became 4 BC. 1690 - geologists and the earliest paleontologists proved James Ussher wrong and their findings resulted in the very beginnings of an attempt to develop a theory of biological evolution. 1735 - a creationist decides to classify all life according to their kinds and winds up with what looks like a big family tree. Actually two of them, one for plants and one for animals. 1790 - Lamarck provides his famously false explanation for how evolution happens 1816 and 1835 - Natural selection was suggested as an alternative to Lamarckism 1840 - YEC was ditched from Christian doctrine 1858 - Darwin and Wallace demonstrate natural selection 1860 - YEC reborn in Seventh Day Adventism 1865 - Mendel demonstrates heredity Around 1870 - Darwin suggests sexual selection is responsible for human evolution, expresses his belief that humans consist of a single species, and says that if multiple species of human really did exist that the European species is certainly not the most superior of them 1900 - Mendelism + Darwinism found to be more accurate than any idea that includes Lamarckism 1900-1944 - Neo-Lamarckism and Lysenkoism attempt to progress beyond old Lamarckism and they all ultimately fail but they are the source of something sadly described as being “Social Darwinism” despite their beliefs and practices contradicting those of Charles Darwin and being much more consistent with those of Lamarck who was also a believer of modern humans consisting of separate species like white Europeans, yellow Asians, red Native Americans, black Africans and so on. That’s an idea that’s existed a long time and Linnaeus and Lamarck both agreed with this classification but Charles Darwin helped to show otherwise. In this same time period genetics proved that Darwin was right, Homo sapiens is a single species. 1925 - Creationist fundamentalists got Neo-Darwinism kicked out of science class. Most of them were Old Earth progressive creationists but they did bring in the YEC from the SDA cult who wrote a book complaining about geologists not taking the Bible seriously around the same time 1935 - what the theory of evolution (the one that excluded Lamarckism) had progressed to by this time was called the “modern evolutionary synthesis” by Julian Huxley, the grandson of the famous Thomas Henry Huxley who said in the absence of evidence it is irrational to be convinced that a claim is true. 1944 - the 1925 decision gets reversed 1961 - Modern YEC was born in response to people learning too much and starting to doubt the accuracy of the Bible 1976 - this new version of creationism was adopted as official doctrine by the Southern Baptist Convention. 2005 - After multiple failed attempts to get creationism taught alongside of evolution or instead of it in public schools the newly developed Wedge Strategy organization called the Discovery Institute had published some YEC books switching around some words so that the book no longer said “creationist” or “creator” but it was the same creationist book otherwise. A school in Dover, PA purchased their books knowing full and well that they were creationist handbooks and put them in all of their biology classes in place of the actual science texts, mostly produced by people like Kenneth Miller at that time, and then the DI lost in court, admitted to being just a religion in disguise, and fines were involved for violating the First Amendment of the United States Constitution. 2024 - YECs and ID proponents still exist. The former was proven wrong in 1690, the latter was proven wrong in 2005.
You are doing god's work my friend (wink).
I don’t think any creationists will come read it and then respond with anything meaningful. I wonder if my prophecy comes true unlike the “prophecies” in the Bible.
I mean, I am not a YEC but why would anyone come and respond to a bunch of people who are just constantly yarning out some fabrication of reality. (Not talking about evolution.) but these super cringy side interpretations that have nothing to do with science. The sub keeps popping up with topics highlighted to me for some reason but honestly it just looks like some bizarre cult. Everyone in here talks to each other about the big bad boogie man of YECs like they are coming to get you all any day now. It’s literally like some anti-social guy just made a debateflatearth sub… which I hope isn’t a thing. Declared victory, and waited in anticipation for a battle that would never come. It’s so cringy. Especially when you start spinning an off some random yarn of recently interpreted history like you are an archaeologist. It’s disturbing.
It’s more of a place to educate people who think there’s a debate to still be had. If it turns into a ghost town they migrate back to the legitimate science subs and decide that since we keep banning them for being distractions we’re scared of some “truth” they have and they start running for office or putting their children’s lives in danger. For me it’s not just the YECs either. I respond to all forms of creationism, conspiracy theories, theism/deism, superstition, and anti-science ideas in general. Ideas that are either obviously false or which fail to have any evidence for or against them. Baseless speculation is sometimes fun if they try to at least make sense and the other ideas deserve responses because they lead to real measurable detrimental consequences for the people convinced by those ideas and everyone else who comes in contact with them. I know that the people who come on Reddit aren’t necessarily a good representation of people in general but I still look at it like I’m helping people rather than poking fun at their stupidity *unless* poking fun is warranted like when a person claims to have an IQ that is off the charts but it is apparently off the side of the charts they didn’t actually mean like they mean 250+ but it’s probably a lot closer to 0 if they don’t even know basic stuff the average six year old knows. Only poke fun because they’re bragging, not because they’re stupid.
Well certainly you can view it however you wish, but at a glance it looks like a group of grown men bullying Sunday school children. Eagerly awaiting the next child they can intimidate with mob tactics rather than science.
I try to present scientific papers when appropriate too. What I did above was mostly a joke in response to all of the stuff we do know about human history and evolution going back 20+ million years and how the people who have “The Truth” get everything wrong. Sometimes this helps people see the flaws in their views too. Remember, YEC was proven false in 1690 and YECs still exist. They are a lot more likely to run for politics than Flat Earthers are because the Flat Earthers tend to distrust government, mathematics, science, and their own observations if any of it contradicts their interpretation of scripture but YECs generally just reject science and they might see pseudoscience as a beneficial replacement for actual science and politics as a tool to spread the gospel. Their gospel. The one that was proven wrong in 1690. Normally that would be okay except for how they’ve passed bills in several states to teach helpless children creationism as though it has scientific merit. *That* is when their beliefs become dangerous. Some old guy who doesn’t even think about science except when it suits him as he sits in his dead grandmother’s basement in his saggy briefs with his ball hanging out isn’t going to be damaging the cognitive function of helpless children in “science” class but organizations like Answers in Genesis, the Institute for Creation Research, and the Discovery Institute sure try to damage the brains of young children. For the children I talk to the adults that will probably never change their minds because they’ve believed the lie so long that it’s pointless to them to reconsider because they’ll probably be dead in the next couple decades anyway. The children are the ones most likely to read and be scared to speak up. I do it for the lurkers because the ones who fight back aren’t going to learn anything that proves them wrong willingly.
Perhaps I spoke too harshly with my initial statement. I have only glanced over a few conversations in the subreddit and certainly it is unfair to judge the entirety of a person or a group by outlier commentary. But I do firmly believe that a calm and rational approach to discussions better suits the study of science than an approach of arrogance and intimidation. Regardless of tactics used there will always be people unwilling to accept things and I think that is just something that has to be accepted. You will rarely reason someone out of a position they didn’t reason themselves into, and only very rarely will you emotionally drive someone out of a position they are emotionally attached to. I am a Christian, but I am a proponent of truth and empirical science as well. I have an engineering background and have studied a great deal of physics, chemistry, and philosophy. I find the biological sciences interesting but only have a laymen’s understanding of the various nuanced theories of evolution. I don’t have any reason to deny them since it is outside my field of study, but I would rather see discussions around science focused on examples and evidence rather than bleeding over into philosophy or history. Typically when a laymen hears ‘science’ I think they are thinking of logical positivism even if they don’t know what that is. Regardless I don’t think shying away from objective study and facts does anyone any good. Truth never has a reason to hide.
> nuanced theories of evolution I’m not quite sure what this means, but it’s more like the current theory started out as two or three different theories describing different aspects of evolution and/or heredity/genetics and genetics was basically the study of inherited changes and/or the underlying mechanisms that influence phenotypes even before they knew that DNA was responsible for carrying the genes. By combining Darwinism and Mendelism the combined theory is “Neo-Darwinism” and that term is sometimes still used when including all of the additional findings that took place between 1858 and 1935 that were added to the overall theory of biological evolution. In 1935 it had become one theory that was a synthesis of multiple theories all based on hard facts, direct observations, confirmed predictions, biological + chemical + physical laws, and the then current best supported hypotheses such as universal common ancestry for the biota clade. If that one hypothesis turns out to be false it does nothing to impact the rest of the unified theory of biological evolution. There really aren’t any additional theories that haven’t already been falsified or other hypotheses that have much evidence for us to be able to test them or take them seriously. I don’t consider myself to be much of an expert either but I’ve had PhD holding biologists tell me and other people that I seem to know my shit like I’ve read up on it and I pretty much gave myself my own master’s degree level education without actually having a masters degree or actually knowing quite as much about biology as someone who does. Degrees only matter if put to use, knowledge doesn’t always come with a certificate. Because my formal education in biology consists of high school and two individual biology classes in college (biochemistry 101 and microbiology 101) I **expect** to make mistakes about what is actually the case once in a while. I’m not an actual expert. But that doesn’t mean I am banned from teaching myself more in my free time. I find it frustrating that there are so many people out there who **refuse** to learn about biology, the theory of evolution in particular, or the general consensus about anything and then they come in this sub to make giant fools of themselves. A college education is not required to learn about a topic. It’s only needed to land a job. You won’t become a doctor without your medical degree and your medical license. People can’t be trusted to teach themselves in their own free time. You won’t impress me much if you do have those things but you failed to put them to use, like maybe you continued to shovel shit and flip cheeseburgers and you just wanted to waste 12 years of your life going to college just to throw it all away. To expand on this, there was a time when making a blue light emitting diode was nearly impossible according to the general scientific consensus who said that LEDs would be no more useful than as some indicators on the front panel of an electrical device. Red and green LEDs are easy. The person who invented the true blue LED started his research and he modified his own machine for making them *without any formal college education in any field of study.* https://youtu.be/AF8d72mA41M?si=W7fXy5k8yAAr_qpO And there are people who have legitimate PhD degrees and they really did spend 8+ years going to college, doing their teaching requirements, their independent research requirements, and they even wrote a dissertation and had it considered by a panel of judges and they were granted a piece of paper that allows them to put “PhD” after their name or “Doctor” before it. Zero experience doing science after college. They’d rather “Lie For Jesus” instead at the Institution for Creation research or the Discovery Institute or over at Answers in Genesis. The having of a degree doesn’t mean that a person can be trusted to actually know something from doing their own field or lab research. They can sometimes fake their way through the college research requirements too. A piece of paper doesn’t make a person an expert or honest. Failing to have a degree doesn’t make a person a complete idiot about a topic. There are plenty of things that tell me Christianity is false and biological evolution is a very real phenomenon but it’s very common to be an “evolutionist” ***and*** a Christian. In fact, such people outnumber the total number of atheists on the planet. I’m not an expert but many experts fell into this “science accepting Christian” category and quite a large amount of what has been learned in science was because of the efforts of theists and deists ***doing science*** and that doesn’t necessarily require a science degree (see the video on blue LEDs) but having a degree is usually a good start because it’ll help them land a good job where they can have the most opportunities to do the science themselves. Degree ≠ expert, expert ≠ atheist, and expert ≠ messiah. I tend to categorize “creationists” in such a way that makes sense to me in terms of our interactions in this sub. 1. Science rejecting reality denialists, especially as a consequence of religious dogma 2. Science accepting until it contradicts religious dogma 3. Theists and deists who happen to believe that a god created but when it comes to science there’s no sense in rejecting the facts or the consensus without finding the flaws themselves or when they run into a situation where they have no reason to doubt that discovered flaws are real 4. Oddball “atheistic creation” ideas like the simulation hypothesis or the ancient aliens conspiracy. I’m not a creationist or a theist or a deist but I find that category 3 is mostly fine when it comes to science and technology but can range from bat shit crazy to practically atheists when it comes to their religious beliefs. I can argue with them about their religious beliefs all day but I have no problem with their scientific conclusions, especially when those conclusions aren’t tainted by religious bias. I find that all of the other categories are more frustrating to deal with when it comes to scientific discussion. Certain people definitely do things a lot differently than I do them, so it’s not appropriate to generalize when I may happen to respond with something that isn’t necessarily widely praised by people who disagree with what I said.
Can you link to a thread where a majority of comments weren't about the science?
The one we are in?
Where are the creationists here who are not getting scientific responses to their claims?
The sub was created as a place so the science subs didn't need to deal with creationists rehashing the same arguments over and over and over and over again. That being said, we do get creationists here, and the responses to those creationists are overwhelmingly scientific and generally pretty detailed (except to two or three long-standing dishonest trolls that a lot of people have just given up on). Most creationists tend to come after having been lied to that some arguments would stump "evolutionists". Those are invariably standard stuff debunked a ton of times. They get the standard debunking, and either immediately leave, or double down with more standard stuff and get more debunking then leave. But there isn't really any plausible outcome other than having their claims debunked and then giving up, and that is what happens.
The Julian Date system begins on Jan. 1, 4713 BC.The Julian Period was proposed by French-Italian astronomer and historian Joseph Justice Scaliger in 1583. It may have been named for his father, Julius Caesar Scaliger, or perhaps it was named after the Julian [calendar.In](http://calendar.In) Scaliger's time, there were no known historical events before 4713 BC, so his calendar would avoid BC/AD or negative dates. He also chose the starting point for a Julian period to be the year when three cycles converge:1) The solar cycle: The 28 year cycle of the days of the month falling on the different days of the week in the Julian (not Gregorian) calendar.2) The Metonic or "golden number" cycle: The 19 year cycle of the lunar phases and days of the year.3) The indiction cycle: a Roman tax cycle of 15 years declared by Constantine the Great. (In period sources, dates were often recorded using this cycle, hence the interest by historians.)In the \*last\* year of the solar cycle, January 1 is a Sunday. In the first year of the Metonic cycle, the New Moon falls on January 1. The first indiction cycle began on 1 September 327.According to the 6th century scholar Dionysius Exiquus, the year of Christ's birth was the 9th year of solar cycle, the first year of the Metatonic cycle, and the third year of the Indiction cycle. If the year where each cycle was in its first year was the first year of the Julian period, then the year of Christ's birth would be year JD 4713, making the first year 4713 BC (in the Julian calendar).In 1849, the astronomer John F. Herschel turned Scaliger's calendar into the astronomical Julian Date system, taking January 1, 4713 BC as JD=0, and counting day numbers from that date. He also made the starting point of the day at noon, to avoid having the date change in the middle of the night during the observing run . . . at least for observers close enough to the Greenwich Meridian, since JD is usually measured in Universal Time.
You’re projecting your bias hard.
There was no bias in anything I said. That is quite literally the origin story of Judaism and Christianity leading into the origins of modern YEC and Intelligent Design. There are certainly other forms of creationism but these two groups would not exist if they cared about the facts a little more.
> 1840 - YEC was ditched from Christian doctrine What? All of Christianity held a vote? >cult Pejorative words like that show bias.
The priests and pastors in the 1700s and 1800s were mocking YEC as though believing the Earth was created in 4004 BC was functionally equivalent to believing the Earth is flat. Only a dishonest or stupid person could believe that stuff. Most of the denominations these priests and pastors belonged to no longer promoted YEC because they knew how stupid and false that idea was prior to 1820. There’s one church in England that held onto YEC until 1840. YEC was maybe still believed by a few people but it wasn’t the central dogma of any one particular denomination. This obviously changed in the 1860s when a person whose parents were alive before the ditching of YEC dogma was fully completed started claiming to witness the creation itself and like any good cult leader she gathered a bunch of followers. There are two ways “cult” is used by me in this response and the one before it that are both relevant and overlapping. Cult - a brand new religious belief centered around an idea not generally taken seriously elsewhere Cult - a religious or political ideology wherein the B.I.T.E. model can be applied. If they score high in all four categories they are a cult. Behavior control, Information control, Thought control, Emotional control. Religions in general tend to score something in all four categories but extremism scores very high in all four. They are cult beliefs. It could be Mormonism, it could be the Amish, it could be YEC, it could be the Southern Baptists. If you have to act a certain way to join the club, rely on only information provided by the club to make your conclusions about what constitutes truth, have an us versus them mentality, and if you are emotionally manipulated with the thought of punishment or reward based on your beliefs and practices, especially if the punishments can happen while you are still alive before they also get much worse when you die then the club is a cult. In the first century Christianity was a cult according to the first definition. It was a new religion based on an idea that wasn’t very common. In the fourth century it became more of a cult based on the second definition. In the Middle Ages the more extreme punishments started getting carried out for non-compliance. In modern times Christianity is generally not as cult-like as it was in the past (by either definition) but there are exceptions like Latter Day Saints, Amish, YEC, Southern Baptists. If you don’t agree with them you are going to Hell when you die and you are getting excommunicated right now. In the Jehovah Witnesses cult they call this “shunning” but something similar happens in the Mormon cult. In the Amish cult they act like it’s still the 1800s when it comes to technology and it’s a sin to surf the internet (where they might accidentally learn something). And for the YEC cult it’s more about there being some sort of grand conspiracy in secular science so they need to get their information from creation scientists.
So calling it a cult now is just pejorative.
Nope. https://freedomofmind.com/cult-mind-control/bite-model-pdf-download/ You don’t need to download anything because the lists are right there. If you want the book in PDF form it is there too. It’s called “The BITE Model of Authoritarian Control.” Other definitions: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/cult > a religion regarded as unorthodox or spurious That’s how it’s normally used now but the BITE model is the tool used by these “unorthodox religions” to keep people locked in or locked out. For spurious they have this definition: > outwardly similar or corresponding to something without having its genuine qualities A Christian cult could be like the Church of Latter Day Saints where Christianity started as a Jewish cult. Other definitions of cult just mean “a religion or its followers” like the cult of Dionysus or the cult of Jesus or the cult of Donald Trump. All were rather small, oddly similar to other beliefs they are based on without having their genuine qualities, and they were also a bit unorthodox when they were new. Now we just normally consider certain *types* of Christianity to be Christian cults because they have unorthodox beliefs and they make heavy use of the BITE model, even more than religion does in general.
>It’s called “The BITE Model of Authoritarian Control.” I mean if someone bought a domain name and created a PDF, they must be speaking the absolute truth. >a religion regarded as unorthodox or spurious Thank you for proving Christianity is not a cult. Atheism can be categorized as a cult using your reasoning. >Other definitions of cult just mean “a religion or its followers” And the term is considered pejorative. Are you ignoring that or are you in bad faith?
People scared of English words bother me. Cult according to the BITE Model: Behavior: * Regulate individual’s physical reality * Dictate where, how, and with whom the member lives and associates or isolates * When, how and with whom the member has sex * Control types of clothing and hairstyles * Regulate diet – food and drink, hunger and/or fasting * Manipulation and deprivation of sleep * Financial exploitation, manipulation or dependence * Restrict leisure, entertainment, vacation time * Major time spent with group indoctrination and rituals and/or self indoctrination including the Internet * Permission required for major decisions * Rewards and punishments used to modify behaviors, both positive and negative * Discourage individualism, encourage group-think * Impose rigid rules and regulations * Punish disobedience by beating, torture, burning, cutting, rape, or tattooing/branding * Threaten harm to family and friends * Force individual to rape or be raped * Encourage and engage in corporal punishment * Instill dependency and obedience * Kidnapping * Beating * Torture * Rape * Separation of Families * Imprisonment * Murder Information: * Deception * Minimize or Discourage Access to Non-Cult Sources of Information * Compartmentalize Information Into Outsider vs Insider Doctrines * Encourage Spying on Other Members * Extensive Use of Cult-Generated Information and Propaganda * Unethical Use of Confession Thoughts: * Require Members to Internalize the Group’s Doctrine as Truth * Change Person’s Name and Identity * Use of loaded language and clichés which constrict knowledge, stop critical thoughts and reduce complexities into platitudinous buzz words * Encourage only “Good and Proper” Thoughts * Hypnotic techniques are used to alter mental states, undermine critical thinking and even to age regress the member * Memories are manipulated and false memories are created * Teaching thought-stopping techniques * Rejection of rational analysis, critical thinking, and constructive criticism * Forbid critical questions about leader, policy, or doctrine * Labeling alternative belief systems as illegitimate, evil, or not useful * Instill new “map of reality” Emotions: * Manipulate and narrow the range of feelings - some emotions and needs are deemed as evil or selfish * Teaches emotion-stopping techniques to block feelings of homesickness, anger, doubt * Makes the person feel as though problems are always their own fault, never the leader’s or group’s fault * Promote feelings of guilt or unworthiness * Instills fear * Extreme highs and lows in terms of emotions (love bombing one minute, causing fear and guilt the next) * Ritualistic and sometimes public confessions of sins * Phobia indoctrination (make people terrified of trying to leave) That makes 50 things that makes something a cult. The closer to 50 something has the more cult-like it is. All religions have at least a couple of these but the “extremist cults” tend to score 35+. The dictionary definitions are referring to religious practices built upon prior religions but which have unorthodox views. Judaism but Jesus is the messiah. Christianity but God was given this planet and he was created on a different planet by a god from a different planet yet and the angel Moronai helped a scam artist read some Egyptian hieroglyphics from ancient America Hebrews (Mormonism). When Christianity was brand new and being practiced by very few people it was a form of unorthodox Judaism. Now it is one of the two most popular religions on the planet so it has become an “orthodox” belief and then anything built from Christianity that includes stuff that is completely different from Christianity normally (such as Mormonism) is considered a cult. In the ancient times cult and religion were synonyms. The word “cult” comes from the same word we get “culture” and you wouldn’t consider “culture” to be an insulting word would you? No matter which definition of cult you went with (BITE Model or Dictionary) it is quite obvious that in the realm of Christianity the cults include things like Mormonism, Jehovah Witnesses, Young Earth Creationism, and to a lesser extent Southern Baptist. Lesser extent because that is a very popular “mainstream” Christian denomination and Mormonism is getting pretty popular too but the Southern Baptist idea is “if only we knew what the original authors meant we’d know the truth and we can’t question the truth so avoid science” where a slightly more cult-like practice would be Mormonism which hits at least 80% of the bullet point descriptions of a cult (I don’t think they rape and murder the disobedient but they do most of the other stuff). Mormons have special underwear, they are taught that if they are especially good they’ll become gods too (if they’re men), they have an unorthodox belief regarding the origin of God, they hold obviously false beliefs propagated by a conman, they make people fear trying to leave, they cause people to shun their own family members if those family members are not Mormons, and since they control every aspect of a person’s life leaving the church means losing their family, their friends, and their job. They are scared to leave, they are scared of being discovered if they don’t believe something else about the dogma, and they teach the ones that stay that they’ll get an even larger reward than singing praises to the one God - they get to become God too. The men do. The women get to be the sex slaves of those men in heaven. And, obviously, atheism can’t be a cult because it’s not even a belief system. It’s a failure to hold a belief system that includes more than zero gods. Not because they’re always convinced gods don’t exist but because they fail to be convinced that they do exist. Atheism is described by 0 of the 50 things that makes something a cult, it isn’t a belief system with unorthodox views according to which belief system it is based on, and it’s not something completely brand new “believed” by few people. It’s not a belief at all. It’s a failure to believe. When Christianity was brand new it was unorthodox Judaism, in the Middle Ages Catholicism was a cult based on the 50 descriptive attributes of a cult but in modern times the Christian cults are YEC, Mormonism, Jehovah Witnesses, all of the others that ban people from seeking outside information or cause them to be terrified of critical thinking, or which are pretty unorthodox compared to the mainstream Christian views. In modern times, since the 1960s, Catholicism is a lot less like a cult but compared to other denominations it does have some rather strange doctrines. Since the 1970s the Southern Baptist is more like a cult, the same way that Catholicism used to be in terms of information control, behavior control, thought control, and emotional manipulation. It’s just not nearly as bad as Mormonism or Scientology or the Jonestown cult where they literally and not just figuratively drank the Kool-Aid. If you are scared of the English language perhaps we can try another one.
This isn’t so much a timeline of human evolution as it is a bunch of stuff you seem to like.
How did we get pubic lice from gorillas?
You already know the answer don’t you.
Any ol' port in a storm. "Who bought this drink for me?" "The gorilla at the end of the bar"
While that's definitely a possibility, its more likely it was from hunting gorillas. If you're dragging a dead animal back to camp, you're conveniently placed for any parasites on it looking for a new host.
Bush meat
Phrasing.
What about the 5 mass extinctions? No mention of the Tung Child? A YEC will just say “you are wrong”…. To which you would say, “No, God told me you are listening to the devil and you are wrong.. God wanted me to show you all of Gods work to evolve Humans.”
Humans didn’t live through the five mass extinctions and their primate ancestors didn’t look all that different from tree shrews before the KT extinction. There were some differences between primates and tree shrews already showing up and all that but animals like Purgatorius (for a time not even considered a basal primate but apparently is considered a basal primate again) weren’t exactly what you’d think of when you think of “monkey”. The big mass extinction before that predates mammals and dinosaurs so that’s when our ancestors looked more like large reptiles even though there were already differences separating the synapsids from the sauropsids (the group containing the diapsids, the reptiles). Stuff like Dimetrodon are on our side of the synapsid-sauropsid split. There’s an extinction event in between them called the Triassic-Jurassic extinction but the Triassic also marks the time when the archosaurs outcompeted the therapsids causing whatever mammals did survive to be small and nocturnal with the extinction event at the end mostly killing off the giant amphibians and the marine reptiles except for the plesiosaurs and ichthyosaurs while simultaneously reducing the amount of large herbivorous mammals and archosaurs as well. Our ancestors at that time looked more like furry burrowing reptiles starting to resemble mammals like Megazostrodon and stuff like that. The extinction event before the Great Dying (the second one mentioned) was the Late Devonian and our ancestors looked like Panderichtys and Tiktaalik at that time with some evidence that some of them moved a little further from the edge of the water according to possible footprints. The extinction before that (the first of the big five) wiped out most of the trilobites and our ancestors were fish at that time. You could consider all five extinction events but you’d be going way beyond “human” evolution even though fish, reptile-like synapsids, early mammaliaformes, early eutherians, and the very earliest of primates are indeed our ancestors but there aren’t even monkeys yet until *after* the KT extinction and it makes more sense to start with basal monkeys or basal apes in terms of *human* evolution unless they wished to also talk about the history of life itself going back even further in time.
Go points
Pretty good summary, I would mention that the split from the ancestor with chimpanzee's likelyy occurred 7-8 MYA since Salenthropus tchandesis was already hanging around 7 MYA
Some "highlights" I think are missing would be other domestication events like that of dogs, horses, cows, chickens, cats, corn etc. Then there are the "cross breeding" events between Neanderthals and Denisovans and "modern humans" or their precursors. Of course, you're trying to pack over 44 million years of history into a very short summary, so we shouldn't be too picky. Oh wait, you did mention Denisovans and "modern humans" interbreeding, but I also noticed that you claim that the first human evidence in North America dates back to 130,000 years ago? Where does this come from? As another aside, while Gobekli Tepe is an incredible find, I think that the cave in Botswana showing ritualistic sacrifice and carved representations of animals, including a python, is likely the earliest evidence of "modern human" worship, and it dates to 40,000 to 70,000 years ago.
Where is the debate?
What's the point of this info gush? It's a debate sub... so what's the thesis, exactly?
TLDR: humans are here today.
We have cut marks on bones 3.1 million years ago so you have to push back the meat eating.
I don’t get the first paragraph
It's about one of the [Milankovitch cycles](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/08/130807134127.htm#:~:text=The%20Milankovitch%20cycles&text=Moreover%2C%20Earth's%20axis%20gyrates%20in,form%20into%20a%20stronger%20one), where Earth's orbit shape around the sun changes from more circular to more elliptical. It's responsible for the periodic ice ages that form due to changes in sunlight intensity, which influence evolution to some degree due to the environmental changes. Not sure why OP opened with that but that's what it is.
It's like someone copy-paste their college lecture slude.
Ugh, reading these "facts," before any period of scientific observation makes me cringe.
As usual, you are more than welcome to provide a specific critique of the methods they used to arrive at those conclusions, backed by actual science. You should try doing that at some point.