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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   3351 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for January 26, 2025

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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You can judge things by the outcome they produce. An unsuccessful person has no right to lecture a successful person by demanding that the successful person imitate the unsuccessful person. This generalizes - Anime is doing much better than western cartoons, so it's simply better. If Christians have better mental health, then Christianity is superior in at least one way. If children who are spanked grow up to be better people than those who weren't, then parents who spanked their kids were in the right. Reality is in the right, even when it appears immoral or irrational.

The Bible would seem to agree. But I’m curious about how far this goes- I’d be willing to bet creation scientists have happier lives, higher social status in their communities, better marriages, more grandchildren(and better relationships with them), and possibly better financial security compared to evolutionary biology. They’ve also introduced enough epicycles to make their theories work for everything we need knowledge of evolution and deep time for for(indeed, making this happen is their actual job- ‘there were six days’ does not require a professional researcher). Does this mean it’s a superior idea?

I don't think you can compare jobs like that, since a society needs a variety of trades to function. If we identify "the best job" and educate every single person in that, it will quickly stop being the best job. Society forms a hierarchy, but the top of the hierarchy is made possible by the bottom. I don't think it's fair to take the winners in isolation and say "everyone should be like them", for instance, concluding that every person should be a CEO so that every person could be rich and high status. So we have to be careful how we apply the rule.

But if creation scientists are more healthy (I think health is the closest we get to an objective metric), then I think we can conclude that their values are superior in a way (and to be exact - they're more in line with nature). So what if they're irrational, delusional, or "wrong"? That's just theory, and theory exists to aid reality. Reality will always beat theory. If they enjoy life, have many children, and have less mental issues on average (which seems to be the case), why not consider their ways superior?

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