Some creationists have been doctored
It's true. Some creationists have doctorates. And those doctorates are not just in irrelevant subject areas like theology, history and mathematics. It's just an empirical fact of the universe that some people have been awarded PhDs degrees in the relevant areas of biology and genetics -- yet they remain convinced that evolution by natural selection is a false explanation of human origins. I make this point only because there is some debate on other threads on this blog about whether young earth creationists with an advanced degree in a relevant discipline actually exist. I think it would be wise to simply stipulate that they do exist, though in very small numbers, then move on; because absolutely nothing follows from this admission. The fact that a creationist holds a PhD in biology or genetics cannot be advanced as an argument in defence of creationism, anymore than an evolutionist in possession of a relevant PhD is a walking argument for evolution. The truth or falsity of those accounts of life is demonstrated by the evidence, not the personnel.
A few years ago, a book was published with the title, In Six Days: Why 50 Scientists Choose to Believe in Creation. The book raised a little controversy at the time, and it's now regularly referenced in Creationist literature. One of the scientists who contributed to that collection is a young earth creationist called Kurt Wise. Dr Wise is a geology graduate of Chicago University and earned a PhD in Invertebrate Paleontology at Harvard University, under the supervision of the late Stephen Jay Gould. He later served as a teaching fellow in Gould's introductory geology and biology courses. For many years, Wise was a professor in Bryan College, in Dayton, Tennessee (yes, of Scopes Monkey Trial fame). He is now a professor of theology and science at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and served as scientific consultant to Answers in Genesis's Creation Museum in Kentucky. He's also a popular speaker at creationist events around the world -- and you can be sure that his Harvard credentials are underlined when he's introduced.
In his review of the anthology, Richard Dawkins described Kurt Wise as "an honest Creationist", because Wise writes this:
"Although there are scientific reasons for accepting a young earth, I am a young-age creationist because that is my understanding of the Scripture. As I shared with my professors years ago when I was in college, if all the evidence in the universe turns against creationism, I would be the first to admit it, but I would still be a creationist because that is what the Word of God seems to indicate. Here I must stand."
The "honesty" in this statement is Wise's willingness to reject "all the evidence in the universe" if it challenged creationism. Dawkins sees this as an example of the power of childhood indoctrination to leave a "mind wrecked".
Answers in Genesis has a different explanation for why some PhDs are creationists while others are evolutionists.
© MMIX~RS~q~RS~~RS~z~RS~48~RS~)
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I suppose the important phrase here is "in very small numbers", since it seems likely that any overwhelming statistic like this will have a few examples to the contrary. Condoms work 99.9% of the time, for example. Most swans, KKK members and McCain voters are white. Ikea furniture is made mostly of particle board. Episodes of South Park are funny. Humanists are not. etc.
Who can explain Kurt Wise? The biggest indictment of both his science and his theology is the quote above, where he admits his position wouldn't change even if he was proved wrong. I think most of his peers would agree that that's already happened, leaving Wise wearing the condom that didn't work. If you... see what I mean.
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Bertrand Russell
"Most people would rather die than think; in fact, they do so."
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Richard Dawkins and his pals would like people to believe that 'no reputable scientist accepts the Biblical account of creation', but - of course - that is demonstrably arrogant nonsense. (Check out, for example, 'Dissent from Darwin')
It's a pity that, in this important discussion, some resort to ridicule rather than debate the issues. Rather gives away their lack of arguments, don't you think?
Surely true science has nothing to fear from honest investigation?
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Phil, the problem here is that science has plenty to fear, not from honest investigation (as Kurt Wise correctly observes, all the evidence points to evolution), but from dishonest rhetoric. Yes, it is possible for people to get PhDs (in minute numbers) and be creationists - I don't think anyone ever observed that people couldn't be liars or fools.
The argument from authority is a false argument. It doesn't *matter* if someone has a PhD or is the son of god or whatever - it is their *argument* that is important. And creationists have lost the argument.
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By stunning coincidence (surely it must be intelligently designed??) Pharyngula has a short piece directly relevant to this today. Any comment?
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/08/a_first-hand_report_of_nathani.php
From the sound of it, this Jeanson chap does not sound very knowledgeable.
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Catherine Fahringer
"We would be 1,500 years ahead if it hadn't been for the church dragging science back by its coattails and burning our best minds at the stake."
Is this what the creationist nonsense has come to? I know a few creationists who have a PHD.
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princeessnewsjunkie -- An interesting quote from the American secularist Catherine Fahringer. On next Sunday's programme, you will hear an historian of science disagree profoundly with Fahringer's historical assessment. Far from standing in the way of scientific progress, James Hannam (PhD, Cambridge!) will argue that the church was a major driver of scientific exploration. He'll be talking about his new book, God's Philosophers: How the Medieval World Laid the Foundations of Modern Science.
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I will listen to it, i have not read his book so i cannot comment on it. I would love to hear him explain about the 200,000 or so people burned at the steak in the 16th and 17th centuries and the reason why they got burned.
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Helio- I've always enjoyed PZ's bluntness. I see from your regular comments that you share that approach! And yes, I think as with Wise, this Jeanson isn't being a good scientist to ignore so much of what science has discovered. I'm no scientist, and don't have a scientific background, but the reason I said Wise was indicted by his own comments (which William quoted in the original post) is that it is so obviously the antithesis of the scientific process to say that no amount of evidence could change your mind.
Like PZ, I have to wonder how these two got their Harvard PhDs.
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"Like PZ, I have to wonder how these two got their Harvard PhDs."
People are perfectly capable of doing a PhD in a real scientific discipline, do their thesis defense, get their title. Then they have a party to celebrate getting their PhD and the next day they wake up saying the exact opposite of what they've been saying the last years to get their PhD. Prime example of that: Andrew Snelling. He is AiG's geologist. And yes, he did get a real PhD in geology from a real university. Published papers that mention the earth being billions of years old, to get his PhD. Yet now he would rather be have his eyes cut out than repeat those things:
http://www.noanswersingenesis.org.au/realsnelling.htm
As Will said, AiG, ICR, etc are happy to tout the valid scientific titles their stooges obtained, but they never mention how they got those credentials by saying the exact opposite of what they are saying now as YECs.
And another great Pharyngula fan here btw.
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Will
How can you say that scientists who believe in creationism or ID exist in very small numbers?
Anyone with a passing interest in this subject knows that such scientists often get a roasting in their professional capacity.
Would it not be logical to suggest there may be many more who keep a low profile?
I have certainly met a few who fit this category.
On paper the number on one side or another doesnt matter. quite right.
In the real world, the dominant viewpoint in science has always had significant power over other views which would challenge them.
I was speaking to a doctor yesterday who told me a very interesting story about an aussie docotor who found out that tetracyline would cure many stomach ulcers. But this threatened to put a pharma mnc out of business.
It was a very dirty story. pure science does not always rule the world!
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the great ulcer rip off;-
http://www.yourhealthbase.com/ulcer_drugs.htm
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While we're waiting for Dr Naughty PhD (Hi Peter!), I actually don't entirely *disagree* with the notion that for many people, their religious beliefs actually spurred on their science - in many ways that was the case for me. And the church certainly played its role (albeit coming to the party a bit *late*!), but the history of science is littered with people who started out trying to find evidence for one hypothesis, ending up finding that the evidence didn't support that, and thereby changing their minds. The fact that the God Hypothesis may have (to some limited extent) impelled science forwards in the middle ages (following the excellent advances made by the Muslims, who very much dropped the ball later) does not support the original flawed hypothesis.
It's not so much that we stand on the shoulders of giants; it's more that they give us an upsy. If they suddenly fall away, we're still here; we haven't lost anything by discarding redundant hypotheses.
John, yes, I like PZ's bluntness, and I *love* what he did with the cracker - that was hilarious. But I still have no problem in calling myself a Christian Atheist, because for me it was indeed Christianity that led to me becoming an atheist. If there *is* a god, he wants me to be an atheist - that's a calling, and it's one I'm not ashamed of.
:-)
-H
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OT,
I was speaking to a doctor yesterday who told me a very interesting story about an aussie docotor who found out that tetracyline would cure many stomach ulcers. But this threatened to put a pharma mnc out of business.
Alas, the conspiracy theory is not true. Barry Marshall is a medical hero, and was awarded the Nobel prize, and the "medical" treatment of ulcers is now routine.
http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/2005/press.html
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I'd have thought 'Christian Atheist' was a contradition in terms....but perhaps the comment was tongue-in-cheek!
Few people seem to be aware of the scientific evidence which is consistent with the creation model, simply because that information is effectively censored from public view. (eg no series of programmes
called 'God's Blueprint' on BBC N. Ireland!)
Professor Verna Wright observed that, in so many places, 'Evolution is not debated - it is regarded as a basis for further discussion: that is brainwashing.'
As I say, honesty in this area seems to be scarce!
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Pastorphilip-
I'm certain that the many observers and contributors to this thread would be highly interested to see some examples of "the scientific evidence which is consistent with the creation model". I know I would. Could you post an example for me? Thanks.
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Hi John,
You are right to call out pastorphilip over providing some evidence. But as you may recall from the recent creationist movie thread, we won't see him backing up anything he says:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/ni/2009/06/creationists_defend_darwin_fil.html#P81915851
PeterJhenderson called him out several times to provide some evidence. And despite Graham Veale atttributing credibility in spades to our pastor, it was once again all empty noise. Bold assertions of there being great evidence for creation, cries of repression syndrome, but when told to put up, nothing.
Come on pastorphilip, please answer the calls from peterJhenderson, John and myself to provide the positive evidence for creation. Feel free to enlist the help of your fellow pastor in this thread who shares your repression syndrome. Pastor B has been challenged to provide positive evidence for creation by DylanDog, Helio, myself and others for years already.
But it seems you two religion pros just can't do it at all.
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you can be sure that his Harvard credentials are underlined when he's introduced.
For me, this is the most troubling aspect - that institutions of higher learning are complicit, and that these spurious institutions then bank on their credibiltiy
This (among other things) is what's happening over here across the pond. You Europeans are right to laugh at us; we're a scandal.
I don't suppose you folks would be interested in coming back here and taking us over again?
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Hello Jeff_Eyges,
"For me, this is the most troubling aspect - that institutions of higher learning are complicit"
Please see the example of Andrew Snelling, post 10. I think he got a real degree for real work from a real university. It's just that the day after he received his degree, he started saying things 180 degrees opposite to what he had received his degree for. I'm no so sure if the university where he got his PhD can be faulted for that.
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PK- I happen to think you're probably right about what's happening here; the Snellings, the Wises and the Jeansons are hiding their proclivity to ignore the scientific method whenever it conflicts with their preconceived religious beliefs until after they've completed their degrees, and then being accepted as proud heroes of AiG on the speaking circuit.
Would anyone else be interested in seeing their PhDs? I'm sure we can find some links.
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Others who have gone the same route, however, have been completely forthcoming. Stephen Jay Gould knew full well of Wise's beliefs; he defended him against his colleagues who didn't want to give him the degree. Another Young Earth Creationist, Marcus Ross, got a PhD from the University of Rhode Island two years ago; his advisers were quite aware of his beliefs: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/12/science/12geologist.html
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3. pastorphillip:
Surely true science has nothing to fear from honest investigation?
-
Nothing to fear at all, - that is real science.
Religion and xianity on the other hand, have EVERYTHING to fear from ANY investigation that challenges their validity, like any other lies.
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If evidence is what people want, then the evidence that is abundantly clear to me from my excursions into this blog is that very few of the arguments I have read here have anything at all to do with science, and everything to do with philosophical presuppositions.
There seems to be either a complete inability to understand this on the part of some contributors (who shall remain nameless), or, as I think is more likely, a complete unwillingness to accept this (most probably for deeply personal reasons). There is a determination to make science the mouthpiece of a particular philosophy, and thankfully there are intelligent people who are not taken in by this act of intellectual subterfuge.
How we interpret scientific data depends on the presuppositions that we bring to that data. The idea that "the scientific evidence demands that we rule out any possibility that the emergence of life could have depended on the actions of an external organising influence (i.e. intelligence)" is a truly laughable proposition. There is not one shred of empirical evidence that demands such a thing. Not one. There is not one shred of empirical evidence that demands that we should be naturalists.
So I will quote CS Lewis again, even though I am apparently not allowed to (according to one contributor), since he was supposedly not "up to scratch" intellectually (even though no evidence at all was offered to support this criticism):
"What we learn from experience depends on the kind of philosophy we bring to experience. It is therefore useless to appeal to experience before we have settled, as well as we can, the philosophical question."
Two groups of people are shouting at each other from opposing philosophical positions, and poor old science is the "piggy in the middle". CS Lewis was absolutely right. We will never get anywhere with the discussions on this blog unless we face up to this simple truth.
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"Stephen Jay Gould knew full well of Wise's beliefs .... Marcus Ross got a PhD .... his advisers were quite aware of his beliefs"
And to clarify: having religious beliefs of many sorts should have no bearing whatsoever upon whether someone is granted a PhD in a scientific discipline. But in my mind there is a huge problem when a geologist, for example, holds to the empirical claims being made by their religion which conflict with the science in their field in the way Young-Earth Creationism does evolutionary theory and contemporary geology, and then waver in their adherence to the scientific method by deliberate ignorance of evidence. Can there be any better definition of 'bad science' than the scientist whose positions run contrary to the very scientific method??
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There are few Dr Creationists and they are afflicted by a condition called being deranged.
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#25 - rochcarlie -
"There are few Dr Creationists and they are afflicted by a condition called being deranged."
And your evidence to support this assertion is..............?
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#25 - rochcharlie -
"There are few Dr Creationists and they are afflicted by a condition called being deranged."
How wonderfully constructive!
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In answer to comment 23, I agree that we need to make claims based purely on evidence. However, although absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence, we don't gain anything by saying that an intelligence created life if there is no evidence for it. What that intelligence might be is pure conjecture (is it the Christian, Hindu, Sikh, Muslim, deist god or is it an advanced alien etc.)
Whilst we can't completely rule intelligence out, (obviously if the evidence points to an intelligent creator I'd have to admit that one exists) it's reasonable to start from a position of there not being a creator.
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LSV, the views of CS Lewis on science *irrelevant*. As it happens, he was not up to scratch, but that is neither here nor there. I don't understand why some people think he was a hot shot. But maybe that's just me. Let me repeat it for you, because you seem to be determined to misunderstand. NO-ONE is a priori excluding the presence of some sort of Primary Intelligent Cosmic Creator (PICC, pronounced "pixie"). There is no need to either include or exclude such a beastie; the only way of addressing that question is NOT by cod philosophy, but by scientific evidence. And even the most rabid supporter of that load of nonsense that is the Kalam cosmological argument wouold have to admit that there is no EVIDENCE.
As it is, there is EVIDENCE that life has evolved; there is EVIDENCE that "prebiotic" molecules can and do exhibit behaviours that when combined would be called "life"; there is EVIDENCE that the solar system is just one of billions; there is EVIDENCE that the universe is Really Old.
This has nothing to do with presuppositions. The old creationist problem has been comprehensively FALSIFIED; end of story. The continued clinging to a duff construct by some people is an interesting issue for psychology (and possibly psychiatry), but has nothing whatsoever to do with real questions of origins. We've moved on; creationists are foolish virgins.
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Quite simply, there is vast evidence for evolution, there is none for creationist beliefs.
Not to accept this is as bizarre as to believe in a flat earth.
For informed people to believe in a flat earth or creationism must be the result of a serious cognitive flaw.
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#25 deranged... #30 serious cognitive flaw...
evolution?
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Helio.
There is evidence and there is interpretation of evidence.
... there is EVIDENCE which can be interpreted as meaning life has evolved; there is EVIDENCE which can be interpreted as meaning that "prebiotic" molecules can and do exhibit behaviours that when combined would be called "life"; there is EVIDENCE which can be interpreted as meaning that the solar system is just one of billions; there is EVIDENCE which can be interpreted as meaning that the universe is very old.
Nobody disputes that there is evidence, only the interpretation of that evidence. I see the same fossil record, the same adaptations in nature etc but my interpretation of and conclusions about the evidence is different and yes, based upon my worldview as is the basis for all our assumptions. But in spite protestations to the contrary from so-called 'free thinkers', for me, the evidence confirms my assumptions and is therefore acceptible to me. Interpret the evidence in another way if you wish.
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A few examples of things which point to Creation rather than Evolution:
* Evidence of design in the Universe, the earth, and Man himself. (The planet on which we live gives all the indication of having been fine-tuned for human life.)We are surrounded by observable natural laws.
* Man is clearly different from other animals - physically, mentally and spiritually.
* The absence of transitional forms in the fossil record - the 'missing link' is still missing;
* Philosophically, the Creation model is certainly preferable to one which says we came from nothing, are here for no reason and are headed nowhere. The Bible teaches that Man finds his fulfillment in being rightly related to God - the inner longings of our own hearts confirm that this is so.
* While we are God's creation, we are flawed because of sin (see Genesis 3), and - in contrast to the idea that we are getting better and better - the evil we observe in our world can be traced back to sinful human nature. This, of course, is why we needed a Saviour, which God provided in the person of His Son,Jesus Christ, Who died on the Cross to make it possible for our relationship with God to be restored.
Of course, there is very much more, and an abundance of material available to help in getting to grips with this neglected body of evidence.
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Hello pastor,
Thanks for finally at least making an effort, after the many reminders by various posters to do so. Unfortunately, your effort is either wholly unpersuasive or unclear.
"Evidence of design in the Universe, the earth, and Man himself. (The planet on which we live gives all the indication of having been fine-tuned for human life.)"
The possibility of human life on our planet is not evidence for creation of course. If conditions had been slightly different, life would have evolved different. As anyone who has thought it through anything would grasp, the life forms inhabiting a particular planet would be tuned to conditions on that planet. No evidence for creation here.
"We are surrounded by observable natural laws."
So we are, but please explain how that is in any way evidence for creation.
"Man is clearly different from other animals - physically, mentally and spiritually."
Evolution explains to a large extent differences in life forms through adaptation to different environments. Please explain how differences between man and animals would constitute evidence for creation.
"The absence of transitional forms in the fossil record - the 'missing link' is still missing"
Yawn. Focusing on a gap in the fossil record rather than taking into account the many transitional forms that have been found would suggest that you are much predetermined to stick to your views.
"Philosophically, the Creation model is certainly preferable to one which says we came from nothing, are here for no reason and are headed nowhere."
Science doesn't say we came from nothing. And just the desire to have a higher purpose or goal is no good basis for claiming there is one. Again, no evidence for creation here.
"While we are God's creation, we are flawed because of sin (see Genesis 3), and - in contrast to the idea that we are getting better and better - the evil we observe in our world can be traced back to sinful human nature."
The concept embodied in the phrase 'the selfish gene' is a rather better explanation for many of the bad things we see around us. That's why evolutionists will generally tell you that it is often much better for us to act on reason rather than instinct.
Why don't you try again, dear pastor.
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Ladies, a quick primer. In science you need to state your hypothesis and relate the evidence to your hypothesis to see whether it supports it or otherwise. "Prior assumptions" are actually very peripheral to all this (but I do recognise that some armchair commentators like to flatter themselves that this makes everything arbitrary. Postmodernists are not generally highly regarded by scientists).
I simply do not accept this "I look at the same evidence and reach different conclusions" bunkum - and bunkum it is. Anyone who comes out with this is - at best - just LAZY. Yes, I've seen Ken Ham and similar cretins spew it out, but it is just so much fluff. It is undisciplined, it is intellectually cowardly, it is simply moronic.
The EVIDENCE refutes the hypothesis of a young universe. IF you wish to continue holding that pathetic myth, you need to SHOW how the evidence has been so misinterpreted. You need a MECHANISM for how the radiometric data is so wrong, you need a MECHANISM for how we can see very distant stars and galaxies, you need a MECHANISM for what happened to the dinosaurs, you need a MECHANISM for why biological organisms exhibit phylogenetic similarities etc etc, and you need to be able to TEST those mechanisms.
As it is, all we have from the creotards is "we look at the data with a different set of assumptions". That is so so lame.
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Are you now starting something like a witch hunt? The topic must be very important right now in the US and the UK. I think creationism is nothing but rubbish myself, but we have 6 (or is it more?) major religions in the world. Most of them believe in very different things and I hope I won't blow a whistle now to say even if one is, not all of those 6 can be right. As long as those clearly false things as creationism are not taught to small children who may not be able to say for themselves what is right and what is wrong, I don't care what someone may be believing for himself.
I even think be writing so much about the persons mentioned above, you give them an attention they don't deserve and which they could utilize for means we don't want them to achieve.
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We have seen all these calls for "evidence" for ID / creationism before.
The fact of the matter is that there is actually no evidence either for or against ID/creationism.
In fact there is no evidence for or against evolution either.
There is simply data/evidence and it is what world view you bring to the table which decides how you interpret it.
If anyone has an open mind, just spend a few hours investigating the phylogenic tree in a reputable mainstream works.
It is like the optical llusion of the image of a young woman and an old crone on the same page, in the same image. The object of your focus determines your conclusion.
In many areas of science it is normal to have rival theories.
But not in origins. There is too much emotional investment.
That is why Francis Collins, an evolutionist, got such a roasting recently Helio. Science on paper is clean and objective. But Helio please do not be so juvenille as to suggest that science in the real world is immune from some of the big drivers of humanity ie money, sex and power. I can just see the smirk on you face when you fly such comments.
Barry Marshall may have got the Nobel prize, but only because he was so pugnacious in the face of such an onslaught.
Your task is to explain why he faced such massive attacks on his person because of his science.
How many more Barry Marshalls are there out there in science whose work is never accepted because it is inconvenient for political, religious or economic reasons?
Dont insult our intelligence by implying this is not an issue. Look at the roasting Francis Collins got recently and he believes in evolution!!!
There are big questions at stake.
-What caused the big bang?
-How did life begin from nothing?
-Why did the order and laws of the universe come from chaos?
-Why is the universe so stable?
These questions do not undermine theistic evolution. But they do undermine secular humanism, the real agenda here. That is why Collins REALKLy took such a hit.
All the founders of modern science and the scientific method and disciplines joined all these dots and fervently believed that a Creator was responsible for the natural world. That underpinned all their work.
Oppenheimer said the Scientific Revolution would not have happened without this Christian faith.
Kepler said science was "thinking God's thoughts after him". I refer you back to Will Crawley' supporting comments in post7.
If they had believed in origins from chaos they would not have created the science we have today; all their work assumed a creator as the first cause, the ultimate designer of all nature and scientific laws, and the power that keeps them all constant. That is no mere God of the gaps.
And of course, all the foundations were laid long before Darwin. That includes Mendel, the founder of your field Helio.
As for Wise, his comments do seem a little strange. Are they in context?
It would of course be a mistake to think that they represent all scientists with a creationist/ID outlook. Because of course, the 50 scientists in the book William quoted make it quite clear that all the evidence they have seen in their career is entirely consistent with creaionism / ID.
But now that we are talking about prejudice, do secular scientists not have any?
Can anyone show me the scientific paper which explains why a God hypothesis should be excluded from science?
Such a stance turns historical science, and almost all the giants of the field, utterly on their heads.
Yes, quoting CS Lewis on this matter may be an argument from authority.
But it shoots an arrow through the heart of W&T's view that ID is purely a fringe "fundamentalist" outlook.
Oh, and of course Alvin Plantinga. It seems he tore the conclusion of the Dover trial to shreds for suggesting a supernatural causation was not science.
And there is no way Plantinga is going to be called a fundie by Mr Crawley.
People who are hostile to the idea of ID or creationism also need to ask whether their hold any other religious prejudices in relation to this.
If ID / creationism was true, they would obviously have to start to take the bible seriously ie in the way that all New Testament characters assumed all Old Testament characters and events to be actually true.
That would have severe implications for pride and spiritual accountability.
How many secularists will say this could never colour their views of this conversation?
OT
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OT, getting tired, are we?
There is simply data/evidence and it is what world view you bring to the table which decides how you interpret it.
This was precisely the nonsense that my previous post was addressed towards. I really don't give the proverbial monkey's that some "PhDs" feel that the evidence is consistent with creation. Loonies are not exactly in short supply. The question is NOT their metaphysical assumptions or some quasiphilosophical twaddle, but how they can DEMONSTRATE that the evidence supports their wacky hypothesis. They cannot do that; all they can do is DECLARE, and that, my dear boy, is a pretty feeble attempt at an argument from authority, and that, again my dear boy, is a fallacy. You can *claim* whatever you like; *showing* is a different thing altogether, and that's the chewing gum on LSV's trousers too.
Marshall's case - sorry - REFUTES your suggestion. Of course new ideas are ridiculed and pilloried and attacked and shot at from all sides - and guess what - the ones that work STILL WORK; this is trial by fire. It is part of normal science. However, a lot of ideas are pants (such as creationism), and these ideas perish. Of course, you'll always be able to find crazy people who wish to believe the lie; no-one is surprised that cdesign proponentsists continue to exist.
As for Plantinga, he may not be a fundie, but his understanding of science in general and evolution in particular is, well, pathetic. His book review of "The God Delusion" is comedy, and his analysis of the Dover trial is utter tripe. It's hard, though, to allow him the excuse of simple inane stupidity; he seems to have tried quite hard to get the wrong end of the stick in both cases, so my sympathies are somewhat blunted. I accept he is a virtuoso with philosophically-impressive terminology, but he's riffing on a really duff tune.
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OT
It is not just secularists (do you mean atheists) who are hostile to creationism, mainstream religion is also.
Even the RC church, never an institution in the vanguard of enlightened thought, quickly accepted the overwhelming evidence for evolution.
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This thread really seems to be generating a lot of emotional heat. It makes me smile (better that than cry). A veritable psychologist's paradise, methinks!
I discovered a new word today: atheophobia. It cropped up in a blog about a review of some unfortunate soul's book who dared to write a (polite) rebuttal of "The God Delusion". Obviously this daring chappy was really being "atheophobic". Well, chaps, welcome to the club, because we've had plenty of "christophobia" (cringe word) for 2000 years (and it seems it hasn't ended)!
Thanks imperialphysics for your post in #28. Although I don't entirely agree with what you wrote I appreciate your point of view. You wrote that "it's reasonable to start from a position of there not being a creator". I am not saying that that is an unreasonable position, but it is, in fact, a philosophical assumption, as is the starting point of belief in an intelligent creator. We make deductions from the study of empirical data, and the deduction of "intelligence" behind the emergence of life is a perfectly reasonable interpretation based on the empirical evidence of complexity. It is an assumption, of course, but, in my view, a very sound assumption.
I am well aware that there are people who angrily dismiss this argument, but they do so not by recourse to reason, but by appealing to emotion. There is nothing inherently illogical about the "intelligence" explanation. Those who insist that all scientific explanations must be naturalistic are not operating as scientists but as philosophers. Even if science discovered a mechanism by which non-living matter could create life and sustain it for millions of years in a hostile environment (a very big "if"), that still does not prove that life emerged by purely natural means. Such an explanation can only remain in the realm of speculation. Even Prof. Dawkins acknowledges that life is highly improbable, and therefore to believe a more improbable explanation for the emergence of life over a less improbable is only possible if you are committed to a particular philosophical position which rules out the more probable explanation.
Naturalism has to come to terms with its own materialistic determinism. On what basis do we "think" at all, if our thoughts are nothing more than the product of atoms and molecules in our brain? On what basis can anyone be considered "deranged", since evolution has made them that way? In what sense can we talk about "truth" and "falsehood" at all? If evolution has made creationists the way they are, then in what sense are they "wrong", since they are simply part of the evolutionary process? If purely naturalistic macro-evolution is true then creationists are only creationists because they naturally feel that that enhances their prospects for survival. That is the way natural selection works. There is no "right or wrong" about it. (You will have probably guessed that I don't accept this interpretation of reality). But naturalism should only operate according to its own internal rules - not something that, in my view, it is able to do.
In an act of generosity towards an opponent of the Christian faith I will quote Friedrich Nietzsche: "There are no facts, only interpretations". There is a lot of truth in that statement, and both atheophobes and atheophiles would do well to think about it.
(By the way, OT, you're absolutely spot on in what you wrote in #37: "There is simply data/evidence and it is what world view you bring to the table which decides how you interpret it."
This is exactly what CS Lewis was saying, so my mention of him was not an argument from authority - as you put it - but a simple statement of fact open to discussion and analysis.)
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"There is simply data/evidence and it is what world view you bring to the table which decides how you interpret it."
Nonsense. In some cases where the evidence is ambiguous it can be claimed by both sides, but that is not ordinarily the case.
Let's consider the evidence of vestigial organs, or the very direct evidence of human evolution in the fusion of human chromosome #2 from two ancestor chromosomes, or the evidence from dating, or the evidence in the fossil record, or the evidence in genome mapping (which paints a very clear picture of human ancestry).
Each of those cases constitutes evidence for evolution, and only the most inventive, somersaulting gymnastics of creationist rhetoric could "interpret" them differently. In the case of human chromosome #2, for example, the creationist must argue that for some reason God chose to create human chromosome #2 to make it look as though it were the result of a fusion between two ancestor chromosomes. No amount of interpretation can make something so square fit in such a perfect round hole.
I'm afraid there comes a point at which an alternative theory is just not tenable anymore. That point came a long time ago for creationism.
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What every body can be sure about without a doubt is that Christianity is a joke. Since there apears to be no other religions trying to scam their faith here i will leave it at that.
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LSV, once again you have either skilfully evaded my point, or cluelessly not even recognised it. We have hypotheses and we have data. In science, we relate the data to the hypotheses and see whether they *explain* the data or not. It is not the sort of vague hand-wavey armchair process you seem to think it is.
NO scientist brings an a priori assumption that there IS NO great pixie interfering with the world. We do NOT "start with this assumption" - it doesn't even enter the equation. I don't even really CARE if there is a space pixie - it is irrelevant. We have data, and my job, as a scientist, is to come up with an explanation FOR THOSE DATA. If you just say "Fred did it" (to follow A.C. Grayling), that is no help to me. Yeah, sure, maybe Fred did it, but I want a BETTER explanation. What if Fred *didn't* do it - can we explain the data without recourse to Fred? As it turns out, in general we can, and this process (sorry to crow over abject religious failure) have been very very successful. So successful, in fact, that to invoke Fred, while not impossible per se, is a mark of supreme cowardice and arrogance. Far better to treat the unknown as a "black box", and see if we can devise ways of unpacking it in the future, than to triumphantly parade the Works of Fred, only to look like silly twits further down the line, like the creationists, when it is shown that Fred hadn't anything to do with it.
I know your jejune philosophy requires you to assert that nonsense; just don't expect the rest of us to swallow it. If there is a god, then I have absolutely no problem with it. But I don't need it, and I refuse to dishonour any god that might potentially exist by making truly rubbish arguments for it, and calling it "apologetics". I appreciate that the likes of Lewis or Craig or Plantinga or Swinburne have no such qualms or standards, and I would imagine that any hypothetical god probably has the same low opinion of them that I do.
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Response to post 35
'In science you need to state your hypothesis and relate the evidence to your hypothesis to see whether it supports it or otherwise. "Prior assumptions" are actually very peripheral to all this.'
I say you are wrong about assumptions...
'I simply do not accept this "I look at the same evidence and reach different conclusions" bunkum - and bunkum it is.'
I say you are wrong and also speaking 'bunkum' as you childishly put it....
'Anyone who comes out with this is - at best - just LAZY....It is undisciplined, it is intellectually cowardly, it is simply moronic.'
More assumptions and vindictive accusations and again, I say you are wrong and will continue to say you are wrong...
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#43 - helio -
"Yeah, sure, maybe Fred did it, but I want a BETTER explanation."
Thank you for your highly lyrical response. Very entertaining.
Please define what you mean by "better" (and no cheating allowed, by appealing to any a priori philosophical assumption - you are a scientist remember. No value judgments are allowed to cloud your "objective" analysis of the data).
I wait with bated breath....
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#42
"What every body can be sure about without a doubt is that Christianity is a joke."
What a cracker quote - without a doubt! Aah, the evolution of thinking-atheism - makes me rationally reject the Christian faith - not! Ever thought about writing it on a sandwich board and walking up and down Royal Avenue?
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Yes some very bright people believe the descriptions of creation given in their preferred holy book. One explanation is that they reserve a compartment in their consciousness that they do not subject to reason. It is as if the temporary suspension of disbelief that is necessary for any of us to enjoy a novel or a film is made permanent. Were the intelligent believer to subject his faith to reason it would of course crumble, I suspect that sub-consciously he knows this and so has to make his faith a no-go area for intelligent enquiry.
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FP, I'm glad you're entertained. It would be a bonus if you were capable of being *informed*, but it's probably best not to get our hopes up.
LSV, by "better" explanation, I mean an explanation that actually EXPLAINS something. Let me illustrate. You COULD say that the tides are caused by Fred magically pulling up and pushing down the water level in the sea. That would be an "explanation" for sure, but it's not a very good one. It is not very good because it doesn't help us understand things, and also it presupposes both the existence and active arbitrary intervention of Fred. Maybe it's true. Who knows? However, a BETTER explanation is the dynamic gravitational action of the sun/earth/moon system - this theory allows us to make predictions and learn stuff. It is not only more satisfying, but we can gather other data to support it.
None of that disproves the Fred "theory", but the Fred theory can quite easily be seen to be a ridiculous ad hoc notion that requires more to explain it than it actually explains in the first place.
Questions about the origin of life & the universe etc are PRECISELY the same. And even when we do not know the answer (or, more correctly, the FULL answer), there are still no grounds for bringing Fred into the picture. Fred is not a hypothesis of last resort - you need specific direct evidence.
As for creationism, it is perhaps a little unfair to suggest that it does not contain some scientifically testable hypotheses. It does. The hypothesis of a 6000 year-old universe is valid as it stands, but is readily refutable. The Universe is NOT 6000 years old. That is a dead hypothesis. "Scientists" can NOT state that they "look at the evidence in a different way" or "bring different assumptions" and pretend that the nonsense of a 6000YOU remains intact. The only assumption that you need to work with is an assumption that the truth has some value, and lies should be expunged.
Creationism is a lie. It does not matter whether some of the people passing on the untruth actually *believe* it - humans can be stupid and lazy animals, in case you have not noticed. Some creationists think they are acting in good faith; they think that the sort of armchair belly-rubbing "philosophy" that you seem to enjoy actually give them some support in their ludicrous beliefs. Well, it doesn't. The reality is much more enthralling and interesting. The world is a beautiful place, and when people cast off the old superstitious ways of looking at it, it's the proverbial scales falling from the eyes.
Don't stop in Damascus - keep moving North. It gets better!
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GCD, one of the interesting things is how these folks build their wee firewalls around those compartments. LSV is a good example - sophistry and verbage is difficult jungle to hack through, but it is ultimately fluff. Scientists generally recognise that, but just like some bacteria surround themselves with the dead and dying corpses of their ancestors, and gradually build up a little nest, safe from the immune system, so creationists surround themselves with decaying philobabble from the likes of Lennox, Craig, Plantinga, and even snippets from *competent* philosophers like Karl Popper, as well as quotes mined from real scientists, taken out of context, or hideously garbled.
It is all exceptionally dishonest, and if OT is right about one thing, it is that many scientists started off as Christians, who valued TRUTH, and wanted to get rid of error. But that means that instead of regarding doubt as a *bad* thing, it is a *good* thing. In science, doubt is SYSTEMATIC. You NEED it, and very valuable it has proved.
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A bad gospel joke
And whatever you ask in my name, I will do, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask anything of me in my name, I will do it. John 14:13-14
It would be funny to see an atheist sandwich board carnival march up Royal avenue.
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Helio
The reason you are so emotionally committed to evolution is because your entire worldview hinges on it. No evolution, athiesim is suddenly a very shaky proposition.
That is your prejudice you bring to the table.
Marshall does not refute my point. You say trial by fire is good science?
Is that why he endured such heavy duty smear tactics for his science?
Is that why Francis Collins endured such heavy duty smear tactics?
Yes Marshall made his point in the end; but my point is simply that the dominant view in any field will not go down without a dirty fight if there is money and power involved.
And how many times has a dominant view never gone down at all when it should have? nobody can say.
But we can say it is absolute nonsense to suggest that it is irrelvant in science as to whether a controversial view is held by a weak minority or a powerful majority. If it suddenly becomes the majority view, it is no longer controversial.
It is religious prejudice by scientists that refuses to allow ID credibility as a proto-hypothesis.
Proof? Please give me an objective scientific definition of the term "supernatural" which we must keep out of science. It cant be done because everything beyond our current understanding of nature is in fact supernatural, of course.
However, who is to say that evolution is not currently going down, but not without a fight? Over half the UK pop now believe in some form of ID, it appears.
Your arguments, Helio, are 100% rhetoric.
When I have duelled on this blog on any concrete examples I have won;-
* Feathers;- After lengthy investigation nobody could provide any actual evidence of their evolution - an argument from silence! As from Dr Klaver.
* Human body hair as per John Wright, who claimed it was vestigal. Turned out current science holds that its purpose is to diffuse hormone secretions.
* Vas deferens - John Wright said it was vestigal in humans, but it turned out that even rats have exactly the same design.
Now to the phylogenic tree Helio. If you are going to bite back you are going to have to chew on something solid, not thin-air rhetoric.
Can someone please explain to me how evolution is a rock solid theory in light of the phylogenic tree? Lets all admit it. It is actually looking very much like an argument from silence.
In reality, the actual evidence shows yawning chasms in animals types between;-
* Insects
* Fish
* Plants
* Birds
* Reptiles
* Mammals
* Bacteria etc etc
In other words, evolution can be argued as being a massive argument from silence ie the silent chasms between these animal types.
Here is what Enclyopaedia Britannica says about the phylogenic tree, and feel free to give your opinion about why it is so convincing in favour of either evolution or creationism.
Enc Brit article;-
(My emphasis added)
Phylogeny
the history of the evolution of a species or group, especially in reference to lines of descent and relationships among broad groups of organisms.
Fundamental to phylogeny is the >>>proposition>>is nearly always incomplete, for the vast majority of species that have ever lived have become extinct, and relatively few of their remains have been preserved>>speculation>>at least in principle>>propositions
Biologists who >>>postulate
The earliest organisms were >>>probably>>random>>supposed>>not certain
Cyanobacteria (sometimes called the blue-green algae) are >>>thought
After the cyanobacteria there appeared an extensive array of algae, molds, protozoans, plants, and animals. Three groups of algae can be dismissed with passing mention, as they arose from >>>uncertain>>suggest>>unknown
Land plants contain two major groups, bryophytes and tracheophytes, which differ in many ways but which share distinctive characteristics for adaptation to dry land. These include the housing of the plant embryo in maternal tissue.
Bryophytes are descended from green algae and include mosses, liverworts, and hornworts. Only small quantities of water are needed for their reproduction, so that the sperm may travel to the eggs. The fertilized egg matures within the maternal tissue. The plant is protected from dessication by a waxy cuticle. Bryophytes have >>>apparently>>seem
All the dominant plants on Earth are included in the tracheophytes. The tracheophytes' development of large plant bodies has been made possible by having vascular parts that carry water and food inside these plants, and by a dominant sporophyte stage with a microscopic-sized gametophyte. Tracheophytes' tissues have differentiated into leaves, stems, and roots, and in the highest plants seeds and flowers are featured.
In explaining the evolution of tracheophytes, it has been >>>suggested
>>>The problem of the origin of multicellular animals>>theory>>presumed>>theory hypothesizes>>No decisive information, however, yet exists to sustain either contention
Two current >>>theories postulate>>suggests>>theory
Humans are included in the chordates. Three basic structures are shared by all chordates: a dorsal nerve tube (brain and spinal cord in vertebrates); a notochord (supporting rod under the nerve tube); and a pharynx perforated bygill slits, at least during the embryonic stage.
The history of evolution is full of examples of primitive groups giving rise to more advanced groups, but it should be noted that it is the more primitive and less specialized members of a group—not the advanced members—that produce new groups. For example, birds and mammals arose not from advanced reptiles but from primitive, unspecialized reptiles.
The data and conclusions of phylogeny show clearly that the world of life is the product of a historical process of evolution and that degrees of resemblance within and between groups correspond to degrees of relationship by descent from common ancestors.
ENDS/////////////////////////
Helio, you affirm with absolute certainty that Christ is not God and yet never stoop to justify your certainty. You seem to bring the same attitude to this field.
I am not claiming any certainty about ID/creationism, but I am claiming that there is certainly room for a conversation about credible rival theories.
In theoretical physics there are many exotic ideas treated with huge respect without any real credible evidence.
LSV - sorry to misrep you about CS Lewis. He was obviously getting quite sceptical about evolution at the end. But he was certain that science was going through many distortions to keep God well and truly outside.
Sincerely
OT
PS Helio, I think it could be a mistake to conflate a youth earth viewpoint with creationism/ID. Many people who do not believe in evolution do not believe in a young earth.
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I'm sorry, that excerpt from Enc Brit phylogenic tree is not very clear.
What I have tried to emphasise is the amount of speculate, assumption and uncertainty in how evolution is supposed to operate.
Some might call these arguments from silence.
In any event, I suggest there is room for rival theories.
OT
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This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the House Rules.
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Try explaining the human Alu element, or homologous endogenous retroviruses in the hominid/primate lineage using a creation model. In fact try to refute any of the evidence acquired using molecular genetics.
Hardly room for interpretation and different "paradigms" or points of view.
I expect a parsimonious answer with bated breath OT.
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Oh dear - it would appear that my removed post slighted a number of people who are prominent cdesign proponentsists. I have edited it, and here it is, cleaned up, and any criticism of these people can be reasonably inferred, rather than me having to spell it out.
---
OT, yes, I know many creationists realise the stupidity of the "Answers in Genesis" view of a young universe (say 6KY). Of course, Ken Ham is quite correct to point out that once you ditch that particular vapid absurdity, the whole lot goes down the pan. What is sad is to see people scrabbling about trying to rescue bits of Genesis as "science", when all it is is folklore. It has NOTHING to say about origins; it is pure myth.
Now, as to your rather mangled attempt to use EncBrit to support your claims, you need to perhaps read a bit more widely in the scientific literature AND my own posts. Doubt, as I mentioned before, is SYSTEMATIC. We talk in terms of propositions and probabilities; you are making a MASSIVE error if you think this means we secretly think that the ID-creationist piffle has any merit. Merit has to be EARNED (as the H.pylori story demonstrates very well. There were no smears, btw - that is your fantasy).
Let me further clarify. I cannot prove that life was not intelligently designed. That life might have been "intelligently designed" is in principle a valid hypothesis so far as it goes. However, those who claim that it WAS (i.e. those who put forward the hypothesis) have consistently lied and misrepresented both the data and the theoretical basis of evolution, not to support *their* claims, but to undermine the scientific position. The problem is that they have NO data to support their contentions, other than the fact of life itself (which is of course very complex - we know that, duh), and their criticisms of evolution are WRONG. They are false. They are *demonstrably* false.
Now, you have a choice - you can align yourself with people like Behe, Dembski, Fuller and so forth, who DO NOT UNDERSTAND EVOLUTION (and I say that quite deliberately; they either misunderstand it in general, or they dissemble, and treat a ridiculous straw man version of evolution; either way, they have no credit), or you can keep your mind open and try to understand how we REALLY think evolution works. Because it is quite beautiful and wonderful. Very very different from the ugly hopeless sludge that is intelligent design. ID hasn't had a hearing? It had a hearing for 1800 years, and FAILED.
I do not need evolution in order to "shore up my atheism". I am an atheist because I am a systematic doubter. If there is a god, well and good. I don't have a problem with that. That's interesting, and I would like to probe it with my proton beam scanner. But don't ask me to *believe* in one - that is a fool's game. And in particular, don't ask me to believe it is responsible for things that we KNOW occur by natural processes, such as evolution.
Pick up your game, please.
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Why does OT not come out as a pastor, is it because it will show up the stupid tricks that creationists use to try and made an excuse for faith?
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Interesting Peter. I am glad to hear that some of the Christians here have been distancing themselves from him. This dirty, dishonest, tactic that a lot of young earth creationists use by pretending that what they say is based on science while deliberately hiding the fact that they secretly believe in yec is all they have got left.
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PeterK,
Hi.
This issue relating to OT's identity has gone quite far enough. As you know, I would prefer it if everyone here posted comments using their real name, but OT is not the only one unknown to me, and unknown he is. I do not know who OT is, and nor do you. You think you have suspicions, but they are irrelevant and have been denied and it is only fair to OT, whoever he is, a Derry church pastor and that pastor's wife, who as far as we know has never posted on W&T, that everyone on here accepts the situation as it is.
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Hello petermorrow,
I typed post 62 while yours hadn't appeared yet. It wasn't intentional timing.:)
I'll be going scuba diving for some weeks tomorrow, so rest assured, I won't making posts of whatever nature for while.
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To get back to the original topic......our own local young Earth creationist organisation's committee contains quite a number of highly qualified individuals, and several with PhDs into the bargain:
http://www.creationoutreachministries.com/com_committee.htm
Also caught the BBC's excellent series on the cell this evening, and why biologists now have undeniable proof of common decent. How and why a well qualified biologist, such as Prof. Nevin for example, can sit and ignore such evidence is beyond me.
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In any event, I suggest there is room for rival theories.
This is not a debate within science OT.
That the Earth is 4.55 billion years old and not 6,000 is not open to discussion, purely and simply because there is no evidence for the latter. That is why a 6,000 year old Earth, 6/24 hr creation, and a global flood, are not taught in any school, college or university the length and breadth of the UK, or the rest of the world for that matter(except in idiot America).
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PeterH, among that crowd of jokers that comprise Cretin Outreach Ministries, there is only one PhD, and that is in the unrelated field of Engineering. There's a Biotechnology undergrad, who is apparently working towards a PhD in parasitology (perhaps he recognises the irreducible complexity of the nasty trypanosome; I wonder who designed *that*?!), but that's about it. Oh, and there is a junior medical doctor on there too, who qualified last year. The others have very few qualifications.
So, it's not really true to say that these guys have "quite a number of highly-qualified individuals" - their makeup is distinctly unimpressive (very male - where are the girlies?), and it is very unclear from their website as to what research they are carrying out into fields such as the age of the Earth, the processes by which evolution occurs, how the inconsistencies in the folklore collection of Genesis enhance our understanding of Iron Age culture in the Middle East, etc. One-dimensional tosh.
But there is always the danger of the *reverse* argument from authority. The fact that very few, if any, have *relevant* qualifications does not necessarily make their arguments irrelevant. What makes their arguments irrelevant is that the arguments are inconsistent, they do not address the core theoretical understanding of biology, and they are typically based on a misunderstanding of what the bible *is* (see the "Statement of Faith" - a ridiculous litany if ever there was one).
It is good to know that some Christians are keeping an eye on these people. I would encourage that.
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PS, PK, re PT & PICC, LOL!
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51. At 11:17am on 19 Aug 2009, Orthodox-tradition wrote
When I have duelled on this blog on any concrete examples I have won;-
This neatly sums up the dilemma, you have “won” because you believe you have won, not because you have deployed an argument that can be tested. This is the believer get out clause.
I have no science qualifications and only a lay person’s knowledge of it. I stopped believing in god aged about 11, not because I had the skills to challenge it with science but because it just seemed silly. A few years previously I had stopped believing that Santa brought my xmas presents. What is interesting about this comparison is that for a little while after I knew the provenance of my presents I continued to half believe in Santa, I fooled myself for a bit longer because it was nice. Orthodox-tradition I am afraid that is the state you are still in.
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There are few Dr Creationists and they are afflicted by a condition called being deranged.
What every body can be sure about without a doubt is that Christianity is a joke. Since there apears to be no other religions trying to scam their faith here i will leave it at that.
Don't you just love the comments from some of the Atheists! I've met some so called christians in my time who were pompous and arrogant about their faith and traditions, but you guys take egotism to a whole different level.
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cretinoutreachministries haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa (evil laugh)
howmanymiles glad to hear you love the comments.
Back to Dawkins video, Excellent description of how childhood indoctrination wrecks a mind to such an extent that when faced with the facts they have almost no impact. Shows you what damage the religious Sunday schools for children are doing.
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The Jesuit motto "Give me a child until he is seven and I will give you the man"
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That is why a 6,000 year old Earth, 6/24 hr creation, and a global flood, are not taught in any school, college or university the length and breadth of the UK, or the rest of the world for that matter(except in idiot America).
Peter, as an American, I quite agree; we're a nation of imbeciles - but I'm disheartened to see Creationists and Christian apologists posting their arguments here. I've been led to believe you lot are above that.
If I wanted to hear Christians mangling science, I could stay home!
(Also, our trolls at least know how to use HTML codes to italicize quotes!)
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"as an American, I quite agree; we're a nation of imbeciles - but I'm disheartened to see Creationists and Christian apologists posting their arguments here. I've been led to believe you lot are above that."
Jeff, as a visitor to your great country having lived here for the past 5 years I am inclined to disagree with you. Yes, there are areas in the United States which want their schools to spew creationist garbage, but as you should know America is a very diverse, varied culture from place to place and there are plenty of places which would be even less inclined than the UK to do so, and that fact shouldn't be ignored. America cannot be reduced to a simple singular assessment; it is a complicated spectrum, from extreme to extreme, of everything, and it is the best of everything as well as the worst.
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Creationism taught in the schools in the US? I have doubts given that there have been a large number of cases about this in the US Supreme Court. All have ruled it to be illegal.
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we're a nation of imbeciles
Here in Norn' Iron Jeff, we're just as bad, worse possibly. However, schools have the national curriculum to fall back on and whether they(the YECs) like it or not, state schools must abide by this, despite Philip Bell and Paul Taylor of CMI and AiG attempting to do otherwise. I notice Bell in visiting some state schools in the Fivemiletown area in a couple of weeks (along with QUB).
Still, we have nothing like Ham's crazy museum, or Cedarville/Liberty Univerities. The closest we have in the UK is Sylvia Baker's creationist schools in England, although even these have to teach evolutionary science.
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See, the difference in the U.S. - widely misunderstood by those in Europe - is the system of government which allows local jurisdictions much more power in deciding how they want their societies to run. So you can go to one state and find a place that's very friendly to traditional fundamentalist Christians and very hostile to liberal, gay artists, for example. But you could also go to places that are exactly the opposite, and most places are somewhere in between. The rule of law begins with the city, then the county, then the state, then the feds, and that's a HUGE plus. But it also makes it possible for people to point to a tiny jurisdiction in America which has made an idiotic decision and say that "In America" they do such and such. It's a horrible mischaracterization. And Smithborough is right to say that courts have generally sided with science.
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PeterH, OMG - first Fivemiletown - tomorrow, THE WORLD!!
;-)
-H
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See, the difference in the U.S. - widely misunderstood by those in Europe - is the system of government which allows local jurisdictions much more power in deciding how they want their societies to run. So you can go to one state and find a place that's very friendly to traditional fundamentalist Christians and very hostile to liberal, gay artists, for example. But you could also go to places that are exactly the opposite, and most places are somewhere in between.
It isn't even that easy to break down. You can come to Boston, where I live, which is perceived as being irredeemably liberal, then go fifteen, twenty miles out of town and find yourself in red-statish territory. And our small towns in rural New England (again - you guys want it back?) are as regressive as anything you'll find in the South - although, mercifully, without the heat.
Plus, the evangelicals' influence is spreading. Even in school districts populated largely by liberals, some teachers are afraid to teach about evolution. They haven't been challenged, but, if there is even one parent who is going to make trouble - they don't want to chance it.
Another factor - Texas, which is insanity's home state, is the nation's largest purchaser of textbooks. Publishers tailor their books to the Texas market - and, as you may be aware, there is overwhelming pressure in Texas right now to include creationism in science classrooms. The governor appointed a hard-core YEC to head up the Texas school board, and, when the state legislature defied him and forced the fellow out, the gov retaliated by appointing someone even crazier. They won't stop there; they intend fully to "reclaim this nation for Jesus". You have no idea what we're dealing with over here. Anyway, my point is that school books across the nation are going to be "dumbed down" because of this.
Finally - in the South and the Midwest, public school administrators tend to behave like tinpot dictators and routinely ignore federal law. There are public schools that shamelessly promote the evangelical world view. If anyone complains about the legality, they're simply told, "This isn't America; it's [insert municipality of choice]!" No one does anything about it, because everyone is afraid. The reason the Dover trial went our way is because it took place in Pennsylvania.
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Jeff- The point is in America you're free to move somewhere which reflects your values, and because of the diversity those places aren't hard to find.
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PeterH, OMG - first Fivemiletown - tomorrow, THE WORLD
I know Helio.
Stand by for a flare up in Lisburn next month as well, since Taylor's back. You know what happened the last time. Ian Derthal man, and all that type of thing ! Amazing that one of our local politicians managed to completely stump Richard Dawkins:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGF2AxlQsYE
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Erm helio...
Your PICC has been mentioned on The Panda's Thumb.
Kudos.
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HowManyMiles
You thought my sermons were boring and unpleasant in High School! You're getting the taste of Atheistic sermonising here.
At the same time, Helio and a lot of the others are open to discussion and debate. A bit of humour goes along way, and if you roll with the punches, you can have a very good discussion, and learn a lot too.
There are one or two guys who just like throwing out insults. (Like one who asks for a simple logical argument and then can't even recognise a disjunctive syllogism. I wouldn't expect many people to recognise a disjunctive syllogism, but when they ask for simple logical steps...).
Anyway, don't take *everyone* on first impressions. A lot of the skeptics here are good guys, and good fun.
Your life long friend
Graham
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Graham, you and PeterM belong with us lads.
You know it! ;-)
-H
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ref post 56 Helio
I am just a layperson, but I am wondering if evolution is in practise, only accepted as a dominant and widespread argument from authority.
What I mean by this is that if the origin of the species was published today, I dont think it would be accepted as valid science, because it is just so thin on conclusive evidence. Darwin admitted this as the greaest weakness in it but said he hoped the fossil record would vindicate him later. It it widely accepted it didnt.
I refer you back to your post 56 Helio. Just because you are a professional in medical genetics, you think you can talk about "scientific literature" and everyone will roll over and accept evolution as unassailable fact? Even Dawkins doesnt go that far. He accepts it may be overthrown some day.
It appears to me that if ANYONE here on this blog started from scratch and tried to present evidence to a layperson to convince them that evolution was an unassailable fact...they would fail miserably. Macro evolution has never been observed, just surmised.
Helio, there is the gauntlet thrown down.
Stop the insults and patronising ad hominems.
Roll out your best evidence for macro evolution in language that a layperson can understand.
Anyone else is welcome to join in. Pincess News Junkie???? GCDavis? Or do your abilities stop at sneering???
That goes for you too Geneboy. Stop your sneering put your gloves on and get into the ring. I'm waiting.
Put forward your best shot to prove macroevolutuion in a way that could convince a layperson.
There is far too much argument from authority in the form of intentionally and needlessly technical language, used here to intimidate people and cover your tracks. Yes I am looking at you Geneboy.
If you cant explain an idea in plain language then you either dont understand it or you are trying to hide something.
Helio said;-
Now, as to your rather mangled attempt to use EncBrit to support your claims, you need to perhaps read a bit more widely in the scientific literature AND my own posts. Doubt, as I mentioned before, is SYSTEMATIC. We talk in terms of propositions and probabilities; you are making a MASSIVE error if you think this means we secretly think that the ID-creationist piffle has any merit. Merit has to be EARNED (as the H.pylori story demonstrates very well. There were no smears, btw - that is your fantasy).
I say;
Helio, sounds impressive but you didnt even mention the explicit and persistent speculation in the phylogenic tree. I dont go in for slight of hand card tricks. bite the bullet and explain why this is so unclear.
Helio said;-
Let me further clarify. I cannot prove that life was not intelligently designed. That life might have been "intelligently designed" is in principle a valid hypothesis so far as it goes. However, those who claim that it WAS (i.e. those who put forward the hypothesis) have consistently lied and misrepresented both the data and the theoretical basis of evolution, not to support *their* claims, but to undermine the scientific position. The problem is that they have NO data to support their contentions, other than the fact of life itself (which is of course very complex - we know that, duh), and their criticisms of evolution are WRONG. They are false. They are *demonstrably* false.
I respond;- Nice try Helio. Again, this is thin air rhetoric.
This thread has been entitled "Some creationists have been doctored" as a smirking underhand sneer at the integrity of creationists with phds. Fair enough. Big boys rules.
But the author of that headline will NEVER have the courage to debate me head on in this thread to see just how certain they are of evolution.
I think a follow-up thread could be called;
"SOME SCIENTISTS HAVE BEEN EVOLUTIONISTS".
Because of course, from the dawn of science in ancient civilisations, science was always considered, roughly speaking, to be the study of the uniformity of natural causes in an open system/supernatural world.
ie from the dawn of science right through the scientific revolution, NO SCIENTISTS BELIEVED IN EVOLUTION. It has only really been secured in place in that last 100-200 years.
But the normal position of the scientific revolution was actually young earth creationism. Shock!!
Only the PHILOSOPHICAL churnings of the enlightenment later put the onus on me to prove God. Read that again Helio.
The fact that you press me to prove God ID creationism is a philsophical trick unknown to the giants of science who conceived and built all your foundations of modern science. It certainly proves that YEC scientists have an unrivalled record in breaking new scientiific ground. Indisputable fact.
Even today, Gould said some 50% of his colleagues believed in theistic evolution ie that God caused the big bang, ordered the universe and its laws, created life on earth and upholds the stability of the universe ie ALL SUPERNATURALLY.
So, in the history of science, Helio, that puts you as a strict materialist in a very small minority of scientists. And me in with he majority.
And with the regular radical theory change of science, who knows what the accepted position will be on human origins in 100 years. Perhaps something quite different to either of our positions?
If evolution is your article of faith, that will probably anger you.
The fact that Francis Collins and others endure massive personal attacks for science is evidence enough that scientists must think very carefully before they come out and admit belief in ID/creationist for the sake of their jobs. The heated personal attacks, which nobody can deny happen, are evidence enough to suggest that many creationist/ID scientists will prefer to keep their heads down.
Now, who has the guts to step up to the mark and PROVE macroevolution in layman's terms to all the readers?
We're waiting
;-)
sincerely
OT
PS I have no beef whatsoever with theistic evolutionists BTW, I fully respect their faith and viewpoints. I just dont like athiestic bullies who try to close down free speech and thought with ad hominem attacks. Especially when they actually believe that their insults are valid as actual arguments. Yes Shane, I am talking to you!
////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
Peter Henderson says this is not a debate within science. How does he define science? If scientists debate origins isnt that a debate?
GC Davis and Princess News Junkie both express searing insults and opinions. I always think this underlines a lack of confidence in their positions. Otherwise, please engage in discussion. BTW, I only became a Christian as an adult. No childhood indoctrination there.
Peter Morrow. Thanks. I assure you I am not the person I am accused of and I think it unfair that he is constantly libelled on this blog when he is not here to defend himself.
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BTW Helio
You take issue with having your post censored. Just for the record I dont know if anyone noticed this but it would appear there was a change on this blog some months ago were it switched from reactive moderation to post moderation ie it used to be posts were only reviewed if there was a complaint, but now they are actually ALL reviewed by moderators.
This seems to have cooincided with much suspicion on this blog about who was complaining about postings. Perhaps this explains the mystery.
Perhaps it is ironic that those most adamantly defending orthodox science are the ones using the most underhand debating tactics and therefore falling foul of the moderators most.
Says something about their confidence in their position??
;-)
* Pre-moderation - every single message is checked before it appears on the board. All of the BBC's children's message boards are supervised in this way.
* Post-moderation - all messages appear on the board first and are checked afterwards. Most BBC message boards are supervised in this way.
* Reactive moderation - messages are only checked if a complaint is made about them. This approach is only used on boards for adults.
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OT
I got a C in Chemistry, failed Biology but got it at nightschool. Didnt even attempt Physics. I scraped through Maths and Arithmetic, how I'll never know because they bored me to death. Then did six years Philosophy and Theology and was ordained.
So I'll answer you from the point of view of the Bible, and totally exclude science.
Stop talking mince. Amen.
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OT - there's nothing there even worth responding to. If you want to find out about evolution (and I really mean *find out*, rather than blether on), I would encourage you to read Jerry Coyne's "Why Evolution is True". There really is too much to put on Will's blog. I'm sorry you think he is sneering at Creationists with PhDs, but really, you haven't learnt very much from the previous ongoing discussions, nor have you taken on board the point about doubt being systematic in the sciences. As we have worked outwards in science, we have got to a position where we can really engage questions of origins - these were vistas previously inaccessible to these giants of science. Those giants gave us an upsy, to be sure, but they got a lot of things wrong, and from where we are now, we can see more clearly. The glass is not as dark as it was for the ancients.
I'm all for Christians and others having a look at the real evidence. When they do, and particularly if they are given the freedom to do so, without religious bullying from the likes of "Creation Outreach Ministries", they will see the beauty of biology, and the truly elegant theoretical framework of evolution that underpins our understanding of it. It will enhance their enjoyment of this incredible universe. It can't not do so.
BTW, wrt the moderation, I found out that my post got yanked because in one I linked to an off-site PDF, which isn't allowed, and in another, I stated an opinion about some punters who *don't* get on this blog that was considered by the mods to be potentially defamatory, and I would hate to have to go through the sort of persecution Simon Singh is suffering from malicious and litigious people. I'm not on pre-moderation *yet*!
Have a nice weekend :-)
-H
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OK so Helio and RJB have already chickened out.
I like this bit from Helio best "there's nothing there even worth responding to" regarding my last post.
I can just see the sweat forming on his brow, his pulse rising and his silent prayer to...well nobody actually... that everyone else on this blog actually believes him!
;-)
So, the challenge remains.
Who here is going to try and prove macro evolution in layman's terms on this blog???
The next person who refers me to a book or a hyperline will get a rap across the knuckle fyi!
;-)
OT
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OK another chance for Helio to engage.
Helio, please define "supernatural" scientifically so we know why it is excluded from science.
Please do not give an athiest's arbitrary religious prejudiced definition.
That aint science.
Supernatural special creation is the foundation of all modern science.
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OT asks "Who here is going to try and prove macro evolution in layman's terms on this blog?"
I will, I will!
Okay, so everyone here knows that humans have 46 chromosomes, 23 from your mother, 23 from your father. (Everyone, I assume, is happy that every human has both a mother and a father, coherent with what science teaches us - but not Christianity, which claims Jesus only had a mother. Anyway.)
The problem with the claim that we share common ancestry with the great apes is that the great apes have 48 chromosomes, not 46. So the claim of evolution is falsifiable; in other words if there isn't a reason found for the difference in the number of chromosomes then evolution is false. We test it in the field of human genetics, where we can examine the chromosomes in detail and find out what explains this difference. If we don't find this evidence then evolution cannot be true. If we do find it, then it is direct evidence for common ancestry and thus evolution is true.
The perfect litmus test!
Well, just like eviction night on Big Brother, the results are in, and someone is going home. Who will it be, creationists or evolutionists?! PINS AND NEEDLES!
A piece of evidence has been found. What is it? Does it verify the claims of evolution or does it fail to show evidence of common ancestry? ............... And the evidence is... human chromosome #2, which shows that a fusion took place between two ancestor chromosomes, leaving the markers found at the end of chromosomes in the middle instead - unique - and proving that these were once two separate chromosomes. Which means we once had 48, sharing ancestry with the great apes, and proving the claims of evolution!
The smoking gun! Irrefutable evidence! Undeniable truth!
And the creationist goes home.
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By the way, you wonder what separates us from the great apes most of all, our morality, our belief systems, our reasoning? In fact it is our intelligence, which research indicates derive directly from chromosome #2 and which makes possible morality, belief and reasoning... and all because a chromosome fused. If it had never fused, we'd be just like the bonobos, living in trees and eating bark.
(And the creationist goes home.)
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Er, John, yes - human Chromosome 2 is lovely, and indeed I would argue that the architecture of the genome is irrefutable evidence of evolution, but there is no point in trying to edumacate OT. His wee mind is made up. You are not dealing with a rational being. However, I really do need to take issue with you for implying that the ch2 fusion event was CAUSAL to the enormous increase in human intelligence (OT excepted har har). We see such fusions and translocations and such all the time in the "normal" extant human population; many are entirely harmless, e.g. the 13;14 translocation, although they're often associated with an increased rate of miscarriage, so generally only reach high proportions capable of going to fixity in small founder populations (e.g. where there is a dominant related group of males, as may well have been the case in our history at certain points).
As it is, it is highly likely that the rapid increase in human brain power was a multilocus response to a peculiar selective pressure, when being stupid was a positive disadvantage to reproduction. Hence the worry that in Northern Ireland we may be going *backwards*. Maybe it is a *duty* of this blog to keep OT occupied so that he doesn't have too many babies.
I do think that a lot of people ARE turned off by creationist dogma and distortion; the truth IS out there, and there's no need to try to convert the OTs of this world - they simply aren't worth it. Evolution is really extremely beautiful. When people look up at the night sky, say at the Andromeda galaxy, and realise that what they are seeing DIRECTLY proves that the universe is millions of years old, they often feel the desire to look into the issues further. The bible gets set to one side, and science gets brought in. The honesty of people like Karl Sagan or Richard Feynman is a stark contrast to the nasty sniping carpery of Ham or Morris or their ilk.
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There has never been an issue about the phenotypical similarity of humans and apes or that the chromosomes are similar (48 in apes and 46 in humans). It appears that fusion occurred on the human chromosome 2 and indeed, it seems to corresponds to ape chromosomes 12 and 13. But to then make the assumption that there is common ancestry is a leap of faith.
It appears that chromosomal rearrangement is quite common and doesn't lead to speciation. It is probable that fusion of human chromosome 2 occurred between two human chromosomes and has nothing to do with a supposed common ancestor.
Genetic information on the chromosomes and not chromosome number is the issue. Many human introns are specific for that which makes us human and indeed the number of extrons which code for MiRNA which regulates gene expression are very different between humans and chimpanzees.
It is not the chromosome differences or similarities which are important but the information found in the DNA code. In humans the DNA blueprint makes us human and in apes, well, it makes them apes.
(And the creationist comes back again...)
By the way JW are you saying that the fusion of two bonobo chromosomes and time gives us Einstein? Man, I admire your faith...
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FP, it is the information on the chromosomes that shows that we ARE apes. Evolution explains this fact. It's endlessly beautiful and fascinating, and thanks to the (atheist) John Sulston, it is in the public domain.
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Helio
On and on and on he goes, where he stops nobody knows.
You are an awful big blether.
A master of slur and slime.
But at no time do you EVER attempt to justify your religious or scientific beliefs.
You are one big argument from authority, and the main authority as far as you are concerned appears to be you.
;-)
You speak of the ancients in science in patronising tones. But all the work you do in genetics is microscopic in comparison to the groundbreaking concepts and foundations of the YECs of the scientific revolution.
All the work you do is standing on the shoulders of these giants.
You have no justifcation but your own opinion to palm off the very wellspring of all their scientific inspiration - supernatural creation.
A popular philsophy trend switched the onus to prove their inspiration was valid. You dont contest this. This trend could reverse in the future.
Two questions remain;-
1) Can you prove macroevolution in layman's terms for the readers here?
2) Can you give a scientific definition of "supernatural" in order to justify the rejection of a creationist hypothesis. Or do you rely on arbitrary religious prejudice to do so?
Come on big shot, or do you cry uncle?
;-)
OT
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Hat tip to John Wright for having the guts to try!
Cheers JW.
Anyway, Helio, a doctor of medical genetics, doesnt seem too impressed with your evidence. Not at all. Why do you think that is?
I believe it is because he knows fine rightly that you cant "prove" evolution. It is simply a best effort at explaining the evidence, but is hardly conclusive.
The attempt to exaggerate its solidity (a recurring flaw with Helio in many areas) gives rise to "The Emperor's New Clothes" scenario where everyone knows the case is being overstated and is not convincing.
Then you have a "stupid" little boy like me sniggering at Helio's lack of clothes on the high street. Helio, you havnt given any factual reason to wipe the smile off the faces of the crowds yet.
Otherwise, where is the convincing explanation for the mass vagaries of the phylogenic tree?
Why the deafening lack of repsonse to my request for proof of macroevolution? Even a Dr of medical genetics (Helio) cowers in fear at the challenge.
Anyway JW,
You say;-
human chromosome #2...shows that a fusion took place between two ancestor chromosomes, leaving the markers found at the end of chromosomes in the middle instead - unique - and proving that these were once two separate chromosomes. Which means we once had 48, sharing ancestry with the great apes, and proving the claims of evolution!
Perhaps FP raised some valid points.
My questions;-
1) How can you be sure that this was a fusion between two chromosomes and that they were not created that way?
2) How can you be certain that these are "ancestor" chromosomes? Is this not drawing a conclusion before working through the evidence? Isnt this prejudicing the outcome of your investigation?
3) If this was a fusion event as you suggest (you cant repeat and observe it) then how can you be sure it didnt happen in humans and not apes, who then passed it on to other humans?
4) How can you be certain that the fusion was actually that of primate genetic material? Isnt this an assumption? Do any primates carry evidence of this same fusion?
5) Isnt this issue a bit of a red herring? ie how do you explain the massive differences in actual information between primates and humans DNA aside from the exceptionally minor APPARENT similarity you raise? Interim stages are not known to exist which show either the DNA deevelopment or physiological development from primate to man. Therefore to claim the leap from primates to humans was real is speculative at best as there are no real missing links. Surely John, if you are going to claim this as fact this is an argument from silence and therefore an article of religious faith (athiesm)?
I confess I have very little knowledge of genetics but I think these are reasonable questions.
However, JW, thanks again for having the guts to enter the arena and fight, like a man!
;-)
The crowd shouts "Helio! Helio! Helio!"
Will he have the courage to fight, or just shout insults from the sidelines at the reigning champion?
;-)
OT
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Helio
For a dr of genetics post 94 seems to be an embarrassingly obvious case of mixing up the terms "evidence" and "interpretation" into a single fruitcake.
Does any of the information on the chromosomes actual say "We came from apes"?
Of course not.
Remember the rule;- explain your justifcation for macroevolution in layman's terms, dont just jump to the conclusion.
Otherwise we will suspect
i) You dont really understand what you are talking about
ii) You are hiding something.
You could also trying some convincing answers to the questions I posed for John Wright.
cheers
OT
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FP says in #93-
"But to then make the assumption that there is common ancestry is a leap of faith."
"By the way JW are you saying that the fusion of two bonobo chromosomes and time gives us Einstein? Man, I admire your faith..."
On the contrary, the leap of faith is made by the person who considers all of this evidence and to where it points, and instead goes on to claim that the human genome was created that way. This was a prediction of the theory of evolution: if evolution occurred, consistent with all the other evidence here's what we expect to see, and, lo and behold, we did. Creationism, on the other hand, simply tries to explain away these amazing coincidences rather than making any falsifiable predictions of its own.
Can you suggest a single falsifiable prediction of creationism? A single piece of evidence which, if found, would destroy the hypothesis that creationism explains origins? I can't. This was one of evolution's falsifiable predictions, and it - like all the others - passed with flying colours. (By the way, the reason creationism cannot be falsified is because it's a childish, unscientific game whereby any refutation can be met with 'Ah, God just did it this way, who are we to question?' It cannot be falsified, therefore it is not science.)
"It appears that chromosomal rearrangement is quite common and doesn't lead to speciation"
Are you saying that some time in the past 6000 years this fusion event happened? Which was God's design: the unfused or the fused? Is this not a chromosomal change not the very definition of evolution? If a genome can change this much, what's to stop it changing in the way mainstream science postulates? You're reaching, aren't you?!
OT asks these questions in #96-
"1) How can you be sure that this was a fusion between two chromosomes and that they were not created that way?"
In layman's terms (and of course as you know I'm no geneticist), there are markers which occur at the ends of chromosomes called telomeres which protect the chromosome, and there are markers in the middle of chromosomes called centromeres. Thus you can always tell when you're looking at the end of a chromosome - it'll have a telomere - and when you're looking at the middle. Well if you look at human chromosome #2 (this graphic will help), it is literally: START-MIDDLE-END-START-MIDDLE-END in a single chromosome, when it should be START-MIDDLE-END. This is how we know it's a fusion of two chromosomes, rather than a created design.
"2) How can you be certain that these are "ancestor" chromosomes? Is this not drawing a conclusion before working through the evidence? Isnt this prejudicing the outcome of your investigation?"
Evolution made a hypothesis, of which certain predictions derive, tests, none of which must fail, and each time the hypothesis withstands the scrutiny. In the case of human chromosome #2, the prediction is that, because apes and humans are hypothesised to have shared an ancestor, there would be two more chromosomes hidden in the genome. This was bourne out by this evidence. So it isn't drawing a conclusion other than that which was predicted. There doesn't appear to be any other hypothesis which would fit the evidence. It certainly isn't design, for the reason that a designer would not choose to make it look exactly as though two chromosomes had fused when they hadn't!
"3) If this was a fusion event as you suggest (you cant repeat and observe it) then how can you be sure it didnt happen in humans and not apes, who then passed it on to other humans?'
Well it could have happened anytime and the prediction would still pass. In other words, it doesn't really matter whether the fusion happened in earlier humans or if they happened before we branched off into humans and great apes (although it would make a lot of sense to suggest that these kinds of differences in our genomes explain the differences between us and them); the discovery was that the two 'missing chromosomes' were found, and the evidence fits the theory like a glove. Much, much, much too well to be a coincidence!
"4) How can you be certain that the fusion was actually that of primate genetic material? Isnt this an assumption? Do any primates carry evidence of this same fusion?"
No, they have all 48 chromosomes, and we would too without the fusion. All scientists can do is compare the chromosomes, and the bonobo for example has near-identical DNA sequences to humans in chromosome #2, but unfused. The theory fit the facts even before the facts were known, which is very impressive!
"5) Isnt this issue a bit of a red herring? ie how do you explain the massive differences in actual information between primates and humans DNA aside from the exceptionally minor APPARENT similarity you raise? Interim stages are not known to exist which show either the DNA deevelopment or physiological development from primate to man. Therefore to claim the leap from primates to humans was real is speculative at best as there are no real missing links. Surely John, if you are going to claim this as fact this is an argument from silence and therefore an article of religious faith (athiesm)?"
I'm not an atheist, actually. But I don't believe in a God who creates chromosomes that appear fused when they're not, and who 'designs' such apparently bad and messy designs when we look this closely at them, and who creates a world in which all the evidence suggests that he didn't actually create it. When we go to a crime scene and try to figure out what happened, forensic science is used to track the criminal. In forensics they find fingerprints and DNA, and match it with human beings, and when John Smith's DNA is found in a hair on the floor, and John Smith's fingerprints are on the murder weapon, and John Smith has no alibi for where he was, and John Smith had a motive.... then we rightly prosecute John Smith for the crime despite the fact that nobody was there to see it and it could all be an amazing coincidence. It's called a preponderance of evidence, and that's what we have for evolution.
And here's the interesting thing: the only people who question John Smith as the criminal have a vested interest in getting him off the hook (his lawyers, his friends and familiy who which to protect him). The only people who question evolution are people with an ideological interest in doing so: creationists who are protecting their theological traditions. Show me an non-religious person who questions evolution. There aren't any, because the preponderance of evidence points to it.
John Smith is guilty, and evolution happened. Even the Catholic church, which opposed Galileo so adamantly over something we all now accept to be scientific truth, has come to admit it. It's time everyone else did too.
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ot, i'll keep this short. evolution from a common ancestor explains these data. de novo creation does not- unless your creator is a/ an incompetent buffoon, and b/ wanted humans made, not in HIS or HER image, but that of an ape. the data FORCE the evolutionary interpretation. There is no other. You ARE AN APE. here - have a banana.
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Helio
Lol! Brilliant.
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~Lol~ Here is some laymans tems for you
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3111/2878699711_5cb9392908.jpg
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RJB #100- So my saying creationists are fun to debate for sport demonstrates that I'm lacking in empathy and basic humanity, but Helio is "brilliant" for telling one to go eat a banana? Are all your logic circuits operating correctly? Would you consider yourself a good judge of these matters? Just wondering!
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Lol! I knew that one got to you, JW.
Now whose sense of humour has gone?
Should have waited a bit longer until I said something really hypocritical. As it stands, criticising me for smiling at Helio's 'have a banana' comment, is a bit tenuous, dont you think?
Here, have a sip of this vinegar....
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Ah, you were joking, either this time or that time... of course. Hilarious!
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JW I criticised a post you made which I thought was obnoxious. You corrected me and told me that it was actually a humorous post. I accepted that and made no more comment.
You bring it up again on this thread. What's your problem?
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RJB- That post had no alternative interpretations; it was what it was. You pursued me from yet another previous thread we had wrapped up with that comment, and I certainly had no way to know until now that you weren't holding to your accusations anymore, or that you'd even seen my reply. I'm glad about that, and I'll be happy to put it behind us. :-)
Meantime I'm looking forward to hearing from OT...
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Ah - the vinegar - is JW being crucified here? Look, he's NOT the Messiah etc etc. John - it's the way I tell 'em ;-)
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cheers JW
Like you I'm not a geneticist.
Honestly, I have studied most of the other fields we have discussed and feel I have got a basic grasp of them, but not genetics at the moment.
I *feel* you are much too certain of what you are stating.
Factually it doesnt convince me. You are honest enough to say you are weak in the field but then draw watertight conclusions that I guess no geneticist would do in a formal paper.
What I can say is that creationism as a theory is perfectly comfortable with natural selection and mutations. I *feel* could could be somewhere in a ball park rival hypothesis.
An analogy could be analagous design in terms of organs and skeletons in mammals. Creationists explain this, fairly enough imo, by pointing to a common design from a common designer.
To be honest, I will have to study more to understand the points you raise.
But on their own, would they get evolution over the hurdles to be accepted as a new theory today? I seriously doubt it, personally.
What might go further for me John would be if you could name all the organisms since life "happened" out of dead matter which have progressed into man.
ie lets start with a bacteria of similar, and name every organism as best you can right up until man. I have never probed this but intend to.
I am not asking for vagaries, actual species to species progress. Have you ever done this?
YEC predictions, which you say dont exist;-
1) The cradle of civilisation will be around the Rivers Tigris and Euphrates as in Genesis' Garden of Eden. They are.
2) The order of creation of life forms will follow that in genesis. They do, even in evolution.
3) There will be no signs of human *recorded* history beyond several thousand years ago. There arent.
4) There will be huge chasms between species in terms of fossils. There are.
5) Recorded history of creation stories will have many parallels and similarities. They do. eg Noah and the ark.
6) Local history in Armenia will record sightings of Noah's ark and the emergence of 8 people from it. they do.
Will that do to be getting on with?
BTW I wouldnt insist that creationist or ID must be true. Science and theology both have a habit of changing radically.
OT
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ref point 5. I have posted on this before, there really are some striking similarities between most creation stories. If the biblical creation story was true, I suggest, it would not be unreasonable to suggest that different early people groups might change aspects of the stories slightly.
Common themes, as I recall, were man being created by a God or gods; a golden age of peace and plenty; a tragedy in which man is implicated which ends the golden age.
OT
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BTW Helio
As doubtless the best qualified scientist posting here, I would just like to flag up a little red herring you have unwittingly thrown in.
To suggest that you cant post your best argument for macroevolution here in laymans terms because my mind is already made up is irrelevant.
It never stopped you demanding I "proved God" the first time we "met".
I saw no profit in debating you because of you mad ideas about Christianity and against my better judgement I engaged with you.
Now you are refusing to repay the compliment.
Anyway, nobody on this blog ever changes their mind about evolution or creationism, but they do learn.
And the onus on you to explain your theory is to defend your own credibility and to reassure the other bloggers like princess news junkie and RJB, who obviously cant make an argument for evolution at all.
OT
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OT, we've been over this many times before. It has become tiresome. You, frankly, are not worth it.
If you are really wanting to approach this with an open mind (and I do not think you are, but hey), the first thing I suggest you do is try to understand how we estimate the age of the earth and of the rocks we find on it. Then try to understand what we find (in terms of fossils) in the various layers. Try to understand their distribution. Try to understand *where* the continents would have been when these creatures were alive. Try to picture a Devonian swamp or a Cretaceous beach. Open your eyes.
And come back to us when it dawns on you that Genesis is nothing more than a record of the folklore of one particular civilisation that flourished in Palestine in the 8th century BCE.
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Firepor has already let the cat out of the bag OT, he quoted a verse in the bible in another thread which said that birds and all creatures are Christian theists.
Why would i want to make an argument for evolution? it is just the same as wasting time to make an argument with someone who does not believe the earth revolves around the sun.
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Having said all that, I would very much recommend that anyone who wants to approach this from a theistic position should think VERY carefully about it, because the consequences of behaving idolatrously in relation to the bible (i.e. elevating the bible above reason, evidence, ethical behaviour etc) are *universally* negative. The large majority of Christians in science are definitely NOT creationist; most would be in the "theistic evolution" camp.
The website of Christians in Science is http://www.cis.org.uk/ - I hope some over-zealous moderator doesn't remove it this time! [please, guys!]
There are a number of things on that site to which I would certainly not subscribe (such as getting Alister McGrath to write *anything* - it's just pointless), but a lot which is good, and illustrates what scientists who are theistic christians really think. It needs to be remembered that creationISM is a fringe crackpot dogma, NOT the opinion of scientists who are christians.
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Helio
You never approach anything with an open mind either but I dont respond by pouring insults all over you!
You are just adamant that there is no God and you never stoop to offer a solid argument.
;-)
I respect the fact that you have different views even when you hold them trenchantly and do not try and justify them.
To be honest, I am quite startled by the utter lack of any attempt to address the big questions I have raised here from the top of this thread.
You refuse to even discuss them.
Because you leave me no other choice I am forced to conclude that you are UNABLE to respond to the points I have raised in any logical fashion.
If I am not worth it, as you so graciously put it, why are you still here talking to me?
Because you are afraid to allow me the oxygen of free publicity? So the best you can come up with is a string of ad hominems instead?
Is this really a clinical consultant Clinical Geneticist speaking?
"YOU ARE AN APE. Have a banana?"
Theistic evolutionists have MUCH more in common with me than you.
They believe in a God who caused the big bang, a God who created all matter, time and space; a God who designed and ordered the entire universe and its laws; a God who upholds all order in the universe; a God who created life at the very beginning.
BTW John Wright more or less fits into this camp!
;-)
I certainly dont consider evolution to be a barrier between myself and them.
But I can see a few problems between an athiest like yourself and these people.
You never claimed to come with an open mind to me when you wanted to debate God and I still humoured you. Double standards??
You say;-
the first thing I suggest you do is try to understand how we estimate the age of the earth and of the rocks we find on it. Then try to understand what we find (in terms of fossils) in the various layers. Try to understand their distribution. Try to understand *where* the continents would have been when these creatures were alive. Try to picture a Devonian swamp or a Cretaceous beach. Open your eyes.
Helio, I think I have a fair grasp of radiometric dating. I couldnt claim it is inaccurate. Did you miss that?
Couldnt fossils be sorted in layers in a flood situation according to their bouyancy? I know there has been a rethink about fossils in recent times from the idea that they were animals etc buried very slowly to the current stand where we accept that they were more likely buried very rapidly. ie neo-catastrophism. it isnt creationism, but it def a move in that direction.
Like I said, I dont think we should hold current trends in science or theology too tightly (including YEC and ID). They have a habit of breaking up.
I dont understand why plate tectonics theory is incompatible with creationism or ID?????
It does seem higly cooincidental that the fossils we have and the kinds of animals/plants alive correspond to the kinds in Genesis; broadly speaking;-
Plants, fish, birds, reptiles, mammals etc.
It seems unlikely to me that the fossil record AND the living lifeforms we have AND Genesis would tally so closely by sheer chance.
If evolution was true, instead of yawning chasms between these kinds I would have expected much more evidence across the fossil record and the living natural world of a very gradual transformation in kinds from simplest up to most complex.
Instead we find yawning chasms between these types of life.
This is not closed minded Helio, it is a very reasonable point, I suggest. Why does this evidence appear to fit the creationist model much better than the evolutionist one?
I appreciate your point that fossils are very rare because of the conditions needed to make them. granted.
But why should the chasms in the fossil record and the living world so closely mirror Genesis?
I can assure you my mind is very much open on this. I have NEVER seen an evolutionist willing to seriously explain this. If you can you will have given me something to seriously think about.
It is probably the broadest and most straightforward aspect of evidence for or against evolution; Darwin saw it as a very weak point of this theory; it is the biggest reason I cant take evolution seriously.
But nobody will discuss it. Is this open minded Helio?
PNJ. Better not to enter a debate in which you are unable to participate rather than degrade yourself with straw man arguments, arguments from authority and ad hominem comments.
I can see you right through your smoke and mirrors and you arent fooling anyone.
Lastly, you say there are no creationist scientists.
We had better not mention Prof Norman Nevin then, a figure of world standing in your field and based here in the same country.
Im not as closed minded as you might think Helio. Just because I play devils advocat doesnt mean I am not listening.
eg radiometric dating.
OT
OT
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Hi John
ref the DNA thingy.
More thoughts.
Firstly, I doubt your argument qualifies as one which a layman would understand.
You dont seem to understand the subject yourself beyond the issue under discussion. I am the same.
Having said that, it is interesting I a do think you have a point worth further examination.
To this end, can anyone provide a peer reviewed paper on this subject?
Because that way we can have a professonial in the field put his reputation on the line by saying how certain he is that this is what you say it is.
He will also have to flag up the alternative explanations and weaknesses in this theory.
Finally, if evolution is so true, it is unconvicning to me that it requires an obscure corner of genetics to prove it.
ie see the questions I put to helio above about the fossil record.
Good chat John
Later
OT
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OT, a couple of things. Firstly, Norman Nevin is indeed a very eminent clinical geneticist, but he has no more reason for his creationism than you have. He can't back it up with science; neither can you. The science directly refutes creationism. Get used to it.
That is just a preamble. You still aren't worth it, but I'm assuming there are some other people reading this blog who are not aware of how dishonest you have been in post #114. So allow me to explain for their benefit, since you seem to lack the integrity to recognise the flaws in your argument.
You are just adamant that there is no God and you never stoop to offer a solid argument.
I am not adamant that there is no god. I cannot say 100 percent that there is definitely no god, just as you cannot say 100 percent that there is. However, I CAN and DO say that all the arguments put forward for god actually *existing* are rubbish. The precise details of all that can wait for another day, but they are rubbish. Many Christians do indeed realise this, but "believe" anyway. I regard belief as unnecessary, and indeed potentially harmful.
To be honest, I am quite startled by the utter lack of any attempt to address the big questions I have raised here from the top of this thread.
Well, why don't you look back over my oeuvre? We've been at this long enough, that there scarcely seems a need to repeat it.
If I am not worth it, as you so graciously put it, why are you still here talking to me?
Because this is a public forum. There are others who *are* worth it.
But this is funny:
Theistic evolutionists have MUCH more in common with me than you.
Well then why don't you try out your arguments on them? If it really doesn't matter whether the bible is folklore or factoid (at least with regard to the Answers in Genesis "interpretation"), why will you not approach this properly, and discard your young-earth preconceptions? And if you think theistic evolutionists are on your side, how do you explain AiG's total disregard for them? How do you explain the fact that folks like Peter Henderson align with *me* more than you?
They believe in a God who caused the big bang, a God who created all matter, time and space; a God who designed and ordered the entire universe and its laws; a God who upholds all order in the universe; a God who created life at the very beginning.
Oh yes - a god of the gaps. That god gets smaller all the time. Indeed, *much* smaller, and you will end up with one that is about as powerful as the creationist god, which is pretty feeble.
BTW John Wright more or less fits into this camp!
He will be intrigued to discover that, I am sure.
Couldnt fossils be sorted in layers in a flood situation according to their bouyancy?
Well, there's a hypothesis, PB - why don't you go and test it? Get a load of chickens and conpsognathids and squirrels and lemurs and ammonites and ichthyosaurs and pterodactyls and trilobites and shake 'em up and see how they settle out. And then go and compare that with the actual data and see how your little hypothesis performs.
I'll save you the bother. You may get some hydrodynamic sorting, but it will not produce the layering we observe. "Flood geology" is a ridiculous farce, and if you took even a moment to look at real geology, you would understand this. I was in Portmuck in Islandmagee yesterday. The limestone formations there are gorgeous. There is NO WAY they could have formed from, as you tweely put it, "in a flood situation". You need millions of years. If you have an alternative hypothesis, please write to the president of the Royal Geological Society.
I know there has been a rethink about fossils in recent times from the idea that they were animals etc buried very slowly to the current stand where we accept that they were more likely buried very rapidly. ie neo-catastrophism.
Wrong. Animals fossilise in a wide variety of ways; some are buried by local mudslides (just as they are today), some in other sedimentary deposits, some in volcanic ash, some die in their burrows etc etc. Oh yeah, it's a catastrophy for the poor critter that dies, but to call this neocatastrophism is just silly.
Like I said, I dont think we should hold current trends in science or theology too tightly (including YEC and ID). They have a habit of breaking up.
Well, consider YEC and ID to have broken up. They have rolled up the curtain and joined the choir invisible, and no amount of Notlob Pet Shop Ownering is going to change that.
It does seem higly cooincidental that the fossils we have and the kinds of animals/plants alive correspond to the kinds in Genesis; broadly speaking;-
Plants, fish, birds, reptiles, mammals etc.
Hold the front page. Fancy that - Hebrews in c8BCE knew there were plants and fish and birds and reptiles and mammals. Who'd have thought. You don't need to be a keen observer of nature to spot these things, PB. As it was, they did get several things incorrect, such as classifying bats as birds, and whales as fish. But never mind.
It seems unlikely to me that the fossil record AND the living lifeforms we have AND Genesis would tally so closely by sheer chance.
They do not tally. Where are the marsupials? Where are the amphibians? Molluscs? Insects? Genesis is folklore, PB. Remember that.
If evolution was true, instead of yawning chasms between these kinds I would have expected much more evidence across the fossil record and the living natural world of a very gradual transformation in kinds from simplest up to most complex.
No - that is perhaps what YOU would expect, but not what the theory predicts. I'm sorry that you seem to have had a poor education in the subject area. What evolution predicts is that different forms *branch off* from each other - MICROEVOLUTION, in fact. And as different populations go their separate ways, they diverge further. This is spectacularly confirmed in the horse lineage, the whale lineage, and in a host of other lineages, including (increasingly) the evolution of the birds from the theropod group of dinosaurs.
But why should the chasms in the fossil record and the living world so closely mirror Genesis?
They don't. Not even close. You cannot back up that statement. Genesis, as I have said before, is hopeless if you try to treat it as a factual account of origins. It is folklore, and you are being grossly abusive to the text to try to turn it into something else.
I can assure you my mind is very much open on this. I have NEVER seen an evolutionist willing to seriously explain this. If you can you will have given me something to seriously think about.
Well, you perhaps flatter my pedagogological abilities. I suggest you should simply run with me on this one and seriously think about it *anyway*, in spite of your natural inclination to disregard anything I say. After all, it is not just me saying this, but the vast majority (and I do mean vast) of scientists. Why are we all "wrong" in Ken Ham's book, INCLUDING people like the Pope, the ABoC, Allister McGrath, John Lennox, Francis Collins, Ken Miller, Francisco Ayala, George Coyne? Why do all these committed Christians agree with evolution?
Im not as closed minded as you might think Helio. Just because I play devils advocat doesnt mean I am not listening.
Well, that would be nice. I would really like for that to be so. If you are indeed listening, please be prepared to open your mind and accept that some people have very good reasons for not "believing" - that some of us view systematic doubt as a good thing, and that evolution is indeed one of the most beautiful and productive areas of science. We have reasons for rejecting creationism. Please try to understand why, rather than swallowing the vicious nonsense that emanates from crazy people like AiG.
Please also be assured that I bear you no animosity whatsoever, but you raise a lot of issues that have been raised many times before, and adequately addressed.
Creationism is false. Ethically, falsehood must be tackled. I'm sure you would agree.
There - you're worth it after all ;-)
Cheers,
-H
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Helio
Wasnt that just a long winded way of saying, "You're an ape, here have a banana!" ?
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RJB, sometimes an ape needs to have it impressed upon him or her both the availability of the banana and the advisability of giving its consumption due consideration. But, as the adage goes, you can give the ape the banana, but you can't make him eat it. Sometimes I wish Genesis WAS true, and then I would regard Adam & Eve's "sin" as the most righteous event in all history.
Maybe it was a banana tree... ;-)
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Yeah, what was so awful about "knowing" good and evil, and the difference between them? Eve may have done us all a favour. I have to clarify that I don't regard myself as sharing more in common with OT than with atheists - in fact just the opposite - though he's right to say that I'm not an atheist and also accept evolution, which was the main thrust of his point (people can be theists and evolutionists). I could be more of a deistic evolutionist actually than a theistic one, but no matter. That said, I think I'm more of a Helioist than an OriginalTraditionalist, a fact to which my other postings on this and many other subjects over the past 6 years will attest. :-)
I'll come to OT's other points when I get a chance later this evening.
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Attaboy, John ;-)
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Helio
Just to keep the fruit tree scenario going for a second, while I admire your patience and endurance in attempting to convince, persuade, advise certain people to come down from the tree, I much prefer it when you just shake the tree instead.
Sometimes, its the only language they understand.
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Thanks Helio
First, I'm so relieved that you dont bear me any animosity whatsoever.
Its just with an ad hominem slur on every other line of your comments, its easy for somesome stupid like me to get confused.
;-)
I am a bit surprised at you actually accusing me of being "dishonest" as well but there you go.
First things first - I did not propose a God of the gaps in my last posting, I proposed a God who currently upholds the order and all scientific laws of the universe. quite a difference. Why should the laws and order not descend into utter chaos at any moment?
* Genesis and chasms between lifeform kinds;-
The writer of Genesis could not have known whether there were plant-fish or fish-lizards or lizard-birds elsehwere in the world. They would not have had such a widespread knowledge of the life across the world.
Furthermore, the writer of genesis would not have known what the fossil record would later throw up.
I concede that Genesis does not give a very detailed phylogenic tree, nor did it intend to. but the problem still remains that there are yawning chasms between the kinds and that the writer of genesis could not have known this as a universal fact.
You actually dont offer an explanation for this. just sneers. they dont count.
So we have these kinds;- mammals, birds, fish, reptiles, plants and we add to that molluscs and insects as you point out?
Can anyone show me a few examples of life half way between an insect and anything else? Or a mollusc?
My feeble education does indeed inform me that as populations go their seperate ways they would diverge. But my feeble education has trouble informing me why evolution bases itself on a argument from silence ie that the chasms between these kinds are evidence FOR macroevolution.
I have yet to see the actual linkage of animals between dinosaurs and birds - Can you provide the names of any actual examples? I have seen the horses but not the whales.
My problem is that out of all the zillions of life forms, these are the handful of pebbles that purport to be the rock solid foundation of evolution. The "horses" dont actually prove anything that is difficult to explain with special creation.
If you had solid gradual developments in fossils from every area then you would have a strong argument and not an argument from silence;-
Linkages from plants to other life, from fish to reptiles, from reptiles to amphibians, from amphibians to mammals, from reptiles to birds etc etc then Darwin himself would have been very pleased. But we dont.
Please remember it is not actually me you are arguing against, it is Darwin himself. It was he who said the fossil record was very weak as part of his theory. It has not improved though he believed it would.
Just to keep it simple, old earth creationism and ID need not have any problem with rocks formed over millions of years, so we can set that to one side for the moment. My point in raising neo-catastophism was simply to illustrate that scientific theories do change, sometimes gradually and sometimes radically as you well know.
In other words, I was not using the example to justify flood geology, rather to question your absolute faith in all the current scientific theories you throw at me. All real science is provisional, as you know, and any of the theories you throw at me could change drastically.
To present them fascistically as articles of faith I must prostrate before is anti-scientific.
That is also quite a hall of fame of theistic evolutionists you cite. But is is yert another argument from authority and to be honest it smacks of desperation.
For the record, I think they believe in evolution because they have examined the evidence and they believe it best fits with evolution. simple. I respect them and their views.
Funny how we hear all the time that athiesm does not necessitate a plunge into immorality and yet its adherents on this blog so readily demonstrate the opposite with the lack of common courtesy to others.
I dont have a fascistic mindset which drives me to degrade people who do not see things the same way as me. Nor do I have a mindset which says that I must draw absolute conclusions on all matters under the sun -yesterday- for fear of being smeared by consultant geneticists on public forums.
You said;-
If you are indeed listening, please be prepared to open your mind and accept that some people have very good reasons for not "believing" - that some of us view systematic doubt as a good thing, and that evolution is indeed one of the most beautiful and productive areas of science. We have reasons for rejecting creationism. Please try to understand why, rather than swallowing the vicious nonsense that emanates from crazy people like AiG.
Helio, I dont think I have ever given any serious reason for anyone to draw the conclusion that you have anything other than very good reasons for believing evolution. In fact I repeatedly say the opposite, I have every respect for such people and their views. It is their bullying and smearing of those who are not convinced which I find objectionable, and unscientific BTW.
I have no problem at all with your systematic doubt - why do you rage at mine?
Just because I listen to both sides of the debate doesnt mean I have stopped thinking or put my handbrake on.
OT
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John and RJB
Perhaps you could explain to Helio and myself why you believe that an Almighty God conceived of the universe, designed it and created everything in it?
What possible evidence do you have for such an unscientific and medieval viewpoint?
;-)
OT
PS Helio, it was a very staw-man type attack to sneer at perhaps the weakest of the YEC predicitions in post 108. But why ignore the more difficult ones? Too difficult?
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In all serious now, not that I wasnt before,
may I just repeat my request for someone to explain the lineage of evolution that began with single celled life and has resulted in humans as they are today?
Helio?
I have seen the snapshot of horses...what about the lineage of man?
OT
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OT
Could you please tell me where I stated that God conceived the Universe, designed it and created everything in it?
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OT-
"But on their own, would they get evolution over the hurdles to be accepted as a new theory today? I seriously doubt it, personally."
See, statements like this are a real problem. Evolution is not a new theory, and it does not have a single hurdle left to be accepted as one. Creationism has infinitely more hurdles than evolution does, and it hasn't been accepted as a valid hypothesis since evolution was accepted as explaining the origins of complex life! As I explained earlier, not chromosome #2 or anything else by itself is being relied upon to establish the truth of evolution; it is when all of this evidence is accumulated that it is proven beyond any reasonable doubt (to use another courtroom phrase). Evolution is so obvious to biologists now as an explanation, there is no longer any doubt whatsoever (except sometimes the exact mapping of how it happened). That is the reality that you don't appear to acknowledge.
Regarding the predictions of creationism you gave-
"1) The cradle of civilisation will be around the Rivers Tigris and Euphrates as in Genesis' Garden of Eden. They are."
But in creationist doctrine the Garden of Eden is not only the "cradle of civilisation" but also the origin of first life, and first human life. Actually, mitrochondrial Eve probably lived in Tanzania, based on everything we know from science today. This would make the predictions of creationism wrong.
"2) The order of creation of life forms will follow that in genesis. They do, even in evolution."
The only thing Genesis may have gotten 'right' was that there were plants before creatures, and 'animals' before humans. But it got so much else wrong that it's bound to have gotten something right. For instance, it says that the land was producing plants before the sun was created, something any kid paying attention in biology class would know is impossible. That Genesis may contain an element which manages to be compatible with modern science is not an indicator that it is a true account of how the universe came into being.
"3) There will be no signs of human *recorded* history beyond several thousand years ago. There arent."
We have well-understood reasons that the recorded history of human beings lasts only several thousand years. Contrary to this being proof that the earth and humans have only existed for several thousand years (we have a ton of evidence to prove otherwise), this is evidence that human beings have only been recording their history in durable forms for several thousand years. This point gains creationism nothing.
"4) There will be huge chasms between species in terms of fossils. There are."
Fossils run the gamut. There are millions of recorded fossils of every kind, and when a fossil is found which doesn't fit into a species we know, we record a newly-discovered species.
"5) Recorded history of creation stories will have many parallels and similarities. They do. eg Noah and the ark."
This is not a prediction of creationism that would establish the truth of creationism, any more than the prevalence of polytheism before monotheism establishes the truth of polytheism. What it does establish is that certain ideas were popular, and there could be good reasons for that (eg. extreme flooding among religious peoples with primitive understanding led to some great flood stories with religious overtones, a theme throughout the entire Old Testament as people sought to understand the reasons for things).
"6) Local history in Armenia will record sightings of Noah's ark and the emergence of 8 people from it. they do."
Thank God science is based upon more concrete evidence than the stories told by primitive people around campfires spread from generation to generation.
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pastorphillips said ..."Richard Dawkins and his pals would like people to believe that 'no reputable scientist accepts the Biblical account of creation', but - of course - that is demonstrably arrogant nonsense. (Check out, for example, 'Dissent from Darwin')"
This might interest one or two. Just how many actual biologists on the list *deny* common decent ?
List of Scientists Rejecting Evolution- Do they really?
(AKA - Intellectual honesty, you're doing it wrong)
I highly recommend the checking out the authors additional materials.
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OT, I have not slurred you at all. Do you not feel that trying to play the poor little martyr is a bit pathetic? Claiming an ad hominem falsely is also a fallacy. Just because you can't cope with counter-arguments does not excuse you from dealing with them. Why do you not try to actually engage with my arguments? Your last couple of posts simply parrot old stuff that we have debunked before. There is nothing new there, and certainly no evidence of a desire to learn about biology. So you're agreeing now that the YECs are wrong in their assertion that the universe is only a few thousand years old? Is this progress?
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126 JW
- There is a lot of evidence out there but what does it point to? Could just as easily be interpreted as catastrophe on a universal level - the flood.
- The garden of Eden no longer exists if the universal flood occurred. Mention of the rivers Euphrates and Tigris simply reflects the growth of post flood humanity in Mesopotamia and the renaming of those rivers after the ancient ones.
- however we understand the making of the 'great light' before plants, it's clear that God said before plants, 'let there be light...' Light was there in whatever form for photosynthesis. Hey, give the author a break, they only needed to wait a day! :-)
- Mitochondrial Eve is a moot point and if anything points to a bottleneck sometime in humanity's past. Could that be the destruction of humanity and the repopulation via Noah's family?
- your point 3 doesn't actually say anything.... Give us the 'tons of evidence'. History is about writing and prehistory is before writing. So...?
- point 4. The term species is very fluid in many cases and in the fossil record there are many unknowns about organisms and where they fit in. 'There are millions of fossils of every kind' Are you getting biblical here? :-) Actually biblical kinds would not run into millions but variations on a kind, that is, species, would. When not known we record a new species. Yes, but why is that an issue?
- point 5. You are assuming that polytheism came before monotheism. There are good arguments that state the opposite. Okay, taking the view that Moses was 13th Century BC then Akhenaten is seen as the first recorded monotheist but I don't place Moses in the 13th but the 15th Century (and I have good evidence for this - whether using the conventional or revised chronology) and I would say that Akhenaten (short lived though his changes were) was influenced by the Israelites. And if the Biblical account is reliable then there have always been a few down through history who have known the one God.
- Extreme flooding - what across the globe? Every culture has a similar story, even the native Australians and the Inuit of the Arctic. Seems like the memory of an ancient event to me. By the way, all ancient people were religious in one way or another and are you so arrogant as to think that we are any more intelligent than ancient peoples? In many ways the opposite is true. And have you actually read the Hebrew Scriptures? The flood is not a persistant theme but salvation is.
- Science is based upon evidence and sometimes that evidence is the stories of people, along with other things. Who said anyone was sitting around a campfire? Primitive just refers to people from the past, like say, Darwin or Lyell or Huxley. It is not a pejorative term. Actually, just like the Medieval Catholics who sold pieces of the cross, you are always going to get some traditions based around a certain area. The Bible actually places the grounding of the Ark in the mountain regions of Ararat and nobody is quite sure where that might be, though some think it might be the northern mountains of Iran.
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FP, so many mistakes there. Flood stories are indeed common, because floods are two a penny. Mitochondrial Eve does NOT save Noah, because she's way too far back - in Africa; Y-chromosome Adam is even more lethal for your notions. Interestingly, the Noah myth would mean that creationists would need to believe in even MORE evolution than most biologists, in order to generate the genetic diversity we see, even within individual species. The notion of a global flood in the last several MILLION years is flatly refuted by geology, genetics, and even good common sense. It is a myth from ~8th century BCE - a re-working of the much older story of Gilgamesh.
As for poor old Moses (sadly absent from any Egyptian texts, and the exodus itself, likewise without a shred of archaeological support), which Pharaoh do you think was involved? Poor old Rameses seems out of the picture in your model now...
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Ooh what fun! The hardy foot-soldier science, used as a pawn in the titanic clash of opposing forces - GODFAITH vs NOGODFAITH! But hey, pawns do serve a purpose...
Mitochondrial DNA.
Recent research has indicated the possibility that there are only about 3 distinct strands of mtDNA that go back to "the Out-of-Africa" event. If this is indeed true (and it appears that it is), how intriguing that the so-called unsophisticated hacks responsible for the genesis fable, had the amazing good fortune to 'fabricate' a story that told of a human genetic bottle-neck, where the entire modern human population derived from 3 sons and their respective wives. Or perhaps they were recording actual history.
Radiometric dating.
The only real observed data in radiometric dating is the decay rates of certain radioactive elements from mother to daughter isotopes (which are admittedly, a very long time as measured presently). However gathering a so-called 'age date' from certain rocks (sedimentary rocks don't qualify) requires assumptions about the following:
1. The ratio of mother to daughter isotopes at the time of 'creation'. No daughters are assumed (impossible to test)
2. That the system is "closed" i.e. no contamination is allowed (impossible to prove)
3. That rates of decay have remained uniform (also impossible to prove).
Current practice seems to be that if a "measured date" doesn't meet with the expected result, the data is discarded. Now that's objective science...
Also, there is the minor problem of rocks of known age (rocks that have been ejected from volcanoes within the last 50 years), showing radiometric ages of around 2 million years.
This hardly inspires confidence in a so-called infallible proof that the earth is billions of years old. More like interpreting (or should that be manipulating) data to fit a preconceived construct. A construct that was conceived a couple of hundred years ago by two gentlemen geologists, who wanted to discredit Genesis as accurate history. In other words, a construct ("the earth is very, very, VERY old")that is rooted in theology NOT science.
The trouble for Helio and the gang is this: if modern scientific observation was to do the unthinkable and demonstrate that it was more likely that the earth was indeed young (let's be generous and say less than 1 million years), then the whole edifice of evolutionary theory comes tumbling down. Because, as Darwin rightly concluded, the ONLY way evolutionary theory can even begin to work is by having the luxury of vast eons of time.
Which brings us to JW's assertion that evolution has been accepted as "explaining the origins of complex life" in #126. Since when? Evolution is supposedly a process not a creative force. To the devotee of everything 'natural', the origin of first life remains a mystery. Speculate to your heart's content, but 'life' is the materialists dirty little secret *miracle*. Yes that's right - a miracle.
In keeping with OT's challenge, I have yet to see a rational, scientific hypothesis that provides a purely natural source for the complex, coded message system that we see in the DNA. An information system that transmits functional instructions to enzymes that in turn manufacture the building blocks of life. This is highly advanced software that drives a vastly complex biological machine. Random mutations produced that???
Tell that to any software engineer and see how well he reacts to the idea of mutations being a good thing in his software program!!! "Hey, let's just randomly fuse a couple of lines of code shall we? Double up the odd sequence, eh? Bet that'll give us something bigger and better..."
(And please, no rants that pull the sleight of hand trick of equating 'Shannon Information' with functional information or info that communicates actual instructions)
Now who was it again who exhibits blind faith?
I suspect that if we stepped back in time 350 years, Helio, like most scientists of the time, would have been proclaiming loudly his unyielding certainty that phlogiston was indeed the 'element' responsible for fire.
Oh what a cruel mistress science can be...
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What creationists really believe posted by johntheebap, i got this from another thread on this site,another creationist has let the cat out of the bag :)
"Now I think THAT the reason why you say such a thing, is, because the main stream view off Christianity is, that Adam & Eve were the only 2 persons upon a young earth and from that relationship came the whole Human Race by Incest.
This in my view is only an interpretation.
In my opinion the Bible teaches two races upon the earth during that time, firstly...there are the son's of God (not Angels) and then the son's of men, where cain got his wife from in the land of Nod, if you think about the Big Brother TV show, you see people living together as housemates confined and we can watch them via our TV sets as things develop, while at the same time, there's a great big world going on outside of Big Brother.
The point is, we can watch the Big Brother household in Eden via the Genesis account viewed from the Bible unfold, were Adam & Eve fall into SIN.
Again the next one is Noah and the regional flood"
"I clearly understand what you are saying about Adam & Eve having many Children and would accept that, BUT all I'm saying is that their was two sets of tribes living upon the earth at that time...the son's of Elohim & the son's of Men, even in Genesis chapter 6, it is recorded for us that they had started to inter-marry, which at first began with cain moving to Nod, and Seth was the first Evangelist to cause Men to call upon the Lord.
The way I see it is, that the Human race was NOT started through any form of incest OR for that matter so-called "Angels" coming down and having SEX with the women of the earth which made Elohim very mad BUT it was the fact that the son's of Elohim were putting the very lineage of Christ under threat, which would result in Bible prophecy not being fulfilled.
lastly, the young earth can be better understood in the context of how old is the jewish people "approximately 5770" jewish years, but the Earth is older."
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korotiotio i was just looking at your posts,You have just won the case for the pyscotic imaginary bronze age god, congratulations you will go in history haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
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Helio
Just for reference here are a sample of your ad hominems on this thread;-
1) You arent worth it
2) YOU ARE AN APE.
3) That is just a preamble. You still aren't worth it.
4) you seem to lack the integrity to recognise the flaws in your argument....
5) I'm sorry that you seem to have had a poor education in the subject area.
I have to apologise, the majority of your last major posting was not actually ad hominem, now that I review it. It was saracasm.
;-)
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Hi RJB ref 125
are you saying you dont?
While you are on, are you discounting everything Christ said about Adam and Eve, Abel and Noah....as what?
OT
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Hi John
Good to see you back, its an interesting debate.
I did some reading around chromosomes today in relation to your argument ref post 90 and 98 point 3 you avoid answering whether or not the genetic changes you speak of have ever been seen in an ape, or if you could be certain they didnt happen in a human.
You had no clear answer. If they happened in a human then there is no evidence of macro evolution and your theory falls.
If there is no evidence of them in any ape that hinders your argument that they came from apes.
It is very clear that all sorts of genetic disasters can happen with chromosomes during replication. Helio makes a living treating them.
It does not appear to be certain that this happened originally in an ape.
Furthermore, in practise, it is also clear that abnormalities with chromosomes generally either delete DNA information with no ill effects, or cause serious health problems for the resultant animal.
Deletion of DNA information cannot create a new more complex and more intelligent lifeform.
Serious health problems will not either.
Both work against the theory that man developed from less complex species.
That is all PRACTICAL science.
It is only in the THEORY of genetics that we imagine that such processes can create more complex organisms.
I know this is contested by evolutionists, but the proof of the pudding is that we know of numerous health problems caused by genetic abnormalities, but we have no examples of anything approaching a new kind of organism (Macroevolution) coming from such a process. I know creationism theory argues that such a process cannot create new information either and I know evolutionists disagree. But, for the layman IMO there are no convincing actual examples of new information which are heading in the direction of macroevolution, just natural selection, which is perfectly compatible with creationism.
As for your point about Africa and the cradle of civilisation we are both right, but creationism is not therefore wrong.
Google - the fertile crescent and cradel of civilisation and you will see my point. The fact that we also came out of a genetic bottleneck in Africa does not disprove the Tigis and Euphrates area as the cradle of civilisation. think about it! I am factually correct.
As for the lack of recorded history beyond 6 thousand years ago, you admit I am right but say it proves nothing. why could recorded history not go back 300k years and begin in America? why did it darned well tally with Genesis?
ref creation myths
Here is Enc Brit. I am not saying this proves creationism, just that it fits mighty well with the other data;-
"...the existence of a belief in a supreme being among primitive……has been proven and attested to over and over again by investigators of numerous cultures. This belief has been found among the cultures of Africa, the Ainu of the northern Japanese islands, Amerindians, south central Australians, the Fuegians of South America, and in almost all parts of the globe.
"Though the precise nature and characteristics of the supreme creator deity may differ from culture to culture, a specific and pervasive structure of this type of deity can be discerned. The following characteristics tend to be common: (1) he is all wise and all powerful. The world comes into being because of his wisdom, and he is able to actualize the world because of his power. (2) The deity exists alone prior to the creation of the world. There is no being or thing prior to his existence. No explanation can therefore be given of his existence, before which one confronts the ultimate mystery. (3) The mode of creation is conscious, deliberate, and orderly. This again is an aspect of the creator's wisdom and power. The creation comes about because the deity seems to have a definite plan in mind and does not create on a trial-and-error basis. In Genesis, for example, particular parts of the world are created seriatim; in an Egyptian myth, Kheper, the creator deity, says, “I planned in my heart,” and in a Maori myth the creator deity proceeds from inactivity to increasing stages of activity. (4) The creation of the world is simultaneously an expression of the freedom and purpose of the deity. His mode of creation defines the pattern and purpose of all aspects of the creation, though the deity is not bound by his creation. His relationship to the created order after the creation is again an aspect of his freedom. (5) In several creation myths of this type, the creator deity removes himself from the world after it has been created. After the creation the deity goes away and only appears again when a catastrophe threatens the created order. (6) The supreme creator deity is often a sky god, and the deity in this form is an instance of the religious valuation of the symbolism of the sky.
"In creation myths of the above type, the creation itself or the intent of the creator deity is to create a perfect world, paradise. Before the end of the creative act or sometime soon after the end of creation, the created order or the intent of the creator deity is thwarted by some fault of one of the creatures. There is thus a rupture in the creation myth. In some myths this rupture is the cause of the departure of the deity from creation."
OT
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a bit more about the creation myth, I dont believe you can prove creationism or evolution with proper science (neither are observable or repeatable) but this EB extract of creation myths is excatly what you would expect if creationism were true.
if creationism were not true, you would not expect to find such similar stories of origins in diverse and isolated cultures across the world. Logical?
I know it doesnt "prove" anything, but you have to grant the logic that it does fit the data very well?
Or have you another explanation?
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Helio
Now back to fossils.
I reviewed the matter and it would appear you are overstating the case to suggest the fossil record supports the theory of macro evolution.
Darwin said;-
"....the number of intermediate varieties, which have formerly existed on the earth, be truly enormous. Why then is not every geological formation and every stratum full of such intermediate links? Geology assuredly does not reveal any such finely graduated organic chain; and this, perhaps, is the most obvious and gravest objection which can be urged against my theory. The explanation lies, as I believe, in the extreme imperfection of the geological record."
The Origin of the species.
Enc Britannica confirms this is still the case;-
"Fundamental to phylogeny is the PROPOSITION, universally accepted in the scientific community, that plants or animals of different species descended from common ancestors. The evidence for such relationships, however, IS NEARLY ALWAYS INCOMPLETE, FOR THE VAST MAJORITY OF SPECIES THAT HAVE EVER LIVED HAVE BECOME EXTINCT, AND RELATIVELY FEW OF THEIR REMAINS HAVE BEEN PRESERVED. Most judgments of phylogenicity, then, are based on indirect evidence and CAUTIOUS SPECULATION. Even when biologists use the same evidence, THEY OFTEN HYPOTHESIZE DIFFERENT PHYLOGENIES, though they do agree that life is the result of organic descent from earlier ancestors and that true phylogenies are discoverable, AT LEAST IN PRINCIPLE….Since the publication of Charles Darwin's Origin of Species in 1859, however, taxonomy has been based on the accepted PROPOSITIONS of evolutionary descent and relationship.
"Biologists who POSTULATE a phylogeny derive their most useful evidence from the fields of paleontology, comparative anatomy, comparative embryology, and biochemistry…"
I also reviewed three phylogenic trees in EB purporting to show the evolution of life in
1) all species
2) plants
3) Mankind
The diagrams explicitly make it clear that around 90% of their composition is speculation. That is consistent with what Darwin said and what EB says above, ie "Most judgments of phylogenicity, then, are based on indirect evidence and CAUTIOUS SPECULATION".
Furthermore, this accentuates my case that there are yawning chasms between kinds in terms of actual live or fossiled evidence for lifeforms bridging;-
1) Non-life
2) One celled life
3) many celled life
3) Invertabrates
4) vertabrates
4) Fish
5) amphibians
6) Reptiles
7) Birds
8) Man
I understand you have said that these forms as we know them may not have evolved into each other, nonetheless, the transitionary forms are missing.
You can talk about horses and birds to dinosaurs, but those are
1) Very much the exception to the rule
2) Easily explained special creation
In other words, you are arguing from silence to presume so many imaginary transitionary lifeforms and are therefore taking a faith position to proclaim this as absolutely certain.
In fact, evolutionists have created the theory of "Punctuated Equilibrium" to overcome the lack of transitional fossils.
This is supposed to be Macro-evolution on a rapid pace and is invoked to explain and allow for evolution in the absence of fossil transitional forms.
OT
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Helio
REF neocatastrophism
In your post above you denied this was a valid geological outlook. You are incorrect.
Enc Brit says of catastrophism;-
"A doctrine that explains the differences in fossil forms encountered in successive stratigraphic levels as being the product of repeated cataclysmic occurrences and repeated new creations. This doctrine generally is associated with the great French naturalist Baron Georges Cuvier (1769–1832). One 20th-century expansion on Cuvier's views, in effect, a NEOCATASTROPHIC school, attempts to explain geologic history asa sequence of rhythms or pulsations of mountain building, transgression and regression of the seas, and evolution and extinction of living organisms."
Derek Ager ( I dont believe he is a creationist), past president of the British Geologic Association, says;-
"I have already declared myself an unrepentant `neo-catastrophist.' "
He goes on to say that the geologic evidence reminds him of the life of a soldier, full of "long periods of boredom and short periods of terror". It seems to me that the "long periods of boredom" are the contact lines between the strata (the absence of deposits where, presumably, all the evolution has occurred). The "short periods of terror" formed the fossil-bearing deposits themselves. It is rapid, large-scale processes that form the fossil-beating deposits we actually observe."
Ager also interprets differences in geological formations as a result of "ecological expropriations", a rapid process involving replacement of one existing kind by another, i.e., ecology not evolution.
The evidence suggests rapid deposition on a large scale: catastrophism.
The reason I brought this up was to highlight how theories may dramatically change, not to support creationism, however the theory does move in the direction of a creationist outlook of how fossils were formed.
You were obviously wrong to suggest neo-catastrophism is not valid science. That is now looking tenous.
OT
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OT
I am saying, "I dont KNOW." (Three words which you dont read very often on here.)
I am open to reasonable suggestions, theories, arguments.
I am not open to infantile, illogical, ungrounded fairy stories. Adam and Eve did not exist. Genesis is myth. It is merely the story of how a primitive people explained in primitive terms, how they came about.
These primitive people at least had an excuse. They didnt have access to science, genetics, archaeology, etc... to help their understanding. We, on the other hand, do. To reject the beauty of the knowledge that we have been gifted with, is criminal (or sinful, to use your language.)
What an Evangelist says Jesus said often tells us more about how the evangelist saw things, not necessarily what Jesus actually said. For example, one writer has Jesus coming from Bethlehem, another from Nazareth. Which is it to be? One of the evangelists is 100% wrong, OT.
I'd describe my view as one of faith seeking understanding, as opposed to faith based on groundless certainties. Out of the truths, contradictions, demonstrable falsehoods and mytholgies contained within the Bible, emerges the central figure of the Logos, Jesus. He is still there when we peel away the nonsense. In fact, he is far more powerfully there if we have the courage to make that journey and rid ourselves of the clutter.
While you are asking for my opinion I'll also say I do not like biblical fundamentalists, creationists, etc.. I dislike the damage they do to the credibility of Christianity. I dislike their proselytising, their arrogance and their extremely irritating use of the Bible as proof texts and their unhealthy focus on sin, (normally other peoples.) You, nor any of them will prove the existence of God by refering to the Bible.
Finally, I dislike them because they often scheme. They will ask a question designed, not to seek a genuine opinion, but to set a trap. (Just like the Pharisaic "Should we pay our taxes to Caesar?" or again,"We caught this woman in the very act of committing adultery, what should we do?") The question is designed in such a way that no matter what Jesus answers, they are ready to pounce.
A bit like your question to me OT, "Are you saying you dont?" I am never going to win, OT, am I?
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koro-
I only wish I had more time today to respond to what you wrote. No matter, let me hit on one main point:
"if modern scientific observation was to do the unthinkable and demonstrate that it was more likely that the earth was indeed young (let's be generous and say less than 1 million years), then the whole edifice of evolutionary theory comes tumbling down."
I agree; a young earth and evolution are incompatible. So what? As Lewis Black says, "When anyone tries to tell me the earth was created in 7 days I go and pick up a fossil, and I hold it up and I say 'FOSSIL.' And if they keep talking I throw it just over their head." The earth is old. Current geology and geophysics suggests about 4.54 million years.
"To the devotee of everything 'natural', the origin of first life remains a mystery. Speculate to your heart's content, but 'life' is the materialists dirty little secret *miracle*. Yes that's right - a miracle."
What's so bad about mystery? It's better than filling it with 'God did it' or, as is said a lot in current evangelical culture, 'It's a God thing.' If we don't know, we don't know. That doesn't mean that God did it. God is only so big as to be used like putty to fill in gaps in our knowledge? That doesn't lead to a very impressive view of God.
"I have yet to see a rational, scientific hypothesis that provides a purely natural source for the complex, coded message system that we see in the DNA. An information system that transmits functional instructions to enzymes that in turn manufacture the building blocks of life."
A complex insomatic protein metabolic motor. Yes, I've heard Answers in Genesis lectures too. See my last answer. Thank God for scientists willing to continue searching for answers they don't have, as opposed to sitting in church saying, 'God did it.' Without that scientific drive for truth we would not have most of the very uncontroversial modern science we have today. You are lucky: you may live long enough to see a discovery which fills this gap scientifically. Watch this space.
"Tell that to any software engineer... 'Hey, let's just randomly fuse a couple of lines of code shall we? Double up the odd sequence, eh? Bet that'll give us something bigger and better...'"
You're not doing yourself any favours with this utter mischaracterisation of how natural selection works. A better analogy would be if a programmer built a basic program in which the fittest code survived, and adaptations occurred. It's been done, of course, and some interesting evolution is seen. Do some reading on this; you'll be amazed.
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Helio
Ref the God debate.
You say;-
"I am not adamant that there is no god. I cannot say 100 percent that there is definitely no god, just as you cannot say 100 percent that there is. However, I CAN and DO say that all the arguments put forward for god actually *existing* are rubbish. The precise details of all that can wait for another day, but they are rubbish. Many Christians do indeed realise this, but "believe" anyway. I regard belief as unnecessary, and indeed potentially harmful."
I respond;-
You say all the arguments for God are rubbish, but that is very subjective indeed. So you admit that God may be actually real, and you admit you can't refute the idea.
But in practise, your "science" is overlaid with a generous helping of naturalism, which is built on the foundation of the untestable and unproven assumption that there is nothing outside the natural world.
Perhaps proof of this is that you continually equate science with the non-existence of God and your refusal to discuss the demaraction of science with "the supernatural".
In reality science has always been the study of the uniformity of natural causes in an open system/supernatural world. No historical conflict at all.
I argue that we have isolated your untestable, and unproveable and therefore unscientific assumption (Naturalism) and can now look at how it impacts your worldview.
In abstract terms, we can come to any raw data with untestable assumption A and interpret it, giving us conclusion A.
But what happens if you come to the raw data with untestable assumption B and interpret it with that? Obviously you are going to get conclusion B.
Neither macro evolution or creationism can be observed, tested and repeated in real time. These are the requirements of good science, you will agree.
Therefore interpreting the ancient data requires model building and unproveable assumptions, not regular science.
If macroevolution is assumed the data can be interpreted as though it were true and the conclusion will fit with that.
But if creationism is assumed the data can also be interpreted with that and the conclusion will also fit.
One assumes God's special creation happened. The other assumes it didnt happen. Neither can be observed or proven.
But to present only one assumption, secular evolution, and its conclusion as factual and the only possible outcome glosses over the unproveable assumptions used to get there; naturalism.
This is how life is in totalitarian regimes - only one worldview allowed based on one set of assumptions - no thinking allowed. Assumptions presented as facts and it is frowned on to question them.
Evolutionists normally dont even admit they have presuppositions. Often they dont even realise they do. They present their version of history and their interpretations as if they were observed facts.
People are either snowed under with jargon by "experts" or intimidated into acceptance of a world view with its philosophical and religious implications without even knowing what has happened. Most people believe in evolution because most people believe in evolution; if creationism is even mentioned it's ridiculed and caricatured.
Thus, evolution is assumed, not proved, and creation is denied, ***NEVER REFUTED***.
To argue that there is no other possible way of interpreting the data than macroevolution could therefore be argued as brainwashing.
The only people who approve of censorship and brainwashing are those who have a worldview to protect--in this case an admittedly unproveable atheistic worldview based on evolution.
Macroevolution is based on untestable and unproveable assumptions which cannot be observed, tested and repeated in real time; it might arguably be true, but it is not good science.
It's a philosophical world-view about the past, loaded with religious implications.
Thanks for reading this far...lets continue the conversation...
regards
OT
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RJB
Thanks for taking the trouble to respond.
I respect your answer and I also recognise that my question came across as very blunt. sorry.
I know when we have previously debated you expressed the highest respect for the teaching of Christ in the gospels.
So I am now getting a clearer picture of your views on this matter, which I repeat, I have the utmost respect for.
As for creationism, I am not arguing that I am absolutely certain on any issue I am discussing here. Theology and science do change.
But I am very interested to test how credible various ideas are.
Obviously I have a bias towards creationism/ID, I hope you will also respect that.
I dont question the integrity of anyone who believes in evolution, but I reserve the right to test their arguments for it.
I notice that you frame your responses to me on this subject in ways other than those which examine the actual evidence and means of interpreting it.
Could I please request that you limit your contributions on this matter to this sphere please?
Many thanks
OT
BTW, have you really got a functioning definition of fundamentalist there?
What about this;- Fundamentalism is an ideology which has absolute certainty about itself and refuses any attempts to have a rational discussion about its strengths, weaknesses and origins. It usually makes personal and vicious attacks on the integrity and ability of anyone who does.
OT
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OT
I'm not a scientist. I do have a degree in theology/scripture though. I know that the church got many things wrong. I could not prove to you that the earth is not in fact flat.
You will get no scientific argument from me either to prove or disprove evolution. I am simply not qualified. However, I have reason. Reason, common sense etc.. tells me that evolution is more likely than a seven day glorified mechano set.
Within possibly a week of studying biblical inerrancy, I concluded that Adam and Eve were myths, the flood was myth, etc.. (I remember it well because "It aint necessarily so.." was in the pop charts at the time.)
I know enough about the Bible itself - without reference to science - to discount the Genesis account of creation. (Both of them.) Is the creation account in the Bible reasonable to believe? No it isnt.
You point out that I frame my responses in ways other than examining the actual evidence and means to interpret it. As has been pointed out to you a hundred times by others on here, you are the one who is putting forward a theory based on a camp fire story and stating that you believe it. No evidence, no means of interpretation.
The onus is on YOU to provide it to back up your belief. Your argument is, God wrote the Bible therefore it must be true. My argument is that God did not write the Bible and that it is not true, as in historical fact.
OT, this has been pointed out to you before.
Lastly, lol, yes you can ask me to limit my contributions to this sphere please. But no I wont. Its a blog, OT, I'll say what ever I wish. You have the perfect right not to respond. Part of the fun of blogging is the interesting tangents we go off on.
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RJB
'Within possibly a week of studying biblical inerrancy, I concluded that Adam and Eve were myths, the flood was myth, etc.. (I remember it well because "It aint necessarily so.." was in the pop charts at the time.)'
Your studies must have been very shallow RJB. I'd be interested to know where you studied and what kind of course would be in 'biblical inerrancy'. I have several theology and ancient history degrees along with a degree in biology (Yes, Helio and co, before you start, I know, I am not up there in the higher eschalons of PhDdom like yourselves but they do afford me a broad informed opinion) and I have studied in both conservative and liberal college environments over the last twenty five years. Obviously, you came to your conclusions from what you were told. Wouldn't it be better to be looking at the documents in depth before, so quickly coming to this conclusion. Over the years I have read and studied ALL of the biblical texts over and over again - the Hebrew texts, Aramaic texts in Daniel and Esther, The Syriac Peshitta, the Greek Septuagint, the Greek New Testament etc, as well as other ancient Near Eastern texts. I have read many scholars positions concerning the Bible and taken on board some of their arguments but I am now content to accept, based upon my studies and not blind or ignorant faith, that the Bible is the Word of God. But you can think differently if you wish...
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Helio 130
You really take the biscuit. Floods are two a penny. You claim to have studied ancient Near eastern myths and stories in some small measure and yet you give the impression that these universal stories describe some local disaster. They all describe a catastrophic deluge which destroyed humans and animals and one family and some animals were saved in a boat. Same story, slight variations. Quite significant I'd say.
Mitochondrial Eve - too far back. Assumptions again.
Are you really a geneticist as some on this blog say? You know that diversity of species can occur very quicky and we see it in domestic animals.
Geology refutes nothing. Geologists with a particular world view attempt to refute these things. The same is true of many geneticists.
Assumptions again. A reworking of Gilgamesh. There are some similarities but they are very different. Incidentally, if you knew about the Gilgamesh story you would know that he was a king living in the third Millenium BC and that the story of the flood plays a small part in the story of his search for his departed friend and his eventual conversation with the immortal Upnishtim. The focus of the story is Gilgamesh and his search for immortality and so it would be odd for the Hebrews to pop along to the local sixth century (not eighth, when incidentally, Asshurbanipal's marvelous library had been destroyed) Babylonian library and pick a story about a king who was later elevated to deity and extract a story. Oh, while we are at it, let's take this story of Atrahasis and use it.
I'd be interested to know how much you know about Egyptology. The name Moses comes up again and again in Egypt, Tutmoses, Rameses (Ra-moses), Ahmoses etc. A very Egyptian name. If you knew anything about Egypt you would understand that defeats were never recorded. If you read the records you would think they only ever had victories. The slaves leaving Egypt after the Egyptians had been humiliated, and led by one who had been in line for the throne. As far as they were concerned, it didn't happen. The Pharaoh and his army were destroyed. The Pharaoh was Horus, a living god. This would have been hushed up. The date is pretty clear, somewhere between 1450-45 BC. Taking the conventional chronology that would involve the early part of the 18th Dynasty and there is a lot of circumstantial evidence for this. There is even more evidence if the revised chronology is applied and Moses and the exodus is placed during the 12-13th Dynasties. As to the pharaohs involved at the exodus - coregency of Tutmoses III/Amenhotep II or Neferhotep I. As you say, Rameses was definitely out of the picture being much too late.
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FP
Biblical Inerrancy is the doctrinal position that, in its original form, the Bible is totally without error and free from all contradiction.
As I stated above, even with my "shallow" education, it didnt take 7 days, even with a rest day at the end, to conclude that, that particular view was rhubarb. (Especially when the contradictions start almost immediately.)
Jesus' life didnt somehow miraculously correspond exactly to the OT, as you well know, the Evangelists, with their knowledge of the Old Testament, just made it fit where possible. I can accept that 'poetic licence', as well as the dozens and dozens of contradictions which are rife throughout the Bible.
I can accept the human frailty of the authors, their mistakes etc.. and still believe in Jesus Christ. But please dont tell me that it is all true and is all the word of God. It insults my intelligence, no matter how shallow you think that may be.
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JW re #141
"Current geology and geophysics suggests about 4.54 million years."
Yes but why do they suggest that? Because a couple of hobbyist geologists came up with the idea that "the present is the key to the past" - the grand assumption that geological processes are "slow and steady" called uniformitarianism. They observed that nothing much was happening geologically in their neck of the woods(the British Isles) and came to the startling conclusion that that's how it was for all of geological history worldwide (of course some like Cuvier came to a very different conclusion - catastrophism). Remember, this concept of uniformitarianism came from a theological desire to overturn the Genesis account. Their thinking was a classic example of the rationalist school of scientific thought where the hypothesis proceeds the data.
Now fast-forward to the 20th century and the discovery of radioactive elements with their propensity to decay from one form into another. Once again rationalist thinking comes into play and the observed data is interpreted(manipulated) into supporting the hypothesis that the earth is billions of years old. Except radiometric 'dating' doesn't actually prove anything because the conclusions are based on a series of unprovable assumptions.
Today the concept of uniformitarianism in geology has been quietly swept under the carpet as the overwhelming geological evidence supports catastrophe as the main shaper of geological features - volcanoes, earthquakes, tectonic upheavals and flooding events (rain based & the sudden release of glacial melt-water).
Clearly the doctrine of uniformitarianism and 'long ages' go hand in hand, but catastrophism is not bound by such a restriction. Gobal catastrophic events could easily be short, sharp affairs that are done and dusted within weeks or days (if not hours as the Bali Tsunami graphically demonstrated).
Whether you wish to dismiss the Genesis record as fable and myth, its record of a global flood makes far better sense of the observable geological evidence.
"Thank God for scientists willing to continue searching for answers they don't have, as opposed to sitting in church saying, 'God did it.'"
What's good for the goose is good for the gander...
How many times have I heard, "ah yes, we're not quite sure how that happened, but we do know that 'evolution did it'!" Regardless of how many 'research problems' that crop up with evolutionary theory, adherents retain an a priori commitment to holding on firmly to their own 'creation myth'.
"A better analogy would be if a programmer built a basic program in which the fittest code survived, and adaptations occurred."
Thanks! I couldn't have thought of a better analogy to support the thesis that the living world we see around us DOES have a 'first cause', a supreme programmer that has written a 'mind-boggling' programme that we call life.
;-)
I have no problem fitting your analogy into a 'creationist' scenario. From converstations I've had with both a molecular biologist and a respected geneticist it would seem likely that the genome has the ability to respond to external stimuli from the environment and then put in place adaptations that help the organism survive. Also that natural selection far from being a creative force, is indeed a *preservation* mechanism that helps organisms survive in the face of the deleterious onslaught of 'bad' mutations.
Anyway, you missed my point regarding software engineers and random mutations. I think I understand natural selection as well as any layperson and believe it is the fundamental mechanism that produces the diversity we see within the various biological 'kinds' (in other words, natural selection operates within specific limits). My desire was not to misrepresent natural selection.
I was making a point about messing with informational code that is carrying a specific message. If random mutations (not planned by the programmer) either delete, insert or re-arrange the characters that constitute the syntax of the code, this will *most* likely result in the program being broken and failing miserably. A bit like MS Vista really.
Actually, Microsoft is a nice analogy...
What Evolutionary Theory is wanting us to believe is akin to believing that once upon a time and without a helping-hand, a program called "MSDOS" popped into existence along with the hardware that would run the program.
It sat there doing it's thing and in the course of time environmental factors caused the code in 'MSDOS' to mutate, adding more & more bits of code fragments. Some of those fragments caused the 'new' MSDOS to fail and it was no more, but other fragments added exciting new features that would do more as well as allowing it to build better hardware all by itself. It also developed variants like XP Home & Business. Then we arrived in the now and today we have 'MS Vista'. A program with lots of flaws but with superior functionality to it's far-distant ancestor.
Now where were we on the 'origin of life' question? :-)
Oh and I do like OT's request to define "super-natural"... Nice.
Answers anyone???
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Hi again RJB
You said;-
I'm not a scientist. I do have a degree in theology/scripture though. I know that the church got many things wrong. I could not prove to you that the earth is not in fact flat.
You will get no scientific argument from me either to prove or disprove evolution. I am simply not qualified. However, I have reason. Reason, common sense etc.. tells me that evolution is more likely than a seven day glorified mechano set.
I say;- can you explain exactly how "reason" leads you to this conclusion?
You said;-
Within possibly a week of studying biblical inerrancy, I concluded that Adam and Eve were myths, the flood was myth, etc.. (I remember it well because "It aint necessarily so.." was in the pop charts at the time.)
I know enough about the Bible itself - without reference to science - to discount the Genesis account of creation. (Both of them.) Is the creation account in the Bible reasonable to believe? No it isnt.
I say;- can you actually justify these comments or do you ask us to take them on authority from you RJB?
You say;-
You point out that I frame my responses in ways other than examining the actual evidence and means to interpret it. As has been pointed out to you a hundred times by others on here, you are the one who is putting forward a theory based on a camp fire story and stating that you believe it. No evidence, no means of interpretation.
I say;- Please refer to
1) the list of falsifiable predictions I have made for creationism above
2) The failure of anyone to refute any of them
3) The inability of anyone to refute my arguments that neither macroevolution nor creationism can be ultimately "proven" because they cannot be observed, tested and repeated in real time; and my argument that the fossil record more closely fits creationism than evolution etc.
You say;-
The onus is on YOU to provide it to back up your belief. Your argument is, God wrote the Bible therefore it must be true. My argument is that God did not write the Bible and that it is not true, as in historical fact.
OT, this has been pointed out to you before.
I say;-
Ok so your argument is that God did not write the bible....that this has been pointed out to me before. This actually smacks of fundamentalism; you say something and we are expected to believe it. there is no onus on you to justify your argument???? we are not allowed to cross examine you on pain of being given nasty religious labels???
BTW, did you come up with a definition of fundamentalism yet?
A few points on the bible and creation;-
1) Christ referred to Adama and Eve being joined together AT THE START OF CREATION. In the passage below he speaks of the beginning of creation and quotes directly from the Genesis account of the first marriage. He also referred to Noah and the flood as a real person and event.
Mark 10
2 And the Pharisees came to him, and asked him, Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife? tempting him. 3 And he answered and said unto them, What did Moses command you? 4 And they said, Moses suffered to write a bill of divorcement, and to put her away. 5 And Jesus answered and said unto them, For the hardness of your heart he wrote you this precept. 6 But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and female. 7 For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and cleave to his wife; 8 And they twain shall be one flesh: so then they are no more twain, but one flesh. 9 What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.
2) Why does each "day" in Genesis emphasise the description of a morning and evening?
3) Why is the Hebrew term used "Yom" without any qualification for day? Nowhere else in the bible is this term used as a figurative day unless explicitly qualified as such?
4) Historically, Jews and Christians always believed in a young earth and creationism, right up until Lyell and Darwin. You will see complex arguments being debated here which strongly challenge both their views. If you dont feel qualified to discuss them, perhaps better not to engage with ad hominems, arguments from authority and circular reasoning?
Quote from the Apostle Peter about the fact of Noah and the flood;-
"...that you may be mindful of the words which were spoken before by the holy prophets, and of the commandment of us,[a] the apostles of the Lord and Savior, 3 knowing this first: that scoffers will come in the last days, walking according to their own lusts, 4 and saying, “Where is the promise of His coming? For since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of creation.” 5 For this they willfully forget: that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of water and in the water, 6 by which the world that then existed perished, being flooded with water. 7 But the heavens and the earth which are now preserved by the same word, are reserved for fire until the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men."
RJB, I certainly can't be certain that my ideas are completely accurate. But it is reasonable to ask for a reasoned response from you to them.
No doubt we will chat again later
regards
OT
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Hi JW
Im not sure if you realise this, but throwing a fossil over someone's head does not constitute a serious argument.
Please read some of the recent postings about catastrophism.
As for the God of the gaps argument you use it is not relevant.
The creationist argument is that without God, all the laws, order and stability of the universe would collapse. Aquinas made this point, so it is not new.
That is no God of the gaps. Furthermore, your argument that "we dont know is better than filling it with God did it" is in no way scientific nor objective by any standard. By what objective standard is it better than a God hypothesis?
Furthermore, all current mainstream attempts actually break the scientific law of albiogenesis, which says that life can only come from life, not dead matter.
It is actually quite logical then to suggest that life must have come from eternal life; this is a great fit with the scientific law.
Are you yet willing to give an objective scientific definition of supernatural, needed to exclude God? IOr are you relying on the subjective athiestic religious one? You do believe in a creator God, dont you?
Furthermore, this was the default position of science during the scientific revolution, when all the foundations for modern science were laid down by real giants of science.
To suggest that creationist scientists interested in the origin of life are "sitting in church" and refusing to examine the issue is a facile and juvenille straw man argument. The scientific drive you spoke of CAME FROM THE CHRISTIAN FAITH DURING THE SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION. Have you missed this? Kepler said: "Science is thinking God's thoughts after him".
Keep well, chat later
OT
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Helio
Hope you havent given in there, friend?
ref Egypt and the Hebrews;-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habiru#Habiru_and_the_Hebrews
It is not surprising that the mighty Egyptions might not want to record such a humiliating defeat of all their Gods and mighty army.
The Habiru are a credible ref to the Hebrews in Egyption records though.
Apart from that, if the bible was to begin at Exodus, we would be left with a mighty tough job to explain where the Jews came from and why they invented the passover.
Also ref the fossils and hydrological sorting, this is a bit of a red herring of course, because, simple and complex life forms appear together in the fossil record; the simple and complex are not seperated by "time" in the fossil record. This is especially noticeable in the Cambrian explosion, but it is also plain throughout.
Finally, you expressed frustration earlier that we dont believe you have good reason for believing evolution etc. I certainly dont think that.
I think both theories can coexist peacefully.
regards
OT
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Sorry chaps - too much water, too many bridges, too much else going on. Getting in training for my Big Cycle Ride (OT, you should be aware of this if you know my blog!). Pretty weird - an atheist riding from a predominantly Muslim country to a predominantly Jewish country in support of a Christian hospital...
Anyway, too much nonsense up there to deal with each point individually. I would hope our regulars would be able to brush korotiotio aside without too much hassle. That the laws of physics have not changed over the last several billion years is not an assumption, but a result. A "young earth" is a ludicrous ad hoc mess of a hypothesis that has been completely refuted. Genesis, ladies and gentlemen, is a MYTH.
OT, you never find dinosaurs and humans in the same strata. Rabbits did not appear in the Cambrian radiation ("explosion" is a little too dramatic a word to use for a radiation that took 10-50 million years).
Similarly for the flood - OT, you can't claim on the one hand that all these cultures have flood stories that are really similar (actually, you will find that they are generally not similar at all apart from a "flood" element, and we can tell those in NI from recent living memory), and then try to claim that the flood bit in "Gilgamesh" (yes, I have read the whole thing - I do have a copy of Pritchard, you know) is quite different because it does not suit your purpose for Gilgamesh to be the source of this myth. "Mitochondrial Eve" and Y-chromosome Adam (who should actually be Noah, if you think about it) are not assumptions - they were the REAL PEOPLE from whom our mitos & Ys are descended - they did not live at the same time (other genes similarly derive from common ancestors, but figuring that out is a bit more tricky). Sadly for creationists, Noah would have had to have lived something like 75000 years ago. In Africa (or at least that's where he'd have had to spread out from). These are not "assumptions" - these are real results that refute the creationist lie.
As for Egypt, yes, "Mose" ("born") is a hugely common element in many names. But there is, alas, no evidence of a crown prince Moses or a large body of Asiatics moving out of the Delta and fumbling about in the Negev. Yes, "Apiru" is probably the origin of the word "Hebrew", and referred to all sorts of Bedu and Canaanites (Asiatics). What we have no specific evidence of is the exodus. Josephus equated the exodus with the expulsion of the Hyksos, which is thought to be incorrect, although it may provide some elements of the myth (yes, myth) that was being promulgated in ~C8BCE.
Unfortunately, it appears the Exodus did not happen as specified, nor did the conquest of Canaan. The Israelites arose as a confederation of Canaanite tribes (possibly with some admixture from migrants from the Delta) in search of stories to unite them. This is the very FUNCTION of myth. That being said, the weaving in of the Joseph story is a fascinating topic. "Joseph" contains lots of Egyptian motifs and situations; it was probably an Egyptian story that was pinched by the emerging Israelite consensus. But that's OK - it is folklore, after all, and such things (William Tell, Robin Hood etc) have been going on for ever.
I would encourage any properly open-minded people who may have previously thought of themselves as "creationists" to look at the evidence properly, instead of through the twisted "literature" available at the sorts of disgraceful bookstands manned by Creation Outreach Ministries and similar purveyors of malognant drivel. It's really very interesting. "Your Inner Fish" by Neil Shubin is great, as is "Why Evolution is True" by Jerry Coyne. Also, Dawkins' "The Blind Watchmaker" is a great wee book. I know it's hard for some folks to accept that people that they hold in high regard as "spiritual people" or "close to god" can be so utterly wrong, but there you have it.
-H
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koro- Helio is right, we've covered this ground so many times over the years on this blog I feel like I'm in a deja-vu coma. I'm sure it's very easy to refute hobbyist geologists, and everyone else who accepts the age of the earth is just stupid. What age is the earth really, my friend? Please enlighten me. And with regard to the limit you think is acting upon natural selection to keep it within existing species, I'd be delighted if you could tell me what you think that mechanism is. I'm sure the scientific world will be waiting with baited breath.
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RJB
You misunderstand me. It's not your intelligence that I insult but the seeming shallowness of the course you followed. And please, no patronising, I am aware of the general understanding of biblical inerrancy. A number of issues: What was its original form? What is the error it is totally without? And what is the contradiction it is supposed to be free from?
Your second paragraph is an opinion not a fact and I may be getting a bit old in the tooth but many contributors seem rather childish in their turn of phrase or word which seems to me rather silly. '...rhubarb.'
Paragraph 3. An opinion. Dozens and dozens of contradictions throughout the Bible? Again I ask have you read it through? And how deeply have you studied it? As I said in my thread, I've read the Bible systematically, many, many times and read it in depth in the original languages. That is not to say that I know everything about it or that I am right in what I say, but I am at least qualified to give an informed opinion.
That's very magnanimous of you. You can accept the human frailty of the authors. That's because they were human and not automatons recording divine dictations (though the author of Revelation seems to be an exception, along with some prophets in the Hebrew Scripures). Luke didn't set out to write a gospel but a defence document for Paul as he faced emperor Nero, along with Acts of the Apostles. He wrote his account but the Holy Spirit inspired it (breathed divine authenticity into it). These were preaching documents, compiled to be passed on to future Christians who were not witnesses to the events. As such they are faith documents.
You say you believe in Jesus Christ but who is this Jesus you believe in? Without the authority of the Bible and its portrayal of Yeshua, you haven't really got a Jesus to believe in. At least, not one who can make a difference in your life.
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Helio
No evidence for the exodus. Be a good boy and go back and read again my previous thread. Using the accepted chronology and placing the exodus during the early 18th dynasty YOU WONT FIND EGYPTIAN EVIDENCE for the reasons I gave but you do have written biblical evidence (not 8th C myths) along with circumstantial Egyptian evidence. The evidence is much stronger for the 12-13th dynasties if the revised chronology is accepted and I will go into details if an appropriate thread is set up by Will or you wish me to continue on this one. There is evidence for a large body of 'Asiatics' leaving at the end of the Middle Kingdom. Taking the revised chronology the expulsion of the Hyksos (probably Amelakites and others) occurred after the exodus. The conventional chronology would place this event about mid 16C BC before the exodus, so let's not try and involve the Hyksos (Foreign Rulers).
'fumbling about in the Negev' Did you mean Sinai Penninsula? If so, the traditional Sinai site, based upon the dreams of the mother of a pagan Roman emperor have no evidence to substantiate them at all. The area of mount Sinai and the Israelite wandarings are clearly located in the land of Midian, modern day north western Saudi Arabia.
The theory about the Israelites evolving from a Canaanite milieu and tacking on some stories to elevate their position in history is old hat. I was reading that kind of stuff twenty five years ago and it was old hat then. Kenyon was wrong about Jericho and she dug in the wrong place (the poor quarter of town) and she was wrong in her conclusions (arguing from what she did not find - expensive Minoan pottery - in a poor town and a poor part of town). She should have took more note of Gastang's evidence.
Tell me, what specific story did the Israelites steal to construct the Joseph story? It reads as an authentic story of a Hebrew who was not only in Egypt but was aware of the practises of Egyptian nobility, including the details of mummification. You may state that it's folklore but you have no proof and it's just your opinion and indeed you are entitled to it but it doesn't mean it's right, just like mine.
Who is a 'properly open-minded' person? You? Give me a break. In terms of faith and worldview, you are as open-minded as me. We have our views Helio. Why is creationist literature any more twisted than Dawkins 'The Blind Watchmaker' (I have most of Dawkins popular books and some of his papers). We have our views.
Helio "Now say after me, 'Genesis is a myth, Genesis is a myth'. Maybe if they say it enough times they will believe it. Well, maybe not."
Cambrian explosion or radiation. Hey, what's 10 - 50 million years between friends? An assumption, that's what.
No Helio, the similarity is in a UNIVERSAL flood element and a boat, a family and animals. Well, why would Jews in Babylon (sixth not eighth century BC) tag myths onto their traditions. The evidence suggests that they became quite conservative and pulled together their traditions and beliefs as a way of not assimilating what they would have seen as idolatrous beliefs and ideas.
Helio, very rarely do you find humans in any strata. In my opinion, most dinosaurs died out post flood and possibly in recent history. There may even be a few pockets left (kryptozoology?) but then, that's another subject.
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JW just for fun, let's assume that the biblical record & chronology is accurate. By taking the language at face value, as the original readers would have understood it, Genesis would place the age of the earth at less than 10,000 years.
What observable, measurable evidence (from planet earth) do we have that directly refutes that?
Preferably evidence that doesn't require unprovable assumptions...
Just because today's radioactive decay rates measure in the millions of years (or whatever the number is) is totally irrelevant if we cannot be absolutely sure of the starting ratios or that the decay rates have remained the same.
Even if evidence seemed to point to a million years or so, this is moot, as Evolutionary Theory requires vastly longer time spans.
Besides what is a long time ago? 100 years? Fairly recent... 1000? can sort of get my head around that. 5000 years? Nah. Too long ago...
The reason we have billions of years is because Darwin needed it for evolution to work, and Lyell gave it to him. It is purely presuppositional and not necessarily grounded in empirical data.
Just because a majority of the scientific and media communities *believe* something to be true, doesn't inherently make it so. Ergo the earlier comment about phlogiston (see Wikipedia).
Now to species...
What is a definition of species anyway? There seems to be much debate...
My point was that what we do observe is adaptation within similar groupings. In Darwin's case, mockingbirds on the mainland of South America where slightly different than the mockingbirds on the Galapagos. The beak size of some Galapagos finches has been shown to change very quickly from one generation to the next depending on the food supply. But the change is cyclic only - small beak, big beak, small beak. The change is working with the existing genetic information, but it seems to stay within some internally imposed limit, which is the very anti-thesis of what molecules to man evolution requires.
Matti Leisola, a Finnish Bio-Chemist (with a D.Sc), recently commented that we can genetically engineer bacteria to produce such things as insulin and epo hormone, but we cannot change bacteria into anything but bacteria.
Now if human intelligent input is incapable of changing simple bacteria, how on earth are the unguided processes of mutation and natural selection able to do so much more???
So no, I don't pretend to know what this adaptation mechanism is or how it works, but adaption within boundaries is and has been observed. Whereas natural selection, acting on mutations to produce new functional information that gives an organism useful new physical features, has not.
Birds remain birds, cats remain cats and humans remain human.
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Koro, your portrayal of the history of these ideas is simply wrong. Twisted and idiotic indeed. We know that the universe is billions of years old from multiple interlocking lines of evidence. You pretend that it is a few thousand years old based on a prescientific myth that is no more the "word of god" than what I am writing right now.
FP, so the excavation of Jericho is "old hat"? I note you refer to Kenyon, but not to anyone who has actually found any walls at Jericho. Interestingly, we know that Jericho was inhabited for some 10K years, with not a shred of evidence for a flood, so there's another data point that refutes the treatment of Genesis as anything other than myth and folklore.
As for Joseph, yes, there is a substantial Egyptian element there. What is lacking, however, is much of a *hebrew* element, other than the patches to make it "fit" in the Genesis Folklorists' faux-chronological scheme. Your attempted defence of the Exodus is a joke - you're saying we haven't found any evidence, and you are not presenting any - just more historical lacunae where you think you might be able to slot it. Not good enough, laddie. We need specific evidence. I enjoy reading David Rohl too, but his re-dating of the New Kingdom has not been substantiated, interesting though it is.
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Helio, if you are going to accuse my portrayal of history as being wrong, common courtesy would dictate that at least you say why...
But no, it is far too easy to throw out an accusation and not back it up.
Anyway, I assume you are talking about the history around uniformitarianism, but then you aren't very clear.
Main proponents of uniformitarianism in the 18th & 19th Century: Hutton & Lyell.
A major influence on Darwin as he traveled on the Beagle: Lyell.
Lyell wanted to "liberate science from Moses". A 'theological' position, not a scientific one.
Lyell's 'Doctrine of Uniformitarianism' gave Darwin the long ages and slow changes necessary for his theory to work.
Both Lyell & Darwin belonged to the 'rationalist' camp of science that put the hypothesis before the data. As opposed to the empiricists who followed the data, then formed conclusions.
So, how is my history wrong???
Hutton & Lyell based their long ages on what is now considered a flawed assumption i.e. that the earth's geological makeup is the result of a slow and uniform process.
You say I pretend, but "you know". How arrogant. You can't possibly *know* because like me you weren't there. You take it on faith, because of the proclamations of 'scientisms' high priests. You *believe* the earth is a few billion years old based on a system of thought that began with a presuppositional conjecture derived from a theological motivation.
Call it irreligion, call it philosophy, call it anything you like, just don't call it science!
Besides I asked JW to refute a young earth based on empirical data about the earth (rocks, fossils etc), that doesn't rely on unproven assumptions. Notice, I specifically said the earth, not the universe.
BTW, just making the claim of "multiple lines of evidence", isn't evidence.
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Helio
The cycle ride sounds like great craic, hope it all goes to plan!
Maybe there is a stubborn theist gene somewhere in there yet!
;-)
Some scientists do actually claim this is the case now, I believe.
Anyway.
May I recap in brief;-
1) You are working on unproveable assumptions that God is not real which preclude you from considering the very real possibility of a miraculous special creation. This is naturalism or materialism and is just as much of an unproveable faith position as theism. It is blinding you to other possibilities and you cant even admit you hold these unscientific assumptions.
2) I have demonstrated that you were quite wrong to suggest that neo-catastophism is not a valid school of geological thought, ref Enc Brit and Derek Ager, above.
3) You said "...you never find dinosaurs and humans in the same strata. Rabbits did not appear in the Cambrian radiation ("explosion" is a little too dramatic a word to use for a radiation that took 10-50 million years)".
However you are avoiding my main point. All sorts of contrasting and supposedly related lifeforms appear abruptly in the Cambrian and elsewhere. To suggest that they evolved from each other or other unknown forms does follow logical of a sort, ok.
However, it is still a massive argument from silence or to "ape" evolutionists.... an athiestic god of the gaps called; "Evolutiondiddit".
The absolute evidence of this argument from silence is underlined by the evolutionary term "punctuated equilibrium".
4) You have overstated the case to suggest with such certainity that the fossil record transparently supports the theory of macro evolution.
Darwin said;-
"....the number of intermediate varieties, which have formerly existed on the earth, be truly enormous. Why then is not every geological formation and every stratum full of such intermediate links? Geology assuredly does not reveal any such finely graduated organic chain; and this, perhaps, is the most obvious and gravest objection which can be urged against my theory. The explanation lies, as I believe, in the extreme imperfection of the geological record."
The Origin of the species.
Enc Britannica confirms this is still the case;-
"Fundamental to phylogeny is the PROPOSITION, universally accepted in the scientific community, that plants or animals of different species descended from common ancestors. The evidence for such relationships, however, IS NEARLY ALWAYS INCOMPLETE, FOR THE VAST MAJORITY OF SPECIES THAT HAVE EVER LIVED HAVE BECOME EXTINCT, AND RELATIVELY FEW OF THEIR REMAINS HAVE BEEN PRESERVED. Most judgments of phylogenicity, then, are based on indirect evidence and CAUTIOUS SPECULATION. Even when biologists use the same evidence, THEY OFTEN HYPOTHESIZE DIFFERENT PHYLOGENIES, though they do agree that life is the result of organic descent from earlier ancestors and that true phylogenies are discoverable, AT LEAST IN PRINCIPLE….Since the publication of Charles Darwin's Origin of Species in 1859, however, taxonomy has been based on the accepted PROPOSITIONS of evolutionary descent and relationship.
"Biologists who POSTULATE a phylogeny derive their most useful evidence from the fields of paleontology, comparative anatomy, comparative embryology, and biochemistry…"
I also reviewed three phylogenic trees in EB purporting to show the evolution of life in
1) all species
2) plants
3) Mankind
The diagrams explicitly make it clear that around 90% of their composition is speculation. That is consistent with what Darwin said and what EB says above, ie "Most judgments of phylogenicity, then, are based on indirect evidence and CAUTIOUS SPECULATION".
Helio, I think you have overplayed your hand on these matters as stated above and as such I think some specific reaction is only fair. You are clearly only tackling selected "easier" problems presented to you and even then, are increasingly falling back on misdirection, straw men and unabashed arguments from authority.
I would take you alot more seriously on this subject if you more candid on what for you are the more difficult issues. When you run away from them it just gives the impression you are hiding. Even an "I dont know" would earn more respect!
OT
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John Wright, any response on my last posts to you pls?
Was just getting interesting, I thought anyway...
cheers
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Incidentally, arent we really falling into a big hole here to believe that we only have two camps here, ie secular scientists who believe evolution and creationists that dont?
Many secular scientists are sceptical about evolution;-
Prof physics HJ Lipson
Prof Chandra Wickramasinghe, astronomy
Sir Fred Hoyle
etc
OT
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a few quotes for RJB from CS Lewis
Men became scientific because they expected Law in Nature, and they expected Law in Nature because they believed in a Legislator. In most modern scientists this belief has died: it will be interesting to see how long their confidence in uniformity survives it. Two significant developments have already appeared—the hypothesis of a lawless sub-nature, and the surrender of the claim that science is true. We may be living nearer than we suppose to the end of the Scientific Age.’
Lewis, C.S., Miracles: a preliminary study, Collins, London, p. 110, 1947.
“More disquieting still is Professor D.M.S. Watson’s defense. “Evolution itself,” he wrote, “is accepted by zoologists not because it has been observed to occur or…can be proved by logically coherent evidence to be true, but because the only alternative, special creation, is clearly incredible.” Has it come to that? Does the whole vast structure of modern naturalism depend not on positive evidence but simply on an a priori metaphysical prejudice. Was it devised not to get in facts but to keep out God?” (CS Lewis, The Oxford Socratic Club, 1944)
C.S. Lewis (1898 – 1963) Professor of Medieval and Renaissance Literature at Cambridge University Web Amazon GBS AV
More disquieting still is Professor D. M. S. Watson's defense. "Evolution itself," he wrote, "is accepted by zoologists not because it has been observed to occur or... can be proved by logically coherent evidence to be true, but because the only alternative, special creation, is clearly incredible." Has it come to that? Does the whole vast structure of modern naturalism depend not on positive evidence but simply on an a priori metaphysical prejudice. Was it devised not to get in facts but to keep out God? The Oxford Socratic Club (1944)
I have read nearly the whole of Evolution [probably Acworth’s unpublished “The Lie of Evolution”] and am glad you sent it. I must confess it has shaken me: not in my belief in evolution, which was of the vaguest and most intermittent kind, but in my belief that the question was wholly unimportant. I wish I were younger. What inclines me now to think that you may be right in regarding it as the central and radical lie in the whole web of falsehood that now governs our lives is not so much your arguments against it as the fanatical and twisted attitudes of its defenders. Letter to Bernard Acworth September 13, 1951
That, then, is the first proof that popular Evolution is a Myth. In making it Imagination runs ahead of scientific evidence. 'The prophetic soul of the big world' was already pregnant with the Myth: if science has not met the imaginative need, science would not have been so popular. But probably every age gets, within certain limits, the science it desires.
In the second place we have internal evidence. Popular Evolutionism or Developmentalism differs in content from the Evolution of the real biologists. Christian Reflections (1967) p.84-5
I grew up believing in this Myth [Evolutionism] and I have felt – I still feel – its almost perfect grandeur. Let no one say we are an unimaginative age: neither the Greeks nor the Norsemen ever invented a better story. Even to the present day, in certain moods, I could almost find it in my heart to wish that it was not mythical, but true. Christian Reflections (1967) p.88
Every science claims to be a series of inferences from observed facts. It is only by such inferences that you can reach your nebulae and protoplasm and dinosaurs and sub-men and cave-men at all. Unless you start by believing that reality in the remotest space and the remotest time rigidly obeys the laws of logic, you can have no ground for believing in any astronomy, any biology, any palaeontology, any archaeology. To reach the positions held by the real scientists -- which are then taken over by the Myth -- you must, in fact, treat reason as an absolute. But at the same time the Myth asks me to believe that reason is simply the unforeseen and unintended by-product of a mindless process at one stage of its endless and aimless becoming. The content of the Myth thus knocks from under me the only ground on which I could possibly believe the Myth to be true. If my own mind is a product of the irrational -- if what seem my clearest reasonings are only the way in which a creature conditioned as I am is bound to feel -- how shall I trust my mind when it tells me about Evolution? They say in effect: 'I will prove that what you call a proof is only the result of mental habits which result from heredity which results from bio-chemistry which results from physics.' But this is the same as saying: 'I will prove that proofs are irrational': more succinctly, 'I will prove that there are no proofs': The fact that some people of scientific education cannot by any effort be taught to see the difficulty, confirms one's suspicion that we here touch a radical disease in their whole style of thought. But the man who does see it, is compelled to reject as mythical the cosmology in which most of us were brought up. Christian Reflections (1967) p.89
"But, don't you see," said I, "that science never could show anything of the sort?"
"Why on earth not?"
"Because science studies Nature. And the question is whether anything besides Nature exists -- anything 'outside.' How could you find that out by studying simply Nature?"
"But don't we find out that Nature must work in an absolutely fixed way? I mean, the Laws of Nature tell us not merely how things do happen, but how they must happen. No power could possibly alter them."
"How do you mean?" said I.
"Look here," said he. "Could this 'something outside' that you talk about make two and two five?"
"Well, no," said I.
"All right," said he. "Well, I think the Laws of Nature are really like two and two making four. The idea of their being altered is as absurd as the idea of altering the laws of arithmetic."
"Half a moment," said I. "Suppose you put sixpence into a drawer today, and sixpence into the same drawer tomorrow. Do the laws of arithmetic make it certain you'll find a shilling's worth there the day after?"
"Of course," said he, "provided no one's been tampering with your drawer."
"Ah, but that's the whole point," said I. "The laws of arithmetic can tell you what you'll find, with absolute certainty, provided that there's no interference. If a thief has been at the drawer of course you'll get a different result. But the thief won't have broken the laws of arithmetic -- only the laws of England. Now, aren't the Laws of Nature much in the same boat? Don't they all tell you what will happen provided there's no interference?"
"How do you mean?"
"Well, the laws will tell you how a billiard ball will travel on a smooth surface if you hit it in a particular way -- but only provided no one interferes. If, after it's already in motion, someone snatches up a cue and gives it a biff on one side -- why, then, you won't get what the scientist predicted."
"No, of course not. He can't allow for monkey tricks like that."
"Quite, and in the same way, if there was anything outside Nature, and if it interfered -- then the events which the scientist expected wouldn't follow. That would be what we call a miracle. In one sense it wouldn't break the laws of Nature. The laws tell you what will happen if nothing interferes. They can't tell you whether something is going to interfere. I mean, it's not the expert at arithmetic who can tell you how likely someone is to interfere with the pennies in my drawer; a detective would be more use. It isn't the physicist who can tell you how likely I am to catch up a cue and spoil his experiment with the billiard ball; you'd better ask a psychologist. And it isn't the scientist who can tell you how likely Nature is to be interfered with from outside. You must go to the metaphysician." The Grand Miracle (1970) pp.48-49
This point of scientific method merely shows (what no one to my knowledge ever denied) that if miracles did occur, science, as science, could not prove, or disprove, their occurrence. What cannot be trusted to recur is not material for science: that is why history is not one of the sciences. You cannot find out what Napoleon did at the battle of Austerlitz by asking him to come and fight it again in a laboratory with the same combatants, the same terrain, the same weather, and in the same age. You have to go to the records. We have not, in fact, proved that science excludes miracles: we have only proved that the question of miracles, like innumerable other questions, excludes laboratory treatment. The Grand Miracle (1970) p.91
In all my life I have met only one person who claims to have seen a ghost. And the interesting thing about the story is that that person disbelieved in the immortal soul before she saw the ghost and still disbelieves after seeing it. She says that what she saw must have been an illusion or a trick of the nerves. And obviously she may be right. Seeing is not believing.
For this reason, the question whether miracles occur can never be answered simply by experience. Every event which might claim to be a miracle is, in the last resort, something present to our senses, something presented to our senses, something seen, heard, touched, smelled, or tasted. And our senses are not infallible. If anything extraordinary seems to have happened, we can always say that we have been victims of an illusion. If we hold a philosophy which excludes the supernatural, this is what we always shall say. What we learn from experience depends on the philosophy we bring to experience before we have settled, as well as we can, the philosophical question. Miracles (1974) pp.1-2
When a thing professes from the very outset to be a unique invasion of Nature by something from outside, increasing knowledge of Nature can never make it more or less credible than it was at the beginning. In this sense it is mere confusion of thought to suppose that advancing science has made it harder to accept miracles. We always knew they were contrary to the natural course of events; we know still that if there is something beyond Nature, they are possible. Miracles (1974) p.76
The necessary truth of the laws, far from making it impossible that miracles should occur, makes it certain that if the Supernatural is operating they must occur. For if the natural situation by itself, and the natural situation plus something else, yielded only the same result, it would be then that we should be faced with a lawless and unsystematic universe. The better you know that two and two make four, the better you know that two and three don't.
This perhaps helps to make a little clearer what the laws of Nature really are. We are in the habit of talking as if they caused events to happen; but they have never caused any event at all. The laws of motion do not set billiard balls moving: they analyze the motion after something else (say, a man with a cue, or a lurch of the the liner, or, perhaps, supernatural power) has provided it. They produce no events: they state the pattern to which every event -- if only it can be induced to happen -- must conform, just as the use of arithmetic state the pattern to which all transactions with money must conform -- if only it can get hold of any money. Thus in one sense the laws of Nature cover the whole field of space and time; in another, what they leave out is precisely the whole real universe -- the incessant torrent of actual events which makes up true history. That must come from somewhere else. To think the laws can produce it is like thinking that you can create real money by simply doing sums. For every law, in the last resort, says 'If you have A, then you will get B'. But first catch your A: the laws won't do it for you. Miracles (1974) pp.93-94
Men became scientific because they expected Law in Nature, and they expected Law in Nature because they believed in a Legislator. Miracles (1974) p.169
But if we admit God, must we admit a miracle? Indeed, indeed, you have no security against it. That is the bargain. Miracles (1974) p.169
I find in these theologians a constant use of the principle that the miraculous does not occur. Thus any statement put into our Lord's mouth by the old texts, which, if he had really made it, would constitute a prediction of the future, is taken to have been put in after the occurrence which it seemed to predict. This is very sensible if we start by knowing that inspired prediction can never occur. Similarly in general, the rejection as unhistorical of all passages which narrate miracles is sensible if we start by knowing that the miraculous in general never occurs. Now I do not here want to discuss whether the miraculous is possible. I only want to point out that this is a purely philosophical question. Scholars, as scholars, speak on it with no more authority than anyone else. The canon 'If miraculous, then unhistorical' is one they bring to their study of the texts, not one they have learned from it. If one is speaking of authority, the united authority of all the biblical critics in the world counts here for nothing. On this they speak simply as men; men obviously influenced by, and perhaps insufficiently critical of, the spirit of the age they grew up in. Fern-seed and Elephants
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Creation, evolution or whatever what really matters is our relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ. Sometimes I wonder how valuable it is to spend our time debating and agruing when we could be out promoting Christianity instead. sophia
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Fireprior # 154
According to you, I and 99% of Christians are doomed. There is no Jesus for any of us. Very, very few of us have the education you claim to have and, according to you, there is no Jesus without it.
When I get the chance, over the next few days, I'd certainly like to put out before you some of the dozens of contradictions in the Bible and would genuinely like to learn from your wisdom. If you have the time, maybe you could enlighten me. (In case you think I'm being sarcastic etc.. I'm not. If my education is lacking, I need to know the truth.)
Give me a few days.
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Sophia, what makes you think "promoting Christianity" is necessarily a good thing? I'm all for Christianity, but a humble atheistic Christianity that can coexist peacefully (but not quietly nor without debate) with the theistic variety, as well as atheistic versions of Judaism, Islam, Hinduim and whatever else folks can muster up.
The key thing to promote is freedom of thought. Nobody - not even "gods" - can tell you what to think, and if you want to promote your view, you have to debate and argue your view - and that includes arguing with yourself, your "holy book", your ministers and pastors and priests. Now we see as through a glass, darkly, folks. Thanks largely to science and freethought, the picture is getting clearer all the time.
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Helio
YOU HAVE MADE SOME BLATANT AND EXPLICIT BLUNDERS IN YOUR COMMENTS ABOVE TO ME.
PLEASE HAVE THE COURTESY TO ADDESS THE POINTS, REF CATASTOPHISM AND PUNCTUATED EQUILIBRIUM AND THE PAUCITY OF LIFEFORMS IN THE FOSSIL RECORD AS STATED BY DARWIN AND EB.
REF POST 159.
This reminds me of that time that I had to hound you for a week or two until you admitted that the bible does teach that Jesus was a joiner after all!
;-)
OT
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Sophia
Your point is not without merit.
However, on the other hand, for many people athieistic philosophy masquerading as science (see Helio above ;-) discredits the Christian faith for many people before they can take it seriously.
If the first Adam never existed, why is a second one needed at all??
If you arent sure how to read Genesis how can you be sure you know how to read the Gospels?
If you arent sure how to read Genesis then how can you be so certain you understand God's view on how we should use his gift of sex today?
These are not just pedantic debating points but very real issues influencing the minds and actions of everyone in our nation, from the people training our church ministers, to what sort of ethics are employed by politicians creating legislation and doctors making life and death decisions in hospitals.
Christ said "Ye do err not knowing the scriptures..." and he also condemned people believing human tradition in preference to divine teaching.
You might ask what actually constitutes "promoting Christainity"?
Top of the list is probably what sort of person we are...
Do any of use spend too much time on this blog?
Probably!
OT
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RJB #164
Again, you completely misunderstood my comments. Nowhere did I state that education is necessary for knowing Jesus. My point is that without the Bible as an anchor point for authority then you cannot hold a genuine belief in Jesus because our understanding of Jesus is derived from the Bible and it's portrayal of him.
Note the line of argument in John 17
- glorification of the Father and Son is in sacrifice.
- the Son has complete authority and bestows eternal life.
- to have eternal life now is to know in relationship the Father and the Son.
- Jesus has given his word to the disciples.
- followers are to be set apart in the truth.
- what is truth? The word of God is truth (jn 17:17)
Take away the anchor point and you no longer have somewhere to pin down the historical Jesus or the suprahistorical God - and they are one and the same.
Without the Bible you can have some other figure - maybe the Mormon brother of Lucifer or the Jehovah's Witness arch-angel Michael or the Muslim prophet Isa but you can't have the Jesus of Christianity - the Jesus of the Bible.
Continue to search out the alleged contradictions if you wish and I will try and answer your points. If I cannot then I will let you know. As I said in the earlier thread, I may not be right and I certainly don't pretend to know everything (the more I learn, the more I realise how little I know) but I will give an informed opinion.
2 Peter 2:16-21 says: 'For we did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty... we ourselves heard... we have the even more sure prophetic word, to which you do well to pay attention... But know this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture is a matter of one's interpretation (or explanation), for no prophecy was ever initiated by a human, but humans moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God.'
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FP
No one is throwing out the Bible here. I am suggesting that some of it, actually a lot of it, is totally irrelevant for faith in Jesus and, that much of it is contradictory.
I am arguing that what is recorded about Jesus' teaching and behaviour is pivotal, and that often his central message is clouded by people who go off on irrelevant tangents in the OT.
I also believe that God speaks most powerfully in actual historical praxis. Crossing over to the side of the poor, disenfranchised, oppressed and persecuted reveals the living God in a way which the Bible doesnt. Jesus lives there, shows himself there, most powerfully.
I also believe that from the moment you begin to read one sentence in the Bible, you are at some level, interpreting.
And, we do not read the Bible in a vacuum, we come to it with our histories, our circumstances. The story of the Prodigal Son means more to me, does more to me, in my present circumstances than it has ever done, for example.
I dont know if that explains where I'm coming from any better.
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#157 Helio
Everyone knows about the walls. they are not in question. It's the dating of their destruction that is moot. Garstang dated their falling to around 1400 BC but Kenyon said they were destroyed about 150 years earlier. But lately, Bryant Wood has challanged Kenyon's conclusions based upon pottery found at the site (which she ignored) which is from the early 18th Dynasty. He states "When the evidence is critically examined there is no basis for [Kenyon's] contention that City IV was destroyed by the Hyksos or Egyptians in the mid-16th century B.C.E. The pottery, stratigraphic considerations, scarab data and a Carbon-14 date all point to a destruction of the city around the end of Late Bronze I, about 1400 B.C.E."
As for the dating of Jericho as the oldest city in the world at circa 8000-7000 BC and established upon the neolithic tower found by Kenyon, well again, based upon assumptions. Refutes nothing really.
The exodus. What is this specific evidence you demand? I didn't say there was no evidence - you said that. I said there was circumstancial evidence, and a lot of it. I actually disagree with some of David Rohl's ideas about a revised chronology. So no, I am not a David Rohl fan. I like to read a little wider and come my own conclusions. As of yet, I am not sure which view I agree with because both 18th Dynasty and 12-13th Dynasty arguments have their merits. Of course, the greatest evidence comes from an ancient document which predates the others and is contemporaneous with Egyptian records - the Hebrew Scriptures.
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#169 RJB
You claim that much of the Bible is irrelevant for faith in Jesus and that it is contradictory and yet Jesus himself said this of the Hebrew Scriptures: "You (Jewish religious leaders) search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; IT IS THESE THAT TESTIFY ABOUT ME... if you believed Moses (the Torah), you would believe me, for he wrote about me. But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe my words?" (John 5:39-47). Jesus claim is that whole Hebrew canon points forward to him and so cannot be ignored.
In the post-resurrection appearance to the disciples on the road to Emmaus he said, "O foolish men and slow of heart to believe in all that the prophets have spoken.... Then beginning with Moses (the Torah) and with all the prophets (the rest of the Hebrew Scriptures), he explained to them the things concerning himself in ALL THE SCRIPTURES." (Luke 24:25-27). "All Scripture is inspired by God..." (2 Timothy 3:16).
You say that Jesus' teaching and behaviour is pivotal and so it is but let's not try and reduce Jesus to a good man and teacher, a sort of ancient Ghandi. He claimed to be more than that. And the central message of both Jesus and the Apostles is the cross as the place of perfect sacrifice for humanity's sin. Genesis is fundamental to Jesus teaching and the New Testament. "Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female..." (Matthew 19:4). Jesus isn't talking in terms of some parable or myth but matter of fact history. Mark's Gospel gives us the central theme of Jesus's teaching: "... to give his life a ransom for many." (10:45).
I am rather puzzled by your third paragraph. You seem to divorce Jesus from the Bible and then speak of practical situations where Jesus is found. How could you know this was Jesus among the downtrodden of humanity unless you first saw him in the gospel writings? Incidentally we see the same Jesus as Yahweh acting for the oppressed throughout the Hebrew Scriptures.
At every level of all reading is interpretation and that is not negative surely? You interpret what you read, see, hear etc in order to understand. Now at what level depends upon your knowledge of the literature being read. From my experience, most people who have an opinion about the Bible have hardly read it all all, let alone in a vacuum.
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Many secular scientists are sceptical about evolution;-
Prof physics HJ Lipson
Prof Chandra Wickramasinghe, astronomy
Sir Fred Hoyle
OT:
Prof physics HJ Lipson
Never heard of him.
Sir Fred Hoyle
Fred Hoyle was not a youn earth creationist. He believed in the steady state theory (actually coining the term "the big bang"). However, his theories were brought into disrepute by the discovery of the cosmic microwave backgroud radiation in 1965.
Prof Chandra Wickramasinghe
I attended a lecture that Prof Chandra Wickramasinghe gave to the Irish Astronomical socuety a couple of years ago and he didn't appear to be either skeptical of evolution or a young earh creationist.
It may also interest you to know that project Steve has now passed the 1,100 mark. From the NCSE:
PROJECT STEVE: N > 1100
With the addition of Stephen D. Kinrade on August 25, 2009, NCSE's
Project Steve attained its 1100th signatory. A tongue-in-cheek parody
of the long-standing creationist tradition of amassing lists of
"scientists who doubt evolution" or "scientists who dissent from
Darwinism," Project Steve mocks such lists by restricting its
signatories to scientists whose first name is Steve. (Cognates are
also accepted, such as Stephanie, Esteban, Istvan, Stefano, or even
Tapani -- the Finnish equivalent.) About 1% of the United States
population possesses such a first name, so each signatory represents
about 100 potential signatories. ("Steve" was selected in honor of the
late Stephen Jay Gould, a Supporter of NCSE and a dauntless defender
of evolution education.)
Although the idea of Project Steve is frivolous, the statement is
serious. It reads, "Evolution is a vital, well-supported, unifying
principle of the biological sciences, and the scientific evidence is
overwhelmingly in favor of the idea that all living things share a
common ancestry. Although there are legitimate debates about the
patterns and processes of evolution, there is no serious scientific
doubt that evolution occurred or that natural selection is a major
mechanism in its occurrence. It is scientifically inappropriate and
pedagogically irresponsible for creationist pseudoscience, including
but not limited to 'intelligent design,' to be introduced into the
science curricula of our nation's public schools."
Among the 1101 current signatories to Project Steve are 100% of
eligible Nobel laureates (Steven Weinberg and Steven Chu), 100% of
eligible members of President Obama's Cabinet (Steven Chu, the
Secretary of Energy), at least ten members of the National Academy of
Sciences, the authors of widely used textbooks such as Molecular
Biology of the Gene, Psychology: An Evolutionary Approach, and
Introduction to Organic Geochemistry, and the authors of popular
science books such as A Brief History of Time, Why We Age, and
Darwin's Ghost. When last surveyed in February 2006, 54% of the
signatories work in the biological sciences proper; 61% work in
related fields in the life sciences.
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Hi PJH
I'm not that you really understood what I meant Peter.
I was *NOT* mentioning these names to support creationism or young earth creationism.
I was mentioning them to show that THERE ARE SCIENTISTS WHO ARE NOT YOUNG EARTH CREATIONISTS WHO ARE SCEPTICAL ABOUT THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION.
So often the debate appears to be presented as two sides;- caricatured creationists and "sensible" evolutionists.
But there are other consituencies.
There are;-
-fundamentalist YECs
-non-fundamentalist creationists
-old earth creationists
-IDers
-non religious sceptics of evolution
-fundamentalist evolutionists who speak as though evolution is absolute truth and beyond question or change.
-scientific evolutionists who hold to evolution but have a higher committment to the provisionality of scientific theories generally
In other words, it is simply not true to imply that a majority of "sensible" people believe in evolution and a minority of "cranks" don't.
It is a false dichotomy that is a normal part of how this debate is framed.
Inherent in this worldview is the *anti-scientific* idea that all scientists must believe 100% in all "mainstream" scientific theories.
Science is and always has been much more subversive than that, questioning the status quo of accepted ideas, testing them, often overthrowing the old order completely. Think Isaac Newton and Fred Hoyle.
Many people would fall between those two stools.
Do we believe in freedom of thought on these matters?
Or must everyone submit to the party line without question under fear of excommunication from "respectable" people?
What does project Steve tell us? That evolution is the mainstream view in the scientific community. But nobody disputes that at all.
Whatever else we debate, evolution most certainly *IS* a model and not observed, tesable and repeatable science. It certainly has its own logic with which it explains matters within its remit.
But has at least as many unobserved and unproveable assumptions as creationism or ID.
Have you any awareness of how you just dismissed those three non-creationist dissenters or evolution???
YOU ACTUALLY DIDNT EVEN TRY TO ASSESS THEIR STANCE ON EVOLUTION.
What does this say about your mindset Peter?
Would it point towards an open minded approach or perhaps more towards someone who is not open to a reasonable discussion?
If we review this thread it is the creationists who actually engaged with the issues specifically. It was the evolutionists who retreated into denial, ad hominems, arguments from authority, and sarcasm - NOT REFUTATION - and have actually run from reasonable discussion.
Helio runs from those would make him think twice about the completeness of the fossil record and the historical record of Jews in Egypt.
John Wright runs from discussion about why history shows civilisation began in the Edenic area of Tigris-Euprhates 6000 years ago; and from fair questions about his "rock solid" evidence of Chromosome splicing.
Who is demonstrating the most scientific approach to the discussion on this thread therefore?
Without question, the record above shows it is the creationists.
If you are going to reply, please consider whether you are acutally addressing the questions raised, or avoiding them.
Sincerely
OT
OT
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Here is another quote for Helio about the fossil record and geology, from Enc Brit.
It says that fossils for 87 per cent of earth history is missing.
87 PER CENT OF FOSSILS ARE MISSING????
Helio, you are asking me to accept that the fossil record is rock solid evidence for evolution? You lose credibility by refusing to address thos problem.
Sure, there are no rabbits in the Cambrian explosion, but all the variety of life there appears abruptly without source, as happens so often in the fossil record.
Enc Brit;-
Geologic Column
dating
Correlation
Principles and techniques
"Correlation is, as mentioned earlier, the technique of piecing together the informational content of separated outcrops. When information derived from two outcrops is integrated, the time interval they represent is probably greater than that of each alone. Presumably if all the world's outcrops were integrated, sediments representing all of geologic time would be available for examination. This optimistic hope, however, must be tempered by the realization THAT MUCH OF THE PRECAMBRIAN RECORD—OLDER THAN 570 MILLION YEARS—IS MISSING.
"Correlating two separated outcrops means establishing that they share certain characteristics indicative of contemporary formation. The most useful indication of time equivalence is similar fossil content, provided of course that such remains are present. The basis for assuming that like fossils indicate contemporary formation is faunal succession. However, as previously noted, times of volcanism and metamorphism, which are both critical parts of global processes, cannot be correlated by fossilcontent. Furthermore, USEFUL FOSSILS ARE EITHER RARE OR TOTALLY ABSENT IN ROCKS FROM PRECAMBRIAN TIME, WHICH CONSTITUTES MORE THAN 87 PERCENT OF EARTH HISTORY."
See also post 159.
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I was mentioning them to show that THERE ARE SCIENTISTS WHO ARE NOT YOUNG EARTH CREATIONISTS WHO ARE SCEPTICAL ABOUT THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION.
Yes, indeed OT. However, project Steve shows that an overwhelming majority (and by that I mean 99.999%) of all scientists supprt evolutionary theory, and by that I mean the science that is taught in every state school, college, or university the length and breadth of the UK. This is not a debate within science OT.
87 PER CENT OF FOSSILS ARE MISSING????
So ????? This doesn't mean there was a global flood or that conventional geology (as opposed to flood geology) is wrong. As Richard Dawkinns quite correctly points out, we shouldn't really have any fossils at all. Fossilisation is in fact a very rare event. However, the fossils that we do find have thus far confirmed Darwin's predictions on evolution.
Sure, there are no rabbits in the Cambrian explosion, but all the variety of life there appears abruptly without source,
Finding a rabbit fossil in cretaceous chalk for example, would leave evolutionary science dead and buried. Thus far, we haven't found any, not a single one. And what do you mean by the cabrian explosion ???? Surely to YECs this is a death event, not an explosion of life.
as happens so often in the fossil record.
Name some other examples where life has appeared suddenly ? What we do have in the fossil record are extinction events, the last one being the KT extinction.
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Hi Peter
sorry for delay in coming back.
If the fossils have confirmed Darwin's predictions on evolution, you should be able to take any life form we see today and see a chain of progression in life from the primordial ooze through to the animal today.
This chain should be better interpreted as a chain, rather than the creationist prediction of specially created kinds with... chasms between the kinds.
Peter, take any animal you know of today and please detail the chain to us.
You ask for examples of other sudden appearances of lifeforms.... you have got the wrong end of the stick... the rule in the fossil record is stasis in lifeforms... it takes faith and arguments from silence to interpret this as evolution.
OT
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Peter
ref the fossil record, here are some quotes that may be of interest, perhaps to some readers anyway...
I would ask you to focus on the facts and not the personalities ie play the man, not the ball, please.
sincerely
OT
Excerptsd from the Facts of Life by Gary Parker
Many evolutionists still cling to their traditional belief that life did start slowly and gradually on earth, but that the evidence rotted away since the early forms lacked the hard pans that make the best fossils. The Cambrian explosion, then, is simply an explosion of hard parts occurring simultaneously in many different animal groups. Besides being an appeal to faith rather than an inference from science,
Darwin's chapter (in Origin of the Species) is titled "On the Imperfection of the Geologic Record." In that chapter he dealt with "the sudden appearance" of groups of fossils in the lowest known fossil-bearing strata (the Cambrian). When it came to intermediate links (those types of fossils supposed to show how one kind of life evolved into others), Darwin wrote the following:
... intermediate links? Geology assuredly does not reveal any such finely graduated organic change, and this is perhaps the most obvious and serious objection which can be urged against the theory [of evolution]. [Emphasis added.]
So Darwin was faced with a conflict. Theory (evolution) and facts (fossils) didn't agree. Which was he going to throw out, the facts or the theory? Darwin chose to throw out the facts. Normally, of course, a scientist doesn't do that. But Darwin had reason, or at least hope, for doing so. He blamed the conflict between fact and theory on "the imperfection of the geologic record". In his time, the science of paleontology (fossil study) was just getting under way. He hoped that as new fossil evidence was unearthed around the world, the "missing links" would be found to support his theory.
But, it's now well over a century since Darwin made that statement, and we've unearthed thousands of tons of fossils from all over the world. What does all this massive amount of evidence show? Have we found the "missing links" required to support the theory of evolution, or have we merely unearthed further evidence of variation within the created kinds?
David Raup reviews the evidence for us. He has been the curator of the famous Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago. That museum houses 20 percent of all fossil species known, so Raup is in a position to speak with considerable knowledge about the fossil evidence. The title of his article in the Field Museum Bulletin is "Conflicts Between Darwin and Paleontology", and the thrust is repeated and expanded in a second article. {2}, {3}
Raup starts by saying that "most people assume that fossils provide a very important part of the general argument made in favor of Darwinian interpretations of the history of life. Unfortunately, this is not strictly true". He then quotes the same passage from Darwin that I did, and points out that Darwin was "embarrassed" by the fossil evidence. He goes on to say that we now have a rich body of fossil knowledge, so that we can no longer blame the conflict between evolutionary theory and the fossil facts on the "imperfection of the geologic record." He mentions also, as I did, that Darwin expected those gaps in his theory, those missing links, to be unearthed by future discoveries. Then Raup summarizes those discoveries:
Well, we are now about 120 years after Darwin, and knowledge of the fossil record has been greatly expanded ... Ironically, we have even fewer examples of evolutionary transition than we had in Darwin's time. By this I mean that some of the classic cases of Darwinian change in the fossil record, such as the evolution of the horse in North America, have had to be discarded or modified as a result of more detailed information. [Emphasis added.]
Raup is still an evolutionist, but he is beginning to argue for "survival of the luckiest", instead of "survival of the fittest…
…….During the late '70's and early '80's, a group of evolutionists led by Harvard's Stephen Gould tried to resurrect the idea that evolution happened in big jumps, "The Return of Hopeful Monsters" Gould called it. {14} The hopeful-monster idea (variously expressed as punctuated equilibrium, saltatory evolution, or quantum speciation) was proposed to explain why the links required by gradual evolution have never been found. But the "big jumpers" were never able to explain how these big jumps could occur genetically, nor could they answer this crucial question about the first appearance of any hopeful-monster: with what would it mate?
Sometimes it's kind of fun to be a creationist. The "rear-guard" neo-Darwinian evolutionists like to point out the apparent absurdity of hopeful-monster evolution and claim that evolution could not happen fast. The punctuational evolutionists point to genetic limits and the fossil evidence to show that evolution did not happen slowly. The creationist simply agrees with both sides: Evolution couldn't happen fast, and it didn't happen slowly--because evolution cannot and didn't happen at all! In terms of the kind of variation that can and did occur, the creation concept seems to be the far more logical inference from our observations.
Harvard's Stephen Gould says that, "The fossil record with its abrupt transitions offers no support for gradual change..." He proposes instead that evolution occurs in jumps by the "rare success of those hopeful monsters". Could a bird, for example, hatch from a reptile's egg? Gould assumes a materialistic philosophy for himself and all other scientists, however, and that does not permit him to consider creation as a more-logical inference from the fossil evidence.)
Summary: Fossil Kinds
If the fossil evidence is as clear and simple as I'm suggesting it is, then even evolutionists would accept my description of the facts (even if they violently disagreed with my Biblical inferences), and they do. Leading evolutionists from around the world met for a major conference in Chicago in 1980. In chapter two see topic 1432, we discussed the "genetic conclusions" reached at that conference. Evolutionists at the Chicago conference also reached some remarkable conclusions about fossils. {29}, {30}. Without giving creationists any credit, the world's leading evolutionists at that Chicago conference at least agreed on the same assessment of the fossil evidence reached (and predicted) by creationists long ago. As the summary in Newsweek put it (emphasis added):
Evidence from fossils now points overwhelmingly away from the classical Darwinism which most Americans learned in high school…….The missing link between man and the apes... is merely the most glamorous of a whole hierarchy of phantom creatures. In the fossil record, missing links are the rule... The more scientists have searched for the transitional forms between species, the more they have been frustrated.
The concept of evolution touted in textbooks, then, is based on phantoms and figments of the imagination, not on fossils and the facts of science. Stephen Gould and Niles Eldredge {31} put it this way: "Phyletic gradualism [gradual evolution] ... was never `seen' in the rocks." Evolution was never seen in the rocks! Evolution is not a logical inference from scientific observations, because the observations were contrary to the theory right from the start, even as Darwin said.
If it wasn't based on evidence or logic, then, where did the concept of evolution come from? Gould and Eldredge supply the answer: "It [gradual evolution] expressed the cultural and political biases of 19th century liberalism." That's what has been passed off in our school systems for 100 years as the "fact of evolution"--"the cultural and political biases of 19th century liberalism."
…..The overwhelming pattern that emerges from fossils we have found is summarized in the word stasis. Stasis and static come from the same root word, a word that means "stay the same." Gould and Eldredge are simply saying that most kinds of fossilized life forms appear in the fossil sequence abruptly and distinctly as discrete kinds, then show relatively minor variation within kind, and finally abruptly disappear.
Steven Stanley, {32} fossil expert from Johns Hopkins University, provides several examples of stasis. Elephants (Primelephas) appear as a distinct group abruptly in the fossil sequence, diversify immediately into three subtypes, which then persist unchanged (except those which became extinct) without noticeably changing into anything else. Similarly, the modern horses (Equus) appear abruptly, Stanley says, "and their origin is not documented by known fossil evidence." Stanley also notes that the excellent fossil history of bowfin fishes shows only trivial changes, and no basic shift of adaptation, making them very much like their descendants.
Stanley fully intends for the concept of stasis--sudden distinct appearance, minor variation, sudden disappearance--to stand out in stark contrast to the popular textbook and television picture of gradual, mutation-selection evolution. He singles out particularly the oft-taught "fact" of mammalian adaptive radiation, the idea that a mouse-like animal (without a mouse's gnawing front teeth) evolved into swimming whales and flying bats and all the other mammal types within about 12 million years. Trying to explain that on the basis of slow selection of minor mutational changes that would need a million years to transform just one species, he says, "is clearly preposterous" (emphasis added)….
The victory of stasis over gradualism did not come easily at the Chicago conference. As Lewin {33} mentioned in his summary for Science, " the proceedings were at times unruly and even acrimonious", but, on the positive side, "many people suggested that the meeting was a turning point in the history of evolutionary thought".
Perhaps the most dramatic response came from Francisco Ayala. After admitting that neo-Darwinists "would not have predicted stasis from population genetics [extrapolation from mutation and selection]", he concluded, "but I am now convinced from what the paleontologists say that small changes do not accumulate." (Emphasis added.) No one finds it easy to change years of thinking, but a willingness to adapt theory to fact is the mark of a true scientist, and Ayala deserves a lot of credit for his statement.
When the dust finally settled, Gabriel Dover of Cambridge University summarized the Chicago conference by calling species stasis "the single most important feature of macroevolution". Note, again, that at least the creationists and evolutionists agree on what the fossil facts represent, namely, stasis: sudden appearance of complete forms, minor variation, and sudden disappearance. But perhaps you also detected a note of irony in Dover's comment. If stasis means anything, it means staying the same; if evolution means anything, it means change. It seems to me, then, that evolutionists are actually saying (without quite meaning to, of course) that the most fundamental fact of their theory of change is that everything stays the same!
Creationists prefer a much more direct approach to the evidence. Each basic kind of plant and animal life appears in the fossil sequence complete, fully formed, and functional; each classifies according to the criteria we use to distinguish groups today, with "boundary problems" generally no greater nor different for extinct forms than for those living today; and each kind shows broad but quite finite ecologic and geographic variation within its kind. The most direct and logical inference (to a heart and mind open to the possibility) appears to be, it seems to me, creation, and variation within the basic created kinds. Differences such as extinction and decline in size and variety seem to point to the corruption and catastrophe in the created order, not at all to "upward, onward" evolution.
When Darwin published Origin back in 1859, no one knew what discoveries would be made or what patterns would emerge in the new science of paleontology. On the basis of their theory and the observations of heredity and reproduction, creationists predicted that only distinct kinds would be found, variation only within kind, and persistence of the criteria for classification. Evolutionists predicted a series of links would be found to show how complex types today evolved slowly and gradually from common ancestral stocks that finally blurred into simple, indistinct, and difficult-to-classify early forms.
The real test of a scientific theory is its ability to predict in advance of observation. When it comes to fossils, creation has passed the scientific test with flying colors. The original Darwinian theory of evolution and the neo-Darwinist and punctuationalist views, have been disproven twice, both by genetics and by the fossil evidence.
In his final chapter, as he reviews his reasons for calling his book Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, Denton {34} makes the following strong, sometimes harsh, statements:
We now know, as a result of discoveries made over the past thirty years, that not only is there a distinct break between the animate [living] and inanimate [non-living] worlds, but that it is one of the most dramatic in all nature, absolutely unbridged by any series of transitional forms ["missing links"], and like so many other major gaps of nature, the transitional forms are not only empirically absent but are also conceptually impossible [p. 347, emphasis added].
Similarly, the sorts of scenarios conjured up by evolutionary biologists to bridge the great divisions of nature, those strange realms of "pro-avis" or the "proto-cell "which are so utterly unrealistic to the skeptic, are often viewed by the believers [in evolution] as further powerful confirmatory evidence of the truth of the paradigm. Evolutionary thought today provides many other instances where the priority of the paradigm [i.e., the assumption that "evolution is fact"] takes precedence over common sense [p. 352, emphasis added].
For the skeptic or indeed to anyone prepared to step out of the circle of Darwinian belief, it is not hard to find inversions of common sense in modern evolutionary thought which are strikingly reminiscent of the mental gymnastics of the phlogiston chemists or the medieval astronomers (p. 351).
In a very real sense, therefore, advocacy of the doctrine of continuity [i.e., evolutionism] has always necessitated a retreat from pure empiricism [i.e., logic and observation], and contrary to what is widely assumed by evolutionary biologists today, it has always been the anti-evolutionists [i.e., creationists], not the evolutionists, in the scientific community who have stuck rigidly to the facts and adhered to a more strictly empirical approach ... It was Darwin the evolutionist who was retreating from the facts [pp. 353-354 emphasis added].
On the positive side, Denton also notes that "there has always existed a significant minority of first-rate biologists who have never been able to bring themselves to accept the validity of Darwinian claims" (p. 327). At a conference in Sydney, Australia (April, 1987), where we appeared on the platform together, Denton was willing to cautiously extrapolate that "significant minority" to "perhaps a majority" of first-rate biologists. And he stresses also that those biologists willing to explore the design hypothesis do so for scientific reasons, apart from particular religious presuppositions, (p. 341).
Creation-evolution was featured on CBS television "Sunday Morning" (Nov. 23, 1980) in a superb cover story put together by Richard Threlkeld {35} (who ranks up there with CBC's Tom Kelly as a fair, honest, thoughtful, and thought-provoking TV journalist). The 20-minute piece starts with my students and me "in the act of discovery", hunting fossils in the desert east of San Diego. It continues with several evolutionists, other creationists, parents, students, and teachers in action; and it concludes with my favorite evolutionist, Stephen J. Gould, and with a clip from Carl Sagan's Cosmos TV series.
Threlkeld makes the inevitable trip to the site of the famous Scopes "monkey trial", but he does not allow his thinking to be buried there. "The debate goes on", he observes, "and why not?" After all, nobody was there to see how life came into being, he says; at bottom both views are assumptions. But he doesn't stop thinking there, either. Instead, he treats the two ultimate assumptions, creation and evolution, as ideas which can be compared for their scientific merits and which must be compared before we can truly appreciate our origin as human beings.
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You're an expert at quote mining OT:
[Unsuitable/Broken URL removed by Moderator]
Quote mining
Quote mining is looking through large amounts of material for quotes that can be taken out of context or otherwise distorted. Quote mining is especially popular among creationists, but is probably found in any controversial subject. Often times these quotes take on a life of there own, being passed down from one author to the next like family jewels; typically there appears to be little if any going back to the original source to check for accuracy. Other popular techniques include the use of elipsis, those sets of three dots that indicate that material has been omitted, and claims that some obscure author speaks for a whole movement or scientific discipline
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PJH
Sorry for butting in but what about the arguments presented by OT? Are you going to address them? Obviously not by the look of it. I know Helio would have been here saying the same as you, or Peter Klaver if he wasn't off on some holiday trip (Strange but since Peter's been gone we haven't heard from Geneboy either. Must be coincidence) but I assume Helio's either training for, or on his goodwill cycle ride in foreign climes. Answer the points raised and stop trying to raise side issues.
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Oh, I do apologise to OT. OT isn't the expert at quoteming, Gary Parker is.
Also, Parker is talking about biologists from 20/30 years ago. That is a long time in science. He's talking about the lack of transitional forms yet, paleontologists keep finding them. YECs continually deny that they exist of course.
As I have said FirePrior, this is not a debate within science.
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"Paleontologists keep finding them"(transitional forms)
Eh???
How about a list then? Just a brief one will do? Say less than 10...
Good luck! :-)
BTW, Archaeopteryx doesn't count, as even evos are arguing over that one.
I also don't think the 9 groupings on the Wikipedia list of transitional fossils count either as the members of each group look remarkably similar...
We need transitions BETWEEN the groups!
Also the Wiki article shows lots of remarkable imagination in the illustrations...how did they stumble upon so much detail? From bones in the ground, no less??? (Given that it's unusual to find complete skeletons in the fossil record).
Who's giving us myths & fables now???
;-)
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Here's ten:
http://www.earthhistory.org.uk/transitional-fossils/
Fossilisation is a rare event, so only a small percentage of organisms can be expected to be represented in the fossil record. The discovery of rare species that were rarely fossilised will be even rarer.
and another list , complete with illustrations:
http://www.societyofheathens.com/2009/02/list-10-amazing-transitional-fossils.html
Transitional fossils are the bane of Evolution deniers existence. Traditionally they just ignore them, usually by plugging there ears and loudly singing the Flintstones theme song.
Funny they should mention the Flintstones. No where in the bible does it state they roamed around in the Garden of Eden along with Adam and eve, as portrayed by Ken Ham and his crazy museum. In fact we have absolutely no evidence that humans and dinosaurs co-existed. Still, you're perfectly free to believe what you want, for example, that the Fliststones are more fact than fiction. Seems YECs believe this.
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Peter you are so juvenille sometimes.
I suggest that Parker was not quoting Gould out of context at all.
Everyone knows Gould is an evolutionist, so there is no misrepresenting him on that.
Here is an essay from him on "Hopeful Monsters" ie the idea that because the fossil record does not show gradation, he is putting forward the idea that abrupt and major mutations giving form to major new forms of life has taken place.
Anyone with an open mind can read this for themselves. It does not prove creationism. It does not misrepresnt Gould as a creationist. It DOES show that many "mainstream" professionals in this field do acknowledge that the fossil record does not record gardual changes between kinds.
http://www.stephenjaygould.org/library/gould_hopeful-monsters.html
As William Crawley would say, "MONEY QUOTE";-
"All paleontologists know that the fossil record contains precious little in the way of intermediate forms; transitions between major groups are characteristically abrupt."
Fair point that these quotes are 20 years old, but I fear you are assuming they are out of date. The reasons?
Are you saying that Gould has retracted this? Please be clear and provide evidence.
Furthermore, my Enc Brit, which is very recent, makes exactly the same points in his essay;-
"Fundamental to phylogeny is the PROPOSITION, universally accepted in the scientific community, that plants or animals of different species descended from common ancestors. The evidence for such relationships, however, IS NEARLY ALWAYS INCOMPLETE, FOR THE VAST MAJORITY OF SPECIES THAT HAVE EVER LIVED HAVE BECOME EXTINCT, AND RELATIVELY FEW OF THEIR REMAINS HAVE BEEN PRESERVED. Most judgments of phylogenicity, then, are based on indirect evidence and CAUTIOUS SPECULATION. Even when biologists use the same evidence, THEY OFTEN HYPOTHESIZE DIFFERENT PHYLOGENIES, though they do agree that life is the result of organic descent from earlier ancestors and that true phylogenies are discoverable, AT LEAST IN PRINCIPLE….Since the publication of Charles Darwin's Origin of Species in 1859, however, taxonomy has been based on the accepted PROPOSITIONS of evolutionary descent and relationship.
"Biologists who POSTULATE a phylogeny derive their most useful evidence from the fields of paleontology, comparative anatomy, comparative embryology, and biochemistry…"
And again from Enc Brit;-
Geologic Column
dating
Correlation
Principles and techniques
"Correlation is, as mentioned earlier, the technique of piecing together the informational content of separated outcrops. When information derived from two outcrops is integrated, the time interval they represent is probably greater than that of each alone. Presumably if all the world's outcrops were integrated, sediments representing all of geologic time would be available for examination. This optimistic hope, however, must be tempered by the realization THAT MUCH OF THE PRECAMBRIAN RECORD—OLDER THAN 570 MILLION YEARS—IS MISSING.
"Correlating two separated outcrops means establishing that they share certain characteristics indicative of contemporary formation. The most useful indication of time equivalence is similar fossil content, provided of course that such remains are present. The basis for assuming that like fossils indicate contemporary formation is faunal succession. However, as previously noted, times of volcanism and metamorphism, which are both critical parts of global processes, cannot be correlated by fossilcontent. Furthermore, USEFUL FOSSILS ARE EITHER RARE OR TOTALLY ABSENT IN ROCKS FROM PRECAMBRIAN TIME, WHICH CONSTITUTES MORE THAN 87 PERCENT OF EARTH HISTORY."
May I also explain something else to you Peter. Please try and understand me.
I am not a blockhead dogmatistic who stopped thinking decades ago.
I am actually very interested in the website you have finally linked to which purports to show transitional forms.
Finally you have engaged with the dicussion, and to your credit, unlike the other posters, Helio and JW who appear to have scuttled off when they were being forced to think.
But please understand, when evolutionists refuse to actually engage and instead throw out insults, sarcasm, circular arguments and arguments from authority, it pushes me further and further away from your actual goal ie to convince me that evolution is credible.
Can you understand how this behaviour from evolutionists works against your goal? It always makes me think they are afraid of digging any deeper and are running away in fear.
So thanks for the link to this website.
OT
PS have you actually read it for yourself?
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koro-
Just so's I understand this comment correctly - "I also don't think the 9 groupings on the Wikipedia list of transitional fossils count either as the members of each group look remarkably similar..." - your argument against the findings of paleontology on the examples you mention is that they "look" "similar"? How enlightened. (By the way, technically all fossils are transitional forms.)
OT-
Ah, come now - "Helio and JW who appear to have scuttled off when they were being forced to think" - how dishonest of you to suggest that; I haven't "scuttled off" in 6 years of similar conversations on this blog! Couldn't there be another reason I didn't reply? Why do you jump to conclusions so?! Actually life just got very busy and I haven't had the chance to return to this thread until today.
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OT- To go back to your last post to me before I "disappeared":
"The creationist argument is that without God, all the laws, order and stability of the universe would collapse. That is no God of the gaps."
If someone plants a tree and leaves it to grow, the tree will continue to grow whether or not they're around. We could have a good debate, I suppose, about how much God was involved in creation. Did God merely create a spark which set off natural processes which caused multiple universes, all their constants, and causing some of them to naturally develop evolutionary processes? Or did God intervene all the way down to designing the evolutionary process and creating the first life, etc.etc? We don't know, but the scientific thing to say is that just because we don't know, we shouldn't assume that God did it until we do know. To say otherwise is God-of-the-gaps: when we don't know how evolution started, we say God created first life. When we don't know how the physical constants came to be as they are, we say God set them. When we don't know how the big bang exactly happened, we create a bumper sticker which says "God spoke and BANG it happened". That is God-of-the-gaps.
"Furthermore, your argument that "we dont know is better than filling it with God did it" is in no way scientific nor objective by any standard. By what objective standard is it better than a God hypothesis?"
Uh, yes it is scientific OT. Before we knew what caused maggots to appear in lumps of crap, we said God was planting new life in it. Now we know that flies were landing and laying their eggs on it. Before we knew anything about anything - pick your subject - people said God did it. Now we know differently; we know the causes of gravity and of this and of that. We know that stars are not navigational lights, as Genesis says, we know there's no difference between the sun and the stars. Before that we were ignorant: instead of saying we didn't know, we filled the gap in our knowledge with 'GOD'. So what is the scientific answer? It's to say that we simply don't know, not to fill the gap with God. That is the point.
"Furthermore, all current mainstream attempts actually break the scientific law of albiogenesis, which says that life can only come from life, not dead matter. It is actually quite logical then to suggest that life must have come from eternal life; this is a great fit with the scientific law."
Okay, would you be happy with the pastafarians' claim that a Flying Spaghetti Monster did it? If not, why not? It's because there's no scientific proof of a flying spaghetti monster. And, similarly, there's no scientific proof of God. So we say we do not KNOW how life first arose on earth, not that God did it. There's nothing logical about positing the existence of something that you have no evidence for. (By the way, they're working on this question, unlike creationists, who think the question is already answered! How pathetic. There are working theories on what the first life was - single cell prokaryotes - and the the building blocks of life, amino acids, have now been proven to emerge via natural chemical reactions - Google Miller-Urey experiment if you like, or alternatively, if you think the question is already answered because the God-of-the-gaps did it, feel free not to Google anything at all since the question is already answered.)
"You do believe in a creator God, dont you?"
I believe in a God; I have no knowledge of God's role in creation and won't opine that I do unless and until I do.
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'...technically all fossils are transitional forms...' By who's definition? All fossils are the remains of dead organisms or their activities. How these millions and millions of dead organisms ended up in sediment laid down by water all over the world. Well, I wonder? Sorry to sort of repeat an Answers in Genesis mantra but they have got a point.
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John
Good to see you back, maybe I WAS too hard on you. On the other hand, your last posts WERE very dismissive. For example, since when does throwing a fossil over someone's shoulder count as a proper argument and not just patronising sarcasm???
Anyway why could recorded history (and earliest agriculture) not have begun 300,000 years ago in south America or Russia or Europe? Why did it have to be 10-6000 years ago in the Tigris-Euphrates region as described by Genesis???
Also, you did make a number of posts to other threads in the past while and chose not not post here in response to points raised.
Anyway...
You say;-
"...the scientific thing to say is that just because we don't know, we shouldn't assume that God did it until we do know. To say otherwise is God-of-the-gaps: when we don't know how evolution started, we say God created first life. When we don't know how the physical constants came to be as they are, we say God set them. When we don't know how the big bang exactly happened, we create a bumper sticker which says "God spoke and BANG it happened". That is God-of-the-gaps."
OT says: Quite right. We scientifically shouldn't assume that God did it until we do know. A God hypothesis is not an assumption. It is a tentative proposition. BTW, you also have to factor in what "life" actually is in the processes you speak of. Perhaps a God hypothesis should be on the list of *possible* explanations for starting frameworks which should reasonably be explored? Crick got around this by hypothesising that life first came from outer space.
"Furthermore, your argument that "we dont know is better than filling it with God did it" is in no way scientific nor objective by any standard. By what objective standard is it better than a God hypothesis?"
OT says: Again, please understand the difference between an hypothesis and an assumption. Do you know the difference? One dismisses the need for evidence and the other says 'let's look at/for the evidence'.
For example, imagining infinite transitional forms between kinds of life where they are not recorded in the fossil record and insisting that this is a fact is actually an assumption. And BTW, as you believe in God, can you conceive of a scientific test which might prove God and yet not actually disprove him at the same time? If you can command God to do repeatable tests in a lab is he still God? Or does that make you God as you control him? And might you be deliberately booby trapping your own search for God by insisting on such a test?
You say;-
Uh, yes it is scientific OT. Before we knew what caused maggots to appear in lumps of crap, we said God was planting new life in it. Now we know that flies were landing and laying their eggs on it. Before we knew anything about anything - pick your subject - people said God did it. Now we know differently; we know the causes of gravity and of this and of that. We know that stars are not navigational lights, as Genesis says, we know there's no difference between the sun and the stars. Before that we were ignorant: instead of saying we didn't know, we filled the gap in our knowledge with 'GOD'. So what is the scientific answer? It's to say that we simply don't know, not to fill the gap with God. That is the point.
OT says: Why IS gravity? Why ARE maggots? Why is knowledge? Why are scientific laws? Stars still are navigational aids to many people the world over. It is facile to suggest that because they are also suns and planets etc that Genesis is wrong. Please, John. This could go alongside Helio's double donkey argument against the existence of God.
"Furthermore, all current mainstream attempts actually break the scientific law of albiogenesis, which says that life can only come from life, not dead matter. It is actually quite logical then to suggest that life must have come from eternal life; this is a great fit with the scientific law."
You say;-
Okay, would you be happy with the pastafarians' claim that a Flying Spaghetti Monster did it? If not, why not? It's because there's no scientific proof of a flying spaghetti monster.
OT says: I am more than happy for anyone to present an hypothesis about who or what they think the creator is. To suggest I might be interested in some sort of right to veto the FSM followers from making an hypothesis is *VERY* revealing and, IMO, suggestive of an arbitrary and religious prejudice towards freedom of thought and speech in the realm of science. On what SCIENTIFIC grounds would you block the FSMers or myself from proposing such an hypothesis - because it might be "super-natural"? That is not scientific. Please explain your reason. Please understand that demanding proof before you propose the hypothesis is back to front science. BTW, you HAVE still completely avoided the issue of how life from non-life would break the law of albiogenesis. If life always came from life, as the law says, then it does not matter what sort of life is proposed as the first life form. You are still left with the problem that alone, it will break the law of albiogenesis, as it would be life from non-life. Thoughts? Is a God hypothesis starting to look reasonable as a starting point and not a conclusion?
You say;-
And, similarly, there's no scientific proof of God. So we say we do not KNOW how life first arose on earth, not that God did it. There's nothing logical about positing the existence of something that you have no evidence for. (By the way, they're working on this question, unlike creationists, who think the question is already answered! How pathetic. There are working theories on what the first life was - single cell prokaryotes - and the the building blocks of life, amino acids, have now been proven to emerge via natural chemical reactions - Google Miller-Urey experiment if you like, or alternatively, if you think the question is already answered because the God-of-the-gaps did it, feel free not to Google anything at all since the question is already answered.)
"You do believe in a creator God, dont you?"
I believe in a God; I have no knowledge of God's role in creation and won't opine that I do unless and until I do.
OT says: Why do you believe in God John, seeing as there is no scientific evidence?
BTW, testable predicition for the God hypotyhesis are listed above.
OT
PS Helio suggested a rabbit in the cambrian record would falsify evolution. That is quite funny, seeing as cambrian animals all lived underwater!
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Fireprior-
Fossilized living organisms are transitional because living organisms are transitional. We are transitional. This is not the finished product of evolution, and evolution by natural selection is occurring all the time, constantly. So, by definition, we are all in transition, and so are all fossils.
OT says-
"A God hypothesis is not an assumption. It is a tentative proposition."
...and...
"Please understand that demanding proof before you propose the hypothesis is back to front science."
Well let's be honest: a hypothesis not based on any existing science won't last too long. I could say, "I hypothesize that Coke will give you ringworm" and because there's no science behind it, it will be roundly rejected. The onus is on me to prove it. So, I could come up with a few subjects who have ringworm and drink Coke, but it would be very easy for others to invalidate my evidence by showing that there are non Coke-drinkers who have ringworm. Normally it wouldn't even go that far because it's a ridiculous proposition without basis of any kind. And there we find creationism.
Let us consider the approach of creationists, which I assume you're saying you are, tentatively. Even a tentative position could not accept creationism at this point. Evolution is proven beyond any shadow of doubt. There are still many questions, yes, such as the ones I mentioned in my last reply about where first life came from, but that's an entirely different discussion as to whether or not evolution occurred, and the latter is not a serious question anymore in mainstream science.
So feel free to propose the hypothesis first and then look for proof; my answer is that it has already been done, long ago, and the creationist hypothesis fails most of the tests while evolution passes every one of them.
"BTW, as you believe in God, can you conceive of a scientific test which might prove God and yet not actually disprove him at the same time?"
Well this is a very interesting thing for you to say, because it gives me the opportunity to clarify exactly why I believe what I believe. MY God cannot be proven or disproved. My God has not intervened, pulling strings in human affairs, making people pillars of salt, and many of the other supernatural events described in the bible. YOUR God, on the other hand, can be proven, and can be disproved. He is a creator God, who created the world fairly recently in a specific order and in a specific way as described in Genesis. I believe he's already been disproved!
"Why do you believe in God John, seeing as there is no scientific evidence?"
When I say I believe in a God, I'm not using those words in the same way as I am when I say I believe in cancer, or I believe in trees, or I believe in Coke. (Sorry, I have a Coke on my desk.) I'm saying that it seems to me that we know so little that it's likely that our larger reality includes a supreme intelligence and that we can suppose certain things about this supreme intelligence from the nature of reality. We can also easily deduce what this supreme being does not do, like create universes in 6 days six to ten thousand years ago. If science disproved God, or strongly suggested that I was wrong, I would abandon my 'deist' position entirely.
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"Fossilized living organisms are transitional because living organisms are transitional."
Really? And because you say it, does that make it true?
"We are transitional."
Since when?
This is not the finished product of evolution, and evolution by natural selection is occurring all the time, constantly.
Ah, the crux of the matter. No, we do not see evolution in the popularly understood definition at all (macro evolotion) but we do see organisms adapt to their environment etc by natural selection. But only within kinds (there are varieties of species but within kinds). You cannot possibly observe macro evolution and so it remains a tentative theory - which might be entirely wrong. Your faith or mine? We all make choices, but hopefully informed ones.
Christians do actually believe in a form of evolution. Paul says that when Christ returns that the natural body of a Christian will evolve into a spiritual body and this will not be some time driven process but a God ordained immediate change. The earthly body will be transformed into a heavenly body. Flesh and blood will become immortal. Evolution (change) will take place but in an instant (atomos). 1 Corinthians 15:35-54. In fact, all of nature will be changed (Romans 8:21).
So Christians do believe in evolution (change) but not 'the present is the key to the past' kind but rather 'the future depends on the decisions of now' kind.
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#188 JW
What exactly is the creation hypothesis to you? What are the tests it has failed? What tests does evolution pass? What is the basis for the reality of your God? When did God become the object of testing and how did you test the veracity of biblical events? Isn't it interesting that many on this thread plead that Genesis should not be taken literally and yet you use the Lot's wife incident literally. She looked back - that is she went back and ended up like the rest - a pillar of salt. Look for images of around the Dead sea (the area of Sodom and Gomorrah) and you will see literal pillars of salt. If you are going to use the Bible, know what you are talking about. What exactly is it that can be proven/disproven about God? Nothing because by definition God is above our knowledge and understanding. But what if God chose to reveal something of himself and his works?
"... because what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world his invisible attributes – his eternal power and divine nature – have been clearly seen, because they are understood through what has been made. So people are without excuse." (Romans 1:19-20)
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Fireprior-
You'll understand my reluctance to go over all this ground again - from the ground up actually - on creation/evolution. No, they aren't competing theories in serious science. No, evolution is not a faith. No, it isn't true because I say it is, it's true because it is fact as established by science (I presume you don't challenge the theory of gravity for example? Oh, that's right - your religion isn't challenged by that theory so it must be okay).
I'll maybe have time later to answer in more detail... until then....
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What are the tests it has failed
The question really should be what tests has creation science passed. All the YEC claims about a young Earth have failed miserably when put to the test, even the more sophisticated ones such as the RATE project, or Russell Humphreys' white light cosmology nonsense.
And then there are the court cases in the US. Each time they try to have YECism taught as science (their most recent ploy being intelligent design they fail miserably, always through lack of evidence.
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JW
I am assuming that you were not thinking straight when you referred to the 'theory of gravity'. I was always under the impression it was a law, whereas evolution is a theory and cannot be taken as a fact without first BELIEVING it to be a fact. By the way, Newton was first and foremost a theologian who had no problem with creation. Such was his genius he did science as a secondary interest to show the work of God in creation.
PJH
Oh come on, first you move away from the issue and then you make statements without substantiating them. '...failed miserably...' and '... cosmically nonsense...' And to be honest I don't live in the US so I am not really interested in their little quarrels about what should be taught in schools or not. But I am interested in debating science and theology.
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Why people laugh at creationists
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BS5vid4GkEY&feature=related
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So, there is no serious debate today about the validity of creationism?
Huh? Seems strange as just about every third post in W&T alone seems to indicate exactly the opposite, with case studies from all around the world. We have seen numerous surveys in recent years which seem to suggest there is an increasing debate. no matter.
Anyway,
HAS MAINSTREAM SCIENCE MADE ANY CONCESSIONS TO CREATIONISM BEING RIGHT?
Not officially. However, Darwinists used to think that fossils were created by very slow, gradual processes the same as we see today (uniformatism).
But now many experts believe fossils were created by sudden catastrophic events (neo catastrophism)...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catastrophism#Catastrophism_today
...which is what creationists have always argued ie consistent with Noah’s flood. (Wikipedia even suggests that catastrophism does not need to assume and old earth chronology).
For many years Darwinists argued that the fossil record supported the theory of evolution. But now they are increasingly accepting that this is not true and that fossils more accurately reflect organisms which have always remained the same and between which there are huge gaps in types ie consistent with any type of creationism.
Leading evolutionists like SJ Gould argued instead that random creatures with fantastic mutations, or Hopeful Monsters, emerged by chance out of sight of the fossil record. He did this because he wanted to faithfully report the unchanging nature of life forms seen in the fossil record and the abrupt appearance of new life in the fossil record. He did not want to imagine gradual changes which are not seen in the fossil record, to give him his dues.
No quote mining, browse away here;-
http://www.sitelevel.com/query.go?crid=2a4bebf51d5da2bd&query=fossil%20record&slice_title=&page=1
Gould was an evolutionist without doubt. But he was honest enough to call it like it is with regards to the record of the fossils and natural world. Remember Darwin saw the same weakness in his theory and thought new fossils would resolve it. Gould acknowledged this never happened and tried to amend the theory to account for it.
Oh, and some people might say there is no debate in science about creationism (the world seems to be coming down with reports to the contrary) but for my part, if Darwin could shake the entire world of science with his origin of the species, and he did not even have a basic degree in science, well then, reasoned argument in favour of creationism from any unqualified person must be taken seriously, IF we are being consistent.
Especially if the best that people can come up with in response are crazy arguments such as, throwing a fossil over a creationists head disproves creationism (John Wright) or that seeing fossils at Portmuck disproves creationism (Helio) or that people laugh at creationists (PN Junkie) or that Dawkins said we shouldnt actually have any fossils at all (PJH).
An open minded observer will note that none of these even begin to address the fundamental scientific principal that either the fossil record and natural world should plainly show gradual changes in life, or you should at least have the honesty to admit this weakness in the theory still persists today just as Gould did.
A cynic once pointed out that some people really do believe they are actually thinking when all they are really doing is rearranging their prejudices.
OT
PS John, you believe you have dealt with everything on this blog, but you never concluded this issue. you claim an apparent chromosome mutation in homo sapiens is proof of descent from apes, despite no sign of this change ever having been seen in apes and despite the fact that chromosome abnormalities are plentiful in man, and could arguably therefore have taken place within homo sapiens alone.
BTW, you are really overstepping the mark in how you are hijacking science to "prove" evolution. In reality all real published science findings are very cautiously stated and explicitly subject to further research.
To marshall "science" to come to your aid with a huge dollop of dogmatism added only undermines the credibility of your argument.
That is why many people accuse Dawins of shooting himself in the foot with is opinions on religion, presented as science.
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Fireprior says-
"I am assuming that you were not thinking straight when you referred to the 'theory of gravity'. I was always under the impression it was a law..."
This is unscientific thinking. 'Theories' in science do not become 'laws'. Theories are defined as the best way to explain facts. So, yes, there is a theory of gravity and scientists feel it best explains the facts in cosmology, and the fact that we hurt when we let go of an anvil while it's over our toes. Similarly, the theory of evolution is felt to be the best way to explain the facts as we observe them.
"...we do see organisms adapt to their environment etc by natural selection. But only within kinds..."
Why only within kinds? What is the mechanism which stops something evolving when it reaches the edge of its kind? You will have to explain to me scientifically what your hypothesis is which stops something from evolving outside of its labeled species.
"Isn't it interesting that many on this thread plead that Genesis should not be taken literally and yet you use the Lot's wife incident literally."
I could ask the opposite of you: why do you take Genesis literally but not the story of Lot's wife? And why do you assume I know nothing about the bible?
"What exactly is it that can be proven/disproven about God? Nothing..."
I'm not trying to challenge God's existence by proof/disproof. I'm saying that science challenges some of the claims attributed to him, ie. that he created life as we observe it today.
OT says-
"you claim an apparent chromosome mutation in homo sapiens is proof of descent from apes, despite no sign of this change ever having been seen in apes..."
I'm not sure you're understanding the evidence correctly. By this comment it appears you are looking for a similar phenomenon in the apes, yet the lack of such a phenomenon in the ape genome is exactly why it proves what it does. The great apes have 48 chromosomes, humans have 46. Evidence of the fusion in human chromosome #2 accounts for the difference and verifies common ancestry very plainly. If the ape chromosomes had a similar fusion then it would be devastating for evolution; they don't.
"BTW, you are really overstepping the mark in how you are hijacking science to "prove" evolution. In reality all real published science findings are very cautiously stated and explicitly subject to further research."
There is no question among scientists that evolution happened. If you question this fact with the vast majority of scientists, they will be as certain as I that it explains the origin of complex life. They do not take seriously any creationist claims to the contrary.
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#196 JW
Unscientific thinking? What are you talking about? A theory is a summary of a hypothesis that has been supported with repeated testing and so long as there is no evidence to dispute it, then it is valid. So theories can be disproved. Laws on the other hand explain things but do not necessarily describe them (ie. gravity). Proof and truth do not exist in science, only observations. It's down to definitions. Some see proof as the logical conclusion of something, while others define proof as that which can never be wrong, and of course, that cannot be proved.
Now on the basis of this idea of theory, evolution is not a fact. It cannot be tested. How would you test it without putting in place a series of assumptions? What can be seen in the here and now is natural selection within kinds (not the same as species) but that is not evolution. As a theory, one aspect of evolution postulates that something caused the dinosaurs to become extinct and the most popular is some sort of extraterrestrial impact on Earth. It may or may not have occurred. It is a theory which may be disproved. Evolution as a whole is in the same category. And in that category is Creation and the Flood. Both with the same evidence but different conclusions.
You have mixed up kind and species. Of course natural selection allows species to change into other species but kind is not the same as species for the most part. This mixing up of a very broad biblical taxonomy and the specific taxonomy used by biologists causes confusion, some created deliberately. Forgetting your use of species as an equivalent of kind, what stops kinds from 'evolving' into other kinds is the specific gene pool of that kind. Various species can diversify from a kind by a reduction in genetic information and a narrowing of karyotype. So speciation involves a reduction in the gene pool (information) and not an increase.
Could Lot's wife have literally become a pillar of salt? Well, yes I suppose she could. But based upon a broad reading of the Bible and a look at the situation described it would seem to me that the writer/editor is making a theological comment on the situation - there are now salt pillars in the area. Lot's wife preferred life in those cities. She suffered their fate. On the other hand, a broad reading of Genesis and a specific claim of the writer/editor is that Genesis is to be understood as history ('These are the generations of...').
I assume nothing of your biblical knowledge except what I read in your comments. Actually, the Bible does not claim life as we observe it today is the life he created. Life today has been corrupted by the curse and sin and so is very different from what God created.
Just as an after thought. The fact that we hurt when an anvil falls on our toes has more to do with nerve impulses interacting with our brains, resulting in the usual ejaculation of 'Ah, sh**'
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Fireprior-
"evolution is not a fact. It cannot be tested."
Rubbish.
"How would you test it without putting in place a series of assumptions?"
You make predictions, such as that two human chromosomes will show evidence of the fusion of two ancestor chromosomes. You search for the fusion, and when you find it, you've proven the evidence fits the theory. You do this same thing again and again in different relevant fields of study, as we have, and if you find something that runs contrary to your theory, it is falsified, and we haven't.
"As a theory, one aspect of evolution postulates that something caused the dinosaurs to become extinct and the most popular is some sort of extraterrestrial impact on Earth."
Nothing whatever to do with evolution by natural selection as you suggest.
"mixing up of a very broad biblical taxonomy and the specific taxonomy used by biologists causes confusion, some created deliberately."
If you read anything in Genesis as a serious taxonomy then you are reading Genesis incorrectly. It is a creation myth, of which there are at least 60 known examples including Genesis.
"Various species can diversify from a kind by a reduction in genetic information and a narrowing of karyotype. So speciation involves a reduction in the gene pool (information) and not an increase."
The consensus of modern biology disagrees with you.
"it would seem to me that the writer/editor is making a theological comment on the situation..."
I'm glad, I have to say, to hear you say that some aspect of biblical scholarship involves discerning what the authors intended to say. How you can then conclude that something so obvious as the creation hymn in Genesis is meant to be serious science is beyond me. (Of course there are two creation stories in Genesis, two conflated accounts.)
"Life today has been corrupted by the curse and sin and so is very different from what God created."
Presumably the appendix, goosebumps, tail remnants, wisdom teeth, and hoards of junk DNA are not the result of evolution but rather a fantastically peculiar result of the 'Curse'. I hope the biologists you tell this to do a better job of stifling their grins than I am now.
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Just following William's advice, ignore me!
:-)
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And me too - I want to be #200!
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# 198 JW
#1 Rubbish! That's the sum of your rebuttal?
#2 Predictions - evidence - proof. No. Predictions - evidence - interpretation. What are the different things related to this in different fields which have been tested repeatedly?
#3 Theory - dinosaur extinction. As expected no answer to the point.
#4 Genesis - creation myth. For one, I'd be interested to know whether you are using the term myth in its modern context or whether you use it as in the field, the use of story to explain reality. And of course there are creation stories all across the world. But as to how Genesis relates to them well, that's something else.
#5 Consensus of modern biology disagrees. Really? Show me?
#6 Creation hymn? Come on do your homework. Even the most ardent liberal critic of Genesis admits that Genesis 1-2 is written as historical prose.
#7 Trotting out the usual documentary hypothesis of Genesis. Assumptions again.
#8 Appendix? Goosebumps? Tail remnants? etc. The last one smacks of Haekel's fraud about embryo development. The appendix is not vestigial. Keep up with things!
As to law and theory?
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Hi John,
Earlier in this thread you wrote
"PK- I happen to think you're probably right about what's happening here; the Snellings, the Wises and the Jeansons are hiding their proclivity to ignore the scientific method whenever it conflicts with their preconceived religious beliefs until after they've completed their degrees, and then being accepted as proud heroes of AiG on the speaking circuit."
Interesting that you mentioned Jeanson, I just stumbled across a page that very much confirms it. He got a PhD from Harvard. And why did he decide to do that? According to his profile page at the laughingly misnamed Institute for Creation Research
"He went straight to Harvard Medical School, which he said "sounded like it would be useful for credentials and evangelism.""
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One pitiful thing about this "debate" is that it distracts people from looking at the very wonderful and beautiful things that scientists have been able to find out about evolution over the last 150 years. The phylogeny of all organisms is a joy to behold. The way that organisms as apparently divergent as fireflies and FirePrior use essentially the same genetic mechanisms to pattern their embryos, and that pattern has been conserved for over 600 million years. The way that the bones in the fossilised fins of Tiktaalik are not just *like* the bones in our arm, but at a very deep level they are the SAME bones. The gill arches of sharks are not just *like* our branchial arches in development - they are the SAME - deep homology. Even the DNA processing machinery we use inside our cells is essentially the same as in yeast - not just alike, but the SAME.
And then we turn our eyes to the sky, and see events that happened tens of thousands of years to millions of years in the past; we go to the telescopes and we can see things that happened *billions* of years ago.
It's breathtakingly lovely. Science is awe-inspiring, and creationists are like the horseflies that bug you when you're out for a walk in the fields. They get more attention than they deserve, but should not spoil the occasion.
And it's satisfying when you splat them.
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Helio #24 - you are absolutely right - it all is breathtakingly lovely. Science is awe-inspiring... your first paragraph blows me away with facts about things I can only dream of studying, understanding and appreciating at the level at which you do.
"The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands... O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!"
From the Psalms 19 & 8. But I'm sure you know this.
What I don't get is where your faith in evolution seems to lead you - "And it's satisfying when you splat them." (is this the equivilent of 'burn in hell' which I suspect you might rage against?)
If science without the God of the Bible produces this, I don't want what you offer.
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Caspar, you don't need a god or gods to appreciate the wonders of the universe. They are wonderful and marvellous on their own, without any need to impute spurious agency on them. I appreciate that some people find that hard to get their heads around, but that's neither here nor there. Our wetware has its limitations - more in some folks than in others.
Yes, I do know that some people look at the trillions of stars and billions of years, and they associate that with some mystical being who made it all happen. However, the history of science is the history of opening black boxes - understanding how high-order behaviour emerges from lower-order simple rules. This is not just seen in the actual behaviour of the universe, but also in mathematical abstractions that are gloriously free of mythical beings. We don't *need* gods, either as an explanation or a target for our awe.
The evolution of an instance of Conway's Game of Life is a beautiful thing; the Mandelbrot set; the whirling of complex multiplication around the origin; the chaotic behaviour of a simulated magnetic pendulum, etc etc.
Science is wonderful; evolution is one spectacularly gorgeous branch.
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Helio,
"We don't *need* gods, either as an explanation or a target for our awe."
But that's the point - everyone targets their awe; you do it, I do it. Some target it at a sports team, others at a car, some at a person, others at "the phylogeny of all organisms" - and find their joy in them.
Should I ever need to give a definition of worship, you've given me a brilliant one - thanks. Humans are worshipping beings - we target our awe, and draw our joy, significance, meaning and our reason to live from them. Don't think that because you don't do god with a big 'G' renders you 'god-less'.
Would you lay your life on the line for your 'target of awe'?
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Fireprior-
#1 Rubbish! That's the sum of your rebuttal?
No, it was the precursor to answer #2.
#2 Predictions - evidence - proof. No. Predictions - evidence - interpretation.
You're implying that creationism includes some reasonable interpretations of the evidence. No it doesn't.
#3 Theory - dinosaur extinction. As expected no answer to the point.
To what point? You mean where you say that one aspect of evolution is dinosaur extinction theories? That has nothing to do with evolution, however we do know from paleontology that dinos and men didn't walk together as creationists claim (and as depicted wonderfully in the 'creation museum').
#4 Genesis - creation myth. For one, I'd be interested to know whether you are using the term myth in its modern context or whether you use it as in the field, the use of story to explain reality. And of course there are creation stories all across the world. But as to how Genesis relates to them well, that's something else.
Easy: Genesis is ONE OF them. It's a myth; a story written as a primitive attempt to explain how everything came to be. It was a fundamental question for human beings thousands of years ago as it is today; the difference is today we know a million times more about how to go about explaining reality than they do, which is why our explanations are better. (I presume you don't believe the earth is flat? They thought that, too.)
#5 Consensus of modern biology disagrees. Really? Show me?
Read. You're a creationist and you believe there is speciation? Didn't God do a good enough job of creating the species "In the beginning"?
#6 Creation hymn? Come on do your homework. Even the most ardent liberal critic of Genesis admits that Genesis 1-2 is written as historical prose.
Come on. Look at the rhythm, like the verses of a hymn. Each starts with "And God said", each ends with "He saw that it was good. And there was evening and there was morning, the Xth day." It's certainly not written like the rest of Genesis. It's poetry.
#7 Trotting out the usual documentary hypothesis of Genesis. Assumptions again.
Not sure what that comment is in response to.
#8 Appendix? Goosebumps? Tail remnants? etc. The last one smacks of Haekel's fraud about embryo development.
Please. Educate yourself. "The tailbone, located at the end of the spine, has lost its original function in assisting balance and mobility, though it still serves some secondary functions, such as being an attachment point for muscles, which explains why it has not degraded further."
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Caspar, I would lay down my life for truth. Which is why I lay down my faith. You can be in awe of something without making up fairy stories about it. The Giant's causeway is not *less* marvellous because we know it was formed 60 million years ago by volcanic activity, rather than a bellicose giant. On the contrary, it is *more* beautiful.
Awe is precious. Don't waste it on fictions.
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Helio. Nice to have you back. I was getting used to having my own way. Hope the cycle ride was enjoyable (if you've been yet).
#208 JW
Words, words, words. Not explanations. The precursor to #2? Rubbish! That's not an answer. #2 'No it isn't'. That's your answer?
#3 Duh... Think now, what were we discussing? What is the difference between theory and law?
#4 Oh dear. your thinking has made you assume that we are so much more intelligent than those 'primitive' people. Think again, it's not true. Your parenthetical statement really betrays your ignorance. Flat Earth? Now that is a myth. No one significant, ancient or modern has accepted that idea.
#5. Come on, what are you trying to say here? Go back to my comments (Kind - not species).
#6 As I said, you obviously have no understanding of Hebrew or of ancient near eastern texts. Go to my website (http://fireprior.yolasite.com It's new so there's not a lot there yet) and click on 'Is Genesis myth or historical narrative'.
#7 Make's my point. Know what you are talking about.
#8 Assumption.
Oh Helio
All those homologous things might just point to a designer working from a basic design for all things rather than common ancestors.
You know what they say about horseflies, they're attracted to sh**. But then we are all detritus and God (your PICC), in Jesus, has come to rescue and transform us. I've always found it rather difficult to splat them and by the time I have they always leave a mark and keep me thinking.
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FP, that is the point. They are not analogous structures like "designers" use. They are the SAME. Orthologous. By descent. Neil Shubin demonstrates this point (which creationists and other non-scientists ALWAYS get wrong) beautifully in "Your Inner Fish". Not only is it elegant, it's TRUE. Brilliant stuff.
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FP- This conversation isn't working anymore. I can't follow back several comments to see what on earth your replies relate to, and I have no interest in following you over to your blog to discuss it. If you want a conversation, try quoting what I'm saying about an issue and then telling me what your issue is with it. "Know what you are talking about." Uh, okay....
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If I might hijack this thread a little.....
Some of the regular posters of this blog are getting together for dinner in Belfast on the 26th of September. This has become a good habit and more people here are welcome to join. That means both non-believers and believers of any flavour. Those who want to join please see the thread about the first W&T bloggers dinner for contact info:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/ni/2008/04/will_testament_bloggers_dinner.html
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ps John Wright, I think I once heard you mentioning regret about not being able to join up for a previous dinner. Do I remember that correctly? I don't know if there is a wireless network that can be used in McHughes, if so I can bring a laptop with webcam. Care to be a 'virtual dinner attendant' if possible?
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#212. JW
Sorry John. Point taken.
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FP- No worries, we'll try again!
PK- SURE! Sounds like fun! What do I need to do?
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Hi John,
Get a Skype account, but as we were briefly Skyping some time ago you've already got that taken care of.:)
I don't know if there is any wireless available at McHighes btw, so it's only a 'maybe' sofar.
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Hmm, well, let me know. Yup, I'm a heavy Skype user. (It's actually replaced my landline phone now.)
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#211 Helio
'Creationists and other non-scientists.' You know full well that there are scientists who hold creationist or ID views. Just because you disagree with the view does not nullify the credentials.
Orthologous gene sequences are not the same at all but similar. Same initial letter very different definition. Assumptions again.
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FP, sorry, but it does nullify their credentials. When they speak as creationists or cdesign proponentsists, they cease to speak as scientists. Some of them manage the cognitive dissonance, and go back to their day jobs as combustion theorists or dentists or jounohacks without compunction. As for orthologous gene sequences, you don't seem to get it. The SCN1A gene in a mouse (for example) is the SAME gene as the SCN1A gene in you, in precisely the same way as your SCN1A is the same gene as *my* SCN1A. All that has diverged is a little sequence.
As I was saying to Parrhasios above, evolution is incomparably beautiful. Why not learn a bit more about it, and recognise that your "Genesis" book is, as I have pointed out before, just a collection of folk myths?
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Helio
'They cease to speak as scientists'. In your opinion. Guess what? You could be wrong.
Orthologs. You say that I don't seem to get it. Words again. I just checked up across several genetics sites and they all say that SCN1A in mice and humans is similar, along with several others, but not the same. The gene expresses the protein for ion channels and much research has gone into epilepsy and the effects of its mutated form.
A similar gene expressing for similar proteins in a variety of creatures is not proof of common descent - it may be, but it may also point to common design.
Your last paragraph assumes I have not studied evolution. As usual, you are wrong, as with the rest of your comment.
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FP, you may have read a little, but you haven't understood much, as your comment amply demonstrates. The homology between human and mouse SCN1A (and the other genes, at many different levels, from expression pattern to position on the chromosome to intron structure to amino acid encoding to precise base sequence) is not simple "similarity" - it goes much much deeper than that. So far there has only been one explanation that explains this deep homology, and that is that they have evolved from a common ancestor. Not designed; the designer has not re-used components (a human SCN1A would work just as well in a mouse as the murine version, and ditto for many genes). SCN1A has not been tweaked for the squeakers - it is the *same* gene that has diverged from a common ancestral sequence in the time since the human and murine populations split.
That is the lesson that you need to learn. This is what we mean by orthology. It is not convergent evolution; it is not a different component doing a similar job. It is the same gene. The differences have arisen in the course of evolution, and comparison with other species demonstrates that this is the only explanation that makes any sense. Intelligent Design Creationism does NOT explain this, nor does it explain the fact that these sequences can be used to reconstruct phylogenetic trees, no matter which level of gene information you choose to examine.
What I am saying is that you do not have an alternative.
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Helio
REF the similarity between the gene in mice and humans
Isnt it the case, scientifically speaking, that correlation between data does not necessarily imply causation?
An example.
As ice cream sales increase, the rate of drowning deaths increases sharply.
Therefore, ice cream causes drowning.
Not.
The unstated assumption you make is that there is no God and super-natural creation using a common design cannot be considered as a factor in our origins, simply because your arbitrary religious prejudice dissallows it entering the discussion.
To prove me wrong, all you need is to provide an objective scientific definition of what is "supernatural". I have only asked dozens upon dozens of times for this and all the die-hard evolutionists run scared from the question.
I am not saying this proves creationism etc etc, not at all.
But I am saying, you know deep down that your "just so" "just believe it" urgings on this thread are humorous.
On your own blog you seem to be a little more tongue in cheek about acknowledging your untestable assumptions.
You have a great sense of humour, I think I can see the wry smile while you are reading this!
Hope the cycling is going well!
Regards
OT
PS, ref how you keep saying how beautiful and awsome the universe and nature are without faith etc etc, I disagree.
Half the world is starving, actual human slavery is thriving all over the globe, including your home town of Dungannon, most of the world has no effective law and order and unspeakable brutalities are inflicted daily on the weak and defenceless with no natural hope of redress whatsoever.
If I was an athiest this would drive me to despair. ie we are just specks of random chemicals in a chance universe spinnging to its own eventual destruction and your consciouness and personality are an illusion that will expire without trace or meaning like a candle, to be missed or remembered by nobody in due time.
With faith there is hope, justice, grace and ultimate redemption as real hope for every person, who is made in the image of God.
I cant see what there is to celebrate without the hope of an ultimate great reversal for men.
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OT, there is a great deal to celebrate, and a great deal of work to do. Perhaps the pain and suffering in the world would drive some people to despair, if they didn't have the solace of some giant pixie who would wave its magic wand at the end times and make everything OK. But that also saps the desire for some people to go out and make a change (not all - I do know lots of people who have been inspired by their religion to actually go out and do good). But atheism is not about despair. We're here; we're all in this together, and no mythical creature is going to pull us out, so the buck stops with US. That is both liberating and intensely challenging. We should be up for it.
You also didn't address my point above. Of course correlation does not imply causation, but with respect to genetic similarity, I rather think you underestimate (spectacularly) the extraordinary similarity we are talking about here. We are not even talking about the level of similarity that YOU accept shows that Mark and Matthew and Luke shared a common source. It is BETTER than that. This is digital informational similarity at multiple levels - the gene sequence, the gene position, the gene expression, the amino acid sequence, the intron structure, the psuedogenes, the biochemistry, the histology, the physiology, the neurology, the anatomy, etc etc.
The problem for the "design hypothesis" (if I can call it that) is that there are many levels of this homology that are left unexplained. It actively CREATES massive gaps. There is only ONE hypothesis that has been put forward that can explain these staggeringly deep homologies - and that is common descent. The differences we see BETWEEN species are precisely the same sorts of differences we see WITHIN species, and we observe them popping up all the time.
In other words, the "design hypothesis" does NOT explain these homologies - even among non-functional genes! (And I am not talking about "junk DNA" here; I am talking about genes that can be seen to have once been functional, but are now knocked out).
Evolution is the only show in town, and, as Richard Dawkins says, it's the Greatest Show on Earth.
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And speaking of which, especially PNJ, GB, PM & GV, this precise issue will not be discussed in unseemly detail at the W&T Blog Commenters' Dinner on Saturday (Will, you can come too if you like - I'll be nice about Alvin - promise!), so if you leave a comment on my blog (to which I won't link, because the mods don't allow me to :-( but you know the address) I'll add you to the list. PK is making the booking now, and the lions, I hear, are ravenous.
-H
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Helio,
Shhhh! Don't tell them about the old games we had in mind.:)
Instead, let me say that more people, non-believers and believers of just about any flavour, are welcome.
RJB, if my memory serves me correctly, you said some time ago that your faith community and other interactions made you a mostly 'online believer'. If you care for a real-world social occasion, and you are anywhere near Belfast this weekend, then please join in.
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