NationStates Jolt Archive

since the creationism vs "evolution" (aka, all of modern science) fight seems to be the new in thing, and those threads tend to get rather messy and cluttered, i made this new one. in this one i would like to compile two lists of testable hypotheses that if true would tend to strengthen the idea they are implied by and if false tend to weaken it or force it to change dramatically. the next two posts (one for creationism and one for science) will collect these hypotheses and divide them up into broad categories. everyone is welcome to contribute hypotheses to both sides.

until we have a good list of hypotheses, please refrain from posting arguments about which hypothesis is correct and which one is false. we will get to that later. however, feel free to chime in to argue against some proposed hypothesis being a legitimate one - as long as you keep your argument centered on what we would expect to see if the over-arching idea (the creation story or a particular scientific theory) was correct and not on evidence, real or imagined, pertaining to the hypothesis.

after we have gotten a big enough list ('big enough' being determined purely subjectively), we will then move on to comparing the hypothesized predictions to the actual evidence.

and now, onto round one of the championship match of the millennium. let's get ready to rumble! (...in a polite and scientific way)

the list of testable creationist hypotheses thus far (as compiled in this thread (http://forums2.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?t=374885)):

the flood
Well, for the great flood we would expect a uniform layer of sediment all across the world from when everything kicked up in the flood waters settled. (New Granada)

we would expect to find fossils of any animals or plants that died in the flood to be in a jumbled mess within the above mentioned uniform layer. and since all plants and animals that ever existed were alive at the time, we would expect to find a sampling of all of them in that jumbled mess. (free soviets)

the flood would have left multiple distinct layers, arranged with the most dense material on the bottom and the least dense on the top. plant and animal fossils would be similarly distributed by density in those layers. (free soviets' rephrasing of lomia's hypothesis)

age of the earth
As for a young earth, we'd expect not to find any radioactive material that had been decaying for more than 6000 or so years. (New Granada)

we should be able to find naturally occuring radioactive isotopes with relatively short half-lives that aren't continually being reformed. for example, calcium-41, iron-60, aluminum-26, etc. (free soviets)

if we find an unbroken line of annual growth rings from trees in a given area, the most we should be able to count is in the 6,000 and a bit range. (free soviets)

if we count annual layers in an ice core, the most we should get is in the 6,000 and a bit range. (free soviets)

more generally, all dating methods should give us dates of no more than 6,000+ years ago.

ancient life
we would expect not to find any fossils of life forms which arent described in human historical writings. (New Granada)

since all life has existed since the beginning, the deepest and earliest layers of sediment that contain fossils should contain fossils of all forms of life we know of. (free soviets)

since all life has existed from the beginning, there should be no visible order in the fossil record from 'primitive' to modern forms. (free soviets)

no fossils should exist that demonstrate traits halfway between distinct 'kinds', like whales and land mammals, birds and reptiles, apes and humans, reptiles and mammals, etc. we should only find fossil that are clearly wth one group or the other. (free soviets)

linguistics, archaeology, history
there should be evidence of a single unified world language up until approximately 2200 bce, with many different languages appearing quickly thereafter. (free soviets)

the written records after the flood should record the biblical flood story exactly, as noah was still living until about 2000 bce, and his son shem until 1850 bce (we don't have dates for noah's two other sons, but i'd assume they would be similar). (free soviets)

the earliest sites of human habitation should be found in the middle east. human occupation of other continents should only occur sometime after the flood in 2448 bce. (free soviets)

genetics
We shouldn't be able to find any new genetic traits in cells (such as anti-biotic resistance, etc) (CSW)

We should be able to show that no information is ever added to cells by mutation. (CSW)

while dna similarities between similar looking life forms may be due to the same dna sequences being used over and over by the creator to do the same sort of things, we should expect that non-coding dna will either differ greatly and in no particular pattern or be identical across species. (free soviets & Utonium)

Bats should be more similar to birds than mammals. Likewise, dolphins, whales, etc. should be closer to fish than mammals. (Dempublicents)

all of humanity should be able to be traced back to a common ancestor, who lived about 6,000 years ago near the tigris and euphrates rivers. (Streen & free soviets)

there should only be one kind of mitochondrial dna as all human life came from one woman, eve. there should also only be one y chromosome, common to all men, as all human life came from one man, adam. furthermore, the number of y chromosomes would have bee brought back to one (if more had developped) once again, after the flood because only noah and his son's and son's wives were on the boat. all the men would have the same y chromosome, passing on the same y chromosome to their male offspring. (Dakini)

the list of testable hypotheses based on current scientific theory thus far:

age of the earth/universe

any dating method, provided it was used correctly and on an appropriate substance should show the earth to be really old, with the oldest dates converging on 3.8 to 4.2 billion years old. (free soviets)

radiometric dates taken from meteorites (which cooled much faster in the early solar system) should converge on the approximate age of the solar system itself, 4.55 billon years.

evolution of species and ancient life

we should be able to find fossils of species which contain traits currently found in distinct species.

origin of life

the creation of life from basic elements ought to be reproducible. however, since part of the formula is very probably "get an ocean worth of the right mix of chemicals. let simmer for 5 million years", failure to produce life in a single experiment is not a falsification of the general principle.

the complex building blocks of life should be able to spontaneously form from their component parts.

linguistics, archaeology, history

evidence should show an adaptive process showing a gradual adaptation of language from non verbal and hand communication. (Terra-Domina)

we should find evidence of civilization existing before 4000 bce in the form of art, literature, legend, settlement or fossil remains. (Terra-Domina)

we should find evidence of human settlement from a natural to rural and eventually urban living conditions over an extended period of adaptation. (Terra-Domina)

genetics

beneficial mutations will tend to survive and spread across a population over time. harmful ones will tend to be eleminated.

geology

layers of rock will be formed sequentially, with different locations having layers in the same relative order.

(please help fill out this side - we're being a bit lop-sided so far)

this debate is well beyond testable hypotheses

while dna similarities between similar looking life forms may be due to the same dna sequences being used over and over by the creator to do the same sort of things, we should expect that non-coding dna will differ greatly and in no particular pattern. (free soviets)
What makes you think that? If I were the Creator, I sure as heck would Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V every bit of DNA I could, even the stuff that doesn't do jack doody. :D

What makes you think that? If I were the Creator, I sure as heck would Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V every bit of DNA I could, even the stuff that doesn't do jack doody. :D

well, to be perfectly honest, i cannot think of a single reason why non-coding dna would even exist without evolution, but since we know it does i had to say something about it. perhaps this hypothesis should have two possible predictions - no cross-species patterns in 'junk' dna, or identical 'junk' dna in all species (or at least within 'kinds').

What makes you think that? If I were the Creator, I sure as heck would Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V every bit of DNA I could, even the stuff that doesn't do jack doody. :D

Actually, if everything were created perfect and good, one would expect that there would be no non-coding sections, as they would be extra junk that made lifeforms less efficient.

Another way to prove Creationism to be correct would be an indirect proof, showing that the only alternative is Evolution theory, and then somehow showing that Evolution can't possibly be true.

Also, I'm not sure if Creationism necessarily means that everything was created 6000 years ago. I think it just means that all the types of life forms were created at the same time, and hasn't changed since then.

Creationism isn't science thread=Kicking dead horse

Here's another one for Creation:

Bats should be more similar to birds than mammals.

Likewise, dolphins, whales, etc. should be closer to fish than mammals.

Certain bugs should have four, not six legs - we will need another explanation for any third pair of appendages.

*sigh* Look, I hoped I wouldn't have to get too technical here, but the "non-coding" sections are in fact error handlers. Without them, fatal mutations would crash the whole ecosystem. And believe me, the last thing you want is a rainforest-sized Blue Screen of Death.

I have a theory that upon understanding the theory of evolution, one will agree with it. This is based on the observation that everyone I've ever seen argue against evolution did not properly understand the theory.

*sigh* Look, I hoped I wouldn't have to get too technical here, but the "non-coding" sections are in fact error handlers. Without them, fatal mutations would crash the whole ecosystem. And believe me, the last thing you want is a rainforest-sized Blue Screen of Death.

in that case, we would expect it to be identical across all species. so i'm adding that to the list.

jeebus, mass extinction events are god hitting control alt delete!

*sigh* Look, I hoped I wouldn't have to get too technical here, but the "non-coding" sections are in fact error handlers. Without them, fatal mutations would crash the whole ecosystem. And believe me, the last thing you want is a rainforest-sized Blue Screen of Death.

Depending on what people mean by non-coding sections, this is partially true. There are also enhancers and other regulatory sections within most "genes" that people may refer to as "non-coding," since they don't actually code for proteins.

However, no use has been found as of yet for STRs, etc.

Um... you DO realize that I was kidding, right? It's... a joke. Comparing genetic code to computer code. Yeah.

Oh, and what are STRs?

Certain bugs should have four, not six legs - we will need another explanation for any third pair of appendages.

is this a leviticus reference? i don't believe i know it.

somebody should add some modern science hypotheses so i don't have to write them up myself.

is this a leviticus reference? i don't believe i know it.
Why is everything silly from levidicus :p

Why is everything silly from levidicus :p
Because God wanted to see how much stupid stuff he could make the Jews do in His name. It mostly worked.

Ok guys, we could go on for days in an intense, argumentative fashion, or we can accept, that until the trumpets blow for judgement day, or the gun behind your head is fired, we will never know... Until then, the obvious victors will be science due to evidence, but they may be proved wrong when we all die and that 'omnipitent' figure that is God judges us.

Who knows.......?

Because God wanted to see how much stupid stuff he could make the Jews do in His name. It mostly worked.
oh wow ... kind a like simon says

oh wow ... kind a like simon says
I never thought about it that way, but yeah.

"Yahweh says... don't be gay! Good."
"Yahweh says... sacrifice goats! Good."
"Yahweh says... kill the Canaanites! Good."
"Don't eat locusts. Ha! Yahweh didn't say!"

Ok guys, we could go on for days in an intense, argumentative fashion, or we can accept, that until the trumpets blow for judgement day, or the gun behind your head is fired,...
What what what!? *turns around* Crap, you had me worried.

If Creationism is true:

Then all of humanity should be able to be traced back to a common ancestor.

Snakes once had legs, and this should be evident in the fossil record.

Any fossils that appear to be older than 6000 years were really planted there, and there might be some forensic evidence to suggest this. (ALA Hitchhiker)

If Evolution is true:

Then the creation of life from basic elements ought to be reproducible.




Also, I would like to say that minor-adaptations and genetic mutations are not necessarily at odds with Creationism--as long as they don't effect major changes.

From what i figure, God didn't feel God needed to give all the details to a people who probably wouldnt understand stand them, since the very idea of evoltuion wasnt explored till some where around what 1800? I personaly believe that much of the stories in the old testament were exactly that; storties, usually to prove some sort of point. Or how about this.........God was responible for evolution, he created people never said how long it took really. (A day for God could an infinate number of human years etc)

If Evolution is true:

Then the creation of life from basic elements ought to be reproducible.


Only if we assume that life must have started on this planet. Another scientific theory is that life (or the building blocks of life) landed here via a meteor or comet, and in this situation, no evidence of the beginings of life would be seen on this planet, but evolution would still be true.

Secondly, i would like to point out that the chance of an organism becoming a fossil is very very low (sorry i don't know the exact probability), thus an incomplete fossil record (or a missing-link fossil not there) doesn't necessarily disprove evolution.

Only if we assume that life must have started on this planet. Another scientific theory is that life (or the building blocks of life) landed here via a meteor or comet, and in this situation, no evidence of the beginings of life would be seen on this planet, but evolution would still be true.
Yeah, but life would have had to have been formed from non-life somewhere. Unless tiny tiny bacteria popped straight out of the Big Bang. His point stands. (He just said "reproducible," not even "reproducible given early-Earth conditions.")

suggested clarifications to Streen's hypotheses:

Then all of humanity should be able to be traced back to a common ancestor. (who lived about 6,000 years ago the tigris and euphrates rivers)

Snakes once had legs, and this should be evident in the fossil record. (i don't know that genesis actually claims that all snakes had legs. or even that there was more than just the one 'serpent' at the time. after all, genesis 1:24-25 has god making "creatures that move along the ground", which apparently are distinct from livestock and wild animals, before he creates people. so maybe. but if so, this change in the fossils should happen right quick, within 130 years of the creation of earth)

Any fossils that appear to be older than 6000 years were really planted there, and there might be some forensic evidence to suggest this. (well, maybe. but then again it should be impossible for anything to appear older than 6000 years and a bit, unless the entire material world is somehow lying to us)

the creation of life from basic elements ought to be reproducible. (as a point of order, this is not part of evolution. but since this isn't a discussion restricted to evolution, i'll allow it. with one minor change. part of the formula is very probably "get an ocean worth of the right mix of chemicals. let simmer for 5 million years", so failure to produce life in a single experiment is not a falsification of the general principle)

Also, I would like to say that minor-adaptations and genetic mutations are not necessarily at odds with Creationism--as long as they don't effect major changes.

we'll need a solid definition for 'major changes' to get a hypothesis out of this idea. do we have one?

another thing for the creationist story:

there should only be one kind of mitochondrial dna as all human life came from one woman, eve.

there should also only be one y chromosome, common to all men, as all human life came from one man, adam.

furthermore, the number of y chromosomes would have bee brought back to one (if more had developped) once again, after the flood because only noah and his son's and son's wives were on the boat. all the men would have the same y chromosome, passing on the same y chromosome to their male offspring.

If Evolution is true:

Then the creation of life from basic elements ought to be reproducible.
1. that's not part of evolution.
2. it has been reproduced.

1. that's not part of evolution.
2. it has been reproduced.


Not quite. Amino acids have been produced, but amino acids without DNA are useless, and vice versa. DNA has not been produced spontaneously, no-one's quite sure where it came from...

right, we're doing pretty good on the creationism side. now lets get some for all the bits of science that creationism has to dispute.

Not quite. Amino acids have been produced, but amino acids without DNA are useless, and vice versa. DNA has not been produced spontaneously, no-one's quite sure where it came from...
they have produced extremely primitive life from non-living material.

and they've been producing dna base pairs in such conditions since the 1950s.

after we have gotten a big enough list ('big enough' being determined purely subjectively), we will then move on to comparing the hypothesized predictions of the evident to the actual evidence.

So basically what you are doing here is setting up a competition between religion and science which will be decided in accordance with the ground rules of science? Am I the only one to spot a fatal flaw in this whole operation?

So basically what you are doing here is setting up a competition between religion and science which will be decided in accordance with the ground rules of science? Am I the only one to spot a fatal flaw in this whole operation?
If creationism is to be treated as a scientific theory, then we must use the rules of science in order to verify it.

age of the earth
As for a young earth, we'd expect not to find any radioactive material that had been decaying for more than 6000 or so years. (New Granada)

we should be able to find naturally occuring radioactive isotopes with relatively short half-lives that aren't continually being reformed. for example, calcium-41, iron-60, aluminum-26, etc. (free soviets)

if we find an unbroken line of annual growth rings from trees in a given area, the most we should be able to count is in the 6,000 and a bit range. (free soviets)

if we count annual layers in an ice core, the most we should get is in the 6,000 and a bit range. (free soviets)

more generally, all dating methods should give us dates of no more than 6,000+ years ago.

This runs into problems as it we are told that Adam was created as an already grown adult - thus God could clearly have created trees or ice flows with the characteristics of great age at the moment they were called into being.

If creationism is to be treated as a scientific theory, then we must use the rules of science in order to verify it.

the next two posts (one for creationism and one for science) will collect these hypotheses and divide them up into broad categories. everyone is welcome to contribute hypotheses to both sides.

Note how creationism is separated from science in the very first post - the stated intent is thus not to subsume it within science.

This runs into problems as it we are told that Adam was created as an already grown adult - thus God could clearly have created trees or ice flows with the characteristics of great age at the moment they were called into being.
You are not allowed to invoke god, or else this conversation is moot (Blatant endorsement of religion, a no no)

You are not allowed to invoke god, or else this conversation is moot (Blatant endorsement of religion, a no no)

Speaking as an atheist, how about...

"we cannot rule out the possibility within Creationist thought that the creator figure was able to create a world with the appearance and properties that we would expect to find had it been generated in accordance with our current scientific ideas of its origin"

We can even invoke Bertrand Russell and his note that the world could have been generated just five minutes ago, yet with the appearance of a much older world, including ourselves and our fake memories of existence prior to the time at which we were created.

Better?

they have produced extremely primitive life from non-living material.


Cite? Link?

So basically what you are doing here is setting up a competition between religion and science which will be decided in accordance with the ground rules of science? Am I the only one to spot a fatal flaw in this whole operation?

well, they started it. i doubt it's like this by you, but around here the creationists keep trying to put creationism into science classes (while at the same time taking out evolution) and the go around calling themselves "scientific creationists" and talking about alleged 'evidence' that 'proves' their story. they wanted to join in our game, so i'm going to make them play by the rules.

is this a leviticus reference? i don't believe i know it.

I know it is in the Torah, but I can't remember exactly where. Something about grasshoppers having only four legs.

Note how creationism is separated from science in the very first post - the stated intent is thus not to subsume it within science.

i was unclear, i appologize. i meant the dominant theories of modern science.

and they must be divided up, because creationism is actually totally at odds with nearly all of our current theories for pretty much everything, from biology to physics to chemistry to geology to astronomy, etc. in order to subsume creationism within science, it must in essence overturn everything we believe to be true about the universe based on the evidence we've seen thus far. if it can do this scientifically, then it can be made part of science. hence this thread (how's that for ambitious?).

I know it is in the Torah, but I can't remember exactly where. Something about grasshoppers having only four legs.
Leviticus 11 20-24

Cite? Link?
hold on... it's hard sorting through all the people with pseudoscience trying to argue the contrary.. (yes, i looked up abiogenesis, would you believe there are still people using pasteur's example to "debunk" it?)

hold on... it's hard sorting through all the people with pseudoscience trying to argue the contrary.. (yes, i looked up abiogenesis, would you believe there are still people using pasteur's example to "debunk" it?)

Are you misremembering the results of this experiment?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miller-Urey_experiment

This runs into problems as it we are told that Adam was created as an already grown adult - thus God could clearly have created trees or ice flows with the characteristics of great age at the moment they were called into being.

aside from the fact that the "universe created with apparent age 5 minutes ago" idea is fundamentally untestable and we might as well go on treating the universe as if it really was its apparent age (after all, it and everything in it behaves exactly as if it was really that old), this runs into the problem of multiplying miracles without even a biblical reason.

a year long flood that covered the world should have melted those ice caps, and we have no biblical reason to believe that god not only put them back as they were before, but also added hundreds of thousands of extra 'years' to them.

and while i can believe that god would have put fully mature forests on the planet at the time of creation, i can think of no reason to add in a consistent chronology of tree rings in fossil trees (that would never have been alive in the first place) going back thousands of 'years' before the creation even happened. and again, we have no biblical reason to believe he did so.

what's the point of being a biblical literalist when we're just going to make stuff up out of thin air anyways? once we allow that god may have had to do things differently than the bible explicitly says, creationism loses any epistemological force it ever had.

The fact is that an atheist will never believe in a creation for obvious reasons. Even if the evidence was overwhelming some other theory would be proposed. It's the nature of the atheist. Christians can be convinced of evolution, since many see that it can still be made to fit into their religion. The whole discussion boils down to whether you believe there is a supreme being or not, and the whole defense essentially rests on this premise. Since that is one thing that cannot be proven, it is pointless to argue it.

Leviticus 11 20-24

in any case, i'd like to keep this genesis-based - there is far too much material to cover already, without getting into the historical and factual innaccuracies of later books.

The fact is that an atheist will never believe in a creation for obvious reasons. Even if the evidence was overwhelming some other theory would be proposed. It's the nature of the atheist. Christians can be convinced of evolution, since many see that it can still be made to fit into their religion. The whole discussion boils down to whether you believe there is a supreme being or not, and the whole defense essentially rests on this premise. Since that is one thing that cannot be proven, it is pointless to argue it.

It doesn't rest on whether or not you believe in a supreme being at all. If you believe in a supreme being (as I do), you have to, by definition, believe that you can never know all there is to know about that supreme being. So, if a book written thousands of years ago after stories were passed down by mouth for generations says something that you can easily observe to be wrong, you go with the actual data.

Are you misremembering the results of this experiment?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miller-Urey_experiment
i dunno, one of my friends is a biology major (well, molecular biology) and he was telling me that they created primitive life... well, that someone created primitive life from non-life.

i dunno, one of my friends is a biology major (well, molecular biology) and he was telling me that they created primitive life... well, that someone created primitive life from non-life.

They created prions.

Some believe prions to be primitive life because they are self-replicating. Others argue that, much like viruses, they are not life because they don't meet *all* the requirements.

Creationism and Science are not mutually exclusive. It's possible to believe in the big bang and believe every word of Genesis. This goes for a large number of so called "discrepancies" between the first book and scientific evidence.

aside from the fact that the "universe created with apparent age 5 minutes ago" idea is fundamentally untestable and we might as well go on treating the universe as if it really was its apparent age (after all, it and everything in it behaves exactly as if it was really that old), this runs into the problem of multiplying miracles without even a biblical reason.

a year long flood that covered the world should have melted those ice caps, and we have no biblical reason to believe that god not only put them back as they were before, but also added hundreds of thousands of extra 'years' to them.

and while i can believe that god would have put fully mature forests on the planet at the time of creation, i can think of no reason to add in a consistent chronology of tree rings in fossil trees (that would never have been alive in the first place) going back thousands of 'years' before the creation even happened. and again, we have no biblical reason to believe he did so.

what's the point of being a biblical literalist when we're just going to make stuff up out of thin air anyways? once we allow that god may have had to do things differently than the bible explicitly says, creationism loses any epistemological force it ever had.

I agree with what you said about the making stuff up out of thin air to try to prove a theory. That shouldn't be happening.

As for the age thing... everything you said depends on those tests being accurate. How is the accuracy proven?
I'm just interested is all.

Creationism and Science are not mutually exclusive. It's possible to believe in the big bang and believe every word of Genesis. This goes for a large number of so called "discrepancies" between the first book and scientific evidence.

Creationism is the antithesis of science, being supposed "science" that doesn't follow the scientific method. Therefore, they are mutually exclusive.

Creationism is so general that no scientific theory (at least those that have been deemed credible) has disproved it. Creationism is the beleif that a supreme being created existance as we know it. Since the topic is Christian Creationism, the first book of the Bible is where we look. In it, no statement conflicts with know scientific evidence, because of it generality.

It isn't science...it is a belief based on faith.

and thus we go back down the road to nowhere.

please try to keep posts centered on testable hypotheses. we'll discuss how well they hold up later.

Since the topic is Christian Creationism, the first book of the Bible is where we look. In it, no statement conflicts with know scientific evidence, because of it generality.

so is it your claim that none of our hypotheses under creationism are actually legitimate ones - that we shouldn't expect to see those things in the world if genesis was literally true?

they have produced extremely primitive life from non-living material.

and they've been producing dna base pairs in such conditions since the 1950s.

I'm afraid that they haven't. They have created, as I said, amino acids. Amino acids, when in combination with DNA, can create life. Or, to be more accurate, life contains amino acids strung together with the coding in DNA. One without the other is next to useless, and DNA has not been created. It can be taken and duplicated, but it has not been created.

In it, no statement conflicts with know scientific evidence, because of it generality.
according to genesis, the sun was created after the earth.

this is physically impossible.

I'm afraid that they haven't. They have created, as I said, amino acids. Amino acids, when in combination with DNA, can create life. Or, to be more accurate, life contains amino acids strung together with the coding in DNA. One without the other is next to useless, and DNA has not been created. It can be taken and duplicated, but it has not been created.
umm... no, from a link earlier in the thread:

This experiment inspired many similar experiments in a similar vein. In 1961, Joan Oro found that amino acids could be made from hydrogen cyanide (HCN) and ammonia in a water solution. He also found that his experiment produced a large amount of the nucleotide base adenine. Experiments conducted later showed that the other RNA and DNA bases could be obtained through simulated prebiotic chemistry with a reducing atmosphere.

dna base pairs were formed.

umm... no, from a link earlier in the thread:



dna base pairs were formed.

Huh. I could be wrong. Could you repeat the link, I'd like to see this site. If I am wrong, I apologise, I was speaking from the information I heard.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miller-Urey_experiment

ancient life
we would expect not to find any fossils of life forms which arent described in human historical writings. (New Granada)

No,firstly because humanity was not neccessarilly described evenly all over the globe, and thus many kinds of organism may have perished without our encountering them. The very fact that we are still discovering previously unknown existing organisms in this day and age shows that we can't expect the Bible or other historical writings to list all creatures.

Secondly, NG has assumed that the fossils have been produced by the processes that science describes, whereas it is possible they were created embedded in the Earth at the time of its creation.


since all life has existed since the beginning, the deepest and earliest layers of sediment that contain fossils should contain fossils of all forms of life we know of. (free soviets)

No, because this assumes that said 'fossils' were not created already embedded and fossilised, as above.

since all life has existed from the beginning, there should be no visible order in the fossil record from 'primitive' to modern forms. (free soviets)

Once again this ignores the fact that the fossil record may have been created ex nihilo.

no fossils should exist that demonstrate traits halfway between distinct 'kinds', like whales and land mammals, birds and reptiles, apes and humans, reptiles and mammals, etc. we should only find fossil that are clearly wth one group or the other. (free soviets)

Same objection as the others... also the fact that a particular 'cross trait' species became extinct at one point in history does not argue against Creationism. It may claim that bears were created, and that whales were created, but nowhere does it claim that whale-bears weren't created.

Which brings up a better question:

Why would this god bother with the farce of the fossils?

Which brings up a better question:

Why would this god bother with the farce of the fossils?

~cough~

You are not allowed to invoke god, or else this conversation is moot (Blatant endorsement of religion, a no no)


...

Anyhow: as a test of faith to see who are the righteous ones and who are the idolators that fall for the humanist lies of science?

Society, Archeology, Linguistics

for science

evidence would show an adaptive process showing a gradual adaptation of language from non verbal and hand communication.

evidence of civilization existing before 4000 bce in the form of art, literature, legend, settlement or fosil remain would exist.

evidence of human settlement from a natural to rural and eventually urban living conditions over an extended period of adaptation.

this ignores the fact that the fossil record may have been created ex nihilo.

well, any set of beliefs can be held as long as you are willing to keep adding extra unsupported (often unsupportable) beliefs and getting rid of others. but the first thing that has to be thrown out in this case is the idea that the universe is not set up to systematically deceive us about most everything. and frankly, i'm just not willing to grant that, except as an intellectual exercise. kinda like how i'm only willing to hold extreme skepticism as an intellectual exercise.

I don't think I saw anyone cite the actual experiment (you guys are talking about it, but haven't cited it specifically), but it's the Miller-Urey experiment. Basically a model of early Earth's atmosphere (a reducing atmosphere as someone mentioned). IF you believe that living matter came from non-living matter, then it is generally taken that the Earth's atmosphere was devoid of oxygen during life's conception (oxygen tears living matter apart, the free radical deal).

Now, with this atmosphere, Miller and Urey were able to successfully make amino acids. They made these among other carbon compounds that numbered about 30 (there are 90 now). You may say they're only amino acids, but more likely than not, DNA was not the basis for life to begin with. First of all, you can produce in a lab organic bubbles that will absorb material, grow, and divide. They cannot pass on genetic information, but they act as if they are alive. Secondly, the most likely form of genetic material was PNA (protein-nucleic acid). This form of information is self-replicating and capable of passing itself onto the next generation.

Later came RNA and finally DNA. The formation of organic bubbles facilitated these proteins. Bubbles from sulfur vents or on the shore of a radioactive beach were most likely the agent of life. They could for lipid shells or protein shells. Today, cell walls in eukaryotes are a lipid bilayer (or a cell wall). This is relatively strong evidence for a connection.

I'm done with that experiment...but I have a few more points to make:

1) Microfossils have been dated back to 2.5 billion years ago.

2) DNA comparisons between archaebacteria and humans yields similarities.

Meh, done now =P.

Edit: BTW, adenine (a base pair) was created using another experiment by Juan Oro. Other base pairs were created using similar experiments. So in fact, RNA or a PNA could have been created.

Society, Archeology, Linguistics

for science

evidence would show an adaptive process showing a gradual adaptation of language from non verbal and hand communication.

evidence of civilization existing before 4000 bce in the form of art, literature, legend, settlement or fosil remain would exist.

evidence of human settlement from a natural to rural and eventually urban living conditions over an extended period of adaptation.

So then if these were untrue, then by default creationism is true? Or is it exclusive to science, that these must be true for science to be true? Sorry, I don't see how this applies to science and cannot apply also to creationism. (Especially to the last point since if we were created from two original humans, then wouldn't we see also see evidence of human settlement from natural to rural to urban?)

~cough~




...

Anyhow: as a test of faith to see who are the righteous ones and who are the idolators that fall for the humanist lies of science?
Exactly, you can't have fossils being created then, because that would require thought...and a god.

So then if these were untrue, then by default creationism is true? Or is it exclusive to science, that these must be true for science to be true?

no. they have to be true for modern scientific theories to be true. if they are false then modern science is wrong and needs to be changed. but creationism would not be directly affected, except in so far as its hypotheses predict the opposite results.

Especially to the last point since if we were created from two original humans, then wouldn't we see also see evidence of human settlement from natural to rural to urban?

no. the bible claims that cain built the first city. which means that cities are first built within 200 years of creation. there shouldn't be long periods of time where there are no cities at all.

NG has assumed that the fossils have been produced by the processes that science describes, whereas it is possible they were created embedded in the Earth at the time of its creation.


It is surely possible... if the earth was created as an artifact, but it makes no sense.

If random chance created the earth intact, it doesn't explain why world-wide fossils occur with identical characteristics, and with apparent progressions, like those expected based on the theories of evolution.

If the earth was created as an artifact, there is no reason WHY fossils should be created with identical characteristics, and apparent progressions, like those expected based on theories of evolution.

That would imply that, not only was the world created whole, but also with a built in DELIBERATE trick - to suggest a thread of research and science which disagrees with the concept of non-intelligent creation.

no. they have to be true for modern scientific theories to be true. if they are false then modern science is wrong and needs to be changed. but creationism would not be directly affected, except in so far as its hypotheses predict the opposite results.


The beauty of creationism, is that it isn't bound by any of the rules of science.

It has it's own 'proof' (in the case of christianity, this 'proof' is the alleged journal of the creating force), and ignores any proof that contradicts it.

Also - it accepts any stalemate as a victory... any scientific theory that has to be altered, is taken as evidence that creationism is true.

So then if these were untrue, then by default creationism is true? Or is it exclusive to science, that these must be true for science to be true?

Creationism supposes that the world is 6000 years old. It excludes it from haveing a period of development, as civilization dates back 6000 years.

The examples I said have no application at all to creationism's validity, but only that of historical and scientific validity.

It is necessary to many schools of thought that these are ture, history, sociology, psychology, linguistics, science. Its what the evidence has shown.

Sorry, I don't see how this applies to science and cannot apply also to creationism. (Especially to the last point since if we were created from two original humans, then wouldn't we see also see evidence of human settlement from natural to rural to urban?)


easy, story of creation has god talking to adam. If adam's language was a compilation of hand signals, grunts and gestures changed over thousands of years then how was he able to converse with God on... 6th day? (im not a religious scholor)

Basically these are points that go against the creationist idea of the date of the earth and the speed of progress. If the earth was created 6000 years ago we must then assume that all modern sociatal values and structures and knowledge has been accumulated in 6000 years. If the evidence points away from this creationism is not true.

These in themselves do not show evolution, however their application to specific human evolution is apparent. Proto-man, not being the strongest, fastest or most physically able became able to adapt his environment and utilize things for purposes other than their function in nature. buildings, tools, medecine ect.

The evolution of the mind and necessity to create tools to survive natural selection would have led to us being able to create the tools to alter our environment instead of having to adapt to it. Eventually, as Freud puts it, we will become like Prostetic Gods

evidence of civilization existing before 4000 bce in the form of art, literature, legend, settlement or fosil remain would exist.



should read:

evidence of civilization existing before 4000 bce in the form of art, literature, legend, settlement or fosil remains.

(me and grammar/spelling are arch nemesises)

* most rock should be sedimentary and indicative of cataclysmic flooding. There should be no rock formations that indicate the passing of millenia of gradual accumulation of undisturbed sediment, such as multi-layered riverbed formations. There should be no large lava flows layered on top of each other, and definitely not with successively older radiometric dates in the lower levels.
* terrestrial animal fossils should either not be sorted at all, or should be sorted by some "hydrodynamic" aspect such as body size, with, for instance, extinct elephants and large dinosaurs in the lowest layers, and small primitive dinosaurs in the upper layers. Terrestrial animal fossils should not be sorted by subtle anatomical details (such as, say, the number of cusps on the fourth premolar).
* marine animals are a puzzle, since it is unclear that a Flood would cause any extinctions of aquatic animals. If such extinctions did occur, aquatic fossils would perhaps be "sorted" by body size or ecological niche (bottom-feeder vs. surface swimmer). For instance, plesiosaurs, primitive whales, and placoderm fishes (relatively slow-swimming and quite large) should end up in the same layers. Ichthyosaurs and porpoises (smaller, faster swimmers with almost identical body shapes and similar diets) should also occur in the same layers.
* there should be no sorting of large rooted structures such as coral reefs and trees. There should likewise not be differential sorting of microscopic structures of the same size and shape, such as pollen grains.
* sorting, if it occurs at all, should be quite imperfect. With only 40 days for sorting, there should be occasional examples of individual fossils that ended up in the "wrong" layer -- the occasional mammal and human fossil in Paleozoic rocks, for instance, and the occasional trilobite and plesiosaur in Cenozoic rocks.
* sorting should not correlate with date of the surrounding rocks. If all fossils were created by Noah's flood, there is no conceivable reason that, for instance, lower layers of fossils should always end up sandwiched between lava rocks with old radiometric dates.

[from talkorigins.org]

It is surely possible... if the earth was created as an artifact, but it makes no sense.

If random chance created the earth intact, it doesn't explain why world-wide fossils occur with identical characteristics, and with apparent progressions, like those expected based on the theories of evolution.

Evolutionary theory is strongly shaped by the fossil record, and is a result of it, not the other way round.

You are taking evolutionary theory (which grew out of looking at the fossil record) and now using it to look again at the fossil record. You are then attempting to argue that because evolutionary theory matches fossil evidence it must be right. Circular argument, no?

well, any set of beliefs can be held as long as you are willing to keep adding extra unsupported (often unsupportable) beliefs and getting rid of others. but the first thing that has to be thrown out in this case is the idea that the universe is not set up to systematically deceive us about most everything.

Seeing as how at the moment you have the 'science boy' hat on and I have the 'devil's advocate for creationism' hat:

- do you have a scientific hypothesis or methodology which you can test/falsify/use to provide evidence against the world being set up to systematically trick us? Or is it just a primitive assumption that science can't do without? Certainly for Descartes the only way he could believe he had disproved the idea of a systematically deceiving world was to bring a benevolent god into the equation.

Evolutionary theory is strongly shaped by the fossil record, and is a result of it, not the other way round.

You are taking evolutionary theory (which grew out of looking at the fossil record) and now using it to look again at the fossil record. You are then attempting to argue that because evolutionary theory matches fossil evidence it must be right. Circular argument, no?

Depends what you're looking at. The theory of evolution was made based on, among other things, a portion of the fossil record; it explains the rest of the fossil record as well, not just the portion that gave rise to it. So no, it's not circular. Fossils of earlier hominids, predicted by the theory of evolution were (as far as I know) not known of yet when Darwin formulated it. And as we fill in more of the fossil record, the fossils mostly fit into an acceptable framework. The theory undergoes modifications to explain the data/predict new data, but the general form of the theory holds up well.

...there are plenty of other evidences for evolution besides the fossil record though. None of genetics was known when evolution was proposed, but genetics has agreed very well with the theory, it even gave a mechanism by which mutations could occur.

age of the earth/universe

We should be able to trace, according to our physics, the origins of galaxies, planets and other cosmic bodies to the origins of the universe.

genetics

Traceable lineage of creatures, eventually back to the origional organism(s)

geology

Plate techtonics will continue to shape, and will have been proved to have shaped, the physical world.

Exactly, you can't have fossils being created then, because that would require thought...and a god.

So basically you are asking for a defense of Christian Creationism which doesn't involve God?

So basically you are asking for a defense of Christian Creationism which doesn't involve God?

lol

Creationism supposes that the world is 6000 years old. It excludes it from haveing a period of development, as civilization dates back 6000 years.

It isn't as simple as that - although Genesis refers to different stages of creation occuring in 'days' there is little support for the assumption that these are to be taken as conventional blocks of 24 hours - the Hebrew word Yom can mean a standard day, or it can also mean an unspecified block of time or an 'age'. Thus it is entirely compatible with Creationist thought to have an Earth significantly older (in geological terms) than 6,000 years.

It isn't as simple as that - although Genesis refers to different stages of creation occuring in 'days' there is little support for the assumption that these are to be taken as conventional blocks of 24 hours - the Hebrew word Yom can mean a standard day, or it can also mean an unspecified block of time or an 'age'. Thus it is entirely compatible with Creationist thought to have an Earth significantly older (in geological terms) than 6,000 years.

fair enough, i thought this was a discussion in the way of literalism

the questions again were ment as hypothesises that science needs to prove, though i guess the 6000 year bias did appear. If you want I can write a possibly more objective version?

So basically you are asking for a defense of Christian Creationism which doesn't involve God?

We're asking for one that is supported by evidence, and trying to find what tests can be done that would either support or refute it.

If you say that "god could have maliciously created evidence that LOOKS like it points to evolution, but really is just a test of our faith" - I can equally well argue that "a pink unicorn created the universe ten minutes ago, with all of the evidence for a longer-lived universe intact, including our memories, just to laugh at us." Basically, you're discarding ALL evidence against your hypothesis - and that tosses it outside the realm of science.

fair enough, i thought this was a discussion in the way of literalism

the questions again were ment as hypothesises that science needs to prove, though i guess the 6000 year bias did appear. If you want I can write a possibly more objective version?

I'm just an atheist playing devil's advocate for Creationists here, and so it would seem to make sense to actually go and look at what the Creationists actually say, rather than setting up straw men - for example here is a page I have skimmed through which is certainly pro-Creationist, but doesn't live up to stereotypes of Creationism that the pro-science crowd here is throwing out:

http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Delphi/8449/days.html

However, the question with regard to development of civilisation really hinges not on the age of the planet, but on whether Adam and Eve were the actual first humans or just the first to have a relation with the Divine. If they were the actual first homo sapiens, and if we accept the lineage based 6008 (IIRC) year estimate for the time elapsed between their creation and the present day, then your questions regarding societal development have some validity.

http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Delphi/8449/days.html

ya, for sure, even the catholic church accepts big bang

however, i was under the impression that Creationism refered to a group of psudo scientists that attempted to prove a literal translation of the bible

once you allow for metaphorical interpretation then the words can really be manipulated to mean anything.


However, the question with regard to development of civilisation really hinges not on the age of the planet, but on whether Adam and Eve were the actual first humans or just the first to have a relation with the Divine. If they were the actual first homo sapiens, and if we accept the lineage based 6008 (IIRC) year estimate for the time elapsed between their creation and the present day, then your questions regarding societal development have some validity.


achually, since the catagory was history, archeology and language i tried to focus on aspects of those that are affected by creationist theory.

In a way there are reactionist, and none are really scientific, aside from that they are studied through the science of palentology, though sociology and anthropology are hardly exact sciences.

For most of our history to be correct though, we need civilization that extends back further than 4000 bce. However, i should had ommited that date and put in something like "a traceable lineage to natural living conditions".

Creationism is so general that no scientific theory (at least those that have been deemed credible) has disproved it. Creationism is the beleif that a supreme being created existance as we know it. Since the topic is Christian Creationism, the first book of the Bible is where we look. In it, no statement conflicts with know scientific evidence, because of it generality.

Creationism (capitalized) refers to the view that everything in the OT is completely and literally true.

creation (non capitalized) is used to refer to the idea that there was a creator who made everything, regardless of exactly how it was done.

I'm afraid that they haven't. They have created, as I said, amino acids. Amino acids, when in combination with DNA, can create life. Or, to be more accurate, life contains amino acids strung together with the coding in DNA. One without the other is next to useless, and DNA has not been created. It can be taken and duplicated, but it has not been created.

They have also created prions, which are self-replicating.

I'm just an atheist playing devil's advocate for Creationists here, and so it would seem to make sense to actually go and look at what the Creationists actually say, rather than setting up straw men - for example here is a page I have skimmed through which is certainly pro-Creationist, but doesn't live up to stereotypes of Creationism that the pro-science crowd here is throwing out:

http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Delphi/8449/days.html


The problem is that creationists DO throw out those theories. Some do. Others don't. Everyone seems to have their own interpretation of what the creationism says, how much of the bible is interpreted literally...

No,firstly because humanity was not neccessarilly described evenly all over the globe, and thus many kinds of organism may have perished without our encountering them. The very fact that we are still discovering previously unknown existing organisms in this day and age shows that we can't expect the Bible or other historical writings to list all creatures.

You aren't playing properly. According to the Bible, *all* animals were brought before Adam and named. Therefore, for Creationism to hold true, human beings would have already had to know of every single animal ever, as well as it's name.

Generations later, Noah would also see every single animal and house it on the ark.

Therefore, if Creationism were true, human beings would have encountered every single animal that ever was or will be.

We're asking for one that is supported by evidence, and trying to find what tests can be done that would either support or refute it.

If you say that "god could have maliciously created evidence that LOOKS like it points to evolution, but really is just a test of our faith" - I can equally well argue that "a pink unicorn created the universe ten minutes ago, with all of the evidence for a longer-lived universe intact, including our memories, just to laugh at us." Basically, you're discarding ALL evidence against your hypothesis - and that tosses it outside the realm of science.


I have already made note of this point :

http://forums2.jolt.co.uk/showpost.php?p=7531521&postcount=39


The response about the fossil record being a test of faith was not to be taken too seriously - but the fact remains that the Creationist model describes the particular entities which comprise the cosmos being created with the particular attributes which we would associate with entities of a particular age. Thus Adam and Eve were not created as feti or newborns, but instead as fully grown adults. If we accept this, then we must also logically entertain the possibility that a tree with 6008+ growth rings was in fact created not as a seed or a sapling, but as a sturdy thick trunked tree to begin with. Thus a pattern begins to emerge - the cosmos being created in a state which is in accordance with physical laws and their effects. So, we can look at the earth and its fossil record, and this doesn't necessarilly disprove the Creationist model, instead the Earth was created as an example of the conditions we would expect to find in a planet orbiting a particular type of sun of a certain age. If we were to let time run on for a couple of billion years and search through the cosmos we might find another planet, on which a fossil record has been created by entirely natural/scientific means (ie. organisms dying and geological processes follwoing that) while we waited. The Earth may be no different to a tree or to the fully grown Adam - a created example of what natural processes would have created over time, and would create in similar conditions in the future.

You aren't playing properly. According to the Bible, *all* animals were brought before Adam and named. Therefore, for Creationism to hold true, human beings would have already had to know of every single animal ever, as well as it's name.

But nowhere in the texts the Creationists hold to be true is it claimed that all the names were recorded.

Creationism is mythology. Case Closed.

Evolutionary theory is strongly shaped by the fossil record, and is a result of it, not the other way round.

You are taking evolutionary theory (which grew out of looking at the fossil record) and now using it to look again at the fossil record. You are then attempting to argue that because evolutionary theory matches fossil evidence it must be right. Circular argument, no?

No. The strength of scientific theory (such as evolution) is that it is based on actual data, and is able to change with additional data.

They have also created prions, which are self-replicating.


They are not, however, living organisms.

No. The strength of scientific theory (such as evolution) is that it is based on actual data, and is able to change with additional data.

Any theory can do that. If they were to discover an addendum to Genesis in a cave somewhere, then the Creationist thoery would most likely change in the light of such additional data.

The core of science is not comprised of theories, but instead of hypotheses which are open to falsification - that is its defining characteristic.

I have already made note of this point :

http://forums2.jolt.co.uk/showpost.php?p=7531521&postcount=39


The response about the fossil record being a test of faith was not to be taken too seriously - but the fact remains that the Creationist model describes the particular entities which comprise the cosmos being created with the particular attributes which we would associate with entities of a particular age. Thus Adam and Eve were not created as feti or newborns, but instead as fully grown adults. If we accept this, then we must also logically entertain the possibility that a tree with 6008+ growth rings was in fact created not as a seed or a sapling, but as a sturdy thick trunked tree to begin with. Thus a pattern begins to emerge - the cosmos being created in a state which is in accordance with physical laws and their effects. So, we can look at the earth and its fossil record, and this doesn't necessarilly disprove the Creationist model, instead the Earth was created as an example of the conditions we would expect to find in a planet orbiting a particular type of sun of a certain age. If we were to let time run on for a couple of billion years and search through the cosmos we might find another planet, on which a fossil record has been created by entirely natural/scientific means (ie. organisms dying and geological processes follwoing that) while we waited. The Earth may be no different to a tree or to the fully grown Adam - a created example of what natural processes would have created over time, and would create in similar conditions in the future.

And how is this fancy little story more supported than my invisible pink unicorn story?

Oh, the fact that some book says so.

No actual evidence, besides "maybe it's possible."

We can't DISPROVE it, no. But the fact that it's not disprovable immediately throws it out of the realm of science - a critical part of the scientific method is the fact that a theory can be disproven, and will be modified when observations indicate that it needs to be. If you claim that "everything was created to look old," I can equally well argue that the universe was created ten seconds ago and not six thousand years ago, with an equally valid logical platform. Neither that nor Invisible Pink Unicorn theory has a place in science.

Even though frankly, I'm starting to believe the IPU theory... after all, the universe is too frickin WIERD to arise anywhere but in a unicorn's mind.

The core of science is not comprised of theories, but instead of hypotheses which are open to falsification - that is its defining characteristic.

Okay, I'll buy that.

Give me an test that we could make that could falsify creationism if it came out a certain way.

We can't DISPROVE it, no. But the fact that it's not disprovable immediately throws it out of the realm of science - a critical part of the scientific method is the fact that a theory can be disproven, and will be modified when observations indicate that it needs to be.


All very well until you get down to the primitive assumptions that underlay science - can science frame the concept "science operates on the basis of hypotheses which are open to falsification" as a hypotheses open to falsification? In the end science rests on unproven presuppostion and in this it is no different from Creationism be it by the hand of Yahweh or Brahma.

They are not, however, living organisms.

Much like some argue that viruses are living organisms, some argue that prions are.

I personally disagree, but creating prions is *damn* close to creating life.

They are not, however, living organisms.

Well, they
a) Replicate themselves
b) interact with their surroundings

They're on the border of living and nonliving, like viruses.

I doubt scientists are gonna be able to create true living organisms in the lab. Early life had the entire earth and millions of years to form. There's no way we can provide, in the lab, that much space and, more importantly, time. But we CAN show that the basic building blocks of life would be present (amino acids, RNA, proteins) and that they can self-replicate (prions have been shown, RNA can also self-replicate though I'm not sure whether it's been observe to form/replicate on its own in a lab setting). And we have done so.

Okay, I'll buy that.

Give me an test that we could make that could falsify creationism if it came out a certain way.

I'm not here to provide tests, just to point out problems (a purely self-appointed role). I didn't think that some of the hypotheses listed in post #2 were being formulated properly if we took into account some of the glossed over corners of Creationist thought. Thus my entry into the thread.

Any theory can do that. If they were to discover an addendum to Genesis in a cave somewhere, then the Creationist thoery would most likely change in the light of such additional data.

You are very, very wrong here. Creationists (like most fundamentalists) claim that the Bible in it's current form is absolutely perfect. Nothing whatsoever can be added or taken away. If an addendum were found, they would discount it as false scripture, *especially* if it actually discounted anything currently in Genesis. Hell, there are two separate creation stories in Genesis in which events happen in different orders, so Creationists simply conveniently choose bad translations that make it seem like there are no contradictions.

Either way, Creationsists start with the conclusion. They cannot change their minds on *anything*, as it would be admitting defeat. Scientists, on the other hand, see everything as open to falsification.

The core of science is not comprised of theories, but instead of hypotheses which are open to falsification - that is its defining characteristic.

Exactly my point. And herein lies the reason that Creationism can never be seen as science. They are not open to falsification, as they have an absolute and unchangeable conclusion already.

All very well until you get down to the primitive assumptions that underlay science - can science frame the concept "science operates on the basis of hypotheses which are open to falsification" as a hypotheses open to falsification? In the end science rests on unproven presuppostion and in this it is no different from Creationism be it by the hand of Yahweh or Brahma.

There are axioms in every field on which the field is based.

However, if an axiom can be disproven, it is not truly an axiom - it is a hypothesis. The only axiom Creationists have is "There is a God." Unfortunately for them, this does not lead directly to "Genesis is absolutely true."

Well, they
a) Replicate themselves
b) interact with their surroundings

They're on the border of living and nonliving, like viruses.

I doubt scientists are gonna be able to create true living organisms in the lab. Early life had the entire earth and millions of years to form. There's no way we can provide, in the lab, that much space and, more importantly, time. But we CAN show that the basic building blocks of life would be present (amino acids, RNA, proteins) and that they can self-replicate (prions have been shown, RNA can also self-replicate though I'm not sure whether it's been observe to form/replicate on its own in a lab setting). And we have done so.

I was also responding to Dakini's still somewhat unsubstantiated claims that living organisms had been produced in the lab (http://forums2.jolt.co.uk/showpost.php?p=7531218&postcount=30).

I am not saying that there is any reason why life couldn't be created in the lab, just that it hasn't been resolved satisfactorily yet. I'm personally of the opinion that virii and similar entities are too much of a borderline case to count as a definitive resolution of the problem - even if they were created the debate would still be open.

Seeing as how at the moment you have the 'science boy' hat on and I have the 'devil's advocate for creationism' hat:

- do you have a scientific hypothesis or methodology which you can test/falsify/use to provide evidence against the world being set up to systematically trick us? Or is it just a primitive assumption that science can't do without? Certainly for Descartes the only way he could believe he had disproved the idea of a systematically deceiving world was to bring a benevolent god into the equation.

and when i return, i shall be a science man...

anyways, no, i've got nothing. and descartes didn't either. ok, that's glib, but his argument building back up past the fact that he couldn't doubt that he was a thinking thing never really seemed all that strong to me. personally, i never could find a clear and distinct idea of god stamped on me like a craftsman's mark. so i guess nearly universal skepticism prevails!

to get past that, i'm willing to hold that there are certain assumptions about the universe that we can legitimately use to base our system of knowledge on, even though we can't prove them true - even in principle. if the universe is in fact set up in such a way that our senses don't systematically deceive us, then we are justified in claiming knowledge based on them. if it isn't, we're screwed and i don't know that we have a rational way to know anything at all anyway.

there are a couple of assumptions about the universe that are utterly unprovable and yet seem utterly necessary for me to live the way i perceive myself to. the short list is that there are real things outside my head, the universe isn't fundamentally out to trick me, my senses don't systematically deceive me, some method of induction really does work, and that i am capable of making meaningful sense of at least some of what i experience. there's probably a few more, but that's a good basic list. if the universe really is like those assumptions, then my true beliefs that are based on them (or what follows from them) are justified, despite the fact that i can't prove those assumptions. a sort of epistemological externalism of fundamental assumptions, if you will.

if those assumptions aren't true, hell if i know how to do anything. i seem to be doing ok in any case, but really i'd have no way of knowing that. might just be a trick after all.

can science frame the concept "science operates on the basis of hypotheses which are open to falsification" as a hypotheses open to falsification?

aww, leave poor logical positivism alone. what did it ever do to you?

You are very, very wrong here. Creationists (like most fundamentalists) claim that the Bible in it's current form is absolutely perfect. Nothing whatsoever can be added or taken away. If an addendum were found, they would discount it as false scripture, *especially* if it actually discounted anything currently in Genesis. Hell, there are two separate creation stories in Genesis in which events happen in different orders, so Creationists simply conveniently choose bad translations that make it seem like there are no contradictions.

Either way, Creationsists start with the conclusion. They cannot change their minds on *anything*, as it would be admitting defeat. Scientists, on the other hand, see everything as open to falsification.

However, even the most caricatured fundamentalist Creationist is still oepn to Revelation: the Bible may be complete, but the understanding of it may not be - this is why hermeneutics still maintains a respectable role even amongst the more extreme branches of Christianity. Thus the Bible as text is still very open to reinterpretation and as such the idea of the exact nature of the Creation.





And herein lies the reason that Creationism can never be seen as science. They are not open to falsification, as they have an absolute and unchangeable conclusion already.

Well, I stated my problem with Free Soviet's plan for the thread earlier -

"So basically what you are doing here is setting up a competition between religion and science which will be decided in accordance with the ground rules of science? Am I the only one to spot a fatal flaw in this whole operation?"

aww, leave poor logical positivism alone.

I thought you might just catch that old trick...

what did it ever do to you?

I consider studying Frege and Wittgenstein in excruciating detail under a one time student of A.J. Ayer's sufficient material to build a grudge upon.

:p

http://www.drdino.com/index.jsp

However, even the most caricatured fundamentalist Creationist is still oepn to Revelation: the Bible may be complete, but the understanding of it may not be - this is why hermeneutics still maintains a respectable role even amongst the more extreme branches of Christianity. Thus the Bible as text is still very open to reinterpretation and as such the idea of the exact nature of the Creation.

You are espousing a much more reasonable view than that which Creationists hold. To them, there is no "interpretation" or "understanding." Revelation (according to the Bible, and therefore according to Creationists) ended with (strangely enough) Revelation. Everything is literally true.

I thought you might just catch that old trick...

heh, its good practice. i'm starting grad school in two months, ya know.

heh, its good practice. i'm starting grad school in two months, ya know.

Awesome. Where? What field?

You are espousing a much more reasonable view than that which Creationists hold. To them, there is no "interpretation" or "understanding." Revelation (according to the Bible, and therefore according to Creationists) ended with (strangely enough) Revelation. Everything is literally true.

Everything may literally be true, but it remains just words on the page until it is understood and interpreted, thus hermeneutics. 'Revelation' was mentioned not in the context of the book of Revelation, but in the context of internal religious revelation.

Possibly you and I are looking at different sources when we are discussing Creationist thought, or maybe it is a cultural difference between our two locations?

Anyhow, as the only apparent devil's advocate for Creationism here on the thread, you have to cut us a bit of slack, after all, if you can't knock down 'liberal' Creationism, then science has a problem.

heh, its good practice. i'm starting grad school in two months, ya know.

Been there. Done that. Wrote the dissertation on Nietzsche, Nihilism and the Will to Nothingness.

Not that I have much use for it working trying to scrape a living as a sound engineer these days, but anyhow... back to our regularly scheduled flamewar.

Everything may literally be true, but it remains just words on the page until it is understood and interpreted, thus hermeneutics. 'Revelation' was mentioned not in the context of the book of Revelation, but in the context of internal religious revelation.

Possibly you and I are looking at different sources when we are discussing Creationist thought, or maybe it is a cultural difference between our two locations?

Anyhow, as the only apparent devil's advocate for Creationism here on the thread, you have to cut us a bit of slack, after all, if you can't knock down 'liberal' Creationism, then science has a problem.

Well, to tell you the truth, liberal or not - there still is no science present.

There are basic premises in Creationism which can be tested. To be science, evidence against these premises should change the mind of the Creationist. This does not occur, and cannot, as it would mean that the Creationist "lost faith."

http://www.drdino.com/index.jsp

You know he's been disproven so many times it's funny, right?

Wait, this sounds familier. You arn't just posting the same bullshit on multiple threads, are you? Rhetorical question.

I believe one day science will prove creationism, instead of evolution. You
talk about evolution as if it were already proven.

I believe one day science will prove creationism, instead of evolution. You
talk about evolution as if it were already proven.

(a) Science doesn't prove anything, it only disproves.

(b) Many of the premises of Creationism have overwhelming evidence against them.

(c) Creationism isn't science anyways.

Where? What field?

oddly enough, i don't precisely know yet. grad schools take their sweet-ass time getting back to you, even for spring admission. currently i'm accepted to colorado state university and the university of idaho. still waiting to hear one way or the other from three others.

the general field is philosophy. the specialization varies depending on where i wind up going - in the running are philosophy of ecology, ethics in general, political philosophy, epistemology, and philosophy of science. yeah, i know, wide range. but then again, i graduated college with a phil major, minors in poli sci and anthropology, and a bunch of random credits in natural resources.

and when i return, i shall be a science man...

anyways, no, i've got nothing. and descartes didn't either.

Yeah, that's why I said "the only way he could believe he had disproved the idea". I think even he knew that it was something of a fudge.

if the universe is in fact set up in such a way that our senses don't systematically deceive us, then we are justified in claiming knowledge based on them. if it isn't, we're screwed and i don't know that we have a rational way to know anything at all anyway.

Presumably those axiomatic systems such as mathematics would still theoretically be possible in such a systematically deceiving universe (provided we trust our own mind and memory)? Not that they would be of any practical value though.

However, I think that we are in danger here of blurring the issue with discussion of two separate views of the universe: the Cartesian possibility of a systematically deceiving world, and the world as described by Creationism which only contains one major instance of possible deception, just so long as we operate with the idea of a almost completely non-interventionist creator once the system is up and running.*



* I'm suddenly having flashbacks to the Cartese debates. A shudder runs down my spine at the memory.

(a) Science doesn't prove anything, it only disproves.

(b) Many of the premises of Creationism have overwhelming evidence against them.

(c) Creationism isn't science anyways.

Creationism as you call it is " BIBLICAL " . God is the creator of all things
and wants us to have faith where there is no proof. That is the point.

There are basic premises in Creationism which can be tested.

Such as?

Yay! an actual creatonist spotted in the wild:

Creationism as you call it is " BIBLICAL " . God is the creator of all things
and wants us to have faith where there is no proof. That is the point.

So the Bible isn't proof then?

Creationism as you call it is " BIBLICAL " . God is the creator of all things
and wants us to have faith where there is no proof. That is the point.

Then how will science proove it if there's no proof?

You're a strange one.

Yay! an actual creatonist spotted in the wild:


thats richly condescending

Then how will science proove it if there's no proof?

Obviously it must be by a process of elimination: science will falsify every falsifiable hypothesis, and Creationism will be left standing as the only candidate.


Dons deerstalker and shoots up a 7% solution: when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth

thats richly condescending

Not really, as I've been acting as apologist for the Creationists until now, and dying for one to actually show up so that I can switch sides to my usual pro-science, but with certain philosophical reservations.

Obviously it must be by a process of elimination: science will falsify every falsifiable hypothesis, and Creationism will be left standing as the only candidate.


however that is falacious logic

correct science will eliminate any theory that can be proven false. However, science will not be able to prove a true theory untrue, if it does that is a reflection of our limited grasp of science.

Not really, as I've been acting as apologist for the Creationists until now, and dying for one to actually show up so that I can switch sides to my usual pro-science, but with certain philosophical reservations.

i hear what you are saying

honestly, most creationists cant defend their point as well as you have, they normally just default to God

hurray for science, woo!

however that is falacious logic

Yes, was it the fact that it was so incredibly blatant, the opium reference or the ludicrous Sherlock Holmes quote that tipped you off?

Yeah, that's why I said "the only way he could believe he had disproved the idea". I think even he knew that it was something of a fudge.

yeah, i imagine descartes sitting in his oven, getting to the point where he'd like to build a solid foundation for knowledge, and thinking "shit! i'm totally fucked."
(i know, i know, it was probably just a heated room. it's funnier my way)

However, I think that we are in danger here of blurring the issue with discussion of two separate views of the universe: the Cartesian possibility of a systematically deceiving world, and the world as described by Creationism which only contains one major instance of possible deception, just so long as we operate with the idea of a almost completely non-interventionist creator once the system is up and running.

well, it is a bloody huge deception coming from multiple fronts. once you start allowing things like that, holding that other things aren't also just part of the deception becomes trickier. it would be hard to argue with somebody claiming that genesis itself is just another layer to the test of faith in the true god. and even if god showed up in person to tell you that everything else besides the apparent age thing isn't deceptive, i'd still be skeptical. after all, god has already shown himself to be a tricky bastard on an enormous scale. why should we believe him?

Yay! an actual creatonist spotted in the wild:



So the Bible isn't proof then?

There is no " known " SCIENTIFIC proof like you seem to be looking for. The PROOF of the BIBLE is that GOD said it is so and that you believe him without what you call SCIENTIFIC proof. Mankind would like to think we have all the answers, but we don't.

Yes, was it the fact that it was so incredibly blatant, the opium reference or the ludicrous Sherlock Holmes quote that tipped you off?

no, just normal logic

my humor chip is getting intigrated in a few weeks

Creationism as you call it is " BIBLICAL " . God is the creator of all things and wants us to have faith where there is no proof. That is the point.

There is no " known " SCIENTIFIC proof like you seem to be looking for. The PROOF of the BIBLE is that GOD said it is so and that you believe him without what you call SCIENTIFIC proof.

If the BIBLE is PROOF because GOD said it was SO, then we have no NEED for FAITH which CONTRADICTS your EARLIER post. Thus GOD does not NEED our FAITH.

Obviously it must be by a process of elimination: science will falsify every falsifiable hypothesis, and Creationism will be left standing as the only candidate.


Dons deerstalker and shoots up a 7% solution: when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth

Because we have not yet discovered the unknown variables. We once
thought the Earth to be flat, now we know it is not. We once thought the
Earth was the center of the Universe, now we know it is not. Likewise,
we will gain the knowledge needed to understand this mystery when God
decides we are ready. Or possibly when it fits into his plan for us to know.

Because we have not yet discovered the unknown variables. We once thought the Earth to be flat, now we know it is not.

Care to give me an example of a culture that actually believed the world to be flat?

If the BIBLE is PROOF because GOD said it was SO, then we have no NEED for FAITH which CONTRADICTS your EARLIER post. Thus GOD does not NEED our FAITH.


I didn't contradict myself, I quoted Gods word to you. Faith is believing in
God when mans knowledge can't prove it. Now you must decide whether or
not you will choose to believe..... That is Free Will. However, please note that
even though we do have free will.... that doesn't mean that there isn't a cost that must be paid if we make the wrong choice.

Care to give me an example of a culture that actually believed the world to be flat?

SPAIN..... Christoper Columbus..... I'm sure you've heard of him haven't you.

In 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue.... ring any bells?

I didn't contradict myself, I quoted Gods word to you. Faith is believing in
God when mans knowledge can't prove it. Now you must decide whether or
not you will choose to believe..... That is Free Will. However, please note that
even though we do have free will.... that doesn't mean that there isn't a cost that must be paid if we make the wrong choice.

So, in that case the bible isn't proof.

So, in that case the bible isn't proof.

The Bible is Gods Word so if don't have a problem saying that God is a liar, then I guess you might be able to say that. But that very possibly could qualify as making hte wrong choice. Personally I don't think that would be a very good idea.

SPAIN..... Christoper Columbus..... I'm sure you've heard of him haven't you.

Wrong.

Laughably wrong.

Medieval europe knew very well that the world was spherical - the debate with Columbus was about the dimensions of the spheroid. The flat earth/spherical earth debate was invented by Washington Irving in a highly fictionalised biography of Columbus that he wrote in the 1820s.

Question #1 for you: who was the acknowledged scientific authority at the time of Columbus's voyage? Aristotle

Question #2 for you: what shape did he describe the Earth as having? Spherical

Do you want me to go on about Eratosthenes measuring the dimension of the Earth's circumference circa 240BC and getting a figure of between 39,000km and 46,000km (actual circumference = 40,008km)?

Wrong.

Laughably wrong.

Medieval europe knew very well that the world was spherical - the debate with Columbus was about the dimensions of the spheroid.

Question #1 for you: who was the acknowledged scientific authority at the time of Columbus's voyage? Aristotle

Question #2 for you: what shape did he describe the Earth as having? Spherical

Do you want me to go on about Eratosthenes measuring the dimension of the Earth's circumference circa 240BC and getting a figure of between 39,000km and 46,000km (actual circumference = 40,008km)?

Did they now.... and I guess you know this how? You believe what you wish
.... you do have free will. I will not continue talking to someone who has
already made up their mind. But all the arguements in the world will not change the truth.

I know a flat world was hypothesized by a handful of Greek thinkers, but I'm not sure if the ancient Greeks in general bought into it. I do know that even in Medieval Europe, when most learned individuals believed that the Earth must be round or at least curved, much of the general populace still held the primitive notion that the world had edges one could fall off of. Medieval (and early rennaisance) maps depicting a flat world (modeled crudely after Jesus' body on the cross) coexisted with more accurate navigation charts - practical maps that would require a round-Earth hypothesis to be useful. I've even heard that sailors would use these maps to get from A to B, while still believing the flat-Earth maps (often displayed in cathedrals or other obvious public places) somehow represented the "real" Earth.
Anyway, point is, just as some backward folk today believe evolution is a hoax (I admit it isn't perfect, but almost no scientific theories are) there have always been backward folk who believed in a flat Earth - and they were often in the majority, despite what the cartographers, astronomers or philosophers of the day had deduced.

Did they now.... and I guess you know this how?

Having studied Aristotle and Eratosthenes, I know about them. Having read quite a bit about ancient and medieval astronomy and cosmology I know that the closest Europe came to a flat Earth model was one proposed by a monk called Cosmas, but it was actually an inclined plane, and was rejected by his peers and the church authorities. I could go on at length here, but I have already argued this out in detail with too many people on this forum.

Other evidence against the flat earth theory: on a large enough body of water the curvature of the earth is clearly visible as the masts of far away vessels are visible while their hulls are still obscured. Thus all sailing civilisations believed in a curved/spherical earth. The same phenomenon is also visible on canals and rivers.

I've written this out too many times to go over it all in detail: here's some links for you:

http://www.christiananswers.net/q-aig/aig-c034.html

http://www.bede.org.uk/flatearth.htm

I know a flat world was hypothesized by a handful of Greek thinkers, but I'm not sure if the ancient Greeks in general bought into it. I do know that even in Medieval Europe, when most learned individuals believed that the Earth must be round or at least curved, much of the general populace still held the primitive notion that the world had edges one could fall off of. Medieval (and early rennaisance) maps depicting a flat world (modeled crudely after Jesus' body on the cross) coexisted with more accurate navigation charts - practical maps that would require a round-Earth hypothesis to be useful. I've even heard that sailors would use these maps to get from A to B, while still believing the flat-Earth maps (often displayed in cathedrals or other obvious public places) somehow represented the "real" Earth.
Anyway, point is, just as some backward folk today believe evolution is a hoax (I admit it isn't perfect, but almost no scientific theories are) there have always been backward folk who believed in a flat Earth - and they were often in the majority, despite what the cartographers, astronomers or philosophers of the day had deduced.


Well if you wish to believe that we came from monkeys, then you go right
ahead. Personally I find that offensive in the extreme. Evolution is still a
theory.... one embraced by some folks because they don't want to admit the
truth even to themselves. Oh and by the way just because something is the
latest idea doesn't mean it is correct.

Medieval (and early rennaisance) maps depicting a flat world (modeled crudely after Jesus' body on the cross) coexisted with more accurate navigation charts - practical maps that would require a round-Earth hypothesis to be useful. I've even heard that sailors would use these maps to get from A to B, while still believing the flat-Earth maps (often displayed in cathedrals or other obvious public places) somehow represented the "real" Earth.

However, the 'flat earth' maps were more important as religious allegory than as actual examples of cartography - note how Jerusalem was always placed at their centre. They were of the nature of sketches which will obscure and ignore details in the service of making their central message explicit - the Holy City is at the centre of the Earth and the Earth is at the centre of the universe - thus religion is of central importance. The navigational maps were more of the nature of a diagram. To confuse the two different functions and then to make the asumption that there was a widespread believe ina flat earth is to be mistaken.

Well if you wish to believe that we came from monkeys, then you go right
ahead. Personally I find that offensive in the extreme. Evolution is still a
theory.... one embraced by some folks because they don't want to admit the
truth even to themselves. Oh and by the way just because something is the
latest idea doesn't mean it is correct.


Evolutionary theory doesn't claim that we came from monkeys, instead that human beings and monkey shared a common simian ancestor.

Evolutionary theory doesn't claim that we came from monkeys, instead that human beings and monkey shared a common simian ancestor .

[Middle English auncestre, from Old French, from Latin antecessor, predecessor , from antecessus, past participle of antec dere, to precede : ante-, ante- + c dere, to go; see ked- in Indo-European Roots.]
Synonyms: ancestor,forebear, forefather, progenitor
These nouns denote a person from whom one is descended: ancestors who were farmers; land once owned by his forebears; laws handed down from our forefathers; our progenitors' wisdom.


Main Entry: an•ces•tor
Function: noun
1 a : a person from whom an individual is descended
2 : one that precedes <ancestor in title>

ancestor
\An"ces*tor\, n. [OE. ancestre, auncestre, also ancessour; the first forms fr. OF. ancestre, F. anc[^e]tre, fr. the L. nom. antessor one who goes before; the last form fr. OF. ancessor, fr. L. acc. antecessorem, fr. antecedere to go before; ante before + cedere to go. 1. One from whom a person is descended, whether on the father's or mother's side, at any distance of time; a progenitor; a fore father.
ancestor
n : someone from whom you are descended (but usually more remote than a grandparent)

I'm sure you now see my point. As I said .... offensive in the extreme. I
trust I need not post a meaning for simian.

As I said .... offensive in the extreme

Whether it is offensive or not has no bearing on the fact that it's true...

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/species.html - nice timeline of the different fossilized humans we've found, which show how by slight differences, an ape-like ancestor evolved into what we are today.

http://www.talkorigins.org/pdf/fossil-hominids.pdf - more on the subject.

http://www.theistic-evolution.com/transitional.html - transitional hominid skulls

Any theory can do that. If they were to discover an addendum to Genesis in a cave somewhere, then the Creationist thoery would most likely change in the light of such additional data.

The core of science is not comprised of theories, but instead of hypotheses which are open to falsification - that is its defining characteristic.

Interesting. Do you honestly believe that?

I personally think that, if a new biblical text were suddenly unearthed, but one that didn't precisely fit in with the established 'theory', it would be immediately shelved as heretical.

Thomas' contribution, and the Enochian scripture, spring instantly to mind...

Wrong.

Laughably wrong.

Medieval europe knew very well that the world was spherical...

Well, Medieval Europe may have known it, but you might like to visit rural North-East Georgia... there really ARE people that DO believe in a flat earth.. in this day and age.

My favourite comment relating to this, came in a discussion with one of the natives about this 'flat-earth'. I steered the conversation toward satellite technology, and was amused to discover that my erstwhile compatriot DID believe in satellites, and that the world WAS round...

He then went on to explain it as similar to a saucer...

[Middle English auncestre, from Old French, from Latin antecessor, predecessor , from antecessus, past participle of antec dere, to precede : ante-, ante- + c dere, to go; see ked- in Indo-European Roots.]
Synonyms: ancestor,forebear, forefather, progenitor
These nouns denote a person from whom one is descended: ancestors who were farmers; land once owned by his forebears; laws handed down from our forefathers; our progenitors' wisdom.


Main Entry: an•ces•tor
Function: noun
1 a : a person from whom an individual is descended
2 : one that precedes <ancestor in title>

ancestor
\An"ces*tor\, n. [OE. ancestre, auncestre, also ancessour; the first forms fr. OF. ancestre, F. anc[^e]tre, fr. the L. nom. antessor one who goes before; the last form fr. OF. ancessor, fr. L. acc. antecessorem, fr. antecedere to go before; ante before + cedere to go. 1. One from whom a person is descended, whether on the father's or mother's side, at any distance of time; a progenitor; a fore father.
ancestor
n : someone from whom you are descended (but usually more remote than a grandparent)

I'm sure you now see my point. As I said .... offensive in the extreme. I
trust I need not post a meaning for simian.

Or alternatively:

Ancestor n. [ME. and OFr. ancestre < L. antecessor, one who goes before <pp. of antecedere < ante-, before + cedere, to go]

1. Any person from whom one is descended, esp. one earlier in a family line than a grandparent; forefather; forebear.

2. An early type of animal from which later kinds have evolved.

3. Anything regarded as a precursor or forerunner of a later thing.

4. Law: The deceased person from whoman estate has been inherited.


Definitions 2) and 3) may be of greatest interest to you, here.


Personally, I don't see the problem. Humans are a basic enough beast, most of the time, that I see no negative ramification in the implication that, perhaps, modern simians and modern men aren't all THAT far removed from one another.

ancestor
...
n : someone from whom you are descended (but usually more remote than a grandparent)

I'm sure you now see my point. As I said .... offensive in the extreme. I
trust I need not post a meaning for simian.

My point was that evolutionary theory claims that both we as human beings and monkeys share a common root of descent, and that that root is classified not as a monkey but as a simian.

Well, Medieval Europe may have known it, but you might like to visit rural North-East Georgia... there really ARE people that DO believe in a flat earth.. in this day and age.


I'm not denying this - people obviously believe things that others find very strange - but, they do not comprise an entire culture. I asked not for an example of a person that believed in a flat earth, but for a culture.

Can test if Bodies can survive Without Organs, please?

I know it had nothing to do with creationism. I want to test it anyway.

Can test if Bodies can survive Without Organs, please?

Sure.

Take a rhizome like a potato and remove its skin.

You now have a BWO - an entity in which there is no division of function between large scale structures.

Plant it and see if it sends out tubers.

Because we have not yet discovered the unknown variables. We once thought the Earth to be flat, now we know it is not. We once thought the Earth was the center of the Universe, now we know it is not. Likewise, we will gain the knowledge needed to understand this mystery when God decides we are ready. Or possibly when it fits into his plan for us to know.

Curiously, it was scientific evidence that persuaded people that the earth was not flat, and also scientific evidence that persuaded people that the earth is not the centre of the universe. What did the biblical people do to Gallileo when he said this? I can't remember if they imprisoned him or killed him. Anyhoo, we appear to have gained a great deal of the knowledge to understand this mystery, and it is again the biblical people who are saying that whatever's in the bible must be the truth (even if some of it contradicts some other parts of it, and we ignore quite a lot of it).

Curiously, it was scientific evidence that persuaded people that the earth was not flat, and also scientific evidence that persuaded people that the earth is not the centre of the universe. What did the biblical people do to Gallileo when he said this? I can't remember if they imprisoned him or killed him. Anyhoo, we appear to have gained a great deal of the knowledge to understand this mystery, and it is again the biblical people who are saying that whatever's in the bible must be the truth (even if some of it contradicts some other parts of it, and we ignore quite a lot of it).

Galileo was sentenced to be shown the instruments of torture, which caused him to recant his views. The little story of him whispering "But it does move!" ("it" being the Earth) as he left the torture chamber is apocryphal, but I like to think that Galileo never abandoned the truth in his heart. Giordano Bruno, a monk, was burned at the stake for refusing to conform to the orthodox interpretation of Scripture, which -- among its other amusing fairy-stories about magic apples and talking snakes -- states categorically that the Earth is fixed and immobile (Psalm 93:1: "the world also is stablished, that it cannot be moved").

Which is obviously wrong, but not surprising given that it was written by a scientifically backward minor desert culture sometime shortly after they had mastered ironworking. What is surprising is that people living in technologically advanced cultures, with access to vast stores of data and free education, still think the Bible is a better source of information than the whole rest of the universe around them. Their only possible excuse would be if they had grown up in a hole somewhere, with nothing but glassy-eyed fundamentalism drummed into them from birth. Although even then, they couldn't be wholly excused, as the Bible is riddled with so many contradictions and errors (the two conflicting Genesis stories, for example -- chapters one and two, right at the very start of the book, contradict each other) that a smidgin of critical thought would surely be enough to sow at least a few seeds of doubt.

Only a loon would insist that a big book of obvious fable written between 2,800 and 1,700 years ago is a more reliable guide to the structure and nature of the universe than observed data and the application of reason. Sadly, we are not short of loons.

The problem I have with creationism is that it doesn't seem to be a coherent, layed-out, scientific theory. It seems to be primarily an attack on evolution rather than a stand-alone idea. Evolution doesn't seem to be based solely on attacking creationism, it doesn't exist primarily or even partly in my opinion for the purpose of destroying creationism. Also, creationism seems to be based enrirely on the theory of an intelligent designer which seems to be a religious, faith-based concept.
I apologise if I got too far off topic here.
Just my 2 cents.

Here is a walkthrough of creationost theroy

http://www.thebricktestament.com/genesis/index.html

Creationism as you call it is " BIBLICAL " . God is the creator of all things
and wants us to have faith where there is no proof. That is the point.

I don't think that God wanted us to be idiots.

The Bible said that the "sun held still in the sky." For *years*, the church used this as reasoning to state that the heliocentric view of the universe *had* to be right, no matter what the evidence said. Do you really think God wanted us to take a few words that have nothing to do with the point of the Bible and use it to deny the actual physical reality?

The Bible also says that we think with our hearts. Should we believe that out of faith, even though we know that taking a heart from one person and putting into another doesn't change their personality?

Blind faith is idiocy - and it is wasting the brain that God gave you.

Faith is believing in God when mans knowledge can't prove it.

Thank you, you made my point for me. Now if you would only realize what you just said.

Faith steps in where humankind cannot understand. We *can* understand how biology works. We *cannot* understand how God works. We use science for the former and faith for the latter. However, using faith for the former is lazy - and we all know that sloth is a sin.

But all the arguements in the world will not change the truth.

<light hearted>Absolutely. Shame the truth won't, eventually, be shown to be your view of things, but hey, believe what you want... :D</light hearted>

Well, Medieval Europe may have known it, but you might like to visit rural North-East Georgia... there really ARE people that DO believe in a flat earth.. in this day and age.

My favourite comment relating to this, came in a discussion with one of the natives about this 'flat-earth'. I steered the conversation toward satellite technology, and was amused to discover that my erstwhile compatriot DID believe in satellites, and that the world WAS round...

He then went on to explain it as similar to a saucer...

There was a Flat-Earth Society until recently. What cracks me up is how they dissolved it... someone took one of the major members to Australia. :)

[QUOTE=UpwardThrust]Here is a walkthrough of creationost theroy ( Hint:
What is Spell Check )

Creationism as you call it is not a theory.... its backed up by God himself... Evolutionism is the Theory .... so when you have proven it to be fact then I might take it seriously.

right, well i'm back from thanksgiving now and i guess its time for us to see how well our hypotheses hold up (bearing in mind that creationism can always defend itself through adding additional non-biblical miracles, but then must give up any claim to being scientific at all). so let's go through the predictions one at a time and discuss the evidence that we know of. remember to post sources where we can find other discussion of this evidence.

let's start with the flood hypotheses:

the flood
Well, for the great flood we would expect a uniform layer of sediment all across the world from when everything kicked up in the flood waters settled. (New Granada)

we would expect to find fossils of any animals or plants that died in the flood to be in a jumbled mess within the above mentioned uniform layer. and since all plants and animals that ever existed were alive at the time, we would expect to find a sampling of all of them in that jumbled mess. (free soviets)

the flood would have left multiple distinct layers, arranged with the most dense material on the bottom and the least dense on the top. plant and animal fossils would be similarly distributed by density in those layers. (free soviets' rephrasing of lomia's hypothesis)

firstly, we have a disagreement over the way sediment would settle out of a flood, so we need to know which way sediment actually forms layers during modern floods.

right, well i'm back from thanksgiving now and i guess its time for us to see how well our hypotheses hold up (bearing in mind that creationism can always defend itself through adding additional non-biblical miracles, but then must give up any claim to being scientific at all). so let's go through the predictions one at a time and discuss the evidence that we know of. remember to post sources where we can find other discussion of this evidence.

let's start with the flood hypotheses:

the flood
Well, for the great flood we would expect a uniform layer of sediment all across the world from when everything kicked up in the flood waters settled. (New Granada)

we would expect to find fossils of any animals or plants that died in the flood to be in a jumbled mess within the above mentioned uniform layer. and since all plants and animals that ever existed were alive at the time, we would expect to find a sampling of all of them in that jumbled mess. (free soviets)

the flood would have left multiple distinct layers, arranged with the most dense material on the bottom and the least dense on the top. plant and animal fossils would be similarly distributed by density in those layers. (free soviets' rephrasing of lomia's hypothesis)

firstly, we have a disagreement over the way sediment would settle out of a flood, so we need to know which way sediment actually forms layers during modern floods.

The funniest thing - for me - is that the Bible SPECIFICALLY states that the flood took place in a very small area.

(In Hebrew, this is crystal clear - since the description of the flood in the earliest Genesis accounts refer to a local area - basically - the earth as far as the eye could see - but this wasn't carried through in translation).

There are specific scriptural references that detail the 'flood' as being the Euphrates river - hardly a whole world flood.

I don't think that the missing links have ever been found ... which is what is needed to prove that evolution is true .... until then its only a theory .
Besides I think that at least in America ( if not the rest of the world )
people should have the knowledge & opportunity to makes informed decisions . So creationism should be taught in school so they can make an intelligent decision .


Please Read this:


FreeRepublic.com "A Conservative News Forum"


How scientific is evolution?

Culture/Society Miscellaneous Keywords: SCIENCE, HOAXES, GENETICS
Source: My Biology Book
Published: February 23, 2001 Author: Patriotic Teen
Posted on 02/23/2001 17:54:05 PST by Patriotic Teen
Just recently, my biology class at my school finished up three chapters on Creation versus Evolution, and I must say, my book provided some compelling evidence in support of Creation. Here is what it has to say.

The Missing Links

"Missing Links" are vital to the theory of evolution . Even Darwin himself admitted that without the existence of "missing links" his theory would be proven false . Let's take a look at some of those missing links.

Coelacanth is supposed to be the evidence that amphibians came from fish. After all, the fins were attached to the body by thick, fleshy lobes, allowing freer rotation and possibly "feet" with which to walk, and evolutionists speculated that they were shallow water fish. All this went uncontested until one was caught in the Indian Ocean, and it was found out that they rarely come within 500 feet of the surface.

Archeopteryx is presented as a link between reptiles and birds. Some unusual features were small breastbones, teeth, elongated tail, and claws on its wings. Sounds pretty convincing, until you realize that there are some species of birds today that exhibit similar characteristics. And besides, it has modern flight feathers and hollow bones, evidence of a true bird.

The "horse series" is probably one of the worst attempts to prove evolution. Ribs woulod magicaly disappear and reappear and is based on a rabbit. Talk about desperation.

Now, to the Hominid Fossils .

Piltdown Man was discovered in a gravel pit not far from Piltdown, England. It was found with crude tools, and bones belonging to humans and apes. But, what was overlooked was the obvious file markings and chemical residue, making the jaw and other bones look ancient and sub-human.

Nebraska Man was constructed from a single tooth, later discovered to belong to an extinct pig.

Ramapithecus was constructed from a heavy jawbone, some teeth, and skull fragments, and was speculated to have walked upright, though a hipbone was never found. But, a full skeleton of Ramapithecus was found, and it resembles modern orangutans.

Ausralopithecus was supposed to be the first in the line of human descent. It was a small ape skull, and regarded as unmistakable evidence, until an adult Australopithecus was found, and declared an extinct ape by evolutionists

Homo habilis was argued to be classified as a type of australopithecine . Later skeletons of homo habilus discovered would reveal though that it was not humanlike at all. And any evidence of H. habilus that would suggest it is human is because human bones were mixed by "scientists" with ape bones.

Homo erectus , known as "Java Man" and "Peking Man" , discovered by Eugene Bubois, was considered a link. Heavy brow ridges and femur bones, similar to modern humans, was considered to be proof of the evolution of man. But, Dubois exaggerated the skull, and failed to report that he found a complete human skeleton in the same strata.

Neanderthal Man was characterized by heavy brows, sloping foreheads, powerful physiques, and larger brains than humans of today. But closer examinations of this "link" show that he stood upright with the posture, gait, and intelligence of a modern person. And some tools that have been unearthed reveal that they may have been smarter than humans of today. That sounds like a regression , and I thought that evolution was supposed to be better, not worse. In any event, they were later clasified as true humans.

Cro-magnon man , like "Neanderthal man" was a more powerful and had superior intelligence. They just lived in caves and hunted bison, like some of the Indians (or, to be politicaly correct Native Americans) do. Even evolutionists classify them as modern humans.

The impossibility of transition

In order for evolution to take place, the creature has to be fully functional while undergoing the change. Bats, who supposedly evolved from rodents similar to shrews, would be a great example for evolution. But, the complexity would render the rodent unable to use his paws for running or grasping, and it would not be able to walk, hold its food, or fly. In fact, it would be incredibly vulnerable, and it would not have lived long enough to produce offspring. Kind of goes against "Survival of the fittest" doesn't it?

Genetics as proof against evolution

Unlike evolutionists who speculated about genetics, Gregor Mendell did extensive research and expirementation. He found
1) Variety within kinds result from pre-existing genetic variety.
2) There are fixed limits to biological change.
3) Mutations cause genetic information to be lost, not gained.

There is much evidence that evolution is not science at all, but vain attempts to keep a philosophy alive . An evolutionist by the name of G.A. Kerkut even admitted that evolution is not capable of scientific verification , and called it a philosophy which needs to be accepted by faith , and admitted that any evidence supporting evolution is circumstancial .

I hope I have given you evidence to ponder at just how scientific evolution is.

Creationism[/b] as you call it is not a theory.... its backed up by God himself... Evolutionism is the Theory .... so when you have proven it to be fact then I might take it seriously.

I suppose you don't believe anything science says then - since none of it has been "proven to be fact."

*Snip ignorant bullshit*

I demonstrated why this is utterly useless in the other thread. Do you really think posting it in multiple places is going to make you look any less ignorant?

I say where I stand

In the beginning God created everything, then Adam and Eve pissed him off and he blew up the world, hence the big bang, then everything evolved from there, and Jesus came, and Moses, and on and on and on.

I demonstrated why this is utterly useless in the other thread. Do you really think posting it in multiple places is going to make you look any less ignorant?


Well I guess this means you didn't except my apology in the other thread. I
also said I would continue this conversation in a thread of your making that
shows me your indisputible proof that evolution is fact. This thread doesn't
qualify. Your demonstration in the other thread didn't prove anything. So
put up or shut up.

so does anybody care to discuss the evidence for or against the hypotheses at hand?

for example, what kind of layering would we expect to see left behind in a flood, and do we see evidence of this layering that is best explained by a global flood?

I say where I stand

In the beginning God created everything, then Adam and Eve pissed him off and he blew up the world, hence the big bang, then everything evolved from there, and Jesus came, and Moses, and on and on and on.

There's a new twist on the big bang theory

so does anybody care to discuss the evidence for or against the hypotheses at hand?

for example, what kind of layering would we expect to see left behind in a flood, and do we see evidence of this layering that is best explained by a global flood?

Yes I would be glad to discuss this evidence

<light hearted>Absolutely. Shame the truth won't, eventually, be shown to be your view of things, but hey, believe what you want... :D</light hearted>

I will ... I believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and his teachings .... and I
believe that the Bible is God inspired .... if not written in his hand. Except
the Ten Commandments of course. These are beliefs that no one will ever
change .... period. I also believe that scripture dictates that christain people
must make an effort to teach non-christian people about the Lord. When
you attack anything related to these beliefs I will defend it to my death if
need be.

Well if you wish to believe that we came from monkeys, then you go right
ahead. Personally I find that offensive in the extreme.
Aghhhhhhhhhhhhhh! No, no, no! I'm not an evolutionary biologist, but I know that HUMANS DID NOT EVOLVE FROM MONKEYS. No. Humans, monkeys, and many other apes evolved from a common primate ancestor, aka The Missing Link. Unless any more knowledgeable person can improve on what I said. Do you think this thread should have a "Frequent Myths About Evolution" part?

Evolution is still a
theory.... one embraced by some folks because they don't want to admit the
truth even to themselves. Oh and by the way just because something is the
latest idea doesn't mean it is correct.
You know, a much braver way of arguing would be to back up your points, rather than flinging cowardly and vague accuations about.

So creationism should be taught in school so they can make an intelligent decision .

And all other non-Christian theories of the creation should also be taught in school as well, in order that people can make an intelligent, informed decision about them too, yes?

And all other non-Christian theories of the creation should also be taught in school as well, in order that people can make an intelligent, informed decision about them too, yes?

You must be informed of all choices in order to make a intelligent, informed decision about them. So yes I believe they should all be taught without
bias included and let people decide for themselves .... thats what freewill is
all about.

And some tools that have been unearthed reveal that they may have been smarter than humans of today.
What, hovercars? :D
That sounds like a regression , and I thought that evolution was supposed to be better, not worse. In any event, they were later clasified as true humans.

My second rant...
Evolution is not about animals improving, as such. Humans are not superior to bacteria. Dinosaurs were not inferior to mammals.
However, evolution is about ADAPTING. We are better adapted to living on land than a fish. Fish are better ADAPTED to living in water than a human. We are, evolutionarily speaking, equal in that we are both alive today.

You must be informed of all choices in order to make a intelligent, informed decision about them. So yes I believe they should all be taught without bias included and let people decide for themselves .... thats what freewill is all about.

And equal time should be spent on all different religious viewpoints, so as to show no bias? For example: the same amount of time should be spent teaching children about Atum masturbating and creating the world out of his semen as should be spent teaching children about the Christian God creating the world in seven days, yes?

Aghhhhhhhhhhhhhh! No, no, no! I'm not an evolutionary biologist, but I know that HUMANS DID NOT EVOLVE FROM MONKEYS. No. Humans, monkeys, and many other apes evolved from a common primate ancestor, aka The Missing Link. Unless any more knowledgeable person can improve on what I said. Do you think this thread should have a "Frequent Myths About Evolution" part?


You know, a much braver way of arguing would be to back up your points, rather than flinging cowardly and vague accuations about.

Both Apes & Monkeys are primates. Humans are not ...don't knit pic me Bob

And equal time should be spent on all different religious viewpoints, so as to show no bias?

What is your point?

What is your point?

See edited version of post:

http://forums2.jolt.co.uk/showpost.php?p=7591223&postcount=185

Both Apes & Monkeys are primates. Humans are not ...don't knit pic me Bob


Wrong. Primates is an order that includes apes, monkeys, lemurs and human beings.

Well I guess this means you didn't except my apology in the other thread. I
also said I would continue this conversation in a thread of your making that
shows me your indisputible proof that evolution is fact. This thread doesn't
qualify. Your demonstration in the other thread didn't prove anything. So
put up or shut up.

How can I argue with someone who has *no* understanding whatsoever of the issue?

I never stated that evolution was *fact.* However, it is the best theory we currently have based on all of the evidence that we currently have. That is all science every provides.

You asking for proof that it is *fact* demonstrates that you don't even know what science is or what it does.

My demonstration in the other thread showed that everything in your post was either based in a complete misconception or demonstrated the *strengths* of science, rather than any weaknesses.

You must be informed of all choices in order to make a intelligent, informed decision about them. So yes I believe they should all be taught without
bias included and let people decide for themselves .... thats what freewill is
all about.

Only if you make a religion class for creation theories, as none of the creation stories are in any way science (and thus can't be taught in a science class) and only a select few Christians are idiotic enough to try and suggest that (one of) their particular creation story(ies) is science.

So far, most of what I have seen from the people who support Creationism are (sometimes) scientific criticisms of the theory of Evolution. This does not make Creationism a science.

So far none of the criticisms here or elsewhere have "disproven" Evolution. All they have done is show that evolution is an incomplete theory. No one (in the scientific community, at least) has yet claimed that the theory of evolution is complete. In fact, they don't claim any theory is complete.

Here is just a rough example: The fact that objects can float in space does not disprove gravity. It just shows that the exact mathematical model of the force of gravity as it applies on earth does not work everywhere. When you calucuate different variables - which were discovered later - it proves that gravity "works" in space too. For evolution we have not yet encountered the different variables.

When evolution is taught in high school, all that is taught is the basic theory, with the caveat that it is just the basic theory and that there are still holes left to be explained. No, the exact nature of all the holes are not explained because that would take going beyond the basics, and then instead of taking a portion of the year in a biology class it would have to be expanded out to several years to teach all the full concepts - in otherwise you would have to teach highschool students what would be the equivalent of the knowledge held by someone with an advanced degree in the evolutionary sciences. All science classes teach just the basics. High school physics does not teach chaos theory or things like that.

Creationism should not be taught in SCIENCE class rooms because it isn't a science. What measurable evidence does it have to point to a Creator as opposed to existance just forming itself? One of these options may seem more logical than the other (and different people think differently here) but there is no empirical evidence for either. And without empirical evidence, what is or is not logical is not a matter of science, but rather a matter of philosophy.

Wrong. Primates is an order that includes apes, monkeys, lemurs and human beings.

Regardless of what science believes to be true I still find that offensive

It brings a whole new light to the phase " Monkeys Uncle " that I don't
like.

Regardless of what science believes to be true I still find that offensive

Whether you like it or don't like it or find it offensive or inoffensive doesn't matter... that's the way it is! If I get cheated out of a point in a tennis match, I might find it offensive, but that doesn't change the fact that it happened.

:rolleyes: :p

Heck, I find it offensive that some people I have come across are of the same species as me, they're so clueless, bigoted and ingnorant... maybe I should claim that they're not human?

Regardless of what science believes to be true I still find that offensive
I find lack of logic to be offensive lol so I learn to deal with it ;) you best do the same

Grown up world and all … and truth being on the other side of the argument (or at least preponderance of evidence)

Both Apes & Monkeys are primates. Humans are not ...don't knit pic me Bob
umm... yes we are.

it's classification there, you can't argue with how we're classified, that's like arguign that 2+2!=4 because you are arguing the definitions of 2 and 4.

Regardless of what science believes to be true I still find that offensive
Well I find your offence offensive.

There was a Flat-Earth Society until recently. What cracks me up is how they dissolved it... someone took one of the major members to Australia. :)
man, i should pretend to believe the earth is flat so i can get a free trip to australia.

Well I find your offence offensive.

aha, you must suffer for offensesensitivity, as do I. :D

(with apologies to Opus and Berkeley Breathed)

Creationism as you call it is not a theory.... its backed up by God himself... Evolutionism is the Theory .... so when you have proven it to be fact then I might take it seriously.
creationism is backed up by a book written by men who are just as fallible as you or i.

i think i'll side with the men who are doing research and constantly evaluating the evidence rather than one who claims to have been speaking to a higher power. or rather, higher powers... in genesis, there are multiple gods at work.

I don't think that the missing links have ever been found ... which is what is needed to prove that evolution is true .... until then its only a theory .
Besides I think that at least in America ( if not the rest of the world )
people should have the knowledge & opportunity to makes informed decisions . So creationism should be taught in school so they can make an intelligent decision .

1. fine, teach creationism. not in a science class though. it's not science.
2. despite your ignorance on scientific theory, not to mention current evidence supporting evolution (which by the way is simply the theory that life has changed on this planet since it started up... we don't see trilobites and tyranosaurs rexes around anymore, do we?) i've heard those arguments before (that evoluton isn't a science) and yeah, again, it's from poor understanding of a theory. and evolution is a scientific theory. end of story.

Curiously, it was scientific evidence that persuaded people that the earth was not flat, and also scientific evidence that persuaded people that the earth is not the centre of the universe. What did the biblical people do to Gallileo when he said this? I can't remember if they imprisoned him or killed him. Anyhoo, we appear to have gained a great deal of the knowledge to understand this mystery, and it is again the biblical people who are saying that whatever's in the bible must be the truth (even if some of it contradicts some other parts of it, and we ignore quite a lot of it).
galileo was put under house arrest.

however, this wasn't because he discovered that there were bodies orbiting other planets so much as for the way he presented his ideas.

for instance, he published a paper in italian (not latin as was the custom) wherein he had an idiot proclaiming the pope's views and someone else dismantling them.

he was rather rude with his way of going about it, which resulted in a negative backlash. kepler and copernicus didn't have such problems, they published their works quietly and i think kepler's had a preface (added by someone else) stating that it was for mathmatical calcualtion purposes that the sun was assumed to be at the focus of an ellipse.

Care to give me an example of a culture that actually believed the world to be flat?
i think that was one of the things aristotle promoted.

along with fossils beign fish that swam through rocks, the earth being the centre of the universe (it was ptolemy's idea, but aristotle made it popular) umm...what else... oh, everything being made up of 5 elements, that kind of thing.

i think that was one of the things aristotle promoted.

along with fossils beign fish that swam through rocks, the earth being the centre of the universe (it was ptolemy's idea, but aristotle made it popular) umm...what else... oh, everything being made up of 5 elements, that kind of thing.

Aristotle knew that the earth was a sphere. All ancient Greeks agreed that the earth was spherical; this was proven beyond doubt by Erasthenes by measuring the angle of shadows cast by the sun on various objects on earth. Aristotle himself also made a geometric proof of the spherical model of the earth. If the earth were a flat plane, even if it was a circular flat plane, Aristotle realized that the shadows cast by the earth on the moon would sometimes be elliptical and otherwise irregularly shaped. However the earth's shadows on the moon were always circular, so Aristotle reasoned that the earth must be a sphere; no matter from which direction light was shone on a spherical earth, the sphere's shadow on the moon would always be round.

As for all of Aristotle's other whacked out theories, their invalidity should not degrade Aristotle's contribution to philosophy. Aristotle was one of the first ever true scientists, one who systematically investigated things and tried to break from tradition by rejecting faith and only relying on evidence he percieves... he originated systematic classification of data and he invented the first systematic classification scheme for living things. Many of his theories are in hindsight utterly ridiculous but at least he made an attempt to use logic to quantify the world, and he was held back only by technological limitations. Almost all cultures in the world believed in some form of the earth-air-water-fire "elements" thing, due to technological constraints back then nothing else would be any less of a stab in the dark than the four elements theory... one shouldn't expect Aristotle to suddenly invent the modern proton theory of elements without things like knowledge of electricity and calculus. But it is ironic that Aristotle called for constant reevaluation of dogma and constant innovation but his followers transformed Aristotle's theories into an unchanging dogma for two thousand years.

Only one major ancient culture which widely accepted the flat earth theory was China. Even though there were countless individual Chinese astronomers and mathematicians who realized the earth was round, Chinese science was heavily influenced by nationalist CHinese politics and cultural prejudices. Ancient and medieval Chinese believed that not even the earth was in the center of the universe, but China was directly in the center of the universe. The Chinese universe was composed of three "planes" - heaven, flat earth, and hell. On the flat earth dwelt Chinese and barbarians. Above China was heaven, below China was hell, and all around China were barbarians. The Chinese believed that all civilization and worthwhile culture was concentrated in the exact geometric center of the universe - China. Obviously this was a severely self-serving and culturally biased system of science. When Catholic missionaries reached China in the 17th century and introduced mathematical proofs of the spherical nature of the earth, this came as a great shock to the Chinese mentality because it meant China would no longer be geometrically perfect to go along with the cultural perfection that the Chinese believed they attained. However Bodies Without Organs' original point still stands; medieval Chinese science was not part of the development of modern scientific method, and in Europe where true systematic science was invented, everyone knew the earth was a sphere.

Creationism and Science are not mutually exclusive. It's possible to believe in the big bang and believe every word of Genesis. This goes for a large number of so called "discrepancies" between the first book and scientific evidence.

Actually, if you are a biblical literalist (read fundamentalist Christian) then Creationism and Science ARE mutually exclusive, if for no other reason than astronomical data. The Bible gives (relatively) accurate geneaologies that date the world somewhere between 6000 and 10,000 years. Astonomy has detected things that are hundreds of thousands of lightyears away, and since a lightyear is the distance it takes light to travel in a year, that would require the light from those distant objects to have been traveling towards us for longer than the universe has existed. So, if for no other reason than this one (and believe me, there are a plethora of them is you really think about it), Creationism and Science are mutually exclusive.

Now, that being said, Religion in general and Science need not be mutually exclusive, as long as the Religious are willing to re-evaluate beliefs as Science challenges them.

Edit: Can we add this one to the list?

Any theory can do that. If they were to discover an addendum to Genesis in a cave somewhere, then the Creationist thoery would most likely change in the light of such additional data.

The core of science is not comprised of theories, but instead of hypotheses which are open to falsification - that is its defining characteristic.


Actually, this is not true. There have been many religious texts found that fit into the Biblical timeframe and were accepted religious texts at the time, but are not accepted now as being part of "the Bible". A specific instance would be the Gospel of Mary Magdalene found recently, or even the gnostic texts. Several of these things contradict what's in the Bible, and they are therefore not "Biblical". They are just from "Biblical times". The Gospel of Mary Magdalene will never be accepted as Biblical in nature, at least not without a major overhaul of Christian thinking.

There is much evidence that evolution is not science at all, but vain attempts to keep a philosophy alive . An evolutionist by the name of G.A. Kerkut even admitted that evolution is not capable of scientific verification , and called it a philosophy which needs to be accepted by faith , and admitted that any evidence supporting evolution is circumstancial .

I hope I have given you evidence to ponder at just how scientific evolution is.


Science DOES NOT PROVE ANYTHING! All a scientific theory is is a model we can use to explain current data and, more importantly, to predict future data acquisitions. As a scientific theory, evolution works remarkably well! There is no way to verify any scientific theory because data may come along at any time to change it. This applies to the Theory of Evolution. This also applies to the Theory of Gravity! Does that mean that I think gravity is going to fail tomorrow? No. But, from a scientific perspective, it might. And if it does, we will have to change scientific theory.

Now, to see some of the data that the Theory of Evolution was used to explain so remarkably well, please look at this link:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/library/05/2/l_052_05.html

Does this in some was "prove" evolution? No, because no scientific theory is provable, only disprovable. What this data DOES do is show that it evolution is a reasonably good predictor.

As to the equine series, et al. also mentioned in your post, they were mistakes. They have been (mostly) corrected within the scientific community.

so does anybody care to discuss the evidence for or against the hypotheses at hand?

for example, what kind of layering would we expect to see left behind in a flood, and do we see evidence of this layering that is best explained by a global flood?

FS, I would point people to lake varves. These are sedimentary layers that are lain down on a seasonal basis. Here's a (very) basic informational link:

http://www.zephryus.demon.co.uk/geography/resources/glaciers/varve.html

There are some lakes that have literally tens of thousands of varves in them. A biblical flood would have not only thrown up the ones that had already been lain down, but would have had to "re-lay" them at an unbelievable rate. Thus, lake varves would support an "old earth" theory.

Regardless of what science believes to be true I still find that offensive

"I don't know what X is, but I find X offensive!"

Regardless of what science believes to be true I still find that offensive

I find it offensive that I am classified in the same species as idiots, but that doesn't make it any less true.

Human beings are primates - and are genetically and physically *very* close to them. Our social structure is even very much like that of our closest neighboors.

The fact that you are so insecure that being put in the same sentence with a *gasp* animal offends you is your problem. Most of us aren't so silly that we are bothered by the fact that we're all part of the same world.

I find it offensive that I am classified in the same species as idiots, but that doesn't make it any less true.

Human beings are primates - and are genetically and physically *very* close to them. Our social structure is even very much like that of our closest neighboors.

The fact that you are so insecure that being put in the same sentence with a *gasp* animal offends you is your problem. Most of us aren't so silly that we are bothered by the fact that we're all part of the same world.
:eek: We are all part of the same world! OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG :eek: :eek: :eek:

galileo was put under house arrest.

however, this wasn't because he discovered that there were bodies orbiting other planets so much as for the way he presented his ideas.

for instance, he published a paper in italian (not latin as was the custom) wherein he had an idiot proclaiming the pope's views and someone else dismantling them.

he was rather rude with his way of going about it, which resulted in a negative backlash. kepler and copernicus didn't have such problems, they published their works quietly and i think kepler's had a preface (added by someone else) stating that it was for mathmatical calcualtion purposes that the sun was assumed to be at the focus of an ellipse.

There was also the fact that he said the Moon and planets had craters. The Church held very strongly that everything on Earth was flawed and everything in the heavens was perfect. Galileo talked about "flaws" (ie. craters) on the moon and the Church had a hissy fit.

Calm down, everyone...

1. Putting humans in the same order of primates as monkeys has nothing to do with evolution: it just means we share common characteristics (including...what is it, 98.5% of our DNA?) To say that we're a different order is basically not rusting your own senses.
2. Three things are needed for evolution to occur, so for the theory to work, these need to be proved:
Replication
Mutation
Heritability
3. Saying that we didn't evolve from monkeys is not nitpicking - it is a commonly misunderstood part of evolution.
4. I will post something on lins between fish, amphibians, reptiles, mammals and birds soon.

The Empire of Presidency has $20 on Creationism.

Actually, if you are a biblical literalist (read fundamentalist Christian) then Creationism and Science ARE mutually exclusive, if for no other reason than astronomical data. The Bible gives (relatively) accurate geneaologies that date the world somewhere between 6000 and 10,000 years. Astonomy has detected things that are hundreds of thousands of lightyears away, and since a lightyear is the distance it takes light to travel in a year, that would require the light from those distant objects to have been traveling towards us for longer than the universe has existed. So, if for no other reason than this one (and believe me, there are a plethora of them is you really think about it), Creationism and Science are mutually exclusive.Actually, that brings up an interesting point I've seen brought up eleswhere... Given the assumption that Universe was created after the apparent start of such photons as provide us with the 'information' about distant stars (which may or may not actually exist, though we know the photons certainly do) God must, during the act of creation, placed those photons speeding towards us and given the properties (position, direction, wavelength/energies, etc) to give us the impression of having come from the things that we perceive as having been there millions (even billions) of years beforehand.

To do so, He must have (in a similar way to the creation of strata and fossils and all other 'false' geological) 'imagined' and mentally modelled the pre-creation Universe in sufficient detail in order to lay down such consistent evidence as we see before us. Since the 'mind' of God is now essentially synonimous with the Universe /prior/ to Creation and His being omniscient and omnipresent (not to mention omnipotent) w.r.t. the 'created' Universe after creation we might as well /still/ be in His 'mind', then there is essentially no difference between the two.

You can extend the philosophy further in both directions. Indeed, it is perfectly possible that rather than Last-Tuesdayism being the True Faith, we are actually still being 'thought out' for the World That Is To Come and the religion that we should be following is Next-Tuesdayism, at which point 'real' people will be provided the memories that we (as mere mental constructs in a complex thought experiment) are helpfully building up in preparation for.

Well, it's an idea. (And no, not falsifiable, but I thought it worth presenting.)

You're funny! :p

Actually, that brings up an interesting point I've seen brought up eleswhere... Given the assumption that Universe was created after the apparent start of such photons as provide us with the 'information' about distant stars (which may or may not actually exist, though we know the photons certainly do) God must, during the act of creation, placed those photons speeding towards us and given the properties (position, direction, wavelength/energies, etc) to give us the impression of having come from the things that we perceive as having been there millions (even billions) of years beforehand.

To do so, He must have (in a similar way to the creation of strata and fossils and all other 'false' geological) 'imagined' and mentally modelled the pre-creation Universe in sufficient detail in order to lay down such consistent evidence as we see before us. Since the 'mind' of God is now essentially synonimous with the Universe /prior/ to Creation and His being omniscient and omnipresent (not to mention omnipotent) w.r.t. the 'created' Universe after creation we might as well /still/ be in His 'mind', then there is essentially no difference between the two.

You can extend the philosophy further in both directions. Indeed, it is perfectly possible that rather than Last-Tuesdayism being the True Faith, we are actually still being 'thought out' for the World That Is To Come and the religion that we should be following is Next-Tuesdayism, at which point 'real' people will be provided the memories that we (as mere mental constructs in a complex thought experiment) are helpfully building up in preparation for.

Well, it's an idea. (And no, not falsifiable, but I thought it worth presenting.)

God that is so conspiracy theory like “He faked EVERYTHING for some reason to make us believe it was old but it really is not”
Yikes lol

*bumped for new creationists*

Personally, I don't have a problem with evolution, and I do believe in creationism. God could have made us any way he wanted EVEN THROUGH EVOLUTION; who am I to say what he did and did not do. Also, I think Genesis is more of an allegorical than literal. I mean, it had to be. If God had started trying to explain to the Israelites about the big bang, cytoplasm, protons, neutrons, and electrons, their minds would've exploded. :) I'm not sure if I'm convinced that species changing evolution occurs, but if it were proven, it would not challenge my faith in the slightest. All these people that get hung up on the details have really missed the point of Christianity completely.

I don't think that the missing links have ever been found ... which is what is needed to prove that evolution is true .... until then its only a theory .
Besides I think that at least in America ( if not the rest of the world )
people should have the knowledge & opportunity to makes informed decisions . So creationism should be taught in school so they can make an intelligent decision .


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How scientific is evolution?

Culture/Society Miscellaneous Keywords: SCIENCE, HOAXES, GENETICS
Source: My Biology Book
Published: February 23, 2001 Author: Patriotic Teen
Posted on 02/23/2001 17:54:05 PST by Patriotic Teen
Just recently, my biology class at my school finished up three chapters on Creation versus Evolution, and I must say, my book provided some compelling evidence in support of Creation. Here is what it has to say.

The Missing Links

"Missing Links" are vital to the theory of evolution . Even Darwin himself admitted that without the existence of "missing links" his theory would be proven false . Let's take a look at some of those missing links.

Coelacanth is supposed to be the evidence that amphibians came from fish. After all, the fins were attached to the body by thick, fleshy lobes, allowing freer rotation and possibly "feet" with which to walk, and evolutionists speculated that they were shallow water fish. All this went uncontested until one was caught in the Indian Ocean, and it was found out that they rarely come within 500 feet of the surface.

No one said a Coelacanth was a missing link, a Coelacanth is just a member of a family of fish that also included fish that evolved from fleshy lobe-fins to legs. They later became extinct after some of them evolved into what we would recognize as amphibians, and dominated their ancestors. Coelacanth survived as it never colonized land. It's like the monkey of the primate family.

Archeopteryx is presented as a link between reptiles and birds. Some unusual features were small breastbones, teeth, elongated tail, and claws on its wings. Sounds pretty convincing, until you realize that there are some species of birds today that exhibit similar characteristics. And besides, it has modern flight feathers and hollow bones, evidence of a true bird.

No birds have true teeth, some have serrated beaks, but no actual teeth. Also, the only birds to have claws are young hoatzin birds, and that is just a later adaptation to aid flight in a jungle habitat.

The "horse series" is probably one of the worst attempts to prove evolution. Ribs woulod magicaly disappear and reappear and is based on a rabbit. Talk about desperation.

Now, to the Hominid Fossils .

Piltdown Man was discovered in a gravel pit not far from Piltdown, England. It was found with crude tools, and bones belonging to humans and apes. But, what was overlooked was the obvious file markings and chemical residue, making the jaw and other bones look ancient and sub-human.

People have known Piltdown Man is a fake. Anyone who used this as an example of a missing link would be laughed out of the building.

Nebraska Man was constructed from a single tooth, later discovered to belong to an extinct pig.

Ramapithecus was constructed from a heavy jawbone, some teeth, and skull fragments, and was speculated to have walked upright, though a hipbone was never found. But, a full skeleton of Ramapithecus was found, and it resembles modern orangutans.

Ausralopithecus was supposed to be the first in the line of human descent. It was a small ape skull, and regarded as unmistakable evidence, until an adult Australopithecus was found, and declared an extinct ape by evolutionists

Homo habilis was argued to be classified as a type of australopithecine . Later skeletons of homo habilus discovered would reveal though that it was not humanlike at all. And any evidence of H. habilus that would suggest it is human is because human bones were mixed by "scientists" with ape bones.

Homo erectus , known as "Java Man" and "Peking Man" , discovered by Eugene Bubois, was considered a link. Heavy brow ridges and femur bones, similar to modern humans, was considered to be proof of the evolution of man. But, Dubois exaggerated the skull, and failed to report that he found a complete human skeleton in the same strata.

Neanderthal Man was characterized by heavy brows, sloping foreheads, powerful physiques, and larger brains than humans of today. But closer examinations of this "link" show that he stood upright with the posture, gait, and intelligence of a modern person. And some tools that have been unearthed reveal that they may have been smarter than humans of today. That sounds like a regression , and I thought that evolution was supposed to be better, not worse. In any event, they were later clasified as true humans.

Evolution isn't necessarily better, it's just adapting to the landscape. We survived in the new landscape that came about in the last 30,000 years, and the Neanderthals didn't.

Cro-magnon man , like "Neanderthal man" was a more powerful and had superior intelligence. They just lived in caves and hunted bison, like some of the Indians (or, to be politicaly correct Native Americans) do. Even evolutionists classify them as modern humans.

Well, just because they had more intelligence doesn't mean that they're going to be able to build nuclear reactors right off the bat. Humans have progressed in what we know. Otherwise, you'd be able to build a computer in your home.

The impossibility of transition

In order for evolution to take place, the creature has to be fully functional while undergoing the change. Bats, who supposedly evolved from rodents similar to shrews, would be a great example for evolution. But, the complexity would render the rodent unable to use his paws for running or grasping, and it would not be able to walk, hold its food, or fly. In fact, it would be incredibly vulnerable, and it would not have lived long enough to produce offspring. Kind of goes against "Survival of the fittest" doesn't it?

Actually, it would be able to climb trees for protection and glide onto its prey. As the wings developed more, it eventually could fly. After that, or perhaps during the gliding stage, some bats moved into caves and found that it was much safer. Eventually, they developed echolocation to make cave life even easier.

Genetics as proof against evolution

Unlike evolutionists who speculated about genetics, Gregor Mendell did extensive research and expirementation. He found
1) Variety within kinds result from pre-existing genetic variety.
2) There are fixed limits to biological change.
3) Mutations cause genetic information to be lost, not gained.

There is much evidence that evolution is not science at all, but vain attempts to keep a philosophy alive . An evolutionist by the name of G.A. Kerkut even admitted that evolution is not capable of scientific verification , and called it a philosophy which needs to be accepted by faith , and admitted that any evidence supporting evolution is circumstancial .

I hope I have given you evidence to ponder at just how scientific evolution is.

Whoever made this up is an idiot.