NationStates Jolt Archive

And the atmosphere happened by chance too?
I don't understand what you're saying here.

I don't understand what you're saying here.

Oh, for life to have appeared by chance, then the atmosphere with all the right conditions must also have happened by chance, no?

It's too vague to say anything constructive.

But there's a lot of pressure on researchers. Especially one the government funded ones. Either they keep publishing or they won't get funding.
It's of course a rule with tons of execptions, but it is the norm.

On a funny side note: I read a news article a few years ago ('round 2000 I think), reporting only some 20% of the biologists in the US believed evolution.
Not to sound racist or anything, but seriously... Think there's something brainshrinking in the water?
Ah...no. The number you're looking for is about 98%.

Oh, for life to have appeared by chance, then the atmosphere with all the right conditions must also have happened by chance, no?
Billions of planets, billions of stars. It had to happen sometime.

And the atmosphere happened by chance too?
No, the atmosphere was caused by the cooling of the Earth. Volcanoes release a lot of gases, including CO2, which plants convert to Oxygen, which we breathe. The Moon has no active core, and therefore has no atmosphere.

Oh, for life to have appeared by chance, then the atmosphere with all the right conditions must also have happened by chance, no?
Ah, the Anthropic Principle, if I'm not mistaken. First, there aren't "right conditions". Life will evolve to survive in whatever the conditions are. Read up on extremophiles. Second, the early atmosphere was vastly different than the atmosphere of today. It had no oxygen. It didn't have oxygen until certain organisms began to produce it as a waste product.

No, the atmosphere was caused by the cooling of the Earth. Volcanoes release a lot of gases, including CO2, which plants convert to Oxygen, which we breathe. The Moon has no active core, and therefore has no atmosphere.

no plan - which means by chance....no?

...

Billions of planets, billions of stars. It had to happen sometime.

You can buy a lot of lottery tickets and not win...

Ah, the Anthropic Principle, if I'm not mistaken. First, there aren't "right conditions". Life will evolve to survive in whatever the conditions are. Read up on extremophiles. Second, the early atmosphere was vastly different than the atmosphere of today. It had no oxygen. It didn't have oxygen until certain organisms began to produce it as a waste product.

And we've stabilised because...

Ah...no. The number you're looking for is about 98%.
99.84% of the scientists in relevant disciplines. (Which includes geology and cosmology, for some reason. The number is even higher if you exclude those disciplines.) Also, most of the remaining .14% accept that evolution has happened, but cling to the idea of Irreducible Complexity, and thus don't accept that it is the explanation for all life on Earth. The number of classical creationists in relevant disciplines is almost nil. (Maybe 10 out of 48,000. And that's probably being generous.)

no plan - which means by chance....no?

...
If you wish to look at it that way, yes, by chance. We're just a statistic in a universe that's immensely vast.

If you wish to look at it that way, yes, by chance. We're just a statistic in a universe that's immensely vast.

That's so sad... :(

Actually it's this chance thing that really gets on my nerves. Nothing bumps into perfection by chance.

And we've stabilised because...
Respiration consumes about the same amount of oxygen photosynthesis produces. Photosynthesis consumes about the same amount of carbon dioxide respiration produces. There is also a limit to the amount of atmospheric oxygen that can exist. At levels at 37% or so, IIRC, the level of oxygen is high enough to cause fires to easily start, which reduce the level of atmospheric oxygen. It's a self-stabilizing system.

Also, volcanic eruptions are few and far between, reducing the presence of other compounds.

Actually it's this chance thing that really gets on my nerves. Nothing bumps into perfection by chance.
Perfection? Where the hell did you get perfection from? This planet and the life on it aren't even remotely close to perfect.

That's so sad... :(

Actually it's this chance thing that really gets on my nerves. Nothing bumps into perfection by chance.
The only reason we seem "perfect" for our environment is that we evolved to be that way... We didn't just jump to perfection, we evolved to it.

Besides, we're not perfect yet. Evolution is an ongoing process. In 10 million years we won't recognise our descendants as human.

Respiration consumes about the same amount of oxygen photosynthesis produces. Photosynthesis consumes about the same amount of carbon dioxide respiration produces. There is also a limit to the amount of atmospheric oxygen that can exist. At levels at 37% or so, IIRC, the level of oxygen is high enough to cause fires to easily start, which reduce the level of atmospheric oxygen. It's a self-stabilizing system.

Also, volcanic eruptions are few and far between, reducing the presence of other compounds.

Mmm...and we stabilised at the perfect air-oxygen ratio of 21% because...(some studies say that 25% would burn up everything and 19% is too little for anything to live)

Okay. Here's a concept in ecology.

Suppose there is a large temperate forest which has reached climax community. There's a sudden change in climate, which makes the temperate climate arid and desert. However, the organisms of the forest will move out to better places or die out - they do not evolve into desert tolerant species. New but already existing species will move into the new desert. The old ones say bye bye. Doesn't this case show that evolution may not happen?

[/QUOTE]

GMC Military Arms

Your apparent ignorance of Occam's razor, the scientific method, the proper definition of macroevolution, the fact your pHD thesis apparently involved copying a discredited argument from a book published in 2000 called 'Icons of Evolution' by Johnathan Wells and so on... These don't exactly do you any favours on that mark, but this is irrelevant and a silly attempt at an ad hominem attack.

My thesis had nothing to do with any arguments from such a book. I deliberately left out any mention of either evolution or creation in it. How did you get to that conclusion? Was is something I said?
Occam's razor doesn't help you in this case, because the 'mumbo jumbo' of evolutionary theory is infinitely more complicated (at least in the mechanistic sense) than the 'mumbo jumbo' of God's power, from a creationists point of view.

I'm not so interested in attacking evolution, as in learning whether creationism can stand up to modern scientific criticism. I have to say that being told that I am silly and irrelevant is not making you look like you are basing your criticisms on intelligence, but more like you are depending on bullying.


Wrong. I am explaining the scientific method and the uselessness of making hypothesis based on Biblical events that do not attempt to prove the validity of the underlying mechanism ['God']. Even if you prove the entire Bible is true to all available data, it still doesn't prove that it wasn't written by Zeus to test the faithful and that Zeus created the world in an entirely different manner. You must demonstrate the validity of the underlying mechanism.

You know as well as I do that no one can express God in terms of mathematical probability. Any method which requires God to be expressed so seems rather narrow minded. Why can't modern science be 'open minded' enough to allow for God? It sounds to me as though your version of 'scientific method' is something whereby one can reduce the universe to electrons and protons and mathematical formulas. But if it cannot be reduced to this, if it consists of more than this, then your 'scientific method' is heading for disappointment, or an eternal longing for something that will never be satisfied because it cannot.


Then you're wrong. A one in a billion chance versus an impossibility means the one in a billion chance is a dead cert every time.

Apparently, you are convinced by your beliefs enough to call something that scientific method cannot prove an impossibility an impossibility. Perhaps you could be so understanding as to allow me to have a different set of beliefs and still be intelligent? If you were to see it from my point of view, you would see a one in a billion chance pitted against a very high probability, perhaps even something closer to a certainty.


Well, here they all are.

http://www.skepticsannotatedbible.com/proph/long.html

Well, that's a lot. Perhaps you would like to pick your favorite one to discuss. I'm not a theologian though. From my initial reading of the website, I saw many criticisms that were logically flawed.

You appear to be criticising science for being unable to 'measure' love, even though love is largely a matter of psychology. Since plumbing is also unable to measure love, do you regard it with similar contempt?

I see your point now. You are saying that because love is not able to be expressed in scientific terms, therefore I shouldn't despise science. I don't despise science. I think that perhaps you and I can agree, though, that currently love is considered outside of science, and yet still exists. That was my point.

Absolutely false. God is clearly an anthropomorphic entity according to the Bible: the most obvious line being:



Further, God has:

Nostrils : Exodus 15:8, Psalms 18:8, Psalms 18:15

A mouth: Psalms 18:8, Isaiah 11:4, Isaiah 30:27, Lamentations 3:38

Feet: Exodus 24:10, Psalms 18:9

Arms: Isaiah 52:10

Hands: Exodus 33:22, Isaiah 49:16, Ezekiel 8:3, Habakkuk 3:4

Fingers: Exodus 31:18, Psalms 8:3

Eyes: 2 Chronicles 16:9, Psalms 11:4

Loins [!]: Ezekiel 1:27, Ezekiel 8:2

An arse: Exodus 33:22

Physical strength: Numbers 23:22 ['the strength of a unicorn,' no less!]

Clothes: Psalms 45:8

Clearly God is able to walk, have a 'face to face' conversation [Exodus 33:11] and many other things that imply a being who's basic form is humanoid. As a period of rest after a strenuous task. Since there are things God cannot do [Jg.1:19, Mk.6:5, Heb.6:18], implying he requires physical rest after creating the Earth is hardly a push.

I think that you are arguing that since God has been described in the Bible as having human attributes, that he should also be tired as humans are. But you forget that we are made in God's image, and yet not as He is. The Bible also says that God neither slumbers nor sleeps. The imagery used above (eyes, nose, etc.) is for the purpose of helping humans to think about God. My argument is that you have taken things out of context here to make a point that is at once immeadiately rediculous to someone who believes that God created the world.

Mmm...and we stabilised at the perfect air-oxygen ratio of 21% because...(some studies say that 25% would burn up everything and 19% is too little for anything to live)
It isn't perfect. We evolved to exist at atmospheric oxygen levels of 21%. It stabilized there because of what I mentioned earlier about respiration and photosynthesis.

Okay. Here's a concept in ecology.

Suppose there is a large temperate forest which has reached climax community. There's a sudden change in climate, which makes the temperate climate arid and desert. However, the organisms of the forest will move out to better places or die out - they do not evolve into desert tolerant species. New but already existing species will move into the new desert. The old ones say bye bye. Doesn't this case show that evolution may not happen?
Evolution is a slow process. Fast climate change won't allow species to adapt quick enough. If the forest became desert over the course of several million years, yes, the species would evolve to adapt.

You can buy a lot of lottery tickets and not win...
You can also buy just one and win. Our planet did.

It isn't perfect. We evolved to exist at atmospheric oxygen levels of 21%. It stabilized there because of what I mentioned earlier about respiration and photosynthesis.


Oh ok. Let me get this straight then. You say that the photosynthesis/respiration made the oxygen level at 21%, and from that 21% the right forms of life evolved - and if the percentage was something different other things would have happened - maybe nitrogen-consuming life, and then everything snowballs into what it is today?

Okay. Here's a concept in ecology.

Suppose there is a large temperate forest which has reached climax community. There's a sudden change in climate, which makes the temperate climate arid and desert. However, the organisms of the forest will move out to better places or die out - they do not evolve into desert tolerant species. New but already existing species will move into the new desert. The old ones say bye bye. Doesn't this case show that evolution may not happen?
As mentioned by others, evolution takes a long time. Besides, there are massive modifications needed to sucessfully live in a desert.

My goodness! Slow down the posts! One to four is not good!

It's 25 minutes after midnight and way after my normal sleep time *sobs*

Why am I still up? Lol.

Oh ok. Let me get this straight then. You say that the photosynthesis/respiration made the oxygen level at 21%, and from that 21% the right forms of life evolved - and if the percentage was something different other things would have happened - maybe nitrogen-consuming life, and then everything snowballs into what it is today?
There was almost no O2 in the atmosphere until life showed up (the photosynthetic sort) and caused it to increase dramatically. But yes, if there was no O2, then life would have evolved along another pathway.

Oh ok. Let me get this straight then. You say that the photosynthesis/respiration made the oxygen level at 21%, and from that 21% the right forms of life evolved - and if the percentage was something different other things would have happened - maybe nitrogen-consuming life, and then everything snowballs into what it is today?
Well, no, oxygen is a good gas for life because of some biological process or other. I don't actually know any specifics, but I know that nitrogen is a fairly useless gas, and life probably couldn't make use of it like it does with oxygen.

Oh ok. Let me get this straight then. You say that the photosynthesis/respiration made the oxygen level at 21%, and from that 21% the right forms of life evolved - and if the percentage was something different other things would have happened - maybe nitrogen-consuming life, and then everything snowballs into what it is today?
No. Life originally evolved in an environment where oxygen did not exist in a free form. Eventually, some organisms started to produce oxygen as a waste product. Since oxygen is a metabolic poison, the organisms that were not resistant to it died. Photosynthesis became the dominant oxygen producing pathway. Originally, respiration was anaerobic, and did not use oxygen. A small mutation happened, and allowed an organism to use oxygen in metabolism. (This is easier than you might think. Aerobic respiration is simply photosynthesis taken backwards.) Since there was a plentiful supply of oxygen, these organisms rapidly became dominant. As life evolved to deal with a certain oxygen level, it has become self-stabilizing. If more oxygen is consumed than is produced, organisms die, and it stabilizes. If more oxygen is produced than is consumed, organisms multiply, and it stabilizes.

No. Life originally evolved in an environment where oxygen did not exist in a free form. Eventually, some organisms started to produce oxygen as a waste product. Since oxygen is a metabolic poison, the organisms that were not resistant to it died. Photosynthesis became the dominant oxygen producing pathway. Originally, respiration was anaerobic, and did not use oxygen. A small mutation happened, and allowed an organism to use oxygen in metabolism. (This is easier than you might think. Aerobic respiration is simply photosynthesis taken backwards.) Since there was a plentiful supply of oxygen, these organisms rapidly became dominant. As life evolved to deal with a certain oxygen level, it has become self-stabilizing. If more oxygen is consumed than is produced, organisms die, and it stabilizes. If more oxygen is produced than is consumed, organisms multiply, and it stabilizes.

Okay, that makes the concept clearer...

Well, no, oxygen is a good gas for life because of some biological process or other. I don't actually know any specifics, but I know that nitrogen is a fairly useless gas, and life probably couldn't make use of it like it does with oxygen.

Which makes it a cool gas because it doesn't react with us and blow us up!! :D:D:D:D:D

Which makes it a cool gas because it doesn't react with us and blow us up!! :D:D:D:D:D
It probably would if there were more in the atmosphere. :D

Well, no, oxygen is a good gas for life because of some biological process or other. I don't actually know any specifics, but I know that nitrogen is a fairly useless gas, and life probably couldn't make use of it like it does with oxygen.
The reason oxygen is useful for life is that it is very reactive, a trait shared by most of the elements used in metabolic processes, such as hydrogen, flourine, chlorine, and sodium. Nitrogen is a fairly inert gas, and thus is not much use.

The reason oxygen is useful for life is that it is very reactive, a trait shared by most of the elements used in metabolic processes, such as hydrogen, flourine, chlorine, and sodium. Nitrogen is a fairly inert gas, and thus is not much use.
Ah. I knew it was something like that. Thanks.

You can buy a lot of lottery tickets and not win...

And yet, as you can no doubt see... eventually, one ticket does win...

1) Ah... okay... Punctuated Equilibrium I have heard of... although I am not aware of it as being a mainstay of evolutionary theory... more an 'option' on the list..

It certainly is a mainstay of evolution, from what I have understood. The current mutation rates we have today are not fast enough to eplain the huge jumps in genetics (e.g. from scales to feathers) that must have occured. It would also explain why none, or precious few of the fossils contain anything that looks half like a scale and half like a feather (which would be necessary given todays rate of mutation). Note: I say "precious few" because I remember reading about some dinosaur/flying lizard fossil found in China that appeared to be the first ever that had somthing of a scale and a feather in the same fossil. This caused a huge amount of debate, partly because a similar earlier claim from the same country was found to be fraudulent.


2) Why would a giraffe need a pressure control mechanism if it didn't have a long neck? Well, just because I don't know for sure... doesn't make 'god' a better answer, does it?

How about the fact that, just perhaps, that 'mechanism' came from an earlier mechanism that served a similar purpose? Maybe the proto-giraffe spent a lot of time with a heavy head close to the ground? Maybe the 'pressure control mechanism' was originally a breathing mechanism, that 'allowed' longer necks to evolve - at which point the specialisation became more pronounced?

You are looking at a mechanism with an unfortunate blindness to the fact that it COULD have arrived in some other fashion than entire.

When one theory cannot find an adequate explaination to a problem, generally the alternative theory looks better. However, my point in directing you to this problem in evolutionary theory was merely to show that there are "holes" in both sides of the debate, and one should not be too quick to claim superiority.

The problem with your suggestion is that blood pressure valves are critical. The animal dies with hemorraging in the brain if they dont function properly. The idea of a series of rapid (not observed today), precise (seems impossible when you understand the nature of mutations) and beneficial (the vast majority of mutations are not beneficial) set of mutations that transforms something like a breathing mechanism to a blood pressure control mechanism (for heavens sake, that is what anyone would call mumbo jumbo) is so unlikely. Give it time, and it will only get less likely.

Ok, this is a hole in evolutionary theory. The idea of irreducible complexity will always plague you guys. But I don't call the theory false simply because there is a weak spot. I think any scientist should be far more careful. Who's to say that we don't "roll over" some new information tomorrow that provides a good explanation? I'm trying not to be blind. But so long as you don't have an explanation that is convincing, any half-baked university student can criticise you, and you, as someone who accepts evolution, have to take it.



3) Which 'process' do you believe that 'evolution' accepts without the ability to be falsified?

Ummm, where do you want me to start? Perhaps the idea that organisms can, using the mutations that we observe today, increase their information so that the general trend shows movement from slime to man. Never been proven. Doesn't fit with the current data. Cannot be proven wrong. Is the mainstay of evolution.




4) Refinement in theology is only in the commentary. The 'theory' is not questioned.

Actually, I have personally met theologians who do not (or at least no longer) believe in God.

Another point, although many evolutionists are involved in refining evolution theory, how many of them really frequently ask if it is true? I have never met one that admited this (although I have read about them). I suggest that the evolutionists, in that sense, are quite like the theologians. They seek only to refine their explanation when found inaccurate, and far less often do they really question the theory.


5) 'Unselfish unconditional love' can easily be explained scientifically... in fact, by evolutionary theory... if you just think about it for a while. But, while I may see evidence for 'unselfish unconditional love', I have yet to see ANY evidence for 'miracles' that isn't BETTER explained through known phenomena.

I'm not good at psychology, but I have thought about the way evolution has explained the "unselfish" traits found among humans and animals. They do it by showing the advantage gained for either the "unselfish" individual, or for the community in which they belong. This does make sense to me, at least on the surface. I can certainly see how an evolutionist can logically explain unselfishness. And yet there are times when I have witnessed an experienced love that can never be explained in this way. In those times, I have seen clearly the inadequacy of trying to explain with evolution. But perhaps that is my bias coming through. At least when I read what I have written here, I realize that it won't convince you. I guess it's one of those "you just had to be there" things. Like I said, I'm no psychiatrist.


6) Anything that 'exists' must 'exist' in reality. If it 'exists' in reality, it is subject to reality, or it affects reality. Thus, it can either me manipulated, or measured.... although perhaps not directly.

If 'miracles' exist, there must be two potential states for every phenomena... one where causality is present, and one where causality is subverted.

If you can PROVE that those two states exist, I am willing to accept your assumption that miracles exist.

Yes, but if you decide to believe that reality is only that which we can detect with our five senses, then you and I must disagree on what we understand as reality. Since my version of reality is likely to be a lot bigger than yours (because I include the spiritual world, not because I am claiming superiority), there is plenty of room for spiritual events that will not necessarily be detectable with the five senses. If there is a spiritual reality, then it is likely that it cannot be manipulated nor measured.
You know full well that I cannot prove it to you. God could though.



7) If we are just talking about whether the Deluge is 'possible'... then there is no discussion. We both agree, that the answer is a resounding 'no'.

You just allow a story to give you a reason as to why it could have happened ANYWAY, surely?

Graven, not so fast. I don't agree that the Deluge is impossible. It was described as an intervention of God. A "miracle" in other words. Is there evidence? That depends on the belief system of the observer, to a large degree anyway. I'm not geologist, or water ecologist, like youself, but from the genetics point of view, I understand there are some weak spots, but not impossible, from where I am standing.



8) The schism that you speak of is flawed. The 'change' described is in God's realationship to Adam, not Adam's relationship to the world.

No longer will God 'provide' a perfect garden of easily available food... now Adam has to work for a living. No mention of a schism.

schism is a word that I have used to describe what happened. I got it from the theologians. Man no longer walks with God. Man is kicked out of the garden. man's life is shortened. Man's relationship with man (e.g. Eve) is changed. his role in food gathering is changed. Eve suffers in childbirth. She and her children are going to be at odds with the snake and its children. All this can be described as a schism, a distance that is introduced between God and his creation.

Wait a moment, haven't you just contradicted yourself? You said that Adam's relationship to the world is not changed, and then you say that now Adam has to work for a living, since he is no longer living in the garden. Don't you see a difference between living in a garden and hoeing out thistles?

Which is irrelevant. Your claim was that evolutionary theory claimed that homology had to be based on ancestry. If you knew that function was also a factor, why did you leave out that vital piece of information in your discussion?

Meanwhile, the fact that it is a modification is a point in favor of actual science. This is the way science works. It changes in relation to new evidence.


My apologies here for causing the offence. In my defense, though, I posted an earlier version of this example where I was more careful to include the more modern explanation of evolution theory where gene homology is formed on function. I explained it in terms of convergent evolution and divergent evolution. It's in every genetics textbook.

I realize that is the way that science works. The unfortunate thing is that mistakes in predictions are soon forgotten, and the only thing people seem to know about evolutionary theory is the current version. Of course, that is good science to know the current version. But bad for the opposition, who need to demonstrate the number of times that predictions based on evolutionary theory have been wrong, in order to show that evolutionary theory hasn't necessarily been all that helpful in every cases. As an example, I have posted info about shrinking bacterial genomes. The current evolutionary explanation (you may always be sure there is one) is not based on a prediction holding true, but a new discovery that showed the old one wrong.


But leaving out absolutely vital information in order to create a false dichotomy that you think makes your personal belief look better is fair?

Again, I agree. I apologise again. May we all be careful never to do that.


There are only two explanations for you to have left that out. Either you didn't know it (in which case you shouldn't have a Ph.D. anywhere near the biological sciences) or you left it out intentionally (in which case you can't claim to be trying to be fair to those who are uneducated in the field.).

Oh, come off it. Even scientists make mistakes. I'm glad you pulled me up over it. I shall be extra careful that I dont make that mistake again.

It certainly is a mainstay of evolution, from what I have understood. The current mutation rates we have today are not fast enough to eplain the huge jumps in genetics (e.g. from scales to feathers) that must have occured.

It all depends on when the protection and proofreading mechanisms developed. The rate of mutation without them is quite high.

When one theory cannot find an adequate explaination to a problem, generally the alternative theory looks better.

Not if the alternative theory can't even be said to be scientific.

However, my point in directing you to this problem in evolutionary theory was merely to show that there are "holes" in both sides of the debate, and one should not be too quick to claim superiority.

There is a difference between claiming superiority and pointing out the fact that only one side of the debate is arguing from a scientific standpoint.

The problem with your suggestion is that blood pressure valves are critical. The animal dies with hemorraging in the brain if they dont function properly.

The current animal does. You are still assuming that the giraffe went from normal neck to extremely long neck in a generation. THis is not the claim. We are talking about a very, very long time for these things to develop. If the neck was only slightly longer than a horse's, the new animal could still reach higher leaves, but might only get a bit dizzy when they bent down. These changes weren't instantaneous.

Ok, this is a hole in evolutionary theory. The idea of irreducible complexity will always plague you guys.

Irreducible complexity is another way of saying "We don't know." Of course we don't have explanations for everything. If we did, what would be left to study?

However, the very idea behind irreducible complexity is flawed. It assumes that biology is like a Rube-Guldberg machine, that if you take one part out the whole thing falls apart. This is patently untrue. Biology is very, very robust, and only a few core mechanisms are absolutely crucial to life.

Ummm, where do you want me to start? Perhaps the idea that organisms can, using the mutations that we observe today, increase their information so that the general trend shows movement from slime to man. Never been proven. Doesn't fit with the current data. Cannot be proven wrong. Is the mainstay of evolution.

Incorrect. The mainstay of evolution is the fact that mutations occur. That "additions" in information occur. These things have been observed.

The theory is that these processes, which have already been observed (and were we to find out they actually occur differently, would be disproven) could and did create a progression from species to species.

Another point, although many evolutionists are involved in refining evolution theory, how many of them really frequently ask if it is true? I have never met one that admited this (although I have read about them). I suggest that the evolutionists, in that sense, are quite like the theologians. They seek only to refine their explanation when found inaccurate, and far less often do they really question the theory.

In order to do basic science, one must accept a framework. However, any scientist worth the paper their degree is printed on questions that framework, especially if something seems to contradict it.

Yes, but if you decide to believe that reality is only that which we can detect with our five senses, then you and I must disagree on what we understand as reality.

That reality is the only reality that science can be concerned with.

The spiritual world is separated from science, as science cannot measure it.

Horribly incorrect. Evolution is based completely on the evidence. The parts of the theory that have not yet been verified can, within the realm of logic, be verified or falsified. It is physically possible.

A belief in God, on the other hand, can never be scientifically verified or falsified.

You are demonstrating a high level of belief in evolutionary theory, I think. Evolution is NOT based completely on the evidence. The fact that there are parts that are unverified (and actually look impossible) means that evolution is not based on evidence. You contradicted yourself. I've never head an evolutionary geneticist make such a claim.



Having God in your belief system has nothing whatsoever to do with your science. As God is outside of science, believing in God is outside of your scientific work. However, if your scientific theory depends on God existing, you have introduced a completely unfalsifiable variable on which your theory depends - which makes it inherently unscientific.

But evolution makes some predictions based on completely unfalsifiable variables too. Thus your point makes your theory inherently unscientific.
Personally, I find the scientific method is better kept for things that we can observe with our five senses. It's no less science if it requires explanations that it cannot prove or disprove. Otherwise, you end up with a method that is expected to explain life, death, and the meaning of both.



Well, let's see:

{Grave} If your theory depends on the existence of miracles, it is unscientific.

{You} I don't think science has to disprove miracles!!

You assumed that keeping a theory from depending on miracles meant that you had to specifically state that miracles could not exist. This is not true.

Agreed. A technical point, perhaps, and perhaps not really relevant to the discussion between Graven and I, but I agree with you, nonetheless. One could accept a theory in which there were no miracles, and yet allow that miracles are possible. Is this your possition?

If one allows that God existed, and had anything to do with life or the universe, then that is a miracle, an intervention of God with the natural laws of nature. Thus the theistic evolutionists believe in miracles, in one form or another. Even if God was merely the big bang expert, if he had anything to do with us being here, that is a miracle.



Can you disprove that man evolved from slime? Can you disprove the miracle of creation? I think you are claiming a bit much here.

So now you are not only leaving out information, but taking things out of context as well?

That was clearly a statement related to a global flood incident. It had nothing to do with slime or creation.

My point was that things that belong to the past cannot be proven. We can only prove (using science) that which we can repeat. Thus I was not taking it out of context. Could it be that you did not understand my point? When someone claims that they can prove evolution, they are showing me that they have not thought things through sufficiently. they don't understand what it means to prove something beyond doubt. So long as there exists another explanation, the first explanation remains just that, an explanation.

It all depends on when the protection and proofreading mechanisms developed. The rate of mutation without them is quite high.



Not if the alternative theory can't even be said to be scientific.



There is a difference between claiming superiority and pointing out the fact that only one side of the debate is arguing from a scientific standpoint.



The current animal does. You are still assuming that the giraffe went from normal neck to extremely long neck in a generation. THis is not the claim. We are talking about a very, very long time for these things to develop. If the neck was only slightly longer than a horse's, the new animal could still reach higher leaves, but might only get a bit dizzy when they bent down. These changes weren't instantaneous.



Irreducible complexity is another way of saying "We don't know." Of course we don't have explanations for everything. If we did, what would be left to study?

However, the very idea behind irreducible complexity is flawed. It assumes that biology is like a Rube-Guldberg machine, that if you take one part out the whole thing falls apart. This is patently untrue. Biology is very, very robust, and only a few core mechanisms are absolutely crucial to life.



Incorrect. The mainstay of evolution is the fact that mutations occur. That "additions" in information occur. These things have been observed.

The theory is that these processes, which have already been observed (and were we to find out they actually occur differently, would be disproven) could and did create a progression from species to species.



In order to do basic science, one must accept a framework. However, any scientist worth the paper their degree is printed on questions that framework, especially if something seems to contradict it.



That reality is the only reality that science can be concerned with.

The spiritual world is separated from science, as science cannot measure it.

Thanks, Dem.... I had just typed about twice this much in reply to Braurong's post... and then Jolt ate it.

But, since you seem to have posted pretty much what I was thinking... and in half as many words :) I don't have to cry myself to sleep.

The only thing I'd add to your response, is that it is wrong to 'write-off' ALL Chinese archeology, just because there may have been some less-than-perfect work done in the past.

One could accept a theory in which there were no miracles, and yet allow that miracles are possible. Is this your possition?


Miracles are not possible.

That is why they are miracles.

You are demonstrating a high level of belief in evolutionary theory, I think.

Not in the least. I don't "believe in" evolution. I believe in God. I see evolution as the current best theory on the development of species.

Evolution is NOT based completely on the evidence. The fact that there are parts that are unverified (and actually look impossible) means that evolution is not based on evidence. You contradicted yourself. I've never head an evolutionary geneticist make such a claim.

There is no contradiction. The basic underlying processes of evolution are based on evidence - they have been observed and verified as much as possible.

The exact progression of evolution (ie. X-->Y-->Z&H) has not been verified. However, evidence can be found which would either support those hypotheses or disprove them.

Meanwhile, I have yet to see anything at all in evolutionary theory that seems impossible.

But evolution makes some predictions based on completely unfalsifiable variables too.

No, it doesn't. It is all well and good for you to keep saying this and not naming any such variables. All it does is demonstrate that you are either unaware of the definition of unfalsifiable, or just want to keep talking.

It's no less science if it requires explanations that it cannot prove or disprove.

According to the scientific method, yes it is. If it cannot possibly be logically disproven, it is not in the realm of science.

One could accept a theory in which there were no miracles, and yet allow that miracles are possible. Is this your possition?

Not exactly. A scientific theory can neither state that miracles are possible or that they are impossible. Much like God, miracles are outside the realm of science, as they are outside the normal workings of the universe - which is what we study with science. Thus, much like the existence or non-existence of God, science must be completely and utterly neutral on the question of miracles. A theory cannot depend on the idea that they exist, and it cannot depend on the idea that they do not exist.

A human being can allow that miracles are possible. A theory cannot.

If one allows that God existed, and had anything to do with life or the universe, then that is a miracle, an intervention of God with the natural laws of nature. Thus the theistic evolutionists believe in miracles, in one form or another. Even if God was merely the big bang expert, if he had anything to do with us being here, that is a miracle.

Yes, we believe in God. However, we do not claim that such a belief is scientific.

My point was that things that belong to the past cannot be proven. We can only prove (using science) that which we can repeat.

Incorrect. Logically, science cannot prove anything. It can only disprove hypotheses or support them.

My thesis had nothing to do with any arguments from such a book. I deliberately left out any mention of either evolution or creation in it. How did you get to that conclusion? Was is something I said?

Because the idea that your 'discovery' was in any way at odds with scientific knowledge on the subject can only be found in creationist literature.

Occam's razor doesn't help you in this case, because the 'mumbo jumbo' of evolutionary theory is infinitely more complicated (at least in the mechanistic sense) than the 'mumbo jumbo' of God's power, from a creationists point of view.

False. 'God' looks simpler, but 'God' is merely a name stuck to a group of processes and mechanisms supposedly so complicated that we cannot even begin to comprehend them. 'Creation' might look simpler because it's one word, but the event was apparently so complex in actuality that no so-called 'theory' of creation has even attempted to explain how it was actually accomplished, merely sticking the useless 'God did it' on the whole mess. As an explaination of an event, that's like saying a television set works 'because of electricity' or a car works 'because of gasoline' and calling it a satisfactory answer. Occam's Razor selects the theory which is actually the least unnecessarily complex, not the one that can be stated in the least complex manner.

Read: http://stardestroyer.net/Empire/Essays/Occam.html
and / or http://www.creationtheory.org/Database/Article11

Sorry, but at the risk of offending some, I have to point out that religion is an excellent case study for Occam's Razor. In fact, not to belabour the point, but I must repeat myself in saying that Occam himself was a theologian, and used Occam's Razor as one of his spiritual arguments. Think of our entire worldview as a huge theory which exists in order to explain the universe. This gives you two competing theories:

1. The universe exists. It has natural laws that govern the behaviour of the world.
2. God exists, and created the universe, which has natural laws that govern the behaviour of the world. God is inscrutable.

Note the commonalities: in both theories, we have the universe and its natural laws. The second theory merely adds the "God" term, which cannot be evaluated because he's inscrutable. So the question becomes: how does the second theory outperform the first one? Once again, let us model this as a pair of competing theories which are expressed in equation form:

[Eq 1] P = N

where P is phenomena and N is Nature

[Eq 2] P = N + G

where G (God) is a mysterious unknown

In this case, the problem is rather obvious: the religious explanation merely adds a mystery term which cannot be evaluated in any way. This is the inherent problem with using an inscrutable God to explain mysteries: you cannot explain anything with an inscrutable answer, any more than you can solve a mathematical equation by simply saying "unknown". And this, said William of Ockham, is why believers must rely on faith.

Your misrepresentation of something so fundamental to science as Occam's Razor is rather telling. Saying Creation only requires one term [God] is like saying evolution only requires one thing: science.

I'm not so interested in attacking evolution, as in learning whether creationism can stand up to modern scientific criticism. I have to say that being told that I am silly and irrelevant is not making you look like you are basing your criticisms on intelligence, but more like you are depending on bullying.

Style over substance fallacy. And you should know that since creation 'theory' isn't a real scientific theory it won't stand up to criticism.

You know as well as I do that no one can express God in terms of mathematical probability. Any method which requires God to be expressed so seems rather narrow minded.

And you cannot see why this makes a theory containing God unscientific? If you can't demonstrate the principle mechanism of your 'theory' even exists, how are we supposed to evaluate it and determine it's workings?

Why can't modern science be 'open minded' enough to allow for God? It sounds to me as though your version of 'scientific method' is something whereby one can reduce the universe to electrons and protons and mathematical formulas. But if it cannot be reduced to this, if it consists of more than this, then your 'scientific method' is heading for disappointment, or an eternal longing for something that will never be satisfied because it cannot.

Then all atheists should experience a similiar longing, and they do not. Further, many scientists are actually religous and see the study of natural mechanisms as the study of God's creation; the difference between them and you is they believe God is a good enough designer to create a mechanism that doesn't require his direct interference after being set in motion. While this belief is still irrational [as I'm sure they would be first to admit], the belief that God, if he exists, does not interfere in the operation of this universe, means scientific discussion must concentrate on strictly natural mechanisms. We have yet to observe anything that cannot be explained as the product of a natural process; while we may not understand all the processes exactly yet, we have certainly found no evidence that suggests an all-powerful being who regularly interferes with the physical world.

Again, you are trying to present a false black-and-white version of the world where everyone is either an atheist scientist or a TRUE BELIEVAH and creationist. World don't work that way.

Apparently, you are convinced by your beliefs enough to call something that scientific method cannot prove an impossibility an impossibility.

No, I am convinced something stupid and utterly unsupported by evidence like the Biblical flood and the six-day creation account is an impossibility. We need not demonstrate something to be totally outside the realm of possibility in order to determine it is irrational; science also does not allow for the possibility that we're actually Gods ourselves and created the world ten minutes ago but then forgot about it and how to use our powers. This cannot be disproven, but we can easily recognise it's unreasonable.

It's much like the story of The Emperor's New Clothes; because the Emperor couldn't disprove that the clothes existed in the manner described he went out 'wearing' them [because he did not want to look like he was stupid because he couldn't see them], but the end result was he was actually naked because the clothes did not exist.

Perhaps you could be so understanding as to allow me to have a different set of beliefs and still be intelligent? If you were to see it from my point of view, you would see a one in a billion chance pitted against a very high probability, perhaps even something closer to a certainty.

Assuming you allow totally irrational concepts like incomprehensibly powerful beings causing parascientific miracles to be very probable, which you apparently do. Unfortunately, from a scientific perspective a miracle is impossible, that's why it's called a fucking miracle!

I see your point now. You are saying that because love is not able to be expressed in scientific terms, therefore I shouldn't despise science. I don't despise science. I think that perhaps you and I can agree, though, that currently love is considered outside of science, and yet still exists. That was my point.

Then your point was irrelevant. Science is the study of rational processes, not irrational ones. For as long as creation 'theory' pretends to be science it must demonstrate itself to be rational, and it is not. Love does not pretend to be science, and the whole 'abstract emotions cannot be demonstrated so you can't be sure creationism isn't true' argument is one of the most ridiculous red herrings creationists come out with.

The only thing I'd add to your response, is that it is wrong to 'write-off' ALL Chinese archeology, just because there may have been some less-than-perfect work done in the past.


Agreed.

It all depends on when the protection and proofreading mechanisms developed. The rate of mutation without them is quite high.

Since we were discussing giraffes, or at least mammals, we were well within the time frame where the proofreading mechanisms were present. I would be interested in knowing whether you could honestly say if bacteria have proofreading systems (before you did a google search or a quick look at a biology text book), just out of interest.



Not if the alternative theory can't even be said to be scientific.


It appears that we may have a difference over what we consider "scientific" and what is not. The origin of life and the universe are questions that science cannot observe, only speculate. The evolution of a short necked mammal to a long necked mammal is also not able to be determined by the scientific method. It is merely speculation. The observation that, e.g., that horse-like animals are not growing longer necks today supports the creationary explanation (though it does not prove it, since the absence of evidence is hardly proof). When there is a problem with evolutionary speculation, i.e., when it fails to provide an adequate solution, either to a creationist or an evolutionist, and if the explanation based on e.g. creation seems to fit the current observations better (that giraffes were there from the beginning), then, naturally, the creation explanation looks better.

You are trying to argue against this by claiming that "God created the world" is not science. True, but neither is "horse necks grew longer until we get a giraffe" science either, since neither of them are provable using scientific method. There is not even any evidence for the "miracle" of evolving long necks.

What you have to do, in order to be fair, is to compare the science that a creationist would do today, with the science that an evolutionist would do today. You are in danger of trying to compare the science that an evolutionist would do today with the account in the Bible (obviously not science). I hope you can see that that is totally unfair.


There is a difference between claiming superiority and pointing out the fact that only one side of the debate is arguing from a scientific standpoint.

I would say that a creationist scientist tries to do his best with observation and repeatibility, while realizing that his science is rather limited because he believes in a God who can never be "discovered/analysed" using his methods. But he is still capable of discovering more about his world, as any scientist can. Thus, he can argue from a scientific standpoint (of course that depends on your definition of a scientific standpoint). However, his idea of science will always differ from that of an evolutionist, particularly one who allows no involvement by any god. It would be totally unfair if the definition of "science" was entirely left to the evolutionists.

If you insist on labelling creation scientists as unscientific, you simply show that you are stubbornly sticking to only your definition of "science". And that would make you look narrowminded.




The current animal does. You are still assuming that the giraffe went from normal neck to extremely long neck in a generation. THis is not the claim. We are talking about a very, very long time for these things to develop. If the neck was only slightly longer than a horse's, the new animal could still reach higher leaves, but might only get a bit dizzy when they bent down. These changes weren't instantaneous.

Actually, this has never been my assumption. I would have hoped that you had realized that I understood a little more of evolution than that. nevermind. I think using your rational, it would just be easier for the larger animals to grow longer legs, or something like that. (now, when I say something like this, I have in mind several generations, or hundreds of generations, not just an individual. Sheesh.) Growing a longer neck is a lot more complicated. For example, when the population of animals are always dizzy (while they are waiting for their blood pressure mechanisms to kick in), they are at a distinct disadvantage to things like predators. In this case, natural selection works against such a movement. The only way around the resistance to change, caused by natural selection, would be if the blood pressure mechanisms and the long neck evolved independently but simultaneously, before arriving at a stage where both were functioning and could evolve no further without finally becoming dependent on one another (or at least the long neck trait being dependent on the pressure valves) several hundreds or thousands of generations later. I have used two traits (blood pressure and long necks) to keep the conversation simple. But every time you add another interdependent trait (longer neck involves a larger nervous system, and perhaps different "wiring" in the brain to cope with that), the probability something like a long neck evolving from short necks become tremendously low.
Now we are getting into the unbelievable realms of gene mutations--more like fantasy. At least it's probably similar to what an evolutionist must think when he hears that "God just made it so". In conclusion, we must be patient with each other's "favourite theory".


However, the very idea behind irreducible complexity is flawed. It assumes that biology is like a Rube-Guldberg machine, that if you take one part out the whole thing falls apart. This is patently untrue. Biology is very, very robust, and only a few core mechanisms are absolutely crucial to life.


That's relative. Life is only robust because it has the information already in place to help it cope with life's challenges. If it didn't have reduntant metabolic pathways (for example) a single mutation in it's metabolism would render survival impossible. Incidentally, a pathway is another form of irreducible complexity, and it's presence in no wise makes your argument valid.

But having redundant pathways is acutally an argument against evolution (why have three pathways that function when only one will do). You have to come up with a rational way of explaining why life would do this. It's particularly difficult when we are observing today that e.g. most of the bacteria that we study today are actually losing their redundancy as they accumulate more mutations.


Incorrect. The mainstay of evolution is the fact that mutations occur. That "additions" in information occur. These things have been observed.

The theory is that these processes, which have already been observed (and were we to find out they actually occur differently, would be disproven) could and did create a progression from species to species.


No, you are incorrect. The observation that mutations occur is not the mainstay of evolution. That is something that everyone accepts, creationism and evolutionism. The mainstay of evolution is that these mutations (in the context of natural selection) somehow account for the evolution of e.g. man from slime.

Additions of information have never been observed. It is only speculation. A duplication of genes may result in more genetic material (two gene copies instead of one) but this is NOT an increase in information (e.g. a new gene). An increase in information would mean that one of the two copies (at least) of the gene accumulates mutations during replication, and that given enough changes, the gene eventually ends up coding for a new protein that somehow gives an advantage to the individual (or community to which the individual belongs). We haven"t seen this yet, as far as I have read, and yet this is how evolutionists account for the 30-100,000 genes in the human, and the 3-5,000 genes in bacteria.


In order to do basic science, one must accept a framework. However, any scientist worth the paper their degree is printed on questions that framework, especially if something seems to contradict it.


Agreed. But perhaps it doesn't happen enough.



That reality is the only reality that science can be concerned with.

The spiritual world is separated from science, as science cannot measure it.

Agreed

Miracles are not possible.

That is why they are miracles.

A definition of a miracle is not "something that is impossible", but rather a situation in which God interfers with the natural order (e.g. laws of nature), IMO.

A person who does accept the possibility of miracles cannot use your definition. You could at least try to be fair.

Not in the least. I don't "believe in" evolution. I believe in God. I see evolution as the current best theory on the development of species.


O.K. Fine. That is what my sister believes also (she isn't a scientist, but rather cluey and relatively widely read). I think, though, that you have to see that a belief in God puts you at odds with many evolutionists who think that we don't need God. And quite rightly so. Any intervention by God that affects our existence is generally frowned on by most of the scientists in each disclipline (genetics, biogenesis, physics, etc.). The alternative is to believe in a God who did nothing, and most likely still does nothing. Such a God is quite difficult to "carry" around.


There is no contradiction. The basic underlying processes of evolution are based on evidence - they have been observed and verified as much as possible.

The exact progression of evolution (ie. X-->Y-->Z&H) has not been verified. However, evidence can be found which would either support those hypotheses or disprove them.

Meanwhile, I have yet to see anything at all in evolutionary theory that seems impossible.


"as much as possible" still leaves great big gaping holes. Of course it's all as much as possible. That's just the problem. Right now, not much proof is possible. Not all of the explanations of evolution have not been traditionally based on evidence. How about Dawin who couldn't understand how the changes came about? Nowadays we know about DNA thanks to Watson and Crick. But Dawin never did. Today evolution also has explanations that are based on things not observed. In my previous post I mentioned the increase in information in the genomes.

If you don't see the things that are impossible, it may not be that they ARE possible, but that you are not looking carefully enough, or that your information on science consists of reading interpretations of data rather then the actual data itself.




But evolution makes some predictions based on completely unfalsifiable variables too.

No, it doesn't. It is all well and good for you to keep saying this and not naming any such variables. All it does is demonstrate that you are either unaware of the definition of unfalsifiable, or just want to keep talking.

I can't deny that I do enjoy a discussion.

Since it cannot be proven that e.g. a horse-like creature evolved into a giraffe, and that such evolution has never been observed, that organims don't create more information, that our current mutation rates and processes are far too inadequate to explain today's biodiversity--I would say that much of evolutionary thought DEPENDS on these assumptions. They have no proof. And the evidence? The most common argument seems to be that there is no better explanation and that involving God in your explanation is silly. Sheesh. What sort of logical argument is that?




Not exactly. A scientific theory can neither state that miracles are possible or that they are impossible. Much like God, miracles are outside the realm of science, as they are outside the normal workings of the universe - which is what we study with science. Thus, much like the existence or non-existence of God, science must be completely and utterly neutral on the question of miracles. A theory cannot depend on the idea that they exist, and it cannot depend on the idea that they do not exist.

A human being can allow that miracles are possible. A theory cannot.


Yes, we believe in God. However, we do not claim that such a belief is scientific.


I mostly agree with you here, I think. Perhaps my idea of having a scientific theory that allows for miracles is not that good. I'm still unsure about it. I have to think about it some more. But for now, I'm happy to agree with your point.

GMC, I haven't forgotten to reply to you. As Graven once put it, the problem of "real life" is preventing me from spending more time on NS.

Since we were discussing giraffes, or at least mammals, we were well within the time frame where the proofreading mechanisms were present. I would be interested in knowing whether you could honestly say if bacteria have proofreading systems (before you did a google search or a quick look at a biology text book), just out of interest.

Bacteria generally do not have proofreading systems, at least not ones as complicated as those in eukaryotes. To even start seeing something that can be used as predictive of mammalian systems, you have to move into eukaryotes. Yeast are especially useful. Drosophila are useful as well.

Edit: By the way, just in case it comes up - I am not counting the inherent proofreading activity of DNA polymerase. I am talking about mechanisms that are there specifically for proofreading.

It appears that we may have a difference over what we consider "scientific" and what is not.

Well, mine comes from the definition of the scientific method. Where are you getting yours?

The origin of life and the universe are questions that science cannot observe, only speculate.

We aren't talking about either. We are talking about evolution, which does not speculate about either.

The evolution of a short necked mammal to a long necked mammal is also not able to be determined by the scientific method. It is merely speculation.

Conclusions drawn are always speculative. That is the way the scientific method works. We look at the evidence and we come up with what seems like the most likely explanation for it.

In science, that explanation can never be proven, it can only be supported. There is plenty of support for this evolution.

You are trying to argue against this by claiming that "God created the world" is not science. True, but neither is "horse necks grew longer until we get a giraffe" science either, since neither of them are provable using scientific method. There is not even any evidence for the "miracle" of evolving long necks.

Let me try this again:

BY THE VERY LOGIC OF THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD, ****NOTHING**** CAN BE PROVEN!!! IT CAN ONLY BE DISPROVEN OR SUPPORTED

What you have to do, in order to be fair, is to compare the science that a creationist would do today, with the science that an evolutionist would do today. You are in danger of trying to compare the science that an evolutionist would do today with the account in the Bible (obviously not science). I hope you can see that that is totally unfair.

A creationist begins with a foregone conclusion. Thus, it is not science. That isn't unfair in the least. Beginning with a completely untestable conclusion - which you have no intentions of ever changing (which is what Creationists do) cannot be construed to follow the scientific method. It is, in fact, the exact opposite of the scientific method.

I would say that a creationist scientist tries to do his best with observation and repeatibility, while realizing that his science is rather limited because he believes in a God who can never be "discovered/analysed" using his methods.

This is true of any theist scientist (which would be most of us).

However, a true scientist doesn't bring God into the science, as you admit below.

If you insist on labelling creation scientists as unscientific, you simply show that you are stubbornly sticking to only your definition of "science". And that would make you look narrowminded.

It has nothing to do with being narrowminded. It has to do with the very definition of science. Faith-based beliefs are not a part of science. Period. And hypotheses that are completely reliant on untestable, unfalsifiable claims are as well.

I think using your rational, it would just be easier for the larger animals to grow longer legs, or something like that.

Sure, if you completely and totally ignore the idea that mutations are random.

Evolution is not directed. It simply occurs.

For example, when the population of animals are always dizzy (while they are waiting for their blood pressure mechanisms to kick in), they are at a distinct disadvantage to things like predators. In this case, natural selection works against such a movement.

Wow, strawmen again?

Who said they were "always dizzy". They would only be dizzy if they dropped their necks down to drink. Interestingly enough, giraffes (even today), don't have to do that very often. Throughout the majority of the year, they get all of their moisture from the leaves they eat. Thus, it is perfectly feasible that the problems caused by their once or twice a year dizziness were completely overrided by their ability to reach food that others couldn't get to.

That's relative. Life is only robust because it has the information already in place to help it cope with life's challenges. If it didn't have reduntant metabolic pathways (for example) a single mutation in it's metabolism would render survival impossible.

....which would not be present in the type of system that IDers claim.

But having redundant pathways is acutally an argument against evolution (why have three pathways that function when only one will do).

This is so simple to answer, it really makes me wonder if you are not participating in the kind of closemindedness you so love to accuse others of.

If a pathway failed, a creature that had a backup would surive.

No, you are incorrect. The observation that mutations occur is not the mainstay of evolution. That is something that everyone accepts, creationism and evolutionism. The mainstay of evolution is that these mutations (in the context of natural selection) somehow account for the evolution of e.g. man from slime.

Incorrect. That is the hypothesis involved in evolution. The mainstays - the processes on which evolution is based - are mutation and natural selection.

Additions of information have never been observed.

Incorrect. Even in humans, additions have been observed. A recent article in, Science I think, discussed "slipping" that occurs, often resulting in a single gene being copied twice.

There are mobile DNA units within *human* DNA that have been observed to copy and splice themselves in another part of the DNA chain.

A duplication of genes may result in more genetic material (two gene copies instead of one) but this is NOT an increase in information (e.g. a new gene).

Oh, wait. I see. You are redefining words to suit your purpose.

Agreed

If it is agreed, why are you so intent on bringing your spiritual search into your science?



O.K. Fine. That is what my sister believes also (she isn't a scientist, but rather cluey and relatively widely read). I think, though, that you have to see that a belief in God puts you at odds with many evolutionists who think that we don't need God. And quite rightly so. Any intervention by God that affects our existence is generally frowned on by most of the scientists in each disclipline (genetics, biogenesis, physics, etc.). The alternative is to believe in a God who did nothing, and most likely still does nothing. Such a God is quite difficult to "carry" around.

You are horribly incorrect. The percentage of atheists among scientists is no larger than the percentage in the general population. Thus, the vast majority of scientists belive in a deity.


Since it cannot be proven that e.g. a horse-like creature evolved into a giraffe, and that such evolution has never been observed, that organims don't create more information, that our current mutation rates and processes are far too inadequate to explain today's biodiversity--I would say that much of evolutionary thought DEPENDS on these assumptions. They have no proof. And the evidence? The most common argument seems to be that there is no better explanation and that involving God in your explanation is silly. Sheesh. What sort of logical argument is that?

Incorrect. The things you call "assumptions" are, in actuality, hypotheses. No one is claiming them to be proven, or to be absolutely true. They are the explanations derived from the underlying evidence, not the other way around.


A definition of a miracle is not "something that is impossible", but rather a situation in which God interfers with the natural order (e.g. laws of nature), IMO.

I believe that by "something that is impossible," Grave meant something that breaks natural law.

A definition of a miracle is not "something that is impossible", but rather a situation in which God interfers with the natural order (e.g. laws of nature), IMO.

A person who does accept the possibility of miracles cannot use your definition. You could at least try to be fair.

On the contrary... I would argue that it is illogical to conceive of 'miracles' as 'possible'.

The way I see it... if a thing is 'possible', then there is a chance that it can happen. If multiple thousands of people can 'possibly' be satiated with a few loaves and fish... then you haven't witnessed a miracle.

A 'miracle', my it's very nature, must be 'miraculous'... and that means it cannot just 'happen'... thus - miracles are 'not possible'... and that's kind of the point.

On the contrary... I would argue that it is illogical to conceive of 'miracles' as 'possible'.

The way I see it... if a thing is 'possible', then there is a chance that it can happen. If multiple thousands of people can 'possibly' be satiated with a few loaves and fish... then you haven't witnessed a miracle.

A 'miracle', my it's very nature, must be 'miraculous'... and that means it cannot just 'happen'... thus - miracles are 'not possible'... and that's kind of the point.

so you mean that feeding thousands of people using only some peices of bread and 2 fish isn't miraculous or that raising people from the dead isn't miraculous?

I should hope Creationism is dead... I posted on a thread just now... The whole Garden of Eden thing is an allegory, not a fact. We all came from goo. ;)

so you mean that feeding thousands of people using only some peices of bread and 2 fish isn't miraculous or that raising people from the dead isn't miraculous?

No.

Way to miss the point.

so you mean that feeding thousands of people using only some peices of bread and 2 fish isn't miraculous or that raising people from the dead isn't miraculous?well, the hard core scientists would argue, "it cannot be proven/disproven so thus it didn't happen." :D

so you mean that feeding thousands of people using only some peices of bread and 2 fish isn't miraculous or that raising people from the dead isn't miraculous?
Well it is, but that doesn't change the point because you can't feed thousands of people one peices of bread and 2 fish and you can't raise people form the dead*

*Well, you can with CPR and other methods, but not under the conditions of the Jesus thingy.

Well it is, but that doesn't change the point because you can't feed thousands of people one peices of bread and 2 fish and you can't raise people form the dead*

*Well, you can with CPR and other methods, but not under the conditions of the Jesus thingy.but isn't that what a "Miracle" is... something that happens that is improbable or Impossible?

but isn't that what a "Miracle" is... something that happens that is improbable or Impossible?
Me flipping a coin and getting the same side 200 times is very improbable, but if I did it, is it a miracle? No.

If something impossible happens, it is clearly not impossible eh ;)

but isn't that what a "Miracle" is... something that happens that is improbable or Impossible?

A miracle would be best described as something that is physically impossible and can only be explained supernaturally, so that seems correct.

A miracle would be best described as something that is physically impossible and can only be explained supernaturally, so that seems correct.
But then again, something physically impossible cannot occur.

But then again, something physically impossible cannot occur.

So, that is why it is a miracle. To occur, it would require something to be able to literally alter the laws of the natural world, and that something would have to be God (or any deity) in order to do this.

So, that is why it is a miracle. To occur, it would require something to be able to literally alter the laws of the natural world, and that something would have to be God (or any deity) in order to do this.
But the minute it occurs it's not physically impossible is it? My point is that one cannot alter the laws of physics, you can merely prove that the have exceptions or may be influenced by special circumstance.

Edit: This is boiled down to: Miracles does not / cannot exist.

Miracles were always interesting to me - but one thing I noticed is that the word is only applied to positive or heartrending things. For instance, if someone drops an egg from a 3rd story window and it does NOT break, people say things like "wow, how unusual" or "that will never happen again". But, if a baby falls from a 3rd story window and crawls away unharmed, then people say "It's a miracle!". The improbability and applicable laws of physics were the same in both cases, but the interpretation is different. I don't understand why if "believers" are willing to admit that a highly unusual set of scientific circumstances could have been what saved the egg, then why do they insist that the safety of the baby HAD to be devine intervention.

But the minute it occurs it's not physically impossible is it? My point is that one cannot alter the laws of physics, you can merely prove that the have exceptions or may be influenced by special circumstance.

Edit: This is boiled down to: Miracles does not / cannot exist.

Yes, but since God set the physical laws in motion, he can alter them if he wants to. Thus, miracles are possible because they are not constrained by the laws God created for this universe. God can break the laws he created.

-Note: I am not a creationist by any stretch-

Me flipping a coin and getting the same side 200 times is very improbable, but if I did it, is it a miracle? No.

If something impossible happens, it is clearly not impossible eh ;)for a statician... that would be a miracle. :D

Miracles were always interesting to me - but one thing I noticed is that the word is only applied to positive or heartrending things. For instance, if someone drops an egg from a 3rd story window and it does NOT break, people say things like "wow, how unusual" or "that will never happen again". But, if a baby falls from a 3rd story window and crawls away unharmed, then people say "It's a miracle!". The improbability and applicable laws of physics were the same in both cases, but the interpretation is different. I don't understand why if "believers" are willing to admit that a highly unusual set of scientific circumstances could have been what saved the egg, then why do they insist that the safety of the baby HAD to be devine intervention.actually, I would consider the egg thing a miracle. that is if the egg wasn't part of that physics experimentation we did in High school.

I don't limit miracles to only mean life saving.

But the minute it occurs it's not physically impossible is it? My point is that one cannot alter the laws of physics, you can merely prove that the have exceptions or may be influenced by special circumstance.

Edit: This is boiled down to: Miracles does not / cannot exist.yes they do... I experienced my life changing miracle that no one could explain away.

Me flipping a coin and getting the same side 200 times is very improbable, but if I did it, is it a miracle? No.

If something impossible happens, it is clearly not impossible eh ;)

Flipping a coin 200 times and getting heads 200 times, is unlikely... but still obviously possible.

Now - what if you flipped it one time, and when it came down, it was a grapefruit?

THAT would be a miracle... it would have to be.

And, how 'possible' is it?

so you mean that feeding thousands of people using only some peices of bread and 2 fish isn't miraculous or that raising people from the dead isn't miraculous?

It is a miracle if you take on FAITH that the events occured as described in the Gospel. All of the gospels were written long after the death of Christ, and one (I forget which but I want to say Matthew or Mark) was written nearly a century later so that Followers of Christ spread about the Roman world would have a summary of events. Therefore, if you believe the words of the Bible are literally the word of God, you are doing so completely on FAITH. If you believe the words of the Bible are divinely inspired, but like all works of man the possibility of error or flaw exists, than you take the words of the Gospel with a certain grain of salt.

Scientifically, no theory allows for the Loaves and Fishes story, so that is clearly a Miracle... assuming it happened based on above. There are ways to bring back the dead (recently dead) through CPR, or its simply possible Lazarus was simply in a coma and he recovered. Such events as these are described historically numerous times (as medical science had severe flaws until fairly recently when it came to determining the difference between coma and death).

Either way though, Miracles are outside the realm of science. Creationism claims to be science. If you depend on what cannot be proved, you are depending on faith. If you are depending on what can be proved (or can be supported by proof) then you are using Science.

Therefore, Creationism is not science.

Flipping a coin 200 times and getting heads 200 times, is unlikely... but still obviously possible.

Now - what if you flipped it one time, and when it came down, it was a grapefruit?

THAT would be a miracle... it would have to be.

And, how 'possible' is it?
It's possible, just extremely unlikely.

It's possible, just extremely unlikely.
I think you have to turn on the improbability drive.

I think you have to turn on the improbability drive.
Without engaging the safety shields.


However, it is theorhetically possible, if, say, equal amounts of matter and antimatter in the shape of a grapefruit sprung into being where the coin was, so the coin is now imbedded inside the grapefruit sized mass that happily managed to form up into amino acids, carbohydrates and lipids to form something like it and some remote area of texas has now been vaporized due to the matter/anti-matter reaction that came about as a result of the grapefruit occuring (to keep the universe in balance).

Am I the only one who find's this musing about miracles both silly and irrelevant?

Am I the only one who find's this musing about miracles both silly and irrelevant?

I probably would if I were to read it. I've given up on these types of threads. In other news, I'm about to reach 900 while you're still all the way back there on 48-something. :D

I probably would if I were to read it. I've given up on these types of threads. In other news, I'm about to reach 900 while you're still all the way back there on 48-something. :D

*Yawns*

I'd tell you to go and evolve, but I think God gave up on helping you do that... :p

Hey, I'm only gonna be here for 15 minutes. Jus lettin' you know.

*Yawns*

I'd tell you to go and evolve, but I think God gave up on helping you do that... :p

Hey, I'm only gonna be here for 15 minutes. Jus lettin' you know.

I'll be on for another 50 minutes. Hey, Lashie came with us yesterday. I showed her Genesis and some Phil Collins and she liked it ;). Her punk wasn't so bad either.

I'll be on for another 50 minutes. Hey, Lashie came with us yesterday. I showed her Genesis and some Phil Collins and she liked it ;). Her punk wasn't so bad either.

Can we do this in Ignitia?

Can we do this in Ignitia?

Sure.

Without engaging the safety shields.

However, it is theorhetically possible, if, say, equal amounts of matter and antimatter in the shape of a grapefruit sprung into being where the coin was, so the coin is now imbedded inside the grapefruit sized mass that happily managed to form up into amino acids, carbohydrates and lipids to form something like it and some remote area of texas has now been vaporized due to the matter/anti-matter reaction that came about as a result of the grapefruit occuring (to keep the universe in balance).

Unfortunately, in order to support your claim of 'possible', you have to resort to the entirely theoretical... and thus, I would argue, not a truly 'scientific' possibility. More like the 'miracles' of science, I feel.

Now, if only you'd talked about Black Body phenomena, or entanglement...

Uh oh. I understand how some of you feel, and I was once like you. Now I too am a creationist. Who would like to see an article that will wholly change their mind forever and allow them to accept a divine power? I'll post it at request. It's not garbage either, its by Gerald Shroeder, ex-NASA and ex-U.S. Atomic Energy Commission member, now on the staff of a college in Jerusalem.

Uh oh. I understand how some of you feel, and I was once like you. Now I too am a creationist. Who would like to see an article that will wholly change their mind forever and allow them to accept a divine power? I'll post it at request. It's not garbage either, its by Gerald Shroeder, ex-NASA and ex-U.S. Atomic Energy Commission member, now on the staff of a college in Jerusalem.
That may be interesting. I might like expanding my mind.

Uh oh. I understand how some of you feel, and I was once like you. Now I too am a creationist. Who would like to see an article that will wholly change their mind forever and allow them to accept a divine power? I'll post it at request. It's not garbage either, its by Gerald Shroeder, ex-NASA and ex-U.S. Atomic Energy Commission member, now on the staff of a college in Jerusalem.
Sure, I'll bite. I'll also bet 100 dollars that I'll still be an atheist, mainly because it doesn't take too much to fool someone who thinks evolution = atheism.

Here is the article. I'm not sure if that's what it is, or an excerpt from his book. Either way, its genius. Gerald Shroeder, ex-nasa, ex atomic energy comm. now staff member of religious school in israel. Strange? Here's the article. Maybe some of you will be joining him there soon.

We have a clock that begins with Adam, and the six days are separate from this clock. The Bible has two clocks.



That might seem like a modern rationalization, if it were not for the fact that Talmudic commentaries 1500 years ago, bring this information down. In the Midrash (Vayikra Rabba 29:1), an expansion of the Talmud, all the Sages agree that Rosh Hashana commemorates the soul of Adam, and that the Six Days of Genesis are separate. Now 1500 years ago, when this information was first recorded, it wasn't because one of the Sages like Hillel was talking to his 10-year-old son who said, "Daddy, you can't believe it. We went to a museum today, and learned all about a billions-of-years-old universe," and Hillel says, "Oh, I better change the Bible, let's keep the six days separate." That wasn't what was happening.



You have to put yourself in the mind frame of 1500 years ago, when people traveled by donkeys and we didn't have electricity or even zippers. Why were the Six Days taken out of the calendar? At the time, there was no need to make them separate.



The reason they were taken out is because time is described differently in those Six Days of Genesis. "There was evening and morning" is an exotic, bizarre, unusual way of describing time.



Once you come from Adam, the flow of time is totally in human terms. Adam and Eve live 130 years before having children! Seth lives 105 years before having children, etc. From Adam forward, the flow of time is totally human in concept. But prior to that time, it's an abstract concept: "Evening and morning." It's as if you're looking down on events from a viewpoint that is not intimately related to them.



Looking deeper into the text.



In trying to understand the flow of time here, you have to remember that the entire Six Days is described in 31 sentences. The Six Days of Genesis, which have given people so many headaches in trying to understand science vis-?-vis the Bible are confined to 31 sentences! At MIT, in the Hayden library, we had about 50,000 books that deal with the development of the universe: cosmology, chemistry, thermodynamics, paleontology, archaeology, the high-energy physics of creation. Up the river at Harvard, at the Weiger library, they probably have 200,000 books on these same topics. The Bible gives us 31 sentences. Don't expect that by a simple reading of those sentence, you'll know every detail that is held within the text. It's obvious that we have to dig deeper to get the information out.



The idea of having to dig deeper is not a rationalization. The Talmud (Chagiga, ch. 2) tells us that from the opening sentence of the Bible, through the beginning of Chapter Two, the entire text is given in parable form, a poem with a text and a subtext. Now, again, put yourself into the mindset of 1500 years ago, the time of the Talmud. Why would the Talmud think it was parable? You think that 1500 years ago they thought that G-d couldn't make it all in 6 days? It was a problem for them? We have a problem today with cosmology and scientific data. But 1500 years ago, what's the problem with 6 days? No problem.



So when the Sages excluded these six days from the calendar, and said that the entire text is parable, it wasn't because they were trying to apologize away what they'd seen in the local museum. There was no local museum. No one was out there digging up ancient fossils. The fact is that a close reading of the text makes it clear that there's information hidden and folded into layers below the surface.



Natural history and human history.





There are early Jewish sources that tell us that the calendar is in two-parts (even predating Leviticus Rabba which goes back almost 1500 years and says it explicitly). In the closing speech that Moses makes to the people, he says if you want to see the fingerprint of G-d in the universe, "consider the days of old, the years of the many generations" (Deut. 32:7) Nachmanides, in the name of Kabbalah, says, "Why does Moses break the calendar into two parts - 'The days of old, and the years of the many generations?' Because, 'Consider the days of old' is the Six Days of Genesis. 'The years of the many generations' is all the time from Adam forward."



Moses says you can see G-d's fingerprint on the universe in one of two ways. Look at the phenomenon of the Six Days, and the development of a universe which is mind-boggling. Or if that doesn't impress you, then just consider society from Adam forward - the phenomenon of human history. Either way, you will find the imprint of G-d.



I recently met in Jerusalem with Professor Leon Lederman, Nobel Prize winning physicist. We were talking science, obviously. And as the conversation went on, I said, "What about spirituality, Leon?" And he said to me, "Schroeder, I'll talk science with you, but as far as spirituality, speak to the people across the street, the theologians." But then he continued, and he said, "But I do find something spooky about the people of Israel coming back to the Land of Israel."



Interesting. The first part of Moses' statement, "Consider the days of old" - about the Six Days of Genesis - that didn't impress Prof. Lederman. But the "Years of the many generations" - human history - that impressed him. Prof. Lederman found nothing spooky about the Eskimos eating fish at the Arctic circle. And he found nothing spooky about Greeks eating Musika in Athens. But he finds something real spooky about Jews eating falafel on Jaffa Street. Because it shouldn't have happened. It doesn't make sense historically that the Jews would come back to the Land of Israel. Yet that's what happened.



And that's one of the functions of the Jewish People in the world. To act as a demonstration. We don't want everyone to be Jewish in the world, just to understand that there is some monkey business going on with history that makes it not all just random. That there's some direction to the flow of history. And the world has seen it through us. It's not by chance that Israel is on the front page of the New York Times more than anyone else.







What is a "day?"



Let's jump back to the Six Days of Genesis. First of all, we now know that when the Biblical calendar says 5700-plus years, we must add to that "plus six days."



A few years ago, I acquired a dinosaur fossil that was dated (by two radioactive decay chains) as 150 million years old. (If you visit me in Jerusalem, I'll be happy to show you the dinosaur fossil - the vertebra of a plesiosaurus.) So my 7-year-old daughter says, "Abba! Dinosaurs? How can there be dinosaurs 150 million years ago, when my Bible teacher says the world isn't even 6000 years old?" So I told her to look in Psalms 90:4. There, you'll find something quite amazing. King David says, "1000 years in Your (G-d's) sight are like a day that passes, a watch in the night." Perhaps time is different from the perspective of King David, than it is from the perspective of the Creator. Perhaps time is different.



The Talmud (Chagiga, ch. 2), in trying to understand the subtleties of Torah, analyzes the word "choshech." When the word "choshech" appears in Genesis 1:2, the Talmud explains that it means black fire, black energy, a kind of energy that is so powerful you can't even see it. Two verses later, in Genesis 1:4, the Talmud explains that the same word - "choshech" - means darkness, i.e. the absence of light.



Other words as well are not to be understood by their common definitions. For example, "mayim" typically means water. But Maimonides says that in the original statements of creation, the word "mayim" may also mean the building blocks of the universe.



Another example is Genesis 1:5, which says, "There is evening and morning, Day One." That is the first time that a day is quantified: evening and morning. Nachmanides discusses the meaning of evening and morning. Does it mean sunset and sunrise? It would certainly seem to.



But Nachmanides points out a problem with that. The text says "there was evening and morning Day One... evening and morning a second day... evening and morning a third day." Then on the fourth day, the sun is mentioned. Nachmanides says that any intelligent reader can see an obvious problem. How do we have a concept of evening and morning for the first three days if the sun is only mentioned on Day Four? We know that the author of the Bible - even if you think it was a bunch of Bedouins sitting around a campfire at night - one thing we know is that the author was smart. He or she or it produced a best-seller. For thousands of years! So you can't attribute the sun appearing only on Day Four to foolishness. There's a purpose for it on Day Four. And the purpose is that as time goes by and people understand more about the universe, you can dig deeper into the text.



Nachmanides says the text uses the words "Vayehi Erev" - but it doesn't mean "there was evening." He explains that the Hebrew letters Ayin, Resh, Bet - the root of "erev" - is chaos. Mixture, disorder. That's why evening is called "erev", because when the sun goes down, vision becomes blurry. The literal meaning is "there was disorder." The Torah's word for "morning" - "boker" - is the absolute opposite. When the sun rises, the world becomes "bikoret", orderly, able to be discerned. That's why the sun needn't be mentioned until Day Four. Because from erev to boker is a flow from disorder to order, from chaos to cosmos. That's something any scientist will testify never happens in an unguided system. Order never arises from disorder spontaneously. There must be a guide to the system. That's an unequivocal statement.



Order can not arise from disorder by random reactions. (In pure probability it can, but the numbers are so infinitesimally small that physics regards the probability as zero.) So you go to the Dead Sea and say, "I see these orderly salt crystals. You're telling me that G-d's there making each crystal?" No. That's not what I'm saying. But the salt crystals do not arise randomly. They arise because laws of nature that are part of the creation package force salt crystals to form. The laws of nature guide the development of the world. And there is a phenomenal amount of development that's encoded in the Six Days. But it's not included directly in the text. Otherwise you'd have creation every other sentence!



The Torah wants you to be amazed by this flow of order, starting from a chaotic plasma and ending up with a symphony of life. Day-by-day the world progresses to higher and higher levels. Order out of disorder. It's pure thermodynamics. And it's stated in terminology of 3000 years ago.



The creation of time.



Each day of creation is numbered. Yet there is discontinuity in the way the days are numbered. The verse says: "There is evening and morning, Day One." But the second day doesn't say "evening and morning, Day Two." Rather, it says "evening and morning, a second day." And the Torah continues with this pattern: "Evening and morning, a third day... a fourth day... a fifth day... the sixth day." Only on the first day does the text use a different form: not "first day," but "Day One" ("Yom Echad"). Many English translations that make the mistake of writing "a first day." That's because editors want things to be nice and consistent. But they throw out the cosmic message in the text! Because there is a qualitative difference, as Nachmanides says, between "one" and "first." One is absolute; first is comparative.



Nachmanides explains that on Day One, time was created. That's a phenomenal insight. Time was created. I can understand creating matter, even space. But time? How do you create time? You can't grab time. You don't even see it. You can see space, you can see matter, you can feel energy, you can see light energy. I understand a creation there. But the creation of time? Eight hundred years ago, Nachmanides attained this insight from the Torah's use of the phrase, "Day One." And that's exactly what Einstein taught us in the Laws of Relativity: that there was a creation, not just of space and matter, but of time itself.



Einstein's Law of Relativity.



We look at the universe, and say, "How old is the universe? Looking back in time, the universe is about 15 billion years old." That's our view of time. But what is the Bible's view of time? How does it see time? Maybe it sees time differently. And that makes a big difference. Albert Einstein taught us that Big Bang cosmology brings not just space and matter into existence, but that time is part of the nitty gritty. Time is a dimension. Time is affected by your view of time. How you see time depends on where you're viewing it. A minute on the moon goes faster than a minute on the Earth. A minute on the sun goes slower. Time on the sun is actually stretched out so that if you could put a clock on the sun, it would tick more slowly. It's a small difference, but it's measurable and measured. If you could ripen oranges on the Sun, they would take longer to ripen. Why? Because time goes more slowly. Would you feel it going more slowly? No, because your biology would be part of the system. If you were living on the Sun, your heart would beat more slowly. Wherever you are, your biology is in synch with the local time.



If you could look from one system to another, you would see time very differently. Because depending on factors like gravity and velocity, you will perceive time in a way that is very different.



Here's an example: One evening we were sitting around the dinner table, and my 11-year-old daughter asked, "How you could have dinosaurs? How you could have billions of years scientifically - and thousands of years Biblically at the same time? So I told her to imagine a planet where time is so stretched out that while we live out two years on Earth, only three minutes will go by on that planet. Now, those places actually exist, they are observed. It would be hard to live there with their conditions, and you couldn't get to them either, but in mental experiments you can do it. Two years are going to go by on Earth, three minutes are going to go by on the planet. So my daughter says, "Great! Send me to the planet. I'll spend three minutes there. I'll do two years worth of homework. I'll come back home, no homework for two years."



Nice try. Assuming she was age 11 when she left, and her friends were 11. She spends three minutes on the planet and then comes home. (The travel time takes no time.) How old is she when she gets back? Eleven years and 3 minutes. And her friends are 13. Because she lived out 3 minutes while we lived out 2 years. Her friends aged from 11 years to 13 years, while she's 11 years and 3 minutes.



Had she looked down on Earth from that planet, her perception of Earth time would be that everybody was moving very quickly. Whereas if we looked up, she'd be moving very slowly.



Which is correct? Is it three years? Or three minutes? The answer is both. They're both happening at the same time. That's the legacy of Albert Einstein. It so happens there literally billions of locations in the universe, where if you could put a clock at that location, it would tick so slowly, that from our perspective (if we could last that long) 15 billion years would go by... but the clock at that remote location would tick out six days. Nobody disputes this data.



Time travel and the Big Bang.



But how does this help to explain the Bible? Because anyway the Talmud and commentators seem to say that Six Days of Genesis were regular 24-hour periods!



Let's look a bit deeper. The classical Jewish sources say that before the beginning, we don't really know what there is. We can't tell what predates the universe. The Midrash asks the question: Why does the Bible begin with the letter Bet? Because Bet (which is written like a backwards C) is closed in all directions and only open in the forward direction. Hence we can't know what comes before - only after. The first letter is a Bet - closed in all directions and only open in the forward direction.



Nachmanides the Kabbalist expands the statement. He says that although the days are 24 hours each, they contain "kol yemot ha-olam" - all the ages and all the secrets of the world.



Nachmanides says that before the universe, there was nothing... but then suddenly the entire creation appeared as a minuscule speck. He gives a dimension for the speck: something very tiny like the size of a grain of mustard. And he says that is the only physical creation. There was no other physical creation; all other creations were spiritual. The Nefesh (the soul of animal life) and the Neshama (the soul of human life) are spiritual creations. There's only one physical creation, and that creation was a tiny speck. The speck is all there was. Anything else was G-d. In that speck was all the raw material that would be used for making everything else. Nachmanides describes the substance as "dak me'od, ein bo mamash" - very thin, no substance to it. And as this speck expanded out, this substance - so thin that it has no essence - turned into matter as we know it.



Nachmanides further writes: "Misheyesh, yitfos bo zman" - from the moment that matter formed from this substance-less substance, time grabs hold. Not "begins." Time is created at the beginning. But time "grabs hold." When matter condenses, congeals, coalesces, out of this substance so thin it has no essence - that's when the Biblical clock starts.



Science has shown that there's only one "substanceless substance" that can change into matter. And that's energy. Einstein's famous equation, E=MC2, tells us that energy can change into matter. And once it changes into matter, time grabs hold.



Nachmanides has made a phenomenal statement. I don't know if he knew the Laws of Relativity. But we know them now. We know that energy - light beams, radio waves, gamma rays, x-rays - all travel at the speed of light, 300 million meters per second. At the speed of light, time does not pass. The universe was aging, but time only grabs hold when matter is present. This moment of time before the clock begins for the Bible, lasted about 1/100,000 of a second. A miniscule time. But in that time, the universe expanded from a tiny speck, to about the size of the Solar System. From that moment on we have matter, and time flows forward. The clock begins here.



Now the fact that the Bible tells us there is "evening and morning Day One", comes to teach us time from a Biblical perspective. Einstein proved that time varies from place to place in the universe, and that time varies from perspective to perspective in the universe. The Bible says there is "evening and morning Day One".



Now if the Torah were seeing time from the days of Moses and Mount Sinai - long after Adam - the text would not have written Day One. Because by Sinai, millions of days already passed. And since there was a lot of time with which to compare Day One, it would have said "A First Day." By the second day of Genesis, the Bible says "a second day," because there was already the First Day with which to compare it. You could say on the second day, "what happened on the first day." But you could not say on the first day, "what happened on the first day" because "first" implies comparison - an existing series. And there was no existing series. Day One was all there was.



Even if the Torah was seeing time from Adam, the text would have said "a first day", because by its own statement there are six days. The Torah says "Day One" because the Torah is looking forward from the beginning. And it says, how old is the universe? Six Days. We'll just take time up until Adam. Six Days. We look back in time, and say the universe is 15 billion years old. But every scientist knows, that when we say the universe is 15 billion years old, there's another half of the sentence that we never say. The other half of the sentence is: The universe is 15 billion years old as seen from the time-space coordinates that we exist in. That's Einstein's view of relativity.



The key is that the Torah looks forward in time, from very different time-space coordinates, when the universe was small. But since then, the universe has expanded out. Space stretches, and that stretching of space totally changes the perception of time.



Imagine in your mind going back billions of years ago to the beginning of time. Now pretend way back at the beginning of time, when time grabs hold, there's an intelligent community. (It's totally fictitious.) Imagine that the intelligent community has a laser, and it's going to shoot out a blast of light, and every second it's going to pulse. Every second -- pulse. Pulse. Pulse. It shoots the light out, and then billions of years later, way far down the time line, we here on Earth have a big satellite dish, and we receive that pulse of light. And on that pulse of light is imprinted (printing information on light is called fiber optics - sending information by light), "I'm sending you a pulse every second." And then a second goes by and the next pulse is sent.



Now light travels 300 million meters per second. So the two light pulses are separated by 300 million meters at the beginning. Now they travel through space for billions of years, and they're going to reach the Earth billions of years later. But wait a minute. Is the universe static? No. The universe is expanding. That's the cosmology of the universe. And that mean it's expanding into an empty space outside the universe. There's only the universe. There is no space outside the universe. The universe expands by space stretching. So as these pulses go through billions of years of travelling, and the universe is stretching, and space is stretching, what's happening to these pulses? The space between them is also stretching. So the pulses really get further and further apart. Billions of years later, when the first pulse arrives, we say, "Wow - a pulse!" And written on it is "I'm sending you a pulse every second." You call all your friends, and you wait for the next pulse to arrive. Does it arrive another second later? No! A year later? Maybe not. Maybe billions of years later. Because depending on how much time this pulse of light has traveled through space, will determine the amount of stretching that has occurred. That's standard cosmology.



15 billion or six days?



Today, we look at time going backward. We see 15 billion years. Looking forward from when the universe is very small - billions of times smaller - the Torah says six days. In truth, they both may be correct.



What's exciting about the last few years in cosmology is we now have quantified the data to know the relationship of the "view of time" from the beginning, relative to the "view of time" today. It's not science fiction any longer. Any one of a dozen physics text books all bring the same number. The general relationship between time near the beginning and time today is a million million. That's a 1 with 12 zeros after it. So when a view from the beginning looking forward says "I'm sending you a pulse every second," would we see it every second? No. We'd see it every million million seconds. Because that's the stretching effect of the expansion of the universe.



The Torah doesn't say every second, does it? It says Six Days. How would we see those six days? If the Torah says we're sending information for six days, would we receive that information as six days? No. We would receive that information as six million million days. Because the Torah's perspective is from the beginning looking forward.



Six million million days is a very interesting number. What would that be in years? Divide by 365 and it comes out to be 16 billion years. Essentially the estimate of the age of the universe. Not a bad guess for 3000 years ago.



The way these two figures match up is extraordinary. I'm not speaking as a theologian; I'm making a scientific claim. I didn't pull these numbers out of hat. That's why I led up to the explanation very slowly, so you can follow it step-by-step.



Now we can go one step further. Let's look at the development of time, day-by-day, based on the expansion factor. Every time the universe doubles, the perception of time is cut in half. Now when the universe was small, it was doubling very rapidly. But as the universe gets bigger, the doubling time gets exponentially longer. This rate of expansion is quoted in "The Principles of Physical Cosmology," a textbook that is used literally around the world.



(In case you want to know, this exponential rate of expansion has a specific number averaged at 10 to the 12th power. That is in fact the temperature of quark confinement, when matter freezes out of the energy: 10.9 times 10 to the 12th power Kelvin degrees divided by (or the ratio to) the temperature of the universe today, 2.73 degrees. That's the initial ratio which changes exponentially as the universe expands.)



The calculations come out to be as follows:



•The first of the Biblical days lasted 24 hours, viewed from the "beginning of time perspective." But the duration from our perspective was 8 billion years.

•The second day, from the Bible's perspective lasted 24 hours. From our perspective it lasted half of the previous day, 4 billion years.

•The third day also lasted half of the previous day, 2 billion years.

•The fourth day - one billion years.

•The fifth day - one-half billion years.

•The sixth day - one-quarter billion years.





When you add up the Six Days, you get the age of the universe at 15 and 3/4 billion years. The same as modern cosmology. Is it by chance?



But there's more. The Bible goes out on a limb and tells you what happened on each of those days. Now you can take cosmology, paleontology, archaeology, and look at the history of the world, and see whether or not they match up day-by-day. And I'll give you a hint. They match up close enough to send chills up your spine.

Wow. It's a bunch of pseudo-spiritualistic ramblings. I'M A BELIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEVER! Not to mention that the author is stupid enough to think that plesiosaurs are dinosaurs.

This is bad, even for things that supposedly are so convincing that they will make anyone believe in God. And that's saying something.

Edit: The universe is 13.7 billion years old. Not 16 billion. So much for that portion of his "argument".

In summation: "6 days" is different from Yahweh's perspective.

Yawn. I'm sure this has come up within the last 60 or so pages, so I'm just saving you reading time.

There's nothing groundbreaking or intelligent about it; I rationalized in this manner when I was 12. The only reason why the scientist believes this tripe is because of his propensity for religion.

Bottom line: Stick with the people who make the world better, not drag it into the Dark Ages.

Well I thought it was interesting. Is the universe 13.7 billion years old? After all the quote was by a man who was ex-nasa and ex-energy commission and current professor. He must be smart and it does sound like he works in the sciences(most likely physics from his background and arguments). I am just curious because a person with more experience on the matter of physics seems more reliable.

Well I thought it was interesting. Is the universe 13.7 billion years old?
According to all recent scientific analyses, yes.

Also, physicists don't deal with the age of the universe. Cosmologists do.

Originally posted by CthulhuFhtagn:
Wow. It's a bunch of pseudo-spiritualistic ramblings. I'M A BELIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEVER! Not to mention that the author is stupid enough to think that plesiosaurs are dinosaurs.

This is bad, even for things that supposedly are so convincing that they will make anyone believe in God. And that's saying something.

Edit: The universe is 13.7 billion years old. Not 16 billion. So much for that portion of his "argument".

Maybe you should have a little respect for someone who actlally has the credentials to talk about their field. We have hundreds of estimates on how the universe is. One thing I've learned as a result of my friendship with a few Jewish scholars is that in their lives there is no such thing as blind faith, but others do live lives of ignorance. This is why the many books published dealing with these amazing discoveries in science are not publicized. They are only read in some circles, by people of intellect that has a reached a point in which they would rather lead the masses to believe whatever garbage they believe instead of enlightening them. Your mind could not be changed by anything anyone would have written. Who do you want an excerpt from? God himself? Or would that not do? Would he have to show up in your room and explain things to you? To accept a theory, an opinion, or a truth, you ahve to open your mind to it. If you won't, don't bother arguing with anyone. Thanks for putting an obnoxious spin on a serious article by the way. This guy devoted his life to it. He wasn't born indoctrinated. He was an atheist for most of his life. And he's not the only physicist to have an amazing relapse into faith either- there are plenty. But as long as you believe you're smarter than them, by all means believe what you will.

According to all recent scientific analyses, yes.

Also, physicists don't deal with the age of the universe. Cosmologists do.

Ya, I've heard as old as 15 billion, but definitely not more.
Sorry to all you kabbalists out there, wait a billion years or so for your field day.

Maybe you should have a little respect for someone who actlally has the credentials to talk about their field. We have hundreds of estimates on how the universe is.
As I already noted, physics has nothing to do with the age of the universe. Cosmology deals with it.

By the way, the age of the universe has been disputed to be from 11.2 billion to 20 billion years. And don't think people take up definite stances either. Edwin Hubble went though at least 3 positions, from the universe being 2 billion years old to 13.

You know what? I apologize for ever posting that. You superior logic has undermined an ex-nasa and u.s. atomic energy commission guy. And as for the supposed age of the universe, I guess you even missed the whole point of the article- that the six days aren't literal, but an allegory based on our limited perspective of the dimension of time.
And yet you claimed that article would make anyone believe in God. Forgive me for being underwhelmed.

Thanks for putting an obnoxious spin on a serious article by the way. This guy devoted his life to it. He wasn't born indoctrinated. He was an atheist for most of his life.

The ideas he puts forth are common place to most Jews. Seriously, it's not all that ground breaking. And any high schooler trying to reconcile faith and science can find the magic loophole.

Talk of Einstein and kaballah are just icing on this pie in the sky. The bottom line is, even if it were true, it doesn't suffice for evidence.

Any learned man of the Tanach recognizes its origin from mortal scribes, not Yahweh... you yourself admitted that it was a parable, something to be interpreted. You can't just pick and choose what is to be taken literally and not from the Torah, and hence, the "argument" collapses on its own, without the need to bicker over all the inconsistencies about dual creation myths, pi, and stoning of children.

And once again, to reiterate, spirituality has been found to be predetermined.

All is forgiven. Your reason triumphs. But very seriously- one day stand in front of the mirror and ask yourself what would make you believe? The golden ratio- the blueprint of creation in every form of life? The many connections between Kabbalism and science, thousands of years apart yet corroborating? The basis for Galileo's astrological tables- made by Jewish scholars hundreds of years prior and acknowledged as a basis for his own by himself? No no, that won't do at all. The fact is, we will never be able to go back in time and see what actually happened. So just ask yourself what it would take, and I think you'll find yourself an answer short.

By the way, the age of the universe has been disputed to be from 11.2 billion to 20 billion years. And don't think people take up definite stances either. Edwin Hubble went though at least 3 positions, from the universe being 2 billion years old to 13.
You mean we can actualy change our mind when we learn new data!! amazing ... and amazing the fact that people can have differing opinions when the data is not conclusive wow I did not think that was possible :rolleyes:

It seems like forever since there has been a Creationism vs. Evolution thread in forums. So I wondered, where have all the Creationists gone to?

I've been confronted lately once again with plenty of evidence for evolutionary transition, and it remind me of my old Creationist fellows who wish to deny this reality.

You know, as much as I appreciate it if Creationism is finally extinct... the world is kinda boring without those endless discussions going on. ;)

No you know, you just started one, and the Creationists (contrary to popular belief) aren't the ones trying to shove their ideas down other people's throats. I haven't seen one single thread made by a Creationist or believer that tries to start a huge debate over religion and ethics, it's always the evolutionists and atheists trying to start arguments with us, and still claim that we shove our beliefs down their throats.

No you know, you just started one, and the Creationists (contrary to popular belief) aren't the ones trying to shove their ideas down other people's throats. I haven't seen one single thread made by a Creationist or believer that tries to start a huge debate over religion and ethics, it's always the evolutionists and atheists trying to start arguments with us, and still claim that we shove our beliefs down their throats.
Then you should spend more time reading the forums

The golden ratio- the blueprint of creation in every form of life? The many connections between Kabbalism and science, thousands of years apart yet corroborating? The basis for Galileo's astrological tables- made by Jewish scholars hundreds of years prior and acknowledged as a basis for his own by himself?

No. Nononono. We were never good at math or science. Not until after the fall of the second temple, and the Ashkenazis came into being. Back then, we couldn't even calculate pi to the first decimal, let alone make a decent calendar. I mean, seriously. 12 months and a leap month?

What we have is the knack to obsess about things until we see things that aren't there. Associations we mark up for more than coincidences or the way things simply are.

And why shouldn't divine proportions exist? It's natural, just like exponentials. If it wasn't e, phi, and pi, it would 2.1435..., 1.54262..., and 3.5424....

Creationism? Gone?

*laughs himself to death*

The day the creationism dies is the day someone disproves the existance of deities.

Creationism? Gone?

*laughs himself to death*

The day the creationism dies is the day someone disproves the existance of deities.
You are thinking of ID not Creationism

Creationism is the belief in the LITTLERAL bible creation story ... 7 24 hr days and all
That can be disproven

You are thinking of ID not Creationism

Creationism is the belief in the LITTLERAL bible creation story ... 7 24 hr days and all
That can be disproven

Yes, but spirituality is genetic. So in the same way, it won't disappear. Only be marginalized like all other outdated superstitions and dogmas.


Then you should spend more time reading the forums

No, he's right. We are.
We're trying to prevent the world from going into another Dark Age.

We won't let idiots walk around claiming some random pie in the sky -- that can't withstand the slightest bit of empirical reasoning, let alone scientific scrutiny -- be called "science" and, worse still, indoctrined into our youth.

Evolution might not be the most sound theory, but it's the best we have; and unlike creationism, it's science and it's a genuine theory. The alternative is nothing more than [objectively speaking] baseless bullshit.

Uh oh. I understand how some of you feel, and I was once like you. Now I too am a creationist. Who would like to see an article that will wholly change their mind forever and allow them to accept a divine power?

Several things. First off, when most people talk about Creationists, they are talking about those who take the English translation of Genesis completely literally, so if you agree with your article, you wouldn't apply.

Second of all, why do people assume that a recognition of evolution as the current best scientific theory on the origin and progression of species can only be reached by an atheist?

I've got news for you dear, the percentage of atheists among scientists is no higher than that among the general populace.

No you know, you just started one, and the Creationists (contrary to popular belief) aren't the ones trying to shove their ideas down other people's throats.

Really? I thought they were the ones trying to get a totally unscientific non-theory taught in science classes, y'see. Some of them, anyway.

As I said earlier, as soon as Creationists stop pretending their religion is valid as science people will leave them be.

<<note this is directed at strict creationists and is not meant to be an attack on atheists at all (if anyone has more up to date info or a correction for something I messed up please let me know>>

Ok I don't pretend to be a scientist (much to the shame of my family), however I am a history nerd with a specialization in Ancient Mesopotamia so I feel qualified to clear at least one thing up.
I believe in the God of the Bible but also in what I call inspired evolution. In other words that God set in motion and guided the evolutionary process. Here's how that meshes that with the "six day" account of Genesis.

The first human civilization that we know about was Sumeria centered in between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers right? This is the civ that produced the Epic of Gilgamesh (EoG for later reference) passed down by word of mouth by Sumerian priests and later written by Babylonian scribes (the oldest work known to modern archeology). Now the important thing is that the Genesis creation account follows closely the poetic style of the EoG hinting that the story passed down through the Habru and later their Hebrew off-shoots draws from the Sumerian influence over the entire region. Abraham himself is believed to have lived in the Sumerian "Capital" (Sumeria was arranged much like ancient Greece, into semi-autonomous city-states) of Ur (or Uruk), before God called him. As a result, stories passed down through his family would naturally take on Sumerian style and idioms. The most relevant of the idioms is "morning and evening" meaning simply a "passage of time". Also "day" was a Sumerian idiom for a "period". Therefore when looked at through the unquestionable tint of Sumerian culture on the region (we still feel it's effects now - the 24 hr day) "a morning and an evening the first day" more likely than not means "a passage of time for the first era" therefore allotting as much time as required for evolution.

I've got news for you dear, the percentage of atheists among scientists is no higher than that among the general populace.
You're wrong there Dem. The world percentage of atheists in 14%. The percentage of scientists who are atheists is 60%.

You're wrong there Dem. The world percentage of atheists in 14%. The percentage of scientists who are atheists is 60%.Are you talking globally? There are huge segments of the population living in subsistence conditions who are under-represented in the scientific community.

Or, to put it another way, what's the general atheistic proportion among cultures where there is a possibility of become a scintist, rather than inclusive of all those under the thumb of whatever agro-economy situation where an overwhelming majority of people find themselves unable to break from (and where naturalistic religion is probably the soup of the day, much as for keeping ttrack of calendar as for justifying natural phenomena...)

You're wrong there Dem. The world percentage of atheists in 14%. The percentage of scientists who are atheists is 60%.

You're going to have to source those, as I have never seen any numbers like that.

The last surveys I saw placed the world percentage of atheists at about 1% - and the percentage of scientists the same.

Edit: I think I found your source on the scientist numbers. It is linked on Wikipedia. Problem is, the questions they asked look incredibly biased. They ask about "a God in intellectual and effective communication with humankind" and in "personal immortality."

Many scienists would respond (as the numbers say) with "disbelief or doubt" to that type of god. However, that does not suggest a disbelief or doubt in any god.

I also notice that the source consistently uses the capital "g", suggesting a Judeo-Christian God. However, again, a disbelief or doubt in the Judeo-Christian God does not imply atheism.

Edit again: I think I see where you are getting the 14% number, but you are very clearly misusing it. The 14% is used to represent atheists, agnostics, and those who claim no religion, with the absolute highest percentage of actual atheists given as 8-10% in one study, with most studies listing atheists at no more than 2-4% of the population.

Maybe you should have a little respect for someone who actlally has the credentials to talk about their field.


And, if he was talking about NASA mission data, perhaps you would have a point.

I'm not sure which college science course, or which part of NASA placement and training, YOU think might make the fellow an expert on rationalising 'god'.


And he's not the only physicist to have an amazing relapse into faith either- there are plenty. But as long as you believe you're smarter than them, by all means believe what you will.

First: Faith, conversion, and relapse prove NOTHING about the VALIDITY of a faith.

Second: Why do you assume that a NASA operative is 'smarter' than anyone else you might talk to? Einstein was a humble patent-clerk, remember.

Third: If you read the whole passage - the author seeks to justify a faith... so, the relapse PRECEDES the evidence.... the conversion was one of 'faith', and the 'evidence' is past-dated justification. Whether or not the author was a 'scientist' before, this is not 'scientific'... it means the observation is being skewed to match the conclusion.

No you know, you just started one, and the Creationists (contrary to popular belief) aren't the ones trying to shove their ideas down other people's throats. I haven't seen one single thread made by a Creationist or believer that tries to start a huge debate over religion and ethics, it's always the evolutionists and atheists trying to start arguments with us, and still claim that we shove our beliefs down their throats.

What about forcing Zoo's to have Creationist mythology as a display of origins?

A zoo is not a religious institution, it is a civil institution, and, maybe, a scientific institution.

So - these 'creationist' exhibits really ARE Creationists 'shoving their ideas down other people's throats'.

False. 'God' looks simpler, but 'God' is merely a name stuck to a group of processes and mechanisms supposedly so complicated that we cannot even begin to comprehend them. 'Creation' might look simpler because it's one word, but the event was apparently so complex in actuality that no so-called 'theory' of creation has even attempted to explain how it was actually accomplished, merely sticking the useless 'God did it' on the whole mess. As an explaination of an event, that's like saying a television set works 'because of electricity' or a car works 'because of gasoline' and calling it a satisfactory answer. Occam's Razor selects the theory which is actually the least unnecessarily complex, not the one that can be stated in the least complex manner.

Hello again GMC.
I don't know if it really is that fair to stand on one side of the argument and call the other one more complicated. To do that, one would have to know God and the evolutionary process. But actually, I don't argue that God is simple, but that the act of creation that He performed seems simpler than the long drawn out process of evolution. Then again, from a purely mechanistic point of view, since both processes end up at the same point (e.g. life), perhaps they are both as complicated as each other. My point is that Occam's Razor, selecting the explanation that is simplest, is only going tell you what you think is the most simplest. It won't actually give you any more information than you already know. Thus, it is not bringing any clarity to this argument, since from my point of view, the act of creation continually comes out as more simple than the convoluted evolutionary one.



Your misrepresentation of something so fundamental to science as Occam's Razor is rather telling. Saying Creation only requires one term [God] is like saying evolution only requires one thing: science.

Actually, it's not that fundamental. They only mentioned it very briefly in my university studies. And I disagree that I have misunderstood it. It's more likely that you have misunderstood my point. I simply do not use it in the same way that you do, which is consistent with us have very different world views.


And you cannot see why this makes a theory containing God unscientific? If you can't demonstrate the principle mechanism of your 'theory' even exists, how are we supposed to evaluate it and determine it's workings?

I suppose a scientific theory looks better when it doesn't try to incorporate God. But if God does exist, then what is the point of trying to keep Him out of your reasoning? I do realize that science cannot probe God. But that is no reason for cutting Him out of the picture. That is altogether too simplistic.



Then all atheists should experience a similiar longing, and they do not. Further, many scientists are actually religous and see the study of natural mechanisms as the study of God's creation; the difference between them and you is they believe God is a good enough designer to create a mechanism that doesn't require his direct interference after being set in motion. While this belief is still irrational [as I'm sure they would be first to admit], the belief that God, if he exists, does not interfere in the operation of this universe, means scientific discussion must concentrate on strictly natural mechanisms. We have yet to observe anything that cannot be explained as the product of a natural process; while we may not understand all the processes exactly yet, we have certainly found no evidence that suggests an all-powerful being who regularly interferes with the physical world.


It's looks like you are feeling like you are in the position to decide what is rational and what isn't.
What is your definition of a religious person, just out of interest.
I agree that scientific discussions should focus on natural mechanisms. But that just means that science is limited, not that God is outside of science or that He doesn't exist.
The limitation of science would explain why it has failed to find God. It has, for those who are looking, found evidence for God, e.g. ID.


No, I am convinced something stupid and utterly unsupported by evidence like the Biblical flood and the six-day creation account is an impossibility. We need not demonstrate something to be totally outside the realm of possibility in order to determine it is irrational; science also does not allow for the possibility that we're actually Gods ourselves and created the world ten minutes ago but then forgot about it and how to use our powers. This cannot be disproven, but we can easily recognise it's unreasonable.

It's much like the story of The Emperor's New Clothes; because the Emperor couldn't disprove that the clothes existed in the manner described he went out 'wearing' them [because he did not want to look like he was stupid because he couldn't see them], but the end result was he was actually naked because the clothes did not exist.


Come now, you may think of it as stupid, but that is hardly polite. I don't think much of some parts of the evolutionary theory, but that is hardly grounds for describing it as stupid (and consequently the people who believe it).
It's obvious that a person who believes in one explanation will find the other one unreasonable.
The story of the Emperor's clothes fits in quite well with a number of people I can think of right now, who accepted evolution because they didn't want to look stupid. The knife cuts both ways.


Assuming you allow totally irrational concepts like incomprehensibly powerful beings causing parascientific miracles to be very probable, which you apparently do. Unfortunately, from a scientific perspective a miracle is impossible, that's why it's called a fucking miracle!

Every time you define a miracle as an impossibility, I cannot use your definition. However, if you define a miracle as impossible within the known laws of nature, then I can use your definition.
I have already said before, a scientific perspective cannot include discussions about God, but that doesn't mean that it has to rule out a supernatural interference (miracle).
And who are you to decide what is irrational and what isn't. If God does exist, then your belief system is pretty irrational.


Then your point was irrelevant. Science is the study of rational processes, not irrational ones. For as long as creation 'theory' pretends to be science it must demonstrate itself to be rational, and it is not. Love does not pretend to be science, and the whole 'abstract emotions cannot be demonstrated so you can't be sure creationism isn't true' argument is one of the most ridiculous red herrings creationists come out with.

And I was just trying to point out that there is plenty of things in this world that science cannot prove or study (yet anyway). And therefore a lack of evidence (from the science community) is hardly proof. If you call love irrational, well, now that is rather telling. It sounds a bit suspicious to me that you are actually at the point of saying that it doesn't exist.

I wonder if you could provide a satisfactory definition of rational and irrational.

On the contrary... I would argue that it is illogical to conceive of 'miracles' as 'possible'.

The way I see it... if a thing is 'possible', then there is a chance that it can happen. If multiple thousands of people can 'possibly' be satiated with a few loaves and fish... then you haven't witnessed a miracle.

A 'miracle', my it's very nature, must be 'miraculous'... and that means it cannot just 'happen'... thus - miracles are 'not possible'... and that's kind of the point.

I think you have missed my point. I am not saying that miracles are possible, but that with God miracles are possible. My definition depends on God being actively involved and working against the natural laws in a given situation. The only chance that a miracle would happen is if God was involved. How many more ways can I put it??? Without God, a miracle is impossible. There, does that satisfy you?

I think you have missed my point. I am not saying that miracles are possible, but that with God miracles are possible. My definition depends on God being actively involved and working against the natural laws in a given situation. The only chance that a miracle would happen is if God was involved. How many more ways can I put it??? Without God, a miracle is impossible. There, does that satisfy you?
its the perception. to those with faith, it's a Miracle. to those without faith, it's "Luck" or "Coincedence."

I don't know if it really is that fair to stand on one side of the argument and call the other one more complicated. To do that, one would have to know God and the evolutionary process.

No, one would not. The evolutionary process relies on natural mechanisms that can be measured and tested, whereas God is fundamentally unpredictable and his methods and mechanisms are beyond the possibility of our comprehension. Because we have no hope of ever understanding these mechanisms, 'God' is not more simple than evolution according to Parsimony.

But actually, I don't argue that God is simple, but that the act of creation that He performed seems simpler than the long drawn out process of evolution.

God is the fundamental mechanism of this action; creationism's version of creation cannot happen without God. That's like arguing that evolution doesn't have to be simple because making hybrid plants is easy. Further, you earlier admitted your theory requires speciation [macroevoution]. How can it possibly be simpler when it includes the other theory and then some more besides?

Then again, from a purely mechanistic point of view, since both processes end up at the same point (e.g. life), perhaps they are both as complicated as each other.

No.

Let's say you want to put something on a shelf, yes? So, person A picks it up, and puts it on the shelf. Job done. Person B measures the shelf, weighs the object, makes a lot of calculations and models, finally producing a robot that picks the object up and puts it on the shelf.

Now, in both these cases, the final stage is there is an object on a shelf, but one is obviously more complex than the other; not only has person B done a huge number of things A did not, but he's also had to use his muscles just as A did. And once again, 'life' is not the end point of evolution, that's abiogenesis.

My point is that Occam's Razor, selecting the explanation that is simplest, is only going tell you what you think is the most simplest.

Wrong. Occam's razor is not 'selecting the explanation that is simplest,' it is that 'we should not multiply terms unnecessarily.' In other words, creation loses because it says in addition to everything we see in the world, there is a mysterious and unquantifiable being who did some stuff. We can't see any of the stuff, or the being, and there's no clear events that require the being as an explanation. Further, literal creationism suggests that some of the observations we make in the world are totally wrong, that the natural laws are subject to random change at this creature's whim even though we've never seen that happen at all, and a whole stack of other things.

How does any of that help the theory out? It has no predictive powers whatsoever by the end because it's saddled with so many useless 'unknowns' that can alter the results. In other words, God is an unnecessary term because it grants no additional predictive power to the theory.

Let's take this:

1+1=2
1+1+[X]=2

Ok, the first is evolution. All variables are natural laws, and therefore fundamentally quantifiable. The second is creationism. Natural laws in place, fine and good, but you also have Mysterious Function X. Now, at any given time, Mysterious Function X could be an infinite number of things. It could be [2-[4/2]]. It could be [1-Tan45]. The point is, we can't test it and the result doesn't seem to be affected by it, so it probably isn't doing anything. Therefore, the first equation is superior according to Parsimony because it doesn't throw in a useless extra term.

It won't actually give you any more information than you already know. Thus, it is not bringing any clarity to this argument, since from my point of view, the act of creation continually comes out as more simple than the convoluted evolutionary one.

That is because your point of view has nothing to do with the real usage and meaning of Occam's Razor.

I do realize that science cannot probe God. But that is no reason for cutting Him out of the picture. That is altogether too simplistic.

Science also cannot measure Space Elves, Valkyries, giant invisible wolves or the smurfs that live under your bed. Should it also leave them in the picture even though there's no reason to think they exist and no observed events requiring them to?

It's looks like you are feeling like you are in the position to decide what is rational and what isn't.

I am. Rational theories are based on logic and observation. Religions are based on neither of these things, because they demand faith, and faith in this context is defined as:

Belief that does not rest on logical proof or material evidence.

It is rational to believe the chair I am sitting on is solid because, according to all my senses, I have not fallen through it. It is rational to believe I am typing on my computer because my fingers are moving and words are appearing on the screen. Maybe my keyboard isn't doing anything and my computer is guessing my rebuttal, but that's irrational because it relies on an event I cannot observe and that there is no solid evidence for and that further introduces extra elements that cannot be quantified.

I agree that scientific discussions should focus on natural mechanisms. But that just means that science is limited, not that God is outside of science or that He doesn't exist.

God is supernatural and therefore is obviously outside of science. Using science to find God is a giant use of the Stolen Concept fallacy.

The limitation of science would explain why it has failed to find God. It has, for those who are looking, found evidence for God, e.g. ID.

What evidence? ID is a bad joke, if the 'designer' exists he is the most feckless, unoriginal and unskilled designer possible, and has a weird fascination with beetles.

The story of the Emperor's clothes fits in quite well with a number of people I can think of right now, who accepted evolution because they didn't want to look stupid. The knife cuts both ways.

It doesn't cut people with actual evidence, you know.

Every time you define a miracle as an impossibility, I cannot use your definition. However, if you define a miracle as impossible within the known laws of nature, then I can use your definition.

That would make everything we do not currently understand a miracle, which is utter nonsense. A miracle is something which could never possibly happen without a God's intervention.

I have already said before, a scientific perspective cannot include discussions about God, but that doesn't mean that it has to rule out a supernatural interference (miracle).

Yes it does. It must remove them from consideration because they are fundamentally unpredictable, unquantifiable and cannot add predictive power to a theory.

And who are you to decide what is irrational and what isn't. If God does exist, then your belief system is pretty irrational.

Nonsense. My belief system is based on interpretation of available evidence. Nowhere in that evidence have I encountered anything which requires the existence of a man in the sky who created the Earth six thousand years ago in six literal days, and requires me to accept that speciation happens so fast we can go from a boat full of animals to millions of species in a few thousand years. If God does exist, my belief system is still rational because he has left no physical evidence of his existence.

And I was just trying to point out that there is plenty of things in this world that science cannot prove or study (yet anyway). And therefore a lack of evidence (from the science community) is hardly proof.

Unfortunately for you, geology, cosmology, biology, biochemistry and palaeontology are not among those things. A lack of scientific proof in a scientific field is very, very telling.

If you call love irrational, well, now that is rather telling. It sounds a bit suspicious to me that you are actually at the point of saying that it doesn't exist.

Love is irrational. If love was rational, I would be able to love any healthy female of breeding age; I would not want to spend my entire life with one woman, as I do with my fiancee. Loving the way she looks when she smiles is not rational, because all women can smile.

You, however, are talking about a theory of origins in the context of it being a valid alternative to a scientific theory, therefore you must justify your ideas scientifically or concede they have no place in a field that concerns itself purely with rational matters, admit your theory has no basis outside of pure faith and stop trying to dress it up as an alternative with equal validity when it is clearly no such thing.

The thing with creation is if one thing turns into another what started it in the first place ask any scientist this and he wont be able to answer i am a christian but i also say this so you dont belive in god al least belive in the morals and ethic's in the bible that gives us in western society the freedoms we take for granted.

Also creationism isint dead nomatter where you go just unlike you dam atheist we got better things to do then answer things which quite frankly make more bloody sense. :mp5:

I think were just getting sick of Arrogant Evolutionist

Well a little more detail would be good......

it is just how i fill with some of these arguements

it is just how i fill with some of these arguements

Like what for instance?

Are they arrogant because the dismiss the faith based arguments of the religious?

it is just how i fill with some of these arguements Well there must be a reason for how you feel.

The thing with creation is if one thing turns into another what started it in the first place ask any scientist this and he wont be able to answer

Abiogenesis. To turn it around, if everything must be created by something, and God created everything, what created God?

The thing with creation is if one thing turns into another what started it in the first place ask any scientist this and he wont be able to answer i am a christian but i also say this so you dont belive in god al least belive in the morals and ethic's in the bible that gives us in western society the freedoms we take for granted.

Also creationism isint dead nomatter where you go just unlike you dam atheist we got better things to do then answer things which quite frankly make more bloody sense. :mp5:

Wow. Having a little trouble actually working out what the argument here IS, so forgive me if I get it wrong....

What started life in the first place? Do you mean - the process? Current thinking is an abiogentic reaction that combines all the required elements of basic 'life'... probably around deep-sea vents, for example, for the energy input.

Or do you mean 'what was the first life-form'? Because science will likely ALWAYS be divided over how basic an entity can be, and still claim 'lifeform' status.... there were likely self-replicating proteins, or some similar... but we don't really consider even a virus to be a TRUE lifeform... so that line is hard to place.

Regarding following the 'ethics' and 'morals' of the Bible... well, most people do, to some extent... but you misplace where those things might COME from. The 'laws' of the Old Testament bear a striking resemblence to much older Mesopotamian Codes of Laws (try researching Babylonian societies)... and the 'teachings' of the New Testament bear a striking resemblence to the earliest forms of Buddhism... which entered the 'Holy Land' geography about 600 years BEFORE the alleged birth of Jesus.


Oh, and by the way, it always gives me a giggle when I hear Christians talk about 'damned Atheists'... seems somehow redundant, to me. :D

Besides all the "evolutionary proof" in the world doens't negate creationism.
Creationism is just the fact that God did it. There is no HOW in it. For all we know He had a little test tube, some pitri dishes, etc and pushed along the growth of the various species. Perhaps He made things evolve. I'll tell you when I find out.


Again...the luddite idea that god was a scientist. Actually, all the evolutionary proof does pretty much negate a majority of creationist theories. There is a HOW in it. The theories and evidence presented thus far in our search to figure the HOW still hasn't come up with even the most illusary evidence of an outside being (be it god, aliens, Buddha, or my grandmother) creating any life anywhere.

And aren't the creationists changing there title to Believers in Intelligent Design? I suppose a crock is a crock whatever title it has.

It entertained me that one member said that evolution only related to living organisms (with an entertaining level of conviction)....just to put the record straight. For evolution to occur in a system (any system), all that is required is:
1) variation,
2) the heredity of said variation
3 and differential success of variants (by success, I mean survivorship and fecundity).

This can work in non-living systems as well as living viz. computer programs (which, incidentally are often used to explore evolutionary science).


This of course all works on the assumption that evolution is true (unproven, but I know where my money would be)

I think you have missed my point. I am not saying that miracles are possible, but that with God miracles are possible. My definition depends on God being actively involved and working against the natural laws in a given situation. The only chance that a miracle would happen is if God was involved. How many more ways can I put it??? Without God, a miracle is impossible. There, does that satisfy you?

So, as there is no proof for god as of yet, there can't be proof for miracles? Because if we had proof for miracles, we would have proof for god, which in turn means that, as god can change scientific laws at a whim, scientific laws are null and void?

The thing with creation is if one thing turns into another what started it in the first place ask any scientist this and he wont be able to answer i am a christian but i also say this so you dont belive in god al least belive in the morals and ethic's in the bible that gives us in western society the freedoms we take for granted.

Also creationism isint dead nomatter where you go just unlike you dam atheist we got better things to do then answer things which quite frankly make more bloody sense. :mp5:

Scientists can explain where things came from when one thing turns into another. That's called Paleontology, Paleobiology, Primatology, and Anthropology. Ask those scientists. Ask a chemist and they may not be able to tell you.

The morals and ethics in the bible have served to massacre millions repeatedly over the past 2 millenium. Why support it?

Creationism should die, there is nothing to support it. And it is very christian of you to call people "dam(n) atheists". It's great that god was able to illuminate you with spelling ability.

And what makes more sense than scientific inquiry into our origins? Surely not church going and praying. So what are these better things you have to do?

The thing with creation is if one thing turns into another what started it in the first place ask any scientist this and he wont be able to answer i am a christian but i also say this so you dont belive in god al least belive in the morals and ethic's in the bible that gives us in western society the freedoms we take for granted.

Also creationism isint dead nomatter where you go just unlike you dam atheist we got better things to do then answer things which quite frankly make more bloody sense. :mp5:

Scientists can explain where things came from when one thing turns into another. That's called Paleontology, Paleobiology, Primatology, and Anthropology. Ask those scientists. Ask a chemist and they may not be able to tell you.

The morals and ethics in the bible have served to massacre millions repeatedly over the past 2 millenium. Why support it?

Creationism should die, there is nothing to support it. And it is very christian of you to call people "dam(n) atheists". It's great that god was able to illuminate you with spelling ability.

And what makes more sense than scientific inquiry into our origins? Surely not church going and praying. So what are these better things you have to do?

The thing with creation is if one thing turns into another what started it in the first place ask any scientist this and he wont be able to answer i am a christian but i also say this so you dont belive in god al least belive in the morals and ethic's in the bible that gives us in western society the freedoms we take for granted.

Also creationism isint dead nomatter where you go just unlike you dam atheist we got better things to do then answer things which quite frankly make more bloody sense. :mp5:

Scientists can explain where things came from when one thing turns into another. That's called Paleontology, Paleobiology, Primatology, and Anthropology. Ask those scientists. Ask a chemist and they may not be able to tell you.

The morals and ethics in the bible have served to massacre millions repeatedly over the past 2 millenium. Why support it?

Creationism should die, there is nothing to support it. And it is very christian of you to call people "dam(n) atheists". It's great that god was able to illuminate you with spelling ability.

And what makes more sense than scientific inquiry into our origins? Surely not church going and praying. So what are these better things you have to do?

No, one would not. The evolutionary process relies on natural mechanisms that can be measured and tested, whereas God is fundamentally unpredictable and his methods and mechanisms are beyond the possibility of our comprehension. Because we have no hope of ever understanding these mechanisms, 'God' is not more simple than evolution according to Parsimony.

The evolutionary process also relies on mechanisms that cannot be tested or observed, like procaryotes turning into eucaryotes. No one has ever observed a bacterium turning into a mitochondria. The recent discovery of some similarities between to two has got some people excited about the evidence. But so far, nobody has been able to show how it may have happened, or whether the similarities are not due to similarities in functions (rather than common ancestry). Not sure how Occam's razor would help in this situation.
However, I agree that God is rather complicated, therefore adding Him to any explanation will make it more complicated than another explanation that doesn't include Him. But it makes no sense to take God out of the picture if He is part of the explanation.



God is the fundamental mechanism of this action; creationism's version of creation cannot happen without God. That's like arguing that evolution doesn't have to be simple because making hybrid plants is easy. Further, you earlier admitted your theory requires speciation [macroevoution]. How can it possibly be simpler when it includes the other theory and then some more besides?

I don't recall allowing (in our discussion) that macroevolution has occurred. When I see proof, I suppose I shall believe it.

It also depends on how you define macroevolution. For example, the big cats (lions and tigers and others) are supposed to belong to separate species. I have no trouble accepting that perhaps they all came from the one ancestor (I'm no zoologist), particularly as they have been shown capable of interbreeding. However, I'm not about to accept that land mammals came from some sort of sea creature, and that whales came from land mammals. That all seems a bit far fetched to me. (However, like I said, I'm no zoologist). When I see the proof, I shall accept it. So far, what I have observed fits in with a creator making each kind to reproduce after it's own. natural selection and mutation rates do not conflict with this.





No.

Let's say you want to put something on a shelf, yes? So, person A picks it up, and puts it on the shelf. Job done. Person B measures the shelf, weighs the object, makes a lot of calculations and models, finally producing a robot that picks the object up and puts it on the shelf.

Now, in both these cases, the final stage is there is an object on a shelf, but one is obviously more complex than the other; not only has person B done a huge number of things A did not, but he's also had to use his muscles just as A did. And once again, 'life' is not the end point of evolution, that's abiogenesis.

Fair enough. I see your point.

I am aware of the difference between evolutionary theory and abiogenesis. however, for the purpose of my point, there was no difference.



Wrong. Occam's razor is not 'selecting the explanation that is simplest,' it is that 'we should not multiply terms unnecessarily.' In other words, creation loses because it says in addition to everything we see in the world, there is a mysterious and unquantifiable being who did some stuff. We can't see any of the stuff, or the being, and there's no clear events that require the being as an explanation. Further, literal creationism suggests that some of the observations we make in the world are totally wrong, that the natural laws are subject to random change at this creature's whim even though we've never seen that happen at all, and a whole stack of other things.

How does any of that help the theory out? It has no predictive powers whatsoever by the end because it's saddled with so many useless 'unknowns' that can alter the results. In other words, God is an unnecessary term because it grants no additional predictive power to the theory.

Let's take this:

1+1=2
1+1+[X]=2

Ok, the first is evolution. All variables are natural laws, and therefore fundamentally quantifiable. The second is creationism. Natural laws in place, fine and good, but you also have Mysterious Function X. Now, at any given time, Mysterious Function X could be an infinite number of things. It could be [2-[4/2]]. It could be [1-Tan45]. The point is, we can't test it and the result doesn't seem to be affected by it, so it probably isn't doing anything. Therefore, the first equation is superior according to Parsimony because it doesn't throw in a useless extra term.


Like I said, when an explanation requires God's intervention, there is no sense on cutting Him out simply because that would make the explanation simpler. Cutting him out because having him in doesn't increase your predictive powers seems a bit silly too. Especially if he was really a part of the explanation. You can only fairly cut Him out when you have proven that He had nothing to do with the explanation. For example, you can't explain where gravity comes from, and yet you are willing to write God off.

I can see your point that having God as part of an explanation is going to add complexity to it. But, if I may be permitted to alter the subject slightly, my criticism of the evolutionary explanation is that it is altogether too simplistic--that somehow today's mutation rate and natural selection is somehow able to account for man emerging from slime. I suppose you know that by your definition of 'rational' that this is not rational.



That is because your point of view has nothing to do with the real usage and meaning of Occam's Razor.


I'm not so sure that you can see my point of view. If you can't, how would you know?


Science also cannot measure Space Elves, Valkyries, giant invisible wolves or the smurfs that live under your bed. Should it also leave them in the picture even though there's no reason to think they exist and no observed events requiring them to?

If you think that is why I believe God exists, then you have really missed seeing my point of view.



I am. Rational theories are based on logic and observation. Religions are based on neither of these things, because they demand faith, and faith in this context is defined as:

It is rational to believe the chair I am sitting on is solid because, according to all my senses, I have not fallen through it. It is rational to believe I am typing on my computer because my fingers are moving and words are appearing on the screen. Maybe my keyboard isn't doing anything and my computer is guessing my rebuttal, but that's irrational because it relies on an event I cannot observe and that there is no solid evidence for and that further introduces extra elements that cannot be quantified.

God is supernatural and therefore is obviously outside of science. Using science to find God is a giant use of the Stolen Concept fallacy.


Faith can be based on reason and logic. It certainly made (and makes) a lot of sense to me. I can't observe it, but then again, I can't observe the wind either. I can only see the effects of the wind. Same with faith.

I disagree with your idea of rational/irrational. For example, you can look up into the sky and say that it is blue. That is a rational conclusion. A blind man can also know that the sky is described as blue, but this is not a rational conclusion for him to make, according to you, since he cannot observe it. At any rate, it would be irrational of him to claim that there was no sky. In the same way, it is possible that a religious person who claims to know God may do so on the basis of personal experience (excluding the frauds). You, however, having no experience of God, make the claim that there is no God, or that He cannot be experienced in that way. Your claim is as irrational as that of the blind man.

Furthermore, you can't seriously be claiming that rational conclusions are based on observation. Most of the scientists in the world have never observed a base pair of DNA (I haven't). And yet everybody knows that DNA is the carrier for our genes. That would be a rational conclusion, surely.

I have never suggested using science to find God. Are you trying to take my posts out of context?



What evidence? ID is a bad joke, if the 'designer' exists he is the most feckless, unoriginal and unskilled designer possible, and has a weird fascination with beetles.


Says the man who reckons the human body is a poorly designed boring lump of flaws. You probably have little knowledge of the wonderful complexity that is require just to keep you alive, let alone capable of holding an intelligent debate, love a woman, find pleasure in eating, etc. Statements like that suggest little appreciation or understanding of life, and do a great deal of damage to your credibility.



It doesn't cut people with actual evidence, you know.


There is plenty of evidence about. How it is explained is the key. If you want to convince me of your explanation, you have to find evidence that can only be explained in a way that rules out God, or at least rules out the possibility of creation (preferrably in an area of science that I am familiar with, like bacterial genetics and biochemistry). Otherwise, you too are like the naked Emperor, believing that your explanation really is superior to mine, but without anything better to cloth yourself with than ridicule.



That would make everything we do not currently understand a miracle, which is utter nonsense. A miracle is something which could never possibly happen without a God's intervention.

Here is an example of your taking my posts out of context. I said that a miracle is an impossibility within the known laws of nature. How is it that you can therefore say that this means that everything that we do not currently understand a miracle also? We must first know the laws of nature before we can say that something is a miracle.



Yes it does. It must remove them from consideration because they are fundamentally unpredictable, unquantifiable and cannot add predictive power to a theory.

If, say, you could not make any predictions based on what we currently understand about love, would you then cut it out of existence?



Nonsense. My belief system is based on interpretation of available evidence. Nowhere in that evidence have I encountered anything which requires the existence of a man in the sky who created the Earth six thousand years ago in six literal days, and requires me to accept that speciation happens so fast we can go from a boat full of animals to millions of species in a few thousand years. If God does exist, my belief system is still rational because he has left no physical evidence of his existence.

Your belief system appears to be based on selective evidence. It may be that God allowed mankind the option of not believing in His existence. He would simply 'show himself' to those who sought Him, and 'hide himself' from those who are not interested in knowing Him. That's actually what the scripture says. Your belief system has been already predicted.
As for speciation, that is rather a subjected argument, since who knows what the real definition of a species is? I doubt you are a geneticist. You seem to be placing a lot of faith in the 'absence' of evidence in a process that you may not understand very well.



Unfortunately for you, geology, cosmology, biology, biochemistry and palaeontology are not among those things. A lack of scientific proof in a scientific field is very, very telling.

Are you suggesting that these fields have proof for the non-interference of God? I doubt you can make such a claim.

The evidence is there. The explanation for the evidence is the key. We are not able to prove the past.
The lack of scientific proof tells me that science is limited and cannot tell us if God did or did not create the world.


Love is irrational. If love was rational, I would be able to love any healthy female of breeding age; I would not want to spend my entire life with one woman, as I do with my fiancee. Loving the way she looks when she smiles is not rational, because all women can smile.

You, however, are talking about a theory of origins in the context of it being a valid alternative to a scientific theory, therefore you must justify your ideas scientifically or concede they have no place in a field that concerns itself purely with rational matters, admit your theory has no basis outside of pure faith and stop trying to dress it up as an alternative with equal validity when it is clearly no such thing.

Love might be irrational to you and me, but to someone who understands it better than us, it may be rational. It may be that you and I will one day come to understand love. Does that mean that it suddenly becomes a rational thing? At least you can see that your idea of rational/irrational does not necessarily hold for the next person.
Also, I'm not convinced at all that a 'rational' love would mean that you could love any healthy female. That sounds more like natural selection. Perhaps we should thank God that we humans are capable of a higher love than that.

Perhaps I could accuse you of needing faith to hold on to your theory of origins also. You certainly don't have proof for it. I am trying to justify my ideas scientifically. But since I refuse to leave God out of the picture, you are claiming that I am departing from good scientific principle. If that is the case, then I disagree with you over what science really is, what it is about, and how one should go about cutting 'things' out of it.