Modern creationism makes no sense

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No, you are objectively wrong. You believe things that are demonstrably BS.


Um... we can, and we have. You being too lazy or close-minded to see the smoking gun does not change the fact that it exists.


Except that the facts available to us have changed. People once believed in a geocentric universe based on faith, but someone who accepted it on the same basis now would be rightfully regarded as crazy, or an idiot, or both.


No, it only points to the fact that many people are stubborn idiots and completely impervious to evidence, facts, and reality.


What the hell does evolution have to do with the heavenly host? I've seen atheists use this argument to dismiss God. Seeing it in reverse to argue against evolution is just surreal. "I'll believe in gravity when it announces itself with the sounding of trumpets accompanied by the singing of the heavenly host!"


Because rejecting science has consequences. Replacing evidence with superstition has consequences. It leads us to a dark place when we ignore facts. Evolutionary theory is applied every day in laboratories around the world. Without it, we are less able to control the spread of disease and parasites. Without it, we are less able to care for the sick. Without it, we fail in our conservation efforts and entire ecosystems are endangered. And further, once you start to undermine science, once you start to distrust the scientific process and the scientific community and the value of evidence, you have just catapulted society back into the dark ages. You end up in a situation where you no longer care what is and is not true, and people can just choose to reject what science says on any given issue, be it evolution, vaccination, "holistic" and homeopathic medicine, and any number of other things. The result is untold suffering and death for no damn reason but the insistence of morons to proudly hold on to their ignorance.

Not likely. I mean, MAYBE it would, but somehow I doubt it. My biggest point of contention with evolution is that it (by evolutionists admission) has nothing to do with origin-of-life theory. The way most people seem to handle the evolutionist argument is that there has to have been an origin for present-day species, which has its origin in another historical period, which has its origin in another period, and so on all the way back to the creation/appearance (depending on which side you're on) of life. The problem as I see it is that, going this direction, there SHOULD be a point we reach in which there is no life at all. You'd trace it back to some common ancestor from which, even further back, came about as a result of a lightning bolt striking exactly the right mud puddle at exactly the right time. When I say "smoking gun," this is one example of what I mean, though the one for the current view of evolution simply isn't possible: observations covering millions/billions of years and documentation to show that, indeed, it is more than just a theory.

Perhaps the origin of life is the 6-day creation. Perhaps it's the lightning bolt and the mud puddle. Perhaps it's any one of a number of explanations of which I'm not aware. Perhaps Genesis, as you've said, is nothing more than a parable. Empirically, we don't really have a way to KNOW. As I see it, that's the only reason why there's even a discussion at all.

I know what I believe, and as I see it that's all really anyone can know, at least on that subject.

Trolls aren't just the ones spewing hatred, but often the goal of a troll is to get somebody to do this by saying things incredibly dumb/insulting/whatever else have you.

You aren't really making a case for anything though. If you were making a case, then there would actually be something of substance in your comments.

My judgment is not so terribly clouded, but rather as a number of posters have been pointing out, it is your attitude that is relatively absurd.


The theory that is considered the only legitimate theory in our textbooks has now finally bit it? We'd see enough agitation that something related to this would end up in the front page without question, whether it is this directly, or this indirectly.


I know, how terrible, evolution doesn't have anything to do with the origins of life. It also doesn't explain why food explodes if you keep it in a microwave too long. Why can't those evolutionists come up with a grander theory, one that can explain speciation, the origin of life, microwave oddities AND why I can't find my car-keys?


Evolution is more than just a theory, it is also the reigning paradigm in many elements of biology and considered by many people to be a "scientific fact". I mean, I think you might partially be confused on scientific labeling. You certainly aren't asking for a law, correct? Even further, things that are undeniable paradigms in other fields of science, such as relativity, are still labeled theories rather than given fancier titles.


Y'know, I don't think that this argument would work at a murder trial and I don't see why we should treat it with dignity here.

I'm pretty sure there have been a few papers written from an evolutionary biology perspective that could address your poor short-term memory. You are right about the origin of life and the behavior of electromagnetic radiation, though.

Also: why doesn't evolution explain why light and heavy objects fall at the same speed? This seems like a major shortcoming in the theory, and as we all know any scientific explanation that is incomplete is automatically wrong and should be replaced by the "goddidit" explanation.

How convenient! They (the scientific community) convenientely ignore that fact.
Therefore science, evolution and evidence are not in my trust list.




Perhaps the origin of life was 10 minutes ago and we all have implanted fake memories of the past, based on that assertion this can also be included.


Speak for yourself, you may not have a way to know, for an impediment or whatever reason, I don't know and shouldn't care, but that would be YOU. For the rest on the other hand, they do.


The reason why there is a discussion on it is because of the mindset of few people and that's about it. A debate on this in an academic level doesn't really exist.


Ok, you can believe whatever you want, but that doesn't affect the facts in any way.



You are missing the point, it is not wether you agree with the theory of evolution or not but your justification and defense here are as logical valid or perhaps worse than flat-earthers and all conspiracy theorists together.



The troll thing, I believe it has been brought up because your assertions sounded too absurd that wether they were intended to be serious was put into question.

In 1919 when the Eddington expedition brought back empirical evidence that Newton's theory of gravitation was wrong and Einstein's theory was right it made the front page of the New York Times.

ruveyn

To be fair that was eighty-one years ago. Who knows what would happen now?

Major developments like that are always a big enough deal to be headline stories. If evolution, or quantum mechanics, or string theory, were ever soundly refuted we would all hear about it.

My reasoning behind saying it wouldn't make the news is that the news, for the most part, isn't really THAT concerned with religion except when a large number of people end up dead. There never even would have BEEN a debate on the issue in the first place if certain aspects of evolution hadn't tread on religious ground. I think that the religious community would have seen it differently if the focus had entirely been on the microevolutionary results of real-time observation--things we CAN say we know and observe.

Empirical evidence that DISPROVES evolution might, at best, get a little box on the third page. My personal feeling on this is that media outlets know full well how the religious community would react to this as well as the rest of the pseudo-scientific world (by that I mean only those who know enough about science to be dangerous). It would be just as well that all-out war had broken out. The mass media, to include the NYT, would not be serving their own best interests to publicize it.

I think empirical evidence that PROVES creationism--not just show supporting evidence, but incontrovertible PROOF--might have slightly more likelihood of doing so, if it's even reported at all. It would certainly be newsworthy. I'm worried that there'd be too much public backlash from publishing such a story. Something like that would certainly cross the line between sacred and secular reporting, and not in the kind of direction that would be favorable to most people. Sure, the papers are committed to reporting "just the facts," but they also have their profits to consider in order to stay in business. The NYT would probably be immediately accused of religious bias and dropped in circulation among many of its readers.

Further, evolution is far too ingrained into our knowledge base to be simply refuted in a single news story. Evolution is over 100 years old right now, and there are still many--and I mean even those within the scientific community itself--who don't buy into it wholesale. If the opposite became accepted as fact the same way those of us accept evolution as fact, you would STILL have a large number of evolutionists still holding onto it 200 years from publication.

A known example of this kind of thing is "the father of modern science" Galileo vs. the RC Church. I think he had much to contribute to scientific dialogue, but he simply claimed his ideas to be more than they were. It's even become widely accepted within the present-day scientific community that many of his ideas were dead wrong (his use of tides as evidence was questionable even by that day's standards), although he was headed in the right direction. We have a much better understanding today of how astronomical forces actually work and how objects in space actually move (elliptical orbits as opposed to perfect circles), and Galileo laid some amazing groundwork for it. Oddly enough it was the Church that upheld integrity in scientific thought in that particular case. That was one that the Inquisition actually did get right. Those of us who believe the Bible do have to understand it in the light of certain facts--it is NOT incorrect to say that the sun rises and sets because, by appearances, this is what happens; the writers of the text were neither aware of nor concerned with the actual mechanics of it. Even today, neither poets nor artists are overly concerned with the mechanics of their subject (unless mechanism IS the subject). The difference with the Church was that they needed more to go on than some silly arguments about tides and a telescope, and we know that the position of the church in interpreting certain Biblical passages that seem to explain the HOW and WHY of earth movement has adjusted to account for things that cannot be disputed any longer.

I view evolution in a similar way. There remain certain things that are disputed, certain questions about evolution that current data still cannot satisfy. We CAN observe microevolution, for instance. In that sense, evolution cannot confirm nor deny a six-day creation. Therefore, microevolution is NOT incompatible with a creationist view. That leads me to conclude that dogmatic assertions that evolution is natural LAW and that there never could have been a 6-day creation inspires such apparent inward rage because of something else that it implies.

My contact with you has indicated you are quite well informed, suitably articulate and not obviously driven by outrageous emotions. Therefore I have been trying to figure out why you have been unceasingly proposing such idiotic nonsense in that creationism contains validity sufficient to measure up to evolution. The only thing that makes any sense is that you are perversely probing if it is possible to scam well informed people that the hugely fantastic and obviously ignorant and silly biblical tale of a superbeing pulling the universe out of his top hat well before rabbits were invented can elicit gullibility sufficient to be taken seriously. You must be playing some sort of humorous game with this site. Nothing else seems possible.

Sand: You got THAT from my post? Wow...

Seriously, no scams, no games. Just expressing my views. Speaking as a Christian, there are legitimate concerns that are yet to be addressed. It's quite possible we may one day have the means to do so, or our species will survive long enough to review enough collected data to reasonably affirm evolution in a larger sense. If true, we may even be discussing this data with some humanoid cousin, or they may be reviewing the data we (being long gone by this point) collected and adding it to their own. If the data remains inconclusive or even calls the whole thing into question, we may concede that either it was false all along or according to available information it MIGHT have been true but abruptly ceased at a certain point in the historical record.

Since you are fond of being direct in your statements, I'll afford you the same: The Bible says nothing about any superbeing pulling the universe out of his top hat. It would help if you would actually read the Bible, else you'd already know that!

You misunderstood. I am trying to get AngelRho to understand that this here is nonsense:

I asked him more than once to tell me who holds that mistaken idea. He doesn't say, perhaps because he would have to admit his argument is a straw man. This is another approach. I planned to demonstrate that the people AngelRho accuses of being absurd can't believe what he accuses them of believing. But he refuses to engage in argument, so the point is moot.

@AngelRho

I'm still waiting.


Your refusal to engage with counterarguments makes me wonder the same about you.


The usual approach to forensic evidence is that you test it on cases where you know the answer. If it works, apply it to cases where you don't know the answer. The same kind of evidence that works in cases you yourself have accepted as true tells us of the changes you want to deny.

Evolution is widely accepted in the scientific community because it is the best explanation for the data. You keep saying creationism is as good an explanation as evolution. You haven't shown that is so. You only keep repeating it. Repetition doesn't make it true.

Why don't you list your criteria for what makes a theory a good theory and then compare evolution and creationism?

He hasn't responded to my request for his so-called "evidence" against evolution either.

The king doth protest the peasant poaching on his private hunting grounds.

The point of that is that abstractions, especially with regard to mathematics, is they aren't necessarily absolute. Not that I'm one to make relativist arguments, or at least I try not to, but the idea is that reality isn't quite so cut and dry.

There's not necessarily ONE correct proof of that. 1+1 in principle can equal really anything. You can use your imagination to figure out probably any number of correct answers.

Here's what I had in mind: 1 human being + 1 other human being = (over time) 2 adults + 2 children = 4 human beings living under the same roof. Where there WAS only 2, there is now 4. Potentially the answer could be anything, and it's perfectly logical, though it doesn't quite fit the "rules" of elementary math. Make sense?

As far as "proof" or "evidence" goes, I'm not fooling myself that many here are going to believe what I have to say. That's a matter of indoctrination--you've always believed one way, thus you aren't inclined to believe in another. You "say" something doesn't make sense and you instantly attack it when someone DOES defend it. I still can't imagine how it is someone who pays lip service to objectivity can get so overemotional about an idea to the contrary.

Seriously, is my ability to provide evidence really the point? So be it.

Evolution has a lot of problems. Period.

First, let me say that I don't take a position on Young Earth/Old Earth. There isn't a way to know for sure, and the Bible doesn't seem that concerned about it.

But Evolution, on the other hand, DOES necessarily take an Old Earth view. It HAS to, else it can't allow for all the time required to pass in order for evolutionary processes to take place (human origins in apes, for example).

Before I got further with that, one of the biggest holes (as I've said before) is evolution doesn't touch the origins of life. The trouble here is that evolution suggests that all present species have their roots in other former species or branched off from a current species long ago. At some point, according to this pattern, you end up at a mudhole that (we think) got struck by lightning, hence binding together self-replicating proteins forming the first single-cell organisms. That's one possible explanation that I'm aware of, though there are probably variations on that as well as other explanations. You can SAY that evolution and abiogenesis have nothing to do with each other. That much I understand--they are not the same thing. The thing I find troubling about that is it makes no sense that something that explains the origin of present day species as something like a ladder or a tree (meaning some kind of succession of speciation over time, one step above another or one branch descending from another branch, and so on) itself ignores or conveniently disregards how exactly it is all things presently living can have a common ancestor. Someone mentioned to me that abiogenesis has more to do with chemistry than biology. Well, OK, but we all know that biology and chemistry are inextricably linked (specifically biology depends on chemistry, I don't mean to suggest vice versa). In other words, it's difficult to gain an understanding of biology without at least mentioning the chemistry involved in biochemical processes--even if you don't have an in-depth, advanced, independent understanding of chemistry, at some point you need at least the basics as it pertains to biology. If biology and chemistry overlap in other scientific disciplines, there is no need to suggest that a basic origin-of-life hypothesis has no place in Evolution. The way I see it, it is essential to Evolution. Yet evolutionists, or at least the advocates for it here, don't seem that concerned that the lack of a mechanism by which evolution is possible leaves a tremendous hole in the theory. Abiogenesis is one of any number of scientific hypotheses one might make that would fill this void. Of course, so would Special Creation. And so would a lot of things.

The problem with abiogenesis is it has yet to be proven. No mechanism in nature, the chemistry lab, or the biology lab has been found that COULD yield the expected results.

But lets assume that abiogenesis WAS that mechanism--essentially the first living things crawled out of some mud puddle, the primordial ooze after millions and even billions of years. Real spontaneous generation through abiogenesis process, purely by accident of nature, is highly improbable. Not probable, but not impossible, either. Given the time it would take for such a "happy accident" to happen, you find that it would take billions of years at best after the Earth formed and cooled off enough to support life.

That's what it would take to allow for the possibility--a LONG time. If that's the case, then it IS possible. But now here's the problem with that: Geologic evidence appears to show that the earth is somewhere around 4 billion years old (more or slightly less). That's the typical "Old Earther" estimate. If it requires billions of years after the planet is hospitable to life for life to appear, then why do we even exist at all? That means that life had to begin about the same time as the Earth, and that shouldn't even be possible, much less probable! Even if abiogenesis and evolution are true, the fact that life appeared on earth relatively immediately after it was formed in all probability has to be a miracle. And it is also a strange coincidence that if life began immediately after the formation of the planet, Genesis 1 also explains that within days of creating the earth that God filled it with all living creatures.

So given the likelihood that it would take longer than the earth is old by "old earth" standards for life to even begin developing given the odds, it makes absolutely no sense at all that even basic single-cell organisms began appearing so soon after the earth formed. Believing in an all-powerful Creator, however, DOES make sense in showing that life appeared within the 6-day special creation--i.e. VERY soon after the earth was formed.

There does exist some evidence that the Earth isn't even that old. I'll give a few facts in that regard: The oceans contain concentrations of various metals and other elements. The river systems add to these concentrations at fixed rates. Comparing the amounts already in the oceans with the rates at which more are added, shows that the Earth and its rivers and oceans are fairly young.

Sediments are being eroded into our oceans at a fixed rate. There are only a few thousand years worth of sediments on the ocean floor.

The Earth's magnetic field has been accurately measured since 1829. Since 1829, it has decayed 7%. It is decaying exponentially at a fixed rate. By graphing the curve, we see that approximately 22,000 years ago the Earth's field would have been as strong as the Sun's. Life would have been impossible.

Saturn's rings are not stable. They are drifting away from Saturn. If Saturn is billions of years old, why does it still have rings.

The moon is slowly drifting away from the Earth. If it is getting further, at one time it was much closer. The Inverse Square Law dictates that if the moon were half the distance from the Earth, its gravitational pull on our tides would be quadrupled. 1/3 the distance, 9 times the pull. Everything would drown twice a day. Approximately 1.2 billion years ago, the Moon would have been touching the Earth.

Earth's rotation is slowing down. We experience a leap second every year and a half. If the Earth is slowing down, at one time it was going much faster. Besides the problem of extremely short days and nights, the increased "Coriolis Effect" would cause impossible living conditions.

In 1999, the human population passed six billion. In 1985, it passed five billion. In 1962, it passed three billion. In 1800, it passed one billion. In 1 AD, as far as we have any way of knowing based on censuses, it was only 250 million. At the current population growth rate, considering wars and famines and other variables, it would take roughly 5,000 years to get the current population from two original people.

So as far as the age of the Earth is concerned, we have no real way of knowing. Certain means of determining the Earth's age show it is anywhere from millions to billions of years old, whereas YECers place it around 6,000 years. Personally, I prefer to conclude that it is younger than what Old Earthers say it is, and probably a little older than YEC.

Funny how we all just assume evolution and laugh at or ignore certain other facts.

Which brings me to the next point: All data is interpreted through presuppositions. Take radiometric dating, for instance. It is assumed that the rate of decay remains constant, there has been no contamination, and that we can determine how much daughter elements there was to begin with. Recent studies have shown that, even though we can't vary decay rates much in the lab, it's possible that decay rates may have been accelerated in the unobservable past. So it can't necessarily be assumed that the rate of decay remains constant. When uranium decays to lead, a by-product of this process is the formation of helium, which escapes from rock. Zircons, which are found by drilling into granite, contain uranium partly decayed into lead. By measuring the amount of uranium and lead in these crystals, you can calculate about 1.5 billion years has passed if you assume that the rate of decay is constant. But this doesn't make sense, because there's still a lot of helium left in the crystals. Over 1.5 billion years, the helium should have gradually seeped out, not accumulated. Testing the zircon crystals, you'll find that the helium does seep out very quickly over a wide range of temperatures. So given that amount of helium in the crystals, you can date the rock (and by extension, the Earth) to somewhere between 4,000 and 14,000 years. It makes no sense at all that 1.5 billion years' worth of decay can take place in 14,000 years. Therefore, decay rates are not constant, and radiometric dating should be reconsidered.

That severely limits the amount of time needed for evolution.

Here's another problem with geology (incidentally, geology happened to be my science elective my senior year of high school): It is assumed that rock layers, or strata, represent millions of years. These strata are where your fossil records are found, and there are billions of fossil remains in these layers. The layers are catalogued and arbitrarily arranged into a certain order, which doesn't necessarily mean the order in which they were found. This order assumes Evolution. The fossils that are thought to have evolved first are (logically) assumed to be the oldest, so they're placed at the bottom of the column of strata. The next oldest are placed in the next column, and so on.

Do you see the problem here? Evolution is in part based on fossil evidence, which is based on geology. But geology is based on evolution...

Let's take that a step further: We can determine the age of the rock by the assumed age of the index fossils it contains (index fossils are varieties of fossils found within strata used to represent that particular strata). The age of a given fossil is determined by the stage of evolution it seems to be in. One has to then guess how long it would take for one life to evolve into another and date the fossils (and hence the rocks) by that guess. If you date the rocks by the fossils, how can you then talk about evolutionary change through time in the fossil record?

So we take index fossils, date the rocks by those fossils, and then look at the other fossils within that layer of rock to determine their age. The succession of organisms is determined by a study of their remains found in the rocks, and the relative age of the rocks are determined by the remains of the organisms they contain.

The problem here is that this method is open to circular arguments. Which is funny, because theological arguments are often circular. Hmmm....

Another related point of view is so-called Catastrophism. Consider: poly-strata fossils, fossil clams in the closed position found on Mt. Everest's peak, sedimentary rock, the fact that 95% of all recorded fossils are marine invertebrates, you get the idea. Interesting how a global flood MIGHT explain how some of this might have happened... But I don't KNOW, I'm just guessing. After all, ancient manuscripts do, oddly enough, seem to confirm this...

As I've mentioned before, only micro-evolution has ever been actually observed. Everything else has simply been assumed. Lack of transitional fossils has been a problem for macro-evolution. Retrograde motion. The fact (in cosmic evolution) that there are observed "voids" and "clumps."

So from where I'm sitting, blindly accepting evolution doesn't make any sense at all.

Am I suggesting there's any PROOF or evidence of creationism? No, not at all. I gave up on the traditional evidentiary position a few years ago because I found that it doesn't really "prove" anything. I mean, sure, the ontological argument is kinda cool, in my opinion, but I don't really care that much to get into those more recondite areas of faith. To me, it makes more sense to assume that the God of the Bible exists. And just as I've pointed out some concerns with evolution, it seems to me that certain types of man-made observation and reasoning (which is by nature flawed), are meaningless apart from miraculous creation and design. For that, one needs no evidence.

I will not go into details on AngelRho's latest post but in effect he claims that the overwhelming bulk of the scientific community are a pack of idiots and his bible study buddies have their finger on the true realities. Matching up the contributions of the two general divisions he makes of these two communities I can only state he is quite strange in his choices and I find his pick of the group he chooses to follow beyond rational comprehension.