Modern creationism makes no sense

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Physics in general or cosmogony?

What are the premises of nuclear physics? Are you talking about the existence of neutrons and protons? The function of pions? Or are you just hurling crap at me to make yourself feel better? Go play with yourself and bugger off if that latter is your goal in this elephant hurling.



I understand you value your version of history, but it is irrelevant to actual scientific functions in hard sciences and even in soft sciences like biology also.

I've known people--doctors, biologists, chemists, even psychologists--who in no way required evolution to support the observed realities of their field. Why is it that these people, and I mean brilliant Ph.D. types with decades working in their field of expertise, can independently come up with different conclusions in regard to evolution?

To Gromit: I can sum up my answer to your response quite simply--I have yet to see ONE good, acceptable reason to believe in any other way. The Bible states that God exists. I believe that. Assuming that the God of the Bible exists, it makes sense that a perfect creator can create a universe that is fundamentally perfectly ordered. For example: Atomic structure, subatomic particles, nuclear and molecular chemical bonds. It makes perfect sense, but I don't know of any (human) person who could come up with the idea of the atom et al and implement it in such a way that it actually WORKS. Another example: DNA/RNA as means of communicating genetic traits from generation to generation. That is a work of beauty in and of itself. It's the kind of thing that artists and sculptors invent--people who are in the business of working from an idea alone, essentially bringing something forth from nothing, "out of the air," for no more reason than the joy of it. If God has the power to create an underlying order (a sort of canvas upon which to paint the rest of the picture, or the stone or clay from which to form a sculpture) to the universe, He also has the power to intervene in it in so-called "ad hoc" kinds of ways. And if that is true He CERTAINLY has the power to draw up the plan and put it into action within a 6-day time frame.

Without a Creator, creation has no meaning. Human explanations are NEVER good enough. YOUR logic and reason are still human traits, not God traits (God is a logical mind, which is shared with the human mind. The difference is God's mind isn't clouded by an imperfect nature). That kind of thinking renders you unable to understand it. The difference is that I recognize that and relegate the details to God to sort it all out for me. God doesn't require understanding for obedience--which for MOST people (indeed there are many Christians out there) is a good thing. Hence, nothing can ultimately make sense without first assuming God. Traditional arguments don't work because they are all by nature attempts to prove God within the human mind. The human mind and heart are sinful and thus partially veil or obscure the truth. Make up your mind about what lies beyond the curtain first (that God exists), and everything else follows just fine.

Radioactive decay as an application of nuclear physics. Tell me where you believe the error lies.


It is extremely relevant to biology. I know you lack the background to really see how pervasive and unifying a force evolution is in the field, so you can either take my word as a trained biologist or not.

As an aside: you filthy hypocrite.

Plenty of people doing day-to-day work need never worry about the theoretical underpinnings on which their work rely. Engineers don't have to worry about the fact that classical mechanics is actually wrong as a description of the universe, programmers don't often have to consider P=NP, etc.


Clarify what you mean here. If you mean that these people are rejecting evolution, that is mostly an urban legend. Contrary to the claims of many creationists, there are not a significant number of people with a solid background in biological sciences who reject evolution.

The issue is that that is completely irrelevant to the development of a valid scientific theory, there is no place for a debate about the existence and/or nature of a supernatural supreme being or force, and given that science is about the natural world, leave supernatural beliefs to metaphysics, and science to the physical world.
It is one of the best advances of humanity that science separated itself from religion and philosophy.


Beauty is very subjective and irrelevant, it would pose a tremendous problem if that is influential to the developement of a scientific theory. Evolution does not rely on aesthetics at all.


The belief in a deity is a HUMAN trait.

Not true. I have a robot priest.

You own an irrational robot.

You simply can't question evolution on the basis that there are educated people/Ph.D's/scientists who do not accept it without immediately bringing to mind the fact that the number of educated people/Ph.D's/scientists who do accept evolution outnumbers the ones who don't by a vast margin.

Um... it's not just "a vast margin." Among scientists, support for evolution is basically unanimous, and the tiny handful of people who reject evolution very transparently do so for purely ideological reasons, rather than on the basis of the evidence. Heck, there are more scientists named "Steve" who support evolution than there are total scientists who support creationism, and this is even after ignoring a variety of dishonest tactics used to inflate the lists of "creationist scientists."

The idea that there is a controversy, or even that there is a significant minority opposition to the current scientific orthodoxy, is a complete and utter myth. Evolution is a settled fact in the scientific community, just as much as the Holocaust is a settled fact in the historical community.

Radioactive decay is hardly a premise of nuclear physics. Nuclear decay and reactions are applications of nuclear physics. Premises would be more toward the theoretical basis for understanding why these reactions occur. The particular application of the process of radioactive decay which you are referring to, namely radiometric dating, has assumptions involved which do not cast any doubt upon nuclear physics. These assumptions are, primarily, initial conditions and non interference. For some methods, the quantity of a parent isotope alters with sun activity (such as the production of C14 from nitrogen increases with increasing solar wind activity, and fluctuates along with the sun's 11 year cycle. To some extent this is able to be calibrated with dendrochronology). And some elements have different levels of ionization potential, such as rubidium and strontium, and such will react differently to water in manners such as forming oxides and dissolving at different rates. Over the course of time which would be propounded by such calculations of the formula A_final = A_initial^(0.5*k*t) interference is bound to occur as the continents shift, land masses become ocean floor, and sea basins become land. Over the eons of time as calculated by the radiometric dates, there would practically be no area of land unaffected by water and thereby no radiometric dates unaffected by water to one degree or another.



Trained biologist, really now? What is your PhD in? How many tens of thousands of dollars do you know owe in loans for learning a subject which would cost me the price of the textbooks and equipment to learn by myself? Really though, as a trained biologist even, all you can do in regard to the unobservable and unrecorded pseudo-history of evolution[b]ism[/] is say "trust me as these are historical claims about biological organisms and I'm a person who studies biological organisms". I seem to recall that you haven't even graduated, and yet even now you are arguing on the basis of your credentials. I hate to see what you are like when arguing in this matter after you obtain your final piece of overpriced paper. You'll probably be just as raving mad as Huxley and Dawkin's.

I'm on full academic scholarship, so trying to criticize the cost of my degree just makes you look stupid. I don't even pay for my textbooks, since I got another scholarship to cover those.


I could cite piles of evidence, but the problem is that if you haven't spent several years of your life studying biology most of it will just be unintelligible to you. AG has posted that article "Would you like fries with that theory?" several times, I suggest you go and read that to understand why I don't feel like spelling everything out in tremendous detail for you. A proper explanation would span several textbooks.


If you feel like inquiring as to my credentials, I currently (after two years as an undergraduate) have enough credits to graduate. I'm staying on to take extra classes and complete extra majors.

Hum, i feel like i'm sticking out like a sore thumb again... But it seems quite a few topics end up with tirades between either Orwell, Keet, AngelRho, Ruveyn or AG... <.<

Been thinking that essentially science is based on observing the facts, and its aim is to find patterns of order in those observed facts. The scientific method deals with those things that are observable and repeatable. Evolution claims to be a science that is based on the origins of life, but this is a fallacy since the origins of life is neither repeatable nor observable.

On the other hand, "evolution" is a fact when applied only to "microevolution," which operates within the restrictions specified by the DNA for a specific organism. For instance, dog breeders have produced a great number of dog breeds of various sizes, colors, shapes, and personalities, but the dogs remain dogs. This is observable and repeatable.

But "macroevolution" is not a fact but an assumption because one type of organism does not change into another type of organism. For instance, lizards did not sprout wings and become birds by flapping their arms while running quickly downhill or jumping off tree branches - as some evolutionists believe. And because macroevolution is something that is neither observable nor repeatable, and never will be, it must be assumed. At best, it is very imaginative thinking; but it is definitely not very good science.

JetLag, we have observed speciation dozens of times, and we can reproduce it in the laboratory. The fossil record also gives us a lot of evidence of many different transitional forms. And the most compelling evidence in molecular genetics very clearly shows that all life is related.

And no, for crying out loud, evolution does not deal with the origin of life. That's another whole area to study. Evolutionary biologists hope to study all the back to LUCA (the last universal common ancestor of all present life) but anything before that is beyond the scope of evolution.

Aaaaaah... A skawl-uhr-shee-uhp. lol

Now THAT is interesting indeed. Still studying and no independent real-world experience.

I'll be honest. I have two degrees in my field of study and am pondering going all-the-way to doctorate because I'm sick and tired of making less than $12,000 a year. One thing that has really been enlightening to me is all the time I've had to ponder my graduate experience, independently work (and fund) my own projects, and let some of those things I THOUGHT I learned back then really sink in. I could go back, start working on my dissertation fairly quickly, and be done within a year or two after a residency. I could even start my dissertation NOW (why wait?) and make going back to school a mere formality. I own my own equipment, so I have no need for a school's resources--maybe just a research library, but that's about it. Of course, advanced schools don't really want to train people who believe they already have it all figured out. It's more important that I gain more actual experience and go as far as I can on my own, rather than going back to grad school where they are only going to want me to change direction. If I can't or don't want change and mature, then graduate studies aren't going to benefit me one bit. And nobody is going to want a person like that taking up a university teaching position. Your status in the adult world is something that is EARNED through experience.

You can spout off what you professors want you to say all day long if you want to and it won't make ANY bit of difference to the rest of the world. I pity you. There are still a number of profs out there that if you barely even breathe the name "Christ" your educational career is OVER. My profs KNEW what I believed, even my Jewish agnostic mentor. I made NO effort to hide that. Back then I held the attitude that I was there to learn, not to challenge my superiors. Towards the end of my last semester, my advisor confided to me that the reason I was invited to study at that school was because I was so much different culturally and idealistically than the other students. He said he wished that I'd actually spoken up more and disagreed more rather than just go along with what everyone else was doing.

In an effort to maintain my teaching license (not that I have a use for it, but I did work 4 years to get it, after all), I took an online course by a respected school in one of my post-college interests (but related to what I do). Again, my initial approach was with the same attitude, and in a weekly real-time voice chat session, the instructor complained that we weren't REALLY talking, and even then we were just all agreeing with him and each other. So after that I tended to jump on any kind of minutia that didn't seem copacetic. I also handled the required assignments with same (perhaps overly) thorough approach I generally take with many things I do. After a week or two of doing this, I realized that what was happening--I was actually the one teaching the class, NOT the instructor.

The point is, no matter who you are or what you believe, EVERYONE has some unique perspective to bring to the academic table. Some professors are reasonable and will allow for views that contrast with their own. You may be in a place where other ideas are intolerable and most of your professors have that whole "man with a microphone" approach that doesn't really allow for ANY religious tolerance. You may not have the luxury of opposing your mentors, and an even greater shame than closed-minded "religious nuts" as you may call them is that there are closed-minded academic, ivory-tower elitists who seek to indoctrinate new science students with their views and eliminate those who have even a shred of faith in something greater than the physical universe. I personally choose to stay away from teachers like that (not teachers who disagree with me, just ones who don't encourage us to think for ourselves), and perhaps I'm just lucky that I've chosen an academic area dominated by artists and creative types who are open to a variety of experiences--those which may or may not include any kind of god. Obviously any original thought you may have ever had has already been beaten out of you, and it is a real shame if this is true that you won't really be contributing that much to your field of study.

Further, anyone devoted to an academic study--and I don't care if it's science or art--HAS to acknowledge that they are ultimately in service to a global community, not JUST their own studies. We are all servants of one form or another, and we should take care that our pursuits do not make us become arrogant. I'm not asking you to believe. But you DO have to understand that the people you serve by and large DO have some kind of faith in SOMETHING, whether it's Jesus, Mohammed, or Buddha, or anyone else. To disregard that is to spit in the face of the people who put up the money for your scholarship.

I'm spending this summer on a major research grant funded by industries working for the US government.


You must be in music, aren't you? I used to be much more into music than I am now (I was a very serious trombonist). I eventually realized that I also have an interest in science, and scientists actually get paid.


Whatever. The professor in my evolutionary biology class was Christian. And so am I, for the record. A person's religious views are not the issue, the issue comes in when people demonstrate themselves to be incapable of maintaining academic or intellectual integrity.


My cell bio prof tolerated the ravings of one of those organic-only, anti-GMO nuts. There is no certainly no persecution of Christians or anyone else here.


Quote me one place where I have ever said "religious nut." I am religious myself.


Right, because understanding the foundational work in a field is definitely indicative that I have no capacity for original thought. And I've disagreed with my professors before without any repercussions. I disagreed with my genetics professor about whether viruses should be classified as life or non-life. I've disagreed with my history professors on several issues, but as long as I can demonstrate that I at least understand what I'm saying they don't hold my opinions against me. The reason creationists are mocked and ignored is because they don't understand what they're talking about. At all.


Of course. As a scientist, I would have two major responsibilities:
a) To advance the scientific community's understanding of my field, laying the groundwork for future researchers
b) To produce useful results for society, saving or improving lives by enabling us to understand and react better to various threats

My objection to people like you is that you damage those efforts. As I said when I first entered this thread about why rejecting evolution was a big deal,



Yeah... as I said, I am Christian. I just don't happen to agree with your way of interpreting the Bible. And the people who fund my scholarships don't really care about my religious beliefs, they just want results.