Young Earth Creationism....Fail

[zinfamous]

Natural selection I totally agree with. But natural selection != evolution or cause it. Sure some slight adaptations may happen, but never changes one species into another.

Of course it has everything to do with evolution. And species absolutely do change into one another. You can't agree with natural selection and not accept evolution.

 

[StageLeft]

also, evolution is not concerned with the origin of life.

Well it certainly is concerned. If you want to detach the two because there is no real evidence of anything to do with the origin of life in terms of the magic mud/lightning start that's fair, but then those who scoff at evolution do not scoff at natural selection, so in a way they're not throwing out everything evolutionary, just not buying as much into it as others. As you move from natural selection and bob next door breeding different dogs to sell and you get further deep into this is when the debate becomes increasingly part of the picture because the data becomes increasingly weak until you end up at the origin of life in the mud and for that there is nothing but conjecture.

 

[Brainonska511]

Well it certainly is concerned. If you want to detach the two because there is no real evidence of anything to do with the origin of life in terms of the magic mud/lightning start that's fair, but then those who scoff at evolution do not scoff at natural selection, so in a way they're not throwing out everything evolutionary, just not buying as much into it as others. As you move from natural selection and bob next door breeding different dogs to sell and you get further deep into this is when the debate becomes increasingly part of the picture because the data becomes increasingly weak until you end up at the origin of life in the mud and for that there is nothing but conjecture.

Evolution does not cover how we went from nonliving stuff to life. It is outside the scope of the theory.

There are separate hypotheses for abiogenesis.

It should not be confused with evolution, which is the study of how groups of living things change over time.

(Abiogenesis article on Wikipedia, 2nd sentence)

 

[zinfamous]

The only only only reason you can't watch "species" changing into other ones drastically different is because you don't live long enough.

and this is the layman's problem with the understanding of "species." We can watch plenty of speciation events during our lifetimes.

Speciation occurs when mating events can no longer produce fertile offspring. The morphological differences wouldn't be drastic of course, but there is a ridiculous amount of evidence for larger speciation events in the genomic history.

 

[zinfamous]

Well it certainly is concerned. If you want to detach the two because there is no real evidence of anything to do with the origin of life in terms of the magic mud/lightning start that's fair, but then those who scoff at evolution do not scoff at natural selection, so in a way they're not throwing out everything evolutionary, just not buying as much into it as others. As you move from natural selection and bob next door breeding different dogs to sell and you get further deep into this is when the debate becomes increasingly part of the picture because the data becomes increasingly weak until you end up at the origin of life in the mud and for that there is nothing but conjecture.

basically, those who claim to accept natural selection while denying evolution simply have no fucking clue what they're talking about. Simple as that.

Such people should simply come out and admit that they don't trust science...or reality for that matter.

 

[Jeff7]

Abiogenesis - another spot where the God of the Gaps likes to hide out.

They say life on Earth didn't appear for about a billion years or so following Earth's formation.

So it took nature a billion years, with a laboratory the size of a planet, in order to chance together some molecules which were self-replicating. (Incidentally, such molecules have been created artificially in a lab. Scientific American had an article about it some years ago. Alas, the only links I know of want money for the article.)
Anyway, nature had a billion years.
We discovered atoms......sometime around 1800. (Cheers, Google.)
So even assuming we got chopping right away on researching self-replicating molecules (first we had to do away with of phlogiston-esque ideas), that's still only about 200 years for us to figure out what took nature a billion years to get right, in its planet-sized laboratory.

But hey, like I say, Christianity is only like, the 3000th religion humanity's come up with. I'm quite sure it's the right one. Definitely. The talking snake and zombie god-offspring are what really solidify it.

 

[Praxis1452]

In the weekly evolution thread! Atleast I know who's willfully ignorant.

 

[SparkyJJO]

... Why do religious people only come up with ironic arguments? HELLO? WHO CREATED GOD? WHERE DID HE COME FROM?

Theres no doubt we will eventually self destruct, humanity is just too stupid

Matter is not eternal. God, by very definition, is eternal.

Of course it has everything to do with evolution. And species absolutely do change into one another. You can't agree with natural selection and not accept evolution.

No, it does not. Natural selection isn't the change of species from one to another. It is one species (or variant of one) surviving in an environment and another not. The peppered moth is a good example of this. The species didn't change, but the dark ones survived on the sooty trees while the light ones did not.

 

[sandorski]

Matter is not eternal. God, by very definition, is eternal.



No, it does not. Natural selection isn't the change of species from one to another. It is one species (or variant of one) surviving in an environment and another not. The peppered moth is a good example of this. The species didn't change, but the dark ones survived on the sooty trees while the light ones did not.

Tell that to Zeus.

 

[yhelothar]

Both of you fail. Just throwing random comments contributes nothing. Maybe you can't really refute what I said so that's the best you can do?



Natural selection I totally agree with. But natural selection != evolution or cause it. Sure some slight adaptations may happen, but never changes one species into another.



OK, so where did the stuff and that background radiation come from in the first place? Had to come from somewhere


Now pardon me but I have some work I need to get done around here.

So where did God come from in the first place? Had to come from somewhere

Anyways, there's actually quite a bit of observed evidence now showing how the universe could have came from nothing. There was a whole thread about it. Search for Universe from nothing. tl;dw it basically provides evidence that the universe is flat, which is mathematically proven and observed to have a total energy of 0(meaning there's negative as well as positive energy), which means you can have matter as well as antimatter fluctuating over time.

 

[bdude]

Matter is not eternal. God, by very definition, is eternal.



No, it does not. Natural selection isn't the change of species from one to another. It is one species (or variant of one) surviving in an environment and another not. The peppered moth is a good example of this. The species didn't change, but the dark ones survived on the sooty trees while the light ones did not.

Since when was eternal part of a god's definition?

Species? Variant of a species? Go read origin of species...oldie but a goodie.

TOo bad darwin isn't in the bible, otherwise this oaf might actually have given it some thought.

 

[yhelothar]

Matter is not eternal. God, by very definition, is eternal.



No, it does not. Natural selection isn't the change of species from one to another. It is one species (or variant of one) surviving in an environment and another not. The peppered moth is a good example of this. The species didn't change, but the dark ones survived on the sooty trees while the light ones did not.

Yeah natural selection can be mutually exclusive with evolution if you believe the earth is really 6000 years old and fossils were put there by God to test your faith.

 

[Hayabusa Rider]

I love how everyone states that evolution, big bang, etc is fact, yet everyone forgets that it is a theory, and there is no solid proof of any of it

You either do not know or do not wish to understand the difference between science and religion.

Religion assumes a priori knowledge. It makes the conclusion about something, and that's it. It requires no evidence that can be seen. You cannot test for God. That does not invalidate all tenets of religion, however if facts contradict a dogma, then dogma cannot prevail.

Science on the other hand is merely a tool, a method of examining that which is around us. As I say God cannot be examined. A faith that says that there is a Supreme Being which has an interest in you is not testable. Science proper cannot be used to examine your contention. It cannot say you are right or wrong. That's where the more belligerent atheists fail. They try to beat others with something which cannot apply. Most real scientists understand that, and your beliefs are of no consequence to them personally.

Nevertheless, science is useful in explaining things. It is not like religion which makes a declarative statement.

Let's take the Big Bang. No one said "Hey I think the universe started as unimaginably dense object which blew up and created everything. Let's go out and find the things which match our claim"

I can trace the scientific basis for the Big Bang back to 1842, when Christian Doppler published his conclusions stating that the observed frequency of a wave depends on the relative speed of the source and the observer. This was confirmed in 1845. To state the principle another way the frequency of a sound changes when the source and observer move in relation to one another. It gets higher as they come together, lower as they move apart.

At the time most people believed the galaxy and the Universe were one in the same. The Andromeda Galaxy and everything else were nebula contained in the Milky Way. There was no reason to think otherwise until Edwin Hubble noticed that the shift of the "pitch" of light was proportional to the distances of the galaxies and the overwhelming majority were shifted to the red end of the spectrum. All distant galaxies are receding. The fastest ones are the farthest ones. This is a direct effect of the physics. There are no questions about the measurements. They've been done to death. There is no question about the Doppler shift. It's been done to death as well.

There is conclusive evidence that the Universe is expanding and that the furthest and therefore oldest galaxies are moving fastest.

But just how fast is the expansion? That depends on the value of something which was little more than a guess at the beginning, the Hubble Constant. By several means, this has been determined with great accuracy.

Where that fits in to the Big Bang is that since the universe will be larger in the future, it must have been smaller in the past. That's where the concept of the singularity comes from. It's not a guess. It's not massaging the data. It's the direct result of observation.

It also gives a very good estimate of how old the Universe is, and it's not 6k, or anything like it.

Now one could argue that God decided to deliberately created the Universe to deceive people. God could be the Great Liar, who twists things to snare and punish. Well my a priori opinion of a God that would do that is that he should be detested and reviled. Doesn't match up with how Jesus approached things, does it?

Now there are many other things that go into the Big Bang theory, and they can be similarly explained.

Yes there are facts behind the theory, it's not just some blind guess with people scrambling about in an effort to steal your faith. You faith is going to have to reconcile itself to the fact that it cannot put God in a box, if God is responsible for what we see.

This same thing happened already. In other threads I posted a quote from Martin Luther who felt about Copernicus when he said that the Earth is not the center of Creation.

Why was Copernicus wrong? Because "Joshua did not command the Earth to stop spinning!" He must be! The Sun and not us move!

Joshua determined the nature of the Universe because the Bible is the literal word of God and since God in infallible so is his word. The Sun revolves around the Earth. End of story.

Now do you believe that? If you do, then there is no room for understanding. The Bible says it, you believe it, and that settles it.

If not, if you accept science after all. If you believe the Moon revolves around the Earth, and the Earth revolves in turn around the Sun, then you have to accept that the truths of science will change your beliefs, and if the facts (and I have provided evidence of observational data) then you are going to have to do so again.

That's reality. Accept or reject it. That's up to you.

 

[Jeff7]

So is that all I have to do, define something as eternal, and that's how it is?

What defined God as eternal.
The Bible.
What gave the Bible legitimacy?
a) The Bible. See "Circular Logic" in your friendly neighborhood dictionary.
b) A lot of people say so. See "Democracy" and tell me how a consensus among humans somehow legitimizes a deity.

Originally Posted by SparkyJJO
Both of you fail. Just throwing random comments contributes nothing. Maybe you can't really refute what I said so that's the best you can do?



Natural selection I totally agree with. But natural selection != evolution or cause it. Sure some slight adaptations may happen, but never changes one species into another.

See my previous post about "species" changing, and Zin's followup post.
And saying "natural selection != evolution" is like saying "fur != hair." Guess what...they're both secretions of various proteins from follicles in the skin. "Fur" is just our way of saying "really dense hair."
You're basically saying that fur isn't hair. Fine, then what the hell is it?

OK, so where did the stuff and that background radiation come from in the first place? Had to come from somewhere

God gets a "Get out of Causality Free" card, but when you try to say "Time also came from the Big Bang singularity, therefore causality as we define it didn't exist until then," no, that's just crazy talk. :confused; again.



Adding to this part of Hayabusu's post:

Let's take the Big Bang. No one said "Hey I think the universe started as unimaginably dense object which blew up and created everything. Let's go out and find the things which match our claim"

Look up the COBE mission.
A prediction was made before the mission went up about the data it would return if the Universe was once very hot, and uniformly so, which would indicate that it was rather dense, so as to allow this.
COBE went and had a look around.
The data it returned almost perfectly matched the prediction.
This wasn't some arbitrary BS that was contrived ahead of time. It was based on the equation for the EM emissions of a blackbody, something derived through experiment and observation here on Earth.



Religion: Please make a scientifically testable prediction of this nature. Then we'll go test it.

 

[lxskllr]

Yeah natural selection can be mutually exclusive with evolution if you believe the earth is really 6000 years old and fossils were put there by God to test your faith.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oXgzzZXOMIg&feature=related#t=2m00s

 

[yhelothar]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oXgzzZXOMIg&feature=related#t=2m00s

classic. that's where i got it from actually :awe:

 

[nerp]

The teaching of science is abysmal in the United States. Don't be surprised when our standard of living is far worse than China and India.

 

[yhelothar]

The teaching of science is abysmal in the United States. Don't be surprised when our standard of living is far worse than China and India.

While the teaching of science is abysmal in the US, what's worse is that much of science has become a political issue.
The acceptance in creationism or evolution has been much integrated with political parties.
The article I posted a few pages back explains it well IMO.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/08/060810-evolution.html

 

[Cerpin Taxt]

Matter is not eternal.

If you are suggesting that the universe is necessarily not past-infinite, you are demonstrably mistaken.

God, by very definition, is eternal.

I don't really care how you want to define your term. There's no reason to believe your definition is instantiated in reality. It's frankly amusing that you'd declare your definition of God as though the fact you've defined it that way had any real meaning.

Anyone can postulate a definition. "Smerb" means "the individual that will pay me 1 million dollars on my 50th birthday." Now, I can just decide to believe in Smerb, and I can take that money straight to the bank!

Maybe I should define Smerb to be eternal, too, just in case.

No, it does not. Natural selection isn't the change of species from one to another. It is one species (or variant of one) surviving in an environment and another not. The peppered moth is a good example of this. The species didn't change, but the dark ones survived on the sooty trees while the light ones did not.

You speak as though you do not understand the fuzzy nature of species delineations, nor the real significance of the hierarchical pattern of common descent. Evolution isn't a ladder-like progression. Biological diversity expands outward in all directions like a bush or a tree, each limb contemporaneous with the others. You think evolution is false because cats will never evolve into dogs or monkeys, and you don't realize that even while mammals will never evolve into marsupials, they will themselves evolve into bison, manatees and men, or koalas, possums and bandicoots.

 

[Firsttime]

Here we go. I'm not a scientist, nor do I claim to have any real understanding of many of the processes being discussed here. However, the assumption in this thread that scientists are any less biased then the preachers is absolutely insane. Everyone is working towards an agenda operating from a set of presuppositions. Whether you hold to the religion of Christianity or that of Humanist Science no one is immune from subjectivity. Everyone is out for the furthering of their own viewpoints, me included, true objectivity does not exist. And if it did it certainly would never be present in such an incredibly volatile issue with so many ramifications on every facet of society.

 

[jagec]

Here we go. I'm not a scientist, nor do I claim to have any real understanding of many of the processes being discussed here. However, the assumption in this thread that scientists are any less biased then the preachers is absolutely insane. Everyone is working towards an agenda operating from a set of presuppositions. Whether you hold to the religion of Christianity or that of Humanist Science no one is immune from subjectivity. Everyone is out for the furthering of their own viewpoints, me included, true objectivity does not exist. And if it did it certainly would never be present in such an incredibly volatile issue with so many ramifications on every facet of society.

Just because no one is innocent, does not mean that there are not degrees of guilt.

 

[Firsttime]

Just because no one is innocent, does not mean that there are not degrees of guilt.

I would disagree, in this situation guilt is guilt is guilt. Applying your presuppositions to the way you live or conduct science or whatever does not come in varying degrees, certainly it may appear some people allow their view points to have a more visible impact on their work but at the end of the day the effect is the same, objectivity has been perverted and the truth distorted. It does not matter if someone distorts the truth more then someone else the result is the same.

 

[Jeff7]

Here we go. I'm not a scientist, nor do I claim to have any real understanding of many of the processes being discussed here. However, the assumption in this thread that scientists are any less biased then the preachers is absolutely insane. Everyone is working towards an agenda operating from a set of presuppositions. Whether you hold to the religion of Christianity or that of Humanist Science no one is immune from subjectivity. Everyone is out for the furthering of their own viewpoints, me included, true objectivity does not exist. And if it did it certainly would never be present in such an incredibly volatile issue with so many ramifications on every facet of society.

...which is why the peer review process exists.

 

[Cerpin Taxt]

Here we go. I'm not a scientist, nor do I claim to have any real understanding of many of the processes being discussed here. However, the assumption in this thread that scientists are any less biased then the preachers is absolutely insane. Everyone is working towards an agenda operating from a set of presuppositions.

Every individual has their own set of beliefs unique to them. That's true. However, the basic belief-set of science is one common to every person who does not doubt his own physical senses. The naturalistic assumptions of science are the same that lead you to believe that your keys will generally stay wherever you leave them, and that your car won't magically change into a truck. Every sane person must at least pragmatically accept that the universe is generally consistent, and that we can make reliable inferences by testing our hypotheses.

Whether you hold to the religion of Christianity or that of Humanist Science no one is immune from subjectivity. Everyone is out for the furthering of their own viewpoints, me included, true objectivity does not exist.

There may not be true objectivity, but there is certainly inter-subjectivity. The scientific method is organized in such a way as to be truly inter-subjective -- meaning that observations which cannot be independently corroborated have no scientific meaning.

{snip}

 

[jagec]

I would disagree, in this situation guilt is guilt is guilt. Applying your presuppositions to the way you live or conduct science or whatever does not come in varying degrees, certainly it may appear some people allow their view points to have a more visible impact on their work but at the end of the day the effect is the same, objectivity has been perverted and the truth distorted. It does not matter if someone distorts the truth more then someone else the result is the same.

Are you honestly claiming that a slightly distorted truth is just as bad as a twisted, mangled, charred beyond recognition truth?