Creationism...?

Great Debates
41

My own experience with educated creationists is thus:

Back when I was in grad school, in a lab which worked on determining the 3-d structure of various enzymes, we had two creationists join the lab at roughly the same time. I remember that in their first or second year in the lab we went to a conference, and they got into a dinner-table argument with a friend of mine over evolution, and they whipped out the usual: peppered moths are a fraud, similar organisms require similar proteins, etc.

A couple of years later we went to another conference, and took a side trip to the local aquarium. We were all looking at a sea lion, and one of the (now ex-) creationists commented to himself, “Wow- look at those fingernails on its flippers. You can really see evolution in action.”

Around the same time, the other creationist gave a talk on her project, which involved the differential responses of new-world monkeys vs. old-world monkeys to cortisone. (Trust me, this is not nearly so esoteric as it sounds. There are good medical reasons to look into the enzymes that monkeys use to deal with cortisone.) Afterwards I complimented her on her talk, and she spontaneously - and enthusiastically - started regaling me with an account of the evolutionary background of her project, and how evolution had shaped cortisone response, etc.

I should also mention Gish, who has (IIRC) a PhD in biochemistry from Berkeley. He is, however, extraordinarily ignorant of his field. I remember hearing about a debate in which his opponent pointed to the vertebrate immune system as an example of natural selection creating new information. Now, I’ve heard about the vertebrate immune system about five or six times now, from as many different textbooks (immunology, cell bio, molecular bio, evo/devo, molecular genetics, etc.) You just can’t avoid learning about it these days if you keep your eyes open. But Gish’s comments indicated that he clearly had never heard anything about it. (i.e., he argued, “your comments about the immune system are obviously wrong. If they were true, someone would have won a Nobel prize for it!” Er, someone did. “If what you’re saying about the immune system is true, why doesn’t it attack the body as well as attacking pathogens?” Gee, all six textbooks said it was because of the thymus.) If Gish knew what he was talking about, he would have known ahead of time which arguments would be easy to shoot down.

42

To add to Ben’s experiences:

I am a nonpracticing Jew, and one of the more senior graduate students our lab is an ultra-Orthodox Jew. We are a lab which works on eye and brain development in the fruit fly, and his project centers around modeling human diseases in the fruit fly. Obvious evolution is a key tenet in our lab, yet as of last year he did not accept evolution.

He had erected a very delicate wall in his intellect. On one side was his faith, with a sort of hybrid Old Earth Creationism that is not questioned. On the other side was his whole scientific experience. I would hear him describing his work to other Orthodox friends : “Isn’t it great how Hashem made the world?”

We have learned to avoid the heated arguments of the past few years, and we get along fine unless politics, views on women, views on religion in society, or evolution comes up. So we talk science. But I have noticed change in him when I have pushed the limits. He was going to the Jewish Day School to talk about DNA fingerprinting, and as a genetics student (he has more or a neuroscience background) I was explaining the basics to him. I couldn’t help but press the point (repeatedly) about the origin of the vast majority of polymorphism in the genome originating before humans moved out of Africa 60,000 years ago. Like anything in genetics (or in biology in general), fingerprinting can be tied to evolution in one easy step. No matter how hard I pressed the point, he didn’t say a peep. He seemed to accept it, but perhaps he was seeking to avoid argument as well.

I hope that as he becomes more enrapt in his science, as he comes to depend on evolutionary tenets to make sense of his work, that delicate wall will be subject to more questioning.

43

I should also add that this is why I find it so frustrating that of late, I’m hearing more and more creationists “prove” ID by saying, “the more we learn about DNA, the more it looks designed,” or, “if you just look at DNA, it’s obvious that it must have been designed.”

The funny thing is, none of the people who say that stuff have actually ever looked at DNA. And as I’ve argued at length in my FAQ, if you actually bother to look, DNA very, very obviously looks evolved. If you really want to see creationists squirm, just bring up retrogenes.

“You know what the funny thing is about Milla Jovovich? The more you look at 'er, the more she looks like Ed Asner.”

44

I still don’t get it. What is a “non-physical” construct, and how does it differ substantively from an unknown physical construct? How can we tell that a particular thing is one or the other?

And what DO you mean about “passing on information about itself.” To who?

I agree that complexity is necessary: what I’m not sure about is “reproducing” and “passing information.” For biological life that evolved, yes, by definition. But would we really reject as life a complex creature that didn’t reproduce at all? Death, after all, is itself just an evolutionary development.

Indeed: that approach is premised on the idea that constants were randomly set at all. We don’t know this. It just seems to be an interesting line of speculation.

No, they don’t. Indeed, then they wouldn’t really be constants. Some things about our universe seem to be the result of things like symetry breaking in a certain way. But then again, we don’t know the chains of causality that led to any particular outcome: how far back it goes, and what determined IT.

It might have had, it might not have had. It’s not clear. Maybe another universe that didn’t start the exact way ours did could have been different… but then we’re already talking about multiple universes. We don’t yet know for sure that there are any. The SA article involves some good solid guesses about how we might go about confirming such a thing, and what the conditions around it might be.

And again, while other universes might not have life, it’s not clear that whatever was there, even random quarks, could be considered any more or less “lucky” than we are for existing. It is only hubris that allows us to consider ourselves specially “amazing.” Amazing compared to WHAT? For all we know, if there are multiple constants, other universes could be more complex than ours: and we are amazing because our universe is almost 100% chaotic on most levels.

Yep. But there also need not be any why. We can’t just assume any particular “next step” of causality when that step could be litterally anything… or nothing.

Of course they don’t: we measure them and take them as given. But they aren’t themselves “values.” “Values” are what are created by the act of measuring and codifying them. What they are are regularities, similarities.

Why?
Then we are just left with “why are there multiple universes and why are there particular constants of a particular available ranges”?

It’s not that it’s unreasonable: it’s that not only is your explanation reasonable no matter what, but just about ANYTHING is reasonable.

Evidence of a) that creator itself or b) evidence of a particular mechanism of the process used FOR a creation. For instance, when we make a watch, it has tool marks on it that give us some sense of the process that went into constructing it.

Evidence should have nothing to do with convincing any particular person of any belief. That you might already believe in a creator should not make a particular argument more or less compelling.

45

Apos, I only have a high school knowledge of biology so I asked Cecil. He said, “Living things contain reproducible hereditary information.” If you read the complete article, this seems to be a necessary, but not sufficient condition (AI and viruses). There are some more esoteric responses as well. “Passing on information” means “passing on hereditary information to a descendant.” I think a certain level of physical complexity is necessary to do this.

The SA article admits the appearance of a “fine-tuning” of the universal constants. It describes this as an “unexpected coincidence” that is fortunate for life as we know it. The article goes on to use this to justify a Level II multiverse as an explanation for why our universe exists as it does (in the fortunate for life as we know it state that it is in). I can’t say anything more about the physical constants. I don’t understand more. As the article describes, small tweaks in the values of the constants would result in universes that are much less complex.

Finally, I realize that my assertion is untestable. If I haven’t already admitted that I can’t prove it, I can’t. It seems that the evidence you have requested is a) a supernatural revelation or b) a revelation of supernatural tools. I am not sure if you’ve read the post I made after I reread the SA article, or even if that post is any more helpful.

What is your view on the origin of the universe?

46

for reference here is a gross outline of the story so far,

hominids appeared 5 million years ago (mya)
the genus Australopithecus appears about 4 mya
most species died out about 2.5 mya but at least one co-existed with other hominids at that time.

The first human genus Homo decented (acended?) from one of the species of Australopithecus. This was a pretty smart animal for it day but still rather small compared to moder humans.
Unlike Australopithecus these first humans were mostly walking and tool using.

Well time goes on, brains and bodies get bigger, lose a little hair and so on until about 100-150 thousand years ago sapien appear. Somewhare in Africa is commonly believed before H.sapiens migrated to the rest of the world. Driving other Homo competitors to extinction.

Evolutionary theory (not doctrine) is supported by the archeological evidence.

47

In case you’ve forgotten, you raised this terminology in your discussion of what a SOUL would need to do. Are you saying that souls reproduce and pass on information to their descedants?

Second, the key idea here is not “biological life” but “intelligent being: capable of wondering at its own existence.”

Third, as Cecil notes, there is no commonly agreed upon definition of life. If all heritable information were deleted from my cells, leaving only the sequences necessary for current function and replication, would I cease to be “alive” in anyones terminology?

Yes, but what’s the evidence of this view? From what I know, it’s by far overstating our knowledge. How can we describe as being a “coincidence” that there is a cause (state of the universe) and an effect (life as we know it)? Is it a “coincidence” that when I hit a pool ball with a cue, it moves? And how can it be “unexpected” when we have no alternate universe to compare it to and thus build up a profile of what is “expected?”

Yes, but we don’t know what “tweaks” are even possible, if any. There is every reason to think that if they can be different, then the constants are going to be interelated to each other, not just capable of being any arbitrary value indepedant of each other. For all we know, there is only one underlying relationship that determines them all. There is no reason why the “standard” universe couldn’t just as easily be more complex instead of less. We aren’t talking about all concievable universes, but all possible universes given whatever the underlying state of universes is.

And remember, at this point we CAN’T be talking about an intelligent “creator” in the sense of a being that can just make anything happen. We’re talking about a selector of our sort of universe: one that need not necessarily even be intelligent (or thoughtful at all).

Why would it need to be supernatural, especially in the second case? We’re talking about evidence in creation itself of the sort that demonstrates an external process of manipulation, rather than just effects that we assume are manipulations. Again: human creations tend to have tool marks, pencil marks, even author’s inscriptions.

And are you sure you are even conveying intelligible information by calling these things “supernatural?” What does this convey beyond “not understood,” which is already the case by definition? What is a “supernatural” thing as opposed to simply “not natural” (which tells us absolutely nothing, since we have no complete sense of what is “natural” to begin with?)

The problem you raise is what I pointed out in the beginning: explanations have to stop somewhere if we don’t have an infinite regress. It’s not clear where they should stop, but if we admit that they do, it’s certainly not clear that the logic “but for that to be so, then there must be a…” is valid as an ad hoc.

I have no idea if the universe originated at all, let alone how or from where. The very concept of it originating seems to be impossible to concieve of or model, because all known physical theories break down at a point of singularity (which is what the BB is), and that includes our theory of time. Stephen Hawking has thus sugguested that when we look back to the beginning, there is really no explicit “point” at which the universe starts
/
but rather an ever decreasing function that approaches, but never reaches, a 0 point
U

As he points out, this leaves pretty much nothing for a designer to do: the universe would be self-contained like the surface of a balloon, not actually starting any"where" or “when.”

Others have suggested that, because the universe was at one point on a quantum scale in which there is always potentiality rather than discrete state (“nothing” would be a discrete state), that it could have simply started the way particle/anti-particles appear. This seems plausible largely because the estimated total energy in the universe appears to be… 0, as well as fitting in with the inflationary hypothesis.

But beyond speculation like this…

In short, I have no idea, and I don’t think anyone else who considers the matter seriously does either. Hawking puts it brilliantly: no matter what logical or empirical argument we make, when we start to consider ultimate origins, we face the problem of figuring out how “life” was breathed into the equations. After all, why should the universe, or, for that matter, a god, exist in a certain way simply because it’s logical for it to from the perspective of things whose existences are already premised on it existing in that way?

48

All right. How does evolution explain the appearance of life from non-life? That would imply spontaneous generation.

49

Evolution doesn’t deal with life from non-life. Evolution deals with life after it’s been created.

I believe Abiogenesis is what you are interested in. I unfortunately don’t have a link handy.

50

Here are two discussions on abiogenesis.

We should probably note, quickly, that abiogenesis is not the same thing as spontaneous generation. (A number of Creationists make the faulty claim that since “Pasteur ‘proved’ that there was no spontaneous generation,” then obviously “evilution” is wrong.) However, spontaneous generation is the belief that the same sorts of living creatures arise spontaneously from some non-living source in repeated generations. Pasteur did, indeed, demonstrate that the bugs that were ruining wine (and spoiling milk, etc.) were being bred by earlier generations and not arising spontaneously. What he did not prove (because it was not what he was attempting to discover) was that no chemical process could ever occur in such a way as to give rise to living creatures.

(Beyond which, of course, spontaneous implies a poof event in which there is no life and then, POOF!, there is life. Abiogenesis could have occurred over a fairly extend period of time with one chemical reaction occurring multiple times with no consequent development of life until it was succeeded by a second chemical reaction, that built on the first, but was, itself, repeated for long periods until it, in turn, gave rise to a third, etc.)

51

The theory of abiogenesis actually explodes the essentialist concept of “life” in the same way that evolution explodes the essentialist concept of “kind.” In short, it suggests that there is no hard and bright line between life and non-life.

52

To get back on subject, I have seen three classes of creationists.

  1. The ignorant. These are people who have never really read about evolution, or who have been fed bad information by their churches. (And not all churches do this, by a long shot.) They say things like cats never turn into dogs, so evolution is impossible. There is nothing wrong with being ignorant, I’ve seen many of this type of people read some books, have their eyes opened, and drop creationism.

  2. The stupid. There are some people who just don’t get it, no matter how much you try to explain. None of those around here, so I’ll move on.

  3. The religiously committed. These are people who have convinced themselves that if evolution is true the Bible is false, and just can’t deal with it. They are the ones who invent lies to defend the Bible. Look at the pledge one must sign to join the Institute for Creation Research.

The reason you don’t see many creationists in threads like this, I think, is that the leaders of the movement don’t want to get pinned down, and will only debate in their territory where their sound bites work, and that the followers, once prevented with the evidence, get very nervous about the core of their belief system being challenged, and drop out.

It would nice if some creationist would prove me wrong, but I am not holding my breath.

53

Apos, could you explain your position on the universal constants?

Do you believe that they are required to be what they are?

I am trying to understand where you are coming from.

54

My position, as I have stated it several times, is that we don’t even know if “constants” is the correct way to conceptualize “them,” let alone whether or not “they” can be different than they are, and if so, over what ranges and in what interelations to each other. What we have are certain empirically measured values that appear to be both consistent and interelated. Beyond that, we really don’t know much about why they are the way they are: why there are certain regularities and not others, or even what additional constants or regularities there could be. For all we know, other universes have more fundamental forces than ours at different temperatures, different sorts of particles, etc.

It’s important to speculate about this matter of course, because we can probably rule out various things logically. But it doesn’t seem like we can rule out any of the truly basic differing possibilities I noted.

All of this is simply beyond the realm of our knowledge of the universe, largely because of two major problems. First, the universe apparently started as a singularity: a point of zero size. Even math doesn’t have any ability to theorize about the nature of a point, and certainly the theory of relativity does not. Even Quantum mechanics faces some real challenges about theorizing about a “naked” singularity. Second, we cannot “see” beyond a certain point when we look backwards in time using powerful telescopes. Beyond a certain point, we cannot currently gather any further empirical data (further back in time: we can of course gather more detailed information about what we can see).

55

Do you approach the world through the Aristotelian paradigm? If so, there isn’t much more I can say. You are right, we have a single data point.

The Aristotelian paradigm (via SA) - “physical reality is fundamental and mathematical language is merely a useful approximation”

56

No. Even SA knows the difference between a theory and what it is trying to describe. Not all theories are conceptually appropriate: that’s why, after all, we go through the trouble of trying to test them.

No no: not a single data point: a singularity.

57

Voyager, you just proved my point all along: evolution is being used to attack religion. It has become a scientific form of fundamentalism that those who are religious feel compelled to attack.

58

I’m not sure what your last sentence means. I am religious and I do not feel compelled to attack anyone either pro or con evolution.

If you mean that some people who accept the scientific Theory of Evolution use the facts in that system to attack people who do not accept the science, you are probably right that some do. If you mean that there are people who do not believe in God who attack religion for purportedly fostering Creationist ideas, I am sure that some of them exist, as well.

On the other hand, if you are holding that the Theory of Evolution is merely one more belief system with no better claim to recognition than any Creation account and that people who “believe” in Evolution are simply engaged in a religious war with people who “believe” in Creationism, then I suspect that you are mistaken.

Certainly, there are folks like Voyager who seem to have a rather narrow view others’ beliefs. However, there are a great many people who understand the basic points of the Theory of Evolution who do not put down other voices (although they will probably not agree with Creationist accounts). Some of this last group may be atheists or agnostics–or they may be Christians or Jews or adherents of some other faith.

59

Heck, religion should be attacked, or at least deflected, when it wanders out of philosophy and makes scientific claims.

Want to claim we should lead disciplined, noble lives? No argument from me. Want to claim the Earth was created in six days? Prove it.