It occurs to me that we are three pages into this thread, and still no creationist has answered the question the OP asked:
“I’m opening a new thread just for the creationists to put forth their evidence for creationism and/or against evolution.”
I’m not surprised by this, mind you.
ARG220 said:
And just how do you know that? Are you omniscient? Do you have some special knowledge of the universe that we lack? How can you put forth such an unsupported statement and expect it to be taken seriously?
And something that no one has yet answered:
Just what is the probability of God existing? Hmmm?
It is proof that it formed. And absent of any proof of a creator, that means that it forming out of nothingness is a good possibility.
DavidB said:
The issue of whether there is a creator has a direct bearing on this discussion. While it is possible to believe in God and believe in evolution, it’s rather hard to disbelieve in God and disbelieve in evolution as well. The existence of God is a necessary but not sufficient condition for Creationism.
Actually, I am a bit surprised that there’s no creationist around to tell us that the dust on the moon is only an inch thick.
In the interests of getting the conversation moving, I’ll post some of the evidence for human ancestry which pashley and CalifBoomer are unaware of:
Transposons are bits of parasitic DNA which can insert themselves into the host’s genome. If one inserts into your genome, all your descendants will inherit the transposon at the same place in their genomes; this sort of thing has been observed to happen in families in historical (as opposed to geologic) time.
Humans and apes have identical transposons at the same place in their genomes.
Also, sometimes copies of genes get shut down, if natural selection provides no pressure to keep them. These deactivated, damaged genes are called “pseudogenes.” Humans and apes both have pseudogenes for the protein that synthesises vitamin C (among other pseudogenes.) The inability to synthesise vitamin C is quite rare among mammals, limited basically to guinea pigs and to higher primates. The evolutionist explanation is that the common ancestor ate so much fruit that it didn’t need the gene, and in the absence of selection pressure lost it. There is no good creationist explanation- one fellow suggested that God cursed Adam and Eve by taking away some of their genes, and did the same thing to apes because of some bizarre principle of guilt by anatomical similarity.
CalifBoomer? You stated that there was no evidence for the shared ancestry of humans and apes. Well, there you have it.
-Ben
I do have a comment on the issue of astronomical odds as to why exact things happened. As I understand it one of the basic fundamentals of physics is entropy(a tendency to mave from more ordered to less ordered). How does evolution fit in. Shouldn’t entropy cause more complex organisims to devolve, rather than evolve further? To me it always suggested an outside influence, which I guess is a case for creationism(essentially what the bible says,rather than literaly )as a guiding force that drove evolution.
Do you ever get the feeling that everybody thinks you’re paranoid?
Wolfman: Indeed evolution does appear to contradict the Second Law of Thermodynamics.
However, It really doesn’t. Evolution is happening not in a “closed” system but in an open system, in which energy is constantly entering the system via the sun.
Overall, the local “negative entropy” is more than compensated by the overall positive entropy of the sun becoming more disordered by burning its fuel.
All the second law states is that the overall entropy always increases. It doesn’t disallow at all for some portion of an open system to lower its entropy, as long as that entropy, and a little more, goes somewhere else.
Against stupidity the very gods / Themselves contend in vain.
What SingleDad said.
Plus, if you really want to get serious about thermodynamics, it is far from clear that there is an exact equivalence between entropy and order/disorder. IIRC, there is no equivalence in non-equilibrium thermodynamics. Almost all the thermodynamics taught at university undergraduate level and below is equilibrium thermodynamics, which is only an approximation (although a damned good one) to reality.
jrf
Incidentally, I haven’t seen too many creationists on this board starting these arguments. Most of them seem to have take the attitude of “Hey, you can believe what you believe, and I’ll believe what I believe.” It’s mostly the evolutionists who call the creationists out, asking for evidence, and when they try to appease you, you yell at them for promoting religious belief as scientific theory. (If the argument is over whether or not creation should be taught in public schools, then that of course is an entirely different story).
Gee, I don’t know…
[/QUOTE]
So you’re blaming scientists for your inability to accept reality?
[/QUOTE]
[quote]
Because {my beliefs} are “so much more valid,”
To think that I once believed you had only opened this thread to pounce on and belittle creationists. All you’ve done is refer to their belief as “ignorance,” contended that your beliefs are much more valid, called them whiners, accused them of “making stuff up,” accused them of “ignoring any option they don’t like” (there’s the pot calling the kettle black), and asserted that no rational person could hold their belief.
Incidentally, I haven’t seen you (meaning David, not the evolutionist camp as a whole) present any evidence whatsoever supporting your belief. Not that it would be at all germane anyway: just as theistic arguments hold no water with you, scientific arguments have little bearing on Creationism. Why can’t you accept this?
“History will be kind to me, for I intend to write it.” -Winston Churchill
Although I’ve only been on this board about a month, I’ve never seen seen the scientific Christians attacked for their belief in God.
These are people who I understand to believe very strongly in the existence of God, and furthermore appear to believe that God expresses Himself truthfully in the physical, observable facts of the Universe.
If the Universe is 15 billion years old, if it contains subtle, powerful, and rationally comprehensible mechanisms that led over the course of those years to the existence of Man who can appreciate God’s work with the full power of his senses and mind, well, the greater then is the Glory of God.
What pisses us all off is when idiots with no common sense, no understanding of rational inquiry, try to pass off their cheap superstition as fact equivalent to the understanding gained from decades, centuries, even millenia of careful observation and deduction. I’m not naming names, but if the shoe fits, wear it.
As to the presence or absence of evidence, anyone paying the slightest attention to various conversations here will see numerous references to positive evidence supporting evolution: protein homology, the fossil record, carbon dating, etc. The list goes on. If you follow even a fraction of the cited links, you will find ample evidence supporting evolution.
Whereas, in my decades of conversations with Creationists, following hundreds of links since the beginning of the Internet, reading various Creationist books, I have never once seen a single fact, one single sharable, carefully and critically examined experience, other than the testimony of the Bible, that supports their theory.
It’s been said before but I’ll say it again: If you want to believe in God, that’s fine. Maintain rationality and if anyone is rude enough to irrationally question your belief, I for one will jump into the fray to defend you.
If you want to practice ignorance and superstition, do it in your own home with the doors locked and the shades drawn. Keep it out of our schools, our newspapers, our laws, and our forum.
If you want to come here and assert that Anti-evolution Creationism is as equally rational an explanation as Evolution, then you deserve what you get: Requests for proof, and derision when you can’t provide it.
Against stupidity the very gods / Themselves contend in vain.
Bravo, Rousseau!
Patrick Ashley
“For those who believe, no evidence is necessary; for those who don’t believe, no evidence is enough.” -Unknown
So, Rousseau, are you saying that religious belief IS scientific theory?
-andros-
The 2nd law of thermodynamics, referred to by Single Dad above, provides a good example of just how pernicious and willfully misleading Creationist arguments can be.
Every single introduction to physics, including Isaac Asimov’s popular Understanding Physics, makes it plain that the 2nd law applies to closed systems only. Surely Creationists who are well read enough to cite the 2nd law must have stumbled upon this little limitation. Surely it must also have occurred to them that the earth Orbits the Sun, which has been known to give off a little energy now and then. Then why do they persist in citing the 2nd law? It can only be because they are not really interested in coming to an understanding of Natural History, but instead wish to use a series of cheap debater’s tricks to defend an intellectually bankrupt idea.
This example (One of many) shows why creationists do not deserve equal time, in shcools or anywhere else. If Creationism were a true scientific alternative to Neo-Darwinian evolutionary theories, certainly it would behoove any intelligent person to study it. However, since Creationism is an absurd patchwork of ludicrous, rhetorical tricks it does not deserve any serious consideration whatsoever. Certainly it should not be taught to high school students as science. This would doom science in America. See my sig, Which came from John Dewey, I think.
Having an open mind means you put out a welcome mat and answer the door politely. It does not mean leaving the door open with a sign saying nobody’s home
Rousseau, thank you for the long rant.
BTW, can you provide any scientific evidence for Creationism?
Pash, I’m sure Rousseau appreciated the attaboy.
BTW, can you provide any scientific evidence for Creationism?
Califboomer, your posts didn’t surprise anyone here.
BTW, can you provide any scientific evidence for Creationism?
In case I’m not being clear enough-Can anyone provide, in this topic designed for just this purpose, scientific evidence for Creationism?
Evolutionists: Prove that Creation is impossible. Show me evidence, that God did not create this earth. You cannot. You cannot find evidence against creation. Either you believe it, or you don’t.
For that matter, prove that God doesn’t exist. Use the scientifoc method if you wish. But show me evidence that He is not real. You can’t. There is no way to disprove the existence of the Father. You either believe in Him, or you don’t.
Now, since the methods of science brought us the theory of evolution, we could, technically, disprove evolution using the scientific method. This is exactly what many creationsists are set out to do. (I am not one of them)
David: Stop asking us for the evidence. You either believe in Creation, or you don’t. How am I going to use science to show you that God used His power to create you? I can’t. No one can. It’s all faith, and I know you know it.
Adam
“Life is hard…but God is good”
SingleDad said:
Hell, in roughly thirty years as a fairly outspoken born-again Christian, I can’t remember an instance of feeling attacked for my belief in God, on the board or anywhere else. But I’ve frequently felt under attack from my more conservative brethren and sistern in Christ for not believing the whole evangelical package - inerrancy, creationism, and the right-wing politics of Falwell and Robertson.
I’m still waiting to run into atheists who really hate Christians. All I run into are nonbelievers who don’t want the prejudices of a certain subset of Christians enacted as laws, and don’t want the superstitions of that same subset taught as science. Can’t say I blame them; I feel exactly the same way.
Arg,
You are asking the impossible. I cannot prove that Creation did not happen, but then One could come up with any number of absurd theories and say to doubters
You cannot prove me wrong!
I am reminded of the famous badfilm classic Plan Nine from Outer Space in which the narrator intones,
What you have seen is true! Can you prove it didn’t happen?
In a more serious vein there is Betrand Russel’s famous comment
can you prove that the entire universe, including all your memeories of a past, did not come into being five minutes ago.
Evolutionists have ample evidence for there theories. Creationists do not. End of story.
Having an open mind means you put out a welcome mat and answer the door politely. It does not mean leaving the door open with a sign saying nobody’s home
Oy, gone for 2 days and the post count doubles, shhes =)
~arg220
[/quote]
David: Stop asking us for the evidence. You either believe in Creation, or you don’t. How am I going to use science to show you that God used His power to create you? I can’t. No one can. It’s all faith, and I know you know it.
[/quote]
I’m not David, but what he is NOT asking you to simply NOT believe in creation.
He is only asking for evidence because many of you have tried to pass it off as a proven FACT. It may be faith, but it takes more then faith to prove a fact. I too would like to see this evidence.
-bored2001
Rousseau said:
Then, quite frankly, you haven’t been paying attention. Indeed, I started this thread because a couple of creationists were talking about it in other threads. They brought it up, get it?
I’m sorry, but bullshit. They have taken the attitude that they believe in creationism, and so that is what should be taught in school. Again, you show that you haven’t been paying attention.
Again, we call them out after they make their claims to scientific validity. Have you been reading any of the recent discussions, or do you just jump in willy nilly without bothering to look for factual information?
Exactly! And that’s what it often boils down to. So why did you bother with the first few lines of this message?
Then you accuse me of mocking people with religious beliefs by quoting my discussions of creationism. You seem to be mistakenly assuming that religion = creationism. Well, there are a bunch of pretty religious folks around here who would tell you differently. ]
Nope, I opened it so they’d have a place to post their supposed evidence to back their claims. And you know what? They still haven’t.
All of which are true. Creationist claims to scientific validity are ignorance of the highest degree. They do make stuff up (I know a professor who teaches a college creation/evolution class – he does a whole night on creationist lies, and he has to leave an awful lot of stuff out). Etc. You want to whine about it? Fine, but wouldn’t it be better to try to prove me wrong if you really think I am wrong? Go ahead. Give it a try.
First, it’s not a “belief,” it’s science. Second, this thread was for the creationists to strut their stuff. They made the claims, the can back them up. Scientists backs up their claims every single day.
Why can’t you learn to read? I know that scientific arguments have little bearing on creationism. Hell, that’s what I’ve been trying to say (although if I’d have said it, you’d have whined that it was an attack against religion). I’m just trying to get the creationists to admit that!
Adam, what’s the point? Nobody here is trying to prove that God didn’t create the world. We’re divided between those who believe He did, but not in the manner described in Genesis, and those who don’t believe in God, but want only to show that creation without God is equally as plausible as creation with God.
Those of us who believe God exists have no desire to prove His nonexistence, and those who don’t recognize that neither His existence nor His nonexistence can be proven. (Although cf. O. Colluphid, Well That About Wraps It Up for God. ;))
They are indeed welcome to try. That’s what science is all about. What they should remember, though, is that in the unlikely event that they prove evolution false, they will not have proved a single thing about Biblical creation, one way or the other.
We know this, but the point was that certain creationists weren’t acting like they knew it. (Read the OP again.) Their creationist claims were challenged in an appropriate manner: rather than further hijack threads devoted to other subjects, David set up a new thread for purposes of debating those claims. That’s the diplomatic way to deal with things like that here. Nobody intended it as an affront to Christians who believe in young-earth creation (or whatever), but don’t insist that others recognize the truth of that doctrine. Including you.
ARG said:
That is absolutely correct. You either believe it on pure faith, or you accept the actual evidence around us.
Correct again. You either accept God’s existence purely on faith, or you don’t. This contradicts precisely nothing I have ever said here.
Hell, yes, I know it. I’ve said it repeatedly, fercryingoutloud! And if you or any other creationist want to say, “Creationism is a religious belief that is based solely on faith,” then I will say, “Fine, good.” But the minute you or any other creationist try to claim evolution is false, or try to claim creationism is a theory, or that evolution is faith, or any of the myriad other pieces of BS I see put forth around here, a number of us are going to point out the error of such statements. And that is exactly what has happened recently.
In an attempt to answer the OP:
Do the similarities of religions across disparate cultures constitute evidence?
What about all that matter that science suggests should be in the universe, only a fraction of which seems to exist or be observed (the missing matter argument)
Science can only go back so far to understand conditions in the microseconds after the big bang. The physics of the big bang itself is not understood, nor or the laws that govern conditions in the singularity (which might not even be possible) from which the big bang supposedly originated i.e. infinite mass in a geometric point. If it can’t be explained with rational scientific theory, what is wrong with a God hypothesis?
What about the similarities between the big bang and the event described in Genesis. I mean geez, if you took a photo of the Big bang as it happened wouldn’t the caption read “let there be light!”???
Scientific theory today bears little resemblance to scientific theory of 100 years ago, hell there have been significant changes and reversals in the last ten years. Isn’t the arrogance of today’s scientists unjustified? I’m sure 100 years from now, today’s theories of physics and the origins of the universe will be regarded as quaint and outdated as was the accepted “scientific belief” that maggots spontaneously arose from the flesh of dead carcasses of only a few hundred years ago, or the belief that light and sound was carried through the “Aether.” Since accepted scientifc theory has proven itself to be as malleable as silly putty why the conviction that you have it right this time? Isn’t that unfounded?
Christian doctrine as to the creation on the other hand has at least proved stable. WHy is this constant hodge podge of changing “scientific” theory superior?
there’s this:
Magnetic field: Direct measurements of the earth’s magnetic field over the past 140 years show a steady and rapid decline in
its strength. The half-life of the Earth’s magnetic field is about 1400 years. This decay pattern is consistent with the theoretical
view that there is an electrical current inside the earth which produces the magnetic field. If this view is correct, then 25,000
years ago the electrical current would have been so large that the earth’s structure could not have survived the heat produced.
By the way, the sheer existence of the earth’s magnetic field is a miracle of creation. The surprisingly rapid decline in the earth’s
magnetic field, when compared to the maximum possible, original, field strength, argues very strongly for a young earth. We
assume, of course, that the magnetic field was created at the same time as the earth itself.
How about the abiogenesis event. The chances of a SINGLE CELL arising spontaneously from the primordial ooze are less than 1 to the 200th power, but there are only 10 to the 80th power atoms in the universe.
THe pressure of oil found in sedimentary rocks is often way to high These deposits are “millions of years old” according to science , yet their pressure should have dissipated through the porous rock in 10,000 years or so. Yet it still remains high enough to create gushers. This shows that the earth is less than 10,000 years old.
Based on the decay of thorium and Uranium which are the only two sources for helium, there should only be enough helium in our atmosphere to last for 40,000 years or so before it bleeds off into space. Yet scientists tell us the earth is billions of years old. What is all this helium still doing in our atmosphere?
There’s the whole moon dust thing.
WHere is this wonderful mutation mechanism that makes evolution work? Almost all mutations are not beneficial to the organism. Natural selection can only select from existing genes it can’t make new ones. Who made these genes if not God?
The sun is shrinking at the rate of 5 feet per hour based on elips observations, that would make it less than 20,000,000 years old instead of the billions “Science” points to.
The dating of Hawaiian lava fields (K-Ar) is wildly inaccurate.
Erosion should have dumped at least 30 times as mush sediment in the sea over the billions of years the oceeans existed wiping out all the landmasses if the earth was that old.
The last few appearances of Halley’s and other periodic comets show them to be disintegrating rapidly. Based on their known periodicity this seriously disagrees with the “scientifically determined” age of the universe.
It takes roughly 20,000 years to fgorm six inches of topsoil. The earth’s average topsoil depth is only about 7 inches. Where’s the topsoil?
What about Polonium Halos, huh?
OBserved exponential population growth?
Shouldn’t half of the amino acids be right-handed statistically speaking?
Doesn’t mitochondrial Dna show that manking evolved from one common female? Isn’t this proof of Eve?
WHy did humans lose their hair and tales? Aren’t they useful?
Mendellian inheritance suggests that recessive traits like gills tails and hair should reappear sporadically. WHere are they?
Heart mountain in Cody Wyoming? Explain that!
THe spin of the solar system?
WHy would humans evolve emotions like love unless God gave them to us?
WHere are the intermediate fossils?
The folding of sedimentary rock indicates it was still soft when folded. How can this e if it was millions of years old.
Scientists are arrogant and stuck up, why should we believe what they say?
Doesn’t science suggest that energy and matter should constantly be being formed? Why isn’t this happening?
Hmmmm.
I guess that’s enough for now. Somebody had to try to fulfill the OP, might as well be me.
Not that I buy into that stuff, I’m just depressed that the creationists didn’t even make the effort before committing intellectual suicide.
C’mon guys, your fighting for God here! you should at least try and make a serious effort here!
It’s also important to keep DavidB well fed with bad science or he starts to get cranky. Who knows, maybe there’s a new one in there somewhere.
By the way wouldn’t it be fun to have a great debate like this:
DavidB, Dr Fidelius and others defend the following OP:
“Elvis is very much alive and at large. He will make his wishes known to us when he is ready.”