Creationists teach evolution, too!

Great Debates
21

JonF wrote:

The sad fact of human communication is that everyone has an agenda. Therefore, you have to take everything you hear with a grain of salt. While it is true that some ‘creationists’ and other Christians may have a hidden agenda of bringing God back into the schools, realize that some of these people are only concerned that the schools NOT try to use evolution theory/science to “debunk the existance of God”. I know, personally, of an instance where a 5th grade science teacher proclaimed that evolution proved, without a doubt, that God does not exist. Interestingly, the “scientific creationists” are not the only ones with hidden agendas.

For enlightened Christians, evolution does not conflict with religious beliefs. I’m a Christian, yet I believe the evolutionary theory is mostly sound. I don’t believe that, as theories go, it ranks up there with relativity in terms of evidence, but give it time…

22

sdimbert wrote:

Or alternatively, God developed the mechanisms and set the process of evolution in motion. When I envision God, he’s wearing a lab coat…

23

sdimbert wrote:

Yes, it is possible to assume that God created the universe 6000 years ago, and rigged it so that it looked 10+ billion years old. And you would not be able to disprove this assumption.

The problem is, you could also assume that God created the universe last Thursday and made it look like it was 10+ billion years old, and you would also not be able to disprove this assumption. God could have created you at your current age and given you false memories of a non-existent past, and done the same with everyone else on Earth.

This notion is sometimes called “Last Thursdayism”.

24

JoeyBlades

So what? This in no way should reflect poorly on evolution and doesn’t justify the attacks by psuedo-scientific creationists. The teacher is at fault, not the science. I have known of individuals who try to use astronomy and geology to disprove the existence of God. Why single out evolution?

Evolution has far more evidence supporting it than Relativity. Anyone with a shovel can uncover evidence for evolution. A vast amount of evidence is stored in museums and universities. An enormous amount of scientific literature is published in the field of molecular biology. It takes a great deal more effort to document Relativity.

25

There’s no particular reason why we can’t. BUt, if we do, we’re finished at that point. There would be no experiments to run, no test to apply, no new knowledge to be gained, no progress to be made.

26

Can you provide some evidence for this assertion? Be warned that many posters have already seen and refuted the standard creationist stock-in-trade.

No. In science, “theory” is a technical term. It does not carry the connotation of “tentative and unproven” that it does in ordinary speech. In scientific usage, “hypothesis” is used for such situations. "Theory " is used to acknowledge that it is conceivable, no matter how unlikely, that the theory could be refuted. The theory of evolution is as well founded as the theory of the existence of gravity; don’t bet your life savings on either of them being overturned.

27

As I said in another thread, a true skeptic should be skeptical of skeptics. It is, of course, inappropriate to teach that evolution or science to disproves (or proves) the existence of a supreme being. I believe that many creationists are concerned because the teaching of scientific principles does (and should) lead people to question assumptions and various logical fallacies. It is a fact that some people apply these techniques to religion and “lose their religion”. It is also a fact that some people apply these techniques to religion and remain or become faithful. But I don’t believe that these facts require us to abandon science.

(Yowza! Posting is ever so much faster now that I can do it all in Opera and not duck over to Netscape for each reply!)

28

Sdimbert said:

Why can’t we assume that I made everything and just like to hang around message boards to taunt people by apparently “joking” about being a God, when, in fact, I really am God and I’m just testing you all?

Or, as SingleDad has said, if we’re just assuming, can I be taller?

As some have already pointed out, you don’t know what you’re talking about. Yes, that was blunt, but true. It’s called a theory because it has mountains of evidence to support it.

Or are you going to claim that the heliocentric theory doesn’t hold water? How about gravitational theory? Quantum theory? Etc.

Perhaps it’s time to put the religion off to the part of your brain that doesn’t deal with science, because the two don’t go together.

29

tracer wrote:

Not all Christians or even creationists believe that God created the heavens and the Earth a mere 6000 years ago. Actually, I would guess that population of Christians is relatively small.
hardcore wrote:

I never said that they were justified in their concerns. I was only pointing out that this is one of the most common concerns that is related to me by fundamentalist Christians.

I think you are very confused. The evidence for relativity is demonstrable through predictive analysis and executable scientific procedures. Sadly, while the evidence for evolution is voluminous, it’s largely circumstantial. Very little of this evidence leads us to repeatable experiments that demonstrate that species A can evolve into species B. As I stated before, I believe in evolution, I want to see more strong evidence to support the theory. I personally believe that the process is in some ways much simpler and rapid than natural selection suggests and in some ways much more complex. Circumstantial or not, the evidence is in support of the theory, but to claim that as a theory, evolution compares to relativity suggests to me that you lack some fundamental understanding of one, the other, or both.
David B wrote:

This is very good advice. Faith is faith and science is science. I never let science interfere with my faith… or visa versa.

30

Unfortunately, I know from experience reading (and enjoying) his posts that JoeyBlades is not the standard creationist.

31

DaivdB:

**

OUCH! :slight_smile:

You know, when Cecil and Ed come to my house for a Shabbos and my fundamentalist, lunatic, Lubavich friends convince them to join their gang, and, out of their appreciation to me for guiding them onto the One True Path, Cecil and Ed make me High Exalted Grand Poobah and Administrator Extrodinaire of the Great Debates, I am going to have a preeeetty hard time forgiving you for saying that I said something stupid just because I said something stupid.

OK, OK. I know that, as far as scientific ideas go, Evolutionary theory has quote a bit going for it; I would be hard pressed to find an idea with more hard-evidence to suppport it or more widespread acceptance.

I know that.

And yes, you’re right again, it would probably be safer to just, as you said, “put the religion off to the part of my brain that doesn’t deal with science.”

But I can’t.

You know - I’m not an idiot. :slight_smile: I mean, I don’t know more about most of the things I debate in this forum than the people I debate with, but I’m certainly no slouch. I often think that my inability to make my ideas clear here stems from the fact that I’m always embroiled in discussion with people severly more intelligent than me. (That was a compliment, BTW. Not just to DavidB, but to joeyblades, tracer, JonF and anyone else who leapt at the chance to point out that my last post made me sound like a slack-jawed maroon.

I can just see you all… furiously pounding on the Reply With Quote button, drooling with anticipation at the idea of telling that jackass sdimbert what a jackass he really is.

Boy, I just lobbed it up there for ya, didn’t I? Sheesh. You’d think I should know better.

But here’s the thing:
I once attended a lecture by Dr. Yaakov (Gerald) Schroeder, author of Genesis and the Big Bang and a noted theoretical physicist (according to the guy who introduced us). He spent over two hours explaining how, through the use of relativity, one could reconcile the Big Bang and ensuing evolutionary process with (to borrow from Lawrence and Lee) “the sweet poetry of Genesis.”
It was fascinating and brilliant. I listened, took copious notes, asked enlightening and thought-provoking questions (which he complimented for thier clarity and pointedness) and walked out satisfied. Then, less than a week later, I forgot every last detail.

It was pretty friggin complicated, ya’know?

And that’s what irks me the most: the complexity.

I mean, why does it have to be so hard? Look - I was brought up to believe a set of core ideas. They are good, healthy ideas which allow me to be happy with myself, behave morally, love my fellow humans, be true to my heritage and traditions, succeed in the modern world, etc, etc, etc.

And I suppose that I am proud to say that I believe in this set of core ideas and nothing you can say will make me stop believing in them and start belieiving in what you guys believe to be true. And, before you jump down my throat again, be honest - you don’t really know anything to be true - that’s what makes everything so frustrating. DavidB could have cooked this all up Last Thursday, and SingleDad could be taller, too. We all just evaluate evidence put before us, compare it to our own Bullshit Threshold, then decide to accept or ignore the conclusion to which we are lead.

So (long way around), when I asked “Why can’t we assume that God created everything and made it look like something else?”, I wasn’t really looking for the answers you provided. I guess I was really asking why I couldn’t just believe Mr Dugge (my bio teacher) and get the hell to sleep already. Or, why can’t I ignore Mr Dugge and get the hell to sleep already?

Either way, I find this whole side of the human experience unbelievably frustrating…

Doesn’t it suck to always need to know the next answer?

32

Since I’m the OP, I felt the need to ring in again…

  1. The homeschool was a video tape school that I took from home. I did make it sound like a physical school that I attended. Sorry for the confusion. Anyway, I did bail nonetheless.

  2. I don’t recognize Ace. But I can tell you that if a child starts out free thinking, no amount of schooling is going to be able to radically burn ideals into his/her head.

I got out of that school with a good education on History and English, but some things were just taught that made me think “That’s all wrong!”

And yes, most kids come out of a schooling like that with ideas burned into their heads. They’re drones. Getting anything past that shell is going to be tough, man. Aggressive education is damaging. I survived, yet.

  1. Here’s what this school said, to clear up points: The world is not 6000 years old. God created the earth billions of years ago and that whole 6 days stuff was just thrown in to make the people of yesteryear have something easy to comprehend. BUT, people did not show up until about 6000 years ago, as I understood. That’s when the Adam and Eve stuff starts, and that’s where they lost me, pretty much.

  2. My OP stated that they offered the Moth story as a argument against evolution. I realize that this is only a step in natural selection toward that point… What I was saying is that the fact that they used a cornerstone of the theory to break down the theory blew me away.

  3. I’ve met several people who believe that the earth is 6000 years old. They explain things like, oh, dinosaurs as lies from Satan to cover up God’s work. I’m not joking. There are lots of these people. Oh yeah, carbon dating is false, too, under this theory.

  4. I think we have enough to say that evolution is more than theory and more toward flat-out fact. To deny this at this point does not force you to lose any religion or basic beliefs in God. But most people I encounter of this idea will not even begin to move in thought. Cement shoes on the brain.

  5. I admire people that continually visit these boards and fight for truth. Time after time I see your postings… Always fresh and to-the-point. I don’t always agree, but I love to read.

Infamus

33

In what way does the theory of evolution attack your core ideas? Maybe I’m missing something here, but it seems to me that the only conflict between scientific beliefs and the creation beliefs of particular religions arises when some well meaning idiot decides to teach religion as science. Since this is simply wrong —the scientific method requiring a specific rational approach— the “war against ignorance” must be waged on yet another battlefield.

34

JoeyBlades

And I think you have been seriously misled by the fundamentalist friends you referred to earlier. As I showed above, you didn’t even understand the definition of evolution, so it is not suprising that you don’t realize the weight of the evidence supporting it. But since you likely don’t believe me, perhaps you will accept the unanimous opinion of every Nobel Prize winner living in the United States in 1986:

You admit the evidence behind evolution is substantial here:

but attack it for being circumstantial. IMO, this makes little sense. Nearly all evidence of anything is circumstantial. We kill people based on evidence that is largely circumstantial. I daresay you probably feel the evidence of O.J.'s guilt is overwhelming, yet every bit of it was circumstantial.

If you are trying to claim that evolution doesn’t make predictions, this too is demonstrably wrong. Evolution predicts much of what we will find every time a scientist goes hunting for fossils. Evolution predicts what the molecular biologist will find under his microscope when comparing the DNA of two different species. But I am not sure you were making this point, so I will let this be.

Here is where I think the heart of the misunderstanding lies. As I mentioned before, this is speciation, which is only a part of evolution. Even so, biologists find extensive examples of speciation as shown in tracer’s links above, and further evidence is shown in the aforementioned fossil record and DNA. Now if you are implying that scientists haven’t reproduced speciation in the laboratory, this is also incorrect as new species of bacteria and Drosophila have been observed. But if you are wanting to see “eyewitness” examples of a reptile becoming a mammal, well… I doubt you will be seeing this in the lab anytime soon. We also can’t create stars in the lab – do you doubt their validity also?

Might I suggest some light, online references for you. I would start with this introduction to evolutionary biology, then proceed to the recent genetic evidence that, IMO, should remove any doubt from the skeptics mind. It speaks of the similarities in the “junk” DNA of related species, something that never would have occurred had they not evolved from a common ancestor.

Before you disparage my understanding of evolution, I recommend that you get the definition correct. But it seems silly to me for us to be arguing about which has more evidence - Relativity or Evolution. Obviously we both agree these theories are the best current explanations of the natural world around us. I simply wish to note that evolution is as strong as any theory we use today.

35

pldennison wrote:

Not a creationist in any sense of the word. BTW, I think JonF’s request for evidence was directed at sdimbert’s assertion that the theory of evolution doesn’t hold water anymore than creationism. This is certainly not my position.
sdimbert wrote:

I don’t think you’re a jackass, though I probably don’t agree with all of your beliefs. I think you’re pretty naive if you think you’re going to make some sort of revelational argument in favor of creationism with this crowd… [wink]
mealworm writes:

Interesting, these people were willing to accept the genesis of the universe and the planet as allegorical and apocryphal, but not the story of Adam and Eve???

36

This thread is boring. We need some die-hard creationists on these boards. HorseloverFat and jally are defending PSI phenomenon in a different thread, maybe they’d be interested. . .

37

hardcore,

You wrote:

Yet another silly assumption on your part. I’m reasonably sure that my knowledge of evolution comes from reading the same sorts of materials that you read.

You demonstrated nothing of the sort. You’re delusional. If anything, you demonstrated that you don’t understand the definition of evolution.

Again with the assumptions. You’ve already slotted me into some sort of fundamentalist fanatic category and closed the book. You’ve obviously not been paying attention to what I’ve been saying, because I have repeatedly said there is a lot of evidence supporting evolution and I believe evolution is the best explanation to tie this evidence together.

Realize that the point of this document is attacking something that you and I both agree on; Requiring the teaching of “creation-science” in schools.

But you pointed to this quote to defend your point:

I think this language is overly strong and reactionary due to the attempts to defend the teaching of evolution in schools… again, the point I agree on, but I don’t agree with the statement as it’s written. There are many, many more biological concepts that have been much, much more extensively tested and corroborated. I’ll elaborate more in a bit, but this same paper contains the following quote that contradicts the above statement:

The key word here is ‘infer’. Inference is not fact.

Let’s take my statement in the context of which it was intended, i.e. comparing the evidence of relativity to the evidence of evolution. Stephen Hawking wrote the 99% of all the concepts in the theory of relativity have been verified through scientific experiment. I’m going to take his word on the percentage, but I’ve seen results from many of these experiments, so I believe the second bit, as well. Most of these experiments were proposed by Einstein and others long before there was sufficient technology to carry them out. In all cases, actual experimental results validated the predicted results. Relativity is a very strong theory (I sometimes wonder why they still refer to it as a theory). In evolution theory, there is very little of a predictable science involved. It’s almost entire reconstructive. That doesn’t make it invalid as a science, but it does leave some doubt about the inner workings and mechanisms. I’ve looked around and I’ve yet to find anything even remotely approaching the level of completeness for the theory of evolution that is demonstrated by the theory of relativity. This is, in part, due to the apparent cycle times required for measurable evolutionary steps, but is more a function of our still incomplete knowledge of the microbiology involved.

This was indeed one of my points. I’d be interested to see actual evidence of how the theory of evolution actually predicted something from fossil hunting or molecular biology.

No, I agree, but a science is not sufficiently advanced enough beyond mere theory until we can model the environmental factors and the underlying mechanisms. Evolution passes the basic common sense test, but I think we’ve got a ways to go before we can call it a demonstrable science.

I’m not really a skeptic, and it still doesn’t remove all doubt for me. There are other possible explanations for these genetic similarities, several have been proposed, others probably haven’t even been thought of yet. Yes, I agree that shared genetic origins is a really good explanation, but it’s not the only explanation. A good scientist doesn’t arbitrarily rule out equally good explanations, just because they don’t agree with his philosophy.

Careful with that analysis. I use code segments and libraries to build complex computer programs. If you look at any two programs that I’ve written, you will see many, many simularities. It would be a mistake to assume that any two of these programs once shared a common ancestor on the basis of these similarities.

Well, clue me in, o great and wise sage. I’ve consulted a number of sources that support my definition, but perhaps you have a more credible source that contradicts it??? For the record, the only definition of evolution you’ve offered in this thread has been:

I defy you to find any credible reference that would call “a change in allele frequency of a population” an example of evolution.

Sorry, I guess that’s my beef-of-the-day, because I think you’re oversubscribed just a tad.

38

Just trying to heat things up so VarlosZ doesn’t lose interest.

39

Joeyblades:

**

Thank you - For what it’s worth, I’m really not a jackass ;).

As far as trying to convince others to adopt creationism… The point of my rambling post was that I’m having a tough enough time trying to figure out what I believe!

40

I think you folks are missing the original item taught, about the moths. They were NOT teaching evolution. I sounds like what they were saying is that there are white & brown moths. Thw white moths get eaten, so we see fewer of them. But, it appears what the creationist here are saying, is that every generation continues the same, producing the same # of white & brown moths. But since we onlt SEE the brown ones, we assume selective evolution is taking place. In other words, what they are reaching is not only not evolution, but goes against common sense, which is why Mealworm thought they WERE argueing evolution. What was happening is that the gene for white moths was being wiped out as they were eaten before they could reproduce, so that there were NOT = #s of both being born. Of course that is only 1 part of evolution.
And SDIM: I hate to pile it on you, since you have recanted so nicely, but the word 'theory" does not mean the same in common english as it does in scientific speaking. Evolution is a provable FACT. It’s exactly HOW evolution works which is still not completely solved.