Oh there are creationists around all right, they just seem to have neglected to post in this thread. Hmmmm.
Well I’m an atheist who believes in scientific method.
But I can answer the above as if I were a creationist:
-
Yes, but He did it in 7 days (Hallelujah!)
-
As it says in the Bible, just a few thousand years (The Word of God!)
-
He is testing our faith in Him (Praise the Lord!)
Next question…
Glee, I already imagine those are the answers, more or less, but I’d like to hear it from the horse’s mouth, just for the sake of argument. Thanks.
Would it help if I created a sock puppet for laughs? 
(I am of course kidding.)
Now, hold on just a cotton-pickin’ minute here!
Kepler’s Astronomia Nova was published in 1609! If Kepler’s version of the Heliocentric model explained perceived planetary motion better than the old Ptolemaic geocentric model did (and it did; Kepler’s planetary position tables were up to 100 times more accurate than either Ptloemy’s or Copernicus’s) – then why wasn’t Copericus’s work placed on the Index of Forbidden Books until six years later?
I smell a rat, and its name is Cardinal Bellarmine…
You must not be a member of The International Square Earth Society.
I guess I will spell out the implicit questions raised by the OP.
Maybe this will get some response.
- Creationists, do you have any fear of going down in history as backward, superstitious cretins who denied the evidence and tried to cram your outdated ideas down the publics throat using the education system?
- In your idea of the afterlife, do you have any concept that all truths will be revealed to you? If so, any thoughts of being embarrassed by being wrong on this and finding out about it when you die?
- Why not just use the fall back position that there is a God and he created the universe. He had us in mind when he did it, and simply set up the natural laws as we see them knowing we would come about in a couple billion years. It may not be right, but it would be hard (impossible?) to refute.
And comments from me: The universe is a wonderous place, and mind boggling to contemplate. To me, all the creationist and ID theories that I have seen are plainly less grand the looking at the real thing. Why belittle the universe (and maybe the creation of same) with these puny ideas?
Probably partly Bellarmine, but more Foscarini. Until Foscarini’s book came out, the Vatican was largely able to ignore the theological implications of the Copernican theory, but his book brought the controversy to a head.
Also, even when De Revolutionibus was on the index, it was on there “subject to correction”. The version allowed to be published just got rid of a few paragraphs, and was pretty close to the original.
Also, because of the Wars of Religion and the Counterreformation, the Catholic church at that point was getting pretty reactionary…finding Protestants under every bed and all that, so anything that might challenge the power of the Church was suspect. Also, wasn’t the pope at the time a geocentrist? He might have taken it personally.
mmm? Why Bellarmine, particularly? My memory is that he actually defended Galileo, trying to keep him out of trouble during the first inquisition, so why would he be out trampling on Kepler? (I’m not claiming it could not have happened; I’m only looking for the story.)
Why Bellarmine? Uh … because his name came up on this week’s 2-hour episode of Nova about Galileo, that’s why. :o
I hope you don’t mind if I suggest the likely answers, based on previous conversations with creationists:
- Creationists, do you have any fear of going down in history as backward, superstitious cretins who denied the evidence and tried to cram your outdated ideas down the publics throat using the education system?
The truth has already been revealed in His Holy Book.
You are the one who should be afraid about facing God in His majesty and being condemned to eternal torment for refusing to acknowledge His works.
- In your idea of the afterlife, do you have any concept that all truths will be revealed to you? If so, any thoughts of being embarrassed by being wrong on this and finding out about it when you die?
The truth has already been revealed in His Holy Book.
We will not be embarrassed, since we are right.
- Why not just use the fall back position that there is a God and he created the universe. He had us in mind when he did it, and simply set up the natural laws as we see them knowing we would come about in a couple billion years. It may not be right, but it would be hard (impossible?) to refute.
The truth is has already been revealed in His Holy Book. Creation took 7 days a few thousand years ago.
And comments from me: The universe is a wonderous place, and mind boggling to contemplate. To me, all the creationist and ID theories that I have seen are plainly less grand the looking at the real thing. Why belittle the universe (and maybe the creation of same) with these puny ideas?
I think you can guess the answer, so I won’t paste it in…
Adding my voice to the choir…
Relax. You can be proud of it. Sometimes when the OP is written well, there is little to say other than “amen”. (pun intended.) It was well written. I wish I’d have written it. Though you have a good point in that this has ended up as much more of a MPSIMS thread than a GD thread. So be it. Who knew?
As many others have pointed out, while the parallel is not perfect, it’s close enough to ring true. And glee is doing such a fine job of providing the opposing viewpoint held by the fundamentalists. (I think they’re exhausted from such active participation in a few of the other GD threads.)
And yet that hasn’t stopped this anti-Creationist lovefest. It’s amazing how willing people on this board are willing to trash an opposing view when no representative is willing to show up.
Pretty juvenile really.
Lets see… for the most part, this thread has set essentially idle since posted. A few “where are they?”, posts, a few historical questions, and a couple people offering to play devil’s advocate.
But really, it has been waiting for a defender of the faith to step in to get rolling. This thread has been here 6 days and for the most part it is still waiting for the other side to come.
So, before you go pointing the “juvenile” finger lets look at reality.
- 6 days and pretty much just enough posting to keep the thread disappearing. Hardly a love fest.
- And really… “willing to trash”, eh? I’ve read all of it, and wrote alot of it. Except for a couple of minor exceptions, the thread is completely devoid of trashing at all. The trashing was going to begin once a defender arrived.
- It is pretty obvious after freshly rereading this thread that either you did not read it all (or even close to all), are functionally illiterate, or just a liar. It is impossible to support your two claims of our ill conduct by what is in this thread.
I’ve been tempted to bite, but I don’t think I live up to the creationist straw man you’ve created in this thread.
Maybe I’m not a creationist. I believe the earth is as old as it looks, on the order of billions of years. I don’t believe it was made in literally six days. And I do believe that natural selection has caused differentiation and evolution within species.
The two issues I struggle with are:
– macro-evolution (from one species into another, and the sudden development of complex biological features such as the eye). Basically really big jumps for which random mutation seems prohibitively unlikely
– origin of life: how complex organic chemicals organized themselves into systems even more complex by orders of magnitude. How do you go from long strings of carbon molecules to simple proteins, and then from there to single cells or whatever? How do the intermediate forms survive? How do you reconcile with the law of entropy?
Right now, I have to hold to creationism to explain these things, for lack of better evidence to the contrary. I’m not saying the better evidence will never come; nor will I reject convincing arguments. But I’ve looked into this on and off for a long time and haven’t found convincing explanations yet.
If I may ask:
- Are you familiar with current theories regarding how speciation occurs?
- Which “complex bioloigcal features” (aside from your eye example) do you feel represent sudden leaps?
- Are you familiar with the numerous intermediates which have been identified for most such novelties?
- Are you familiar with the concept of constraint as it applies to the perceived directional aspects of evolution?
I ask these because many of the “problems” normally associated with so-called macro-evolution stem from a poor understanding (or should I say, a lack of awareness) of the material (both in the form of physical fossils and in the form of literature on the topic of speciation and evolution of novel structures) available.
**
The first issue is best resolved by realizing that it matters not how life first arose; evolution proceeds independently of such. The “intermediate” issue is best understod in light of the previous questions (with the added concept that a given structure can perform multiple functions during the course of its evolution). And the entropy issue can be resolved by realizing that the earth itself is not a closed system.
But see, yours is fairly reasonable position… not exactly the one I was aiming at. (You of course realize that the other position does exist.) None the less, everything you bring up isn’t about evolution or are questions that have been answered. (Just because you can’t think of the answer for yourself, doesn’t mean it isn’t answerable or that it hasn’t been answered)
I really like your choice of the eye as an organ you have problems with. This is fortunate because we can look at existing organisms today. There exist today organisms that have a simple “eye spot” all the way to a fully developed eye. These creatures that have less than fully developed eyes still get good utility out of them and it is pretty easy to see how each progressive version could be achieved by slight modification to a previous version. My tense usage is a bit wierd here, but I it is kinda strange when you use living organism as a record. There are many problems with the design of the eye that you would not expect if it was truly “designed”. (The way the retina is attatched, and its associated detatchment problems). This is exactly what you would expect if the current eye came from modification to existing less sophisticated eyes. Eyes, completely contrary to the creationist claims of irriducible complexity, are in fact one of the best example of the evidence looking exactly like what one would expect if it was evolved. I can go into this in as much detail as needed to convince you that eyes are great counter example when you look at what we really know about them instead of just saying “how could something this complex just appear, throw up the hands, and leave it at that”
Origins of life is not evolution, that is biogenesis, another topic… but there are quite a number of interesting hypothisis on this, none have a great deal of evidence. For the record, even if we set things up in the lab somewhere and life arose spontaneously, it would not prove that that was how life arose on this planet. It would merely show that life could arise spontenously in a certain set of conditions.
Please drop the entropy arguement… that only shows you have no idea what entropy means. This indicates you are taking arguements from a playbook instead of looking at things for yourself. If you don’t know anything about thermodynamics except that a creationist source said that evolution violates the entropy laws, you aren’t very credible. With a day one understanding of thermodynamics, it is clear this arguement isn’t an arguement at all and makes no sense.
People who PUSH creationism always throw up objections and quesitons that a non scientist audience would probably be baffled by, and never point out that these questions have been answered and shown not to be inconsistent with evolution. Actually, many of their arguments point to what is some of the best evidence of evolution.
The evidence is available and it is very clear. Every (that I have seen) arguement to evolution happening even on the macro scale (deliberately) ignores what is shown in the fossil record and in living creatures that exist today.
This is really the point of the story. The evidence is in and it is very clear if one takes the time to actually look at it. Creationists today are in the business of denying the evidence handed to them and pretending they didn’t see it (or for whatever reason just can’t understand it). Alot of what they do smacks of complete and deliberate dishonesty. When a given speaker/book writer presents an arguement and then is shown overwelming evidence that the arguement is flawed, inaccurate, or just plain wrong and continues to use that very same arguement in book and speech, what conclusion is left to be drawn?
Many people have a desire to believe the biblical story. Understandable, it is very reassuring. So when people get up and tell them that the evidence supports their desired position and that the other side has big problems with their evidence, they tend to believe it. (Most people don’t look to closely at evidence when it supports the position they want to hold). The problem is those big name proponents that speak “with authority” that are just flat lying through their teeth most of the time.
Every time they get away it, it leads the less informed to think there is really something to debate.
Damn hamsters are really slow today.
Yeah, I wasn’t really trying to develop a comprehensive argument against macro-evolution, and I’ll concede that my comment about ‘entropy’ was a poor choice of words, since the scientific definition of the word doesn’t mean what I really meant.
Your argument for the development of the eye is interesting. I know about photospots and rudimentary “seeing” abilities, but I haven’t seen examples of things that are more than than but less than an eye. I take it from the two posts above that such things do indeed exist. Your ideas intrigue me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
My experience is that God almost always works in our world through natural processes. I believe there are exceptions, but it would be uncharacteristic of God not to have the universe obey the natural laws he designed. If evolution conforms with The Way The Universe Works, I don’t have a problem with that.
I guess that’s the position I’m taking. I don’t see it as a cop-out or compromise or a trick to evade the evidence. Nor am I saying God created the universe and took a step back and has no input anymore.
What will a creationist accept as proof that they are wrong?
Can you prove there is a God?
Is God a theory?
Creationists believe in God. They cant "prove" God exists. Why should they need proof that he didnt create the universe as the Bible says?
What fact or facts would sway a creationist from saying that God created the world exactly as we see it.
If faith is what gets you into God`s grace and the after life, what weight do “facts” regarding evolution hold, to a creationist, that is?
I say squat.
Have at it
Well, that is not exactly the position that I am rallying against. If you follow the news, you will see that hardcore creationist are trying to jam pretty literal accounts of creationism into science class rooms all accross the country.
The creation science positions that I have seen (and I am probably much more familiar with them than your average person who believes in creationism) range from complete mumbo jumbo that sounds technical but says nothing, to a few that actually require some thought to dismiss. None of them do anything other than throw the best evidence, and where it clearly points, into the trash and calls it lies. The slightly sneakier tactic being used in Ohio at the moment calls creationism “inteligent design” and is a pretty transparent rehash of creationism using the language of science but not its methods.
I will point out that if you reasonably want other people to believe your instances of devine “input” in the worlds development, it would pay to find an example where there isn’t a non devine answer that would work equally well. Those are getting pretty scarce.