Because that seems unsatisfactory to them. It isn’t enough. I’ve found it curious that the so-called positive proof they claim is by negation of evolution. This lets them frame the argument as “god or evolution”. Pick one. Pick the wrong one, and you’re damned. It’s, of course, all lies, but that’s where the discussion is.
It’s trivially demonstrable that creationism isn’t science by any definition of the term.
The problem is that there ISN’T any such evidence. Trying to come up with evidence or arguments against evolution is like trying to come up with the best arguments for the earth being flat. It’s impossible, and I don’t see the point. I also think it’s a bad idea to even legitimize such anti-scientific drivel by treating is as anything that’s capable of being “researched” and respected as an alternate theory.
OK, let’s debate. Want to start a new thread?
Yes, yes, we know this. But that notwithstanding, it’s my job in the debate to paint the best light possible. As was noted earlier, a lawyer can, and often does, make the best argument for his client even if the merits of it are weak. His job is to advocate his client’s position; my job is to advocate theirs. I hate doing anything poorly.
Creationists don’t like written debates; there, their words are permanent and can be analyzed and checked. The rapid fire nature of oral debate lets them spew their nonsense so fast that it’s nearly impossible to refute it. That doesn’t hold up in written debates.
I think the first thing you should do is parse the distinction between Creationism, Young Earth Creationism, Intelligent Design, and intelligent design (no caps). Evolution is not in conflict with all of them, and most in conflict with YEC. But one thing your audience would be able to get out of the debate is the importance of defining one’s terms before debating.
I’ve seen these debates get confusing in that the both sides (beyond the extreme YEC group) confuse Evolution with the existence of God, or even a particular strain of it. Fact is, Evolution is mum on the topic. But I’ve found that a lot of people on either side do not understand this, leading to very frustrating debates. As someone who fully believes in Evolution, I would make that distinction, as I think it helps remove a kneejerk barrier to accepting the fact of Evolution.
This being the case that you need to handle, it does no good to poke holes in Evolution, the way ID arguers typically do–that does nothing to support the position you are trying to argue. If ID is a competing scientific theory, then you must present a statement of what that theory is, and make predictions of what observations you will observe.
For instance, if the theory is that the Earth is 6000 years ago and fossils were laid down in a flood more recently than that, we would expect to find fossils mixed up in a layer of ocean sediment. We would also expect to find no delicate structures older than the flood. We would expect to find salt water in caves.
If evolution was guided by an outside force, we would expect to see evidence of good design in humans and animals–we would expect to find no useless organs, for instance. We would not expect to find a system made up of jury-rigged jury-riggings.
If a small population of human beings living in the Middle East had a “soul” implanted in them 6000 years ago, following 3.5B years of evolution, we would expect human behavior to be dramatically different than animal behavior. Also, we would expect that “human” beings that had been separated for more than 6000 years would be soulless automatons.
And so on. Pick a theory and defend it. That is the scientific approach.
I understand, but what is the goal of this exercise from your perspective?
This is true, and many professional creationists are quite adept at spewing a barrage of obscure data and assertions about data which can sound superficially impressive to unsophisticated audiences, and for which opponents don’t always have enough specific knowledge to be able to refute on the spot (though it can ALWAYS be refuted. Their arguments are never legitimate. They just try to be obfuscatory enough to make it hard to tell they’re full of shit). Maybe you should try that approach. Spouting spurious statistical probabilities is always good. Lots of people get very intimidated by numbers. You don’t even have to research any actual statistics. You can just make them up. That’s what they do.
To be fair, science doesn’t advocate that evolution is an exclusion to religion. Religions, on the other hand (well, some strains of it), does make that argument. It’s a red herring.
I’m not sure that I’ll have time to argue all of those topics. Then again, given the dearth of information I can argue for any one of them, I might have to argue a little of all to meet my time.
(bolding mine)
THAT is the point.
I would actually avoid using a Christian basis for creationism. I think if you present your opponent with a different creation story than she believes in, it will be easier for her to argue against it, which means a better debate for all.
I’m not sure that I could do it justice as I’m not as familiar with other cults’ myths as I am with christianity.
I don’t know what you mean by that’s your point? Since I’m arguing for creationism, wouldn’t it make sense that I’d actually adopt their platform? I don’t think it does credit to them if I misrepresent their views, one of which is that evolution and christianity are mutually exclusive.
Unless you’re using an idiosyncratic definition of one or more, then no, the differences are trivial and science is indeed strongly opposed to all of them.
Creationism: the belief that a divine entity or entities created life, the universe, and everything. Untestable, unfalsifiable, makes no workable predictions and unless we accept the ‘works in mysterious ways’ excuse, doesn’t’ explain all the kluge and maladaptive structures/behaviors.
YEC: God made the world last Thursday after lunch, complete with false memories (or at least a few thousand years ago complete with false fossils.)
ID: Pretty much same as creationism, just repackaged. cdesign proponentists.
id: Don’t know how you’d differentiate this. That space aliens came down and designed the genetic code or what have you? Even if it’s accurate, it just kicks the ball further down the street, and evolution is still fact and we’d still have to answer how the aliens’ genetic code came to be, and so on.
And yes, evolution and science would be strongly opposed to any and all of those, for obvious reasons.
What am I missing?
IMHO one of the best augments for creation as described in the Bible is that man’s understanding of how things work is so poor and science is a card house build on sand, and God is willing to give us His knowledge if we just stop trying to figure out how things work after He already told us how they work. I would point out that many great thinkers have come to realize that they really know very little, and what they though they did know were but teachings of myths through others handed down through the educational system.
So, your argument boils down to: Stop asking so many questions, just read the Bible.
No, that’s not a debate, that’s an attempt to squelch inquiry.
No no no, that’s one of the best arguments for Creation as described by the Word of Odin, the All Father.
Duh.
The question is what is being debated. For instance, YEC vs Evolution. There is no common ground there, and holding with YEC puts you in direct opposition to Evolution. And in direct opposition to science. But if you remove the timetable of YEC, and move to a more loosely defined Creationism, Evolution is no longer necessarily in direct opposition. For instance, one can hold the seven days of creation to be metaphorical and accept that the earth and the universe are just as old as Evolutionist and/or Atheists do—but believe that a Creator started the whole thing off.
I think that a disciplined approach is both more respectful of people’s views (and thus, less likely to have them shut down) and simply a better debate policy. So, one should not argue against all Creationism by showing the flaws in Young Earth Creationism.
As to your comment that “science is indeed opposed to all of them”, I’m surprised that you, as someone whose debating style I hold in high esteem, would argue for such a mushy debate. As I said earlier, it’s important to be clear what one is arguing for and against. For instance, I don’t practice a religion, but I do hold that there was a Creator (sans flavor). I see no conflict with that and Evolution (or any aspect of science). I think it helpful and valuable to point out what beliefs are in direct conflict with science, AND not pushing for a more general dismissal of “religion” more vaguely defined. There are some things that are certainly outside the scope of Evolution, the creation of the earth and the universe, for one.
So, at a very basic level, one should state what the debate is. The OP was fairly clear about the one side: Evolution, but less specific about the other. You seem to jump on that wagon by moving the debate away from Evolution specifically to “science” more generally. One is a subset of the other, they are not synonymous, and can/will lead to a frustrating debate for both sides.
Is your next baseless claim going to be about how the theory is in crisis and scientists are leaving it en masse, flocking towards some god to answer the questions they spend their very lives trying to solve so as to ameliorate the evils of the world?
Yes, our understanding is so poor as compared against a hypothetically all-knowing being. However, with each passing moment, our ignorance is diminished a little more. And a little more after that. Knowledge of the profound type about which books are written, movies are made and history is shaken, and the people who come up with after whom laws are named, theorems are dedicated towards and the like aren’t aha! moments. They’re merely the culmination of much labor taken in incremental steps wrought through many years of frustration. These are built upon the less obvious, or at least more obscure minutia, of the generations of great thinkers who came before.
Science, in a regard different from religion, is the progress of mankind through systematized processes towards a generalized end-goal, on purpose; namely, the reduction of our stupidity. This is anathema to religion. Religion is an enterprise unto itself which retards progress, encourages stagnation, also on purpose. Science seeks to enhance man by making use of our great potential and supreme intellect while religion attempts to stifle our intellect and keep us precisely where we were in years past. It isn’t as though it just tries to keep at our current level of understanding, but it actually wants us to return to some less desirable period.
Science is about the distribution of power to all through the enhancement of the mind. Religion is about concentration of power to the few who are able to convince others they lack the capacity to do it themselves. We are at it; the seminal expansion of the human potential, on purpose, and despite the dedicated will of people to remain childlike. This is tyranny.
It’s hubris outright, but not for merely believing in some god. I have no issue with that. My issue is with religion in general. Aggressive religion. It’s hubris to think that because what you feel about your religion is powerful and important (to you at least), then so too are your thoughts. Such isn’t the case. It’s arrogance in its most evil form to think that because you’ve read something which commands of you certain conduct for your own salvation, that it must be foisted upon the remainder of us who find it quaint. And useless. And contemptible. But time has a way of dealing with this these people, as noted by Sophocles in the immortal Oedipus Rex:
The tyrant is the child of pride
Who drinks from his great sickening cup
Recklessness and vanity;
Until from his high crest headlong
He plummets to the dust of hope.
The bible has been correct about the factual accounting of history precisely never. None of the bible is corroborated by the evidence collected in nature, or even by any other contemporaneous accounts found in history. One would think that if there were any truth to the bible and its assertions about how the world operates, someone, somewhere, somehow, sometime would have found a single shred of evidence to shore it up. Instead, all of the evidence ever collected in all of recorded history directly contradicts the claims of the bible. Take from it what moral lessons you want, and what relationship to any god you want. But when it comes to matters of intellect, facts, science, truth or any of those things which actually bear on our lives, the bible is the best source of what didn’t happen that can ever be found.
You’d think they’d have accidentally gotten some facts right, but no, not a single one. This counsels much.
DNFTcrazy person.
Well one can believe that to be sure, but it’s still in direct opposition to scientific methodology from top to bottom. “God did it” is no more acceptable in cosmology than it is in biology. And while it’s true that evolutionary biology doesn’t deal with cosmology, that doesn’t mean that the scientific methodology behind it accepts God of the Gaps style arguments, either.
Thanks, but it’s not mushy. One is certainly free to have faith in whatever origin story of the universe they want. but ideas of supernatural influence must, by their nature, conflict with the scientific method. That doesn’t necessarily make them wrong, but it does make them opposed.
I’m not pushing for religion to be dismissed, at all.
And sure, cosmology/physics/what have you isn’t in the sphere of biology, no argument. But scientific principles stay consistent through the disciplines and supernatural action as an explanation places one’s ideas in opposition to scientific methodology. That’s not pushing for religion to be dismissed at all. It’s just saying that, for instance, if your origin story of Universe includes supernatural forces, then at least on that particular you’ve stepped outside of the bounds of scientific methodology in a manner that places your belief in irreconcilable opposition to that methodology.
Yes, cosmology does not gainsay Creation, but by the same token its methodology allows absolutely o talk of Creationism in it. It must, by necessity, stand mute since the two systems (epistemology and faith) are not compatible on that level.
Well, since you defined the term you were using I see that “Creation” doesn’t refer to any biological concept (even abiogenesis) and while it’s in conflict with the methodology behind biological science (or any other field for that matter), it’s not specifically in conflict with evolution. ID in caps would seem to violate the specifics of evolutionary biology and I’m still unsure what you mean by id in lower case.
I will just add one thing to Finn’s otherwise excellent post: it isn’t so much that believing in the supernatural stands in opposition to science as it is that science just doesn’t deal with it because it is, by definition, beyond the purview of science. If I had to imagine something that stood in opposition to science, it would never be the metaphysical because science simply doesn’t deal with that at all. Provided one’s belief in some deity stops where science starts, there’s no conflict between the two: let religion stand as a philosophy on morality and what should be the case, and let science stand as the arbiter of what is. So long as they stay in their respective fields, I see no problems.
Of course, it’s a happy byproduct that as science marches forward, there’s less and less need and space for a god. I don’t see how a god is relevant to morality anyway, but some people do. I would only suggest that an atheist who does good by his fellow man and all that jazz simply because he wants to has a superior moral compass than a christian because the christian is doing for either a.) a greater reward later on down the road, or b.) to avoid being punished later on the down road. The one who does it only with the motivation to be a good person has demonstrated a superior moral code.
While I agree in your estimation of “aggressive religion”, you seem to be guilty of pretty much the very thing you warn against in your aggressive dismissal of “religion” in general. In fact, you define “religion in general” with “aggressive religion”. Do you really think that’s accurate? Fair?
In another of his Theban plays, Antigone, Sophocles counsels against pride and certainty in one’s opinions again. Creon doesn’t learn this lesson until he loses both his son and his wife, by their own hands, due to his certainty. You may want to read what you wrote in the post I took this from. Hubris is present there. An unquestioning and closed mind is not helpful regardless of the opinion held, whether it be religious certainty or its opposite.