Questions for Creationists
(I’ll get to them eventually)
The morning gospel preacher came on with the tube. He was all worked up over evolution. As I like to monitor the rantings of anti-Christians, I watched as I got ready. It is all ways best to know thine enemy.
In the 20 minutes before my duty would call, he described the internal workings of a cell as a factory. It took him twenty minutes to say that this was much too complicated to have formed “naturally”. This was all he could say when given twenty minutes. You just now read the same in less than 20 (if not closer to 2) seconds.
I can only assume he was trying to hypnotize the weak of mind. Evidently it works.
Yet, still, it is not true. An untruth is an untruth, even when it is belabored, even when it is spoken ten thousand times.
Imagine how confusing this is to our youth. How can one properly learn to judge truth, when the people you should be able to trust, are not above untruth?
To the undecided, I offer the first question:
What do you wish to understand about evolution or creation?
To the creationists, pharisees and doubters:
Can you name at least one thing (other than species) that has not, will not ever change?
What is your strongest proof against evolution? (After the Bible of course.)
Peace through Liberty and Knowledge
Just for the record, this board isn’t really a creationist hangout, as far as I can tell. I think we’ve got a few Intelligent Design people and some Theistic Evolutionists. There might be other places where you can get a better, less one sided conversation on this.
Even this likely won’t get you many takers. In my experience, fishing expeditions such as this don’t net many keepers. The lengthy discussions usually occur when an creationist or IDer starts the thread.
Q 1 is not a challenge to Creationists- even most YEC believe in vast changes within kinds/species, or what has been called “micro-evolution” (and the propriety of that term was strongly debated here in years past). (Macro-)Evolutionary thought calls for the eventual changes from one species into another.
Q 2- my strongest arguments against Evolution (moresoe against “Evolutionism”- the idea that everything develops out of mindless natural processes)- the
unlikeliness of order, life, mind developing randomly out of chaos, lifelessness, mindlessness. I can’t buy that at all. G.K. Chesterton in THE EVERLASTING MAN acknowledged that while the development of life may or may not have been along an evolutionary scenario, it can’t be reduced to that. To him, evidences of a Creator come from the emergence of order from chaos, life from lifelessness, more advanced animals from lesser ones, humanity from the animals, the Jews from humanity, Jesus from the Jews.
AFAIK, God may have used evolution as His methodology, even with the creation of humanity. My main fight is against materialist reductionism, aka naturalism, not with evolutionary theory.
Yet isn’t it true that single cell organisms such as amoeba, that reproduce through by means of fission, never technically die?
I don’t know, just asking.
The argument he presented sounds like some variation of “irreducible complexity” (IR). IR was proposed by a member of the scientific community who noted that some biochemical systems didn’t seem like they could have “evolved.” The counter-argument is that evolution/natural selection does not presuppose moving from a simple system to a complex one. A system that appears to be IR could have evolved from a more complex system whose predecessors are more obvious.
If you want the Creationist argument and counter-arguments, go to WikiPedia and look up creationism. Not only is it well-covered, but it’s constantly being updated and critiqued.
Someone else commented on the ideas surrounding “what started it all.” As others have pointed out, evolution/natural selection does not presuppose an answer to this. As far as I know, Darwin never said anything about it. Many theories exist, but none has any conclusive proof associated with it. The theory of natural selection, combined with molecular biology, proposes a mechanism by which lifeforms change over time, thus explaining the existence of distinct species and the variation between two species that seem closely related.
I suspect that we will never know what “started” life unless we have the incredible luck to see it starting somewhere else in the universe.
There is no mechanical difference between “micro” and “macro” evolution. That is an artficial boundary invented by creationists. It’s like admitting that hair can grow one inch but no way can it grow six inches. It’s the same thing. Macro is just a whole lot of micro. If you accept “microevolution” then you accept evolution. If “microevolution” occurs then speciation must also occur unless something were to stop it. What mechanism would stop it?
Also speciation has been directly observed anyway so it’s a completely moot objection. There is no question that evolution occurs in that species mutate and change over time. That is an observed phenomenon. The theory of evolution is about how and why it occurs, not whether it occurs. It also includes common descent of all species which is really the sticking point for creationists.
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Q 2- my strongest arguments against Evolution (moresoe against “Evolutionism”- the idea that everything develops out of mindless natural processes)[.quote]
This is a completely erroneous definition of evolution…and there is no such thing in science as “evolutionism.”
Without getting into the likeliness of the above, I just want to point out that it has nothing to do with evolution. Evolution only explains what happened *after life began on Earth.
Evolutionary theory is not a theory about the origin of life, or about the origin of the universe or about the existence of God. If it could be proven that God created the universe and then zapped the waters of the Earth to create the first lifeforms, evolutionary theory would be completely unaffected. Nothing in the theory would have to change or be adjusted.
This is not correct. The concepts of microevolution and macroevolution are alive and well within evolutionary biology (the terms were coined by an entomologist). In fact, I quote the following from the text Evolutionary Biology (2nd ed), by Douglas J. Futuyma:
So, they are valid evolutionary terms. However, this is not to say that creationists haven’t latched onto the terms and twisted meaning from them which is not generally meant by evolutionary biologists. An easy counter to any creationists who claims to not accept macroevolution (while accepting microevolution) is to ask if they therefore do not accept that extinction occurs, as extinction is a macroevolutionary concept.
I’m not a creationist, so I’m not arguing against it because I think it’s wrong. On the contrary, I would find it hard to believe there are people that believe in the scientific method, but think there is no merit in the theory of evolution. But many people have poked holes in the theory of evolution. I’m sure there are many websites that have collected some of them. If you insist, I will find you some, but it hardly seems worth my time right now.
Nobody has poked holes in evolutionary theory. You are misinformed and, I suspect, not aware of how the word “theory” is defined in science. I am not trying to pick a fight with you, I honestly think you’ve been given bad information.
That statment its self makes the argument against evolution.
We know that viri probably traveled here from space long before life could even under the best conditions have formed on its own. We know given the estimated ages of both the earth and the universe, that conditions would have been right
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elsewhere long before earth was a dribble down milkys leg. For us to live under the delusion that life got its start from the muck of this world is pure loonisy. we stopped believing the earth was the center of the universe a long time ago. Get a news paper its 2005.
:smack:
I have no idea what you’re talking about. You seem to be implying that terrestrial life came from outer space, which…whatever…but you misspelled “lunacy.”
Agreed. I suspect that creationists make the distinction because they subconsciously (or consciously) equate macroevolution with changes in kind (however it is they define that word), rather than changes from one species to another (which is but one macroevolutionary concept; there are others), despite FriarTed’s wording.
