How long does it take to evolve?

In your model, you start with single-celled asexually-reproducing organisms and then move on through many levels of sexually-reproducing animals. Unfortunately, your model does not take that into account.Your model is based on mutation rates in body cells (AKA somatic cells). But in sexually reproducing animals, such mutations are of no interest in evolution. Rather, the mutations that are of interest are the ones occurring in germ cells (AKA gametes), which is to say in the sperm and eggs. When body cells mutate, those changes disappear when that body dies. When gametes mutate, those changes are passed on to other bodies -- ie, to the offspring of the body in which the gametes had mutated -- and then have a chance of being passed on further to future generations.Your model's use of somatic cell mutation rates and cell replacement times may be useful when dealing with the asexual organisms which use fission and budding and the like, but as soon as you start dealing with sexual reproduction then the generational time changes to that of the organism (eg, about 14 years for humans, a year for dogs). Your calculations would need to take that into account.

Lamden:I started studying "creation science" in 1981 and began discussing it on-line with creationists around 1986. Before then, in the early 1970's, I was a kind of "fellow traveller" of Christian fundamentalism during which time I learned a lot about their proselytizing methods and training materials -- it was during that time that I first encountered young-earth creationism. So you might say that I've been around the park more than a few times and I have acquired a nose for certain smells.What I am smelling here is a creationist using a not-so-common ploy: a reasonable person attempting a reasonable discussion in which both sides are weighed fairly and without him taking either side. Of course, when we do engage in that discussion (as I always try to do, much to the chagrin of the creationist) we quickly discover that "reasonable person" as being a creationist in sheep's clothing who's taking the standard course of attacking evolution in order to "prove" creation by process of elimination as per their Two-Model Approach, a false dichotomy intended to deceive the courts and the public. Like I said, I've been around the park more than a few times and I have seen many things.That is what I am smelling from you. Of course, I could be wrong, but your next actions will determine that. And even if I am right, that does not automatically mean that you might not be a reasonable person after all. Nor that we could not have a reasonable discussion after all.Do please stay and let us have a reasonable discussion.

Mocking like a typical creationist. If you don't want to be taken for a dishonest creationist, then that is definitely not the way to do it.Now, I am willing to try to take your self-representation as a reasonable neutral person at face value, even though you keep throwing red flags in our faces that clearly reveal you to be a dishonest creationist who has come to us in sheep's clothing. While you do most certainly smell like a creationist, I am willing to play along with the idea that that's just some creationist crap you had stepped in and are tracking on our floor.You see, the problem is that in the past we have seen far too many creationists misrepresent themselves such that they appeared and sounded just like you do now. It is a shame that they have poisoned the well so thoroughly for you, but we will try to work past that. Please be understanding and patient as we scrutinize you and your statements extra closely. And do please endeavor to demonstrate that you are not a dishonest creationist by separating yourself from typical creationist misconduct.Regardless of whether you are or are not a creationist, there is a lot you can learn here from us about "creation science". Not only do we collectively have extensive experience in the relevent sciences, but we also collectively have considerable experience with the claims of "creation science". Indeed, some of us used to be creationists (not me; I smelled hokum from my very first exposure to it circa 1970, especially that claim about a NASA computer having found Joshua's Lost Day).And if you are indeed a creationist as you so strongly indicate, then we can learn some things from you. For example, there are a number of creationist claims that make absolutely no sense whatsoever and yet sound convincing to other creationists. There seem to be a number of unspoken false assumptions about how evolution works that they are making that would allow those claims to make sense, but, since those assumptions are unspoken (and creationists I have asked about them have refused to speak about them), we don't know what they are. As a creationist, you would be in a position to provide that missing information and understanding of the creationist position and mindset.And if you are indeed a creationist, then we could round out your education in ways that your creationist teachers never could. Assuming you are a creationist, how long have you been one? Not for very long, I would guess, since most experienced creationists know that their position is far too weak for them to risk "strolling into the lions' den." But a new and nave creationist is born every minute, like P.T. Barnum's suckers. Those new creationists feed from the creationist literature and armed with those "new scientific discoveries" venture forward to the slaughter, not knowing that those "new discoveries" are very old false claims that were soundly refuted decades ago. On this forum, we call them PRATTs, "points refuted a thousand times". The problem is that the creationist literature almost never gives you the history of those claims and most definitely never tells you about how they were refuted. Even in the rare instances when a creationist admits that a claim is wrong and officially drops it, his writings continue to carry it and new creationists will read that and never know the truth.Here are a few cases to illustrate that point, plus an illustrative quote from a former creationist, Scott Rauch:

• The "leap second" claim that at the rate the earth's rotation is slowing down then billions or even just millions of years ago the earth would have been spinning impossibly fast, flattening it like a pancake or pizza. It originated circa 1979 and was soundly refuted in 1982 -- the originator didn't understand leap seconds and came up with a wrong rate several thousands of times too great. Even though it was refuted over three decades ago, it is still very popular and is used very widely. New creationists are taught it routinely and are never informed of its refutation. See my page on it at http://cre-ev.dwise1.net/earth_rotation.html (incomplete, but I will upload it today within 12 hours from now).
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• The moon dust claim that if the moon were really billions of years old then it should be covered by a layer of meteoric dust more than 200 feet thick. Specifically, Dr. Henry Morris of the ICR cited a "1976" NASA document ("written well into the space age", as every creationist citing it would intone) as the source for that claim during a debate mainly to "refute" the opposition's claim that creationists use out-dated and obsolete sources, plus he cited it in his book, Scientific Creationism. When I pulled that NASA document off the university library shelf, I immediately saw that its contents were presented in 1965 and that the document was printed in 1967. Furthermore, I found that Harold Slusher, Morris' actual source, had misrepresented the document and pulled a couple mathematical tricks in order to inflate his result by a factor of 10,000; correcting for that factor, his equation actually yields a dust layer depth of a third of an inch. That false claim received so much negative attention that the ICR officially dropped using that claim. However, to my knowledge that disclaimer only appears in the foreword of one book, while Morris' Scientific Creationism still contains that false citation of the NASA document 25 years later and most of the ICR's books (published by Master Books) still contain a "uniformitarian age of the earth assumptions" table that repeats this admittedly false claim. See my page, MOON DUST for the complete story.
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• Circa 1990, a local creationist fossil shop hosted a short series of informal public debates in which any member of the audience could get up and present his case. I got the word out to local groups so that the audience ended up roughly half creationist and half not, instead of almost totally creationist as the organizer had wanted. One young creationist got up and announced he had some brand new scientific information that was going to blow evolutionists away: the speed of light has been slowing down. Immediately, half the audience both burst into uncontrollable laughter and explaining to him what was wrong with that claim. At the time, Setterfield's claim was more than a decade old, hardly "brand new", and it had been refuted almost as soon as it had come out. The young creationist was completely blown away and had no idea what had just hit him. He is an example of what I told you above, that new creationists fed only on what creationists teach them and knowing nothing about their claims' histories are in grave danger when they sally forth "into the lions' den". On my quotes page, I quote a leading member of Answers in Genesis about this very problem, Dr Jonathan Sarfati. And on my links page I link to an article by another leading member of Answers in Genesis, Dr. Don Batten (not actually posted on the AiG site for political reasons, but I have verified its authencity with Answers in Genesis) -- in particular read the final section of the article, "Muddying the water?".
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• "I still hold some anger because I believe the evangelical Christian community did not properly prepare me for the creation/evolution debate. They gave me a gun loaded with blanks, and sent me out. I was creamed."
  (Scott Rauch)

So as you can see, if you are a new creationist then you can use this forum to learn the complete story about the claims that you have been taught. That way, you will which ones to not use. Though, of course, if you are a dishonest creationist (which is sadly typical), then the truth would mean nothing to you anyway.So, even if you are a creationist, we both have a lot we can learn from each other. Do stay and allow that to happen.In subsequent messages I will describe some of the red flags you've been waving and describe their problems. Others' replies have mentioned them, but I think they should be explained to you.

As others have indicated, your question itself is a red creationist flag. To give you the benefit of the doubt yet again, this could just be some creationist crap that you are tracking in after having stepped in a steaming pile. In other words, it could be that this was a question that you had heard a creationist raise and which you thought sounded reasonable, so you passed it on to us to answer it. And that could most likely be the case even if you are indeed a creationist in sheep's clothing, since most creationists just simply regurgitate the convincing-sounding claims and arguments that they hear, most often without understanding them themselves (which is one thing that makes it very difficult and frustrating to discuss a creationist's claim with him).So then, here is what we are talking about:Your question sounds very much like a common creationist "unanswerable question". An "unanswerable question" is a dishonest fundamentalist proselytizing trick widely used by creationists. It's a question that is designed to be impossible to answer, at least for most of the creationist's victims. Its primary purpose is to knock your opponent's feet out from under him and, by throwing him off-balance, hopefully to make him doubt his own position, thus softening him up for conversion (like I said, I have read their training materials). Secondarily, though in a very close second, they are useful in deceiving an audience by making the opponent's position appear weak, even to the point of making it appear that you have disproven his position.Part of the delivery of an "unanswerable question" is to insist emphatically that you honestly and truly want to get an answer to that question, that you are extremely interested. In email correspondence with a local creationist, Bill Morgan, he would constantly throw "unanswerable questions" at me, always insisting emphatically that he really wanted an answer, and yet when I would answer it and suggest we discuss it, he would invariably either run away (ie, not respond and refuse to respond to any follow-up emails), change the subject with yet another "unanswerable question" (which he calls "rabbit trailing" and which he condemns as an unacceptably dishonest trick, but which he constantly employs himself thus revealing himself to be a hypocrite), or rarely try to claim that I didn't answer the question while refusing to respond to my request for any reason why he thought that. A key component of nearly all of his reactions to getting an answer was a sudden and total loss of interest in the question. That is understandable, since the whole purpose of an "unanswerable question" is that it cannot be answered. On one occasion, Bill Morgan slipped up and admitted the real reason he asked a particular "unanswerable question": "To make you look stupid."One form of the "unanswerable question" is to require your opponent to have complete knowledge, such as a detailed account of how life began, or of every single stage in human evolution, and to present it right then and there off the top of his head. Despite the fact that we do not yet possess that amount of detailed information yet, since much of it is still to be discovered, and regardless of the fact that your opponent is far from being a foremost expert in that field -- eg, should you expect the bag boy at the local grocery store to be an expert in brain surgery?It should also be noted that most "unanswerable questions" are based on false assumptions and are presented in a manner to force the victim into defending a position that he in fact does not hold. For example, Bill Morgan's more recent "unanswerable question" has been to present complex human organs as the product of supernatural design and to mispresent my position as being that they formed by matter just having happened to have fallen together in that form. No, what he is misrepresenting evolution to be is actually a form of creation ex nihilo, whereas I would instead say that those organs had evolved, which is something quite different than what he's trying to pin on me.Now regard your question in light of all that. You wanted us to calculate how long it would take for single-cell organisms to evolve into humans. In order to do that, we would need to construct a detailed mathematical model of every single stage of that evolution. That would require us to possess complete and highly detailed knowledge of every single stage. Not only does that not yet exist, but the likelihood that we on this forum would be such foremost experts is extremely slim. And even if one of us were an expert, constructing that detailed mathematical model is a non-trivial task, so to expect us to do it immediately off the top of our heads and on the back of an envelope is highly unreasonable. And to then declare defeat for evolution nobody could comply to your unreasonable request goes far beyond unreasonable.Consider this analogy: You decide to disprove the existence of supersonic aircraft by stopping people on the street and challenging them to design and build and fly one. Virtually all the people you ask have no idea how to do that. Even if you were to find an aeronautical engineer who has the knowledge to design a supersonic aircraft, it is not only a non-trivial task you have given him, but one that is impossible for him to perform by himself on the street. Therefore, you conclude, supersonic aircraft cannot exist.This keeps reminding me of that incident told in the Pirke Avoth ("Sayings of the Fathers") about the uppity Gentile who was going from one rabbinic school to the next demanding the head rabbi to recite the whole of the Law (ie, the Torah, the first five books of the Old Testament) while standing on one foot. Now, it would not have been unreasonable to ask that they recite portions from memory, since memorizing the Torah was a primary skill that they taught (memorizing entire books was common practice even in Gentile academies, as memorizing the Talmud in yeshivas centuries later), but to have to recite the entire Torah in one session would be a non-trivial task and to have to do that while standing on one foot was just plain unreasonable. The other rabbis treated that Gentile as he deserved and chased him out with a stick. But when he approached the Pharisees with his unreasonable request, Rabbi Hillel answered him with: "Do not to others that which is displeasing to yourself. That is the whole of the Law. The rest is just explanation. Now go and learn it." BTW, that was in 20 BCE, a full half century before Jesus is reported to have presented that Pharisaic teaching, the Golden Rule.BTW, creationists do pull the dishonest trick of misidentifying someone as an expert and then either discredit him publically or use his inability to answer his questions as proof. For example, Bill Morgan told the story of going to a national park and listening the ranger describe the geology of the valley, during which he started hitting the ranger, whom he misidentifed as an "expert in geology", with outlandish creationist claims that the ranger had no idea how to respond to; in that way, Bill Morgan "disproved" geology to the rest of the audience by having publicly disgraced a "geology expert." In another example, Bill Morgan had a series of questions about how chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) can get into the stratosphere to damage the ozone layer if they're heavier than air. So he took his questions to "the experts": air conditioning salesmen at a trade show (CFCs are used in refrigeration). His "experts" couldn't answer his questions, so that meant that CFCs couldn't possibly be in the stratosphere -- never mind that air samples taken by sounding rockets directly and empirically detect CFCs at various altitudes and measure their concentrations. Now, if he instead had gone to the real experts, the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Agency (NOAA), he would have found all his questions answered in their on-line FAQ.Lamden, do you now see how your question and the conclusion you jumped to make you appear exactly like a typical creationist? Especially considering how you invoked the Two Model Approach, which is the false dichotomy (AKA "false dilemma") that others have mentioned -- indeed, in a Wikipedia article that mentions the Two Model approach, that link takes you directly to the false dilemma page. I will discuss the Two Model Approach with you later.Now, your first post would have come off much better if you had stated the general problem ("How long would it have taken?") and asked for ideas of how to set up the mathematical model to arrive at the answer. And to have asked if anyone knew of research that had been done along those lines. And to have refrained from pronouncing defeat for evolution (an extremely typical creationist action).Are you starting to understand everybody's objections?

Well, if we were to view that in context, I believe that you would see that the point I was making was that there is a lot that he can learn about "creation science" from this forum and that that would be regardless of whether he is a creationist or not.So, if he is indeed a creationist, then he should kindly drop the pretense and engage in open discussion with us.And if he is indeed not a creationist, then he should kindly stop looking and acting like one so that we can engage in open discussion.A corollary would be that if he is a creationist, then he should realize that trying to sway us with creationist claims and arguments will not work, so he should drop the standard creationist adversarial role and engage in open discussion.And if he is not a creationist but rather has indeed studied both sides, then he should share what he has learned and engage in open discussion about it.As I believe I had mentioned, I have been encountering absolutely bizaare creationist claims that make no sense whatsoever (eg, when whatever evolved into chickens, then they would have had to have completely re-evolved their reproductive organs from scratch) but which creationists seem to find quite reasonable. The only explanation for that that I can think of is that they are operating under a set of assumptions about evolution and how it works which are completely divorced from reality, but which they believe to be true. It would really help for us to know what those assumptions are, but trying to ask a creationist about them is virtually impossible. I tried to ask Bill Morgan about his underlying assumptions for "but THEY'RE STILL MOTHS!!!!", but he kept dodging and trying to change the subject by throwing one "unanswerable question" after another at me.We need to find a way to get creationists to engage in open and frank discussion. Frankly, I doubt that they are capable of it.

Lamden:From your Message 9: As several replies have pointed out to you, you committing the logical fallacy of the false dichotomy, AKA "false dilemma". And for the record, yes, the creationists do need to prove that creation happened. And they also need to prove that there is a conflict between believe in Divine Creation and evolution, because the "creation/evolution controversy" that they have created is just as contrived and false as their implementation of that false dichotomy, their "Two Model Approach" upon which their entire case depends.Not knowing how much you do or don't know, let's start with what a dichotomy is. After all, you need to know what a true dichotomy is before you can understand what a travesty a false dichotomy is.A dichotomy is where you prove something by eliminating all other possibilities, like the oft-quoted Sherlock Holmes quote to the effect of "Once you have eliminated all other possibilities, then whatever is left, however unlikely, must be the truth." Another example is a common type of mathematical proof in which to prove something you assume the complete opposite and when that proves to be false, then what you wanted to prove must be true; I believe it's called "proof by contradiction" (it has been a few decades for me). There are conditions that must all be met in order for a dichotomy to be valid:

1. All the alternatives must be considered.
2. They must all be mutually exclusive.

If either of those two conditions are not met, then you have a false dichotomy (AKA false dilemma), which is a logical fallacy and a common means of deception and of demogoguery.With its Two Model Approach (TMA), creationists claim to have created a valid dichotomy, but it is instead a false dichotomy. They posit two and only two "models" -- their "creation model" and their "evolution model" -- which they claim to be "mutually exclusive".The Two Model Approach (TMA) is a false dichotomy specially designed to deceive -- indeed, in a Wikipedia article that provides a link for "two-model approach", it links directly to the False Dilemma article (see link in the first line of this paragraph). The Two Model Approach posits two and only two "mutually exclusive" "models" for origins: their "creation model" and their "evolution model". In reality, there are vastly more models than just two: vastly more creation models than, many more evolutionary models, and many other models which are neither creation nor evolutionary, including the ones we don't know about yet. And many of those different models are not mutually exclusive. The Two Model Approach fails both tests of a valid dichotomy. The Two Model Approach is a false dichotomy.In its most fundamental function, creationists use the Two Model Approach to "prove" their "creation model" solely by attacking their "evolution model". In this manner, they seek to achieve their goals without ever having to present any evidence for their creation position or even ever having to present what their creation position is. This has led to the description of the Two Model Approach as being a book with two chapters: Chapter One is "Evolution" and Chapter Two is "Everything That's Wrong with Chapter One." In debates, this has led to the ironic situation where creationists absolutely refuse to present the "creation model" and, when their opponents then have to present it for them, they absolutely refuse to discuss it or to defend it.

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Let us take a short break here for a reality check. If you have an idea or a position that you want to promote, how should you go about it? Would you go out of your way to avoid presenting it? Would you refuse to discuss it? Would you just concentrate all your efforts on arguing against what you see as a competing idea and claim that that by disproving that competing idea you have proven your own idea? No, that is not the way to promote your idea or position. Instead, you would need to present your idea and argue for it.So why don't creationists just present their "creation model" and their evidence for it? Maybe because they don't have any evidence? Maybe because actually presenting their "creation model" would reveal the deception they're practicing?IOW, the approach for creationism that you offered, that all they do not need to prove creation but only need to disprove evolution, is dead wrong. Disproving evolution would never prove creation, because there will still remain other explanations that are neither evolution nor creation, including the ones we don't know about yet. That situation is not helped by the fact that creationists don't go anywhere near evolution, but rather only attack their misrepresentations of it. Instead, creationism must present its ideas for creation and its evidence for creation and argue for creation instead of merely arguing against their false ideas about evolution.

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The Two Model Approach was invented in 1971 by the Institute for Creation Research (ICR), which also invented "creation science" itself (based on the Two Model Approach) as a deliberate deception for circumventing the courts and which for many years was the foremost propagater of "creation science" (mainly through creationist "debates" based solidly on the Two Model Approach) and foremost publisher of creationist textbooks, including "public school editions" (which were merely scrubbed superficially of explicit religious and biblical references) based solidly on the Two Model Approach (when Arkansas' 1981 "balanced-treatment" law was passed, school districts trying to comply found the ICR to be the only source of creationist educational materials). And, indeed, every aspect of "creation science"-style creationism (which is the only type of creationism involved in creation/evolution) is fundamentally and intricately based on the Two Model Approach.You may observe and point out that in the debates and presentations you've attended you didn't see the creationist explicitly present the Two Model Approach. Well, not only does each creationist have his own style and prepared presentation, but he's also of a different generation. Since "creation science" has been exposed as a religious fraud (see below), "intelligent design" has become a far more popular fraud with which the creationists deceive their audiences. And yet, that most fundamental purpose of the Two Model Approach, the use of a false dichotomy of "two models" to "prove" creation solely by attacking "evolution", is still fully in effect and serves as the single most basic premise of the creationist's strategy. Even though you don't actually see it that often, the Two Model Approach is still very much in play.By the time I arrived on the scene in 1981, the Two Model Approach had already existed and operated for a full decade. Since it was very widely and well-known by that time, especially among its opponents, I learned about it from the very start. So you can imagine my surprise during my first presentation at those local informal debate nights (c. 1990). I started my first presentation discussing the Two Model Approach and most of the creationists in the audience started shouting that they had never heard of it before and denied following it. They also denied having ever heard of the ICR before, nor of any of the leading creationists. All I can think of that is that creationists are very poorly schooled in creationism. They haven't made an actual study of it, but rather they have been told various claims and been taught or preached to what they are supposed to think and believe, but without ever learning the basis for those claims and teachings. Instead of having learned it from the sources as I and other opponents of "creation science" have done, they had gotten it all third- and fourth-hand by word of mouth from friends, acquaintances, ministers, or TV or radio televangelists.So just exactly what is the Two Model Approach? It posits that there are two and only two mutually exclusive models for "origins": the "creation model" and the "evolution model". Every old=school ICR presentation I can think of would start out with a presentation of these two "models" and with the premise that if the entire question of which is right will be determined by how well the "evolution model" holds up, whereupon the presentation would then concentrate on attacking the "evolution model" or simply by unsupported assertions that "the creation model is the better explanation." This was their first order of business in debates, in public presentations, in radio and TV appearances, in interviews, ain their books, and in their educational materials.It was the cornerstone of everything they presented to the public. And it was the cornerstone of their proselytizing efforts, including in the public schools. In 1981, public school teacher Ray Baird used ICR materials at his elementary school in Livermore, Calif. The format of each lesson was to present basic premises of the Two Model Approach, followed by a misrepresentation of the scientific evidence, and ending by urging the student to make a life-long decision right then and there between their so-called "unnamed Creator" and "atheistic evolution" -- blatant proselytizing! Some of those fifth- and sixth-graders found creationism so stupid that they became atheists, exactly as instructed and urged by the ICR materials. More information is at http://cre-ev.dwise1.net/Livermore.html.Dr. Henry Morris, then-President of the ICR, described the two models in a letter to me in response to my question of why they never present any positive evidence FOR creation instead of only negative claims against evolution. He insisted that negative evidence against evolution does constitute positive evidence for creation and he presented his description of the two models which included something very interesting. I would like to quote from that letter, but I don't know which box it's filed away in, but I will present below that something very interesting. Instead, to expidite this writing, I will use the definitions presented by the then-Vice-President of the ICR, Dr. Duane Gish, in a 1981 ICR article from their site, Summary of Scientific Evidence for Creation (Part I & II):

quote:

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Definitions of the Creation Model and the Evolution Model

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The scientific model of creation, in summary, includes the scientific evidence for a sudden creation of complex and diversified kinds of life, with systematic gaps persisting between different kinds and with genetic variation occurring within each kind since that time. The scientific model of evolution, in summary, includes the scientific evidence for a gradual emergence of present life kinds over aeons of time, with emergence of complex and diversified kinds of life from simpler kinds and ultimately from nonliving matter. The creation model questions vertical evolution, which is the emergence of complex from simple and change between kinds, but it does not challenge what is often called horizontal evolution or microevolution, which creationists call genetic variation or species or subspecies formation within created kinds. The following chart lists seven aspects of the scientific model of creation and of the scientific model of evolution:

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The creation model includes the scientific evidence and the related inferences suggesting that:	The evolution model includes the scientific evidence and the related inferences suggesting that:
I. The universe and the Solar system were suddenly created.	I. The universe and the solar system emerged by naturalistic processes.
II. Life was suddenly created.	II. Life emerged from nonlife by naturalistic processes.
III. All present living kinds of animals and plants have remained fixed since creation, other than extinctions, and genetic variation in originally created kinds has only occurred within narrow limits.	III. All present kinds emerged from simpler earlier kinds, so that single-celled organisms evolved into invertebrates, then vertebrates, then amphibians, then reptiles, then mammals, then primates, including man.
IV. Mutation and natural selection are insufficient to have brought about any emergence of present living kinds from a simple primordial organism.	IV. Mutation and natural selection have brought about the emergence of present complex kinds from a simple primordial organism.
V. Man and apes have a separate ancestry.	V. Man and apes emerged from a common ancestor.
VI. The earth's geologic features appear to have been fashioned largely by rapid, catastrophic processes that affected the earth on a global and regional scale (catastrophism).	VI. The earth's geologic features were fashioned largely by slow, gradual processes, with infrequent catastrophic events restricted to a local scale (uniformitarianism).
VII. The inception of the earth and of living kinds may have been relatively recent.	VII. The inception of the earth and then of life must have occurred several billion years ago.

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Now, normally that table is not presented. Normally, they just make define the "models" in very general and vague terms, especially the "creation model". The reason is that they need to be stealthy about the "creation model", since it is so blatantly a statement of fundamentalist religious beliefs that include a young earth (VII) and Noah's Flood (VI), albeit it superficially scrubbed of overt religious wording. You can see this far better in a table the ICR published in December 1978 (which I reprinted at http://cre-ev.dwise1.net/cmodel.html) meant to "differentiate" between the "Scientific Creation Model" and the "Biblical Creation Model", but by placing them side-by-side you can see that they are identical except for superficial rewording (eg, substituting "on the basis of scientific evidence" for "on the basis of Genesis") -- BTW, that article was written by a lawyer, Wendell Bird.Similarly, Paul Ellwanger, the author of the model bill that was the basis for the 1981 Arkansas and Louisiana "balanced treatment" laws, included definitions for the two "models" which were virtually identical to Gish's list above. Those definitions were included in the Arkansas law (see https://en.wikipedia.org/...ean_v._Arkansas#Arkansas_Act_590), which proved very useful in exposing that law as being religious in nature and having it struck down (McLean v. Arkansas (1982)). The Louisiana legislatures, seeing what was happening in Arkansas, stripped those definitions from their bill, but to no avail. The Lousiana law was challenged and the case went to the US Supreme Court where it was found to have a religious purpose and was struck down as well (Edwards v. Aguillard (1987)). Both those rulings exposed "creation science" as being nothing more than an attempt to hide a religious purpose (commonly referred to as a game of "Hide the Bible"), so creationists changed their strategy by replacing "creation science" with "intelligent design" (literally! *), which was in turn revealed as nothing more than "creation science" in disguise (a game of "Hide the Creationism") in Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District (2005).

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{FOOTNOTE *:
Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District revolved around a creationist textbook, Of Pandas and People. Manuscripts of the book were acquired as evidence. The authors started writing the book before Edwards v. Aguillard before the term "creation science" was exposed in the courts as a deception, so they used the term "creation scientists" throughout the book. Then after the shift to the game of "Hide the Creationism", they changed all references to creation and creationism to "intelligent design" and creator to "intelligent agency", and "creationists" to "design proponents". The smoking gun for what they were doing was one instance of "creationists" that wasn't changed cleanly, creating the word "cdesign proponentsists". In the ruling, Intelligent Design was found to be religious in nature. }

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So then, the Two Model Approach consists of two "models" (since they're not even true models): the "creation model" which is pure YEC and fundamentalist beliefs, and the "evolution model" which is everything else. That means that the "evolution model" is a jumbled mess of every single idea non-YEC idea. Now, that opens an immense CostCo-size can of worms which we'll discuss below, but first let's concentrate on the evolutionary ideas contained in the "evolution model".The "evolution model" contains all the ideas about evolution that have ever existed and that will ever exist. The vast majority of those ideas are obsolete, having been found to be wrong; eg, Lamarckism, the idea that genetics disproves Darwin (early 20th century), saltationism (mid-19th century idea that entire complex organs or species would appear in a single generation), Ladder of Life. And it also contains all the misconceptions and mistaken ideas that anyone has ever had or ever will have about evolution; eg, Social Darwinism, that evolution somehow "knows" what changes are needed, "why are there still monkeys?", "but they're still moths!". With such an overabundance of false ideas about evolution, creationists are embarrassingly rich in forms of "evolution" that are easy to refute. And since most of those wrong ideas about evolution have been pronounced wrong and false by reputable scientists, creationists have extremely rich fodder to forage through in order to find quotes by reputable scientists doubting or rejecting "evolution".But the "evolution model" is not restricted to evolution, but includes all the sciences that do not agree with YEC. So geology, physics, astronomy, etc are also open to misrerepresentation.So then, when the strategy is to prove the "creation model" solely by eliminating the "evolution model", then in practical terms, how do you do that? If the "evolution model" were an actual model, it would be an integrated whole with the model's validity and truth being dependent on the validity and truth of each of its parts. In refuting an actual model, you should be able to disprove it by disproving its key component parts.However, the "evolution model" is far from a true model and even further from being an integral whole. The many disparate ideas that it contains do not depend on each other in any manner and, indeed, the vast majority of them contradict each other. Disproving one of those ideas has no effect on the rest, except to strenghten the probability that they are the right one since you've just eliminated one of their competitors. The only way that you can possibly disprove the "evolution model" would be to eliminate each and every one of the ideas that it contains. Clearly, that is a monumental task, even an intractable one (a task that is possible, but so immense as to be deemed impossible to actually accomplish) -- when we consider what Dr. Henry Morris had told me, we will see that it is clearly impossible. Not that any creationist would actually attempt it, since that would force him to deal with the actual ideas about evolution, something that no creationist dares to do (except for the nave ones, but then they do not last long).The picture should become clearer by examining what's really going on in the Two Model Approach. In reality, there are vastly more than just two models. Each of the disparate ideas about evolution is one of those models. The same with the ideas about the age of the earth (though most of those can properly be grouped together into single models). The same with the non-YEC ideas of creation that have been consigned to the "evolution model" (a bit of fore-shadowing there). What the creationists have done was to lie about that simple fact by clumping all non-YEC ideas together and falsely proclaiming them to be a single model. And by falsely declaring creation to be true just because they had poked a few holes in a few wrong ideas.Clearly, instead of two and only two models, there are thousands of models that must be processed and eliminated in order to whittle it down to the one single remaining model proven through a valid dichotomy. Obviously intractable. And, it turns out, also impossible because a huge number of those models are supernatural.Now for what Dr. Henry Morris wrote to me. In his letter, he stated explicitly that the "atheistic" "evolution model" includes "most of the world's religions, ancient and modern."That means that all the non-YEC creation myths are part of their "evolution model". That's literally thousands of myths, all of them supernatural in nature, which makes them impossible to prove or disprove. That makes it literally impossible to ever disprove the "evolution model" and hence literally impossible to every prove the "creation model" by means of a dichotomy.It would prove far more effective and efficient for creationists to prove their "creation model" giving up on the Two Model Approach and presenting evidence for creation and demonstrating that it is true. Yet they absolutely refuse to do so and insist on continuing to use the Two Model Approach. Why? Because the real reason why they use the Two Model Approach is so that they can deceive their audiences. They know full well that they have no evidence for YEC, so they use the only tools at their disposal: lies and deception.But wait! There's more! Order now and you get ... oops, wrong script {grin}But there is more. YEC is not the only Judeo-Christian model for creation nor even the only Christian one. There are several Christian models for creation, including many old-earth ones. In a survey of Christian creation models, YEC is considered one of the worst. Well, guess where all those Christian creation models are consigned. Into the atheist "evolution model"!Of course, no creationist would admit to that. When confronted with that fact, Duane Gish would just hem and haw and mutter evasively about there being disagreement on the details, etc, all to avoid admitting that those other Christian creation models were excluded from their "creation model". But when amongst themselves they would spare no vitriol against Christian creationists who would not toe the YEC line (especially the old-earth/young-earth line); that particular hornet's nest was especially kicked by Ken Ham when he moved from Australia to join the ICR.Another extra treat is the fact that the Two Model Approach is a sword which cuts both ways. They intended it to prove creation by disproving "evolution". But what would happen if you were to prove evolution to be true? By the Two Model Approach, that would disprove creation and, by extension through fundamentalist logic, it would disprove God.

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"If the earth is more than 10,000 years old then Scripture has no meaning."
(John Morris, current President of the ICR, as reported at the 1986 International Conference on Creationism)

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"If evolution is true, then the Bible is not true."
(John L. Groenlund, What is the Purpose of Creation Ministry, in Institute for Creation Research Back to Genesis Report No. 78, June 1995)

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"We have been taught that the Bible demands a young earth interpretation and when the facts of nature become inescapable - our faith becomes shattered! My pastor was wrong, the opposite was the case. If "R" had been offered the truth from the beginning, he would never have experienced the turmoil he went through. When "R" could no longer deny that the universe was billions of years old, the only option left for him was to deny the Bible. How many others have been disheartened in like manner?"
(Ed, formerly "ceaa151b@aol.com", from his site, Creation, Evolution and Adam)

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"If the Darwinian theory is true, Genesis is a lie, the whole framework of the book of life falls to pieces, and the revelation of God to man, as we Christians know it, is a delusion and a snare."
(unnamed contemporary of Darwin quoted in Andrew Dickson White, A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom, Second printing, 1917, p. 71-72)

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"If this hypothesis be true, then is the Bible an unbearable fiction; ... than have Christians for nearly two thousand years been duped by a monstrous lie. ... Darwin requires us to disbelieve the authoritative word of the Creator."
(unnamed contemporary of Darwin quoted in Andrew Dickson White, A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom, Second printing, 1917, p. 71-72)

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There are many people who have wanted to disprove God and many who have tried (I am not one of them), but they have all failed because that is an impossible task. The opposite task, proving God, is also impossible for the same reasons. So you just have to appreciate the sheer deliciousness of the creationist irony: in their attempts to prove God, they end up disproving God conclusively. These rabid theists have succeeded where the most rabidly anti-God atheists have always and would always fail. All you have to do is to accept their premises: "If evolution is true, the God does not exist" or "If the earth is older than 10,000 years, then God does not exist." Since evolution is true and since the earth is indeed older than 10,000 years, once you have accepted those creationist premises then the only possible conclusion is that God does not exist. QED and amen!

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"It may be true that scientism and evolutionism (not science and evolution) are among the causes of atheism and materialism. It is at least equally true that biblical literalism, from its earlier flat-earth and geocentric forms to its recent young-earth and flood-geology forms, is one of the major causes of atheism and materialism. Many scientists and intellectuals have simply taken the literalists at their word and rejected biblical materials as being superseded or contradicted by modern science. Without having in hand a clear and persuasive alternative, they have concluded that it is nobler to be damned by the literalists than to dismiss the best testimony of research and reason. Intellectual honesty and integrity demand it."
(Conrad Hyers, The Meaning of Creation: Genesis and Modern Science, John Knox Press, Atlanta, Georgia, 1984, page 26 -- my emphasis added)

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Before we all go to the book-signing party for Well, That About Wraps It Up For God, we must note that that creationist syllogism for disproving God is false, because the premises are false. Though if any fundamentalist wants to insist emphatically that they are true, then he's back to having disproven God. Again, how delicious such a dilemma is to watch, kind of like observing a Christian Scientist with appendicitis.{a tip of the hat to both Douglas Adams and Tom Lehrer}Please remember back to the conditions for a valid dichotomy:

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1. All the alternatives must be considered.
2. They must all be mutually exclusive.

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So then, are the "two models" mutually exclusive? Obviously not, since the "evolution model" contains a plethora of creation models. But that begs the most basic question: Are creation and evolution truly mutually exclusive? Are they truly incompatible?I believe that they are not incompatible. And indeed, I draw a distinction between creation and "creation science" (see my site at http://cre-ev.dwise1.net/).Science, including evolution, is the study of how the universe works in a manner that digs into the nitty-gritty details. Creation is one idea about why and generally how (while skipping the nitty-gritty details) the universe came into existence. There is no reason for the two to be incompatible, since the universe still does work the way that it does regardless of how it had come into existence. Even cosmological ideas such as the Big Bang are not incompatible with Divine Creation, since human knowledge of Divine Creation does not even begin to get into enough detail of the processes involved to be able to determine incompatibility with ideas such as the Big Bang.The only incompatibility that arises is when a religious group decides to dictate to God how He had to have created. Normally, one wouldn't consider it wise to dictate anything to God, but you know how those fundamentalists can be. They insist that the universe must agree with their Man-made fallible theology in all aspects, including their fallible Man-made interpretation of a young earth, thus creating a world-view that is contrary to fact. Then they declare the very existence of God to depend on their contrary-to-fact world-view being true, such that if they turn out to be wrong then God does not exist. And since their contrary-to-fact world-view is indeed false, ... well, we all know what happens when a creationist discovers that. The booby-trap they had so carefully constructed is triggered and their faith is destroyed.

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Satan, being the Great Deceiver, never creates a lie by itself, but rather always creates lies in pairs. The first and lesser lie is intended to alarm the faithful and to drive them to embrace the second and more pernicious lie, trapping them there. That Christian viewed both creation science and evolution as lies, but evolution was the lesser lie which Satan uses to frighten Christians and to drive them to embrace the truly pernicious lie, creation science.
(by a Christian who opposed creation science on CompuServe's Science Forum, 1997, summarized from memory)

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What I do not get is why former creationists believe the creationist proof that God does not exist. They learned that the creationists lied to them about everything else: about the Two Model Approach, about the young earth, about evolution, about all other aspects of science, etc, etc, etc. Why don't they realize that the creationists also lied to them about God?What are they thinking?

First, out of personal curiosity: Lakewood. WA? I have family there. So discuss already! Nobody's stopping you. What attacks? You want to discuss? I also want to discuss. So stop whining and start discussing already! So tell us about those. Please, name names and offer descriptions. Give examples.One big question I have is what presentations from "the evolution side" you would have seen. Certainly, creationists are very active in organizing presentations and debates, since that is part of their proselytizing effort, but I cannot say that I've seen "the evolution side" being so active except to respond to the creationists. So tell us about that!You can start a new topic about those presentations if you want. Though one suggestion I would make is that when you present a question or an assertion that you cite it. That way, we will know when you are repeating a creationist claim or a statement from "the evolution side".

I did read it in the Pirke Avoth.When I transferred to university from junior college in '71, one of my classes that first semester was in Rabbinic Literature. Our instructor was a rabbi from Europe by way of Israel -- I later took Hebrew from his daughter.Our paper was to be on the Pirke Avoth, so to ensure that we all worked from the same text he ordered the books for us through a bookstore in the Jewish section of Los Angeles (Fairfax District? Lived next door to LA almost all my life and it's still practically foreign territory to me.) and had us go there to buy our copy. It was a dual-language book with the Hebrew on one side and the English translation on the other. I wish I still had it, but a couple years later I loaned it to a friend and he moved away without returning it. When I watched the movie, Yentl, I recognized many of the passages that she'd quote.Of course, it is possible that that account had been included in a footnote. Since that was more than 40 years ago, my memory on the details is not so good.

A proper reply will have to wait until tomorrow. We're doing Oktoberfest tonight (band is Die Odenwlder Dirndljger, "The Skirt-chasers from Odenwald"), so I'll need to start my afternoon nap momentarily. If not Christian, then why considering and the fundamentalist perspective and even adopting some of their premises? If by "not Christian" you meant "not Fundamentalist", then bear in mind that Fundamentalists (creationists are drawn primarily from Fundamentalists and a handful of other sects) are a definite minority among Christians.Not accusing, just confused and wondering what you meant. Perhaps this can help to untangle some of your confusion.Science is the study of how the universe works and how it has worked. Whether any of the gods exist or not has absolutely no effect on science -- except possibly to argue for a god's arbitrary actions causing a change in the laws of physics. Science assumes no supernatural interference not in order to deny God, but rather because including supernaturalistic explanations or causes actually explain nothing and, far worse, interferes with scientific investigation.The findings and endeavors of science would be exactly the same whether the universe had been supernaturally created or not.Creationism (in the general sense, not restricting it to the false belief of "creation science") only concerns itself with identifying a Creator and giving Him/Her/It all the credit. It has no interest in how creation happened (and indeed creationists boast that their explanation is better because they don't know how it happened and they don't claim to know).Creationism and science are two very different types of endeavors with very different goals. There is no either-or nor can there be because they are far too different.Creationists' (meaning "creation science" types) fundamental mistake is to try to prove their position through the Two Model Approach. And that fundamental mistake is compounded through yet another fundamental mistake: they chose to concentrate their attacks against science. They mistakenly think that it's science that they must fight when the real competitor of Creation is a philosophy or set of philosophies that deny the supernatural. Science does not deny the supernatural; it just simply does not deal with the supernatural since it cannot use it nor even deal with it. Same as why you shouldn't try to come up with creationist auto mechanics.Similarly, in discussions between creationism and opposing philosophies there is no place for science. Unless either side tries to make assertions about the physical universe that are contrary-to-fact (eg, "creation science's" many false young-earth claims and "flood geology" claims).And as for the question of whether "creation science" and "intelligent design" are valid, no, they are not. They both try to use sophistry and public relations ploys to sway public opinion instead of doing actual research. For example, ID wants to force supernaturalistic explanations onto science, which offers nothing and would do irreparable damage.If you read my site (http://cre-ev.dwise1.net/) you will see me stating that if you want to oppose evolution then that is your choice. But I must insist that you do so honestly and truthfully. "Creation science" and ID do neither.

Seriously. While claiming no Christian background, you nonetheless sound very much like one, specifically like someone with "conservative Christian" leanings (ie, fundamentalist/evangelical/etc). Are the concerns and the way you're expressing them and the questions you're raising in the manner you're raising them based on your own non-Christian background or on the proselytizing process that creationists are applying to you?This is of interest for learning what non-Christians are thinking as they're being manipulated and persuaded by creationist proselytizers. And do not for one instant imagine that they're not trying to convert you. That is their primary goal. Their method is to throw you off by asking you "scientific" questions that you are unable to answer (they are designed to be unanswerable), thus leading you to question what you know and think and then offering their "creation model" as the only alternative, knowing that once you have bought into that then converting you to their form of Christianity will follow quite easily. At http://fishdontwalk.com/witnessing-dialog-real-life-story/, Bill Morgan describes having applied that technique in real life -- it might look familiar to you. That is also the progression that he himself had followed in his own conversion: first he got sucked into "creation science" and then two years later he became a fundamentalist Christian.We can easily understand why and how "creation science" appeals to strongly to fundamentalist Christians, because it appears to support their beliefs in biblical literalism, a young earth, Noah's Flood, and other aspects of their theology. But what we find harder to understand is how it would appeal to a non-fundamentalist.This is where you can help by discussing those questions with us. And by differentiating your ideas about the whole question now with before their conversion process had started. For example, at what point did you adopt the assumption that creationists only have to disprove evolution in order to win? And when did you adopt the Christian idea of a Creator along with the assumptions that science somehow disproves that idea?My own reaction to "creation science" was apparently different than yours. 25 years ago I had written an essay to explain that to someone: Why I Oppose Creation Science. Do please read it, but in the meantime I will offer a short synopsis.Half a decade before my initial exposure to creationism (at the time, "creation science" was still in the process of being invented), I had left Christianity because I could no longer believe its teachings (specifically, I had started reading the Bible and found it too unbelievable). I was already finding fundamentalist beliefs to be vastly more unbelievable, so I was skeptical about the first few claims presented to me. But then that story about the NASA computer having found Joshua's lost day was just too blatantly bogus.That was circa 1970, in the midst of the rise of fundamentalism fueled by burned-out hippies (they called themselves "Jesus Freaks"). I didn't hear more about creationism until a decade later. Since creationists were still around, I assumed that maybe there might be something to their claims, so I started studying it in order to see what their evidence was. I mean, they said that they had evidence, so what was it? I quickly discovered that they had no evidence, but rather only distortions and misrepresentations of scientific sources, combined with outright lies.My initial efforts had been learning the claims and checking them out, then discussing what I had learned with creationists. Of course, that never went well. At first I had navely assumed that they didn't know they had made a mistake and that, being a truth-loving Christian (that was my own Christian training), they would correct their mistake. I was not prepared for ferocity of their hostile reaction. They cared far more for defending their false beliefs than for the truth. In fact, I have come to learn that creationists can be the most pathological of liars (Bill Morgan most especially).So basically, that has been my experience. Feel free to ask questions.Another set of questions that we may want to explore would involve what you understand about how evolution is supposed to work. Actually, I'm more interested in a creationist's answers to that question, but so far they've refused to answer. Specifically, there are creationist claims that they accept readily but which make absolutely no sense whatsoever. I assume that those claims are based on bizarre misunderstandings of how evolution is supposed to work, in the light of which those nonsensical claims might make some kind of sense. But until we know what they are thinking, we cannot make any sense of what they are saying.While you have not yet been converted into a creationist, it may prove worthwhile to explore creationist claims that appeal to you and that seem to make sense to you and why that would be.

I'll have to rush off to dance class in a short, so I'll just address a few things for now. Actually, my program would by default try to generate the alphabet in alphabetical order. It could also accept any string you give it. Richard Dawkins' original program was called WEASEL because he had it produce a line from Shakespeare's Hamlet where the characters are looking at clouds and saying what they look like: "Methinks it is like a weasel." I named my effort MONKEY because of Eddington's statement about thermodynamics that (as I recall) the probability of all the gas molecules in a container spontaneously aligning on one side would be the same as an infinite number of monkeys banging randomly on an infinite number of typewriters producing Shakespeare's Hamlet.A favorite creationist probability argument describes how virtually impossible it is for amino acids to arrange themselves randomly into the exact order needed for a modern protein. That argument is wrong for a number of reasons (including over-specifying that sequence), a primary one being that that is not how we would have gotten that protein. It wouldn't have just fallen together by chance, but rather it would have evolved. And the big difference between it just falling together spontaneously by chance (AKA creation) and it evolving lies in the difference between single-step selection and cumulative selection, which is what WEASEL and MONKEY are all about.The conclusion (sorry, I'm really rushed here) is that single-step selection, which is what creation is based on, is virtually impossible (which is why it requires a Creator to direct it), whereas cumulative selection is virtually inevitable since it is virtually impossible for it to fail.The part in the middle that I just left out is MPROBS.DOC, which I HTML'ized and posted at http://cre-ev.dwise1.net/mprobs.html, which I believe is what you were talking about. I used Markov chains (which I used cookbook-style from a textbook) and finite state automata with which I am very comfortable since I studied them in computer science. Basically, each state represents having a certain number of letters right and you transition from one state to the next by either advancing with another correct letter, stay put by either replacing a wrong letter with another wrong letter or a right letter with the right letter, or falling back by replacing a correct letter with a wrong one. For each of those three transitions there is a probability with I developed. And those probabilities are different for each state, such that when you start with all wrong letters then it's more likely to change one to a correct letter, and when you have mostly correct letters it's more probable to fall back. But for cumulative selection to fail you must always fail to advance, which becomes virtually impossible.That does not model evolution -- even Dawkins explicitly wrote that, regardless of what creationists say -- but rather compares and contrasts two forms of selection.In the meantime, find a copy of Dawkins' The Blind Watchmaker and read Chapter 3, which is where this is developed. 1. Evolution is not random blind chance.2. The products of evolutionary processes are complex. Very complex. Even irreducibly complex. We have conducted design experiments based on evolutionary models and their results are functional and far too complex for any human to have done (eg, designing a device made of digital circuits, but which exploited the minute differences in those circuits' electrical properties. What good is 1/10-th of a liver? Better than 1/100-th of one.In The Blind Watchmaker, Dawkins goes through that argument using the evolution of the vertebrate eye.To quote Ian Shoales, "I gotta go."

Since I had already written so much of this before your reply (Message 92): Yes, that is a widely held belief and attitude. And a valid idea for an actual creationist to hold. However, it is one that "creation science" creationists (the kind that we are discussing, so let's just call them "creationists" in order to keep the discussion simple) do not hold. Rather, those creationists teach that only the Bible testifies about the Creator and that the real-world evidence must be subverted in favor of the Bible. I feel that that idea is just plain wrong.When AOL was still in the web hosting business, one of the sites was created by George H. Birkett, a grandfather and devout Christian (he has not recreated his site and I think I found his obituary). He had little patience for creationists and fundamentalists whom he considered quite correctly to be bibliolaters (bible-worshippers). He devoted one page to what he called "The First Testament", which is the world and universe and everything that is in it. God wrote The First Testament and we can learn much by reading it. Men then wrote the Bible to tell us about the Author of The First Testament. Similarly, the filk song, The Word of God says: "Humans wrote the Bible; God wrote the world."The universe is The Word of God. Creationists' beliefs about the Bible are Man-made (which is the nature of all theologies), hence the Word of Man. Their theology claims things about the universe that are contrary to fact and insist on giving their Word of Man precedence over The Word of God. Seems kind of blasphemous, don't you think? Yes, that is correct. And your point is ... ?You see, regardless of whether there is/was or is/was not a creator, the world can still be explained without one. So you're seeing a problem where there isn't one.As I pointed out earlier, science is the study of how the universe works and how it has worked. Regardless of how the universe came into being, whether by purely natural means or by supernatural means or by natural means directed by the supernatural, since the universe has come into existence it has worked the way that it does, which is what science studies. The findings and endeavors of science would be exactly the same whether the universe had been supernaturally created or not.Therefore, science can and does explain the world without referring to a supernatural Creator. For that matter, science cannot make any use of supernaturalistic explanations. The scientific method involves observation, forming hypotheses to try to explain observations, and testing those hypotheses to eliminate or to correct hypotheses. That works exceedingly well with naturalistic explanations, but it cannot work at all with supernaturalistic explanations. It is impossible to observe or measure the supernatural, or to detect it in any manner, or to determine whether it even exists. Science does not attempt to make any use of supernaturalistic explanations because it cannot. Science restricts itself to naturalistic explanations because that's all that it can work with, not because it wishes to deny the existence of the supernatural.Besides, what scientific purpose could it possibly serve to add God to the equation of how something works? It offers nothing. It would be like adding to a description of the four-cycle gasoline engine that the sky is blue. The color of the sky makes no difference and hence has no effect of how a gasoline engine operates; if you were to have added that the sky is green, then the engine would still operate exactly the same.Forcing God into the equation can have a detrimental effect. There are many gaps in our scientific knowledge, gaps which we are working to close but gaps do still remain. By adding supernaturalistic explanations to science (which is what you're doing by adding God to the equation), you open the door to using God to explain away those gaps. We hit a gap in our knowledge and say "Goddidit" in order to explain that gap away. That does several things, none of which is desirable. It gives us a false sense of accomplishment, such that we stop trying to seek the answers for closing that gap properly; ie, scientific research in that matter stops. We come to define God as a means to fill those gaps -- this is "God of the Gaps"; also read the two short essays, What Does "God of the Gaps" Mean?Science and Christian Apologetics. Through "God of the Gaps" thinking, we come to define God as that which fills the gaps in our knowledge, which itself has several effects such as edifying our ignorance and motivating us to actively block scientific research since trying to solve a mystery that justifies the existence of God would be seen as a directly attack on God (very much the attitude of creationists towards science). By consigning God to the dark gaps of our ignorance, we diminish Him greatly, turning him into an impotent sad excuse for a deity who must forever hide in the darkness mortal terror of the bright light of knowledge as his hiding places shrink away. And by turning God into the God of Ignorance, then believers and non-believers alike will view new knowledge as disproving God.It should be noted that both "creation science" and "intelligent design" make extensive use of "God of the Gaps" reasoning as both will point to some gap in our knowledge, whether real or imagined, and pronounce it as evidence or proof of "Goddidit". While "creation science" uses it more as a rhetorical device, "God of the Gaps" is an integral part of ID and a fundamental basis for all their reasoning. It should also be noted that forcing God into science is a fundamental goal in their Wedge Strategy.The only place where it makes any kind of sense to add God to the equation is in philosophical and theological settings, which include one's own personal beliefs. And the way that that should relate to science is that we may personally believe that the world and universe are as God had made them and that they work as God had created them to work, while science investigates how the universe works.More on ID:
Science restricts itself to naturalistic explanations out of practical necessity. This is called "methodological materialism", which basically says, "We will restrict ourselves to materialistic explanations which dealing with how the universe works because those that's the only kind of explanation that we can deal with." Science does not bother itself with the question of whether the supernatural exists, but rather conducts its business without including the supernatural for practical purposes.In contrast, "Intelligent Design" (ID) proponents accuse science of engaging in philosophical materialism, which is a philosophical position that the supernatural does not exist and the material universe is all that there is. Because IDists confuse methological materialism with philosophical materialism, they have launched a crusade to force science to change, to force science to incorporate supernaturalistic explanations. We have already seen what that can lead to.Several years ago I started a topic here, So Just How is ID's Supernatural-based Science Supposed to Work? (SUM. MESSAGES ONLY). Only a few people tried to respond to the question, but nobody could offer an acceptable answer. If that link doesn't work, go to http://www.evcforum.net/dm.php?control=msg&t=12852. But that is all that science does. If you are not interested in that, then you are not interested in science.Rather, you should think about the roles and capabilities of science. I would suggest that some things to consider would be 1) that science does not and cannot deal with the supernatural, which makes it incapable of proving or disproving God, let alone give direct testimony as to the nature any gods (you would need to infer that yourself independent of science), and 2) the natural universe works the way that it does regardless of the existence of non-existence of any gods. By "IC" I assume you mean something like "intelligent creation". I have never seen those initials used.Evolution is natural. It does contain some randomness. But it is hardly unguided, since it gets its guidance primarily from natural selection. True, there's no conscious deciding of what changes are needed, nor are there any long-term goals, just response to immediate pressures of the environment.In the conclusion of MONKEY Probabilities (MPROBS), I try to offer an analogy which may not have made much sense. In orbital mechanics, we can describe entire orbits and use our knowledge of those entire orbits to predict where a planet or asteroid will appear at any given time or to plot the course of spacecraft. But how does an orbiting body follow its orbit? Does it need to have knowledge of that entire orbit and foresight and foreknowledge for where it needs to go to stay in that orbit? No, of course not! All that that orbiting body does, all that it could possibly do, is respond to the immediate forces that are exerted upon it from one moment to the next. It is the cumulative effects of all those instananeous responses to immediate forces that result in the complete orbit.Similarly, evolution is the cumulative effects of life doing what life does. Although we describe evolution in terms of special forces and processes, those terms are only to enable us to think and talk about what's happening; those forces and processes don't actually exist in nature even though their effects do. All that's happening is that some organisms in a population survive long enough and with varying success to reproduce with varying success and some of their offspring survive long enough with varying success to themselves reproduce with varying success. Those varying degrees of success are determined primarily by the organisms' characteristics (the physical expression of their genes; ie, their phenotypes which are the physical express of their genotypes) and how well those characteristics work in their environment.There is an adage: individuals do not evolve; populations evolve. In evolution, what happens to the individual is relatively unimportant. Creationists like to throw in the effects of fatal accidents that would kill of the most fit individual before he can reproduce. But what's important is what's happening in the entire population -- you should have received some schooling in statistical methods, which likewise deals with population samples instead of the individual units under test; the mathematical analysis of evolution is population genetics which employs statistical analysis of entire populations.Furthermore, individuals do not evolve. They were both with one genotype which does not change in their lifetime. Their offspring will be born with genotypes that are very similar to that of their parents, so that is where change in the genotype starts. It should also be noted that the same holds true for the entire population in any given generation: the gene pool of a given population, the cumulative genotypes of all individuals in that population, of any given generation does not change; it is only with the next generation that any differences can arise. Therefore, the cumulative effects that constitute evolution is what happens to a population's gene pool over many generations.I packed a lot into those last four paragraphs, the last three especially. You may want to chew on them quite a bit more to make them more digestible.

I never thought that I would ever channel my basic training TI, Sgt Denmark, an almost archetypal red-neck. One of the jobs assigned to recruits would be to march other recruits to divine services (everywhere a group would go, they had to be marched there and somebody had to be in command of the formation), a Catholic to march the Catholics to Catholic services and a Protestant to march Protestants to Protestant services. After he had made those two assignments, he asked simply because he had been trained to, "Anyone else?", and a single hand raised up. Surprised, he asked, "What else is there?" "I'm Jewish."Actually, one of the basic training details I was on was as "Shabbas goy" for the Jewish chaplain. It was light duty and I got to hear a little Beethovan (on the TV in the break room), which did do my soul much good.But seriously, thanks for finally clearing that up. The same basic Creator tradition as the fundamentalists claim to follow, though they have added layers of additional twists and turns to it. I know that there are forms of strict creationism (including denial of evolution) in Judaism and in Islam, though I don't know the particulars, being much more familiar with the most prevalent form, that of fundamentalist Christianity. Glad someone finally read what's there instead of what they want to see. As I mention, I've received a lot of very vicious hate emails accusing me of saying things that I simply have not said, and almost every time I ask for specifics so I could find what they are talking about they never reply. Similarly, I have explained my position repeatedly to local creationist activist Bill Morgan, which I'm sure he has always ignored; ironically, he boasts repeatedly of opposing my position and having disproven it, so since my position is that truth, truthfulness, and honesty matter greatly that means he opposed truth, truthfulness, and honesty -- that's doubly ironic, since he is a pathological liar and the most dishonest person I have ever encountered (all of which, he says, is because he loves Jesus), so for once he's telling the truth.Basically, the story with "creation science" is that fundamentalists' literalist theology has them believing many things about the physical world which is contrary to fact, as well as believing that those contrary-to-fact things must be true in order for God to exist or at least be worth worshipping (As the Jewish protagonist of a movie remarked, "Christians do not know how to read the Bible." ¹). They have invested an enormous part of themselves in a theology that is at odds with reality, so a large part of the function of "creation science" is to lie to themselves for reassurance about their beliefs. And then it gets weird. So you want to search the beach for the footprints of the unseen Hand of God? (no, I didn't make up that mixed metaphor)I do not think that science will help you there. Remember, all that science does is figure out how the universe works. The results of science would be the same whether any of the gods exist or not. Rather, it is only your interpretation of what you find that will serve your purpose, but that interpretation is admittedly very biased.You know what topiaries are, shrubbery that's been trimmed to specific shapes, including animals. And there are also bonzai trees whose shapes are created by artful and careful trimming. I see those as representing two different analogies for two kinds of Creator, God as Gardener. One kind just goes in and uses brute force to hack and cut the creation into shape, while the other applies subtle influences on the plant at key times in its growth to influence it into the desired shape. Which one displays the greater skill and artistry? Which one is more worthy of respect and awe?Or we could use an designer analogy. One type of designer throws a quick-and-dirty design together. It works, but he has to constantly adjust it in response to changing conditions, even to the point of having to basically rebuild it every time a parameter changes. An electrical example would be a voltage regulator which must adjust for changes in the load (amount of current drawn from the power supply) in order to maintain a constant output voltage. A voltage regulator design that required a human operator to manually adjust it every time the load changes would be a very poor design. Basically, that describes my mprobs program, which calculates and prints out the tables of probabilities for cumulative selection. I wrote it quick-and-dirty with the parameters (eg, population size, string being created) hard-coded into the program. Every time I need to run it with different parameters, I need to change them in the program and recompile it.Then there's the type of designer whose designs need no outside intervention to run. Such superior designs can react to and adjust themselves automatically to changes in the environment. Every practical voltage regulator is designed to automatically adjust to changes in the load and maintain a constant output voltage with need for a human operator to do that. Every self-respecting computer program allows the user to enter values and options and even tests those values for validity and can handle bad values.So which designer is the superior one, the one more worthy of praise? The schlockmeister who has to continually poke his pudgy fingers into the works to keep it going? Or the one who can simply start his design running and then leave it to do its thing?And example of that argument is in my response to one of Bill Morgan's recent "unanswerable questions" (his "question" is in the angle quote marks) -- emphasis added:

quote:

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>> So you think your kidneys have the ability to regulate the water content
in your blood because matter arranged itself into the kidneys...but wait...oh
wait....matter can't analyze blood counts....... <<

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No, kidneys evolved. ...

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Though actually, my own kidneys did not evolve, but rather the human kidney evolved. Which is not the same thing as matter just coincidentally arranging itself. I'm sure that you are aware of the difference, but as usual you choose to use the lie instead of the truth even when you do know better. And actually my own kidneys did result in matter arranging itself during the process of embryonic/fetal development. Or does your position go to the ridiculous extreme of having your god micromanage the placement of every single atom during the entire process of embryonic and fetal development as well as throughout the entire lifetime of every single individual organism, not just the human population but also every single animal of every single species on the planet? Do you really believe that your "Creator" is so grossly incompetent that he couldn't have designed a world in which everything ran by itself without the need for him to keep poking his pudgy fingers into everything constantly? What a pathetic theology you have!

​

And, yes, my kidneys do have the ability to function as kidneys. Duh? And as for matter analyzing blood counts, I don't know what you mean. Do kidneys have to perform blood counts in order to work? Is that really the way that kidneys work? That would be the same as saying that in order for the moon to orbit the earth, it must be able to calculate the solution to Kepler's Equation. Sheer idiocy! The moon doesn't have to calculate anything, just as I'm sure that kidneys do not need to analyze blood counts. In the case of the moon, gravity does the work based on immediate forces. In the case of the kidneys, they just do their thing in response to immediate conditions.

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And we build machines and other equipment to analyze blood counts. Machines and equipment consist of matter. So then, yes, matter can indeed analyze blood counts.

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So, do you believe God to be a Schlockmeister designer? Or a competent one? For a Schlockmeister, we should be able to observe a constant stream of miracles as He has to constantly poke His Pudgy Fingers into his Creation in order to It running. But for a competent Designer, we should be able to observe the Creation humming along running all by itself. Even though I've been an atheist for half a century, I would opt for the competent Designer and cannot imagine any believer wanting to opt for the Schlockmeister.Or to follow the Gardener analogy, I can find more praiseworthy a Designer who grew the universe into what it is instead of One who just hacked everything together by brute force.I tend to see support for my position in Genesis 1:20 and 24, which I think depicts the Creator working indirectly through Nature as He commands the waters and the earth to bring forth life. No, that is not a false dichotomy. What is a false dichotomy is where you use a contrived set of options and try to prove the one simply by disproving the other. Which is what you are arguing for in saying that creation wins solely by discrediting its contrived and false ideas about evolution.

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{ FOOTNOTE 1:
Mein Bester Feind ("My Best Enemy"), 2011. IMDG page: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1822255/
The Wikipedia page is in German and the only alternative languages offered are Russian, Japonese, and Ltzebuergesch?.The scene involved a principal plot device, an unknown Michelangelo sketch of either Moses or Abraham. The sketch depicted him with horns, a common Christian misconception of the time due to a mistranslation from the Hebrew. That prompted Bleibtreu's character to remark that Christians do not know how to read the Bible.I saw it on Netflix. I don't know whether it is still there (the organization of their site, including search results, can be very frustrating).
}

OK, that makes sense.Though of course complexity -- and especially "irreducible complexity" -- is characteristic of the products of evolutionary processes. And anathema for good designs.

Think Rube Goldberg types of complexity. Think computer programming projects that have been allowed to "evolve" and have become so complex and filled with interdependencies and special cases that the slightest change you make will break it in very unexpected places, thus rendering it a nightmare to maintain -- and most of the work in programming is maintaining existing software.Those kinds of complexity.