Evolutionists are at a disadvantage compared to creationists

Everytime an evolutionist talks, he has to present genuine scientific evidence and demonstrate that he can properly use logic to the extend that others who have at least some higher education background could understand. However, when a creationist talks, sometimes he only uses something as vague as faith and his own personal evidence and demand that the evolutionists use scientific evidence to falsify his faith and personal evidence. Read arkie's new thread to see what I mean. Pay attention to some of his responses to people.If something cannot be falsified, it cannot be used as real evidence in our debate.Can some kind of curb be put on this board to at least regulate such attitude from the creationist side?

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The Laminator

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How would you expect someone to present scientific support for an entirely non-scientific position?It's creationists who have the disadvantage - the disadvantage of being wrong. We simply afford them a little courtesy - a handicap, if you will - to encourage their participation.I know Percy's talked about this before, so I know its a situation of which he's actuely aware. Perhaps he'll share his thoughts again this thread but from what he's said, I'm fairly convinced that this is the way it has to be unless you want a board where nothing happens but biologists talking to each other. Me, I think it gets kind of boring when all the creationists run off.

Ya but there never seems to be a shortage.

How about imposing a quota of a maximum of 2 miracles and/or unknown naturalistic mechanisms per creationist explanation? Maybe creationist can work within those limitations. Will that even up the playing field?

A quota of miracles. My personal view is that in the science threads one miracle is too many.Once you have offered a miracle as an explanation the "scientific creationism" game is over. I'm not inherently anti religious (not a Dawkinist) (well, not very stonglly so) but I am very against the dishonest attempts to subvert the educational system by pretending to be doing science. If someone wants to believe in mircles that fine by me. But they aren't doing science anymore and they can no longer be pretending to be when it comes to the separation of church and state.

Come on Ned. Not even 1 lousy little miracle to help a creationist out of a tight spot? A miraculous sorting of the debris during the flood to mimic a pattern of temporal evolution? A miraculous watery firmament which didn't raise atmospheric pressure to crushing levels? One instance of miraculous hyperevolution after the grounding of the ark so that the pitifully small number of animals and humans could explode into all of the extant species and variants? A little miraculous settling of strata during the flood to mimic millions of annual varves in the Green River formation? A little miraculous migration of koalas from the Middle East to Australia after the flood in the complete absense of their Australian-endemic food trees? Can we throw in the trek of moas, kiwis, emus and cassowaries along that same path without leaving any visible sign of their passing?If you don't bend the rules for them the creationists won't want to play.

Before I joined this site, I had never encountered anything remotely scientific regarding creationism. However, since there were so many people that worship it, I thought that genuine scientific evidence for creationism must exist. That was my one true hope when I joined this forum. Boy was I disappointed when I read the old threads.

oh you mean just one (maybe two) but they still have to explain everything else without any more miracles. Well I guess.

Being from the theistic evolution camp, I think this is well stated.If one needs to invoke miracles that are, by the way, extraneous to the Scriptural text, one has not only ceased to do science, but has implicitly abandoned their Scriptural literalist position. I've pointed out this point to creationists a few times, but they don't seem to understand that their particular brand of Scriptural exegesis is in fact a human interpretation. And a rather odd one at that, IMO.

Excellent point, that very thing has bothered me with a couple of people here but I hadn't quite put it in that context before.On the quota issue, one miracle is a gimee: the creation of the universe. What followed is open for evaluation, but that is unknown one way or the other.

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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand RebelAAmerican.Zen[Deist
{{{Buddha walks off laughing with joy}}}

is that Evolution and religion are not necessarily mutually exclusive.As I have mentioned in other threads I went to a Christian School. There was no problems involved in teaching either that the world was billions of years old or that evolution was the way things had happened. In addition we had formalized religious studies during the week, daily morning chapel, weekly trips down the hill to church and many, many long and heated debates over religion, religions and the meanings to life.I feared that might have changed over the years so recently I checked to see if the old school had a presence on the web. It did, and they even list the curriculum. Fortunately, it looks like they are still trying to expose the students to a pretty well founded base for later studies. If anyone is interested it is at this link. (Warning, it's a long list so you can use the drop down to jump to specific sections)What I find frightening is the growth over the last 50 years of a very vocal and expanding body of folk that seem to want to drive us back into the Dark Ages. These people are every bit as sincere as Toms de Torquemada and are beginning to gain power.IMHO, such people are as real a threat to us all as the fundamental Muslims. In fact, they may be an even greater threat since they are not just killing people, but ideas.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

You and I agree completely, I am Catholic, and evolution has been taight as probable fact in Catholic schools at least since 1950, when Pope Pius XII issued the encyclical Humani Generis.I do think religious obscurantism (not religion per se) is a real and growing threat.What I don't get is why the atheists and agnostics (most of whom I respect, if disagree with) are so hostile to trying to resist the more violent forms of religious obscurantism like Islamofascism.But that is perhaps another thread.

To extend this argument further:IF what is being argued is just a hypothetically proposed mechanism to vailidate a beliefAND it has no basis in science or in scripture,THEN it is no different than any similar hypothetical proposal to validate any myth, or even a story like the Wizard of OZ (... "he just waved his magic wand and it was so ...").This kind of argument can be called a WOZ argument (Wiz of OZ)

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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand RebelAAmerican.Zen[Deist
{{{Buddha walks off laughing with joy}}}