The point is, you can say that a common creator created life on this planet to have evolved exactly as if there was no common creator, but what is the point of that?
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Well, I neither DID nor WOULD say that, though.
OK, so how do you explain the remarkable similarity of morphological trees of life and genetic trees of life?
You rather obviously avoided that direct question.
How is it that the branching trees showing how more or less related species are based upon physical similarity (which were developed pre-genetics) match remarkably the trees of life showing how species are related based upon genetic similarity?
Common descent predicted this similarity, and it was correct.
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Theistic evolution should even be in the mix, at least not main-stream. The two predominant ideas, based upon full-acceptance of one over the other, are Darwinian evolution and young-earth creationism.
I disagree.
Young earth Creationism is a very, very small (but vocal) minority religious view, confined mainly to conservative Protestant sects within the US.
The large majority of Christian denominations worldwide believe in an old Earth.
The largest Christian group in the world, Catholics, are Theistic Evolutionists. and fully accept all science.
Also, you you mistate the scientific position by calling it "Darwinian Evolution". The correct reference would be to The Modern Synthesis, which includes genetics.
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The thing is, a clear and straight reading of the Bible does in fact disallow the possibility of there being millions of years of evolution to fit in (thus, the argument posed is not whether there is or isn't a God/Creator, but whether Scripture is correct or Charles Darwin and his predecessors).
Well, that's why religious books, and the interpretation of those religious books, are not scientific in any way.
Oh, and I think we should be talking about Darwin and the scientists who followed him, building upon his work for 150 years, until the present day.
The simplest explanation that accounts for all the evidence is the ToE. Adding a "creator" into the mix only creates more questions and doesn't explain anything at all.
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Not exactly true. Study the creation model from several different viewpoints--in conjunction with the standard: Scripture, of course--and you may find that adding a Creator disconfuses most puzzles.
The problem with this is that the answer creationists give is, "Godidit".
...which is what I meant about not explaining anything at all.
HOW does something in nature appear as it does?
"God made it that way" is not an explanation.
Science, by contrast,
demonstrates, how something in nature appears as it does, by observation, experimentation, and the repeated testing of hypotheses and theories.
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The problem is, the majority of people who accept evolution as a non-questionable fact are ignorant of the explanations about nature and science offered by Scripture and the creation model.
Why should people interested in scientific (demonstrable) explanations for natural phenomena pay attention to a religious explanation that doesn't provide any testable (falsafiable) hypothese, nor any actual positive evidence?
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Give me an example of a puzzle that creation fails to address. I would be glad to--using the Bible as my standard of argument and as much evidence as I can find to back it up--display any possible alternatives to the ToE ("possible" = legible, not just a random what-if).
Well, you just said this:
"Study the creation model from several different viewpoints--in conjunction with the standard: Scripture, of course--and you may find that adding a Creator disconfuses most puzzles."
You did not, however, include any examples.
Why don't you pick an example of a confusing puzzle of natural phenomena that is elucidated by adding a Creator?
Can you please provide a scientific theory of Creation that accounts for all of the evidence just as well as or better than the ToE. It also must be falsifiable and have positive evidence to support it.
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First of all, your question here suggests an underlying bias ("better than the theory of evolution" implies an answer that is already suggested within the question... whereas the question's answer should be determined on a case-by-case basis based upon each person's beliefs).
I don't understand this sentence at all.
My "bias" is for a scientific Theory of Creation to actually meet the criterion for a scientific theory.
Since you seem to insist that Creationism is just as valid a scientific endeavor as Evolutionary Biology, it must explain all of the evidence just as well as or better than the current best explanation for the evidence that we have, which is the Modern Synthesis of the ToE.
If you cannot, then why should anyone treat Creationism as valid science?
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Now that answer does not sound scientific enough, I imagine;
Your answer is an attempt to avoid Creationism following the stringent rules of scientific inquiry.
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nevertheless, Scripture serves as the hypothesis--from a scientific perspective--for the creation model while all other arguments posed serve as observations/explanations/evidence in support of the hypothesis.
Sorry, Scripture can't be where scientific investigation begins.
The evidence is ALWAYS, ALWAYS, ALWAYS where scientific investigation begins.
You can't have in mind some religious idea of what nature is "supposed" to be like if the Scriptures are correct, and then pick and choose what evidence you find in order to satisfy your
a priori assumption.
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The problem is, evolution is not a final conclusion of science.
"No conclusions in science are final." --Craven, M.S. Computer Science
That's not a problem.
The idea that germs cause disease and that the Sun is the center of the Solar System and that matter is made up of atoms are also scientific theories, just like the Theory of Evolution.
All are open to being revisited if some new evidence comes to light, but in the mean time, they all seem pretty damn accurate and correct because all the evidence points to them being correct; they haven't been falsified.
The problem actually is that Creationism isn't science.
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Furthermore, evolution as described by Darwin and his predecessors is in the past--that is, all mutations/adaptations/variations seen today does not necessarily add up to anything other than that which has been going on since the creation of the earth only 7000 y.a.
First of all, we have tree ring and ice core data going back tens of thousands of years, so you are just plain wrong about the Earth being 7,000 years old.
Second, though Darwin was a great scientist, it's the hundreds of thousands of scientists who have come
after him, rather than his predicessors, that have done the most testing of his theory, particularly the Molecular Geneticists of the last 50 years who have been mapping the genomes of species.
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In other words, evolution is a past phenomena and all evidence to support it are based upon not current observations but rather a gathering of data that has been interpreted to fit with Darwin's ideology.
Darwin didn't have an "ideology".
Darwin proposed a testable, falsafiable,
scientific theory that had a great deal of positive evidence to support it, to explain the origin of species.
If you don't think that the Modern Synthesis of the ToE (which includes Molecular Genetics) explains all of the evidence in nature adequately, then propose your own scientific theory that is also, falsafiable, testable, and has a great deal of positive evidence to support it.
The reason we currently use the ToE is the same reason we currently use the theory of a Heliocentric Solar System and the Germ Theory of Disease to explain natural phenomena.
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Thus, since evolution is a past-phenomena (as is creation) all evidence to support both sides is based upon an illogical trail of "well, we don't know of any better explanation, therefore OURS must be true..."
Well, provide a better scientific example, which meets the criterion I listed above.
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Can't you see the flaw in this logic.
There is no flaw in this reasoniong, you just don't yet understand how science works.
Science works by using the current best explanations, period. The way science moves forward is when new information comes to light that either confirms existing theories or leads us to modify existing theories or possibly discard them.
Just in case I haven't said this enough times, science is ALWAYS, ALWAYS, ALWAYS evidence-driven.
Your repeated assertion that Evolution somehow is something from the "past" is strange. Can you explain what you mean by this? Do you think that Evolutionary Biologists don't continue to observe evidence for evolution?
You do realize that the scientist who presesnts real scientific evidence to overturn the ToE would win a Nobel Prize, don't you?
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That is why I accept my beliefs not based on logic necessarily but based on faith, reason, and prior knowledge of the fact that neither side can be proven beyond a reasonable doubt by our current understanding of scientific processes.
Faith based belief is fine.
The problem is, you want to think it is somehow scientific as well, and it is no such thing.
Evolution is as well-supported a scientific theory as we have. The fact that your religion doesn't allow you to accept this particular part of science doesn't chance this.
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