Acceptance, Evolutionists vs. Creationists

this is a good point. except for the actual dates of course. but then, i've never seen a creationist try to argue the laws of mathematics used to derive them.

In so far as the length of a "year" and what date it is today are essentially arbitrary, yes. Though usually when I see the results of radiometric dating, it's given in so many years ago.If you really wanted to be pedantic about it, I suppose you could start counting from the Big Bang...

i don't see why not? given a different star system, silicon based life forms would be a pretty easy thing to concieve of. behe's black box, i'll call that. i'm actually not sure why anyone rejects it. it has nothing to do with the bible. old geology, maybe, but biological evolution and the bible being literally true don't exclude one another. the tenses and moods of the verb in genesis even hint there was a larger process used to create.

i was being a smart-ass, you can ignore that one.

"Silicon-based life forms" sounds good in sci-fi, but I understand that it's pretty crappy chemistry. It's not clear that silicon-based compounds could support life. Then again I'm not a chemist.Maybe I picked a bad example. Didn't we all come up with evolutionary falsifications a while back? What were some of those?

Jar responds: Jar raises a good point which I think it is easy to lose sight of: it's easy to blame lack of critical thinking on religion, but the root cause goes so much deeper than Christianity, or any other religion.Think about it. How many people do you know who are not creationists (which is everyone I know except one friend) but who believe in one or more of the following: UFOs, homeopathic 'medicine,' psychics, ESP, tarot cards, astrology, George Bush propaganda, Michael Moore propaganda, JFK conspiracies, conspiracy theories in general, TM, Feng Shue, Acupuncture, Dowsing, etc. etc.Most people I know believe in one or more or at least do not doubt the possibility of their existence. How many of your friends/acquaintences would consider themselves valid thinkers yet still espouse one of the things I listed? Not a valid sample set? True, but telling nonetheless. Better examples are how popular and prevelant books, shows, and movies about the aforementioned subject matter are.A great example is how popular homeopathic medicine has become despite the fact all you are buying is a placebo. Even some health care insurance providers are allowing some forms of 'alternative medicine' to be covered by medical insurance.Heck, even think about your typical US highschool experience, how many of us were really, truly encouraged to challenge what we were taught in chemistry, biology, or physics? It's hard to challenge things when you:1- don't know much about the subject (e.g. most creationists (or laypeople) really don't understand evolution).2- have authorities you respect teaching you and reinforcing what you have been taught is true.3- have an inherent bias because you want to believe it is true.4- the subject is constantly in print, telivision, or media in general and it doesn't critically question your position.I honestly believe many, if not most people are not critical thinkers
but not simply because they have been exposed to Christianity (look at how many of the forum participants have "I used to be Christian" stories).That said, I do agree that passionate religious communities bend over backwards to obfuscate or warp reality to fit their desired vision of the world. Joseph Smith saw invisible golden tablets? L. Ron Hubbard knew about extraterrestrial intelligence? Noah crammed a bunch of critters in a wooden boat for months?I will never forget how my grandparents explained dinosaur fossils away as Satanic tricks intended to make the righteous stray from the path.But I also think with enough exposure to difficult questions, people can become critical thinkers. If tough questions are presented, or even encouraged, I think some of it has to start rubbing off. A seed is planted. Isn't this similar to the conversion process in a way? All that witnessing and Good News spreading bombards folks with questions they can't answer then provide them with answers from God?

Jar responds to Almeyda: This reminds me of an interesting conversation I recently had with my one and only friend who is a creationist (but whom I strongly suspect is wavering bit by bit).We had both taken two years of biology in school (same classes in fact) and I was lamenting how woefully lacking our education in evolutionary theory had been: a picture of the Lamarckian giraffes juxtaposed with a picture of Darwin with the captions "Darwin was right and Lamarck was wrong."My friend responded that evolution was really a small part of all of the science of biology and I wondered aloud why there is so much controversy about it. Then I immediately realized that there really isn't any controversy, at least not in the scientific community. Evolution is just another fact, a building block of the foundation of science that everyone accepts (like gravity) and they move on from there.The only reason I thought it was an issue is because the creationists keep howling so loudly at the moon, that it seemingly creates a debate where there isn't one. Arguing evolution with a creationist really is like arguing heliocentric theory with a member of the flat earth society. It's that whacky.

You only have one friend?

Two. I had forgotten about you.

i'll look this up later. i remember hearing that it was theoretically possible. unfortunately, this board is currently distracting me from writing an essay for school, ironically refuting michael behe's major arguments. i dunno. i don't think i was here for that. i suspect that evolution is falsifiable, but several things should NOT make the list including:
* species that do not evolve (does not generalize to everything)
* species very, very different from us in biology (does not preclude evolutionary principles)
* species that mutate very, very fast.
* a cat evolving into a dog (convergent evolution has been known to produce similar looking results...)however, a cat giving birth to a dog would totally invalidate the theory, as well, as you know, reason in general.This message has been edited by Arachnophilia, 06-07-2004 05:41 AM

Well, I think hangdawg proved my point about them not being willfully ignorant by addressing the point?

There's lot's more than two or three places. The Geologic Column and Its Implications to the Flood.The author is a former YEC who had several articles published in creationist journals. When he got a close look at the evidence, he realized how much he'd been deceived, and almost lost his faith ... but didn't. He did abandon YEC. You might want to browse his site. About the Author, DMD Publishing Co. Home Page.

mOf course the world has not been changing and eroding and upheaving at the same rate over the last couple of billion years, and nobody claims it has. (Some creationists claim that mainstream geologists think that, but that's false). The rates of the processes vary over time as the forces that drive or affect the proceses vary.The Grand Canyon is a particularly bad example of your ideas. The Grand Canyon does not consist of "uniform parallel layered strata and no evidence of upheaval or erosion between layers". We see lots of evidence of upheaval there; the entire Colorado Plateau has been lifted significantly during the formation of the canyon (that's why the top of the canyon is above the headwaters of the Colorado). And there's plenty of evidence of erosion between layers, such as the unconformity between the Muav limestone and the Temple Butte limestone, or between the Surprise Canyon formation and the Redwall limestone. Indeed, the Surprise Canyon formation is deposited in wide river valleys cut into the Redwall limestone, and the lower portions of the Surprise Canyon formation is cemented conglomerate including chunks of eroded Redwall rock ... that's certainly evidence of erosion!See Young-Earth Creationism and the Geology of the Grand Canyon: Part 1: The Geology of the Colorado Plateau.I suggest you refrain from making claims of what the geological evidence shows or does not show until you have some familiarity with what the geological evidence is.

What do you understand about how fossils are formed?

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

Right. You're telling me after 500,000 years no member of a species would leave us a fossil to find? Ah yes... most fossilizations only occur during rapid burial, an unlikely thing to happen. And of course if there were any left they would have been ground up in earthquakes, eaten up by the sea water, washed out by rivers or landslides, gouged out by glaciers, cratered by asteroids... And yet all the layers are parallel, flat, one on top of another showing no evidence that a huge chunk of geologic history was removed between geologic periods.Well it appears all the earth was under water at one time because 95 percent of all the fossils we find in any layer are marine.

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"It is the glory of God to conceal a thing, but the honor of kings to search out a matter." Proverbs 25:2