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Author | Topic: What evidence is needed to change a creationist | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Rahvin Member Posts: 4039 Joined: Member Rating: 8.2 |
You must have the chemicals, etc., to come together naturally, and you must have them at the right moment in proper proportion. Just a quick note: no, you don't. Chemistry dictates the ratios in a molecule, but that doesn't mean you need to start out with the correct ratio. For instance: water consists of 2 Hydrogen atoms and one Oxygen atom. Do Hydrogen and Oxygen need to exist in the right proportion for water to form? Do you actually need to posses exactly 2 moles of H for every mole of O? No. H2O will simply form from the "materials" present, and whatever is left over will just have nothing to combine with. If I am baking, and my recipe calls for 1 cup of sugar and 2 eggs, but I have exactly 1 cup of sugar and 6 eggs, does that mean I can't follow my recipe? Of course not - the leftover eggs just don't get used. Formation of organic molecules like proteins re the same way. They do self assemble, through simple chemistry - we've even seen it happen in the lab. The building blocks need to exist, but we know they did from evidence about the ancient Earth and observing similar bodies like Titan (which is full of organic molecules like methane). Every time a fundy breaks the laws of thermodynamics, Schroedinger probably kills his cat.
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RAZD Member (Idle past 1427 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined: |
Let's not assume, let's know for sure. We know for sure that we do not know. What you are engaging in is called the logical fallacy of special pleading -- requiring more from the opposition than you are willing to provide, or alternatively requiring something from the opposition that you feel you are exempt from providing. Seeing as you cannot "know for sure" it is equally impossible for you to provide such proof. Note, "belief for sure" is not the same as "know for sure" - knowledge with such surety is necessarily based on actual evidence of objective reality.
To occur naturally, ... spontaneous combustion ... big bang, ... Much less creation. ... unmeasurable attributes ... without proof ever entering the conversation. ... I dismiss the former ... and hope you fellows will find what you can reasonably accept as facts. Being of one mind, of course. ie special pleading again. You can blithely reject all evidence of reality, but want us to concur with your belief based on a lack of evidence. You didn't answer the question (Message 68):
Got another one? As I said before let's step over this one, assume creation for the sake of argument, specifically that god caused what you (with the logical fallacy of argument from incredulity btw) find incredible. Done. Creation is assumed to be a fact for the sake of this argument. This creation is also assumed to match the evidence of objective reality that we do know -- ie that the universe is at least 13.7 billion years old and that the earth is at least 4.55 billion years old and that life on earth is at least 3.5 billion years old. Given this creation as a {set of facts}, then, what is your next test of reality? Enjoy. Edited by RAZD, : . by our ability to understand Rebel American Zen Deist ... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ... to share. • • • Join the effort to solve medical problems, AIDS/HIV, Cancer and more with Team EvC! (click) • • •
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Volunteer Junior Member (Idle past 5931 days) Posts: 21 From: Tennessee Joined: |
I may not be a scientist,but I do understand what Robert Jastrow has to say about the Big Bang. As you probably know, Robert Jastrow now sits in Edwin Hubble's chair at Mount Wilson observatory. In addition to serving as the director of Mount Wilson, Jastrow is the founder of NASA's Goddard Institute of Space Studies. His credentials as a scientist are impeccable.
Jastrow writes, "Now we see how the astronomical evidence leads to a biblical view of the origin of the world. The details differ, but the essential elements in the astronomical and bibical accounts of Genesis are the same: the chain of events leading to man commenced suddenly and sharply at a definite moment in time, in a flash of light and energy." Jastrow, God and the Astronomers,11. "Astronomers now find they have painted themselves into a corner because they have proven, by their own methods, that the world began abruptly in an act of creation to which you can trace the seeds of every star, every planet, every living thing in this cosmos and on the earth. And they have found that all this happened as a product of forces they cannot hope to discover...That there are what I or anyone would call supernatural forces at work is now, I think, a scientifically proven fact." "A Scientist Caught Betwee Two Faiths: Interview with Robert Jastrow," Christianity Today, August 6,1982. By speaking of the supernatural,Jastrow brings to mind the conclusion of Arthur Eddington. Although he found it "repugnant," Eddington admitted, "The beginning seems to present insuperable difficulties unless we agree to look on it as frankly supernatural."Arthur Eddington, The Expanding Universe(New York:Macmillan,1933)178. Even though I'm not a scientist and don't understand science, I guess that I'm in pretty good company believing that God created the universe with a Big Bang. "Faith is: the substance of fossils hoped for,the evidence of links unseen."
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Rahvin Member Posts: 4039 Joined: Member Rating: 8.2 |
I may not be a scientist,but I do understand what Robert Jastrow has to say about the Big Bang. As you probably know, Robert Jastrow now sits in Edwin Hubble's chair at Mount Wilson observatory. In addition to serving as the director of Mount Wilson, Jastrow is the founder of NASA's Goddard Institute of Space Studies. His credentials as a scientist are impeccable. Which means nothing, as it is an appeal to authority. Who a person is is irrelevant to the argument.
Jastrow writes, "Now we see how the astronomical evidence leads to a biblical view of the origin of the world. The details differ, but the essential elements in the astronomical and bibical accounts of Genesis are the same: the chain of events leading to man commenced suddenly and sharply at a definite moment in time, in a flash of light and energy." Jastrow, God and the Astronomers,11. One little similarity is all it takes to match Genesis? Really? So, the whole 6 days thing, the creation of day and night before the Sun, the misordered creation of living things, and all of the other problems with Genesis are irrelevant as long as the Universe has a beginning?! If that's not a perfect example of special pleading, I don't know what is.
"Astronomers now find they have painted themselves into a corner because they have proven, by their own methods, that the world began abruptly in an act of creation to which you can trace the seeds of every star, every planet, every living thing in this cosmos and on the earth. No, they found that the universe once existed as a dimentionless point into which all matter and energy were compressed. The word "began" is the product of our limited language and linear existence - since time is one of the dimensions that existed as a single point, it's not possible to describe a "before" for the Bing bang and more than it is possible to ask what is North of the North Pole. This does not invoke a Creator, or even have any relevance to Genesis - the Universe expanded, and is expanding, and we can extrapolate the expansion backwards to a single point. Speculating on additional entities without a specific reason to do so (especially when tying it to a specific entity, the God of Genesis, discounting all other Creation myths) is just that - speculation.
And they have found that all this happened as a product of forces they cannot hope to discover... How nice. But the root of scientific inquiry is "I don't know," not "I can't know." There is a large difference, and assuming that it is impossible to ever understand the forces at work in the Big Bang is neither scientific nor rational.
That there are what I or anyone would call supernatural forces at work is now, I think, a scientifically proven fact." "A Scientist Caught Betwee Two Faiths: Interview with Robert Jastrow," Christianity Today, August 6,1982. And all from a respected scientific journal called...oh, wait. No, this was from Christianity Today. Not the most unbiased source, now is it.
By speaking of the supernatural,Jastrow brings to mind the conclusion of Arthur Eddington. Although he found it "repugnant," Eddington admitted, "The beginning seems to present insuperable difficulties unless we agree to look on it as frankly supernatural." Arthur Eddington, The Expanding Universe(New York:Macmillan,1933)178. And now a quote from 1933? Anything we don't understand looks supernatural...until we examine and understand it. Airplanes would have appeared to be supernatural, and the forces governing their operation unfathomable to the stoneage nomads who invented the Genesis myth.
Even though I'm not a scientist and don't understand science, I guess that I'm in pretty good company believing that God created the universe with a Big Bang. You're certainly not in bad company. But there is a difference between believing it is so and claiming the evidence supports such an assertion. It's interesting - Creationists will accept anything a scientist says so long as it agrees with their pre-existing conclusions. The moment a scientist disagrees, suddenly we don't know how the Universe worked in the beginning, suddenly all logical inferences are based on faith, etc. The cognitive dissonance is palpable. When you know you're going to wake up in three days, dying is not a sacrifice. It's a painful inconvenience.
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Percy Member Posts: 22480 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 4.8 |
Volunteer writes: Even though I'm not a scientist and don't understand science, I guess that I'm in pretty good company believing that God created the universe with a Big Bang. If disagreement in the creation/evolution controversy only concerned whether God caused the Big Bang, it would be cause for much rejoicing. --Percy
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jar Member (Idle past 416 days) Posts: 34026 From: Texas!! Joined: |
However that is exactly the position Georges Lematre warned against in his letter to the Pope.
Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!
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Jaderis Member (Idle past 3447 days) Posts: 622 From: NY,NY Joined: |
If evolution were a fact, proven beyond doubt,or even a convincing theory, we could not possibly expect to see thousands of reputable scientists rejecting it outright. The fact that a lesser number of scientists reject evolution is not the issue here, as some evolutionists maintain.The issue is that thousands of credible scientists would not deny the theory of evolution if it were a proven fact. Something else, then, must account for belief in evolution, something other than the scientific data. I think you got that backwards. Only a relative few scientists (less than 1% as Percy pointed out) do not accept evolution. If so many other scientists accept the evidence for evolution, then something else must account for the denial of the evidence on the part of the < 1%. My guess is that 99.99% of the few "rejectors" are theists of the fundamental type and that they were either raised that way or only started denying the evidence after their conversion. Care to prove me wrong? "You are metaphysicians. You can prove anything by metaphysics; and having done so, every metaphysician can prove every other metaphysician wrong--to his own satisfaction. You are anarchists in the realm of thought. And you are mad cosmos-makers. Each of you dwells in a cosmos of his own making, created out of his own fancies and desires. You do not know the real world in which you live, and your thinking has no place in the real world except in so far as it is phenomena of mental aberration." -The Iron Heel by Jack London "Hazards exist that are not marked" - some bar in Chelsea
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Volunteer Junior Member (Idle past 5931 days) Posts: 21 From: Tennessee Joined: |
Now why would Jastrow and Eddington admit that there are "Supernatural" forces at work? Why couldn't natural forces have produced the universe? Because these scientists know as well as anyone that natural forces were created at the Big Bang. In other words, the Big Bang was the beginning point for the entire physical universe. Time, space, and matter came into existence at that point. There was no natural world or natural law prior to the Big Bang. Since a cause cannot come after its effect, natural forces cannot account for the Big Bang. Therefore, there must be something outside of nature to do the job. And that is exactly what the word supernatural means.
"Faith is: the substance of fossils hoped for,the evidence of links unseen."
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jar Member (Idle past 416 days) Posts: 34026 From: Texas!! Joined: |
Now why would Jastrow and Eddington admit that there are "Supernatural" forces at work? Why couldn't natural forces have produced the universe? Because these scientists know as well as anyone that natural forces were created at the Big Bang. In other words, the Big Bang was the beginning point for the entire physical universe. Time, space, and matter came into existence at that point. There was no natural world or natural law prior to the Big Bang. Since a cause cannot come after its effect, natural forces cannot account for the Big Bang. Therefore, there must be something outside of nature to do the job. And that is exactly what the word supernatural means. That is not quite correct. Those Natural Forces we can discover were created shortly after the Big Bang. That does not mean that what came before is supernatural, only that it is so far unknown. However the creation of the forces we can learn about was entirely natural. Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!
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Rahvin Member Posts: 4039 Joined: Member Rating: 8.2 |
Now why would Jastrow and Eddington admit that there are "Supernatural" forces at work? Because some scientists are Christians, and have faith in the existence of the supernatural. That does not mean that it exists, and you'll notice an absence of this sort of speculation in actual scientific journals, where assertions must be backed up with evidence. There is a very large difference between believing in the supernatural and actually proving it to exist. A bare statement from incredulity on the part of a pair of scientists certainly proves nothing whatsoever.
Why couldn't natural forces have produced the universe? Because these scientists know as well as anyone that natural forces were created at the Big Bang. In other words, the Big Bang was the beginning point for the entire physical universe. Time, space, and matter came into existence at that point. There was no natural world or natural law prior to the Big Bang. Since a cause cannot come after its effect, natural forces cannot account for the Big Bang. Therefore, there must be something outside of nature to do the job. And that is exactly what the word supernatural means. You have a very strong misconception of what Big Bang theory actually states. No natural forces were "created" at the Big Bang. The Bang was the result of those natural forces, which are a property of the Universe. Our laws of physics are our models of those forces - we create the laws to describe the forces we observe, but there was no need to "set" or "create" the forces in the first place. Nothing was created in the Big Bang - it simply changed from one form into another. We know that matter and energy can neither be created nor destroyed. The Big Bang was the brief period of time where the dimensions of the universe (length, width, height, and time, with the possibility of others) expanded from the single point of the Singularity. There is no "before" the Big Bang, any more than you can say that something is farther North than the North Pole. Time is a dimension, and it existed as a single point in the Singularity along with all of the other dimensions. That single point contained all of the matter and energy we see today, simply in a different form. There is no actual evidence that suggests anything supernatural about the Big Bang. Appealing to the authority of a single scientist's quote in an almost 30-year-old Christian publication or a quote from 1933 are hardly arguments. Both of the quotes you posted are arguments from incredulity in the first place, meaning they're logically invalid statements on their face. When you know you're going to wake up in three days, dying is not a sacrifice. It's a painful inconvenience.
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Brad McFall Member (Idle past 5054 days) Posts: 3428 From: Ithaca,NY, USA Joined: |
Simply, evos must say IN WHAT GENERATION the change occurred in. Darwin was not specific while rejecting special creation. Blaming the climate went too far. Wright asserts Fisher put in in the wrong generation. Morris is of a generation that saw past that. We still do not have this resolved two generations later, but culture and politics moved on, without us (those trying to resolve it). There were modifiers before DNA was discovered but there is little to relations without mutations and yet we can not say this much often, even.
Brad.
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RAZD Member (Idle past 1427 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined: |
Simply, evos must say IN WHAT GENERATION the change occurred in. um, all of them? Enjoy. Edited by RAZD, : . by our ability to understand Rebel American Zen Deist ... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ... to share. • • • Join the effort to solve medical problems, AIDS/HIV, Cancer and more with Team EvC! (click) • • •
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TheNaturalist Member (Idle past 5706 days) Posts: 86 Joined: |
buzsaw-1. Falsify all the fulfilled Biblical prophecies. LOL! 2. Falsify the fact that God reveals himself to those of us who acknowledge him. According to the Bible he draws near to and reveals himself in manifold ways to those who draw to and acknowledge him. 3. Have your secularist researchers go to Nuweiba Beach at Aqaba and falsify the alleged chariot wheels encased in coral as well as all the corroborating evidence in the area relative to the Biblical Exodus account. 5. Empirically account for all the design evident in the DNA, the human cell and brain logically and mathmatically relative to the mathmatical probabilities. 6. Explain why your theory can circumvent the 1st law of thermodynamics relative to your contention that there was no before the BB. 7. Falsify the evidence of the supernatural relative to bo good and evil such as voodoo, the accult and such as is experienced from time to time in churches; things like exorcism, healings etc. 8. Explain the probabilities mathmatically as to how so many factors relative to life on earth just happen to be right in order for life as we observe it to exist; things like a the properties of the atmosphere etc, the location of sun and moon relative to earth, the properties of the planet's surface such as soil, water, gravity, the intensity of the sun's heat, etc, etc. 9. Verify that life began naturally void of ID, existed long enough to begin to multiply and the mathmatical probabilites of procreation of life to the extent that is observed today. I know we've been told, but nothing has come close, better than ID, yet to convince me. 1.What fulfilled biblical profecies? The only biblical profecies that have been fulfilled are vague coincidences which are only examples of many things which could have happened to "fulfill" the supposed profecy. For example, most creationists(biblical) say that the predictions of constant battle in Israel is evidence for creationism(again, biblical), but, I myself know that Israel will probably never stop fighting with the middle easterners, because theyre primitive, religious SAVAGES over there. duhhh2.Makes no sense. Specify 3.C'mon, even biblical creationists have to admit that its likely a hoax. Of course, it could have happened as the bible described it, but how does that relate to supernaturalism, rather than just accurately recording historical events? Reason.. 5.(though buzsaw meant "4.") NO WAY. buzsaw is clearly entirely misinformed. Most of DNA (in all creatures) is non-functional and useless. It is easy to notice mutations in DNA(mutations have been observed and their effects on the DNA were noticed, so scientists can recognize mutations), and they compose almost all of DNA 6.It is known that before the BB was probably a "big crunch" where gravity condensed all material in the universe to the size of a plank unit. This then caused a reversal of movement, the "big bang". It has been mathematically demonstrated that if the universe were to condense to a plank unit, it would have to reverse movement to a "big bang". 7.That made no sense whatsoever. What the hell? 8.The probability of such happening for one planet in interest is extremely slim, of course, but guess what? There are TRILLIONS of planets in the universe, likely. For it to happen on at least one of them is not so unlikely. Reason.... 9.There is much information on that topic which is significant; research it. Im feeling to lazy to go through all I know about it. But, Im guessing youre smart and interested and hard-working enough to research it on your own anyways..
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pelican Member (Idle past 5007 days) Posts: 781 From: australia Joined: |
I am posting this message to the originator of each thread in which I have participated. I apologize to those I have not been able to respond to. Living a double life (see below) even on a forum is very time consuming. I have had a wonderful experience and aplogize for my deceitful behaviour.
RULE 9. Do not participate as more than one ID. You may change your user ID by going to your Profile Page and creating a new alias. I have been participating as two identities. In my defense, I created two identities because I felt I needed some moral support. I also thought it would help to promote some points that I could not do alone. In view of this obvious breaking of a clearly defined rule, there can be no excuses, no claims of innocence because the truth is: I did not read the rules. I prefer to judge myself and implement the consequences myself. I prefer to be my own judge and jury. In this case the punishment is a life time ban. I will retire DAMEEVA as from 1.2.08 (just to give myself time to pack my bags) unless a higher authority decides otherwise, in which case authority has the final say. I have thoroughly enjoyed this forum and have learned a lot that otherwise I would not.
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asif Junior Member (Idle past 5910 days) Posts: 6 Joined: |
hello everyone , I am new on this forum reading around for the last couple of days. I am no expert on either theory but just have one question for those that believe we were not always in this human form , a question that has always bugged me and no friend of mine has satisfied me with an answer.
If we indeed evolved from something else (apes, chimps , etc.) into what we are today and the process took millions of years where is the chain of species between the two extremes (us as humans today and the chimp, ape at the other end) The answer most of my friends have given me is that everything that branched off from that chain of link died off , but I tell them that seems all to convenient that every single thing died off and not even one line between existed If someone can please answer me that question. I do believe our bodies evolve from generation to generation depending on the environment around us but I believe we still remain humans with different bodies and the same applies for animals etc. For the sake of complete honesty I am a Muslim that believes in God and understand that not everything in the Koran needs to be taken word for this is an honest question and not an attempt to say this is right or that is wrong , it is something that always bugs me.
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