Kent Hovind

No one claims there is evidence that non-natural causes do not exist.

We provide explanations that include causes we have evidence for, and we only have evidence of natural causes.

But you provide explanations that include causes you have no evidence for.

When comparing explanations with evidence to explanations with no evidence, it's no contest.

Why did the big bang go bang?Scientist: we dont know
Creationist: creatorWhat was there before the big bang?Scientist: we dont know
Creationist creatorWhyt started life?
Scientist: we have a few working hypothesis
Creationist: creatorHow did life came to be as it is now
Scientist: Evolution
Creationist: creatorWhy does gravitiy wor as it does?
Scientist: we are working on it we have some working hypothesis
Creationist: creator

You provided evidence of the creator and of how he influenced evolution? Really? Where? Oh, and did God turn out to be Christian, Islam, Hindu, Buddhist or other?

I think you're providing wonderful examples of a couple of the creationist approaches to debate: making claims that you've proved things you've never proved, and misunderstanding how evidence works.

You mean "Why do I reject a false dichotomy?". That should answer itself as well.

I'm sure I've missed some evidences which corroborate the arsenal of evidence which creationists should be citing, whether or not the skeptics admit to it.

Creationists have fumbled the evidence ball due to apathy and reliance on blind faith. Faith should not be blind. The great Apostle Paul advised to "Prove all things." in his 1st letter to the Thessalonians, yet he is know as a great man of faith.Corroborated data, such as distances, positions, temperatures, elements, forces, etc relative to the compatibility of our planet for life adds to your list. These, individually and alone may, perhaps, afford them some skepticism, but corroborated with your list, builds on our arsenal of evidence.Sadly, precious few creationists have studiously corroborated and harmonized the amazing prophecies of the Biblical record. Our pulpits are essentially silent about them. The sheeple in the pews haven't a clue, nor do they care.Having studied them for decades, they have become a significant factor in convincing me of the existence of higher intelligence existing in the Universe. Again don't expect any amount of this evidence to be acknowledged by our secularist friends. Poor deluded folk.Corroborating prophecy with prophecy and pigeonholing them into the proper time frame is not for novices. It's been a 66 year study for me. The more I read and analyze them, the more I see their significance as we observe their fulfillment in what is turning out to be the 'latter times."

1. Many premises put forward are unwarranted assumptions. If a premise has not been established with enough certainty to be considered true, then it cant be used to start a logical argument. The conclusion may end up being true but as it has been reached from a faulty premise, it is irrelevant. This is the problem that a lot of Creationists face here. Many on the other side already view their premise as faulty so the arguement is lost before it begins. If your beginning premise is that God or a deity of some sort exists, then you have an unwarranted assumption as the premise.

I would argue that the assumption that there are no deities is a much stronger logical, warranted assumption to begin with.

Noone can start from the premise that there is a god. This can only be taught.

This is some serious bullshit Dawn. For someone who discusses a very strong attatchment to logic (often at great length), it would seem odd that you can even have this thought, let alone put it onto the forum.In what reality do you think that a position on one subject or point requires and explanation of everything?

and your evidence for this assertion is?

Theism is the belief in a god or gods.

That is an unwarranted assumption when putting forward a premise. If there
was sufficient evidence to believe in a god or gods, most of the science
community would be believers.

It is these people who, for the most part,
associate their beliefs with evidence. We need a fair bit of verifiable
supporting evidence before they choose a position. If the evidence was there, we
would make the decision on whether to believe based upon that evidence. That's
how scientists come to support any new theory. They ask for the evidence,
evaluate, then decide to support it or not.

I am not saying that theism is not valid. I am saying that it does not have
sufficient evidence to become a warranted assumption.

The evidence is not the same for both positions. I will assume we are both
talking about the evidence for the existence of a supernatural being here.

You believe that in order to discuss the origin of existence, you need to
discuss everything from that origin all the way to the present moment.
Is
that right?

f it is, I will be calling bullshit.

There is no requirement to discuss
current existence when talking about the origin of existence. From current
theories (Stephen Hawking and a few other guys) there was no beginning in the
sense you suggest. To discuss a beginning in this sense, there would still be a
point before the beginning. And this is like discussing a point south of the
south pole. Maybe you need to define existence.

Take the Theory of Evolution for example. It is not necessary to prove
abiogenesis, or even discuss it to support the theory. Proving abiogenesis does
not directly support or prove evolution. It is not necessary to discuss the
things that occurred after the origin of the universe when discussing theories
of the origins of the universe. Unless they are actually part of the actual
process being discussed.

You will have to clarify what you mean by natural causes. Are you using the
term natural causes as a catch all term to mean everything that has ever
occurred?

What event or process are you talking about when you say natural
causes. There is no event or single process that I am aware of called natural
causes for me to demonstrate from start to finish

Creationism is a more valid position than what? Are you using the terms
'natural causes' as the opposing position to creation? If you are, this may be
where people are having a problem with your arguments. As natural causes is a
description of how an event takes place, rather than an event or theory

it does not make sense to use it as the opposing terms to
Creation. What are you comparing creationism to exactly? I have explained how an
unwarranted assumption works. As soon as god enters the premise, it is an
unwarranted assumption.

What observations are leading you to this assertion. More description is called for. Take this opportunity to be verbose.

This doesn't say anything. What "evaluation"? Walk us through this evaluation, step-by-step. Depending on the evidence you are evaluating this should take at least a couple paragraphs of details of your evaluation.

What experimentation? What specific hypotheses was being tested? How was the experiment conducted? What were the controls, null-hypothesis, equipment, sensors, etc. What were the raw results and your conclusions? If you take just one such experiment and relay some of these details this may help us get a better feel for what you are going on about.

That's an interesting and rather all-encompassing question to ask, but Jar never claimed to have evidence of natural causes from start to finish. In fact, no one here has claimed this or would claim this, and no one I know of in science has ever claimed this.What Jar did say and what we are all saying is that when we make a claim it is because we have evidence for that claim, and that to this point in time all evidence we have is due to natural causes.

You name a claim that we have actually made, rather than one you have made up, and we will provide the evidence behind that claim.

But you continue to make significant contributions to this thread by providing examples of creationist debate techniques, in this case of putting words in other people's mouths, and of asking unanswerable questions as if the inability to answer unanswerable questions proved anything.

You said that you'd already answered this question in Message information:Message 273

Claiming they've already proved something they haven't proved.

Misunderstanding how evidence works.

Putting words in people's mouths.

Asking unanswerable questions.

Asserting that something is so is sufficient, no evidence required.
In this case Dawn is providing another example of misunderstanding how evidence works.

Dawn appears to think that:

My evidence for the creator is the same as your evidence that existence is soley by natural causes. its called, existence, law, order,, purpose and designJust demonstrate that the things i have mentioned dont eixist or that they can eixst soley by themself and you will have demonstrated it to not be evidenceSince I have now provided what you requested it is your obligation as an debater to respond to that rebuttal.

(Message 267) is "providing evidence".

I asked for you to break this down into finer details in support of your statement that someone along time ago in a galaxay far far away observed the available evidence, law order an purpose, design etc and used this available evidence to form a valid, warrented premise.I did not ask for generalizations of philosophy unattached from this specific statement.

However, since the Enlightenment, there has arisen a contrary strand of thought that is deeply suspicious of the idea of purpose. This philosophy, sometimes known as positivism, does not deny the order of the physical universe, but simply takes this order as a brute fact that stands in no need of further explanation. The order of nature may be rationally intelligible and explicable through the tools of science and mathematics, but for the positivist it makes no sense to ask why this is so. According to this perspective, the universe just is as we encounter it. The task of science is restricted to producing ever more complete and precise descriptions of empirical phenomena. However, inferences concerning unobserved theoretical entities and questions pertaining to why the world is as we observe it are both dismissed as unscientific. Positivism simply forbids one to ask why the laws of nature are those that we discover rather than some others.The Retreat of Positivism
Yet, the advances of physics in the past century have made the stance of positivism increasingly difficult to maintain. As physics has explored phenomena at ever smaller scales that are ever more difficult to detect, it has moved further and further away from the everyday experience of human beings. When working in regimes that cannot be easily observed, physics becomes increasingly reliant upon the human ability to reason from observed effects to unobserved causes. Through such reasoning, theoretical entities characterized by mathematical relations are often hypothesized to account for observed effects, even though the entities themselves have not been observed.The early history of modern particle physics offers dramatic examples of such reasoning. For example, in 1930, Wolfgang Pauli sought to explain an anomaly associated with nuclear beta decay by postulating the existence of an undetected particle. In 1933, Enrico Fermi wrote a paper concerning the particle, which he called the neutrino, and submitted the paper to the journal Nature. From one point of view, Pauli and Fermi were reasoning straightforwardly from observed effect to an undetected cause. Yet, this mode of inference offended the canons of positivism, and so the editors of Nature rejected Fermi’s paper as too speculative and remote from reality. The neutrino remained unobserved until 1956, when it was detected using the Savannah River reactor.1Just as the restrictions of positivism have proven untenable in regard to theoretical entities such as subatomic particles, so they appear questionable in regard to the discernment of purpose. The stimulus for the consideration of purpose lies in the nature of the scientific enterprise itself. Science seeks to identify the laws by which the natural processes of our universe evolve in time, and these very laws serve as indicators of purpose. The laws discovered by science have allowed the complex, multilayered order found in the universe to emerge over time from the relative homogeneity of the universe’s early state. These laws thus manifest an astounding creativity whose potential continues to unfold. It is the very operation of these laws that produces the subtle and amazing order of nature. Moreover, the order of our universe is closely calibrated to the particular laws that produce it. Physical laws chosen at random would, in an overwhelming majority of cases, lead to a universe completely lacking in the kind of order we observe. It therefore strains credibility to suggest that we ought simply to take for granted either the laws or their marvelous outcome.Order in Physical Laws
A fundamental example of order in physical laws is found in the notion of symmetry.2 Symmetry is an intuitive concept familiar to us in the form of regular shapes, like that of the snowflake. However, symmetry can also be precisely characterized through the branch of mathematics known as group theory, which allows us to describe types and degrees of symmetry. A central discovery of modern physics has been the manner in which various laws exhibit particular mathematical symmetries. Furthermore, as physicists relate the various laws to each other, an important relationship emerges. As we move to physical laws at deeper or more fundamental levels of organization, we find higher degrees of symmetry. The phenomena at more shallow or easily observed levels of organization typically have lower degrees of symmetry. Yet, the higher degrees of symmetry found at the deeper levels of organization, while exhibiting an intricate order, are in no way logically necessary.The pattern discovered in regard to symmetry holds true of the order in nature more generally. As the sources of order are analyzed in terms of physical laws at various levels of organization, order is never seen to emerge from a lack of order. Rather, the order at each observed level of organization is found to unfold from a greater order at a deeper level. Thus, the scientific process explains order by mathematically relating it to a more profound order. The deepest levels of order, such as those that may be revealed by a future theory of quantum gravity, are the least readily observed. As the scientific process advances, progressively greater degrees of order are exposed. From the perspective of twenty-first century physics, the universe appears far more intricately ordered and profoundly rational than it did to Plato or Aristotle.

The Contingency of Physical Laws
What then is the significance of this order? To explore further the implications of natural order, we must begin to confront the very questions that positivism forbids us to ask. Why are the laws of physics what they are, rather than otherwise? These laws are surely not logically necessary, as are purely mathematical theorems. Even when physicists eventually arrive at a fundamental physical theory, such as a theory of quantum gravity, there is no reason to believe that this theory will be logically necessary. In other words, it will always be logically possible for the universe to have been otherwise. Physical laws that are not logically necessary may precisely describe order, but they do not explain away that order in any way that would obviate the question of purpose. Such laws possess no status that would prevent us from asking questions about their further significance. When such questions are squarely posed in regard to fundamental laws, with their intricate harmony and elegance, purpose seems to become manifest.Moreover, the physical laws that have already been discovered seem to be fine-tuned’ to produce a universe in a narrow regime that allows the emergence of novel structures through a process of self-organization. This self-organization is manifested first at the astrophysical level, in the structure of stars and galaxies, before we even consider the emergence of life. To permit such self-organization, the laws must achieve a delicate balance between an utterly chaotic and disorganized universe and one that is completely static and uninteresting. The fine-tuning of our physical laws to produce such an order weighs heavily against the credibility of treating those laws as brute facts. Rather, the fact that our universe appears to lie so perfectly in the favored range seems indicative of purpose.The advocates of positivism sometimes object that the notion of purpose adds no empirical content to the known physical laws. However, this objection misconstrues the idea of purpose, treating it as if it were an extra force above and beyond those already accounted for. Purpose is not supposed to have empirical content apart from the physical laws in which it is manifest. On the contrary, it is the empirical content of the laws themselves that persuasively leads us to posit purpose.Although the idea of purpose may not alter the empirical content of physical laws, it can nevertheless greatly affect our understanding of the significance of life and its relation to the rest of nature. Indeed, the evidence of the natural order suggests that one of its purposes lies in the appearance of life itself.

This is the definition I use - Creationism - The belief that the universe and living organisms originate from divine creation.

I am comfortable with my attempts to explain things to you.It seems you are unwilling or unable to think outside or your very narrow focus.