A genuine enquirery

Hi. Although I undestand the basics of the argument I was wondering whether anybody would be so kind as to fill me in on some details. That way I can base my arguments on facts rather than assumpsions when I post. Admittedly I am biased towards evolution theory, having been taught this as fact and being brought up in a scientific family. I feel that I am, however, open minded and open to new ideas if I am given a good enough argument to accept them.As I see it the situation stands as follows:Evolutionists follow Darwins theory that the Earth evolved over millions of years to the world we see at present. The life on it evolved over millenia from single celled organisms to the complex ones we have today, us included. This process was slow and graduall and is backed up by fossil evidence (eg, the horse, a species shown through fossil evidence over a series of thousands of years to have developed from the dog-size animal living on ice-age plains to the animal we have today)Creationsists base their theory on Genesis: that the world was created in 6 days by God, and that we were given stewardship of it. Following this basic premise they state that there is scientific evidence (or are looking for scientific evidence) to back this up. (I'm sorry my factual evidence to back this up is extremly limited, as I was never taught this as fact unlike evolution which was part of my biology syllabus). Their basic claim is that as God is omnipotent and allpowerful creation is perfectly plausable.If I have missed things (which I almost certainly have) is there anybody out there who would fill me in on this. I know that my argument is obviously biased towards Darwin, however I am asking for evidence to the contary to balance this.I know there are two sides to every story and cling to the belief that every myth or legend or religious text, no matter how extreme (and by this I am not just refering to Christanity: each religion having it's own creation myth these can be quite extravagent such as the aborigininal Dream Time), ..no matter how extreme they are each based to some degree on FACt. On an actuallity in existance. I just want to have both sides of the story before I make up my mind for sure; up to this point I haven't got that. There will always be a degree of sceptism and bias in any argument for or against, but still...

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Originally posted by Jennynot:
Hi. Although I undestand the basics of the argument I was wondering whether anybody would be so kind as to fill me in on some details. That way I can base my arguments on facts rather than assumpsions when I post. Admittedly I am biased towards evolution theory, having been taught this as fact and being brought up in a scientific family. I feel that I am, however, open minded and open to new ideas if I am given a good enough argument to accept them.

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Welcome to the forum, Jenny! Supporting evolution isn't 'bias', except insofar that one must think science is a good thing, which presupposes that one is biased towards rationality.

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As I see it the situation stands as follows:

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Evolutionists follow Darwins theory that the Earth evolved over millions of years to the world we see at present. The life on it evolved over millenia from single celled organisms to the complex ones we have today, us included. This process was slow and graduall and is backed up by fossil evidence (eg, the horse, a species shown through fossil evidence over a series of thousands of years to have developed from the dog-size animal living on ice-age plains to the animal we have today)

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Creationsists base their theory on Genesis: that the world was created in 6 days by God, and that we were given stewardship of it. Following this basic premise they state that there is scientific evidence (or are looking for scientific evidence) to back this up. (I'm sorry my factual evidence to back this up is extremly limited, as I was never taught this as fact unlike evolution which was part of my biology syllabus). Their basic claim is that as God is omnipotent and allpowerful creation is perfectly plausable.

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That's broadly accurate, but there are many positions inbetween. At one end of the spectrum you have evolution. Then you have theistic evolution, which basically states that evolution happened, but God directed it. Then you have old-Earth Creationism, which accepts science's age for the Earth, but rejects evolution. Finally there is young-Earth Creationism, which claims on the basis of scripture that the Earth is c.6000 years old, and that all 'kinds' of life were created fully-formed by God. I'm still waiting on a proper definition of 'kind', unfortunately.

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If I have missed things (which I almost certainly have) is there anybody out there who would fill me in on this. I know that my argument is obviously biased towards Darwin, however I am asking for evidence to the contary to balance this.

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You won't get it. There is no evidence for Creation. That does not mean that it is false, of course. The Universe could have been created 5 minutes ago. But there is no way to test that hypothesis, and so there is no meaningful way to say it is true. The same goes for the Christian creation myth, or any other religious myth - no way to disprove them, but there is no reason to suppose they are true, or to favour them over any other unfalsifiable hypothesis.

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I know there are two sides to every story and cling to the belief that every myth or legend or religious text, no matter how extreme (and by this I am not just refering to Christanity: each religion having it's own creation myth these can be quite extravagent such as the aborigininal Dream Time), ..no matter how extreme they are each based to some degree on FACt. On an actuallity in existance.

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What do you do with two myths which are mutually exclusive?

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I just want to have both sides of the story before I make up my mind for sure; up to this point I haven't got that. There will always be a degree of sceptism and bias in any argument for or against, but still...

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I am sure the Creationists here will be more than happy to set up their case for you, and I will do my best to knock it down again ------------------

Evolutionists follow Darwins theory that the Earth evolved over millions of years to the world we see at present. The life on it evolved over millenia from single celled organisms to the complex ones we have today, us included."
--Actually, to be more accurate the 'earth' evolved over billions of years in current mainstream theory & life as well over billions rather than millennia."This process was slow and graduall"
--Depending on how you would interpret whether something was 'slow' or rapid or 'gradual'/jumpy. There are plenty of sections in the fossil record where great evolutionary leaps are found. Theoretical reasoning on this is explained by evolution through punctuated equillibria and whatever mechanism causing such rapid evolutionary development."and is backed up by fossil evidence (eg, the horse, a species shown through fossil evidence over a series of thousands of years to have developed from the dog-size animal living on ice-age plains to the animal we have today)"
--Within its own realm interpretation, you are correct."Creationsists base their theory on Genesis"
--I would rather say its origin is 'from' Genesis. And the 'creationist' doesn't necessarelly hold this as their belief, though the Christian Young Earth Creationist does."that the world was created in 6 days by God, and that we were given stewardship of it. Following this basic premise they state that there is scientific evidence (or are looking for scientific evidence) to back this up. (I'm sorry my factual evidence to back this up is extremly limited, as I was never taught this as fact unlike evolution which was part of my biology syllabus). Their basic claim is that as God is omnipotent and allpowerful creation is perfectly plausable."
--In my view, the continued naturalistic development of the universe and its inclusions is rather deistic, having little to no supernatural involvement in geologic/biologic/cosmologic etc. developments. Also, I have read through some studies in biology and have found nothing which I do not agree with with the exception of their application of current evolutionary observation to the fossil record, & uniformitarian/geologic time so there is no biological observation or collection of data whose extant I will not agree with.
--There is an enormous pile of evidence to point in many directions, so your argument against the YEC isn't that there is a non-existence of evidence, but that the evidence does not add up to our interpretation.--You can find a brief overview of what I held to be true at the time of this posting which may have changed very little if at all in post 3 & 10 of this topic:http://EvC Forum: Creationist only flood topic? / Young Earth vs. Old Earth id's? -->EvC Forum: Creationist only flood topic? / Young Earth vs. Old Earth id's?--Mostly pertaining to the majority of my research, geoscience & flood mechanics, your comments here are welcome.
--Welcome to the forum.------------------

"Then you have theistic evolution, which basically states that evolution happened, but God directed it."
--This may possibly be the more widely accepted theistic evolutionary theory, however, God didn't necessarily direct its direction, though he did begin the process.------------------[This message has been edited by TrueCreation, 10-02-2002]

JennynotWelcome to the madhouse.MartinM has given you a good precis of the creationism / evolution debate. If you wish for some more detail you could read through this article What is Creationism?"

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Originally posted by TrueCreation:
"Then you have theistic evolution, which basically states that evolution happened, but God directed it."
--This may possibly be the more widely accepted theistic evolutionary theory, however, God didn't necessarily direct its direction, though he did begin the process.

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TC, I do agree with your statement, but I do wish to comment.I think that if God were capable of "beginning the process" (ie. the initial creation), God is certainly capable of guiding the direction. If so, the question is, to what degree did God choose to? The answer could range from "not at all" to "in minute detail". It is this "God in the details" that Behe is trying to document. But like I said before elsewhere, how does one find the "fingerprints" (or "signiture", "mark", "stamp", etc.) of God?You replied to me, on this, once before - seemingly taking the literal meaning of "fingerprints". All in all, I found your answer highly ambigious, and lacking in real content.Maybe someday we'll have the microscope powerful enough, the find messages such as "copyright 1955, God Inc." on everything. Maybe then we'll have "proven" creation. Which still doesn't say that God didn't use evolution as his methodology of creation.By the way, am I starting to show some new form of psychosis, because of my recent interfacings with the "Terry" unit?Moose[This message has been edited by minnemooseus, 10-03-2002]

This is something I posted in the "Kenneth R. Miller - Finding Darwin's God" topic (http://EvC Forum: Kenneth R. Miller - Finding Darwin's God -->EvC Forum: Kenneth R. Miller - Finding Darwin's God), back on 7/6/02. It didn't gather any response there. I thought of it, because I'm under the impression that TC (and others?) seem to have a Henry Morris type thought process going.It is a direct quotation from the book (pp. 172-173):

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Are such opponents of evolution sincere? Several years ago, I was invited to Tampa, Florida, to debate the issue of evolution with Henry Morris, founder of the Institute for Creation Research and one of the most influential of the young-earth creationists. The debate had been occasioned by the passage of a curriculum mandating the inclusion of so-called creation science in high school biology. In front of a large audience, I hammered Morris repeatedly with the many errors of "flood geology" and did my best to show the enormous weight of scientific evidence behind evolution. One never knows how such a debate goes, but the local science teachers in attendance were jubilant that I scored a scientific victory.

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As luck would have it, the organizers of this event had booked rooms for both Dr. Morris and myself in a local motel. When I walked into the coffee shop the next morning, I noticed Morris at a table by himself finishing breakfast. Flushed with confidence from the debate, I asked if I might join him. The elderly Morris was a bit shaken, but he agreed. I ordered a nice breakfast, and then got right to the point. "Do you actually believe all this stuff?"

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I suppose I might have expected a wink and a nod. We had both been paid for our debate appearances, and perhaps I expected him to acknowledge that he made a pretty good living from the creation business. He did nothing of the sort. Henry Morris made it clear to me that he believed everything he had said the night before. "But Dr. Morris, so much of what you argued is wrong, starting with the age of the earth!" Morris had been unable to answer the geological data on the earth's age I had presented the night before, and it had badly damaged his credibility with the audience. Nonetheless, he looked me straight in the eyes. "Ken, you're intelligent, you're well-meaning, and you're energetic. But you are also young, and you don't realize what's at stake. In a question of such importance, scientific data aren't the ultimate authority. Even you know that science is wrong sometimes."

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Indeed I did. Morris continued so that I could get a feeling for what that ultimate authority was. "Scripture tells us what the right conclusion is. And if science, momentarily, doesn't agree with it, then we have to keep working until we get the right answer. But I have no doubts as to what that answer will be." Morris then excused himself, and I was left to ponder what he had said. I had sat down thinking the man a charlatan, but I left appreciating the depth, the power; and the sincerity of his convictions. Nonetheless, however one might admire Morris's strength of character; convictions that allow science to be bent beyond recognition are not merely unjustified - they are dangerous in the intellectual and even in the moral sense, because they corrupt and compromise the integrity of human reason.

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My impromptu breakfast with Henry Morris taught me an important lesson-the appeal of creationism is emotional, not scientific. I might be able to lay out graphs and charts and diagrams, to cite laboratory experiments and field observations, to describe the details of one evolutionary sequence after another; but to the true believers of creationism, these would all be sound and fury, signifying nothing. The truth would always be somewhere else.

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MooseEdited to add a space between two of the paragraphs - Moose[This message has been edited by minnemooseus, 10-18-2002]

That is a very interesting opinion. I never looked at it like that before. It must take a serious amount of faith to seriously believe the entire world is wrong, and to try and convince them that there will discover the truth eventually.Reminds me of when everybody thought the world was flat and ridiculed those that said otherwise. However the minority then were the scientist and now they are the theologians.It's hard for me to believe anything that isn't scientifically proven though..no. It's hard for me to believe any theology DISPRVOVEN by science.You mentioned you agreed with Mr Morris when he said science was wrong sometimes....When has science been wrong on such a grand scale?

Jennynot writes:

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You mentioned you agreed with Mr Morris when he said science was wrong sometimes....When has science been wrong on such a grand scale?

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Some might consider plate tectonics a good example. Despite the evidence Wegener amassed that Europe and Africa had once been joined to North and South America, lacking a mechanism by which continents could move through oceanic crust, scientists rejected Wegener's theory of continental drift. The geologic similarities between the east coast of South America and the west coast of Africa were dismissed as startling but coincidental, and the flora/fauna similarities were explained by proposing an ancient land bridge, since eroded away, between the continents.As one geologist said at the time, "If Wegener is right, then most of what we now know of geology is wrong." Truer words were never spoken.--Percy

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You mentioned you agreed with Mr Morris when he said science was wrong sometimes....When has science been wrong on such a grand scale?

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The agreement was from the author of the book (Kenneth Miller), although I concur. Percy had already supplied a fine answer to the question.Moose------------------
BS degree, geology, '83; Professor, geology, Whatsamatta U; Old Earth evolution - Yes; Godly creation - Maybe
My big page of Creation/Evolution Links

If God created the universe, and everything of the universe, such that there is such a wealth of evidence of a multi-billion year history of evolution, who are we to doubt that evidence?Should we believe what we see in the details of the product of the creation, or should we believe what is said is a book containing a superficial (lacking detail) story of the creation process?We need to look at the product of the creation, to tell us the story of the creation process, rather than look at a story (Genesis), and then try to make the product fit the story.Moose

"I thought of it, because I'm under the impression that TC (and others?) seem to have a Henry Morris type thought process going."
--I probably should feel offended, though I don't think it would be right to take the comparison as offensive. I am not one who takes much of his time in reading the general literature of the widely known YECist organizations. There are positive and negative effects from this. A positive impact that might come from this choice is that I am less exposed to highly biased materials & less likely to be pulled in to feed on dead corpses. A negative may be that it is possible I am missing out on answers to questions I seek to answer. In the most part, I do my own research in recalling data, and I come to my own conclusions, which are often equal or very similar to what mainstream studies deduce.
--Given the information you have supplied in this quote, I suffice that I bear no resemblance as per the motivation and incentive which Morris so confidently, passionately & almost effusively exhibits. While I too, may find myself in admiration & respect for his genuine & sincere beliefs of which he eminently embraces firmly. However, reality begs for more than pertinacious rigour. The depth of emotion, sincerity, cacoethes, or tenacious exasperation cannot alter the past and the surviving trace & vestige elements of which time has left for us to observe and scrutinize. These tendencies exemplify the human desire to perceive origins. My mind greatly persists in a cerebral direction with strict appeals to these such inquiries, to ponder upon what is objective. The subjective world and its conclusive credibility acquires merit which can only be accepted as meritable when realizing its subjective geny. I hold to this fidelity and expect that it continue, without ephemeral qualities, to be my rightful scientific initiative.--If I were to compile a testimony, this would have to be the essence of it.------------------[This message has been edited by TrueCreation, 10-05-2002]

"I think that if God were capable of "beginning the process" (ie. the initial creation), God is certainly capable of guiding the direction."
--Of course, I would not be to argue against this suggestion."If so, the question is, to what degree did God choose to? The answer could range from "not at all" to "in minute detail". It is this "God in the details" that Behe is trying to document. But like I said before elsewhere, how does one find the "fingerprints" (or "signiture", "mark", "stamp", etc.) of God?"
--And a very valid question indeed."You replied to me, on this, once before - seemingly taking the literal meaning of "fingerprints". All in all, I found your answer highly ambigious, and lacking in real content."
--How so? Where might I be able to review my previous responses, ie, the thread & specific posts."Maybe someday we'll have the microscope powerful enough, the find messages such as "copyright 1955, God Inc." on everything. Maybe then we'll have "proven" creation."
--I know were being sarcastic, though I wouldn't think that if we were to find this type of signature trace or 'God's fingerprints' it would really have little to nothing to do with what is directly objective. That is to say, were not going to find the copyright print or anything of that nature. If this is the conclusion we come to scientifically, it is of course not an absolute, but a suggestion which has successfully passed the test of all around scrutiny with various sets of evidence and data. Unfortunately these research inquiries have been going on for very little time, which begins to dwindle if we ask for the amount of veracious conclusions have been found. I can only hope for new scientists in the world who have the interest and intellectual qualities for approbation in these topics."By the way, am I starting to show some new form of psychosis, because of my recent interfacings with the "Terry" unit?"
--Hang in there moose ------------------