Evolution versus Creationism is a 'Red Herring' argument

The thread proposal appears in Message 6. --AdminI choose: "Evolution versus Creationism, et all is a 'Red Herring' argument due to misunderstanding on both sides"I cannot thank you enough for your informed and cogent help.
PaulGLEdited by Adminnemooseus, : Changed topic title from "I choose: "Evolution versus 'Creationism, et. al.' is a 'Red Herring' argument due to" to "Evolution versus Creationism is a 'Red Herring' argument".Edited by Admin, : Direct readers to the message containing the thread proposal.

Hi PaulGL,That choice is fine. Could you expand that title into a thread proposal? A few short paragraphs providing background and outlining your position should be sufficient.

Still interested in pursuing this? If so, see message 2.For whatever it's worth, your proposed topic seems to be similar to the (also stalled) proposed topic Evolution/Creationism - Two sides of the same coin.Adminnemooseusps: I note that in your profile, you have not chosen the "Email Notification" option. If you select that, you will receive e-mail notices when you get replies to any of your messages.

Sorry, admin. For some reason my email notifications got cut off, and I didn't realize any of this was happening. Will change/check settings to rectify.

Percy: I'll have to get back to you on that, but within 10 days- since my email notifications are now back on (I hope). I had to ditch my 7-year old PC and get another. Rather than transfer my bacup, the PC store put my old hard drive in the new PC also. But I just found that it won't access those files. Will be knocking on their door Tuesday.

Evolution was, in its conception, an applied extension to biology of the school of thought known as uniformitarianism. Evolution itself is a logical explanation of the information that it correlates, and the evidence of the appropriate scientific fields has consistently verified the mechanisms necessary for substantiating the validity of evolution. Evolution, while it is not a proven process in the strictest sense, is completely valid in its viability and is the only logical process (i.e., one amenable to scientific analysis) so tenable.The human error in the promotion and promulgation of evolution was, and still is, of two aspects: Firstly, as we shall see later on in this chapter, the school of thought that gave rise to the theory of evolution- Uniformitarianism﷓ is totally in contradiction to scientific evidence. Uniformitarianism was founded on insufficient and incomplete data, and the motives for its adoption were more anti﷓Genesis than they were pro﷓scientific.The second mistake, resulting from the same anti﷓spiritual motivation as the first, was in the use of evolution as one pillar of a mechanistic explanation capable of circumventing the problem of first cause, i.e., the origination of everything. Evolution is merely a process and is not an explanation of actual creation; the explanation of creation per se does not lie within the realm of scientific explanation.The validity of evolution would not, in the slightest degree, diminish the evidential necessity of the existence of God, nor would it preclude the validity of divine creation.Evolutionists for nonscientific reasons have erroneously discarded the Genesis account and, equally erroneously, religionists have discarded evolution as being contradictory to a Genesis account.
Now it is time to logically examine the merits and foibles of the "pro-Creation" argument.To promote the literality of the six days of restoration makes equally as much sense as the Roman Catholic Church's defense of the earth as the center of the universe in the time of Copernicus. It is theologically incorrect to think that the 6 days were literal 24-hour days, since time elements (lights) were not assigned until the 4th day. The damage done by such misguided, and scripturally mistaken believers, in making Christians appear to be ignorant and illogical people, has been inestimable. What would cause some of the better scientific minds of the last century to illogically jump to conclusions in a frenzied effort to discredit the Bible in general and Genesis in particular? What would cause religious people to feel compelled to attack evolution as if they were defending the Faith? The answer to these questions is obvious if we rephrase them with the word who instead of what. Who has always endeavored to cause the human race to strain out a gnat and swallow a camel? None other than our most subtle enemy, Satan.

Hi Paul,Your thread proposal appears to be a cut-n-paste from A Message for the Human Race. This is from the Forum Guidelines:

6. Avoid lengthy cut-n-pastes. Introduce the point in your own words and provide a link to your source as a reference. If your source is not on-line you may contact the Site Administrator to have it made available on-line.
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7. Never include material not your own without attribution to the original source.

At this site debaters are asked to marshall their arguments using their own words and use links and citations only as support. Excerpts should be brief and should include attribution.

I wrote A Message for the Human Race. The 'cut and pastes' are my commentary on specific footnoted material validating the concepts elucidated. Do forum rules require that I re-phrase my own commentary, probably to a less cogent version?
Also, am going to check my 'murphy's law' email notification setting, since I didn't receive notification of any forum/thread/replies.
PaulGL aka achristian1985

I have no way of knowing that. I guess there are drawbacks to writing anonymously.I'll promote the thread, but keep in mind that there are three reasons we ask people to compose original replies rather than cut-n-paste. One reason is the obviously plagiaristic one. Another is that very early on in EvC Forum's existence we found that those who cut-n-pasted their arguments usually didn't understand them. And the last, and the one that applies here, is that we find that pre-composed replies rarely if ever fit the context of a dynamic on-going discussion.Also, even when you're quoting yourself, people have the right to know when the words were composed as a direct response to their message and when they were composed for another context.

Thread copied here from the Evolution versus Creationism is a 'Red Herring' argument thread in the Proposed New Topics forum.

You're making the usual mistake of equating 'evolutionist' with 'atheist'. (And also, by saying evolutionist and not simply biologist, you're imagining that there are some particular groups of people working in the biological sciences that think that evolution is false - there aren't.)That aside, science has not discarded the Genesis account - science never ever had anything to say about it. What a particular religious group thinks about its creation myths is of absolutely no interest to science. Rather, a few groups of believers are disconcerted by science's findings and fear that the natural explanations they provide challenges their beliefs.Science has simply found out how the natural world works and that's a challenge for those who need to cling to impossible beliefs come what may. There are no merits to the creation story, except as a childish myth to be put to one side once you come of age.If there's a red herring anywhere here, it's the supposition that science is remotely interested in anything religions believe. Science didn't discover evolution as a prop for atheism, it discovered it because it's a fact of the world we live in.Edited by Tangle, : No reason given.

Do you know what 'uniformitarianism' even means? Are you claiming that things happened differently in the past, that landslides went up instead of down, that mountains sank into the earth instead of rising up, that weathering made rocks grow instead of splitting into smaller pieces?Are you claiming that rain didn't fall, that streams ran uphill, that storms were calm and volcanoes spewed cold magma, that water contracted when it froze and the circumference of a circle really is three times the diameter?As a Christian I can tell you that the Genesis accounts of creation are rejected because they are simply wrong as well as the internal inconsistencies in the accounts.The Genesis accounts were not dumped in some frenzied effort to discredit the Bible but rather simply because the overwhelming body of evidence in all fields of investigation showed that the Genesis accounts were incorrect.Now I'll admit that it certainly is possible that Satan, not as an enemy but as the servant of GOD, is influencing those Christians that oppose the fact of Evolution and the Theory of Evolution.

While this is trivially true you then have the difficultly of having to decide which god is responsible for all the evidence that unfailingly points towards a naturalistic explanation for the diversity of life on Earth (that is assuming you are not using ToE as a place holder for atheism).If no god is required and none evident, why conclude one?

Have we met? I don't see that as a problem... regardless of it: evolution is the best explanation of the data we have. Again a non-issue. Evolution still explains the data. The ramifications are no problem for the explanation. How would you have us debate whether Satan was responsible for the EvC debate or not?

PaulGL:Evolution has nothing to do with gods or deities. Whether the supernatural exists or not would not alter the validity of the theory of common descent. Yes, when creationists argue that the Genesis account should be taken literally.In short, evolutionary theory isn't attacking theism. It makes no claims regarding the existence (or lack thereof) of deities.This makes comments like the one made by William Provine (professor of history and biology, Cornell University) especially egregious:"Naturalistic evolution has clear consequences that Charles Darwin understood perfectly. 1) No gods worth having exist; 2) no life after death exists; 3) no ultimate foundation for ethics exists; 4) no ultimate meaning in life exists; and 5) human free will is nonexistent."Nothing could be further from the truth.