quote:
From the creationist perspective, these types of assertions made by naturalists are like the empty rhetoric aspects of creationists’ perspectives (so say the naturalists) which discuss things that are required by the favored model, but yet are empirically unsubstantiated.
The difference is, people who understand how science works understand that there are different levels of certainty of claims. By contrast, there is no such differentiation made among most Creationists; in general, if a Creationist wants to promote an idea, there is no insistence upon evidence at all.
That "something came from nothing" is on the lower end of certainty.
quote:
There’s nothing about allele’s that is inconsistent with the Creator’s creation that was made to operate according to the laws of nature that exist.
OK, so what you are now saying is that there is no way of telling the difference between a Created universe and a totally naturalistic universe?
At any rate, you didn't answer my question; what does all of this talk about "something from nothing" have to do with the change in alelle frequency in a population over time?
quote:
Naturalists go to great lengths to avoid topics like this not only because there is scant (if any) evidence, but because acknowledging that their ideas must hearken back to their mere assumptions about what might have caused everything, betrays the face of surety that they put up that depends upon the validity of such thoughts that relate to origins.
We don't know how life first began.
What does this have to do with the change of alelle frequency in a population over time?
quote:
---------------------------------------------------------------
I don't claim that I have a crowd pleasing answer to that--any more than nats have such for their unprovable philosophical assumptions that are inherent to their faith.
---------------------------------------------------------------
schrafinator writes:
Tell me, does your faith in God change according to physical evidence discovered here on earth?
quote:
No.
Well, then you are in error when you equate religious faith (the kind that does not change according to physical evidence found here on earth), and the "faith" that the Theory of Evolution is the best explanation we have come up with so far to explain the evidence of what has happened to life once it got here.
See the difference?
schrafinator writes:
If you are attempting to equate your religious faith with the kind of faith that is based upon evidence and experience of nature (such as my faith that the Earth spins on it's axis and is in orbit around the Sun, for example), then you have a very strange kind of religion.
quote:
I am attempting to equate my religious faith (in a sense) with the kind of faith that is based upon the natsian TAKE on the evidence and experience of nature. Macro-evolutionary ideas are way, WAY out there compared to your parenthetical citations that creationists also acknowledge.
So, you have just contradicted yourself.
You just said that your faith does NOT change based upon naturalistic evidence, and then you equate your faith with the scientific, emperically-supported idea of Evolution, which has changed in response to evidence found in nature.
Which is it?
quote:
Without scrolling back up to check (I’ve been coming back and forth to this reply for days on my disk because I’ve been busy), I think I might’ve mentioned that both models are broad enough so that each can accommodate a boast of fulfilled predictions.
...except that's not true.
What predictions has Creationism made about nature what have subsequently been borne out by the evidence?
Actually, having predicions at all implies that there is an actual theory, which I have been asking Creationists to provide but none ever have.
quote:
But, for the record, Evolutionary Theory is not so great at making good on its predictions. To take an example, if evolution is true, then "simple" plants, like mosses, evolved slowly, and gradually changed into plants that have seeds, and the seed-bearing plants then evolved into plants and trees that have flowers. Paleontologists haven't discovered fossils of plants that were changing from seed-bearing plants into flowering plants.
Here is some evidence of plant evolution for you, including transitionals.
CC250: Plant fossil record
quote:
Just as we would expect on the basis of creation, however, these in-between kinds, or transitional forms do not exist.
Ah, but they do, across many species of organism. Here's a whole bunch:
CC200: Transitional fossils
Perhaps you might think about doing a bit more research on what evidence is actually out there, and then you wouldn't make such outrageous claims.
quote:
This is true of each one of the many different kinds of plants. Major university professors--the most honest ones--have acknowledged that to any fair-minded person, the fossil record of plants is in favor of creation--not evolution.
How offensive!
All scientists who do not share your paticular belief in God are all a bunch of liars according to you, is that correct?
If you actually feel that way, then you are obviously not interested in being reasonable.
Perhaps you would like to name some names? Who are all of these scientists that you claim support Creationism?
quote:
The truth is that many scientists believe in evolution, not because the scientific evidence favors evolution instead of creation, but because they prefer to believe in evolution, no matter what the scientific evidence says.
Baseless assertion and meaningless to the debate.
quote:
If one believes in creation, then one has to believe in a Creator, right? And that is simply unthinkable, so we (the evolutionists) simply must be right.
40% of scientists, including Boiologists, belive in God.
What are you going to do with them?
quote:
In a sense, you’re right; there was a time in the past when people thought that the universal creation was infinite in size. The Tryonic superstition (that the universe popped into existence on its own, a belief that could represent the naturalistic delemma), is no more rational than creationism.
What does this have to do with the change in the alelle frequency in a population over time?
schrafinator writes:
All you have done is inserted God into the gaps of our understanding. What happens when something that you once considered "inexplicable" and evidence of the hand of God is explained by science? Does your faith die, or do you simply move it to another unexplained phenomena, as has been done by your predecessors for centuries?
quote:
That’s what you do with areas that haven’t been forged through in the empirical sense. What will you do when you find out that naturalistic tenets are destroyed by straight science (real science, unfettered by naturalistic assumptivism)? Move it to another back-up excuse, such as living fossils?
What are you talking about?
Science uses naturalistic explanations to explain naturalistic phenomena.
That means that science can't use "godidit" as some kind of explanation, and far from being fettered by this constraint, science is stronger because of it.
Tell me, if science suddenly were able to use "godidit" as an answer to any question, how would inquiry into the workings of the universe be aided? Obviously you think scientific inquiry would be vastly improved, so perhaps you can give some specific examples of what, exactly, this would look like.
quote:
I don’t know any creationists who don’t want to understand as much as we can about the laws of nature God created.
God could have created the laws of nature, I don't know. However, most Creationists, including you, go much farther than that. You only want to understand nature if it doesn't contradict what you have already decided is true.
That's as far away from real scientific methodology as one can get.
quote:
In the ultimate sense, God is the answer. But that doesn’t stop us from studying the works of God in the scientific senseit amounts to studying God’s thoughts after Him . . . the difference is our under-girding philosophical assumptions about how to view these findings that we disagree on.
No, you go beyond that. You simply reject major chunks of science for no reason other than your religious views, and you also call scientists who do not share your religious conclusions a bunch of liars.
quote:
Such as the belief that chemicals have an observable tendency or ability to form living cells,
Are you talking about Abiogenesis here? If so, then is it inaccurate to talk about "chemicals" forming living cells. Cells are quite complex and are not at all what is proposed as the first life.
quote:
and single-celled organisms have an observable tendency or ability to form complex plants and animals; reproduction can produce radically new organs or organisms one tiny step at a time or all at once; simple life forms can be transformed into the highly complex organisms that inhabit the planet todaynatural selection in combination with random mutation, has the kind of creative power needed to make complex plants and animals out of much simpler predecessors; etc.
Many of these things have a great deal of evidence to support them. The evidence is there, easily acessable for everyone who wants to learn.
All you have shown me is a lot of personal incredulity and I have a great deal of doubt that you have ever undertaken any kind of sincere study of the subjects you bring up.
quote:
Various admissions that are made by the more honest evolutionists demonstrate the fact that evolutionism is not based on logic or evidence, but on faith. As one example, Dr. Harold Urey, a Nobel Prize winner for his research in chemistry, wrote about the impossibility of evolution, but still admitted he believed in the theory. All of us who study the origin of life find that the more we look into it, the more that we feel that it is too complex to have evolved anywhere. And then Dr. Urey added these words that represent some facts of the case, We believe as an article of faith that life evolved from dead matter on this planet. It is just that its complexity is so great, it is hard for us to imagine that it did.
Ah, quote mining, my favorite creationist tactic.
Quote Mine Project: "Miscellaneous"
quote:
Quote #58
"All of us who study the origin of life find that the more we look into it, the more we feel that it is too complex to have evolved anywhere. We believe as an article of faith that life evolved from dead matter on this planet. It is just that its complexity is so great, it is hard for us to imagine that it did." (Urey, Harold C., quoted in Christian Science Monitor, January 4, 1962, p. 4)
Here is the relevant text:
Dr. Harold C. Urey, Nobel Prize-holding chemist of the University of California at La Jolla, explained the modern outlook on this question by noting that "all of us who study the origin of life find that the more we look into it, the more we feel that it is too complex to have evolved anywhere.
And yet, he added, "We all believe as an article of faith that life evolved from dead matter on this planet. It is just that its complexity is so great it is hard for us to imagine that it did."
Pressed to explain what he meant by having "faith" in an event for which he had no substantial evidence, Dr. Urey said his faith was not in the event itself so much as in the physical laws and reasoning that pointed to its likelihood. He would abandon his faith if it ever proved to be misplaced. But that is a prospect he said he considered to be very unlikely.
I bet you are just dying to know what the question referred to in the first sentence is, aren't you? The preceding section was on panspermia vs abiogenesis:
This theory had been proposed before scientists knew how readily the organic materials of life can be synthesized from inorganic matter under the conditions thought to have prevailed in the early days of the earth. Today, Dr. Sagan said, it is far easier to believe that organisms arose spontaneously on the earth than to try to account for them in any other way.
This is a misquote, pure and simple. With the reporting style used, you can't string together the items in the quote marks and assume he said those things in order.
quote:
At the Alpach Symposium conference, which dealt with the growing problems of the theory of evolution, one of the speakers (whose name I don’t have now, but who nevertheless had some good insight regardless of who he is) admitted that the reason evolution was still supported by intellectuals, the education establishment, and the media had nothing to do with whether it was true or false. While reading about the conference, I copied down this tell-tale line, I think that the fact that a theory so vague, so insufficiently verifiable and so far from the criteria otherwise applied in ‘hard’ science has become a dogma can be explained only on sociological grounds.
I did a Google search on "Alpach Symposium" and no documents were found. Did you misspell it? Perhaps you could find some information and link to it?
quote:
There’s nothing in the Theory of Evolution that is empirical that is not consistent with the creationist model. What is it exactly, that you want me to address?
Explain how the change in alelle frequency in a population over time actually doesn not happen.
This is what you are claiming.
quote:
In an un-handwaving manner, please explain how universal physical existence came into being.
I don't know.
However, what does this have to do with the change in allele frequency in a population over time?
quote:
I never claimed to know this in any official or definitive sense, although I am aware of some of their beliefs that I have been exposed to over the years from textbooks and tv documentary interviews of biologists. I mean, I could look it up, but I’m quite sure that nothing I’d find would come as a surprise to me. In the interest of this interaction, I’ll do that if you come back with any type of insistence, but if you know the definition of evolution as per the perspective of biologists, I’d be happy to read it and think about it.
Yes, I insist.
See, what has happened just now, in your reply, is what almost always happen when I challenge Creationists to show their understanding of the Theory of Evolution.
Lots of dancing and handwaving but no answer to the question.
quote:
The definition of science is, in an all too true sense, controlled by naturalists, who operate to the left of science, and so skew the definition accordingly. Straight science, in the ideal and more accurate sense, bisects the philosophies of creationism and evolutionism.
Science uses naturalistic evidence to explain naturalistic phenomena.
That's the definition of science. Can you please explain how letting "Godidit" into this definition would benefit inquiry?
quote:
As for following the rules, you provide a great laugh for me. My favorite dodge of the rules by evolutionists is the notion of "living fossils," those creatures that should not be here if evolution were true.
What are you talking about? Evolution does not say anything about what kinds of creatures "should or shouldn't" be here.
quote:
Nothing could be concieved of that evolutionists wouldn't invent a way around in order to protect the status of their faith.
Ah, those hundreds of thousands of lying scientists over the last 100 years really have pulled the wool over all of our eyes, haven't they?
...and those Geneticists are the absolute WORST, totally fabricating the amazing concordence of genetic similarity between organisms just so they agree with the trees developed by Biologists before we knew about genes!
quote:
So, if following the rules of straight science is the criteria, then there is no such thing as evolution scientists either. I happen to think, though, that there are some scientists whose undergirding philosophical positions about origins differ, and so color their approaches to assessing the evidences.
Science doesn't care about philosophy. Science cares about evidence, falsifiability, and testability.
quote:
Straight science also ignores assumptivist philosophy that, by definition, prevents the work of the Creator (if one exists) from being detected or recognized as suchHe’s outside the loop of possibilities even if He existseven if He created a la yec-ish and left implications of such type of work.
There is only one kind of science; science uses naturalistic explanations to explain naturalistic phenomena.
Can you explain how using "Godidit" in science would benefit inquiry?
quote:
And science can never validate your faith that the philosophy of naturalism is a superior perspective.
Correct.
Science is not in the business of validating philosophies.
Science is the explanation of naturalistic phenomena using naturalistic evidence.
quote:
As for Get over it, although the laws and manifestations of nature are consistent with my faith, I don’t look to science to validate my faith.
Of course you do, and have several times in this very message!!
You say that the "manifestations of nature are consistent with your faith", yet you reject the Theory of Evolution which is arguably the best-supported theory in all of Science.
quote:
You (and yours), however, seem to be suffering from something deeper than looking to science to validate your faith (as I delineated above);
Hm, I have no faith to validate. I am an Agnostic.
quote:
you seem to think that your faith in the philosophy of naturalism is synonymous with the different position of having faith that the findings of straight science are valid, which, to me, seems a quite lamentable state to occupy.
What does any philosophy have to do with the evidence for the change the in allele frequency of a population over time?
quote:
But when the "evidence" (of microevolution) is used in a bait-and-switch manner (i.e., "macroevolution is true and here's the evidence:"--and then enter all manner of microevolutionary findings that are also totally consistent with creationism), the "evidence" becomes suspect, and therefore "theoretical" in a real sense.
Um, what?
You are not making sense.
Evidence are facts. They are not theoretical, period.
Would you agree that 1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1=10? Yes?
Then why is it so difficult to accept that many, many, many small changes in the allele frequencies in a population can accumulate to large changes?
schrafinator writes:
Evidence is a bone of hundreds of species of dinosaur in certain layers of rock that have never, ever been found in any other layer around the world, evidence is a species of bacteria which becomes resistant to penicillin, evidence is the fact that descendents from certain survivors of the Black Plague in medieval Europe have partial to total immunity to HIV because thety share a mutation that conferred a survival advantage.
There are millions and millions of individual pieces of evidence which all point to the fact of evolution ocurring.
quote:
All of the things you alluded to are at least as consistent with creationism.
Actually, all of these things contradict what you have been saying is possible.
schrafinator writes:
It is simply a very sad thing that your religion forces you to choose between your faith and your intellect.
quote:
Actually, my intellectual life harmonizes with my faith. I suppose that you make the same claim about what your article of faith demands, that life evolved from dead matter on this planet (even though there's not a shred of evidence to suggest that it did). And I find that to be very sad.
I have no faith. I am Agnostic.
Oh, and considering that you have contradicted yourself several times in this post alone, I wonder how "harmonious" your intellectual life is when you have to reject much of modern science in one breat, then claim it all points to Creationism in the next. Very confused.
Schrafinator writes:
I think you are quite unaware of the staggering, overwhelming amount of evidence for Evolution.
quote:
I think you may be quite unaware of the necessity to distinguish between microevolutionary evidence (which is indeed widespread), and hard macroevolutionary evidence, which is nonexistent.
You seem to think that saying something repeatedly makes it true. The evidence for macroevolution has been accumulating for around
150 years, Martin. When DNA and genes were discovered and Genetics incorporated into the ToE, it pretty much put to rest any major doubts that the ToE was basically correct.
It's up to you if you want to reject Genetics and modern Biology, but just know that this is what you are doing.
Have a look at these specific evidences for macroevolution, complete with potential falsifications which have not been observed:
29+ Evidences for Macroevolution: The Scientific Case for Common Descent
™ Version 4.2