Stephen,
Just a critique, not a personal attack. I hope by the end you can see the difference between a scientific and a philisophical theory.
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The scientific hypothesis for creation is that there is a Creator, and that all of the universe we can experience exists because this Creator put it there. It has meaning according to the purpose or whim of this Creator. "It is there for such or so reason in the mind of the Creator, or because it appealed to the subjective desires of the Creator." This is, in part, a psychological hypothesis, since it addresses the mind and emotions of the Creator.
In science, we look for a measureable physical/chemical mechanisms that can be measured and are consistent with the data. Saying "God created the universe" falls short of this requirement. If you could show HOW God created the universe and illustrate the ongoing mechanism in physical/chemical units, then you would have a scientific theory. Saying "God did it" may loosely fit under hypothesis, but only in a very general way. There is no way to test the mechanisms. For example, we can measure the mutations in bacteria in scientific units, say 1 base change/million bacteria. Now, how many "God did it"'s are there in one million bacteria? I'm not trying to belittle creationism here, only showing the difference between creation theory and scientific theory.
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We postulate that this Creator is out there partly because we are living beings, and we create things. So, we suppose that there could be another living Being also creating things, even everything. We don't have much sensory information about this being, but earthworms don't have much sensory information about us, and we are out there in the earthworm's world. So, the Creator being could be out there, as well.
There is not logical or chemical/physical requirement for a deity if life is present. This is an arbitrary postulation, a guess with no evidenciary support. As to sensory information, science has extended our perception of the world many fold thanks to the development of tools and instruments. The eye can't see the proton spin in a molecule of octane, but an NMR machine can. We can't see the wobble of a sun due to a close orbiting planet in the distant sky with our naked eyes, but a telescope can. The NMR machine and the radio telescope work within scientific theories to give us reliable information. However, even as we extend our perception farther and farther into the universe and the micro-verse, we never sense the machinations of a supernatural entity. Could a deity exist? Maybe. Will science ever find one? Probably not, and the chances are shrinking every day.
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But many postulate that this Creator is out there because of this extraordinary book called the Bible, which has a remarkable history as a document. The book presents itself as a message from the Creator to us. That makes sense. When we create things, we often make up a creator's manual telling how to deal with our creation. This book describes the psychology of the hypothetical Creator in some detail, and outlines several experiments anyone can do to falsify the reality of the Creator, if they are so inclined. For example, Malachi 3:10 says simply, as a message from the Creator, "prove Me now in this" outlining a titheing experiment that will either verify or falsify the Creator.
I think even the most ardent fundamentalist christian can agree with this statement: "God did not write the Bible." Saying "God inspired the writings of the Biblical Authors" is probably a closer approximation to the belief held by most christians. Please correct me if you feel I have overstep my bounds here. What it comes down to, though, is that MEN wrote the bible. As a historical document, I would agree that it is a very fascinating book, as is the Epic of Gilgamesh. But how do we determine what is inspired and what is directly conveyed? How do we separate the relation of a story through allegory and the relation of a story through actual events? How do we trust the fallibility of man to transmit an infallible message? In science, the fallibility of man is drastically reduced through open methodology and repeatibility. If someone can't copy your work, then the work is meaningless. If creation theory is going to further itself, it must separate itself from the possible fallibility of the biblical authors by substantiating the six day creation within a scientific framework instead of through a faith derived axioms. As to testing the Creator through tithing, I have tried that and it didn't work. But that wasn't the reason I tithed, I did it because it made me feel part of the christian community. Anecdotal evidence may show a connection, but you would be hard pressed to find a double-blind study that illustrates a tie between tithing and wish granting. For instance, do you think Steve Forbes or Bill Gates tithe? They seem pretty blessed. Anecdotal evidence is fun, but ultimately useless.
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But I like this experiment, because it uses strong inference, known to vastly improve the quality of science. If the creation theory is true, then the reproductive value of creation believing persons will be higher than that of evolutionists. This will be in part because believing the truth ought to improve one's adaptive fitness, the W of the population geneticists. Also, the primary mode of creation probably is artificial selection, where the Creator "blesses" with lots of children those who honor Him and give Him glory for His handiwork. If evolution is true, then creationists are wasting precious time and intellectual energy on something that isn't real, and are misguided. Then they ought to have a lower reproductive value than the evolutionists.
The Creator seems to bless non-christians such as Hindus in India and Confuscians and Buddhists in China. Believing in the Christian God does not explain population booms in those countries, and so it doesn't explain the population booms in Christian/Creationist countries either. Education and Economic levels in general, irrespective of evo/creo, seem to be correlated with reproductive rates. Without a bias for one religion over another, IOW a subjective bias, this theory falls apart. On top of this, mechanisms are still lacking. What makes God fearing creationists more productive? Well, "God did it".
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In my many years of "evolution" research, it was the effect of behavior on reproductive value that was the gold standard.
The effects of sexual selection and instinct evolution have been understood for quite a while, and are part of the theory. It still doesn't rule out opening new niches when competition over resources causes uneven reproductive values between two populations.
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The data of course strongly support the theory of Creationism. The human sub-group with the highest W value are the "Plain People" the Amish and Mennonites, with over 9 children per couple, and 85% remaining in the community, having the same reproductive rate. Evolutionists do not seem to be replacing themselves, over-all. Nations with strong evolutionary teaching average barely, or less than, 2 children per female. The evolutionists, of course, ad hoc this finding by bringing up overpopulation theory, a theory which has yet to make a successful prediction, and which has been refuted by the data many times. Julian Simon's great book, "The Ultimate Resource" chronicles this very well. The creationists, of course, have predicted that evolutionists are so reproductively unsuccessful because they are deluded and deceived, in part by malignant spiritual beings also described in the Bible. This state of delusion is thus manifested as well in the claim by evolutionists that they are scientists. But, if they were scientists, they would have accepted the data on overpopulation theories, and changed their minds. However, instead they continue to defend the overpopulation theory by reason, which of course is not science.
Anecdotal without reference to a mechanism. This is important. For instance, cancer rates can be correlated to the proximity to power lines. However, without a mechanism by which high voltage and EMF can cause cancer the relationship can not be drawn. I could also correlate many unrelated things such as dog collar colors and the average temperature during March. I haven't read up on "overpopulation theory", maybe you could start a new thread, I would be interested. But I am guessing that nowhere in the refutation does it say that lower reproductive rates are caused by not believing in Vishnu. Why not? Because it is not scientific.
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So, scientific testing of creation hypotheses is validated, while evolution is shown implausible, and evolutionists not scientists at all. Moreover, the creationist hypothesis, according to population genetics, will prevail by simply outbreeding the evolutionists. Evolution fits well into their model of the world as a sort of mental illness, that will soon be selected (artificially, of course) out of the species.
Where did you show that evolution was implausible? I must have missed it. Maybe you were referencing a previous post? But just a question for you about "breeding out evolutionists". If evolutionists were breed out and every scientific book was lost, could the theory be rediscovered? I would say yes. If all christians were breed out and the Bible lost, could the Christian Creator be rediscovered? No. It exists as a belief system, not something that was discovered through scientific inquiry into the natural world. Creationism is the propagation of ideas while evolutionary theory is the best explanation of physical observations. Oh, and the other scientific theories could be rediscovered as well, such as Gravity, Quantum Mechanics, Fluid Dynamics, etc. Why? Because they are based on observation and are not dependent on a faith system.
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