Creationism in Museums and Schools

[Big_John]

Speculating that God made the Universe to look old is a cop out. We may as well speculate that the universe was created complete with our memories five minutes ago. It may be true, but there are an infinite number of such theories and they are all completely untestable. This is why scientists at some point have to apply Occam's razor. On one hand we have an infinite number of theories, all of which require us to assume a priori the existence of an omnipotent creator who for no clear reason sets out to systematically deceive his creations (or some other, henceforth completely unknown reason why the universe could simply pop into existence fully made) and all of which are utterly untestable. On the other hand we have a theory which makes no a priori assumptions and instead states all life forms to have been produced by a natural, already documented phenomenon, as well as making testable predictions such as requiring the Earth to have been around for an awfully long time.

yes, this is simply an epistemic skepticism (which is humorous enough, coming from creationist), and has no bearing on the scientific validity of evolution. a good quote on the matter:

The honest scientist, like the philosopher, will tell you that nothing whatever can be or has been proved with fully 100% certainty, not even that you or I exist, nor anyone except himself, since he might be dreaming the whole thing. Thus there is no sharp line between speculation, hypothesis, theory, principle, and fact, but only a difference along a sliding scale, in the degree of probability of the idea. When we say a thing is a fact, then, we only mean that its probability is an extremely high one: so high that we are not bothered by doubt about it and are ready to act accordingly. Now in this use of the term fact, the only proper one, evolution is a fact. For the evidence in favor of it is as voluminous, diverse, and convincing as in the case of any other well established fact of science concerning the existence of things that cannot be directly seen, such as atoms, neutrons, or solar gravitation ....

So enormous, ramifying, and consistent has the evidence for evolution become that if anyone could now disprove it, I should have my conception of the orderliness of the universe so shaken as to lead me to doubt even my own existence. If you like, then, I will grant you that in an absolute sense evolution is not a fact, or rather, that it is no more a fact than that you are hearing or reading these words.

Incidentally, amid all this clutching at straws regarding carbon dating and such, I hear no attempt to address any of the astronomical evidence regarding the age of the Universe. For instance, the evidence that all the visible galaxies appear to be expanding out from a Big Bang some 14.2 billion years ago, or the evidence that our sun is apparently a main sequence star about 6 billion years old. Am I supposed to believe that this evidence was also planted by a flood?

there are numerous lines of evidence for the age of the universe/age of the earth. creationist will no doubt have criticisms of them as sloppy as the criticisms we've seen on radiometric dating here.

note about radiometric dating: the idea that creationists seemed to try to invoke as a criticism (with all the talk about ashes or whatever) is contamination. and it is true that a few radiometric isotopes are vulnerable to contamination (carbon-14 especially), but many others aren't. moreover, if contamination were responsible for all radiometric evidence for the age of the earth, we would expect radiometric dating to produce random results, not the essentially uniformly old age that they do.

I was not being sarcastic. More importantly, I remember it now!

'La théorie de la récapitulation'. Which, if there is a benevolent God, hopefully simply translates as 'theory of recapitulation'. Which is now considered an erroneous biological theory.

Which no doubt will please the critics of biology.
A rejoicing, which, in turn, will to the science crowd only further attest to their unfamiliarity with scientific concepts, progress and perennial critical evaluation.

yes, recapitulation (aka "the biogenetic law") was a theory put forth by ernst haeckel. recapitulation was never a part of darwinism, and isn't part of evolutionary biology. recapitulation is essentially dead as a theory, though some science textbooks still bring it up as a discussion point, and there are (as always) a few holdouts out there that believe in it, or some reworded form of it.



fellow rationalists, there really is little reason to discuss this topic with people like navaros. as others have pointed out, his MO here is the rejection of rationality. you can't have a real argument with nonsense. don't try.

[Ironside]

Call me crazy, or maybe just a religious softy, but I always rather interpreted the creation story(well, ya know, the 2nd one ) as a general parable about how God gave man life, and man turned from God. Rather than a specific and exact account of actual events. Plus, I was always a bit miffed that Cain suddenly got married, yet the only other people who had been created, if we are to take it literally and exactly, were his father and mother.

No worries, It only took the enlighted ones atleast 1800 years to figure out that the Bible were to be taken entirely literally intead of mostly allegoral.

It's aslo funny that the first group to come to the conclusion that the earth needs to be much older than about those 10.000 years gets almost no mention at all. Those damn geologists.

I was not being sarcastic. More importantly, I remember it now!

'La théorie de la récapitulation'. Which, if there is a benevolent God, hopefully simply translates as 'theory of recapitulation'. Which is now considered an erroneous biological theory.

Which no doubt will please the critics of biology.
A rejoicing, which, in turn, will to the science crowd only further attest to their unfamiliarity with scientific concepts, progress and perennial critical evaluation.

That theory claims that we go through all the previously evolutionary stages, not that there's some remnant development (aka forming legs and then remove them).

It would be simular to claiming the Lamarckism is correct because it actually does seem like some traits caused by environment does get inheirited.

[Seamus Fermanagh]

It's aslo funny that the first group to come to the conclusion that the earth needs to be much older than about those 10.000 years gets almost no mention at all. Those damn geologists.

Absolutely! Those should be the second ones up against the wall when the revolution comes -- right after the lawyers. Bunch of simpering know-it-all rockheads.

[KarlXII]

Absolutely! Those should be the second ones up against the wall when the revolution comes -- right after the lawyers. Bunch of simpering know-it-all rockheads.

Anyone hear the joke about why the Ten Commandments should not be courtroom policy?

Hilarious.

[m52nickerson]

Wikipedia - ROFL. Probably the most uncredible 'source' in history.

Evolution is not a scientific theory. Can't produce observable, testable, or repeatable results - like all legitimate scientific theories can. I know Darwinists like to counter this point with examples of variation within a kind, but that is not proving the outlandish claims of evolution like common descent of all forms of life from bacteria.

For evolution to be a scientific theory there would need to be observable, testable, and repeatable evidence of lower forms of life transforming into completely different higher forms of life with new, additional genetic information. But there is none. Therefore, evolution can only be accepted based on faith, not based on science.

Observable - fossil record

testable - miller experiment, DNA data, Mitochondrial RNA data

repeatable - see above

Evolution is a scientific theory, in fact it has more evidence supporting it then any other theory.

The figure is usually closer to 10 000 years old, although it can range from 6000 - 10 000 in some cases.

I personally do not know how old the Earth is since the Bible isn't specific about the age of the Earth. A few things must be noted, however:

1. God can create things with age as He did with Adam & Eve (Ie: they were never babies). So even if the Earth is old, that does not necessarily mean that Earth has actually existed for the years of age which it contains.

2. No one knows exactly how, and to what degree, the Earth was changed as a result of the damage from the great Flood (Ie: potentially causing artificial signs of age in all sorts of things as a result of damage from the great Flood), and other natural disasters.

3. All the Darwinists 'dating methods' that they allege 'proves' how old things are, have been proven to be erroneous & unreliable; and believing in their accuracy requires faith in unprovable assumptions to begin with.

1. Ok, since your hypothesis relies on God, use the scientific methond to prove God exists.

2. No one knows, because their is no evidence, that their was a flood or that it changed anything as far as signs of age.

3. Fail - http://www.actionbioscience.org/evolution/benton.html

[KarlXII]

I think Wikipedia is alright, unless you're more in line with reading Conservapedia. Anyway, there definition of a "scientific theory":

In scientific usage, a theory does not mean an unsubstantiated guess or hunch, as it can in everyday speech. A theory is a logically self-consistent model or framework for describing the behavior of a related set of natural or social phenomena. It originates from or is supported by rigorous observations in the natural world, or by experimental evidence (see scientific method). In this sense, a theory is a systematic and formalized expression of all previous observations, and is predictive, logical, and testable. In principle, scientific theories are always tentative, and subject to corrections, inclusion in a yet wider theory, or succession. Commonly, many more specific hypotheses may be logically bound together by just one or two theories. As a rule for use of the term, theories tend to deal with much broader sets of universals than do hypotheses, which ordinarily deal with much more specific sets of phenomena or specific applications of a theory.

And they're absolutely right. A scientific theory is a theory derived through observation and experimentation. As stated before, evolution is a scientific theory. It can be observed through fossils of past creatures, and experimented with things like DNA (I hate to be so crude, though I don't know the specifics of how evolution is thoroughly tested).

If you still do not think so, you're in zealous denial.

[Navaros]

Observable - fossil record

testable - miller experiment, DNA data, Mitochondrial RNA data

repeatable - see above

Evolution is a scientific theory, in fact it has more evidence supporting it then any other theory.



1. Ok, since your hypothesis relies on God, use the scientific methond to prove God exists.

2. No one knows, because their is no evidence, that their was a flood or that it changed anything as far as signs of age.

3. Fail - http://www.actionbioscience.org/evolution/benton.html

The fossil record provides zero evidence for evolution. Darwinists like to allege it does, but that is only their opinion, not fact & not science.

It's summed up quite nicely on this site, click "Click here for the evidence of evolution in the fossil record!" to see:

http://www.evolutionfairytale.com

Any claim made by a Darwinist about any specific fossil showing evolution, can be debunked by a Creationist looking at the very same fossil who has a different, scientific explanation for the same fossil.

Miller experiment...you mean the one where they tried to create life from non-life, and failed miserably at doing so? If anything that is further disproof of evolution.

DNA data - so what, as discussed in previous posts in this thread, is provides no evidence of anything other than that God used the same building blocks in different creations, when applicable to do so. That provides zero evidence for evolution. It provides evidence for God, the common designer.

There is plenty of Flood evidence, the Grand Canyon is probably the best example, although that's just one of countless examples.

God's methods of creation cannot be proven by the scientific method. The point is, neither can Darwinists' fabrications of what they think happened in their opinions. The problem lays wherein Darwinists try to elevate their opinions to 'fact' or 'science', zealously mispresent their opinions as such, and then try to suppress any contrary opinions which are every bit as valid, Ie: the Creationist point of view.

The link you provided saying that the dating methods are accurate is bollocks. Here are some good links that illustrate the problems with the dating methods; these facts are agreed upon by all scientists who do not have a pro-Darwinism bias which leads to them fudging the truth, like that article on the actionbioscience site does.

http://www.creationism.org/books/Tay...PrinRadiomMeas
http://www.creationism.org/books/Tay...MMlT_C14Dating

[Navaros]

Speculating that God made the Universe to look old is a cop out. We may as well speculate that the universe was created complete with our memories five minutes ago. It may be true, but there are an infinite number of such theories and they are all completely untestable. This is why scientists at some point have to apply Occam's razor. On one hand we have an infinite number of theories, all of which require us to assume a priori the existence of an omnipotent creator who for no clear reason sets out to systematically deceive his creations (or some other, henceforth completely unknown reason why the universe could simply pop into existence fully made) and all of which are utterly untestable. On the other hand we have a theory which makes no a priori assumptions and instead states all life forms to have been produced by a natural, already documented phenomenon, as well as making testable predictions such as requiring the Earth to have been around for an awfully long time.

Incidentally, amid all this clutching at straws regarding carbon dating and such, I hear no attempt to address any of the astronomical evidence regarding the age of the Universe. For instance, the evidence that all the visible galaxies appear to be expanding out from a Big Bang some 14.2 billion years ago, or the evidence that our sun is apparently a main sequence star about 6 billion years old. Am I supposed to believe that this evidence was also planted by a flood?

If the Universe looks old to men, that does not mean that "God made the Universe to look old". It is only in the minds of men, who think they know better than God, that ideas such as the old age of the Universe have spawned.

God did not set out to deceive His creations. God was quite clear, that in the beginning, He created, and he created each creature fully-formed, and ready to reproduce after it's kind. There is no deception there.

It is exclusively men deceiving other men into believing the Universe is old, because that belief is the only way they can make the evolution fairytale 'work' (not that it really works, that is to say, 'work' in their own minds). God has nothing to do with it. Men who want to replace the reality of what God did with their own fabricated version instead, they are the only ones responsible for this deception.

There is plenty of problems with astronomy's claims of the Universe being old. Ie: short-term comets.

For example:

The kuiper belt and oort cloud --- mythical fabrications with no evidence whatsoever, used to 'explain away' parts of the evolution fairytale, like short-term comets, that do not jive with reality that the Universe is not so old as Darwinists require it to be. That's also why evolution is unfalsifiable - any time something factual that does not fit in with it's requirements is discovered, it is either 'explained away' with wild fabrications like the kuiper belt and oort cloud, or the evolution story is changed and then the 'current version' is assumed to be irrefutable fact, until it gets re-written again when Darwinists accept that additional 'irrefutable facts' they believed turned out not to be facts after all. But the 'current version' always remains 'irrefutable fact' no matter what. Obviously it is impossible to disprove something under these circumstances.

Here's another recent example from the Creation/Evolution headlines website about a problem of time & astronomy:
http://creationsafaris.com/crev200809.htm

Short-Term Flings at Saturn’s Rings 09/16/2008
Sept 16, 2008 — The Saturn system is assumed to be 4.5 billion years old like the rest of the solar system. What mean the delicate dances of ring particles that have been observed by Cassini lately? One would think moons and particles had pretty much settled into a stable old age by now, but no: some things change on a daily basis, and Cassini’s cameras are catching the action. The question is, how long can this go on? Is the dance marathon at Saturn setting new records?
A Cassini press release shows gouges in the narrow F-ring that scientists say are evidence of a collision. And just a couple of days earlier, another Cassini press release published pictures of delicate ring arcs among two of Saturn’s small moons, Anthe and Methone. “This is further evidence that most of the planet’s small, inner moons orbit within partial or complete rings,” the article says. Are they exceptions to a rule of stability and senescence? No again; “The intricate relationships between these ring arcs and the moons are just one of many such mechanisms that exist in the Saturn system.”
Notice how rarely the scientists ever address the age question. It seems hard to believe that interactions this delicate and dynamic could persist for billions of years. Before spacecraft got there, scientists expected things to be simple and stable and old. Things like ring arcs, thousands of ringlets, ring spokes and ring collisions caught them by complete surprise. Why are they silent on the question about whether such phenomena could last that long? As with biological evolution, the answers are worded as vague promissory notes: “Understanding these interactions and learning about their origins can help us to make sense of what we are seeing in the Cassini images.” They need help, all right, especially with sense.

Occam's Razor supports the Genesis account. God created the Universe and everything in it fully-formed and able to reproduce after it's own kind. That's the simplest and most likely explanation.

The other explanation: the Universe and everything in it formed by random happenstance. Molecules became bacteria life by random happenstance, which then evolved into higher more complex forms of life by random happenstance, like bacteria to fish, fish to mammals, apes to men, birds to dinosaurs etc. etc. It really gets quite absurd rather quickly. Occam's Razor slices the heck out of the evolution fairytale.

[Big_John]

if anyone can read those last two posts and not come away with a certainty in the truth of biological evolution, nothing will help them.

[Ser Clegane]

Occam's Razor slices the heck out of the evolution fairytale.

I certainly will not get fully sucked into the good ole evolution/creation debate - but the quoted statement struck me as "interesting".

If you use Occam's Razor to support your view - how do you actually measure the likelihood of the existance of an omnipotent entity that is able to create the universe out of - what exactly? - vs the likelihood of evolution happeneing the way you describe it?

I am tempted to doubt that creation is any "simpler" than evolution - at least not if you would bother to apply the same scrutiny to this "model" that you are trying to apply to evolution.

[rory_20_uk]

Navros, besides a book (of which there are many, many different variants) what evidence is there for all being made by God? As far as I can see, no more than Aliens seeding the earth.

[Ronin]

Navros, besides a book (of which there are many, many different variants) what evidence is there for all being made by God? As far as I can see, no more than Aliens seeding the earth.

if you read his posts carefully you will see that he admits there is no proof.

you are making a mistake here because you are trying to deal with Navaros using logic, this will get you nowhere because he does not follow the same logical rules as you.

there is simply no way to argue with someone like this [snip]
nowadays I see Navaros posts as more fodder for humor than as a serious debate possibility....the guy will just wear your down......it´s much like having a fight with a girlfriend.....it comes to a point that you shut up...........not because she´s right...she isn´t...but just because you´re tired.

[rory_20_uk]

You're right of course...

I was even going to answer one link... (yolk sac is most efficient place for early blood cells - apart from the liver and spleen of course) but sanity kicked in.

Yup, it is rather like arguing with a woman. The sooner you apologise and try to find out what it is you are perceived to have done wrong the better

[PBI]

Occam's Razor supports the Genesis account. God created the Universe and everything in it fully-formed and able to reproduce after it's own kind. That's the simplest and most likely explanation.

Ah, the old misconception about Occam's Razor. Occam's Razor has nothing to do with the simplest theory, the point is to select the theory that makes the fewest assumptions whilst still explaining the observed phenomena. Special Relativity could hardly be described as a simple theory, but the reason it won out over its competition is that formulating the entire theory requires only two postulates.

Creationism requires some big assumptions. Firstly, it requires us to postulate without justification the existence of an infinitely powerful being with limitless arbitrary attributes. Secondly, it requires us to postulate the occurance of a vast series of floods several thousands of years ago, and this introduces a whole vast subset of little postulates, that the flood, rather than just jumbling stuff around at random, must by chance have left everything lying in the exact position required to give the impression of an Earth billions of years old, with all the fossils of the dinosaurs lined up neatly with the newly created geological epochs.

Similarly it requires a whole bunch of postulates about stuff that could not possibly have been affected by the flood nonetheless appearing to be much older than it is, such as the Universe or the Sun, for which I have yet to hear any coherent explanation beyond "the astronomers are in on the conspiracy". Incidentally, the article you linked to about Saturn's rings falls down in its very first sentence:

The Saturn system is assumed to be 4.5 billion years old like the rest of the solar system.

According to my astronomer friend it is generally accepted by the astronomical community that the rings were produced much more recently than the rest of the Solar System, so they are not of any real relevance in gauging the age of the Solar System.

Evolution by contrast requires only two postulates:
*That living things are capable of mutation when reproducing.
*That the Earth has been around for a really long time.

Both of which have a great deal of experimental support. Everything else follows as a logical consequence of those two postulates.

Incidentally, I note that the point about the FSM critique of Creationism remains conspicuously unanswered.

[Banquo's Ghost]

Ah, the old misconception about Occam's Razor. Occam's Razor has nothing to do with the simplest theory, the point is to select the theory that makes the fewest assumptions whilst still explaining the observed phenomena. Special Relativity could hardly be described as a simple theory, but the reason it won out over its competition is that formulating the entire theory requires only two postulates.

Creationism requires some big assumptions. Firstly, it requires us to postulate without justification the existence of an infinitely powerful being with limitless arbitrary attributes. Secondly, it requires us to postulate the occurance of a vast series of floods several thousands of years ago, and this introduces a whole vast subset of little postulates, that the flood, rather than just jumbling stuff around at random, must by chance have left everything lying in the exact position required to give the impression of an Earth billions of years old, with all the fossils of the dinosaurs lined up neatly with the newly created geological epochs.

Similarly it requires a whole bunch of postulates about stuff that could not possibly have been affected by the flood nonetheless appearing to be much older than it is, such as the Universe or the Sun, for which I have yet to hear any coherent explanation beyond "the astronomers are in on the conspiracy". Incidentally, the article you linked to about Saturn's rings falls down in its very first sentence:.

Why do you hate leprechauns?

[Sigurd]

Navros, besides a book (of which there are many, many different variants) what evidence is there for all being made by God? As far as I can see, no more than Aliens seeding the earth.

It is interesting that present day religionists take the Bible as a book of allegory.
I have the opinion that those preceding didn’t. In fact the early Christians was very much literalists.
I have been of the opinion that religion and science don’t mix. That religion is about the metaphysical and therefore removed from science which tries to understand the physical.
I have even engaged in debates supporting this notion of metaphysical prior to physical i.e. a first cause, eternal and beyond physical, causing the temporal event called creation. However I have learned that this metaphysical first cause crept in with other Greek philosophies during a sorrowful time in Christianity. The early Christians believed in a physical God, very much present in or close to our universe.
But this is a discussion belonging elsewhere.
One thing I will say is this:
True religion should reflect true science. By this I mean; scientific truths where they have been found should comply perfectly with revealed religion through heavenly beings.
Ok this might need further explanation: If there is a God and he has angels, anything coming from their lips should support scientific truths or where science has gotten their answers right.

Present discussion is on the Creation and its chronology. To me those who claim that the earth was made in six days and that the earth only is 6000 years old have not really read the Bible. They might have read it but not “read” it.
Genesis doesn’t give us that much really. And scholars and their ilk need other supporting scriptures from other biblical or contemporary writers to support their views.

If we simply look at Genesis chapter one with the eyes of present we will notice some interesting things.

Let’s take “day one”

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.
And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.

The question would be; is this talking about the creation of the universe or our earth?
Other translations mention this heaven and this earth as in a geocentric view, which were the common view at the time this was supposedly written. An account from a book of Abraham with a creation text nearly identical to Moses’ account gives a prelude to the creation of this earth. Abraham is taken on a journey through God’s creations and Abraham explains this journey with: “I saw those things which his hands had made, which were many; and they multiplied before mine eyes, and I could not see the end thereof”. Clearly this is not merely standing on the ground looking into the night sky with its 3 to 5 thousand visible lights. While several thousand is a lot, “the end thereof” can be seen.
Take into account that those men were shown the creation and hence described it as they saw it.
The next sentences are interesting. Let’s presume this account by Moses and Abraham speaks of the formation of our solar system some 4.6 billion years ago.
The first period would be that of the organization and the formation of the solar system. The sun, planets and other astral bodies, dust and gas. In this early stage darkness “was upon the face of the deep and the spirit of [the] God[s] moved upon the face of the waters”.
According to the current theory of the formation of our solar system some 4.7 billion years ago a large cloud of gas and dust was shocked by a wave of a nearby supernova.
The cloud began to rotate and collapse upon itself due to the mutual attraction of the gas and dust particles. About 75% of all matter in the universe is hydrogen and was a major component of the cloud. Notice the use of non created waters in the genesis text. Hydrogen in Greek means water source. It is not unthinkable that there is a connection here.
As the cloud of gas and dust began to collapse it became denser and began to block out light; hence the darkness. (This is an observed reality where stars are forming).
The cloud continues to collapse and regions of higher density forms within it. At the center where the highest density forms, gravitational potential energy converts to heat and gets progressively hotter until the density and temperature are high enough for nuclear fusion of hydrogen into helium. Other high density areas form into the nine planets and other astral bodies.
The proto-sun core and the fusion within, starts to push on the remaining gas and dust but the view to the outside stars are yet obscured and the light described could be the ignition of our star. Hence the puzzle of creating the other stars on day 4 gets new meaning.

I am going to postulate an alternative meaning of the term day used in Genesis.
There is a slight difference in the Moses account compared with the Abraham account:
In Genesis it states:

And the evening and the morning were the first day.

But in the Abraham account it states:

And this was the first, or the beginning, of that which they called day and night.

As I see it, it can mean one of three things. One day as in 24 hours, one day as in; one day to the Lord is a thousand years, or one day as in a period of time. As I understand it the word day in Genesis could also mean time in a general sense.

So this first day of creation could either be 24 hours as in a day here on earth, at a time before where these things had meaning. Or … 1000 years as in a day reckoned by the creator(s). Or … the time frame from 4.6 billion years to 3.6 billion years according to scientific estimation for the events described in day one.

This would become a rather lengthy post should I continue.
My point is that even if you take a literal interpretation of the Bible, you can surely fit it in with today’s scientific theories with a creative mind.

Scientific evidence contradicts popular religious ideas of the creation, but instead of taking another look at what is actually written, the dogmas dictate creative research on where the science must be wrong, which is clearly the wrong approach.
Most if not all religion has a deist approach which excludes new information on the subject. Apparently we have to solely live by what is written which is up for interpretation if we look at the numerous denominations out there.

[Adrian II]

Fruit flies? Experiments on fruit flies actually help to disprove evolution because all the mutants die out since mutations are almost always bad, not good (which evolution would require). Yes there are a few freak exceptions to this, but it is not the general rule.

All mutants die out? You haven't been looking into the matter again, only into your little websites.

The rule is that only a few survive, and a fraction of those result in speciation, i.e. the appearance of a new species that is unable to mate with its ancestors. Speciation is best observed in insects because of their high rates of reproduction. Novel genetic material is created by non-fatal mutations all the time.

As for mutants dying out, just ask bacteria. Mutation is their very strategy of of survival.

It is a pity that you stick to mythology. Many creationists at least accept the basics of evolution because their own world view and concept of science wouldn't make sense without it.

[Seamus Fermanagh]

It is a pity that you stick to mythology. Many creationists at least accept the basics of evolution because their own world view and concept of science wouldn't make sense without it.

Can't speak for Navaros, but I suspect the devout creationist would pity your reliance on concrete minutae to attempt to explain the transcendent.

I keep telling you he doesn't accept your basic premise -- as you don't accept his. You couldargue until you burst a vein without swaying him because he KNOWS -- not merely knows -- that you are off base. The difference is, he's comfortable with his view and accepts that you'll probably remain unconvinced with relative equanimity.

[Big_John]

Can't speak for Navaros, but I suspect the devout creationist would pity your reliance on concrete minutae to attempt to explain the transcendent.

I keep telling you he doesn't accept your basic premise -- as you don't accept his. You couldargue until you burst a vein without swaying him because he KNOWS -- not merely knows -- that you are off base. The difference is, he's comfortable with his view and accepts that you'll probably remain unconvinced with relative equanimity.

much of the posts pointing out the nonsensical aspects of navaros' posts are for the benefit of other readers. like people who may not know enough about evolution to understand why it is a scientific fact. or people who would be swayed by the sexiness of one of the many flavors of creationism (personally, i prefer the Finnish 'comsic egg' story).

[Ice]

I actually pity people like Nav. It's a shame there isn't a way to say "I told you so".

Oh well, guess I need to start work on that time machine.

[Reverend Joe]

All this Creationism/Evolution argumentation is useless... after all, God is dead.

[Ice]

All this Creationism/Evolution argumentation is useless... after all, God is dead.

Nah... god's away on business... he isn't dead

[Ice]

double post... the internet company lied to me... this isn't 7 megs :/

[m52nickerson]

Any claim made by a Darwinist about any specific fossil showing evolution, can be debunked by a Creationist looking at the very same fossil who has a different, scientific explanation for the same fossil.

Miller experiment...you mean the one where they tried to create life from non-life, and failed miserably at doing so? If anything that is further disproof of evolution.

DNA data - so what, as discussed in previous posts in this thread, is provides no evidence of anything other than that God used the same building blocks in different creations, when applicable to do so. That provides zero evidence for evolution. It provides evidence for God, the common designer.

There is plenty of Flood evidence, the Grand Canyon is probably the best example, although that's just one of countless examples.

God's methods of creation cannot be proven by the scientific method. The point is, neither can Darwinists' fabrications of what they think happened in their opinions. The problem lays wherein Darwinists try to elevate their opinions to 'fact' or 'science', zealously mispresent their opinions as such, and then try to suppress any contrary opinions which are every bit as valid, Ie: the Creationist point of view.

The link you provided saying that the dating methods are accurate is bollocks. Here are some good links that illustrate the problems with the dating methods; these facts are agreed upon by all scientists who do not have a pro-Darwinism bias which leads to them fudging the truth, like that article on the actionbioscience site does.

http://www.creationism.org/books/Tay...PrinRadiomMeas
http://www.creationism.org/books/Tay...MMlT_C14Dating

Just because someone comes up with a fairytale about fossil does not remove the fact that the fossil record as a whole supports evolution. Anyone who does not see this does not understand how science works.

The miller experiment was not to create life, but to see if under the condition that existed on this earth millions of years ago could produce the building blocks of life, which it did. For life to have developed it would have to have run for at least a could of millennium. Most of the theories that life started spontaneously are antiquated, most scientist believe life developed over time.

The Grand Canyon was carved by a river, not a flood. Pretty common knowledge for anyone except those despite enough to claim evidence of the bible.

Your hypothesis about God using the same block explaining DNA lacks one thing, you must prove God exists until you can do that it is nothing more then a fairytale.

God's methods can't be proven because science can't prove something that did not happen. Evolution is science, in fact it is the central theorem of Biology. If someone can't understand how evolution is science they don't understand what science is or how it works.

All in all creationist fail because they are trying to prove something, not looking for the truth. You think that science is just trying to prove evolution, its not, it is trying to find the truth. Right now the evidence point at evolution.

Even if next week evolution was total dis-proven it would not meant that creation would be correct.

It is their approach and lack of understanding is why creationist fail.

God did not create Man, Man created God to explain what we did not understand. As we advance God is becoming less necessary.

[Navaros]

Evolution by contrast requires only two postulates:
*That living things are capable of mutation when reproducing.
*That the Earth has been around for a really long time.

Both of which have a great deal of experimental support. Everything else follows as a logical consequence of those two postulates.

Incidentally, I note that the point about the FSM critique of Creationism remains conspicuously unanswered.

That those are the only two postulates of evolution is incorrect. It leaves out the absurdities that evolution requires.

Evolution also requires these postulates too:

-Vastly complex working systems, biological machines, and the Universe as a whole can self-assemble by random happenstance.
- All the infinitely complex genetic information that is loaded into these biological machines just got there by random happenstance.
- Mutations - which is in actually a degenerative process which damages the genome by corrupting the information in it and/or causing it to lose information and therefore worsens organisms - is a beneficial process that causes lower forms of life to transform into better, more complex, completely different, higher forms of life with new genetic information that did not exist before, by random happenstance.
- All life shares a common ancestor, which is bacteria, that eventually transformed into all the forms of life that have ever existed.

Obviously, there is no scientific support for any of the above. These things being true can only exist as faith-based opinions as there is no observable, testable, or repeatable evidence to support them.

All mutants die out?

All the mutants died out in the fruit flies experiments, that's what I was talking about. You are talking my quote out of context in that post.

But mutations remain a degenerative process that damages the genome even if the organism survives. Bacteria survive by mutation by losing genetic information, thus the things that used to kill it no longer can because they are no longer able to latch onto the genetic information that used to be present before the bacteria lost it; which is the method by which they used to be able to kill it. Thus the bacteria survive by devolving and becoming less complex. Which is what mutations cause to happen in all organisms. This is the opposite of evolution. Mutations are another great disproof of evolution.

does not remove the fact that the fossil record as a whole supports evolution. Anyone who does not see this does not understand how science works.

Incorrect. That's not a fact. The fossil record shows every fossil fully-formed just as they were created. There are none of the (required by evolution) millions of transitional fossils that Darwin said would be found and indeed knew that were/are required to be found for evolution to be true, but never were found. Darwinists have at times attributed 'transitional fossil' labels to fully-formed creatures that were not really 'transitional' at all, but that always turn out to be a fabrication. Wishful thinking to support their own worldview. The fossil record supports Creation, not evolution. Here is a good new example regarding the fossil record of how the evolution story just gets rewritten around the facts whenever evolution's 'irrefutable facts' are proven wrong (and therefore the theory of evolution is unfalsifiable, and therefore, unscientific):

Again from http://creationsafaris.com/crev200809.htm
Fully Gecko 40 Million Years Earlier? 09/03/2008

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Sept 3, 2008 — Amber, or fossilized tree sap, usually contains remnants of insect parts. One piece, mined in the jungles of Myanmar, contained the foot of a gecko – alleged to be 100 million years old. That’s 40 million years older than the previously claimed oldest gecko fossil. This critter may have skittered under the feet of dinosaurs. Maybe it even hitched a ride by walking on the underside of a Diplodocus.
Examination of the foot pads shows the same lamellae that give modern geckos their ability to walk across ceilings. To Science Daily, this could only mean one thing: “that geckos were definitely in Asia by 100 million years ago, and had already evolved their bizarre foot structure at that time.”
The discoverers from Oregon State and the London Natural History Museum estimate the juvenile specimen could have grown to about a foot long as an adult, comparable to living species.
Speaking of the Spiderman abilities of the gecko, the article stated that “Research programs around the world have tried to mimic this bizarre adhesive capability, with limited success.” How did this inimitable ability arise? “It’s not known exactly how old this group of animals is, and when they evolved their adhesive toe pads.”
But does this fossil really provide evidence that evolution produced a gecko, with its innovative adhesive feet? Certainly not directly. The specimen was 100% gecko – and it appeared 40 million years earlier than evolutionists thought, according to their own timeline. It’s not clear, therefore, how or why this fossil is “shedding additional light on the evolution and history of these ancient lizards that scampered among the feet of giant dinosaurs then and still are common in tropical or sub-tropical regions all over the world.”

If you are tired of the evolutionists’ tiptoe dance around falsification with the falsetto jingle that the latest discovery is “shedding more light on evolution,” then let’s all shout in basso profundo, “Let there be light!” The light is shining, but it is shining everywhere except on evolution.
Fossil after fossil has proven older and less evolved than any honest evolutionist would have predicted. Nowhere do we find them evolving into something else. All their equipment is there from the start. At first appearance, this gecko was all gecko, just like the first bat was all bat (02/16/2008), the first frog was all frog (05/28/2008), the first bombardier beetle was already armed and dangerous (09/23/2007), the first horseshoe crab was all horseshoe crab (01/28/2008), the first platypus was all platypus (11/27/2007), the first penguin was all penguin (06/26/2007), the first jellyfish was all jellyfish (11/02/2007, the first crustacean was all crustacean (10/04/2007), and the first comb jelly was all comb jelly (04/03/2007), and on and on anon etc. and so forth. In each case, the evolutionary paleontologist declares that the fossil is “shedding light on evolution.”
Let’s follow the light, then. If trends keep up, every kind of animal will trace its ancestry to the Cambrian or before. They will all be seen to burst onto the scene, fully formed, without ancestors. The light shed on evolution will show it to have been essentially instantaneous. In the asymptotic limit, evolution under the lights will be seen clearly. It will come into sharp focus. It will read: CREATION.

As for applying the scientific method to how God created: you can't. God spoke things into existence. This is not something any other entity in the Universe can do, and it is not something that can be repeated, observed, or tested. This being so, however, does not mean that making up an unprovable faith-based evolution story and then slapping an illegitimate 'science' label onto it is a better explanation that has more validity (contrary to popular belief). The scientific method can no more be applied to the evolution being true point of view than it can to the Creation point of view. Both points of view require faith as they cannot be proven.

There is however, plenty of circumstantial and common-sense evidence for Creation as described in Genesis. Simply looking at anything in nature makes it clear it was the Universe itself and all life in it were designed, and designed fully-formed and ready to go. We only ever observe life reproducing after it's own kind exactly as God's Word says. Not lower forms of life transforming into completely different, more complex, higher forms of life with new genetic information like evolution claims.

[Ser Clegane]

Just a gentle reminder:
Please stick to playing the ball instead of the man.
Feeling that playing the ball is no fun anymore does not justify overt or covert personal attacks.

Thanks

[rory_20_uk]

Mutations are degenerative? Very simplistic approach. Sure, they often are, but sometimes help the organism: resistance in bacteria is a case in point. Bacteria have evolved to have multiple drug resistances with the increased use of medicines. This can be altering the shape of protiens that the drugs work on, or pumps that remove the substance from the bacterium. To achieve this process billions of bacteria die as they fail to evolve, but there are sufficient billions for this approach to work. Generations happen in ideal conditions every 30 minutes, so evolution can be this quick - it is a process you can easily replicate in a lab.
Further examples are sickle cell trait providing resistance to Malaria.

Evolution is survival of the fittest: when the envoronment changes, mutations that are often not beneficial become beneficial: Sickle cell trait is not beneficial, unless the alternative is dying of malaria; similarly lugging around DNA for resistance for several antibiotics isn't of any use, unless there is heavy antibiotic use in the colonised organism - hence why MRSA can be carried on 30% of people and does nothing, but kills hospitalised patients.

[Viking]

For example:

The kuiper belt and oort cloud --- mythical fabrications with no evidence whatsoever, used to 'explain away' parts of the evolution fairytale, like short-term comets, that do not jive with reality that the Universe is not so old as Darwinists require it to be.

You could in fact observe KBOs with a backyard telescope if you'd bother to. If you're interested in the truth, that is.

[rory_20_uk]

What do Darwinists have to do with the Age of the Universe? Surely that's Astrophysics.

[Riedquat]

- Mutations - which is in actually a degenerative process which damages the genome by corrupting the information in it and/or causing it to lose information and therefore worsens organisms - is a beneficial process that causes lower forms of life to transform into better, more complex, completely different, higher forms of life with new genetic information that did not exist before, by random happenstance.

I'm sorry, a little clarification, in genetics the term mutation is only used to non beneficial changes of genes only. Meanwhile a beneficial change is called evolution.

In Evolution, mutation and change have the same meaning, without making distinction between beneficial or not.

Mutation is a beneficial process that causes lower forms of life to transform into better, more complex, completely different, higher forms of life with new genetic information that did not exist before, by random happenstance.

Somehow correct.

Mutation - in genetics - is a degenerative process which damages the genome by corrupting the information in it and/or causing it to lose information and therefore worsens organisms

Somehow correct too.


Both statements together......