A creationism challenge

[insane_alien]

I challenge any creationist(or anybody else for that matter) to attempt to find a single peice of logical and/or empirical evidence that suggests that creationism is true.

 

I DO NOT WANT attacks on belief(this is not about belief but science), references to the bible(it can be made to agree with anything) or statements such as "i think evolution is a bunch of crap so creationism must be true"(if something is not A it does not necessarily mean that B is true).

 

If this erupts into a flame war or personal attacks of any kind are made then i will ask for this thread to be closed by the moderators.

[the tree]

The theory of evolution requires there to be life in the first place for it to evolve so at some point abiogenisis must have occured (there wasn't life, then there was).

 

The odds of a life form just coming together are low, altough the size of the enviroment and timespan allow for unlikely things to happen so I wont leave the argument there.

 

Even lower is the odds of a lifeform coming together that is capable of producing more life forms and passing characteristics on to it's offspring. Those odds are spectacuarly low even with on a massive planet with a massive time frame, no-one could ever quite work out how low the odds are.

 

Something that would make the above a lot more likely would be a deliberate control: that put the right materials together and stirred them up for a bit.

 

If there were an entity capable of doing that then it would be more likely that they had done so than if it had happend by chance.

 

This controlled abiogenisis is not quite Creation in the sense of Biblical Literalism, but still suggests that God (or whatever you want to call it) may well have created the first life.

[insane_alien]

but it still could have happened randomly. i'm more interested in someone providing evidence for biblical literalism but that is the quality of posts i'm looking for.

[the tree]

If someone (I couldn't do it) were to show the Bible to be credible as a historic document in many other areas then would you count that as evidence (albiet very weak)?

[Hellbender]

Don't bet on anything good, man. If you are lucky, a creationist may come by and propose problems for evolution, using the faulty logic that this is evidence of creation.

[LucidDreamer]

If someone (I couldn't do it) were to show the Bible to be credible as a historic document in many other areas then would you count that as evidence (albiet very weak)?

I think certain parts of the bible are credible as a historical document. That doesn't prove that all of it is. Just because the Jews might have been in Egypt and Israel was occupied by the Romans, doesn't mean that the earth was covered by a global flood or that the earth was created in 6 days.

[swansont]

The odds of a life form just coming together are low' date=' altough the size of the enviroment and timespan allow for unlikely things to happen so I wont leave the argument there.

[/quote']

 

These "odds" are usually calculated in a way that makes it clear that the arguer hasn't a clue about probability, biology or chemistry. So asserting this without proof is nowhere near enough of an argument.

[insane_alien]

i f the bible could be shown to be credible in all areas then it would require other proofs to back up what is said about the creation of evidence. If it was prooved to be credible as a historical document then yes it would be acceptable but only just since it is mainly a religious text.

[AzurePhoenix]

The odds of a life form just coming together are low' date=' altough the size of the enviroment and timespan allow for unlikely things to happen so I wont leave the argument there.

 

Even lower is the odds of a lifeform coming together that is capable of producing more life forms [i']and[/i] passing characteristics on to it's offspring. Those odds are spectacuarly low even with on a massive planet with a massive time frame, no-one could ever quite work out how low the odds are.

Unless the odds say absolutely that it can't ever happen, there are still more than enough worlds in the universe to compensate. But really, we can't know the odds unless we actually figure out how life forms in the first place, which we hav eyet to do. If we find that out, then maybe we can state the odds, but until that point, one person's guess of a 1/1,000 chance has just as much validity as another's chance of 1/10,000,000,000.

 

**And, with an estimated seven sextillion (70,000,000,000,000,000,000,000) stars in the known universe, even if their was only one chance in a trillion, that would leave opportunity for life to spring up 70,000,000,000 times.

[Kyrisch]

**And' date=' with an estimated ten billion, billion stars in teh known universe, even if their was only one chance in a trillion, that would leave opportunity for life to spring up 10,000,000 times.[/quote']

 

Life doesn't form on stars. Life forms on planets. You need to calculate the probability of a life-suitable planet and multiply it by that insanely small percentage there. Pretty soon you'll be left with a lot less than you originally thought.

[AzurePhoenix]

Sorry, lapse, I don't know the figure for planets, but if you also have to figure that many stars will have multiple planets (our own debatedly has around 8, and many extrasolar systems also have mutliple worlds, and those are just the big visible giants), so the figure might not drop quite so drastically. Oh, while you were responding, I updated the original figures to fix faulty math.

 

You need to calculate the probability of a life-suitable planet and multiply it by that insanely small percentage there.

This again is faulty, because though we have ideas of what is necessary for life, these ideas are based on our world. Until we can examine life on other worlds, or examine many, many more dead ones, we won't be able to accurately make a valid, usable figure, which was my actual point.

[insane_alien]

right now back on topic please.

[J.C.MacSwell]

I challenge any creationist(or anybody else for that matter) to attempt to find a single peice of logical and/or empirical evidence that suggests that creationism is true.

I DO NOT WANT attacks on belief(this is not about belief but science)' date=' references to the bible(it can be made to agree with anything) or statements such as "i think evolution is a bunch of crap so creationism must be true"(if something is not A it does not necessarily mean that B is true).

 

If this erupts into a flame war or personal attacks of any kind are made then i will ask for this thread to be closed by the moderators.[/quote']

 

I think there is plenty of evidence that fits a creationist model. The problem is that, for the most part, it also fits the evolutionary model and with less "baggage". So it seems necessary to disprove or at least discredit evolutionary models to support creationist ones. Disproving either model absolutely is not possible so we are left with the weight of evidence for each case. A more restrictive model, say one where the Earth was literally created in 7 days or whatever, is more difficult to support than a more vague one, say a creationist evolutionary model where a "life force" is assisting or guiding evolution that has "almost random" mutation/diversification and natural selection.

 

May the Force be with you!

MacSwell

[swansont]

I think there is plenty of evidence that fits a creationist model.

 

Right. Mainly because the creationist model is not based on a scientific theory - there is no way one could falsify it. From that viewpoint, everything is supporting evidence.

 

Similar with ID. Why does every living thing have the same basic DNA? Because the creator would reuse the design of one being for another; no sense wasting a good design. Why then are there different designs for e.g. the eye? Because the creator is creative. No predictive value, and no falsification. From a scientific standpoint, it's useless.

[Hellbender]

And completely ad hoc, I might add.

[J.C.MacSwell]

Right. Mainly because the creationist model is not based on a scientific theory - there is no way one could falsify it. From that viewpoint' date=' everything is supporting evidence.

 

Similar with ID. Why does every living thing have the same basic DNA? Because the creator would reuse the design of one being for another; no sense wasting a good design. Why then are there different designs for e.g. the eye? Because the creator is creative. No predictive value, and no falsification. From a scientific standpoint, it's useless.[/quote']

 

You can base it on a science and I think it could be falsifiable to a certain extent, or degree. What other basis would you have for rejecting it? (occam's razor notwithstanding, or Hellbender's "Ad Hoc" point)

 

The "supporting evidence" I was referring to is the parts of the "theory" that agree with evolution. If you falsify them, you falsify both theories. (or more correctly the theory of evolution and the creation model you are considering).

 

I would say that a prediction of a "life force" mechanism could be that evolution would take place at a faster rate than physics/chemistry, as we currently know it, would reasonably allow. Although this would not prove either theory/model absolutely you could find evidence that would support each theory and weigh it accordingly.

[BobbyJoeCool]

as previously mentioned, all creationist "evidence" is based on the fact that it can point towards more than one thing (ie, incomplete). Evidence points towards evolution, and they say, "where did life come from." If they would accept life as "starting" on it's own, they would say, "where did the building blocks come from." and after that can be proven where it came from, they'd say "where did the universe come from." etc...

 

It all goes back to origins. "Where did it come from?" I'm not saying that they're wrong, but mostly, their evidence is based on the fact that something cannot be proven, and that their beliefs can never be proven wrong (unless you want to die and find out for yourself that it.), because they can always say "God causes this to happen, God causes everything to happen." God is the cause, and since God cannot be proven, Creationism cannot be proven (and little to no "scietific" evidence exists. There's the Bible. That's about it.)

[swansont]

You can base it on a science and I think it could be falsifiable to a certain extent' date=' or degree. What other basis would you have for rejecting it? (occam's razor notwithstanding, or Hellbender's "Ad Hoc" point)

 

The "supporting evidence" I was referring to is the parts of the "theory" that agree with evolution. If you falsify them, you falsify both theories. (or more correctly the theory of evolution and the creation model you are considering).

 

I would say that a prediction of a "life force" mechanism could be that evolution would take place at a faster rate than physics/chemistry, as we currently know it, would reasonably allow. Although this would not prove either theory/model absolutely you could find evidence that would support each theory and weigh it accordingly.[/quote']

 

 

"God did it" is the ultimate way to weasel out of any situation. You could start to analyze any prediction of creationism, like the age of the earth, and find that there's zilch, nada, bupkus, to support creation. "But God made the earth look young, and placed dinosaur fossils and other things to give it the appearance of age" is the usual response. At which point you give up, because it's not falsifiable and thus not science.

[AL]

I challenge any creationist(or anybody else for that matter) to attempt to find a single peice of logical and/or empirical evidence that suggests that creationism is true.

 

The "intellectual" creationists usually quote Michael Behe or William Dembski.

 

The less sophisticated "intellectual" creationists will regurgitate Behe's mousetrap analogy (a mousetrap is specifiably complex; removing just one of its components would cause the entire function to fail, ergo it must've been Intelligently Designed, many biological constructs fit this bill). Nevermind that the whole notion of specified complexity presupposes teleology in order to prove teleology -- begging the question is the least of this analogy's problems.

 

The more sophisticated creationists will regurgitate Dembski's (mis)use of the No Free Lunch Theorem (which states that no algorithm can outperform any other algorithm when averaged across all fitness functions). Dembski thinks this implies that an evolutionary algorithm of mutation and selection (or genetic drift or anything else you want to add to the mix) cannot outperform an algorithm of blind chance. This is a misinterpretation of the theorem that one of the theorem's coauthors (David Wolpert) has pointed out to Dembski.

http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CF/CF011_2.html

 

Dembski wrote an entire book entitled No Free Lunch, and the entire thesis of his book is refuted by one of the premise's coauthors -- how humiliating. I'd resign into a life of obscurity if that happened to me, but Dembski and other Creationists have no shame. It's a quest to save hellbound souls, not a quest for objectivity in science.

[Janus]

If someone (I couldn't do it) were to show the Bible to be credible as a historic document in many other areas then would you count that as evidence (albiet very weak)?

 

No more than I would count the fact that the movie Titanic accurately described many real events that took place on that ship as evidence that the characters of Rose and Jack actually existed in real life.

[ydoaPs]

If someone (I couldn't do it) were to show the Bible to be credible as a historic document in many other areas then would you count that as evidence (albiet very weak)?

considering it rewrites history and most of it is based on other religions, i don't think it is credible.

 

Luke' date='

 

 

Archbishop James Ussher dated the creation of the world back to Oct 23, 4004 BC. See Wikipedia - Ussher-Lightfoot Calender and AnswersInGenesis - Ussher's Achievement.

 

And about those Egyptians, the AnswersInGenesis site records that the civilization goes back only as far as 2242 BC (based on the Tower of Babel), however we know that Cuneiform and Egyptian hyroglyphs go back a tiem before 3000 BC. Based on different methodologies for calculating the age of the Earth, you could push back the Tower of Babel a few centuries, but much more.

 

So, either the AiG site is factually inaccurate, or the history of the world is wrong. Naturally, based on this conclusion, the AiG site decides to rewrite the history of Egyptian chronology. In a nutshell, suggest moving forward some important dates like the Middle Kingdom by 400 years, and suggesting the foundation of Egypt in 2188 and Egypt's 22nd dynasty (Soshenq according to the bible) took place around 970 AD, therefore fitting the entirety of Egyptian history in roughly 1200 or 1300 years.

http://www.scienceforums.net/forums/showthread.php?t=14095 has more

Luke' date='

 

 

Yes, the creation myth in the bible is compilation of myths already existing from the surrounding region.

 

I've written a post on the subject before:

 

 

 

Someone sent me the following creation myths just the other day:

 

Hindi Creation:

 

 

Norse Creation:

 

 

And some links I've posted before:

 

http://ancienthistory.about.com/od/creationmyths/ - AncientHistory.About.Com: A Unique Collection of Creation Myths

 

http://ancienthistory.about.com/od/creationafterlife/ - AncientHistory.About.Com: Creation Myths By Geography

 

http://www.magictails.com/creationlinks.html - Links to creation myths from around the world

 

http://www.intrepidsoftware.com/other/create.html - Creation Mythologies from Around the World

 

http://www.muddlepuddle.co.uk/Religion/creationmyth.htm - Creation Stories From Around The World

 

http://www.ohiou.edu/esl/elective/Mythology/ - Ohio.edu: Mythology

 

http://www.mythinglinks.org/ct~creation.html - Mything Links: Comparing Common Creation Themes

 

http://www.tnte.com/mmc/mythology.htm - Comparitive study of Creation Myths from Around the Globe

 

And of course, a complimentary link to Flood Stories From Around The World.

 

Horus was born of the virgin Isis in Egypt and as an infant was visited by three kings. He was born in a stable in late December' date=' his father was a god, a tyrant made an attempt on his life while he was still a child, he met with a violent death and rose again afterward.

 

All this predated Jesus by centuries.[/quote']

Osiris was murdered by his brother Set and his body thrown to the ground in Netat. Isis' date=' his wife, found the body and animated it long enough to magically draw his essence. Their offspring was Horus. No matter what he was born like or went on to do, his virgin conception predated Jesus'.

 

This link has a translation of the actual hieroglyphics from a stele taken from Egypt to Paris that has been studied by experts for 150 years.

 

http://www.earth-history.com/Egypt/Legends/gods-10summary5.htm[/quote']

[ElijahJones]

I'm not surprised, but nobody has yet mentioned that we may not be capable as a species of knowing the answer to certain questions. When we talk about causes that precede the big bang, how do we trace that deterministically through a singularity (if that was in fact what was there, there are some various scientific theories about that I guess). Personally I think that God may have used evolution, its an elegant method to be sure. I have heard Christians oppose this perspective because it seems unholy. But what do mere mortals know about holiness?

 

Having this viewpoint leaves me in a very awkward position, a creationsist who believes in evolution and most of modern cosmology. In fact I think that Genesis is really a hodge podge of oral tradition. The law was given to Moses on the mountain, I don't see anywhere where Genesis was dictated to him by God or that anyone can interpret Genesis 1-11 accurately enough to rule out an old-earth. Can anyone?

 

So anyways I think it just does not matter as much as we want it to. And I am certain that if I were God I would think they were confused who did not heed my words about when or how the earth was made. But I can't see how it becomes an issue of salvation. Unless of course they were using their "ideas" to tell people not to believe in me.

 

I'm not God (thank God) but I doubt He would care as much about such things as He would about how we treat one another and (by the New Testament) whether we believe in Jesus. Atonement that comes through Christ seems a very archaic notion to us but it was hot stuff in 33AD, they all knew what atonement was because all of the religions had aspects of atoning sacrifice.

[ydoaPs]

I'm not God

but i am. muwahaha!!!!!!! bow down before me or be smited!

[J.C.MacSwell]

"God did it" is the ultimate way to weasel out of any situation. You could start to analyze any prediction of creationism, like the age of the earth, and find that there's zilch, nada, bupkus, to support creation. "But God made the earth look young, and placed dinosaur fossils and other things to give it the appearance of age" is the usual response. At which point you give up, because it's not falsifiable and thus not science.

 

Wouldn't most scientists (or people using scientific method) agree that in the case you just described that it is in fact falsifiable, to a "reasonable" degree and is therefore unsupportable? The "God did it" weaseling out should not hold up in an honest scientific sense. If it did you could base all of science on it, not just creation.

[BobbyJoeCool]

but i am. muwahaha!!!!!!! bow down before me or be smited!

 

You of course mean "smote."