Exporting creationists

[Bignose]

Macroevolution is psuedoscience, or protoscience, whatever. It just hasn't been elevated to factual. Perhaps intellectually one can extend their minds to seeing it as inescapable fact. But realistically one has to just admit that the day has not come when enough certainty is there, if one is brutally honest.

 

Did you even attempt to look at a single reference Phi for All listed above in post #42? Those are papers that report on actual factual happenings, unless you think that the authors are lying?

 

Creationist' date=' obvisously, none of you know much about how it can be supported, so I don't debate it.[/quote']

 

Sandman, I'd love to see how it can be supported in a scientific way. And since the written word doesn't convey tone very well, let me just say that that was written in a completely sincere and open-minded way. I truly would love to see how it can be supported in a scientific way. Know, however, that if what you post truly isn't scientific, that it will be dismissed pretty quickly. It is a high standard -- which is why there are only a tiny, tiny few scientific papers that support creationism -- and they were rather quickly rebuked by further papers -- and many thousands of papers written from an evolutionary point of view.

 

I'd just like to make a meta-comment here about science in general. Science is not picky, and doesn't play favorites. If creationism could do a better job of describing nature, then it would be the theory all the papers were written on. All that matters to science is to do the best possible job of describing nature. To date, that theory is evolution. (Note, I'm using theory as a the scientific term, not it's colloquial use!) Evolution provides the best method to describe what has been observed. Something else may come along and do a better job, then evolution will be dismissed. Evolution is not a faith, as Retrograder would try to have us believe, it is the theory that does the best job of explaining the facts as we know them today.

 

As a slightly off-topic example, relativity came along and displaced Newtonian physics because relativity did a better job of explaining the world around us. Same thing with heliocentrism. Same thing with the duality of light. Whenever a better theory comes along that describes nature better than the one before it, that new theory becomes the mainstream theory. At any point, it too can be replaced, but something better has to come along first.

 

So, that is the gauntlet that has been dropped. Show us how creationism can be applied scientifically and can do a better job of explaining nature than the current theory. That's quite a hill to climb, like I said, evolution has quite a lot of data behind it (whether you chose to acknowledge that data or not). But, if creationism can do a better job, let's see it.

[MrSandman]

You really need to research Kent Hovind. I will in the matter of the next month and get back to you 'cause I need to overlook it myself. One strange thing is that they could very well be overlaps between the two. Like the form a "symbiotic" relationship. There's is facts, but I don't want to tell you them untill I review them myself.

[shadowacct]

Hmmm... again cold hearts and hot heads. This kind of discussion leads to nothing. Only Retrograder got it right. That is the attitude which can really help us further in our understanding.

 

Please stop "evangelizing". Both camps do harm to science, _and_ to religion. MrSandman, feel free to believe that God created the world appr. 7000 years ago, but why must others be told all over again? Is this essential for your belief? I hope not. On the other hand, from a scientific point of view, most other posters may be right, but does it really add anything to the discussion evolution vs. creation? Both camps are ramming their point of view through the throat of others and that makes me sick .

 

 

 

I like to believe in creationism, because I truly believe there is a God.

This is not the core message of christian faith. Narrowing down the set of possible options for how the world came into being to young earth creationism is narrowing down the greatness of God and the beauty and mystical thing of Gods creation. Why could God not have worked in a different way? The Genesis account is not meant to be read as a sciencebook, it tells that God created universe and why He created this. It is not a record of how He precisely created this. I understand that this leaves open LOTS of questions, but if you are honest, then you accept the challenge. I personally have lots of questions on evolution also, and not everything is clear to me, but if you look around, then there is overwhelming evidence for evolution, and you cannot deny this. What you try to do is bending, deforming, and pushing things in such a way, that the evidence does not seem like evidence anymore, but most likely that is not the right way to respond to this evidence. All creationist explanations, that I have seen, require so much bending, deforming, and pushing that they make these explanations HIGHLY unlikely.

 

 

 

To my personal opinion, the whole quarrel evolution vs. creation is not a scientific discussion, but a discussion with an agenda behind the visible agenda. Some people (only some) use evolution as a device for actively fighting against religion. Many others follow those few anti-religion people, thinking they are doing good things for science, but unfortunately they do not see the agenda behind the visible agenda. In response to this, many christians (but also muslims and other religious people) react with a stubborn young earth creationism, not because of the scientific importance, but in an attempt to 'rescue' their religion. Both camps abuse the Genesis account. The hardcore agressive atheists read it literally, so thay can say: "See these fairy tales? Do you see that we are right, we at least have lots of SCIENTIFIC FACTS!". The young earth creationists read it literally, because this useless quarrel has blinded their eyes so much for the true message of the word of God, that they simply forget that and only focus on one little aspect of the word of God.

 

Finally, there are two victims:

1) Science. The discussion is so far, that even questioning some aspects of evolution makes you suspect and a person generating new "wild" ideas in this area is regarded an heretic. Sometimes, however, "wild" ideas can open completely new lines of thought and can open up doors to new insights. That is what makes science such a fantastic thing, and in this area of science there hardly is any room for this anymore.

2) Religion. The true nature of religion is not a concrete belief in some book/scripture, but it is a personal relation with God, the people around you and the world in which you live. This discussion creationism vs. evolution narrows down religion to only one little aspect.

[swansont]

I do feel like I need to point out that this isn't necessarily the case. The fossils of the Miocene Age Gray Fossil Site, for example, still contain large amounts of their original bone. There are also insects preserved in amber and the remains of animals from tar pits and frozen in ice that it is proper to call fossils.

 

I was under the impression that these were not technically fossils if that were the case.

[CDarwin]

I got my answer verified earlier from this site.

 

Q. How far away from Lucy did you find the knee?

A. Sixty to seventy meters lower in the strata and two to three kilometers away.

 

It's still a long distance.

 

If you'd read my rebuttal (or Talk Origins's, probably) then you'd see why it wouldn't matter if the knee cap was found in the next county (or whatever passes for counties in Ethiopia). No one but a Creationist ever said it was part of Lucy.

 

Creationists lie just as much as the evolutionists????? No, creationists usually believe in the TEN COMMANDMENTS, if you know what they are.

 

There's a knee-slapper.

 

This site is affiliated with a really good creationist. Try emailing him.

 

http://www.drdino.com

 

I've watch this guys seminars and he really rises interesting points about the two. remember I'm not saying he's right. Read Job chapter 21. The chapter about leviathan. They think he was one of the last Dinosaurs. Remember though the word "Dinosuar" wasn't made untill websters time. Before they believe the word might have been DRAGON.

 

Ole Jailbird Hovind, eh? If you really put stock in the ilk that pours from his mouth than I seriously doubt that anything that we say is going to unsettle you from your determined skepticism.

 

I just want to ask one question to you MrSandman. Now I know how terribly arrogant this sounds, and I don't mean it to, and I know that it's poor argument, but I really think it's a question you have to ask yourself from time to time when you're a lay person criticizing established science: How smart do you think you are? Do you really think that because you read some websites and a high school biology textbook that you've discovered something that 150 years of science has missed? Do you really think that you're so much smarter than all the physicists and chemists and biologists and geologists that you're denying the work of here? Just something to think about.

 

I was under the impression that these were not technically fossils if that were the case.

 

Mineral replacement leads to petrification, but not all fossils need be petrified. It's a matter of semantics, obviously.

[Bignose]

1) Science. The discussion is so far, that even questioning some aspects of evolution makes you suspect and a person generating new "wild" ideas in this area is regarded an heretic. Sometimes, however, "wild" ideas can open completely new lines of thought and can open up doors to new insights. That is what makes science such a fantastic thing, and in this area of science there hardly is any room for this anymore.

.

 

I would just like to point out, again, that science is indeed receptive to new ideas. Sometimes, occasionally, rarely, the scientist, because they are a human being, will let his emotions cloud his judgment. If a significant part of your life's work has just been proven inaccurate or a dead end, you're probably going to be somewhat sentimental about it, too. However, the entire community of scientists is usually very dispassionate, objective, and is really only seeking one thing: Better theories. Again, like I said above, bring a theory that describes everything the old theory does better or describes more than the old theory can, and the new theory wins out. It is as simple as that.

 

If these "wild" ideas you speak of can do the job scientifically better than the old ideas, then they win.

 

But, not every "wild" idea has to be treated equally. Just because you have a "wild" idea, doesn't mean it is right, no matter how passionately or firmly you believe in it. There has to be proof. There has to be scientific tests. It has to perform in the crucible that is modern science. This is all that is needed to displace the old theory and bring in the new.

 

So, whatever new theory you have, go ahead and post it, but don't expect scientists to embrace it unless you can back it up with loads and loads and loads of evidence to support it. Again, this is the hill that creationism has to climb. Because there are mountains upon mountains of data that support evolution at the moment, and to become the mainstream theory, creationism has to scientifically demonstrate that is can explain as much as evolution better or explain more than evolution. And the key word in there is scientifically.

[pioneer]

Here is how I look at it. When it comes to evolution/creation the scientists have the upper hand, since they have devoted much more time and effort to this analysis. As Jesus said, render onto Caesar, what is Caesar's.

 

The area where religion is the expert is, what constitutes religion. They have been working on this project for 1000's of years with 1000's of workers, sort of like science has done with evolution. As such, although aetheism does not consider itself a religion, in this case, the shoe is on the other foot. They are the irrational layman in this type of assessment. It is up to the experts from religion to make this determination. If they determine that aetheism is a religion, then the aetheist have the right to freedom of religion. But because of the separation of church and state, they have to be treated like other religions and can no longer be funded by the state.

 

The aetheists are the creationist perspective when it comes to religion, i.e., so to speak, where they think their doctrine appeared suddenly. When it comes to religion, the religious folk are the evolutionists, so to speak, since they are aware of how religion has evolved, diverged and converged and can support that with thousands of years of documentation.

Their final determination will affect how the state needs to treat aetheism.

 

From just a basic assessment, there are eastern religions that believe in self enlightenment and do not have any type of formal God. This type of religion is not much different than the aethiest orientation. The former has moderized itself to make it more appealing to western recruitment. Again, I am no expert, so a formal assessment from the experts is needed. We don't want anyone to break the law.

 

From the point of view of any religious person, one should not be mean or seek vengence, since it can poison the soul. Look at this as a scientific religious study to determine the nature of aetheism as a religion. The goal is to help these closet religious people, come out of the closet. We are just rendering unto Caesar, so he is not spending his money on religion. They are still free to practice their beliefs, even of they believes differently.