REAL WORLD EVENT DISCUSSIONS

Evolution, Science, Faith - Lightning rod

POSTED BY: LEADB
UPDATED: Tuesday, June 26, 2007 07:27
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Friday, June 15, 2007 6:16 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


What I want to know is, where is the transitional fossil between humanity and Kaneman?

But, in all seriousness, creationists keep pointing to whales as an example of the lack of transtional fossils. And at one time the data record DID have a large gap. But no more.
Quote:

Recent discoveries of fossil whales provide the evidence that will convince an honest skeptic.
Note that they say honest skeptic. For those of you who are honest skeptics, please feel free to read all about it here: www.talkorigins.org/features/whales/

Otherwhise, just stuff your fingers in your ears, close your eyes and sing "I can't hear you".

---------------------------------
Always look upstream.

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Friday, June 15, 2007 6:29 AM

KANEMAN




This is the 1st part of 13. Each run about 9min. It is a documentary that kills religion, it is really good. If you watch the 1st clip you'll be hooked.........It is hilarious.
part2



part3


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Friday, June 15, 2007 6:32 AM

CHRISISALL


Quote:

Originally posted by SignyM:
Recent discoveries of fossil whales provide the evidence that will convince an honest skeptic.

If I say God was an alien that played with and accellerated genetic realities s/he found in progress on Earth, is that Creationist, or Evolutionist....?

Curious Chrisisall

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Friday, June 15, 2007 6:46 AM

KANEMAN


Quote:

Originally posted by chrisisall:
Quote:

Originally posted by SignyM:
Recent discoveries of fossil whales provide the evidence that will convince an honest skeptic.

If I say God was an alien that played with and accellerated genetic realities s/he found in progress on Earth, is that Creationist, or Evolutionist....?

Curious Chrisisall



Now your talking my language.......

Originally posted by kaneman:

God - "No. No. No. this isn't right at all. He is way to hairy, he crouches over, he rapes his wife, and he wants to beat everything he sees with a stick."
" Let's go back to the drawing board"

*adds a sprinkle of genetic material*

" Yeah, that's about right. He should be flying in no time"


OR


An alien mated with an ape. Think about it. Take your average hairy stupid assed ape and mix with your average bald smart alien....you get us.... I think I am on to something.......how else could we go from eating bunny shit in caves to using cell phones? Oops, I better be quiet evolution is supposed to be SLOW.........

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Friday, June 15, 2007 7:15 AM

FREDGIBLET


Quote:

Originally posted by chrisisall:
Quote:

Originally posted by Finn mac Cumhal:
I didn’t say there was no evidence for Evolution. I’ve never said that. What I said was that there was no evidence that Evolution is a fact

Any intelligent person will describe evolution as a theory, not a fact, so I'm sorry if I misunderstood you.



Actually, it's both.
http://talkorigins.org/faqs/evolution-fact.html

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Friday, June 15, 2007 7:32 AM

FREDGIBLET


Quote:

Originally posted by antimason:
i kind of feel as if the evidence is cherry picked



The idea of evidence being cherry picked would imply that there is a significant amount of evidence that goes against evolution. Given the amount of people who have been against evolution and the amount of time (and funding) they've had, shouldn't there be a large amount of evidence that has been gathered by anti-evolutionists that disproves it? Or is it more likely that biologists don't cherry pick?

Quote:

maybe im naive, but our ancestors all believed in divine creation.


And almost every culture had it's own system, almost none of which are compatible. Also as you pointed out earlier, most of our ancestors believed that bloodletting worked, that didn't mean it was true.

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Friday, June 15, 2007 7:42 AM

LEADB


Quote:

Originally posted by chrisisall:
Quote:

Originally posted by SignyM:
Recent discoveries of fossil whales provide the evidence that will convince an honest skeptic.

If I say God was an alien that played with and accellerated genetic realities s/he found in progress on Earth, is that Creationist, or Evolutionist....?

Curious Chrisisall


I'm apartial to this one for explaining theistic evolution:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theistic_evolution
If that doesn't settle what you are trying to define, let me know and see if we can dig up a closer match.

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Friday, June 15, 2007 7:48 AM

LEADB


Quote:

Originally posted by fredgiblet:
Quote:

Originally posted by chrisisall:
Quote:

Originally posted by Finn mac Cumhal:
I didn’t say there was no evidence for Evolution. I’ve never said that. What I said was that there was no evidence that Evolution is a fact

Any intelligent person will describe evolution as a theory, not a fact, so I'm sorry if I misunderstood you.



Actually, it's both.
http://talkorigins.org/faqs/evolution-fact.html


Hmmm... I'm not sure I agree it is a 'fact' that man descended from a common 'ape like' ancestor; I do subscribe to the theory it is so. I feel the above URL overstates the 'fact' of this matter.

For example, I would say it is a 'fact' that mitrochonal DNA is 'statistically significantly more similar' between apes and humans than horses and humans, and this fact strongly supports the notion that humans and apes are more closely related. I see they define 'fact' as ... "confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional consent." hmm. Perverse. Well. I'll have to ponder that.

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Friday, June 15, 2007 8:35 AM

RUE

I have a vote and I'm not afraid to use it!


Technically, one can't prove that that big truck will smash you flat if you get in the way. I don't think any one can prove any of this is real, either. So if you restrict yourself to saying that facts are what's proven, then there are no facts.

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Friday, June 15, 2007 8:50 AM

FREDGIBLET


Quote:

Originally posted by kaneman:
An alien mated with an ape. Think about it. Take your average hairy stupid assed ape and mix with your average bald smart alien....



According to an older version of the biography of G.W.A.R. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gwar they created humans by raping prehistoric apes before they were frozen in the Antarctic. They seem to have removed that from their official website now though.

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Friday, June 15, 2007 10:08 AM

ANTIMASON



Quote:

: SergeantX-

Cool! We get evolution! Can we have gravity and relativity as well? (two of my favorites).



i said "atheistic" evolution. some around here agree that evolution is just a process, which doesnt and cant explain its own origins- like gravity and relativity. do laws write themselves? thats my question

Quote:

Just so it's fair you can have the flat earth and crop circles, ok?


the bible never mentions a flat earth, but i am open to speculation about crop circles

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Friday, June 15, 2007 10:49 AM

SERGEANTX


So, if we change it to 'atheistic' gravity, does that mean only non-believers will fall? Hmmm

SergeantX

"Dream a little dream or you can live a little dream. I'd rather live it, cause dreamers always chase but never get it." Aesop Rock

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Friday, June 15, 2007 12:03 PM

ANTIMASON


Quote:

Originally posted by SergeantX:
So, if we change it to 'atheistic' gravity, does that mean only non-believers will fall? Hmmm



well no.. gravity doesnt attempt to explain the origins of life

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Friday, June 15, 2007 1:26 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Neither does evolution.

---------------------------------
Always look upstream.

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Friday, June 15, 2007 1:52 PM

ANTIMASON


but evolutionists do

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Friday, June 15, 2007 2:43 PM

RUE

I have a vote and I'm not afraid to use it!


"well no.. gravity doesnt attempt to explain the origins of life"

Why is this different from any other scientific question?


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Friday, June 15, 2007 6:01 PM

LEADB


I think the main reason I don't quite 'get' where Antimason is coming from is he attempts to distinguish between...

a) 'Atheistic evolution'
b) Evolution as subscribed to by many theists, including many Christians, including a few Fundamentalist Christians, I know.
And I can't find any way to distinguish the two.

While I recognize there is 'theistic evolution', just because one is a theist one does not necessarily subscribe to 'theistic evolution'. It is a question on whether God is somehow 'sticking his hand' in the evolutionary process (after all, all he'd have to do is 'play cupid'). Personally, I think not.

Most folks I know accept 'evolution.' My thoughts on the term 'atheistic evolution' are nicely summarized here (went looking for a writeup that articulately expressed what I was thinking):
http://www.religioustolerance.org/ev_world3.htm
And when I talk to folks about their position on evolution, what is expressed at this site, seems consistent with what they mean by accepting evolution (this thread has spurred me to discuss the topic with a few folks over the past few weeks).

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Saturday, June 16, 2007 3:24 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


No, Anti, they don't.

They attempt to explain how life CHANGES with time. As has been made abdundantly clear to me in previous discussions about evolution, there is a distinction between the genesis of life and the changes it may have subsequently undergone.



Anti, I've been very clear about my position. But your position is kinda murky. Sometimes you claim to be an IDer, but most of your references require- as I said before- a pretty full-blown literal intepretation of the Bible. So for the sake of discussion, would you please elucidate your opinion on the following:

How old is the universe?
How old is the world?
How did life come about?
How many species did we start out with? All of the species represented by fossil records plus our current list?
How did humans come to know about "The Creation", if that is your belief?
How do you account for the fossil record? (I know we touched on this already)
Does mountain-building occur? Does erosion occur? Does sedimentation occur?
Do you think that evolution is occurring today?
What- in your opinion- is the scientific process?




---------------------------------
Always look upstream.

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Saturday, June 16, 2007 9:25 AM

FINN MAC CUMHAL


Quote:

Originally posted by leadb:
Finn... I've commented a few times on various folks twiddling the two; I may or may not comment on a specific instance depending on if I think the semantics is causing a problem.

That’s true. You have. I shouldn’t have said “no one,” because it’s not true.
Quote:

Originally posted by leadb:
Hmmm... I'm not sure I agree it is a 'fact' that man descended from a common 'ape like' ancestor; I do subscribe to the theory it is so. I feel the above URL overstates the 'fact' of this matter.

For example, I would say it is a 'fact' that mitrochonal DNA is 'statistically significantly more similar' between apes and humans than horses and humans, and this fact strongly supports the notion that humans and apes are more closely related. I see they define 'fact' as ... "confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional consent." hmm. Perverse. Well. I'll have to ponder that.

Gould defines a fact as something that is not an absolute certainty and deserves temporary approval. But actually, that is probably not how most people define it. Most people look at a fact as being something that is absolutely true. Now if you did define a fact as Gould does then I would say that Evolution qualifies, but I don’t get the impression that is what people in informal debates mean when they say that Evolution is a fact.

And I don’t care much for the word “perverse” either. It implies that there is something wicked about not accepting a “fact,” which I think is the wrong image to display.




Nihil est incertius vulgo, nihil obscurius voluntate hominum, nihil fallacius ratione tota comitiorum.

Nothing is more unpredictable than the mob, nothing more obscure than public opinion, nothing more deceptive than the whole political system.

-- Cicero

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Monday, June 18, 2007 5:18 AM

CANTTAKESKY


Quote:

Originally posted by SergeantX:
So, if we change it to 'atheistic' gravity, does that mean only non-believers will fall? Hmmm

Haha. Check this out:

Intelligent Falling

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligent_falling



Can't Take My Gorram Sky

--------------
Nullius in verba. (Take nobody's word.)

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Monday, June 18, 2007 6:57 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


And I'm still waiting for an explication from Anti about his/her beliefs concerning earth and the universe as we know it today. As I've said before, his/her position seems murky at best. However, certain statements such as the Earth "allegedly" being millions of year old, myths of "the Creation" and "the Flood" harkening back to an actual Biblical creation and flood, and total resistance to the notion of evolution lead me to think that Anti is pretty much a full-on Creationist obfuscating his/her viewpoint with an attempted blurring between ID, Creation, and science.

I imagine, altho I could be wrong, that Anti belives that by getting some people to accept some parts of his/her viewpoint, s/he will eventually get some people to follow a trail of breadcrumbs all the way to a (previously hidden) Creationist stance. Alternatively, Anti is unwilling to debate his/her viewpoint openly for fear of being ridiculed and being unable to substantiate his/he tenets without resorting to the Bible, which most of us already agree is a myth. (And not science.)

---------------------------------
Always look upstream.

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Monday, June 18, 2007 7:15 AM

FREDGIBLET


Quote:

Originally posted by SignyM:
lead me to think that Anti is pretty much a full-on Creationist obfuscating his/her viewpoint with an attempted blurring between ID, Creation, and science.



Well...the whole point of ID is to obfuscate Creationism by hiding it behind science, so you've just given a fairly good representation of ID there.

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Monday, June 18, 2007 11:02 AM

LEADB


Quote:

Originally posted by SignyM:
[...] being unable to substantiate his/he tenets without resorting to the Bible, which most of us already agree is a myth. (And not science.)

I'd like to see his response as well; however, I'd instead qualify it with 'without resorting to the Bible, which most of us already agree is religion and not science.' You'll get 'more folk' agreeing (I suspect), and be somewhat less likely to tick off Antimason.

====
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Monday, June 18, 2007 12:10 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Ok, religion then. The Bible is religious tradition and not science. Better?

---------------------------------
Always look upstream.

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Monday, June 18, 2007 12:17 PM

LEADB


Much. Thanks.

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Monday, June 18, 2007 2:38 PM

ANTIMASON


Quote:

Signym- Anti, I've been very clear about my position. But your position is kinda murky. Sometimes you claim to be an IDer, but most of your references require- as I said before- a pretty full-blown literal intepretation of the Bible.


im a Creationist... because i 'believe' in a literal interpretation of the bible. but there are people out their, who arent christians, who do believe in ID, and they have their own arguments that i use. if youre saying ID and Creationism are the same, then you must know their was no supernatural cause to the universe, and can show it

Quote:

So for the sake of discussion, would you please elucidate your opinion on the following:

How old is the universe?



i cant say, especially without understanding where the matter came from prior to the 'big bang'

Quote:

How old is the world?


once again i cant say for sure... but most fossils are found beginning in the cambrian layer, which makes me doubt there were any preceding eras of 'evolution'. i have not come up with a date on the 'cambrian' layer, but i cant prove its millions of years old

Quote:

How did life come about?


i dont think it created itself. i believe an intelligence crafted the hardware and laws of the universe

Quote:

How many species did we start out with? All of the species represented by fossil records plus our current list?


one of each archetype

Quote:

How did humans come to know about "The Creation", if that is your belief?


i believe the god 'myths' had a basis in reality, and that man was told this by these fallen angels, or 'gods'


Quote:

How do you account for the fossil record? (I know we touched on this already)


i believe they were preserved by settling sediment during the worldwide floods

Quote:

Does mountain-building occur? Does erosion occur? Does sedimentation occur?


i dont doubt the basic science.. but why, does matter spontaneously occur?

Quote:

Do you think that evolution is occurring today?


i do, but here is the difference: only to the extent that it stays within the species programmed archetype; i dont believe their are infinite variations of evolution possible within any given species. i believe they have 'codes' to follow. i know its happening today, but my prediction is that a cat will never evolve into something beyond its current, known archetype.

Quote:

What- in your opinion- is the scientific process?


the same as it is to you. i have the right, just as an atheist, to apply my worldview, or lens, to the study of science, and it provides me with a different explanation. an atheist, to whom everything is mathmatically random and unguided, would explain the visible world a lot differently then i would, and would produce a different theory or outcome to their hypothesis

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Monday, June 18, 2007 2:44 PM

ANTIMASON


Quote:

Originally posted by fredgiblet:

Well...the whole point of ID is to obfuscate Creationism by hiding it behind science, so you've just given a fairly good representation of ID there.



fred, what evidence to you have that disproves a Creator? since you know there is no 'science' behind ID, you must also know that their is no Creator intelligence, and that everything happened naturally.. so what are you basing that on?


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Monday, June 18, 2007 2:45 PM

LEADB


Quote:

Originally posted by antimason:
Quote:

Does mountain-building occur? Does erosion occur? Does sedimentation occur?

i dont doubt the basic science.. but why, does matter spontaneously occur?

While there's a number of points above I don't necessarily agree with, I 'follow' most of them. This item loses me. Where does the 'traditional' proposition of 'mountain building' come up with 'matter spontaneously occur'ing? The standard scientific theory is that one of earth's 'plates' collides with another; one is 'pushed down', the other 'pushes up'; the one pushing up is the 'mountain' side. There is conservation of matter throughout the process.

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Monday, June 18, 2007 2:54 PM

ANTIMASON


Quote:

Originally posted by leadb:
I think the main reason I don't quite 'get' where Antimason is coming from is he attempts to distinguish between...

a) 'Atheistic evolution'
b) Evolution as subscribed to by many theists,




and there is a difference. either their was a creator force, a supernatural presence that guided the universe and its foundations into being, or their wasnt. Creationists do believe in evolution, to an extent... but atheists have to rely on it for everything in the absence of a transcendent origination of life. is my view really that complicated? if this were a scale, with Creation on one end, and athiestic evolution on another, a 'believer' would settle in the middle, knowing that their was a Creator envolved at some point. an atheist would never consider the possibility, and that is the distinction i make. if there was no Creator force at all, and we could "prove" it, then you will have invalidated ID as a theory, but until then its still a possibility

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Monday, June 18, 2007 3:01 PM

ANTIMASON


Quote:

Originally posted by leadb:
While there's a number of points above I don't necessarily agree with, I 'follow' most of them. This item loses me. Where does the 'traditional' proposition of 'mountain building' come up with 'matter spontaneously occur'ing? The standard scientific theory is that one of earth's 'plates' collides with another; one is 'pushed down', the other 'pushes up'; the one pushing up is the 'mountain' side. There is conservation of matter throughout the process.



i was being rhetorical. i find it insulting that because im a Creationist, im percieved as lacking an understanding of natural processes; im apparently retarded to consider 'intelligence' a possibility

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Monday, June 18, 2007 3:08 PM

LEADB


Quote:

Originally posted by antimason:
Quote:

Originally posted by leadb:
While there's a number of points above I don't necessarily agree with, I 'follow' most of them. This item loses me. Where does the 'traditional' proposition of 'mountain building' come up with 'matter spontaneously occur'ing? The standard scientific theory is that one of earth's 'plates' collides with another; one is 'pushed down', the other 'pushes up'; the one pushing up is the 'mountain' side. There is conservation of matter throughout the process.



i was being rhetorical. i find it insulting that because im a Creationist, im percieved as lacking an understanding of natural processes; im apparently retarded to consider 'intelligence' a possibility

Hmm. Ok. I will say your rhetoric really confused me.
Edit: re-reading your post with your comment in mind, I better understand your point. I thought you were saying the 'moutain building' was an example of matter spontaneously occurring; and instead, you were referencing back up to the 'big bang.' Yes... the great chicken and egg debate... if the matter was always here, how is that so? Or if a creator started this thing with a big bang, fine, but then where did the creator come from? I've yet to hear either 'side' really give a convincing one for that; and, as you might guess based on previous comments, I'm quite inclined to say our universe, as we know it, was created with good design.

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Monday, June 18, 2007 3:16 PM

LEADB


Quote:

Originally posted by antimason:
Quote:

Originally posted by leadb:
I think the main reason I don't quite 'get' where Antimason is coming from is he attempts to distinguish between...

a) 'Atheistic evolution'
b) Evolution as subscribed to by many theists,




and there is a difference. either their was a creator force, a supernatural presence that guided the universe and its foundations into being, or their wasnt. Creationists do believe in evolution, to an extent... but atheists have to rely on it for everything in the absence of a transcendent origination of life. is my view really that complicated? if this were a scale, with Creation on one end, and athiestic evolution on another, a 'believer' would settle in the middle, knowing that their was a Creator envolved at some point. an atheist would never consider the possibility, and that is the distinction i make. if there was no Creator force at all, and we could "prove" it, then you will have invalidated ID as a theory, but until then its still a possibility

Ok, I now understand where you are coming from; though I don't agree. The thing is, I believe you can invalidate ID and that does not -disprove- the existence of the Creator force; though it does somewhat 'require' that the Creator to have kicked things off at the 'big bang' and not interfered much with the mechanics of world/life/evolution excessively from that point.

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Monday, June 18, 2007 6:22 PM

ANTIMASON


Quote:

posted by- LEADB

" Yes... the great chicken and egg debate... if the matter was always here, how is that so?



is there a third option? otherwise the odds are 50/50, which makes ID seem kinda appealin', right?

Quote:

Or if a creator started this thing with a big bang, fine, but then where did the creator come from?


either way you have to wonder why any of its here at all. with the 'chicken' argument, God just had to precede what we understand to be the big bang, since right now nothing did- which seems harder to explain(or is that just MO?). do we have a (divine)purpose, or do we exist by chance, and are we just creatures of our environment? the ideological implications are the most significant though

Quote:

I've yet to hear either 'side' really give a convincing one for that; and, as you might guess based on previous comments, I'm quite inclined to say our universe, as we know it, was created with good design.


i agree. not to stray off topic too much, but i had an interesting discussion with a Mason the other day regarding God; apparently, that is the only requirement to become initiated, that you believe in a 'Great Architect' of the universe







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Tuesday, June 19, 2007 1:41 AM

LEADB


Quote:

Originally posted by antimason:
Quote:

posted by- LEADB
Yes... the great chicken and egg debate... if the matter was always here, how is that so?


is there a third option? otherwise the odds are 50/50, which makes ID seem kinda appealin', right?

ID? Depends on what you mean by ID. ID Vs Evolution, for me, is no contest; the evidence supporting evolution tosses the odds way to the favor of evolution. ID (if you mean, was the universe designed by the creator's hand in triggering the big bang) Vs 'just' Big bang... then perhaps.

"the ideological implications are the most significant though" True; but what those implications are can be significantly different depending on what assumptions you make regarding the Creator, and likely we'd find ourselves with very significantly different implications if we compared notes.

That's interesting about the Masons. Never dreamed I might qualify. Then again, fair chance if we compared notes there might be other reasons they wouldn't have me/I'd not join.

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Tuesday, June 19, 2007 2:10 AM

SERGEANTX


Quote:

Originally posted by antimason:
im a Creationist... because i 'believe' in a literal interpretation of the bible.



I think this is the core of your position that makes it so hard to take seriously. I've never understood this urge to defend the bible as a literal explanation of all truth. Isn't it possible for a Christian to consider truth that isn't contained in the bible?

Even if we accept the premise that the bible is the 'word of god', why would a god bother to explain his creation in explicit scientific detail, especially when he's telling the story to people who have no understanding of things like genetics and evolution? Why is it inconceivable to you that god might have used evolution and genetics to create the wide array of species on the planet?

You're right to point out that you don't have to be a fundamentalist Christian to believe in ID, neither do you have to be an atheist to accept evolution. But if you're looking for ID to be taken seriously as science, you need something more substantial than "God said it, I believe it, that settles it."

SergeantX

"Dream a little dream or you can live a little dream. I'd rather live it, cause dreamers always chase but never get it." Aesop Rock

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Tuesday, June 19, 2007 8:45 AM

FREDGIBLET


Quote:

Originally posted by antimason:
if youre saying ID and Creationism are the same, then you must know their was no supernatural cause to the universe, and can show it



Can you explain your reasoning? It seems like a non-sequitur to me. Stating that ID and Creationism are the same doesn't need to prove that they are wrong, just that they are very similar.

As for whether or not ID is creationism, I refer you again to: http://talkorigins.org/indexcc/CI/CI001_2.html . ID is not identical to YEC, but it's pretty damn close.

Quote:

Quote:

How do you account for the fossil record? (I know we touched on this already)


i believe they were preserved by settling sediment during the worldwide floods



The amount of sediment needed for even a small portion of the strata we observe would be extreme, plus that doesn't account for the stratification at all, if the sediment was deposited in the space of less than a year then fossils should be mixed up instead of perfectly stratified.

Quote:

i do, but here is the difference: only to the extent that it stays within the species programmed archetype; i dont believe their are infinite variations of evolution possible within any given species. i believe they have 'codes' to follow. i know its happening today, but my prediction is that a cat will never evolve into something beyond its current, known archetype.



And what evidence do you base this on? What mechanism has been found that would prevent an "archetype" shift from occuring? Would the transition from land animals to whales be an "archetype" shift? We have a very good fossil record of that occuring.

Quote:

fred, what evidence to you have that disproves a Creator? since you know there is no 'science' behind ID, you must also know that their is no Creator intelligence, and that everything happened naturally.. so what are you basing that on?


I have no evidence that disproves a Creator (though there are many things that make little sense in the light of a Creation), there is no proof of the existence of a Creator either, once again I don't need to disprove a Creator in order to say there's no science behind ID. The ID movement made two attempts to give themselves a scientific backing and both of them failed miserably, so there is no scientific basis for ID, this is a matter of record for anyone interested in (what was your term?) "objective research".
Additionally as I've shown before with the Wedge Strategy wiki article the ID movement is not about science anyway. In their own words from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wedge_strategy

"Our strategy has been to change the subject a bit so that we can get the issue of intelligent design, which really means the reality of God, before the academic world and into the schools."

"This isn't really, and never has been a debate about science. Its about religion and philosophy."

"The objective (of the wedge strategy) is to convince people that Darwinism is inherently atheistic, thus shifting the debate from creationism vs. evolution to the existence of God vs. the non-existence of God. From there people are introduced to 'the truth' of the Bible and then 'the question of sin' and finally 'introduced to Jesus.'"

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Tuesday, June 19, 2007 8:54 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


I tried to reply earlier but just couldn't get on, so here goes...

Anti- thank you for your answer. But parts of it leave me really confused. You said
Quote:

i dont doubt the basic science {geology, earth science, chemistry}
but then you said
Quote:

... i have not come up with a date on the 'cambrian' layer, but i cant prove its millions of years old
Well, so much of dating the earth depends on basic science and simple observation. You've seen erosion, deposition, and mountain-building, and you have an idea how quickly (or slowly) it occurs. So would it not be possible to count layers backwards, a little like rings on a tree, and at least estimate the age between layers? Or look at the Himalayas- or any other growing mountain chain- and estimate how long it would have been growing to reach that height? Or possibly look at the amount of uranium (which is an unstable element) versus lead (which is uranium's end-product) to see how long the uranium has been decaying? (The decay rate of uranium is stable.) There are many possible ways to estimate the age of the earth that don't depend on evolution or even hard-to-follow science.

You also say that life was created
Quote:

most fossils are found beginning in the cambrian layer, which makes me doubt there were any preceding eras of 'evolution'... one of each archetype.... i believe they (fossils) were preserved by settling sediment during the worldwide floods
If all of the species' archetypes were present to begin with and there was a massive flood, what you would expect to find is a large layer, rather uniform, with fossils of all types jumbled together. And yet clearly, there are a lot of "archetypes" missing from the earlier sediment layers followed by other layers which contain other kinds of fossils. You would have to somehow account for the fact that many archetypes are separated from each other by sediment layers that would have taken hundreds of thousands to millions of years to lay down.
Quote:

.. but why, does matter spontaneously occur?
Don't ask me to explain the "big bang" theory bc I don't understand it.

When you said
Quote:

i have the right, just as an atheist, to apply my worldview, or lens, to the study of science, and it provides me with a different explanation.
As you use the term "science" it seems to mean more like "information" or "teaching", which is why I asked you to describe your understanding of SCIENCE and the scientific process. It's possible that much of the misunderstanding between us is our different definitions of "science".



---------------------------------
Always look upstream.

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Wednesday, June 20, 2007 7:38 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Helloooo? Anti, are you home?

---------------------------------
Always look upstream.

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Wednesday, June 20, 2007 3:36 PM

ANTIMASON


Quote:

posted by LEADB-

ID? Depends on what you mean by ID. ID Vs Evolution, for me, is no contest; the evidence supporting evolution tosses the odds way to the favor of evolution. ID (if you mean, was the universe designed by the creator's hand in triggering the big bang) Vs 'just' Big bang... then perhaps.



"perhaps".. but theres no evidence of this? why do you consider it then?





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Wednesday, June 20, 2007 3:58 PM

FINN MAC CUMHAL


Quote:

Originally posted by antimason:
"perhaps".. but theres no evidence of this? why do you consider it then?

I can't speak for leadb, but I’m a big advocate of the Creator initiated Big Bang. You’re right there is no evidence that a Creator initiated the Big Bang, but at far as science is concerned, nothing (literally) initiated the Big Bang from nothing (literally). If there is a perfect point at which religion intersects science it is this. The Big Bang just seems to scream to me “In the beginning, God created the heavens...” It just works for me.




Nihil est incertius vulgo, nihil obscurius voluntate hominum, nihil fallacius ratione tota comitiorum.

Nothing is more unpredictable than the mob, nothing more obscure than public opinion, nothing more deceptive than the whole political system.

-- Cicero

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Wednesday, June 20, 2007 4:07 PM

ANTIMASON


Quote:

Originally posted by SergeantX:

I think this is the core of your position that makes it so hard to take seriously.



im sorry, but thats your opinion. we can talk about science and 'evidence' all day.. but maybe we should take into account known history. i dont believe people became martyrs for Jesus' based on something they new was a lie(like Paul for example).


Quote:

I've never understood this urge to defend the bible as a literal explanation of all truth. Isn't it possible for a Christian to consider truth that isn't contained in the bible?


yes.. but like what?

Quote:

Even if we accept the premise that the bible is the 'word of god', why would a god bother to explain his creation in explicit scientific detail, especially when he's telling the story to people who have no understanding of things like genetics and evolution?


well it doesnt try to explain explicity; but i think it had less to do with "genetics and evolution", and more to do with comprehension and necessity; what was important was that 'he' exists, and we should acknowledge it


Quote:

Why is it inconceivable to you that god might have used evolution and genetics to create the wide array of species on the planet?


why? is God restrained by time and space? thats a very naturalist, material view of the universe.. if God exists, he would have to be beyond the visible universe, so why do we expect 'him' to be subject to its parameters? the 'design' aspect of ID infers some kind of interaction

Quote:

You're right to point out that you don't have to be a fundamentalist Christian to believe in ID, neither do you have to be an atheist to accept evolution. But if you're looking for ID to be taken seriously as science, you need something more substantial than "God said it, I believe it, that settles it."


so then check out some arguments from IDs who arent christians.. they have plenty of instances where the data is not compatible with traditional theories of naturalistic evolution. this subject is not my primary focus, and i dont pretend to be some nobel laureate, i approach this issue from an ideological perspective(which is more relevant to me personally)


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Wednesday, June 20, 2007 4:19 PM

ANTIMASON


Quote:

Originally posted by fredgiblet:


Can you explain your reasoning? It seems like a non-sequitur to me. Stating that ID and Creationism are the same doesn't need to prove that they are wrong, just that they are very similar.



yes.. but all along youve said that theres no evidence for ID. ID and Creationism both have a 'creator'.. so if theres no evidence for one, then theres no evidence for another

Quote:

As for whether or not ID is creationism, I refer you again to: http://talkorigins.org/indexcc/CI/CI001_2.html . ID is not identical to YEC, but it's pretty damn close.


yes.. the site for atheists who abhor theists

Quote:

The amount of sediment needed for even a small portion of the strata we observe would be extreme, plus that doesn't account for the stratification at all, if the sediment was deposited in the space of less than a year then fossils should be mixed up instead of perfectly stratified.


first of all, many fossils are mixed up.. as the article i posted indicated. secondly, i think a flood could cause the stratifications and erosion we've seen

Quote:

And what evidence do you base this on?


what we see today. im not seeing the cross breeds and failed species evolution predicts. i see the same animals we've always had, minus a few that havent made it this long

Quote:

What mechanism has been found that would prevent an "archetype" shift from occuring?


what mechanism have you found that allows a complete archetype change? there are similarities in the DNA of humans and primates, but no amount of 'decoding' is going to turn a human into something too far beyond our current state, and thats my prediction. i guess evolutionists predict that a few million years from now we too may be something else entirely.. but i dont believe so

Quote:

Would the transition from land animals to whales be an "archetype" shift? We have a very good fossil record of that occuring.


yes.. but if your basing that off a useless organ, then i would require more evidence. i know people try to connect dinosaurs and birds, because of similar features.. but i think thats a stretch




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Wednesday, June 20, 2007 4:31 PM

LEADB


Quote:

Originally posted by Finn mac Cumhal:
Quote:

Originally posted by antimason:"perhaps".. but theres no evidence of this? why do you consider it then?
I can't speak for leadb, but I’m a big advocate of the Creator initiated Big Bang. You’re right there is no evidence that a Creator initiated the Big Bang, but at far as science is concerned, nothing (literally) initiated the Big Bang from nothing (literally). If there is a perfect point at which religion intersects science it is this. The Big Bang just seems to scream to me “In the beginning, God created the heavens...” It just works for me.

Well put Finn; my exception is that I think the Creator was busy doing things before creating the heavens, etc.

However, what I'd point out here is that this is where I maintain science ends and religion starts, I have -no evidence at all- for this; it is my speculation. As a consequence, I would, being a strong believer in separation of church and state, not wish my faith here taught in a public school.

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Wednesday, June 20, 2007 4:46 PM

FINN MAC CUMHAL


Quote:

Originally posted by leadb:
Well put Finn; my exception is that I think the Creator was busy doing things before creating the heavens, etc.

I don’t know what god was doing before the Big Bang. I’m not even sure that such a statement makes sense, since time didn’t exist before the Big Bang, so there could never have been a “before the Big Bang.” You can go crazy trying to think about that kind of stuff. When I imagine how God might exist, I like to think of God as being something like a fourth spatial dimension. We can accept it’s existence, but it’s impossible to visualize it and therefore impossible to measure it, because our minds just can't wrap around it.



Nihil est incertius vulgo, nihil obscurius voluntate hominum, nihil fallacius ratione tota comitiorum.

Nothing is more unpredictable than the mob, nothing more obscure than public opinion, nothing more deceptive than the whole political system.

-- Cicero

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Wednesday, June 20, 2007 8:51 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Anti, instead of pointedly ignoring me, you could have asked me a question yourself, such as: Well, how do you define science? The answer is very complex, and I'm not sure I can answer it.

Here's another question you could have asked, which I have no frigging clue how to answer: If uranium decay is one possible "clock" by which we can measure time, and uranium is widely considered to have been formed in a supernova explosion, doesn't the amount of uranium date back to the time of the explosion, NOT the the formation of the earth? If you'd asked that, I would have had to spend all kinds of time googling up the answer. I might have even concluded that the age of the earth is wildly overestimated.
-------------------------

It's disappointin' as hell.

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Wednesday, June 20, 2007 9:43 PM

KHYRON


Quote:

Originally posted by SignyM:
Here's another question you could have asked, which I have no frigging clue how to answer: If uranium decay is one possible "clock" by which we can measure time, and uranium is widely considered to have been formed in a supernova explosion, doesn't the amount of uranium date back to the time of the explosion, NOT the the formation of the earth? If you'd asked that, I would have had to spend all kinds of time googling up the answer. I might have even concluded that the age of the earth is wildly overestimated.

Wow, you would have thrown in the towel after that question? How old the Uranium-238 was before the Earth got created is irrelevant. Once on Earth (or anywhere else), what matters is the abundance of daughter isotopes compared to parent isotopes. The more daughter isotopes, the older the sample.

EDIT: Pre-emptive strike on the follow-up question: http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CD/CD002.html



Questions are a burden to others. Answers are prison for oneself.

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Thursday, June 21, 2007 3:04 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Khyron, you miss my point. Or perhaps I miss yours.

Let's say that there is nothing but decaying uranium in space. Presumably it forms the same ratios of daughter elements in space as it does on-planet. Then that uranium coalesces to form a planet. If all of the uranium daughters are equally volatile as uranium, there would be no way of distinguishing between when the urnanium was formed and when the planet coalesced because the daughter elements would accumulate at the same rate whether in space or in planet. If you mix in other elements, like carbon, silicon, hydroven, iron, and oxygen, the picture with regard to uranium still stays the same.

Not having googled it up (something I would have been forced to do has Anti asked the question) I'm assuming that there are some daughters that are more volatile than others, and that what they are looking at is the differential between formation and escape from earth's gravity among the various decay products. I assume that scientists have already accounted for that factor, and simply neglect to go into detail when they give the quick and dirty explanation. But that would have been a natural question to ask, given the simplicity of the explanation.



---------------------------------
Always look upstream.

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Thursday, June 21, 2007 6:26 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Quote:

secondly, i think a flood could cause the stratifications and erosion we've seen
How could it cause stratification? I can see one big layer, with a difference between the top and bottom: the heavy, coarse stuff like rocks and pebbles settle out first, then sand, then silt. But what I CAN'T see is the multiple layers that we observe today, where sand is followed by pebbles followed by silt. If you could propose a reasonable mechanism how a single flood could cause multiple layers, feel free.

Also, yes, many fossils are mixed up but most are not, especially not to the degree where you find fossils from one era mixed with fossils from another. And while it is easy to explain how some fossils can get mixed together, it is much harder to explain how most fossils could have gotten sorted in a massive flood.


---------------------------------
Always look upstream.

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Thursday, June 21, 2007 7:39 AM

FREDGIBLET


Quote:

Originally posted by SignyM:
If all of the uranium daughters are equally volatile as uranium, there would be no way of distinguishing between when the urnanium was formed and when the planet coalesced because the daughter elements would accumulate at the same rate whether in space or in planet. If you mix in other elements, like carbon, silicon, hydroven, iron, and oxygen, the picture with regard to uranium still stays the same.



Uranium goes through several volatile daughters until it reaches lead, lead is stable and is used as the end point to measure uranium decay from.

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Thursday, June 21, 2007 7:48 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Which is what I assumed, but didn't bother to look up.


ETA: No wait Fred, that doesn't make sense. Let me propose this problem for the sake of illustration:

Let's assume that you have pure uranium-238 vapor flaoting in space as a result of a supernova explosion. The uranium decays at a rather convenient rate of about 10% every billion years. So there it is, decaying in space for a billion years, at which point you have a vapor of 90% uranium and 10% lead.

Then the vapor coalesces into a plant, which hums along nicely for another billion years (assuming that it doesn't explode) at which point you would have lost another 10% of the remaining uranium and reached relative U/Pb concentrations of 81%/19%. By looking at that ratio, you could correctly conclude that the uranium had been decaying for 2 billion years, but you would be mistaken in saying that the planet was 2 billion years old.

Where am I going wrong?




---------------------------------
Always look upstream.

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