CREATIONISM----F.Y.I

by nakedmvistar 72 Replies latest watchtower bible

• 

  Liberty

  Part of the problem in having a debate between Bible Literalist/Creationists and skeptic/science type folks is that we speak a different language and think in different patterns. For example, you CANNOT understand evolution or any branch of science by relying on "nutshell" versions based on short concise answers which wrap the whole thing up neatly. You can get a "nutshell" version of Christianity however, because the concepts are more simple. God is, He makes everything, angels and man rebel, death and suffering results, God's son sent as redeemer and he brings hope for end of suffering.

  Christians are used to short concise explainations and they expect the same mind set from science. Unfortunately there is no such thing in science since the Universe is not seen as a revealed truth from a super being who gives us all the answers. In science we find the answers on our own through observing nature. This is a complex and time consuming adventure. To understand science you must devote a great deal of time and study in many special fields. It is obvious from the many replies from the pro Creationist camp that there is a severe lack of understanding when it comes to the scientific method and evolution. The most common argument I've seen against evolution (and science) is that it is just a faith based religion with its own agenda. This shows the depth of the misunderstanding about science prevailent in the Fundie religious community and the poor science curriculum in public schools which are limited by the school boards who are dominated by Fundies.

  The pro science camp must argue against the strawman " Satanic/Atheistic science conspiracy" which the Fundies think they understand so we really never get to a discussion of the real evidences science provides. In short, we are on entirely different wave links which makes a good debate very difficult because one side has no idea about what they are arguing against. I was a Christian. I studied the Bible and its apologists so I understand the Creationist point of view as if it were my own because once it was my own. The vast majority of Creationists have NOT studied science and have no understanding of its principles. I don't say this as a debating trick or insult it is just the way it is. I challenge you to make a serious study of these subjects before you dismiss them so easily.

  There is no anti God agenda in science. Science is not the study of invisible/silent super beings so it does not address the God problem at all in the same way English teachers do not try to explain Chinese grammer rules. Science has disproved much of the accuracy of the literal Bible because the Bible is a visible book which has a sequence of events laid out in the physical realm which can be studied and proven to be true or false but God cannot be studied in His present form. Science cannot prove God does or doesn't exist in the same way English can't prove that Chinese grammer is right or wrong. Besides the Bible, I am unaware of any proof for God's nature,character, or existance. If He exists then He has chosen to remain indetectable to us so His reality loses its importance in the same way that a distant alien race on a planet far away who have never communicated with us is "real" or unreal.

  Edited by - Liberty on 25 September 2002 17:25:52

  Edited by - Liberty on 25 September 2002 17:27:23

  Edited by - Liberty on 25 September 2002 17:31:37

  Edited by - Liberty on 25 September 2002 17:55:44
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  Xander

  you can't even answer in your own words you just direct me to some website

  Alright, fine. Evolution is heritable genetic change. Those are my own words. Help any?

  However it's not at all certain that it is either.

  !??!

  YES IT IS.

  We can study their genetic code - AND WATCH IT CHANGE OVER GENERATIONS. *That's* all evolution is.

  the heart of my argument, the transitions

  That's not the heart of the argument. Evolution is a very slow process - indeed, ALL organisms can be thought of as 'transitional' - so what are you specifically looking for as criteria?

  I'll post from the rebuttal to the source of your definitions

  Did you read the rebuttal to the rebuttal?

  Further, you keep holding that mutation is key to evolution. It is not. Evolution is heritable change in genetic codes over time. That DOES INCLUDE "how breeders can breed selectively and how all natural variation happens". Surprise - THAT'S EVOLUTION.
• 

  tkmmorgan

  Evolution is heritable genetic change. Those are my own words. Help any?

  Actually, yes. I have no problem with that. It proves that we are arguing two different things.

  the heart of my argument, the transitions

  That's not the heart of the argument. Evolution is a very slow process - indeed, ALL organisms can be thought of as 'transitional' - so what are you specifically looking for as criteria?

  You'll notice the my there. I'm looking for an ape that has enough human characteristics to no longer be ape but not enough human to be human. A transitional species proving a clear progression from ape to man.

  Did you read the rebuttal to the rebuttal?

  Yes, did you read all of them?

  Further, you keep holding that mutation is key to evolution. It is not. Evolution is heritable change in genetic codes over time. That DOES INCLUDE "how breeders can breed selectively and how all natural variation happens". Surprise - THAT'S EVOLUTION.

  That is no surprise. I'm not arguing against evolution in that broad a sense. Only against macro-evolution. I am not arguing that mutation is the key to evolution, simply that it is the key to my belief in it. I am not a scientist but, without gainfull mutation macro-evolution cannot happen.

  The known fossil record fails to document a single example of phyletic evolution accomplishing a major morphologic transition and hence offers no evidence that a gradualistic model can be valid. [Steven M. Stanley, Macroevolution: Pattern and Process. San Francisco: W. M. Freeman & Co., 1979, p. 39.]

  The extreme rarity of transitional forms is the trade secret of paleontology ... The history of most fossil species includes two features particularly inconsistent with gradualism: 1. Stasis. Most species exhibit no directional change during their tenure on earth. They appear in the fossil record looking much the same as when they disappear; morphological change is usually limited and directionless. 2. Sudden appearance. In any local area, a species does not arise gradually by the steady transformation of its ancestors; it appears all at once and fully formed. [S.J. Gould (evolutionist); Natural History 86:14 (1977)]

  Liberty,

  I'm not trying to convert anybody. Forget God and the Bible.I believe in them but that is totally immaterial to the arguement here. How about I argue intelligent design and you guys argue macro-evolution? I don't have a problem with the other definitions.

  http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/evolution-definition.html gives this definition and it is what I can't bring myself to believe. The emphasis is mine:

  "In the broadest sense, evolution is merely change, and so is all-pervasive; galaxies, languages, and political systems all evolve. Biological evolution ... is change in the properties of populations of organisms that transcend the lifetime of a single individual. The ontogeny of an individual is not considered evolution; individual organisms do not evolve. The changes in populations that are considered evolutionary are those that are inheritable via the genetic material from one generation to the next. Biological evolution may be slight or substantial; it embraces everything from slight changes in the proportion of different alleles within a population (such as those determining blood types) to the successive alterations that led from the earliest protoorganism to snails, bees, giraffes, and dandelions." - Douglas J. Futuyma in Evolutionary Biology, Sinauer Associates 1986

  I have to go to work now but I'll be back tomorrow.

  Todd
• 

  crownboy

  tkmmorgan, I see you're a big fan of Kent Hovind, a.k.a. "Dr. Dino", even going as far as to adopt is erroneus definition of evolution (those 5 points). For a look at some of the problems with his $250,000 "bet"see http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/hovind.html

  For a nice refutation for a lot of Hovind's nonsense see: http://www.geocities.com/kenthovind/

  Another pretty good and thorough refutation can be found at : http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/dave_matson/young-earth/index.shtml

  And for yet more refutations of Hovind see: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/hovind/howgood.html

  I happen to be fairly familiar with him, and I've seen his "Dr. Dino" site. As can be seen by the links provided above, "Dr. Dino" (not even a man with any science credentials. See: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/credentials.html ) doesn't know what he's talking about.

  I (and others) are not giving you all this information to read to obstruficate the arguments, but because we seek to educate you. All the cries of "you don't understand evolution" are quite genuine and obvious as your post are read (I was somewhat cringing through most of it, but just had to post once you put "Dr. Dino" as a science reference). Now I don't expect everyone to accept evolution (hell, I don't expect you to really read my info, I did it mainly for lurkers, but I'd be happy if you did read it), because it would entail admitting some deeply held beliefs are wrong, and some people just can't be honest with themselves. But at the very least I expect creationist to simply say that their belief in built on faith alone, and stop butchering theories they don't care to educate themselves about.

  In your last post you talk about having a "transistional species between ape and man". THERE IS NO SUCH SPECIES, SINCE MAN DID NOT EVOLVE FROM MORDERN APES. Apes and humans share a common ancestor some 6 million years ago, and they're both as evolved as the other, humans simply have superior cognitive ability. (for some examples of transisitional evolutionary fossils for humans see: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/ ) And lastly, for some evidences of "macro-evolution" see: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/ .

  Yes, it's a lot of reading, but you have to do that much reading and more to fully grasp evolutionary theory (I use talkorigins alot because they present it very nicely for beginners, but feel free to reference other reputable sources). Most of us (former JW's like me), believed what you did at one time and we know the arguments. I personally have read creationist websites. For your own self education, surprise me and read the evolutionst side. Get rid of your silly notion that evolution is here to promote atheism and godlessness, and recognize that 99% of scientists accept it because it's fact.

  Edited by - crownboy on 25 September 2002 21:55:54
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  tkmmorgan

  Thanks crownboy, lots of good info there. I see your point about the 250k offer. It is useless to the scientific community because of how they define evolution. Defining it as heritable genetic change is so broad as to be useless for debate purposes, that happens all the time naturally and with man's interference-animal breeding programs. According to the talk origins websites difinition I posted above, though that includes "the successive alterations that led from the earliest protoorganism to snails, bees, giraffes, and dandelions". That is what I find no evidence of, in fact I find that the leading evolutionary scientists have a problem with that themselves and discard as curious anomalies things like Archaeopteryx.

  At the higher level of evolutionary transition between basic morphological designs, gradualism has always been in trouble, though it remains the official position of most Western evolutionists. Smooth intermediates between Bauplne are almost impossible to construct, even in thought experiments; there is certainly no evidence for them in the fossil record (curious mosaics like Archaeopteryx do not count). [S.J. Gould & Niles Eldredge (evolutionists); Paleobiology 3:147, 1977]

  The extreme rarity of transitional forms is the trade secret of paleontology ... The history of most fossil species includes two features particularly inconsistent with gradualism: 1. Stasis. Most species exhibit no directional change during their tenure on earth. They appear in the fossil record looking much the same as when they disappear; morphological change is usually limited and directionless. 2. Sudden appearance. In any local area, a species does not arise gradually by the steady transformation of its ancestors; it appears all at once and fully formed. [S.J. Gould (evolutionist); Natural History 86:14 (1977)]

  In the fossil record we view our data as so bad that we never see the very process we profess to study.(Gould )

  How about http://www.creationevidence.org/cemframes.html did you check that one out?To say there is no scientific data that supports the creation model is just as uniformed as my saying evolution is here to promote Godlessness. Sorry for that one it appears I was wrong.To restrict the creation model to a couple verses of the Bible and built on faith alone (there is just as much faith in believing macro-evolution considering the millions of years gaps in the fossil record and Gould's above statement) is also as much a misconception as my definition of evolution. It also shows that there hasn't been an honest examination of facts. There is nothing that leads even the foremost evolutionist scientists to conclude that evolution is indisputable fact.

  [macro-evolution]cannot be refuted thus is outside empirical science. (Ehrlich )

  the chance of life originating from inorganic chemical elements by natural means is beyond the realm of possibility (Hoyle )

  to produce a new organism from an existing life-form requires alterations in the genetic material which are lethal to the organism (Maddox )

  Any random change in a complex, specific, functioning system wrecks that system. And living things are the most complex functioning systems in the universe.Science has now quantitated that a genetic mutation of as little as 1 billionth (0.0000001%) of an animal's genome is relentlessly fatal.The genetic difference between human and his nearest relative, the chimpanzee, is at least 1.6% Calculated out that is a gap of at least 48 million nucleotide differences that must be bridged by random changes. And a random change of only 3 nucleotides is fatal to an animal.Geneticist Barney Maddox, 1992 http://www.creationevidence.org/cemframes.html?http%3A//www.creationevidence.org/archives/maddox.htm for the whole article

  You should know who Hoyle, Gould, and Eldridge are and I will post some of the qualifications of the other 2.

  Ehrlich

  ...his invariable insistence on the repeated proof by many experiments of the results he published...Ehrlich was an ordinary, foreign, corresponding or honorary member of no less than 81 academies and other learned bodies in Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Denmark, Egypt, Finland, France, Germany, Great Britain, Greece, Hungary, ltaly, The Netherlands, Norway, Roumania, Russia, Serbia, Sweden, Turkey, the U.S.A. and Venezuela. He held honorary doctorates of the Universities of Chicago, Gttingen, Oxford, Athens and Breslau, and was also honoured by Orders in Germany, Russia, Japan, Spain, Roumania, Serbia, Venezuela, Denmark (Commander Cross of the Danebrog Order), and Norway (Commander Cross of the Royal St. Olaf Order). In 1887 he received the Tiedemann Prize of the Senckenberg Naturforschende Gesellschaft at Frankfurt/Main, in 1906 the Prize of Honour at the XVth International Congress of Medicine at Lisbon, in 1911 the Liebig Medal of the German Chemical Society, and in 1914 the Cameron Prize of Edinburgh. In 1908 he shared with Metchnikoff the highest scientific distinction, the Nobel Prize.

  Maddox

  Dr. Barney Maddox holds a B.S. in biology from Texas Christian University and an M.D. from UTSW Medical School in Dallas. His residency in urology was done through the University of Missouri, and he now is in private practice. In 1997 Dr. Maddox was a committee member on the Texas State Schoolbook Panel, for biology.

  We all bring our prejudices to the table when looking at evidence and this debate is constantly being fought by much greater minds than mine. We could post refutations of refutations until we were blue in the face and it wouldn't matter one bit. I appreciate being pointed to information but please do me the courtesy of looking at the other side, scientifically too. I have no illusions that you will because at the very least, if you are honest, this stuff will cast doubt on your position. Claiming I am some kind of idiot with reading comprehension problems or something of the sort does your arguments no good. Even if I was it wouldn't prove that evolution was true. As can be demonstrated there is no undisputed (not by me, real scientists in material on the talkorigins site) proofs of macro-evolution. I have never said creation could be proven either.

  Has macro-evolution stopped? If not how come the only supposed "proof" of it anybody can find is in the fossil record? If it has stopped, why? Please point me to some info that answers those questions.
• 

  rem

  LOL

  Using quotes from Gould and Eldredge to argue AGAINST Evolution? Are you crazy? You have no idea what you are quoting.

  Niles Eldrege and Stephen J. Gould are (were for Gould... he just died) not saying there is any doubt of Evolution. They are just saying that the transitions between the higher taxa probably happened faster than peviously thought. This "faster" is in geological terms... meaning tens of thousands of years. Tens of thousands of years is not enough time for the fossil record to catch these transitions, so that is why Gould and Eldrege put forward their theory of punctuated equilibrium. This is not an argument against evolution, but an argument to explain why transitional fossils are hard to detect.

  Are you being intentionally deceptive, or are you just too lazy to actually read what you quote?

  Also, I would like to see the rest of your quotes IN CONTEXT. I've seen way too many creationist websites take scientist's quotes way out of context. This is extremely deceptive and unscholarly.

  rem

  Edited by - rem on 26 September 2002 15:56:48
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  tkmmorgan

  Did I say they were against it? To the contrary, they were totally for it and completely opposed to any other model. Just read the quotes. Gould even said the fossil record didn't show what they professed to study. Here I'll post one again:

  In the fossil record we view our data as so bad that we never see the very process we profess to study.(Gould )

  But I contend because of this, which you obviously didn't bother to read or just can't refute:

  Any random change in a complex, specific, functioning system wrecks that system. And living things are the most complex functioning systems in the universe.Science has now quantitated that a genetic mutation of as little as 1 billionth (0.0000001%) of an animal's genome is relentlessly fatal.The genetic difference between human and his nearest relative, the chimpanzee, is at least 1.6% Calculated out that is a gap of at least 48 million nucleotide differences that must be bridged by random changes. And a random change of only 3 nucleotides is fatal to an animal.Geneticist Barney Maddox, 1992 http://www.creationevidence.org/cemframes.html?http%3A//www.creationevidence.org/archives/maddox.htm for the whole article

  That it didn't happen at all. That's why it was never seen in the fossil record.

  And there's that pesky little "probably" meaning there is no evidence to back it up.

  Edited by - tkmmorgan on 26 September 2002 16:14:27
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  tkmmorgan

  And the evolutionists do it to. This is pointless.

  Edited by - tkmmorgan on 26 September 2002 16:13:15
• 

  rem

  tkmmorgan,

  Gould was saying that the fossil record did not show GRADUALISM, but instead shows various periods of stasis punctuated by rapid Evolution (rapid on evolutionary timescales). See, you are the one who is mindlessly cutting and pasting without even understanding what you are reading. It is sad, though, that Gould's unfortunate choice of words has been a source of many Creationist misquotes. He tried many times to explain his words, but people like you with an agenda don't care about the truth. Thus the myth of some troubles in Evolutionary theory persist.

  Barney Maddox - a geneticist? LOL. How stupid do you think I am? He's a medical doctor, not a geneticist. And his argument is absurd and demonstrably wrong. The fact that a new strain of flu comes out every year completely destroys his pathetic arguemnt. Obviously random mutations are causing the virus to change since viruses don't reproduce sexually. The same is true with bacteria. If his argument were true, then we wouldn't need to worry about getting new flu shots every year. Biological systems are not directly analogous to the english language, so his little example is ridiculous. Who are you going to quote from next? Barney Fife?

  Duh.

  You are obviously quote mining from a creationist website. You don't understand what you are quoting because they are out of context. Anyway, even if they were accurate (which they are not, the way they are taken out of context) then it means nothing. Just because a scientist makes a claim doesn't make a thing a fact. We rely on evidence, not claims. There are many times conflicting claims, but as more and more evidence comes to light, one of the claims is shown to be more probable than the other.

  Now, stop (mis)quoting scientists and show actual peer reviewed studies to back up your claims.

  rem

  Edited by - rem on 26 September 2002 17:16:55
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  tkmmorgan

  Here is Dr. Carl Baugh's doctoral dissertation. http://www.drcarlbaugh.org/ does that qualify for a peer reviewed study? And you don't have an agenda? Give me a break!

  Gould was saying that the fossil record did not show GRADUALISM, but instead shows various periods of stasis punctuated by rapid Evolution (rapid on evolutionary timescales).

  I'll give you the gradualism, but not the rest. His second point distinctly says it appears all at once and fully formed.

  The extreme rarity of transitional forms is the trade secret of paleontology ... The history of most fossil species includes two features particularly inconsistent with gradualism: 1. Stasis. Most species exhibit no directional change during their tenure on earth. They appear in the fossil record looking much the same as when they disappear; morphological change is usually limited and directionless. 2. Sudden appearance. In any local area, a species does not arise gradually by the steady transformation of its ancestors; it appears all at once and fully formed. [S.J. Gould (evolutionist); Natural History 86:14 (1977)]

  Just because a scientist makes a claim doesn't make a thing a fact.

  Unless what he says supports what you want to believe. I will do some more research on the genetic changes point from Maddox, I don't have time to do more today.I have never claimed to not be getting my info from creation websites, however some has come from talkorigins. To point out what I have already admitted does what exactly for your arguements?

  I'll respond more fully when I have more time.See ya tomorrow

  Edited by - tkmmorgan on 26 September 2002 17:58:53

  Edited by - tkmmorgan on 26 September 2002 18:0:7

  Edited by - tkmmorgan on 26 September 2002 18:0:26