Creation Theory

[nolanrh]

... a bunch of smart stuff ...

qft

[pat1167]

A fact is "an observation that has been repeatedly confirmed and for all practical purposes is accepted as 'true.'" The fossil record and abundant other evidence testify that organisms have evolved through time. Although no one observed those transformations, the indirect evidence is clear, unambiguous and compelling.

Perhaps a theory is one that when repeated enough, becomes acceptable to the majority of the population as well as a majority of the scientists. It does not however become a fact in any way, as you have so generously pointed out. Only indirect evidence is available and it is far less than compelling. There are many leaps in the logic, including several frauds discovered over the years, such as Peking Man, Nebraska Man, and the invented embryo sequence by Dr. Haeckel. Archaeopteryx is now considered only a bird, not an intermediate fossil.

Many mathematicians, including some I know personally (3 advanced math degrees and an actuary for an insurance company) have concluded that the probability of evolution (eyes & brain development) is so astronomical that it takes far more faith to believe that theory than to believe in a Creator.

Evolution is a religion. It is the faith of atheism which replaces God with man. When you've conned yourself into believing that some kind of ancient slime morphed into progressively complex and directional life forms, this is faith, not science.

[Nebula]

Evolution is a religion. It is the faith of atheism which replaces God with man. When you've conned yourself into believing that some kind of ancient slime morphed into progressively complex and directional life forms, this is faith, not science.

I don't buy that one bit and I have no idea where you got the idea evolution is a religion of atheists.

There are scientists out there that both believe in evolution and are Christians. How exactly do you reconcile that?

Please don't tell me I have conned myself or that anyone else has conned me. I find that a reprehensible statement.

Evolution replaces nothing except the fable of genesis in the Christian bible. I comfortably put my faith in the slowly expanding knowledge base that is science rather than in a several thousand year old book that has aboslutely no proof of validity.

[nolanrh]

I actually cringed while reading that post but I'll limit my reply to the following statement:

Many mathematicians, including some I know personally (3 advanced math degrees and an actuary for an insurance company) have concluded that the probability of evolution (eyes & brain development) is so astronomical that it takes far more faith to believe that theory than to believe in a Creator.

Oh really? Did you ask your mathematician friends to calculate the probability that there is a creator and compare the two? I would love to see the basis for that calculation...

[pat1167]

Oh really? Did you ask your mathematician friends to calculate the probability that there is a creator and compare the two? I would love to see the basis for that calculation...

As you may know, a negative cannot be proven; only the statistical likelihood of a positive. Evolution, unless combined with a Creator as "guided evolution" which many of my friends and myself consider reasonably possible is plausible. That it happened by random chance is not.

[Nebula]

As you may know, a negative cannot be proven; only the statistical likelihood of a positive. Evolution, unless combined with a Creator as "guided evolution" which many of my friends and myself consider reasonably possible is plausible. That it happened by random chance is not...

...in your opinion.

[nolanrh]

Oh really? Did you ask your mathematician friends to calculate the probability that there is a creator and compare the two? I would love to see the basis for that calculation...

As you may know, a negative cannot be proven; only the statistical likelihood of a positive. Evolution, unless combined with a Creator as "guided evolution" which many of my friends and myself consider reasonably possible is plausible. That it happened by random chance is not.

I never asked anyone to prove a negative, only the statistical likelihood of a positive... of a creator existing and guiding evolution.

Evolution is NOT random chance. Mutations are random but those that cause us to evolve are not selected "randomly". In fact they are guided, not by a creator but by natural selection. The scientific community has accepted natural selection as the guiding factor based on scientific method.

You say evolution, the combination of random mutations and guided by natural selection is less likely than evolution guided by a creator. But what evidence is there at all of this creator guiding evolution?

You can't just assert a creator guided evolution without providing evidence that the creator exists and guides evolution.

Nolan

[pat1167]

Evolution replaces nothing except the fable of genesis in the Christian bible. I comfortably put my faith in the slowly expanding knowledge base that is science rather than in a several thousand year old book that has absolutely no proof of validity.

Unfortunately, evolution replaces much more than that. It makes man into nothing more than an evolved animal. It has been used to justify eugenics and other atrocities of the past with its “survival of the fittest” slogan. People have used it to place one race above another and to call one group or another deficient and worthy of extinction.

Most of the Bible (about 2/3rd's of it) is far more ancient, than the establishment of Christianity. Much of the history contained in the Original or Old Testament including Jericho, Temple walls at Karnak, Mari Tablets, the discoveries of Ur and Petra have been substantiated in recent centuries. That it has not all been proven is true, but to say that there is “absolutely no proof”, is just untrue.

To write off the 2000 yr old book, the New Testament, is just as unreasonable as those who take it 100% literally as much if is allegory (to teach a lesson through stories) and has moral as well as literary value.

[Nebula]

Evolution replaces nothing except the fable of genesis in the Christian bible. I comfortably put my faith in the slowly expanding knowledge base that is science rather than in a several thousand year old book that has absolutely no proof of validity.

Unfortunately, evolution replaces much more than that. It makes man into nothing more than an evolved animal. It has been used to justify eugenics and other atrocities of the past with its “survival of the fittest” slogan. People have used it to place one race above another and to call one group or another deficient and worthy of extinction.

Most of the Bible (about 2/3rd's of it) is far more ancient, than the establishment of Christianity. Much of the history contained in the Original or Old Testament including Jericho, Temple walls at Karnak, Mari Tablets, the discoveries of Ur and Petra have been substantiated in recent centuries. That it has not all been proven is true, but to say that there is “absolutely no proof”, is just untrue.

To write off the 2000 yr old book, the New Testament, is just as unreasonable as those who take it 100% literally as much if is allegory (to teach a lesson through stories) and has moral as well as literary value.

Let me ask you this. Suppose for a moment that we did evolve from primordial slime and that it took billions of years and a whole of lot of chance to do it. Would the question not remain: where did the primordial soup come from?

I do not see evolution replacing God or the belief in one in any way, shape or form. It certainly puts Genesis into the fable category but that's about it.

I also suggest you don't bring up evolution as the starter of bad things lest cerealkiller come in here with his list of all the justifications that have been made to do harm to people in the name of the bible.

[pat1167]

Let me ask you this. Suppose for a moment that we did evolve from primordial slime and that it took billions of years and a whole of lot of chance to do it. Would the question not remain: where did the primordial soup come from?

I do not see evolution replacing God or the belief in one in any way, shape or form. It certainly puts Genesis into the fable category but that's about it.

I also suggest you don't bring up evolution as the starter of bad things lest cerealkiller come in here with his list of all the justifications that have been made to do harm to people in the name of the bible.

We agree on more than you may think.

Genesis; meaning 6-24 hr days is definitely a myth. Not logical or justifiable with the substantiated age of the earth. Have you been to Drumheller lately? It is very interesting.

Ok, I promise to stay away from ck hot spots.

[Nebula]

Let me ask you this. Suppose for a moment that we did evolve from primordial slime and that it took billions of years and a whole of lot of chance to do it. Would the question not remain: where did the primordial soup come from?

I do not see evolution replacing God or the belief in one in any way, shape or form. It certainly puts Genesis into the fable category but that's about it.

I also suggest you don't bring up evolution as the starter of bad things lest cerealkiller come in here with his list of all the justifications that have been made to do harm to people in the name of the bible.

We agree on more than you may think.

Genesis; meaning 6-24 hr days is definitely a myth. Not logical or justifiable with the substantiated age of the earth. Have you been to Drumheller lately? It is very interesting.

Ok, I promise to stay away from ck hot spots.

Drumheller was a bit of a letdown for me actually. Now Dinosaur Provincial Park... that's a whole other story. It's like walking into a time warp there.

My initial two points still stand.

1) Evolution is not an atheist theory, per se. I don't think it precludes anything other than the 'literal' translation of Genesis (that better?)
2) Evolution still allows for God, at least in my mind:

How did we come to be?
We evolved from lower life forms.

Where did the lower life forms come from?
Even lower life forms.

Well where did they come from?
The primordial soup.

Who made the soup?
I don't know, ask the cook.

[Mr Danksworth]

Perhaps a theory is one that when repeated enough, becomes acceptable to the majority of the population as well as a majority of the scientists.

Unfortunately, you have no idea of how the scientific method works. What you are describing is how religion is passed down.

There are many leaps in the logic, including several frauds discovered over the years, such as Peking Man, Nebraska Man, and the invented embryo sequence by Dr. Haeckel.

I have found no evidence of The Peking Man being a fraud, unless you check out the creationist/id liiterature. No modern textbook uses Nebraska Man anymore and none had done so in a lifetime. The process of science works because it is not a dogma. Indeed the reason why creationism is not science has more with the fact that it is dogma than the fact that happens to be wrong. It was evolutionary scientists that showed that Nebraska Man was wrong.

Archaeopteryx is now considered only a bird, not an intermediate fossil.

Outright misinformation. The only place I have found this 'fact' is from the creationist/ID side. And that aside, what about the others?

(eyes & brain development)

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

http://chronicle.uchicago.edu/040429/brainsize.shtml

Evolution is a religion. It is the faith of atheism which replaces God with man. When you've conned yourself into believing that some kind of ancient slime morphed into progressively complex and directional life forms, this is faith, not science.

Atheism is neither religion nor faith, but the happy freedom from them. Declaring it to be otherwise, sadly, will not make it so.

Unfortunately, evolution replaces much more than that. It makes man into nothing more than an evolved animal. It has been used to justify eugenics and other atrocities of the past with its “survival of the fittest” slogan. People have used it to place one race above another and to call one group or another deficient and worthy of extinction.

Wow, haven't heard that one before. First I'll point out the atrocities committed in the name of your chosen deity...then I'll point out that Natural selection is the "natural engine" which drives the theory of evolution. Natural selection is NOT eugenics, artifical selection, or selective breeding. It is the process described by Darwin which is demonstrated by the change in the heritable traits of a population over successive generations, as determined by shifts in the allele frequencies of genes. Tinkering by man with genetic information is not an example of natural selection as described by Darwin. It is an example of artificial selection, whereby genes are selected for characteristics not based upon a naturally occuring selection process. That mankind can produce a cloned animal, is not an example of natural selection. It is an example of man using genetic knowledge to predetermine a desired result. That mankind can use a system of eugenics against those who they arbitarily consider "unfit"; is also not an example of natural selection. It is an example of the use of genetic knowledge in order to prejudicially determine "fitness."
Certainly, neither eugenics nor artifical selection, fit the description espoused by Darwin.

[zzontar]

Alexander Mebane on the probabilities of abiogenesis:


Although this "disproof by mathematical impossibility" might well
be called the most fundamental argument against Darwin's imagined "
accidental creation" of all new organisms, it has historically been
the easiest one for believers to laugh off, because the matter is so
complex that, in general, it is quite impossible to produce
estimates of the improbabilities involved that are more than "impression-
istic". Much quoted has been Fred Hoyle's striking simile for the prob-
ability of an accidental or spontaneous formation of the simplest known
life-form: "comparable to the probability that a tornado sweeping
through an airplane junkyard would happen to assemble a flyable
Boeing 747" 39-but, of course, no coercive proof can be given that
that comparison is a realistic one. The French physicist Lecomte
du Nouy, in 1947, calculated an "astronomical" improbability for
the accidental assemblage of even a small protein-but, since he made
the wholly unrealistic assumption that its natural formation could occur
only by a "fortuitous concourse" of all its atoms, his result was (rightly)
ridiculed by chemists, and his point (wrongly) inferred to be unsound.

But, as it happens, a similar calculation has more recently been carried
out which, unlike du Nouy's, "leans over backwards" to be as favorable
as possible, though it leads to the same conclusion. Robert Shapiro is a
chemist who actively participated in the post-1952 experimental
investigations of "origin of life by natural chemical evolution", and in
1986 published a very significant book (Origins)
summarizing that work and the conclusions to be drawn from it. Dismissing
as unrealistic the idea that either DNA or RNA could ever have spontaneously
"evolved", because of the complexity of those purine base + sugar +
phosphoric acid structures,t he asks what could have been the simplest
possible "pre-living" chemical assemblage that might have been able to
generate the essential quality of life, self-replication. Generously
oversimplifying to the maximum degree credible (or beyond), he proposes
(p. 296) that the first "proto-life" might conceivably have emerged from
a set of as few as ten very small "primitive enzymes", each one a
mini-protein of only 25 links, and all constructed from a set of only four
amino acids, rather than the twenty that Nature now employs. Assuming
for the purpose the real natural occurrence of a "primordial soup"
that consisted exclusively of those four amino acids (which is of
course, a simply ridiculous postulate), he proceeds to show
that, under these absurdly favorable conditions, the probability
of "spontaneously", or accidentally, forming the requisite set of
molecules would be about 1 in 10^150. So, if something like 10^150
random trials were available, the thing might really have
happened. But he had previously calculated (p. 126) that, if one
assumes that the Earth was covered by a 10-km-deep layer of "soup",
and that random trials went on at the rate of one billion per second
in every cubic micrometer (billionth of a cubic millimeter) of that
ocean for one billion years (the maximum time that really elapsed
before life appeared), only 1.5 x 10^62 separate tries could be made.
(I have checked this calculation, and found it correct.) This number
is so invisibly tiny compared to 10^150 (far tinier than a bacterium
compared to the whole Solar System!) that the spontaneous natural
formation of the ten mini-enzymes is thus demonstrated to be
strictly impossible. This amounts to a proof that, even when making
the most favorable assumptions conceivable, one is simply forbidden
to take seriously the proposition that "Life on Earth must have
arisen spontaneously, in some natural and unintentional way...

In fact, the whole Oparin'Haldane picture of a naturally-formed "
primordial organic soup", though it was taken very seriously for
some thirty years after the first promising.looking Urey.Miller
experiment of 1952, must now be called an "exploded" belief. Not
only do the early rocks show no trace of its presence (it would
necessarily have generated enormous quantities of rather stable
organic "tars"). but it is now admitted by all that the prerequisite "
Jovian" atmosphere (methane,ammonia,hydrogen) would in reality have
been blown away by the Sun very early in Earth's formation: our
real primordial atmosphere consisted, like those of Venus and Mars,
almost entirely of carbon dioxide. There is no way to produce any
sort of "organic soup" from such an atmosphere.

This would make solely evolution as our reason for existence not only improbable but impossible.

[Mr Danksworth]

'Evolutionism and Fascism' Classy, real classy. Is that what they are teaching you kids nowadays?

http://www.bearfabrique.org/evolution/evolution.html

[zzontar]

I guess for some, believing there's a God is about as believable as believing we evolved from a hot molten ball is to others.