Evolution and Creationism

[Varthikes]

Here is an article I found interesting. If you read it, be sure to read all of it.

[Mikey]

Maybe it's not quite relevant to the current state of the universe, except in an explanatory role, but that does not preclude it from being an interesting topic of debate.

As science stands now, though, the origin of the universe is almost wholly the province of faith - until a true GUT comes to light, we have nothing else; special relativity breaks down at such a small scale as the origin, and quantum theory doesn't shoe enough attraction to overcome the repulsive forms of the remaining three forces.

[Mikey]

Here is an article I found interesting. If you read it, be sure to read all of it.

It is interesting, and I respect your viewpoint if only partially agree. However, those who belief firmly and solely in evolution (vs. creation) do just that: BELIEVE. In other words, they take it on faith, and require no proof, much the same as I require no proof in order to believe in G-d.

What I'm saying, I guess, is that you won't convert an evolutionist - their response to a demonstration (although that article is a little weak) of the lack of evidence for evolution would be, "Where's the MORE solid evidence for creation?"

[Tiberius]

Here is an article I found interesting. If you read it, be sure to read all of it.

It certainly is interesting. I've got many responses to it...

The following quotes are all from the article. My responses will contain a number of links, but this is in order to save space instead of typing it all out.

First of all, the lack of a case for evolution is clear from the fact that no one has ever seen it happen.

This is incorrect. New species have been observed (and macroevolution is defined as the change from one species to another). THIS page has many examples.

If it were a real process, evolution should still be occurring, and there should be many "transitional" forms that we could observe.

Again, this is incorrect. Many examples of transitional forms have been found, as THIS page indicates. Also, each species is a transitional form between what came before and what will come after.

Evolutionists commonly answer the above criticism by claiming that evolution goes too slowly for us to see it happening today.

And it's true. Remember, a population evolves, not individual animals. Evolution does require many generations of animals for a change to occur and spread throughout a population.

Even those who believe in rapid evolution recognize that a considerable number of generations would be required for one distinct "kind" to evolve into another more complex kind. There ought, therefore, to be a considerable number of true transitional structures preserved in the fossils - after all, there are billions of non-transitional structures there!

Fossilisation is very rare. THIS page has more information about the topic.

With respect to the origin of life, a leading researcher in this field, Leslie Orgel, after noting that neither proteins nor nucleic acids could have arisen without the other, concludes:

And so, at first glance, one might have to conclude that life could never, in fact, have originated by chemical means.5

Being committed to total evolution as he is, Dr. Orgel cannot accept any such conclusion as that. Therefore, he speculates that RNA may have come first, but then he still has to admit that:

The precise events giving rise to the RNA world remain unclear. . . . investigators have proposed many hypotheses, but evidence in favor of each of them is fragmentary at best.6

Translation: "There is no known way by which life could have arisen naturalistically."

So? Just because we don't have the information at the moment is no reason to throw out evolution and claim that God is responsible. There is no way to logically go from saying that something is unclear to saying that same thing is impossible.

Neither is there any clue as to how the one-celled organisms of the primordial world could have evolved into the vast array of complex multi-celled invertebrates of the Cambrian period. Even dogmatic evolutionist Gould admits that:

The Cambrian explosion was the most remarkable and puzzling event in the history of life.8

The Cambrain explosion is dealt with HERE.

So how do evolutionists arrive at their evolutionary trees from fossils of oganisms which didn't change during their durations?

Fossil discoveries can muddle over attempts to construct simple evolutionary trees - fossils from key periods are often not intermediates, but rather hodge podges of defining features of many different groups. . . . Generally, it seems that major groups are not assembled in a simple linear or progressive manner - new features are often "cut and pasted" on different groups at different times.11

This is making the unjustified assumption that the evolutionary tree must be simple. It is very complex.

All that paleoanthropologists have to show for more than 100 years of digging are remains from fewer than 2000 of our ancestors. They have used this assortment of jawbones, teeth and fossilized scraps, together with molecular evidence from living species, to piece together a line of human descent going back 5 to 8 million years to the time when humans and chimpanzees diverged from a common ancestor.12

First of all, there are at least twice as many. And it doesn't take a huge number to show the changes between different forms of homonid.

A number of evolutionists have even argued that DNA itself is evidence for evolution since it is common to all organisms. More often is the argument used that similar DNA structures in two different organisms proves common evolutionary ancestry.
Neither argument is valid. There is no reason whatever why the Creator could not or would not use the same type of genetic code based on DNA for all His created life forms. This is evidence for intelligent design and creation, not evolution.

First of all, this is claiming a false dichotomy by assuming that if evolution is disproved, Creation MUST be the truth. This is not true, there are other options.

Secondly, there are some similarities that cannot rationally be attributed to design. See HERE.

Lewin also mentions just a few typical contradictions yielded by this type of evidence in relation to more traditional Darwinian "proofs."

The elephant shrew, consigned by traditional analysis to the order insectivores . . . is in fact more closely related to . . . the true elephant. Cows are more closely related to dolphins than they are to horses. The duckbilled platypus . . . is on equal evolutionary footing with . . . kangaroos and koalas.15

It is not explained why such claims are contradictory.

The abundance of so-called "junk DNA" in the genetic code also has been offered as a special type of evidence for evolution, especially those genes which they think have experienced mutations, sometimes called "pseudogenes."16 However, evidence is accumulating rapidly today that these supposedly useless genes do actually perform useful functions.

THIS page discusses junk DNA.

The law of increasing entropy - also known as the second law of thermodynamics - stipulates that all systems in the real world tend to go "downhill," as it were, toward disorganization and decreased complexity.
This law of entropy is, by any measure, one of the most universal, bestproved laws of nature. It applies not only in physical and chemical systems, but also in biological and geological systems - in fact, in all systems, without exception.

The second law of thermodynamics does not apply to evolution. It applies to a closed system, and the earth (with constant energy streaming in from the sun) is not a closed system.

Evolution is Religion - Not Science

Religion contains (among other things) holy men, holy texts, worship, places of worship, ceremonies involved in worship, prayer...

Evolution has none of those.

The question is, just why do they need to counter the creationist message? Why are they so adamantly committed to anti-creationism?

One could just as well ask, "The question is, just why do creationists need to counter the evolution message? Why are they so adamantly committed to anti-evolutionism?"

And atheism, no less than theism, is a religion! Even doctrinaire-atheistic evolutionist Richard Dawkins admits that atheism cannot be proved to be true.

Of course we can't prove that there isn't a God.22

Therefore, they must believe it, and that makes it a religion.

First of all, this is speaking about atheism, not evolution.

Atheism is not a religion for the same reasons evolution is not a religion.

Secondly, you can't prove that a squirrel hasn't tapdanced on the roof of your car at 3am, you can only believe it, so does that make it a religion too?

Since evolution is not a labo ratory science, there is no way to test its validity

The laboratory is not the only place were science is studied. Vulcanism is studied in the field, yet that is science.

In closing this survey of the scientific case against evolution (and, therefore, for creation), the reader is reminded again that all quotations in the article are from doctrinaire evolutionists.

Again, the false dichotomy. The claim "if evolution is false, the creationism must be true" has never been justified, and there are many alternatives, such as the Dreamtime of the Australian aboriginals.

The article operates from a misinformed and incorrect of evolutionary theory that allows of misinterpretation of what the scientists have said.

In fact, the entire article claims that evolution is a giant worldwide conspiracy by people who are anti-God. Such a secret is impossible to keep, and if it were true, disproving evolution would be ridiculously easy. Unless, of course, any course involving evolutionary theory includes the teacher saying, "Psst, it's all a bunch of balony, but just pretend. We don't want those pesky creationists finding out."

[Teaos]

There are nutters out their who will claim stupid stuff. You have to ignore them and focus on the more intelligent ones. While I don't believe I don't think people who do an stupid. Some are but some who believe in evolution are stupid.

[shran]

Not that I am a supporter of crreationists, but I do have some 'evidence' that might back up their cause.

http://video.google.nl/videosearch?q=kent+hovind - professor who specialized in backing up creationism
http://www.subspace-comms.net/index.php?topic=558.0 - historical backing for biblical events
http://www.subspace-comms.net/index.php?topic=1114.0 - quite a heated discussion on creationism which probably sums up most things.
http://proofthatgodexists.org/ like the URL says, proof that god exists.
http://proofthatgodexists.org/main.php - for those who do not wish to do the insane questioning first.

[Graham Kennedy]

Um... you really want to cite Kent Hovind? The fraudster Kent Hoving who is currently in jail for defrauding his taxes and lying about it on something like fifty occasions? The Kent Hovind whose scientific qualifications were bought from a fundamentalist christian diploma mill?

Really?

[Granitehewer]

Graham, you're a font of facts, is there anything you don't know?!
Respect!

[Captain Seafort]

Speaking of Hovind, a handy resource for dealing with him and his ilk can be found here:

http://bbs.stardestroyer.net/viewtopic.php?t=38371

To add to Graham's list of his antics Hovind also offered a quarter of a million dollars to anyone who could prove evolution to his satisfaction. Unsurprisingly the list of conditions that went along with this offer not only included a definition of evolution bearing no resemblance to how it actually works but also horrifically abused the scientific method by demanding that the responder effectively give a mathematical proof.

[Graham Kennedy]

I've done this debate before. More than once.

For your information... here is Hovind's education...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kent_Hovin ... _education


This is the "college" he "attended". Not that this photo shows the entire campus and all buildings. Oh, and his dissertation is secret, not available to the public. Doesn't it just fill you with confidence?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Patr ... rsity2.jpg

Let us make absolutely no mistake about this. I have no doubt that the majority of people who believe in creationism do so honestly. But those who lead the movement, those who write the books and do the lectures and appear on the TV shows. People like Kent Hovind. These people are deliberate, knowing liars. They have openly admitted that their intent with "intelligent design" and the like is simply to sneak religion into schools past the whole separation of church and state thing. That's it, that's their agenda. And they are perfectly prepared to perjure themselves to accomplish it.

[Captain Seafort]

Speaking of Hovind, a handy reference for dealing with him and his ilk can be found here:

http://bbs.stardestroyer.net/viewtopic.php?t=38371

In addition to Graham's list of his antics, Hovind once offered a quater of a million dollars to anyone who could prove evolution to his satisfaction. Unsurprisingly the offer came with a list of conditions that not only grossly misrepresented the theory, but also butchered scientific method by requiring absolute proof that evolution is the only possible answer to the evidence at hand.

[shran]

I did not know that about Kent Hovind. If I had known that, I would not have recited it, probably.

[Graham Kennedy]

I did not know that about Kent Hovind. If I had known that, I would not have recited it, probably.

I know, shran. I don't know you well at all obviously, but I have no problem believing you are an absolutely honest and honourable man. What you have to understand is that when you read stuff like creationist books and websites... those people are LYING to you. They know intelligent design and creationism are entirely unsupported. They tell you it is anyway.

This video is two hours long. I know that's a lot to get through, but believe me it's well well worth watching if you have any doubt at all that creationism is unscientific nonsense.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVRsWAjvQSg

[Mikey]

...creationism is unscientific nonsense.

I posted a point of view which holds creationism and evolutionism as compatible. In that rambling, I mentioned that creationism is designed to explore the "why" of the matter - as opposed to the "how," which is process-based and explained by evolution. Ergo, to my way of thinking, creationism is the faith-based componenet of those two.

Unscientific? Definitely. Nonsense? Now, I must take exception to that.

My religion, all of the Indo-Aryan religions, and most of the world's other religions, include some sort of creation mythos or text. Would you call Judaism, or Hindu, or Norse paganism, or any other person's faith nonsense?

Please don't mistake my tone, Mr. Kennedy. You have always seemed to be a fair and right-minded man - that's how I know I can ask that rhetorical question, because I know it wasn't your intention to insult anyone here. I would never seek to dissuade you from having your opinion just because it differs from mine; just don't call my beliefs "nonsense."

[Tiberius]

Still, creationism does violate known scientific fact. Nonsense, being derived from "Non" and "Sense" does describe something which goes against known fact. It may have a rather insulting implication to it (which personally I wouldn't include - science does not need to resort to ridicule), but from a strict interpretation of the word, it is accurate.

However, I would use the much more neutral "Incorrect" instead of nonsense.