Creation vs. Evolution

[Grand Prix]

The laws of physics are "right" to our current frame of reference. Of course they will always be "flawed", even after we find the Unified Theory. But the nature of science is progression. Just because we as human beings cannot understand the concept of a super natural being doesn't mean that we have to assume the Earth is flat. We know that we will always eventually be proven wrong, but that doesn't mean we should give up on science.

 

[Pako]

The laws of physics are "right" to our current frame of reference. Of course they will always be "flawed", even after we find the Unified Theory. But the nature of science is progression. Just because we as human beings cannot understand the concept of a super natural being doesn't mean that we have to assume the Earth is flat. We know that we will always eventually be proven wrong, but that doesn't mean we should give up on science.

All I need to do is say THANK YOU! You are right on all accounts, very good. 👍

Here's what I don't get. If people can be open to new ideas and possibilities, especially when you consider how vast our universe is, why is the concept of a divine being dismissed so quickly when such concepts of "infinite" is so quickly accepted. Seems like the more you study about our universe, the more prominent God would be in your thoughts of possibility. It might just be that the god that people so quickly discount isn't the God they thought (or didn't think) He was. If our understanding of the Laws of Physics are wrong, then it's possible for God to exist outside of the Laws of Physics as we understand them today.

 

[PS]

Yep a single cell is equal to life.. What do you call the single-cell organisms like the Paramecium or the lowly bacteria? Are they not alive? If you try to look at a Biology book single cells formed into multicellular organisms...

If you know me, you know I'm being sarcastic and satirizing Swift's logic. I didn't think that or ask it in the form of a question.

To answer Pako's question: Lack of evidence. Simple as that. The burden of proof is on those who believe, not for unbelievers to disprove because it is technically impossible to disprove something. Ever since the 1600's (when a preist proposed the earth was 6000 years old) scientists have asked for proof, yet the church and those associated with it said "omg, don't you ever wonder why....[stuff], or ever wonder how [stuff]?!" and never actually try and do anything to prove his existence except by trying to find out-dated flaws in Science.

 

[code_kev]

Earth is also doing a great job of backing evolution.

Why? Because there never was a book written about the flying spaghetti monster that mentioned the creation of the universe, man, and has scientific facts that back up its creation account.

So if I wrote a book that details the creation of man etc, said that the great spaghetti monster spoke to me in divine ways, called it the spaghettinomicon and then made up some pseudo science to back it up, you'd believe it? Hell, I know you would, you could then start quoting passages as if it was some kind of proof!

"Chapter 8, verse 5.15, "and the spaghetti monster created people, in the form of those who would eat him, and he knew that it was good. He gave them taste buds with which to taste spaghetti and all that goes with it, and he knew that it was DAMNNNN good""

I love the "has scientific facts that back up its creation account" bit. Quite funny. I've never seen any real scientific facts, except the crap on answeringgenesis, which everyone knows is a joke. Talking dinosaurs...

 

[TheCracker]

I love the "has scientific facts that back up its creation account" bit. Quite funny. I've never seen any real scientific facts, except the crap on answeringgenesis, which everyone knows is a joke. Talking dinosaurs...

Trouble with Creation is that the 'science' behind their theories is geared towards explaining things written in a book. Where as the science behind Evolution theories is based around 'found objects' ie fossils etc. Creation uses science to prove stories. Evolution uses science to prove reality.

Here's what I don't get. If people can be open to new ideas and possibilities, especially when you consider how vast our universe is, why is the concept of a divine being dismissed so quickly when such concepts of "infinite" is so quickly accepted. Seems like the more you study about our universe, the more prominent God would be in your thoughts of possibility. It might just be that the god that people so quickly discount isn't the God they thought (or didn't think) He was. If our understanding of the Laws of Physics are wrong, then it's possible for God to exist outside of the Laws of Physics as we understand them today.

The reason why many people dismiss the concept of a 'divine being' creating the Universe is that its such a 'Human' way of thinking. The more we discover about the Universe, the more we realise how insignificent the human race is in the grand scale of things. If mankind was created in the form of God, and mankind's physiology is only suited to the physics and gravity of our own planet - doesn't this seem a little strange?

 

[Duke]

Why? Because there never was a book written about the flying spaghetti monster that mentioned the creation of the universe, man, and has scientific facts that back up its creation account. Find me a creation myth that has those 3.

I can't, because there is not a shred of scientific evidence to back up any Creation myth. I'm sure you don't mean to be, but you keep making the case for an all-natural source of life stronger and stronger.

There is NO - zip, zero, zilch, null, nada, rien - scientific evidence that backs up the Judeo-Christian Creation myth, or any Creation myth. There just isn't any. Answersingenesis is nothing but the world's largest collection of fake science painted over good old fashioned Creationism as a means of attempting an end run around the prohibition of teaching Creationism in American public schools. It is nothing else.

So your theory rests upon geological shifts and the passing of time? Just how steady of a theory is that? There is no facts or anything to prove that happened.

It's a hell of a lot steadier than a book written 2000+ years ago when there was virtually NO scientific understanding of the world at all, and never allowed to change! At least scientific theory accounts for the vast majority of the physical evidence we live in. There are kilotons of factual, physical evidence to support our understanding of the physical shifts the planet has undergone in its multibillion-year life. Just because you don't understand (or more accurately, don't want to understand) does not mean that the facts do not exist. You can ignore the real world all you wish but somehow it manages to keep existing.

Why did the perfect building blocks of life arise on their own? Also, you believe these parts met in a ocean?

Hitching: “In other words, the theoretical chances of getting through even this first relatively easy stage (getting amino acids) in the evolution of life is forbidding.”

He's discounting the effects of the massive quantity of time, plus he's based everything on his assertion that ultraviolet radiation would be instantly deadly, and his assertion that nothing but 03 (ozone) blocks ultraviolet.

I can counter that: "God couldn't possibly have created the Earth." That statement has equal scientific validity to Hitchings.

I'm unratrional?

Yes, you are unrational. You've abandoned the physical evidence and the logical anlysis of it in favor of a supernatural myth that is not supported by observed phenomena. That is by definition non-rational.

Am I the one who believes in 1 : 100000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 odds? If you went to a casino and you saw a man bet everything he owned on those odds what would you think of him? Would you think he was rational?

You're making the classic Creationist's "mistake". I put "mistake" in quotes because it is rarely an accident; usually it is done purposely as a smoke screen in order to cloud the issue.

You quote some inconceivably huge astronomical odds against life arising naturally as evidence that it must have been supernatually Created. But those odds are based on an incorrect assertion that renders them meaningless.

The odds against life happening precisely the way it did are astronomical. You are correct, if you start with current existence as a fait accompli and try to reverse-engineer it randomly, it will never happen. But that's making the incorrect assumption that our current state of life is the only possible form life could take.

It isn't. That's why your computer motherboard analogy falls apart instantly as soon as you look at it.

There is a nearly infinite number of paths that life could have taken from those basic amino acids to self-awareness. In the nearly infinite universe, that makes the odds of it happening resolve to 1:1. In fact the odds of it happening only once are infinitessimally small. This means that you can put a 1 followed by an infinite number of zeroes as your odds against life occurring naturally, and it will still be meaningless because the logical assumption on which the argument is based is meainingless.

So again, you can believe what you wish, but admit to yourself that it is non-rational and that you don't care about that.

 

[sicbeing]

People can't be expected to know everything, but it sure does help in this debate.

 

[Danoff]

I notice you call gravity Newton's law. How is it his? Better yet, who created this law?

Why newton did! Before Newton F did not equal MA. He took the universe in his hands and molded it so that F would now equal MA and the Earth could start orbiting the sun (before newton it didn't because Newton's law of gravity didn't exist). Gosh without Newton we'd all be dead. In fact, I wonder how Newton survived long enough to create physics.

Why is 1+1 always 2? Why is math perfect?

Because it is defined perfectly.

Why can you use simple formulas to figure out pretty much anything number related? Why does it all fit together?

You can't, and it doesn't.

If the universe was one big accident, why did an accident produce order?

Human beings were not an accident

Feel free to apply that to the universe.

And if you say it started in disorder but became orderly, then, why?

Logic.

Why were laws in place that bring order out of disorder?

Don't know, neither do you.

It didnt have to be that way. You all well know that order does not result from accidents, and things left over a period of time get worst, not better.

I see. That's why computers exist then right? That's why we live longer today than we ever have in human history? That's why a chaotic system like captialism results in a perfectly ordered market and has rocketed America to be the most powerful nation on Earth (and IMHO in the history of the Earth).

Does a car crash produce better results?

Depends on what cars were invovled - check the ugly car thread.

Does a car crash produce order? Does a car crash create anything?

Oh yes. A car crash certainly creates things. It creates light and sound. It creates lots of new metal configurations. It creates an insurance paper trail a mile long and a big pain in the neck when the legal battles ensue. But a car crash is not a phsyical law, a car crash is not the same thing as reproduction.

How does great order come out of an accident?

Human beings were not an accident

Use the same argument I made for human beings for the universe.

Geometry, everything, where did it come from? A large explosion?

I don't know, neither do you.

Laws need a lawmaker

You're limiting your own thinking.

I can defeat this argument with the phrase "lawmakers need a maker too".

If the government put 1 good law in effect for every 100,000,000, would there be order?

Don't get me started on the government.

If a doctor did one good move for every 100,000,000 would you let him operate on you? If a driver did one good move for every 100,000,000 would you drive with him?

This fundamentally misunderstands evolution. When a doctor or a dirver makes 999,999,999 wrong moves you're worse off than you started - not so with evolution. Natural selection ensures that those poor choices don't end up in the gene pool for long. So the analogy is flawed. A driver will never get where he's going if onely 1 in 100,000,000 moves are correct. Here's a better analogy.

Let's say you make 100,000,000 dollars per year and you spend $999,999,999 each year. So you save only 1 dollar every year. In a few billion years you've saved up some serious cash. That's the analogy.

 

[sicbeing]

man, its been 5 hours since the last post, has this thread finally died? Duke and Danoff had really good points, Id like to see the creationists argue back.

edited for typos, even though there are still some there.

 

[Swift]

man, its been 5 hours since the last post, has this thread finally died? Duke and Danoff had really good points, Id like to see the creationists argue back.

edited for typos, even though there are still some there.

Yes, they did. However, I would venture to say that they didn't gain any ground.

Many times Danoff would say I don't know and you don't either.

The fact of the matter is that all things in our universe have a creator. You wouldn't believe that the computer I'm typing on right now appeared here or was a simple collection of lesser parts that came together to form it over time in a random fashion. But you believe that of planets that are much more intracate then a computer.

If you don't want to believe in teh bible version of creation, that fine. But to think that all of this is random, well, that's irrational.

 

[Zardoz]

...The fact of the matter is that all things in our universe have a creator...

I've plowed through just about this whole thread to see if anybody had asked you this question, and I couldn't find it, so I'll ask it here. Pardon me if I'm repeating something that has been asked before, but if you believe that everything must be "created" by a "Creator", and that random chance can not be responsible for anything, then how do you explain the existence of your Creator?

Where did your Supreme Being come from? Who created Him?

 

[Danoff]

Yes, they did. However, I would venture to say that they didn't gain any ground.

Many times Danoff would say I don't know and you don't either.

The fact of the matter is that all things in our universe have a creator. You wouldn't believe that the computer I'm typing on right now appeared here or was a simple collection of lesser parts that came together to form it over time in a random fashion. But you believe that of planets that are much more intracate then a computer.

If you don't want to believe in teh bible version of creation, that fine. But to think that all of this is random, well, that's irrational.

Zardoz makes a good point above.

Swift,

I don't see how you can sit there and compare life to a computer when we've shown how those things are very different. We know of no natural processes that will create a computer, only human intervention. But we can calculate exactly how extremely primitive life can form from chemicals - and we can show how that extremely primitive life will NECESSARILY become something much more complicated.


I also don't see how you can say that everything in the universe has to have a creator when you yourself don't think your creator has a creator. But you ask me where did matter and engergy and the laws of physics come from? I'll tell you I don't know. I don't know if a creator was required, maybe so... maybe not. Some particles spring into and out of existance (hawking theorized and provided evidence to support this). It's a pair of particles that comes from nothing and goes right back to nothing - a positive and negative charge if you will the separate into existance an then collide and cancel each other out of existance.

To say that everything must have a creator is to unecessarily limit the scope of the discussion. How can something come from nothing? I don't know. Is it possible? I don't know. Have I seen it happen? No. Does that mean it will not happen? No. Can I rule it out as a possibility? No. Can you? No.

 

[PS]

Zardoz makes a good point above.

Swift,

I don't see how you can sit there and compare life to a computer when we've shown how those things are very different. We know of no natural processes that will create a computer, only human intervention. But we can calculate exactly how extremely primitive life can form from chemicals - and we can show how that extremely primitive life will NECESSARILY become something much more complicated.


I also don't see how you can say that everything in the universe has to have a creator when you yourself don't think your creator has a creator. But you ask me where did matter and engergy and the laws of physics come from? I'll tell you I don't know. I don't know if a creator was required, maybe so... maybe not. Some particles spring into and out of existance (hawking theorized and provided evidence to support this). It's a pair of particles that comes from nothing and goes right back to nothing - a positive and negative charge if you will the separate into existance an then collide and cancel each other out of existance.

To say that everything must have a creator is to unecessarily limit the scope of the discussion. How can something come from nothing? I don't know. Is it possible? I don't know. Have I seen it happen? No. Does that mean it will not happen? No. Can I rule it out as a possibility? No. Can you? No.

Excellent point, but I think we'll need Famine if there's going to be any more elaboration on quantum mechanics.

The fact of the matter is that all things in our universe have a creator.

Oh really? Where's the evidence to support that "fact"?

 

[Swift]

Zardoz makes a good point above.

Swift,
To say that everything must have a creator is to unecessarily limit the scope of the discussion. How can something come from nothing? I don't know. Is it possible? I don't know. Have I seen it happen? No. Does that mean it will not happen? No. Can I rule it out as a possibility? No. Can you? No.

This is why it's so circular to talk to you. Because you always say, "I don't know, but you can't prove to me that you know either"

I DO know. Show me in the laws of physics where something can come from nothing?

Danoff, you rule out nothing. Everything is possible to you. There's an old saying, "If you don't stand for something, you'll fall for anything." You believe/trust/have faith in nothing. So, why do you fight so hard against what those of us who do have trust say?

 

[Danoff]

This is why it's so circular to talk to you. Because you always say, "I don't know, but you can't prove to me that you know either"

I DO know. Show me in the laws of physics where something can come from nothing?

Danoff, you rule out nothing. Everything is possible to you. There's an old saying, "If you don't stand for something, you'll fall for anything." You believe/trust/have faith in nothing. So, why do you fight so hard against what those of us who do have trust say?

If you don't know something, it's better to be aware that you don't know.

I don't see what makes anything circular about talking to me. My position on evolution is clear, my position on the creation of the solar system is clear. My position on the origins of the universe is that nobody knows. What's circular about that?

I'm going to have to refer you to hawking for his spontaneous particle generation and destruction theories - but I can tell you that I don't feel bound by our current understanding of physics. I don't have to show you where in physics it says that its possible for something to come from nothing, I only have to say that we may understand it better later. Just like later we might realize there is a God.

As far as not standing for something... when was the last time I sounded wishy washy to you? And when was the last you saw me accept something without question? I hardly think that saying applies.

 

[Famine]

Show me in the laws of physics where something can come from nothing?

Danoff did. It's called "Hawking Radiation".

You can also create nothing from something - which is a lot harder.

 

[Swift]

If you don't know something, it's better to be aware that you don't know.

I don't see what makes anything circular about talking to me. My position on evolution is clear, my position on the creation of the solar system is clear. My position on the origins of the universe is that nobody knows. What's circular about that?

I'm going to have to refer you to hawking for his spontaneous particle generation and destruction theories - but I can tell you that I don't feel bound by our current understanding of physics. I don't have to show you where in physics it says that its possible for something to come from nothing, I only have to say that we may understand it better later. Just like later we might realize there is a God.

As far as not standing for something... when was the last time I sounded wishy washy to you? And when was the last you saw me accept something without question? I hardly think that saying applies.

You're not wishy washy. You simply stand firm on nothing. I guess that's a position.

Famine, what's the deal with Hawkings radiation?

PS, have you or anyone in documented scientific history seen something come from nothing? Nope, someone or something had to be the source for it. That's what I'm saying.

 

[Danoff]

PS, have you or anyone in documented scientific history seen something come from nothing? Nope, someone or something had to be the source for it. That's what I'm saying.

Well the hawking radiation is documented evidence of something coming from nothing. He postulated that you'd be able to see this phenomenon on the event horizon of a black hole.

Here's the deal. Two particles pop into existance and would normally attract right back to each other and cancel each other out of existance, but when they pop into existance on the event horizon of a black hole - one of them can escape, the other one does not. Then you're left with a net zero in the universe (because they still add up to nothing) but we can observe the effect.

It's an example of something coming from nothing and its a documented effect that we've observed on the edge of black holes (at least I think it is). Anyway don't rule it out.

Edit: This leads to the only closed form view of the universe that I know of (including christiantiy). That our universe amounts to these particles poping into and out of existance. That all of the matter in the universe will eventually cancel itself out and then respawn in a big cycle. It does it because it is equivalent to nothing. It does it because it is the same thing as nothing happening at all. Instead of imagining a big bang with one ball of matter, imagine it as two balls - matter and antimatter coming into existance in the same manner as these particles, spewing off galaxies as forming solar systems and life only to cancle itself out in the end and start over.

I find that prospect fascinating. That the sum of our entire universe could be zero - non-existance.

 

[Swift]

Uh, so where did the particles come from?

 

[Danoff]

Uh, so where did the particles come from?

Nothing. And they go back to nothing. They're the logical equivalent of nothing at all.

 

[Danoff]

Ok I read up on hawking radiation just a bit. I HAS NOT been observed at black holes because we don't have the ability to observe something that faint. But it can be observed "indirectly" in laboratory experiments. Anyway it's contraversial but it fits the facts.

 

[Famine]

And they're detectable.

Wikipedia: Hawking Radiation.

 

[code_kev]

I love this, Evolution etc is "irrational", yet believing everything you read in some book wrote by people who claimed to communicate to Gawd, with no proof what so ever at all, is some how more rational? Explain, I don't understand. Swift, you've made your mind up I see. Nothing anyone says, or shows you will ever sway your dogma polluted opinion.

 

[PS]

Aren't quantum mechanics also a form of creating something from nothing? I'm pretty sure I heard that from school, however flawed that might be.

And just for some fun, guys, go read the first 3 pages of this debate.

 

[Swift]

I love this, Evolution etc is "irrational", yet believing everything you read in some book wrote by people who claimed to communicate to Gawd, with no proof what so ever at all, is some how more rational? Explain, I don't understand. Swift, you've made your mind up I see. Nothing anyone says, or shows you will ever sway your dogma polluted opinion.

You choose not to read carefully. I didn't say evolution was irrational. I said that big bang-primodial soup-evolution is irrational.

 

[PS]

Primordial soup evolution is perfectly rational because Famine outlined how it could be formed, along with the big bang and how something can come of nothing as well. It is all perfectly rational. What is not rational is denying countless sources of information to support that and to continue believing in a book of morals with no proof or evidence of anything happening in it to be true.

 

[sukerkin]

PS, you have to be careful about making definite statements like the ones above as there is a difference between rational/logical and correct. There are many things that are rational but wrong, which is why you can have so much fun with logical paradoxes.

What you have to bear in mind that science has a tendency to be just as dogmatic as religion and that, at the bleeding edge of theory, a great deal is taken on faith i.e. the basis for much theory is the acceptance of certain assumptions.

Now I'm not saying that these assumptions are necessarily unreasonable, just that some of them are likely to be things that are 'unproven'. Given that one of the most basic rules of science is that you can never prove anything right, you can only prove it wrong ( ref. Karl Popper), that doesn't imply a fatal flaw in the theory. What it does mean is that it is a theory and not a fact.

One problem I have with arguments such as this is that those with a scientific angle on things tend to state their arguments as facts and dismiss the creationists points as myth. A more level approach is to say that the disputants differ on what they accept as evidencial.

It really is a fascinating discourse, which is why my father and I have been having this argument for thirty years. I take the 'science' side by the way whilst my father is a creationist but I take a stance similar to Dan in that my opinions are formed by a flexible belief system that allows for changes in the underpinning theories i.e. what is promulgated as 'reality' by the sciences morphs as studies and experiments reveal new insights.

I don't think that you can ever resolve the issue but that doesn't make it any less interesting to talk about.

 

[Pako]

PS, you have to be careful about making definite statements like the ones above as there is a difference between rational/logical and correct. There are many things that are rational but wrong, which is why you can have so much fun with logical paradoxes.

What you have to bear in mind that science has a tendency to be just as dogmatic as religion and that, at the bleeding edge of theory, a great deal is taken on faith i.e. the basis for much theory is the acceptance of certain assumptions.

Now I'm not saying that these assumptions are necessarily unreasonable, just that some of them are likely to be things that are 'unproven'. Given that one of the most basic rules of science is that you can never prove anything right, you can only prove it wrong ( ref. Karl Popper), that doesn't imply a fatal flaw in the theory. What it does mean is that it is a theory and not a fact.

One problem I have with arguments such as this is that those with a scientific angle on things tend to state their arguments as facts and dismiss the creationists points as myth. A more level approach is to say that the disputants differ on what they accept as evidencial.

It really is a fascinating discourse, which is why my father and I have been having this argument for thirty years. I take the 'science' side by the way whilst my father is a creationist but I take a stance similar to Dan in that my opinions are formed by a flexible belief system that allows for changes in the underpinning theories i.e. what is promulgated as 'reality' by the sciences morphs as studies and experiments reveal new insights.

I don't think that you can ever resolve the issue but that doesn't make it any less interesting to talk about.

Thanks for that post, very well put. 👍

 

[sicbeing]

He's believes we were created

You don't think so


No matter what you say, he will say "yea, well god MADE that"

or etc.

but we are drifting away from what the bible tells us. The bible lets us all know that he first created earth, then everything around it. Now if we KNOW for a fact that the universe does not revolve around the earth, then we must dismiss the bible, therefore dismissing god, therefore it shouldn't even be argued about since we all know that the bible is mostly just stories and lies.

By the way, nothing scientific can explain anything in the bible, and thats the definition of creationism (science explaining the bible), because we all know better, right?

 

[Touring Mars]

PS, you have to be careful about making definite statements like the ones above as there is a difference between rational/logical and correct. There are many things that are rational but wrong, which is why you can have so much fun with logical paradoxes.

What you have to bear in mind that science has a tendency to be just as dogmatic as religion and that, at the bleeding edge of theory, a great deal is taken on faith i.e. the basis for much theory is the acceptance of certain assumptions.

Now I'm not saying that these assumptions are necessarily unreasonable, just that some of them are likely to be things that are 'unproven'. Given that one of the most basic rules of science is that you can never prove anything right, you can only prove it wrong ( ref. Karl Popper), that doesn't imply a fatal flaw in the theory. What it does mean is that it is a theory and not a fact.

One problem I have with arguments such as this is that those with a scientific angle on things tend to state their arguments as facts and dismiss the creationists points as myth. A more level approach is to say that the disputants differ on what they accept as evidencial.

It really is a fascinating discourse, which is why my father and I have been having this argument for thirty years. I take the 'science' side by the way whilst my father is a creationist but I take a stance similar to Dan in that my opinions are formed by a flexible belief system that allows for changes in the underpinning theories i.e. what is promulgated as 'reality' by the sciences morphs as studies and experiments reveal new insights.

I don't think that you can ever resolve the issue but that doesn't make it any less interesting to talk about.

Can only say what Pako has already said, that was a great post... 👍

I have another perspective too... which is that theories and even experimental observations will only ever allow us to understand so much... but our understanding or beliefs do not in any way change or affect what actually happens in reality...

We only ever begin to change our minds about what reality is based on solid proof that our theory credible. For me, evolution theory explains elegantly (and simply) how species arise... and extrapolated back over aeons, it also can adequately explain how the illusion of complexity can arise from non-complex beginnings (by the process of cumulative selection)....

Now we have techniques that can prove beyond all reasonable doubt that certain species are related, I cannot rationally accept that evolution is not occuring. Although, I appreciate most people accept that evolution does occur, but Creationists believe that the starting point of the process were fully formed creatures, like humans. With the genetic evidence infront of you (i.e. phylogenetic trees based upon scientific observation) I find it difficult (if not impossible) to accept that this is the case. We no longer need to accept the 'theory' that man was made as man. Phylogenetic analysis is more than capable of demonstrating scientifically that we originated from human-like species i.e. evolved... and that the human-like species originated from a 'human-like'-like species (and so on...) until you reach a point where you find that our ancestors bore no resemblance to a human being at all...