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A simple question for creationists.

Alceste

Vagabond
Actually the fossil record supports creation. We have fossils of creatures that are alive today with no changes. No fossil can be shown to have any direct ancestor or descendant relationship with any other fossil. We have fossils with DNA which validates a young earth. We have fossils of creatures that were in struggles with other creatures when they died which show a quick burial. We have marine fossils on just about every mountain top which validates a global flood.

The fossil record doesn’t support all the evolution that supposedly took place, even Darwin admitted that. Other evolutionists have had to admit this also which is how the theory of punctuated equilibrium came about.

There you have it: creationists explain fossils by completely misunderstanding what they are and what they mean.

It seems crazy until you consider that not many of us have direct experience relating to fossil research. Most of us get our information from somebody else - a teacher, a book, a colleague, a documentary, etc. Creationists have their own teachers, books, colleagues, documentaries, etc, so the information they are exposed to is controlled, fortifying a culture of shared ignorance masquerading as fact. Because he is carefully sheltered by his church from non-religious information and opinions, a creationist claims total falsehoods with complete, bewildering confidence - for example "fossils validate a young earth".

We all know that's not true, but a creationist will never know. To him, a teacher is a teacher, a book is a book, a colleague is a colleague, etc. and there is no qualitative difference between his and ours.

I once had a creationist tell me my 100 million year old dinosaur tooth that I found in the badlands of Alberta was placed there by Satan to divert me from the truth. You just can't argue with that sort of thing.
 
There you have it: creationists explain fossils by completely misunderstanding what they are and what they mean.

It seems crazy until you consider that not many of us have direct experience relating to fossil research. Most of us get our information from somebody else - a teacher, a book, a colleague, a documentary, etc. Creationists have their own teachers, books, colleagues, documentaries, etc, so the information they are exposed to is controlled, fortifying a culture of shared ignorance masquerading as fact. Because he is carefully sheltered by his church from non-religious information and opinions, a creationist claims total falsehoods with complete, bewildering confidence - for example "fossils validate a young earth".

We all know that's not true, but a creationist will never know. To him, a teacher is a teacher, a book is a book, a colleague is a colleague, etc. and there is no qualitative difference between his and ours.

I once had a creationist tell me my 100 million year old dinosaur tooth that I found in the badlands of Alberta was placed there by Satan to divert me from the truth. You just can't argue with that sort of thing.

The fossil record is the biggest blow to the theory of gradualistic evolution. Theres fossils coming out of nowhere, with no predecessors. And yes one interpretation would be that they were created or caused by some flood. Either way fossils are no friend of Darwins theory, and this is why any mainstream textbook on evolution now says very little on the fossils. Infact if you have ever see an evolution Vs creationism debate, the evolutionists say they do not need the fossil record anymore, this is becuase of the many gaps.
 

Photonic

Ad astra!
The fossil record is the biggest blow to the theory of gradualistic evolution. Theres fossils coming out of nowhere, with no predecessors. And yes one interpretation would be that they were created or caused by some flood. Either way fossils are no friend of Darwins theory, and this is why any mainstream textbook on evolution now says very little on the fossils. Infact if you have ever see an evolution Vs creationism debate, the evolutionists say they do not need the fossil record anymore, this is becuase of the many gaps.

Umm...no...there isn't?

Where the hell did you learn about evolution? My guess is not from something outside your own mind.
 

outhouse

Atheistically
The fossil record is the biggest blow to the theory of gradualistic evolution. Theres fossils coming out of nowhere, with no predecessors. And yes one interpretation would be that they were created or caused by some flood. Either way fossils are no friend of Darwins theory, and this is why any mainstream textbook on evolution now says very little on the fossils. Infact if you have ever see an evolution Vs creationism debate, the evolutionists say they do not need the fossil record anymore, this is becuase of the many gaps.

you really need a education on the subject, you are embarrassing yourself
 

outhouse

Atheistically
I am a creationist who believes evolution does happen, however does not believe humans have any common ancestors with apes.


then you really dont believe in evolution.

You have your own form of creationism, its OK no creationist have the same view
 

Alceste

Vagabond
The fossil record is the biggest blow to the theory of gradualistic evolution. Theres fossils coming out of nowhere, with no predecessors. And yes one interpretation would be that they were created or caused by some flood. Either way fossils are no friend of Darwins theory, and this is why any mainstream textbook on evolution now says very little on the fossils. Infact if you have ever see an evolution Vs creationism debate, the evolutionists say they do not need the fossil record anymore, this is becuase of the many gaps.

Sorry, but no. You're wrong. I've read a lot on this subject, and I hunt fossils as a hobby. Do you want to learn something, or do you want to argue?
 

johnhanks

Well-Known Member
Either way fossils are no friend of Darwins theory...
Darwin died in 1882. Given that most of the known fossil record has been unearthed since then, and the entire sciences of genetics and molecular biology post-date him, why are you so fixated on the inadequacies of one long-dead man's ideas?
... and this is why any mainstream textbook on evolution now says very little on the fossils.
Interesting, then, that chapter 2 ('Written in the Rocks') is the longest chapter of Jerry Coyne's Why Evolution is True, and chapter 6 ('Missing Link? What do you mean, Missing?') central to Richard Dawkins' The Greatest Show on Earth. The latter begins
Creationists are deeply enamored of the fossil record, because they have been taught (by each other) to repeat, over and over, the mantra that it is full of "gaps": "Show me your 'intermediates!'" They fondly (very fondly) imagine that these "gaps" are an embarrassment to evolutionists. Actually, we are lucky to have any fossils at all, let alone the massive numbers that we now do have to document evolutionary history—large numbers of which, by any standards, constitute beautiful "intermediates".
Infact if you have ever see an evolution Vs creationism debate, the evolutionists say they do not need the fossil record anymore, this is becuase of the many gaps.
In fact? I'm not sure you'd recognise a fact if it crept up and bit you.
 

Pegg

Jehovah our God is One
This is a really simple and probably obvious question to ask creationists (or anybody who doesn't think evolution is correct), but one to which I can not ever recollect obtaining an answer to.

My question is simply, how do you explain fossils?

It may sound like a daft question to ask, but it honestly does baffle me.

Please give your honest opinions :)

what sort of fossils.... do you mean how do we explain the fossils of apes who turned into mankind? those sorts of fossils? ?


If so, then the answer is simply that grouping fossils together based on similar physical features does not prove relationship....it does not prove that mankind came from ape kinds.
 

johnhanks

Well-Known Member
I am a creationist who believes evolution does happen, however does not believe humans have any common ancestors with apes.
No doubt you will have a convincing non-evolutionary explanation for primates (including humans) possessing working genes for three of the four enzymes involved in making ascorbic acid, but a broken copy of the fourth, resulting in a need for vitamin C in the diet; further, why this broken gene is almost identical in humans and chimps, less similar in humans and orangs, and much more different in humans and monkeys.

Inheriting the broken gene from a common ancestor provides a simple and complete explanation of the entire phenomenon. Attempts by creationist organisations to account for them end up flailing away with weak bromides like
It is possible that these regions of DNA do have a role in human and animal genomes and this role has not been discovered yet...
which even then fail to address the hierarchy of similarity from human pseudogene to chimp to other apes to monkeys.

Sorry, yaddoe, but evidence for our kinship with apes is overwhelming. Ignore it if you will, but you'll have to keep your eyes shut very tight.
 

cablescavenger

Well-Known Member
Most of us get our information from somebody else - a teacher, a book, a colleague, a documentary, etc. Creationists have their own teachers, books, colleagues, documentaries, etc, so the information they are exposed to is controlled, fortifying a culture of shared ignorance masquerading as fact. Because he is carefully sheltered by his church from non-religious information and opinions, a creationist claims total falsehoods with complete, bewildering confidence - for example "fossils validate a young earth".
I think you hit the nail on the head there.

I don't think I would want to change them if I could though. These people wrap their lives in religion, and if it was ever disproven it would be harmful to their mental health.

I have to admit, I have more sympathy for them than anything else, but realise we can reach them no more than they can reach us.
 

cablescavenger

Well-Known Member
Really? 2001?
Again, I challange you to find one Modern Biology Textbook that uses the Heackel diagrams as "evidence of evolution".
(The last one I could find was from 1944, Animal Biology by Grove and Newell - University Tutorial Press. And even then, no diagram, and Haeckel and his work is mearly mentioned as being historically important to the study of comparative embryology)

Here you go :D

link: [youtube]1QCFUg7p6f8[/youtube]
Biology Uncovered: Haeckel's Diagrams - YouTube
 
Umm...no...there isn't?

Where the hell did you learn about evolution? My guess is not from something outside your own mind.

Do you only offer personal opinions and attacks in your posts, do you actually read books and have you actually even looked at the evidence? No matter what evidence is given to you, you will dismiss it, as you take natural selection as a religious script and no evidence will change your assumptions. But atleast read other peoples posts.

This is according to Darwin's Origin of the Species:

"If numerous species, belonging to the same genera or families, have really started into life all at once, the fact would be fatal to theory of descent with slow modification through natural selection."

Well there is fatal evidence which debunks Darwins theory of gradualistic natural selection:

For example over 600 million years ago corals and tiny worm-like creatures appeared on earth. Appeared suddenly and - like prokaryotes and eukaryotes - with no precursors like they came from nowhere. The fossils record also has no explanation for insects, it's like insects came from nowhere and just appeared, there is no sign of "slow modification through natural selection".

In scientific discussions there is also talk of a cambrian explosion

Many major animal groups appear out of nowhere at the bottom of the fossil record. Where did this “Cambrian Explosion” come from?

According to Stephen Gould: "The Cambrian Explosion occurred in a geological moment, and we have reason to think that all major anatomical designs may have made their evolutionary appearance at that time. ...not only the phylum Chordata itself, but also all its major divisions, arose within the Cambrian Explosion. So much for chordate uniqueness... Contrary to Darwin's expectation that new data would reveal gradualistic continuity with slow and steady expansion, all major discoveries of the past century have only heightened the massiveness and geological abruptness of this formative event..." Nature, Vol.377, 26 10/95, p.682

Here is your hero Richard Dawkins on the subject:

"And we find many of them already in an advanced state of evolution, the very first time they appear. It is as though they were just planted there, without any evolutionary history. Needless to say, this appearance of sudden planting has delighted creationists. ...the only alternative explanation of the sudden appearance of so many complex animal types in the Cambrian era is divine creation...", The Blind Watchmaker, 1986, p229-230

A quote from David Raup on this subject, Raup is notable on his work with fossils:

"The evidence we find in the geologic record is not nearly as compatible with darwinian natural selection as we would like it to be. Darwin was completely aware of this. He was embarrassed by the fossil record because it didn't look the way he predicted it would.... Well, we are now about 120 years after Darwin and the knowledge of the fossil record has been greatly expanded. We now have a quarter of a million fossil species but the situation hasn't changed much. ....ironically, we have even fewer examples of evolutionary transition than we had in Darwin's time. By this I mean that some of the classic cases of darwinian change in the fossil record, such as the evolution of the horse in North America, have had to be discarded or modified as the result of more detailed information." F.M.O.N.H.B., Vol.50, p.35

Daffodils, tulips, roses and other flowers are so much a part of our daily lives that we take them for granted. Yet, how and when flowering plants appeared on Earth remains a mystery, a question that has gone unanswered by evolutionary scientists for more than a century. According to the fossil record, mosses were the first plants to emerge on land, some 425 million years ago, followed by ferns, firs, ginkgoes, conifers and several other varieties. Then, it seems, about 130 million years ago flowering plants abruptly appeared out of nowhere.

Solving Charles Darwin's 'Abominable Mystery' - NASA Science

Dr. Niles Eldredge:

"But the smooth transition from one form of life to another which is implied in the theory is ... not borne out by the facts. The search for “missing links” between various living creatures, like humans and apes, is probably fruitless ... because they probably never existed as distinct transitional types ... But no one has yet found any evidence of such transitional creatures. This oddity has been attributed to gaps in the fossil record which gradualists expected to fill when rock strata of the proper age had been found. In the last decade, however, geologists have found rock layers of all divisions of the last 500 million years and no transitional forms were contained in them. If it is not the fossil record which is incomplete then it must be the theory. “Missing, Believed Nonexistent,” Manchester Guardian (The Washington Post Weekly), Vol. 119, 26 November 1978, p. 1."

unexpectedvariety.jpg


"Unexpected Variety—At the lower fossil layers, known as the Cambrian, is an incredible variety of sea creatures without any ancestors below them. This sudden appearance of variety is a mystery to evolution, which would expect species to arise in small steps over long periods of time."

Photonic do you still want to hold on to the outdated flawed theory of gradualistic evolution? Or do you actually want to look at the real evidence.

George Gaylord Simpson conceded, that the gaps in the fossil record are a universal phenomenon: "...every paleontologist knows, that most new species, genera, and families, and that nearly all categories above the level of families appear in the record suddenly and are not led up to by known, gradual, completely continuous transitional sequences." (Major Features of Evolution, 1953 p. 360)
 
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camanintx

Well-Known Member
Well there is fatal evidence which debunks Darwins theory of gradualistic natural selection:

For example over 600 million years ago corals and tiny worm-like creatures appeared on earth. Appeared suddenly and - like prokaryotes and eukaryotes - with no precursors like they came from nowhere. The fossils record also has no explanation for insects, it's like insects came from nowhere and just appeared, there is no sign of "slow modification through natural selection".
There is evidence of multicellular life dating back almost 2 billion years and you think that the appearance of coral 600 million years ago was "from nowhere".

In scientific discussions there is also talk of a cambrian explosion
What you call an explosion took between 70 and 80 million years. It wasn't that long ago that the planet was ruled by dinosaurs and most of the animals you know today didn't exist.
 

Alceste

Vagabond
I think you hit the nail on the head there.

I don't think I would want to change them if I could though. These people wrap their lives in religion, and if it was ever disproven it would be harmful to their mental health.

I have to admit, I have more sympathy for them than anything else, but realise we can reach them no more than they can reach us.

There are some ex-creationists here and many who have given up YEC beliefs un favour of theistic evolution. It seems to do people more good than harm to accept the fact of evolution, since natural sciences simply make no sense otherwise.

There are a few who seem to come here to do battle with heathens so they can put a few notches in their crucifixes - I imagine them getting a big ego boost talking about these debates in church. Those stand out because they're so boldly and proudly wrong about everything, but I'm sure they're a minority.
 

outhouse

Atheistically
I think you hit the nail on the head there.

I don't think I would want to change them if I could though. These people wrap their lives in religion, and if it was ever disproven it would be harmful to their mental health.

I have to admit, I have more sympathy for them than anything else, but realise we can reach them no more than they can reach us.


I dont buy that at all. :p

They are at war with us, and we are not at war with them in any shape or form. they just hate being ignored by science.

In forums like these though, there are people on the fence that never post but browse. We may not take down theisms warriors but we wont let them convert middle of teh road people with misinformation and severe ignorance
 
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