Some thoughts about evolution vs creation debates

[exchemist]

What I think now is that there wasn’t much controversy opposing Darwinism and Christianity in the first fifty years after The Origin of Species was first published, and I might have been mistaken about the controversy starting with evolution being taught in public schools. It might have started with the publication of The Fundamentals.

I still think that from the time that The Origin of Species was published, there have always been some people who tried to use Darwinism to discredit Christianity and Christian beliefs, but I agree that there have also been some people during that time who tried to use some Christian beliefs to discredit Darwinism.

I think you need to research this and post some evidence of Darwin being used to oppose Christianity in the c.19th, because I do not know of any evidence for this. People such as Bishop Wilberforce tried to knock down Origin of Species, but I do not know of anyone who made a determined effort to use Origin of Species to knock down Christianity. And of course the main churches were fairly nimble at accommodating the new discoveries within their interpretations of scripture*.

In general, I find you stubbornly determined to push a false equivalence between the behaviour of science towards religion and the behaviour of religion towards science. Historically it seems to have been almost entirely one-sided: religious stick-in-the-muds struggling to take in the new scientific discoveries.

Science has no interest at all in what people think about religious matters, so long as they do not tread on science's turf by making falsifiable claims about nature.

*By coincidence, at Mass today, the sermon contained an aside about interpretation of scripture, emphasising three aspects to be borne in mind: the literal meaning, the allegorical meaning and the spiritual meaning. The priest made the point, gently but explicitly, that there are some people who get stuck on the first of these and that this is a naive error.

 

[Jim]

I moved this post here: Evolution theories with no universal common ancestor

 

[nPeace]

I mean whether the scientific method had been adopted before the bible was written or not, makes no different. It doesn't change the facts of how things are. Meaning if its a fact that you need a Star for there to be light, then that is a fact. And it doesn't matter if the bible say that there was light before the Sun was made. The fact are still the same.

None of us can change facts.
I think it does matter what the Bible says, because if the Bible is in line with what the facts are, then it is confirmation that the Bible can be trusted... don't you agree?

Obviously, you think the Bible says light came before the Sun, and others believe that too.
It all goes back to how we interpret the evidence, doesn't it.
Whatever the case, the facts don't change, but you would agree that what we believe, do.
For example, new discoveries cause scientists to alter what they previously believed about something. it's the same with Christians. New understandings, cause them to change what they previously believed about some passage of scripture.

That's how we acquire knowledge. It doesn't happen instantly... at least not in every case.

 

[QuestioningMind]

Point out where they got it wrong?
I said nothing about right or wrong. All I said was, in other words, they interpret the evidence to mean X. The evidence didn't say anything.

Since it appears, you seem to think that the expert opinion, or interpretation must definitely be right, I'll allow the experts to point out to you, where they do get it wrong.

On universal common ancestry - sequence similarity and phylogenetic structure
Universal common ancestry: The qualitative evidence and need for a formal test

When biologists attempt to reconstruct the phylogenetic relationships that link a set of species, they usually assume that the taxa under study are genealogically related. Whether one uses cladistic parsimony, distance measures, or maximum likelihood methods, the typical question is which tree is the best one, not whether there is a tree in the first place.
This is the question I set out to answer: Is there a universal tree — or, more broadly, a universal pattern of genetic relatedness — in the first place?

Several researchers have recently questioned the nature and status of the theory of UCA or have emphasized the difficulties in testing a theory of such broad scope. For example, Ford Doolittle has disputed whether objective evidence for UCA, as described by a universal tree, is possible even in principle:

Indeed, one is hard pressed to find some theory-free body of evidence that such a single universal pattern relating all life forms exists independently of our habit of thinking that it should.
This sentiment was echoed also by K&W, who concluded that a "formal demonstration of UCA … remains elusive and might not be feasible in principle.". Such criticisms of UCA point to a need for a formal test, similar to the formal tests of fundamental physical theories like general relativity and quantum mechanics.

Employing Phylogenomics to Resolve the Relationships among Cnidarians, Ctenophores, Sponges, Placozoans, and Bilaterians
Introduction
Phylogeny is the cornerstone of comparative biology, and interpretations of phenotypic evolution hinge on accurate hypotheses of organismal relationships (Felsenstein 1985). Transcriptomic and genomic sequences offer a nearly overwhelming source of information for inferring relationships, with some studies employing hundreds of genes. Despite great potential, phylogenomics has thus far failed to confidently resolve relationships of many animal groups (Dunn et al. 2014). Inferring relationships among major metazoan lineages (i.e., Bilateria, Ctenophora, Cnidaria, Placozoa, and Porifera) has been particularly difficult, with numerous recent studies recovering conflicting phylogenetic topologies

In recent years, systematists have faced many theoretical and methodological challenges associated with analyzing high-throughput sequencing data for phylogenetic inference, and a major bottleneck for modern phylogenetic studies is the analysis of data, rather than the generation of sequences. Modern phylogenomics requires a new set of expertise and methodologies compared with phylogenetic studies with only one or a few genes.

Rethinking phylogenetic comparative methods
...unresolved challenge permeates not just tests for discrete character correlations, but nearly every method of finding associations in comparative methods

On universal common ancestry, sequence similarity, and phylogenetic structure: the sins of P-values and the virtues of Bayesian evidence
Sequence similarity and homology are not equivalent
One common thread among the various arguments for common ancestry is the inference from certain biological similarities to homology. However, with apologies to Fisher, similarity is not homology. It is widely assumed that strong sequence similarity indicates genetic kinship. Nonetheless, as I and many others have argued , sequence similarity is strictly an empirical observation; homology, on the other hand, is a hypothesis intended to explain the similarity. Common ancestry is only one possible mechanism that results in similarity between sequences.

Colin Patterson made a similar argument, explicitly pointing out that statistically significant sequence similarity does not necessarily force the conclusion of homology:

… given that homologies are hypothetical, how do we test them? How do we decide that an observed similarity is a valid inference of common ancestry? If similarity must be discriminated from homology, its assessment (statistically significant or not, for example) is not necessarily synonymous with testing a hypothesis of homology.
How, then, would we know if highly similar biological sequences had independent origins or not? In all but the most trivial cases we do not have direct, independent evidence for homology — rather, we conventionally infer the answer based on some qualitative argument, often involving sequence similarity as a premise.


Okay. You are not angry.

ROFL... and you claim that I'M the angry one. THAT'S funny!

 

[Jim]

I moved this post here: Evolution theories with no universal common ancestor

 

[Nimos]

I think it does matter what the Bible says, because if the Bible is in line with what the facts are, then it is confirmation that the Bible can be trusted... don't you agree?

In cases where the bible is correct, then that single piece of fact can be said to be correct. It doesn't as such say anything about any other claim that it may state.

Obviously, you think the Bible says light came before the Sun, and others believe that too.
It all goes back to how we interpret the evidence, doesn't it.

Obviously it does. I do however not know how one would interpret this differently:

Genesis 1:3-5
3 God said, "Let there be light!" So there was light.
4 God saw that the light was beautiful. He separated the light from the darkness,
5 calling the light "day," and the darkness "night." The twilight and the dawn were day one.

Genesis 1:16-18
16 God fashioned two great lights—the larger light to shine during the day and the smaller light to shine during the night—as well as the stars.
17 God placed them in the sky to shine on the earth,
18 to shine both day and night, and to distinguish light from darkness. And God saw how good it was.

Now as I understand it, we are talking about the sun and the moon in 16-18. I think its reasonable to assume that they would not be able to figure out that the moon is not actually a light, but rather its reflecting the light from the sun.

I always find it strange, how people interpret these things to the extreme, rather than simply letting the text speak for it self. To assume that the Jews wrote the whole bible in the most cryptically way possible and refusing to write what they really meant, seems rather wrong to me. And if it is inspired by God, then nothing of what is written here would change the overall meaning of the bible had it been written to fit the facts. Absolutely nothing is gained from not writing these things so they match what we know. The Jews wouldn't have known the difference anyway, so to them it wouldn't have changed anything.

 

[nPeace]

ROFL... and you claim that I'M the angry one. THAT'S funny!

That's some huge strawman you built there. Nothing to say on what the EXPERTS had to say about the interpretations?

 

[nPeace]

In cases where the bible is correct, then that single piece of fact can be said to be correct. It doesn't as such say anything about any other claim that it may state.


Obviously it does. I do however not know how one would interpret this differently:

Genesis 1:3-5
3 God said, "Let there be light!" So there was light.
4 God saw that the light was beautiful. He separated the light from the darkness,
5 calling the light "day," and the darkness "night." The twilight and the dawn were day one.

Genesis 1:16-18
16 God fashioned two great lights—the larger light to shine during the day and the smaller light to shine during the night—as well as the stars.
17 God placed them in the sky to shine on the earth,
18 to shine both day and night, and to distinguish light from darkness. And God saw how good it was.

Now as I understand it, we are talking about the sun and the moon in 16-18. I think its reasonable to assume that they would not be able to figure out that the moon is not actually a light, but rather its reflecting the light from the sun.

I always find it strange, how people interpret these things to the extreme, rather than simply letting the text speak for it self. To assume that the Jews wrote the whole bible in the most cryptically way possible and refusing to write what they really meant, seems rather wrong to me. And if it is inspired by God, then nothing of what is written here would change the overall meaning of the bible had it been written to fit the facts. Absolutely nothing is gained from not writing these things so they match what we know. The Jews wouldn't have known the difference anyway, so to them it wouldn't have changed anything.

Don't you find it equally strange how people say the Bible has been copied, and recopied, and we cannot be sure that everything it says is accurate...
Or, how people say, the Bible cannot be taken literally...
Apparently, there are a lot of different opinions on the Bible.
Don't we get that with historical science, also?

No one from the past is here to tell us anything... unless... Do you think there is a God who tells us things, or do you think we are all on our own, to work out things?

 

[Nimos]

Don't you find it equally strange how people say the Bible has been copied, and recopied, and we cannot be sure that everything it says is accurate...
Or, how people say, the Bible cannot be taken literally...
Apparently, there are a lot of different opinions on the Bible.
Don't we get that with historical science, also?

No one from the past is here to tell us anything... unless... Do you think there is a God who tells us things, or do you think we are all on our own, to work out things?

Whether one should take it literally or not depends on the stories as they are a mixture of historical and moral stories. But I think it would be wrong to read the bible from a perspective that all of the stories are purely metaphorical and that one have to try to interpret them to understand their "true" meaning. But rather that it is something that have become more popular to do over time.

It is correct that the bible have been copied a lot of times and therefore we can't be 100% certain that it is accurate. However what it does not mean and what people might misunderstand, is that there are such huge issues with the bible that we can't trust it as being correct. From all the copies we have, there are very few differences, the vast majority by far, when it comes to errors are typing errors, duplicated verses or lines, as a result of the way it was copied, since it were done by hand. Which is not the same as saying that the stories changes from one bible to next, which is not the case. So in general they are very accurate when it comes to telling the same stories.

 

[nPeace]

Whether one should take it literally or not depends on the stories as they are a mixture of historical and moral stories. But I think it would be wrong to read the bible from a perspective that all of the stories are purely metaphorical and that one have to try to interpret them to understand their "true" meaning. But rather that it is something that have become more popular to do over time.

It is correct that the bible have been copied a lot of times and therefore we can't be 100% certain that it is accurate. However what it does not mean and what people might misunderstand, is that there are such huge issues with the bible that we can't trust it as being correct. From all the copies we have, there are very few differences, the vast majority by far, when it comes to errors are typing errors, duplicated verses or lines, as a result of the way it was copied, since it were done by hand. Which is not the same as saying that the stories changes from one bible to next, which is not the case. So in general they are very accurate when it comes to telling the same stories.

I agree.
So you are not opposed to the Bible. You just think we should read Genesis as is, correct?
In that case, I have a question.
The account in Genesis 1, mentions morning and evening, before mentioning the sun, moon, and stars. The sun and moon divided day and night.
How do you account for there being a morning and evening, before the sun and moon existed?

 

[Nimos]

I agree.
So you are not opposed to the Bible. You just think we should read Genesis as is, correct?
In that case, I have a question.

I don't know if I would use the word opposed, I don't believe the bible is inspired or the word of God, so Im skeptical in that regard. But I think its a very important set of texts telling us about our past and for that I respect it. I see no need to go after it, just for doing it, just as I will also "defend" it, if I believe that people are saying things about it, that it doesn't say. So I see it as an important historical and religious piece of text and think that its interesting trying to figure out what the ancient Jews believed in, rather than what modern preachers tell us it means. Especially looking at how they tend to avoid huge parts of the OT and just focus on the good parts, as they constantly run into problems with the issue of evil and God being purely good, so how does one explain that this good God, have no issue with telling parents to kill their children if they don't behave? To me that is not easily explained and guess that is why it seem to be mostly ignored.

Therefore I don't think the ancient Jews saw it like that, but rather its something that it have developed into later on, as these texts have been interpret to death by people that want them to mean all sorts of things, than what is actually written in them.

For instant, I have never heard a priest talk about, how God encourage slavery or the killing of ones children. Most people that haven't read the bible, but only get their information from the church are most likely not aware of all the horrors in the OT as they are never talked about. But to me, these things were written and added to the OT, because the Jews found them important, they had meaning for them one way or another and to me that is important. Just as Genesis is, whether one believe that it actually happened that way or whether the Jews thought it did. Regardless of that, its still part of the story and history. And since I don't believe any of it, I see no reason having to avoid talking about certain verses, because I don't think the Jews wrote it, because they were evil or bad. But to me If someone only focuses on the parts they like, I think they will get a wrong picture of what the Jews meant with these things.

The account in Genesis 1, mentions morning and evening, before mentioning the sun, moon, and stars. The sun and moon divided day and night.
How do you account for there being a morning and evening, before the sun and moon existed?

That is a good question, which I really don't have an answer for. My best guess, based on the texts is that they are talking about different things. But again, I will stress that its just a guess!!

But if I go through the verses simply trying to understand what it say, it seems like they believed that you could have darkness and light regardless of the sun and the "moon". And that they maybe thought that these were added later.

Genesis 1:2
2 When the earth was as yet unformed and desolate, with the surface of the ocean depths shrouded in darkness, and while the Spirit of God was hovering over the surface of the waters,

Darkness seems to be some sort of substance or condition that is covering the ocean surface. And doesn't seem to be related to the lack of the sun.

Genesis 1:3-5
3 God said, "Let there be light!" So there was light.
4 God saw that the light was beautiful. He separated the light from the darkness,
5 calling the light "day," and the darkness "night." The twilight and the dawn were day one.

So God separate the two and give them the name "day" and "night". Which seem to suggest that the light and darkness here, is what control the actually day and have nothing to do with the sun and the moon. As it apparently is something that can be separated from each other.

Genesis 1:14-18
14 Then God said, "Let there be lights across the sky to distinguish day from night, to act as signs for seasons, days, and years,
15 to serve as lights in the sky, and to shine on the earth!" And that is what happened:

What I think might be important here is that God want something to "distinguish" day from night. And again "act" as signs for seasons, days and years. So it seems to suggest, that it is not the actual sun and moon's job to decide day and night, but simply there so we can keep track of days, seasons etc. and to serve as lights. Which seems to have a different meaning from light and darkness as the purpose of them is to serve as "lights" or indicators maybe, as suppose to them having anything thing to do with the actual difference between light and darkness, as written in 4. He separated the light from the darkness. as the separation happens here.

16 God fashioned two great lights—the larger light to shine during the day and the smaller light to shine during the night—as well as the stars.
17 God placed them in the sky to shine on the earth,
18 to shine both day and night, and to distinguish light from darkness. And God saw how good it was.

Here they both shine. So we have two lights, one to shine during "Light/day" and one to shine during "Darkness/night" again to distinguish between them. Which could suggest, that they might have seen moonlight as being another type of light than what we see during the day.

To me, based on Genesis, im not convinced that they thought of day and night, and how light from the sun works the same as we do.

Taking into account that they had no means of verifying what on Earth either of these were, I don't think its unreasonable to think that their idea of them were quite different from what we know today.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

?

Do you think that you have challenged @Jose Fly 's statement?

It always looks like a big smokescreen to me. Overly long posts that meander around with bolding and different colored fonts that only serve to make it more difficult to see there is nothing to see.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

No one from the past is here to tell us anything

Not if by tell you mean speak.

But we have have many items such as Lucy's skeleton (Australopithecus afarensis) that existed in the past and still exist in the present (we can't see the past, and don't need to - just what's present now), which can "speak" to us about human evolution, for example. Before Lucy, we knew that our ancestral apes had smaller brains and brachiated, but that eventually, brain size tripled compared to more chimp-like ancestors, and man became bipedal. Lucy was able to tell us which came first, and she did so with just her skull.

The skull of a quadrapedal animal including brachiators like Lucy's ancestors differs from that of a biped by the location of the foramun magnum - the hole in the skull where the spinal cord and brain meet. It's on the inferior aspect of the skull of an animal that walks upright so that the spinal cord can drop straight down, but located more posteiorly in animals whose spines and spinal cords more closely parallel the ground below - animals that need to raise their heads to see, and whose foramen occur more posteriorly. Lucy, with her inferiorly lying foramen magnum, was clearly a biped, but still had a 450 cc or so cranial capacity like its ancestors (ours is closer to 1400 cc).

So what is Lucy telling us about human evolution? You might say nothing, but if so, you are choosing to not accept what impartial and trained observers see based on your religious preferences. What you are saying is not that these fossils and artifacts tell us nothing, but that you have chosen to let them tell you nothing. You might say that nobody was there to see which came first, so the answer is unavailable, but your opinion would carry no weight in the scientific community or probably anywhere else outside of creationist organizations ind individuals. We know which came first without being there. Lucy is quite clearly telling if you choose to let her.

It's a common apologists claim that we can't know the past if we can't visit it. That is incorrect. It's purely a matter of properly interpreting the evidence present here and now. If I come across a dead person in the street bleeding from two bullet holes, I can tell you an awful lot about the past just from what is present. This person was shot. This person was formerly alive. He or she was conceived some time in the past, was born, took a first breath, grew up, etc.. No witnesses are necessary, and we don't need a time machine to know what preceded the present.

Do you think there is a God who tells us things

There is insufficient evidence for that. All we have is people telling us that a god told them things. We have no reason to believe them and plenty of reasons not to, given all the competing holy books and contradictory claims made by people and various religious factions about what a god told them. They must perforce be almost all false claims (if not all), so we know that people make these claims based in nothing more than normal human psychology and the human proclivity for mythopoeia

So you are not opposed to the Bible.

You didn't ask me, but I'll answer. No, I am not opposed to the Bible. I simply don't accept it as the word of a deity, meaning it is not authoritative in my life, nor a source of knowledge or wisdom, so I don't consult it. But I do not oppose it.

What I oppose is people trying to impose ideas from that source or from the church onto unbelievers like me.

The account in Genesis 1, mentions morning and evening, before mentioning the sun, moon, and stars. The sun and moon divided day and night. How do you account for there being a morning and evening, before the sun and moon existed?

It's mythology. There may need to be a sun and a rotating earth to have a day and night, but not to invent a story that has days and nights without stars and planets (moons also have days and nights, as we can in a half moon - a dark part in night, and a light part in daytime).

 

[Jose Fly]

Uh...
NOPE.

Recall that the point at hand is whether "intelligent design" is a form of creationism, and I had earlier presented evidence that it is (creationists using "intelligent design" and "creationism" interchangeably, ID documents explicitly describing ID in religious terms, and ID leaders admitting under oath that ID is no more scientific than astrology).

Letter from Charles R. Darwin to Darwin, C. R. to J.F.W. Herschel, J. F. W.

(May 23, 1861)
I am in a complete jumble on the point. One cannot look at this Universe with all living productions & man without believing that all has been intelligently designed; yet when I look to each individual organism, I can see no evidence of this. For, I am not prepared to admit that God designed the feathers in the tail of the rock-pigeon to vary in a highly peculiar manner in order that man might select such variations & make a Fan-tail...

This does not counter the evidence I presented, nor does it provide evidence that ID is anything other than a form of creationism.

WORDS evolve, even those coined by skeptics of evolution. Consider "intelligent design," a phrase used for over a century by critics of Darwin but only recently bursting into prominence as both a concept and a movement intended to explain, its proponents say, the "irreducible complexity" of nature.

According to the Discovery Institute, a group based in Seattle that promotes intelligent design as an alternative to natural selection, the phrase may have first been used by an Oxford scholar, F. C. S. Schiller, who in 1897 wrote, "It will not be possible to rule out the supposition that the process of Evolution may be guided by an intelligent design."

This does not counter the evidence I presented, nor does it provide evidence that ID is anything other than a form of creationism.

Late 1800s
DARWIN, AND AFTER DARWIN - George John Romanes
I have heard an eminent Professor tell his class that the many instances of mechanical adaptation discovered and described by Darwin as occurring in orchids, seemed to him to furnish better proof of supernatural contrivance than of natural causes; and another eminent Professor has informed me that, although he had read the Origin of Species with care, he could see in it no evidence of natural selection which might not equally well have been adduced in favour of intelligent design.

Again, this further supports my point in that it describes ID as being about supernatural causation.

The objection is urged against his interpretation of the facts merely on the ground that these facts might equally well be ascribed to intelligent design. And so undoubtedly they might, if we were all simple enough to adopt a supernatural explanation whenever a natural one is found sufficient to account for the facts.

Again, this further supports my point in that it describes ID as being about supernatural causation.

To supply this explanation, two, and only two, hypotheses are in the field. Of these two hypotheses one is intelligent design manifested directly in special creation; the other is natural causation operating through countless ages of the past.

Again, this further supports my point in that it describes ID as being about special creation.

Intelligent design - Wikipedia

Barbara Forrest writes that the intelligent design movement began in 1984 with the book The Mystery of Life's Origin: Reassessing Current Theories, co-written by creationist Charles B. Thaxton, a chemist, with two other authors, and published by Jon A. Buell's Foundation for Thought and Ethics.

This does not counter the evidence I presented, nor does it provide evidence that ID is anything other than a form of creationism. Further, in the Dover trial Barbara Forrest was the plaintiff's chief witness on the question of whether ID is a form of creationism. As she testified....

Q. On what do you base your opinion that intelligent design is a form of creationism?

A. On the statements by the movement's own leaders, they have at times referred to it that way.​

Fred Hoyle (agnostic)
1950s

The second of Hoyle's nucleosynthesis papers also introduced an interesting use of the anthropic principle, which was not then known by that name. In trying to work out the routes of stellar nucleosynthesis, ....
Hoyle therefore predicted the values of the energy, the nuclear spin and the parity of the compound state in the carbon nucleus formed by three alpha particles (helium nuclei), which was later borne out by experiment.
This energy level, while needed to produce carbon in large quantities, was statistically very unlikely to fall where it does in the scheme of carbon energy levels. Hoyle later wrote:
Would you not say to yourself, "Some super-calculating intellect must have designed the properties of the carbon atom, otherwise the chance of my finding such an atom through the blind forces of nature would be utterly minuscule. A common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a superintellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as with chemistry and biology, and that there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature. The numbers one calculates from the facts seem to me so overwhelming as to put this conclusion almost beyond question."
— Fred Hoyle

In 1982 Hoyle presented Evolution from Space for the Royal Institution's Omni Lecture. After considering what he thought of as a very remote possibility of Earth-based abiogenesis he concluded:
If one proceeds directly and straightforwardly in this matter, without being deflected by a fear of incurring the wrath of scientific opinion, one arrives at the conclusion that biomaterials with their amazing measure of order must be the outcome of intelligent design. No other possibility I have been able to think of...
— Fred Hoyle

Intelligent Design is not creationism
...the substance of [Hoyl's] design argument was based on physical evidence rather than Scriptural authority and therefore should be judged on the physical evidence rather than on any hidden motives he may or may not have had.

This does not counter the evidence I presented, nor does it provide evidence that ID is anything other than a form of creationism.

A Brief History of Intelligent Design
A correct history will make it clear that “intelligent design” was not a term invented to avoid the Edwards ruling, but a project that has always been distinct from the core claims of creationism.

Defending Intelligent Design
Phillip Johnson is known as the father of intelligent design. The idea in its current form appeared in the 1980s, and Johnson adopted and developed it after Darwinian evolution came up short, in his view, in explaining how all organisms, including humans, came into being. Johnson taught law for over 30 years at the University of California at Berkeley and is the author of the book Darwin on Trial, in which he argues that empirical evidence in support of Darwin's theory is lacking.

Again, this furthers my argument. In writing about ID in his article Starting a Conversation about Evolution, Johnson describes ID as a "movement" and describes it this way....

"My colleagues and I speak of theistic realism, or sometimes mere creation, as the defining concept of our movement. This means that we affirm that God is objectively real as creator, and that the reality of God is tangibly recorded in evidence accessible to science, particularly in biology"​

Clearly Phillip Johnson, someone you describe as "the father of intelligent design", in explicitly religious and creationist terms. There are many, many other instances of Johnson doing this and I can provide them if needed.

The naturalism paradigm
NOVA: What is intelligent design?
Phillip Johnson: I would like to put a basic explanation of the intelligent-design concept as I understand it this way. There are two hypotheses to consider scientifically. One is you need a creative intelligence to do all the creating that has been done in the history of life; the other is you don't, because we can show that unintelligent, purposeless, natural processes are capable of doing and actually did do the whole job. Now, that is what is taught as fact in our textbooks. And to me it's a hypothesis, which needs to be tested by evidence and experiment. If it can't be confirmed by experiment, then you're left with the same two possibilities, and neither one should be said to be something like a scientific fact.

See above. Johnson has been on record many times as explicitly stating that the "designer" in "intelligent design" is the Christian God, thereby making it abundantly clear that ID is indeed a form of creationism.

 

[Jose Fly]

So. I believe the idea - not the observable facts - is Satanic,

Do you think your view that evolutionary theory is Satanic biases you in debates and discussions of it?

 

[viole]

I don’t have any objection to common ancestry as a hypothesis in research. I do have an objection to depreciating people who don’t believe it, and using it as an argument against their beliefs.

i don’t depreciate people who do not believe that we and gorilla share a common ancestor. If that is what their mind tells them, it is OK for me.

i don’t depreciate gorillas who do not believe that they and humans share a common ancestor, either.

ciao

- viole

 

[nPeace]

I don't know if I would use the word opposed, I don't believe the bible is inspired or the word of God, so Im skeptical in that regard. But I think its a very important set of texts telling us about our past and for that I respect it. I see no need to go after it, just for doing it, just as I will also "defend" it, if I believe that people are saying things about it, that it doesn't say. So I see it as an important historical and religious piece of text and think that its interesting trying to figure out what the ancient Jews believed in, rather than what modern preachers tell us it means. Especially looking at how they tend to avoid huge parts of the OT and just focus on the good parts, as they constantly run into problems with the issue of evil and God being purely good, so how does one explain that this good God, have no issue with telling parents to kill their children if they don't behave? To me that is not easily explained and guess that is why it seem to be mostly ignored.

Therefore I don't think the ancient Jews saw it like that, but rather its something that it have developed into later on, as these texts have been interpret to death by people that want them to mean all sorts of things, than what is actually written in them.

For instant, I have never heard a priest talk about, how God encourage slavery or the killing of ones children. Most people that haven't read the bible, but only get their information from the church are most likely not aware of all the horrors in the OT as they are never talked about. But to me, these things were written and added to the OT, because the Jews found them important, they had meaning for them one way or another and to me that is important. Just as Genesis is, whether one believe that it actually happened that way or whether the Jews thought it did. Regardless of that, its still part of the story and history. And since I don't believe any of it, I see no reason having to avoid talking about certain verses, because I don't think the Jews wrote it, because they were evil or bad. But to me If someone only focuses on the parts they like, I think they will get a wrong picture of what the Jews meant with these things.

Okay. I'm just trying to understand your perspective, since I'm not getting you clearly. So I hope you don't mind the questions.

You see it as history, but not accurate history, or you see it as history by a people who had strange beliefs and rituals, because they believed in a god (imagined) whom the thought requested these things of them?

So Genesis, for example, is history as seen through their eyes, or myths borrowed from earlier civilization? For example, they wrote down things that no man could have claimed to witness (Genesis 1 & 2)

I'm asking because you said, "its a very important set of texts telling us about our past", even though you are skeptical of it being from God.

That is a good question, which I really don't have an answer for. My best guess, based on the texts is that they are talking about different things. But again, I will stress that its just a guess!!

But if I go through the verses simply trying to understand what it say, it seems like they believed that you could have darkness and light regardless of the sun and the "moon". And that they maybe thought that these were added later.

Genesis 1:2
2 When the earth was as yet unformed and desolate, with the surface of the ocean depths shrouded in darkness, and while the Spirit of God was hovering over the surface of the waters,

Darkness seems to be some sort of substance or condition that is covering the ocean surface. And doesn't seem to be related to the lack of the sun.

Genesis 1:3-5
3 God said, "Let there be light!" So there was light.
4 God saw that the light was beautiful. He separated the light from the darkness,
5 calling the light "day," and the darkness "night." The twilight and the dawn were day one.

So God separate the two and give them the name "day" and "night". Which seem to suggest that the light and darkness here, is what control the actually day and have nothing to do with the sun and the moon. As it apparently is something that can be separated from each other.

Genesis 1:14-18
14 Then God said, "Let there be lights across the sky to distinguish day from night, to act as signs for seasons, days, and years,
15 to serve as lights in the sky, and to shine on the earth!" And that is what happened:

What I think might be important here is that God want something to "distinguish" day from night. And again "act" as signs for seasons, days and years. So it seems to suggest, that it is not the actual sun and moon's job to decide day and night, but simply there so we can keep track of days, seasons etc. and to serve as lights. Which seems to have a different meaning from light and darkness as the purpose of them is to serve as "lights" or indicators maybe, as suppose to them having anything thing to do with the actual difference between light and darkness, as written in 4. He separated the light from the darkness. as the separation happens here.

16 God fashioned two great lights—the larger light to shine during the day and the smaller light to shine during the night—as well as the stars.
17 God placed them in the sky to shine on the earth,
18 to shine both day and night, and to distinguish light from darkness. And God saw how good it was.

Here they both shine. So we have two lights, one to shine during "Light/day" and one to shine during "Darkness/night" again to distinguish between them. Which could suggest, that they might have seen moonlight as being another type of light than what we see during the day.

To me, based on Genesis, im not convinced that they thought of day and night, and how light from the sun works the same as we do.

Taking into account that they had no means of verifying what on Earth either of these were, I don't think its unreasonable to think that their idea of them were quite different from what we know today.

Hmmm. Interesting.
That's why I like talking to people, and listening to their views. You get such a variety. This one I never heard before.
Some people speculate that God was the light, and energy that nourished life before the sun. There are many guesses, as you said.

I read it, as it is, but try to make sense of what is there, without adding anything new.
I think what is key too, is taking into consideration the terms used.
So, for example, taking it from the top...
Verse 1. God created both the heavens and earth.
Automatically, because of what we already know, in my mind, I don't think of heavens as an empty void of space. In my mind, I see galaxies, and we now know there are billions, and we know there are billion of stars in those galaxies, and planets, etc,,, So that's what I see, and verse 2. earth... but earth is just a mass of terrestrial matter covered in a mass of water. ...and since light reflects on the water because perhaps the sun too is a mass of gaseous matter that is not yet "burning".
Verse 3. Then God said, let's set her alight. So there was light... from the sun.
Why do I believe this? The use of language.
Here in Genesis 1:3 the Hebrew word is אוֹר (or: a light).

noun
1.
the natural agent that stimulates sight and makes things visible.
"the light of the sun"
verb
1.
provide with light or lighting; illuminate.
"the room was lighted by a number of small lamps"
2.
make (something) start burning; ignite.

Whereas, at Genesis 1:16, the Hebrew word used is מָאוֹר (maor: a luminary).

noun
1.
a person who inspires or influences others, especially one prominent in a particular sphere.
"one of the luminaries of child psychiatry"
2.
ARCHAIC
a natural light-giving body, especially the sun or moon.

That's significant to me, because if I want to make sense of the texts, I should consider why these specific words are used.
The light in verse 3, obviously has a source, which is not given previously. However, based on the fact that the heavens were already existing, and no details are given about what's there... other than earth, I think it makes sense that verses 14-16 fills in those details.
It makes sense to me, that the stars and all the heavenly bodies were created in verse 1, but then were made visible through the atmosphere, in verses 14-16.
I can reasonably take this position considering a perspective from the earth, since that perspective was shifted to since verse 2.
Verse 1, does not appear to be from an earthly perspective.

This is what currently makes the most sense to me.

 

[Jose Fly]

It always looks like a big smokescreen to me. Overly long posts that meander around with bolding and different colored fonts that only serve to make it more difficult to see there is nothing to see.

True, but the really odd thing is how much of what he posted actually further illustrated my point.

 

[nPeace]

Recall that the point at hand is whether "intelligent design" is a form of creationism, and I had earlier presented evidence that it is (creationists using "intelligent design" and "creationism" interchangeably, ID documents explicitly describing ID in religious terms, and ID leaders admitting under oath that ID is no more scientific than astrology).


This does not counter the evidence I presented, nor does it provide evidence that ID is anything other than a form of creationism.


This does not counter the evidence I presented, nor does it provide evidence that ID is anything other than a form of creationism.


Again, this further supports my point in that it describes ID as being about supernatural causation.


Again, this further supports my point in that it describes ID as being about supernatural causation.


Again, this further supports my point in that it describes ID as being about special creation.


This does not counter the evidence I presented, nor does it provide evidence that ID is anything other than a form of creationism. Further, in the Dover trial Barbara Forrest was the plaintiff's chief witness on the question of whether ID is a form of creationism. As she testified....

Q. On what do you base your opinion that intelligent design is a form of creationism?

A. On the statements by the movement's own leaders, they have at times referred to it that way.​

This does not counter the evidence I presented, nor does it provide evidence that ID is anything other than a form of creationism.


Again, this furthers my argument. In writing about ID in his article Starting a Conversation about Evolution, Johnson describes ID as a "movement" and describes it this way....

"My colleagues and I speak of theistic realism, or sometimes mere creation, as the defining concept of our movement. This means that we affirm that God is objectively real as creator, and that the reality of God is tangibly recorded in evidence accessible to science, particularly in biology"​

Clearly Phillip Johnson, someone you describe as "the father of intelligent design", in explicitly religious and creationist terms. There are many, many other instances of Johnson doing this and I can provide them if needed.


See above. Johnson has been on record many times as explicitly stating that the "designer" in "intelligent design" is the Christian God, thereby making it abundantly clear that ID is indeed a form of creationism.

Recall that the point at hand is whether "intelligent design" is a form of creationism...

Of course not.
Post #66

It’s important to understand that the intelligent design theory was not developed by religionists.

Completely false. ID creationism was specifically developed as a means to sneak creationist arguments into science classes, following a series of court rulings banning the teaching of creationism (in science classes).

According to the articles. what you said is evidently false.
There were scientific reasons for proposing intelligent design as a hypothesis to explain the evidence.

 

[Jose Fly]

Of course not.
Post #66

In that post I concluded, "ID is without a doubt a version of Christian creationism." In your reply you copied that statement and replied "Uh...NOPE."

According to the articles. what you said is evidently false.
There were scientific reasons for proposing intelligent design as a hypothesis to explain the evidence.

As even your own post illustrated, the concept of "intelligent design" is explicitly about creation by the Christian God. Thus ID is indeed a form of creationism.