Verifiable evidence for creationism?

[McBell]

Well, most of what you believe is assumed to be fact but not proven to be actual fact at all. Oops, kind of shot yourself in the foot there, pal.

Says you.
But then, you have not shown you know what you are talking about.
Perhaps you can actually show that a shot has been fired?
After that, perhaps you might be able to point out where it landed?

I hope you can, but based on your posts thus far, I shant be holding my breath.

 

[Ouroboros]

They're totally different, why can't you see that!?

Absolutely. They're as different as H2O and water.

I remember a discussion I had with someone a few months back on this site. And it was exactly that. "It's not evolution, it's adaptation." And I tried the hardest to get information about how this "adaptation" of a virus or bacteria worked. The only way we know it works is through changes in the DNA, i.e. mutations and selection, i.e. evolution.

 

[First Baseman]

Says you.
But then, you have not shown you know what you are talking about.
Perhaps you can actually show that a shot has been fired?
After that, perhaps you might be able to point out where it landed?

I hope you can, but based on your posts thus far, I shant be holding my breath.

I simply hold to the word of God, which is plain enough:

Romans 1
"20 For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse."

If you can't see it you have been blinded to it. If you don't believe then you don't believe.

 

[ImmortalFlame]

I simply hold to the word of God, which is plain enough:

Romans 1
"20 For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse."

If you can't see it you have been blinded to it. If you don't believe then you don't believe.

Well, "most of what you believe is assumed to be fact but not proven to be actual fact at all". Or does that not apply to you?

 

[james bond]

cmon 007, I think comparing evolution to a religion is a little unfair..

Religion acknowledges it's own beliefs, faith as such, and teaches the importance of personal, direct exploration, discovery, validation. Evolution would have to do the same to rise to the same level would it not?

I would say evolution is more of a superstition, unquestioning belief and acceptance of something simply because it is taught as such.



Again a little harsh I think, credit where it is due: Darwin recognized many potential fatal flaws in the theory, long before they were established scientifically,

I'm being a little harsh because this has become all out war in the US. It's about what we want to teach our children in science classes at our schools. Today, it has become a big deal. I'm all for science, but not evolution. It's come down to creation science and evolution. We understand that science will not accept the supernatural, but there are alternative worldviews that can be taught without God or religion.

Evolution is a religion just like atheism is a religion. Atheism is evolution. If it was science, then when I asked for an explanation of the origin of the universe -- people would have answers. Mostly, there was no answers. Yet, evolution gets most of the funding today in our institutions, but creation science is able to fight back with private donations and fundraising.

So, we will continue to battle here for which science is better.

Evolution as religion
http://creation.com/evolution-as-religion

Leading anti-creationist philosopher admits that evolution is a religion
http://creation.com/michael-ruse-evolution-is-a-religion

 

[james bond]

I asked you a question and now you've galloped off onto 2 other claims.

You don't really care about the answers, do you?

No, I listened to your answers. What Darwin brought up was there were many "significant" difficulties with his theory. In his book, he made an honest attempt to answer those difficulties, but he failed to adequately answer them.

He said, "In the Articulata we can commence a series with an optic nerve merely coated with pigment, and without any other mechanism; and from this low stage, numerous gradations of structure, branching off in two fundamentally different lines, can be shown to exist, until we reach a moderately high stage of perfection. In certain crustaceans, for instance, there is a double cornea, the inner one divided into facets, within each of which there is a lens shaped swelling. In other crustaceans the transparent cones which are coated by pigment, and which properly act only by excluding lateral pencils of light, are convex at their upper ends and must act by convergence; and at their lower ends there seems to be an imperfect vitreous substance. With these facts, here far too briefly and imperfectly given, which show that there is much graduated diversity in the eyes of living crustaceans, and bearing in mind how small the number of living animals is in proportion to those which have become extinct, I can see no very great difficulty (not more than in the case of many other structures) in believing that natural selection has converted the simple apparatus of an optic nerve merely coated with pigment and invested by transparent membrane, into an optical instrument as perfect as is possessed by any member of the great Articulate class."

If we look at crustaceans, we do see that they have very different eyes. Since lobsters and crabs evolved from a common ancestor, and their eyes are so different, natural selection must have made them different. Since natural selection is powerful enough to make these large differences near the end of the evolutionary process, it must have been powerful enough to do the whole job. That is, it must have been powerful enough to turn a single light-sensing cell into a full-blown eye.

So you want me to believe based on lobsters and crabs, that is sufficient to explain the human eye?

 

[james bond]

No. Go to the link I provided and keep reading the part after your quote ends. There are 3 pages worth of explanations (and that's completely ignoring everything we've learned about evolution over the last 150+ years). Or go grab a copy of the book and read it.


This is why quote mining is unproductive.




It’s not a hypothesis you’ve quoted, rather it’s one line from a book.




The evidence does not show that. Like I said, all of the proposed steps involved in the evolution of the eye exist in all manner of organisms living today, so we know they are viable.





http://www.nyas.org/publications/detail.aspx?cid=93b487b2-153a-4630-9fb2-5679a061fff7


https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/01/080101193317.htm

http://www.zmescience.com/medicine/genetic/evolution-of-vision-from-700-million-years/

You're jumping to the WRONG conclusion that I am quote mining.

Now, I'm supposed to read these. I don't have time for this. None of it is scientific evidence. If it was, then it would be peer-reviewed and would have been a marvelous coup for evos. More people would believe in evolution.

Why don't summarize what I'm suppose to get out of this. All of these are hypotheses by the media. The eye is very complex, so evolution does not have a good explanation for it. Instead, it is evidence for a creator.

"Evolutionist Robert Jastrow once wrote:

The eye is a marvelous instrument, resembling a telescope of the highest quality, with a lens, an adjustable focus, a variable diaphragm for controlling the amount of light, and optical corrections for spherical and chromatic aberration. The eye appears to have been designed; no designer of telescopes could have done better. How could this marvelous instrument have evolved by chance, through a succession of random events? (1981, pp. 96-97, emp. added).

How indeed? Though Dr. Jastrow argued that “the fact of evolution is not in doubt,” he confessed that “…there seems to be no direct proof that evolution can work these miracles.… It is hard to accept the evolution of the eye as a product of chance” (1981, pp. 101,97,98, emp. added). Considering the extreme complexity of the eye, it is easy to understand why Jastrow would make such a comment. In his book, Does God Believe in Atheists?, John Blanchard described just how complex the eye really is.

The human eye is a truly amazing phenomenon. Although accounting for just one fourth-thousandth of an adult’s weight, it is the medium which processes some 80% of the information received by its owner from the outside world. The tiny retina contains about 130 million rod-shaped cells, which detect light intensity and transmit impulses to the visual cortex of the brain by means of some one million nerve fibres, while nearly six million cone-shaped cells do the same job, but respond specifically to colour variation. The eyes can handle 500,00 messages simultaneously, and are kept clear by ducts producing just the right amount of fluid with which the lids clean both eyes simultaneously in one five-thousandth of a second (2000, p. 313).

Statements like this proves that the eye was so well designed, and so complicated, that it could not have happened by accident, as evolution teaches."

http://apologeticspress.org/apcontent.aspx?category=9&article=1412

Here's an article by Dr. Doug Borchman. He has a Ph.D. in chemistry and is the author of more than 100 peer-reviewed articles and has given more than 250 scientific presentations around the world.
http://www.southeastoutlook.org/news/features/article_9f63fbf8-bd7a-11e2-9f4b-0019bb30f31a.html

 

[Guy Threepwood]

I'm being a little harsh because this has become all out war in the US. It's about what we want to teach our children in science classes at our schools. Today, it has become a big deal. I'm all for science, but not evolution. It's come down to creation science and evolution. We understand that science will not accept the supernatural, but there are alternative worldviews that can be taught without God or religion.

Evolution is a religion just like atheism is a religion. Atheism is evolution. If it was science, then when I asked for an explanation of the origin of the universe -- people would have answers. Mostly, there was no answers. Yet, evolution gets most of the funding today in our institutions, but creation science is able to fight back with private donations and fundraising.

So, we will continue to battle here for which science is better.

Evolution as religion
http://creation.com/evolution-as-religion

Leading anti-creationist philosopher admits that evolution is a religion
http://creation.com/michael-ruse-evolution-is-a-religion

Well I agree with you on pretty much all of that, and I think far more people do than we perceive from popular culture. Belief in Darwinism in the US is <20% according to Gallup, after all these years of teaching it as fact.

And the 'consensus' is splintering even within evolutionists, with various versions of 'punctuated equilibrium' etc that fly in the face of just about everything Darwin predicted or most of us were taught in school.

Many of the most qualified scientists likewise do not concur with the very vocal pop-science, Richard Dawkins minority.

 

[First Baseman]

Well, "most of what you believe is assumed to be fact but not proven to be actual fact at all". Or does that not apply to you?

I never claimed I could prove anything. I can and did prove that according to the verse I quoted it is obvious that God created.

 

[First Baseman]

Well I agree with you on pretty much all of that, and I think far more people do than we perceive from popular culture. Belief in Darwinism in the US is <20% according to Gallup, after all these years of teaching it as fact.

And the 'consensus' is splintering even within evolutionists, with various versions of 'punctuated equilibrium' etc that fly in the face of just about everything Darwin predicted or most of us were taught in school.

Many of the most qualified scientists likewise do not concur with the very vocal pop-science, Richard Dawkins minority.

I agree, also. Evolution without a creator is the religion of abiogenesis, really, though these guys will never admit it.

 

[ImmortalFlame]

I never claimed I could prove anything. I can and did prove that according to the verse I quoted it is obvious that God created.

If you're going to dismiss other people's arguments on the basis of them "maybe being wrong", don't be surprised when people turn the logic around on you. Especially if the entirety of the justification for your position is a verse in a book which has absolutely no basis in reality.

 

[First Baseman]

If you're going to dismiss other people's arguments on the basis of them "maybe being wrong", don't be surprised when people turn the logic around on you. Especially if the entirety of the justification for your position is a verse in a book which has absolutely no basis in reality.

Your opinion is noted.

 

[ImmortalFlame]

I'm being a little harsh because this has become all out war in the US. It's about what we want to teach our children in science classes at our schools.

Yet, earlier you stated that you were never taught evolution at school. So, which is it?

Today, it has become a big deal. I'm all for science, but not evolution. It's come down to creation science and evolution.

Evolutions IS science, Creationism isn't. If I'm wrong, provide one testable fact that indicates creation.

We understand that science will not accept the supernatural, but there are alternative worldviews that can be taught without God or religion.

It is utter garbage to assert that creationism isn't about forcing God into science. Just be honest and admit that you want God to be taught instead of evolution.

Evolution is a religion just like atheism is a religion.

Wrong on both counts, skip. Evolution is a science, and atheism is a single position on a single subject. You either have no understanding of either atheism or evolution, or you have an extremely flimsy definition of "religion".

Atheism is evolution.

So confoundedly wrong that I'm amazed any sentient being could make such a statement. Atheism and evolution are entirely unrelated. You can be an atheist without accepting evolution, and you can accept evolution without being an atheist. Just try asking Professor Kenneth Miller, a cell and molecular biologist and former head of the Human Genome Project who is a staunch supporter of evolution, denouncer of creationism, author of "Finding Darwin's God" and a practising Roman Catholic.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_R._Miller

Miller has written extensively about the compatibility between theistic beliefs and evolution, and has travelled the country giving lectures on the details of the Kitzmiller vs. Dover trial and how it exposed Creationsim as an absolute fraud. Here is one of his lectures:

Miller is just ONE example of a theist who not only accepts evolution, but works incredibly hard to dispel the myths of "creation science" in spite of his own beliefs. There are MILLIONS of theistic scientists and biologists working in the field today.

If you don't want to sit through an hour-long lecture, here is a much shorter 13-minute rundown of a lot of his positions explain at length in the lecture:

If it was science, then when I asked for an explanation of the origin of the universe -- people would have answers.

What does the origin of the Universe have to do with evolution?

Leading anti-creationist philosopher admits that evolution is a religion
http://creation.com/michael-ruse-evolution-is-a-religion

Why do you feel the need to misrepresent people? Ruse was referring specifically to when people take evolution out of science and start using it to support moral, ethical, or philosophical postulations. I don't entirely agree with everything he writes, and certainly not the obvious "attention grabbing" sentence this website latch on to, but here is a full transcript of the article:

http://www.jodkowski.pl/ek/MRuse002.html

Here is the important part:

"What is the moral to be drawn from all of this? You might think that the time has come to save evolution from the evolutionists.

Darwinism is a terrific theory that stimulates research in every area of the life sciences. In the human realm, for instance, discoveries in Africa trace our immediate past in ever greater detail, while at the same time the Human Genome Project opens up fascinating evolutionary questions as we learn of the molecular similarities between ourselves and organisms as apparently different as fruit flies and earthworms. Surely this is enough.

There is no need to make a religion of evolution. On its own merits, evolution as science is just that -- good, tough, forward-looking science, which should be taught as a matter of course to all children, regardless of creed.

But, let us be tolerant. If people want to make a religion of evolution, that is their business. Who would deny the value of Mr. Wilson's plea for biodiversity? Who would argue against Mr. Gould's hatred of racial and sexual prejudice, which he has used evolution to attack?

The important point is that we should recognize when people are going beyond the strict science, moving into moral and social claims, thinking of their theory as an all-embracing world picture. All too often, there is a slide from science to something more, and this slide goes unmentioned -- unrealized even.

For pointing this out we should be grateful for the opponents of evolution. The Creationists are wrong in their Creationism, but they are right in at least one of their criticisms. Evolution, Darwinian evolution, is wonderful science. Let us teach it to our children. And, in the classroom, let us leave it at that. The moral messages, the underlying ideology, may be worthy. But if we feel strongly, there are other times and places to preach that gospel to the world."

Not quite as clean-cut as you, or that terrible Creationist website you linked to, would have liked it. Perhaps in future you would do better to actually fact-check the claims you read on websites, rather than just blindly accepting and then copying and pasting them here.

 

[ImmortalFlame]

No, I listened to your answers. What Darwin brought up was there were many "significant" difficulties with his theory. In his book, he made an honest attempt to answer those difficulties, but he failed to adequately answer them.

He said, "In the Articulata we can commence a series with an optic nerve merely coated with pigment, and without any other mechanism; and from this low stage, numerous gradations of structure, branching off in two fundamentally different lines, can be shown to exist, until we reach a moderately high stage of perfection. In certain crustaceans, for instance, there is a double cornea, the inner one divided into facets, within each of which there is a lens shaped swelling. In other crustaceans the transparent cones which are coated by pigment, and which properly act only by excluding lateral pencils of light, are convex at their upper ends and must act by convergence; and at their lower ends there seems to be an imperfect vitreous substance. With these facts, here far too briefly and imperfectly given, which show that there is much graduated diversity in the eyes of living crustaceans, and bearing in mind how small the number of living animals is in proportion to those which have become extinct, I can see no very great difficulty (not more than in the case of many other structures) in believing that natural selection has converted the simple apparatus of an optic nerve merely coated with pigment and invested by transparent membrane, into an optical instrument as perfect as is possessed by any member of the great Articulate class."

Once again, because you appear to be completely ignoring this simple fact:

Darwin died over 100 years ago - since then, we have developed a far greater and more comprehensive understanding of biodiversity than he ever could have.

 

[ImmortalFlame]

You're jumping to the WRONG conclusion that I am quote mining.

No, they're not. You took a quote out of context to make it appears as if the author was saying one thing, when they actually intended to mean something else entirely. That is quote mining. As is what you did the Michael Ruse and Richard Dawkins, and what Guy Threepwood has repeatedly done with Dawkins and Raup. You are quote mining, and you are dishonest.

Now, I'm supposed to read these. I don't have time for this. None of it is scientific evidence. If it was, then it would be peer-reviewed and would have been a marvelous coup for evos. More people would believe in evolution.

Evolution is accepted by over 99% of the world's biologists. It is widely held as the most evidenced and credible theory in modern science. The only people who reject it are those who have personal agendas, ideological hangups, or are just plain ignorant of the theory.

Why don't summarize what I'm suppose to get out of this. All of these are hypotheses by the media. The eye is very complex, so evolution does not have a good explanation for it. Instead, it is evidence for a creator.

We already know how the eye evolved:

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

"Evolutionist Robert Jastrow once wrote:

The eye is a marvelous instrument, resembling a telescope of the highest quality, with a lens, an adjustable focus, a variable diaphragm for controlling the amount of light, and optical corrections for spherical and chromatic aberration. The eye appears to have been designed; no designer of telescopes could have done better. How could this marvelous instrument have evolved by chance, through a succession of random events? (1981, pp. 96-97, emp. added).

I can't find any source for this quote, though I presume it is in Jastow's 1981 book The Enchanted Loom: Mind in the Universe. I can't find an available transcript of the book, but even a cursory glance at this quote itself has several indications of it being a quote mine. Jastrow is a firm believer in theistic evolution, and in this quote he doesn't assert any kind of design - he simply says it APPEARS designed. Unless you can quote the rest of this particular chapter, we have no basis on which to assume that this is anything other than another quote mine.

How indeed? Though Dr. Jastrow argued that “the fact of evolution is not in doubt,” he confessed that “…there seems to be no direct proof that evolution can work these miracles.… It is hard to accept the evolution of the eye as a product of chance” (1981, pp. 101,97,98, emp. added). Considering the extreme complexity of the eye, it is easy to understand why Jastrow would make such a comment. In his book, Does God Believe in Atheists?, John Blanchard described just how complex the eye really is.

Again, further quote-mining the same text doesn't make your case any stronger.

The human eye is a truly amazing phenomenon. Although accounting for just one fourth-thousandth of an adult’s weight, it is the medium which processes some 80% of the information received by its owner from the outside world. The tiny retina contains about 130 million rod-shaped cells, which detect light intensity and transmit impulses to the visual cortex of the brain by means of some one million nerve fibres, while nearly six million cone-shaped cells do the same job, but respond specifically to colour variation. The eyes can handle 500,00 messages simultaneously, and are kept clear by ducts producing just the right amount of fluid with which the lids clean both eyes simultaneously in one five-thousandth of a second (2000, p. 313).

Statements like this proves that the eye was so well designed, and so complicated, that it could not have happened by accident, as evolution teaches."

Garbage. One person saying that the eye "appears" designed, and explaining that it is difficult to comprehend something so supposedly complex evolving is not "proof" that the eye could not have evolved. Such ludicrous hyperbole should be shelved. I have already provided several sources above that explain how the eye evolved. Your move.

Here's an article by Dr. Doug Borchman. He has a Ph.D. in chemistry and is the author of more than 100 peer-reviewed articles and has given more than 250 scientific presentations around the world.
http://www.southeastoutlook.org/news/features/article_9f63fbf8-bd7a-11e2-9f4b-0019bb30f31a.html

Excusing the fact that this article contains several outright lies and misrepresentations, Borchmann's entire argument is centred around personal incredulity and bogus probability calculations. He ignores any and all facts in favour of a position posited entirely on an argument from ignorance.

 

[ImmortalFlame]

Your opinion is noted.

That remains to be seen.

 

[Parsimony]

Atheism is evolution.

There are many people who believe in both God and evolution, so your statement right there is exceedingly wrong. I even remember someone on these forums in the past who was an atheist and rejected evolution. Please do proper research before making such claims.

Belief in Darwinism in the US is <20% according to Gallup, after all these years of teaching it as fact.

Given that 1 in 4 Americans still believe that the Sun revolves around the Earth, I wouldn't put much stock in public opinion when it comes to scientific matters.

 

[SkepticThinker]

Absolutely. They're as different as H2O and water.

I remember a discussion I had with someone a few months back on this site. And it was exactly that. "It's not evolution, it's adaptation." And I tried the hardest to get information about how this "adaptation" of a virus or bacteria worked. The only way we know it works is through changes in the DNA, i.e. mutations and selection, i.e. evolution.

I think I remember that discussion. It certainly is frustrating when you're actually talking about the same thing.

 

[SkepticThinker]

Once again, because you appear to be completely ignoring this simple fact:

Darwin died over 100 years ago - since then, we have developed a far greater and more comprehensive understanding of biodiversity than he ever could have.

This ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

 

[First Baseman]

There are many people who believe in both God and evolution, so your statement right there is exceedingly wrong. I even remember someone on these forums in the past who was an atheist and rejected evolution.

No, atheism is evolution, he's right. How are you going to justify the appearance of living things if you don't believe in a creator or abiogenesis?