Verifiable evidence for creationism?

[Sapiens]

Yep. You're right. Not provable.

And abiogenesis is atheism and yes, atheism is a religion. It is the religion of no god. It is a religion because science cannot justify or prove that no god exists. That's the truth, like it or not.

There are many religionists who see abiogenesis as the only rational explanation.

It is impossible to prove a negative and doing so is not a requirement, one must make the positive proof, there is a god, which if true should be possible. Let's see you prove the nonexistence of leprechauns, unicorns or garden fairies.

 

[james bond]

You, if you're still claiming that evolution is atheistic. Evolution is theistically-neutral.

Which in no way denies the existence of a deity.

Regardless, evolution does nothing to falsify the existence of a deity and therefore is not atheistic. It does not require that a god not exist.

That depends on how you look at it. If you ask a believer "does God make hailstones?", they could answer "yes" in the sense that He creates hailstones through the laws of nature that He put in place or "no" in the sense that the laws of nature are what create the hailstones without His direct interference. You can do the same thing with evolution.

I can't say it's theistic neutral. Atheism is in evolutionary thought. History shows this. This was argued in the 1800s.

"Natural theology and God’s design

William Paley

Some clergymen worried that this mechanistic approach of life (Evolution) smacked of atheism. But many of the naturalists themselves believed that they actually were on a religious mission. In fact, a number of them were both naturalists and theologians. They believed that God had created the entire world in such a way that his plan could be understood in part by rational creatures. By studying the intricate structures of a hand or a feather, a naturalist could appreciate God’s benevolent design.

Natural theology, as it became known, dominated English thinking for nearly two centuries. In the early 1800s, it was best known to Englishmen through the writings of Reverend William Paley (left). Natural theology was important scientifically because it guided researchers to the fundamental question of how life works. Even today, when scientists discover a new kind of organ or protein, they try to figure out its function. But it would be Charles Darwin, who actually occupied Paley’s rooms at Cambridge University and was an admirer of Paley’s work, who would take science beyond natural theology and move those questions from the religious sphere to the scientific."

http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/history_03

A little before that, in 1795, was the rise of uniformitarianism which sought to displace catastrophism.

The point stands that science and the law will not accept the supernatural. God is not falsifiable. This also includes multiverses and the such, so the atheist scientists are trying to change the falsifiability rule.

In evolutionist terms, falsifiability came from Karl Popper and under philosophy of science.

• Ideas that are falsifiable but not falsified are capable of being tested, have been tested, and have passed the test. They are the most reliable form of scientific knowledge;
• Ideas that are unfalsifiable are ideas that are not capable of being tested. They may or may not be true, but since there is no way to test them, they are not a reliable form of knowledge;
• Ideas that are false are ideas that are capable of being tested, have been tested, and have failed the test.

Actually, it came from GK Chesterton who wrote nine years before Popper,

"Science is weak about these prehistoric things in a way that has hardly been noticed. The science whose modern marvels we all admire succeeds by incessantly adding to its data. In all practical inventions, in most natural discoveries, it can always increase evidence by experiment. But it cannot experiment in making men; or even in watching to see what the first men make. An inventor can advance step by step in the construction of an aeroplane, even if he is only experimenting with sticks and scraps of metal in his own back-yard. But he cannot watch the Missing Link evolving in his own back-yard. If he has made a mistake in his calculations, the aeroplane will correct it by crashing to the ground. But if he has made a mistake about the arboreal habitat of his ancestor, he cannot see his arboreal ancestor falling off the tree. He cannot keep a cave-man like a cat in the back-yard and watch him to see whether he does really practice cannibalism or carry off his mate on the principles of marriage by capture. He cannot keep a tribe of primitive men like a pack of hounds and notice how far they are influenced by the herd instinct. If he sees a particular bird behave in a particular way, he can get other birds and see if they behave in that way; but if he finds a skull, or the scrap of a skull, in the hollow of a hill, he cannot multiply it into a vision of the valley of dry bones. In dealing with a past that has almost entirely perished, he can only go by evidence and not by experiment. And there is hardly enough evidence to be even evidential. Thus while most science moves in a sort of curve, being constantly corrected by new evidence, this science flies off into space in a straight line uncorrected by anything. But the habit of forming conclusions, as they can really be formed in more fruitful fields, is so fixed in the scientific mind that it cannot resist talking like this. It talks about the idea suggested by one scrap of bone as if it were something like the aeroplane which is constructed at last out of whole scrapheaps of scraps of metal. The trouble with the professor of the prehistoric is that he cannot scrap his scrap. The marvellous and triumphant aeroplane is made out of a hundred mistakes. The student of origins can only make one mistake and stick to it." G.K. Chesterton, Everlasting Man, II"

Chesterton's philosophy pointed out the usefulness of a functional definition of falsifiability. Today, some scientists are trying to change the falsifiability rule because it limits their research in such areas as multiverses, aliens, and God.

http://pk.b5z.net/i/u/2167316/i/A_Critique_of_Falsificationism_by_Karl_Popper.pdf

Thus, creation science, which is based on the Bible, will have to develop a different course. That said, I do see that ID has made inroads and do agree with CS Lewis that we should look for the truth, no matter where it leads.

 

[james bond]

Quroboros, here is why I asked about the giraffe's neck. I guess it took until 2015 to show it. Lemarck in 1790s:

"Lamarck was struck by the similarities of many of the animals he studied, and was impressed too by the burgeoning fossil record. It led him to argue that life was not fixed. When environments changed, organisms had to change their behavior to survive. If they began to use an organ more than they had in the past, it would increase in its lifetime. If a giraffe stretched its neck for leaves, for example, a "nervous fluid" would flow into its neck and make it longer. Its offspring would inherit the longer neck, and continued stretching would make it longer still over several generations. Meanwhile organs that organisms stopped using would shrink.

Lamarck believed that the long necks of giraffes evolved as generations of giraffes reached for ever higher leaves.

 

[ImmortalFlame]

I can't say it's theistic neutral. Atheism is in evolutionary thought. History shows this. This was argued in the 1800s.

Do you have a single opinion on this issue that isn't copied and pasted entirely from other websites (mostly creationist ones)?

 

[McBell]

(1) debatable, but it was certainly explicitly about replacing God in explaining those patterns of life seen in nature

This is nothing but you dictating what you want Darwin to be about.
Thus t is dismissed as nothing but wishful thinking.

(2)..again to explain the patterns with natural mechanisms instead of intelligent design/ God..

Again, this is nothing more than you pushing your own agenda onto Darwin.

(3) yes, attempts to explain them without God, and acknowledges that problem of getting the system up and running without God in the first place is a potential flaw in the whole theory.

Still abusing that dead horse?

If crystals self improved themselves until they developed intelligence and pondered their own existence, I'd say God was involved yes, and any claim that this could have happened through millions of lucky flukes would be a similarly atheistic theory, similarly designed to appeal to atheist beliefs.

I wonder if you are even capable of a post without a fallacy?

 

[ImmortalFlame]

Quroboros, here is why I asked about the giraffe's neck. I guess it took until 2015 to show it. Lemarck in 1790s:

"Lamarck was struck by the similarities of many of the animals he studied, and was impressed too by the burgeoning fossil record. It led him to argue that life was not fixed. When environments changed, organisms had to change their behavior to survive. If they began to use an organ more than they had in the past, it would increase in its lifetime. If a giraffe stretched its neck for leaves, for example, a "nervous fluid" would flow into its neck and make it longer. Its offspring would inherit the longer neck, and continued stretching would make it longer still over several generations. Meanwhile organs that organisms stopped using would shrink.

Lamarck believed that the long necks of giraffes evolved as generations of giraffes reached for ever higher leaves.

You do realize that Lamarck had no idea of the mechanisms of evolution, or the exact phylogenetic history of giraffes, right?

 

[Sapiens]

JB, you are clearly cherry-picking and quote mining Popper when viewed from the perspective of his life's work (this is cribbed from: "Index to Creationist Claims"edited by Mark Isaak):

1. Popper's statement of nonfalsifiability was pretty mild, not as extensive as it is often taken. He applied it only to natural selection, not evolution as a whole, and he allowed that some testing of natural selection was possible, just not a significant amount.
   
   Moreover, he said that natural selection is a useful theory. A "metaphysical research programme" was to him not a bad thing; it is an essential part of science, as it guides productive research by suggesting predictions. He said of Darwinism,And yet, the theory is invaluable. I do not see how, without it, our knowledge could have grown as it has done since Darwin. In trying to explain experiments with bacteria which become adapted to, say, penicillin, it is quite clear that we are greatly helped by the theory of natural selection. Although it is metaphysical, it sheds much light upon very concrete and very practical researches. It allows us to study adaptation to a new environment (such as a penicillin-infested environment) in a rational way: it suggests the existence of a mechanism of adaptation, and it allows us even to study in detail the mechanism at work. And it is the only theory so far which does all that. (Popper 1976, 171-172)Finally, Popper notes that theism as an explanation of adaptation "was worse than an open admission of failure, for it created the impression that an ultimate explanation had been reached" (Popper 1976, 172).
2. Popper later changed his mind and recognized that natural selection is testable. Here is an excerpt from a later writing on "Natural Selection and Its Scientific Status" (Miller 1985, 241-243; see also Popper 1978):When speaking here of Darwinism, I shall speak always of today's theory - that is Darwin's own theory of natural selection supported by the Mendelian theory of heredity, by the theory of the mutation and recombination of genes in a gene pool, and by the decoded genetic code. This is an immensely impressive and powerful theory. The claim that it completely explains evolution is of course a bold claim, and very far from being established. All scientific theories are conjectures, even those that have successfully passed many severe and varied tests. The Mendelian underpinning of modern Darwinism has been well tested, and so has the theory of evolution which says that all terrestrial life has evolved from a few primitive unicellular organisms, possibly even from one single organism.
   
   However, Darwin's own most important contribution to the theory of evolution, his theory of natural selection, is difficult to test. There are some tests, even some experimental tests; and in some cases, such as the famous phenomenon known as 'industrial melanism', we can observe natural selection happening under our very eyes, as it were. Nevertheless, really severe tests of the theory of natural selection are hard to come by, much more so than tests of otherwise comparable theories in physics or chemistry.
   
   The fact that the theory of natural selection is difficult to test has led some people, anti-Darwinists and even some great Darwinists, to claim that it is a tautology. A tautology like 'All tables are tables' is not, of course, testable; nor has it any explanatory power. It is therefore most surprising to hear that some of the greatest contemporary Darwinists themselves formulate the theory in such a way that it amounts to the tautology that those organisms that leave most offspring leave most offspring. C. H. Waddington says somewhere (and he defends this view in other places) that 'Natural selection . . . turns out ... to be a tautology' ..4 However, he attributes at the same place to the theory an 'enormous power. ... of explanation'. Since the explanatory power of a tautology is obviously zero, something must be wrong here.
   
   Yet similar passages can be found in the works of such great Darwinists as Ronald Fisher, J. B. S. Haldane, and George Gaylord Simpson; and others.
   
   I mention this problem because I too belong among the culprits. Influenced by what these authorities say, I have in the past described the theory as 'almost tautological', and I have tried to explain how the theory of natural selection could be untestable (as is a tautology) and yet of great scientific interest. My solution was that the doctrine of natural selection is a most successful metaphysical research programme. It raises detailed problems in many fields, and it tells us what we would expect of an acceptable solution of these problems.
   
   I still believe that natural selection works in this way as a research programme. Nevertheless, I have changed my mind about the testability and the logical status of the theory of natural selection; and I am glad to have an opportunity to make a recantation. My recantation may, I hope, contribute a little to the understanding of the status of natural selection.

Personally I find Popper to be selective in his knowledge and surprisingly unfamiliar with some critical work on evolution that provides clear and observable proof of natural selection that passes the test of falsification (e.g., Weinberg, J. R., V. R. Starczak and P. Jora. 1992. Evidence for rapid speciation following a founder event in the laboratory. Evolution. 46:1214-1220). We should, however, forgive Popper for living long (he died at 92, two years after Weinberg's paper), but not long enough, to have witnessed the major changes in biological sciences that would have amplified Popper's late-in-life view that: "I have in the past described the theory as 'almost tautological', and I have tried to explain how the theory of natural selection could be untestable (as is a tautology) and yet of great scientific interest. My solution was that the doctrine of natural selection is a most successful metaphysical research programme. It raises detailed problems in many fields, and it tells us what we would expect of an acceptable solution of these problems." It does Popper's memory a disservice to remember him for that which can be, retrospectively, seen as erroneous views that he was on the path to correcting in an almost prescient fashion at his death. Rather let us remember him for the valuable contributions that he did make, those that have stood the test of time.

Quroboros, here is why I asked about the giraffe's neck. I guess it took until 2015 to show it. Lemarck in 1790s:

"Lamarck was struck by the similarities of many of the animals he studied, and was impressed too by the burgeoning fossil record. It led him to argue that life was not fixed. When environments changed, organisms had to change their behavior to survive. If they began to use an organ more than they had in the past, it would increase in its lifetime. If a giraffe stretched its neck for leaves, for example, a "nervous fluid" would flow into its neck and make it longer. Its offspring would inherit the longer neck, and continued stretching would make it longer still over several generations. Meanwhile organs that organisms stopped using would shrink.

Lamarck believed that the long necks of giraffes evolved as generations of giraffes reached for ever higher leaves.

Lamarck had the right idea, but the wrong mechanism. A simplification: the long necks of giraffes evolved as giraffes with longer necks were favored reproductively over those who could not reach higher leaves.

But you are begging the question. He OP asked, "Is there any verifiable evidence for creationism." It would appear that the answer is a firm and resounding "no!" All that you seem to be able to do is pick at evolution and fail to falsify it, so you fall back on old and discredited statements.

 

[Parsimony]

(1) debatable, but it was certainly explicitly about replacing God in explaining those patterns of life seen in nature

You could just as easily argue that every theory that explains something using natural processes that were once thought to be caused directly by God are "replacing God". So are those all atheistic too?

(2)..again to explain the patterns with natural mechanisms instead of intelligent design/ God..

Which is true of every single well-supported scientific theory currently in existence. By your reasoning, all those theories support atheism too.

(3) yes, attempts to explain them without God, and acknowledges that problem of getting the system up and running without God in the first place is a potential flaw in the whole theory.

No, because evolution does not depend on any particular mechanism for bringing life into existence. X being directly involved in one stage of a process does not mean that X has to be directly involved in the other steps.

If crystals self improved themselves until they developed intelligence and pondered their own existence, I'd say God was involved yes, and any claim that this could have happened through millions of lucky flukes would be a similarly atheistic theory, similarly designed to appeal to atheist beliefs.

So again, you're creating the dichotomy of "if a theory includes God in its mechanisms then its theistic, but if it doesn't then it's atheistic". This would, again, make every single currently-accepted scientific theory atheistic.

I can't say it's theistic neutral. Atheism is in evolutionary thought. History shows this. This was argued in the 1800s.

And yet the first widely-accepted model of evolution was developed by a theist (Darwin) and is currently accepted by many theists. If "explaining something without referring to God" makes something atheistic, then you'd be hard-pressed to find any currently-supported scientific theory that isn't atheistic.

So I have a question for Guy Threepwood and james bond: if sufficient proof was supplied to you to convince you that evolution did actually happen, would you stop believing in God? Would the very existence of evolution somehow destroy all of the other evidence often used by theists to support God's existence (like the fine-tuning argument)?

 

[Riders]

Not believing in Creationism doesn't leave anyone in spiritual darkness IMO. Some believe God created evolution. But some of us who are nature based believe in no God but nature instead that nature has force and power that nature the diety and power of nature caused evolution.

 

[leibowde84]

The existence of many Christian and other religious paintings is evidence of man's reverence towards God. Just today I was reading that the iconic ET movie poster painted by John Alvin is based on Adam's Creation by Michelanglo. Of course, one story is entirely fictional. The painting of Adam and Eve in the Garden is by Austrian painter Wenzel Peter circa 1800s and it hangs in the Vatican. It was purchased by Pope Gregory XVI who was looking to furnish the Room of the Consistory in the Papal State Apartment. It's a work of naturalism by the animalist painter, so it resembles a photograph.

There could be a brachiosaur in-between the trees and mastodon, too.

One particular painting called Jealousy from 1895 is intriguing done by Norwegian expressionist Edvard Munch.

He did do one of Adam and Eve in 1918 which reflects a different tone.

Paintings might evidence reverence for God, but they don't evidence God's existence or dinosaurs, though. So, I fail to see how this is relevant.

 

[McBell]

Paintings might evidence reverence for God, but they don't evidence God's existence or dinosaurs, though. So, I fail to see how this is relevant.

Perhaps he is trying to say that if enough people believe then that which is believed in becomes real?

 

[viole]

Is Evolution being taught as a course? When you said "teaching it as fact," I thought you meant withing a biology course or other science course. For example, is age of the earth taught? My classes never covered it, but we did cover fossils that were millions or billions of years old which infers old earth. I do not have a problem with the old earth, but the other worldview should be presented. However, creation science has not been able to present the other worldview without running into problems with the law and religion. Some states, they are making inroads.

Presenting creationism as an alternative to evolution is like presenting the stork theory as an alternative to embryology.

Ciao

- viole

 

[McBell]

Presenting creationism as an alternative to evolution is like presenting the stork theory as an alternative to embryology.

Ciao

- viole

Actually, it isn't.
Creationism is how life started.
Evolution explains the diversity of life regardless of how it started.

So it would be more like presenting apples and explaining to the students how some people think these apples are blenders.

 

[Dante Writer]

I am new here so be gentle lol!

Is there any verifiable evidence for creationism?

Your question seems to be a common misconception of both religion and science.

Science only answers the questions of how something happened.

Religion only answers the question of why something happened.

That is not meant as an excuse for religion and if people understood the biblical teachings of Genesis you can see it follows very closely the scientific explanation of how the Universe and specifically our solar system came into being. Genesis was written by non scientists to be explained to people that were not scientists. Scientists claim a big bang while creationists call it God's power. Whether it was divine is in the eyes of the beholder and any scientist that is honest would certainly say it is amazing that it happened at all without any plan or outside intervention. The amount of random coincidences necessary to bring it all together without a plan boggles the mind.

I do not believe evolution and creationism are mutually exclusive and in fact they confirm each other.

So to answer your question: Yes, the verifiable evidence is the fact that with all our scientific knowledge we can still not answer the basic question of why it happened and we are the evidence that it did happen and the amount of random coincidences necessary for it to happen by chance is so phenomenally huge that the only realistic explanation is there was some outside direction, plan, or creator involved.

It is the watch parts in a box answer but unless disproved by science with replication of a functioning watch forming spontaneously from a box of watch parts it stands as evidence. The verification is that no one has ever replicated or observed that process and even attempting to do so proves a creator, plan or outside direction was necessary.

 

[leibowde84]

Perhaps he is trying to say that if enough people believe then that which is believed in becomes real?

Isn't that absurd though?

 

[McBell]

Isn't that absurd though?

Absolutely.
I mean what will he use if the time comes that there are more atheists than theists?
Using that "logic" wouldn't god cease to exist?

 

[McBell]

So to answer your question: Yes, the verifiable evidence is the fact that with all our scientific knowledge we can still not answer the basic question of why it happened and we are the evidence that it did happen and the amount of random coincidences necessary for it to happen by chance is so phenomenally huge that the only realistic explanation is there was some outside direction, plan, or creator involved.

Please present your math.

 

[Dante Writer]

Please present your math.

The odds in favor - the ratio of the number of ways that an outcome can occur compared to how many ways it cannot occur.

Odds in favor = Number of successes: Number of failures

The odds against - the ratio of the number of ways that an outcome cannot occur compared to in how many ways it can occur.

Odds against = Number of failures: Number of successes

Now you do the math and tell us what the odds are of a bunch of watch parts in a box forming a functioning watch with no intervention.

Good luck!

 

[McBell]

The odds in favor - the ratio of the number of ways that an outcome can occur compared to how many ways it cannot occur.

Odds in favor = Number of successes: Number of failures

The odds against - the ratio of the number of ways that an outcome cannot occur compared to in how many ways it can occur.

Odds against = Number of failures: Number of successes

Now you do the math and tell us what the odds are of a bunch of watch parts in a box forming a functioning watch with no intervention.

Good luck!

still waiting for you to present MATH, not philosophy.
You do know that math has numbers, right?

 

[SkepticThinker]

The odds in favor - the ratio of the number of ways that an outcome can occur compared to how many ways it cannot occur.

Odds in favor = Number of successes: Number of failures

The odds against - the ratio of the number of ways that an outcome cannot occur compared to in how many ways it can occur.

Odds against = Number of failures: Number of successes

Now you do the math and tell us what the odds are of a bunch of watch parts in a box forming a functioning watch with no intervention.

Good luck!

Is somebody claiming that such a thing will happen?