Newsflash: YECs secure release of criminals

[jereth]

Why respect it?

People believe YECism because of an entrenched method of reading Scripture, which they were often taught from an impressionable age in Sunday school. They may have been told all their lives that Genesis 1 is literal history. They may attend churches which teach YECism year in year out. They may read literature which argues forcefully (and sometimes manipulatively) for YECism and denounces other viewpoints as dangerous heresy.

What with all this, it is hard to blame them for their opinion. And they generally do believe that they are upholding the truth.

Like I said, I was once a YEC, and so I have personal experience of all of the above forces. They can be extremely powerful, believe me. It took a cool headed, patient brother to help me gradually (over about 3 months) change my mind using many biblical and rational arguments.

I know many YECs, and by and large they are all sincere Christian people. Most of them don't go around trumpeting that they are right and everyone else is wrong.

So yes, I do respect YEC as a private opinion. What I don't respect is certain YEC organisations and people (eg. AiG) with an ulterior agenda of dragging the whole church towards YECism using wholesale deception, manipulation and vitriol.

 

[Dannager]

There is alot in this thread thatto be honest I do find offensive.

I think it's ridiculous to say that YEC's would have convictions overturned like there was in the parody. I am however a Christian as I am sure people here are and I'm sure that no offense was intended, so moving on.

What I have done is found a few questions for all the evolutionists out there. Prove me wrong. I love a challenge.

1. Where did the space for the universe come from?
2. Where did matter come from?
3. Where did the laws of the universe come from (gravity, inertia, etc.)?
4. How did matter get so perfectly organized?
5. Where did the energy come from to do all the organizing?
6. When, where, why, and how did life come from non-living matter?
7. When, where, why, and how did life learn to reproduce itself?
8. With what did the first cell capable of sexual reproduction reproduce?
9. Why would any plant or animal want to reproduce more of its kind since this would only make more mouths to feed and decrease the chances of survival? (Does the individual have a drive to surviv e, or the species? How do you explain this?)
10. How can mutations (recombining of the genetic code) create any new, improved varieties? (Recombining English letters will never produce Chinese books.)
11. Is it possible that similarities in design between different animals prove a common Creator instead of a common ancestor?
12. Natural selection only works with the genetic information available and tends only to keep a species stable. How would you explain the increasing complexity in the genetic code that must have occ urred if evolution were true?

When you copy and paste verbatim from another website or otherwise use words that are not your own, please do the intellectually honest thing and include a citation for your source. This is a straight copy-paste of Dr. Dino's website's list of questions for evolution supporters - questions that have been answered literally hundreds of times. You can find them (complete with your extraneous space in the middle of the word "occured" in question 12) at http://www.drdino.com/articles.php?spec=76. Would you like to ask some of your own questions now?

 

[aussie4god]

When you copy and paste verbatim from another website or otherwise use words that are not your own, please do the intellectually honest thing and include a citation for your source. This is a straight copy-paste of Dr. Dino's website's list of questions for evolution supporters - questions that have been answered literally hundreds of times. You can find them (complete with your extraneous space in the middle of the word "occured" in question 12) at http://www.drdino.com/articles.php?spec=76. Would you like to ask some of your own questions now?

Actually if you go back in the thread you'll see that I already said I sourced the questions elsewhere (plus I'm sure everyone here has seen the Hovind questions).

I used them because I wanted to get the answers (I thought he raised a good point). They are the questions I would have been asking anyways but a bit reworded. I'm a YEC but I'm pretty open to be proven wrong. I'm searching for answers.

God Bless

 

[Dannager]

Actually if you go back in the thread you'll see that I already said I sourced the questions elsewhere

While we are familiar with the Hovind list, we are also very familiar with the many YECs who have posted that same list and not bothered to clarify that the words they use are not their own. Hovind's questions are leading, though - they presume certain answers and ask ones entirely unrelated to the validity of evolutionary theory. It is a deceptive straw-man creation, and an attempt to try evolutionary theory for something no scientific theory can be held accountable for.

 

[aussie4god]

While we are familiar with the Hovind list, we are also very familiar with the many YECs who have posted that same list and not bothered to clarify that the words they use are not their own. Hovind's questions are leading, though - they presume certain answers and ask ones entirely unrelated to the validity of evolutionary theory. It is a deceptive straw-man creation, and an attempt to try evolutionary theory for something no scientific theory can be held accountable for.

Once again, I said that the questions weren't mine on page 1 of the thread (maybe 2).

I am open to evolution with God involved. All I'm doing is asking the questions that I believe are valid. I'm not asking for critisism.

Like I've said time and time over, prove me wrong. Show me the evidence.

 

[Silent Bob]

Like I've said time and time over, prove me wrong. Show me the evidence.

What evidence do you want? Present a claim by evolution, tell us why you think it is wrong, what exactly would convince you otherwise and maybe we can offer evidence or explain any misconseptions.

But don't just post strawman falasies that makes you look neither inteligent nor open. If you want to discuss other issues with the scientific view of the cosmos then let's do that too but lets not confuse astronomy with evolution.

Hovind says there are many types of evolution, although this is right in a linguistic sense there is only one theory of evolution and it is concerned with the change of species with time and the increase or decrease of biodiversity of this planet. The origins of life, the planet, sun, universe matter is of no concern to evolution. Same way the Bible cannot be used to understand Fourier series, the theory of evolution cannot be applied to the formation of the cosmos.

BTW you should be worried by the fact that Hovind's list agrees with yours as far as creationists go he is really the lowest of the low.

 

[rmwilliamsll]

Once again, I said that the questions weren't mine on page 1 of the thread (maybe 2).

I am open to evolution with God involved. All I'm doing is asking the questions that I believe are valid. I'm not asking for critisism.

Like I've said time and time over, prove me wrong. Show me the evidence.

First, the issue isn't really over TofE, it is about human beings, most YECists wouldn't care about the issue if TofE hadn't found human beings continuous with the rest of living creatures.

Second, so look at the evidence for human evolution.
1.chimp 2p+2q=human 2 (chromosomes)
2.HERV's recapitulate both the taxonomic and protein sequence clades.
3.GLO pseudogene and the issue of plagarism.

Third, look at the big issue of TofE: common descent. understand that living things fall into nested hierarchical structures, no chimeras, no hopeful monsters, no swapped modules have been found. consistently vertical transmission of genetic material is found. (minor exception is ERV co-option but that is another matter) if a designer designed it then he made it look a lot like it evolved.

so, there is good understandable at the laymen's level evidence for TofE. AFAIK there are no good YECist or AiG replies to any of this.

 

[gluadys]

Actually if you go back in the thread you'll see that I already said I sourced the questions elsewhere (plus I'm sure everyone here has seen the Hovind questions).

I used them because I wanted to get the answers (I thought he raised a good point). They are the questions I would have been asking anyways but a bit reworded. I'm a YEC but I'm pretty open to be proven wrong. I'm searching for answers.

God Bless

So let's look at the first question in the list.

Where did the space for the universe come from?

Now for sure, I would need that question re-worded. Can you reword it so that it makes some sense?

Where would space be if not in the universe? How could it come from somewhere else when there is no somewhere else?

 

[Veinor]

There is alot in this thread thatto be honest I do find offensive.

I think it's ridiculous to say that YEC's would have convictions overturned like there was in the parody. I am however a Christian as I am sure people here are and I'm sure that no offense was intended, so moving on.

What I have done is found a few questions for all the evolutionists out there. Prove me wrong. I love a challenge.

1. Where did the space for the universe come from?
2. Where did matter come from?
3. Where did the laws of the universe come from (gravity, inertia, etc.)?
4. How did matter get so perfectly organized?
5. Where did the energy come from to do all the organizing?
6. When, where, why, and how did life come from non-living matter?
7. When, where, why, and how did life learn to reproduce itself?
8. With what did the first cell capable of sexual reproduction reproduce?
9. Why would any plant or animal want to reproduce more of its kind since this would only make more mouths to feed and decrease the chances of survival? (Does the individual have a drive to surviv e, or the species? How do you explain this?)
10. How can mutations (recombining of the genetic code) create any new, improved varieties? (Recombining English letters will never produce Chinese books.)
11. Is it possible that similarities in design between different animals prove a common Creator instead of a common ancestor?
12. Natural selection only works with the genetic information available and tends only to keep a species stable. How would you explain the increasing complexity in the genetic code that must have occ urred if evolution were true?

Some answers:
1-5 have nothing to do with evolution, so they are irrelevant.
6: Abiogenesis is perfectly possible: amino acids, the building blocks of life, have been produced from non-living things in something called the Miller-Urey experiment.

8. Maybe it was capable of both sexual and asexual.
9. Your statement implies that, for example, plants have to go out and bring home the bacon, as it were, for their pollen. Resource competition only occurs when the population reaches a certain size (the human population is getting there.)
10. In the same way that science comes up with better ways to do things: trial and error. Maybe the modification of one of the base-pairs improves the efficience of white blood cells or something; this mutation will prove to be beneficial.
11. Yes.
12. Similarly to how technology advances, actually: trial and error.

 

[laptoppop]

6. These experiments have been criticized on a number of levels, including the use of a trap to collect the molecules and the lack of oxygen, etc. It has not been shown at all that the molecules would form otherwise.

(I also found the original topic EXTREMELY insulting -- and it saddened me to see others joining in. I only read the first page and these last posts)

 

[Mallon]

(I also found the original topic EXTREMELY insulting -- and it saddened me to see others joining in. I only read the first page and these last posts)

I thought it was funny in a tongue-in-cheek, not-so-subtle kind of way. Certainly, if you follow the creationist argument that forensic science cannot accurately detail past events "to its logical conclusion" (where have I heard that before?), any criminal convicted based on forensics should go free! Where does the logic break down?

 

[laptoppop]

OK, its a supposedly logical insult. Its still insulting and uses a straw man view of YEC to start its logic.

 

[Mallon]

OK, its a supposedly logical insult.

I'm glad you'll at least admit to that.

Its still insulting and uses a straw man view of YEC to start its logic.

I can understand and appreciate how some would find it insulting. I won't contend that.
I fail to recognize the strawman, though. Can you please point it out?

 

[shernren]

6. These experiments have been criticized on a number of levels, including the use of a trap to collect the molecules and the lack of oxygen, etc. It has not been shown at all that the molecules would form otherwise.

(I also found the original topic EXTREMELY insulting -- and it saddened me to see others joining in. I only read the first page and these last posts)

Which experiments in particular? I agree that Miller-Urey was probably not too refined, but it was not by any means the last word on chemical abiogenesis. And one who accepts long-ages will also accept that the early atmosphere of the Earth was anoxic (if I use my terms right) and strongly reducing, hence the lack of oxygen actually fits Earth's prebiotic environment quite well instead of being an experimental flaw.

The problem is really that creationists themselves are a bit sloppy with the way they use the concept of "presuppositions", as I was trying to show a little at the slugfest over at Calminian's miracles-and-science thread. Creationists try to distinguish between present (operational) and past (origins), but on what grounds? The problem is that there is really no good way to demarcate the past from the present, any experiences I perceive at this present moment actually happened in the past, even if only a little while past, and therefore by creationist standards anything I ever experience would be unreliable.

I think I'm starting to grasp what the creationists are trying to say (months after this thread went its course!), it's about miracles and causation, but then the un-investigability of the historic interpretation of Genesis 1 is directly related to its being a miracle rather than its happening in the past. If someone tells me that the past is not amenable to investigation, I would ask "How would you demonstrate that the sun rose yesterday?". Clearly the past is amenable to investigation and the "operational/origins" divide is not as simple as "if it happened a long time ago it's unknowable", which is essentially what AiG's stance reduces to.