That is simply false... you just cited a source from PhD scientists that do not believe the earth is billions of years old and than said there is no scientific debate. I think what you meant to say, and I'll qualify your statement, is: "There is no scientific debate over the age of the Earth or whether evolution occurred as a mechanism giving rise to the current species on Earth, within the secular scientific (mainstream) community. Even that is not completely true either, as ironically, there are a number of scientists who identify themselves as atheists, who have an issue with ToE. Just so we're clear...
Name them, and show evidence that they have an issue with the theory of evolution as a whole, rather than some specific aspect of it. I don't view a scientific consensus in the high 90 percents to be "heavily debated". Nor do I view it as particularly relevant that some people with relevant degrees do debate against it, because this is the case for all scientific theories, regardless of the evidence supporting them. I'd view it relevant if they made an important discovery that challenged the theory of evolution, though.
I'm pretty sure that Christian creationists would be heavily debating atomic theory if the bible stated "all substance consists ultimately of perfect, unchanging spheres". The theory of evolution isn't some especially weak theory
Taken out of context. They are not suggesting the earth is unequivocally billions of years old. They are saying that from a radiometric dating perspective (where uniformitarian assumptions are applied, there is the appearance of long ages - millions/billions of years) but as I previously stated there is evidence supporting both views. In the same project, the RATE team also measured the amount of helium atoms in zircon crystals and compared against current diffusion rates of helium, resulting in an age of only thousands of years... from the same samples that yielded millions of years from radioisotope dating.
-_- the reason they got that result is due to the fact that it is difficult for helium to diffuse out of zircon once it is trapped within, and that helium can be trapped within it during various stages of formation. It's not considered to be a particularly reliable dating method. Furthermore, I see a few places suggest that the data RATE did get should suggest an age of 1.5 billion years, not thousands.
Dating methods work by comparing multiple ones to each other to get reliable dating, since it is possible for any singular dating method to become flawed as the result of contamination. However, it is exceedingly unlikely for 3 or more dating methods to all be skewed by contamination at the same time. I would always take any age derived from a singular method with a grain of salt, and I would take any age derived from a singular method and only gotten by a singular team with a tub of salt.
Furthermore, by your mention of uniformitarianism, you do not seem to understand the far reaching implications of things such as radioactive decay rates somehow being different in the past than they are today. Basically, in order to get billions of years worth of decay within just a few thousand years, life on this planet couldn't exist. That is, the amount of alpha, beta, and gamma particles released in the past would have to exceed 450,000 times that of today to accommodate an eventual decline of radiation released. That is, compared to the 2.40 mSv of radiation the average person on this planet is exposed to every year, ancient people would have had to withstand more than 1,080,000 mSv per year. That is 2958.9 mSv per day, or 123.29 mSv per hour. 100 mSv per 5 years is generally considered the recommended limit for people that get exposed to high levels of radiation in the workplace, and they'd be getting far more than that within an hour. Two days of this high radiation environment would kill about half the people exposed to it within a month, even if taken out of that environment.
Not to mention the heat of all that energy being released.
Further, a recent article posted in another thread in CF by another member shows evidence that from a study of the genes across many species, it appears that all major life forms alive all showed up at the same time:
https://phys.org/news/2018-05-gene-survey-reveals-facets-evolution.html
It isn't all major forms of life, you didn't read that source for yourself very well: "The study's most startling result, perhaps, is that nine out of 10 species on Earth today, including humans, came into being 100,000 to 200,000 years ago."
That is, 90% of animal species which are currently alive today originated 100,000-200,000 years ago (animal is clarified before the quote I made, since the page mentions that this was derived from studying animal sequences). From my perspective, that just goes to show that populations are always changing. It certainly doesn't support any YEC views.
Soooooo...... as I've posted before, science is an ineffective tool for proving the existence of God (or that God does not exist), regardless of what worldview you ascribe to - scientific assertions are not the end-all, final say.
-_- that's just an admission that the deity you worship isn't observable in any regard. Also, that deities don't exist is the null hypothesis, the default you end up with when there isn't sufficient evidence that something exists. Same goes for giant purple people eaters. You wouldn't be able to force yourself to believe in giant purple people eaters without evidence for it, right?
Yet, we know that people can be raised to believe in just about anything, even if there is no evidence provided for it, such as the Easter Bunny. You might say "but people stop believing in the Easter Bunny when they grow up", but note that people simply stop reaffirming the belief after a while. Tell me, did your parents state that YHWH wasn't real after you turned 8, much to your childhood disappointment? I highly doubt it.
God's word is the final say, and He said He created the universe and everything therein just as we're told in the book of Genesis, and there is, unequivocally, evidence of a Creator. Only those who choose to willingly ignore this evidence or attempt to explain it away by natural events continue to reject the truth.
Dude, I just don't see any evidence that the bible is the word of a deity to begin with. It's not like I am denying a deity exists when it is demonstrably the author of a book; it's not demonstrably the author of a book. I've read the whole thing, and found nothing in the pages that a human couldn't have written on their own.
If you actually have evidence of a creator, present it. No reason to allude to it and not mention it.
Seems the alternative to believing in God is that all the design, order, information, intelligence, and balance to delicately support life is to have happenstance come from a giant explosion, that resulted in particles and atoms that chose to combine and form stars, then by random chance have protoplanetary space dust just decide to coalesce and clump together into distinct planets orbiting around them (though not all rotating the same direction in the case of our solar system) and these planets would just form atmospheres and slowly, without direction, develop all of the systems and processes necessary to support life... then by way of abiogenesis life would just form from non-life, and through evolution you and I would come to be here and be conversing back and forth through a systematic language over an electronic construct we call "the internet." You see the irony then, where creationists are critiqued for invoking "magic"; however, having a divine creator actually fits with the evidence whereas having to imagine that all of this would just happen on its own, that information would just come from nowhere and patterns would just form and repeat by themselves, that matter would form from non-matter, and life from non-life, etc, etc... all without a Creator, REALLY would require "magic".
-_- sure, it sounds unlikely when you give atoms a choice, as if they actually can choose not to collect together. That's like saying that vinegar can spontaneously decide not to be acidic, it's nonsense. The physics of our universe don't allow for it to be as drastically different as you suggest it could be, and we have no reason to think that said physics could have developed any differently. Heck, for all we know, even if there are many universes, they all have the same physics as our own at some point in their existence.
-_- plus, as if there could be organisms questioning their own existence in a universe that utterly doesn't allow life to form. Perhaps if we consisted of exceedingly rare elements and compounds you could have a point about how unlikely it is for it all to come together, but we consist of the most common elements in the universe. You consider life to be outrageously improbable, but it is entirely possible that with sufficient time, life will form in any environment that allows for it. 50% of all solar systems with planets could have at least 1 planet that has life and we'd be completely unaware of it all because of our technological limits.
It is an attempt to undermine the truth of God's word... as a strategy it is nonsense to squabble about things like how many loaves of bread and fish Jesus used to feed the 5,000 or whether He raised people from the dead, walked on water, was born to a virgin, etc...
The "born of a virgin" thing is actually the result of an ancient mistranslation in one of the OT prophecies Jesus supposedly fulfills. It wouldn't be until long after the NT was written that scholars would realize that the actual phrase was "young woman", not virgin. Not that it is actually possible to demonstrate that anyone is a virgin; it's not like the hymen is some sort of seal that absolutely must break upon contact with a penis and prevents fertilization otherwise (yes, a woman can have sex and the hymen remains completely intact, and said woman can also get pregnant with the hymen remaining intact).
-_- yet the bible treats the hymen as if it cannot break through any other means aside from sex and that it absolutely does break with sex. I would think that YHWH would know better about the women it supposedly created than that.
Instead, it is treated like a weed and the attempt is to kill it at the root, so the attack is on the creation account and the events around the opening chapters of the Bible. If people can be deceived to believe the beginning of the Bible is wrong, then they are more likely to toss out the entire thing... and not coincidentally I am finding a number of the folks here in this thread who identify themselves as atheists, having issue with Genesis.
I just have issues with the lack of evidence that the Christian god at all, but seeing as Genesis is the most relevant part of the bible for Christian creationists debating evolution supporters, it just makes sense that part of the bible gets brought up so much. It's not like there is much of a reason to bring up the book of Esther in this debate context from either side.
But hey, if you want more variability in the parts of the bible debated, pick a book of your choosing; I don't think any of them are without contradictions.
Best regards as you continue to search for the truth. We may all have our own version of the truth, but ultimately there is only one truth in the end and the evidence continues to stack up in favor of a loving God that made everything - Christianity is not a blind faith, but ultimately you and I are called to live by faith. I choose to have faith in God's word regardless of the ever-changing winds of what is believed by the philosophers (scientists) of our day.
This whole post, and not a single word of it was actual evidence for the existence of the deity you worship. Even your argument from incredulity in regards to abiogenesis, etc. was but a small portion of your post, not that it would have been a satisfactory argument even if it made for the majority of it. I am immensely disappointed that you decided not to respond to anything I said in regards to your claim that populations have some sort of limit as to how much they can change.
If your faith isn't blind, demonstrate it. How genetically different can members of a population get before they just stop? What stops the change from continuing?
