Are creationism and evolution "beliefs"?

[Melethiel]

Just to give you a taste of what my university is like...on the main Plaza (and there was a photo with these characters in our campus paper) on any given day, you're likely to find the Easter bunny, a Hare Krishna, an evangelical preacher, Moses, a bunch of JW/Mormons, and a Shark advertising file-sharing programs.

 

[Assyrian]

We get around

 

[GratiaCorpusChristi]

I go to Messiah College, an evangelical Christian campus. It's not terribly conservative, but they definitely market the conservative evangelical community.

And yet, our premed and bio departments are rather... evolutionary....

 

[chaoschristian]

I go to Messiah College, an evangelical Christian campus. It's not terribly conservative, but they definitely market the conservative evangelical community.

And yet, our premed and bio departments are rather... evolutionary....

You go to Messiah? There's someone else who used to frequent here who goes to Messiah.

I know folks who have graduated from there. It's a good solid school.

 

[lucaspa]

No, always. The conclusion that explains the most observations and evidence collected is always the correct choice. Even if it turns out to be false in its ultimate veracity, at the time it was supported by the evidence and it was thus correct to choose that conclusion.

Sorry, but no. You are stacking up piles of "evidence for" and seeing which is the tallest pile. That isn't how science works. What counts is "evidence against". A theory can explain lots of evidence but, when confronted with evidence contrary to the theory, then the theory is in trouble.

If I found someone who believes that computers are a gift from God and that their transistors operate not on electricity but on divine will, nothing I could show them in terms of experimentation would convince them otherwise, despite the fact that no other naturalistic conclusion can be drawn.

Again, you are confusing the idea with people who advocate the idea. You say "would convince them". That isn't the issue. The issue is:

Do computers work only on divine will and not electricity?

THAT you can refute. Whether the person admits it or not says something about their personality, but nothing about the accuracy of the idea.

So, instead of saying "You are that sort of person. You believe what you believe because you believe it and will not acknowledge even the most bullet-proof of evidence to the contrary of your beliefs.", which gets you nowhere and is close to flaming, I suggest you simply say that "Creationism has been shown to be wrong. Whether you accept that creationism is wrong does not affect the reality that creationism is wrong."

 

[lucaspa]

I go to Messiah College, an evangelical Christian campus. It's not terribly conservative, but they definitely market the conservative evangelical community.

And yet, our premed and bio departments are rather... evolutionary....

Of course! That's because there is no other viable alternative theory.

Tell us, tho, does the faculty present evolution as atheistic?

 

[lucaspa]

The difference I would propose is that if we have two models, both possible, even if one is considered more likely than the other, as Christians we should prefer the model which is most consistent with Scripture. ... A global flood does a much better job of explaining the geological evidence that we have than any other explanation.

Sorry, but a global flood is NOT possible! There are simply too many observations that we have that could not be there if a global flood had happened.

True statements cannot have false consequences. And the global flood has false consequences.

We can go into several of these if you want. I'll give you just one: the volcanic cones in Auvergne, France. These are very delicate volcanic cones. Yet at their feet are layers of sedimentary rock that would have had to be deposited by the Flood. BUT, such a flood would have destroyed the cones themselves. Therefore, no flood.

 

[lucaspa]

This chart could also be interpreted as the rate of successful indoctrination by the educational establishment.

Let's go back 170 years. We have Rev Adam Sedgwick. He was the premier geologist of the time, head of Geology at Cambridge and President of the Royal Geological Society for over 10 years. He was also a very conservative Christian and started out as a flood geologist.

In his Presidential Address in 1831 -- when he was retiring at President of the RGS -- Sedgwick stated that the Flood never happend. The following is a segment of his address:

""Having been myself a believer, and, to the best of my power, a propagator of what I now regard as a philosophical heresy ... I think it right, as one of my last acts before I quit this Chair, thus publicly to read my recantation. ...
"We ought, indeed, to have paused before we first adopted the diluvian theory, and referred all our old superficial gravel to the action of the Mosaic Flood. For of man, and the works of his hands, we have not yet found a single trace among the remnants of a former world entombed in these ancient deposits." Adam Sedgwick's presidential address to the Geological Society, 1831

So, Sedgwick wasn't "indoctrinated" by the educational establishment, was he? He was an Anglican minister, a professional geologist, and had accepted that geology was caused by a global flood. But here he is admitting that the Flood had been shown false by the data. His fellow geologists - Rev. Buckland, Rev Baden-Powell, and others -- all agreed.

Now, you say flood geology explains things. How does it explain the very thick salt beds under Lake Erie by Cleveland, OH? After all, the solid salt beds are sandwiched between sedimentary rock that must, under flood geology, have been laid down by the Flood. So, if the Flood is there and laying down the sediments below the salt layer, and the Flood also lays down the sediments above the salt layer, how can the Flood lay down solid salt? The salt would have to be dissolved in the Flood waters, right?

If flood geology is true, then those salt beds can't exist. Yet there they are. Been mined for decades.

 

[GratiaCorpusChristi]

You go to Messiah? There's someone else who used to frequent here who goes to Messiah

Interesting.

Of course! That's because there is no other viable alternative theory.

Tell us, tho, does the faculty present evolution as atheistic?

Nope. They don't try to fill in gaps of data with acts of miraculous special creation, but they do see the whole process as guided by God to non-random results (like the human body).

 

[lucaspa]

Nope. They don't try to fill in gaps of data with acts of miraculous special creation, but they do see the whole process as guided by God to non-random results (like the human body).

OK, so the faculty is not presenting evolution as atheism. Good. But evolution is not about "random results".

Here the faculty is missing (if you reported them correctly) that natural selection is a non-random process. Yes, variations are random, but only with respect to the needs of the individual or population.

Selection is the opposite of random; it is determinism. So the whole idea that "results" are "random" is not part of evolution to begin with.

What it sounds like is that your faculty believes God tinkered with evolution to get the human body. How do they think that happened?

 

[GratiaCorpusChristi]

What it sounds like is that your faculty believes God tinkered with evolution to get the human body. How do they think that happened?

I don't they would put it quite that way. The faculty, I don't think, wouldn't generally say that God produced the random genetic mutations amiable to the primate's environment in order to produce the human body. I think they'd say that the universe was originally set up in such a way, with a certain organization of matter and energy and certain universal laws that would result in the human body.

And I don't think they're committed to the idea that the human body has to be exactly as it is, either. A human might have had six digits or four, and might have had a different endocrine structure, or whatever. Their general idea is that the universe was, from the very beginning, finely tuned to deterministically generate bipedal hominids.

Look up Robin Collins on google. He teaches philosophy here and has some interesting discussions with the biology department.

 

[shernren]

Is there a difference between teleological randomness and methodological randomness?