Are there any creationists willing to debate?

[Alessandro]

That is not for me to answer.

 

[David Gould]

That is not for me to answer.

Ah! Christian code for: "I think so but because God is the judge I am not allowed to say."

Interesting.

To me, this causes a problem for your position. If belief in a 6,000 year old earth is required in order to be saved then surely you have a responsibility to tell people that - there are immortal souls at stake here!

But if you do tell them that, then you are guilty of judging people and we all know what the Bible warns may happen to those who judge ... (I think it has something to do with cinnamon but maybe I am misremembering ).


Quite a conundrum. How do you work around it? Do you simply argue against evolution and an old earth without giving your rational for doing so? That might work, although it does not convey the seriousness of the situation and people might think that insofar as salvation is concerned the answer is irrelevent.

Again, I am serious: how do you resolve this? How do you warn people they are unsaved without warning them that they are unsaved?

 

[Megachihuahua]

It has beem established that their are creationists willing to debate, can this thread die now?

 

[Aaron11]

Ah! Christian code for: "I think so but because God is the judge I am not allowed to say."

Interesting.

To me, this causes a problem for your position. If belief in a 6,000 year old earth is required in order to be saved then surely you have a responsibility to tell people that - there are immortal souls at stake here!

But if you do tell them that, then you are guilty of judging people and we all know what the Bible warns may happen to those who judge ... (I think it has something to do with cinnamon but maybe I am misremembering ).


Quite a conundrum. How do you work around it? Do you simply argue against evolution and an old earth without giving your rational for doing so? That might work, although it does not convey the seriousness of the situation and people might think that insofar as salvation is concerned the answer is irrelevent.

Again, I am serious: how do you resolve this? How do you warn people they are unsaved without warning them that they are unsaved?

I am amazed at your ability to argue against your own straw man. Stop placing words in the guy's mouth. If he says, "it is not for me to say," then take his word at face value. He doesn't say statements of judgement for a reason. The reason is because he is not the judge, God is. You do not know this guys thoughts and make yourself look like a fool for trying to pretend to. You are arguing something that this guy never projected and acting like you have defeated him somehow. If you can not argue what the guy said without pretending that he said something else, why are you talking?

 

[David Gould]

I am amazed at your ability to argue against your own straw man. Stop placing words in the guy's mouth. If he says, "it is not for me to say," then take his word at face value. He doesn't say statements of judgement for a reason. The reason is because he is not the judge, God is. You do not know this guys thoughts and make yourself look like a fool for trying to pretend to. You are arguing something that this guy never projected and acting like you have defeated him somehow. If you can not argue what the guy said without pretending that he said something else, why are you talking?

Bu you have just agreed with me as to what he meant!

He doesn't say statements of judgement for a reason. The reason is because he is not the judge, God is.

This was my starting point. From there, I moved to the why of this. How about, to make it more correct, I put an if in there.

In other words, if he believes that those who do not believe in a 6,000 year old earth are in danger of not being saved then what does he do about, given that he is not to judge?

I would also point out the following statement:

When one is saved, clearly that shows that one trusts in God and the Word of God. Then there is no reason for him/her to disregard anything in the Bible.

As far as I can tell, this pretty much clearly states: 'People who are saaved trust God and the Word of God.' In other words, people who are saved believe the creation story in Genesis is literal.

There are no strawmen here. There is just standard Creationist dodging of difficult questions.

 

[kenneth558]

I don't mean to derail anything ya'll got goin' on here, but I couldn't sleep thinking about this. I'm up late studying Human Anatomy & Physiology. I see all the elaborate tissues and systems. Evolutionists say that humans and chimps have the same ancestor. Also, the evolution of a trait requires reproductive separation and evolutionary pressure over several generations to establish the different trait. Now, if there are 5000 trait differences between humans and chimps (including different numbers of chromosomes), so perhaps 2500 trait differences between humans and the common ancestor. That means that there had to be 2500 different reproductive separations in our history, combined with the unique evolutionary pressure required to select a new trait. I don't know how many generations would be required to establish a new trait in each situation, but let's say a minimum of 35 generations. We can't assume these reproductive separation/evolutionary pressure combinations are 100% productive in giving rise to a new trait, nor can we assume they happen immediately following each other, so let's say each one has 1000 yrs non-effective time.

Therefore the equation for minimum evolution time is:

time = # generation * yrs/generation * # trait * non-effective time

If each generation takes 15 years,

time = 35 * 15 * 2500 * 1000
time = 1,312,500,000 yrs from common ancestor to human.

1 billion, 312 million, 500K yrs

This does not account for the science of probability and statistics which would dictate the direction would not always be from ancestor to present, but could reverse randomly at each reproductive separation. This would stretch the time to nearly infinity.

 

[Arikay]

Im not quite sure I understand, but we really only need one speciation event, then the new species will continue to grow and develop different from the old species, because they can no longer successfully share their genetic changes.

 

[David Gould]

I don't mean to derail anything ya'll got goin' on here, but I couldn't sleep thinking about this. I'm up late studying Human Anatomy & Physiology. I see all the elaborate tissues and systems. Evolutionists say that humans and chimps have the same ancestor. Also, the evolution of a trait requires reproductive separation and evolutionary pressure over several generations to establish the different trait. Now, if there are 5000 trait differences between humans and chimps (including different numbers of chromosomes), so perhaps 2500 trait differences between humans and the common ancestor. That means that there had to be 2500 different reproductive separations in our history, combined with the unique evolutionary pressure required to select a new trait. I don't know how many generations would be required to establish a new trait in each situation, but let's say a minimum of 35 generations. We can't assume these reproductive separation/evolutionary pressure combinations are 100% productive in giving rise to a new trait, nor can we assume they happen immediately following each other, so let's say each one has 1000 yrs non-effective time.

Therefore the equation for minimum evolution time is:

time = # generation * yrs/generation * # trait * non-effective time

If each generation takes 15 years,

time = 35 * 15 * 2500 * 1000
time = 1,312,500,000 yrs from common ancestor to human.

1 billion, 312 million, 500K yrs

This does not account for the science of probability and statistics which would dictate the direction would not always be from ancestor to present, but could reverse randomly at each reproductive separation. This would stretch the time to nearly infinity.

Assuming your maths is valid - and personally, I doubt it but I have not the time to go through it, there are a number of problems.

In your maths, one of the things I can see is a hell of a lot of ifs. For example, the generational age - many apes species have much less than 15 years. If we set it at 7.5, your figure halves. If we set the number of separations required at 500, the total ends up being 1/10th of your figure. If we then say it takes 10 generations, that takes it to 1/30th. If we say that your non-effective time (not clear on what you mean by that) is 10 years, we are down to 1/3000th. Which is around the 3 - 4 million year figure for chimp/human divergence. (assuming, of course, that my maths is right)

So putting in different values - all of which are simply guesses on your part and mine - gives different results so even assuming your equation is a valid look at the evolutionary process, it tells us not much at all. It is like the Drake equation - it tells us what variables we need to know in order to work out the answer but does not tell us what the values of those variables are.

 

[Pete Harcoff]

One glaring problem with the scenario is that it assumes a completely linear establishments of new traits. I.e. a trait appears, gets established, second trait appears, gets established, etc, one after another.

Of course, like David Gould already said, you're also pulling numbers of thin air, which makes the whole scenario invalid.

 

[LorentzHA]

'Work' in what sense? Are you saying that believing that the Earth is 6,000 years old is required in order to be saved?

If so, where does Jesus or any of the gospel authors or anyone else in the Bible say so?

If not, then picking and choosing (as you call it) clearly can work in a salvation sense - provided you pick the right things.

I agree with what you are saying here. What is really odd to me..is that we are told in the original story that Jesus died on the cross to "save" mankind...does manking not include everyone? I think the whole story incorporates much conjecture.

 

[Aaron11]

Bu you have just agreed with me as to what he meant!

Read it again. You are obviously confused.

 

[Aaron11]

This was my starting point. From there, I moved to the why of this. How about, to make it more correct, I put an if in there.

In other words, if he believes that those who do not believe in a 6,000 year old earth are in danger of not being saved then what does he do about, given that he is not to judge?

Well, since you already asked him, and he gave you his answer that he is not to judge, you should leave it at that. If you are just going to pretend that he means something else when he says that he isn't to say whether or not someone is saved, then you are putting up a straw man.

This would be a parallel situation:

If you believe that Allah created the world, tell me why the Quran wasn't made of gold.

 

[David Gould]

Well, since you already asked him, and he gave you his answer that he is not to judge, you should leave it at that. If you are just going to pretend that he means something else when he says that he isn't to say whether or not someone is saved, then you are putting up a straw man.

This would be a parallel situation:

If you believe that Allah created the world, tell me why the Quran wasn't made of gold.

I am not pretending anything. He said the things I quoted previously and they lead inexorably to the conclusion that he believes that people who do not think the earth is 6,000 year old are unsaved. I will quote it again:

When one is saved, clearly that shows that one trusts in God and the Word of God. Then there is no reason for him/her to disregard anything in the Bible.

They are his words.

That is why he is on the horns of the dilemma I put forward: he cannot judge, so he cannot directly say, 'By not believing this, you are not saved,' and yet morally he cannot just sit back and watch as people fool themselves they are safe from Hell.

Him saying, 'I can't judge,' is not an answer to my question, which is: how does he solve the problem?


Your example has no similarity to my question at all.

 

[Jet Black]

Therefore the equation for minimum evolution time is:

time = # generation * yrs/generation * # trait * non-effective time

first of all, generations are not distinct quantities. monkeys are born every year, there is not a 15 year gap in which no monkeys are born. granted it will take something like a few years before an individual can breed (5-6 years for a femal rhesus monkey, and about 12 for a human) but continual breeding and selection of traits will occur even while a given monkey is going through it's adolescence. (discarding the years/generation variable)

traits do not evolve seperately either. monkeys did not develop an opposable thumb, and then develop a straight spine, and then develop the ability to walk bipedally, and then develop the ability to control their breathing better, and so on. many of the traits are interlinked, so the whole walking mechanism would have evolved togather. (discarding both the #traits, #generations and non-effective time variables)

furthermore, the process is not a linear one. some traits will have been selected for very rapidly, and others will have taken longer to select for. so the assumption of a linear development of a trait is a false one too (an analogy can be seen here in bacteria, where selection of a given characteristic can take over an entire culture in one single selective event, or in the case of albinism in the wild, where it gets selected out immediately)

sorry, but your equation is conceptually flawed, nice try though, and it is good to see people actually thinking about these things a little more, rather than just presenting unfalsifiable arguments.

if you have any objections to my objections, I would be glad to discuss them

 

[Alessandro]

Telling people what the Word of God is/has is the objective, whether they take it all or take some of it or completely disregard it is up to the person not me. Quite simple and there are no problems with it.

 

[Aaron11]

That is why he is on the horns of the dilemma I put forward: he cannot judge, so he cannot directly say, 'By not believing this, you are not saved,' and yet morally he cannot just sit back and watch as people fool themselves they are safe from Hell.

Him saying, 'I can't judge,' is not an answer to my question, which is: how does he solve the problem?


Your example has no similarity to my question at all.

I am going to interject my beliefs here. I am not sure if I believe exactly as he does, but allow me to show how I do believe. I believe that if someone is saved, they will listen to the words of God. I do know that opinions will arise and no one will understand perfectly everything about everything. I believe that I am saved when I am in Christ. I do not think that God wants me to pronounce judgement on another person. Our salvation is not based on our perfect interpretation of the Bible, it is based on our faith through grace in Jesus Christ.

 

[David Gould]

I am going to interject my beliefs here. I am not sure if I believe exactly as he does, but allow me to show how I do believe. I believe that if someone is saved, they will listen to the words of God. I do know that opinions will arise and no one will understand perfectly everything about everything. I believe that I am saved when I am in Christ. I do not think that God wants me to pronounce judgement on another person. Our salvation is not based on our perfect interpretation of the Bible, it is based on our faith through grace in Jesus Christ.

That last line is the key, methinks. This is the thing I challenge creationists on - if someone has faith through grace in Jesus Christ, then surely it does not matter whether they believe the earth is 6, 6000 or 6 billion years old.

But many creationists equate belief in evolution with atheism and thus call into doubt the Christianness of those Christians who are convinced by the evidence that evolution is a valid theory.

 

[fortheloveofmike]

That last line is the key, methinks. This is the thing I challenge creationists on - if someone has faith through grace in Jesus Christ, then surely it does not matter whether they believe the earth is 6, 6000 or 6 billion years old.

But many creationists equate belief in evolution with atheism and thus call into doubt the Christianness of those Christians who are convinced by the evidence that evolution is a valid theory.

i cant recall anyone calling you not a christian because you believed in evolution.

 

[DGB454]

Bu you have just agreed with me as to what he meant!



This was my starting point. From there, I moved to the why of this. How about, to make it more correct, I put an if in there.

In other words, if he believes that those who do not believe in a 6,000 year old earth are in danger of not being saved then what does he do about, given that he is not to judge?

I would also point out the following statement:



As far as I can tell, this pretty much clearly states: 'People who are saaved trust God and the Word of God.' In other words, people who are saved believe the creation story in Genesis is literal.

There are no strawmen here. There is just standard Creationist dodging of difficult questions.

One quick question on the last part. You quoted him saying basically that people who are saved believe the word of God. Then you say "In other words, people who are saved believe in the creation story in Genisis"(which is part of the Bible)" is literal"
Am I wrong or did you pretty much say that the Bible is the word of God?
Am I misinterpriting your meaning?

 

[Aaron11]

We are not saved by the word of God if you mean the Bible. We are saved by the Word of God, which is Christ.