Creation & Evolution

[Snide]

I don't understand why people here cannot accept both. Evolution is a part of life, but so is creation.

From a religious standpoint, in the bible it said God changed the race of people. What is wrong with saying he used evolution to do that? Point is you can have Creation and Evolution at the same time without any conflicts.

 

[lucaspa]

I don't understand why people here cannot accept both. Evolution is a part of life, but so is creation.

From a religious standpoint, in the bible it said God changed the race of people. What is wrong with saying he used evolution to do that? Point is you can have Creation and Evolution at the same time without any conflicts.

Instead, why not just say that God created by the mechanism of evolution?

Now, the problem is that we don't know that creation by a deity is part of life. Christians believe that (and I don't want to change that belief), but it is not "knowledge" as intersubjective, objective evidence.

 

[Snide]

Instead, why not just say that God created by the mechanism of evolution?

Now, the problem is that we don't know that creation by a deity is part of life. Christians believe that (and I don't want to change that belief), but it is not "knowledge" as intersubjective, objective evidence.

So whats the argument here? Justifing beliefs with beliefs? It takes just as much belief to say we wasn't created as it does to say we was.

Here is an example:

I think we live in a deterministic world where nothing happens truely random. Therfore for our world to happen, something has to create it. But either way we go, its just belief.

 

[lucaspa]

So whats the argument here? Justifing beliefs with beliefs? It takes just as much belief to say we wasn't created as it does to say we was.

Here is an example:

I think we live in a deterministic world where nothing happens truely random. Therfore for our world to happen, something has to create it. But either way we go, its just belief.

There's not necessarily an argument. Only what I think is a better way to phrase what you were saying and making clear the distinction between what we KNOW and what we BELIEVE. You stated a belief as fact.

I agree that atheism is just as much a belief as theism.

The evolution vs creationism debate, however, isn't about whether or not there is a deity or whether we were created. Creationists often view it in those terms, but that is a mistake.

What is at issue in the evolution vs creationism discussion is HOW God created. The evidence shows that God did NOT create by creationism. Instead, IF you believe in God (for other reasons), then God created by evolution.

Your "I think we live in a deterministic world where nothing happens truely random" has been falsified by the data. Quantum mechanics show definitively that we do NOT live in a deterministic universe. It only APPEARS that way because the random quantum events have predictable probabilities in large numbers.

 

[7891b]

If God created life by evolution, why doesn't it say so in the Bible?

 

[Freodin]

If God created life by evolution, why doesn't it say so in the Bible?

Because the Bible is not a science textbook written by God YHWH, but a compilation of texts that try to explain individual and general human relationships with God.
It was written by humans, and thus limited by human knowledge.

 

[lucaspa]

If God created life by evolution, why doesn't it say so in the Bible?

Freodin gave a good answer. As Pope John Paul II reiterated, the Bible is to teach us how to go to heaven, not how the heavens go. You read the second book of God -- Creation -- to find out how God created.

You read Genesis 1 and 2 for the theological messages in them. If you insist on mistakenly reading them as history, you miss the theological messages.

 

[Snide]

There's not necessarily an argument. Only what I think is a better way to phrase what you were saying and making clear the distinction between what we KNOW and what we BELIEVE. You stated a belief as fact.

I agree that atheism is just as much a belief as theism.

The evolution vs creationism debate, however, isn't about whether or not there is a deity or whether we were created. Creationists often view it in those terms, but that is a mistake.

What is at issue in the evolution vs creationism discussion is HOW God created. The evidence shows that God did NOT create by creationism. Instead, IF you believe in God (for other reasons), then God created by evolution.

Your "I think we live in a deterministic world where nothing happens truely random" has been falsified by the data. Quantum mechanics show definitively that we do NOT live in a deterministic universe. It only APPEARS that way because the random quantum events have predictable probabilities in large numbers.

Evolution doesn't say that is the absolute way we were created. It just says we may have been created using that process. You could look the same way at a stone sculpture. You could argue that the sculpture was created by an artist or you could also argue that it was created by other natural means. It could have looked different when the artist created it and changed. The only way you could know the answer to that riddle is to prove the artist to be true or false. In other words science would have to prove God as false before ruling out the creation idea. I don’t see that happening as the concept of God is completely over the abilities of the human mind.

As far as the non-deterministic universe goes, I have to disagree. If the universe was non-deterministic then it wouldn’t be predictable at large numbers. It shouldn’t be predictable no matter what the numbers are. In a non-deterministic universe anything could happen at any moment without any kind of cause what so ever. In other words a hot chick could appear right in front of me completely naked in a non-deterministic universe. Things wouldn’t happen for a reason, it would just happen. That’s what a non-deterministic universe would look like.

By the sound of what you’re saying in your post, quantum physics is trying to say anything over the human understanding is non-deterministic. In other words their saying pseudorandom numbers are true random numbers because we don’t have the capacity for the information needed to predict it. Even though as time goes forward our capacity may change and that may no longer be a source for a truly random number.

If a numbers are predicatable in any form then its generated by deterministic means. I think quantom physics stance on this issue will change in due time.

 

[Arikay]

And in science you cant prove god true or false, creation is not part of science, its part of philosophy.

One thing to mention is there is a difference between *creation* and *creationism*

 

[lucaspa]

Evolution doesn't say that is the absolute way we were created. It just says we may have been created using that process.

Science shows that we were NOT created by the process of creationISM.

What science does is absolutely falsify hypotheses/theories (which are collections of statements) by deductive logic. The idea that God created by separately manufacturing each species -- including humans -- is shown to be wrong by the data.

What the data also shows is that repeated attempts to falsify evolution has failed. There is overwhelming data supporting it. Therefore, it is perverse not to accept evolution as (provisionally) true.

Thus my statement: If there is God, then He created by evolution.

Now, I and countless Christians don't see any problem of that statement for Judeo-Christianity.

In other words science would have to prove God as false before ruling out the creation idea. I don’t see that happening as the concept of God is completely over the abilities of the human mind.

Now you are confusing two ideas: creation and creationISM. Creation is a theological statement that God created. Science can't address that. Not won't, but can't. Methodological materialism. However, scinece can address proposed mechanisms for HOW God created. CreationISM is one method. It is falsified.

Evolution can be viewed as the mechanism by which God created. That view is theistic evolution. Science can't touch that.

You could look the same way at a stone sculpture. You could argue that the sculpture was created by an artist or you could also argue that it was created by other natural means. It could have looked different when the artist created it and changed. The only way you could know the answer to that riddle is to prove the artist to be true or false.

I hear what you are saying. However, your example has problems because in the case of the statue, you can tell. What you can do is eliminate the possibility that ANY process in the environment that could produce the scultpure. If you do that, then the ONLY hypothesis left standing is that the sculpture represents a manufactured artifact.

What happened in biology was that Darwin did discover a process in the environment -- natural selection -- that can and does produce the designs in living organisms. Thus we cannot infer that they are artifacts manufactured by God.

As far as the non-deterministic universe goes, I have to disagree. If the universe was non-deterministic then it wouldn’t be predictable at large numbers.

You can't predict each coin toss with any reliability. However, if you toss a large number of coins you know that about 50% will be heads and 50% tails.

In a non-deterministic universe anything could happen at any moment without any kind of cause what so ever.

Not any kind of thing, because "any kind of thing" would violate the probabilities. IOW, if you have a gram of Radium, you can't have all of it decay in the next second, because that would violate the probability.

In other words a hot chick could appear right in front of me completely naked in a non-deterministic universe. Things wouldn’t happen for a reason, it would just happen. That’s what a non-deterministic universe would look like.

Now you are talking about a non-rational universe, not a non-deterministic one. Have you read about the decay of black holes? Hawking has shown that the energy emitted by black holes MUST be in EVERY POSSIBLE configuration. And since matter and energy are one, that means your hot chick, you, me, or Cthuhulu WILL come out of a black hole eventually.

By the sound of what you’re saying in your post, quantum physics is trying to say anything over the human understanding is non-deterministic.

Not that. Quantum physicists were no more happy initially with non-determinism than you are. They fought it tooth and nail. However, the data leave us no choice. Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle and Planck's work are not based on the limits of our measurements. Indeterminancy is a real part of the universe. See Timothy Farris' The Whole Shebang for a readable description.

Now, Kenneth Miller argues that indeterminancy is good for theology. Because it means God created a universe with meaning, and a purely deterministic universe would lack that meaning. Read Chapter 7 in Finding Darwin's God for a full discussion.

I think quantom physics stance on this issue will change in due time.

That's wishful thinking. That's not accepting the universe as it is but trying to make the universe what you want it to be. You've violated the prime rule of the scientific method.

As I said, the data is conclusive. Not only that, but new experiments are linking the quantum world to our macroscopic world. And QM applies here as well. Below are some places to start reading.

12. M Tegmark and JA Wheeler, 100 years of quantum mysteries. Scientific American 284: 68-75, Feb. 2001.
10. J Winters, Quantum cat tricks. Discover, 17(10): 26, Oct. 1996. Atom in spin up and spin down can be separated and be in 2 places at the same time.
8. M Brack, Metal clusters and magic numbers. Scientific American, 50-57, Dec. 1997. Experiments linking the quantum world to the macroscopic world.
11. EA Cornell and CE Weiman, The Bose-Einstein condensate. Scientific American, 278(3): 40-45, March 1998.
18. HJ Meisner, DM Stamper-Kurn, MR Andrews, DS Durfee, S Inouye, W Ketterle, Bosonic stimulation in the formation of a Bose-Einstein condensate. Science 279: 1005-1007, Feb 13, 1998. Another way to get a Bose-Einstein condensate and macroscopic matter-wave anplification. Is crucial to the concept of an atom laser. So QM is accepted as basis for next step. D Kestenbaum, Hydrogen coaxed into quantum condensate. Science 281: 321, (17 July) 1998. Bone-Einstein condensate of hydrogen. Has 10x more atoms than previous condensates.
9. CM Caves, Quantum teleportation: a tale of two cities. Science 282: 637, 23 Oct. 1998. Primary article is A Furusawa, JL Sarensen, SL Braunstein, CA Fuchs, HJ Kimble, ES Polzik, Unconditional quantum teleportation. Science 282: 706-717, 23 Oct. 1998.
10. LV Grover. Beyond factorization and search. Science 281: 792-794, 1998 (7 Aug). Describes progress in making quantum computers.
11. GP Collins, The coolest gas in the universe. Scientific American, 283: 92-99, Dec 2000. Summary of Bose-Einstein condensates.

 

[lucaspa]

And in science you cant prove god true or false, creation is not part of science, its part of philosophy.

One thing to mention is there is a difference between *creation* and *creationism*

Thank you Arikay. You got this in while I was composing a longer post that had this in it. But I don't think we can make that distinction too often or too emphatically.

 

[Snide]

And in science you cant prove god true or false, creation is not part of science, its part of philosophy.

One thing to mention is there is a difference between *creation* and *creationism*

Not really, without asking the creator or seeing the creation take place you could never be 100% certain about the method used to do the creating. You could only assume or guess that it was created by this or that. The tools you see now and the tools you seen then could be different. The creation could have changed since it was created leaving you with just assumptions or guesses. If you were there at the time of creation then there would be no search for the answer as you would know it.

You can think of God as an artist and many different theories as tools that God uses to create works of art with. Just because you see evolution in the set of tools doesn’t mean you can explain what he does with it, if he has used it in his creations, the reasons behind using the tool, how long it has been there, if he has ever modified anything with it, or much of anything else. What do come up with is that God has the option to use that tool. But you definitly cannot say that everything was created using that tool. You can believe it, but you'll never know it.

 

[Cantuar]

Not really, without asking the creator or seeing the creation take place you could never be 100% certain about the method used to do the creating.

Considering the number of people sitting in jail after being convicted by eyewitness evidence and who were later shown by DNA fingerprinting to be innocent, I'm not sure why eyewitness evidence is considered by creationists to be foolproof and the scientific method is considered to be a waste of time.

You could only assume or guess that it was created by this or that.

Do you really think science is just a case of guesses or assumptions? You must spend a lot of time avoiding anything based on the scientific method, then. Hope you're comportable in that cave.

The tools you see now and the tools you seen then could be different.

What tools do you mean?

The creation could have changed since it was created leaving you with just assumptions or guesses.

Do you have some reason to believe that those changes wouldn't have left evidence? I mean, if we're going to get into a discussion of whether things are completely different from the way they appear to be, we're going to get nowhere. You might just as well say that the Invisible Pink Unicorn (PBUH) created the universe last Thursday and just made it appear that everything's been around a lot longer. In science, you deal with what's actually there, not with philosophical musings about whether it's actually all completely different.

If you were there at the time of creation then there would be no search for the answer as you would know it.

Setting aside the less than perfect reliability of eyewitness evidence, I don't see how being there would help you. How would you know how many years before present it was? How would you have a clue about what was going on below the surface of the Earth or in the next galaxy over?

You can think of God as an artist and many different theories as tools that God uses to create works of art with.

You can think about God as being literally described in Genesis, or you can think about God as being a figment of the human imagination. I don't see how that's relevant to the use of the scientific method. The scientific method isn't about God.

Just because you see evolution in the set of tools doesn’t mean you can explain what he does with it, if he has used it in his creations, the reasons behind using the tool, how long it has been there, if he has ever modified anything with it, or much of anything else.

The whole point of science is to explain things. If science can't explain nature, it might as well give up. The scientific method depends on observing what's there and formulating and testing theories to explain those observations. Musings about whether we're really seeing what we think we're seeing or whether some deity did it totally differently but made it look as if he used evolution are outside the parameters of the scientific method.

What do come up with is that God has the option to use that tool. But you definitly cannot say that everything was created using that tool. You can believe it, but you'll never know it.

See above. This isn't science. I'm sure philosophy and theology are very satisfying for people who like tying their brains in knots, but evolution is science, it isn't philosophy.

 

[Snide]

What science does is absolutely falsify hypotheses/theories (which are collections of statements) by deductive logic. The idea that God created by separately manufacturing each species -- including humans -- is shown to be wrong by the data.

What science shows is that God could have used evolution to create, not that he did. If I’m wrong then you could tell me if the God the bible speaks of is a man made idea or not. Just by seeing if we were manufactured or not. God could have introduced evolution later on after we were created to satisfy a problem. The bible actually hinted about this. I don’t remember the passage but more or less it said that people were grouping up so he split them up into races. Wouldn’t evolution be a good tool to use to solve that problem? If he did so then you couldn’t say he created with evolution, you’d have to say he changed his creation with evolution. I mean you are left to assume a lot of things like that the data we have now is an accurate representation of what happen.

Thus my statement: God may have created with evolution.

I hear what you are saying. However, your example has problems because in the case of the statue, you can tell. What you can do is eliminate the possibility that ANY process in the environment that could produce the scultpure. If you do that, then the ONLY hypothesis left standing is that the sculpture represents a manufactured artifact.

I understand where you’re going but what you’re not realizing is that the tools we use come from the environment. For example, sandpaper and water. Both of which can make an object smooth. The tools we use come from the environment and you would never be 100% sure of what was used or how it was created unless you can say an author did or didn’t create it. Even then you wouldn’t be 100% certain how it got created. You also wouldn’t be able to tell if that was the original work of art, you could only assume it may have looked like this or that.

More or less it’s like saying we have a chainsaw now so every tree must have always been cut down with a chainsaw. Years ago that chainsaw wasn’t in existence. People used a different method to chop down trees.

You can't predict each coin toss with any reliability. However, if you toss a large number of coins you know that about 50% will be heads and 50% tails.

That’s not really random though, that is pseudorandom. In other words if you flipped 2 coins in the same manner in a controlled environment you would have a sequence. IE: both coins would land the same way. If it was truly random then each coin could show different results, they wouldn’t always land the same way. This is the difference between a deterministic and non deterministic random number. A deterministic random number is not a true random number, it’s almost a random number.

Now you are talking about a non-rational universe, not a non-deterministic one. Have you read about the decay of black holes? Hawking has shown that the energy emitted by black holes MUST be in EVERY POSSIBLE configuration. And since matter and energy are one, that means your hot chick, you, me, or Cthuhulu WILL come out of a black hole eventually.

A non-deterministic universe would be a non-rational universe. There would be no such thing as physics in a nondeterministic world because there would be no structure to it what so ever! It would be impossible to predict something from one second to the next. Making our communication on this board for example, impossible! You wouldn’t be able to rationalize what is going on because nothing has a structure. Our universe doesn’t work that way, things happen for a reason, things have a structure!

Just like that coin example of yours, if I knew enough information I could predict what that coin was going to do accurately every single time you flipped it. This is just like the tree falling in the woods with nobody around to hear it scenario. Just because I may not have the ability to gather all the information doesn’t mean that all information isn’t there.

In a non-deterministic world it doesn’t matter how much information I have, I cannot predict anything because it’s truly random.

Not that. Quantum physicists were no more happy initially with non-determinism than you are. They fought it tooth and nail. However, the data leave us no choice. Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle and Planck's work are not based on the limits of our measurements. Indeterminancy is a real part of the universe. See Timothy Farris' The Whole Shebang for a readable description.

That’s very understandable because it’s not accurate of our universe. Though we may or may not be able to use this system to get some things to work, it eventually should be replaced and probably will be in the future.

I simply don’t understand how they can even get it passed scientist. The simple fact that we are able to use algorithms to get desirable results should be proof enough that we live in a deterministic world. In a non-deterministic world things are happening truly random so algorithms would be useless.

Now, Kenneth Miller argues that indeterminancy is good for theology. Because it means God created a universe with meaning, and a purely deterministic universe would lack that meaning. Read Chapter 7 in Finding Darwin's God for a full discussion.

I don’t understand how he comes to that conclusion because for me it does the exact opposite of that. A non-deterministic universe would be absolutely meaningless. Things would happen at random without any kind of purpose. However in a deterministic universe there is some purpose to it, we would have a structure, a reason for being here.

That's wishful thinking. That's not accepting the universe as it is but trying to make the universe what you want it to be. You've violated the prime rule of the scientific method.

I’m doing this from a mathematical standpoint. It’s why I don’t want to accept it, it doesn’t sound accurately mathematically or with what I see with every day life. Mathematically if the outcome can be predicted then it’s not truly random. If it’s not truly random then it uses a deterministic way of obtaining the random output. Just like a random number generator that a computer uses. As you know computers are a deterministic machine that can only generate pseudorandom numbers. If this universe was non-deterministic then mathematics would be a useless tool because you cannot describe something with mathematics that has no structure. Because quite simply you would have no clue what is going to happen.

 

[TheBear]

Let me add a few words here. First of all, science never claims something as 100% fact. Instead, science gains confidence in an explaination, (scientific guess >>> hypothesis >>> theory >>> law), based on many things including predictions. The more predictions that are proven true, the higher the confidence is in the explaination.

At a crime scene, similar steps are taken. If a business burns to the ground, one of the things that is investigated is arson. If the investigators find an accelerant in the flooring, the possibility of arson enters the picture. If the investigators also find an empty gas can just outside the doorway, confidence that this was an act of arson grows. If the investigators also find that the sprinkler system had been tampered with and disabled, confidence that it was arson grows even more. If the investigators find all these things, plus find that the business was financially suffering for the last 6 months, and a new insurance policy was purchased, confidence that this was arson, goes through the roof. Notice that the investigators did not actually have to see the crime in progress, in order to gain any confidence in their theory that is was an act of arson.

Science works the same way.

 

[Revelation 22:21]

I totally agree with you Snide (about the determinal stuff)-- I have been thinking about that for a while. Everything is based on something- which ultimately means that nothing can truely be random. When you flip a coin you're not getting a random responce-- you're getting a responce that results from various variables-- such as how hard you flip it- wind- opposing force- (if it hits something) and so on. If the result of that coin flip wasn't based on anything- and was turely "random"- then the coin might come back as a penny- (if it was a quarter or dime- etc) or it might not come back at all. It comes back based on the fact that it was there when you threw it- and it comes back as a coin because you threw a coin. The world would completely be without structure if everything was turely random-- that would be insane-- you could be sitting at your computer one minute- living on mars another minute- turn into a cat another minute- then completely not exist in another minute.-- Things would happen truely randomly- but since everything is based on something else- we know that if we are human this minute- then we will be human in the next minute. Everything is based on something.- Simply put.

 

[Arikay]

And science would agree with you.

I dont believe science considers anything trully random except for things on the quantum level. On the quantum level you can get true randomness, but thats for one of our scientist people to explain further (so I dont make myself look like an idiot. ).

 

[Snide]

Considering the number of people sitting in jail after being convicted by eyewitness evidence and who were later shown by DNA fingerprinting to be innocent, I'm not sure why eyewitness evidence is considered by creationists to be foolproof and the scientific method is considered to be a waste of time.



Do you really think science is just a case of guesses or assumptions? You must spend a lot of time avoiding anything based on the scientific method, then. Hope you're comportable in that cave.



What tools do you mean?



Do you have some reason to believe that those changes wouldn't have left evidence? I mean, if we're going to get into a discussion of whether things are completely different from the way they appear to be, we're going to get nowhere. You might just as well say that the Invisible Pink Unicorn (PBUH) created the universe last Thursday and just made it appear that everything's been around a lot longer. In science, you deal with what's actually there, not with philosophical musings about whether it's actually all completely different.



Setting aside the less than perfect reliability of eyewitness evidence, I don't see how being there would help you. How would you know how many years before present it was? How would you have a clue about what was going on below the surface of the Earth or in the next galaxy over?



You can think about God as being literally described in Genesis, or you can think about God as being a figment of the human imagination. I don't see how that's relevant to the use of the scientific method. The scientific method isn't about God.



The whole point of science is to explain things. If science can't explain nature, it might as well give up. The scientific method depends on observing what's there and formulating and testing theories to explain those observations. Musings about whether we're really seeing what we think we're seeing or whether some deity did it totally differently but made it look as if he used evolution are outside the parameters of the scientific method.



See above. This isn't science. I'm sure philosophy and theology are very satisfying for people who like tying their brains in knots, but evolution is science, it isn't philosophy.

The current scientific evidence we have says the theory of evolution is possible. The reason we live in similar enviroments could be reason enough alone to explain what scientific evidence you do have for the theory of evolution. Point is your jumping the gun when you are trying to say that we were created with evolution. You should be saying its possible we were created by evolution and then again the entire theory could be proven incorrect.

Just to jump from one side to the other to show an open mind: I will say the 6,000 year old earth idea that dr dino or whatever they got that idea from is nonsense. The earth is a whole lot older then that and anyone who says it isn't is just enjoying a conjured felicity and not accepting the facts.

Does that dispute the bible in a way, yes and no. The question is are you reading the meaning correctly. An author in the bible said a day to God is like 1,000 years to a man. And then antoher author said everything was created in 6 days. Neither author was meaning that to be read literally I don't think or they probably wouldn't have said it. Time is meaningless to God as he has no beginning or end. I think thats what the first author was shooting for when he said a day to God is like 1,000 of our years. The next author I mentioned seemed to be shooting for an example of how to live. The work he did was like us doing work for 6 days and he rested on the 7th, So should we =)

 

[Snide]

I totally agree with you Snide (about the determinal stuff)-- I have been thinking about that for a while. Everything is based on something- which ultimately means that nothing can truely be random. When you flip a coin you're not getting a random responce-- you're getting a responce that results from various variables-- such as how hard you flip it- wind- opposing force- (if it hits something) and so on. If the result of that coin flip wasn't based on anything- and was turely "random"- then the coin might come back as a penny- (if it was a quarter or dime- etc) or it might not come back at all. It comes back based on the fact that it was there when you threw it- and it comes back as a coin because you threw a coin. The world would completely be without structure if everything was turely random-- that would be insane-- you could be sitting at your computer one minute- living on mars another minute- turn into a cat another minute- then completely not exist in another minute.-- Things would happen truely randomly- but since everything is based on something else- we know that if we are human this minute- then we will be human in the next minute. Everything is based on something.- Simply put.

Right and if its based on something then its deterministic!

 

[Snide]

And science would agree with you.

I dont believe science considers anything trully random except for things on the quantum level. On the quantum level you can get true randomness, but thats for one of our scientist people to explain further (so I dont make myself look like an idiot. ).

Well if it was turely random on the quantum level then it would also be truely random on higher levels. I think what their doing maybe is using the term loosely. IE: it would be a pain in the butt to gather the information required to predict the number because there is just so many variables you'd have to take into account in order to predict it.

For example predicting numbers based on radioactive decay. That would take a hefty amount of resources to accomplish.

But then again they use "Non-deterministic". That suggests it just happens without any kind of reason. That part I don't like so much.