Creation Science Evangelism

[lucaspa]

Since you Atheist seem to dismiss Creation so easy why don't you debate Dr. Hovind LIVE?

toll free > 1.888.878.8436
Weekdays from 5pm to 6pm central

I tried. He won't let me on.

Also, let's be clear: we are not arguing CREATION, but creationism. Creation is a belief statement that God created the universe. Creationism (which is what Hovind has) is a scientific theory and a how God created.

Evolution is also a scientific theory and a how God created. See the second quote in my signature.

So, among Christians the issue is not whether God created, but how. The evidence God left in His Creation says He created by what is loosely called "evolution".

 

[Jet Black]

I tried. He won't let me on.

how did they manage to vet you out of his calls?

 

[lucaspa]

Since you ignored my post on the philosophy of science, I guess I'll have to try again. Maybe you will listen this time.

Postman:

"A hypothesis is just an educated guess at what will happen or what was likely to have happened."

That's why I call evolutionary theory a hypothesis.

Both theories and hypotheses are statements about the physical universe. While a hypothesis may start out as an "educated guess", it doesn't stay that way.

John, you are ignoring testing. Hypotheses and theories get tested against the physical universe. That's when they stop being "metaphysical" and become connected to reality. Theories and hypotheses become either supported or falsified by testing. Often we refer to supported theories and hypotheses as proved for verbal shorthand.

Evolution has long since been supported so well by so much testing that it is perverse to withold (provisional) agreement that it is true.

"You have to have some knowledge of the subject before you can make a hypothesis otherwise it's just a random guess."

So a hypothesis is an educated guess. That's better.

It's wrong. Hypotheses can be based on no knowledge. Remember, both hypotheses and theories are products of the imagination. Often it is knowledge that stimulates the imagination, but not always.

However, neither hypotheses nor theories remain simply imaginative statements. Testing tells us whether the hypothesis/theory is correct or not.

"Evolution started out as a hypothesis because it was based on an observation of facts."

Facts cannot be an object of scientific observation. Physical objects are. Facts are metaphysical. They have no Atomic elements.

Misuse of the words "fact" and "metaphysical". Facts are repeated observations of physical objects. Metaphysics is simply the "system of principles underlying a particular study or subject " You are misusing the term to be "not real".

What facts? What evidence?

Read Origin of the Species. Darwin lists many of his facts and evidence there. It's too long to go into here.

Truth is not an object for scientific observation.

Since when? Do you doubt that the image on your computer screen is "true"? As long as the observation is intersubjective -- available to anyone -- then some forms of truth are an object of scientific observation.

Everything that's

pretty well accepted ought to be questioned and challenged by real scientists.

It's a waste of time to constantly question well-supported theories for no reason. For instance, I do not constantly question Cell Theory when I grow adult stem cells in culture. There's no point. Instead, I take Cell Theory as true and use it as a fact in order to build new theories on the behavior and c capabilities of adult stem cells. Now, if my experiments don't work and I find new data that is inconsistent with cell theory, then I will go back and look.

This is happening now in gravity. See the latest Discover magazine. The behavior of the Pioneer spacecraft is not consistent with Newtonian gravity. It could be a system error, or it could be that the gravitational constant is not what we thought. Some physicists are now questioning Newtonian gravity, but there was no point until we had data that could not be explained by it.

So, unless and until you find biological data that isn't explained by evolution by natural selection, there's no point in constantly questioning such a well-supported theory.

Thank God I was spared American High School science fair projects.

I'm sure the judges feel the same. The wasted time on what you consider science is time they would never get back.

 

[lucaspa]

Evolutionary processes though, are still metaphysical because they are not directly observed by scientists but are merely imputed to be attributes of certain objects.

This "direct observation" is a misunderstanding of science. Most of science is not "direct observation" as you are using the term. It is deductive reasoning.

I had a paper published (Tissue Engineering, 1(4): 345-353, 1995) describing an experiment for a possible treatment for osteoarthritis. We drilled a 3 mm diameter hole thru the articular cartilage and part of the underlying bone in the knee of rabbits. This diameter hole will not regenerate on its own and is an established model for osteoarthritis. In the defect in one knee we placed a polymer alone and in the other knee we placed polymer into which had been grown special cells, mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs for short). Animals were euthanized at 6 and 12 weeks post-op and the defect removed for histological (under the microscope) analysis. At 6 weeks there was no difference between defects with polymer alone and defects with polymer-MSCs. Both contained cells but there was no identifiable cartilage or bone. At 12 weeks, the defects with polymer alone contained fibrocartilage (which is NOT the same as articular cartilage) and no bone. It looked like a big hole in cartilage and bone filled with scar tissue. In contrast, the defect with polymer-MSCs had a surface layer of articular cartilage and an underlying layer of bone. The edges of the defect could not be observed. The bone in the defect could not be distinguished from the surrounding bone. We concluded that the MSCs had formed the new cartilage and bone that now filled the defect. However, the point here is that we DEDUCED, or INFERRED, the differentiation of the MSCs to chondrocytes (cartilage cells) or osteoblasts (bone cells). We never observed it directly. In thinking about our current, and planned, experiments, this lack of direct observation will be true there also. The best, and most accepted, "proof" will be to insert the gene for beta-galactosidase into the MSCs. The beta-galactosidase produced by the labeled cells will stain blue with a chemical reaction. Therefore, we will see the chondrocytes and osteoblasts in the defect treated with polymer-MSCs turn blue, "proving" that the MSCs differentiated into these cells. But that is still inferrence, or "detective style reasoning". Everything we observed happened in the past, from a microsecond to 6 weeks before we removed the tissue at 12 weeks post-op. It is still looking at the result of a past event we will never be able to see in real time. This is no different than Darwin observing the Galapagos finches and INFERRING that evolution occurred.

Take one more example from the "inductive" sciences. This time chemistry. One of the first experiments I did in undergraduate organic chemistry was reacting organic acid with an alcohol to get an ester. Esters have distinctive odors that depend on the acid and alcohol used. My reaction produced an ester that smelled like bananas. My lab partner and I knew we had succeeded when we began smelling bananas. Did we ever see the 2 molecules actually come together to form an ester? No. We knew we had those 2 chemicals and that we got the reaction product. We DEDUCED the reaction took place, but never directly observed it. Except for behavioral biology, where the observed behavior can be observed in real time and videotaped, nearly every experiment I can think of in the "inductive" sciences involves deductive reasoning.

Everything in evolution, from common ancestry to natural selection to speciation, fits in this deduced or inferred method. Some of it is what you call "direct observation" as in natural selection making new traits or in the production of new species in the present. Some of it is deduced from what we see in the present and the knowledge that the present is the way it is because the past was the it was.

 

[lucaspa]

how did they manage to vet you out of his calls?

They asked me what I wanted to ask Hovind. I was honest enough to tell them. Since what I wanted was an explanation of varves and the Maiasaura nests under a Flood model and whether Hovind knew about Gibb's Free Energy, they knew I had falsifications for his position! So they disconnected me.

See? They know what falsifies Hovind's position. And they prevent his listeners from hearing that evidence.

 

[lucaspa]

Reality is a word which many secularists use instead of religion or God.
Reality is like the Universe itself, ever expanding and contracting and existing only in the mind.

So God didn't create the Universe and it exists separate from both God and our minds? Congrats, John, you just denied the existence of God!

Yes, all the words in your heart, soul, mind and spirit are metaphysical.

Only by a misuse of the word "metaphysical"

Glory be to God that we humans have language at all.

No glory to God at all, according to you. Since the universe exists "only in the mind", there is no God.

 

[lucaspa]

It is a metaphysical fact that the so-called biological theory of human evolution has never been scientifically proven because no scientist has ever presented any observable evidence of it, let alone offered repeated validation of the theory.

ROFL!! First, read Origin of the Species.

Now go to http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi and enter "evolution" as your search term. Read the abstracts of the papers you get from that and then get back to us about that "observable evidence of it, let alone offered repeated validation of the theory"

It is still a figment of one's imagination.
Imagination is a scientists best friend.

Imagination is science's friend, but human evolution is not a figment of our imagination. The phrase means it has no connection to reality. Unfortunately for you, there is overwhelming connection to reality. A series of transitional individuals linking A. afarensis to H. sapiens thru 2 intermediate species for starters. There is other evidence, but the existence of those transitionals is denied by the professional creationists.

 

[lucaspa]

You are as free to reject my standards and premises as I am to reject yours.

The force of gravity is a mental concept.
The force could equally be understood and appreciated as the force and power of God. It is easy to transpose concepts and words.
Newton just didn't want to give God the credit or acknowledge Him as the sole power Who rules all space and time.

John, have you ever heard the Christian concept "secondary cause"?

It appears that you are accepting the basic statement of faith of atheism: natural = without God.

Secondary cause is the material mechanism by which God works. The "force of gravity" is a set of words to describe a physical phenomenon: the attraction of two material objects. It is not a "mental concept" as you use the term. It is simply words to label a real, repeatedly observed, fact.

Your characterization of Newton is ironic since Newton did what you deny he did. That is, Newton viewed gravity as the secondary cause by which God kept the planets in orbit.

Darwin viewed evolution as a secondary cause.
"To my mind it accords better with what we know of the laws impressed on matter by the Creator, that the production and extinction of the past and present inhabitants of the world should have been due to secondary causes, like those determining the birth and death of the individual." Origin of the Species pg. 449.

To fully understand this, we must look at some more Christian thought. In the Fontispiece to Origin we find:
"But with regard to the material world, we can at least go so far as this -- we can perceive that events are brought about not by insulated interpositions of Divine power, exerted in each particular case, but by the establishment of general laws" Whewell: Bridgewater Treatise.

IOW, God made the physical laws. This was stated more explicitly by Gravesende:

"A Law of Nature then is the rule and Law, according to which God resolved that certain Motions should always, that is, in all Cases be performed. Every Law does immediately depend upon the Will of God." Gravesande, Mathematical Elements of Natural Philosophy, I, 2-3, 1726, quoted in CC Gillespie, Genesis and Geology, 1959.

So, after all this, we see that your objections to "evolution" and science are based on a misunderstanding of Christianity!

You are a closet atheist in believing that evolution or gravity proceeds without God. You've been seduced by the Dark Side and didn't even know it!

 

[lucaspa]

What I am saying is that although evolution is accepted as a scientific theory, it is not done so based on evidence. It is accepted so atheistic scientists do not have to accept that there is a living God that does miracles in this day and age.

There is no evidence to support evolution. ... There are NO modern day examples of macroevolution. It is fantasy, not fact.

-Chris320

This is soooo wrong onm so many levels. Where do I start? Perhaps with that "atheistic scientists" part. At least half the evolutionary biologists in history, starting with Darwin, have been theists. Yes, Darwin was a devout theist when he wrote Origin of the Species. Which is why these are in the book:

"There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved." C. Darwin, On the Origin of Species, pg 450.
Also: "To my mind it accords better with what we know of the laws impressed on matter by the Creator, that the production and extinction of the past and present inhabitants of the world should have been due to secondary causes, like those determining the birth and death of the individual." pg. 449.

Could an atheist have written this?

"Forget philosophy for a moment; the simple empirics of the past hundred years should suffice. ... the great American botanist Asa Gray, who favored natural selection and wrote a book entitled Darwiniana, was a devout Christian. Move forward 50 years: Charles D. Walcott, discoverer of the Burgess Shale fossils, was a convinced Darwinian and an equally firm Christian, who believed that God had ordained natural selection to construct a history of life according to His plans and purposes. Move on another 50 years to the two greatest evolutionists of our generation: G.G. Simpson was a humanist agnostic, Theodosius Dobzhansky a believing Russian Orthodox. Either half my colleagues are enormously stupid, or else the science of Darwinism is fully compatible with conventional religious beliefs -- and equally compatible with atheism, thus proving that the two great realms of nature's factuality and the source of human morality do not strongly overlap."
SJ Gould, Impeaching a self-appointed judge. Scientific American, 267:79-80, July 1992.

As to evidence, saying "there is no evidence" is just silly. No theory can last without evidence. Read Origin of the Species. Go to http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi and enter "evolution" as your search term. Then start reading abstracts.

Some have given you examples of macroevolution -- speciation. Here are some more that have been observed. In case you get confused, reproductive isolation = speciation:

1. G Kilias, SN Alahiotis, and M Pelecanos A multifactorial genetic investigation of speciation theory using drosophila melanogaster Evolution 34:730-737, 1980. Got new species of fruit flies in the lab after 5 years on different diets and temperatures. Also confirmation of natural selection in the process. Lots of references to other studies that saw speciation.
2. Speciation in action Science 72:700-701, 1996 A great laboratory study of the evolution of a hybrid plant species. Scientists did it in the lab, but the genetic data says it happened the same way in nature. Follow up paper in PNAS http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/95/20/11757
2a. Hybrid speciation in peonies http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/061288698v1#B1
2c. http://www.holysmoke.org/new-species.htm new species of groundsel by hybridization
3. Paleontological documentation of speciation in cenozoic molluscs from Turkana basin. Williamson, PG, Nature 293:437-443, 1981. Excellent study of "gradual" evolution in an extremely find fossil record.
4. A trilobite odyssey. Niles Eldredge and Michelle J. Eldredge. Natural History 81:53-59, 1972. A discussion of "gradual" evolution of trilobites in one small area and then migration and replacement over a wide area. Is lay discussion of punctuated equilibria, and does not overthrow Darwinian gradual change of form. Describes transitionals.
5. Ohno, S, Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 81:2421-2425, 1984. Frame shift mutation yielded random formation of new protein, was active enzyme nylon linear oligomer hrydrolase (degrades nylon)
6. Muntzig, A, Triticale Results and Problems, Parey, Berlin, 1979. Describes whole new *genus* of plants, Triticosecale, of several species, formed by artificial selection. These plants are important in agriculture.
3. JM Thoday, Disruptive selection. Proc. Royal Soc. London B. 182: 109-143, 1972.
Lots of references in this one to other speciation.
4. KF Koopman, Natural selection for reproductive isolation between Drosophila pseudobscura and Drosophila persimilis. Evolution 4: 135-148, 1950. Using artificial mixed poulations of D. pseudoobscura and D. persimilis, it has been possible to show,over a period of several generations, a very rapid increase in the amount of reproductive isolation between the species as a result of natural selection.
5. LE Hurd and RM Eisenberg, Divergent selection for geotactic response and evolution of reproductive isolation in sympatric and allopatric populations of houseflies. American Naturalist 109: 353-358, 1975.
6. Ahearn, J. N. 1980. Evolution of behavioral reproductive isolation in a laboratory stock of Drosophila silvestris. Experientia. 36:63-64.
7. Barton, N. H., J. S. Jones and J. Mallet. 1988. No barriers to speciation. Nature. 336:13-14.
8. Baum, D. 1992. Phylogenetic species concepts. Trends in Ecology and Evolution. 7:1-3.
9. Boraas, M. E. 1983. Predator induced evolution in chemostat culture. EOS. Transactions of the American Geophysical Union. 64:1102.
10. Rice, W. R. 1985. Disruptive selection on habitat preference and the evolution of reproductive isolation: an exploratory experiment. Evolution. 39:645-646.
11.. Ringo, J., D. Wood, R. Rockwell, and H. Dowse. 1989. An experiment testing two hypotheses of speciation. The American Naturalist. 126:642-661.
12. Schluter, D. and L. M. Nagel. 1995. Parallel speciation by natural selection. American Naturalist. 146:292-301.
10. Breeuwer, J. A. J. and J. H. Werren. 1990. Microorganisms associated with chromosome destruction and reproductive isolation between two insect species. Nature. 346:558-560.
11. Budd, A. F. and B. D. Mishler. 1990. Species and evolution in clonal organisms -- a summary and discussion. Systematic Botany 15:166-171.
12. Bullini, L. and G. Nascetti. 1990. Speciation by hybridization in phasmids and other insects. Canadian Journal of Zoology. 68:1747-1760.
13. Butters, F. K. 1941. Hybrid Woodsias in Minnesota. Amer. Fern. J. 31:15-21.
14. Butters, F. K. and R. M. Tryon, jr. 1948. A fertile mutant of a Woodsia hybrid. American Journal of Botany. 35:138.
15. Brock, T. D. and M. T. Madigan. 1988. Biology of Microorganisms (5th edition). Prentice Hall, Englewood, NJ.
16. Callaghan, C. A. 1987. Instances of observed speciation. The American Biology Teacher. 49:3436.
17. Castenholz, R. W. 1992. Species usage, concept, and evolution in the cyanobacteria (blue-green algae). Journal of Phycology 28:737-745.
18. Clausen, J., D. D. Keck and W. M. Hiesey. 1945. Experimental studies on the nature of species. II. Plant evolution through amphiploidy and autoploidy, with examples from the Madiinae. Carnegie Institute Washington Publication, 564:1-174.
19. Cracraft, J. 1989. Speciation and its ontology: the empirical consequences of alternative species concepts for understanding patterns and processes of differentiation. In Otte, E. and J. A. Endler [eds.] Speciation and its consequences. Sinauer Associates, Sunderland, MA. pp. 28-59.
20. Craig, T. P., J. K. Itami, W. G. Abrahamson and J. D. Horner. 1993. Behavioral evidence for host-race fromation in Eurosta solidaginis. Evolution. 47:1696-1710.
21. Cronquist, A. 1978. Once again, what is a species? Biosystematics in agriculture. Beltsville Symposia in Agricultural Research 2:3-20.
22. Cronquist, A. 1988. The evolution and classification of flowering plants (2nd edition). The New York Botanical Garden, Bronx, NY.
23. de Oliveira, A. K. and A. R. Cordeiro. 1980. Adaptation of Drosophila willistoni experimental populations to extreme pH medium. II. Development of incipient reproductive isolation. Heredity. 44:123-130.

 

[lucaspa]

Obviously, germs exist. The question to be answered for our discussion is whether germs evolve or mutate. I imagine there may be some germ theorists who subscribe to the hypothesis of evolution but I doubt if they have ever observed a germ evolve into anything other than another form of germ. In other words, a mutation.

ROFL!! the old "it's only a germ" dodge. You do realize that bacteria is a Kingdom composed of millions of species. Whereas humans are a single species?

As someone noted, we have seen bacteria evolve into multicelled organisms, which mean they aren't bacteria anymore.

Now, if you still want to tell me that human beings like myself are some sort of mutation of ancestral primates, I don't have to believe you do I?

You do unless you want to deny God. The transitional series between A. afarensis to H. sapiens is complete. Not to mention all the morphological, physiological, and genetic data.

Of course, you can always stick your head in the sand and deny it all, but, as I said, if God really Created, then you are denying God.

 

[HunterjWizzard]

Everyone here knows about Hovind. Most (Christians and non-Christians combined) think he is a charlatan and an extremely poor scientist.

Dr. Hovind saved my faith. when i stunled in my walk with christ, god worked through him to save my soul from eternal damnation.

just think about that before you mock him.

 

[Jet Black]

Dr. Hovind saved my faith. when i stunled in my walk with christ, god worked through him to save my soul from eternal damnation.

just think about that before you mock him.

so long as he didn't say anything about science, because the vast majority of what he says is wrong. and demonstrably so.

 

[LorentzHA]

I agree with what Jet Black said. I am glad he "saved" you but I hope it had nothing to do with his pseudo science information. It is neither correct nor Christian like of him to propogate such falsehoods!

 

[greatcogitator]

The problem with Hovind and his ilk is that they end up convincing people like me that to believe evolution is to be an atheist. In fact the only reason I'm agnostic is because so much of what I've heard was wrong that I have to look at the basis for my beliefs and prove each one all over again. You see I grew up in one of those churches where it was always spouted that evolution is wrong and that theology disagrees with it, then I was introduced to micro-evolution by some people, this made me think for a few seconds and realize that by accepting micro-evolution you must accept the premise that macro-evolution is possible. This threw my theology in to doubt, and so I became an atheist, which lead me to forums, which showed me that theology and evolution don't have to be in conflict. (If anything I imagine that Hovind is an EAC puppet)

 

[lucaspa]

Dr. Hovind saved my faith. when i stunled in my walk with christ, god worked through him to save my soul from eternal damnation.

just think about that before you mock him.

Just how did Hovind "save" you? Why did you "stumble"?

 

[Pete Harcoff]

Dr. Hovind saved my faith. when i stunled in my walk with christ, god worked through him to save my soul from eternal damnation.

just think about that before you mock him.

That doesn't change the fact that he is terrible when it comes to science.

 

[Mike Flynn]

Dr. Hovind saved my faith. when i stunled in my walk with christ, god worked through him to save my soul from eternal damnation.

just think about that before you mock him.

I'm sorry Hunter but the ends cannot justify the means. If Hovind cooks up science and uses deception, he is not justified simply because some have entered the church by those arguments. As a Christian, you should appreciate this.
He might have pushed away a stumbling block for you...but at the same time he has thrown them out for others to trip over with his representation of creation science. He has done damage to the Church in this process and it should not be accepted even if it wins over thousands.
I'm sorry you don't feel that Christ himself has saved your faith...for it is likely that this is the case. If you find that Hovind has *decieved you* to win you over then where will that leave your faith if he is exposed? I can only pray that your faith is based squarely in God's grace and not on the shallow (and often false and misleading) arguments of Mr. Hovind.