Creationists False on Key Point

Dale said:

Ronald in post #44: << Genesis says God created man, plants and animals complete with no evolutionary process -- a finished product. A peacock was always a peacock, a rose, a rose and man always man. >>

I'm not at all sure that Genesis denies the possibility of an evolutionary process. Genesis simply says that God caused the seas and the Earth to bring forth living things. According to standard science, the seas and the earth did bring forth living things, just not exactly in the way that Creationists like to imagine it.

Living things have changed. Take flightless birds. The most obvious characteristic of birds is that they have wings but there are birds that cannot fly. Ostriches, emus, penguins and kiwis are flightless birds. Flightless birds less familiar to Americans include the rhea, large South American birds, and cassowaries, a large Australian bird. Some flightless birds are extinct, such as the dodo and the elephant bird. It is obvious that flightless birds are descended from birds that did fly.

Adapting to their environment, birds like the ostrich became too large to fly and so became walkers and runners. Others, like penguins, became more adapted to water than to land or air. Penguins became great swimmers but lost the ability to fly.

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Radrook said:

Why is it obvious that flightless birds descended from birds that flew?
Doesn't evolution say that flight came AFTER non-flight?
In other words, at some point birds must have been flightless until your natural selection helped via your punctuated equilibrium mutation cycles gradually granted them modified appendages to fly with. Seems as if you are going in reverse.

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Hieronymus said:

There are 3 chapters.
1 creation week
2 summary
3 focus on day 6 (particularly the Garden)

You're not quoting it properly.
Genesis 1:27
...in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.

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I don't think anyone uses the term Darwinism except for Creationists. It goes along with their illusion that people who believe in evolution are following Darwin, their prophet. Completely inaccurate.

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mark kennedy said:

I originally said:
Creationists are not fighting science, that's a gross misnomer. It's not even opposed to evolution as properly defined scientifically, it's defined as the change of alleles (traits) in populations over time. Darwinism is the a priori assumption of universal common descent by exclusively naturalistic means.

Then you replied with this anecdotal...whatever it is....
I'll have to differ on this. Where I live, a local judge, who is a Baptist, delivered a sermon where he said, “Evolution is stupid” at least three times. From his following remarks it is clear that by evolution he means science, he does not distinguish between the two. This is only one example of someone who clearly believes that fighting science and fighting for Christianity are one and the same.

I defined both Darwinism and you equivocated a random statement that obviously equivocated Darwinism and evolution in the first place. The are not the same thing, pretending that they are is the essence of the relentless fallacious logic of Darwinism.

Then I say:
Christianity wasn't weakened by Darwinism, in fact, the conflict over creationism and Darwinian logic has been a profoundly important addition to Christian Apologetics.

And you blissfully respond:


Which tells me you never read Darwin and you don't know the definition of evolution

all change in the organic, as well as in the inorganic world, being the result of law, and not of miraculous interposition. (Darwin, On the Origin of Species)
​

The philosophical reconciliation of natural selection and genetics was known as the Modern Synthesis, aka neodarwinism.

Define evolution. Seriously, what is the scientific definition for evolution? Because you will find that it's not universal common ancestry by exclusively naturalistic means going all the way back to and including the Big Bang. It's actually the change of alleles in populations over time. Or you can repeat this equivocation in circles, that's what most evolutionists do.

Have a nice day
Mark

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Speedwell said:

I'm not sure I followed all that. Are you using the term "Darwinism" as synonymous with "metaphysical naturalism?"

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mark kennedy said:

Darwinism is a transcendent philosophy, universally including all life in all time. There is nothing like that except ontology. I clearly defined Darwinism and evolution. If you want to make inferences that's your prerogative.

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Speedwell said:

I was just asking a question, not making an "inference."

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mark kennedy said:

I have always thought it was an experiment in metaphysics. On the Origin of Species, the opening line quotes Asa Gray. He called the origin, ' the mystery of mysteries'. Asa Gray was a naturalist and a philosopher, part of a new generation that were kind of like Milleanials, young people coming of age in a time ripe for change. Asa Gray collaborated and corresponded with Darwin right up until On the Origin of Species went to press. Darwin responds to the common inference that what he wrote was metaphysic saying he had neither the aptitude nor the background for it. Little did he know, young Asa Gray did. When Darwin died he was all set to be buried when As a Gray and his colleagues at Westminster heard the news and offered to lay him to rest at Westminser, and so he was.

I told you all that to tell you this, that's not a simple yes or no question. To be honest I have always thought Darwinism was and is metaphysics simplified for public consumption.

Grace and peace,
Mark

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Dale said:

Thanks for replying to my thread on Creationism.


You have your facts on Marx and Darwin scrambled. As I've pointed out in a previous thread, Marx and Engels published The Communist Manifesto in 1848. Charles Darwin first presented his theory before a scientific audience in 1858. The Origin of the Species was published the following year, in 1859. The Communist Manifesto was published eleven years before Darwin's Origin of the Species.


The significance of this is that many Creationists seem to believe that the atheistic philosophy of Marxism arose in the chaos following the rise of evolutionary thinking. History shows that it is the other way around. As to what Creatonists believe this, the Seventh Day Adventist Church puts out a pamphlet, The Hidden Truth, which closely associates Marxism and evolution.

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mark kennedy said:

Its an interesting thought and apparently they corresponded. Darwin was of the opinion that going aggressivly after religion was something he could not do, something Communism is famous for. There are some ideological themes in common but I see nothing beyond that. Seventh Day Adventists are not exactly a prime source for this kind of thing, personally I like primary source material.

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Speedwell said:

I also had the impression that you considered "Darwinism" as you defined it to be distinct from the modern theory of evolution in some way. Do you acknowledge the distinction between metaphysical and methodological naturalism?
(Sorry if you thought you had made that clear in your post.)

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Speedwell said:

Still, you owe them one. It was the Seventh Day Adventist and amateur geologist George McCready Price who laid the groundwork for the modern revival of YECism carried out by Whitcomb and Morris.

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mark kennedy said:

Nonsense

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mark kennedy said:

Methodological naturalism is just what the name implies a methodology. You seem puzzled by metaphysics, it actually just a unified theory expanded to include everything. When Darwin say all organic and inorganic he is including everything. Of course inductive science and metaphysics deductive logic are very different, the are reasoning in opposite directions. Do you see how Darwinism and we evolution are two different things?

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Speedwell said:

You never read The Genesis Flood? The "Flood Geology" which formed the basis of that book was taken directly from the work of Price.

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mark kennedy said:

I have never taken geology seriously when it comes to creationism and Henry Morris doesn't impress me. I liked Duane Fish and Philip Johnson, can't see where geology and cosmology have anything to do with it.

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Speedwell said:

Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that deals with the first principles of things, including abstract concepts such as being, knowing, substance, cause, identity, time, and space. I am not confused by metaphysics, having studied it extensively at the college level, Aristotle through St. Thomas Aquinas. I told you I went to a Catholic college--you should have known better.

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