Data that confirms creationism

Originally posted by npetreley
It's a really lousy analogy, since we're talking about a murder that happens in a recent time frame vs. events that supposedly happened millions of years ago in an environment we know nothing about. But heck, I figured I'd roll with it.

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Here you are wrong. We do know about ancient environments. They leave behind evidence too: geological, biological, etc.

What makes inferences from 20 year old evidence valid but 20,000 year old data not? You've asserted this, but not shown it.

Originally posted by npetreley


By the way, I'm not a Linux Journalist.

I started out with a major in astrophysics. I switched to music theory/composition/conducting, which I studied for 10 years. Since programming was a hobby, I took a job doing assembly language programming because I couldn't get a job in music. Since then I've been a teacher, programmer, consultant, manager, editor. I applied to be a missionary, but the missions were too critical of my applications, so I was turned down by them all. (So I know something about mission critical applications.) I have been writing about everything related to computing technology for 15 years, certainly not just Linux. I enjoy it, and it pays the rent. Almost, anyway.

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Thanx for the clarification. I guess it was the editor position that made me think you were a journalist.

So you can still dismiss everything I say because I don't have a doctorate in biology, but I thought I'd set the record straight about being a Linux journalist.

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I don't dismiss you because you don't have a doctorate or other degree. I dissmiss you because you demonstrate little understanding about actual biology and science. You cannot successfully critique a subject if you don't know much about it. I'm not trying to be offensive or attack you as a person. I just want to show that if there is going to be any sort of productive debate, you and some other posters need to get up to speed on the science behind evolution, wheather you buy it or not.

I serious doubt you would even give me your ear if I started trashing music theory, composition methods, or the Linux kernal.

Originally posted by Josephus
Jerry Smith:

"Do this for a hundred years straight with several predictions and thousands of observations of the predicted results, and I will be convinced."

Are you willing to bet your eternal soul on a condition that will not let you live long enough to ever be convinced?

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Several problems here. First, mea culpa: I tried to demonstrate various levels of scientific credibility that evidence for the creation hypothesis could provide. I should have said that I would be convinced to a very high degree of certainty after a 100 year track record of numerous successful predictions and repeated failed attempts at falsification (due to the lack of falsifying data, not due to the unfalsifiability of the hypothesis). Of course, after only 35 years if there were many examples of good confirming evidence, I would still be convinced enough to subscribe to creation as a strong theory, and after only a few successful trials, I would be convinced enough to use it as a working theory.

Second, I have absolutely no reason to believe that my eternal soul depends on being convinced of a particular theory of "creation". You are really the only person who has suggested this is the case. I understand from a religious (not scientific) perspective, that my lack of faith in the God-hood of Jesus and his resurrection might imperil my immortal soul... but on the other hand so does my lack of faith in Allah and Mohammed, His Prophet.

The simple fact is, if my immortal soul is imperiled because of my lack of faith, then I will probably go to Hell. You might too - if it is the Muslims who are correct. Either way, we are both justified, because we believe what we are convinced of. Anything else would be self-deceit. You will agree, won't you, that self-deceit is immoral, and it is better to do the right thing than to do the wrong one, even if the consequences are unpleasant?

"We must believe what we are convinced of."

Yet, you've laid out conditions impossible to convince you.

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I've laid out conditions that convinced me of the accuracy of Darwinistic evolution. If they have succeeded in one area, they aren't impossible. On the other hand, if creation was a brand new hypothesis, then I would give it credence (with a smaller degree of certainty) if it had some body of evidence, and was falsifiable but unfalsified. I'm sorry for the misleading statements. I should have said "very strongly convinced" with reference to the 100+ years of accumulated evidence.

Originally posted by npetreley
I don't think I'm the only one who fails to equate the authority of the Pope with the authority of just about anything else. I think there was some guy named Luther who wrote extensively on this subject and coined the phrase "sola scriptura, sola fide, sola gratia" or something like that. What was his first name again? Lex? Martin? Yeah, that's it.

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Believe me, I don't disagree with you on the authority of the Pope. I was simply using him as an example to refute your assertion that the only people who embrace evolution are those with an apriori committment to it.

Originally posted by npetreley
You can observe certain events in a lab such as mutation, adaptation, etc., which you can then extrapolate to imagine that this process could have turned the most primitive life form into people, but all you've proven is that you have a vivid imagination.

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That's right, and we call the result a "hypothesis". And then we go out into the world and look for physical evidence that confirms or refutes what we have just hypothesized. In the case of evolution, a broad and continually increasing set of data confirms our hypothesis, and no significant data has been found which refutes it. (The continued failure of creationists on this board, including yourself, to present any refuting data confirms this).

Why then do you think it is not acceptable to conclude that the theory of evolution is reasonable model of what really happened? Why is it that the only people with a serious objection to this common sense conclusion are those with a fundamentalist religious background?

You're free to stick your fingers in your ears and say "Na na na na na.." all you wish if you feel you need to avoid the evidence. But please stop insinuating that the rest of us are stupid, or liars, or both.

"I should have said that I would be convinced to a very high degree of certainty after a 100 year track record of numerous successful predictions and repeated failed attempts at falsification"

but never fully convinced, right?

"I would be convinced enough to use it as a working theory."

A working theory towards what? Are there any implications for you if Creationism is correct?

What you're asking for is a cause-effect relationship between theory and evidence. Granted that's good if everything has remained constant for the last million or so years. If one can not tell what environmental factors were like before a Global Flood, then predicting what we would see today, in my view, would be an exercise in mere guesswork. So my question again begs, what do YOU think YOU should find, if there was such a global flood in history - a flood that Creationism relies on to explain the current conditions of this planet? I myself have a theory for the cause of the flood, which involves the whole Solar System.

Originally posted by Josephus
"I should have said that I would be convinced to a very high degree of certainty after a 100 year track record of numerous successful predictions and repeated failed attempts at falsification"

but never fully convinced, right?

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I do not things can ever be infallible, so I could never have absolute certainty about anything. I would be convinced enough, though to consider that theory true, without any reasonable doubt.

"I would be convinced enough to use it as a working theory."

A working theory towards what? Are there any implications for you if Creationism is correct?

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A working theory - one that I would accept, but only very provisionally, and use as a basis to attempt further explantations.

Before I can answer whether there are implications for me if a theory of Creationism is correct, you have to tell me about the theory of creationism. If Genesis were a theory with lots of evidential support, then yes: I would have to radically re-think certain religious, ethical and philosophical ideas.

If the Buddhist "theory" of creation were proven correct, that would also have a fairly big impact on my day-to-day life and thoughts.

If the theory that Something created the universe and everything in it was supported by lots of evidence, then I would be very interested to know that, but it wouldn't affect my positions on many religious, ethical or philosophical questions.

What you're asking for is a cause-effect relationship between theory and evidence. Granted that's good if everything has remained constant for the last million or so years. If one can not tell what environmental factors were like before a Global Flood, then predicting what we would see today, in my view, would be an exercise in mere guesswork.

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Please see my post to Nick. Sure, something miraculous and catastrophic could have occurred that distorted all of the evidence that supports any scientific theory, in a misleading way. Unless it is readily apparent that the evidence WAS skewed by some interference, we have to go with the evidence we have. Do you question the inverse square law because the observed elliptical orbits of the planets (the best evidence for the inverse-square law) might be the result of yo-yo strings tied to them?

So my question again begs, what do YOU think YOU should find, if there was such a global flood in history - a flood that Creationism relies on to explain the current conditions of this planet? I myself have a theory for the cause of the flood, which involves the whole Solar System.

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Well, assuming that the global flood was not followed up by a string of miracles, we would expect to find nothing. An ecology disrupted as catastrophically as it would be by a global flood, the environment would not support the continuation of human life. We could expect not to be here to find anything at all. If an alien life form landed here and had a look around, they could expect to find one recent stratum extremely thick, cluttered with fossilized remains of modern organisms, human tools, houses, and uniformly so, all over the world. They could expect to see major anomalies in the chemical composition of one layer of ice cores that dates to the time of the flood, uniformly no matter where on Earth the cores were drilled. They could expect to find a recent genetic bottleneck in all of the organisms that did manage to survive the aftermath of the flood. They could also expect to find some indication of where all of the water went.

Can you tell me anything that the flood theory predicts that we should find --- that we actually do find?

Originally posted by LiveFreeOrDie


Believe me, I don't disagree with you on the authority of the Pope. I was simply using him as an example to refute your assertion that the only people who embrace evolution are those with an apriori committment to it.

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Re-read my post. That wasn't my point at all.

Originally posted by RufusAtticus

Here you are wrong. We do know about ancient environments. They leave behind evidence too: geological, biological, etc.

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I am 100% right. We analyze the evidence based on assumptions about things we cannot possibly know for certain because we weren't there. If our assumptions are even the least bit wrong, we cannot possibly know what the ancient environment was really like. Scientists love to think their assumptions are reasonable, but they've been shown to be wrong (from slightly innaccurate to outrageously wrong) time and again.

That's your cue to wax rhapsodic about how science is so wonderful because we correct our theories as we gain more knowledge and evidence. But the fact that we MUST KEEP CORRECTING OUR THEORIES BECAUSE WE KEEP DISCOVERING HOW WRONG OUR ORIGINAL PREMISES WERE -- AND SOMETIMES RADICALLY WRONG -- only proves my point.

What makes inferences from 20 year old evidence valid but 20,000 year old data not? You've asserted this, but not shown it.

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I'm not going to present all the typical examples I'm sure you've already seen just so you can pick apart the examples and ignore the overall concept. It should be intuitively obvious why inferences we make on 20 year old evidence may not be accurate for 20,000 year old evidence. If it is not intuitively obvious to you, then I recommend you examine your abilities as a scientist or your level of honesty in debate.

Originally posted by RufusAtticus

I serious doubt you would even give me your ear if I started trashing music theory, composition methods, or the Linux kernal.

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Quite the contrary. I might even agree with your opinions on these topics.

Originally posted by LiveFreeOrDie

That's right, and we call the result a "hypothesis". And then we go out into the world and look for physical evidence that confirms or refutes what we have just hypothesized.

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That's what you SAY you do, and probably what most of you THINK you do. But what you REALLY do is go out into the world and look for evidence that you (can) interpret to confirm your hypothesis.

I put "can" in parens because some people unwittingly work that way, but others deliberately do so. Regardless, that makes all your so-called "evidence" nothing but circular reasoning. You see what you want to see because you already believe that's the proper way to interpret the evidence. So you have no choice but to find what you're looking for. When you find something that poses a problem, you either throw it out as an anomaly or (as is more often the case) imagine a solution to the problem that allows you to retain your premise that evolution is true.

But please stop insinuating that the rest of us are stupid, or liars, or both.

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I am not insuating that you are stupid, a liar or both. I believe that many of you are so focused on your conclusions that you can't see the forest for the trees, are suffering from spiritual blindness, are self-deceived, in denial, or any combination of the above.

But don't take my word for it. Many evolutionists have already plainly said the same thing for me, and I've provided quotes from them saying so, and posted some of them on this very board. Others have claimed I'm taking the quotes out of context, but the only added context they provide is that these people still believe in evolution. Well, duh -- I wouldn't list them as evolutionists if I meant to question that.

The quotes are from such noted evolutionists as Richard Dawkins, Niles Eldredge, the late Stephen Jay Gould, and perhaps my favorite of all times, the quote from Richard Lewontin, which is more subtle than those you find from the others, but probably the most poignant...

We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. ...we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door...

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Originally posted by LiveFreeOrDie
In the case of evolution, a broad and continually increasing set of data confirms our hypothesis, and no significant data has been found which refutes it. (The continued failure of creationists on this board, including yourself, to present any refuting data confirms this).

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You want to talk about failure to present evidence? Fine - here's a challenge for you (although I may start a new thread for this one, since it should be fun). Name ONE famous evolutionist who examined evidence that was problematic for evolution and publicly proposed in a paper for peer review the possibility that it was problematic because evolution could be wrong. Show me that there is a single famous evolutionist WHO YOU RESPECT AS EDUCATED AND QUALIFIED who really does examine the evidence from an objective perspective.

Nick,

Just to recap, your entire argument rests on the assumption that inferences based on 20,000 year old evidence are invalid, but inferences based on 20 year old evidence are good. Is it possible for you to demonstrate that this assumption is applicable to the real world or specifically the study of biology? If it is so plainly obvious, then you should have little trouble explaining it to us.

The strength of science is that it will adjust to accomidate new evidence, thinking, and techniques. You consider this a flaw, but that doesn't stop you from using the latest medicine and technology that comes out of such a method. The fact is that evolution has not changed much since the modern synthesis. It's been some what refined and added too, but nothing central has been over turned. On the contrary, new evidence has only strengthened the claims of modern synthesis.

I am not insuating that you are stupid, a liar or both. I believe that many of you are so focused on your conclusions that you can't see the forest for the trees, are suffering from spiritual blindness, are self-deceived, in denial, or any combination of the above.

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In other words, you are not insinuating that we are stupid, liars or both. You are merely saying that we are stupid, liars, or both.

That's what you SAY you do, and probably what most of you THINK you do. But what you REALLY do is go out into the world and look for evidence that you (can) interpret to confirm your hypothesis.

I put "can" in parens because some people unwittingly work that way, but others deliberately do so. Regardless, that makes all your so-called "evidence" nothing but circular reasoning. You see what you want to see because you already believe that's the proper way to interpret the evidence. So you have no choice but to find what you're looking for. When you find something that poses a problem, you either throw it out as an anomaly or (as is more often the case) imagine a solution to the problem that allows you to retain your premise that evolution is true.

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Please leave off with the unsubstantiated accusations of incompetence and dishonesty. If you can substantiate your accusations, I have started a whole new thread, just for you to do so.

But don't take my word for it. Many evolutionists have already plainly said the same thing for me, and I've provided quotes from them saying so, and posted some of them on this very board. Others have claimed I'm taking the quotes out of context, but the only added context they provide is that these people still believe in evolution. Well, duh -- I wouldn't list them as evolutionists if I meant to question that.

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I won't take your word for it, or the snippets of other people's words, regardless of who they are or what their profession is. If you think that there is systematic dishonesty, denial, and bad methodology in the evolutionary science, then post some substantiating examples. That way we don't have to worry about taking anyone's word for it, we can see it for ourselves... There is a thread set aside for you.

There are only so many times you can cry "the sky is falling!" before someone demands to see a piece of it on the ground. I am doing that now. Please - put your money where your mouth is. The thread is waiting.

JS:

"If the Buddhist "theory" of creation were proven correct, that would also have a fairly big impact on my day-to-day life and thoughts."

Mine too. But when we're left with non-scientifically proven theories, when actually considered, the only remaining comparison is the religious. And I'm more than happy to engage someone on the comparative religion level. Of course, the end result is also the same, a faith is needed, but from my standpoint, less faith is needed to believe what I've acccepted, than other faiths I have studied and compared.

"Do you question the inverse square law because the observed elliptical orbits of the planets (the best evidence for the inverse-square law) might be the result of yo-yo strings tied to them?"

No, because we haven't detected any yo-yo strings.


and I'm beginning to think we should have started our discussion with this:

"Well, assuming that the global flood was not followed up by a string of miracles, we would expect to find nothing. An ecology disrupted as catastrophically as it would be by a global flood, the environment would not support the continuation of human life. We could expect not to be here to find anything at all. If an alien life form landed here and had a look around, they could expect to find one recent stratum extremely thick, cluttered with fossilized remains of modern organisms, human tools, houses, and uniformly so, all over the world. They could expect to see major anomalies in the chemical composition of one layer of ice cores that dates to the time of the flood, uniformly no matter where on Earth the cores were drilled. They could expect to find a recent genetic bottleneck in all of the organisms that did manage to survive the aftermath of the flood. They could also expect to find some indication of where all of the water went."

"Can you tell me anything that the flood theory predicts that we should find --- that we actually do find?"

This is what I would expect to find:

- A world with water enough to cover all the available land space.
- Massive worldwide layering.
- Water and wind-created land features, mountains, canyons, and more.
- Massive fossil and oil fields.
- Destructive scars evidencing ruptures in the earth from waters "bursting forth" as Genesis says the water came from - underground. The plates themselves seem to be a good place to start.
- Massive uplift and huge water basins as the weight of the water formed vast ocean deeps, and a broken/ruptured crust that would move to fill in pressure elsewhere.
- A record massively layered ice age of massive proportions, perhaps even caps at the coldest and windiest parts of the earth.
- Evidence of worldwide glaciation due to the cooling of the earth's climate by the cooling effect of a massive world-wide, wind-swept ocean.
- marine fossils at the tops of mountains
- massive oil fields in the regions of the most populated areas of Earth before the flood (like the Garden of Eden). Middle East.
- my theory predicts asteroid impacts caused the rupturing of the earth's crust and underground water oceans. Evidence of at least one huge asteroid currently makes up the Gulf of Mexico.
- those asteroids came from somewhere in the Solar System. Evidence should thus be found of this massive sudden storm.
- The Moon would have one side completely potmarked with craters, and the other side relatively untouched by the sudden storm that did cause the flood as it acted as a partial shield for the bigger asteroids. This caused even the moon to one time spew lava because of it's own destruction at the onslaught of this storm.
- The Asteroid Belt - being a suspicious source for this storm that probably swept through the entire system, an exercise only able to affect all planets closest the sun (with increasing pot-marking along the closer to the suns gravity one gets) if it had been an explosion of some kind.. perhaps a planet or body that did once make up the belt that is now there.
- Venus, having an atmosphere before such an event, but ocean-less? would instead be faced with a severe nuclear winter. Mars, being evidence of great destruction as well. In fact, all planets struck would be so thus. A sudden barrage would cause volcanism on all planets that were hit where volcanism was possible.
- think. there is a lot more. heck, I just came up with the last four as I wrote this.

These are just a few things biblical Creationism/Flood Theory would predict, as well as my theory as to what caused the Flood in the first place: the fracturing and disintegration of a small planetary body between Mars and Jupitor.

Originally posted by Jerry Smith


In other words, you are not insinuating that we are stupid, liars or both. You are merely saying that we are stupid, liars, or both.

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Well, that wasn't what I was saying, but you're convincing me that maybe that's what I should have said.

Originally posted by Josephus
JS:

"If the Buddhist "theory" of creation were proven correct, that would also have a fairly big impact on my day-to-day life and thoughts."

Mine too. But when we're left with non-scientifically proven theories, when actually considered, the only remaining comparison is the religious. And I'm more than happy to engage someone on the comparative religion level. Of course, the end result is also the same, a faith is needed, but from my standpoint, less faith is needed to believe what I've acccepted, than other faiths I have studied and compared.

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Josephus, I hope you understand that I look at this in a different way. When there is no evidence for any theory for the origin of the universe, I don't see any justification for using non-empirical means to decide between what is essentially an infinite number of possible hypotheses just so that I will have something to believe. I would rather confess ignorance than hold a belief for no better reason than that I do not know the answer.

"Do you question the inverse square law because the observed elliptical orbits of the planets (the best evidence for the inverse-square law) might be the result of yo-yo strings tied to them?"

No, because we haven't detected any yo-yo strings.

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Good, so if evidence for the global flood isn't found, then you wouldn't assume that the data from the fossil record was skewed by it. I think that you will find that the global flood model is unsupported when you examine it more closely. As a matter of fact, you could say that it is falsified. I'm going to take your predictions and my predictions and go through them one by one. I think you will find that the flood hypothesis, just doesn't hold water

Originally posted by npetreley


Well, that wasn't what I was saying, but you're convincing me that maybe that's what I should have said.

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Where did I get the idea that was what you were saying??
Lets parse the statement that led me to post that:

A. I am not insuating that you are stupid, a liar or both.

Ok, good!

B. I believe that many of you are so focused on your conclusions that you can't see the forest for the trees,

But here you are essentially calling us stupid. You, better than a community of thousands of working biologists, paleontologists, geneticists, etc, are equipped to see the "big picture", because all ten thousand of them, and those of us who don't do it for a living but are interested enough to learn about their work are just too focused on the conclusion to see the obvious faults.

C. are suffering from spiritual blindness,

Would it be inappropriate to restate this as "stupidity caused by not belonging to the right religion?"

D. are self-deceived,

Here you say we might not be stupid: we might just be lying to ourselves.

E. in denial,

I assume you don't mean in denial of non-facts. Denying the facts is dishonest. If a person is dishonest with themselves, then shares those thoughts with another as fact - that is still lying.

F. or any combination of the above.

"Or both"....

Hmmmmm.... from where could I have gotten the idea that you are saying we are either stupid or liars, or both?

If not from your own statement, parsed above, maybe from here:

If it is not intuitively obvious to you, then I recommend you examine your abilities as a scientist or your level of honesty in debate.

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or here:

That's what you SAY you do, and probably what most of you THINK you do. But what you REALLY do is go out into the world and look for evidence that you (can) interpret to confirm your hypothesis.

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So we SAY we do one thing but REALLY do something else and you aren't insuating we are liars?

So we THINK we do one thing, but we REALLY do something else, and you aren't insuating we are stupid?

Nick, there is a thread waiting for you to really put your money where your mouth is, and show which "interpretations" are poor. There you can show which "assumptions" are wrong. There you can expose the systematic ineptitude and dishonesty in evolutionary biology with REAL WORLD EXAMPLES!!

Originally posted by Jerry Smith

B. I believe that many of you are so focused on your conclusions that you can't see the forest for the trees,

But here you are essentially calling us stupid.

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Not at all. I'm saying it's like when you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

Once you are convinced of a conclusion, it is very easy to get caught in the trap of seeing everything in terms of that conclusion. It has nothing to do with being stupid.

I would say it was stupid if:

1. It was easy to PROVE that evolution or creation were true or false.

But it is not easy to prove either. And it is VERY easy to see all the evidence in terms of creation or see all the evidence in terms of evolution.

2. If spiritual issues weren't involved.

Spiritual blindness IS involved. If you are spiritually blind, you will look only for natural explanations of things.

Would it be inappropriate to restate this as "stupidity caused by not belonging to the right religion?"

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Very inappropriate.

D. are self-deceived,

Here you say we might not be stupid: we might just be lying to ourselves.

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Unwittingly, yes, at least for the most part. That's what denial is, so I won't address it separately.

Originally posted by Ray K
Evidence for creationism

1. The universe exists

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evidence for evolution: the sky is blue (just pointing out how nonsensical your first point is)

Originally posted by Ray K
[B
2. Current scientific evidence indicates that the universe began at a previous point in time (as opposed to always existing in its current state)[/B]

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source? it was to my knowledge that no one really knows that.

Originally posted by Ray K

3. The Solar System and Earth also have definite starting points in time.

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perhaps i should state my sky is blue argument again. you are right, but it means little.

Originally posted by Ray K

4. Current scientific evidence points to an large amount of fortituitous conditions to occur to support the formation and support of life long enough for the advancement to intelligence.

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source?

Originally posted by Ray K
5. New species appear abruptly in the fossil record.

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i would ask for a source, but the fossil record is really the "theory" part of evolution.

Originally posted by Ray K

I am an atheist, but current knowledge in no way rules out deistic belief systems.

Oh wait. Were you talking about Biblical creation? Sorry, I can't help you with that one.

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atheist: without belief in god. that does rule you out of a belief in the deistic.

no matter what creation you're trying to argue, your points are weak.