Help! need help debating an evolutionist!

Hawk007 said:

You don't know , but most Christians know!

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Sorry, I forgot a couple of gems:

11. Ask him, "If we come from Monkeys, why are there still monkeys??"

12. Remind him that Darwin was a racist, therefore evolution is a lie.

13. Tell him that Hitler and Stalin were evolutionists, therefore evolution is evil.

14. Tell him Evolution makes people think they are "just animals," which makes them sin.

15. Or ask your frined, "If you're an animal, why don't you act like one?"

Hawk007 said:

Do you really believe that evolution will stand the test of time? A theory?

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A scientific theory is not a hunch or a guess. It is an explanation for a group of related phenomena that explains the data and observations and makes testable predictions. Evolution has already stood teh test of time, and yes, I beleive it will continue to do so.

Hawk007 said:

Do you think that there are a chance in the next 1000 years that science might say oops, we made a mistake about macro-evolution, because they have observed new data and found a much better system for dating material which is also a lot more specific and efficient......less dependent on unknown circumstances for instance the effect what the weather may had on the subject being dated.

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While evolution could be overturned in teh future, I think it unlikely. There is just too much support for it. Also, dating methods are not dependent on the weather.

Hawk007 said:

Evolution is to me vulnerable, because when you look to the past science is known for changing their theories, to believe that they now have the truth is scary......

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Why is it scary??

Hawk007 said:

You are welcome to believe evolution, but it looks like that it is pretty much your only option......

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If you have a scientific theory that explains the data better, present it to us.

Split Rock said:

14. Tell him Evolution makes people think they are "just animals," which makes them sin.

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Actually, just the opposite.

I am not a Homo sapiens --- I have the Sin Nature.

I'm not a sinner because I sin, I sin because I'm a sinner.

AV1611VET said:

Actually, just the opposite.

I am not a Homo sapiens --- I have the Sin Nature.

I'm not a sinner because I sin, I sin because I'm a sinner.

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Maybe you can tell your fellow fundies that then.

You're wasting your time repeating that to us ad nauseum. It isn't even what we claimed anyway, so you may as well have the bonus of not committing false witness too

Split Rock said:

12. Remind him that Darwin was a racist, therefore evolution is a lie.

13. Tell him that Hitler and Stalin were evolutionists, therefore evolution is evil.

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Or in the case of the OP's other thread on the same topic in Origins Theology, Darwin WAS a Nazi.

A time travelling one apparently.

Cabal said:

Or in the case of the OP's other thread on the same topic in Origins Theology, Darwin WAS a Nazi.

A time travelling one apparently.

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Darwin is [now] a believer, and he will one day demonstrate it.

AV1611VET said:

Darwin is [now] a believer, and he will one day demonstrate it.

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Um....he already did. He was a Christian.

And one day certain people will have to demonstrate their contrition for spreading false witness about brothers and sisters in Christ.

I am in a tough spot. I have been in a very conservative church for a long time and I just went along with everything, but now I see no reason to disregard scientific evidence—and I don't know how to handle it with my kids. Yes, I know all about creation scientists' evidence, but come on, let's be real. What are we afraid of? It doesn't mean the end of our faith to think that God could have had an less literal way of creating life.

Space Cadet said:

I am in a tough spot. I have been in a very conservative church for a long time and I just went along with everything, but now I see no reason to disregard scientific evidence—and I don't know how to handle it with my kids. Yes, I know all about creation scientists' evidence, but come on, let's be real. What are we afraid of? It doesn't mean the end of our faith to think that God could have had an less literal way of creating life.

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QFT - sorry to hear about your situation.

If you don't mind me asking,* why do you feel it's hard handling it with your kids?


*"Naff off and mind your own business" is a perfectly valid response here

Cabal said:

QFT - sorry to hear about your situation.

If you don't mind me asking,* why do you feel it's hard handling it with your kids?


*"Naff off and mind your own business" is a perfectly valid response here

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Because their mother still believes in the literal young earth creation. I don't want to cause confusion, but I want them to know that they can look at the evidence and not be afraid to draw their own conclusions.

Space Cadet said:

I am in a tough spot. I have been in a very conservative church for a long time and I just went along with everything, but now I see no reason to disregard scientific evidence—and I don't know how to handle it with my kids. Yes, I know all about creation scientists' evidence, but come on, let's be real. What are we afraid of? It doesn't mean the end of our faith to think that God could have had an less literal way of creating life.

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Religions love to rush people into making commitments, I'd recommend doing the opposite.

What I did was just to stop. I stopped preaching Noah and Adam and Eve, I just plain stopped talking and started listening. No one has blamed me for it.

Hawk007 said:

Hi,

The only concern I have is that of macro evolution and that carbon dating is unreliable......Carbon Dating: Why you cant trust it or other radiometric dating methods. creation evolution young earth evidence old earth bible

All the best!

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For the record, carbon dating is only used to date things that are about 60000 years old. We use other radiometric dating methods for older things.

Anyway, what do you want me to do with that link? I could go through it, pointing out where it's wrong. Because, unsurprisingly, it is wrong. It cites a number of examples of where carbon dating is way out, but these are all examples of where the reservoir effect is not taken into account. It's a well known effect, and such anomalous results are characteristic of a scientist who wasn't careful enough. Fortunately, all the other scientists notice it and point it out.

In other words, the site doesn't so much demonstrate that radiometric dating is wrong, but rather, it quite nicely demonstrates the problem with Creationists: they rely far too much on each other's misinformation. When one makes a mistake, it isn't noticed by the other Creationists, they just parrot on what they've heard.

So, I ask you again: what do you want me to do with the link? It's just old arguments that I've heard before.

Space Cadet said:

Because their mother still believes in the literal young earth creation. I don't want to cause confusion, but I want them to know that they can look at the evidence and not be afraid to draw their own conclusions.

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Then tell them that. After all, what's the worst their mother can say? "No, don't make up your own mind"?

Scepticism and objectivity are valuable traits, and don't necessarily spell the end of religious faith.

Space Cadet said:

Because their mother still believes in the literal young earth creation. I don't want to cause confusion, but I want them to know that they can look at the evidence and not be afraid to draw their own conclusions.

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And I'm sure you'll be glad to provide all that evidence, along with its interpretation --- won't you?

How about you show me some evidence --- starting here: 1?

(Please --- )

Space Cadet said:

Because their mother still believes in the literal young earth creation. I don't want to cause confusion, but I want them to know that they can look at the evidence and not be afraid to draw their own conclusions.

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Well, if you haven't squared it with their mother first, best to do that I guess - but if you don't mind me saying, if it's something you two can come to an agreement on it could be a great way of demonstrating to your children that it's possible to agree to disagree over comparatively minor* things like this.

* It would also be a great demonstration that one can disagree over the smaller differences without compromising on the bigger ones - when I call this evolution/creation thing a minor thing, I'm not meaning to trivialise your situation, what I mean is that compared to the more basic tenets and more important tenets of faith, like the crucifixion, resurrection, etc. one's choice of preferred creation mechanism is really quite unimportant by comparison.

AV1611VET said:

And I'm sure you'll be glad to provide all that evidence, along with its interpretation --- won't you?

How about you show me some evidence --- starting here: 1?

(Please --- )

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Maybe let the guy worry about his own children first before worrying about the ones on this board, hmm?

Hawk007 said:

So who or what created the universe and set natural laws in place to prevent chaos according to you?

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God. Not empirically provable or demonstrable in the slightest, however, and I'm fine with that. I wouldn't exactly expect anything else from something that needs to be decided on faith.

Hawk007 said:

Hi,

The only concern I have is that of macro evolution and that carbon dating is unreliable......Carbon Dating: Why you cant trust it or other radiometric dating methods. creation evolution young earth evidence old earth bible

All the best!

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Oh boy.

Firstly, dating is but one facet of the evidence for evolution - and even if the dates were incorrect there's still plenty of genetic evidence to show we evolved from previous lifeforms and share common ancestry with other primates.

Let's blast through this shockingly-designed website:

Firstly, I notice that generally all the "corrected" radioisotope dates quoted still have the Earth way older than YEC predicts. There's also a shocking tendency to assume that showing radioisotope dating to be wrong proves evolution wrong (it won't), and thus prove creationism right by default (it doesn't, but of course if creationists actually had data this would be a whole different matter entirely).

Secondly, this website should have come to end at the comment from the user about not using the correct radioisotope dating method, or using them incorrectly. If I want to measure the position of an atom, I use a specialised microscope. I do NOT use a ruler, as I can't narrow the location of any one atom down to anything greater than a millimeter, which is about seven orders of magnitude bigger than the atom itself. This is not about cherrypicking your data, this is about using the right tool for the right job.

Thirdly - the section entitled "30,000 year limit to Carbon dating" is deliciously ironic, not least because the same canard used in other parts of this article is funnily enough NOT applied to his argument here, namely - how does he know that the rate of change of C-14 in the atmosphere has remained constant? All of the objections he raises with this argument are regularly taken into consideration when taking measurements, he is most definitely NOT the first person to think them up - conversely, he is unlikely to have applied the same diligence to his own argument here, and when creationists try and pull these kind of linear extrapolation arguments with any system, be it C-14 equilibrium, lunar recession rates or whatever, they always get it wrong for this same reason.

Fourthly - the section entitled "God cursed the ground" with no sense of irony whatsoever, starts with the massive assumption that

Genesis 3 verse 17 "..cursed is the ground for your sake"

When this happened there was a burst of radioactity that made the rocks appear older than they were.

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And this is somehow meant to be LESS of an assumption that the decay rates of rocks have remained constant etc?

Fifthly - dating living material. Um....WHAT?

Yeah, that must have been the mistake we made, us scientists are clearly so much less intelligent than this goon with an angelfire website and too much time on his hands that we forgot to check whether or not that T-Rex skeleton we dug up from miles underground was trying to bite our heads off or not,,,,,

Sixthly - section entitled "Has the rate of decay remained constant?"

Just what the bible, and a Devolution and degenerating model of the earth would predict.

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Which I'm guessing refers back to the blue quoted text earlier on that website:

Look at biological breakdown everywhere, it proceeds at different rates. Look at the world from a devolutionary viewpoint and see how perfection has been lost and breakdown has proceeded in spurts and stasis periods. Some of us have lost more information than others, that's why some are at Harvard, but others, more unfortunate, [the same] age struggle with debilitating genetic degenerative diseases like Lupus, MS, ALS, Crohn's and many other autoimmune diseases. The keys of which are locked in the "vault of degeneration knowledge" that evolutionists are unwilling to open for fear that we creationists might be correct."
Jack Cuozzo 3/02

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This statement is simply incorrect as is not an analogous system to radioactive decay. Biological decay does usually not happen on an atomic scale, whereas radioactive decay is a statistical quantum mechanical process which operates at well-defined rates. I could be wrong on this, I'd need to look it up, but tweaking decay rates would require at least one change in the fundamental constants of the universe, which I think we would notice in multiple other areas of science if there were.

There are other errors in the link you posted, but quite frankly, this is getting wearying.

AV1611VET said:

And I'm sure you'll be glad to provide all that evidence, along with its interpretation --- won't you?

How about you show me some evidence --- starting here: 1?

(Please --- )

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No. Your question is not the point of this thread.

Evidence can be interpreted differently, sure. However, only one interpretation will allow you to make accurate and independently verifiable predictions based on it.

Space Cadet said:

I am in a tough spot. I have been in a very conservative church for a long time and I just went along with everything, but now I see no reason to disregard scientific evidence—and I don't know how to handle it with my kids. Yes, I know all about creation scientists' evidence, but come on, let's be real. What are we afraid of? It doesn't mean the end of our faith to think that God could have had an less literal way of creating life.

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How old are your kids? One thing you can do if give them some stuff to read about what evolution really is. One book I recommend is "Science, Evolution and Creationism," 2008, National Academy of Sciences. You can buy it in many bookstores, and also online at the NAS website. It is inexpensive, short (70 pages), to the point, and written for laymen, not scientists.

Hawk007 said:

Hi,

The only concern I have is that of macro evolution and that carbon dating is unreliable......Carbon Dating: Why you cant trust it or other radiometric dating methods. creation evolution young earth evidence old earth bible

All the best!

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You seem to be forgetting the other half dozen isotopes, with half-lives ranging from several thousand to millions of years, that are also used in radiometric dating. Lucy, for example, was dated using the Potassium-Argon method, in which they measured the decay of K-40 to Ar-40.


I swear, you guys repeat this anecdotal straw man about radiocarbon dating being inaccurate (usually because a Creationist supposedly idiotically applied it incorrectly) and completely ignore every other dating method science possesses.