I Reject Creationism because it does not make accurate predictions about the future

[JeremyHopkins]

I reject Creationism because it does not make accurate predictions about what we would observe in nature, human behavior, what we would find in the fossil record, or anything else that I know of.

Creationists, if your ideas are correct, then in what way can you use creationism to make accurate predictions about the future?

 

[[serious]]

I predict one of the following responses:
1. specified complexity
2. common design
3. evolutionist conspiracy

 

[corvus_corax]

I reject Creationism because it does not make accurate predictions about ...human behavior...
Creationists, if your ideas are correct, then in what way can you use creationism to make accurate predictions about the future?

If Creationism is true, then we should see "degenerate man" (i.e. a degenerated human race). We actually do see this, hence my god (Creationism) PWNS evilution.

Obviously that's not my stance, but (believe it or not) that argument (minus the sarcastic end-note of mine) has actually been used. Of course I dont think "degenerate" was ever even defined. Additionally the fact that the books of the bible were written by men merely observing and making judgement calls (IOW, not actually making predictions) usually goes blatantly ignored.

 

[Blayz]

Decent topic which the OP immediately muddies by given examples (fossil record, human behaviour) which have nothing to do with the future
.

However, I can post this again and this time it is on topic, even more ontopic than the OP

I am a scientist, I have spent the last 20+ years working in life science research in academia, government and commercial settings. I have spent much of that time using the predictive power of the Theory of Evolution to make discoveries in various fields, the most recent being HIV therapeutics. To be perfectly honest, whilst I will admit to a sense of shadenfreude watching people with no knowledge of logic nor science try to use the former to disprove the latter, I really could not care less what the tree of life looks like, nor how old the earth is. the ToE works. it is that simple. I have used it every day of my working life, and if it didn't work, I would not have a job....And if you think large pharmaceutical companies are in the business of paying out wads of cash in the name of the great evolutionist conspiracy, you are seriously deluded.


So once again, if you can offer me anything else with better predictive power as an alternative, I will drop evolution with a smile and never look back. One thing, that's all I ask, one simple predictive model borne out of ID or any alternative to evolution which I can actually use in my day to day job

Anything else...you are just blowing hot air.

 

[JeremyHopkins]

Decent topic which the OP immediately muddies by given examples (fossil record, human behaviour) which have nothing to do with the future

You couldn't be more wrong. Suppose we are going to dig and analyze the fossil record. Going by the theory of evolution, we know what will happen in the future. That is before we ever start to dig, we can accurately predict what we'll find once we do start digging. With digging and finding being two events taking place in the future.

Also, human behavior is largely entire dependent upon the human brain which has been shaped by the process of evolution. If you have a good enough working knowledge of how the theory of evolution works, then you can accurately predict how people will behave. Advertisers do this all the time.

A biology designed by an infinitely intelligent being is bound to be different than a biology that is a result of unintelligent but nonrandom forces and processes. If you apply Creationism and Evolution to human behavior, you'll find that they make vastly different predictions about human behavior. One predicts that we'll basically be just smarter animals (which we are) with our instincts and emotions often coloring and distorting our perceptions to give us an inaccurate view of external reality (the world outside your brain). The other predicts that our brains are intelligently designed. How any specific brain would function would depend upon the designer, but we can be pretty sure that an infinitely intelligent that cares about us is not going to intentionally design our brains so that our built in instincts give us inaccurate information.

However, I can post this again and this time it is on topic, even more ontopic than the OP

I am a scientist, I have spent the last 20+ years working in life science research in academia, government and commercial settings. I have spent much of that time using the predictive power of the Theory of Evolution to make discoveries in various fields, the most recent being HIV therapeutics. To be perfectly honest, whilst I will admit to a sense of shadenfreude watching people with no knowledge of logic nor science try to use the former to disprove the latter, I really could not care less what the tree of life looks like, nor how old the earth is. the ToE works. it is that simple. I have used it every day of my working life, and if it didn't work, I would not have a job....And if you think large pharmaceutical companies are in the business of paying out wads of cash in the name of the great evolutionist conspiracy, you are seriously deluded.

This basically the same thing as what I was talking about, you are just applying it in a different way. It's just that the predictive powers of the Theory of evolution do not stop there. They have much broader applications than just that.

I'm with you though. I didn't start dating until I was 25 and the reason why was because I had no idea how the game of love worked. I had been brought up a creationist and so came to wildly inaccurate conclusions about my own ability to reason and how people would behave. When I changed my mind about evolution, it changed the whole way I viewed myself and the world around me and it opened up doors. I could also care less about how old the earth really is. I use the theory of evolution because it allows me to me accurate human behavior.

So once again, if you can offer me anything else with better predictive power as an alternative, I will drop evolution with a smile and never look back. One thing, that's all I ask, one simple predictive model borne out of ID or any alternative to evolution which I can actually use in my day to day job

Anything else...you are just blowing hot air.

 

[RichardT]

I am a scientist, I have spent the last 20+ years working in life science research in academia, government and commercial settings. I have spent much of that time using the predictive power of the Theory of Evolution to make discoveries in various fields, the most recent being HIV therapeutics. To be perfectly honest, whilst I will admit to a sense of shadenfreude watching people with no knowledge of logic nor science try to use the former to disprove the latter, I really could not care less what the tree of life looks like, nor how old the earth is. the ToE works. it is that simple. I have used it every day of my working life, and if it didn't work, I would not have a job....And if you think large pharmaceutical companies are in the business of paying out wads of cash in the name of the great evolutionist conspiracy, you are seriously deluded.

You seem to be fighting a straw man, Creationists do believe alleles change over time(what they disagree with is mutations being a good mechanism new "information", and by information they don't mean it in a Claude Shannon way).

 

[ReverendDG]

You seem to be fighting a straw man, Creationists do believe alleles change over time(what they disagree with is mutations being a good mechanism new "information", and by information they don't mean it in a Claude Shannon way).

sadly they seem to be unable to tell people what makes mutation unable to produce new "information" without redefining the terms they use, when people try to show examples

 

[RichardT]

I'm with you though.

ME -> I didn't start dating until I was 25 (potentially) and the reason why was because I had no idea how the game of love worked. I had been brought up a creationist and so came to wildly inaccurate conclusions about my own ability to reason and how people would behave.



When I changed my mind about evolution, it changed the whole way I viewed myself and the world around me and it opened up doors. I could also care less about how old the earth really is. I use the theory of evolution because it allows me to me accurate human behavior.

Wow. I am exactly where you were. I really don't know what to think about this. Girls seems 100% unpredictable to me, I think things will happen one way but I always am 100% wrong about absolutely everything in the "game of love".

 

[corvus_corax]

they don't mean it in a Claude Shannon way).

Why not?
Information theory was pretty much invented by him back in the '40's.

Or do you have an actual definition of "information"?
If you do, that would be great!

I mean, seeing as how most creationists bandy the word around (after reading Hovind, Ham, and Behe) but still have no actual definition of the term.

And please (please?) dont give me some online dictionary term, as those (commonly used terms) don't usually apply when it comes to science (although if you can find a dictionary definition that adheres to the scientific terms, that would be great)

 

[Blayz]

You seem to be fighting a straw man, Creationists do believe alleles change over time(what they disagree with is mutations being a good mechanism new "information", and by information they don't mean it in a Claude Shannon way).

Pray tell exactly what allelic variance over time has to do with determining the location of promotor sites for targets based on mouse/human homology?

Do these creationists believe this allelic variation is caused by random mutation and natural selection?


Any chance you could not avoid my original question, and provide me with a tool with predicitive power that I can actually use that is not based on evolution?

 

[RichardT]

sadly they seem to be unable to tell people what makes mutation unable to produce new "information" without redefining the terms they use, when people try to show examples

Werner Gitt defined it as such:

1. Information is more than the physical coding used to represent it. The sender and receiver must agree in advance on conventions to represent whatever is to be communicated in the future.
2. Information exchange requires that the frame of reference or context be agreed to in advance.
3. Random processes cannot generate coded information; rather, they only reflect the underlying mechanistic and probabilistic properties of the components which created that physical arrangement.
4. Information efficiency may be denser than implied by Shannon’s log[SIZE=-1]2[/SIZE](n) equation, since a common basis of understanding exists between sender and receiver, often allowing implications with various degrees of certainty to be assumed by both parties, in addition to the raw data of the message.
5. In addition to the data encoded in the physical message the intention of the original sender must be considered. An encoding system can be devised to ensure transmission accuracy or to avoid understanding by an unwanted party.
6. A message allows information to survive over time. Assuming that the physical medium is not destroyed, there is some flexibility as to when the receiver can interpret the information.
7. The underlying meaning of coded information is external to the mere nature and properties of the sender.
8. The physical medium upon which a message is encoded is subject to physical laws such as a natural trend towards increased entropy in the long run (and thereby loss of encoded information which is dependent on a physical medium).
9. Information content of messages is more easily quantified in a comparative than absolute sense.

 

[RichardT]

Pray tell exactly what allelic variance over time has to do with determining the location of promotor sites for targets based on mouse/human homology?

I don't accept homology as evidence for the ToE at all. It is such a general post diction that I reject it out of hand. This is what Isaac Newton, a bible believing Creationist, propagator of gravitation (he also had some work on calculus) had to say about homology.

Of Atheism

Opposite to the first is Atheism in profession & Idolatry in practise. Atheism is so senseless & odious to mankind that it never had many professors. Can it be by accident that all birds beasts & men have their right side & left side alike shaped (except in their bowells) & just two eyes & no more on either side the face & just two ears on either side the head & a nose with two holes & no more between the eyes & one mouth under the nose & either two fore leggs or two wings or two arms on the sholders & two leggs on the hipps one on either side & no more? Whence arises this uniformity in all their outward shapes but from the counsel & contrivance of an Author? Whence is it that the eyes of all sorts of living creatures are transparent to the very bottom & the only transparent members in the body, having on the outside an hard transparent skin, & within transparent juyces with a crystalline Lens in the middle & a pupil before the Lens all of them so truly shaped & fitted for vision, that no Artist can mend them? Did blind chance know that there was light & what was its refraction & fit the eys of all creatures after the most curious manner to make use of it? These & such like considerations always have & ever will prevail with man kind to beleive that there is a being who made all things & has all things in his power & who is therfore to be feared?


Now, if it can be shown that different genetic information could produce almost the same physical features, (like, different genetic information for a modern primate / human for their hands for example) this would show that Creationism does have predictive power, and that it actually worked (some scientists who were creationists told me that this was somewhat the case).

 

[Blayz]

I don't accept homology as evidence for the ToE at all. It is such a general post diction that I reject it out of hand

And yet, as I say repeatedly, it provides me with enough predictive power to be a useful tool. Your decision to reject it out of hand, strangely enough, has no effect on my ability to produce results and get paid for it...though you seem to imply that you accept mouse/human homology....would you do that if you knew that the scientific meaning of "homology" is "related by descent"?

And, *sigh*, yet again you fail utterly to address the point. I honestly do not care what you do or do not reject out of hand. Provide me with a better tool. Do something useful and constructive rather than destructive.

Give me something I can use that is as good as or better than the ToE

This is what Isaac Newton, a bible believing Creationist, propagator of gravitation (he also had some work on calculus) had to say about homology.[/quote]

You forgot to mention he was also an alchemist. At any rate, as I have said before, it is only the creationists that think that "he's really famous, he must say right stuff". I could not give a tinker's cuss what Isaac Newton said on any subject, and I would feel the same way if he was around today, rather than several hundred years ago.

Now, if it can be shown that completely different genes produce almost the same features, this would show that Creationism does have predictive power, and that it actually worked(some scientists who were creationists told me that this was the case).

Under the assumption that evidence for different genes showing the same features was an argument for creationsim and not the ToE, and IF it can be shown THEN yes, assuming you could quantify it so it was actually useful, it would have predictive power.


Obviously my initial statements were not entirely clear, let me elaborate. I need a predictive tool I can use now. Not a predictive tool that may or may not exist some time in the futre whose level of predictive power is completely unknown.

 

[notto]

Werner Gitt defined it as such:

1. Information is more than the physical coding used to represent it. The sender and receiver must agree in advance on conventions to represent whatever is to be communicated in the future.
2. Information exchange requires that the frame of reference or context be agreed to in advance.
3. Random processes cannot generate coded information; rather, they only reflect the underlying mechanistic and probabilistic properties of the components which created that physical arrangement.
4. Information efficiency may be denser than implied by Shannon’s log[SIZE=-1]2[/SIZE](n) equation, since a common basis of understanding exists between sender and receiver, often allowing implications with various degrees of certainty to be assumed by both parties, in addition to the raw data of the message.
5. In addition to the data encoded in the physical message the intention of the original sender must be considered. An encoding system can be devised to ensure transmission accuracy or to avoid understanding by an unwanted party.
6. A message allows information to survive over time. Assuming that the physical medium is not destroyed, there is some flexibility as to when the receiver can interpret the information.
7. The underlying meaning of coded information is external to the mere nature and properties of the sender.
8. The physical medium upon which a message is encoded is subject to physical laws such as a natural trend towards increased entropy in the long run (and thereby loss of encoded information which is dependent on a physical medium).
9. Information content of messages is more easily quantified in a comparative than absolute sense.

Now it is up to creationists to explain why by this definition the DNA molecule contains information while another complex sugar molecule (or a water molecule for that matter) doesn't.

 

[RichardT]

homology

The quality or condition of being homologous.

homologous

Corresponding or similar in position, value, structure, or function.



The above are the definitions of homology that I will agree on.

Now there are also some other definitions to homology that make some assumptions.

"Similar in structure and evolutionary origin, though not necessarily in function, as the flippers of a seal and the hands of a human."

 

[Blayz]

homology

Now there are also some other definitions to homology that make some assumptions.

"Similar in structure and evolutionary origin, though not necessarily in function, as the flippers of a seal and the hands of a human."

I do like the concept of a definition containing an assumption, but regardless. We are discussing science, so I use the scientific definition.


Hmm...still no response to my challenge, what a surprise. First a side track into what RT does not consider evidence, then another into the semantics of homology.

If I pray to your god that you will remain on topic, will it help?

 

[RichardT]

And yet, as I say repeatedly, it provides me with enough predictive power to be a useful tool. Your decision to reject it out of hand, strangely enough, has no effect on my ability to produce results and get paid for it...though you seem to imply that you accept mouse/human homology....would you do that if you knew that the scientific meaning of "homology" is "related by descent"?

I apologize. I accept the fact that they are similar in structure, not that they have a common ancestor.

And, *sigh*, yet again you fail utterly to address the point. I honestly do not care what you do or do not reject out of hand. Provide me with a better tool. Do something useful and constructive rather than destructive.

Name every single predictive tool that you believe comes from the belief that all organisms share a common ancestor. If homology is the only one, you really have nothing to worry about because it is such a general post diction anyway.

Give me something I can use that is as good as or better than the ToE

Potentially falsifiable claims that might work better within the assumption of a common designer.

You forgot to mention he was also an alchemist. At any rate, as I have said before, it is only the creationists that think that "he's really famous, he must say right stuff". I could not give a tinker's cuss what Isaac Newton said on any subject, and I would feel the same way if he was around today, rather than several hundred years ago.

Doesn't matter, Newton saw homology (shared physical characteristics) as a monument to the creative power of God. The only reason I used that example was in order to show that the prediction was too general.

Under the assumption that evidence for different genes showing the same features was an argument for creationsim and not the ToE, and IF it can be shown THEN yes, assuming you could quantify it so it was actually useful, it would have predictive power.

OK. I shall do more research to see if this is possible, but to me, evolution vs creationism is a lot more philosophical than scientific.

 

[RichardT]

.

 

[Frumious Bandersnatch]

Werner Gitt defined it as such:

1. Information is more than the physical coding used to represent it. The sender and receiver must agree in advance on conventions to represent whatever is to be communicated in the future.
2. Information exchange requires that the frame of reference or context be agreed to in advance.
3. Random processes cannot generate coded information; rather, they only reflect the underlying mechanistic and probabilistic properties of the components which created that physical arrangement.
4. Information efficiency may be denser than implied by Shannon’s log[SIZE=-1]2[/SIZE](n) equation, since a common basis of understanding exists between sender and receiver, often allowing implications with various degrees of certainty to be assumed by both parties, in addition to the raw data of the message.
5. In addition to the data encoded in the physical message the intention of the original sender must be considered. An encoding system can be devised to ensure transmission accuracy or to avoid understanding by an unwanted party.
6. A message allows information to survive over time. Assuming that the physical medium is not destroyed, there is some flexibility as to when the receiver can interpret the information.
7. The underlying meaning of coded information is external to the mere nature and properties of the sender.
8. The physical medium upon which a message is encoded is subject to physical laws such as a natural trend towards increased entropy in the long run (and thereby loss of encoded information which is dependent on a physical medium).
9. Information content of messages is more easily quantified in a comparative than absolute sense.

This is all about communication deriving from Shannon's theory of communication. Why don't you explain to us what its exact relevance to "biological information" and evolution is? What is the role of natural selection in Gitt's definitions for example? How has Gitt actually shown the "new information" can't arise? What is the implication of Schneiders work on the Evolution of Biological Information to Gitt's postulates. How does Gitt deal with algorithmic information?

Gitt seems to be extending Shannon but as far as I can see he just made up these postulates. Shannon provided rigorous math in his paper to support his theory. What has Gitt done to support his?

 

[Blayz]

Name every single predictive tool that you believe comes from the belief that all organisms share a common ancestor. If homology is the only one, you really have nothing to worry about because it is such a general post diction anyway.

Ahh, OK, once again, the gulf between the layman and the scientist causes mis understanding. Perhaps this hypothetical will help (note the names have been changed to protect the innocent, which is to say the actual material of iterest is proprietary and I am not allowed to disclose it)

Some science has determined that 5HT is a brain receptor involved in depression and bi-polar disorder. We have isolated this gene from mouse, and because the ToE says similarity of sequence is predictive of similarity of function, identified a number of homologs in humans. Now the problem with a homolog is that the ToE says it might be paralogous (derived from gene duplication) rather than orthologous (derived from speciaition). The ToE says paralogs tend to drift over time since they are redundant copies, either fading into the genetic background or acquiring new activities. However, the ToE says that the genetic similarity between the 5HT signaling pathways (based on other bits of ToE based evidence) is such that it is likely the transcriptional regulation elements for 5HT in the mouse are similar to those in humans, and the ToE says this will only be true for the orthologue. Now I don't knwo anything about the regulatory region for 5HT in mouse or human, but evidence and the ToE has shown me that other similar brain receptors have similar regulatory regions, some of which are well characterised. I can use the ToE to look for patterns in the known regulation regions and use them to predict (and then empircally test) the regulatory region for 5HT in the mouse, then use all of this data to explore the sequence that lies upstream of my homologs, to narrow down which is the true orthologue.

I am not habd waving here, or using useless generalisations. This work requires precise mathematical models of the evolutionary relationship between mice and humans, and the process surrounding the gene regulation of the 5HT family of brain receptors.


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