Is Creationism a Fairy Tale?

nuttypiglet · Oct 15, 2013

mzungu said:
You may as well say that you accept Jesus but not the Bible.

Religions are static. Are you implying that the Bible or qura'an or Torah change on a constant basis? I will not name one thing as it would be like naming a mathematical formula to a 1 year old. You have no idea about ToE and have extremely limited knowledge about science. Why bother?

{quote]You really don't knwo much acout Christianity. It is absurd to say creationists try to impose their faith into science. You try to impose your faith in evolution into real science and that is unacceptable.

I do not remember scientists taking to court any faith in order to impose ToE in Sunday class. On the other hand we all know how much creationists have tried to use the law to impose creationism in science class. As for me not knowing much about Christianity? Try me.

Indeed it is not. May I suggest you go to the Christians only forum as this one deals exactly such things as the creationist's insistence on supplanting science with the Bible's claims.

Make up your mind. If it is not a science book then how on earth can it be accurate compared to science? Your example pales compared to the Genesis story compared to the scientific theories on the birth of the universe. The Bible claims Bats are birds and whales are fish. That the earth is flat and that a worldwide flood occurred that covered all land masses. Of Talking snakes and what not. Really now!

Absolutely not. Unless you can show me how any religion will allow for one to question God or the official dogma.

Ignorance of Christians? You need only read all the posts by creationists![/QUOTE]

Oh by the way, Science came from religion, but that's the thanks we get lol

KWCrazy · Oct 15, 2013

Wiccan_Child said:
Non sequitur - a relativistic moral code is still a moral code, and still ascribes the 'evil' label. Also, you're conflating 'objective/subjective' morality with 'absolute/relativistic' morality. The two are axes.

If there is no God, there is no absolute morality.

If man is an evolved animal then societal constructs of morality are meaningless.

In a desert situation there is no society, so therefore there is no evil, right? The Donner party, for example, were cut off from society and were in essence their own society. Therefore there could be no evil ascribed to their actions; whether driven by necessity or boredom.

If we live in a Godless world and you tell me I can't cross the street against a red light then you are exercising your dominance over me. If I shoot you in the head and cross anyway, then I'm exercising my dominance over you. Both actions are purely natural. How can one be evil and one not?

Even those who pretend there is no God, who proclaim their atheism loudly and often know in their heart that God exists. They have a conscience which tells them right from wrong, and that is innately human. The knowledge of good and evil resides within us all, as dos the free will to choose. That confirms that we are created by God and not the random product of some overly mutated chimp.

KWCrazy · Oct 15, 2013

TLK Valentine said:
So we can't apply a human construct to humans? I thought you just said God created evil?

No, evil is the absence of God. God allowed for man to gain the ability to know good from evil; and to so bear the consequence of his choices.

KWCrazy · Oct 15, 2013

Wiccan_Child said:
In humans, we have evolved to cooperate for our mutual benefit, and this has created a sense of morality - it is good to help others, bad to murder and steal.

However, we are not intrinsically social. If I choose NOT to live with you by your rules and rather choose to kill you, dominate you and make you live by mine, how can that be called evil?

Chimps have a social structure but no morality. The same can be said with a pride of lions. According you you were're no different, so how can we have an intrinsic knowledge of good and evil if we're nothing more than primates with better grooming skills?

Wiccan_Child · Oct 15, 2013

nuttypiglet said:
Well evil originated from religion and it basically means someone or an action against Gods will. Man cannot decide what is right or wrong to an absolute, we need someone outside this system to determine that, with greater knowledge. It would take us millions of years if not longer to try to get a society which contains no evil and suit everyone. So how do you decide what is right or wrong? Do you decide by majority vote? which could be 51% one way and 49% the other, not pleasing nearly everyone. Do you vote in a leader to decide who may not feel the same as anyone else? Do you build a computer and let it decide?

Hence why one of the major branches of philosophy is the study of ethics. In developed countries, we've gravitated towards a 'consensus' approach to societal ethics, with a bent towards protecting the minority from the whims of the majority. Fairness, equality, and love, are promoted, while suffering and the infringement of freedom are demoted.

The problem with resorting to an absolute morality, is who dictates the absolute morality? The Queen? The Tsar? The President? The Pope? God? And in practice, there are many absolute moralities promoted as THE absolute morality - there are Abrahamic absolute moralities, Vedic moralities, Buddhist moralities, humanist moralities, etc. As a society, which should we opt to follow?

Saying "there's no morality without God" does nothing to advance human quality of life. I'm sure you wouldn't want to live under the heel of Shari'a law, so why should I live under the heel of Christian law?

nuttypiglet said:
With so many cultures across the world, one thing seen as evil in one land would likely be seen as perfectly acceptable to others. What about killing animals for food? Sure we can say it's what they were raised for, but scientifically and morally speaking, doesn't ALL life deserve better? Who are we to decide a chicken should be killed to satisfy our stomachs? According to science, dinosaurs evolved into birds over millions of years, but was that just to give us eggs and chicken meat?

They evolved that way because those variations were best suited to their environment. Our diet has evolved to take best advantage of the available resources (which includes milk: in Europe, we have preferentially selected those individuals who can drink milk for longer, to the point where nearly everyone is lactose tolerant; Native Americans, meanwhile, has no tolerance for milk).

Science is descriptive, not proscriptive. It tells us that chickens evolved from dinosaurs, but it is silent on what we should do with that information.

nuttypiglet said:
So who decides what is right or wrong? We could all say rape is definitely evil and wrong, yet in evolutionary terms this is a great way to spread genes.

Not in a society that despises rape. You have a much better chance of spreading your genes by love and consent.

Wiccan_Child · Oct 15, 2013

KWCrazy said:
However, we are not intrinsically social. If I choose NOT to live with you by your rules and rather choose to kill you, dominate you and make you live by mine, how can that be called evil?

Chimps have a social structure but no morality. The same can be said with a pride of lions. According you you were're no different, so how can we have an intrinsic knowledge of good and evil if we're nothing more than primates with better grooming skills?

Because that 'intrinsic knowledge of good and evil' is an evolved instinct that promotes advantageous behaviour (cooperation, altruism, etc) and demotes destructive behaviour (theft, rape, murder, etc). We have no idea if chimps or dolphins experience the same instinct, but their societies work as if they do.

TLK Valentine · Oct 15, 2013

KWCrazy said:
No, evil is the absence of God. God allowed for man to gain the ability to know good from evil; and to so bear the consequence of his choices.

Ok, so that's your definition -- and we should accept it because...?

nuttypiglet · Oct 15, 2013

Wiccan_Child said:
Because today's floods are always local, while Noah's flood was global.

1) Predation. An animal eaten is an animal that never* gets fossilised.

2) The mechanism of fossilisation requires highly specialised conditions (such as anaerobic burial) which not all carcasses would enjoy.

*Barring rare cases when a predator is fossilised with a meal still in its stomach. But even then, this would only include its last meal, not all the meals prior.

Catastrophic events, such as floods, leave tell-tale signs, including mass burials and, thus, mass fossilisations. A global flood would fossilise on a singular and unprecedented scale, meaning one geological stratum should be chock-a-block with fossils (those that died at the hand of God).

Population dynamics is more robust than you might suspect. The dynamics of a species - size, metabolism, diet, predation, reproduction, etc - dictate the minimal size for a sustainable population.

Are we talking land surface, surface, volume...?

But the geological strata is not really reliable, some experts agree on this. With fossils in different so called layers, you really believe its nice and simple and evidence. However, what is overlooked all the time are 'leaks'. Some refer to them as 'misplaced fossils' whatever that is supposed to mean. You expect to see fossils in one era of strata representing life from that time period, then above that, more modern life forms and it goes on. Misplaced fossils (where species are in the wrong strata) are so common that Evolutionists have made up new terms for them. A species found too low in the column is called a "stratigraphic leak". A species too high in the column is called a "re-worked specimen". These are far more common than you think, and Geology is fighting very hard to keep in alignment with Evolution, but failing. There also seems to be 25 million years missing from the column, the Silurian. It wasn't down to erosion because there is no evidence for this, and how the heck can you erode away 25 million years of deposits? It simply isn't there as discovered when looking at coral fossils.
Coal formation is another problem, with the theory of swamps etc. It simply doesn't work to produce the results seen today. If you read some of the work done by Dr. Austin, he shows how a global flood would give the exact predicted results of coal seen today.

KWCrazy · Oct 15, 2013

nuttypiglet said:
IThe Bible claims Bats are birds and whales are fish. That the earth is flat and that a worldwide flood occurred that covered all land masses. Of Talking snakes and what not. Really now!

Get your stories straight. The Hebrew language has fewer words than the English language. Bats, birds and locusts are all called "fowl." The Bible never says they are all the same thing.

The Bible never states that the earth is flat. Your statement is a lie that has been refuted in this forum dozens of times over.

The serpent which spoke was not a snake, since it was AFTERWARD commanded to crawl on its belly. Moreover, it is made abundantly clear who the was speaking through the serpent.

The Bible and every major culture acknowledge a world wide flood. Your disbelieve doesn't change that.

nuttypiglet · Oct 15, 2013

Wiccan_Child said:
Hence why one of the major branches of philosophy is the study of ethics. In developed countries, we've gravitated towards a 'consensus' approach to societal ethics, with a bent towards protecting the minority from the whims of the majority. Fairness, equality, and love, are promoted, while suffering and the infringement of freedom are demoted.

The problem with resorting to an absolute morality, is who dictates the absolute morality? The Queen? The Tsar? The President? The Pope? God? And in practice, there are many absolute moralities promoted as THE absolute morality - there are Abrahamic absolute moralities, Vedic moralities, Buddhist moralities, humanist moralities, etc. As a society, which should we opt to follow?

Saying "there's no morality without God" does nothing to advance human quality of life. I'm sure you wouldn't want to live under the heel of Shari'a law, so why should I live under the heel of Christian law?

They evolved that way because those variations were best suited to their environment. Our diet has evolved to take best advantage of the available resources (which includes milk: in Europe, we have preferentially selected those individuals who can drink milk for longer, to the point where nearly everyone is lactose tolerant; Native Americans, meanwhile, has no tolerance for milk).

Science is descriptive, not proscriptive. It tells us that chickens evolved from dinosaurs, but it is silent on what we should do with that information.

Not in a society that despises rape. You have a much better chance of spreading your genes by love and consent.

not at all. Spreading strong genes is much more than love. If you were to take several males/females and match them by genes, you would probably find they wouldn't get along. So how does LOVE have anything to do with getting stronger genes into the population?

nuttypiglet · Oct 15, 2013

KWCrazy said:
Get your stories straight. The Hebrew language has fewer words than the English language. Bats, birds and locusts are all called "fowl." The Bible never says they are all the same thing.

The Bible never states that the earth is flat. Your statement is a lie that has been refuted in this forum dozens of times over.

The serpent which spoke was not a snake, since it was AFTERWARD commanded to crawl on its belly. Moreover, it is made abundantly clear who the was speaking through the serpent.

The Bible and every major culture acknowledge a world wide flood. Your disbelieve doesn't change that.

.

nuttypiglet · Oct 15, 2013

KWCrazy said:
Get your stories straight. The Hebrew language has fewer words than the English language. Bats, birds and locusts are all called "fowl." The Bible never says they are all the same thing.

The Bible never states that the earth is flat. Your statement is a lie that has been refuted in this forum dozens of times over.

The serpent which spoke was not a snake, since it was AFTERWARD commanded to crawl on its belly. Moreover, it is made abundantly clear who the was speaking through the serpent.

The Bible and every major culture acknowledge a world wide flood. Your disbelieve doesn't change that.

You quoted me as saying "IThe Bible claims Bats are birds and whales are fish. That the earth is flat and that a worldwide flood occurred that covered all land masses. Of Talking snakes and what not. Really now!"

BUT I DIDN'T, IT ISN'T FROM ME

Split Rock · Oct 15, 2013

nuttypiglet said:
But the geological strata is not really reliable, some experts agree on this. With fossils in different so called layers, you really believe its nice and simple and evidence. However, what is overlooked all the time are 'leaks'. Some refer to them as 'misplaced fossils' whatever that is supposed to mean. You expect to see fossils in one era of strata representing life from that time period, then above that, more modern life forms and it goes on. Misplaced fossils (where species are in the wrong strata) are so common that Evolutionists have made up new terms for them. A species found too low in the column is called a "stratigraphic leak". A species too high in the column is called a "re-worked specimen".

And there are perfectly reasonable explanations for these. You forget to mention that, because you are trying to make the exception, the rule. This would only be a problem if there was no explanation.

nuttypiglet said:
These are far more common than you think, and Geology is fighting very hard to keep in alignment with Evolution, but failing.

Strawman. Most geologists couldn't care less about "keeping in alignment with evolution."

nuttypiglet said:
There also seems to be 25 million years missing from the column, the Silurian. It wasn't down to erosion because there is no evidence for this, and how the heck can you erode away 25 million years of deposits? It simply isn't there as discovered when looking at coral fossils.

What does this even mean? If there is no deposition, there are no layers. If there are layers, they can be destroyed or eroded. Of even more likely, simply never located since they are buried deep within the column and not exposed at the surface.

nuttypiglet said:
Coal formation is another problem, with the theory of swamps etc. It simply doesn't work to produce the results seen today. If you read some of the work done by Dr. Austin, he shows how a global flood would give the exact predicted results of coal seen today.

Show us it doesn't work. You believe Austin because he is a creationist and you find the snake oil he sells sweet.

Sasquatchit · Oct 15, 2013

Oncedeceived said:
"Mathematics is the language with which God wrote the universe." Galileo

"So sad that in times past the church could not see that God spoke with numbers, just as sad now, Science can not see that numbers speak of God."
Oncedeceived.

Love ur quote...and I believe it to be sooo true!

mzungu · Oct 15, 2013

KWCrazy said:
Get your stories straight. The Hebrew language has fewer words than the English language. Bats, birds and locusts are all called "fowl." The Bible never says they are all the same thing.

So much for accuracy. You may as well call aeroplanes and avians "BIRDS". This is not how science works.

The Bible never states that the earth is flat. Your statement is a lie that has been refuted in this forum dozens of times over.

It has been debated but not refuted. The Bible states that the Earth is a circle and not a sphere. In the Hebrew language the two have each a separate word.

The serpent which spoke was not a snake, since it was AFTERWARD commanded to crawl on its belly. Moreover, it is made abundantly clear who the was speaking through the serpent.

Really now. Snakes are agile and very competend predators and in no way can be considered as punished in any way. They were also damned to eat dust which snakes do not do. What of the sea snakes who spend almost all their lives in water?

The Bible and every major culture acknowledge a world wide flood. Your disbelieve doesn't change that.

All major cultures??? You mean religions. Religious claims do not a fact make. All cultures once believed and claimed the earth to be flat. It was empirical science that proved otherwise; much to the chagrin of religions. No matter how you spin it; no religious claims can replace hard empirical data.

Wiccan_Child · Oct 15, 2013

nuttypiglet said:
But the geological strata is not really reliable, some experts agree on this. With fossils in different so called layers, you really believe its nice and simple and evidence. However, what is overlooked all the time are 'leaks'. Some refer to them as 'misplaced fossils' whatever that is supposed to mean. You expect to see fossils in one era of strata representing life from that time period, then above that, more modern life forms and it goes on. Misplaced fossils (where species are in the wrong strata) are so common that Evolutionists have made up new terms for them. A species found too low in the column is called a "stratigraphic leak". A species too high in the column is called a "re-worked specimen". These are far more common than you think, and Geology is fighting very hard to keep in alignment with Evolution, but failing.

Misplaced fossils are to be expected, but they occur by well-understood mechanisms that leave tell-tale signs.

For instance, the most common misplaced fossil is an old fossil appearing in younger strata. This occurs due to the erosion of the rock the fossil was in, displacing it (and if the erosion was caused by water, it may well travel downstream). But again, there will be tell-tale signs - the fossil will bear the hallmarks of the correct stratum, its current stratum will bear the signs of water deposition (as opposed to tar or such), etc.

The term 'stratigraphic leakage' applies to rocks which demonstrate leakage, not to any and all fossils that appear too far up the column. But, tellingly, all such fossils do bear the signs of leakage, providing a well-evidence mechanism for their occurrence. They all bear the signs of reworking, of having been sedimented more than once.

nuttypiglet said:
There also seems to be 25 million years missing from the column, the Silurian. It wasn't down to erosion because there is no evidence for this, and how the heck can you erode away 25 million years of deposits? It simply isn't there as discovered when looking at coral fossils.

I'm not sure what you're referring to. Silurian layers are as readily observable as any other:

This is an image in Wikimedia of the Ordovicium-Silurian boundary. The Silurian rock itself is the brown mudstone.

nuttypiglet said:
Coal formation is another problem, with the theory of swamps etc. It simply doesn't work to produce the results seen today.

Do you have a source for this claim? It doesn't seem to be in the academic literature.

nuttypiglet said:
If you read some of the work done by Dr. Austin, he shows how a global flood would give the exact predicted results of coal seen today.

Are you referring to this Dr. Austin? Can you cite the paper in which he published his results?

Wiccan_Child · Oct 15, 2013

nuttypiglet said:
not at all. Spreading strong genes is much more than love. If you were to take several males/females and match them by genes, you would probably find they wouldn't get along. So how does LOVE have anything to do with getting stronger genes into the population?

Because humans take 18 years to mature, which is a significant investment of resources. Thus, parents bonded by love are much more successful at rearing a child, since it needs long-term cooperation and altruism (something parents of hate are much less inclined to do).

Moreover, it is socially suicidal to engage in rape to proliferate one's genes. From the sheer calculus of it, you can have and rear more babies to adulthood through love and cooperation, than you can through rape.

Oncedeceived · Oct 15, 2013

Sasquatchit said:
Love ur quote...and I believe it to be sooo true!

Thank you. I had a quote from Einstein but was told it offended the non-believers to use a quote from him. So I used this one and added my two cents in for good measure.

nuttypiglet · Oct 15, 2013

Split Rock said:
And there are perfectly reasonable explanations for these. You forget to mention that, because you are trying to make the exception, the rule. This would only be a problem if there was no explanation.

Strawman. Most geologists couldn't care less about "keeping in alignment with evolution."

What does this even mean? If there is no deposition, there are no layers. If there are layers, they can be destroyed or eroded. Of even more likely, simply never located since they are buried deep within the column and not exposed at the surface.

Show us it doesn't work. You believe Austin because he is a creationist and you find the snake oil he sells sweet.

Oh so they are the exceptions? So how many exceptions does it take for you to consider there may be a problem?
No Geologists don't care, they tell the truth, but it's evolutionists who try to keep in alignment with the columns. I have to wonder just how many fossils are found in the wrong layer, but are labelled as the expected one, hmmm.
What it means is, there is 25 million years of evolution missing with corals in southern Indiana. There is no evidence of any erosion, it leaves evidence. One layer very smoothly goes into the next with nothing between. But there should be another layer in between with transitional fossils of the coral. Perhaps someone stole it.
What can I really explain to you about the coal problems? What don't you understand? what do you not see as the problems?

lasthero · Oct 15, 2013

But the link provided, regarding dogs, does nothing to prove Darwins evolution theory

It does. Darwin proposed that species can change over time, and it's an example of species changing over time.

We witness this all the time, yet you insist on clinging to this notion that if there are enough changes, it will become something totally different.

As an organism goes on, it's just going to acquire more and more changes. What's to stop it? Look at the wall lizards and what they acquired after just a few decades. After a few million years of such changes...

(which I'm not sure if it constitutes as life because there is no real accepted definition of life)

I'm fairly certain bacteria are alive by any definition of life you would care to name.

and watch it mutate really fast, does it ever become anything except bacteria?

No one said it would. It will stay a bacteria in the same way that whales stayed as mammals and birds are still dinosaurs and grass is still a plant, despite all of them descending from organisms that were much different than they are today. It will always 'still be' something, no matter what changes occur.

Also - I'll ask you, since I've yet to get a straight answer from Froggy on this. Are bacteria all a kind? If so, how? They reproduce asexually. If a bacteria is different from the one it came from at all, wouldn't that be a new kind? I'm curious how this 'kind' concept applies to such organisms.

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