It seems to me that the creationist argument is just... silly.

[BobRyan]

Originally Posted by godenver1
The above post doesn't address the issue of the reliable evidence for YECreationism. This post seemingly tried to dispel the credibility of the theory of evolution, but (although I'm no expert) it appears to lack an accurate understanding of what it is. I don't see anyone claiming a single celled amoeba can "turn" into a horse. Give me 5 minutes and I'll try and find an 8 minute YT video covering the basics.

The easter-bunny like fictions of evolutionism are not "wrong because Bible Believing Christians can make life in their own creationist labs better than evolutionists can" or any such thing.

The easter-bunny like junk-science fictions of evolutionism - are simply wrong.

As one of their own says "stories easy enough to tell but they are not science" when it comes to the stories of "how one thing came from another" to march up the taxonomic ladder of life.

This is about the paucity of evidence demonstrating the salient point of blind-faith evolutionism.

As one of their own admits - "stories easy enough to tell but they are not science" when it comes to the stories of "how one thing came from another" to march up the taxonomic ladder of life.

[FONT=&quot]On April 10, 1979, Patterson replied to the author (Sunderland) in a most candid letter as follows: [/FONT]
[FONT=&quot] [/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]

April 10, 1979 Letter from Colin Patterson to Sunderland[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot] [/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]“ I fully agree with your comments on the lack of direct illustration of evolutionary transitions in my book. If I knew of any, fossil or living, I would certainly have included them.[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]You suggest that an artist should be used to visualise such transformations, but where would he get the information from? I could not, honestly, provide it, and if I were to leave it to artistic license, would that not mislead the reader?[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot] [/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]I wrote the text of my book four years ago. If I were to write it now, I think the book would be rather different. Gradualism is a concept I believe in, not just because of Darwin’s authority, but because my understanding of genetics seems to demand it. [/FONT]
[FONT=&quot] [/FONT]
[FONT=&quot] Yet Gould and the American Museum people are hard to contradict when [/FONT][FONT=&quot] [/FONT][FONT=&quot]they say there are no transitional fossils[/FONT][FONT=&quot]. [/FONT][FONT=&quot]As a palaeontologist myself, I am much occupied with the philosophical problems of identifying ancestral forms in the fossil record.[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot] [/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]You say that[/FONT][FONT=&quot] [/FONT][FONT=&quot] I should at least show a photo of the fossil from which each type of organism was derived. I will lay it on the line- there is not one such fossil for which one could make a watertight argument.[The reason is that[/FONT][FONT=&quot] [/FONT][FONT=&quot]statements about ancestry and descent are not applicable in the fossil record. Is Archaeopteryx the ancestor of all birds? Perhaps yes, perhaps no [/FONT][FONT=&quot]there is no way of answering the question[/FONT][FONT=&quot]. It is easy enough to make up stories of how one form gave rise to another, and to find reasons why the stages should be favoured by natural selection. [/FONT][FONT=&quot]But such stories are not part of science, for there is no way of putting them to the test[/FONT][FONT=&quot].[/FONT][FONT=&quot] So, much as I should like to oblige you by jumping to the defence of gradualism, and fleshing out the transitions between the major types of animals and plants, I find myself a bit short of the intellectual justification necessary for the job “[/FONT][FONT=&quot][/FONT]
[FONT=&quot] [/FONT]
[FONT=&quot][Ref: Patterson, personal communication. Documented in Darwin’s Enigma, Luther Sunderland, Master Books, El Cajon, CA, 1988, pp. 88-90.]

[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot][/FONT]

[FONT=&quot][/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]of course this ignores the fiction that 'all news is good news' if you are an evolutionist.
[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]
[/FONT] [FONT=&quot] [/FONT]

Sorry about the delay.

This post doesn't address any evidence at all, and claims that evolutionism is "easter-bunny like junk-science fictions (sic)" without any actual evidence to prove so. It is hard for me to actually respond when there's no evidence or sources up for debate. I haven't read the OP in a while, but I believe this thread is about the creationist argument, and not about evolution. I haven't seen a decent defence of the YEC argument other than a certain interpretation of the bible which has been displayed is up for debate, and quite possibly not the correct interpretation.

And then of course

[FONT=&quot]Colin Patterson (Senior paleontologist at the British Natural History Museum and author of the Museum’s general text on evolution) in a talk given at the American Museum of Natural History 1981[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot] [/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]--------------------- Patterson said -[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot] [/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]“Can you tell me anything you know about evolution, any one thing…that is true?[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot] [/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]I tried that question on the geology staff at the Field Museum of Natural history and the only answer I got was silence. I tried it on the members of the Evolutionary Morphology seminar in the University of Chicago, and all I got there was silence for a long time and eventually one person said “I know one thing – it ought not to be taught in high school” [/FONT]
[FONT=&quot] [/FONT]
[FONT=&quot] "...I'm speaking on two subjects, evolutionism and creationism, and I believe it's true to say that I know nothing whatever about either...One of the reasons I started taking this anti-evolutionary view, well, let's call it non-evolutionary , was last year [/FONT][FONT=&quot]I had a sudden realization. [/FONT]
[FONT=&quot] [/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]"For over twenty years I had thought that I was working on evolution in some way. One morning I woke up, and something had happened in the night, and it struck me that I had [/FONT][FONT=&quot]been working on this stuff for[/FONT][FONT=&quot] [/FONT][FONT=&quot]twenty years, and there was not one thing I knew about it. "That was quite a shock that one could be misled[/FONT][FONT=&quot] for so long... [/FONT]
[FONT=&quot] [/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]It does seem that the level of knowledge about evolution is remarkably shallow.[/FONT][FONT=&quot] We know it ought not to be taught in high school, [/FONT][FONT=&quot]and perhaps that's all we know about it...[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot] [/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]about eighteen months ago...I woke up and [/FONT][FONT=&quot]I realized that all my life I had been duped into taking evolutionism as revealed truth [/FONT][FONT=&quot]in some way."[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot] [/FONT]

 

[godenver1]

Augustine argued that 7 literal days was TOO LONG because the "physical reality" is that God cannot make plant life - after creating light on day 1 if he waits until the "day AFTER" creating plants to create the Sun. Augustine "imagined" that this would be 'too long' a time even for God so it all must have happened in one literal day.

Odd how the T.E. 4 billion year argument is claiming that Augustine's "1 literal day week" - is "helping them".

If Augustine is now to be the T.E. Bible - then the T.E. argument is even more "sunk" than it was before when we thought they were looking at the actual Bible.

in Christ,

Bob

Once more, the point is that a respected interpreter of the bible doesn't interpret Genesis literally. That is used against the creationist argument. I can find other sources, if you'd like.

This is about the paucity of evidence demonstrating the salient point of blind-faith evolutionism.

As one of their own admits - "stories easy enough to tell but they are not science" when it comes to the stories of "how one thing came from another" to march up the taxonomic ladder of life.

On April 10, 1979, Patterson replied to the author (Sunderland) in a most candid letter as follows:

I did a quick search and found a couple of sources on the first page claiming Patterson is often misquoted. Here is one:

I decided to get to the bottom of the matter. The quote is from a personal letter dated 10th April 1979 from Dr. Patterson to creationist Luther D. Sunderland and is referring to Dr. Patterson's book "Evolution" (1978, Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd.). My first step was to read the book. (I believe it is now out of print, but most university libraries should have a copy.) Anyone who has actually read the book can hardly say that Patterson believed in the absence of transitional forms. For example (p131-133):

"In several animal and plant groups, enough fossils are known to bridge the wide gaps between existing types. In mammals, for example, the gap between horses, asses and zebras (genus Equus) and their closest living relatives, the rhinoceroses and tapirs, is filled by an extensive series of fossils extending back sixty-million years to a small animal, Hyracotherium, which can only be distinguished from the rhinoceros-tapir group by one or two horse-like details of the skull. There are many other examples of fossil 'missing links', such as Archaeopteryx, the Jurassic bird which links birds with dinosaurs (Fig. 45), and Ichthyostega, the late Devonian amphibian which links land vertebrates and the extinct choanate (having internal nostrils) fishes. . ."

Patterson Misquoted: A Tale of Two 'Cites'

Regardless, I believe that for every "expert" that denies evolution, I could provide a multiplicity of experts that support it.

 

[BobRyan]

This is about the paucity of evidence demonstrating the salient point of blind-faith evolutionism.

As one of their own admits - "stories easy enough to tell but they are not science" when it comes to the stories of "how one thing came from another" to march up the taxonomic ladder of life.

[FONT=&quot]On April 10, 1979, Patterson replied to the author (Sunderland) in a most candid letter as follows: [/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]

April 10, 1979 Letter from Colin Patterson to Sunderland
​

[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]“ I fully agree with your comments on the lack of direct illustration of evolutionary transitions in my book. If I knew of any, fossil or living, I would certainly have included them.[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]You suggest that an artist should be used to visualise such transformations, but where would he get the information from? I could not, honestly, provide it, and if I were to leave it to artistic license, would that not mislead the reader?[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]I wrote the text of my book four years ago. If I were to write it now, I think the book would be rather different. Gradualism is a concept I believe in, not just because of Darwin’s authority, but because my understanding of genetics seems to demand it. [/FONT]

[FONT=&quot] Yet Gould and the American Museum people are hard to contradict when [/FONT][FONT=&quot]they say there are no transitional fossils[/FONT][FONT=&quot]. [/FONT][FONT=&quot]As a palaeontologist myself, I am much occupied with the philosophical problems of identifying ancestral forms in the fossil record.[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]You say that[/FONT][FONT=&quot] I should at least show a photo of the fossil from which each type of organism was derived. I will lay it on the line- there is not one such fossil for which one could make a watertight argument.[The reason is that[/FONT][FONT=&quot]statements about ancestry and descent are not applicable in the fossil record. Is Archaeopteryx the ancestor of all birds? Perhaps yes, perhaps no [/FONT][FONT=&quot]there is no way of answering the question[/FONT][FONT=&quot]. It is easy enough to make up stories of how one form gave rise to another, and to find reasons why the stages should be favoured by natural selection. [/FONT][FONT=&quot]But such stories are not part of science, for there is no way of putting them to the test[/FONT][FONT=&quot].[/FONT][FONT=&quot] So, much as I should like to oblige you by jumping to the defence of gradualism, and fleshing out the transitions between the major types of animals and plants, I find myself a bit short of the intellectual justification necessary for the job “[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot][Ref: Patterson, personal communication. Documented in Darwin’s Enigma, Luther Sunderland, Master Books, El Cajon, CA, 1988, pp. 88-90.] [/FONT]
​

I did a quick search and found a couple of sources on the first page claiming Patterson is often misquoted.

All you found is that it is not a misquote - rather it is a verbatim 100% accurate quote.

Here is one:



Patterson Misquoted: A Tale of Two 'Cites'

This only proves my point - a 100% accurate verbatim quote of Patterson in that letter above.

Regardless, I believe that for every "expert" that denies evolution, I could provide a multiplicity of experts that support it.

Patterson is not an example of an anti-evolutionist or a creationist. He was a diehard atheist evolutionist simply "lamenting" the state of the junk-science religion that he was stuck with as an atheist - called blind faith evolutionism.

in Christ,

Bob

 

[yesyoushould]

The topic I wanted to make was "It seems to me that the creationist argument is 'my Bible beats your mountains of empirical data!'", but it wouldn't fit.

Honestly, there's just so much evidence for evolution and an old earth and all that stuff; to be a creationist, you have to deny radioactive decay, half-life dating (e.g. potassium-argon or strobidium-brontium dating), relative dating, everything we know about astrophysics and the formation of the universe, and almost all of biology, including observed instances of speciation. In essence, you must deny the large majority of astrophysics, regular physics, biology, geology, archaeology, chemistry, medicine... a huge amount of observable facts that directly disprove the claims of those who believe that Genesis is a literal, historical account.

The thing is, it's up to the one making the positive claim to substantiate it*; science disagrees with the Bible, and since the Bible can't come up with anywhere near as many things as physical evidence of its claims than science can, in a contest of science versus the Bible, science wins.

*You have to prove the positive claim simply because you can't disprove something without a contradicting positive. I don't believe in an invisible unicorn because there is no evidence for such, and I don't believe in a literal Genesis account because there is both no evhttp://www.christianforums.com/newthread.php?do=newthread&f=143idence to support it and a great deal of evidence which contradicts it.

At this point, creationism has been virtually destroyed within the scientific community due to the vast amount of data. The Devil in Dover (about the Kitzmiller v. Dover trial re: teaching evolution in schools in '06), Your Inner Fish (about how we're all just evolved fish), and Dawkins' Why Evolution Is True all make really great arguments, if anyone wants to read them; I'm not a fan of his anti-religion stuff, but he makes some great arguments and is an evolutionary biologist, and he really knows his stuff when he's talking about the field he has a doctorate in.

I really love this quote from Pope Francis, though I am not a Catholic and disagree with a huge amount of their doctrines: "God is not a magician with a magic wand." He works within our universe; he may have created the world ex nihilo, but that doesn't mean that His works in the world after that were all done in a similar fashion. He doesn't have to create everything in such a fashion; rather, he seems to set up systems to work independently of him, such as the weather cycle, and because he interacts and changes things within the universe, we can see his effects on said universe.

I'm not a theistic evolutionist, per se, because I think that evolution and theology are completely separate subjects; rather, I think God put in place the system that caused humanity to be created, including the processes of evolution and abiogenesis.

Wikipedia has an absurdly good page on abiogenesis and how it occurred; I couldn't find anything nearly this solid on Google, though I typically look for non-Wikipedia stuff to link to people when discussing science.

The New England Complex Systems Institude has a great page on evolution.

Berkeley.edu has a fantastic page on speciation and observed instances of it.

You also may want to check out the Wedge Strategy, a strategy by the Discovery Institute which essentially is trying to "lie in the service of the truth". There's a reason that they refused to testify over the validity of creationism in science in the Dover trial: it's because they know it's a lie and they're just scumbags who make loads of money off of other people's ignorance and/or gullibility. (It was a really great chance to try to bring creationism into the main stream.).

I honestly can't even image a person rejecting creation and accepting The Creator.

Oh, I understand it now. They must have bought into the human definition of creation instead of Gods.

 

[BobRyan]

good point - a point that both Bible believing Christians and also the atheist evolutionist professors of Hebrew and OT studies can see clearly -- apparently.


We had some T.E. posts trying to 'wish this away' recently - but the facts remain.


Originally Posted by BobRyan ============================================
[FONT=&quot]One leading Hebrew scholar is James Barr, Professor of Hebrew Bible at Vanderbilt University and former Regius Professor of Hebrew at Oxford University in England. Although he does not believe in the historicity of Genesis 1, Dr. Barr does agree that the writer's intent was to narrate the actual history of primeval creation. Others also agree with him. [/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]
[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]Probably, so far as I know, there is no professor of Hebrew or Old Testament at any world-class university who does not believe that the writer(s) of Genesis 1-11 intended to convey to their readers the ideas that (a) creation took place in a series of six days which were the same as the days of 24 hours we now experience; . . . Or, to put it negatively, the apologetic arguments which suppose the "days" of creation to be long eras of time, the figures of years not to be chronological, and the flood to be a merely local Mesopotamian flood, are not taken seriously by any such professors, as far as I know. [/FONT]

James Barr, letter to David Watson, 1984.
================================

 

[godenver1]

This is about the paucity of evidence demonstrating the salient point of blind-faith evolutionism.


Patterson is not an example of an anti-evolutionist or a creationist. He was a diehard atheist evolutionist simply "lamenting" the state of the junk-science religion that he was stuck with as an atheist - called blind faith evolutionism.

in Christ,

Bob

This thread is about creationism. To claim that evolution requires "blind faith" without actually proving it is not a defence of YECreationism. I can't actually think of a defence of YEC and a sufficient case has yet to be presented. Presented to the contrary has been both arguments involving proven science, and respected church fathers, because both the science and the best authorities on biblical interpretation appear to be against YEC.

I honestly can't even image a person rejecting creation and accepting The Creator.

Oh, I understand it now. They must have bought into the human definition of creation instead of Gods.

Maybe we should just pray the measles away and leave it at that instead of actually getting vaccinated, we don't want to use the "human definition" of healing as opposed to God's.

And who decides that is God's "definition" anyway? In this thread it has be argued, and not refuted, that numerous authorities of biblical interpretation do not interpret Genesis literally.

 

[yesyoushould]

Maybe we should just pray the measles away and leave it at that instead of actually getting vaccinated, we don't want to use the "human definition" of healing as opposed to God's.

And who decides that is God's "definition" anyway? In this thread it has be argued, and not refuted, that numerous authorities of biblical interpretation do not interpret Genesis literally.

Surely you aren't trying to put me on trial. Your the one against Creation. (The topic)

Look, the fact is, How long is the first man and woman before the fall?



The fact is, all Christians believe in God. So yes, I agree with God.

 

[yesyoushould]

And no, I'm not interested in "evolution" apart from God.

 

[yesyoushould]

Think about it, seriously. Calculating the time of the fall till now is simplistic.

 

[godenver1]

Think about it, seriously. Calculating the time of the fall till now is simplistic.

Yeah, if it actually happened historically, but, once again, I'll defer to St. Augustine to show that people that have a historical and respected authority to interpret the bible do not interpret Genesis literally as it is written.

Surely you aren't trying to put me on trial. Your the one against Creation. (The topic)

Look, the fact is, How long is the first man and woman before the fall?



The fact is, all Christians believe in God. So yes, I agree with God.

I don't know what this post means by putting any poster "to trial". It has yet to be demonstrated that those that do not interpret Genesis literally do not "agree with God" and to claim so would be to claim numerous respected church fathers/theologians do not "agree with God". This means that both the science and biblical interpretation is against YECreationism. Until a post presents evidence to the contrary, such as science or historical interpretation, I think I'm finished with this debate. I'm responding to the same things over and over, and as I have said numerous times, I'm yet to see any actual refutations with evidence apart from the claims.

 

[yesyoushould]

Yeah, if it actually happened historically, but, once again, I'll defer to St. Augustine to show that people that have a historical and respected authority to interpret the bible do not interpret Genesis literally as it is written.



I don't know what this post means by putting any poster "to trial". It has yet to be demonstrated that those that do not interpret Genesis literally do not "agree with God" and to claim so would be to claim numerous respected church fathers/theologians do not "agree with God". This means that both the science and biblical interpretation is against YECreationism. Until a post presents evidence to the contrary, such as science or historical interpretation, I think I'm finished with this debate. I'm responding to the same things over and over, and as I have said numerous times, I'm yet to see any actual refutations with evidence apart from the claims.

I don't know what to tell you. God is perfect.

 

[Willtor]

Surely you aren't trying to put me on trial. Your the one against Creation. (The topic)

...

This is a fundamental misunderstanding. Everyone in this thread supports Creation. As you say, we're all Christians.

It's a particular interpretation of Genesis that's being disputed.

 

[Calminian]

Just a headsup, Willtor is actually a troll. He believes very little of what he posts. Feed him at your own risk.

 

[yesyoushould]

This is a fundamental misunderstanding. Everyone in this thread supports Creation. As you say, we're all Christians.

It's a particular interpretation of Genesis that's being disputed.

My apologies.

 

[Willtor]

Just a headsup, Willtor is actually a troll. He believes very little of what he posts. Feed him at your own risk.

Don't be like that, Calminian. I'm not a troll, and it's an unkind accusation to make.

 

[Willtor]

My apologies.

No worries.

 

[yesyoushould]

boooooooooooooooppppp..........

thread dead lol

 

[Calminian]

Don't be like that, Calminian. I'm not a troll, and it's an unkind accusation to make.

You're not a great troll, but a troll to be sure. You've exposed yourself many times. A young earther that believes Genesis if figurative?

Come on dude. You've had your fun.

 

[Willtor]

You're not a great troll, but a troll to be sure. You've exposed yourself many times. A young earther that believes Genesis if figurative?

Come on dude. You've had your fun.

What?! I said I conceded for the purpose of discussion that the earth was young, not that I actually believed that it was young. And I did it so we could talk about how the ECFs interpreted the Bible and leave science out of it.

If you actually think I'm a troll, you should report me. Otherwise, stop saying it. It's not appreciated.

 

[Calminian]

What?! I said I conceded for the purpose of discussion that the earth was young, not that I actually believed that it was young. And I did it so we could talk about how the ECFs interpreted the Bible and leave science out of it.

If you actually think I'm a troll, you should report me. Otherwise, stop saying it. It's not appreciated.

That's not what you said, Willtor. You're just being dishonest now.