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

Blue Wren · Feb 1, 2015

KWCrazy said:
- snip -

Thanks for reminding me how I am to live in the United States, where people are free to accept or reject the Scriptures as they see fit, and where the free exchange of ideas is not prohibited.

You mined my post, to make it look like you were responding directly, to what I had written, instead of to the pasted information that I provided for another user. You can contact the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly, and tell them all that puffery, if you please, lol. In the US, you cannot teach creationism in public school science classes, for the same reasons, it is not permissible to teach it in science classrooms in most of Europe. Maybe when you were young, that was possible, it is not so anymore. It is permitted, to believe whatever you wish, about Scriptures, or whatever religion you please, outside of school, in Europe, too, yes.

Blue Wren · Feb 1, 2015

Jennae said:
I think it's a shame that children aren't taught both sides. Children are just taught one side as fact and expected to believe it. Many are being taught the evolution worldview as fact when it is not. I know I know...it's a straw man right? I'm learning forum terminology.
I think both sides should be taught without prejudice and children should be allowed to come to their own conclusion without ridicule. It won't matter what I say as a firm believer in one side or the other. Someone will always say I'm brainwashed or wrong....giving me some source as proof. I will read that source and then google something that disproves that source...then I will quote it and be told my source is not credible. Yes, it's a endless circle. My gut tells me that people overall are going to believe what they are taught by their parents. Rarely will anyone change their worldview based on what some else says is true. Let's take a liberal evolutionist's child and raise it in an evangelical bible believing home for 20 years...what will that liberal born child believe? Hmmm. Nature vs Nurture? Hmmmm.

Jennae, could you explain, what your science classes have taught you, please? How they presented "both sides"? Do you have any links, that you could show us, for the textbooks, that are used, or any other of your learning resources?
If you believe, so passionately, about this, why do you not, post in the Creation & Evolution area?

"Liberal evolutionist's child." "Evolution worldview." I'm learning new terminology, also.

yesyoushould · Feb 1, 2015

Audacious said:
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.).

The worlds definition of "creationist" is lacking. That is true.

Creationist just mean's, a believer in God as the Creator of all, seen and unseen.

KWCrazy · Feb 1, 2015

Blue Wren said:
You mined my post

No, and you are misusing the definition of mining. I wasn't commenting on your post. I was commenting on the blithering nonsense published by the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly which you shared in your post.

We don't teach creation in science class. Science is the study of the natural world. Religion is the study of the supernatural world. We simply want our children to be taught the truth. Teaching evolution as established science fact is not educating, it's indoctrinating. Evolution is not a fact. It is a theory by which scientists attempt to explain origins through the information in the natural world. However, if your Bible is correct and there is a Creator, then the origination of man was a supernatural event, not a natural one. We simply don't want to have teachers telling our children that the word of God is false and the unprovable theory of man is true.

Blue Wren · Feb 1, 2015

KWCrazy said:
No, and you are misusing the definition of mining. I wasn't commenting on your post. I was commenting on the blithering nonsense published by the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly which you shared in your post.

We don't teach creation in science class. Science is the study of the natural world. Religion is the study of the supernatural world. We simply want our children to be taught the truth. Teaching evolution as established science fact is not educating, it's indoctrinating. Evolution is not a fact. It is a theory by which scientists attempt to explain origins through the information in the natural world. However, if your Bible is correct and there is a Creator, then the origination of man was a supernatural event, not a natural one. We simply don't want to have teachers telling our children that the word of God is false and the unprovable theory of man is true.

I know you weren't commenting on my post, yes. You selectively quoted me, so that it looked like you were commenting on what I had written, instead of the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly's resolution. You cut out the source you were responding to, you did not mention them, no. If someone, were to come here, and only read that post of yours, they would think, that you were replying to what I wrote myself, instead of the source I provided. That is called mining, in internet terminology, yes.

You can think it was blithering, ignorant nonsense, if you please. People are entitled, to think the same, about your response to it, of course.

Creation isn't taught in science class, anywhere with respected education for the society, as actual science, of course. I was horrified to learn, that creationism, it is taught, as science, to children who school from the home, in the US and Canada. They are not protected.

You don't want children to be taught THE truth, no. You want children to be taught YOUR version of the truth. YEC does not equal the truth, no. That's narcissistic, and horribly wrong. You can believe, that God created, and not believe that idiocy that it was created 6000 years ago, in six days. Most churches, that are not fundamentalist, have no problem, with evolution.

The Natural World - The United Methodist Church
"We recognize science as a legitimate interpretation of God’s natural world. We affirm the validity of the claims of science in describing the natural world and in determining what is scientific. We preclude science from making authoritative claims about theological issues and theology from making authoritative claims about scientific issues. We find that science’s descriptions of cosmological, geological, and biological evolution are not in conflict with theology."

Evolution and Intelligent Design - The United Methodist Church
HEREAS, The United Methodist Church has for many years supported the separation of church and State (¶ 164C, Book of Discipline, 2004, p. 119);

"Therefore, be it resolved, that the General Conference of The United Methodist Church go on record as opposing the introduction of any faith-based theories such as Creationism or Intelligent Design into the science curriculum of our public schools.

ADOPTED 2008
Resolution # 5052, 2008 Book of Resolutions

See Social Principles, ¶ 164E."

Christians who accept evolution, still believe God created, yes. We do not believe, that He created, as you say He did.

Evolution is fact. You can say, it isn't, all you want. All that proves, is why creationism undermines science literacy, yes. Creation science is made-up pseudoscience that is indoctrinated into children. Creationists do the best job of teaching us why, creationism, is harmful and foolish indoctrination, and should never be taught, as science, especially, but not as theology either. This is why, it is banned in science classes around the world, yes. Complain about that, as you please. Meh.

I saw this, posted elsewhere here. Pat Robertson's thoughts, on YEC:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3qh-heyoFk

Papias · Feb 1, 2015

KwCrazy wrote:

Evolution is not a fact.

Simply false. Evolution (Common descent) is both a fact and a theory. Since you don't seem to understand those terms, here is some help from the national academies of science:

Is Evolution a Theory or a Fact?

It is both.

Evolution Resources from the National Academies

Papias

KWCrazy · Feb 1, 2015

Papias said:
Evolution (Common descent) is both a fact and a theory.

Your claim defies both truth and reality.
FACT: noun
1. Something that actually exists; reality; truth:
2. Something known to exist or to have happened:
3. A truth known by actual experience or observation; something known.

I don't know what world you live in, but in the REAL world evolution has never been proved, never witnessed, never replicated and never conceded as established fact. Since we both know that the great attempt to force evolution by irradiating fruit flies for decades proved conclusively that increased information via mutation does not happen.

Since you don't seem to have the ability to comprehend that science cannot either prove or disprove the supernatural world, let me assist you.

SCIENCE: noun
1. A branch of knowledge or study dealing with a body of facts or truths systematically arranged and showing the operation of general laws:
the mathematical sciences.
2. Systematic knowledge of the physical or material world gained through observation and experimentation.

SUPERNATURAL: adjective
1. Of, relating to, or being above or beyond what is natural; unexplainable by natural law or phenomena; abnormal.
2. Of, pertaining to, characteristic of, or attributed to God or a deity.

In case you didn't grasp the difference, one points to a strictly physical existence and the other to a non-physical existence. Beyond that, the observed process of adaptation amounts to a net decrease in genetic information by extinguishing deleterious characteristics.

Since you posted a biased source as a supposed authority, I can do the same.

Evolutionary belief is a remarkable and largely unexplained phenomenon. It is a belief held by most intellectuals all over the world, despite the fact that there is no real scientific evidence for it at all. Evolutionists allege that evolution is a proved scientific fact, based on a multitude of scientific proofs, but they are unable to document even one of these supposed proofs!

source

Before you attempt to disparage others and openly lie about whether or not evolution is a proven fact, you might want to look past your own propaganda and look at the world around you. Making false claims like you did only makes your argument weak and pathetic.

BobRyan · Feb 1, 2015

Willtor said:
BobRyan, you're trolling. Read the thread -- or not. But KWCrazy and I are discussing abiogenesis. He preferred that topic to evolution.

If your argument is that creationists are arguing in favor of abiogenesis -- or that this topic is not mentioned in the evolutionist texts... then you have a little more research to do.

The OP has already set the context - abiogenesis in a discussion about evolutionism.

As for abiogenesis - that brings us to Miller-Urey, and utter failure.

A 60 year old "dead end"

BobRyan · Feb 1, 2015

BobRyan said:
Hi audacious,

So, let me ask just a few simple questions. Why don't you believe that God created everything just as He has told you? Why don't you believe that the first man who stepped foot upon this earth was a man by the name of Adam whom God fashioned out of the very dirt of the earth and gave that molded form life by putting breath into his lungs? Why don't you believe that God fashioned this entire realm in which we live in 6 simple days and that on the 6th day He made the first man Adam? Why don't you believe that you can count out all those years of life from Adam to Noah and know how long it was from Adam's life to Noah's life? Is it at all possible that you aren't able to live by faith?

It does have eternal consequences.

God bless you.
In Christ, Ted

Click to expand...

good questions --

The Bible clearly says that the world was created in 6 days and that there was a world wide flood.

Even the atheist and agnostic professors of Hebrew and O.T studies in all world class universities admit to this "detail" about 'the literature' - the Bible, the text.

So then that leaves the Christian with a choice - will we choose blind-faith evolutionism over the word of God?

Some say "yes" -- and that is what the discussion is about.

miamited said:
Hi Bob,

Yes, I understand the issue and agree completely with your assessment.

Just as in the days of Elijah, it has always been about who really stands with God and who, even though they may self-identify as such, doesn't.

Just as in Jesus' day there were thousands upon thousands upon thousands of Jews whose very identity was based on faith in the God of their own Scriptures. But, when Jesus came to tell them the truth there were very few that agreed with him.

So, just because someone calls themselves a christian or a Jew doesn't mean they are a child of the one true and living God. Those who are God's children...believe God.

God bless you.
In Christ, Ted

The choice is easily seen in the OP were Christianity is being tossed under a bus in favor of blind faith evolutionism.

Given what James Barr freely admits about the text of Gen 1-11 - it is no wonder.

in Christ,

Bob

KWCrazy · Feb 1, 2015

BobRyan said:
The choice is easily seen in the OP were Christianity is being tossed under a bus in favor of blind faith evolutionism.

Of course, if you started a thread that read "It seems to me that the evolutionist argument is just....silly," you would be accused of flaming and creating a deliberately hostile thread. It seems to be that Christianity is always a fair target; even of a Christian website.

Saricharity · Feb 1, 2015

Blue Wren said:
Jennae, could you explain, what your science classes have taught you, please? How they presented "both sides"? Do you have any links, that you could show us, for the textbooks, that are used, or any other of your learning resources?
If you believe, so passionately, about this, why do you not, post in the Creation & Evolution area?

"Liberal evolutionist's child." "Evolution worldview." I'm learning new terminology, also.

I sent you a pm.

I have learned to stay out of debates about creation and evolution basically for the reasons I mentioned before. It just isn't a debate in my life. No one believes it or considers it anything but a theory. It wasn't until I came to read forums that I discovered it is a huge debate. Most of my teachers will say, this is what is taught about evolution and we move on. No judgement or time wasted on it. It's not hidden from us. It's right there in the textbooks. I've been reading about the world being billions of years old in story books for years. It just isn't an issue for me. I know what I believe about origins. I'm still learning about science. Origins and science are not confusing to me.

And those terms probably aren't terms except for how I have seen then used online. People will say I'm a liberal or I'm an evolutionist. I just combined them. I used the term worldview to show how a person views the world. We all have a worldview and it determines how we view the world.
Btw I have never and will never refer to myself as a creationist or a fundamentalist.
I'm just a follower and servant of Christ.
I know you are too.
That is all that is important to me.

Blue Wren · Feb 2, 2015

Jennae said:
I sent you a pm.

I have learned to stay out of debates about creation and evolution basically for the reasons I mentioned before. It just isn't a debate in my life. No one believes it or considers it anything but a theory. It wasn't until I came to read forums that I discovered it is a huge debate. Most of my teachers will say, this is what is taught about evolution and we move on. No judgement or time wasted on it. It's not hidden from us. It's right there in the textbooks. I've been reading about the world being billions of years old in story books for years. It just isn't an issue for me. I know what I believe about origins. I'm still learning about science. Origins and science are not confusing to me.

And those terms probably aren't terms except for how I have seen then used online. People will say I'm a liberal or I'm an evolutionist. I just combined them. I used the term worldview to show how a person views the world. We all have a worldview and it determines how we view the world.
Btw I have never and will never refer to myself as a creationist or a fundamentalist.
I'm just a follower and servant of Christ.
I know you are too.
That is all that is important to me.

I replied to your PM, yes. Thank-you, again. I spent time tonight, reading through that site. It is alarming, they teach such manipulation, in science classrooms, to unsuspecting children and teenagers. You think, that "evolutionists" do the same, no doubt, lol. Apologia distorts the actual science of evolution. It teaches the nonsense of the pseudoscience creation science, as science. If no one you knows "believes" in evolution and considers it to be "just a theory", of course, you cannot recognise that, no. It is possible that there are some echoes of authentic science, in some of the textbooks. I had been, so puzzled, and concerned, by your terminology, your mindset, that is so foreign and peculiar, to me. It did explain, so much, about creationists, yes. I found this article, from a woman, who was also homeschooled and "taught both sides."
Teaching “Both Sides”?

You write that you do not want to debate creationism and evolution, but you have written, so many posts on here, about them. You realise, that is participating in a debate, yes? I wanted to add, I am glad, you put the priority, on accepting Christ, as your Saviour, yes.

Saricharity · Feb 2, 2015

Apologia is just the textbooks I have used on my own. We don't use them in school. Our textbooks are approved by the Canadian government for schools. I assume they are used in the public schools as well but I have no idea. Again I've read about evolution all along and like I said it's just a theory and that's how we view it. You assume I don't know what is taught in main stream? I'm well aware but it wasn't until I came to forums that I realized people actually believed the theory as a fact. I also had to shake my head and laugh. It's just unfathomable to me. I suppose it wasn't a complete surprise to me that unbelievers believed it but Christians? Now that was a complete surprise. What ever happened to being taught good solid apologetics? I guess it just isn't taught anymore which is a shame. You do realize that the things you say about so called pseudoscience have just been taught to you as well. At any rate, you don't need to worry about me or be concerned. I don't plan to go into any science related fields. You can breathe a sigh of relief now.
Actually I never intended to debate...just answering your questions.
And sometimes I read things on here and think WHAT? Good grief and oh my goodness! Lol so my self control and common sense wanes and I post anyways. But hey, in the last year, I have grown by leaps and bounds and have asked more questions than I ever thought possible about a issue that was no issue in my mind. That has to be a good thing I think...maybe.

miamited · Feb 2, 2015

Willtor said:
I see. So... if Peter says, "With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day," and you continue to take the creation days as 24-hour periods, then you are not a child of God?

See? I can do it, too. Of course, the "Bible-hammer" approach to hermeneutics is for the easily threatened and weak-minded.

Hi willtor,

That is a matter of rightly discerning the word of God. Peter wasn't saying that a day can be different lengths of time. He was saying that such measurements of time, for God, are irrelevant. If we follow through with your understanding, then yes, we can say that a day might be a thousand years, but then we also have to find evidence where a thousand years was really only a day.

Yes, you can certainly qualify me as not being a child of God. After all Jesus did. The question, of course, is whether your qualification is based on 'truth'. I can call myself the queen of England, but I assure you that I'd have a tough time trying to lay my head down in her bed tonight because what I was saying about myself isn't the truth. Friend, it's all about 'truth'. What is the truth?

What I know is that God's final written condition for anyone who will receive His promise of eternal life is that they not be cowardly, or unbelieving, or vile, or murderers, or sexually immoral, or practice magic arts, or idolaters or liars. The issue that we need to answer in this particular discussion is what exactly did God mean by 'unbeliever'? Does He mean only those who don't believe that Jesus is God's Son? Or rather does He mean only those who don't believe that His Son died for their sins? Does He mean only those who don't believe that Jesus was raised for our sanctification after three days in the grave? Or is it possible He means those who don't believe Him? Is one an unbeliever because He just doesn't believe there is a God or that all that God has revealed to us isn't believed? What does God mean when He says that no unbeliever will inherit eternal life?

For me, God has given several good qualifiers that when He caused to be written 'day' or 'yom' in the Hebrew text, He meant the reader to understand that it was a pretty regular day, as we define such today. He qualified each day as consisting of an evening and a morning and He caused that time period to be repeated at least twice more in the Scriptures thousands of years after the days of the beginnings.

There has never been, even among the pagans, any writing that calls some period of time a day, and qualifies that period of time as consisting of an evening and a morning, that has ever, ever meant to allude to an age or some greater period of time than a pretty regular single rotation of the earth upon its axis. Throughout 6,000 years of whatever remnants we have of writing, up to and including today, when the word day is used and we write that there was a morning or an evening of that day, it has always referenced a singular day.

Of course you can do it too. After all, it only takes a slight amount of pressure upon a set of alpha keys to type anything. However, the question is always whether or not what is being said is true. Jails and prisons are full of men and women who have written down and claimed their innocence, but the question that must be answered is whether or not their claims are true. Now, among men this can be a daunting task, but not so with God. God knows the truth.

God bless you.
In Christ, Ted

BobRyan · Feb 2, 2015

KWCrazy said:
We simply want our children to be taught the truth. Teaching evolution as established science fact is not educating, it's indoctrinating. Evolution is not a fact. .

It is a religion. bad religion at that. Blind faith evolutionism is nothing more than a junk-science based system of science fraud as can be easily demonstrated in the known frauds regarding Othaniel Marsh's horse series still on display at the Smithsonian, Piltdown man, Nebraska man -- and many many others.

The list is long, the frauds are epic lasting for many decades in some cases.

No wonder this sort of junk-science is sometimes referred to by its own atheist devotees as "anti-knowledge".

in Christ,

Bob

Blue Wren · Feb 2, 2015

Wrong emoticon sent from phone, lol.

BobRyan · Feb 2, 2015

If you want to watch Nobel prize winning atheist/agnostic evolutionists tell you just how steeped the are into "belief in evolution" over all science fact to the contrary - over direct observations in nature... take a look at "What we still don't know" by Cosmologist Martin Reese and and Physicist Leonard Suskind.

They will admit in no uncertain terms that when "observations in nature" drove them to conclude in favor of intelligent design - a Creator "the beneficent" -- they chose rather to 'imagine' 10^500 other entire universes mostly "getting it wrong" so that the "odds" could be improved for blindly clinging to evolutionism, naturalism etc anyway in this universe no matter the observations to the contrary.

They say the problem is fine tuning to 10^120 or no evolution in this entire universe.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oyH2D4-tzfM
Go to the 16:00 minute point - if you don't have time to watch the whole thing. Watch 5 or ten minutes at the 16 minute mark. (at least).

in Christ,

Bob

mmksparbud · Feb 3, 2015

BobRyan said:
If you want to watch Nobel prize winning atheist/agnostic evolutionists tell you just how steeped the are into "belief in evolution" over all science fact to the contrary - over direct observations in nature... take a look at "What we still don't know" by Cosmologist Martin Reese and and Physicist Leonard Suskind.

They will admit in no uncertain terms that when "observations in nature" drove them to conclude in favor of intelligent design - a Creator "the beneficent" -- they chose rather to 'imagine' 10^500 other entire universes mostly "getting it wrong" so that the "odds" could be improved for blindly clinging to evolutionism, naturalism etc anyway in this universe no matter the observations to the contrary.

They say the problem is fine tuning to 10^120 or no evolution in this entire universe.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oyH2D4-tzfM
Go to the 16:00 minute point - if you don't have time to watch the whole thing. Watch 5 or ten minutes at the 16 minute mark. (at least).

in Christ,

Bob

Watched the whole thing---so now, in order to sidestep the issue of a Creator, the universe is made up of many universes that each had their own "big bang" and so since there are soooo many of them, the odds of having had a Creator have now decreased????----Did I get that right?? So now we are no longer a fine tuned evolutionary wonder, but a run of the mill evolutionary process? And us being simply the virtual reality game of some very highly intelligent beings (who have evolved into that state)is a very distinct possibility??----
They can't even see that they have "evolved" from writing science to writing science fiction.

Thanks for posting this---I was in need of a good laugh! We had been with our main sewer blocked for 5 days--you have no idea of the horrors that entailed!!---but, I must say, this video dishes up more than what we had backing up!!!

Saricharity · Feb 3, 2015

Blue Wren said:
Wrong emoticon sent from phone, lol.

I have to say you had me scratching my head last night.

supersoldier71 · Feb 3, 2015

As a creationist, I find it amusing when my biology textbooks say something like: "evolution couldn't leave [this] to chance" or "evolution solved this issue by..."

Evolution is a religion absent a ruler, a Lord.

It's not God the Creator that makes them uncomfortable, it's the King of Kings part.

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

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