RightWingGirl said:
A very good point. I do not think God would put evidence of ages on the earth to decive people.
and yet the evidence of an old earth and universe is there in great abundance, enough to convince virtually every geologist and physicist in the entire world. it was enough to convince the christian geologists (who were searching for flood deposited sediments) that originally falsified a young earth and global flood. in contrast, i have seen no valid evidence for a young earth. if you have some, please offer it up.
you might want to check this list first to make sure your argument isn't on there:
http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/list.html
we don't have to just guess whether conventional geology is correct, we can test it, and our tests have shown that it produces real world results. that is why every single mining and oil comany in the world uses conventional geology when searching for diamonds/minerals/oil etc. if conventional geology is wrong, why do these companies use it? why isn't there a flood geology based mining company that is outperforming all the others by using a superior model to find what they are looking for? i have never heard a creationist even attempt to provide an answer to this. what do you think about it?
Evidence, as pertaining to the past, cannot be tested or experimented with.
nonsense. this shows me that you don't really understand how we test theories in science. theories make (falsifiable) predictions, and we go out and test those predictions and try to prove them wrong. if the predictions turn out to be correct, then that is evidence for the theory. if the prediction turns out to be wrong, then the theory is falsified. both evolution and conventional geology make many specific predictions about the past, and also about what we must find in the present, and by looking at the evidence we find in the past and present, we are testing these theories.
and if you honestly consider the evidence, you will find that evolution has passed these tests very well:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/
Because of this it can be interpreted many ways.
evidence is not "interpreted" in science. it either matches the predictions of a theory, or it does not. interpretation is not a part of the process of testing.
A fossil fish could have died in hundreds of different ways, but an Evolutionist will tell you it died in a shallow, calm ocean and drifted to the bottom where there was little or no oxygen (anoxic) and thus was protected from scavengers and bacteria that encourage decomposition, and then buried.
there isn't a geologist in the world that will tell you that something can only be buried in one way. despite what you have been told, geologists are quite aware that rapid sedimentation can occur, because we directly observe this happening today with floods and volcanoes, sand dunes, etc. of course, it's not global floods we observe causing this, it's local ones. these provide a better explanation for what we find. that's not just my opinion, that's what objective testing of our theories have shown us.
--And a YEC will tell you it was buried suddenly in a flow of mud generated probably by the flood.
yes, they will tell you this despite the face that YEC geology was falsified 200 years ago. the reason they will tell you this despite the facts is that this is exactly what they have sworn to do:
AiG said:
No apparent, perceived or claimed evidence in any field, including history and chronology, can be valid if it contradicts the Scriptural record.
of course they are going to come to the conlcusion that their literalist interpretation of genesis is literally true - they have sworn an oath to ignore any evidence which contradicts them! they are presuming their conclusions, and then refusing to test whether they are correct or not. you can't test something without allowing for the possibility that it might be wrong. that's why what creationists are doing is not science, and why their conclusions are irrelevant.
Now it is possible neither of these are true,
it's possible, but it's not what the evidence indicates. the evidence tells us that flood geology is false, and it does not tell us that conventional geology is.
but the interesting thing is that two people can look at the exact same fossil and come up with such different theories.
you can come up with a lot of different theories to explain something. the point of science is to take these theories and TEST them. 2 theories aren't equal just because they are both theories. we have to test them to see which ones are making the right predictions and which are making predictions that are falsified.
We know that the fossil is the same for both, and what we know of the fossil will allow for both burials. Why then, are such conflicting scenarios thought up? Because each man looks at the fossil from the point of view of his particular theory, and judging by that theory interprets the fossil-
as i explained, that's not how science works. scientists just check to see if the evidence fits the predictions of a theory. creationists refust to test their theory, and just assume that the fossils must somehow fit in with their predetermined conclusion, and come up with an ad hoc explanation for them, which they also refuse to test.
it's not hard to guess which of these 2 methods is going to produce the best results, and we don't have to guess, we can clearly see which of these 2 methods produce the best results. that's why no mining company on earth would dare touch creationist geology with a 10 foot pole. make sure to explain that one for me.
It is only the mans presuppositions that lead him to believe one particular thing.
if one presupposes that their conlcusion is true, then certainly their presuppositions will lead them to believe only one particular thing: their predetermined conlcusion. that is the creationist method. the scientific method doesn't have this flaw, because we can actually test scientific theories.
Every man interprets the evidence, knowing or not, by his presuppositions.
pray tell, what do you think the presuppositions of conventional geology are?
The earth can be interpreted to, and seem to be interpreted correctly, to be millions of years old, but that does not make it so.
no, the evidence is what makes it so. it's not a matter of interpretation.
And, I must admit that the same is true for YEC. What we ought to do, then, is to look at those things which are measurable, testable, which may be experimented with. These thing can more clearly tell us about the past history of the earth.
which is exactly what scientists do, and exactly what YE creationists refuse to do. that is why they arrive at different conlcusions.
It is said that various species evolved from lower forms of life, gaining complexity and information. I would ask if such a thing has been observed today.
gained complexity and information through evolution? yes, we do observe that to occur today.
Evolution (I am aware that evolution is not well pleased to discuss biogenesis, and concerns itself only with biology, but all things must have a beginning, and if they do not start they cannot continue.) tells us that life came from inanimate slime.
evolution does not say anything about the origin of life, and you appear to know that already. does atom theory explain the origin of atoms? does general relativity explain the origin of gravity? does it matter if it doesn't?
Evolution teaches that life passed through many forms becoming the species we see today. Why then have we virtually no record of those forms?
what do you mean? we do have a record of many of these forms. we do not have a record of all species that ever lived, and this is because fossilization is a rather rare process, as we observe in nature. we still have representatives from all the major groups that we know of. what matters is whether or not the evidence we do have matches the predictions of evolution, and it does. the evidence does not match the predictions of YEC geology, which is why it has been considered falsified for the last 200 years.
If Evolution were true, and we have been evolving for roughly the last 3,500 million years, and only in the past 1.6 million years we have had humans (erect), and modern animals in something like 250-300 million, and yet we have only a handful of sharply contested "missing links" to make up for 3,200 million years!
absolute nonsense. we have an abundance of transitional fossils:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-transitional.html
3,000 million years; a large gap, where are the missing 80% of the fossils we should see?
you answered this question with your very next sentence:
Few animals reach fossilization,
there's your answer.
