The nature of evidence

[mindlight]

Applying the analogy of a court case to the pursuit of facts about our origins seems to lead to the conclusion that we have insufficient evidence to assert anything like the science based theory of evolution whereas Creationism can be credibly argued on the basis of documentary evidence. To put it simply if the prosecutor says "it was evolution what done it- your honour" then the defence would be "you have no evidence which is actually permissible in this court room".

To summarise the prosecution case looks really weak:
We have no DNA - its all degraded,
We have no fingerprints or footprints that we can definitely tie to the events of our origins,
We have no human witnesses to the actual events,
We have no analogous circumstances that we can confidentally and conclusively say repeat those of our origins
We have no evidence that we can definitively say has not been weathered, spoilt or tampered with over the thousands of years of its existence.
We have no document evidence- contract documents etc.

Whereas the defence can say:
We have an eyewitness report from a credible witness whose character billions of people can vouch for.
We have documentary evidence
We can credibly argue that the documentary evidence has not been changed from its original.

In a court of law Creationism would win!!!

 

[Chesterton]

I have to agree. Chain of custody is very important, and is completely lacking in the theory of evolution, and will probably be forever lacking.

Chain of custody - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[philadiddle]

Evolution vs creation (or ID) has actually gone to court several times and the theory of evolution has prevailed every time. The most recent would be the dover trial where the evidence for evolution was clearly presented and the ID proponents had no evidence to present aside from "stuff is complicated."

Ten Major Court Cases about Evolution and Creationism | NCSE

You just can't honestly argue that evolution would lose in court when time and time again it has been taken to court and it has won every time.

 

[Papias]

mindlight wrote:

Applying the analogy of a court case to the pursuit of facts about our origins seems to lead to the conclusion that we have insufficient evidence to assert anything like the science based theory of evolution

You've got to be kidding me. We have so much evidence that it's hard to keep track of it all. Here is a summary of just some of it:


29+ Evidences for Macroevolution: the Scientific Case for Common Descent

The kicker is that these are all from different lines of inquiry, different fields of science, and they all give the same answer. Not just that evolution happened, but that it happened the same way, in the same time frame, confirmed over and over by method after method. It would be hard to get a more solid court case than that.

We have an eyewitness report from a credible witness whose character billions of people can vouch for.

Oh, you mean the metaphors of Genesis? You know that Genesis has metaphors in it, as does much of whichever Bible you choose. You do agree that Genesis has metaphors, right?

We have documentary evidence

What are you talking about other than what I just mentioned?

We can credibly argue that the documentary evidence has not been changed from its original.

Again, how can you say that? We don't have the original, the oldest copies are long after the original, and it's clear that several people edited and changed different parts. That's not even disputed among Bible scholars any more - they only argue about how many different changes there were, and when.

Papias

 

[solarwave]

To summarise the prosecution case looks really weak:
We have no DNA - its all degraded,

But DNA itself looks evolved

We have no fingerprints or footprints that we can definitely tie to the events of our origins,

We must be wrong then.

We have no human witnesses to the actual events,

Do you mean they have to be alive? If so this is true of both. Even if they don't have to be alive Adam never wrote anything down.

Whereas the defence can say:
We have an eyewitness report from a credible witness whose character billions of people can vouch for.

Who?

We have documentary evidence

Was it writen by someone who saw it?

We can credibly argue that the documentary evidence has not been changed from its original.

In a court of law Creationism would win!!!

In the same way intelligent design won the right to be taught as science in schools?

All in all you don't give the real evidence the full weight it deserves. If we go by this we probably can't know much history.

 

[mindlight]

mindlight wrote:


You've got to be kidding me. We have so much evidence that it's hard to keep track of it all. Here is a summary of just some of it:


29+ Evidences for Macroevolution: the Scientific Case for Common Descent

The kicker is that these are all from different lines of inquiry, different fields of science, and they all give the same answer. Not just that evolution happened, but that it happened the same way, in the same time frame, confirmed over and over by method after method. It would be hard to get a more solid court case than that.

29 witnesses who were not there, who cannot show the evidence has not been tampered with, degraded or changed by circumstances and who present cases that rely on evidence that would not be permissible in a court of law and which would obtain no convictions.

Oh, you mean the metaphors of Genesis? You know that Genesis has metaphors in it, as does much of whichever Bible you choose. You do agree that Genesis has metaphors, right?

I think you will find that your hermeneutical positions are well outside the mainstream of global Christian historical thought about the scriptures although they may well be nearer to the mainstream in Western liberal theological circles in declining churches. Genesis is written a literal historical style and has been interpreted as a literal historical document for most of its existence.

Again, how can you say that? We don't have the original, the oldest copies are long after the original, and it's clear that several people edited and changed different parts. That's not even disputed among Bible scholars any more - they only argue about how many different changes there were, and when.

Papias

None of those misinterpretations or redactory errors with the original documents that scholars can agree on impair the basic message of scripture pertaining to the doctrine of creation.

 

[philadiddle]

29 witnesses who were not there, who cannot show the evidence has not been tampered with, degraded or changed by circumstances and who present cases that rely on evidence that would not be permissible in a court of law and which would obtain no convictions.

Actually, how DNA supports relationships is permissible in court and it overturns eye witness accounts.

I think you will find that your hermeneutical positions are well outside the mainstream of global Christian historical thought about the scriptures although they may well be nearer to the mainstream in Western liberal theological circles in declining churches. Genesis is written a literal historical style and has been interpreted as a literal historical document for most of its existence.

Everything about this paragraph stands in opposition to reality, although I doubt there's much point in explaining it to you.

You seemed to completely skip over my simple little post that shows you that evolution has gone to court and won, making the entire premise for this thread moot. (Edit - seems you were replying as I was typing this)

 

[mindlight]

Evolution vs creation (or ID) has actually gone to court several times and the theory of evolution has prevailed every time. The most recent would be the dover trial where the evidence for evolution was clearly presented and the ID proponents had no evidence to present aside from "stuff is complicated."

Ten Major Court Cases about Evolution and Creationism | NCSE

You just can't honestly argue that evolution would lose in court when time and time again it has been taken to court and it has won every time.

Nice try , but no you cannot honestly argue that the Supreme court represents the world on these matters. Indeed all of the ten judgments you refer to have to do with the First Ammendment of the American constitution artificially separating church and state. None of these judgments had to do with the factual nature of evolution itself. Some were opposed to "creation science" on the grounds that it represented religious advocacy in practice in the classroom. There is no Supreme court judgment that rules macro-evolution is the true account of the development of life itself. Indeed the constitution itself assumes creation.

"we hold these truthes to be self evident that all men are created equal and are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights and that among these are life liberty and the pursuit of happiness."

 

[mindlight]

Actually, how DNA supports relationships is permissible in court and it overturns eye witness accounts.

And how long does DNA evidence last in a fit condition to obtain a conviction in a court of law?

 

[philadiddle]

Nice try , but no you cannot honestly argue that the Supreme court represents the world on these matters. Indeed all of the ten judgments you refer to have to do with the First Ammendment of your constitution artificially separating church and state. None of these judgments had to do with the factual nature of evolution itself. Some were opposed to "creation science" on the grounds that it represented religious advocacy in practice in the classroom. There is no Supreme court judgment that rules macro-evolution is the true account of the development of life itself. Indeed the constitution itself assumes creation.

"we hold these truthes to be self evident that all men are created equal and are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights and that among these are life liberty and the pursuit of happiness."

It is still an invalid argument to say "Evolution would not win in court" when it has. Some of these were subject to free speech laws so you do have a point regarding those, but some looked at the evidence itself.

Ken Miller, who appeared on the stand for one of those trials, explains the evidence presented for evolution, and explains the judges ruling.
YouTube - Ken Miller on Intelligent Design

At the end of the day, evolution has won many times in court, and creatioin has not won once, so your argument is moot.

 

[philadiddle]

And how long does DNA evidence last in a fit condition to obtain a conviction in a court of law?

We use the DNA of living things to establish relationships. What do you mean with your question about how long it must last?

 

[mindlight]

But DNA itself looks evolved

Please expand on what you mean by that.

Do you mean they have to be alive? If so this is true of both. Even if they don't have to be alive Adam never wrote anything down.

Who?

Was it writen by someone who saw it?

If you accept the living presence of the only witness to creation in your life then the words He inspired in scripture will resonate wth your own experience also. This would not be permissible evidence in a modern North American court. Of course in other ages scripture would have been regarded as primary evidence. The court system itself is in part shaped by its culture but no court I know has yet pronounced evolution an incontrovertible scientific fact outside of the ideological atheist instruments of totalitarian communist regimes in which the rule of law was clearly subordinate to ideological positions.

In the same way intelligent design won the right to be taught as science in schools?

All in all you don't give the real evidence the full weight it deserves. If we go by this we probably can't know much history.

History has a lot of human witnesses many of whom wrote their observations down. But the degree we can speak with exhaustive authority about other ages than our own or even our own is something we should regard with a degree of humility.

 

[mindlight]

We use the DNA of living things to establish relationships. What do you mean with your question about how long it must last?

But with DNA the differences often make all the difference and a broad similarity today can tell you very little beyond that today we can say the building blocks of life have many patterns shared by many different organisms - I could have told you that by showing that different animals bleed or breathe in similar ways. The historical chain of events described by evolutionists requires that they draw links between creatures that they say lived millions of years ago. DNA today has nothing to say on that and there is no DNA we can use to describe those linkages and what linkages we can make today do not prove evolution.

The tests required to test for DNA similarities between samples discovered in one place and in another require that the samples be fresh enough and also quantitative enough to run the tests. DNA does not last and macro-evolutionists talk in terms of timescales in which its original samples cannot be measured.

 

[bdfoster]

Much like a criminal trial, historical geology is concerned with determining past events. There are different levels of certainty. Events we directly observe through sensory perception are the most certain. Our knowledge of events we directly observe is as certain as any knowledge. We can only see or directly observe the present. As humans we cannot see the future and we cannot see the past. But past events can leave records. We can only know what happened in the past by observing these records in the present. We can no more "see" the past than we can the future. We often think we can see the past because our brains make a vivid record of the past we have experienced called memory. But our memories are not even very good records of the past, compared to things like photographs, audio recordings etc. Our knowledge of past events depends on the quality of the records, not the amount of time since the event occurred. We know there were Trilobites in the Cambrian with more certainty than we know who shot JFK. Both events left records. I won't go into how uncertain the JFK evidence is. It's been done! But the records trilobites left when they crept along ancient mud is very simple and there for all to see. The evidence that Cambrian rocks are roughly 500 million years old is more complicated, and not based on direct observation. But the case has been argued convincingly in court and in the technical literature.

 

[Calminian]

These are great points, Mindlight. The problem with modern courts, unfortunately, is their adversity toward miracles. I don't think this should be the case, but unfortunately it is. Simon Greenleaf is one of our country's most prominent law scholars in the area of evidence. And he actually concluded the the resurrection of Christ passes legal muster. In essence he argued in his book for the evidential basis of this miracle.

But I doubt the legal minds of today are that sharp. In regard to origins, scripture reveals six full days of creative miracles, and many prominent subsequent miracles. The testimonial evidence is there, but unfortunately, this goes against modern scientism, which dismisses miraculous causes a priori.

 

[marktheblake]

Ken Miller, who appeared on the stand for one of those trials, explains the evidence presented for evolution, and explains the judges ruling.

Ken Miller cannot be trusted to make an objective observation on that topic, he is a well known critic of Creation and ID.

 

[solarwave]

These are great points, Mindlight. The problem with modern courts, unfortunately, is their adversity toward miracles. I don't think this should be the case, but unfortunately it is. Simon Greenleaf is one of our country's most prominent law scholars in the area of evidence. And he actually concluded the the resurrection of Christ passes legal muster. In essence he argued in his book for the evidential basis of this miracle.

But I doubt the legal minds of today are that sharp. In regard to origins, scripture reveals six full days of creative miracles, and many prominent subsequent miracles. The testimonial evidence is there, but unfortunately, this goes against modern scientism, which dismisses miraculous causes a priori.

Law must be based on what is common not rare.

 

[Mallon]

In a court of law Creationism would win!!!

The case for Creationism hasn't won in the court of law since the Scopes trial 85 years ago.

Oh yeah, and the court of law allows forensic evidence -- that is, evidence for unobservable, unrepeatable events in the past. The same type of evidence that supports evolution.

 

[philadiddle]

But with DNA the differences often make all the difference and a broad similarity today can tell you very little beyond that today we can say the building blocks of life have many patterns shared by many different organisms

You are right, the differences are very telling. I made a spin off thread to explain it to you because it's a topic that deserves its own thread. I hope you participate in the other thread.
http://www.christianforums.com/t7514173/#post56135681

 

[matthewgar]

Ken Miller cannot be trusted to make an objective observation on that topic, he is a well known critic of Creation and ID.

Well in that case is that grounds to dismiss every single Creationist and intelligent design proponent since they are all critics of evolution abd biased against it thanks :> Guys we don't need to post here any more, :>