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The nature of evidence

matthewgar

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No, everyone is entitled to present their view.


Well you seem to dissmiss him for suppoedly being biased, does it ever occur to you guys that maybe the reason no one takes you seriously, courts, scientists, among other things, is because your wrong, and take us no where? All I see from creationists is distorting data, attacking evolution by not understanding what they are attacking, and calling conspiracy theories, or a bunch of ad hoc's.

Creationism requires too much faith, not in god, or the bible, but the person making claims. Look at how many attempts to prove the flood could happen, and every single one of them fails on the most baisc tenants of science, and either get abandoned or god gets stuck in as a excuse, if thats the case then why bother trying to scientificly prove anything.

Another big problem for me is, wich really relates to this topic, just because you think it's plausible isn't evidence. You may not like evolution or think it's right but it's backed up by evidence, you might say faulty but it's still there. Creationism has no evidence for flood other thing things wich couldn't prove the flood as I showed in another topic. Or for the world being 6000 years old, and relies on making impossible to prove theories, wich have the most simple of reasons why there is no evidnece, because htey didn't happen.

The problem with creationists is you have nothing, you have your interpetation of the bible, but your human and falliable, you have nothing to back you up outside of it, wich means maybe your understanding is flawed. We have mountains of evidence taht continues to grow, I have no reason to buy your guy's made up reasons, because there is nothing behind them. Are you trying to convince us, or yourselves when you keep repeating pratt's debunked decades ago?
 
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marktheblake

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Well you seem to dissmiss him for suppoedly being biased

Then you read it wrong.

I dismissed him for not being an objective asssessment of the Creation v Evolution issue.


The problem with creationists is you have nothing
Of course you have to say that. You would be in a bit of a quandary with your own beleifs if you considered their position to be sound.

Are you trying to convince us, or yourselves when you keep repeating pratt's debunked decades ago?
What have I repeated? You are just making that up. In fact your entire post is just an emotional rant.
 
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matthewgar

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And can you give a single creationist that by the definition you give of ken miller is objective? Again doesn't it occur he is a critic of them because they are wrong? You act like him being a critic some how makes him not objective. Seems like alot of hand waving.

And emotional rant? How about responding to points rather then more hand waving? What part of finding the methods of creationists wanting, and relying entirely upon making up posabilities, then using them as proof, emotional rant? Maybe I just dislike seeing people buy into the idea that what you make up is a reasonable argument for a stance?
 
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marktheblake

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And can you give a single creationist that by the definition you give of ken miller is objective?

Never said I could. I doubt anyone is truly objective particularly in this field of knowledge.

Again doesn't it occur he is a critic of them because they are wrong?
Yes he certainly does think they are wrong. That is quite obvious.
You act like him being a critic some how makes him not objective
He isnt objective - he is absolutely one sided to his view, its really that simple.

Seems like alot of hand waving.
Gee - have a look at your previous post.

And emotional rant? How about responding to points rather then more hand waving?
It would take me a month to reply to all your hand waving.
 
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mindlight

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This may well be in many modern court rooms but nonetheless life remains quite obviously miraculous. It bothers me that many of the Supreme Court cases listed previously consider that the proper interpretation of the separation of church and state implicit in the First Ammendment is that only purely natural causes can be considered for things when most peoples experience of life is of events that happened against all odds for better or for worse. It also defies the original assumptions of the constitution about a supernatural Creator being the basis for the rights that the Supreme Court is meant to defend. Naturalistic evolution and the modern interpretation of the separation of church and state walk hand in hand.
 
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mindlight

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What better quality record than documentary evidence written on the instruction and with the guidance of the only person to witness Creation.

Yes there are different levels of certainty and the kinds of evidence paraded as fact about events ages past would not pass muster in a court of law for just about any kind of criminal trial we can think of.
 
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mindlight

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John Scopes was found guilty in that trial and the antievolution law on the basis of which he was tried was not challenged again until the 60s.

But despite being an apparent Creationist victory I think you miss the point on this. Given the Butler act John Scopes was a lawbreaker and the facts were clear on this. The veracity of evolution or otherwise was not the essential basis of the case against him in legal terms whatever the PR that has since been cultivated from this.

The ways in which this trial and others are won are by appealing to documentary evidence relating to what is written in the law and what statements can be tied to the defendant rather than any direct assessment of the authenticity of evolutionary theory.

The basic point of this OP is that the ways ín which macro-evolutionists use evidence would not be permissible in a court of law and would obtain no convictions as the degree of certainty that surrounds the so called facts they uncover is too low.
 
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Papias

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ML wrote:
29 witnesses who were not there,
in many cases,they were indeed there. Fossils were present when they were alive, etc.

who cannot show the evidence has not been tampered with, degraded or changed by circumstances

First, we can see from the surrounding rock that they haven't been tampered with, unless you are saying that Satan magically tampered with them, and their condition is easily verifiable by science. For many of those lines (did you read them?), such as the DNA of current species or the nest hierarchy, the whole idea of tampering or degrading makes no sense. Do you understand what a nested hierarchy is?


Second, and more importantly, if they were tampered with or degraded, why would all 29 give exactly the same answer? If unreliable, would they not give random answers? You didn't answer that from the previous post.

and who present cases that rely on evidence that would not be permissible in a court of law and which would obtain no convictions.

Sure it would be permissible in a court of law. As others have pointed out, it's been permitted in courts of law time after time.

I asked if you agreed there were metaphors in Genesis. Do you agree there are metaphors in Genesis, or not? It's really a very simple question.


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.​

Watch those goalposts get moved! First you said we knew what the originals said, now you say that the changes don't matter. Before we move on to that, can you acknowlege both that you agree that you can't say there haven't been changes, and that you are now moving the goalposts?

What better quality record than documentary evidence written on the instruction and with the guidance of the only person to witness Creation.

Can you be clear as to exactly who that person is? Could you give us that person's name for the sake of our discussion? Thanks-

Papias


 
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Mallon

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The basic point of this OP is that the ways ín which macro-evolutionists use evidence would not be permissible in a court of law
The same forensic tests used to convict a murderer or to declare the paternal father of a newborn baby are used to infer evolutionary history. If you're going to accept forensic evidence in a criminal court trial, then to be consistent, you must also accept forensic evidence in an evolution court trial. Similarly, if you're not going to allow for appeals to miracles in a criminal court trial, you cannot allow for appeals to miracles in a court trial pertaining to the creation of biodiversity.

And by the way, "the ways ín which macro-evolutionists use evidence" HAS been permitted in the court of law. And it has won out every time.
 
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bdfoster

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What better quality record than documentary evidence written on the instruction and with the guidance of the only person to witness Creation.
Oh please! There isn't any documentary or eye-witness testimony that would be accepted in any trial of creation vevsus evolution. The creation story you are trying to prove is IN the documentary evidence you are trying to admit! To accept the documentary evidence as authoritative ASSUMES your conclusion! I'm sorry that assumes facts not in evidence, as Johnny Cochran used to say. Don't misunderstand. As a Christian I believe the documentary evidence and hold it in very high regard. But even if it were admitted there is HUGE disagreement over what it means. Both sides say it supports their side.


Yes there are different levels of certainty and the kinds of evidence paraded as fact about events ages past would not pass muster in a court of law for just about any kind of criminal trial we can think of.

What are you talking about? As people have pointed out in this thread it has.
 
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mindlight

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ML wrote:

in many cases,they were indeed there. Fossils were present when they were alive, etc.

Fossils might represent 10 % of the original body mass of a creature and contain no testable DNA - the associations scientists draw with current creatures are speculative. The attempts to build a hierarchy of interrelationships between explaining the development of life are fantastical.


Fossils were mainly formed by a global flood and quite rapidly and recently. I see commonalities in terms of the Creators design rather than in terms of a mythical tree of life. Just as an object orientated programmer reuses modules of good code slotting them into different configurations in unique ways so we can see the Designers hand in the configuration of different species. The creative reuse of good programming code is a closer explanation to what is going on here than a nested hierarchy. The commonalities and the differences testify to the Designers hand not to a merely naturalistic process which cannot possibly be checked or verified.

Second, and more importantly, if they were tampered with or degraded, why would all 29 give exactly the same answer? If unreliable, would they not give random answers? You didn't answer that from the previous post.

Because all accept the same assumptions that led to the theory of evolution e.g. uniformitarianism and naturalism and the conviction that the unity of life and its diversity can be explained in terms of a tree like evolutionary model. All this demonstrates is that science is more credible where its results and conclusions can actually be measured than when it is permitted to go off on wild flights of fancy.

Sure it would be permissible in a court of law. As others have pointed out, it's been permitted in courts of law time after time.

Can you give me an example please of the use of 1 million year old DNA in a contemporary court room case as I think I must have missed that case.

I asked if you agreed there were metaphors in Genesis. Do you agree there are metaphors in Genesis, or not? It's really a very simple question.

And I gave you a simple answer - I hold a literal historical view of Genesis and by way of an example believe a literal Eve was tempted by the devil through a talking snake.


We can trust the current versions and any differences with the originals are irrelevant to this discussion. You are playing with semantics for point scoring rather than looking at this objectively.

Can you be clear as to exactly who that person is? Could you give us that person's name for the sake of our discussion? Thanks-

You can read the names of Almighty God in the scriptures. But again the tone of this question is flippant and unproductive to this discussion.
 
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mindlight

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Can you give me an example of the use of forensic tests such as those used on modern court evidence but on million old DNA to prove a point relating to the veracity of macro-evolution in a court case please.

To suggest that tests similar to those used in court cases on DNA evidence can also be used on ancient DNA evidence is false because DNA does not last that long. If you wish to assert conclusions based on analysis of DNA extracted from contemporary creatures then you make big assumptions in saying that you can then draw a tree of life from these interrelationships that plot the development of life.

Commonalities and the different ways they are used in different creatures merely testify to the hand of the same Designer and need not be taken as proof of common ancestry with other creatures in a particular branch of the tree of life.

Forensic evidence can be accepted as having a degree of validity and I know a number of example of that in court cases. I can do that without surrendering a miraculous view of life as these tests are only a part of the whole picture and only tell us so much.
 
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Mallon

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Can you give me an example of the use of forensic tests such as those used on modern court evidence but on million old DNA to prove a point relating to the veracity of macro-evolution in a court case please.
Sure. Paternity tests are based on the fact that closely-related individuals share similarities in their DNA exclusive of other, more distantly related individuals. Evolutionary relatedness is based on the same principles, the similarity between human and chimp DNA being a prime example.

Commonalities and the different ways they are used in different creatures merely testify to the hand of the same Designer and need not be taken as proof of common ancestry with other creatures in a particular branch of the tree of life.
The "common designer" argument is an ad hoc argument that explains nothing. If the similarity between organisms attests to their common design, do the differences between organisms attest to their uncommon design? It does not follow that an infinitely-capable God should necessarily limit himself to the same building blocks and bauplans when creating life de novo. Artists don't limit themselves to the same materials.
Creationists are slowly coming to understand that "common design" isn't a valid argument. Take Todd Wood's essay on the matter, for example:
http://documents.clubexpress.com/documents.ashx?key=u4FIU0eLuT6SmyXcvLmbCiFa4UnoWsTP3lyArVOo/gM=
He's been commenting on this on his blog lately, too.

I can do that without surrendering a miraculous view of life as these tests are only a part of the whole picture and only tell us so much.
Do you think appeals to miracles should be allowed in the court of law? Do you think a man deemed the paternal father of a newborn baby based on DNA evidence should be allowed to argue that he is unrelated to the child and that their genetic similarity is due only to their common design? Is that a valid argument?
 
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matthewgar

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I wish you guys get a clue on just what there is that shows common decent, you guys sound ingorant of the subject when you do.

It's NOT just this gene is the same or common accross all species, or even just that the differences in the gene can be connected to a phylogenic tree, so that species on one branch will all share the same differences that another branch doesn't. But there are many things wich don't effect change, ERV's, gene duplications, inversions, broken genes, completly pointless genes if they were made from a kind.

Why do chickens have genes for teeth, why do whales have genes for scent, why do humans have genes for tails, for proteins we don't use, why along with dolphins do humans contain 4% of our DNA devoted to scent receptors that other species use that we don't? Why do whales have genes for creating legs, wich still ocasionally show up? Why do many species during development as a embryo form beginnings of things that evolution shows they should? Birds have finger buds, whales have foot buds and so on?

If you took away all the simularities, we still have all the things that don't make any sense being stuck in. It's like a designer creating a tank, then making a SUV but he sticks big chunks of the parts for the tank in the SUV, even if they are welded to the under frame, and do nothing, but left there.
 
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mindlight

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The differences between that relative of mine in Australia or America and an ape are of course significant and clearly make all the difference as the "Planet of the Apes" (as in the film) has not happened in reality. Also I can confirm these links by other means also. The tests on linkages only work with contemporary DNA ( as the life time of testable DNA is limited) so speculation about links in some distant past for apes and men with a common ancestor remain unproven and speculative. Similarity does not have to be an argument for convergence at some point in the past. Difference does not have to be explained in terms of which branch of the tree of life my species is meant to be associated with. This is applying the assumption of a tree of life to evidence of similarity and of difference and explaining it in terms of the those assumptions.


God chose to create creatures from the dust of the earth and that the design patterns overlap to a considerable extent is testimony to his design in my view. I see this as would a programmer looking at a masters code. There are reasons for all of it, reuse and apparently unnecessary difference, for apparent verbosity in some places and precision in others, for code that only seems justifiable in terms of aesthetics and for code with clear functional reasons.


While the argument of common design is clearly regarded as ad hoc by many Theistic Evolutionists it is the best way in my view to reconcile similarities between species we can discern in the science and the revelation we have been given concerning the distinctiveness of people made in the image of God. Creationists may sense this is a tough one to argue given the genetic evidences and given that the genetic differences do nto necessarily always give humans advantages over Apes for example. The article itself was an excellent read - thank you for providing that. I liked the below quote that points out the apparent limits of genomics in explaining the distinctiveness of mankind. That we must look perhaps to a more supernatural reasoning why creatures that share so many similiarities can be so vastly different in actual levels of achievement and comprehension of God and his creation. I think in practice the unique supernatural intervention that makes a man and the genetic distinctiveness however quantitatively insignificant is all a part of a Creators design and helps to explain the distinctive way in which humans interact with each other, the world and with God.



Do you think appeals to miracles should be allowed in the court of law?

YES _I think that very often what is rare and unique overthrows what is common and repeatable. This is life. Statute Law seeks a standard way of dealing with situations , Case law attempts to deal with the unique situations that arise and marry them to the broad thrust and purpose of the law. Miracles are rare but they do happen, a legal process that ignores that , or cannot accomodate that is ultimately inauthentic and articificial.

Do you think a man deemed the paternal father of a newborn baby based on DNA evidence should be allowed to argue that he is unrelated to the child and that their genetic similarity is due only to their common design? Is that a valid argument?

A man should not and my father is not and could not be an ape.
 
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mindlight

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I believe that creation is broken and spolit in some fundamental way by the fall. Broken genes would be a part of that.

Also I would not attempt to explain apparently unnecessary genetic coding in merely immediateley discernable functional terms. There could be a variety of reasons ranging from aesthetics for design to more deeply spiritual and inaccessible reasons.
 
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Lucapsa has a very interesting thread http://www.christianforums.com/t7513865/#post56127903 Evolution convicts criminals where forensic scientists assumed, sorry, constructed a phylogenetic tree of HIV mutations to identify the person who was the source of the infection, even though his own viruses and those of his victims had been busy evolving and changing since the infection.
 
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juvenissun

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He never positively responded to my comment, which suggested that he made the cause and consequence reverse in the illustration.

His example illustrates that many people do not know what does an "evidence" mean.
 
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