My, my. A whole page of posts to reply to. This has become much more time consuming than I had originally anticipated.
Find me a single scientific fraud discovered by creationists.
There was a museum in Europe where some fossils were thought to have provided evolutionary support, but a creationist uncovered that it was a fraud. The specifics escape me at the moment, but I remember reading about this in the book In Six Days, a compilation of reports from scientists concerning evolution and the age of the earth, as well as the Great Flood.
Anyway, for what its worth, Ill provide a list of examples thought to support evolution, but were later found out not to be (which party discovered that a given case was a fraud, I simply dont know).
Piltdown Man, a basic form in science texts and museums for years, turned out to be a fraud. Nebraska man was a reconstruction from one tooth, which turned out to be that of an extinct pig. Yet Nebraska Man was used as evidence in the Scopes Trial (1925) to support the teaching of evolution in public schools. The fossil evidence for Peking Man vanished. Some question its validity, based on studies before the pieces of bone disappeared. One serious problem is that this creature was killed by a sharp object, a highly unlikely cause of death for a prehuman. Even some evolutionists believe Australopithecine was an orangutan. Not one primate fossil find to date that has been subjected to objective scientific scrutiny is a strong candidate for the human family tree.
On a side note, Sir Fred Hoyle, one of the worlds leading astronomers and mathematicians, said before the British Academy of Science, Lets be scientifically honest. We all know that the probability of life arising to greater and greater complexity and organization by chance through evolution is the same probability as having a tornado tear through a junkyard and form out the other end a Boeing 747 jetliner.
Scientists do not fight blindly for theories, they look at the evidence and see what best fits it. Most of these same fakes were unconvered [sic] by evolutionists, not creationists. Your potential conspiracy theory fails.
So quick to point the finger and say that my arguments are leading to a conspiracy theory. I never asserted that was the case, but merely thought it logical that had all scientists accepted evolution, the already accepted examples wouldnt have been given a closer look. Perhaps evolutionists were double-checking their prized examples since they were experiencing opposition from the Creationists.
First, get off your pedestal. A teacher and a student is how I feel when you either ignorantly or deliberately misrepresent evolution.
Show me where. Id greatly like to know.
The universe had a beginning.
Are you sure you want to admit this? If you do, you are admitting that there exists something outside of nature (a super-nature), which caused this one to come into existence (Thus a creator).
We don't know what came before out universe, or what is outside of it. You say that since something can not come out of nothing, therefore God. But we don't know that there is "nothing" outside of our universe.
The universe is the all in all of the natural world. Were talking about the creation of the natural world, arent we? So then, were agreed that our Universe was created, and what is created requires a creator (There lies an intelligent cause outside of the universe that caused it to come into being. We know its an intelligent cause, since sentience cannot come from non-sentience. And we, as humans, definitely possess sentience).
It could very well be an intelligent being. Or an accident to made this occur. Physicists have found it possible to create miniuniverses within the laboratory. So, the existence of our universe is not necessarily the result of something out of nothing. It could very well be the consequence of something outside which does not obey our universe's laws.
Id like to see these miniuniverses. Are they created out of nothing? If not, by creating them, how do the scientists know theyre doing it right, since they would be creating these miniuniverses with things found inside of our own universe (things which were probably not involved in the creation process of our universe since they, themselves, were being created).
Anyway, we know that an intelligent being created the universe because of this: If our solar system came about by an accidental (meaningless) collision, then the appearance of earth is also an accident. If this is true, the appearance of organic life on earth is an accident. If so, then the entire evolution of man is also an accident. Further still, this would mean all of our thought processes (i.e. of astronomy, and evolution) are accidents as well (the mere accidental collisions of the movement of atoms). If this is so, why should we believe our thoughts to be true? I see no reason to believe that one accident can take a correct account of all the other accidents. Youd be thinking and speaking mere accidental gibberish.
I don't think the existence of our universe is necessarily proof for a deity at all.
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The existence of it does not, but the Creation of it does. The evidence of design within our universe is remarkable. From the tilt of the Earths axis (just right not too cold, not too hot), to the irreducible complexity found in the genetic codes of living organisms. Design requires a designer.
Now, the fact that we don't know what happened before our universe does leave room for a Creator. Which is why I'm agnostic.
Oh, I was right.
It is the most intellectually honest position. There's a lot of things we don't know about our universe, so certainly, the possibility is there. What I do know so far though, has indicated to me that the possibility is unlikely.
If there exists no Creator/God, then your life is meaningless (as is the rest of our lives), since there is no Ultimate source from which meaning comes. For something to have meaning, someone must give it meaning. If theres no one to give humanity meaning, then humanity does not possess meaning to give to other things (like words, thoughts, devices, etc). All of our words then become utter accidental/meaningless by-products of our surroundings, and if thats the case, theres no reason to believe such accidental gibberish to be true.
There was nothing inside our universe, because it did not yet exist. However, we simply don't know what was there. There could very well be "something" before our universe that is not within our universe, and we would not know.
Indeed. This seems to be where science leaves off, and philosophy picks up to carry us only slightly further.
Well, offhand, I can promise you that most of the above (like Kelvin) though the Earth was old and that the flood never happened.
I agree that the Earth is probably very old, however, the topic of the flood is still an unsettled dispute in the scientific world. According to the text, it might have been global or local (and theres massive evidence for a huge flood around Noahs time in the Mesopotamian Valley).
Are you confusing theistic evolutionists and creationists again?
Nope. Theistic evolutionists would even need to cling to creation in some sense (Since their stance requires that God
created the first life, and worked from there, but even then, it differs. Did God Create the organisms as they are and then started using evolution, or did he start using evolution right after first life was created? Or, perhaps, was it some time in-between? There are different stances even for the Theistic Evolutionist).
I'm not sure why less than instant acceptance of Darwin's ideas is any sort of blow for Creationism.
Neither do I, since consensus doesnt define truth.
It's more than a little futile to list people who died before Darwin published (and in some cases before he was born!) as "Creationists". It's interesting that what you don't see up there is a bunch of biologists (indeed, the two involved in biology don't really belong).
Evolution isnt limited only to the biological world. It depends on geology, astronomy, and other things as well. Suppose someone could amazingly prove that the earth is only 7,000 years old. Wouldnt that pretty much crush the current acceptance rate of evolution? Biology isnt the only aspect of science which could make or break evolution (or at least the doctrine thereof anyway).
I guess a better question would be, "How could you describe 'red' (or any colour) to someone who has never seen it?".
What does that have to do with this? If we know someone is incapable of telling what color the apple is via the naked eye, why would you value his conclusion (he doesnt have the means to come to that conclusion without scientific instruments).
Atomic clocks, like any oscillator, are still measuring relative change. Experiments have proven this (along with other aspects of Einstein's theory of relativity).
These things vary, but only ever so slightly. They are extremely accurate/consistent. The fact that were even discussing how accurate our clocks are implies that there is an objective standard to measure such accuracy against.
Rather than freezing over the world with ice, let's "freeze" the universe. That is, every single particle, wave, etc, will be "frozen in time".
Alright, Im following you here (as long as youre not talking about time itself coming to a stop, but rather all changing/moving things merely stopping dead in their tracks).
There is no change (I feel very Matrix-esque). Now, an independent observer of the universe could experience a near-infinite amount of "time".
This is assuming that time exists outside of the universe. And even then, if the observers area couldnt be infinite in time, since if time were infinite, he would have never gotten around to observing at a particular moment.
But anyone and anything trapped in this frozen universe would have no knowledge of such an event because there would be absolutely no record of it. They wouldn't be able feel the passage of "time" and neither would anything else. The whole universe could experience an event like this at any given moment, but we'd never know about it. No clocks, no memories, no changes. Therefore, no time.
Ah, but thats where the mistake comes in. Just because theres nothing observing a given item doesnt mean that item isnt there to observe. That fact that time continues to march on (even if we stopped on a frequent basis) means that we constantly use up moment after moment, and this couldnt have been going on for all eternity, or else we would have never reached this moment.
You are assuming an arbitrary (infinite) timeline.
Actually, thats what Im arguing against.
Like I said earlier, I don't view time that way. There is no need to "travel" along such a timeline because it doesn't exist.
Im glad you know so much without begging the question.
