What Would Convert You to Creationism?

[Notedstrangeperson]

Alot of us here debate with Creationists (usually without succes ...) about what it would take for them to believe in evolution. So out of interest, what would it take for the TEs here to start believing in Creationism? And if you did which form would you choose: Young Earth? Old Earth? Intelligent Design?


For me? Aliens - or rather, how much the aliens resembled humans. If we did discover another inhabited planet, with human-like aliens (two eyes, two arms, two legs, walk upright, breathe oxygen etc.), an Earth-like atomosphere and Earth-like animals and plants, that would be a coincidence too far for me. Somebody must have planned it.

 

[solarwave]

Alot of us here debate with Creationists (usually without succes ...) about what it would take for them to believe in evolution. So out of interest, what would it take for the TEs here to start believing in Creationism? And if you did which form would you choose: Young Earth? Old Earth? Intelligent Design?

Well I would say obviously Intelligent Design since that can be compatible with something like the big bang and evolution(continuous creation) can't it, just that God has to directly act at certain stages (ie: the cambrian period, the human eye). So I could be convinced of this if science proved natural evolution wrong.

Old Earth, by which I mean the days of creation being actually very long periods of time, the evolution of the universe after the Big Bang would have to be proven impossible and the second day of creation would have to be explained in a way which makes sense.

For YEC a sign from God would be helpful. I suppose alot of science would have to be proved wrong and/or Genesis 1-3 explained in a way which doesn't sound like a ancient myth. Proving the world wide Flood of Noah would give a huge probability to YEC being true in my eyes.

Mostly this is all to do with new findings in science rather than arguments by theists because hebrew cosmology only works with a small universe.

For me? Aliens - or rather, how much the aliens resembled humans. If we did discover another inhabited planet, with human-like aliens (two eyes, two arms, two legs, walk upright, breathe oxygen etc.), an Earth-like atomosphere and Earth-like animals and plants, that would be a coincidence too far for me. Somebody must have planned it.

Might that not just prove that a human like body is the best for survival?

Why would God create copies of humans, it makes more sense to me that He would create different life forms.

 

[gluadys]

Might that not just prove that a human like body is the best for survival?

That's what I was thinking too. After all, most animals have a bilateral body plan so it is a pretty successful type. It might make the most sense on other planets too. Though it needn't be restricted to the tetrapod form. I could see aliens like the Hindu deities with multiple arms for example.

What would it take for me to reject evolution? Any of the standard disproofs of evolution: genuine chimeras or bunnies in the Cambrian--whatever breaks the standard phylogeny.

Evidence for a global flood would be a necessity to accept YEC.

 

[Rudolph Hucker]

Is this nonsense taking hold in UK now too?

I thought that only in USA could a head of state stand up, say "the jury's still out on evolution" and be applauded.

 

[Chesterton]

For me? Aliens - or rather, how much the aliens resembled humans. If we did discover another inhabited planet, with human-like aliens (two eyes, two arms, two legs, walk upright, breathe oxygen etc.), an Earth-like atomosphere and Earth-like animals and plants, that would be a coincidence too far for me. Somebody must have planned it.

If we could find out that Earth is the only planet with life I'd likewise have to think "somebody must have planned it". I can't imagine a scenario where I wouldn't think that. I guess how much the somebody micro-managed life is a separate question.

 

[solarwave]

Is this nonsense taking hold in UK now too?

I thought that only in USA could a head of state stand up, say "the jury's still out on evolution" and be applauded.

Well I know some Christians in the UK do believe in creationism, but in the church I am from it is more of a passive belief rather then the active belief you get in the USA.

 

[Notedstrangeperson]

Might that not just prove that a human like body is the best for survival?

That's what I was thinking too. After all, most animals have a bilateral body plan so it is a pretty successful type. It might make the most sense on other planets too.

Not necessarily. All animals on Earth have roughly the same shape - which makes sense if you think we have a common ancestor. The same idea may not apply for a creature which isn't even from this planet at all. After all, why should they look like us? If they were living on a gas planet like Jupiter they might be sentient clouds.

That's why I thought that humanoid aliens would be evidence of Intelligent Design. It would suggest that there's only one way for life to evolve, and that it was heading in roughly the same direction.

 

[Mallon]

Not necessarily. All animals on Earth have roughly the same shape - which makes sense if you think we have a common ancestor.

I wouldn't say humans are shaped all that much like sponges.

 

[Notedstrangeperson]

I wouldn't say humans are shaped all that much like sponges.

Uh ... OK, perhaps a few exceptions.

But that's (kind of) my point. Compare for example the body of a virus versus the body of a redwood versus the body of a dog. They all look quite different, and they all come from Earth. Something from another planet may look very strange compared to us.

 

[Mallon]

Uh ... OK, perhaps a few exceptions.

But that's (kind of) my point. Compare for example the body of a virus versus the body of a redwood versus the body of a dog. They all look quite different, and they all come from Earth. Something from another planet may look very strange compared to us.

Can't argue with that!

 

[bdfoster]

Great question. For me I started out in a Christian home and YEC by default. I started out very much opposed to evolution, continental drift, an old earth etc. My conversion to TE was gradual, spanning the ages from about 7 (when I was just old enough to think about it) to 21 or 22 (when I was well into college). There was no one event or piece of information that convinced me. Just a gradual realization that mainstream science usually has a pretty good reason for the positions it takes. When I was starting college a popular slogan was "Question Authority". Being a young rebellious type I liked the slogan. I still think it's good to question authority. But when you do, I think you usually find that authority has a really good answer.

To be honest it would be very difficult for me to convert to YECism (I do believe in creation) due to any discovery I can imagine. I've spent my whole adult life studying geology. You would have to change knowledge that I've gained over the years. Am I supposed to forget about things like angular unconformities, faunal succession? A change of worldview might be required. If I had a faith that was dependant on a specific interpretation of scripture I might make any intellectual sacrifice to keep from accepting scientific findings that are inconsistent with that interpretation. Those sacrifices might include outright cognitive dissonance, rejecting simple obvious solutions in favor of more complicated solutions that don't challenge one's worldview, founding movements like Intelligent Design and organizations like the Discovery Institute, ICR etc.

 

[shernren]

I wouldn't say humans are shaped all that much like sponges.

 

[Willtor]

Convergent evolution.

---

As with Gluadys, any of the typical disproofs of evolution would do.

But at that point, I wouldn't know what to make of it. I'd probably remain in uncertainty until a new grand-unifying theory of biology became widely accepted within the scientific community.

Regarding YEC/OEC/ID: if the evidence pointed in one of those directions, I'd go that way. For YEC, the evidence weighs so heavily against it at this point, I don't see how it could ever achieve a following within the scientific community.

 

[elopez]

Alot of us here debate with Creationists (usually without succes ...) about what it would take for them to believe in evolution. So out of interest, what would it take for the TEs here to start believing in Creationism? And if you did which form would you choose: Young Earth? Old Earth? Intelligent Design?


For me? Aliens - or rather, how much the aliens resembled humans. If we did discover another inhabited planet, with human-like aliens (two eyes, two arms, two legs, walk upright, breathe oxygen etc.), an Earth-like atomosphere and Earth-like animals and plants, that would be a coincidence too far for me. Somebody must have planned it.

Some type of credible evidence. And whatever evidence that would be, it should without a doubt point to a young earth, old earth, or intelligent design.

As to aliens of that nature, why couldn't they have evolved? Planning therefore creationism?

 

[Dark_Lite]

Alot of us here debate with Creationists (usually without succes ...) about what it would take for them to believe in evolution. So out of interest, what would it take for the TEs here to start believing in Creationism? And if you did which form would you choose: Young Earth? Old Earth? Intelligent Design?


For me? Aliens - or rather, how much the aliens resembled humans. If we did discover another inhabited planet, with human-like aliens (two eyes, two arms, two legs, walk upright, breathe oxygen etc.), an Earth-like atomosphere and Earth-like animals and plants, that would be a coincidence too far for me. Somebody must have planned it.

Actual, objective, independently verifiable scientific evidence. But not to worry, that will never happen.

 

[Papias]

Good question – it’s an interesting way to look at our thoughts.

It would take the same things that convince me of TE. Specifically:

• Confirmation of YEC through multiple lines of evidence, from different methods of testing, from different fields of science.
• Further, these confirmations would show not just that creationism is true, and not just the evolution is false, but that the SAME story of creationism is true, with the same order of creation, in the same time frame.
• A useful way to look over some of the different fields & lines of inquiry would be to look at this page: 29+ Evidences for Macroevolution: the Scientific Case for Common Descent, which lists many of those fields, with descriptions. Just imagine each one showing what we’d expect for YEC instead – now that would be a mountain of evidence for YEC!
• This would be much more powerful proof for YEC than say something in a written text (like, say they found more DSS, and one of them said that animals don’t change over time, or such), because text can be interpreted differently, forged or altered by copyists, included or excluded from the canon, and so on.
• The above would also be more powerful evidence than a vision from God would be, because I can always recheck the evidence, but would only have my personal memory to rely on for the vision (even if it was completely convincing at the time). I bet all of us (me for sure) have had dreams in which we really think the dream is real, even for a while, only to think later “oh, yeah, that was a dream – how silly of me!”.

****************************************
Oh, and the idea of bipedal aliens as evidence –

We need to keep convergent evolution in mind here. It’s a safe bet that there would bet that alien life would have a lot of similarities, simply due to convergent evolution.

Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to examine life that evolved independently? Well, we can. Some lines of life on earth have been separate from others for a long time, and have evolved the same things. The classic examples are eyes and wings. Eyes have evolved independently at least a half dozen times (vertebrates, squid, rattlesnake pits, planaria, shrimp “back eyes”, annelid worms, and more. For flight, look at the wings of pterosaurs, birds, bats, flying fish and insects. Poison must have evolved separately hundreds of times, including dozens of different, independent venomous biters. Even specific animal forms, like the Tasmanian wolf and the gray wolf, show that some kind of “wolf like” creature is likely to evolve.

That same approach can be applied throughout the animal kingdom, and tested after each mass extinction. Grazers (horses, apatosaurs, etc)? They arise every time. Small scavengers (rats, some lizards, etc)? Sure thing. Complex brains have evolved at least four times, in octopi, parrots, dolphins and primates. Aliens can be expected to have two forward facing eyes because binocular vision is advantageous, and will be selected for. And so on. We can expect all of those seemingly "Earth like" things on an alien world.

For evidence of YEC, in aliens I’d look for exactly the same endogenous retroviruses in the same places as us, or exactly the same sequence of identically disabled psuedogenes, or some such.


In fact, looking at DNA, with so much unused DNA, why not spell out the first chapter of the Gospel of John in binary in the first chromosome of all creatures, both on earth and on the alien world? If God had wanted to be an undeniable micromanager, who wanted people to be YEC, that would have been trivially easy, and then we’d have YEC confirmation that no-one could deny, in every cell of our bodies. On a moment’s reflection, the lack of anything like that is quite stunning.

Papias

 

[Notedstrangeperson]

We need to keep convergent evolution in mind here. It’s a safe bet that there would bet that alien life would have a lot of similarities, simply due to convergent evolution.

I know Solarware and Gluadys brought it up earlier (sorry, I'm too lazy to re-write all of it).

Convergent evolution makes sense - on Earth. We all evolved from the same ancestor and face (roughly) the same challenges. But if you lived on Jupiter what would be the point of evolving legs? There's nothing to walk on. We used evolution on Earth as an example of how life began because, well, we have nothing to compare outselves to. And we never will until (if?) we discover aliens.

Human-like aliens might make me believe in Intelligent Design since it still leaves room for evolution. At a stretch I suppose it might also make me believe in OEC, since presumably Earth-like creatures would require an Earth-like planet.

If I owned an ultra-powerful telescope I may start to believe YEC if I saw a close-up of a new planet and thought "Funny, that wasn't there last week ..."

 

[Willtor]

Convergent evolution, to my mind, is a side issue. It would be very strange, indeed, to discover aliens that looked basically like us. On the other hand, it doesn't in any way impinge on the evidence we have for evolution, here. It isn't enough to say the probability of 'x' is vanishingly small (assuming it is vanishingly small). If the evidence points to 'x' then 'x' is not undermined because probability says that one's money would have been well-spent predicting '!x'.

To my mind, there really would have to be something here that caused us to say, "in spite of all the evidence, evolution prohibits this." Kent Hovind's idea of a monkey giving birth to a human would do that very well. It would break evolution in a fundamentally irreparable way. Evolution would not identify that as an improbability. It would identify it as an impossibility.

 

[Alive_Again]

<Alot of us here debate with Creationists (usually without succes ...) about what it would take for them to believe in evolution. So out of interest, what would it take for the TEs here to start believing in Creationism? And if you did which form would you choose: Young Earth? Old Earth? Intelligent Design?

It would take God telling us that in His Word. Apart from all arguments and contentions, since I became a Christian and was baptized in the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit time and time again has impressed that His Word is true and is the standard for all truth. God backs up the Word. He magnified His Word above His name, etc.

If you can hear that without closing an ear (i.e. yeah, yeah, yeah) then you can consider at least why someone who's listening to God would dare to take Him at His Word, even if you don't fully understand it.

I'm intrigued by the "gap theory". I'm not saying it is truth, but it could account for a much older earth and still have the Word true as it is written.

As Christians, the Holy Spirit will lead and guide us into all truth. All we have to do is have a humble and open heart, a teachable spirit, and seek the truth. I've had some very incredible personal experiences with God and they center around His Word and How He backs up what He says.

For starters, as far as evolution goes, it is not scientific. They put it in the textbooks as though it is, and it demonstrates a certain blindness. Don't close me off because I say that. The reason is that you have to be to duplicate that your hypothesis works in order for it to be scientific. They know it's impossible and yet they present it as such, even in college. So they are willingly ignorant of their own yardstick for scientific truth.

Christians tend to "blindly" believe the Word, because God is dwelling on the inside and He agrees with truth. The Word says everything reproduces after its own kind and it didn't spin off from some distant source. So, God's pretty big, and I don't want to argue with Him!

 

[Bushido216]

Crocoduck.

That would do it.