Why ... (2)

[lasthero]

Good. So we finally agree. There are separate kinds that no matter how much evolution occurs, they never become something that they were not.

No one ever said evolution would make something into it something it wasn't.

 

[Loudmouth]

Where in any of my posts have I ever in anyway implied that a species suddenly appears out of a puff of smoke? This is absurd.

Then what are you proposing? What is ID/creationism other than the sudden appearance of species through supernatural magic?

They could very well share a common ancestry, I don't know. I don't really care. The point is that it is a common design in which all living forms are related. In fact, there were many components that would have been able to be used and in a random non-intelligent process it would seem more likely that some of the other elements available could have been utilized rather than the fixed ones we see in all life forms. It makes more sense from a design point of view that this is the case.

Given that there is a finite time period and finite resources you will always have a finite number of characteristics that become fixed in any lineage.

However, a supernatural designer could use unlimited numbers of designs, so why reuse a single one?

You have evidence to support such an event may have occurred. You however have no evidence of the universal common ancestor.

The evidence of the universal common ancestor is the evidence supporting universal common descent.

The evidence can be viewed as common ancestry and it may even be the case. One can assume based on a naturalistic worldview that this common ancestry is:

1. Created using only certain elements available while there was a multitude of equally available ones suitable for life.

2. That only common decent alone explains the fact that life is common in design.

3. That there is no other reason but for common decent for life forms to be grouped in a nested hierarchy.

Let's go back to the forensic science analogy. When a forensic scientist finds the suspect's fingerprints, DNA, shoe prints, tire prints, and fibers at a crime scene does the forensic scientist have to rule out the possibility that a deity planted all of that evidence at the crime scene before that evidence can be used in a court of law? Would you, as a juror, find the defendant not guilty because there is a possibility that God could have planted those pieces of evidence at the crime scene?

If not, why use the same excuse to dismiss the evidence for common ancestry?

1. We must conclude a priori that life could have only come into existence from a natural cause.

That is completely false. I am beginning to think that you have not read a single one of my posts.

If a deity created a simple RNA replicator that evolved into the biodiversity we see today then that would be consistent with the evidence. However, you still have a universal common ancestor and subsequent evolution.

If a deity created multiple, separate species that evolved into the species we see today then we would not be able to fit all life into a single nested hierarchy since there is no reason why separate species would fall into a nested hierarchy.

There is no reason to believe by observation that a common ancestor even ever existed.

There is every reason to conclude this. It is what the evidence indicates.

2. Evidence may support the concept of common decent but the concept itself is based on certain presuppositions. The first is that common decent is the only possible way to explain the evidence.

Again, go back to the forensic science analogy.

When we look at Epigenesis we see new discoveries that may challenge the nested hierarchy. Horizontal transfer and other perhaps unknown factors could be found that would cause this system to either be revised by the new information or be completely renewed, which happens in science as it did with the tree of life.

Epigenetics does not change the nested hierarchy whatsoever since it does not involve DNA sequence, and its effects are small and only last a few generations. As to horizontal genetic transfer, this will not solve the nested hierarchy produced by highly conserved features such as tRNA's. These relationships are no different than finding a suspect's fingerprints at a crime scene. You can argue all you want that God plants fingerprints at crime scenes, but there is no reason why someone should take you seriously.

In the end, you are trying to produce a role for God by pretending as if God's actions would exactly mimic a natural process for no other reason than inserting God into the process.

3. If it is true that only common decent explains the nested hierarchy. We must presuppose that there is no other explanation and without knowing all possible causes we can't say with total certainty that there would be no other cause. If common decent explains nested hierarchy we would assume that there would be no inconsistencies or anomalies if the decent is fixed. If true, we should see molecular evidence to substantiate the system but actually one must invoke molecular clocks, which in themselves are a problem.

Can you name any other situation where we must insert the actions of a deity when the naturalistic explanation is enough to explain the outcome?

If it could be shown that life was totally random and without limits to design, it would falsify design.

That would falsify evolution as well. You are being completely unreasonable, as usual.

 

[Loudmouth]

Lining up pictures of animals that appear similar is their way of proving evolution actually happened and that transitional species exist. It is pictures on paper. They have never actually observed, tested or repeated said "evidence".

So what features must a fossil have in order for you to accept it as transitional between humans and a common ancestor with other apes?

 

[Loudmouth]

I am aware of CERN and the Large Hadron Collider. In fact, the perfect liquid that they discovered I feel is supportive the the water in Genesis. I called and talked to them about the findings and it was very interesting.

Of course, there is no evidence that would ever convince you that you are wrong, so what is the point in pretending that evidence supports your claims? No matter what evidence is presented you will claim that God did it, no matter how consistent it is with natural processes.

You keep saying that logic, mathematics and universal laws are material without giving evidence for the material used for them. You are not following the evidence.

The material is particles, for about the thousandth time.

So again, where is the evidence for your supernatural claims? If there is no evidence for them, then why base claims on them?

I want you to understand that you don't have evidence for your own position.

I do have evidence for my position. That's the entire point.

This is quite false. I might question evidence that contradicts my worldview, I might change what I thought of my interpretations of evidence or of the Bible. The only thing I don't change is that God exists and the interpretations, knowledge or my understanding can be adjusted to make new determinations on all of them.

So what features must a fossil have in order for you to accept that it is evidence for evolution and not design? What shared genetic features?

Then why are we debating the issues? If you can't determine if something is true from false, you can't claim that you are "right" and I am "wrong". It might be right or true for you that the only way to know anything is through evidence but you contradict that statement because you can't know anything if there is no true or false. It then becomes a mute point.

You debate to find out if you are wrong. How else are you going to figure this out unless you allow your ideas to be challenged. If we accept the Popperian view of the world, we can never know that we are 100% correct, but we can discover that we are wrong. Falsification is a very important part of figuring out how the world works, and it is the one thing that you will not apply to ID/Creationism.

What? What did I claim that didn't exist? A universal common ancestor? There is no common ancestor anywhere to be found there.

The evidence says otherwise.

 

[Wiccan_Child]

Does the theorem not work on the gravitational laws?

The theorem doesn't apply to laws. It says a conservation law must exist if the Lagrangian function is invariant during changes to the coordinate system that describes it. What is conserved depends on what changes are made.

I would agree, however if we don't know that we have 99.999% we can't possibly know that we basically know what is going on

Of course. We can make decisions based on what we know, but we can't claim that the conclusions are correct because we don't know everything we need to know can't be quantified. We can know what we know but what we don't know might change everything we thought we knew.

You are arguing on the basis that we have the higher percentage of knowledge when in fact, we can't know what percentage we are working with. If we base a conclusion only knowing .01 % of all available criteria we are going to be lacking a great deal of information. IF we feel that we have 99.999% of the information when in fact we only have .01% our conclusions will be substantially insufficient. We have seen this time and time again in science. We think we know for all most certain that something is so, and then we grow more technically advanced and find we didn't know what we thought we knew. Which is fine, that is the reason behind the whole process. We just have to keep in mind that nothing is set in stone in the scientific arena.

That simply is not true. If we have only .01% of all available fossils on earth how do we arrive at the conclusion we have all we need to make any real conclusion? Take whale evolution. There is only 10 million years or so for the evolution needed to evolve to the modern whale. If there is a modern whale fossil that is found before that period of time it changes everything. If we were to find a modern whale 100 million years earlier it changes the whole picture.

There is a quite serious flaw in your statistical analysis.

You are saying that if we have only excavated 0.01% of all fossils, we are hardly suited to come to any solid conclusions, but if we have 99.999% of all fossils, we're much better suited. That is, the certainty of our conclusions depends on what percentage of all possible evidence we have acquired. But this percentage is completely arbitrary.

Suppose we have two seperate murders, one where the murderer left fingerprints and DNA, and one where only fingerprints were left. Forensics finds fingerprints at both scenes, but DNA at neither. So how certain can our conclusions be? We have only 50% of the evidence in case 1, but 100% of the evidence in case 2, so therefore our conviction is more certain in case 2 (perhaps not completely certainty, but still more certain that case 1). More generally, you're saying we can have more evidence convicting a guy in case one and less evidence in case 2, but because we have a higher percentage of all possible evidence, the conviction in case 2 is actually more certain despite having less evidence!

This is, of course, absurd: the certainty of conviction is based on the available evidence, and not on how much evidence we don't have. This is simply how science (and, indeed, mathematics) works.

With regards to fossils in particular, the problem with your analysis is that 0.01% of all fossils is still a lot of fossils, and it's that sheer number that's more important than the relative percentage. After all, the certainty of our conclusion cannot depend on how much else is left out there, so that percentage must be irrelevant.


Now, where you might be getting confused is that specific evidence, once found, might overturn all our theories. But we've already accounted for that in our confidence intervals: we always say "Evolution is 99% certain", not "Evolution is 100% certain", because it's of course possible that some new discovery does just so happen to debunk the whole thing. The problem is, we have so much evidence that our confidence asymptotes right up against 100%. If we had only scant evidence, it would be much lower. But never does it depend on the volume of as-yet unknown evidence.

It doesn't matter how many there are if it only comes to .01% of the entire possible fossil record. We base our dating on a rather circular criteria. We base our evolutionary distribution on what we have found in the strata and we sometimes base our strata on what is found in it. We see life forms in a strata and we place that life form as arising in that strata if we don't find any fossil evidence prior to that strata, however, many times we later find that same life form millions of years earlier than predicted.

Finding a fossil in a stratum gives us a minimum date for when it could have appeared, but there are other scientific fields that grant us maximum dates as well. Genetic analysis, such as molecular clocks, is the most useful of these.

Ultimately, conclusions in science, particularly in the multidisciplinary subject of evolutionary history, enjoy supporting evidence from a wide range of physically unrelated processes. The odds that any one process is wrong is slight, but the odds that all are wrong and still give exactly the same date, is infinitesimal. After all, if dendrochronology and radiometric dating are bogus techniques, isn't it a bit of a coincidence that they still give matching dates?

This phenomenon is called 'consilience', and means our conclusions are far more likely to be right than you might at first think. Yes, it's possible this was a fluke or that was mistaken, but having it's almost impossible that all these things were mistaken and that they were mistaken in just the right way to give just the same result!

I am not sure what point you are making here.

I am explaining that, despite your claims to the contrary, we have seen enormous variation and diversification in the past 100-200 million years.

I am saying that we should see the same type of branching that we have had in the past which take the organism in a completely different path and we don't see that in the last millions of years.

What makes you say that? During the Cenozoic era (the extinction of the dinosaurs onwards), mammals went from a few small rodents to dominating the land, and even proliferating in the sea and air. The descendants of our rat-like ancestors are as far flung as whales and mice

 

[Loudmouth]

These are not examples of what I was asking for.

Then what examples are you looking for?

What features must a fossil have in order for you to accept it as being transitional between us and a common ancestor with other apes? What shared genetic markers will you accept as evidence for common ancestry?

 

[Wiccan_Child]

Good. So we finally agree. There are separate kinds that no matter how much evolution occurs, they never become something that they were not.

Inasmuch as the descendants of theropods are always theropods, and the descendants of mammals are always mammals, yes. This is what evolution and evolutionists have always said: a vertebrate can never give birth to something other than a vertebrate.

What does happen is that the distant descendants can look very different (just compare crocodiles to owls). They're very different, but they're still ultimately both vertebrates, and they share all the common features thereof.

 

[Wiccan_Child]

These are not examples of what I was asking for.

Why not? Are these not intermediary transitions between one form and another? Evolution is under no onus to make things change (especially if they're well adapted to a static environment, such as the deep sea), but nevertheless you do sometimes get large changes. Why do the fossils documenting the transition from terrestrial mesonychids to aquatic cetaceans, not meet your criterion?

 

[Oncedeceived]

I know the context that you are working in, but be aware that you have (by your own free will ) chosen to post this in a physical sciences subforum, and not Exploring Christianity.

I think the nature of the discussion makes it a necessity to determine the parameters of the opposing sides.

So again, how did you determine that the universe is designed? By what testable criteria?

Well lets see what we can predict in the Christian worldview.

1. 1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

The prediction is that the universe had a beginning.

Evidence: In this lecture, I would like to discuss whether time itself has a beginning, and whether it will have an end. All the evidence seems to indicate, that the universe has not existed forever, but that it had a beginning, about 15 billion years ago.
The Beginning of Time - Stephen Hawking

2. 45:12 I have made the earth, and created man upon it: I, even my hands, have stretched out the heavens, and all their host have I commanded.

Evidence: In 1929 Edwin Hubble, working at the Carnegie Observatories in Pasadena, California, measured the redshifts of a number of distant galaxies. He also measured their relative distances by measuring the apparent brightness of a class of variable stars called Cepheids in each galaxy. When he plotted redshift against relative distance, he found that the redshift of distant galaxies increased as a linear function of their distance. The only explanation for this observation is that the universe was expanding.
The Expanding Universe

I'll say this: if the universe is infinitely big, then the answer is simply that it isn't expanding into anything; instead, what is happening is that every region of the universe, every distance between every pair of galaxies, is being "stretched", but the overall size of the universe was infinitely big to begin with and continues to remain infinitely big as time goes on, so the universe's size doesn't change, and therefore it doesn't expand into anything. If, on the other hand, the universe has a finite size, then it may be legitimate to claim that there is something "outside of the universe" that the universe is expanding into. However, because we are, by definition, stuck within the space that makes up our universe and have no way to observe anything outside of it, this ceases to be a question that can be answered scientifically. So the answer in that case is that we really don't know what, if anything, the universe is expanding into.
Curious About Astronomy: What is the universe expanding into? Emphasis mine.

Another prediction is that the host of heaven should be governed and have "commands".

Kepler's Laws

Johannes Kepler, working with data painstakingly collected by Tycho Brahe without the aid of a telescope, developed three laws which described the motion of the planets across the sky.
1. The Law of Orbits: All planets move in elliptical orbits, with the sun at one focus.
2. The Law of Areas: A line that connects a planet to the sun sweeps out equal areas in equal times.
3. The Law of Periods: The square of the period of any planet is proportional to the cube of the semimajor axis of its orbit.
Kepler's laws were derived for orbits around the sun, but they apply to satellite orbits as well.

http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/kepler.html#c6

Another verse which can be said to agree with the above is:

14 And God said: 'Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days and years;


3. Hebrews 11:3
By faith we understand that bthe 3worlds were framed by the word of God, so that the things which are seen were not made of things which are visible.

The prediction is that the universe which is seen is made of things which are not seen.

Evidence:

Everything is made of atoms. That is the key hypothesis. The most important hypothesis in all of biology, for example, is that everything that animals do, atoms do. In other words, there is nothing that living things do that cannot be understood from the point of view that they are made of atoms acting according to the laws of physics. This was not known from the beginning: it took some experimenting and theorizing to suggest this hypothesis, but now it is accepted, and it is the most useful theory for producing new ideas in the field of biology.
http://www.informationphilosopher.com/solutions/scientists/feynman/

and:


Most of the Universe is invisible. Understanding these unseable elements can be an important step in working out how the entire Universe works.

http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20130912-probing-the-invisible-univers

4. [Jesus] is the image of the invisible God, the first-born [prototokos] of all creation; for in him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or authorities [these words in Greek refer to the hierarchical angelic powers]---all things were created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the first-born from the dead, that in everything he might be pre-eminent. For in him all the fulness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.

The prediction is that some kind of force keep the universe together.


Evidence:

Invisible matter helps to hold the Universe together.
BBC Universe – Dark matter: A chunk of the Universe is missing

5.
Isaiah 45:18 - For thus saith the LORD that created the heavens; God himself that formed the earth and made it; he hath established it, he created it not in vain, he formed it to be inhabited: I [am] the LORD; and [there is] none else.

The prediction is that if God created the universe we will see that he established it (design) and that life would be found in it.

Evidence: The appearance of design.


Evolution is very possibly not, in actual fact, always gradual. But it must be gradual when it is being used to explain the coming into existence of complicated, apparently designed objects, like eyes. For if it is not gradual in these cases, it ceases to have any explanatory power at all. Without gradualness in these cases, we are back to miracle, which is simply a synonym for the total absence of explanation. River out of Eden (1995) p.83 Richard Dawkins



The illusion of purpose is so powerful that biologists themselves use the assumption of good design as a working tool.
River out of Eden (1995) p.98




Biology is the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose. The Blind Watchmaker (1996) p.1

And there is a great deal of scientific evidence that must be taken as a whole, evidence that does not show gods to be of any significance. Take the example of the speed of the hypothetical graviton we discussed earlier.

How does one determine that God would be of no significance?

That the table is solid is the illusion, one of those illusions that are common occurrence in our universe. The appearance of design is not necessarily evidence of design.

This of course is declared to be true based on only we see "illusions" in our universe? If that were true, everything that we "see" could be an illusion including all that evidence of ToE.

No problem. I have Fred.

Yes, and others have pink unicorns. However, is Fred considered factual to anyone other than yourself? No? Well it seems that you are the only one to have this deity. Shall we stack up what is know about Fred and what he claims against what God claims and see which one comes up with the most evidence for their claims. Does Fred have a book that tells us what we should expect from Fred and what we should see if Fred exists? No? well seems that Fred is pretty empty handed when supporting his existence. Would you care to try for pink unicorns?

Bible passages do not count as evidence.

No, I would agree with that. I would say that evidence that is predicted by them is.

So where is this "scientific evidence would show that indeed something or someone holds together the universe"?

See above.

Can you present it in the form of a testable, falsifiable hypothesis?

See above.

Yes in the Christian worldview. What the bible says is irrelevant. Define "God" in some measurable, testable way.

If the Bible says God claims something and it is shown to have evidence to support it, that is a testable.

How did you determine that something existed prior to the existence of the universe? How do we know that question even makes sense?

There is no problem with that in the Christian worldview, the materialistic one is the one in which no sense is made of it.

Can you choose to not believe in deities for a week? Or a different one?

This is nonsensical.

I am not saying that we don't have some form of free will.

Explain please?

Can you do me the courtesy of answering my question before adding another?

I did. I answered and asked in the same response.

What would it feel like if free will was an illusion?

The same as it would feel if all life was an illusion.

 

[Loudmouth]

Well lets see what we can predict in the Christian worldview.

Why would the christian worldview predict that separately created species would fall into a nested hierarchy?

 

[Oncedeceived]

Why not? Are these not intermediary transitions between one form and another? Evolution is under no onus to make things change (especially if they're well adapted to a static environment, such as the deep sea), but nevertheless you do sometimes get large changes. Why do the fossils documenting the transition from terrestrial mesonychids to aquatic cetaceans, not meet your criterion?

I mean more recently in the last say...20 million years?

 

[Oncedeceived]

No one ever said evolution would make something into it something it wasn't.

No, they didn't but they have claimed that there are not separate kinds in evolution.

 

[lasthero]

No, they didn't but they have claimed that there are not separate kinds in evolution.

Who claimed that? How can you even make that claim without some understanding of what a kind is?

 

[Loudmouth]

I mean more recently in the last say...20 million years?

How about the last 5 million years?

 

[Davian]

These are not examples of what I was asking for.

In this post you said "I have debated with the best of them. I have debated with people that held PhD's or were working on them. Believe me when I say that I am well versed in the mechanics of ToE and many other scientific studies. When I doubt anything I will go online or to the Library to gain the necessary information to be informed enough to make intelligent conversation on the subject."

Are you are making the claim that you can debate at a PhD level on the subject of evolution? If you are, one might expect you to be more explicit in what you expect to see.

Just sayin'.

 

[OllieFranz]

Don't forget that even here, there's no actual transition: therapods never become something other than theropods, and all their descendants are still theropods. The term 'bird', inasmuch as English allows, refers to a specific subset of theropods. Birds are still therapods, just as cats are mammals and whales are vertebrates. It's in line 1 of the Wiki article.

Good. So we finally agree. There are separate kinds that no matter how much evolution occurs, they never become something that they were not.

That's what we've been saying all along. The evidence for evolution is in its nested hierarchies. Once a sub-population splits from the mother population (speciation), any changes in either population will not, can not, occur in the other. Even if the other population or another daughter sub-poplation thereof is constrained by the same environmental pressures, the response will be different. Therapods developed warm-bloodedness and needed insulation for the cooler times, and so developed feathers and down.Pelycosaurs developed warm-bloodedness and also needed insulation. Their mammalian descendents developed hair and fur.

 

[OllieFranz]

No, they didn't but they have claimed that there are not separate kinds in evolution.

No they haven't. Common ancestry does not mean that kinds can't exist. But to answer whether they do exist, we need to know what a kind is.

No Creationist wants to define "kind" in a way that can be used for scientific comparisons. I have suggested that a kind is similar to a clade, with one exception. If Special creation is true, then the root species of each kind is unrelated to any other root species. Creationists sometimes call these root species "baramins," a word they coined by combining the Hebrew words for "created" and "kind."

If common ancestry is true, then the root species of the clades can be combined into new, larger clades, producing a nested hierarchy. We see a series of nested hierarchies, and they go down, down, down. apparently to a common ancestor. This argues for common ancestry.

 

[Davian]

I think the nature of the discussion makes it a necessity to determine the parameters of the opposing sides.

What "sides"? Science vs not-science?

Well lets see what we can predict in the Christian worldview.

Not gonna put aside that crutch, I see. Well, let's take a look at it.

1. 1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

The prediction is that the universe had a beginning.

Evidence: In this lecture, I would like to discuss whether time itself has a beginning, and whether it will have an end. All the evidence seems to indicate, that the universe has not existed forever, but that it had a beginning, about 15 billion years ago.
The Beginning of Time - Stephen Hawking

Actually, when you look at the story, it starts with a universe already in progress, already with a resident god, looking for something to do.

Boredom, I would guess.

Interestingly, the universe-already-in-progress also has support from the scientific community, so you could claim the bible was right either way.

Prediction failed.

2. 45:12 I have made the earth, and created man upon it: I, even my hands, have stretched out the heavens, and all their host have I commanded.

Evidence: In 1929 Edwin Hubble, working at the Carnegie Observatories in Pasadena, California, measured the redshifts of a number of distant galaxies. He also measured their relative distances by measuring the apparent brightness of a class of variable stars called Cepheids in each galaxy. When he plotted redshift against relative distance, he found that the redshift of distant galaxies increased as a linear function of their distance. The only explanation for this observation is that the universe was expanding.
The Expanding Universe

I'll say this: if the universe is infinitely big, then the answer is simply that it isn't expanding into anything; instead, what is happening is that every region of the universe, every distance between every pair of galaxies, is being "stretched", but the overall size of the universe was infinitely big to begin with and continues to remain infinitely big as time goes on, so the universe's size doesn't change, and therefore it doesn't expand into anything. If, on the other hand, the universe has a finite size, then it may be legitimate to claim that there is something "outside of the universe" that the universe is expanding into. However, because we are, by definition, stuck within the space that makes up our universe and have no way to observe anything outside of it, this ceases to be a question that can be answered scientifically. So the answer in that case is that we really don't know what, if anything, the universe is expanding into.
Curious About Astronomy: What is the universe expanding into? Emphasis mine.

Cherry picking the bible?

Do you cut out or stand by the bits that would refer to a flat Earth, and Earth with corners, Sun that orbits an immovable Earth?

This is why I don't debate the bible. It becomes a rabbit hole through a big book of multiple choice.

Another prediction is that the host of heaven should be governed and have "commands".

Kepler's Laws

Johannes Kepler, working with data painstakingly collected by Tycho Brahe without the aid of a telescope, developed three laws which described the motion of the planets across the sky.
1. The Law of Orbits: All planets move in elliptical orbits, with the sun at one focus.
2. The Law of Areas: A line that connects a planet to the sun sweeps out equal areas in equal times.

Is this the weak anthropic principle? If there were no laws like those we observe we would not be here to observe them?

We are right back to the appearance of design is not evidence of design point.

3. The Law of Periods: The square of the period of any planet is proportional to the cube of the semimajor axis of its orbit.
Kepler's laws were derived for orbits around the sun, but they apply to satellite orbits as well.

http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/kepler.html#c6

Another verse which can be said to agree with the above is:

14 And God said: 'Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days and years;

The moon is a light? or a reflector of light?

Do you recall the incident with Bill Nye? Where people angrily stormed out when he said the moon was not a light?

Bill Nye Boo’d In Texas For Saying The Moon Reflects The Sun (Really???)

As you did not include a way to test or falsify these predictions, there is no point in going further with them.

3. Hebrews 11:3
By faith we understand that bthe 3worlds were framed by the word of God, so that the things which are seen were not made of things which are visible.

The prediction is that the universe which is seen is made of things which are not seen.

Evidence:

Everything is made of atoms. That is the key hypothesis. The most important hypothesis in all of biology, for example, is that everything that animals do, atoms do. In other words, there is nothing that living things do that cannot be understood from the point of view that they are made of atoms acting according to the laws of physics. This was not known from the beginning: it took some experimenting and theorizing to suggest this hypothesis, but now it is accepted, and it is the most useful theory for producing new ideas in the field of biology.
http://www.informationphilosopher.com/solutions/scientists/feynman/

and:


Most of the Universe is invisible. Understanding these unseable elements can be an important step in working out how the entire Universe works.

And other than this post hoc rationalization, where has the bible assisted in these discoveries?

Again, nothing testable or falsifiable.

4.

[Jesus] is the image of the invisible God, the first-born [prototokos] of all creation; for in him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or authorities [these words in Greek refer to the hierarchical angelic powers]---all things were created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the first-born from the dead, that in everything he might be pre-eminent. For in him all the fulness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.

The prediction is that some kind of force keep the universe together.


Evidence:

Invisible matter helps to hold the Universe together.
BBC Universe – Dark matter: A chunk of the Universe is missing

So, "God" is the force that explains the astronomical observations for the rotational speed of galaixes and gravitational lensing and such?

You are back to trivializing this god of yours, when you use it to fill the gaps in scientific knowledge. "God is the force that enables us to have flush toilets..."

More god-of-the-gaps.

5.

Isaiah 45:18 - For thus saith the LORD that created the heavens; God himself that formed the earth and made it; he hath established it, he created it not in vain, he formed it to be inhabited: I [am] the LORD; and [there is] none else.

The prediction is that if God created the universe we will see that he established it (design) and that life would be found in it.

Evidence: The appearance of design.


Evolution is very possibly not, in actual fact, always gradual. But it must be gradual when it is being used to explain the coming into existence of complicated, apparently designed objects, like eyes. For if it is not gradual in these cases, it ceases to have any explanatory power at all. Without gradualness in these cases, we are back to miracle, which is simply a synonym for the total absence of explanation. River out of Eden (1995) p.83 Richard Dawkins



The illusion of purpose is so powerful that biologists themselves use the assumption of good design as a working tool.
River out of Eden (1995) p.98




Biology is the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose. The Blind Watchmaker (1996) p.1

Have you read these books?

I have yet to see your response to my repeated question: By what testable criteria do you determine if something is designed?

Will you be going back to those posts of mine you skipped?

How does one determine that God would be of no significance?

Have we not had this discussion about you shirking the burden of evidence?

The onus is on you to establish the existence of, and significance of, your particular choice of gods.

However, for me I feel I can determine the significance of gods by the inability of posters like yourself to provide their evidence in the fashion of a testable, falsifiable hypothesis.

This of course is declared to be true based on only we see "illusions" in our universe? If that were true, everything that we "see" could be an illusion including all that evidence of ToE.

As long as the illusion ( or simulation) is consistent and testable, science can proceed. Water (as ice crystals) gives away its molecular structure even without knowledge of atoms.

Yes, and others have pink unicorns. However, is Fred considered factual to anyone other than yourself? No? Well it seems that you are the only one to have this deity.

The appeal to popularity fallacy?

Shall we stack up what is know about Fred and what he claims against what God claims and see which one comes up with the most evidence for their claims. Does Fred have a book that tells us what we should expect from Fred and what we should see if Fred exists? No? well seems that Fred is pretty empty handed when supporting his existence. Would you care to try for pink unicorns?

I make no claims that the existence of Fred can be established by any objective means. He is only there to fill the gaps. I can write a quick book about him if you like. Appeal to human emotion, prejudices, need for justice, etc, with some hot gypsies thrown in.

How about your god? Is it detectable by any objective means?

No, I would agree with that. I would say that evidence that is predicted by them is.

See above.

See above.

I asked, Can you present it in the form of a testable, falsifiable hypothesis?

If the Bible says God claims something and it is shown to have evidence to support it, that is a testable.

Then present it in the form of a testable, falsifiable hypothesis. Define "God" in some measurable, testable way.

There is no problem with that in the Christian worldview, the materialistic one is the one in which no sense is made of it.

Only in that strawman version you carry around.

This is nonsensical.

Do you not have free will? Can you choose to not believe in deities for a week? Or a different one?

Explain please?

Not until we make progress here.

I did. I answered and asked in the same response.

The same as it would feel if all life was an illusion.

Perhaps you should stay out of the "free will" rabbit hole for now.

Are you going to present your evidence in the form of a testable, falsifiable hypothesis, or not?

 

[Cheeky Monkey]

Good. So we finally agree. There are separate kinds that no matter how much evolution occurs, they never become something that they were not.

If you replace the humpty dumpty term "kinds" with "taxa" you are correct and that's exactly what evolutionary theory predicts.

 

[Oncedeceived]

How about the last 5 million years?

Well this fits with my request, I am looking for more of a change to the body plan. More like whale evolution.