The Bible, Creationism, and Prophecy (part 1)

BrianCalgary

Scofflaw wrote:

Crikey! Not only is this argument by anecdote (look, here's one scientist that believes in Creation, there must be literally thousands), but the list contains an awful lot of people from the 19th century (Charles Babbage (1791-1871)) and most are in fields unrelated to evolution.

appalled,
Scofflaw

I checked some of their bios. Degrees in biology, physics, astronomy, chemistry, etc. I think that they would be surprised that they lived in the 19th century. I find the list to include the greats of the past which is fine. The point is it's a quick response to the post that there are no creation scientists. On the contrary there are plenty and with a few clicks they can be found.

the next link:
http://www.christiananswers.net/creation/people/home.html

(I do find the evolution list weak)

Scofflaw

Sorry, Brian - I didn't intend to suggest that anyone in the Creation Institute lived in the 19th century. Well, physically, anyway...:D


cordially,
Scofflaw

Scofflaw

wolfsbane wrote:

Scofflaw said:


Yes, that is my defination of the term - anyone who believes in evolution. Same as with 'creationist'.

Which, again, pre-supposes that you have won the debate, and that evolution is no more and no less scientific than creationism, which I do not accept.

I object to the term 'evolutionist', since evolution is scientifically tenable. I will accept, if you like, the term 'scientist', as being someone who believes in the methods of science.


cordially,
Scofflaw

wolfsbane

Son Goku said:

If the galaxy is 100,000 light years wide and the universe is only 6,000 years old. How are we receiving light from the other edge?

If Adam was one second old, how come he had a fully developed body? Answer: To be a man, he had to be mature instantly. The Universe had to have light and had to be there instantly. The stars would not have amazed man with God's power if they only saw a few. Yet that is one main reason for their existence, according to the Bible.

So I'm saying God not only created all thestars instantly, He also created the light they would produce as stars. Everything has its purpose.

(I'm ignoring the debates surrounding the speed of light and the size of the Universe).

robindch

> your website [...] about non living matter begetting non-living
> matter [...] doesn't answer the question.

One quick point -- it's not my website, it's owned by an organization based in Texas. More substantially, as I've pointed out before, evolution has nothing to do with biogenesis. They are separate things, they are not linked and they have nothing to do with each other. They are both interesting topics, but one can exist without the other. Now, to explain this in more detail:

Evolution is concerned only with why there are different forms of life. In summary, it explains this diversity by pointing out that offspring are generally different from parents and that some offspring reproduce more successfully than others. It is not due to 'survival-of-the-fittest' (which doesn't make much sense and evolutionists do not generally use the phrase), but to 'differential reproductive success' instead (which does make sense).

Biogenesis is a separate topic which only discusses how the process of life got started.

Since they are separate things, the fact that somebody might disagree with one topic does not invalidate the other topic. This means that you can disagree with biogenesis, but you can't then go on to say that this means that evolution doesn't exist. This is because they are not linked.

To put it in a nutshell, biogenesis describes how things got started, but not how they continued, while evolution describes how things continued, once they were started.

I hope I've been able to make the differences between the two topics clear.

On to your next question:

> If there is no God, how does life happen?

As you're interested in this topic, read this short page which describes the known probabilities behind the development of self-reproducing chemicals:

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/abioprob/abioprob.html

In summary, this description points out that we know how the constituent bits form, and that we have demonstrated that they can form in several different ways. It explains that generally we know how these things work together, and contines by pointing out that we have plausible mechanisms for linking the chemistry of non-self-replicating chemistry (rocks) to self-replicating chemistry (life).

In particular on this page, look at the differences between biogenesis (as understood by creationists) and biogenesis (as understood by chemists). Note that they are very different and the chemists' one is much more complicated, with many more steps. The simple diagram which creationists use is inaccurate and is not the one used by chemists.

> "the evolutionist says that 'there is no God and life evolved'"

It has been made clear many times on this board and elsewhere that evolution is a theory which describes why there are lots of different forms of life on Earth. It is not a religion. It says nothing about a god (or gods) -- this is what theology is about, not biology. You can believe in a god if you like and it doesn't make any difference to the facts that (for example) in hospitals, bacteria constantly evolve resistance to drugs, or that dogs are related to wolves, or that Avian flu can evolve to infect humans, to take a timely example.

If you can keep clear in you head the differences between evolution and biogenesis, and evolution and god, you may find that evolution is actually quite an interesting description of the way the world works and not a competing religion like you currently understand it to be.

> Then why does it seem as though evolutionists also say that there is no God?

Other than the committed and very vocal atheist, Richard Dawkins, I can't think of any evolutionists who do say that (see, for example, my posting here a couple of days ago).

However, just about every Creationist that I can think of -- yourself included (see post 467 above) -- does say that about evolutionists, which I find quite dishonest. From this, we can see that what evolutionists say about evolution is different from what creationists say about evolution. This explains why evolutionists like myself get so cheesed off discussing anything with creationists -- we are consistently misquoted and continually misrepresented by creationists (for example, Ken Ham). If creationists (I'm thinking of people like JC here, not your good self in the last day or two) took the time to read patiently what we write, they would realise that we are not the arrogant, immoral, inaccurate jackasses that we are continually painted by our opponents to be.

> There are many scientists who would classify themselves as creationists.

Statistics from Gallup suggest that around 700 current scientists in the USA are creationists. These are outbalanced by around 480,000 current scientists who are not creationists. In percentages, that's about 99.85% versus 0.15%. Outside the USA, the figures are estimated to drop to greater than 99.9% and less than 0.1%. The references for these figures are available here. In addition to this, you can find a list of 72 Nobel Laureates supporting evolution here. To my knowledge, there are no creationist Nobel Laureates from the disciplines of Chemistry, Physics or Physiology/Medicine.

This long posting has taken me around an hour or so to write -- in between long compiles through the course of today -- and I trust to your good nature that you will take a similar length of time to digest it.

BrianCalgary

robindch wrote:

> your website [...] about non living matter begetting non-living
> matter [...] doesn't answer the question.

One quick point -- it's not my website, it's owned by an organization based in Texas. .

I called it yours because you direct us there so often. I knew you didn't run it.

robindch wrote:

[[More substantially, as I've pointed out before, evolution has nothing to do with biogenesis. They are separate things, they are not linked and they have nothing to do with each other. They are both interesting topics, but one can exist without the other. Now, to explain this in more detail:

B]Evolution[/B] is concerned only with why there are different forms of life. In summary, it explains this diversity by pointing out that offspring are generally different from parents and that some offspring reproduce more successfully than others. It is not due to 'survival-of-the-fittest' (which doesn't make much sense and evolutionists do not generally use the phrase), but to 'differential reproductive success' instead (which does make sense).

Biogenesis is a separate topic which only discusses how the process of life got started.

Since they are separate things, the fact that somebody might disagree with one topic does not invalidate the other topic. This means that you can disagree with biogenesis, but you can't then go on to say that this means that evolution doesn't exist. This is because they are not linked.

To put it in a nutshell, biogenesis describes how things got started, but not how they continued, while evolution describes how things continued, once they were started.

I hope I've been able to make the differences between the two topics clear...

Very much so.



Thanks Robin. It does take time to digest and read things. And to your point, what I found very clearly developing on all of these posts was the same term meaning different things to different people. Real lack of communication

Scofflaw

wolfsbane wrote:

(I'm ignoring the debates surrounding the speed of light and the size of the Universe).

How very disingenuous of you. There are no debates surrounding the speed of light - it's used as a physical constant.

cordially,
Scofflaw

Son Goku

wolfsbane wrote:

If Adam was one second old, how come he had a fully developed body? Answer: To be a man, he had to be mature instantly. The Universe had to have light and had to be there instantly. The stars would not have amazed man with God's power if they only saw a few. Yet that is one main reason for their existence, according to the Bible.

So I'm saying God not only created all thestars instantly, He also created the light they would produce as stars. Everything has its purpose.

(I'm ignoring the debates surrounding the speed of light and the size of the Universe).

So he created a massive universe that looks old, with several old stars and several TeraJoules of light in transit?

Scofflaw

Son Goku wrote:

So he created a massive universe that looks old, with several old stars and several TeraJoules of light in transit?

There's certainly nothing to prevent an omnipotent deity doing so, although according to JC, you don't get any maintenance afterwards.


cordially,
Scofflaw

BrianCalgary

Son Goku wrote:

So he created a massive universe that looks old, with several old stars and several TeraJoules of light in transit?

Yes. At the wedding of Cana, He created the best wine from water. My winemaking buddies tell me that the best wine has to be aged. If he can create old wine, He can do it with rocks and light.

Son Goku

BrianCalgary wrote:

Yes. At the wedding of Cana, He created the best wine from water. My winemaking buddies tell me that the best wine has to be aged. If he can create old wine, He can do it with rocks and light.

I'm not saying he can't do it, in fact the fact that he can do it is crucial to my point.
If he literally made the universe look old, then is it any wonder that scientists think its old?

Or to put it another way how do we not know he didn't create it five seconds ago?

If the evidence is identical then shouldn't a scientist just use Occum's Razor and go with what it looks like?

Sapien

BrianCalgary wrote:

Yes. At the wedding of Cana, He created the best wine from water. My winemaking buddies tell me that the best wine has to be aged. If he can create old wine, He can do it with rocks and light.

And why would he do this?

BrianCalgary

Sapien wrote:

And why would he do this?

I guess because in order for the universe to work it needed aged rocks and in order to give us the stars to provide light at night and give us the heavens to gaze upon they to also needed to be aged.

BrianCalgary

Son Goku wrote:

I'm not saying he can't do it, in fact the fact that he can do it is crucial to my point.
If he literally made the universe look old, then is it any wonder that scientists think its old?

Or to put it another way how do we not know he didn't create it five seconds ago?

If the evidence is identical then shouldn't a scientist just use Occum's Razor and go with what it looks like?

It isn't a wonder that scientists think it's old. My geologist buddy and I debate the age of the earth quite a bit and we are both Christians.
What is Occum's Razor?

wolfsbane

Scofflaw said:

How very disingenuous of you. There are no debates surrounding the speed of light - it's used as a physical constant.

Hey, I'm just noting debates I have heard of. For example, New Scientist reports
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn6092

robindch

> It does take time to digest and read things.

Just wondering if you've had time to get through the rest of my post above?

samb

BrianCalgary wrote:

My geologist buddy and I debate the age of the earth quite a bit and we are both Christians.
?

Seems a little unfair, unless your a physicist or something.

Sapien

BrianCalgary wrote:

I guess because in order for the universe to work it needed aged rocks and in order to give us the stars to provide light at night and give us the heavens to gaze upon they to also needed to be aged.

I can't see how that would be the case. Humanity (and I'm assuming that the prospering of humanity is what you mean by the universe "work[ing]") would have gotten along just as well with a pitchy night sky and freshly solidified rocks. Any other reasons you can posit for this bizarre subterfuge by the creator?

robindch

Ha, the 500th thread posting -- will we ever reach a conclusion?

Sapien

robindch wrote:

Ha, the 500th thread posting -- will we ever reach a conclusion?

Not until we get JC to quote Occam's Razor in defense of an argument.

Scofflaw

robindch wrote:

Ha, the 500th thread posting -- will we ever reach a conclusion?

It's logically impossible captain. We're playing chess, and they're playing soccer, in different places, quite possibly at different times.

cordially,
Scofflaw

Morbert

pH wrote:

I'd have thought it's obvious, people who *believe* in evolution are evolutionists in the same way that those who believe in creation are creationists.

They're both just beliefs aren't they, why should evolutionists beliefs get taught in Science class, and not creationists beliefs ?

No. Evolution is not just a belief. It is a well substantiated scientific theory which addresses the fact that life changes and evolves over time.

---

BrianCalgary.... Once again, your post is misleading. Many of the scientists in the list you provide are from an era long before evolution was as rigorously studied as it is today. And many of them are involved in non-evolutionary study. The number of creation scientists is 0, as there is no scientific theory of creation. And the number of creation-ist scientists is vanishingly small. Whereas the number of Evolutionary biologists is huge. Less than 1% of scientists in the relevant fields* are creationists.

*Biology and geology.

----

And regarding the claim that God created the light "en route" to our planet... What evidence is there to suggest this, and how can it be tested using the scientific method.

wolfsbane

Morbert said:

And regarding the claim that God created the light "en route" to our planet... What evidence is there to suggest this, and how can it be tested using the scientific method.

1. It's there. 2. He created all things some several thousand years ago.

It cannot be proved or disproved by any scientific method I can think of. Doesn't make it any less true/untrue.

wolfsbane

Sapien said:

Humanity (and I'm assuming that the prospering of humanity is what you mean by the universe "work[ing]") would have gotten along just as well with a pitchy night sky and freshly solidified rocks. Any other reasons you can posit for this bizarre subterfuge by the creator?

Regarding the stars, man would have gotten on OK physically, but Scripture suggests the reason for such a magnificent display was spiritual. Romans 1:18 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, 19 because what may be known of God is manifest in them, for God has shown it to them. 20 For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse, 21 because, although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened. [underlining mine]. Also
Psalm 19:1 The heavens declare the glory of God;
And the firmament shows His handiwork.

Regarding rocks, could they have all the varieties of ore from freshly solidified rocks? What is a one second old rock composed of?

Morbert

wolfsbane wrote:

Morbert said:


1. It's there. 2. He created all things some several thousand years ago.

It cannot be proved or disproved by any scientific method I can think of. Doesn't make it any less true/untrue.

That is not evidence, that is a contention. Your failure to produce scientific evidence or support for the claim renders it irrelevant as a description of the natural world.

i.e. Give me a reason to believe what you say.

wolfsbane

Morbert said:

Your failure to produce scientific evidence or support for the claim renders it irrelevant as a description of the natural world.

I've told you how I think the starlight came to earth originally. You might not want to accept that, but given the concept of instantaneous creation of the universe, the physics of that is just as solid as those for an old universe. Same light, same distances, just a different snapshot in time. Nothing about the measurements of the light or the stars themselves would be different. So I could just as easily say to you, prove to me that it happened your way and not mine. It can't be done.

i.e. Give me a reason to believe what you say.

Because God says so. Neither you nor I were there, so it all comes down to believing Him or not.

Son Goku

wolfsbane wrote:

I've told you how I think the starlight came to earth originally. You might not want to accept that, but given the concept of instantaneous creation of the universe, the physics of that is just as solid as those for an old universe. Same light, same distances, just a different snapshot in time. Nothing about the measurements of the light or the stars themselves would be different. So I could just as easily say to you, prove to me that it happened your way and not mine. It can't be done.

Exactly, so we go with Occum's Razor.
The observational evidence fits General Relativity and QFT and both of those can predict and retrodict, so the scientific community goes with what they say.

If God created an old universe which looks exactly like what GR and QFT predict, then how are we to know any different?

robindch

> prove to me that it happened your way and not mine. It can't be done.

Don't you think it's a bit strange that quite a lot of evidence points in the direction of an old universe? For example, it's not just the light in transit, but also the cosmic background microwave radiation, the radioactivity of rocks on earth (and on the moon and in other cosmic debris), the distribution of the continents, the variation in magnetic particles on the seabed, the redshifting of distant stars, the existence of cool planets, moons and second- and third-cycle stars, the existence of black holes, and so on and so on.

I would like to hear why you think that god would go to the bother of creating all of these separate pieces of evidence which disagree with your interpretation of the bible? Wouldn't he be lying? Or could it be possible that your interpretation is wrong?

BTW, Brian -- I'm still waiting for you to reply to the second half of my posting from yesterday.

Morbert

wolfsbane wrote:

Morbert said:


I've told you how I think the starlight came to earth originally. You might not want to accept that, but given the concept of instantaneous creation of the universe, the physics of that is just as solid as those for an old universe. Same light, same distances, just a different snapshot in time. Nothing about the measurements of the light or the stars themselves would be different. So I could just as easily say to you, prove to me that it happened your way and not mine. It can't be done.



Because God says so. Neither you nor I were there, so it all comes down to believing Him or not.

Again... This is what you claim, but I have no reason to believe what you say because you have not presented evidence for what you say.

Sapien

wolfsbane wrote:

The heavens declare the glory of God;
And the firmament shows His handiwork.

Well, apparently not. Apparently it shows his trickery and sense of inadequacy with what he had actually created.

wolfsbane wrote:

Regarding rocks, could they have all the varieties of ore from freshly solidified rocks? What is a one second old rock composed of?

Oh dear. Metallic ores do not result from the ageing of rocks Elements can only be formed by nuclear processes. All metals found on Earth, with very few exceptions, were formed inside ancient stars that went nova aeons before the planet was formed from a great swirling cloud of stellar dust. Seems like a much simpler way of doing things.