The Bible, Creationism, and Prophecy (part 1)

AtomicHorror

Not going to discuss the evidence bit here, since we can do that in BC&P.

wolfsbane wrote: »

The scientific bit is indeed to support the Biblical claims.

No, just to create the appearance of support. You'll have to (not) take my word at that, since you can't assess the science, just the people.

wolfsbane wrote: »

No, you are just missing the truth about their stated purpose and confusing that with the science they use to support it. And choosing to dismiss their scientific work. Try to separate their religious claims from their scientific argument and give some credit to opposing scientific arguments.

If I ask them if the veracity of the bible is falsifiable, they will say no. Not scientists. Whether they are right is certainly another matter, but they're not using science to ascertain that.

wolfsbane wrote: »

I know the latter is difficult for many scientists. The comedy show, The Big Bang Theory humourously captured this. Two of the scientists were engaged to be married, when in discussion with their friends they find out that one holds to String Theory and the other doesn't. But how would they raise the children? What would they tell them? So it was a deal-breaker and they parted.

String theory is falsifiable and despite its name is an hypothesis. We can hypothetical determine it to be correct or not with evidence, so pursuing that goal is science. We've already falsified 6 day creation, to overturn that would require strong evidence for creation, not a bunch of nitpicky attacks on various scientific methods which don't pan out.

Mark Hamill

wolfsbane wrote: »

Maybe I am defining subjective in a different sense from you. When I think of subjective morality, I think of an act that is deemed moral by one but not so by another. Their opinion is subjective. The act is either moral or not, ie. objective.

But you think that any act is inherently moral if its done by god, dont you? Or can i set some bears on youths who are insulting me, or kill a whole group of people living somewhere were i want to live and be moral?

wolfsbane wrote: »

That is not God's definition. He says they knew His will, but did not know good and evil. Maybe they only knew good. Just how that works the Bible doesn't say.

Maybe, but without the bible being any more explicit, its an awfully ambiguous. Maybe they only know good, but the definition of good is gods will, so by him telling them something, they know his will. But they dont know anything of evil, of what it is to defy gods will, of why thats something they shouldn't do. They only realised why its wrong after eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

wolfsbane wrote: »

That is psychology of today, not of pre-Fall times. They had no fallen nature.

And yet they fell. Does this not imply that the reason for falling came from outside of them, ie it wasn't their fault, and so they shouldn't be punished?

wolfsbane wrote: »

Certainly, evil arose from good.

And god is good, the source of all goodness, so therefore he is the source of evil too.

wolfsbane wrote: »

As above, their opinion is subjective, not the act.

Then i can do the acts that god has done and still be considered moral, because its the acts themselves are moral, not who does them

wolfsbane wrote: »

There was nothing that forced Adam to sin.

What about the serpent? And the fact he had no knowledge of evil, and therefore wouldn't know the possible consequences of doing evil worked against him.

wolfsbane wrote: »

Circumstances did not force him to sin - he was free to sin or not to sin. You confuse God's knowing he would with God making him do so. God permitted him to sin, not made him sin.

You forget that god didn't just know he would sin, he created him knowing he would sin. God wasn't powerless to alter adams creation to prevent him to sin, he wasn't powerless to let adam know he would be tempted and what the outcome would be if he did sin.

wolfsbane wrote: »

Yes, He decided the outcome would be permitted to happen. That does not mean He made it happen.

God decided the outcome, pure and simple. He didn't just permit them to happen, he created every aspect of the circumstances leading up to them, moulding them to get the outcome he desired.

wolfsbane wrote: »

Seems clear enough to me, for I do not confuse permission with commandment.

But if someones freewill is subject to the permission of someone else, then its not really free, especially when that someone is an omnipotent omniscient being who has no qualms about altering peoples nature to force them to love him when he feels like it.

wolfsbane wrote: »

Because they had free-will, an ability to will to obey God or disobey Him.

But that "freewill" was moulded by circumstances created by an omnipotent omniscient deity who knew how that "freewill" would be changed by the circumstances he purposefully created. That deity created that "freewill" from the ground up, knowing exactly when and how it would will for or against him.

wolfsbane wrote: »

Want only in the sense of tolerating it while He accomplishes His perfect end. God said Yes to the Fall in order to bring His salvation to its fulfilment. He did not approve of the Fall, but did not let it alter His purpose. Man's sin was overidden by His grace.

But god can have it any way he wants, so the fact that this way is the way it is, it means it is the way he wants

wolfsbane wrote: »

No, it's not. Circumstances may contribute something to one's decision, but they do not determine it.

Someones nature is a mix of what nature they where born with (ie what god gave them) and the circumstances that alter that nature (those circumstances being created by god). One set of circumstances can effect another by altering how you see the world, your opinion of people, just by increasing your experience with an activity or skill and this can change the way you decide what to do. God sees all circumstances like a web, he knows that by changing one thing in one circumstances (ie letting you be lucky and finishing a particular shot in snooker, say) it can make you more confident and result in you trying it in more circumstances. To god, one set of circumstances is a tool for getting some certaoin result in another set of circumstances.

wolfsbane wrote: »

Influence, fine. But not determine.

This is god your talking about! He doesn't just "influence", there is no possiblity for anythging other than his will to happen when he alters something, he's omnipotent and omniscient!

wolfsbane wrote: »

And Adam & Eve had so much more going for them than going against them: God's presence, a perfect world vs Satan's suggestion they get more knowledge.

Gods presence and a perfect world and all it took was a suggestion for the to sin. You would think that god would have prepared them to resist a suggestion, that is unless he wanted them to sin...

wolfsbane wrote: »

Again, that is a presupposition of yours, that God made them sin. But God works out His end in spite of man's sin.

Seeing as god has the power to stop man sinning, but doesn't, it seems that god works out his end because of mans sin.

AtomicHorror

wolfsbane wrote: »

I appreciate your interaction with the material. As I'm not qualified to comment on the details, I am happy that anyone who wants to do so can access the creationist sites for their side of the argument.

Hang on now, you've decided that the source is correct and that it supports your position. So I refute this and suddenly we're back to "I'm not qualified to comment on the details". In the other thread you once again linked us to the RATE data as evidence that radioisotope data is flawed but you can't explain to me how it shows this and can't answer rebuttals. What good are these sources to you or to others who won't try to understand them? In this context they only serve as a meaningless reassurance that the science has been done.

Read back on my point about unique trait combinations- it requires no specific scientific knowledge and it makes quite perfect sense by logic alone. It is not falsified by the existence of HGT, but would be falsified by the breaking of the tree in the absence of HGT. The tree as it stands says, at the very least, that all vertebrates originated in some manner from a single common ancestor. Evolution says this is a relationship by descent. Creation seems to have no answer.

kiffer

I thought I'd post this here rather than in the other thread... seeing as they'll most likely be merged anyway...

It is wolfsbane's opinion that we reject creation science ideas out of hand because they are ideas produced creationists...

Take for example the work of the RATE group and their "Decaying decay rates" hypothesis, do I discard it out of hand? Not exactly but maybe it looks that way...

Let me run you through my thoughts upon reading about the ideas in Snellings papers and elsewhere.

First quickly what you, the observer, sees of my reaction.
A. Snelling/RATE group: "Decay Rates have changed such that 1.5 Ga of worth of decay has taken place with in the the time it takes the Po to diffuse from Zircon to nearby Biotite..."
kiffer: "... That's stupid. There are lots of things wrong with that."

A lot happens in that ellipse, much of which can be summed up as "what else would that mean?"

1, hummm there's something wrong with that...
2, what evidence do they have for this assumption?
3, I think that just they've taken the amount of decay we both acknowledge has happened and shoe horned it into 6ka.
4, ok... but does it work?
5, what else would that mean based on what I know of other things about rocks and radioactive decay...
6, decay produces heat ... faster decay, more heat*.
7, Alpha, Beta decay and spontaneous fission rates (for all elements involved) would all have to change by the proportional amounts amounts to keep everything balanced.
8, what would cause a change in alpha decay? change in the strong force? or would all the nuclear forces need to change... What else does that mean? Would otherwise stable elements become radioactive at these extremes...?
9, ...
...
n -1, ... if the decay rates (across the board) are so accelerated that millions of years worth(at today's rates) of Po is generated with in the required time frame then wont the decay rate of Po be similarly accelerated... meaning less time for transport to sites in the biotite causing Snelling's whole model to fail...
n, doesn't this count as God making the Earth look old?


It goes on like this, some more technical objections/reactions some less technical... and that's before I went and looked at what others were saying in response to the rate groups hypothesis.
After reading up on the issues, I'm totally happy with my initial reaction.

Wolfsbane... a response (which you don't understand), to a statement (that you don't understand) is not dismissing things out of hand.
I think everyone here tries to give logical accessible answers/responses which are not too hard to actually follow.


(*The RATE group acknowledges there is a heat problem, but frankly downplays it as if it's a minor issue... in the same way excess heat was a minor problem for the people of Hiroshima)

Galvasean

PDN wrote: »

I'm not sure how we ended up with 2 Creationism threads. Anyone got a really good reason why they shouldn't be merged?

I would actively encourage them being merged.

AtomicHorror

kiffer wrote: »

Wolfsbane... a response (which you don't understand), to a statement (that you don't understand) is not dismissing things out of hand.

Well it may or may not be, the point is that Wolfie can't make that judgement. He's assuming that our dismissals are out of hand, but since he can't assess our justifications, it is just assumption.

AtomicHorror

PDN wrote: »

I'm not sure how we ended up with 2 Creationism threads. Anyone got a really good reason why they shouldn't be merged?

Probably not. The only distinction I can see in this one is a reluctance to get into the specifics...

wolfsbane wrote: »

The dating methods are in dispute. For example, see the work of the RATE group:
Radiometric dating and old ages in disarray
http://creation.com/radiometric-dating-and-old-ages-in-disarray

Helium evidence for a young world continues to confound critics
http://creation.com/helium-evidence-for-a-young-world-continues-to-confound-critics

A single research project would not equal "in dispute" even if it were quite a good one. We've already discussed why the RATE group were not convincing and even demonstrably wrong. You don't understand their findings (as far as we can tell) or our objections. But you're happy enough to conclude that we're just being contrary, dismissive or in some cases delusional.

wolfsbane

AtomicHorror wrote: »

Probably not. The only distinction I can see in this one is a reluctance to get into the specifics...



A single research project would not equal "in dispute" even if it were quite a good one. We've already discussed why the RATE group were not convincing and even demonstrably wrong. You don't understand their findings (as far as we can tell) or our objections. But you're happy enough to conclude that we're just being contrary, dismissive or in some cases delusional.

Yes, it is a matter of character judgment for me, as I'm not qualified to assess the scientific argument. So I have equally well qualified scientists on both sides of the argument, but only one side saying the other aren't scientists/aren't doing science.

I have a choice:
1. Say the creationist scientists I personally know to be godly men are in fact liars, presenting non-science as science.

2. Say the evolutionary scientists are prejudiced or too sure of their case and so are dismissive of the other side.

All I have encountered so far makes the latter the certain choice.

I don't have a problem with a scientist who says the creation scientific argument would require so much revision of current assumptions that it must be unlikely; that it has many objections to overcome; that he prefers the current explanation.

As long as he acknowledges the evolutionary argument has its share of objections to overcome; and that the creationist case is scientific, even if coming to the wrong conclusions.

If he treats the creationists' arguments like he does any other competing scientific argument, then he is being fair.

wolfsbane

Mark Hamill said:

Quote:
Originally Posted by wolfsbane
Maybe I am defining subjective in a different sense from you. When I think of subjective morality, I think of an act that is deemed moral by one but not so by another. Their opinion is subjective. The act is either moral or not, ie. objective.
But you think that any act is inherently moral if its done by god, dont you? Or can i set some bears on youths who are insulting me, or kill a whole group of people living somewhere were i want to live and be moral?

Yes, for God - their Judge - it would be moral, but not for you and me.

Quote:
Originally Posted by wolfsbane
That is not God's definition. He says they knew His will, but did not know good and evil. Maybe they only knew good. Just how that works the Bible doesn't say.
Maybe, but without the bible being any more explicit, its an awfully ambiguous. Maybe they only know good, but the definition of good is gods will, so by him telling them something, they know his will. But they dont know anything of evil, of what it is to defy gods will, of why thats something they shouldn't do. They only realised why its wrong after eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

No, they knew it was wrong because God said not to. Their relationship to God would make that evident - they knew Him face to face, knew He was God and they His creatures.

And yet they fell. Does this not imply that the reason for falling came from outside of them, ie it wasn't their fault, and so they shouldn't be punished?

No, it comes with a free-will - the ability to choose to obey God or not.

Quote:
Originally Posted by wolfsbane
Certainly, evil arose from good.
And god is good, the source of all goodness, so therefore he is the source of evil too.

Arose from need not mean caused by. My act of kindness in giving a beggar £5.00 might give rise to an on-looker mugging me for my wallet. I did not cause him to rob me, but it arose from the good I was doing.

Quote:
Originally Posted by wolfsbane
As above, their opinion is subjective, not the act.
Then i can do the acts that god has done and still be considered moral, because its the acts themselves are moral, not who does them

You forget the proper authority aspect; what may be right in itself may be wrong for you to do.

Quote:
Originally Posted by wolfsbane
There was nothing that forced Adam to sin.
What about the serpent? And the fact he had no knowledge of evil, and therefore wouldn't know the possible consequences of doing evil worked against him.

The serpent was Satan, who knew all about evil.

Quote:
Originally Posted by wolfsbane
Circumstances did not force him to sin - he was free to sin or not to sin. You confuse God's knowing he would with God making him do so. God permitted him to sin, not made him sin.
You forget that god didn't just know he would sin, he created him knowing he would sin. God wasn't powerless to alter adams creation to prevent him to sin, he wasn't powerless to let adam know he would be tempted and what the outcome would be if he did sin.

Correct. But altering Adam so he couldn't sin would have been to remove his free-will. And God was not obliged to re-enforce His clear commandment. And He did tell them the consequences if they sinned.

Quote:
Originally Posted by wolfsbane
Yes, He decided the outcome would be permitted to happen. That does not mean He made it happen.
God decided the outcome, pure and simple. He didn't just permit them to happen, he created every aspect of the circumstances leading up to them, moulding them to get the outcome he desired.

As I said before, circumstances do not make us sin.

But if someones freewill is subject to the permission of someone else, then its not really free,

God did not touch Adam's free-will. He was left to do as he pleased about God's command.

especially when that someone is an omnipotent omniscient being who has no qualms about altering peoples nature to force them to love him when he feels like it.

God's intervention after the Fall is another matter. It has nothing to do with how He treated Adam before the Fall.

Quote:
Originally Posted by wolfsbane
Because they had free-will, an ability to will to obey God or disobey Him.
But that "freewill" was moulded by circumstances created by an omnipotent omniscient deity who knew how that "freewill" would be changed by the circumstances he purposefully created. That deity created that "freewill" from the ground up, knowing exactly when and how it would will for or against him.

As above - circumstances do not make us do anything, must less Adam who had no internal sinful pressures.

But god can have it any way he wants, so the fact that this way is the way it is, it means it is the way he wants

As I said before, the ultimate outcome is how God wants it, but the sin of man is not His will. He overides man's sin to bring about His chosen end.

Quote:
Originally Posted by wolfsbane
No, it's not. Circumstances may contribute something to one's decision, but they do not determine it.
Someones nature is a mix of what nature they where born with (ie what god gave them) and the circumstances that alter that nature (those circumstances being created by god). One set of circumstances can effect another by altering how you see the world, your opinion of people, just by increasing your experience with an activity or skill and this can change the way you decide what to do. God sees all circumstances like a web, he knows that by changing one thing in one circumstances (ie letting you be lucky and finishing a particular shot in snooker, say) it can make you more confident and result in you trying it in more circumstances. To god, one set of circumstances is a tool for getting some certaoin result in another set of circumstances.

Circumstances do not make us do anything. They affect how we choose only by informing us of alternatives and appealing to our sinful natures. We make the choice.

Certainly, God uses circumstances to direct our hearts. He knows how sinful men love the sinful course; how godly men love to do His will; how suffering will move us this way or that - but every choice is ours. Some resist to the end, others capitulate at the start. Some learn; others are stubborn.

Quote:
Originally Posted by wolfsbane
Influence, fine. But not determine.
This is god your talking about! He doesn't just "influence", there is no possiblity for anythging other than his will to happen when he alters something, he's omnipotent and omniscient!

Yes, when He determines something, it will happen. But that does not mean He determines you will sin against your will, nor that He will make you do so by circumstances, against your will. Your sin is your responsiblity. God may permit you to sin freely, or He may prevent you from doing so.

Quote:
Originally Posted by wolfsbane
And Adam & Eve had so much more going for them than going against them: God's presence, a perfect world vs Satan's suggestion they get more knowledge.
Gods presence and a perfect world and all it took was a suggestion for the to sin. You would think that god would have prepared them to resist a suggestion, that is unless he wanted them to sin...

Telling them not to was enough. You are just making excuses for their free choice to sin. Or demanding God remove their free-will.

Quote:
Originally Posted by wolfsbane
Again, that is a presupposition of yours, that God made them sin. But God works out His end in spite of man's sin.
Seeing as god has the power to stop man sinning, but doesn't, it seems that god works out his end because of mans sin.

God is going to end all sin, but in the meantime He calls all sinners to repentance. When that time of grace ends, the sinners will be stopped. Forever.

wolfsbane

marco_polo wrote: »

Really?, because it seems some dating methods are extremely accurate. October 4004 BC wasn't it? Bit of an oddity that we cannot seem to acurately date anything after this point. :rolleyes:

I said dating methods were in dispute, not that none of them are reasonably accurate.

Ussher, that noted Irish Christian, used genealogies and fairly well-established chronological events to arrive at his figure. There would be a margin of error from both sources. Years, maybe a decade or so.

I don't understand what you mean by anything after this point. Ussher's 4004 BC date for Creation depended on several other key dates after that: Abraham, David, Christ, for example.

wolfsbane

marco_polo wrote: »

If course even if that was the case that the links did not exist you still end with with three single celled 'kind' ancestors.:pac: Bit of a pickle eh?

If they are not linked, they are just three single celled creatures, 'kind' ancestors of some other such creatures perhaps, but not related to any other 'kinds'. Or have I missed your point?

Zombrex

wolfsbane wrote: »

I have a choice:
1. Say the creationist scientists I personally know to be godly men are in fact liars, presenting non-science as science.

2. Say the evolutionary scientists are prejudiced or too sure of their case and so are dismissive of the other side.

All I have encountered so far makes the latter the certain choice.

That is a bit ridiculous.

What the 5 guys you know prove the 10 million other scientists are wrong?

wolfsbane wrote: »

As long as he acknowledges the evolutionary argument has its share of objections to overcome; and that the creationist case is scientific, even if coming to the wrong conclusions.

And what happens if they explain to you why evolution is one of the best supported scientific theories ever essembled, and list of all the reasons that Creation Science is not actually science because it puts forward models that cannot be tested or examined, going into great detail to explain to you why it does not meet scientific standards?

You just ignore that because it isn't what you want to hear.

It is a bit silly to say that you will be happy when people admit that Creationism is science. It isn't science, so you are simply producing a strawman that allows you to always be unhappy with modern science.

It is like saying that I will be happy when Christians admit that Islam is compatible with Christian teaching, until then I'm totally justified in thinking that Christians are being biased against Muslims. It ain't going to happen because it isn't compatible. It just isn't. If it was it would be. But it isn't. So its not.

wolfsbane

Wicknight wrote: »

That is a bit ridiculous.

What the 5 guys you know prove the 10 million other scientists are wrong?



And what happens if they explain to you why evolution is one of the best supported scientific theories ever essembled, and list of all the reasons that Creation Science is not actually science because it puts forward models that cannot be tested or examined, going into great detail to explain to you why it does not meet scientific standards?

You just ignore that because it isn't what you want to hear.

It is a bit silly to say that you will be happy when people admit that Creationism is science. It isn't science, so you are simply producing a strawman that allows you to always be unhappy with modern science.

It is like saying that I will be happy when Christians admit that Islam is compatible with Christian teaching, until then I'm totally justified in thinking that Christians are being biased against Muslims. It ain't going to happen because it isn't compatible. It just isn't. If it was it would be. But it isn't. So its not.

In other words, my friends are liars.

Experience tells me otherwise. And it confirms what I know from God's word. Those are two witnesses I can rely on.

Zombrex

wolfsbane wrote: »

In other words, my friends are liars.

No idea, I don't know your friends.

But you appear to be calling 99% of biologists liars, so if I had to pick between your friends being liars and, well, everyone else I would say your friends are lying.

But then I don't have to do that, the science speaks for itself. If biological evolution was an inaccurate model it would not match prediction over and over and over and over and over again. The fact that it does match prediction strongly supports that it is accurate. It is one of the best supported scientific models in existence. Whether or not your friends are aware of this fact or not is quite irrelevant.

wolfsbane wrote: »

Experience tells me otherwise.

Your experiences are wrong. Though having said that I seriously doubt you have had any experiences in the world of evolutionary biology.

J C

marco_polo wrote: »

Is there any mention of nylonase in Genesis?

no .... but neither is there mention of any other biochemical pathway ... but the critical fact is that they are all highly integrated tightly specified and irreducibly complex phenomena ... which is an unambiguous signature of an ultimately intelligent cause!!!:pac::D

marco_polo

wolfsbane wrote: »

If they are not linked, they are just three single celled creatures, 'kind' ancestors of some other such creatures perhaps, but not related to any other 'kinds'. Or have I missed your point?

The three major domains of life Archaea, Bacteria, and Eukaryote?
My point is that you still end up with single celled ancestors for multicellular life. Still a wee bit of a problem for creationists?

The existance of HGT links mainly complicates the process of untangling of the evolutionary history of the earliest singled celled life forms.

Long story short is that it is not really such great news for you either way. For one there is still a tree shape from ape to chimps and humans.

marco_polo

J C wrote: »

no .... but neither is there mention of any other biochemical pathway ... but the critical fact is that they are all highly integrated tightly specified and irreducibly complex phenomena ... which is an unambiguous signature of an ultimately intelligent cause!!!:pac::D

In fact the steps involved in the evolution of this novel function are not in any way irreducibly complex.

marco_polo

wolfsbane wrote: »

I said dating methods were in dispute, not that none of them are reasonably accurate.

Ussher, that noted Irish Christian, used genealogies and fairly well-established chronological events to arrive at his figure. There would be a margin of error from both sources. Years, maybe a decade or so.

I don't understand what you mean by anything after this point. Ussher's 4004 BC date for Creation depended on several other key dates after that: Abraham, David, Christ, for example.

Let me rephrase then. There seem to be an unusual property of the creationist universe where only those events that suit a literal interpretation of the bible can be dated accurately.

It is nearly as strange as Quantum Physics.

J C

Fanny Cradock wrote: »

Indeed, the age of the Earth has always fascinated theologians. The notion that the Earth was a few thougsand years old has been contested from very early Christianity.

....yes indeed, many things have been contested from very early Christianity...
...however, the TRUTH is that we have a Young Earth and a God who loves us and became a Man to Save us!!!

J C

Galvasean wrote: »

While I agree with you that the giving of free will is certainly a very righteous act, I would also say punishing those who use said free will in a manner that displeases you with eternal suffering kind of defeats the purpose.

...HOW does it defeat the purpose of free will to punish somebody who abuses their free will to, for example, cause mayhem and murder????

....you're mixing up God's perfect love and God's perfect justice again!!!!!:D:eek:

J C

Fanny Cradock wrote: »

Wow! It comes as a shock to discover that you are interested in investigating biblical interpretation. Here was me thinking you pick the interpretation you find most preposterous and then attack it for the sake of attacking Christianity!

Go on! Pull the other one, Mr P.

....which 'preposterous' interpretation are you referring to Fanny???

...is it the one about the Man, Jesus Christ being able to raise the dead ... or the one about Him being able to forgive sin ... or the one about Him being born to a Virgin ... or how about the one about Him changing water into wine or raising Himeself from the dead???

...or is it ONLY the FACT that an omnipotent GOD created the Universe and all life in a week ... that you have a problem believing????

J C

Wicknight wrote: »

At what point in the Old Testament does it actually start describing historical events, rather than myth?

....you can include the New Testament in that question as well!!!!

...and the answer is .... that the Bible is true from the VERY FIRST VERSE!!!!!:D:)

J C

prinz wrote: »

The story of Noah and the Great Flood as has been pointed out is based upon the Sumerian legend the Epic of Gilgamesh.

....or WAS it the other way around?????

J C

Woger wrote: »

Is there a chance that there will be an updated word of god?

....it all depends on WHICH church you choose to attend!!!!:eek::eek::)

J C

Gurgle wrote: »

Surely the word of God is the word of God: You don't get to choose which bits you believe literally, which bits are parables and which bits are bullshìt.

...it all depends on WHICH church you choose to attend!!!!:eek::eek:

AtomicHorror

wolfsbane wrote: »

Yes, it is a matter of character judgment for me, as I'm not qualified to assess the scientific argument. So I have equally well qualified scientists on both sides of the argument, but only one side saying the other aren't scientists/aren't doing science.

I have a choice:
1. Say the creationist scientists I personally know to be godly men are in fact liars, presenting non-science as science.

To call them liars would suggest they're aware that they're wrong and understand why what they are doing is not science. I don't think that they do.

wolfsbane wrote: »

2. Say the evolutionary scientists are prejudiced or too sure of their case and so are dismissive of the other side.

All I have encountered so far makes the latter the certain choice.

You're presenting a false dichotomy here. Those are not your only two options at all. My explanation is that, in general, creationists are being sincere. I think that the ramifications of what is being presented by the scientific community are very frightening to many creationists and that as a result they are ignoring evidence, or attacking minor weaknesses as justifications for denying that evidence in total and thus becoming subject to rather extreme confirmation bias. You have yourself admitted that you find the implications of evolution upsetting, so I'm sure you can at least accept that some worry will be contributing to the motivation of creationists.

I'm sure there are many other shades of grey explanations open to you aside from the above.

wolfsbane wrote: »

I don't have a problem with a scientist who says the creation scientific argument would require so much revision of current assumptions that it must be unlikely; that it has many objections to overcome; that he prefers the current explanation.

As long as he acknowledges the evolutionary argument has its share of objections to overcome; and that the creationist case is scientific, even if coming to the wrong conclusions.

But what if this is genuinely not the case? Should scientists give a fair hearing to any argument that has already been put to bed scientifically? If a person wished to claim to you that the sky was green, how many times would you politely listen to new arguments on that theme before you started to feel like your time might be better spent considering actual open questions?

wolfsbane wrote: »

If he treats the creationists' arguments like he does any other competing scientific argument, then he is being fair.

Have you seen how scientists treat competing scientific arguments? They demand evidence appropriate to the claims being made and if the evidence is insufficient they dismiss the claim pending new evidence. This happened with creationism some time prior to 1900.

J C

Fanny Cradock wrote: »

Exactly!

I would like to think that most Christians are open to possibility that their particular interpretation on a given belief could be wrong. In this regard, I've recently begun to shift my position on something I had previously always accepted.

....are you starting to doubt Evolution ????:pac::):D

AtomicHorror

J C,

Can you please limit the number of posts you make in sequence. You've basically just filled an entire page with single quote replies to people, pushing my own and other people's posts off the latest page unnecessarily. Use multiquotes or something. Or just don't feel compelled to reply to every post you've missed during your month off.

J C

andy1249 wrote: »

The Whole world is awash with flood myths .... every continent has them,

....I wonder is that because the World was awash with a GREAT FLOOD??????:D:pac::)

AtomicHorror

So J C, last time you were with us you repeated the assertion that there are no examples of "increasing genetic information" apparently demanded by evolution. I asked for you to clarify the meaning of genetic information and to define what would constitute a measurable increase in that.

You said:

J C wrote: »

1. Genetic information is the information required to produce functional specific biological components and their organisation into organisms.

2. A test showing an increase in genetic information would be the spontaneous production of a functional biological component, such as a simple protein, or the spontaneous transmution of one functional protein into another functional protein.

....even a computer model of how either 1 or 2 above could occur will do.

To which I responded:

AtomicHorror wrote: »

1. A full definition would require that you define what you mean by "information". That word has several related but distinct meanings. I'm also not sure what you mean by "functional specific biological components", is that "functional-specific" or "functional, specific"? I know you'll see this as pedantic, but science requires exact and unambiguous meaning.

2. Again with the spontaneous, single-step majick. This doesn't happen in evolution and the only people suggesting otherwise are creationists.

A new gene doesn't just pop into existence. New bases and chunks of DNA are frequently added to the genome, but these are typically non-coding. A new gene can emerge either by one of these stretches of non-coding DNA becoming coding or by the duplication of an existing gene to a new locus followed by its modification.

There are countless examples of this.

CCR5d32, a mutation of gene CCR5, removes the gene's function as a chemokine receptor and replaces it with a function as a HIV-binding decoy. This confers AIDS resistance in homozygotes and delayed onset in heterozygotes. As the function of CCRs are multiply redundant, the receptor function is not lost even in homozygotes. This means there is a net gain in function.

Can you address the above please? Finally, I'm very sad to see that after all my hard work you're still not willing to address my rebuttals of your replies to me or take the time to refute my answers to your own questions. Now we're on to a new set of questions and those haven't been resolved. Should I just take it that you concede on both points?