Why Creationism is Nonsense

[kallipolis]

It is noteworthy that traditional Christianity, supports Evolutionary Theory.

A recent conference, at The Vatican discussing these matters:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article5054745.ece

quote

Stephen Hawking to address Vatican conference on evolution.

There is no contradiction between creation and science, says Benedict XVI.

Pope Benedict XVI this morning opened the conference, organised by the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, which will last until next Tuesday. He said that like modern Popes before him, he saw no contradiction between the Christian concept of Creation and science. He cited Galileo, whom, he said "saw nature as a book whose author is God in the same way that Scripture has God as its author." He added: "To "evolve" literally means "to unroll a scroll", that is, to read a book. The imagery of nature as a book has its roots in Christianity, and has been held dear by many scientists."

unquote

 

[AsianDream]

Absolutely; one of the tactics that creationists use is conflating evolution with atheism, which is a massive logical fallacy. The vast majority of Christians on this planet and indeed the vast majority of churches accept evolution, and see no reason why it conflicts with their particular beliefs.

Evolution does not disprove religion. However it does render invalid the “Watchmaker analogy” which was once (and occasionally still is) used as an argument in favour of religion.

This argument was that the very existence of a complex structure (like a watch or a human being) implied that there must be a designer (eg: all watches have a watchmaker that designed them).

The fact that complex organisms (including people) are now known to have evolved from extremely simple origins (given a few billion years) means that there is no logical need for there to have been a designer or creator (though does not prove that there isn’t one)

 

[Fire]

Some are willing to rely on a theory that millions of complex animals have evolved flawlessly by random...

Stopped reading here.

 

[bankside]

Some are willing to rely on a theory that millions of complex animals have evolved flawlessly by random because of some billions of years? I can sit all day and try to throw a cap on a pen across the room and what are my chances of success?

The complexity of a human brain the only species to dominate the earth with intelligence out of millions of other animals should scream intelligent design.

If our planet will change course in speed of revolution, rotation and axis tilt then all living organisms will be extinct by the catastrophic climate change. Billions of years of random trial and error brought this perfection?

For every example suggesting intelligent design, there is a counterexample.

 

[AsianDream]

It is hardly "known." That is the theory part, actually. Theory based on evidence and high-probability? Perhaps. But trans-species mutations are simply educated guesses, not proven facts the least reason of which because the fossil record simply gives us no examples and secondly because it can't be observed. It is rather the best explanation (barring creationism) for the variety we see and the similarities species share.

It’s a philosophical point – but almost everything people think we “know” is a theory. The only thing someone actually “Knows” in the absolute sense is that they themselves exist (I think therefore I am etc).

In the case of Evolution – it was the transition examples that first convinced Darwin. Though it’s normally a slow process there are examples all around us: How bacteria evolve resistance to antibiotics; How people hunting Elephants for Ivory has led to the evolution of Elephants without tusks.

One of the strengths of Evolution is that the theory was based on simple observation long before the actual biological and chemical mechanisms (DNA etc) behind it were discovered.

 

[AsianDream]

Some are willing to rely on a theory that millions of complex animals have evolved flawlessly by random because of some billions of years? I can sit all day and try to throw a cap on a pen across the room and what are my chances of success?

The complexity of a human brain the only species to dominate the earth with intelligence out of millions of other animals should scream intelligent design.

If our planet will change course in speed of revolution, rotation and axis tilt then all living organisms will be extinct by the catastrophic climate change. Billions of years of random trial and error brought this perfection?

The concept that biological systems are “flawless” is not in line with reality. Most animals and organisms have major faults and problems in their design – but just about work well enough to reproduce.

The “random” chance argument does not take into account the way systems that evolve actually work. As well as random change these need a mechanism to carry forward changes that work and remove those that don’t also to combine successful changes together.

You are right that random chance alone would not work. An example often given is that of billions of monkeys typing the complete works of Shakespeare at random. As even an 8 letter word has about 200 billion possible combinations of letters (meaning getting two words right is 40 thousand billion billion to 1)– the complete works would take more monkeys than there are atoms in the universe and longer than it’s age so far.

But there are only a few thousand English words in common use which have a distinct pattern of vowels and consonants. So a process which ensured the survival of only letter combinations that fitted this pattern would narrow down the odds a lot. Next steps might be something that recognised and rewarded the names of people in the plays and inserted these in passages (like DNA transposons in nature). If sequences of words that fitted the subject verb object framework were selected for then the number of possible combinations would be vastly reduced. Also mechanisms that favoured the exchange and combination of winning word sequences would speed the process (as does the exchange of genetic material between bacteria and sexual reproduction in multi cell organisms like people).

In short the “improbability” argument simply disappears if you consider the actual mechanisms of evolution – though the process still requires billions of years and a vast number of organisms to produce the complexity we see today.

Out of interest - the Earth is lucky that our relatively large moon acts to stabilise its Axis - so it does not suffer from the same axial variations as similar planets like Mars do. This does hint that the evolution of life may be fairly rare on a cosmic scale.

 

[AsianDream]

Observed instances of speciation (i.e. instances in which life forms have been observed and analysed as mutating into another species

Too many links - how many guys are going to bother to play all these? - also the "Creationists" can probably quote just as many links - so doesn't contribute much to the real discussion

 

[Jeffs0418]

Creationism=Hocus Pocus (something from nothing) Genesis says so. Never question the word of God.
Evolution=Something from something. Science says so. Science is something we can question. And look at the tremendous strides we have taken in finding answers to evolution in just the past century.

 

[Jeffs0418]

Too many links - how many guys are going to bother to play all these? - also the "Creationists" can probably quote just as many links - so doesn't contribute much to the real discussion

The creationists think exactly as you do.
Why bother? God did it!

 

[bicivici]

a girl once stood up with intention and gravity in my philosophy of religion class and stated that dinosaurs never existed and that their "bones were placed on the earth to challenge the faith of his people and fool non-believers". at first i thought she was making a very sarcastic point, but i stifled my laughter after she shot me the look of death. i still find it hilarious and ridiculous that she even said that. can't remember the girl's name. i can see her face clear as day, though.

i personally believe that both are true on some level. do these have to be mutually exclusive ideas? i think darwin was a christian.

 

[Kurn]

It falls to the calling of Philosopher to thoroughly test all such ideas. That involves giving them all the life that one's imagination can.
And then one sees many other possibilities and pursues them as well.
In summary, to learn, avoid ridiculing what sound like ridiculous ideas; learn from them, how they live, by what they persist, how they die.
Oh, it can be hard and risking one's sanity.
In the meantime, just "Do good." "As best you know how." "Nature and experience. Often borrowed experience."

 

[eintown]

They are not known as fact at all. Darwin's theories are not proven fact and are full of inaccuracies (ever read his explanation of homosexuality?). Just like Freud's castration theory, though accepted by many psychologists, is not proven fact. Science is limited in that it denies intuition, higher intellect and feeling and only focuses on ration constructed from the five senses. Nothing can be proven this way as we as individuals have no way of knowing if our senses observe fact or a mere delusion/hallucination. Ever seen The Matrix? Reality is objective but human perception of it is always subjective. Scientific method goes against the intuitive nature of humanity. Simply put, you could hold five fingers in front of me and I have no way of knowing if that is any more real than my intuition that you are real.

The core facets of evolution HAVE been proven and are fact - just as much as gravity is fact. Darwin's view on homosexuality was not part of his basic thesis. Who says science denies "intuition, higher intellect and feeling"? Anything goes if it is rationally and logically backed up however - and whats wrong with that? Besides, the majority of new (past 100 years) scientific ideas (relativity/quantum mechanics) are completely contrary to common sense. So one shouldn't rely on it anyway. You wouldn't fly a plane built on irrational and illogical ideas? Your last bit about the nature of reality applies to any sphere of life - both scientific and religious.

 

[eintown]

There is nothing wrong with ration or logic. However, in understanding the universe it is only one of many tools. People who only use ration and deny everything else are missing out. I appreciate your opinion but there is no universal agreement about Darwinism even within the scientific community. People who can only see logic are too afraid to trust higher knowing as logic can only understand two polarites (i.e. yes or no, 0 or 1, true or untrue.) I find theory of relativity quite sensible and rational, though Einstein was a genius who could grasp higher concepts far greater than the sum of their parts and he believed in God.

So weird speaking about this on a gay porn website lol. The is universal agreement about Darwin. Yes there are a couple of fringe 'scientists' who disagree, but their objections are fully discredited. What is "higher knowing" how do you "know" is correct? Einstein was an atheist, who is always quoted out of context when it comes to religion. And no, time dilation, length contraction, relativity of simultaneity and mass energy equivalence are simply not intuitive. I simply dont feel it is common sense that the faster one travels through space-time, the slower time moves for the individual and the shorter the physical dimensions become with the mass increasing exponentially.

 

[AsianDream]

There is nothing wrong with ration or logic. However, in understanding the universe it is only one of many tools. People who only use ration and deny everything else are missing out. I appreciate your opinion but there is no universal agreement about Darwinism even within the scientific community. People who can only see logic are too afraid to trust higher knowing as logic can only understand two polarites (i.e. yes or no, 0 or 1, true or untrue.) I find theory of relativity quite sensible and rational, though Einstein was a genius who could grasp higher concepts far greater than the sum of their parts and he believed in God.

There is general agreement in the scientific community that Evolution is proved beyond any reasonable doubt - in the same way that the theory that the Earth is a sphere is generally (though not universally) known and accepted.

While there is always the possibility that science is one vast conspiracy or that we are living in a simulation (like the Matrix) - these seem rather improbable.

Though these are a good reminder that all "facts" or things that are "proved" are relative terms - there is no such things as absolute knowledge (except we each know that we exist - everthing else is relative)

 

[hotatlboi]

Billions of years of random trial and error brought this perfection?

No it didn't. Descent with modification (natural selection) is not "billions of years of random trial and error". This is what religious apologists continually fail to understand regarding the theory.

 

[eintown]

As I mentioned before, the there are only fringe scientists – who contribute little, or nothing to science – who contradict modern evolution. Whether or not 1 lay person OR scientist or everyone is the world believed in evolution, that does not affect the validity of theory. Your statistic of 67% seems very high. Nevertheless, recent statistics show very little scientists and even fewer of the most published scientists believe in god. The belief in evolution has, without a doubt grown over time. And the claim of 1000’s of scientists against evolution is patently untrue. Dude, 90% (of the thousands of fossils found) are transitional fossils.

It doesn’t matter whether Einstein believed in god or not. He was a cosmologist, not a biologist. Einstein used the word ‘god’ so loosely that he applied it to the natural phenomenon that is the universe:

"It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it."

 

[bulge]

Europe sees creationism simply as another typically American Clinton-Lewinsky-cigar fairy-tale. Too ridiculous to speak about.

 

[hotatlboi]

You question valid sources without providing any of your own. What basis are you using to define transisitional? Your quote is pointless. The fact that Einstein did not believe in a personal God wasn't being argued and does not reflect on his belief in a universal spirit. If you are going to so arrogantly deny people's posts the least you could do is provide some credible sources, since it would seem you claim to know better than the sources I cited.

Your claim that one needs to cite sources to prove the theory of evolution is almost universally accepted among scientists just shows how backward your position on science really is.

 

[eintown]

You question valid sources without providing any of your own. What basis are you using to define transisitional? Your quote is pointless. The fact that Einstein did not believe in a personal God wasn't being argued and does not reflect on his belief in a universal spirit. If you are going to deny people's posts the least you could do is provide some credible sources, since it would seem you claim to know better than the sources I cited.

Additionally, evolution is present in all of us from day to day, we grow and evolve. It is the idea that humans originated from the animal kingdom and were not a creation of God that is rejected by the majority of Americans and a significant number of scientists (45% believing God has had a role in either evolution or believe in the Bible's literal explanation) according to Gallup. A majority (67%) of Scientists as I posted and cited earlier believe in God, even if they do not believe he assisted evolution.

Open any science textbook, google any word read above and you will find a plethora of information. I'm seriously not going to spend 30 minutes writing a comprehensive list of sources on a gay porn website. Its NOT a conspiracy and its NOT evil. Amazingly enough, scientists who spend decades immersed in biology DO know more then laypersons or other scientists (IF they are mathematicians or physicists). Stop being blinded by childhood teachings from adults.

 

[hotatlboi]

It seems to me that even though most biologists believe in evolution a significant number are not of the strict Darwinian athiest sense.

Athiesm is not a prerequisite for Darwinian evolution. This is another fundamental misunderstanding from religious apologists and another reason you should watch the videos posted above.

Darwin's theory only describes the evolution of life in the natural world. It says nothing about the supernatural, as no scientific theory ever can.