Any young earth creationists out there?

[buffalo]

Here is what we observe when an intelligent agent designs:

(1) Take many parts and arrange them in highly specified and complex patterns which perform a specific function. (Irreducible complexity, cell machinery and systems, error correction, etc.)

(2) Rapidly infuse any amounts of genetic information into the biosphere, including large amounts, such that at times rapid morphological or genetic changes could occur in populations. (adaptation, phages, Complex language of DNA, etc)

(3) ‘Re-use parts’ over-and-over in different types of organisms (design upon a common blueprint). (building blocks, conserved core components, convergent “evolution”)

(4) Be said to typically NOT create completely functionless objects or parts (although we may sometimes think something is functionless, but not realize its true function). (so called Junk DNA has function)

 

[mVitus]

In response to some of those.

1. Cells do have reducible parts. Mitochondria for example are essential to human cells, but not bacterial cells. We also observe other organelles “missing” from bacterial cells. This would suggest that a complete organism cannot have parts removed withoit harm for the most part, but that different stages can occur.
   To use an analogy, an arch cannot function without its keystones. But that doesn’t mean an arch had to have come into existence all at once.
2. Why only rapid? Intelligence is not limited to speed. And changes can come by natural processes.
3. Again, why limit intelligence to reuse? With evolution, our explanation comes from the shared ancestry.

And getting back to the lion and tiger, I’m seeking to delve into a discussion of how you view, to use your words, microevolution occurring. And exploring the line between ID portions and natural processes. That’s why I’m asking your views there, to try getting a more concrete example we can work with.

 

[buffalo]

o use an analogy, an arch cannot function without its keystones. But that doesn’t mean an arch had to have come into existence all at once.

How do you build a partial arch without scaffolding that will not fall?

The ATP synthase motor is the power plant of the cells. Cells need energy. Which came first and show the complete successive evo steps and the survival function of each and every one.

 

[buffalo]

Again, why limit intelligence to reuse? With evolution, our explanation comes from the shared ancestry.

Not in dissimilar lines?

 

[mVitus]

Again, prokaryotes don’t have organelles really. They don’t even have nuclei. They show a possibility for a less, bad word alert, complicated cell. As for the various steps, it’s rather hard to fossilized a cell and I’m not studying cells in depth. But the lrinciple of change over time remains.

 

[mVitus]

Which dissimilar lines would you be referencing? I’m just wanting to know what you’re considering dissimilar.

 

[Hugh_Farey]

I’m sorry, but I’m still not following this. The first question I must ask myself, according to the flow diagram above is ‘Contingency’. I do not really know what this means, but apparently if I answer ‘No’, then the object of which I am asking the question is labelled ‘Necessity’, while if I answer ‘yes’ then the flow diagram heads towards ‘design.’ I take this to mean that nothing which is ‘necessary’ is designed. And I take the word necessary to mean, in this context, an inevitable consequence.

But surely this is a very subjective assessment of sorting. Is a river-system ‘necessary’? Or really, is a river-system more necessary than a frog?

Then your posts move back into the assumption that the ‘design’ evidenced by living things is different from the design evidenced by non-living things, but, as usual, without explaining how this can be derived from observation of the two, without assuming it in the first place.

Actually I think this intelligent design thing is flogging a dead horse. It was concocted, I believe, to challenge an idea that evolutionists didn’t hold in the first place, that of total randomness being the structure of something. Theistic evolutionists, from the start, have seen the hand of God in every part of creation, from the apparently random crevices in a cliff face to the apparently non-random arrangement of atoms in a crystal, and from the apparently simple shape of a rain-drop to the apparently complex shape of a river-drainage basin. In this view, the Theistic evolutionist objection to Intelligent Design is not that living things are not designed, but that non-living things are, and that there is no qualitative way of distinguishing between the two.

If living things were designed by God, and non-living things weren’t, then how did non-living things come to be?

 

[mVitus]

Did you hit the reply button to the wrong person?

 

[Dan123]

How do you build a partial arch without scaffolding that will not fall?

You don’t but that’s the point. People look at a modern cell and say “if you removed any of these pieces the whole thing would stop working!” just as an arch would fall if you removed any of it’s stones. But just like an arch can be built using supports that are later removed, biological structures can contain the same history.

 

[Hugh_Farey]

Did you hit the reply button to the wrong person?

Ah. Yes…

 

[buffalo]

You don’t but that’s the point. People look at a modern cell and say “if you removed any of these pieces the whole thing would stop working!” just as an arch would fall if you removed any of it’s stones. But just like an arch can be built using supports that are later removed, biological structures can contain the same history.

Scaffolding is purposeful.

 

[PickyPicky]

My tentative understanding of the filter is that it is saying: if a state of affairs exists that is a necessary result of accepted physical laws, we need look no further for an explanation of its existence. If, however, the state of affairs depends on some contingency, we must determine how likely that contingency is to occur. If the likelihood is the other side of some probability boundary erected for the purpose, we must turn to ID for an explanation (and so are back on the familiar ground of arguments about probability).

If this is what the filter is diagramming, it seems to me mistaken. If a state of affairs definitely exists, and if it definitely depends on the occurrence of some contingency, then that contingency has definitely been met, however unlikely it may seem.

And of course science isn’t like that, anyway. If some state of affairs is not the necessary result of accepted physical laws, science develops hypotheses that might explain it. Probabilities will, of course, be considered when these hypotheses are debated. In the case of the origin of species, a general hypothesis has been developed which explains the known facts and has been adopted as the explanatory theory.

The scientific community finds this theory acceptable, buffalo finds it risible. As a non-scientist, I happily fall into the trap of appealing to authority.

 

[Hugh_Farey]

My tentative understanding of the filter is that it is saying: if a state of affairs exists that is a necessary result of accepted physical laws, we need look no further for an explanation of its existence.

I agree with that completely. However, what we may need to do is to consider how the ‘accepted physical laws’ arose in the first place. This is the ‘design’ that Theistic evolutionists accept, and results in everything from cliff faces to statues. Intelligent Design advocates don’t seem to be able to see God’s work in everything, as if he is somehow in opposition to his own ‘accepted physical laws’, and has to keep correcting them where he finds he has made a mistake. This is more like a Roman or Greek idea of God than the Christian one.

 

[Gorgias]

The last line - Adam had no parents and was the son of God directly. No one in between.

“son of Enos, son of Seth, son of Adam, son of God”

Well, God is the one who gave him an immortal soul, so… yeah!

The counter to your claim would be “yes, we agree that Adam was the ‘first true human being’”, and that’s what genealogies detail: human beings. So… the genealogy demonstrates our point just as validly as it demonstrates yours."

He clarifies in each instance so there can be no doubt.

The first chapter of Genesis is written in the genre of an epic poem. What you’re demonstrating isn’t “clarification” against “doubt” – no, what you’re demonstrating is repetition in poetry.

“Aliens exist” speaks to probability and life (not sentient life)

Who’s saying that a claim to life outside of earth implies atheism?!? No one here…

I believe the “six days” of creation occurred 6000-10,000 years ago. But Scripture says the earth was created BEFORE the “six days”, which means the earth could be much older.

Wow. That’s a pretty interesting interpretation for the word “when” in Gen 1:1…!

OK, then: so, if dating techniques show the earth as 4.5 billion years old and the oldest fossils are in rock dating to 3.5 billion years old ('cause, after all, the earth had already been created by then, right?), then how are we to explain the existence of life that’s 3.4 billion years older than your 6,000-10,000 year old date?

 

[buffalo]

The first chapter of Genesis is written in the genre of an epic poem. What you’re demonstrating isn’t “clarification” against “doubt” – no, what you’re demonstrating is repetition in poetry.

It is written as history and always interpreted that way.

 

[buffalo]

Well, God is the one who gave him an immortal soul, so… yeah!

The counter to your claim would be “yes, we agree that Adam was the ‘first true human being’”, and that’s what genealogies detail: human beings. So… the genealogy demonstrates our point just as validly as it demonstrates yours."

Nope - There are several other passages that confirm Adam was specially created body and soul together at the beginning.

 

[buffalo]

I agree with that completely. However, what we may need to do is to consider how the ‘accepted physical laws’ arose in the first place. This is the ‘design’ that Theistic evolutionists accept, and results in everything from cliff faces to statues. Intelligent Design advocates don’t seem to be able to see God’s work in everything, as if he is somehow in opposition to his own ‘accepted physical laws’, and has to keep correcting them where he finds he has made a mistake. This is more like a Roman or Greek idea of God than the Christian one.

He corrects what humans mess up. He sustains His creation.

 

[Hugh_Farey]

He corrects what humans mess up. He sustains His creation.

Most of his correction occurred long before humans appeared, let alone messed anything up.

 

[buffalo]

Are the evo’s ready to concede?

What I have been saying right along:

Sweeping gene survey reveals new facets of evolution

It is textbook biology, for example, that species with large, far-flung populations—think ants, rats, humans—will become more genetically diverse over time.
But is that true?
"The answer is no," said Stoeckle, lead author of the study, published in the journal Human Evolution.
For the planet’s 7.6 billion people, 500 million house sparrows, or 100,000 sandpipers, genetic diversity "is about the same," he told AFP.

The study’s most startling result, perhaps, is that nine out of 10 species on Earth today, including humans, came into being 100,000 to 200,000 years ago.

"This conclusion is very surprising, and I fought against it as hard as I could," Thaler told AFP.

That reaction is understandable: How does one explain the fact that 90 percent of animal life, genetically speaking, is roughly the same age? ( we know the answer here at CAF)

In analysing the barcodes across 100,000 species, the researchers found a telltale sign showing that almost all the animals emerged about the same time as humans.

And yet—another unexpected finding from the study—species have very clear genetic boundaries, and there’s nothing much in between.

“If individuals are stars, then species are galaxies,” said Thaler. “They are compact clusters in the vastness of empty sequence space.”

The absence of “in-between” species is something that also perplexed Darwin, he said.

Sweeping gene survey reveals new facets of evolution

 

[Richca]

Glark:

I believe the “six days” of creation occurred 6000-10,000 years ago. But Scripture says the earth was created BEFORE the “six days”, which means the earth could be much older.

Wow. That’s a pretty interesting interpretation for the word “when” in Gen 1:1…!

The ‘when’ or ‘when God began to create’ construction in Gen. 1:1 used in some modern bibles is a highly controversial translation and interpretation of Gen. 1:1. It is said by some biblical scholars that this construction is syntactically possible as an alternative to the traditional rendering ‘In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.’ But, this is also very controversial.

The ‘when’ construction is used in conjunction with ‘then.’ So, in those bibles that use the ‘when’ or ‘when God began to create’ in 1:1, verse 3 generally begins with ‘Then’, i.e., ‘Then God said, Let there by light.’ This sort of translation/interpretation comes not explicitly from the Bible itself, but it is also based on exterior sources such as the babylonian Enuma elis creation mythologies. It is a form, in my opinion, of eisegesis, a babylonian reading into the text, a babylonian interpretation of the Genesis 1 creation narrative. On the contrary, the transcendent God of Genesis 1 and the creation narrative is a polemic against the mythologies of Israel’s neighbors and their untranscendent gods.

The problem with the ‘when/then’ construction of Gen. 1: 1-3 is that it is not supported or interpreted as such by other texts of the Bible and other sacred writers whatsoever, even from Genesis 2 which syntactically uses a ‘when/then’ but this is grammatically/syntactically structured differently than the supposed one in Gen. 1: 1-3. And the ‘when/then/ syntax of Genesis 2: 5-7 is concerned about plants, herbs, rain, and human beings only after declaring in 2:4 ’ These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created. In the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens.’

The ‘when/then’ construction of Gen. 1: 1-3 such as used in the NABRE and the NRSV lends itself to an extremely problematic interpretation of a pre-creation state, namely, vv. 1-2, with v. 3 being God’s first creative act (cf. footnotes of the NABRE). As I mentioned in the last paragraph, there is not a text in the entire Bible from any sacred writer who understood Gen. 1: 1-2 in such a ‘pre-creation’ fashion as if the heavens, earth, waters, darkness, the ‘mighty wind’ translation of the NAB/NABRE for ‘Spirit of God’ are not creations and works of God.