Creation or Evolution. What do you believe?

[Oolon_Colluphid]

Blimey, too much here to reply to! Looks like much of what I’d say has been covered by Phil and Vindex.

Just a couple of points though. It’s been said that non-theists are spiritually bereft. Well that’s dihydrogen monoxide off an anadid’s dorsal side to me. But it bothers me that those who are therefore spiritually superior may think their superiority gives their scientific claims any more weight.

Science stands or falls by the evidence, not by the beliefs of those supplying the evidence.

I’m not accusing anyone in particular of this; it’s just something to keep in mind.

And following on from that, I’d just like to remind everyone that an awful lot of scientists are theists. Not being spiritually bereft, maybe their evidence carries more weight? Or at least cannot be so easily dismissed or ignored?

If anyone is serious enough about this to go to a library (I know what it’s like, fire off replies, maybe follow a link, maybe even read the link (more likely skim it)… but go away and read?! But nevertheless… ) then you might like to look out one or two from theist and geologist Keith Miller’s Annotated Science/Faith Bibliography.

Miller also has a variety of pages online, including The Precambrian to Cambrian Fossil Record and Transitional Forms and Taxonomy, Transitional Forms, and the Fossil Record. Please at least skim them , especially the latter.

Bear in mind that Miller, as a member of the American Scientific Affiliation, would seem to have no trouble agreeing with their statement We Believe in Creation.

And finally, Vindex… great posts, but could you slip in a few more paragraph breaks please? My attention span is tested by long chunks of text!

(More to the point, people tend not to read thoroughly every word… splitting it up makes people have to see more of one’s text (I hope!))

 

[Oolon_Colluphid]

vrummage:

…] after reading some of the posts I felt compelled to make some clarifications. We are not talking about two mutually exclusive theories of origins.

Okay, with you so far. I disagree; whenever a claim is made about the (non-spiritual) world, then that is a scientific claim. But the ASA do not disagree, nor did Gould with his concept of ‘non-overlapping magisteria’, so I won’t push the point here.

The real issue is Did God use Evolution as part of the creative process?

Fine. The answer from science is that if God was involved at all, then yes he did.

Allow me to quote Fr. Rumble:

Let’s get ready for Rumble?

"Creation is not a theory. It is a fact revealed by God.

A theological fact, then. Whatever that may be.

Evolution is a fact within certain restricted spheres

Yeah, spheres that restrict themselves to test and evidence.

but a mere theory when made of universal application.

I’m not sure if this is nonsensical or disingenuous. If something is a fact in a particular area, then it remains a fact in that area (pending refuting evidence)… and has no application in some other area. So what’s he on about?

We have to admit evolution in knowledge, or in growth from babyhood to manhood.

‘Yes’ to the former, an absolute ‘no’ to the latter except in the most ridiculously loose definition of evolution. Babyhood to manhood is development.

As a universal theory, however, evolution from nothing is absurd.

Since it is not a universal theory, but applies to living organisms and their lineages’ history only, his point is irrelevant.

Yet granted that God created something, it is quite possible that God allowed His original creation with the power to evolve. Did He create vegetables and animals separately, or did He create a vast rotating nebula and give it the power to evolve into various forms of being and life? The latter idea has never been proved.

And since science never proves anything to an absolute certainty (merely as certainly as is possible), it won’t be.

It is a matter of speculation

Yeah, speculation called testable hypotheses.

with no certainty attached to it

Duh.

save that science quite discredits spontaneous generation of life.

Spontaneous generation of separate ‘kinds’, yes. And we’re working to remove the need for a god-of-the-gaps in abiogenesis too… which shouldn’t upset anyone except those who want such a fragile god.

Did man himself evolve from lower living beings?

Apart from there being no ‘higher’ and ‘lower’, and instead taking it to mean worm-like things, fish-like things, amphibian-like things, reptile-like things, primate-like things and ape-like things, then yes, as far as we can tell.

It is absolutely certain that his soul did not. The soul is an intelligent spirit, and an intelligent spirit can not evolve from matter.

Then there is no problem. Souls, being an utterly untestable, irrefutable hypothesis, are not scientific. You can have one if you like. You can have mine for fifty quid. I take PayPal.

Moreover, God has revealed that the soul is created immediately by Himself. Did man’s body evolve from lower animals, God creating the rational soul when some lower animal had sufficiently evolved towards manhood?

If you like. Hard to tell where in the lineage he slipped in a couple of souls, but okay.

Despite conjectures in favor of this notion, the evidence is against it.

Ah, a *scientific * claim. Righty-ho, lets see this evidence.

The missing link is still missing

Logical fallacy: absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. And false anyway: take a look at that pic I posted earlier – that’s just a few of the ‘links’. Just how many links do we have to provide? There are none so blind as those who will not see. I suspect the good Father is no palaeoanthropologist, more of a palaeoapologist.

and reason discounts the probability that a purely animal soul could develop an animal body beyond its own powers, lifting it to the higher stage needed for a rational soul."

Theological argument. When he’s demonstrated there’s such a thing as a soul, then we can talk about what sort of bodies can have them.

(cont…)

 

[Oolon_Colluphid]

vrummage:

I do not ascribe to the belief that man has descended from lower forms of life.

That’s okay, neither do I. There’s no ‘lower’ lifeforms: everything alive today is just as successful as any other, by virtue of being here. We (all living things) are all winners: we come from a long line of winners. Not one of our ancestors died young or without issue, while many of their contemporaries did. It’s hardly a surprise that we’re so good at being alive, is it?!

Vast numbers of fossils identical to creatures alive today have been found,

Evolutionary theory does not require things to constantly change; if they’re well adapted to their niche (eg coelacanths… or come to that, cyanobacteria) there is no selection pressure to change much. Though I dispute “identical”. Please name a Miocene (say) species that is still alive today.

but not a trace of transitional forms.

Plain false. You’ve been given some links. Do not repeat this falsehood till you have read them and have evidence to dispute it.

The fossil record is devoid of “missing links” grading up from simple to more complex creatures.

Please explain why some of the earliest fossils are stromatolites, and use that to help (if it does) you explain what you mean by “complex”. I’d call cyanobacteria ‘simple’, at least compared to, say, a trilobite. Basically, Your claim is an unsupported assertion. Kindly support it.

Even those thought to be among the oldest are very complex in composition, with no ancestors leading up to them.

I suppose they’re complex, at a molecular level, but I doubt that’s what you mean. The earliest fossils are microbial.

Maybe you’re thinking of the ‘Cambrian explosion’? If so, you might be interested to hear that there are plenty of Precambrian metazoan fossils, including likely ancestors of trilobites.

(cont…)

 

[Oolon_Colluphid]

vrummage:

Macroevolutionary models are also directly contradicted by the second law of thermodynamics (entropy)

cough splutter You really have swallowed creationist propaganda whole, haven’t you?

which states that every system left to its own devices always tends to move from order to disorder, its energy tending to be transformed into lower levels of availability, finally reaching a state of complete randomness and unavailability for further work.

The key point being “system left to its own devices”. That big hot thing in the sky is a bit of a giveaway really. As the sun gains entropy, the earth loses some.

You might like to read the following page. And I mean you might actually like to, because the chap who’s written it states at the start:

I am an evangelical Christian. I believe the Bible to be entirely trustworthy in conveying God’s messages.

He says that:

I have a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering (UC-Berkeley, 1988), specializing in “Molecular Thermodynamics,” which combines classical and statistical thermodynamics to describe the thermophysical properties of fluids. I then did two years of postdoctoral work, more or less in Chemical Physics, followed by four years in private industry. I am now with the Physical and Chemical Properties Division of the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Boulder, Colorado. …] I do not consider myself a specialist specifically in the second law, but my overall expertise in thermodynamics is sufficient to shed light on the relevant issues.

And that:

My main purpose here is to dissuade my fellow followers of Christ from pursuing incorrect arguments based on a lack of understanding of the second law.

The Second Law of Thermodynamics in the Context of the Christian Faith.

Evolution theory requires a universal principle of upward change;

False. Only local change. The universe as a whole is gaining entropy; nowhere does the 2LoT say that entropy cannot be reversed locally.

If the 2LoT does apply as you claim, disallowing “upward change”, please explain how you managed to ‘upwardly change’ from a single cell to the trillion-celled, highly organised and complex critter you are?

And if that is not disallowed by the 2LoT, why your offspring may not be slightly different from you, and theirs from them?

the entropy law is a universal law of downward change. The latter has been proved to apply in all systems tested so far; the former cannot even be tested scientifically.

False. 29+ Evidences for Macroevolution. Note that for each there is a prediction, confirmation and potential refutation.

“…Hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world?” 1 Cor. 1:20

“Often a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other parts of the world, about the motions and orbits of the stars and even their sizes and distances, …] and this knowledge he holds with certainty from reason and experience. It is thus offensive and disgraceful for an unbeliever to hear a Christian talk nonsense about such things, claiming that what he is saying is based in Scripture. We should do all that we can to avoid such an embarrassing situation, which people see as ignorance in the Christian and laugh to scorn.”
(St Augustine, De Genesi ad litteram libri duodecim)

See what I mean about the repetitious nature of creationist arguments? I have genuinely lost count of the number of times I’ve heard ‘no transitional fossils’, ‘the 2LoT disproves evolution’, ‘no new species’ and so on.

And you wonder why I am scornful of those who use these.

Cheers, Oolon

 

[Oolon_Colluphid]

Chris W:

Yet their objections seem to make sense. How is an undecided person to know who to believe?

By learning some science? Try a few textbooks from the library. Futuyma’s Evolutionary Biology is a good place to start.

Then, when one understands what science actually says (as opposed to creationist caricatures and straw men) and understands how it works, one is in a position to judge the validity of the claims.

After all, science seems to work. If it is wrong on things involving fundamental principles like radiometric dating and evolution, how can it be right with radiotherapy and DNA fingerprinting?

 

[Bracer]

Hi everyone. I hadn’t actually meant to chime in on this particular thread (I mainly got interested in this board thanks to the various atheism threads that sprung up over in “Non-Catholic Religions,” although since a number of fairly articulate individuals seem to be responding well there, I may never actually feel the need to do so myself after all, but I digress). This is especially true since I can’t claim anywhere near the level of expertise in the relevant fields that Oolon and Vindex do. However, since radiometric dating seems to have been thrown into the mix of arguments, I feel it’s worth jumping in to spin off a point Oolon alludes to in his last post.

Namely, how very interconnected all of science is – this isn’t just a matter of evolutionary biology being right or wrong, but how well it fits with every other area of scientific knowledge, and how very, very wrong our basic understanding of things like chemistry and physics would have to be as well for evolutionary biology to be incorrect.

Radiometric dating is a perfect example. The dating of various rock strata supports the predictions of evolutionary biology. Now, we can only perform radiometric dating because we have a very good understanding of weak force and quantum interaction, which enables us to accurately predict things like isotope decay rates, and just as importantly, detect the effects of that decay.

Now, if our understanding of these very fundamental principles of physics is so skewed that we can get the ages of rock strata wrong, and moreover, wrong by many, many orders of magnitude (in the worse case scenario remember, we’d have to mis-read an age of around 6,000-10,000 years as 4.5 BILLION – a huge, huge mistake), then really, it’s clear we just don’t understand atomic and quantum physics in any meaningful sense at all.

And yet, we most demonstrably do. The microchips (soon to be nanochips) at work right now in the computers we’re all using to communicate on this board are built using the very same principles of subatomic physics that enables us to understand radioactive decay – by and large it all has to fit together, or none of it makes sense. Indeed, in a very real way, every time one scientist confirms a discovery, it requires every other scientist in related fields to re-think their own work (one reason professional scientists spend so much time reading journals and keeping up with current research, actually).

The point is, the physics (and the chemistry, and the geology, and all other areas of biology, and even mathematics – statistics being invaluable in understanding population dynamics), all support the underlying principles of evolutionary biology with additional lines of evidence that makes pefect sense within those disciplines (and vice-versa). If evolutionary biology is just flat-out wrong, then so is just about every other scientific discipline.

Certainly, scientific research is not a perfect process. The history of science is riddled with errors and bad ideas, but over time, the bad ideas get weeded out and the good ones get better understood. Evolutionary biology has been around for over 150 years now (although the basic idea was around even longer), and it simply fits in with everything else we know. To toss out the entire discipline of evolutionary biology is really tossing out an awful lot of babies with the bathwater (to strain a metaphor).

Because you can’t realistically argue that the scientific method doesn’t work as a way of describing the workings of the material universe around us (and, incidentally, has nothing whatsoever to say about the spiritual). Just look at all the marvelous, fully functioning technology around you right now. What’s more, do you think, just to pick handy examples, the search for disease cures and vaccines, or the development of new crop strains to feed famine-stricken areas, would even be possible if evolutionary principles didn’t work (just to hit on Melchior’s “Does it save anyone’s life or get you a cup of coffee” comment from earlier in the thread)? No, they wouldn’t.

And in a very real sense, neither would just about any other endeavor to improve our lives, based on any other scientific discovery – because none of that science would work either.

Anyway, just my two cents’ … or um, maybe dollars’ worth… Hope I don’t derail anything here.

 

[Oolon_Colluphid]

Melchior:

No it [evolution from one species to another] has not [been shown].

Please define ‘species’ as you understand it then.

As far as science is concerned, it has. Species are populations that are reproductively isolated from each other. Speciation is therefore the evolution of reproductive isolating mechanisms. This has been observed many times. I also refer you back to my post #35.

There is not one transitional form that has been proven to be a direct ancestor of man.

Sister clades if all we can hope for from fossils, as Vindex has explained in depth. Of course we cannot tell if a particular fossil creature – or even some other member of the population it came from – left descendants. So we don’t even try. We can analyse the fossils by their characteristics – conserved, shared derived and so on. And when we do, they fall into a neat pattern – not predicted and unwarranted under creationism – that looks like a family tree.

Furthermore, this pattern independently matches the ages of the fossils: the older ones are always more ape-like.

Here is a simple introduction to cladistics.

I’m still waiting to hear what the problems are with the hundreds of hominin fossils you have not yet disputed.

Some have been speculated but none proven in a conclusive manner.

Even if this were true, it’s not as if the fossils are our only line of evidence. I refer you back to my post #35 and #132. And I repeat that human evolution was accepted for other reasons long before there were many fossils, and that the fossils are therefore just as predicted.

Note that if creationism were correct, there should be no such fossils. Evolution says that species now separate shared a common ancestor, and that therefore, as we look back through the record, such fossils as we do find should be more and more similar. Further back, prior to the divergence, there should be fossils of creatures containing features of both now-separate groups.

Under creation though, because ‘kinds’ (whatever they are, do tell!) were created separately, there cannot be fossils sharing characteristics of separate groups.

Unfortunately, the cry of ‘there are no transitional fossils’ owes more to wanting it to be that way than to reality.

For instance, what would you call a fossil creature with the skeleton of a dromeosaur – with a long bony tail and teeth, etc, all characteristics of dinosaurs? A dinosaur, presumably. What if it also had feathers, an opposable hallux (big toe), a furcula (wishbone), and a bunch of other features found only in birds?

Come on then Mel. These things cannot exist. So just *what * was Archaeopteryx?

If you think different [sic] please provide the conclusive evidence here and now.

Since you won’t apparently deal with even the evidence offered so far, why should we try?

And I mean conclusive evidence - not theoretic or speculative but actual, uncontested, verifiable, universally accepted, no room for error proof.

Proof is for mathematics and alcohol. So I’ll post this again in the hope you’ll read it. Evolution is a fact and a theory. If you can’t grasp what science is, it’s not surprising you refuse to accept what it reveals.

Have you ever seen the film Twelve Angry Men? Remember the bloke at the end: “You can’t PROOVE he ws in the room!”

Everything we know indicated evolution. If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, quacks like a duck… you’d still say its duckness was in question.

 

[buffalo]

Catholic Catechism

**143 **By faith, man completely submits his intellect and his will to God. With his whole being man gives his assent to God the revealer. Sacred Scripture calls this human response to God, the author of revelation, “the obedience of faith”.

It seems that atheists cannot do this. It requires a humbling and understanding that their own minds are limited to God’s parameters.

 

[Oolon_Colluphid]

buffalo:

Catholic Catechism

**143 **By faith, man completely submits his intellect and his will to God. With his whole being man gives his assent to God the revealer. Sacred Scripture calls this human response to God, the author of revelation, “the obedience of faith”.

It seems that atheists cannot do this. It requires a humbling and understanding that their own minds are limited to God’s parameters.

If you say so. What has it to do with evolution? Try reading the Keith Miller links I posted.

 

[Melchior]

Vindex Urvogel:

Reply to Melchior Cont’d.

Philosophical difficulties in Melchior’s reply, however, do not end there. In a thoroughly wretched and incoherent manner, it would apepar that my opponent is attempting to accuse one of the logical fallacy known as the “undistributed middle.” Quite simply this is the fallacy that comes from attempting to argue two points as related without specifying why this should be. Melchior has scarcely, however, provided where in any statements offered by myself I have erred so egregiously as to engage in a rudimentary logical error of this sort, and I should think it most munificent of him to provide the appropriate examples for the readers of this thread. It would appear in the absence of evidence to the contrary, that charges of an undistributed middle fallacy are baseless.

Let us consider the statement that there are not transitional fossils demonstrating any sister-group hypothesis for humans. The very structure of the demand for evidence indicating human sister-group relationships from the fossil record is curious, in that it would seem to distinguish *Homo sapiens *from Animalia. Though disingenuous, this line of argumentation is pursued simply enough by producing the character data which precludes placing *H. sapiens *within Animalia, and I eagerly await such data. As human origins are neither my primary interest, nor any field in which I have more than the vaguest knowledge, I leave specific details of such matters to other individuals (namely Oolon) posting on this thread. I will note, however, a subtle shift in focus (the logical fallacy of shifting the goalposts). The original objections to the fossil record presented on this thread were that were no transitional forms of any kind (see the post by E. Tabara on the first page). When data were presented to refute such an assertion, it was ignored (as has been the majority if not all of the data advanced in defense of evolution in favor of argumentum ad hominem). Now, it would seem, the goalposts have been shifted to hominid phylogeny. Indeed we see a reflection of this in the language which Melchior uses. He makes great rhetorical flourish with the usage of the term proof, and yet formal proof are restricted to Logic and Mathematics and thus one must question why Melchior has requested such. It would seem that he has failed to understand that explanations in science consist at the most basic level of nomological-deductive explanations and historical narrative explanations, and thus consequently, has failed to understand how either is supported or refuted. Indeed, one must call into question given his emphasis on descriptive vocabulary to affix his use of the term “proof,” just what evidentiary standard Melchior feels acceptable. He has conspicuously failed to offer an explicit statement of an acceptable evidentiary standard, merely offering platitutdes and vauge generalities (“universally accepted,” e.g.). Until such time as Melchior has offered an evidentiary standard which he views as acceptable, it is difficult to construct a meaningful debate.
Last, but certainly not least, the creationist penchant on this thread for ignoring data presented in defense of evolutionary biology, with concomitant refusal to provide evidence refuting it, has continued admirably in Melchior’s post. Until such time as data is advanced to refute evolutionary biology which falls within the philosophical provenance of science, there is in actuality no debate occurring on this thread.

Vindex Urvogel

Did you miss your post that I was responding to? I provided the quote. You seem to have missed my point. You made a bold assertion. I challenged the merit of your assertion. You wrote a great deal in your response. Ironically, you never did provide that evidence.

I must applaud your brilliant and sophisticated use of language to completely avoid answering what I wrote. Instead you resort to highbrow insults and belittlement. Ad hominem attacks are always the last resort of the desperate. You have proven you have a vast vocabulary and remarkable aptitude for arrogance. And you call me a pseudo-intellectual? Your post could be used as a textbook example. You challenged my philosophical premise when it was actually a simple logical premise (again see your quote - the logic holds). You made a claim and I challenged you to prove your claim. You have failed to do so. Perhaps you thought you could silence the opposition by burying the issue in a deliberately verbose and jargon filled post. Of course, this board is mostly laymen. But please don’t insult everyone’s intelligence by assuming we can’t think because we choose to use terms everyone actually understands. You could have answered in a way that was understandable to all. But that would not have been nearly as impressive, would it?

When you have an actual answer feel free to post it.

Mel

 

[JimO]

Oolon,

You stated the following:

“It’s been said that non-theists are spiritually bereft. Well that’s dihydrogen monoxide off an anadid’s dorsal side to me. But it bothers me that those who are therefore spiritually superior may think their superiority gives their scientific claims any more weight.”

“Souls, being an utterly untestable, irrefutable hypothesis, are not scientific. You can have one if you like. You can have mine for fifty quid. I take PayPal.”

“Hard to tell where in the lineage he slipped in a couple of souls, but okay.”

The “spiritually bereft” term originated from Vindex when he got a little defensive. I only pointed out that if one is an atheist and rejects the spiritual, what is that? The last two quotes indicate a cynical attitude towards faith/religion. One of my complaints is that these types of cynical and condescending comments that you and Vindex seem to slip into your posts suggest an attitude of intellectual superiority that shows no respect for people of faith.

However, I would like to state clearly that as followers of Christ, it is completely wrong to give someone the impression of “spiritual superiority”. I apologize if I have given that impression. I feel no superiority over you or anyone else. I’m just grateful for the faith I have and want to share it.

Oolon, if I could purchase your soul for Christ, I would spend all that I have to do so. I mean that sincerely. You apparently don’t believe in the soul or God or a spiritual existence. Fine, that’s your choice. Vindex indicated in a earlier post that you cannot have faith in a physical law (like gravity). You can believe it or not but that doesn’t change the fact. My response was that if I absolutely refused to believe in gravity, I would be perplexed over my bloody nose when I tripped over a rock.

The same goes for spiritual laws. You can refuse to believe in a soul (which, in reality you have been using very skillfully, because it is comprised of your mind and will), but if God exists and if your existance is eternal, watch out for the “bloody nose.”

I realize that all my fervent believing won’t “create” God or life after death if they do not exist, but likewise, all your denial won’t make Him go away and it won’t cause you to cease to exist if they do. I believe that it’s not a matter of whether you will “live forever”, but where.

A clear indication of God’s existance and His love is that people like me care at all.

 

[Oolon_Colluphid]

<moderator’s hat on> Please can everyone deal with the facts of the case, rather than the personalities involved

(Okay, so I’m no longer even a moderator at Infidels, but the point remains. Issues, not ad hominem arguments.)

 

[Chris_W]

Oolon Colluphid:

By learning some science? Try a few textbooks from the library. Futuyma’s Evolutionary Biology is a good place to start.

Then, when one understands what science actually says (as opposed to creationist caricatures and straw men) and understands how it works, one is in a position to judge the validity of the claims.

A nice idea, but impractical I’m afraid. As I mentioned before, I did pursue in depth the issue of radiometric dating by reading and reading and reading. I read how radiometric dating works and then I read arguments for why it might not be accurate. Then I read the responses to the arguments against it. Then I read the rebuttals of the responses to those arguments, and so on and so on. If the scientists who are already knowlegable about these matters are not unanimous, why should I think a little more reading will give me the answers I seek?

I do not discredit scientific endeavors. They are often very beneificial to mankind. For example the study of how viruses can become resistant to antedotes. Good stuff, and certainly incorporates evolutionary knowlege. I even gave credit to Vindex for for his explanation of a theory he posed a few posts ago.

Let me explain my position as a creationist. I will use the example of Vindex’s explanation:

A hypothesis was made (a good thing to do). Then an if-then statement was made: If the hypothesis is correct, then we should expect to see such and such results (still good). Then the experiment is performed to test the hypothesis (again good). The results were just as suspected, so the hypothesis is corroborated (good yet again).

At this point the scientist can conclude that this experiment does not falsifiy the hypothesis…it makes the hypothesis possible. But as I stated earlier on this thread, there is a difference between showing it is possible and showing it is true. All the scientist can say is that it is possible. It does not rule out the possibility of some other explanation.

The next logical step then, if one is in a pursuit for truth, would be to ask the following question: What, if any, are the other possible explanations? Here is where a creationist might raise his hand and say “perhaps God made it that way.” The scientist can only respond, “well, yes, i suppose that is possible, but science can neither validate nor falsify that claim.”

Here is where the creationist and the atheistic evolutionist part ways. To answer this claim a person needs to (dare I say it) look outside the realm of scientific evidence.

Science is limited, as has been pointed out so many times in this thread, to emprical data. Man, however, is not limited to scientific empirical data. Science is something man does, not something man is limited by (unless the claims can be refuted by science). I can therefore justifiably look to philosophy, history, reason, societal evidences, etc in the pursuit for absolute truth.

I understand the argument by evolutionists that their confidence is the result of so many small evidences that all make evolution possible. But what the evolutionist doesn’t seem to understand is that the creationist uses an even larger spectrum of evidences, which make theism more credible than atheism. I think this is the point Jim O was trying to make about this forum. To limit the discussion to empirical data while talking to creationists, is futile because science is just one of many things to consider.

If evolutionists insist on discussing only science, then this discussion will indeed be futile. For as many evolutionists have already admitted, science cannot disprove God, and the confidence of belief in a creator by creationists does not rest on scientific data. There will be nothing to argue then, unless evolutionists try to insist science can somehow refute the possibility of a creator.

If evolutionists wish to dispute the existance of God, then by definition, they need to be ready to discuss evidences outside the realm of scientific data.

 

[Oolon_Colluphid]

JimO:

The last two quotes indicate a cynical attitude towards faith/religion.

So sue me

One of my complaints is that these types of cynical and condescending comments that you and Vindex seem to slip into your posts suggest an attitude of intellectual superiority that shows no respect for people of faith.

I have to both apologise for apparent condescension, and admit that people of faith generally have a remarkably respectless attitude to people without faith. I’ve lost count of how many people are going to pray for me.

However, I would like to state clearly that as followers of Christ, it is completely wrong to give someone the impression of “spiritual superiority”. I apologize if I have given that impression.

Accepted :bowdown2:

Oolon, if I could purchase your soul for Christ, I would spend all that I have to do so.

I really do take PayPal. How much have you got?

I mean that sincerely.

So do I. Remember, I think God is Santa for adults. But I do appreciate the thought. An awful lot of non-believers used to be believers, me included. Then I… sorry, this is going to sound condescending again, but don’t know how else to put it, so please bear with me… then I grew up.

You apparently don’t believe in the soul or God or a spiritual existence. Fine, that’s your choice. Vindex indicated in a earlier post that you cannot have faith in a physical law (like gravity). You can believe it or not but that doesn’t change the fact.

The difference being one of evidence. Reliable, testable, outside-world evidence, not emotions and feelings.

You can refuse to believe in a soul

I don’t refuse at all. Show me, is all I ask.

(which, in reality you have been using very skillfully, because it is comprised of your mind and will), but if God exists and if your existance is eternal, watch out for the “bloody nose.” …] I believe that it’s not a matter of whether you will “live forever”, but where.

Ah, Pascal’s Wager. I wondered how long that would take.
But it is more than a little off topic. Somewhere else?

A clear indication of God’s existance and His love is that people like me care at all.

And I suppose atheists are somehow demonstrating God’s existence when they’re nice and caring too? Well they do say he moves in mysterious ways…

Topic, topic…

 

[JimO]

I cannot give you an equation, but have you read any C.S. Lewis?

 

[Melchior]

Oolon,

Quote:
You can refuse to believe in a soul

I don’t refuse at all. Show me, is all I ask.

Show me love empirically. Or how about grief? I bet you believe in both, right? How can one ever prove that love or grief exist? Yet we all believe that they do.

I know this is way off topic. Something for you to ponder, maybe?

Mel

 

[Vindex_Urvogel]

Melchior:

Did you miss your post that I was responding to? I provided the quote. You seem to have missed my point. You made a bold assertion. I challenged the merit of your assertion. You wrote a great deal in your response. Ironically, you never did provide that evidence.

Your continued accusations that I have invoked an undistributed middle in my argument are either indicative of severe misunderstanding of this particular logical fallacy or simple disingenuosness in your argumentation. Since I will give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that you simply do not understand what the fallacy of the undistributed middle is, we shall proceed to discuss and define this fallacy, review pertinent examples, and again my challenge to produce where within any prior argument I have made such a fallacy, will be produced.

The logical fallacy of the undistributed middle is quite simply when one attempts to argue two points as related without specifying why this should be so. A generalized example can be rendered thusly:

“A is a form of B based on C. D is a form of B based on C. Ergo, D is a form of A.”

Or, one can render this argument as such:

“X is based on Y. Z is based on Y. Thus, Z is a form of X.”

As can be seen, the undistributed middle makes an argument via analogy, and this is the fundamental prerequisite for such a logical fallacy to occur. To my knowledge, I have not made an argument predicated on an analogy in any prior post, nor have I produced an argument which conforms to either generalized expression of an undistributed middle fallacy. Melchior has stated that my assertions were “bold” and thus somehow conform to the fallacy of the undistributed middle, but review of my prior posts finds nothing which fits the generalized expression of an undistributed middle fallacy. There appears to be an assumption of analogy-argument on the part of my opponent that has not in fact been made in my posts. Melchior has asserted that the following statement from an earlier post of mine conforms to the generalized expression of an undistributed middle fallacy:

“Terribly sorry, chap, but it has. Why, there was just recently a speciation even in Icterus. And besides our avian friends, there is always the good old Drosophila. Plants are pretty speciose creatures too, and speciation has often been demonstrated there too.”

I do not see within this statement an argument via analogy, nor any argument which conforms to the generalized expression of an undistributed middle fallacy. Perhaps Melchior could exactly specify where, within this statement he quoted, either criterion is met. If he cannot, I suggest that he retrieve a different statement from my earlier posts to substantiate his claim that I am guilty of an undistributed middle fallacy. If this proves impossible, the only ingenuous course of action is to retract the claim entirely.

He goes on to say that I never did provide evidence. This is a problematic assertion for multiple reasons. My post in respone to his was explicitly addressed at the philosophical structure of his reply. I noted that Oolon had already provided ample data to support the sister-group relationships of hominids, which Melchior has apparently ignored or forgotten. Moreover, Melchior, as addressed, asked for an orthogenic ancestor/descendant statement of relationship, which at the least displays a misunderstanding of phylogenetic inference and the logical structure thereof. I thus explained why such statements are not scientific nor are they something which systematists produce. At most he is guilty of strawman fallacy in which he has deliberately distorted systematics and asked for that which cannot be scientifically provided, as opposed to that which could, namely, a sister-group relationship of any given two clades. Lastly, and perhaps most seriously, Melchior has consistently failed to define his evidentiary standard. Though he continues to use terms such as “evidence” and “proof” and “universally accepted” he has not explicitly enumerated the criteria which underwrite his evidentiary standard and thus we are left with no frame of reference for what is considered valid evidence or “universally accepted” evidence. Such infinitely mutable evidentiary standards are ad hoc structures meant to preclude a hypothesis from falsification. Until such time as Melchior defines in explict terms his evidentiary standard, it is exceedingly difficult to host any meaningful discourse.

Vindex Urvogel

 

[Bracer]

I hope nobody minds if I jump in here (what can I say, I’ve nothing else to do today…). Also, it seems I’ll have to break this up into two posts (all things considered, probably just as well). Anyhoo:
Chris W:

A nice idea, but impractical I’m afraid. As I mentioned before, I did pursue in depth the issue of radiometric dating by reading and reading and reading. I read how radiometric dating works and then I read arguments for why it might not be accurate. Then I read the responses to the arguments against it. Then I read the rebuttals of the responses to those arguments, and so on and so on. If the scientists who are already knowlegable about these matters are not unanimous, why should I think a little more reading will give me the answers I seek?

Fair enough – if that’s really the case. If, however, you’re referencing something like the debate outlined here (tim-thompson.com/radiometric.html#resp1), then although I can understand your confusion, I can also see the problem. The simple fact is, this sort of thing is rarely (if ever) a debate between “scientists who are already knowledgeable,” but rather between a knowledgeable scientist, and a rather non-qualified person who is either honestly mistaken, or deliberately distorts the data for some other purpose. The Henke-Plaisted debate above, for example, was between Dr. Kevin Henke, whose degrees are in physical chemistry and geology, and whose research is directly involved with radiometric dating techniques, and Dr. David Plaisted, whose degree is in computer science (and not even, as near as I can tell, in something vaguely related like IC design, but in software development).

I’ll grant that I generally don’t like arguments from authority, but let’s just shorthand here: whose opinion do you think is worth more in this case? The person who works in this specific field every day, or the one who may or may not actually understand what he’s talking about? As with all things, it’s worth looking into what the source of your information is, as well as the evidence they present and the logic (or lack thereof) of their arguments.

(Now, if you’re thinking of some other papers/debates, I’ll be happy to look those over.)

(continued…)

 

[Bracer]

(Actually, it looks like I’ll have to break this up into three posts… Hoo boy…)
ChrisW:

I do not discredit scientific endeavors. They are often very beneificial to mankind. For example the study of how viruses can become resistant to antedotes. Good stuff, and certainly incorporates evolutionary knowlege. I even gave credit to Vindex for for his explanation of a theory he posed a few posts ago.

Good. Good…

Let me explain my position as a creationist. I will use the example of Vindex’s explanation:

A hypothesis was made (a good thing to do). Then an if-then statement was made: If the hypothesis is correct, then we should expect to see such and such results (still good). Then the experiment is performed to test the hypothesis (again good). The results were just as suspected, so the hypothesis is corroborated (good yet again).

Excellent. Keep going.

At this point the scientist can conclude that this experiment does not falsifiy the hypothesis…it makes the hypothesis possible. But as I stated earlier on this thread, there is a difference between showing it is possible and showing it is true. All the scientist can say is that it is possible. It does not rule out the possibility of some other explanation.

Again, true enough.

The next logical step then, if one is in a pursuit for truth, would be to ask the following question: What, if any, are the other possible explanations? Here is where a creationist might raise his hand and say “perhaps God made it that way.” The scientist can only respond, “well, yes, i suppose that is possible, but science can neither validate nor falsify that claim.”

As the scientist should. Again, so far so good.

Here is where the creationist and the atheistic evolutionist part ways. To answer this claim a person needs to (dare I say it) look outside the realm of scientific evidence.

OK, here’s where you kinda start to run off the rails. First of all, the preceding exchange would also hold true for a theistic evolutionary biologist (of which, it has already been pointed out, there are many, maybe even most). Second, what claim, exactly, are you trying to answer? That god did it? Well then, OK, sure, you’d have to look outside the “realm of scientific evidence,” but that’s really sort of self-evident, because that’s an entirely separate question – keep reading.

(continued…)

 

[Bracer]

(OK, let’s go for FOUR!!!)
ChrisW:

Science is limited, as has been pointed out so many times in this thread, to emprical data. Man, however, is not limited to scientific empirical data. Science is something man does, not something man is limited by (unless the claims can be refuted by science). I can therefore justifiably look to philosophy, history, reason, societal evidences, etc in the pursuit for absolute truth.

Um, your first sentence is fine, but you blow it at the finish, because the scientific method makes no claims to finding “absolute truth,” only to developing increasingly accurate models of how the material universe works. You are quite correct that the scientific method is limited to empirical data – the method can only be applied to what can be tested and verified (I would argue the same is true for history and – if this is what you were trying to say – the social sciences as well, but that’s a completely different discussion).

The problem is (and I don’t think, in spite of your above hypothetical exchange, you really understand this) “perhaps God made it that way” doesn’t really explain anything as far as the scientific method is concerned. Supernatural claims are not in any way testable or verifiable, pretty much by definition – “supernatural” = “outside of nature.” The miraculous is, by its very definition, not repeatable, nor testable.

And unfortunately, the reverse is also true: if you believe you do have evidence – physical, verifiable, repeatable and testable evidence – for a supernatural claim, then it categorically ceases to be supernatural, by definition. If, for example, I claim I can wave a magic wand and instantly clean up my living room, and can do it again and again, under controlled conditions, this would in turn enable us to begin looking into the mechanism of such a phenomenon, figure out how it works, see how it fits in with what else we know, and learn to apply it to other things. In which case, granted, the world would start looking like something out of a Harry Potter novel, but it would still involve testable and repeatable actions – hence, non-supernatural (certainly, our ideas of what constituted “natural” would shift a great deal if that happened, but I hope you understand my point).

(continued…)