Happy Birthday, Mr. Darwin: Growing Majority of Americans Support Teaching Both Sides of Evolution Debate

[The_Barbarian]

Question: Are there any creationist sites which are reputable, i.e., tell the truth?

If you contact Dr. Kurt Wise, at Bryan College in Dayton, Tennessee, I believe he would tell you the truth to the best of his ability.

Harold Coffin at Southwestern Adventist University, is apparently honest to a fault; he once testified that if it wasn’t for his interpretation of the Bible, the evidence would lead him to believe that the Earth was very old.

Thomas Woodward, author of “Doubts About Darwin”, a lecturer at Dallas Theological Seminary, has always been forthright in my experience. I am convinced that he would not lie to you.

I wish some of these people would have web sites. Woodward used to be associated with one that I liked very much, but it no longer exists.

 

[buffalo]

Maybe, but it beats the great sky fairy magically creating the cosmos.

Oh boy - here comes another atheist strolling into the conversation with the magic stuff.

Two suggestions before you debate - know what the Catholic church is and teaches, study some philosophy and definitely know history and the evidence of history.

 

[atheist1]

Oh boy - here comes another atheist strolling into the conversation with the magic stuff.

Two suggestions before you debate - know what the Catholic church is and teaches, study some philosophy and definitely know history and the evidence of history.

Well…let’s see if I am wrong…I’ve been wrong before.

Your church allows it’s members to accept creationism of the young earth type or a belief in theistic evolution. Am I wrong?

 

[atheist1]

Oh boy - here comes another atheist strolling into the conversation with the magic stuff.

Sorry…couldn’t help it…

 

[buffalo]

Well…let’s see if I am wrong…I’ve been wrong before.

Your church allows it’s members to accept creationism of the young earth type or a belief in theistic evolution. Am I wrong?

The constant teaching of the Church has been well established here and on other threads.

First and foremost and everything flows from here, is God is the creator of all that is seen and unseen. He created everything from nothing. Revelation gives us certainty about our first parents and original sin. Because we are human and creatures we cannot attain a perfect explanation of God or His ways. God made the universe intelligible and it was Catholics who sought its explanations. Catholics are responsible for the scientific method that gave rise to modern science. From the earliest times we observed life changes and adapts. It is only recently that uniformatism allowed the long ages necessary for evolutionism. Catholics know faith and reason cannot be opposed for they flow from the very same God. The reasoning of our observations are the weakness. Science, a subset of reason, is limited by our 5 senses, 3 dimensions and time. Science by its own definition has a limited say about the universe. Science can say nothing about the soul or the supernatural. Scientism is out. Theistic evolution is not a doctrine of the Church. Creation is. There is definitely evidence that we see on earth. We have a small percentage of pieces of a huge puzzle. As we piece it together we think we know the picture on the puzzle. Since faith and reason cannot be opposed as time goes on the conclusions will merge together, or there is an force at work preventing it. Polygenism is ruled out. Science is claiming life is from the cell up. Revelation has told us that it has been created top down and now corrupted. Adaptation is common to both scenarios.

The origins of man is important. Man is an intelligent project, each of us willed by our Creator.

 

[atheist1]

The constant teaching of the Church has been well established here and on other threads.

First and foremost and everything flows from here, is God is the creator of all that is seen and unseen. He created everything from nothing. Revelation gives us certainty about our first parents and original sin. Because we are human and creatures we cannot attain a perfect explanation of God or His ways. God made the universe intelligible and it was Catholics who sought its explanations. Catholics are responsible for the scientific method that gave rise to modern science. From the earliest times we observed life changes and adapts. It is only recently that uniformatism allowed the long ages necessary for evolutionism. Catholics know faith and reason cannot be opposed for they flow from the very same God. The reasoning of our observations are the weakness. Science, a subset of reason, is limited by our 5 senses, 3 dimensions and time. Science by its own definition has a limited say about the universe. Science can say nothing about the soul or the supernatural. Scientism is out. Theistic evolution is not a doctrine of the Church. Creation is. There is definitely evidence that we see on earth. We have a small percentage of pieces of a huge puzzle. As we piece it together we think we know the picture on the puzzle. Since faith and reason cannot be opposed as time goes on the conclusions will merge together, or there is an force at work preventing it. Polygenism is ruled out. Science is claiming life is from the cell up. Revelation has told us that it has been created top down and now corrupted. Adaptation is common to both scenarios.

The origins of man is important. Man is an intelligent project, each of us willed by our Creator.

Can you show me where theistic evolution has been denounced by your church?

 

[buffalo]

Can you show me where theistic evolution has been denounced by your church?

CCC

**295 **We believe that God created the world according to his wisdom. It is not the product of any necessity whatever, nor of blind fate or chance. We believe that it proceeds from God’s free will; he wanted to make his creatures share in his being, wisdom and goodness: “For you created all things, and by your will they existed and were created.” Therefore the Psalmist exclaims: “O LORD, how manifold are your works! In wisdom you have made them all”; and “The LORD is good to all, and his compassion is over all that he has made.”

God creates an ordered and good world
299 Because God creates through wisdom, his creation is ordered: "You have arranged all things by measure and number and weight."151 The universe, created in and by the eternal Word, the “image of the invisible God”, is destined for and addressed to man, himself created in the “image of God” and called to a personal relationship with God.152 Our human understanding, which shares in the light of the divine intellect, can understand what God tells us by means of his creation, though not without great effort and only in a spirit of humility and respect before the Creator and his work.153 Because creation comes forth from God’s goodness, it shares in that goodness - "And God saw that it was good. . . very good"154- for God willed creation as a gift addressed to man, an inheritance destined for and entrusted to him. On many occasions the Church has had to defend the goodness of creation, including that of the physical world.155
God transcends creation and is present to it.
300 God is infinitely greater than all his works: "You have set your glory above the heavens."156 Indeed, God’s “greatness is unsearchable”.157 But because he is the free and sovereign Creator, the first cause of all that exists, God is present to his creatures’ inmost being: "In him we live and move and have our being."158 In the words of St. Augustine, God is “higher than my highest and more inward than my innermost self”.159
God upholds and sustains creation.
301 With creation, God does not abandon his creatures to themselves. He not only gives them being and existence, but also, and at every moment, upholds and sustains them in being, enables them to act and brings them to their final end. Recognizing this utter dependence with respect to the Creator is a source of wisdom and freedom, of joy and confidence:

For you love all things that exist, and detest none of the things that you have made; for you would not have made anything if you had hated it. How would anything have endured, if you had not willed it? Or how would anything not called forth by you have been preserved? You spare all things, for they are yours, O Lord, you who love the living.160

This rules out any form of theistic evolution that uses random processes to explain the world.

 

[The_Barbarian]

Theistic evolution is not a doctrine of the Church. Creation is.

Creationism is not. Scientism is not.

But science and evolutionary theory are still compatible with the Church. Which is the way it should be. As Pope John Paul II said, regarding the Church and evolution:

“Truth cannot contradict truth.”

 

[atheist1]

CCC

**295 **We believe that God created the world according to his wisdom. It is not the product of any necessity whatever, nor of blind fate or chance. We believe that it proceeds from God’s free will; he wanted to make his creatures share in his being, wisdom and goodness: “For you created all things, and by your will they existed and were created.” Therefore the Psalmist exclaims: “O LORD, how manifold are your works! In wisdom you have made them all”; and “The LORD is good to all, and his compassion is over all that he has made.”

God creates an ordered and good world
[299](javascriptpenWindow(‘cr/299.htm’) Because God creates through wisdom, his creation is ordered: "You have arranged all things by measure and number and weight."151 The universe, created in and by the eternal Word, the “image of the invisible God”, is destined for and addressed to man, himself created in the “image of God” and called to a personal relationship with God.152 Our human understanding, which shares in the light of the divine intellect, can understand what God tells us by means of his creation, though not without great effort and only in a spirit of humility and respect before the Creator and his work.153 Because creation comes forth from God’s goodness, it shares in that goodness - "And God saw that it was good. . . very good"154- for God willed creation as a gift addressed to man, an inheritance destined for and entrusted to him. On many occasions the Church has had to defend the goodness of creation, including that of the physical world.155
God transcends creation and is present to it.
[300](javascriptpenWindow(‘cr/300.htm’) God is infinitely greater than all his works: "You have set your glory above the heavens."156 Indeed, God’s “greatness is unsearchable”.157 But because he is the free and sovereign Creator, the first cause of all that exists, God is present to his creatures’ inmost being: "In him we live and move and have our being."158 In the words of St. Augustine, God is “higher than my highest and more inward than my innermost self”.159
God upholds and sustains creation.
[301](javascriptpenWindow(‘cr/301.htm’) With creation, God does not abandon his creatures to themselves. He not only gives them being and existence, but also, and at every moment, upholds and sustains them in being, enables them to act and brings them to their final end. Recognizing this utter dependence with respect to the Creator is a source of wisdom and freedom, of joy and confidence:

For you love all things that exist, and detest none of the things that you have made; for you would not have made anything if you had hated it. How would anything have endured, if you had not willed it? Or how would anything not called forth by you have been preserved? You spare all things, for they are yours, O Lord, you who love the living.160
This rules out any form of theistic evolution that uses random processes to explain the world.

Nothing you have posted, as far as I can tell, would upset a person who believes in theistic evolution, at least if that person is a Christian.

Are you a young earth creationist?

 

[buffalo]

Nothing you have posted, as far as I can tell, would upset a person who believes in theistic evolution, at least if that person is a Christian.

Are you a young earth creationist?

I am a Catholic who believes in the constant teaching of the Catholic Church. I do not see these teachings to be overturned. That leaves perhaps a third option:

Catholic Traditon vs Science - are we looking deep enough

I do not know how old the earth is.

 

[Monty_Arch]

That’s not a mutation. That’s a fine example of methicillin resistant staphlococcus aureus bacteria dominating because of its pre-existing resistance. No mutation necessary. One cite that I visited stated that MRSA evolved “through random mutations and the acquisition of plasmids.”

So as I said, mutations caused methicillin resistance just as the cite stated.However, if the staph had prexisting resistance , methicillin would not have worked in the first place.

But reality is that plasmids occur naturally in bacteria, and bacteria could have acquired a plasmid (by consumption) that was beneficial to methicillin resistance. Again, no mutation necessary.

Plasmids are not consumed. They don’t exist outside the cell. They are transferred from cell to cell directly via conjugation. Also, plasmids undergo mutations.

 

[rossum]

I’ll repeat it here for your edification. Information is abstract; it conveys meaning; it has purpose; it is aperiodic.

Thank you for that, again my apologies for missing it. I will make the point that your definition does not allow any calculation of the amount of information. Your definition is purely qualitative, not quantitative. Hence you have no basis to stand on when you talk about “increase” or “decrease” of information. With your definition you can only talk about the presence or the absence of information.

No, in the absence of evidence, science reverts to its standard default of “we default to what we WANT to believe.” In the case of evolution theory, evolutionists default to the position that DNA is not so special, and is a result of random forces acting in natural selection - therefore there is bound to be random results!

You have been misinformed. One of the things that Darwin discovered was that the development of organisms was not random. In the process of random mutation and natural selection it is true that the random mutation part obviously includes a random element. Hosever the natural selection part is most certainly not random, and hence the overall process is not random. Mutations generate variation in the population and from this random variation natural selection picks the most successful variants. The overall process is not random because it preferentially selects the most successful variants.

In the case of Intelligent Design theory, ID’ers default to the position that since DNA is made by an intelligence, that it is special, and that each constituent part is placed there for a purpose. Any mutations may, or may not be identifiable unless we have the original master plan.

ID is not at the moment science. It may become so in future but at the moment it fails to make the grade. For example, ID has so far failed to articulate any way to falsify itself. How would we recognise anything that could not have been designed? Darwin provided at least two ways to falsify his theory when he wrote OtOoS; so far ID has not told us of any way to falsify ID. Various claims made by IDists (“X cannot have evolved”) have been falsified, but as yet ID itself is so nebulous that it cannot be falsified and so fails to qualify as science. How does one falsify an idea like: “An entity about which we know nothing, used powers of which we are not aware, to arrange some DNA, or RNA or something, into a pattern at some unspecified time in the past and possibly also the present.”

Actually, my “claim” is a response to your claim that information arises spontaneously as the result of random forces operating within natural selection.

Using my definition of information I have shown this. Using the pi example I have shown this.

Yes, it COULD, MIGHT, POSSIBLY. But it most likely would result in a decrease in the accuracy of the approximation of pi. I say it “COULD, MIGHT, POSSIBLY” because the chances are so rare that you don’t even have to compute it.

I am glad to see that you now agree with me. You previously claimed that it was impossible; I showed that it was possible albeit unlikely.

I say that “most likely would result in a decrease in the accuracy of the approximation of pi”

Agreed. Deleterious mutations outnumber beneficial mutations.

The problem with your approach to information is that you continue to fail to appreciate the difference in measuring the MEDIUM, and understanding that a measurement of information (by Shannon methods) being larger is not amenable to reason and logic.

I have to use mathematical definitoins of information if I want to be able to measure it. Your definition does not allow me to measure information.

For example, I could make the following two statements:

I am wearing a blue jacket.
I am wearing a blue dinner jacket.

The second has more letters, so Shannon computations would render it as containing more information.

Correct.

But I could make the following two statements:

I own a yellow vehicle.
I own a yellow car.

The second has fewer letters, so Shannon computations would render it as containing less information, but our reason and logic and intuition steps in to counter the results, because it is painfully obvious that the second statement actually renders MORE INFORMATION than the first.

The amount of information imparted may not be as obvious as you think. What is the proportion of yellow vehicles in all vehicles? What is the proportion of yellow cars in all cars? Since these proportions are likely to be different, which of your statements contains more information will depend on exactly what these two ratios are. I would not like to say which is the greater without measuring first.

Not quite. The example must meet with scientific criteria and plausibility.

Here we disagree. You claimed that it was “impossible”; a probability of 0 exactly. All I have to do is to show that the probability is not zero, which I have done. I agree that it is very unlikely in this particular example, but even 3 x 10**-21 (see post #649) is greater than zero. Your claim of impossibility is incorrect. The actual numerical values from the pi example are irrelevant to the evolution of DNA in real life. It is sufficient that the probability is greater than zero to disprove your “impossible”.

rossum

 

[The_Barbarian]

I’ll repeat it here for your edification. Information is abstract; it conveys meaning; it has purpose; it is aperiodic.

What is the “purpose” of the information in a hurricane?

 

[buffalo]

What is the “purpose” of the information in a hurricane?

To talk to another hurricane?

 

[rossum]

To talk to another hurricane?

“Shooting the breeze” no doubt.

Sorry, I’ll get my coat…

rossum

 

[buffalo]

“Shooting the breeze” no doubt.

Sorry, I’ll get my coat…

rossum

That’s a good one rossum.

 

[The_Barbarian]

Barbarian, regarding the claim that all evidence has a “purpose.”
What is the “purpose” of the information in a hurricane?

To talk to another hurricane?

That’s not the wildest idea we’ve heard from creationists here. But I don’t think so. There is no “purpose” to such information; it has no sender.

Information doesn’t necessarily have a sender or a purpose.

 

[buffalo]

Barbarian, regarding the claim that all evidence has a “purpose.”
What is the “purpose” of the information in a hurricane?

That’s not the wildest idea we’ve heard from creationists here. But I don’t think so. There is no “purpose” to such information; it has no sender.

Information doesn’t necessarily have a sender or a purpose.

I know, among the wilder one’s is the constant belief and teaching of the church.

 

[The_Barbarian]

(Barbarian remarks about wild ideas)

I know, among the wilder one’s is the constant belief and teaching of the church.

I’ve heard a lot of creationists say that. They’re just put out that the Church teaches evolution is consistent with Catholic belief.

 

[PEPCIS]

Question: Are there any creationist sites which are reputable, i.e., tell the truth?

LOL That’s funny. The better question is “Are there any creationist sites which tell lies?” Why do you default to the concept that “All creationist sites lie”? :tsktsk: